Levels… With Steps… Like Ancient Egypt

The 5 billion years of the development of life on earth, by whatever means or combination of means it proceeded, such as evolution, intelligent design, or special creation, were God’s way of intensive testing the world before humans could be admitted to it safely.

Barnbaum uses this term in The Ethics of Autism. Highly complex definitions of it are provided. Instead, let me suggest that “moral community” should be defined simply as the set of people who as a rule treat each other justly or would if they could. The last clause allows autistics to be included into the moral community.

Here is how. Knowledge is linked with prudence, and understanding, with justice.

An autistic person does not understand people, but if he did, then he would be just toward them or love them.

Such a person (1) may not realize that there is anything on earth to be understood: Barnbaum (2008) quotes a mother who questions whether her autistic son will ever be able to grasp that “she is a person with thoughts and feelings, not a wind-up toy.” (78) Again, an autistic person may be “unperturbed by the loss of her father, comparing his departure to a bowl of fruit that was on the table one day and gone the next.” (106) Alternatively, (2) an autistic may feel presence of other human beings but be completely unable to “read” them.

He has the habit of justice, but a bodily sickness has prevented him from acting justly.

A psychopath does understand people but is unjust to them or fails to love them. In fact, a psychopath may derive perverse pleasure from toying with people’s emotions.

Thus, an autistic would be just, if his virtue of understanding were restored to him. By my definition then, an autistic person is, and a psychopathic person is not, a member of the moral community.

Another idea: this is a way of convincing another that you are not his enemy. “You demand that I do X. I will comply but also out of the goodness of my heart will help you more than you ask of me. I’m willing to go the extra mile. I’m not reluctantly obeying, while waiting for an opportunity to rid myself of you. I bear you no ill will; in fact, the reason I am doing this is that I love you as a brother. There is no need for you to coerce me at all; I would assist you even if you just asked me nicely. So, we need not fight but can be friends.”

Perhaps, this way, any antagonism or animosity can be safely diffused.

“If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.” How about this: this is an invitation to supererogate. Supererogation is an upgrade of one’s moral ideal. If you are morally required to do X, then go beyond the call of duty and do X + Y.

Of course, the word “forces” belies this understanding somewhat, because it connotes unjust coercion rather than necessity imposed by duty.

Could that be a subtle way of shaming your enemy? “If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.” Oh, so if you want my shirt so badly that you are willing to commit an unjust act, such as steal from me or falsely accuse me; I mean if this pathetic shirt means so much to you that you do this evil for its sake, then here, take the coat as well. I hope that satisfies your avarice. Blessed are those who persecuted because of righteousness: I will be blessed, and you, a thief and a liar, will not. Take the coat, in fact, take everything, if you are such a scumbag. I hope you are happy!

Mascetti writes that in primitive societies, “During menstrual period women, almost universally, were put under severe restrictions and banned from social activities. Women were considered taboo and many tribes believed that anything a menstruating woman touched would lose its ‘power.’ … For instance, among primitive people today, when a woman is under the menstrual taboo she may not come near any man. Her shadow is polluting, so she must keep well away from the other members of the tribe.” Etc., you get the point.

I suppose one difference between primitive and civilized people is that the latter don’t take signs literally but rather as pointing to some greater reality. Thus, the female yin represents both receptivity and destruction: potency and evil or corrupting act into potency. The male yang, on the contrary, suggests act and good or creating act from potency.

For example, from my book:

The yang and yin of creative destruction are best fully enabled and well balanced. In creating profits and jobs, the disequilibrating yang butchers the deer-in-the-headlights even rotators; in destroying profits, the equilibrating yin like some bloodthirsty goddess Kali (remember that the female archetype is both receptive and destructive in its various guises: e.g., if you do not take the opportunity to plant your crops in the summer when nature is pliable, the same nature will starve and kill you in the winter) creates new opportunities for growth; both benefit economy as a whole. Under unhampered capitalism, society tends to become more ideal in the most efficient ways possible.

(I’m not sure I want to keep the part in the parentheses, though… a bit too much symbolism for a book on economics. Then again, it’s precisely the failure to grasp the economic yin and yang that has led so many economists completely astray. What should I do?)

We should not say that, because it is an unintended compliment. Militant atheists are not religious but fanatical. They have elevated their own mental powers to the divine status. They think they are infallible at least in their belief that God does not exist. A militant atheist dismisses any argument that claims to show the opposite without engaging it.

This seems like a suspect notion. For to doubt or lose one’s faith is a sin. But seeking to understand one’s faith may in principle lead you to reject it. How then can one honestly claim to be using his reason and going where the evidence leads, if its deliverances, if they be contrary to faith, are immediately and automatically branded as false?

Well, faith is a set of axioms, and understanding is deriving theorems from these axioms. The axioms are coherent, so if two theorems seem to follow from them that contradict each other, then I must by logic have made a mistake.

A person who does not accept the articles of the Christian faith as axioms cannot undertake the same search, unless he accepts them provisionally, just to see where they will lead him. (Though I don’t know why any non-Christian would bother to do something like that.)

Another question immediately arises. Why this set of axioms and not some other set? Axioms are supposed to be self-evident; but not all people consider them such. Well, the Christian articles of faith are self-evident not a natural unaided reason by to an enlightened mind graced by God.

Faith is a peculiar thing: attaining it requires both man’s own effort and God’s assistance. The best way to summarize Christianity is this: I believe that I am spiritually connected to the divine as a branch to a vine through which the Holy Spirit flows, nourishing me. The connection is through love with all the consequences that that implies. As God breathes, so do I.

Now if a person lives in an area where missionaries have not yet arrived, he does not know this and cannot, generally speaking, be helped by God. If he is not aware of the axioms, then God cannot make them feel self-evident. On the other hand, sanctification is done at God’s pleasure, so even a person who is well aware of the Christian claims may have been for whatever reason denied grace. Perhaps, since grace builds on nature, this person’s nature is corrupt.

If Smith is a wicked person, then his nature may be an unsuitable host for grace. But if Smith defiles himself so, then the fault and punishment are his and his alone.

In short, faith is the axioms that seem self-evident to the chosen ones, and understanding is everything that these axioms do and do not entail.

So says Jesus in Mt 5:38-42. This seems to be an injunction to a certain measure of humility. Do not take vengeance, do not always insist on your rights, etc.

Very good. But could Jesus also have said: “But I tell you, if anyone rapes you in the ass, turn to him your mouth also.” Surely not. So, where do we draw the line? Where does humility become cowardice and self-contempt?

Economist Leland Yeager argued that “turn the other cheek” encourages violent predation of humans on each other. This certainly seems to be the case.

Economics is a human science, and so makes use of ideal types. For example, we may distinguish between product designer, marketer and advertiser, technologist, and manager. Also, between entrepreneur and worker, between entrepreneur and capitalist-saver, between entrepreneur and consumers.

These despite the fact that one and the same person often plays multiple roles.

The Idealist’s world of fancy is what C.S. Lewis called the “numinous”: “filled with a sense of the presence of divinity” or at least “appealing to the higher emotions or to the aesthetic sense: spiritual” (m-w.com).

And here’s Mises again: “Not shepherds, but sophisticated aristocrats and city-dwellers were the authors of bucolic poetry. Daphnis and Chloe are creations of fancies far removed from earthy concerns.”

The most sophisticated form of fantasy today is the massively multiplayer online games like Rift which I actually played for a few months. It was kind of fun, but took far too much of my time. This artificial world of faeries and trolls and magic and heroism was made possible through super-powerful technology and capitalist advancement. The ancients had no use for such diversions: they were too busy surviving each and every day and barely subsisting. Mascetti’s Idealism is just that: a luxury, a fairly superfluous entertainment on which you can spend at most 30 minutes per day before going to bed.

The Christianity she despises as unnatural and rigid and the capitalism she probably also considers to be too “material” are precisely what made her flights of fancy possible.

In her defense, however, I think that the Catholic faith could benefit from fresh Idealist blood. We need a dose of fantasy and romance and heroic deeds in the imagination every once in a while. It’s a pity that she found there nothing there to inspire her. Christianity needs to become both more rational and more mystical at the same time. And between you, me, and this book, Guardian priests are just a shame.

So, I’m doing research into an aspect of human affairs, and as part of it, reading a book called Goddesses: An Illustrated Journey into the Myths, Symbols, and Rituals of the Goddess, which presents itself as an inquiry into women’s “archetypes.” Now I like archetypes. I think they are indispensable for understanding human beings. But the author, Manuela Dunn Mascetti, is an Idealist to the core and as such, is living in a heavenly fantasy land with no rules, frolicking in the fields, picking flowers, and enjoying her eternal youth and perfect safety from any consequences of her actions.

Her understanding of Christianity is limited to the calumny that it is unnatural: “the relation to woman was expressed in the collective worship of Mary, a figure stripped of all humanity. The image of woman thus lost its value in the eyes of men and women. … Men repressed the sexual instinct, for it was sinful to desire carnal pleasures; the sexual instinct had been displaced from its natural and only pattern and the repression created an unconscious force which was projected on external objects. The devaluation of woman was, so to speak, compensated by her endowment of demonic traits. …”

OK, first, when ever did men repress their sexual instinct? My cousin just turned 18; in his own words, he “loves pussy.” Good for him.

Second, either desiring or having sex is not a sin, when done right.

Third, most important, this opinion fails to reconcile men with nature. For men (and women, for that matter) control nature including their sexuality; they do not despise nature also including their sexuality.

The human appetite is divided into intellectual and sensual; to quote from my book: “The virtue of temperance, in particular, is a kind of liaison, a middleman arbitrating between the delights of the senses and the joys of the will. It moderates animalistic sensual pleasures, so as to not cause any harm to conscious purposive plans of the will.”

Remember that there are 3 vices opposed to temperance: incontinence, intemperance, and insensitivity. Being indifferent to sensual pleasures is, in Christian moral philosophy, itself a sin!

Mises writes: “Acting man also rationalizes the satisfaction of his sexual appetites. Their satisfaction is the outcome of a weighing of pros and cons. Man does not blindly submit to a sexual stimulation like a bull; he refrains from copulation if he deems the costs — the anticipated disadvantages — too high.”

The relationship between me and this computer I am typing on is one of master-slave, the controller and the controlled. But I do not despise or repress the pleasures, such as games, that the computer can bring. I am the master of my domain in more ways than one.

Can we at least agree that terror against American citizens is due almost entirely to big US government which expresses its bigness through aggressive foreign policy? This government’s “war on terror” is just escalation. The idea is to crush the terrorists via brute force. But why not try the other approach: reduce and weaken the federal government especially regarding war and military, so that foreigners have less reason to plot revenge?

I’m not a boxing fan, but that fight just broadcast on Showtime was pretty spectacular. Hmm… Lopez argued the ref had a “gambling problem.” If the ref hadn’t stopped the fight after the knockout, Lopez would probably have been killed. This is a boxing match, not a snuff film. If anyone was gambling, it was the judges who bizarrely scored the match in Lopez’s favor when Salido was the star. Lopez took tremendous punishment, and 10 rounds was clearly enough for him. Salido earned a glorious victory against a mighty opponent.

A boxing match is like the free market… there is no shadowy power elite pulling the strings from the darkness. Every product is out in the open strutting its stuff and competing honestly against every other product. No one knows who will win and become rich and who will lose and disappear from the marketplace. Entrepreneurs are as gritty and tough as boxing contenders. May it always be so.

What’s with the italics?

The very name of this policy, “drug war” underscores how despicable this phenomenon is, a war being fought against the citizens, as if aliens from outer space (these are the only guys who could conceivably defeat the US military) in some silly movie have invaded America, and cities have turned into battlegrounds, where urban warfare rages with utmost and interminable brutality. And this is not necessarily a metaphor; some cities are extremely dangerous.

Still my favorite game soundtrack.

According to this website, this new law exempts companies from liability regarding any privacy violations they might engage in or fail to prevent, as long as they share their data with the federal government. Are we creating the new Stasi?

In other words, it’s a “you can screw your customers, as long as you help the government” legislation. And it’s a clever one. The state is regrouping, it seems, and going on the offensive more seriously. Well, what did we expect?

Mt 18:3 suggests that one’s growth and development should lead him round the world in search of wisdom but in the end come back toward the very self he was as a child.

Maybe that’s the ideal old age: a burning off of the ego, combined with profound wisdom.

I was thinking about an insight I got long ago how a person can in a more heavenly environment sort of explode or “blow up” and subsist in the hearts of all other human beings as pure love, augmenting and enhancing them. He will fully retain his intellect as his essence but forsake power. It’s a little like a rock being converted into its own rest energy.

I suspect, however, that the backward conversion is also possible: one can “breathe in” and create a subtle body for himself, trading some love for physical power.

I suppose that means then that life in this world is like holding one’s breath.