My name is Dan Rogger and this is my blog (you can find out more about me at my About me page of my main web site). It aims to present my beliefs on how to live contemporary life in a philosophical way (or how I have tried to confront some of the challenges I face on an everyday basis). Every other week I aim to write a short piece on a topic of note from the weeks gone by.
The below are letters to my generation. They are, I hope, a collection of notes that explore the idea of a social philosophy - a philosophy anchored in the idea that society is the fundamental unit of philosophical analysis. Please send your thoughts and replies to drogger@worldbank.org.
I opened the door with quiet anticipation. It creaked slightly on its hinges. There. A memory crystallized, with the dust moving slowly through the mellow shafts of sunlight.
The room was as I remembered it. Or mostly so. The plain desk without a chair. The bed nestled against the wardrobe hindering its use. And little else.
Ten years ago, almost to the day, I had left this room and gone home. The year away from home. The sadness forgotten; the warm glow of satisfaction remembered. The years since felt long and it was warming to be back here.
I stepped in and could taste the mustiness I always remembered. My wife would be coming from reception at any moment, so I took the opportunity to remember. The showers to relieve the heat. The many happy moments, unburdened by responsibility. The freedom of my youth.
My mind wandered over the last few days of that trip. The terrible sickness I had always told people of. The two days and nights where my diary was blank. The nausea. I could feel it coming on now. As the memory of those two days came flooding back.
The sweat. The movement from consciousness and back. The figure. That terrible moment. That choice. Locked away as part of the deal. I felt a heaviness building with every recollection.
And then I sensed that presence that would make it all real. I couldn't be remembering right. It had been the fever. Or a terrible dream. Or something unreal. So I turned to the corner behind the door, where I felt him.
He was there. The collection of half-memories solidified. It was as I remembered.
Cloaked in black and smaller than most men, Death is a presence rather than a figure. He is a coldness, an unknowing. The desire to run could not become whole, and stayed as fear. So I stood in front of him; him staring back at me.
I remembered. Our first meeting flowed back to me with a constance I felt nowhere else.
"You came back, as you promised." His voice was weak, but with a clarity of purpose. I was empty. "You have brought what you said you would."
Only then did I think of Gemma. My God. No. I began to fill. My desperation mixed with hate. What had I done? I was a child, inexperienced, stupid. How can I have brought her here, to this?
Death's stare was constant. He spoke softly. "Be at peace."
I had been so sick. I had never felt like that. On the second night I had woken with Death nearby. I should have gone to the hospital the day before but had been too weak. I was alone. Death had become my only companion.
He had had a calmness in his presence. A certainty. His was the only sure profession. His purpose was clear to him, and his place in the world certain.
He had approached me with his hand outstretched, ready to clasp mine. He seemed to have a purity about him. That purity. There was something about it that I could not recognise. Something that had made me uncomfortable.
It was that sense that gave me enough strength to mutter three words. "Deal with me." He stopped his reach. I had felt some new drops of life flow into me.
"What do you offer?" I lay there for some time. "My soul," and the only thing I could think of in my foolish youth, "and another."
"I collect all souls," he replied, "in time." I searched for an answer, and found he had given it to me as carefully as he felt he could. "Then I will give you their time."
He seemed to bristle. "I can only give you these terms. For a decade I will leave you in peace. After that time you will return here; you will bring a soul. You must cherish this soul as if it were your own."
"Once I leave this room you will not have memory of our meeting, but your destiny will be wrapped in the bond you make here. There is nothing but these terms. The soul you bring must have decades to live, so you trade their future for your present."
I paused to search inside myself. In the fondness of youth we do not understand what it is to truly love another as we are taught to love ourselves. I found peace in myself and Death melted as I raised my hand to his.
All this I had forgotten. All this had made up who I had been since then. I could not bear to think that this had motivated my time with Gemma. I could not believe that my life had been directed at this.
I quivered. Death motioned for me to sit down. I looked at him. There was nothing but certainty in his presence.
I slowly fell on to the bed, my shoulders hunched and my eyes filling with water. I must have looked as if hollow.
My thoughts turned to Gemma. She was beauty defined for me. I thought of the first time we met, at a picnic hosted by a friend. Her smile and the sun were how I remember that day. I thought of the day we were married and how we held each other as man and wife. I could feel her hand in mine and her head on my shoulder.
"I just didn't know," I stopped to choke back the tears. "I didn't know what I was doing. Please."
Death repeated, "Be at peace."
I thought of how Gemma and I held each other as we watched a movie on the couch, or how we loved to go swimming in the summer. I thought of our arguments. How she had taught me so much.
What would her family do when they heard? I could see her mother now, falling into her father's arms and he with the quiver of his lips Gemma had inherited. I saw my own parents and my sister, and I began to cry.
Death's stare fixed me through my tears and he blurred. I placed my head into my hands and wiped my eyes with my palms. He was still blurred.
"Whoever enjoys a moment of love," Death said softly, "has lived."
Somehow this gave me a little balance and I could feel my breath settle. I sat searching for something that would give me a grasp on the world I had created. I looked up at Death as he stared down at me.
"That love is our greatest window into life."
I stared into the figure that stood in front of me. I looked into his form and began to focus. I searched deeper and deeper into that form and its purity. The unease that purity had stirred in me ten years ago began to return.
I began to think about my own end and how it would drift like a whisper into that formless purity. This began to haunt me once again but I clutched onto my unease to steady my composure.
"I think back to the first time we met," I began to echo my thoughts to Death, "and think of who I was then." "I was scared of losing myself." "Then I think of how much I have changed since then, and," I almost breathed in a moment of relief, "and I realise how much Gemma has been a part of that." "In so many respects, she has become a part of who I am."
Death bristled at this, almost seeming excited. "Then I am gaining a mosaic of your two souls; a beautiful idea."
This caused me to come close to tears again. And I thought of our parents. I thought of all they had done to define who I was. I thought of my sister and all we'd shared.
I composed myself a little, hoping Gemma would never come to join us. "I am a mosaic of more than two souls," I said, fixing my stare with Deaths. "I may be more than you are expecting." My thinking was flowing into my words.
Death stood back for a moment, my words seeming to affect him. I searched his expression for some sense of how. His eyes broke with mine and looked at the floor.
I took myself back into my thoughts to understand what was affecting him. His cracked lips had opened slightly and his dark eyes sat unblinking. I thought of all those who had shaped me. I thought of my father teaching me to saw, and how he'd let me make mistakes on a project he was working on just so he could say we'd made it together. I thought of how he'd disciplined us when we did things he didn't approve of. Thinking of this made me turn to Mum, who would hold us after Dad had gotten angry. I thought of all the advice she had given me as the years had turned, and how that advice had made me who I was. It felt as if they were with me now.
Then there was my sister who would boss my friends and I around all summer, only to come running for protection when she was scared. I thought of all the feelings this had given me, and how I always wanted to protect her from harm. I thought of how, many years later, I had felt it ever more strongly for Gemma.
My friends. How much mayhem we had caused as kids, and how they had been there since then. Their advice, their opinions, their ideas, all now mingled with who I was.
"It's not my life that is flashing before my eyes," Death looked at me, "but all those who make me up." Death's eyes widened. All those he had taken. It had always been so clear. Seemingly simple. This made things looked blurred. Look different.
The two of us waited, both thinking, hoping. To see Death vulnerable implied a chance. For Death, there had never been anything but certainty. There was always a purpose. That must be achievable again.
Then I thought of Gemma and her parents. She hadn't just been changed by them. She had changed them. Her father, it was said, had become a family man when Gemma had been born. 'The little girl that had melted her father's heart' was what her mother said she was.
Gemma was like that. She had made little changes in so many people. Her family was just the start. I and they were just the strongest examples of her impact. There were pieces of Gemma in so many people I knew. I had just never really thought of it until that moment.
"You cannot ..." Death interrupted me, "I know." He stepped softly over to the bed and sat down. His intent stare was now fixed upon the floor.
I could feel his coldness next to me against the warmth of the sunshine coming through the windows.
"You cannot," I persisted, "take Gemma's soul by taking her life." "She is part of me, her father, her mother, and all those she has ever touched. The changes she inspires ripple through her community."
Death shuddered. The suggestion that a person could be more than just an individual, more than just a soul, shook him. His purpose, his meaning, was based on the singularity of life. If a person lived on through all others, then ... He tried to shake the thought, visibly shaking. What had he done? What was his purpose if this was true? He sat in still thought as the moments passed.
After a long pause Death looked up at me. "You are right. And I have failed." Death looked into my eyes for a few moments. "You are free." His body seemed to shrink as mine had done only minutes before. He stared into the ground.
Gemma stepped into the room. She was visibly nervous from the sight of a figure that had an aura such as Death's sitting by me. She looked at me in confusion. "You are free? From what?"
Death looked up at her. With his certainty of purpose shaken, he was a shadow of his former self. "She does have a beautiful soul, whatever that might mean."
Gemma looked at me almost alarmed now. I stood up, realising I must get her home and safe immediately. I took her arm to leave and she asked, "What is going on?"
"Please trust me. We must go." She put her hand on mine and nodded. "Can we not help this man at all?" Gemma said softly as we turned. I paused. The humanity of the question gave me a sense of protection from the harm I feared.
"We knew each other once," I said to her, "and he feels he has lost much of the reason that brought us together. Much of the reason for doing what he does."
Gemma squeezed my hand and looked at Death. "We can only ever really see ourselves in others," she addressed him, "and a world without you would, I'm sure, be a poorer one. Whatever you do, if it gives society and the people you effect meaning, then be proud of that contribution."
Death looked at her and raised his brow. "So there is hope for me."
Gemma looked at me and could see the concern in my eyes. We turned and moved swiftly out of the door, leaving Death in the beams of sunlight that lit up the room.
At the Martin Luther King Junior Memorial in Washington, DC, displayed amongst his many quotes is, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
In a social framework, the network of mutuality across others is a fundamental assumption of the philosophy. The assumption is that society must be taken as the fundamental unit of philosophical analysis. However, this assumption does not restrict the size of that society, such that it could be limited to two people. The quote above implies that i) all people 'anywhere' are members of our society, and ii) for each of these people, we should place a non-zero weight on an injustice done to them.
Interpreting this quote in the light of a social philosophy, a remaining question is how much weight to place on an injustice done to someone in our society. Everyone who believes in the above two statements must face the question of how much weight they should place on injustice 'anywhere'. In a social philosophy, there are many reasons why this weight might vary over individuals in your society. Such a framework allows for a measure of 'closeness' to sway the moral responsibility to others in our society. So we might be 'closer' to our children and our parents, and thus have a greater moral responsibility to them.
To define what we owe to each member of our society, we must consider at least the following things: What is the state of injustice against all of those in our society? To what extent are we ready to understand that injustice? How much are we ready to trade off our responsibilities across members of our society? And how do we take action given these trade offs?
Working in international development, let me work through an example from that setting. It could be argued in a social philosophy that I am philosophically distant from someone living in the poorest parts of the world. On the other hand, if economic injustice is greatest there, I must choose to weigh up the injustice they face against their distance from me. Suppose I have to decide how much of my income to donate to those facing economic injustice. The question is how much do I give? A fully utilitarian model would frequently argue that you should give everything you have beyond your own subsistence living allowance. A social philosophy allows you to weigh those philosophically close to you, such as your children, higher than those philosophically distant. But if you believe that even those socially very distant from you but still within your society should receive some of your income, you must decide what that number should be. So the question we must all make a decision on if you believe in i and ii above, is what number reflects our philosophical weightings of those in our society who may be most distant but who face the greatest economic injustice.
A social philosophy would argue that this number is not just something that reflects who you are, but also defines who you are. By living by a number, that number becomes part of your society and so defines you. So perhaps the question should not be what number reflects you, but rather what number are you?
This weekend I have had to look after my son completely on my own for the first time. There is a very regular routine, and my wife kindly left a timetable for me to follow and notes on activities we could undertake. I have only blown up one egg and caused a small international incident, so things are going OK.
As I spend time with Josh, I think of what we know about how to influence our children in a positive way. By keeping them healthy, talking to them about the interactions they have in the world, and teaching them the basic principles around which our world is organised, we change who they are. Then there are the passive influences we can appreciate, such as our habits, the language we use, and the rhythms of our lives, that are passed on to our children. We are less likely to modify those to be focused on bringing up our children, but we likely give these thought.
Then there is everything else about our interactions with our children that we do not typically appreciate as playing a role in their definition. For me, this might be how I dress, how much I talk, when I talk, how others respond to my talking, how much I hold hands with my wife, or whether Josh observes us praying or having moments of reflection in our lives. Or it might be a host of other things I simply do not understand.
Our defining role is regarded by most people as partly economic, partly social and partly spiritual. In a social philosophy it is also partly philosophical. The way we define our children fundamentally determines their philosophical future as it shapes the society they are embedded in and thus the philosophical choices they will face.
The catch with our children, is that we care for their future more deeply than most peoples. We must therefore shape their current selves to be philosophically ready for the uncertain future they face. There are relative constants as one generation moves to the next it seems, but what about those aspects of society that are not constant? How can we be sure we are preparing our children philosophically for the future in the face of such uncertainty?
Rather, it seems most truthful to embed in them the capacity to respond to the uncertainties. Give them the machinery of us. Teach them how we would face such uncertainties, so that our voice, be it among many, is part of their conversation when they face those new worlds.
A big question my wife and I have had to face is how to build a life together when I am so committed to a particular world view. My belief is to always act in Truth, whether you are acting with others or alone. This requires any action you take with others to conform to your belief of what is truthful. With many actions and relationships, you can simply choose which actions to take with whom so to meet this requirement.
This is a more complex task when you commit yourself to someone to build a life with. In this case, you are committing to a huge range of joint decisions that are not specified in advance, from what to do as a family activity on a particular weekend to what home to buy. This intense degree of collaboration requires compromises by both parties, as perhaps the pair do not have exactly the same likes and dislikes. A commitment to truthful action, however, is a non-negotiable. It has to be adhered to for the committed party to be involved.
So when there are partners or other group members who do not believe in such a framework, how does collaboration work?
At the heart of social philosophy is that we are made up of those in our society, and in reverse, we are reflected in a host of people in whose societies we have played a part. Each time we make a change in ourselves, therefore, that change is reflected in those who we make up in the future. So personal change, in a social philosophy, is social change. As an aside, this is also true in the sense that we embody the sum of societies that we reflect, and thus any personal change we affect is a reflection of a social process of change that goes on within us. The societies that make us up must combine in a way that allows the change that we enact.
The notion of social change as it is commonly used is therefore a matter of degree. The changing of ourselves is a social change, and the degree to which it is passed on depends on the processes of society. Our changing of the next person is, by the same logic, also a social change. And the next person. And so on. Changing others is changing the societies that will reflect them in the future. Thus, undertaking social change is equivalent to changing just one person, including yourself. The extent of social change is then determined by how society sets itself up to promulgate that change.
I regularly fast. One day a week. A friend recently asked me why I do this. Partly, it is for reasons that I have heard from across the major religions. Giving up something allows us to better understand the value of it. Most of my life I try to keep myself away from hunger of any type. This implies I have a constant engagement with the world. This constancy limits my ability to appreciate the value of that lack of hunger, and the value of what I consume.
There is also the reverse rationale. Not only does fasting allow us to understand the value of the thing we give up, but also their transient nature. If I feel full today, this has little bearing on how full I feel in a week. Physically, our society is one in which we have a demanding schedule of eating, but each meal is relatively transient in itself. This is in direct contrast to the constancy of Truth. Fasting is as much about understanding the transience of the thing that is given up as understanding its value.
Fasting for more prolonged periods, such as Lent or Ramadan, has another benefit. Giving up food in particular allows the body to be in a more meditative state. This is particularly true in my society, in which there is too much food consumed, and many pressures to consume it.
However, my reason for fasting goes beyond these reasons, to a rationale embedded in social philosophy. Within the context of a such a philosophical framework, our experience of the world - our society - influences who we are. Unless I choose to go without something on a regular basis, in my case food for a day, my experience of the world is both constant and satisfied. This limited variation in an important aspect of my life defines me. This is true for those things directly related to fasting, for example my awareness of the value of food. But it can also be true for how my days relate to each other, with constancy bringing about little distinction between one day and the next.
By fasting, my experience of the world becomes more variable within a controlled setting, and my broader perception of the world becomes richer. I am connected to an aspect of the world that is important for understanding the true nature of things - scarcity - and that variation provides greater distinctions between the times I fast and those I do not. My perception of the world certainly changes when I fast, varying my society.
Sometimes the variation brings unexpected benefits, such as realisations about the nature of change. Without the variation that underlies all creation of knowledge, I would be unable to appreciate Truth. And the more closely my search for Truth echoes the realities of the world, including scarcity, the closer I am to living a truthful life.
I've seen a number of people in my life for whom their interaction with society is at the core of their mental health. Though not philosophy, this topic extends the idea of a social philosophy to our capacity to formulate philosophical thoughts.
The perception of one's society is a key ingredient to how one formulates one's actions, which define one's experience of the world. I've known a number of people who perceive the world as relatively disappointing. They feel that other people typically let them down, and have an approach to other people that implies there do not exist individuals to whom they can look up to, or that inspire them. This perception of society changes their actions, which in turn changes their society, changing them. By not being inspired by the world around them, they seem to create an environment that reinforces this view. The world therefore becomes uninspiring, leading to degrees of depression.
This chain is simply my assessment of a few people in my life. However, it brings up an idea; that we should choose to have inspirational people in our societies that sustain our interest in our world. As I have discussed below, the frameworks we use to assess the world, and therefore other people, are in large part a matter of choice. We should therefore aim to include in our views of the world a means by which to find other people inspiring. By not doing so, we endanger our passion and thirst for the world, and thus the drive that keeps us mentally healthy and keen to seek out Truth.
19th April 2015 follow up
One perspective social philosophy brings to mental health is the notion that we are made up of others. It is the interaction of these others within us that makes up who we are and, importantly for this issue, how we experience the world.
One can see this as a conversation between all those who make us up. The interactions between those selves that make us up will have the features of the interactions of those people from who we were defined. So mental health is a feature of that conversation. We must resolve the conversation between all the voices of those who define us in a way that allows us to stay stable within ourselves. An inspiring voice corresponding to the inspirational people described above helps us resolve that conversation in a more truthful way.
A corollary of this line of thought is that the love affairs and disputes between people that define us are raging inside us to. A social philosophy would argue that the resolution of these interactions in the wider sense would not be limited to the group that initiated them, but to all those persons that were affected by, and thus defined by, those interactions. To this end, we must build a society that can resolve issues socially, in all those an interaction affected, rather than just individually.
When I was talking to my wife about my last post, On the Interactions of Others, she talked to me about how one route to impacting on the interactions of others is through your relationships with the others. By being a strong friend to two people in a relationship, you may help them strengthen their relationship. There are many ways to define strong in the previous sentence that would feel satisfactory. It might simply be shared experience, so that 'the three of us always do stuff together, and it wouldn't be the same if any of us dropped out'. It might be a shared commitment, so sharing that commitment with them both allows them to share that commitment together.
A next step in this chain of logic is that any relationships you support may support others. Perhaps the shared commitment of your friends inspires others to commit. You echo on through society. To what extent it is possible to think through this chain is specific to the context at hand, but it provides a further layer of philosophical consideration for those of us who believe in a social philosophy.
I look after Joshua, my son, on Sunday mornings. At the end of the morning, I sat with Josh and prayed. It was my normal prayer but recast as to regard Joshua's relationships with the people I pray about. I typically think through key members of my society, long ago coming to the belief that their state is a key part of mine.
Thinking about Josh's relationships with my parents, my sister, my wife's family and so on, solidified a part of my world I have not thought enough about - the relationships between members of my society. These relationships are philosophically important to me, for they may go on to shape who I am. By relating with and changing each other, members of my society change that society, and thus what shapes me.
The relationships of others in my society - that of my parents for example - are independent of me in a few ways. First, I don't understand those relationships in the way I do any that involve me. I know less about their content and take less time to think about them. Second, it seems truthful for each relationship to have some degree of privacy, and so there will always be boundaries to the extent I can involve myself in others relationships.
But do I not also have a responsibility to understand and support these relationships? Partly, they are parts of me talking to other parts of me, in the sense that I have defined all of those in these relationships. And thus I have a responsibility to ensure my selves interact truthfully. Beyond that, I am faced with a multitude of opportunities to support these relationships, and these are reasons to support.
In many ways we already do this, by connecting people for example. It is, however, an important new area of reflection for me. How far do I and should I support those in my society in their relationships outside of those with me.
It is good, every so often to restate my philosophy. Here is the November 2014 edition.
There are an infinite number of frameworks ... [well that took long]
This implies that a more satisfactory treatment of philosophy is one in which differential philosophical frameworks can co-exist within a society, and within an individual.
It's my birthday again. It's a time I typically reflect on life. And increasingly over the last few years I have reflected on the same things. One, that my deepest regret is that I have not done more to develop my understanding of my philosophical foundations. Two, that I have produced so little relative to my ambitions. The two combine beautifully in my ongoing inability to keep this philosophy blog alive.
So I shall try again. With this year all about productivity and discipline, let us see whether I can hold myself to this task: every two weeks I will write on some aspect of social philosophy. I shall also go back and try to tidy up some of the half-finished and missing entries that I had hoped to write.
This poem by Billy Collins, 'On Turning Ten', really touched my wife and I as we think about the process of our son growing up:
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
A philosophical life is as much about the small actions as it is the large. Defining how you will walk along the path you choose is important, just as the direction of that path.
A philosophical life is as much about the small actions as it is the large. Defining how you will walk along the path you choose is important, just as the direction of that path.
One morning I ran into work and was stretching outside my office. One gentleman, who'd I'd never seen before, was outside the main offices talking on his mobile phone. He was quite audible as he was using his hands free kit and had both headphones plugged in. I thought it quite amusing to be forced to share in his conversation but wasn't bothered by it.
However, you could see those people working on the ground floor of our shared offices were getting increasingly frustrated and after a while were shouting to try and get his attention. Because he had both earplugs in, he couldn't hear them. So, feeling bad for my colleagues, I went up to just ask if he could talk away from the window. He didn't like it.
"That's there problem", he grumbled, and then stormed off saying to ???
A philosophical life is as much about the small actions as it is the large. Defining how you will walk along the path you choose is important, just as the direction of that path.
A philosophical life is as much about the small actions as it is the large. Defining how you will walk along the path you choose is important, just as the direction of that path.
Last week's entry, On Tension, asked to what extent my freedom to choose my life's central tension should reflect the wishes of those who had given me that freedom. I focussed on my grandparents, but could of course talk of my wider ancestry and the debt I owe them.
I focussed on my grandparents because ...
has made me think of the wider debt I owe to my society, and the
All of my grandparents were defined by a central tension in their life. My paternal grandfather always fought between his love of the good life and his wish to do the right thing. He had a strong sense of social justice, and gave away almost everything he had to those he thought more deserving. This jarred with his love of beauty and luxury. Staying in a nice hotel in Eastern Europe one winter, he couldn't stand to see so many people hungry outside. He wrapped up all the bread he could find in a tablecloth and threw it outside to all those who couldn't find a meal.
My paternal grandmother wanted deeply to study medicine, or to live a more academic life than she did. The chance to be a doctor was taken away by her father as he believed women shouldn't study to the degree she wanted to. And then the war left her with an everlasting fear that she would never be safe again. She was torn between her hopes of another life, and those who would take it away.
My maternal grandfather wished for a better world. He was angry at the injustice in the world around him and the resistance to his efforts to make it more just. He wished to create a community around him that would be an island of values in an otherwise indecent world. Such a plan had within it the seeds of its own unravelling, as his children had their own hopes for a different future.
My maternal grandmother, although immensely commited to her family, always though of what could have been. A young man she had fallen in love with had died in the second World War. Whilst she had been happy enough with my grandfather, it was clear she always wondered what her life would have been with her first love.
We can view each of my grandparents as having had a tension that was a defining pillar of their life. To differing extents, these tensions were defined by external forces. The second World War had played a central role in each of my grandmothers' lives, robbing one of her security, the other of her love. My grandfathers were both torn between their sense of social justice and their other ideals, be it luxury or capitalism, with the war challenging both of these.
These thoughts make me consider viewing my own life this way, and asking what the central tension of my life is. It is certainly one that I have chosen for myself. That I am free to choose the defining feature of my life is quite remarkable. Through so much of history, the central tension of a person's life has been chosen for them. Be it the search for food, the submission to or resistance of an authority, or the boundaires of culture.
My own generation has huge freedom to define the central tension of their lives relative to those who have gone before us. The external world asks less of and provides more to us than it has before. The opportunities that come with this relative plenty rests on the shoulders of all those who have gone before us. What debt do we owe them? How do we choose the central tension in our lives so to recognise that debt? Like some religious or cultural practice dictates actions that intend to respect their ancestry, what are we to do to respect ours?
An obvious first choice is to use part of the newly gained freedom to undertake actions that would please or satisfy those whom we owe our debt. In some religions this would take the part of a sacrifice. Rather in my life, I have to ask whether I am living in the way that my grandparents would believe is right.
As I understand it, I am fortunate. My grandparents were all motivated to some extent by social justice and academic pursuits. That I am following a path that respects each of these makes me feel that they would be at least satisfied with my path.
If I find we are at odds however, to what extent do I subjugate my own will to my perceptions of their preferences? For example, my religious beliefs are certainly distinct from those my paternal grandmother would wish I had, and not in the tradition she would have wished. How far do I shape my religious practices so to satisfy my understanding of her hopes for me? Should I conciously try to bend my beliefs towards hers?
Then there is the case in which my grandparents only wish me happy and well. Does this give me the freedom to choose my path within these broad constraints, or should we look beyond their wishes and organise my life so as to reflect important pillars of their lives that have relevance for my society today?
My answers to this final set of questions are not well defined. So far my response has been to at least try the path they would have wished when it is not the one I would have chosen. It may give me an appreciation of their point of view. I have even smoked a cigar or two in honour of my grandfather. I don't think that will be an ongoing legacy.
Discussion: These are certainly not questions I have been equipped to deal with in my upbringing so far. Have you answered them for yourself? It seems that other traditions have investigated these questions. Have they found answers?
My wife is currently reading Caitlin Moran's 'How to be a Woman'. On a train journey with her I picked it up and had a little look. Ms Moran is very funny. "If I've gone from being wholly undesirable (then), to being looked down upon as a slag (now), this is, surely, a bit of a promotion? Becoming a woman has to be done one step at a time and this is, in its own way, considerable progress." (p.127)
She is also angry. Angry with the way women are regarded and influenced by society.
And so am I. When close female friends tell me of their common insecurities with other women, it angers me. Someone who believes we are defined by society, as I do, is faced by the notion that women are being defined to feel insecurities in a way that men are typically not.
So I looked into whether the feminist movement has been populated with any males, as I was interested in their perspective. Male feminists exist, but it seems that the relationship with feminism and feminists is complicated. So let's side step those issues by saying I am a femanist, someone who believes in society's responsibility to support women to reach their capabilities as it does men. Whether this overlaps with feminism or not, let's say this is a descriptor of what I'm for.
Agreement with feminist or femanist ideals is only one part of why someone who believes in a social philosophy would care about feminist/femanist issues. When I look down at the list of the 30 people I feel have most defined me, a substantial portion of them are women. And therefore, I am made up in large part by women. A misguided approach to women will end up being a huge part of who I am through the females that define me.
If I am a mixture of the people I have described over the last year, and all the others I have not described, there are two reasons why the way women are regarded and influenced by society matters directly to who I am. First, they are the raw ingredients of my person. Suppressing the potential of women therefore directly suppresses my own potential. Second, in the mixing of those ingredients, if society is set up so to suppress the contributions of women, then the mixing itself is biased. I suffer again from being less of a person than I could have been had I had the full contribution of the potential of the women who make me up.
This social philosophy perspective says that not only do I want to protect the full contributions and freedoms of women, but I want to be the fullest person I can be. When society is biased against a group in an untruthful way, I myself suffer in becoming less of a man than I could be.
The relationship between feminism and femanism that I read a little of in the past few days could be stated as follows. The claim could be that I am unable to appreciate the issues that Caitlin Moran talks of because they are things I would have very little understanding of, and that my experience is ill-equipped to empathise with. An imprecise approximation to an experience will add little to its analysis if a precise appreciation already exists. I could respond that I may have a slightly different, not just poorly understood perspective. In the same way that multiple perspectives or more data allows us to better understand a scientific phenomenon, surely the male perspective on the female experience is useful.
One could also claim that as being a key part of the discrimination against women, men are critical in understanding feminist issues. A male perspective allows us to better understand the drivers of half of the society these issues occur in, and often the half implicated as the source of feminist grievances. It seems funny science to try to understand male behaviour without asking any of them. It also allows us to draw society's boundaries more clearly. Whether a woman's constraints are artificially imposed or those of humanity can only be understood by looking at men as well. By the logic that a woman best understands the boundaries of her world, a man is likely to understand the boundaries of his. Finally, if men don't get to talk about woman's issues, how will we learn?
But these are not what a social philosophy contributes. It says that feminist issues are all persons issues in a very direct way. We are all partly defined by the biases against women that prevail in society, so the impacts of these biases arise through all persons defined by that society.
So a new birthday, and a year of reflecting on who I am made up of. The last 30 posts have hopefully given a sense of who I am. As importantly, they are a reflection of how an individual is formed in the framework of a social philosophy.
Video: Charlie Chaplin tells us that "more than cleverness, we need kindness" in this beautiful speech from 'The Great Dictator', Chaplin's highest ever grossing film and first 'talkey'.
This week I heard a fantastic quote from the musician and composer, Terence Blanchard:
“Beethoven said that music is deeper than philosophy. Ludwig, what do you mean music is deeper than philosophy? He says well in the end we finite creatures, we don't have a language or even a linguistic eloquence that can begin to be fully truthful to the experiences that we have the short time we're here in time and space. So therefore we need some sounds, even some noise, organised noise, we need silence between the notes and the sounds that get at the deeper truths of who we are.”
It struck me as a perfect summary of the power of music. It is a language that extends our capacity to express. Good music tells the best stories. But it can also express important philosophical emotions that are difficult to communicate through words. This links to my conception of Truth: whilst we can determine a structure from which our presuppositions can be analysed, the core assumptions of our beliefs come from what we intuitively feel about an issue. Music makes me feel a broader range of and more in touch with those instinctive emotions, emotions that seem connected to my intuitive sense of what is good, bad, right, and wrong.
Discussion: Do you think of music as having these features? Can words do justice to the feeling music gives us (and if so, can you give me some examples)? My wife has just asked me how one could debate with music, and if you couldn't, how useful music would be as a philosophical tool?
"It is in our lives and not, fundamentally, in our conscious experiences that we find the memories of those who are gone. Our consciousness is fickle and not worthy of the task of remembering. The most important way of remembering someone is by being the person they made us - at least in part - and living the life they have helped shape. Sometimes they are not worth remembering. In that case, our most important existential task is to expunge them from the narrative of our lives. But when they are worth remembering, then being someone they have helped fashion and living a life they have helped forge are not only how we remember them; they are how we honour them.”
I am finding it unusually difficult to motivate myself to do my work. This is typically not a problem for me, as I enjoy what I do. Poor motivation is a Catch-22 as you are not motivated to snap yourself out of it. So you keep on working poorly, potentially compounding the reason for your lack of motivation.
I recognise this cycle, and so need to focus my energies on revitalising my enthusiasm for work. I stopped work to concentrate on why I might be uninterested in what I am doing, made a list of potential causes, and
This week I heard two great things about a colleague, and relayed them to him when I next saw him. I was inspired by a wise man I met when I was in India. I had been working in a little village alone for a few months and felt throughly overwhelmed by the experience. The night before I was going to leave he sat on a rock with me and said "You know people say you have done well”. This came as quite a shock, as I imagined I was generally thought of as the fat little white man who sleeps too much and can't throw very well. The message I took home was what he said next; "Too often people speak well of a person to others, and others amongst themselves, but the circle is never completed. I wanted to complete this circle.”
I heard a song this week in which the singer describes a memory from his childhood. He walks down to the river with his father, who scoops a cup of water from the river with his hand and has his son drink it. The event is vivid in the singer’s memory, “as if it were yesterday”. It seemed an important moment in their relationship, though the details of its symbolism were left to the listener.
It got me thinking. What are those memories most vivid in my childhood? In particular, what are those memories associated with my parents? And which of these have symbolic significance like that described in the song?
I remember my father watching over me when I was very small, and that my Mum used to make a ‘castle’ out of the giant boxes that my sister’s nappies came in. I remember my first rally with my Dad, and watching TV with my Mum. Then there is lots about school, and my childhood best friend.
It surprised me how little there was in the way of ‘rites of passage’, like that described in the song. I remember not talking for a day as a challenge to get a penknife, but that’s not really the same. I wonder how many of my friends have vivid memories of rites of passage like described in the song, or in books, or that exist in more traditional societies.
The absence of such memories reflects, for me, the sense of linearity I have had growing up. Life is always comfortable, always measured, and typically understood. My sporting, academic, and even romantic moments in my life don’t ring with the kind of energy that make these songs so vivid.
The song goes on to relate a memory of when it was going to rain one day, so the neighbours came over to ensure the hay bails all got into the barn before it rained. Again, a vivid memory of community vibrating with energy that I’m not sure I possess. I doubt many people I know would have such memories.
None of this casts a shadow on the amazing things my family provided. It just seems a part of life I might want to provide for my own children. Rites of passage may be part of our lives today, but by not marking them in anything but the most superficial or subtle ways, they lose some of their weight in our lives. Bringing back a little of the structure to our rites of passage may mean something to our children.
I'll finish with a quote from a book about the wisdom of aboriginal elders:
“Traditionally we didn’t celebrate birthdays, nor the silver anniversary for husband and wife. You were born and not measured by years. It wasn’t about how long you were married, but who you were in that family unit – Mother, Father, children, Grandfather, Grandmother, Auntie, Uncle. Our celebration was about living; age was about wisdom and knowledge, not how old you were.”
We seem to be hard-wired not to take criticism well. For a long time, I would fume if anyone criticized me. At school, I always thought I knew better than the teachers. (Once I was dragged out of class by the vice-principal for telling my teacher I could do a better job than he could and then trying to do so.) At work, they just didn’t understand how right I was. And I’ve had a reputation in my family for ‘getting on my high horse’ and telling everyone just how it is (ironic that I am admitting this in a blog post).
However, the older I get, the more I realise how foolish this all is, and that criticism is a healthy part of a good life. One can get so wrapped up in what you are doing, you forget all the paths you could have taken, but didn’t. Since you can only see the world from one perspective, another is a gift. And if there is a way of getting a bit of reflection going, then I'll take it.
Criticism is often delivered poorly, so one has to be strong enough to cut through the delivery to the useful stuff at the centre. That might mean getting home and saying, 'you know what, she had a point'. It can be even more productive if you can realise it at the time.
If one can become strong enough to do this, I believe one should go out hunting for criticism. First, you can criticise yourself. I’ve been trying to stop and reassess more recently: what part of that mix up was my fault, and what can I learn to do better next time? I don't want to run round in circles second guessing myself, but I am usually far enough from that for it to be a worry.
Second, you can get others to criticise you (in a sweet and constructive way of course). I'd love to know what my friends do when faced by everyday problems, and in my experience there is limited discussion of such things. I'm talking about real nitty gritty debate about what is the right or wrong thing to do in a situation, or whether such concepts are relevant. No one should mind a bit of 'street ethics' or '. I have tried doing this, and it seems most productive when you are clear in your mind what your general position is, and what the most important logical leaps and assumptions in your argument are. You can then have people have a go at each one.
I aspire to take criticism in a way that will ensure the provider will be ready to give it again. Many people seem to react, quite understandably, either defensively or by being silent and fumey. This doesn’t make the deliverer feel useful, just sorry they said anything (or proud they got at you). I try to be ready to take criticism well. A friend of mine I had asked to look over some work asked me ‘How critical can I be?’ “As much as you like,” I replied, “I am able to take a lot of criticism.” “Good,” he said, “I have a lot to say.”
Whatever religion you are, whatever form you believe God takes, and even if don't believe in God, prayer is fantastic. Prayer makes you focus for a time on what you most want to say to God, or to yourself. If you start with thanks, as I do, it focuses your mind on all the things you have, and can thus make you more satisfied. If you include aspects of your recent past, it helps you reconsider them, contemplate lessons learned, and reignites a dedication to commitments made. If you go on to request, it makes you reflect on what you can do to achieve your aim, and gives you determination to achieve it.
For those who believe in an omniscience presence in the world, the rationale for prayer is simpler: a communion with God. I want to focus here on prayer by those who are agnostic, atheistic, or uncertain. In this case prayer is a ritualistic engagement with the personification of your basic principles and beliefs. So few people, at least that I've talked to, feel that this sort of interaction is useful unless you believe in God.
But why? Why does giving thanks or asking for things we care about have to be directed towards anyone but ourselves? I don't believe it does, and think prayer can be just as powerful a force in the lives of those who do not feel responsible to pray. It has played the following 'non-divine' roles in my life:
It gives me a regular time to reflect and be grateful for what I have. It is very refreshing.
Praying when I'm nervous calms me down as I vocalise the challenges and realise their limitations. Since I associated pray with peaceful, meditative time, it is soothing.
In being a practice, prayer helps us engage with what we are happy about, fearful of, and committed to without distraction, haste, or uncertainty. It is not the only way to engage, but it is a good one.
It can focus the mind and make me driven, as if I had given myself a pep talk.
Discussion: Does anyone reading this prayer for non-spiritual reasons? If you don't prayer, why not?
I start my blog with what I think of as my founding story. Most of my teenagehood was a classic British teenagehood, complete with irresponsibility on as many margins as I could find, unless there was something good on television.
One night, I was on a train coming back from a weekend of mild debauchary. We were pulling into a station when a load of friendly British lads started throwing bottles at the train and screaming. The lady across from me seemed scared, so I said she could sit next to me and they wouldn't bother her. She did. We started talking, about many things, and our conversation turned to religion. As we were about to part, she gave me a little book, and, having written her phone number in it, said we should keep talking. When I opened it to find it was a bible, I almost felt duped into talking about Christianity.
The little book sat on my table for weeks, until one night, having thought about the things that lady had said to me, I opened it. I started to take it everywhere, and read it voraciously. It said so many things that strengthened the doubts I had been having about my lifestyle. And it gave me immense food for thought.
I didn't stop there. I talked to a friend of the family, and he gave me a passage from Khalil Gibran's 'The Prophet'. This had an instant and momentous impact on me. It was, in the terminology of my teens, absolutely wicked. I found as much Gibran as I could get my hands on, read 'The Teachings of the Buddha' compiled by Paul Carus, then as much Buddhist doctrine as I could find. Having made it through all the major religious texts, I found a book of Socrates, and then took up reading philosophy. This was much slower, and was more at the level of 'Sophie's World' and 'The Children's Companion to Nieztsche', but I loved it.
I gave up on what had been my closest circle of friends. One night at a lock-in my best friend at the time pulled himself a pint and wouldn't pay for it; so I did. He reacted badly to this and told me to "$£@$ off". I thought 'what a bloody good idea'. I walked the whole night to get home, and thought the whole way. You can do much better than this Rogger. Change. Change for the better.
The rest of that year at school I was increasingly thought of as a total geek. No one really knew what I was doing, and I was too embarrassed, and had too little courage to argue otherwise. But looking back on that train journey, and the change it has since inspired, I thank God for that lady. I call her my angel.
My generation and I entered this world at an amazing time. Never has there been so much wealth, so much freedom from want, and so many opportunities to enjoy and experience the world. With these opportunities we can do basically anything we want.
At the same time, we sometimes feel overwhelmed with choice, and continue to face many of the same challenges, of direction, partnership, and balance, that every generation preceding us have had to face
Of particular importance to me is how to deal with the fact that there are so many people in the world materially poorer than I. However, I will not write about that inequality here. That is what the rest of my web site is about.
Here I want to develop a better understanding of how I, and people like me (my generation), should try to live the best life we can. How do we deal with the freedoms and capacities that we have been granted, unique in history as we are? What philosophy do I turn to having been brought up tied only weakly to any individual religion? What can we learn from our distinctive perspective on the past to enrich our present? I would also like to hear from others on all these questions, and on the topics to come.
Why have a blog? It is a great thought pad. My commitment to writing regularly means I have to think regularly. It helps me concretise my own views. I also hope it will inspire conversations with others, so my beliefs can be independently assessed. Finally, given how little discussion I hear about the philosophy of today, I hope I am developing a little useful food for thought.
Discussion: Is it a good idea to have a blog of this sort? What can I do to make it better?
