Bravo!

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

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

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

A View from a Greek's Eye

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

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

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

The Genetic Pot

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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.