Tuesday 24 September 2013

True progress: institutions, freedom, God

Institutions are good and, anyway, necessary (i.e., unavoidable - anarchists are profoundly unrealistic). But they do have within them a totalitarian tendency. They can loom so large in human life, society, history, that they come to appear to be the ultimate reality - or at lest the ultimate arbitrators of what should count as reality. To the extent this happens, institutions discourage us from pondering ultimate realities, and so also from pondering the ways in which they themselves may be distorting our understanding of reality and thus - in spite of responding to various real or artificial or even merely imagined needs (here I think especially of educational institutions these days) - inhibiting genuinely human progress.

From Pope Benedict XVI's Caritas in veritate, para. 11 (my unofficial, and better-than-the-official, translation into English):

...the true progress of man concerns the whole person in each and every dimension. When an expectation of eternal life is taken away, human progress in this world is left short of breath (spiritu privatur). Enclosed within history, it can run into the danger of giving itself over solely to the increase of power and possessions; humanity thus loses the heart to strive for higher goods and for the great and generous (selfless) initiatives, towards which universal charity urges us. By his own powers alone man does not progress, nor can progress be given to him wholly from outside. In the course of history, this has often been supposed, that the creation of institutions would be enough to make it possible to provide the abundance of resources required in light of humanity's right to progress.  Sadly, too much confidence was placed in those institutions, as if they would be able to deliver the desired objective by themselves. In reality, institutions alone are not enough, because integral human development, including all of its elements, is primarily a vocation, and therefore it brings with it a certain free and solidary responsibility, which every person must assume. Moreover, such progress requires a transcendent viewpoint on the person, it needs God: without him,  progress is either denied, or turned over exclusively into the hands of man, who falls into the conceit of saving himself (of being his own saviour), in the end pushing forward a dehumanized kind of progress. For indeed, only an encounter with God allows us to not see "in the other always only an other," but to recognize the divine image in him, so that thus the other is uncovered in his reality and so love ripens into "caring concern for  the other."


The authoritative Latin:

...verum hominis progressum ad totam personam eius in omnibus rationibus pertinere [16]. Dempta vitae aeternae exspectatione, hoc in mundo spiritu privatur humanus progressus. Intra historiam conclusus, periculum adire potest ne ad opes augendas tantummodo se tradat; humanitas sic despondet animum praestantiora bona atque magna liberaliaque incepta appetendi, ad quae universalis caritas impellit. Suis tantum viribus non progreditur homo, neque ei mere extrinsecus datur progressus. Annorum decursu saepenumero hoc putatum est conditas institutiones humanitati progressus ius suppeditare affatim posse. Proh dolor in his institutionibus immodica fiducia est collocata, quasi optatum propositum per se ipsae consequi possent. Institutiones revera solae non sufficiunt, quandoquidem humanus omnibus ex partibus integer progressus imprimis est vocatio quaedam ideoque liberam solidalemque responsalitatem secum fert, quam omnes suscipere debent. Talis progressio praeterea personae transcendentem prospectum requirit, Deo indiget: sine Eo progressus aut negatur aut hominis manibus solummodo demandatur, qui in iactantiam se ipsum salvandi incidit, inhumanum denique progressum provecturus. Ceterum cum Deo tantum occursus non sinit « in altero semper alterum solummodo » [17] cernere, sed in eo divinam imaginem agnoscere, dum sic alter reapse detegitur atque amor maturescit qui « alterius hominis curatio » [18] fit.

The original(?) German:

...die echte Entwicklung des Menschen einheitlich die Gesamtheit der Person in all ihren Dimensionen betrifft.[16] Ohne die Aussicht auf ein ewiges Leben fehlt dem menschlichen Fortschritt in dieser Welt der große Atem. Wenn er innerhalb der Geschichte eingeschlossen bleibt, ist er der Gefahr ausgesetzt, sich auf eine bloße Zunahme des Besitztums zu beschränken; so verliert die Menschheit den Mut, für die höheren Güter aufnahmebereit zu sein, für die großen und selbstlosen Initiativen, zu denen die universale Nächstenliebe drängt. Der Mensch entwickelt sich nicht bloß mit den eigenen Kräften, noch kann die Entwicklung ihm einfach von außen gegeben werden. Im Laufe der Geschichte hat man oft gemeint, die Schaffung von Institutionen genüge, um der Menschheit die Erfüllung ihres Rechtes auf Entwicklung zu gewährleisten. Leider hat man in solche Institutionen ein übertriebenes Vertrauen gesetzt, so als könnten sie das ersehnte Ziel automatisch erlangen. In Wirklichkeit reichen die Institutionen allein nicht aus, denn die ganzheitliche Entwicklung des Menschen ist vor allem Berufung und verlangt folglich von allen eine freie und solidarische Übernahme von Verantwortung. Eine solche Entwicklung erfordert außerdem eine transzendente Sicht der Person, sie braucht Gott: Ohne ihn wird die Entwicklung entweder verweigert oder einzig der Hand des Menschen anvertraut, der in die Anmaßung der Selbst-Erlösung fällt und schließlich eine entmenschlichte Entwicklung fördert. Im übrigen gestattet nur die Begegnung mit Gott, nicht »im anderen immer nur den anderen zu sehen«,[17] sondern in ihm das göttliche Bild zu erkennen und so dahin zu gelangen, wirklich den anderen zu entdecken und eine Liebe reifen zu lassen, die »Sorge um den anderen und für den anderen«[18] wird.

Friday 20 September 2013

"Dear Madame Marois": a confused letter from a pretentious academic

Matt Friedman, a guy who teaches history at Rutgers University, recently wrote an annoyingly self-righteous letter to Pauline Marois, premiere of Quebec. I find Friedman's letter annoying because I always find pretentious academics who don't know what they're talking about annoying. But let's get into some specifics.

Friedman is writing to protest against the imposition of the "Charter of Quebecois values" currently being proposed by the government of Quebec. After an impassioned recital of his bona fides as a real Quebecois who holds real Quebecois values - though he is temporarily in exile from sa patrie -, he gets into trying to tell us what is wrong with the Charter.

He first explains that the law would allow certain things and disallow others, then, after making the accusation that the proposed Charter is essentially totalitarian, he writes: "Indeed, it is an axiom of both the Common and Civil Law that, for a law to be just it must apply equally and without discrimination. Yet the secularism you seek to impose on Québec is fundamentally unequal and discriminatory. It is therefore unjust."

Now I'm pretty sure the axiom he refers to means that the law must apply equally to all of those who fall under its prescriptions. It doesn't mean that the law itself must fail to make any distinctions, that is, that the law itself must not discriminate, that the law must regard every possible state of affairs as 'equal' - in other words, that the law should be nihilistic. The purpose of law is precisely to discriminate, and to do so in a way that is just and that will promote the common good... isn't it?? Friedman's claim is analogous to the claim that laws against murder discriminate against murderers - yeah, that's the point! (This all-too-common argument is one that annoys the heck out of me: "X is discriminatory; therefore X is unjust." No; to be discriminating is a good thing; it is to be capable of seeing reality and making sound judgments. To call something unjust is an act of discrimination, so if discrimination as such was really unjust, then it would be unjust to call anything unjust! That way of talking is thoroughly nonsensical.)

But then we might ask, how do advocates of unfettered tolerance, like Friedman, feel about someone wearing a KKK outfit, or displaying a big swastika tattoo? I'd actually be okay with that (i.e., tolerate it, not be happy about it) in some cases, perhaps in the case of a student, for example - but students are not agents of the state. As students they are expected to be open-minded, to want to learn, to be willing to examine their beliefs and values. But they are not representatives of the state and of societal values. (On the other hand, when it comes to a student having a covered face, I would incline towards intolerance. I think seeing someone's face is an important part of communicating with her, and I don't think that there are any real religious or cultural values tied specifically to the niqab that are worth defending. Are there any??) But Friedman, like Marois, seems reluctant to talk about - let alone defend - any of the specific values that are associated with any specific cultural symbols.

Friedman goes on to accuse Marois of not understanding her own cultural patrimony, of embracing, without realizing it, a "profoundly Christian secularism." [Insert extended discussion of this apparently oxymoronic concept here.] He writes: "To prohibit the display of religious symbols by citizens in public employment while the government of Québec displays them on its letterhead, in the Assemblée nationale, on Sureté de Québec cruisers – the physical embodiment of state power – and our society displays it in its geography and calendar, is not to preserve neutrality but privilege."

He thinks that Marois and co. don't understand this, and perhaps there's some truth to that [again, insert extended discussion here of exactly what that truth is], but he is just as confused as they are, because his own viewpoint no less than theirs pretends to value value-neutrality (to promote a culture of cultural neutrality) - which is impossible. And Friedman is even more confused than Marois, because he ignores the fact that most Quebecers - especially the Francophone ones - support the proposed legislation and fails to recognize that he too is endorsing a similar individualistic anti-cultural multiculturalism, which at its core is merely nihilistic. He thus fails to realize that the Charter is perfectly congruous with mainstream Quebecois culture - of which he is unwittingly a good representative in many ways -, because, au contraire de his conceited panegyric, mainstream Quebecois culture is simply nihilistic and shot through with irrationalism. I suspect that Friedman's self-righteous endorsement of Levesque and the noble humanism (or whatever) of the Quiet Revolution is simply nonsense and that in reality Marois and Drainville are, if anything, better interpreters and more genuine heirs of the legacy of Levesque than is Friedman. In any case, if Friedman wants to pretend to promote neutrality, it is a mystery how he can so baldly privilege (his interpretation of) the ideological legacy of Levesque.

And finally, I'm disgusted by Friedman's lack of ingenuousness: First he writes, "I believe that you are a very reasonable, well-meaning person, Mme. Marois, and I don’t doubt that you are motivated by the best-possible intentions." Then he concludes, "It appears that you believe that you can play the people of Québec like a violin; that you have so much contempt for us that you can manipulate us at the basest level. I hope I am wrong about you..." Really, Mr. Friedman? Make up your mind, man! But hey, let's face it: that kind of double-speak is just how lefties roll. Friedman or Marois, take your pick: when it comes to fundamentals, I don't see much difference here.

Monday 16 September 2013

Truth, fidelity, freedom, progress

From "Caritas in veritate" (para. 9), my translation:

"Without truth, one falls into empiricist and sceptical views of life, which lack the power to go beyond merely doing something, and wherein there is no concern for grasping the real values — or sometimes even the basic meanings — with which to judge and direct life. Fidelity to man* implies fidelity to the truth, which is the one thing which is a guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32), and which also can provide for integrated human development."

*Or the fidelity *of* man, i.e., human fidelity.

[Absque veritate in vitae empiristicas scepticasque opinationes deciditur, quae ex praxi exsistere non valet, cuius non interest bona percipere – interdum nec significationes – quibus ea est iudicanda dirigendaque. Hominis fidelitas secum fert fidelitatem veritati, quae una est sponsio libertatis (cfr Io 8, 32) atque humanum omnibus ex partibus progressum praestare potest.]

Official English (mis-)translation:
"Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and sceptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development."

Wednesday 11 September 2013

Value positivism and religious neutrality: "La charte des valeurs québécoises"

The principle goal of the Charte des valeurs québécoises (the Charter of Quebecois Values) is supposedly the following: "to affirm Quebecois values and the religious neutrality of the state." In other words, the Quebecois state wants to affirm Quebecois values while remaining religiously neutral. So the implication here - that is, in the view of Pauline Marois, Bernard Drainville, and a majority of Qwee-beckers (in particular most of the ones who are francophone) - is apparently that there is no contradiction between the Quebecois state's affirmation of Quebecois values, on the one hand, and the religious neutrality of the Quebecois state, on the other. But this means that 'Quebecois values' (i.e., the values that the Quebecois state wants to affirm) must be 'religiously neutral' - otherwise the supposedly 'religiously neutral' Quebecois state couldn't affirm them.

So are they? Are 'Quebecois values' actually 'religiously neutral'? Is that really a difficult question to answer? If they were neutral, then the levels of support/abhorrence for the Charter affirming these values would be found to be uniform across all of the diverse religious/irreligious communities that exist in Quebec. Is anyone - Marois, Drainville, anyone - daft enough to think that this is actually the case? That people's religious views are in fact irrelevant to whether or not they support the Charter and its 'values'? Not likely.

So what is the real problem then? Is it that the Quebecois state has no right to affirm Quebecois values? No, that's not it: it is simply not possible for a state to be value-neutral. No society could possibly exist without affirming some set or other of values. And since no particular set of values is truly 'religiously neutral,' no state and no society can ever be truly 'religiously neutral' either. (In fact, 'religious neutrality' is itself a value, and indeed, a 'Quebecois value,' but it is a value that is not religiously neutral - you clearly can't value and advocate for religious neutrality and at the same time remain religiously neutral! - so in reality this 'value' simply doesn't make sense.)

So the problem with the Charte of 'Quebecois values' is first of all that it pretends to incarnate a contradiction. The truth is that it attempts to affirm Quebecois values, and in so doing makes manifest certain ways in which the Quebecois state is not religiously neutral. So why do Marois, Drainville, and all those French-speaking Quebeckers want to pretend otherwise? Why would they want to pretend to be religiously neutral? That's a trickier question.

I suppose that some of them are not stupid, and in the purely political machinations of their devious minds they simply feel no compunction about abusing their electorate with straight-up doses of double-speak whenever it suits them. I suspect that most of them, however, are not in this category. I think that most of them are just very confused. They sincerely embrace a view of themselves as morally progressive beings who are quite enlightened when it comes to values: values, they believe, are merely subjective things, and so, they reason, no one has the right to impose his values on anyone else, and certainly not by means of the state. Therefore the state must be value-neutral; value-neutrality is in fact valuable; in other words, value-neutrality is not value-neutral. But of course if you are trying to be value-neutral, then you can't show favor to the value of value-neutrality. And that is exactly what they want to do!

So they come to a compromise: "We can't possibly embrace genuine value-neutrality: that is psychologically and socially impossible. But fundamentally our values are merely subjective constructs, so we have no real right to impose them on anyone. We believe quite fervently in individualism, in the right of every individual to define him-/her-/it-self and the world around him/her/it however he/she/it sees fit. We recognize the wrongness of arbitrary exercises of power as a means to constrain the individual's right to self-expression. But as a practical matter we can't possibly live in a society that has no shared values. So we will impose our values; but as a salve to our conflicted liberal consciences we will declare ourselves to be religiously neutral, even though we evidently are not; which is to say that those among us who are not stupid are simply lying. But our lie is a noble one, because it at least expresses our noble liberal intention to respect the individual; and it is a useful one, because it makes us feel better about ourselves, gives us an ideological tale to spin to those who are less intelligent, and facilitates our ability to exercise power over those who disagree with us."

And the bonus: they are spared from ever having to call into question the basic liberal, 'progressive' premises - about the essential, metaphysical nature of man and of values - which produce their confusion and necessitate their lies in the first place.

"...and in honour of the saints"

I went to mass this morning at St. Clement's. In the Latin mass they have this prayer as part of the Offertory (Preparation of the Gifts) (it was removed from the 1970 Missal, so you don't get it in the Novus Ordo mass):

"Accept, holy Trinity, this oblation (offering) which we offer to you in memory of the passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ; and in honour of blessed Mary ever Virgin and of blessed John the Baptist, and of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and of these (whose relics rest here in the altar), and of all the Saints. To them may it bring honour, and to us salvation; and may they, whose memory we keep on earth, be pleased to intercede for us in heaven. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen"

I really like it. It reminds us that the ultimate point of the cross is to bring honour to the saints and at every mass we not only participate in the memorial of Christ's suffering, resurrection, and ascension, but also in the act of bringing honour to all those who have been saved through Christ's cross and resurrection (including my own blessed daughter, Naomi Therese).



[Here is the Latin text:

Suscipe, sancta Trinitas, hanc oblationem, quam tibi offerimus ob memoriam passionis, resurrectionis, et ascensionis Jesu Christi Domini nostri: et in honorem beatae Mariae semper Virginis, et beati Joannis Baptistae, et sanctorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, et istorum, et omnium Sanctorum: ut illis proficiat ad honorem, nobis autem ad salutem: et illi pro nobis intercedere dignentur in caelis, quorum memoriam agimus in terris. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.]

Friday 6 September 2013

Believe!

It is a mistake to believe something just because you want it to be true.

It is a worse mistake to disbelieve something just because you want it to be true.

Frosh week! Chanting is fun!

I was shocked by this when I saw it. Shocked and appalled. A bunch of 'student leaders' at St. Mary's University in Halifax chanting about what St. Mary's boys like in the way of sex: Y - your sister, O - o so tight, U - underage, N - no consent, G - grab that ass. But the reaction to it has been predictably silly and shallow: People are shocked, disappointed, offended by the U and the N, sometimes even the Y, while the O and the G generally seem to get a pass.

First of all, I’d love to know who came up with this chant (fricking dumbass ‘student leaders’ – these are the same kind of 'bro-choice' morons who somehow figure they have the moral authority to ban pro-life groups from campus), but the reality here is that even if what they’re chanting is evil – not ‘inappropriate’ or ‘sexist’; evil – we should understand that they’re mostly just sheep who would chant pretty much anything they were told to chant, just because that’s what the others are doing. (Some have criticized the chant as mindless behaviour, which is correct, but keep in mind that most frosh week activities consist of mindless behaviour.) As for the chant itself, people who think that this is a matter of sexism are not thinking clearly. If someone thinks it is okay to rape women, his (or her) problem is not that he (or she) thinks it is okay to discriminate against women. Using that kind of (stupid) reasoning, you could just as well say that someone who thought that consensual sex with women was okay was sexist. The problem is with the attitude towards rape; the sex of the victim is not morally relevant. If someone who raped only women was thereby sexist, then someone who raped only men – or even just mostly men – would likewise thereby be sexist, and the non-sexist course of action would be to ensure that half of one's rape victims were male and half female (and one should very occasionally rape an inter-sex person, if possible). Which is, of course, utter nonsense. (Think about it, if you need to. Some (many? - most?) feminists seem to think that the main evil in the world is sexism, so whenever they see some evil they instinctively try to classify it as a form of sexism. If you’re interested in understanding the truth and living in reality, this is a stupid thing to do.)

Secondly, this kind of disgusting, brain-dead trash – this chant, that is – is precisely what our wonderful public education system naturally gives rise to. I’ve had perfectly nice, ordinary, not-racist-or-homophobic kids – i.e., high school graduates, university students – in  my moral reasoning class who can quite blandly say stuff like, “The Holocaust was wrong from our perspective; but maybe it was right for them, for the Germans seventy years ago – who are we to judge?” Does anybody think that kids are just NATURALLY that dumb? No, that kind of stupidity is the result of indoctrination – that is, a corrupt education. These masses of publicly-educated – i.e., semi-educated – moral imbeciles are simply the wretched products of the massive influence of the education system – including the mass media, and especially entertainment media – that produced them. They’re not awful people. They’ve just been constantly taught that there is no truth in questions of morality; that sex is fun and healthy, so go ahead be creative, do whatever feels good – just wear a condom, you’ll be fine; that we all know you’ll have sex anyway, regardless of what anyone says, so again, have some more condoms. Of course the truth about such matters is also readily available (if not equally so to all), at least to anyone who actually cares to look for it (which is to say, very few people). But when you’ve got this army of clever, cool, progressive, rich, beautiful, sexy, successful adults telling teenagers, go for it, there are no moral issues here; just do what you want, whatever feels good to you; remember: it’s bad to judge others’ behaviour – progressive, fun, tolerant, GOOD people don’t judge; well, isn’t it a big surprise when some kids – in fact, most of them – actually decide to buy into the lies? Is it a surprise when they end up thinking, “No one has a right to judge me, I can do, think, say whatever I want if it makes me feel good... (oh, also: vote for me! – next mayor of NY!)”? Once you get kids (who do become adults, even if they never become mature) to start thinking like that, guess what? It doesn’t really matter what politically correct lines you try to draw in the sand after the fact; you have already so destroyed their basic powers of judging the truth that such ‘relatively-moral’ lines can never exercise any genuine – that is, moral, rational, properly human – constraint upon their thinking, saying, and acting. All you’re left with to constrain behaviour are arbitrary exercises of techniques of social coercion – public shaming, enforced ‘sensitivity training’ (i.e., more BS ideological indoctrination) – which always ignore and sometimes exacerbate the roots of the problem.

Thursday 5 September 2013

Feminism and 'Rhetorical Force'

I had a friend try to explain to me yesterday that women – especially ‘feminist’ women – have suffered so much from sexism that they are justified in using extreme levels of ‘rhetorical force’ in responding to people who question their claims (see, for example, this piece from Jezebel). Here’s a very simple point that feminists and other fundamentalists need to consider: when you defend a point of view by acting like an absurdly arrogant, irrational, violent, etc. ignoramus, the rhetorical force of such behaviour is to establish the following fact: that it is absurdly arrogant, ignorant, etc. people who defend that point of view. So it seems that either (1) you’re actually proud to be an absurdly arrogant ignoramus, in which case you’d do yourself and the rest of the world a favour if you’d just shut up; or (2) you really hate feminism (or whatever pseudo-sophisticated ideology you feign to embrace), in which case, please be honest about that; or (3) your ideology actually includes the doctrine that it's cool to be stupid, rude, violent, or whatever, in which case, really? - don't you think it might be worth checking out some alternative ways of thinking about who you are and what you are meant to be?

Monday 2 September 2013

Divine Adoption

The gospel message of adoption:
 
“He, through whom the world was made, was in the world, and the world treated him as a stranger. He came to what was his own, and they who were his own gave him no welcome. But all those who did welcome him, he empowered to become the children of God, all those who believe in his name.” (John 1:10)
 
The sign of adoption:

“When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'" (Galatians 4:4-6)
"The spirit you have now received is not, as of old, a spirit of slavery, to govern you by fear; it is the spirit of adoption, which makes us cry out, Abba, Father." (Romans 8:15)
 
The means of adoption:

 “Ask, and the gift will come, seek, and you shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened to you. Everyone that asks, will receive, that seeks, will find, that knocks, will have the door opened to him. Among yourselves, if a father is asked by his son for bread, will he give him a stone? Or for a fish, will he give him a snake instead of a fish? Or if he is asked for an egg, will he give him a scorpion? Why then, if you, evil as you are, know well enough how to give your children what is good for them, is not your Father much more ready to give, from heaven, his gracious Spirit to those who ask him?” (Luke 11:9)