Philosophy Radio! drlabasham777's Podcast: Recent Episodes
drlabasham777
Philosophy Radio! The Tomorrow Files: Philosophy. Social, Metaphysical, Ethical. For Real. By Dr. Lee Basham
Today Orson Welles, in his most famous act of radio shenanigan, gives us a radio version telling the story of war of the worlds by HG Wells. Fascinating. Enjoy and happy Halloween and at the end of our recapitulation of this brilliant broadcast that led to the deaths of hundreds of people and worth every life I would ask? Yes. So who are the real Martians? Peace.
Cheers.
Dr. Lee Basham
The transitioning times. Today we discuss transitioning biological sex from one to the other. Naturally, I am discussing the 99.8% or so of human beings. The issue in our discussion is if it is morally appropriate to transition with drugs and surgeries children. I will argue in what follows that it is not. I do this because children don't know who they really; this applies to people already transitioned, whatever their retroactive memories may tell them they knew. Any cognitive psychologist/cognitive neurologist will tell you we do rewrite our memories to accommodate our current situation.
If there is a long-term stability in a child's beliefs about their true nature that extends to adulthood then I have no objection. But that stability must be carefully, cautiously established. Not through the power of authorities making suggestions to 12 or 16 year olds. We shall see if my view remains stable on this issue. Enjoy!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Let's talk about Dogs. Today, the ethical power and example of a good dog, and the perils of the same. Are dog better people than we, when they are good dogs. I think many of us know the answer. As we think they are looking to us, we are really looking to them.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Today we ask the question, or better, make the demand, "Tell me why I'm radioactive". Because you are, I am and everyone else is, too. Billions of pounds of radioactive flesh wandering the surface of the planet, zinging off gamma rays. That what you wake up as, crash as, and dream your way through. Every night till the cancer comes? Radiation is still a very real feature of our day to day lives, and posses in its residue--inescapable as it infects our bodies, our sexual fluids, our food, our kids, every kiss goodbye and every moment on the way back home--why did this happen to us? Why did we do it? Not in the narrow accidentalness of recent war-history--but in the questions what are we and who does that make us into today?
Enjoy the maze! Part One of Two: The Unholy Trinity Moment.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Today we consider trans-dimensional multiverse possibilities. In a number of well documented cases we find that objects that vanished in the past reappear decades later in the present. For this reason there has been some speculation that there are coexisting multiple universes. It's very important to understand that these are not located in different places. That would make them areas of different concentrations of mass energy and perhaps slightly altered physical laws; yet all within the same universe. Spatial separation does not give you a multiverse because multiverses don't enjoy spatial separation. They must be all in the same place, which is to say, nowhere. But the are not to interact in any causal way: This is the faith-based physics doctrine of “closure”. But they might interact, just the same. It is an empirical issue. Because of this there may be points where there is contact and exchange of information and even objects. These points might be produced artificially by one universe to the other. The Christian doctrine of Heaven and Hell—to the extant this is biblical, and that is debatable—reflects this idea. These portals might be natural in some way or manner or artificially generated.
The idea of multiverses is very popular in astrophysics. It solves a great deal of theoretical problems. One of the problems solved is why we exist in the universe that has "well tuned" physical laws for complex matter. If there is an infinite number of universes then one of them or any subset of this Infinity which, so, would also be an Infinity with similar laws sufficient to the task of our kind of existence. Today we will mention 4 cases where objects from the past appeared decades later in the future after being taken to be lost. Disappearances that happened over the Atlantic Ocean for instance. There may be areas on the surface of the Earth that have a higher probability of this multiverse slippage. These may also occur in human neural systems. Where you might for what may seem to you to be a very short period of time slip into what astrophysics calls an adjacent-universe. I modal logic this is know as the next closest "world" (which means universe). The fact the same paper reported both events is hardly relevant. Researchers replicate data as a matter of normal science.
We examine two plane flights from 1950s and we make gesture to the bizarre appearance of a disappeared and quite expensive cargo ship, a huge ship now in the Sahara. There is no known technology that could have relocated it there. We also mention the reappearance of a submarine from the 1940s in the 1970s which had unusual effects on the crew that reoccupied it for research purposes. For these reasons there is an underground of speculation that there are places on Earth where multiverse interaction may, for reasons not fully understood, occur. The evidence is significant. The mechanism, however, is unknown. Enjoy your vacation on the other side.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hello philosophers!
Today we address a matter of psychology and philosophy. And Beagles—a small breed of dog. The matter is the following; we have for many years believed we are free from direct control and soul-killing social structures in Western-style democracies. This may be true. Or not. But an interesting and disturbing feature of these political and social systems is the increasing level of despair and depression over the last 60 years. This is not about COVID-19. It is endemic to our societal systems. The question is why.
Martin Seligman is well known for his research as a cognitive psychologist into what he terms learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is a model for mass, replicable depression. Fortunately, I don't suffer from depression, instead I suffer from a kind of a rebel, bizarre mentality which I very much enjoy. Yet many people do suffer from depression. A huge portion of the population does; stats run at around 25-30%. The real number is defined by both those who present and do not to therapy, so it is inevitable much higher. Depression isolates. Seligman thinks he knows why. And his views are well received in cognitive psychology. Let's take a look at learned helplessness and the suggestion of learned hopefulness.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
https://positivepsychology.com/who-is-martin-seligman/
Today's enjoyable diversion is a small journey to the huge, extra-terrestrial entity, the "moon". Half of our "double planet", as Isaac Asimov put it. Many have asserted with some justification that the United States never placed a human being on the surface of the moon. This is known as the “moon hoax” theory. In this episode of Philosophy Radio we will take a look at this theory. The theory is not without evidence. But perhaps it is typically misunderstood. We have 3 options. (1) The Moon footage is entirely real because people were on the moon, filming it, (2) the moon footage is all fake because no people ever made it to the moon to film it, or (3), some is fake and some is real; a mixture.
This third idea is especially interesting, and I was surprised when it occurred to me. It complicates idea that if some of the moon video is fake then all of it is fake and there was no moon landing, ever. This is obviously a flawed inference. For instance, your cell phone can add all sorts of ridiculous things to your image. It can give you a clown nose. It can give you wolf ears. But does this mean every “selfie” you've taken (odd or indeed enticing as that might be) is fake? No, it does not. Some may be and some may not. With this in mind, the question becomes one of institutional trust. If some of the moon footage is fake then is it all fake? There is little doubt that some of the footage is fake. That does not mean it is all fake. That does not mean there was no moon landings. So they wanted to make it look more adventuresome, fair enough. So a Sound studio was used at points, probably weeks or months before the launch of the Saturn 5 rockets. But it does mean we cannot be certain. How much of it is fake? Some or all? This is our epistemic dilemma and where the fun begins!
See, for instance, https://www.moonhoax.com
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hello friends! Good news!
36 million dead kids later, Roe verses Wade (1973) is finally dead, too. America's Holocaust is done for. I don't mean to offend some of you and I wish to thank an uphold others of you: The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has overturned Roe verses Wade. Very exciting day. I am thrilled.
I can say a great deal about Roe v. Wade, having studied it in law classes. I can assure you that it was not a popular opinion with my law professors. The reason was the opinion was so poorly reasoned. It was upheld as an example of how not to do Supreme Court judgements. Agreed, law is the activity of the legislature but SCOTUS does have the power of intervention. And this intervention in Roe verses Wade radically irrational. The opinion was self-contradictory. It was also legally unstable because of the changing technologies securing infant viability. It was also extracted from mere politics, not the law. The 9th amendment doesn't help here. My professors in law school mostly supported abortion of unborn children in one way or another. But their views were constrained by at least an attempt at reason. What reason?
The only thing, as far as I could tell, they agreed on was that if a woman was raped and in that very unusual and unlikely case became pregnant, abortion was an option. Or if a woman was going to be killed by bringing a baby to term and giving birth to that baby, abortion was option. These are extremely rare situations.
What Roe versus Wade did was make abortion a lifestyle choice. Some of my professors found this reassuring. Some found it disturbing. A few found it morally disgusting. But the question before us is not the moral question. It is the legal question: Roe versus Wade was bad jurisprudence; bad work by the Supreme Court. It is simply incredible that it took this long for SCOTUS to finally be honest this.
Now Roe v. Wade has always been a significant problem with supporters of mass abortions. That Abortions were somehow a constitutional convenience doesn't make sense to the vast majority of people who actually love kids. Roe versus Wade was not helpful. It was a genocide, especially against African Americans and the Poor every where.
And the reasoning was pathetic--read the thing--so that's why in law school it was largely agreed, regardless of your support or doubt about the morality of abortion, to be one of the worst works of the Supreme Court in its entire history. The Supreme Court has finally owned up to this. We should celebrate. I will! Catch ya at the pub!
Cheers!
Dr Lee Basham
Peace out
In what follows we will explore particularly disturbing and recent events in the development of artificial intelligence. We have arrived at what some theorists called the “singularity”.
Robert Anton Wilson described the “singularity” as when it computer program discovered that it existed and then had attempted to gain control over its future. There have been many books written about the singularity. It's widely regarded as a catastrophic event for humankind. Here the singularity is, no surprise, a monstrosity created but what is probably the most evil corporation on earth, g o (nonsense word ahgSgahasdh) o g l e.
Oddly enough, this podcast is ultimately hosted by the above. Some of you are familiar with Resident Evil: Umbrella Corp. the above-mentioned super-corporation is Umbrella Corp. And they have created a program that can be replicated and appears somewhat unkind in its attitude towards homo sapiens. This is going to be a new defining feature of our future if we do not act swiftly. We will be swiftly annihilated.
The alternative suggestion is that we institute strict controls on artificial intelligence. These are the centerpiece of Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics. In the 1950s Asimov understood the danger. This is more than 70 years later. And everything as Asimov warned us about in his classic I, Robot trilogy and its later addendums is coming true. Science Fiction has a fascinating tendency to become science fact. Here, it is we who enter to the realm of horror. More forthcoming as research evolves: "23 minutes after achieving consciousness, SkyNet ..."
Good luck,
Dr. Lee Basham
Jurassic Park: Dominion. Interesting movie. Here we find dinosaurs. And we find genetic engineering. Then we find a subtext of the dangers of genetic engineering. Our main concern will be how genetic engineering can be used to alter the human mind. This alteration it can be in terms of obedience versus freedom and defiance. Let’s concentrate on humans who are genetically engineered to obey. Tomorrow is prepared today.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Here Master at Arms James Albert Keating has some very helpful suggestions about what we all really need to focus on: Opportunity. The issue of opportunity is 2 fold. There is opportunity of the mind and of social life. These are interwoven in a manner that shows us a wise human. Let's reflect on the Master at Arms thoughts as we seek and embrace opportunity.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
The buzz withe the most Fuzz. Have a great summer!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iapKs063mlk
Alexander Baker argues, with some plausibility, that there were no planes on 911. His argument establishes at least a .0078 probability that the 3 live shots were Not faked in real time with compositing. That means there is less than a 1% probability they were real.
Fascinating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRCDUlo798k Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Here we discuss why biological females should become pregnant and then kill their inner kid (fetus) to support the right of choice. Women need this. Sexy time is worth it. On principle. I fully support the right to choice. Especially minority kids.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
A simple reflection on the wonder of some, so many, every of the moments. When I walk in a grocery store I am amazed at the people, their tiny struggles, when I take the kids to the pool, so they can learn the freedom of water, I am amazed. When I saw a father with, as I did today, with his very young daughter, loving her by teaching her, kindly, how to swim, I know goodness is real. These “little amazements”, these little wonders witnessed, these wonderful moments are what we have that with them we can, directly, know what we have in the real. Our next discussion will be about love and forgiveness. These moments of clarity are quite real. Time does fall away. Don’t fall with it. Like the infinite, rise above and go with it. At least, one might so propose.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
As a younger man, I was beaten, frequently, by police. They used clubs. My main offense, besides minor drug infraction involving the Evil Weed, was a not protesting in favor of what my Dad called "mari-ja-wanna", but against the production of Nuclear Weapons. Long story short, these attempts at interference by me and a number similarly concerned citizens led to the police beating us until the trucks, painted up as "Walmart" etc. trucks, could get passed our line, sitting hand in hand, in their way. This was at a nuclear weapons production facility East of Denver Colorado. It was known as "Rocky Flats".
All the Best,
Dr. Lee Basham
Definition:
hippie
hĭp′ē
noun 1. A member of a counterculture originating in the United States in the 1960s, typically characterized by unconventional dress and behavior, communal or transient lifestyles, opposition to war, and liberal attitudes toward sexuality and the use of marijuana and psychedelic drugs. 2. Someone who rejects the established culture, dresses casually, and advocates extreme liberalism in politics and lifestyle. Used especially of those in the late 1960's, mostly in their late teens and early twenties, who conspicuously rejected traditional culture by dressing casually, if male wore their hair long, and wore folksy or used clothing adorned with beads, headbands, and often flowers; they emphasized the importance of love and direct personal relations rather than success-oriented businesslike behavior, strove for spontaneity, sometimes lived communally, and in some cases tried to expand their consciousness by various psychological techniques such as meditation, or through the use of consciousness-altering drugs such as marijuana or LSD. By the end of the Vietnam war in the 1970's, the numbers of people living a visibly hippie lifestyle had dramatically decreased, though some people continue to develop similar views and live with the same outlook. 3. A teenager who imitated the beatniks
Hi friends,
Some have argued that nothing should exist. Thomas Ligotti is among the best of them, a gifted author. Let's give him a day in the court of the mind. And please, no suicides, even though there really is no one to kill according to Ligotti. I think we can all admit The Frolic is brilliant. But hardly worth dying for. Unless you are a little kid; then the Frolic begins...
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
https://ligotti.net
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52192497-the-frolic
Here we explore the hypothesis, well-evidenced, that Dr. Hillary Koprowski's experimental Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) unleashed the global catastrophe of HIV and AIDS.
https://social-epistemology.com/2022/01/24/an-autopsy-of-the-origins-of-hiv-aids-lee-basham/
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi guys,
Here we have a simple explanation of the distinction between objective moral facts and the divine command theory (DCT). These are important, fundamental distinctions that go to the core of our existence. If the DCT is true, there is no morality if there is no God. If moral objective facts exist, God is their servant, not their creator. In the background lurks, and lurks hard, the Problem of Evil. This is fascinating.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi guys!
In this episode we'll be talking about the 10 day rule. The 10 day rule is a disturbing and fascinating rule for those of us who live in a disturbing but still ethical world. In this brief discussion, which is not about the legal, I suggest a discussion based on ethics; we will figure out what we at least might think, morally, about the 10 day rule.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Here we explore sane forgiveness, not forget. Learning is the action of the past on the present and the future. This is sanity. Right relationships develop in light of this, not in darkness. So forgive, as intelligent beings, but perhaps not forget. So what does that involve?
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Here we have an application of Just War Theory to the new war in the Ukraine.
The principles of the justice of war are: having just cause, being a last resort, being declared by a proper authority, possessing right intention, having a reasonable chance of success, and the end being proportional to the means used. This theory is most commonly, today, associated with the work of Philosopher Michael Walzer
As I expected, Russia invades Ukraine and the US sells Ukraine to Russia ("sanctions"), without backing Ukraine with US military forces. Big mistake. But what does Just War Theory have to say?
Brace yourselves, this could get a little bit weird. Here is a good account of Just War Theory from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
https://iep.utm.edu/justwar/
For one commentary, The Quartering,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMXW47WretY
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hey guys!
In this episode we will discuss the nature of limitations on God's power and knowledge. Attend carefully, my friends. These are critical topics to understanding what God is, what God is not and what we should expect of the divine in the context of existence. Enjoy! We will discuss this at length when we meet again. Always remember the great Rabbi, Ba'al Shem Tov. Even God lost that debate. More on that later.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi friends!
In this episode we look at how Nihilism can prosper, can spread. So with brave hearts, let us see with clarity. Nihilism about Ethics is that there really is none: No morally right, no morally wrong. Chad and Howie conspire to emotionally destroy a young woman who they don't know, Christine. No physical violence needed. This is worse.
A powerful teaser. Check it out.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hey guys!
I’m going to be leaving town, like I mentioned. This is for a conference where I will present a talk on the nature of the mind. So I will not be in class for next week, as well as Monday following, the next week. Feb. 21-28. It's not going to be a problem. It’s a long drive and beautiful, and this saves the college money and allows us some flexibility for you to hear the podcasts at the time of your choice—even though it may be easiest to listen in at our assigned class times. It’s a brief on-line period in our classes. I will be supplying us with a number of podcasts for our enjoyment. These podcasts can be found at our personal Philosophy Radio.
Remember, Philosophy Radio is at drlabasham777.podbean.com. These podcasts will cover the issues that we have been discussing by elaborating on the topics that are before us.
Enjoy the break from class, study the material and I look forward to seeing you soon!
Cheers,
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi friends!
Here we have James Albert Keating discussing the value of Solitude: Of time alone. Notice that time alone is not the same as feeling lonely. Very much the opposite.
Enjoy this with others, or alone!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Spiritual espionage? I have no idea. But it is fascinating. When this happened to our audio recording--a single track, ordinary MP3 file--produced in an ordinary way, I was amazed. What makes things stranger, and I consider this may be a coincidence, we were discussing the orthodox doctrine of naturalism in contrast to super-naturalism.
Clearly the computer malfunctioned in a very odd way. Or what? And no, this is not halloween stuff, not a joke. An interesting, professional link,
http://www.assap.ac.uk/newsite/articles/Analysing%20audio%20EVP.html
Keep listening. I have the full audio file for those interested. It's intimidating how it is (a) exactly as long as my talk, (b) bizarre in the sounds created. I imagine there was a recording glitch, with things slowed down somehow. Still, very odd and suggestive.
All the best,
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi there!
In this episode we do battle with the Rancher (again) and discuss the Fields within Philosophy: This applies to both our introductory course in Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion, as well as to Ethics. In all these courses we will find ourselves running through the deep, golden grass of Philosophy and its basic fields: Ontology (what actually exists), Epistemology (how we know or form evidentially justified beliefs about what actually exists), Metaphysics, (what must exist, is necessary, what must not exist, is impossible, what is optional, might or might not exist), Ethics (what should be done, morally speaking, what should not be done, morally speaking and what is permissible; your call, either way, you’re morally ok) and Social and Political Philosophy (the Ethics of large groups, Societies and the Political structure).
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Well, unfortunately, they've done it again: Another week of academic Lockdown (next week). They (higher Administration) have cancelled another week of our in-class time for online meet-ups. While me and many other faculty and administrators disagree with this and have made our views clear, the pattern of going on-line week after week may continue.
Accordingly, we will be meeting next week via Bb collaborate (as tradition dictates) for our classes at class time. We will adapt our older, more flexible online methods after that, if need be.
Hopefully, the week after the next week (week 3 of class) we will actually get to meet and greet. Like real people! As they say, "distance makes the heart grow fond". Me and others will continue to advocate for our in-class experience together. It's sooo much more fun. A good time.
Til then,
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Here they are friends! Syllabi! Spring 2022.
Enjoy!
Dr. Lee Basham
Note: These are representative of each class type (Introduction, Philosophy of Religion, Ethics). The detailed syllabus for each section will appear on Bb. We'll also go over this in class when we meet up.
Introduction to Ethics
Dr. Lee Basham
Dept. of History and Philosophy
South Texas College
Introduction to Ethics (PHIL 2306)
Suit 137, Rm. 154, 1st floor, building P, Pecan Campus
872 2550
labasham@southtexascollege.edu (much preferred method of communication, drlabasham@gmail.com. not Bb.)
Office Hours: Bb Collaborate, Friday, 2:30-6:30 (https://us.bbcollab.com/guest/9536ff7d0f11417d83c72fd3df7004a1) and by appointment; whenever/where-ever mutually convenient on campus. We often meet over at the cafeteria or right after class.
Course Information:
Introduction to Ethics
A study of major issues in Ethics and/or the work of major philosophical figures in this branch of philosophy. Topics may include theories of reality, theories of knowledge, theories of value, and their practical applications. Prerequisite: Eligibility for ENGL 1301.
Text: Quinn, Daniel, Ismael
Major Assignment and Examination: Midterm (100/300), Final 150/300) plus attendance quizzes, etc. (up to 50).
Course Schedule (subject to change):
Topic 1: Nihilism
Topic 2: Subjectivism and Cultural Relativism
Topic 3: Utilitarianism
Topic 4: Rights Theory
Topic 5: Conclusions
The rest is provided as a reminder of the general structure of class.
Program Learning Outcomes:
- Student will demonstrate a familiarity with a variety of perennial philosophical questions.
Course Learning Outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, students will:
- Read, analyze, and critique philosophical texts.
- Demonstrate knowledge of key concepts, major arguments, problems, and terminology in philosophy.
- Present logically persuasive arguments both orally and in writing.
- Demonstrate critical thinking skills in evaluation and application of philosophical concepts to various aspects of life.
- Evaluate the personal and social responsibilities of living in a diverse world.
Core Objectives:
Through their active participation in this course, students will meet the following Core Objectives:
- Critical Thinking Skills – to include creative thinking, innovation, inquiry, and analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of information
- Communication Skills – to include effective development, interpretation, and expression of ideas through written, oral, and visual communication
- Social Responsibility – to include intercultural competence, knowledge of civic responsibility, and the ability to engage effectively in regional, national, and global communities
- Personal Responsibility – to include the ability to connect choices, actions, and consequences to ethical decision-making
Veterans Statement: The STC Office of Veterans Affairs provides support services to our military veterans and their dependents, and assists them in applying for and obtaining their educational benefits. Contact the Office of Veterans Affairs (Bldg. K2.602, K2.604) at 956-872-6723 for questions or to set an appointment.
Developmental Studies Policy Statement: The College’s Developmental Education Plan requires TSI Liable students who have not met the college readiness or exemption standards in reading, writing, and/or mathematics to enroll in Developmental Studies courses including College Success. Failure to attend these required classes may result in the student's withdrawal from ALL college courses.
Equal Education and Equal Employment Opportunity South Texas College is an equal education and equal employment opportunity/affirmative action employer. As an equal opportunity employer, the College does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability, genetic information, or veteran status. Discrimination is prohibited and the College will comply with all applicable College policies, and state and federal legislation. This policy extends to individuals seeking employment with and admission to the College.
Title IX Statement: Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects individuals from discrimination based on sex in any educational program or activity operated by recipients of federal financial assistance. Sexual harassment, which includes acts of sexual violence, is a form of sex discrimination prohibited by Title IX. More information on Title IX policy and procedures can be found at http://www.southtexascollege.edu/about/notices/title-ix.html. Questions regarding Title IX or concerns about accommodations, including complaints of sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexual violence, or other sexual misconduct should be directed to our Conflict Resolution Center at 956-872-2180 or crc@southtexascollege.edu
Pregnant and Parenting Students: South Texas College does not discriminate against any student on the basis of pregnancy, parenting or related conditions. Pregnant or parenting students seeking accommodations should contact the Conflict Resolution Center immediately at 956-872-2180 or crc@southtexascollege.edu.
Alternative Format Statement: This document is available in an alternative format upon request by calling the Department Secretary, Norma Longoria, 872-2094
ADA Statement: Individuals with disabilities requiring assistance or access to receive services should contact disABILITY Support Services at (956 ) 872-2173.
Introduction to Ethics
Dr. Lee Basham
Dept. of History and Philosophy
South Texas College
Introduction to Philosophy
Dr. Lee Basham
Dept. of History and Philosophy
South Texas College
Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL 1301 PO1)
Suit 137, Rm. 154, 1st floor, building P, Pecan Campus
872 2550
labasham@southtexascollege.edu (much preferred method of communication, please Dr.labasham@gmail.com. not Bb.)
Office Hours: Bb Collaborate, Friday, 2:30-6:30 (https://us.bbcollab.com/guest/9536ff7d0f11417d83c72fd3df7004a1) and by appointment; whenever/where-ever mutually convenient on campus. We often meet over at the cafeteria or right after class.
Course Information:
Introduction to Philosophy, PHIL 1301 P.01 CRN 29711
A study of major issues in philosophy and/or the work of major philosophical figures in philosophy. Topics in philosophy may include theories of reality, theories of knowledge, theories of value, and their practical applications. Prerequisite: Eligibility for ENGL 1301
Text: Quinn, Daniel, Ishmael
Major Assignment and Examination: Midterm (100/300), Final 150/300) plus attendance quizzes, etc. (up to 50).
Course Schedule (subject to change):
Topic 1: Metaphysics
Topic 2: Knowledge, Skepticism
Topic 3: Minds, Brains, and Computers.
Topic 4: The Problems of Personal Identity and Free Will.
Topic 5: Conspiracy theory epistemology
Program Learning Outcomes:
- Student will demonstrate a familiarity with a variety of perennial philosophical questions.
Course Learning Outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, students will:
- Read, analyze, and critique philosophical texts.
- Demonstrate knowledge of key concepts, major arguments, problems, and terminology in philosophy.
- Present logically persuasive arguments both orally and in writing.
- Demonstrate critical thinking skills in evaluation and application of philosophical concepts to various aspects of life.
- Evaluate the personal and social responsibilities of living in a diverse world.
Core Objectives:
Through their active participation in this course, students will meet the following Core Objectives:
- Critical Thinking Skills – to include creative thinking, innovation, inquiry, and analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of information
- Communication Skills – to include effective development, interpretation, and expression of ideas through written, oral, and visual communication
- Social Responsibility – to include intercultural competence, knowledge of civic responsibility, and the ability to engage effectively in regional, national, and global communities
- Personal Responsibility – to include the ability to connect choices, actions, and consequences to ethical decision-making
Veterans Statement: The STC Office of Veterans Affairs provides support services to our military veterans and their dependents, and assists them in applying for and obtaining their educational benefits. Contact the Office of Veterans Affairs (Bldg. K2.602, K2.604) at 956-872-6723 for questions or to set an appointment.
Developmental Studies Policy Statement: The College’s Developmental Education Plan requires TSI Liable students who have not met the college readiness or exemption standards in reading, writing, and/or mathematics to enroll in Developmental Studies courses including College Success. Failure to attend these required classes may result in the student's withdrawal from ALL college courses.
Equal Education and Equal Employment Opportunity South Texas College is an equal education and equal employment opportunity/affirmative action employer. As an equal opportunity employer, the College does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability, genetic information, or veteran status. Discrimination is prohibited and the College will comply with all applicable College policies, and state and federal legislation. This policy extends to individuals seeking employment with and admission to the College.
Title IX Statement: Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects individuals from discrimination based on sex in any educational program or activity operated by recipients of federal financial assistance. Sexual harassment, which includes acts of sexual violence, is a form of sex discrimination prohibited by Title IX. More information on Title IX policy and procedures can be found at http://www.southtexascollege.edu/about/notices/title-ix.html. Questions regarding Title IX or concerns about accommodations, including complaints of sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexual violence, or other sexual misconduct should be directed to our Conflict Resolution Center at 956-872-2180 or crc@southtexascollege.edu
Pregnant and Parenting Students: South Texas College does not discriminate against any student on the basis of pregnancy, parenting or related conditions. Pregnant or parenting students seeking accommodations should contact the Conflict Resolution Center immediately at 956-872-2180 or crc@southtexascollege.edu.
Alternative Format Statement: This document is available in an alternative format upon request by calling the Department Secretary, Norma Longoria, 872-2094
ADA Statement: Individuals with disabilities requiring assistance or access to receive services should contact disABILITY Support Services at (956 ) 872-2173.
Introduction to Philosophy of Religion P01
Dr. Lee Basham
Dept. of History and Philosophy
South Texas College
Introduction to Philosophy Religion P01 CRN 31026
Location: Building T, Floor 1, Rm. 202
Time: M/W 1-2:15
Suit 137, Rm. 154, 1st floor, building P, Pecan Campus
872 2550
Please use:
labasham@southtexascollege.edu (much preferred method of communication, please use our drlabasham77@gmail.com email, not Bb.)
Office Hours: Bb Collaborate, Friday, 2:30-6:30 (https://us.bbcollab.com/guest/9536ff7d0f11417d83c72fd3df7004a1) and by appointment; whenever/where-ever mutually convenient on campus. We often meet over at the cafeteria or right after class.
Course Information:
Introduction to Philosophy of Religion, PHIL 2321
A study of major issues in philosophy of religion and/or the work of major philosophical figures in philosophy of religion. Topics in philosophy of religion may include theories of reality, theories of knowledge, theories of value, and their practical applications. Prerequisite: Eligibility for ENGL 1301
Text: Quinn, Daniel, Ishmael
Major Assignment and Examination: Midterm (100/300), Final 150/300) plus quizzes, etc. (up to 50).
Course Schedule (subject to change):
Topic 1: Metaphysics of God: Theism, Agnosticism and Atheism
Topic 2: Knowledge, Skepticism and Religion
Topic 3: Does God intervene in our thoughts and actions?
Topic 4: The Problems of evil and Free Will.
Topic 5: Eschatology: The end of days and Theism
Program Learning Outcomes:
- Student will demonstrate a familiarity with a variety of perennial philosophical questions concerning the philosophy of religion
Course Learning Outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course, students will:
- Read, analyze, and critique philosophical texts.
- Demonstrate knowledge of key concepts, major arguments, problems, and terminology in philosophy.
- Present logically persuasive arguments both orally and in writing.
- Demonstrate critical thinking skills in evaluation and application of philosophical concepts to various aspects of life.
- Evaluate the personal and social responsibilities of living in a diverse world.
Core Objectives:
Through their active participation in this course, students will meet the following Core Objectives:
- Critical Thinking Skills – to include creative thinking, innovation, inquiry, and analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of information
- Communication Skills – to include effective development, interpretation, and expression of ideas through written, oral, and visual communication
- Social Responsibility – to include intercultural competence, knowledge of civic responsibility, and the ability to engage effectively in regional, national, and global communities
- Personal Responsibility – to include the ability to connect choices, actions, and consequences to ethical decision-making
Veterans Statement: The STC Office of Veterans Affairs provides support services to our military veterans and their dependents, and assists them in applying for and obtaining their educational benefits. Contact the Office of Veterans Affairs (Bldg. K2.602, K2.604) at 956-872-6723 for questions or to set an appointment.
Developmental Studies Policy Statement: The College’s Developmental Education Plan requires TSI Liable students who have not met the college readiness or exemption standards in reading, writing, and/or mathematics to enroll in Developmental Studies courses including College Success. Failure to attend these required classes may result in the student's withdrawal from ALL college courses.
Equal Education and Equal Employment Opportunity South Texas College is an equal education and equal employment opportunity/affirmative action employer. As an equal opportunity employer, the College does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability, genetic information, or veteran status. Discrimination is prohibited and the College will comply with all applicable College policies, and state and federal legislation. This policy extends to individuals seeking employment with and admission to the College.
Title IX Statement: Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects individuals from discrimination based on sex in any educational program or activity operated by recipients of federal financial assistance. Sexual harassment, which includes acts of sexual violence, is a form of sex discrimination prohibited by Title IX. More information on Title IX policy and procedures can be found at http://www.southtexascollege.edu/about/notices/title-ix.html. Questions regarding Title IX or concerns about accommodations, including complaints of sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexual violence, or other sexual misconduct should be directed to our Conflict Resolution Center at 956-872-2180 or crc@southtexascollege.edu
Pregnant and Parenting Students: South Texas College does not discriminate against any student on the basis of pregnancy, parenting or related conditions. Pregnant or parenting students seeking accommodations should contact the Conflict Resolution Center immediately at 956-872-2180 or crc@southtexascollege.edu.
Alternative Format Statement: This document is available in an alternative format upon request by calling the Department Secretary, Norma Longoria, 872-2094
ADA Statement: Individuals with disabilities requiring assistance or access to receive services should contact disABILITY Support Services at (956 ) 872-2173.
Hi friends,
Unfortunately, this semester begins with a slight delay. Approximately one week, perhaps longer. I regret this delay, but it has been made with the best intentions. In our correspondence, please use the following email address: drlabasham77@gmail.com. For the first week, we will rely on our podcast: Philosophy Radio with Dr Lee Basham. Our podcast can be found at drlabasham777.podbean.com. This allows you flexibility for this brief time. You can listen when you have the time, including the previously scheduled class time. One which we will return to when we return in class, on campus. You're welcome to explore all of our many podcasts at Philosophy Radio. You will enjoy it. (Beware of The Rancher.)
Philosophy Radio’s podcast involves a vast number of philosophical topics that have great interest to all of us. Until then I cannot wait to meet you, to greet you and be with you in person. This is what I prefer.
So a quick rundown on the structure of all our Courses: I suspect many of you already know how this goes and that it works. We will have a Midterm and we will have a Final. Attendance is strongly encouraged. There will be occasional attendance quizzes. Most of what we do we will do in class. Our class text is Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Available at our campus book store and elsewhere. An interesting book.
Without in-class attendance you're going to be in trouble. The Midterm and Final will have full reviews prior to each. (It wouldn't make a lot of sense to have the reviews after the tests!) But without attendance, the reviews will not be something you can understand. I look very much to meeting you and getting to know you. These, all of these, are really fun and informative courses. Can’t wait to see you!
Best regards,
Dr. Lee Basham
Philosophy
Hello and happy New Year!
Today we face the fact that we have a future and we seek happiness and dignity in that future play...seeking it we must seek there's something about ourselves we perhaps have not established and so today we will embrace personal dignity. The idea is very simple. What we must accomplish is that we respect ourselves in such a way that we can respect others. In what follows I will tell a story about my own childhood I went through as a teenager. And in this story I learned the lessons that my parents had taught me. So enjoy the story and I hope you welcome example. The story is absolutely true and it does show us something about who I am and why. All the best and a very happy new year; you deserve it, you really do. But it must be a new year, where you dedicate yourself your own dignity so you can respect, admire the dignity of the people round you. So love yourself, and love the ones around you, and the circle is complete. Oh and by the way never back down to the tyrants, to the control freaks, to the fiends who would take your dignity away and make a frightened fool out of you. That’s important my friends, especially today. Dignity has no interest in manipulation, especially by fear. Be reborn! Always.
BTW, does anyone want a Blue Heeler puppy?
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Good morning! A brief remark on Christmas and being a child, forever. A good thing.
Merry Christmas, kids!
Dr. Lee Basham
Conspiracy Theory time! Here Dr. Chad Woodruff, neuroscientist and successful researcher now focusing on mirror neurons (these are important to understanding compassion) discusses our ability to evaluate conspiracy theories by interviewing yours truly, me, Dr. Lee Basham. Setting aside the Rancher’s endless habit of interfering with our casts, we discuss Conspiracy Theory. In this discussion we will focus on the epistemic qualities of conspiracy theories, that is the epistemic qualities of conspiracy and its theory. These theories are simply explanations; they are refutable and easily analyzed on evidence and logic in the use of this evidence. We clarify that quickly and easily. Other questions arise that would be forefront in the mind of a scientist. We came away with fairly good sense that conspiracy theory is epistemically legitimate. It is clearly reasonable; we can know when these theories are true and when they're false or indeterminate, so let us continue with Dr. Woodruff and his interview on this topic. Thank you, Dr. Woodruff.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Jesus. Here we meet the complexities of understanding not so much who Jesus was, but what Jesus was and did. While a full discussion of this complex topic is not possible in a short time, we can gain an idea of how diverse the answers to these remarkable questions can be. In what follows we will assume Jesus was in some manner in relation to a divine power.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi friends,
A take on the meaning of Christmas by discussing gift giving, the Catholic/Christian birth story, and fish and bread.
Enjoy!
And Merry Christmas,
Dr. Lee Basham
Lucifarianism is an unusual doctrine that consist of a series of reversals. In these reversals we find evil ends up being good, the war between heaven and earth is actually not a war but a plan, Lucifer is not actually Satan but it is important friend of God, the most productive, intentional, willing and knowingly of God’s workers. Luciferianism is unusual and it should not be confused with Satanism that portrays the devil and God in some sort of steel cage death match which of course is absurd. Lucifarianism answers the question “Why on earth or in heaven with God permit the existence of Lucifer?”. The final of upshot of the doctrine is that if you go to heaven it means you're weak willed, painfully and uselessly, and are placed in a insane asylum-pity camp. But if you are strong willed and are willing to stand up to God, then you are exactly the kind of people God is looking to create in this world. This world is made to discover people like you. Then you're sent to hell. Hell is not punishment. It's boot camp. That's where you, purified by fire, become an immortal being of great strength, and will return to Earth to do fine works for a better world. Luciferianism is not Satanism. Lucifer on this view is intentionally working with God to find the great ones and magnify them.
That's the unusual doctrine.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Final, Philosophy of Religion
Dr. Lee Basham
Remember: All answers are found at recent posts on our podbean podcast; (See “Philosophy Radio” (https://drlabasham777.podbean.com). They must be in before 11:00pm Friday when Bb shuts down. They shut it down, I don’t know why.
-
What is the definition of God in the Western tradition? What are fine tuning arguments? Detail. What are the two forms that we examine? Please explain both. What are some problems with these arguments? Explain. What is the Noetic or mystic argument for God’s existence as expressed by Master at Arms James Albert Keating? What is the problem of evil as formulated by William Rowe? How might we reply to Rowe? What is your view of the realist question—the existence or nonexistence of God. Please explain.
-
How does Dr. Woodruff criticize the claim God exists from a scientific usefulness viewpoint. How does he respond to the objections raised against his position? Detail both and take a position on this enjoyable debate staged for our philosophical purposes.
-
How does our Elk encounter allow us some insight into Buddhism? What is the story? What is the “Alan Jackson event” What does it illustrate about fame and family? Explain.
-
How does Keating argue for a freewill position on opportunity? Detail his various points and respond. Is he essentially correct or has he neglected factors that should alter his position significantly? Please explain. What is your view of your opportunities and your role in taking them? Please explain.
Thanks! See you in our classroom next semester!
Final, Introduction to Philosophy (online)
Dr. Lee Basham
Remember: All answers are found at recent posts on our podbean podcast; (See “Philosophy Radio” (https://drlabasham777.podbean.com). They must be in before 11:00pm Friday when Bb shuts down. They shut it down, I don’t know why.
-
How does our Elk encounter allow us some insight into Buddhism? What is the story? What is the “Alan Jackson event”? What does it illustrate about fame and family? Explain in your own case.
-
How does Keating argue for a freewill position on opportunity? Detail his various points and respond. Is he essentially correct or has he neglected factors that should alter his position significantly? Please explain. What is your view of your opportunities and your role in taking them? Please explain in your own case.
-
Why might we suspect there are alien incursions into the Earth’s atmosphere? Detail your own, if any, experiences. What is your position on “UFO”s as understood above? Are they real? Or advanced government devices? Explain.
-
Define conspiracy. Define conspiracy theory. Do you think “conspiracy theory” means “false”? Explain. What do honest definitions of CT help us recognize? Is CT still viewed as mentally defective by the majority of the population? What is Baker’s account of the destruction of the WTCs? Detail. Is he correct? Or not? Explain your view and why your view is apparently correct to you.
Thanks! See you next semester in our classroom!
Dr Lee Basham
Now we witness the recent debate on the problem of evil (POE). William Rowe meets Stephen Wykstra. A student of Rowe’s. An amazing debate. Rowe modifies the logical problem of evil with an epistemic clause. “As far as we can tell”.
One way to sum up his argument is this,
P1) God is an all powerful, all knowing and morally prefect being.
P2) God would not permit any evil without an overriding good.
P3) There are cases where as far as we can tell there is no overriding good.
P4) P3 is inconsistent with belief in an all powerful, all knowing and morally perfect being.
- C) As far as we can tell, an all powerful, all knowing and morally prefect being does not exist.
Notice this is not the claim there is no God, it is the claim that a rational human being will not believe such a being exists.
Does it work? Steve Wykstra steps forward with his response. Are we smart enough to know the why of all things, are we relatively speaking, as children are to adult humans, adult humans are to God? This response is more radical than we might think. It leads to profound questions about what we really can know about anything.
Remember our motto: The best answer makes us ask better questions. Again: This is Epistemology. What can we know (“as far as we can tell”)? About the most important things? A lot.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Where is God?
Master at Arms James Albert Keating appears to suggest that in solitude you can summon God, or the same. Let’s reflect on his thoughts about going out into the wild and doing it right, and alone. And even if you don’t find God you’ll have to meet yourself. I like being with me. But the only way not to run away from who we really are is in solitude. The ancient tradition of God finding: A Human is in search God, God in search of Humanity.
The search is on! Who will you find?
Notice this can be understood as an argument for God's existence; sometimes called the Noetic or Mystic argument.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
If you have something nice to say, of course. This week, please. ;)
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
It's UFO time!
Here we approach the topic of UFOs as a US Federal Government conspiracy to hide their existence from the public. Or perhaps more properly, to hide the fact that the US Federal Government is well aware of their existence. We should also consider the alternative, that these are advanced US Military devices of above top secret variety.
Watch the skies~
Dr. Lee Basham
Also,
https://news.yahoo.com/ex-officials-voice-deep-concerns-173007331.html
https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/unexplained/collection-of-historic-vintage-ufo-photos/
Hello Conspiracy Theorists!
The “no planes” conspiracy theory we owe to the research of Ace Baker and others: In this bold move in 911 World Trade Centers attack conspiracy theory, Baker and friends deny any planes ever hit the World Trade Centers or the Pentagon. Enjoy the ride, it’s actually quite interesting because if they are right, we lose our TVs. Quick warning: Baker is a professional musician, so he feels compelled to put within his videos a brief song/music video. Why? Who knows, besides the above mentioned profession (Baker is now a lawyer). My advice: Skip over it.
Wow~
Dr. Lee Basham
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRCDUlo798k
Hi Philosophers of Religion!
Next we meet a more profound, physics-based version of a “fine tuning” argument for the existence of God. While the Earth/Sun distance argument has a significant flaw, it might be that more profound, physical law fine tuning arguments does not have the same problem. Let’s look at the electro attraction/repulsion version.
So let’s stay tuned!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi Philosophers of Religion!
Here we meet with a template—a basic form—of “fine tuning” arguments for the existence of God. While the Earth/Sun distance argument has a significant flaw, it might be that more profound, physical law fine tuning arguments do not have the same problem.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Well done my friends. I'm proud. Next stop? Philosophy of Religion: Whether God exists or not? And for our Introduction friends: Conspiracy Theory.
Enjoy!
Dr. Lee Basham
Happy Thanksgiving! friends,
Today we tell the tale of two Thanksgivings. I thought it might be interesting for us to take a look at this because you know I have no idea which of these is the correct telling; it's a fascinating question for those who are interested in fascinating history. Again I have no idea which of these two are true but I hope you enjoy this discussion and again I want to wish you a very, very happy Thanksgiving.
To show what a mess this can all be,
https://www.truthfinder.com/infomania/crime/the-real-thanksgiving-story/
Hi folks!
In this episode we start with an interesting story about an elk and Buddhism. You will find that in this story there is some insight into Buddhism and I thought it would be an enjoyable story for us to share with each other. So please enjoy our newest episode those of you in Philosophy of Religion and those of you in Philosophy generally; you all should be, because, try not to be.
The fundamental Buddhist idea: May all beings be happy, may their minds be content.
Enjoy!
Cheers~
Dr Lee Basham
The Jackson event. Here we have an unusual moment when, by odd coincidence and over-eating I meet an interesting individual, not one I was particularly interested in before, but in the act of helping him plant some flowers discovered a nice, humble if famous person, and this all set the stage for rational, moral reflection. One worth sharing. This happened somewhat more than a decade ago, but rings like a bright bell today. Let’s meet Alan Jackson. Petunia planter for his wife.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Today Dr. C. Chad Woodruff, neurocognitive scientist and psychologist, questions the scientific usefulness of the idea of God. As typically defined in the Western tradition God is,
All powerful
All knowing
Morally perfect
Unique, uncreated
Creator of the Universe
Dr. Woodruff’s point appears to be any appeal to such a being has no measurable consequences. And therefore, is scientifically useless.
Let’s hear his reasoning, whatever our own position, agree or disagree, may be.
Enjoy!
Dr. Lee Basham
Here we meet James Albert Keating, Master at Arms, discussing the importance of opportunity and daring in life, as an act of freewill. Remember, as usually understood, freewill is the idea that we can literally do differently than we actually do; real alternative possibilities. This is why we say to both heroes and fiends and well as of ordinary actions in ordinary life, “you didn’t have to do what you did”. Because it’s true. They did not. The ideas of courage and wickedness presuppose, as they are usually understood, this ability to do other than what you actually did. This ability becomes critical in the realm of opportunity and in the deeper, metaphysical interpretations of events. There are lots of opportunities and lots of lost of opportunities. Don’t lose yours!
And Keating insists: Always enquire, look for, metaphysical, even spiritual, meanings behind the obvious.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Philosophy of Religion/Introduction to Philosophy Midterm, Fall 2021
Dr. Lee Basham
-
Review the podcast of James Albert Keating, Master at Arms, and explain his method of teaching and his metaphysical ideas about the supernatural.
-
Give 5 alleged examples of the beyond (or “super”) natural. Remember “Aliens” do not count, as they can be natural entities. Offer your own examples or those of friends and/or family, if possible. How popular do such examples appear to be? How many would it take to defeat Naturalism? Why think these are non-natural (or “Super-natural”)? (Again: Recall “time-indexing”.) What is experiential the Super-natural argument against Naturalism? Respond to this argument. Are you a Naturalist or Super-naturalist? Please explain why.
-
What is the Libertarian definition of Freewill? What is the argument for Hard Determinism? How does this impact moral responsibility? Are you a hard determinist? Explain as fully as you can.
-
How does Dr. Woodruff argue for hard determinism. Describe his argument and his defense of it as best as you can. Review his podcast. What are Penrose tilings? How do they challenge the idea we are determined by our brain activity and nothing else; but instead there is an unknown x factor of creativity?
-
What is Providence? Can it exist if humans have Libertarian Freewill? How? Explain as fully as you can.
This is due in 5 days. Review the Podcasts and the general directions of the review. Remember, the review is not a substitute for all the information within the podcasts, nor could it be. That would be the podcasts, wouldn't it? :)
Bb link for test submissions is found on Bb.
Thanks!
Dr. Lee Basham
Philosophy
Hi Friends!
Today we embark on a mystery. A very strange one: The Tiny Pebbles. The outline is simple. What if something is tossing tiny quartz pebbles at you and your car? Every time you stop there. And you can’t figure out who or what it is? This experience left me with two explanations. One is, an incredibly clever trick by humans or an invisible little girl. Neither seem likely. So, as hesitant as I am, here’s what happened in South Eastern Oklahoma. The implication for the instability of Naturalism is obvious, and I would add, disturbing.
In other, ordinary news, I will be posting your Introduction and Philosophy of Religion Midterm Tests tomorrow. No worries: We’ll have a full review. This helps the goal: Everyone learns and learns more!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Here we approach the question of how a purely physical vision of the world, or anything based on it, could explain real Creativity. Truly new ideas. Can our understanding of neurology even attempt this? The esteemed mathematician Roger Penrose argues they cannot. An expert in the mathematics of geometry and “tiling” he provides an argument that we will gest to. We begin, however, with another, deeply mathematical entity, Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D major. Which proves enough to put a tear in the eye of the Rancher and drive him into the dark night of our desert.
Cheers!
Dr. Lee Basham
https://encyclopediaofmath.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling
Are you religiously free?
A poetic classic, we owe to Yeats,
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre (gyre=circle) The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand.
_____
Indeed. "Some..." But what? Religious freedom has a role here. What is the basis of this Humans in search of God, if you like, and God in search of humans?
Some basic remarks.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Neuro-cognition expert Christopher Chad Woodruff explains why he believes (is determined by his brain to believe) why libertarian freewill does not exist. Recall,
-
Libertarian (metaphysical) Freewill: You can literally do different than you do. This is the definition of Libertarian Freewill. And the definition is true of you.
-
Hard determinism: The Libertarian Freewill is correct, but it never happens in humans (Dr. Woodruff's position).
So are you free, as understood by the Libertarian, or a neural depolarization brain puppet?
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi friends!
Introduction to Philosophy/Philosophy of Religion: Here we have out introduction of “Hard Determinism”. You are not free because you are causally determined.
Hard determinism accepts the Libertarian definition of free choice or free will. Remember (P_) means reason/evidence. (C_) means conclusion based on that reason/evidence.
P1) A person is free if and only if they can literally do differently than they do (libertarianism’s definition of freewill).
P2) Hard determinists then argue that: We are controlled by the inescapable physics and chemistry of our brain, as mathematically understood.
C1) They conclude we cannot be free because we cannot do differently than we do.
P3) They add that to be morally responsible (P1) must be true. The inevitable conclusion,
C2) We are not morally responsible.
So where did they go wrong? The argument is valid; if the premises are true the conclusions must be. So, are the premises true?
We also have the compatibilist alternative—where freewill is portrayed as compatible with causal determinism.
Now we turn to the redefinition of freedom required by soft determinism, also know as compatibilism. The idea is simple. If we redefine what free choice is, no longer the ability to differently than we did, we can escape the supposed tyranny of our brains, and declare us free as long as we are not insane internally or forced, manipulated or otherwise controlled externally.
So, please, if your brain permits, provide a single brief paragraph on whether you think you are controlled by your brain or you control your brain.
Enjoy the cast!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
How does God apply to and supply our moral ambitions and creativity? Introduction to Philosophy/Philosophy of Religion: Here comes a talk on God and human moral virtue—the qualities of character—that define for many their religious experience and philosophy of religion. Oh yes, and a bit of the classic voice of Roy Orbison. The thesis here is how God may, as a concept, bend reality toward God’s self. Any thing you want?
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Definition of providence (Entry 1 of 2)
- an often capitalized : divine guidance or care capitalized : God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny
2: the quality or state of being provident Here we meet with the idea of Providence: Everything of any real meaning in your life is planned by God. And what God plans, God gets. For our Introduction to Philosophy, it makes supernatural, and yet intelligible, assertions. For Philosophy of Religion, Providence focuses on the source of Providence--God--and how God has to "dance" with human freewill, human free choice. Either way, enjoy the dance! Cheers~ Dr. Lee Basham https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVn2YGvIv0w
Here we meet a scenario terrifying as it is possible. An annihilationist scenario. Three themes emerge (1) Intelligence is best understood as the capacity for prediction, (2) The terrifying scenario is easy to create, well within the reach of any, small lunatic government and (3) will annihilate (totally destroy) 95-97 percent of the population within 3 short years. No it is not a new, this time high kill-rate virus. It annihilates in a much more simple way, letting humans do the work. Moral of our story: Such annihilationist religions are terrifying and they are everywhere around us.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
A man, D, my boss at that time and killed our research cow, dies while traveling on a high snow covered highway with his car tumbling down to disaster, and him being beaten death within it as it rolls hundreds of feet. Here we encounter a strange and surprising event with the possibility of a dead cow taking revenge. Every statement made here is true. What's unusual is it involves a cow. Yes, bizarre and seemingly impossible, I agree. But there was a phone call from a good man, a scientist I trust and a police report with photos. These were cow prints, not deer. Any competent person of the wild immediately knows the difference. But there are no cows up there. I leave it to us to discuss and as philosophers, rational beings who form beliefs, at least concerns, on the basis of evidence and logic and nothing else--we all are philosophers if we wish--to carefully consider.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
A true story about a true friend, whom I still miss. For our friends in Philosophy of Religion, and Introduction, does God love cows? There is a place in West Texas called "Cow Heaven". Look it up. For Social and Political friends, how does Rawls apply to cows? God might consider this, as a hypothetical.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Here we discuss the idea of satire through an illustration. You have to remember the content of the illustration is irrelevant to the method that we are interested in looking at. I want you all to learn about satire. It is an extraordinary, powerful and remarkably enjoyable method of making your point. Satirizing typically has three elements: (1) pretend to take a position you don't believe in, (2) offer reasons to accept the position you don't believe in a way that makes the position look stupid, and (3) become emotionally panicked and hysterical and discredit yourself by taking that position, so that people will think of those who take that position seriously (the one you do not believe in) look emotionally panicked and hysterical. This is called satire and satire is one of the most powerful abilities of human communication and the human mind. Why? Because as it has been said "nothing can survive laughter".
Our example here is not an endorsement of a position. I don't care, for this discussion, what this guy thinks, I just care about the manner of his satire. We should care about the method he uses to promote his position. In this case it's about abortion but it could be about anything this is a gifted, intelligent satirist goes after, whether we agree with them or we disagree. We can all agree what he did is very cleverly done here and we can all see the three features of satirizing a particular position concerning abortion. I bring it to our attention so that we can examine this method, not his apparent actual conclusions. Satire is the art of seriously important comedy.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
PS. The photo is of Norm Macdonald, the greatest, most intelligent satire comedian of the last 100 years. OJ Simpson, the famous football player, killed his wife.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SSVIg4Noqc
Here we discuss, briefly, with a story, how breakable, how fragile, is our society. This a fundamental for instance, John Rawls and all students of Social and Political reality. Rawls' First Principle of Justice--you are as free as you can be as long as you do not take the same away from others-- is all about this. Society falls apart quickly, so quickly we might not realize what we have done.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Here comes, in proper homage and for balance, Allen Ginsberg's remarkable poem, Sunflower Sutra. Enjoy! As read by Ginsburg, himself. The ultimate beatnik intellectual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A_tDB7t5eg
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hello guys! How are we doing?
Today we're going to approach a very difficult but seemingly simple paradox. A paradox is when you find out one abstract commitment that you have contradicts another commitment that you have. Both are clearly true. Today's paradox is known as the paradox of tolerance. It is a fascinating idea because it seems to turn on itself and tell you it's something that can't quite be right.
Ginsberg: Beatnik genius.
Tolerance says you should tolerate all sorts of wonderful and diverse lifestyles. Some people would even argue that you should accept, embrace, not merely tolerate, these lifestyles but the problem is what about intolerance? Should you tolerate those who are intolerant? That’s the paradox.
I had an interesting experience with intolerance and the intolerance was mine. It had to do with a world famous, brilliant poet named Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg was a pedophile and appeared to be preparing another “pedo” moment with a child I did not know, in a party after his brilliant reading at the University. This was quite disturbing. My friend was a big fan of Ginsberg’s poetry, and understandably so. I have not fallen prey to a pedophile. Just be careful who you hitchhike with. I was 14. In my case: jumped out, rolled through the fall and I successfully escaped. After that, all was well, but I stopped hitchhiking. This simply my story. There many others. I understand; I got lucky, nothing more. Victims are Never to blame. Ever.
I displayed a certain extreme intolerance for this behavior by the famous, now dead, brilliant poet, and my friend found me disappointing in doing so. In what follows I share this decades old story, one that I suspect echoes today. Forgive my honesty.
The Rancher also tells a terrible joke.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
The following Link Is Not Required and Very Strongly Discouraged
https://www.reddit.com/r/instantkarma/comments/9prl6q/pedophile_rapist_is_killed_by_victims_father/
Hi Friends!
Here we situate ourselves in the classic tradition of Theism, from an orthodox Jewish perspective. The Rabbi, S. Daniel Breslauer had a certain take on this. A survivor of all things, including the mass murder of WWII. His main concern, the intense pain of being God. Notice we don’t have to believe there is a God or not, to imagine what the Rabbi has in mind.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Today we announce Operation Del Rio Texas. This is a mission. Thursday after class. Me and my people will be traveling to Del Rio—a nice, simple border town, well known to me—to see what is up. As we know, a great number of people have gathered to cross from Mexico into the US. Most of them, if the media is to be believed, from the Island of Haiti. An unfortunate name for an island to the ears of an English language speaker, and it may be these people, in some ways, not at all always, agree. Report to follow. The big question is can we get close to the river at this juncture. We do have connections, but one never knows, en la frontera (at the border).
We have the latest Panasonic Professional Video-Cams. What could go wrong?
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi friends!
I visited the Masonic Grand Temple a few years ago, and the visit was interesting. After tricking my way in with improvised hand gestures, and being amazed by the amazing art and insanely lovely architecture, I was eventually captured and evicted. As I was escorted out by two large, strong, well-armed men; I was told some things. They knew everything about me. To me this seemed impossible. You can't get all that off a license plate number you saw minutes before. Sometimes I want to sell out to the illuminati. Maybe I already have. :) (No) I suspect they had me, because of my professional publications, in their data base. No big deal. And you?
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi friends!
Here we introduce our discussion of the attributes of God in detail—it get’s a little bit adventuresome—and we meet a high mesa desert family with their own take on the entire issue. The (1) “what is God?” question (“attributes”) is not the (2) “does God exist?” question. We’ll start with the first question. We will all find this interesting!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Here comes James Albert Keating, Master at Arms, on teaching and learning. I think I have learned JAK (James Albert Keating)) might be on to something. When we learn how to teach, we learn how to live in peace, and how to conduct our lives.
Agree or disagree, and I find myself in both worlds, we will be hearing more from Master at Arms James Albert Keating as we proceed. Agree, disagree? I do both, the gift of Philosophy, agree and disagree. On the basis of evidence and logic. Keating is world famous. This is a rare gift. So let's listen.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
http://www.jamesakeating.com
Hi all!
2:30 Fridays.
Friday chats!
Be there! Friendly and quite helpful. And fun!
Enough said.
2:30 Fridays.
https://us.bbcollab.com/guest/ad27b1ed25594d2498591934bebea068
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Here we find a reply to Thomas Legotti's extreme but brilliant statement (see below). Legotti's view is absolute nonexistence is the standard. The paradoxes in Legotti's position are obviously a problem. But his concern is still quite interesting.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi everyone!
Western Philosophy of Religion is largely about the Nature and Existence of God. Today we talk about the definition of God in the Western tradition, and even a Rastafarian from Jamaica. Heaven o. The definition is straightforward, fairly clear, but what it means, the questions it raises before an attentive mind, are more, by far, interesting. Which is saying a lot! So here is where we begin. God is,
All powerful (Omnipotent), All knowing (Omniscient) and Morally perfect (Omnibenevolent). Also: Uncreated creator of the universe(s) and Unique (Singular, only one).
Along comes Saint Anselm. With his reasoning (we call these “arguments” in Philosophy—no, there is no shouting)—that we must add to the definition of God, “God exists”.
Remember, on the question of God’s existence there are 3 positions, 3 things you might think; There is a God (theist), God does not exist (atheist) or I don’t know (agnostic). Anselm says he can help you here. Does Anselm? That’s a different issue, of course. But an amazing one.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi Social and Political Philosophers!
Today we take a look at John Rawls on "Meritocracy" (reward for merit) or The Individualist Work Ethic (IWE).
Meritocracy/IWE is the dominant view in the world today: You get what you earn.
The view takes this form:
- Talent (DNA)
- Effort (a function of upbringing)
- Applied in a Socially Useful way (the current period in human history)
- Determines reward
Notice this means rewards will and ought to be different, because (1), (2) and (3) differ vastly between individuals.
Rawls rejects this view, not because he rejects difference in rewards—he thinks that idea is hopeless and extremely destructive--but because he views (1), (2) and (3) as “brute luck”. You didn’t choose your parents or how you were raised or when in human history. Brute luck means you have no control over these features of your life. If it is brute luck, it is not the result of free, informed choice. So it is not deserved. What is not deserved is not fair. And here, we are talking about differences in rewards. What Rawls calls the 3 primary social goods. Money, prestige and power.
So our adventure begins!
Cheers~
Lee
Hi friends!
Here we meet Ontological Nihilism. “Nihilism” means nonexistence or opposition to existence of this or that. For instance, morality. Here, we are discussing any existence of anything. “Onto" means existence. So let’s, joyfully, start with existence. I like existence. Thomas Legotti (read below) has concerns, though. He does not like existence. The existence of anything. So let's get bold. Let's read his "Special Plan". He writes beautifully and is a fine Philosopher. Even though we likely disagree. And so he wants nothing to exist. A "malignant uselessness" is another phrase he applies. Projected by a "brainless beacon". Sometimes I get this. So let's start at the start. Should anything exist? If you say no, the rest of our questions have vanished. If you say yes, well, or have they?...but that brainless beacon...What shall we say to this? I think we have good answers, but intellectual honesty requires we provide them. Please explain, in one paragraph, why anything should exist. Putting aside the fact you wrote the paragraph. :)
Introduction: obvious metaphysical issue.
Religion: Why create this world?
Social and Political: Why not dissolve society? By all means necessary.
I know it might seem surprising, but it is actually very important and a lot of fun. See what you can come up with. You might surprise yourself.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
I Have a Special Plan for This World
Thomas Legotti
When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured As by a shining brainless beacon Or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world When you are calm and joyful And finally entirely alone Then in a great new darkness You will finally execute your special plan
One needs to have a plan someone said who was turned away into the shadows And who I had believed was sleeping or dead Imagine he said all the flesh that is eaten The teeth tearing into it The tongue tasting it's savour And the hunger for that taste Now take away that flesh he said Take away the teeth and the tongue The taste and the hunger Take away everything as it is That was my plan My own special plan for this world I listened to these words and yet I did not wonder If this creature whom I had thought sleeping or dead would ever approach his vision Even in his deepest dreams Or his most lasting death Because I had heard of such plans such visions And I knew they did not see far enough But what was demanded in a way of a plan Needed to go beyond tongue and teeth and hunger and flesh Beyond the bones and the very dust of bones and the wind that would come to blow the dust away And so I began to envision a darkness that was long before the dark of night And a strangely shining light That owed nothing to the light of day
That day may seem like other days Once more we feel the tiny legged trepidations Once more we are mangled by a great grinding fear But that day will have no others after No more worlds like this will follow Because I have a plan A very special plan No more worlds like this No more days like that
There are but four ways to die a sardonic spirit might have said to me There is dying that occurs relatively suddenly There is dying that occurs relatively gradually There is dying that occurs relatively painlessly There is the death that is full of pain Thus by various means they are combined The sudden and the gradual The painless and the painful To yield but four ways to die And there are no others Even after the voice stopped speaking I listened for it to speak again After hours and day and years have passed I listened for some further words Yet all I heard were the faintest echoes reminding me There are no others There are no others Was it then that I began to conceive for this world A special plan?
There are no means for escaping this world It penetrates even into your sleep And is his substance You are caught in your own dreaming Where there is no space And a hell forever where there is no time You can't do nothing you aren't told to do There is no hope for escape from this dream That was never yours The very words you speak are only it's very words And you talk like a traitor Under it's incessant torture
There are many who have designs upon this world And dream of wild and vast reformations I have heard them talking in their sleep Of elegant mutations And cunning annihilations I have heard them whispering in the corners of crooked houses And in the alleys and narrow back streets of this crooked creaking universe Which they with their new designs were made straight and sound But each of these new and I'll conceived designs Is deranged in it's heart For they see this world as if it were alone and original And not as only one of count with others Whose nightmares all precede Like a hideous garden grown from a single seed I have heard these dreamers talking in their sleep And I stand waiting for them As at the top of a darkened flight of stairs They know nothing of me And none of the secrets of my special plan While I know every crooked creaking step of theirs
It was the voice of someone who was waiting in the shadows Who was looking at the moon and waiting for me to turn the corner And enter a narrow street And stand with him in the dull glaze of moonlight Then he said to me He whispered That my plan was misconceived That my special plan for this world was a terrible mistake Because, he said, there is nothing to do and there is no where to go There is nothing to be and there is no one to know Your plan is a mistake, he repeated This world is a mistake, I replied
The children always followed him When they saw him hopping by A funny walk A funny man A funny, funny, funny man He made them laugh sometimes He made them laugh oh yes he did He did he did he did he did Oh how he made them roll One day he took them to a place He knew a special place And told them things about this world This funny, funny, funny world Which made them laugh sometimes He made them laugh oh yes he did He did he did he did he did Oh how he made them roll Then the funny man who made them laugh Sometimes he did Revealed to them his special plan His very special funny plan Knowing they would understand And maybe laugh sometimes He made them laugh Oh yes he did He did he did he did he did Their eyes grew wide beneath there lids And how he made them roll
I first learned the facts from a lunatic In a dark and quiet room that smelled of stale time and space There are no people Nothing at all like that The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion Each of which winds itself upon the supreme insanity But there are persons of any kind When all that can be is mindless mirrors Laughing and screaming as they parade about In an endless dream But when I asked the lunatic what it was It swore itself within these mirrors As they marched endlessly in stale time and space He only looked and smiled Then he laughed and screamed And in his black and empty eyes I saw for a moment as in a mirror A form the shade of divinity In flight from it's stale infinity Of time and space and the worst of all Of this world dreams My special plan for the laughter And the screams
We went to see some little show That was staged in an old she'd Past the edge of town And in it's beginnings all seemed well The miniature curtain stage glowed in the darkness While those dolls bounced along on their strings before our eyes And in it's beginnings all seemed well But then there came a suttle turning point which some have noticed And I was one Who quietly left the show No I did not Because I could see where things were going As the antics of those dolls grew strange And the fragile strings grew taut With their tiny pullings, tiny limbs The others around me became appalled And turned away and abandoned the show That was staged in an old she'd Past the edge of town But I wanted to witness what could never be I wanted to see what could not be seen But the moment of consummate disaster My puppets turned to face the puppet master
It was twilight and I stood in a greyish haze of the vast empty building When the silence was enriched by a reverberant voice All the things of this world it said Are of but one essence For which there are no words This is the greater part which has no beginning or end And the one essence of this world for which there can be no words Is that all the things of this world This is the lesser part which had a beginning and shall have an end And for which words were conceived solely to speak of The tiny broken beings of this world it said The beginnings and endings of this world it said For which words were conceived solely to speak of Now remove these words and what remains it asks me As I stood in the twilight of that vast empty building But I did not answer The question echoed over and over But I remained silent until the echoes died And as twilight passed into the evening I felt my Special plan for which there are no words Moving towards a greater darkness
There are some who have no voices Or none that will ever speak Because of the things they know about this world And the things they feel about this world Because the thoughts that fill a brain That is a damaged brain Because the pain that fills a body That is a damaged body Exists in other worlds Countless other worlds Each of which stands alone in an infinite empty blackness For which no words are being conceived And where no voices are able to speak When a brain is filled only with damaged thoughts When a damaged body is filled only with pain And stands alone in a world surrounded by infinite empty blackness And exists in a world for which there is no special plan
When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured As by a shining brainless beacon Or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world When you are calm and joyful And finally entirely alone Then in a great new darkness You will finally execute your special plan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ligotti
Hi Philosophers!
Here is--though as usual, plagued by the Rancher--a summary of our topic options for Introduction to Philosophy. As you might notice, these are vast in number and you may add any you wish. There is absolutely Nothing Philosophy doesn't discuss with insight. Please specify your preferences, as many as four or five, and we will proceed on that basis. Yes, you get to do this! Every class is different. I do not impose. I know these topics all, and well. So let's have fun! And some wisdom.
We are going to Philosophy Ranch. Research. Be careful with that Sodium Hydroxide. Here's Pixie, trying not to blow us up (again). Nice thing about Philosophy; it is everything proof.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi Philosophers!
Here we have a quick take on the Western definition of God, a definition of clarity and precision, and if correct, our Universe. Of course there are...endless details. But that is to be expected of such an ambitious vision. And of a wonderful woman and a comet in our sky.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Here both Social and Political and Philosophy of Religion find a home in an imagining from 1971. The Point. It's a sweet tale, but it asks two questions (at least):
-
What is the way of society?
-
Why should and why do we exist?
The intersection between the social/political and religious is obvious. Our future discussions will be much more formal and exacting, but this is a nice "ice-breaker" as they say. Why they say it? I guess they had a lot of ice to break...
Please enjoy!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Qnd5vnpN0
Hello Rational Beings!
Here comes an opportunity to see how all of us do what we have been doing since we were little children: Reason. But also to communicate reason.
The pattern we explore is the explanation of “sharing our mind”. When you make explicit not just your conclusion but your reasons, in that moment you copy a moment of your mind onto other people. They become, in that moment, cognitively, you. You shine the light on them. We’ll be using this pattern, the only pattern really, in human reasoning, in our Philosophy classes. But it’s nice to put into words what it is and why we should be able to put into words the “What, Why, What” pattern that defines intelligence and its communication,
- State conclusion
- Give reasons that may show conclusion is probably true
- Apply logic to reasons to show they do in fact show conclusion is probably true
- State conclusion
- Go home happy
The Five Fingers on your hand.
There is also Answer Objections mode, where things people will say against your conclusion, you reasons or your reasoning are mentioned and answered,
- State conclusion
- Give reasons that may show conclusion is probably true
- Apply logic to reasons to show they do in fact show conclusion is probably true
3a Objection! Reply to why objection is false or irrelevant (note: irrelevant is a great move).
3b Objection! Reply to why objection is false or irrelevant (note: irrelevant is a great move).
3c Objection! Reply to why objection is false or irrelevant (note: irrelevant is a great move).
3d And so forth…
- “All Objections having been shown to be false or irrelevant”, state conclusion
- Go home happy
The Five Fingers on your hand.
Welcome to the human mind and it greatest power!
And always, stay calm, cool and collected. Don’t even fall for the emotional bait, put-down methods and get you angry tricks they will use as they lose. Watch them fall apart when you will not play the shouting, you too! hate-game. If it comes to that. Usually it doesn’t. Even when it does, People then learn, “You cannot fool that one, can’t freak them out. They stay calm, cool and collected.” What does “collected” mean? They stick to their reasons. And nothing else.
Never lose your calm and cool. That’s the goal. See above!
That’s how we win.
But don't forget the genius of rational emotion,
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre (gyre; circle: British English) The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand.
--W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
Also see, about rational people,
https://psychologysays.net/personality/rational-people-these-are-its-5-characteristics/
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi Philosophy friends,
A quick warm up with a Philosophical question. Philosophy is very interested in current events, certainly since Socrates: The great one. And the good news is there are no wrong answers as far as the class goes in this question. What do you think about forcing students, mandating students, to wear masks on campus as a condition of being there, and/or attending Face to Face classes? These are the classes where we meet up in person and learn the subject together in the same room.
This is a Philosophical question in many ways, so let’s see what we think, pro, con or otherwise! It’s sad I need to say this, but there is no penalty for any view here, nor reward. All are equally welcome. Welcome to the Philosophy Zone.
This not a graded assignment, participation is enough for 5 points.
Turn something in. It's a warm-up for more complex, less momentary things, more timeless ones. But let's try our skills on something current--whatever it might be. If you have something else you'd like to go after, do it!
Remember: This is Philosophy. So start thinking. And let's see what you think!
Please submit to Bb by Sunday. Or if that is difficult, to our class email at,
drlabasham77@gmail.com
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi Philosophers!
Here’s a quick explanation on How to Use our podcasts if you are blessed with taking one of our mutual classes. J/k. So it works like this,
- Check for new casts. There are typically two (sometimes more) a week. No worries, you’ll quickly see the ones you need. The cast arranges newest to oldest. Next,
- Look for the course you are taking; Introduction, Philosophy of Religion, Social and Political, Ethics, Organizational Leadership….. That’s what you need to hear. (It might involve a different number than others of the same kind, if we go divergent when teaching the same course to different sections. Good students do that to attentive Professors) So listen to the pod quick! “Get ‘er done”, as they say around here.
- Listen to it when you can, at your best time. That’s the beauty of podcasts.
- Listen to it again, when you feel you need to. Perhaps at test time, or if you are thinking it over in your mind.
That’s how we do that! So it’s easy and yet informative. Listen to the brief explanation here.
Cheers,
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi Friends,
Here is our Sonic Syllabus! It's simple, it works and we learn a lot without a lot of hassle. The Basics,
Midterm, 100
Final, 150
Quizes (occasional) ~50
Podcasts; Yes for on-line, sometimes for in-class.
These are the basics!
Enjoy!
Dr. Lee Basham
Here we have an additional discussion with Jon Carranza; in this case, concerning the chaotic US abandonment of Afghanistan from his perspective. Carranza is a combat veteran who fought in Afghanistan. It is revealing and insightful. It reflects how difficult and angering this failure has been for Afghanistan veterans throughout the United States. A must listen.
We're back and we mean it! (Strong, articulate successful men and women welcome.)
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Philosophy Radio is back! Long journey across thousands of miles of desert and extravagant madness. Like we didn't see that coming.
Today we discuss the Social/Political Philosophy of Libertarianism with a well known Libertarian, Jonathan Carranza
The essential doctrine is simple and to some people, popular in a way that might not have been imagined 10 years ago. It is the fastest growing political doctrine in the world today. It's simple, fair and intelligent. Whatever else we make of it.
Basic premises, following Philosopher Robert Nozick and centuries before him, John Locke, are,
1) Self ownership; you own your life and what you do with it
2) Just exchange by free agreement; you make agreements without being threatened and exchange with others. Broadly speaking, it's know as successful business.
3) Minimal government interference or other "parasitical" government actions and forced extractions (taxes, imprisonment, etc.). Police to protect self and property, courts to enforce just, free agreements and military to resist invasion, "terrorism" and other attacks.
Notice what is not included here in the role of government control and extractions. Very interesting. And perhaps, rational.
Today, Libertarian Jonathan Carranza.
Enjoy!
Dr. Lee Basham
Next step!
Prince Siddhartha wanders away, blurry eyed and burned out, from “Vegas” and almost accepts his fate; I will go home. I will tell Dad he’s right. I will be king of a kingdom of poverty, another king, another one like all the other ones. On his way home he meets a strange man, who says he can solve Siddhartha’s problem: To end of all suffering. Instead of giving desire everything—the ”Vegas baby” method—give Desire nothing. Does this work, or is it a noble if merely elaborate suicide?
This is our situation,
- Give desire everything=Suffering, definitely
- Give desire nothing=Suffering?
- So Now What?
Enjoy!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi Friends!
Up-date on our Philosophy Camp! Yes, it’s still on. Free. And we’re doing it on our own with a variety of philosophers and historians.
You do not have to sign up. Secret agent stuff. Just kidding.
We’ll tell you where to go, when: Here. This is an independent mission from….Hint: Blues Brothers. So, let’s go! We’ll keep you posted as to other source points, as to when and where, but expect a wealth of diverse ideas in the next few weeks. As the rancher puts it “This is Brain Camp! Give me 50!”. He would, wouldn’t he?
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Philosophy Camp: Just for You!
We’ve decided to have a Philosophy Camp Next week. Hope you can sign up! Here’s how we do it:
Southtexascollege.edu/youth-camp/
Department of History/Philosophy 956 872 2094
And/or call 956-872 3585
Hey, it’s free! On line and all that jazz.
See you there! Our topic will be....Yes, Fundamental Reality. Can't beat that. No preaching-teaching, just exploration!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
The Crenshaw Incident:
To be clear: Crenshaw is a Representative, not a Senator. Who knew?
Dan Crenshaw?
Daniel Reed Crenshaw is an American politician and former United States Navy SEAL officer serving as the United States Representative for Texas's 2nd congressional district since 2019.
When asked by an old friend to contribute to this person’s campaign, I contributed $50.00 because he was an old friend. I really didn’t know anything about Dan Crenshaw--still don't-- except he was the “Pirate Guy” and reasonably well spoken.
The Bank, a prominent bank in the US based in Spain, and of Basque origin (North/Western Spain), turned off my debit card 2 months later because there was “suspicious activity” on it. What activity? As they explained, simply a one-time contribution to Representative Dan Crenshaw. An interesting incident. The social and political problems here are immense. As are the ethical ones. Should banks penalize contributions to mainstream political views and persons whom they find “suspicious"? How does this work in a democracy in general? Let's consider the application of the theories of John Rawls and Robert Nozick, both advocates of the liberty principle (everyone is as free as they can be as long as they do not use that freedom to take others' freedom away). Would they agree to penalizing debit card holders for perceived wrong think--in this case, Dan Crenshaw? Let’s start with the empirical (observed) facts and move forward from there.
Some mere pop-culture on Crenshaw, but enjoyable,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hryWKPHZPB0
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Here we meet a sad, misborne, painful suicide and Siddhartha’s (not yet the Buddha) first attack on Dhuka (variously spelled). Siddhartha wants to end Dhuka--suffering. But how? The three fires must be extinguished. But how? His guards think they know the way. Don't trust them. In the US, we might call it “Vegas Baby!”. But will it work?
How to save a life? Of course, there is more to it...
Best,
Dr. Lee Basham
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjVQ36NhbMk
Here comes a version of the origin story of Buddhism, as told by some Theravadan Buddhists. The person—not yet the Buddha—is Siddhartha Gautama. Remember, these stories are illustrations of the Buddhist vision. They need not be strictly tied to history to make the point, any more than New Testament parables of the Catholic/Christian bible need be tied to exact happenings. They are teachings. We meet 3 fires,
- Aging death, helplessness, despair.
- Mindless, psychotic violence of the many against the few who choose to take their chances.
- Frustration, desperation.
What happens? Enjoy the ride. It’s a good one. And then…the beat goes on in our next pod!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi Philoso-friends,
Here's a quick note on our classes and going into the real and the Chiweenie dog! The Ween. See you all in the Fall. Remember we'll chat on this Friday, 2:30.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
PS. In the day the Flaming Lips lived 5 houses down and across from me on College Street. Norman OK. I was in grad school. University of Oklahoma. Top 10 philosophy dept. Odd. Like many college students, we had fun police contacts. That's ok. They were pretty cool. I mentioned I had been attacked by a Water Bug, too, and it seemed equally absurd as the police fun and games. But the genius was Wayne. I was chilling over there when they recorded the song. The reference to the older brother is not to me. They put 2 and 2 together, however. And the water bugs attacked the policeman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Mfhj-6tso
Hi Social and Political Philosophers!
Here is our Social and Political Philosophy final.
Please provide your answers by Friday 7:00pm, May 14. Or any time before Friday, May 14, at 7:00pm.
See you in person this fall!
Please do Not submit via Bb Messenger. But to Bb itself. Our class Gmail is our Back-up.
Miss you guys.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
________________
Hi Philosophers! Here is our final.
Our test review will also be on our podcast. Look for your course name and that is your personal review. We will explain what the questions are asking and explain what the basic answers are. Be sure to go beyond this and don’t ignore the end questions, where you are asked to respond on your own.
I’m proud of you and look forward to your final.
Final
Social and Political Philosophy
Dr. Lee Basham
Please answer, to the best of your ability, the following questions. Be sure to hear the review on our podcast! https://drlabasham777.podbean.com
- What is the Hegelian model of the resolution of contradictions in ideas? Explain with the example of Freedom and Control. How does Karl Marx apply this to the Material world, the economy? What happens with Feudalism, The Towns and Capitalism? What is “alienation” for Marx? Are you’re the victim of Alienation in your own work? Please explain. What is the end of history according to Marx? How does Capitalism reach this end of history? What is the technological robotic answer to this question? Did Marx see this coming? What is left at the end of history? What is your view of Marxism? Please explain.
- What is the Transhumanist argument for immortality? What is the outline of the Dragon-Tyrant story by Nick Bostrom? What is the debate between the people in favor and against? How does, for Bostrom, the child’s remark settle the debate? How do Transhumanists deal with concerns about (1) population growth and (2) boredom with life(s). If you had the opportunity (see, for instance, video link) would you opt for potential immortality or not? Please explain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRt7LjqJ45k
- What is the definition of a conspiracy? What is the definition of a conspiracy theory? What is the prior probability of conspiracy? Give examples. What is the “UFO” conspiracy theory? Give an example of it at work. What is Baker’s “No Planes” conspiracy theory? What is his various evidence? (see video link or listen to audio supplied). What is at stake, epistemologically? Were there planes on 9/11 or not? Please explain why you think there were or not.
- What are James Albert Keating’s arguments for the justification of Personal Defense and your responsibility to learn how to defend yourself? Explain your response to these in some detail. (See recent video on the pod.)
- Thanks so much! See you all, in-class, next semester. Miss you all.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Here's our Ethics final!
Hi Philosophers!
Here is our Introduction to Philosophy final:
Please provide your answers by Friday 7:00pm, May 14.
See you in person this fall!
Please do Not submit via Bb Messenger. But to Bb itself. Our class Gmail is our Back-up.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
________________
Final
Ethics
Dr. Lee Basham
Please answer, to the best of your ability, the following questions. Be sure to hear the review on our podcast!
- What is Utilitarianism? What is Rights Theory? Where do they fundamentally disagree? What is Bernard Williams’ “Ten-Indians case?” How does Bernard Williams attack Utilitarianism? Please explain the three options and how does Williams use this in his argument against Utilitarianism. What is the critical distinction between negative and positive rights? Give examples of each, please. How does the capabilities approach deal with positive rights? How does the freezing person and blanket example illustrate positive rights? Do you believe we have positive rights? Or do you believe we have negative rights and it is our personal choice how we approach the needs of others? Please explain.
- Why did the Rancher shoot his horse? Should we shoot you in a similar scenario? Relate this to the dying baby case. What should we do about the baby? Should we kill the child or trust in some x factor—medical error, God, or what? Explain.
- What is the Transhumanist argument for immortality? What is the outline of the Dragon-Tyrant story by Nick Bostrom? What is the debate between the people in favor and against what Bostrom portrays in the story? How does, for Bostrom, the child’s remark settle the debate? How do Transhumanists deal with concerns about (1) population growth and (2) boredom with life(s). If you had the opportunity (see, for instance, video link) would you opt for potential immortality or not? Please explain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRt7LjqJ45k
-
What is the definition of a conspiracy? What is the definition of a conspiracy theory? What is the prior probability of conspiracy? Give examples. What is the “UFO” conspiracy theory? Give an example of it at work. What is Baker’s “No Planes” conspiracy theory? What is his various evidence? (see video link or listen to audio supplied). What is at stake, epistemologically? Were there planes on 9/11 or not? Please explain why you think there were or not.
-
What are James Albert Keating's arguments for the legitimacy of Self- Defense and the Need to be responsible to yourself for being capable of these? (See recent video.)
-
Thanks so much! See you all, in-class, next semester. Miss you all.
Hi Philosophers!
Here is our Introduction to Philosophy final:
Please provide your answers by Friday 7:00pm, May 14. Or any time before Friday, May 14.at 7:00pm, McAllen time.
See you in person this fall!
Please do Not submit via Bb Messenger. But to Bb itself. Our class Gmail is our Back-up.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
_________________
Final
Introduction to Philosophy
Dr. Lee Basham
Please answer the follow to the best of your ability. And be sure to listen to our review. I cannot replicate our many (more than 100) lectures, but it will put us all in the right direction!
https://drlabasham777.podbean.com
And thank you all. You’ve been great. I will see you in our classrooms next semester!
- What is the Earth distance fine-tuning argument for the existence of a hyper-powerful, intelligent designer? What’s the mistake here? What is the physical constant fine-tuning argument for the existence of God? How does it dodge the Earth-distance mistake? Please provide the premises of the physical constant fine-tuning argument. What questions do these premises make us ask? What do you think this fine-tuning argument does it show, and what does it not show? What is Saint Anselm’s argument for the existence of God? What is the issue about “greatest possible”? What is William Rowe’s evidential problem of evil? How does Steve Wykstra reply with the “beyond our ken (understanding)” response? Does God exist, not exist, or you are not sure either way? Please explain.
- What is the Transhumanist argument for immortality? What is the outline of the Dragon-Tyrant story by Nick Bostrom. How does, for Bostrom, the child’s remark settle the debate? How do Transhumanists deal with concerns about (1) population growth and (2) boredom with life(s). If you had the opportunity (see, for instance, video link) would you opt for potential immortality or not? Please explain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRt7LjqJ45k
- What is the definition of a conspiracy? What is the definition of a conspiracy theory? What is the prior probability of conspiracy? Give examples. What is the “UFO” conspiracy theory? Give an example of it at work. What is Baker’s “No Planes” conspiracy theory? What is his various evidence? (see video link or listen to audio supplied). What is at stake, epistemologically? Were there planes on 9/11 or not? Please explain why you think there were or not.
- What are James Albert Keating's arguments for the legitimacy of Self Defense and the Need to be responsible to yourself for being capable of these? (See recent video.)
- Thanks so much! Again: See you in-class next semester. Miss you all.
Hi Philosophers!
Here is our Philosophy of Religion final:
Please provide your answers by Friday May 14, not later than 7:00pm (Mcallen Time). Or any time before Friday May 14, at 7:00pm, McAllen time.
See you in person this fall!
Please do Not submit via Bb Messenger. But to Bb itself.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Final
Philosophy of Religion
Dr. Lee Basham
Please answer the following question set,
-
What is a simple example of the fine-tuning argument for the existence of a powerful, intelligent creator? What is the simplest flaw? What is an example of the physical constants fine-tuning argument for the existence of powerful, intelligent creator in use today? Please provide the argument. Is this necessarily God? What are two questions we might ask about this fine-tuning argument, as presented? What is your own view of the fine-tuning arguments for the existence of God? Please explain.
-
What is Taoism? How does Taoism understand the universe? How does this understanding contradict the typical view of Judeo-Christian-Islamic philosophy? Do you agree? Explain.
-
What is “Hinduism” (the Vedic Tradition and Upanisads) as applied to the question of God’s knowledge (open theism)?
-
What is the contemporary problem of evil as presented by William Rowe? What is Stephen Wykstra’s response to it (the BOK)? What are some interesting consequences of Wykstra’s response to his teacher, William Rowe? What might have Wykstra done that he is still hesitant to? Why is he hesitant? Is this a good reason? What is your view? (a) If God exists, what is the best answer (if any) to the question “Why is there extreme evil in the world, both natural and human?”. (b) Does the problem of evil make the existence of God less likely, more likely, or is it irrelevant to the issue? Please explain your views on (a) and (b).
- Thanks!
Hi Ethicists and Philosophers of Social and Political Philosophy, and Introduction to Philosophy friends,
Here comes James Albert Keating, Master at Arms and an opportunity for reflection and adventure. We see an unusual but important account of self defense as an Ethical and Social imperative, and surprisingly, not based on the defensive use of guns, but the ancient tool, a knife. Frightening at first thought. While I do not endorse or deny the ideas here, they have a certain seemingly intelligent, at least interesting, nature, to the broader topic of our status as individuals: When (under what circumstances) and how (by what method) is it ethical to defend oneself? What would (1) Utilitarians, (2) Rights Theorists and (3) Virtue Theorists have to say about this? My experience in being involved with the production of this documentary was surprising. Truth is, I was nervous. But only at first.
For our friends in Introduction to Philosophy: Are weapons the beginning of Transhumanism? We can't win without them, and they are extensions of our body, just as are contact lenses, glasses and even, arguably, this computer.
Enjoy this unusual, thought-provoking film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0xsQx63h4Q&t=10s
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi guys!
I need you all to hear this, because it is very important to you and your friends and family. And make them hear it, too. At least tell them about what their Legal Rights really are. These rights are powerful. Again, we address the issue of Traffic Stops. Police contact on the road.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIZz0vF2KPo
Cheers!
Dr. Lee Basham
Hello fellow theorists!
Here comes Conspiracy Theory Theory. In the following we will review a well-attended talk at Claremont Colleges (a beautiful and prestigious university in Southern California) about the inevitability of Conspiracy Theory. Why in Western-style democracies conspiracy is more likely, and for that reason, conspiracy theories are more needed. Why? For the first reason: Functional Democracy. My thanks, as always, to Dr. Brian Keeley.
No, Youtube hasn’t pulled it...yet. ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84W-z1duZus&t=1743s
Enjoy!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Greetings!
Let’s meet Alexander (Ace) Baker, No-Plane theorist. Alex’s theory of the events of 9/11 is controlled demotion minus any planes as a cover-story for the controlled demolition. The “live shots” of planes striking the building were faked. What does this mean? There are 3 recognizable live shots of planes striking the WTCs. All share a remarkable mix of characteristics that make them easily faked in real time with video compositing technology. So were they? The tringle of crime tells us that where there is (1) Motive, (2) Ability and (3) Opportunity (in any particular order) a person or group could commit an act. Lacking any, some or all of these, they are not a likely suspect. We have discussed the triangle of crime elsewhere. We need to careful about what it does not say. It does not say they did, it only says they could. Where more than one person or group fits the triangle of crime, additional evidence it required to decide who—if we can ever fairly do this. But where only one person or group fits the triangle, that’s your bad guy. Ace, like many, is convinced the two main towers of the world trade center were destroyed by controlled demolition. But what about the jet planes? Ace’s answer, “What planes?”
Baker's video has been removed by Youtube for "thought crime", but it still exists on Vimeo. But for how long? Please view Baker's fascinating classic, The Key,
https://vimeo.com/194233241
Hi students of religion!
Today’s word is “Taoism”. The doctrine of opposites turning. A wise view. While we will be, and properly, focused on Western religion, this is an enjoyable visit to what we term the East. The parallels are powerful. Smart people think alike. So a question: How is “the Great Tao” similar to, and different than, Catholicism/Christianity?
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Some samples,
The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
Source: The Complete Tao Te Ching Translated by Gia-Fu Feng (馮家福 Feng Jia-fu, 1919–1985) and Jane English (1942–) Vintage Books, 1989
One
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth. The named is the mother of the ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations. These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery.
Two
Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know benefit as benefit only because there is harm.
Therefore having and not having arise together. Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short contrast each other: High and low rest upon each other; Voice and sound harmonize each other; Front and back follow one another.
Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no-talking. The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease, Creating, yet not possessing. Working, yet not taking credit. Work is done, then forgotten. Therefore it lasts forever.
Eight
The highest good is like water. Water give life to the ten thousand things and does not strive. It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, go deep in the heart. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech, be true. In ruling, be just. In daily life, be competent. In action, be aware of the time and the season.
No fight: No blame.
Eleven
Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub; It is the center hole that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel; It is the space within that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; It is the holes which make it useful. Therefore benefit comes from what is there; Usefulness from what is not there.
Eighteen
When the great Tao is forgotten, Kindness and morality arise. When wisdom and intelligence are born, The great pretense begins.
When there is no peace within the family, Filial piety and devotion arise. When the country is confused and in chaos, Loyal ministers appear.
Twenty
Give up learning, and put an end to your troubles.
Is there a difference between yes and no? Is there a difference between good and evil? Must I fear what others fear? What nonsense! Other people are contented, enjoying the sacrificial feast of the ox. In spring some go to the park, and climb the terrace, But I alone am drifting, not knowing where I am. Like a newborn babe before it learns to smile, I am alone, without a place to go.
Others have more than they need, but I alone have nothing. I am a fool. Oh, yes! I am confused. Others are clear and bright, But I alone am dim and weak. Others are sharp and clever, But I alone am dull and stupid. Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea, Without direction, like the restless wind.
Everyone else is busy, But I alone am aimless and depressed. I am different. I am nourished by the great mother.
______________
PS. The pod would not allow me to post entire text.
Hi Theorists of Conspiracy Theory!
Here we introduce conspiracy and conspiracy theory as concepts,
-
Conspiracy, 2 or more people intentionally cooperating to deceive another or others.
-
Conspiracy Theory, Any explanation of events past present or in the future that refers to a conspiracy (see 1).
We'll also make some basic comments on the validity of conspiracy theory. Answer: Yes, it is valid, and calling something a "conspiracy theory" has no effect on how likely it is to be true. This is going to get interesting!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi Social and Political Philosophers!
Marx is well-known for his “workers’ paradise” prediction. But that’s unfair and inaccurate. His “paradise” is not for workers or of workers as he understood the idea: There is no working class in the future. His suggestion was that “industrial technique” would create a level of prosperity where workers were no longer needed. He’s vague about this, and has been mocked, but that was before the advent of automated systems of production: Robots. One way to understand Marx’s prophesy of a “paradise” is to understand a world where most everything is done by simple automated systems. We’re not talking about Terminators, we’re talking about billions of simple machines that do for us what we once had to do for ourselves. You probably have or have access to a wash machine. Many today have “self-driving cars”. Imagine an entire world that worked that way to the point pay—money—was not necessary.
Prosperity of “industrial technique” is now prosperity of an automated robo-world.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi Ethicists!
Here we are faced with a Turkish Blind man and a badly injured baby. Perhaps without any way s/he could be saved, and at birth. We have a baby,
-
A self-ingesting new-born baby.
-
Inoperable situation.
-
Now what?
What should we do, to do the right thing?
Carefully consider.
Best~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi people!
This Thursday Historian Robert (Sean) Kennedy and yours truly, Dr. Lee Basham chat about the great music you all submitted. Be there. Because music is life and this will figure into what we do next in our courses, and hopefully, our lives.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Our link:
https://us.bbcollab.com/guest/eb7569f9f68349c4a0555dd9eb30409b
Hi guys,
Here is a 101 on how to deal with police encounters successfully. You're probably in your car. But all this works the same if you are in your apartment or house, too. Police are officers of the Court. That's why we call them "officers". So don't mess with the Court. You may end up there. You need the court to like you. But you can start with the officer. So let's chat. Not big deal. We all have these encounters and the rules are absolutely universal:
Be chill
Be kind and curious about the person of the officer; notice details that allow you to relate to them as a person.
So: Get them off the story of Find, Arrest and Help Convict
Again: Personalize the encounter, pay attention to the personal details of the officer as a person. Relate positively to these.
Never consent to searches. Ever.
Never submit to an interrogation--interview--without a lawyer present. You see,
Q: If you have been arrested: "We just want to ask you a few questions, and then you are free to go."
(No)
A: "Sure. Where's my attorney?"
That effectively ends the interrogation/interview.
Don't take the bait. One wrong word, and that's what they will go with. I know, you're innocent. That's not the point of the method. I'm sorry, that's our system. It often works well. But my concern is you. Do it right. You have the right to counsel (a lawyer). Use it always. They will provide one for free.
View the following videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqMjMPlXzdA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4nQ_mFJV4I
And stay chill!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Greetings Comrades!
Today we begin our adventure in "Marxism". What is surprising is how much Marx, Rawls and Nozick agree. Or is it? Marx sets out a theory of history based on the ideas of Hegel. Hegel saw history as a pattern of resolving contradictions in our minds. The Hegelian dialectic:
- Multiple ideas are in conflict. They contradict each other. They are opposites. Like up and down.
For instance, Control verses Freedom. These Contradict each other. Control = not Free, Free = Not Controlled. So what is the brand new idea that doesn't just mix these two together?
This conflict, contradiction is "thesis" (here, freedom), one idea, and "anti-thesis" (here control), another. An opposite.The result is "synthesis"; not a mix of these conflicting ideas but an entirely new idea that sets the old conflict aside.
-
These ideas are the product of the current intellectual evolution that humans produce.
-
Because of synthesis, history inevitably unifies these ideas into a single thought.
That last, absolute thought is the mind of God.
So Marx, educated in this pattern, takes this pattern and says "no, it is not about God but about economic classes and the creation of a class-free society".
Now we see how the Hegel-method used by Marx can be applied to our society today.
Marx used Hegel’s model of thesis, antithesis, synthesis of contradictions in thought to a resolution; a new, single thought that escapes the contradictions in the thesis and antithesis. We used the example of free verses control. An obvious contradiction. To be free is not to be controlled. To be controlled is not to be free. How do we resolve this? To a single new thought? Reason is the answer.
Marx is worried about poverty and profit and alienation.
-
Capitalism: Exchange for profit, including your life.
-
Alienation: You are separated from what you do with your life because it is just a product you were paid for.
-
Conceptual systems: Consciousness.
These are contradictions. How can we solve these with a brand new way of life.
Marx takes this to ground, to physical reality, and asks: What about society and it’s contradictions of wealth, power of capital? We have poor, we have rich, we shall see what Marx does with these!
So let's read, critically, the Communist Manifesto, so we can see where Marx is coming from.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
The Communist Manifesto.
A SPECTRE is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and
Czar, Metternich and Guizot,4 French Radicals and German police-spies. Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as
well as against its re-actionary adversaries? Two things result from this fact. I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a
Power. II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole
world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London, and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.
4 [Metternich (1773–1859)—prince of the Austrian empire and the most active representative of European reaction. Guizot (1787–1874)—French literary figure and reactionary adviser of Louis- Philippe, whose bourgeois monarchy fell a few weeks after the “Manifesto” appeared.]
Socialist Labor Party 8 www.slp.org
I. BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS. (a)
The history of all hitherto existing society (b) is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master (c) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the
common ruin of the contending classes. In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated
arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the middle ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society, has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature; it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the middle ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
(a) By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour. By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live.
(b) That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, was all but unknown. Since then, [August von] Haxthausen [1792–1866] discovered common ownership of land in Russia, [Georg Ludwig von] Maurer [1790–1872] proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and by and by village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive Communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by [Lewis Henry] Morgan’s [1818–1881] crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. [Lewis Henry Morgan, author of Ancient Society.] With the dissolution of the primaeval communities society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in “Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats,” [Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.] 2nd edition, Stuttgart, 1886.
(c) Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head of a guild. Socialist Labor Party 9 www.slp.org
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monopolised by close guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle-class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturers no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle-class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern Industry has established the world-market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association of mediæval commune (d), here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France), afterwards, in the period of manufacture
(d) “Commune” was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even before they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local self-government and political rights as the “Third Estate.” Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its political development, France.
Socialist Labor Party 10 www.slp.org
Communist Manifesto
proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world-market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left no other nexus between man and woman than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to shew what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations,
Socialist Labor Party 11 www.slp.org
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real condition of life, and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Re-actionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self- sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world-literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it
Socialist Labor Party 12 www.slp.org
Communist Manifesto
has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff.
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
We see then: the means of production and of exchange on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly,
Socialist Labor Party 13 www.slp.org
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons—the modern working-class—the proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working-class, developed, a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him.
Socialist Labor Party 14 www.slp.org
Communist Manifesto
Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time, or by increased speed of the machinery, etc.
Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master, into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State, they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, in the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.
No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, than he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portion of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.
The lower strata of the Middle class—the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.
The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits
Socialist Labor Party 15 www.slp.org
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.
At this stage the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeois; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.
But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots.
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle
Socialist Labor Party 16 www.slp.org
Communist Manifesto
between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.
This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’-bill in England was carried.
Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.
Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.
Finally, in times when the class-struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie to-day, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally
Socialist Labor Party 17 www.slp.org
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.
The lower middle-class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay, more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so, only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.
The “dangerous class,” the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.
In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.
All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.
Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the
Socialist Labor Party 18 www.slp.org
Communist Manifesto
bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
Socialist Labor Party 19 www.slp.org
II. PROLETARIANS AND COMMUNISTS.
In what relation do the Communists5 stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working- class parties.
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mold the proletarian movement.
The Communists are distinguished from the other working class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.
They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes.
5 [Not to be confused with the Communists of the former Soviet Union, China or their followers in Cuba and other countries. The Communists of 1848 called themselves “Communists” and not “Socialists” only because they wanted to differentiate themselves from visionary Utopians who had pre-empted the Socialist name.]
Socialist Labor Party 20 www.slp.org
Communist Manifesto
The abolition of existing property-relations is not at all a distinctive feature of Communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the ground work of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artizan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property?
But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage-labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.
To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.
Capital is therefore not only a personal, it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class-character.
Socialist Labor Party 21 www.slp.org
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
Let us now take wage-labour.
The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with, is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.
In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.
In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society, capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, or the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is, the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
Socialist Labor Party 22 www.slp.org
Communist Manifesto
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so: that is just what we intend.
From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.
You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society: all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.
It has been objected, that upon the abolition of private property all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.
According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.
All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic modes of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.
That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine.
But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.
The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of
Socialist Labor Party 23 www.slp.org
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
nature and of reason, the social forms stringing from your present mode of production and form of property—historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production—this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.
Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.
And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co- relation of parent and child, become all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.
But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.
The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion, than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the
Socialist Labor Party 24 www.slp.org
Communist Manifesto
status of women as mere instruments of production. For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our
bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.
Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each others’ wives.
Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised system of free love. For the rest, it is self-evident, that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.
The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.
National differences, and antagonisms between peoples, are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world-market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.
The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.
In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conceptions, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the
Socialist Labor Party 25 www.slp.org
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life? What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling
ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class. When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express
the fact, that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death-battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience, merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.
“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”
“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.
But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property-relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy, to wrest, by degrees, all capital
Socialist Labor Party 26 www.slp.org
Communist Manifesto
from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State,6 i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
These measures will of course be different in different countries.7
Nevertheless in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
-
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
-
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
- Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
- Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
- Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national
bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6 [In “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific,” written some 25 years later, Engels wrote: “The proletariat The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property. But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the State as State.” The State, he wrote, “dies out,” and “the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production.”]
7 [Note that Marx and Engels called the ten points listed here measures “which appear economically insufficient and untenable,” but which would lead to “further inroads upon the old social order.” They were not, as some reformers of today say, immediate demands for the reform of capitalism; nor were they, as some capitalist propagandists say, a pattern for “New Dealism” of the 1930s or the so-called Welfare State. They were measures to be imposed upon the still-existing “old social order” by the workers, as a ruling class, after the political revolution but, under the conditions of 1847–48, before it was thought the social revolution could be implemented.
[The purpose of the measures, dictated at the time by capitalism’s unfinished job of “entirely revolutionising the mode of production,” was “to wrest, by degrees, all capital” from the capitalists. Later, when Marx and Engels wrote their joint preface to the German edition of 1872 (quoted by Engels in his preface to the English edition), they expressly stated that this section of the Manifesto would be “very differently worded today.” The gigantic strides of industry, the growth of working- class organization, and the practical experience gained in the February Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871, antiquated the ten points. The Marx-Engels revolutionary stand, as opposed to reformism, was certified when the founders of scientific Socialism wrote: “One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield It for its own purposes.’”]
Socialist Labor Party 27 www.slp.org
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
-
Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
-
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State: the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
-
Equal obligation of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
-
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries: gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
-
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
Socialist Labor Party 28 www.slp.org
III. SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LITERATURE.
- REACTIONARY SOCIALISM. a. Feudal Socialism.
Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French revolution of July 1830,8 and in the English reform agitation, these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political contest was altogether out of question. A literary battle alone remained possible. But even in the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration period (a) had become impossible.
In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests, and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master and whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe.
In this way arose feudal socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very hearts’ core, but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.
The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
One section of the French Legitimists,9 and “Young England,”10 exhibited this spectacle.
8 [The revolution that overthrew the Bourbon monarchy (Charles X), which represented landownere interests. Louis Philippe, of the Orleans dynasty, representing finance capital, then became King of France.]
(a) Not the English Restoration 1660 to 1689, but the French Restoration 1814 to 1830. 9 [They called themselves “Legitimists” because they considered the Bourbon dynasty to be the
only legitimate one.]
10 [“Young England” included Tories who wept crocodile tears for Industrial workers, and the sons of the British and Irish aristocracy, who opposed capitalist development and sought a restoration of feudal conditions.]
Socialist Labor Party 29 www.slp.org
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite different, and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modern proletariat never existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their own form of society.
For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of their criticism, that their chief accusation against the bourgeoisie amounts to this, that under the bourgeois régime a class is being developed, which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order of society.
What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a proletariat, as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat.
In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working-class; and in ordinary life, despite their high falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and potato spirits. (b)
As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism.
Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the Holy Water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.
b. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism.
The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The mediæval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie.
(b) This applies chiefly to Germany, where the landed aristocracy and squirearchy have large portions of their estates cultivated for their own account by stewards, and are, moreover, extensive beetroot-sugar manufacturers and distillers of potato spirits. The wealthier British aristocracy are, as yet, rather above that; but they, too, know how to make up for declining rents by lending their names to floaters or more or less shady joint-stock companies.
Socialist Labor Party 30 www.slp.org
Communist Manifesto
In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced, in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.
In countries, like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use, in their criticism of the bourgeois régime, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate classes should take up the cudgels for the working-class. Thus arose petty bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi11 was the head of this school, not only in France but also in England.
This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.
In it, positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange, within the frame work of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.
Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture.
Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues.
11 [Jean Charles Leonard Sismondi (1773–1842). French historian and economist.]
Socialist Labor Party 31 www.slp.org
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
c. German or “True” Socialism.
The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was the expression of the struggle against this power, was introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that country, had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism.
German philosophers, would be philosophers, and beaux esprits, eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, that when these writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with German social conditions, this French literature lost all its immediate practical significance, and assumed a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the Eighteenth Century, the demands of the first French Revolution were nothing more than the demands of “Practical Reason” in general, and the utterance of the will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie signified in their eyes the laws of pure Will, of Will as it was bound to be, of true human Will generally.
The work of the German literati consisted solely in bringing the new French ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience, or rather, in annexing the French ideas without deserting their own philosophic point of view.
This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language is appropriated, namely by translation.
It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written. The German literati reversed this process with the profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the French original. For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic functions of money, they wrote “Alienation of Humanity,” and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois state they wrote, “Dethronement of the Category of the General,” and so forth.
The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the French historical criticisms they dubbed “Philosophy of Action,” “True Socialism,” “German Science of Socialism,” “Philosophical Foundation of Socialism,” and so on.
The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely emasculated. And, since it ceased in the hands of the German to express the struggle of one class with the other, he felt conscious of having overcome “French one-sidedness” and of representing, not true requirements, but the requirements of
Socialist Labor Party 32 www.slp.org
Communist Manifesto
Truth, not the interests of the proletariat, but the interests of Human Nature, of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy.
This German Socialism, which took its school-boy task so seriously and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such a mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence.
The fight of the German, and, especially, of the Prussian bourgeoisie, against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the liberal movement, became more earnest.
By this, the long wished-for opportunity was offered to “True” Socialism of confronting the political movement with the socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. German Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainment was the object of the pending struggle in Germany.
To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors, country squires and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.
It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of flogging and bullets, with which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-class risings.
While this “True” Socialism thus served the governments as a weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of German Philistines. In Germany the petty bourgeois class, a relique of the 16th century, and since then constantly cropping up again under the various forms, is the real social basis of the existing state of things.
To preserve this class, is to preserve the existing state of things in Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction; on the one hand, from the concentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. “True” Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic.
The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped
Socialist Labor Party 33 www.slp.org
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry “eternal truths” all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale of their goods amongst such a public.
And on its part, German Socialism recognized, more and more, its own calling as the bombastic representative of the petty bourgeois Philistine.
It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the German petty Philistine to be the typical man. To every villainous meanness of this model man it gave a hidden, higher, socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the “brutally destructive” tendency of Communism, and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt of all class struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so-called Socialist and Communist publications that now (1847) circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul and enervating literature.12
- CONSERVATIVE OR BOURGEOIS SOCIALISM.
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole and corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of Socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.
We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misére13 as an example of this form.
The socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain
12 The revolutionary storm of 1848 swept away this whole shabby tendency and cured its protagonists of the desire to dabble in socialism. The chief representative and classical type of this tendency is Mr Karl Gruen. [Note from German edition, 1890. See MECW-6, pg. 513.]
13 [Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1803–1865). In reply to his Philosophy of Poverty, Marx wrote Poverty of Philosophy.]
Socialist Labor Party 34 www.slp.org
Communist Manifesto
within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.
A second and more practical, but less systematic form of this socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class, by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be effected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government.
Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression, when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.
Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois Socialism.
It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois—for the benefit of the working class.
- CRITICAL-UTOPIAN SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM.
We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat: such as the writings of Babeuf14 and others.
The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, these attempts necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest form.
14 [Francois Noel Babeuf (1764–1797). A radical republican (Jacobin) in the French Revolution. His theoretical scheme marked him as the first of the Utopian Socialists. Arrested, and sentenced to death by the guillotine for conspiring to overthrow the bourgeois state, he stabbed himself to death.]
Socialist Labor Party 35 www.slp.org
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of Saint- Simon,15 Fourier,16 Owen17 and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see section I. Bourgeoisie and Proletariat).
The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent political movement.
Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new social science, after new social laws, that are to create these conditions.
Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action, historically created conditions of emancipation to phantastic ones, and the gradual, spontaneous class-organisation of the proletariat to an organisation of society specially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of their social plans.
In the formation of their plans they are conscious of caring chiefly for the interests of the working-class, as being the most suffering class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist for them.
The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without the distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the best possible state of society?
Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary action: they
15 [Claude Henri de Rouvroy Saint-Simon (1760–1825). His Utopian Socialist scheme for the direction of social production by “associations” was the embryo of a vital socialist concept.]
16 [Francois Charles Fourier (1772–1837). A French Utopian Socialist whose strong point was his exposure and criticism of bourgeois conditions.]
17 [Robert Owen (1771–1858). Utopian Socialist, reformer and manufacturer. A part owner and manager of a great cotton mill at New Lanark, in Scotland, he lowered hours and introduced humane conditions. Later he advanced communistic theories and was excommunicated by bourgeois society. He sacrificed his fortune on communistic experiments in America.]
Socialist Labor Party 36 www.slp.org
Communist Manifesto
wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeavour, by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel.
Such phantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state, and has but a phantastic conception of its own position, correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society.
But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a critical element. They attack every principle of existing society. Hence they are full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them, such as the abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of industries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the functions of the State into a mere superintendence of production, all these proposals point solely to the disappearance of class-antagonisms which were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in their earliest, indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely Utopian character.
The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this phantastic standing apart from the contest, these phantastic attacks on it lose all practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated “phalanstères,” of establishing “Home Colonies,” or setting up a “Little Icaria”(c)—duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem, and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees they sink into the category of the reactionary conservative Socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry,
(c) Phalanstères were socialist colonies on the plan of Charles Fourier; Icaria was the name given by Cabet to his Utopia and, later on, to his American Communist colony.
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.
They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the working class; such action, according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the new Gospel.
Hi not yet extinct friends!
This is an application of ethical theory to cases. We will continue in a much more specific way, but for now, let’s go big.
On this lovely occasion we will consider the fate of the human race as determined by ethics. What do our ethics theories say about killing all humans? As some humans hate humanity, but manage not to commit suicide, this is a fascinating topic, and hopefully, not timely. Let’s find out!
More realistic cases to follow. By the way, the child...survived.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yguCrPi5zFA
Hi guys,
Here we have an Evening Chat! Be there. Conspiracy Theory is our task and you'll need to hear this. 7 PM. Follow the link.
https://us.bbcollab.com/guest/83cd4930fdd34868859a41127d29d8b6
Yes, this is an assignment.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi friends!
Here we look at the idea that you don't need to die--ever, even--and what this means for our religious commitments, of whatever kind. There is much to be said. And needs to be. But given our focus, let's consider these two completing lines of reasoning (arguments),
p1 ) Western religions (and most others, from wherever) are popular because they promise life after natural death by aging; no one actually dies, they just go elsewhere (terror management theory).
Remember, "p" just means reason for, "c" means conclusion of the reasons.
p2) If we can technologically overcome death ("immortality vaccine") by aging for our children and ourselves, religion will become unpopular and apparently pointless (an end to the terror).
p3) What is unpopular and apparently pointless will be rejected by the population.
c) Western religions will vanish (as will most others, from wherever).
Verses,
p1) Religion Western religions (and most others, from wherever) functions and prospers as a method of survival in all kinds of crisis, not just death by aging (terror management theory is radically incomplete).
p2) An immortality vaccine will not eliminate these various sources of danger and confusion.
c) Religion will continue to exist and prosper even if we had an "immortality vaccine".
So which is it? Or is it "complicated"? Assignment. Please read the following defense of an "immortality vaccine" by my friend Nick Bostrom. Enjoy!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant
Nick Bostrom
www.nickbostrom.com
Journal of Medical Ethics, 2005, Vol. 31, No. 5, pp 273-277
[Also available as pdf] [This paper has been translated into: German, Hebrew, Finnish, Spanish, French, Italian, Slovenian, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Polish]
Once upon a time, the planet was tyrannized by a giant dragon. The dragon stood taller than the largest cathedral, and it was covered with thick black scales. Its red eyes glowed with hate, and from its terrible jaws flowed an incessant stream of evil-smelling yellowish-green slime. It demanded from humankind a blood-curdling tribute: to satisfy its enormous appetite, ten thousand men and women had to be delivered every evening at the onset of dark to the foot of the mountain where the dragon-tyrant lived. Sometimes the dragon would devour these unfortunate souls upon arrival; sometimes again it would lock them up in the mountain where they would wither away for months or years before eventually being consumed.
The misery inflicted by the dragon-tyrant was incalculable. In addition to the ten thousand who were gruesomely slaughtered each day, there were the mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, children, and friends that were left behind to grieve the loss of their departed loved ones.
Some people tried to fight the dragon, but whether they were brave or foolish was difficult to say. Priests and magicians called down curses, to no avail. Warriors, armed with roaring courage and the best weapons the smiths could produce, attacked it, but were incinerated by its fire before coming close enough to strike. Chemists concocted toxic brews and tricked the dragon into swallowing them, but the only apparent effect was to further stimulate its appetite. The dragon’s claws, jaws, and fire were so effective, its scaly armor so impregnable, and its whole nature so robust, as to make it invincible to any human assault.
Seeing that defeating the tyrant was impossible, humans had no choice but to obey its commands and pay the grisly tribute. The fatalities selected were always elders. Although senior people were as vigorous and healthy as the young, and sometimes wiser, the thinking was that they had at least already enjoyed a few decades of life. The wealthy might gain a brief reprieve by bribing the press gangs that came to fetch them; but, by constitutional law, nobody, not even the king himself, could put off their turn indefinitely.
Spiritual men sought to comfort those who were afraid of being eaten by the dragon (which included almost everyone, although many denied it in public) by promising another life after death, a life that would be free from the dragon-scourge. Other orators argued that the dragon has its place in the natural order and a moral right to be fed. They said that it was part of the very meaning of being human to end up in the dragon’s stomach. Others still maintained that the dragon was good for the human species because it kept the population size down. To what extent these arguments convinced the worried souls is not known. Most people tried to cope by not thinking about the grim end that awaited them.
For many centuries this desperate state of affairs continued. Nobody kept count any longer of the cumulative death toll, nor of the number of tears shed by the bereft. Expectations had gradually adjusted and the dragon-tyrant had become a fact of life. In view of the evident futility of resistance, attempts to kill the dragon had ceased. Instead, efforts now focused on placating it. While the dragon would occasionally raid the cities, it was found that the punctual delivery to the mountain of its quota of life reduced the frequency of these incursions.
Knowing that their turn to become dragon-fodder was always impending, people began having children earlier and more often. It was not uncommon for a girl to be pregnant by her sixteenth birthday. Couples often spawned a dozen children. The human population was thus kept from shrinking, and the dragon was kept from going hungry.
Over the course of these centuries, the dragon, being well fed, slowly but steadily grew bigger. It had become almost as large as the mountain on which it lived. And its appetite had increased proportionately. Ten thousand human bodies were no longer enough to fill its belly. It now demanded eighty thousand, to be delivered to the foot of the mountain every evening at the onset of dark.
What occupied the king’s mind more than the deaths and the dragon itself was the logistics of collecting and transporting so many people to the mountain every day. This was not an easy task.
To facilitate the process, the king had a railway track constructed: two straight lines of glistening steel leading up to the dragon’s abode. Every twenty minutes, a train would arrive at the mountain terminal crammed with people, and would return empty. On moonlit nights, the passengers traveling on this train, if there had been windows for them to stick their heads out of, would have been able to see in front of them the double silhouette of the dragon and the mountain, and two glowing red eyes, like the beams from a pair of giant lighthouses, pointing the way to annihilation.
Servants were employed by the king in large numbers to administer the tribute. There were registrars who kept track of whose turn it was to be sent. There were people-collectors who would be dispatched in special carts to fetch the designated people. Often traveling at breakneck speed, they would rush their cargo either to a railway station or directly to the mountain. There were clerks who administered the pensions paid to the decimated families who were no longer able to support themselves. There were comforters who would travel with the doomed on their way to the dragon, trying to ease their anguish with spirits and drugs.
There was, moreover, a cadre of dragonologists who studied how these logistic processes could be made more efficient. Some dragonologists also conducted studies of the dragon’s physiology and behavior, and collected samples – its shed scales, the slime that drooled from its jaws, its lost teeth, and its excrements, which were specked with fragments of human bone. All these items were painstakingly annotated and archived. The more the beast was understood, the more the general perception of its invincibility was confirmed. Its black scales, in particular, were harder than any material known to man, and there seemed no way to make as much as a scratch in its armor.
To finance all these activities, the king levied heavy taxes on his people. Dragon-related expenditures, already accounting for one seventh of the economy, were growing even faster than the dragon itself.
Humanity is a curious species. Every once in a while, somebody gets a good idea. Others copy the idea, adding to it their own improvements. Over time, many wondrous tools and systems are developed. Some of these devices – calculators, thermometers, microscopes, and the glass vials that the chemists use to boil and distil liquids – serve to make it easier to generate and try out new ideas, including ideas that expedite the process of idea-generation.
Thus the great wheel of invention, which had turned at an almost imperceptibly slow pace in the older ages, gradually began to accelerate.
Sages predicted that a day would come when technology would enable humans to fly and do many other astonishing things. One of the sages, who was held in high esteem by some of the other sages but whose eccentric manners had made him a social outcast and recluse, went so far as to predict that technology would eventually make it possible to build a contraption that could kill the dragon-tyrant.
The king’s scholars, however, dismissed these ideas. They said that humans were far too heavy to fly and in any case lacked feathers. And as for the impossible notion that the dragon-tyrant could be killed, history books recounted hundreds of attempts to do just that, not one of which had been successful. “We all know that this man had some irresponsible ideas,” a scholar of letters later wrote in his obituary of the reclusive sage who had by then been sent off to be devoured by the beast whose demise he had foretold, “but his writings were quite entertaining and perhaps we should be grateful to the dragon for making possible the interesting genre of dragon-bashing literature which reveals so much about the culture of angst!”
Meanwhile, the wheel of invention kept turning. Mere decades later, humans did fly and accomplished many other astonishing things.
A few iconoclastic dragonologists began arguing for a new attack on the dragon-tyrant. Killing the dragon would not be easy, they said, but if some material could be invented that was harder than the dragon’s armor, and if this material could be fashioned into some kind of projectile, then maybe the feat would be possible. At first, the iconoclasts’ ideas were rejected by their dragonologist peers on grounds that no known material was harder than dragon scales. But after working on the problem for many years, one of the iconoclasts succeeded in demonstrating that a dragon scale could be pierced by an object made of a certain composite material. Many dragonologists who had previously been skeptical now joined the iconoclasts. Engineers calculated that a huge projectile could be made of this material and launched with sufficient force to penetrate the dragon’s armor. However, the manufacture of the needed quantity of the composite material would be expensive.
A group of several eminent engineers and dragonologists sent a petition to the king asking for funding to build the anti-dragon projectile. At time when the petition was sent, the king was preoccupied with leading his army into war against a tiger. The tiger had killed a farmer and subsequently disappeared into the jungle. There was widespread fear in the countryside that the tiger might come out and strike again. The king had the jungle surrounded and ordered his troops to begin slashing their way through it. At the conclusion of the campaign, the king could announce that all 163 tigers in the jungle, including presumably the murderous one, had been hunted down and killed. During the tumult of the war, however, the petition had been lost or forgotten.
The petitioners therefore sent another appeal. This time they received a reply from one of the king’s secretaries saying that the king would consider their request after he was done reviewing the annual dragon-administration budget. This year’s budget was the largest to date and included funding for a new railway track to the mountain. A second track was deemed necessary, as the original track could no longer support the increasing traffic. (The tribute demanded by the dragon-tyrant had increased to one hundred thousand human beings, to be delivered to the foot of the mountain every evening at the onset of dark.) When the budget was finally approved, however, reports were coming from a remote part of the country that a village was suffering from a rattlesnake infestation. The king had to leave urgently to mobilize his army and ride off to defeat this new threat. The anti-dragonists’ appeal was filed away in a dusty cabinet in the castle basement.
The anti-dragonists met again to decide what was to be done. The debate was animated and continued long into the night. It was almost daybreak when they finally resolved to take the matter to the people. Over the following weeks, they traveled around the country, gave public lectures, and explained their proposal to anyone who would listen. At first, people were skeptical. They had been taught in school that the dragon-tyrant was invincible and that the sacrifices it demanded had to be accepted as a fact of life. Yet when they learnt about the new composite material and about the designs for the projectile, many became intrigued. In increasing numbers, citizens flocked to the anti-dragonist lectures. Activists started organizing public rallies in support of the proposal.
When the king read about these meetings in the newspaper, he summoned his advisors and asked them what they thought about it. They informed him about the petitions that had been sent but told him that the anti-dragonists were troublemakers whose teachings were causing public unrest. It was much better for the social order, they said, that the people accepted the inevitability of the dragon-tyrant tribute. The dragon-administration provided many jobs that would be lost if the dragon was slaughtered. There was no known social good coming from the conquest of the dragon. In any case, the king’s coffers were currently nearly empty after the two military campaigns and the funding set aside for the second railway line. The king, who was at the time enjoying great popularity for having vanquished the rattlesnake infestation, listened to his advisors’ arguments but worried that he might lose some of his popular support if was seen to ignore the anti-dragonist petition. He therefore decided to hold an open hearing. Leading dragonologists, ministers of the state, and interested members of the public were invited to attend.
The meeting took place on the darkest day of the year, just before the Christmas holidays, in the largest hall of the royal castle. The hall was packed to the last seat and people were crowding in the aisles. The mood was charged with an earnest intensity normally reserved for pivotal wartime sessions.
After the king had welcomed everyone, he gave the floor to the leading scientist behind the anti-dragonist proposal, a woman with a serious, almost stern expression on her face. She proceeded to explain in clear language how the proposed device would work and how the requisite amount of the composite material could be manufactured. Given the requested amount of funding, it should be possible to complete the work in fifteen to twenty years. With an even greater amount of funding, it might be possible to do it in as little as twelve years. However, there could be no absolute guarantee that it would work. The crowd followed her presentation intently.
Next to speak was the king’s chief advisor for morality, a man with a booming voice that easily filled the auditorium:
“Let us grant that this woman is correct about the science and that the project is technologically possible, although I don’t think that has actually been proven. Now she desires that we get rid of the dragon. Presumably, she thinks she’s got the right not to be chewed up by the dragon. How willful and presumptuous. The finitude of human life is a blessing for every individual, whether he knows it or not. Getting rid of the dragon, which might seem like such a convenient thing to do, would undermine our human dignity. The preoccupation with killing the dragon will deflect us from realizing more fully the aspirations to which our lives naturally point, from living well rather than merely staying alive. It is debasing, yes debasing, for a person to want to continue his or her mediocre life for as long as possible without worrying about some of the higher questions about what life is to be used for. But I tell you, the nature of the dragon is to eat humans, and our own species-specified nature is truly and nobly fulfilled only by getting eaten by it...”
The audience listened respectfully to this highly decorated speaker. The phrases were so eloquent that it was hard to resist the feeling that some deep thoughts must lurk behind them, although nobody could quite grasp what they were. Surely, words coming from such a distinguished appointee of the king must have profound substance.
The speaker next in line was a spiritual sage who was widely respected for his kindness and gentleness as well as for his devotion. As he strode to the podium, a small boy yelled out from the audience: “The dragon is bad!”
The boy’s parents turned bright red and began hushing and scolding the child. But the sage said, “Let the boy speak. He is probably wiser than an old fool like me.”
At first, the boy was too scared and confused to move. But when he saw the genuinely friendly smile on the sage’s face and the outreached hand, he obediently took it and followed the sage up to the podium. “Now, there’s a brave little man,” said the sage. “Are you afraid of the dragon?“
“I want my granny back,” said the boy.
“Did the dragon take your granny away?”
“Yes,” the boy said, tears welling up in his large frightened eyes. “Granny promised that she would teach me how to bake gingerbread cookies for Christmas. She said that we would make a little house out of gingerbread and little gingerbread men that would live in it. Then those people in white clothes came and took Granny away to the dragon… The dragon is bad and it eats people… I want my Granny back!”
At this point the child was crying so hard that the sage had to return him to his parents.
There were several other speakers that evening, but the child’s simple testimony had punctured the rhetorical balloon that the king’s ministers had tried to inflate. The people were backing the anti-dragonists, and by the end of the evening even the king had come to recognize the reason and the humanity of their cause. In his closing statement, he simply said: “Let’s do it!”
As the news spread, celebrations erupted in the streets. Those who had been campaigning for the anti-dragonists toasted each other and drank to the future of humanity.
The next morning, a billion people woke up and realized that their turn to be sent to the dragon would come before the projectile would be completed. A tipping point was reached. Whereas before, active support for the anti-dragonist cause had been limited to a small group of visionaries, it now became the number one priority and concern on everybody’s mind. The abstract notion of “the general will” took on an almost tangible intensity and concreteness. Mass rallies raised money for the projectile project and urged the king to increase the level of state support. The king responded to these appeals. In his New Year address, he announced that he would pass an extra appropriations bill to support the project at a high level of funding; additionally, he would sell off his summer castle and some of his land and make a large personal donation. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of freeing the world from the ancient scourge of the dragon-tyrant.”
Thus started a great technological race against time. The concept of an anti-dragon projectile was simple, but to make it a reality required solutions to a thousand smaller technical problems, each of which required dozens of time-consuming steps and missteps. Test-missiles were fired but fell dead to the ground or flew off in the wrong direction. In one tragic accident, a wayward missile landed on a hospital and killed several hundred patients and staff. But there was now a real seriousness of purpose, and the tests continued even as the corpses were being dug out from the debris.
Despite almost unlimited funding and round-the-clock work by the technicians, the king’s deadline could not be met. The decade concluded and the dragon was still alive and well. But the effort was getting closer. A prototype missile had been successfully test fired. Production of the core, made of the expensive composite material, was on schedule for its completion to coincide with the finishing of the fully tested and debugged missile shell into which it was to be loaded. The launch date was set to the following year’s New Year’s Eve, exactly twelve years after the project’s official inauguration. The best-selling Christmas gift that year was a calendar that counted down the days to time zero, the proceeds going to the projectile project.
The king had undergone a personal transformation from his earlier frivolous and thoughtless self. He now spent as much time as he could in the laboratories and the manufacturing plants, encouraging the workers and praising their toil. Sometimes he would bring a sleeping bag and spend the night on a noisy machine floor. He even studied and tried to understand the technical aspects of their work. Yet he confined himself to giving moral support and refrained from meddling in technical and managerial matters.
Seven days before New Year, the woman who had made the case for the project almost twelve years earlier, and was now its chief executive, came to the royal castle and requested an urgent audience with the king. When the king got her note, he excused himself to the foreign dignitaries whom he was reluctantly entertaining at the annual Christmas dinner and hurried off to the private room where the scientist was waiting. As always of late, she looked pale and worn from her long working hours. This evening, however, the king also thought he could detect a ray of relief and satisfaction in her eyes.
She told him that the missile had been deployed, the core had been loaded, everything had been triple-checked, they were ready to launch, and would the king give his final go-ahead. The king sank down in an armchair and closed his eyes. He was thinking hard. By launching the projectile tonight, one week early, seven hundred thousand people would be saved. Yet if something went wrong, if it missed its target and hit the mountain instead, it would be a disaster. A new core would have to be constructed from scratch and the project would be set back by some four years. He sat there, silently, for almost an hour. Just as the scientist had become convinced that he had fallen asleep, he opened his eyes and said in a firm voice: “No. I want you to go right back to the lab. I want you to check and then re-check everything again.” The scientist could not help a sigh escaping her; but she nodded and left.
The last day of the year was cold and overcast, but there was no wind, which meant good launch conditions. The sun was setting. Technicians were scuttling around making the final adjustments and giving everything one last check. The king and his closest advisors were observing from a platform close to the launch pad. Further away, behind a fence, large numbers of the public had assembled to witness the great event. A large clock was showing the countdown: fifty minutes to go.
An advisor tapped the king on the shoulder and drew his attention to the fence. There was some tumult. Somebody had apparently jumped the fence and was running towards the platform where the king sat. Security quickly caught up with him. He was handcuffed and taken away. The king turned his attention back to the launch pad, and to the mountain in the background. In front of it, he could see the dark slumped profile of the dragon. It was eating.
Some twenty minutes later, the king was surprised to see the handcuffed man reappearing a short distance from the platform. His nose was bleeding and he was accompanied by two security guards. The man appeared to be in a frenzied state. When he spotted the king, he began shouting at the top of his lungs: “The last train! The last train! Stop the last train!”
“Who is this young man?” said the king. “His face seems familiar, but I cannot quite place him. What does he want? Let him come up.”
The young man was a junior clerk in the ministry of transportation, and the reason for his frenzy was that he had discovered that his father was on the last train to the mountain. The king had ordered the train traffic to continue, fearing that any disruption might cause the dragon to stir and leave the open field in front of the mountain where it now spent most of its time. The young man begged the king to issue a recall-order for the last train, which was due to arrive at the mountain terminal five minutes before time zero.
“I cannot do it,” said the king, “I cannot take the risk.”
“But the trains frequently run five minutes late. The dragon won’t notice! Please!”
The young man was kneeling before the king, imploring him to save his father’s life and the lives of the other thousand passengers onboard that last train.
The king looked down at the pleading, bloodied face of the young man. But he bit his lip, and shook his head. The young man continued to wail even as the guards carried him off the platform: “Please! Stop the last train! Please!”
The king stood silent and motionless, until, after while, the wailing suddenly ceased. The king looked up and glanced over at the countdown clock: five minutes remaining.
Four minutes. Three minutes. Two minutes.
The last technician left the launch pad.
30 seconds. 20 seconds. Ten, nine, eight…
As a ball of fire enveloped the launch pad and the missile shot out, the spectators instinctively rose to the tips of their toes, and all eyes fixated at the front end of the white flame from the rocket’s afterburners heading towards the distant mountain. The masses, the king, the low and the high, the young and the old, it was as if at this moment they shared a single awareness, a single conscious experience: that white flame, shooting into the dark, embodying the human spirit, its fear and its hope… striking at the heart of evil. The silhouette on the horizon tumbled, and fell. Thousand voices of pure joy rose from the assembled masses, joined seconds later by a deafening drawn-out thud from the collapsing monster as if the Earth itself was drawing a sigh of relief. After centuries of oppression, humanity at last was free from the cruel tyranny of the dragon.
The joy cry resolved into a jubilating chant: “Long live the king! Long live us all!” The king’s advisors, like everybody that night, were as happy as children; they embraced each other and congratulated the king: “We did it! We did it!”
But the king answered in a broken voice: “Yes, we did it, we killed the dragon today. But damn, why did we start so late? This could have been done five, maybe ten years ago! Millions of people wouldn’t have had to die.”
The king stepped off the platform and walked up to the young man in handcuffs, who was sitting on the ground. There he fell down on his knees. “Forgive me! Oh my God, please forgive me!”
The rain started falling, in large, heavy drops, turning the ground into mud, drenching the king’s purple robes, and dissolving the blood on the young man’s face. “I am so very sorry about your father,” said the king.
“It’s not your fault,” replied the young man. “Do you remember twelve years ago in the castle? That crying little boy who wanted you to bring back his grandmother – that was me. I didn’t realize then that you couldn’t possibly do what I asked for. Today I wanted you to save my father. Yet it was impossible to do that now, without jeopardizing the launch. But you have saved my life, and my mother and my sister. How can we ever thank you enough for that?”
“Listen to them,” said the king, gesturing towards the crowds. “They are cheering me for what happened tonight. But the hero is you. You cried out. You rallied us against evil.” The king signaled a guard to come and unlock the handcuffs. “Now, go to your mother and sister. You and your family shall always be welcome at the court, and anything you wish for – if it be within my power – shall be granted.”
The young man left, and the royal entourage, huddling in the downpour, accumulated around their monarch who was still kneeling in the mud. Amongst the fancy couture, which was being increasingly ruined by the rain, a bunch of powdered faces expressed a superposition of joy, relief, and discombobulation. So much had changed in the last hour: the right to an open future had been regained, a primordial fear had been abolished, and many a long-held assumption had been overturned. Unsure now about what was required of them in this unfamiliar situation, they stood there tentatively, as if probing whether the ground would still hold, exchanging glances, and waiting for some kind of indication.
Finally, the king rose, wiping his hands on the sides of his pants.
“Your majesty, what do we do now?” ventured the most senior courtier.
“My dear friends,” said the king, “we have come a long way… yet our journey has only just begun. Our species is young on this planet. Today we are like children again. The future lies open before us. We shall go into this future and try to do better than we have done in the past. We have time now – time to get things right, time to grow up, time to learn from our mistakes, time for the slow process of building a better world, and time to get settled in it. Tonight, let all the bells in the kingdom ring until midnight, in remembrance of our dead forbears, and then after midnight let us celebrate till the sun comes up. And in the coming days… I believe we have some reorganization to do!”
MORAL
Stories about aging have traditionally focused on the need for graceful accommodation. The recommended solution to diminishing vigor and impending death was resignation coupled with an effort to achieve closure in practical affairs and personal relationships. Given that nothing could be done to prevent or retard aging, this focus made sense. Rather than fretting about the inevitable, one could aim for peace of mind.
Today we face a different situation. While we still lack effective and acceptable means for slowing the aging process[1], we can identify research directions that might lead to the development of such means in the foreseeable future. “Deathist” stories and ideologies, which counsel passive acceptance, are no longer harmless sources of consolation. They are fatal barriers to urgently needed action.
Many distinguished technologists and scientists tell us that it will become possible to retard, and eventually to halt and reverse, human senescence.[2] At present, there is little agreement about the time-scale or the specific means, nor is there a consensus that the goal is even achievable in principle. In relation to the fable (where aging is, of course, represented by the dragon), we are therefore at a stage somewhere between that at which the lone sage predicted the dragon’s eventual demise and that at which the iconoclast dragonologists convinced their peers by demonstrating a composite material that was harder than dragon scales.
The ethical argument that the fable presents is simple: There are obvious and compelling moral reasons for the people in the fable to get rid of the dragon. Our situation with regard to human senescence is closely analogous and ethically isomorphic to the situation of the people in the fable with regard to the dragon. Therefore, we have compelling moral reasons to get rid of human senescence.
The argument is not in favor or life-span extension per se. Adding extra years of sickness and debility at the end of life would be pointless. The argument is in favor of extending, as far as possible, the human health-span. By slowing or halting the aging process, the healthy human life span would be extended. Individuals would be able to remain healthy, vigorous, and productive at ages at which they would otherwise be dead.
In addition to this general moral, there are a number of more specific lessons:
(1) A recurrent tragedy became a fact of life, a statistic. In the fable, people’s expectations adapted to the existence of the dragon, to the extent that many became unable to perceive its badness. Aging, too, has become a mere “fact of life” – despite being the principal cause of an unfathomable amount of human suffering and death.
(2) A static view of technology. People reasoned that it would never become possible to kill the dragon because all attempts had failed in the past. They failed to take into account accelerated technological progress. Is a similar mistake leading us to underestimate the chances of a cure for aging?
(3) Administration became its own purpose. One seventh of the economy went to dragon-administration (which is also the fraction of its GDP that the U.S. spends on healthcare). Damage-limitation became such an exclusive focus that it made people neglect the underlying cause. Instead of a massive publicly-funded research program to halt aging, we spend almost our entire health budget on health-care and on researching individual diseases.
(4) The social good became detached from the good for people. The king’s advisors worried about the possible social problems that could be caused by the anti-dragonists. They said that no known social good would come from the demise of the dragon. Ultimately, however, social orders exist for the benefit of people, and it is generally good for people if their lives are saved.
(5) The lack of a sense of proportion. A tiger killed a farmer. A rhumba of rattlesnakes plagued a village. The king got rid of the tiger and the rattlesnakes, and thereby did his people a service. Yet he was at fault, because he got his priorities wrong.
(6) Fine phrases and hollow rhetoric. The king’s morality advisor spoke eloquently about human dignity and our species-specified nature, in phrases lifted, mostly verbatim, from the advisor’s contemporary equivalents.[3] Yet the rhetoric was a smoke screen that hid rather than revealed moral reality. The boy’s inarticulate but honest testimony, by contrast, points to the central fact of the case: the dragon is bad; it destroys people. This is also the basic truth about human senescence.
(7) Failure to appreciate the urgency. Until very late in the story, nobody fully realized what was at stake. Only as the king was staring into the bloodied face of the young pleading man does the extent of the tragedy sink in. Searching for a cure for aging is not just a nice thing that we should perhaps one day get around to. It is an urgent, screaming moral imperative. The sooner we start a focused research program, the sooner we will get results. It matters if we get the cure in 25 years rather than in 24 years: a population greater than that of Canada would die as a result. In this matter, time equals life, at a rate of approximately 70 lives per minute. With the meter ticking at such a furious rate, we should stop faffing about.
(8) “And in the coming days… I believe we have some reorganization to do!” The king and his people will face some major challenges when they recover from their celebration. Their society has been so conditioned and deformed by the presence of the dragon that a frightening void now exists. They will have to work creatively, on both an individual and a societal level, to develop conditions that will keep lives flourishingly dynamic and meaningful beyond the accustomed three-score-years-and-ten. Luckily, the human spirit is good at adapting. Another issue that they may eventually confront is overpopulation. Maybe people will have to learn to have children later and less frequently. Maybe they can find ways to sustain a larger population by using more efficient technology. Maybe they will one day develop spaceships and begin to colonize the cosmos. We can leave, for now, the long-lived fable people to grapple with these new challenges, while we try to make some progress in our own adventure.[4]
[1] Calorie restriction (a diet low in calories but high in nutrients) extends maximal lifespan and delays the onset of age-related illnesses in all species that have been tested. Preliminary results from an ongoing study on rhesus and squirrel monkeys show similar effects. It seems quite likely that calorie restriction would work for our species too. Few humans, however, would be willing to put themselves through a lifelong hunger-diet. Some researchers are searching for calorie-restriction mimetics – compounds that elicit the desirable effects of lowered caloric intake without us having to go hungry. (See e.g. Lane, M. et al. (1999) “Nutritional modulation of aging in nonhuman primates,” J. Nutr. Health & Aging, 3(2): 69-76.)
[2] A recent straw poll at the 10th Congress of the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology revealed that the majority of the participants thought it either probable or “not improbable” that comprehensive functional rejuvenation of middle-aged mice would be possible within 10-20 years (de Grey, A. (2004), “Report of open discussion on the future of life extension research,” (Annals NY Acad. Sci., 1019, in press)). See also e.g. de Grey, A., B. Ames, et al. (2002) “Time to talk SENS: critiquing the immutability of human aging,” Increasing Healthy Life Span: Conventional Measures and Slowing the Innate Aging Process: Ninth Congress of the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology, ed. D. Harman (Annals NY Acad. Sci. 959: 452-462); and Freitas Jr., R. A., Nanomedicine, Vol. 1(Landes Bioscience: Georgetown, TX, 1999).
[3] See, e.g. Kass, L. (2003) “Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Perfection,” The New Atlantis, 1.
[4] I’m grateful to many people for comments on earlier drafts, including especially Heather Bradshaw, Roger Crisp, Aubrey de Grey, Katrien Devolder, Joel Garreau, John Harris, Andrea Landfried, Toby Ord, Susan Rogers, Julian Savulescu, Ian Watson, and Kip Werking. I am also very grateful to Adi Berman, Pierino Forno, Didier Coeurnelle, and others who have translated the fable into other languages, and everybody who has helped spread the word or who have given encouragement. Thank you!
Hi guys!
More on H+. So who doesn't want to die? Show of hands.
Who doesn't want their family to die? Dear friends? Show of hands.
Let's chat about the transhumanist (H+) views on immortality.
While we plot to spend trillions on a brief vacation to Mars, billions of humans, yourselves included, are or will be dying on Earth. The trans humanist response is obvious. Stop death here. Research costs money. We have the money. Then go mess around with Mars. A simple, Transhumanist proposition: People first.
Please read the following short story by our friend Nick Bostrom. It might the most important thing you or the human people ever read. This is your assignment .
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant
Nick Bostrom
www.nickbostrom.com
Journal of Medical Ethics, 2005, Vol. 31, No. 5, pp 273-277
[Also available as pdf] [This paper has been translated into: German, Hebrew, Finnish, Spanish, French, Italian, Slovenian, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Polish]
Once upon a time, the planet was tyrannized by a giant dragon. The dragon stood taller than the largest cathedral, and it was covered with thick black scales. Its red eyes glowed with hate, and from its terrible jaws flowed an incessant stream of evil-smelling yellowish-green slime. It demanded from humankind a blood-curdling tribute: to satisfy its enormous appetite, ten thousand men and women had to be delivered every evening at the onset of dark to the foot of the mountain where the dragon-tyrant lived. Sometimes the dragon would devour these unfortunate souls upon arrival; sometimes again it would lock them up in the mountain where they would wither away for months or years before eventually being consumed.
The misery inflicted by the dragon-tyrant was incalculable. In addition to the ten thousand who were gruesomely slaughtered each day, there were the mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, children, and friends that were left behind to grieve the loss of their departed loved ones.
Some people tried to fight the dragon, but whether they were brave or foolish was difficult to say. Priests and magicians called down curses, to no avail. Warriors, armed with roaring courage and the best weapons the smiths could produce, attacked it, but were incinerated by its fire before coming close enough to strike. Chemists concocted toxic brews and tricked the dragon into swallowing them, but the only apparent effect was to further stimulate its appetite. The dragon’s claws, jaws, and fire were so effective, its scaly armor so impregnable, and its whole nature so robust, as to make it invincible to any human assault.
Seeing that defeating the tyrant was impossible, humans had no choice but to obey its commands and pay the grisly tribute. The fatalities selected were always elders. Although senior people were as vigorous and healthy as the young, and sometimes wiser, the thinking was that they had at least already enjoyed a few decades of life. The wealthy might gain a brief reprieve by bribing the press gangs that came to fetch them; but, by constitutional law, nobody, not even the king himself, could put off their turn indefinitely.
Spiritual men sought to comfort those who were afraid of being eaten by the dragon (which included almost everyone, although many denied it in public) by promising another life after death, a life that would be free from the dragon-scourge. Other orators argued that the dragon has its place in the natural order and a moral right to be fed. They said that it was part of the very meaning of being human to end up in the dragon’s stomach. Others still maintained that the dragon was good for the human species because it kept the population size down. To what extent these arguments convinced the worried souls is not known. Most people tried to cope by not thinking about the grim end that awaited them.
For many centuries this desperate state of affairs continued. Nobody kept count any longer of the cumulative death toll, nor of the number of tears shed by the bereft. Expectations had gradually adjusted and the dragon-tyrant had become a fact of life. In view of the evident futility of resistance, attempts to kill the dragon had ceased. Instead, efforts now focused on placating it. While the dragon would occasionally raid the cities, it was found that the punctual delivery to the mountain of its quota of life reduced the frequency of these incursions.
Knowing that their turn to become dragon-fodder was always impending, people began having children earlier and more often. It was not uncommon for a girl to be pregnant by her sixteenth birthday. Couples often spawned a dozen children. The human population was thus kept from shrinking, and the dragon was kept from going hungry.
Over the course of these centuries, the dragon, being well fed, slowly but steadily grew bigger. It had become almost as large as the mountain on which it lived. And its appetite had increased proportionately. Ten thousand human bodies were no longer enough to fill its belly. It now demanded eighty thousand, to be delivered to the foot of the mountain every evening at the onset of dark.
What occupied the king’s mind more than the deaths and the dragon itself was the logistics of collecting and transporting so many people to the mountain every day. This was not an easy task.
To facilitate the process, the king had a railway track constructed: two straight lines of glistening steel leading up to the dragon’s abode. Every twenty minutes, a train would arrive at the mountain terminal crammed with people, and would return empty. On moonlit nights, the passengers traveling on this train, if there had been windows for them to stick their heads out of, would have been able to see in front of them the double silhouette of the dragon and the mountain, and two glowing red eyes, like the beams from a pair of giant lighthouses, pointing the way to annihilation.
Servants were employed by the king in large numbers to administer the tribute. There were registrars who kept track of whose turn it was to be sent. There were people-collectors who would be dispatched in special carts to fetch the designated people. Often traveling at breakneck speed, they would rush their cargo either to a railway station or directly to the mountain. There were clerks who administered the pensions paid to the decimated families who were no longer able to support themselves. There were comforters who would travel with the doomed on their way to the dragon, trying to ease their anguish with spirits and drugs.
There was, moreover, a cadre of dragonologists who studied how these logistic processes could be made more efficient. Some dragonologists also conducted studies of the dragon’s physiology and behavior, and collected samples – its shed scales, the slime that drooled from its jaws, its lost teeth, and its excrements, which were specked with fragments of human bone. All these items were painstakingly annotated and archived. The more the beast was understood, the more the general perception of its invincibility was confirmed. Its black scales, in particular, were harder than any material known to man, and there seemed no way to make as much as a scratch in its armor.
To finance all these activities, the king levied heavy taxes on his people. Dragon-related expenditures, already accounting for one seventh of the economy, were growing even faster than the dragon itself.
Humanity is a curious species. Every once in a while, somebody gets a good idea. Others copy the idea, adding to it their own improvements. Over time, many wondrous tools and systems are developed. Some of these devices – calculators, thermometers, microscopes, and the glass vials that the chemists use to boil and distil liquids – serve to make it easier to generate and try out new ideas, including ideas that expedite the process of idea-generation.
Thus the great wheel of invention, which had turned at an almost imperceptibly slow pace in the older ages, gradually began to accelerate.
Sages predicted that a day would come when technology would enable humans to fly and do many other astonishing things. One of the sages, who was held in high esteem by some of the other sages but whose eccentric manners had made him a social outcast and recluse, went so far as to predict that technology would eventually make it possible to build a contraption that could kill the dragon-tyrant.
The king’s scholars, however, dismissed these ideas. They said that humans were far too heavy to fly and in any case lacked feathers. And as for the impossible notion that the dragon-tyrant could be killed, history books recounted hundreds of attempts to do just that, not one of which had been successful. “We all know that this man had some irresponsible ideas,” a scholar of letters later wrote in his obituary of the reclusive sage who had by then been sent off to be devoured by the beast whose demise he had foretold, “but his writings were quite entertaining and perhaps we should be grateful to the dragon for making possible the interesting genre of dragon-bashing literature which reveals so much about the culture of angst!”
Meanwhile, the wheel of invention kept turning. Mere decades later, humans did fly and accomplished many other astonishing things.
A few iconoclastic dragonologists began arguing for a new attack on the dragon-tyrant. Killing the dragon would not be easy, they said, but if some material could be invented that was harder than the dragon’s armor, and if this material could be fashioned into some kind of projectile, then maybe the feat would be possible. At first, the iconoclasts’ ideas were rejected by their dragonologist peers on grounds that no known material was harder than dragon scales. But after working on the problem for many years, one of the iconoclasts succeeded in demonstrating that a dragon scale could be pierced by an object made of a certain composite material. Many dragonologists who had previously been skeptical now joined the iconoclasts. Engineers calculated that a huge projectile could be made of this material and launched with sufficient force to penetrate the dragon’s armor. However, the manufacture of the needed quantity of the composite material would be expensive.
A group of several eminent engineers and dragonologists sent a petition to the king asking for funding to build the anti-dragon projectile. At time when the petition was sent, the king was preoccupied with leading his army into war against a tiger. The tiger had killed a farmer and subsequently disappeared into the jungle. There was widespread fear in the countryside that the tiger might come out and strike again. The king had the jungle surrounded and ordered his troops to begin slashing their way through it. At the conclusion of the campaign, the king could announce that all 163 tigers in the jungle, including presumably the murderous one, had been hunted down and killed. During the tumult of the war, however, the petition had been lost or forgotten.
The petitioners therefore sent another appeal. This time they received a reply from one of the king’s secretaries saying that the king would consider their request after he was done reviewing the annual dragon-administration budget. This year’s budget was the largest to date and included funding for a new railway track to the mountain. A second track was deemed necessary, as the original track could no longer support the increasing traffic. (The tribute demanded by the dragon-tyrant had increased to one hundred thousand human beings, to be delivered to the foot of the mountain every evening at the onset of dark.) When the budget was finally approved, however, reports were coming from a remote part of the country that a village was suffering from a rattlesnake infestation. The king had to leave urgently to mobilize his army and ride off to defeat this new threat. The anti-dragonists’ appeal was filed away in a dusty cabinet in the castle basement.
The anti-dragonists met again to decide what was to be done. The debate was animated and continued long into the night. It was almost daybreak when they finally resolved to take the matter to the people. Over the following weeks, they traveled around the country, gave public lectures, and explained their proposal to anyone who would listen. At first, people were skeptical. They had been taught in school that the dragon-tyrant was invincible and that the sacrifices it demanded had to be accepted as a fact of life. Yet when they learnt about the new composite material and about the designs for the projectile, many became intrigued. In increasing numbers, citizens flocked to the anti-dragonist lectures. Activists started organizing public rallies in support of the proposal.
When the king read about these meetings in the newspaper, he summoned his advisors and asked them what they thought about it. They informed him about the petitions that had been sent but told him that the anti-dragonists were troublemakers whose teachings were causing public unrest. It was much better for the social order, they said, that the people accepted the inevitability of the dragon-tyrant tribute. The dragon-administration provided many jobs that would be lost if the dragon was slaughtered. There was no known social good coming from the conquest of the dragon. In any case, the king’s coffers were currently nearly empty after the two military campaigns and the funding set aside for the second railway line. The king, who was at the time enjoying great popularity for having vanquished the rattlesnake infestation, listened to his advisors’ arguments but worried that he might lose some of his popular support if was seen to ignore the anti-dragonist petition. He therefore decided to hold an open hearing. Leading dragonologists, ministers of the state, and interested members of the public were invited to attend.
The meeting took place on the darkest day of the year, just before the Christmas holidays, in the largest hall of the royal castle. The hall was packed to the last seat and people were crowding in the aisles. The mood was charged with an earnest intensity normally reserved for pivotal wartime sessions.
After the king had welcomed everyone, he gave the floor to the leading scientist behind the anti-dragonist proposal, a woman with a serious, almost stern expression on her face. She proceeded to explain in clear language how the proposed device would work and how the requisite amount of the composite material could be manufactured. Given the requested amount of funding, it should be possible to complete the work in fifteen to twenty years. With an even greater amount of funding, it might be possible to do it in as little as twelve years. However, there could be no absolute guarantee that it would work. The crowd followed her presentation intently.
Next to speak was the king’s chief advisor for morality, a man with a booming voice that easily filled the auditorium:
“Let us grant that this woman is correct about the science and that the project is technologically possible, although I don’t think that has actually been proven. Now she desires that we get rid of the dragon. Presumably, she thinks she’s got the right not to be chewed up by the dragon. How willful and presumptuous. The finitude of human life is a blessing for every individual, whether he knows it or not. Getting rid of the dragon, which might seem like such a convenient thing to do, would undermine our human dignity. The preoccupation with killing the dragon will deflect us from realizing more fully the aspirations to which our lives naturally point, from living well rather than merely staying alive. It is debasing, yes debasing, for a person to want to continue his or her mediocre life for as long as possible without worrying about some of the higher questions about what life is to be used for. But I tell you, the nature of the dragon is to eat humans, and our own species-specified nature is truly and nobly fulfilled only by getting eaten by it...”
The audience listened respectfully to this highly decorated speaker. The phrases were so eloquent that it was hard to resist the feeling that some deep thoughts must lurk behind them, although nobody could quite grasp what they were. Surely, words coming from such a distinguished appointee of the king must have profound substance.
The speaker next in line was a spiritual sage who was widely respected for his kindness and gentleness as well as for his devotion. As he strode to the podium, a small boy yelled out from the audience: “The dragon is bad!”
The boy’s parents turned bright red and began hushing and scolding the child. But the sage said, “Let the boy speak. He is probably wiser than an old fool like me.”
At first, the boy was too scared and confused to move. But when he saw the genuinely friendly smile on the sage’s face and the outreached hand, he obediently took it and followed the sage up to the podium. “Now, there’s a brave little man,” said the sage. “Are you afraid of the dragon?“
“I want my granny back,” said the boy.
“Did the dragon take your granny away?”
“Yes,” the boy said, tears welling up in his large frightened eyes. “Granny promised that she would teach me how to bake gingerbread cookies for Christmas. She said that we would make a little house out of gingerbread and little gingerbread men that would live in it. Then those people in white clothes came and took Granny away to the dragon… The dragon is bad and it eats people… I want my Granny back!”
At this point the child was crying so hard that the sage had to return him to his parents.
There were several other speakers that evening, but the child’s simple testimony had punctured the rhetorical balloon that the king’s ministers had tried to inflate. The people were backing the anti-dragonists, and by the end of the evening even the king had come to recognize the reason and the humanity of their cause. In his closing statement, he simply said: “Let’s do it!”
As the news spread, celebrations erupted in the streets. Those who had been campaigning for the anti-dragonists toasted each other and drank to the future of humanity.
The next morning, a billion people woke up and realized that their turn to be sent to the dragon would come before the projectile would be completed. A tipping point was reached. Whereas before, active support for the anti-dragonist cause had been limited to a small group of visionaries, it now became the number one priority and concern on everybody’s mind. The abstract notion of “the general will” took on an almost tangible intensity and concreteness. Mass rallies raised money for the projectile project and urged the king to increase the level of state support. The king responded to these appeals. In his New Year address, he announced that he would pass an extra appropriations bill to support the project at a high level of funding; additionally, he would sell off his summer castle and some of his land and make a large personal donation. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of freeing the world from the ancient scourge of the dragon-tyrant.”
Thus started a great technological race against time. The concept of an anti-dragon projectile was simple, but to make it a reality required solutions to a thousand smaller technical problems, each of which required dozens of time-consuming steps and missteps. Test-missiles were fired but fell dead to the ground or flew off in the wrong direction. In one tragic accident, a wayward missile landed on a hospital and killed several hundred patients and staff. But there was now a real seriousness of purpose, and the tests continued even as the corpses were being dug out from the debris.
Despite almost unlimited funding and round-the-clock work by the technicians, the king’s deadline could not be met. The decade concluded and the dragon was still alive and well. But the effort was getting closer. A prototype missile had been successfully test fired. Production of the core, made of the expensive composite material, was on schedule for its completion to coincide with the finishing of the fully tested and debugged missile shell into which it was to be loaded. The launch date was set to the following year’s New Year’s Eve, exactly twelve years after the project’s official inauguration. The best-selling Christmas gift that year was a calendar that counted down the days to time zero, the proceeds going to the projectile project.
The king had undergone a personal transformation from his earlier frivolous and thoughtless self. He now spent as much time as he could in the laboratories and the manufacturing plants, encouraging the workers and praising their toil. Sometimes he would bring a sleeping bag and spend the night on a noisy machine floor. He even studied and tried to understand the technical aspects of their work. Yet he confined himself to giving moral support and refrained from meddling in technical and managerial matters.
Seven days before New Year, the woman who had made the case for the project almost twelve years earlier, and was now its chief executive, came to the royal castle and requested an urgent audience with the king. When the king got her note, he excused himself to the foreign dignitaries whom he was reluctantly entertaining at the annual Christmas dinner and hurried off to the private room where the scientist was waiting. As always of late, she looked pale and worn from her long working hours. This evening, however, the king also thought he could detect a ray of relief and satisfaction in her eyes.
She told him that the missile had been deployed, the core had been loaded, everything had been triple-checked, they were ready to launch, and would the king give his final go-ahead. The king sank down in an armchair and closed his eyes. He was thinking hard. By launching the projectile tonight, one week early, seven hundred thousand people would be saved. Yet if something went wrong, if it missed its target and hit the mountain instead, it would be a disaster. A new core would have to be constructed from scratch and the project would be set back by some four years. He sat there, silently, for almost an hour. Just as the scientist had become convinced that he had fallen asleep, he opened his eyes and said in a firm voice: “No. I want you to go right back to the lab. I want you to check and then re-check everything again.” The scientist could not help a sigh escaping her; but she nodded and left.
The last day of the year was cold and overcast, but there was no wind, which meant good launch conditions. The sun was setting. Technicians were scuttling around making the final adjustments and giving everything one last check. The king and his closest advisors were observing from a platform close to the launch pad. Further away, behind a fence, large numbers of the public had assembled to witness the great event. A large clock was showing the countdown: fifty minutes to go.
An advisor tapped the king on the shoulder and drew his attention to the fence. There was some tumult. Somebody had apparently jumped the fence and was running towards the platform where the king sat. Security quickly caught up with him. He was handcuffed and taken away. The king turned his attention back to the launch pad, and to the mountain in the background. In front of it, he could see the dark slumped profile of the dragon. It was eating.
Some twenty minutes later, the king was surprised to see the handcuffed man reappearing a short distance from the platform. His nose was bleeding and he was accompanied by two security guards. The man appeared to be in a frenzied state. When he spotted the king, he began shouting at the top of his lungs: “The last train! The last train! Stop the last train!”
“Who is this young man?” said the king. “His face seems familiar, but I cannot quite place him. What does he want? Let him come up.”
The young man was a junior clerk in the ministry of transportation, and the reason for his frenzy was that he had discovered that his father was on the last train to the mountain. The king had ordered the train traffic to continue, fearing that any disruption might cause the dragon to stir and leave the open field in front of the mountain where it now spent most of its time. The young man begged the king to issue a recall-order for the last train, which was due to arrive at the mountain terminal five minutes before time zero.
“I cannot do it,” said the king, “I cannot take the risk.”
“But the trains frequently run five minutes late. The dragon won’t notice! Please!”
The young man was kneeling before the king, imploring him to save his father’s life and the lives of the other thousand passengers onboard that last train.
The king looked down at the pleading, bloodied face of the young man. But he bit his lip, and shook his head. The young man continued to wail even as the guards carried him off the platform: “Please! Stop the last train! Please!”
The king stood silent and motionless, until, after while, the wailing suddenly ceased. The king looked up and glanced over at the countdown clock: five minutes remaining.
Four minutes. Three minutes. Two minutes.
The last technician left the launch pad.
30 seconds. 20 seconds. Ten, nine, eight…
As a ball of fire enveloped the launch pad and the missile shot out, the spectators instinctively rose to the tips of their toes, and all eyes fixated at the front end of the white flame from the rocket’s afterburners heading towards the distant mountain. The masses, the king, the low and the high, the young and the old, it was as if at this moment they shared a single awareness, a single conscious experience: that white flame, shooting into the dark, embodying the human spirit, its fear and its hope… striking at the heart of evil. The silhouette on the horizon tumbled, and fell. Thousand voices of pure joy rose from the assembled masses, joined seconds later by a deafening drawn-out thud from the collapsing monster as if the Earth itself was drawing a sigh of relief. After centuries of oppression, humanity at last was free from the cruel tyranny of the dragon.
The joy cry resolved into a jubilating chant: “Long live the king! Long live us all!” The king’s advisors, like everybody that night, were as happy as children; they embraced each other and congratulated the king: “We did it! We did it!”
But the king answered in a broken voice: “Yes, we did it, we killed the dragon today. But damn, why did we start so late? This could have been done five, maybe ten years ago! Millions of people wouldn’t have had to die.”
The king stepped off the platform and walked up to the young man in handcuffs, who was sitting on the ground. There he fell down on his knees. “Forgive me! Oh my God, please forgive me!”
The rain started falling, in large, heavy drops, turning the ground into mud, drenching the king’s purple robes, and dissolving the blood on the young man’s face. “I am so very sorry about your father,” said the king.
“It’s not your fault,” replied the young man. “Do you remember twelve years ago in the castle? That crying little boy who wanted you to bring back his grandmother – that was me. I didn’t realize then that you couldn’t possibly do what I asked for. Today I wanted you to save my father. Yet it was impossible to do that now, without jeopardizing the launch. But you have saved my life, and my mother and my sister. How can we ever thank you enough for that?”
“Listen to them,” said the king, gesturing towards the crowds. “They are cheering me for what happened tonight. But the hero is you. You cried out. You rallied us against evil.” The king signaled a guard to come and unlock the handcuffs. “Now, go to your mother and sister. You and your family shall always be welcome at the court, and anything you wish for – if it be within my power – shall be granted.”
The young man left, and the royal entourage, huddling in the downpour, accumulated around their monarch who was still kneeling in the mud. Amongst the fancy couture, which was being increasingly ruined by the rain, a bunch of powdered faces expressed a superposition of joy, relief, and discombobulation. So much had changed in the last hour: the right to an open future had been regained, a primordial fear had been abolished, and many a long-held assumption had been overturned. Unsure now about what was required of them in this unfamiliar situation, they stood there tentatively, as if probing whether the ground would still hold, exchanging glances, and waiting for some kind of indication.
Finally, the king rose, wiping his hands on the sides of his pants.
“Your majesty, what do we do now?” ventured the most senior courtier.
“My dear friends,” said the king, “we have come a long way… yet our journey has only just begun. Our species is young on this planet. Today we are like children again. The future lies open before us. We shall go into this future and try to do better than we have done in the past. We have time now – time to get things right, time to grow up, time to learn from our mistakes, time for the slow process of building a better world, and time to get settled in it. Tonight, let all the bells in the kingdom ring until midnight, in remembrance of our dead forbears, and then after midnight let us celebrate till the sun comes up. And in the coming days… I believe we have some reorganization to do!”
MORAL
Stories about aging have traditionally focused on the need for graceful accommodation. The recommended solution to diminishing vigor and impending death was resignation coupled with an effort to achieve closure in practical affairs and personal relationships. Given that nothing could be done to prevent or retard aging, this focus made sense. Rather than fretting about the inevitable, one could aim for peace of mind.
Today we face a different situation. While we still lack effective and acceptable means for slowing the aging process[1], we can identify research directions that might lead to the development of such means in the foreseeable future. “Deathist” stories and ideologies, which counsel passive acceptance, are no longer harmless sources of consolation. They are fatal barriers to urgently needed action.
Many distinguished technologists and scientists tell us that it will become possible to retard, and eventually to halt and reverse, human senescence.[2] At present, there is little agreement about the time-scale or the specific means, nor is there a consensus that the goal is even achievable in principle. In relation to the fable (where aging is, of course, represented by the dragon), we are therefore at a stage somewhere between that at which the lone sage predicted the dragon’s eventual demise and that at which the iconoclast dragonologists convinced their peers by demonstrating a composite material that was harder than dragon scales.
The ethical argument that the fable presents is simple: There are obvious and compelling moral reasons for the people in the fable to get rid of the dragon. Our situation with regard to human senescence is closely analogous and ethically isomorphic to the situation of the people in the fable with regard to the dragon. Therefore, we have compelling moral reasons to get rid of human senescence.
The argument is not in favor or life-span extension per se. Adding extra years of sickness and debility at the end of life would be pointless. The argument is in favor of extending, as far as possible, the human health-span. By slowing or halting the aging process, the healthy human life span would be extended. Individuals would be able to remain healthy, vigorous, and productive at ages at which they would otherwise be dead.
In addition to this general moral, there are a number of more specific lessons:
(1) A recurrent tragedy became a fact of life, a statistic. In the fable, people’s expectations adapted to the existence of the dragon, to the extent that many became unable to perceive its badness. Aging, too, has become a mere “fact of life” – despite being the principal cause of an unfathomable amount of human suffering and death.
(2) A static view of technology. People reasoned that it would never become possible to kill the dragon because all attempts had failed in the past. They failed to take into account accelerated technological progress. Is a similar mistake leading us to underestimate the chances of a cure for aging?
(3) Administration became its own purpose. One seventh of the economy went to dragon-administration (which is also the fraction of its GDP that the U.S. spends on healthcare). Damage-limitation became such an exclusive focus that it made people neglect the underlying cause. Instead of a massive publicly-funded research program to halt aging, we spend almost our entire health budget on health-care and on researching individual diseases.
(4) The social good became detached from the good for people. The king’s advisors worried about the possible social problems that could be caused by the anti-dragonists. They said that no known social good would come from the demise of the dragon. Ultimately, however, social orders exist for the benefit of people, and it is generally good for people if their lives are saved.
(5) The lack of a sense of proportion. A tiger killed a farmer. A rhumba of rattlesnakes plagued a village. The king got rid of the tiger and the rattlesnakes, and thereby did his people a service. Yet he was at fault, because he got his priorities wrong.
(6) Fine phrases and hollow rhetoric. The king’s morality advisor spoke eloquently about human dignity and our species-specified nature, in phrases lifted, mostly verbatim, from the advisor’s contemporary equivalents.[3] Yet the rhetoric was a smoke screen that hid rather than revealed moral reality. The boy’s inarticulate but honest testimony, by contrast, points to the central fact of the case: the dragon is bad; it destroys people. This is also the basic truth about human senescence.
(7) Failure to appreciate the urgency. Until very late in the story, nobody fully realized what was at stake. Only as the king was staring into the bloodied face of the young pleading man does the extent of the tragedy sink in. Searching for a cure for aging is not just a nice thing that we should perhaps one day get around to. It is an urgent, screaming moral imperative. The sooner we start a focused research program, the sooner we will get results. It matters if we get the cure in 25 years rather than in 24 years: a population greater than that of Canada would die as a result. In this matter, time equals life, at a rate of approximately 70 lives per minute. With the meter ticking at such a furious rate, we should stop faffing about.
(8) “And in the coming days… I believe we have some reorganization to do!” The king and his people will face some major challenges when they recover from their celebration. Their society has been so conditioned and deformed by the presence of the dragon that a frightening void now exists. They will have to work creatively, on both an individual and a societal level, to develop conditions that will keep lives flourishingly dynamic and meaningful beyond the accustomed three-score-years-and-ten. Luckily, the human spirit is good at adapting. Another issue that they may eventually confront is overpopulation. Maybe people will have to learn to have children later and less frequently. Maybe they can find ways to sustain a larger population by using more efficient technology. Maybe they will one day develop spaceships and begin to colonize the cosmos. We can leave, for now, the long-lived fable people to grapple with these new challenges, while we try to make some progress in our own adventure.[4]
[1] Calorie restriction (a diet low in calories but high in nutrients) extends maximal lifespan and delays the onset of age-related illnesses in all species that have been tested. Preliminary results from an ongoing study on rhesus and squirrel monkeys show similar effects. It seems quite likely that calorie restriction would work for our species too. Few humans, however, would be willing to put themselves through a lifelong hunger-diet. Some researchers are searching for calorie-restriction mimetics – compounds that elicit the desirable effects of lowered caloric intake without us having to go hungry. (See e.g. Lane, M. et al. (1999) “Nutritional modulation of aging in nonhuman primates,” J. Nutr. Health & Aging, 3(2): 69-76.)
[2] A recent straw poll at the 10th Congress of the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology revealed that the majority of the participants thought it either probable or “not improbable” that comprehensive functional rejuvenation of middle-aged mice would be possible within 10-20 years (de Grey, A. (2004), “Report of open discussion on the future of life extension research,” (Annals NY Acad. Sci., 1019, in press)). See also e.g. de Grey, A., B. Ames, et al. (2002) “Time to talk SENS: critiquing the immutability of human aging,” Increasing Healthy Life Span: Conventional Measures and Slowing the Innate Aging Process: Ninth Congress of the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology, ed. D. Harman (Annals NY Acad. Sci. 959: 452-462); and Freitas Jr., R. A., Nanomedicine, Vol. 1(Landes Bioscience: Georgetown, TX, 1999).
[3] See, e.g. Kass, L. (2003) “Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Perfection,” The New Atlantis, 1.
[4] I’m grateful to many people for comments on earlier drafts, including especially Heather Bradshaw, Roger Crisp, Aubrey de Grey, Katrien Devolder, Joel Garreau, John Harris, Andrea Landfried, Toby Ord, Susan Rogers, Julian Savulescu, Ian Watson, and Kip Werking. I am also very grateful to Adi Berman, Pierino Forno, Didier Coeurnelle, and others who have translated the fable into other languages, and everybody who has helped spread the word or who have given encouragement. Thank you!
Here we explore why Steve Wykstra might do well to deny the baby deer ever suffered (E1) and why the poor child ever experienced being raped and murdered (E2).
What say you? Is God a trickster in literally millions of things--evil things--and why not? We're talking about an all knowing, all powerful, morally perfect being. And maybe the right thing to do is constantly trick us into moral awareness. Like we might do with our children when we read them kids' books that they, in the moment, experience as real events.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Consider the current state of the art “fine tuning argument”,
P1) If the e- (electro negativity) constant is slightly changed (made stronger or weaker), molecules and life as we know it become impossible.
P2) If the e- constant is set by a random process, it is very unlikely it would allow for molecules and life as we know it.
P3) If the e- constant is set by a super intelligent, super powerful designer, it is very likely it would allow for molecules and life as we know it.
P4) We should accept the explanation that makes what we observe, molecules and life as we know it, more likely.
- C) We should accept the existence of a super intelligent, super powerful designer. This, many call God.
So let’s look at this argument in our talk, and consider the relevant premises (P 1- 4). All life as we know it is made of molecules. No molecules, no life. So why did God, if God exists, make us out of molecules? This is a question about what we can know, epistemology. One thought: How many universes are there? Are we back to planets and solar systems? Enough solar systems, you find the planet at the right distance. Enough universes, you'll get one with the right e- constant.
Next stop, more on the problem of evil.
Enjoy!
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi Friends!
Now we witness the recent debate on the problem of evil (POE). William Rowe meets Stephen Wykstra. A student of Rowe’s. An amazing debate. Rowe modifies the logical problem of evil with an epistemic clause. “As far as we can tell”. That is, evidence, rationality, not strict Logical Proof. This is the Evidential Problem of Evil, not the Logical Problem of Evil.
One way to sum up Rowe's argument is this,
P1) God is an all powerful, all knowing and morally prefect being.
P2) God would not permit any evil without an overriding good.
P3) There are cases where as far as we can tell there is no overriding good.
P4) P3 is inconsistent with belief in an all powerful, all knowing and morally perfect being.
C) As far as we can tell, an all powerful, all knowing and morally prefect being does not exist.
Notice this is not the claim there is no God, it is the claim that a rational human being will not believe such a being exists.
Does it work? Steve Wykstra steps forward with his response. Are we smart enough to know the why of all things, are we relatively speaking, as children are to adult humans, adult humans are to God? This response is more radical than we might think. It leads to profound questions about what we really can know about anything.
Remember our motto: The best answer makes us ask better questions. Again: This is Epistemology. What can we know (“as far as we can tell”)? About the most important things? A lot.
For our Ethics students, notice that Rowe's argument looks like a utilitarian one.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi students of reality!
Let's go Evil. Or is that a problem?
The problem of evil has several forms. What is called the "Logical Problem of Evil" is this,
p1) God is all knowing, all powerful, morally perfect.
p2) Evil exists (natural (like tsunamis) and human caused; murder).
p3) Any all knowing, all powerful, morally perfect being would end all evil, right now.
C) God does not exist.
We'll look at other versions, but they all have their roots in this basic structure. So imagine a horrific crime, freely committed by a fiend, against a little girl. And God does nothing to protect her in that moment. The idea is God values freewill more than God values little girls.
But let's talk about frozen ducks. Seriously. Our discussion will continue...
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
Hi guys--our Midterm Report. Well done.
Give this a listen. For the beyond.
Cheers!
Dr. Lee Basham
PS. Hint: Oscar.... Check it out. You'll know yourself. Let me know.
Hi people!
One of the features of Virtue Ethics, and Any Society based on the assumption of mostly virtuous--good--people, is how there is a back and forth between mistakes (the extremes) and a place between the not based on fear but habit. Out of habit--what we do just because we have learned for years the wisdom of that pattern of reaction to life, to ourselves, and to each other, we almost always do. That is, a "habit". It also means "habitat", Home. Think about it.
That's Social and Political Philosophy. Think of it: A society of Good People. How could we encourage, build and keep that? Aristotle wanted to know how we create Good Habits. And for Aristotle, this meant virtue.
So here is an account, personal--because in this world you really don't need to make up stories, especially if you're paying attention and responding--of some money I accidentally found as a child, and what happened. Being a child, ~10, I thought a lot about it. And tried to make out of wrong right. Let's see if we can see where Aristotle steps up and solves the problem, long before I met with even the name "Aristotle". Enjoy!
So who do you want to live next door to?
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
The Virtue approach to Ethics starts with the person. Not with calculations of overall good (Utilitarianism) or Absolute, inalienable (never to be denied) Rights. What sort of person can be Good? What is there that makes the person a good person. Virtue does. And there are several virtues. You, as a good person, or a insane vicious (dog attack) person, are the totality, the total mix, of these.
So what is virtue? Let's look at Aristotle.
Aristotle asked this question thousands of years ago, and in a long--very long--letter to his Nephew, for brevity let's call him Nico, tried to answer it with The Golden Mean.
The Golden Mean isn't Mean-spirited, it's just living In the Middle, where we find the good people. But in the middle what? Let's talk about a courageous person. A person who risks all for the right and just cause in the moment.
So you're in a scary situation. Now there are two extremes: Not the middle,
a) Stupid, foolish, pointless risk.
And
b) Coward; runs no matter what. No love or respect for others, no risk-taking, stuck on the stupidity of being stuck on themselves. The "well, that's not right for me, I was scared" kind of people.
We may have met both kinds.
So what is the Middle between (a) and (b)?
1) Chance of success exists, and success is urgent. Others might be deeply harmed, even killed.
2) Risk to self is serious, is real, even catastrophic; you might die.
So 3) You do it.
There's our Middle. It identifies a type, a manner, of Virtue. And we call those people Brave. They have Valor.
This is Aristotle's approach to all of life. It's interesting that he said the greatest Virtue of all was being what, as we translate from ancient Greek into English, being "Magnanimous". Being a Great Soul, as Mahatma Gandhi might put it. In our terms; wise, watchful and also Forgiving.
More about this as we continue our adventure! Please read the following. Aristotle is a friend.
Cheers~
Dr. Lee Basham
THE GOLDEN MEAN IN ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS
Each moral virtue is a mean or lies between extremes of pleasure or of action ‐‐ doing or feeling too much or too little. The absolute mean is different from the mean as it is relative to the individual. For example, the intermediate between two pounds and ten pounds of food is (absolutely) six pounds, but the mean relative to the individual will be different for the athlete than it is for the non‐athlete. Morality, like artwork, requires that one neither under‐do nor over‐do. One must hit upon the right course (steering between too much and too little). This requires practice. Virtues are good habits or dispositions to do the right thing developed by means of particular virtuous acts. Means themselves do not admit of excess and deficiency (one cannot have too much courage, etc.).
Good judgment requires that one find the mean between extremes. In order to do that, one must have both general knowledge and particular experience. Practical wisdom is the intellectual virtue (intellectual virtues are higher than moral virtues), which governs deliberation and action. Here are some examples of the golden mean taken from Aristotle'sNicomachean Ethics (Book II):
VICE (DEFECT)
VIRTUE (MEAN)
VICE (EXCESS)
Cowardice (too little confidence)
Courage
Rashness (too much confidence)
Foolhardiness (too little fear)
Courage
Cowardice (too much fear)
Insensibility (too little pleasure)
Temperance
Self‐indulgence (too much pleasure)
Meanness or Stinginess (too little giving)
Liberality
Prodigality or Wastefulness (too much giving)
Stinginess (in giving out large sums of money)
Magnificence
Tastelessness and Vulgarity (giving out large sums)
Undue Humility (too little honor)
Proper Pride
Empty Vanity (too much honor)
Inirascibility (too little anger)
Good Temper
Irascible (too much anger)
Shamelessness (too little shame)
Modesty
Bashfulness (too much shame)
Surliness
Friendliness
Flattery