Principles of Mental Rebellion

Something of a Change

2007-07-01T21:58:00.000-04:00

I haven't been here for a while. A lot has changed in my own life and in my perspective on life in general. I don't disclaim anything I've said here in the past -- far from it in fact -- but I don't plan to continue the line of thought. It's taken me to this point, and I'm ready to move on.

So, if anybody is reading -- I don't really have a readership anymore, but that makes me bolder and more interesting -- I have a new project. Yes, we are still rebelling. Don't worry about that. But, we have to define our rebellion much more carefully and tangibly.

If you need a coach in life, stop by here from time to time. It may not be what you're looking for, but you might be surprised. I might also start a new blog or two, the names of which are more appropriate. But I'm pretty attached to this old thing at this point.

Mea Culpa

2007-03-12T21:06:00.000-04:00

Big words. Ugh. I will do better. The thoughts run deep. But I don't need four syllables or more, or so much Latin, to put them onto paper.

Flies and Fleas

2007-03-10T21:32:00.000-05:00

Have you ever watched followers? Look at them. How serious they are! Can you see them reading their magazines and watching TV? Do you hear them all saying the exact same things and waiting for the applause. Nietzsche called them flies. I love Nietzsche. But they seem to me more like fleas.

Defining Evil

2007-03-10T21:28:00.000-05:00

Masculinity has become evil. Does it resist uinversalism somehow?

Intelligent Strength

2007-01-13T20:36:00.000-05:00

Collectively we are fools and collectively we doom ourselves. Individually we are intelligent but individually we are weak. The middle ground lies somewhere.

Imperial Bias

2007-01-13T20:34:00.000-05:00

It is ironic that in this age nations are bigger than ancient empires, while imperialism in name is out of favor. The next time you hear an American self-righteously condemning imperialism, ask him his opinion about secession.

Idealist? Me?

2007-01-13T20:29:00.000-05:00

The target of this rebellion is not idealism but universal morality. There is a difference. Idealism cannot claim to exist without universalism, but the latter can claim, albeit falsely, to exist without the former. The many who have abandoned idealism in theory would never think to give up universalism. The universal has been leading a charmed and inviolate life.

Creation and Transformation

2007-01-13T20:25:00.000-05:00

Because we are unable to create energy, we are unable to create wealth. The “creation of wealth” is the value extracted during the transformation of energy from useful to irreversibly useless.

In Search of a Premise

2006-12-09T22:29:00.000-05:00

According to Cicero, the very fact that the Romans had acquired an empire proved their wisdom. Success makes philosophers of us all.

Absolutely Respectful

2006-12-09T21:29:00.000-05:00

The lack of a universal standard is exactly why the various local customs, despite their stark contrasts with each other, ask to be respected in absolute terms, not the reason why they ought to be ignored and destroyed. What do we plan to replace them with? Reason, empire, Christ, the Church, communism, fascism, capitalism, liberalism, selfishness, chaos, equilibrium, heat-death?

Strangely Diverse

2006-12-09T21:12:00.000-05:00

Nietzsche, who despised the ideal of equality, adopted and adapted the teaching that unavoidably assumed it as a foundation. That explains to a great degree his strangely diverse appeal.

Longing for Sobriety

2006-12-09T21:00:00.000-05:00

The reality of the modern human perspective is that it has been subjected to a rational development of ideas founded upon a dubious but now unconsciously accepted premise. A belief in universal morality as a concept or form leads by logical necessity to the commitment both to equality and to the interests of the individual (see “Selfishly Inevitable” on 1/1/06). I pose to myself a series of questions at this stage. Do equality and the interests of the individual define the moral paradigm of our age? Is the modern moral condition healthy, or are we in trouble? Is this chaos? If so, are we prepared to give up the spirits to which we are so addicted and to find out once again what mere water tastes like? We have put our faith into intoxicants, whether we call them gods or godless patterns of perfection. Anyone who refuses to gulp them inevitably suffers the moral criticism of the tipsy. I myself do not particularly enjoy condemnation, but I can no longer tolerate having to hold my nose in order to drink the false ideals of a foolishly inebriated society.

Mass Destruction

2006-12-06T21:31:00.000-05:00

The followers of a universal morality are more destructive than its creators. The creator in many cases was a rebel, who would be the first to take a stand against his own conception in its massified form.

We Need to Talk about This

2006-12-06T21:19:00.000-05:00

Small groups depend on individuals, large groups depend on committees. When the end of mankind is at hand, the one and only thing we will know how to do is to call a meeting.

Inconsistency? Or Adventure?

2006-12-03T22:26:00.000-05:00

I believe in evolution, I do not believe in God, and I prefer Christian to liberal morality. Liberal morality has no more claim to evolution than Christianity does, and to me Christianity seems more life preserving. But evolution puts an undeniable block on the authority of Christianity. So where are we? I go back to my first statement. I am unwilling to finish it with "and I embrace liberalism." Here is where I break from the evolutionists that I admire, and here is where I am ready to lead into an unknown.

Acclimatized Heroism

2006-12-03T22:08:00.000-05:00

Most of us acclimatize ourselves regardless of the environment. The true exception, by contrast, does not adapt and leaves himself vulnerable to the elements as a result. Is he under-evolved biologically speaking? Is the thoughtless follower the real hero of Darwinian theory? He is certainly one of them.

Bravo!

2006-11-26T09:15:00.000-05:00

Our temporal pride is reaching its summit. We have become good simply because of the age into which we have been born, and without any qualification other than the ability to listen to the moral zeitgeist, as Richard Dawkins calls it, or perhaps the ability to listen to Dawkins himself, we can sit in judgment of those who have lived before us. Let’s try a metaphor, for metaphors are the best teachers when the truth is elusive. We are singing the final aria of the opera known as human progress, and as long as we trust in science and reason, overcome our selfish replicators, and methodically wipe away any traces of our past misbehavior, we will hit every note. O tempora, O mores!

Parallel Worlds

2006-11-24T19:14:00.000-05:00

Men hate women and women hate men. We might therefore imagine a perfect situation in which we are safely segregated from each other, with an unqualified sharing of resources and overall power. There is Men’s World and there is Women’s World. We are of equal status; we are at peace; and nothing is threatened by our having to deal with each other on a day to day basis. We would have carefully regulated centers of reproduction of course, where we would discretely perpetuate our species in test tubes. What do you think? What would you suggest as the penalty for those who would inevitably get caught sneaking across the borders and coupling under the cover of night? Death? Exile? Marriage?

Nature as Teacher

2006-11-24T19:06:00.000-05:00

When it comes to learning, inertia is a law of nature.

A View from a Greek's Eye

2006-11-24T19:04:00.000-05:00

In the end, “might makes right” will undermine those in power; and those who claim to be masters according to the law of nature, or of God, will someday find themselves as slaves according to the same law.

Abstract Attack

2006-11-24T18:57:00.000-05:00

Polytheism was the religion of organic abstractions. It was life-preserving insofar as it worshiped those aspects of nature, including war, which were eternally recurring. Ultimately the attempt to attack and remake those abstractions attacks what is eternal in life and thus life itself.

Convicted and Doing Time

2006-11-24T18:49:00.000-05:00

Sometimes what is true is known only by a conviction that relies on time for its justification.

The Genetic Pot

2006-11-23T21:30:00.000-05:00

Caesar's greatest rival was Pompey, and Pompey's was Caesar. Neither struck the blow that killed the other, but both did it in their way from a distance. For a while, however, in their rise to power, they were allies. Pompey, though the elder, was Caesar's son-in-law. As we attempt in this day and age to find a larger morality developed from the kin selection and reciprocal altruism that evolved in our hunter-gatherer ancestors, we should never lose track of the individual stakes involved and forget that certain men, like Richard Dawkins, are playing for a much larger pot than most.

Insensible Graft

2006-11-23T21:09:00.000-05:00

Polytheism is the worship of the abstract and eternal in the sensible world. People have always lusted and loved, so let there be Aphrodite. Platonism, on the other hand, wants to know, what is love? And when it gets in reply only examples instead of a universal definition, it locates the abstraction in another realm; and other-worldly philosophies, abhorrent to the sensible world, are born. Today we are attempting to graft back onto the sensible world the abstractions originally removed from it. But the abstractions have been so totally altered by their stay in the other world that they bear no resemblance to the world they are supposed to represent. Our only recourse is to change the world so that it resembles the abstractions. Do we wonder why we can no longer recognize the obvious?

Simple Obstruction

2006-11-23T20:58:00.000-05:00

It is not lack of purpose but lack of fulfilled purpose that kills us. This is a subtle but profound difference. Our society is set up in such a way that our plainest purposes are obstructed, and we are sent on a mission of complicated redefinition of purpose as a result. But we are not as complicated as all that. We are forced into complexities and complexes that we would never meet under circumstances simpler and more human.

Where's the Logic?

2006-11-22T11:55:00.000-05:00

It is commonly held among modern philosophers that we human beings do not really have free will. Every choice that we make, so they say, is dictated by a personal nature that we did not choose and by circumstances beyond our control. From this premise comes the argument that we ought not to punish criminals, because they cannot act otherwise than they do and are therefore not responsible for their actions. Do you see a flaw in this? Why do we as punishers have an option when the criminal does not? Wouldn’t we simply punish him or pardon him according to our circumstances and our unchosen nature? If we are able to choose, so is he. The premise cannot withstand the argument.

Willfully Real

2006-11-22T11:43:00.000-05:00

Even if you believe in the truth and believe that there is an eternal truth, you are still left with the question, is truth living or is it mechanical? Let us say that the answer does not really matter. In either case biological reality is subordinate to it. The fear behind a truth more mechanical than alive is the fear of randomness and purposelessness. But life and death themselves are fixed and regular. Mechanical truths are no more random in their manifestations than living ones. Your purposefulness lies in your will. No theory of where it came from can either add to it or take away from it.

Beggars Can't Be Choosers

2006-11-22T11:29:00.000-05:00

I am a modern Western man. I am weak. I have neither people nor property. Please give me an occupation that will sustain me and possibly enrich me, and I will live out my life in obedience to your ideals rather than to the volition which is my only personal possession.

Fun With Numbers

2006-11-22T11:25:00.000-05:00

Is there a relation between mathematics and ethics? If two and two make four, does it follow that everybody is equal? If you think that I have asked a ridiculous question, you do not understand the games that idealistic philosophers have been playing with human life.

Monkey Do

2006-11-22T11:24:00.000-05:00

“Every single day sees improvement in human morality, but we should never forget what human beings are capable of doing to one another.” This is a line of graffiti that I saw at the zoo on the walls of the monkey-cage.

The Wonder of It

2006-11-21T22:10:00.000-05:00

Will it ever be recognized that philosophies of freedom, tolerance, and equality have been conceived in order to convince people to submit to a centralized authority? Will we ever be able to look back in wonder and ask ourselves how human beings could have come to believe that they wanted nothing else than to be uselessly uniform, at the inestimable cost of themselves as unique societies?

Valorous Offense

2006-11-21T21:59:00.000-05:00

The world will never be completely united, but perhaps someday it will be divided into just two groups, those who want to preserve the human species and are not afraid to offend, and those who say what everybody wants to hear in order to preserve their personal security. The former will be superior in valor, the latter in number.

Dead-End Trail

2006-11-21T21:46:00.000-05:00

Pragmatically speaking, the imperative to 'live and let live' is false over the course of time. We are too dependent upon one another. As Europe is beginning to discover, individualism is an evolutionary impasse. True survivors follow a different trail.

An Olympic Sport

2006-11-18T20:34:00.000-05:00

You can talk all you like, but I suspect that you are nothing but an insignificant spectator. The game that will determine what we are as a species is being played only by those, like Richard Dawkins, with natural talent and the motivation to develop that talent into an intimidatingly muscular condition.

Universal Logic

2006-11-18T20:31:00.000-05:00

Because universalism destroys local customs and laws, it promotes anarchy, and anarchy in its turn necessitates comprehensive control. Causing a problem for which you are the only solution is an infallible path to success.

The Psychology of Moral Ignorance

2006-11-18T20:08:00.000-05:00

We learn from Thucydides that the history of human morality and the reality of human psychology are the same story. I will be bold enough to assert that our scientific understanding of human psychology today is better than that of Thucydides, but our understanding of our personal psychology, and therefore of morality, is over two millennia behind.

Too Simple to be Taken Seriously

2006-11-18T20:04:00.000-05:00

If you insist on having a universal law of nature as the master of human affairs, all you are going to get is a struggle for the power to pronounce what the law of nature is.

A Rock of Your Own or a Crowded Hard Place

2006-11-18T19:53:00.000-05:00

Today we have two choices, individualism or universalism, which we might also call radical detachment and lifeless assimilation. It is a predicament created by philosophers, but by now it is ours. We are too meek and dependent to create a realistic alternative.

Unified Defiance, Unified Disintegration

2006-11-18T19:43:00.000-05:00

Independent peoples face grave problems when they have to defend themselves against large numbers of amalgamated enemies. The Greeks had to unite in order to defeat the Persians, but the unification that persisted thereafter destroyed them.

Packing Your Bags

2006-11-18T19:34:00.000-05:00

Philosophers argue from the known to the unknown and then back again. Does knowledge of the unknown place an obligation on the known? We are currently in a state of mind where we do not even bother to argue from the known to begin with but rather just make assumptions about the unknown and initiate debates over the known. Listen to people throw around the words good and evil, right and wrong, without the meagerest conception of the metaphysical baggage that goes with them. The popular perspective is unconsciously philosophical by now, and philosophy itself is becoming obsolete as a result.

Resourceful Goodness

2006-11-18T19:29:00.000-05:00

Societal entropy is very expensive because of the huge costs of centralized management and massive redistribution. It is quite possible that sometime in the near future we will no longer have the natural resources to be good.

Bringing the Violence Home

2006-11-18T19:24:00.000-05:00

Universal law in no way implies universal peace. The more universal we become, the more the violence moves from the battlefield into our own neighborhoods. We trade warriors for police, that is all.

Insignificant Consequences

2006-11-18T19:17:00.000-05:00

Restrained by the limits of our universal ideals, we have to create artificial significance. Athletic contests are an obvious example. We might take it as a general rule that the more attention something receives in this society of ours, the less consequential it is.

Crude Neutrality

2006-11-18T19:07:00.000-05:00

We human beings cannot tolerate truth in its crudest state, because it is neutral and does not take human sensibility into account. In order to make it usable, we have to refine it into a benevolent god or into an ideal of toleration or equality.

Impression, Suppression, Depression

2006-11-08T22:04:00.000-05:00

You do not need to know much to impress those who know nothing. Any system of mass education relies on the fact that very few people have the will or the ability to learn anything whatsoever on their own.

By the Imitators, For the Imitators

2006-11-08T21:55:00.000-05:00

Rule by the people is a phantom, because most human beings imitate. Doing what everybody else is doing is the safest and least exhausting way to perceive yourself well and, in the evolutionary model, to get your genetic material reproduced. In modern history rule by the people has come to mean rule by the representations of the people. These representations, which include not so much elected officials as centralized education and the popular media, do not mimic our behavior; they direct it. Almost all people, although unwilling to admit it, depend utterly upon others to tell them what to think and how to act. The citizens of this society of ours, including the elected officials themselves, could not possibly put themselves into motion without the stimulus of their scholars, their journalists, and their entertainers.

Self-Intimidation

2006-11-08T21:50:00.000-05:00

Millions of people in this society live life prepared at every moment to be piously offended at the speech and actions of others. Ironically, they all depend upon one another for their perception of themselves and greatly intimidate each other as a result.

Seeing Through Spectacles

2006-11-08T21:29:00.000-05:00

When life becomes showy and extravagant, we tend to see truth only in the spectacular.

Freely Unimportant, Wisely Uninteresting

2006-11-08T21:19:00.000-05:00

In a world of institutionalized education, something unfortunate happens to an adolescent as he is turning into an adult. He loses his freedom of thought and ceases to have anything interesting to say, long before he has the wisdom to say anything important.

Dependent Independence

2006-11-08T21:17:00.000-05:00

Generally speaking a man is an ignorant creature and is at the mercy of the more perceptive of his kind. In the era of universalism, however, he has no sense of his dependence. He happily believes that the dictates of others constitute his education and his initiation into intellectual independence.

An Ideal Use of Time

2006-11-08T20:48:00.000-05:00

Our attempt to apply the democratic process to every affair of our daily lives is wasting everybody’s time. Nevertheless it is helping us to achieve our ideals. Through common uselessness we are advancing toward equality.

Cowardly Ignorance

2006-11-08T20:17:00.000-05:00

We define wisdom as knowing what everybody else is doing. Anyone therefore who does not give a large part of his life to the popular media is considered either ignorant or suspect. “Where do you find the time to read literature?” a man asked me once, insisting that after he had read the newspapers and the magazines and had watched the news on television, he did not have time to pick up a book. I replied that I did not read the newspapers or the magazines and did not watch the news on television. His jaw dropped in disbelief. “How do you know what’s going on?” he cried. It crossed my mind that I might try to explain to him how literature opened your eyes to your surroundings and how the media blinded them by contrast; but my tongue tied as he stared superciliously at me. “I would rather not know,” I said in the end; “I do not have the courage to face it.”

Task-Master

2006-11-08T20:08:00.000-05:00

The ideals of capitalism teach us that if someone is willing to pay us to perform a task, doing it will give us worth. Faithfully we expend ourselves in our attempt to attain the justification of our existence. But if someone is willing to pay us in return for our exertion, the task by itself must lack intrinsic value and without compensation would go undone. We earn money from it, that is all, and give up our only life to do it. We become petty occupations rather than ourselves and are fated to die as if we had never lived.

Oppressive Ethics

2006-11-08T19:55:00.000-05:00

By now the words “oppressors” and “oppressed” symbolize many people who are neither, but nobody is free of his symbol. If you are marked by the former you must repent and seek forgiveness. If you are marked by the latter, you are one of the chosen and have attractive privileges, such as the right to redistributed wealth and the right to slander the oppressors. The oppressed demand Christian morality from the oppressors while permitting themselves an eye for an eye. How much longer will this literal evolution of Judaeo-Christian ethics give the Western world a good perception of itself?

In Need of Repairs

2006-11-08T19:42:00.000-05:00

Individuals are inventive in their pointing out the general evils and outrages of the past. They search especially for those which will justify financial reparations to themselves.

Fission or Fusion

2006-11-07T21:13:00.000-05:00

People who talk about “family” and look for its foundation in Christianity sense that something in the human condition is unhealthy. Christianity as a solution is an illusion though. It is a universalizing agent, and universilization is our illness, no matter what its present mutation is. Families are the smallest and strongest of human groupings, and like atoms they resist division. They are strong by nature and do not need theoretical binding. They do not need to be defined or justified by something unseen to give them their identity and validity. Nothing tangible does. What weakens them is any belief in the unification of mankind based upon intangible and unprovable principles. When mankind attempts to unify, families split. If we look to the past and see evidence of more coherent families, it is naive to conclude that Christianity was the source of coherence, simply because it predominated at the time. Let us look beyond Christianity. In the ancient world families were stronger yet. Christ was not the champion of the earthly and temporal family. He was celibate and promoted the everlasting family of God. Marriage only merits secondary and inferior approval in the New Testament. How can we appeal to Christianity in our despair over familial disintegration? This disintegration has been steadily taking place over the course of our history in the West, and Christianity has made its contribution to it. We either embrace the disintegration and the present stage of universalism, whatever it might be, or we make a stand against universalism in any guise. To return to an earlier stage of it is not to contest it.

A Block Observed

2006-10-29T09:28:00.000-05:00

No matter how much talent someone has, he cannot write anything if he has nothing to say. Those who write for the sake of writing are no more profound than those who speak for the sake of speaking.

A Well Calculated Paradox

2006-10-11T21:21:00.000-04:00

In the age of progress we learn to trust the accumulation of knowledge over time, and to prefer the inexperienced opinions of the young to the seasoned insights of the old.

Perceived Danger

2006-10-11T21:00:00.000-04:00

People are dangerous not because there is something wicked about them but because they are malleable. Why are they malleable? They have an innate need to be well perceived, and the easiest way to be well perceived is to imitate the latest idol.

Moral Progress and the Natural Process

2006-10-11T20:47:00.000-04:00

The irony of our belief in moral progress is that we as individuals cannot avoid becoming part of the condemned past. We glorify youth and despise the natural process of aging. Physical health becomes an obsession, and the physician who is anything short of divine gets sued.

An Idea of Love

2006-10-04T21:37:00.000-04:00

When we try to love everybody, we love an idea rather than people of flesh and blood. In the end, someone who loves everyone is in love with nobody but himself.

Acknowledgment by Representation

2006-10-04T21:25:00.000-04:00

When representation replaces reality, the universalists triumph. For they gain the authority to force others to acknowledge what is not worth acknowledging.

Exceptional Lack of Freedom

2006-10-04T21:14:00.000-04:00

When exceptions become the rule, it is possible for everybody to be well perceived. There is no freedom whatsoever under these conditions, but what is freedom compared to universal self-approval?

Legal Realization

2006-10-04T20:50:00.000-04:00

For some reason moral visions frequently realize themselves as the legislated redistribution of money and property.

Price of Disobedience

2006-10-01T20:36:00.000-04:00

Only those who learn how to obey become fit to rule. When the young are taught disobedience, society pays the price. For when these young themselves come of age, not only do they not know how to rule, they are not worthy to be obeyed.

Popular Endorsement

2006-09-29T20:19:00.000-04:00

The great benefit of endorsing a popular ideal is that you can make a conspicuous show of your own goodness for nobody's benefit but your own.

Expand and Contract

2006-09-26T20:25:00.000-04:00

Sympathy is a finite emotion. The vision of ever-expanding rings of sympathy, which the Stoics made much of in the ancient world and Peter Singer makes much of today, has no foundation in human nature. The attempt to force ourselves to feel sympathy for those who exist outside our natural range will not increase our humanity. In fact it will do just the opposite, because if we expend our compassion on people we never meet, we will tend conversely toward indifference in our actual interactions.

A Ton of Bricks

2006-09-07T06:50:00.000-04:00

Why is it that writing in this age has to be full of bad metaphors in order to be considered good? Evidently something's own essence isn't enough. It has to be like something else, even if the comparison is ill-conceived.

A Local Act

2006-09-05T06:40:00.000-04:00

It is the goal of our society to give us a sense of fear and awe before its ideals. How well does it succeed? Do you find yourself for instance, in your attempts to achieve local social acceptance, casually upholding and promoting the ideal of universal equality? If so, do you do it because you actually believe in it? Do you understand why? How intimate are you with your own inclinations?

Is There a Recipe for This?

2006-09-01T22:59:00.000-04:00

The truth frequently means nothing to a human being until it has been interpreted in processed terms. As a result, the truth and its interpretation have often been mistaken for one another. “The truth is a social construct,” goes the familiar cry. This is close enough to being true to have become extremely influential; but the interpretation, not the truth itself, follows the social construct. The truth is raw, the interpretation processed. Those who propose to deconstruct the truth are doing no such thing. They are merely deconstructing the interpretation according to an assumed and of course rejected social recipe, whether it lies behind it or not, in order to promote their own preferred recipe in its place.

Not As I Do

2006-08-26T08:52:00.000-04:00

What should we think about the philosopher who acquires literary fame by eloquently persuading us to restrain our ambition and to live a quiet and humble life? Is his real motivation to help others, or is he driven by the very ambition that he claims to despise? Does he not foresee his own glory while he is urging the rest of us to embrace obscurity? He does if he is wise enough.

Dueling Egos -- or Ergos

2006-08-25T20:37:00.000-04:00

"I think, therefore I am." -- Descartes
"I think, therefore matter is capable of thought." -- Hobbes

Selected Ignorance

2006-08-22T21:55:00.000-04:00

If Darwin's theory of the origin of species is true, then we have been selected to survive without any knowledge of it. This is an oddly logical fact. When you consider that man's first sin, according to the Bible, was to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge, and that Oedipus, in the greatest of ancient tragedies, causes horrible consequences to himself and his family simply by discovering who he is, this oddly logical fact becomes fascinatingly eery.

A Ghost and a Gambler

2006-08-19T13:50:00.000-04:00

Every now and then a person comes along who ignores the living and holds his only meaningful conversations with the dead and with those who have not been born yet. If, for whatever reason, the latter fail to hear him after he is gone, he will have left no significant traces of himself. But he will have known the ghostly pleasures of living out of time and the thrill of gambling for posthumous status.

Selected Traits

2006-08-19T13:36:00.000-04:00

If, indeed, as a species we have acquired our physical traits through natural selection, then we have acquired our behavioral traits through the same means. I will give it a quarter of a century at most before the comprehension of this simple fact dismantles the moral paradigm of Western society.

The Will to Knowledge

2006-08-15T11:04:00.000-04:00

Imagine a society consisting of two groups of people, called Alphas and Omegas, who quarrel with one another over questions of morality. The Alphas contend that morality ought to be based on the dictates of a god who created the human race and reveals his will to it. The Omegas deny the existence of this or any other god and argue for a morality founded not on the fiction of divine revelation but on the reality of human knowledge.

The strength of the Omegas’ position depends in large part on a scientific theory that states the human species was not created by intelligent design but came into being over time through the operation of a natural, organic, and impersonal process. The evidence in support of this theory is massive and persuasive, so much so in fact that the Omegas cannot understand how the Alphas can continue to disclaim it.

As the dispute continues, a curious thing happens. Some researchers working within the paradigm of the great scientific theory, themselves Omegas and therefore ideologically committed to knowledge in principle, begin to uncover evidence that calls into question the particular knowledge upon which the Omegas base their conception of morality. The general community of Omegas reacts furiously against this new evidence and categorically rejects it as false, continuing, however, to revere the theory in its prior form as the antidote to the morality of the Alphas. The Alphas for their part are relatively uninterested in the new evidence. They simply persist in dismissing the theory as a whole.

Ideal Germination

2006-08-15T08:47:00.000-04:00

What percentage of those people who feel deep devotion to the theory of evolution have read Darwin’s Origin of Species? I suspect it is every bit as small as the fraction of ardent Christians who have actually read the Bible. It is hardly worth asking, moreover, how many of each group have read the textbook of the other, which they are apt to condemn with even more confidence than they glorify their own. Ideology thrives in a culture of mental laziness as prosperously as physical illness does in one of bodily carelessness and neglect.

Common Cause

2006-08-11T21:30:00.000-04:00

Today’s philosopher-king is the professor who champions the cause of the common man, using language the common man cannot comprehend. “Aren’t you teaching me that I do not need a patron?” cries the confused common man. The king smiles and pats the poor man’s head. “You are even wiser than I previously believed,” he responds; “I must go and tell my colleagues.” “No, no! Explain it to me! I do not understand.” But the great man is already hastening away.

Moral Intensity

2006-08-11T21:15:00.000-04:00

If a man with an enormous amount of money and influence devotes his life to the pleasures of the flesh and is intensely happy up until his final moment, should we moralists, who are concerned with human happiness, not be intensely happy for him? Or do we know him better than he knew himself? Do we know that deep down he was unhappy, and should we therefore strive with our judgments, our laws, and our loftier purpose to keep those like him confined within the limits of true contentment?

The Prescribed Limit

2006-08-11T21:01:00.000-04:00

In return for the rewards of status, position, and recognition, scholars and scientists subject themselves to the unwritten command that they are to interpret their findings in a manner consistent with the ethical presuppositions of the academy. A moral philosopher at a university, for instance, will apply his rigorous, complex, and undeniably intelligent logic only up to a prescribed limit, even though in doing so he runs the risk of leaving his argument exposed. By way of compensation he is able to permit himself a premise, such as “ethnic prejudice is wrong,” for which he can rely on the quiet consent of colleagues who know deep down as well as he does that it cannot be rationally substantiated.

Willful Compliance

2006-08-04T00:15:00.000-04:00

According to John Locke, I am bound by natural law to preserve myself and not to quit my station willfully. But if my nature compels me to kill myself, I obey natural law by complying. I am not capable of an unnatural act.

Cover Your Mouth

2006-08-02T00:10:00.000-04:00

We all yawn uncontrollably at times. Why don’t we create a universal system of morality based on boredom, fatigue, and apathy?

Definite Desperation

2006-08-01T23:56:00.000-04:00

When morality became the province of philosophers, theologians, and scholars, it ceased to be morality. Today we have a word with no meaning and a society that desperately needs a definition.

Scholarly Inertia

2006-08-01T10:24:00.000-04:00

The scholar’s perspective is that of the observer and interpreter, rather than that of the doer. What are the implications of the massification of this perspective, especially as scholarship becomes more and more its own object of study? It is not insignificant that in our age artists have little subject matter other than themselves as artists and we are knee-deep in novels whose protagonists are professors.

Passing and Merging

2006-07-31T09:28:00.000-04:00

I came across this unreferenced quote the other day, scribbled in an old notebook: “The problems of Greek citizenship touch us today because they are ours, and they are ours because the experience of the Greeks has passed into our substance and merged into our being.” After I had read it and thought about it for a minute or so, two questions came to mind. First, which Greeks is this person talking about? They were not a homogenous people, either temporally or spatially speaking. Is our substance stuffed with aristocratic Homeric warriors, Spartan hoplites, Athenian demagogues, Macedonian imperialists? Or is it simply that we are all citizens of Plato's idealistic republic? Second, is it any longer possible for us in the West to purge our substance and release our being?

Impulsive Concealment

2006-07-27T16:54:00.000-04:00

The impulse to conceal an underlying impulse must be either a different manifestation of the same impulse or itself a stronger one.

Organic Insensibility

2006-07-26T12:05:00.000-04:00

In Plato’s Republic men of their own accord come together into society with one another in order to improve their personal circumstances. Later, however, they inexplicably lose their singularity in the context of the whole; and what were previously living beings, each endowed with a complete set of organs and a will of its own, become themselves insensible organs of another body, away from which they have no function and no life. This is the essence of Platonic justice, but we will look in vain for the bridge back to human nature.

Elementary Revolution

2006-07-26T11:50:00.000-04:00

In order to be successful, a universal code of morality must either persuade through individual reward or resort to force; and because no code of morality can possibly be universally beneficial, they all have an element of coercion and therefore contain their own seed of revolt.

Artful Expression

2006-07-26T11:38:00.000-04:00

Doesn’t “art for art’s sake” mean “art for the artist’s sake”?

Advance in Scholarship

2006-07-26T11:16:00.000-04:00

A good literary scholar is rare and worthy of admiration. He actually takes his object of study more seriously than he takes himself and protects it from colleagues predisposed to promoting intellectual distortion for the sake of personal advancement.

Origin of Rebellion

2006-07-26T10:59:00.000-04:00

Does it make sense to search for the origin of morality when we presuppose the code of morality to which it has presumably led? What if we were to discover an origin inconsistent with the presupposed code? If the code were beyond question, as moral codes tend to be, we would have to reject our findings, no matter how persuasive they were. Therefore, the search for the origin of morality could be nothing more than a quest for communal justification, or perhaps just personal intellectual recognition, unless we were engaged in an act of moral rebellion.

Truly Evil

2006-07-12T08:34:00.000-04:00

Protagoras, the Greek sophist, taught that man was the measure of all things. The Western tradition since Protagoras has taught us that morality is a universal phenomenon. Modern psychology teaches us that a person desires to feel good about himself. Given that he is the measure of all things and is therefore the standard of universal right and wrong, he has the moral right to feel good about himself. Therefore, anything that makes an individual feel bad about himself, including the truth, is evil.

Subconscious, Unconscious, Conscious

2006-07-09T09:33:00.000-04:00

There is a big difference between subconscious motivations that we can never really perceive in ourselves and recognizable motivations that we are unwilling to acknowledge. We have a tendency to categorize the latter as the former when in fact, if we are honest and courageous in our self-evaluation, the so-called subconscious will yield to the conscious. And as soon as we begin to uncover the dirty little truths behind our own behavior, other people will unconsciously reveal to us the secrets unperceived by their own dishonest consciousness.

Your Papers, Please

2006-07-07T16:08:00.000-04:00

Scholars do not like the obvious, because it belongs to everybody. It is not necessary to have a Ph.D. and tenure in order to recognize it. If you try to point out the obvious to a scholar, you should not be surprised to find him resisting you with great earnestness and seriousness of purpose. For without proper credentials you are trespassing into the highly exclusive club of knowledge.

de te fabula

2006-07-06T18:11:00.000-04:00

Beards are in fashion among scholars today. It is amusing that they were also in fashion among the Stoic street-preachers of ancient Rome. According to the poet Horace, Roman boys enjoyed annoying these wise men by pulling on their beards. Imagine now giving a tug to the facial hair that belonged to a tenured professor at Harvard. Do you think, even if he taught the works of Horace in his classes and encouraged his students to laugh at the self-importance of the philsophers being mocked, that he would be capable of seeing himself in the mirror that Horace was holding up for him?

Worldly Differences and Divine Similarities

2006-07-05T21:29:00.000-04:00

“There are certain laws which all peoples follow, peoples who have never had any contact whatsoever with one another. They have arrived at the same laws independently and therefore must have received them from a divine source.”

If you already believe in God, this is a persuasive argument; but it is flawed. It assumes as a premise that human beings must be either completely the same or completely different. For some reason it is unacceptable that they be the same in some ways but different in others, by their own nature and without divine intervention. Moreover sameness gets the preferred status. Why not argue that the laws which are different have come from a divine source, that God in his infinite wisdom guaranteed not our unity but our differentiation and separation?

Relatively Speaking

2006-07-04T08:00:00.000-04:00

Insight is an unusual instinct, and scholars, who tend to confuse insight with knowledge, rarely have it. All the knowledge in the world will not generate the ability to see relations where others miss them, any more than endless practice alone can produce unique athletic talent.

Practically Monstrous

2006-06-20T09:43:00.000-04:00

A theory of morality that is forced into practice will produce a monstrosity if it contains imaginary and unrealizable assumptions about human nature.

Provincial Governors

2006-06-02T20:41:00.000-04:00

By now we have captured an enormous expanse of knowledge and have countless specialists who govern their little regions of it. No one knows what it all means, but it is an empire that inspires great faith. The specialists take their provinces, and therefore themselves, very seriously.

Too Dull

2006-05-26T07:10:00.000-04:00

In the ethical arena the bare truth is a dull weapon. It consistently loses in the duel against untruth, because its point does not penetrate to the source of decision, which is the instinctive will to believe, not reason. When behavioral norms are at stake, reason is an accessory target.