Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Evil

  • Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains

    Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains

    As the world writhes in the grip of rapidly increasing extremism and greed, it would be well to imagine what a better world would look like.

    A peaceful but profound revolution is needed in the way society is organised to achieve the highest possible degree of equality.

    It is sad to witness the behavior of the ruling US political class, and it would be unfair to blame the appalling shift in emphasis on the President alone. Primarily one must blame the voters, although once in, it is difficult to dislodge a rogue president, especially when his own party has a majority in both Houses.

    Behind Trump stand men and women equal or worse, ready and no doubt willing to take his place as age withers him. The talk is of aggression and power: we shall take what we want from the rest of the world whether you like it or not. Their playbook is depressingly familiar.

    Not satisfied with inflicting violence on foreign sovereign states, the ruling elite is also intent on coercing and subduing its own people. Those who dissent are swiftly dealt with by branches of the state which ought to be separate and impartial, but which are quickly becoming part of the political machine. How many times in history have we seen the same moves played out. Fear is rampant and the state has its boot on the face of the people.

    ICE and the National Guard send chilling reminders of the jackboots which paraded roughshod over people in another century. Killings are no longer to be investigated – might is right. The elite is right and woe betide anyone who gets in the way.

    The US has been riding down this brutal road for a while. Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary rendition, torture and murder come to mind. Now the ruling elite seems to be turning on its own people.

    Leaders in Europe and elsewhere refuse to call a spade a spade. Refuse to express their disgust and distaste for what is happening in the US. So far, no action is being taken on the threats to Greenland and elsewhere, and it is difficult to see much that can be done if the military juggernaut and its violent drivers are determined to invade.

    But it is certainly time to cut dependence on the US. Time to cease being yes men. Time to stand up for decency against greed, violence and hypocrisy.

    Time to accept that what is happening is inherently evil, and that such evil is by no means new. And by no means an American monopoly. What country in the past has not relied on violence to subdue both its own population and that of its neighbours. What country has not invaded, enslaved, stolen. Murdered.

    And so I come to the point of my post once again – the need for draconian reform of human society. Everywhere. The need to make sure that people like Trump cannot rule over us.

    The need to make sure that no one can: that we have rules but no rulers. I am a Utopian but it does no harm to dream.

    So here are a few well rehearsed ideas on egalitarianism. Which will, of course, never see the light of day.

    Tax Reform

    Establish global high progressive wealth and income taxes, close tax loopholes, shut tax havens. Abolish inheritance to prevent the inter-generational concentration of wealth. Abolish “wealth mountains”.

    Asset and Resource Redistribution

    Abolish land ownership to ensure that all individuals have equal access to essential resources and opportunities; provide fair use rather than ownership. Establish a Universal Basic Income to cover basic needs and Universal Basic Services including housing, education, food and healthcare.


    Political Reform

    Abolish elitism, elite institutions and the political class to give equal participation to all citizens. Move to proportional representation. Moving decision-making power away from central “corridors of power” toward local and regional bodies. Expose and outlaw vested interests. Establish and enforce credible legal sanctions for corruption.


    Legal Reform

    Abolish all forms of legal immunity for elites and ensure every human has access to the same quality of legal defense and due process.

    Environmental Reform

    Treat natural resources and the atmosphere as a “global commons” – a paradigm shift away from national sovereignty and private ownership toward collective stewardship and equitable distribution.


    Social Reform

    Enforce anti-discrimination laws that dismantle hierarchies based on race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation.


    Workplace Reform

    Mandate the transition of corporations into worker-owned cooperatives where employees have an equal vote in management and profit-sharing.


    Technological Reform

    Ensure that life-saving innovations and AI advancements are open-source and publicly owned to prevent a “digital divide” in human capability.


    Relational Reform

    Shift societal norms away from status-seeking and meritocratic elitism toward a culture of mutual respect, co-operation and horizontal social relations.

    Environment

    Encourage a severe reduction in the world population. Give rights to animals and prevent their use as food. Stop the concretisation of land and restore a nature based landscape. Stop pollution.


  • Extremism

    Extremism

    If there can be said to be a “root” of evil look no further than extremism. 

    Here are a few useful synonyms:

    Radicalism
    Fanaticism
    Ultraism
    Intolerance
    Zealotry
    Dogmatism

    If there can be said to be a “hell” then it is certain that we humans create it.

    Here a few antonyms:

    Moderation
    Centrism
    Compromise
    Tolerance
    Nuance

    I wonder whether extremism or its opposite would make for a more pleasant environment?

    Extreme behaviour can perhaps be linked to our unfortunate evolution which has led to the desire to survive, usually by conquest and domination. Soon after the emergence of the first animal, the tooth and claw evolved. From there it was a short and seemingly inevitable step to the concentration camp, the atom bomb, ethnic cleansing and all the other fun of the human fair.

    Tragically we seem ever closer to the ability to create a genuine utopia – the elimination of so much of what has made animal life unbearable over the many millennia of existence on this planet. Thanks to science we no longer have to rely on manna – we have the ability but apparently not the desire or determination to eliminate hunger. It is much the same with pain – in the developed world, anaesthetics and drugs can relieve us of the necessity of suffering.  Not so in the poorer quarters of the planet – sharing seems unaligned with our inherited behaviour.

    We have begun to achieve feats only ever dreamed of by the alchemist – only recently some base element was transmuted briefly into gold. Unlimited free energy surrounds us to do our bidding. Even life itself may eventually be prolonged indefinitely.

    And yet as a species we still cling to ways of behaviour bred into us and our very distant ancestors over billions of years. The worship of self, the desire to accumulate “matter” and keep it all for ourselves, despite the increasing clarity that matter is for all intents and purposes infinite. As of course is energy.

    There is a social hierarchy in all animals it seems.  Few of them seem to lead to peaceful co-existence either inter-se or across different herds, tribes and species.  War and violence have dominated human history – the savage, far from being noble, was simply a less technically developed version of our current selves.

    Weapons have existed since the very beginning of our existence, and with them  the same breed of brutal strongman we see today. Women seem rather better behaved and nicer people – the alpha female seems rare.

    Only the strongest and toughest tend to get ahead in our world.  The mentally and physically tough, those with the will to succeed at all costs. And in general their aim is self aggrandisement and domination, extremism and a determination to insist that they and only they are “right”.

    I’m sure I have ignored counter examples, but they seem few and far between. FDR in the 1930s seemed well motivated, but such exceptions are vanishingly rare. And in any event I don’t know enough about the man or the era.

    In general it is the more moderate and tolerant human who seems to want what is good for all, but such people don’t normally seem to possess the desire to climb the greasy pole. Hardly surprising, since climbing to the top inevitably involves dedicated aggression and single minded concern for self above others.

    Is there any answer to our plight? Should there be? Is there anything to be done?

    My thought is that only very gradual change could ever work and that it would have to be voluntary.

    Any sudden, dramatic and extreme change always brings out the worst in our species.

    Was Marx a well meaning cove? Or just another flawed human with no real desire to heal? Whatever he was, no good has flowed from his works. He spawned some of the worst monsters and psychopaths in history.

    What good can ever come from violent revolution?

    There have been exceptionally decent people who have popped up throughout history, offering some rather less offensive solutions.  But few have listened to them, especially the monsters.

    And of those who did listen, some created monstrosity and beastliness wholly out of line with the good intentions of the original idea.

    It is a sad paradox that far from creating a better world, religion has thrown up extremist monsters just as intent on conquest, wealth and domination as their secular counterparts.

    Sad that we humans have not listened to the good words of the well meaning folk who came up with the original thoughts. Tragic that such “faith” has been used to support war and terrorism rather than peace or harmony.

    From the insane Christian right to the equally unbalanced madness of the other Abrahamic faiths, intolerance and violence make a mockery of the basic decency the founders envisaged.

    Has any other religion fared any better? I’m not sure.

    We don’t need it. Any of it. All we need is to change our own behaviour and renounce our genetic inheritance.

    Will it ever happen? I think it could – slowly and over time if more and more of us caught up with the undeniable fact that violence and greed do not bring anything we should or could want.

    Easy to talk. Words are cheap. But it must inevitably be a personal choice to “smite the mote”.   I suspect that a better society can only emerge if each of us concentrates on getting his own life in order rather than bemoaning the acts of insanity perpetrated by others. 

    What drives the monster? Are we ourselves monsters in the making, given the right circumstances? Highly probably.

    Regrettably the solution is as extreme and radical as all the abhorrent behaviour I have described: just drop it. Stop. Down tools.  Turn our own lives around for the better. Use passive resistance.

    Watch our own thoughts like a hawk. Put an end to our own insecurities and greed and fear. Refuse to compete – instead we should cooperate and ignore the ghastly throat cutting capitalists.

    Feed the poor and hungry, treat the sick. House people properly, educate them well.  Ignore our own fears and abandon our seemingly inbuilt desire to destroy others in an insane drive for the material.

    Will it ever happen? Well it certainly could – the way is clear enough. The means are there, the intelligence, the technology, the resources. The ideas, the blueprints.

    I hope a silent, slow and non-violent revolution comes about.  But as I have learnt over my many decades in the financial markets, prediction is futile. Perhaps we will improve, perhaps we won’t.

    There again it would be little real surprise were we to be wiped out by some catastrophe, man made or otherwise.

    For my own peace of mind, I choose not to worry about it.

  • I’m off to Narnia

    I’m off to Narnia

    When it comes to parallel universes, it does not get much better than Narnia. Where better to escape the troubles of a world which at times feel overwhelming.

    The desire to transcend to a realm of peace, goodness and beauty has been paramount in our minds since we first acquired the double-edged sword of consciousness. Who does not seek an escape from pain, uncertainty and eventual death?

    For me, Narnia always has been and always will be a place where I feel at home, a place I feel wholly and completely at peace.  Those enchanting tales fill me with joy and as with all the best stories, when I read them, I almost feel I am there.

    There is no travel agency for those who want to make the trip and besides, you need an invitation. For those lucky enough to be summoned, the journey is strange, and the means of travel varied and magical.

    The first visitors witnessed the very creation of that world, genesis itself. And this first journey to Narnia was one of the most memorable.

    In the Chronicles of Narnia, we learn that time and space are malleable, infinite, unfixed. All is possible, everything exists somewhere in a multiverse, a place of infinite possibility. These first visitors were children form Edwardian London and their portal was a wood between the worlds. A lush, sleepy sylvan setting, where each of the woodland pools led to a different world, a different universe. That wood itself was very special and somewhere you feel you wouldn’t mind resting awhile.

    The children (Polly and Digory) had the misfortune to awaken evil in one of the worlds they visited and introduced it into Narnia at the very dawn of time. They brought Queen Jadis form the land of Charn, where she had used the Deplorable Word to destroy her own universe and now looked for another realm to spread her wickedness.

    Narnia is created by the Word of Aslan. The logos. That world is sung into existence and as the music continues, black waters are calmed, and dawn arrives. The song conjures all into being as trees and rivers, hills and mountains and the talking creatures themselves are fashioned by the beauty of that voice, called into existence. From nothing came everything. From empty blackness the Word called matter and energy to birth yet another world into the infinity of the multiverse.

    It was all there in this new land. Evil, temptation, joy and sadness. Good and bad. But it was a special place, one where you somehow knew the bad was a mere test and that good things would surely arrive, if only you had the right intentions and avoided temptation.

    It was a land in which there was guidance, a clear code of behaviour. A land where somehow one has the feeling that the right path is obvious, and not so very difficult to follow.  Where it is simple to make the right choices and one is glad to do so.

    For some lucky children in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, the portal is a magical wardrobe built from a tree whose seed was brought from that fabled land by an earlier generation. Staying with a kindly old professor deep in rural England, the children brush past fur coats and emerge in a land of snow and ice where the spirits of trees and rivers roam the land. And where talking animals greatly outnumber humans.

    I can still feel the sense of wonder when my primary school teacher read the book to us in class back in the early 1960s. I was hooked at the first sitting and am still entranced by Lucy and Mr Tumnus, by Aslan and the Beavers. I still shudder at the White Witch, who condemned the beautiful land of Narnia to eternal winter.

    A couple of later visitors jumped through a picture of a Narnian sailing ship, hanging on a bedroom wall, and found themselves swimming in a foreign sea nearby to the Dawn Treader, the royal Yacht of King Caspian of Narnia. Those lucky children joined on a quest to find the seven lost Lords of Narnia. It is here that you will meet Reepicheep, the valiant talking mouse who is in search of Aslan’s land.

    In one adventure, the search for the Silver Chair, two children escaped their miserable school through a gateway in the wall and found themselves on a high clifftop in the land of Narnia’s creator. From whence they were gently blown towards Narnia itself, far out over the seas. Their adventure with Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, in search of lost Prince Rillian, is perhaps the most captivating of all the Narnian Chronicles. The giants of Harfang want to eat the children as part of their Autumns Feast, while the Lady of the Green Kirtle wants to enslave them in her claustrophobic underground kingdom, where she holds the Narnian Prince under an evil enchantment.

    Death itself might call you to this land of milk and honey, as it did to the children who were transported from the scene of a train crash.  These children joined others in the Last Battle, the Narnian day of judgement, where the chosen ran on and ever on joyfully into ever higher heavens, and the undeserving met their end in the destruction of Narnia at the end of its days.

    Is Narnia a land where all is good, and evil has ceased to exist? Not quite, for Narnia is a testing ground for those who seek an even better place.

    But what evil there is in this far away world is not of the visceral, threatening sort we find in our own universe. Somehow, even the wickedest of White Witches is manageable. Somehow, we know that the serpents and giants, the tyrants and the bad dreams are manageable here and can be conquered by a little faith and some determination to do the right thing.

    In Narnia we can see the whole span of a universe’s history from creation to eventual destruction, but with the comforting knowledge that all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

    Narnia is a place where only good can triumph and where evil may last a while but is never too terrifying. It is a country with a protector, an omniscient and omnipotent creator who will make sure that all will go well in the end. And when the time comes for that world to end, he will open the doors to better and greater paradises.

    It is true that you must make the grade in Narnia. At the end of days, the great Lion stands by a gateway and those who have lead lives of evil are sent off to a realm of darkness and destruction. Only those who have behaved well are ushered through to light and Eden.

    But it is difficult to be a monster in Narnia. It is a land which seems to make the choice to act well so obvious and easy. A realm where the division between good and evil is so clear and the right path so easy to tread.

    It is a world where doing right and making noble decisions seem to be the default option; where evil and taking the wrong path seem so obvious and so easy to avoid.

    There is so much beauty and goodness in this charmed land that a brief (even if imaginary) visit has changed the lives of many who have been lucky enough to be called there.

    Narnia is a country I have visited so very often in my mind and a place I suspect I will visit again and again as the years roll by.

    I can imagine a wide range of opinions on hearing my words. Some will be uncomfortable with the religious themes of which I remained blissfully unaware in childhood. Some will be irritated by the magical thinking, the apparent belief that such places can or do exist.

    But the imagination is a surprising tool. Consciousness is a great and powerful creator. In a very real sense, we are what we think, and we think our world into being. Our brains are indeed governed by the physical laws of the universe in which we happen to live, but our imaginations are not.  We have emerged from mere matter but our whole is so much more than our parts.

    Could we but see it, Narnia is not an inaccessible and imaginary world open by invitation only. We may not have Dryads and Nyads walking the earth, we may not be able to converse with talking Fauns and Beavers but we are in possession nonetheless of a miraculous universe.

    We are learning each day how to re-arrange matter in previously unthought of combinations to make better materials for our use. Medicine and food production continue to improve. Disease could one day be a thing of the past. Mental and physical disability will be overcome.  Death itself may be vanquished.

    All we need to do is to make our world one where, like in Narnia, the right path is so easy to follow. And where evil is as easily vanquished.

  • Does Evil Exist?

    Does Evil Exist?

    In the absence of conscious beings with free will, morality can not exist.  Picture a universe of infinite violence such as our own with no sentient life.  Is the extreme destruction of a super nova evil? Is a tsunami evil, or an earthquake? Surely not.

    Now assume a universe with consciousness and beings able to cause acts of violence and cruelty.

    Destruction of itself can not, presumably, be deemed evil (even if caused by sentient beings) unless other sentient beings suffer. And even then intent must be shown. Accidental destruction causing suffering can not be evil. There must have been an intent to cause suffering. Or callous carelessness without regard to the consequences.

    We know that consciousness exists even if we do not understand what it is. I think, therefore I am.

    We do not know whether free will exists. Without free will there can be no intent to cause harm and suffering. Nor indeed to cause good or happiness.

    But we must act as if free will does exist. We must believe free will exists. Not to do so makes all our thoughts, words and deeds pointless.

    So on those assumptions does evil exist? Does good exist? Are there any moral imperatives or are we free to interpret morality as we desire?

    I argue very strongly that moral imperatives do exist in a universe with sentience and free will.

    The most important moral imperative is to abolish suffering. To refrain from causing suffering to conscious beings. I can not, will not accept, as I have seen argued recently, that good and evil are subject to change and interpretation by different societies in different ages.

    This has absolutely nothing to do with a belief or disbelief in a deity. We do not need a deity to explain to us what suffering is and to tell us it is wrong.

    And please, please do not tell me that society of any age or geography genuinely believed that the barbarity handed out to their fellow men was justified. Was not “evil”. If they did so believe then very clearly they were wrong. Good and evil do very obviously exist in our universe and it is our duty to espouse the former and eschew the latter.

    We are not robots, surely? And on that assumption our duty is to prevent suffering.

    I recently sang in a Passion by the contemporary English composer Howard Goodall.

    The lyrics were profound (even if the music was not destined to become one of my personal favorites).

    In his Lamentations are found the words of William Wilberforce, spoken in the House of Commons on 18th April 1791, “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know”.

    Please do not tell me that among sentient beings with free will, morals are relative.

  • Processed for the Slaughterhouse.

    Processed for the Slaughterhouse.

    In the featured image, Leni Riefenstahl and a camera crew stand in front of Hitler’s car during the 1934 rally in Nuremberg.  Note the eerie order in the street, the crowd carefully controlled in the gutters to express their awe of the military behemoth.

    Earlier, in 1927, Fritz Lang had produced the unsettling film  Metropolis, where wealthy industrialists and business magnates and their top employees reign from high-rise towers, while underground-dwelling workers toil to operate the great machines that power the city.  And lo, a few years later……

    It struck me today while travelling from Zurich to London by air, that the way our society is now organised lays us wide open to dystopia in the not too distant future.

    Airports, airplanes and their employees seem to be closely related to the prison services.  The secret police. We are dehumanized and humiliated while in their clutches. We are frogmarched, searched  and sometimes seized and stripped. We become numbers; lumps of meat. Our society has created monsters in the wings waiting to enchain and enslave us when commanded so to do by the Hitler or Stalin of the modern age.

    Faceless men and woman roam at will with guns.  They keep us in line, push us shuffling towards what today might laughingly be called “transport” but could tomorrow so easily become the gas chamber.  Hundreds if not thousands of faceless officials are in support of those toting guns. Humor is strictly discouraged and a minor infraction of some petty rule will have you marched, arm twisted behind your back, to a dark guardroom and interrogation.

    If you attempt modern air travel, you will so easily understand why Hitler’s Germany was run by  clerks. Ordinary people who became institutionalized into monsters.  The station masters and train guards who transported the victims to the camps. The police who rounded up Jews and dissidents. The ordinary people, you and me, our neighbors who gave rise to the phrase “the banality of evil”: we are turning ourselves into Hitler’s railway clerks.  His Blackshirts. His Gestapo.

    The descent into totalitarianism is made so easy by modern technology.  What would Hitler have given for CCTV.  For a digitised society where our every move can be traced and tracked and minuted by automated software and replayed at whim whenever we are caught in some infidelity towards the hydra state.

    Am I exaggerating? Am I just feeling particularly down after a hateful day? I think not. The monolith I witnessed today could so easily be pressed into more sinister service. The common response of the common man after the Second World War was that there was nothing he could have done to stop the terror.

    And how right was that common man. Picture a group of strong men in control of modern media, the army, transport, banking. Our societies are so centralized, our freedoms so restricted that a gang of half determined thugs could walk all over us and we, the common men, could do nothing to resist them.

    Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

  • Communist Manifesto vs Mein Kampf

    Communist Manifesto vs Mein Kampf

    In today’s Guardian, some dear lady says that she gives the Communist Manifesto out as a gift.  Presumably to young nieces and nephews, to educate them in the ways of righteousness.

    In the comments section I suggested she may just as well as hand out copies of Mein Kampf.

    Unsurprisingly (we are talking the Guardian after all!) my comment created an uproar for and against and ended up by getting deleted.

    The Communist Manifesto calls for “forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions”.  The ideas of Engels and Marx have brought more death and misery on the world than any other barbarity in history. Communism with a small c was advocated by the historical Jesus but it may be noted by the more canny amongst us that poor old JC did not suggest armed revolt or the brutal death of untold millions.

    I am all for a better and fairer society, achieved slowly and using democratic and peaceable means.  The communist manifesto ushered in a dystopia of gargantuan and horrific proportions, dwarfing the evil works of Hitler, another 20th Century madman, in terms of eventual body count.

    The communist manifesto promotes the slaughter of the wealthy, the capitalists and the bourgeois – and didn’t they do well? From Stalin and the Kulaks, to Mao and the intellectuals. From Pol Pot to the despots of Eastern Europe. Mass slaughter in the name of communism, which equated not to a better world for all, but a life of luxury and power for a political class who committed every evil known to man and were the equal of every awful tyrant humanity has ever known.

    And we are still suffering from the aftermath, with Mr Putin and his cronies carrying on the great example of his forebears.

    No excuse can be made for Hitler and Mein Kampf. A hideous, barbaric book and a hideous, twisted, vile, evil human being.

    But I consider the Communist Manifesto of a work of evil as shocking as that of Mein Kampf.  To promote revolution and death is an atrocity. Hitler both promoted and carried out atrocity. Marx and Engels may not themselves have committed atrocity but they were certainly responsible for it.

  • The Existence of Evil

    The Existence of Evil

    Evil cannot exist without consciousness and free will.

    Imagine a universe without consciousness. Our own universe by way of example but with no life forms with the gift of consciousness. There would be great violence of course: supernovae, asteroids pummeling planets, volcanoes, tsunamis….and Big Bangs.

    But none of that would affect any “body”. None of that violence would be evil since evil must surely show intentionality. And if there were no conscious entity in the universe there could be no intentionality.  No one who deliberately does horrible things to another. And inert matter can not perpetrate or suffer an evil act: however violent a physical reaction may be, if it has no intention of causing harm to a conscious entity which can experience that harm, then evil can not occur.

    Equally there must be conscious beings whose subjective experiences are those of pain and suffering, physical or mental, for evil to exist.  There must surely exist a victim, a subject for an evil to act upon..

    The question becomes a great deal more complex when one factors in the existence (or not) of free will.

    Leaving aside the endless religious nonsense which has clouded the subject for millennia, the question of free will boils down, ultimately, to physics.

    Most physicists are determinists of one sort of another.  Steven Hawkins was convinced humanity are mere robots with no free will. Chemical scum as another enthusiastic optimist called us.

    Strict determinism means that physical cause and effect govern everything from the orbit of the earth round the sun to wars and human history. Using such laws, physicists believe they have traced back our origins back to the singularity of the big bang and forward to the big whimper, the petering out of energy and matter. Atom hits atom in endless Newtonian cause and effect and in such a world free will is an illusion.

    We may believe we have decided to cosh our neighbour over the head with a steel mace but in fact we had no choice in the matter.  Our atoms did it.

    To add to the confusion many physicists also claim that time is an illusion. Without time there can be no change. Without change what evil act or thought could arise?

    So there you have it. Or rather you don’t. The existence of evil is not a simple question..