Category: Politics

Human

I suppose I am a human being. I mean, that must be the assumption, right? I have always felt like a freak. I was frequently called “weird” and “a freak” growing up. I admit I have always been puzzled by the way people around me behave. They all seem to be in on a secret to which I have never been privy. What to do and when to do it. I have always done my best to act in ways that that meet with approval—whenever I can, anyway. I guess the word people use now is “masking.” I’m glad we finally have a term for people like me: neurodivergent. It doesn’t sound so bad when you say it like that.

Physically I am average in every way. I look normal, I suppose. Somewhat attractive, I am told. I have traced my ancestry and I come from a long line of everyday people. My genetics are English, German, Scot and Irish, in that order. I am a plain old ordinary guy, but somehow I was gifted and cursed at the same time. I’m hyper-sensitive, queer, musically inclined, and with a very high IQ. Oh, and also an alcoholic (with forty years of sobriety). If you are meeting me for the first time and are interested, scroll back and read “From Boom to Bust,” a thread in which I recount my childhood, and you will get a sense of who I am.

I hit a point in my autobiographical storyline where I had to stop and rethink how I wanted to proceed. I have been thinking about it a lot over the last few months and have decided that the theme must be “a man’s search for meaning.” Mine has been a journey of spiritual growth, but I have to take a moment to define what I mean by that term.

I don’t believe in God or gods, or in any of the things that are generally encompassed by the term “spiritual.” But there is no denying the reality of what I call “the human spirit.” Humans are interesting beings: we evolved like all animals, yet we have reached a point where we can reflect on ourselves and assess. If other animals have this capacity it’s hard to know, since they don’t talk to us, at least not in words. They do communicate, and we form bonds with them. How much they are like us I just don’t know. But humans, we talk a lot. Every person has a spirit about them. I mean all the things beyond the merely physical: qualities of character, vibes and energy. What we value shows up in everything we do. Most importantly, I believe in the plasticity of the human spirit. We can, by choice, cultivate in ourselves any qualities we wish, given time and persistence. The Buddha recommended developing compassion, generosity, and wisdom, and any of us can do that if we choose to prioritize those things. What we often forget is how amazing that is!

So, I see humans as animals with a little something extra. We are organic life forms, but something about us can transcend mere nature if we try. Inside of each of us is an image of what we are striving to become. I call that our higher self. When I do 12-step work, that’s the “higher power” I’m working with: the yearning to be more than I was yesterday, and the inherent power to move one inch closer each day, trusting the process.

It has been a long journey, and I have learned a lot. My life story includes many stages including grasping to make some sense of my life when I was in the depths of CPSD and alcoholism with a dissociative identity disorder, recovery with the help of 12-step programs and therapy, a decade as a devout Methodist, then as a “new-age guy,” then Buddhism. Eventually I became a licensed massage therapist so I could go back to college. I completed a double-major undergraduate degree in philosophy and economics and finally felt that life made sense.

Until lately. Now I am living through the descent into darkness, the ripening of negative karma, of my once great nation, with which I happen to share a birthday, July 4. My disappointment in my species, of which I have only ever barely felt a part, is crushing. Humans are more than our animalistic urges, but only barely. People can rationalize any atrocity if sufficiently motivated, and I’m seeing a lot of dark motives playing out in our public life. I am disgusted.

But I also feel a sense of urgency bordering on despair. I have so much I want to say that I feel I could pound away at this keyboard for the rest of my life and barely scratch the surface. Today I wonder if my country will die before I do, and if these “messages in bottles” will be picked up and read by anybody, or if I am just yelling into the wind. Regardless, writing in this blog is a duty I owe to myself and my loved ones, so I will proceed.

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Tax Day Gripe

Every year it’s the same thing in the USA: we receive a bunch of tax documents like 1099s, W-2s, etc. and all of them say “a copy has been provided to the IRS.” Oh really? Then why can’t I log into the IRS website by January 31 and see all of the documents. Why, at that point, can’t I already be provided an estimate of what the IRS already thinks my tax liability will be? And if everything were already there, why couldn’t I just click “OK” and be done? Or if I need to provide more information such as my own business income, why couldn’t I do it right there on the site?

The reason is what I call the “incumbency problem.” We’ve reached the point in this country where we can’t actually address, much less solve, any of our societal problems because it would be bad for some sector of the economy. That sector will lobby against any public policy changes that would affect them negatively. Thus, we can’t solve the tax complexity problem without destroying the accounting, tax preparation, and tax law industries. A universal vaccine against cancer would gut wide swaths of the medical sector. The “drug war” employs tens of thousands of people including the DEA, FBI, prisons, police forces, and Coast Guard — not to mention plenty of lawyers. I could go on.

I hear from people in Europe that they just get a tax bill every year and pay it, like our property taxes here.

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Language Games on the Playground

All of us probably mastered the creation and development of language games by the time we were ten years old thanks to our vast experiences on the playground at recess, or passing time in the back seat of the car on family vacations. When children engage in creative group play, role-playing “cops and robbers” or “playing house”, they are not only trying on adult behaviors to imagine how they would feel, they are learning how to negotiate evolving rule sets as an imaginary consensus “reality” is being collaboratively constructed.

It is easy to forget that the same process is continuing throughout our lives, and much of what we take for “reality” today didn’t even have words to describe it a century ago. A century from now, if there are people, their reality will be described in words that haven’t been invented yet, because the concepts don’t yet exist. This is not just because of technological developments (“If someone were to hand Leonardo da Vinci a garage door opener how would he make sense of it?”) but also many social ones. Decades ago gender roles were a “presupposed value” that can no longer be assumed in current discussions. “Privacy” is certainly different today than even thirty years ago, with different assumptions necessary. Do you even read the “updated privacy policy” notices you receive via email? I read one all the way through the other day and found that the policies, while reasonable, included many possibilities and issues that might never have occurred to me.

If you are old like me (I’m fifty-six) you might be taking for granted certain aspects of the “social contracts” in our society which have been evolving into a new reality right under your feet. Your relationship with your employer. Your rights over your property (including intellectual). Did you know you can be arrested for carrying too much cash?

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Power Context

TrafficStop

Another crucial factor in the structure of language games is what I call the “power context.” As stated in earlier posts, language games are more than mere linguistic constructs: they involve people, and take as ‘givens’ many facts and values. The ‘play’ includes activities and things in the real world. Every example of a language game I have presented also includes a power context: an unstated but inescapable configuration of relative powers of the participants. Sometimes the players are equal, but often not. To ignore the power context of a language game would be as absurd as doing astrophysics without considering gravitational fields.

Revisiting some of my earlier examples with this in mind:

  • In the operating room, the surgeon is giving commands, the assistant is responding to the commands, and the patient lies helpless on the table.
  • The police officer, with the full backing of the government, has power over the citizen in the traffic stop. The citizen has certain rights but would do well not to try to turn the tables by, say, reaching for a weapon.
  • At a wedding, the minister has been vested by the state with the power to perform the ceremony. The couple to be married stand as equals while the guests, except for one opportunity to voice an objection, are expected to tacitly lend their support.
  • In a chess tournament the individual players are considered equal and must comply with the instructions of the tournament director. The tournament itself may be conducted under the auspices of a chess federation. Participation is voluntary.
  • In a university chemistry research lab there is likely a hierarchy (professor and grad students, say). The game is played under the umbrella of not only the university, but also the chemistry profession and the greater scientific community. From another angle, the whole enterprise might be seen as an attempt to acquire the power over nature that scientific knowledge might impart.
  • In the farmers’ market the buyer and seller have different powers: the seller knows the “real story” of the produce, but the buyer has the money and free choice to walk away. A balance is presumably reached at the moment a deal is agreed to.
  • At the bank the internal auditor has great power over the manager being audited, although it could be the case that a rookie auditor is going up against a veteran senior manager. Presumably both are under the authority of a board of directors, while the banking industry is under the regulation of the government.
  • In a job interview the power context could vary: perhaps the job seeker is in dire financial straits and feels marginally qualified amongst a large number of applicants. In that case the power is with the interviewing manager. On the other hand, the position might be crucial to the operation of the company, may require a specialized skill set, and this candidate uniquely qualified. Depending on the length of the vacancy and the urgency of making the hire, the power may lie squarely with the candidate.
  • At the gym with a personal trainer, the client may feel subservient to the trainer — especially if the client is a beginner and out of shape while the trainer is super fit and experienced. On the other hand, the client is the one with the money and the trainer may be in the early stages of building their business, so it could be the opposite. Take a moment to consider a variety of factors and possibilities. Also, the power balance can certainly change over time.
  • Even in the example of the chapter in the chess book there are implicit power factors: the authority and reputation of the writer (grandmaster? coach? theoretician?), whether they utilized computer chess engines to analyze the variations, the strength of the examples from master practice, the willingness of the public to buy the book, the efforts of the publisher to sell it, the prospect of increased chess strength for the reader, etc.

Many language games exist for the explicit purpose of addressing and resolving power struggles, for example: court cases, business negotiations, philosophical arguments, politics, and, of course, chess matches and sporting events. But apart from the power struggles harnessed within language games (the internal combustion engines of society!), without the structuring of the games themselves by contextual power gradients outside of them they would have no sense or function at all.

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The Language Game

Much can be said — and has been said — about the so-called “linguistic turn” in philosophy. For me it just signifies an overt recognition that all philosophic inquiry is constrained by the limits of language. The Buddha made the distinction between the moon we can each see, and a finger pointing at the moon. Language is the “finger” which essentially says “hey, look at the moon.” Once you see the moon, I can lower my hand, as it is no longer necessary. Philosophical discourse has as its aim the goal of seeing the moon together. The body of literature known as “Philosophy” is just an audit trail of the effort to come to see “what is” in a way that is satisfactory to both of us, at which point we can leave off until another day.

Did you notice what I did in the previous paragraph? I used language to talk about philosophy in general terms. I painted a word-picture of the process of doing philosophy and invited you to see it with me. If you bought into it, great. It was a linguistic exercise which required the imagination of both the writer and the reader to flesh out the intended meaning. It was “meta-philosophy” — philosophizing about philosophy itself. It was a “language game.”

Ludwig_Wittgenstein

The idea of philosophy as a language game comes from Ludwig Wittgenstein. Language games, for Wittgenstein, are more than just linguistic constructs: they also include players, moves, rituals, physical reality, etc. The scientific method carried out in a chemistry lab, for example, is a language game. The scientists, apparati, chemicals, procedures, data — even the scientific theories — are all part of the game. The “scientific method” structures the playing of the game, which has as its goal the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Even the notion of “scientific knowledge” is a linguistic construct that helps structure the game. The overall process of what goes on in a chemistry lab is a perfect example of a language game. Many parts of the game are not linguistic in nature (people, chemicals, beakers), but they are every bit as essential to the “game” as the linguistic elements.

To say that Philosophy is comprised of language games (and nothing more) is to “make the linguistic turn.” At the end of the day there are people, chess boards, moons, and beakers — these things exist. But when it comes to answering the question “what is Philosophy,” we are left with what we can say about what we can say about such things.

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Independence

I read something a long time ago by the 20th century evangelist E. Stanley Jones that so impressed me that not only did it stick, it has guided my thinking ever since. We are all born completely dependent on others for our survival. As adolescents we naturally must exert our independence — physically, mentally, socially. But as adults, when we are fully mature in our understanding, we come to see that we are interdependent. Individual humans are weaker than other species, but together we dominate the planet. The greatest achievements of humankind are not individual acts of heroism, but the creation of civilizations that are vast and complex webs of specialization and interconnection.

It seems natural that one’s political orientation might evolve along with these stages of development. Early in life we might wish to be taken care of. Later, when our strength is greatest, we seek to sharpen our blades against brave challenges. But sooner or later we encounter failure, bad luck, or simply our own limitations. We gain the perspective that there is really no such thing as a “self-made man.” We come to see that we all have different capacities at different times in our lives, and virtually none of us could survive long in the absence of the contributions of others. A mature political outlook sees society as a vital shared resource. Yes, it imposes burdens and obligations, but without the public goods it offers, very little economic activity could occur. Nurturing and protecting the common good becomes a priority. On the other hand, a political view that clings to adolescent notions of liberty and independence — especially decrying the burdens of regulation and taxation — is not just immature, it is literally anti-social.

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No, I Would Not Kill Baby Hitler

“Knowing what we know today, would you go back in time and kill baby Hitler if you could?”

Every time I hear this question I cringe a little. I find the presuppositions underlying it highly dubious. Leaving aside the paradoxes of time travel (I will save the discussion of the incoherence of the concept for future posts), the belief that you could change history in a meaningful way by adding or subtracting a single person is highly problematic: social forces play a bigger role than any individual. There is a feedback loop between the individual and society, each shaping the other. When conditions are ripe for a movement, a person will emerge to be its standard-bearer. That person is less unique than we are apt to think.

“Hitler Didn’t Drop Out of a Clear Blue Sky”

The social, political, and economic conditions in Germany between the two phases of the great world war are well known. Alice Miller makes a convincing case in her book, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware, that Hitler was skilfully triggering deeply programmed responses from the German people that had been burned in by the pedagogical norms of the early 20th century. What’s more, the silly brown-shirt fringe group he was leading only gained power after it received the backing of the German military-industrial-financial complex (with help from abroad). Had there been no Hitler, they could have / would have chosen someone else to represent their interests.

The scenario presupposed by the “kill baby Hitler” question seems to assume that Hitler was some sort of demonic presence with super-human powers, not the sick but ordinary man he actually was. It also assumes he had no rivals. Suppose you go back and kill baby Hitler, only to find out later that all you have done is create space for his otherwise unknown rival, Schitler, to rise to power in his place — with the difference that Schitler is slightly less psychologically damaged and slightly more intelligent than Hitler, just enough so to actually win the war?

The idea that you could change history by plucking one person out is like thinking you could end a hurricane just by removing the molecules that form the wall of the eye: other molecules would form a new eye wall almost instantly.

Posted on by Kirk