Culture and Freedom

Midgley says that culture is the foundation of freedom. She's right, of course, on a fundamental level. Culture and freedom are not opposed as many moderns and post-moderns would have it. Freedom arises out of culture, for culture provides the social and historical context for meeting our needs as human beings. In other words, our innate tendencies, which are the foundation for the good for us, are found in particular cultures.

On the other hand, Midgley is also quite aware that culture can be damaging. John Kavanaugh makes this clear in Following Christ in a Consumer Society.

"In its fullness, culture can be the free undertaking of communities and people in a world-building; and as such cultural structures can be invitational to the individual... Culture, on the other hand, exhibits a dynamic which can be an expression of dangerous human potentialities. As the exteriorization of human consciousness, cultural products can acquire the characteristics of an objective pre-existent reality, and as a result are apprehended as an external force 'over against' the demands of human freedom and open inquiry." (84)

We live in a culture that does seem objectively pre-existing. The bureaucracy is something over which we have no control. It is already there -- working regardless of our fears and needs. The state is there, and we must live with the choices it provides. The market works regardless of our needs.

This is the same story told from a different context. Culture has always faced empire -- in the form of military might, church, and now market. But culture also provides the very resources for undermining empire and living a truly human life. In fact, there is no truly human life without culture. That is Midgley's point -- we cannot simply get rid of culture. To do so would be to get rid of the human -- of humanness itself.

The Social, The Economic and Spirit

"We must more fully realize that there is nothing in the realm of the social, the political or the economic which does not influence or is not influenced by the realm of the spirit. And there is nothing in the realm of the spirit which does not influence or is not influence by history." John Kavanaugh, Following Christ in a Consumer Society, p39

What a profound statement, not because it is a religious statement, though it is one. It is profound because in our world we try hard to divorce the Spirit from the Material. I could go on and on about how this is an inheritance from Descartes who said that I am Mind, and the body is separate. But we re-inforce this idea each time we buy and thing what we bought has no impact on our spirit, or each time we go to church and think that church has no impact on what we buy.

We are spiritual beings! True, but we are not only that.

We are material beings! True, but we are not only that.

We are a composite of soul and matter -- neither able to exist without the other. And like any other composite whatever happens to one must have an effect on the other part of the composite.

I Buy, therefor I am

Or, we are because we possess.

There certainly is an element in our American society that our worth -- our self-worth as much if not more than out social worth-- derives from our ability to buy something, to possess something, to have. In lists of essential social goods from philosophers like John Rawls or Martha Nussbaum, we find included the need for wealth or money. Why?

Becuase we need money to buy things.

Again, that we must buy stuff -- food and clothing, health insurance, etc -- is a truth. But what is it that we really spend our money on? And how often do we go to the mall and buy a new shirt or skirt because we're depressed?

The human being of the 21st century is the consumer. We are looking for things to fulfill us, which means that we must be things too.

Of course, everything I just wrote is hogwash. It's just propaganda that doesn't really mean anything. We talk about religion or ethics or the value of human beings, but what really matters is that I can head down to Starbucks and get my double latte. I know that, you know that. Nothing else matters. I'm just wasting time.

Drink one for me.

Thrownness

Heidegger refers to human beings as dasein -- we are thrown into being.

What this means is that we find ourselves already part of the world. This point is important to remember. We often like to think of the human being out of context. A human being is a rational animal, becomes a focus on reason. But whence reason? From our animal nature. And whence that nature? From the very world of which we are a part.

We always already find ourselves, as Heidegger would say, in situation with certain problems/challenges, certain tools/gifts, and certain goals/desires. This is a very Aristotelian and Thomistic way of thinking, I think. We have desires and live in society which both shapes and is shaped by those desires. And in that society we face certain obligations and challenges, whether we are poor, middle class, or rich. And we have certain talents we can use in meeting those desires or choosing not to meet them and finding some others.

This notion of thrownness is captured in the notion of tradition. We are born in a tradition -- as part of a family with a particular role to play. We are not Athena born full grown from the head of Zeus. We are not created by God as some protoplasm without any relation to anything. God makes us as human persons already engaged in the world in a particular way.

Everything else follows from that

The Great Pumpkin

Supposedly, the secret is....... ask and you shall receive.

No wait. Even that's too hard, too distant from the truth.

Think it and it shall come to you.

Sorta of like Field of Dreams. Or waiting for the Great Pumpkin.

The Secret is a movie and book phenomenon recommended by Oprah Winfrey who lives her life according to the secret. And why not? It's the power of positive thinking and we KNOW that thinking positively DOES in fact aid us. Cancer patients who have a positive attitude about recovery are significantly more likely to survive cancer than those who are negative.

The trick, I think, that we must learn is to understand that what we want is not necessarily what is positive for us. We wants lots of things: food, sex, money, fame, fortune, power. These things may have their place in life. I think THAT is what is profound about Aristotle's conception of the happy human life. He recognizes that a full human life requires various elements -- such as wealth and pleasure -- and not just a ONE that supersedes all.

But the other aspect that is so important is that we have to take our wants and values and prioritize them with respect to what will bring us to fulfillment -- self actualization, or what we refer to in natural law as expansion of human personality. This is the point seems secret to The Secret.

Reason and Empathy

In the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? There is a scene involving the replicants and a spider. Philip K Dick's novel is set in a dystopian future where the richest humans have abandoned earth for far off worlds. Earth, it seems, suffers under environmental disaster. Live animals are few. People substitute replicant animals for pets, just as they substitute human replicants -- androids -- for other human beings.

In the particular scene I have in mind, the replicants have caught a live spider -- not simply a replicant, but a real spider that can suffer. They tear off its legs one by one, observing the bhavior of the spider.

We might think that says a lot about the differences between human beings and androids/robots. Androids lack empathy which human beings have. And, in fact, the main test to determine whether someone is a replicant is an empathy test.

But something else is going on. For one of the replicants is killed, which sends the leader into a violent reaction because he cared about her.

Ah, now we see a broader perspective. How often do human beings today prejudice their own species over others? Isn't, in fact, the biodegredation and environmental collapse not due to human abuse of an environment for which human beings lack empathy?

Which raises the question, what is the role of empathy in human life and in defining human nature?

Doomsday, Mad Max, and Hobbesian Reality

I recently saw the movie Doomsday. The movie is set about 20 years in the future. A plague hit Glasgow and other parts of Scotland around 2010. No one could find a cure for the plague, and almost everyone who caught the plague died. London walled off Scotland by rebuilding the Hadrian wall. In the movie, another outbreak of the plague has occurred in downtown London. The Prime Minister sends in an elite team to find a cure behind the wall, because they have satellite photos of survivors. This is where the action begins. But what we see is that human society has fallen into a barbarism behind the wall.


There are two societies behind the wall, one a return to medieval times holding down a castle. The other is a more post-modern, cannibalistic society running over the streets of Glasgow. The idea is that without some social structure, human beings return to their essential barbaric nature.

But that isn't all. Back in London, we realize that the leaders are out for their own interests. This idea is encapsulated in the adviser to the prime minster who runs the show (a Dick Cheney character). He decides to withhold any cure until it best benefits him, and he has no inhibitions in using the military to uphold his will.

This sort of movie plays on the idea that human beings are basically barbaric, which is the idea we find prominently in Hobbes but also in Augustine, who claimed that human beings were "despotic." Hobbes, of course, defends the idea that, without a strong despot, human society cannot survive. Augustine can rely on God as his despot. But both assume human beings to be incorrigible barbaric monsters.

I think this shows that a fundamental choice we all have to make in life is what our conception of human beings are. And that choice determines a lot about our political views and actions. We've certainly seen the dark ages, and if there is a nuclear or enviornmental disaster, we may see another dark ages. But we ought not take the extreme cases as the norm for human beings. Human beings have a wide range of behaviors based in our natural constitution. We can be aggresive and we can be loving. These are potentials in the human person. Which ones we choose to support and develop can determine the future of the world. This is not simply oonce in a blue moon choice, but a choice we make everyday in all of our actions.