Losing the War

As more and more people fall victim to mass gun violence, the debate between whether there should be more or less gun laws heats up. For a large majority of people, they fall on either side of this debate. The problem is, to be on either side of this debate suggests an unwillingness to think about the problem’s origins. Whether the public has a right to bear arms has nothing to do with what is allowing for the U.S.’s staggering gun violence problem – Collectively speaking, the U.S. has a deep, severe mental problem that is based upon its very foundation.*

[* That is to say, The U.S. as a country was born out of violence and established a two-century old patriarchal, racist society not much better than the U.S.’s country of origin.]

But this deep, severe mental problem is merely indicative of a larger problem; what it means to be human. In the last year there has been an alarming rise of practically fascist, regressive leftism in America paralleled by the number of people who think Donald Trump should be the President of the U.S. On both these sides there is a very particular way in which these people’s brains operate, which is to say however good their intentions may be, they are not capable of critically thinking not because they lack the tools – self-reflection requires no tools – but because they are determined to believe what they want to believe.

If the number of people on the planet is any indication, this lack of self-analysis and moreover, reasoning ability, has preserved and perpetuated the species. This same ability is what puts people at odds, though, and has long made the world an unfriendly place to live. It appears as though we may have to settle for this state of affairs in order to preserve and perpetuate the species, which really is the point of life after all. Our genes don’t care how we treat each other; they just want to get themselves into the next generation. If this is the case, it is more likely that people are going to be less rational than rational despite how many generations come and go. In other words, it will always be the case that people will make dumb decisions, do dumb things and believe in dumb ideas. Despite absolutely zero evidence, particle physicists cling to string theory. Despite the overwhelming evidence that smoking is harmful to the body, people still smoke. Despite the health problems that come with being obese, people still overeat. Despite being as far from science as one can get, people still heed warnings from their horoscope. Despite the fact that wealthy socialites contribute nothing to society, people still worship them. For a human, being dumb is inescapable.

It is tempting, seeing how humans are capable of as much hope as they are capable of stupidity, to assume people can be rational especially when lives are at stake. For example, cooler heads prevailed in October, 1962 during the Cold War when Russia attempted to base missiles in Cuba aimed at the U.S. Ultimately, Russia withdrew their weapons from the U.S.’s backyard and a nuclear war was averted. This is because everyone involved came to see that for either side, the whole debacle was a lose-lose situation. At the same time, Russia acted irrationally and thought, “What the heck, the U.S. won’t mind if we put some missiles in their backyard. After all, they have missiles in Italy aimed at us.” Sadly, hope is often a result of humans acting or doing something stupid. We ‘hope’ as a hedge against a cruel world in which we would otherwise feel completely defeated. In this example, we hoped to avoid nuclear war and we did, but first, someone did something which required hope as a hedge against their action. That is to say, if we build a nuclear weapon, we have to hope that we never have to use it which indicates building the nuclear bomb in the first place is irrational. (Using nuclear fission to produce energy, yes. Using it to kill people, um…)

Acting or thinking rationally is a foreign practice for most people. There are many reasons for this, the foremost being that thinking requires the brain to use a lot of energy and it goes against people’s general desire to be placated as soon as possible (despite evidence that prolonging the reception of an award or desire appears to allow for more enjoyment of the award or desire). One cannot even rationalize with a teenager who will post damning pictures of themselves on social media despite how far their posts may travel around the world to say nothing of their local police force because a teenager, like people in general, needs to placate their ego immediately. As I alluded to earlier, it is not a part of human nature to be rational and this is why it is so rare. With human population closing in on 7.3 billion people as of 2015, it appears there is no particular reason for the human race to be any more rational than it is if being irrational perpetuates the species. Notice if you will that the people with the most offspring are usually the least educated and often the most ideologically radicalized.

There is no rationalizing with an irrational person when there is nothing in it for the irrational person. An irrational person will choose to believe in a heavenly afterlife over being atheistic because even if they see an atheistic lifestyle as potentially making their earthbound life more important, they know that one day their earthbound life will end. In other words, the atheistic principle as it may apply doesn’t offer the ultimate in hope. If there is no potentially bigger reward for changing sides in a debate, it is very unlikely that people on opposite sides of a debate will come around to a new way of thinking. Once a person is indoctrinated into thinking a particular way, it is very difficult to change their mind. It is often not worth the energy one spends trying to do that unless one’s survival is literally at stake. That is to say, it is irrational to continually engage irrational people when there is only a small chance of changing their minds ‘for the better.’ It does happen, on occasion, that people do think deeply about their ideas and beliefs, but it will always be the case that such people will be vastly outnumbered and ultimately always be at the mercy of the irrational.

This is in part why, here at the end of 2015, I am coming home from the war. Fighting stupidity, however noble, will forever be a losing battle. Over the course of years of debate and attempted discussions, I’ve had very few rational, much less civil, interactions with people on a myriad of issues. It’s not worth trying to get people become uncomfortable with their ideas or beliefs; I only become a villain so I suppose it is better to let sleeping dogs lie unless I am confronted myself. I will allow people their beliefs if there is no cost to me, but of course one should not expect to get off easy when trying to engage me with their irrational ideas or beliefs. I otherwise don’t have the time to waste and I don’t want to end up like Socrates (as if I were important enough to be so lucky).

I have plans for 2016 that include contributing to answering the question of time, exploring Genetic Philosophy (developed by yours truly) and solving problems within the Philosophy of Language (as far as any philosophy is concerned), committing more time to my tourism blog and spending more time writing fiction (something people seem to lap up as they apparently identify strongly with lives that are not real) and reading for enjoyment. I have enjoyed writing and posting my thoughts here as any good philosopher must mentally masturbate, but I suppose I have reached the point in my life when I want to do other things.

This blog will be maintained in 2016 by occasional ruminations and relevant re-posts, but other than that, there will be no commentaries on religion, atheism, politics or any other current events. I know, I know, what will you do with yourselves? You can always follow Kim Kardashian on Twitter. 

Nothing More Than Feelings

Observing the behavior of my students as they interact with other faculty, it occurred to me that Millennials are now running with the torch of hypocrisy with absolutely no hindsight. While the hypocrisy of human beings is nothing new, it seems odd that it doesn’t occur to our social justice warriors, Millennials, that in seeking restitution for hurt feelings (whether anyone meant to hurt their feelings) they take no heed of whose feelings they hurt in the process.

For example, as Millennials go to war over trivialities such as Halloween costumes, college

presidents have to give in to whatever demands their students make in an effort to save their own job. One could scarcely imagine the stress Peter Salovey, the President of Yale University, recently underwent after a campus-wide email detailing how students should deal with Halloween costumes that they deemed offensive. Worse, that situation escalated and in early November 2015, an incident at Yale saw “…students surround[ed] Nicholas Christakis—husband of Erika [Christakis], a professor of sociology and medicine, and master of Silliman. One African-American woman, seemingly speaking for the crowd, told him that his wife’s email [about Halloween costumes] and his failure to apologize for it made her feel “unsafe.” When Christakis earnestly explained that he would need to consider the matter before apologizing, the woman shouted at him, “Be quiet!”; “Why the f--- did you accept the position!”; “If that’s what you think, you should step down!”; and “You should not sleep at night! You are disgusting!” She then turned and walked away” (as reported by Peter Berkowitz). While Millennials are not going to stand for having their feelings hurt, they think nothing of how they make anyone other than a Millennial feel.

One would suppose this failure to apply their ideology equally stems from a lack of shared values. Nonetheless, if the desire to spare the feelings of Millennials only applies amongst themselves, this is an indication of a culturally relativist practice, which surely Millennials do not mind since they go out of their way to respect – almost – all cultures.

The problem is, Millennials don’t respect the cultures they have the ability to usurp or wrest power from. Millennials respect, say, the practices of the Islamic State, since they believe all culture is relative and as such who is to say IS’s murderous tendencies are wrong. Millennials, however, don’t actually have to ever deal with IS directly. If they did, they would quickly find out IS has no respect for the belief of Millennials and getting upset about an email about Halloween costumes would soon be the least of a Millennial’s worries. And that’s just the thing; if all cultures should be respected because their practices are relativistic, there is absolutely no reason for anyone who is not a Millennial to respect the beliefs or practices of Millennials because to not respect the beliefs of Millennials is neither right nor wrong. As many liberals before them, Millennials fail to see this error in their philosophy. As many people before them, Millennials are blinded by ideology.

And so they go to war against the people they can control. Using the fact that colleges are for-profit, Millennials battle against college professors and administrators who don’t want to simply give them a degree without a student actually working for it or with whom they have a difference of opinion. Lost on Millennials is the fact that if colleges were not for-profit, a college administration would never give into their demands. Millennials get their way not because their demands are reasonable or philosophically justifiable, but because college administrators are capitalists. (Also lost on Millennials is that capitalism begets inequality and they fail to realize this because in actuality a Millennial’s smart phone is more important to them than social justice.)

But all of this is a symptom of a more pressing question, one I keep asking for which no Millennial can answer: Why is it more important to spare a person’s feelings* than to have a reasoned, civil debate in which we may have to settle for “agreeing to disagree”? If a person falsely believes that 1 + 1 = 3, why is it worth not correcting them, because it might hurt their feelings? If an attempt is made to build a person’s self-esteem by giving them an award for simply showing up, doesn’t this make it more likely that when that person’s feelings do get hurt, for whatever reason even by accident, that person is going to be ill prepared to deal with it? Why do feelings matter more than the analysis of a situation?

[* By person we should take to mean anyone that agrees with Millennial ideology or that may disagree with Millennial ideology but lives outside of the U.S.]

In my opinion, that is, the opinion of a seasoned thinker experienced in life, I rarely if ever have my feelings hurt because someone said such-and-such about me. I’ve been called plenty of names and shouted out and vehemently disagreed with but all these things amount to are words. Words by themselves have no power. All power lies with the person hearing the word. In order to be insulted or offended by words, one has to internalize them and make the decision for those words to hurt them. If one sees a Halloween costume that offends them, the offended party has to decide that they are offended. Granted, what is deemed an offensive costume may be a symptom of some systematic oppression, but this merely means there is a chance to have a debate with someone and possibly have the offender understand why a costume is offensive. I might add to this that if a certain group currently possesses more power than another group, I do not believe one should be offended by past transgressions such as in the case of a Jew seeing a Nazi Halloween costume. (I am open to debate on this point, though.)

Feelings are irrelevant in the face of more pressing concerns. IS, economic inequality and climate change do not care about the feelings of their victims. Nor is everyone special; it is quite clear the opposite is true as we see it again and again every day and there would be no CEOs or celebrities if everyone actually were important. I certainly understand the desire to ignore inconvenient truths, but this doesn’t make feelings more important than anything else out of necessity. While I would agree that it is basically cruel to hurt someone’s feelings intentionally, there should not be consequences for unintentional harm, as Millennials would have it. While we can never know someone’s true intention, neither can we know whether someone is truly having their feelings hurt or trying to manipulate others to their advantage. Millennials should beware the trappings of power; power corrupts and that corruption will wind up hurting someone’s feelings. Don’t be a hypocrite by refusing to examine your own beliefs, Millennials. If you want to be the stewards of the future, try to avoid operating from false premises like all of your predecessors. 

Gun Ownership Questionnaire

Should you be allowed to own a gun? This short questionnaire will answer this pressing question.

1)    Do you believe in a deity?

2)    We know about Mohammed, but would Jesus have owned a gun?

3)    Are you a man?

4)    Do you think women should be subservient to men?

5)    Do you have an ex-girlfriend?

6)    If you’re a woman, has your husband ever cheated on you?

7)    Do you think abortion is murder?

8)    Do you think requiring classes before owning a gun is a ridiculous idea?

9)    Do you think society would be safer if everyone had a gun?

10) Do you think society would be safer if no one had a gun?

11)  Do you get road rage?

12)  Are you a mean drunk?

13)  Are you now or have you ever taken medication to control your moods?

14)  Do you take any illegal drugs besides marijuana (if marijuana is still illegal in your backwards state)?

15)  Do you drink Budweiser or Coors?

16)  Do you live in any southern or ‘red’ state?

17)  Is high school your highest level of education?

18)  Do you think the authors of the 2^nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had the vision to anticipate assault weapons?

19)  Does you think the “well-regulated militia” referred to in the 2^nd Amendment mean individuals who aren’t part of a militia should own a gun?

20)  Does the “well-regulated militia” referred to in the 2^nd Amendment mean you should be able to own a gun without training?

21)  Do you think President Obama is a Muslim?

22)  Do you pronounce ‘government’ ‘gun’mint’?

23)  Do you think the gub’mint is poisoning us with chemtrails?

24)  Do you think the gub’mint trying to mind control the U.S. population by adding fluoride to tap water?

25)  Do you own a gun for ‘protection’ and not because you just like guns?

If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, congratulations! you should probably not own a gun because you have mental health issues. And that’s what this is really about; owning or not owning guns isn’t ‘Merica’s problem, it’s the fact that ‘Merica has some deep psychological problems. The mentally ill should not own guns. End of story.

Mind Field

It was during a Superbowl party that some friends and I were looking at my modest library and began discussing the human mind, of all things. Well, someone put forth the suggestion that the mind is a non-physical entity of the body and brain in much the same way that kickers are the non-physical entities of football teams. Hmmm, someone’s been smoking Rene Descartes again.

My reply was swifter than Bruce Lee’s fists. I replied that it was silly to suppose any duality between the mind and body since consciousness is an activity of the brain. This is indisputable (though we don’t know why brain activity leads to consciousness). In layman’s terms our minds, acting largely as an organization devise, arise to integrate and provide an interpretation of the world around us as perceived by our senses. Having operated on the brains of patients who are awake, scientists have located sites that stimulate the sense of smell, reflexes, emotions, hallucinations, and out-of-body experiences (OBE’s). You see, it’s a new thing educated people are doing; they’re called scientific journals and people should read them more often. But I suppose I care more about these kinds of things, so I’ll take it upon myself to bring the rest of the team up to speed.

Theists more so than agnostics seem to be fans of Dualism (the belief in a spiritual realm that supersedes physical reality) while there is no good evidence for such a state of affairs than say, Quadralism or Hexalism. I would also like to add that if we’re going to argue over realms of existence superseding each other, how do we determine which realm is ‘superior’ or answerable to another? Theists take for granted the notion that their unseen and immeasurable realm of spirituality, where God coincidently resides, is the immutable master over all. As usual, such a supposition is undertaken with absolutely no more evidence than a pair of crossed fingers.

Let’s do something crazy and ask an important question: Do ideas survive on their own when no one is around? The answer is “No, are you out of your mind?” (Well, not unless you’re a Platonist or fan of the Irish philosopher George Berkley…in which case you are out of your mind since you can’t provide the slightest evidence.)

But how do ideas even begin to happen? What goes into making a concept meaningful between two people? First, you think of an idea which is a physical event in your brain that is the culmination of experiences related to the real world we live in; ideas do not appear out of thin air. To transmit this idea to another person, you need a physical transport system such as text or language. (Sorry, but ESP hasn’t come close to verification. Even if valid it would have to be shown to be a non-physical event using non-physical means to transport thoughts which is not outside the realm of possibility if you’re at all familiar with the “spooky action at a distance” in physics.). Then, my senses receive your data, which is also a physical event. My brain interprets the data through a biological process, organizes the information and compares it against what I already know about the world. At some point I conclude with or without reason whether you are insane or not. There is never a point where the exchange of information between people is anything other than a physical process. Ideas do not exist without a brain around to think of or transmit them.

Now we might ask if the mind can exist without the brain. If you’re thinking “yes” then I’d like to know where the mind goes when someone is in a coma. Why don’t people revived from comas tell us about the wonderful places their mind has been while the body was laid up? If the mind can exist without the brain, why do personality and intelligence disorders sometimes arise from trauma and injury to the head? Why, if duality exists, do most people experience memory loss in old age? This tells us the brain and ‘mind’ must be intimately related somehow. The theistic objection here is that if the physical transport system of the mind is damaged, misinterpretations by the brain of what the mind wants will naturally occur.

      

Such a defense raises some questions. For example, which “you” would survive death into the afterlife? People display different personality traits throughout their entire life; the young “you” is surely most different than the old “you.” Would personality changes come with experience in the afterlife as they do in our earthly lives? If ideas come from some netherworld, would we be privy to all the knowledge in the universe come the afterlife? Now please feel free to ask your own questions on the matter that you haven’t used your brain to think of.         

In the laboratory where scientists have studied monks meditating and achieving nirvana, snapshots of the brain during this time record unusual brain chemistry. However, consciousness cannot be shown to “go” anywhere during this time. The transcendence of physical reality does not occur. The last time I checked, monks still needed to eat. I guess that’s because transcendence is not a practical state to be in if you intend to provide your brain with enough energy to meditate and achieve transcendence. Honestly, I wouldn’t see the point of the brain continuing to register any activity if the transcendence of physical reality has occurred. Does it not defeat the point? Perhaps we haven’t developed the means by which to measure “where consciousness goes” in these instances of meditation, but the theist cannot dismiss out of hand the possibility that it’s all just in the head.

Another theistic defense postulates that the human brain only uses a small percentage of its capacity. Sometimes, theists and other spiritualists argue that we only use 10-12% of our brain; a popular common misconception. Therefore, they postulate, perhaps the areas of the brain that seem inactive are actually busy being connecting the mind to a higher or unseen reality, being that again, we haven’t devised a means of detection. Or, that at least these areas of the brain we haven’t been able to access yet because, “We’re not ready for it.” Yes, someone actually said that to me. Again there is no good reason to suppose any of this. You can’t tell me it can’t possibly be that these areas of the brain are dormant because they are no longer necessary. We are obviously getting by without using the whole brain if it actually were the case we only use a small portion of it and if there were any advantage to using the whole brain, we would seem likely to already be doing it. We need only to consider possibilities to cast suspect on a world of duality.

The human mind is a tool, albeit the most important tool in our arsenal. Even though it may allow us deep experiences and fantastic ideas, it cannot do so without the physical component of the brain. No brain, no deep experiences or fantastic ideas. Now, does this tool have a purpose? Yes. The ability to problem solve and think abstractly provides us with adaptability. This increases individual survival as well as the collective survival of the species. That is the human mind’s greatest asset. It is also the mind’s greatest liability.

Problem is, our interpretations of the world are highly subjective to our sensory experiences. Moreover, what happens to our interpretations of the world when some of our senses aren’t working? I am continuously awed by theists who should know better but fail to consider these questions because it would challenge their faith. Is it reasonable, I ask, not to consider what if our senses are working, but due to nurturing and conditioning we draw false conclusions of reality? Does the mind make any more sense of the world than is necessary for a person to live?

Maybe author Scott Adams understands: “There is more information in one thimble of reality than can be understood by a galaxy of human brains. It is beyond the human brain to understand the world and it’s environment, so the brain compensates by creating simplified illusions that act as a replacement for understanding…the delusions are fuelled by arrogance, the arrogance that humans are the center of the world, that we alone are endowed with the magical properties of souls and morality and free will and love.”

That’s almost hard to argue with. However, some things can be known with some degree of certainty through reasoning or evidence. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it still make noise? Yes it does. Leave a microphone and recorder in the woods if you don’t believe me. Even if there are no means with which to record it, the rustling of the air (noise) has still occurred. Even if one dies, there is still a world for living people to participate in, unless the world is a figment of my imagination (or of God’s imagination, as George Berkley might say).

If the world is not my imagination, then an objective reality exists whether or not I can know it. But as I have pointed out, at least some truths can be objectively known. If the world is my imagination (and my brain is in a jar somewhere), I still need to deal with the world how I imagine it, a world where apparently immutable laws of physics apply. If I’m only dreaming that some true reality exists, then God’s existence can be equally true or untrue depending upon what I felt like believing when I woke up in the morning. If we don’t perceive more of reality than is necessary to live, then there’s a good chance that believing in God isn’t particularly practical. It would depend upon the individual. Believing in God would become more of a whim since it has little practical value in helping you, say, outrun a lion.

On the other hand, if God does exist outside of our minds and it’s one of those few things we could know, again, we might wonder why God wouldn’t make us all goddamn sure of it. What is God afraid we would do with immutable knowledge of His existence? Why exist unless this is all some kind of test? It would benefit us tremendously to know what’s really going on, oh great and all-loving God, unless you have a practical reason for sending people to hell or some other equally gruesome fate. Again, we’re never privy to God’s reasoning. Are God’s plans beyond our ability to understand? This is a common theistic defense that explains nothing.

It’s not that our thoughts are without some physical existence. God does exist, at least as a concept which arises from the physical process of thinking. But God, nor any “soul”, exists when there isn’t anyone around to imagine such nonsense. Even if a soul did exist, there isn’t anyway for us to know how far divisions go. If the body is a subject of the soul, is the soul subject to a super soul? This would seem ridiculous, but I’m only following the theist’s line of thinking that arbitrarily chooses to end the divisions with duality.

If God cannot be proven to be true or false, it would do the world a good bit of justice to dispense with the idea of gods. By freeing ourselves of less delusional delusions, we free up more time to learn things that can be known as well as identify and deal with actual threats to our existence, like intolerance and martyrdom. The collapse of theism replaced by actual thinking would increase the chances of survival for all of us. After all, religion has proven unable to control itself, what with Inquisitions, Crusades, and wars of and on terrorism. Maybe that’s because people who say they believe in God really do not; or maybe their god is a primitive, bloodthirsty prick. Believe in God if you want, but for the love of Christ keep it to yourself.

In the end, it’s worth remembering that dinosaurs were around eighty times as long as humans have been around. Yet we view their brains as vastly inferior to ours. Trees have been around even longer than dinosaurs and they don’t even have brains! So what makes anyone think they know what they’re talking about (besides me and my superiorly advanced brain)? What makes anyone think our ability to think is so special? Will our brains help us as a species to survive as long as dinosaurs or trees? Only time will tell. Delusions will not.