Nietzsche, Mill, and why religion is a little absurd.

So my professor told me to blog about Nietzsche and Mill (who are old philosophers for those of you not privy to philosophy/history) for my assignment, because I clearly am unable to make any progress on a legitimate piece of academic work at the moment. It’s a long story, maybe I’ll tell you all about it later. On to the philosophy.

Many people consider Nietzsche to be an anti-semite, anti-christian, power-hungry prick. In fact, his work, and subsequently Heidegger’s work, has connections to Hitler’s viewpoint about the Arian and Jewish races, though Hitler was clearly misinterpreting the philosophers. Though Nietzsche does REALLY enjoy bashing religion over the head with a baseball bat….wait, did they have baseball when Nietzsche was alive? Googling…….googling…… Apparently they did. File that one away; it’s incredibly important. Anyway, Nietzsche really dislikes what religion has done to our society, and therefore he insults it pretty much continuously throughout his first two essays in “On the Genealogy of Morals”. He believes religion (specifically Judaism and subsequently Christianity) has subdued or even completely eradicated our animal instincts; for after all, we are but animals with semi-advanced cognitive abilities (this point is arguable of course, though in my opinion, and Nietzsche’s for that matter, the arguments against evolution/for creation carry little weight). To deny our animal instincts is to deny our very nature; it’s denying what it is to be human. We have deemed that our instinctual natures are in some sense immoral, and that our cognitive abilities should override our natures at all times. We should always be in control of the animal side of us. This is folly! In Nietzsche’s opinion, we are empowered through our instincts. When does a human not feel more powerful than when he/she has embraced his/her instinctual nature and had sex, or killed another animal or person for that matter. It is only after the moment, when the conscious mind reflects on the incident and compares it to our sense of morality (which, in western society, has been heavily influenced by religion, specifically Christianity) that we feel guilty. Reconciling this guilt is almost impossible, except through the lord Jesus Christ, who died for us in order for us to be free of sin through repenting. The path to salvation from our animal natures goes through God himself. The truly powerful person, Nietzsche’s “master”, would not be troubled by any of his “immoral” actions, for he does what he desires and that is his morality. “To be incapable of taking one’s enemies, one’s accidents, even one’s misdeeds seriously for very long – that is the sign of strong, full natures” (Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Section 10). He is his own master, not governed by some imaginary deity. If he feels bad about an action he deems it incorrect and adjusts his behaviour.

Nietzsche’s believes that the Jewish religion came about because of this master/slave relationship, which was more pronounced in ancient times. The relationship begins with each party’s conception of itself. The master class obviously thought of themselves as “good”, just, and righteous; the perfect expression of humanity. In their minds-eye they looked upon themselves with pride. The slave class thus originally thought of themselves as lesser-beings, because when they compared themselves with the master, they found they lacked the strong qualities attributed to the master class, the qualities that made him the master in the first place. Being beaten down for so long a time, the slave begins to hate his master; for why wouldn’t he? He his constantly controlled by him, made to do his bidding, if not directly, then in indirect fashion. He despises his masters for his predicament. It is at this point that the Jews turned to God, their benevolent creator. It was he who planned for the slaves to suffer as they did, for if they endured suffering on earth, then they would receive everlasting peace, prosperity, and pleasure in the afterlife. Suddenly the slave believes himself to be just, righteous, good, and holy, for he is engaged in a noble suffering now, and he takes pride in his suffering. Thus the masters become evil, and humanity itself, our very nature, is denied existence, lest we suffer everlasting pain in hell.

But the master does not hate the slave; quite the opposite. Nietzsche’s uses the analogy of an eagle and it’s relationship to a lamb to illustrate this point. “That lambs dislike birds of prey does not seem strange … And if lambs say among themselves ‘these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey … a lamb [for instance] – would he not be good?’” (Nietzsche, E1, S13). The logic is simple, but an Eagle would say “we don’t dislike [lambs] at all … nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb”. Thus the master loves the slave, even though he knows he is not like him. But the slave demands that the master not express his strength, just as the lamb would like to demand an eagle not to eat lambs. This is utterly absurd! How can an eagle deny itself its natural instincts? But we humans do this constantly. It is crazy for us to do this to ourselves, and Nietzsche explains precisely how this happened, but I won’t get into that now. Read more for yourself!

So you see, Nietzsche wasn’t really an anti-semite, and he wasn’t really power-hungry. He just wanted us to be sure not to deny ourselves our natural, instinctual drives and not to feel guilty for partaking in these so-called “sins”. He did NOT want Judaism to be completely eradicated….at least not overnight, and CERTAINLY not through the means Hitler took. He simply thought it would be better for humanity if Judaism and Christianity were phased out, which appears to be happening, albeit slowly (go Atheists go!). Though Mill doesn’t go as far as saying religion needs to completely end, he does say that religion should not necessarily be consulted when considering moral dilemmas, and he implies that religious morality came to fruition because it consulted the principle of utility, made rules that increased the utility of the time, and then made them into “law”. “It would, however, be easy to show that whatever steadiness or consistency [religious] moral beliefs have attained, has been mainly due to the tacit influence of the [principle of utility]” (John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Chapter 1, Section 4). Oh wait, I think I should explain what he means by “the principle of utility”.

The principle of utility is also known as “the greatest happiness principle”. It states that each decision, each moral action undertaken by an individual or humanity in general should attempt to induce the greatest amount of happiness possible in the greatest number of people. Thus if you think you will increase one person’s happiness with decision X by say, 10 points, but you’ll increase 3 people’s happiness by 5 points with decision Y, you should make decision Y. This doctrine of morality also encompasses avoidance of pain, so increasing happiness at the expense of pain to others is unacceptable. “[E]very writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who maintained the theory of utility, meant by it … pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain” (JSM, Util., C2, S1). That’s really all there is to it. Now for the arguably religious objections to this theory, though most of the time Mill doesn’t specify who the supposed objectors are.

“To suppose that life has no higher end than pleasure … [objectors] designate as … a doctrine worthy only of swine” (JSM, Util., C2, S3). But “this accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable” (C2, S4), and this idea is absurd. For who “does not assign to the pleasures of intellect … a much higher value as pleasures than those of mere sensation” (C2, S4). Some would argue that many people do not enjoy the pleasures of intellect, but to this Mill responds by stating that these people who “addict themselves to inferior pleasures [do so] not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying” (C2, S7). Another objection states that “happiness, in any form, cannot be the rational purpose of human life and action; because … it is unattainable…What right hast thou to be happy?” (C2, S11). But each person has every right to at least some level of happiness if not true happiness (which may be unattainable; I certainly haven’t gotten there), or at the very least an avoidance of unhappiness. So utilitarianism still applies.

Though Mill avoids religious morality for the most part in his discussions, he doesn’t carry the disdain for it that Nietzsche did. It should be said though that a theory of morality based on rules written 1600ish years ago, and one which attempts to deny human nature, is probably not one we as a species should subscribe to. Sure there’s good points about it, but a re-evaluation is in order. Priorities must shift and the people must be set free of their unwarranted guilt.

Sex, Gender, and the Institute for “Canadian Values”

I haven’t bitched about shit for a couple of weeks now, so I’m due.

Issue Numero Uno: It has been brought to my attention recently that there is lobbyist group in Canada known as the “Institute for Canadian Values”.  They are in the habit of putting up posters like this one in schools around the province of Ontario.  Go look at it.  I’ll wait.

You’re back?  Good.  Are you as pissed off as I am?  Hope so, because if you’re not you’re probably not going to enjoy this next part.  These people are being absolutely ridiculous.  Educating children at an early age to accept the differences in sexual orientation or gender selection is probably the BEST IDEA EVER, and these people want to stop it before it catches on.  Kids are notoriously bad when it comes to accepting differences; there are stories of children committing suicide because of severe bullying almost daily, and one of the main reasons some kids are bullied is because they don’t conform to a given society’s gender stereotypes.  If you’re gay, transexual, mix-gendered or even just a little manly (for girls) or effeminate (for guys), you can expect to be ridiculed on a daily basis.  The reasoning for most of this hatred is because of ignorance and mis-information.  The curriculum for sexual education in public schools is at least making an attempt to inform children of all the possibilities for sexual orientation and gender in the world, and thus are trying to negate this ignorance at a young age, and the ICV wants to STOP THIS?

Listen, the government can’t tell you what to teach your children at home, so if you want your children to be as ignorant as you are, so be it.  But please, try to realize that there are other people in the world too.  You can’t possibly imagine what a gay child/teenager has to go through on a daily basis.  I really wish there was a machine that could allow people to trade places for a week, so that people could understand what it’s really like to be someone who doesn’t conform to the binary system of gender.  Or maybe every ignorant prick who thinks being gay is a choice could have the blessing of a son or daughter who is gay.  But seeing as these things aren’t going to happen anytime soon, why don’t we allow for a little education so that gay and mix-gendered people don’t have to kill themselves to escape the ridicule.

The worst part of this poster campaign is that its under the banner of the Institute for CANADIAN VALUES.  What kind of picture is this painting for the rest of the world when it comes to Canadian values?  I know I’m pretty damn Canadian, and these beliefs certainly don’t represent MY values, but someone on the outside looking in is just going to get the message that all Canadians don’t accept gender ambiguity or atypical sexual orientations.  Great message for our country.  Fucking assholes.

There is more that saddens me.  Recently, I read an article for my Feminist Philosophy class (Don’t laugh, it’s actually pretty good, and eye-opening for a heterosexual male.  Everyone should take it, especially guys.  I mean it.) that talked about people born with dual sets of genitalia and other genetic differences.  The medical community has been terrible in their dealings with these people.  Often, infants with both types of genitals are operated on immediately to “fix” the “problem”, sometimes against the wishes of the parents.  For example, Helena Harmon-Smith’s son was born with both an ovary and testes.  She expressed to the doctor that surgery was unnecessary; she planned to go along with the child’s wishes when he could express himself.  However, the surgeon removed the testes against her wishes.  The kicker is that this happened IN THE 1990s!!!  You know, when we were all supposed to be more enlightened about issues such as this.  What. The. Fuck.  There is a lot of research that has been done that shows that infant surgery in these cases actually does a lot more harm than good, causing extensive scarring and often resulting in multiple surgeries being needed throughout childhood/adolescence and even into adulthood.  But the absolute WORST part of all this is that often medical records of the initial surgery are withheld from the patient, even when expressly requested.  Sometimes children are even told that they are having a normal surgery, such as having their appendix removed, only to find out later that the surgery was anything but normal.

One of the theories this article (by Anne Fausto-Sterling) spoke of was Martine Rothblatt’s “343 shades of gender”.  She suggests that each individual can be categorized into one of 7 different levels of aggression, nurturance, and eroticism (7x7x7=343).  This makes much more sense to me than our society’s binary system.  I would even go further.  There are MILLIONS of different shades of gender, unique to each individual.  I am my own gender, and I call it Drew Johnson.  Simple.  Fuck this binary bullshit!

Insert Title Here [ Agtheism ]

Hey guys/girls/hermaphrodites.  I don’t really have a topic today (hence the title, though I may actually insert one once I finish this), so I’m just gonna talk about my day and see where I end up.  Should be good times.

Alright.  Day started with Ancient Philosophy.  Knee-slappin’ topic eh?  We talked about Socrates and some of his beliefs, including his thesis that human beings can do nothing bad (harm) willingly.  At first this seems counter-intuitive; everyone has willingly done something they believed is wrong before, right?  We’ve all hit that bong one extra time, or had one too many drinks, or punched that asshole in the face (yes, I know he deserved it, but it’s still harming someone).  Socrates would argue something along the lines of “if you committed the action, you obviously didn’t think it was legitimately wrong, for your rationality would prevent you from doing the action if you TRULY believed it was wrong”.  Fun stuff eh?  I’ll end the Socrates talk here.

Anyway, this class was tough for me this morning for a variety of reasons, which can be boiled down to one cause: I am quitting smoking.  By smoking I mean weed and cigarettes.  This is causing me to be kind of fidgety.  It is also causing me to lose lots of sleep and be unable to eat properly, especially in the morning.  Seeing as this class was at 10am (I know I know, not THAT early, but when you can’t fall asleep till 3am and wake up every hour until 7am, at which point its impossible to fall back asleep, it sucks) I was kind of out of it.  So much so that I was actually having dizzy spells.  Good times.  I forced some food into me, finished the class, and moved on to write an essay outline, which was due Wednesday of this week.  Whoops.  I do kind of have an excuse though; quitting this shit isn’t exactly easy, and I’m not really all the motivated to do stuff at the moment.  I don’t think I’ve half-assed an assignment as bad as I did this one, at least this year.  Oh well, it’s only an outline; I’ll get feedback and then make the essay better.

After that I came home for some food and watched a bit of Enemy at the Gates with my roommate.  Good movie that one, but I had to cut it short to hit the gym.  Fuck does the gym suck when you haven’t been going consistently for months.  It’s just pain.  Pain which ends up feeling good later on (you know, like when you look in the mirror), but pain nonetheless.  After that I went to see a guest speaker at the lecture hall: Christopher DiCarlo.  He is a philosopher who recently published a book call “How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass”.  This was put on by the Atheist society at Trent (oh shit, I said the A word).  Before we go any further, I should probably tell you that I am, to quote Christopher, an “agtheist”.  This means that I don’t believe that any religion in the world has gotten it right, but I leave room for there to be a creator (like an agnostic), for clearly we haven’t been able to determine BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT how the universe came into existence.

Anyway, he talked about how the world is getting more and more fucked up (I’m paraphrasing a tad) because we are no longer having rational discussions about our beliefs.  It is considered taboo to discuss things like religion, politics, etc. with friends and family.  This is out of fear of offending someone, and trust me when I say that, as an “agtheist”, I offend a lot of people when I talk about my beliefs.  So I often bite my tongue when I’m in a situation where there are people with strong religious beliefs surrounding me.  I kind of feel like my beliefs are constantly under attack by literally EVERYONE who does not share them.  Whether you’re Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or whatever else, you can all agree on one thing: we atheists are fucked.  If only we could see “the truth” they say, we would understand.  Listen, I see the truth all around me.  It’s called the physical world.  And in the physical world there are some rules which govern how things work, known as laws of physics.  How these laws came into being?  I don’t know.  But I see no evidence supporting there being a God who created these.  I also see a LOT of evidence which points to the fact that the world is NOT 6000 years old, that humans evolved from a species of ape, and that being gay is not a choice.  So I take this evidence and use it to my advantage.  That is not to say that I ABSOLUTELY, 100% believe that this is the way things are.  Can you really ever be 100% about anything?  There’s always got to be a little room for doubt.  Thus I love to have conversations with religious people.  I am NOT out to prove you wrong; I’m just trying to make you think a little more about what it is you believe.  For if you don’t question your beliefs, how can you be sure that they are correct?  I am just looking for the answers, like religious individuals, but unlike them, I don’t place my faith all in one place.  I guess the only real faith I have is in myself and my ability to think rationally (most of the time) about the happenings around me.

Wow, my argumentation is terrible this evening.  I’m really glad this is just me rambling and not an essay, as this would be a FAIL.  Whatever, let me know what you think of all this crap.  I could always use more information and more perspective.

Can’t Sleep

A friend of mine reminded me that blogging can be a great stress reliever.  Not that I’m really that stressed right now.  I’m just in the midst of cutting every bad, unhealthy habit out of my life.  No big deal.  48 hours without it all is good right?  I feel like it’s good.  I can’t fucking sleep though.  My body needs THC to properly shut itself down at the end of the day, and without that it appears that I shall be awake all damn night.  No matter, I’m actually somewhat enjoying it to be honest.  I won’t tomorrow at my 9am class, but sometimes (to quote a great old Tom Cruise movie) you just gotta say, “what the fuck”.

People say that you shouldn’t try to quit all of your habits at once.  ”You’re setting yourself up to fail” and all that shit.  But “what the fuck”, it’s all gotta happen sometime.  Mind you I have tried this technique before, and it has Failed (yes, that’s right, with a capital).  But there has been some significant change in my life since we last spoke: I was diagnosed with Bi-polar disorder.  Surprised?  I wasn’t either.  However, this means I now take medication, which seems to help me out of this endless spiral of depression and mania.  I feel a lot more normal (gasp), and also like I have the willpower to succeed this time.  I guess I’ll find out, one way or another.

I was kind of hesitant about revealing my condition to the world, and I may end up regretting it, but tonight a friend of a friend revealed that he was diagnosed with depression, and immediately all I wanted to do was to talk with him.  I wanted to explain as much as I could about the situation he is now in and help him on his way to gaining more control over his life, as I have over these past few months.  So I figure that maybe someone else with a similar condition may someday stumble across my incredibly small corner of the internet and take some comfort in the knowledge that he/she is not alone in his/her battle with a mental disorder.

Don’t really know what else to talk about, so I’m probably just gonna ramble on about my day for the next paragraph.  I feel like today was productive.  I hit the gym (gasp), completed two assignments (one was overdue), went to dinner with a good friend, though the conversation was a little intense at points (you know who you are), and finally had a random 3-hour chat with my roommate.  I like our chats a lot.  We have a solid one about once a week, and there is nothing I would rather be doing during that time.  She’s like the sister I never had.

Hmmmm, anything else to talk about?  Maybe tomorrow.  I’m sure I’ll have a craving at some point that blogging will help me get through.

Canucks Series: 1-0 for the Nucks. Mood = “Oh God…”

Wow.  Two posts in a week.  You know playoffs are on when….

Last night was the first Canucks/Hawks game.  I was pumped.  If I had a Nucks flag, I would’ve been waving it all over the house.  I managed to miss the first 45 seconds of the game (stupid hunger) and a buddy decided to tell me it was 1 zip Hawks.  Fuck you buddy.  Don’t ever do that.  I wouldn’t do that if your Leafs were in the playoffs.  Bitch.  I digress.

The Nucks flew out of the gate.  I have never seen a more one sided period in a playoff series in my entire life.  They were everywhere: laying big hits; moving the puck quickly; peppering Corey Crawford.  A sense of peace came over me.  These are the President’s Trophy winners, and they were sending an early message; “you don’t scare us anymore.”  The building was going crazy as they watched their heroes sit in the Hawks end and blast shot after shot.  Bieksa gets the puck at the point and wires one that’s tipped by Higgins.  One nothing.  Couple of plays later, the Nucks steal the puck and Hansen gets in alone.  Two zip.  Fist pump.  This is going to be easy.

The Hawks coach calls a timeout to calm his team.  It works.  They finally start to get some shots on Luongo, but he’s on form.  With about a minute left in the first, Lu makes a spectacular toe save and once again I go a little nuts, even texting a buddy the ensuing “LUUUUU” call that comes every time he makes a save.  Then I see the replay.  It was a LOT closer than I thought.  Reality sets in.  The game isn’t over.

The second period starts and it looks more even.  The Hawks hit the post about fifteen-hundred times (ok…4, but still).  I wasn’t really pleased with what I was seeing.  They weren’t going away.  Don’t get me wrong, the Nucks still had their share of chances, and they were playing excellent defense, but it was a much more even game.  I don’t like even games when I’m emotionally invested in one of the teams; I like one-sided massacres.  The second ended with the score still 2-0.  I thanked the Hockey Gods.

It was at about this moment that the commentators reminded me that Vancouver was 38-0-3 when leading going into the third period.  I breathed a little easier.  The third came and went without incident.  The Nucks played fantastic defense and closed the game well.  Luongo gets another playoff shut-out.  I thanked the Hockey Gods once again, and sacrificed a bug in their honour.  On to game 2.  I want that massacre.