CHAPTER 5

1. CHAPTER 5 Delicate Co-Existence: The Human Love/Hate Condition

2. Snell and Gail Putney write: “The age of cultural innocence is passing: the American is beginning to recognize the patterns to which he conforms.”

3. Psychiatrist R. D. Laing writes: “They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.”

4. History • Philosophers have studied history to discern if there are patterns that can reveal hidden implications or “messages”

5. Theater of the Absurd • The philosophy of history asks two central questions, although each leads logically to countless others: (1) Does human history have meaning? (2) Can we learn from history?

6. The Meaning of History • Deuteronomic Historians • Saint Augustine • Friedrich Hegel • Karl Marx • A Feminist Reappraisal of history • Edward Gibson • Darwin

7. Toynbee’s Organismic Interpretation of History • Peace and contentment • Disillusionment and suffering • Salvaging of values • Period of creativity • Peace and contenment

8. The Plight of Western Civilization • Western civilization is not yet dead and buried, not quite. • When a civilization becomes materialistic and “sensate” in its values, then it is in trouble • Nationalism is a necessary but passing phenomenon • Disintegration of a civilization is not the ultimate tragedy we may think it to be

9. The Roots of Violence • First, human history is largely a story of war • Second, human societies live almost entirely by myth, including myths of war • The deepest roots of violence are evolutionary?

10. Can We Learn from History? • Be careful how we interpret history • Understand others • Understand ourselves • Discover that empathy with living creatures is normal and is perhaps the most distinctive quality that makes us human

11. G.W.F. Hegel“Reason: Substance of the Universe” • “The real is rational, and the rational is real” • Hegel believed that he was the first thinker in all of history to have seen and properly located the essence of what is real in the Universe, namely, the mind of God • The mind of God is the essence of what is real

12. Reflections… • What is the goal of “the philosophy of history”? • Does history of meaning? And, if so, what is that meaning? • What are the sources of meaning? • How could we go about gathering evidence to find our if history has meaning? • How would you respond to these questions?

13. Laws Conscience • Every society is burdened with more than just one set of rules that represent different values and concerns • Which set of rules is best? Is any set of rules best?

14. Conflicting Loyalties • Fundamental tension in society between individual freedom and the structure of law and order • Fundamental tension in society between the various forms of individual structure of law and order and individual freedom

15. Good Laws & Bad Laws • No matter how strongly one advocates lawful obedience to the state and its laws, it is inevitable that some laws will turn out to be bad ones • Unless laws are periodically challenged, they don’t get improved

16. Loyalty to Higher Authority • Western (Judeo-Christian) legal tradition takes the form of a hierarchy of laws – a sort of jurisdictional totem pole – with a clear order of precedence • Loyalty to an institution considered to have divine authority over the state • Loyalty to “God’s law” as personally understood – by revelation, spiritual knowledge, conscience

17. Obedience to the Rule of Law • Laws must be obeyed, for if each person were permitted to decide which laws were good and which were bad, social chaos would necessarily result

18. The Personal Dilemma • To obey or not to obey • Saint Paul • Martin Luther • Hinduism • The Milgram Experiment • Joseph Klausner • Socrates

19. Henry David Thoreau“…after my own fashion.” • “My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with fewest obstacles…” • “Private business?” • “That government is best which governs not at all…I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.”

20. Reflections… • “Our Western experience has been an ongoing conflict of loyalties.” From your point of view, how do you assess this conflict? How much have you been victimized by it? By conviction and temperament, which way do you tend to leap in your allegiance: toward the mandate of personal conscience of the necessities of a lawfully ordered society?

21. Lifestyles • Acculturation – the process by which individuals are gradually conditioned to accept the ideas and values of the culture they are born into. Once conditioned, an individual no longer perceives himself or herself simply as human but identifies with an ethnic, social, political, economic, or religious subunit and feels that her or his primary allegiance is to the role appropriate to that subunit.

22. The Bonds of Culture • Our social roles, along with their supportive functions, also become our prisons. We assume the carefully defined roles that society has constructed for us, and enormous pressures are brought to bear upon us to stay with the confines of those roles.

23. Prisoners • Professor Zimbardo’s halted experiment • How easily we accept the impersonal rules of order as substitutes for human understanding, how conditioned we become to respond to dominant symbols of authority

24. Alternatives to Remaining Prisoners • We recognize the cultural patterns that have shaped our existence • We are involved in a cataclysmic increase in cultural interaction • We have new insight into the dynamics of our inner world

25. Cultural Relativity • In any society, specific BTF-patterns (behavior, thought, feeling) are considered “normal” not merely because the majority adheres to the, but also because they are meaningful and functional

26. Personal Alienation • What happens to you and me as we try to adjust to a cultural eclecticism? • Identify with a single isolated strand of culture • Join a truth-group • Experience “psychosis” • Conform to nonconformity • Humankind’s most dangerous myth

27. Diogenes the CynicThe Hound-Dog Philosopher • A culture-critic • He went about criticizing everybody and everything – but always with a point, and often a sharp point, for he specialized in bursting ego-balloons • Goal and purpose of life is to be happy

28. Reflections… • This chapter suggests that freedom has been imposed upon us whether we wish it or are ready for it. Do you agree?

29. Ethics • Several distinct criteria are commonly used for making moral judgments • What is moral or immoral? • Whom (and what) we should care about?

30. Sin and/or Virtue • Gibran writes: “Last night I invented a new pleasure, and as I was giving it the first trial, an angel and a devil came rushing toward my house. They met at my door and fought with each other over my newly created pleasure; the one crying ‘It is a sin!’ – the other, ‘It is a virtue!’”

31. Debatable & Nondebatable Value Judgments • Type I – value statements of personal taste and temperament and are not debatable • Type II – value statements that lend themselves to rational analysis and empirical investigation and are, therefore, debatable

32. The Morality of Ethics/The Ethics of Morality • Bank employee • Manhunt • “The best genes” • Frontier village • “Haggling over price” • The William Brown • Arkansas donor

33. Three Ethical Questions • Who actually makes an ethical decision? • What criteria should I use in making a relevant and meaningful ethical decision? • To whom (or what) do my moral obligations apply?

34. Who Really Makes Decisions? • Authoritarian decisions • Autonomous decisions • What is humanity’s task?

35. What Makes a Decision Right or Wrong? • What criteria should I use in making a relevant and meaningful ethical decision? • The formalist • The relativist • The contextualist

36. Whom (and what) Should I Care About? • How large should we (I) draw the circle of ethical concern?

37. The Dalai LamaCourage and Compassion • “This, then, is my true religion, my simple faith. In this sense, there is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine, or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion.”

38. Reflections… • Are you an “issue maker”? That is, are you prone to creating issues when it might be easier to solve problems? Or, are you essentially a pragmatic problem-solver? Can you give examples from your own experience of persons or personalities who are especially visible for the making of petty issues?