now & forever
Q has given me a fantastically good book about Cicero. Reading it, I find myself coming back to the oft-considered idea that the narrative of historical progress is largely a myth. I am struck by the fact that the Roman Republic, even in decline, would in many ways have been surprisingly familiar to us today: warring political factions, questions of the role of populism in the governing of the democratic state, issues to do with citizenship, courtroom trials and legalistic loopholes, land reform, taxation structures, professional sports, class woes, and on and on and on. The debates and problems of Cicero's Rome are precisely the sorts of debates and problems that I could easily imagine preoccupying Congress today. Some of them give me a ridiculous sense of déjà vu; redistributing somebody else's land to soldiers as a reward for and incentive to service is a common feature of both ancient Rome and modern Zimbabwe, while a political rival's decision to raze Cicero's home on the Palatine Hill and to replace it with a state-sponsored temple smacks to me of the common tactic of using eminent domain to further one's political ties to friendly, well-connected developers--or, even more, it makes me think of the recent politically-motivated attempt to seize Justice Souter's home in order to teach him a political lesson.It's not just the politics and psychology of ancient Rome that we would have found familiar, however. There were physical similarities (if also great differences), and we would recognize everything from sports arenas to the library. There weren't really recognizable banks, but people did give loans and there was even a legally-mandated maximum interest rate. There were tenement blocks, single-family houses, homeowners, renters, and even occasional running water. Roads had mile markers. Girls had dollhouses.
It's not surprising that one can paint an engaging picture of Cicero and his life, either. It's got to be relatively easy to write a book about the historically distant politician--after all, we have his extensive correspondence, his books, and his speeches (improved for publication), just as we have for somebody as recent as Adams or Einstein.
But this is not meant to be a lament for progress in the world, or even an exposition of the lack thereof. I do think there are some ways in which we have undeniably learnt, built, created, and improved over the years. Modern medicine comes readily to mind, as does space exploration. Perhaps the development and use of the internet is another major progressive step, though I am somewhat skeptical. At any rate, I feel comfortable saying that there exist, simply put, new things that we can do now that we could not, and did not, do before, and that these things bring about real change in the way the human life is lived or the way that we think about ourselves and our place in the world; medicine and space exploration are some of those things. Moreover, these are things we understand now that we did not understand before, too. Voila! Progress.
The worldview I am presenting, then, is not one in which I descend into a chaotic postmodern narrative of human development in which we never learn and in which quality of life never improves, and during which we can never hope (as a species, or a nation, or a family, or any other group) to achieve any great goal or to approach any knew sort of objective knowledge; I emphatically find such a worldview to be false. At the same time, though, I do tend to approach narratives of progress with a major grain of salt. We can move forward, but it is hardly the inexorable march to modernism imagined by Marx or anybody else. (I'm not saying that such an idea is particularly Marxist, just that he is the proponent of it who comes most immediately to mind.)
Tangentially, I note here that I have just rhetorically placed myself somewhere between modernism and postmodernism, which is sort of amusing. Perhaps I can coin a new "ism" halfway between the two: "stmodernism," or "osmodernism," or something else with only half of the "post" included.
The thing is, it seems to me that most of our tangible improvements (both "hard" improvements like the development of pacemakers and heat-efficient buildings and fiberoptic cables as well as the more theoretical "soft" improvements in understanding, like our knowledge of how synapses work and why heat rises) are scientific. To be sure, the random legislator has at least as much and, generally speaking, probably a lot more, power over an individual's life and happiness than does a random scientist. But the legislator is doing exactly what legislators before him did, trying to balance the same forces, encouraged by the same kinds of promises and ambitions, and plagued by the same kind of difficulties. There may be different sorts of political leaders today (a king here, a Congressman there), but both seem to me to be practicing old methods of governance, necessarily rehashing again and again what has already gone before.
This is not a bad thing. I use the word "necessarily" with care; we need governance, social work, an economy, and literature and story as much now as ever anybody did then. (The "then" being some unspecified time in the past, I know, I know.) But these things are at once ephemeral and repeating; we will play them out now, and people will replay them over and over again into the future; and they played out in various permutations in the past as well, wherever and whenever there have been people out there (I imagine).
The work of science--at least some of the work of science--is different. It is not ephemeral, but timeless: we can forget a discovery, but it cannot be less true in the future (whereas the best way to run a society may very well change as the people change). This is complicated, of course, by the way that philosophical arguments turn into scientific investigations--but I think that that is not so difficult for us to understand intuitively. We know that Aristotle's physics and our own are different sorts of beasts; we know that Descartes talking about the mind is not the same as Harvard Med School studying the brain while looking at the output of a PET scan.
But that is, again, tangential. In the end, where I mean to be going is here: I think that all of this presents to me a sense of who one is helping when one prefers a political, social, religious, or literary calling over a scientific or mathematical one (or vice versa). In their noblest form, the former kinds of work engage in the eternal struggle to make life better for today's people (though, in more ignoble form, they can of course be used to make life worse, or to make the power-hungry happy, or for other nefarious but short-lived purposes). By contrast, scientific work is forward-looking, more about the good it can bring to people and the world in the future than about solving present and pressing problems (or doing harm--this, too, can be seen from a more nefarious flip-side). Even the person looking for an AIDS vaccine, very much with a mind to helping her world today, is learning something which will be useful and lifesaving even more in the future than it will be during her own time. Politics is not primarily about making the world better for all time, but shepherding one's compatriots pleasantly through the present. No politician is under the illusion that she will broker a lasting and permanent peace for all people. A scientist, however, is precisely under the impression that, if successful, she will discover (or create) something forever relevant to everybody.
This does not make the social sciences more parochial than the hard sciences, nor does it make the hard sciences more divorced from today's reality than the social sciences. But it does clarify a continuing tension in my own mind. I studied history and government in school (because I loved the former, at least, and was good at both); I believe in the public service of politics; I think history and story are deeply important, underappreciated, and excitingly able to give people a sense of themselves in the world, of cultural affinities, of analytical yet abstract thought, and even of right, good, and decency, all while being straightforwardly fun. I have occasional crises of conscience, however, in which I consider that I should devote my life to science--especially privileging medicine, physics, certain kinds of engineering, and math (don't ask). I would not be as good a physicist as I am an historian, but I wouldn't be too shabby--and it seems, on occasion, that that would be the best way to do good in the world. The question of how to make my world a better place is idealistic and perhaps even silly, but it does deeply matter to me nonetheless; it is helpful to think of these two kinds of pursuits as so explicitly complimentary, then, and so equally necessary. (I mean, we say that all the time, but we hardly ever act that way...)
posted by Skay @ 10:19 AM
7 Comments:
Two questions: (1) Math? (2) Why does it matter so much to you to make the world a better place? Or to put the question in a more cynical mode, why, given the lessons of your previous post, on the $11, do you still care to make the world better?
I pester, I know.
-Ezra
wow! gr8 blog!
i have always believed that ppl tend to confuse technological progress with historical progress and as you so rightly show - history does repeat itself.
advancing technologically could mean that our future will be a little brighter, but that does not eliminate the possibility that history could repeat itself - because we cant factor out the human aspect.
every person, community, society, country and nation has his/hers/its own ideals and aspirations - each pulling in a different direction - disturbing the harmonious balance of life.
nations dont agree - war breaks out
ppl dont agree - different political parties are born
Famine, crime, etc etc all result from human conflict or indifference and hence bound to arise again and again.
Now there is a strong possibility that whatever i wrote did not make sense at all! - in that case plz forgive my blabbering - its 1:40am and its been a really loooooong week! :)))))))
On a totally seperate note: i visited the States a good few yrs back and to date, New York has got to be one of my fav places in the whole whole world! We were there in December. the first day in the city, the temp was -3...MINUS three - shit it was cold! But had great memories - the hot chocolate being sold on the street corners and roasted chestnuts on every other corner.fabulous! :)
thanx for dropping by in on my blog - will def be returning to yours again - but right now i gotta catch some shuteye!
cheers
zee.
A significant factor in the establishment and maintenance of the Roman economy, state, and civilization was the institution of slavery;certainly these were impossible without it. One may argue that slavery in virulent forms has been important in modern times and that even currently there are analogous arrangements or worse, but I would posit that these are not defining features of modern Western civilization. Let's hope that bit of history won't repeat itself here again.
Maybe the scientist can prevent history from repeating itself. On the other hand, too often scientific advancements are turned to warmongering machinations, regardless of the original intent of the discovery. If someone can discover it, it seems someone lese can pervert it.
Do we need another Hiroshima? What good is done by repeating that particular piece of history? Do we need WWIII, or perhaps, the fourth Crusade... both of which seem likely to spring out of the current Middle East crisis?
History repeats itself because we, as human beings, don’t change, regardless of how technologically advanced a society we live in. Don’t believe me? Then why is Shakespeare still popular today, 390 years after his death? Because the characteristics of his characters are alive and well today in the modern world. We recognise that, respond to that in his plays, because those character’s traits are in our lives today.
Scientific advancement is a great thing, don’t get me wrong, but we need to advance as a people, a race, a biological genus. Now that would be progress.
Ezra, you get very much to the heart of the matter with your second question. I've been giving it a lot of thought, and I think that in the end I have to say that caring about the world, and the people in it, is a necessary consequence of eschewing a nihilist or existentialist worldview. Once one grants the existence of good objects and actions, I think that we have no choice but to pursue them. Goodness exists for its own sake; it is necessarily and definitionally desirable. (I wonder what Kant would make of such a formulation; "goodness is desirable" is neither obviously analytically true (as is "my nephew is my sibling's son" or a tautology like "either today is Wednesday or today is not Wednesday") nor synthetically a posteriori true (as are those things which we know from observation of the world around us, like "apples grow on trees" or even "waterslides are fun"). I would argue that the statement is an a priori synthetic truth. Kant would say that makes it like mathematics, and he may be right--so there's a nice tie-in to math, I guess. But I don't buy that 2 + 3 = 5 needs any sort of knowledge about the world, and so I take it to be analytic, Kant's own writings notwithstanding. This seems to put statements about beauty and goodness, both of which necessarily imply desirability, into a category of their own. Or perhaps they are just a more complex take on the analytic after all?)
This all leads to another, and maybe more substantial, question than the one above. Why dismiss nihilism in the first place? What compelling evidence is there that there is a knowable good? (Let me point out here that the knowable nature of goodness is desirable, but unneccessary, for trying to do good in the world. The attempt to discover goodness is a project of its own that entails certain activities, and that itself presumes that such goodness exists--and is, therefore, appreciably non-existentialist and non-nihilistic already. This is not where I stand, obviously; I do think we have a good grasp of morality in many situations, and are generally able to act in our daily lives with reasonable moral certainty even without absolute moral certitude. (This, of course, breaks down in hard cases, but generally speaking I think it's right.) The tripping point here is not whether there is compelling evidence that goodness is known, but rather about whether it is real.)
I do think there's a kind of leap of faith here, not so unlike the leap of faith that led Kierkegaard to religious belief (even if it fails to lead me in quite that direction). I buy that there is real goodness because, by some accident of fate, I am an optimistic and hopeful person. Buying into the existence of goodness is buying into the idea that there is something to be done in this world--that there is purpose in the form of a moral imperative, even if it is difficult to glean.
That is philosophical. But my conviction here is really more experiential. The truth is, I want to make the world a better place, to use your words, because it seems self-evident to me that we can. This does make some philosophical sense, I think, as I've pointed out above; the ability to to good seems to me to entail the moral obligation to do it. But, while I can philosophically justify that sense of can only as a leap of faith, I don't really think that my convictions here come from any decision to take that leap. Rather, the conclusion that doing good is possible is born out of the empirical sense that I've seen good done in the world. This is not philosophically sound at all; there are all sorts of arguments against trusting one's perceptions, from the solipsistic to the demented. But it seems obviously, near self-evidently true to me that alleviating undesired pain is good and that opening up a greater number of choices to a greater number of people is good. These come from talking to and observing others, not from starting from first principles. Nonetheless, they are what, fundamentally, push me to take that philosophical leap of faith.
I don't think it's ridiculous to start from the proposition that other people exist, and that they are much like me in intelligence, sentiment, desires, and abilities, just as I observe them to be, either. This, of course, may be false--but it is also how I experience the world. Even if it is all an illusion, I can't really escape that experience. And starting there, I think there are obvious actions that are good. I don't buy that we live in a world in which others don't matter because--well, because, for all practical purposes, we do live in that world. And once we allow for that, then trying to do good for other people necessarily follows.
This is not well-reasoned. I'd certainly never turn it in as a philosophy paper. But it does, I think, get at the truth of why I care so deeply. I think that once we grant that we care a little bit about somebody else, and about their wellbeing, we're obligated to go the whole nine yards and care about the world as a whole, to grant its existence and importance just as much as we grant the existence and importance of that one other person who we take to be real. And if we want to help make her life even slightly better, I think it is morally incumbent upon us to try to do the same for all the other people out there, insofar as reasonably practicable. I don't think that there's a middle ground; one can be consistently nihilist, or consistently striving to do good and help others in myriad ways, but I don't see any space for one to be selectively caring. I don't think it's a philosophically consistent position. Nihilism is out for me, not by choice, but because constitutionally I just don't believe that you aren't real or that your desires don't matter. I fundamentally believe in others; when a friend is in need, I instinctively want to help him, and I will go out of my way to do so. This is a desire that betrays what I really think: I could say I didn't care 'til I was blue in the face, but I still act in the world as if others exist and matter. Well, okay. So I take it all the way, as I think I must, with all the moral obligation that entails.
I should point out that there are good arguments about whether proximity--physical or metaphorical--entails special duty. That might be the case. But lack of proximity certainly does not entail NO duty, and that's really all I need, I think. So there you are. It's an attempt at an answer, anyhow.
Philosophically tenable or not, much of history can be summed up in the phrase "selectively caring".
Much of human experience, too. But I don't think that changes the nature of what we SHOULD do.
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