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To Rave Is Madness by
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To Rave Is Madness
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To Rave Is Madness
Western Ideas I happened, recently, to look up in one of my dictionaries the definition
of humility. Here it is.
Naturally, I looked up humble. This is what I found.
That we define humility in terms of arrogance is a disappointing revelation. That is, we necessarily define it in terms of something that we understand and, sadly, we're quite familiar with arrogance. In addition, to define it in terms of submission or apology reflects our superficial perception of it when we've encountered it. Finally, to place it low on any hierarchy, to brand it as insignificant, indicts our values. It isn't surprising, I suppose, for our Western culture to fall so far short of the mark in understanding what is, after all, a rather foreign concept. In this series of essays, I've tended to deal with language, which is
crucial to understanding. To understand humility, for example, we
need to understand more than its opposite. We need a better understanding
of words like respect, reverence, and consideration. Those are difficult
concepts in our Western culture, where formal behavior passes for respect,
where reverence is viewed as something reserved for church, and where consideration
usually causes you to tip generously. Our understanding is also limited
by the problem of nonexistent words. Humility isn't the state or
quality of being humble. Being humble, as you can see from the definition,
is a different sort of thing. However, we don't have an adjective
to properly put in its place when defining humility. Our failure
to understand humility goes hand-in-hand with our inability to define it,
and who can say which came first?
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To Rave Is Madness
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To Rave Is Madness
Digital Thinking It often happens that new concepts might be lurking within old ones but haven't been sorted out yet. An example of this is what I call Jonathan's Distinction, after the man from whom I first heard it.1 In the dictionaries, ethics and morality are defined in terms of one another and, indeed, most people would respond that there isn't really any difference between the two. Jonathan's Distinction suggests a difference. According to Jonathan's Distinction, morality is the determination of
correct behavior according to assumptions while ethics is the determination
of correct behavior according to consequences. Consider, for example,
killing.2
A moral code of behavior might proclaim that it's wrong to kill.
The assertion doesn't require justification and need not depend upon circumstances.
It isn't susceptible to proof or refutation. It's an assumption.
A code of ethics, however, may assert that killing is wrong only if such
killing demonstrably causes more harm than good. That judgment of
consequences is far more complex and difficult than the moral assertion.
Suppose that the man to be killed is a proven serial killer. Is it
possible that more killing might be caused by leaving him alive (to continue
killing) than by killing him? On the other hand, who can measure
the harm done within a culture by its use of capital punishment and balance
that harm against the harm that
might be done by letting killers
live? Even if those questions can be answered, it might not yet be
the end of the quandary. Suppose this particular serial killer kills
only other serial killers. Maybe total killing in the future can
be reduced by leaving him alive to do his work. Maybe he should be
hired as a cop. Whether or not the example seems far fetched, it
illustrates the potential complexity of ethical judgment as compared to
a simple moral assumption. Jonathan's Distinction suggests (among
other things) that before we can decide upon the virtue of capital punishment
in Western culture, we must first understand both morality and ethics and
the differences between them.
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To Rave Is Madness
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To Rave Is Madness
Digital Thinking Each advancement in understanding reveals new frontiers of uncertainty.
Jonathan's Distinction isn't an exception. When one understands the
differences between morality and ethics, and attempts to determine which
he's using, he discovers that neither alone is adequate. The benefit
versus harm in an ethical determination can be judged only against previous
and fundamental assumptions of right and wrong. Thus, ethical reasoning
must begin from what can only be morality. On the other hand, moral
behavior is usually exhorted in terms of ultimate consequences, which
is ethical-style reasoning. The two beliefs thus turn out to be another
yin and yang. They're different from one another, they depend upon
one another, and they can't be divorced from one another. That points
to a general truth. Eventually, we must learn that all things are
different and that we must respect the differences. We must learn
that everything is connected to everything else and that the connections
are severed only at the risk of great loss. In the complex reality
of life, nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems.
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To Rave Is Madness
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To Rave Is Madness
Statutes and the Common Law
The uncertainty in determining correct behavior, and our imperfect understanding of any basis for it, is a problem for us. A study of history or of current events reveals the horrors that people commit when they try to impose a system of belief on others who do not share it. Given the shameful record of Western culture in that regard,3 I cannot believe that any system of behavior based only on moral assumptions is worthy of mandatory implementation. On the other hand, what legislature is competent to unravel the complex threads of ethics, and enact ethics into legislation? These considerations convincingly remove the determination of correct behavior from the legitimate purview of legislation, which is inherently coercive. Most readers will probably cringe in their chains and whimper "anarchy!" Perhaps, however, there's an alternative. The common law is the accumulation from antiquity of things that work. Legislation is merely somebody's opinion of how everybody else ought to behave. Given a respected body of common law, I can't see any reason to have any legislation at all. Remedy can be just as well obtained, and justice just as well be served, by judgment of every alleged offence by a jury of local people using the common law. The entire judicial procedure can be customary. It need not be
defined by legislation and it need not even reside within a branch of constituted
government. A jury of free, informed, and consenting adults, freely
convened, is always competent to judge offenses using only the common law,
tempered only by courtesy. Indeed, if that isn't true then we don't
have any business advocating self-government. Every injured party
has the incentive to convene such a jury and every member of the community
has the incentive to serve on it against the day that he himself might
need such service from the community. Customary law was acknowledged
over 2000 years ago as a safer rule than legislation and simple courtesy
in its administration will prevent the
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To Rave Is Madness
tyranny of convention. Legislation was acknowledged over 2000 years ago as the least reliable source of rule yet today we have deemed it supreme, placing it above even ourselves.
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To Rave Is Madness
The Call of the Wild A couple of million years ago (supposedly), men acquired certain differences from their nearest animal relatives and became (whatever it may mean) men. According to the modern consensus, life in cities began about five thousand years ago. If those beliefs are true, then it means that men have been citified for about three tenths of a percent of their existence which makes it seem like a pretty recent thing. When compared to the probable duration of other phases through which the race has passed, city life hasn't yet even qualified as a trend. In the time scale of human life, it may be nothing more than the quirky behavior of a few short generations. Given the unsustainable and irreversible nature of what we're doing with present technology, it's likely that city life will soon be lost in an overwhelming return (optimistically speaking) to the normal state of human existence. Perhaps a thousand years from now, no one will even remember us except as a rather bizarre creation legend told around the campfires late at night. Of course, the consensus might be wrong. It may be that city technologies arose within the first few thousand years of the advent of man and have been periodically recurring ever since. Surely, a few thousand years is long enough for men to have developed them. You wonder at the lack of relics? Don't be ridiculous. Relics from only 4000 years ago are near the point of utter disappearance. How could anyone expect to find relics from a city almost 2 million years in the past? Why would anyone but an idiot presume that the lack of such relics disproves the existence of the city? And, how better to account for those rare but tantalizing anomalies that sometimes float to the surface of legend, appear on the walls of caves, or end up among the "lunatic fringe" of artifacts that professional archaeologists so dearly love to condemn?4 And consider this. Perhaps we're looking for the wrong kind of relics. The present human form is rather poorly suited for survival in the wild. A mere 5000 years is far, far to short a time for such evolutionary adaptation to have occurred. Perhaps we ourselves are the most convincing relics of nearly 2 million years of city life. Or, perhaps the consensus is correct after all. Perhaps the first
cities did arise a mere 5000 years ago and the human race really has spent
99.8% of its history obeying the call of the wild. In that case,
this new style of living might well be viewed as a rite of passage.
When applied to an individual, a rite of passage is a thing that presages
the onset of maturity. In cultures which take them seriously, a rite
of passage can be a thing that must be not only endured but also survived.
If this is a rite of passage that we're experiencing, then it's one of
the kind that must be survived. The most superficial survey of past
known societies is proof enough that human society is fragile. The
present accumulation of unsustainable and irreversible situations in the
world, and our technological ability to sustain them far beyond the breaking
points of previous known societies, is a harbinger of approaching failure
more global than any in recorded history. It's a situation that cannot
be much longer ignored. Shortly, probably within our own lifetimes,
our species must confront its rite of passage. No one can deny that
the tools of success are available. We have everything
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To Rave Is Madness
that we need to succeed except humility and our lack of it contaminates with greed, arrogance, and cruelty most of what we accomplish. The
result of this hypothetical rite of passage, if we can survive it, is obvious.
We've shown our potential by the heroism that we've performed, the ideals
that we've attempted, and the beauty that we've created but the brutality
of the beast haunts our every endeavor. We have a lot to learn yet
if we are to learn humility and move another step toward civilization.
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To Rave Is Madness
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To Rave Is Madness
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To Rave Is Madness
References
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To Rave Is Madness
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