Release the hounds!!!

Gareth Armstrong, as Shylock

“The mere receipt of an order backed by force seems, if anything, to give rise to the duty of resisting, rather than obeying.” – H. A. Prichard

Canine "leash laws" are a matter of controversy, even among friends. It turns out that they also can be the foundation of bad relationships between neighbors. Living on my street is a man - we'll call him Shylock - who persistently and obnoxiously believes in the letter of the law, and thus objects to the practice of off-leash dog walking, no matter the total isolation, late hour, harmlessness of hypothetical dog, nor other circumstance. Conversely, others on my block believe merely in the spirit of such laws: dog owners must be in complete control of their dogs, and are absolutely responsible for their behavior. After all, if a dog bites, do you care if she's on a leash? I have heard that Shylock's zealous support for the letter of the law has resulted in calls to "the police", though not surprisingly, I have yet to see a Fulton County Animal Control officer on my street... ever.

I make my living by promoting ethical behavior in organizations, a neighborhood being but one example. Not taking into account Shylock's arrogant and bullying style, the ongoing conflict troubles me deeply from a moral point of view: Is a violation of the leash law also a moral wrong? Do we have moral obligations to obey every law, no matter how silly we think one might be?

Laws are statements of minimal social norms. Societies create laws to describe behavior that is either required or unacceptable. Given this absolute quality, one hopes that all laws - which are coercive by nature - are grounded in some sense of shared morality, but the inescapable truth is that The Law is morally fallible, and specific laws are corrected or even repealed using this very rationale. The reality is that some laws unjustly restrict a citizen's liberties or infringe on personal rights and obligations without a compelling moral argument for doing so. These immoral laws should be resisted on principle. Do "leash laws" fall into this category?

I believe that some do. Many leash laws in Georgia do not go so far as to require an actual leash, specifying only that the dog must respond to voice commands and be "at heal" in the presence of others. This makes sense to me, because those laws articulate a reasonable expectation of responsibility and control, but do not dictate the type of control. However, the overly sensitive Fulton County statue to which this neighborhood is subject requires a six foot fixed length lead. Why? Why six (why not seven)? Why fixed? Who can say? From a practical perspective, these leash laws are motivated by the bad behavior of dogs that have not been trained properly by their owners. All the dogs I know at the center of this conflict are small, harmless, non-agressive, and well-trained. If the specific dog is small, harmless, non-aggressive, and well-trained, then what, exactly, is the law trying to achieve in this case?

The Fulton County leash law (and Shylock) is attempting to force dog owners to perform in an arbitrary way that may or may not have any relevance in a given situation, and as such is an inappropriate government infringement upon individual personal liberty. The law actually prevents the dog owner from taking personal (voluntary) responsibility for his own (or his dog's) actions. Much like helmet laws, leash laws start from the presumption that citizens are dumb, insensitive to context, and in need of parenting. So, Fulton County would like to be my daddy, but can I say no?

I encourage all responsible dog owners who have harmless, non-agressive, well-trained dogs that respond immediately to voice commands to resist overly aggressive leash laws by practicing civil disobedience.

Civil disobedience is a violation of the law without any loss of respect for law and the other basic political institutions generally acknowledged to be fair and just. Speaking most generally, civil disobedience is that act which knowingly violates a law, committed in deference to a higher order (like natural rights), or in support of a cause greater than the actor himself (like liberty) and the law itself. Under John Rawls’ strict interpretation, civil disobedience is a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law, usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government.

Civil disobedience is a form of political statement, an invitation for others to join in a just cause. Civil disobedience is deliberate lawlessness, and can be classified as either direct (by breaking the very law that is objectionable) or indirect (by breaking laws which are not objectionable, but which call attention to the wrong). Lastly, acts of civil disobedience must be conscientious, which generally means that one acts out of an honest and sincere conviction that what one is doing is the uniquely correct thing to do, no matter what the personal cost. This stipulation rules out the motives of private or personal gain, or malevolent emotion as primary factors. The actor’s willingness to suffer inconvenience, expense, threats, real danger and punishment helps to demonstrate that his purpose is to protest a greater social injustice or wrong and not to achieve some immediate gain for himself.

So, if you are a responsible dog owner, act on principle and release the hounds!!

The false self.

In a previous post, I quoted a well-known passage in Henri J. M. Nouwen's book, The Way of the Heart, a work I had not read. I'm reading it now, and finding it very thoughtful. Here is a more lengthy excerpt:

"The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions.  'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated, or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a business man, or a minister, what maters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failing and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same - more work, more money, more friends.

These very compulsions are at the basis of the two main enemies of the spiritual life: anger and greed. They are the inner side of a secular life, the sour fruits of our worldly dependencies. What else is anger than the impulsive response to the experience of being deprived? When my sense of self depends on what others say of me, anger is a quite natural reaction to a critical world. And when my sense of self depends on what I can acquire, greed flares up when my desires are frustrated. Thus greed and anger are brother and sister of a false self fabricated by the social compulsions of an unredeemed world."

The image above is "Versace Veiled Dress, El Mirage" (1990), by Herb Ritts (the artist who took perhaps my favorite image of all time).

More standing.

"New York City Skyline" (1940), by Leon Dolice

Another interesting passage from the book I'm reading, "I'll Take my Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition":

"Religion can hardly expect to flourish in an industrial society. Religion is our submission to the general intention of a nature that is fairly inscrutable; it is the sense of our role as creatures within it. But nature industrialized, transformed into cities and artificial habitations manufactured into commodities, is no longer nature but a highly simplified picture of nature. We receive the illusion of having power over nature, and lose the sense of nature as something mysterious and contingent.

Nor do the arts have a proper life under industrialism, with the general decay of sensibility which attends it. Art depends, in general, like religion, on a right attitude to nature and in particular on a free and disinterested observation of nature that occurs only in leisure. Neither the creation nor the understanding of works of art is possible in an industrial age except by some local and unlikely suspension of the industrial drive.

The amenities of life also suffer under the curse of a strictly-business or industrial civilization. They consist in such practices as manners, conversation, hospitality, sympathy, family life, romantic love - in the social exchanges which reveal and develop sensibility in human affairs. If religion and the arts are founded on right relations of man-to-nature, these are founded on right relations of man-to-man."

Anger

"Seneca on Anger" by Alain de Botton

Over the last several years, I have felt in myself and in many of my close friends a growing store of anger, regret, resentment, and disillusionment. Perhaps this is merely what They call "middle age", or "the onset of reality", but it's grim stuff, and it has many of my contemporaries well within its grasp. And not just a few.  A satisfying explanation for why these emotions are so pervasive among the smart, peaceful and prosperous currently eludes me (even after watching the video), but there it is.

This transition is associated with a growing sadness about the world, an acceptance of the inevitability of cruelty and disappointment, a questioning about the natural order and purpose, and a loss of both optimism and hope. It is clearly linked to a weakening of spiritual faith - any belief that God "cares".

Last week, I was (sorta) joking with a friend that recently I have embraced pessimism as a time-saving device, and today I come across the video above suggesting that it could be more: a successful coping mechanism. To reduce anger, Seneca suggests that we manage (adjust downwardly) our expectations about life. While this makes sense at some level, it is an approach decidedly lacking in all those natural, joyful inclinations that make life worth living, and borders on hopelessness itself. Though perhaps it proves that cynics are optimists run down by reality.

My grandmother used to tell me that happiness (and optimism) is a choice, and this was a choice that she had to make every day.  In contrast, Seneca starts from the Buddhist position that to be happy is to suffer less, and to suffer less we must suffer in advance, to prevent disillusionment when the inevitable occurs.  Frankly, I suspect that my grandmother was far happier than Seneca must have been.

Still, it's an intelligent, interesting video. It is part of a series by Alain de Botton, author of The Art of Travel, and The Consolations of Philosophy, from which these videos are derived.

UPDATE: The timing of William Kristol's uplifting piece in Monday's New York Times about Tony Snow and the nature of optimism couldn't be better. Thanks to Captain / Doctor / Professor / Momma Betsy Holmes for the heads-up.

Stink Gorilla More

The essay found here is a collection of thought-provoking ideas surrounding the nature of art, humanity, expression, morality and abstraction.  It reminds me of a story on Will's blog about a man who associates mathematical concepts like Pi with colors, lights, and feelings, and it makes me wonder if our whole notion of "abstraction" and "concept" are too restrictive.  Perhaps the categories of "real", "think" and "feel" are far more fluid than we imagine them to be.

The top image to the left is "Stink Gorilla More" (1983), and below is "Anger" (1984), both by Michael.

Prince Albert

A reader of this blog commented that several posts (like this and this) addressing technology seemed influenced by Dr. Albert Borgmann, Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montana. As Dr. Borgmann was my professor in 1999, it occurs to me that in the interest of citing my sources, a word could be said about this remarkable thinker.

Like most of the scholars in Missoula, Dr. Borgmann could have taught at the world's best institutions, but selected "The U" for social or environmental reasons (Dr. Borgmann is an exceptional skier).

He is all at once brilliant, focused, humane, exceptionally clear and (though few students ever witness it) funny, compassionate and merciful. He gives every indication of loving his pupils, even when he's scaring them out of their German-fearing-minds.

He is known around the globe for several of his books. Perhaps the best known is "Crossing the Postmodern Divide", but in this area of technology and philosophy that I also find so interesting, he made his name with "Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life" back in 1984 (in recent years, he has gotten a lot of press for "Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology").

Reading one of his books is not a simple undertaking, but insightful, rewarding, and inspiring in many ways. To get a feel for his style, I suggest this article, or - if you have headphones (the quality is not so good) - this audio interview.

Work and technology

"Noon, or The Siesta, after Millet" (1890), Vincent van Gogh

One of the several books on my bedside table is, "I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition", by Twelve Southerners. It's a wonderful collection of essays contrasting The South's (historically) agrarian culture with The North's industrialism. I came across the passage below and it made me think again of the threat to human nature posed by the technological imperative.

"The contribution that science can make to a labor is to render it easier by the help of a tool or a process, and to assure the laborer of his perfect economic security while he is engaged upon it. Then it can be performed with leisure and enjoyment. But the modern laborer has not exactly received this benefit under the industrial regime. His labor is hard, its tempo fierce, and his employment is insecure. The first principle of a good labor is that it must be effective, but the second principle is that it must be enjoyed. Labor is one of the largest items in the human career; it is a modest demand to ask that it may partake of happiness.

The regular act of applied science is to introduce into labor a labor-saving device or a machine. Whether this is a benefit depends on how far it is advisable to save the labor. The philosophy of applied science is generally quite sure that the saving of labor is a pure gain, and that the more of it the better. This is to assume that labor is an evil, that only the end of labor or the material product is good. On this assumption labor becomes mercenary and servile, and it is no wonder if many forms of modern labor are accepted without resentment though they are evidently brutalizing. The act of labor as one of the happy functions of human life has been in effect abandoned, and is practiced solely for its rewards."

The view from here.

"Tetons and The Snake River", Grand Teton National Park (1942),
by Ansel Adams

One of the most accessible, interesting and insightful books of contemporary philosophy is "The Art of Travel" by the amazing author Alain De Botton. As the summer travel season moves along, I will be jotting down some of my favorite passages from that text.

"Our misery that afternoon, in which the smell of tears mixed with the scents of sun cream and air conditioning, was a reminder of the rigid, unforgiving logic to which human moods appear to be subject, a logic that we ignore at our peril when we encounter a picture of a beautiful land and imagine that happiness must naturally accompany such magnificence.

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect. Thus we will not enjoy - we are not able to enjoy - sumptuous tropical gardens and attractive wooden beach huts when a relationship to which we are committed abruptly reveals itself to be suffused with incomprehension and resentment.

How quickly may the advantages of civilization be wiped out by a tantrum. The intractability of the mental knots points to the austere, wry wisdom of those ancient philosophers who walked away from prosperity and sophistication and argued, from within a barrel or a mud hut, that the key ingredients of happiness could not be material or aesthetic but must always be stubbornly psychological."

Politics and the young man.

"Aristotle with a Bust of Homer" (1653),
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

Something about the events of this past Tuesday brought to mind a wise passage in Aristotle's Ethics:

"Now each man judges well the things he knows, and of these he is a good judge. And so the man who has been educated in a subject is a good judge of that subject, and the man who has received an all-round education is a good judge in general. Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character; the defect does not depend on time, but on his living, and pursuing each successive object, as passion directs. For to such persons, as to the incontinent, knowledge brings no profit; but to those who desire and act in accordance with a rational principle knowledge about such matters will be of great benefit."

Or, as Ronald Reagan famously asserted regarding Walter Mondale, "I refuse to make my opponent's youth and inexperience an issue in this campaign." (Hat tip to Dr. Moore for the historical fact checking...)

"Hypocrisy"

The recent "scandal" involving Eliot Spitzer, the (now former) Governor of New York, calls for a bit of reflection. For readers who live outside the U.S. media bubble, Spitzer rose to prominence and power on his reputation as a crusader who fought to eradicate corruption, wherever it was found. He did this primarily in his previous elected position as New York's Attorney General.

According to the press, Spitzer did three things that are noteworthy: I. More than any other single individual, he helped advance the causes of shareholder control, and proper governance and oversight of corporations. II. He used public, vicious, personal attacks on specific individuals at these corporations as one tool for achieving these ends. III. He spent tens of thousands of dollars on prostitutes.

It has been noted in several articles that the individuals targeted by Spitzer were openly and vindictively gleeful at the revelation that Spitzer had spent huge sums of his personal money on high-priced hookers, and his subsequent resignation in shame. The American press, especially in New York, was quick to reflect not only this euphoric reaction, but also the commonly held belief on Wall Street that Spitzer's harsh tactics and degradation of women was demonstrable proof that his efforts to check corporate misconduct were invalid.

Say what? To understand this reasoning (that the governor's inclination to pay women for sex negates his anti-corruption work), you must comprehend the American view of integrity and hypocrisy.

America is a culture that craves consistency, and mistakenly equates this consistency to something like "integrity". We demand consistency in our leaders, in our foreign policy, and from our fellow citizens. We want consistency so badly that we presume it exists, even when it is plainly absent. We are not believers in Oscar Wilde's observation that "we are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent". Quite to the contrary. For Americans, the opposite of consistency and integrity is hypocrisy. In fact, as Kenneth Johnson pointed out, in a culture where there are no shared values, the only sin is hypocrisy.

Consider this: cultural agreement on a foundational moral code (as in the "natural law" or "divine command" construction) provides individuals with a form of security. Life is more predictable when we can make certain presumptions about how each of us "should" behave, and "ought to" live, as indicated by our shared moral code. Conversely, in a society where this shared understanding does not exist - such as in multicultural, secular, western, liberal democracies - we feel a collective sense of instability because we do not have a framework to predict the behavior of the man standing next to us. The only way stability can be reclaimed is if we demand consistency relative to itself and live our lives equating consistency to morality and personal integrity.

It is for these reasons that in America, a person who says one thing and does another is seen as the incarnation of evil. We tolerate a great deal in this country, from prostitutes to white-collar thieves, but we will not tolerate a man who is inconsistent. We see the inconsistent man as the embodiment of randomness and volatility in our world. We see him as the threat that must be put down. Without a shared moral code, we are not a culture that can say, "Spitzer is a man who did wrong when he used a woman by treating her purely as an object. He did wrong when he attacked individuals harshly and personally. He did good by fighting corruption." No, in our effort to establish certainty and regularity where there never is any (inside one person), what we say is, "If we voted this man into office, that is because he was a predictable force for good. If he did something bad, he must therefore be a predictable force for evil. Therefore, everything he ever did was wrong."

To complicate matters is our rather blunt use of the word "hypocrite", a term that has become our shorthand for "inconsistent" or even "unclean". To be technical about it, "hypocrisy" is not "saying one thing and doing another", but believing one way and directing another. Put a different way: if Spitzer believed in his heart that engaging in prostitution was wrong, but did it anyway, his behavior is merely a demonstration of remarkable personal weakness, but not hypocrisy. However, if he believed in his heart that prostitution was acceptable, but spoke out publicly against it, then this could be actual hypocrisy.

The obvious problem - the missing variable - in all cases is that we do not know what any other man really believes in his heart. In order to get away with our use of the word "hypocrite", we presume that Spitzer's actions were in line with his beliefs, while at the same time knowing that every day we each do things that go against the convictions we hold most dear. As Betsy Holmes likes to remind me, when other people violate the moral order, it's because they are bad people. When I do it, I've got pretty good reasons.

Let's be more careful casting stones, shall we?

Evolution and Ethics

"Luna Moth / Actias Luna" (2007), by Honor Marks

In a very un-modern way, I routinely find myself struggling to accept the ethical implications of social and biological Darwinists. Generally, these Darwinists argue that what we call "morality" is a different way of articulating "those behaviors and characteristics that maximize surviving and thriving".

From time to time, I read thought provoking books (such as "The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life", by Robert Wright) or articles (such as "Three-way mating game of North American lizard found in distant European relative") on the subject and I get an uneasy feeling that what is undoubtedly fascinating science is being used to promote a highly questionable view of ethics and religion. It does happen.

The philosophical principle most often violated in this, and similar arguments is called the "fact-value distinction" (or perhaps, depending on the argument, the "is-ought distinction". Associated closely with David Hume, this principle asserts that one can not ground normative arguments in positive arguments. One can not say that because a being does behave a certain way, then it ought to behave that way, as some evolutionary psychologists do. The first claim belongs to the realm of description / empiricism, while the second is a prescriptive judgment. My dog does poop on my jackass neighbor's lawn, but one can not conclude from this that she has a moral obligation to do so.

Sed Digressio. Consider the following conclusion drawn from the scientific observation explained in the lizard article above:

Force defeats cooperation. Cooperation defeats deception. Deception defeats force.

What science can not tell us here is whether or not we should be forceful, cooperative, or deceptive - it only tells us the way the world is. We still must make a moral judgment about who we intend to be, and what we ought to do. Authors like Wright tend to blur this line, while I prefer the delineation to be sharp.

The Technological Imperative

"The Scream" (1893), by Edvard Munch

I was watching the trailer for the film Naqoyqatsi and noted the tagline, "There is no more nature. There is only technology." That assertion made me think about the tense relationship between the two, and how the modern world is caught somewhere in the middle.

When philosophers invoke "the technological imperative", they refer to two closely related ideas that try to describe how human beings have come to perceive technology:

1) Once technological advances have been made, further progression is inevitable. In this sense, technological growth - and man's embrace of it - is unavoidable and can not be reversed. For example, can you imagine a future world in which people desired black and white televisions and gravel roads? How about one that rejected the use of antibiotics or tractors? Interestingly, while our society as a whole seems to accept that technological progress is inescapable, some individuals still attempt to moderate the impact of its onward march. Consider that Amtrak now carries a single "quiet car" on most northeastern routes in which cell phones can not be used, and some couples avoid pharmaceutical birth control strictly because it is "unnatural".

2) If something can be done (if it is technically possible), then it ought to be done. The most oft cited example of this view was the French politician Jacques Soustelle who said of the atomic bomb, "Since it was possible, it was necessary." This second view goes beyond the first notion of inevitability by suggesting a moral imperative. Therefore, if we can go to Mars, we ought to. If we can keep a man alive for 200 years, we ought to. If we can find a technical solution to a problem (perhaps one that has a compelling human or spiritual solution), we ought to employ technology.

Should we, really?

I am a big fan of technology, but I am increasingly wary of its influence on our lives, specifically the way in which it separates us from nature and deprives us of authentic human experience. Or, as Max Frisch put it,

“Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn’t have to experience it.”

What is "natural" and how much of our existence should include this quality, even at the expense of efficiency? I can't say that I know for sure. Email is fantastic, but we should weigh the value of a typewritten letter with the value of a face-to-face encounter. Does checking the weather online provide us the same connection to the earth as going outside and taking measurements - and does that matter? Is the use of a stethoscope really as valuable as a doctor putting his ear on your chest? Maybe, and maybe not.

The painting above is "The Scream" (1893), by Edvard Munch. In his diary, Munch wrote of this day, "... my friends walked on, and there I still stood, trembling with fear - and I sensed an endless scream passing through nature." I believe that it was good for Munch to feel nature's cry. I doubt that he would have had the same experience watching this sunset on television.