H.M.S. Defiance

The protests in Iran and China, not to mention the recent coup in Honduras, have me thinking about the role defiance plays in politics. Refusal to accept the status quo often appears stubborn or pointless to external observers, but blunt defiance of political reality or social demands is how revolutions begin. An unacceptable condition gives rise to defiance, defiance to discord, discord to argument, argument to change. Any of these stages may or may not involve violence, and that is where ethical and moral decisions come into play. Viewed solely as a political creature, defiance is tough to nail down as a force for good or ill. Look at the Americans in the 1770s. Look at the Irish in the 1970s. Look at the Palestinians today. Who's right? The answer depends of who you consult, but these causes and their proponents all wound up defying someone, sometimes to great effect and sometimes not. The most illuminating feature of examining defiance on a case-by-case basis is the obvious division of the justifications of differing forms of defiance. That, then, is where I will begin: with the whys and hows.

The first criterion defiance must meet before enjoying positive moral status is a just cause. This is hardly rocket science at first glance. Of course a group needs some legitimate grievance before opposing authority. Which causes are just are also pretty obvious to any individual with a solid Christian worldview. Opposition to abortion is just. Opposition to speed limits is not. The challenging bit lies in determining under which circumstances a substantively just cause merits pursuit via defiance. Consider abortion. We have a pro-choice President. Yay, America. This view, and the policies it entails, are directly contrary to my worldview. I am obviously justified in using political channels to try to rectify the situation. When that fails, though, can I defy the law? Can I distribute literature within fifty feet of an abortion clinic? Can I refuse to pay taxes when a percentage of that money would fund abortions? The fact is that Obama is the duly elected leader of the United States, along with the lefty Senate and House. Can we defy their edicts? The answer, on moral issues, is a yes based upon Scripture. The answer is cloudier on issues of pure policy, say, gun control. If I disagree with a law, can I cease to obey it? Or what about income tax and the resultant effective forfeiture of Fourth Amendment rights? We are bound to obey the law, but in America statutory law is supposed to be bound by the Constitution and ultimately by natural law. Where is the line? In all honesty, I don't know. But I do know this. The time for protest is when protest, via whatever means, will make a difference.

Which segues into the second criterion of moral defiance: appropriate means. Distributing pamphlets is appropriate. Blowing up buildings, usually, is not. Timothy McVeigh arguably had a just cause (accountability for the Ruby Ridge incident) but his methods were unconscionable. Means must be appropriate to the nature of the grievance. The word "usually" may have given you pause in context to the unscheduled demolition of buildings. Think about it, though. What if our government effectively repealed the Constitution and instituted martial law? What degree of violence is appropriate to restore rights? Any? Again the question is clearly a complex one, a better suited to discussion than monologue. If someone tries to shoot you, you are clearly entitled to defense with lethal force. Does the same logic apply to abuses of statutory power? I think it does. I'm not advocating burying an AR-15 in your backyard for the day democracy falls. I'm saying make sure you know someone who has buried two. The cold fact is that democracies invariably self-destruct. Tough cookies, as my mother would say. When that happens, defiance will be necessary. The means justifiable via any tenable moral code are proportional to the nature and extent of the atrocities committed by the target authority. Alecto and company are nasty pieces of work, but the Furies have their uses.

I'm starting to sound like a right-wing extremist. Stop and think, though, and you'll probably realize that my assertions and conclusions are not that far-fetched. When someone brings up genocides or oligarchies, there tends to be a knee-jerk "that can't happen here" mentality. That mentality is precisely why it will happen, be it later or sooner. Defiance is dangerous. Defiance is often undesirable. Defiance is also an inherent part of the political cycle. What is happening now in Iran and elsewhere is an inevitable response to an unacceptable situation. We should be watching the situation in the Middle East very carefully for obvious reasons. We should also be taking notes.

Who we are instead

Humanity, I think, has more or less figured out who we are not. We are not perfect. We are not eternal in nature, at least not physically. The question posed by existential philosophy, then, is less "Whe are we?" than it is "Who are we instead?" and in this the doctrines of existentialism swiftly begin to break down. Existentialism, or the idea that people determine our own purpose and meaning, is based upon two primary postulates. I'll address each in turn.

First of these is that human purpose is open to determination. I always found this rather amusing. After all, purpose is definitionally the function an object is intended to perform. A hammer is designed to hit things and that is why it exists. If it has any "purpose" it only has one and that one is pre-determined. Sure, a hammer can be used for other things (propping open doors, holding down errant pieces of paper, etc.) but to do so is a waste of its potential. Once we acknowledge that humans can have a purpose, we are obligated to ackowledge that this purpose already exists. Thus, based on a reasonable concept of "purpose," we see that it is in no way subjective. Tying back to my introduction, people have decided, in general, that we are not purposeless. We have a purpose, one that is set by design and pre-existent intent.

In light of this the second assumption, that people are qualified to choose our purpose, looks similarly shaky. Imagine, for a moment, that people are all characters in a novel. We might do anything, but who we are is another matter entirely. Each character has a given perspective and can interact with other characters and the fictitious environment, but is powerless to alter his or her own identity beyond the natural growth and evolution all people experience as life progresses. The point here is that, within the story, we are not narrators. In a plot-driven story (as the story of human existence definitely is from a Christian standpoint) the players are defined by the plot, not vice versa. Characters lack the omniscient third-person perspective necessary to assign meaning. We are not qualified to assign ourselves identities.

In short, unless we accept a God capable of granting us purpose all we can ever know is what we are not. Our failings as a species are painfully obvious, even without a clear definition of the word "failings." Any rational individual can tell you that something is wrong with us. A sharp one might go so far as to say that we have failed to attain some standard. But without an entity to provide this standard, and perhaps even the means to attain it, we are powerless to determine who we are instead.

On continuity of experience

Postmodernism can be reduced to absurdity in so many fun little ways, but I thought of a particularly interesting one recently. I doubt that this is new, but it's still an intriguing argument.

First, a little background. Postmodernism, for the purposes of this analysis, is the idea that "there is nothing outside the text." Picture a short essay, say on the superiority of Lincoln-Douglas debate over Team Policy. The contents of this paper are, according to postmodernism, entirely a matter of interpretation because no extra-textual (Yes, I just made up a term. No, I don't care.) data or context exists. My interpretation is just as valid as yours even if one of us were to assert (gasp!) that the paragraph proves that Team Policy is superior.

According to postmodernism, the entire world is like that paragraph. It has no meaning beyond what we assign it as individuals, and no one individual's assertions are any more or less valid than the next's. No higher or absolute truth exists. A few problems do exist here. The most obvious, of course, is that even the claim that no absolute truth exists is an absolutist claim. Slightly more subtle are postmodernism's other flaws.

And so we come to my argument. Tag this one as the argument from continuity of experience. If you throw a rock at me and manage a hit, I will experience pain. Trade sides with me and I bet you'll feel the same. We both would rather not be eaten by bears. Such experiences are uniformly unpleasant. Similarly, we both probably like clean air, chocolate, and the song "There's No One As Irish as Barack O'bama." This implies that our minds function in similar ways, in turn suggesting that there is some uniform constant that forms a reference point. Even if it is merely biological in nature, such a constant is immutable and not "subject to interpretation." This is the first half of the argument, namely that our minds deal with reality in similar ways. The second, and more forceful, aspect of the argument is simply that the rock you just threw nailed me right between the eyes. You can apologize next time you see me. From your perspective, the rock traveled in a parabola from hand to mark. From my perspective the rock traveled in a parabola from hand to mark. Then blackness. The point is that this event was obviously independent of perspective and interpretation. You were able to take an action that I then perceived. Thus our minds engaged in interaction via some sort of medium (the medium that allowed conveyance of your intent to throw the rock to my perception of your intent). This medium, I postulate, is called reality, and it changes only when acted upon and not with "interpretation."

Treating reality as a medium through which minds interact is an interesting idea. I'm probably not the first person to think of it, but it still has some interesting implications even beyond a refutation of postmodernism. If reality really is simply aether for the conveyance of data, then some credence goes to the philosophy of Berkeley, who asserted that an object only exists insofar as it is observed. I think he is close. He claimed that the world continues to exist when you close your eyes because God is still watching. Hmmmm.... I think it may be still more fundamental. Let us progress from philosophy to theology.

First postulate: God created us to love him. Love, according to Augustine, requires that we make a decision. A decision requires that we possess information.

Second postulate: Such a decision is inherently heuristic because we cannot know God fully in our present form. If our form were changed so that we could fully know God no decision would be necessary. (Who would turn away from God revealed in His majesty?) This decision must be based on limited or incomplete data.

Third postulate. A means of limited communion must therefore exist between God and Man to allow the conveyance of knowledge of God without total exposure.

Fourth postulate: The universe provides exactly such a medium. God reveals His attributes to us in limited form through the universe. We gain fleeting but awesome glimpses of His skill in design, of His omnipotence, and so on.

Fifth postulate: The universe (Scripturally, nature) was corrupted by the Fall because Man's ability to commune with God was damaged by our sin nature. The cataclysm extended from the direct connections of the soul to God to the indirect link through Creation.

I am not an expert or ordained theologian. I have no degrees (although you might be wise to trust me less if I did). This is merely a though experiment and should not be regarded as teaching. But it is an interesting and perhaps helpful way of looking at the world. Suddenly any philosophy (and there are postmodernists and existentialists who claim to be Christians) that denies the absolute nature of reality starts looking a bit odd. Once matter becomes an absolute aether, the external world takes on an interesting purpose.

We are not what we think we are.

I've been thinking about the philosophies of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. They both are credited with the formation of utilitarianism as a legitimate philosophy, but I've never taken utilitarianism all that seriously. Bentham would have us all hunched over computers our entire lives, trying to model and predict what consequences our actions will have. Mill reduced utilitarianism to heuristics, a more viable option, but he also assigned qualitative (in addition to Bentham's quantitative) values to pleasure and pain, thus introducing a criterion aside from pleasure or pain for standards of right and wrong. Mill's philosophy is closer to what people actually do, of course. Recall the first law of humanity: people act in what we perceive as someone's best interest.

This is how so many of us wind up in Hell.

Perhaps my favorite of C.S. Lewis's books is The Great Divorce, in which he describes why so many people choose Hell. It is a disturbing book, to my mind, for it depicts, with merciless precision and astounding accuracy, the mental and emotional hoops people will leap through to protect our paradigms. Every single condemned soul in the book acts based on what they think will best serve their interests. The artist refuses Heaven because of the loss of "recognition." The philosopher returns to Hell to continue "free inquiry." These examples illustrate how ill-equipped we really are to identify what our best interest is. I think every Ghost in The Great Divorce commits the same underlying error: they all insist on viewing the world through their own biases, ideas, and mental constructs. The purpose of all these abstracts is to distort the universe around them to enhance their own importance. The inability to even identify our best interest lies in our molding the entire world around ourselves.

This peculiar lensing results in an equally peculiar view of the world. Suddenly all that matters is me and the rest of the world is merely some external motion picture I participate in or have to deal with from time to time. Well, guess what? Within seventy years I'll be dead. Odds are, so will you. The world, second coming notwithstanding, will still be here. I suspect that we could avoid many of the problems we experience if we acknowledge that cold and corrosive truth: as individuals we don't actually matter all that much.

One maxim I am thoroughly sick of hearing is the claim that it doesn't matter how much money you make or what car you drive but rather what relationships you form. Friends, family, these are the demigods of secular culture and the true meaning of Christmas. Horse hockey, as Colonel Potter would say. The relationships we form matter no more than the money we earn. What counts is what we do with our relationships and other resources. The attitude that the relationship itself is somehow of value reflects a deep-seated egocentrism. It's one of two expressions: "Look how lucky that person is to know me," or "Look how lucky I am to know that person." Either way, the focus is on "me." Focus upon what the relationship accomplishes, on the other hand, is actually quite selfless (or can be). Inherent is the acknowledgement that it is not "I" that matter but what I accomplish, how I change the world around me. Suddenly the focus is external.

Applying this concept to Christianity, we need to stop focusing so intensely on how we feel or how we are victimized by popular culture or even how "special" we are. Let us focus on an external. How about God? When we focus on ourselves we are building our lives around nothing of consequence. Do we matter to God? Sure. Does that give us value? Yes, but it is not a value to be proud of for our sakes, but it is instead a testimony to the grace of God. Christian existentialism is as deadly a trap as any other, for it folds us inward and implodes the soul to a spiritual singularity, so very nearly nothing that it cannot love or change or grow. Who we are is of little consequence, what matters is what we do and in whose name. What matters is to whom we surrender ourselves for salvation. What matters is our assimilation into the body of Christ. What matters is our reconciliation to our true purpose. When we simply act in "our best interest" we can never see beyond our collective nose. The impact we have the world around us and our eternal condition is a matter of how well we can turn our attention to God and, eventually, to those around us.

Spread

I did some reading today on Von Neumann machines. To any reader who is not a complete nerd, John Von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician born in 1903. He did some work on the Manhattan Project and the later hydrogen bomb project. Anyway, a Von Neumann machine is a device that, in addition to carrying out its primary function, is capable of self-replication. The only non-living Von Neumann machines in existence today are viruses. And, like Von Neumann's theoretical machines, viruses are generally not terribly good things to have around long-term. I'd contend that ideas are like Von Neumann machines. Richard Dawkins (someone of whom I am not fond) proposed that memes (cultural constructs) are capable of complex evolution and replication. This, I think, is the result of a much simpler idea. Rather, the result of two ideas.

First of these is the idea that ideas multiply and propagate. This should be fairly obvious. Let's say I decide that it is "cool" to wear hats inside out (and not just when the Cubs are behind). Suppose further I am someone anyone cares about regarding popular fashion. The idea to wear caps backward spreads to a few friends and then to a few more and so on exponentially until the entire hat-wearing population of the world look like idiots who can't figure out which way to wear caps. This wouldn't actually happen though, of course. Why? Because the idea of inverse hat-wearage lacks inherent force. To propagate, an idea must be one that can really spread itself. Consider democracy. Democracy, once established, tends to want to spread. The same is true of most religions. The ideas that endure are the ones that either claim to be necessary or that really bring some tangible benefit. In other words, the ideas that survive are the ones that shape their surroundings to encourage spread. If we regard ideas as Von Neumann machines, this second idea has some startling implications.

If ideas are capable of altering their surroundings and of replication, then we have an explanation for why ideas evolve over time. An idea arises under a given set of conditions and then alters them. Under new conditions the idea may or may not be capable of survival so it will have to change. The variants of an idea that survive will be adapted to the new environment will continue propagation and further alter the environment in a continuous cycle. This cycle occurs because an idea will invariably result in an environment ill-suited to its continuation. Democracy again provides an example. Democracy is popular (almost by definition) but democracies usually choose bad policies. This causes a new form of government (usually a less friendly one) to step in a restore power/order to a chaotic situation. Then the system slides back the other way over time.

What can we learn from this? Any idea, even after successful implementation, will tend to suffer distortion over time. This is why, if an idea is to last, it must be tied to something it is powerless to directly change. This, I assert, is where the U.S. Constitution failed. The ideas in the document were subject to interpretation, and interpretation was based in external conditions. External conditions were altered by the Constitution, and the feedback loop has caused some, ah, issues. The solution? No clue, except one. Contrive a system that cannot be altered by its own influences. Isolate an idea from its effects and allow it to spread to the limits of its jurisdiction. Thus, stability is attained. The drawback is that it limits the idea's operational lifetime. Unable to evolve, it will die rather abruptly. Still, this may be worth the cost if the idea can last long enough. An example of this would be a constitution with no means of amendment. Change would come suddenly but only after a considerable period. This may be preferable to gradual decline. Pick your poison. The world of self-replicating, evolving entities is a bizarre one, but limitation of evolution may delay damage.

The few, the many, and those ill-equipped to choose

I am a Lost addict. One scene in a recent episode featured a rather substantial number of people on an aircraft that may have been about to crash. A character asked the person seated next to him what would happen to all those people. The other, in one of his priceless signature lines, answered, "Who cares?" This cold indifference to the possible deaths of a few dozen people struck me as simply evil. Then I thought about it for a while. No one could do anything to protect them. Even if they died, the cause for which they died is probably (nothing is certain on this show) more important than a few lives. Surely allowing the dozen to die to save millions is acceptable? Ah, utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher of the early and mid 19th century, proposed that an action is moral when it attains the highest good for the greatest number. Utilitarianism is, at first glance, a viable moral framework for at least the shaping of policy. Unfortunately, it is also flawed. The Second Law of Humanity (see January 27) and the Third Law both render utilitarianism ineffective and even dangerous.

1) People cannot always identify "the highest good for the greatest number."

People always, always base decisions on incomplete information outside the realm of mathematics. Consider, for example, a chess game. You are white, so you open. What to do? Queenside pawn? Kingside? A knight? Just run away because you are playing Matthew Sadler? The cold, unpleasant truth is that you have no idea of what the best move is. You might have a general idea or a "gist" of what a sound move would be, but you cannot plan the entire game and cannot foresee every outcome. The science of making decisions without complete information is called "heuristics." It is, almost by definition, the least precise science in existence with the possible exceptions of sociology and psychology. Let us say that Ebola breaks out from an escaped monkey in San Diego (lots of zoos there) and threatens to wipe out 80% of the U.S. population, but we can stop the spread of the plague by detonating a thermonuclear device over San Diego and killing everyone who is infected. Not exactly original, I know, but still interesting. On the one hand, we can save 270 million people by killing a few hundred thousand. But will we really? Can we be sure that the nuclear device will kill everyone? Has anyone already left San Diego? Will the outbreak just die out due to the inhospitably cold climate (relative to Congo)? We just don't know. Utilitarianism promises the end of moral compromise via precise measuring of cost and benefit, but all it offers is a set of mind-boggling probabilities and possibilities. Man knows not his needs.

2) People are incapable of detecting error once a choice has been made without an external reference point. People are also very, very selfish.

Consider, for example, an incident that occurred a few days ago. A man was pulled over by the police and later questioned by the Secret Service because he had an "Abort Obama, not the unborn" bumper sticker. (Here's a brain teaser: if abortion is not murder then how is this a death threat?) This poor guy was placed under investigation for expressing an opinion is way that was tactless but hardly disruptive or grossly inappropriate. Now we come to the crux of the matter: the government will continue to treat folks this way until given a reason not to. Unless someone loses a Senate seat over this, conduct will stay the same because the choice has been made and from the perspective of the people in power there is no reason to change it. Because the government has a different perspective than the people it theoretically serves the significance of external stimuli is not consistent between the two. SWAT teams accidentally breaking down the wrong door is a problem for the people in the house; it is not a problem for the government beyond some wasted time. What Congress perceives to be the greater good is almost certainly going to be incorrect from our standpoint and will remain incorrect until angry letters and petitions start showing up. Utilitarianism cannot be counted upon in government because "highest good for the greatest number" is a relative term from the beginning and is still further damaged by inertia and selfishness.

3) Utilitarianism cannot even be enacted.

I love game theory; it is one of the few elements of philosophy that functions with mathematical precision. Consider the following: two fighter pilots are over enemy territory. A formation of enemy fighters approaches. If both fighters stay, both pilots will be injured and both craft damaged but they survive and reach home. This outcome has a value of 2 for both pilots. (total of 4) If one turns and runs, he will escape but his wingman will die trying to hold off the fighters. This outcome has a value of 3 for the pilot who escapes but a value of 0 for the pilot who dies. (total of 3) If they both flee they outrun the enemy fighters but burn so much fuel doing so that they have to bail out over enemy territory and are captured. This outcome has a value of 1 for both pilots. (total of 2) Now imagine that you are one of the pilots. Should you stay or go? If he stays you are best off fleeing because otherwise you'll be wounded. If he flees you had better follow because otherwise you will die. No matter what your wingman does you are best off retreating. And yet, paradoxically, the best overall outcome is if you both stay and fight. The utilitarian outcome is only possible if both fighters stay. The actions that the pilots actually take will be based in self-interest and render an optimal outcome impossible. The optimal outcome occurs only when courage is added to the mix. This is rather ironic, given that utilitarianism is intended to replace all other value systems and cannot explain or support courage. Utilitarianism tells us to value the highest good for the greatest number but provides to clear means or even reason to try. People, left to their own devices, are not utilitarian. People subject to the will of a Benthamite totalitarian are not free and will likely attempt to become so.

Utilitarianism has a certain appeal, I admit, but recall what is paved with good intentions and utilitarianism is little more than a set of good intentions.