"To call the taming of an animal its "improvement" sounds almost like a joke to our ears. Whoever knows what goes on in kennels doubts that dogs are "improved" there. They are weakened, they are made less harmful, and through the depressive effect of fear, through pain, through wounds, and through hunger, they become sickly beasts. It is no different with the tamed man whom the priest has "improved." In the early Middle Ages, when the church was indeed, above all, a kennel, the most perfect specimens of the "blond beast" were hunted down everywhere; and the noble Teutons, for example, were "improved." But how did such an "improved" Teuton look after he had been drawn into a monastery? Like a caricature of man, a miscarriage: he had become a "sinner," he was stuck in a cage, tormented with all sorts of painful concepts. And there he lay, sick, miserable, hateful to himself, full of evil feelings against the impulses of his own life, full of suspicion against all that was still strong and happy. In short, a "Christian."
"Physiologically speaking: in the struggle with beasts, making them sick may be the only way to make them weak. The church understood this: it sickened and weakened man — and by so doing "improved" him."
--Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
One of the nice things about meeting back up with my friend was it turned out he had brought with him a copy of The Portable Nietzsche, the same copy, in fact, that I had given to him a year or so ago to keep him company in Japan (along with Crime and Punishment, which he quite enjoyed). He told me he hadn't read any of it, but as I didn't have a book, I was able to while away some of the time on buses and such reading through The Antichrist and (re-)reading through Twilight of the Idols. As much as Walter Kaufmann makes of Nietzsche's 'insanity' at the time of his writing of The Antichrist, I believe it to be a powerful critique of Christianity and the rather demeaning effect that it has on the human spirit.
When I read the above quote, I thought about the Phajaan ceremony that goes on in Thailand. Phajaan is loosely translated as 'elephant crushing', and is basically what all elephants have to go through in order to be the servants to mankind that you see during many tourist ventures in Southeast Asia.
But then it is rather interesting that this 'torture' to crush the spirit of an elephant in order that the elephant will do the bidding of their captors is not seen in a more similar light to a lot of the ways in which religion (especially Western religion) has resulted in the 'improvement' of people the world over: improvement in the form of docility, being open to suggestion, and, in general, as Dennett once said, "a gold-plated excuse to stop thinking".
Just like the elephants, they are trained to no longer fight back against conflicting ideologies. The elephant wants to stay with its mother, it wants to eat, drink, and be able to roam free, etc. On the other hand, isn't this what the human wants as well? Or is it simply the fact that the elephant is not conscious of its own metaphysical position in the cosmos and therefore has no idea of the ease and automation with which its post-Phajaan life will be.
No more decision-making, just follow your master. What could be simpler?
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Monday, July 25, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Notes from a Small Country
It's been awhile since I posted, mostly because it's largely been business as usual around here now that university is out and Im preparing to spend my break in various other southern Africa countries.
Today, however, I had to go into town to do a bit of volunteer work with an organization that is trying to put together cheap high school textbooks to help get more people educated in a country where a lot of people have few resources, especially in the townships.
As I got on the train car at Rondebosch, I heard an all-too-familiar 'commotion' in the form of some random guy blithering on about how Africa must give themselves over to Jesus Christ and yadda-yadda-yadda. While I stood there, a guy opposite me was taking a bit of an interest in me. The usual 'icebreaker' followed: "Hey man, you know, you look a lot like... Him." I said "Yeah well..." because as much as my appearance has got me into many interesting conversations with many interesting people, most of them just sort of make that comment and it doesn't really go anywhere. But then he pushed to the 'next level' asking me if I was a Christian. And then we got into a discussion about religion. So I asked him what I usually ask these sort of people in true 'Fanonist' style: why is it that after being persecuted and enslaved for over a century by Europeans, and still to this day feeling a fair bit of animosity towards colonialism and neo-colonialism (with good reason), they find favour in 'the white man's religion'?
But this guy was quite smart and quite interesting. It turned out that he was from Gabon ("Libreville?" I asked, since I know all the capital cities) and then he started talking about the 'head of his tribe' in his village. I didn't know much of anything about Gabon, and he told me that he came from a village called 'Bongoville' that was named after this 'tribal head' who he described alternatively as his 'uncle' and 'basically his father', namely Omar Bongo, who ruled Gabon for 42 years from 1967 to his death in 2009.
What struck me most about what he talked about, however, was the manner in which he described the situation in Gabon in such graphic detail. I had used terms like 'fucked over' and such, and this guy proceeded to use the same sort of terms in such graphic detail that I didnt know whether he was speaking figuratively or was actually describing what happened. He told me something like "when the white men came to Omar Bongo and took him into the forest and fucked him [and he actually went through the somatic motions to go along with act], he didn't cry. He let them do it again and again, but he didn't say anything, because his sadness was inside him. Then when they were done with him and left, he told them when they came back that if they ever touched anyone else in his tribe, he would kill them [and here again he acted out a few mock haymakers]."
As I said, I didn't know anything about Gabon at the time, but reading the wiki article about Omar Bongo, it seems that Gabon had incredible wealth, which now justifies why he kept telling me how the faith in African people derives from the manner in which they have been blessed with resources, and that the people of Gabon strongly feel that they are, in some sense, 'chosen ones' because of the rich wealth that was bequeathed to them. He told me, in a way that very creepily reflects Sartre's declarations in the preface to The Wretched of the Earth, e.g.:
1961. Listen: ‘Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience.’ The tone is new. Who dares to speak thus? It is an African, a man from the Third World, an ex-‘native’. He adds: ‘Europe now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to keep away from it.’ In other words, she’s done for. A truth which is not pleasant to state but of which we are all convinced, are we not, fellow-Europeans, in the marrow of our bones?
He said that Africa in general is where things actually happen, that Westerners are basically zombies made content by wealth. That Westerners come to Africa because the peoples and cultures are interesting and beautiful to behold. That Africa is where all the resources are, it has been richly endowed with resources.
That is why people have faith, he says. Because they can see that they are in a privileged position, despite their history being sabotaged by economic crimes.
But it wasn't all fun and games. He told me with brutal honesty how as a young boy of around 9, he saw his mother raped and his village compromised. That there were definitely things that he had seen growing up that were filled with shocks and horror.
When I got off the train, I was already sort of 'late' to where I was supposed to go, but still I spent about 10 minutes standing at the train station listening to this guy's story. And then he told me about how he had actually fled from Gabon for various reasons, that people were looking for him for some reasons, that in his village and later in Libreville there had been problems, but I didn't really understand what was behind it all.
And then he told me he had to go to a class. He was being taught how to fight like Bruce Lee, so that when it came time for him to meet these assailants, he would be ready.
Today, however, I had to go into town to do a bit of volunteer work with an organization that is trying to put together cheap high school textbooks to help get more people educated in a country where a lot of people have few resources, especially in the townships.
As I got on the train car at Rondebosch, I heard an all-too-familiar 'commotion' in the form of some random guy blithering on about how Africa must give themselves over to Jesus Christ and yadda-yadda-yadda. While I stood there, a guy opposite me was taking a bit of an interest in me. The usual 'icebreaker' followed: "Hey man, you know, you look a lot like... Him." I said "Yeah well..." because as much as my appearance has got me into many interesting conversations with many interesting people, most of them just sort of make that comment and it doesn't really go anywhere. But then he pushed to the 'next level' asking me if I was a Christian. And then we got into a discussion about religion. So I asked him what I usually ask these sort of people in true 'Fanonist' style: why is it that after being persecuted and enslaved for over a century by Europeans, and still to this day feeling a fair bit of animosity towards colonialism and neo-colonialism (with good reason), they find favour in 'the white man's religion'?
But this guy was quite smart and quite interesting. It turned out that he was from Gabon ("Libreville?" I asked, since I know all the capital cities) and then he started talking about the 'head of his tribe' in his village. I didn't know much of anything about Gabon, and he told me that he came from a village called 'Bongoville' that was named after this 'tribal head' who he described alternatively as his 'uncle' and 'basically his father', namely Omar Bongo, who ruled Gabon for 42 years from 1967 to his death in 2009.
What struck me most about what he talked about, however, was the manner in which he described the situation in Gabon in such graphic detail. I had used terms like 'fucked over' and such, and this guy proceeded to use the same sort of terms in such graphic detail that I didnt know whether he was speaking figuratively or was actually describing what happened. He told me something like "when the white men came to Omar Bongo and took him into the forest and fucked him [and he actually went through the somatic motions to go along with act], he didn't cry. He let them do it again and again, but he didn't say anything, because his sadness was inside him. Then when they were done with him and left, he told them when they came back that if they ever touched anyone else in his tribe, he would kill them [and here again he acted out a few mock haymakers]."
As I said, I didn't know anything about Gabon at the time, but reading the wiki article about Omar Bongo, it seems that Gabon had incredible wealth, which now justifies why he kept telling me how the faith in African people derives from the manner in which they have been blessed with resources, and that the people of Gabon strongly feel that they are, in some sense, 'chosen ones' because of the rich wealth that was bequeathed to them. He told me, in a way that very creepily reflects Sartre's declarations in the preface to The Wretched of the Earth, e.g.:
1961. Listen: ‘Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience.’ The tone is new. Who dares to speak thus? It is an African, a man from the Third World, an ex-‘native’. He adds: ‘Europe now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to keep away from it.’ In other words, she’s done for. A truth which is not pleasant to state but of which we are all convinced, are we not, fellow-Europeans, in the marrow of our bones?
He said that Africa in general is where things actually happen, that Westerners are basically zombies made content by wealth. That Westerners come to Africa because the peoples and cultures are interesting and beautiful to behold. That Africa is where all the resources are, it has been richly endowed with resources.
That is why people have faith, he says. Because they can see that they are in a privileged position, despite their history being sabotaged by economic crimes.
But it wasn't all fun and games. He told me with brutal honesty how as a young boy of around 9, he saw his mother raped and his village compromised. That there were definitely things that he had seen growing up that were filled with shocks and horror.
When I got off the train, I was already sort of 'late' to where I was supposed to go, but still I spent about 10 minutes standing at the train station listening to this guy's story. And then he told me about how he had actually fled from Gabon for various reasons, that people were looking for him for some reasons, that in his village and later in Libreville there had been problems, but I didn't really understand what was behind it all.
And then he told me he had to go to a class. He was being taught how to fight like Bruce Lee, so that when it came time for him to meet these assailants, he would be ready.
Monday, May 23, 2011
The Morals of the Wretched (Conclusion)
Well, it's nice to wake up for the second straight day to a fire-and-brimstone-free morning. However, there are likely a fair few (including Harold Camping) that are NOT waking up to an egg-on-face-free morning. Though I AM waking up to another been-to-Mzoli's-free day, as the plan for Sunday failed to materialize. Such as it is.
As I mentioned in my previous post, (oh, and by the way, here is the B.I.N. Laden parody I mentioned), we were supposed to experience the end of the world on Saturday. It failed to materialize (as far as I can see, though it seems people continue to justify that there was an apocalypse in SOME domain and the world will, indeed, end on October 21... after what will likely be a disappointingly tame six months of fire and brimstone), and there a fair few articles about the after-effects, but one of the most interesting articles includes a psychologist's assessment:
"It's very hard for us to say, 'Boy, was I stupid!' " says Elliot Aronson, a prominent psychologist and co-author of the book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, And Hurtful Acts.
"The more committed a person is to their prophecy," he says, "the more likely they are to justify that action, and to try to convince people that their belief was in some way right or good."
I mention that simply because a lot of what I have talked about during this thread has to do with psychology and its 'consequences. So with that in mind, let's move on to the two anecdotes I promised:
The first involves a family I stayed with in Elsiesrivier, one of the more notoriously dangerous 'coloured' suburbs in Cape Town. Because the train ends early and the taxi service ends early, there were more than a few instances where I had to walk about twenty blocks through said 'notorious' neighbourhood to get back to where I was staying, and when I arrived safely, it was always 'a miracle' that I survived. But that's not really the story; it just sets the tone.
This family is devoutly Christian. The father is born-again, or some such, saying that he turned to it as a means to getting his anger and violence in check. And from the stories I've heard he's a pretty crazy mofo telling me about numerous times when he let his fists do the talking with some fairly extreme consequences for others (he kind of has to being a white South African in a coloured neighbourhood) and also about the insane shit that he went through while 'fighting the Cubans in Angola' during the early 80s.
Anyway, during one exchange about religion, I was pressed about whether or not I believed in God. I replied that I had no opinion. I was told that that is not possible. I replied that I don't know enough about it to conclude one way or the other, so I just let it be; at the end of the day, whether God exists or not is beyond my comprehension, and it won't affect the way I live my life, so who cares? Just like I don't know enough about quantum physics or string theory or M-theory or the Higgs Boson or who knows what else to have an opinion. Why is it that the existence of God seems to be the one highly contentious metaphysical issue in the world that you have to have an opinion on??
So anyway, as a demonstration of my apparent 'stupidity', the daughter of 17 called in the 5 to come into the room. And she proceeded to put him on the spot: "Wilfred, does God exist?" He had a very wide-eyed anxious look on his face, and didn't answer. She repeated the question. Still the only response was him searching the eyes of everybody in the room (the sister, the mother, and I, all of whom he knew quite well and was very comfortable around by the time). After a third time, he let out a barely audible, totally unconfident 'yeaaaahhhh'. He was then sent from the room and the daughter triumphantly declared, 'there, you see? A 5-year-old!' I could have gone on and told her how completely ridiculous this 'proof' was, but I decided to save my breath because I knew I wouldn't get anywhere. Whenever I need some sort of religious insight, I always turn to Herr Kierkegaard, and this instance is no exception:
"If you want to be loathsome to God, just run with the herd."
"The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever."
But the inquiries kept coming as to how I could not be religious. So one day, I sat down at my laptop, and composed a brief text file, which was basically an outline of the argument put forward by Nietzsche in 'The Genealogy of Morals' that I've already briefly summarized in Part I. After reading through it, the mother said something to the effect of 'if I didn't know you better, I would think that the Devil was in you'. And I immediately launched my usual counter-attack to these sorts of absurd allegations, namely if the sole purpose of the Devil is to corrupt Christians, then surely he would have been clever enough to write a book, claim it was actually written by God, and have all Christians follow it blindly...
Anyway, perhaps the ending of that was rather anti-climactic. I find most religious debates are, since it usually ends with people agreeing to disagree because neither will budge from their position. But let me speak of another thing that happened to me, the irony of which was so incredibly amusing, and everything set up so incredibly perfectly, if anything would have made me religious it would have been that. But then the way Christians proclaim God as dolefully caring and just, rather than a trickster having a rich sense of humour, the god I would be forced to believe in would be nothing like that. If anything I would have to choose a Loki-esque god. But anyway, here goes (this is a cut-and-paste job I sent to a friend of mine from back in January):
A few days ago I had to invigilate on a math exam. When it ended at 7PM I headed to the train station. There, a man with few teeth and whom age had seemingly not been kind to poked his head around the corner and told me that when he saw me, Jesus came to mind, and, predictably, started launching into a monologue that I have heard many times before wherein people talk about how much they had sinned in the past, then found Jesus and dropped all their bad habits because they had given themselves over to God, God was watching, God would judge, etc. So eventually the train arrived, we went our separate ways and whatever.
Today, I got on the train and found that this same guy was coming towards me trying to sell things to various traingoers (as many in this country do), but he hadnt seen me as he was too busy selling. And even despite the narrow passageway, he didnt look up when he squeezed past me standing in the middle of the aisle, but all the while I was observing him. Then a funny thing happened:
I was standing near the end of the traincar, with only about 4 people on each side in the seats between me and the end of the traincar. And as he got to the very end, he turned to a girl who had apparently asked for what he was selling, but instead of conducting himself in an appropriate manner, he took what he was selling (small sealed packages of razorblades) and made an attempt to place it between the rather massive cleavage that was hanging out the top of her shirt. She appeared very disconcerted about it and he quickly righted himself by jokingly saying 'no sorry let me place it in your hand, all the while sporting the sly grin of an old pervert'.
So of course I started to laugh inside at the irony of it: that he had basically confessed to me as if I was Jesus one day, and then, after walking past me as if I wasnt there, proceeded to 'sin' in front of me, all the while, unbeknownst to him, 'God' was indeed watching.
So after this little episode, he started back, noticed me, asked if i remembered him and what we had talked about. I, still quite amused, said nonchalantly 'dont you think thats a bit hypocritical after that?' and nodded in the direction of the 'incident'. So he murmured some excuse that it was her who had asked him to place it in her breasts and he (gentleman that he was) had declined and placed it in her hand instead ('didn't you see?' he asked). After which he quickly changed the subject to loudly mentioning something about my apparent non-committal to religion and slunk away out of the traincar at the next station.
Maybe next time, he'll take a quick look about to see if 'God' is watching before he decides to 'sin' again, no?
As I mentioned in my previous post, (oh, and by the way, here is the B.I.N. Laden parody I mentioned), we were supposed to experience the end of the world on Saturday. It failed to materialize (as far as I can see, though it seems people continue to justify that there was an apocalypse in SOME domain and the world will, indeed, end on October 21... after what will likely be a disappointingly tame six months of fire and brimstone), and there a fair few articles about the after-effects, but one of the most interesting articles includes a psychologist's assessment:
"It's very hard for us to say, 'Boy, was I stupid!' " says Elliot Aronson, a prominent psychologist and co-author of the book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, And Hurtful Acts.
"The more committed a person is to their prophecy," he says, "the more likely they are to justify that action, and to try to convince people that their belief was in some way right or good."
I mention that simply because a lot of what I have talked about during this thread has to do with psychology and its 'consequences. So with that in mind, let's move on to the two anecdotes I promised:
The first involves a family I stayed with in Elsiesrivier, one of the more notoriously dangerous 'coloured' suburbs in Cape Town. Because the train ends early and the taxi service ends early, there were more than a few instances where I had to walk about twenty blocks through said 'notorious' neighbourhood to get back to where I was staying, and when I arrived safely, it was always 'a miracle' that I survived. But that's not really the story; it just sets the tone.
This family is devoutly Christian. The father is born-again, or some such, saying that he turned to it as a means to getting his anger and violence in check. And from the stories I've heard he's a pretty crazy mofo telling me about numerous times when he let his fists do the talking with some fairly extreme consequences for others (he kind of has to being a white South African in a coloured neighbourhood) and also about the insane shit that he went through while 'fighting the Cubans in Angola' during the early 80s.
Anyway, during one exchange about religion, I was pressed about whether or not I believed in God. I replied that I had no opinion. I was told that that is not possible. I replied that I don't know enough about it to conclude one way or the other, so I just let it be; at the end of the day, whether God exists or not is beyond my comprehension, and it won't affect the way I live my life, so who cares? Just like I don't know enough about quantum physics or string theory or M-theory or the Higgs Boson or who knows what else to have an opinion. Why is it that the existence of God seems to be the one highly contentious metaphysical issue in the world that you have to have an opinion on??
So anyway, as a demonstration of my apparent 'stupidity', the daughter of 17 called in the 5 to come into the room. And she proceeded to put him on the spot: "Wilfred, does God exist?" He had a very wide-eyed anxious look on his face, and didn't answer. She repeated the question. Still the only response was him searching the eyes of everybody in the room (the sister, the mother, and I, all of whom he knew quite well and was very comfortable around by the time). After a third time, he let out a barely audible, totally unconfident 'yeaaaahhhh'. He was then sent from the room and the daughter triumphantly declared, 'there, you see? A 5-year-old!' I could have gone on and told her how completely ridiculous this 'proof' was, but I decided to save my breath because I knew I wouldn't get anywhere. Whenever I need some sort of religious insight, I always turn to Herr Kierkegaard, and this instance is no exception:
"If you want to be loathsome to God, just run with the herd."
"The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever."
But the inquiries kept coming as to how I could not be religious. So one day, I sat down at my laptop, and composed a brief text file, which was basically an outline of the argument put forward by Nietzsche in 'The Genealogy of Morals' that I've already briefly summarized in Part I. After reading through it, the mother said something to the effect of 'if I didn't know you better, I would think that the Devil was in you'. And I immediately launched my usual counter-attack to these sorts of absurd allegations, namely if the sole purpose of the Devil is to corrupt Christians, then surely he would have been clever enough to write a book, claim it was actually written by God, and have all Christians follow it blindly...
Anyway, perhaps the ending of that was rather anti-climactic. I find most religious debates are, since it usually ends with people agreeing to disagree because neither will budge from their position. But let me speak of another thing that happened to me, the irony of which was so incredibly amusing, and everything set up so incredibly perfectly, if anything would have made me religious it would have been that. But then the way Christians proclaim God as dolefully caring and just, rather than a trickster having a rich sense of humour, the god I would be forced to believe in would be nothing like that. If anything I would have to choose a Loki-esque god. But anyway, here goes (this is a cut-and-paste job I sent to a friend of mine from back in January):
A few days ago I had to invigilate on a math exam. When it ended at 7PM I headed to the train station. There, a man with few teeth and whom age had seemingly not been kind to poked his head around the corner and told me that when he saw me, Jesus came to mind, and, predictably, started launching into a monologue that I have heard many times before wherein people talk about how much they had sinned in the past, then found Jesus and dropped all their bad habits because they had given themselves over to God, God was watching, God would judge, etc. So eventually the train arrived, we went our separate ways and whatever.
Today, I got on the train and found that this same guy was coming towards me trying to sell things to various traingoers (as many in this country do), but he hadnt seen me as he was too busy selling. And even despite the narrow passageway, he didnt look up when he squeezed past me standing in the middle of the aisle, but all the while I was observing him. Then a funny thing happened:
I was standing near the end of the traincar, with only about 4 people on each side in the seats between me and the end of the traincar. And as he got to the very end, he turned to a girl who had apparently asked for what he was selling, but instead of conducting himself in an appropriate manner, he took what he was selling (small sealed packages of razorblades) and made an attempt to place it between the rather massive cleavage that was hanging out the top of her shirt. She appeared very disconcerted about it and he quickly righted himself by jokingly saying 'no sorry let me place it in your hand, all the while sporting the sly grin of an old pervert'.
So of course I started to laugh inside at the irony of it: that he had basically confessed to me as if I was Jesus one day, and then, after walking past me as if I wasnt there, proceeded to 'sin' in front of me, all the while, unbeknownst to him, 'God' was indeed watching.
So after this little episode, he started back, noticed me, asked if i remembered him and what we had talked about. I, still quite amused, said nonchalantly 'dont you think thats a bit hypocritical after that?' and nodded in the direction of the 'incident'. So he murmured some excuse that it was her who had asked him to place it in her breasts and he (gentleman that he was) had declined and placed it in her hand instead ('didn't you see?' he asked). After which he quickly changed the subject to loudly mentioning something about my apparent non-committal to religion and slunk away out of the traincar at the next station.
Maybe next time, he'll take a quick look about to see if 'God' is watching before he decides to 'sin' again, no?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Apocalypse How??
Last night I was watching 'Late Night News with Loyiso Gola', a South African spoof news show akin to Jon Stewart's 'The Daily Show', but with more SNL-type humour than Stewart, and, as far as I know, no serious interviews. I suppose more like 'Royal Canadian Air Farce' or 'This Hour Has 22 Minutes' (for those in Canada).
It contained a very amusing 'tape from the caves of Pakistan that not even the CIA had' that had a guy dressed in a white tunic with a beard singing a rendition of P.Diddy's 'I'll Be Missing You' SLIGHTLY MODIFIED as a tribute to his esteemed 'B.I.N. Laden'. I tried to look for it online, but I guess it isn't up yet.
The other thing that I was reminded of by the LNN was that 'the world is supposed to end this weekend'. I chuckled at this reminder. Ahh yes, May 21, 2011 is supposed to be 'Doomsday' or 'the rapture' or what not from some cultists, though it is rather interesting that these supposed 'Christians' which are supposed to uphold some notion of 'not sinning' seem to fly in the face of stories like "Every day Mr Camping, an 89-year-old former civil engineer, speaks to his followers via the Family Radio Network, a religious broadcasting organisation funded entirely by donations from listeners. Such is their generosity (assets total $120m) that his network now owns 66 stations in the US alone." (And just look at the ridiculously esoteric numerological justification for this date.) Though, of course, this is to be expected. While I was on a board reserved for politics (which I will withhold the name of to protect my identity...), someone had come on and posted the following:
"will you believe someone says today is friday the 13 so is expecting something bad to happen? but to me today is the day my Lord has made and i will rejoice and be glad in it"
I was a little disheartened that someone would post this on a board that was supposed to be reserved for more political posts, so I looked at this woman's profile pic and, having a very African name with the photo of a fancily-dressed white woman, I thought 'hmmm... perhaps I can exploit the opportunity to open the eyes of this victim of neo-colonialist idiocy' so I clicked on her profile and saw amongst her 'inspirational people' was one 'Joyce Mayer'. Comparing the photos, I was fairly sure that this individual was also the one posted in the pic. So I went on wiki to see who this person was. 'Ahh... an American evangelist is she? Hmmm... let's scroll down and see what money-spinning hypocritical scandals this evil imbecile is involved in, shall we?' So (VERY VERY PREDICTABLY) I was able to post the following cut-and-paste reply from wikipedia:
"On November 11, 2003, the St. Louis Post Dispatch published a four part series exposing Mayer’s "$10 million corporate jet, her husband’s $107,000 silver-gray Mercedes sedan, her then $2 million home and houses worth another $2 million for her four children," her $20 million headquarters, furnished with "$5.7 million worth of furniture, artwork, glassware, and the latest equipment and machinery, including a malachite round table, a marble-topped antique commode, a custom office bookcase, a $7,000 Stations of the Cross in Dresden porcelain, an eagle sculpture on a pedestal, another eagle made of silver, and numerous paintings," among many other expensive items — all paid for by "her ministry." The article prompted Wall Watchers (a Christian nonprofit watchdog group) to call on the Internal Revenue Service to investigate Meyer and her family."
Not surprising. As Søren Kierkegaard once said:
"The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly."
And who wants to 'act accordingly'? In my next post, I will finish the 'Morals of the Wretched' thread (because I know you're all in suspense!!!) with a rather amusing anecdote of just this type of hypocrisy. But anyway, enough about crooked iconoclasts and religious swindlers. Let's get back to the coming apocalypse, shall we?
Personally, this would be a very sad thing. First of all, we would never know how the Champion's League final between Manchester United and Barcelona was decided, but even worse than that, it would mean that I wouldn't be able to chalk 'go to Mzoli's' off my list of things I felt I should do (aka 'bucket list', a term I only came across recently, aka Murtaugh list, an inside joke that me and a friend of mine started throwing around while we were in India after a certain episode of 'How I Met Your Mother'), because I'm scheduled to go on Sunday. Such is apocalypse I suppose.
So what is this obsession with 'the end of the world', anyway? We already passed Y2K and 6/6/6 with little more apocalypse than, perhaps, a fit of convulsive laughter, which rarely proves fatal. Shouldn't these modern day Nostradamuses simply let bygones be bygones, sit tight, and just wait?
Well I suppose, in a rather cynical way, the obsession with the end of the world with respect to some people (like, for example, David Koresh, Jim Jones, and, well, Mr Camping) might stem from it being a VERY win-win situation. Either you are correct and you become some sort of demi-god or, more likely, you lose, but still have managed to hoodwink a bunch of fools out of millions of dollars. But this only appeals to the minority of shepherds. What about the sheep who are at fault for creating the personality cults and inflated Swiss bank accounts for these 'apocalypticists'?
Again, I can't speak for everybody, but I liken it to a similar story to that of the psychology surrounding a close football (soccer) match: your team is up 1-0 with about 5 minutes to go. A win will seal your club a first trophy in 35 years and finally cause a certain banner to be pulled down from the Stretford end of Old Trafford (no payouts for guessing what I'm talking about here...), but you NEED that final whistle to blow. And when it does, the sense of relief you feel after an 'all hands to the pumps' last few minutes needed to hang on passes and you hear that final whistle is amazing.
I believe it's the same thing. These religious people are in the battle of their lives, wanting the final whistle to go to end the world and make their devotion all worth while; to prove them right in their choice of following, and to end millenia of uncertainty. And, of course, to whisk them away from the difficulties of the real world to their idealized fantasies of heaven, where everything will be eternal bliss for them: 'I've done all this work, but when will I get my reward???'
The unfortunate thing is that it is not known when (or if) this final whistle will ever blow. We have December 2012 to look forward to, probably Easter of 2033 to look forward to, etc., etc. So long as people are desiring a break from the ups and downs of reality, there will be people who are only too happy to throw their weight behind some new-fangled cultist that declares such-and-such to be the day of rapture (and I can PROVE IT!!!).
Of course, if my laptop and I are not here on Sunday, but rather sitting in Limbo waiting for my turn to step up to the plate to be judged by an old ethereal bearded dude, I guess my dismissive cynicism will have been misplaced.
Still, if that happens, what will Herr Camping and Ms Mayer do with all their cash? They can't burn it once they see the heavens start to open up and pretend they were innocent of greed and swindling the world over. God is watching, remember?
It contained a very amusing 'tape from the caves of Pakistan that not even the CIA had' that had a guy dressed in a white tunic with a beard singing a rendition of P.Diddy's 'I'll Be Missing You' SLIGHTLY MODIFIED as a tribute to his esteemed 'B.I.N. Laden'. I tried to look for it online, but I guess it isn't up yet.
The other thing that I was reminded of by the LNN was that 'the world is supposed to end this weekend'. I chuckled at this reminder. Ahh yes, May 21, 2011 is supposed to be 'Doomsday' or 'the rapture' or what not from some cultists, though it is rather interesting that these supposed 'Christians' which are supposed to uphold some notion of 'not sinning' seem to fly in the face of stories like "Every day Mr Camping, an 89-year-old former civil engineer, speaks to his followers via the Family Radio Network, a religious broadcasting organisation funded entirely by donations from listeners. Such is their generosity (assets total $120m) that his network now owns 66 stations in the US alone." (And just look at the ridiculously esoteric numerological justification for this date.) Though, of course, this is to be expected. While I was on a board reserved for politics (which I will withhold the name of to protect my identity...), someone had come on and posted the following:
"will you believe someone says today is friday the 13 so is expecting something bad to happen? but to me today is the day my Lord has made and i will rejoice and be glad in it"
I was a little disheartened that someone would post this on a board that was supposed to be reserved for more political posts, so I looked at this woman's profile pic and, having a very African name with the photo of a fancily-dressed white woman, I thought 'hmmm... perhaps I can exploit the opportunity to open the eyes of this victim of neo-colonialist idiocy' so I clicked on her profile and saw amongst her 'inspirational people' was one 'Joyce Mayer'. Comparing the photos, I was fairly sure that this individual was also the one posted in the pic. So I went on wiki to see who this person was. 'Ahh... an American evangelist is she? Hmmm... let's scroll down and see what money-spinning hypocritical scandals this evil imbecile is involved in, shall we?' So (VERY VERY PREDICTABLY) I was able to post the following cut-and-paste reply from wikipedia:
"On November 11, 2003, the St. Louis Post Dispatch published a four part series exposing Mayer’s "$10 million corporate jet, her husband’s $107,000 silver-gray Mercedes sedan, her then $2 million home and houses worth another $2 million for her four children," her $20 million headquarters, furnished with "$5.7 million worth of furniture, artwork, glassware, and the latest equipment and machinery, including a malachite round table, a marble-topped antique commode, a custom office bookcase, a $7,000 Stations of the Cross in Dresden porcelain, an eagle sculpture on a pedestal, another eagle made of silver, and numerous paintings," among many other expensive items — all paid for by "her ministry." The article prompted Wall Watchers (a Christian nonprofit watchdog group) to call on the Internal Revenue Service to investigate Meyer and her family."
Not surprising. As Søren Kierkegaard once said:
"The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly."
And who wants to 'act accordingly'? In my next post, I will finish the 'Morals of the Wretched' thread (because I know you're all in suspense!!!) with a rather amusing anecdote of just this type of hypocrisy. But anyway, enough about crooked iconoclasts and religious swindlers. Let's get back to the coming apocalypse, shall we?
Personally, this would be a very sad thing. First of all, we would never know how the Champion's League final between Manchester United and Barcelona was decided, but even worse than that, it would mean that I wouldn't be able to chalk 'go to Mzoli's' off my list of things I felt I should do (aka 'bucket list', a term I only came across recently, aka Murtaugh list, an inside joke that me and a friend of mine started throwing around while we were in India after a certain episode of 'How I Met Your Mother'), because I'm scheduled to go on Sunday. Such is apocalypse I suppose.
So what is this obsession with 'the end of the world', anyway? We already passed Y2K and 6/6/6 with little more apocalypse than, perhaps, a fit of convulsive laughter, which rarely proves fatal. Shouldn't these modern day Nostradamuses simply let bygones be bygones, sit tight, and just wait?
Well I suppose, in a rather cynical way, the obsession with the end of the world with respect to some people (like, for example, David Koresh, Jim Jones, and, well, Mr Camping) might stem from it being a VERY win-win situation. Either you are correct and you become some sort of demi-god or, more likely, you lose, but still have managed to hoodwink a bunch of fools out of millions of dollars. But this only appeals to the minority of shepherds. What about the sheep who are at fault for creating the personality cults and inflated Swiss bank accounts for these 'apocalypticists'?
Again, I can't speak for everybody, but I liken it to a similar story to that of the psychology surrounding a close football (soccer) match: your team is up 1-0 with about 5 minutes to go. A win will seal your club a first trophy in 35 years and finally cause a certain banner to be pulled down from the Stretford end of Old Trafford (no payouts for guessing what I'm talking about here...), but you NEED that final whistle to blow. And when it does, the sense of relief you feel after an 'all hands to the pumps' last few minutes needed to hang on passes and you hear that final whistle is amazing.
I believe it's the same thing. These religious people are in the battle of their lives, wanting the final whistle to go to end the world and make their devotion all worth while; to prove them right in their choice of following, and to end millenia of uncertainty. And, of course, to whisk them away from the difficulties of the real world to their idealized fantasies of heaven, where everything will be eternal bliss for them: 'I've done all this work, but when will I get my reward???'
The unfortunate thing is that it is not known when (or if) this final whistle will ever blow. We have December 2012 to look forward to, probably Easter of 2033 to look forward to, etc., etc. So long as people are desiring a break from the ups and downs of reality, there will be people who are only too happy to throw their weight behind some new-fangled cultist that declares such-and-such to be the day of rapture (and I can PROVE IT!!!).
Of course, if my laptop and I are not here on Sunday, but rather sitting in Limbo waiting for my turn to step up to the plate to be judged by an old ethereal bearded dude, I guess my dismissive cynicism will have been misplaced.
Still, if that happens, what will Herr Camping and Ms Mayer do with all their cash? They can't burn it once they see the heavens start to open up and pretend they were innocent of greed and swindling the world over. God is watching, remember?
Monday, May 9, 2011
The Morals of the Wretched (Part I)
The Genealogy of Morals is a book written by Friedrich Nietzsche talking about his perception of how morality arrived at its present state as upholding asceticism, piety, and pacifism.
I would recommend it as an interesting historical account of the power balance between politics and religion that is ongoing, but basically he surmises that way back when, when 'good' was associated with power and 'bad' was associated with inferiority, the clerics sought to upset the system, suddenly defining 'good' as pious and 'evil' as powerful. Meanwhile, the clerics could now count on an army of people wishing to be 'saved' which would bring them power and control.
It is an interesting idea, and one that I take seriously. The situation that exists between politics and religion is still a very real one, and it just goes to show the somewhat paradoxical outcome of colonialism which ended with the colonized accusing the colonizers of tyrannical brutality, yet embracing the religion that these 'tyrants' brought with them:
"All values, in fact, are irrevocably poisoned and diseased as soon as they are allowed in contact with the colonized race. The customs of the colonized people, their traditions, their myths—above all, their myths—are the very sign of that poverty of spirit and of their constitutional depravity. That is why we must put the DDT which destroys parasites, the bearers of disease, on the same level as the Christian religion which wages war on embryonic heresies and instincts, and on evil as yet unborn. The recession of yellow fever and the advance of evangelization form part of the same balance sheet. But the triumphant communiqués from the mission are in fact a source of information concerning the implantation of foreign influences in the core of the colonized people. I speak of the Christian religion, and no one need be astonished. The Church in the colonies is the white people’s Church, the foreigner’s Church. She does not call the native to God’s ways but to the ways of the white man, of the master, of the oppressor. And as we know, in this matter many are called but few are chosen."
--Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
But then what comes of this? Today as I was walking to the university, an individual called out to me ('Jesus!') from the place by the river where he regularly squats with other destitute individuals. He told me of his situation. That they are harassed constantly by the authorities, that the situation is so unfair because whenever he has bread, he shares it with his comrades but they do not reciprocate. That he cries a fair bit because of his destitute situation (though when he mentioned this to me, I wasnt sure if this was actual or metaphorical), that he was born in Guguletu, and had a pretty rough life, that he was born in 1974 and had lost his mother recently, that he had talents and liked to sing, and wanted to somehow find a change for the better and no longer live and be treated like an animal. During that time, a 'Groote Schuur Community Officer' came and started harassing him and his fellow strugglers, and forced them to disperse, while they protested that they werent cheating and stealing; they were just trying to live. And so during the conversation, we moved from the open to a more discrete location away from the main road while he continued his talk. And after this, he did indeed start to weep at his miserable plight. But a common theme kept arising: his Christian faith.
Although I often lend an ear to such people, I am not always inclined to help them. When I was in Oxford, and even back in Canada, people ask for money on a lot of occasions but it is fairly easy to shut them out. You wonder what has crept into their situation: if you give them money, how will it be used? Yesterday at the pub, my friend pointed out a grizzled elderly white woman that had tried her best to add some notion of beauty to her features with little dabs of makeup here and there. She had started coming to the pub fairly recently (as far as I could see), but I thought I remembered seeing her somewhere before. And then my friend said 'I see this old woman in Observatory all the time and I always give her a bit of change when she asks me for it. Seeing her in here purchasing beers, I now know where my money is going.' Sad.
But you cannot blame these people, as I mentioned in the post on death, I spoke of the book 'Better Never To Have Lived', and the difficulty that children face when they are brought into this world. Of course, some have it much more difficult than others, and it is not always easy to deal with hardship and have the strength to continue. Sometimes when I see Rasta at the house after a hard day's work, it really pains me that I can't do more. But when it comes to randoms, Cambodia always comes to mind, and I remind myself that I can't save everybody. And so anyway, these people must find a way to continue the struggle, often by bypassing the reality of the situation through substance abuse, domestic violence,... or religion:
"Here on the level of communal organizations we clearly discern the well-known behavior patterns of avoidance. It is as if plunging into fraternal blood-bath allowed them to ignore the obstacle, and to put off till later the choice, nevertheless inevitable, which opens up the question of armed resistance to colonialism. Thus collective autodestruction in a very concrete form is one of the ways in which the native’s muscular tension is set free. All these patterns of conduct are those of the death reflex when faced with danger, a suicidal behavior which proves to the settler (whose existence and domination is by them all the more justified) that these men are not reasonable human beings. In the same way the native manages to by-pass the settler. A belief in fatality removes all blame from the oppressor; the cause of misfortunes and of poverty is attributed to God: He is Fate. In this way the individual accepts the disintegration ordained by God, bows down before the settler and his lot, and by a kind of interior restabilization acquires a stony calm."
--Ibid.
Anyway, this individual, 'Albert', wanted me to sing with him, and went into some hymn or something or other about how Jesus saves and all that, while all the while I watched him and the other passersby who were curious about this white man being entertained by a homeless local. The Officer came back briefly but didnt approach us while I was with this man. Then Albert asked me for food, as I knew he inevitably would. Normally I say no to these people, but he had done some work: telling me about his situation, about the situation of many of his ilk in Cape Town, singing for me, etc. He had wanted to follow me into the shop, but as he approached, he was barred from entry but the security guy, so I went in myself. As I had left him to go in, he had called after me requesting a veritable smorgasbord of food. I at first thought that I would 'do the usual' and just buy him a loaf of bread, but then as I was near the deli, my eye looked over the possibilities on offer, and there was a fairly cheap chicken curry and rice, so I went for that and repaid him in kind with some rice and chicken curry from the Pick n Pay that came to about R18 ($2.50). I emerged from the store just in time to see a group of these guys (including Albert) getting shooed away by the security staff, and as he moved away, I caught up to him, gave my offering to him, said 'best of luck', and walked off.
I had to go, and I wasnt particularly interested in hearing his long-winded lamentations about how he had just been treated.
I would recommend it as an interesting historical account of the power balance between politics and religion that is ongoing, but basically he surmises that way back when, when 'good' was associated with power and 'bad' was associated with inferiority, the clerics sought to upset the system, suddenly defining 'good' as pious and 'evil' as powerful. Meanwhile, the clerics could now count on an army of people wishing to be 'saved' which would bring them power and control.
It is an interesting idea, and one that I take seriously. The situation that exists between politics and religion is still a very real one, and it just goes to show the somewhat paradoxical outcome of colonialism which ended with the colonized accusing the colonizers of tyrannical brutality, yet embracing the religion that these 'tyrants' brought with them:
"All values, in fact, are irrevocably poisoned and diseased as soon as they are allowed in contact with the colonized race. The customs of the colonized people, their traditions, their myths—above all, their myths—are the very sign of that poverty of spirit and of their constitutional depravity. That is why we must put the DDT which destroys parasites, the bearers of disease, on the same level as the Christian religion which wages war on embryonic heresies and instincts, and on evil as yet unborn. The recession of yellow fever and the advance of evangelization form part of the same balance sheet. But the triumphant communiqués from the mission are in fact a source of information concerning the implantation of foreign influences in the core of the colonized people. I speak of the Christian religion, and no one need be astonished. The Church in the colonies is the white people’s Church, the foreigner’s Church. She does not call the native to God’s ways but to the ways of the white man, of the master, of the oppressor. And as we know, in this matter many are called but few are chosen."
--Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
But then what comes of this? Today as I was walking to the university, an individual called out to me ('Jesus!') from the place by the river where he regularly squats with other destitute individuals. He told me of his situation. That they are harassed constantly by the authorities, that the situation is so unfair because whenever he has bread, he shares it with his comrades but they do not reciprocate. That he cries a fair bit because of his destitute situation (though when he mentioned this to me, I wasnt sure if this was actual or metaphorical), that he was born in Guguletu, and had a pretty rough life, that he was born in 1974 and had lost his mother recently, that he had talents and liked to sing, and wanted to somehow find a change for the better and no longer live and be treated like an animal. During that time, a 'Groote Schuur Community Officer' came and started harassing him and his fellow strugglers, and forced them to disperse, while they protested that they werent cheating and stealing; they were just trying to live. And so during the conversation, we moved from the open to a more discrete location away from the main road while he continued his talk. And after this, he did indeed start to weep at his miserable plight. But a common theme kept arising: his Christian faith.
Although I often lend an ear to such people, I am not always inclined to help them. When I was in Oxford, and even back in Canada, people ask for money on a lot of occasions but it is fairly easy to shut them out. You wonder what has crept into their situation: if you give them money, how will it be used? Yesterday at the pub, my friend pointed out a grizzled elderly white woman that had tried her best to add some notion of beauty to her features with little dabs of makeup here and there. She had started coming to the pub fairly recently (as far as I could see), but I thought I remembered seeing her somewhere before. And then my friend said 'I see this old woman in Observatory all the time and I always give her a bit of change when she asks me for it. Seeing her in here purchasing beers, I now know where my money is going.' Sad.
But you cannot blame these people, as I mentioned in the post on death, I spoke of the book 'Better Never To Have Lived', and the difficulty that children face when they are brought into this world. Of course, some have it much more difficult than others, and it is not always easy to deal with hardship and have the strength to continue. Sometimes when I see Rasta at the house after a hard day's work, it really pains me that I can't do more. But when it comes to randoms, Cambodia always comes to mind, and I remind myself that I can't save everybody. And so anyway, these people must find a way to continue the struggle, often by bypassing the reality of the situation through substance abuse, domestic violence,... or religion:
"Here on the level of communal organizations we clearly discern the well-known behavior patterns of avoidance. It is as if plunging into fraternal blood-bath allowed them to ignore the obstacle, and to put off till later the choice, nevertheless inevitable, which opens up the question of armed resistance to colonialism. Thus collective autodestruction in a very concrete form is one of the ways in which the native’s muscular tension is set free. All these patterns of conduct are those of the death reflex when faced with danger, a suicidal behavior which proves to the settler (whose existence and domination is by them all the more justified) that these men are not reasonable human beings. In the same way the native manages to by-pass the settler. A belief in fatality removes all blame from the oppressor; the cause of misfortunes and of poverty is attributed to God: He is Fate. In this way the individual accepts the disintegration ordained by God, bows down before the settler and his lot, and by a kind of interior restabilization acquires a stony calm."
--Ibid.
Anyway, this individual, 'Albert', wanted me to sing with him, and went into some hymn or something or other about how Jesus saves and all that, while all the while I watched him and the other passersby who were curious about this white man being entertained by a homeless local. The Officer came back briefly but didnt approach us while I was with this man. Then Albert asked me for food, as I knew he inevitably would. Normally I say no to these people, but he had done some work: telling me about his situation, about the situation of many of his ilk in Cape Town, singing for me, etc. He had wanted to follow me into the shop, but as he approached, he was barred from entry but the security guy, so I went in myself. As I had left him to go in, he had called after me requesting a veritable smorgasbord of food. I at first thought that I would 'do the usual' and just buy him a loaf of bread, but then as I was near the deli, my eye looked over the possibilities on offer, and there was a fairly cheap chicken curry and rice, so I went for that and repaid him in kind with some rice and chicken curry from the Pick n Pay that came to about R18 ($2.50). I emerged from the store just in time to see a group of these guys (including Albert) getting shooed away by the security staff, and as he moved away, I caught up to him, gave my offering to him, said 'best of luck', and walked off.
I had to go, and I wasnt particularly interested in hearing his long-winded lamentations about how he had just been treated.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Pascal's Can of Wagers
Last night I was thinking about Pascal's Wager and toying with making it the topic of today's post. Admittedly, a lot of the direction of the argument stems from various parts of the corresponding wikipedia article, but anyway...
Many know something of Blaise Pascal's famous wager with respect to the existence of God. I would wager (haha) that few have actually read the Pensées, and/or perhaps could not even recognize when it is alluded to, since most have simply seen it in the following simplified 'decision theory' form:
Wager:
(a) Believe in God
(b) Do not believe in God
Possibilities:
(i) God exists
(ii) God does not exist
Consequences:
(a) If (i) is true, then you get infinite bliss, if (ii) is true then you lose nothing.
(b) If (i) is true, you burn in Hell, if (ii) is true, you lose nothing.
One problem is that critics of his wager attack its simplified form. Walter Kaufmann, for example, argues that if God is truly omniscient, then surely he will frown upon (i.e. punish) someone trying to use a simple logical trick to get into Heaven, so surely such a method is bound to fail in the end. This criticism has been used to both satirize the Wager, and justify its false logic, for example:
"Suppose there is a god who is watching us and choosing which souls of the deceased to bring to heaven, and this god really does want only the morally good to populate heaven. He will probably select from only those who made a significant and responsible effort to discover the truth. For all others are untrustworthy, being cognitively or morally inferior, or both. They will also be less likely ever to discover and commit to true beliefs about right and wrong. That is, if they have a significant and trustworthy concern for doing right and avoiding wrong, it follows necessarily that they must have a significant and trustworthy concern for knowing right and wrong. Since this knowledge requires knowledge about many fundamental facts of the universe (such as whether there is a god), it follows necessarily that such people must have a significant and trustworthy concern for always seeking out, testing, and confirming that their beliefs about such things are probably correct. Therefore, only such people can be sufficiently moral and trustworthy to deserve a place in heaven — unless God wishes to fill heaven with the morally lazy, irresponsible, or untrustworthy." (Richard Carrier)
(I believe this sort of argument is sometimes referred to as 'Pascal's Demon', because it essentially tries to show that the Wager could actually be convincing people to take up a logical argument that is bound to fail in the face of God, thus recruiting minions to Hell).
However, in it's original form, Pascal's Wager is actually put forward as an impetus to faith, i.e.:
"Now, what harm will befall you in taking this side? You will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful. Certainly you will not have those poisonous pleasures, glory and luxury; but will you not have others? I will tell you that you will thereby gain in this life, and that, at each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognize that you have wagered for something certain and infinite, for which you have given nothing."
However, this does not deal with a host of other problems, one of the main being 'Ok, even if we accept Pascal's logic, what's to say whether we should believe in this God or that? Since there are so many possibilities, surely by choosing you are actually putting yourself at the risk of burning in the Hell of whatever God is up there, should it not be your own?'
But even if we put questions within religion to the side for a second, Pascal's Wager has opened up a proverbial can of worms ever since religion became such a controversial subject in the modern age due to many critics questioning, for example, its political motives (recall that during Pascal's time, religion was not often debated openly, and non-Christian religions were not as 'global' as they are now).
This new religious 'scrutiny', especially by those who see things like Pascal's Wager as a tool of 'flawed logic' to recruit people to religious sects, has opened up a proverbial can of worms in the sense that there are now many other versions of Pascal's Wager that attempt to satirize it and thus argue against its validity as a logical tool, as well to put forward alternatives to say that Pascal's 'logic' can be used to argue against believing in God; it all depends on how you put your argument forward. Religious critic Richard Dawkins, for example, puts forward the 'Anti-Pascal Wager' in The God Delusion by revaluing life as what's important (scored with infinite loss if you 'waste' it on kowtowing to God or infinite gain if you 'spend it wisely' on making a genuine effort to make a difference in the world itself) and afterlife as simply a meager 'bonus'. Another is the 'Atheist's Wager', which is akin to the 'Pascal's Demon' criticism above. It alleges that if you maintain scepticism then you may build a 'positive legacy' by doing good things in life, and this you gain, then if there does exist a God in the end, he will reward you for your good deeds as well as your staunch resistance to blind faith.
Whatever the outcome of the Wager or its many versions, Pascal's Wager was the beginning of modern decision theory/game theory (for example, the Prisoner's Dilemma), and thus, irrespective of the validity of its content, his suggestion/approach is definitely useful for philosophy. In true, demonic fashion, however, I must leave the last word to the critics:
"[Pascal's Wager is] indecent and childish... the interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists."
--Voltaire
"By arguing that we should first act and then gain faith Pascal is in fact subjecting us to physical domination through use of ideological power (i.e. we are being forced to physically kneel down, pray, etc.). For this reason Louis Althusser claims that Pascal brings 'like Christ, not peace but strife, and in addition something hardly Christian... scandal itself'."
--Wikipedia
Many know something of Blaise Pascal's famous wager with respect to the existence of God. I would wager (haha) that few have actually read the Pensées, and/or perhaps could not even recognize when it is alluded to, since most have simply seen it in the following simplified 'decision theory' form:
Wager:
(a) Believe in God
(b) Do not believe in God
Possibilities:
(i) God exists
(ii) God does not exist
Consequences:
(a) If (i) is true, then you get infinite bliss, if (ii) is true then you lose nothing.
(b) If (i) is true, you burn in Hell, if (ii) is true, you lose nothing.
One problem is that critics of his wager attack its simplified form. Walter Kaufmann, for example, argues that if God is truly omniscient, then surely he will frown upon (i.e. punish) someone trying to use a simple logical trick to get into Heaven, so surely such a method is bound to fail in the end. This criticism has been used to both satirize the Wager, and justify its false logic, for example:
"Suppose there is a god who is watching us and choosing which souls of the deceased to bring to heaven, and this god really does want only the morally good to populate heaven. He will probably select from only those who made a significant and responsible effort to discover the truth. For all others are untrustworthy, being cognitively or morally inferior, or both. They will also be less likely ever to discover and commit to true beliefs about right and wrong. That is, if they have a significant and trustworthy concern for doing right and avoiding wrong, it follows necessarily that they must have a significant and trustworthy concern for knowing right and wrong. Since this knowledge requires knowledge about many fundamental facts of the universe (such as whether there is a god), it follows necessarily that such people must have a significant and trustworthy concern for always seeking out, testing, and confirming that their beliefs about such things are probably correct. Therefore, only such people can be sufficiently moral and trustworthy to deserve a place in heaven — unless God wishes to fill heaven with the morally lazy, irresponsible, or untrustworthy." (Richard Carrier)
(I believe this sort of argument is sometimes referred to as 'Pascal's Demon', because it essentially tries to show that the Wager could actually be convincing people to take up a logical argument that is bound to fail in the face of God, thus recruiting minions to Hell).
However, in it's original form, Pascal's Wager is actually put forward as an impetus to faith, i.e.:
"Now, what harm will befall you in taking this side? You will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful. Certainly you will not have those poisonous pleasures, glory and luxury; but will you not have others? I will tell you that you will thereby gain in this life, and that, at each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognize that you have wagered for something certain and infinite, for which you have given nothing."
However, this does not deal with a host of other problems, one of the main being 'Ok, even if we accept Pascal's logic, what's to say whether we should believe in this God or that? Since there are so many possibilities, surely by choosing you are actually putting yourself at the risk of burning in the Hell of whatever God is up there, should it not be your own?'
But even if we put questions within religion to the side for a second, Pascal's Wager has opened up a proverbial can of worms ever since religion became such a controversial subject in the modern age due to many critics questioning, for example, its political motives (recall that during Pascal's time, religion was not often debated openly, and non-Christian religions were not as 'global' as they are now).
This new religious 'scrutiny', especially by those who see things like Pascal's Wager as a tool of 'flawed logic' to recruit people to religious sects, has opened up a proverbial can of worms in the sense that there are now many other versions of Pascal's Wager that attempt to satirize it and thus argue against its validity as a logical tool, as well to put forward alternatives to say that Pascal's 'logic' can be used to argue against believing in God; it all depends on how you put your argument forward. Religious critic Richard Dawkins, for example, puts forward the 'Anti-Pascal Wager' in The God Delusion by revaluing life as what's important (scored with infinite loss if you 'waste' it on kowtowing to God or infinite gain if you 'spend it wisely' on making a genuine effort to make a difference in the world itself) and afterlife as simply a meager 'bonus'. Another is the 'Atheist's Wager', which is akin to the 'Pascal's Demon' criticism above. It alleges that if you maintain scepticism then you may build a 'positive legacy' by doing good things in life, and this you gain, then if there does exist a God in the end, he will reward you for your good deeds as well as your staunch resistance to blind faith.
Whatever the outcome of the Wager or its many versions, Pascal's Wager was the beginning of modern decision theory/game theory (for example, the Prisoner's Dilemma), and thus, irrespective of the validity of its content, his suggestion/approach is definitely useful for philosophy. In true, demonic fashion, however, I must leave the last word to the critics:
"[Pascal's Wager is] indecent and childish... the interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists."
--Voltaire
"By arguing that we should first act and then gain faith Pascal is in fact subjecting us to physical domination through use of ideological power (i.e. we are being forced to physically kneel down, pray, etc.). For this reason Louis Althusser claims that Pascal brings 'like Christ, not peace but strife, and in addition something hardly Christian... scandal itself'."
--Wikipedia
Monday, February 14, 2011
Some Reflections on Selfishness (or 'The Significance of Valentine's Day')
Last night I was again in my usual place in Rondebosch and got into a fairly heated debate with a friend of a friend from Tanzania. He had said he was 'interested in economics', so I pushed for a clarification of this by saying 'you mean your interested in capitalist economics, i.e. making money.' And he agreed. So I got to thinking about this notion of greed. Is it inherent? Or is it dependent on our social milieu, e.g. does it develop because of the idolization of those in power over others?
And since today is Valentine's Day when we (supposedly) should be thinking about our significant others, maybe a discussion of whether or not selfishness is inherent is a good topic. Does he really love you, or he is just offering you this cheap card because he has a hidden agenda? (But maybe you're accepting it because you also have a hidden agenda... but then maybe he knows that you know that he knows that you know... you get the picture...). To raise your suspicions even further (because my primary goal by publishing this post is to plant a seed of doubt about the value of 'superstition' in terms of certain days being supposedly 'more important' than others in terms of showing someone else you care, and so, in this instance I'm unfortunately out to make war, not love) let me share a humourous anecdote shared with me by some friends here in South Africa:
The son of a certain family is well-known by his family and most of his friends to be something of a 'Don Juan' (though I've not been able to affirm this through personal experience since he's currently in a detention center and I've only visited him once). Given that Valentine's Day was coming up, they told me about how there is a very large Valentine card that one of his aunts received some years ago. As luck would have it, the card was completely generic and not personalized. So every year on February 14 he takes this same gigantic card and gives it to whichever female is the apple of his eye at the time, and even though as the years go by its appearance has gotten old and crusty, as far as I know it's always greeted exceptionally favourably ('ohhh... the sacrifice you must have made to get such a Valentine card JUST FOR ME!!!'), and the guy usually gets what he wants (the substance of which is probably fairly obvious). So they joked that they should contact him and ask him who 'the Valentine' should go to this year... (so ladies, maybe this year you should check your Valentine cards a bit more carefully than years past for signs that it might have actually come from years past...)
But let's get back to theory, shall we? In Book 2 of The Republic, Plato tells the story of 'The Ring of Gyges'. He describes a shepherd named Gyges, who finds a ring that is able to make him invisible at will. He describes a sequence of events wherein the shepherd uses the powers of the ring to kill the king, marry the queen, and rule over the domain. Plato then declares that if a just man had found the ring, his actions would be the same as the unjust man,
"For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice."
In other words, Plato argues that the only reason why we are moral beings is because of the consequences that we face due to our actions. (Recall I previously brought up this notion of consequentialism at the end of the discussion of 'Sadist morality' in the post Exegesis in the Bedroom). If, in the case of having such a ring, you can do whatever you wish and no one could ever charge you with any action since they could never trace the action to you, there are seemingly no consequences. (If you've seen it, maybe think of Kevin Bacon in Hollow Man). Although this sequence of events could never conceivably happen, let's take this a step further.
Often an argument against materialistic greed is "he who dies with the most toys still dies" or, equivalently, "no matter what you have, you can't take it with", but let's look at it from a more 'statistical' vantage point. If one is to play Russian Roulette, and the revolver in question has six chambers only one of which contains a bullet, then you have only a 1/6 chances of dying. But the problem with statistics is that they only really 'work' long term. In normal roulette, if you lose, you can ante up and try again, but in Russian Roulette if you end up on the fatal chamber, you can't say 'the odds weren't in my favour, so let me try again', because you're dead and that's the bottom line.
So consider the following argument: what we really should blame human greed on is human finiteness, because in the end all 'worldly' consequences (i.e., death doesn't count), no matter how large, are, in the end, only temporary (consider, for example, the old adage that 'suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem'). For example, it may be all well and good to say 'we need to protect the Earth for future generations', but talk is cheap; in the end, any individual will be dead long before 'future generations' come into being. Conceivably, one can argue 'well surely my own future generations are equivalent to my existing in future generations': children, children's children, etc, but even if this is true, it really is an 'out of sight out of mind' problem, and, when the chip's are down, most people are willing to (deliberately or not) turn a blind eye to this sort of idea and show a real lack of foresight by exploiting the world's resources in whatever way tickles their fancy.
And this claim of finiteness extends to other's memories of events and consequences, which is why someone who 'holds a grudge' is so dangerous:
"How little the world would look moral without forgetfulness! A poet might say that God made forgetfulness the guard he placed at the threshold of human dignity."
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
Perhaps, then, this is the real reason why Heaven is such a perfect place: everybody has to be moral because 'it's a loooooooooooooooong (i.e. infinite) ride and if I screw someone over, its gonna come back to haunt me' (But if that's the case, shouldn't Hell, which is also eternal, be equally perfect?)
Indeed, one sometimes wonders how those who believe in an otherworldly paradise can be so selfish and greedy, since if they happen to meet anyone up there who they screwed over down here, they're going to be hearing about it for a long time.
Or maybe not: maybe chronic amnesia is a prerequisite for human perfection, and is therefore an attribute of all residents of Heaven (save for God Himself, of course, who is omniscient)...
And since today is Valentine's Day when we (supposedly) should be thinking about our significant others, maybe a discussion of whether or not selfishness is inherent is a good topic. Does he really love you, or he is just offering you this cheap card because he has a hidden agenda? (But maybe you're accepting it because you also have a hidden agenda... but then maybe he knows that you know that he knows that you know... you get the picture...). To raise your suspicions even further (because my primary goal by publishing this post is to plant a seed of doubt about the value of 'superstition' in terms of certain days being supposedly 'more important' than others in terms of showing someone else you care, and so, in this instance I'm unfortunately out to make war, not love) let me share a humourous anecdote shared with me by some friends here in South Africa:
The son of a certain family is well-known by his family and most of his friends to be something of a 'Don Juan' (though I've not been able to affirm this through personal experience since he's currently in a detention center and I've only visited him once). Given that Valentine's Day was coming up, they told me about how there is a very large Valentine card that one of his aunts received some years ago. As luck would have it, the card was completely generic and not personalized. So every year on February 14 he takes this same gigantic card and gives it to whichever female is the apple of his eye at the time, and even though as the years go by its appearance has gotten old and crusty, as far as I know it's always greeted exceptionally favourably ('ohhh... the sacrifice you must have made to get such a Valentine card JUST FOR ME!!!'), and the guy usually gets what he wants (the substance of which is probably fairly obvious). So they joked that they should contact him and ask him who 'the Valentine' should go to this year... (so ladies, maybe this year you should check your Valentine cards a bit more carefully than years past for signs that it might have actually come from years past...)
But let's get back to theory, shall we? In Book 2 of The Republic, Plato tells the story of 'The Ring of Gyges'. He describes a shepherd named Gyges, who finds a ring that is able to make him invisible at will. He describes a sequence of events wherein the shepherd uses the powers of the ring to kill the king, marry the queen, and rule over the domain. Plato then declares that if a just man had found the ring, his actions would be the same as the unjust man,
"For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice."
In other words, Plato argues that the only reason why we are moral beings is because of the consequences that we face due to our actions. (Recall I previously brought up this notion of consequentialism at the end of the discussion of 'Sadist morality' in the post Exegesis in the Bedroom). If, in the case of having such a ring, you can do whatever you wish and no one could ever charge you with any action since they could never trace the action to you, there are seemingly no consequences. (If you've seen it, maybe think of Kevin Bacon in Hollow Man). Although this sequence of events could never conceivably happen, let's take this a step further.
Often an argument against materialistic greed is "he who dies with the most toys still dies" or, equivalently, "no matter what you have, you can't take it with", but let's look at it from a more 'statistical' vantage point. If one is to play Russian Roulette, and the revolver in question has six chambers only one of which contains a bullet, then you have only a 1/6 chances of dying. But the problem with statistics is that they only really 'work' long term. In normal roulette, if you lose, you can ante up and try again, but in Russian Roulette if you end up on the fatal chamber, you can't say 'the odds weren't in my favour, so let me try again', because you're dead and that's the bottom line.
So consider the following argument: what we really should blame human greed on is human finiteness, because in the end all 'worldly' consequences (i.e., death doesn't count), no matter how large, are, in the end, only temporary (consider, for example, the old adage that 'suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem'). For example, it may be all well and good to say 'we need to protect the Earth for future generations', but talk is cheap; in the end, any individual will be dead long before 'future generations' come into being. Conceivably, one can argue 'well surely my own future generations are equivalent to my existing in future generations': children, children's children, etc, but even if this is true, it really is an 'out of sight out of mind' problem, and, when the chip's are down, most people are willing to (deliberately or not) turn a blind eye to this sort of idea and show a real lack of foresight by exploiting the world's resources in whatever way tickles their fancy.
And this claim of finiteness extends to other's memories of events and consequences, which is why someone who 'holds a grudge' is so dangerous:
"How little the world would look moral without forgetfulness! A poet might say that God made forgetfulness the guard he placed at the threshold of human dignity."
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
Perhaps, then, this is the real reason why Heaven is such a perfect place: everybody has to be moral because 'it's a loooooooooooooooong (i.e. infinite) ride and if I screw someone over, its gonna come back to haunt me' (But if that's the case, shouldn't Hell, which is also eternal, be equally perfect?)
Indeed, one sometimes wonders how those who believe in an otherworldly paradise can be so selfish and greedy, since if they happen to meet anyone up there who they screwed over down here, they're going to be hearing about it for a long time.
Or maybe not: maybe chronic amnesia is a prerequisite for human perfection, and is therefore an attribute of all residents of Heaven (save for God Himself, of course, who is omniscient)...
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