Philosophy of the Void

Relativism is often attacked for being morally ambiguous and admissive of all perspectives. I think this is somewhat misguided. Morality can be absolute within bounds. In our youth, virtually all of us undergo some type of moral indoctrination. Whether one treats this as religious doctrine, social morality, common sense, or just one of many plausible perspectives is a function of humility. Humility allows us to defend our moral prejudices without an overbearing assertion of absolute truth. The justification granted to our particular morality is a function of affinity, comfort, and familiarity. The morality is bounded by those who subscribe to it. People can be held accountable if they hold a morality and fail to adhere to its tenets. The same is not true of individuals outside a given moral framework. The punishment or mistreatment of such individuals might be justified on grounds of social welfare or stability, but this justification never has the same force brought to bear on deviants operating within a coherent moral framework. A murderous Christian is evil, but a psychopathic atheist is a social problem. Even a relativist can hold this statement to be true.

Religions often make universal claims to some truth or way. In reality, I think it depends on your personality. Active, restless souls are ill suited for meditation and satori. Sedated, calm types do not fit well with fanaticism. Artistic, sensual people are attracted to mystic rituals. Rational, philosophic minds find pleasure in brain-twisting deepness. Finding the right religion, then, is mostly about finding something that suits your temperament. A very successful religion, like a Shakespearean play, will appeal to every type of personality.

This weekend, I read “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel. It was good airplane reading – not dense but thought provoking. One of the themes that come up in this novel is the superiority of atheism and faith over agnosticism. The assumption here is that having faith in something is more “mature” or otherwise somehow preferable to wavering. Like all assumptions, there is no argument for or against this one. I object, however, on two grounds. First, faith is compatible with agnosticism. Second, atheism and faith in religion do not exhaust the options available to the “faithful.”

Agnostics can be faithful. There is no contradiction here. I have been faithful and agnostic in the past. The contradiction only arises because some people have trouble separating the realm of the rational from the spiritual. On scientific grounds, we should all be agnostics since there is no physical evidence for the existence or non-existence of God. This is the rational realm. One can strongly believe in something while being unsure about its existence. I’m not sure whether dreams exist or not, but I believe in them. In fact, I think one can strongly believe in something while being entirely sure – on rational grounds – that the thing in question does not exist. A utopia, or world government, maybe. On a separate note, strong agnosticism might also constitute a sort of faith – a faith in the limitations of our comprehension. I think Confucious and Socrates could be classified as such.

The faith I find most attractive arises from the assumption that the concept of “existence” is inapplicable to divinity. This moots the distinction between religion, agnosticism, and atheism. Or, one may say this constitutes a fourth category, one that asserts that the other three are divided over an irrelevant question. A useful metaphor might be the “void.” One cannot really say whether or not the void “exists,” or how many “voids” there are. Rationally, one could say, “there is no basis to say whether or not the void exists, so I remain undecided.” But this is sort of like remaining undecided over whether or not a cauliflower prefers blondes or brunettes. The reason I find this assumption attractive is because it seems to put divinity beyond the grasp of human constructs and concepts. I’m turned off by notions such as God being “jealous” or “seeing” or even “loving” or, ultimately, “existing.”

According to the The Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), “During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms.” This suggestion is apparently common enough to warrant a FAQ entry on their website, in which they offer a “rigorous” scientific explanation as to why this might be a bad idea.

Having spent much of my early life growing up in Japan, I’m always struck by the difference in perceptions towards nuclear weapons in the two countries. The above example is obviously extreme. Nonetheless, in Japan, the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has created a nuclear taboo that would render the above paragraph unfunny. In contrast, in the US, the opposite has happened - because the US was responsible for the first use of the weapons, a culture of justification has developed. The intellectual and emotional efforts that went into justifying the use of nuclear weapons in World War II have had the effect of legitimizing the weapons themselves. One can only imagine how we would view nuclear weapons if the Nazis invented them first and used them on, say London or New York.

This is not to deny that geopolitical realities would have made the subsequent possession of nuclear weapons inevitable. However, the casualness and absence of reluctance in our society strikes me as both disturbing and aberrant.

My former roommate Don and I recently had a e-mail discussion about weird google searches.  Presumably because they contain a lot of text, these types of blogs attract a lot of hits from very random and/or unintended sources.  Recent examples for this site include “eating habits of the ameba” and “pathological depression.”  This site comes up among the first ten for a google search on these phrases.  The first is pretty random and funny but I’m surprised about the latter, since the term returns over 100,000 hits and this is clearly not a site about pathological depression… or maybe google knows more about me that I’m willing to admit?

From Don’s weblog (*3), the funniest search result was for scantily clad females, for which his site shows up among the top five… although now that I read his entry again, I suppose the connection is not very random.  It’s pretty funny though.  I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if linking to his page with a specific pointer like this would bring it to the top of the search results, so there it is. 

I guess this entry was more void than philosophy… oh well…

Update (11/2/03): The desired outcome has been achieved. I suppose this type of low-key manipulation is not very difficult for not-so-popular search phrases.