End of Semester, the year 2010, and life as we know it.

So... you would think that it wouldn't be too terribly difficult to just sign in a drop a few quick thoughts onto this thing--what with all the free time I have. But alas... unlike the moderately well-thought-out philosophy-based posts I seem to type up every now and then, these improvised at-this-point-in-my-life posts are much more time and effort consuming. At least, that's what I tell myself.

That said, I'm obviously a little behind on things. The Fall 2010 semester ended, for me, on December 20th and the year 2010 ended for me and everyone else on December 31st. It's not the 2nd of January and one might ask, "Dylan, what exactly are your thoughts on things?" Well, to be fair, I don't think anyone would ask my thoughts on those things. But isn't that what this is for?

Anyway, the Fall 2010 semester for me had been quite possibly the best semester ever, as far as semesters have gone. I've tried my hardest to step out of my shell and talk and hang out with people instead of just staying in my room all the time (as I had done in the past). Overall, it's been a successful endeavor. Turns out that the best way to have new experiences and opportunities is to go out and seek them. Whodathunkit? So yeah. Uhh... but definitely good.

Of course, there was downs to go along with the ups but i think that really just puts in perspective. I know there are things that I hope for for 2011 and things that I want for 2012 but we'll just have to take it a day at a time. I'm very much looking forward to May but not because I'll have to be working/finishing my Junior year.

I think I started this with the intention of having something really long, thought out, and thought-provoking. It's just not turning out that way and I'm feeling kinda lazy (I told you it was energy-consuming)... so... Happy Belated New Year. May all your wishes come true... or whatever.

On Morality and Nietzsche

So... Here is where I talk about why I don't like Nietzsche. It's an adamant dislike, actually which is hopefully founded in sound reason. As I always say, the best way to avoid group think is to encourage disagreement and dissension. Thus, if you have issue, speak up.

Oh and please excuse my very topical treatment of Nietzsche and his "philosophy." After all, I only care enough to have read him to the extent I can write a proper essay of him and hopefully respond to his key arguments, but if I have missed something that would provide crucial insight, please, again, let me know.

First, the part that I can understand. The distinction between Master and Slave morality seems relatively intuitive. I'm not saying it's right, but I think its intuitive as the basis for my disagreement. For those who don't know, Master morality is the championing of natural strength, of wealth, and of power and the distaste of weakness and the like. Slave morality is born of ressentiment which is French for resentment but isn't necessarily being used in the same fashion. Ressentiment in this manner means building a moral code and value system based on a frustration towards an authority you don't respect. Thus we can see where we get the term slave morality (because it comes from the "slaves"). Slave morality is characterized by Nietzsche as self-denying the pleasures of life such as money, sex, and the like as well as adapting strong opposition to killing, stealing, lying etc. because those are things that the Masters do and is therefore bad because they treat us wrong.

He uses the example of lambs and birds of prey. The birds feed on the lambs and the lambs get mad and adopt a no killing policy as part of their moral code. This, Nietzsche says, is part of their ressentiment towards the birds and is not a justifiable moral... thing. Nietzsche says that the birds are just doing their bird thing and cannot be blamed for seeking to conquer and feed on the lambs. (Here, Nietzsche also is falsely attributing cognitive states to animals which I certainly don't approve of.)

Here's where I start to disagree, obviously. You can't blame someone for subjecting someone else? You can't blame the bully for beating up the nerd? You can't blame a murderer for killing? You can't blame someone for just being a general jerk? Really? Really Nietzsche?

Nietzsche adopts the argument that what is natural is right. As I was recently enlightened to, there is no arguable conceptual connection between what is natural behavior and morally correct behavior. Additionally, animals are NOT moral agents and therefore cannot make more judgements! THE LAMBS DON'T HAVE A MORAL CODE. Sorry. I digress. It seems that Nietzsche supports the Darwinian idea of might makes right and whatever behavior promotes oneself is good behavior to have. But again, these ideas in and of themselves are not necessarily moral. Again, since humans are capable of moral action, we are not on level with animals in our moral choices and thus what is necessarily natural is not necessarily moral.

Going back to slave morality: it is in this moral viewpoint that Nietzsche claims that religion is born from. He primarily attacks Christianity and, by extension, Judaism, but he really is attacking the moral framework of all religions. He says they are self-depriving and wrong because they are based upon this championing of the meek and lowly and weakness and the like which is not something that we should be okay with. My issue is that A) while that might be a possible source for morality in religion, that doesn't make it wrong. In fact, seeing injustice and forming a moral code around NOT doing that is what's right, in my opinion. B) To have a very Darwinian society is much like having an anarchist society in that no one abides by laws they feel they can physically overcome. It's a dangerous spiral.

Nietzsche wants a resurgence of Master morality which I think is dangerous to society. Moreover, he wants people to reconsider their morals. Because they might be grounded in falsehoods of slave morality, we should reconsider them. I think we should reconsider our morals for the same reason we should reconsider our beliefs about the world and other values that we hold dear. They might be grounded in false reason or misconceptions. Point is, I think instead of having a strict set of rules, we should have guidance systems that help us come up with rules as we need them. I suggest utilitarianism as just one of the many ways one can establish a frame of reference for these things. Nietzsche says utilitarianism sucks because it treats everyone as equals. REALLY? What kind of elitist is he that he can say that some people's pain or pleasure counts for more or less than other's? It's outrageous to say that one person is inherently better than another. It blows my mind.

Finally, on top of all this absurdity, Nietzsche spends a TON of time talking about why there is no truth. Mainly, he says that any proposition of so-called "truth" is just an assertions of someone's "Will to Power." That is, whoever says, "Hey I've got some truth for you," is really just saying, "Hey I want to be better than you and so here is something you should accept as truth because I said it is and I want to be better than you..." or something. This too seems outrageous for a few GLARING reasons. A) There HAS to be objective, empirical truth about the universe. It abides by laws and any positing of these laws cannot merely be an assertion of power. B) A priori truths are not necessarily false by the virtue of their coming to be. There is a definite possibility of some things being known without having to be experienced or without the need for definitive evidence.

and of course, C) HOW CAN NIETZSCHE SAY THERE IS NO TRUTH WHEN HE IS TRYING TO TELL US THERE IS NO TRUTH? By saying there is no truth, he is trying to convince us of something he believes is true. He's contradicting himself completely and entirely and it bothers me. His claim of untruth fails on so many levels. Additionally, I can't tolerate skepticism in general. Mainly epistemological skepticism because it's not practical in the slightest. It doesn't do us any good to sit around and try to think of reasons why we can't know anything because that's contradictory in itself. Descartes can get away with it because he at least makes an attempt at moving away from his starting point of complete skepticism. All Nietzsche is doing is whining in a corner saying we can't know anything while telling us what to think.

It's not okay.

On the Facade and the Public Self

Now... this post is the direct result of criticism and me being the way I am... but I'm going to do my best and keep it professional.

It's funny because I'm supposed to be writing a 1000 word essay about this very topic so I suppose the mere typing of this post begs the question, "Why don't you just write the stupid essay?" Truth is, I don't know.

Anyway, in my meditation, I was having a rough time distinguishing the private self from the public self. For me, I couldn't put A and B together but I now realize the following:
1) The private self is that who you are when no one is around. The private self is that idea that you know yourself best--that you're the best monitor of your own beliefs and feelings. The private self is the self you would sit down and have the most truthful conversations with (or just talking to yourself). The private self is that person you talk to when you think to yourself, "I should have known better," "I didn't really mean to say that," or any other type of cognition-related dissonance.
2) The public self is that person (the Jungian persona or facade) who you are to every other human being. Now, I think it's important to make the distinction between good friends (who you don't have to impress and who know you), acquaintances of interest (that is, people who you want to be friends with or people in a position to be flattered by you for your own personal gain), and strangers or other temporary acquaintances (those who will only you know based on a first impression). For the first, self-monitoring is usually low and who you are reflects your private self very well. For the second two, the public self can be this completely different person--that is, the person you think you want people to know. And of course, for some, this might be the same person as their private self. But you have to admit, for everyone, there are always those situations where they can't say or do exactly what they want because they're worried about how others will judge them for it.

That's another key point--being judged. That persona for the public self is a direct result of how you want to be remembered by everyone. The fact of the matter is, you can die with all your dirty secrets, but the person every one will know you as is the person you will always be. I guess it speaks to past transgressions: don't let anyone ever be mad at you for anything; simply because that kind of thing is hard to forget.

As I said, this all is a direct result of not only have to write a paper on the very same topic (which I think I have just mostly done... sort of), but a lot of self-reflection. I think my private self is very different from my public self but I think my good friends truly know me since I'm typically an open book for those people at certain times. I have a terrible time admitting my insecurities but when I do, that's pretty much a peek into who I am underneath it all.

I'm sure I had a point, but as usual, it escapes me. What can you do?

Considering things less important than usual...

So I don't have anything deep to say (surprise, surprise) and so I'll give a general update.

School is good albeit stressful--mostly due to personal expectations for a certain amount of academic success which isn't necessarily being met/validated on a normal day-to-day basis. I mean, I can suppose that I'm doing pretty well and considering the kind of material that I'm working with, I think I'm doing pretty good. I guess my main issue is the consistency of speculation towards performance in that I generally have to just sit around and hope that I'm doing well instead of actually having a quantifiable measure of actual performance.

That being said, I have a short paper to write (which will consist of 40% of my grade) for my philosophy seminar on Animal Considerability. Honestly, I wish I hadn't taken the class... but my main source of stress comes from my total lack of understanding towards cognitive ethology and a general lack of caring towards the idea of whether animals can think. I don't think animals have desires and while I grant that they have feelings and rudimentary/crude reasoning skills, I don't think that we need attribute moral status to them in so much as we only take cares to ensure they never suffer more pain and suffering than is acceptable for any living creature. But then again, that's how I feel about all people I don't really know. I simply wish that all people be granted at a minimum enough moral consideration that they not be egregiously harmed.

Is it so much to ask that I not be forced to believe that animals are so morally considerable that they be granted the right to property and representation in congress? I exaggerate of course because out of all the gargantuan readings we've had for that class, none of them make any sense and I don't understand the point of any of them.

Perhaps you can see the underlying causes of my stress?

I thought this wasn't going to be a deep post...?

Anyways, everything else is going fine. Social life is fine and considering it's infinitely better than the past two years of college, I can't complain. The radio show is going swimmingly. Writing for Broadside has been much, much better than it was last year but still not nearly as wonderful as it was Freshman year when I was able to write more to my style and about more things I cared about.

Note to self: Broadside retrospective in an upcoming blog post?

I'm participating (for the most part) in National Novel Writing Month. Even though, I'm really only doing it in my head and not physically because I still am lacking any extrinsic motivation and pressure for actually doing it. I write my best under pressure and I am not feeling any when it comes to these novels. I guess I could drop out of school and declare to the world that I will make a living writing novels and the only way I can eat is by the fruits (lol) of my imagination. Seems like that would deliver adequate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for finishing one or more of the five projects I've started.

Latest project: Novel! By: Author (by Dylan Hares)

It's the epic story of writing an epic story. The journey of one writer in his quest for his magnum opus. I got the idea from Paul Laudiero (who came up with the title) and from Milan Kundera's Immortality whose first chapter seems much like Kundera is narrating his epiphany on immortality and identity and the human condition. It will be literally brilliant if I can find the voice and pacing and stick to it. Maybe I'll write some more tonight after I study for my Personality exam.

But yeah... I suppose that's it for now.

I mean... considering things less important than usual, that is.

More on Humans, animals, and the state of nature

This first thought kind of relates to everything I've been talking about when it comes to religion and evolution and stuff like that.

It's amazing how perfect everything works isn't it? I mean... out of all the stuff that can go wrong in the scheme of things... it's amazing how perfect everything works.

Here's a thought I had earlier:

What do dogs hear when we talk to them? I imagine it would be like someone talking to me in very fast Japanese. I have NO IDEA what they're saying. But then think about an infant. The infant makes noises, thinking it's communicating in an effective manner... but it's not. But what the infant does do is as it develops, it learns that the words it hears from its parents have meaning beyond just being sounds. That the word "chair" refers to something shaped like a chair and that if it wants to reference the chair, it should say chair. But despite hearing "chair" a million times, a dog could never absorb the word chair and learn that it should say the word chair if it wants to talk about the chair. I mean, its obvious that it doesn't have the same capacity for vocals that a human does. But still, can you imagine the cognitive function and upper-level thinking that it takes to absorb first language? We learn new languages by referencing the one we already know and so it's crazy thinking about we first make associations.

Oh i remember what I wanted to talk about..

I've been reading Rousseau almost out of genuine interest (but don't have nearly enough time on my hands) and he talks about a lot of interesting things. For example, he says that because we live in a civilized society, we feel the ever-increasing need to advance ourselves that, without society, we would never do. That there are so many illnesses and maladies that exist simply because, as creatures in society, we indulge and therefore push our bodies beyond their natural capacities. It's just really interesting to read about his state of nature.

I have a very similar view as Rousseau, I think. He talks about nature treating infants as did Sparta. That is, weak or deformed infants just die because of the demands of living in the wild. Nature would treat humans the way it treats all creatures, with a fair and crushing indifference.

He says that man in the state of nature has to be strong. That he could easily beat up civilized man, even with all of his tools because nature has crafted him to be resourceful, smart, and cunning. It's funny because beyond the natural sciences, every single thing we learn is an attempt to understand the society that has emerged from this hypothetical state of nature. Rousseau says that man has no need for reason and thus, no need for philosophy.

And without philosophy, there is no need to ponder the workings of the universe.

And thus, no need for any other discipline.

In the state of nature, man knows all he needs.

Anyway, I might post more things that he talks about that I think are interesting.

Oh and another thought I had during my terrible, awful philosophy seminar:

We spent nearly 2 and a half hours talking about whether animals have ideas and if we need to worry about the content of their ideas in order to show that they have them. On the one hand, I believe it can be argued that animals are little more than fleshy things with feelings. I believe animals can feel pain and respond to stimuli. In the vein of Hume I believe that animals have a very limited capacity for reason in that they can be trained through Pavlovian conditioning.

For example, when my Dad opens the fridge and takes out the pack of American cheese, the dogs come running because they've been conditioned that when he takes out the cheese, they will get some. They come because for whatever reason, dogs just like to eat and eat and eat and I think if you somehow had a never-ending pile of cheese, a dog might just sit there and eat it til he died.

On the other hand, you could say that the dog had the desire for cheese or that when my dad gets the cheese out, they already know they want some and now is their opportunity to grab it. This would imply that animals have desires and no matter the content of their desires, gives us some insight to proper moral treatment. Now I think it's very possible that animals can have desires. Like when it comes to playing games. Maybe dogs legitimately like fetch or tug-of-war because they have fun doing it. Maybe they only do it because it helps them work out their instinctual frustration that being a house pet surpresses. If the former, then dogs have desires to play games. If the latter, my point stands that they are little more than fleshy things with rudimentary brains.

I can't decide and frankly, I don't care. Still, it's interesting to think about.

On schadenfreude and suicide

I'll keep this short, mostly in part because I don't have a ton to say on the matter but I think it's important and should be said.

With the recent suicide of Tyler Clementi, the homosexual football player from Rutgers who was lead to the act because of bullying, I've been thinking about how society views suicide. Not only have I wanted to use schadenfreude in something, but I think it certainly applies in part to how the media portrays suicides. I mean, schadenfreude is German for a concept that means to delight in the pain of others. Now I'm certainly not saying anything like the media is delighting in the pain of Tyler and his family, but LGTQB groups as well as the media are jumping all over the over-arching themes behind the suicide such as LGTQB bullying. And yes, of course, this is important. We need to learn from tragedy and things like that, but it was really hard to find this kid's name in the news. I mean, they've completely forgotten about him. Most people have. They only remember now that bullying is bad. Again, a good thing to remember but I think it's kind of disrespectful to the victim. Now LGTQB groups will forever put his face on a collage full of people who have been victims to bullying and he's just going to be a statistic for their cause.

Again, it's important that people learn from the tragedy, but does anyone really think that this guy killed himself so people would use him in their campaign against bullying? I just think the whole system is kind of messed up. What should they do instead? I don't know. Talk about it. Tell people what happened. Just inform the public that he did this because of bullying. Don't parade it around.

Maybe there isn't so great of a point here (and thus merits another use of the word schadenfreude), but take it for what it's worth.

Again though, society feeds off this stuff. Stories based off pain and suffering are incredibly popular. There are entire genres of music dedicated to pain and suffering. As John Cusack puts it in High Fidelity:

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

So potent.

On the other hand though, I think the actual act of committing suicide is very interesting. In fact, the phrasing I just used is interesting: committing suicide. It makes it sound the crime goes way beyond the victim. The interesting thing about the "crime" of suicide (among all the others), is that the victim and the suspect are the same person. To commit murder involves at least 2 people. To say that someone committed suicide, at least in context, makes it seem like there are more victims than the person who did it. Now obviously everyone around them are affected and maybe my tone sounds like I disagree, but I don't. Suicide, in one respect, is the most selfish thing you could do. But it's also fascinating when you think about what it takes to do it.

I mean, people have a biologically driven desire to further their own lives. To end it by your own hand must take an extraordinary amount of desperation. I mean, if you can rule our intrinsic motivation by the idea that one is biologically pre-determined to preserve one's own life, then you must say that it takes at least 1000% more extrinsic motivation to get them to actually do it.

What makes life not worth living anymore? When the things that you're living for don't matter? Think about homeless people. They spend the latter part of their years in the streets begging for money. Most of us, having lost everything, would really think about just ending our lives. I mean, why don't they? You've got nothing left and you're reduced to begging. And to what end? To make another day of life possible? And then when you think of these college students who end their lives because of bad grades... it's just incredible. To be under such pressure of performance that when you have an inkling of failure, your life is suddenly less worth living than if you were homeless. Again, maybe suicide is incredibly selfish. And maybe it's stupid. Life could always be worse, right? Maybe.

This whole post feels really scatterbrained so if you are shaking with rage by now because I didn't make any sense, I sincerely apologize. I think it made more sense in my head.

Next time--something that makes sense.

On Animal Welfare and Politics

So Professor Light was (thankfully) absent from class today and we were left with a video on animal welfare to entertain our thoughts for a small portion of the class period. Probably since it would be unthinkable to allow us to go unstimulated for two whole weeks.

Either way, it was an interesting video. But really, it just pissed me off. Not because of animal cruelty, but because of the politics involved behind the whole thing.

Now, it's not that animal cruelty doesn't bother me.... in fact... let's do this. We can accept the following as true:
A) Animals are sentient beings that feel pain and potentially slightly more complex feelings such as fear and being to know if they're separated from family.
B) There is a ton of science to back this up.
C) Good, peer-reviewed science is legitimate grounds for legislation.
D) As moral agents, humans with the knowledge of A and B have, at the very least, the ability to recognize animal suffering in factory farms.

Factory farming is horrible and unnatural and as a meat-eater, I dislike supporting the organization. In fact, I plan to be more conscientious about buying products and plan to look out for animal products market as free-range or humanely raised. In the video we were even shown how in the modern day, traditional animal husbandry can be not only humane, but just as profitable.

Now, if we can accept these things (and please tell me if you can't), we need to look at why we're actually dealing with the issue.

Agribusiness (which is actually a word, surprisingly enough) is huge. Massive. Pervasive. It has the same lobbying power as the tobacco, alcohol, and firearms industry and we can all attest to the power they have. The issue is that because the agribusiness lobby has such intense power to influence senators and congressmen from farming states as well as any other legislators, nothing gets passed. The legislation as it stands is muddy and convoluted in the way that while many common animals are protected under anti-animal abuse laws, animals under the domain of factory farms are not. It's appalling how Europe has already passed dozens of laws for the humane treatment of farmed animals and yet we lag nearly 50 years behind.

The thing is, nothing can get passed because of the greed in the legislative body. In true Orwellian style, we are being subjugated and told what to believe and not say by a totalitarian state. The worse thing is that it's not even the state that's doing this. The corporations are so powerful that they've pushed the government aside and are not only feeding us with their product, but with the power they have over how this country runs. Again, it's not just the agribusinesses. You hear all the time about how perfectly sensible bills that could really help people are stricken down by special interest groups and heavily pressured subcommittees of Congress because the vote of our legislators, the people we vote for, are up for sale.

I know it's a very Mr. Smith Goes to Washington kind of thing in that it's truly idealistic to think that lobbyists, the people who are only supposed to be providing congressmen with legitimate information, should and could never hold real power over our congressmen, but the fact of the matter is that they do.

Animals in factory farms do suffer and that's not really debatable. I know it's tough to watch PETA propaganda and it's even easier to push it out of your mind as isolated cases. But I feel like the fact that every PETA documentary has new footage of animals squeezed into tight cages is enough to say that maybe this stuff is really happening.

I'm not a vegetarian by any sense and I certainly don't plan to be. I don't think we have a moral obligation to be vegetarian, but I don't believe we have to harvest animals in a way that makes them suffer more than necessary just to increase productivity and expand profits. Natural animal husbandry in such a way that is profitable to small farmers would increase competition and drive down the prices of animal products and hopefully alleviate the suffering of farmed animals. While this still means we bring animals into this world to kill them, at least they don't have to suffer along the way.

I just don't think it's possible though until we have someone in the White House that is not afraid to take a stand against Congress. We also need a total flush of Congress while we are at it. Get some young, educated, idealistic Senators and Representatives in there and get some stuff done. Again, I support a totalitarian state as long as it is one that uses ultimate power and subjugation FOR all people instead of against them. I support the state dismantling factory farms and agribusinesses so we can have smaller, more humane farms. It would probably solve a lot of problems as long it was run by a totalitarian dictator that isn't trying to kill a certain kind of people or conquer the world and instead is motivated by a desire to help everyone at the same time. I think it's very possible.

Again, always open to objections.