PauloSalem.com

How convenient. When I thought I had to stay with abstract ideas, here comes the Japanese government with a concrete implementation of the insanity I foresaw. I’ve just found out that it is now illegal to be fat in Japan. It seems that citizens are required to undergo an annual checkup, and if their waistlines are found to be above a certain limit, they are supposed to be “re-educated” and taxed somehow.

How come such an aberration is not met with horror? Shouldn’t it be obvious what such a law represents? Shouldn’t independent citizens, lovers of freedom, never allow such a thing to be even conceivable?

I’m surely not the only one puzzled by these questions. In fact, maybe that’s the essence of the problem. From where the idea that people like freedom came in the first place? Perhaps because those Enlightenment philosophers enjoyed the idea of their own freedom so much, they inferred that everyone else also did. “If freedom to pursue what is great, to develop myself into what is best, is so good to me” thought the philosopher, “certainly it must be the case for others too.”

“If only they had the chance!” So they destroyed the ancien régime and gave the chance to those men that, by themselves, would have never sought it. And here we are, a few centuries later, only to realize how wrong they were. Instead of free citizens, behold, we have consumers, ready to give up every single freedom as long as they can trade it for an iPod or a free health insurance! Somehow I don’t think this is what Enlightenment was all about. A sad reductio ad absurdum.

These days, there is an undeniable aura of evil surrounding most psychoactive substances, from cigarettes and alcohol  to cocaine and heroin. It is ironic, therefore, when the means to combat the perceived evil turns out to be far more destructive than its own enemy. And the more clear this contrast is brought to life, the more pointless the whole thing seems.

In this sense, what could be more graphical and illuminating than what the BBC reports today. Apparently, twelve people were killed at Mexican nightclub precisely because the police raided the place in order to protect them. From what, you ask? Oh, you fool, from the illegal drugs and alcohol been offered to minors, of course! Better dead than high, right? Like a famous messiah of old, who would advise you to cut your own hands if they turned out to be the instruments of sin.

To be fair, the police had no idea of the killing they were about to bring about. In fact, it seems that three of them were among the dead. People just got scarred and died asphyxiated as everyone tried to run away. Nevertheless, the episode demands an important reproach: why the hell they thought they had any business there in the first place? Couldn’t they just leave the people alone, having a good time? Now what was an imaginary evil has materialized into an actual one. The kids - and everyone else - intoxicating themselves at the party would hardly be harmed in any serious way by that, whereas now there are twelve cold dead bodies. And for what? Nothing at all: people will continue to intoxicate themselves, kids will continue to break such laws and almost no one will learn a good lesson from the episode; a lesson, by the way, that seems rather urgent.

Curiously enough,  the BBC also reports today that a lot of farmers in Afghanistan are becoming even more miserable owing to new laws that forbid poppy farming. I wonder which new god is behind all this. For, surely, some new theology must be in place in order to justify these atrocities in the name of some immaterial and senseless ideal. The BBC reports the case, but, loyal to its supernatural master, is careful to add that “Afghan opium, processed into heroin, causes the deaths of tens of thousands of people around the world each year. ” What they don’t say is that all these heroin deaths have been freely chosen (i.e., by the heroin user, who is not forced into becoming a user, unless we pervert the meaning of “forced”), while the poppy farmers are being quite literally forced to give up their traditional trade. A way to interpret this would be to say that, in order to protect the dumbest part of their youth, Americans are oppressing the hard worker farmers of their conquered lands.

The problem, however, is deeper, and such a simple interpretation, fashionable as it might seem, would distract from its root causes. For the Americans are not really doing service to their own kind. They are just a part in a larger system of deceit; and though they are its most powerful enforcers, they are also its main victims. Any reasonable person would think that,  after some five hundred years, people would have finally got the point. Alas, they have not.

Here is an ethical dilemma. Most people agree that freedom is good. And most will also point out that social welfare is desirable. However, if we account for the fact that, left to themselves, most people will eventually do something terribly wrong and stupid, it follows that you cannot have both freedom and welfare. For example, in a ideal free society, one should be able to choose what to do with their money. But this implies that a considerable amount of people will spend everything they have quite quickly, and therefore end their lives in poverty and misery. To remedy this, government might step in. However, to do so, it’ll have to use the resources of other people, and thereby take part of their freedom. So it seems that a choice must be made. Either you have freedom or social welfare, but not both.

The more I think about it, the more important this problem becomes to me. Consider this other example. It is believed by many that health care should be provided to all citizens by governments. And when you look at how sick poor people can be at times, it is easy to understand why. On the other hand, if indeed a government becomes responsible for the health of its citizens, it will be one step from demanding that such citizens have “healthy” habits. No drugs for you, and also no wine, no candies, no fat, no cigarettes. Smoking, for instance, is almost illegal these days, which would be an absurd in a free society, but makes perfect sense if the people writing the laws are also paying to fix the health problems of smokers.

There are those who think that there must be some sort of middle ground between these two extremes. Well, maybe there is. But unless we come up with a precise characterization of what this middle ground is, it will be very hard to find it. In the mean time, it seems that you can only choose a direction, either for one side or for the other. So, again, it is a very precise dichotomy, because there are only two possible directions. You have to choose, unless you wish to stay in confusion and contradiction.

When confronted with this imperative need to choose, I’m finding out that most will prefer to stay in confusion and contradiction. Thus harming themselves, precisely because they are free to choose.

To those that are not familiar with classical mythology, the Trojan War was a (possibly mythical) conflict between Greeks and Trojans, in which the Greeks were trying to rescue the legendary Helen, the most beautiful woman of antiquity, then at Trojan hands. After years of conflict, the Greeks finally won, through the well-know trick of the fake wooden horse (i.e., the “Trojan horse”, because it was used to penetrate Troy’s high walls). After the rescue of Helen, Troy was destroyed, most of its champions were dead and those that survived had to run away.

So, clearly, the Greek forces won the war. But can we say that the Trojans really lost? To begin with, the Trojans are never pictured as somehow inferior people; rather, they have the same gods and are valorous enemies. Throughout the Iliad we are constantly reminded that Troy is a mighty city and that Hector is, himself, almost an Achilles.

It is interesting, therefore, that the image of Troy that survived through the centuries after the war is not of a humiliated enemy. On the contrary, Troy only became greater because of its tragedy. The Trojans that survived were believed to have regained strength and, after some time, conquered the whole world. Virgil’s Aeneid, for instance, tells precisely this story, when he pictures Aeneas, a surviving Trojan, as the founder of mighty Rome:

For these have I set no limit of power or time;

Empire unending I give them. (…)

Medieval noble families would later also proudly state that their ancestors were Trojans. So, it seems that a defeat, as disastrous as it may be, does not harm the honor of a person or even a whole people. Within the logic of myth, greatness is not a matter of victory, but a matter of tendency, that is, of virtue.

Given enough time, virtue is bound to bring victory, because this is the nature of virtue. To individuals, though, the problem is that time is a very limited commodity. Does that imply that this logic only makes sense when a whole community is involved? Was Hector a great hero only because he was also part of the larger Trojan community? That’s hard to say. But to Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and other Greeks, at least, this does not seem to be the case. To them, virtue comes in the first place, mostly because it can be guaranteed, while victory depends too much on luck. An idiot can, by luck, become prosperous, but his prosperity - and, specially, of his descendants - will be weak. A virtuous man, on the other hand, might fall in disgrace, but he is bound to improve, if only he manages to survive.

Given the ever weaker and childish ethical thinking of our days, the rush for quick and simple results, the imperative need of immediate gratification, it seems that the Trojans still have a lot to teach. Perhaps that’s one more reason why such myths are never forgotten; for as soon as we ignore them, and the sky falls over, we quickly run into the old texts, to once more recall what they have discovered a long time ago.

I returned last week from AAMAS 2008, and I must say that it was a very fruitful experience. The conference, being huge, allowed me to see a lot of ideas and people quickly, which is very useful as time is an ever more valuable commodity. I was pleased to see that, indeed, there is a lot of interesting work being done out there. In particular, in a lot of topics that I was not even aware of previously. On the other hand, I was rather disappointed to realize that some specific areas are quite lost, owing to the pointless arrogance of their participants. This kind of thing, it seems, can be best assessed personally. It is sad that  so called scientific work can be subject to this kind of wicked influence, and worrying that it can hide under the mask of academia in order to waste resources that could be useful elsewhere.  Overall, though, most people are great and I hope I have made many friends. If we met there, please feel free to mail me or add me to your I.M., I’m eager to keep in touch with everyone.

Moreover, it turns out that Lisbon and its vicinities are terrific. Places where everything is measured by the centuries cannot fail to inspire. Highly recommended for anyone seeking intellectual and aesthetic stimulation.

Doesn’t complete freedom implies complete emptiness? For our deepest will is still a constraint over our being. To will is to be invisibly coerced. In limiting, thus, seems to lie the meaning of things. Our business: to find those constraints which are fundamental and to live by them. Our worry: that the necessary resources for the quest might be beyond our means. Our consolation: we’ll soon be dead anyway, so why not give it a shot.

A nice artist for restless nights.

Plato says that the business of philosophy is with things that “never change”, meaning that it seeks fundamental knowledge instead of superficial details. One great benefit of studying philosophy, thus, is becoming able to more easily dismiss irrelevant issues and opinions. In this ever more noisy world, it is an important principle to keep in mind. For example, suppose there was a brutal murder last month. That would be bad, but it would not change our fundamental knowledge of anything, since numerous other brutal murders have already taken place and taught us everything such cases can, and therefore this new particular instance should not occupy our thoughts, unless we are law enforcers. Another example. Assume a brutal murder happens. Should a person that previously did not support death penalty suddenly become a supporter after hearing about the brutal murder? Whatever are the reasons to support the penalty or not, it is plain that they must be based on rationality, not on passion and commotion regarding current events. Here a Marcus Aurelius quote comes to mind: “no random actions, none not based on underlying principles.” Hence, tragic as it might be, the new murder would not be really relevant to the issue of death penalty and should not be given attention when judging it. This recommendation, however, is hard to understand, unless you have some philosophical principles already commanding your mind.

This is not to say one should not care for everyday events. Surely one must be aware of the world situation, which is, of course, temporary and therefore not a philosophical subject. Still, the point to keep in mind is that most of our energies should be direct toward things that truly matter, while perhaps still playing some minor role in the ordinary course of events. Otherwise we would become - irony of ironies - like certain subgroups of modern Philosophy university departments, whose main occupation is to complain about every single event on the face of Earth (my condolences to the actual philosophers working at these institutions).

To finish with another of the emperor’s thoughts: “the value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. You’re better off not giving small things more time than they deserve.” A sound advice, though not so easy to follow.

The lack of a proper art and an adequate aesthetic experience is as poisonous as the lack of proper food. It doesn’t kill its subject at once, but slowly consumes him. Beauty has a purpose, namely, to guide, to show what one ought to pursue, to mark what is worth living for. And, like anything else, it is also harder to find as one improves, for improvement implies in alienating oneself from worlds which, suddenly, feel strange and distant. One is compelled to go further, to seek something among the endless possibilities of the universe - a universe which doesn’t yield its secret ambrosia easily.

Won’t the heavens have sympathy for such melancholic men? If there are immortal gods, one should wonder what they had in mind when creating this world. Perhaps they too, though eternal and infinitely wise, felt the need for something. However, being gods, all was already known and beauty was thus impossible, having nowhere to guide them, unless something entirely new was brought into existence. If part of their pathos has descended into their creatures, maybe their cure might also be applicable. When existence stifles and beauty seems impossible: a signal that a new world is required.

Perhaps the evils of the world can be reduced to this: those who have relevant problems employ ineffective methods to treat them, whereas those who have sophisticated methods are usually concerned with irrelevant issues. Under this light, actual progress looks more like a kind of miracle, depending more on obscure forces than on science and reason. To be sure, I don’t think it is a simple matter at all to create practical theories and technology; that’s why these things belong to my research portfolio. But it is depressing to realize the indifference of business men and academics alike to this important divide. It is no surprise, though. It is just what you would expect from a society impregnated with worker’s ethics: “do your job, don’t care for larger issues, and get your payment.” Like dogs trained to perform tricks.