moved to google groups

i have created a google group to supercede this blog. i think an email list is a better format to encourage discussion.

it is invite only, so if you're interested, just let me know.

to my loyal fans

this blog will not be abandoned. i'm busy with other things right now, but i have some ideas on how to rouse you from your lazy, unthinking, existentialist stupors.

Nietzsche?

It's not that Nietzsche is that hard to understand. It's that he is that hard to accept. Which is similiar. But those who "accept" Nietzsche are often just monsters. No balance, I guess.

But how can I even start with someone who has not read Nietzsche, or who has misunderstood him, or who has "understood" him?

catastrophe

If the present rate of technological advance continues, we can expect a major human induced epidemic within the next 50 years, directly killing, lets say, 30% of the world population. The indirect lethality rate---from a massive economic collapse accompanying the epidemic---would likely make things much worse.  This will probably happen sooner if reports are correct about the Soviet Union having weaponized a particularly lethal strain of small pox. Within 100 years, it is plausible nuclear technology will be so advanced that the destruction of cities by nuclear weapons will be a commonly occurring nuisance, and within 200 years, it will be fairly easy to manufacture weapons capable of destroying the entire planet.

Of course, any near term catastrophe will have a substantial effect on the pace of technology, so the rest of the story could take longer to pan out.  Also, on a positive note, the creation of technology capable of destroying the planet will most likely be accompanied by a technology that makes energy production basically free, making space colonization far easier to accomplish. 

living for the moment

Is this my biggest obstacle in getting across? As long as people are comfortable, they will fall back on the simple formula of "living for the moment." From that perspective, all this philosophical seriousness and morbid talk of the future must seem odd and bordering on irrelevant.

Of course, in a state of suffering, we see the matter much differently. And when suffering is common in life, living for the moment is, quite often, just living for suffering. Which forces us to abandon the silly notion.

But as things stand, people are comfortable. And once that changes it will change, of course, for a reason, i.e., war, recession, environmental catastrophe. People will then suffer, but they will also no longer have the luxury of preparing for the future. When things are pleasant, we do not think of the future. Once things are unpleasant, we can no longer afford to.

Is human life really so stupid as an Aesop's fable? And how do you go about solving this problem?

might vs spirit

Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit.

--Zechariah 4:6

This is one of the ideas promoted by the JCC I recently joined, primarily for the gym facilities, in fact.  It is one of those insights that is so sharp that it almost inclines me to convert to Judaism.  Of course, I could not actually do that because, for among other reasons, it would require me to recuse myself from the study of a large part of philosophy, especially moral philosophy.

We are all familiar with that dangerous expression, "might makes right."  It is a particularly dangerous expression because it is so close to the truth.  The truth, however, is that raw power -- might -- isn't what makes right, it is staying power -- spirit.  The problem is that might often looks like right, because it is able, by definition, to force people to act as if it is so.  But might is only temporary, while spirit lasts.

nothing but a dream

Science and industry, and their progress, might turn out to be the most enduring thing in the modern world.  Perhaps any speculation about their coming collapse of science and industry is, for the present and for a long time to come, nothing but a dream; perhaps science and industry, having cause infinite misery in the process, will unite the world  -- I mean condense it into a single unit, though one in which peace is the last thing that will find a home.

Because science and industry do decide wars, or so it seems.

-- Ludwig Wittgenstein , Culture and Value, 63

Wittgenstein hoped that science and industry would collapse, yet he feared his hope might be "nothing but a dream."  I think of Wittgenstein as trying to solve the problem of culture and science by clearing up linguistic/philosophical confusions, saving humanistic culture, hoping to stave off or limit humanity's dangerous fascination with science and technology.  He saw civilization as something that had been infected, sickened by science and scientific thinking, and wished to effect a cure.

I believe he is right about science having "infected" humanity, but I do not believe this infection can be reversed.  Rather than getting rid of science and technology, I believe the best hope is in adapting culture to science and technology.  That means that the cores of our value systems must be founded on a more rational, scientific basis.  Only by doing this will culture be given the strength it needs to survive in a world increasingly dominated by science and technology.  The alternative is the collapse, not of science and technology, but of culture and humanity.

survival

I am generally not fond of the habit of many philosophers to attempt to explain all morality in one simple concept, i.e. happiness, power (Nietzsche), or the categorical imperative (Kant). It seems like these kinds of theories are usually poorly founded and ill-defined; i.e. everything depends on how you interpret the central concept.

Not withstanding these limitations, I am nevertheless inclined to reduce most of human morality to the idea of survival.  After all, the only reason people have the sort of judgments they do comes down to their basic instincts, which evolved and are what they are simply because they could survive.  Of course, nothing forces us to use survival as a rule of thumb in judging the ultimate moral value of a thing, but it seems futile and contradictory to do otherwise.  If you invent a moral system that leads to the death of those who adopt it, for example, you might just as well have killed your followers.

sketch for an introduction

Humanity has problems, of course, because humanity is a collection of barely evolved apes, in the possession, nonetheless, of incredible technology. The only enduring solution to this problem is for humanity to evolve, both culturally and biologically. But just as the invention of technology has not been a haphazard affair, neither must be the further evolution of humanity.

In fact, given present geo-political dynamics, it is far from clear that humanity could evolve without a very conscious attempt to adapt. Normally evolution requires a large number of relatively distinct, cohesive actors competing and, at times, cooperating, over a long period of time. Given the diffuse nature of cultural beliefs, practice and enforcement, it is quite unclear who or what are the independent actors among humanity. One might argue that each of the nations represents one, but there are only a couple hundred of these, and even these are hardly distinct, due to human migration and the complex dynamics of international and economic relations. Moreover, since most individuals survive the "death" of a nation, the interests of the individuals are not really aligned with that of each nation (as they are in the case of the individual cells that make up an organism, for example). Therefore, individual humans are in fact likely to slowly evolve separately from culture, becoming, most likely, more selfish and culturally less conscious: i.e. more apelike and less human.

Perhaps most significantly, there is little time. even in the best circumstances, evolution requires hundreds of generations. when an environment changes radically over a short period of time, it is far more likely to cause mass extinction than mass adaptation. Therefore it seems foolhardy to cling to the hope that humanity will sort out its present mess without a careful, rational, and strategic effort. If the problem of culture and humanity is left to sort itself out, it will likely do so by extinguishing itself.

What I propose, in short, is the erection of a new social and biological science, similar to what is already going on in those sciences already, but focused on a producing a foundation to enable a "technology" of cultural engineering. This technology would allow the rational creation of new cultures, including even the altering of human instincts, with an aim to evolving humanity past its current degenerative and self-destruction condition. Most likely, this science would suggest it is important to have a lot more distinct groups, and thus it would probably aim at finding ways to allow people to organize themselves into distinct groups of less than, say, 100 thousand, possibly much less.

Of course the idea of creating culture and value rationally and synthetically is bound to be controversial, as it seems like an unprecedented and dangerous activity. indeed, large-scale attempts have been made at this sort of thing, and some have shown just how awful the outcome can be (communism and national socialism). One positive example of this kind of synthetic approach, however, is the founding of the government of united states, the core culture of which is enshrined in its constitution and other founding documents. Ultimately, the united states may be corrupt and degenerative in its own way, but its relative success shows what is possible with a careful, rational approach.

This is a very rough introduction to the intellectual agenda I am advocating, and a lot of questions remain. Why should we be concerned with the evolution, adaptation, and survival of humanity in the first place? And what do we mean by evolution, survival, and adaptation (or, more properly put, what should we mean)? Is it appropriate to "play god" by synthetically producing cultures? To what extent should culture be produced scientifically, and to what extent should it be an artistic affair? Is a social science like that suggested really possible? What might it look like? How will people be convinced to adopt the values of new cultures it eventually produces? How will the necessary resources, especially intellectual resources, be obtained and coordinated in order to found such a science? I will address these questions in later posts.

purpose of this blog

Over the years, I've come up with a bunch of different ideas, mostly philosophical in nature.  While I have certainly been influenced by other thinkers, I believe many of my ideas are novel.  

My hope is that this blog, especially the give and take of the comments, will help me clarify these ideas, possibly allowing their expression in a more traditional form, like essays or a book.

While I have given a lot of thought to the things I write about, there are many cases were I am uncertain, and even where I feel certain, I could, of course, be mistaken.  So this blog will also hopefully help me correct my errors.

Note that (most of) my ideas are not disconnected ramblings.  I have formed a cohesive perspective that suggests a particular agenda for further intellectual development.  Actually, unless I felt like I had some constructive goal in mind like this, I would have trouble writing at all, since criticism by itself seems of questionable value.