"Different"

I get it. They want to make sure that someone with a birth defect is not considered of lesser worth. They want to be kind and fair, so they coin labels like "limb different."

I think it rises from the denial that there's a human nature – physical, mental, spiritual. The way they define things, and people, is by their actions. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck – nevermind if it needs batteries.

If you define humanity by the things a person does rather than some essence or nature, inequalities of ability are a problem for you. The world's economies define human worth by economic value added, but there's no reason for us to give assent to that. We know better (I hope).

There are normal differences in people, e.g. skin color. There are also abnormal differences, e.g. skin color (albinism). It's normal to have 5 digits on each limb, and rare indeed for more than 5 not to be a defect.

The Salisbury Organist goes to old country churches to play their organs. Not infrequently a note will be bad or the machine slightly out of tune – and you wouldn't be able to tell because he picks the music to fit the organ.

If you don't have a right foot, walking is more of an accomplishment than it is for a healthy youngster. If we flatten everything to "difference" you lose that extra accomplishment.

Plenty of things are legitimately just "difference": including a lot of the skills. Just because it isn't always easy to agree on the names of things that are human essence doesn't mean they aren't real.

We seem to have a hunger to oversimplify. A "definition by action" is very useful (especially in mathematics), while a "definition by essence" is also important in determining purposes – like what a government is actually for. If we don't know what the essence of human-ness is, how do we know what human flourishing is? Keep both approaches, but in tension with each other.

More Motse

Following up on the earlier post

An easier-to-read site

From section I, a call for the rule of universal love:

Suppose everybody in the world loves universally, loving others as one's self. Will there yet be any unfilial individual? When every one regards his father, elder brother, and emperor as himself, whereto can he direct any unfilial feeling? Will there still be any unaffectionate individual? When every one regards his younger brother, son, and minister as himself, whereto can he direct any disaffection? Therefore there will not be any unfilial feeling or disaffection. Will there then be any thieves and robbers? When every one regards other families as his own family, who will steal? When every one regards other persons as his own person, who will rob? Therefore there will not be any thieves or robbers. Will there be mutual disturbance among the houses of the ministers and invasion among the states of the feudal lords? When every one regards the houses of others as one's own, who will be disturbing? When every one regards the states of others as one's own, who will invade? Therefore there will be neither disturbances among the houses of the ministers nor invasion among the states of the feudal lords.

And from section III, a claim that the sage-kings expressed universal love:

Nevertheless. the gentlemen in the empire think that, though it would be an excellent thing if love can be universalized, it is something quite impracticable. It is like carrying Mt. Tai and leaping over the Ji River. Mozi said: The illustration is a faulty one. Of course to be able to carry Mt. Tai and leap over the Ji River would be an extreme feat of strength. Such has never been performed from antiquity to the present time. But universal love and mutual aid are quite different from this. And the ancient sage-kings did practise it. How do we know they did?

When Yu was working to bring the Deluge under control, he dug the West River and the Youdou River in the west in order to let off the water from the Qu, Sun, and Huang Rivers. In the north he built a dam across the Yuan and Gu Rivers in order to fill the Houzhidi (a basin) and the Huzhi River. Mt. Dizhu was made use of as a water divide, and a tunnel was dug through Mt. Lungmen. All these were done to benefit the peoples west of the (Yellow) River and various barbarian tribes, Yan, Dai, Hu, Ho, of the north. In the east he drained the great Plain and built dykes along the Mengzhu River. The watercourse was divided into nine canals in order to regulate the water in the east and in order to benefit the people of the District of Ji. In the south he completed the Yangtze, Han, Huai, and Ru Rivers. These ran eastward and emptied themselves into the Five Lakes. This was done in order to benefit the peoples of Jing, Qi, Gan, Yue, and the barbarians of the south. All these are the deeds of Yu. We can, then, universalize love in conduct.

When King Wen was ruling the Western land, he shone forth like the sun and the moon all over the four quarters as well as in the Western land. He did not allow the big state to oppress the small state, he did not allow the multitude to oppress the singlehanded, he did not allow the influential and strong to take away the grain and live stock from the farmers. Heaven visited him with blessing. And, therefore, the old and childless had the wherewithal to spend their old age, the solitary and brotherless had the opportunity to join in the social life of men, and the orphans had the support for their growth. This was what King Wen had accomplished. We can, then, universalize love in conduct.

When King Wu was about to do service to Mt. Tai it was recorded thus: "Blessed is Mt. Tai. Duke of Zhou by a long descent is about to perform his duty. As I have obtained the approval of Heaven, the magnanimous arise to save the people of Shang Xia as well as the barbarians (from the tyranny of Emperor Zhou). Though (Emperor Zhou) has many near relatives, they cannot compare with the magnanimous. If there is sin anywhere, I am solely responsible." This relates the deeds of King Wu. We can, then, universalize love in conduct.

And again from section III, examples of things that are nominally harder to do. One may harbor doubts about the wisdom of these kings...

Is it because it is hard and impracticable? There are instances of even much harder tasks done. Formerly, Lord Ling of the state of Jing liked slender waists. In his time people in the state of Jing ate not more than once a day. They could not stand up without support, and could not walk without leaning against the wall. Now, limited diet is quite hard to endure, and yet it was endured. While Lord Ling encouraged it, his people could be changed within a generation to conform to their superior.

Lord Goujian of the state of Yue admired courage and taught it to his ministers and soldiers three years. Fearing that their knowledge had not yet made them efficient he let a fire be set on the boat, and beat the drum to signal advance. The soldiers at the head of the rank were even pushed down. Those who perished in the flames and in water were numberless. Even then they would not retreat without signal. The soldiers of Yue would be quite terrified (ordinarily). To be burnt alive is a hard task, and yet it was accomplished. When the Lord of Yue encouraged it, his people could be changed within a generation to conform to their superior.

Lord Wen of the state of Jin liked coarse clothing. And so in his time the people of Jin wore suits of plain cloth, jackets of sheep skin, hats of spun silk, and big rough shoes. Thus attired, they would go in and see the Lord and come out and walk in the court. To dress up in coarse clothing is hard to do, yet it has been done. When Lord Wen encouraged it his people could be changed within a generation to conform to their superior.

Now to endure limited diet, to be burnt alive, and to wear coarse clothing are the hardest things in the world, yet when the superiors encouraged them the people could be changed within a generation. Why was this so? It was due to the desire to conform to the superior.

Now, as to universal love and mutual aid, they are beneficial and easy beyond a doubt. It seems to me that the only trouble is that there is no superior who encourages it. If there is a superior who encourages it, promoting it with rewards and commendations, threatening its reverse with punishments, I feel people will tend toward universal love and mutual aid like fire tending upward and water downwards - it will be unpreventable in the world.

So a realm of universal love is achieved from the top down, by conforming the inferiors by "Identification with the Superior."

About fifty years ago I decided to read Mencius, who was one of the great influences in Chinese thought. I wearied of the book well before finishing, but got through the section in which he excoriates Mozi's "universal love" ideas. He complained about propriety (insuffiicent filial piety) and hierarchy (You have to have hierarchy!). I don't remember a complaint that this just wouldn't work.

I think the 20'th century shows us that top-down proclaiming everybody to be comrades doesn't work very well.

Forging on: This sounds fairly timely. Economy of Expenditures

When a sage rules a state the benefits of the state will be increased twice. When he governs the empire, those of the empire will be doubled. This increase is not by appropriating land from without. But by cutting out the useless expenditures it is accomplished. In issuing an order, taking up an enterprise, or employing the people and expending wealth, the sage never does anything without some useful purpose.

…

What, then, is difficult to increase? To increase the population is difficult. In ancient times, the sage-kings said: "No man of twenty should dare to be without a family; no girl of fifteen should dare to be without a master." Such were the laws of the sage-kings. Now that the sage-kings have passed away, the people have become loose.

…

In those ancient days, at the beginning of the race, when there were no palaces or houses, people lived in caves dug at the side of hills and mounds. The sage-kings felt quite concerned, thinking that the caves might keep off the wind and cold in winter, but that in summer it would be wet below and steaming above which might hurt the health of the people. So palaces and houses were built and found useful. Now, what is the standard in building palaces and houses? Mozi said: Just so that on the side it can keep off the wind and the cold, on top it can keep off the snow, frost, rain, and dew, within it is clean enough for sacrificial purposes, and that the partition in the palace is high enough to separate the men from the women. What causes extra expenditure but does not add any benefit to the people, the sage-kings will not undertake.

I'm not sure how popular some of these ideas would be today.

How about the supernatural?

Mozi said: The way to find out whether anything exists or not is to depend on the testimony of the ears and eyes of the multitude. If some have heard it or some have seen it then we have to say it exists. If no one has heard it and no one has seen it then we have to say it does not exist. So, then, why not go to some village or some district and inquire? If from antiquity to the present, and since the beginning of man, there are men who have seen the bodies of ghosts and spirits and heard their voice, how can we say that they do not exist?

…

Not only does the record in this book prove it to be so. Formerly the Lord Zhuang of Qi (794-731 B.C.) had two ministers, Wang Liguo and Zhong Lijiao, who were engaged in a lawsuit. For three years no judgment could be reached. The Lord of Qi thought of putting both of them to death, but was afraid to slay the innocent; he thought of acquitting both of them but was afraid to let loose the guilty. So he let them provide a lamb and take oath on the altar of Qi. The two men agreed to take the oath of blood. The throat of the lamb was cut and its blood sprinkled on the altar. The case of Wang Liguo was read all through. But before half of the case of Zhong Lijiao was read, the lamb arose and butted at him, broke his leg and prostrated him on it. At the time those people who were present all saw it and those far away heard of it. It was recorded in the Spring and Autumn of Qi. The feudal lords circulated the news around and remarked: "So speedy and severe is the punishment from spirits and ghosts to him that takes an oath in insincerity!" Judging from the record in this book, how can we doubt that spirits and ghosts exist?

Therefore Mozi said: One may not act disrespectfully even in woods, valleys, or solitary caves where there is no man. Spirits and ghosts are watching everywhere.

…

Those who deny the existence of spirits, saying "Ghosts and spirits just do not exist", are opposing the interest of the sage-kings. Opposing the interest of the sage-kings is not the way of the superior man.

Motse

We've all heard of Confucius. One of his competitors was Motse. Legend has it that many of the books from his school were burned, and a bunch of the scholars too.

I'm not sure I'll finish the work linked above. His style is maddening; repetitious and forever citing dubious details of the putative wonderful reigns of the first emperors. The first thing that looked different from the rest was this--but (spoiler) it isn't.

Motse said: The interest of the wise (ruler) lies in carrying out what makes for order among the people and avoiding what makes for confusion.

But what is it that makes for order among the people?

When the administration of the ruler answers to the desires of the people there will be order, otherwise there will be confusion.

How do we know it is so?

When the administration of the ruler answers to the desires of the subjects, it manifests an understanding of the approvals and disapprovals of the people. When there is such an understanding, the good will be discovered and rewarded and the bad will be discovered and punished, and the country will surely have order. When the administration of the ruler does not answer to the desires of the subjects, it shows a lack of understanding of the approvals and disapprovals of the subjects. When there is no such understanding then the good will not be discovered and rewarded and the bad will not be discovered and punished, such a government will surely put the country into disorder. Therefore when rewards and punishments do not answer to the desires of the people, the matter has to be carefully looked into.

But how can the desires of the people (being so many and various) be met?

Therefore Motse said: It can only be done only by adopting the principle of Identification with the Superior in government.

Nope. We don't have an ancient Chinese democrat here. "Identification with the Superior" means that the hierarchy takes its standards from the top. The desires of the people should be shaped into conformity with the rules of clan patriarch, with the feudal lords, and so on up the chain.

Whoever discovers a benefactor of the clan shall report it; whoever discovers a malefactor to the clan shall report it. Whoever reports the benefactor of the clan upon seeing one is equivalent to benefiting the clan himself. Knowing him the superior will reward him, hearing of him the group will praise him.

And then the feudal lord says the same about the state, and the emperor about the empire. "Now that the empire is orderly, the emperor will further organize the purposes in the empire and identify them with the Will of Heaven."

Quite a bit of the advice so far boils down to "You're supposed to be keeping the state orderly and prosperous for everybody." and "Don't appoint your relatives and sycophants; appoint the capable and honest." and "Make sure everybody knows to do what their superiors tell them to." and "Don't go in for excessive luxury."

I haven't gotten to the parts about designing fortifications yet. Apparently the Motse school was famously good at that.

Natural

English infamously overloads the word "love" with a riot of different meanings.

We overload "nature" too. There's the physical universe, and also the local ecosystem; alternatively, it means the rules they operate by.

And there's "human nature", which can mean the ways we were designed to function (human nature to love your children), or the brokenness we suffer from (human nature to be selfish). For the Christian there's a new nature given as well.

And there's the "nature" of the expression of individual gifts and traits (a "natural-born storyteller") or expressions of training ("a natural-born killer").

So is a writer using "nature" to describe something common to all humans, or specific to this individual? Is it something built in, or thanks to training (marching towards the gunfire)? It makes a difference in what is changeable, or even what's good--and I see a lot of disagreement on that.

Until we learn to disaggregate these meanings, and quit playing motte and bailey with them, I guess we're stuck making sure we parse out how the writer is trying to use them.

FWIW, about 400 years ago a "natural" was an idiot.

No matter how you deny

We walked by a curious conversation at Horicon this morning. She was talking and he assenting: "He has his truth, and I have my truth, and we can have different truths. But somewhere there must be a truth that joins them."

I missed the rest, and it wasn't my circus, but I thought it telling that even though she believed in the relativity of truth, she hungered for a real truth, a true truth.

Old writings

C.S. Lewis strongly recommended On the Incarnation of the Word by St. Athanasius. I finally got around to reading it. Yes, read it. It's short and the language is clean--it doesn't need lots of explanatory footnotes. He explains why the Incarnation is fitting and offers proofs for the divinity of Jesus.

I notice that he brings forward among the proofs of his case both the lives of Christians and miracles. I wonder what he'd refer to if he wrote today.

Lewis also recommended Boethius. Cheers for CCEL!

Mozi

AVI has a link to a Spengler article which offers to explain Chinese governance policies as a consequence of its geography and formation: bottom line is that something as critical as flood control has been impossible without central organization and control for at least a couple of thousand years. China isn't an organic entity, and doesn't act like it.

OK, it's a plausible model. I'm not sure his comparison with Rome is accurate.

Along the way "Spengler" wrote "Chinese philosophy focuses on acceptance, hierarchical loyalty, or adherence to authority, in its respective guises of Taoism, Confucianism, and Legalism."

Back when I was in grad school I tried to read Mencius. (I didn't finish the book; see "grad school" above.) He spent a fair chunk of ink blasting a different philosophy, not one of the famous schools, called Mohism. Its characteristic theme was "universal love," or "impartial love."

I looked it up.

It's a curious confection. Apparently the school rented themselves out as philosophical advisors to rulers (as did the Confucians), but also for designing fortifications. Mozi held that "since development of music involves man's power, it reduces production of food; furthermore, appreciation of music results in less time for administrative works. This overdevelopment eventually results in shortage of food, as well as anarchy." This sounds like a dislike for ostentatious events more than for playing a flute, but I never finished his treatise and can't swear to that. And he was big on frugality; without which you could not have contentment and the material wealth and population growth he regarded as the marks of a good society.

From Wikipedia

Law and order was an important aspect of Mozi's philosophy. He compared the carpenter, who uses standard tools to do his work, with the ruler, who might not have any standards by which to rule at all. The carpenter is always better off when depending on his standard tools, rather than on his emotions. Ironically, as his decisions affect the fate of an entire nation, it is even more important that a ruler maintains a set of standards, and yet he has none. These standards cannot originate from man, since no man is perfect; the only standards that a ruler uses have to originate from Heaven, since only Heaven is perfect. That law of Heaven is Love.

Not agape, however. Similarities to Christian ideas are only superficial.

Maybe I shouldn't go by the extremes

Transhumanism seems to borrow a bit from ancient philosophies that held that the human spirit was trapped in a physical body, and needed liberation. Except that this time liberation from the world comes through being reincarnated in a different body: one made of electronics instead of self-repairing flesh.

"Effective altruism" claims nice things on their websites, but the things I've heard of a few of its devotees bring Linus to mind.

Rand sacrifice

I ran across one of those Ayn Rand memes on sacrifice the other day, and remembered how I'd reacted when I first read about it fifty years ago. Contra Rand, a sacrifice isn't giving up a greater value for a lesser, but exactly the opposite: giving up a lesser value for a greater. A mother giving her child the last bread in the house isn't doing it because she values the child less but more. You sacrifice the party night to study for your electrodynamics exam because you value passing the course more.

The conflict comes when you value the lesser good more than the greater one--you don't love having good lungs better than you love cigars, or you don't love God in your neighbor more than your entertainments. The glory of the sacrifice comes from the glory of the higher good involved.

In her view, enlightened self-interest will always pick the greater value--but who enlightens that self? Someone who explains that good lungs are a great lifetime value, and that the world is wider and deeper than the simply physical universe--someone who does the sort of thing she complains about. Unless you are born and grow with perfect wisdom and enlightenment, you need someone to teach you. And WRT her strawman, I don't know anybody who says you should love a stranger more than your family--except politicians and Marxist theorists.(*)

She had a pretty fair understanding of what the socialist state involved, and what sort of people were attracted to it (she'd observed for herself) but I don't put any trust in her diagnoses and her prescriptions.

---

(*) Elisha asked a widow to feed him first in honor of God, but then he backed it up with a miracle. We might be in a better place if we applied the rule about what to do with false prophets...

"As they were in 1834"

"Scott Campbell no longer sits smoking his long pipe, and conversing in low tones with the listless loungers around the old Agency House; but who that resided in this country thirty or forty years ago can pass by the old stone houses near Fort Snelling and not think of Major Taliaferro and of his interpreter?"

He was skillful as an interpreter, and perhaps more skillful as mis-interpreter. When translating for Major Taliaferro, he gave a true rendering of what was said, for the major knew the Dakota language too well himself to be deceived by an interpreter; but for those who were ignorant of the language he sometimes used his own discretion in the choice of what to say. The words of the speaker, whether Dakota or English, lost all their asperity, and often much of their meaning, in passing through his interpretation. He told what he thought the speaker should have said rather than what he did say, and frequently a good understanding seemed to have been restored, simply because there had been no understanding at all. The grievous words which stir up strife might go into his ears but did not come out of his mouth, especially when it was for his interest to restore peace between contending parties. This readiness to substitute his own language for that which he professed to translated might not be the best qualification for an interpreter, and sometimes it proved mischievous; but he doubtless intercepted many harsh and passionate words, which, if they had reached their destination, would have done more harm than good.

Perhaps, but I think truth is better.

Death of Meaning

AVI has a Quilette link on his sidebar, and yesterday's article was "Elder Millennial Metalheads: Our Shrinking World of Dark Thoughts and Bad Jobs". It's quite sad.

Everywhere I looked, it seemed all of the cool people had the same message. The American Dream is a sham. You’re better than that.

... We were too clever for the assembly lines, too principled for Wall Street, too vulgar for academia. Find glory or die, because this middle space of strip malls and mortgages is worse than death.

So we did what we could, and tried to find a purpose in a world that seemed more excited about a new Olive Garden than teaching us how to be good men.

What think you of that charge? We're offered buybuybuy, with a side order of sex, and if that's not enough meaning for you you're welcome to embrace the "magical progress of history" and signal how virtuous you are. We get some rules about tolerance and treating the environment nicely, but what about courage or justice (unqualified) or wisdom?

Still, the author has agency:

We all shared a common disdain for the dehumanizing economic machine set to absorb us. We were average young suburbanites struggling to make a living at mindless service and factory work. For many, death really did seem preferable.

...Aspiring to transcend the system, we were living in a kind of economic limbo, choosing low-paying, low-responsibility work that allowed us time off to rehearse, record, and tour.

OK... I think I detect some choices here.

I love America. I love this land that birthed the artists whose works give me life. This is the country that molded all of my sick, glorious heroes and friends. I don’t want to see it torn apart. But the anger, this rage I’ve seen growing among youth, I do understand it. Among all the things in this world that have baffled me since I can remember, anger might be the one thing I understand.

I will hold fast to self-reliance until my hands are cold and my heart is lifeless meat. I will honor the memories of fallen brothers. And for others, this is my plea: Our problems are complicated, so don’t fall under the sway of ideologues who offer answers that are simple. You know better than that. Be who you choose to be, be beautiful, be yourself. No one has magical access to sacred knowledge, religious or secular, that can save you. Only death is real.

It sounds like the heart of self-definition is sawdust in a silk wrapper, with no meaning or power to inspire.

If it walks like a duck

We love to abstract--I'm no exception. I'm good at it, which enhances the temptation.

Unfortunately we also love to abstract according to things that interest us, and not always according to the nature, or even all the details, of the thing.

Yes, that. Does it have all the functions that interest us?

Treating things operationally is powerful. And the Scholastics wasted an amazing deal of time and thought on details about intrinsic nature that don't always seem to have clear meaning, let alone objective reality.

But just because Forms aren't fashionable, and that people can ask stupid questions about them, doesn't mean they aren't real, or aren't useful ways of thinking about reality.

The huge temptation of the operational approach is to ignore anything inconvenient. If you put lipstick on the pig, it becomes pretty--if you abstract away inconvenient details. A woman is a man after various surgeries and drugs--if you abstract away inconvenient details and just look at the cartoon; the same way a sex doll is a woman.

Are we just a computation engine with some built-in mechanisms and some sensing gear? We don't live as though we are--probably we can't. I'd have thought that would be a useful datum for the likes of Hume, but he didn't take the hint.

"Art"

We're planning to go to the Milwaukee Art Museum tomorrow, so I looked up the temporary exhibits. First on the list was Sara Cwynar, whose work was described as exploring "through film and photography the subjects of color and design, the ways that they operate politically, socially, and historically, particularly in the context of how we conceptualize beauty."

I don't really have to look at the examples: the supposedly enticing keywords "politically" and "conceptualize" warn me of a lack of beauty in the work. And so it proves, if google images gives a representative sampling.

Wikipedia's description might give an explanation "Cwynar’s understanding of Kundera’s definition of “kitsch” as images that we are drawn to in order to escape from all that is aesthetically unpleasant in life"

If I follow that correctly, Kundera and she think beauty and efforts at beauty are kitsch. That seems like a bad philosophy, and bad philosophy can poison life.

It seems to be a popular attitude among recent artists. That and making everything the servant of politics.

Taboo breaking

Someone who posts under the name of "Sophia's Favorite," (?probably the same person) who knows a lot more about anthropology and comparative religion than I do, pointed out an interesting connection: "limit experiences" ("He went on to challenge surrealism with a kind of anti-idealism searching for what he called the impossible by breaking rules until you reached something beyond all rules.") are exactly parallel with witchcraft ("In contradistinction to "sympathetic magic," these opposite manifestations of magic may fitfully be described as "transgressive magic," because they are based on the violation of fundamental taboos. ... taboos are sometimes deliberately violated by individuals with the intention of thereby obtaining certain benefits.").

Foucault (the subject of the first quotation) wanted to break rules--break taboos--in the hope that somewhere at the end of all the broken laws would be something superior to all the laws. That it is called "experience" is telling--it is something for him or his emulators, not for the rest of us. It is something which obviously makes him superior to the law, and presumably to the rest of us as well. The classic witch wants power, and will violate any law to get it--notably including human sacrifice. (Leopard Societies are still active.)

S.F. calls Foucault a "skinwalker." We're not talking about a Stephen Schwartz witch here. More like this.

In fact, one of the sources of a witch's power is the fact that the witch refuses to recognize boundaries, and thereby terrorizes others. Still better is if the witch can persuade you that he is superior because he breaks taboos. An "unshockable" person is obviously more cosmopolitan and experienced than the rest of us, right? Or else his heart is more deadened and his conscience more seared--pick one.

I leave the application of this observation to modern arts as an exercise for the reader.

Updates for (I hope) more clarity).

First things

"The very word 'superficial' is founded on a fundamental mistake about life, the idea that second thoughts are best. The superficial impression of the world is by far the deepest. What we really feel, naturally and casually, about the look of skies and trees and the face of friends, that and that alone will almost certainly remain our vital philosophy to our dying day." Twelve Types, Chesterton

Born Free

The song from "Born Free" came back to me again this evening. I haven't heard it (or mentally replayed it) in decades. It is a great anthem to freedom--sort of.

Elsa was trained to return to the wild, and when she was released her scope for roaming was vastly increased--in that sense she was free. But in another sense she still wasn't. Her appetites drove her, and what choice had she in that? I have not quite puzzled it out completely, but I suspect, with Lewis, that the pet cat may be more free than the wild one, even though it superficially labors under more restraints.

"As free as the grass grows" It sounded nice, and I never bothered to think about exactly what that might mean. "Stay free where no walls divide you" Sounds good, but it doesn't seem to make sense, unless somehow I'm on both sides of the wall. Even "born free" is a little odd when you think about it. We're born dependent, not able to exercise much freedom. We're born into families, with obligations we did not ask for. What kind of freedom were we celebrating here?

It sounded good and noble, and we didn't think about it much. I wonder if, at that age, I would have sat still for a more rigorous discussion of what freedom was. I read Plato, but I didn't do Plato--I didn't try on my own or with others to puzzle such things out. Do you need more adult experience, or can youngsters handle such questions? (If said youngster is aching to get back to a video game, probably not.)

Defined by relationships?

I noticed that behind the scenes most math is defined in terms of relationships, operations, mapping, and interaction. Even things like the ordinary counting numbers—you can find a definition of a non-negative integer in terms of the characteristic unique to all sets that have that many elements. (That sounds a bit circular, doesn't it?) One hot topic tries to treat vast swaths of math in terms of objects and morphisms.

This has been extremely fruitful.

The same sort of approach of defining things in terms of their operations seems to be able to produce quite complex machines, whether physical or organizational. It is very convenient to define people-roles in terms of their interactions and operations: "We need N of type AAZ and M of type CBZ." The more interchangeable the components are, the more efficiently you can feed and run the system—at least in theory. If everyone is identical except for minor education and training differences, you can feed as many of each people-role as you need into the hopper, and shift them around like checkers. (It helps if they have no personal attachments, so you can ship the components around the world at will.)

But this kind of abstraction is well known to induce some push-back from the unique individuals who find themselves thus categorized. And, funny thing, there turn out to be irreducible differences that make people non-interchangeable for some of those people-roles.

And the apparent circularity of some definitions strongly suggests to me that there needs to be some room for some fundamental objects in mathematics. I haven't run across a good definition of a "geometric point" that isn't circular in some way.

And if you only think of defining things by their transformations and mappings, you don't have much mental space for thinking about things like Forms or aseity. (Does that mindset account for the rise of process theology?) People and things are contingent and largely defined by relationships (just don’t try to abstract too much away!), but that doesn't prove everything is.

Free

I don't remember where I read the rule that "A free man is one who can bind himself." He can bind himself to a wife and to the still unknown children who follow. He can promise to work for someone. He can make an implicit commitment to tend his farm; feed and care for his livestock. Or he commits to solve a problem or write a book. Some commitments are short term, others life-long and extremely open-ended.

Freedom seems less like a status and more like a coin to invest. The one who never binds himself never shows fruit.

Experiences

Crowley seems to have won the field. "Do what you will" seems to be the dominant touchstone for ethics. He meant, or at least professed to mean, that your true self would make appropriate decisions, but the simpler way (and I hope I may be forgiven for thinking it Crowley's true meaning) is to follow your impulses. We measure how strong we are by how strong our feelings and impulses are.

And in the society that resulted, the most valuable things are experiences. To see the Shire in New Zealand, or ride a hot-air balloon, or free climb El Capitan--OK, most of us aren't eager to take on the years of discipline to manage El Capitan, but watching the GoPro video is almost as good. Right?

A cruise in the Bahamas, see the pyramids of Egypt, a trip to Machu Picchu--what is on the usual bucket list? For that matter, what's on the unofficial bucket list--the things you want to experience but would be embarrassed to tell your friends?

The most valuable experiences are those that demand training and skill. The pinnacles of experience would be free-climbing K2, surfing a tsunami, sky-diving from orbit. Most settle for less. But after you've sky-dived, you will have to try to sky-dive while balancing on a skate-board, or while playing the accordion, or while trying to have sex.

Lots of people covet celebrity, which can be very decoupled from any accomplishment.

"Getting stuff" doesn't seem quite so fashionable, but I suspect that's because we're rich, we have most of the stuff we want anyhow, and we noticed that it wasn't making us happy enough. But next year's iPhone--that'll be the ultimate!

What doesn't seem to be so popular is writing a symphony or the next Moby Dick, or building cabinets that the Smithsonian displays. (Or becoming a saint, but that's never been popular) Accomplishment is harder than simple experience--is it also less popular? Accomplishment may be "what you will" but it involves a lot of grunt work or doing what other people want. And following rules--which conflicts with the "what you will" theme.

Maybe you can keep experiences longer than stuff, though dementia can steal those too, but at the end of the day you don't get to keep anything, unless you've invested with Someone in the resurrection business.

Can you tell I read Ecclesiastes recently?

Gain the whole world and lose his own soul

Does it strike you as odd that solipsism is so popular these days? References to "my truth" or the assertion (usually only implicit) that "How I perceive myself is who I am" turn up with disconcerting frequency.

I wonder if part of this is a reaction to "scientific claims" about human nature. When you're told that you do X because of Y, or think Z because of T, you start to feel like a puppet. If your mind is just rationalizing what you've already chosen, you're kidding yourself, so how can you communicate with anyone else? Or can I even cogito?

If you try to shoehorn human experience and communication inside the universe bounded by sense perception and what can be tangibly measured, there's not much room for a "you," and still less for communion. In a way you "gain the whole world" in terms of what power the approach can give, but you lose your soul. That's not universally popular—even Faust regretted the bargain.

Of course you know better, but the these days default parameters of the debate are Descartes': even if you're not a puppet, you still wind up with an incommunicable reality.

There’s another way, of course—or two, or three. One way says that statements about our nature refer to things that "ought" or "ought not." "Ought" is not something you can derive from science, and if you propose to think only in categories of sense-perception and tangible measurements, you're cut off from that. You may find the oughts inconvenient sometimes (like me), but you are free to do the oughts or not. This leaves room for "you," for communion, and purpose—and a creator.

That last item can be frightening. Suppose my creator has different priorities and different ideas about my nature. Will conforming to my creator lose me myself?

Christianity says "just the opposite," but you can see how the prospect would look to someone who believes their nature is their perception of it, malleable by their choice.