First, what spawned this train of thoughts:
A while ago, I read a whole buttload of Escapist articles concerning objectification of women in video games. What struck me was the division between how male and female authors addressed the problem. The female authors were, in general, arguing that there should be more non-sexualized women in video games, to give female players someone to identify with that wasn't a man. The men, on the other hand, were generally arguing that, to even the score, there should be more sexualized male characters. In this case, I think the female authors are in the right, and the male authors were sort of missing the point - but it spawned a semi-related train of thoughts in my mind.
The full train of thoughts is quite long, as these things tend to be, and there's no way for me to write down my full reasoning in a concise manner, but here's the gist of it:
Jean-Paul Sartre argued that human interaction, by necessity, involves a degree of objectifying. We can't always perceive the full scope of humanity in everyone in our surroundings, so there is a need to objectify, to simplify. The cashier at a supermarket is a good example: Of course, if you start a conversation with her, you'll find out that she's a human being with as much depth as anyone else, but most of the time, we regard her as a bit player: A minor NPC, without any real humanity - much like the ever-present Vendor guys in computer games. (Sartre was a cynic, so his argument was actually that objectification is the only possible mode of human interaction, but I sorta disagree with that. Nonetheless.)
Sartre further argued that to be on the wrong end of this objectifying process isn't very pleasant. We don't want to be treated as objects by other people, we want them to see the way we truly are - rich, complex human beings. Ultimately, we don't want to be judged. This is what led him to coin the famous phrase "Hell is other people".
Now, who objectifies whom obviously becomes a question of power. It is convenient for me to objectify you, but it is unpleasant for you to be objectified. The obvious solution is clearly for us both to treat each other as human beings and not do any objectifyin' of any sort. Unfortunately this is sort of a Prisoners' Dilemma situation. You can treat me with all the respect you want, and I can still be a total dickhead and treat you like a vending machine/microwave/sex toy/whatever.
The second-best solution would be for both of us to objectify each other - this is what ties back into the male authors' solution to the Girls In Videogames problem. It's not a good solution, but it's at least a solution - both you and me have to endure some discomfort, but at least the situation is fair. Unfortunately, this is a bit of an unrealistic solution. We don't like being objectified, so we will try to do stuff to prove our humanity, our agency - and if given power, we can enforce this humanity, this agency, over people. Such power can be established bluntly, e.g. through violence, or subtly - consider the stereotypical seductress. Often objectified in the media, certainly, but in reality she is very clearly exerting power over and objectifying her target, having no genuine interest in him as a person; merely turning him into an instrument of her will. [I apologize for the gender role and heteronormativity here, but you get my point].
In videogames, this hierarchy is clear. A guy who is offended by being put in the tight pants of a sexy bishounen can just go back to playing God of War; a girl who is offended by being squeezed into a minimal bikini can... play God of War, I guess. But you've heard these arguments before.
Nonetheless, sexuality and intimacy are pretty complicated subjects. There's a lot of objectifying and a lot of vulnerability being thrown around, and a deep amount of trust and respect needed to pull it off. It isn't strange that we would want to objectify people in the contest of sex. We want to look, we want to touch, we want to judge - but we're afraid of being looked at, of being touched, and most of all, of being judged. So we pretend that there isn't a person with his or her own thoughts doing all the looking and touching.
And here's what I'm actually getting at, namely some self-psychoanalysis: This is probably the reason why I was so afraid of women for much of my youth. I was afraid of the female agency - afraid of being reduced to something less than I was*. I think, despite what our macho culture claims, that many, many other men are afraid of this as well.
The prospect that a woman would think "I don't care who he is, I want to screw him" might superficially seem pleasant to the stereotypical man, but here's the catch: Men are used to being the subject in a sexual situation. The man who behaves like the Hollywood man is thinking through a filter in which he is the actor, and the woman doesn't really want to use him, she wants to be used by him.
The thought that it could be the other way around never even enters Hollywood Guy's mind. If someone tries to convince him of it, he would just grin and say that it's mutual.
But sometimes it isn't. Sometimes a woman really is in power. And to be confronted with the thought that all your ideas and dreams and hopes are insubstantial - that all that really matters about you can be reduced to one tiny, insignificant detail like how much money you make or what you have between your legs - that is a deeply disturbing thought, no matter what you happen to have there.
----
*Just to be clear here: Was I, as a teenage boy, afraid that women would only be interested in me for sex? No. Not strictly speaking. But I was afraid that women would see me as something less than a person. It's not so much which object you're being reduced to as it is the fact that you're not being seen for what you are.
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onsdag 22 februari 2012
måndag 6 februari 2012
Better Days of a Defender of the Innocent Youth
So we saw a documentary on the youth magazine "Okej" from the 1980s. A guy was railing against the perverting effects of hard rock, and it got me thinking:
What happens to all the moral guardians once it becomes obvious whatever they were railing against is harmless? What do the moral-panic guys do when the Black Sabbath fans become responsible family fathers pushing on forty, when the guy who watches splatter movies becomes a store manager, when the gamers spawn little gamerlings and make surprisingly good parents? Where do the morally outraged go, what becomes of them once society accepts whatever they were railing against, as inevitably happens?
Do they just give up? Do they shut up, but grumble in silence about how "punk ruined the world" for the rest of their lives? Do they resent the new society where Satan-worshipping baby killer music is featured on Melodifestivalen? Do they admit they were wrong?
The guy who went on SVT in 1985 and seriously claimed that W.A.S.P. would be responsible for raising an entire generation of violent, hedonistic anarchists - what does he say now, when the hard rock generation works as accountants and nurses throughout the country? If you interviewed him, what would he have to say about it?
I'm really quite curious.
What happens to all the moral guardians once it becomes obvious whatever they were railing against is harmless? What do the moral-panic guys do when the Black Sabbath fans become responsible family fathers pushing on forty, when the guy who watches splatter movies becomes a store manager, when the gamers spawn little gamerlings and make surprisingly good parents? Where do the morally outraged go, what becomes of them once society accepts whatever they were railing against, as inevitably happens?
Do they just give up? Do they shut up, but grumble in silence about how "punk ruined the world" for the rest of their lives? Do they resent the new society where Satan-worshipping baby killer music is featured on Melodifestivalen? Do they admit they were wrong?
The guy who went on SVT in 1985 and seriously claimed that W.A.S.P. would be responsible for raising an entire generation of violent, hedonistic anarchists - what does he say now, when the hard rock generation works as accountants and nurses throughout the country? If you interviewed him, what would he have to say about it?
I'm really quite curious.
torsdag 24 november 2011
Unique
Sometimes it strikes me how spectacular life is.
There's no guarantee of it, but by the simple task of picking up a book and turning on my playlist, I may be doing something that no human being has ever done before: In this case, reading a Swedish book on child psychology while listening to a Punjabi rapper.
Uniqueness is all around us.
There's no guarantee of it, but by the simple task of picking up a book and turning on my playlist, I may be doing something that no human being has ever done before: In this case, reading a Swedish book on child psychology while listening to a Punjabi rapper.
Uniqueness is all around us.
söndag 13 november 2011
Mr. Wright on Beauty
The following is a very long quote, reposted here because I liked it:
"One day, rummaging through a dusty old attic in a small Austrian town, a collector comes across a faded manuscript containing many pages of music. It is written for the piano. Curious, he takes it to a dealer. The dealer phones a friend, who appears half an hour later. When he sees the music he becomes excited, then puzzled. This looks like the handwriting of Mozart himself, but it isn’t a well-known piece. In fact, he’s never heard it. More phone calls. More excitement. More consultations. It really does seem to be Mozart. And, though some parts seem distantly familiar, it doesn’t correspond to anything already known in his works.
Before long, someone is sitting at a piano. The collector stands close by, not wanting to see his precious find damaged as the pianist turns the pages. But then comes a fresh surprise. The music is wonderful. It’s just the sort of thing Mozart would have written. It’s energetic and elegiac by turns, it’s got subtle harmonic shifts, some splendid tunes, and a ringing finale. But it seems … incomplete. There are places where nothing much seems to be happening, where the piano is simply marking time. There are other places where the writing is faded and it isn’t quite clear, but it looks as though the composer has indicated, not just one or two bars rest, but a much longer pause.
Gradually the truth dawns on the excited little group. What they are looking at is indeed by Mozart. It is indeed beautiful. But it’s the piano part of a piece that involves another instrument, or perhaps other instruments. By itself it is frustratingly incomplete. A further search of the attic reveals nothing else that would provide a clue. The piano music is all there is, a signpost to something that was there once and might still turn up one day. There must have been a complete work of art which would now, without additional sheet music, be almost impossible to reconstruct; they don’t know if the piano was to accompany an oboe or a bassoon, a violin or a cello, or perhaps a full string quartet or some other combination of instruments. If those other parts could be found, they would make complete sense of the incomplete beauty contained in the faded scribble of genius now before them. …
This is the position we are in when confronted by beauty. The world is full of beauty, but the beauty is incomplete. Our puzzlement about what beauty is, what it means, and what (if anything) it is there for is the inevitable result of looking at one part of a larger whole."
--N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, reposted on slacktivist.
"One day, rummaging through a dusty old attic in a small Austrian town, a collector comes across a faded manuscript containing many pages of music. It is written for the piano. Curious, he takes it to a dealer. The dealer phones a friend, who appears half an hour later. When he sees the music he becomes excited, then puzzled. This looks like the handwriting of Mozart himself, but it isn’t a well-known piece. In fact, he’s never heard it. More phone calls. More excitement. More consultations. It really does seem to be Mozart. And, though some parts seem distantly familiar, it doesn’t correspond to anything already known in his works.
Before long, someone is sitting at a piano. The collector stands close by, not wanting to see his precious find damaged as the pianist turns the pages. But then comes a fresh surprise. The music is wonderful. It’s just the sort of thing Mozart would have written. It’s energetic and elegiac by turns, it’s got subtle harmonic shifts, some splendid tunes, and a ringing finale. But it seems … incomplete. There are places where nothing much seems to be happening, where the piano is simply marking time. There are other places where the writing is faded and it isn’t quite clear, but it looks as though the composer has indicated, not just one or two bars rest, but a much longer pause.
Gradually the truth dawns on the excited little group. What they are looking at is indeed by Mozart. It is indeed beautiful. But it’s the piano part of a piece that involves another instrument, or perhaps other instruments. By itself it is frustratingly incomplete. A further search of the attic reveals nothing else that would provide a clue. The piano music is all there is, a signpost to something that was there once and might still turn up one day. There must have been a complete work of art which would now, without additional sheet music, be almost impossible to reconstruct; they don’t know if the piano was to accompany an oboe or a bassoon, a violin or a cello, or perhaps a full string quartet or some other combination of instruments. If those other parts could be found, they would make complete sense of the incomplete beauty contained in the faded scribble of genius now before them. …
This is the position we are in when confronted by beauty. The world is full of beauty, but the beauty is incomplete. Our puzzlement about what beauty is, what it means, and what (if anything) it is there for is the inevitable result of looking at one part of a larger whole."
--N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, reposted on slacktivist.
torsdag 7 juli 2011
Why Selfishness?
This is... perhaps a weird thing to be thinking, but it's something that has been bothering me for a while:
What reason is there to be selfish? Why have we accepted the axiom that "I should try to benefit myself"? Why do we somehow believe that there's any reason to do so?
I mean, put it like this: There are maybe 7 billion people on the planet. Why do I care that a particular person out of these 7 billion is better off? What reason do I have for that? Is it just that I'm more acutely aware of that person - that I can hear that person's thoughts, that I can perceive that person's hunger and thirst?
That doesn't really make any sense, does it? That's like saying "There are plenty of paintings in the world, but I can see this one most clearly because it's standing right there, so therefore it must be the most important painting in the world and I should care about it more than I care about any other painting."
What reason is there to be selfish? Why have we accepted the axiom that "I should try to benefit myself"? Why do we somehow believe that there's any reason to do so?
I mean, put it like this: There are maybe 7 billion people on the planet. Why do I care that a particular person out of these 7 billion is better off? What reason do I have for that? Is it just that I'm more acutely aware of that person - that I can hear that person's thoughts, that I can perceive that person's hunger and thirst?
That doesn't really make any sense, does it? That's like saying "There are plenty of paintings in the world, but I can see this one most clearly because it's standing right there, so therefore it must be the most important painting in the world and I should care about it more than I care about any other painting."
torsdag 30 juni 2011
Wickedness
So in Iceye's post "Who do you think you are?" the question of evil was discussed in the comments. I just read the latest comment, stated by ShadoWolf that "No one considers themselves to be evil when they do something most would call evil."
I disagree. I can't speak for other people, but I see a lot of wickedness in myself.
Now, I cannot claim to believe in a "universal evil", of course, because that implies some sort of omniscent judge, and while I have what I consider solid evidence of the existence of the Blind Idiot God, I don't believe it judges.
I do, however, believe in a subjective sort of evil - as a sort of "necessary fantasy" in order to properly function. Why have I never killed anyone? The long and short of it is "Because I have been convinced that murder is evil". If I didn't regard murder as an evil thing, I would have no real reason not to do it (disregarding the "I might be caught" angle, but honestly, how likely are you to be caught if you murder a random stranger for the lulz? Not very.)
Evil may be a fantasy, something that does not objectively exist - "as real as Santa" - but unlike Santa, it is a necessary fantasy. It's a made-up belief that we, at least on a personal level, need in order to function as a modern society. It's like how the medieval church needed God to function; the church was objectively useful, it created order and provided employment for countless people - but its authority was (probably, at least) entirely fictive, there was no "real" reason to listen to the Pope. Yet, if nobody had listened to the Pope, we wouldn't have literacy in the Western world.
It's the same with "evil". If we didn't believe in it, society would collapse, because people would undertake any selfish act that they thought they could get away with.
Occasionally, people do selfish things - but often, they regret them afterwards, because they think that the act is wrong; they consider themselves, in some small fashion, "evil" for having done it.
That's how I understand the word, at least.
I disagree. I can't speak for other people, but I see a lot of wickedness in myself.
Now, I cannot claim to believe in a "universal evil", of course, because that implies some sort of omniscent judge, and while I have what I consider solid evidence of the existence of the Blind Idiot God, I don't believe it judges.
I do, however, believe in a subjective sort of evil - as a sort of "necessary fantasy" in order to properly function. Why have I never killed anyone? The long and short of it is "Because I have been convinced that murder is evil". If I didn't regard murder as an evil thing, I would have no real reason not to do it (disregarding the "I might be caught" angle, but honestly, how likely are you to be caught if you murder a random stranger for the lulz? Not very.)
Evil may be a fantasy, something that does not objectively exist - "as real as Santa" - but unlike Santa, it is a necessary fantasy. It's a made-up belief that we, at least on a personal level, need in order to function as a modern society. It's like how the medieval church needed God to function; the church was objectively useful, it created order and provided employment for countless people - but its authority was (probably, at least) entirely fictive, there was no "real" reason to listen to the Pope. Yet, if nobody had listened to the Pope, we wouldn't have literacy in the Western world.
It's the same with "evil". If we didn't believe in it, society would collapse, because people would undertake any selfish act that they thought they could get away with.
Occasionally, people do selfish things - but often, they regret them afterwards, because they think that the act is wrong; they consider themselves, in some small fashion, "evil" for having done it.
That's how I understand the word, at least.
lördag 12 mars 2011
The Good Delusion
My philosophy of values is something that gets revisited a lot on this blog. What with it being called Absurd Heroes and all, I suppose that's not really strange - philosophy of values is something I place a lot of value in. Ironic, I know.
So, let's for a moment go over the basic idea behind absurdism again. Absurdism states that there are no inherent values - the world is meaningless and devoid of any real content, save for what values we invent for ourselves. The idea behind the philosophy is that causes - something to champion, something to be a hero for - fill our lives with meaning. Essentially, any goal we set is arbitrary and meaningless, but the struggle towards that goal is meaningful, because of the challenge it poses, because it keeps us moving. When Sisyphus gets the rock to the top of the mountain, it rolls down on the other side - nothing is achieved, nothing has happened - but the struggle to push the rock gives him something to do.
So much for values as in goals. The struggle to create a good fiction, or a nice drawing, or a beautiful piece of music, are valuable; the outcome basically isn't really important. So what of being a patron of the arts? Is enjoying art also an entirely arbitrary thing? Maybe. I'm thinking it probably is.
The reason I'm philosophizing about this is because I just watched a magical girl transformation sequence and started crying. My thoughts at the moment were basically "My God, this is so beautiful". Yes, you read that right. I was deeply touched by a cartoon depicting a poorly-drawn girl spouting random English nonsense and then magically changing into a pretty outfit. Now, normally - to protect my pride - I would probably blame this reaction on sleep deprivation, or making some association, or some other excuse. But the fact remains: I was deeply touched. I felt the essence of True Art for a moment, art that moved and inspired me.
And I'm thinking, can you argue for something being True Art and something else not being? I don't think so. Beauty, or Quality, much like a religious experience, is something which cannot be quantified, measured, or established in repeatable experiments. Just like God, it's only something we feel, not something we can ever prove. So when we say, "This is a good song", we are saying essentially the same thing as "I felt the presence of God". You are saying you felt something, the existence of which you cannot prove, an intangible, unquantifiable, unmeasurable something, with no substance, no essence, no form. You're essentially saying you saw something that for all intents and purposes doesn't exist.
And yet, there are trends. There are some things that are more widely considered beautiful, and there are whole academic fields devoted to trying to understand quality. And there are shortcuts, like the golden ratio, or tropes, or literary techniques, which are recipes that will likely result in something of quality. But we won't find universal consensus. The whole thing reminds me a bit of the ancient Jews, reading the Torah and trying to understand the nature of God, trying to say, "This here text proves that God is good, because it describes benevolence in his actions", much like a literary critic might say, "This here text proves that Catcher in the Rye is good, because it describes its expert usage of the unreliable narrator technique". In both cases, you can flatly deny the arguments. "It is true because it's in the Bible", they say, and you say, "But I don't believe the Bible is true, and you can't prove it. You can't even demonstrate it, actually - you can't even provide indications that it might be."
And yet, I think, a lot of people claim that Good is something real. You'd certainly think so, what with how hurt people can be when you insult their favourite pieces of art. Firefly sucks. The Final Fantasy series is for losers. Hyperion is a terrible book.
It hurts, doesn't it? It feels so wrong somehow. Art is very important to us. And yet we haven't even got a clue what it actually is.
So, let's for a moment go over the basic idea behind absurdism again. Absurdism states that there are no inherent values - the world is meaningless and devoid of any real content, save for what values we invent for ourselves. The idea behind the philosophy is that causes - something to champion, something to be a hero for - fill our lives with meaning. Essentially, any goal we set is arbitrary and meaningless, but the struggle towards that goal is meaningful, because of the challenge it poses, because it keeps us moving. When Sisyphus gets the rock to the top of the mountain, it rolls down on the other side - nothing is achieved, nothing has happened - but the struggle to push the rock gives him something to do.
So much for values as in goals. The struggle to create a good fiction, or a nice drawing, or a beautiful piece of music, are valuable; the outcome basically isn't really important. So what of being a patron of the arts? Is enjoying art also an entirely arbitrary thing? Maybe. I'm thinking it probably is.
The reason I'm philosophizing about this is because I just watched a magical girl transformation sequence and started crying. My thoughts at the moment were basically "My God, this is so beautiful". Yes, you read that right. I was deeply touched by a cartoon depicting a poorly-drawn girl spouting random English nonsense and then magically changing into a pretty outfit. Now, normally - to protect my pride - I would probably blame this reaction on sleep deprivation, or making some association, or some other excuse. But the fact remains: I was deeply touched. I felt the essence of True Art for a moment, art that moved and inspired me.
And I'm thinking, can you argue for something being True Art and something else not being? I don't think so. Beauty, or Quality, much like a religious experience, is something which cannot be quantified, measured, or established in repeatable experiments. Just like God, it's only something we feel, not something we can ever prove. So when we say, "This is a good song", we are saying essentially the same thing as "I felt the presence of God". You are saying you felt something, the existence of which you cannot prove, an intangible, unquantifiable, unmeasurable something, with no substance, no essence, no form. You're essentially saying you saw something that for all intents and purposes doesn't exist.
And yet, there are trends. There are some things that are more widely considered beautiful, and there are whole academic fields devoted to trying to understand quality. And there are shortcuts, like the golden ratio, or tropes, or literary techniques, which are recipes that will likely result in something of quality. But we won't find universal consensus. The whole thing reminds me a bit of the ancient Jews, reading the Torah and trying to understand the nature of God, trying to say, "This here text proves that God is good, because it describes benevolence in his actions", much like a literary critic might say, "This here text proves that Catcher in the Rye is good, because it describes its expert usage of the unreliable narrator technique". In both cases, you can flatly deny the arguments. "It is true because it's in the Bible", they say, and you say, "But I don't believe the Bible is true, and you can't prove it. You can't even demonstrate it, actually - you can't even provide indications that it might be."
And yet, I think, a lot of people claim that Good is something real. You'd certainly think so, what with how hurt people can be when you insult their favourite pieces of art. Firefly sucks. The Final Fantasy series is for losers. Hyperion is a terrible book.
It hurts, doesn't it? It feels so wrong somehow. Art is very important to us. And yet we haven't even got a clue what it actually is.
torsdag 3 februari 2011
Eat. Breathe. Reproduce.
I know it isn't a particularly strange approach to the meaning of life. The theory of evolution has been suggesting this as the "meaning" since, well, since it was invented. We're here to eat, to breathe, to reproduce. We're here to propagate the species.
But I wonder - and this is what bothers me most about the theory of evolution - is that really it? I can live without a grand, cosmic plan, that doesn't bother me. I have no issue with a life in which we create our own meaning. Trouble is, are we really? Isn't there a grand meaning, one we didn't sign up for but got nonetheless? If the meaning of life is to maintain and create life, doesn't that make it all just a grand pyramid scheme in which we're forced to participate? "Sell our product to three of your friends, so that they can sell our product to nine more people, so that they, in turn, can sell our product to..." - "Create at least one new person, so that it can create at least one new person, so that it, in turn..."
Sure, we can try to screw the Grand Plan and just our own thing - we can declare, "I don't want children", and we can even kill or castrate ourselves, thus messing up the entire plan. But can we ever really escape? How do we know that our actions, intended to subvert the Grand Plan, aren't really serving it, by removing unsuitable elements from the gene pool? It may seem paranoid, even insane, to worry about the principle "Eat. Breathe. Reproduce." ruling our lives, but it bothers me. It bothers me because it seems so cruel, so ultimately tragic, that all the beautiful things in life should evolve as completely trivial side effects to a machine that was designed and optimized to eat, shit, and fuck.
"But why should that be a problem?" you ask, "Why can't we just enjoy the side effects, now that we have them?" - well, we can. And that is, after all, what I spend most of my time doing, so I don't have any particular problem with it, at least not one I can easily describe. But somehow, on some level, it feels wrong. It makes me feel like I'm a man who believes himself to see fairies and dragons where really there's only the cold, hard walls of his cell in the asylum. No doubt that man is happy, living an adventurous, exciting life inside his head - but he can't help but doubt, wonder, pick at some thoughts that shouldn't be picked at, secretly suspecting that whatever he believes, the cell is actually real, and the dragons actually aren't.
But I wonder - and this is what bothers me most about the theory of evolution - is that really it? I can live without a grand, cosmic plan, that doesn't bother me. I have no issue with a life in which we create our own meaning. Trouble is, are we really? Isn't there a grand meaning, one we didn't sign up for but got nonetheless? If the meaning of life is to maintain and create life, doesn't that make it all just a grand pyramid scheme in which we're forced to participate? "Sell our product to three of your friends, so that they can sell our product to nine more people, so that they, in turn, can sell our product to..." - "Create at least one new person, so that it can create at least one new person, so that it, in turn..."
Sure, we can try to screw the Grand Plan and just our own thing - we can declare, "I don't want children", and we can even kill or castrate ourselves, thus messing up the entire plan. But can we ever really escape? How do we know that our actions, intended to subvert the Grand Plan, aren't really serving it, by removing unsuitable elements from the gene pool? It may seem paranoid, even insane, to worry about the principle "Eat. Breathe. Reproduce." ruling our lives, but it bothers me. It bothers me because it seems so cruel, so ultimately tragic, that all the beautiful things in life should evolve as completely trivial side effects to a machine that was designed and optimized to eat, shit, and fuck.
"But why should that be a problem?" you ask, "Why can't we just enjoy the side effects, now that we have them?" - well, we can. And that is, after all, what I spend most of my time doing, so I don't have any particular problem with it, at least not one I can easily describe. But somehow, on some level, it feels wrong. It makes me feel like I'm a man who believes himself to see fairies and dragons where really there's only the cold, hard walls of his cell in the asylum. No doubt that man is happy, living an adventurous, exciting life inside his head - but he can't help but doubt, wonder, pick at some thoughts that shouldn't be picked at, secretly suspecting that whatever he believes, the cell is actually real, and the dragons actually aren't.
söndag 28 februari 2010
Karl Marx and Zen
Random thought that I felt the need to write down:
Karl Marx claimed that capitalism takes the fun out of working. His thesis was that while working is healthy and natural, working without any emotional investment in exchange for money is just like having sex without emotional investment in exchange for money, i.e. it is a form of spiritual prostitution, making such work a harmful thing rather than a healthy thing.
There is a Zen saying, "Before enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water."
What if the key part of Marx's criticism isn't "for money", but rather "without emotional investment"? What if the biggest problem of capitalism is not that some are rich and others are poor, but rather that a lot of people don't have any sort of relation to the work they do?
Karl Marx claimed that capitalism takes the fun out of working. His thesis was that while working is healthy and natural, working without any emotional investment in exchange for money is just like having sex without emotional investment in exchange for money, i.e. it is a form of spiritual prostitution, making such work a harmful thing rather than a healthy thing.
There is a Zen saying, "Before enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water."
What if the key part of Marx's criticism isn't "for money", but rather "without emotional investment"? What if the biggest problem of capitalism is not that some are rich and others are poor, but rather that a lot of people don't have any sort of relation to the work they do?
fredag 23 november 2007
This is madness!
It's in the middle of the night and I can't stop typing.
God and Free Will.
There, I said it. I've been thinking about that too, and I have more arguments. Just stop reading at this point if you're tired of me.
I think we all know this argument - if God knows everything, it is impossible for free will to exist, since He would have predicted our actions already. (For a writer who's not strictly religious, I capitalize God a lot, I just realized).
Anywho: If God knows everything, we cannot have free will, because our actions would be predicted. But really - why does this have to be? I'll take a mundane example.
I flip a coin. In doing so, I don't determine the outcome, yet I know the outcome will be either heads or tails (or, possibly, it will land on edge). I know these are the possible outcomes. I know perfectly well how the "heads" and "tails" on the coin look, and if we want to get nitpicky, let's say I've carefully studied every other factor in the room. The only thing I don't know is the force used to flip the coin (obviously, as this is hard to measure beforehand). I still know everything about the coin being flipped and about all the possible outcomes, I just cannot predict it.
Omniscence, by definition, is the ability to know everything, which includes every possible action (but, as in the previous post, not actions that could not logically occur). Presuming God knows all, does this really limit our free will? Yes, God can perfectly predict what outcomes will come of my choice to buy ice cream or not, but He does not cause either choice, he simply knows both alternatives. This possibility, of course, requires that God knows everything that could potentially happen, not just everything that happens. This, of course, amounts to an infinite amount of knowledge, but that's no problem since that is the very definition of omniscence.
Does this explanation make sense? It's kind of Schrödingers' Cat-ish in nature and I don't know how well physics-con-philosophy-con-pop-culture applies to theology, but I had to write this down, or I'd forget it.
God and Free Will.
There, I said it. I've been thinking about that too, and I have more arguments. Just stop reading at this point if you're tired of me.
I think we all know this argument - if God knows everything, it is impossible for free will to exist, since He would have predicted our actions already. (For a writer who's not strictly religious, I capitalize God a lot, I just realized).
Anywho: If God knows everything, we cannot have free will, because our actions would be predicted. But really - why does this have to be? I'll take a mundane example.
I flip a coin. In doing so, I don't determine the outcome, yet I know the outcome will be either heads or tails (or, possibly, it will land on edge). I know these are the possible outcomes. I know perfectly well how the "heads" and "tails" on the coin look, and if we want to get nitpicky, let's say I've carefully studied every other factor in the room. The only thing I don't know is the force used to flip the coin (obviously, as this is hard to measure beforehand). I still know everything about the coin being flipped and about all the possible outcomes, I just cannot predict it.
Omniscence, by definition, is the ability to know everything, which includes every possible action (but, as in the previous post, not actions that could not logically occur). Presuming God knows all, does this really limit our free will? Yes, God can perfectly predict what outcomes will come of my choice to buy ice cream or not, but He does not cause either choice, he simply knows both alternatives. This possibility, of course, requires that God knows everything that could potentially happen, not just everything that happens. This, of course, amounts to an infinite amount of knowledge, but that's no problem since that is the very definition of omniscence.
Does this explanation make sense? It's kind of Schrödingers' Cat-ish in nature and I don't know how well physics-con-philosophy-con-pop-culture applies to theology, but I had to write this down, or I'd forget it.
Some More Theology
Inspired by Sara, I would like to add a private philosophy of my own to the debate about God. This is an old and probably leaky theory, but I'd like to figure out exactly how it leaks, so responses are welcome.
Basically, I theorized a while back about the seeming inconclusiveness in God's attributes. Theologists summarise God as:
1. Omniscent, All-knowing
2. Omnipotent, All-powerful
3. Omnibeneficient, All-good
4. Omnipresent, i.e. Everywhere
and
5. Eternal and always existing.
This is basically how God is described, and most arguments against His existence are based on that these cannot fit together. If God is all-knowing and all-powerful he cannot also be all-good, since he would know disasters beforehand and prevent them. There's no goodness in introducing diseases to the world, and arguments about "testing Man" strike me as a tad ridiculous.
But, I figured - if we're to adhere to the principles of Logic, the definition of all-powerful becomes interesting. Basically - can an all-powerful being do something logically impossible? Those who argue against God's existence generally say God should be able to do this - i.e. create a rock so large he cannot lift it. But if we presume that logic restricts God, not because God is flawed but because logic is the natural boundary of all that exists - illogical events not only cannot occur, but in fact, are not part of the universe.
In this case, God cannot do something logically impossible. This does not restrict his omnipotence in any way, because illogical events simply do not exist. The argument is valid because an omnipotent being couldn't perform a non-existing action anymore than he could pet a non-existent dog.
If this is the case, might it not be so that God foresaw the world from the point where everything started (since he knows literally everything), saw a myriad logically possible universes, and then created the best one? Every improvement, say, a world where murder was impossible, would have logical consequences that would be harmful. Therefore, God saw all the myriad possible universes and created the best one. This certainly satisfies that omniscence, omnipotence and omnibenevolence fits together.
Does this satisfy the idea of a logically coherent God?
Basically, I theorized a while back about the seeming inconclusiveness in God's attributes. Theologists summarise God as:
1. Omniscent, All-knowing
2. Omnipotent, All-powerful
3. Omnibeneficient, All-good
4. Omnipresent, i.e. Everywhere
and
5. Eternal and always existing.
This is basically how God is described, and most arguments against His existence are based on that these cannot fit together. If God is all-knowing and all-powerful he cannot also be all-good, since he would know disasters beforehand and prevent them. There's no goodness in introducing diseases to the world, and arguments about "testing Man" strike me as a tad ridiculous.
But, I figured - if we're to adhere to the principles of Logic, the definition of all-powerful becomes interesting. Basically - can an all-powerful being do something logically impossible? Those who argue against God's existence generally say God should be able to do this - i.e. create a rock so large he cannot lift it. But if we presume that logic restricts God, not because God is flawed but because logic is the natural boundary of all that exists - illogical events not only cannot occur, but in fact, are not part of the universe.
In this case, God cannot do something logically impossible. This does not restrict his omnipotence in any way, because illogical events simply do not exist. The argument is valid because an omnipotent being couldn't perform a non-existing action anymore than he could pet a non-existent dog.
If this is the case, might it not be so that God foresaw the world from the point where everything started (since he knows literally everything), saw a myriad logically possible universes, and then created the best one? Every improvement, say, a world where murder was impossible, would have logical consequences that would be harmful. Therefore, God saw all the myriad possible universes and created the best one. This certainly satisfies that omniscence, omnipotence and omnibenevolence fits together.
Does this satisfy the idea of a logically coherent God?
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