Against "Against Happiness"

But should alienation always be eliminated? Some lives are better than other kinds of lives, regardless of the psychological well-being of the person who is living them. And some kinds of lives are so soul-deadening that we might worry more about a person who was not alienated. Is the happy slave really better off than the alienated slave? Is a medicated Sisyphus obviously better off than an unmedicated Sisyphus? Is there not something disturbing about trying to medicate that alienation away?

Kramer seems to miss this point. He argues that in The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus had imagined Sisyphus happy, despite the fact that the gods had intended Sisyphus to suffer. But the happiness or unhappiness of Sisyphus is not the issue. What is the issue is the wisdom of making psychological well-being the sole measure of a successful life. It is not hard to see why a psychiatrist would put Sisyphus on Prozac. Prozac might well help Sisyphus push the boulder up the mountain more enthusiastically. Sisyphus might even appreciate the prescription. Yet this would not mean that Sisyphus had a mental health problem. Sisyphus is in a predicament, and to understand his predicament you cannot simply look at his internal psychological state. You must also understand his circumstances. Given the fact that he will be pushing the boulder up the mountain for eternity, alienation seems like an appropriate response. [emphasis added]

This moving passage is from Carl Elliott's poignant review, entitled "Against Happiness", reviewing Peter Kramer's book Against Depression. Kramer is well known for his Listening to Prozac, an early account of the impact that antidepressants could have on people's lives, well Elliott is the author of the excellent Better Than Well, a "diagnosis" of the American cultural anxiety surrounding the tension between ideals of authenticity and self-improvement. I've read all 3 of these works and I would recommend all of them to individuals interested on this issue.

Elliott finds that Kramer's polemical new book, which tries to argue against people who romanticize depression, is aimed for an audience that scarcely exists. And insofar as it is targeted at an American audience, this is to a large extent right. When I read Against Depression, this did not occur to me, because as an academic in the humanities, I encounter people who try to justify depression all of the time, along with those who decry the overuse of antidepressants and other psychopharmaceuticals.

Regardless of whether the book has an audience, it does address a serious issue. Elliott gets at the heart of the matter in the portion I emphasized above: Should psychological wellbeing--happiness as most Americans understand it--be "the sole measure of a successful life"? This is a question I have struggled with for a few years now--perhaps since I started taking antidepressants myself--and the only response that makes sense to me is "yes".

Even though Elliott does a better job than most in his attack on the "medicalization" of what were once considered character traits (drunkenness as alcoholism, awkwardness as social anxiety, sadness as depression, etc.), the force of his appeal must ultimately be an emotional one. In fact, it's the very same appeal that you find in all kinds of arguments against the use of enhancement technologies on humans. Elliott asks, don't we find this whole business a little disturbing?

A lot of people do. I for one don't. Yes, sadness does have a function in human life. Yes, widespread alienation in the developed world is likely a consequence of the ways in which these societies are organized. Yes, it's a luxury that we even have the opportunity to think about questions of happiness--I was recently reminded of how, for so many, practical matters associated with survival and making a living rule out consideration of such things--let alone to choose many of the conditions of our lives according to whether we think we'll find them fulfilling.

But what does that matter to me as a depressed individual? I cannot change the fact--or at least, I would certainly not want to--that I live in an affluent society that allows me to pay little attention to basic issues of survival. Right now it's unfair, but I think this is a better way to live and I would love to see it more prevalent throughout the world, because it's a way of life that allows us to ask questions of how we ought to live. Moreover, we now live in an age in which we can inquire not only about the requirements of living and of living well, but also of the possibility of living "better than well".

Of course this makes a lot of people uncomfortable. One reason I think this is so, although Elliott doesn't explicitly raise it, is that the existence of this possibility depends on a lot of social conditions which are unjust and produce a lot of unnecessary suffering. Besides America's various underclasses, there are many developing nations in which persons are ruthlessly exploited to produce cheap consumer goods. Similarly, many of us lack awareness of the sordid and bloody history of attaining and sustaining this affluence.

I think that this is an excellent point. In focusing on one's own individual contentment, it's easy to lose track of the massive amount of unjust suffering in the world. However--and this is my central argument against a position like Elliott's--while in a state of extreme sadness, one simply lacks the motivation and the energy to do something about that.

As Spinoza understands it, and rightly so I think, sadness is a recognition of our impotence, of the ways in which we are limited. Nothing is gained by feeling sad about something that cannot be changed--such as the past--and something is lost or at least endangered, viz., our capacity to do something positive, if we feel sad about those things which we might be able to affect.

While sadness might have some evolutionarily adaptive value, it is simply a counterproductive feeling and is by no means a necessary prerequisite of bringing about positive social change. Sadness is the real luxury, not happiness. Alienation may be "reasonable" or "appropriate" in our society, but it sure as hell won't change anything.

Let us return to the example of Sisyphus. Keeping in mind that his situation is fantastical, I think that especially for him what matters is happiness. He is stuck in a situation he has no power to change. What does it matter if he, as Elliott interprets Camus, is happy, not in the sense of emotional wellbeing, but only in the sense of being conscious of the absurdity of his predicament? In other words, what does it matter if he is alienated? Perhaps it makes us feel better that his is an "appropriate response" to his "predicament", but it does little for Sisyphus except perhaps give him some feeling of moral superiority, a slim consolation indeed compared to the tragedy of his infinite torment.

As Wittgenstein so aptly puts it, somewhere in his notebooks, "The world of the happy man is not the same as the world of the unhappy man." And the difference between the happy world and the unhappy world can be the only one that matters in our nihilistic age. (This last point I recently wrote a paper about, so I will not develop it further for right now. By nihilism, I mean something like recognition of the contingency of all structures of meaning. In other words, every belief or value is simply regarded as a choice among numerous others, with no criteria upon which to choose. Picture life in the existential shopping mall, to use philosopher James Edwards' analogy.)

I am not convinced that medicalizing life's woes is incompatible with social critique. The suffering that depression brings about is as real as the suffering of malnutrition, although different in kind. It is certainly tragic that so many ignore the latter kind of suffering, but the cure for this is not to be found in the former. In short, this is why I am against "Against Happiness" and for Against Depression.

Problems with Technology

In preparation for a paper on Critical Theory and the critique of "Instrumental Rationality", I've been reading a number of articles in the philosophy of technology. As might be suspected from a discipline that has virtually eschewed any technological innovation--aside from the word processor, I can scarcely think of any concrete examples--most of them are critical, with some even celebrating their "Luddism".

Just today, I came upon a review for yet another book against genetic engineering by philosopher Michael Sandel, who I think I used to like. Called "The Case Against Perfection", it's typical of a certain class of problems that I'll explicate below. At least his critique seems somewhat novel, according to the reviewer, who calls it "half right".

Reading these various pieces has helped to clear up, in my own mind, what my general advocacy of technology more specifically entails, and where I am in agreement with its critics. To that end, I've been experimenting with a simple typology of problems, which I present in a draft form now.

I see two basic categories of problems, which I call "Problems of Destruction" and "Problems of Transformation". With respect to the former, I am on the same page with the most rabid of Luddites; it is the latter that I am less inclined to think of as problematic. Of course, these categories are not likely to be exhaustive--I can think of some examples which seem to fit into neither--nor mutually exclusive; they are simply schematic.

I) Problems of Destruction, as might be inferred, are those that deal with issues of survival. These include various threats to individuals, species, the environment, civilization, even life itself.

Certain fields like the recently emergent "synthetic biology"--a name I only came across days ago, but which already seems ubiquitous on the net--along with other sectors of biotechnology and nanotechnology have the potential to unleash massive devastation on par with nuclear holocaust (but without all that messy radiation). The engineering of a super-virus not found in nature or something like the infamous "gray goo" scenario (in which self-replicating nanobots are let loose and convert the entire biosphere into copies of themselves) would be examples of this.

(Artificial intelligence and robotics pose different kinds of threats, such as replacing human beings, which are considered by some as instances of the other class of problems. Insofar as an artificially intelligent civilization might mitigate the risk of other kinds of destruction, I find myself potentially sympathetic. This is an area I'll have to return to.)

Less destructive examples include pollution and other industrial processes which contribute to global warming, as well as more locally situated contaminations. The development of biofuels--undoubtedly the stupidest way of trying to resolve the energy crisis so unsurprisingly one championed by our president--poses significant dangers which have largely gone unrecognized. According to a recent report human beings already consume a quarter of nature's productive capacity, a figure which would be made even worse if fossil fuels were simply exchanged for biofuels.

Threats to the survival of human beings and other life would be regarded seriously by all but the most misanthropic. Efforts like the green energy movement and oversight of the most dangerous areas of research would be in our best interest. Those who resist these measures are simply not examining long-term consequences. Unfortunately, some major corporate players fall into this camp as a consequence of our brand of capitalism which is incapable of looking ahead more than a couple of years, usually being focused on this quarter's earnings and whatnot.

II) Problems of Transformation are more problematic in their problematicity. (As ugly as that last sentence is, it conveys what I want to say tersely.) Sandel's diatribe against genetic engineering is but one of a broad range of examples. In essence, what I'm calling "transformations" involve significant alterations to established ways of life, some more profound than others.

Since at least the industrial revolution, we have undergone a number of significant transformations. We live very differently than did our ancestors. The more conservative elements of society are likely to lament this as a loss, but most people are happy to call this "progress". I use the more neutral term "transformation" to avoid overt bias, even though I tend more often than not to fall into the latter camp. (Also, it's foolish to view a change as progressive simply in virtue of the fact that it is novel.)

The largest areas of concern today seem to be the potentially radical transformations to human beings that come from "enhancement technologies" such as genetics and cybernetics. Many critics contend that the blurring of boundaries occasioned by such interventions threaten our "humanity", "dignity", "meaning", or whatever other romantic buzzword one cares to use. In the very least, I grant them that not all "enhancements" will necessarily be improvements.

The more sophisticated critics realize that humans will (by and large) adapt to changes and take them for a new "normal"--and see this as part of the problem. However, it is difficult for such critiques to find purchase; either they rest on some dubious metaphysical ground, or they rely on the equally dubious strategy of taking certain characteristics of human beings--like the way that certain things disgust or frighten us--as essential. Quite frankly, I think "postmodern" intellectuals have no basis for criticizing transhumanism except their individual prejudices, which are only valid to those who share them.

Other examples of this would include heightening of the gap between technological elites and those without access. I'm inclined to think that such partitions are more a function of capitalism than a necessary consequence of technology. In fact, I see no way of finding positive alternatives to capitalism without significant technological change. Proponents of technology like to see this gap as more of a "lag"; the poor eventually do get access, as can be seen, e.g., in the spread of cell phones in the developing world.

I think that this Transformation category probably requires some greater specification since it covers such a broad range of issues. What's important to note is the way in which they tend to effect not merely our material circumstances, but also our beliefs, attitudes, and structures of meaning. The latter is what is most scary to people, but as an anti-essentialist, I am unconcerned.

Social critics will always find ways to complain of deficits of meaning in a society; conservatives will always long for the good old days that never were; but most people will adapt. Clinging to the old ways of life I see as a consequence of a couple of factors. Often, it's just greater fear of unknown evils than of known ones. When it's opposition to ostensible improvements, it's a way to make people feel better about the unnecessary suffering that they had to endure ("suffering is just a part of life!", "pain is what gives human existence meaning", "our imperfections constitute our humanness", and other such drivel).

Most likely, the intelligent inhabitants of earth a century from now (if there are any) would not appear "human" to most people today. As for me, I see no reason to cling to an evolutionary accident. What matters are things like rich experience, intelligence, reason, happiness, meaningfulness, benevolence, and so forth. Whether or not such beings think of themselves as "human", perhaps as some nostalgic sentiment, is to me entirely inconsequential. (I think an extension of the category of speciesism would be appropriate here.)

Why do I call myself an atheist?

In researching this paper on Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion, I've been coming upon some really fascinating ideas. My understanding of what faith is and what it means to be religious has changed, and I think it valuable to attempt to apply this to my own particular faith, or lack thereof.

To begin, just like religion is many different things to many different people, so too is atheism. Thus, the answer I give will be above all a personal one. Other people may choose to take it up, and that might give me some measure of satisfaction, but by and large I'm indifferent.

In practice, I think the differences that I have from many religious believers, particularly those who are reflective and philosophically-inclined, are really not so great. A lot of it amounts to differences in the use of language.

I have no problem speaking in religious terms--I talk about God all the time, particularly when teaching. However, I feel no need to understand my life in terms of such categories. If I were to use the word "God" in speaking about my Weltanschauung, I would probably either follow Spinoza's usage and treat it as equivalent to nature (i.e., all that is, was, and ever will be), or use it as another way of talking about myself. I, of course, recognize that I am finite and imperfect, but nothing requires that God be otherwise except the conventions of particular faiths.

So, in short, I am an atheist because I have no need of God. In fact, I find very admirable the figure of Lucifer in Christian mythology. Not insofar as he as anything to do with human suffering--here, I'd be much more sympathetic to Jesus--but because he refuses to submit to God.

Following Wittgenstein, I see faith as, for the most part, an act of submission to authority. (It is no coincidence that Islam, for instance, is a word meaning "submission".) I submit to no one but myself, and so I am proud, but I see this as a virtue and not a sin (so long as the pride does not become overweening).

Incidentally, this is one reason I love the series His Dark Materials. Pullman does more than undermine traditional religion with this work. I see him as actually putting forth another ideal, which we might call the Republic of Heaven.

Most of us do not deal with God on a face-to-face basis, so the act of submission is in practice to worldly authorities--priests, politicians, religious communities, and so forth. Their invocation of God as ultimate authority is meant to put an end to questioning and independent thought; again, it is a call for submission. But why submit to God? Or if this is too objectionable, why submit to those who claim to speak for him?

In my own case, there is no good reason for unthinking obedience (under ordinary circumstances, but I can imagine exceptions). But I don't think this is by any means true of everyone. Nor do I condemn them for it. From some perspectives, reasoning and questioning authority only causes problems, leading people away from God and salvation, etc. It would be cruel of me to try to force people who are otherwise happy in their beliefs (however misguided I may find them) into another mode of thinking.

This point, in particular, is something I have wavered on. I've had my periods of militant, evangelical atheism. But why should I care about what other people believe? Unlike some, I have no salvation to offer. Nor have I access to some absolute truth or knowledge of some correct way of living. Religious tolerance is, to me, the only reasonable option.

In fact, it would be hypocritical of me to try to proselytize, since it is an activity that I find objectionable when practiced by others. Certainly, I can see why people do it, but here is a place where they cross the line between living in their own worlds of constructed meanings and attempting to infringe on mine.

But one can't help but wonder, what motivates proselytizing atheologians like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens? I can't speak for them, but I know in my own case, the reason is primarily emotional. I just do not care for religion. At times, I even hate it.

Here now we must tread with caution. What exactly am I saying when I say that I hate religion? Case in point: I watched, for the first time, the movie Gandhi last night. In this instance, we have religion serving as a means of uniting people and overcoming injustice. It would be inhuman of me to want to rid the world of examples like Gandhi. Here is a case where, unambiguously (because there's no question here, unlike in so many other cases, of an individual justifying the violation of the very rules his religion provides with the excuse that the end justifies the means) where religion is a boon to humanity.

That is an atypical example. More commonly, we find individuals who perhaps do no great goods for the world, but do affect the people in their communities positively with support from a religious worldview. These more neutral cases I am tempted to dislike, but only because of association. In all honesty, I have no good reason for experiencing the irritation I sometimes do when encountering the typical, harmless believer.

If I am to be reasonable, I must distinguish between the cases where religion is harmful, and those in which it is positive or neutral. I don't really hate religion, per se, but only those cases in which people use it to justify violence or some other form of oppression, or when it is used as the basis for making decisions which would better be made on the basis of scientific evidence and critical reasoning.

---

I've become sidetracked. Really, there are just a few key points that I see as distinguishing me from most religious believers.

1. I grant the existence of genuine loss, of meaningless, unnecessary suffering in the world. Things do not always turn out for the best. No cosmic being has a "plan" that will make everything okay in the end. Life is tragic.

Of course, I think granting this is not simply a cause for despair. The world may not be as we like it to, but sitting around and crying about it does no good. Instead, we should do the best we can to make things better, for ourselves and everyone else.

2. I recognize meaning as a human construction. In itself, the universe lacks purpose or direction. All that can be said of nature outside of the human world is that it is. It is not good or bad, beautiful or ugly, comic or tragic. It simply is.

However, this does nothing to undermine all our structures of meaning. Even though I recognize any way of understanding the world as ultimately contingent, I do so within my own structures of meaning. One can never step outside of these--or if one could, one can say nothing about it, nothing meaningful (this should be self-evident).

There is no Archimedean point, no ground for neutral criticism of any worldview. If I take objection to someone's way of looking at life, if I call it unreasonable, I am presupposing a standard of reasonability (and, moreover, presupposing that reasonability is something valuable itself) that is, perhaps regrettably, not shared by everyone.

3. Lastly, as I have said before, but almost as a consequence of the previous two points, I have no need to use religious language in my own case. No cosmic being has my back, or cares in the slightest about me. The only support is that which I receive from other human beings. But this is enough for me.

In saying that, I realize that I am fortunate and that many people are not able to live this way. (Personally, I see this newly discovered strength as a consequence of the mental health treatment I've been receiving over the past several years.)

I also reject other religious conceptions without negative consequence. I deny freedom of the will, and yet I feel freer than before, insofar as I feel more self-determined (granting that I am only in this position as a result of contingencies totally beyond my control). I deny personal immortality, and yet death does not concern me, but only encourages me to make the most of the life that I have. I deny transcendent ethical categories, but feel no less committed to leading a life that is ethical by human standards.

I may be living proof that one does not need to be religious to lead a decent life (and I am not alone; many in the 17th century were perplexed by the case of Spinoza, a man who led a virtuous and happy life--he saw these two as coextensive--but who was regarded as an atheist).

I feel confident and self-sufficient, able to live without consolation. I'm perhaps happier than I've ever been, including those times when I was a believer (if for no other reason than I no longer am plagued by doubts about the truth of my worldview).

Moreover, I am not exempt from ethical concerns. Even though I recognize that no one is keeping score and that I stand to gain nothing from it directly, I still strongly desire to diminish suffering in the world. Watching the story of Gandhi really made this hit home for me. I felt more keenly the suffering of others than I have in quite some time.

Usually, I maintain a certain kind of distance, a general coping strategy that I tend to employ often (and unconsciously), to keep me from getting caught up in all the world's pain. Last night, I felt it. But even though it hurt, I ultimately felt the better for it.

I know now--and this is something I had doubts about before--that deep down I am a compassionate person. If I can care for my fellow living creatures when I stand to gain nothing from it, that can only mean that I am a good person. I hope this to be a countervailing force to many of my self-centered tendencies.

I can see firsthand how Spinoza can ground ethics in (enlightened) self-interest. Part of my self-interest is an interest in others. Regardless of the circumstances of my own life, I could not be fully satisfied in the face of rampant injustice and suffering.

---

If I had more time, I might organize these thoughts more coherently. I may incorporate some of them into the paper I'm writing, although they are on the personal side. I don't know that I've answered my initial question (I neglected to mention the strategic/prudential considerations, e.g., in the circles I run in, being an atheist is viewed favorably), but it is good to write out one's thoughts.

An Informal Review of The Courtier and the Heretic

As I begin to turn my thoughts to a paper on the philosophy of religion, I found myself this evening (which has now turned into this morning) gripped by a fascinating piece of intellectual history, viz., Matthew Stewart's The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World. I had read something like the first 5 chapters over the span of nearly a month, but tonight I just couldn't put the book down (when I tried to do so, I inevitably returned to picking it back up).

To begin with, Stewart is an excellent writer. This is a topic I already find interesting, but I think that he does an admirable job making something esoteric profoundly interesting and, above all, human. He takes to heart the Nietzschean maxim he cites that philosophies are merely expressions of the temperaments of their creators; the story he tells is more about the men and the times in which they lived than their ideas.

What little is known of Spinoza's life is something I'm already familiar with, but I knew next to nothing about Leibniz. Stewart's analysis of the two figures is perhaps a bit too neat to be accurate, but it makes for a wonderful account that is not totally implausible.

I find it difficult to determine which philosopher he sides with. More of the book is devoted to Leibniz (in part because he lived so much longer) but Leibniz characterized as a reaction to Spinoza.

In terms of the exposition of the two thinkers' philosophies, Stewart does an admirable job for a popular work. I can speak less for Leibniz, but on many of the most important points, he gets Spinoza right. He rightly recognizes Spinoza primarily as an ethical and political thinker (so too, Leibniz, for which he provides evidence ample enough to convince me at least).

He uses a few turns of phrase I don't care for: e.g., he talks about Spinoza's "parallelism" while simultaneously describing it as distinctly not that (unless a single line can be parallel to itself). Extension and thought are two aspects of the same nature, and he clearly understands this, so in what sense is this "parallel"? To me that seems a better epithet for something like Malebranche's fantastical "occasionalism" or even Leibniz's "preestablished harmony". He also follows Shirley in rendering what is better translated as "joy" and "sorrow" into the unduly austere terms "pleasure" and "pain".

The way he connects the two philosophers to two fundamentally different reactions to modernity is compelling, if a bit overstated. While throughout the work he is trying to argue for a greater than recognized influence of Spinoza (albeit a negative one) on Leibniz, his own thinking really comes to the fore in the closing chapter. I love the way that he unapologetically lumps Heidegger and the Postmodernists into the same camp as Kant and Hegel, essentially imitators of Leibniz's reactionary stance. It is by no means fair to these thinkers, but it is certainly amusing to imagine the reactions of their contemporary proponents.

He also makes a solid case for my suspicion that Locke is largely a hack who stole Spinoza's ideas without crediting him because he was too controversial. And in a few short paragraphs he demolishes the established practice of calling Spinoza and Leibniz, along with Descartes, "rationalists".

Do I regard Spinoza as a champion of modernity, as Stewart clearly maintains? I suppose it depends on what we understand by modernity, but Spinoza undoubtedly embodies many of the greatest values of the Enlightenment and was a thinker centuries ahead of his time. The world that we live in now, I think, is constituted largely by this struggle between the proponents of a secular society and a great hodgepodge of reactionary forces. On this note, Stewart's closing passages are particularly apt (the bracketed insertions are my own, obviously):

Leibniz was a man whose failings were writ as large as his outsized virtues. Yet it was his greed, his vanity, and above all, his insatiable, all too human neediness that made his work so emblematic for the species. With the promise that the cruel surface of experience conceals a most pleasing and beautiful truth, a world in which everything happens for a reason and all is for the best, the glamorous courtier of Hanover made himself into the philosopher of the common man. [What audacity! To claim a thinker so abstruse as Leibniz to be "of the common man" is obscene. I love it!] If Spinoza was the first great thinker of the modern era, then perhaps Leibniz should count as its first human being.

Spinoza, on the other hand, was marked from the start as a rara avis. [Philosophers cannot resist showing off their familiarity with dead languages even in purportedly popular works.] Given his eerie self-sufficiency, his inhuman virtue, and his contempt for the multitudes, it could not have been otherwise. [I think this is a bit overstated, and partially a product of our lack of knowledge about the circumstances of Spinoza's life.] Yet the message of his philosophy is not that we know all that there is to know; but rather that there is nothing that cannot be known. Spinoza's teaching is that there is no unfathomable mystery in the world; no other-world accessible only through revelation or epiphany; no hidden power capable of judging or affirming us; no secret truth about everything. There is instead only the slow and steady accumulation of many small truths; and the most important of these is that we need expect nothing more in order to find happiness in this world. His is a philosophy for philosophers, who are as uncommon now as they have always been. [An obvious allusion to Spinoza's final thought in the Ethics: "all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare". I take this as evidence that he ultimately favors Spinoza, but I'm not always so sure.]

In contrast to the suggestion of this poetic denouement, I recommend Stewart's book to philosophers and non-philosophers alike. Finding decent popular accounts of Spinoza's philosophy is nearly impossible, and while Stewart has his flaws, the beauty of the historical narrative alone makes it worth reading. To everyone (and I know there are so many of you who read this) curious to understand what I find so remarkable about Spinoza, this is not a bad place to start.

What exactly is natural selection?

I am no scientist--my background in the sciences is, at best, patchy--but I try to learn what I can about the natural sciences. I can't help myself from voraciously consuming news of the latest breakthroughs (for instance, check this out), or from spending hours on Wikipedia reading articles on quantum mechanics that I can scarcely comprehend, or from dabbling in a little philosophy of science now and then.

One issue that has long fascinated me is evolution. A few years ago, I read Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker and was impressed by the way he connected evolution to other physical phenomena. If we think about things in terms of the probability that they should exist--this is highly speculative but bear with me--we would expect to find, for instance, things that last a long time (like rocks) or that are frequently produced (like clouds). But add in something that can replicate itself--but does so imperfectly--and the history of life on this planet seems like a foregone conclusion. (This is a partial response to creationist "arguments" concerning the improbability of life.)

I've also had debates with colleagues about evolution, trying to argue on premises like Dawkins' that natural selection (leaving aside the phenomena of mutation/variation and genetic drift, which are in some ways more straightforward, as generators of a kind of "randomness") is a general physical process not specific to biological organisms. Even higher-level phenomena like culture and technology, I would say, undergo an analogous process in their development.

As it turns out there are physicists who are trying to argue exactly this. A common "criticism" leveled by creationist idiots is that life is incompatible with the second law of thermal dynamics (viz., that entropy in a closed system increases over time). Contrary to what we might think, living things actually do more to increase entropy than do non-living things. One physicist in particular, Roderick Dewar, has even argued that what natural selection is really selecting for is not something vague like "fitness" but rather "maximum entropy production" (MEP):

Dewar has shown that MEP is the most probable behavior of an open, nonequilibrium system made up of many interacting elements, provided that system is free to “choose” its state and not subject to any strong external forces.... The large-scale state of MEP represents the largest proportion of the countless possible arrangements of the system's microscopic parts, regardless of what those parts are up to.

Natural selection in biology could work the same way, Dewar thinks: “In physics, to speak of natural selection is to ask, among all possible states, which is the one that nature selects.” This, he points out, is a question of probability. “The state that nature selects is the one that can be realized in more ways than any other. Biologists don't think like that, but I want to entertain the hypothesis that natural selection in biology works the same way, and see where that gets us.”

The issues here are actually quite complex, and I encourage you to read the whole article, which includes opposing points of view and an alternative theory about increasing matter and energy "flow"--did someone say "Heraclitus"?

Part of what we're dealing with is a question about the distinction between living and non-living things, but it also pertains to the issue of scientific reductionism: is biology ultimately explicable in terms of physics? Personally, I'm inclined to believe in emergent properties that require "higher" levels of description to account for.

In any case, I think it advantageous to see natural selection as a more general--dare I say metaphysical?--principle. Some have even argued that a kind of selection operates between different universes--although this is too speculative to entertain as anything more than a neat idea. When it comes down to it, we may not be able to ask why there is something rather than nothing, but the question of why this something rather than another may be in bounds.

Emotions and Reason: Together at Last

The emotion-reason connection has now bled through to popular media, as evidenced in this Boston Globe article:

Ever since Plato, scholars have drawn a clear distinction between thinking and feeling. Cognitive psychology tended to reinforce this divide: emotions were seen as interfering with cognition; they were the antagonists of reason. Now, building on more than a decade of mounting work, researchers have discovered that it is impossible to understand how we think without understanding how we feel.

[...]

Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at USC, has played a pivotal role in challenging the old assumptions and establishing emotions as an important scientific subject. When Damasio first published his results in the early 1990s, most cognitive scientists assumed that emotions interfered with rational thought. A person without any emotions should be a better thinker, since their cortical computer could process information without any distractions.

But Damasio sought out patients who had suffered brain injuries that prevented them from perceiving their own feelings, and put this idea to the test. The lives of these patients quickly fell apart, he found, because they could not make effective decisions. Some made terrible investments and ended up bankrupt; most just spent hours deliberating over irrelevant details, such as where to eat lunch. These results suggest that proper thinking requires feeling. Pure reason is a disease.

Besides Damasio (whose Looking for Spinoza is a must read!), the article makes reference to other theorists who I've been in the habit of reading, Jon Haidt and Josh Greene.

Spinoza, of course, goes unmentioned, but again we find that he was centuries ahead of his time.

(Tangential Remarks: Recently, I've been toying with some unusual interpretations of Spinoza, not so far from Damasio's neuroscience-infused account of the mind-body relationship. For instance, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics would be consistent with Spinoza's claim that everything that is possible exists.

Now I'm not so brash as to claim that Spinoza anticipated modern physics, anymore than he anticipated evolution with his outstanding refutation of intelligent design in Ethics I Appendix. Rather, like Damasio has argued with respect to the brain, Spinoza provides a framework for thinking about the sciences that is far preferable to other paradigms, like the Cartesian.

In a similar vein, Spinoza also seems to have a notion of identity as continuing proportion which meshes nicely with current ideas about identity as patterns of information--which has now led me to believe that mind uploading is possible [particularly if the upload is gradual, but perhaps even in the case of instantaneous transfer or the activation of a "backup" copy--imagine being able to "save" your life story!--it's something I've wanted to do for as long as I've been playing RPGs].

These recent ideas, which are extremely exciting, have spawned from my recent reading of Hans Moravec's brilliant 1988 work Mind Children. Moravec's solution to the problem of consciousness copying strikes me as brilliant, if extremely counterintuitive.

I hope to write more on this work at some other point, because it's been extremely fruitful for my thinking: so much so, that I think the more appropriate title would be Mind Fuck [which would be a natural predecessor to Mind Children, anyway.] The first 100 pages can be a bit boring, especially since he dabbles in what's state of the art for 1988 [i.e., even before the Internet], but beginning with the fourth chapter's discussion of the Robotic Bush [not the George variety, but the branching kind] things take a turn for the surreal-yet-plausible.)

Upon Further Reflection...

The musings of yesterday evening did not quite sit well with me, even immediately after writing them. While I do think the problem of technology is of vital importance, my feeling is that some of my political conclusions were over-hasty. I was caught up in the rush of radical new ideas and just got carried away. This post is a more critical take on some of the issues raised previously.

When one reaches conclusions that clash dramatically with the sensibilities of most others, it's a good idea to try to understand as well as possible what really underlies these conclusions, and whether they rest on secure foundations. Thus, I want to consider this from at least two perspectives. One is the rational and evidentiary basis of the claims, while the other is more psychological, looking at the factors that motivate the creation of the arguments.

First, it seems yesterday's conclusions depend on a number of presuppositions which I either failed to mention or inadequately argued for. The prediction of rapid progress is premised on the continuation of a trend that so far shows no signs of slackening, but it is far from certain that the conditions which support it will be stable.

While I mentioned the possibility of an apocalyptic disaster which other wiped out or species or at least destroyed a good chunk of it and ended civilization as we know it, I didn't consider other, more minor catastrophes which might serve to delay or reverse scientific progress. For example, the looming specters of global warming and the energy crisis constituted by the depletion of fossil fuels are significant problems which I've been content to lump in with other problems having merely technological solutions. It may be the case that we find new, cleaner sources of energy, or technological fixes to reverse the effects of excessive carbon emissions, but this is far from certain. One could raise other problems as well: instability caused by economic collapses and shifts in the balance of political power, wars over certain limited resources like oil, and so forth.

On top of that, there may be certain things which are just not physically possible to achieve, or that come with such adverse side effects as not to be worth pursuing. One could imagine certain genetic augmentations that disrupt a finely balanced natural system, or the problem of creating software to use all our powerful computing hardware to its fullest capacity, to name just two.

Next, in terms of the basis of the normative claims, it is by no means obvious that greater intelligence necessitates better judgment or wisdom. My inclination is to believe that this would be the case, but it's something of an empirical question, although one that is simultaneously normative since the meaning of better judgment is itself a question of ethical/political judgment. Furthermore, I downplayed the possibilities of other reasons why letting greater-than-human artificial intelligences decide for us might be undesirable. One such instance would be the importance for well being of the sense of being free to decide for oneself, determine the course of one's own life, etc.

Moving on to the second view, I find that psychologically my motivation in the previous post is highly misanthropic, in addition to being highly anti-natural. Now, granted, that I think this hatred of natural processes and of human beings is justified, but there are some serious repercussions to being so motivated. In the least, I need to offer a better justification for this attitude.

For the first time in my quarter-century or so of life, I have broken a bone. It happened I think about a month ago, but I didn't notice any effects of it until I started feeling pain in my right foot about two weeks ago, and it was not confirmed until just today after I had X-rays taken. Suffice it to say that it has reminded me of the frailty of human bodies.

Similarly, although it places me in a camp with some of the most violently ascetic individuals in history, there are many things that annoy me about the kinds of bodies that we have: all the effort that is required to maintain physical hygiene, the inefficiency of many systems, the unpleasant wastes that our bodies produce, the way that we get so easily tired by sustained activity, etc.

My body in particular is not in the greatest of shape, even after I devote considerable time to habits of maintenance. I have never been particularly strong or fast or resilient. Frankly, if not for safety concerns, I think I would be one of the first in line for a prosthetic body if such a thing should be developed. As it stands, I can easily imagine myself voluntarily opting for cybernetic limbs to replace my perfectly healthy ones, once these are safe and indistinguishable from natural limbs.

All of these shortcomings are to be expected by the unintelligent design of blind evolutionary forces. Unfortunately, as imperfect as they are they are still exceedingly complex, having reached solutions to problems of organization that we are not even aware of at the present. I think we will eventually design better bodies, but it may be quite some time. In the interim, the best option may just be to try to optimize the basic design that we do have, and this is a problem for biotech more than anything else.

Furthermore, I was explicit previously in my suggestion that suffering is pointless and worthless, but this is a bit of an overgeneralization. Pain certainly has an evolutionary function, which involves, among other things, learning how to respond to complex environments. What I see as another unfortunate consequence of nature's blind designs is that pain seems to accomplish the task of learning far more readily than does pleasure.

I have seen evolutionary justifications for this empirical fact, such as the far greater cost imposed by death (which must in turn be avoided to the greatest degree possible) versus the relatively small benefit accrued by successfully obtaining food for the day, or by one act of mating, and so forth. The consequence of this is that, on the whole, there is likely a far greater degree of pain than pleasure in the world, and to me this is simply unacceptable. On simple utilitarian grounds alone, it would be incumbent upon us to undertake to redesign natural processes as far as possible, so that we might reverse this pernicious trend with all its adverse consequences (e.g., the possibility of torture).

Lastly, on this note concerning my distaste for "nature" and "human nature", there are the myriad of social and political problems which I see as ultimately unresolvable. My contention is that most of these problems have at least two kinds of solutions, one of which is primarily social and the other of which is medical or otherwise technological.

For example, take the difficulties imposed on the handicapped in virtue of their injuries and defects. The problem here is fundamentally a mismatch between certain individuals and their social environments. To an extent, the environment can be altered: e.g., handicapped bathrooms and ramps are fairly common accommodations that society has made for those bound to wheelchairs.

But, rather than taking all that effort to redesign the environment--including some that are extremely difficult to change, viz., opinions and attitudes--we can attack the problem at an individual level. By screening for genetic defects, and by developing highly effective prosthetics, cures for paralysis, and so forth, we can simply eliminate the handicaps themselves. (And unlike the deplorable eugenics movements of the past, this totally avoids killing people; it simply remedies certain existing conditions and prevents certain genetic combinations from attaining life.)

Not all social problems may be resolvable on this model, but I believe that many of the causes of unhappiness in people can be so resolved, and this would be a major step forward. One can think of it as something like "applied stoicism": I change myself rather than my environment, because I have so little power over the latter.

In short, I like to see this as a problem of figuring out how reason can best overpower negative affects. I've been meaning to write a post to show why Spinoza would agree with me about all this technology stuff (and it's not even that big of a stretch, as I hope to show), but certainly we have a case here of people coming together (thus having more power than individuals alone) and crafting artifices which allow for more direct control of those things which disempower us. To my mind, that's what human enhancement truly is: the augmentation of our freedom.

Returning to the previous perspective (beliefs that underlie my conclusions), it is vital to note that certain conclusions I have reached concerning human freedom and divinity are essential presuppositions for me. I believe, but will not argue for here, that what is taken for free will is simply ignorance of the causes of our desires (for one excellent argument, see the invaluable Appendix to Spinoza's Ethics Part I). I maintain that the choices we are presented with when it comes to technological control are between numerous causes (of which we are ignorant) interacting in highly complex ways producing highly contingent effects, on the one hand, and more direct control based on scientific knowledge.

(As an aside, I use the word "choice" deliberately; I do not deny that we have the freedom to make choices. Rather, I maintain that the basis on which those choices are made consists of desires that are primarily the product of external forces--and to the extent that we can change our desires, this requires the operation of second order desires, whose origin will ultimately be derived from external factors.)

In short, the choice is between chance and ignorance, on the one hand, and control and knowledge on the other. To me, this is really no choice at all; only a fool would choose ignorance. The problem that most people face, and this is a point that B.F. Skinner, of all people, has made remarkably well, is that the external determination is more evident in cases of control (because, of course, we're ignorant in the more complex cases), so it's easier to see this as simply being manipulated. But, as I construe it, we're being determined to action either way; the path of knowledge though allows us to be more determined by our own nature, which is what I think true freedom is.

This should be sufficient for now. Let me to some extent rescind my previous rejection of certain democratic values, and leave them in a sort of questionable area, a matter of doubt requiring further reflection.

A 3rd Dimension in 21st Century politics

I've begun reading Ray Kurzweil's most recent book The Singularity is Near. I'm tempted to call the man a visionary; his view of the world is profound and startling. It's got me thinking about some issues I've seen raised elsewhere, and I've come around to some political conclusions that are, to say the least, not mainstream.

In contemporary politics, a 2-dimensional model is sometimes proposed for plotting political views. Wikipedia has a nice discussion of the diversity of views on what constitutes the political spectrum. Many have seen the inadequacy of the left-right model, and have proposed alternatives, one of which is known as the "political compass" model (discussed in detail here), which is fairly representative of 2-axis accounts, so I will briefly discuss it.

The two axes are the social and the economic. On the economic side of things, you find a range of views from hardcore libertarianism and support of laissez-faire capitalism, on the right end, to various forms of communism and socialism, on the left. The range of views on economics is of course more complex than this, but it offers a rough guideline by focusing on the level of interference in an economy by the state or some other collective.

On the social axis, you have views that range from authoritarianism and the worship of tradition, on the right (actually, the top of the compass), to what they call libertarianism (it's probably appropriate to distinguish between economic and social libertarianism, as well as the political group that calls itself libertarian, whose members are often both) with its emphasis on personal freedoms, on the left (the bottom). The relevant characteristic here is a measure of permissibility, how much is left up to individuals to choose for themselves.

I trust these two axes are fairly straightforward. However, there a third dimension is emerging in 21st century politics, and will become extremely prominent very soon. My suggestion is that it warrants its own axis, since it does not map well with either of the other two. I think the easiest way to distinguish the ends are by calling them technoconservatives and technoprogressives, but you also might talk about the range as being from Neo-Luddite to Transhumanist. On either end, you find unlikely allies.

On the technoconservative side, you find environmental activists, religious fundamentalists, leftist academics (much to my chagrin; it makes me wish Brave New World were never written), and groups like the Amish. On the technoprogressive side, you have avowed transhumanists, technophiles of various sorts, avid consumers of gadgets and doodads, and even the occasional social conservative who sees technology as a means of "curing" the gay or as a great way to enforce law and order.

I view our culture as being far more technoconservative than technoprogressive, in spite of all the money we put into scientific and technological research. Yes, there is a sort of contradiction represented by our worship of progress and our insatiable consumer culture, but by and large Americans are weary of new technologies, particularly biotechnology like genetic engineering. Contrast us with nations like Japan, India, or Thailand, and you find far less support of, for instance, germline genetic augmentation, which many westerners are inclined to dismiss as scary "eugenics".

Carl Elliott has documented our tenacious relationship with human enhancement in Better Than Well, a text which I use in my intro philosophy class and one I highly recommend. What you find, Elliott suggests, is a tension in thinking about human identity between notions of authenticity and being true to yourself, and those of self-improvement and being all that you can be. And, in truth, this issue of technology is largely one of identity, although in a different sense than the trendy topic found in academia today.

The fact of the matter is that we will very soon be dealing with beings of our own creation who match and then exceed human capabilities. The extent to which this happens in part depends on how long the Luddites are able to hold off what I see as inevitable (or, inevitable so long as we do not destroy ourselves, which is actually a likely possibility).

But if the technoprogressives win out, we will see robots, genetically enhanced humans, humans who voluntarily integrate themselves with machines (cyborgs, they are often called), but also computerized intelligences without bodies properly speaking, as well as intelligences realized in new forms like molecular computing that call into question the living/non-living distinction, and then all the hybrids of these various types. Imagine the world of the "X-Men" combined with that of "Ghost in the Shell". Add in nanotechnology, and things get even more wacky--and all of this happening all at once.

Very soon, people will have no idea about what is human and who counts as a person deserving of legal and moral rights. In this era, the technoconservatives (or at least the social conservatives among their number) will probably limit humanity to the unenhanced and non-cybernetic. This group, which I like to think of as the Neo-Amish, may constitute a substantial portion of the population in the beginning. But ultimately, they will be unable to compete with their enhanced brethren (and good riddance!).

This picture of the world scares many people. It runs counter to our understanding of the equality of persons; when you talk about improving humans, you are talking about making some better than others. It essentially destroys the traditional human world. I think that it is more than likely--I'd say even 90% certain--that human beings, as we are constituted now, will be extinct by 2100. Either we will have destroyed our species, or we will have moved beyond it.

This is, as I see it, the last century of humanity. Because I far prefer augmenting humanity rather than eliminating it, I strongly support unimpeded technological development in the GNR (genetics, nanotechnology, robotics) fields. Now, some people oppose it for the same reason, since they see it as increasing the likelihood of human extinction, whether by some super-virus, a robot rebellion, or the destruction of life by omnivorous nanobots (the "gray goo" scenario). And to an extent, this is true.

However, I see a far greater threat in the form of the idiots who control our nuclear weapons. One of the problems with unenhanced humanity is constituted by our aggressive and tribal impulses that incline us to hate those different than us and go to great lengths to destroy them. The sooner the enhanced and machine intelligences take over the world, as far as I am concerned, the better. In short, for those of you who know the film, I see "I, Robot" as having an unhappy ending.

Now, this is a radical view politically. It makes me part ways with many democratic ideals. But the more I read about the exponential growth of technologies, the more inevitable it seems. Yes, we may ban a lot of biotech, but the change is coming faster than we can respond to. Ultimately, I think it's the machines who will triumph, because people will view advances in computing and robotics as relatively innocuous, until the robots and other machine intelligences become commonplace.

Before long, recognizing their superiority, the machines and their cybernetic allies will sweep the unenhanced out of power--hopefully nonviolently--and usher in a new era of peace and cooperation. My guess is that this would happen around mid-century. It behooves those of us with any sense to join them.

All this sentimental piffle about the flaws and sufferings that make human beings special should be recognized for the garbage that it is. Nietzsche articulates it perfectly: the one thing we cannot accept is the notion that our suffering is meaningless. Well, folks, like it or not, it mostly is. It's the product of blind chance, of complex natural processes that lack foresight, of the various idiocies that human beings foist upon themselves. A world with as little suffering as possible would be a far better world, and this will (I hope) be the world of the future, in which intelligence wins out over other natural forces.

Most of you who read this, although I know few do, will likely regard me as insane, or at least deluded. I say time will tell. Predicting the future is a difficult business, and I could likely be wrong. However, one thing I am quite confident in is my normative stance: human beings are ultimately unfit to govern themselves. You can arrange societies in only so many ways, some more preferable than others, but like a mosaic made out of dog shit, the substance with which you work will put serious limitations on how beautiful your finished product will be.

In the past, this view was simply used as a means for one group to gain power over another. We are "the well born", "the best men", the ones who speak directly to the gods, etc., etc. But, in the future, this pretense will become a reality. Let there be democracy amongst the enhanced, but most human beings have no idea about what is good for themselves. Certainly, the people are not equipped to recognize who among them would serve as the best leaders--George W. Bush is but one obvious example.

We should be honest with ourselves. Frankly, I see myself as lacking in these respects--certainly I lack the intelligence and wisdom to see how the world ought to be governed but, really, so do all human beings. For too long, we have been at the whims of fortune, but now that we have the possibility to become masters of fate, it is incumbent upon us that we do so.

I find myself with a new purpose, as an academic and a philosopher, which is to sell this vision of the world, to encourage people to put effort into making our radically different future as utopian as possible. More and more are waking up to the importance of the issue, but far too many react to it with revulsion. I hope to change that. In any case, this is really the defining issue of our time. Recognize it.

What's Wrong With American Democracy

Among many other things, this.

For all the policy blueprints churned out by presidential campaigns, there is this indisputable fact: People care less about issues than they do about a candidate's character.

A new Associated Press-Ipsos poll says 55 percent of those surveyed consider honesty, integrity and other values of character the most important qualities they look for in a presidential candidate.

Just one-third look first to candidates' stances on issues; even fewer focus foremost on leadership traits, experience or intelligence.

Now this might not be such a big deal if it were actually possible to know the character of candidates. In theory, it seems that our leaders ought to be men and women of character. Perhaps this is not the most important quality, but it is worth something.

The problem is that a presidential candidate's "character" is the creation of PR and marketing specialists. If people actually knew George Bush's character (and, according to a poll cited in the above article, a whopping 44% think Bush is honest as of January; I didn't realize such a large percentage of the population was mentally challenged), he never would have come close enough to steal the 2000 election in the first place.

But speaking more generally, look at the types of people who are attracted to politics. Do any of them have the least bit of character? I think we've forgotten one of the fundamental premises of our form of government, as Glenn Greenwald has repeatedly pointed out. Power corrupts, politicians are not to be trusted. This is why we have check and balances, separation of powers and all that.

Now granted that some politicians are bigger crooks than others, but we should never just trust them, regardless of their party affiliation. Since the media has essentially forfeited its role as watchdog, and is selective about which facets of individual character it reveals, we should always be at least initially suspicious of the claims to good character that we hear from the candidates, or bad character from their opponents (recently, it came out that Obama was late in paying some parking tickets at Harvard--is this "character"?).

By what criteria should we judge our candidates? I'm inclined to say not his character, but whether I could have a beer with the guy is what really matters. But seriously, anyone who can honestly say "I voted for/against candidate X because s/he seems like a [insert trait here] person" has essentially abdicated their responsibility as a democratic citizen.

Numerous other qualities, like, say, oh, I don't know, what they plan on doing when elected are more responsible criteria for decision. In truth, though, the entire system of presidential elections almost ensures that no one can make a good decision about whom to vote for, and that that decision is in favor of the lesser of two evils.

In summary: character is a dumb way to decide who should be president, not because it doesn't matter, but because it's nigh impossible to discern who has the least awful character.

Two Aspects of the Left Blogosphere

I've been reading liberal and progressive blogs regularly for a few years now; I even bought and read that Crashing the Gate book from Kos and that other guy (Armstrong, I believe). I've been pleased to see its increasing influence in politics and the political media. And of course, November 2006 brought the first enjoyable election day in all of my adult life.

Nevertheless, while I have jumped all over the place ideologically in the past decade, I have never really been entirely satisfied with the Democratic Party (I've never registered to vote as one, preferring either no affiliation or the Green Party) and what is taken to be liberalism in the US. For quite a while, I considered myself a species of Marxist, until I did some further study in 20th C. Marxism and came to reject the economic determinism that pervades most such accounts. To this day, even though my views are more complex, I would still call myself a leftist.

In any case, one thing I have come to notice is that, even though Democrat-friendly liberals and progressives dominate one hemisphere of the blogging world, there are Marxists, left libertarians, radical feminists, and others who are highly critical of the Democratic party. (I suppose this would be that radical (anti-)American left that we all hear about.) It goes without saying that they see Republicans as worse, but they don't see the Democrats as offering a substantive alternative.

I have come to read these blogs more and more, particularly these two (I've already mentioned Arthur Silber's work before, but this IOZ character is also a joy to read, even if he identifies as a libertarian). Perhaps I'm reading them more because Bush is starting to recede into the background, and I'm worried about what's coming next.

To simplify the situation, you might say there are two major factions in the Internet left, two distinct philosophies of how to effect change. On the one hand, you have what IOZ cleverly dubs "The Donkle", a mainstream, "work within the system" group that subordinates ideological consistency to the needs of a practical political movement.

On the other, there are what Joe Klein snidely refers to as the "illiberal left", those who are unwilling to "sell out" or water down their principles, who are just as eager (if not more so) to criticize Democrats as Republicans, and who reject American Empire, with minimal care as to which wing of the ruling class governs it.

A great example of the conflict of these approaches is an interchange between Steve Gilliard and Max Siwicky that I'm too lazy to link to right now (just check the archives of the News Blog if you're interested). Steve was arguing that his side is actual accomplishing positive things for people as Max and his ilk are busy having ideological discussions. (I don't quite recall Max's precise response to that point, but I will offer something in that vein below).

Now, as an individual enamored of ideas more than actions, I tend to side with the latter. Yet, I am still often torn, because I recognize that this alternative often practically amounts to invigorating and insightful discussions among intelligent people who have absolutely no power to change anything. I am not completely averse to compromise against my principles when it can lead to a palpable good.

This is probably why I vote Democratic. And yet, I see the Democrats, both politicians and voters, as suffering from a few major flaws they share with mainstream independents and Republicans. The easiest way to put it is as a kind of American exceptionalism (and again, Arthur Silber is the man to read for some excellent essays on this theme at "Once Upon a Time...").

If you look at American history since WWII, and even before (see US involvement in WWI, the Spanish-American War and the occupation of the Phillipines, the Mexican-American War, the genocide of the native population and the enslavement of another, etc.), you will see many horrific acts committed often unapologetically, even proudly, guided by this idea that America is a special force for Good in the world, so that it's fine to resort to all sorts of unsavory ends to achieve its ambitions.

Most of this past is ignored, probably because most Americans don't really care about history (or are fine with a watered-down, pro-American mythology). Even ostensibly well-educated and intelligent Democrats tend to view the actions of the latest administration as a unique monstrosity, a sudden abandonment of cherished American principles. Nevermind that, as Chomsky has demonstrated by carefully culling the historical record, every president since at least FDR has probably been guilty of war crimes as a result of covert and not-so-covert military operations (yes, even Carter).

I've said this before, and it's by no means an original insight, but here goes again. What distinguishes Bush from previous administrations is his administration's incompetence and lack of subtlety (isn't it ironic that an administration can be well-known for its secrecy?). They brazenly condone torture, indefinite extralegal detention, aggressive warfare, and a slew of other things which other administrations have kept on the DL.

Of course, I will acknowledge that this is a serious problem. If we openly condone and engage in these practices we have truly become monsters (although I will grant that there's also the possibility that by bringing them out into the open, they actually stand a chance of being changed--some variant of the heightening the contradictions argument). But let's not pretend that these are radical, totally unprecedented things.

I'd like to say more on this subject, but I've got too much other work to do. In closing, I'll say that while a continue to read excellent authors like Glenn Greenwald and Digby, I am less and less compelled by the Left Lite. If we were to seriously adopt a simple principle of consistency between evaluating the actions of our nation and those of others (what I deem to be the central point that the radical left-wing nut Chomsky argues), we would be having very different political conversations these days. Then I might be inclined to read more mainstream political sources.

Why the Medicalization of Everyday Life is Good

(I've posted this at another journal of mine, but I'm reposting it here.)

It is a common claim that Americans take too many drugs, that we are society that is overmedicated. Conditions like attention deficit disorder and depression are said to be overdiagnosed and drugs like Prozac and Ritalin overprescribed. In short, so it is said, we make the mistake of taking ordinary differences in mental and physical abilities as genuine diseases to be treated medically, instead of problems of character that require more complex solutions.

Not only are all of these claims false, but I will argue the opposite: the medicalization of ordinary life is ultimately a positive development.

It never ceases to amaze me that, in a society that develops and benefits from so much of the technological progress of recent decades, opposition to future technologies runs at such a high level. From stem cell research to genetically modifed crops, Americans (as well as many Western Europeans) incessantly cry "it's unnatural!" and invoke the specters of Brave New World and Frankenstein. (Brave New World is perhaps my least favorite book for this very reason.)

This is not the case everywhere, particularly in Southeast Asia, where increasingly more of the breakthroughs in biotechnology are coming from. According to Ramez Naam, author of the superlative More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Human Enhancement, while a meager 20% of Americans advocate genetic engineering, 63% of Indians and an astounding 83% of Thais do. All the more reason why nations like China and India will overtake the West in the coming century (and why I may have to move to Asia).

What is interesting is that many Americans oppose augmenting human nature through genetic and cybernetic technologies, but have no issue with medical research to treat and cure diseases. The fact of the matter is, however, that research to treat a disease almost invariably can be used to enhance a normal condition.

Let me give but one example to illustrate. Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is commonly treated by the drugs Ritalin and Adderall. However, when "normal" indivduals take these drugs, their ability to pay attention and focus also improves.

Why is this? Part of it is the nature of the disease. Attention, like many human traits, is distibuted among the population along a normal distribution, or bell curve. Thus, most of the population falls near the average, with smaller percentages the further away in either direction.

ADHD, instead of being a condition with distinctive symptoms that one either has or does not (one example of this would be schizophrenia), is defined in a way that will include everyone below a certain point in that distribution. In other words, all it means to have ADHD is to be, say, in the bottom 20% (I'm not sure of the precise number) with regard to attention. This would be like saying that the dumbest fifth of the population suffers from "Intellect Deficit Disorder".

To extend the example of our hypothetical "Intellect Deficit Disorder", giving Ritalin only to those diagnosed with ADHD would be like giving a drug that increased intelligence only to those diagnosed with IDD. Such a thing would be absurd; if anyone could benefit from it, why shouldn't it be accessible to all? Many mental disorders, like depression and social anxiety, fall in the same category as ADHD.

Thus far, I have been giving an argument that would seem to oppose the point I'm trying to make. This is because I see "medicalization" as the means to fostering a wider acceptance of the use of medical treatments to improve human abilities. The more people who are diagnosed with these conditions, the more who take drugs, and the better off society is as a whole.

Why? Well consider what these drugs do. Prozac and other Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) can work on both the depressed and the healthy (although the effects are not quite the same for everybody) to increase their happiness. The happiness that comes from an SSRI is not the mindless contentedness of Huxley's idiotic "soma" but a kind of increased energy to get things done and a better resilience to the setbacks that everybody faces from day to day. Not only are the conditions for an individual improved, but our economic productivity as a society increases. (This doesn't necessarily entail an overworked population, the value of which is questionable, because if an individual finishes her work sooner, there's no reason why some of her increased productive energy couldn't be devoted to leisure pursuits, should she so choose.)

The major objection here, would be the negative side effects of drugs, for instance, Prozac's sexual side effects. However, as our understanding of biology improves, increasingly selective drugs are developed that produce fewer adverse side effects. There are more antidepressants on the market today that have fewer or no sexual effects; I'm on two myself and experience no discernible impediments.

Thus, I will be honest; I'm being a bit disingenuous with the title of this post. Medicalization in itself is not the good thing, but rather, the acceptance of technological enhancements to human functioning. Quite frankly, the objections to human enhancement are silly (in part because the distinction between pathology and normality is often completely arbitrary) and basically come down to two: one is that it is "unnatural", the other is that unintended side effects could produce negative, even fatal, results.

The first is merely a prejudice, which I won't bother taking the time to refute here (I've done it elsewhere); the second is largely mitigated by the extensive process of animal and human testing that precedes the approval of any treatment for public consumption. This may not answer every objection, but is sufficient for the purposes of this post.

In short, I ultimately think that it should be up to individuals to decide what treatments or enhancements they want for themselves, and in the case of children, families rather than governments should decide. For this reason, I oppose disastrous and wasteful policies like the so-called "War on Drugs", as well as the efforts of radical rightwing organizations to impede the release of drugs that fail to satisfy their rigid and narrow constraints of what is acceptable behavior for human beings.

And really, like I've said, should the US become even more of a society of Luddites and bioconservatives, we will be all the more quickly and easily surpassed by those who lack our prejudices. The development of these technologies ultimately cannot be stopped, and in the future, like all the progresses of humanity in the modern era, history shall recognize those who opposed them as the truly short-sighted ones.

...and then what?

(I really should be getting onto other things, but I wanted to jot down a few thoughts about something interesting from yesterday.)

The Doomsday Clock was recently moved forward 2 minutes to 11:55. Most people probably don't pay much heed to it--of those who are even aware of its existence, it's probably just to keep their sanity.

In some ways, it's amazing that human civilization has continued since the discovery of nuclear weapons and their mass proliferation. Now, we face other threats like global warming and the depletion of fossil fuels which will likely only make things worse.

I suspect global warming in itself would not be sufficient to wipe out human civilization, but insofar as it will be a spur to other problems--famines, mass migrations, wars over resources, etc.--it will create a more unstable world in which nuclear warfare becomes more probable. Other new weapons technologies pose additional dangers.

In any case, I think it's only a matter of time before humanity either destroys itself or descends into a new Dark Ages. We can only hope this doesn't happen during our lifetime.

I've been fortunate this semester to sit in on a class entitled "Boundaries of the Human in the Age of Robots and Clones," dealing with the implications of future technologies, especially human enhancement and robotics. I've written on such topics before--anyone who knows me is well aware that this is an interest of mine, even if they don't take it seriously.

The other day, the professor leading the class mentioned a roboticist at the university here with whom he has conversed before. When meeting with a previous version of this class, the roboticist was asked what inspires him to do the work that he does. He began by making a statement similar to that I opened this entry with, namely that he's pessimistic about the future of humankind, and thought it a huge shame especially because of the likely scarcity of intelligent life in the universe.

Right now, some roboticists have taken a lesson from biology and are designing robots from the bottom up, creating simpler robots and gradually making them more complex (top-down design has produced very limited results). Right now, we may have robots about as smart as insects. The roboticist's hope is that his life's work will move this along, perhaps producing robots as complex as some simple mammal. Future roboticists, given enough time, may produce something like Commander Data from Star Trek, or perhaps yet greater things.

In short, he sees himself as helping to design a successor species to humanity, one that may survive our destruction and perpetuate the existence of intelligent life, perhaps eventually spreading itself to other parts of the universe. His motives are no different than those of the blue collar worker who spends his life working hard so that his children might go to college and do better than he.

Personally, I have little interest in children--also something I've written about. This is why I'm more interested in human biological (and cybernetic) enhancement, including things like increasing our lifespan. Perhaps it's selfish, but I want to be among those modifying themselves and becoming a part of "post-humanity".

"Human nature" may not be concrete or easily ascertainable, but I think history shows that people never learn from history (perhaps Western Europe's rejection of warring amongst itself is an exception, but such examples are few and far between). We are messing with powers far beyond our understanding or ability to control.

Thus, as I see it, our only hope is to change human nature itself, so that we might be more capable of handling this problems. Wisdom may not be encoded in our genes, but there is certainly a large genetic component to traits like intelligence and empathy. Yes, research into human enhancement (genetic or otherwise) might only exacerbate our current problems, but I don't see any other choice.

Perhaps it's perverse, but this is the only reason for hope I've been able to discover in a world that stands but 5 minutes from destruction.

Leiter on Vanderbilt

I will not comment on this in detail, because I am leaving a public record, and it would be inexpedient to say what I really feel. Nevertheless, some of you will probably find this NYT article on Leiter's Gourmet Report along with Leiter's response, rather interesting.

Here is an excerpt from the latter:

...[W]hat is more appalling is the nonsense about Penn State, Stony Brook, and Vanderbilt. First of all, they don't have good departments, they have weak departments overall (with honorable exceptions etc. etc. etc.), whether you're interested in philosophy of language or ancient philosophy or Continental philosophy. Second, it is simply false that "they do not participate in the ratings." Each of them have been included in the ratings, and each time they fared quite poorly overall, even if they each have some areas of strength.

But most breathtaking is John Stuhr's idiotic comment that Rutgers "doesn't emphasize what we do," where "we" means Vanderbilt. It is true that Rutgers doesn't much emphasize history of philosophy or Continental philosophy (that's why NYU is #1, and Rutgers #2), but how could that explain why Vanderbilt has never been close to the top 50 and barely rates in any historical areas? The difference between Rutgers and Vanderbilt isn't "emphasis": it's that Vanderbilt has a weak faculty, even in most of the areas it purports to "emphasize" like post-Kantian Continental philosophy. (Rutgers, by the way, is obviously much stronger in the history of ancient and early modern philosophy than Vanderbilt; only in American pragmatism does Vanderbilt have an edge.) One would need only ask the dozens of philosophers specializing in those areas who completed the PGR surveys, after all.

Leiter is good enough to malign both my alma mater and my current institution. I must say, though, had I not gone to a school like Penn State, I probably would have never gotten into philosophy. Analytic philosophers have a distinct talent for sapping the life out of even the most exciting topics (see, e.g., an anthology on the Philosophy of Sex that I used a year and a half ago).

Of course, it's unfair to impugn the group as a whole. There are quite a few distinctly analytic philosophers doing interesting work today, not to mention the fact that good historians of philosophy--the ones who read original texts closely and charitably and who know the relevant historical background well enough to avoid anachronistic interpretations--can just as easily come from either "branch" of contemporary philosophy.

I could say more, but I will stop myself before I say anything potentially incriminating.

The Virtue of Cowardice

I have long accepted the fact that I am a coward. I would never consider dying or killing for my country, or for any purported noble cause. Yet, I have never been ashamed of that. I have never really seen the value in sacrificing for such things. However, I have also never been able to adequately articulate this vision, and was literally accused of moral weakness once when I tried to defend it.

Thus, when I watched The Americanization of Emily, a film which I was led to by the fascinating blogger Arthur Silber, it instantly became one of my favorites by doing something I could not. This movie launches an unrelenting shock and awe campaign on the futility of warfare and the idiocy of heroism, as Silber compellingly argues here (see also here and here).

I strongly encourage you to read at least the first of Silber's essays, although it may be better to do so after watching the film. If you at all trust my opinion on these matters, watch this movie. It is brilliant, absolutely marvelous, and incredible considering the time it was produced, in 1964, not even a decade after the "noble" war which serves as its setting. It is likely unlike any war film you have ever seen.

(Incidentally, those of you familiar with James' essay "The Moral Equivalent of War" might find it an apt accompaniment. I'm considering showing this film to my class in the spring along with James' essay.)

I offer this one tidbit to stoke your interest, and to give you a sense of why cowardice should be nothing to be afraid of:

War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best; the highest morality he's capable of ... it’s not war that’s insane, you see. It’s the morality of it. It’s not greed or ambition that makes war: it’s goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons: for liberation or manifest destiny. Always against tyranny and always in the interest of humanity. So far this war, we’ve managed to butcher some ten million humans in the interest of humanity. Next war it seems we’ll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity. It’s not war that’s unnatural to us – it’s virtue. As long as valor remains a virtue, we shall have soldiers. So, I preach cowardice. Through cowardice, we shall all be saved.

Speaking of Non-belief...

This is quite fascinating and, in my view, a good sign (h/t Digby):

Multinational surveys have often reported that Americans are much more likely to believe in God than people in most other developed countries, particularly in Europe. However, a new Harris Poll finds that 42 percent of all U.S. adults say they are not "absolutely certain" there is a God, including 15 percent who are "somewhat certain," 11 percent who think there is probably no God and 16 percent who are not sure.

These are the results of a Harris Poll conducted online by Harris Interactive® between October 4 and 10, 2006 with a nationwide sample of 2,010 U.S. adults.

Important difference between online surveys and surveys conducted by telephone interviewers

Over the last few years, several different surveys have found that more people admit to potentially embarrassing beliefs or behaviors when answering online surveys (without interviewers) than admit to these behaviors when talking to interviewers in telephone surveys. They are also three times more likely to say that their sexual orientation is gay, lesbian or bi-sexual. Researchers call this unwillingness to give honest answers to some questions in telephone surveys a "social desirability bias."

It is therefore no surprise that in this online survey, more people say they are not absolutely certain there is a God than have given similar replies in other surveys conducted by telephone.

...

Are believers declining?

Three years ago, in an identical survey, 79 percent of adults said they believed in God and 66 percent said they were absolutely certain that there is a God. In this new survey, those numbers have declined to 73 percent and 58 percent respectively.

I've studied this issue a bit myself, and the numbers I've seen for belief in God have always been in the 80s or even 90s for the US. I wonder how much of this disparity has to do with the whole "social desirability bias" and how much with actual declining belief. (Or, how much is error in this particular poll? For instance, internet access tends to be less evenly distributed in this country than telephones, so this could bias the sample towards those who are better educated and better off financially.)

That more than a quarter do not believe (11% believing there is no God, 16% unsure) makes me pleased.

But why? Why does it please me that belief in God is declining? (I ask this question to myself, as much as anyone else who might wonder at my motivations.)

Well, one reason would not be specific to me: we like people to believe as we do, especially when we are confident about something.

But honestly, there's a lot of evidence that people who are religious believers are happier than those who are not. Jonathan Haidt suggests that this is a result of feeling connected to something larger than the self, whether it be a religious community or something metaphysical (or both).

He may be right. Beliefs aside, there are few secular organizations that are as tightly knit as (many) religious communities are.

In any case, given that at least some of this happiness is attributable to beliefs, in a sense I am pleased about something that results in less happiness in the world.

Peter Singer was on The Colbert Report last night, and it got me thinking about problems with utilitarianism (a view for which I have a lot of sympathy). The thing that I don't like about utilitarianism is that it puts all moral worth on something passive, something that is undergone rather than done, viz. suffering.

Yes, they claim to be concerned with happiness, but as pleasure, not as something active like eudaimonia or laetitia (joy) in Spinoza's sense. In any case, all people like Singer ever talk about is suffering anyway.

Returning to the issue at hand, I'm inclined to think that belief is not a matter of choice (contrary to the popular interpretation of James' "Will to Believe"). On some issues one does have options but, for most issues most of the time, things just seem true or false to most people.

I'll grant that wishful thinking plays a large role in determining belief--so that people believe what they want to believe--but this seldom operates consciously. In any case, even if they believe what they want and even if they recognize this to some extent, they still don't have much control over what they want in the first place. (They are aware of their desires but never even dream of the causes of those desires, etc.)

I think the challenge for modern human beings is to find happiness in a world in which we realize that we are unquestionably finite. We are not the center of the universe, there is not some higher power watching over us, we have no eternal aspects to ourselves; we are animals as much as any other species.

This doesn't mean happiness is impossible. We have to realize that this is not an all or nothing game. Yes, it would be nice to live longer than we do (although I don't know that I'd go so far as to say forever), but given our limitations, we can still make the most of things.

This may be a diminished happiness, but at least it's one that doesn't depend on questionable beliefs that will be doubtful for any honest, intelligent person. (OK, that's an unfair jab at believers. I think they can be honest and intelligent in their own ways.)

Anyway, it's nice to know I'm not the only one ineligible for public office in this state.

Fun Fact

I'm not allowed to hold public office in Tennessee!

Article IX, Section 2 of the state's constitution reads (h/t Incongruous):

"No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state."

Apparently my home state, Pennsylvania, is among six other states with a similar clause (in its case, Article 1, Section 4), although technically it just implies that it is not the case that atheists are not disqualified:

"No person who acknowledges the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of trust or profit under this Commonwealth."

Isn't that fun? More reason why I have no intention of ever living in Tennessee or Pennsylvania again!

Iraq

As the civil war rages on, my mind turns more and more to thoughts of Iraq. Of late, I've taken more of an interest in educating myself about the conflict.

I pride myself on having opposed the invasion and occupation from the beginning, not from some sense of political expediency, but for moral reasons. As is well known by any student of history or veteran of combat--and of course the Bush administration has a dearth of both--war is hell and should be avoided when at all possible. Death, destruction, and suffering on a massive scale are all but guaranteed in war; if we resort to it, we'd better do so for a damn good reason and in a way that minimizes its negative results.

Two recent articles, one from the NY Review of Books and the other from the Boston Review, are excellent resources for understanding the current situation and its development. They complement each other quite nicely, since the former shows the massive ineptitude in managing the occupation from the US side, while the latter is an excellent account of what Iraqis have experienced in the transition from standing united against the American occupation to pandemic sectarian strife.

Both are quite long, but well worth the time spent. It's sad that there's so little that we as individuals can do to end this thing; it seems like the only person who has the power to do so (at least in terms of US involvement) wouldn't change his mind even if Jesus Christ himself descended from the heavens and slapped him upside the head.

Nevertheless, one thing we can do as citizens is inform ourselves and try to learn how we got into this mess. This is especially important since a number of those still in power want to go for the threepeat of failed US interventions in the middle east by targeting Iran. We must do everything in our power to prevent such recklessness--what better way to start than through knowledge?

A Simple Argument

After watching Chomsky's film last night, I started to wonder why he is viewed as such a radical figure. What he's arguing is rather simple actually. (Because of this, I will employ the charged language of "good" and "evil" in a somewhat simplistic manner, as a kind of shorthand.) I see it as something like the following.

1. We should hold ourselves to the same standards we hold others.

This is a straightforward premise that almost everyone would grant on an individual level, but which some Americans might take issue with, making the claim that, since America is a force of good in the world, it's perfectly alright if we engage in some acts of evil for the sake of a greater good. Before moving on, I will try to refute this point.

First, two facts about our psychology: a) humans have an overwhelming tendency to view themselves, the groups that they belong to, and the people that they like as good; b) humans have a strong tendency to view individuals and groups that they dislike as bad or evil. I think the tendency in (a) is stronger than that of (b).

Concerning (a): Everyone, with very few exceptions, views themselves as good and no one thinks of themselves as evil. This includes Nazis, Soviets, Islamic terrorists, you name it. (The handful of exceptions would be silly people like Satan worshippers and perhaps psychopaths and serial killers who are honest with themselves.)

Vast amounts of evidence support this claim; take any purportedly "evil" group in history and look at their literature. Whether they're killing in God's name, for the sake of their glorious nation, or to spread freedom and democracy, they tell themselves some kind of story to justify what they're doing.

In short, to label a group as simply and purely evil is to totally misunderstand human psychology and, in fact, to repeat the error of many of these groups--this is why the rhetoric on both sides of the "War on Terror" is eerily similar. If a group is actually evil, it's not because they embrace the dark side but because what they think of as a good comes with evil, but often forseeable, consequences.

Now these two tendencies are not impossible to break free from, but it requires a great degree of self-honesty and the use of reason. You simply cannot take for granted that the side you're on consists of "the good guys". Everyone thinks they're on that side.

The world is a complicated place. Evil comes in degrees, and often as the consequence of noble intentions. Whether we are, in the end, a force of good in the world is determined by our actions. So, in order to make such a judgment well, it is essential that we hold ourselves to the same standards as everyone else.

2. Citizens of a democratic society are at least partially responsible for the actions of their government.

We live in a relatively free country and even though it is hard for an individual to make an impact by herself, people can come together in groups and bring about changes and reforms. The very least they can do is try. Cynicism and detachment do not absolve anyone of blame. I could say more on this point, but this is not the time or place for it.

I think these are really the only 2 premises that you need to grant. There may be some others, such as that responsibility requires becoming informed about the consequences of your actions, but I don't think I need to argue for these. Here are some of the conclusions that follow from these two:

3. It is our responsibility to figure out what wrongs our government is committing, to make them public, and to take steps to stop them.

This is clearly a driving force for Chomsky; he has said that what motivates his efforts is a matter of conscience, doing what he can to live with himself. This is why he looks at our foreign affairs and brings to light the crimes that our country has perpetrated on other parts of the world.

4. America is a good nation only if it avoids employing evil means to achieve its ends.

Realizing that every group of people sees itself as acting for noble ends, what really differentiates groups (if we apply a consistent standard) are the means they employ to achieve their ends. Really, the distinction between means and ends is fuzzy, so it is vital not to gloss over the tactics that we use to achieve our goals (Dewey is excellent on this point).

5. War, a human activity which invariably leads to widespread suffering and death, should only come in self-defense and as a last resort.

Okay, this may be a bit of a stretch, but here's how I think it follows. War is never an end in itself (or at least, most would grant that it never should be), but a means to some other end. However, given that judging the means we employ is essential to evaluating the character of our country, we should be extremely cautious about engaging in activities which are known evils, such as war.

6. The rule of law and consistent principles must always guide our conduct, even in extreme circumstances, and with people we detest.

Chomsky took a lot of flak for supporting the freedom of speech of a Holocaust-denier, but I think he made the right choice. Similarly, I concur with Glenn Greenwald on his recent post condemning Germany for trying to prosecute Donald Rumsfeld and others for war crimes that in no way involve Germany. I truly believe that Rumsfeld (along with Bush, Cheney, et alia) are guilty of war crimes, but this is not the way to prosecute them (read the whole thing for more on this).

This is also why our government should not suspend habeas corpus for so-called enemy combatants, or engage in torture, or spy illegally on its own citizens. Again, it is easy to view our ends as necessary (what is more vital than a nation's preserving itself?), so we must always proceed cautiously and, for all intents and purposes, act as though suspending the rule of law or violating international law are never justified.

I say "never" because in this way, on those occasions when there really are emergencies and extreme measures must be taken, we will always condemn them and strive to return to the conditions of normalcy, not letting ourselves slide along a slippery slope to totalitarianism or military dictatorship.

Really, this is all I think that Chomsky and many other leftist intellectuals are trying to do. Of course we have other goals (like ensuring more equitable distribution in the world, preserving our environment, and so forth) which might come into conflict, but this is one that I think almost everyone agrees on.

This is very much not a case of anti-Americanism (which Chomsky rightfully denounces as the kind of rhetoric one would expect from a fascist state), but precisely the opposite. Chomsky and others like him are true patriots who want us to be consistent and to live up to the values and standards that we profess (and judge others by). Is that so unreasonable or radical?