The Party of Rage

Why are so called conservatives so angry all the time? I admit that I get angry from time to time, but they seem to be angry forever. You just can't have an interesting reasonable political discussion with them. I enjoy debate, that's why I was a varsity debater in high school. I say to everyone, relax, have a fun debate, you make your points, I make mine. No one's judging and awarding a trophy. Cool.
From a specific conversation: I call everyone who disagrees with me a racist? You sound like a recording of Fox News and or Rush Limbaugh. What does racism have to do with gun control? You are sounding desperate. I state facts so you accuse me of using racism, which I never mentioned. You brought it up, not me. Is your only way to defend your position reduced to making false accusations?
I should stop watching so much MSNBC? When did I start watching only MSNBC? Have you forgotten what I've always done? I don't let anyone do my thinking for me.
Let's get the facts straight. I watch one, that is one, program on MSNBC. I rarely watch the entire show. I watch only the segments that have the guests who interest me. And I have to say that Chris Matthews, who played Nerfball during the Bush years, has graduated through wiffleball up to softball. Maybe someday he will will play hardball. I haven't noticed him doing it yet.
I am still informed by CSPAN most of all, spending more hours watching all three of its channels more than any others, but also by MSNBC, Comedy Central, Science News and similar magazines, BBC News, Al Jazeera news, Democracy Now, KNX radio, Charlie Rose, independent documentaries, well, the list gets a little long, but don't forget, yes, FOXNews. I rarely agree with them. But that doesn't mean I refuse to listen to them.
(I like to keep an eye on the enemy -- you're supposed to laugh, it's a joke.)
I also spend a lot of time looking into the theory of politics. Currently I'm reading On Politics by Alan Ryan which covers the subject from Plato to today, The Origins of Political Order by Fukuyama, which goes further back, selections by Hayek and Keynes...Yeah, I'm an intellectual geek. Always was and always will be.
I spend most of my day browsing news, politics and economics from many sources, rarely MSNBC. I do hear Fox often attacking MSNBC, but not my other sources, except for Al Jazeera, and they only hate them because they fear Muslims. Let's be honest, people who watch only FOXNews and their fellow travelers, such as a certain self styled Federalist group, love to accuse other people of watching only MSNBC and it's fellow travelers. Maybe it's true for some people. I wouldn't know.
Let's face it, if MSNBC and I agree, I regarded that as MSNBC agreeing with me!
I used to have to ask self identified conservatives what they believed on any given subject. Now I don't have to ask. They believe whatever they just saw on Fox news. There are people to whom I find myself saying, "Those people you used to grumble about, the ones you said drove you out of the Republican Party with their extremism... Well, you sound just like them now."
My advice to all of them? Stop being so concerned with the mote in your neighbor's eye and start looking at the great beam in your own.

Idle Thoughts -- I'm Going to Eat Your Face!

Question 7 

Levinas is reluctant to include animals as "beings with faces" . Do you agree that ethics can be extended to animals only as a secondary form, more patterned after ethics towards humans? Or should ethics toward animals be a primary from of ethics? Can Levinas's own theory be redesigned to include animals? 

The Bible says we have dominion over other animals and this has usually been interpreted to mean we can do with them whatever we wish. Descartes said animals are only machines that have no feelings or language, or consciousness. Nietzsche acknowledged that we also were merely animals, but said that superior animals can kill and eat lesser animals. 

And so on through a number of philosophers. Slowly but surely, we have been seeing people begin to accept the idea that animals and we are much the same. This can be seen as an increase in the size of the circle of what we consider to be us as opposed to them. This, too, is one of my theme concepts and we have discussed it before. Human beings believe that those who are considered to be "us" are better than those who we consider to be "them". This extends even to our fellow human beings. Prior to the opening of World War II, people knew that it was disrespectful and rude to refer to people from Japan as "Japs". They also knew it was disrespectful and rude to refer to people from Germany as "Krauts". Once the war began, however, these terms became the most commonly used, even in movies, newspapers and magazines, and by the US government.

This wasn't just people being angry. It was a deliberate choice by the media managers to develop propaganda to make Americans feel comfortable about bombing and killing those other human beings. By using these pejorative terms, the American people came think of them less as human and more as some sort of monsters. Levinas would say that we were denying those human beings their faces.

The question of whether animals have faces in the sense that Levinas intended is of great importance to those who believe in the animal rights movement. Scientifically, he is very correct. We humans do look into each others faces and this has powerful evolutionary impact upon our behavior and responses. I'm going to list a few examples below which shows the importance of the face to human psychology.

- When giving advice to people on how to avoid panhandlers, experts often say, "Don't look them in the eye." To do so is to make a contact, which is very difficult to break without feeling rude and emotionally troubled. You could say that once you look in person in the eyes, once you connect your face to their face, you have been hooked.

- Paleontologists have been known to use such expressions as the world's first face or the earliest face. This usually applies to very primitive creatures. It can even go back to the Cambrian era when we first find sea animals with a front to their bodies in which is contained a cluster of sense organs and the mouth. In other words, the first head with a face.

- Primatologists who study gorillas and chimpanzees in the wild very often refer to the profound impact upon their psyches that is made when they first are close enough to the animals to actually look them in the eyes. Their moving descriptions demonstrate how deeply this act makes them feel that they are looking at a kind of primitive human being.

Of course, these are largely emotional reactions. That is exactly my point. Our emotions are part of the deepest section of our brain. They are not generally controlled by our higher, intellectual functions. We feel at our deepest level that anything with a face is similar to us.

For the same reason we see faces everywhere. We are born with the ability to recognize a human face and to seek it out. So it is not surprising that we see faces on clouds, on burnt pieces of toast, on random patterns of water splashed against the ground, and just about everywhere else. To a human being the face is one of the most basic and significant marks of humanity.

Levinas, a survivor of the Holocaust, did not simply grow to hate his Nazi abusers, but instead saw that they were flawed because they were unable to recognize the humanity of their victims. Having seen these horrors, he declared no one should ever suffer this way again. Human beings needed to recognize their fellow human beings as inherently having some level of dignity and some basic rights, no matter how debased or vile they are. No matter how debased or vile either the abusers or the victims are!

It has often been said, even during the days when slavery still ruled over much of America, that the act of holding other human beings in bondage has a bad effect on the masters as well as upon the slaves. You cannot commit such a despicable act, you cannot so degrade your fellow humans without it having a brutalizing effect upon your own character.

Even the monsters of society must be recognized as having a few basic rights in spite of their own abuse of the rights of others. This is what keeps us safe from moving down the path which they have already travelled.

And now to go back to the paleontologists and the original question. Yes, our face is a derived characteristic which we inherited from our ancestors going back many hundreds of millions of years to the Cambrian explosion. If everything we have, if everything we are, is inherited and developed from our ancestors, then those ancestors must have had a more primitive version of what we now possess.

The book, "Your Inner Fish", points out how much of our human body plan is based upon the first fish that came into existence back in the Cambrian. This includes our brain, which is the center of our own existence. As I pointed out to you before, if we feel pain, it is because animals felt pain before us. If we feel love, it is because animals felt love before us. If we have a sense of morality, it is because animals have had a sense of morality before us.

It follows that if we humans have an innate dignity and innate rights, animals also have these things. Our dignity and our rights evolved from the more primitive levels of dignity and rights which existed in animals. We must continue to expand our circle of what we consider to be us. And it should expand to include animals.

I have pointed out in the previous communications that children who abuse animals grow up to abuse other people. It is also true that adults who abuse animals often abuse people. Like the slaveholder, allowing ourselves to be cruel and brutal to others, even to animals, makes us even more cruel. There's a positive feedback loop at work here. The more badly we behave toward others, the less we are able to understand how wrong it is to so.

Extending the same basic dignity and rights to animals that we do to human beings does not mean giving them exactly the same dignity and rights. They are lesser creatures than we. Their levels of dignity and rights are less than ours. Nevertheless, they do exist and should be respected.

This is so for two reasons. First, as I have already stated, being cruel to animals strengthens our tendency to be cruel and weakens our sense of morality. Once we begin walking this path, the path becomes easier and easier to tread. This is just like a path which at first is no different from any other part of forest, yet the more it is walked upon, the more flattened and plant free it becomes.

Cruelty and indifference to the suffering of others are easily habituated patterns. Once they form into a habit, it is very hard to break it. 

This would form a secondary cause to treat animals well. It derives from the need to treat humans well and from the need to protect ourselves from self-destructive habits.

The second reason is that, if you accept my statement that animals have rights and dignity, it follows that those rights and dignity should be respected. Animals are incapable of doing so. Their intellects exist, but are not as well developed as ours. They operate primarily upon a basis of instinct. but that is not an excuse for us to do so. We do have higher intellectual facilities and we are mandated to use them or accept responsibility for having failed to do so.

This is a primary reason for giving animals respect and dignity.

Let me end by harkening back to something else I said in previous posts (I know that's getting wearisome, but I just can't help myself), recently scientists served guests the first meal of lab grown meat. It resembled ground hamburger and was based upon beef. The cells certainly had been alive, but there never was an animal from which that meat was taken. There was no life, no dignity, no rights. There was only meat. Meat without a brain, meat without nerves, meat that could sense nothing.

Reports were that it wasn't identical to hamburger but was surprisingly similar. I predicted before and I predict again that the day will come when the idea of killing an animal for food will be utterly horrifying. Nevertheless, we will continue to eat meat. That is because we will grow that meat in a lab, in a vat. There will never be a living animal which will have to suffer so that we can feast.

Idle Thoughts -- Sartre and Jesus on Responsibilty

Question 6

For Sartre, any explanation that deflects ones complete responsibility is an example of bad faith. Do you agree? Are there cases where people should not be held accountable for what they have done? Or cases where it is legitimate to say, I had no choice? Explain

To Sartre, and many other existentialists, there was no escaping your responsibility for your own decisions. Circumstances might limit the range of choices available to you, but you always have choices that are up to you and you must make the best choice possible under the given circumstances.

This is reminiscent of the Greek attitude toward your responses to your Moira, your net of fate. While the Greeks insisted that there was no escaping your fate, you were still able to make choices. You could decide how to react to your fate. You could fight against it, you could accept it, you could cry about it, or many other choices. Even under circumstances where your fate was firmly set and sealed, you had some choices.

Eventually Western civilization developed this idea of freedom into what we refer to as Shakespearean tragedy. Remember, this is when circumstances may give you a bad situation but you have many choices about how to react to that bad situation. You are no longer fated to a certain end of absolute inevitability. I earlier spoke of you about how, if Romeo and Juliet had responded more thoughtfully to their circumstances, things might have turned out well for them. Consider also Macbeth. He was tempted to commit murder so that he could become king, but he was not forced to do so. He could have chosen to ignore the prophecy of the witches and the pressures of his wife.

Sartre believes that people trick themselves into thinking that they have no choice. In this way, they excuse themselves from doing things that they know are wrong and which should not have been done. Earlier we talked about how many people said they had no choice but to help Hitler commit his mass murders. It's an excuse that was often used after the war when there were trials for those who had participated in these horrible acts. Sartre would say these people were deluding themselves and trying to escape responsibility for their own decisions. After all, they could have resisted, accepted imprisonment and death, run away, or done many other things.

Sartre is angry when people say they had no choice. Let us look again at the person who assisted in the Holocaust. He may well declare that he had no choice. Had he resisted the Nazis he would become a victim of a Holocaust. Sartre says that this person made a choice as we discussed above. Of course, one wonders how much responsibility a person must take for such a terrible choice. What if the man's entire family would have been sent to a death camp if he have not done what the Nazis perceived as his duty?

I am not arguing with Sartre's point about moral responsibility. The man did make a choice and he should not pretend he did not. However, should we condemn him for a choice made under those horrific circumstances? Do we really think he should have said, "Yes, go ahead and murder my family. As long as I don't have to do anything wrong."?

Now let's consider the issue from the viewpoint of justice. Imagine you are assigned to decide whether a person should or should not be charged with war crimes. When you interview him you realize he never hated Jews and never wanted to kill anyone. He really participated only because he was told his family would be murdered if he did not. Should he be tried for his crimes? Is he the abuser or the victim?

Perhaps he's some of each. Certainly, a person forced to do something he did not wish to do, that is, forced to make a decision he did not want to make, should not be charged with as serious a crime as a person who committed a war crime because he wanted to do so.

Sartre would certainly say that this man should admit that he made a decision to do a terrible thing and take responsibility for doing so. I do not disagree. However, I think it is also fair for a man to say, "I made this horrible decision because I thought the alternative decisions were even worse."

For example, many Americans talk of World War II as the Good War. This always upsets me.There has long been a concept in Christian circles of a just war. This also upsets me. This is because I can see no war as either good or just. War is always evil.

Yet, I am not a total pacifist. I am a pacifist insofar as I believe we should always try to avoid war. However, I recognize that sometimes war is forced upon you.

This is not an attempt to evade responsibility. I recognize that I am responsible for my choice if I decide to support my government going to war. Still, I insist that this might be the lesser of two evils. The evil of allowing Hitler to take over the world would have been even worse than the evil of going to war to stop him from doing so.

Because of the circumstances, I had to choose between one evil or the other. That does not completely excuse me from responsibility. On the other hand, you can hardly say that I had a choice which would have allowed me to escape responsibility for either going to war to stop Hitler or taking actions which would allow him to conquer the world. Even by taking the option of declaring I was a pacifist who would not fight, would have denied my government my assistance in stopping this evil man. Arguably, refusing to fight would have been helping Hitler to win.

So I must agree with Sartre that you must take responsibility for your own decisions. However, I must remind everyone that the decisions you have available to you may be very limited indeed. You can't be blamed for having only a few choices when circumstances have forced them upon you.

We should also remember that Sartre's advice is very good for people who are natural leaders. Such people naturally make up their own minds and are hesitant to simply do what others tell them to do.

But he seems to ignore the fact that not everyone is a natural leader. In fact, since we are a social species, we must be like other social species. That is to say, most of us naturally are followers, not leaders. For a great many human beings the most natural thing to do is to do what you are told to do by the people you respect. I agree that this does not make for a very good excuse when you do awful things. However, we would be foolish to ignore this hard, cold reality of human nature.

Does this mean that there is a free pass given to the majority of human beings who are naturally followers? No, it does not! After all, even followers have to make a decision as to whom they will follow. If a person decides that he will follow Rush Limbaugh and believe whatever that leader tells him to believe, that person is responsible for believing the horrible lies that have been told to him. No one made him choose that person to trust. That was his own choice and he must take responsibility for the consequences of choosing that person as his leader and for giving that person his trust.

I don't know if I told you this particular example before, but I think it's very appropriate here. As usual, I will return to my favorite case of extreme focus. I use extreme focus to demonstrate moral problems in the most extreme circumstances, and what is more extreme than the Nazis?

During World War II, France surrendered. Part of France was occupied by the Germans. The other part was allowed to have it's own French government, but under strict Nazi control. French policeman in this supposedly French country were given strange orders. The Nazis ordered the heads of the French government to tell their policeman to start arresting Jewish families.

Most of the policeman did what they were told. After the war many of them said they didn't want to do it, but they were policemen. A policeman is sworn to do his duty and that duty is to enforce the law. A policeman isn't supposed to choose which law to enforce and which one not to enforce. He is supposed to simply enforce the laws and let the courts make the decisions about what is right or wrong. So, where the French policeman wrong to enforce be a law when they knew the law itself was wrong?

I'm sure Sartre would say they were, and I would agree with him.

Now let's pull back from extreme focus and take a look at America today. There are two bitterly different attitudes toward how we should treat our citizens. This difference is tearing this country apart right now. Democrats believe that we must do more for the poor, the young, the old, and others with difficulty taking care of themselves. The Republicans say that this is creating a culture of dependency and that we can't afford it anyway.

My position on this is very clear. Every year tens of thousands of Americans die because they do not have health insurance. Many of these are children. My moral position is that as a country, we are guilty of the blood of those children. And I most especially believe that Republicans are morally responsible for letting them die. As a religious individual, I believe that one day they will be judged and found guilty of having allowed those children to die.

Some Republicans say that it is the fault of the parents who do not work hard enough to care for their own children. Others say they recognize that it isn't the children's fault, but insist that we just don't have enough money to do this, so we have no choice. I must agree with Sartre. There is always a choice and these people have made the wrong one.

I say this even of those who say that they had no choice. Of course they did. As in the case of choosing whether to go to war or to let Hitler win, sometimes our choices are so limited that whatever we decide will support one or another outcome. This is rare. Usually there are many more choices than just two. But sometimes circumstances are so extreme that there really are only two basic choices. We in America are living a very wealthy country. We could choose to provide healthcare for all American citizens if we wished to do so. Of course, it would be expensive. Of course, it would have some negative effects.

Of course, it would also save tens of thousands of lives every year.

Let me point out that Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act, only partly fixes this problem. It is far from adequate. As a nation we have made this choice. We must take responsibility for it. There are no valid excuses.

We either act to save tens of thousands of American lives a year, or we fail to do so. There are no excuses, there is only responsibility for the choice we make.

Mark 9:42 KJV
And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.

Although I love this quote in many ways, I am offended by the fact that it seems to protect only little ones who believe in Jesus. I believe God loves them all and wants them all equally protected.

But putting that aside, I wonder what Republicans, who frequently declare their Christian faith, plan on saying when they stand before Jesus in judgement and Jesus asks, "Why did you let my little ones die? Why did you deny them healthcare? Why did you deny them food stamps?" Do these people really believe that Jesus will be convinced when they say, "Why Jesus, I did it to save money!"?

Idle Thoughts -- Nietzsche and the Übermensch Fight the Nazis

Explain Nietzsche's theory of the master morality vs. the slave morality, and his concept of the Overman. What in your view are the positive aspects of that theory and what are the negative if any?

Nietzsche's higher good is everything which is powerful and life-asserting. On the other hand, slave morality is a concept developed by those who are oppressed. They both resent and envy the powerful, so they declare they that that which the powerful call good is actually evil. Since they feel they've been unjustly treated, Nietzsche says that they create an imaginary world in which they will be rewarded for their meekness and for having been oppressed. This would be the Christian heaven. They also imagine another imaginary world in which the powerful will be punished. This would be the Christian hell.

By imagining these worlds they comfort themselves. Their miserable lives are made tolerable by the belief that there will be an eternal reward once they die. It is worth noting that Karl Marx referred to religion as the opiate of the people. He did not mean opium as in drug abuse. Instead he meant that it is the soothing medication of the masses. Nietzsche would agree.

As for the master morality, Nietzsche says that a strong man knows that what is good for him is morally good. This is because, to the strong man, the measure of all things is himself. Don't forget that Nietzsche described a "strong man" as a strong willed man. Having the will to control yourself as well as the world around you is essential to this definition.

He believed that master morality is inherently strong because it grew out of the strong men who were the Masters. Slave morality is inherently weak because it grew out of the weak men who were dominated by the strong.

If this is reminding you of Herbert Spencer's Social Darwinism, don't be surprised. The two are very closely related.

You might be wondering how the supposed slave morality came to take over entire societies. Nietzsche's answer is that there are many of the weak willed slaves and only a few of the strong willed masters. By sheer force of numbers, the slaves convinced the Masters to accept their weak version of morality.

This is rather hard to believe. If the masters are so strong-willed, why would they let the masses who are weak willed overwhelm them simply because there are so many of them? That doesn't sound like something a very strong-willed person would allow to happen.

In any event, Nietzsche did not think that either master morality or slave morality where the very best moral positions. The Nazis seized upon his philosophy as an excuse for their horrible behavior. They said we are the masters and have strong wills therefore we can do anything we want. Nietzsche would not have agreed.

He believed that both slave and master morality had flaws. He hoped that by looking at them honestly and rationally, a newer, better morality could be developed.

This new morality would be developed by the übermensch. This German word literally means over man, but it has also been translated as superman. This is a bad translation and should be disregarded, although many people mistakenly think that Nietzsche believed in this more extreme concept.

Nietzsche did not believe in a super being. Instead, he believed that a new man would arise out of a blend of our old cultures and ethnicities. This new man would be a free spirit who would be able to think more clearly and more effectively than we do.

Once again the Nazis twisted what Nietzsche actually said. He never said the overman was a superman who could make up his own rules and do whatever he wanted to. On the contrary, he said this overman would create an entire new morality. This new morality would have its own rules and its own obligations. It was not a free license to do anything you wanted. It was a new set of rules which would be better than either master morality or slave morality, and which should be followed because it would be more moral than either of its predecessors. This is the opposite of license.

I repeat, Nietzsche's concept of a strong-willed man was not a man who could do anything he wanted to do. It was a man who possessed the strength of will to control both himself and the world around him.

What was positive about this theory?

Nietzsche himself was physically weak and died young. He did not think that physical strength was the most important factor in a person's life. What mattered was having willpower and the ability to control yourself and the world around you. His story is very inspiring. He did not allow his illness to keep him down but instead lived life as fully as he could for as long as he could. He intended for everyone to understand his philosophy in those terms.

Remember that he expected his overman to create a new and better morality. He clearly confirmed the importance of self-control in this process.

What was negative about this theory?

Nietzsche focused mainly on slave morality because he felt that was the one which is dominating the world. Since he interpreted slave morality as Christian morality many people were and still are offended by this position.

Furthermore, he is not clear as to what morality the overman will create. He cannot be clear, since he himself is not one of the overmen. This new human will come in the future. Therefore, we cannot decide whether we do or do not approve of his morality, since we do not know what it will be.

The worst thing about these concepts is how they were distorted by others for their own purposes. Many supposed followers of Nietzsche declared themselves to be overmen who posessed the strength of will to force their rule upon weaker human beings. In other words, they declared that Nietzsche's statement that what is good for the strong man is by nature good should be the rule. Since they say they are strong men, what is good for them is morally good.

In fact, this was how he described master morality. Somehow these "followers" forgot that he condemned master morality as well as slave morality.

Perhaps this misunderstanding and misuse was inevitable. After all, Nietzsche himself could not describe what the new morality would be. That leaves the door open for individuals who wish to abuse his philosophy and use it as an excuse for their own self-indulgence and excesses.

Idle Thoughts -- Abraham, Kierkegaard, and Salvation

Question 4

Kierkegaard believes that being ethical is not the ultimate ideal mode of existence - one must also have religious faith. Explore this view point: what does he think faith can give that ethics can not ? Do you agree ? Can we be ethical w/o faith? Can we have religious faith w/o ethics ? Explain

Kierkegaard's ethics are disturbing to me. He believed that that which is ethical is that which is socially acceptable. That does not mean socially acceptable as in, you can get away with it. It means that which is universally accepted by a given culture as ethical. For Kierkegaard, it was ethical to practice human sacrifice, even of children, if that was the norm of a given society and accepted by the members of that society.

In other words, as long as your neighbors approve, go ahead and do it. I'm sure Kierkegaard wouldn't put that way, but he does not seem to have any kind of external moral standard. Everything is subjective and depends upon your culture.

Referring back to my answer on role models, what would Kierkegaard say about the brutality of the Jim Crow laws of the American South in the 1950s? At first glance, he would surely say they were acceptable. After all they were the social norms of the day. However, these were the social norms of the White society of the day. Blacks never agreed with those laws. Would their opinion matter?

Nothing is universally accepted. There's always at least someone who disagrees. So what percentage of a society or culture must agree on an ethical position before it actually becomes ethical?

You might conclude that Kierkegaard did not believe in God. After all, he makes no reference to God in his opinion about what is ethical. Surprisingly, Kierkegaard was a Christian and his faith was very important to him. He believed that if God commanded you to do something which was unethical, you should do it. God was, to use another philosopher's image, the trump.

Most people who know about Kierkegaard know about him because of his interpretation of the sacrifice which Abraham was willing to make. That is, the sacrifice of his son.

Kierkegaard accepts the Biblical explanation which is accepted by the vast majority of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. They all believe that Abraham was tested by God to see if his faith was great enough to do a terrible thing simply because God told him to do so. In other words, Abraham passed the test.

So, God is important after all! It is He who decides what is good or evil. Ethics may be a matter of social norms, but God can overrule those norms and must be obeyed when He does so.

Here I must insert my own interpretation of the story of Abraham. Many of the deeply religious would find it unorthodox at the very least. Some might go so far as to call it heresy or blasphemy. However, it grows out of my own deep love of God and my conviction of His inherent goodness.

I am convinced that Abraham failed the test. I believe God intended him to say, "You cannot be God if you demand such an evil thing because God is good and this is not."

I even find some cause to believe that the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross in order to save humanity was not required to wash us free of original sin. Surely, God has the power to simply forgive that.

Instead, I believe that such a death was required because it's the only way we humans could believe we were capable of being forgiven. Without such a sacrifice, Christians often declare that there is no way they can be freed of the awful burden of sin they carry. It is this conviction, this wrong conviction, which required such a great sacrifice. Without it, we would not be able to believe that we could be forgiven. Without it, we would not believe that we could be saved.

We are the children of Abraham, we simply cannot surrender the idea of sacrifice. We somehow, deep down in our psyches, believe that sacrifice is essential. Without it, we cannot cannot believe in our own salvation. We feel that there must be a punishment so great that it cleanses our sins, that it redeems us from them. What greater sacrifice than God himself being killed? That can cancel out all of humanity's sins for all eternity. Just as Abraham was perfectly willing to believe that God might require the sacrifice of his son, so we believe that there must be the sacrifice of the Son of God in order to set us free of our own sins.

Why doesn't God simply change us? Good question. I don't want to get into that here, but I will say that if he did change us, then we wouldn't be human anymore.

I repeat my warning, although I intend this to be very respectful of God, there are many who will find this to be a profoundly offensive position. To the best of my knowledge, many people have criticized Abraham for making the wrong decision, but I believe that I am the first to make this particular extension onto the sacrifice of Jesus. The relationship of Abraham sacrificing his son to God and God sacrificing His Son is often made, but I don't recall it being made in this negative sense, as a failure of humanity and of Abraham rather than as an entirely positive event.

The question of ethics without faith is one that really interests me. We had a discussion like that in the old philosophy club a few years ago. My point is that if faith leads to morals because all morality comes from God, then that means that things are moral only because God says so. Therefore, we can conclude that if God decided to change His mind about what is moral, then we must also change our minds about what is moral.

That means that if tomorrow God decides that from now on morality will consist of murdering your parents and eating them, then that will be moral. From that point on, it will be immoral not to murder your parents and eat them. After all all, morality comes from God. Whatever He says is moral, IS moral. Morality does not have its own existence outside of God. . All morality is external to us. It is contained in the simple fact that God said so.

(Remember that Kierkegaard said that that which is acceptable to society is ethical, but that God can overrule that at any moment in time and that He must be obeyed and is always correct.)

Naturally, we would still find murdering your parents and eating them immoral. That means that the act is immoral whether God says so or not. Even if God said to kill our parents and eat them, it would still feel immoral to do so. There is something inherently wrong about doing this thing. Right or wrong does not depend upon the word of God.

For many believers this is a shocking and disturbing statement. However, are we to assume that atheists must automatically be evil people? Many religious people insist that this is true. Nevertheless, I have known and loved at least three atheists. All of them are good, kind, decent people with high moral values. I also know some deeply believing Christians who have much lower moral values. Go figure.

What about faith with no ethics? Well, the ancient Greeks certainly had a lot of faith, but many of the ethics of that society are repulsive to us today. Not only can you have ethics without faith, having faith is no guarantee of having ethics!

I have had two relatives working in prisons. One in the state system and one in the federal system. Both of them are correctional officers working with the most brutal of all human beings. They guarded and monitored mass murderers, rapists, and just about every kind of disgusting criminal you can imagine. Both of them tell me that most of those prisoners are religious. I'm not saying that being religious makes you bad, but I am saying that being religious or not religious does not make a noticeable difference as to whether you are or are not an ethical and moral person.

If God didn't give us our morals, where did they come from? As I noted to you in an earlier post, there are certain moral and ethical values that go across every single human culture ever discovered or studied. Those beliefs came from somewhere.

The answer is that those are evolved beliefs. Remember the monkey that was supposed to share his precious food find? And don't forget the chimpanzee who would punish the other chimp if it took his food but would allow the other chimp to eat the food in peace if a human being took it away and gave it to the second animal.

Even animals have some morals. We do interpret our moral positions in many different ways from society to society, but we also share a common basic belief in what is right and what is wrong. This is true no matter what our religious beliefs may be.

And finally in regard to the importance of God to Kierkegaard: First, to Kierkegaard, God is the factor which can override ethics in determining morality. More importantly, this simply reflects the centrality of God to all things in the universe. Without God, Kierkegaard feels everything is incomplete. Nothing can be whole if it does not include Him. No person, no philosophy, no thing is complete without the presence of God.

Idle Thoughts -- J Edgar Hoover vs Martin Luther King, Jr.

Barnard Mayo wants us to emulate role models. Can you think of a person - a historical figure, a living person, or a fictional character - whom you would like to emulate? Explain who and why. What are some of the problems involved with the idea of emulating role models ? 

Mayo said, "We find moral guidance by looking to a person who embodies, or a unified character type that exemplifies, some human ideal. We become better, more virtuous, by imitating this ideal as much as it is possible for us to do."

I'm going to start with the ending of the above question because I think it's more natural to start with the cautions. The problems in having a role model are many, but I will specify those that I think are most risky.

1.). What if your role model ends up disappointing you? 

Even an historical figure whose, life is safely over, may turn out not to be as you expected. You devote yourself to emulating an individual only to find out that he is not the person you thought he was. Consider the case of Demosthenes.

Google his name and you will find glowing reports of the great speaker, one of the greatest orators in of all history. The man who encourages people to rise up against Alexander the Great and defend their nation in the glorious struggle against tyranny...etc., etc., etc.

And then there's Demosthenes. Google his name and you will find bitter attacks upon this demagogue, this false prophet, who tricked his people into a stupid and pointless rebellion against an overwhelming power, causing the brutal destruction of his homeland for his own political gain...etc., etc., etc.

You'll find a lot more in the way of praise and a lot more in the way of attacks. Yet the attackers and the praisers are both describing the same person! They just see him very differently.

So was Demosthenes a great man to be emulated or an evil man who should be used an example of everything to avoid?

The answer is the depends on who wrote the history you are reading.

2.) Is anyone really so perfect that you should emulate them? Having a role model is nice, but you need to keep this in balance. Emulating your role model in entirety is not a good idea. No human being is perfect. Instead, you should emulate the traits a particular person displays in a particular area, perhaps even only at a particular time.

For example, Benedict Arnold was one of the greatest heroes of the American Revolution. His courage, his wisdom, his devotion to the cause were all deeply admired. Then he turned traitor.

3.) It is unreasonable to expect any one person to possess the same levels of potential as another person. The person you are emulating may have a very different personality or natural talents than you. So it is possible that what you're attempting to emulate may be extremely difficult or perhaps not attainable for you. 

4.) The question also rises, just how much should you try to be like another person? This is a question of balance. Do you try to be somewhat like the person you were using as a role model or do you try to completely pattern yourself upon him?

You may not be able to be as much like that person as you would wish, and you may have strengths which that person lacks.

It can be very endearing when a child says I want to be just like you daddy or just like you mommy, but in reality every person needs to become himself and not simply try to be someone else. You have your own talents, skills, and abilities. You need to develop them to be the best person you can be. It is good to look up to others and try to develop the traits that you admire in them, but you should also develop your own.

You'll have to figure out which role model you prefer for yourself.

As for me, I can point to two role models who were of the utmost importance to me in my childhood and youth.

As a child, I was a deep admirer of J Edgar Hoover. Later I learned that he had gone to great lengths to push his image onto the public, an early example of the effectiveness of public relations in an era of mass media. Still, here was a man who took an almost unknown federal agency and turned it into one of the world's most highly respected and professional police forces.

Who wouldn't look up to a man who fought gangsters, Nazi spies, and the Communist enemies of America? Especially in the 1950s!

In the early 1960s, someone else came to my attention. Having spent a year down south in Biloxi Mississippi, to this day still called the Capital of Segregation, I saw some of the ugliness of Jim Crow. We lived on base where the only color that mattered was the color of your uniform, but outside the gates was a totally different world.

Like so many service brats I regarded our entire family as members of the Air Force. We were an Air Force family. So when the couple who lived downstairs in our converted barracks housing was arrested by local police, I was angry. I was even angrier when I found out the reason they had been arrested.

They were a Black couple. One day they were out driving with their one-year-old daughter. The police thought that the daughter looked like she was not as dark as the parents. They thought she might be Mexican.

Of course, to Biloxi policeman, Mexicans were barely human. However, they were a lot more human than Blacks. So they arrested a couple because their baby was a few shades lighter in skintone but they were. Of course, they were released. Nevertheless, I have never forgotten that incident and never will. It had a profound influence on who I was and who I grew up to be.

I was also upset by the fact that we were all carefully vetted as to which school we could attend. Had that couples' daughter been my age she would have been sent to a Black third-grade classroom on the bad side of town. Because my family was Spanish and other European, my brother and I were sent to Miss Pittpat's school on the good side of town. (Aunt Pittpat was a character in the book, "Gone With the Wind". I don't remember the actual name of the actual elderly Southern lady who was principal of the school.)

If I learned one thing that year it was that I hated the South. I hated segregation. I hated injustice. I still do.

So, when Martin Luther King rose to prominence leading the civil rights movement, I had a new hero. When I read about Henry David Thoreau and his civil disobedience and how that idea traveled all the way to India to be practiced by Gandhi and then all the way back here to be practiced by Martin Luther King, I was more than a little impressed.

Also being a very religious person, I found the way that Dr. King combined religion, the dignity of common humanity, and politics was simply amazing. Since I tended to be a shy and quiet little boy who did not like violence, the whole concept of passive civil disobedience moved my soul.

So far, no problem. There's no reason you can't admire two men. Anyone who knows the history of that era sees the problem coming up, though. Of course it wasn't history then, so I wasn't ready!

When I was in junior high school, J Edgar Hoover's efforts to keep America the way he wanted it to be came into direct conflict with Dr. King's efforts to change this country. Hoover's efforts became absolutely repulsive. With his cooperation, Congressmen began attacking King as a communist. There were even quotes about this in the Congressional Record.

There was a real clash here. Something was obviously wrong with the way I was seeing the world. One of these two men I so deeply admired was a despicable liar. The question was, which one?

I did my research, and I tried to keep my mind open. In the end, I came to realize a J Edgar Hoover was now and had always been a very bad man.

Dr. King was not perfect. There's no doubt he cheated on his wife and had other moral failings. He had his imperfections, as we all do. But he remains one of the few men who was alive during my lifetime that I genuinely and truly respect. The lessons that he taught me, that he taught America, are still a very important part of my life today.

In the end, J Edgar Hoover let me down. He disappointed me very deeply. But I learned to be more cautious from that experience.

In the end, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proved to be a fallible human being. However, I respect him all the more for overcoming his human weaknesses to become such a great leader.

Idle Thoughts -- Lost Sheep in Heaven

Question 2

Discuss the question of character verses conduct in personal matters. Philippa Foot claims, with Aristotle, that a person who has good character is better then a person who has to control him or herself. Kant would say the opposite. Explain those view points. Which do you agree with more and why?

From: http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/103/ve103.htm

-- The motto for virtue ethics is: "Be this sort of person" rather than "Follow this rule." Kant's "What is my duty?" becomes instead "What sort of person shall I become?" --

This contradiction between Foot and Kant I think, is overstated. Recall the Native American and African attitudes that a person must acquire character. Foot's person who already has good character is all fine and good, but how do you get there? Don't you use a kind of self construction method as understood by African-American Indian societies? Don't you make yourself do the right thing so that it becomes habitual?

It seems to me that we are not discussing two entirely different things here. They may sound like different ways of viewing character, but I see them as simply two different aspects of the same process.

Foot and Aristotle assume a person in a certain state. Kant assumes a person who is working toward that state. Admittedly, the first two seem to believe that once a person attains that state it simply becomes his natural, default position. Kant, on the other hand assumes a person is always in the process of improving himself or resisting his undesirable impulse.

To sum that up, Kant assumes that the journey never ends and that you must always keep up the struggle. But what Foot and Aristotle assume is that you can reach a position in which the journey is over and, as long as you don't travel backwards, you need struggle no more.

Nevertheless, Foot and Aristotle do assume a situation which I think is unrealistic and unreasonable. More about that later.

But back to differences in detail with another excerpt from the article:

-- Let us take the example of Jack and Jill, who work in a bank at the same position. Each have the same opportunity to embezzle money from their tills. Jill never thinks about doing it, and thus can be said to have "natural" virtue. However, Jack is always tempted to take some money for himself, but he always overcomes the temptation. Let us call Jack's virtue "duress" virtue.

Which person has highest moral worth? Kant's answer is clear: Jack, because we are sure that he is not stealing out of duty. We are not sure about Jill, because of her natural inclination not to steal. (As Kant reminds us: we don't praise people for preserving their lives when they have every inclination to do just that.) Kant's view seems unsatisfactory, because we definitely want to give Jill moral worth. Indeed, if after a probationary period, the bank managers have to decide whom to keep--Jack or Jill--it is obvious that they will not want to keep Jack on. (Let's assume for the sake of argument that Jack confesses his daily temptations to his superiors.) --

Foot and Aristotle most value Jill. She is clearly a better person than Jack. She has never even experienced the temptation.

I contend that they are wrong. The fact that she has never experienced temptation may be due to the simple fact that she has never had a need. What if she suddenly discovers that she will lose her home if she does not embezzle some money? Previously the situation did not exist, so she was not tempted.

I reject the idea that there are people of such perfect moral character that the idea of doing a wrong thing never even occurs to them. I believe this is an unrealistic view of human character. Once Jill suddenly realizes that by embezzling from the bank she may save her precious home, she would have to be a very stupid person indeed not to realize, at least on an intellectual level, that this does present a solution for her problem.

It is entirely possible that she would immediately reject this temptation. Nevertheless, the idea that she would never under any circumstances even be tempted is to establish her as some sort of superhero character. Or perhaps as an alien. No human being is perfectly capable of resisting or even of conceiving of temptation.

Given that, one could still argue that she is of a superior moral character because, unlike Jack, she's not tempted to embezzle simply for the pleasure of gain, but only because she feels desperate.

However, I think Jack deserves a great deal of praise as well. After all, he has the moral willpower to say no to himself. I think the error here is in comparing two things that are not exactly identical. Yes, obviously Jill has a moral character which is in many ways superior to Jack's. Most particularly superior to Jack in that she does not feel the need to indulge herself. I would have to say that I find her to be more morally reliable than Jack.

But the fact remains we have no idea what would happen if she were tempted by some other element. Are we to assume that she was never tempted by anything, anywhere, under any circumstances? Again, this is an unreasonably high expectation for a human being. Foot and Aristotle are attempting to establish, rather like Plato, an ideal perfect form of a person of character. It may exist in some alternate world which is itself perfect, but it does not exist in our grubby world of reality.

Jack, on the other hand, shows a great deal of moral character in that he can control himself. This is something which apparently is totally absent and totally unnecessary in Jill.

In other words, my interpretation is that Jill shows a certain type of moral character which is different from the moral character which is displayed by Jack. Jill is certainly more reliable as a bank employee. However, I insist that no one is truly perfect. Jack may be the completely moral superior to Jill in that he can resist temptation while we do not know if she can or cannot. Surely she is tempted by something. The question is, does she then give into it? Or does she resist it, as does Jack?

The fact is, we have insufficient information to decide who is morally superior.

To answer the question in a direct and simple manner, I say that Foot and Aristotle have fallen into the careless and intellectually devastating trap of utopianism. Utopia means "no where", a place so perfect that it cannot exist. I am applying the word in this case not to a place but to a human being. A person as perfect as Jill is like a utopia. It doesn't exist anywhere in the real world, neither does someone as perfect as she.

So Kant is more correct simply because he deals with a better view of people as real beings, not imaginary idealized symbols of a philosophical belief. Jack is a superior human because because Jack is a real person while Jill is nothing but an imaginary idealization.

Additional comments which I just can't resist making:

In an earlier presentation I sharply criticized Kant for not dealing with the real world. Now I'm praising him for dealing with the real world. This is not a contradiction. My criticism of Kant is correct in regard to that particular point. My praise of Kant is correct in regard to this particular point. This time it is Foot and Aristotle who aren't dealing with reality. This is an occupational hazard of philosophers.

This whole thing can also be better understood if we look at an excellent example outside the area of moral character. You remember that during World War I people who fell apart under the stress of combat were referred to as lacking moral fiber, while today we know their bodies and their minds simply broke down. So we know that moral character isn't the issue when it comes to fear.

In the question about Jack vs Jill, the difference between Foot and Aristotle's view of character as opposed to Kant's shows up very well in the following example.

Who is braver? The person who never fears anything or the person who overcomes his fear? Shakespeare said, "The coward dies a thousand deaths. The brave man dies but once." This is a very common attitude and it's very foolish. The idea that man who is brave is never afraid makes no sense at all. Bravery consists of going ahead when you are afraid. If a person ever existed who was never afraid of anything, he had no courage at all. He didn't need any. Also, he had some kind of severe brain damage.

Remember Aristotle's Golden Mean between cowardice and excessive courage. The person with no fear at all would be about as excessive as possible.

Imagine you go to a petting zoo and in one area there's a snake. Are you very brave if you walk up and pet it, when you have no fear of snakes and even enjoy their company? Of course not.

But an old friend of mine, Barbara Hamilton, was once teaching her class of special needs students. One of our bus drivers brought in his huge pet boa constrictor to show to the children. Barbara was absolutely terrified of snakes, but didn't say so because she didn't want to teach the children to share her fear. Since she looked so calm, the driver showed the children how nice snakes were by putting the snake on her lap and wrapping it up around her neck. She showed no sign of her fear.

The next day she couldn't come to work because she had broken out in hives as result of her absolute terror. She was brave. Although terrified, she would not show that fear because she didn't want to teach the children to be afraid.

The driver was not being brave, he was enjoying his pet.

My final point: addicts who have recovered will frequently tell you, if you ask, that they have recovered only in the sense that they no longer indulge their desperate desires. They will tell you that they are under control, but they are still addicts. They will always be addicts. There is no way to escape that reality.

A modern psychologist would say these individuals have an addictive personality and an addictive habituation. Foot and Aristotle would say they have weak moral character. Kant would say they have strong moral character.

People like me simply aren't tempted into addiction because we have what psychologists call a nonaddictive personality. It is unlikely that I, or people like me, will ever become addicted. If we ever do become addicted to something, we will be able to escape that addiction without most of the stress and horror that other addicts experience. This is not because we are better people. It's because of the way our brains are constructed. We are just lucky. It has nothing to do with moral character.

Recovered addicts show the greatest moral character as they continue to be severely tempted and to resist

Luke 15:7 KJV

I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.