Death threats and readership: two great tastes.

Just recently, a blogger of some standing was singled out and defamed on the internet. Yeah, I know, that really narrows it down. But, still, it has garnered a lot of attention, attention I believe better spent discussing things that actually matter. What frightens me here are not the death threats that were rattled off, or the possibility that I could be next (gasp! No, probably not.), but rather the reaction of the 'victim' and the way that people are rallying to her cause. These small and seemingly insignificant events could easily lead down paths of much more dangerous efficacy. Here is a comment I left on drumsnwhistles. That's right. I'm that lazy:

Roark said:
March 30th, 2007 at 10:06 am

The irony of the situation is chokingly delicious. I don’t think I could take another bite. If Kathy Sierra had remained anonymous, the same anonymity she and many others in the blogosphere are railing against, it would be difficult to target her, her family, her image, or her gender for such, admittedly frightening, comment. Of course, if the nature of the job lends to a certain amount of celebrity status that is beyond your control, then unfortunately these types of comments are an unavoidable consequence of the choice in career. If so, you are again faced with a choice: accept these consequences or change careers. If the belief spreads that instead of taking responsibility for these choices we must force the population to behave in a way that we find suitable, we will find ourselves on a slippery slope of unappetizing ends. I understand that the behavior on meankids.org is reprehensible, that’s why I don’t go there or any of the other websites that promote an agenda that is morally contrary to my own: KKK sites, Kiddie Porn, FOX news, etc. But they have a right to exist. If a law has been broken, alert the website and other authorities to try to ban or isolate the offending party. This has been done. If a tirade on the subject is warranted, about hurt feelings and the way it has affected the lives of those involved, have at it. But, please, let’s not make this into a widespread regulatory discussion. We need to take personal responsibility of our actions AND reactions. The bit about our children being at risk of falling in with a bad crowd of questionable moral judgements has existed well before the internet, and it is STILL the job of the parent to guide them through those pitfalls. Not mine nor anyone else’s out in cyberland. How can we “create communities?” By monitoring our own actions and beliefs. Unless you want to go the route of tyranny. Be careful what you ask for.

On the vast expanse that is the wired, there is only anonymity and celebrity, and very little, if any, gray. Choose wisely.

PS. Kudos to anyone that has profited from this affair! I wish I could, but that’s not my style.

Individual Virtues (or Happy Retorts)

It's possible that in my last post I may have misunderstood what Aristotle meant by happiness and man's relation to it, that my assertion of happiness being the ultimate goal as an impossibility is the foolish notion of a child that wanders into the middle of a movie. It's possible that I'm out of my element. Possible, but probably not. I'll try not to make this as dry as possible, but just in case grab a glass a milk if you have trouble choking this down.

Yes, it's true, we all want to be happy. Happiness is preferable to misery hands down and this pepsi challenge doesn't need a blind taste test to the note the difference between taffy and vomit. But as the Ultimate End? Aristotle described happiness in two distinct ways. What it is to be happy he references in a conversation between Solon and Croesus the king of Lydia, where C. tries to eke out a fished compliment that he, king, is the happiest man alive. Sucker.

'Croesus', replied the other, 'I see that You are wonderfully rich and are the lord of many nations, but as for your question, I have no answer to give until I hear that you have closed your life happily. For assuredly he who possesses great store of riches is no nearer happiness than he who has enough for his daily needs. For many of the wealthiest men have been unfavoured of fortune, and many whose means were moderate have had excellent luck. The wealthy man, it is true, is better able to content his desires, and bear up against sudden calamity. The man of moderate means has less ability to withstand these evils, from which, however, his good luck may keep him clear. If so, he enjoys all these following blessings: he is whole of limb, a stranger to disease, free from misfortune, happy in his children, and comely to look upon. If in addition to all this, he ends his life well, he is truly the man who may rightly be termed happy. Call him, however, until he die, not happy but fortunate.'

He had to see that shit coming. Never fish for compliments from wise men. They live to knock people down a peg. But the point is driven home: You can't be considered happy until you're dead. Happiness is the ultimate goal because for Aristotle it's the introspective reflection of one's entire life. He even goes so far to say at one point that children cannot be happy 'cause they haven't lived long enough. Old man logic at it's finest. This was my contention: that's bullshit.

He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life...But we must add 'in a complete life.' For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

Um, no. It's completely possible for an individual to experience moments of happiness, to feel the swell in ones chest, like a sugar high, when the girl you love touches your face, or when chaos ensues and you smile because you know exactly what needs to be done, or when the silence of sunlight makes you think of nothing but the warmth on your face. You don't need to be dead to be happy because it's an emotion that is inspired, not a goal to be reached. Yes, you should be happy when you think back upon your life, but only because you think back upon times of happiness that have already happened. To accept happiness as an end goal, a goal that is truly self-sufficient, is to be as good as dead, without ambition, without any further goals. Conversely, by this line of thought, to be alive, to have goals, is to never be happy.

But this begs the question: How does one become happy? This is the more interesting point, and the reason I loved the Ethics: his ideas of virtue and the volition of man.

Aristotle describes happiness a second way, the way of becoming happy as opposed to his crappy way of being happy. By denying his way of being it would seem that happiness is on a sliding scale and that it's different for each person, that it's not solid and therefore unknowable to reason. Not so, friend, not so. His way of becoming speaks of a manner of living, of following the path of complete virtue, and acting in accordance of virtue.

Again, we feel anger and fear without choice, but the virtues are modes of choice or involve choice.

For these reasons also they are not faculties; for we are neither called good nor bad, nor praised nor blamed, for the simple capacity of feeling the passions; again, we have the faculties by nature, but we are not made good or bad by nature; we have spoken of this before. If, then, the virtues are neither passions nor faculties, all that remains is that they should be states of character.

Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

It's here that he gets down to the nitty gritty of human nature: it is choice that defines us. We as humans spend our entire lives trying to figure out who we are, how we relate to where we are, and what the fuck is going on. We identify. It is this process of identification that consumes our lives as we make choice after choice trying to assert ourselves into the world and evaluate if that choice is the right one for us.

He gets it wrong by making the leap that we choose virtues for the sake of happiness, and not that happiness may be a byproduct of being virtuous. Byproduct. What is honor, pleasure, reason? What is virtue if not the things we as individuals determine to be honorable, pleasing and reasonable. Our end goal is to define these things, these virtues, by defining our choices in relation to the world around us. Our ultimate goal is to define ourselves. I can die a happy man if I can look back upon my life and know that I lived to the best of my ability to hold to the standards of my individual nature. The same holds true while I'm still living and looking back. This is the equalizer of kings and common: individuality.

I loved the ethics on this point because his description of virtue was spot on. The idea of happiness as an end goal was such a small point of contention and seemed more as a setup for his views of virtue and individual accountability. The happiness thing was just a lead in to end the Ethics with "Philosophers are the happiest people alive by definition and should be kings. Period." Which is hilarious, but wrong.

Now he who exercises his reason and cultivates it seems to be both in the best state of mind and most dear to the gods. For if the gods have any care for human affairs, as they are thought to have, it would be reasonable both that they should delight in that which was best and most akin to them (i.e. reason) and that they should reward those who love and honour this most, as caring for the things that are dear to them and acting both rightly and nobly. And that all these attributes belong most of all to the philosopher is manifest. He, therefore, is the dearest to the gods. And he who is that will presumably be also the happiest; so that in this way too the philosopher will more than any other be happy.

So funny. Gotta love it. But seriously, the best way to be happy, today, tomorrow, and the last day, is to know yourself. Happiness will follow. With every action, every choice, we learn more about ourselves to refine those choices to ultimately point to the idea that there is no greater goal than self-discovery. Now, how one goes about that is another question.

Let us make a beginning of our discussion.

Aristotilian Backwash

A. and I were talking the other day about our collegiate failures and successes and how pissed we were at the overall apathy to our education. Such classic phrases as "If I knew then what I know now," and "I just didn't apply myself," were uttered with sheepish reluctance. When I was in college, I really didn't care about the grade. I was an arrogant, self-centered, happy-go-lucky idealist that really believed the only thing that mattered was the information that I wanted. I wasn't there for a degree, I was there for self-actualization. Really. I took the classes I was interested in and only spoke to an advisor twice, at the beginning and at the end, during my nine years at University. That's right. Nine. I loved college life that much. And why not? I slept late, I learned interesting things every day, I drank, I smoked, I surrounded myself with smart people, people that were involved in the same environment as I was, if not for the same reasons, and I loved every minute of it. College rocked. And with nine years of schmoozing comes knowing a lot of people. I was the anonymous celebrity that you didn't know but saw everywhere. Classes, functions, offices, bars, clubs, secluded smoking areas, tops of buildings, private basements. I don't know how or why, but I got around. Someone once recognized me in the middle of a swamp. Honestly. But I digress.

My grades were terrible. Actually, that's not true. Terrible I could take, but my grades were mediocre. I never turned in any assignments, I was always late on papers, I skipped a lot of classes, but I aced almost every exam. It balanced itself out but paints a very washed out picture of my potential, not that I cared. But why didn't I? In my premature journey for self-actualization, I questioned the motive of human ambition. In doing so I agreed, then, with Aristotle that said the ultimate goal of human ambition is happiness. Seemed reasonable enough, and heartwarming to boot. Our actions and choices are bent to the sole, if somewhat convoluted, goal of being happy. Example: I went to school so I could learn, so I could get a good job, so I could be financial comfortable, so I could relax and be happy. I went to school to be happy. So to speak. But being the arrogant, self-centered, happy-go-lucky idealist that I was, I wanted to skip the hoopla and go straight to the point. I was already happy. I loved school, loved learning, and the job thing didn't interest me much. I was happy because I went to school. The glaring hole in this philosophy didn't hit me until year eight. I'm extremely intelligent, but I'm still dumber than a bag of hammers.

So the question becomes: is happiness an appropriate end for human ambition? Does it even qualify? If we assume yes, what happens during the attainment of this goal. To walk down the street to reach the corner store is only necessary if your at home. If you're already there, the very statement "I want to go to the corner store," is absurd. So one could say that the nature of wanting is not having, or that the nature of becoming is not being. So if we say that happiness is an appropriate goal for human ambition, it assumes that we are not happy at the start. And will never be throughout the journey. At worst, we will move through life miserable, driven by our ambition for true happiness and die unfulfilled. At best we will find happiness and give up our ambitions and goals. Neither sit very well with me.

I don't think it's a valid goal. I think happiness is not something sought after but something realized. We cannot chase happiness because I don't think that it's something external. While that may seem like an obvious statement, the argument between existence and essence is time honored. Is there a great thing that encompasses and defines all happiness through which all things can share? That should every object cease to exist, that thing, that Happiness, would continue on? Is it external? Or is it a label by which we define ourselves in reference to our surroundings, and thereby internal? I would stand by the latter.

We cannot have happiness as our end goal. It is a state of being. To say happiness is an end is likened to saying I just want to exist. While true, it is ultimately useless. Goals are temporary, materialistic things. Houses, investments, bank accounts, travel. Happiness, on the other hand, is a state of mind that we can be or not be. There is no "on the way" to happiness, regardless of what the commercials say. We can find ourselves at the worst place possible and still find happiness, and, conversely, at the most beautiful places and feel nothing. It is a perspective we strive to keep in mind, but seems less about working toward, and more about allowing.

I made the genius error when I was in college of knowing all of this, but not understanding. I skipped to the ultimate end of having happiness as a goal, and found a strange sense of nihilistic apathy to my ambitions. In the, hopefully, long journey we have in front of us that is our lives, happiness is not, and should not be, the final destination.

It's more like a backpack.

Philosophy of arrogance.

Someone once asked me who my favourite philosopher was over a game of pool. While usually quick witted, I was a bit taken aback at my uncharacteristic lack of a response. Though I uttered something foolish (not uncharacteristic) like Aristotle, I've come to the point where I need to set the record straight.

I am my own favourite philosopher.

Arrogant, sure, but honestly, can it be any other way? I remember being taken aback by the sheer simplicity of the question and the complicated answers it entailed: well, so and so was good on this point, but lack this and this, this guy was competent at this business, but an idiot on that, etc. And so as I weighed my response, I came up with the first name that I had the least problems with that I could think of at that moment. I missed, though, the idea that I, myself, choose bits and pieces of the philosophical smorgasbord of my experiences to create some semblance of a philosophy that I must base my decisions upon and weigh my existence against. While it may not be a perfect system, full of omissions and falacies due to my god given ignorance, it is a working system. A system in progress.

It kinda of bothers me the name dropping that invariably happens in philosophic discussions with those initiated in the arcane realm of Philosophy. "Blah blah blah Schopenhauer, Nietzsche blah. Blah Husserl blah Ponty blah blah." I don't really give a good god damn who said what, only if it has some personal significance and relevance to the discussion at hand. And while I love philosophy, for it's efficacy and it's dream of delving into the human condition and find what that really is, I hate - hate - the intellectual pissing contest it more often than not becomes.

What I do love is finding people that express their own views of their experiences and involve philosophic notions to explore the meaning or significance of that experience. It's rare, but it's out there. While that may sound like some touchy feely hippy crap, in my opinion, that's all philosophy is. We all have to come to terms with our own lives, and the philosophy of others will always fall short of our needs. We must come up with meaning for our existence so that we can continue to exist, and move forward. And though I give big props to those that came before that helped me become who I am, much love indeed, the ultimate end is a selfish one.

As it should be for us all.

I am the architect of my own best working philosophy.

Commuters and Conspiracies

Today is the 21st of February, and I slept on the train taking me to work. Usually I look out the window and search for amazement in the buildings that pass by, holding the territory they've claimed a helluva lot longer than I've been here. Thanks for having me! Today though, I wasn't interested in stationary turf wars, tired from sleeping too much. It was too good, sleeping that much, and I wanted more. My eyes were shut lightly, trying to recapture the feeling I had before drive time radio turned my dreams weird and public, while people shuffled in and out of the train car, unexcited by their capitulation to common goals and destinations. It's odd, really, that my love of sleep is so great that I'll share it with the random passengers that board the train. Seems such a private thing, and the question of my comfort was small voice behind my ear. But here I was snoozing away like a tired wino on a hard mobile futon, while a girl sitting next to me grades essays of indeterminate subjects, as though we were estranged lovers in bed trying to pretend the other doesn't exist. It was sweet, and I hoped she would leave first.

I like giving consipratorial nods to people I pass on the street, like we were comrades that shared a secret knowledge of shadowy pacts, confirming and denying that knowledge in a simple gesture. It's somewhat silly, but for the most part people nod back as though they're in on it too, slightly grinning, and that makes me smile. It really is a win win situation, if they don't nod, it's as though they're too deep under cover to draw attention to themselves, and that makes me smile too. Today I saw this little kid, probably about a year and a half, maybe two, at the bus stop. His stroller was precariously perched at the edge of the curb by a somewhat inattentive mother, and while that gave me the heebies, he seemed not to notice. I looked him square in the eye and gave him a slight nod. Surprisingly, he looked at me and nodded back! Now this kid is two at best, and let me tell you, this was not the nod of a two year old. He seemed fully in on the joke and smiled at my expression, and I, in mild, though controlled, shock smiled back. I gestured my eyes at his mother, and he shrugged, acquiescent to the role he was playing, and smiled big, seeming relieved to be able to finally have a normal, if silent, conversation with someone. I chuckled and shook my head, and he laughed. Then his stroller started slowly rolling backward into traffic. I jumped up and jammed my foot behind one of the wheels, as his mother spun around at my movement. "I got it, I got it!" she said indignantly as she put her hand on the stroller arm. I looked her in the eye and she looked away, "thanks." I turned away from her as the bus pulled up, a small nod to my short friend as I pulled out my bus pass. He nodded back.