The faith of atheists -- examining the Dennis Prager/Sam Harris debate

Here is my analysis of a debate between Sam Harris, an evangelical atheist, and Dennis Prager, a Jewish theist, that took place back in November, 2006.

Here is Sam Harris' day 1 opening salvo to Dennis:

In the beginning of this debate, Harris declares all religion to be jihadist, loony, and/or prejudicial. Only later in the debate does Harris, hypothetically, consider the value of some sort of religion (which he will later call "Scientismo" in day 4 of the debate). This colors how one is to interpret Harris' statement, "there is no good reason to believe in a personal God", since it can mean two different things: A) there is no good evidence for believing in God and B) there is no good usefulness for one believing in God. In the beginning of the debate, Harris is clearly stating both A) and B). In the course of this ensuing debate, Harris will relinquish assertion B) in favor of assertion A).

Here is Dennis' day 1 reply to Harris:

Here is Harris' day 2 reply to Dennis:

(Harris) Atheism does not assert that “it is all made by chance.” No one knows why the universe came into being. Most scientists readily admit their ignorance on this point. Religious believers do not.

"No one knows why the universe came into being" – that is the statement that needs to be unpacked. It can mean one of two different things A) that no one can have absolute scientific certainly as to why the universe came into being – or B) that it is not possible for anyone to have the slightest clue why the universe came into being. The former assertion leaves room for religious faith, the second assertion doesn't.

If a scientist is operating with intellectual honesty within the limitations of science, he would offer assertion A). However, an atheist is not merely scientific, but is rather scientismist, believing that science is the key to any and all metaphysical questions. As such, an atheist will either firmly believe that 1) the universe was not created -- on account of science or 2) firmly believe that it is not possible for anyone to have the slightest clue as to why the universe came into being -- on account of science.

The first statement is plainly a statement of faith regarding the origins of the universe that asserts a certainty over an uncertainty. The second statement is also a faith statement, albeit more subtle, in that it places faith in the idea that science is the key to all metaphysical understanding and that all knowledge is to be made real/unreal, relevant/irrelevant within limitations of science.

It is also important to note that statement 1) and 2) are tantamount to being the same thing. The first statement plainly says that God does not exist, thereby denying the existence of any sort of God. The second statement says that God knowledge is completely unknowable, and therefore completely irrelevant to questions of truth and knowledge. The second statement thereby denies the existence of a "personal God" who, by definition, has made himself knowable to people. It is on the matter of a "personal God" not existing that Harris asserts total certainty.

And it is not a far leap from the certainly of statement 2) – that no personal God exists-- to certainty of statement 1) – that no God exists at all. At this point in the discussion, Harris is claiming statement 2) in order to downplay his claims of certainty in the face of Prager's charge that Harris is claiming too much certainty. Harris will indicate that he does in fact believe statement 1).

(Harris) Why can’t I say that the cosmos is uncreated?

Of course, Harris can say that the cosmos is uncreated. That is, in fact, what Harris believes, which is why he states it in the first person. Harris is now admitting to having the certainty regarding statement 1) that he did not admit to having earlier. This is part of the reason why Prager will later, in day 4, redirect the blame on Harris for "making maneuvers" in the course of the debate and not owning up to the true extent of his certainty, and therefore, his faith.

Here is Prager's day 2 reply:

Here is Harris' day 3 reply:

(Harris) But it is clear from our debate that you and I differ on the location of the problem. In your view, the problem must be that Europe has lost the moral backbone that only religion can provide (and Islam just happens to be the wrong religion.) In my view, our world has been shattered, quite unnecessarily, by religion itself. As I said, even if you were right, and the only people who could summon the moral courage to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world were the religious lunatics of the West, this would suggest nothing at all about the existence of the biblical God. It would only show that a belief in Him might be politically necessary, in a given time and place, to motivate people to fight (as our inimitable President says) “the evildoers.” I am reasonably sure you are wrong about this. But again, this is quite irrelevant to the question before us.

The question whether religion is useful is relevant to Harris' original salvo "there is no good reason to believe in a personal God".

Here is Prager's day 3 reply:

Here is Harris' day 4 reply:

(Harris) While the usefulness of religion might be worth debating in another context, it is completely irrelevant to the question of whether God exists.

Again. The question whether religion is useful is relevant to Harris' original salvo " there is no good reason to believe in a personal God". If A) one cannot prove whether or not God exists with scientific certainty, as both Prager and Harris have admitted, and B) believing in God is potentially useful, as Harris has admitted, then there is a good reason, under certain circumstances, for one to believe God as a matter of faith. That is why Prager, in day 1, made a distinction between bad God-belief and good God-belief.

If I believe that there is an afterlife, and believing in that afterlife gives meaning to my struggle to be moral, then there is a good reason to believe in the afterlife. In a similar vein, if I am moved by listening to Beethoven, there is a good reason for me to believe that it is beautiful.

By "good reason", I do not mean "a good scientifically verifiable reason", since I recognize that the question of "good" lies outside the realm of science to answer, whether in the realm of faith, morality or art.

If I believe that there is a moral order to the world, and I believe that an idea of God is the key to that moral order, then there is a good reason for me to believe in God. If someone else does not see that belief in God is important to moral order, then for that person, he/she may not possess a good reason to believe in God in regard to the issue of morality. As someone who believes that believing in God is important to having morality, it is my perogative to state my case and leave it alone for each to decide on his/her own.

Here is Prager's day 4 final reply:

I have more to say on the matter of "moral intuition" which Harris raises in day 3.

Morality and Ethics

This past week I was exploring a classic dorm room philosophical question: what, if any, is the difference between "morality" and "ethics".

As I've been reflecting on various moral and ethical issues, I've realized that it's actually an important question. It matters in terms of how to properly classify, compare and contrast morals and ethics across the boundaries of belief and skepticism. It matters, as a Christian, in regard to many of these inter-related questions in terms of how to discuss morality and ethics with the world at large:

-- Is what is moral also ethical?
-- How much does any one else's moral system fit in with "ethics"?
-- What do these terms mean to those who are hailing from a different ideology or different belief system?
-- What is it to have a moral debate or an ethical debate?
-- How much is a question of Christian morality "exportable" into the realm of ethical inquiry beyond Christianity?
-- Do I have a Christian ethical system or a Christian moral system, or both?
-- Where, if at all, do moral considerations and ethical blend in?

As with any important philosophical inquiry, I went to the internet. In freedictionary.com, it offers these definitions:

eth•ic ( th k)
n.
1. a. A set of principles of right conduct. b. A theory or a system of moral values: "An ethic of service is at war with a craving for gain" Gregg Easterbrook.
2. ethics (used with a sing. verb) The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy.
3. ethics (used with a sing. or pl. verb) The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession: medical ethics.

mo•ral•i•ty (m -r l -t , mô-)
n. pl. mo•ral•i•ties
1. The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct.
2. A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality.
3. Virtuous conduct.
4. A rule or lesson in moral conduct.

So to what extent are these terms interchangeable? Here, a gentleman named Lawrence M. Hinman gives his effort at making contrast:

"Ethics. The explicit, philosophical reflection on moral beliefs and practices. The difference between ethics and morality is similar to the difference between musicology and music. Ethics is a conscious stepping back and reflecting on morality, just as musicology is a conscious reflection on music.

Morality. "Morality" refers to the first-order beliefs and practices about good and evil by means of which we guide our behavior. Contrast with Ethics, which is the second-order, reflective consideration of our moral beliefs and practices. "

Here is wikipedia contrasting morals and ethics:

"Morality (from Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behaviour") refers to the concept of human action which pertains to matters of right and wrong—also referred to as "good and evil"—used within three contexts: individual distinction; systems of valued principles—sometimes called conduct morality—shared within a cultural, religious, secular or philosophical community. Personal morals define and distinguish among right and wrong intentions, motivations or actions, as these have been learned, engendered, or otherwise developed within individuals. Bycontrast, ethics are more correctly applied as the study of broader social systems within whose context morality exists. Morals define whether I should kill my neighbour Joe when he steals my tractor; ethics define whether it is right or wrong for one person to kill another in a dispute over property. "

Notice that the two sites listed above distinguish ethics from morality by defining ethics as the disciplined, conscious study applying the broadest examination of society. Morality is portrayed as being more instinctual, reflexive and provincial. Here, below, is a professional trade publication weighing in on the topic. The distinction made here is similar to that made by Wikipedia that morals are personal, and that ethics are global.

"Morals and the expression, “moral values” are generally associated with a personal view of values. Personal morals tend to reflect beliefs relating to sex, drinking, gambling, etc. They can reflect the influence of religion, culture, family and friends.

Ethics is concerned with how a moral person should behave. Ethical values are beliefs concerning what is morally right and proper as opposed to what is simply correct or effective.
i.e.

An individual may personally believe that drinking is immoral. However, drinking is not, in and of itself, unethical. Further, it is unethical to impose your personal moral values on another.
Ethical values transcend cultural, religious, or ethnic differences.

Ethical values embrace a more universal worldview. The Josephson Institute of Ethics recommends six, core ethical values to abide by: Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring and Citizenship. "

Here is a link to an atheist at atheism.about.com who gives a good breakdown of the different ethical disciplines, defining "ethics" in broad enough terms that it could be used to describe any feature of "morality". He does not explicitly define "morality", though in his writing he uses the term "ethics" more in regard to the disciplines of study and "morality" more in regard to their application.

Here are his categories of ethical inquiry listed as links:

• Descriptive Ethics
• Normative Ethics
• Deontology and Ethics
• Teleology and Ethics
• Virtue Ethics
• Analytic Ethics (Metaethics)

Here is a link to a philosopher who draws no distinction, but who is open to others attempting to make a distinction.

"I draw no distinction between ethics and morality. For me, the difference between the two terms is simply the difference between Greek (ethos) and Latin (mores). That is to say: in my lexicon they are stylistic variants of each other. If someone uses these terms in such a way as to suggest a difference, I have no objection as long as the person explains what difference he has in mind. But one should not assume a difference without explaining it."

So with this peek into the web, allow me to take a crack at this question of morality vs. ethics. I recognize that there is a certain value to all of the above attempts at comparing and contrasting ethics and morality, however, all of the above distinctions between ethics and morality, or lack thereof, leave something to be desired. I want to build on the categories of ethical inquiry listed at atheism.about.com to define "ethics" and "morality" in a way that encompasses the way that these words are commonly used, but that allows for a more disciplined understanding of how these terms blend together. So I define

Ethics as the realm of inquiry into questions of right conduct and virtue wherein a common metaphysical understanding among the debating parties is not a pre-requisite.

Morality as a particular value system that is oriented around a particular metaphysical understanding. It is the value system of a morality that will inform matters of right behavior and virtue.

By my definition, ethics is not the only province of conscious examination, nor is it the only idea that is non-provincial. Rather, an ethical discussion/debate occurs when the parties involved do not necessarily have an agreement on a metaphysical principle that serves as an ultimate truth. A moral discussion/debate is an inquiry in which the debating parties agree upon a metaphysical principle and are debating the correct application that flows from that principle.

My definition allows a superficial similarity to some of the definitions offered above, since a system of morality as I've defined it will be more idiosyncratic to individuals, since individuals can have a differing view of what is ultimately true. A system of morality will also be more likely to be connected to religion, since religious beliefs provide people with answers concerning ultimate truth.

It is a tendency among philosophical cognicenti to define morality as the "petri dish" that is examined by the objective "microscope" of ethics. The hierarchical relationship that places ethics above morality that is created for the inquiry elides into the conclusion -- that "ethics" is the meta-morality above morality. The trade publication's definitions of these terms are representative of this tendency.

Based on how I've defined "morality" and "ethics", no one can claim to be a member of a cognicenti that has risen above questions of mere morality. Saying that there is no ultimate truth is, in itself an ultimate truth which functions as the basis of organizing a moral value system. Even those who claim that they have no settled metaphysical understanding, in fact, have one by default. It is also possible for people to have un-examined beliefs and therefore have deeply held moral systems that are in conflict with their overtly stated moral/ethical positions.

A moral system may encompass ideas of right conduct and virtue that are amenable to many others who have differing moral systems. It is these common denominator questions of right conduct and virtue that exist in the realm of "moral overlap" and are considered to be the realm of what is "ethical" by many. Ideas of Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring and Citizenship would fall into this category.

In regard to the blend of morality, morals, ethics and an "ethic", "morals" are generally referred to those principles of behavior and value which are not subject to any debate within a moral system. A "(fill in the blank) ethic" is a term that may be used by moralists to describe conclusions that certain members of a moral system have made in regard to particular chosen code/patterns of mind and behavior. For example, it may be moral in my moral system for me pray, and I may have a "prayer ethic" of praying in a certain way. Based on my definitions, if I am having a discussion on ethics that is informed by moral view in a way that can be commonly understood among those with different moral outlooks, I can be said to be discussing ethics.

It is this breakdown of ethics and morality that I will be using when I refer to "ethics" and "morality" in later blog posts. If I am echoing anyone else who has opined on this topic, please let me know.

My Comment at ChristianPost.com

Here is a comment that I made at ChristianPost.com on the topic of modesty using the moniker GW. I respond directly to a person's comments. This person does care about modesty and that's good. However, based on her comments, if she is ever in charge of a ministry, I will be sure not to send men to her church who are struggling with lust, since she expects men of God not to have those struggles.

Female Chauvenist Pigs and their defenders

This post is also my 3rd post as a "review of a review", criticizing the book reviewers opinions. Book reviews are an important part of the opinion media, and are an important place where secular apologists of ennui let their opinions hang out.

Ariel Levy's Female Chauvenist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture is a book that I refer to in my Crisis of Modesty in the Evangelical Church. Despite Levy's faults and naivete in certain areas of her analysis, Levy was one of a couple secular authors who began seriously questioning and confronting the raunch culture at large. I am particularly interested in writers like Levy, since secular writers arguing for social sexual boundaries cannot look to Scriptures to back up their arguments. They are often forced to construct better arguments from available evidence in society at large, often doing a better job than many Christians who care about the same topic.

While researching for my Modesty writing, I found that Levy coined the term, "Female Chauvenist Pigs", while it was Christine Smallwood who actually coined the term "raunch feminism" in her 2005 review of Levy's book entitled "Girls gone wild". There are many aspects of Smallwood's review that have vexed me, and I wanted to examine Smallwood's review in greater depth as part of my ongoing look at raunch culture and its apologists.

Here is the book review by Smallwood that was featured in Salon.com in 2005

Girls Gone Wild

The second half of Smallwood's review has been copied to my post and is featured in blue. My comments are interspersed throughout it in black. Notice that Smallwood acknowledges certain aspects of Levy's analysis while disparaging/questioning others aspects of it. It is my critique of Smallwood that most of her criticisms of Levy are contradictory and are "red herrings" for a central viewpoint of Smallwood that is not contradictory to any other of Smallwoods remarks.

…Levy extrapolates from her research subjects to all women, relying on a "we" without clearly defining who she's speaking about, or for. We revel in the porn aesthetic. We fetishize strippers. We do cardio striptease workouts. We have no real erotic role models. We are female chauvinist pigs.

But are we? It's clear that "we" live in a culture permeated by raunch and pornography -- at least white women do. Levy doesn't take account of black, Asian or Latino culture. She doesn't look at booty shakers pouring champagne on themselves, dripping with gold on the music videos on BET, or thumb through Confessions of a Video Vixen, the bestselling book about a hip-hop video dancer. She doesn't think about Japanese anime and manga, with their double-D heroines.

Smallwood accuses Levy of failing to look at non-white women, but it is not clear what the consequence is. At the beginning of the paragraph, Smallwood seems to be questioning whether “we”—in regard to the idea that “we” live in a culture permeated by raunch and pornography—is a tent that includes all women or merely just white women. Ms. Smallwood then promptly fills in the gaps to say that non-white women do live in their own versions of raunch culture.

After second-wave feminism was accused of being a white movement, women of color assumed an important position in academic and activist debate. "We" could have a lot to teach each other about the ways that we are uniquely, and commonly, misused across media. Female Chauvinist Pigs ignores that possibility.

Again, Smallwood is not criticizing Levy’s fundamental analysis that women are misused across the media, she is criticizing the fact that Levy has not done more to weave non-white women into the discussion. While this is not a bad suggestion, to conduct this cross-cultural comparative analysis Levy would have had to have written a longer book, maybe a much longer book. Levy is giving herself permission to be a bit polemic. Perhaps Levy should have described her current as an analysis of white culture and then write a second follow-up book that includes all of the other bits of analysis that Smallwood wants.

It also neglects any mention of class. Male-identified FCPs are financially successful. Even if they're not at the top of the ladder, if they're bartenders or registered nurses, they're not struggling to get by. They would never be forced to strip for money, for instance, which is one reason it's easy for them to dissociate themselves from women who do.

Who are these indentifying males and these dissociating financially successful Female Chauvinist Pigs? It's Smallwood's red herring and a meaningless pronoun minefield that has no bearing on Levy's analysis. If Levy wanted to deal with class nuances—a tangentially important area to her analysis-- she would need to have written a bigger book.

Aside from the question of "white-ness" and class, Levy is writing to and about those women who have the means to consume, who are knowingly or un-knowingly driving raunch into the mainstream by their consumption choices. As it relates to women who have the means to consume, Levy's "we" covers most of the bell curve of consumerist Western culture, and only excludes, perhaps, the utterly destitute poor, who might feel that they were "forced" to strip.

So you have to wonder why Levy doesn't take the time to interview strippers or sex workers. She quotes Jenna Jameson, but she doesn't get an analysis of raunch from the perspective of an actual sex worker. Presumably such a thing falls outside the scope of her subject matter, but you'd think that a G-string diva would have an idea or two of her own on her new role as cultural heroine.

Again, Levy could have written a massive tome to include every angle of cultural analysis that Smallwood criticizes her for not including. We can read Jenna Jameson’s book, How To Make Love Like a Porn Star to learn about Jameson’s own personal cocktail of pride, bravado, denial, ambivalence and cognitive dissonance.

Levy takes it for granted that Jameson's lifestyle is destructive. There are other things that one can read if one is unconvinced of this. If porn women like Jameson were interviewed so that their opinions could be taken seriously in answering the question whether porn as destructive, most would be in some degree of denial. If it is taken as a given that Jameson's public image is destructive as Levy does, then Jameson represents a proverbial "flame", and mainstream girls who aspire to be like her in some way represent proverbial "moths".

Levy's book is about the motivations of the "moths", and so it is actually far more important for Levy’s over-all analysis of mainstream culture to interview “normal” girls like Erin and Shaina than to further probe into what Jenna actually thinks of herself.

Raunch, whether or not we like it, is tangled and complicated, fraught with pleasure, voyeurism, mimicry, excitement, revulsion, exploitation -- a whole host of contradictory impulses.

Smallwood’s description of raunch also sounds like an addiction. At certain points in the midst of an addiction to drugs and alcohol, an addiction includes all of the impulses that Smallwood mentions – pleasure, mimicry, excitement, revulsion and exploitation. To admit that something is an addiction, though, requires that one be capable of super-imposing a higher and better and more wholesome image of health over and above the pleasure, mimicry, excitement, revulsion and exploitation.

While raunch is indeed a tangle of contradictory impulses, the question is whether it can be untangled. Is there is an image of health and wholeness that one can superimpose over and above the pleasure, mimcry, excitement, revulsion and exploitation of raunch or are the contradictory impulses are necessarily and inevitable linked in a sort of yin and yang, held together with an umbreakable centripetal force?

(There's a reason this stuff tore the women's movement apart.) But all is not a matter of false consciousness. Many women are savvy enough to recognize those contradictions and see through the charade that is broadcast into their lives 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The advance of raunch in our culture has come from the tandem forces of A) women at large and B) the men who pleasure from and consume raunch and C) the media who profit from raunch. Perhaps there are some women who are able to see this "through the charade”. There are also a lot of women for whom the media and the culture at large is a “super-peer” ("super-peer" was a brilliant term coined by Jane D. Brown, et. al. in an article in Pediatrics). Even if some women are able to see the manipulative element of the media’s involvement in raunch, many of them are not strong enough to resist the pull into raunch behavior and fashion, or they have thoroughly embraced raunch culture.

The essential drive toward raunch behavior in our culture is a destructive drive, and Smallwood has not denied its destructiveness. There is an element to this drive into raunch that Levy has correctly identified – that women, on some level, view it as an avenue to having power equity with men, or even power over men. As a mutated post-feminism that can bear little resemblance to earlier forms of feminism, raunch feminism is feminist in its essential belief in that women demand power equity with men. Raunch feminists seek this power even at the expense of doing destructive things with their sexuality, often aping and even one-upping various forms of male sexual conquest.

This tacit affirmation of power in raunch culture is “false”, in the sense that it is not a true and constructive measure of a woman’s value.

The ways that they consume and digest endless streams of newspaper stories, television shows, magazine covers, books, advertising campaigns, billboards and Internet pop-up ads would have been worth investigating.

Again Levy could have written a book the size of War and Peace, or could write a follow up book.

After all, being a woman faced with infinite images of other women taking their clothes off, gyrating, tittering, moaning and pushing product can be exhausting and demoralizing. (Shockingly, there are those rare mornings that the New York Times online goes down better without the Victoria's Secret pop-up ads.) Raunch, like so much of mass culture, is both out of our control and impossible to ignore. We must develop a smarter strategy for living with it than simply wishing it would go away.

Who’s "simply wishing" it will go away? Is it Levy? Surely Levy desires that it will go away, and which decent person wouldn’t desire that it went away? Smallwood seems to be implying that Levy has not done something constructive in trying to usher the end of raunch. In fact, Levy has done something in her effort to raise consciousness, and raised consciousness is always penultimate to action.

Raunch is a fungus that grows of a critical mass of popular ennui and blasé. If that ennui and blasé were to end, then raunch would diminish. If we believe that it is out of our control then it is. As Andrew Carnegie said, "Whatever you think, you're right", and any reform movement seems like an impossible dream to those who first dare to conceive of it.

Levy's book diagnoses, but it doesn't prescribe. After carefully documenting the sale of female sexuality, Levy closes with the call for readers to believe they are "sexy and funny and competent and smart." Apparently the solution to a system of objectification in which women themselves are complicit, in which feminism has been co-opted by and for profit, is for us to be ourselves. It's a little hard to swallow.

Smallwood seems to be saying that self objectification is in the very nature of womanhood. That for women to "be themselves" is to necessarily live out this impulse to self-objectification, and that to tell women to "be themselves" at the expense of self-objectifying is nigh impossible.

Unless there is a political dimension to our personhood that extends to other women, we will never be more than marketing niches.

"A political dimension to our personhood that extends to other women" that Smallwood suggests would require that women as a group presented a clear objective to the world that could be advanced through the peculiar medium of politics. Feminism was just such an attempt to define a political dimension to the personhood of women that extended to other women and, so says Smallwood, it was torn apart by the contradictions of raunch. So the raunch sexuality that split the political unity of feminism will be fixed by the political unity of feminism? Generally speaking, if this is the "smarter strategy for living with it" that Smallwood suggests, then it's not a very good one.

Raunch is about individual choices. It is a juggernaut that is created by what individual people wear when they get up in the morning, what they do with each other in relationships, what they consume and what they excuse. It is in the intimate realms of life that raunch must primarily be contronted.

Levy has done the good work of documenting raunch culture. What next?

Having offered no hint a substantive solution, and after hinted spuriously at fatal flaws in Levy's analysis, Smallwood is basically saying that self-objectification is an intractible part of modern womanhood.

So what is next? The patent destructiveness of women’s self-objectification and seeking power equity via raunch behavior and the destructiveness of men who participate in raunch will only end with this: when men and women are transformed by a God into the image of Christ who is higher than their sin. While it is possible for certain lone secular thinkers to grasp the problem of raunch, at bottom, there is not other "strategy" for dealing with it other than the individual transformation of people's hearts and minds to an image of spiritual health and wholesome-ness that lies outside of the human predicament of bondage to sin. This is the only strategy that will confront raunch in the intimate realms of life where it is flourishing.

If Smallwood were to consider this suggestion an intrusion of “conservatism” that would erode feminism “hard won gains”, then, for Smallwood, nothing is “next”, and people will continue to be titillated and excited and then demoralized and exhausted by an addiction to raunch that is, and always will be, out of control.

To her credit, Smallwood is at least willing to admit that there is a destructive aspect to raunch feminism. Read some the passionate letters in response to her "Girls gone wild" review, and you'll see the full-throated denial of any dark side to the raunch culture.

Letters in response to "Girls gone wild"

Examining a dirty word -- Censorship

Back in May, a book review by Richard Schickel was featured in the Los Angeles Times about book Freedom to Offend: How New York Remade Movie Culture by Raymond J. Haberski Jr. on the era just after the movie censoring of the ‘50’s. I’ll admit I haven’t read the book. However, as with most book reviews that use the book topic as a springboard for the book reviewer’s opining, I don’t need to have read the book confront Schickel’s point of view. Here is the link to Schickel’s book review below.

Read the article

Now that you’ve had a chance to read it, here is a statement that he made that I want to unpack in the context of other thing that he says in his article.

…The real issue was the widespread belief that movies, as a mass art, required closer censorship than other arts. The censors argued, ludicrously, that they were protecting a completely mythical creature, the innocent child who might someday wander into a theater and, in effect, see Mommy and Daddy doing it. Might have, I suppose. But so what? Children see and hear all sorts of things we'd prefer they didn't…

Now my goal is not necessarily to defend the movie censors, their methods or their rhetoric. That is a topic for another post. I will say in regard to this book review that I have a bias: I sympathize with the essential idea that there is an innocence that children possess that adults have an obligation to protect by setting boundaries.

Countering this idea is Schickel who is in the same ilk as Bill Maher when Maher says, “children aren't innocent” (Maher also says that Jesus wasn’t Republican, which is true, but that’s another issue). Here’s what at stake in denying the existence of innocence in children. If there is any idea that there may be a special innocence to the lives of children then it opens the door to arguing that some sort of boundary somewhere is appropriate is appropriate and that some censorship of some kind must take place to enforce the boundary.

While often claiming that parents should confine their jurisdiction of values to the “home”, Schickel and those who share his belief, use a rhetorical sword that thoroughly dismisses the ontological possibility that children have any special innocence. It is this sword that, taken to its logical conclusion, cuts into the very jurisdiction of the home. If the innocent child is a completely “mythical creature” and therefore is as non-existent as the tooth fairy, why should any parent ever raise a finger, a voice or an eyebrow to ever demarcate boundaries to protect a child’s innocence.

Likewise, there is the equal and opposite rhetorical sword; the one that says that there is a special innocence to children. It is a sword that is wielded by those who favor the imposition of boundaries that cuts into a realm beyond the jurisdiction of home and cuts into society at large, and even into the realm of the movies. In response to this threat, Schickel and those who share his belief are willing to use an opposing rhetorical sword that is able to cut into more than they are willing to admit.

What is happening in the paragraph cited above is Schickel in the process of A) creating the rhetorical sword to cut at the idea of children’s innocence, and then B) trying to hold back the sword from cutting along the full arc that his blade is designed to cut. He does this by first declaring that the innocent child who might wander into a theater is a purely “mythical creature” but then admits that "Children see and hear all sorts of things we'd prefer they didn't…".

It is almost an offhand remark, "Children see and hear all sorts of things we'd prefer they didn't". There is more importance and meaning in that statement than Schickel lets on, or is even able to admit to himself, which is why I want to camp out on it. Who is “we’? If we assume for the sake of convenience that “we” is adult society, is this adult society completely and utterly wrongheaded in its preference? Is the preference completely and utterly baseless and devoid of any claim to truth or reality? Here is the problem. The preference that “we” have would need to be completely and utterly baseless in order for the innocent child to be a “completely mythical creature”. “Completely” doesn’t leave a lot of room for ambiguity or nuance.

Perhaps Schickel would try to explain his position by saying, as many would, that A) the reality of kids seeing adult content and B) the desire that we would have for a child to not see it is the difference between what is "real" and an "ideal" in the world. Here, our “preference” is that which is ideal, while the reality of kids being exposed to adult content is that which is “real”. If Schickel took this line of thinking, he would be saying that the “ideal” is something that is purely mythic, and that what is “ideal” in human affairs does not have nearly the claim to being real when compared to that which actually occurs in day-to-day human affairs.

This is a common belief but inaccurate belief. In truth, that which tangibly occurs in the realm human affairs is merely an existential realm of reality. An ideal is not completely mythic in the sense that Schickel intends the word "mythic" to mean, as something as fanciful as the tooth fairy and that can be totally dismissed from serious discussion. Ideals are an intangible part of reality that are as real as our existential and tangible reality, even as our existential and tangible reality falls short of the ideals most of the time. Nevertheless, ideals shape, and should shape, our existential reality profoundly. Human affairs exist in the tension between what is ideal and what is real, and we would quickly think our way into savage behavior if we completely abandoned ideals.

As an example of this, we all know what junk food is even though we eat it. If a Martian were sent to Earth to conduct a superficial survey of what it is that people, in fact, eat, the Martian would discover that lots of people eat a lot of junk food. The practice of eating a purely nutritious diet is “mythic” in the sense that it is an Olympian task that the vast majority of people fail at. However, the need that people have for nutrition is not mythic at all. It may be impractical to prevent people from eating junk food. It may even be that people in a free society need to be free to have junk food. Whatever the case may be, there is an intellectual canyon that is crossed by telling ourselves that it isn't, in fact, junk food or by saying something tantamount to it, i.e. that junk food is completely harmless.

Of course, the nutritional value of junk food can be verified in a laboratory. The innocence of children can’t. The epistemology of tangible scientific empiricism is not always suited to the realm of grasping at ideals any more than it is suited to explaining the mystery of beauty and art. As with many issues, one person’s studies with one agenda can be pitted against another person’s studies and statistics with another agenda.

But maybe, just maybe, the innocence of children exists in some plane of reality, where it is a real thing, and kids are, in some way, better and healthier for having a sense of innocence protected. If this is true, then violations of their innocence are a spiritual and emotional junk food of a different kind. It is my assertion that it is this ephemeral reality that the antennae of collective adult preference is pointing us to, and our intuition, though not provable with scientific precision, may not be completely wrong.

I think that Schickel knows this on some level, which is why he includes his reference to our “preference" in stating his opinion, even as he has crafted his opinion as a “take no prisoners” rhetorical sword. He doesn't want to be too dismissive of the remote possibility that kids have an innocence that needs to be protected and nurtured. However, Schickel doesn't want the faint possibility of this to in any way get in the way of the way that movies are presented to the world.

Schickel criticizes the idea that the “mass art” required some “closer censorship” by brushing aside any concern about the possibility that a few kids made it into the theaters. So Schickel doesn't seem to be bothered by a few kids going in. But that is an easy target of his blasé. The real question is whether he bothered by a vast swath of them going in? It would be more intellectually honest for Schickel to say flat out that he wouldn’t mind in the least if most, if not all, children made it in to see movies with adult content. But then again, his “preference” would get in the way of making such a bold statement.

In regard to movie boundaries, more and more allow more and more sex and gore has been allowed in movies under the R and PG-13 rating over the years. In relation to what was censored in the ‘50’s, more and more kids have been "brought in" to the theatre to more sex and gore. For all intents and purposes, the 1950's boundary that Schickel dismissed has now been significantly breached. Now what?

Later in his book review, Schickel bemoans that "American film is almost universally pitched to teenage dimwits and the nation's addiction to pornography is chronic and more alarming… ”. So what does this have to do with adult content in movies? Movies are part of the larger media infrastructure that has increasingly brought raunch, and gore into the mainstream. And movies for “dimwits” and “porn” are both appeals to our base nature and the lowest common denominator for and easy buck.

What Schickel is actually bemoaning is the taste for raunch and gore and has run amok, that has become so dominant in our society that it imposes its own unique form of tyranny. As our society demands some form of “closer censorship” in the form of a ratings system, so too does our present society demand raunchy spectacle in movies, and it is this demand that has financial clout and with it, the creative clout to crowd out better movies. While certain aspects of some movies may be “self censoring”, the market is not.

Schickel plainly loves the "heady days" of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s and hates prissiness and dismay of the guardians of moral purity and the contempt of the high culture that came before and the drivel and raunch that has come after. Here is a scary possibility for Schickel. It is possible that there was a value to the force of censorship, even as the rhetoric of it was grating. The force of ‘50’s era censorship probably kept a lot of dimwit stuff and raunch in check by making movies work harder on different levels to be appealing without having easy access to sex and gore.

It is also possible that the first generation to be free from '50's censorship had the creative spark that was extruded though their being part of a culture that still had a more of a value for the sacred. I think that this enabled the first generation of movie makers who were free from censorship to be able to deal with sex in more aesthetically sophisticated ways than was accomplished in either their past or in their future because it was suppressed for decades in our culture. Their creative ability came out through the pressure of the culture like the force soda after it has been shaken, only to become warm, sticky suds on the ground later. It is possible that sex for lowest common denominator of raunch and gore has become the sticky “suds” of American cinema and media oozing out of spent creative and intellectual fire of the past.

Schickel knows, on some level, that the proliferation of raunchy garbage and the associated costs to our society is the price that he is willing to pay for the artistic freedom that he wants, the price for having enjoyed the “heady” days of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. The problem is that in the cognitive dissonance of completely denying the existence of the innocence of children, but not completely, he has not risen completely to the task of admitting the true extent of the cost of the artistic freedom he wants.

In regard to children's innocence, for Schickel to say that children's innocence is there and is violated would be honest. For him to say that we have allowed it to be violated and that we've all become cynical and blasé to sex and violence would be honest. For him to say that our society values the freedom of movie art and movie economics more than the innocence of children would be honest. For him to say that he and many others are willing to accept the trade-off of allowing raunchy and dimwitted movies to proliferate and help dumb many people down and injure the innocence of many kids in order to allow for greater artistic freedom would be honest.

However, for him to say that the innocence of children is not there to begin with; that it is simply a fairy tale myth with not claim to reality, is not honest. It is simply less painful to his conscience than admitting that the possibility that innocence of children has been injured.

Unsolicited Advice -- Examining Matthew 7:3

Matthew 7:3 Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

Many people read this passage to mean that one person, whom I will refer to as the “confronter”, should not confront another person, whom I will refer to as the “confronted”, on a small fault when the confronter has not dealt with his large violation of that same fault. This interpretation of the passage is based the most obvious and clearest form of hypocrisy. If I am criticizing another person for a small infraction, when I am committing that same infraction on a larger scale, I am obviously guilty of hypocrisy. Others may interpret this passage in the broadest possible sense to mean that anyone with a large fault in any realm of his life cannot confront another person on a small fault, even if the large fault of the confronter is completely unrelated the small fault of the confronted.

The problem with the former interpretation is that it is too narrow and does not call many confronters to enter the full X-ray of self-examination. The problem with the latter interpretation is that it is too broad and makes the standard for confrontation too high – who is not guilty of any large faults in any aspect of his life?

The passage is best interpreted to mean that there is something about the large fault of the confronter that it is affecting the confronter’s ability to operate with love and integrity as he approaches his brother in confrontation. Here, Jesus is saying that that one must remove any obstacle to operating with love and integrity as one begins to operate in the process of confrontation.

If the “speck” that belongs to the confronted is a genuine fault, then an unsolicited confrontation may be necessary on the part of the confronter. However, in order to proceed, the confronter must make sure that is not guilty of committing that same fault. That is the first test of integrity. Then, the confronter must make sure that he has repented of any insecurities or latent issues that are in any way keeping him from operating carefully with love, care and precision as he attempts to confront his brother. This is the second test of integrity, and it solves another potential problem. It is possible that the “speck” belonging to the confronted is not a genuine fault at all but only appears to be that way in the eyes of the confronter. It is also possible that the “speck” is a tiny fault that appears to the confronter to be much larger and more urgent that it really is.

It is the confronter’s failure to operate out of peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control that will render him unable to see clearly to approach his brother. For the confronter to operate without hypocrisy in all of the ways that hypocrisy can affect the confrontation, he must first take his emotions captive and surrender his emotions to the ministry of God’s Spirit. He must also apply his mind to discern the true severity of the fault that he is about to confront another on, according to Biblical standards of what constitutes a severe fault. The quality of the confronter’s emotion processing and Biblical/intellectual discernment will determine the quality of the confrontation.

The second test of integrity, of taking insecurities captive to the truth of Scripture and the ministry of God’s Spirit, solves yet another problem. A confronter who is being driven by insecurities to act impulsively is not assessing the true gravity involved in confronting another person. When we are confronting another person, we are drawing from a certain “negativity bank” in our relationship; there is a certain, limited degree to which we are prepared to hear things that are necessary but negative from another person with whom we are in relationship with. Any confrontation, no matter how small, even if it is only to dispense advice, is never “no big deal”, and must always be done with care and forethought so that we do not draw from the “negativity bank” carelessly. To treat any advice and criticism that one offers another as “no big deal” is to be flippant in regard to what is real about relationships. Anyone who is being intellectually honest will admit that this is true for anyone, including him.

It is the teaching of Jesus for us to be slow to confront another over what, according to Biblical standards, is a small matter, and to put our hearts and minds through several tests before proceeding in a confrontation. The wisdom of this passage can be summed up, by saying, “do unto others, as you would have them do unto you” by confronting others with the care and precision that you would like to have applied when you are confronted. A confronter’s failure to confront another with the precision and care that he/she would like to be confronted with is the subtlest and most common form of hypocrisy that Jesus is addressing. The inability to confront a brother in love and precision is the most common form of “plank” as it superficially presents itself. It is taking the hard, necessary step to examining the sin and insecurities that are causing this inability that we are able to understand the specific nature of the “plank” that needs to be removed as it is lodged deep in our hearts

One of the most common ways that the teaching is this passage is violated is when people give impulsively give advice/criticism to others. It will invariably be grating and will be interpreted as unloving criticism by the person receiving it. The insecurities that can fuel the impulsive giving of unsolicited advice/criticism are many. Someone who is giving advice/criticism impulsively may have the fear he/she is not effective in influencing the world and is trying to soothe that fear by trying too hard to seem wise and effective in the company of others. This form of insecurity is the result of a fallen, misapplication of a God-given need that we all have to affect the stage of history.

Someone who is giving unsolicited advice/criticism can have an even deeper an uglier problem; the need to find comfort in conforming to the standards of the world and the impulse to act out of discomfort to “fix” another person to conform to worldly standards. There is a demonic torpidity that lurks in the hearts of those who affect the stage of history in order to make themselves more comfortable according to worldly standards of comfort. This sin is compounded by intellectual dishonesty when those who act out of their desire for comfort excuse and justify the unsolicited advice/criticism by saying that it is “no big deal” or that they were “just” trying to “help” the other person. It is in this case the giving unsolicited advice/criticism can be the manifestation of a deep idolatry on the part of the person giving it.

These are only a couple of the insecurities that can fuel hypocritical and impulsive criticism and advice giving. It is A) impulse to give hasty, unsolicited advice and B) the empty justifications for giving it that Jesus calls us to crucify in the application of his teaching in Matthew 7:3 on how to proceed to properly confront another.

Dealing with Wounded Energy

We have each been hurt. We have each been punched in the gut by some form of injustice, whether committed by group or an individual, whether intentionally or un-intentionally.

I know that there are Christians who say that we must immediately invoke the gratitude of Jesus' death on the cross as the antidote to our wound. I find that this advice vexing. It is empty advice even as it contains some aspects of truth. It is in the family of “forgive and forget” advice that does not honor the difficult and thorny process of dealing with hurt. At least I can say that that sort of advice has never cut it for me.

Dealing with gratitude and the cross in the context of ministry to ourselves and others is a big topic. Suffice to say for this post that my idea of Jesus is one who is active and living and who meets us in our hurts. It is this supernatural, pan-global availability of Jesus via the Holy Spirit was a primary reason for the cross (John 16:7 But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you). It is in the ministry of the here and now that the power of the cross time and space into the present moment. It is in the clear and present availability of Jesus in the here and now that my discussion of forgiveness and anger relinquishment begins.

Dennis Prager, a Jewish commentator, makes the observation that Jesus calls us not to be angry at our brother but only calls us to actually forgive those who have directly asked for it from us. There are some passages that speak of forgiveness as something we offer to one who asks us, and there are other passages that speak of forgiveness as something we offer to anywone ("...as we forgive those who trespass against us..."). Is there any difference between the relinquishment of anger/forgiveness that we are called to for anyone's offense against us and the act of offering forgiveness to the one who has specifically asked for forgiveness from us? That is an interesting question for another post. What can be said is that the common denominator in forgiveness and anger relinquishment is that we are called to is a journey of emotion processing that requires giving up our anger that must not depend on whether the offending party has repented.

The common denominator for any serious hurt from another that requires a serious act of forgiveness/anger relinquishment is that there will often be a long intellectual, emotional and spiritual journey to reckon fully and completely with the offence. There will be a long, staggered process to properly understand and put into words what happened to know with precision what exactly is being forgiven, so that the offense is understood in all of its dimensions. The hurt will be contained in our psyche in several pockets at different levels of depth. The exposure of these pain pockets will occur as we are continually ministered to by God’s Spirit and as we are placed under various stresses and pains. It is when these various pockets of hurt see the light of day that they can explode in our consciousness like un-detonated grenade that has been exposed in a mine-clearing operation.

Dealing with this hurt, as it is continually brought to the surface, is a long journey of managing wounded energy. There are bad forms of wounded energy, which include rage and other forms of malicious thought and behavior. There are good forms of wounded energy, which include compassion, passion, understanding and even a righteous form of anger. The nut-meat of deep forgiveness and anger relinquishment is the long process of letting go of the bad forms of wounded energy and the redemptive directing of the positive forms of wounded energy.

Wounded energy and the call to justice

While we are accountable to care about injustice even if we have not been directly hurt by it, being directly hurt by an injustice is an important way that God calls us to attention to care about injustice in the context of "faith, justice and mercy". To illustrate this in the context of urban ministry, John Perkins of the Voice of Calvary Ministry in Jackson Mississippi discussed the “felt need concept” of urban ministry. In John Perkin's ministry people with resources choose to enter a poor, distressed neighborhood, ie. the ‘hood, to become neighbors to those who are stuck there. As those who have chosen to live in the 'hood experience the injustices first hand, they are compelled to pursue justice for the inner city in their own enlightened self interest. The “felt need concept" is also about making the Gospel real and tangible by dealing with the needs that have been brought to the fore of people’s attention.

As humans, we live in the ‘hood of planet earth and the injustices therein. We are called to live on planet earth like those who have chosen to move into the ‘hood, as Jesus himself chose to enter the ‘hood when he became flesh. It is by “picking up our cross daily” that we continually own and re-own this choice. Like the wealthy neighbors who choose to live among the poor, as Christians, we are called to bring the wealth of the resources of knowing God intimately into the situation of our hurt. It is as we are hurt directly by injustice that we are able to feel the “felt needs” of planet earth in regard to the need for justice. This is enlightened self-interest for the benefit of ourselves and those around us to confront injustice that we pray with force for God’s Kingdom to come.

It is when we experience injustice that we are able to know evil on earth first hand and to have a depth of conviction to confront it and the compassion for others being afflicted by it. It is in this context that we can begin to give shape to the long process of managing our wounded energy so that God is able to heal us and guide our wounded energy for a redemptive purpose. It is via the experience of injustice that God heightens our need to fulfill our purpose and fulfill the calling of bearing His image. It is the act of trusting God that we enter into this calling, trusting that God will bless and harness all of the wounded energy that we have acquired for a good and blessed purpose.

It is in the face of being hurt, we have two-fold responsibility, each complimenting the other. The first aspect of responsibility to manage our wounded energy is directly tied to the moment of the hurt. We must immediately enter into a gear of operating in trust in God and giving up our rage and anger to God and to His direction and timing. We are to not return injustice with injustice. The second aspect of responsibility that we have is across the span of time. We are responsible to the bigger picture, and we are to allow God to use our wounded energy to be the engine of our conviction to confront the injustice under God's direction.

These two forms of responsibility operate symbiotically with each other. We are to trust "from the get-go" that vengeance and total judgment belong to the Lord. It is in the successful ministry of God’s grace and direction to our wounded energy that we are able to exercise the lesser forms of judgment that we are called to. As we operate in God's grace and timing in managing our wounded energy, we are able to operate in Godly wisdom and direction in the management of our heart and mind and our affairs with others and (see my post on judging).

Rage is crisis in the exercise of proper judgment in of the all realms in which we are called to exercise right judgment. Rage is a crisis in our sense of being able to protect ourselves from the slings and arrows that would subvert our joy and our fulfillment. In rage, the human self lashes out apart from God’s peace and direction, operating out of fear. It is in the impulse of rage that we have the impulse to exercise the sort of total judgment on another person that God reserves for Himself.

The beginning of being able to deal with rage is to recognize it as a form of fear. If we take it captive properly and early, we can present it to God while it is still in its “fear” form before it has mutated into something larger and darker in our psyche. If the fear has become rage, we must allow God to unravel it so that it is revealed as fear in our hearts, so that we can present it God as our fear and receive the ministry of God’s peace.

The point of God’s peace that passes understanding is not tranquil, blissful equanimity. Rather, the point of God's peace that passes understanding is that the peace is an essential part of our trans-rational ballast as we embark on God’s path to redeem our wounded energy. The peace is a "pre-articulate" part of journey with God, penultimate to the exercise of fierce precision that God would lead us to confront evil. It is in recognizing this that we can submit to God’s peace not as an act of “blowing out” in a Zen Buddhist sense, but as the beginning of a journey with God who wants to use us as instruments to confront injustice in the world.

I discussed forgiveness and anger relinquishment once with a non-Christian Japanese friend of mine who was still learning English. I was trying to explain a big concept in very simple terms. I explained that being hurt by someone is like being shocked by the electricity coming from a bare wire that one has stepped on. I explained that the generator for that electricity is coming from somewhere far and beyond that person. The process of forgiveness/anger relinquishment involves correctly identifying the spiritual source and putting the person who is the conduit for that spiritual source into perspective.

Forgiveness/anger relinquishment is the act of putting a conflict with another person into its correct spiritual and philosophical plane, transferring the battle away from its incorrect target and following the direction of God to enter the battle correctly. As we relinquish our rage and surrender our wounded energy to God, we are able to operate in God’s direction and timing confront the injustice as a larger philosophical and spiritual battle and let go it is as a "tit for tat" with another person. While "forgive and forget" is often bad advice, it is valuable in the limited sense that we are called to have the image of the “monster” as it has taken the form of a particular person vanish into irrelevance, as the image is juxtaposed against the truth, joy and wisdom of the Lord.

As we are able to walk with God to channel our wounded energy toward a correct and fruitful confrontation of evil, we are able to we are able to pray effective for the advancement of God’s Kingdom that will end the foolishness that we were subjected to. It is via God’s healing in us that we are able to glimpse how His Kingdom is being brought “on earth as it is in heaven”, and it is by God’s grace that we are able see how the Kingdom is advancing into earth. These moments of holy clarity usher the triumph of joy over rage and are landmarks on the road to the redemption of our wounded energy.

As this vision matures, God allows us to see how His kingdom is advancing into the lives of those who were the conduits of evil that we are experienced. It is then that we are able to “pray for our enemies” as an act of correctly applied spiritual battle, confronting evil in prayer with the force of passion, joy and clarity.

As the battle is a spiritual one, it is also a philosophical one. We are called to confront the intellectual anatomy of the foolishness of the ideas that caused or facilitated the evil that we experienced. As we walk on the intellectual journey of reckoning with the hurt, we are able to articulate the justice that we were not able to articulate at the time. As we do so for the defenseless self that we once were, we are able to do so for others who are in a position of defenselessness.

It is as we are confronting successfully on the spiritual plane and the philosophical plane of reality that we are able to be more effective confronting in the human to human plane. We are able to live out Jesus’ commands to call our brother’s attention (Matthew 18:15-17) to an offence without being in a state of sin that would cause harm.

The Pleasure Principle

I was watching David Letterman once when he had Jerry Seinfeld as a guest. Seinfeld then riffed on a little comedy routine, talking about deferred payment plans that say “buy now, pay in June”. He said that it was like a person was treating their self today and their self in June as two different people, as “Today guy” and “June guy”, and saying, “I’m Today guy and I’m going to enjoy this purchase. As for paying for it, that’s June guy’s problem”. Seinfeld was making a funny commentary on a serious issue in a society wherein many people have allowed themselves to be fleeced of the idea that there is any continuity of their selves through time, and thereby give themselves permission to act on impulses without regard to the future. It is the consequence of people who do not have a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives that is constructed enough to give shape to their sense of self as it moves through time.

Daniel Robinson is a philosophy teacher featured on the Teaching Series on the great Ideas in Philosophy” was discussing the goals of philosophy to find the “good life” and offered up a metaphor that was clearly not the “good life”. Robinson described a person who allowed their brain to be removed from their body and placed in a vat with electrodes hooked up to it so that the brain could receive constant streams of stimulated pleasure.

While the "brain in the vat" has been used as a thought experiment for various philosophical ends to examine the question of real and perceived knowledge, I want to examine is the visceral reason why the “brain in the vat” is a ghastly image. For one to choose to place one's brain in a vat is to choose after a series of experiences that not contextualized into a whole. Choosing to place one’s brain in a vat can offer one no joy in how one has affected the stage of history. It can offer no joy in the thread of continuity in life experiences that one can discover via one’s conscious effort to explore one’s nature and develop one’s character.

In the context of a discussion of pleasure, putting one’s “brain in the vat” is a metaphor for those who seek continual pleasure highs in the moment but who reject any effort to contextualize their pleasure and hold it accountable to a larger purpose. Jerry Seinfeld's “Today guy” and “June Guy” dichotomy is a consequence of “brain in the vat” living. For one who wants to divorce "Today Guy" from "June Guy", having one's brain in a vat would actually be a way for one to save oneself the consequences of living in the real world The only alternative to attempting to put one's “brain in the vat”, and therefore living properly in the real world, is to realize that there is a self inside of us that is being continually made better or worse toward an end that is larger than ourselves.

In The Picture of Dorian Grey, Dorian Grey is a man who was given the opportunity to live forever and appear young and beautiful as long as he did not look at the painting of himself in the attic of his house. As Dorian Grey did good deeds, his picture was made beautiful and as he did bad deeds, his picture was made scarred and ugly. In the context of our purpose for being, the self is like a Dorian Grey painting that is either becoming increasingly beautiful or increasingly ugly, and that will presented to us, to God and to the stage of history for all to see.

Our purpose is to elevate the world, to give the world a new experience of moral beauty through the unique contours of our own individual personhoods. It is our conscience that holds us accountable to this end. It is our conscience, as the Dorian Grey painting, that reflects the self that we are developing back to our self-consciousness according to whether the self is being developed according to our purpose. In is in the rejection of our conscience and the rejection of looking at our true selves and in the rejection of seeking our purpose that we place our "brain in the vat" and live as Dorian Grey did, who chose cruel pleasures until he was compelled to look at his ugly, scarred picture.

Our conscience is the membrane between our self-consciousness and our soul’s inner knowing of the larger purpose that each of us are endowed with. Our conscience informs our self-consciousness of whether we are rising to that purpose, and our conscience gives us joy or misery. It is with this understanding that Meaning is that form of knowledge and truth that reveals the contours of ourselves inside and out in the context of our purpose and elaborates on our purpose. It is meaning that takes other forms of truth and makes it beautiful within our lives.

It is in this context of a soul’s journey to achieve its meaning and purpose that one can begin to deal with each experience in life as an opportunity to discover Meaning. It is on a “journey of meaning” that one discovers the landscape of one’s soul and the purpose for which it was created, and is able to better lead others to find their purpose. With this understanding of purpose, life is both a construction and a journey leading somewhere, and the journey is not merely the destination.

It is from the vantage point of our purpose and our conscience that there is a hierarchy of pleasures within a moral order. There are pleasure pursuits that are connected to truth and to our purpose. It is these pleasures that are consistent with our purpose and that are validated by our conscience that constitute Joy, which is the union of truth and pleasure.

And then there are pleasures are not Joy, which replace, or even subvert our purpose. There are pleasures that can be wedded to our purpose in the right context and pleasures that are perverse and are inherently destructive. There are pleasures of beautiful accomplishments, the pleasures of blessing another person, which are joyful pleasures. There is the pleasure of winning the chess game, the pursuit of which can either be a joyful experience or an escape from the pursuit of higher pleasures. And there is the pleasure of crack cocaine, which demands everything of body and mind and gives nothing in return except for ruined health and addiction. There are pleasures that are virtues; the feelings of peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control. And that are pleasures that are vices; the feelings of lust, greed and the satiating of envy and revenge.

It is in the context of a moral hierarchy of pleasure that pleasure has gravitas, that pleasure is the power of gravity to lead us to blessings or to curses. Not all pleasure “rushes” are created equal, and each pleasure must be taken captive to purpose. All pleasures must be taken captive to the journey, and that meaning must be extracted from it, and every experience is taken captive to the whole endeavor of ones development. This is why Christian teaching holds us accountable for being aware of the moral and spiritual value of the things that please us.

In regard to the "brain in the vat" and the cruel pleasures of Dorian Grey, seeking mediocre and ephemeral pleasures is not unrelated to seeking destructive and cruel pleasures. When we seek momentary and banal comfort, we abandon the search for Meaning and leave the deep and heaving needs that we possess in a state of restlessness. It is these needs that will warp us, leading us down destructive paths, if they are not brought in line with our purpose. (As I wrote about in my discussion on vapidity, it is a consequence of being vapid that peoples' need for a sense of purpose is warped into a need to be the "fashion police" who hold themselves and others accountable to being excellent within the realm of banal pleasures)

In the context of pleasure and the moral order of pleasure that runs from vices to virtues, Character is the stoic ability of the self to persevere in the absence of lesser pleasures in order to secure a greater pleasure. It is our responsibility to exercise our Character to harness the power of pleasure so that it leads us to the joy and truth. It is when we experience pleasure that we are transformed, and are bonded to the source of our pleasure and become better or worse, becoming more or less in line with our purpose for being.

In regard to the question of pleasure, it is Christianity that that asserts that there is a moral order and spiritual order to the realm of pleasure, based on whether the pleasure is connected to our purpose for being; that the pleasure of virtues, peace patience kindness goodness and self-control are morally superior to the pleasures of vices. It is our purpose defined by Christianity that we are to enjoy God, to glorify God and to advance His Kingdom. It is this purpose gives us the shape and context for our journeys of meaning, and gives us benchmarks for how we are doing on that journey. It is Christianity that empowers us for the journey, wherein the Holy Spirit interacts with our conscience, empowering us to discover the contours of our created being and succeed in operate according to God’s purpose for us so that we can find joy in the virtues and grow out of the vices. And it is all of the benefits and consequences of God's promises for now and for eternity that call us to have the Character to keep life in perspective as the cord that saves us from being bonded to lesser pleasures.

Social Justice and the Mexican Border

Intro

I have pondered the issue of illegal immigration, and I have come around over the years very slowly and reluctantly to the position that I now hold, even as I am always open to hearing other points of view that are well articulated. Unfortunately, I've found many arguments on both sides of the issue wanting. Many of those who favor un-mitigated immigration across our borders discuss the topic in the context of promoting social justice, as understood as confronting the injuries that rich have promulgated against the poor.

Simply put, justice is the calculation of fairness, the exercise of fairness and the prosecution of fairness. From that essential starting point, there are many forms of justice, including jurisprudence, that deal with different jurisdictions of life wherein questions of fairness are tested. In Scripture, the prophet Amos specifically discusses social justice, and Jesus calls us to "faith justice and mercy". Mercy is clearly a value that we are called to practice on an interpersonal level, but how much should mercy be exercised by the government in relation to the application of the justice and jurisprudence? This post is the beginning of an ongoing attempt to begin to explore the complexities of justice when justice and mercy are complicated.

I have written a speech wherein I imagine myself giving a speech as if I were President of the United States. Writing this imaginary speech has been an exercise in trying to begin deal with the complexities of justice and mercy in regard to the current issue of illegal immigration. This "speech" also contains a redaction of many points that have already been made before on the issue.

"My fellow Americans,

"While it is possible to be racist and anti-Latino as a reason to care about border security and immigration, racism and bigotry are in no way inherent in having an interest in protecting our borders and the integrity of our legal system. While it is true that the northern border needs to be made more secure, and that our coasts need to be made more secure, it is our southern border where the vastly greatest number of illegal immigrants comes from. Our energy on border issues needs to be proportional to the scope of our problem, and it is our southern border that needs special attention.

I have known and liked many illegal Latino immigrants who are sweet, quiet hard working people, and the thought of doing something that would disrupt their lives is a painful prospect. Our current situation that allows many sweet, quiet hardworking people to cross our borders also allows many people who are a threat, including gangs, criminals and terrorists. It is an unfortunate reality, one that adults must face in dealing with this issue: we cannot confront the problem of border security in a way that deals with the bad people without also impacting the ability of good people to make it across.

One could argue that we should merely interdict the bad people who enter after they've crossed the border and leave the good ones alone. While we must, of course, interdict bad people who've crossed onto our soil as an unavoidable part of law enforcement, it does not make for a good foundation for our immigration policy to do this at the expense of tightening the border. Interdicting bad people who are here in the US after they have crossed the border means that these bad people will be first crossing the border and inflicting harm on US soil before they are caught. Our immigration policy must be based on a more serious and concerted effort to control who enters our country so that bad people enter as infrequently as possible.

Allowing many sweet, quiet, hardworking people to cross our borders illegally is beneficial to many parties. Illegal immigrants benefit, the families and homelands of many illegal immigrants benefit from remittances, and many US business interests benefit. Nevertheless, despite the ways that illegal immigration is benefiting many parties, it is eroding the integrity of our legal system and the integrity of many other key institutions that are necessary for our society. This erosion is not happening because the majority of individual illegal immigrants are especially evil or flawed people: most of them are decent people acting rationally in their own personal interests to try to better their lives. The erosion of the integrity of our legal system and institutions is happening because our society is only able to assimilate a certain number of people at a time.

While determining that number is an arbitrary and inexact science, it is necessary for us to arrive at a number and respect the number that we have arrived at. This is the very essence of a value for the rule of law. The alternative is that we find no such number, and allow our system to be overwhelmed. The integrity of many other institutions and interests in our society, including – but not limited to— our budgets, hospitals, schools, social security system is at stake. Being able to predict and manage the flow of new people into our country allows us to plan and budget accordingly. It also allows us to better culturally integrate people into the E Pluribus Unum that makes our country strong and great. It is in the advancement of this interest that managing the flow of people into our nation is the right and the responsibility that comes with being a nation.

One could try to make a counter-argument to this by saying that our country has benefited from immigrants. Of course our country has benefited from immigrants. However, this is a non sequitor as a response to the current problem of mass illegal immigration from the southern border. The current southern border illegal immigration issue is not the same issue as the immigrants who crossed the Atlantic at the turn of the 20th century. Those immigrants arrived at our invitation and put an ocean in between the Old Country and their new home in America. In fits and starts, they assimilated into the new, American way and came to recognize George Washington as the father of their country as much as any other American. We are at a time in our history when we do not need the mass influx of people in quite the same way that we did in the last century. The mass influx that we are facing now is overwhelming our institutions, and we need to have it slow down so that those who are coming in to be citizens can be assimilated.

Many of the illegal immigrants of today are more geographically and culturally connected to their homeland than the immigrants of the past, and often consider the US to be an extension of their rightful homeland. Many of them still wave the flags of their homeland and vote in their homeland's elections, and demand that the language of their homeland be institutionalized alongside the English language in every manner of document. While Spanish is a beautiful language, there is a potent symbolism in making it co-equal to English in America in every public space and on every public legal document. Having two languages side by side is as potent a symbol of dual allegiance as having two flags. This phenomenon on the current grand scale has no precedent in any of waves of immigrants who arrived in this country at the turn of the 20th century.

This is not to say that the heritage the Spanish language, of Mexico or of any other south of the border country is bad and must be rejected. It means that a dual allegiance that increases in scope will make it increasingly harder to assimilate people and their children into the American heritage. Our country must have both the Unum and the Pluribus to be strong, and the current illegal immigration problem on its current course is leading us away from E Pluribus Unum.

Immigrants must make a meaningful and symbolic break with their allegiance to their homeland of origin so that they may fully bond to our nation as citizens. While this is true for all current immigrants from any part of the world, this is especially true for those who are geographically close to us. It is our prerogative as a nation to decide how many immigrants we can accept. It is our prerogative as a nation to make the laws that an immigrant must follow to become a citizen.

This is not to diminish the personal sacrifice and hard work that many illegal immigrants have made to get where they are. While this is usually a great sacrifice of personal effort to find personal gain for one's family, it is not the same sacrifice of one's identity and allegiance as one who has followed all of the rules to become a US citizen. The sacrifice that bonds a person to our nation and to all of the ideals of our nation as a fellow citizen must be that unique form of sacrifice that holds the law of our land in highest regard. It is in following those laws -- that we as a nation have decided – and in valuing the wisdom that lies behind those laws that an immigrant makes the meaningful symbolic break with the allegiance to his homeland of origin and crosses the threshold to become a US citizen. An illegal immigrant who wants to change the U.S. laws ex post facto to fit his behavior is not properly bonding himself to our nation.

And likewise, U.S. corporation or politician that wants to change the immigrations laws to accommodate the current situation is not operating in the best interest of our nation in the long run. All too often, they are serving their more immediate interests to please their constituents or to maintain their current business situation than they are interested in the long term interests of our nation. While wanting to "help the economy" is a valid goal, there is an interest of our collective citizenship of the E Pluribus Unum that is even higher than the economy. We are citizens of a nation first and foremost before we are members of an economy. When the interests of the economy are the first source of our allegiance over and above the well-being of our nation, we are doomed to be corrupted and subverted.

Some have proposed making changes to our immigration laws to allow for temporary workers. The problem with this is that we will not be able to enforce new immigration laws if we cannot enforce the ones we already have. We will no more be able to control the flow of those individuals across the border to get their temporary jobs under this proposal than we are now able to control the flow under our current immigration regime. Under this proposal, we will no more be able to enforce the "temporariness" of those workers under new laws than we are able to enforce the status quo under the current laws. Without the will to enforce the laws that we now have, any proposal to change our laws to confront the problem of illegal immigration is an empty proposal and will not fix our broken system.

Simply allowing an illegal immigrant who is already established here to pay a fine to begin the process of becoming a legal citizen will not solve the problem we now face. This is because this proposal would allow illegal immigrants to work their way out of the act of having broken the immigration laws that made them illegal in the first place. As others have stated, it would unwittingly establish the act of breaking our laws as the basis for one to begin the path to citizenship. And for every other illegal immigrant who did not want to pay the fine, the system would continue to operate in the broken way that it has been operating.

While disrupting the lives of many nice and hardworking people is a painful thing to do, it will be an unavoidable aspect of restoring integrity to our legal system. In the face of the flesh and blood people who will be uprooted, the idea of preserving the integrity of our legal system might seem as cold, remote and abstract interest. However, it is in our best interest in the long run to preserve the integrity of our legal system. Doing so means that we maintain the value for the rule of law, which means that we preserve a value for all of the long term interests that laws are created to protect even when they are sometimes inconvenient in the short term.

It is true that the Bible speaks of justice as it relates to helping the poor and correcting the historical injuries that have been done to the poor. There are historical injuries that the U.S committed against poor Mexicans – as have the Aztecs, and then Spanish and then Mexican oligarchy and the Central American drug lords and sundry leftist rebels. This does not excuse the U.S. of its responsibility to face its past. In a separate discussion, we can debate whether reparations should be made to Mexico for the Mexican American war or for "Greaser laws" of the turn of the 20th century. We can balance out the things that the US took and the ways that the US has benefited Mexico over the years see where the balance lies. What we cannot do is use the broken state of the current immigration laws as the de facto and undeclared "reparations" to Mexicans for any and all sins of the US against Mexico and/or poor Mexican citizens. In the context of the current immigration debate, any appeal to "justice" to help the poor illegal immigrant that frames the issue as exclusively the U.S. vs. the poor Mexicans is simplistic and injurious to the truth. An idea of justice that comes at the expense of facing the more abstract and long term considerations of what is in the best long term interests of the US and US institutions is a narrow and incomplete idea of justice. It is an attempt to correct a series of injuries with yet another injury.

Some will argue that we cannot take such drastic measures on account of the pragmatic concerns for our national security. They say that while our current immigration situation presents some degree of threat to our security, having an unstable situation south of our border would also be a threat to our national security in a different way. This is a valid concern. In our current situation, the US absorption of illegal immigrants has functioned to mitigate against that potential economic and political instability south of our border. As we in the US move toward seriously enforcing the laws that we currently have, we also need to be open to ways that we can help avert the disruption that would occur south of the border as a result of enforcing those laws.

I don't have the complete answer to this problem, though micro-lending NGO's in Central America may play a role. The governments of countries in Central America also need to find ways to better support entrepeneurship, confront corruption and become places where people don't feel the need to emigrate from. Confronting this potential problem will be complex, and it is an uncertain future that we must face. What we cannot do is work backward from the corruption and dis-function of other countries as a reason to diminish the integrity of our own laws.

It is true that certain parts of our country have deep historical and cultural ties to Mexico. These parts of the country have an American culture that has absorbed many aspects of Mexican culture. I personally enjoy this as I walk down the street where I live in Southern California. While it is valuable for these parts of the country to recognize and celebrate their heritage and the blend of cultures that has occurred, these parts of the US need to be recognized as belonging to the US and operating under the dominion of US laws.

It is tempting for those who value a globally inter-connected world to conclude that maintaining the integrity of our borders or the integrity of our national identity is an enemy to this interconnectedness. It is easy to believe that borders only promote a sense of bigoted and narrow identity among those who identify with one side of the border or the other, and that truly enlightened people don't need borders. While the existence of borders may help enforce the bigotry of some people, the belief that borders are useless is a belief that seems enlightened but is actually sloppy, dangerous and inaccurate. In truth, our borders and immigration laws are a necessary membrane between countries that have a relationship culturally, economically, geopolitically and in many other ways. It is in the interest of what is best for that membrane that we need to face the problems of our broken immigration system.

The answer to this issue of illegal immigration must be one that has the ultimate best long term interests of all parties. Our current practice of having under-enforced immigration laws seems on the surface to be helpful to the most parties, but it is actually shortsighted and will not be in our best interest in the long run. What will be in everyone's best long term interest is an immigration system that is consistent, transparent, properly enforced and sustainable long into the future.

The idea of mass deportations seem scary and unpleasant, but it is part of the bitter pill that must be swallowed to get there. The argument that this is impractical is an empty argument, since it only means that it will be difficult, messy and expensive. Any course of action we take will be difficult, messy and expensive including the course of taking no action or of taking "path of least resistance" action. In the long run, it is in doing what is in our best long term interest that will be most practical."