Burning Bright

"No individual has any right to come into this world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it."

In the last couple of weeks I've come dangerously close to deciding that I knew what I believed. Upon further examination, what I wanted was to believe that I had acceptable answers to the following questions - Why am I here? What should I strive for? How should I prioritize my time and resources? What kinds of risks should I take, and why?

It occurred to me to wonder how humanism deals with these questions. And so I began a more systematic application of the google-fu...

Humanist Manifesto I (1933)

• "...the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man's life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now."
• "...aim to foster the creative in man and to encourage achievements that add to the satisfactions of life."
• "...seek to elicit the possibilities of life, not flee from them"

Humanist Manifesto II (1973)

• "The ultimate goal should be the fulfillment of the potential for growth in each human personality..."
• "...will tap the creativity of each human being and provide the vision and courage for us to work together."
• "Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement. He must set intelligence and will to the task."

Humanist Manifesto III (2003)

• "We welcome the challenges of the future, and are drawn to and undaunted by the yet to be known."
• "We aim for our fullest possible development..."

I've cherry-picked some quotes that seem to illustrate an accepted goal or purpose that humanists can agree on - self-actualization, and the realization of an environment that supports the same opportunity for growth in all human beings. I've stated elsewhere that I believe that the purpose of life is to learn and grow, individually and collectively, so I'm pleased that this is an objective that humanists support so strongly.

What is perhaps less clear is where my responsibility to my own self-actualization should step aside in favor of efforts to help others achieve the same. Herein arises a division of thought that is fundamental, and for which there appears to be no objective resolution. Here is where we are called upon to examine our beliefs about the nature and value of compassion, the relationship of self to other, and the health and well-being of the collective weighed against the health and well-being of the individual.

Is it in my enlightened self-interest to route a portion of my time and resources towards bringing others closer to self-actualization? And if so, how big of a portion?

Who burns brightest - he who fuels others, or he who fuels himself?

Defending Your Life

"Certified son-of-a-gun
Learns life lesson 101.
Don't fly too high on your own supply
Get burned by the sun."

Hey, we have a 'follower' now. (waving to follower)

So I've been doing a lot of thinking about risk-taking. Actually, I've been doing a lot of introspecting and reflecting about my own willingness to take risks. (Let's face it - thinking in the abstract is all fine and good, but at some point you need to take stock of yourself and match the theory to the reality.)

It's easy to tout romanticized notions about risk-taking and courage, and people like to think they know how they would act in a given situation. I subscribe pretty heavily to the theory that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, so I look to my own past behavior in an attempt to identify what factors are more likely to enable/encourage me to take risks.

For example, the sky-diving story... If you are thinking of doing something that other people might look down upon (especially if it fails), it is eminently easier to decide to do this thing if you can convince someone else to do it with you. Yes, my decision to jump out of a perfectly good airplane was made easier by the fact that I was able to convince my new friend to do it with me. Perhaps this says something about my need for validation, or perhaps it just says that I thought the experience would be worth more if it were shared. ('We just jumped out of an effin' plane! How badass are we!' doesn't work when you substitute 'I' for 'we'. Nobody wants to hear it.)

Despite the fact that New Friend bailed on the skydiving trip at the last minute, I persisted in recruiting her for similar adventures. And she persisted in bailing at the last minute. After the mid-winter, too effin' cold, hip-deep snow, camping mis-adventure, I gave up on her. And though I had gone ahead and done these things without her, they never meant as much to me as other adventures I had shared with other friends.

So what is it about having a co-conspirator that increases one's willingness to engage in risky behavior? (Once New Friend had proved to be an unreliable co-conspirator, I ceased to engage in adventures of this magnitude.) Individual risk-exposure doesn't change with the presence of a co-conspirator. (My likelihood of crashing into the ground when my parachute doesn't open is no different when I go by myself than when my friend agrees to jump as well.) This leads me to suspect (in my case anyway) that the potential social costs of engaging in risk-seeking behaviors were at least as important as the potential physical costs. You can only stray so far from the herd before you are no longer a member of the herd. If you take a few of them with you though, you can start a new herd. ;)

As far as I've been able to observe directly (in myself and others), having a co-conspirator does increase one's willingness to engage in risky behavior. That statement almost has the 'well, duh!' quality that one would expect of a well-known fact. Yet I'm struggling to come up with a name of a theory that adequately explains why this should be so. Is it a function of choice-validation and having support when called upon to defend your decision? Is it a function of mitigated social costs - would we all engage in riskier behaviors if there was less social cost associated with them?

There must be an academic study or theory somewhere that adequately addresses this issue, but my google-fu appears to be inadequate for the task of finding it. So the take-home message today is simply this - I'm more likely to jump if you are jumping with me.

Lust for Life

"For each thing you do, stop and ask yourself if death is to be feared because it deprives you of this."

Back 'in the day' I used to be quite the adrenaline junkie. Nothing too extreme, but the ordinary ways of passing time were little too... Well, let's just say I itched for something more. Thrill, risk, danger, etc. The other night I was watching a documentary film on extreme skiing. While softly swearing under my breath, I was simultaneously wondering where my own hurl-through-the-air, jump-out-of-a-perfectly-good-plane adrenaline junkie had gone. (She messed up her ankle during the landing on her first (solo) jump. Perhaps this taught her to respect the fact that man was not meant to throw himself at the surface of his tiny piece of the galaxy from several thousand feet above it. Then again, perhaps it just taught her that you can't always blindly trust the guy on the ground with the signal sticks.)

Now jump ahead a few days to me doing a lot of walking and reflecting on death. The above quote has doggedly attached itself as a filter to my conscious stream of thought. I sometimes wish that I had a clarity of vision about all of my activities that enabled me to say 'Yes! I don't want to be deprived of this!'. I suspect though that such is not the lot of humankind, nor perhaps should it be. But I realize that I can say 'Yes!' to at least two things, and this brings a clarity of its own.

And while I may have lost the desire to recklessly court danger, I dare say that I have not lost my lust for life. In my cold, tired, caffeine-deprived state, this makes me very happy.

"It's not my time, I'm not going.
There's a fear in me but its not showing...
...There's a will in me and now I know that.
This could be the end of me
And everything I know.
Ooohh but I won't go."

The Mystery of Grace

Today a strange thing happened to me.
I saw you as the enemy.
I saw what you could do to me
And you became the enemy.
I saw how you could limit me
And then you were the enemy.

Today a strange thing happened to me.
I felt your hostility.
I saw that you were not free.
You saw me as the enemy.
How did this come to be?
Has fear made us enemies?

Today a strange thing happened to me.
I had a vision that we were free.
We had lost our enmity.
I trusted you and you trusted me.
But what it took awhile to see
was that it was trust that had set us free.

Man for Himself (Pt II)

"Keep your own advantage in mind, act according to what's best for you; by so doing you will also be acting for the greatest advantage of others."

Sometimes I think I'm too suspicious and cynical to be a good humanist. After all, isn't one of the basic tenets of humanism faith in humankind? Yet I have blindspots of possibly-irrational distrust of/in human nature. Like when it comes to having work done on my car.

I'm writing this right now in part so that I can't spend the time thinking of all the ways I could be getting screwed over right now by the people who have my car. (I've had some really bad experiences with car repair. They've made me more than a little suspicious of the entire automotive repair industry.)

I don't generally think that the profit motive is an entirely bad thing. But we're talking about that gray area just beyond the profit motive where the desire for more money causes one to exaggerate the actual need for, or cost of, an item in an attempt to exploit the customer. This area is generally referred to as Greed, and perceived to be a bad thing. These days special attention is paid to Corporate Greed as an especially destructive form of Greed.

It's fair to say that I'm more suspicious of a larger institutional imperative to make money at my expense than I am of the intentions of any single individual. (My regular mechanic is unavailable. My car is currently with a 'larger institution'.) An institution lacks the vulnerability of a single individual when it comes to trust-based transactions. Yet an institution is comprised of nothing but individuals. So how does the behavior of the collective come to reflect attributes that most individuals are sufficiently reluctant to own?

Here we could digress into a discussion on the diffusion of responsibility in situations where "underlings claim that they were just following orders and supervisors claim that they were just issuing directives and not doing the deeds." But as I am looking for reasons to be hopeful (about my car repair, and humanity in general), I'll pass along this instead.

Here is the short version of the "Hippocratic oath for managers" taken by "around half of this year’s graduating class" of Harvard MBAs.

"THE MBA OATH

As a manager, my purpose is to serve the greater good by bringing people and resources together to create value that no single individual can create alone. Therefore I will seek a course that enhances the value my enterprise can create for society over the long term. I recognize my decisions can have far-reaching consequences that affect the well-being of individuals inside and outside my enterprise, today and in the future. As I reconcile the interests of different constituencies, I will face choices that are not easy for me and others.

Therefore I promise:

I will act with utmost integrity and pursue my work in an ethical manner.

I will safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers and the society in which we operate.

I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves.

I will understand and uphold, both in letter and in spirit, the laws and contracts governing my own conduct and that of my enterprise.

I will take responsibility for my actions, and I will represent the performance and risks of my enterprise accurately and honestly.

I will develop both myself and other managers under my supervision so that the profession continues to grow and contribute to the well-being of society.

I will strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide.

I will be accountable to my peers and they will be accountable to me for living by this oath.

This oath I make freely, and upon my honor." (from mbaoath.org, longer version here)

Now the real question - Would I feel better about my car repair situation if I knew that one or more of the managers had taken this oath?

Maybe.

All for One, and One for All

(donning feathered hat)
(unsheathing pen)

Ladies and Gentlemen, I beg your pardon for this bit of unpleasantness, but some things should not go unchallenged...

Madame, as a duly sworn Defender of Knowledge, I really must insist that you unhand that stolen library book. I hate to have to draw pen on you, but as you have failed to listen to my spoken words, I'm afraid you leave me no choice. Your possession of that purloined book is an affront to our Right to Knowledge and I mean to liberate that book and set an example that will discourage others from committing similar misdeeds.

Ah! You thought I was going to accuse you of theft. A wicked thing, theft, but that is not the aspect of your action that galls me most. I see you are puzzled. It's understandable; few have heard of the Right to Knowledge. Allow me...

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know..." - John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

While this may seem like a trivial statement to you, I assure you that the right to knowledge is recognized as a critical aspect in ensuring and preserving other universal human rights.

Libraries are a sacred trust between people to ensure and enhance this right to knowledge. We fund them, and we use them, though perhaps not in equal portion. We work together to create a collection of knowledge greater than that which most of us could possess on our own, and this collection is governed by the principle All for One, and One for All. All of the material in the collection is available for any one user, and any one piece of knowledge is available for all users.

Madame, your actions violate that sacred trust. I am not persuaded to stand down by your passion for this tome. Truly, it is a wonderful book. But that only makes its loss to the collective that much more painful. Nor I am persuaded to back down from my condemnation of your action by your protests that the you paid for the book after declaring it 'lost'. Many such 'lost' items are never replaced - indeed, cannot be replaced - because they are out of print. Which is, no doubt, why you did not simply find a copy elsewhere and purchase it.

Having been thwarted more than once in my own quest for knowledge by the 'lost' status of similarly scarce items, I am particularly prone to reacting harshly to the joy you evince in your possession of this particular volume. Perhaps I am also remembering of all the times that I was similarly tempted by an enticing find, but refrained. And so I am not without some measure of sympathy. I believe that you really do find inspiration and joy in that illicitly-acquired opus, and that you want to share that inspiration. But I cannot conclude that you do service to this receptacle of knowledge, its contents, or the Right to Knowledge, above and beyond what would have been accomplished by letting it remain freely accessible to other library patrons.

And now, again, I really must insist that you unhand that book and return it to its rightful place.

All for One, but more importantly, One for All!

Man for Himself (Pt I)

"Having realized his own self as the Self, a person becomes selfless. This is the highest mystery."

This week has been filled with interesting meditations on the nature of Self. I'll spare you the self-portrait I had to draw, but if you keep reading you will have to listen to me hash out some of these other thoughts.

Much of what it means to be human comes from the fact that we have such a pervasive sense of self as an independent, autonomous awareness. 'I am me, and you are not. I am different and separate from you, and you cannot know what it is like to be me.'

But what am 'I'? Where does my sense of self come from? And while we may commonly confuse the two, are sense of self and sense of identity really the same thing? (Though the terms are commonly interchanged, I'm going to try to define them as two different things.) Think about the following example... If my physical body is altered or enhanced with a piece of technology, how and to what degree does that piece of technology become part of my sense of self and identity? There is evidence that my brain can easily incorporate it into its map of how 'I' interact with the outside world, but does my sense of identity incorporate the change so easily, or do I persist in identifying it as foreign to 'me' long after my brain has actually learned to function with it?

I suppose I'm trying out the argument that a sense of self (separateness) is a necessary precursor to a sense of identity (relationships and relatedness). I must first know/feel that I am separate from you before I can begin to identify how I relate to you. If this is so, then a sense of self might be seen as a more primitive, basic construct - perhaps the defining feature of conscious experience [1] - while a sense of identity involves higher-order cognitive processing and understanding of relationships. Acquiring a sense of identity is a natural response to perceiving oneself as separate from another, but our sense of identity is a much more fluid construct than our fairly-resilient sense of being separate from others.

Our sense of identity is acquired from our experiences, and continuously modified. It seems reasonable to say that our sense of identity gives us our basis for moral reasoning, as the acquisition of a more complex sense of identity is often paralleled an accompanying increase in capacity for moral reasoning. In a very real way, identity drives morality. A person's social identity - as defined by the groups to which she belongs - will largely determine the values that she is taught, and which she internalizes and chooses to express through actions. There is already evidence that we choose actions that calibrate our sense of moral identity with regard to social norms, which is arguably identity driving morality. Only to a limited extent can a person choose to alter her social identity to bring it in line with her sense of morality.

Many of our definitions of what is morally correct come from our perceptions about the appropriate balance of self-interest against the needs of others. All theories of morality are predicated on the idea that one person is separate from another, yet can have a significant impact upon another. More specific notions of what is right and wrong are subsequently derived from our ideas about how a particular person is related to another (identity).

When it comes to an individual sense of identity, what is acquired via experience is incorporated as changes to a physical structure (the brain). Science is reaching a level where it has become possible to discuss altering various aspects of the brain to create a 'better' personal identity. (Still waiting to get my hands on the full paper.) In reading this abstract though, it occurred to me to ask - If what is 'moral' has previously been defined largely by one's sense of identity, then what are the implications of allowing morality to define identity?

(h/t Trans-Spirit)



[1] Though it is possible for the sense of identity to expand to include other people and objects, as described in mystical experience, one can argue that there must persist something apart from the experience which is able to note the change and reflect upon it.