On Supposedly Seeing Signs

Three times in the last two weeks friends have asked me whether I am going to return to stand up comedy. (For the record, I would like to. Just a matter, as always, of finding the time.)

When the second friend asked me, and I told her that she was the second person, she replied somewhat playfully, "See, it could be a sign."

I found myself surprised by my response, which was truthful, but so long as it remained publicly unspoken, more tentative: "I don't believe in signs anymore."

I have been pondering the implications of this, my belief, for some time now. (Note, this too, is a "belief.") A belief born of what I would call a personal backlash against my own pious self deceptions for many years.

Among these pious self deceptions: seeing signs about whom to date, what career to pursue, or even that my mother was not going to die of cancer at 48, as she did. (I saw signs for that on bumper stickers that happened to show up on cars at just the "right time." Her church friends saw other signs and gladly interpreted them for me both before and after her death.)

Does such a skeptical belief, born of dissatisfaction and sometimes even disgust with a particular culture's understanding of how God works in a particular time, and the wasted time it caused me, make me irreligious?

I would like to think not. I would like to think that I am looking for a more pure form of connection with the ultimate reality. And yet, I wonder, can one expect a pure intuition of the ultimate reality while living any kind of normal life? Is it really possible not to look for signs?

Maybe there are more pure "signs" than ambiguous bumper stickers seen at just the right time? For example, the beautiful face of a child. Is it a sign of God's love? Or, my persevering wife?

I have frequently wondered whether my new found semiotic deconstruction has a stopping point. Or, does it obliterate everything that is significant in my life -- everything that would mediate between me and the First Cause.

I have often wondered whether I can make decisions anymore, given this skepticism. Is any direction in life "important?" I have become deeply skeptical of having any "enthusiasms" about anything. This is very unlike what I used to be.

And yet, the strongest enthusiasm that I have is love. I shudder to think that I could part with the enthusiasm for my child. Yet, I shudder a little less to think that buying into the child as sign means I have to buy into the bumper sticker too.

Perhaps all signs that come forward to mediate must themselves be mediated and tested? But where does that stop (thank you, Charles Peirce), and what is to stop the self deception one would impose on any sign? Grace? (Which we often "discover" in signs.)

I don't know.

Dawkins Tweaked in New Music Video

I had to share this humorous little item from YouTube about Richard Dawkins - a very smart and very condescending man, leading a modern "posse" of pugnacious atheists.

Humor helps put things in perspective.

Mathematicians In Search of Infinity

Someday I will write the book entitled "The Best and Worst Cases for God." The worst case is well known: The Problem of Evil, and is a particular obsession of this blog.

The best case is less known, I think, and is to be found rolling somewhere around in this marvelous documentary from the BBC entitled "Dangerous Knowledge."

The mysterious power of mathematics, which so fascinated Plato and contributed to his Theory of the Forms, is also one of my fascinations.

I don't claim to have the analytical and logical power of a mathematician. One of the great regrets of my life is that I did not pay enough attention in my high school's experimental "Unified Mathematics" course, despite the solicitous concern for my success there by Sister Higgins. (I was too interested in analyzing the various properties of 1653 girls in my new high school.)

But like many philosophers and mathematicians, I am compelled to ask "Why the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics?" (Kurt Godel is a particular fascination. What are the implications of his famous Theorem?)

I have found my way back to mathematics somehow. I hope that somewhere Sister Higgins is smiling.

Talk Shows the Mysterious Power of Mathematics

Here's a very interesting video from the Ted Talks on the origin of fractals, and how they are used extensively in African culture. It reminds me of why I find mathematical history so fascinating.

The speaker, Ron Eglash makes some broad, rather unsubstantiated claims in this, particularly when, like the proverbial man with the hammer who sees everything as a nail, he suggests capitalism is an out-of-control self-replicating system.

Nevertheless, Eglash makes a real contribution to our understanding of mathematics and culture, and raises truly fascinating questions. Particularly about the mysterious power that mathematics offers up to us out of the riddles at its core.

Lecture on Evil, Harry Potter and More

Here is a very interesting video about the problem of evil, presented on the Google Channel. It is a a lecture by philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain, with ample examples from the Harry Potter series. It reminded me of the importance of the Platonic and Augustinian conceptions of good even for understanding modern life and literature.

A Final Thought on Utility in War

One final thought on the post just before this one, in case I didn't make myself quite clear on what I meant by "morally extraordinary" behavior in World War II.

Bret Stephens makes the argument in the posted video that the firebombing of German and Japanese cities - which, it seems, everybody now accepts as morally licit - "hastened" the end of the war.

Well, exactly which bombings? If the earlier acts against non-combatants were moral because they would hasten the war, and presumably save even more lives, then why did we need the later atomic bombs?

Weren't the atomic bombings justified on the grounds that they were "necessary" to end the war? In what sense, if we were already engaged in acts of the same nature, also meant to end the war.

And, as has been argued before, Hiroshima didn't do the trick. Or, did it? No one is really responsible for scientifically pinning down this utilitarian calculus, probably because it cannot be done.

In fact, if atrocities in war are justified on the grounds that they will save more lives later, doesn't that mean that every atrocity, from Genghis Khan on, if done in the name of bringing about peace, was actually morally justified?

These specious arguments make a hash out of the whole notion of just war, and human rights for that matter. As Socrates pointed out, evil is done because it is believed to be good. The question for the American Right in general, and Mr. Stephens in particular, is, "are good intentions all one needs to engage in extraordinary wartime acts?"

Two Voices on Utilitarian Ethics and War

Funny how this issue keeps coming back to haunt me. Second time in a week that it hits the news.

While I have long been aligned with the movement from an economic point of view, I have always found the Right's willingness to embrace utilitarian ethics in warfare, or loosely defined warfare, (WWII, "War on Terror") disturbing.

Bret Stephens, a fine and intelligent gentlemen, has written a piece in the Wall Street Journal defending the "limited use" of waterboarding torture; citing as analogous our somewhat morally extraordinary behavior in World War II. A related video link is below.

Contrast that with journalist Stephen Grey's contention, in his new book Ghost Plane, that horrific things have been done during "rendition" of terror suspects, and that there is serious professional opinion that there are other ways to get information beside waterboarding, etc. See the video link below.

My contention against the Right on this issue (and against situationists in general, Left or Right) has always been epistemological.

The claim to "know" what will happen, and thereby justify "extraordinary" actions, even when rooted most firmly in statistical projection, ignores the nature of moral responsibility, where the actions of war lie within human choices.

We can't "know" that a result will come in the same sense we can predict a chemical reaction - because the choice to carry on or not carry on is always there.

And even where we can predict an outcome, the prediction should not hold the same moral weight.

There is a certain degree of moral vanity and underlying self-interest (pace Oppenheimer, see my last post), I can't put my finger on it, in suggesting that a kind of moral uber-man must emerge to do terrible things in the name of goodness, at any time. (The great myth of the "disinterested" utilitarian.)

Is not this moral vanity at the heart of every repugnant "real-politik" politician and so-called "professional" amoral foreign policy operative we have ever heard of?

One is not responsible to single-handedly prevent evil that will come as the result of the choices and actions of others - so long as one does everything one humanely can to prevent those actions directly. That means against the aggressor. Not against those the aggressor knows or cares about.

And even against the aggressor, cruel and unusal behavior is inherently codependent.

I don't know how to "prove" this. Stephens will cite the "facts" of history to make his case. The War ended. But are those all the facts? As Hadley Arkes once noted in his text, "First Things" the effects of Caesar crossing the Rubicon are never all in. Perhaps the effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still inform the thinking of Osama bin Laden? Perhaps they still inform the thinking of our foreign policy establishment, creating new ripples of codependence and reaction.

While I have respect for the facts of math and science, I also know that "facts" are often selected with certain biases. Ethical moments are not over when the news cycle is over. Americans look upon the morality of World War II entirely too much through the haze of triumphalist newsreels, and ignore the potentially codependent after-effects.

In any event, have a look at these two videos. Intelligent cases made. But, one is wrong; the other right.