The Committee

Sep 20, 2014 //
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This isn’t out of my brain, but from a film from 1968 called The Committee. It provides quite a bit to think about, as well as having a delightful psychedelic element to it. The musical score in the background is Pink Floyd. You can either watch it here, or read my transcript. Or both!

I don’t mean to sound like a snob, but that man, worrying about his car, you know what I mean, he’s not alive. If you can do what you say, why don’t you wake him up?

Just tell me what happened.

You could ask him, but he couldn’t tell you. That’s the point, isn’t it? He couldn’t tell you.

Can you tell me?

I can tell you this. In that car there was nothing, see, nothing, just talk. It’s fair to say, isn’t it, that a man like that doesn’t think. He doesn’t really feel. He goes through the motions of being human because nobody told him different.

Look, you may be the best surgeon in town, but you’re not making yourself very clear. What doesn’t he think?

OK, for all I know he might be a very clever and successful person.

Successful in whose terms?

In our terms.

His terms don’t matter?

Yes, in some sense they don’t matter. I know that sounds awful, I probably don’t even mean it. Maybe I have the whole thing wrong. The only thing to do is to try to make things better.

In whose terms?

Look, I’d like to explain to you about that guy. He’s enclosed in himself. He goes on and on, I get the feeling that he just isn’t concerned. Concerned with other people. I mean, everything else is a matter of taste, a matter of opinion. But if anyone can live on this earth and not care about other people.

So you cut his head off. The thing you really seem to hold against him is typified by what you did to him.

I did nothing to him. He’s okay. I put it back on. The head, I mean.

His head.

Yeah, I put the right head back on. In that car I was suffocating. Not just there, lots of times. We’re helpless really. You as well.

If we are helpless, then we are not responsible. But there is a difference between things. I can hold my breath, but my blood flows regardless.

You can hold your breath for a little while, but if you stop the blood flowing, that’s for good.

In the womb, the baby thinks that it’s the universe, and when the baby is born there is a glimmer of light. “I was there, but now I am here. So now there are two things: me, and the universe. The universe is there for me.”

Then what happens?

Other people. That’s what happens. I’m skipping the details, just hitting the main points. Other people. In thought you can try to clear the deck, but in practice, there is a lot of history. In a way, you sell yourself, but the universe is there for you. Now tell me what happened in the glade.

I did something to myself; like entertainment, like amusement, like a daydream. There was nothing there, and I saw something. I saw his head under the bonnet of the car. You can say what you like, but I saw the Bird of Paradise spread its wings.

And the suffocating? Are you still suffocating?

Not now. Not just now.

Can you put yourself in my shoes? Can you picture how it looks to me?

You know, that’s the one thing I can’t do.

Why can’t you put yourself in my shoes? Because it would mean eliminating me, in effect killing me? Or are you afraid to see yourself? And who am I?

You’re the director. Of the committee. You are the state. The trouble is that before the conversation even begins everything has been said.

Ten years from now, there will be a person wandering around, and people will say that it is you. Now they say that it will be you, but what really is your obligation to him? Suppose he starves. Does that bother you? Can you experience his pleasures?

In a way, yes.

Like you can experience mine? What is the difference between your relation to yourself in the future, and other people now?

I may be the director of a committee in the future… I can’t think anymore. There is something that we’re driving at, but I can’t see what it is.

Do you believe that I have access to knowledge? That I understand something about society?

Yes.

Do you want me to stop the games and just come out with it?

Yes.

Suppose I were to tell you, just like that, in a phrase. Do you have any idea what it would sound like? Do you think you could understand it? Do you have any idea what it would be? Would it even be a sound? What would it look like? Could you even recognize it? And would it always be the same?

I can tell you one thing. You’re just as much a part of it as me, and him.

What interests me about authority is the fakery, and what interests me about rejection of authority is also the fakery.

I think the whole world is a mad house. An extended mad house.

Is that a way of saying that *you* are mad?

As long as the dialogue goes on, there’s a chance of rationality.

Not everyone would agree with that. Let me ask you a question; suppose we could get far enough away from human society to observe it with detachment. What would it look like? A mold? A colony of bacteria going through the familiar phases?

And if so, what would we do about it? Try to break the ghastly chain?

With what means?

You would have to understand the process, or else just lash out, strike at something.

It’s late in the day. Maybe too late. I’d suggest we look for the best shortcut.

Back to the lodge?

Yes, if you like. Back to the lodge.

It’s obvious that my contract with society was not total. I may have cut my head off and put it back on again, but the wound didn’t close up completely. Not completely.

Some people think that the criminals and the mad are the real heroes.

Why not in a corrupt world? In a pointless and vicious society?

But in a reasonable society?

There are no criminals.

So one criminal act can turn a reasonable society into an unreasonable one.

And back again.

To the lodge?

Yes, if you like.

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Categories Fun, Philosophy

The Negative Side of Selfishness: Because we all loved it so much before

Sep 16, 2014 //
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There is a fairly common belief that part of the basic nature of humanity involves some amount of selfishness. That, instinctively, people will look out for number one, and when it really counts, will leave their fellow man behind. This allows things like Capitalism and Liberalism, with their heavy emphasis on individuality and striving to raise oneself over others, to become bio-truths. When the paradigm of the day declares selfishness to be a part of who we are, the exploitation and oppression that arise from it become even more difficult to fight and overcome. If one despot is overthrown, for example, another will simply take his place as that is how our basic chemistry makes us.

Is it true? Are we naturally selfish? I am but a humble blog writer with no relevant credentials, but I would disagree with this assertion. The belief that we would naturally be selfish is based on the idea that self-preservation would allow our ancestors to make sure they weren’t eaten by a saber-tooth tiger. They only had to outrun the person they were with to survive, after all.

It is of course impossible to know for certain what makes up our biological impulses compared to what is nurtured into us, but I believe there is evidence even today that disproves selfishness as a part of our nature. The easiest place to look to see if self-preservation prevails is a place where human beings are being threatened with death every day. So let’s look at war.

The book On Killing by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman tells us that the utmost fear of a rookie recruit going in to battle is the fear of dying. However, the greatest fear of soldiers who have seen combat is letting their comrades down. The conditioning of soldiers is intended to strip them of their humanity until they are unfeeling killing machines, and this typically works. However, basic instincts would remain, and what we see by those who have faced the opportunity to either embrace their allegedly selfish nature, or stick with their friends, is that they almost always stick with their friends. Those who are ignorant of the ways of war maintain the selfish fear of personal death likely due to the common cultural belief that we are inherently selfish individuals, but those who have lived it show that the true instinct lies in our connection with others.

This phenomenon doesn’t just appear in war. Parents on welfare will frequently go without food so that their child will be able to eat. When the situation becomes dire, it seems that our instinct is to take care of those that we love, not abandon them in order to save ourselves.

So… cool? Most people associate selfishness with “bad” anyway, so why am I bothering to disprove it as a bio-truth? Because when we see it as a part of who we are, it seems almost necessary that greed and corruption permeate all levels of our culture. To strike back becomes futile, and the common trend is to join in and try to survive as best you can. We even have philosophies based on selfishness that are wildly successful. To achieve happiness, don’t change the world, change the way you look at the world. Reality is based on our perception and experience, and if one focuses solely on the way they perceive things, they would be able to achieve whatever they want: within the realm of their own existence.

But our reality is not the only reality. Each reality shares an interconnected dependence on all the realities of all the individuals around it. Think of it as a a lake, and every action we take is a stone dropping into the water, creating a ripple. If everyone throws in a stone, each ripple overlaps with all the others, influencing the pattern on the surface. We are not individuals, we are individuals within a community, and to ignore that is detrimental to both the community as well as the individual.

So if our basic instinct is to embrace our love, why is there selfishness? The entire premise of Grossman’s book is to look at what enables one human to kill another, and I believe the conditions that allow us to kill allow us to perform all manner of terrible things upon each other, and I look at this premise more in depth in my blog post here. I also believe that what we call empathy, or our ability to perceive the experiences of others through our own personal lens (oftentimes to the detriment of that other) allows us to act selfishly without recognizing the consequences of our actions as damaging to others.

How do we fight the selfishness that appears to be overpowering our culture? Foster the interconnected in our communities, listen instead of assume, disable the conditions that perpetuate both figurative and literal violence, and above all else know that deep down we are creatures of love. Expand the circle of that love to include more than just family and friends, and a difference will be made.

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Categories Philosophy

Being Nice is Bullshit

Sep 7, 2014 //
0

There was once a man named Abraham Lincoln. Now, Lincoln is known for a few things, like abolishing slavery, owning dapper hats, and a posthumous distaste for the theatre, but one story that is slightly less known is that one day Abe and a buddy were riding in a carriage discussing altruism. Lincoln was saying that there is no such thing as a truly selfless act, and his buddy was saying, yeah bro, there is. All of a sudden the carriage came upon an adorable little pig stuck in some mud. Abraham Lincoln demanded the carriage driver stop, leaped out of the carriage with his coattails all a-flutter, rolled up his sleeves, and rescued the pig. Dusting himself off, Abe climbed back into the carriage. His buddy, triumphant, declared, “Saving that pig did not affect you in the slightest! That was a truly selfless act!” and Abraham Lincoln, being the wise-cracking mother fucker that he is, smirked and replied, “If I hadn’t saved that swine, it would have bothered me all day.”

Do I agree with good ol’ Honest Abe? That there is no such thing as a truly selfless act? No, I don’t. I’m using this story to illustrate the fact that people who do nice things for themselves are smug assholes.

Too often do I hear people say to do nice things, and nice things will happen to you. Or to do nice things because it’ll make you feel good. Or do nice things and people will finally respect you. These are the reasons that Abe Lincoln claimed that a truly selfless act is impossible. Doing nice things for personal gain or self-image doesn’t make you nice. It makes you a dink. You’re like those people who are always so God damned cheerful, but everybody knows that it’s just a ruse and they’re really a creep. Just because your actions might be considered nice or beneficial to others, it doesn’t make you a saint if your justifications are self-serving.

A Batman once said that it’s not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you. That may be how others will judge you, but it is not who you are. Your essence as a person is not based on the opinions of others, but on your consciousness alone. If the quality of that consciousness is based on self-serving motives, then regardless of how many pigs you save, you’re still kind of a twat.

The obvious alternative is to do nice things for other people. That is also stupid. There is no way to predict the outcome of a “nice” act, and so to rely on the reactions of other people to dictate the merit of an act will constantly vary. Did you ever give a gift you felt sure would make somebody happy, and have it rejected or met with apathy? It’s the thought that counts, right? The thought to do something nice for someone else? What good is a thought if everybody loses? An act cannot be judged based on its outcome because the outcome will never be known prior to the act itself.

So if the consequences of an act don’t define it, nor does its intent, the only thing left is the act itself.

But Dan, don’t actions lack any inherent value?

That is an excellent point, italicized text. We as subjects create the value for every single act, but that does not exclude the possibility of projecting that value outside of ourselves when it comes to morality. Therefore when we act, we do it not for ourselves or for others, but for the deed itself. This allows us to abstain from self-righteousness, as well as foregoing the risk of a moral quandary due to unanticipated consequences.

This does not mean that we are obligated to hold others to account under our morality, for it is still our own and will always be unique to us. Just because we project it outside of ourselves does not mean that we must forget its original source. Neither does this mean that absolutism is the answer, and projected morality does not have to be rigid, but can be just as fluid as the situation merits.

Hold on, so we’re just supposed to pretend that something that comes from within us is actually outside of us? How can a form of ethics be based on make believe? 

All forms of ethics are based on make believe. Ethics is impossible to nail down; hence why it’s one of my favourite things. This is just a theory of mine to prevent people from being terrible, and also to help them realize that deeds are not necessarily the only method of defining somebody’s character.

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Categories Philosophy
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