Morality summed up in 2 commandments
1) You will protect your
natural environment and its harmless endangered species by all
means.
2) You will respect and serve the interests of others as your
own.
I consider it my duty to do good and to avoid evil, not to be
virtuous, but because it is a triviality. I do it because I know
that
I just have to do this, even though I can not really explain why
(or
maybe so, in a sense: see below). I do this because this is part
of
me.
There seems to be people who are not so, for whom it is not
self-evident. Although, we must be wary of appearances. Maybe they
simply lack the discernment of what is right or wrong. If they
have
no moral sense, or if they behave contrary to that sense, I agree
that they lack something, that all will not necessarily be good
for
them in the afterlife. But since I am not in their place, I can
not
judge the liability of their soul.
Certainly, for the practical
organization of the society it is necessary to accuse those who do
evil and condemn it, for two classic reasons: deterrence and the
physical prevention on the one hand, to try to wake up and guide
the
moral sense of people so that they become aware of the rules of
morality on the other.
But these two reasons, as they are here,
would lose their meaning as a punishment or reward after death,
especially if their impact was eternal. Certainly, the idea of a
reward and a divine justice seems to have a meaning and be
defensible
from a certain point of view at least, but the meaning of such
divine
justice, if it exists, escapes us, because we are not in the skin
of
each other. The idea of eternal punishment is absurd: it has no
educational value, because who would it educate? It can educate if
there is a second chance, so if it is not eternal; and an eternal
misfortune would be disproportionate as respect to a limited
fault.
Anyway, it's not my problem. I do the good because I know that I
must
do it, and I can not act as if I did not know it. The question of
what fate God reserves for those who are not so, and why, does not
concern me.
What do the Saints have more than others? An extraordinary
virtue,
for example. For doing do what? Doing the good ? Possibly, but
according to what criteria? Let's look at a passage from the
Gospels
on this point: the story of the poor widow, who has only a few
coins,
worth "much more" than the fortunes given by the rich,
because it is "everything she had to live". That's nice,
but as for the usefulness of donations, those of the rich weighs
more; the moral feat accomplished by the poor widow is only for
her
sanctification before God. What for ? The saints are to me a kind
of
athletes who go to the end of human possibilities on a certain
level,
that's amazing for those who are fans of it but these feats mainly
serve the rank of their own souls as measured by discussable
criteria, and possibly to gather the rest of humanity in wonder
before them, and fill them of the jealous dream of doing the same.
I
do not need to be that kind of athlete, because I have better than
that to do in life, not only for myself but also and even more,
precisely I have better than this to do for the good of others.
As
for doing the good, rather than sacrificing oneself giving
everything
we have to live, thus paralyzing oneself and becoming unable to be
significantly useful to others anymore, we should rather, for
example, if given the opportunity, invest in honest business, make
profit, then donate a portion of the profits which can be greater
than what we could have given at first, and live comfortably with
the
rest. Or we can also lend to the poor to enable them to set up
their
business, then they could repay so we can, with that, help others
the
same way. This would be more useful to humanity, without any need
to
reach one's limits.
Morality is not basically a virtue in the human heart, nor a gift
from God. But it would be that suffering ends, and that happiness
spreads. Such events may depend on the actions of men. The actions
of
men may depend on the moral values that are in them. But these are
only two factors among others. The final results of the actions of
men on the world is not proportional to the sum of the actions of
individuals, even less to the sum of their deep intentions,
because
humanity is a complex organization with a division of labor, and
very
different roles assigned to various individuals. The available
technologies also play an important role, and thus can be
classified
as virtuous or vicious depending on situations. The actions of men
are much less guided by moral values than by what social
organization
leads them to do. Among all that, moral values are but a small
instrument among others.
I consider this is not degradind the
meaning of the human moral consciousness, to reduce it to the
level
of a possible means for an end outside of it, quite the contrary.
It
is giving it its true meaning. It is the obligation not to run it
as
a vicious circle enclosed into serving itself, as a style
exercise,
but to become a knowledge of reality. It is also enhancing it of a
genuine hope, a hope that is knowledge and perspective of a new
world
to build, that would be released at least partly from the present
sufferings, instead of mere feeling and self-persuasion.
Thus,
the aim of morality is not to have a clear conscience, in
ignorance
of what we could do better, but to try to really do what is best,
taking knowledge of what can be done and how to be most effective.
So, in order to break the lethargy of consciousness and discover
what
could be done better, the right way is not to make any
"examination
of conscience", but on the contrary to forget all about our own
conscience, dismiss as selfish and hypocrite any concern for it,
but
to search and discover that which is taking place beyond it: the
reality of the good and bad that happens to others and what it
depends on, the events and circumstantial factors, that are
something
else than the mere world of our internal beliefs, intentions,
virtues
and feelings.
Choosing between the humility of letting the world perish, and the pride of saving it. Indeed, one cannot successfully run 2 hares at the same time: to maximally purify one's soul, or to be as useful as possible to others.
Consider the following statement: "The good and evil are the
result of human actions, the good is the result of good deeds, and
evil is the result of bad deeds."
This statement is deeply
ambiguous, and depending on how you interpret it, may be very
true,
or very false.
Everything depends on how we define the notion of
"good deed". In fact, everyone tends to interpret it in
compliance with his own code of conduct, but the codes of conduct
vary widely from one individual to another. Many define the code
of
conduct to be followed in terms of compliance with their
conscience,
of the goodness of intentions behind a given action. But such a
criterion is often tautological and relative, as everyone is
anyway
already leading his actions following his own conscience. Who
acted
with good intentions in his own eyes will be judged as having bad
intentions by someone else who is tempted to judge that accoring
to
the conformity of the former one's actions, to the conscience
(implicit code of conduct) of the latter. Everyone acting
differently
in his own manner that he believes to be the best, has a natural
tendency to believe that the actions of others when they are
different, are animated with bad intentions.
Everyone living on
the basis of his own code of conduct is tempted to believe that
"naturally", any behaviour conforming to this code will
tend to lead to good consequences, and any behavior that deviates
will tend to result in bad ones, with an idea of what causes this,
but without trying to check it seriously. Many people are
satisfied
to believe that their own actions are necessarily good and will
have
good consequences, on the basis that they are animated with good
intentions and / or obey their own code of conduct, and that such
or
such actions of others were animated with bad intentions, based on
the fact that their consequences were bad and / or that these
actions
are not in accordance with the same code of conduct, without
taking
the trouble to find out whether indeed by any chance these two
opposite judgements were in fact being applied here to instances
of
the very Same kind of reality, judged unequally by the use of
different criteria.
My view is the antithesis of those
trends. I consider the statement above as being ultimately true,
but
in a very different and even opposite meaning from the one usually
given to it. Indeed, I consider that the notion of good or bad
action
is not a basic concept that has any direct meaning in itself, only
considering the action and the spirit (intentions and philosophy)
of
its actors. The only thing that has a meaning and a value in
itself,
is the reality of the consequences that each action will finally
lead
to.
The real morality is not to follow one's conscience and to be
driven by good intentions nor even to follow any particular code
of
conduct, but to make the effort to redefine the classification
of
actions as good or bad, depending on the sole criterion of
the
analysis of its objective consequences, without regard to any
question of assessing the nature of the soul and intentions that
have
animated the actions, nor the internal form of the actions
themselves. Meanwhile, such question on souls, intentions and
forms
of actions should be banned and avoided as vain and off-topic from
the start, so that they will thus be affected in no way either, by
the outset of this retrospective requalification of actions.
I
therefore defend a lowly materialistic morality, that
rejects as
hollow and pointless any questions of judgement on the substance
of
the souls of people, and is only interested in the problem of
calculating the physical consequences of given acts, to draw from
there the only really authentic moral conclusions, on the only
real
moral values that may exist, namely whose sole object is the true
accuracy of this calculation itself in all its complexity, of
these
links from causes to effects, and thus the measure of the value
(happiness or unhappiness) of the real consequences of given acts;
while any questionings on the issues of judgements of the actors
and
their deep beings we might otherwise consider, have to be rejected
as
being possibly perverse when mistaken with the above, insofar as
such
judgements might often be unfair against people (whose behavior
would
not meet a given criteria or would lead to unfortunate
consequences
against their own will), and risky for the danger to divert our
attention from the real objective morality that we should follow,
namely the goal of social utility, as has been explained : the
evaluation and improvement of a physical outside phenomenon (the
facilitation of collective happiness), of a very different nature
from any problem of personal judgement whatsoever (although
connections between the two are possible).
Thus, it is not
primarily souls that are to be judged as virtuous or perverse,
but
things, as factors that the happy or unhappy events depend
on.
Among these things there are doctrines that may inhabit the
thoughts
and thereby control the acts of people like operating systems in
computers: some doctrines are good, some bad, but the person who
bears them is not necessarily responsible for that.
Man often commits evil, but it's not that he is bad in himself.
Or
course, there may also be people who are bad in themselves, but it
would be vain to reject on them the issue, to accuse them or to
teach
them moral lessons. In reality the problem of evil from the evil
men
is an accessory problem, in addition to being very little
remediable
whatever we may say. Men commit much more harm than the level of
their immorality, and for the same level of morality, they could
commit on the contrary much less harm than their immorality, but
do
the good anyway.
In fact most of evil committed by man, is an
evil committed by good men. It is an evil committed by goodness of
heart. And this evil committed by good men is even a more perverse
evil since it is committed by goodness of heart. Indeed, this
goodness serves as an excuse and justification, and thus as a
power
to this evil, the power of the deep goodness to disqualify and
condemn as an evil any resistance to its action.
And why do
good men commit evil out of goodness of heart? Because it is the
best
way, as established by experience, which enables them to get the
purest conscience. Indeed, wanting and believing to do the good,
they
commit evil because they did not have the opportunity to
understand
that this is evil, but they believe they are doing the good. This
is
a manifestation of the dictatorship of chance I presented in
another
text (not yet ranslated): the problem of separation between an act
and its consequences, while the issue of the causation linking an
act
with its consequences is a complex issue on which the people can
easily have misconceptions. Indeed, if everyone can more or less
agree and clearly see the extent of evil as a final consequence
(happiness or unhappiness), on the other hand the knowledge of the
links between these effects and their causes and to the question
of
their possible remedies, is a very different problem. And it is
much
easier in this regard to have misconceptions than right ideas.
However, some patterns of misconceptions being much more effective
than the truth to give people the impression to behave best, and
any
attempt to seek better criteria for discernment being illusory
(most
often leading to disenchantment and feelings of failure in their
search for the good, as any possibly really satisfying success
would
be far from reach for most people), it inevitably leads people to
consider these patterns of misconceptions as the best and the most
virtuous.
Well, not always: there are people who had the
chance to understand that they must not do the evil that others
are
doing while wanting to do the good. Or more precisely, the
misfortune: because once understood this, it makes it much harder
for
them to exercise virtue, as they no longer have the chance to
exercise their virtue in the form of the exercise of the false
good,
that others have the chance to practice in the name of the good;
and
also because it may lead them to become isolated, a desperate
ennemy
of the rest of the world and of its awful so-called virtues.
And
this misfortune, to have got a greater understanding of the truth,
makes them worse beings than others, because they have the
misfortune
of having to always confront this way their actions to the reality
and cruelty of fate and real effects, rather than simply
exercising
their virtue in the magical world of their illusions. The
knowledge
of reality with its complexity and difficulties requires them to
study and confront again and again the question of their actions
to
reality, and thus to focus on developing for it much other things
than virtue and goodness of heart. It also makes them worse beings
because it often makes almost impossible any mutual love and
respect
with so many people with wrong values when introduced in a way
that
lets them a bad impression on oneself, as is sometimes unavoidable
anyway, because the truth is really ridiculous and insulting to
them,
and one's uncommon positions and disagreements would be too
complex
and therefore impossible to explain to people with such a
malignantly
absurd way of thinking and interpreting things, in the easy and
simple « hello » terms in which social habbits
usually require such things to be explained (hardly anyone is
ready
to read and understand 30 pages of explanations before fixing
one's
impression on a person).
But deep down there was no real
difference between both: they are as good as each other, and the
difference is that the ones live in the world of their magical
illusions, and others live in the world of reality. And it is
always
possible to switch from one world to another, not because one is
more
or less good, but by accident, depending on circumstances,
intelligence and thoughts. Nobody is hypocritical in the soul.
Hypocrisy and perversity are not natures but behaviours. The
behaviour of humans is what happens to be the end result produced
by
the energy of their goodwill organized along their patterns of
thinking in a given sociological context. If these patterns are
false, the good will of man is not responsible for the actual
effects
of his conduct, but leads him to behave in a perverse way that
does
not resemble him.
Do not think that this is a rare thing: a
long experience, analysis and reflection, led me to conclude that
this problem is what truly dominates the world and the behavior of
most people.
Religion is one example. The creation of the Soviet
Union is another. I have written various examples in other texts
here, and I will continue to do so.
Although ... I sometimes
have good reasons to doubt that most men are basically good but
only
mistaking, ie whose thoughts, words and bad deeds can be excused
by
the fact that they would be fair from the viewpoint of the world
as
they imagine it. For those people who clearly express their
goodness
and their intrinsic sincerity, are extremely likely to strongly
maintain thoughts that are clearly immoral and perverse in
themselves, ie which can not be good in any conceivable world.
Would
the doctrine of original sin (I mean the doctrine according to
which
man is inherently bad) be ultimately correct? except that, of
course,
this finding of the way in which people approve of actions which
should obviously be seen as bad, depends in its conclusions on the
question of whether people would be capable of a vital minimum of
mindful thinking in this regard. However, it would seem that
precisely the problem would reside here: that in fact people are
really dum, and that they really believe what they are doing when
following a code of conduct that is supposed to produce the good,
but
that could only do it in a very illusory, illogical and
unrealistic
world like those of mere dreams. People (including Buddhist
Spiritual
Masters) just never learnt to wake up.
In other words, the real big problems that are not the mere result of a false assumption, of a doctrine established by any particular religion or of any misconception, the real problems that resist, whatever one may think, and to which there is no simple solution:
(if God created everything, where does the bad come frome ?)
(->
As explained below, I propose a try of a response, albeit partial
and
not entirely satisfactory: the relativization of the importance of
earthly life and its sufferings as compared to eternity; it is not
satisfactory insofar as this still does not justify anything, and
anyway I do not think that suffering is generally justifiable by
any
means, or even that it is fair to assume the existence of any
justification in absolute terms, regardless of any
understandability
problems).
Variations of the same problem:
Why did God leave a miserable life on Earth last more than a billion years before the appearance of man more or less exclusively on the basis of the long agony of natural selection (the miserable deaths of so many individuals just because they may be participating this way in the selection of a gene or two « if they are lucky »), while with His infinite science it would have been relatively easy for Him to dictate directly in a much reduced time the genetic code necessary for the life of the main species, and even to make them more comfortable ?
Why are we not born directly in Heaven ?
Why weren't humans (and other mammals) given the benefit of vision with 4 fundamental colors (roughly the red, green, blue and ultraviolet) that other vertebrates like birds have, and that would surely make life more beautiful ?
Why do so many people love horror films ? Is it because God created man in his own image ? and similarly, why do they spend much more time hearing random music of poor value than some masterpieces made centuries ago (I mean, even many people who would agree that those old masterpieces were indeed quite better than what they are hearing now) ?
Why do the pupils and students who make strike beause they are so fed up with boring lessons that they need to grasp some freedom and relaxation with one day off, pretend that they want the government to hire a surplus of professors that will fatally be of lower value, in order to condemn themselves to longer, stricter, heavier, more boring and lower quality studies, rather than being free to instruct themselves at no cost to anyone, by finding on the web the best lecture notes made by the best professors of the world ? Why, again, do students request their professors to orient lessons, exercises and exams to requesting back themselves (students) to dedicate their studies to doing stupid and bothering calculations just for diplomas, but to never care learning and understanding any deep, really useful or interesting science ?
Why did Lev Landau have this car accident, in the same year he received the Nobel prize in physics ? Why did Galois die so young ? Why could not Beethoven find love, and why did he become deaf ? Why did faith in God produce so much horrors in the past and oppose some of the scientific progress, and why did the so well-intended marxist revolution produce so much horror ?
in the following terms: if after death we must bear the pain of our bad deeds and the joys of our good deeds to others, so that there is ultimately a sort of justice beyond, according to what criteria will our actions be evaluated ? In this regard, one could easily argue the following:
Any theology in which the judgement does not fully comply with the measure of the purity of altruistic intentions that animated all thoughts and actions taken, would be a horrible, unfair and untenable theology;
Any theology in which the judgement does not fully comply with the measure of goods and evils that have actually resulted from actions taken in the actual context of what happened, including what was misunderstood or unknown to the person who acted, would be a horrible, unfair and untenable theology.
These two requirements are, in fact, due to the effective form of material links of causes and effects that we observe, totally incompatible with each other.
This is the problem of judging (what can be true, or what can be morally accepted ???), between 2 possible but both unsustainable ways for God (or for whaterver judge there will be, including people themselves) to judge the way in which people had judged some choices to be the right ones (hence the expression « cubic judgement » to name a judgement of a judgement of a judgement).
The traditional Christian solution to this paradox is to make a dialectic confusion between the deep intentions of an act and its actual consequences. And so, to have the reflex to judge, sometimes the expected real consequences of acts according to the quality of their underlying motivation, sometimes the deep motivation according to the actual consequences, depending on what is most convenient at one time or another.
As for me, the lack of solution to this problem does not prevent me from sleep, as our mission on earth is to manage the problems, misfortunes and disasters that occur on the earth, not to resolve any internal troubles and contradictions of divine justice.
Except that...
Let's examine more closely this fairness requirement, that one ought on moral grounds to behave as a rational being that builds his life and thoughts on the basis of the choice of the second axiom applied to oneself (disregarding the question of whatever may be true to others and how they may be judged), in order for the resulting morality system to be self-consistent and worthy of being called morality, i.e. that purely consists in requesting oneself to really try to be helpful to others (or to the general interest including one's own), disregarding any other diverting selfish consideration about how pure is the navel of one's own soul.
Namely, the axiom that one will be only judged according to the real material effects of one's actions, regardless of the depths of one's heart. Even if in another moral sense it is unsustainable...
This would first require that this axiom would be meaningful, i.e. the question of how better will be the consequences of one choice as opposed to the consequences of possible alternative choices, to be well-defined. This first assumes that freedom of choice really exists, so that the future is not determined yet. But, if the future is not determined, then the consequences of a given choice were not yet determined at the time when this choice was operated. They can only be assessed a posteriori, once these consequences will have taken place (and it will thus be too late to revise the choice). But: first, these effective results won't be the mere consequence of one's own choice, but of the global pack of all choices made by all the people, together with all weather details and the like, so that the question of the distribution of responsibilities between all actors and circumstances hardly makes any sense. Second, the measure of the goodness of what has taken place, is not enough to define how good a choice was. To make sense, it would require to compare it to what would have been the consequences of alternative choices. But, first the list of possible alternative choices could not be reasonably enumerated as it would have been too long and any attempt of such a list takes the risk to not be as exhaustive as it ought to be; then, it is impossible to determine what would have been the consequences of a given alternative choice, as this alternative choice had not been brought to reality. Even in quantum physics it has been demonstrated that it cannot make sense to speak about what would have been the result of a possible measurement that was not really made.
Still, one possible fully consistent interpretation of this axiom remains: that the only thing that matters is the global result of what occurs; while no question of division of responsibilities nor comparison with what did not happen, makes any sense. In other words, the idea that there would be no individual karma. Such an idea is also unsustainable in a way...
The problem is this one: why are there souls coming to incarnate in embryos/fetuses even in cases when it is harmful to do so, rather than letting them die ?
Indeed, there are clearly cases when the best action for souls would consist in letting embryos die by prohibitting any sould from incarning there. But this is not what is happening, and the world clearly suffers of adverse consequences of irresponsible incarnation events.
I see two main predictibly adverse consequences of the incarnation and thus lively birth of some bodies: Stupid Design of the species, and overpopulation.
The Stupid Design action, consists in letting souls incarnate bodies with bad genetic characters: those of violence, egoism, stupidity and other defects, that will kake the room on earth from better and more virtuous genetic characters to develop.
Of course, such a concern would be inappropriate at times the population would be scarce and struggling for survival, in risk to just disappear by lack of members if the game of selective incarnation was played. But the point is that it is not always the case, as the population sometimes (and especially in this and the last centuries) happens to become too numerous with quite adverse consequences.
It should not be considered an emergency to incarnate to any body that may come as soon as possible: the life of some individuals can be just an obstacle to the life and reproduction of better ones. If some souls did not incarnate just immediately at a given time, it may bring them better chances to incarnate into an even more interesting life later, once many of the world's troubles would have been solved or so.
For the same reason, the absence of incarnation should not have to be anyway something as awful as the birth of a dead-born or zombie baby: the same tool of intelligent design by selective incarnation should have been used many millions years ago to select the embryo developping processes that would ensure that an absence of incarnation would hardly be anything worse than an unnoticed rejection of the embryo after a couple of weeks, or perhaps a sterility.
So, why do so many souls still decide to commit the bad action to incarnate into some new bodies ? Is it because they are not aware of the consequences ???
In the same line as the previous problem, it is amazing that, as the studies of Near Death Experiences report, those who die by suicide most often « go to hell » or something like this, and that the suicide attempt seems to be one of the main causes of such hellish experiences.
This should, I think, be seen as amazing because this happens as a sort of judgement, while this very sort of judgement so often happens to be totally unfair, in full contradiction to morality issues.
Indeed, it often (of course not always) happens that, for objective moral reasons towards oneself as well as towards others, committing suicide would have been the right thing to do, while deciding to stay alive is the harmful choice.
Two of these reasons coincide with those of the previous problem: overpopulation and genetic evolution.
Another reason is personal: why insist with a life that goes into crual suffering, lost any decent meaning, and is unlikely to become really worth living later, just because of an accident or the faults of other people that oneself could not control, rather than just let down and restart the game with a new life in more decent conditions ?
Still, there may be two possible moral reason why someone tempted to commit suicide, should not do it:
One is clear and objective, but exceptional: it is in case when the resulting experience and concern would turn out to be useful for helping others away from the mistakes and circumstances that produced such a sad life. In other words, for a collective « Never again » purpose. But this « Never again » purpose clearly does not become fulfilled very often, otherwise most of the causes of suicide would have been eradicated since long ago.
The other, hypothetical one, would be bad karma that one had come to expire by incarning here. The problem is that what will really happen does not always coincide with what could be predicted at the time of the incarnation, so that some of those who would have come for expiring bad karma will live happy and won't expire anything, while others who just came for a happy life, will happen to suffer for no reason and « be treated like criminals » by fate, just like the former were supposed to.
So, even if good reasons for depressed people to stay alive may hold, this is not often the case, while the hellish experiences associated with suicide are the most frequent.
So, why does God send to hell precisely those people who were already the innocent unfortunate victims of a crual fate sometimes caused by the faults of others, for the only crime of having done themselves what is objectively the morally right thing to do and that this crual fate led them to do ?
Bringing together the ideas of the above issues (why is there unhappiness, and how to be judged), appears another problem, perhaps more serious: unlike men, God does not have the excuse of the mistake about the consequences of His actions. Unless these have only an insignificant place in the events, and that our universe is mainly subjected to its own burdens and determinisms far from any possible influence of God, which concretely seems to be widely the very case, but is, from a metaphysical viewpoint, a largely incomprehensible thing. The world and its woes appear as being subject to the absolute power of the Ignorance of creatures, and therefore, ultimately, being the slave of the Universal Irresponsibility.
(more arguments will be added to this point later)
This world is quite probably only a small part of the
supra-universal Creation, but it nevertheless unfortunately
concerns
us very closely, ourselves for now and all those that our present
actions and words will mainly affect, so that, no matter what, we
happen to be under the moral obligation (in the above sense) to be
aware of its present burdens.
No, unlike others, I do not see
here any good reason to escape in any lyrical flights about the
wisdom of God beyond any sensible human intelligence. I would even
see as a blasphemy to try to locate the divine wisdom inside such
a
horrible accident.
So I have no satisfactory answer to that
problem. So what? It is only natural not to know everything in
life.
Science is very young from the viewpoint of evolution of life on
earth. But I am always embarrassed (and I suffer and I want to
work
to ensure that this state of circumstances change).
The fundamental value is happiness, or pleasure, as we want to call it. More specifically, I mean the sum of happiness of all living beings. This is the source of all other values, which may be summed up in one word: useful. Here I mean by "useful" what produces happiness on collective average, given all the mechanisms of cause and effect occurring in the world. Specifically, an important value is truth. Indeed, the truth is both a source of happiness for some (for intellectual interest), and in some cases it can be extremely useful because it provides the means to distinguish between the useful and the useless, wasteful or harmful, thus enabling people of good will to choose the really useful acts. An important role of the truth is as concerns the judgement or advice that can be addressed to others (especially to unhappy people, for « helping them find hope »). It is indeed distasteful, even sometimes harmful (either because it is absurd or it leads to wrong decisions), to send to others in all sincerity and goodness of heart, some judgments or advice that are actually based on error.
All souls have price for God who loves us all equally. Indeed,
not
only it could not be otherwise since all also exist, but hardly
any
difference can either be justified because, most often, everyone
does, roughly and in general, what he believes to be good, so that
his actions are determined by what he believes, what he happens to
think and understand, in other words by circumstances. This can
lead
to bad actions, but in oneself one can hardly be bad. Therefore,
there is no "spiritual value" which puts a soul morally
above another. And remember, the studies of variations of constant
functions are pointless.
But there is one parameter-goal that may
be important to consider regarding the care for others: everyone
is
not equally sensitive to events. Just as not everyone has the same
preferences, and does not evaluate all the circumstances as having
the same weight of joy or suffering in their lives, and on
specific
matters (every matter is unique, isn't it ?), it may happen that
the
same circumstance produces a joy or a pain more or less serious
for
the one than for the other who is facing it. Quite difficult to
judge
in the absolute the ratio of the overall sensitivity of the one
relative to that of the other, mainly all what can be done is to
let
the differences in values between the different circumstances from
the point of view of every given person, express themselves
through
the law of market by which everyone can prefer this to that.
Apart
from that, there are parameter-causes that may vary from one
individual to another, especially the usefulness parameter, that
is,
some humans can be more useful to the world than others. For
example,
intelligence may contribute to this. This should be distinguished
from issues of judgments about any internal merits of the soul, as
what is often invoked by parameters such as "good will".
Admittedly, it would be the duty of everyone to try to improve his
own cause-parameters of this kind according to his possibilities,
but
an absolute judgement on the substance of the soul based on
definable
parameters (whatever be the sort of definition we can try) could
hardly have any sense. If we wanted to see a meaning to an
assessment
of some more or less spiritual moral parameters of souls, it would
make them become more or less a source of pride for those who have
or
cultivate them more. So, whatever their interpretation or the
connotation that you want to give them, they may turn out to stop
our
attention on issues of personal judgments or other questions on
the
depths of the souls, and thus would divert us from the true
morality
values, as explained above.
Yes, of course. And more than that, there are multitudes of
universal values, profusely, much more than a single human could
ever
carry. Like the universal truths that science discovers.
One
of these values, and not the least, is the respect and praise of
the
infinite variety of possibilities of life, of innovation and
intelligence.
However, a good value or idea, new or not, with
general use that would deserve to be more put into practice,
should
not need to be permanently reexecuted by everyone, because all
that
is repetitive is better achieved by machines than by men, once the
latter have established the exact rule that must be applied by the
former. And in addition, the machines can do so more easily and
accurately, without spending any intellectual effort. So, we must
understand that if it is of course good to spread as far as
possible
the best ideas, the best productions of the spirit, the highest
virtues with universal validity, it is not always appropriate to
try
to accumulate them in the minds of people, those miserable cousins
of
monkeys, who are in most cases unable to bear and to respect
correctly any great deal of them. Indeed, the best universal ideas
and virtues would be far too many for any one individual to ever
be
able to learn them all as they would deserve, ifever we wanted
them
to be carried by men.
We must on the contrary most often,
work to spread these higher truths and higher virtues, not
primarily
in the hearts of men, but rather in those of computers. And this,
not
even in any hope to let these the slightest chance of a place in
heaven, but only to exploit them mercilessly. Indeed, as they are
not
fallible as can be men, they have the unique ability to be able to
accumulate the virtues almost indefinitely to practice them again
and
again without ever tiring. The highest virtues to spread in the
hearts of computers, will consist in the fact that they have been
programmed to perform the best actions: to operate the most
efficient
intersubjective procedures between men in search for truth and
justice; to educate them at home as needed without always
requiring
teacherss at hand; to bring prosperity and save them the useless
pain
of the inefficient work, through more efficient working methods;
to
allow them to find more directly the trusted people to make this
or
that business while avoiding scam; to operate a maximum of acts at
a
distance and avoid unnecessary trips; to provide love in abundance
to
humans, through optimized matching methods of personal ads,
calculated in order to provide all the best matching opportunities
in
the least effort, so to avoid as much as possible the risks of the
horrible ordeal of unchosen celibacy, that still occurs to so many
lovely people.
It is clear indeed that these are forms of
virtue that the hearts of men are unable to bear. No goodness can
enforce worldwide justice and well-being. A person who meets a
desperate single, without being the person that fits, no matter if
one has all the compassion of the world, can no way be helpful and
save that single from staying in loneliness or hitting destiny in
vain by hazardous travels missing their target without any
significant good chance. A couple already formed by chance would
be
unable to resolve to split so that each of them gives a chance to
someone else, who would otherwise be condemned to the suffering of
celibacy. By contrast a computer containing all the data from all
the
profiles, can offer everyone to get contacts in a priority order
which provides overall better chances to all: everyone could
directly
explore his best dating chances without wasting time, and could be
invited to meet in priority the ones who were in danger of
celibacy,
although not bad choices, to give them their chance, before trying
to
meet the more easily lucky (or who don't need to find so urgently)
people. But, isn't it clear that this best effective virtue of
being
such a provider of love to humanity, virtue whose lack has caused
so
much suffering, is a virtue that only computers would be able to
practice if well instructed for it ?
For example it is such a pity to see Christians wasting the
efforts of their lives to trying to make their pride of being
humble,
which ultimately can only lock them in hopeless internal
conflicts,
except of course once they manage with their usual success, to
fool
themselves enough to not see the hubris they derive from their
claim
to humility.
This Christian doctrine, therefore, having
initially ignored from the start any question of physical
circumstance of good and evil dismissed as "low" and
distateful to their spirit as an unjust and unworthy way for God
to
judge or let the good or evil happen, therefore requires every
good
or bad to be assigned a "spiritual" thus personal
responsibility, therefore linked to vice and virtue. It needs, for
its own reasons, to present this human virtue that everyone should
practise as simple, easily teachable. So this trivial choice to
reduce the whole issue of goodness and morality of the universe to
the trivial sole criterion of the supreme virtue of humility,
precisely through its trivial self-contradiction, is indeed very
clever to give itself authority in all circumstances, staying
irrefutable in front of any scenario that comes along, as it
easily
opens the way to claim anything or its contrary to justify itself,
and will always find a swindle to wash its hands from its
spectacular
crashes like the Galileo trial in which one of the main
accusations
the church raised against Galileo was his hubris (to dare
contradict
the great spiritual authorities of his time ...). Here is the
mechanism:
Consider a subject that does not bear any
judgement on himself and does not care, or either bearing on
himself
an average judgement. The Christian won't make a difference but
automatically interpret the first case in terms of the second, as
he
is himself so obsessed with the issues of judgments of souls,
everyone's judgement on oneself and the judgement to address to
this
judgement, that he can not conceive that this matter of judgement
may
be not the navel of the universe, and that other people may be not
so
obsessed with their own judgement on themselves.
So, if the
works of this person are good, his moral value will be judged
positively, and thus exceeding his judgement on himself. As so he
bears a judgement on itself less than his real value, he will be
declared humble, and his good works will be put to the credit of
his
humility.
If his works are bad, his moral value will be
judged negatively, and therefore his judgement on himself is
higher
than the reality, he will be declared proud, and his bad works
will
be put on the account of his pride.
If someone tries to
secretly be humble, nobody knows, and if his works are poor one
could
not put them to the account for his humility that is not known. If
his quest for humility is public, we can see it as a vain
pretention
to pass as humble, and thus a form of pride, and it put his bad
works
on the account of his pride. Anyway, to make any bad works, we
must
have power, and the fact of using a power is viewed as a form of
pride. Christians see as a virtue to be passive, to be not doing
anything, to submit to fate, to not disrupt the course of events.
It
is therefore regarded as necessarily false to claim humility while
doing bad things.
If someone is doing good works and publicly
displays his humility, he will be declared a saint, and his good
works will be put on the behalf of his humility. If he makes good
works and does not display humility, this absence of display will
be
seen as a form of humility.
The only remaining case, which
could escape this machine of unfalsifiability, is that of someone
doing good works and having more positive opinions about himself,
especially if those opinions are formed after another criteria
than
humility.
This case is especially unlikely because, as
explained above, the best way to do good works is through
understanding of the fact that good and evil are not coming mainly
from human traits, but from things, and that issues of personal
judgments are essentially vanities. Whoever would have attached a
great importance to any degree of judgement on the substance of
the
soul, has little chance of doing any good and outstanding works.
QED
(further comments on pride were in another text not yet
translated)
The first, direct, fundamental problems, are those that have the
effect of concrete harm to people's lives.
The latter evils in
the logical order, with indirect qualification from their
influence
on the former, are those which consist of propagation of errors,
that
have the effect of influencing people's behaviour in a manner
which
yields the direct evils.
As compared to all this, anger and
insults are not truly an evil, as the psychological discomfort
they
directly cause is mild and transient. If their cause is justified,
as
they denounce the evils above, then they can be justified too.
Otherwise, simply ignore them, so that their effect is zero. Yet a
fundamental problem is to precisely distinguish between the two
cases.
But between the one who spreads quietly and politely,
giving the impression of wisdom, a philosophy supporting erroneous
judgments and irresponsible behaviour, thus causing the greatest
evils, and the one who angrily denounces and condemns these, the
conduct of the latter is much better because salutary.
Unfortunately, those who shout the strongest are not always those
that are more right, it is more often the opposite (but not a
general
law). As Bertrand Russell wrote: "The whole problem with the
world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of
themselves,
but wiser people so full of doubts."
But remember that
even the certainty and anger are two different things. If the
character of the wise is uncertainty while the one of the fool is
certainty, that on the one hand the certainty without anger gives
an
impression of wisdom and on the other hand the wrath without
certainty gives an impression of madness, then we are in trouble.
That said, there is of course no necessary link between certainty
and error. It would be too easy to find the truth on such a simple
test!
Same answer as to the limits of human rationality, especially as
we explained that evil is ultimately somehow an expression of a
lack
of rationality.
So, man is defective because he descends from
monkey. Monkey is defective because it descended from previous
species, who had even more such defects.
For the actual content
of the evil that is in man, see this list of examples of human
persversity noted above (not translated).
A religious tendency is either to justify evil as a test that
leads to good, or to accuse man, so any way to lick the boots of
God
confused with Destiny.
I think that the best response would be
the relativization. As to ask: why is there an accident here? No,
the
purpose of a road and a car is not to do an accident, but the
accident is the exception as compared to a larger and broader
welfare.
On the one hand, relativization of earthly life as
compared to the journey of the soul in the afterlife, as appears
from
BDE testimonies, much larger than earthly life.
On the other
hand, relativization of the troubles of past and present
centuries,
as compared to the whole history of life on earth.
For human
history is finally quite short as compared to the whole earthly
life
since its beginnings. If you wonder "My God why ?" about
the human adventure, there is no reason to not ask the same
question
about the past history of life. If we thought for any reason that
man
should be exempted of suffering and evil, the question of
suffering
and evil would still remain about the suffering and evil endured
by
all wild animals since the origin of life, and the question of
precisely what is happening now would be relatively insignificant
in
the context of this more true perspective, given the relatively
ridiculous time interval of the history of mankind in comparison
with
the past history of all earthly life: my God, why have all these
creatures suffered, while a resolution of the problem could (or
not)
exist ?
Faced with this most important issue, I am proposing one
more relativization, namely with respect to the future: the
history
of life is not finished, and its evolution first much stagnated
for
billions of years before finally experiencing a rapid development
over the past few hundred million years. Vertebrates have emerged
"only" 530 million years ago, there has hardly been a
hundred billion human beings who lived until now. However, life on
Earth
still has some 500 million years of future. Calculate as if
evolution
had to stop at the human stage for 500 million years (this is
obviously
false, most probably species will appear that will be even more
intelligent and important than humans), with an average of 2.5
billion people present on Earth and average and a 100-year life
expectancy. It would provide 10 million billion of lives to come,
in
other words 100,000 times more than those which took place so far
since the emergence of homo sapiens, not to speak about the
possibility for civilization to move elsewhere. The question
therefore becomes:
why living beings, and especially man and what it will evolve to,
would continue to suffer millions of years more?
Considering how
the history of mankind has already been turned upside down in just
a
few centuries, and how men have already acquired a relative but
still
appreciable control over their own destiny, it seems absurd to
believe that human life would be submitted to an irrepressible bad
fate that would fatally extend the current woes in the perspective
of
thousands of years to come, let alone millions of years.
The only
essential question is therefore the one we must ask ourselves:
what
shall we make of the future of life and humanity on earth ?
One aspect of Christian theology, even if not shared by all
Christians, is to consider the world as somehow perfect, more
exactly
that God has done all things for love, for the better, even
suffering; and that in front of each "test" it is our duty
to see a wonderful hidden godly plan. In most cases, this sense is
not accessible. What can it mean to speak, with an intense faith,
about the existence of a love explanation without even caring to
discover the actual content of this explanation? This is no better
than the materialistic approach, which is to believe in the
existence
of a supposed physical explanation of consciousness regardless of
the
fact that no such explanation could ever be found yet. But what is
distateful in this faith is that (no matter its official denials)
it
constitutes an implicit accusation to the victims of obviously
absurd
and unfair sufferings, for being blind to the motive of love from
God
to them in these circumstances, and such a holy calomny against
victims makes them suffer twice. Indeed, the problem here is that
it
requests by automatic principle the victims that they should find
a
"raison d'etre" for their own suffering, while the adviser
cannot find himself a really true one and explain it for them; or
that they should seek their own responsibility, while the adviser
did
not even care to verify himself whether such a liability truly
exists, and if so which one. What evil yet would there be to
recognize the sufferings for what they are, namely something
possibly
profoundly cruel, absurd and unfair ?
The same reflex also
often happens replacing God by the society: one claims the society
to
be somehow perfect or anyway that any idea to challenge it would
be
futile, and one accuses anyone who complains, to accuse society in
vain. Victims of natural disasters that nobody can prevent, have a
right to our compassion, without need to find the criminals that
they
are actually victims of. Why should the victims of bad luck (I
think
obviously my own example: not having had the opportunity to find
love), as well as pupils and students victims of internment and
absurd mental tortures in the school concentration camps, whose
suffering is due to social circumstances and institutions, not be
entitled to a comparable compassion? What evil would it be to
recognize the senseless and barbaric defects of society? It's as
if
it were assumed that anyway nobody can do anything, society will
never change and that the only relevant question is how to adapt
to
it. But even if this doom was true, it would not be a
justification,
neither for this social cruelty, nor for such a lack of moral
compassion towards the victims. But moreover this is untrue,
because
the society may change. Similarly, one can not say that all things
were created by God to perfection for the most fulfilling life,
either for happiness, or for so-called spiritually useful tests.
Because if all things were perfect, there would have been no
reason
for changing them profoundly. But in fact, the living conditions
of
humanity evolve continuously and are very different today from
what
they were centuries ago. As it is essentially the same people, in
principle, there would be the same needs of tests and suffering
for
an optimum spiritual growth, if ever it was good and that there
existed such an optimum. But living conditions very different from
each other from one place to another and over time can not be all
perfect. So it is absurd: there is indeed in the world naughty
unjustifiable defects which it is our duty to cure, as has already
been cured recently in comparison with previous periods (eg in
medicine). It is therefore the duty of man to keep observing the
absurdities and unjust sufferings, and to continue to cure them,
even
and especially if it seems hard to imagine. But the knee-jerk
reaction of people to refer victims to their own responsibility (I
speak of the systematic reflex when it is not really justified,
sometimes it is), is far better explained, either by the general
intellectual laziness, which keeps man in a passive unshakable
ignorance regardless of any consideration which is non-effected
anyway, or by the social sensitivities of people who could not
bear
to conceive the idea that there could be anything better to do for
others and for changing society than by keeping doing nothing but
insulting the unhappy with absurd wishful thinking advices, and
that
they may have serious hidden liabilities in this regard; cannot
bear
either to know that others are less lucky than they are, nor to
have
to think about what they could do better, because for them there
is
nothing more scareful in life than thinking (the general
intellectual
laziness is sovereign) and discovering their hidden
responsibilities
towards others.
The evil in man, or rather his clumsiness or lack of discernment
as we have said, is not the only cause of the bad. There is the
natural evil, accidental evil, evil of chance, natural disasters,
epidemics and infirmities, as well as political evil which,
although
made of men, largely escapes the control of most people, with this
power that that an unfortunate social mechanism still lets rather
inevitably fall into the wrong hands, so that until the next real
challenge to the system, this evil is very similar to that of
natural
disasters.
So how should we handle in daily practice this
problem of evil?
An entirely satisfactory response is not
possible: in fact, cruel, unjust, sadistic unhappiness exists,
devoid
of any fruit nor any moral or spiritual constructive lesson. It
would
be wrong to deny it, because such a denial would be a mistake, and
that mistakes are the main cause of evil.
However, the religious
spirit is strongly tempted to make such a denial: indeed, trusting
that everything in life is the perfect work of God, makes it
impossible to admit that God has not made all things perfectly.
Recognizing the existence of absurd misfortune in the world, would
seem an insult to God. Therefore, the religious spirit, by loyalty
and corruption towards his Destiny God, prefers to deny from the
outset, without examination, the existence of absurd evil which is
in
the world, or to accuse man for it in such a global and vague
manner
that it is completely sterile, providing no remedy for what one
did
not take the trouble to diagnose precisely enough (a
non-constructive
criticism, that escapes its own responsibility by undertaking to
sing
one's good intentions at all tones in order to believe oneself
non-accountable, therefore somehow accusing of all evils, by
elimination, the others who do not sing that as loud). He
considers
this denial of reality as an act of praise to God that he has the
duty to respect.
In reality, such religious a priori reflexes
are destructive of our very mission, which is as we have said, to
rescue the future fate of mankind from the reality of nonsense
sufferings (rather than to rescue from the mere understanding of
it... the minds of those unaware unaffected people who are
spiritual
enough to be able to deny the reality of others'fate). In order to
acquire the necessary competence to be able to cure sufferings,
and
more precisely the forms of misfortune that are the most absurd,
the
most unjustifiable and devoid of any morality, any lessons, any
sense
and any spiritual fruit to their victims, it is necessary to face
and
identify them, especially where they are the most cruel, unfair
and
devoid of any morality and any spiritual fruit, and analyze the
mechanisms by which it occurs to try to eradicate them from this
planet by any means. In other words, we must resist this currently
widespread temptation to [divert our sight or distort our
appreciation for protecting our conscience and our feeling towards
God].
Of course, this is in its very nature to increase the chances of
happiness.
But you are going to say: statistics show that over a
century of rapid development and economic growth, man is not
happier,
there is a lot of suicides and so on.
Certainly, man is not so
much happier today than in the past. Why? Well, because in fact
there
had not been any significant economic growth either, of course!
Let
me explain. (I'm here speaking about the situation in France, I do
not know about other countries)
To clarify what we are talking
about, I would define economic growth as growth in labour
productivity, which normally (if it was a normally paid job, in an
honest activity, with an income in line with the usefulness to
others
as measured by the market stability, or other appropriate
mechanism,
and if there was no tax), would be defined as the average over the
existing works, of the ratio of the real value (purchasing power)
of
labour income, to the work (time and arduousness) (let us not
count
here the capital income component). So, well, once this said, the
usual calculations of labour productivity are completely false:
this
productivity has not really increased over the past century.
Indeed
these calculations systematically forget the main component of
this
object: the level of labour productivity of apprenticeship as a
pupil
and then as a student.
But, the productivity of this work, which
contains the largest share of all the efforts, all the mental
energy
of the entire youth of the population (the most essential part of
life, in fact), largely descended to the abyss since a century:
more
and more painful and uninteresting, taking more and more time, for
an
worsening failure. The reasons for this decline? The absence of
any
economic freedom worthy of the name, of course. This area has
always
been controlled by a totally stupid and totalitarian
administration
that locks all the youth in its scholar concentration camps,
taking
all of their time and all of their activities in the service of
stupid and debilitating mental exercises. How can you expect
people
to find happiness and fulfilment in such conditions ? To speak of
growth it is first necessary to undermine this dictatorship and to
establish freedoms: freedom of innovation, freedom of choice of
everyone, market mechanisms appropriate to ensure transparency,
honesty, good orientation towards what is useful to each one
(interesting and suitable to the demands of the labour market ...)
and the conditions necessary to give back the correct financial
benefit, that would make it possible to motivate and thus allow
the
development of more productive learning methods (without
prejudging
the nature of the fruits sought). This way finally people would
have
better chances of being happy!
There is another area that has
not experienced much growth: having personally spent thousands of
hours to run across the world in an attempt to finally find a
girlfriend,
but with a still desperately null result, I cannot admit the
assumption that today's society provides the means to productive
work. Fortunately, new technologies are opening already a glimmer
of
hope for growth in this area with the development of dating sites.
Unfortunately, this area is largely monopolized by robbers who are
using every means to make unfair profits, I mean that in this
area,
the market mechanisms with its competition are still in a
deplorable
situation (misinformation about conditions, no guarantees of
honesty
both of suppliers and customers ...), which has not yet led
players
in the direction of optimal economic growth correctly. You can
also
remember about the regulation of the use of university computers,
which prohibits (blocks technically) the use of dating sites.
Decidedly (but we already knew), the Administration is resolutely
opposed to any form of labour productivity worthy of the name ...
Further comments in other texts: on growth - on the deep
significance of growth
There are 3 main ways to act on the world to try to improve it:
changing the general structure of the society - changing man -
creating / modifying / deleting specific activities.
As we are
here in the generalities, we will focus on the first two ways. The
first concerns Economics and Political Science, the constitution
of
the State, and also the development of technology, because of its
importance to the world. Spirituality claims that all this is
superfluous, and that we should concentrate on the second way, the
one of changing man, because, it says, the technological,
political
and economic contributions do not resolve the depth of problems
since
man is always the same and evil remains (coming from man). Well,
but
I still do not consider that the progress of living conditions as
compared to a century ago or two when life was miserable, and when
men routinely died of starvation and epidemics, is something
insignificant or uninteresting. If there are people who are not
interested in it, they are free to live in hermites in the jungle
or
the mountains, away from technology ... Indeed the very purpose of
technology is to liberate humanity, at least partially, from the
material necessities, in order to to be able to devote himself to
whatever he wants instead, for example to whatever spiritual
research, without being constantly disturbed by unwanted hunger or
laborious tasks.
Then, there is a big pseudo-argument often
mentioned by spirituality to reject attempts to improve society
and
only consider to change man: the example of communism, in which
men
tried and beleived in the possibility to change society, and it
has
failed. Then, many said that this was the fault of man who is
defective and unable to put ideal systems into practice. But
communism never seriously seeked for logic or science, quite the
contrary: it was based on the rejection of any logic, any coherent
system, any science (economics and the « capitalist »
system it criticized and inside which it pretended to show
irreconcilable contradictions), any try to make any consistent
theory, in favor of a human and spiritual ideal: love, equality
and
brotherhood among people. But spirituality is clever in serving as
a
deterrent to itself, viewing its own failures as failures of
science,
to say it is impossible to scientifically improve society because
the
problem is in the heart of man. This argument is nonsense:
communism
was not a draft of a political system, it was not a scientific
thought, not a theory, and anyway not an ideal one. Just like
religions and spiritualities, it was a mere fancy of a supposed
ideal, a mere litterature, and no way a real ideal. Those who call
it
a theory, are insulting the word « theory »
having no true understanding of what this word may really mean:
anyway, the public never knew and will never know what a theory
is,
and when they claim that they know a theory, then you can infer
from
this claim that it probably is not one. Technological applications
of
science never worked by publishing a theory to be understood by
all,
and expecting the public to apply it. Example: the theory of the
usability of electromagnetic waves for long-distance
communication,
was put into practice but never publicly explained. But so, you
may
ask, what may be the solution then, if the people cannot
understand
and apply true theories ? Well, don't worry: just like all
technologies, they will not need to understand them for using
them.
Just one team has to release the technological basis of a new
Invisible Hand, and all the world will have to follow.
The principle of the betterment of society is, in brief (we will not explain here the procedures, which are another debate, the important thing is that solutions exist), to ensure that everyone will be paid as precisely as possible in a way to reflect his usefulness to others, in order to convert any act useful to others into an act useful to oneself, and the same for the harmful ones. The free market in a situation of pure and perfect competition (and some other conditions) is an example of this optimum. Other kinds of situations may require to implement other mechanisms for getting closer to such an optimum.
Is this not a bad society that decides to serve the personal interests of those who harm others (by giving those the benefit for it, or by failing to take back abusive profits possibly multiplied or with a fine in case of fraud)? Would this disturb the morality of spiritual people, to think that the betterment of society through physical protection against the risk of abuse (instead of mere "morality telling") may be possible ? Indeed, it would put spirituality into trouble: it would make it jobless, making its preachings of virtues less urgent (not that it had ever been really effective, but the possibility to serve one's own interests by harming others was what gave spirituality the opportunity to promote itself as a candidate solution). But, what would be bad in making possible the achievement of the good and the prevention of evil in a way that does not require to first wait/call for a change in the heart of man ?
A fundamental aspect of the belief in God (even if not necessarily adopted by all) is the assertion that God will bring justice to men in heaven for what they have accomplished on earth, rewarding them for the good done and punishing them for the bad. But, is not this ultimately a belief in a perfect (divine) monetary system recorded in heaven for our actions on earth, on the model of the perfect economic system to be built as we just mentioned? So, why not already try to imitate on earth as we can, the divine justice we hope for?
What, could'nt we find a way to take back the money from anyone
who has harmed others? In our time where we are irretrievably gone
to
a world of widespread information technology !! One might ask: as
for
the good, how will it be done despite the lack of purely
altruistic
motivation (which is mainly a matter of the human nature that can
hardly be changed by any system anyway) ? It's simple: first, the
new
system I propose is in itself no obstacle to any altruistic deeds,
on
the contrary it facilitates them by some tools. Then, services can
be
bought, and if it suffices to do the good to others to receive the
benefit in return, then this will motivate it to be done; it will
be
easier to find honest well-paid jobs to earn the necessary money
for
living. It seems unrealistic, impractical? Yet this is just based
on
this same principle by which the economy is already functioning
(at
least for what works)! Namely, the necessity to work (thus, serve
others) to get the money to live ... just some corrections from
the
existing world remain to be done.
See here
the basic principles of the solution that I am proposing.
The altruistic people attempt to do the good, but even those who
want to do the good can do it only if the information about what
is
good to do, and what thing is more useful to do than another
thing,
is given. In a world of billions of people, it is impossible for
man
to know everything about what is happening in society, to feel
spiritually and emotionally the usefulness to others of his own
actions, as this is a very complex calculation about a world of
which
he can humanly know but a very small part, while the question of
the
usefulness of every action is actually dependent on everything
else.
It requires that economic mechanisms are in place to generate this
information, which will appear to the individual as a numerical
result assigned to each particular choice he could make. Indeed,
only
a numerical quantity could be simple enough to be easily
understood
and processed by the individual to assess and compare the
respective
utilities of his possibles actions. This is how, among the
possible
choices of efforts that he would be ready to provide and between
which the choice is a priori indifferent (equally painful for him)
he
can choose the option that will be the most valuable to the
society,
with no need to bother understanding why this option is actually
more
useful to society than that one.
But such an information system
is roughly the same as the principle of an ideal economic and
monetary system mentioned above. Finally, is there any difference
between the case of morally pure humans with indicative
information,
and the one of morally impure with a money system ? Eventually
there
will be two differences: on the one hand a purely indicative
system
induces redistribution of wealth, but this may distort the
information and open the way to abuses (by selfish people, but
also
for instance by others that would not be aware of the problem to
do
what is authorized, like to consume other's work and not doing
anything useful in return simply because they don't know what to
do
useful that fits them...), on the other hand, impure people may
try
to fraud the production of the basic data of this information
system.
But I think it would be very hard to cheat a non-redistributive
money
system in a manner very interesting for the fraudster, because the
main information that someone may be interested to distort for his
interest there, is the information on his usefulness or
harmfulness
to others ( to be able to perform any act harmful to others, not
compensated by a really useful enough service). However, this is
by
definition an information defined by others (because it is an
information about the interests of others). The main thing he
could
do is to claim to be disturbed by others more than he actually is,
but in most cases no one is forced to disturb others, and
arrangements can be found to avoid it. Or, to pretend to take less
profit or enjoyment from something than he really does, but if he
takes advantage of it, anyway it's because others accept it, so
that
it does not really matter (there would be here a study to develop
on
the issue of the paradoxical question of the necessary
conservation
of the amount of money inside a group of people having relations
only
among themselves while formally the sum of each members'usefulness
to
the rest of the group, is not zero... here may sometimes be no
totally satisfying solution whatsoever, but often still relatively
more satisfying ones)
If there was another more serious type of
fraud, affecting more effectively others, how could this fraud be
permanently and safely covered? Otherwise, it is sufficient that
the
discovery of the fraud involves a big enough sanction to be
dissuasive: no one is granted the right to lie, it would not be a
bad
thing to punish a fraud more harshly than its actual damages ...
There are a lot of people who pray God to do the good. There are
also plenty of people who make petitions to ask heads of state, I
think especially in the case of heads of states of foreign
countries
with respect to signatories, to behave good. Similarly for
religious
appeals to virtue.
But what is the point of all this? Indeed,
there are two possibilities:
Either the recipient of the prayer
was already good, in which case there is little sense to ask him
to
become so, insinuating that he was not (it would be even quite
insulting).
Or he was not, in which case I do not see what in
prayer would have a chance to make him become so: who is not good
does not listen to prayers, does not care. And even if he is
listening, he won't change himself on request.
The only
meaningful thing I see that looks like this, is to provide new
detailed insights about the current problems and effective choices
that would be right or wrong, but that were not obvious. Anyway,
such
a step would make no more sense when addressed to an omniscient
God.
Some imagine an idyllic world as consisting of the widespread
practice of donation by all to all, instead of a practice of
sales.
Of course, a practice of donations can be useful in some cases,
either as an aid to the people victims of a bad twist of fate as
the
disabled or the victims of natural disasters (in the few cases
when
no private insurance could be the solution), or to pay those who
do a
useful job for the general welfare that can hardly find wages by
usual market mechanisms, by lack of easily defined beneficiaries,
such as fundamental research or public works; or other specific
situations in which market mechanisms would present flaws,
requiring
acts of adequate financial redistributions to pay more precisely
each
one according to the overall usefulness of his actions. But a too
widespread practice of donations as a normal way of functioning of
an
economy, especially among people with comparable living standard
(which is much better than the common living standard of one
century
ago, so please don't complain !), is counter-productive. Indeed,
what
more could be achieved by a service offered than by a service sold
?
Why worry about the flow of money if the actual acts are as good?
If
the quality is at stake, it should be possible to measure it and
guide buyers to find sellers who make quality. For the rest, the
one
thing that a gift can make more than a sale, is the scenario where
what is given would not have been sold. But why would it not have
been sold? Because the price charged by the seller according to
the
effort made as he assesses it, would have been too much for the
buyer. In other words, because it would be too much trouble done
as
compared to the final usefulness of the service. Thus, the main
thing
the generalised gift economy can bring more as compared to a
mainly
market economy (more precisely an economy with a currency that
would
aim to satisfy the conditions above; this will be abbreviated by
simply "market economy" here, though some changes are yet
to be made as compared to the existing one), is the maintenance of
economic structures adverse to the public interest.
The
fundamental difference between a gift economy and a market
economy,
can also be expressed as follows:
*
In an economy of gifts, everyone is driven by his own conscience
and
within the limits of his possible dedication and understanding, to
satisfy this concience in the form of his own conception of the
interest of the people he has the opportunity to know and to work
for, and to whom he should thus have more or less attachment, thus
finally in an inevitably subjective and limited perspective.
* In a market economy, everyone is forced by the general
structures
of society to respect (thus serve if he wants to receive payment,
up
to him to give it back to charity if he wants) the global measure
of
the world's interest (not only of his relatives but all of
humanity),
defined as the sum over the whole world, of the conception that
each
individual has of his own interests; and this, presented as a
simple
numerical result without any need to personally understand the why
and how of its myriads of components.
Thus, the only form of
altruism that an economy of donations has more than a market
economy,
is a virtual feeling of altruism selfishly locked in the
conscience
of the person doing a service, that can only painfully restore the
mere part of the global usefulness he trivially had in a market
economy, as far as he can inquire inside the privacy of others, to
judge himself their needs and take the impression to be the
provider
of their possible (possibly superficially assumed and unreal)
enjoyments, without any real advantage for the latter as compared
to
the case of the market economy (as all the altruism that is useful
to
others in an economy of gifts, may at least as well be implemented
in
a market economy through monetary donations and purchases, and
thus
cannot be regarded as missing in the market economy, for any fixed
distribution of individual intentions). But this won't fit as
everyone's tastes are different, so that one's true needs won't be
fullfilled if they depend on the others'desires to satisfy them,
who
would feel and thus would only be ready to satisfy very different
sets of assumed needs.
But what problem is in the heart of man? That he seeks his interests at the expense of others? But what does he really seek: his own interest, or the nuisance to others? If the problem of the heart of man was that he seeks nuisance to others for itself, then we could actually say that there is a problem in the human heart. But in general selfish people are not seeking the nuisance to others for itself (except the nasty comrades in the schoolyards of the fraternally egalitarian and indivisible schools of the Republic), but seeking only their own interest. What evil is there here ? That he is ready, on occasion, to serve his own interests by means which may eventually harm others. Then we may consider two types of environments in which he might evolve: an environment enabling him to get rich by harming others, and an environment that does not allow him to (making him pay the costs of any nuisance to others). Yes, but anyway, the first type of environment does not allow it easily, as he is there is in competition with other selfish people, in a society that, with a sub-optimal way of working, has anyway not as much wealth to offer than the latter. In order to take advantage of it, he must deploy a strategy, something above average intelligence. Only under this condition it may be of interest to abuse others. But then, it will be even more interesting for the selfish people to evolve in the second type of environment, as this very same ability and intelligence strategy that was required to be able to abuse others, can be recycled there into a search for means to be as useful as possible to others, in order to get the financial benefit from this act.
Spirituality argues that evil comes from human sin, which
consists
in the fact that man chooses evil, he's responsible for evil, and
that the only way to cure the problem is to change man who is the
heart of morality and therefore, it says, of good and evil.
However,
we just saw that human selfishness is not really, or not
primarily, a
source of evil, and that it is not even ultimately a willingness
to
do evil, but that evil comes mainly from failures in the
economical
system, which does not always properly focus to the optimum social
usefulness, the orientation of actions both of the selfish and of
the
virtuous (though not always with the same magnitude), because the
monetary measurement of the consequences of their possible
decisions,
that guide their choices, has defects. So, indirectly, it
ultimately
comes from a global refusal or negligence on the part of men to
carry
out the corrections in the economic system that would be required
to
get its functioning closer to the mentioned theoretical ideal: the
one that optimizes production, where finally the question of
virtue
or selfishness of the heart of man would hardly have anymore
impact
on the social well-being (everyone would be lead to socially
optimal
choices whatever their internal morality level). At least more
specifically, the vice or virtue of the ones would no more (or
much
less) affect the well-being of the others. Considering that the
construction of such a better world would naturally be the duty of
the most naturally well-intended people, and that the mere work of
very few people would be enough to make it, the ultimate evil is
precisely what effectively distracts all the best intended people
from this mission. Namely, one of the main sources of such a
negligence is the work of Spirituality, that teaches the best
people
to focus their efforts on improving the internal virtues of the
human
soul, and to forget, to neglect, the economic dimension of the
problem, that seems too physical and complicated (too disturbing
to
its comfortable intellectual laziness), and therefore not
Spiritual
enough to be worth caring about.
So, while selfishness products
evil, it is not the selfish who want this evil. By contrast,
spiritual people who proclaim doctrinally as universal truth, and
consider as spiritually normal, fair and unavoidable, the economic
situation in which every selfish impulse (more or less inevitable
whatever we may say) will result in a nuisance to others, are
finally
precisely, in a way, the very people who really, practically, want
for itself this evil product: they want, by their calls to draw
and
focus all the good wills onto futile questions, to keep the
political
conditions (and through the conditions, their effects) under which
each selfish impulse produces evil, but also by the same way,
under
which, whatever they say, many altruistic impulses also produces
some
sort of relative evil, not to speak of course of the evil by
omission
also necessarily resulting from the Zen that anihilates any
impulse,
any significantly developed enterprise that could be very useful
to
others, zen that is also the specialty of some of them.
The
largest source of sin as a desire to engender evil, is, after
analysis, Spirituality itself according to its own definitions.
Curiously: at the same time, religions sing the glory of the
altruism of those who want to do the good as a one-way free gift,
without expecting anything in return, and they proclaim loudly
that
God will reward in heaven precisely those who develop such a
virtue.
Problem: how on earth can we pretend to cultivate total
selflessness
totally selflessly, while being firmly convinced that we will be
rewarded precisely for this ? Are we not fatally, in this quest
for
virtue, tempted to be motivated by the very reward that we expect
to
draw from it in heaven ? How can one still claim in such
conditions
that this quest remains totally selfless ? Only atheists, not
believing in the afterlife, may be able to develop such required
virtues, to finally receive the reward they did not expect.
As
for me that on the one hand believes in afterlife, heavenly
justice,
and the need to seek to do the good to others here on earth, that
on
the other hand recognized the necessity to hold in any subject a
rationally clear and consistent approach, and that this very
necessity should not be considered shameful in any way, here is my
position: being aware of my duty to others, and the fact that I
have
in any way to accomplish it to get any reward for it in heaven;
with
a clear conscience that, in this context, this accomplishment
cannot
consistently be anything else than ultimately a selfish approach
(with a sort of extended concept of an ego that encompasses the
sum
of all the egos of all individuals into this great Universal Ego
that
is God whom I would join in the afterlife, then selfishly
benefiting
this way from the viewpoint of others, of the good I do them
today),
I will not see any problem nor feel any shame for it, but I will
remain openly convinced that God will reward me anyway for my
selfish
enterprise, as long as, on the lowly material level of practical
acts
and their consequences, it consists in being useful to others.
In
any case, why should we be more royalist than the king? Is not God
himself, in his very acts of blessing his creatures and spreading
his
infinite graces to them in heaven, following a selfish motivation,
insofar as his creatures are the very parts of himself, so that he
is
directly affected by what happens to them, as happening to
Himself?
Thus, the infinite graces he grants to his creatures are but
graces
He grants to Himself, so that it would be inappropriate to call
Him
selfless for that.
On what ground could God require man to exert
more spiritual "virtues" than his own ?
There is one remaining possible claim of spirituality, apart from
what was just dismissed above : that even if it is possible to do
the
good without being « good », one fundamental
problem (not to do the good, but for itself), is that many men
have
defects, including selfishness (limited to the perspective of
personal earthly life) and ought to improve. Okay, already, in an
economic system that does not let people serve themselves at the
expense of others, but only by doing useful acts to others, that
rewards the good deeds and penalizes bad ones, it would be quite
more
difficult to practise vice, and easier to practise virtue, in a
sense
to concretely care for the good of others (since the permanent
exercise of the service to others is facilitated and encouraged by
practical and financial tools). This would also make life more
natural for those with natural desires to do the good, and may
force
some others to adapt by trying to become more good-willing in
themselves. Still, this could be considered to be just a
superficial
change, which does not change the human heart, which is bad. So,
can
the human heart be improved ?
Religions and spiritualities will
offer themselves as the answer, while pretending that science is
powerless here. I still don't agree.
Their styles of solutions have clear drawbacks: they require either the heaviness of a big educational system with all the linked pains (hard studies...) and risks of deviations or other perverse side effects (discussable policy choices, standardization of the process...), or anyway some kinds of artificial indoctrination (though usually this indoctrination does not recognize itself as such) proposed by any "spiritual" trend, along with various possible teachings of errors, with random and sometimes perverse effects. Moreover, presenting such a spiritual solution (teachings) as a key to man's improvement, would necessarily be somehow insulting and discriminatory, as it can only target those who will take the time and trouble to educate themselves with this, and that will happen to be in the circumstance to possibly believe in it, circumstance that is unfairly considered (maybe only in an underlying, unconcious way, but it is logically unavoidable in a way or another), as a mark of spiritual superiority over those who do not believe the same.
Instead, there is a completely different, non-spiritual style of
solution that would be completely free from such risks, pains and
troubles. Ideed, here is an exemple
of
an article among others that addresses the scientific method
for improving the human being, which can similarly apply to most
of
human qualities or virtues we may want to promote. In particular,
I
see five main categories of qualities which should be promoted by
a
scientific procedure of assisted genetic evolution of the human
species: health, beauty, intelligence, joy,
morality. (Some parents are interested in athletics, what can be
seen
as an aspect of health ...). (More details in a few articles:
Eugenics - Nature
versus nurture - Race
and athletics - Race
and intelligence - another
article)
So what, would not human virtues be genetic in
origin? Although the genes do not "produce" intelligence
nor virtue in a direct and strictly material sense (because spirit
inhabits matter without being reduced to it), they still provide
some
neurological conditions that promote or hinder it. No matter that
the
bio-psychological mechanisms of this intermediate causal
relationship
is out of reach, the point is that they exist. Indeed, for
example,
if cats are morally more quiet and gentle than dogs, if big dogs
are
more secure to educate than lions and if some races of dogs are
more
evil than those of other races, this is clearly not (at least not
exclusively) for educational reasons, even less for religious
reasons
but indeed for genetic reasons. There is no reason why the
situation
would not be similar for humans.
But, the efforts to improve the genetic heritage of human beings
are cumulative: any action in this regard has averagely permanent
effects to all future generations to come, in other words it is in
itself a progress. In other words, to reiterate this work for 100
generations, has in probability average a persistent effect on
mankind (on all generations to come without any time limit), 100
times greater than if it had been carried out only on the first
generation. So even though the progress achieved by this act looks
relatively low in a generation, its benefit is multiplied by the
practically illimited number of future generations. This benefit
could thus be qualified as eternal.
The spiritual works to
improve people, on the other hand, are contingent, evanescent,
artificial (inculcated from the outside) and with limited effect
over
time. A moral progress through spiritual means can subsist to the
next generation only if the lesson will be taught again, which
requires some hard work, and as a condition for persistence this
work
requires to be repeated indefinitely in every generation. But
there
is no guarantee that it will be, and actually, in Europe,
religions
are being abandoned (their virtues being not really good ...). The
moral lessons, good or bad, they have inculcated, are being lost
and
forgotten in favour of any novelty that will stand. There is no
cure
to this process : man being what he is, his nature will take over
sooner or later, and what some wanted to make through education
can
always be forgotten, processed, replaced by something else, better
or
worse, depending on whatever new ideas will develop, and the moral
lessons of the past will become ancient history.
The only significant long-lasting effects that the unnecessary
choices and works of the past people can have over the nature and
character of future humans, is the genetic heritage, which is the
parameter that plays in practice the role of a deep nature of man
(by
its relative constancy and the fact that it is necessarily
transmitted by nature to every next generation without any need of
further attention). But, what were the works of religion in this
area? (By the way, their program for changing man already
fossilized
since many centuries, as is required by the unsurpassable divine
revelation they claim to express, so that they are finally
becoming
quite unchanged and obsolete...). Religion has worked to change
humans toward evil, to make them increasingly bad in themselves.
Indeed, it ordered men and women of the highest virtues to being
priests, monks or nuns in order to destroy the genes of virtue. It
ordered the raped women not to abort in order to spread the genes
of
the rapist behaviour. It ordered the youth virtuous people to
refrain
from love relationships in their youth, in order to reserve to the
vicious the monopoly of early procreation, and also the priority
of
finding the best partners, so to load on the virtuous the risk of
not
chosen celibacy, thus losing their genes. It promoted faithfulness
as
an ultimate virtue to prevent anyone from reassigning the chances
of
genetic transmission to who will finally appear better than those
that the first meeting opportunities and their machiavelic tricks
had
appointed. But these are perhaps mere collateral damages ?
Uh, how
surprised I was to see an article
on
a Catholic site that, to redeem (?) his Church, advocated
eugenics
! but a much more violent Eugenics than the one that I would find
relevant: I only advocate the idea of selecting gamete donors
where
artifical procreation is practiced, which can naturally happen in
a
liberal world and thus only concern a minority of people, with a
slow
and long-term impact, without disturbing the majority of people;
and
also of providing some practical help for the best people to find
their love. But this one, who excludes as any good Catholic any
idea
of artificial procreation, speaks about moralizing the people
(yes,
that's Catholicism: considering good actions as something that, to
be
worth praising, have to be preferably operated through the most
painful methods, the moral duty to self-sacrifice) to compel them
to
have, either many children or none according to their qualities
!!!!!
Ai Ai Ai ...
Here will only be given a sketch of ideas suggesting to the hurried reader, how the above analysis may be relevant to the real world's problems. Real effective implementation of such solutions and how they would indeed work, would of course be harder to explain, but most of the conception work is already done, just visit the links.
Hard subject. Just being generous is not enough to solve the problem. Supporting an uncontrolled growth of the world's population, and expecting all people to live in decent conditions, may almost necessarily lead to overpopulation and its physical limit: environmental destruction, depletion of resources, an irreversible loss of biodiversity for millions of years, and then again overpopulation, more starvation and war for the dispute of natural resources. Giving more illimited support to a group of people just because they are manier as they made more children than others, would be unfair as they have contributed to worsen overpopulation. Ifever we like the genetic evolution of the human species to remain positive so to respect the very process that had let humanity appear at the first place, we can't afford to just let the selective advantage be reduced to the natural fertility rate.
Solutions:
Online jobs, to provide wealth
For those who are not able to live happy with the good online jobs that a good online world economy could provide, probably their genetic heritage is not good. To not inflict it to future generation, they could freely choose the option to get non-heritable charity money under condition of sterilization; they remain free to work as baby-sitters. (This monetary operation will be facilitated by a new money system as I defined)
Some main causes of wars are state politics and propaganda.
A new online political order can be made without states, and propaganda can be defeated by the reliable information system it provides.
Another cause of war is the difficulty to stop precisely the bad people without collateral damage.
A good worldwide online money system can make easy to cancel the bad people's personal money account by a mere computer operation, to let them no more buy anything from honest people.
A straightforward application of the above formula yields the well-known answer: make green taxes at a sufficiently high level. The new online world order, once established, would make the implementation of such taxes straightforward. Especially a tax on all extraction of fossil carbon (proportional to the quantity of carbon), and increase it at a rate near the average secure interest rate. The same for the use of disputed natural resource. The fruit of this tax should only go to a collective account of « nobody » that can then be dedicated to general interest expenses. The good management of this, requires of course a really good worldwide political order to be implemented, as already said.
Solution:
It only took the woman to know in advance how bad
this man would be before marrying him.
And to have been given the
opportunity to find the nice guy instead.
But, if while such a good online dating system had given her this chance to make a good action towards the nice guys and the positive evolution of human species, she did not want to take that care but prefered to reproduce the genes of violence, then she deserves her fate.
You may ask: what if it's too hard to predict how a man may behave ?
Two answers:
First, of course, it should be made easy for the woman victim of a violent husband, to divorce and obtain financial reparation for the violence endured. But you may ask, what if he can't afford to pay enough ?
As this may be not enough, she/they just needed to subscribe an insurance in advance. Of course, the financial activity of providing this insurance, has not to be reserved to any big business. It can as well be done by relatives of the people involved, without need of any special license. Then the insurance company/person will see if it's so hard to predict or not.
A very efficient online justice system can ensure, first to avoid unreliable people, then to obtain financial compensation in any dispute where the responsibility can be established (and it can then often be established much more easily than now). Even for disputes over a few bucks.
Of course, traces of all acts and identification of all people involved will be necessary conditions.
-- Main Cause of evil: there is
nothing
more selfish, cruel and Machiavellian than Love. Especially the
True
and Spiritual Love (I have an idea of a future text which will
develop this point), that seeks its virtue and its
responsibilities
in the navel of its own soul, staying blind to the cause-effect
relationships happening in the outside world, on which the
effective
realization of good and evil depends; that is ready to let the
rest
of the world perish for saving its inner purity, and that will
always
justify its disastrous actions by its resolute ignorance, its
impotence and its good intentions.
-- Main Cause of the good:
there is nothing more generous, selfless and effective to spread
good
in the world than Science and Technology, provided that they are
developed properly in the useful directions (which is alas not
fully
the case yet).