Maverick Philosopher

The Great Blizzard of '78 and How I Got my Dissertation Done

Reader Josh E. asks for tips on how to get a dissertation done. Here is how I did it.

..........................................

I had an odd schedule in those days.  I hit the sack at four in the afternoon and got up at midnight.  I caught the last trolley of the night to the end of the line, Boston College station.  I got off and hiked up the hill to my office where I worked all night on my dissertation while listening to a classical music station out of Waltham, Mass.  Then I prepared my lectures, taught a couple of classes, went for a run, played a game of chess with my apartment mate,  Quentin Smith,  and was in bed by four again.  That was my schedule early fall '77 to late spring '78 every single day holidays included.

That's how I got my dissertation done. I ruthlessly cut out everything from my life except the essential.  I told  one girlfriend, "See you at my dissertation defense."  She later expressed doubts about marrying a man given to occasional interludes of "hibernation."  Another girlfriend complained that I kept "odd hours."  True enough.  And I still do.  I don't get up at midnight any more.  I get up at 2 AM.  I've become a slacker.

One night in early February the snow was coming down pretty thick as I caught the last trolley of the night.  The trip up the hill to my office was quite a slog.  A big drift against the main door to Carney Hall made it difficult to get the door open.  But I made it inside and holed up in my windowless office for two or three days as the Great Blizzard of '78 raged.  I got a lot of work done and finished the dissertation on schedule.

Addendum.  An excerpt  from Dissertation Advice on the Occasion of Kant's Birthday:

So finish the bloody thing now while you are young and cocky and energetic.  Give yourself a year, say, do your absolute best and crank it out. Think of it as a union card. It might not get you a job but then it just might. Don't think of it as a magnum opus or you will never finish. Get it done by age 30 and before accepting a full-time appointment. And all of this before getting married. That, in my opinion, is the optimal order. Dissertation before 30, marriage after 30. 

Cured by Age

Old age is the sovereign cure for romantic folly and I sincerely recommend it to the young and foolish.  Take care to get there. Philosophers especially should want to live long so as to study life from all temporal angles.

Panicked over the Wuhan Flu (Wu-Flu)?

For perspective, consider that in recent years 30,000 to 40,000 Americans each year have been killed in car crashes, and that thousands and thousands die each year of various strains of influenza the names of which are not bandied-about by the 24/7/366 media.  The Maverick advises: resist group-think and mass hysteria. While taking reasonable precautions, live your life and consider what really matters. This is not to say that the COVID-19 virus is not a serious threat. It is, and it is being dealt with by a serious president who gets called a 'racist' and a 'xenophobe' for his eminently sensible travel bans. People such as Joe Biden who hurl these epithets are moral scum and need to be denounced as such.

There are things about which people should be panicked [or at least seriously concerned].

For example, the contempt for America and capitalism taught to a generation of young Americans from elementary school through college is worthy of panic. The extreme levels of economy-collapsing debt we are irresponsibly piling onto the backs of future generations to maintain “entitlements” is worthy of panic.

So is the premature sexualization of children—encouraging them to choose their own gender and taking 5-year-olds to public libraries for “Drag Queen Story Hour.”

But such things hardly register with most Americans.

I feel awful for kids today. They are relentlessly told that global warming poses an “existential threat” to life on earth. They are relentlessly told that President Donald Trump poses an “existential threat to America”—the words used, for example, a few weeks ago by Frank Rich in New York magazine, and used by the “moderate” Michael Bloomberg repeatedly in his speeches.

And now they are told their families had better stock up on toilet paper because only God knows when they will be unable to leave their homes.

It was a Democratic president who told Americans, during World War II no less, that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” He is a liberal idol, in part for saying that.

That is more or less exactly what Trump has been saying. Yet he’s an “existential threat” to our country.

Now chill out and have a beer. May I recommend a

The dude had a couple of Buds, but he was none the wiser.

The Stock Market is Tanking. Do Nothing.

Good advice. I learned the lesson back in '87. New to the game, I freaked out on Black Monday. Of course you remember the 508 point drop in the Dow. I got out, locking in losses, but then took too long getting back in. Now I am older, wiser, and if truth be told, a tad wider. 

Here is an old post of mine from 2008 that stands up well: Some Principles of a Financial Conservative. Agree or disagree, but if you disagree you won't budge me from views only reinforced by my experiences since aught-eight.  The main, thing, however, is to think hard, critically, and for yourself.

And another thing.

Don't say that money is the root of all evil. That's just silly. Say something that is true:

The inordinate love of money is the root of some evils.

Point proven in Radix Omnium Malorum. 

'Facially'

'Facially' is seeing a lot of use recently. I take it to be an English equivalent of prima facie. Some say that we should avoid Latinisms. I say instead: use them sparingly. 

"The Great Use of a Life . . .

. . . is to spend it for something that outlasts it." (William James)

How to Get Your Spouse to do Some Work around the House

Do some work around the house.

What Can a Sane Individual do in the Present Political Situation?

What can an individual do? Not much, but here are some suggestions.

Exercise your rights and in particular your Second Amendment rights; the latter provide the concrete backup to the others. A well-armed populace, feared by the totalitarians, is a strong deterrent without a shot being fired. Money spent on guns, ammo, accessories, and range fees goes to support our cause.  Be of good cheer, and hope for the best. But prepare for the worst.

Vote in every election, but never for any Democrat. And don't throw away your vote on third-party losers. The Libertarians are losertarians and the other third parties are discussion societies in political drag. Politically, they are jokes. Politics is a practical business. It's about better or worse, not about perfect or imperfect. Don't let the best become the enemy of the good. Make your vote count -- not that any one vote counts for much. Thanks to Trump, the Great Clarifier, there are now real choices.  The days of Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee are over. 

Vote with your wallet. Contribute to conservative causes, but never give money to leftist causes, organizations, or publication outlets. Did your alma mater ask for a contribution? "Not one dime until you clean up your act."  That's what I tell them. PBS and NPR programming is sometimes surpassingly excellent, but to give money to these left-leaning outfits is inimical to your interests as a conservative. Don't be a fool who empowers his enemies. 

Vote with your feet. Do you live in a sanctuary crap hole such as California? Leave. But don't come to Arizona, this rattle-snake infested inferno crawling with gun-toting racists. Keep heading East.  Move in with Elizabeth Warren. Her 3.5 million dollar pad near Harvard Square has plenty of room.

Punish any leftist 'friends' you may still have by withdrawing your high-quality friendship from them. Let them experience consequences for their willful self-enstupidation. Ceteris paribus, of course. 

Finally, show some civil courage and speak out: blog, facebook, tweet. But temper your rhetoric and don't incite violence. That's what they do (Maxine Waters, for example, hiding behind her Black Privilege.) But if you are young and need gainful employment, be careful, be very careful.  Never underestimate the mendacity and viciousness of leftists.  To them you are a deplorable 'racist.' Truth and morality are bourgeois fictions to them.  Power is what they believe in. 

Don't retreat into your private life lest you wake up one morning to find that there is no private life.

Ideals and Non-Attachment

Self-mastery, you say, is the highest mastery. You are attached to this ideal and you live for the most part in accordance with it. But on occasion you stumble and fall. You lose your temper, overeat, or succumb to lust. And then you feel disgust with yourself. The failure hurts your ego. It diminishes your sense of distinction, which is what the ego is. The pain of moral failure reveals attachment to an ideal and a self-image. Is it the ideal you honor or your self-image? The solution is not to abandon  the ideal,  but to pursue it with detachment from the outcome, the outcome being either your success or your failure in meeting its demand.

Non-attachment is an ideal too. You can identify with it and become attached to it to the detriment of your non-attachment. But if I am not my property, pelf, and productions, nor my body, nor my transient states of mind, how could I be my ideals? They too are external.  If I identify  with the ideal of non-attachment, then I am attached to it, and to that extent conflate my (true) self with my (worldly) ego. 'My' ideals are not me. I don't own them or control them. It would be truer to say that they own me and control me. They are not ex-pressions of any true self I may have. They are not my innermost identity; I acquire an objective, a worldly identity by identifying with them. 

So subtle are the dialectics of the self and the demands of the moral life.

The Need for Vindication

"See? I was right, and you were wrong!"

But why does one want to be seen as right by an indigent and fickle mortal? Why not be satisfied with being right? Let it go!

Useless Rehearsals

Rehearsals are for a future performance.  Why then are you 'rehearsing' that altercation with so-and-so from twenty years ago? Do you plan to bring it back to the stage?

Weakening Thoughts

Thoughts of past weakness are weakening thoughts. Don't entertain them.

A Rule of Engagement with Females

Accept and return hugs, but do not initiate them. Exception: family members.  Joe Biden take note.

Let it Go!

Why are you recalling an unpleasant event when everyone else involved has forgotten -- not only it, but you?

My Approach to Study and Writing

A reader inquires,

A question. It seems I hit a wall every year or so in my intellectual life which involves uncertainty about what books/essays to read next, what subject matter to systematically pursue, what to reread and review (review is all too important). Now I know everyone is different, but could you share your approach to study during the week/month? Do you have a review day once a week? Do you have both a long-term project and a short term one going at the same time? Sorry if you’ve answered this in a post before, you may refer me to it.

I do have a long-term project, namely, a book I am trying to finish. The subject matter is extremely difficult and technical and so the going is slow.  I am perhaps perversely attracted to the nastiest and toughest problems there are, problems that tax my poor pate to its paltry limits.  I work on the book a little each day.  And then I have a number of short-term projects going at the same time. One is a review article I have been invited to write, and another is an invited contribution to a collection of essays that must be submitted by January 1st.  And then there is my pursuit of all sorts of other questions via blogging.  On top of that 'culture war' activities: Blasting away day by day against the insanity of the destructive Left. The Kavanaugh proceedings galvanized me and 'inspired' me to bring the fight into the belly of the beast, Zuck's Facebook.  I can't sit back and only think about God and the soul, time and existence, while my beloved country is destroyed by liberal-left filth.

You ask about review. Blogging helps with this. You shouldn't read serious material if you are not willing to study it, and there is little point in studying it if you don't take notes, assemble them into a coherent commentary, and evaluate what the author is maintaining, taking on board what is useful to you.  For example, I have written series of posts on books by Benatar, Nagel, Plantinga, and others.  These posts are available for review and cannibalization.  The book I am writing will have a chapter on death.  Some of the material from the Benatar posts will find its way into it.  

Above all you need a direction and a definite focus. What is it that most concerns you that you want to understand? What is the cynosure of your interest? The nature of disagreement? The rationality/irrationality of religious belief? The foundation of morality? The nature of the political? Mind's place in nature?  In Aristotelian terms, you need a 'final cause' of your inquiries, a unifying telos lest you spread yourself too thin and scatter your energies -- as I am wont to do.

Related:

Peter Suber, Taking Notes on Philosophical Texts

A Method of Study

Studiousness as Prophylaxis Against the Debilities of Old Age

Desideratum

Cultivate a critical openness.

William James on Self-Denial

Few preach self-denial anymore. We have become a nation of moral wimps. We need a taste of the strenuosity of yesteryear, and who better to serve it up than our very own William James, he of the Golden Age of American philosophy:

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But, if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, "I won't count this time!" Well, he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. (Principles of Psychology, vol. 1)

At James' door we receive bread. At Quine's a stone. How American philosophy has fallen off since the Golden Age of James, Royce, and Peirce!

 

 

 

Believing on Insufficient Evidence

The notion that we should always and everywhere apportion belief to evidence in such a way that we affirm only that for which we have sufficient evidence ignores the fact that belief for beings like us subserves action. If one acted only on those beliefs for which one had sufficient evidence one  would not act as one must to live well.

When a young person believes that he or she can do such-and-such, it is almost always on the basis of insufficient evidence.  And yet such belief beyond the evidence is a sine qua non of success.  There are two necessary conditions of success in life: one must believe that what one proposes to do is worth doing, and one must believe that one is capable of doing it.  In both cases one believes and acts on evidence that could hardly be called sufficient. 

This strikes me as a good maxim:  Don't let insufficient evidence prevent you from believing what you are better off believing than not believing. 

For a detailed discussion of what is behind the above remarks, see The Pragmatic and the Evidential: Is it Ever Rational to Believe Beyond the Evidence?

Beware of Projecting . . .

. . . your values and attitudes into others. We are not all the same 'deep down,' and we don't all want the same things. You say you value peace and social harmony? So do I. But some are bellicose right out of the box. They love war and thrive on conflict, and not just verbally.  

Liberal 'projectionism' -- to give it a name -- can get your irenic ass killed.

Never Buy a Book You Haven't Read

Wisdom and wit with a soupçon of paradox.

How Much Logic Do I Need?

A reader who reports that his main interest is in contemporary metaphysics inquires:

Should I learn as much logic as humanly possible during my PhD? Or should I learn only what I need along the way? I have a basic grasp of symbolic and predicate logic, but little meta-logic.

First of all, it makes no sense to oppose symbolic to predicate logic.  Modern symbolic logic includes both propositional logic and predicate logic.

Second, learn what you need as you go along.  For example, existence is one of the central topics in metaphysica generalis. To work on this topic in an informed way you have to understand the modern quantificational treatment of existence in mathematical logic. 

Here is the minimum required for doing metaphysics. First, a thorough grounding in traditional formal logic including the Aristotelian syllogistic. Second, modern symbolic logic including the propositional calculus and first-order predicate logic with identity.  Third, some familiarity with axiomatics and the concepts of metalogic including consistency and completeness of axiom systems.  Fourth, axiomatic set theory. Fifth, some (alethic) modal logic both propositional and quantified.

The best way to master these subjects, or at least the first two mentioned, is by teaching them to undergraduates.  

Of MInd and its Agitation

When the mind is agitated, meditate on its agitation to quiet it. When the mind is quiescent, do not analyze its quiescence lest one agitate it.

What, Me Worry?

The evil event will either occur or it will not.  If it occurs, and one worries beforehand, then one suffers twice, from the event and from the worry.  If the evil event does not occur, and one worries beforehand, one suffers once, but needlessly.  If the event does not occur, and one does not worry beforehand, then one suffers not at all.  Therefore, worry is irrational.  Don't worry, be happy.

Am I saying that that one ought not take reasonable precautions and exercise what is pleonastically called 'due diligence'?  Of course not.  Rational concern is not worry.  I never drive without my seat belt fastened.  Never! But I have never been in an accident and I never worry about it.  And if one day it happens, I will suffer only once:  from the accident.

Worry is a worthless emotion, a wastebasket emotion.  So self-apply some cognitive therapy and send it packing. You say you can't help but worry?  Then I say you are making no attempt to get your mind under control.  It's your mind, control it!  It's within your power.  Suppose what I have just said is false.  No matter: it is useful to believe it.  The proof  is in the pragmatics.

Seeking a Mate?

Better a loving heart than super smart.

Troubled

Troubled people are often trouble. Do you need more? Avoid the troubled, avoid trouble.

Perfectionism

Some, of modest ability, publish too much; others, of greater ability, are stymied by perfectionism.

Perfectionism is a curse!

Leave perfection to the gods. The most that can be asked of a mortal is that he strive for excellence within the limits of time, talent, and circumstance. Striving is not achieving, and excellence is not perfection.

You will never get to the point where you have read all the literature on a topic, even a well-defined one. Some of the material is out of print or otherwise unavailable, some of it is in foreign languages. Should you hold off on writing something about mereology until you can read Polish?

Too much reading blocks the channels of one's own creativity. Forever reading, never read. 

Writing is the best way of working out your ideas; so if you wait until you know exactly what you want to say before writing, you will miss the best way of determining exactly what you want to say.

Parents

Honor them for what was honorable in them. As for the rest, forgive and forget, or at least forgive. Honor the honorable; forgive the rest.

Mirror Meditation

Neither admire the handsome face that looks back at you, nor be troubled by the inevitable signs of aging as the face gives way to a meatless, brainless skull.

Yes, I Repeat Myself

Leftists constantly repeat their lies in the hope that they will be eventually taken for truths. So we of the Coalition of the Sane need to constantly repeat truths.  Not our truths, for there is  no such thing as 'our' truth or 'my' truth or 'your' truth.'  Truth is not subject to ownership. If you have it, you have it without possessing it.   

So speak the truth and speak it often.  Don't be afraid of repeating yourself. Living well is impossible without repetition. All learning, all teaching, all physical culture, all musicianship require repetition. No mastery of anything, no improvement in anything, is possible without repetition.  Can you play that riff the same way every time? If not, keep practicing. 

By practicing blows, whether verbal or physical, you learn how to land effective ones.

To Write Well, Read Well

To write well, read well. Read good books, which are often, but not always, old books. If you carefully read, say, William James' Varieties of Religious Experience, you will learn something of the expository potential of the English language from a master of thought and expression. If time is short, study one of his popular essays such as "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life."  Here is a characteristic paragraph:

But this world of ours is made on an entirely different pattern, and the casuistic question here is most tragically practical. The actually possible in this world is vastly narrower than all that is demanded; and there is always a pinch between the ideal and the actual which can only be got through by leaving part of the ideal behind. There is hardly a good which we can imagine except as competing for the possession of the same bit of space and time with some other imagined good. Every end of desire that presents itself appears exclusive of some other end of desire. Shall a man drink and smoke, or keep his nerves in condition? — he cannot do both. Shall he follow his fancy for Amelia, or for Henrietta? — both cannot be the choice of his heart. Shall he have the dear old Republican party, or a spirit of unsophistication in public affairs? — he cannot have both, etc. So that the ethical philosopher's demand for the right scale of subordination in ideals is the fruit of an altogether practical need. Some part of the ideal must be butchered, and he needs to know which part. It is a tragic situation, and no mere speculative conundrum, with which he has to deal. (The Will to Believe, Dover 1956, pp. 202-203, emphases in original)

One who can appreciate that this is good writing is well on the way to becoming a good writer. The idea is not so much to imitate as to absorb and store away large swaths of such excellent writing. It is bound to have its effect. Immersion in specimens of good writing is perhaps the only way to learn what good style is. It cannot be reduced to rules and maxims. And even if it could, there would remain the problem of the application of the rules. The application of rules requires good judgment, and one can easily appreciate that there cannot be rules of good judgment. This for the reason that the application of said rules would presuppose the very thing — good judgment — that cannot be reduced to rules. Requiring as it does good judgment, good writing cannot be taught, which is why teaching composition is even worse  in point of frustration than teaching philosophy. Trying to get a student to appreciate why a certain formulation is awkward is like trying to get a nerd to understand why pocket-protectors are sartorially substandard.

But what makes James' writing good? It has a property I call muscular elegance. The elegance has to do in good measure with the cadence, which rests in part on punctuation and sentence structure. Note the use of the semi-colon and the dash. These punctuation marks are falling into disuse, but I say we should dig in our heels and resist this decadence especially since it is perpetrated by many of the very same politically correct ignoramuses who are mangling the language in other ways I won't bother to list. There is no necessity that linguistic degeneration continue. We make the culture what it is, and we get the culture or unculture we deserve.

As for the muscularity of James' muscular elegance, it comes though in his vivid examples and his use of words like 'pinch' and 'butchered.' His is a magisterial weaving of the abstract and the concrete, the universal and the particular. Bare of flab, this is writing with pith and punch. And James is no slouch on content, either.

C. S. Lewis somewhere says something to the effect that reading one's prose out loud is a way to improve it. I would add to this Nietzsche's observation that

Good prose is written only face to face with poetry. For it is an uninterrupted, well-mannered war with poetry . . . (Gay Science, Book II, Section 92, tr. Kaufmann)

A well-mannered war, a loving polemic. There is a poetic quality to the James passage quoted above, but the lovely goddess of poetry is given to understand that truth trumps beauty and that she is but a handmaiden to the ultimate dominatrix, Philosophia. Or to coin a Latin phrase, ars ancilla philosophiae.

Finally, a corollary to the point that one must read good books to become a good writer: watch your consumption of media dreck. Avoid bad writing, and when you cannot, imbibe it critically.

To write well, read well. Read good books, which are often, but not always, old books. If you carefully read, say, William James' Varieties of Religious Experience, you will learn something of the expository potential of the English language from a master of thought and expression. If time is short, study one of his popular essays such as "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life."  Here is a characteristic paragraph:

But this world of ours is made on an entirely different pattern, and the casuistic question here is most tragically practical. The actually possible in this world is vastly narrower than all that is demanded; and there is always a pinch between the ideal and the actual which can only be got through by leaving part of the ideal behind. There is hardly a good which we can imagine except as competing for the possession of the same bit of space and time with some other imagined good. Every end of desire that presents itself appears exclusive of some other end of desire. Shall a man drink and smoke, or keep his nerves in condition? — he cannot do both. Shall he follow his fancy for Amelia, or for Henrietta? — both cannot be the choice of his heart. Shall he have the dear old Republican party, or a spirit of unsophistication in public affairs? — he cannot have both, etc. So that the ethical philosopher's demand for the right scale of subordination in ideals is the fruit of an altogether practical need. Some part of the ideal must be butchered, and he needs to know which part. It is a tragic situation, and no mere speculative conundrum, with which he has to deal. (The Will to Believe, Dover 1956, pp. 202-203, emphases in original)

One who can appreciate that this is good writing is well on the way to becoming a good writer. The idea is not so much to imitate as to absorb and store away large swaths of such excellent writing. It is bound to have its effect. Immersion in specimens of good writing is perhaps the only way to learn what good style is. It cannot be reduced to rules and maxims. And even if it could, there would remain the problem of the application of the rules. The application of rules requires good judgment, and one can easily appreciate that there cannot be rules of good judgment. This for the reason that the application of said rules would presuppose the very thing — good judgment — that cannot be reduced to rules. Requiring as it does good judgment, good writing cannot be taught, which is why teaching composition is even worse  in point of frustration than teaching philosophy. Trying to get a student to appreciate why a certain formulation is awkward is like trying to get a nerd to understand why pocket-protectors are sartorially substandard.

But what makes James' writing good? It has a property I call muscular elegance. The elegance has to do in good measure with the cadence, which rests in part on punctuation and sentence structure. Note the use of the semi-colon and the dash. These punctuation marks are falling into disuse, but I say we should dig in our heels and resist this decadence especially since it is perpetrated by many of the very same politically correct ignoramuses who are mangling the language in other ways I won't bother to list. There is no necessity that linguistic degeneration continue. We make the culture what it is, and we get the culture or unculture we deserve.

As for the muscularity of James' muscular elegance, it comes though in his vivid examples and his use of words like 'pinch' and 'butchered.' His is a magisterial weaving of the abstract and the concrete, the universal and the particular. Bare of flab, this is writing with pith and punch. And James is no slouch on content, either.

C. S. Lewis somewhere says something to the effect that reading one's prose out loud is a way to improve it. I would add to this Nietzsche's observation that

Good prose is written only face to face with poetry. For it is an uninterrupted, well-mannered war with poetry . . . (Gay Science, Book II, Section 92, tr. Kaufmann)

A well-mannered war, a loving polemic. There is a poetic quality to the James passage quoted above, but the lovely goddess of poetry is given to understand that truth trumps beauty and that she is but a handmaiden to the ultimate dominatrix, Philosophia. Or to coin a Latin phrase, ars ancilla philosophiae.

Finally, a corollary to the point that one must read good books to become a good writer: watch your consumption of media dreck. Avoid bad writing, and when you cannot, imbibe it critically.

Is the Philosophical Life the Best?

This from a reader:

I have a concern about the philosophical life. While I do think philosophy is intrinsically valuable, and while I do deny that one is obligated to "do the most good" with one's life (I'm not a consequentialist), I wonder if there are better ways to live than to devote one's life to philosophy. Prima facie, devoting one's life to solving global poverty or curing cancer seems better than focusing on philosophy. If so, then even if one isn't obligated to solve global poverty or cure cancer, why not devote one's life to these causes instead?

 

Perhaps the philosophical life is better than these other options, but that isn't clear to me. It seems more plausible that, all things being equal, a life that saves countless lives is better lived than a life that doesn't save a single life. Again, I'm not saying we're obligated to save lives, I'm just making a comparative judgment.

I can't refute what you say, but I can offer an alternative point of view.  If you consider it, it may help you better understand your own point of view even if it does not motivate any modification of it.

 

One question concerns the best life humanly possible.  Aristotle discussed it in his Nicomachean Ethics. He considered lives devoted to pleasure, material acquisition, politics, and philosophy. I set forth his answer here.

 

But the best life possible for humans might not be the best life  for a particular human.  Whether or not the best life is the philosophical life, not everyone is 'philosophy material.'

 

Philosophy is a vocation, and only some are called to it. (I am speaking in ideal terms here: what passes for 'philosophy' in the 'universities' falls far short of the ideal.)

 

The best life for you will depend on your aptitudes, values, and worldview.   Everyone has a worldview of sorts even if unexamined and unarticulated.  Suppose your outlook is broadly secular.   And suppose you find secularism obvious.  Then you will not be inclined to question it and will have no need for philosophy.  You have 'your truth,' a worldview you believe is true, and therefore feel no need to investigate whether it is true in whole or in part.  Doubt is the engine of inquiry, but you have no doubts. For you philosophical inquiry would be idle.  You would be left cold by the Socratic, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

 

And if the people you associate with share your tacit worldview, then you will have no need to articulate and defend it.  The existence of competing worldviews might trouble you or then again it might not. You might be the sort of person who is not disturbed or given pause by the disagreement of others.

 

For me, disagreement is a goad to inquiry. I have a consuming need to know. And a life lived without examination is definitely worth little or nothing. Such a life remains on the animal level. A human life, speaking normatively, is a transcending life, a life of self-transcendence and aspiration.

 

Primum vivere deinde philosophari.  I agree. We must live and live fully to gather the grapes of experience from which to press the wine of wisdom.  We don't gather grapes to gather grapes, but for the wine. The vita activa subserves the vita contemplativa.

 

You say it is not clear to you that the philosophical life is superior to, say, cancer research.  Then I say you should leave philosophy alone.  The quest for the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters is the highest calling and it demands total commitment.  I can argue for this conviction, but I can't prove it, and I will persuade only those who already sense its truth.

 

In the early '80s I heard a speech by the American politician, Mario Cuomo, in which he touted the political life as the highest life. I thought to myself: "He can't really believe that!"  But I soon concluded  that he did believe it.  I can give my reasons why Cuomo is wrong, but these reasons, which suffice for me, will make no impression on those who think the political life the highest. (To me, politics is like taking out the garbage or unplugging the toilet: it's a dirty job and it has to be done and done properly; in an ideal world, however, there would be no State and no need for politicians. As things are, our fallen predicament makes the State  practically necessary, a necessary evil, along with its agents.)

 

My advice is, first of all, know thyself.  Having honestly assessed your abilities, do with your life what you think is the best, and what you are fit to do.

 

I realize that this advice is of very little practical value.  Listen to others, but keep your own counsel, and follow the urgings vouchsafed to you in the highest moments of existential clarity and discernment.

How to Grow Old and the Question of an Immortality Worth Wanting

Sage advice from Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) who grew old indeed. The best part of his short essay follows:

I think that a successful old age is easiest for those who have strong impersonal interests involving appropriate activities. It is in this sphere that long experience is really fruitful, and it is in this sphere that the wisdom born of experience can be exercised without being oppressive. It is no use telling grownup children not to make mistakes, both because they will not believe you, and because mistakes are an essential part of education. But if you are one of those who are incapable of impersonal interests, you may find that your life will be empty unless you concern yourself with your children and grandchildren. In that case you must realise that while you can still render them material services, such as making them an allowance or knitting them jumpers, you must not expect that they will enjoy your company.

Without a doubt, "strong impersonal interests involving appropriate activities" is the key. 

Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there there is a justification for this feeling. Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it -so at least it seems to me- is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.

[from “Portraits From Memory And Other Essays”]

The second paragraph raises deep and difficult questions.  The philosopher in me has often entertained, with considerable hospitality, the thought that an immortality worth wanting must involve a transcending of the petty and personal ego, the self that separates us from other selves and the world. An immortality worth wanting must involve a sloughing off of the petty self and a merging into an impersonal, universal, transcendental awareness of impersonal Platonica including eternal truths, changeless essences, absolute values, and noble ideals. Those philosophers of a predominantly theoretical bent will be attracted to this conception reminiscent as it is of Aristotle's bios theoretikos as exemplified in its highest instance, noesis noeseos.

"But then you would no longer exist! You would be swallowed up in death, the greatest calamity of them all." To this objection I had a ready reply: "It all depends on who I am in the innermost core of my selfhood; if I am in truth the eternal Atman, and not this indigent and limited psychophysical complex; if I am the transcendental witness self, then I will not cease to exist. In the measure that I identify with that deathless, impersonal awareness of eide and Wahrheiten an sich, I am proof against extinction by the body's death. I will merge at last with the sea of transcendental awareness which is my true self and give up my false petty individuality for a greater individuality, that of the Absolute.

That is one strand, the monistic strand, in my thinking about selfhood and immortality. It dominated my thinking in my twenties and thirties. 

But another is the personalist strand which takes very seriously the reality of persons in the plural and the possibility of deep I-Thou (as opposed to I-It)  relations between persons and between a finite person and the ultimate person, the First Person, if you will, God. 

On both conceptions there is a distinction between the true self and the false self. Controversy erupts over the nature of the true self. Is it trans-individual, or is it individuated?   Is there one true self or many? Are we to aspire to an obliteration of the individual self or to its transformation?  On neither conception is survival the schlepping on of the crass and carnal earthly  self.  Is the death of the individual a great calamity or is it  a benign release into true selfhood? The controversy is ancient. Ramanuja to Shankara: I don't want to become sugar; I want to taste sugar!

As for Lord Russell, he would not have spoken of the eternal Atman, but he was a convinced atheist and mortalist. He was sure his individual consciousness would cease at death. But this did not bother him because the objects of his ultimate concern were impersonal.  "The things I care for will continue, and others will carry on what I can no longer do."

More on Tipping: A Server Weighs in with Insights and Advice

Long-time reader R. B. sends us his thoughts:

I appreciated your post. I am on the other side of the coin: I am a server and I depend on tips to help get me through nursing school. So hopefully I can help bring some insight. I agree with your overall point that one ought to tip based on service. Bad service? Bad tip. Excellent service? Excellent tip. The restaurant I work at bases my tip out (my pay out to the bar, bussers, food runners for their help) on my overall sales (4%); suppose I sell $1000 worth of food and beverages on a particular night; this means I dish out $40 of my tips out to those who directly helped me. So when I don’t get tipped (whether justified or not), I am still paying the tip out. I had a table of Europeans last week and the bill was around $400. If I did my job well—and I think I did—then I ought to have earned an $80 tip. Well, they left me zero. It happens. But here I am paying out $16; so I essentially had to pay to wait on this table! It usually evens out because some people are generous and see me busting my ass and tip over 20%. And if mistakes happen—which they do—99% of the time a nice attitude and an apology fix everything and I still get the 20%.

 

Another important point is this: if you are nice to me (which is a low bar: just acknowledge I exist and have feelings), I will do everything within my power to get you free stuff. You asked me how my day was? I won’t charge you for that soda. You say please and thank you (embarrassingly enough you’d be surprised how many people don’t use these words at all)? I’ll get you that free dessert all on company moolah baby. I don’t expect a bigger tip when I do this, but you get my point. 

 

I also notice this a lot: how you treat waitstaff directly correlates to a deep part of your character. It’s a good litmus test for first dates. I went on a date with a girl and she was rude/snippy to the server because our food was late. Guess what? 99% chance it was not the server’s fault. The kitchen is busy and things come out late during a dinner rush. Needless to say we didn’t go out again. How can you be rude to someone who is bringing you food and beverages? It blows my mind. 

 

My personal rule is that I tip whenever and wherever I can. I rationalize it by thinking: how much will me giving this extra $1-2 actually affect me financially (*wink* famine and affluence)? The coffee shop? I tip like I would at a bar. The car wash? You bet. The dishwashers at my work? Certainly; they have the worst job in the entire restaurant and are not part of the tip out. And it’s nice because I know the money is going directly into their pocket and the government doesn’t see it (when it’s cash). Always tip in cash if you can.

 

While there might not be a moral obligation to tip, to me it does show something about your character if the service was excellent and you stiffed them. If you are opposed to tipping at sit down restaurants, then don’t go to them—simple as that. 

 

Some points:

 

It’s dehumanizing when someone doesn’t acknowledge you or even looks at you in the eye. Be a decent person and say please and thank you.

 

Don’t be rude because of mistakes (again: the vast majority of the time, the person you will tip had no control over it).

 

Control your kids (most kids nowadays are sadly glued to phones or tablets so it’s not usually a problem).

 

Don’t be a cheap bastard.

 

Have a Merry Christmas!

On Tipping

Here, in no particular order, are my maxims concerning the practice of tipping.

1. He who is too cheap to leave a tip in a restaurant should cook for himself. That being said, there is no legal obligation to tip, nor should there be. Is there a moral obligation? Perhaps. Rather than argue that there is I will just state that tipping is the morally decent thing to do, ceteris paribus. And it doesn't matter whether you will be returning to the restaurant. No doubt a good part of the motivation for tipping is prudential: if one plans on coming back then it is prudent to establish good relations with the people one is likely to encounter again. But given a social arrangement in which waiters and waitresses depend on tips to earn a decent wage, one ought always to tip for good service. 

2. Tip on the nominal amount of the bill, not the amount less a discount. You got the discount, you skin-flint coupon clipper, don't be so cheap as to demand a discount on the tip as well.

3. Tip no less than 15%. But when in Rome, do as the Romans do. In Turkey, 5% suffices and more might be perceived as ostentatious. And in some places, a tip is an insult.

4. Do not hesitate to leave no tip or a measly tip to punish poor service. The whole point of tipping is to reward good service and to encourage good service in the future. If I have to beg for a second cup of coffee at a breakfast joint, or am reduced to swiping silverware from adjoining tables, then I am not inclined to leave much of a tip.  Lousy service, lousy or nonexistent tip!

5. Tip on the entire bill, including alcoholic beverages, unlike a cheapskate I once knew who tipped only on prandials but never on potables.

6. At buffets, smorgasbords, and other self-service establishments, one should also leave a tip depending on the services rendered. In such places I sometimes tip less than 15%.   Why? Because I do more of the work.

7. What about tipping on a take-out order in a sit-down restaurant? My inclination is not to tip there any more than I would tip in a fast food joint.  

8. Tip the bartender, but if he complains about the size of the tip, tell him to go to hell.

9. I always travel light and carry my own luggage. This obviates the tipping of bellboys and other baggage schleppers. But a hard-working maid who has just done up my room may garner a few bucks.

10. Tip the barber whose floor is now littered with your long hair.  I exercise my frugality by having my hair cut only  four times per year. I've been known to go to barber colleges for cheap haircuts. There I can play the big shot and leave a 100% tip. If you are ever in Mesa, Arizona, check out Earl's Academy of Beauty. 

11. Discount Tire around here offers a great free and friendly service. They will check your tire pressure including spare and inflate if necessary. I always give the kid a $5 tip.  They also fix flats for free.  I tip the guy who does the work $5.  

12. I tip my massage therapist $15-20 for a 90 minute session. More at Christmas.

13. Having driven cab, on the mean streets of Boston no less, I always tip taxi drivers unless they are surly pricks in which case they get zilch. I once tipped a taciturn Jamaican two bucks on a twenty dollar fare and the guy had the chutzpah to complain. I told him to shove it.

The most I ever tipped a cabbie was 20 semolians on a short airport run to McCarran in Las Vegas. He was an interesting character and his conversation was scintillating. I asked him to name his tip. He said 'twenty' so I gave it to him. It is worth remembering that there are people out there who actually work for a living.  We can't all be men and women of leisure.

"Your Tip So Far"

Here, in no particular order, are my maxims concerning the practice of tipping.

1. He who is too cheap to leave a tip in a restaurant should cook for himself. That being said, there is no legal obligation to tip, nor should there be. Is there a moral obligation? Perhaps. Rather than argue that there is I will just state that tipping is the morally decent thing to do, ceteris paribus. And it doesn't matter whether you will be returning to the restaurant. No doubt a good part of the motivation for tipping is prudential: if one plans on coming back then it is prudent to establish good relations with the people one is likely to encounter again. But given a social arrangement in which waiters and waitresses depend on tips to earn a decent wage, one ought always to tip for good service. 

2. Tip on the nominal amount of the bill, not the amount less a discount. You got the discount, you skin-flint coupon clipper, don't be so cheap as to demand a discount on the tip as well.

3. Tip no less than 15%. But when in Rome, do as the Romans do. In Turkey, 5% suffices and more might be perceived as ostentatious. And in some places, a tip is an insult.

4. Do not hesitate to leave no tip or a measly tip to punish poor service. The whole point of tipping is to reward good service and to encourage good service in the future. If I have to beg for a second cup of coffee at a breakfast joint, or am reduced to swiping silverware from adjoining tables, then I am not inclined to leave much of a tip.  Lousy service, lousy or nonexistent tip!

5. Tip on the entire bill, including alcoholic beverages, unlike a cheapskate I once knew who tipped only on prandials but never on potables.

6. At buffets, smorgasbords, and other self-service establishments, one should also leave a tip depending on the services rendered. In such places I sometimes tip less than 15%.   Why? Because I do more of the work.

7. What about tipping on a take-out order in a sit-down restaurant? My inclination is not to tip there any more than I would tip in a fast food joint.  

8. Tip the bartender, but if he complains about the size of the tip, tell him to go to hell.

9. I always travel light and carry my own luggage. This obviates the tipping of bellboys and other baggage schleppers. But a hard-working maid who has just done up my room may garner a few bucks.

10. Tip the barber whose floor is now littered with your long hair.  I exercise my frugality by having my hair cut only  four times per year. I've been known to go to barber colleges for cheap haircuts. There I can play the big shot and leave a 100% tip. If you are ever in Mesa, Arizona, check out Earl's Academy of Beauty. 

11. Discount Tire around here offers a great free and friendly service. They will check your tire pressure including spare and inflate if necessary. I always give the kid a $5 tip.  They also fix flats for free.  I tip the guy who does the work $5.  

12. I tip my massage therapist $15-20 for a 90 minute session. More at Christmas.

13. Having driven cab, on the mean streets of Boston no less, I always tip taxi drivers unless they are surly pricks in which case they get zilch. I once tipped a taciturn Jamaican two bucks on a twenty dollar fare and the guy had the chutzpah to complain. I told him to shove it.

The most I ever tipped a cabbie was 20 semolians on a short airport run to McCarran in Las Vegas. He was an interesting character and his conversation was scintillating. I asked him to name his tip. He said 'twenty' so I gave it to him. It is worth remembering that there are people out there who actually work for a living.  We can't all be men and women of leisure.

"Your Tip So Far"

Welcome to Finitude

You are largely stuck with the guy you are and you have to make the most of it. There are things you don't like about him, but some of them just can't be helped. Change what can be changed; accept what can't.

Neither god nor beast, a man is a being in-between.

Our predicament is at once horrifying and exhilarating. Not to mention a source of endless blog fodder.

Word of the Day: Costive

Merriam-Webster:

1a: affected with constipation

b: causing constipation

2: slow in action or expression

3: not generous : STINGY

Where did I find it? In a fine analysis of the concept of charm by Joseph Epstein.  Here is a taste that features the word under definition:

Some people I talked with thought charm was synonymous with “cool.” In fact, the two, charm and cool, are all but opposed. Cool aims for detachment, distance; charm is social, bordering on the intimate. Cool is icy; charm warm. Cool is costive; charm often ebullient. Cool doesn’t require approval; charm hopes to win it. Cool began life in jazz under the great saxophonist Lester Young, who first used the term, but it soon descended to the argot of drugs. Cool gave way to hip and hep. In Dave Frishberg’s song “I’m Hip,” the singer proclaims that he watches “arty French flicks with [his] shades on” and is so hip “I call my girlfriend ‘Man.’ ” Miles Davis was cool, Louis Armstrong charming.

How does one acquire a large vocabulary? The first rule is to read, read widely, and read worthwhile materials, especially old books and essays.  The second rule is to look up every word the meaning of which you do not know or are not certain of: don't be lazy. The third rule is to compile vocabulary lists. The fourth rule is to review the lists periodically and put the words to use.  Use 'em or lose 'em.

Some 19th Century Rules for Social Intercourse

The wise man abstains from an excess of socializing as from an excess of whisky; but just as a little whisky at the right time and in the right place is a delightful adjunct to a civilized life, so too is a bit of socializing. But he who quits his solitude to sally forth among men must do so with his maxims at the ready if he values his peace of mind.

Herewith, a faithful transcription from a 19th century work, The Corsair: A Gazette of Literature, Art, Dramatic Criticism, Fashion and Novelty, Volume 1, Nathaniel Parker Willis, Timothy O. Porter 1839,  831 pages. (Obviously, not to be confused with the Danish publication that pilloried Kierkegaard):

Never discuss politics or religion with those who hold opinions opposite to yours; they are topics that heat in handling, until they burn your fingers; never talk learnedly on topics you know, it makes people afraid of you; never talk on subjects you don't know, it makes people despise you; never argue, no man is worth the trouble of convincing, and the better your reasoning the more obstinate people become; never pun on a man's words; it is as bad as spitting in his face. In short, whenever practicable, let others perform and do you look on: a seat in the dress circle is preferable to a part in the play. -- This is my rule.

A pretty good rule, one of what Schopenhauer calls Weltweisheit, worldly wisdom. In a fallen world, one needs such maxims. Did you know that Schopenhauer believed in something like Original Sin despite his being an atheist? 

"Never argue, no man is worth the trouble of convincing."  This is sage advice for almost all social situations.

I would add: never in general correct anyone's grammatical, logical, or factual mistakes unless it is your job to do so; the exception of course is serious discourse among serious and well-qualified people. Avoid talk of money if you don't want to be taken to be either poor-mouthing or bragging. Sex-tinged jokes can get you into trouble.  And so on.

Should we go all the way with  Pascal? “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées

To paraphrase a line often attributed (rightly or wrongly) to the cowboy wit, Will Rogers:

 

Never miss an opportunity to keep your mouth shut.

That of course is an exaggeration. But exaggerations are rhetorically useful if they are in the direction of truths.  The truth here is that the damage caused by idle talk is rarely offset by its paltry benefits.

My mind drifts back to the fourth or fifth grade and the time a nun planted an image in my mind that remains.  She likened the tongue to a sword capable of great damage, positioned behind two 'gates,' the teeth and the lips.  Those gates are there for a reason, she explained, and the sword should come out only when it can be well deployed. 

Related: Safe Speech

Now if you bear all of the above in mind, you may safely sally forth into society as long as your sojourn is brief and your maxims are 'cocked and locked.'

Vote. Confirm.

A powerful statement by Malcolm Pollack, at once both personal and objective. I recommend in particular the penultimate paragraph:

We who came of age in the latter half of the twentieth century have lived our whole lives in such ease and peace and prosperity that we have mostly forgotten, I think, how rare, and how precarious, order and peace and safety are — how easily they are lost, and what sacrifices, and what sense of duty and gratitude, are necessary to sustain them. We just take it all for granted — this astonishing edifice of law and tradition and culture and trade and agriculture and innovation and justice and security — as if it was simply a pre-existing and eternal feature of the world. We imagine, lately, that we can just pick at it as we please, pull pieces out of it and burn them, hack away at its foundations, rip out its beams and joists, and crack its pillars without causing it, someday very soon, to come crashing down on our heads.

One does well to recall the wisdom at Hosea 8:7: Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

And never forget who has the guns. Is that a threat? No, it's a warning. You do not want a civil war. You will not like it.

Please exercise your historically-informed imagination now so that you won't have to rely on perception later.

Be Skeptical of Activists' Claims

Here's a tip for you. 

When some activist or advocate makes a claim, be skeptical and run the numbers, especially when the advocate has a vested interest in promoting his cause.  

Do you remember Mitch Snyder the advocate for the homeless who hanged himself in 1990?  I heard him make a wild claim sometime in the '80s to the effect that the number of homeless in the U. S. was three million.  At the time the population of the U.S. was around 220 million.  So I rounded that up to 300 million and divided by three million.  And then I knew that Snyder's claim was bogus, and probably fabricated by Snyder, as was later shown to be the case.  It is simply not credible that one in 100 in the U. S. is a homeless person.

When Snyder admitted to Ted Koppel that he made up his number, advocates for the homeless defended his tactic as "lying for justice."  See here. A nice illustration of the leftist principle that the end justifies the means.  Obama implemented the principle when he  lied some 30 times about the Affordable Care Act .  But let's not go over that again.

Philosophy needs no social justification. But one of the salutary social byproducts of its study and practice is the honing of one's critical thinking skills.  I am assuming that the philosophy in question is broadly analytic and not the crapulous crapola  of such later Continentals as Derrida.

Twin Mistakes

If something is good, more is better.  For example, there are people who think one cannot drink too much water.  False. Hyponatremia can be induced by excessive water consumption especially if the water is pure or near-pure.  You flush out your electrolytes and die. 

If something is bad in large quantities, it is bad in small quantities as well. False.  Exposure to sunlight.

The Young and the Reckless: The Cautionary Deaths of Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan

To live well, one must take risks. To live long they must be calculated in a calculus informed by knowledge of self and knowledge of world. Let the romantic in one be tempered by the realist to avoid the fates of Christopher  McCandless, Timothy Treadwell, and Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan:

Asked why they had quit their office jobs and set off on a biking journey around the world, the young American couple offered a simple explanation: They had grown tired of the meetings and teleconferences, of the time sheets and password changes.

“There’s magic out there, in this great big beautiful world,” wrote Jay Austin who, along with his partner, Lauren Geoghegan, gave his two weeks’ notice last year before shipping his bicycle to Africa.

They were often proved right.

[. . .]

Then came Day 369, when the couple was biking in formation with a group of other tourists on a panoramic stretch of road in southwestern Tajikistan. It was there, on July 29, that a carload of men who are believed to have recorded a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State spotted them.

Bruce Bawer in Death by Entitlement offers astute commentary (bolding added)

Their naivete is nothing less than breathtaking. “You watch the news and you read the papers and you're led to believe that the world is a big, scary place,” wrote Austin during their trek. “People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted....I don't buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own.” This rosy view of humanity suffuses Austin's blog: “Malawians and Zambians are fantastically friendly people.” And: “All throughout western Europe, when folks asked us where we were headed and we'd say Albania, their faces would drop and they'd start muttering 'Oh, no, no, no.' Albania, they'd tell us, is dangerous. The people of Albania will steal your spleen....The Albanians we come across are perhaps the warmest, friendliest, smiliest...people we've met on the continent.”

Austin's blog also provides a window on his (and presumably her) hippie-dippy worldview and ultra-PC politics. Elephants, writes Austin, “may very well be a smarter, wiser, more thoughtful being[s] than homo sapiens sapiens.” When white South Africans tell them “that the nation and its redistributionist government are making poor, ignorant choices,” Austin sneers at their “Eurocentric values” and their failure to realize that “[n]otions like private property” are culturally relative. This is apparently a comment on the South African government's current expropriation of white farmers' land without compensation. (To be sure, when a friendly Afrikaans man advises Austin and Geoghegan to move their tent because they've pitched it too close to a black settlement and may antagonize the locals, they're quick to let him lead them to a safer spot.)

[. . .]

The Times article about Austin and Geoghegan drew hundreds of reader comments. 

[. . .]

Perusing all the reader comments, I found exactly two that mentioned Islam critically. Here's one: “Tajikistan is 96.7% Islamic. It is a dangerous place for American tourists....This is not Islamophobia. It is common sense.” Here's the other: “As a Western woman I have no desire to visit a majority Muslim country because of the religious and cultural bias regarding their treatment of women.” Both of these comments attracted outraged replies. (“Many parts of the US are not so kind to women either, particularly those states that have managed to close just about all their Planned Parenthood clinics.”) Several readers railed against “religion” generally, as if terrorism by Quakers and Episcopalians were a worldwide problem.

Indeed, this being the New York Times, moral equivalency was rampant (“Yes, they [the ISIS murderers]were brutal....But what about our treatment of prisoners in Guantamino Bay?”), as was a readiness to blame Islamic terrorism on America (“There are consequences to our nation's decision to murder Muslim civilians by the hundreds of thousands”) or, specifically, on Donald Trump. One reader comment, a “Times Pick,” read, in part, as follows: “A great story and an admirable couple. But those who condemn their killers as evil probably fail to recognize that ISIS fighters see themselves as being on the side of good. For them, these young Americans were an embodiment of the Great Satan....Instead of bandying around moral absolutes, perhaps we should recognize that good and evil are relative categories, dependent on your culture and your values.”

[. . .]

Times readers called the couple heroes. No, the heroes are not these poor fools who stumbled into an ISIS-controlled area; the heroes are the soldiers from the U.S. and elsewhere – most of them a decade or so younger, and centuries savvier, than Austin and Geoghegan – who, while the two 29-year-olds were on a year-long cycling holiday, were risking their lives to beat back ISIS. What, then, is the moral of this couple's story? In the last analysis, it's a story about two young people who, like many other privileged members of their generation of Americans, went to a supposedly top-notch university only to come away poorly educated but heavily propagandized – imbued with a fashionable postmodern contempt for Western civilization and a readiness to idealize and sentimentalize “the other” (especially when the latter is decidedly uncivilized). This, ultimately, was their tragedy: taking for granted American freedom, prosperity, and security, they dismissed these extraordinary blessings as boring, banal, and (in Austin's word) “beige,” and set off, with the starry-eyed and suicidal naivete of children who never entirely grew up, on a child's fairy-tale adventure into the most perilous parts of the planet. Far from being inspirational, theirs is a profoundly cautionary – and distinctly timely – tale that every American, parents especially, should take to heart.

Dissertation Advice on the Occasion of Kant's Birthday

Immanuel Kant was born on this day in 1724. He died in 1804. My dissertation on Kant, which now lies 40 years in the past, is dated 22 April 1978.  But if, per impossibile, my present self were Doktorvater to my self of 40 years ago, my doctoral thesis might not have been approved! As one's standards rise higher and higher with age and experience one becomes more and more reluctant to submit anything to evaluation let alone publication. One may scribble as before, and even more than before, but with less conviction that one's outpourings deserve being embalmed in printer's ink. (Herein lies a reason to blog.)

So finish the bloody thing now while you are young and cocky and energetic.  Give yourself a year, say, do your absolute best and crank it out. Think of it as a union card. It might not get you a job but then it just might. Don't think of it as a magnum opus or you will never finish. Get it done by age 30 and before accepting a full-time appointment. And all of this before getting married. That, in my opinion, is the optimal order. Dissertation before 30, marriage after 30. 

Now raise your glass with me in a toast to Manny on this, his 294th birthday. Sapere aude!

 Related: Right and Wrong Order

A Budding Thomist Seeks Advice

This from a reader:

I'm a junior year theology major. I recently found your blog and it's now one of my favorites. You are a voice of reason in this dark postmodern era.

As someone pursuing a BA in theology and considering grad school, I love learning, reading, and writing. I've always wanted to be the person to have ideas and spend my life thinking and writing about them.

Since you are someone who does this exact thing, I'm curious as to what it takes. How much time did you devote to studying theology or philosophy outside of classes and assignments? Did you ever write theological or philosophical essays for fun?

Any advice, especially in light of your personal experience, would be greatly appreciated. I eagerly await your response.

One question is whether one should go to graduate school in the humanities. I have addressed this question on several occasions. Here are some links:

Should You Go to Graduate School in Philosophy?

Graduate School and Self-Confidence

Thinking of Graduate School in the Humanities?

Is Graduate School Really That Bad?

Another question concerns the life of an academically unaffiliated philosopher. This is what I have been for over a quarter century now after resigning from a tenured position at age 41. So I don't conduct classes, give assignments, or waste time on the absurd chore of grading papers by students who could not care less about the life of the mind or about becoming truly educated. 

To be perfectly blunt, I found teaching philosophy to undergraduates to be a meaningless activity in the main. Philosophy is a magnificent thing, but to teach it to bored undergraduates with no intellectual eros is like trying to feed people who aren't hungry. Depressing and absurd. Of course I did have some great students and some memorable classes. But my experience was similar to Paul Gottfried's:

Having been a professor for over 40 years at a number of academic institutions, I find Caplan’s main argument to be indisputable. The vast majority of my students, particularly those towards the end of my career, had little interest in the material I was trying to transmit, whether classical Greek, European history, or modern political theory. [ . . . ] Caplan also rolls out statistics showing most college students spend shockingly little time studying, and when polled express utter boredom with most of their courses. The overwhelming majority who graduate admit to having forgotten most of what they learned even before graduation. 

It's a bit of a paradox: I would never have had the opportunity to enjoy the comfortable and relatively stress-free life of a professor for all those years if it were not for the fact that all sort of kids were attending college who had no business doing so. It is a paradox of plenty in the sense of Quine's great essay, Paradoxes of Plenty. The explosion of higher education in the 1960s, together with the Viet Nam war and other factors led to a glut of students which led to a need for more professors. So the good news is that guys like me got to be professors, but the bad news was that we had to teach people not worth teaching for the most part.

More on this in The Academic Job Market in the 'Sixties.

Things get worse and worse thanks to the Left's ever-increasing destruction of the universities, STEM disciplines excepted. Higher Education has become Higher Infantilization what with 'safe spaces,' 'trigger warnings,' and other incomprehensibly idiotic innovations.  

I say this so that my young reader has some idea of what he is in for if he is aiming at academic career.  The universities have become leftist seminaries. No conservatives need apply. Express heterodox opinions and you will be hounded and doxxed. Of course, it is not just leftists that do these things.

How much time do I spend on philosophy? Most of the day, every day. Do I write for fun? That is not a word I would use in this connection. Let's just say that I find wrestling with the big questions to be deeply satisfying and the meaning of my life. I see philosophy as a vocation in the deepest sense and a spiritual quest and something best pursued outside of the precincts of the politically correct present-day university.

Advice for Introverts

Relations with extroverts should be left at the superficial level. Never seek  a deep relation with a person who is surface all the way down.

Two Measures of Personal Success

One measure of success is how far you've gotten, and the other is how far you've come. 

The second is the better measure.

On the occasions when you feel you haven't gotten very far in life, tell yourself, "But look where you started from, and what you had to work with, and the obstacles you had to overcome."

Safe Speech

"No man speaketh safely but he that is glad to hold his peace. " (Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Chapter XX.)

Excellent advice for Christian and non-Christian alike.  Much misery and misfortune can be avoided by simply keeping one's  mouth shut.  That playful banter with your female student that you could not resist indulging in  -- she construed it as sexual harassment.  You were sitting on top of the world, but now you are in a world of trouble. 

In this Age of Political Correctness examples are legion.  To be on the safe side, a good rule of thumb is: If your speech can be misconstrued, it will be.  Did you really need to make that comment, or fire off that e-mail, or send that picture of your marvellous nether endowment to a woman not your wife?

Part of the problem is Political Correctness, but another part is that people are not brought up to exercise self-control in thought, word, and deed.  Both problems can be plausibly blamed on liberals.  Paradoxically enough, the contemporary liberal promotes speech codes and taboos while at the same time promoting an absurd tolerance of every sort of bad behavior.  The liberal 'educator' dare not tell the black kid to pull his pants up lest he be accused of a racist 'dissing' of the kid's 'culture.'

You need to give your children moral lessons and send them to schools where they will receive them.  My mind drifts back to the fourth or fifth grade and the time a nun planted an image in my mind that remains.  She likened the tongue to a sword capable of great damage, positioned behind two 'gates,' the teeth and the lips.  Those gates are there for a reason, she explained, and the sword should come out only when it can be well deployed.

The good nun did not extend the image to the sword of flesh hanging between a man's legs.  But I will.  Keep your 'sword' behind the 'gates' of your pants and your undershorts until such time as it can be brought out for a good purpose. 

Companion post: Idle Talk

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Don't touch a woman without her specific consent. Consent, to be consent, must be informed. Don't resort to trickery, subterfuge, dissimulation, or manipulation (including getting her drunk or high).

I would add a qualification: unless she is your wife and you have a loving relationship. (And if you don't share a loving relationship, why are you still married to her?)

That is a good point about the nature of consent, by the way.

I would say that the above, even with my qualification, is a rule of thumb (rule of hand?), which is to say that it is broadly accurate. 

Suppose you are seated opposite a woman not your wife whom you find attractive and with whom you are enjoying a tête-à-tête. She strokes your hand. She has given you a signal that may justify your touching her in a similar way even without explicit consent.

Prudent? Moral? The near occasion of sin? You decide!

In any case, don't be an Al Franken. Where is his hand? And what can be inferred from the gal's 'goosey' expression?

 

 

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