Month: October 2020

On a more personal note

crimsonLeave a comment

I know that my posts are generally pretty reflective, but this time, I’m really going to speak from the heart. You may already notice this post is occurring at a very unusual time. I even missed my last “scheduled” post. With the pandemic raging, and especially with the looming presidential election in the United States of America (USA), frankly, I’m exhausted and a bit depressed.

It’s really hard staying at home so much. It isn’t even just that I’m staying at home either. Most people seem to be. There isn’t as much socializing. There isn’t as much getting out and doing stuff. I leave the house and avoid people, like the plague. That saying holds substantially more meaning presently. “Like the plague” is precisely what it is. We are treating the pandemic “like the plague,” being all paranoid and critical of nearness. I was never that fond of simple handshaking. Other people’s grimy hands “infecting” my own. I often would seek out a nearby washroom to wash my hands after hand shakes if I could. But now, I miss that simple act. I miss contact.

I am very privileged and lucky. I have a partner and she takes really good care of me. I try my hardest not to be a burden on her, but sometimes I think she wishes I would be more of a burden. I support her projects; I want her to truly express her freedom; I want her to be able to demonstrate full personhood. However, I think she believes I am doing all of this at my own expense. I try to tell her I am not, but she doesn’t really believe me.

I am an Earth sign. I don’t really hold much weight in astrological stuff, but in this case it really does fit. I am slow and patient. As I get older, I get even slower and even more patient even. During this pandemic, I’ve been looking for a job, and while it is always disappointing when my calls are not returned, I am still very patient for the opportunities that eventually do come. I am not unhappy presently. Perhaps a bit melancholy, and possibly a little depressed, but I’m not unhappy. I’ve been unhappy in the past; this is definitely not that.

My life, like so many other people’s lives, has been turned on its head. I am treading in unfamiliar territory. And this experience has been more enlightening than I’d ever have expected. I stay at home most days, cleaning the house and tidying up. I do dishes. I do laundry (a little, I’m not trusted with the delicates yet). I even cook a little too, though I worry my meals will not be as well received as hers are. I am very much domestic now. And I’m starting to realize the primary issue with women’s lot.

To be clear, I am not regarded as a woman. I never lived a woman’s or a girl’s life. I am unfamiliar with all those details and experiences. But I feel like my present experience is giving me a taste of it. The stereotypical duties of the housewife. Spend your time at home doing all those duties at home. There is plenty to do. It is always surprising to me how much work there is to do around the house. There is just so much. So much to do that I am barely able to do the things I want/need to do. That is, as a man, I have often thought that certain tasks and activities were important. And, of course, when I have completed those tasks, I felt like my work was done, and I had earned a break to watch television or play a video game. But I am realizing how wrong I was.

The work is never done. Tasks are endless. You can clean some dishes, but there are more five minutes later. Clean the clothes, and there are more clothes already in need of washing. Vacuum, and collect some of the dust and debris, but miss so much more. It doesn’t matter what I do, I can never do enough. I can never complete a task. All I can do is abate the inevitable. But it is still more than that. Because all these sorts of tasks take me away from other tasks I often think are more important, like applying for jobs, or socializing with friends, or writing blog posts. Are these things really more important? I wonder sometimes. I wonder more and more these days.

I think on all this, and I realize something. This is slavery. This is an inability to express freedom; an inability to pursue one’s projects fully. I am performing all these duties at the expense of those duties I may want to perform. My choice is getting lost. At first, it made me angry and upset. But I realize now that it is simply another revealing of a truth. When my wife takes care of me, performing all these functions and so much more, so that I can sit on the couch and write a blog post like this, she is accepting her own slavery. She is giving up her own freedom in order to allow me mine.

It reminds me of something Aristotle wrote, which at the moment I cannot find. I believe it was part of his discussion in his Politics. He suggested that for philosophers to be able to do philosophy, others had to do the other work that needed to be done. That one needed to be free from the duties of every day life, like cooking and cleaning, in order to be able to contemplate and think on things. I believe this was part of his conclusions related to natural slavery; that some people are simply born or destined to be slaves, perhaps by their very genetics (though Aristotle was clearly not thinking about genetics at the time, as genetics is a very recent field of study). When I first read this, I immediately connected it with patriarchy.

I’ve only had the most minute taste of what it is like. I know I am still a man, and so I will never truly experience the life of a woman. In fact, I have a wife and my wife will always insist on taking care of me and attending to my needs. In fact, if I don’t let her, she actually takes insult to my reluctance. I’ve experienced this same situation in other settings too, where a guy I worked with insisted he had to pay for our lunches because he was older than the rest of us. Like some weird tradition I was not familiar with, he felt a duty to take care of us younger workers by buying our lunches all the time. If we discretely paid the bill ourselves, he would get incredibly upset, like we had punched him in the face or called him a bad name. In all these cases, the people seem to feel a duty to take care of me in some way, and if I deny them in this duty, they get very upset. I’ve since learned to accept it when people want to take care of me, at least somewhat. I care for them, and I don’t want to insult them or make them feel bad. I always feel I don’t deserve their appreciation, but my feelings regarding the situation are not important.

With all this background, I return to my own current experiences, trying to take care of my wife the way she always takes care of me. I don’t feel angry or upset or even sad about doing all this work. I feel the workload is unaccomplishable, but necessary. I say to myself, “it doesn’t have to be perfect; it just needs to be better than it was.” And I’ve become more understanding of the importance of the various duties and tasks I have. I’ve reevaluated. I’ve re-valued those tasks. Those I had thought were important are no longer as important as I remember, while others have become more so. My priorities have changed.

I am not unhappy. Quite the contrary. Okay, perhaps this is saying too much. If being unhappy is to not be in a state of happiness, then perhaps I am not happy. But I am also not the opposite of happy either. I am not upset or angry or sad. Maybe a little depressed, because the seemingly hopeless tasks can never be completed. Like Sisyphus, always pushing the boulder up the slope, only to watch it roll back down, over and over again. This is the life before me. This is the life that, I think, so many experience. The life of slavery.

I think that one is only upset about being a slave when one thinks they ought to have more freedom. And perhaps we all ought to have more freedom than we have. If democracy is the highest, best form of politics, and if the Americans are right to value freedom as much as they do, then perhaps slavery needs to be abolished more completely than it has (supposedly) been. Those aristocratic individuals who use their power to manipulate the world of those around them, in order to leverage their own projects and express their own freedom, ought to instead use their power to support the projects of those around them. Instead of using their power to support their own desires, perhaps they ought to use their power to support the desires of others. Perhaps the model many of us are familiar with, where the manager has subordinates below them, should instead be the subordinates with the manager below. Perhaps who is accountable to whom should be flipped. Perhaps the president of the USA ought to be accountable to his people, rather than his people being accountable to him.

I have this “thing” I call consciousness

crimsonLeave a comment

Today, I want to talk about something that I honestly don’t really know how to talk about. When I think about who and what I am, I often strip myself down to this “thing” that I call consciousness. However, the use of the term consciousness confounds precisely what the thing is I’m trying to describe. I will attempt to clarify what I’m talking about here.

What makes me “me?” If I grant that the world is at least partially deterministic—that the world, much of the time, follows a chain of events where one event will generally be responsible for the coming about of another event—then I would expect a part of who I am to be a result of various events that came before me. My parents got together and produced offspring, of which I was the first. My genetic material came from them, so I am in some way a part of my parents physically. Furthermore, during my early years, my parents taught me many things about the world, attempting to prepare me for a time when they would no longer be around. That training is also a part of who I am; through habituation and experience I view the world a particular way and understand the world a particular way. They were a significant part of the outside influences that affected me growing up, and so I am in some way a part of my parents psychologically as well.

Further to all this, my time spent alive has given me opportunity to encounter much more of the world than what my parents might have liked. I’ve encountered many other people beyond my parents. I’ve encountered many non-human entities, such as the pets I had growing up, or other animals encountered in travels. I’ve also interacted with countless non-living entities, from pencils to cars to buildings. All of these things I’ve encountered have left their mark on me as well, in various ways. The impact of seeing the majestic beauty of a mountain, or even simply stubbing my toe on the coffee table in my living room.

All of these interactions, at least in part, make up who I am. Those that view all of these as the ONLY things that make up who and what I am would likely be called Empiricists, as the Empiricists believe that all knowledge ONLY comes from my sensible experiences. In a purely deterministic world, one that is entirely governed by chains of causes and effects, it would make much sense that I am only as much as I have thus far described. That I am akin to a very complex, biological machine that follows a very predictable pattern of actions and choices. Given enough information, anyone could determine what I would say and do at any time.

But there is something more. It is hard for me to describe, but there is something else (perhaps) within me that is beyond simply these genetic and environmental aspects. Stuff happens in my mind. Even as I type these words, within me I am thinking about what I what to write, reasoning out the order of the words as well as why I want to use these words. It might be argued that this is still deterministic in nature, but it seems to be beyond simple sensible experience. Within me, I have done something with the experiences I have received and turned them into something else. If I consider that part of me that is processing all this information from my experiences to be “me,” then I might be considered following the Rationalists, who suggested that true knowledge comes from reason and reason alone. If this were true, then who and what I am would likely more closely align with my mind, and could be conceived with the absence of my body. After all, I am simply the processing part of this experience machine.

When I consider these views, I think to myself that there is still something about me that is not captured in either viewpoint. At least not entirely. There does seem to be a part of me that experiences the world, providing me with a lot of raw information that I can use. And there does seem to be a part of me that reasons, taking all this raw information and turning it into decisions and choices. But there is something else within me that I have an even harder time explaining.

Here and now, I “see” the world, like from a “first person perspective.” Sort of like the video games that have become so popular. I use the term “see,” but it is so much more. I hear the world, taste the world, feel the world. But more than that, I reflect on the world and on myself. I talk to myself, from within. Others cannot hear it, but I have an inner voice, that only I can hear. In addition to that voice, I also hear music as well. Patterns of sounds and feelings. I generally refer to this thing as being my consciousness. However, the term “consciousness” seems to be incomplete. For one, it seems caught up in the idea that I am awake. If I restrict its meaning to when I am awake, then I am no longer a conscious being when I am asleep. If that were to be a requirement of consciousness, then when I am asleep, I am no longer a conscious being; during that time, I am something less.

It is possible that I am hoping for there to be more to it. It is possible that there is not. Perhaps when I am asleep, there really is no me to speak of. And then, when I wake up in the morning, I come to exist once again. Or perhaps, as CGP Grey suggests, “every night’s slip into unconsciousness, the warm embrace of the Reaper, and every morning the first and only day of a new creature’s conscious life,” here suggesting that my consciousness ends each night, and the consciousness that comes about each morning is simply a unique consciousness that perhaps resembles the previous consciousness, but is in fact something altogether different. His “The Trouble with Transporters” YouTube video is, in my opinion, the best discussion of this topic ever, and I highly recommend taking a moment to watch it (https://youtu.be/nQHBAdShgYI).

Taking all this seriously, I have come to the conclusion (for now) that this thing within me, that I generally call consciousness, is something akin to fire. I talked about this briefly in my previous post entitled “I am not solid.” That my consciousness is not a monolithic, nor static, thing but something fluid and dynamic. I do not think it is a coincidence that many ancient philosophers, such as Heraclitus, held that fire was a fundamental element involved with much of what we are. If I am correct, then the consciousness I now presently possess is the equivalent to a raging bonfire, made up of a massive amount of these smaller atomic consciousness elements, while when I am asleep, it is equivalent to the glowing embers of coals, made up of a very small amount of smaller elements. Furthermore, this would suggest that consciousness could present itself in larger and smaller forms, such as perhaps a lesser consciousness within a non-human animal like a dog or a cat. That these “lesser” beings have a consciousness comparable to our own, yet not the raging bonfire, but perhaps more like the ample campfire used to cook marshmallows on.

This seems (to me) to be consistent with my interpretation of how my dreams have operated. That while dreaming, where I may not be aware I am dreaming, the world and my faculties seem to be diminished. The best example of this occurred when I was quite young, when I had a very strange nightmare. In the dream, I had no sensory input; I did not see anything, hear anything, taste, smell, or feel anything. Furthermore, I could not remember anything from moment to moment, my memory lasting all of a second perhaps. The entire dream was me saying to myself (using my inner voice), “who am I,” followed by “where am I.” Unfortunately, after saying one phrase, I would forget having said the other phrase, so I would repeat the other. The entire dream was simply me saying “who am I,” then “where am I,” then “who am I,” then “where am I,” over and over again. Only once I awoke did I remember everything that had taken place. I could not tell you for how long I was in this insane loop, but it was for quite a time. This happened before I was 5 years old; it probably illuminates a lot about how I have come to be as I am today.

In other dreams, while dreaming, I would not know or understand certain things, but upon waking up, I would recognize that I had been dreaming and would suddenly understand the things I could not understand in the dream. It seemed to me that I was able to understand things in a downward fashion, into the dreams, but not in an upward fashion, out of the dreams. Upon reading René Descartes and his discussions about greater and lesser realities (in his argument to how God must have imprinted his stamp on us for us to have a concept of infinity), it seemed to me that perhaps that is how dreams also work. That the dream is the lesser reality, and from the dream I can only understand the world of the dream and any other lesser realities than the dream. However, from a greater reality, such as when I am awake, I can understand the waking world, and any lesser realities such as the reality of the dream. If this were all true, then it is conceivable that there are greater realities than this one, where I in some way awake from this dream, into a greater world. It puts an interesting spin on the idea of an afterlife.

These perspectives given to me by my dreams and by my other experiences leads me back to this first person viewpoint that I have, from within my consciousness. I considered the possibility that it could be like a passive observer, like a pilot flying an airplane on autopilot, simply watching the plane fly. However, without any interaction at all, how would my conscious mind have any idea that the passive observer existed, after all there is no interaction in the passive situation. Thus, the observer must be at least in some small way active. There has to be an interaction between the observer and the consciousness for the consciousness to have an understanding of the observer. At least this holds in a world that is deterministic, where the nature of the interaction follows from cause to effect. If there was another method of interaction that allowed for the observer to be detected, then perhaps it is this other method of interaction that is taking place.

Unfortunately, I presently cannot imagine another way of interacting than through cause and effect. That event A has some impact on bringing about event B is to say that events A and B interact in a way. If event A does not contribute to the bringing about of event B, or the other way around, this is to say that events A and B do not interact. However, in the case of a passive observer, there is still an interaction. While the passive observer does not necessarily cause events to occur, the events from the world (through the body in some way) do bring about something for the observer to observe. Perhaps the issue isn’t whether there is or is not an interaction, but in which directions the interactions occur or do not occur. Both the passive and the active observer are in some way affected by what happens, as they observe what happens. The difference is then that the passive observer does not induce a reaction back in the opposite direction. And as my conscious mind is somehow aware that there is something like an observer, then the observer has induced something of an effect on my conscious mind. Therefore, it cannot be a passive observer.

I have made a lot of progress here, but I have also barely scratched the surface. The best I can suggest at this point is that this thing I have been calling a consciousness, this thing that is me, is some sort of an active observer. The question I might pose next, is how much does this active observer contribute to my conscious mind.

The (American) Center of the Universe

crimsonLeave a comment

I start with an apology. If you exist in a location where the going-ons in the United States of America (USA) do not significantly influence your day-to-day life, or if you do not even know what is going on in the USA, then what I will be writing about today may be of little interest to you. Furthermore, I am jealous if that is the case. You see, where I live in the world, the things that go on in the USA significantly affect my day-to-day life. To the point that it seems like the USA is the center of the universe. I know it is not actually the center of all things, but for me it seems to be much of the time.

I do not live in the USA; I live in Canada. I grew up in Alberta, to be precise. Anyone who knows the stereotype of Alberta may now believe that I am a redneck, right wing conservative. Of course, if you’ve been reading my blog posts up to this point, you should also realize that this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Perhaps it is because of my upbringing and environment that I rebelled later in life, likely falling much more on the left side of the political spectrum. If you’ve been reading my posts, you will know that I value freedom pretty highly. It is ironic, I suppose, that the USA considers freedom to be particularly important as well.

A lot is going on in the USA presently. Aside from a raging pandemic, there is widespread racism, violence, and an impending presidential election about to happen. Actually, technically, the election has already begun as many have already submitted their early ballots for the election. This, of course, makes all that is going on all the more controversial. However, I will not begin here. I will begin about four years ago, with the previous election, which resulted in Donald Trump placed into the office of the president of the USA.

I remember when it was announced. I was in a university pub, surrounded by philosophy and political science students. If you are not familiar, there is another stereotype related to university students, that they are all liberals. The group of people I found myself surrounded by expressed a strong, sort of liberalism with the announcement. Being all intelligent, critically thinking university students, they could not imagine the travesty that had occurred that resulted in Trump’s success. Something must clearly be wrong in the USA if he got elected as their president.

For the next couple hours, discussions ensued regarding how best to prevent this tragedy from ever occurring again. It culminated in the suggestion that all Americans should be forced to take a political science/elections class in high school, so that they would know how to critically assess potential candidates and would then only elect those actually worthy of office. If it is not clear, the very discussion belays a subtle opinion that the students overlooked: they had already prejudged the situation and decided that Trump was unfit for office.

Now, four years later, I’m sure that many people would suggest that their greatest fears have been affirmed. Trump’s management of the pandemic, alone, raises grave doubts as to his political fitness. The controversy that suggests he knew that COVID-19 was a lethal disease, but chose to play it down in order not to incite panic within the population. And there’s the issue of how he has chosen to deal with the Black Lives Matter movement, recently sparked by the killing of George Floyd by police in May. There are plenty of examples of issues Trump has chosen to deal with in unconventional and controversial ways. However, there is still an issue that seems to have escaped the entire discussion.

I am considered a Canadian. I live in Canada. My life revolves around Canadian affairs in my Canadian environment. So why am I spending so much time paying attention to and worrying about the USA and what goes on there? Is the USA the center of my universe? Should I be doing more to prevent the re-election of Donald Trump as president of the USA? Is there to be a call to arms, or a rally to protest, or some other movement that needs to be raised?

No.

While I can sit here and think about and discuss what is happening in the USA, ultimately that is the limit to what I can do. I can talk. I can listen. I can express my opinions. It is easy for me to criticize events in the USA and suggest that were I their president, I would behave differently. However, I am not an American. I was not elected by the population of the USA into the office of presidency. And, admittedly, I am not very familiar with the American political system, how it works, nor how I might navigate it in order to get elected.

I am not an American. I do not live in the USA. I do not actually know what the majority of people in the USA think about their president, nor why they may have elected him. Yes, there is talk about election fraud, both in the current and previous election. Yes, it is possible Trump has been playing the system in order to keep himself in office much longer than I may believe he deserves. However, this may simply be an example of a man who, unlike me, really does understand the American political system. He certainly has figured out how to milk the American economy for all he could. While these actions may be morally reprehensible, following the morality that I tend to support, this is far from suggesting he weaseled his way into office without the support of the American people.

I am not an American. I have enough trouble dissecting the Canadian political system, trying to understand how it can even be called “democracy” with all the representation going on. But my lack of understanding does not automatically suggest that the Canadian political engine is about to break down and fall apart. Similarly, the American political system may be functioning precisely as it was intended. The American dream seemed to suggest that anyone could make it in that country; all it takes is for one to buckle down and work hard, and they can be successful. Perhaps it is the precise understanding of “buckle down and work hard” that might need to be reexamined, similar to how Darwin’s survival of the fittest does not suggest that the fittest are those who are physically the strongest.

I say today what I said four years ago: the American people will do what they think is best. Four years ago, they elected Donald Trump as their president, regardless of how I or my peers in Canada may have felt about it. Right away, they will make their decision known again. If there is a problem with election fraud, as Trump himself is suggesting, then those same American people will react as they feel is appropriate. There could possibly be a bloody civil war or other large rebellion, if it turns out that Trump does not have significant support by the American people. Or, it may simply turn out that Americans really do want a guy like Donald Trump as their president. Who are we, as non-Americans, to criticize the democratic choices of the American citizens?