Goodness and Evil? A response and admission.
On 2013-03-22 06:47 PM, L wrote:
I'm still in shock after seeing a Dutch documentary just now in which Turkish youth display extremely antisemitic behaviour, being 'very satisfied with the holocaust'. The fact that the world is so full of ignorant people just makes me want to cry.
I'm still in shock after seeing a Dutch documentary just now in which Turkish youth display extremely antisemitic behaviour, being 'very satisfied with the holocaust'. The fact that the world is so full of ignorant people just makes me want to cry.
I'm going to put a few thoughts down here in response to your
reaction to the documentary. It's less a response to your reaction
than using it as an excuse to vent a little about some internal
confusion I have, and wanting to share it with someone who might not
only be able to accept some of the things I say as genuine
conundrums, at least genuine questions that many people probably
have but do not admit, and moreover with someone who is well
equipped to disillusion me of the fallacies of my messy
argumentation.
I need to start by saying that I haven't seen the documentary, and my thoughts are not fully formed.
Further, you do not fall under the class of people I'm talking about and it is because of this that I am writing this to you. You are one of the few people who are capable of reacting in politically enraged fashion but for whom I do not hold a vague sort of contempt. So, your reactions to things and opinions threaten to undermine my mild misanthropism and superiority complexes, and make me question why I feel irritated with some people and whether I'm right to do so.
So, on first reading this might be personally offensive to you, but I think it a compliment. You might find my views misguided perhaps even dangerous and perhaps generally (rather than personally) offensive, but that's another matter. In any case I think it's a good thing to have my thoughts out there and open to criticism and correction by someone such as yourself rather than fester alone in the chaotic chambers of my conceited cranium.
So, the point is that I find myself irritated by people who get personally upset about general injustice done to people elsewhere with whom they have no immediate contact. I do not mean a logical deduction of what justice is, or a keen sense of equality of people (which you display) but people who burst into tears in contemplation of people they've never been closer to than the pictures on a TV set. I often do not trust people who feel, or want to seem to feel, overwhelming sympathy for people they are not closely associated with. I know this idea of loving strangers is seen typically as a virtue in the western world, but I think that largely derives from Christian teaching. That's a little simplistic, I know, because it is also related to the underlying principles of communism and socialism (which in the inception were truly humanist endeavours dreamed up by amazing thinkers who were philanthropic, and despite how maligned these two -isms are these days, they've shaped our modern world profoundly and, I think, for the better).
Another point is that a documentary can be shocking, sometimes because it corrects your perspective of the world, and sometimes because it skews your perspective of the world. I doubt that these anti-semitic youth are representative of the world, and to believe that the world is 'full' of ignorant people only in the sense that there cannot be more of them (like a tea can be full of sugar), and as such it is a jolly good thing. It's certainly not true if you make the assumption that people of about our level of education and exposure to the world are not ignorant (of course you could shift the bar and consider every living soul ignorant, but then the point is diluted to meaninglessness). Whether the world has 'too much' ignorance is a question of relativity. I always balk at politicians railing about there being 'too many deaths on our roads', because I always wonder as an egg-headed literalist, how many deaths on the road that particular politician would be content with. Presumably these people would claim 0 deaths are acceptable, but then I wonder what sacrifice in true quality of life we make by trying for such a utopian ideal. It's a hard stretch to compare car deaths with ignorance, but my point (if I have one) is that these questions are largely rhetorical devices detached from reality: we don't have the possibility of an ignorance-free world (leaving beside the non-trivial question of whether such a world would be a world worth living in), and so it's largely useless to lament the presence of ignorance in this world that we do have. However, if we agree to avoid the extremes, then there still seems to be utility in asking whether we are tending towards increased ignorance or away from it, and there I tend to believe we are heading in the direction you'd presumably want us heading. I cannot believe we have more anti-Semites than 20 years ago, 100 years ago, 2000 years ago, relative to the world population. I cannot believe that our ideas of racial difference, gender difference, the rights of animals, and so on, have not made progress toward where we both want them to go. I feel like the progress has been quite astounding (I find myself sometimes quite shocked at how nice society is, how little aggression there is between strangers and how supportive it is to someone like me who would seem to contribute very little and who depends entirely on other people in order to clothe myself feed myself bathe myself in water and entertain myself), but saying that the progress is 'astounding' is to utter the same kind of empty platitude which I abhor bleeding hearts making, because the claims they make have no frame of reference. I'm thinking here of Bono showing some graph depicting an increase in the amount of 'lives of children saved' and dancing about with enthusiasm about how incredible and astounding that is, leaving me contemplating what exactly the un-labeled, reference-less graph was actually telling me. Is a flower really 'beautiful' or does it merely seem so to us because our survival probability is somehow benefited by believing such a thing? Is it 'incredible' that we are the only life we know of in our solar system, or is it a fantastic banality, an absolute inevitability?
This leads me now to what is perhaps a crass admission that I shouldn't make, but I'll march in anyway in the spirit of lifting up the carpet not out of pride at what lies beneath but with the hope that if it is indeed mouldy garbage, it can be cleansed by exposure to the light. The admission is: I often find myself question from basic principles whether death is a bad thing. Activists against poverty in Africa or fighting in the middle East or traffic laws in lower Saxony, or bridges without 6-foot high railings in Brisbane, can rouse even erudite rabble to sweeping claims that 'enough is enough' and 'too many lives have been lost', but I question this. What does it mean to say 'too many lives have been lost'? I simply do not understand how it can be taken as an axiom that saving lives is always and necessarily a positive thing: we begin to isolate our world, to insulate and insure ourselves so impermeably that we may slowly, and without obvious transition, start robbing life of the very essence which makes it worth having in the first place. A world in which we are never in any danger is certainly not a 'Brave New World'. 'Brav', perhaps, in the German meaning of Obedient, or Boring, or Banal, or Beautiful, or maybe even Best possible, but certainly not Brave.
There is so much awareness-raising these days that I wonder at what our limits of awareness are. By raising my awareness of the plight of southern-black-tongued geese in the northern republic of east bubble-fuck, do I not lower my awareness of the plight of the white-winged piper that inhabits the pine forests of upper to-hell-and-gone?
And now back to my praise of ignorance. Maybe ignorance breeds positive things. Poets need pain, but most people don't. Contentment needs delusion.
There is much in the world that is tragic, ignorant, hateful, distasteful, and incensing. There always has been and there always will be. I don't for a minute mean we should not strive to rid the world of, for example, racism, but I don't think it is a realistic goal, and so I don't think it is worth crying over as a general fact. One can cry about the child in Sudan starving for want of water, while we flush our toilets twice to sink a piece of dental floss... such things are all definite inequities in our world, and some I have seen have made me weak in my knees, want to weep where I stand, but which world have we ever had that does not have them? And of what use are our personal tears except to absolve ourselves of a little responsibility? And what possibility have our best intentions of doing good in the world, considering the disaster that charity has wreaked in Africa and Communism has wrought in Europe and Asia? I can sense a good deal of sense in the Ayn Rand praise of selfishness, because it is of its nature ingenuous, honest, and exposed and does not rely on abstract notions of what a 'good' world actually is.
I need to start by saying that I haven't seen the documentary, and my thoughts are not fully formed.
Further, you do not fall under the class of people I'm talking about and it is because of this that I am writing this to you. You are one of the few people who are capable of reacting in politically enraged fashion but for whom I do not hold a vague sort of contempt. So, your reactions to things and opinions threaten to undermine my mild misanthropism and superiority complexes, and make me question why I feel irritated with some people and whether I'm right to do so.
So, on first reading this might be personally offensive to you, but I think it a compliment. You might find my views misguided perhaps even dangerous and perhaps generally (rather than personally) offensive, but that's another matter. In any case I think it's a good thing to have my thoughts out there and open to criticism and correction by someone such as yourself rather than fester alone in the chaotic chambers of my conceited cranium.
So, the point is that I find myself irritated by people who get personally upset about general injustice done to people elsewhere with whom they have no immediate contact. I do not mean a logical deduction of what justice is, or a keen sense of equality of people (which you display) but people who burst into tears in contemplation of people they've never been closer to than the pictures on a TV set. I often do not trust people who feel, or want to seem to feel, overwhelming sympathy for people they are not closely associated with. I know this idea of loving strangers is seen typically as a virtue in the western world, but I think that largely derives from Christian teaching. That's a little simplistic, I know, because it is also related to the underlying principles of communism and socialism (which in the inception were truly humanist endeavours dreamed up by amazing thinkers who were philanthropic, and despite how maligned these two -isms are these days, they've shaped our modern world profoundly and, I think, for the better).
Another point is that a documentary can be shocking, sometimes because it corrects your perspective of the world, and sometimes because it skews your perspective of the world. I doubt that these anti-semitic youth are representative of the world, and to believe that the world is 'full' of ignorant people only in the sense that there cannot be more of them (like a tea can be full of sugar), and as such it is a jolly good thing. It's certainly not true if you make the assumption that people of about our level of education and exposure to the world are not ignorant (of course you could shift the bar and consider every living soul ignorant, but then the point is diluted to meaninglessness). Whether the world has 'too much' ignorance is a question of relativity. I always balk at politicians railing about there being 'too many deaths on our roads', because I always wonder as an egg-headed literalist, how many deaths on the road that particular politician would be content with. Presumably these people would claim 0 deaths are acceptable, but then I wonder what sacrifice in true quality of life we make by trying for such a utopian ideal. It's a hard stretch to compare car deaths with ignorance, but my point (if I have one) is that these questions are largely rhetorical devices detached from reality: we don't have the possibility of an ignorance-free world (leaving beside the non-trivial question of whether such a world would be a world worth living in), and so it's largely useless to lament the presence of ignorance in this world that we do have. However, if we agree to avoid the extremes, then there still seems to be utility in asking whether we are tending towards increased ignorance or away from it, and there I tend to believe we are heading in the direction you'd presumably want us heading. I cannot believe we have more anti-Semites than 20 years ago, 100 years ago, 2000 years ago, relative to the world population. I cannot believe that our ideas of racial difference, gender difference, the rights of animals, and so on, have not made progress toward where we both want them to go. I feel like the progress has been quite astounding (I find myself sometimes quite shocked at how nice society is, how little aggression there is between strangers and how supportive it is to someone like me who would seem to contribute very little and who depends entirely on other people in order to clothe myself feed myself bathe myself in water and entertain myself), but saying that the progress is 'astounding' is to utter the same kind of empty platitude which I abhor bleeding hearts making, because the claims they make have no frame of reference. I'm thinking here of Bono showing some graph depicting an increase in the amount of 'lives of children saved' and dancing about with enthusiasm about how incredible and astounding that is, leaving me contemplating what exactly the un-labeled, reference-less graph was actually telling me. Is a flower really 'beautiful' or does it merely seem so to us because our survival probability is somehow benefited by believing such a thing? Is it 'incredible' that we are the only life we know of in our solar system, or is it a fantastic banality, an absolute inevitability?
This leads me now to what is perhaps a crass admission that I shouldn't make, but I'll march in anyway in the spirit of lifting up the carpet not out of pride at what lies beneath but with the hope that if it is indeed mouldy garbage, it can be cleansed by exposure to the light. The admission is: I often find myself question from basic principles whether death is a bad thing. Activists against poverty in Africa or fighting in the middle East or traffic laws in lower Saxony, or bridges without 6-foot high railings in Brisbane, can rouse even erudite rabble to sweeping claims that 'enough is enough' and 'too many lives have been lost', but I question this. What does it mean to say 'too many lives have been lost'? I simply do not understand how it can be taken as an axiom that saving lives is always and necessarily a positive thing: we begin to isolate our world, to insulate and insure ourselves so impermeably that we may slowly, and without obvious transition, start robbing life of the very essence which makes it worth having in the first place. A world in which we are never in any danger is certainly not a 'Brave New World'. 'Brav', perhaps, in the German meaning of Obedient, or Boring, or Banal, or Beautiful, or maybe even Best possible, but certainly not Brave.
There is so much awareness-raising these days that I wonder at what our limits of awareness are. By raising my awareness of the plight of southern-black-tongued geese in the northern republic of east bubble-fuck, do I not lower my awareness of the plight of the white-winged piper that inhabits the pine forests of upper to-hell-and-gone?
And now back to my praise of ignorance. Maybe ignorance breeds positive things. Poets need pain, but most people don't. Contentment needs delusion.
There is much in the world that is tragic, ignorant, hateful, distasteful, and incensing. There always has been and there always will be. I don't for a minute mean we should not strive to rid the world of, for example, racism, but I don't think it is a realistic goal, and so I don't think it is worth crying over as a general fact. One can cry about the child in Sudan starving for want of water, while we flush our toilets twice to sink a piece of dental floss... such things are all definite inequities in our world, and some I have seen have made me weak in my knees, want to weep where I stand, but which world have we ever had that does not have them? And of what use are our personal tears except to absolve ourselves of a little responsibility? And what possibility have our best intentions of doing good in the world, considering the disaster that charity has wreaked in Africa and Communism has wrought in Europe and Asia? I can sense a good deal of sense in the Ayn Rand praise of selfishness, because it is of its nature ingenuous, honest, and exposed and does not rely on abstract notions of what a 'good' world actually is.
Have a look at this: my-journey-from-evil-to-heroism by Phil Zimbardo of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment. It
is a fascinating presentation from a very interesting psychologist, but
I demur against his 'heroic
involvement project'. Behind everything he does is a simple dichotomy of good and evil. It seems to him that evil is an obvious thing:
that the problem during the time of the national socialists was that the
people were put in a situation (a bad barrel) that allowed them to
disregard what they knew to be evil. I think this is only partly true:
there were many people at the time who truly did not know: they
literally saw Hitler as a hero. He was (or seemed to be) courageous,
outspoken, prepared to stand up to what they saw as the negative
influences on their society. In promoting 'heroism' as a general trait: as the severe active aversion to what is perceived as evil, he is promoting extremism. There are many examples where such extremism, such as that of Martin Luther King, Martin Luther, Gandhi, Mandela, has led to great positive changes in our world - good as judged with historical hindsight - but there are many examples where it has not. Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, even Hitler and Stalin, were all seen in their time and context by the majority as heroes, as positive examples, and through the sweeping fever for heroism (which is arguably behind Hollywood's success) great tragedies transpired.
My thoughts diverge here and so I shall leave you!
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