We Need Fake Stories

WE NEED FICTION
We love stories. We read books (though not as much as before), watch series and movies, and make up our own. It’s a love we’ve had for some time. There’s debate among scholars about the origin of storytelling. It’s fascinating but won’t be the focus here. Assuming it has been highly heritable, given its pervasiveness and value among disparate cultures, why should we care about stories today? 

We Learn via Stories
We see and understand the world through stories. We have a beginning, middle, and end, often remembering mostly the salient parts. To this arc, we attach deep and personal meaning. We see ourselves as agents within a causal universe; our actions have consequences, and those consequences have consequences - and so on into the future. What life is not, subjectively, is a meaningless soup of anachronistic percepts without causal powers. I am not arguing for innate meaning. I find theists’ messaging in this respect often comforting but incredible. Whatever the reason for us, we apply meaning to events in our lives given our unidirectional passage through time; past is past and not now, and now is now and not future. Thus is the human condition under which we have evolved. To say we understand the world through stories is to say we learn through stories, not by mere facts or data points alone.

Here’s an obvious example I often use. “Don’t touch the stove!” a parent says to a child. The child presumably understands what the words mean. But, experience demonstrates, the child, nevertheless, touches the stove. This is followed by pain. Thus, the child’s story goes, “Mom warned me, I didn’t listen, I touched the stove, and it hurt!” Pain plays an important role here, of course, helping to create a mnemonic emotional response. The emotion is part of the story. Without a self, the emotion has no head, no direction. Because the action could have been prevented by listening to the parent, regret is generated, adding to the salience of the narrative. Stoves now, at least in the immediate, represent a special, meaningful object, one that motivates regret and reminds the child of the possibility for suffering. It, along with other, similar life experiences, inculcates the lesson that the child is an agent with causal powers. Perhaps, if the child could write a story, it would emphasize both emotions: regret and fear of pain. For example, a beautiful, nurturing mother figure warns her young son not to touch the stove. The boy, being rather reckless, touches the stove without a second thought and gets badly burned and spends the rest of his life without hands.

An experience is a full-body cocktail of thoughts, emotions, and feelings embedded in a deep and personal context. It cannot be conveyed with an abstract set of facts without becoming, in our minds, a story. Here’s a possible experience: “You die.” Try not to make this into a story in your mind. You can’t. It means, in some sense, the end of your own personal story, the extinction of all possible work, joy, and love. Even mundane facts (e.g., “Water is wet” or “Fire is hot”), in minds, become stories in the aggregate (e.g., “Fire is dangerous, but water puts out fire.”)

Fictional narratives typically relate to us by mimicking our experience of events and facts as they obey the laws of physics and the biases of consciousness. Hemingway said, “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you finish reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.”  

Entertainment’s Advantage
Non-fiction narratives also have this didactic benefit. But fiction benefits in its non-commitment to truth, which allows for greater embellishment and more effective storytelling. Fictional storytellers can be more concise, more evocative, and repeat themes to further inculcate a moral or message. As a result, fictional narratives are generally more entertaining. This argument is central to the academic paper “Why and How Did Narrative Fictions Evolve? Fictions as Entertainment Technologies” in which the authors argue for entertainment as fundamental to the origin of fiction, particularly as it is its most adaptive, distinct (from non-fiction) quality. That is not to say that non-fictional narratives can’t be entertaining or don’t use rhetorical devices. However, non-fiction has more constraints. While some might argue that commitment to truth would make stories more relevant and, therefore, more interesting, the authors argue that the verisimilitude of non-fiction largely produces more skepticism from the audience. Fiction, as entertainment, seems to bypass this wall via suspension of disbelief.

Fiction as Virtual Reality
Some fictional narratives mimic real life closely. Others are fantastical. Either way, fictions contain hypothetical worlds, counterfactuals that may be instructive or otherwise useful; these worlds can provide a playground for problem solving abstract or unmet challenges. Science fiction, for example, can help us resolve issues concerning superintelligence or communicating with an alien race. As many already know, narratives with diverse characters help us empathize with experiences that would otherwise be alien to us; think of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and what it did for whites who were ignorant of the realities of slavery. (A favorite historical story of mine I oft quote: President Lincoln, who was over 6 feet tall, is said to have said, upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was under 5 feet tall, “So you’re the little woman who started this big war!”)

BUT WE DON’T READ AS MUCH
As far as the aforementioned benefits are concerned, the medium doesn’t appear to be particularly important. Yet reading is more active than, for example, watching a film or listening to an audiobook. There are various studies supporting the benefits of reading, both mental and physical.

So, I find it disheartening that reading has gone down in the US. According to a 2022 study, “Over 50% of American adults haven’t read a book in the past year.” According to research published by the American Psychological Association, social media, especially among the young, has taken over some of that leisure time past people would’ve spent reading: “In recent years, less than 20 percent of U.S. teens report reading a book, magazine or newspaper daily for pleasure, while more than 80 percent say they use social media every day.”

Maybe that’s not so bad. What do people do on social media? What’s popular is short-form content; it receives increasing investment from marketers. Further, because algorithms on social media and on streaming services cater to one’s likes, there is an echo chamber effect. This is the antithesis of the key value of fiction, exposing you to different viewpoints and experiences that enhance your understanding and empathy as well as reduce stress.

Short- and shorter-form content is also why attention spans have gotten worse over recent years. While the link to social media is tenuous, over the short-term, there appears to be some causation. This is important because it says something about A) how likely one is able to “tolerate” a “lo-fi” print medium (a book) and B) how low attention spans might affect the future of narrative creation (films, shorts, series), which, in turn, will likely lead to lower attention spans. Currently, there is a correlation, showing both movies and ads becoming shorter and shorter, along with our attention spans.

To be clear, I’m not against short-form content; it can be educational and useful for quick narratives. The problem is more so the viral nature of outlandish content (e.g., extreme pranks) combined with extreme editing (jump cuts and loud, trashy music galore) and bad morals (e.g., you’re the shit if you own your opponents, are rich, sleep with multiple women, and/or can beat people up).

More particularly, it seems there are still readers and readers still read. Rather, there are simply fewer readers: “reading is in decline because the population is now composed of fewer readers . . . when Americans sit down to read, they still typically read for about an hour and a half, but fewer are doing so, or are doing so less often.”

Readers are still reading. Good. They still see the value of reading. Better. But there are fewer readers. Bad. And this trend might continue. Worse. 

WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
We should read more. But, of course, it’s easier said than read. Modern life, with its infinite, rapid-fire stimuli, makes it hard to be consistent or even to read for a long time. To combat this, I propose we make fiction consumption into a (nearly) daily habit.

I’m not James Clear. But he knows a thing or two about habit formation. In his best-selling book Atomic Habits, he details his four laws for building better habits. I’ve successfully incorporated these laws into my life to read more fiction and want to share how I did so. (Follow my Goodreads here.)

1. Make It Obvious
A habit has a cue, something that triggers it. Usually, it’s the environment. The specific trigger might be visual, olfactory, touch, or otherwise. For a smoker, say, it might be walking outside their apartment. (If only all smokers were so conscientious to smoke outside.) That’s because they tend to light up upon exiting their apartment. Even when they’re not thinking of smoking, stepping foot outside their apartment will cue them to smoke.

(I’ve been writing this post for some time. Interestingly, Clear was on Peter Attia’s podcast talking about his book and using the same or similar examples. I’m keeping these examples here because they’re, well, clear.)

How can you use this law to read more fiction? I do two things. One, I set up a daily task to read on Google Calendar, which I check every day. I use Google Calendar for my work schedule and daily routine, checking off tasks throughout the day. I use Reminders (an iPhone app) for tasks that tend to be more variable. Two, I read every day after writing and with breakfast. I don’t even have to look at my calendar to cue the activity; the cue is actually sitting in front of my computer with breakfast. Hence, I prefer ebooks. Because I do it almost every day, I don’t need another cue. Eating breakfast at the same time and even using an alarm also help to maintain regularity, which helps cue the next action. This is largely why I’m a huge fan of routines. They free up the mind up from generally non-important daily decisions. 

2. Make It Attractive
The idea here is to make it so that you want to read, to associate pleasure with the activity.

Two things. First, I read what I enjoy. That is not always the case for people. If you’re in college, it’s largely not up to you. Point is, though, fiction can be its own intrinsic reward. And any other benefits to fiction fall through if you do not continue reading because you’re bored. Ask yourself, What do you really like? I like, among other things, science fiction (e.g., time travel stories, aliens, robots). And I like certain writers of genre (e.g, Ken Liu, George RR Martin, PKD) and of literary (e.g., Junot Diaz, Hemmingway, Faulkner). I often return this the quote, “Life is too short for inferior books” by James Bryce (1838-1922), British academic, jurist, and historian. If you’re not enjoying a book, and you don’t have to read it, drop it ASAP and pick up something else. The world is filled with fantastic books and writers waiting for you to discover and fall in love with them. Reading bad books makes it less likely you will find these undiscovered gems.

Second, I, sometimes, reward myself for reading, especially if I’m struggling to start. If you like gaming or Netflix or whatever, make it so that you have to finish reading first to earn the thing that is actually attractive to you. Then you can engage in your vice (if you deem it so) without guilt. (This tactic is more pertinent for those, such as in university, who have to read books they don’t want to.) This allows for practice in delayed gratification as well as in managing vices.  

3. Make It Easy
The idea is to reduce that initial inertia, or “friction.” Easier tasks require less thought. That’s great if you want to form a positive habit. Things that are difficult, even if we really want to get them done, often require greater willpower. Reading seems difficult for many. I don’t blame them. It’s difficult for me, too, sometimes. Why? There’s a lot vying for my time and attention, especially in the dopaminergic video shorts that pervade social media. I’m reminded of gambling addicts at a casino: quarter, quarter, quarter, then – bam! Cat video!

Here’s what I have done to make reading fiction easier.

One, I give myself a low threshold. I start with a goal to read for one minute. That’s all. And that’s hard to say no to. Who doesn’t have one minute? Of course, once I start, I often read for much longer - but there is no longer an obligation, no guilt for missing the mark. If you want to read for an hour the thought of it might feel onerous, and you’re more likely to put it off until you have more “free time.” Even if you quit, distracted or bored, after only five minutes, that’s ok. Keep building the habit until you’re barely thinking about it. The goal is to conquer that initial inertia.

Two, I read using the Kindle app, usually for desktop but also for iPhone. This makes things easier for two key reasons. A, I don’t need to carry a physical book, which means there’s no worry I’ll forget to bring it. And I’m almost always near either my computer or phone. The app syncs instantly across devices. So, I can usually pick up wherever I am whenever I’m ready. B, reading on Kindle allows me to read just about anything instantly and comfortably. The book, just about any book in the world in any language, downloads in seconds without me having to leave the house or even get up. (This is not a paid promotion for Amazon, Kindle, or James Clear.) Definitions and translations are a click or two away. I can search and annotate easily and instantly. I don’t need to hold the book (if I’m reading on my computer), which is convenient if I’m eating, which is a trigger for the habit. Finally, I can adjust text and background for reading that’s easier on the eyes.

4. Make It Satisfying
The goal here is to make the habit itself rewarding.

There are two key ways I make reading more rewarding. One, I check off the task from my Google Calendar. This may not seem rewarding. But getting the visual confirmation that I accomplished something for the day and have fewer to-dos left is pretty satisfying for me.

Two, if fiction isn’t intrinsically rewarding enough, you can try to make the total experience more pleasant. For example, when reading, I will put on light music or sounds in the background (e.g., lo-fi, traditional Japanese, sounds of nature). I don’t always do this. It depends on my mood. It also depends on dopamine, given my understanding based on Dr. Andrew Huberman’s podcast Huberman Lab (Controlling Your Dopamine For Motivation, Focus & Satisfaction - Huberman Lab | Podcast on Spotify). Always reading with music would alter my dopamine baseline, which would make it harder to read without music. Anyway, the extra sound helps to drown out distracting sounds around me and put me in a more relaxed state, making it easier to transport myself into a fictional world. (It’s important to note the music shouldn’t have lyrics to minimize distraction.) 

Other Considerations
Part of the solution naturally follows from the problem: spend less time on social media. Social media is obviously useful for marketing and for staying connected. (However, there are methods for social connection that don’t have the negative impacts, such as those on attention, e.g., picking up a phone or texting someone). The issue is that the attention economy monetizes your time and information; you are the product. Further, you are fighting an uphill battle against billions of dollars spent on advertising and Ivy League tech grads to limit your time on these platforms. Willpower is a bad long-term strategy.

How do I consume less social media?

Mainly, I delete the tempting, time-consuming applications from my phone. I might have first heard about this technique from the podcaster Tim Ferriss. Most of the time, if needed, it’s possible to use the desktop version, which has a lot less “pull,” I find. Only if I really need to (e.g., to upload a video) will I download the app. But I quickly use it and then delete it again. This process provides enough friction to make it unappealing to upload the app just to kill time. Certain social media app icons look very much like a button and are hard to resist when on the phone (remember the casino analogy?); I don’t think that’s a coincidence.  

FINAL THOUGHTS
Unfortunately, fewer people read now. And people are spending increasing time on social media. As a result, we have ever decreasing attention spans, which has impacted the types of stories that get made. Reading is a fantastic way of consuming information, especially compared to more passive means, such as watching TV. Ultimately, the right kind of fiction is what you enjoy most and, thus, will continue to come back to. Perhaps it helps make you a more empathetic person or more imaginative. Maybe it’s just that your mood is improved. Whatever you get out of fiction, don’t lose it.

Jim Nog Reads, 1/5/25 - God, Gödel, and Grace

Book:

Goldstein, Clifford. God, Gödel, and Grace: A Philosophy of Faith. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 2003. 

Chapter: 2: Chemical Dilemma

Context:

This book was gifted to me by my friend, a Christian, many years ago. I’m not Christian. But I found the book recently and decided to reread it. I am grateful for friendship and find Christians, in particular, to be some of the best people I know.  

Sum:

The chapter begins with some summary and commentary on Waiting for Godot. In the play, like Christians wait for God, two men wait among the absurdity of life for someone who doesn’t show up. It seems, life has no inherent meaning. Goldstein takes issue with this view. In short, he says that we are more than the molecules and chemistry that make us up. Our ideas and feelings (love!) seem to transcend mere materialism. He also writes about determinism; we don’t act like people are automatons. We hold people responsible. And to not do so would be insane.

Thoughts:

Goldstein writes, “A worldview that limits its world, and its view, only to rationalism, to materialism, and to scientific Atheism misses all that's beyond them—which is so much of us, of what we are, of what we hope for, of what we aspire to, of what we imagine, of what we dream and laugh and cry about and love and worship and live and die for” (26). It’s a beautiful sentence, and it captures something true about the human condition. There is so much of who we are and what we experience that cannot and – maybe – should not be explained through science. Science is limited to what can be systemically and objectively tested and falsified. We cannot go to it for philosophical questions or for how we feel, or perhaps should feel, about important, subjective questions. Religion has done a good job, from an evolutionary point of view, in filling that void. But, of course, as Nietzsche observed some time ago, we have killed God; we are not the society we once were. So what will rise in His place? I don’t know. Perhaps a different kind of God. Perhaps a different kind of secularism. Whatever the case, it is toxic to live without meaning.

Quickly, I want to make a simple point that seems to elude the author, if I may be so bold. Materialism, as he calls it, doesn’t necessitate a lack of meaning; to be fair, his point is that because all is material, we don’t have access to innate, objective, eternal truths – to any truths, really, other than our own. So who’s to say anything matters or anything is correct? It seems sad. Why live? Why love? What does your love even mean? My dear atheist and agnostic friends, you must know this: Christians will always win the narrative battle. Their story is better than ours. It’s more comforting, inspiring, and probably more prosocial. Nevertheless, no one escapes the human condition. Whether you realize you are, epistemically speaking, on your own or not, you are. For example, Christians rely on their faith to determine ultimate truth. This belief may be false. After all, that is why faith is needed. Believing in your belief because God made it doesn’t make it any more reliable. So, when criticizing secularists for relying on reason, which, the author asserts, relies on faith, consider who is being more reasonable, relying less on faith, and is more aware of reason’s fallibility – theists or the Godless, sciency types?

Note: This will be my last Jim Nog Reads. I’ve decided to instead focus on doing reviews for the books I read and find interesting, instead of these weekly updates. It reduces redundancy, makes the individual posts more substantial and significant, and I may enjoy the process more. I reserve the right to change my mind and return to these; we’ll see how it goes.

Jim Nog Reads, 12/23/24 - God, Gödel, and Grace

Book: God, Gödel, and Grace: A Philosophy of Faith by Clifford Goldstein

Chapter: “1: Trinkets of Death”

Context: A friend of mine, a Christian, gave me this book. This is my second time, after many years, reading it. When I read what the books they gift me, I am often filled with renewed gratitude and optimism about friendship, the human endeavor on this lonely planet – heck, even about religion.

Sum: In this chapter, the author tackles meaning, mortality, and morality. The chapter is excellently written with chartable and thoughtful representations, with citations, of the opposing side: namely, atheism. He questions nihilism and subjective morality, setting the tone for the rest of the book.

Thoughts: My beef with this chapter, despite enjoying the book so far, is with the bit about morality. Goldstein writes, what atheists can’t do is “derive an internally coherent moral system based upon any transcendent or immutable absolute—because, they assert (often absolutely), none exists” (14). (I don’t think so. I’m a moral realist – and an agnostic.) There’s more, “If morality does not transcend the human … then Hitler’s murder of the Jews in lands under Nazi occupation was moral because it was legal.” Further, “there are no transcendent, transnational, and eternal moral values” without God (16).

I might write a blog post about this. But I’ll try to be brief here. Yes, God makes morality easy. I think this is not a good thing; one should be cautious of easy morality. Well, this ancient, internally-contradictory collection of books (with unverified supernatural claims) written by homophobic and misogynistic (and so on) people says God defines what is good – and it’s all in here! Yay! Morality solved! How should we treat our slaves? And what should be done to gays? How about women who are sexually violated? Oh, and children who do not obey their parents? What about the Canaanites? Really, even their children and their animals? Jeez, well, who am I to question Him?

No, morality is actually quite hard. Welcome to the human condition. If we just take consequentialism into account, which I’m partial to, we must live day-to-day ignorant of the true consequences of our actions (because we cannot reliably predict the future with much depth and can’t infinitely compute). There’s so much more I want to say. But this is supposed to be a brief. I’ll just say, Christians are not immune to hard morality, even if some think they are. For example, which laws and commandments do you follow? Have you read Leviticus? Have you stoned anyone to death? Whose example do you follow: Yahweh’s, Moses’, Jesus’? Post-Enlightenment Christians sure do read these texts differently. One more thing, Christians believe in God. So, even if you believe your morality (whatever your interpretation) is perfect, you also have doubt; after all, you believe in the supernatural. To be clear, you’re basing your entire morality on a belief that most Christians acknowledge might be false. Now, that’s hard (and subjective).

Jim Nog Reads, 12/16/24 - Agap-ology

A friend of mine, a Christian, gave me this book, Agap-ology: Little Things I Learned About God’s Big Love by David Scherer (rapper name: Agape); he’s friends with the author. This is my second time, after many years, reading it. I noticed the Christians like gifting books. Maybe that’s just my friends. But when I read what they gift me, I am often filled with renewed gratitude and optimism about friendship, the human endeavor on this lonely planet – heck, even about religion.

Scherer’s book contains lyrics; thought-provoking, end-of-chapter questions; blank spaces for thoughts; as well as encounters from throughout his life in the church, rapping, and generally inspiring the youth. The stories are told in an authentic, down-to-earth style that relates deep meaning without excess. Scherer comes across as funny, humble, and relatable. The struggles he meets (in himself and in others) are all of our struggles: those with mortality, redemption, grief, doubt, self-esteem, anger, and injustice.

This book helps me to remember why Christians do much better, actually, on average, than the non-religious when it comes to general feelings of happiness, fulfillment, and purpose in life. The holy texts, while flawed, are filled with a historical and cultural context that is anything but meaningless. As a result of rereading this book, I find myself much closer to the Christians than before. We all face the same struggle for meaning in a chaotic world; and when we find it, we do so in beliefs that uplift the human spirit, to borrow a term. These Biblical narratives are powerful. No wonder why about a third of the world is Christian. Whether the stories are literally true or not, I think, is not as important. Perhaps we all could live a bit more with this sort of thing in mind.

Reading Notes, 10/7 - Physics of the Impossible

I’ve been finding it difficult to find the time to read since the semester began. I’m hoping posting these reading updates (hopefully) weekly will motivate me more to continue to read with some consistency.

Book: Kaku, Michio. Physics of the Future. Doubleday, 2011. 

• Chapter: “3. Future of Medicine”

• Summary: In Near Future, Kaku sees the rise of bioinformatics being prominent. (This is already true: 23&Me, Ancestry.com, etc.) He acknowledges we are getting better at cloning and fighting cancer, though the war is far from won. In Midcentury, he expands on the coming biotechnological revolution comprised largely of genetic manipulation: gene therapy, designer babies, and all their ethical concerns come to the fore. According to Kaku, genetic enhancements may become commonplace, maybe even indispensable in the future of space exploration (142). In Far Future, he discusses, among other things, the real possibility that we will end death by old age. This alone, however, will not make us immortal. We will still die by other means (e.g., accidents).

• Thoughts: Kaku covers a lot in this chapter. There are many interviews and experts cited. There are bold claims, such as those in Far Future, of which I remain skeptical, if hopeful. I first read futurist Raymond Kurzweil make the point that if we focus on life extension, there may be future innovations that allow us to build a bridge to a bridge to a bridge - in effect, allowing us to conquer death from old age. Well, I don’t think this chapter adds any real reason, beyond those already generally known within longevity circles, to be more optimistic. Kurzweil and others seem to be aging more or less normally, if better than most.

Reading Notes, 9/9 - Physics of the Impossible

Book: Kaku, Michio. Physics of the Future. Doubleday, 2011. 

• Chapter: “2. Future of AI”

• Summary: Kaku starts the chapter with context. The current state AI is not impressive; they’re dumber than cockroaches. In Near Future section, he thinks we’ll have plenty of helpful robots around. In Midcentury, he expects robots to be ubiquitous, modular, emotional, and much more useful. In Far Future, he speculates we’ll have, toward the very end, AGI, artificial general intelligence, or AI that is generally smarter than humans. He also believes they’ll be conscious.

• Thoughts: It’s important to note the book was published in 2011. Things are much more impressive now, I think, re: AI, especially re: GenAI, and LLMs, in particular. Kaku’s prediction’s contrast with the more techno-optimistic prediction of 2029 by futurist Ray Kurzweil. Personally, I thought the latter prediction was unrealistic the first time I read it (maybe a decade earlier). But I would not have anticipated AI to seem so human-like (via LLMs) by now … Kaku writes, “In the future, however, robots will become so sophisticated that they will almost appear to be humanlike, operating seamlessly with nuance and sophistication” (77).

Should We Fear Death?

Pendant with a Monk and Death

NOT FEARING DEATH

I don’t fear death. Maybe that sounds extreme. Let me explain.

To be clear, I don’t want to die. I exercise every day; eat healthy; supplement; meditate; don’t smoke; and try to stay up to date on the latest in longevity, health, and fitness. There are many reasons I don’t want to die, but I don’t think fear of death (FoD) is one of them.

First, perhaps there’s an element here of the sunk cost fallacy. I’ve suffered a lot. I’m approaching forty. To die now, before realizing many goals seems (whether rational or not) like a waste. The narrative itself (my life’s story) becomes important to me as I live; it matters whether or not this thing (me) manages to succeed, even if I suffer in the interim.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, I love life. (See FoD VS LoL for more on this) Ultimately, this distills down to an overall sense of gratitude. It’s hard to achieve this if you are suffering deeply; I make no judgment on others here. But I feel like life, generally, on balance, is worth living. That’s all gratitude means to me. It is impossible to achieve, however, without meaning. Suffering and experience may lead to meaning. It requires effort, though. It isn’t just given to you, not any meaning worth having, anyway.

I’m also not arguing life is “long enough.” It might be, if we consider that we exist at all. When one contemplates such things as mass extinction events; 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history; about 14 billion years of Universal history; all the wars and genocides ever; the numerous nuclear near misses; and, oh, the perilous, uncertain road of evolution via natural selection and genetic mutation that got us here, one has to kind of pause and appreciate the unlikeliness, no? The fact that I’m writing this at all is a minor miracle, which is to say nothing about the myriad biological processes occurring in unison to produce it. All that said, forever is a long time. (More on this below, LIVING FOREVER?)

Thing is, and I know it might seem hypocritical, I can’t seem to convince my body of what my mind says. The former seems to call the latter’s bluff. Only, it’s not a bluff! That is, when I think of death, especially of dying, I get anxious, even though I know that ultimately death is what I will want, one day. So what gives?

I think the answer is that FoD is deeply biological.

FoD IS USEFUL

Survival

Firstly, clearly, a good way to stay alive is to be scared to do dangerous things. A fear of heights, for example, makes it rather unlikely you fall off a building, even if the overall likelihood is already low. Of course, fear can be irrational or overwhelming. But, from an evolutionary lens, it’s better to be safe than sorry. That’s a bit of an oversimplification, sure. In nature, there are often competing risks. A fear of heights, for instance, might have obviated a risky opportunity for much-needed resources high up a mountain. Fear is complicated.

Even when we have children, we still fear death. Prima facie, it appears to be an evolutionary paradox. If we have passed on our genes, then why still fear death? Many species, in fact, die shortly after giving birth or mating, as if preprogramed, such as the female octopus and the male leafy seadragon. It seems not unrelated that our children, who share 50% of our genes, need us to survive; they don’t learn to walk within a few hours like some ungulates. In nature and in society, when necessary, parents willingly risk their lives for their offspring. We are useful.

One key difference between us and other animals, however, is that we are not so constrained by natural selection. People can set themselves on fire to protest injustice, say, or hang themselves out of despair. We have a greater degree of agency and abstract thinking.

Should we, then, fear death?

Urgency

Philosophy YouTuber and podcaster Alex O’Connor has argued, notably in a recent podcast, that FoD is, on balance, a good thing as it motivates us to act with a sense of urgency. This is something we all seem to know. Diagnosed with a terminal illness, someone with subjectively important plans, write a book, say, will tend to want to compress their plans to get more done (i.e., write more), not less. Obviously, there are exceptions. Generally, however, mortality seems to have a productive impact on the psyche. Alex points out, we all face a similar kind of diagnosis; it’s called life, by far, the leading cause of death.

One can imagine, if Alex is right, that, without FoD, people might feel unmotivated. They might reason, “Why do anything difficult at all if we’re just going to die?” If death doesn’t seem that bad, why not die now? Why go through any hardship at all? Alternatively, why not commit oneself to hedonism (smoke, do drugs, have unprotected sex, commit crimes, and eat junk food all day)? Perhaps this sense of urgency stems from the significance we attribute to life that itself derives from our inevitable fates. If so, then, without this fear, nothing means anything. Then, truly, there wouldn’t be any good reason to create or to do good. And that would engender a world that few people would want to live in.

So, Alex has a point. People genuinely seem propelled by a sense of death anxiety. They tend to avoid talking about death, especially their own. They mourn losing loved ones. They don’t like receiving a terminal illness. When characters die in movies, that’s sad, unless it’s the villain. People do what they can to live longer, even if they have bad habits. People create things and have children. Finally, and thankfully, suicide is, on a population level, relatively rare.

All good, so far. I ask, though: Is FoD all good?

FoD IS HARMFUL TOO

If we’re going to talk about how FoD is useful, it is only fair to talk about how it is also harmful.

Existential Angst

In some, death anxiety leads to a kind of existential dread. I have felt this. It’s hard to express the subjective character of this experience, a la Thomas Negal. I’ll try, though. It’s kind of like you have a suicide vest on and can’t take it off. You also don’t know how much time you have left; but you know it will go boom, no matter what, one day, hopefully one far away. That’s a debilitating feeling!

I remember feeling like this when I was 16. It seemed scary and unfair to die. After all, I didn’t even ask to be born. It led, among other difficulties, to depression. As a result, I missed what I more readily observe today: the beauty and wonder and meaning to be found in nature, consciousness, life, and the universe. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” That is, we need meaning. (This is to say nothing about how this dread may result in an insidious chronic stress.)

Avoidance Behaviors

FoD, given its emotional basis, can lend itself readily, in some, to excess or irrationality, which can lead to extreme avoidance behaviors. That is, while self-preservation is generally a good thing, never doing anything risky at all is, well, limiting. For example, you might not want to go skydiving or visit a certain country because you feel doing so would incur some special risk. Of course, much of what we do incurs some sort of risk to our well-being. Driving incurs risk, and many of us do this daily. And some people fear flying when it is generally much safer than driving. Such an excessive fear could lead to missing out on something life changing or extremely rewarding, such as creating a special life-long memory or just growing as a person and giving you a newfound sense of freedom and independence. Importantly, you don’t know what you might be missing out on. You could, say, meet your future spouse on that supposedly risky trip overseas. We, also, tend to value experiences and efforts more that undertake greater risk. There is a saying, “No risk, no reward.” I don’t know what it must feel like to summit Mt. Everest. But I imagine it’s pretty fucking awesome.

To be clear, my argument here is not that FoD is more harmful than useful. It appears, based on what I’ve written so far, that the utility of FoD is perhaps greater. Maybe FoD is generally more useful than it is harmful. OK.

I wonder, however, if there is not something altogether more useful, given FoD’s drawbacks.

FoD VS LoL

But what can fill the Nietzschean void left in the absence of FoD? Will to Power? No, love! Some might see this as a contradiction. Let me explain how love of life ((LoL, no pun intended) is different.

Defining LoL

If FoD, as defined here, is an anxiety about one’s mortality, LoL then is the substitution of said anxiety with love. Both, nevertheless, appreciate life. Admittedly, this sounds simplistic. One might ask if there really is a difference.

The podcaster Chris Williamson on Modern Wisdom once asked his guest, Brian Johnson, the millionaire vegan trying to reverse his aging, if he fears death. Johnson replied, “No; I love life.” Williamson asked him if there’s a difference. Johnson replied, “I know what fear feels like; I don’t feel it when contemplating death.” Williamson goes on to question whether or not ultimately this life love stems from fear. Johnson responds he’s motivated by biographies (by life).

It’s a good question. Are they ultimately the same?

The difference, to me, has to do with motivation. The key motivator for FoD is fear. Why does one fear death? It could be because death is the ultimate unknown; because of an irrational fear based in evolution; or because it takes everything you’ve ever done, everything you are and seemingly makes it null. All of the above? On the other hand, the key motivator for LoL is love. Why does one love life? This is more complicated. To me, love implies meaning; it isn’t a simple emotion. There are many kinds of love: agape, eros, brotherly love, etc. That which I apply to life, which makes it worth living, is a love that is embedded with meaning. Parents love their children, for example, not simply because of a biological predisposition. There is deep meaning their kids bring to their lives. An emotional love, closer in analogy to fear, I’d more likely call like.

Still, perhaps LoL leads to FoD. In this way, Williamson would be correct. If you love life, the argument would go, would you not, then, fear the thing that takes it away? Sounds reasonable. I think LoL can, indeed, lead to FoD. You would, I think, want to preserve life; fear may be engendered when it is endangered. Does it inevitably lead to FoD? Well, no. Death may be meaningful (more on this below). Ok, but does FoD lead to LoL (the inverse)? Again, no. Fear does not necessitate meaning. It can foster it, and maybe in some superficial way create it, in some contexts. For example, fear of getting eaten by a lion can make you think about the meaning in your life. But this might culminate in nothing but a bad memory. Meaning is hard to find.

Still, let’s grant, for argument’s sake, that FoD and LoL are the same. I could be wrong. Maybe they’re just two sides of the same coin. If so, let’s consider the consequences of these two frameworks and compare.

What benefits does LoL hold against FoD?

It seems to me that avoidance behaviors likely to be experienced with FoD are less likely under LoL. Let’s use an example. Someone offers you to go skydiving. If you are primarily motivated by fear, or resonate more with the FoD framework, the thought of dying would skew things into the “Hell-no!” direction. Conversely, if one’s motivation is more grounded in love, in appreciation for life itself, then the experience of weightlessness and having a bird’s eye view of the earth might tilt things more in the direction of “Hell yeah!” I mean, what would be the point of loving life if you cannot enjoy it?

Does LoL even have the utility of FoD?

As I alluded to earlier, LoL would also lead to self-preservation because one would have to keep living in order to enjoy (or love) life. Nevertheless, one might imagine a scenario in which, given the satisfaction of one’s purpose (essentially synonymous with love), one might decide to end - not out of sadness but in, dare I say, à la Lex Fridman, love! (Perhaps I have a hot take on suicide. Assuming it is based on sound reason, it’s one’s right to choose to discontinue life. In contemporary society, though, suicide is typically completed out of despair and/or desperation; I wouldn’t wish such an end on anyone.) So, there we have it. LoL might be more conducive to a shorter lifespan in some circumstances when compared to FoD. I concede this point. But, of course, what is more life without meaning attached? This reiterates the core difference. Love is inherently more meaningful than fear.

FoD’s other advantage is urgency in action. Is there the same or similar urgency in action under the LoL framework? First, what is the action that we feel is now more urgent? Hookers and coke? For some, yes. But, for most, no. As mentioned, when faced with approaching death, most people seem to be propelled to more meaningful action. Writers with a terminal illness may hurry to finish their magnum opus in time, so their work may be read, if they’re lucky, decades hence. The metaphor also works with parenthood or with helping others; our good deeds reverberate in the future success or good will of our descendants or fellow humans. The question then becomes, which framework would more likely lead to more meaningful action? Now, to me, the answer becomes clear.

Both FoD and LoL want to avoid death, yet LoL is more anchored in meaning. This means, LoL cares about an existence that is meaningful, and not about one that isn’t. When death looms, LoL would tend to engender action that reinforces the meaning one finds in life significant enough to make it worth living. Meaning is subjective, obviously, but not arbitrary. A LoL can be based on different things (yes, again, even fear). But it cannot be based on something meaningless to the individual. In other words, you cannot fake love, not to yourself, anyway.

Is LoL itself harmful?

If FoD is useful and harmful, then is LoL harmful in some ways, as well? Not really. While just about anything can be harmful, love, as defined here, is inherently positive; it’s like saying well-being. One might argue it’s a rather vague concept. It is, and that is important. We would prefer to find meaning ourselves than to have others tell us what purpose to have. Nietzsche writes in Untimely Meditations, “No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.”

Alternatively, one can argue that love in life is misplaced. Perhaps there is nothing to love. Again, to me, it’s like saying there’s no meaning in life. Perhaps, to quote Ecclesiastes, “all is vanity.” Well, here we are. Deal with it. We either make meaning, or we have a hard fucking time. I’m not telling you there’s meaning in your life. There likely is. But, again, you are the best person to figure that out. To again quote Nietzsche, this time from On the Genealogy of Morals, “Man would rather will nothingness than not will."

LIVING FOREVER?

Don’t Die

This post has been predicated on the fact that we die. But maybe we won’t - at least, not due to old age. Futurists like Ray Kurzweil have long predicted that death is a disease that will be cured one day. According to him, it’ll happen by 2030! (BTW, wouldn’t it suck to be the among the last naturally dying generation, missing perhaps an extra century - or millennia! - of life by a decade or two? It’s a recurring worry I have. TMI?)

Every day, Brian Johnson, like Kurzweil, takes a ton of pills, exercises vigorously, and experiments with new technologies and medicines. His philosophical approach is, “Don’t die.” Ideas can be limiting. There might not be a more limiting, enduring idea than death. Take Roger Bannister, for example, no one thought a person could run a sub-4-minute mile, until Bannister did it. Then everyone did. It was like the veil of impossibility had been lifted. Likewise, when we view death as inevitable, we live that way; we accept it. To get to a future where it isn’t, we must believe in the possibility of that future. So, let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that death will be cured.

What would living forever be like? Would we want to live forever? Should we want to live forever?

Don’t Die, Yet

I suspect nobody really wants to live forever. It’s difficult to imagine continual growth, fulfillment, purpose, love, and meaning forever and ever, million, billions, trillions of years hence - and then some. There may come a time when tomorrow is a day too far, not out of sadness or boredom or insanity, but, perhaps, out of gratitude; understanding; and, yes, again, love.

What people actually want, I think, is freedom from the human condition as we now know it. Today, we’re lucky to reach 100. The first 20 or so of those years, we typically spend with either little agency or doing stupid shit. The last 20 years or so, we typically spend with little agency or not remembering shit. That means, generally, if we’re lucky, we get to spend 60 years living, more or less, increasingly the way we wish, which is to say nothing about external or biological circumstances that may inhibit our ability to thrive and/or find meaning. Don’t get me wrong. Our early human ancestors would’ve killed, literally, to live the lives we live today. I am more than grateful for the progress and relative comfort we enjoy today. But, assuming good health, would I stop at 80? Hell, no! And I don’t think most would either.

In other words, it’s not that we don’t want to die. We don’t want to have to die. Another way, we don’t want to die yet.

It appears, at some point, we will conquer death from old age. I’m for it. When that moment becomes a reality for most, then our values and beliefs will be challenged. FoD would no longer apply, as it does today, in such a world. Our fear stems from death’s inevitability. When the power is in our hands, when we have all the opportunity to live out our purpose and right wrongs, to write the true narrative of our lives, then death will not be, I suspect, a great villain, but a final chapter in a beautiful story.

Finally, if we should not fear death or want to live forever, then how should we live?

TO LIVE

Life, for many, is often brutal. And there doesn’t appear to be any innate meaning or purpose to any of this. The universe seems random; uncaring; and we, in relation to it, but ants.

What’s more, death, for now, is a certainty. Maybe there is something after all this. I wouldn’t bet on it, though. Generally, I think we think much too much of ourselves for such fantasies to work out. (We can’t even agree on the fantasies!)

I think we should live with all this in mind. Treat death as inevitable; it probably is, even if Kurzweil is right (and many people don’t think he is). But, also, like Johnson, live as if you have the chance to escape natural death; you might. But do neither of these absent meaning and love, which take considerable time and effort. Otherwise, you are simply surviving. Fear lack of meaning, lack of purpose, lack of virtue, lack of heart - any of these more than death.

(As an aside, this post took quite some time to create, as I wrote maybe twice a week. Listening to podcasts and such with some of the people mentioned addressing some of these topics forced me to rewrite certain sections and update things. Hopefully, this post is better for it.)

When Reason Isn't Enough

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters by Francisco Goya

SLINGS & ARROWS

Life is hard. And its slings and arrows are often difficult to rationalize into hope. We all have bad luck sometimes: traffic, bad weather, accidents, breakups. That’s not what I’m getting at here. I’m also not without hope. But it seems to me that reason itself stands meekly against a sea of troubles.

Henry David Thoreau writes about quiet desperation in Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854). He spent some two years living in relative isolation, surviving on his own. One of his critiques is that nineteenth century New England society was complicated, superficial, and separated from nature. Strict societal expectations, too, played a part in a general resignation people felt, in Thoreau’s view, resulting in unfulfilled lives.

Today’s society is not dissimilar. With our gadgets and games and shows, we are even more separated from nature, from reality. And popular culture is consumerist garbage, mostly, more a result of maximizing profit than creative expression. Further, as in previous centuries, people trade their lives for a wage. We’ve made much progress. Children are no longer working 16 hours a day in dangerous factories. But the US has some of the most worked hours per year of OECD countries. Of course, we have it good compared to many Latin American countries, for example, such as Mexico and Costa Rica, which certainly aren’t the worse. I have family and friends in Latin America and have visited several times. They tend to describe bleak conditions: exploitation of immigrants, capitalist greed, non-stop work, poor pay, economic stagnation, and high inflation. 

To be clear, I don’t think the cause of this type of suffering is capitalism or greed or the rich or your parents or friends. It’s not that you weren’t born with this or that.

There isn’t one cause. In real life, you might be poor, a minority, a woman, a single parent, a student, working full-time for minimum wage, face discrimination, face racism, have survived sexual abuse, face violence at home, and, yeah, you might also have a problem with the cops. That’s closer to the truth of quotidian suffering than hope-filled platitudes give credit for. 

The human condition is more often faced by a set of intersectional complexities. We face identity crises, meaning crises, economic crises - all at the same time.  We try to navigate through them, as if through a Melvillian sea storm. Reason might portend an unhappy end. Our monomania threatens to lead us to ruin, like Ahab. We must see more than the whale; the whale, after all, is merely a reflection of us.

MORE THAN THE WHALE

Critical Thinking

We need a complex solution for a complex problem. Something like the power of problem solving itself. Problem solving can be taught. There are many studies on this. It’s the main idea behind formal education: Teach people to think and learn better. Of course, it takes time. But, for life, it’s imperative.

1. Be like Socrates

One of the most brilliant things Socrates ever said is “I know that I do not know.” As a result, Socrates asked a lot of questions. He didn’t do this because he wanted to “corrupt the youth,” which he was accused of and sentenced to death for. He did what he did because, as he also wonderfully said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The first step, then, is to understand where knowledge begins, in knowing that you do not know. It is only from this vantage point that you can then explore and discover truth, whatever it may be. If we are not open to learning, if we feel we already know, if we let our biases go unnoticed, we will learn little, if anything at all.

Understand that you are human, a soft, relatively defenseless, talking animal. 10,000 years ago, people’s biggest concern was not dying. It’s a wonder you know anything at all. You are full of evolutionary flaws, impediments to logic. You have biases and emotions. You live in a one-sided movie. You don’t feel others’ pain. So, know how little you actually know. And ask questions.

2. Solve Problems

We learn from doing. And we learn to do from watching others. We are Old World apes. And the word ape means to mimic. It’s in our genes. Learning from watching speeds up learning. This is why we watch video tutorials instead of reading detailed instructions to do many things, such as playing an instrument, juggling, singing, dancing, and so on.

Practice on small problems first. Make it a matter of everyday life, a habit, so you don’t have to think about it. Small problems are encountered in life all the time. So I don’t think you need to look for more. Rather, notice them. One thing I do is keep a journal where I reflect on the day: my mistakes, such as watching too much Netflix or YouTube, causes, and possible solutions. Use scaffolding. Start out easy and slowly build your problem-solving ability by gradually increasing the task’s difficulty. After considering everyday mistakes, I might contemplate bigger failures, such as not making enough money or not having yet found a life partner. The solution may not be evident right away. The goal here is the effort itself.

3. Teach

Finally, we learn from teaching. I’m an educator. I’ve spent my entire working life in higher education. I know better than most that teaching is an excellent way to learn. What happens, when you teach people something you think you know, is that you discover that you thought you knew much more than you actually do. Further, when we teach others, we look at things with the beginner’s mindset, also called shoshin, which is a concept from Zen Buddhism. The beginner’s mind is a blank canvas, open to possibility. The expert’s is ingrained; they “know.” Again, knowing is the enemy. Try to unknow.

Almost everyone has something to teach. Take the opportunity when it presents itself. As much as possible. Choose something you enjoy. Passion is infectious. It also tends to make you a better teacher. After your “lesson,” reflect. What did you do well? What not so well?

Now, problem solving is good. When there are solutions. When there aren’t any or when they aren’t forthcoming, we need something more, something greater, a kind of armor.

Meaning

I’m with Victor Frankl. Life is about meaning, a universal basic need. Of course, meaning is often hard to find. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl explains the odds of making it out of a Nazi concentration camp were extremely low. But the ones who did survive, he shows, were those who had something to live for; they had meaning. Frankl quotes Nietzsche, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

Having meaning doesn’t necessitate a belief in God or that things will work out in the end. It just means that, whatever may come, your suffering, however severe, will not have been in vain. It means something. Even if it’s just for you. Perhaps your suffering will help make the world a better place. Maybe not, but perhaps you are doing the right thing. That may be enough. Frankl writes, “. . . suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

No one can tell you what your meaning is. It wouldn’t be meaningful. You must find your own. Frankl’s was to “help others find the meaning of theirs.” Mine is to help make the world a better place for my having been in it. It isn’t original. I derived this meaning from reading Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography many years ago. I was struck by his devotion, sincerity, and temperance. For me, a better place is one with less obligate suffering. When little else makes sense, this postulate still does. Making the world better, then, could mean to expose injustice and stand up for what’s right, despite the consequences.

If you don’t have profound meaning, it will likely take time. That’s ok. You must live. You must suffer. Not intentionally. Don’t be a masochist. But that’s why you must wait; it will come. It comes to all of us. And when it does, you still struggle and, hopefully, find meaning on the other side. Last Nietzsche quote, “What does not kill me, makes me stronger.” I’ll add, it doesn’t have to make you stronger. You can be racked with guilt or shame or trauma. Instead, take time to process. To think critically about it. And then to act. Only then may you become stronger.

Consider the following. If you were to be diagnosed tomorrow with a terminal illness, what would make your life worth living? What would be your purpose? Your ikigai? Your plan de vida? Turns out, you are in such a situation; it’s called life.

Gratitude

I’d like to end with gratitude because when I reflect on my own state of joy, after having endured a lot of suffering, including a suicide attempt and subsequent hospitalization in 2015, I can’t seem to ultimately separate the concept from gratitude. I mean joy, not happiness. In The Book of Joy, featuring the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the difference is articulated. Happiness is fleeting and tied to external circumstances. Joy is more stable and comes from within. So, my joy is not tied to quotidian pleasures, such as exercise or reading, or material possessions, but from this. I am simply more grateful than I am not to be alive.

Here’s another thought experiment. Imagine you have the choice, before you are born (just go with it), to decide whether to live or not. (Many nihilists lament, “I didn’t choose to be born”; in this scenario, you could.) The catch is that you know you will suffer - a lot, actually. Think John Wick but less dramatic. Gratitude, then, for me, is deciding on living; it’s taking the red (not the blue) pill. (End of Keanu fanboying.)

How can you cultivate your own gratitude?

Here’s what’s worked for me. First, accept suffering. Stop running from it. I used to run and run. And that shit would chase me to the end of the Earth. Then I learned helplessness. And that sucked a lot, as mentioned. But when I didn’t die, I realized, “Wait a sec, I’m not scared anymore. I can take this.” Well, that was a game changer. In The Book of Joy, it is said that our lives begin with the suffering of our mothers through childbirth. In a way, suffering is a requirement for life.

Secondly, as Frankl states, be grateful that you can find meaning at all. Imagine that? We live in a universe in which even suffering can have meaning! The universe owes you nothing. Don’t be entitled. That we can find meaning in our suffering is a blessing.

Third, fortunately, many of us don’t live in extremely dire situations. Yes, kids get cancer, and there are even worse horrors. (Though I wouldn’t say those are hopeless circumstances.) But if you’re watching this, you’re probably doing pretty well. Here are some things to be grateful for that many take for granted:

- Having food to eat.
- Having shelter.
- Being free to love who you want.
- Living in a democratic country, however imperfect.
- Having limbs and digits.
- Not being gravely ill.
- Having friends
- Having family
- Being able to cause change in the world
- Being able to reason and problem solve
- Being able to communicate with others with language.

I am extremely lucky. I have these things. I’m also American. I could have been born in the DR, the birthplace of my mother, and spent most, if not all, of my life there. The weather is good. It would have been a good life; I would have found meaning, even if only toward the end. But opportunities remain limited there. Many relatives have come here, after years of trying. The trend doesn’t go the other way. I’ve also had a loving mother, who is still alive and healthy. Also, I’ve never gone to jail, broken a bone, or required surgery.

So, how can I not be grateful? Seriously, if I can’t be grateful despite being at the top 1% of the world in terms of basic needs and income, then I think I would look at such a person as a fucking dick.

Don’t be a dick.

In brief, reason is useful in resolving suffering. But reason alone can lead to deciding not to be. It would certainly avoid the suffering. We need more. We need meaning, which is part reason, part emotion, and part belief. And to be human, one must learn to balance the three.

Be human.

What It's Like to Write a Poem

It’s like grabbing a cloud in your hand, opening it up, and discovering it was never there.

It’s like taking the subway, getting off at random, and making your way back home on foot.

It’s like swimming in space, where the stars are up and down and left and right, or is it the other way around?

It’s like shouting into an endless abyss, and waiting for the echo.

It’s like remembering you exist as if for the first time. No how. Or why.

It’s like forgetting everything at once; like being naked and alone in a forest.

It’s like being haunted by dreams, imaginary friends; like being schizophrenic and bipolar, and having a party.

It’s like God, for a moment, conducted into your massively idiotic fingers; like Prometheus stealing fire and giving it to you, by mistake.

It’s like Death shutting the fuck up for a moment, and just watching.

It’s transcendence triumphing over biology, some 4 billion years later.

It’s what words fail to describe, and what they do at their best.

It’s what it is to be.

Everything Is Now

Photo by user pzado on Freeimages.com

Movement. It’s perhaps the most quintessential element of the human condition.

You move from one location to another throughout life. Home. School. Work. Dates. Meetings. Vacations. Retirement. Funerals. When you should, when you want, when you must.

You move, too, in time. Like a time traveler. From the past to the present. From the present to the future. From birth to adolescence to old age. One way. Like Gatsby. Unable to go back.

And there is internal movement. Your cells constantly renew. About 330 billion cells daily, about 1% of you. Over the course of 100 days or so, you are essentially a new you.

My last analogy. Notice how, for example, one thought leads into another. Try to stop it. Try thinking your last thought. Hold onto that precise mental moment for as long as you can, no interruption. I’ll wait . . .

Ok, you move. What’s the point?

The point is that you are not, as intuition hints, a driver going along a road. You are the car.

And the story is movement. A drive. Even when you stop going forward, or backward, when you are idle, still, you move. Otherwise, you are dead.

Without this knowledge, you look ahead, for yourself, but see only what you have yet to traverse. And when you look back, again, you fail to see yourself.

The perceived continuity between the past or the future with the present puts you in contrast with whom you are. Which is neither. And both.

You are not an identity. But a process.

As such, you are not one thing. But things moving together to make the thing you recognize as you, the thing of things, move.

You are kaleidoscopic. The universe. Looking back at itself.

You are everything.

Everything is now.

Movement from movement from movement . . .

(To watch a narrated short film derived from this content, click here.)

Not Yet Done - Journal 12/15

Rereading and editing my autobiographical story “Imitating Life.” It’s much better now. Like a different story. Will post soon. But it makes me think about a lot of things. Looking back at my life, all these stages. In some sense a repetition. A searching for something. In some sense I’m still that kid at the beginning of the story, listening to the other children, wondering how they happen to get along. How they do this thing. Life. No instructions. Would be nice. Life is inherently unfair. And yet. It’s all there is. Thank you. To whomever. Whatever. Even if just chance. Despite it all I am grateful for my little patch of dirt. What is unmathematically mine. A blink in the cosmic consciousness. But I still be. Still strive. To learn. To grow. Show me more. Not yet done.

Greatest American Novels - Ranked

Credit: Upsplash

The United States is where I was born, where I grew up, and maybe where I’ll die.

The US exists because its founders held the ideals of individual liberties to be incompatible with tyranny. As a result of this breaking free, it had to forge its own identity. Over the centuries, it has been a melting pot for immigrants of all types. Many have moved here for better opportunities and freedoms. Of course, it hasn’t been all good. In creating this new identity, it did so on stolen land, genocided native peoples, enslaved tens of millions, continued to discriminate against them even after their liberation, and has failed to live up to its stated ideals time and gain. Despite all this, I remain optimistic about the American struggle to live up to what it wants itself to be. It embodies the Solzhenitsyn dyad represented in the famous quote: “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

Nowhere is this more explicit than in the Great American Novel (GAN). The GAN, a term coined by the 19thC American writer John William de Forest, “paints the American soul” and provides a “picture of the ordinary emotions and manners of American existence." In short, it’s a time capsule - but not just of simple things, such as how people talked, what people did, what they wore, and so on. It tells us we are: what we care about, what we’re willing to die and live for; it encapsulates the human struggle toward something greater. That is, in a nutshell, the human condition.

The following is not an exhaustive list. There are many other books I have not read. But these are my favorite that also fit the category.  For fun, I ranked them, according to how well they capture the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of the US story, the story of us.

6. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Díaz

This is the tale of an overweight Dominican-American otaku named Oscar. He yearns to fall in love. But he’s caught in the fukú, a multi-general curse that plagues the de Léon family, perhaps originating with the first arrival of Europeans in the so-called New World, a moment that ushered in the literal decimation and extinction of native peoples across the Americas.

It’s a fantastically written work, one of my favorite contemporary novels. Your heart breaks for the naïve but brilliant Oscar. But how well does it fit the category?

Oscar Wao doesn’t show up as much as the others here in other GAN lists. Why?

Traditionally, we’ve had some deep-seated assumptions about what it means to be American and, thus, who should write a GAN and who such a book would be about. It’s an old criticism of English lit and how it’s been taught: too many dead white guys. But the US has changed and so has the GAN. I find no fault in Oscar Wao being an immigrant story. Such is the American story.

Oscar Wao is also partly a historical text, documenting key moments in the history of the Dominican Republic under the Trujillo regime, as told through the lives of the older characters and through many of the book’s footnotes. To be fair, it’s hard to separate the history of America from the history of Latin America, especially the Caribbean, given extensive American influence and interference, thanks to the wonderfully paradoxical Roosevelt Corollary. More, history is hard to separate from the present in any meaningful way. So, to me, despite differences with others on this list, Oscar Wao qualifies as a GAN. These differences, however, are also why I ranked the narrative 6 and not higher.

There’s another reason - the magical realism. In the story, there are a few supernatural elements, the fukú; the Faceless Man; and Zafa, the talking mongoose. This believable blending of real life with magic is a Latin American coinage. It works beautifully in the book, mixing Oscar’s science fiction and comic books with his real-life adventures and struggles, adding depth and uniqueness. I love the work. I am a bit biased, to be sure. My mother’s side of the family is from Quisqueya; I know many Oscars, Lolas, and Belis; and I love science fiction and magic realism. Despite this, ideally, I think a GAN should anchor itsself a bit more solidly in the US and its traditions.

Still, and more importantly, Oscar Wao adroitly captures the immigrant struggle to free themselves and their family from the fetters of the past, to start a new hopeful generation and break the cycle.

5. Moby-Dick, or The Whale (1851) by Herman Melville

This narrative is told by someone who prefers to be called Ishmael, an introspective crew member aboard the Pequod, a whaling vessel doomed in a revenge quest against the whale that bit off part of the leg of the ship’s captain, the monomaniacal Ahab. The tome is a mishmash of philosophy, religion, adventure, history, marine biology, and more. Not since Laurence Stern’s Tristam Shandy has a novel been this convoluted and long and weird and ineffable and - yet - kinda great. It’s almost post-modern before there was such a thing; it’s pre-post-modern.

When I first read it, I felt like it could’ve used some editing. But then it wouldn’t be Moby-Dick. Like the US, it is what it it: an amazingly amorphous collage of synthesized contradiction.

Moby-Dick is also a part of the American Renaissance, a literary movement that ran from about 1830 until about the end of the Civil War. It romanticized nationalism and generally called on America to live up to its principles.

The ship is composed of a motley crew with different faiths, tongues, colors, and backgrounds. Along the journey, over time, barriers erase. The harpooners are all minority figures: Queequeg, Polynesian; Tashtego, Native American; and Daggoo, African. Their position of harpooner disrupts traditional race narratives about white supremacy. In fact, Ishmael’s diatribe against whiteness in Chapter 42 (“The Whiteness of the Whale”) examines the complexities of such traditional narratives. Elizabeth Shultz, retired U of Kansas Professor of English, writes in “Visualizing Race: Images of Moby-Dick,” an article in the Melville-centered journal Leviathan: “Analyzing his terror of whiteness, Ishmael realizes that in addition to royalty, nobility, innocence, and benignity, the color also signifies death, aberration, desolation, alienation, and, most horrific of all, utter nihilism, utter meaninglessness.” Fitting for the voyage itself since thus is revenge - a pointless effort in the end.

In brief, to quote Childish Gambino, who’s also written about the complexities of race and contradictions of this country, “This is America.”

4. Catcher in the Rye (1951) by JD Salinger

This is the story of Holden Caulfield, a young man attending a boarding school in Pennsylvania who gets expelled for poor academic performance, loses a fight over a girl, and decides to avoid going home until Wednesday, a few days away, when his parents will have received notice of his expulsion.

He is young, lost, and searches for meaning. What he finds, though, is a superficial world. He’s always looking in the wrong places. For example, one incident sees him pursue company (not sex) with a prostitute, who later gets her pimp, who then assaults Holden.

Many early settlers came here and saw empty, seemingly endless plains before them (largely due to genocide). The land held promise. It was, to them, a new world, one that required a new government, a new people, and a new way of life. In the book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, the American journalist Sebastian Junger recounts the tale of early settlements who were either kidnapped by native tribes or left European settlements voluntarily to live among the Native Americans. Most preferred life among the Native American to the fetters of puritanical society. Even when recaptured by other settlers and returned to Western civilization, there were those who escaped again to rejoin tribal society. Point is, meaning didn’t just show up where ever you are. Sometimes, Americans had to go and find it.

Faced with nihilism, Holden plans to abandon everything, to run away from the phonies. It’s a tear-jerking moment when his 10-year-old sister Phoebe shows up to meet him with a suitcase, ready to leave it all behind and accompany her big brother. To Holden, she represents innocence. It’s something he wants to protect in her. In the end, he decides not to leave but to stay and make things better.

The deceptively simple tale showcases a moment in time, the mid-to-late 1940s. There was, as there has been in many countries, a desire to preserve what is sacred. We saw a lot change in the ’60s. It had its antecedents in the ’40s and before. While this desire to protect innocence, to see the contemporary world as tainting what one deems as pure, some innate human nature or virtue, is more or less universal, there is something about the US, a country that has seen every ill intent manifested, that forever struggles to keep itself from falling.

3. The Great Gatsby (1925) by F Scott Fitzgerald

This is not my number one, though it often shows up as such in many of these lists. And for good reason.

It’s a damn near perfect book. The writing may be a little flowery for a few modern readers. But the themes, despite the hundred years that have passed, are timeless. Prime among them is the idea of recapturing the past. Gatsby longs to rekindle a past flame he had with Daisy. But five years have gone by since they last say each other, and she’s now married with children with Tom Buchanan, the old money to Gatsby’s nouveau.

Gatsby embodies the achievement of the American Dream; a poor South Dakotan with no name (né James Gats) reinvents himself and accumulates fantastic wealth, with the help of a few underworld figures. Though not an immigrant, per se, he does what many immigrants strive to do. He creates a new identity for himself and climbs out of poverty.

We also see society, its hopes and faults, in the 1920’s, many of which persist, even if we’ve made progress, chiefly racism and sexism. While the novel exposes Daisy’s plight as a woman, to be treated with equality and dignity, as well as Tom’s white supremacy, it doesn’t seem to find fault in its stereotypical depiction of Meyer Wolfsheim. According to the accounts of “Frances Kroll, a Jewish woman and secretary to Fitzgerald, . . . Fitzgerald was hurt by accusations of antisemitism and . . . [claimed Wolfsheim] merely ‘fulfilled a function in the story and [his depiction] had nothing to do with race or religion.’ ” I don’t see the need in the stereotype. Many 1920s Americans were anti-semitic and few questioned white supremacy. So, we can say that, for its time, Gatsby was ethically progressive.

Despite its tragic ending, we that, as Nick states, “Gatsby turned out all right in the end.” Gatsby, who hid his identity for so long, afraid of being judged, was exposed by Tom, broken in front of everyone, killed by Wilson, and yet - and yet - turned out to be a great, after all.

America is also great, if flawed and failing at times to be better.

2. Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison

I was hesitant about including this novel due to its use of the supernatural. The supernatural feels like almost another category of story. With Oscar Wao, the magic realism is part of why, despite my admiration for the story, I only rank it 6. But it’s a masterpiece. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and Morrison won the Nobel Prize in 1993.

What’s also different about Beloved, and shared by Oscar Wao, is that the story is authored by a minority - what’s more, by a woman. History has been told by the victors, and this biases what we read and come to know. As stated, the GAN is a category that features mostly white men. My own list bears out this bias; I can only partly blame my formal education, which focused on such writers. So, Toni Morrison’s inclusion helps the list be more balanced and diverse.

Truly, it’s hard to imagine America, as great and diverse as it has become, without the immeasurable contributions from African Americans. In a literal sense, they built this country. So, their story is our story.

Beloved takes place in the mid-to-late 19th Century. It deals with the psychological and physical trauma left in slavery’s wake. Sethe, a mother and former slave, lives with a virtual “tree” on her back, the many scars she carries from the whippings she received. She tries to move on, to find love in Paul D, another former slave from the same plantation, the so-called Sweet Home. But her current home is haunted by the spirit of her murdered eldest daughter, as if the spirit of slavery and hatred and cruelty still besieges them.

The heart-wrenching moment in the book is based on real life. To understand this, one must first know the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which gave human traffickers, racist, and torturers the legal authority to kidnap their escaped victims. It’s one of the most evil laws the US has ever had. Consider for a moment how you think such a reunion likely would have gone? What would it have been like to have been recaptured and brought back into the bloody hands of a personal tyrant? Margaret Garner, a runaway slave, having fled Kentucky and made a new life for herself in Ohio, after having been found by US Marshals, barricaded her family inside. As they approached, she did the unthinkable. She killed her own daughter. If you find it difficult to comprehend, perhaps you lack either imagination or real knowledge of slavery. It was not a life worth living. Consider the many unrelenting slave revolts in the US, destined to be put down eventually and their instigators surely to be tortured and killed. I can not fault her.

In Beloved, as with The Catcher, there is an innocence that needs to be protected and a love that overcomes. America has fought to free itself from its demons, literally via the Civil War. Morrison sheds light on the special case of the African-American plight, which has borne deeper scars than others. I think we still struggle with this dark past.

1. The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck

It’s hard to argue The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is not a great book. It won the National Book Award (1939) and the Pulitzer Prize (1940). Steinbeck also won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Ok, I like Steinbeck.

The book is set during the Great Depression. Beginning with the stock market crash of 1929 and lasting into about the start of WWII, it was one of the most severe economic downturns in American history. US GDP fell by about 15%. For comparison, US GDP fell by about 5.1% cumulatively during the recent Great Recession. The period is characterized by  widespread unemployment and extreme poverty.

Grapes of Wrath is about the Joads, poor Oklahoman tenant farmers, who were hit hard by economic hardship caused by the Dust Bowl, a dire agricultural crisis centered on the Great Plains, coinciding with the Great Depression. Severe dust storms, soil erosion, and droughts were common. The Joads leave everything behind for California, which holds an almost Edenic quality to the desperate, jobless Joads and other fleeing “Okies.”

They form a mass of desperate families. Along the way, they experience exploitation and discrimination. To fight these social injustices, the characters find resilience and dignity in solidarity. The book exposes exploitative capitalist practices. Many of the characters, particularly Jim Casy, a doubtful preacher, find solace in some socialist ideals. (As an aside, during J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, Steinbeck complained of being audited every year by the IRS. A faction of the government suspected he was a communist. I don’t think so. He just cared a lot about working class people.)

Yes, one of the GANs, and my number one, promotes some socialist ideas. To me, part of what it means to be American is to criticize your country, not because it sucks or one is unpatriotic, as some oversimplifications from the right-wing tend to say, but because one wants it to be better, because there is still hope. Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, MLK Jr, the Founding Fathers - all of them fought against injustice because they felt that the country shall overcome one day.

The storytelling is masterful. The scenes, the characters, the dialogue all come to life. It’s not a story you easily forget. You see yourself in these Okies. We’re all Okies at heart, trying to find a better life, fighting off life’s slings and arrows through love and family and purpose.

Conclusion

America, despite its greatness, was and is and will likely always be flawed. It has its origins in genocide, its past in racist enslavement, segregation, and discrimination. Currently, there is economic injustice and systemic bias. As human history has shown, it’s a slow crawl to learn to walk and then to run. We will fall and cry and stub our toe. A lot. We will go back sometimes. Sometimes, we’ll be afraid to stand at all. But this young nation will grow up tall one day and move past the past. That is my hope. That is the American story.

Is It Good to Give or a Duty?

In “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” a 1972 journal article published in Philosophy and Public Affairs, utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer argues that individuals who possess the means to prevent suffering and/or save lives, assuming no great cost, have a moral duty to do so. In other words, the traditional view that sees such acts as charity (i.e., not morally obligatory) is wrong. To illustrate the point, he asks readers to imagine walking through a natural environment when in a pond or a lake a drowning a child appears. Should they not stop and intervene, the child would die. Most would intuit that it’s morally imperative to save that child's life, even if, for example, doing so would ruin their expensive clothes; the clothes are of relatively little moral significance compared to the life that they could save. Hardly a soul would call such an act charity, laudable but unnecessary. Singer claims citizens of wealthy countries are in a similar position, capable of saving others without incurring great costs.

But most people don’t see it this way. In Singer’s view, we have placed an undue border between charity and duty largely because of our faulty empathy; we tend to help those who look more like us or who are in closer proximity than those who aren’t either. We’re more willing to help family than a stranger, a compatriot who shares our skin tone and language than a foreigner who shares neither. This intuition is likely an evolutionary by-product of being social creatures.

For Singer, the distinction is arbitrary and wrong. Suffering is suffering. Proximity alone cannot be of moral significance; if a child is drowning somewhere else, are they less worth saving? Singer, therefore, asks for a higher moral standard. We should give more. We should consider it duty and not charity. There is no excuse for inaction.

Charity and Duty

There are two ideas in the article that really struck me, the first very emotionally. It wasn’t made emotionally concrete for me until Singer quotes the theologian Thomas Aquinas. Try to contextualize the quote in your own life to feel its full effect: "The bread which you withhold belongs to the hungry; the clothing you shut away, to the naked; and the money you bury in the earth is the redemption and freedom of the penniless." It almost brings me to tears. It makes me think about how many people go about in their quiet suffering, as we would see it, when we, their brothers and sisters, capable of helping, go about our own in relative comfort. I’m not particularly religious, and religion has obviously gotten things wrong. Nevertheless, I sometimes find, when I’m open to it, philosophy and religion dovetail serendipitously, as if philosophy is catching up with old cultural wisdom - in this case, the moral obligation to give. Believing that it is charitable but not morally obligatory to give to those who are in desperate need, I think, creates a wall of apathy between us, a way of shirking moral obligation.

To be fair, there are many reasons why people put up a wall between charity and duty. If you were to come across a drowning child, you would be faced with the virtual certainty of their death should you not intervene. Look away, perhaps - but you cannot run away from that reality. In quotidian experience, however, analogous circumstances are rarely so clear in their consequences or in their appropriate requisite aid. Real life is blurry. We’re all myopic. While not saving a drowning child, rightly, would engender severe criticism, not giving your loose change to the unhoused individual you cross paths with in the street would not attract the same censure. It’s less clear if the loose change is the appropriate course of action. I advocate it, generally. But perhaps, as I’ve often heard, “they’ll just go buy drugs with it.” Or, maybe someone will steal it from them. Or maybe you don’t need to because someone else will give and all you have is loose change. There are, however, clearer consequences to not giving to starving children, say, in an impoverished country. Nevertheless, even when we know that children will die as a result of people not giving, rarely are the facts so crystal clear as a drowning child before you. It’s not just bad empathy or social norms. Maybe someone else will give. Maybe the charity is corrupt. Maybe your amount will make no real difference.

None of my arguments here are meant as an excuse for those who do not give. I’m with Singer. Again, there’s no excuse for inaction. And, to be clear, Singer acknowledges other, practical concerns, such as identifying trustworthy charitable organizations, conflicting personal obligations, and opportunity costs. But it is rational for humans to act differently when there is less certainty, both in terms of the consequences of one’s actions and how to best help. With the drowning child, the best course of action is plain.

Clarity matters. The lack of it allows us to comfort ourselves, to mask our guilt in the stochastic nature of fate and fortune. In other circumstances, where the consequence of inaction is more evident, if a house were on fire or if the starving child were right in front of you, say, people are more likely to act altruistically. Many Americans are not particularly educated on what happens overseas. Therefore, it is imperative for charities to prioritize educating the public. The onus is not solely on the charity, however. It is incumbent upon all of us to educate ourselves on the world and its crises. Otherwise, we’re shirking responsibility.

Singer’s words helped me feel, as well as see, that we are all wrong who understand helping the unhoused, or those in desperate need, as a nice but needless act.

Famine and Family Planning

The other paradigm-shifting idea in the article is equally actionable. As stated, Singer anticipates a few objections to his argument. The most salient one, to me, is that efforts by individuals of wealthier countries to alleviate famine and/or poverty in developing countries are not addressing the key cause; they are treating the symptom but not the illness. What causes famine or poverty? There are many causes, to be sure, such as armed conflicts, natural disasters, and climate change - all deserving of our attention and action to prevent or better prepare for. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, famine is worst in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is also where population growth is at its current global zenith. The objection argues that “until there is effective [family planning], relieving famine merely postpones starvation.” Singer agrees; the earth “cannot support indefinitely a population rising at the present rate.”  Again, Singer warns against excusing away action. Help no matter your cause.

The logic of the objection is appealing. To be clear, though, I don't think it’s wrong to help alleviate current famine. In “Carbon Capture,” a 2015 New Yorker article, the American novelist Jonathan Franzen, argues that long-term concerns over climate change can make our contemporary concerns for the creatures that inhabit our world seem unimportant. It struck the author as disheartening that some climate activists have been too comfortable in disregarding the well-being of extant species because “mitigating climate change trumps all other environmental concerns.” He references Saint Francis of Assisi as “an example of loving what’s concrete and vulnerable and right in front of us.”

We have a direct influence over what’s present and can do real good. That should not be forgotten. I can no longer look at birds and not think of Francesco. The point is, we can do both: help to alleviate current famine and poverty and have a big picture view of the problem. Personally, I would focus my efforts on the long-term suffering of peoples because I think I can do more good. And I don't think there's anything heartless about that, though there are similar arguments against effective altruism, which, generally, I also support. It's hard to see much of a distinction between what I'm arguing here and effective altruism, which tends to take a more long-term, utilitarian view on charitable giving. We need to apply science and reason to our compassion and empathy. Helping those close to us or who look like us might intrinsically feel more good. There is an immediate good feeling. Helping those further away (in time or space), though, might do more good.

You have to ask yourself, what is the right thing to do for you? And, again, it is not an either/or. But it is, in my opinion, a question of where to focus (not to limit) one's efforts. And the beautiful thing about diversity is that we all have different interests and causes. Thus, we can spread the love. And that is what Singer sings. Kill suffering with love. Whatever your cause, however you can, do good.

Socrates on Love and Writing

SUMMARY

In the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates speaks with a young, somewhat superficial Athenian, the eponymous Phaedrus. The young man is a fan of speeches and tells Socrates of one he’s recently heard by Lysias, son of Cephalus, a speechwriter, on the topic of love. Socrates, who also likes speeches, with some gentle prodding, convinces Phaedrus to read the written speech. The speech argues that, contemporary ethics in mind, a boy should have “relations” with a lover (someone who is interested in him) as opposed to a non-lover (someone who may not be so interested but seeks a mutual benefit).

The main topic of the dialogue is on the nature of rhetoric and of philosophy. The former is seen by Socrates as shallow, while the latter seeks true knowledge and understanding.

The structure of the dialogue is as follows. First, there’s the written speech read by Phaedrus. It argues that a non-lover is better for a boy than a lover in that a non-lover may give the boy more advantages since he is without the passionate nature of the lover, who could be driven to illogical behavior that may harm the boy, should the relationship go south.

Next, Socrates, initially somewhat coy, delivers the first of two speeches. He argues in the speech’s favor, for the non-lover, but elaborates. There are two human guiding principles: pleasure, which is inherently selfish, and reason, which is not. Both lead to different outcomes, the former to overindulgence, the latter to wisdom.

Then there’s Socrates second speech in which, divinely inspired, he argues that, put simply, if love is madness, not all madness is bad. Madness, as he describes, is a gift from the gods. One example he gives is poetic madness, a blessing from the Muses. He argues that the lover, not the non-lover, is better for the boy. He compares the lover to a philosopher, someone like Socrates, in that love may be a type of divine madness that provides some hidden knowledge.

Finally, Socrates goes on to critique the invention of writing - yes, writing! Socrates is against it for a few reasons. It eliminates the need for an important and valued skill in memorization. In practice, it also eliminates the tradition of the dialectic, which was Socrates’ philosophy in action. With speeches, a common use for writing, one would read or hear a speech, but the speech itself was static and did not answer questions. They provided answers to questions that may be asked that may be memorized without true understanding. Philosophy, on the other hand, as Socrates would see it, lives on the tongue of the lover, the lover of wisdom.

RESPONSE

Phaedrus is a deconstructive work; it’s self-contradictory. That is, Plato through Socrates, his great teacher, criticizes writing - in a piece of writing! Many scholars have commented on this. Robin Waterfield, who wrote the Introduction to and translated the Oxford World’s Classics edition of the dialogue, argues Plato does this consciously. He is modeling the dialectic through the dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus, having the latter perform the role of the somewhat naive seeker of knowledge who needs to be guided toward a more useful heuristic. It’s also modeled in Socrates, who humbly denies credit for his speeches, crediting the gods for their inspiration, and is reluctant to criticize Lysias’ work, merely expounding on its ideas and providing an alternative. If the philosopher is anything, he is a questioner - a questioner of everything and a knower of but one fact: that he does not know.

It’s, therefore, easy to see why writing would seem to pose a threat to the OG of philosophers, especially given the prominence of rhetoric during his time. Rhetoric was essentially marketing or persuasion. Practitioners were largely lawyers and speechmakers. People memorized speeches, reciting them word for word (like Phaedrus). To Socrates, this rote memorization led to the appearance of knowledge but was actually vapid, lacking in actual wisdom.

Socrates, like many critical of nascent technologies, especially those in wide use today, failed to see new use cases for writing that would emerge, such as philosophical or otherwise educational books, which have disseminated knowledge globally and provided a scaffold of knowledge for other writers and scholars to build upon. Hardly anyone today considers books to be anti-intellectual.

Socrates’ critique, therefore, was shortsighted. He’s hard to blame. Writing was new; people were unaware of how it would evolve and be used over time - and how society might change, sometimes because of it. Luckily, Plato saw something in writing, however inchoate. Otherwise, the world would not have these rich dialogues of Socrates’ teachings, a man who lived and died by the principles of reason and logic, wherever they might lead.

I can’t help but think that something similar is happening with ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs). Granted LLMs provide a different risk, they make plagiarism and fraud much easier. I think they’ll always be an arms race between those who seek technologies for ill and those who use technologies to protect from the former. LLMs provide the ability to boost productivity. While the current WGA strike shows that this too can have harmful effects, if harnessed correctly, we may find ourselves once again with a technology that allows us to do more than we could before - in a sense, to be more human since we can do more and with fewer constraints. As a writer, and a human, I’m excited.

According to Microsoft, ChatGPT-4, the current model, shows “sparks of artificial general intelligence” - or human-like intelligence. The performance is impressive. I remain skeptical, however, of claims that these technologies think like we do. We create stories of the world. LLMs largely splice together - albeit skillfully - human ideas and thoughts into coherent and persuasive - and highly probable - responses to prompts.

LLMs will continue to evolve. As with Socrates, it’s hard to know how these technologies will change and how much we will change as a result. Ultimately, it’s up to us to shape these technologies. After all, they’re a reflection of us. And that, amid all the AI fear, uncertainty, and doubt, is hopeful.

Should We Kill Farm Animals We Give Good Lives To?

Peter Singer / Wikipedia

I was recently listening to a podcast titled “Talking Animal Ethics with Peter Singer,” episode 31 of Within Reason, a podcast by Youtuber Alex O’Connor, aka Cosmic Skeptic. I enjoy his philosophical content, and I’m a fan of Peter Singer, Australian utilitarian philosopher. There was a section that grabbed me; it begins at about 34:00.

When discussing “raising animals ‘humanely’ before killing them,” Singer states that it’s not wrong for theoretical humans to be killed if they would not have been born otherwise and live a good life, even if they’d be killed prematurely and used as a means and not as an end - like farm animals. (This aspect of the discussion captures the essence of the non-identity problem.)

I agree with Singer that using a person as a means rather than an end is sometimes ethical; the example he uses to illustrate this point is moving an unconscious person’s leg under a concrete block to save one’s own child from being crushed to death in a building collapse. However, even in the example, while using someone as a means is ethical, given the circumstances, the act itself isn’t ethical. That is, if you could save your child without having to move someone’s leg under a concrete block, that would be better.

(This is a good place to quickly get metaethical. My morality is based on a simple tenet: Consciousness is valuable [to conscious creatures]. Broadly, sentient creatures want to be happy and, when they are, to continue to live. When I write that something is ethical, in this context, I mean that it promotes less obligate suffering.)

Now, I understand that we live in a complex world where we have to make choices that entail both good and bad consequences. But, whenever possible, we try to avoid the negative consequences, to reduce them to zero, ideally.

It seems doubtful that we could live our lives without impacting nature negatively in some way, even in an idealized future. There’s overpopulation, invasive species, pests, limited resources, and so on. I want, therefore, to focus on animal agriculture, the focus of the podcast episode. In other words, is there an answer that reduces animal suffering to creatures bred into existence to be used as a means rather than an end?

As I pointed out, Singer finds it difficult to condemn the practice as long as, as he puts it, their lives are worth living and they are killed “humanely.” So, one answer is to improve farm conditions and slaughter methods. The incentives of feeding a growing population and profit seeking don’t often align with this altruistic goal. Further, there is no federal regulation standardizing animal care in factory farms. Also, where regulation is in place, abuse is still common and requires exposure. So, trusting that animals are treated humanely is problematic, especially with the large farms needed to feed an omnivorous, growing population.

I think there’s a clearer answer. Try not to eat or buy animal products, or, at least, to reduce consumption. Try is the key word. It is easier said (or written) than done. Animal products are cheap and ubiquitous. More, buying and/or consuming animal products is culturally acceptable, expected even. I don’t want to point the finger at someone who struggles to go vegetarian. I did, at 19. Also, I, otherwise vegan, currently eat pasture raised eggs (for health) and relax standards (to vegetarian) when interacting with difficult situations. If we don’t consume or buy animal products, there is no need to exploit animals in farms. We won’t need to breed them into existence and, ipso facto, justify a wrong. Surely, it would be better not to do the wrong. In other words, since there is no need to consume animal products, there is no need to use animals in this way. If there were, if were were obligate cannibals, for example, then I would agree with Singer that I would find it difficult to condemn such a practice. Luckily, we have a choice.

This isn’t a clean answer; plant-based agriculture has its own issues, including the unintentional killing of animals, mostly insects. I think, though, this involves less suffering. First, we aren’t breeding animals, creating an incentive for their exploitation and slaughter. Second, I believe that insects, if they’re sentient, and I suspect they are, likely, given the size and complexity of their nervous systems, are less intelligent and feel less pain than farm animals (whose nervous systems more closely resemble ours). I also think most people think this. If given a choice to squash an insect or stab a cow, I think most, if obligated, would choose the former.

In addition, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention better animal agriculture models, such as regenerative farming. I don’t know a lot on this topic. But currently it doesn’t seem to be a model that could replace factory farming. Plant-based agriculture, on the other hand, is able to do this since it requires fewer resources than factory farming. (Here is more on that.) And when comparing more ethical methods of animal agriculture with plant agriculture, the latter seems to be inherently more ethical. The reason is simple: Unless some shocking scientific discoveries occur, killing animals causes more suffering than killing plants, if I grant, which I don’t, that plants can suffer. We can also benefit from plants without killing or harming them, such as eating their fruits.

To be clear, being vegan or vegetarian does nothing to solve issues of animal suffering as a result of what Tennyson called “Nature, red in tooth and claw.” The natural world is full of death and suffering. Predators have to kill to survive. Many do it for fun. I don’t know if future ethical concerns will focus on bloody nature. It seems doubtful we will be able to do much there without dangerously disturbing complex and sensitive ecosystems. We must make the best with what we have. We must eat, if we must exist. And I choose to.

We Are in the Nexus

Dr. Soran reentering the Nexus / Star Trek: Generations / Paramount

In the 1994 film Star Trek: Generations, the first to feature the Next Gen crew, the main villain, Dr. Soran, through nefarious acts, attempts to regain access into the Nexus, an alternate reality that, as Guinan puts it, feels like being wrapped up in joy, where the goal is to make you as happy as possible, to make it so that you’d never want to leave.

Picard fails to stop Soran and gets trapped inside the Nexus. Despite the bliss he experiences, Guinan, or an echo of Guinan in the Nexus, convinces him that he must escape and try to stop Soran anew. First, though, he must find another captain, James T. Kirk, who was trapped inside the Nexus decades earlier, to help.

This takes some work. Kirk has many reasons for staying, like Picard. But Kirk makes up his mind to join Picard in stopping Soran because, among other things, “It isn’t real” – referring to the Nexus.

This got me thinking. What if it were real? Suppose we lived in such a universe where everyone got what they wanted, assuming no one wanted to hurt others. In other words, you’d live a perfect life - no regrets. Your happiness would be guaranteed.

On the surface it sounds wonderful, especially given our current reference frame. Life is full of unavoidable suffering and tragedies. It’s stressful and chaotic, much of the time. People often live with regrets. To err is human. So, the opportunity to erase all the pain or to do away with all our shortcomings sounds kinda nice, no? If there were a God, why not create such a world? Isn’t that the promise of Paradise?

Well, to me, there’s something absolutely dreadful about the Nexus. Think about it. Picture a world in which everything you’d ever want would happen. Want to have a dog or a cat? Want cake? Want sex? Want a family? Boy or girl? Sure. Anything you want! Whenever you want it!

Part of the problem is that there’s no randomness. Everything, because it’s what you want, is, more or less, up to you. To me, this feels boring. How long of this before I would want to hit the eject button or go crazy? Not too long, I suspect. It would be like getting stuck in a time loop, like Groundhog Day (1993) or the Stargate SG-1 episode “Window of Opportunity.” One of my favorite episodes from the franchise.

Sure, you could add some randomness into the equation. Let the Nexus choose at random if a girl rejects you or not, for example. To be fair, because it seems to be based, at least in part, on memories, there may already be some element of randomness in the Nexus.

Ok.

Another, bigger part of the problem, though, is that there’s no real struggle. Suffering is bad, by definition. But, man, does it make me more grateful for what I have, for when I don’t suffer. We get used to anything; that might be part of the human condition. Thus, living in perpetual joy may degrade our sense of gratitude. In a similar way, working hard for something, which entails the possibility of failure, the uncertainty of success, makes the reward that much richer. The reward represents more to us. It’s a bit cliché, but suffering allows us to understand the value of our joy.

You could also somehow add adversity to the Nexus. Hypothetically, if that would make you happy, it should do that. Make it rain, sometimes. Introduce people into the Nexus with motives that go against yours. Have some competition.

Ok. Better still.

But, ultimately, I think, the problem is that, in life, we are not the authors of our fate. The world doesn’t exist to please us. Our efforts matter. If we knew that, in the end, we’d be happy no matter what, I think most of us would probably not care much about what they choose to do since the consequences would be predetermined. The same applies to other people, who seek their own happiness; they’re not simply means to justify our ends. So how we treat them matters – for their sake. 

When we love someone, say, we understand that they are free not to love us back, to reject us – and that makes it that much more meaningful when they do love us back. When we succeed, it is not because the world conspires to make it so, but because, for better or worse, we try and triumph under the circumstances; we are free to fail. We are free. And that’s what makes life worth living.

And if you added some element to the Nexus that made it so that your happiness would no longer be predetermined, then it would cease to be the Nexus. You’d be in the real world. If the Nexus represents a better world, you are actually in the Nexus! Congrats!

Think about this the next time you recall a painful moment.

Will Tribalism Be the End of Us?

Credit: Andy Sotiriou

We live in an increasingly interconnected world, due largely to globalization and advances in technology, particularly in communications and in travel. We have always needed each other. But it’s never been truer. Perhaps we rely on each other too much. As we’ve recently seen, global supply chains alone have the power to halt the world economy in its tracks.  

At the same time, however, it seems like, especially post-Trump, we are living in the most divided time in American politics. That’s probably a recency bias; the Civil War was a pretty divisive time. Still, things aren’t what they used to be. Nixon, a crook, was forced to resign as a result of the Watergate scandal. Trump, on the other hand, having had the requisite number of Republicans in the Senate, could not get convicted, despite two impeachment trials – one for inspiring an impromptu coup against democracy!

I ask, Will tribalism in an increasingly connected world be the end of us?

Defining Tribalism

To be clear, I’m not talking about simply having a tribe. Except in rare cases, we all have at least one: family, friends, neighbors, partners. Journalist Sebastian Junger in the book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging identifies the quintessential element of belonging to a tribe as the feeling of some obligation to take responsibility for the well-being of the group or one of its members; failing to do so makes one feel “dead inside.”

These groups can help foster a sense of identity and purpose, promote in-group solidarity, and provide much-needed support in troubled times.

Tribalism, though, is typically defined as the negative aspects of strong group loyalty. Some object to the derogatory denotation, arguing it furthers anti-African stereotypes. First, anthropological research cited by Richard Wrangham in his book The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution shows that tribes have, indeed, engaged in regular inter-group conflicts. In fact, despite their relatively peaceful natures, inter-group conflicts tend to be the only times tribal societies reliably contribute to violence. Nonetheless, for the sake of argument, I will use a broader, neutral definition: tribalism here means strong loyalty to a group. 

But what does the word “strong” mean in this case? It has to do with valuation. It would be understandable, for example, expected even, to value one’s own family more than those of others. The same goes for people we love. If we were forced to make a choice, most of us would likely save these people over others. The heritability of such a disposition from evolution’s view is obvious. But we do not make our laws favoring one family over another. We try to be objective. We value all equally under the law. It is only when we value our particular group to an extreme that we start to justify unequal treatment: slavery, segregation, nepotism, genocide, etc. But what is an extreme – or strong – valuation? I think it’s one in which the well-being or goals of an in-group are valued so much that the well-being or goals of an out-group do not matter, when we’re no longer willing to be objective. It’s a relative definition.

Now, we can begin.

Tribalism’s Problems

This tribalism is the existential threat. 

Division

It’s not difficult to understand how tribalism drives division. We identify with groups we’re a part of. In practice, this means, for many, identifying with its ideas, as well. It’s often difficult to separate the two. Therefore, attacks on ideas become attacks on people. And when it’s your group being attacked, it’s personal.  

Nowhere is this more obvious today than in politics. It’s common to see political pundits hurl ad hominems at their counterparts for disagreeing with them. Republicans consistently intimate, if not outright claim, that Democrats are demonic. Conversely, Dems often call Republicans racist, gun-toting lunatics - all this despite a lot Americans agree on, such as the need for infrastructure, education, health care, criminal justice reform, climate change initiatives, and national security.

A binary party system that benefits from discord, also, doesn’t help.

Discrimination

Despite movements in identity politics against discrimination, some of which I broadly support, tribalism may also, somewhat counter-intuitively, lead to greater discrimination. While real-world discrimination exists today, such as in policing and in housing, issues that should be addressed, forming group identities tied to immutable characteristics fundamentally divides groups in ways that can’t be reconciled. If, for instance, there’s one thing that white supremacists and the extreme Left can agree on, it’s the primacy of race. Further, such groups frequently emphasize subjective experience. Yes, it’s important to understand the struggles of others; they may be hard sometimes to notice. A young black man in the Bronx, for example, is likely to have very different interactions with the police than a young white girl from a wealthy neighborhood. Still, in our increasingly mixed and globalized world, fixation on race anchors us to the past. We’ve made much progress because of past struggles. Most of what lies ahead, though, is not a black or white struggle but a human struggle against oppression. In an ideal future, to paraphrase neuroscientist and author Sam Harris, differences in skin color or race should be as trivial as those in hair color.

Closed-mindedness

Tribalism is pernicious, too, in its ability to insidiously close off the mind itself to reason. As alluded to, tribes often come with ideas, not just people. There is usually a pull to accept these ideas and, sometimes, to not question them. The go-to example here is religion. While I find religious people in my own life to be, on net, the best people I know, displaying ideal characteristics of generosity, selflessness, moral courage, and so on, they also seem reluctant to accept ideas that, to me, are plainly obvious: such as the non-issue of homosexuality or of pre-marital sex. While there are open religious communities, accepting of LGBTQ, say, they are, for now, the rule’s exception, and few outright contradict traditional church teaching.

Groupthink

Tribalism also has the tendency of creating echo chambers. It’s comforting to be surrounded by like-minded people who constantly agree with us, who make us feel safe. Democracy, nevertheless, hinges on open discourse; ideally, the best ideas win. We need to be exposed to challenging ideas, to grow. And it’s harder to do that if we feel a strong loyalty to a particular group with a particular set of ideas. Ideas themselves then become things that must be defended.

Conflict and Violence

The most problematic aspect of tribalism is that it sometimes leads to violence. Tribalism itself doesn’t necessarily lead to violence. Jains and Sikhs, for instance, can be very tribal but rarely engage in violence. Not all tribalism is the same. Doctrine matters. Yet a wide range of doctrines may lead to violence. What do Trumpists and BLM supporters, for example, have in common? Both reacted in violence to what they perceived as a rigged system: for the former, a fraudulent election; for the latter, systemic racism. Self-defense is one thing - I support it; but violence against innocent people and property, rioting and looting, I do not. Failing to defend one’s group is often considered disloyal, which usually warrants expulsion from the group, or worse. There’s a lot to lose.

These problems of tribalism, despite the aforementioned good they occasionally engender, slowly degrade our ability to work together. Without that capacity we may, as with the Neanderthals, go extinct. Perhaps AGI will usurp us like we usurped the Neanderthals in Europe. It’s hard to say; there are many unknowns, by definition, with the future. Or, perhaps we are our own worst enemy. In a nuclear age, discourse is our main tool for preventing radioactive oblivion.

Tribalism’s Solutions

So, what can be done about all this, especially given the natural tendency to form groups?

Encourage empathy and understanding

One obvious thing is to encourage wider empathy. Psychologist Paul Bloom points out that we tend to be more empathetic toward those who are more similar to us. There is likely an evolutionary explanation; those who shared our genes looked more like us. But this a bug, not a feature. The whole point is to understand and share in the feelings and thoughts of others because we care, presumably because others are sentient and can suffer. Empathy may not be the whole answer; Bloom extols the virtues of rational compassion. But I think wide empathy is a recognition of our common humanity, and, therefore, the first step to any rational or compassionate approach.

Moreover, in this increasingly multicultural and intersectional world it is important, if we are to have empathy, to see ourselves in everyone, including those that not only do not share our race or gender but neither our politics nor religion. The most direct way of doing this is for groups to encourage diversity: in members and in thought. And smaller tribes, all else equal, are, thus, more problematic than larger ones since they are more likely to promote smaller empathy. To me, the best tribe to focus on is the human tribe. Here there is a real obligation, a shared identity. We are all we have; and we are all, as evolution tells us, the same.

Promote critical thinking and independent decision-making

Next, groups should promote critical thinking and independent decision-making skills. Here religion still needs much in the way of progress, though I acknowledge we’ve certainly made progress. I mean, we used to burn people at the stake for questioning the Church. However, not all religions are the same. While dogma or fundamentalism is the main enemy, critical thinking will always be impaired if one is bound by a deeply flawed source material – another idea I first encountered in a forceful way with Sam Harris. There is a reason many churches still drag their feet to accept homosexual love, say. Regular debate and interactions with those who share differing worldviews, should be commonplace.

Address structural inequalities

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention especially after criticizing some aspects of identity politics, that structural inequities are a real thing. If we do not address these, then it will be difficult to move past these issues; they hold people back. How can African Americans, for example, move beyond race issues if they are still being disproportionately shot dead by police when unarmed, about five times as often per capita when compared to whites, according to a Washington Post database? More, there is a wide range of scientific data out there about systemic racism and innate bias. I would invite anyone to learn more. Ironically, one way to fight tribalism, as defined here, is by understanding when to engage your tribe in a fight, and when to join a bigger, more inclusive one. Over time, as these issues are addressed, the latter tribe type should be favored.

Conclusion

Lastly, it’s important to note that tribalism doesn’t inevitably lead to conflict. This is the main point of “The Myth of Tribalism” by Dominic Packer and Jay van Bavel, an article published in the Atlantic in 2022; “groupishness,” a human tendency to identify with social groups, the authors claim, can, also, lead us into acting altruistically, “embracing diversity, and helping people radically different from ourselves.” They cite psychological researchers who found that “Participants [in the study] who [were] led to believe that their group normalizes fairness engage in less in-group favoritism than do people who think that their group has a discriminatory norm.” They go on: “Most people want to fit in, and the promotion of inclusive social norms unlocked their desire to be good group members.” 

What is needed is to embrace the complexity: “Understanding how group identities combine with norms to shape human behavior also empowers people—and especially leaders—to focus more on cultivating healthy norms within their group.” Yes, we can.

Are we currently moving away from tribalism?

It’s hard to tell. But one positive sign is that it seems as if Republicans are finally starting to reject Trump. According to The Hill, a recent conservative poll shows Trump might not win the Republican primary this time around. It might go to someone like Ron DeSantis, who, despite his flaws, does not appear insane. Further, according to a recent Marist National Poll, Trump would also lose in a hypothetical 2024 head-to-head with Biden, who, despite his flaws, isn’t nearly as divisive.

Or, maybe I just have Trump Derangement Syndrome and am a Libtard.

Either way, we’ll see. I, for one, will move away from tribalism and toward greater acceptance of our differences and more understanding of our commonalities. It’s a work in progress. Let’s work together.

Will Aggression Be the End of Us?

Nagasaki

The tendency toward violence is all too human. So is compassion and empathy, to be fair. But there is something special about aggression that I find extremely unnerving: it contains the potential for our eventual undoing, principally via war.

While I believe that sometimes war is necessary, in self-defense or in defense of others, it rarely is. Our political leaders in the US often propel us into conflict, as if there is always a just war waiting around the corner. Yes, there are oppressive regimes out there. But does the US, the largest military in the world, without a close second, engage in war because it holds principles of democracy and freedom so dear that it cannot tolerate despots? It doesn’t seem that way; we tolerate Saudi nobility just fine, despite their violence toward their own people for offenses that aren’t even crimes in most developed countries; and former President Trump, for example, was fond of Kim Jong Un, Duterte, Xi Jinping, and Putin - a dictator’s Mt. Rushmore. Instead, maintaining the global hegemony seems a key motivation: the Spanish-American War, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. These stand in stark contrast to the few, arguably, just wars, such as the American Revolution and WWII.

Personally, I wonder how much of my anxiety on this topic, and that of many others, is influenced by the media, in particular given our attention economy, which rewards yellow journalism, clickbait, and polemic content. These things are hard to avoid in modern life - that’s the point. Thanks to the writings of individuals like Tristan Harris, executive director and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and former Google design ethicist, many people are aware of how the almighty social media algos utilize our outrage and discontent to make us use these platforms more frequently and for longer. So, yes, media does seem to add fuel to the fearful fire.

And yet real-world aggression is a real thing. Russia continues its occupation and attempted takeover of Ukraine. Recently, a drone strike, likely from Israel, destroyed an Iranian weapons factory. China is threatening invasion of Taiwan, again. For some, WW3 seems terrifyingly close. Further, a casual perusal of history reveals a consistent pattern of large-scale violence. Here’s a short list: the Crusades; the Inquisition; the Age of Colonization; all wars ever; slavery; the Holocaust; and more tyranny and genocide than anyone can ever remember.

However, somewhat paradoxically, most of history is people living their lives and working together in relative peace. This contradiction in aggression is the subject of Harvard anthropologist and author Richard Wrangham recent book: The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution. Wrangham bifurcates aggression into reactive and proactive types. The former is instant and instinctual, like punching someone in the face because they stepped on your shoe; the latter is cold and calculated, like a political assassination. His research shows that, compared to chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest living relatives, human are remarkably peaceful when it comes to reactive violence. Hence, quotidian experience in society is largely amicable. On the other hand, our propensity for proactive violence has not decreased as a result of natural selection.

It is precisely this propensity for violence that troubles me because, given recent advances in technology, most notably nuclear weapons, we stand the chance of wiping out civilization the next time we collectively fight. Einstein famously said, “"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Why So Aggressive?

I’m a firm believer that to solve a problem one must understand its causes. So, why the sometimes pull toward violence in our species?

Sadly, in simple terms, as far as propagating one’s genes is concerned, the prime evolutionary drive, often, violence works. In animals, the advantage to violence, especially in a larger individual, minimizing risk, is often clear. The idea of the alpha male is essentially synonymous with being the biggest and baddest, and, therefore, having procreative dominion. Many species bear this out, including bears. But, especially with social animals, there is a mitigating risk. Wrangham’s research shows that, with chimps, resentful betas sometimes band together and take out an oppressive alpha when presented with the right opportunity. This backlash puts pressure on social animals to maintain group ties, which brings images of social grooming to mind. Chimps, though, lack the language necessary to plan an assassination. And this difference has proven to be quite significant in the evolution of aggression.

Humans evolved gossip. It seems innocuous. “Did you hear Bob clubbed his wife with a mammoth femur?” Killing a rival, writes Wrangham, became relatively easy; wait till he slept or outnumber him. Therefore, we had to build alliances and trust.

Further, language enabled us to create narratives. Research by the anthropologist Andrea Migliano et al. shows that tribal societies value storytellers; in fact, they’re more reproductively successful on average than their peers. The reason is that they, in a sense, show the tribe who they are, what they believe, and how to act; in my view, they are the proto-priests.

Thus, a strong individual sense of what is acceptable and what isn’t within a tribal society would have been crucial in maintaining order and unity. Rule-breakers, as evidenced in modern tribal societies, would have faced collective punishment. This type of societal control is what British sociologist Ernest Gellner calls the “tyranny of the cousins,” given the strong consanguinity (or relatedness) of tribal societies.

The effect of this control is remarkable and leads to what Wrangham calls self-domestication: a pacification process starting before some 300,000 years ago whereby reactively aggressive males were selected against via execution, exile, and other societal punishments impacting reproductive success.

At the same time, though, proactive aggression did not decrease. Wrangham writes, “Since proactive aggression is complementary to reactive aggression (rather than its opposite), proactive, planful aggression can be positively selected even while reactive, emotional aggression has been evolutionarily suppressed.” Proactive aggression, right or wrong, was the mechanism of self-domestication, helping us work together better. And it’s cooperation that Wrangham credits for our species’ usurping of Neanderthals in Europe, who, contrary to popular belief, had a similar level of intelligence, but whose high reactive aggression hindered their collaboration.

Following the Neolithic Revolution, the beginning of agriculture, our large numbers, a result of food surpluses, required complex planning and, arguably, centralization. Agriculture, also, would make little sense if one did not have some assurance, by settling down in one obvious, attackable spot, that one would not labor year-round in vain. Leaders would have made this a priority and would have helped organize what was the ancestor of an army. So, the tyranny of the cousins became what Gellner called the “tyranny of the kings,” ushering in a new era of violence.

In sum, physical power became cultural and then political power. Certain kinds of violence, such as sexual violence, became more socially acceptable, instead of going away, because one of the benefits of leadership is, simply put, to lead. You make the rules. There’s a reason we’re skeptical of those in positions of power, and why we pursue it. Hence, culture, religion, and laws have all been used as a means of making some violence acceptable some of the time.

When these attack vectors fail, despots use fear. Ancient and Medieval history is replete with tyrants that oppressed their people with fear. Fear works well because it makes people selfish. When a tiger shows up, everyone scatters. When the SS appeared, 1930s Germans snitched on their neighbors so as to not be snitched on themselves or be suspected of disloyalty. When people are afraid and paranoid, the survival instinct is triggered. Dictators have exploited our evolutionary survival instinct by using extreme cruelty. So-called democratic leadership isn’t too different. They sell us fear because we want a savior, a protector. After 9/11, for instance, the Bush Administration sold us the USA PATRIOT Act, which saw a dramatic decrease in popularity after the high emotions following the national tragedy had subsided.

There is more to say on this topic, surely. But these are the broad outlines of our problem with violence. All this suggests that the violence problem is pretty entrenched. If it’s in our genes, and evolution works, on human timescales, imperceptibly slowly, then is there any hope that we survive the worse devils of our nature in this age of easy apocalypse?

Hope against Aggression

Ok, let’s talk peace. There must be some hope. Otherwise, we all go boom. What about deterrents and broader trends in proactive violence?

The most critical deterrent we have to avoid nuclear bye-bye is mutually assured destruction, the idea that nuclear war would ensure that all the participants lose, since nuclear winter would extinguish virtually all complex life on earth. But how effective is mutually assured destruction? Well, we’ve had nukes since 1945. Since then, we’ve come close to annihilation about twice. Once during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and again in 1983 when Soviet Col. Stanislav Petrov accurately believed that a computer system had malfunctioned when it had warned that the US had launched a missile toward the USSR; he had not, as was within his duty, decide to launch a counterattack, thus avoiding radioactive oblivion. So far, so good - right?

I think mutually assured destruction, or MAD, works as long as you have three things. First, the nuclear armed participants must value life. That’s not always the case. Neuroscientist and author Sam Harris argues the deterrent would fail when dealing with a suicidal religious extremist group who somehow got their hands on nukes. This is an all too possible reality, and we should guard against it. Second, the deterrent must be mutual; if one party is not at risk, it doesn’t work. Currently, we’re all sharing one world, the Earth. In the future, a hypothetical multi-planetary civilization may not have the same assurance. Luckily, we’re far from that reality. The last requirement is rationality. Appropriately, the acronym MAD foregrounds the problem of human emotion, which, however briefly, occults rationality. Many, including Senator Ted Cruz, before he endorsed him for president, feared the possibility of Trump having access to the nuclear football. While tempers have been known to flare among world leaders, there stand various people between a world leader and a nuclear launch. Hopefully, cooler heads prevail, as they did with Col. Petrov.

There is some good news.

Steven Pinker, cognitive psychologist and author, somewhat counter-intuitively, claims that we are currently living in the least violent time ever. How can we know this? He argues: “It’s only by (1) counting the violent incidents, (2) scaling them by the number of opportunities for violence to occur, and (3) seeing how this ratio changes over time that one can get an objective sense of trends in violence.” The results? Pinker charts violence (e.g., wars, genocide, homicides, sexual violence, and so on), showing a consistent, global decline over many decades and centuries.

Unfortunately, though, progress is too slow for the amount of change that is necessary. Abuses of power continue. Yes, as we learn from Wrangham and from history, tyrants do seem, sometimes, to live on borrowed time: Hitler, Mussolini, Ceausescu, etc. But why do we have to wait for death to make progress?

No, hope is not a strategy; it’s its antecedent. We must continue to fight, to expose injustice by authorities wherever we find it. In this way, we help keep them accountable. No more “tyranny of the cousins” or “of the kings”; we need democracy, which means fighting tyranny wherever we find it. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Admittedly, it isn’t an easy fight. Around the world, large protests for political change are often met with violence. Of course, it’s easier and safer to say, “Let’s wait. Change will come, eventually.” When King was met with the same criticism for fighting injustice in Birmingham, AL, he wrote, “There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.”

To quote the rapper J. Cole: “It’s beauty in the struggle”; there’s hope there, too.

On the Goodness Paradox

Are humans inherently violent or peaceful?

I’ve gotten into debates about this. My readings on the topic had led me to believe that humans were quite violent in the past, that perhaps that illustrated something about our true nature. Others would argue with me that past societies were more egalitarian and necessitated such cooperation that made violence rather rare.

That’s when I came across The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship between Virtue and Violence by Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham.

The Myth

Rousseauians, named after Jean-Jacques Rousseau, believe human nature is inherently good, whereas Hobbesians, after Thomas Hobbes, believe that human nature is naturally selfish and violent. Traditionally, the Hobbesians have held sway in the evolutionary narrative of our species’ beginnings. Wrangham argues that neither side is correct. Our evolution is complex. He divides aggression into two aspects: reactive aggression, which is instantaneous and instinctive, such as punching someone who steps on your shoe, and proactive aggression, which is delayed and premeditated, such as assassinating a political rival. Humans, compared to our chimpanzee relatives, are less reactively aggressive but also equally, if not more, proactively aggressive.

Thomas Hobbes

Today, however, I find the Rousseauians gaining much, too much, traction. They tend to blame modern society for corrupting our otherwise amicable nature. To them, our pre-agricultural ancestors, represent an idyllic, peaceful past. It is correct that true tyranny arrives after agriculture, since more resources can be amassed via what Wrangham calls “coalitionary proactive aggression” (or CPA), to refer to premeditated aggression by a group that A) affords some worthwhile benefit and B) substantially limits risk of personal injury.

Further, Rousseauians are right about hunter-gatherers – when referring to hunter-gatherers who happen to live near farmers or pastoralists “herders of mobile animals such as cattle, sheep, and goats)” (236). For example, the Hadza of Tanzania live in perpetual peace and even intermarry with their pastoralist neighbors. But we must note that they do this because the latter group is militarily superior, not because their benign nature is able to shine without the corrupting influence of civilization.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

More, during the Pleistocene, an epoch marked by its ice ages, among other things, hunger-gatherers were more evenly matched, broadly speaking, since there were no farmers – or pastoralists, since domesticated animals, except for dogs, did not exist yet. Without a commanding leader, however, hunger-gatherer societies have relied on strict adherence to social norms, what social anthropologist Ernest Gellner called the “tyranny of the cousins” (149), protecting them from “challenges to social norms, and from selfish aggressors” (153). In a sense, the relative peace of hunter-gatherers has been heavily regulated; rule breakers and other conflicting groups have often been met with proactive violence.

A study cited by Wrangham sampled twelve hunter-gatherer societies and found that per capita death rates from intergroup conflict were lower (164 per 100,000 per year) than death rates from twenty small scale farming societies, at 595 deaths per 100,000. To compare, in the US, the death rate has ranged from 5.2 deaths per 100,000 per year due to homicide in recent times to 200 deaths per 100,000 per year during WWII (pp. 238-239), a period that saw the world engulfed in a military conflict. So, while hunter-gatherers have been more peaceful than agriculturalists, they pale in comparison to how we live today.

Motivations

Rousseauian’s motivations are sometimes explicitly political, affecting how the science is interpreted. “For instance, the anthropologist Douglas Fry wrote, “One important, general, contribution that anthropology holds for ending ‘the scourge of war’ lies in demonstrating that warfare is not a natural, inevitable part of human nature” (238).

They tend to believe that “if warfare and related forms of violence are found to be important evolutionary adaptations, politicians and the general public will treat them as inevitable: pessimism will reign and efforts for political improvement will be thwarted (249).”

They are implying that “biology is destiny, an idea captured in the phrase “biological determinism.” (250-251) . It’s important to note that: “Goodall, Hinde, Hamburg, and many others did not consider that, if aggression is adaptive, war must be inevitable” (253).

What I find interesting is that “Rousseauians have been relatively comfortable with the idea that tendencies for attachment, romantic feelings, or cooperation have evolved. . . . When dealing with those positive aspects of human behavior the arguments about determinism are (quite rightly!) forgotten” (254).

Takeaway

Biology is not destiny. This is illustrated well in the story of Professor James Fallon, a neuroscientist who, while studying the brains of patients with psychiatric disorders, many of them murderers, found that his brain shared many of the same traits that marked some of them as “psychopaths.” It is remarkable the different path his life took compared to those who had had a similar brain.

Our evolution shows us that, as the dharmic religions and the Stoics teach, among others, it is only through constant training and effort that we are able to resist our more primitive urges and reach a higher level, one more determined by reason than by biology.

I really enjoyed The Goodness Paradox, and highly recommend it. Read it, though, with an open mind. Science tells us many things about ourselves. To effect the best change, it is necessary to know truth. Emotion is not an enemy to truth. But it can cloud it. So it is important to control it, not through tyrannical suppression, but with understanding.

Rewriting Twins (1988) w/ ChatGPT

I was curious about what Twins (1988) might be like if it were a horror film instead. So I asked ChatGPT to write a memorable scene. This is what it did (my comments in brackets):

The scene opens with Julius and Vincent running through a dark, abandoned laboratory. They've just escaped from the facility where they were created, and they're being chased by a group of scientists and government agents. [This was initially confusing. In the film, they grow up separately. So I wondered, Why are they in the lab? Did they grow up in the lab? Definitely a different take.]

As they run, Julius turns to Vincent and says, "We have to split up! I'll lead them away and you get to safety!"

Vincent nods, and the two brothers part ways.

Julius runs down one corridor, dodging bullets and narrowly avoiding capture. But as he turns a corner, he's met by one of the scientists, who grabs him by the arm. [This actually wouldn’t work bc Vincent in the film is super strong and knows karate and stuff. Maybe it’s not a scientist but a Fed w/ a gun.]

"Gotcha," the scientist says, with a sadistic grin on his face.

Julius struggles, but it's no use. The scientist has him pinned. [Definitely wouldn’t work. One could switch out Julius for Vincent, but there’s a particular reason, coming up, why not.]

But just as the scientist is about to administer a sedative, Vincent appears out of nowhere, his eyes glowing with an otherworldly power. He lunges at the scientist and rips his throat out with his bare hands. [Vincent should definitely be the monster, not Julius; Julius represents purity and what is good while Vincent is corrupt.]

Julius watches in horror as Vincent turns to him, his face twisted into a monstrous snarl.

"Vincent, what have they done to you?" Julius whispers.

Vincent doesn't answer. He only gives a deafening scream and charges towards Julius.

This scene would set the tone for the movie, introducing the audience to the stakes, the main characters and the twist of one of the twin being a monstrous creature. It also presents the action and horror elements that would be expected of a science fiction horror movie.

Honestly, that’s pretty good. Not very original, but decent. It’s a great writing prompt. I wonder what happens next. Maybe there’s something in Vincent that stops him from attacking Julius, a brotherly instinct; and he runs off. Next, Julius has to find him - before they do!

Have to say, though, as a writer, I hope I’ll still be able to write and sell fiction once this thing gets really good, which won’t take too long, in my view . . .