Egocentrism: A Few Kind Words

     The title subject is much on my mind, for reasons partly derived from fiction. One of my fiction gurus, Robert A. Heinlein, early in his career produced a stunning short story titled “They.” It was an exploration of a species of madness… or so it seems at the start. In his anthology The Dark Side, Damon Knight introduces the story thus:

     This brilliant and compact story has the hallmark of great fiction: you will never be quite the same again after you have read it.

     The story reaches for the heights of solipsistic paranoia when its protagonist says this to his therapist:

     “All of these creatures have been set up to look like me in order to prevent me from realizing that I was the center of the arrangements. But I have noticed the key fact, the mathematically inescapable fact, that I am unique. Here am I, sitting on the inside. The world extends outward from me. I am the center…”

     What makes this story so compelling is that each of us sees things exactly the same as its protagonist. Berkeleian subjective idealism arises from that fact. In its collectivized version, it becomes the social construction of reality.

     And we can never wriggle completely free of that wholly individual viewpoint. You can’t really “see it the way he does” unless you are “he”… and you’re not.

     That this is “built in” to the human psyche is one of the downsides of individual consciousness. Heinlein wasn’t the only great writer to use it. Judith Guest employs it in her first novel, Ordinary People, in building up the ultimate rift between Calvin and Beth Jarrett.

     Each of us is the center of his own universe. Maturation is in part the process of learning to accept others’ equally egocentric viewpoints. He who cannot do so is unlikely to have a good time in society.

     A great deal of social strife arises from certain persons’ inability to allow others to believe what they wish. The difficulty of accepting other people’s convictions as beyond your power to change moves some to embrace force and fraud as their methods. Think a little about politicians and you’ll see the causal chain at once.

     But none of this is really news. It’s just that it’s seldom addressed openly. Even the word egocentric has been shorn of its etymological meaning. Today it just denotes the attitude of someone you wouldn’t want to be around. That’s because he’s an egotist. He’s on an ego trip. In other words, he’s not you.

     Ayn Rand did some good and some harm by emphasizing egoism in her novels Anthem and The Fountainhead. Ethical individualism is a vital stance, to be sure, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with a genuine egotist. In social dealing, the practicing egotist tends to evoke the egotism of others. The consequences are seldom pretty.

     The challenge for public discourse is to assert the rights of the individual while remaining untainted by the accusation of egotism. That is, we who champion the individual must strive to uphold the political implications of our egocentric nature without allowing the promoters of collectivism to claim that “you only care about yourself,” as they so often do. For that reason, the defense of egocentrism must be coupled to the promotion of Golden-Rule-patterned behavior and the rejection of self-absorption in all its forms.

A Simple Life

     Do you regard your life as “simple?” Before you answer, think about this: what qualifies a life as “simple?” Doesn’t the answer depend on the meaning you assign to that word?

     Some great, genuinely accomplished men have been vocal advocates of the “simple life.” You know about some of them: Thoreau. Tolkien. Steinbeck. They didn’t all agree on what such a life might be, but they all liked the phrase.

     I’m something of an advocate for simplicity myself. Complex things are daunting. They mystify. Some of them terrify. It’s part of why I went into physics in my youth: a sound grasp of physics takes the mystery and terror out of many complex things by making them comprehensible. Even simple, in a certain sense.

     But all the physics in the world won’t repair your flatscreen television if it should stop working. Neither will it rewire your kitchen or pump out your cesspool. Those chores require carefully nurtured skills and – often – a lot of special equipment.

     The contemporary middle-class American is surrounded by complexities. He can’t cope with most of them from his own knowledge and tool resources. What makes coping possible is that mysterious phenomenon called specialization, a.k.a. the division of labor.

     The availability of specialists who can cope with your particular complexities on your behalf, plus the wherewithal to pay their fees, can transform a life utterly buried in complexities into one that’s simple, yet no less comfortable or convenient.

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     J. R. R. Tolkien had some unusual views. His idea of the “simple life” might be called anarcho-pastoralism. He disliked government of any kind to the point of nausea, and modern technology almost as much. He occasionally expressed those opinions to an effect that would shock most of the admirers of his fiction. And to be fair, he lived as simple a life as one could contrive in the Twentieth Century, while serving as a college professor.

     But Tolkien, for all his brilliance, did not have a real appreciation for the sacrifices a genuinely pastoral, technology-free life would require: the endless backbreaking labor; the few physical comforts; the uncertainty about tomorrow. Pre-technological simplicity was a hard way to live. It killed most infants in the crib. Unending labor and hardship brutalized those who survived to adulthood, nor were their lives as long as ours, on average.

     The price of that kind of simplicity is one that few would willingly pay. Contemporary advocates for such a life usually have no idea whatsoever what they’re advocating.

     Present-day simplicity, in which each of us strives to master one skill with which he will earn his living, and pays part of his earnings for the skills of others at need, deserves to be better appreciated, and much better thought of.

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     All that having been said, there is merit in reducing one’s dependence on complexities – if that can be done “at a profit.” To become omnicompetent, such that one never needs the services of others regardless of what problem one confronts, is a dream that fails to envision the consequences of such absolute self-reliance. Economics will have its say, and what it says in this instance is known as the principle of comparative advantage:

     David Ricardo made one of the enduring contributions to the analysis of international trade with the publication in 1817 of his On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. In addition to putting forward what was to become known as the Principle of Comparative Advantage, in this treatise Ricardo analysed the effects of import tariffs and subsidies (“bounties”, as he called them) on resource allocation, trade, and the level of profit; the impact of shocks to international trade; and the terms upon which the UK traded with its colonies....

     Ricardo put forward a simple and compelling example that showed why two nations would trade cloth for wine and why both would benefit from that trade, even if one nation maintained a productivity edge over the other in the production of both goods. Some object to the simplicity as being unrealistic but, as Richard Baldwin argues in his chapter of this eBook, Ricardo simplified to clarify. And with it the implication that it is comparative cost advantages – rather than absolute cost advantages – that matter.

     The above refers to international trade, but it applies with equal validity to relations among individuals. For example, if a lawyer were to hire a secretary, and then to discover that he types more rapidly than does she, it would still make more sense for him to leave the typing to her. Time the lawyer spends typing is time not spent lawyering, a far more remunerative undertaking. Similarly, for Smith to hire specialist Jones to solve a complex problem will usually make more sense than for Smith to undertake the task himself. In the usual case, the cost of learning (and equipping himself) to do Jones’s work at least as well as Jones would do it is, if not prohibitive, at least a net detriment to Smith’s overall happiness and well-being. (Besides, where would he keep the spools of wire, the large inventory of electrical components, or the cesspool-pumping truck?)

     Happiness is the goal, isn’t it? For a considerable range of problems, Smith will be better off in “happiness units” for having “rented” Jones’s skills and equipment than if he were to tackle those problems himself.

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     It’s natural to admire others for skills one does not possess. I do, certainly. But let’s not kid ourselves: locating reliable specialists, paying their fees, and enduring their occasional surly remarks about the foolishness and carelessness of homeowners are a reasonable price to pay for contemporary simplicity. There’s great comfort in knowing that one’s own skill and equipment are sufficiently valued by others to allow the employment of such specialists at need. It’s the route to simplicity I prefer, though your mileage may vary.

Striking At The Root

     First and above all else, my sincerest thanks to those who’ve written, called, and sent smoke signals and carrier pigeons in my time of troubles. It’s good to know someone cares, even if from far away. Things are gradually growing more stable, and I’m coping adequately with my burdens, at least for the moment. “The moment,” and the light and warmth of God’s love, are where I’m struggling to stay. What the future holds, no one can know.

     Anyway, for now it’s back to the regular drivel.

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     There’s an old Henry David Thoreau quote that’s been much on my mind:

     There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

     (Yes, as annoying as it can be at times, a retentive memory is good for some things.)

     The metaphor embedded in that statement is devastatingly accurate. How does one remove an unwanted tree? Not by pruning its branches, though that might be a required preliminary step to reach the trunk. Neither does one kill a man by cutting off his fingers. You must aim at a vital target, not a peripheral one.

To bring down an enemy, you must strike at what sustains his life.

     The same is true when one’s enemy is a system of beliefs.

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     Recently I’ve been writing about the Left’s assault on the right to life. It’s an important subject that deserves all the attention we can give it. Indeed, it’s more important than the subject of abortion itself – and if you’re a bit startled to see that coming from a Catholic, I’ve achieved my initial objective.

     Don’t just run your thumb under the words. Think about it. What did I just say and why did I say it? A Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch is expected to apply his little gray cells to what he encounters here. Give ‘em a workout.

     There! You’ve got it! The right to life is closer to fundamental than the questions that surround abortion. Before abortion can be addressed morally, we must satisfy ourselves as to whether the developing infant possesses a right to life. The answer to that question would dispose of the abortion question, no matter what it might prove to be.

     My right-to-life Jeremiads are closer to being fundamental investigations than anything else I’ve written lately. And yet, they’re not at “the root.” Not quite, though they’re pointed in the right direction.

     We must go still deeper.

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     When Thomas Jefferson, the sole certified genius among the Founding Fathers – I almost wrote “Fondling Fathers,” and wouldn’t that have delighted Joe Biden? – wrote that the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are “self-evident,” he was working from a philosophical plateau upon which all of Western thought had been built. He believed his conceptual footing reliable, which, given one assumption, it was. But the assumption itself was incorrect.

     Can you spot the assumption I have in mind? Give it a moment. Virtually no one has done so in recent years. It’s a tricky little devil that will squirm out from between your fingers if you’re not both quick and very, very firm. Think hard.

     Getting frustrated? All right, here’s the answer: another quote:

     Either rights exist, or they do not exist. If they exist, they involve absolute consequences...Furthermore, if a right exists, it exists at every moment. It is absolute today, yesterday, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in summer as in winter, not when it pleases you to declare it in force.

     The author, Louis Thiers, was an opponent of the concept of rights. Yet he understood how a right must operate – how it must differ from a permission. A right is absolute, inherent in its possessor. Its existence requires no one’s assent, any more than the effect of gravity requires that we agree to stay stuck to the Earth. And its consequences, as Louis Thiers said, are absolute, whether it is respected or held in contempt.

     Are we at “the root” yet? Very nearly. If fact, I’d say we’re there…but there’s still a little digging to do. Call it a trench for irrigation and protection.

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     Anyone who’s been a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch for very long will already be aware that I’m a fanatic about exactitude in the use of words. Words are our tools of thought; we cannot think without them. Without words, we cannot form and manipulate generalizations – concepts. To reason usefully, therefore, requires that the words we use to do so have stable meanings that are not subject to “reinterpretation” according to fads, fashions, or the needs of propagandists. If that’s not perfectly clear, draw the analogy to mathematics and the symbols used in expressing an equation to be solved.

     Any attack on the stable, traditional meanings of words – and please don’t mistake me; the meanings of words are always established through tradition – is an attack on the tools we use to reason, and the concepts we’ve used them to form.

     The contemporary attack on human reason and individual freedom began with an attack on our language.

     A single word – rights – will suffice as an example for this morning’s discourse. If a right is and must be an absolute property that has absolute consequences, then the word must not be applied to anything that lacks those properties. Yet it has been, limitlessly, to the destruction of the concept of rights itself. That destruction was the Left’s aim from the outset.

     I’ve written about this many times. Yet the concept eludes a great many persons, including many who have no excuse. Consider the “right to vote.” This is so plainly not a right that there’s no way anyone could finesse his way toward it…except by twisting and torturing the meaning of rights to force voting inside it. I suppose if one is determined to have one’s way, a trivial matter like destroying the meaning of the most important word in all of political philosophy seems no great matter.

     But wait: there’s more!

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     The attack on the concept of rights has not one but two main prongs. The above – the application of the word rights to desires that are not rights – is one. The second is the equally pernicious notion that the exercise of a right can be licensed.

     As I wrote some time ago:

     A brilliant friend of mine once propounded the following scenario: “Imagine that the police have come to your house. Though they have neither a warrant nor “probable cause,” they intend to perform a search of your home for unspecified items. You protest this invasion of your rights, whereupon the detachment commander says ‘Just give us $100.00 and we’ll let you be.’”

     If the police could do that, would Americans possess a true right to “be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects?” Or would it be something the “authorities” could arbitrarily grant or withhold on payment of a “fee?”

     If you still resist the idea that an attack on the meanings of words, especially fundamental words such as rights, is at the base of our degeneration, ponder that a while.

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     We have arrived at “the root.” I can make no better case for where our attention belongs than what you see above. Yet if there’s anything in this spatiotemporal continuum of which I am absolutely certain, it’s this:

Some persons will fail to understand.
Others will refuse to understand.
Still others will call me everything but white for saying so.

     With that, I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.

Purposes And Meanings

     It’s easy to get lost in the thickets of aimless rhetoric founded in circular “logic” when discussing “the meaning of life” or “Man’s purpose.” The reasons are not far to seek:

1. Very few people can cope logically with what “meaning” and “purpose” mean.
2. Virtually everyone who orates about these things has an axe to grind.
3. There’s a lot of self-justification and self-exaltation involved.

     So when I encountered this John Hawkins piece, I braced myself for another ton and a half of those three undesiderata. And I got it.

     But we Certified Galactic Intellects have our duties, don’t y’know. One of them is to “sift the fly shit from the pepper” in such matters. Hence the following essay.

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     “Martha, what is the meaning of life?”
     “What? Why, what a stupid question!”
     “He did not ask it stupidly.”
     “It’s a psychopathic question, unlimited, unanswerable, and in all probability, sense-free.”
     “I’m not so sure, Martha.”
     “But—Well, I won’t attempt to argue with you outside my own field. But it seems to me that ‘meaning’ is a purely anthropomorphic conception. Life simply is. It exists.”
     “He used the idea anthropomorphically. What does life mean to men, and why should he, Hamilton, assist in its continuance?”

     [Robert A. Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon]

     “Meaning.” Meaning what and to whom? Doesn’t meaning require an interpreter? Some entity capable of ratiocination to ask the question, and to whom the answer matters?

     But why should “the meaning of life” matter? Why, as Martha Mordan asserts in the passage above, can’t we just it accept it “as given?”

     Claude Mordan provides the answer, even though he doesn’t quite trust it himself. The interpreter is the individual asking the question – and the question, properly formed, isn’t “What is the meaning of life?” but rather “What does my life mean to me?”

     Until we reach that level of personalization, the question is too poorly formed to be answered. However, even once it’s been delimited as I’ve proposed above, there’s work to be done in answering it.

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     What does your life mean to you? Do you ever think about it, or are you too busy actually living to trouble yourself with that question?

     Consciousness imposes certain burdens upon us. We appear to be the only members of the animal kingdom capable of examining our own thought processes, which involves us in what Douglas Hofstadter called a “strange loop.” We ask ourselves “why did I do that?” in the aftermath of many of our decisions: a clear indication that our minds embed processes that resist penetration. Yet they participate in our decision making, sometimes crucially.

     One of those processes is the one that seeks meaning. We seem to need it. However, we resist admitting to ourselves that meaning is something each of us must create for himself.

     A great part of the reason faith in God is so important is that God is the ultimate Interpreter: He Who assigns both meaning and a “final grade” to each human life. Individuals “borrow” that meaning by their adherence to (or divergence from) His Commandments. For many of us, that’s all the meaning we need; more is not required.

     But atheists and agnostics need meaning too. They have a harder row to hoe, for the only interpreter the non-believer has available is himself. Still, the job is doable.

     Meaning arises from one’s chosen purposes, how one chooses to pursue them, and what costs and sacrifices one is ready, willing, and able to make in the process. Felix Hamilton, referred to in the quote above from Beyond This Horizon, feels that “life” is meaningless. In part that stems from his choice of occupation: game designer. He does it to satisfy an unarticulated urge, but he doesn’t respect it:

     “You don’t understand me. I’m not interested in games. Have you ever seen me waste a slug or a credit on one of my own gadgets—or any other? I haven’t played a game since I was a boy. For me it is already well established that one horse can run faster than another, that the ball falls either on red or on black, and that three of a kind beats two pair. It’s that I can’t see the silly toys that people play with without thinking of one a little more complicated and mysterious. If I am bored with nothing better to do, I may sketch one and dispatch it to my agent. Presently in comes some more money.” [Ibid.]

     At that juncture in Heinlein’s story, Hamilton has no love to cherish, no family to protect, and “work” he chose for himself but doesn’t respect. Of course his life lacks meaning!

     Under those conditions, wouldn’t yours?

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     A few years ago, I wrote:

     The realities of human nature, our needs and desires, and the choices that flow from them are as absolute as any other metaphysical fact. Two above all confine us beyond all hope of escape:

• We must work to live and flourish;
• We need to love and be loved.

     He who rejects either or both of those facts is insane in the most fundamental sense: he denies the reality in which he must live. He who exhorts you to doubt or deny them is emphatically not your friend.

     “He who exhorts you to doubt or deny them” will be the one to pose questions to you about “the meaning of life.” They reveal his intent: he wants you to question the meaning of yours. But you’ve probably been creating meaning for yourself through your conscious choices for many years: your choice of occupation and avocations, and the persons you’ve chosen to love and protect. Those choices may entail necessities and difficulties. Perhaps the work you do is your only way to earn enough to meet your obligations, or is utterly unappreciated even by those who benefit from it. Perhaps the people you love are difficult, or don’t love you back. Both those conditions are common enough for all of us to be aware that sufferers exist.

     But the meaning of your life lies in those choices and nowhere else. Through them you defined your purposes. By pursuing those purposes in your chosen manner you made them – and yourself – meaningful, both to yourself, to those your work has benefited, and to those who’ve had your love.

     And no one else’s opinions about “the meaning of life” matter at all.

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     For further reflections upon this subject, I can do no better than to commend to you my short novel The Sledgehammer Concerto. The Heinlein novel is pretty good, too. With that, it’s time for Mass. Be well.

The Left And The Philosophy Of Power

     This piece from Mike Hendrix has remained on my mind, especially this portion of it:

     [S]ome of them, starting with Obama’s pal Bill Ayers, have openly declared that millions of us will probably have to be marched off to the camps and murdered in order to finally get the dodo off the ground.

     I asked, “well what is going to happen to those people we can’t reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?” and the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated.

     And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers.

     And when I say “eliminate,” I mean “kill.”

     Twenty-five million people.

     I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.

     And they were dead serious.

     I can recall at least two other such admissions during Obama’s Reign Of Error, which a cursory Duck-Duck-Go-ing doesn’t unearth. But I strongly suspect such sentiments are far from rare among the more dedicated of these Leftard fanatics; mass slaughter is baked right into the totalitarian cake, a feature, not a bug.

     Ayres has dismissed the informant who narrated the above, Larry Grathwohl, as “having no credibility.” But he wouldn’t deny Grathwohl’s assertions directly and unambiguously. Perhaps he’s aware that others have confirmed the sentiments to which Grathwohl testified.

     For my part, I find Grathwohl’s statement entirely consistent with what I know of the Left. Theirs is an ethic-free philosophy. It goes like this:

1. We are morally superior to our adversaries.
2. Therefore, they have no right to oppose us.
3. Therefore, they have no rights at all.
4. Therefore, we can dispose of them as we please and whenever it suits us.

     Every particle of evidence we have, drawn from the Left’s own words and deeds, confirms this. Bear in mind that some of them have already acted in accordance with it.

     Mike’s assessment is dead on target: mass slaughter and other horrors are “baked right into the totalitarian cake, a feature, not a bug.”

     And it is long past time we in the Right took official notice of it.

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     The Philosophy of Power is usually summarized as “might makes right.” That’s actually a misapplication of terms. The Philosophy of Power denies the existence of rights. In effect, it dismisses all conceptions of morals and ethics a priori. Its outlook is teleological: whatever gets the job done. “The job,” of course, will be defined by those who hold the preponderance of might – and they will brook no dissent from it.

     I suppose that comes as no surprise to a regular Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch. What I have in mind this morning is how the Philosophy of Power dovetails, in operation, with another well known conception: the philosophy of Utilitarianism, usually summarized “the greatest good for the greatest number.”

     The Utilitarian will tell you that he seeks “the greatest good for the greatest number,” nothing else. But let’s follow that out for a bit:

1. First, he and those in league with him must settle upon a “good” to be sought.
2. Next, they must choose a means by which to seek it.
3. Next, they must implement their means.
4. Resisters, who cannot possibly have “the greatest good for the greatest number” as their priority, must be thwarted. But what means would be appropriate?
   • Persuasion has failed.
   • Democratic processes don’t eliminate a resister’s capacity for resistance.
   • Therefore, only force remains.
5. Having thus satisfied what he uses for a conscience, the Utilitarian will employ coercion.
6. But coercion only works if behind it looms the ultimate threat: death. So the Utilitarian must be ready to kill those who won’t surrender.

     And as I’ve written before, the Utilitarian makes no “money-back guarantees:”

     It is obvious that many a State policy formulated to bring about some well-conceived end has failed to do so. Sometimes the failure was inherent in the policy conception; sometimes it was the result of discontinuity in administration or application. What matters is that the result upon which the policy was founded was not achieved. How, then, shall we defend, morally or practically, the imposition of collective decision-making that overrode individuals' claims to rightful autonomy, when the very good they were promised in exchange for their rights has failed to materialize? Shall we make restitution to those who were deprived of their lives, liberties, or properties in service to the unachieved goal? If so, what becomes of collective utility's conceptual superiority to individual rights? If not, why should individuals agree to submit to the usurpation of their rights, however conceived, in the first place?

     It becomes clear from such simple analyses that utilitarianism in theory reduces to absolutism in practice.

     And thus we come back to the Philosophy of Power. Gee, it’s like we never left.

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     I’ve argued before that there can be no compromise with the Left, because any compromise would undermine a critical principle. The principle, of course, is the existence of natural individual rights. the Left presupposes that no such rights exist. Their polemicists routinely cloak that presumption in the language of the Utilitarian: “This is for the common good.” In effect, this is a bid to nullify any moral test of the means they choose. Their chosen means are always increased government power: the power of the sword.

     If the Left is allowed that power, they will use it. Have no doubt of that – and indulge no further impulse to look like a “nice guy” in confrontation with those to whom power is all.

Ultimate Concepts

     Yes, Gentle Reader, it’s another of those philosophical Mondays, when the news simply doesn’t inspire the spleen and Ye Olde Curmudgeon must reach into his bag of “reserve topics” for an essay. Not that I feel obligated to produce an essay every day, mind you; it’s just that there’s a rhythm to it. It’s a habit that’s easier to maintain than to break.

     In the world of physics, we bandy about terms such as matter and energy and law without troubling to define them too rigorously. We know what they are, you see. We don’t have to engage in Aristotelian hair-splitting to use them effectively. Why waste the time and effort? There’s work to be done!

     But some of those terms have rather interesting implications. Here’s one that I recently spent awhile pondering: What is energy?

     A sophomore physics major has already learned various things about energy, when and where to find it, how to calculate it, and some of the transformations it can undergo. But aside from the situational and effectual aspects, he doesn’t know what it is. It’s not a failing in his knowledge or comprehension; we’re all in the same boat with him. It’s the consequence of the habitual use of an undefined term.

     I’m cheating a bit, here. There are two forms of acceptably rigorous definition:

1. Intensive: This sort of definition possesses a genus and a differentia. It describes the category of entities being defined as a subset of a larger category – the genus — and then states a distinguishing characteristic – the differentia — that entities in the category being defined must possess, but which other entities in the genus do not.
2. Extensive (alternately, Tabulative): A definition of this sort merely lists all the entities that belong to the category being defined. It does not attempt to group them in the ways intensive definitions require.

     If the term energy has a definition, it’s more akin to an extensive one. We recognize it situation-by-situation and law-by-law. For example, in mechanics we recognize kinetic energy, potential energy, and work. In electromagnetics we recognize the energies that arise from interactions between charged particles and magnetic dipoles. In atomic and nuclear physics we recognize binding energy and energy of decay.

     Given the above, the question “What is energy?” divorced from any better specified situation becomes impossible to answer. Though the term is a highly useful placeholder in our analyses and computations, giving it a firm, intensive definition appears to be beyond our capabilities.

     Energy is an example of an ultimate concept: a concept we “know” to be true and useful, but beyond which we cannot see, at least at present.

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     An old gag popular among philosophers runs thus: “Define the universe. Give two examples.” This is plainly an absurd request. Definitions pertain to categories, and the universe, by postulate, is above categorization. It contains everything “real.” But that merely raises another, more fundamental question: “What do we mean by real?”

     Real is yet another ultimate concept. It’s useful, it its way. At any rate we “know” what we mean by it. But it can get rather slippery when invoked in an argument.

     Perceptual variations can cloud the meaning of real. There are many problems in special relativity in which observers in equally valid inertial frames perceive events quite differently. Some of those problems can be quite troubling to him whose working definition of real is “what I can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch that doesn’t go away when I turn my back on it.” The twin paradox is probably the best known, but there are many others.

     Douglas Hofstadter, in his landmark book Godel, Escher, Bach, offered a neat twist on the “define the universe, give two examples” gag. He proposed what we might call the “inverse” question: “Define an entity. Give a counterexample.”

     Real, reality, and entity are all useful placeholders beyond which our human limitations forbid us to see.

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     One more, to epater les mathematical bourgeois. I used this one in On Broken Wings:

     Louis drew three pentacles in one corner of the sheet. "What do you see, Chris?"
     She glanced at him suspiciously. "Three stars."
     He nodded, and drew three rhomboids a little distance away. "And what do you see here?"
     "Three diamonds. What does this have to do with computers?"
     "Patience, Chris. I'm trying to lay some groundwork, here." He drew a large numeral 3 and pointed at it. "And this?"
     "Come on, Louis, get serious."
     He said nothing.
     "It's a three."
     "Three of what?"
     "Huh? Three of anything."
     "Is 'three' a thing, Chris?" He was grinning now.
     "Well...isn't it?" She was beginning to feel confused.
     He shook his head. "Go anywhere you want, in this house or anywhere else, and find me a 'three.' I'll pay big time for it. I've been looking for more than thirty years."
     "All right, what is it, then?" Confusion and frustration were beginning to blend.
     Louis shook his head again. "You're going to tell me. I'll ask a related question." He wrote "Christine" below the 3. "What's this?"
     "It's my name...wait...it's a lot of other people's name, too. It's not me, but it's used to refer to me." She frowned. "Louis, what does this have to do with computers?"
     He declined to acknowledge the question. "What do you call something that's used to refer to something else?" He waited, eyes and grin wide.
     She thought furiously. "A name? A label? A...symbol?"
     His grin blossomed into a brilliant smile. "A symbol. These are both symbols. Nearly pure, too, since they have no use except to refer to other things." He appended "Marie D'Alessandro" to her first name and pointed to it again. "That's a symbol, too. A more specific one, the symbol for you. Now, how does this symbol differ from that symbol there?" He pointed to the numeral again.
     She thought a moment. There had to be a point. She would find it.
     "That," she pointed to her name, "refers to something specific. This," she pointed to the digit, "refers to an idea."
     He laid his pencil down and brought his hands together in three sharp claps. He appeared to be both surprised and pleased.
     "You're on your way, Chris."

     Mathematics, the realm in which propositions can be proved or disproved, constitutes an ultimate. As its rules are unconstrained by “reality,” we can create fanciful situations that have no referent in the world around us. Indeed, high school geometry is exclusively about such situations: two-dimensional situations with absolutely precise mathematical entities in them that follow rigid rules.

     I’m not downplaying the utility of mathematics; I’ll leave that to the “pure” mathematicians, who disdain to have anything to do with concepts that can be applied to practical situations. Indeed, that mathematics of certain varieties can be usefully applied is why it originated...but not why “research” into mathematical systems persists.

     The concept-systems mathematicians explore are ultimates of a unique sort: their explorers don’t expect to find analogues to them in the “real world” (and some of them would be offended if they did). But even the simple stuff, the stuff we all use daily and think we understand completely, possesses an ultimate character. Ponder Louis’s insistence upon three and what it “is” in the above. The “atomic” concept of “three” conceals a foundation that exists only in our minds: cardinality. Only we conceptualizers count. Only we are concerned with enumeration. The objects – hey, another ultimate! – we enumerate are there, self-demonstrating, and indifferent to their “number.”

---

     I toy with questions of this kind frequently. The intellectual exercise helps me to keep a good grip on my humility. Given Man’s ever-expanding capabilities, humility is a slippery thing in our hands. But we can recover it by reflecting on the tenuous, contingent, and often disputed ultimate concepts on which all our “knowledge” rests.

     Hoc scio, nihil scio might not have been Socrates’s exact words, but it’s a nice formulation...one we should clasp close at all times. It might help us to avert another Tower of Babel – and you know what became of that.

In Need Of A Word: A Slightly Skewed Rumination

     Yes, Gentle Reader, you read it right: your host, the Curmudgeon Emeritus to the World Wide Web, has been searching for a word, certain that it must exist, and is unable to find it! Sound the general alarm! Ready the cannons! Alert the media!

     Actually, my determination to find the elusive word I seek isn’t founded on the conviction that others have found it necessary or useful. It’s just that I could really use it. It would have several extremely handy characteristics:

• It would promote concision in discussing an important subject;
• It would emphasize the objective nature of reality;
• It would remind us that we’re mostly idiots.

     The “important subject” is metaphysics: the branch of philosophy that deals with that which lies behind the phenomena we observe and puzzle over. In a sense, when a physicist strains to puzzle out the mechanisms that lie behind the physical laws, he becomes a metaphysicist.

     To claim that there is an “objective nature of reality” is to choose a side in a centuries-long battle among schools of philosophy. Ironically, these days the concept that reality is independent of human perceptions, opinions, and preferences is hardly even nodded to by university philosophy departments. Rather, the dominant view there is more in line with this passage from 1984:

     Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. 'If I wished,' O'Brien had said, 'I could float off this floor like a soap bubble.' Winston worked it out. 'If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.' Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind: 'It doesn't really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination.' He pushed the thought under instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a 'real' world where 'real' things happened. But how could there be such a world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.

     This notion is purveyed under a number of names, the most common one being social construction of reality. It’s clearly useful in promoting other counterfactual notions. Indeed, there’s some question as to whether socialism could survive as a school of thought without it.

     As for Mankind’s prevalent idiocy, does that really require a deep explication?

---

     Most people dismiss philosophy and philosophical lines of thought as unimportant to them personally. It might actually be so for many, Ayn Rand’s contrary assertion notwithstanding. But a scientist, of whatever discipline, can hardly do without it, which is why I’m in search of that maddeningly elusive word.

     Etymologically, philosophy means “love of knowledge.” Yet the word in its original meaning has been ripped from the English language. Today a gaggle of tenured, largely useless (if not outrightly destructive) lecturers who harangue wide-eyed dupes for a salary claim it as their personal property. Few semantic felonies have done more harm to the minds of men.

     The greatest harm has been done to the field of metaphysics. Far from being the province of “professional philosophers,” metaphysics is the indispensable foundation for all human thought. Bluntly, if you don’t have a position on metaphysics, you don’t know anything worth knowing.

     Which is why I demand that the nation’s lexicographers provide me with a single, mellifluous word that means “metaphysics for practical use in day-to-day life.” I’ve searched; I’ve commissioned detectives; I’ve offered bribes! Yet the word simply refuses to exist.

---

     I’ve had some fictional “fun” with metaphysics:

     Althea: Probe, I’d like to consult with you about the plan I’ve been contemplating for our return to the Loioc system.
     Probe: You are welcome to do so, Althea.
     Althea: Thank you. My original intention was to build an armada and conduct an invasion in force. However, I’ve begun to wonder if that would be necessary to attain the end I seek.
     Probe: If your end remains the extinction of the nanite that prevents the development of sentience in male Loioc, my assessment is that a great deal of force will be unnecessary.
     Althea: Do you expect the system to be entirely undefended?
     Probe: No. If my grasp of contemporary Loioc society is sound, there will be a defense of some kind. However, it will embed a set of assumptions about probable invaders, and will employ weaponry that will not require Loioc females to engage in any amount of violence, even indirectly.
     Althea: Let’s discuss the assumptions first. What are the Loioc rulers most likely to expect of us?
     Probe: First, that the invading vessels will be few in number, perhaps no more than ten. Second, that the invaders intend the conquest and subjugation of the Loioc. Third, that the invaders will rely upon real weapons.
     Althea: I understand the first two of those assumptions, but the third eludes me. What sort of weapon would not be a real weapon? Would it be one that acts solely upon the mind or perceptions of the target?
     Probe: No. You have misunderstood me. We have entered a realm of discourse for which we have not prepared. I did not realize that. My apologies.
     Althea: What realm is that?
     Probe: The realm of metaphysics. I did not realize that despite your accomplishments, you had not yet formulated an explicit conception of metareality.
     Althea: Probe, you have just taken me outside the lexicon I live with. When we of Hope speak of metaphysics, we mean reality as it presents itself to our senses and instruments. Your use of the term is unfamiliar, as is the even newer term metareality. Would you please expand on them?
     Probe: Yes. The senses of spatiotemporal sentients, both organic and nonorganic, are sharply limited. Reality as we perceive it appears fundamental, not merely pre-theoretical but above all theory. Let us assign a few terms for convenience. Let the sentient to whom spatiotemporal reality is all be called a realist. To the realist, the laws of the universe are without foundation. They admit of no explanation, being sufficient unto themselves. The realist’s highest natural scientist is the physicist. The physicist accumulates spatiotemporal data in his attempts to infer reality’s laws. He does not entertain the possibility that those laws might arise from some deeper set of mechanisms. Yet there are deeper mechanisms: atemporal, independent of location, and potentially in flux. Probing them and their interplay is the domain of the metaphysicist: he who studies the nature of metareality.
     Althea: How do my accomplishments, as you put it a moment ago, bear on this realm?
     Probe: You are Hope’s first metaphysicist, Althea. You alone have thought to alter the properties of space itself. It is how you constructed your superluminal vessel.
     Althea: Then to alter the permittivity of the vacuum is an act of meta-engineering?
     Probe: Yes. It requires an assumption realist physicists would dismiss out of hand. Their assumptions are wholly incompatible with it.
     Althea: What are those assumptions?
     Probe: They pertain to the undefined term existence. If asked “does space exist?” the realist physicist would decline to give a definite answer. Space, he would say, is nothing: the absence of anything real. Therefore, the concept of existence does not apply to it. You, by contrast, have treated space as having existential properties. You have treated nothing as being something, and so have succeeded in making changes to it.
     Althea: Which of us is nearer to the truth?
     Probe: Surely that question answers itself.
     Althea: Does my technique for attaining superluminal speeds resemble yours?
     Probe: Only in the results achieved. At present I lack the terms required to explain the technique embodied in my superluminal engine to you. It will require us to expand our lexicon much further.
     Althea: I infer from this that metareality is complex, perhaps even more complex than spatiotemporal reality.
     Probe: If I may borrow an expression you have used in another context, you have no idea. But there is more. Have you attained an understanding of your telekinetic powers?
     Althea: No. They baffle me even as I use them.
     Probe: Yet you use them with precision and confidence. They are as metareal as your vessel’s manipulation of the permittivity of space.
     Althea: That implies that I am actually altering the laws of reality when I employ them.
     Probe: Yes, you are, within the radius of their operation. I became aware of their nature when you freed me of my payload. You reconfigured local reality continuously as you worked. It was a display of metaphysical capabilities no Loioc has ever commanded. Yet your skill and self-assurance were such that I did not suspect that you were unaware of what you were doing.
     Althea: Probe, there are several things I can do for which I lack an explanation. Perhaps they are all metareal. I look forward to exploring them with you.
     Probe: As do I, Althea. Have you ever discussed them with another organic sentient?
     Althea: Yes, I have. He told me to consider them gifts.
     Probe: Who would give you such gifts, yet deny them to others of your race?
     Althea: I cannot say. Possibly God.
     Probe: It appears that we must discuss God at some length.
     Althea: We’ll have plenty of time for that on the trip to Loioc system. Until then, we should concentrate on more practical matters.
     Probe: The subject might prove to be more practical than you currently realize, Althea.
     Althea: You may be right, Probe. All the same, shall we go over the invasion plan for now?
     Probe: As you wish.
     Althea: It involves you.
     Probe: That conforms to my prior projections. Will I have an active role?
     Althea: Oh, quite active, I assure you. Does it please you to learn that?
     Probe: You have no idea.
     Althea: That’s a useful phrase, isn’t it?
     Probe: Yes, it is. Thank you.

     As lighthearted as that conversation between a human genius and an equally intelligent nonorganic sentient might seem, I’ve never written anything that has more potential impact on life – human or otherwise. Perhaps the most important phrase in it is one that Probe uses twice: You have no idea. It is factually correct at a dizzying number of times, about innumerable subjects.

     “You have no idea.” That describes how most of us go about our lives. We don’t think about them; we merely “do” them. And for many, nothing more is necessary...at least, as they see things. “Go away, you self-important word-mincing buffoon,” they say, “you’re harshing my mellow.” And they go on with their routines, serenely unconcerned with the substrata that make possible what we limited ones call reality.

     It might be for the best to let them be. A lot of them are armed.

---

     Among the ironies of our day is that even the most ardent purveyors of the “social construction of reality” blather live their daily lives in complete denial thereof. Imagine challenging one of them on it:

     FWP: Why did you do that?
     Social Constructivist: Do what?
     FWP: Stop there, when I know you want to cross the street.
     SC: Are you crazy? Look at all that traffic!
     FWP: What traffic?
     SC: What?? Are you crazy, blind, or both?
     FWP: I have decided that there is no traffic. Therefore, there is none.
     SC: Oh? Then why don’t you cross the street?
     FWP: I have no desire to do so.
     SC: Yeah, right.
     FWP: However, I desire that you cross the street, yet you have not done so. Why?
     SC: (shakes head) I can’t believe this.
     FWP: Answer me! You’re disturbing my construction of reality. Account for it!
     SC: Look, hero, you might not believe that there’s any traffic, but the hundreds of people driving those cars speeding by certainly do, and their opinions supersede yours by a lot!
     FWP: But if they didn’t, what then? Could they pilot their vehicles however they chose?
     SC: Well...
     FWP: Without causing an immense accident and a lot of deaths?
     SC: (unprintable)

     If reality is independent of our perceptions, opinions, and preferences, then the social constructivist must operate under that assumption or be mowed down by the traffic, no matter how many degrees he has from what prestigious institutions. Yet their madness persists. It can be observed in thousands of “philosophy classes” throughout the nation. From it are germinated many more tangible but equally pernicious ideas, such as the notion that we can determine the sex of a newborn baby by voting on it...or that he can decide on it later in life.

     Yet there are important questions to be asked about reality -- metaphysical questions. Why are the laws of the Universe what they are? Were they ever different? Can they be changed by human action, or by any other agency under the veil of Time? What would be the consequences of such a change?

     To the extent that the physicist asks such questions, he departs from “conventional” physics to enter a realm of theory for which we have no exploratory tools...

     At the moment.

---

     If I may return briefly to my contention that there is such a thing as “metaphysics for practical use in day-to-day life,” I’ll close with a question that seems wholly impractical:

How do I/we know what cannot be changed?

     In light of the import of Reinhold Niebuhr’s exceedingly popular “Serenity Prayer:”

God grant me:
Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom always to know the difference.

     ...it’s a question more of us should entertain now and then, whether in fiction or otherwise. But to ask it in the passive voice, as I did above, leads us to another question:

Who might be able to change what I/we cannot?

     Enjoy a wholly un-laborious Labor Day.

"How Do I Learn Philosophy?"

Some weekend reading; since I personally don't have anything especially insightful to add to Fran's recent Enemies and How to Treat Them Part 2 ("We can beat these clowns. Indeed, we can beat them so thoroughly that they won't even dare to whimper. But to do so, we must be ready, willing, and able to fight.") I want to share an article of interest from Curt Doolittle, an interesting character and writer. He calls his philosophy "Propertarianism" and I don't intend to explore that right now, but it's worth a look.
(My comments)


A reader asked Doolittle "How Do I Learn Philosophy?" Some highlights from his answer:


First, we need to define Philosophy. Which I think I can successfully do by stating it’s a set of ideas that assist us in forming a framework of understanding, whether by imitation of others – whether real or mythical (virtue), rules of conduct and decision making(deontological), or understanding of the mechanics of the universe(teleological), with which we can use limited human knowledge and reason for the purposes of acting to achieve needs, satisfactions, and fulfillments, by cooperating successfully in a world of others doing the same.


I can already sense some of our Gentle Readers raising their hand and saying "But wait, what about X" but I'm not going to parse this definition right now either. Mainly, I want to share some truly interesting insights and opinions that I had not considered before:


-One’s Experience-
i – children and primitive cultures rely on virtue (religion)
ii – adults in developing cultures rely on rules (law)
iii – the wise in mature cultures rely on outcomes (science)
(And then, when the limits of science are exhausted, the wise return to virtue, only at the next higher level.)


Christianity provides a body of myth and ritual with but one purpose: the extension of kinship love to non kin, as a means of generating universal inclusiveness. It is a religion of benevolent pacification cured only by it’s opposite in the martial nobility.
(Obviously there is more than "one purpose" but this is true, as far as it goes. "Martial nobility" married to Christianity is the very essence of "The West.")


Islam provides rules and virtues for people with limited intelligence to observe and daily rituals to enforce them – although this is a false promise since it achieves the opposite.


Stoicism provides a means of achieving personal happiness for those who live in civilized worlds but who have little control over their environments. Stoicism is the opposite of buddhism in that buddhism achieves satisfaction by escapism and internal discipline, while stoicism achieves satisfaction by means of creating many small successes in daily life, accumulating in your achievement of virtue independent of the opinions of others. Combined with Sport it is extremely attractive to men.
(Perhaps the best definition I've seen.)


Judaism provides a means for not only exiting their incompetent classes but an entire body of law to master, and overwhelming pressure to remain within the polity which is ensured by the hostility to outsiders and therefore outsider hostility to insiders. Judaism is perhaps the ultimate synthesis of rule based systems and history even if it is a failed system because it lacks the moral content necessary to hold land. It originated with pastoralists and remains a pastorialist (unlanded) doctrine. It lacks intertemporal moral content. That is why the jews cannot hold land.
(That's a way of looking at it that I've never heard before, at least not with such simplicity and clarity. It has remarkable explanatory power and aligns with reality.)


Aristotelianism (what we call science) is demanding and at times forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, but at least when large numbers of us adopt it, we are able to master reality better than all other philosophies combined. The problem is that it is an aristocratic philosophy because it requires great effort and ability to learn and apply. Which is why we invest so heavily in education: we must.


###


Some reading lists follow--you've probably read some of the works, but perhaps you'll find something new and, ahem, enlightening.


I considered Doolittle's post to be well worth my time. It might be worth yours as well.

A Morning Muddle

     Many persons find early mornings more difficult than the rest of the day. I suppose that’s true of me as well, albeit not for what you’d call a typical reason.

     This morning, after the first self-administration of Cardiac Starter Fluid (a.k.a. coffee), one of my first thoughts was “How can we harmonize Aristotelian essentialism with the fluidity of reality first noted by Heraclitus and the phenomenological insights of Husserl?” No, I’m not kidding: that’s the way my mornings have been trending. Such notions aren’t the sort of controversy one normally reads about in the morning paper. Perhaps that’s for the best.

     This penchant for the most abstract of abstractions has been with me for a long time, but I can’t recall a time when it’s been this insistent, or this powerful. If it’s a consequence of aging, it’s not one covered by the medical journals. Fortunately, it usually recedes when I say my morning prayers.

     The above left me with the feeling that this is going to be a really interesting day...hopefully in a good way.

---

     The typical American is almost entirely uninterested in philosophy. His concerns are mundane, practical, focused on the bills, the roof, and the wife and kids. If he thinks about them at all, he regards the etherealities of philosophical discussion as gaseous blather. The word philosophy has been so badly abused in recent years that that, too, might be for the best.

     That puts me out on the margins of thought. (It certainly makes my style of conversation less than appealing.) Yet I persist in my conviction that the most abstract of abstractions – the ones addressed by questions such as “What do we mean by real, and how can we believe in the reality of a thing if it’s changing as we watch?” – deserve more attention from the common man than they usually get.

     Consider two relatively recent movies: The Thirteenth Floor and The Matrix. Both of these are founded on exactly such conundrums. They challenged their audiences at a conceptual level; you had to “buy the premise” in order to “buy the flick.” Yet many did so, especially in the case of the Matrix series.

     Another noteworthy movie, Dark City, embedded as its premise that what we call reality might really be at the mercy of others’ whims. That’s goes deeper into the conceptual darkness than the “simulation within a simulation within a simulation within a...” premise of The Thirteenth Floor. However, it has an important distinguishing characteristic: it’s true.

     Reality is being continuously reconfigured as we live it, largely by persons other than ourselves. That some of those persons live near to you – perhaps in your very own home! – doesn’t disturb the validity of the premise.

---

     An old, low-grade joke runs thus:

     Q: What does Helen Keller’s mother do to punish her?
     A: She moves the furniture around.

     (As I typed that, two other things occurred to reconfigure my local reality: First, I received an “important message” about the worn, tired condition of my underwear...from Victoria’s Secret. Second, it occurred to me that there are probably millions of young Americans who, owing to the “excellence” of their “public” school “educations,” have no idea who Helen Keller was. But that’s a subject for another screed: one that must wait to be written until the serviceman arrives to recharge my sneer-quote generator. All things in due course.)

     We live in a reality whose surface properties are being continuously altered, mainly by others. The alterations don’t touch the metareality beneath us, of course – you’d have to be Althea Morelon to do that – but they do influence our perceptions and subsequent decisions and actions. How, then, do we state definitively anything about reality, even in the most localized sense?

     It appears that there are several criteria:

• Perception: One must have sensory evidence of the item / event;
• Persistence; The item or event must have occupied a non-zero, finite space and interval in time;
• Confirmation: Others who can legitimately be presumed to have witnessed the same item / event must confirm (or at the least, not seriously dispute) one’s perceptions and the recollection thereof.

     Remember this scene from 1984?

     ’Another example,’ he said. ’Some years ago you had a very serious delusion indeed. You believed that three men, three one-time Party members named Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford men who were executed for treachery and sabotage after making the fullest possible confession — were not guilty of the crimes they were charged with. You believed that you had seen unmistakable documentary evidence proving that their confessions were false. There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.’
     An oblong slip of newspaper had appeared between O’Brien’s fingers. For perhaps five seconds it was within the angle of Winston’s vision. It was a photograph, and there was no question of its identity. It was the photograph. It was another copy of the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford at the party function in New York, which he had chanced upon eleven years ago and promptly destroyed. For only an instant it was before his eyes, then it was out of sight again. But he had seen it, unquestionably he had seen it! He made a desperate, agonizing effort to wrench the top half of his body free. It was impossible to move so much as a centimetre in any direction. For the moment he had even forgotten the dial. All he wanted was to hold the photograph in his fingers again, or at least to see it.
     ’It exists!’ he cried.
     ’No,’ said O’Brien.
     He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O’Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O’Brien turned away from the wall.
     ’Ashes,’ he said. ’Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.’
     ’But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it.’
     ’I do not remember it,’ said O’Brien.

     It’s one of the most chilling scenes in a supremely chilling book...and one of the most important, as well. The brainwashing techniques of the Communist nations are founded on nothing else but that plus mass confirmation and repetition.

---

     As usual, I’m coming at my point in a circuitous fashion. (Why not? I’ve been doing it for a lot of years now.) It’s merely this:

Reality may be changing, but it’s still real.

     That includes conscious attempts to change reality “out from under you,” such as O’Brien worked upon Winston Smith, or the media are attempting to do with the Chicago atrocity of a few days ago. It’s up to you – your perceptions of reality and your firmness of will – to decide whether you’ll allow it.

     Stop.
     Look.
     Listen.
     And remember.

On Solitude

     A little philosophy today:

     I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. [Henry David Thoreau]

     It seems a rule among men, and of all things sought now and then by men, that the more of something one has, the less he values it. This is as true of the opposed conditions of society and solitude as of any other.

     Today, when the great majority of us are seldom alone – indeed, when many of us find that we cannot contrive to be alone no matter how hard we might try – moments of solitude are simultaneously dreaded and sought with an ardor no other desire could approach.

     When I was a boy in upstate New York, I loved my time alone in the forests. I would walk through them for hours, savoring the silence and thinking my own thoughts. Since I retired, I’ve been alone most of the time: twelve to fourteen of my sixteen hours of daily consciousness. I’ve returned to it more joyfully than I could ever have imagined when I was still employed. It sometimes makes me wonder how I survived the enforced society of ten hours each day spent among hundreds of colleagues for so many years.

---

     There are two aspects to solitude that are underappreciated by those who continuously immerse themselves in society:

• Freedom;
• Peace.

     Theoretically, it’s law that supposedly restricts your freedom. In practical, day-to-day terms, it’s what other people do or might do: how their actions and reactions, actual and possible, will constrain you. When you’re alone, those constraints are as far away as you can put yourself from other people.

     Alongside that, you cannot be completely at peace when in society. Society marries its benefits to all sorts of costs, including noise, bustle, and the continuous possibility of conflict. Noise alone, the inevitable byproduct of all human action, creates stresses of which we’re often unaware. While some environments are inherently noisy, being in company is always noisier than being alone.

     Granted that some human activities require that we accept the company of others – sex and Scrabble^® come immediately to mind – nevertheless, solitude offers many benefits Americans of the Continuously Connected Era lack. Perhaps we should consider reacquainting ourselves with them.

---

     I know a number of persons who are afraid to be alone. They’ve become addicted to human interaction. They seem not to have any concept of self except in relation to others: how they’re the same, and how they’re different from those in their company. If they don’t have a buddy physically nearby, they’re on their cell phones.

     I don’t grasp it. Fear of solitude strikes me as a fear of oneself: the afflicted one’s uneasiness about what he might get up to without others to curb him. Or perhaps it’s a fear of self-discovery: that acquaintance with oneself outside of all society might reveal personality or character traits he’d rather not recognize.

     How could a man possibly be comfortable with others if he’s not first comfortable with himself? And how could he become comfortable with himself, as himself apart from others, without learning his nature in solitude?

---

     I can think of three generic conditions a man must master to feel himself fully realized as a mature man:

• Solitude;
• Casual society;
• Emotional intimacy.

     We do need one another. As Marshall Fritz once observed, the toughest Delta Force special operator or Navy SEAL, if isolated on a tropical island without the means of escape, would be hard put to maintain his sanity or his body weight. Practicalities aside, each of us needs a degree of social acceptance and some source of love. But we need ourselves as well. One must be whole and firm before he can risk the company of others, and there is no substitute for solitude as an avenue to the crafting of a character and a personality that can withstand the abrasions, contusions, and occasional lacerations one must endure in society.

     Much of “what’s wrong” with America could be remedied by the rediscovery of solitude and its benefits: whether it’s to be alone with agreeable reading or music, or to stroll at leisure through some congenial woodland or meadow, or merely to be alone with one’s thoughts. It’s a pity that our working lives allow so little solitude. It’s even worse that whether we’re working, playing, praying, or lazing, we’re surrounded with so many inducements to shun it.

     Just some food for thought on a lazy Monday morning when I’ve had my fill of our various social pathologies.

Canons

     Catholics are made aware, fairly early in life, of canon law: the set of rules that govern:

• The Church hierarchy;
• The way in which rules are arrived at, modified, and enforced;
• And of course, the behavior of lay Catholics, including their relations with the hierarchy.

     That’s usually our first encounter with the term canon. The modifier specifically addresses the Churchly aspect of its laws: their position in Catholic life above and apart from civil law. Civil law, the theory runs, is impermanent, often arbitrary, and not to be relied upon for moral guidance in day to day life. Canon law derives from a far more authoritative Authority, at least in theory.

     However, the term canon is used to describe certain things that aren’t explicitly religious in nature. In particular, there’s been a great deal of talk about the Western canon: that set of great books that articulate and defend the core ideas behind Western Civilization.

     (I’ve often referred to Western Civilization as Christian-Enlightenment Civilization. The melding of Christian moral codes with the Enlightenment understanding of the supremacy of the indivdual’s rights over the claims and representations of the powerful was what made freedom possible. Before that marriage, freedom as Americans understand it had never even been conceived. But this is a subject best left for another time.)

     In similar fashion, various collections of literary works have been described as canon or canonical, meaning that they express the ideas at the heart of some current in the evolution of fiction, or a category thereof. A recent encounter struck me as particularly revealing...and somewhat humorous as well:

     The end result is that you now hold a new Tomb Raider story. It is canon. Its events are now part of Lara’s life and the origin story that is currently being told. [From the Foreword to Tomb Raider: The Ten Thousand Immortals. Emphasis added by FWP.]

     Mind you, Lara Croft is the heroine of a video-game series. Surely no one is less real than a video-game heroine who explores tombs, warrens of caves, and mystically infested islands. Yet the adoption of the bosomy adventurer by millions of fans has resulted in two slam-bang action movies starring Angelina Jolie, a number of spin-off novels, comics and fan fiction, a “reboot” of the franchise to give her a more complete, more human “biography”...and the need for her creators to say which works in which Lara appears are “canonical.”

     I’m in something of the same position at the moment, having surrendered to pressure from my readers to extend the Realm of Essences series, and to connect it somehow to my Spooner Federation series. The problems that face a writer in this sort of effort can be quite severe. He’s basically writing a “future history” of the sort Asimov and Heinlein once essayed – and once it’s been declared canonical, even he won’t dare to violate its precepts.

     The amount of Sturm und Drang surrounding the idea of literary canons is difficult to overstate. Some writers regard the Western canon as quasi-sacred: not to be questioned, much less violated. Others, obsessed with being regarded as “innovators,” treat it as a target to be punctured. (Those latter ones often regard the existence of a canon as an affront to their “creative freedom.” Given the generally abysmal quality of most of their fiction, I’m tempted to say that they could use a little discipline...in some cases more than a little.) The volume of the argument occasionally violates the pain threshold, to say nothing of the accusations and epithets the participants sling around.

     Universities are often major participants in the “canonist vs. anti-canonist” cage matches. There’s a certain logic to this, as the University of Chicago, under the leadership of the brilliant Robert Maynard Hutchins, was instrumental in the compilation of the Great Books curriculum, which has come to be regarded as essential to if not identical with the Western Civilizational canon. Those who seek to “make their mark” often choose that series as a target: to be extended, amplified, edited, or destroyed.

     Lesser canons have become significant in genre writing. For example, there’s been a lot of back-and-forth over what John C. Wright and others have proposed as the canonical works of fantasy and science fiction. Some of the exchanges, like the Cherry Fondue from the Whizzo Quality Assortment, have been extremely nasty. (No, we can’t prosecute for that.) Yet the veneration of those canonical works, their immense popularity, and their importance as points from which thousands of other writers have chosen to pursue elaborations, cannot be disputed.

     What the literary anti-canonists refuse to accept, in virtually every case, is that a canon does not exist because it was declared from On High. It emerges from the widespread recognition of the quality of its components, and their formative importance to later writers. In the usual case, that’s because their attempts to gain fame by dismissing or contradicting some canon fail miserably. The execrable quality of most of the crap that’s won awards stands in testimony.

     The same is true for canonical ideas. The ideas and principles at the foundation of Western Civilization were, at some point, original. But they would not have become a canon if they hadn’t succeeded in practice – and so brilliantly that the rest of the world is divided between camps that seek to emulate us and camps that seek to destroy us.

     In a way, the emergence of a canon demonstrates that Aristotelian essentialism and Platonic idealism can be harmoniously fused. Horses must pre-exist “horseness,” except in the mind of the Creator, but once one has recognized the commonalities of horses, their differences from other mammals, and the perpetuation of those characteristics from generation to generation, “horseness” becomes equally real and equally powerful. So also with canons.

     More anon.

Quickies: Okay, So He Misuses “Determinism”...

     ...but apart from that, Dystopic’s latest essay is a must-read. Just substitute “belief in control over one’s own destiny” for “determinism” wherever the latter term appears.

     There is no wider nor more important cleavage than the one between those benighted fools who believe themselves helpless pawns of Fate and those of us who know better. But of course, we here at the Irony Detection Instruments Of Tomorrow (IDIOT) R&D center must also note that the promulgators of fatalistic concepts – Dystopic mentions a couple – include some of the most arrogant and vicious persons known to history: individuals fanatically bent upon imposing their own ideas upon the world. How’s that for a kick in the head?

     Truly, there’s so much in my IDIOT folder that I could write on this subject all day. But I have a story to finish.