Many people like to think that they are unique and that there is (or was) nobody like them anywhere (or at anytime).  The truth, however, is that people are a fairly homogeneous group, and that nobody is really extremely unique, or most likely, all that unique at all.

Every emotion you’ve ever experienced?  Most everybody else has experienced it as well.  The degree to which you’ve experienced it?  Again, most everybody has done the same.

“Ah,” you may say, “but these individual experiences I’ve had – nobody else has had them.”  To an extent, this is true, but we have all had such similar experiences that the only significant difference is whether Bob, Bill, Mary, Sue or John is experiencing it.  Now perhaps you are saying to yourself, that it is in the combination and sequence of these events that a unique individual can be formed.  I’m afraid, however, that once again you must abandon your notion of your individuality. Most everyone has had a very similar set of experiences as well.

Now, though, you probably think you’ve got the answer, how you’re going to prove  me wrong.  You say, “it’s my reaction to each of these events, my contribution to them that makes me truly unique.”  If you are feeling particularly pithy you may say something like “the sum is greater than its parts.”  And you would, in fact, have said something that sounds good, and would probably settle things in a movie.  I am sorry to disappoint you, but this simply isn’t the case either.

Now, all I’ve done so far is make statements, which in all honesty, is worthless all by itself, but I wanted to get your attention.  I don’t actually any data, but I’m not really sure if one could obtain data about this sort of thing.  However, there are glimpses one can obtain.

Language can provide one of these views.  Language is a societal construct which only functions inasmuch as people share similar experiences.  Words only have meaning in relation to other words within each system and are nothing more than meaningless symbols (auditory or visual) which are part of a huge web of meaning.   Certainly, one can acquire a travel-guide knowledge of a language without much work, but that hardly counts.

Culture and society, obviously, also provide more insight into the matter.  Things like wars will obviously push a generation in a certain direction.  In fact, the mere fact that one can talk about “a generation” shows the homogeneity in people.  Any distinct grouping of people is dependent upon similarity between people.  This is because groupings of people (or society) is formed (intentionally or otherwise) by people with similar experiences, and then commences to ensure that people continue to have similar experiences.  Thus, the only way one could even imagine completely unique individuals is if there was no (or at least not significant) contact between humans.  Now, besides leading to the extinction of the human race, this still would not cause truly unique individuals, because the configuration of our body, our senses and which ones we depend upon the most already force us into a certain mold.

Some people like to talk about how “each of us is unique, just like a snowflake.”  The funny thing about snowflakes, however, is that they all look  the same to the unaided eye.

It has been quite a while since I made a new post here, but my excuse is that school has been really busy.  I don’t really have anything earth-shattering (although that’s probably true every time  I post), but I thought I would put this quote up that I ran across while feeling a bit of nostalgia for one of the few things I have read.

If God held all truth enclosed in his right hand, and in his left hand the one and only ever-striving drive for truth, even with the corollary of erring forever and ever, and iff he were to say to me: Choose! – I would humble fall down at his left hand and say: Father, give! Pure truth is indeed only for you alone!

That is, as you may have guessed, from Kierkegaard – Concluding Unscientific Postscripts, but it is a quote from Lessing (wikipedia), whom the author of C.U.P. has a great deal of respect for.

While I was at work today, for some reason, I started thinking about Pascal’s Wager, and I realized how it is used sometimes for absolutely bizarre reasons.  For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Pascal’s Wager is a concept formulated by Pascal, a French philosopher, that essentially goes like this: if (since?) God’s existence cannot be proven by reason, one should “wager” as if He does exist, because if he does, one has everything to gain or lose, but if He does not exist, the one who has believed in Him hasn’t really lost anything, nor has the one who did not believe lose  anything.  (Wikipedia has a much fuller article than I would be able to or care to produce – here.)

Regardless of how reasonable that seems to you, my mine frustration is not with his ‘wager’ as much as it is how people use it.  According to the Wikipedia article, and it also makes sense given what I do know about Pascal, he did not conceive of it as a ‘proof’ for the existence of God, but it was simply a conclusion of his arguments about uncertainty and the weaknesses of reason.  In that regard, it may be reasonable, however, as usual, the problem lies with those who come after him.  I have, in my ‘circles’ seen this used in proselytizing, and they were being serious.  To me, it seems that telling somebody “well, what have you got to lose if you’re wrong” is one of the worst ways to actually communicate Christianity.  Furthermore, I can’t think of a time that would ever sway what I believe about anything.  As you should have expected, there is a quote from Kierkegaard that seems particularly applicable.

Although, as frequently noted, the leap is the decision, Jacobi nevertheless wants to fashion a little transition to it.  He, the eloquent speaker, wants to entice Lessing.  “It does not amount to much,” he says, “it is not such a difficult matter.  Just step on this elastic spot – then the leap will come by itself.”  This is a very good example of the pious fraud of eloquence; it is as if someone were to recommend execution by guillotine and say,  “This whole business is an easy matter.  You just lie down on a board, a string is pulled, then the ax falls down – and you have been executed.”  But suppose now that being executed is what one does not want, and it is the same with making the leap.

It seems to me that Pascal’s Wager also falls into this trap when it is used to evangelize people.  If, as is so often said, Christianity is a ‘relationship’ between the individual and Christ, this becomes even more ridiculous.  Does anyone say to another person “Hey, you should be my friend, after all, what is there to lose?”  I have certainly never heard or seen that happen before, but who knows.  All told, it seems that Pascal’s Wager is not an evangelistic tool, but perhaps merely a thought exercise, after all, Paul says:

And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty.  Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up – if in fact the dead do not rise.  For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen.  And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile: you are still in your sins!  then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.  (I Corinthians 15:14-19, NKJV)

I don’t know about you, but to me, that is the opposite of simply ‘what do you have to lose?’  If, in fact we would be “of all men the most pitiable” there must be something that could be lost by believing in Christ.  In order to understand Christianity as simply the best option because there is less to lose, one must have a completely different understanding of Christianity than Paul did.  In fact, it would seem, according to Paul, that believing in Christianity is actually the riskier of the options.  Of course, Jesus said: “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.  For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8: 34-5 NKJV).  Clearly then, a Christianity which can tell people “What do you have to lose?” is clearly not the Christianity of the New Testament.

Kierkegaard quote  from: Concluding Unscientific Postscripts page 103

The following is a quote from Kierkegaard, except not really.  It’s from “Either/Or” which was ‘edited’ by Victor Eremita, and he (the editor) claims to have found this manuscript.  Thus, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym (Victor) does not even claim to have written it, so in a way it’s 2 steps removed from Kierkegaard.  Anyway, on to the quote.

Let others complain that the times are evil.  I complain that they are wretched, for they are without passion.  People’s thoughts are as thin and fragile as lace, and they themselves as pitiable as lace-making girls.  The thoughts of their hearts are too wretched to be sinful.  It is perhaps possible to regard it as sin for a worm to noursich such thoughts, but not for a human being, who is created in thhe image of God.  Their desires are staid and dull, their passions drowsy.  They perform their duties, these mercenary souls, but just like Jews, they indulge in trimming the coins a little; they think that, even though our Lord keeps ever so orderly an account book, they can still manage to trick him a little.  Fie on them!  That is why my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare.  There one still feels that those who speak are human beings; there they hate, there they love, there they murder the enemy, curse his descendants through all generations — there they sin.

I really don’t have anything to add or a conclusion to draw, I just  thought somebody might like the quote.

In Georg Simmel’s Philosophy of Money, he describes several different negative effects the growth of the money economy can have upon the individual. The first few are really things which can be found in any sort of economy – no matter how primitive. These include greed and avarice (by avarice he means being miserly), which are caused by thinking of money as the final end; in greed, the individual simply wants more money, whereas in avarice, the individual is not willing to ever part with the money that has been accumulated. The next two effects are those of extravagance and ascetic poverty. Extravagance is easy enough to understand, but ascetic poverty, initially, seems misplaced when discussing negative effects of money. What indites this sort of poverty as a perversion of money is that it still makes money into an absolute importance. Simmel says: “The tremendous and wide-reaching power of the process by which money is elevated from its intermediary position to absolute importance is best illuminated by the fact that the negation off its meaning is elevated to the identical form.” Thus, by making the renunciation of money the highest good, money is still viewed as something more than a mere tool. The final 2 effects are also those which come only in a more fully developed money economy, according to Simmel. Those 2 are cynicism and the blasé attitude. He writes: “cynicism and a blasé attitude – both of which are the results of the reduction of the concrete values of life to the mediating value of money.” The cynic, Simmel writes “his awareness of life is adequately expressed only when he has theoretically and practically exemplified the baseness of the highest values and the illusion of any differences in values.” This only occurs in a well developed money economy because it is there that everything becomes reducible to money. Anything – and everything – is for sale, and as such can be given a “value” that is nothing more than an amount of money. For the cynic, this debases the object to nothing more than its monetary value.

This leaves the blasé attitude, which is what I wanted to talk about all along, but I had to set the stage. In the blasé attitude, the person “has completely lost the feeling for value differences. He experiences all things as being of an equally dull and grey hue, as not worth getting excited about.” This is the individual who has become indifferent towards just about everything. This is caused by the nature of money. Simmel writes, in his essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life:”

“For money expresses all qualitative differences of things in terms of ‘how much?’ Money, with all its colorlessness and indifference, becomes the common denominator of all values; irreparably it hollows out the core of things, their individuality, their specific value, and their incomparability. All things float with equal specific gravity in the constantly moving stream of money.”

Money then changes qualitative differences into quantitative ones, which leads to the emptying of everything. While the cynic responds to this by mocking it, the blasé individual responds by searching for some sort of stimuli that actually retains meaning. Again, Simmel writes: “out of this there emerges the craving today for excitement, for extreme impressions, for the greatest speed in its change.” This search for stimuli, however is ultimately worthless, and even exacerbates the problem. Simmel says:

“The search for mere stimuli in themselves is the consequence of the increasing blasé attitude through which natural excitement disappears. This search for stimuli originates in the money economy with the fading of all specific values into a mere mediating value. We have here one of those interesting cases in which the disease determines its own form of the cure. A money culture signifies such an enslavement of life in its means, that release from its weariness is also evidently sought in a mere means which conceals its final significance – in the fact of ’stimulation’ as such.”

What makes Simmel’s claims even more compelling is that he wrote in the early 1900’s. He saw in his time those currents which have become endemic in our time. It is hard, at least for me, to read his description of the blasé individual and not see myself in it, even if only to an extent. I find the last line of the last quote particularly true, and also increasingly disconcerting. The money culture enslaves to such a point that even those who recognize its negative effects can still only seek release from within it. In nearly every situation, it is impossible to truly escape from the money economy – and it is only becoming more difficult.

N.B. I wish to be careful to express that this is only one aspect of Simmel’s presentation. He is extremely balanced throughout the entire book, and this is merely one aspect of his argument that I have focused upon. In the book, he is constantly showing the positive and negative effects of the changes the money economy brings. So, please don’t read this as Simmel (or myself) condemning the money economy as evil or as something purely bad.

Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Mental Life” Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities. Ed. Richard Sennett. Meredith Corporation; N.Y., N.Y. 1969: pgs 47-60.

Simmel, Georg. The Philosophy of Money. Trans. Tom Bottomore and David Frisby. Routledge, NY. 1978

Before I begin, I have to tell you that I am by no means a professional economist.  I have a basic grasp of some major economic ideas, but I am far from really understanding economics in any sort of overarching sense.  That said, this really seems to me to consist in rather self-evident things, hence “simple economics.”

I was reading a book entitled Confidence Games by Mark Taylor, which I’m reading because it is heavily influenced by Georg Simmel’s Philosophy of Money, which I’m reading for class, and I came across this section.

“In addition to this, the policies of many lending institutions during boom times returned to haunt them when the economy slowed.  With inflation and interest rates rising rapidly, banks encouraged many property owners – especially farmers – to borrow more money to cover operating expenses.  The logic was a familiar as it was flawed: borrow now at lower interest rates, pay back later with cheaper money.  The only way people could do this was to leverage their land.  But as the economy fell into recession and interest rates did not adjust quickly enough, property owners could not meet their debt obligations and defaulted on their loans.  At the same time, the vallue of their land was declining, thereby decreasing the value of their collateral.  As matters worsened, debtors’ problems quickly became creditors’ problems.”

Now, as I said, I am not a professional economist, but when I was reading this passage I could not but help be struck by how familiar that passage sounded.  I do not really understand the details of the current economic “crisis,” but I think that many of the issues in this passage are the same as the ones that caused the current state of events.  Taylor, however, was writing about a collapse that occurred in 1981-2.

Whatever other similarities there may or may not be between 81/2 and now, I feel quite confident in saying that institutions encouraging people to borrow in an irresponsible manner happened in both situations.  I mean, how could you miss it these past several years?  Banks encouraging people to take second mortgages on their homes to do home improvement or buy a car, a big T.V., a race-horse (okay, probably not the horse).  Even beyond the banks, the whole of culture was/is based around borrowing.  (As an aside, I am far from claiming that people should never borrow money, as I borrowed money to go through undergraduate and at the beginning of my graduate work.)  I have read about college students who graduate with massive debt, and not simply from paying for school, but several thousand dollars of credit card debt as well.  Seemingly everyone engaged in buying things with their credit cards and paying the minimum due, or not much more than the minimum.  This culture of debt was definetily a factor in this current “crisis,” and, according to Taylor, was a factor in 81/2.

Now, I realize this is easy to say after the case, but it seemed so to me even before the events of the last half-year or whatever it’s been.  It seems inevitable that a culture built upon people spending money they don’t have will experience economic crisis.  It doesn’t seem reasonable, to me at least, to believe that there will be no adverse consequences for irresponsible behavior.  Now, it obviously can endure for a while, but it seems to carry within itself its own destruction.  The problem, however, runs deeper than what I called above a “culture of debt,” because people are obviously not going into debt simply for the sake of being in debt.  No, the reason they plunge headfirst into debt is for what I like to call (if you’ll permit me a bit of dramatization) the “tyranny of comfort.”  What I mean by that seems relatively simple, but perhaps I’ll talk about it more sometime.  Regardless of whether I am getting too carried away to refer to it so strongly, our culture has a definite obsession with stuff, and acquiring as much of it as possible, and it seems ridiculous to deny that this sort of mentality was not a factor in either of these economic crises.

“What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like  beautiful music. It is with him as with the poor wretches in Phalaris’ bronze bull, who were slowly tortured over a slow fire; their screams could not reach the tyrant’s ears to terrify him ; to him they sounded like sweet music.  And people crowd around the poet and say to him, ‘Sing again soon’ – in other words, may new sufferings torture your soul, and may your lips continue to be formed as before, because your screams would only alarm us, but the music is charming. And the reviewers step up and say, ‘that is right; so it must be according to the rules of esthetics.’  Now of course a reviewer resembles a poet to a hair, except that he does not have the anguish in his heart, or the music on his lips.  Therefore, I would rather be a swineherd out on Amager and be understood by swine than be a poet and be misunderstood by people.”

That is from Either/Or Part 1, by Kierkegaard.  I didn’t really expect to say much besides simply quoting him, but as I was retyping it, I was struck by the irony when he discusses the reviewers.  He says that the reviewers are nearly the same as the poet, except for the “anguish in his heart” or “the music on his lips.”  Those, however, were the defining characteristics of the poet, so Kierkegaard is really saying that the reviewer has nothing important in common with the poet.

Also, in case you are interested, here are some links to references he made:

Phalaras

Amager

Often, I like to think that the truth somehow ‘calls’ to people, and that if the truth is presented to them and they truly understand it, that they would accept it as truth.  In my more lucid moments, however, I realize that this is a rather overly-optimistic view of the world and mankind.  Kierkegaard, in The Sickness Unto Death, formulates it this way:

“It is far from being the case that men regard the relationship to truth, relating themselves to the truth, as the highest good, and it is very far from being the case that they Socratically regard being in error in this manner as the worrst misfortune – the sensate in them usually far outweighs their intellectuality.   For example, if a man is presumably happy, imagines himself to be happy, although considered in the light of truth he is unhappy, he is usually far from wanting to be wrenched out of his error . . . Imagine a house with a basement, first floor, and second floor planned so that there is or is supposed to be a social distinction between the occupants according to floor.  Now, if what it means to be human is compared with such a house, then all too regrettably the sad and ludicrous truth about the majority of people is that in their own house they prefer to live in the basement.  Every human being is a psychical-physical synthesis intended to be spirit; this is the building, but he prefers to live in the basement, that is, in sensate categories.  Moreover, he not only prefers to live in the basement – no, he loves it so much that he is indignant if anyone suggests that he move to the superb upper floor that stands vacant and at his disposal, for he is, after all, living in his own house.”

It seems fairly obvious, to me at least, that Kierkegaard is correct in his estimation of people  in general, and if I was honest with myself, I’m sure that, at times, I have chosen to ignore the truth and instead dwell in that which made me think I was happy.  Perhaps instead of desiring truth, it would be more accurate of people to say that they desire ease and comfort.  That, however, is too large a claim to substantiate right now.

For one of my classes, I am reading Georg Simmel’s Philosophy of Money, which is extremely interesting and not an economics book.  His claim in the book is that by understanding money and the function of money, one can understand the whole of human experience, so he talks about things outside of money.  I am not yet sure whether his overarching claim can be upheld, but it is interesting to read nonetheless.  Today, I was reading, and I came across the following section, this is only part of the paragraph, and I would quote more, but this  is the most pertinent, so I will not quote the entire paragraph as I had originally planned.

“It seems to me that a vast number of life experiences that we enjoy derive their intensity from the fact that, for their sake, we leave unexplored innumerable opportunities for other enjoyments and for other ways of proving ourselves.  A regal extravagance, a careless grandeur of existence, is revealed by the way that people ignore each other or pass on after a brief encounter, by our total indifference towards many to whom we could give much and who could give much to us.  But there also emanates from this unique value of non-enjoyment a new, enhanced and more concentrated charm in what we do actually possess.  The fact that this one among innumerable possibilites has become reality gives it a triumphant tone; the shades of the untried, neglected richness of life provide its victor’s retinue.

According to Simmel, each decision to do something is also a (implied) decision to not do many other things.  This is unavoidable, but also provides richness to that which we decide to do.  I think everyone is cognizant of this fact to some degree, but probably not fully aware of the lasting impact of each decision one makes.  This of course is not meant to render one incapable of making decisions, because decisions of course must be made.  Perhaps, however, it would be wise to not reveal such “a regal extravagance, a careless graneur of existence” about those decisions that we do make.

Philosophy of Money – ISBN 13 (pbk) 978-0-415-34172-1 (-8 for hbk)

This is something which I wrote a little bit ago, purely for fun.  Think of it as an exercise in defining and dividing, but this is (hopefully obviously) not to be taken very seriously, although I do think that I lay out the answer to the allegedly “age old question” quite well.

I’ve been thinking about the question, “Which came first the chicken or the egg?” People often throw this around as if it is some sort of eternal question that can’t ever be accurately answered, but the problem is, however, that the answer is ridiculously simple. So, here we go.

To begin with what is easiest, if somebody believes in creation, the answer is obviously the chicken came first, these people, however are not likely to actually think this question is difficult to answer, in their minds, it is plain that the chicken came first.

However, those who believe in evolution will perhaps find the question slightly more difficult to answer, as their presuppositions do not necessarily require a certain answer. In order to accurately answer the question, we must first further elucidate the question. “Egg” is a rather general term, but in this question, there are two specific ways that it can be taken. One, it can mean an egg of any sort, laid by any animal, as chickens are far from the only animals that lay eggs. The other option, obviously, is that the question is actually “which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg?” In this interpretation, the egg is referring specifically to a chicken egg. We shall deal with these two interpretations separately, as the distinction is vital to finding the correct answer.

If egg is taken in a general sense of any animal’s egg, then the answer is, again, remarkably clear. As I understand it, unless it’s changed since I was younger, dinosaurs, or at least some kinds, were born from eggs. Again, as I understand it, according to evolution, dinosaurs were gone long before chickens were around. Thus, if egg is meant in a general sense, then, from an evolutionary viewpoint, the egg clearly came before the chicken.

Well, those two answers are fairly straightforward, which leads me to believe that the people that think the question is difficult must be interpreting in this third, and seemingly final, way. In this interpretation, “egg” is referring to a chicken egg specifically, not simply to egg as a means of bearing young. This question must also be further examined before it can be properly answered. Obviously, if one is going to answer the question, a definition of “chicken egg” must be available. Does it mean an egg which contains a chicken, or an egg which was laid by a chicken? These two different definitions will again determine whether the chicken or the egg came first, for obvious reasons.

In evolution, it is hard to draw lines between species as they change, or at least, if one assumes intermediate links, it would seemingly have to be difficult. However, at some point, an animal that was not a chicken, would have to become a chicken. If by chicken egg, we mean an egg which contains a chicken, then clearly, the chicken egg would come first. It would have been laid by some chicken-esque animal, that was not, in fact, a chicken. Thus, the chicken egg came before the chicken. If, however, by “chicken egg” one means an egg which was laid by a chicken, the answer is just as readily apparent, but the exact opposite. Again, this chicken, which was born of that-which-was-not-chicken, would lay an egg, and that egg would be a “chicken egg,” but the chicken would have come first.

Thus, in answer to the question “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” there are several ways of responding, all of which depend upon your beliefs and your definition of the question, to sum up:

1. A creationist: the chicken came first

2. An evolutionist, defining the egg in a general sense: the egg came first

3. An evolutionist, defining the egg in a specific sense, in which the chicken egg is the egg containing a chicken: the egg came first

4. An evolutionist, defining the egg in a specific sense, in which the chicken egg is the egg laid by a chicken: the chicken came first.

It seems to me that, for most people, option #4 is the most likely way they would define the question, because it simply makes the most sense that the chicken egg is the egg which is laid by the chicken. I say it makes sense because if one has an egg laid by a chicken which was not fertilized, and thus does not contain a chicken, one would still call that a chicken egg.