Life, Death, Meaning and Meaninglessness

The older one gets the more one thinks about death. When thinking about death one is going to obviously consider the meaning of one's life. When we hear the news of someone's death we often consider the life of that person and wonder what purpose the person served -- we wonder if their life had any meaning. More importantly, we wonder if that person believed their life had any meaning. When we hear of suicide, we might be even more intrigued by the person's life.

I had never heard of David Foster Wallace until his suicide made national news this past fall. He was found dead in his home in September of 2008 at the age of 46. I read his commencement speech given to the 2005 graduation class from Kenyon College and I was immediately intrigued. Here was an obviously very intelligent individual who had had some success as a writer and then decided to end his life because living was just too painful. From a very limited perspective, I have some empathy for his feelings. I have been lucky to have never suffered from depression in my life. However, DFW’s writings had an appeal to me because of his ability to describe the meaninglessness of everyday life in our society.

I went to the library and checked out a couple of his books. He railed against the ironic, and coplained that irony was making it very difficult to be a fiction writer in today’s world because television had surpassed the novel as the descriptor for modern life. DFW believed that television was the prime mover of irony in modern society. I’m not sure if his depression was a result of his inability to find true meaning in his life, but I have a feeling it must have played a part. DFW was smart. He was a lot smarter than I. As I read him, I could not help thinking in my mind as he made acute observations on the mundane world around us, that this person eventually killed himself and basically came to the conclusion that life was not really worth living -- for any of us.

I know depression is more than just an intellectual exercise. I also understand that some people who are clinically depressed are really not that intelligent to begin with. But, the inability to find meaning in our lives is a symptom of modern society and the rise of depression must have something to do with the ironies and meaninglessness that surround all of us.

Reinhold Niebuhr observed that “every universe of meaning is constantly under threat of meaninglessness,” or something to that effect. Niebuhr was a social critic and a theologian. He had an understanding of the ironic and was aware of both the comforts and the pitfalls that science and modernism has brought humanity. Materialism has brought television, automobiles, cell phones, and other conveniences. The modern age, along with science, has also demonstrated the folly of certain religious beliefs and makes individuals who attack scientific theories such as Darwin’s evolution seem foolish and intellectually dense. Niebuhr had no problem with recognizing the limitations of literal beliefs from the Bible. However, Niebuhr’s observation that the Bible and religious faith provide meaning within the meaninglessness of existence is worth heeding attention to and could have saved DFW the torment that eventually led him to take his life. I think it might be the only thing that saves any of us from following DFW's example.

DFW was cool. He made many references to popular culture. He was obviously well-read and could pontificate on many subjects including philosophy, mathematics and literature. But, he could also talk about television and the internet. He was not just an intellectual. He wrote for Rollingstone, Harpers and the Atlantic. DFW was fully immersed in modern society and popular culture. But, despite his talents and success, the meaning of his existence eluded him. Was he just too smart?

Charlie Walters died on January 17, 2009 at the age of 83. I had never heard of Charlie Walters until a few years ago when I began subscribing to an organic farming magazine called ACRES,USA. The magazine was very informative and contained a wealth of information on farming and gardening that arrived each month. Charlie was the editor and, I assumed he put together many of the articles that gave me many facts for becoming a better gardener by taking care of my soil and using different organic techniques. But, the real value of the magazine was Charlie’s editorials. Charlie was a genius. He was incredibly smart, like DFW a lot smarter than I.

Charlie understood how to find meaning in his life even though he was confronted daily with the same ironies and meaninglessness from modern society as DFW. No, being smart, or thinking about all the examples of the meaninglessness in our lives and jobs in not necessarily a sentence for depression and eventual suicide. There has to be meaning among the meaninglessness. We have to find it. Sometimes that takes a little faith, but even when we find meaning it has to be understood that this meaning will be under attack by meaninglessness as Niebuhr says. So where do you find meaning? I cannot answer that and I’m not sure that Charlie can answer it either. Faith can mean many things and it can also lead one to blindness, but in the end everything is built upon the faith in something and because of this meaninglessness is built into any metaphysical or religious thought. But we can’t address the mystery without some sort of metaphysics and beauty in the world is as unexplainable as the ugliness and the mundane.

Meaning in our lives is found wherever we can find beauty or maybe love. We can tear down all of this meaning with irony and, I suppose, that was why meaning could nosustain DFW. For Charlie Walters, equally aware of the ironies and meaninglessness of modern life, meaning was sustainable because he had faith in something beyond the meaninglessness, call it God, call it humanity, call it beauty or love. Charlie had faith in something and I don’t think DFW had faith in anything. I can understand why DFW didn’t either and that’s what scares me most.

Which brings me back to Niebuhr’s “every universe of meaning is under constant threat of meaninglessness,” or something like that (I don’t remember the exact quote, but it really was something either exactly like that or very close to it). It’s a tenuous hold on sanity for all of us. People like Charlie and Niebuhr shine a light on meaning and faith, while not asking any of us to be fanatics or to sacrifice our intelligence to fundamentalism. This faith or meaning is mysterious and our inability to describe it or defend it with reason is what makes it fallible. It is the same as saying there is not Truth or nothing we can point to that describes exactly the workings of the universe – or knowledge is not discovered, but made. Acknowledging this does not mean we are nihilists. We can still be pragmatists and still have a faith in a meaning of our lives whose outcome is not predetermined or known by a larger being or entity. The meaning can be in the process of living or even our acknowledgement of the beauty and order amongst the chaos or meaninglessness.

Perhas.

Alone

The older I get, the more solitary I become. I spend more time with my family, but even during this “quality time” I spend many a moment transfixed in my own thoughts. I am often startled back to attention by my wife’s words to my son, “Daddy isn’t listening honey, he’s thinking of something else again.” I’ll quickly try to cover for myself and reach back to the last words I can recall in the discussion, but usually she’s right. So, what am I thinking about and why? Usually, a lot about nothing.

We have been called social animals and it is true, we are. We are defined by our relationships and without them we would not exist. Our thoughts are meaningless without language to guide them and language is the tool that connects us with other humans. But, still, why do I feel so often that I am alone?

I am sitting in a coffee shop and I can feel my heart beating and I am reading of Adam Smith whose heart stopped beating almost a quarter of a millennium ago. As I look around observing everyone walking to and fro, some young, some old, I realize that in another quarter of a millennium all of our hearts will have also stopped beating a long long time ago.

What will that moment be like – when my heart stops beating? Will I know it at the time – that my heart will never make another beat. Will I know my last thought? Will I know when my body will no longer be seeking nourishment or eliminating its last bit of waste.

Of course, my genes will live on in another being whom I am aware of – love deeply – but it cannot be said I know his thoughts, nor will I live on in them. And, yet, I will – in his thoughts, but not my own which will have ceased at some point in the future.

Just as Adam Smith’s thoughts are still alive, my son will keep me alive in his thoughts as he goes through the rest of his life – stuck and immersed inside his own head monitoring his own heart beating. At least that is what I wish, should a catastrophe not fall and my son be taken from me before his time. His thoughts must live beyond my own, for my own sense of worth and being.

I see my father as he is in the last phase of his life. His brain still working, working well, but his thoughts not as cogent as they once were. He is part of me. He raised me. But, he does not have access to my thoughts. Nobody does. We are each alone even as we sit together and speak of baseball games and fishing trips.

My wife is social. She talks. She comes from a family of talkers. I mystify her. She mistakes my quietness for self-assuredness and wisdom. Many people do, but she is my wife. You would think she would know by now. Of course, in many ways she does, but she still thinks I am a thinker. I suppose I am smart. I mean I do think. I think a lot. But, I am not solving quadratic equations in my mind.

I read many other people’s thoughts, too. The ones they put down on paper. Some tell stories and we call them novels. They entertain me, but they also reveal to me the thoughts of the author. Brilliant men and woman, much smarter than I, thinking about what to put down on a paper for me to pick up to read, many of who’s hearts stopped beating a long time ago.

Other authors provide me with a different perspective on many problems in the world worth contemplating. Often when I decide to speak, I have this information readily at hand. People take this for me being smart – knowledgeable. Sometimes, when I contradict someone, they take me for a pompous fool. Indignant, they would say to themselves, if I could read their thoughts.

But, most of the time I cannot, because usually they don’t write them down. They walk away without saying anything and we both leave with only our own thoughts as we wonder what the other might be thinking. Judging each other as we rerun the conversation in our minds and continue it forward all inside our own minds, because our hearts are still beating and we can for as long as we can continue to nourish our bodies, breathing the air and taking in all of the creation.

We each may wonder about our souls, but our bodies and our brains are confined to this earth and one day our bodies will stop working and our thoughts will cease. Then we might find out about our souls, perhaps.

In some ways I am sure I am much larger than what is confined inside my body. What is it my dreams stand for otherwise? I am a part of the ecosystem that has its own metabolism and thoughts. Or is this just a delusion I use to deal with the loneliness of my existence and the knowledge that some day my thoughts will cease.

For that matter, is this why I write down my thoughts? Can I not bear the thought of the conversation ending? Do I delude myself into thinking that by having my thoughts written down others will keep them alive? Of course, this is a worthy goal. Who would not want to be part of the great conversations that live on with Aristotle, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and others? But, even if we can get our thoughts down for the next generations to read this will not keep our own brains alive. For what I wrote twenty years ago does not keep the twenty year old young man alive. Some day my thoughts will cease and my heart will stop beating. I am confined inside this body. We can share thoughts in conversation as long as I am still alive. But, some day this possibility will end.

And when it ends, it will end as lonely as it was when it all began, but much more abruptly. I was not aware of my first thought, but I will be aware of my last even as I am incapable of remembering it. My last thought will not be in conversation with another. It will be alone and I will not be able to share it just as I have not really been able to share with you what it is like to sit here alone and listen to my own heart beat. But, you know that anyway. Perhaps we don’t need to share that. We are each alone even if we are social. We will always be alone in our thoughts.

Shultz, Meloncholy and the Weather

I left the Twins cities at about 4 pm last Friday afternoon heading up to Jay Cooke State Park to meet a contingent of fools from Duluth to hike into one of the four (Silver Creek) remote backpack sites in the park along the St. Louis river. I was wearing a T-shirt when I left the muggy Twin Cities on the early October afternoon. When I stepped out of the car at the highway 210 exit to Jay Cooke to grab a burger with my co-rider Big Bill B., it was a balmy and chilly evening requiring a quick change into long underwear and several layers of clothing I wore through the remainder of the weekend camping trip with my cronies. I was still bundled up when I stepped out of my car on Sunday afternoon at my suburban sanctuary and was hit with a wave of heat and humidity from an unseasonably warm October afternoon.

On my ride into work this morning the Minnesota Public Radio weatherperson was stating that there is no normal, just variations of extremes. hmmm.

I was reading the paper this morning and stumbled across an article on the reaction of Charles Shultz's family to his latest biography portraying the Peanuts creator as a miserable and cantankerous man prone to fits of depression. The fact that Charles Shultz was prone to melancholy is not exactly a new insight into the famous cartoonist. He said as much on the 60 minutes interview I saw several years ago. Shultz used humor to assuage his melancholy and funny may make us laugh, but it is rarely happy. We laugh at absurdities and to overcome the hardships and suffering of life.

There is no normal, just variations of extremes. Look at the Colorado Rockies. They are far from the best team in baseball this year, but they are currently baseball's hottest team as they ride a streak of 17 wins out of the past 18 games. Despite the American league being the dominant league of the two, if the Rockies sweep the Diamondbacks the world series might be very competitive and exciting whether they play the favored Indians, Yankees or Red Socks. Hitters are usually either in a slump or on a tear and rarely are hitting their average over the season. Basketball players get hot or can't find their shot. Life isn't average or normal, it fluctuates between extremes.

When study statistics, the interesting pieces of data are always the anomalies. What lies within the Bell curve is never interesting. Our education system is all about getting more people to fall under that bell curve whether describing cognitive abilities, behavior, social interactions, or motor skills. Development must also fall into these trajectories based on statistical analysis and God forbid if someone finds themselves outside the range of their age group in any of the above categories. Early intervention is the catch phrase for prodding children back into the range of normal and keeping them from being in the extremes, at least on the lower end of the bell curve.

At the high range lies the gifted, and these become the prodigies who need their gifts nurtured, but often at the expense of the developments of their whole being. But, thats another story. My point here is the lower regions, because I am told my son is below the developmental average in fine motor skills and social interactions (recognition of boundaries, oppositional behavior, etc) for his age group. Obviously, I strive to be a good parent and I want what is best for my son. But, do we really know the optimum way for brains and humans to develop, and if we did, why would we assume that it would resemble anything close to normal or average. Ludwig Wittgenstein did not speak a word until he was four years old, according to his biographer Ray Monk. He would have been found to be developmentally delayed in cognitive functions by today's child psychologist, but without any outside intervention, he arguably developed into one of the greatest intellects western society has ever produced.

It all just makes me wonder what the hell is normal?

Fall, Grief and Despair

I still have potatoes, broccoli and kale left to harvest in the garden. Soon, I must begin applying compost and mulch to prepare the soil for next spring and plant the garden along with other fall plantings of flowers and herbs.

Fall always arrives in a rush and I, as usual, am unprepared for the wave of hopelessness that overcomes me. The tomatoes, peppers, beans, flowers, and the lush colors of the summer suddenly give way to browns and decay leaving one in a general state of despair. Luckily, this feeling is only temporary and can be assuaged through the hard work of preparing the garden in anticipation of the following spring when the plants will once again begin to sprout and grow to full bloom. There is also the work in the kitchen of preparing and storing the harvest from the summer and fall. It is a time to grow closer to family and community.

I, like many people living in suburban communities, feel a disconnect with my neighbors. I am treated as a sort of oddity by my neighbors. They arrive in amazement during the summer to witness the bounty I have managed to grow, but seem puzzled by my efforts and slightly taken aback in wonderment over my motivations. Am I a survivalist, hippie, malcontent, liberal, conservative? All these questions seem to be forming in the backs of their mind as they make comments on the amount of work and time my efforts must consume.

Fall is a time for reflection and with the wave of hopelessness that accompanies the end of the harvest, one can be overwhelmed with grief. I don’t see a need to run from this grief or feel a need to medicate it. Rather, I let it flow through my veins and contemplate the loss I am experiencing with the fall while being aware of loss and death in the world that surrounds me. Life and death go hand in hand and the experience of fall should prepare us for our own deaths and help us learn to live with our mortality.

As someone who follows and sometimes obsesses over political and global events, fall can amplify the hopelessness of our times. But, it is only by experiencing the despair and working through the misery that accompanies the life cycle that we can retain our sense of hope and put it to use to build a more sustainable world beginning with our own lives. But, we are a society that treats depression and grief as a disease rather than a perfectly natural response to our changing conditions. Rather than experience this grief we medicate and dull it so we can forget about it. But nothing we do can erase the fact that we are all mortal and our death stalks us every moment of our lives.

What many of us do not realize is that medicating and forgetting about our inevitable death may prolong our lives and keep the physical body alive, but it creates a spiritual emptiness. Most of us spend the majority of our waking moments in a trance that might as well be death for the experience it gives us. Our lives are not killing us, our lives are already dead. This is why we must experience grief, taste it and glorify it. That is what fall reminds me, anyway.

Sell out.

There was a term we used for bands that had gained commercial appeal by sacrificing their integrity. It was something we all realized was necessary to some degree, but some bands managed to pull it off more gracefully than others. For a local scene, if a band made the transition to a more national audience, there was no greater scorn than for a band that sold out.

What exactly does it mean to sell out?

In our society today, everything is measured by price. The only recognized value is price. Even our time has a price on it - time is money. Some people's time is worth more than others. My time is not worth quite as much as my bosses, but more than our office secretary. Yet, intuitively, we all know that some things in life our priceless. We sell our time to pursue some things that cannot be valued in a marketplace. Eight hours a day, five days a week buys us a few precious hours a week for such pursuits if we can make all of our payments necessary to maintain our lifestyles. Sometimes we dream about combining our priceless pursuits with our work. We think about making our hobbies into profit-making adventures. What would it take to profit off of our hobbies?

Selling out, of course.

This is the dilemma. As many jobs I have had, I have also had hobbies, dreams or goals. Each time my hobby has run up against the market, it has evaporated into a fine mist and blown away with the wind. For anything to have integrity and value that is long lasting it has to be motivated by something close to the heart and not by what can be obtained in the market.

This does not mean that anything that has sold for a price in the market is automatically crap and of no value. There are many examples of successful artists who have made a good living off of their art. However, their chosen craft would still be the same whether they made money or not off of it - for they are motivated by something that comes from within.

Right now I garden when I am not working. Someday I would like to farm, but this notion of value and markets has me worried. I can see what happens to farmers and the economics of agriculture. There is an incentive to get into organic farming because right now there is a large demand for organic products. Walmart, Target, Sam's club and many other retail stores are devoting several aisles to organic products. However, farmers should never forget that these outlets and buyers of their production are forever in search of selling at the lowest price to their consumers and generating profits for their shareholders. When agricultural products are in large supply, the market place will lower the price. Eventually, the market for organic products will bottom out and farmers will get lower and lower prices for their ever-increasing yields.

The temptation to produce one crop on a farm is huge. Even local organic farms selling their produce at Farmers Markets are in search of products that will sell. If a farmer just follows the seasons and sells only what is in season, they will always have competition from other area farms and the price for their products will be driven down. Everyone loves tomato season, but it is the farmer that brings the first tomatoes to market that gets the highest prices. Tomatoes in the fall are going to sell for much less. So, one farmer begins growing tomatoes in January in a greenhouse, so they have ripe tomatoes in May or June. Soon everyone has a greenhouse and is selling tomatoes in June. This is wonderful for tomato lovers, but works contrary to what the farmer seeks - high prices.

This is where farming for the love of farming comes in. The first priority of the gifted farmer is producing good food to eat, while taking care of the soil and land. The wonderful thing about farming and gardening is that cornucopias amounts of produce are generated during the season. It is an awesome task to put all the tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, garlic, onions, etc. to good use before it spoils and must be returned to the compost heap. The kitchen is filled with activity this time of the year - cooking, canning, freezing and fermenting. The same goes for dairy, meat and poultry production. What throws all this out of balance is when the farm is devoted to the market and yields of selected crops are emphasized over more diversified production using holistic practices. Of course, farms require land and land costs money that often necessitates debt owed to banks that only care about the profits of the farm. What this means for me is that I can't think of farming as a livelihood, but must instead devote my energies to a garden that produces vegetables and fruits for seasonal consumption of my family and friends. An expanding garden can never come at the expense of "selling out," or the next in my line of hobbies will dissipate into thin air.

What's the point?

I've talked about goals in a previous thread. I have had more jobs than I can count and someday I will list than all in a future thread. I've had many dreams and desires that I have pursued at various times and this question - What is the Point - usually ends up being the end of the pursuit. Yesterday I had that thought as I contemplated a new post for this blog.

It comes without warning usually and is usually accompanied by a wave of sadness. I am not prone to what our society refers to as depression. I don't believe in taking medication for chemical imbalances in the brain. For a number of reasons I don't find the rationale that depression is caused by some dysfunction of our brains convincing. I actually like getting sad. It makes me feel alive. It starts my brain searching and questioning. When I am sad, I blame it on my surroundings and I seek to change what I am doing. This is what leads me to asking the question that can never be answered - What is the point? The answer I come up with is always liberating - there is no point.

More Irony

I walked through a downtown park on the way to the Mississippi River to lay down for an lunch-time nap in the near the waters flowing from Lake Itasca through the Gulf of Mexico. On my way I was accosted by another homeless person (like any modern metropolis, St Paul is filled with homeless individuals whom the city is currently considering options to make invisible for the upcoming 2008 Republican Convention). He was holding a package of cards with hand drawn art upon them. An Eagle was depicted with the saying "Proud to be an American." written above it.

"Sir, Sir, Sir - Would you like to purchase a drawing? A card?, " he said as I strained my eyes to read the printing he held out to me.

"Sorry," I said, "No, thanks," as I walked on by and he moved on to the next lunch taker walking through the park.

I usually do purchase and hand out what is in my wallet to those who ask of me. Today, I walked by though as I was offended by the card. If he had drawn an Eagle casting a glance downward and written simply "Shame" above it, I would have reached for my wallet.

Delicious Irony

Over lunch hour I am walking through the park and I overhear this little snippet of a conversation between two middle-aged homeless men sitting on a park Bench.

"Its a long lonely road to the top."

"Uh-huh."

The Goal - what is it?

It was in summer basketball camp that the high school coach told us that none of us would ever be playing NBA basketball. I was defiant. I could not even start for my junior high team, but I was convinced through hard work I could be a professional basketball player. My more immediate goal was to play for the High School Varsity team – the Osseo Orioles. I attended every home game as a youngster. I would cheer on the Orange and black team and knew all the starting players. It seemed an honor to be able to wear those flashy warm-ups and all I desired was to one day be able to play on that team.

I shot baskets over and over again in our driveway and developed a potent outside shot. But, I was small and not very strong. I had not grown since I was in the fourth grade and by my ninth grade year I was an undersized and skinny guard. Going into to my sophomore year, it seemed like I would probably get cut once tryouts for the basketball team commenced. Suddenly, I began to grow but not upward. My feet and hands grew. I was 5’7” with a size 13 basketball shoe and I could not run down the court without falling down. I think I made the team, strictly because the coaches knew my father (he was 6’4”) and the looked at my feet and knew I had to grow into them eventually. My junior year I was 5’10” and going into my senior year I was 6’3” although still skinny weighing barely 135 lbs. I made the team and I could shoot and handle the ball decently. I was wearing the uniform, but I stopped having fun. Suddenly basketball was not very fun.

I started running distances my senior year. In my phy. ed. class my junior year, I ran a 4:57 mile in high-top basket ball shoes. I was skinny and all legs. I could run forever without tiring. My phy ed teacher was also the Cross-country coach. He told me if I trained all summer I would be the State Champion in the fall. I didn’t train over the summer, but since I was assured of a place on the roster for the varsity basketball team in the winter, I decided I might as well go out for the cross-country team as well and I had a blast. I wasn’t the state champ but I was all state, all conference, all regional and our team went to the state meet. I ran a 4:20 mile and a 9:26 2-mile in the spring and suddenly I my goal went from the NBA to the Olympics.

I ran cross-country in college and track, but I never really trained during the summers. I slowly put on weight and eventually my frame filled out with muscle that was not conducive to being carried over long distances. Besides, I started playing the guitar and decided I was going to be a rock star. Then, I was going to be a politician, then get my PhD.

Goals? What is the goal in life? One of the things I realized about sports and competition is that there is no ultimate goal. We strive to be a champion and, in the majority of cases, most of us will never get there. But, even the champions have to defend their title and eventually will be dethroned. So, we end all competitive pursuits with failure. That is our last memory. And, I knew I wanted more in life than failure. But, what is success?

Is there a goal in life? Raise a family, is that it? I really don’t know what it is. It might be to live the good life, but to live the good life we first have to decide what the good life is. I suppose that is the spot I am at right now. I am trying to define what the good life is, so I can make a goal worth striving for. In the meantime, it is just one day at a time, or on a more cynical note - as Celine says - Death on the Installment Plan.

The Thread

I am reading two books right now. One Dharma by Joseph Goldstein and The Revolt of the Elites by Chritopher Lasch.

I started this blog upon stumbling upon a friends blog called Pirsig Affliction. Its a long story, but I have come to be a fan of Matt's writing there on Philosophy and I missed not reading him for a couple of years after I stopped being subscribed to the MOQ.ORG mailing list. Anyway, he had a lot of posts and archives to go through, so I began printing off his threads at work and reading him at home as I became reacquainted with Richard Rorty and pragmatist philosopy. I don't know much about Philosophy but everything I have read from Matt seems to make a lot of sense to someone like myself with a bent toward the practical.

Well, funny thing is, no sooner than I finish catching up with Matt's thoughts, I begin the introduction to these two books which are completely dissimilar as far as topics. Let me quote from each beginning with One Dharma first.

A new mantra began emerging in my practice, and it was a very truthful response that had been plaguing me: "Who knows?" ..."Don't know mind," a phrase often used by Zen master Seung Sahn, enabled me to embrace a variety of perspectives, seeing the different views and methods as skillful means for liberation, rather than as the statements of absolute truths I was taking them to be. ..."Skillful means"is a phrase often found in Buddhist literature referring to the particular methods and practices used to help people free themselves from the bonds of ignorance. As skillful means we employ whatever is useful, whatever is truly helpful.

And from Revolt of the Elites:

The quest for certainty, which became an obsessive theme in modern thought when Descartes tried to ground philosophyin indubitable ppropositions, was misguided to begin with. As John Dewey pointed out, it distracted attention from the real business of philosophy, the attempt to arrive at "concrete judgments ...about ends and means in the regulation of practical behavior." In their pursuit of the absolute and immutable, philosophers took a disparaging view of the time-bound and contingent. In the world view of Western Phiosphy, knowing came to be split off from doing, theory from practice, the mind from body. ...The trouble in academia...derives not from the absence of secure foundations but the belief (shared it must be repeated by both parties of the debate) that in their absence the only possible outcome is a skepticism so deep that it becomes indistinguishable from nihilism. That this is not, in fact, the only possible outcome would have been abundantly clear to Dewey, and the revival of pragmatism as an object of historical and philosophical study--one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dismal picture--holds out some hope of a way out of the academic impasse.

I have always found that there is a thread weaving from the works of authors I read that resides somewhere in the pages - a truth revealed but remaining still unattainable. From Kundert to Goldstein to Lasch the thread remains as resolute as ever even as the subjects vary disparately.

Opinions over Facts

I have to admit to being slightly uncertain of my convictions. For the most part I am not sure of much. What gets my ire is when anyone proclaims something that they are certain of or dismisses something because it is preposterous and violates some notion they have about the ways of the world they are certain of.

In other words, the only thing I am certain of is that nothing is certain. Of course, that statement contradicts itself and the weight of certainty can be lifted from one’s shoulder simply by shrugging and saying, “Who the hell knows?”

I don’t want the polar ice caps to melt, but do I really know if man is causing global warming? Who the hell knows? I am in favor of some regulations reducing the amount of CO2 being put into the atmosphere because I don’t like the idea of burning fossil fuels and lowering the Earths storage of energy versus using the annual supply of solar energy and renewable resources. I read Buckminster Fuller as a youth in the 1970’s and he always made sense to me.

Here is where we are all confused and lost in this conundrum in my opinion, though. We expect someone else to solve the big problem facing our increasingly global economy. Science tells us that the Earth is warming and CO2 is the likely cause. There is a consensus. I don’t have the equipment or the know-how to verify if this is true or not, so I am just supposed to trust the experts. Fine, in this case I do. However, the experts in science have been wrong on the consensus view in the past. How do I know that this is not one of those cases?

In today’s world we are beholden to the experts. Our education does not teach us to verify the results of scientists, but rather to trust the experts and the work they produce. We are fed these results in the media and by journalists, whom we are supposed to trust can verify the results of the scientists. We are left with an elite group of experts making our decisions for us and arguments or debate usually is just one side spouting facts from one side at the opposing side. We leave for the experts to reach a consensus, then we scream at our opponent, “Science says!” How is this different than appealing to the Priests and the religious icons in the past to settle debate?

I think we often come at debate wrong. Many people think it is ignorant to begin with an opinion as opposed to having facts on hand. I disagree. I think one should begin first with an opinion that is based on ones experience and socially formed morality. For instance, I start most political arguments with a few basic opinions that reflect my morality.

1. We should have concern and compassion for our fellow human beings.
2. War is bad and should always be avoided in almost all instances.
3. We should preserve local resources and strive for a sustainable economy.
4. We share the Earth with other species and we should have some reverence for all species on Earth.
5. We should not take ourselves too seriously.
6. Love is universal and is the closest thing to an absolute humans can experience

There are others, but I begin with these opinions that are not backed up with scientific fact or religious ideology. However, when I meet my interlocutor, I must attempt to understand the opinions that inform his or her views. Once the point is reached where we each understand the others viewpoint, then we can reach for facts on hand supporting out views and work toward common understanding.

I once had a conservative friend in college. We used to go round and round on many issues. Over time we came an understanding. He believed that each person was only responsible for his or herself and his or her family. If everyone would just take care of his or herself, the world would take care of itself just fine. This view contradicted one of my fundamental starting points that we should have compassion and concern for the well-beings of others (#1). He believed that my views often led to people being worse off. For example, the welfare argument that giving a helping hand to someone promotes laziness. Well, we differed in our fundamental beliefs, but we had a starting point for a discussion. Neither of us was going to change the others view, but I did have to take into account the possibility that my compassion could lead to dire outcomes. I had to ask the question “What if I am wrong?” This is what leads to healthy discussions. If all we have is facts at our disposal when we go into a discussion and repeat the thoughts and ideas of experts with the facts they have provided us, we may be well-informed but we cannot have a discussion on important issues that will lead to productive results.

So, I think we should value opinions over facts. That’s my opinion at least