Ever since my arrest in 2005 people have been telling me that my thinking sounds a lot like existentialism. I usually just dismiss such observations because I know that my "thinking" is based primarily on my own first hand observances, not on anything I heard someplace, or read about in some book. What little I know about philosophy has given me a strong distaste for it. So calling me an existentialist seems just silly to me.
Recently though, the Education department on this prison set up a study program for the death row prisoners (SCU) called "A.C.E." (Adult Continuing Education) that allows us to have a DVD player in our cells so we can view education videos. Most of the videos that they have available for us are high-school and middle-school documentaries that aren't very interesting. But mixed in with those are a few college level lecture based coursed that I've found to be enjoyable.
After completing a six part biology course, that consisted of 72 lectures all together, I decided to do a two part lecture course (24 lectures total) on existentialism called "No Excuses" by professor Robert C Solomon (business and philosophy at the University of Texas at the time he did these lectures, but according to Wikipedia he is deceased now, having died of a heart failure while travelling). The education department provides only the DVD's and none of the texts meant to accompany these courses. Fortunately, because the material is a bit dated, I've been able to ask a friend to buy the main texts very inexpensively on Amazon.com (see "Books" "No Excuses" for a list of the books I read in accompany with this course). This has brought the educational value of these video courses up to a good level for me. In fact, while studying these materials in my cell I can easily forget where I am (and why) for hours at a time as I slip into the intellectual realms of intent concentration that I developed over years in various state colleges, both in and out of prison. This focused state of mind is my "comfort zone" or "happy place" that I've often found more relaxing than deep meditation. The fact that I am actually aquiring a useful education in the process is, and has always been, a mere added benefit. And in the case of this "No Excuses" course on existentialism, I also get the added benefit of finally understanding why people tell me that I think like an existentialist, so I can disagree more informatively.
Professor Solomon structures his lectures around the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre. He spends most of the lectures discussing Sartre's predecessors and contemporary philosophers that contributed to, or otherwise helped shape (or at least influence), Sartre's thinking. But, the entire last six lectures of Solomon's course focus exclusively on Sartre, with clear emphasis on Sartre's ideas about freedom (free will) and individual responsibility; hence the title of the lecture series, "No Excuses".
But, when I read the same writings by Sartre that Solomon cites and discusses I come away with a slightly, but fundamentally different understanding of what Sartre is trying to say.
According to Solomon, Sartre emphasizes INDIVIDUAL responsibility. But, for me, Sartre emphasizes something else. He points to individual responsibility, but then emphasizes the SOCIAL aspects of that responsibility not the INDIVIDUAL aspect.
For example, in Sartre's well known lecture, "Existentialism is a Humanism", he says plainly, "... the first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders". Solomon uses such statements to assert a kind of individual blame for what we do. But, if you continue Sartre's thought (i.e. the very next sentence in the same lecture) we find a critical qualification, "... when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men." The qualification is critical because it says that we are not INDIVIDUALLY responsible, but we are SOCIALLY responsible. If we follow Sartre's thinking through, then we find that his philosophy does not give us an excuse to blame others for what they do, but instead it only tells us that we are all responsible, entirely responsible, for what all men do!
This idea is so alien to our conditioned way of thinking, especially in the West, that it doesn't surprize me that such a preeminent contemporary expert on existentialism such as professor Solomon. would fail to see the significance of Sartre's carefully worded qualification for what is meant by "responsibility". Sartre himself never asserts that we have "no excuse" for our behavior (or thoughts for that matter). Instead he is merely pointing out that we have the freedom (a term that philosophers use to mean "free will") to CHOOSE, regardless of our excuses. Sartre's emphasis, according to what I have read myself of his works, is on freedom, not responsibility; especially not responsibility in the sense of "blame" that Solomon seems to take from Sartre's philosophy.
If I were a professor myself then I would put a lot more effort into supporting, defending, and clarifying this interpretation of Sartre's meaning. But, it is this very type of quibbling over language that I feel gets in the way of real understanding in the first place. If Solomon spent more time thinking for himself, instead of studying other people's thoughts, then maybe he would have seen what Sartre was trying to say in the first place.
(J.D. 9-15-2014)
Sunday, November 30, 2014
The Religion of Justice
Despite numerous studies and official investigations there is no evidence that capital punishment deters crime. This, by definition, makes "belief" in the death penalty an article of faith, not reason. It is just one part of the complex belief system we call criminal justice, which itself is a part of the more general religion of Justice.
Because the major religions of the past have fallen out of power, due primarily to their frankly antiquated belief systems, it is a common error today for people to fail to recognize the modern religious constructs that have stepped in in their place as political powerhouses.
Religion has always been first and foremost a means of political control over a large population. Today, as throughout history, wars are fought over resources, but justified through religious doctrine. Only today we don't recognize these doctrines for what they are: fabricated belief systems that are defended by legal decree (i.e. law); a.k.a. religion.
There are many (far too many to deny, through many people still deny it in attempts to defend their outdated beliefs) examples throughout history of religious authorities, (a.k.a. lawmakers, or "pharisees" as they were once called) attempting to defend their belief systems, which they saw as critical to the functioning of society itself, by outlawing and punishing anyone who offered evidence against or otherwise contradicted their articles of faith. It is easy to recognize these travesties of deceit against the truth that were propagated by the very people that society looked to in general to defend the truth. The same practice not only continues today, but does so rampantly under the same guise it has long used... "the best interest of the people."
There are too many examples of this to even begin to tell. The real problem is that, like all religions, the "belief system" that is being so defended by contemporary politics is based upon a complex of erroneous fundamental beliefs that are consistent with the "best evidence" available. That doesn't make them reasonable though. The "best evidence" one thousand years ago supported the fundamental belief that the earth was the center of the universe. And thus, the modern continued belief that humans are the "dominant" species on this planet is equally and erroneously believed by those who would defend the system of beliefs that extend outward from such a premise, such as the belief that humans must invoke order and justice through law.
But, there are some blaring examples of this practice of defending religious beliefs against new evidence that even the lawmakers themselves must admit (to themselves at least, or so one would hope) is done contrary to the truth in defense of the so-called "common good" (a justification for deception that Jesus himself warned against when he confronted the pharisees of his day). One such example is the Rind, et al. study.
Professor Rind, and a collection of highly reputed and respected colleagues, did a meta analysis of a dozen or so official studies on the long term effects of "adult-child sexual relations". The collection of studies they choose all met the most rigorous of academic and scientific standards (they were later criticized for not adhering to strict scientific standards, but these critics were later proven to be the ones in error, not the studies). Rind and his colleagues checked and double checked, even quadruple checked their sources and their results before they published the results of their analysis in a highly reputed scientific journal. They knew that their results were highly controversial, but they were scientists, and evidence was evidence as far as they were concerned.
The study showed with a high degree of statistical significance (i.e. "proved" in layman's terms) that there were no long term harmful effects of adult-child sexual relations on the child involved in the relationship. And by "no harmful effects" they were talking about negative psychological impact, i.e. emotional, intellectual, etc... And, as I've already suggested, they did not come to this conclusion based on circumstantial or incomplete evidence. The study accounted for numerous factors, using the best known control group and statistical techniques. (In other words, they did not base their conclusion on just one study or even one type of study. The Rind et al. study was a "meta study", which means it compiled and confirmed it's observations over several overlapping studies that could account for almost any anomalous findings.)
The result of their published study was predictable. It raised a maelstrom of heated controversy. The Rind study was attacked from all possible directions and for all possible reasons. It directly threatened one of the cornerstones of our criminal justice beliefs; that children are emotionally and psychologically vulnerable to sexual predators and must be protected at all cost (even if that means taking a man - or woman - away from their family and locking him in prison for 20 or more years, just because he uploaded pictures of naked children on the Internet). But the evidence that the study presented was solid and conclusive; children are not as vulnerable as we thought, and "sexual abuse" does not cause the harm we believe it does. And that's where the lawmakers stepped in.
Several states passed legislation, as a direct response to the Rind study, that decreed by law that adult-child sexual relations are abusive and harmful to the child. Then the Federal government jumped in and passed similar laws, and furthermore restricted any Federal funding of future research into such matters (i.e. the National Science Foundation funds and others, which pretty much shut down any further research by anyone on adult-child sexual relations).
And there you have it. Our so-called "Justice System" is no more than a system of beliefs that are defended by law, not available evidence. The Rind study and the death penalty studies are just two explicit and prominent examples of this fact. We live in a society that still centers around systems of legally defended false beliefs... a society of Baal-worshipers , in every sense. How tragic is that?
(J.D. 11-13-2014)
Because the major religions of the past have fallen out of power, due primarily to their frankly antiquated belief systems, it is a common error today for people to fail to recognize the modern religious constructs that have stepped in in their place as political powerhouses.
Religion has always been first and foremost a means of political control over a large population. Today, as throughout history, wars are fought over resources, but justified through religious doctrine. Only today we don't recognize these doctrines for what they are: fabricated belief systems that are defended by legal decree (i.e. law); a.k.a. religion.
There are many (far too many to deny, through many people still deny it in attempts to defend their outdated beliefs) examples throughout history of religious authorities, (a.k.a. lawmakers, or "pharisees" as they were once called) attempting to defend their belief systems, which they saw as critical to the functioning of society itself, by outlawing and punishing anyone who offered evidence against or otherwise contradicted their articles of faith. It is easy to recognize these travesties of deceit against the truth that were propagated by the very people that society looked to in general to defend the truth. The same practice not only continues today, but does so rampantly under the same guise it has long used... "the best interest of the people."
There are too many examples of this to even begin to tell. The real problem is that, like all religions, the "belief system" that is being so defended by contemporary politics is based upon a complex of erroneous fundamental beliefs that are consistent with the "best evidence" available. That doesn't make them reasonable though. The "best evidence" one thousand years ago supported the fundamental belief that the earth was the center of the universe. And thus, the modern continued belief that humans are the "dominant" species on this planet is equally and erroneously believed by those who would defend the system of beliefs that extend outward from such a premise, such as the belief that humans must invoke order and justice through law.
But, there are some blaring examples of this practice of defending religious beliefs against new evidence that even the lawmakers themselves must admit (to themselves at least, or so one would hope) is done contrary to the truth in defense of the so-called "common good" (a justification for deception that Jesus himself warned against when he confronted the pharisees of his day). One such example is the Rind, et al. study.
Professor Rind, and a collection of highly reputed and respected colleagues, did a meta analysis of a dozen or so official studies on the long term effects of "adult-child sexual relations". The collection of studies they choose all met the most rigorous of academic and scientific standards (they were later criticized for not adhering to strict scientific standards, but these critics were later proven to be the ones in error, not the studies). Rind and his colleagues checked and double checked, even quadruple checked their sources and their results before they published the results of their analysis in a highly reputed scientific journal. They knew that their results were highly controversial, but they were scientists, and evidence was evidence as far as they were concerned.
The study showed with a high degree of statistical significance (i.e. "proved" in layman's terms) that there were no long term harmful effects of adult-child sexual relations on the child involved in the relationship. And by "no harmful effects" they were talking about negative psychological impact, i.e. emotional, intellectual, etc... And, as I've already suggested, they did not come to this conclusion based on circumstantial or incomplete evidence. The study accounted for numerous factors, using the best known control group and statistical techniques. (In other words, they did not base their conclusion on just one study or even one type of study. The Rind et al. study was a "meta study", which means it compiled and confirmed it's observations over several overlapping studies that could account for almost any anomalous findings.)
The result of their published study was predictable. It raised a maelstrom of heated controversy. The Rind study was attacked from all possible directions and for all possible reasons. It directly threatened one of the cornerstones of our criminal justice beliefs; that children are emotionally and psychologically vulnerable to sexual predators and must be protected at all cost (even if that means taking a man - or woman - away from their family and locking him in prison for 20 or more years, just because he uploaded pictures of naked children on the Internet). But the evidence that the study presented was solid and conclusive; children are not as vulnerable as we thought, and "sexual abuse" does not cause the harm we believe it does. And that's where the lawmakers stepped in.
Several states passed legislation, as a direct response to the Rind study, that decreed by law that adult-child sexual relations are abusive and harmful to the child. Then the Federal government jumped in and passed similar laws, and furthermore restricted any Federal funding of future research into such matters (i.e. the National Science Foundation funds and others, which pretty much shut down any further research by anyone on adult-child sexual relations).
And there you have it. Our so-called "Justice System" is no more than a system of beliefs that are defended by law, not available evidence. The Rind study and the death penalty studies are just two explicit and prominent examples of this fact. We live in a society that still centers around systems of legally defended false beliefs... a society of Baal-worshipers , in every sense. How tragic is that?
(J.D. 11-13-2014)
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
The Meaning of Privacy
Privacy is a concept that I have often pondered. Why do people demand it? What's so important about it? Why can't we live happily without it? Isn't privacy just a polite word for secrecy? If so, then isn't it devious, and ultimately harmful? Well, I think I've finally come up with a way to think about our "need" for privacy in a way that could answer all these questions and more.
Ultimately, our desire for "privacy" is really a desire to not be judged by other people. When you look at it that way then our "need" for it starts to make sense. It is revealed as a pathological desire after all, for we only fear being judged when we have something to hide. That is, we only fear our loss of privacy when we have judged something about ourselves that we do not want others to judge likewise.
But, if we do not judge, then we have no desire for privacy. So, a world without judgement, i.e. a better more natural world, would have no hidden secrets, and no need for privacy.
Think about it.
(J.D. 10-24-2014)
Ultimately, our desire for "privacy" is really a desire to not be judged by other people. When you look at it that way then our "need" for it starts to make sense. It is revealed as a pathological desire after all, for we only fear being judged when we have something to hide. That is, we only fear our loss of privacy when we have judged something about ourselves that we do not want others to judge likewise.
But, if we do not judge, then we have no desire for privacy. So, a world without judgement, i.e. a better more natural world, would have no hidden secrets, and no need for privacy.
Think about it.
(J.D. 10-24-2014)
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