posted
In my flamboyance, I said I'd post occasional articles of mine here. Problem is, most of my stuff is in Hebrew these days for logistical reasons; so here are little segments of correspondence between a friend of mine and myself - myself being the person with a severe 'trust problem' (which has routinely been proven to be the right ideology); she being the humane, intrinsically-good, optimist.
I'm starting to develop a social dogma that is finally holding ground with my opinions in metaphysics. So I was wondering what input and thoughts ye wise men and women may have, lest I fall into a "dogmatic slumber"?
quote:
quote: I'm not sure what I can say that might help explain to you why trust is so necessary, why I feel like even if you cannot bring yourself to trust fully in people yet, it's still important that you do trust. Before we started texting today, I was reading my seminar reading – Plato's Republic, and Socrates talks about what it would be like for form a perfect, just city in the hopes of trying to understand exactly what Justice is. One of their major points is that when people are raised without corrupting influences, then they themselves will grow to live without corrupting influences and raise children who are not corrupt.
The point being: that it's hard to overcome where you come from, but it is possible. It’s possible because they also recognize that there are just people in the real world, not simply their hypothetical city, and so clearly living in an unjust world does not keep justice from being present in the government and in people.
Right now, you don't see much of a reason to trust, but I know that you can. I have no idea what prompted any of the betrayals of trust that you've experienced. But I do know that relationships rarely fail because of one person alone. Sometimes they do, but usually, both parties play a role in it. I think that the want to trust needs to precede the actual trust itself. Venting makes us feel better and it relives our stresses by placing them on the other person – our friend, who bears them willingly, even eagerly – but venting without concluding in a desire to change simply sparks a cycle of venting. If we stayed the same person throughout all of our lives, then there would be no point to our having lived.
[…]
Why should you trust? Because the pain of not trusting is too much. You always accuse me of being an optimist because I refuse to race "reality". Yeah, maybe; but I refuse to "face reality" because I believe that people are born with the potential for so much goodness.
[…]
My life has not been smooth and beautiful, no one's ever is from the inside.
But life is about surmounting our troubles and rising above. It's about still believing that people are good. People react in the ways that we expect them to because that is the framework through which we view their actions. If I expect that someone will let me down, than I will see any human slip-up from traffic or stress or whatever as their failure to come through for me. Insisting that you have no reason to trust means that you constantly see people betray your trust and going back on their word.
I have no magic words to make you suddenly see trustworthiness everywhere; I posses no potion and no desire to infuse your life with my worldview.
[…]
People act as we think that they will.
Maybe the lesson to take from this whole fiasco between us, for both of us to learn, is how much our own perceptions matter, and when we assume that we will be failed, it is only a matter of time before we will be. Yet when we trust, it comes a surprise at first how often, again, people act as we think that they will. Learning to trust people takes time, but the rewards are wonderful.
People have betrayed your trust as you saw it. Yes. But I still insist that I cannot see a reason to withdraw my trust from the whole world.
It's not as if I've never rebuilt trust, sometimes by force. When I say that I've lost my ability to fully confide in people – I mean that it's been a repeated process, that has slowly dug its way into me and planted its seeds in my heart. It's not that somebody was only once caught up in traffic, or forgot my birthday; but when one gets treated harshly, repeatedly, and by different people in a negative way - then yes, it breaks your ability to confide in the other. You brought Plato in, so I'll bring Aristotle about the "happy man" (Ethics, Book 1, Chapter 10): "Nor, in truth, is he shifting and easily changeable, for on the one hand from his happiness he will not be shaken easily nor by ordinary mischances, but, if at all, by those which are great and numerous; and, on the other, after such mischances he cannot regain his happiness in a little time; but, if at all, in a long and complete period, during which he has made himself master of great and noble things."
Perhaps that's the way it is. You get shattered once, you mend yourself. You suffer "those which are great and numerous" and it's not to be expected that you'll wake up the next morning with a smile. It's like the joke about the paranoid guy who says: "yes, I'm paranoid, but so would you be if they were chasing after you!" But it's true. And as for the remedy, I am yet to have come through a "long and complete period" that would have made of me a "master of great and noble things". But this e-mail is not about therapeutic methods of classical Athens, it's about our differing ways. You've been hurt, as we have all, but you somehow managed to put that in a box, say "**** that", disregard […], and go about the rest of life with a smile on your face. Good for you. No, really, good for you! I mean it; I'm glad that you're happy. But you are still willing to believe that people are looking to do 'good', that people are intrinsically positive and want the benefit of their public, friends. That altruism is a human virtue sine qua non.
Now, while I don't deny that there are treehuggers, ideological vegans, doctors, and pacifist volunteers in Sierra Leon and such – I have learned on my flesh and blood that it's probably much more accurate to say that some people have been brought up with a social consciousness and realise that it's wise to support the lower end of the pyramid. But that's hardly an intrinsic human characteristic. People are egoistic, and they are modelled that way. I don't feel hungry when your body needs food; you don't feel pain when I get scratched by something. We're not out there for each other, we're out there despite of each other; and the only reason, I reckon, that people ever bother helping each other is because it helps themselves: whether due to indoctrination from a young age that it's good to 'do things for the public, help the poor and advocate social justice' or by process of making one's self feel better because by common laws of retribution in social conduct planted deep down under in some dark corner of our 'id', if I help you when you need it and it's not much of an effort for me, when I suffer then you can get me out of trouble. It's not being nice, it's being efficient. Biologically. Altruism is not an intrinsic part of human nature, it's an unnatural byproduct of us living more efficiently as a society; and society is not an ends in itself, it is only a medium for us as individuals to be better off.
That being said, anything that we do, any verb that can be applied to our lives, can only be judged in accordance to the benefit or loss we get from it. The only reason why I care about the elections in the U.S. […], for instance, is that the political changes that will occur in the next President's term will have an effect on Middle-Eastern and Israeli politics, and consequently will likely affect my military service, the price I have to pay for bread and cream cheese, et cetera.
But anything we see, any impression of en empiric experience we have, can only be analysed according to our personal terms. I apply my logical categories, and my conception of time, space and span, to the things that I experience, as does everyone. By extension, any social experience I can only be determined by my own 'terms', and that is the perpetual, philosophically unbridgeable gap between the self and the other: any experience of the other's behaviour in the self's consciousness can only be understood by the self's categories, the self's terms. Freud would refer to those 'terms' by name of his eighteen defence mechanisms, Jung by his archetypes, and Kant by 'categories', but the point remains: you can only interpret the data you receive on your own terms, be it your conception of the world, the languages you speak or your intuition of face-reading. That is the philosophically unbridgeable gap between the self and the other, because the other can only be phenomenally understood by the self on the self's own terms. And this will perpetually cause friction between the two.
There is no meaning, therefore, for the other, aside for my own understanding of him as a tool to my benefit. Trust is not something we have to provide the other with, though we must sometimes precautiously rely on them for social purposes and needs. Why should I trust, you ask, and answer that it's too painful not to trust. Well, I disagree: there are no negative surprises when you don't trust, there are negative surprises when you trust and your trust gets broken, for whatever reason. But the difference between us is that you're heading on a road of belief in the human race that will ultimately do you good. That humans are a 'tabula rasa', a blank slate, that, via education or indoctrination, can be made into a positive force, like Locke. Well, to bring you back to good old Plato, some things are intrinsically constructed into the human mind, like mathematical intuition (as demonstrated in Meno), or like one's need to support first and foremost himself. Our bodies are programmed precisely for that purpose: biological alerts pop up whenever we are in trouble, not whenever someone else is. The other can only be perceived through us, and is therefore only a means to ourselves at best. Depressing, no? Well, now you know why I haven't been doing too well lately.
One of the oldest texts in our civilisation, the Bible, has a rather different view than Locke's. Genesis 8:21: “for the intent of man’s heart is bad from his youth”. One's teenagehood is used here figuratively, meaning that it is an intrinsic part of humanity. History has shown us again and again that humans are not there for each other, that it's ultimately egoistic. Locke's theories have mainly given us the biggest political mass of the modern world: the United States of America. No, Plato's political world has never been achieved other than at brief times in the Acropolis; it's delusive to believe that through philosophical pondering we can change the way that people behave towards each other. Humans aren't teenage tabulae rasae that can be indoctrinated positively via philosophical teachings. That approach only gets you executed by the Athenian mob. Remembering the Bible, as Hobbes did, can give you the sole tool to handle human behaviour: caution, mistrust.
Awaiting your philosophical thoughts. Jonathan
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quote:Why should I trust, you ask, and answer that it's too painful not to trust. Well, I disagree: there are no negative surprises when you don't trust, there are negative surprises when you trust and your trust gets broken, for whatever reason.
This is not a rebuttal of the assertion that it is too painful not to trust. Rather, it is an assertion that you personally place a very high price on negative surprises, a price that exceeds the value of trust.
I agree with you regarding the personal nature of terms and perceptions, although I prefer Sartre's take on it to any of the philosophers you mentioned. But I personally find value in the interactions I have with other people, and have found that trusting them -- with little things and with big things -- dramatically improves the quality of those interactions for both of us. Yes, there's a high potential cost to this approach, but I find the rare penalty to be far exceeded by the regularly paid benefits.
Sartre speaks of hell being other people. And this is true, if indeed you accept his definition of hell. It is incontrovertible that other people will cause you to experience things that you do not wish to experience. But this does not have to be the end of the story.
I'm willing to discuss this further, but I suspect you were pontificating at her in an effort to come up with some post hoc justifications for a handful of your bad habits. Is that the case?
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posted
I wouldn't say that I'm trying to come up with excuses for my bad habits; rather, in constructing a philosophical 'model' of these aspects of human nature, I rely on precedents, even if those would displease the Greeks. It's somewhat an 'analytical' approach, analysing the existing rather than reconstructing it 'synthetically' from the ground up.
I must admit that I'm not well-acquainted with 20th century philosophy, nor do I have the background to properly distinguish the various existentialist thinkers (I want to have first gone through Kant thoroughly, then move on); though I've read Camus's L'etranger. What works of Sarte would you advise me to begin with to get to know him?
But at to the core-question: it's a matter of weighing the positivity of what one gets by trusting against the negativity of having their trust broken: my logic tells me that altruism, humanism, love of the other and socially-ethical structures are of secondary importance to human nature and can only function when one doesn't have them in conflict with their instincts. That's why for instance we accept "thou shalt not kill" as an important and valuable social rule, but when you're starving and with no other choice, unless you're disgusted by the notion - you'll kill and eat your friend.
And since social doctrine (keeping promises, taking courteous initiative interacting with a friend) is only a function for the self (feeling good, knowing that they'll be there for you when you need them) - it's much more typical and natural for people to be careless and even hostile than pleasant and caring towards others. Deriving from that, it seems to me that the pain of being typically let down is greater than the benefit of having a promise kept. Being aware (though not necessarily assuming) that things can always go imminently wrong seems the wiser choice to me than getting struck painfully and unexpectedly time and again.
This is, of course, disregarding the wonderful answer of delusive optimism which isolates from one's active consciousness the experience of negativity. (I don't mean this in a sarcastic way, delusions can be wonderful - they're jsut not realistic by definition.)
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quote:There is no meaning, therefore, for the other, aside for my own understanding of him as a tool to my benefit. Trust is not something we have to provide the other with, though we must sometimes precautiously rely on them for social purposes and needs. Why should I trust, you ask, and answer that it's too painful not to trust. Well, I disagree: there are no negative surprises when you don't trust, there are negative surprises when you trust and your trust gets broken, for whatever reason.
Inherently, I think you are questioning people's motives, and to me, that's a noble pursuit. When people speak of noble actions by those who travel to third-world countries, I always wonder whether they went because they wanted the notoriety of being labeled "hero" or whether they went because of that liberal guilt that resides in us all, and even more, I wonder whether we can apply the term "hero" to all of them and *still* have that word mean anything at all. But the thing about questioning one's motives is that you have to question your own as well, or you risk arguing from a position of hypocrisy. That's not to say, of course, that you are in any way a hypocrite, but it is to say that the motives of those who make these arguments matter as well.
With that in mind, I wonder if your loss of trust in the human condition is more about a logical extension of a sound argument or an emotional reaction to your experience of this world?
Also, here is my argument: One of the reasons nihilism (and your argument Jonathan is close), especially Nietzschian Nihilism, fails is for the same reason as Cartesian Skepticism or absolute relativism, the arguments are inherently self-defeating. If there is no meaning, as nihilism maintains, then the argument concerning nihilism is meaningless, and thus, untenable. That's a simplistic and philosophical way of disregarding the arguments of skeptics or relativists or nihilists, in philosophical circles it is rare to get beyond that argument in a discussion about nihilism or skepticism, but in some ways, I think philosophy does itself a disservice by leaving the argument here. Of course, what you argue for Jonathan is not exactly nihilism, it is much more interesting.
quote:[...]you can only interpret the data you receive on your own terms, be it your conception of the world, the languages you speak or your intuition of face-reading. That is the philosophically unbridgeable gap between the self and the other, because the other can only be phenomenally understood by the self on the self's own terms. And this will perpetually cause friction between the two.
I think part of this is true. I think everything we do as human beings is a result of our own perceptions, of how we interpret the world; we see the world exactly how our experiences and history tell us to see it, and yet, the choice is always ours and ours alone. What do I mean? As human beings, we have a choice. The choice is not whether we can perceive the world nor is it in what to perceive, the choice lies in how we interpret our own perceptions. And in that choice, lies the very notion of intrinsic human goodness or evil. There is a truth about the world independent of our perceptions, and though I am not convinced that that gap is unbridgeable, what I do know is that there is a truth about human beings as well that is independent of our own perceptions. In that sense, there is meaning for the "other" aside from what the self perceives, it is the same meaning for that person as it is for anyone else, it is the truth about humanity that exists beyond that possibly unbridgeable gap (that really is another interesting debate--I don't think it is unbridgeable but that's for another time), it goes beyond the self, and it is in the knowledge that there is something greater than the self (not God, necessarily), a truth of the human condition and a grander truth of the world, that reveals the existence of something more interesting than simplistic self-defeating counter-arguments. History has shown us that humanity is egoistic at times, that humanity looks out for the self above all at times, but our choice, your choice, in this case is simple. Should humanity be defined by the worst or by the best among us? I believe the truth lies in that question...
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Individuals tend to respond similarly to similar situations.
I was having a discussion with my wife about a similar topic. Her family is distressed that a family member may go to prison for life due to a minor incident, though he had once committed murder. She didn't understand that the judges and law enforcement involved believed that there was a high likelihood that he would commit murder again in the future. They judged him as a potential criminal, not as a loved one.
Some humans have a propensity to behave a certain way, or to uphold a particular moral value. They generally develop a set of core responses that they don't tend to vary from. An adult human that murders in a certain situation can always be counted on to do it again in a similar situation. The same could be said for cheating on a spouse. It's not that the person can't "change", just that they historically chose to commit a certain action. If someone justified or rationalized a certain action in the past, it is exceedingly likely they will again given similar circumstances.
Unfortunately this reasoning proves that even a single incident where a choice betrays trust can (and possibly should) permanently betray trust. A murderer will murder, a cheater will cheat. People can change, but it is irresponsible to make decisions with regard to another individual that rely on that change having occured. To marry a murderer or a cheater, for instance, is to accept the fact that the incident could reoccur.
Trust is earned, but we as individuals have to give trust. This trust will increase as we see the decisions that are made by another person. And trust is generally just a belief that a person will react in a similar manner to a similar stimuli. Once it's been repeatedly observed, it can be counted on.
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quote:it's much more typical and natural for people to be careless and even hostile than pleasant and caring towards others
Reinforce this assertion before you go any farther; it's the most adolescent part of your argument, and as it stands makes the rest of it weaker than it should be.
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quote:it's much more typical and natural for people to be careless and even hostile than pleasant and caring towards others
Reinforce this assertion before you go any farther; it's the most adolescent part of your argument, and as it stands makes the rest of it weaker than it should be.
Investment in the self ("egoism") is a more primitive function of the human mind than is investment in the other ("altruism"); for instance, as I have demonstrated earlier, one's consciousness is alerted of one's body in case of trouble (pain), but not by the other's body. Therefore, and by extension, we may concur that egoistic action is more basic, intuitive and default for human nature than altruistic action. Not that altruism does not exist, but it is of a higher - and therefore less intuitive - degree.
(It could be theoretically further argued - if we go by Cartesian scepticism - that there is no other, and that the other is a mere phenomenon in our consciousness, directing all "altruistic" action at the self, and making it "egoistic". That doesn't really work, though, because even if I am believed to be someone else's phenomenon, it doesn't mean that their action isn't directed towards *me* as the phenomenon, it is merely retagging me from an entity in my own right as part of something else.)
quote: There is a truth about the world independent of our perceptions, and though I am not convinced that that gap is unbridgeable, what I do know is that there is a truth about human beings as well that is independent of our own perceptions.
Indeed, by accepting the fact that there are other entities that are not me, I am accepting an external world. As you have noted, I am not a Cartesian nihilist who throws everything out of the box; but I am to date convinced that while we can be aware of the existence of the other, we can't really evaluate the other's value for itself. This is because any interaction between the other and the self is done through mediation of the self's senses - and therefore bound to the categorical limitations of that proxy. (Yes, I know, I reek of Kantian metaphysics; I simply believe them to be pretty much as valid as Descartes's.)
But this doesn't give meaning to the other as far as the self is concerned, until one manages to bridge the gap between the self and the other. That is why I don't bring in the "God" argument as Berkley does, because it's assuming an external influence which simply answers the question; I could have likewise inserted an arbitrary postulation that "humans are good" and solve matters that way, but I want to come from within.
(So the question arises, should I care any more for the friend who betras my trust than the mosquito who sucks my blood? They both act based on their personal benefit at my expense, and both are conscious creatures - though the law protects only one of them - hence preventing me from smiting my friend headfirst into the wall. But is there an essential difference between the two?)
quote: History has shown us that humanity is egoistic at times, that humanity looks out for the self above all at times, but our choice, your choice, in this case is simple. Should humanity be defined by the worst or by the best among us? I believe the truth lies in that question...
Humanity should be evaluated by what it is, meaning by the "true" (read: sensibly understood) nature of its mind. The question is whether it is on the individual level intrinsically positive for the other at the expense of itself or intrinsically positive for itself at the expense of the other? I believe that any individual human is first and foremost in concern for itself, and will manifest concern and care for the other only when that helps, or at the very least does not harm or interfere with, the interests of itself.
As for your argument, Herblay, I must say that while this may be a bad habit/perception of mine, I have scaresely seen much improvement with people's ability to comply with their promises over time; meaning, more than one person who've been known for behaviour such as backstabbing, cheating, breaking promises and such (mostly not due to malice, but mere carelessness and ignorance), haven't really shown muh progress when they wanted to change. By this I don't mean that if they're late to a meeting and you point it out, that you expect them to be there sharp already the next morning and every day after; I mean that if a person is [politely] alerted to the fact that they routinely hurt you in a certain manner, that even when they express a willingness to change, you'll still be hurt every two weeks by something that they typically do. And, to quote you:
quote: Some humans have a propensity to behave a certain way, or to uphold a particular moral value. They generally develop a set of core responses that they don't tend to vary from. An adult human that murders in a certain situation can always be counted on to do it again in a similar situation. The same could be said for cheating on a spouse.
This may be a flaw in my perception, yes, but it's still a tendency that I've seen, and attribute to what I've said earlier - that people normally don't internalise things until those things are relevant to themselves directly. How many of us actually care about the fact that a typical Zimbabwian (is that the adjective?) has a life-span of forty years? That six-year-olds get raped in dark corners of Rio de Janeiro? That people in North Korea are being enslaved in work-camps? It rarely bears the same effect until you have Cancer, your daughter gets raped, or your grandfather was sent to Dachau. The other comes secondarily, and at the expense of the self; and altruism is only an extension of what really is egoism.
As for the 'trust' issue, I personally try to go by the following system: when meeting someone on the onset, I don't assume them to be malicious. People don't go outright externalising their 'id', normally. I will trust them (albeit not with the most touching subjects, naturally), and over time if I see that they're trustworthy people I will start entrusting them with more and more sensitive subjects. Now, I'm not saying that one's (my) trust ought to be broken because their car broke down and they were late for lunch and so they 'broke their promise' - circumstances interfere with everybody's life. However, when their decency is compromised by malice or unbearably insensitive carelessness, and they go outright, intentionally breaking your trust as part of their personal agenda, I should hardly be expected to fully trust them again.
[Edited for spelling.]
[ December 02, 2008, 01:28 AM: Message edited by: Jonathan Howard ]
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What I think you've failed to establish is a necessary link between the primacy of the self and carelessness/hostility to others. Even if you accept that all altruism is ultimately self-serving, there's quite a lot of wiggle room in there for good behavior.
quote:that people normally don't internalise things until those things are relevant to themselves directly
There might actually be a biological reason for this. A handful of experiments have shown that people have difficulty feeling true empathy for more than about 200 individuals at a time; if someone new is introduced to that total, someone else gets kicked out. (Online, this group of people is often called the MonkeySphere.) This is of course an incredible sensible thing from an evolutionary standpoint, but it causes problems of perspective.
But here's the thing: people can feel quite keenly about those 200. So if you surround yourself with people who've chosen to include you in their own MonkeySpheres, you shouldn't regularly run into situations where people who don't care about you are interacting with you socially.
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