Posts tagged "philosophy":
Culpability
There are a couple at climate sites where one can take a quiz to calculate the quantity of CO2 each of us produce. According to the parameters of the test, it turns that I'm pretty much a climate criminal. My wife and I share a free standing house of about 150 square meters and travel everywhere by car or by plane. That's enough, apparently, to tilt the scale towards 11 - 13 tons of CO2 per person, regardless of diet or other factors.
I can add that all my electricity is produced by fossil fuels and a third of the water is desalinated by means of electricity.
If these crimes were not enough, I live in an apartheid state where the majority of the land was stolen from an indigenous people whose descendents continue to be oppressed today; a state that makes a living by exporting weapons and cyber-weapons and whose principal friends are corrupt dictators and war-criminals.
Being human, according to many parameters, is already to belong to a species that acts like a cancer on the earth; invading the territories of other species, de-foresting habitats, polluting the rivers, poisoning the oceans, wrecking the atmosphere and bringing about the extinction of many other life forms.
Our presence is as harmful to our environment as that of the rabbits introduced to Australia, which quickly overran the entire continent and ate up most of the vegetation. Or the European settlers in the Americas, who supplanted the indigenous population.
If we were to be put on trial for our crimes, we could claim innocence. We could claim that we ourselves are victims. We could claim extenuating circumstances and express contrition. But if we pardon ourselves and then repeat the crimes, what should be our punishment?
In the case of those rabbits, the favored solution was control or eradication:
Various methods in the 20th century have been attempted to control the Australian rabbit population. Conventional methods include shooting rabbits and destroying their warrens, but these had only limited success. From 1901 to 1907, a rabbit-proof fence was built in Western Australia in an unsuccessful attempt to contain the rabbits.[2][3] The myxoma virus, which causes myxomatosis, was introduced into the rabbit population in the 1950s and had the effect of severely reducing the rabbit population. (Wikipedia)
In the case of settlers (White Americans? Israeli Jews?), they could be expelled, like the Indians of Idi Amin's Uganda. But since humans are anyway problematic, maybe they should simply be exterminated, like the rabbits?
There has to be another solution. Extreme retribution is exacted only at the cost of losing our humanity. Murder, capital punishment, genocide, even suicide are all crimes against humanity.
Does humanity actually count for anything when humans themselves are the problem?
I would argue that what we actually mean when we talk about humanity is divinity. And divinity, rather than being a quirky religious term, means the essential existence-consciousness underlying everything manifest. We call it humanity, because to be human is to be what we are. For a rabbit, it would be his "rabbitness". And the essential in us, as in the rabbit, is the consciousness that binds us all together. The what-we-are is the divine.
I am the gambling of the cheats and the splendor of the splendid. I am the victory of the victorious, the resolve of the resolute, and the virtue of the virtuous.
-Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita 10.36
So essentially, even when we are effectively undermining nature by cause of our existence, we are remaining true to our nature. Because we are part of all nature. We are the thing that we are undermining. We "inter-are", as Thich Nhat Hanh would say. We cannot remove ourselves from the equation.
This is not to say that we cannot mitigate the damage, offset the environmental costs, or possibly give back to the universe something in return for its generous gifts.
Even by being aware of our connectedness, our behaviour can begin to change. It may dawn on us that birdsong and snow on the mountain peaks are as essential to our existence as the shiny new phone that we lust for, or the new car. We can reevaluate our priorities and begin to make different decisions. The question is whether the changes we make - individual and collective - will be sufficient, and in time.
2022-04-13 Ibn Arabi
Reflections after reading a paragraph of Ismail Hakki Bursevi's translation and commentary upon Ibn Arabi's "Kernel of the Kernel"
" That is to say, if he has not… drunk the glass of love, and has not found annihilation in the ipseity of God, when he says "He", he will be speaking according to his own conjecture, imagination, understanding and relativity. He brings the Being of God into imagination, and gives it a form. Because he has not divested himself of being and reached Absoluteness. Consequently, he puts God under a condition, according to his conjecture and imagination and draws around him a limit; thereby he will have immanenced Him and invented Him. And thereby he has worshipped a creator which he himself has originated."
This is a perfectly vedantic commmentary, relating to the dangers of false understanding and imagination of the Absolute, and the need for complete self-annihilation (nirvana) before approaching or presuming to be absorbed in the divine essence.
Yesterday I watched the documentary, "The Pirate Bay - Away from Keyboard". The latter phrase is the way, according to Peter Sunde, of saying "in real life", because for those who spend their lives on the internet, the internet is real life. Well, of course it is. But is playing a game real life? Being immersed in a novel, or in TV, like the character in "Being There", or in a hallucinatory drugged state? Or in a psychosis?
It is, actually, just in the same way as what we call reality is engineered by our imagination. Reality is there, but it is warped into something different. For example, we could say that, from a position of higher understanding, the universe is all in sync; in harmony; in a state of cooperation. Whereas, in the consciousness of an ordinary, conditioned individual, there is instead, competition and rivalry. The big fish eat the little fish; entailing the necessity for constant defence against adversity. This is not just a matter of seeing the world a little differently. It is a fundamental difference; a night-and-day difference. So yes, by the measure of reality, it is likely that we are in a state of psychosis. And a person who sees the world according to a different paradigm from our mundane perception of it would be labeled psychotic. And who can say who is right? We only know that owing to the strict behavioural rules of society and of the human-created world, it is difficult for a person who perceives and understands in a completely different way to function.
In such a world, where one has little chance of ever seeing the real outside of our human-created mould, we might just as well live in a fantasy that is provided by television, by the internet, by the game-makers, or psycho-active drugs; so long as is does not interfere too much with our ability to function, for part of the day, in the "away from keyboard" world constructed by human society for the purpose of eking out a livelihood, consuming, procreating, etc.
There is, however, the unfortunate fact that our human activities are destroying the biosphere. Here again, we find that humans have found a way of incorporating concern for the biosphere into their carefully constructed world of illusion. They believe that if they live according to certain constraints, they will minimize the damage. Thus the founders of the Pirate Bay, despite their disregard for other human conventions, incorporated vegetarianism into their lifestyle. It is fairly easy to integrate "environmental awareness" and other values into our carefully constructed fantasy world.
Whatever the outcome of the environmental crisis we are facing, it is likely that the omnipotent and omniscient pan-consciousness behind the world of appearances has long ago taken human activity into account, and that all of our actions take place against the background of this consciousness.
The real question for us, for human beings, is whether we must reconcile ourselves to living always and forever in illusion, or whether we can follow Ibn Arabi in seeking a reality that is not conditioned by imagination?
2022-03-05 - Thucydides
" A man who has the knowledge but lacks the power clearly to express it is no better off than if he never had any ideas at all."
Since the Ukraine war started I have been feeling a bit powerless to express anything. Times of war usually bring out the latent philosopher in all of us, as we try to get our head around the latest atrocities and rail at or reconcile ourselves to them. Some people don't go much beyond boosting a hearty "Fuck you Putin"s on Twitter. Others are more expansive.
" When one is deprived of one's liberty, one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the shackles on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it."
There is an urge to do something, to speak out against injustice, and to call up people-power. No doubt leaders around the world are worried how their reactions will be judged during this latest humanitarian disaster - the catastrophe of a generation in fact, and they are in a mode of listening to their plebeians, for once.
" We Greeks believe that a man who takes no part in public affairs is not merely lazy, but good for nothing."
The mood of the times, both for leaders and ordinary Athenians is to make our opinions heard. Yet in my heart I know no one will hear me. I'm a stateless good-for-nothing with no possible influence on anybody. No one is going to listen to me. Least of all Putin.
"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
Here is the most famous Thucydides quote of all. I'm definitely on the side of the weak, and have a strong tendency to accept whatever shit they throw at me.
Maybe on account of this weakness, I have a growing cynicism towards nations. I'm not exactly bitter, because I haven't done so badly by them. But I know that when people group together, the larger their number, the greater their tendency to make stupid, life-altering decisions that affect all individuals in the group. The greater is the likelihood that some out-of-touch leader will arise who will drag everybody into a reckless war. The greater are the chances that huge resources will be squandered or swindled. The more it becomes likely that identity politics will arise and wreck the lives of minorities. It can go differently, no doubt, but these are the usual dynamics.
Smaller groupings have serious problems too; it's just that they have less power to do damage. I have less difficulty in identifying as a member of my small community than with a larger group like a nation. This may partly be because I am not a citizen of the nation in which I happen to live. In times of war, people of differing ethnicities, weak national allegiances or foreigners are the first to run away. This is what we have been seeing in Ukraine. In terms of defending their domicile, they are worse than useless.
But women, children and old people have been leaving Ukraine too. They are certainly not useless. It is just that those who are most vulnerable drain resources at a time when food calories need to be converted into active defence.
" It is useless to attack a man who could not be controlled even if conquered, while failure would leave us in an even worse position."
Looking at their history, I have no doubt that Ukrainians will resist Russian occupation even if they are conquered, and that Russia will ultimately fail to subdue them. Like Palestinians, they have the power of sumud. It's going to get really costly - already has been. Putin has wrought a full-on catastrophe; no half-measures for him. This goes further than a small vengeance at being slighted and ignored by the west all these years. It has a destructive power that can change the world permanently.
Ultimately, I don't feel as powerless as Thucydides would have me feel. My cynicism extends also to him, with all his manly moralistic heroism that helps to carry us from warfare to warfare, from generation to generation.
It has not been proven that following principles of nonviolence would make the world better. I can't say for sure whether if I were in Ukraine I would remain a pacifist. Like most people I have been feeling "up-in-arms" about the invasion - if you put me in spitting distance of Vladimir Putin currently I might do more than spit.
Inherently we are free. Whether I take a gun and shoot invading Russians or stay home and meditate on my navel, my enemies can take away everything except my freedom. Freedom has no dependencies. It depends on who we are rather than what we have. We are, and will always remain, free.