Scene: Dinner table, chez Lex
Principal players: Your humble scribe, his eldest daughter
Chorus: CINCHouse, Our Youngest
Eldest Daughter: Stop stressing about it dad, there’s nothing to be done.
YHS: I’m not stressing, kiddo, but it’s an awful, incomprehensible thing.
ED: It had to happen.
YHS: What do you mean, it had to happen?
ED: It was meant to be.
YHS: (Unpleasantly surprised) You mean it was “fated”?
ED: That’s right, it was fated.
YHS: (Frowning slightly) Do you believe in fate?
ED: Yes – I believe everything happens for a reason.
YHS: That’s not fate, that’s causality. (Brief discussion of causality ensues.)
ED: Then I believe in fate.
YHS: Do you mean fate as a kind of predestination, that every act and thought and result we have is pre-ordained? Or something recognizable only in retrospect?
ED: The first.
YHS: Why would you believe that? It runs counter to our culture’s intellectual tradition, apart from a certain Calvinist strain of thought – a exceptional strain that only goes to prove the overall rule. What about free will?
ED: You mean that thing about staring into the abyss?
YHS: No, that’s Nietzsche, although you’re close. I’m talking about your God-given freedom to choose. Or if you prefer a non-religious argument, Sartre’s point about freedom being the defining characteristic of a being-for-itself.
ED: Not following you.
YHS: If you lay a two-by-four across the carpet and walk from end to end you will do so without trembling and without falling. Lay the same two-by-four across a chasm and you will shake with fear at the edge of the precipice. The two-by-four is the same, unchanging (and, by its own volition at least, unchangeable) “being-in-itself”, but your consciousness – the “being-for-itself” – is aware of its freedom.
When you stand at the edge of the precipice you are not afraid that you might fall. You are afraid that you might jump. A part of you wants to jump, to see how it feels, to feel the wind in your hair, to see the rocks coming up. The rest of you is aware of that ever-present desire to self-destruct – this is the source of your fear.
To be a conscious being is to be free. The awareness of that freedom – and the conflicting intrusion of physical reality and events – leads to what Sartre called “nausea.”
ED: What about those university students? What freedom did they have?
YHS: Which is precisely why this whole thing is so disturbing: Their free will – their defining characteristic as conscious human beings – was unnaturally and terminally imposed upon by the free will actions of another. It’s monstrous.
ED: I still believe that it happened because it had to.
YHS: (Hiding an element of exasperation) Look – one of the things I admire least about a certain strain of middle eastern thought is its “inshallah” fatalism. It is a recipe for passive inaction in the face of the supposedly inevitable. It forgives everything, or if it does not, excuses it. (Pauses, awaiting a reaction.)
If we have no free will, what do we make of the concept of sin?
ED: I don’t believe in sin.
YHS: You don’t believe in sin?
ED: I think it’s just a way to guilt people out, stop them from doing fun things.
YHS: Let’s put aside the sins of the flesh for now (although I’d like to get back to that later), and Old Testament proscriptions against shellfish. What did the New Testament say was the sum of all the law and the prophets?
ED: (Eyes rolling, recites) “Love your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”
YHS: So take that out of the religious context and put it into a personal and communitarian frame. To love God is to follow in his ways, or – put another way – to ourselves become more nearly perfect, the best we can be. And from the community perspective, are not those societies, and those who live within them, better off for having certain rules of behavior? Penalties for stealing, lying, etc?
ED: Yes, yes – I get all that. I just don’t believe that God is up there keeping score, waiting to cast bad people into Hell.
(A brief discussion on the existence and ontology of “Hell” ensues. Rivers of fire and imps with pitchforks are quickly discounted, the alternate theory proposed that hell is an eternal absence from the presence of God. Questions are posed about whether such absence – conceded arguendo - is conscious or not. It is postulated that it is probably not if we accept the theory of a loving God – a necessary predicate for the existence not just of Hell but also of Heaven. Why then concern ourselves for a loss we are not conscious of? A lost potentiality is still a loss, even if we ourselves are unaware of it. Lips are pursed all around. The discussion is shelved as ultimately unknowable in this life.)
YHS: Well if you don’t believe in sin, do you believe in evil? How about what Hitler did?
ED: Well, yes, I believe in evil, and I’m not forgiving what Hitler did or making any excuse for it. But he didn’t think he was being evil, no one thinks of themselves as being evil.
Our Youngest: Right, it’s all relative to what each person thinks. (Departs for the bathroom.)
YHS: Hmm. But doesn’t it matter that the rest of us, seeing evil, recognize it as such? Can not those of us who are bound together in community declare something which hurts us all individually and collectively as objectively evil, regardless of the point of view of anti-social psychopaths? And do not those personal actions which take us away from our more perfect selves: abuse of alcohol, illegal drugs, promiscuity – do not those also form a kind of sin, or evil? If not against the nature God has given to us, then at least to ourselves?
ED: You guys drink, you seem to enjoy it.
YHS: (For every thing there is a time, meh.) There is a difference between responsible adult use and any and all abuse. We try very hard to be aware of our limits and to be responsible. (Side discussion ensues on the dangers of alcoholism, health risks to other behaviors, dementias, etc.)
ED: I’m not trying to change your mind, I’m just telling you what I think.
YHS: Neither am I. We’re just having a discussion. Something to think about.
ED: Fine (thinking, “Parents!”).
YHS: Fine (thinking, “Teenagers!”).
CINCHouse: More shrimp?
ED, YHS: (Together) Yes, please!
What a fascinating conversation between you and your daughter. It was an honest heartfelt exchange of ideas that didn’t deteriorate to a battlefield which is often the way these things go — as witnessed throughout the blogosphere.
Even within my own family, our conversations on this very subject can become very passionate :>)
I find Situational Ethics interesting — why does a Christian ethical theory based on the principal that love is the ultimate law(which is at the heart of the NT) and therefore in certain situations certain moral principles can be set aside if love is best served –seem to anger/annoy Christians?
If we start with the premise that all societies share certain moral universals, then why do so many conflicts seem intractable? Even in the blogosphere, we have people who talk past each other, convinced that the other person is incredibly dumb or willfully blind to what’s in front of him/her. We don’t just disagree, we have a hard time imagining how anyone could disagree on “this” point that seems “so obvious”. How can someone tolerate abortion? How could someone not? How can some women go out in public covering their faces? How could they not? Is it possible that our brains moral circuitry is affected by our genes, culture and personal experience and therefore wired in different patterns?
If I can co-exist peacefully with a woman who covers her face by choice, does it mean that I have abandoned my core values? Or am I simply a reasonable person? Likewise, if I cannot co-exist peacefully with her, then what kind of person am I? While each of our values are in conflict with each other, are they not equally correct and fundamental? Do they not both reside in concept at the heart of American values: individual choice?
I’m not a moral relativist — mathematics has proven the existence of universal truths, yet I don’t find it a contradiction to accept the premise of value pluralism: the idea that there are several values which may be equally correct and fundamental, and yet in conflict with each other. The laws that govern the physics of the macro-world,(Newtonian physics) do not govern the physics of the micro-world( quantum physics) yet they are equally correct and fundamental, and they co-exist in conflict with each other.
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ED: I think it?
ED: I think it’s just a way to guilt people out, stop them from doing fun things.
Fun things like blowing away people you don’t like, or having a harem full of sex partners.
There weren’t a lot of fun things to do back when the Roman Catholic church came around. They didn’t have to restrict people having fun, they were more concerned with survival and continuation of society.
People only see it sin now as a way to restrict people from doing fun things, is because people are more free. Meaning, people can do things that folks 500 years ago could not. Not would not, could not. They were prevented from doing so, they were not free just as we are not free to breathe in water as if it is air. There are physical limitations that are not the same as religious and societal ones.
YHS: No, that’s Nietzsche, although you’re close. I’m talking about your God-given freedom to choose. Or if you prefer a non-religious argument, Sartre’s point about freedom being the defining characteristic of a being-for-itself.
ED: Not following you.
I think you should have just said that free will is what can change a person’s fate.
ED: What about those university students? What freedom did they have?
The freedom to choose to try to run, to try to hide, or try to kill the killer. The freedom to choose to be prepared in reaction to an attacker. The freedom to choose not to be helpless, not to be an easy target. There are no physical limitations, and it is not as if the law can prevent you from doing what you want to do. Since laws are just like sins, they prevent you from doing what you want to do. But if you really want to do it, they cannot stop you from doing it, just as it did not stop Chou.
ED: Yes, yes – I get all that. I just don’t believe that God is up there keeping score, waiting to cast bad people into Hell.
She sounds as if she would be more amenable to the Deism beliefs that some of the Founding Fathers interpreted God as, or specifically that God is a natural god, not a humanocentric one.
ED: Well, yes, I believe in evil, and I’m not forgiving what Hitler did or making any excuse for it. But he didn’t think he was being evil, no one thinks of themselves as being evil.
Our Youngest: Right, it’s all relative to what each person thinks. (Departs for the bathroom.)
I hope your Youngest was being sarcastic. ED is right basically, not a lot of people do things because they think it is evil. Most people think their actions are doing good in this world, or their beliefs at least if not their actions.
In a general sense, entropy is fate, it is what makes fate possible. For entropy is the fate of the universe, the inevitable fate. Sooner or later, that is, without an input from a different system/universe/dimension, the universe will face maximum entropy or heat death. In relation to humanity, this means that if you let Evil do whatever it wants, then that becomes the fate of people. It is destined to happen, which is why free will is important, because only the strength of free will can change destiny and fate.
Everyone will die sooner or later. That is fate. But while it is fate that cannot be denied, it can be changed. The time and manner of your death may be changed, if not the inevitability of the final end.
I hope your ED sees the connection between the laws of society and sins. If she truly believes that sins are a limitation upon one’s freedom to do fun things, then she must also recognize the limitations of society that prevents a person from changing his fate. Society said that you must not do violence, that you must not protect yourself by killing the attacker in a brutal and efficient manner. But society is wrong. Fate, as with evil, can only happen if you let it happen. If you stop resisting, you can die easily. If you stop trying to save your life, your fate will be here very soon.
The same with evil. If you stop trying to resist evil, evil will manipulate things in such a way that the final end will be where everything good is destroyed. Everyone can claim that they are strong, but this does not make them strong. The same with Good and Evil. The same with free will and fate. If you are weak, then your actions are decided by fate more often than not. If you are strong on the average, then your actions and life will be decided by your will.
To return to what you said about free will, there are limitations upon the will, free or otherwise. In fact, there are limitations to everything. And as it relates to fate, fate is the limitation placed upon free will. The co-existence of opposites. Light and Darkness. Good and Evil, also pertains to choice and the absence of choice.
If we start with the premise that all societies share certain moral universals, then why do so many conflicts seem intractable?-Huntress
I think in a sense because not everything can be validated or found out by humans, so all that remains is argument. Humans are not very good at argument as a way to find truth, we are much better at doing, at experimenting, and at finding out truths by ourselves. Rather than talking about them. It is not as if inventors found what they found because they got together in a group and started talking. Sure, partnerships can result, and benefits from the research of others accrued, but these are just foundations. They are not the doing, itself.
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Wow. What a great conversation you were able to have with her. I think you’re a pretty great dad to be able to talk about this with your kids the way you did.
+Warren+