I Am Therefore I Harm
The Jainist logo. Source: Wikipedia commons.
What do Veganism, Nonviolence, and Universal Love have in common? Good, but unrealizable, intentions.
It's always been popular, this delusion that we can be without harming. Whether it's the Christian command to love your enemies, or the much older principle of Ahimsa ('non-injury') in Indian religions, Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolence or that of Martin Luther King Jr.—the world has always had a soft spot for the idea of non-harmful, zero-footprint living, going as far as to codify it in our current culture, in impossible injunctions such as 'live and let live.'
Can we live without killing?
Simply by being we rob other organisms of their own life. The mere act of breathing, for instance, though it appears to be quite innocuous, is an act that results in the death of a numberless multitude of bacteria. The Buddhists go to such great lengths to avoid stepping on ants and other such small creatures, only to have modern science reveal that the process of being itself is a veritable bloodbath.
The non-harming principle (in this case Jainism) captured vividly in the character of Merry Levov in Philip Roth's American Pastoral.
Can we love without hating?
Every value implies a disvalue. Every positive can be expressed as a negative: saying 'I love X' is just another way of saying 'I hate not-X.' A parent who loves his child and cares for its welfare will inevitably experience and express his displeasure when anyone harms it. It's a psychological fact, it's human nature: We love only to the extent that we hate the opposite of what we love.
Why is there conflict in the world?
This entanglement of value and disvalue explains why hatred and conflict are such a pervasive feature of our lives. It also shows why there can be no such thing as universal love. Knowing who we really are entails coming to terms with this agonistic (hostile) nature of ours. Any ethics that is premised on the possibility of universal love is bound to fail.
Toward a more honest ethics
In order to build a more honest and correct ethics, we first have to make peace with our own nature. Truth, virtue, love—all great and wonderful ideals, to be sure, but the truth of the deer is ill-suited to the lion's way of life. No matter how much we'd like our lives to have a zero biological footprint, the nature of existence—of what it means to have values—makes it impossible. That's because every positive value necessitates the existence of its antithetical 'evil twin': every parent can be turned into the executioner of his child's killer, every property-owner into an oppressor of the labor class, every Christian into a witch-hunter. Since every value X has its antithesis not-X, opposing the antithesis of the value one embraces (opposing not-X) is not an option—it is an inescapable and logical necessity. I love therefore I hate! It is possible that this 'I hate' may never be expressed—may remain hidden even from the consciousness of its bearer—because no actual event so far has brought it out into the open. But for those of us whose awareness is not limited to the skin-deep proceedings of the accidentally actual, no man is as peaceful and kind as he might seem.
Summing up
Brevity is the soul of logic, and so everything I've said above can be expressed briefly and neatly as follows:
(1) To be is to have values.
(2) For every value there corresponds a disvalue. In other words, for everything we love there corresponds something we hate.
(C) Therefore, to be is to hate!
Right or wrong, good or evil, this is just the way things are. This is who we are.
If you prefer to end it on a positive note, just replace (C) with (C2):
(C2) Therefore, to be is to love!
Just remember that you must take the bad (C) with the good (C2)!
Interesting article.
I am not yet convinced. :-)
Parents could love their children, care for them, help and teach them without hating anybody else.
One concept could be to love some people and don't care about (but also don't hate) some other ...
In this specific example, the meaning was that if you love, say, your child, then you will hate someone who would harm it. True, there are people who forgave their child's killer or rapist etc., but this just shows the weakness of the analogy, not the principle (or it shows they held other values, like equanimity, that outwrestled their love for their child). I have to come up with these examples to make my ideas clearer, but really nothing depends on them. The essence of the argument is that you can't value something (i.e. freedom, pleasure, knowledge, etc.) without disvaluing its opposite. Our values are necessarily binary: there's 2 sides to them. Too many people today pretend they can be for something without being against something else. So for example people try to be atheists without being polemical atheists. It's one of the reasons I appreciate vegans, feminists, social justice warriors, etc., cos at least they wear their agonistic nature on their sleeve. I mean, if it's objectively true that we shouldn't eat animals, like the vegan believes, then of course vegans should be doing everything they can to convert the rest of us! Of course they can't sit at a table with meat-eaters and not think more lowly of them, and not think of themselves as morally superior. What else would we expect? Only a fundamental misapprehension of human nature would make us expect, or demand, otherwise.
Complicated topic ... I understand the idea that a trait can only be remarkable if the opposite exists. But in case of love the question is if hatred is the opposite of love? To know that I love someone I need not to hate someone else (to be able to feel the difference). I just claim the opposite of love is indifference. So I can know what love is because I also know that I don't have deep feelings for others ... So actually I would not necessarily argue against 'your' two-side-theory, but I would argue about what the opposite of love is. :)
If it is objectively true to eat no meat ... we will never know. Everybody has his own subjective (and possibly well founded) 'truth', but that depends on so many things, ones gustatory sense, environmental and health related aspects, our own moral values and believes, ... right up to the question why the universe exists :-) , so that I guess there will never be an agreement (or at least not intermediate term) about the objective truth.
Do you think in case atheists are objectively right that God doesn't exist they should do everything to convince everybody about it? Actually I see it like that, that even if I am convinced (or strongly believe) to be right I respect that other people follow other ways of life than I do ... To tolerate even 'wrong' opinions could sometimes be objectively better than always fighting against them. :)
And concerning vegans again: I fully respect them, even if I don't belong to them. Not everything is about morally superior or not. I just decided to eat meat from time to time, but that's a personal decision, and I really see no reason to think it was better in general than deciding not to eat meat ...
Well like you say, the original topic is complicated, and now your new topic here is ethics and morality and what we should do in different cases, and that's even more complicated!
So yeah that's just a very long discussion! I'd rather just go and read one more of your articles. In fact, that's what I'm gonna do! :)
;-)
Don't love just fuck
Thanks for pointing me to this post. It definitely gave me food for thought, and I've plenty of more thinking to do, as the journey to understanding is, literally, interminable.
One thing I reckon I can offer up is that Thich Nhat Hanh said in 'Anger' that anger is the child of fear. If one follows this line of thought, it becomes apparent that hatred isn't really anything more than fear. It isn't the opposite of love, it is an aspect of it. I actually agree with @jaki01 that if there is an opposite of love, it is indifference.
I agree with your thesis in general, but feel I am (and we, as H. sapiens, are) incapable of parsing the full extent of meaning. We are really insignificant specks of mud relative to meaning itself, and to think otherwise is sophomoric hubris. I don't mean to accuse, but I may not be capable of expressing what I believe in a manner that isn't perceived as accusation. When I say I am but a speck, and so are we each and all, some folks will take that as an insult, contrary to the certainty of our sublimity Shakespeare relates we are.
I don't believe in duality, but in singularity, in a sense. A way to explore that sense of meaning is that there isn't only light and dark, but shades.
Also, I'm offended by determinism =p I'll follow up the link to Schopenhauer, whom I haven't read, but doubt I'll be convinced regardless of his lucidity and loquacity. I can humbly believe that our incapacity to comprehend can lead us to be certain we have comprehended a thing beyond us, so even if my grasp of his rationale leads me to feel certain sure he is right, and we don't have free will, I have but to humbly recognize I'm simply incapable of proving him wrong - and that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
I wanted to enter into this conversation here, rather than on @soo.chong163's post, as he can follow it here, or enter into it there as he prefers, but this is where you treat of the issue, so it seemed appropriate to come here.
Thanks!
You always give thoughtful and eloquent responses! You're the kind of reader many a writer here on steemit hopes for.
I can agree that there's an element of fear in anger and hatred, because without fear (or threat) hatred and anger probably become mere amusement. I hope though that's not interpreted in the wrong way, where fear somehow illegitimizes the concern, like "fear of gay people" etc. Some fears are legit, like fear of Hitler's rising power before everything became evident. Amusement is sometimes peddled as the superior man's default reaction to everything, as though he's supposed to be bereft of any fear/hatred etc., which is ridiculous.
About being "incapable of parsing the full extent of meaning", I view meaning as any other discipline. Touching it doesn't mean solving it completely. I don't see why we should be specks when it comes to meaning but hills when it comes to, I don't know, medicine. If we can figure out that the universe began with a big bang, we can make strides toward demystifying meaning, too.
About determinism, I'm afraid, as I've already stated in the comment you read, it's considered solved! ) If you believe we are 100% material beings, and a rock that is also 100% material has no free will, there is no point at which added material complexity creates free will. Free will is not an emergent property. There's no way a material thing, no matter how it's organized, can suddenly cease to obey all the same laws of nature that any other material thing obeys. I always find the following question helps to clarify things and people's intuitions, and gets at the core of the debate: at time x-1 (i.e. whatever time in the past), if everything had been exactly the same, could you have done otherwise? Given the same neural makeup, all the same experiences, influences, everything exactly the same, is there any chance you would've chosen differently? This is essentially the same as asking if a coin toss could ever yield a different result than the one it did the first time round, had everything else remained exactly the same. I don't see how or why the answer could differ depending on whether we're talking about living or non-living things, given that one is a materialist.
Hmmm. This is not the complete truth. We can call it half truth though. Like the concept of beauty that I am going to publish soon, which I stated as calling one person beautiful is calling all others ugly, doesn't mean that i dont appreciate beauty. It means that I appreciate beauty but in a different manner. I appreciate the beauty in everything instead of discriminating between the ugly and the beautiful. Likewise in your this article, when you say that there is no such thing as universal love, well there is. We don't understand it yet. The way nature loves us without any demands, without asking for anything in return is universal love. The way animals take care of their babies, without the need of wanting them to care back in oldage as happens with humans. Similarly universal love exists, we are just not aware about it. Yes we have hatred and love both in us, knowing and realising this is good but its still half truth. The next step is to choose between these both. Life is all about making choices. We can choose to not hate, we can learn it, we need to give a chance to love to come out and display itself, only then will we know what actually universal love is.
Well I think universal love is the half truth! Mine is the whole truth because it includes both love and hate, and explains how one rises from the other! When you say "nature loves us without any demands, without asking for anything in return is universal love. The way animals take care of their babies", this is a half truth, because nature doesn't just "love" us, it also "hates" us, like when Mount Vesuvius erupts, like when cicadas destroy all our crops, like when your DNA grows old and dies, like when animals kill other animals in order to feed their babies, etc. Nature is full of monstrosities, but when we live comfortably, we forget to notice them, and notice only the beauty: http://www.cracked.com/article_17199_the-7-most-horrifying-parasites-planet.html
What i believe is that it happens due to Karma. Crops being destroyed, animals being killed, natural disasters effecting some people, these happen because one might have done something to deserve it. Animals killing each other is not because of hatred of nature, but because of maintaining a balance as in the nature. Killing should not be called an act of hatred until we are assured of what happens to us after death. Isn't it ?
Well Karma is exactly a theory that tries to explain the evil in the world. Evil is like the first thing people notice (like the first Noble Truth of Buddhism says, "there is suffering"!), and that's why every religion tries to explain it, in a different way in every case.
The idea of Karma is meant to help people accept their suffering, so they can cope with their shitty lives and with injustice, and also maybe so they won't try to do anything about it. Science solves problems, it says "if you are suffering, let me help you". Karma says "if you are suffering, you deserve it". It's actually a very nasty idea. So imagine a 10-year-old girl gets raped. Now imagine telling her she deserves it! A 'Karma rape counselor' would be a very unpopular person indeed!
Here are a few problems with the idea of Karma: First, let's go back, let's go waaay back. You say I suffer X because I did Y. So let's go back to the first person who ever did an evil thing. Say his name is John, and John did something bad to James. Why did James suffer without any reason? So, there must've been the problem of the first person (or animal) who suffered. Either this, or everyone had past lives to infinity, which is ridiculous. So Karma doesn't answer the question ('the problem of evil'), it just pushes it back.
Second, it means we never know what's good and what's bad. Maybe the girl who got raped was a rapist in her former life. So the rapist who raped her, wasn't doing anything bad. So maybe he won't get punished? How can anyone live their life like that, never knowing what's good and what's bad?
Third, there are many more humans now being born than in any other point in history. Where are all these souls coming from? The animal population mathematics don't exactly add up.
Etc.
True. I always wondered why Christians don't celebrate when a person dies! But this is exactly the reason Nietzsche called Christianity and Buddhism nihilist religions: they look favorably upon all things that are anti-life. So for example scientific/material immortality is within our grasp, but we don't pursue it because people believe in immaterial immortality, so they don't care about real immortality (the same way people used to refuse treatments from doctors because they said that God willed this disease for them, so treating it would be against God's will).
In general, before I put my faith in X, I would like to see some evidence for X. I see no evidence for Karma, or life after death, and I see many problems with these ideas. So I'd rather put my faith in science, that actually tries to solve problems instead of rationalizing them.
To be frank, I don't have an answer to you. May be you are right but I will have to rethink it all again, ask myself, knock the doors of my subconscious and come up with an answer later. Thanks for questioning my beliefs. I will get back to you after I come up with an answer.
Interesting. Reminds me of Jung's concept of The Shadow. Are you familiar with it?
No. Just googled it.
Well his 'shadow' idea is commonsencical in a way. It's the idea that there's a dark side to us, and we're liable to suppress acknowledgement of it. We've all met people who are trying to hide the truth from themselves, who are trying to bury the knowledge that there's certain aspects of their personality that are bad, even downright evil.
One difference between that idea and mine, is that mine doesn't have anything to do with the unconscious, nor is there any innate pressure for people to hide this knowledge from themselves.
My point was a more logical one, and as far as I'm aware an original one: that if you care about something, there's an 'inverse-care' that corresponds to that. If you love your car to an unhealthy degree, you might become violent against a person who keys it. We should become aware of that, so that we don't get lost in the positivity of the light side of the coin. A parent teaching his child to love his country, might get so lost in his passionate teaching, that instead of instilling patriotism, he instills nationalism. We should always be aware that there's a dark side to all our passions, and try to think how that might affect real people and our actions. Basically, nothing is free! There's a price to pay for every positive value you hold. So you might want to check what values you choose to invest in, what people or organisms can potentially be harmed by them, how passionately you invest in a small number of values vs a wider amount with less passion, etc. For instance someone who invests everything in his religion, might easily be turned into a suicide bomber, whereas someone else who invests more 'promiscuously' let's say, is in less danger of turning into a fanatic.
Jung goes further than that though. He argues that everyone should not only face this 'evil side', but incorporate it in his identity. To not shy away or be consumed by the monster within, but to assimilate with it. Only than can individualization begin.
Your points reminded me of his concept, because it sort of echoes the same practical warning to always be vigilant of ourselves and how that self manifests in the world. His approach is obviously more subjective, while yours is logical and objective.
In short, I think it's definitely a valid argument. More awareness is always a good thing right?
Probably! Wouldn't go as far as 'always' since it could kill you or something!
I'm definitely gonna be serving a lot of argument fodder on my page, so keep following!
Interesting point of view.
Interesting username! :P
Haha :p
One of many philosophical approaches the hit TV show Agents of SHIELD touched on is the idea that a single altered event in our timeline could completely transform who we are.
Actually I can't make this comment worthwhile with a point because you should watch it and I don't want to give spoilers (the 90's style Steemit won't allow spoiler buttons...)
But I guess the point is we all have the capacity to become explorers of the evil person inside us we never knew existed; think nazi propaganda
Never watched the Agents of SHIELD (tho I love comic book movies), cos the trailers didn't impress me.
Maybe I should give it a go. But there's so many other movies and TV shows on my IMDb watch list. More than a thousand to be inexact....!
Agents of shield is a rare case in that it consistently improves as the seasons continue, like Breaking Bad.
It's not really comic book-ey, not really about super heroes exactly (though there are many involved). Strongest recommendation! When you get to season 4, you'll thank me
You have successfully swayed me!
nice post!
Thanks cripto)
Nice bro
👍
Love the ideas you share, will follow. This is a great post. I recently went Vegan, but the primary driving factor was health reasons. I do distinguish between harming mammals and bacteria however. There are certain organisms and creatures who impose themselves upon us, and there's certain animals creatures and organisms who we impose ourselves upon. Not sure if it's right either way.
Also fuck mosquitoes
Thanks! Will check out your page as well later.
True. Buddhists (and other religions) don't though. They actually thought it was possible to live without harming any other creature. It wouldn't be possible to achieve Nirvana otherwise. When it rains a lot, some Buddhist sects avoid walking outside because they can't see if they're stepping onto some creature.
If you haven't already, see this article by @kyriacos regarding the impossibility of being a vegetarian.
I understand people who are vegans and vegetarians might do it for a lot of reasons, and many might be aware that their lifestyle still harms mammals, but may choose to do it as little as possible, which also qualifies as an -ism.
I worry that this non-harming trend will soon begin to involve plants, to which some now attribute consciousness!
I wanted to make the article intelligible so I didn't go into modal claims ('possible worlds'), whereby it becomes logically inescapable that holding any value means you are being harmful toward some creature, conscious or not.
Agreed on the mosquitoes! :P
Very interesting article Alexander:) I ll resteem it:)
Many thanks George! :)