Quotes & Commentary #35: Bacon

Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

—Francis Bacon, “Of Revenge”

The thirst for revenge is one of our ugliest, most satisfying, and most basic tendencies. It isn’t hard to see why.

The urge to revenge ourselves is a straightforward consequence of the urge to preserve ourselves. If somebody has hurt us in some way—by stealing a mate, by physical violence, or merely by a rude remark—then they have clearly shown themselves to be a threat, a dangerous person who can’t be trusted. The logical thing to do then becomes to neutralize this threat, to diminish or destroy his capacity to further hinder us.

This counter-attack will serve two purposes: first, it will harm the enemy, reducing his capacity to harm you in the future; second, by publically revenging yourself on an enemy, it will signal to others that you are not one to be trifled with, and that you will retaliate if anybody tries something funny. The practical benefits of revenge are thus preventative.

It is paradoxical, therefore, that revenge is not often thought of as oriented towards future security, but instead toward bygone injuries. The purpose of revenge, we feel in our bones, is to right the wrongs of the universe, to put the cosmic scale of justice back to zero, balancing a good action for a bad one.

When revenge is conceived this way, as retaliatory and not as preventative, then it can lead to absurdly unproductive actions, notable only for the resources they waste. In this connection, I can’t help thinking of Iñigo Montoya from The Princess Bride, whose obsessive quest to kill the murderer of his father consumed decades of his life.

Ask anyone to tell you about their ex, and there’s a good chance you will be met with the same vengeful fixation. The revenge intoxicated man is something of a narrative cliche, repeated ten thousand times in novels and television and movies. I would guess that revenge is second only to romantic love as the emotional engine of drama.

The folly of orienting your life around getting back at an enemy is clear to anyone with healthy sense of perspective. The best form of revenge, after all, is being happy, and all-consuming quests for personal justice are not conducive to happiness.

Even as a preventative measure—to incapacitate an enemy and prevent others from springing up—revenge often backfires. This is for two reasons.

First, if you attempt to render an enemy incapable of harming you in the future, there is always a risk you will fall short of full incapacitation. This is dangerous because, if you don’t succeed in fully disabling your enemy—whether psychologically, politically, logistically, socially, or physically—then there is a good chance that you will only embitter him, who will then counter-attack after he recovers his strength.

The second risk, related to the first, is the question of third-parties. If you succeed in fully disabling your enemy, there is still the possibility that he may have powerful friends. The friend of every enemy is another potential enemy, and can be mobilized against you. After successful revenge, you may yourself be the victim of a vengeful act by one of the enemy’s allies. If this revenge against you is successful, then one of your friends might retaliate against this new foe.

This logic of attack and counterattack is how feuds start. Every act of vengeance can breed another, until half the world is embroiled in a bitter, pointless war against the other half. The most emblematic of these vindictive conflicts was the feud between the Hartfields and the McCoys, but you see this sort of thing in every section and at every scale of human life.

Revenge, as you can see, is a strategy of limited utility. It would, however, be untrue to say that revenge is always futile. In a situation similar to Hobbes’s “State of Nature,” vengeful acts are hardly avoidable. If there is no structure in place to resolve disputes, no laws and thus no method to punish law-breakers, then each party must enforce their own version of right and wrong.

Remember that, for each individual, taken separately, right and wrong are products of self-interest. In other words, in the absence of law, “right” is simply what helps you, “wrong” what hurts you; and without any legal system, you must enforce your own version of right and wrong, since no one else will.

In order to survive in an anarchic world, you must retaliate against those who interfere with your self-interest. If not, it will send the message to those around you that you are a pushover, and that they can take advantage of you without any risk; and you can only expect more enemies to interfere with you in the future. (I teach adolescents, so I know something about an anarchic world.) Some retaliation is therefore necessary. But care must be taken not to take vengeance too readily or too forcefully, or you may be the victim of revenge yourself.

Humans were born into anarchy and we still have the instincts that helped us get through it. This is why revenge comes to naturally to us, and why it tastes so sweet. But this emotional armory does not help us when we live in a society governed by law.

Law is a substitute for revenge, with all of its advantages and none of its defects. With recourse to the legal prosecution—organized retaliation, approved by the community—then we can neutralize threats and protect ourselves from future harm, with only a minimal chance that our enemies’ friends will try to get back at us. Law replaces private desire with public safety; and because the will of the community sanctions the law’s consequences, the law is joined with overwhelming force, to protect its adherents and attack its antagonists.

Living, as we all do, in states governed by law, the emotional urge to take revenge becomes a hindrance rather than an asset. If you are wronged, you can seek legal retribution. But if that is not available, then it is usually unwise to take matters into your own hands, since this makes it possible that legal retribution can be used against you.

True, there are many things that fall outside the confines of the law, the most notable of these being romance. And as expected, vindictiveness is alive and well in matters of the heart. You still find people revenging themselves on their exes and their rivals, waxing indignant at perceived wrongs and organizing their friends in concerted actions of revenge. Having no social structure to resolve disputes, people fall into anarchy.

Yet I would argue that, even in these cases, revenge is a poor strategy. The revenge mentality is only justified, I think, in anarchic situations, specifically when the consequences for not retaliating are potentially severe. But in the case of romance, there is no chance that you will be seriously damaged. Heartbreak hurts, but it is seldom fatal.

In cases like these—where you can be sure of surviving any enemy attack—then I think another strategy is called for: returning love for hate. This sounds Biblical, but its justification is logical.

Keep in mind that I am talking of a situations like romance, in which harm cannot incapacitate either you or your enemies. (By “incapacitate” I mean render them unable to do future harm.) Since harming your enemies cannot disable them, it can only embitter them and potentially create new enemies; and since you cannot be disabled by being harmed, you have nothing to fear by not retaliating.

Returning harm for harm is thus clearly a poor long-term strategy, even if it might be satisfying in the short-term. You are left with two options: do nothing, or return help for harm. The first option seems superficially like the more logical one. By doing nothing, you don’t risk creating new enemies, and you don’t use resources to benefit your enemy that could be used elsewhere.

The second strategy, returning help for harm, is quite obviously more expensive, not to mention less satisfying. (Who likes to see their enemies happy?) Yet I think it is wiser as a long-term strategy, since it is by returning help for harm that enemies are converted into friends. A friend, after all, is somebody who acts in our interest; and it would be a stubborn enemy indeed who could persist in hating somebody who showed them only love and kindness.

Revenge, born of anarchy, is both a social and a personal ill. It is rendered obsolete as soon as people begin living in a society governed by law. It is a waste of resources and a poor survival strategy, and has no place in a just legal system or in the conduct of a wise individual.

Quotes & Commentary #34: Dickens

‘Why do you doubt your senses?’ said Marley’s ghost.

‘Because,’ said Scrooge, ‘a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’

—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Recently I read a book about yoga by Swami Vivekananda. In it, the swami puts forward the common argument in favor of mystical truth: that direct experience of the super-sensuous realm—the spiritual plane—can attest to its existence. That is, the existence of the spiritual plane, while it cannot be detected with any technological device, deduced from any scientific theory, or proven on any philosophical grounds, can be known for certain to exist via direct experience.

I have no doubt that, through yoga, meditation, and prayer, people have had extraordinary experiences. These experiences may well have been far more intense than day-to-day life. On occasion these visions may have left such a lasting mark on a sage’s mind that he was forever transformed, perhaps much for the better.

Since experiences such as these are uncommon and unusual, these gurus will then be faced with the impossible task of capturing their private sensation in words and conveying it to somebody who has never felt anything similar. It would be like describing the color red to a blind man. This is why mystical writing is so often poetical. This also explains why it so often strays into metaphysics.

For my part, I am very fond of mystical poetry. But I have little patience for any epistemology that considers fleeting, incommunicable, and private experiences to be valid sources of insight into the nature of reality. Science works because its methodology does its very best to shun these sorts of visions. Science is effective because it treats knowledge as a social product, not a private hallucination, and because it treats experience as prone to error and in need of interpretation, not as a direct window into reality.

Ebenezer Scrooge was wrong about many things. But he was right to distrust his senses when he thought he saw a ghost. Luckily for him, the reality-status of the ghosts he saw does not make their moral message any less true. Likewise, even if mystical visions and meditative ecstasies may not be valid sources of knowledge about the universe, they can lead to valuable personal transformations.

Quotes & Commentary #33: Mann

“What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises?”

—Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

Why do we have politics? Specifically, why do we have distinct political parties, and periodic elections in which these parties compete for power?

Competitions only exist when there is a zero-sum game. In a situation in which success benefits every party, no competition exists; only cooperation. Yet the reason that humans tend to congregate in groups—whether in families, tribes, villages, kingdoms, states, or nations—is that humans have much to gain from living with one another. That is, society is not a zero-sum game. Anyone with a friend attests to this fact.

Social groups persist because, most of the time, the personal interest of each member is aligned with that of every other. This is, of course, not to deny that there is exploitation and conflict within groups; it is only to assert that, broadly speaking, members have more to gain from staying within the group than from leaving it. For all the members of a durable group, there exists a sizeable overlap in their interest. (By “interest” I mean what is needed and desired.)

If we were to imagine a scenario in which there was no overlap in the interest of each member, then a group would never form, since cooperating would benefit nobody. In such a situation, we would expect to see a Hobbesian war of all against all, since every individual would benefit only at the expense of another.

If we were, on the contrary, to imagine a scenario in which the interest of each member overlapped completely, then this would be a true utopia. In such a state, no elections would be necessary because everyone would agree on what to do; no political parties would form because nobody would be argue; and coercion, exploitation, and conflict of every kind would be entirely absent.

Clearly, we are not living in either of these hypothetical worlds, but in a medium between these two extremes. Yet I think that we are much closer to the conflict-free utopia than the anarchical chaos; otherwise, stable nation-states would not exist.

Nearly all the citizens in a nation have much to gain from cooperation. By and large, what is good for my neighbors is good for me. When my neighbors are succeeding in the stock market and advancing in their careers, I probably am too. When they are living in peace and safety, so am I. When they are benefiting from clean streets, strong healthcare, good schools, safe products, and a fair justice system, I am reaping the same benefits. Since our interests are aligned, we have no reason to fight.

Political strife arises when interests are out of alignment. This can occur for a variety of reasons; but a major cause is demographics. Differences in sex, age, religion, race, class, career, and geography can translate into differences in interest; and differences in interest translate into political conflict. Any proposed policy that benefits men at the expense of women, city dwellers at the expense of rural farmers, the professional class at the expense of the working class, or any other combination imaginable, will almost necessarily lead to argument. This is so, because it is in these situations that the basic foundation of government—the overlap of interest—breaks down.

If these conflicts of interest were not addressed and instead allowed to grow, they could become existential threats to the state. Some mechanism is needed to resolve conflicts before they get out of hand; and this method must be deemed fair and legitimate by most of the group, or it won’t succeed. The modern solution is to have periodic elections in which political parties compete for power. This form of nonviolent competition is, by and large, perceived as fair; and the imprimatur of the majority lends legitimacy to the results.

Besides difference of interest, there is another reason that members of a state might come into political conflict: difference in preferred means, or methods, for achieving shared interests. That is, even if two individuals want the same thing, they might disagree about the best way to get it. Two Americans may want economic prosperity, for example, but disagree about which economic policy would most effectively promote this prosperity. They disagree about the how and not the what.

This type of conflict may be even more common than the former type. Luckily, these conflicts normally do not pose existential threats to the state. Even more luckily, unlike conflicts about goals, conflicts about means can be solved, or at least advanced, through rational argument. As our understanding of economic systems improves, for example, we can rule out bad strategies and develop better ones. Vigorous debate, scientific study, historical research, and the input of experts are all valuable resources when deciding questions of method.

But when a conflict is about goals and not means, when two people’s interests are opposed—when each of them will benefit at the expense of the other—then no amount of rational argument can resolve the conflict. Reason only helps us to determine the best way to achieve our interests; reason cannot dictate our interests.

Political conflict, therefore, primarily exists for two reasons: conflicts of interest, and disagreements about means of achieving shared interests. If this is true, then you should expect to see conflicts forming along certain, predictable lines. Conflicts of interest should form around demographic lines, since different demographic groups often benefit at the expense of one another. You would also expect to see different “philosophies of government”—strategies for accomplishing common goals—that concern themselves with questions of shared interest, such as healthcare, the economy, and national security.

It seems to me that this is exactly what we find when we look at the political situation. People divide themselves up into political parties along relatively sharp demographic lines, according to self-interest. Since no individual belongs to just a single demographic group, but to many at once, the way that this division plays out is quite complex. The policies that would benefit one group at the expense of another—like economic redistribution, protectionist tariffs, or anti-immigration policies—are usually the banners behind which the party’s supporters rally.

By contrast, goals that potentially benefit everyone, like economic prosperity, do not lead to this demographic splitting, but rather to differences in proposed strategies. These differences in strategy form the subject of truly substantial political debate (a rare thing). Yet because each party has different constituents, usually these different strategies would not benefit everyone equally, but rather one demographic group would benefit more than another. The conflicts of means and of ends, while separate in theory, are in practice hopelessly mixed up.

Seen this way, political conflict arises when there are conflicts of interest between major demographic groups, and the conflict is governed by the logic of self-interest. Political conflict is a competition like any other, a clash of self-interested parties using all the resources at their disposal to win the prize.

But if that is so, why is political discourse so intensely moralistic? That is a question for another day.

Quotes & Commentary #32: Flaubert

Human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.

—Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

What is language?

Language is a symbolic medium of communication, connecting two immaterial minds through vibrating air.

Language is a chain of crisscrossing lines and circles on a screen, laden with meaning.

A residue of history, language is the appendage with which the human imagination gropes in baffled astonishment to understand its world.

Language is a cry of joy, a gasp of pain, a grumble of discontent, a sigh of lonely misery, a howl in the night. It is a catalogue of regrets, a repository of wit, an archive of longing; it is an asylum of echoes and ghosts. Communal wisdom and folly immemorial, it is a bundle of superstitious sayings, animated with old pains and aflame with arthritic aches.

Language is shabby. Faint whiffs of dust lurk in its crooks and creases. Old stains are folded into its crumpled, crimped, cramped fabric.

As opaque as ink and as clear as air, our language is a chronicle of errors and our only avenue to the truth.

Language is the vessel of our secrets, as intimate as our dreams and yet as impersonal as the weather. The bedrock of human life, and yet as temporary as a puff of smoke and as insubstantial as a speck of snow. Dying away and born again every second, as malleable as vapor and as durable as time itself.

Possessed by all and yet owned by none, language is the voice of our ancestors speaking through us.

Language is a home we carry around in our heads. Caressed, cherished, and treasured like an old teddy bear. Recklessly renovated, refurbished, and redecorated like a basement apartment.

Controlled, manipulated, distorted, twisted, bent, squeezed, throttled, and maimed, over and over again, language is universally betrayed. But we are all betrayed in return, for language always deserts us in our hour of most desperate need, leaving us stumbling, stammering, mouthing jumbled nonsense, and finally—silent.

Quotes & Commentary #31: James

In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as ‘dazzling obscurity,’ ‘whispering silence,’ ‘teeming desert,’ are continually met with. They prove that not conceptual-speech, but music rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth.

—William James

William James’s book on religion, The Varieties of Religious Experience, is of mixed quality. Penetrating insights are buried in mountains of redundant quotations, and a mass of anecdotal evidence is substituted for a coherent system. After putting it down, the only chapter that made a deep impression on me was his chapter on mysticism.

Before that, I had no notion of mysticism as distinct from organized religion; and yet it is quite discrete. Instead of focusing on external rituals, communally observed, the mystic focuses on his own private experiences; and instead of attempting to translate religious experiences into a mythology or a dogma, the mystic more often reverts to poetry or song to convey the intensity of his private rapture. Mysticism is naturally antipathetic, or at the very least indifferent, to organized religion. A mystic needs no clergyman to access the divine. No intermediary clerics, priests, or theologians are necessary to translate the voice of God into profane speech.

One especially striking feature of mysticism is its ubiquity. While dogmas, creeds, rituals, and mythologies vary greatly, the basic notions and motifs of mysticism are encountered across the world. I have encountered Islamic mysticism in Al-Ghazali, Catholic mysticism in St. Teresa, Hindu mysticism in the Upanishads, and Neoplatonist mysticism in Plotinus. The Tao Te Ching of ancient China is full of the self-contradictory phrases described by William James, such as the famous opening: “The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Constant Tao. The name that can be named is not the Constant Name.”

The common theme running through these works is that the mystic, through intense focus, can look past the world as we know it and gaze upon a higher reality, a divine vision normally invisible to earthly eyes. Right now I am reading a short book by the Hindu monk, Swami Vivekananda, in which he describes a method for attaining exactly this. Once you experience this higher reality, religious doubts become irrelevant; your religion becomes a matter of experience and not of faith.

So if mystics have experienced the divine, why don’t they tell us about it? The problem is that the vision is ineffable. This is why, as William James points out, mystic poets often resort to contradictory language as a way of evoking this mysterious essence. The mythologist Joseph Campbell says almost exactly the same thing: “The person who has had a mystical experience knows that all the symbolic expressions of it are faulty. The symbols don’t render the experience, they suggest it.” St. Teresa of Ávila, for example, had to resort to metaphor after metaphor in her manual on mysticism in order to communicate the experience.

In capturing the mystical experience, visual art would have the same problem as does language, since the artist would be attempting to picture the invisible. Music has the advantage of being neither symbolic nor representative. As sound, it is purely sensuous, perhaps a direct expression of emotion. At the very least sound does not tempt its hearers into confusing the symbol for the symbolized, as language and painting might, and so it can be more safely used to transmit ineffable experiences. Music doesn’t communicate emotions, it evokes them in its audience; it doesn’t represent feelings, it re-creates them in its hearers.

The mystical potential of music was memorably illustrated for me in the autobiography of Bryan Magee. A logical, educated man, and one constitutionally antipathetic to religion, Magee nonetheless describes being so transported by music that he felt he was experiencing another plane of reality, one where there is neither time nor space. This experience was so strong that he felt sure it provided him with some clue about the ultimate nature of reality. But he was frustrated by his inability to translate this feeling into a logical argument. Once again, the mystic insight eludes symbolic expression.

Philosophically, the interesting question is this: to what extent can these intense visions can be trusted? It is beyond doubt that mystics can have ecstatic experiences; the question is what causes them. The sensation of divinity and rapture is so intense that the mystic usually cannot bring himself to doubt its veracity. But this subjective feeling of certainty is a poor guide, to say the least, of what can be safely trusted. This is not just a scientific principle; the Catholic Church was well aware of the unreliability of private visions. This is why Saint Teresa’s book is full of strategies for determining whether your vision is from Satan or God, and careful instructions about how to proceed within the Catholic hierarchy once you have a vision.

Occam’s razor would seem to demand that a naturalistic explanation be preferred for mystic visions. The simplest explanation, and the explanation that most easily harmonizes with our current scientific understanding, is that these ecstatic experiences can be traced to something happening in the brain. Nevertheless, I find it difficult not to sympathize with mystics. If I had an experience that was more intense than anything I’ve seen or heard in my waking live, I think that I would also be unwilling to doubt what I saw.

Quotes and Commentary #30: Burns

It is an unfortunate fact of human nature that it can be extremely difficult to do something when you sense you are being forced into it.

—David D. Burns, Feeling Good

Today I taught a class on modal verbs. This is my favorite subject to teach in English, since modal verbs are the most philosophical area of the language. What is the difference between will and would? Between can and could? Between may and might?

Every time I teach this lesson, I pause on the word “should.” I have the following problem. Very often we use the word “should” for recommendations, such as: “You should avoid eating at McDonalds.” In this situation, there is no moral element; we are telling our friend to avoid McDonalds for his own benefit, not for any ethical reason.

In other situations, “should” has an unambiguously moral connotation, as in: “You should always leave a tip in the United States.” Here, we are being exhorted to do something, not for any personal benefit, but because it is the “right” thing to do.

In many cases, however, it is ambiguous whether the word does or doesn’t carry a moral imperative. This most often occurs when we’re talking to ourselves: “I should really jog more,” or “I should quit smoking,” or “I shouldn’t eat so many donuts.” The situation here is strange, for there is no moral rule involved—is it immoral to eat donuts?—and yet we feel we feel guilty when, as so often happens, we don’t follow our own advice.

David D. Burns, in his popular self-help book on depression, cautions against this last usage of the word should. We are always telling ourselves we “should” be doing this, and “shouldn’t” be doing that. But this leads us into a depressive spiral:

A deadly enemy of motivation is a sense of coercion. You feel under intense pressure to perform—generated from within and without. This happens when you try to motivate yourself with moralistic “shoulds” and “oughts.” You tell yourself, “I should do this” and “I have to do that.” Then you feel obliged, burdened, tense, resentful, and guilty.

The process goes like this. You tell yourself you “should” quit smoking. Then, you create resentment in yourself, since you feel like you’re being forced to do something. This resentment and guilt leads to a spiteful rejection of the advice; smoking becomes, not only a pleasure, but a guilty and rebellious pleasure. The habit thus continues, while your self-esteem is eroded by your inability to do the “right” thing.

I don’t know about you, but this sort of thing happens to me all the time. It was thus a revelation when Burns, in his book, pointed out this common tendency and also explained why it is illogical.

The error originates from a confusion of the first and the second usage of the word “should.” That is, when we tell ourselves we “should” quit smoking, we are really saying that it’s a good idea and we would benefit in the long run. We are appealing to our self-interest and not our moral sense. But we feel guilty and resentful nonetheless. Why? Because we are importing the moral imperative of the second usage into our understanding of the meaning. We are, in other words, judging something to be an ethical duty which is only a potentially beneficial activity.

This is very easy to do, I believe, because we don’t tend to think very clearly about obligations. I have heard philosophers say that the metaphysical distinction between the sphere of moral and amoral reality is the distinction between “ought” and “is.” Moral statements, in other words, do not report what the facts are, but how they should be. Many books have been written about where this “ought” comes from and what it says about the universe.

For my part, I do not find anything special or mysterious about “ought” statements. Indeed, I’d argue that, at bottom, the first and second of usage of “should” rest on the same basis; that is, recommendations and obligations both rest on self-interest.

That the power of a recommendation rests on self-interest is not controversial. The motivation to follow a recommendation is that you will personally benefit in some way. Usually recommendations consist of suggested ways to satisfy certain long-standing desires. We are recommended to apply to a certain job or to eat at a certain restaurant, and these are strategies for satisfying our insatiable desires for money and food.

The second assertion—that obligations rest on self-interest—is sure to raise an eyebrow. Well, let me give you an example. Imagine that you promised to pick your friend up at the airport, but you then your crush invited you to hang out at that same time. You are very tempted to blow off your friend and make him pay for a taxi, but then your mom tells you: “You should always keep your promises.”

Now, at first glance this is obviously not appealing to self-interest. You are being told to do something that will be dreadful instead of something fun. So why “should” you do it? Simply because it’s the “right” thing to do? But why is it “right”?

Now you must ask yourself: Do you want to live in a world where promises exist, or a world where they don’t? Think carefully about this. What if you could never trust somebody’s word, and you could not depend on anybody to follow a verbal agreement? I don’t know about you, but such a world seems unlivably dreadful to me.

The world seems to have come to the same conclusion, since promises exist. And the reason we have agreed to have the institution of the promise is that, although occasionally painful in the short-term, it is beneficial in the long-term to live in a society where you can trust somebody’s word. Thus people make a compromise. Accept some incidental annoyances as the price for the boon of general honesty. You gain more than you lose with this bargain.

This is, I think, the nature of all moral rules: they are rules of behavior that, while occasionally painful in the short-term, benefit every individual member in the long-term by enabling a society wherein people can expect their neighbors to be respectful, peaceful, and honest. But these rules only work if everybody abides by them. For a moral rule to be beneficial to its followers, it must not allow others to take advantage of them, but must lead to a long-term gain. If enough people chose not to follow a rule, and instead take advantage of its followers, then it will collapse. All moral action is motivated by long-term self-interest, and morality collapses when it is no longer in the long-term self-interest of its members to comply.

To return to the above example, you must realize that, by breaking your promise, you are making an exception of yourself. You want to live in a world where people keep their promises, but you don’t want to keep yours. Indeed, in a small way you are undermining the institution of the promise, and taking advantage of your friend’s trust. You are choosing to indulge in a short-term pleasure rather than consider the long-term consequences of this action.

To conclude, I think the moral force of the advice “You should always keep your promises” is related directly to self-interest. In almost every situation, the benefits of living in a society where you can trust the word of other people outweigh many times over the benefits of breaking a single promise.

Now, of course, in practice the fabric of society doesn’t collapse when a few promises are broken. Moral systems are human things, and thus imperfect. Moral laws can survive with a surprising amount of noncompliance and hypocrisy. But you also have to consider the potential consequences of acquiring a reputation for being untrustworthy. Besides that, by doing your friend a favor, you earn yourself social goodwill and might be able to call upon him in the future.

This brings me back to my earlier point. A moral obligation is, at base, simply the realization that you have more to gain by following a moral rule than by breaking it. A moral obligation is thus like a piece of especially good advice; and at bottom, the first and second usage of the word “should” are identical.

I have found this way of thinking personally beneficial, since it allows me to avoid the feelings of guilt, bitterness, and resentment that I get when I tell myself “I should do such and such.” Now, I remind myself of how I will personally benefit from the action in the future. I remind myself that the things I “should” do are just ways of satisfying certain long-standing, insatiable desires of mine. And nobody feels guilty when they don’t efficiently satisfy a desire.

Quotes & Commentary #29: Evans-Pritchard

A man is a member of a political group of any kind in virtue of his non-membership of other groups of the same kind.

—E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer

Evans-Pritchard—or “EP,” as his friends called him—was one of the great pioneers of cultural anthropology. His work among the Nuer, a Nilotic ethnic group living in modern South Suden, is now regarded as among the classics of anthropology.

I read his work when I was just a young anthropology student. After all these years, this quote has stayed vividly in my memory because, though not occupying a central position in EP’s thought, I think it says something profound about the nature of social behavior.

Consider this typical habit. If somebody from Europe asks me where I’m from, I say the United States. If an American asks me the same question, I say I’m from New York. If the person is a New Yorker, I say I’m from Westchester; and if they’re also from Westchester, I say I’m from Sleepy Hollow.

Thus, I locate my identity with increasing precision depending on the proximity of our origin. Differences between people become more important, paradoxically, the more similar you are. Freud called this phenomenon “the narcissism of small difference,” and it is memorably portrayed in EP’s book.

The Nuer, a tall, thin, pastoral, cattle-herding people, are constantly at war with the Dinka. The Dinka also speak a Nilotic language, are also characteristically tall and thin, they also herd cattle. An outsider would likely have trouble telling the two groups apart. And yet the Nuer look down upon the Dinka with disdain and disgust, regarding them are nearly subhuman, and never hesitate to inflict violent raids upon them.

This sounds ridiculous; but consider how often we do the same thing. Indeed, it is of the nature of our social identities that they are defined by the groups they are opposed to.

The phenomenon is especially visible in sports. Here in Spain, your identity is signified by the football team you support. Being a fan of any given team has political and cultural overtones. The ideological tension between Madrid and Barcelona is symbolized by the rivalry between Real Madrid and Barça (known as El Clásico). Likewise in New York the Yankees and the Mets attract different demographics.

Politics, too, is classic example. To be a Democrat means being opposed to everything the Republicans do and believe; and vice versa. To quote a recent Op-Ed article by the comedian Trevor Noah: “Either black people are criminals, or cops are racist—pick one. It’s us versus them. You’re with us, or you’re against us.” Even the minor parties are defined by their contrast to the major ones. A member of the Green Party is somebody too leftist and idealistic to be a Democrat; and a libertarian is somebody who disagrees with the Republicans on social issues and with the Democrats on economic ones. And so on.

Less apparent, though no less real, is the operation of this phenomenon in the sphere of culture. This was demonstrated by the work of Pierre Bourdieu’s classic sociological study, Distinction. There he documents how people use their taste in music and literature in order to define their position in the social scale.

Snobbishness is an attempt to distance oneself from other groups by snubbing your nose at their art and culture; and in so doing, you signal your allegiance to your own group and construct your own social identity. Just consider how much time people have spent publically complaining about Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey. Why do people so enjoy—in the privacy of friendly conversation and the openness of social media—berating movies, shows, songs, and books? And why do we often consider a person’s taste to be such a critical factor of who they are?

In the words of Oscar Wilde (who was right about everything): “More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.”

I myself, I am ashamed to admit, have viciously judged others by what books they read and didn’t read—even by what books they have or hadn’t heard of. Likewise, in various circumstances I have been judged for my lack of knowledge of Buddhism, rap, postmodern philosophy, contemporary physics, and the history of the United States.

The knowledge deemed “crucial” varies from group to group. And in each case, some other reason is given for their snobbishness. Buddhism can save your life! Physics is the nature of reality! You need to know all the names of the Supreme Court justices in order to be a conscientious citizen! And so on. But the truth is that all this knowledge, while useful and interesting, also serves as a social marker, identifying your place in the complex, ever-shifting, overlapping hierarchies that we use to negotiate the public world.

Take a moment to reflect on this. How much of your own identity is constructed from this process of embracing and scorning, of judging and condemning, of critiquing and collecting, of identifying and opposing? How much of our self-image is composed of the types of movies we watch, the genres of music we listen to, the sophistication of the books we read? How much of your sense of self is a reflection, a negative definition formed by you self-consciously not belonging to a certain political party?

Personally, when I ask myself these questions, I find the answer very disturbing. Yes, to a certain extent it is inevitable if we are to live in a society. But identifying yourself by variously allying yourself with, or distancing yourself from, various pre-existing identities seems like the very definition of superficiality. After all, if we are not to be mere party members or fans or cheerleaders, we cannot put together our identity out of puzzle pieces we find laying around. A true individual is not made of legos.

At the very least, we can keep this insight of Evans-Pritchard in mind the next time we feel inclined to judge somebody for their political party, for the team they support, for the books they read, or any of the other innumerable things we use to reduce the irreducible complexity of a human being down to simple social categories. Next time you have the urge to be a snob about your musical taste, to hate somebody because of their opinion, or to crown yourself with a halo for not being a Democrat or a Republican, consider how this very act of judging is a way of defining yourself. And do you really want your self-image to be the byproduct of snobbery?

Quotes & Commentary #28: Nietzsche

I would believe only in a god who could dance.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra.

This is one of Nietzsche’s most famous quotes. Like a catchy tune, it sticks effortlessly in the memory after one hearing. Perhaps this is only because it conjures up such a silly image. I imagine the God of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, bearded and robed, skipping and dancing from cloud to cloud, filling heaven with capricious laughter.

But why is this image so silly? Why was Michelangelo, along with so many others, inclined to picture God as solemn, grave, and frowning? Why is a dancing deity such a paradox?

A true god would have no need to be serious and severe; those values are for stern parents, Sunday-school preachers, and ruler-snapping teachers. I know this from my own teaching experience: Putting on a strict, frowning, joyless countenance is a desperate measure. Teachers do it in order to reduce their yapping, fidgeting, giggling, scatterbrained kids into hushed, intimidated, obedient students. But would a god need to resort to such scare-tactics?

This observation is part of Nietzsche’s aim, to resuscitate the Dionysian in European life. By Dionysian, Nietzsche meant the joys of passion, disorder, chaos, and of creative destruction. The Dionysian man identifies with the stormy waves smashing the shore, with the lion tearing into its prey. He is intoxicated by earthly life; every sensation is a joy, every step is a frolic.

This is quite obviously in stark contrast with the Platonic ideal of a philosopher: always calm and composed, scorning the pleasures of the body, worshiping logical order and truth. A true Platonist would never dance. Christianity largely adopted this Platonic idea, which found ultimate expression in the monastic life—a life of routine, celibacy, constant prayer, scant diet, and self-mortification—a life that rejects earthly joys.

I have found myself thinking of this quote because I recently went to a dance club, something I seldom do. Now, at least in theory, I consider myself more of a Nietzschean than a Platonist when it comes to dancing. I don’t see any reason why it should be scorned. And yet every time I get into a situation where I need to dance, I find it distasteful.

The whole thing is a physical ordeal. There must be a better way to find a mate. Behind a booth, a DJ stand there (this one was a middle-aged man, clean-shaven), his head bobbing under the weight of headphones that look more like earmuffs, digitally splicing together song after song, which blare and pound on the strained speakers.

The sound waves bounce off the floors and the walls, creating a super-charged intensity in the atmosphere that makes every molecule in your body vibrate uncomfortably. Conversation is impossible. Men and women shake, jiggle, step rhythmically to the left and the right. None of them are sure what to do with their arms: some arms thrash about haphazardly, some hands are tensed into tight fists. A few are good dancers; the rest are ridiculous.

A few of the men come on rather strongly; they do nothing but prowl around the women, looking for openings. Most of this sort are not the most impressive specimens. Meanwhile, it is hot. Every bouncing body is covered in sweat, and occasionally you’ll get whiffs of the odor.

In short, I find it a bit ridiculous. My usual inclination is to stand in the corner, sipping a drink, wryly observing. But that’s anti-social. So I try to make myself dance. Usually, however, I am far too sober and aware of my surroundings to take any pleasure in it. I would rather have a conversation and learn about somebody else than stand there and bob next to them.

There have been times—not many, but a few—where I have successfully overcome my initial distaste. I need to be in a very specific mood, when I am simply tired of thinking, full of energy, and comfortable with my surroundings. And I admit, I had a good time dancing. I wish I could access this state of mind more consistently. I don’t like being so judgmental, delicate, and self-conscious (seeing everyone around me looking so silly makes me feel silly too). But no matter how hard I try, usually I can’t make myself enjoy it. So I do like I did the other night: I go home.

I don’t think Nietzsche did much dancing himself, anyway. Like him, I’d rather write.

Quotes & Commentary #27: Aesop

What is worth most is often valued least.

—Aesop

This quote is the moral of the fable, “The Stag at the Pool.” The story, like all of Aesop’s fables, is elegant and simple.

A beautiful stag stops at a pool to take a drink of water. But while bending down, he notices his reflection in the pool. “What beautiful antlers I have!” he says to himself, and begins to turn his head left and right, admiring his antlers. “I would be the paragon of animals if I didn’t have such pitiful, skinny legs!” he says.

Just then, a lion spring out of a nearby bush. The stag turns to run. On his skinny legs he is fleet enough to put distance between himself and the lion. He takes cover in a wooded area. The lion is falling behind, and the stag seems to be losing him. But just then, the stag’s antlers get stuck in a tree branch. No matter how much he twists and turns, he can’t extricate himself.

“What a fool I am!” he says to himself. “I despised my legs, which allowed me to escape, and praised my antlers, which doomed me.” But before the late-blooming philosopher can get any further in his thoughts, he is eaten by the lion.

This moral now reminds me of something Bryan Magee said in his intellectual autobiography, Confessions of a Philosopher. He is attempting to summarize the central insight of most religions (and many philosophies, I’d say):

The world is governed by false values. People in all societies seem anxious to do what they think is the done thing, and are terrified of social disapproval. They set their hearts on getting on in the world, being thought highly of by their fellows, being powerful, acquiring money and possessions, knowing “important” people.

As I have discussed in my review of Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth, I think it is, to a certain extent, inevitable that society be governed by these “false values”: wealth, power, attractiveness, coolness, fame, skill, and popularity. Society simply cannot function without them, because society inevitably involves competition: for power, for wealth, for mates, and for fame. Any time there is a competition—with more competitors than prizes—then there arise, ipso facto, standards for determining winners and losers. The competition for wealth causes us to admire the rich; the competition for mates causes us to admire the beautiful; and so on, and so forth.

But these values, which we often put so much stock in, are ultimately superficial and vain. They measure the individual—a constantly evolving, chaotic mixture of virtues, vices, skills, traits, and follies—by external things, like money or power, which are as often as not gotten by luck or villainy. The superficiality of these measures is apparent whenever someone suffers an acute reversal of fortune. A woman in an apparently successful marriage discovers that her husband is having an affair; a young entrepreneur makes a bad choice and goes bankrupt; a one-hit-wonder musician is washed up by thirty. The people themselves did not change; their luck did. And luck is not the measure of a person’s worth.

I do not think society need be condemned for being governed by superficial values. But because this is always so, we must constantly remind ourselves that all these values of the game, these values of the competition for worldly success, and all the relentless, never-ending messages we imbibe every day about the definition of success—all this might as well be a puff of smoke for all its permanence.

The really valuable things are not the prizes of competitions, but are available to anyone. The smell of the air on a chilly autumn day; the chirping of birds and the ringing of church bells echoing through a town; the reds and yellows of a cloudy sunset. Art, love, the pursuit of truth, the laughter of friends—these are what we most enjoy, and it is not a coincidence that enjoying them doesn’t require winning any game.

The story of the stag and his antlers illustrates this point very well. The stag is proud of his antlers, because antlers are what stags use to fight for mates. The stag with the biggest antlers is thus the manliest, the most successful in the eyes of the herd. But the superficiality of this herd value is apparent when the lion attacks. Now what is most valuable? The thing that is given to every stag at birth: his legs.

So remember: never overvalue your antlers at the expense of your legs. When bad luck hits—whether its in the form of a lion or a breakup—then its your legs that will get you through, and your big, impressive antlers will just get in the way.

Quotes & Commentary #26: Durant

A sense of humor, being born of perspective, bears a near kinship with philosophy; each is the soul of the other.

—Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

Durant, though not much of a comedian (and hardly more of a philosopher), did have his funny moments. My favorite of his subtle sarcasms is this delicious pun: “Holland boasted of several ladies who courted in Latin, who could probably conjugate better than they could decline.”

I was reminded of this quote while reading Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning. In his brief overview of his therapeutic technique, Logotherapy, Frankl mentions that he often uses humor to help his patients deal with neuroses.

The popular cognitive therapist, David D. Burns, also uses humor to help his patients deal with anxiety and depression. One of his techniques for managing fear is to replace a dreadful fantasy with a funny one. This relies on the same principle as the advice commonly given to people with a fear of public speaking: imagine everyone in the crowd in their undergarments. The effect of this is to transform something dreadfully serious and frightening into something absurd, and even fun.

I remember something from a documentary I saw long ago (I wish I could remember which one) that human babies laugh when something apparently dangerous turns out, upon closer inspection, to be harmless. For example: A mom hides her face behind her hands. The baby gets confused and nervous. He can no longer see her face. Is that still his mom? What’s going on? Then, the mom takes her hands away, revealing a silly smile. The baby giggles with delight. It was mommy all along!

The reason why humor is effective in dealing with anxiety relies, I think, on this same mechanism. When we manage to see the humor in our situation, we see it from a new point of view, a new perspective in which our problems, which looked terrible from up close, now look silly and harmless.

In a way, to find something humorous, we must see the situation from a greater distance. Instead of getting absorbed in a problem, letting its shape occupy our whole field of vision, we place the problem in a landscape and thus contextualize it. When we do this, often we find ourselves laughing, because the problem, which before seemed so huge, is really small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Here’s a recent example. A book review I wrote, of which I am fairly proud, was somehow deleted off Goodreads. At first I got very annoyed and upset. I had put so much effort into writing it! And I lost all the likes and comments! Then, with a smile, I realized that it is a bit absurd to get worked up about an internet book review. People are struggling to find jobs, managing chronic diseases—and for Pete’s sake Trump is president! My lost book review was nothing to get frustrated about.

As Durant points out, it is this quality of humor—seeing the part within the context of the whole—that most approaches philosophy. Durant does not, of course, mean “philosophy” in the strict, modern sense of the word (the subject that deals with problems of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and so forth). He means, rather, philosophy in its classic sense, as a method of regulating one’s life and thoughts in order to be more virtuous and happy. Nowadays, instead of philosophy, we have therapy and self-help books to aid us in this quest. But whatever we decide to call the art of life, I think most of us can agree that humor plays no small part in it.

Just the other day, I was having a conversation with a teacher in the philosophy department of my school. I asked if there were any Spanish philosophers she would recommend. She mentioned a couple names, but then she added: “You know, the most profound Spanish philosophy cannot be found in any philosophy book. It’s in Don Quixote.”

I was struck by this comment, because Unamuno, who I just finished reading, had the same opinion. And I can’t help agreeing. All profound comedy—and there is no comedy no more profound than Don Quixote—necessarily carries with it a profound philosophy. I do not mean by this that you can extract from Cervantes anything similar to Kant’s ethics; only that great comedy requires an ability to see things as they really are, within the context of the whole, and to transmit this vision with punch and savor.

The comedian alive who, in my opinion, comes closest to this quixotic ideal is Louis C.K. His comedy is distinctive for its emphasis on self-mockery. Most often he uses himself as the butt of his jokes. But his comedy is saved from narcissism because, despite his wealth and fame, he convincingly adopts an everyman persona. Whenever he makes fun of himself he is making fun of you, because inevitably you think the same thoughts and do the same things. But his comedy isn’t threatening because, however denigrating he can be, everyone in the audience is all in it together.

This ability to make fun of yourself is one of the qualities I value most highly. It saves you from being arrogant, condescending, and over-serious. It allows you to be humorous without picking on other people. Self-mockery is also, I think, an excellent antidote to many of life’s petty troubles (like deleted book reviews). If you can take a step back from yourself, and honestly see your faults, your pettiness, and your absurdities—not with bitterness but with forgiving humor—then you will be able to see your successes and your failures with the gentle irony that life, a thoroughly silly thing, so richly deserves.

Lotz in Translation

Saving the world—one long, pretentious blog post at a time.

Category: Quotes and Commentary