Transcript Permission to Behave

Beowulf:
Permission to Behave
Feraco
Search for Human Potential
13 December 2012
Although he’s definitely the villain of the
poem’s first half, Grendel occupies a gray
space in our ethical and moral systems; we
don’t really know what to do with/how to feel
about a victim of abandonment and cruelty
who lashes out in kind.
I should point out that, while the terms
“ethics” and “morals” are related, they aren’t
interchangeable.
When I speak of “morals,” I’m talking
about codes that govern your
personal/private behavior – whether you
choose to help someone, wear something,
relate to someone, abandon something, etc.
When I speak of “ethics,” I’m talking
about codes that govern your professional
conduct – the beliefs that determine my
teaching style, for example.
For simplicity’s sake, let’s keep
assuming, as we did in Run Fast…,
that we have free will.
We established earlier that
choices matter to us because they
allow us to deviate from an
instinctive, automatic course.
Choice is a manual override, so
to speak.
Morals function in much the
same way.
Assuming we adhere to the
values we say we hold dear, we use
morality to arrest our worst
impulses – to resist temptation and
corruption, or to avoid harming
others or ourselves unnecessarily.
In other words, morals slam the
brakes on the parts of human
nature we don’t like; one wonders,
then, whether we aim to be
something other than human.
However, morality really doesn’t have
to be restrictive, and nor do ethics.
At its most basic level, the study of
each requires the student to try
discovering the “best” way to live life.
Without those twin senses of
“goodness,” we simply survive, and
never grow; as I’ve often stated, our
frameworks give us direction.
And that direction shapes more than
your career goals; how many
friendships, for example, would you lose
if you only made relationships based on
who could help you survive?
More importantly, that combination –
choice and morality – profoundly impacts each
individual’s sense of identity.
You should consistently check your own
sense of morality; does it limit or free you?
In what ways does it affect you – and are you
comfortable with those effects?
If you’re not, the nice thing is that you’re
allowed to shift your framework; I imagine
none of you have the same values you held as a
five-year-old, as your needs have changed just
a little since then.
And as we pointed out earlier, if you have
free will, you have the ability to choose your
actions based on your individual needs –
which, in turn, means you’re responsible for
their consequences, and thus get to choose
whether you’ll lead a “moral” life.
But what is a “moral” life?
It’s not simply a matter of
following accepted rules (although
that’s typically not a bad place to
start).
After all, historians have
documented numerous acts of civil
disobedience – immorality in the
legislative sense – that contributed
to human progress.
Was Gandhi’s resistance of British
rule immoral?
Was King’s resistance of racial
bigotry?
For that matter, would it have been
immoral for those men, both of whom
were capable of so much, to stand by and
do nothing in the name of following
society’s established laws?
In the examples of Gandhi and King,
“legal” and “moral” existed at odds with
one another.
Should one follow the rules or follow
one’s instincts when they’re mutually
exclusive?
And if you’re willing to break a rule
because it feels morally wrong to follow
it…well, what if your instincts are wrong?
(You’ll understand why I ask this when
you read the Revenge Therapy thread this
week.)
We form moral/ethical frameworks
in order to make sense of such
situations – to take the things we
comes across and contextualize them
in a way that allows us to act on our
interpretations.
That framework allows you to make
the choices you’d want to make.
Therefore, those codes eventually –
inevitably – shape your hopes and
dreams…which is why you have to
construct your framework carefully,
lest you accidentally build a prison for
yourself.
(Watch for “the box” in Revenge
Therapy.)
In this sense, the ability to choose
to live well is essentially the ability
to choose insight over ignorance, to
elevate the rich, varied lifestyle
above the thoughtless and bland.
You can choose either one, of
course, but let’s say I want to live
well, to live a “good” life.
How do I decide to do so?
It seems like an awful lot of
people have a lot of ideas about how
to do things...how do I choose?
Let’s start with that word:“good.”
What does it mean?
Well, we defined ethics and morality
before we did anything else because
goodness could be relative, and my
impression of living well could be
entirely off-base.
One thought-school holds that true
good and evil exists in the universe,
completely independent of any
perspective-related bias or moral
relativism, and that our inability to
reliably perceive it points to a flaw in us,
rather than in the perfect order of the
universe.
Another school holds that good and
evil are human constructions in a
universe that’s much larger than them,
and thus too shallow to accurately
describe the things they do.
Still another holds that all morals are
relative, subject to dozens of factors per
individual, and that no one can point to
something absolute and say,“This, here,
is unambiguously, incontrovertibly
good” without facing opposition – that,
indeed, every individual is responsible
for defining “goodness” for himself or
herself.
But if you are able to shape the
concept of whatever qualifies as “good”
yourself, does “goodness” lose all real
value?
You, for example, may believe
Death Cab for Cutie is awful; I may
believe they’re excellent.
If we’re listening to the same
music at the same time, doesn’t that
just invalidate the value of both
reactions?
(Think of the darker version of the
P/Not P dilemma.)
The worries here aren’t minor;
we’re talking about the words we
use to make sense of the world and
those around us, words whose
definitions are assumed to be static
during most human interactions.
When someone says something is
“good,” your first reaction isn’t to
assume that all concepts of
goodness are relative; it’s to
mentally process the thing as
“good.”
So when we say something is
“good,” or ask whether something is
“good,” what do we really mean?
Does the use of “good” in “One
Tree Hill is SO GOOD!” match the use
of “good” in “Kindness is good for
the soul”?
In some cases, we seem to be stating
a fact about our opinions – when we say
One Tree Hill is good, we’re expressing a
favorable opinion toward the show with
the expectation that others will agree
(or be interested).
In other cases, we seem to be stating
a fact or truth about something – i.e.,
“kindness is good.”
We call this evaluative objectivism.
Evaluative language assigns a
“quality label” to something – this is
good, that’s bad, this is right, that’s
wrong – and there are different schools
of thought relating to our uses of such
language.
An evaluative objectivist thinks there
is such a thing as a “universal bad” or
“universal good”; an evaluative skeptic,
on the other hand, tends to think that
there are shades of grey in everything –
that is, that good and evil are relative
concepts rather than moral absolutes.
There are ways to deal with the
skeptical thinker, just as there are ways
to deal with the objectivist thinker.
The point, however, is that our
personal understanding of that single
four-letter word –“good” – has a
tremendous impact on how we see the
world – and, therefore, on how we make
moral and ethical decisions.
Let’s test this hypothesis with a
simple question: are you living a
good life?
The obvious follow-up question:
“Well, what defines ‘the’ good life?
What defines ‘a’ good life?”
I know that a bunch of different
responses will pop up around the
classroom if I ask that question,
because you each have your own
interpretation of goodness, and
you assign your own value/weight
to goodness as well.
Can we set up our own ethical
and moral codes just like that,
however?
Well, sure – morals aren’t
(usually) carved in stone, and the
construction of those codes plays a
huge role in determining any
person’s sense of identity.
What’s hard, though, is trying to
separate what one is taught from
what one teaches oneself; I’m not
sure morality can develop in a
social vacuum, but if it can’t, how
can you tell which beliefs are really
“yours”?
And the bigger question – the
more controversial one – is not
whether you can set up your own
ethical and moral codes, but
whether you should be allowed to
do so.
After all, what’s a criminal
action other than a misaligning of
one’s moral and ethical codes to
the ones held by the consensus?
And how easy is it to act perfectly
in accordance with beliefs you
don’t personally hold?
The whole concept of a society as a
body rests on the assumption that the
people who live together in a certain
region did so because they believe
similar things.
This was as true in Beowulf’s time as
it is now, perhaps moreso if you
consider the likelihood that these
characters lived in places where just
about everyone ate the same food and
spoke the same language.
But even in our current mishmashed,
far-flung, polyglot society, people tend
to self-select in order to stay close to
people who are “like them,” whether in
terms of religious, cultural, social, or
political makeup.
(This is one reason why Diversity
Weeks remain important.)
To be clear, my emphasis on belief
in this case is predicated more on
socially-accepted criteria (don’t throw
things while teaching, etc.) and less on
things like who to pray to or vote into
office.
On that score, as long as my codes
meet the criteria my society uses to
define “good,” I’ll probably be fine in
its eyes.
This is why many peoples’
ethical/moral frameworks are deeply
influenced by religious or social
precedents; few among us want to be
exiled.
Most of us would more readily
betray our convictions then be turned
into Grendels, even in a minor way.
That, I think, is why it’s so difficult for
some of you to understand his situation:
you’ve usually been given the chance to
bend yourself into whatever shape you
and others deemed socially acceptable.
Grendel never got that chance, was
never going to get that chance, and then
– to top it off – was going to be forced to
listen to people living the life he’d been
denied while he rotted (semi-literally) in
a freezing, haunted swamp.
Given all that, it’s not particularly
surprising that he snaps.
Grendel’s situation is extreme, but it
points back to what Gladwell alludes to
when he discusses opportunities, or
what Dr. King and Gandhi understood
when they led their movements:
problems occur when, for whatever
reason, it’s not possible to align your
beliefs with societal norms.
A society full of people with wildly
divergent ideas of ethics/morals cannot
stand: we use “consensus morality” to
define criminality, and a total lack of
agreement on basic standards simply
leads to the collapse of law.
Yet there’s an equal danger in
“groupthink,” where progressive ideas
are instantly feared, dismissed, or
ridiculed simply because they don’t
match pre-existing standards.
That’s the balancing act, then,
that falls to every individual: how
different can I choose to be?
How unique should my choices
and morals be?
How much do I dare to rock the
boat while I’m alive?
Can I live with my choices along
the way?
And can I live with them when
the bill comes due?
Can my soul?
When asking about the soul’s
nature, it helps to start with
basic questions… something
like “Where is it?”
Is it in your head? Heart?
Pinky?
Clearly, the soul isn’t
something you can grab and rip
out, Mortal Kombat-style.
But how can we be sure it
exists if we can’t find it?
To try solving this puzzle ourselves, we
need to look at what constitutes a human
being.
Our first school of thought today is
Monism, which holds that everything is
made out of the same stuff – no blending
between anything.
This “stuff” could be matter, could be
energy, could be thought – but whatever
we’re made of is uniform.
In other words, there’s no separation
between the “spiritual” and the “physical” –
Monists believe that everything is built
from the same blocks.
Therefore, humans are either going to
be all spiritual “stuff” or all physical
“stuff.”
There are two subsets of thought that,
when combined, form the Monist school.
Think of a coin representing the
Monist spectrum, with each subset
representing one of its faces.
We’ll assign “heads” to the
Materialists, who believed that
everything is physical – the energy/matter
continuum, essentially.
In this case,“thought” would not be
something that’s “intangible” – it’s a real,
tangible electrical signal, carried from
physical neuron to physical neuron.
Since nothing is intangible – and the
soul would seem to be – the Materialists
argue we don’t have them.
There’s some disagreement among
Materialists, however, on what constitutes a
human being.
We’ll only concentrate on two sub-subsets
in the interest of time.
Eliminative Materialists take a hard line:
“thought” doesn’t exist, nor does sensation.
Everything is just an electrical event in your
brain, and all events are made of the same
“stuff”: nothing that happens brain-wise is
distinct.
Reductive Materialists are gentler – they
accept thought exists – but they also reduce it
to an electric event.
In any event, all Materialists basically argue
that we’re just “stuff,” and there’s no
mysterious or mystical “soul” in us because
we’re uniform and thus indivisible.
If Materialist Monists (say that five
times fast!) have the right idea – that
we’re uniform blocks of “stuff” – we
can’t be divided into bodies and souls.
Since we can’t be divided, we can’t
release anything separate when we die.
(Also, if a soul’s not put in at birth, a
soul’s not leaving when we die.)
This, of course, doesn’t worry the
Monists much: as William Hazlitt put it,
“there was a time when we were not:
this gives us no concern – why then
should it trouble us that a time will
come when we shall cease to be?”
Since we assigned “heads” to the
Materialists, we’ll assign “tails” to
the Idealists, who believed that the
only things that exist are minds
and ideas; anything that seems
physical instead is simply a mental
projection.
In other words, we’ll move from
being nothing but physical forms
in the Materialists’ eyes to nothing
but souls now.
This body is not a body; my eyes
aren’t being used; it’s all in my
head.
With the Materialists and
Idealists representing opposing
sides of a coin, it stands to reason
that there’s a school that grabs the
whole coin.
That’s the Dualist school.
They hold that both bodies
(physical “stuff”) and souls
(mental/spiritual “stuff”) can exist,
and account for our inability to
sense the soul by proposing what
amounts to a multi-plane system.
According to the Dualists, our
bodies exist in this reality/plane of
existence, while our souls exist in
another one – one that’s perfectly
laid over our own and runs at
exactly the same speed.
We’re linked together in time, if
not in physical space, and we
access what we can’t see like an
antenna that receives and
processes an external signal.
If you like the concept of human
beings as combinations – a fusion of
body and soul – you’re also accepting
the idea of a “double reality” (the seen
and unseen).
For that matter, you might buy into
“double reality” without being a Dualist
at heart.
You can propose that a human being
is one thing (not body and soul
components, but one whole object),
then assert that some “omni force” – a
god or gods – operates beyond your
range of sensory perception.
It affects your life, it can help you, it
can sense you – but you can’t see it.
In any case, each school of
thought seeks to address similar
concerns.
Is there more to man than
what can be sensed?
If there isn’t, how did we even
conceive of a “soul”?
(It’s not like anyone believes
they have “secret physical”
components.)
If there is, which part is more
important – body or soul?
Which part lives your life?
Is what goes on in my head –
my consciousness and thoughts –
different from my soul?
(Descartes said no – he felt that
the mind and spirit combined to
form the “theatre of
consciousness and conscious
experience.”)
Oddly enough, these questions
go to the heart of our earlier
explorations of choice and
morality.
If we’re just programmed by
cells and chemistry, are our
“infinite possibilities” actually
limited – at a sub-molecular
level?
(It’s the same question we
considered when we introduced
the “divinely guided” artist,
except here biology, not divinity,
provides the guidance.)
As you can imagine, Monists and
Dualists can’t reach common ground
while considering these matters
(mainly due to the Monists’
perspective), and they don’t take too
kindly to each other.
The Monists believe that we are
complex – but uniform – beings, with
our uniformity eliminating the
possibility that we possess souls.
The Dualists believe the opposite –
that we’re divided at a metaphysical
level, and that there’s something to us
that we aren’t seeing.
But even if we do have souls – if
we are living a Dualist existence –
the Hazlitt quote is still worth
pondering.
After all, none of us can
remember a time before our
births.
What was our soul doing before
then?
Where does the river begin?
Where do we go after – if there’s
anywhere to go?
And where does the river end?
Moreover, if one does have a
soul, one has to wonder whether it
can be changed (consciously or
unconsciously), damaged, etc.
At a minimum, if the soul can’t
be changed, character and
personality certainly can; this
would indicate that soul and
character are separate.
If the soul can’t be changed, is
it more important than our
character – our self-constructed
personas, the ones that we shift in
accordance with the experiences
and knowledge we gain
throughout our lives?
Which one governs our
behavior – soul or character?
And if souls can’t be changed,
why bother being good?
Your soul’s going to be the same
anyway.
Is it a matter of fearing the
karmic consequences?
Are we afraid something bad
will happen to our souls after we
die regardless of whether the soul
was “responsible”?
Earlier today, I made the same point
about a dozen times: our morals provide
a scaffold in order to stop us from
behaving (naturally) badly.
What would have motivated that
awful “natural” behavior, however?
Our souls?
If not, why do we believe our soul’s
eventual fate depends on what we do
here?
How is it any more fair to punish a
soul for something it couldn’t control
than it would be to punish someone who
didn’t mean to commit a crime?
And if there’s some meaning to our
lives at the time we die, will we have
been defined by who we are…or what
we’ve done?
Jesse Lacey, Brand New’s lead vocalist, once
sang,“…I’m not scared to die / But I’m a little
bit scared of what comes after / Do I get the
gold chariot? / Do I float through the ceiling? /
Do I divide and fall apart?”
William Ernest Hocking wryly notes that
“man is the only animal that contemplates
death, and also the only animal that shows any
sign of doubt of its finality.”
Numerous cultures and theologies provide
different explanations for what death actually
is.
(One wonders why we don’t have a “Unified
Theory of Death.”)
However, it’s useful to begin with our old
logic, the Laws of the Excluded Middle and
Noncontradiction: either something lies
beyond death – regardless of what it is – or
nothing does.
For the sake of our exploration today, we’ll
consider both.
Scientifically speaking, death
represents the end of corporeal
existence.
(“Corporeal” = “Physical” –“Corpus”
 Body  Corpse.)
It seems like such a simple deal, and
to a Materialist, it is – but to others, not
so much.
Remember, if you’re a Materialist,
you don’t believe in a division between
realms – you think this is it.
This doesn’t mean that a Dualist
can’t believe this is it; it’s just that
dualism is a prerequisite belief if one
wants to believe in some sort of afterlife
or reincarnation.
As you might expect, a Monist doesn’t think
anything happens after death – or happened
before life.
This works for Idealists (who believe we’re
nothing but mental energy and projections), as
well as for Materialists.
The Idealists, after all, recognize that death
“happens,” even if they don’t believe a physical
body is actually expiring.
Instead, they simply assume death
represents the fundamental ending of a
consciousness.
A Dualist, on the other hand, operates under
the principle that there’s more to us than
meets the eye.
Again, you don’t have to believe in an
afterlife if you’re a Dualist, but a belief in some
state of being that persists after death requires
you to assume that humans are more than
sacks of meat and bones.
If you’re a Monist, can you fear
death?
Sure – there’s a push and pull
between accepting what you see as the
natural necessity of death and facing
the overwhelming terror of oblivion.
Plus, there’s always that final
possibility: what if you’re wrong?
(Would this be a good or bad thing? If
you’re a Monist, I suppose it depends.)
If you’re a Dualist, should you fear
death?
Sure – what if you’re wrong?
Plus, who’s to say you lived well
enough to enjoy a second life even if
you’re a Dualist?
Imminent death tends to elicit a number of
different fearful reactions from people.
We may fear that, as I alluded to before,
something we did in life will come back to
haunt us.
Others may fear that nothing we do, for
good or ill, will impact our fate after death.
Still others fear death because it is a
mystery, and our minds respond oddly to
perceived dangers that aren’t fully
understood.
We may fear that the end will involve
suffering, or that nothing awaits us on the
other side.
But our greatest fear may also be the
simplest: the possibility that our deeply-held
beliefs about the end are, in fact, wrong – and
that something else, something unanticipated,
will happen instead.
The great philosopher Plato took
a physically-oriented approach to
the study of death.
He argued physical objects don’t
just stop existing.
If you want to “kill” a chair, what
do you do?
Breaking it up just separates it
into its components, and even
burning it leaves ashes.
The chair’s been transformed
into something else, but not
eradicated from existence;
whatever you started with remains.
The same thing holds true for a
statue – if it falls over, it breaks into
little shards, but the stone remains.
This, Plato asserted, is how things
get destroyed in our world – they
break down into components, but
they aren’t eradicated or erased.
Plato, a Dualist, then went on to
argue that since the soul is not
substance, it cannot be broken
down into parts – and since it can’t
be broken down, it cannot be
destroyed.
Plato’s thought process may hold
true for physical things – but is
everything in this world physical?
This is the sort of question that
makes a Materialist angry, as one
would insist that everything is
physical, and that it therefore makes
no sense for there to be this mysterious
thing composed of something
unknowable beyond sensation.
If you’re not a materialist, however,
you acknowledge that there are a
variety of different “substances” in the
world.
Is the beam from my laser pointer
made from the same “stuff” as the
grass on the softball field?
However, things do exist that stop existing.
Where does light go when you shut off its
source?
Possibly nowhere – possibly everywhere.
If I play a note on the piano, however, does it
play forever?
What if I destroy the piano?
Can the note live on without its host – its
source?
How does Plato know that the soul isn’t
made of something as transitory as a musical
note – or a physical body?
Then again, if the soul isn’t meant to endure
forever, what’s the point of having one?
With death – as with many other things –
humanity’s questions just lead to more
questions.
We often wonder about the meaning
of life in the context of the meaning of
death.
If there’s no “beyond,” many wonder,
is there any point to the “here and
now”?
I would argue that the lack of a
“beyond” would make the good we
perform in this life even more
important; if this is all we get, why not
make it as wonderful for everyone as
possible?
William Penn phrases it better than
me:“I expect to pass through life but
once. If therefore, there be any kindness
I can show, or any good thing I can do to
any fellow being, let me do it now, and
not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass
this way again.”
What if there’s nothing after this?
How would our lives in this “plane”
(using the Dualist system) change if
nothing lies beyond?
Is Penn’s philosophy best?
Should we instead simply throw
morality out the window and take what
we want while we can?
Does the mystery surrounding death
actually help us live better lives?
(It depends on your view regarding
fear, I suppose – is it a positive or
negative force?)
Many theologies and cultures
account for some sort of continued
existence.
One wonders if this shared tendency
towards a reverence for an “afterlife” is
meaningful in and of itself, or if it
merely reveals something interesting
about the human character – whatever
that interesting thing may be.
We have people who claim to have
been contacted from beyond, or to have
come back from the brink of death.
In some cases, people insist that they
remember previous lives – previous
revolutions of the Samsara cycle,
perhaps.
But in any event, the mystery surrounding
death – the sheer enormity of all that we don’t
know – isn’t necessarily a prescription for
negative possibilities.
After all, if we don’t know whether we
continue beyond our corporeal end, we don’t
know that we can’t continue.
Perhaps that’s part of the meanings of both
life and death: that without definite
knowledge, all doors remain open to us, and
we have an opportunity to explore the infinite
possibilities of existence – and, in turn, the
infinite possibility for discovery, both of new
answers and new questions, a billion targets at
which to fling the arrows of our selves…or
souls.
We just have to hope that we, like Carl, like
Beowulf, lived well enough to make the
adventure worth taking.