Being Human

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

- George Santayana in "Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies" (1922)

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

- George Santayana in "The Life of Reason" (1905-1906) Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

- George Santayana in "The Life of Reason" (1905-1906) Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense

Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in one sense, overcome.

- George Santayana in "Introduction to The Ethics of Spinoza" (1910)

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.

- George Santayana in "The Life of Reason" Vol. II, Reason in Society

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

- George Santayana in "The Life of Reason" (1905-1906)Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense

"My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests."

- George Santayana in "Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies" (1922)"On My Friendly Critics"

History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all, if memory and faith in memory were not what science necessarily rest on. In order to sift evidence we must rely on some witness, and we must trust experience before we proceed to expand it.
The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe.

- George Santayana in "The Life of Reason" (1905-1906)Vol. V, Reason in Science

When Socrates and his two great disciples composed a system of rational ethics they were hardly proposing practical legislation for mankind...They were merely writing an eloquent epitaph for their country.

- George Santayana in "The Life of Reason" (1905-1906)Vol. V, Reason in Science

Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.

"The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy"(1911)

All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.

- George Santayana in "Dialogues in Limbo" (1926) War Shrines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana
"George Santayana (born Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás in Madrid, December 16, 1863; died September 26, 1952, in Rome) was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States and identified himself as an American, although he always kept a validated Spanish passport. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters.
Santayana's main philosophical work consists of The Sense of Beauty (1896), his first book-length monograph and perhaps the first major work on aesthetics written in the United States; The Life of Reason five volumes, 1905–6, the high point of his Harvard career; Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923); and The Realms of Being (4 vols., 1927–40). Although Santayana was not a pragmatist in the mold of William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce, or John Dewey, The Life of Reason arguably is the first extended treatment of pragmatism written."

There are people who have not noticed yet that science has already explained many of the things that used to be explained with metaphysics in the past. Metaphysics was sometimes even a useful tool when there was no real knowledge upon these matters. Luckily, now we much more real information and we do not need hairy metaphysics to explain simple everyday phenomena anymore.
People who use metaphysics to explain things like "imagination, creativity, and the very nature of consciousness" have not realized that these things have nothing to do with metaphysics. They are products of our brains. They are produced extremely complex processes that are going on in a human brain all the time.

Our knowledge of how the human brain does work has grown exponentially during the last few years. At the same time, reasons for explaining normal brain processes with metaphysics have faded away. One problem in modern philosophy is lack of understanding on the state of current science. There simply are people in the field of philosophy who are quite unaware of many of the current advances in science.
However, at the same time there are also people who see knowledge as a threat to their religious ideology. They are often people who misuse philosophy and most of all metaphysics as defensive weapons. They simply use it to protect their pet religious ideology. These people tend also to ignore the new advances in science.

Metaphysics is largely an exercise in futility. There is nothing to 'discover' in metaphysics. New claims can be created at will. All of them will rest on a similar layer of nothing. They are often just as wild guesses as the old ones. There is a everlasting beauty contest of ideas going on in metaphysics, as there is no real basis to claim that one theory would be more accurate any other.
However, there is no doubt that metaphysics will survive as long as there is money in it. Most of all professionals in the philosophy-departments in universities will find endless new angles into metaphysics. This happens as long as their paychecks are in the mail.
The incredibly strong forces of authority and tradition do keep also metaphysics alive, even if the real need for it does not exist anymore. Of course, there are also those who do metaphysics as a hobby too. They will speculate endlessly on the qualities of contradictory theories and endless stream of non-provable ideas. They do this, even if there is no money on it. They do it just for the pure joy of mental exercise.

One test for validity of ideas is to look what insights we will be left without if we forget that idea. The sad fact is that nothing will change in our lives or in our universe if even all traces of current metaphysics would be wiped out completely. We can then create an endless stream of new metaphysics that has similar value as the old had. There could even be same ideas popping up after a fresh start. However, it is to be expected that the same old divisions between rationalists and religious people would just re-appear.
Most of all the religious people would be creating again new lot of metaphysics that would support their pet ideology. These ideas will with time get more and more complex. This happens when their presenters try to safeguard these ideas from criticism. They often do this by creating new ideas to counter the objections to their existing theories.

Other major problem with modern philosophy is that it so easily becomes a form of collecting stamps. People just collect and classify different ideas without really putting them in perspective. Most of all people just learn about ideas without really understanding why philosophers of the past have made their wildly differentiating claims in the first place. A person can be admired if he or she can easily categorize even brand new ideas into different schools of philosophy, even without taking any stand on their validity or truth-value.

This "philosophy" is more about collecting difficult-sounding words and concepts than philosophy that humans can really use for something. Some people just seem to confuse deepness of thought with the complexity of expression.
Especially among the followers of modern continental philosophy there are clearly people who hide the lack of true insight behind a smoke-screen of complex-looking phrases and words.
Most of all, existentialism seems to be about a love of hairy concepts and ideas. All too often they seem to evaporate into almost nothing at all, when all the odd concepts are translated into a real language.

Among the modern philosophers, my own favorites are Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, A.C. Grayling, Alain De Botton and Daniel Dennett. They all have one thing in common: for them philosophy is just a tool for better understanding our world and not an end in itself. They apply their ideas on the real world and see how their ideas do correspond with reality.

They all share clarity of writing and speech, as they need not to hide behind a wall of difficult words and concepts. As they are not defending any clear-cut ideology and form of thinking, they can allow themselves the luxury of an open mind when looking into ideas of others.
On the other hand, the people who populate the philosophy-departments in universities seem to me all too often consist of people who see philosophy as something that exists for its own sake. They can even use it as a smokescreen for pushing their religious ideology.

They seem to see philosophy as a thing that is to be learned by basis of authority of certain philosophers. These philosophers are then to be revered seemingly often just because they have been revered by many for a long time. In practice under the name of metaphysics are classed those abstract ideas that are just speculation without real evidence.
The question still remains: why these questions are labeled under the heading of 'metaphysics'? One can question the wisdom of trying to find universal answers to questions that do not and cannot have any kind of universal answers. Metaphysics is a classical case of trying to find a black cat in the dark room without really knowing if this cat even exists and if the room is the right one. All people just have not given up the bad habit of speculating on some of the issues that have been settled by science a long time ago.

Mostly this happens to protect religious beliefs. They seem to sorely need the existence of metaphysics to give them some protection them from forces of reason. This little essay does naturally present just one opinion on the issue, and it cannot be any kind of ultimate truth. However, I think that it is necessary to raise this debate. Discussion over even extremely basic ideas is needed from time to time.

"Metaphysicians cannot avoid making their statements nonverifiable, because if they made them verifiable, the decision about the truth or falsehood of their doctrines would depend upon experience and therefore belong to the region of empirical science. This consequence they wish to avoid, they pretend to teach knowledge which is of a higher level than that of empirical science. Thus, they are compelled to cut all connection between their statements and experience; and precisely by this procedure they deprive them of any sense."

— Rudolf Carnap

I have been toying lately with an idea for an deology that like to call ‘Pragmatism’. In practice, this 'Pragmatism' would mean that one will always try to find and support the specific solutions that will work in any particular case. Pragmatism means that, in an ideal case, you can take the best parts of all ‘isms’ and you can use them freely when necessary. Most importantly of all Pragmatism means that one does not tie oneself into any ism to such a degree that one cannot see the good parts that exist in other isms anymore.
The result would be an syncretic ideology. It would be like the syncretic religions that loan the best features of existing religions and create their own mixture based on them. Of course, all of us will inevitably have some basic beliefs and preferences. Also a Pragmatist would have a basic higher vision of how the world should be. In fact, I see that one cannot be a Pragmatist if one does not have fixed higher goals of one's own.
These personal higher ideals are needed for one to be able to measure new ideas and to find the best bits in other ideologies. You simply cannot choose the best parts of ideologies, if you do not have anything against which you can measure these ideas.

One needs to have a vision of the general direction where the society needs to go to be a Pragmatist. However, one needs also to have a flexible relationship with these basic personal ideas. A Pragmatist should be able to see how any idea that is pushed too far can cause trouble. Trouble lurks especially when an idea or ideology is successful, and it is pushed without compromises.
Being aware and secure of on one’s basic ideas makes one free to choose the best bits from the big marketplace of ideas. This is impossible if you are insecure of the quality of your basic ideas, or you are so attached to them that you cannot even consider other ideas.

Pragmatism can not be not an option for everyone. A very strong attachment to any ideology will weaken one ability to evaluate other ideas. Most of all it can weaken one’s ability to compromise and a person who cannot compromise cannot be a Pragmatist. For me personally, the very basic ideas and building blocks for my own vision of the world are humanism and the great western tradition of democratic socialism. Both of these ideas have always been forwarded through an endless series of compromises.
However, a Pragmatist could well could have a very different set of basic personal ideas. This is the case as long as the mental flexibility and openness are present that Pragmatism does require from a person. In my vision of Pragmatism, the single most important idea deeply embedded in it is the grand idea of ‘Compromise’. In Pragmatism, a society is made a better place through an endless series of compromises with those who have other ideas of how the society should be developed.

Pragmatism is in reality a viable option only in open and democratic societies. Normally one just cannot compromise with totalitarians. A Pragmatist does not hate or despise people just because of their opinions or ideologies, but a Pragmatist can hate bad and harmful ideas and ideologies.
Keeping the difference between people and ideas in mind can be difficult, and people with strong ideologies normally are quite unable to separate their person from their ideology. However, a Pragmatist should be able to do it.

I know very well that there is also a school of philosophy that is called Pragmatism. It was popular especially in the United States in the 19th century and early in the 20th century. Big names in Pragmatism were Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey and George Santayana.
In the 1970’s, a new version of pragmatism called sometimes neopragmatism gained influence through Richard Rorty. He is the most influential of the late 20th-century pragmatists. Most of their ideas can be applied to my idea of Pragmatism, but I am speaking about an ideology here and not about another school of philosophy.

The version of Pragmatism that I am presenting here is not a philosophy in the sense in which Peirce, Dewey, Santayana or Rorty have presented their ideas. However, their ideas can fit well in my vision. They can be used as building blocks if one wants to dig a bit deeper. My personal vision of Pragmatism is not in any way in conflict with established philosophical pragmatism.
My greatest single influence has, however, been Bertrand Russell. Most of the individual ideas that I present here originate from his writings.

Bertrand Russell was a champion of mental flexibility and openness. He stressed the importance of being able to face and accept the fact that people will always have different ideas of how societies should develop. He saw clearly how there can not exist a single all-encompassing receipt for building a good society. I even think that he would have been a wonderful example of a Pragmatist.

I know well that presenting ideas like this in an obscure Finnish blog is a classical lesson in futility. However, my dream is that the idea of Pragmatism would become a meme that would receive a life of its own. In my wildest dreams in a few years from now, I would be reading a Bulgarian blog where the writer would be presenting his new idea of ‘Pragmatismus’ with wild enthusiasm.

(This piece was refurbished in 26th of April 2013)

I once had a long discussion in the page for Marcus Aurelius in Facebook with a Christian apologist. He claimed that Marcus Aurelius was a ‘midget’ as a thinker compared to Jesus of the Christian fame.
There is one slight problem in this comparison. Marcus Aurelius did write a book that is definitely his own words from the beginning to the end. In this respect, he beats Jesus 1-0. Marcus Aurelius has demonstrably himself written down his ideas. On the other hand, nobody knows who has come up with the ideas that are attributed to Jesus in the "New Testament" of the Christians. This strange collection of writings was written many decades and even century and a half after the death of this Jewish preacher and rebel.

A simple unpleasant fact (for Christians that is) is that Jesus has not written a single word that we would know to be his own work. We have just a book that this full of alleged quotes from him. However, their real sources will probably never be known for sure.
The Greek-speaking writers of the New Testament could well have made up a majority or even all of these quotes and ideas by themselves. Nobody knows what their sources were. Bart D. Ehrman has written some good books about the issue. I have reviewed one of them in this blog at: http://beinghuman.blogs.fi/2010/12/22/for-what-purpose-was-the-bible-written-10240754/

Marcus Aurelius’ only book ‘Meditations' was translated into Latin from Greek. It was the preferred language of Roman intelligentsia of that day. Meditations was originally called in Greek "Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν" or "Ta eis heauton", literally "thoughts/writings addressed to himself".
Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek that was used by the highly educated class of Romans. He wrote the book as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement.

The basic difference between Christianity and Stoicism is that in the heart of Christianity is a group of magical and superstitious beliefs in things like virgin births, sons of gods and resurrections. On the other hand, Stoicism is basically a rather rational system of thought. It is based on practical experience of how the human social relationships and societies do work in practice.

The Stoic concept of "god" is not at all compatible with the Christian idea of heavenly father watching all your moves, punishing, and rewarding you for your actions. The Stoic "god" is just an idea of a pantheistic sameness of all nature, and this "god" does not interfere in human life at all. In fact, the basic nature of Stoicism remains quite unchanged if the idea of a "god" is totally removed from it.
The removal of the idea of "god" from Stoicism is a thing that very many Stoics have done already with good results. Agnostic and atheist Stoics can be even a majority among the Stoics of today, but this is just a guess, nobody has really studied this issue.

Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic, and he was personally a firm opponent of Christianity. He may even have initiated some harsh and violent actions against Christians too, when he tried to defend the Roman traditional toleration of all belief-systems against the harsh and open fanaticism and intolerance of the early Christians.
The later, extremely intolerant Christian rulers of late Roman Empire did not see any kind of compatibility with the Stoic philosophy. They did destroy and eradicate every single source of Stoic teaching and thinking without mercy.

They did eradicate all the older religions and schools of philosophy with brute force during the fourth and fifth centuries. In this process also the Epicurean school of philosophy was destroyed. Sadly also the whole body of writings of Epicurus was lost forever.
The modern Western Lutheran Christianity is of course a completely different religion than the one that did rule unchallenged in the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. The rise of humanistic values and thinking has changed this also religious organization during the last century. The change is so big that even some in their ranks are able to accept ideas from the old enemies of Christianity.

There are Christians who think that Stoicism is fully compatible with Christianity. This is naturally a quite strange idea given the very basic differences between Christian faith and Stoic philosophy. Stoicism and Christianity can well live side by side. This is possible as long as Christians do not try to change the central ideas of Stoicism to fit their pet ideology. However, to become Stoics Christians needs to lose much of the Christian religious dogma.
The core message of Christianity simply is not compatible with Stoic way of thinking. Most Stoic Christians seem to end up more Stoic than Christian. A hard-core Christian will never fit in the Stoic way of thinking in the first place.

PS. The fact that belief in Jesus is so widespread today has been decided in the battlefields of the past. If Muslims had won at Poitiers or at Vienna a few hundred years later, Jesus would perhaps be just a footnote in history; a forgotten figure in a forgotten religion. To put it bluntly; the followers of Jesus just have had success and luck in the battlefield and more divisions than followers of his competitors.
The fact that Christians succeeded in stamping out all other religions in the Roman Empire and in most later acquisitions tells how it pays in the long run to be extremely intolerant if you want to create a stable religion.

When you allow no competition and destroy all attempts to doubt your beliefs, your religion is bound to survive, and other religions are bound to disappear.
It is not a question of the quality or teachings of a religion. The main thing is how ruthless the leaders of a religion dare to be. The use of same tactics has also made Islam strong. When you preach universal love in a church and burn heretics at the same time, you have a winning proposition; a religion that makes people think that burning people is an act of love.

My page for Marcus Aurelius is in Facebook at:
http://facebook.com/aureliusphilosopher

(This piece was refurbished on 25th of April, 2013)

In the Facebook-page for Bertrand Russell that I founded a few years ago, there was discussion of how philosophers need to be open to all ideas. Bertrand Russell for one was open to new ideas all his life. He was always ready to change his views if new and compelling scientific evidence made it necessary.
However, his very basic and fundamental values did remain quite constant all his life. When I thought about it, I found without straining myself 12 ideas that I think Bertrand Russell did hold and value during the whole of his incredibly long life. After all, he died in the ripe age of 98 and was even then still very active.

1. Solidarity of all humans and humanity.

"The only thing that will redeem mankind is co-operation."

in “Human Society in Ethics and Politics “(1954)

2. Opposition to war and violence in all forms.

"This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate. I will not pretend to obey a government which is organising a mass massacre of mankind."

in Speech in Birmingham, England encouraging civil disobedience in support of nuclear disarmament (1961)

3. Respect for truth.

“I cannot believe — and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable — that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth."

in "The Pursuit of Truth" in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell (1993)

4. Opposition to dogma and dogmatism in all of its forms and especially religious dogmas.

“All definite knowledge — so I should contend — belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack by both sides; this No Man’s Land is philosophy.“

in A History of Western Philosophy (1945)

5. Respect for real science.

“Most literary men is obsessed with the idea that science has not fulfilled its promises. They do not, of course, tell us what these promises were. This is an entire delusion, fostered by those writers and clergymen who do not wish their specialties to be thought of little value.”

in Marriage and Morals (1929) Ch. 2: Byronic Unhappiness

6. Advocating sexual liberation.

“Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young; the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.”

in Marriage and Morals (1929) Ch. 8: The Taboo on Sex Knowledge

“Joy of life... depends upon a certain spontaneity in regard to sex. Where sex is repressed, only work remains, and a gospel of work for work's sake never produced any work worth doing.”

in Marriage and Morals (1929) Ch. 20: The Place of Sex Among Human Values

“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."

in Marriage and Morals (1929) Ch. 19: Sex and Individual Well-Being

7. Strong distaste for the open, greedy capitalism.

“Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.”

in Sceptical Essays (1928) Ch. 13: Freedom in Society

“For my part, the thing I would wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security. But what the typical modern man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals.”

in Conquest of Happiness (1930) Ch. 3: Competition

“The businessman's religion and glory demand that he should make much money; therefore, like the Hindu widow, he suffers the torment gladly.”

in Conquest of Happiness (1930) Ch. 3: Competition

8.Opposition to nationalism and overdrawn patriotism.

“Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.”

In Has Man a Future? (1962)

9. Strong respect for liberalism and liberal ideas.

"The doctrine of liberalism is an attempt to escape from this endless oscillation. The essence of liberalism is an attempt to secure a social order not based on irrational dogma, and insuring stability without involving more restraints than are necessary for the preservation of the community." in A History of Western Philosophy (1945) Introductory, p. xxi

11. Rejection of automatic authority by a position in hierarchy.

“As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles. “

in Outline of Intellectual Rubbish

12. Love of life and humanity.

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair..Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people..the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.”

in The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967) Prologue: What I Have Lived For

Quotes from Wikiquote

(This piece refurbished on 24th of April, 2013)