Smartest person you kn(e)w

[smcder]

@Burnt State
"If the option was for 6 to die in order for 1 to live, if those were the ratios that would insure the survival of humanity, so that our story could continue, so that we could continue to work on being a better, more compassionate and caring society, organized around developing everyone's potential, then I would say let the 6 die. If they were going to die though because of war, then I'm not sure there would be much of a story to carry forward.
Einstein preferred an anti-war position and knew that pacifism was the way. If that hypothetical is mired in nationalistic drives and the killing is to maintain a political goal, then I would say let the whole lot die, as we don't deserve to carry anything forward, for we will have defeated ourselves, nature and our reason for being on this planet."

@Constance
"In the nature of things, our species will die out (or destroy itself before it dies out). What is it about our species that leads you to feel its preservation is worth the sacrifice of six billion individuals and all the moral, ethical, and emotional consequences of that?"

I'm not sure how to word the paradox just yet ... if it is a paradox ... but the objection to letting the whole lot die is:

1. any potential to evolve into something better, for this particular line of evolution is gone - you could say this was a natural thing to happen and so it's right to let the species be weeded out, but that's not so because we have the choice to leave a billion alive, we have the choice to survive - but yes, doing so does say something about us as a species ... maybe that's getting at the paradox from another angle

2. what if this is simply the nature of all intelligent life at some stage? letting humans die out doesn't guarantee any kind of intelligence as we know it would even re-evolve much less be better, it could clear the way for something worse ...

Now I think I see why lawyers get to be the way they are! (that's a joke!)

What's the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?

Compare that to the Bostrom text I'm going to post below where he discusses an existential threat ... there is no consideration of the question whether humanity is worth saving, it's assumed:

"A preemptive strike on a sovereign nation is not a move to be taken lightly, but in the extreme case we have outlined – where a failure to act would with high probability lead to existential catastrophe – it is a responsibility that must not be abrogated.
Whatever moral prohibition there normally is against violating national sovereignty is overridden in this case by the necessity to prevent the destruction of humankind."

 

[smcder]

Nick Bostrom (born Niklas Boström, 10 March 1973)[1] is a Swedish philosopher at St. Cross College, University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, the reversal test, and consequentialism. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics (2000). He is the founding director of both The Future of Humanity Institute[2] and the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology as part of the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University.[3]
He is the author of over 200 publications,[4] including Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies and Anthropic Bias. He has been awarded the Eugene R. Gannon Award and has been listed in Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers list.

"9.3Retain a last-resort readiness for preemptive action

Creating a broad-based consensus among the world’s nation states is time-consuming, difficult, and in many instances impossible. We must therefore recognize the possibility that cases may arise in which a powerful nation or a coalition of states needs to act unilaterally for its own and the common interest. Such unilateral action may infringe on the sovereignty of other nations and may need to be done preemptively.
Let us make this hypothetical more concrete. Suppose advanced nanotechnology has just been developed in some leading lab. (By advanced nanotechnology I mean a fairly general assembler, a device that can build a large range of three-dimensional structures – including rigid parts – to atomic precision given a detailed specification of the design and construction process, some feedstock chemicals, and a supply of energy.) Suppose that at this stage it is possible to predict that building dangerous nanoreplicators will be much easier than building a reliable nanotechnological immune system that could protect against all simple dangerous replicators. Maybe design-plans for the dangerous replicators have already been produced by design-ahead efforts and are available on the Internet. Suppose furthermore that because most of the research leading up to the construction of the assembler, excluding only the last few stages, is available in the open literature; so that other laboratories in other parts of the world are soon likely to develop their own assemblers. What should be done?
With this setup, one can confidently predict that the dangerous technology will soon fall into the hands of “rogue nations”, hate groups, and perhaps eventually lone psychopaths. Sooner or later somebody would then assemble and release a destructive nanobot and destroy the biosphere. The only option is to take action to prevent the proliferation of the assembler technology until such a time as reliable countermeasures to a nano-attack have been deployed.
Hopefully, most nations would be responsible enough to willingly subscribe to appropriate regulation of the assembler technology. The regulation would not need to be in the form of a ban on assemblers but it would have to limit temporarily but effectively the uses of assemblers, and it would have to be coupled to a thorough monitoring program. Some nations, however, may refuse to sign up. Such nations would first be pressured to join the coalition. If all efforts at persuasion fail, force or the threat of force would have to be used to get them to sign on.
A preemptive strike on a sovereign nation is not a move to be taken lightly, but in the extreme case we have outlined – where a failure to act would with high probability lead to existential catastrophe – it is a responsibility that must not be abrogated.

*Whatever moral prohibition there normally is against violating national sovereignty is overridden in this case by the necessity to prevent the destruction of humankind.

Even if the nation in question has not yet initiated open violence, the mere decision to go forward with development of the hazardous technology in the absence of sufficient regulation must be interpreted as an act of aggression, for it puts the rest of the rest of the world at an even greater risk than would, say, firing off several nuclear missiles in random directions.
The intervention should be decisive enough to reduce the threat to an acceptable level but it should be no greater than is necessary to achieve this aim.

*It may even be appropriate to pay compensation to the people of the offending country, many of whom will bear little or no responsibility for the irresponsible actions of their leaders.

While we should hope that we are never placed in a situation where initiating force becomes necessary, it is crucial that we make room in our moral and strategic thinking for this contingency. Developing widespread recognition of the moral aspects of this scenario ahead of time is especially important, since without some degree of public support democracies will find it difficult to act decisively before there has been any visible demonstration of what is at stake. Waiting for such a demonstration is decidedly not an option, because it might itself be the end."

 

[smcder]

From my point of view It's more like moving the goalposts.

That's moving from something general ( IQ vs. compassion ) to something specific ( nuking Hiroshima ). I'm not seeing the rationale for doing so. Why setup a situation where there is no alternative other than to feel bad about having to make sacrifices we'd rather not make? If that's how it's going to go; my answer is the same as Kirk's: "I don't believe in the no win scenario."

​

Like I said before, we're motivated by feelings other than just compassion. But even if we leave emotions out of the equation altogether, decisions can still be made based on standards that facilitate the best possible situation for the most people given the various factors in play, and that requires intelligence more than it does compassion. A fictional example might be Commander Data from Star Trek TNG. During the series Data spent most of his existence performing his duties admirably without emotion. Only when emotions were introduced to his character did he begin having serious problems ...

​

Let's move the goal posts back then ... I like that attitude (Kobayashi Maru) - so how do we apply it to your current situation of having compassion but no way to alleviate the material needs that arouse that compassion?

Like I said before, we're motivated by feelings other than just compassion. But even if we leave emotions out of the equation altogether, decisions can still be made based on standards that facilitate the best possible situation for the most people given the various factors in play, and that requires intelligence more than it does compassion. A fictional example might be Commander Data from Star Trek TNG. During the series Data spent most of his existence performing his duties admirably without emotion. Only when emotions were introduced to his character did he begin having serious problems ...

My question remains ... if emotions (e-motions) were left out of the equation altogether, why would decisions be made based on standards that facilitate the best possible situation for the most people? Only if it were programmed that way? There has to be a motive force - I guess Data followed his programming ... and that would be his emotions or his motivation. Otherwise he would just compute outcomes and not take any action. So here it seems "standards" are programmed in ... and that would have been by another intelligence ... so Data's motives were proxies for his creator?

So the whole balance of intelligence and compassion is still on the table ... for example, how would you choose the person who made end of life care decisions for you? You've said physical comfort is very important to you ... a person of empathy might better be able to put themselves in your situation, to sense how much pain you are in at a time when you couldn't communicate ... on the other hand someone smarter might think of more ways to alleviate suffering ...

How would Data have solved the 7:1 problem?

And if I remember correctly ... Data always wanted to be a real boy.

 

[flipper]

Who is the smartest person you know/knew ... not met or read a book by ... but had a working or personal relationship of some standing, some length ... and why do you consider them the smartest person?

My wife calls him the Renaissance man. He can fix anything and build anything. This includes computer software and hardware. He built his own house and repair it himself. Basically he has the same worldview that I do. He thrives on change.

 

[Burnt State]

... self-defense scenarios raise similar issues ... it's something most people do very little thinking about and often surprise themselves when they do get involved in such situations. I was in a situation for a couple of years where I had to think about an ongoing threat to my family and I learned a lot about myself. Would the compassionate thing to do be to take only passive measures and finally refuse to bring lethal force to a situation, giving the advantage to the "bad guy"? I guess at that time I decided I could shoot someone and still feel compassion for what brought them to be the person they were.

I think I took the passive approach to the hypothetical as I find the wasting of human life to be utterly deplorable. But in the Walking Dead website identity challenge I was Rick, the ex-cop with a gun & prepared to kill to protect his family. I identify with your situation and would have no problem defending my family if that was the threat in place. Thankfully, threats to my family have only been in the form of racism, and a racism that was organized but never rose to violence. I have never owned a gun and the only time I would get one would be during the apocalypse, but even then my desire would be to create a peaceful collective and band together in interdependence - to create a space that could defend against depravity through non-violent means where possible.

Anyway ... moving on ... this does get us back to the hypothetical of compassion and intelligence - I had a couple of replies to your idea that intelligence could increase compassion. I don't think that's right. I think compassion is a quality of mind and a way of approaching the world - it doesn't tell you what to do in a situation of course. But if we depend on knowledge of the person's situation to calibrate compassion and forgiveness ... isn't that judgement? Or do I misunderstand? And again - if we know greater knowledge of a person's situation always leads to greater compassion - then can't we go ahead and extrend the compassion to every case? Why wait for the data to come in if we know the outcome? Or are you saying you can't get that feeling of compassion until you know there situation?

I think my position here goes back to why you do equity work. Unless you had really interesting upbringings as we previously discussed (I don't think I talked about witnessing violence in the home growing up in much detail, but that experience made my young male self commit to never being violent with a woman ever) you will not be able to do equity work. People extend themselves towards others only if it's part of their life experience. So I think that knowledge of a family member's experience of racism will sensitize you to the event and now you can extrapolate and have compassion for others who experience racism. But that doesn't mean you will understand homophobia. However, parts of what you say is true, and immersing yourself in equity spaces with good teachers (women, strong men) can sensitize you across spaces to grow compassion. That has been my experience, but I also immerse myself in the data of other people's lives as well and the data speaks to the need for compassion. Being surrounded by people in need (youth) also lets you see up close how the data intersects with real life. Maybe for me I need these reminders of life's needs & sadnesses? I know what I know and I know listening to the radio in the morning usually activates my compassion and purpose follows. One seems to inform the others. Empathy is something you cultivate in your soul (where brain and heart meet) and judgment is only an intellectual capacity, but compassion is what makes the judge wise.

I think the reason we balk at answering how much intelligence we would give up to be more compassionate is that we just don't want to imagine life with less intelligence .... we rationalize that we couldn't help people as much ... but this may get at a difference in how you and I think about helping others ... or it may show we are alike in that, I'm not sure yet.

Flowers for Algernon

... but again, it's not entirely far fetched ... we lose cognitive ability as we age ... the thought occured to me recently that intelligence will be less and less important ... is less and less important as I age ... if I were to be left with the barest of mental furniture it would be love, compassion, equanimity and sympathetic joy. If I could have enough intelligence to take care of myself and not be a burden to others, I'd take as much of those qualities as I could get. On the pragmatic side, I'd probably get a lot better treatment than if I were to become a smart alecky old man!

In thinking through life I have always seen the many intelligences at work simultaneously and am most impressed with people who are academically smart, socially smart and emotionally smart. If I had to drop one I would say that the academic piece could fall into the trash because I get more mileage in this lifetime through social and emotional smarts. Perhaps I've always taken academics for granted, that you can always self teach yourself anything you need to learn. But that confidence is probably intellect talking. It's how you treat living things that does matter the most. IQ can fade - it's those interactive human qualities that mean the most to others, to our family members, our colleagues and to strangers.

 

[Burnt State]

"In a letter to the New York Times in 1945, Einstein quoted recent words of Franklin Roosevelt: 'We are faced with the pre-eminent fact that if civilisation is to survive we must cultivate the science of human relationship - the ability of peoples of all kinds to live together and work together in the same world, at peace.' Well, Einstein continued, 'we have learned, and paid an awful price to learn, that living and working together can be done in one way only - under law. Unless it prevails, and unless by common struggle we are capable of new ways of thinking, mankind is doomed.'"
Albert Einstein

We need new ways of thinking about how to treat each other and to get there we need to learn to see past our intolerances of the beliefs and cultures of others and focus more on creating equitable spaces that promote the primacy of the safety and well being of all individuals. Petty beliefs, that includes misguided religious fervor and male dominance, must be separated from the law of the individual's right to freedom. Unfortunately those old ways of thinking continue to doom us through the weak position of the need to dominate and exclude others because of the labels slapped on them at birth.

In my books bias is a form of stupidity. Bias leads to fear. Fear creates hatred and violence. That's what dooms us - our lack of compassion. And I do believe people need to be educated to understand that their bias dooms them in a global age.

Einstein is constantly on about world government as the solution. How many of our "beliefs" will we need to surrender in order to achieve this?

 

[Soupie]

Don't worry, the Hive Mind will save us all.

 

[smcder]

The discussion has moved away from what my personal decision would be if I had the choice to trade some compassion for intelligence, so that it would be easier for me to figure out ways to help the less fortunate without compromising my own material situation, to global issues like World Wars and weapons of mass destruction. I don't see how the two situations can be fairly compared. But I would be willing to say that things like survival, health, education, standard of living, etc. all seem to be polar opposite to either nuking or being nuked.

So I suspect that if everyone were given enough intelligence points to make it easier for them to help out the less fortunate, we would find that we could accomplish more by doing away with wars and violence and channel those resources into making the world a better place. I don't think being smarter and less compassionate necessarily makes someone a psychopath. It seems to me that psychopathy is more about being self serving at other people's expense and by any means, rather than cooperating as a whole for a common good.

You mentioned psychopaths in an earlier post. For those who have no problem playing videos, here's a TED Talk of how it manifests itself in the workplace ( BTW: I experienced this type of thing in more than one job I've had ).

​

You were the victim of a psychopath more than once at work?

 

[Randall]

Let's move the goal posts back then ... I like that attitude (Kobayashi Maru) - so how do we apply it to your current situation of having compassion but no way to alleviate the material needs that arouse that compassion?

The idea was to trade some compassion for sufficient IQ points to make it easier to acquire the material needs required to alleviate the suffering. Unfortunately the real situation is that I'm stuck being where I'm at now, and being over 55, I might be getting older a wiser, but not necessarily any smarter .

My question remains ... if emotions (e-motions) were left out of the equation altogether, why would decisions be made based on standards that facilitate the best possible situation for the most people? Only if it were programmed that way?

In a dispassionate situation the best possible outcomes can still be recognized. People who are starving still need food so an absence of food can be recognized as a need whether we feel bad for those who are underfed or not, and having adequately fed people makes them more productive, which in-turn provides other benefits such as increased availability of goods and services, which in-turn helps others. It's all very logical, but add the benefit that because the original scenario allowed other emotions to come into play, we would also have the positive emotions of satisfaction and pride at accomplishing something positive as motivating factors. We are also motivated to do things because they feel good, not just because something makes us feel uncomfortable.

So a lack of compassion doesn't have to be an inhibitor to the task of alleviating suffering. In fact, personally, it's the pain I feel from compassion that makes me turn off the charity commercials. I don't want to face those realities knowing I'm in a situation where the water is coming in faster than it's going out ( metaphorically ), and therefore I'm personally vulnerable, while at the same time being emotionally manipulated by commercials on TV pleading for my compassion. It is actually working against itself in a negative reinforcement kind of way. I don't know how I can be any clearer about these concepts.

There has to be a motive force - I guess Data followed his programming ... and that would be his emotions or his motivation. Otherwise he would just compute outcomes and not take any action. So here it seems "standards" are programmed in ... and that would have been by another intelligence ... so Data's motives were proxies for his creator?

So the whole balance of intelligence and compassion is still on the table ... for example, how would you choose the person who made end of life care decisions for you? You've said physical comfort is very important to you ... a person of empathy might better be able to put themselves in your situation, to sense how much pain you are in at a time when you couldn't communicate ... on the other hand someone smarter might think of more ways to alleviate suffering ...

How would Data have solved the 7:1 problem?

And if I remember correctly ... Data always wanted to be a real boy.

Sure, Data always strived to be more human, and in Star Trek - The Wrath Of Khan, Spock logically sacrifices himself to save the Enterprise saying, "It's logical ... The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." This was his solution to the Kobyashi Maru test. In both cases ( Spock and Data ), these creatures of logic would both sacrifice themselves for the lives of those around them.

For me personally, end of life care decisions aren't something I've considered. That goes back to another discussion we had where I said something to the effect that denial can take you a long ways. I'll worry about that some other time and preferably for as short a time as possible.

 

[Randall]

You were the victim of a psychopath more than once at work?

The snakes in suits types, the horrible bosses, the personality disordered supervisors, who hasn't been a victim? Most people put up with them out of fear because they tend to inhabit positions of power. They're rooted in the system and if they know you recognize them, then you become their target. Just saying this on a public forum probably diminishes my chances of being hired because they are so entrenched in the system that hiring someone who will challenge them is the last thing HR departments or employment agencies want. It's bad for their business or could make them targets too.

According to one of the videos I watched recently, 1 in 100 people demonstrate psychopathic behavior, and they tend to be ladder climbers, which means that they're concentrated at the last place they should be and you can practically guarantee you'll run into them in any company with more than a few hundred employees. I've worked in several situations where there are hundreds or thousands of employees and a hierarchy, and because I always stand-up for myself I've become the target of those types more than once. It's why I don't want to go back into the work force. It's plain toxic and I don't have a skill set that affords me enough power to calls the shots. Simply being right isn't good enough. So I'm trying to make my way by being self-employed. It's not easy, especially being over 55.

 

[smcder]

The snakes in suits types, the horrible bosses, the personality disordered supervisors, who hasn't been a victim? Most people put up with them out of fear because they tend to inhabit positions of power. They're rooted in the system and if they know you recognize them, then you become their target. Just saying this on a public forum probably diminishes my chances of being hired because they are so entrenched in the system that hiring someone who will challenge them is the last thing HR departments or employment agencies want. It's bad for their business or could make them targets too.

According to one of the videos I watched recently, 1 in 100 people demonstrate psychopathic behavior, and they tend to be ladder climbers, which means that they're concentrated at the last place they should be and you can practically guarantee you'll run into them in any company with more than a few hundred employees. I've worked in several situations where there are hundreds or thousands of employees and a hierarchy, and because I always stand-up for myself I've become the target of those types more than once. It's why I don't want to go back into the work force. It's plain toxic and I don't have a skill set that affords me enough power to calls the shots. Simply being right isn't good enough. So I'm trying to make my way by being self-employed. It's not easy, especially being over 55.

gotcha ... I guess I never have experienced that, that's very interesting. Did you take the test? I wonder if you might score very low or in some pattern that might make you targeted?

Self employment is tough, but rewarding.

 

[smcder]

The idea was to trade some compassion for sufficient IQ points to make it easier to acquire the material needs required to alleviate the suffering. Unfortunately the real situation is that I'm stuck being where I'm at now, and being over 55, I might be getting older a wiser, but not necessarily any smarter .

In a dispassionate situation the best possible outcomes can still be recognized. People who are starving still need food so an absence of food can be recognized as a need whether we feel bad for those who are underfed or not, and having adequately fed people makes them more productive, which in-turn provides other benefits such as increased availability of goods and services, which in-turn helps others. It's all very logical, but add the benefit that because the original scenario allowed other emotions to come into play, we would also have the positive emotions of satisfaction and pride at accomplishing something positive as motivating factors. We are also motivated to do things because they feel good, not just because something makes us feel uncomfortable.

So a lack of compassion doesn't have to be an inhibitor to the task of alleviating suffering. In fact, personally, it's the pain I feel from compassion that makes me turn off the charity commercials. I don't want to face those realities knowing I'm in a situation where the water is coming in faster than it's going out ( metaphorically ), and therefore I'm personally vulnerable, while at the same time being emotionally manipulated by commercials on TV pleading for my compassion. It is actually working against itself in a negative reinforcement kind of way. I don't know how I can be any clearer about these concepts.

Sure, Data always strived to be more human, and in Star Trek - The Wrath Of Khan, Spock logically sacrifices himself to save the Enterprise saying, "It's logical ... The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." This was his solution to the Kobyashi Maru test. In both cases ( Spock and Data ), these creatures of logic would both sacrifice themselves for the lives of those around them.

For me personally, end of life care decisions aren't something I've considered. That goes back to another discussion we had where I said something to the effect that denial can take you a long ways. I'll worry about that some other time and preferably for as short a time as possible.

interesting ... will have to (dispassionately) ponder a bit

yeah - denial ... can take you a long way then suddenly dump you in the soup ... !

there are some critical decisions I just feel better now having in place

 

[Randall]

gotcha ... I guess I never have experienced that, that's very interesting. Did you take the test? I wonder if you might score very low or in some pattern that might make you targeted?

I took the test and scored normal for the first part, but couldn't get the second part to work correctly on my PC. It seemed like defective or outdated scripting. But I don't need a test to know why I'm targeted. I'm not afraid to speak-up when something isn't right, or to defend other people when I see them being treated poorly, or when I myself am not being treated fairly. Like I said to one of these psychos who suggested that because everyone was getting equal treatment that changing the rules for me would be unfair, "Treating everyone unfairly might make everyone equal, but it doesn't make it fair. It just means you're treating everyone unfairly, and the policy should be changed for everyone." They had no answer for that and really just didn't seem to understand. As a consequence I was labeled a "possible union threat" and dismissed "without cause".

 

[Constance]

The word compassion at its root means feeling-with, so far as I can tell, and the preposition is as important as the noun. It signifies interpersonal exchange of feeling and therefore meaning. While we can feel compassion for whole groups of people who suffer oppression, our feeling is not in such cases less personal in my opinion. In Portia's famous speech in The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare uses the word 'mercy' as a synonym for compassion:

"The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show like God's
When mercy seasons justice."


The lines I've highlighted in blue are for me the most significant ones --

. . . It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

and I want to concentrate on them because I now understand what they mean far more fully than I did decades ago when they first impressed me and became permanent residents of my mind. How does mercy or compassion 'bless' the giver as well as the receiver? It does so because it opens both 'selves' involved in the exchange toward the other and so supplements and strengthens both with an understanding, a commonality, a sharing, and a bond that redeems both from the fallen condition of separateness and solitude. We all know the feeling of deep satisfaction and annealment we have when we act selflessly in the interests of another, support another in his or her or their pain or grief by sharing it and acting to relieve it. It is not that we become 'better' in these acts; we certainly don't become 'God-like'. But we do touch the secure ground of our nature as subconsciously and consciously involved with and responsible to one another. What we know is the rightness of this sharing.

Auden wrote: "We must love one another or die" in this poem from our world:

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
by W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

 

[boomerang]

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Very powerful lines !

I'm re-reading Eric Schlosser's book: "Command And Control". Schlosser does an excellent job of chronicling the almost inevitable slide of the U.S. from a position of secure self-confidence and a desire to limit nuclear proliferation at the end of WWII into the almost bottomless quagmire of ever more massive bombs numbering in the many thousands to insure the endless horror of Mutual Assured Destruction.

Schlosser's book focuses on problems in designing and managing nukes in such a way that makes them both militarily reliable but reasonably "safe" to handle and maintain. But it's also a kind of cautionary tale about how common sense may be turned on its head by a toxic mixture of human nature and the power of technology. It was obvious from the first detonation at Alamogordo that use of any nuclear device would eventually become a path to mass suicide. And yet, the arms race developed a fierce momentum in and of itself that is with us yet today.

Perhaps the paradox here is that mass cruelty is, and has throughout history, been fomented by institutions composed of mostly compassionate individuals. The principle of Mutual Assured Destruction happens to be a particularly poignant and relevant example.

 

[smcder]

I think I took the passive approach to the hypothetical as I find the wasting of human life to be utterly deplorable. But in the Walking Dead website identity challenge I was Rick, the ex-cop with a gun & prepared to kill to protect his family. I identify with your situation and would have no problem defending my family if that was the threat in place. Thankfully, threats to my family have only been in the form of racism, and a racism that was organized but never rose to violence. I have never owned a gun and the only time I would get one would be during the apocalypse, but even then my desire would be to create a peaceful collective and band together in interdependence - to create a space that could defend against depravity through non-violent means where possible.


I think my position here goes back to why you do equity work. Unless you had really interesting upbringings as we previously discussed (I don't think I talked about witnessing violence in the home growing up in much detail, but that experience made my young male self commit to never being violent with a woman ever) you will not be able to do equity work. People extend themselves towards others only if it's part of their life experience. So I think that knowledge of a family member's experience of racism will sensitize you to the event and now you can extrapolate and have compassion for others who experience racism. But that doesn't mean you will understand homophobia. However, parts of what you say is true, and immersing yourself in equity spaces with good teachers (women, strong men) can sensitize you across spaces to grow compassion. That has been my experience, but I also immerse myself in the data of other people's lives as well and the data speaks to the need for compassion. Being surrounded by people in need (youth) also lets you see up close how the data intersects with real life. Maybe for me I need these reminders of life's needs & sadnesses? I know what I know and I know listening to the radio in the morning usually activates my compassion and purpose follows. One seems to inform the others. Empathy is something you cultivate in your soul (where brain and heart meet) and judgment is only an intellectual capacity, but compassion is what makes the judge wise.


In thinking through life I have always seen the many intelligences at work simultaneously and am most impressed with people who are academically smart, socially smart and emotionally smart. If I had to drop one I would say that the academic piece could fall into the trash because I get more mileage in this lifetime through social and emotional smarts. Perhaps I've always taken academics for granted, that you can always self teach yourself anything you need to learn. But that confidence is probably intellect talking. It's how you treat living things that does matter the most. IQ can fade - it's those interactive human qualities that mean the most to others, to our family members, our colleagues and to strangers.

Unless you had really interesting upbringings as we previously discussed (I don't think I talked about witnessing violence in the home growing up in much detail, but that experience made my young male self commit to never being violent with a woman ever) you will not be able to do equity work.

I guess I don't know what equity work is specifically. I do know I worked with people who were effective without having had unusual or particular experiences related to what they do - they seemed to bring a natural compasion and openness to their work and they seemed to understand those they worked with.

People extend themselves towards others only if it's part of their life experience.

I'm not sure I follow this ... is it a one to one - if I don't have mental illness I won't reach out to those who do? Again, some of the people in the helping field who seem more able to freely extend themselves, seem to have come from the healthiest homes and backgrounds without particular experiences in a given area. I've heard the story more than once that someone just saw the problem one day and it captured their imagination and they knew then they were going to grow up and work on that problem. There may be some experience required but I think it's minimal - only enough to be aware of the problem. This is true of medical doctors the majority of the time with a specific illness.

So I think that knowledge of a family member's experience of racism will sensitize you to the event and now you can extrapolate and have compassion for others who experience racism. But that doesn't mean you will understand homophobia.

I'm not sure - I think back to the quote about James Joyce having written the most accurate first person account of a woman giving birth (I need to look that up) and certainly authors commonly at least give words to experiences they haven't had ... it's hard to see how they could do that without feeling it too.

And I think there is a caution here for me, becaue I saw lots of people getting hung up on their qualifications in terms of their experiences ... and denying that they could be understood or that others could understand the problem the way they did ... and that tended to create barriers. Having had an experience is certainly helpful but it doesn't guarantee compassion ... some of the hardest people I've seen on others where those who had some experience and just "got over it" and so should everyone else.

In mental health, NAMI started with the families and they probably did get too strong - and then there was a strengthening of the movement among persons with mental illness and they began to get more control over their own lives and then families felt what it was like to be in a weaker position - so now there is one more shared experience. Also after a lifetime of dealing with the effects of a family member's illness - many people themselves were on anti-depressants and other psychiatric medications, perhaps because the stress triggered underlying predispositions - or from some other cause.

In terms of homophobia - I've been in situations where I was discounted because I was straight. Obviously that's not the majority view in the wider world - but in that space, at that time ... it was the majority view and I'm glad I had someone looking out for me. There are particulars you'd never guess of course - but in terms of the basic feeling that you're not being treated like others because of something you have no control over ... I think most people get some experience with that at some point.

However, parts of what you say is true, and immersing yourself in equity spaces with good teachers (women, strong men) can sensitize you across spaces to grow compassion.

What I mean by growing compassion is intentionally cultivating it as a quality of mind. Approaching everyone with that attitude. Extending it out to everyone on principle because everyone suffers - the data of other's lives is constantly changing but compassion as an attitude or quality of mind is indiscriminate and unlimited. Knowing more about someone doesn't make me more or less compassionate (ideally).

 

[smcder]

The idea was to trade some compassion for sufficient IQ points to make it easier to acquire the material needs required to alleviate the suffering. Unfortunately the real situation is that I'm stuck being where I'm at now, and being over 55, I might be getting older a wiser, but not necessarily any smarter .

In a dispassionate situation the best possible outcomes can still be recognized. People who are starving still need food so an absence of food can be recognized as a need whether we feel bad for those who are underfed or not, and having adequately fed people makes them more productive, which in-turn provides other benefits such as increased availability of goods and services, which in-turn helps others. It's all very logical, but add the benefit that because the original scenario allowed other emotions to come into play, we would also have the positive emotions of satisfaction and pride at accomplishing something positive as motivating factors. We are also motivated to do things because they feel good, not just because something makes us feel uncomfortable.

So a lack of compassion doesn't have to be an inhibitor to the task of alleviating suffering. In fact, personally, it's the pain I feel from compassion that makes me turn off the charity commercials. I don't want to face those realities knowing I'm in a situation where the water is coming in faster than it's going out ( metaphorically ), and therefore I'm personally vulnerable, while at the same time being emotionally manipulated by commercials on TV pleading for my compassion. It is actually working against itself in a negative reinforcement kind of way. I don't know how I can be any clearer about these concepts.

Sure, Data always strived to be more human, and in Star Trek - The Wrath Of Khan, Spock logically sacrifices himself to save the Enterprise saying, "It's logical ... The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." This was his solution to the Kobyashi Maru test. In both cases ( Spock and Data ), these creatures of logic would both sacrifice themselves for the lives of those around them.

For me personally, end of life care decisions aren't something I've considered. That goes back to another discussion we had where I said something to the effect that denial can take you a long ways. I'll worry about that some other time and preferably for as short a time as possible.

In a dispassionate situation the best possible outcomes can still be recognized. People who are starving still need food so an absence of food can be recognized as a need whether we feel bad for those who are underfed or not, and having adequately fed people makes them more productive, which in-turn provides other benefits such as increased availability of goods and services, which in-turn helps others. It's all very logical, but add the benefit that because the original scenario allowed other emotions to come into play, we would also have the positive emotions of satisfaction and pride at accomplishing something positive as motivating factors. We are also motivated to do things because they feel good, not just because something makes us feel uncomfortable.

OK - then wouldn't this be the smartest, most dispassionate thing you could do - to accept the following offer?

Aliens come to you and offer to re-distribute all the world's resources equally among all 7 billion people.

No catches ... you get 1/7 billionth of the resources yourself - no more or less. You ask why they do it and they say they are bored and curious how a randomly selected human would answer.

Yes? or No? (no Googling)

@Burnt State ?

 

[smcder]

The word compassion at its root means feeling-with, so far as I can tell, and the preposition is as important as the noun. It signifies interpersonal exchange of feeling and therefore meaning. While we can feel compassion for whole groups of people who suffer oppression, our feeling is not in such cases less personal in my opinion. In Portia's famous speech in The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare uses the word 'mercy' as a synonym for compassion:

"The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show like God's
When mercy seasons justice."


The lines I've highlighted in blue are for me the most significant ones --

. . . It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

and I want to concentrate on them because I now understand what they mean far more fully than I did decades ago when they first impressed me and became permanent residents of my mind. How does mercy or compassion 'bless' the giver as well as the receiver? It does so because it opens both 'selves' involved in the exchange toward the other and so supplements and strengthens both with an understanding, a commonality, a sharing, and a bond that redeems both from the fallen condition of separateness and solitude. We all know the feeling of deep satisfaction and annealment we have when we act selflessly in the interests of another, support another in his or her or their pain or grief by sharing it and acting to relieve it. It is not that we become 'better' in these acts; we certainly don't become 'God-like'. But we do touch the secure ground of our nature as subconsciously and consciously involved with and responsible to one another. What we know is the rightness of this sharing.

Auden wrote: "We must love one another or die" in this poem from our world:

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
by W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Beautifully said.

Have you seen the documentary "Playing Shakespeare"?

Playing Shakespeare (TV Mini-Series 1982) - IMDb

It's excellent - Portia's speech reminded me, they focused it on the last one we saw in the series.

 

[smcder]

Very powerful lines !

I'm re-reading Eric Schlosser's book: "Command And Control". Schlosser does an excellent job of chronicling the almost inevitable slide of the U.S. from a position of secure self-confidence and a desire to limit nuclear proliferation at the end of WWII into the almost bottomless quagmire of ever more massive bombs numbering in the many thousands to insure the endless horror of Mutual Assured Destruction.

Schlosser's book focuses on problems in designing and managing nukes in such a way that makes them both militarily reliable but reasonably "safe" to handle and maintain. But it's also a kind of cautionary tale about how common sense may be turned on its head by a toxic mixture of human nature and the power of technology. It was obvious from the first detonation at Alamogordo that use of any nuclear device would eventually become a path to mass suicide. And yet, the arms race developed a fierce momentum in and of itself that is with us yet today.

Perhaps the paradox here is that mass cruelty is, and has throughout history, been fomented by institutions composed of mostly compassionate individuals. The principle of Mutual Assured Destruction happens to be a particularly poignant and relevant example.

"... fomented by institutions composed of mostly compassionate individuals."

We're all mostly compassionat individuals. And mostly reasonable.

Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.—James Madison, FederalistNo. 55

So - we're also mostly aggressive and irrational. Certainly in the aggregate.

The needs of the many are different than the needs of the one.

I'd more likely trust my life to the last man on Earth than the last tribe. For want of company - Robin Crusoe was a model of virtues to Friday. But with three comes politics. A tribe has companionship met and goes immediately in search of consensus. Then the one aches for solitude again.

The Porcupine Theory.

 

[smcder]

No doubt meditation is a useful tool in quieting the mind of an individual beset by pain of various kinds and overwhelmed by the state of the society and world in which he or she is trying to live a purposeful and peaceful life. Mindfulness meditation in particular seems to help practitioners to function in the world with an increased sense of personal efficacy, at least in terms of overcoming unhealthy attachments and free-floating anxiety, to live a balance between the self and as much of the world as one can handle. But attachment to this world is our natural condition, like the primordial 'affectivity' Panksepp recognizes in the most primitive organisms, which evolves into protoconsciousness, consciousness, and mind. We are born open to and connected with that which surrounds us, our environment and the others in it, and this openness gives us the contextual sensible world we are part of and present to, providing us with both 'satisfactions' (Whitehead) and challenges. We can't abdicate our situation within this world without losing the ground of our actively meaningful existence in it -- and which becomes our responsibility to bring about for others as well as ourselves. These extracts you bring from Kornfield are very important to the extent that they show how care of the self is not sufficient (though it's necessary) for satisfaction in life and genuinely meaningful existence.

No doubt meditation is a useful tool in quieting the mind of an individual beset by pain of various kinds and overwhelmed by the state of the society and world in which he or she is trying to live a purposeful and peaceful life.

That's a lot of people these days. but I don't want to portray meditation as only for people with certain problems - just as there are so many kinds of exercise for so many kinds of outcomes that almost everyone would benefit from some kind of exercise - there are many forms of meditation/contemplation ... so not everyone should meditate the Buddha way or even meditate in a sit down, formal way ... or even, otherwise. No blanket sytatements from me. There are endless arguments in Buddhism about what jhana one must attain to become enlightened - but it also says people have become awakened just hearing the Damma and in Zen it doesn't even take that - Satori types of experiences are reported frequently now that we have the internt to share them. You don't need it. I think one of the things that makes us human is that we dont need any one thing - that is why you can take so much away from us.

Mindfulness meditation in particular seems to help practitioners to function in the world with an increased sense of personal efficacy, at least in terms of overcoming unhealthy attachments and free-floating anxiety, to live a balance between the self and as much of the world as one can handle.

This actually is a pretty good description of the Buddha's original idea of meditation:

"The Satipatthana Sutta, the Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness, is generally regarded as the canonical Buddhist text with the fullest instructions on the system of meditation unique to the Buddha's own dispensation. The practice of Satipatthana meditation centers on the methodical cultivation of one simple mental faculty readily available to all of us at any moment. This is the faculty of mindfulness, the capacity for attending to the content of our experience as it becomes manifest in the immediate present. What the Buddha shows in the sutta is the tremendous, but generally hidden, power inherent in this simple mental function, a power that can unfold all the mind's potentials culminating in final deliverance from suffering."

The world at that time was very different of course - and Thich Nhat Hahn and others have started a Western direction in Buddhism that recognizes what you say here - more traditional schools are critical of this as bringing the Romantic school into the interpretation of Buddhism. But we've continued to grow from the Romantic critiue into our modern outlook - but the original idea of the Boddhisattva was an ultimate in altruism in which the practioner put off ultimate Enlightement until all beings were liberated - a perhaps rhetorical stance as some argue ultimate liberation can only occur when all are liberated. But taken as a limit (as in mathematics) it points to your statement (if I understand you correctly)

which becomes our responsibility to bring about for others as well as ourselves

But attachment to this world is our natural condition, like the primordial 'affectivity' Panksepp recognizes in the most primitive organisms, which evolves into protoconsciousness, consciousness, and mind. We are born open to and connected with that which surrounds us, our environment and the others in it, and this openness gives us the contextual sensible world we are part of and present to, providing us with both 'satisfactions' (Whitehead) and challenges. We can't abdicate our situation within this world without losing the ground of our actively meaningful existence in it -- and which becomes our responsibility to bring about for others as well as ourselves. These extracts you bring from Kornfield are very important to the extent that they show how care of the self is not sufficient (though it's necessary) for satisfaction in life and genuinely meaningful existence.

Yes - and where I struggled in my work was with what I now think was ultimately a lack of skill in being open and connected and maintaining boundaries and balance between self and others. So my help wasn't always helpful! I find I am better at it now, a bit - and I'm also working outside the institutions we set up to "help" others. Non-profits may get pulled in as corporate fronts

NY Times: NAMI Board Member Resigns in Protest Over Drug Money — MFIPortal

... other non profits may be hampered by arbitrary requirements - but for me right now, self and other is still a fundamentally difficult thing to navigate:

"The other does not exist: this is rational faith, the incurable belief of human reason. Identity =reality, as if, in the end, everything must necessarily and absolutely be
one and the same. But the other refuses to disappear; it subsists, it persists;

it is the hard bone on which reason breaks its teeth.

Abel Martin, with a poetic faith as human as rational faith, believed in the other, in "the essential Heterogeneity of being," in what might be called the incurable otherness from which oneness must always suffer."
-Antonio Machado
Finally, a good summary of Buddhism in a modern dialogue form (actually modeled on classic arguments) and then something from Nietzsche as a tonic to Buddhism - for those who

stink of Zen!

Two Dialogues on Dhamma

... the second dialogue deals with a specific issue of right livelihood and has to do with the ethical treatment of animals

"One can guess from all this just where the great question mark about the worth of existence was placed. Is pessimism necessarily the sign of collapse, destruction, of disaster, of the exhausted and enfeebled instincts—as it was with the Indians, as it is now, to all appearances, among us, the “modern” peoples and Europeans?

Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual inclination for what in existence is hard, dreadful, evil, problematic, emerging from what is healthy, from overflowing well being, from living existence to the full? Is there perhaps a way of suffering from the very fullness of life? A tempting courage of the keenest sight which demands what is terrible as the enemy, the worthy enemy, against which it can test its power, from which it wants to learn what “to fear” means?"

Nietzsche