Dotting the eyes.

Reflections on aesthetic for aesthetic's sake are, for all intents and purposes, rather useless.  Pondering beauty can not bring any results which have real-world applications, or at least one would assume so.  But still, so much is done merely for enjoyment and no other scope, why should this be any exception?  If for no other reason, let us reflect upon aesthetic just to flex our brains a bit and enjoy doing so.

A common question regarding the arts is how is it that people enjoy tragedies when the point of such works is to exhibit negative emotions?  So many works in so many art-forms across all genres - from fiction to fantasy - are focused entirely on the pains and woes of good people.  From sad songs to tragic plays to gritty movies to moving books, how do negative emotions give rise to pleasure?

This conundrum, however, is founded on an important mistake made from the get-go.  We assume that emotions can be classified into two large groups with sadness, grief, anger, disappointment and all the "negative ones" on one side and all the "positive ones" - surprise, joy, relief, excitement and so on- on the other.  We then ask how is it that elements on the negative side can give us a positive effect.  But we only put these things on the negative side because we thought they would give rise to a negative effect, and likewise for the positive side.  If we are questioning the very criterion with which we have formed our two large groups, evidently our method of organization was incorrect - for what was meant to be negative is acting as if it were positive!

I propose, therefore, that "positive" and "negative" are not inherent traits in an emotion, but rather an emotion gets its traits from the context in which it is put.  At once this seems foreign to us.  Can we contemplate a "sadness" without the negative aspect built-in?  Well, we can agree that sadness and disappointment are both negative emotions and still tell them apart, so there must be some other defining features to an emotion other than its polarity- it's emotional "shape" which we intuitively recognise, despite the fact that there exists no established word in the English vocabulary to describe such a concept (at least not yet).  And so I propose that we do not recognize emotions from one another by their polarity but by their shape.

Why then, do emotions appear outside the traditional positive/negative framework only in the arts?  This question is entirely misleading.  Very often we experience "good sadness" outside the arts, such as when we leave a place where we want to remain but know that leaving is so much more beneficial, or when we work ourselves to the bone and feel so depressed by the work, yet at the same time satisfied.  In both cases, as in many more, we feel an emotion we would typically identify as negative, but simultaneously that feeling invokes a positive response in us, such that we know that given the choice we would do it again.

And what then of a reverse case; a traditionally positive emotion causing a negative response?  Another common occurrence in everyday life, from feeling joy at another's expense, for example, or from indulging in a pleasure only to be wrecked by guilt afterwards.

From this analysis one can see how a dichotomy approach to organizing emotions is quite lacking. Rather than using such a cut and dry approach perhaps an approach which is based on the shapes of emotions and knowing that positive/negative responses arise from an emotion's context may be more useful- particularly in predicting how we will feel about our decisions after we have made them. 

And so it seems our intellectual indulgence has had a pragmatic result after all.

The Shape of the World.

The story of man is a vast and complex thing.  It's the stories of countless individuals contained within the stories of several cultures, which in turn are contained in the stories of several lands, which in turn constitute the story of the species.  Every individual's story is subdivided into even smaller stories, and the stories of the species as a whole is just a small fraction of the story of biological life.  It is, to be sure, a self-similar object in the respect that zooming in to any one part will show you a segment that is similar to the whole- but at the same time it is a chaotic object in the respect that no two points are identical.  To add to this conundrum it is not even clear where one story ends and one begins - where does "his" story become "their" story become "our" story?  By no means is the story of man a straightforward thing, and by no means is any meaningful description of it going to be straightforward.

At some points in time we observe that man lives in a fully autonomous manner while in others we observe that man lives in highly organized societies.  Taking into account the continuity of the story in question, there must be a point between these two where society arose from a collection of individuals.  And since, as previous stated, this story is a self-similar one, there must be countless events dotted through history of societies rising from individuals- at all levels of scale- from simple individuals banding together to form a sports club to the merging of companies or the amalgamation of countries.

At all these points of amalgamation, a group realises that its co-ordination is overall more beneficial to them than their individual toils.  However the exact grounds on which this organization is to be formed is not so evident.  To many of those who realise the benefits of organizations but do not know how to achieve and maintain it a strategy of force and fear seems the only path, especially in cases where full co-operation is difficult to accomplish.

At several points through history, and even today, organization is established and preserved by means of a governing body wielding some economical or military force which then forces others into submission either by direct and violent confrontation or by methods of fear and coercion.  From schools which push children by threatening sanctions to workplaces which dangle the threat of termination over their employees to governments which threaten their citizens with incarceration this method of organization is evident in almost every facet of life throughout history.

Granted that in the past, when man was intelligent enough to the see the benefits of the ends, but not the proper implementation of the means, this approach was an unavoidable tactic which had to be employed for the greater good.

However, just as we moved from individual toils to organized societies so can our thinking mature from one pushed by fear to one pulled by aspiration.  Should a society be constructed appropriately- that is founded on sound laws which are derived from indisputable axioms using infallible logic- the several individuals which constitute the society need not be coerced. Rather they need be educated so as to garner the understanding of the laws themselves and so be driven to obedience not by fear but by the will to see the fulfilment of society's ends which in turn - if society has been correctly constructed- will fulfil their own ends.

That is not to say that there should be no response to the infringement of law, but rather that this response should be one that exists to educate the perpetrator and wherever and to whatever extent possible for the perpetrator to atone for his or her wrong doings by contributing over and above what is normally expected so as to compensate for the damage done.

Currently, the law is literally made up as we go along and sentences are not calculated but rather guessed by the self-entitled from their own little and subjective frame of reference.  What more, the "correctional" facilities serve uniquely as a behavioural deterrent and do nothing to contribute to the education of the impeached or the atonement of damage done.

What I am suggesting is no small feat, I am well aware of that, but as things currently stand the world is upside-down and it is required that we should turn it over.  Presently people are pushed by fear, but we must reach a state- or at least come as close to a state as possible- where people are pulled by aspiration.

I will not end on a closing note, for this is by no means the close.  We must begin a dialogue amongst ourselves regarding where democracy has failed and how we are to correct it.

Of Goods, Gods and Governments.

Purpose.  It's all about purpose.  In any given day of our lives we see countless other human beings, each one with their own story, their own past and future, their own track from the before to the after.  In every city, in every country.  In every decade of every century dating back thousands of years.  All these people, all these unique stories.  All with one common theme.  Purpose.

It burnt deep in us, that search for purpose.  It burnt deep, and we made up all kinds of things to soothe it.

We made up destinies - our purpose is out there and we will fulfil it, unquestionably. 
We made up quests - our purpose is out there and we will fulfil it, hopefully. 
We made up priests and oracles - our purpose is out  there and it will be given to us. 
We made up sacred texts - our purpose is in here and we can easily reference it.
We made up patriotism - our purpose is in our land.
We made up kings and nobility - our purpose is decided for us by higher powers. 
We made up family tradition - our purpose is decided by where we are born. 
We made up idealistic love - our purpose is in other people.
We made up governments - our purpose is decided for us by entrusted people.
We made up democracy - our purpose is decided by the majority.
We made up consumerism- our purpose can be easily purchased in ten easy instalments.

From paradigm to paradigm we shift throughout the ages, trying new approaches and new techniques to answering that one ubiquitous question - what is my purpose?  Do any of these paradigms work, or are they just a temporary fix to a permanent problem?

Perhaps we should stop the charade and decide there is no "our" purpose, but my purpose and your purpose, and his purpose and her purpose.  Perhaps one day we'll realise that our purpose is perpetually pulsating and in no way constant.  Perhaps one day we'll realise all these idols we've constructed are nothing but a fleeting sating of our hunger for purpose. Perhaps one day we'll realise that the only constant in anyone's search for meaning is the search and not the meaning. 

The Hunt.  The Hunt which we are all born into.  The Hunt which takes us from one idol to the next but never stops pressing, never leaves the backs of our minds where it lurks and plots and schemes and contrives to cast our whole world into doubt as it pulls who we love away from us and what we hate towards us.  The Hunt which constantly reshuffles the world around us, moving all the elaborate, distinct components of the human polygon around and around with us as just another part of the carousel.

Ridiculous Rights

The thing about Rights is that there is something not quite right about them.  That is about all the wordplay you're going to get from me today.  I'm in a bad mood, and my humour is suffering.  Anyway, on to the point.

When talking about an abstract noun, say "Redness" or "Organization"  it's very easy to begin speaking about things which don't really exist; a mistake common enough to result in several criticizing metaphysics very harshly for being nothing more than speculation.

The way to avoid such a grievous mistake is to understand that any abstract noun is the abstraction of certain properties.  For example, "Redness" is that property which allows us to identify red things as red.  "Organization" is the property shared by all things which are organized. Apart from physical things, properties might also manifest in other properties, such as the "oddness" of numbers, or the brightness of a hue.  Still however, the abstraction of "oddness" and "brightness" is only justifiable if they can be manifested in real properties, i.e. properties which may be manifested in physical things. Speaking about an abstract noun which does not have one or more corresponding properties which may manifest in physical things or other  real properties is to speak about fiction.

Now when we talk about a "Right" (as in the Right to Privacy, Free Speech etc.)  we are in fact speaking about an abstract concept and hence there must be some property which exists in the subject which allows such an abstraction.

Let us call this property simply "R" and assume that it exists.

Now property "R" is different from other properties because it makes an appeal to "should" or "ought" statements, while other properties appeal only to "is" statements.

For example, if a subject has the property of "Organization"  we can understand that it is organized. That's a simple "is" statement.  However if a subject has property "R" we understand it has a right, and that right dictates how the subject should be treated.  For example, if a subject has the property "A Right to life"  then it is understood that that subject should not be killed.  If we remove the "should" aspect from Rights, then they become unintelligible.

David Hume;  Not the inventor of humus.

It is here, that a problem arises.  As one David Hume famously put forward, it is impossible to derive a "should" statement from an "is" statement.  A "should" statement depends on both an "is" statement and a "want" statement.  For example, "I should wear a thicker jacket,"  is a true statement only if "I want to be warm," and "It is cold outside," are also true statements.

Therefore, saying that a subject has property "R" implies that there exists a "should" statement, which further implies a "want" statement.

But this is ridiculous.  How can a subject have a property such that it instills a desire in all other subjects?  If an agent is unique from the subject, then it cannot be that a property of the subject has to instill a desire in the agent.  It might just so happen that it does do so for one agent, but not for another.  But that does not mean that property "R" instills the same effect on all agents. There is no such property "R" which may manifest in anything physical such that it must instill the exact same desire in all agents.

If anyone has any lingering doubts about whether such an "R" can exist, the works of Soren Kierkegaard will quickly put the objections to rest.  Kierkegaard described a "leap of faith" (although he didn't coin the term himself) which everyone must make when s/he comes to accepting something as true; as such it's a "gap" between the external outside world and the world in our heads. Since this "gap" exists, any information we receive must be "subjectified" in our minds, and whether it falls under "desirable" or "undesirable" is a process which takes place privately and cannot be said to be the same for all people. (Granted this point is not completely proven, but it is a claim strongly supported by ample evidence and there exists, as of yet, no counter-example.)

                         

                            

                             There are ways around this problem.

Someone made a Kierkegaard finger puppet.
I suppose the internet is so big that everything
is bound to happen somewhere.

One way is to drop the "universal" aspect of Rights and consider them as relative to specific groups.  A Worker's Union, for example, might agree that all people have a Right to Employment, for as they are all workers, "employability" is a property which appeals to all of them.

A second solution is to form a social construct which "forces" (for want of a better word) the appropriate desire to be related to the property "R" by means of social sanctions.  So all people can have a "Right to life"  if the relevant sanctions against murder are put into place.  But of course this makes a Right a social construct, not a universal truth.

These approaches lead to a very different perspective on animal rights and abortion rights from the more mainstream views, but those are topics for another time.

Is over-secularization a possibility? Part Two

Well I can safely say I did not quite come across clearly in Is over-secularization a possibility? Part One - so much so that I have to follow it up and clarify myself.  I'm not going to lie - it's a bit embarrassing, a bit like having to explain a joke after telling it for five minutes, except having a whacky sense of humour is no excuse here.

First off, I am in no way saying that there is no point to reasoning when it comes to ethics.  I have said time and time again just how banal that is.  What I am saying is that some personal opinion must exist, otherwise the reasoning is all for nothing. Reasoning is a map showing the way, but without any personal belief there is nowhere to go.

Secondly, what did/do I mean exactly by over-secularization? We can all agree that secularization is the separation of Church and State.  Now previously I said that it is the shift of legislation from a religious foundation to a logical and scientific one, which perhaps is not strictly true although I believe it must follow from the separation of Church and State the only other option being public opinion which would inevitably lead to legislatures correcting and re-correcting laws due to good arguments led against them, eventually resulting in a logical foundation anyway.  Whatever, it's not that vital, I'll retract that definition and replace with the more popular one.

But why exactly should a country secularize, and have its state separated from its religion?  The anti-theist outcry of "Religion is evil," is uneducated and quite frankly useless. The Nazis didn't think Hitler was evil, and the Church will never be evil to Catholic counties, so this accusation will inevitably fall on deaf ears.  The only reason - or at least the main reason- why a country would secularize is the acceptance that belief is a personal thing which anyone can choose for themselves.  Therefore, not everyone in the country will have the same religion and so the country must secularize to be accepting to all its citizens.

In doing so, the country takes a stance that what is universal to all people should be endorsed in a public space in favour of what is subjective to some - a stance I very much support, as I always have.  So far that is all secularization and it is fine and dandy.

Multiculturalism from a snail's point of view...
(as they slowly torture it with salt)

Here is where over-secularization might come into play - the placing of all universal value over all subjective value.  As I said in Part One, money has a value recognizable to all, so it is given more importance than personal values.  Same with fame and land and fashion and a hundred other things.  A country which takes secularization to this level effectively robs its citizens of individuality.
Now someone trying to show how I am full of bullshit might say that such a thing could never happen due to secularization unless people actually pushed for it.  But how true is that?  A necessary side-effect of secularization is that all beliefs and value-systems exist side by side in a country, forming a mass of sub-cultures.  In itself that is a brilliant thing, but how will value be communicated from one sub-culture to another?  Everyday we are bombarded by the media and new ways to stay connected with one another, not to mention advertisements which exist solely to display something's value.  In such an environment, value will be communicated by referring to something which holds a "universal" value, and that is where the over-secularization begins; just as we separated our laws from our beliefs we separate all aspects of our behaviour.

Is any of this grounds for halting secularization?  Of course not.  Does it mean that no objective ethics can/should exist?  Definitely not, the very thought abhors me!  What it means is that in a world where we are constantly told that science and logic must come before our personal beliefs, we mustn't completely abandon our personal beliefs in favour of things with a more widely accepted value.

So the question remains, where do we draw the line?  I deliberately left the question unanswered previously, and I learnt the hard way that where you don't give your own conclusions, people will make them on your behalf.

So here it is: The line should be drawn where secularization stops helping people get along with others and starts turning people into identical clones.  There is no reason why we can't have objective laws and ethics and not have subjective beliefs and values.  In fact, with no subjective beliefs and values the whole concept of objective laws and ethics becomes completely undermined, for they are there to enrich our lives, and in the absence of individuality we lose any claim of ownership to our own lives.

I hope I was clearer this time round.

Is over-secularization a possibility? Part One

Secularization. We're all familiar with this notion - the idea that society should move from having religious foundations to being purely based on a logical and scientific point of view.  While I am a staunch supporter of the separation of state from any form of religious institution, every point of view should be scrutinized, and secularization is no exception.

We are more commended for keeping this in our
pocket than placing it in someone else's

Of course the benefits of secularization are obvious and very, very important.  The forwarding of medicine and a fairer treatment of people from all walks of life are advantages which nobody should scoff at.  But can it be taken too far?

Hand-in-hand with secularization comes the notion that objective grounds common to all people are to be held on higher grounds than anyone's subjective individual beliefs and while science and legislation are much improved by this approach, too much of this good thing may be venomous.

When do we stop downplaying subjective beliefs?  Religion is of course the main target of secularization but it's not the only thing that's subjective.

The mentality of objective being more valuable than subjective can very easily - and not so accidentally - be extended to value monetary gain and normative behaviour over any value given to kindness, compassion, selflessness, dignity, valour, and really any virtue imaginable.

The natural sciences aren't the only objective things out their.  Finances, norms, laws, economics and business exist too.  Likewise, religion isn't the only subjective belief - so is any virtue.

Indeed, the world already has adopted secularization into these areas.  Immoral business deals are carried out everyday, personal styles are dictated by fashion magazines, success is measured by the size of one's house, car or income and not by how true he or she has stuck to his/her ideals.

It seems like all modern society is caught up in a global dick-measuring contest.  And the only worthwhile contributions to these contests are things with universally understood values.  We talk about successful people - but these successful people are successful by virtue of fame or wealth.

Who's the most commended?  The honest green grocer or underhanded supermarket chain?  The lying politician or sincere activist?  The popular celebrity or the heart-felt musician?

Whilst secularization is so beneficial to the sciences, might it be carried to the point that what we believe in has absolutely no value whatsoever?  That we only cherish what all people want?  How is that any different from the complete and utter death of individuality?

This post was far too serious, so here's a light bulb to make light of the situation.
.....Get it?.....Make light.....like a light bul- .... fuck it.

We must draw the line somewhere.  And to begin deciding where to draw the line we must recognize that secularization is not the be-all and end-all of all social improvement.  Just like any other belief, omitting secularization from our scrutiny will definitely do more harm than good.

A Funeral.

Dearly Beloved,

We are gathered here today to lay to rest the regularity of this blog.  Regularity was in bad health for much of his life, but the past six months burdened him ever further with harsh spells of writer's block and a severe shortage of time all due to heavy studying and binge coping-with-adminstrative-problems. The final blow came however when I moved to Dublin and started college, a development which led to Regularity's untimely demise.

Not many will mourn the lost of Regularity's humble life, but those few who will may be comforted by his final words; "Tell that bastard to get back to work."  In this context "that bastard" is of course me, but I believe we may all generalize Regularity's ultimate utterance as a wise instruction to lay our hands to work whenever life seems too irregular, and find peace and tranquility in our toiling just as Regularity did throughout his exemplary life.  When life seems tough, remember to be "that bastard."

On a less dramatized note:  posting on this blog regularly has proven to be impractical, impossible, imperceptibly implementable and all together much more "imp" than it's worth.  I will however be posting haphazardly, having a few half-essays jotted down on paper and recycling pieces of my incoming philosophy assignments which I'm sure I will have to trim several times due to their pocket-sized word limits. (Only 1500 words - that's hardly rational.)  I will of course have to spruce up the assignment-trimmings a tad.  I'm quite sure a mock funeral or random animal sounds (which were not so random by the way take a closer look; http://logical-not-unemotional.blogspot.ie/ ) might not sit well with my lecturers.

Back to the dramatization;

And so we lay Regularity to rest, may he find peace everlasting amongst his discarded brethren of abandoned endeavors.

May your respective deities smile kindly down upon us (or mockingly down at us) as indiscriminately and arbitrarily as we choose to adopt their doctrines,

Amen.