Pope Benny's Popemobile is admittedly very cool, but that doesn't mean the Pope knows anything about driving. And what did Jesus drive? What gives the Vatican the authority to publish Ten Commandments about driving? Surely the subject is wholly outside its writ ...
"Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road", the name of the Vatican's publication, is supposed to be infallible because it is officially endorsed by the Pope. I haven't read the whole document, but it is clear from the Ten Commandments itself that the document contains many errors. Here are some of the following:
"4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents." This is particularly bad advice. If there's a car accident and someone is dying on the road, do not go and help him. You will get sued, one way or another.
"6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so." Surely it would be better to not get hammered or high at all.
"8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness [ie. settle out-of-court]."
Later on the document commands drivers to pray while driving. This is a bad idea. Crossing yourself on the highway could very well be your last act ...
Saturday 23 June 2007
Monday 18 June 2007
The case against charity
Most people unthinkingly associate the word charity with good; indeed, charity has become a synonym for the word good. I disagree with this association. I will list the causes of this association between charity and good and will attempt to show that it is unfounded.
All people are equal
As much as we would like to believe that all people are somehow equal, the notion of equality is quite groundless. Plainly, everyone is different. Some people have white skin; others have black, brown, and yellow skin. Some people have amazing capacities of rumination; others are quite bovine. Since every human being is unique in body and mind, one wonders whence this tendency to impose an arbitrary, transcendental, metaphysical equality comes from. Applying Occam’s razor (that we must not make more assumptions than necessary to explain something) to this question shows that any notion of arbitrary equality is unsubstantiated. Since there is no scientific or philosophical evidence to prove that one human being is somehow worth the same as another, we must conclude that equality is a spurious and illegitimate claim.
All people deserve equal opportunities
Social mobility is not as high as we would like it to be; even in the United States, the land of the American dream, most of the wealth of the rich can be attributed to social factors that are outside the control of the wealthy. For example, the argument goes, Bill Gates would not be so wealthy if it were not for America’s relatively stable economy, its public schooling, and its universities. Proponents of charity argue that we thus have a debt to pay back to society, which must be done through voluntary donations to charitable organisations. But this argument is clearly a logical fallacy. The statement ‘social and economic factors beyond our control indirectly are the cause of much of rich people’s wealth’ is a descriptive one. To change it into a normative statement, that ‘we are in debt to society and must pay it back’, is groundless. There is no reason to suppose that just because we profit from society we must pay it back. To invent the notion of the inherent fairness of the universe is ruled out by, again, Occam’s razor.
Charity genuinely improves people’s lives
Many charities proclaim that we can save a starving child’s life in Africa if we donate but HKD 50. We must ask ourselves, to what extent is this true? The answer is: not at all. To dream, nay, fantasise that your pitiful and pathetic contribution can do anything to improve the world is stupidity to the point of lunacy. Tim Harford in Slate Magazine writes that most charity work is about feeling good about ourselves and not about solving the world’s problems. For example, if we have HKD 10,000, most people would give a little proportion of that money to several different charities. HKD 2000 for curing AIDS, HKD 2000 for Darfur, and so on. But surely HKD 2000 isn’t going to cure AIDS, and neither is it going to stop genocide. Another example: between working overtime (earning more money) and volunteer work, most people choose the latter. Why? – because volunteer work makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside. Actually going to Africa to shove food inside the mouths of thin African kids makes you feel good. Of course, the alternative (earning much more money and using this to combat poverty) is more effective, but far less ‘hand-on’.
So should we abandon charity?
The sooner that you get it into your head that you are worthless and must stop trying to be a hero the better. Instead of wasting your time volunteering or wasting your money donating, try the following: when you have HKD 10,000, for example, at the end of the year that you intended to give to charity, invest it to make more money. You will amass much more wealth in this way.
At the end of your life, when you actually have a sizable and not insignificant amount of money to give, then, and only then, perhaps contemplate donating it to charity.
Until then, charity cannot be associated with good; it can only be associated with stupidity.
All people are equal
As much as we would like to believe that all people are somehow equal, the notion of equality is quite groundless. Plainly, everyone is different. Some people have white skin; others have black, brown, and yellow skin. Some people have amazing capacities of rumination; others are quite bovine. Since every human being is unique in body and mind, one wonders whence this tendency to impose an arbitrary, transcendental, metaphysical equality comes from. Applying Occam’s razor (that we must not make more assumptions than necessary to explain something) to this question shows that any notion of arbitrary equality is unsubstantiated. Since there is no scientific or philosophical evidence to prove that one human being is somehow worth the same as another, we must conclude that equality is a spurious and illegitimate claim.
All people deserve equal opportunities
Social mobility is not as high as we would like it to be; even in the United States, the land of the American dream, most of the wealth of the rich can be attributed to social factors that are outside the control of the wealthy. For example, the argument goes, Bill Gates would not be so wealthy if it were not for America’s relatively stable economy, its public schooling, and its universities. Proponents of charity argue that we thus have a debt to pay back to society, which must be done through voluntary donations to charitable organisations. But this argument is clearly a logical fallacy. The statement ‘social and economic factors beyond our control indirectly are the cause of much of rich people’s wealth’ is a descriptive one. To change it into a normative statement, that ‘we are in debt to society and must pay it back’, is groundless. There is no reason to suppose that just because we profit from society we must pay it back. To invent the notion of the inherent fairness of the universe is ruled out by, again, Occam’s razor.
Charity genuinely improves people’s lives
Many charities proclaim that we can save a starving child’s life in Africa if we donate but HKD 50. We must ask ourselves, to what extent is this true? The answer is: not at all. To dream, nay, fantasise that your pitiful and pathetic contribution can do anything to improve the world is stupidity to the point of lunacy. Tim Harford in Slate Magazine writes that most charity work is about feeling good about ourselves and not about solving the world’s problems. For example, if we have HKD 10,000, most people would give a little proportion of that money to several different charities. HKD 2000 for curing AIDS, HKD 2000 for Darfur, and so on. But surely HKD 2000 isn’t going to cure AIDS, and neither is it going to stop genocide. Another example: between working overtime (earning more money) and volunteer work, most people choose the latter. Why? – because volunteer work makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside. Actually going to Africa to shove food inside the mouths of thin African kids makes you feel good. Of course, the alternative (earning much more money and using this to combat poverty) is more effective, but far less ‘hand-on’.
So should we abandon charity?
The sooner that you get it into your head that you are worthless and must stop trying to be a hero the better. Instead of wasting your time volunteering or wasting your money donating, try the following: when you have HKD 10,000, for example, at the end of the year that you intended to give to charity, invest it to make more money. You will amass much more wealth in this way.
At the end of your life, when you actually have a sizable and not insignificant amount of money to give, then, and only then, perhaps contemplate donating it to charity.
Until then, charity cannot be associated with good; it can only be associated with stupidity.
Friday 1 June 2007
Plato and eros
“To sum up then,” she said, “love is the desire to have the good forever. […] Love’s function is giving birth in beauty both in body and in mind.”
-- Diotima; Plato, The Symposium
The concept of the Divided Line is one of the most important in Plato’s works. In The Republic, the four stages of cognition, from lowest to highest, are:
-- Imagining – images in the world of appearances;
-- Belief – visible things in the world of appearances;
-- Thinking – mathematical objects in the intelligible world; and
-- Intelligence or knowledge – the world of Forms (the highest Form being the Good) in the intelligible world.
The Symposium, a work about eros (love), follows this division of the stages of cognition.
Phaedrus argues that love ennobles both the lover and the beloved. Pausanias holds that there are two kinds of love: the common kind and the heavenly kind. Erixymachus says that love is a biochemical balance that leads to peace of the mind. Aristophanes contends that each individual is only one half of a self, and thus that love is a primal urge for wholeness. Note that these notions of love are based only upon the world of appearances. Socrates, telling the others about his teacher Diotima, expands on these to arrive finally at the Form of Love.
Just as a father is always a father of someone (that is, either a son or daughter), Love is always love of something. Thus Love always desires or is in want of something. It follows that Love cannot want or desire something it already has in possession; Love is, therefore, love of something, of something that he currently needs and does not have in possession already.
If we admit that Love is love of good and beautiful things, Love is neither good nor beautiful. But this does not mean he is bad and ugly; he is something in between the two. Just as “right opinions” are in the mean between wisdom and ignorance, Love is in the mean between good and bad and between beautiful and ugly. Love is not a god. A god is, by definition, happy because he is in possession of good and beautiful things. But love is not a mortal either; he is a spirit who is intermediate between gods and men. Diotima explains that Love is the son of Resource (Plenty) and Poverty; he was conceived the same day that Aphrodite was born so he loves beauty. He shares both parents’ characteristics: he is poor in good and beautiful things, but able to make means to achieve them. He is amoral, and lives and dies. He is a philosopher because he always searches for wisdom (one of the most beautiful things).
But what is the use of Love to man? Love is a love of beautiful and good things, and is the desire to have possession of the good forever. The teleological aim is that possession of the good causes happiness.
What function does Love have? Diotima argues that if the object of Love is to have the good always, it follows that we desire immortality as well; the object of love is not merely beauty, but rather the reproduction and birth in beauty. Sex and reproduction are the ways “mortal things have a share in immortality”; this explains the enthusiasm many organisms have for love. There are two kinds of love, then. Firstly, one can be “pregnant in the body”, where one loves physical objects and people, and where one’s aim in Love is physical reproduction. The second kind of love is where one is “pregnant in the mind”, and achieves immortality with virtue and thoughts. Diotima provides the example of Achilles participating in war to achieve immortality – this is described as a form of Love.
In the first stages of life, one is attracted to physical beauty. Later, one is attracted to beauty of the mind. When it is realised that all kinds of beauty have something in common, the real philosopher can “gaze” at the Form of Beauty, which is absolute unchanging infinite beauty. This Form of Beauty, ultimately, is the real object of Love, which can then produce real virtue and thus achieve immortality.
So if a genie offered me the chance to either have the love of a hot girl or gaze upon the Form of Beauty both for my entire life, which one would I pick? A dilemma indeed.
-- Diotima; Plato, The Symposium
The concept of the Divided Line is one of the most important in Plato’s works. In The Republic, the four stages of cognition, from lowest to highest, are:
-- Imagining – images in the world of appearances;
-- Belief – visible things in the world of appearances;
-- Thinking – mathematical objects in the intelligible world; and
-- Intelligence or knowledge – the world of Forms (the highest Form being the Good) in the intelligible world.
The Symposium, a work about eros (love), follows this division of the stages of cognition.
Phaedrus argues that love ennobles both the lover and the beloved. Pausanias holds that there are two kinds of love: the common kind and the heavenly kind. Erixymachus says that love is a biochemical balance that leads to peace of the mind. Aristophanes contends that each individual is only one half of a self, and thus that love is a primal urge for wholeness. Note that these notions of love are based only upon the world of appearances. Socrates, telling the others about his teacher Diotima, expands on these to arrive finally at the Form of Love.
Just as a father is always a father of someone (that is, either a son or daughter), Love is always love of something. Thus Love always desires or is in want of something. It follows that Love cannot want or desire something it already has in possession; Love is, therefore, love of something, of something that he currently needs and does not have in possession already.
If we admit that Love is love of good and beautiful things, Love is neither good nor beautiful. But this does not mean he is bad and ugly; he is something in between the two. Just as “right opinions” are in the mean between wisdom and ignorance, Love is in the mean between good and bad and between beautiful and ugly. Love is not a god. A god is, by definition, happy because he is in possession of good and beautiful things. But love is not a mortal either; he is a spirit who is intermediate between gods and men. Diotima explains that Love is the son of Resource (Plenty) and Poverty; he was conceived the same day that Aphrodite was born so he loves beauty. He shares both parents’ characteristics: he is poor in good and beautiful things, but able to make means to achieve them. He is amoral, and lives and dies. He is a philosopher because he always searches for wisdom (one of the most beautiful things).
But what is the use of Love to man? Love is a love of beautiful and good things, and is the desire to have possession of the good forever. The teleological aim is that possession of the good causes happiness.
What function does Love have? Diotima argues that if the object of Love is to have the good always, it follows that we desire immortality as well; the object of love is not merely beauty, but rather the reproduction and birth in beauty. Sex and reproduction are the ways “mortal things have a share in immortality”; this explains the enthusiasm many organisms have for love. There are two kinds of love, then. Firstly, one can be “pregnant in the body”, where one loves physical objects and people, and where one’s aim in Love is physical reproduction. The second kind of love is where one is “pregnant in the mind”, and achieves immortality with virtue and thoughts. Diotima provides the example of Achilles participating in war to achieve immortality – this is described as a form of Love.
In the first stages of life, one is attracted to physical beauty. Later, one is attracted to beauty of the mind. When it is realised that all kinds of beauty have something in common, the real philosopher can “gaze” at the Form of Beauty, which is absolute unchanging infinite beauty. This Form of Beauty, ultimately, is the real object of Love, which can then produce real virtue and thus achieve immortality.
So if a genie offered me the chance to either have the love of a hot girl or gaze upon the Form of Beauty both for my entire life, which one would I pick? A dilemma indeed.
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