Seeing as he would have to repeat the entire semester course if he failed this supplementary exam, and seeing as he knew me as an honest person, and also as one not afraid of speaking the truth about idiocy, it was peculiar that he wanted to hear my answer to that particular time, where you’d presume his state of mind to be somewhat fragile. But the question was asked.

So, I set about answering, and was instantly struck with the atypical nature of my response, which went along the lines of telling him that I couldn’t possibly tell whether he was an idiot or not, based on the evidence available to me. Even though my course does teach and test basic reasoning skills, I said, it’s entirely possible that he simply wasn’t paying attention in class, or had a bad day at the exam, or may be a good thinker without being a good writer (a significant proportion of the final mark is derived from written assignments). I concluded by saying that I couldn’t know, and that he’d be in a better position to answer the question.

He nodded thoughtfully at times, and listened without interruption to an exposition on idiocy that lasted a good 5 minutes. Then he said: “Where did that come from?”, looking at me, clearly confused. The confusion transferred to me, given his question that started the encounter. I said, well, you asked me if you were an idiot.

“No – I asked ‘are you married yet?’”

And I had to laugh at the misheard question, and also answer in the affirmative, for two reasons: one, that the truthful answer was ‘yes’, and two, that I realised that the very tone and content of my response to the question that I thought he was answering served to answer his actual question also. One of the things that has happened in the course of meeting and then marrying S is that the answer that would have come naturally – typically a rather blunt and unsympathetic one – had been replaced by a different style of answer – one that no longer sees my interactions with random others as a competition by default, where it’s paramount to get your blows in first, just in case they don’t get the point that you’re higher up the food chain than you are. The arrogance is quite sad, in retrospect – and if there are any out there who I’ve offended needlessly in the past, I’m sorry. No apologies to any actual idiots, of course – you need to hear the truth, just in case you’re able to do something about it.

On stickK, you draw up an official commitment contract that binds you to achieving a personal goal, be it big or small. By agreeing to this contract, you publicly state your goal and commit to achieving it. Or, if grand public pronouncements aren’t your style, you can tell only people you select. Either way, you’ve committed to a goal and people know about it – so now it’s your reputation at stake!

To make you accountable as you work toward your goal, you file weekly reports on your success. (And don’t even think about lying — because you appoint someone you know as a “referee” to verify the accuracy of your reporting!) You also enlist as many Supporters as you’d like to encourage you, via the website, every step of the way.

If humans functioned as rational economic agents, it should be a roaring success, and lead many of us to find the motivation required to finish those Ph.D’s, stop smoking, eat less spam, or whatever. But as Herbert Simon (and common sense) tell us, while we’re certainly economic agents, we’re also very infrequently rational – often through little fault of our own. StickK provides an interesting thought-experiment, though, in that the first impulse that comes to mind (in my case, at least) is that – if I wanted to – I could quit smoking. But we’re often willing to leave that commitment in the hypothetical realm, and StickK offers a cheap, yet still incentivising, way to put your money where your mouth is. The key economic question that remains, however, is whether self-deception has a larger payoff than achieving one’s goals. For many of us, self-deception is so ingrained that we see little or no alternative to keep taking that payoff, no matter if it’s less than alternate rewards available. So again, we’re left with the essential prerequisite of escaping the circularity of our definitions of self. And this, fellow humans, requires a significant infusion of courage, as well as friends who are willing to tell you the truth.

On reflection, I suspect that the mistake I’d always made was in imagining that human interaction was often a zero-sum game. It sometimes is, to be sure, but far less often than I once believed. Any principles worth holding dear are presumably only valuable because of the utility they generate for you (I’m excluding fundamentalist epistemologies here) and others (assuming we should factor others in at this fundamental level). My primary utility function rested in first doing no harm, which I interpreted as being as irreproachable as possible. This meant that while people may or may not have enjoyed interacting with me, they could at least not accuse me of deceiving them. But it’s not surprising that interaction often ends up being a zero-sum game with this outlook, as my primary engagement with others was largely inward-looking, as a result of the fear of betraying the demands of that utility-function. And being inward-looking, it’s likewise unsurprising that I was often more concerned with my own utility than with that of others – even though I’ve always argued for a contractarian account of morality, whereby what satisfies others may well satisfy me in the end also. A sizeable contradiction was staring at me all along, and it’s unfortunately taken me quite long to spot it.

Avoiding this contradiction was partly a factor of complacence and partly a factor of the support system I embraced, which involved people like-minded enough that the irrationality of my position never had to be exposed. But in being forced to observe the destructive nature of the selfishness that exists at the thin end of this mindedness, I was lucky enough to start being able to observe the alternatives – which, at the end of a very long story for another day – led me to the preacherman mentioned above. There is still much to figure out, but more importantly, there is much that can’t be figured out – and that’s quite alright.

More on this another day – a cocktail, followed by some molecular gastronomy, awaits.

It’s a curious issue for those who, like myself, have no time for metaphysics. While I’d like to feel the force of ritual, and mark certain occasions in symbolically important ways, the orthodox ways of doing so usually involve nonsensical god-blathering. So after 18 or so years of studiously avoiding god’s people, and having been fortunate enough to not have anyone close die in that time, the extent of my engagement in ritual has been the 3 weddings that I’ve attended during that time (leaving aside the opening day of the Premiership season). This can, I fear, lead to a sort of desensitisation with regard to ritual, and a concomitant inability to feel it’s force. So there is a conflict between two costs associated with religion, where one can either participate in (and by participating, perhaps reinforce) religious ceremony, or one can try to find secular ways of doing the same thing, and thereby run the risk of diluting the experience, given that we aren’t that well trained in observing these events in a secular fashion.

Some occasions deserve to be marked in forceful ways. Someone’s death, for example – assuming they were important to you when alive – should be accompanied by a significant goodbye. But because saying such goodbye’s are mostly associated with religious ceremony, the question is whether we’d be able to feel that we’d said the goodbye properly, in the absence of such ceremonies.

I’m partly wondering about such things because of an imminent ritualistic occasion in my life – my own wedding. The man who is hosting the event was amused when we outlined the ceremonial part, which, in our description, involved my partner and my vows, along with an address by a friend of ours. The friend has no religious inclinations, as far as I am aware – and if he did, he’d certainly not be interested in exploring them in the context of our wedding. But the host’s issue was with our estimate that the ceremonial part would be over in 10-15 minutes, which he feared would leave people feeling like they hadn’t had full value out of the experience. And he’s right, I think, although time is the wrong criterion to use when measuring symbolic import. These occasions do need to be “weighty” to satisfy the punters, and I want the occasion to be weighty too, because, well, it is.

The above is partly why my vows have been written and rewritten a number of times now. But they are getting there. And as I was reminded yesterday (by the bride-to-be), I have a tough act to follow – myself, at my own wedding party in 1999, at which she was present…

But even if happiness is a subjective mental state, we can perhaps correlate measurables like life-expectancy, disease prevalence, literacy, economic and political freedom with our folk-psychological understanding of what it is to be happy. I’m certainly willing to say that in general, having more of those sorts of things do make us happier than having less of those things. And it’s difficult to dispute that the majority of the species do have more of those things than they used to.

There are complications: a more literate society could mean that people are able to learn more, and have richer intellectual lives. But it could also mean that the tentacles of consumer culture reach them more readily, and that they are sucked into intellectual trends that are far more a triumph of branding than sense (The Secret, Deepak Chopra, What the Bleep?, etc.). Having more disposable income could cause them to become increasingly obese, and to then subscribe to one or more of the ever-popular celebrity-endorsed diets.

So even if we have more potential (as a result of more income and the like), we don’t seem to be getting any better at using our resources optimally, and it starts sounding more reasonable to say that we are worse off in that we now have far more power to harm ourselves, given that our options are far less limited than they used to be. Which brings us back to Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

Perhaps this simply boils down to an issue of freedom: I’d far rather we have the means to enhance our lives, even if some of us use those means irresponsibly. The key failing is, as usual, that people aren’t taught to take responsibility, in that nanny-states and programmatic educations encourage us to imagine we’re living in a world with far fewer threats than our actual world has. And if it seems the case that most of us will never be able to engage with choice responsibly, one could begin to argue for the merits of their being fewer choices. But here starts the slippery slope, in that presenting us with fewer choices is the favoured trick of dictators throughout history. Who gets to choose which choices are good ones, and who chooses how many choices we should have? As always, I wish that we could simply trust evolution, and the gradual filtering of sense from nonsense.

And we could trust evolution to do so – if only we had the patience, and a lifetime long enough to see the results. In the meanwhile, pessimism regarding H. Sapiens is very difficult to shake…

Some of the suggestions for integrating CDD (Christian Domestic Discipline) into your marriage include:

Reassure her of your love. Though you might bring her pain during punishment, you would never do her any lasting harm.
If she is afraid of spanking or completely set against it, begin with alternative punishments.
Suggest you begin CDD in a limited capacity (for example, agree to use only your hand with a ten swat limit) until she is more comfortable with the relationship.
Assure her you’re not a sadist, and though you might be turned on by seeing her behind or by her submission to you, you will never gain pleasure from causing her pain.

But don’t for a second imagine that CDD is akin to abuse. On the contrary, one of the listed benefits of CDD is

Protection of the wife spiritually – From the accusations of the enemy and other spiritual attacks. Not being under the protected “covering” of her husband, places her outside of God’s will, and would put her in a place where the enemy has a right to attack her. If anyone, man or woman, stands OUTSIDE of the castle walls of submission to God’s order they are more open to the enemy’s attack.

If you are unfortunate enough to have chosen a heathen spouse, as I have, you’re probably out of luck. Sure, the law won’t come down on you for some mild spanking activity – but don’t expect it to result in correction. And some god-fearing women may also be unsure as to the virtues of spanking. You should carefully and patiently try to help them realise that:

If she has NOT been trained by the painful chastising, she may forfeit some peaceable fruit that could have been hers. She may spend decades trapped in bad attitudes and sinful habits that might have been corrected. She may destroy relationships, even hurt or wreck her marriage, all for the protection of her disobedient heart. DD is not a guarantee of things working out, and at times you may need to walk in FAITH in God’s wisdom. But NOT using DD may cause some habits to go on uncorrected that may be hurtful later.

Disturbingly, the authors are most likely sincere, and truly believe that believers – who lack the mental facilities required for living their lives without the guidance of ancient mythology – will reliably be able to separate CDD from spousal abuse. Furthermore, there are no doubt plenty of loving and attentive wives who are quite happy being infantilised in this fashion. Somehow, though, they manage to justify CDD while arresting the slippery slope towards behaviour like

executing stubborn kids: “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son … Then shall his father and his mother … bring him out unto the elders of his city … And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die.” — Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (AV)

killing kids for mocking prophets: “Some small boys came out of the city and jeered at [the prophet Elisha], saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” And … he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.”
– II Kings 2:23-24 (RSV)

Maybe I’ve got it all wrong – god does exist, and Larson described him perfectly…

There is an interesting use of Locational Processing as a way to make a person sober. It can make a drunk person sober in a very few minutes. As society currently has no technology for handling the drunk, who is an embarrassment to his family, his friends and often to himself, this process has social value and may serve as a line of cooperation and assistance to the police.

Procedure

Use the command:

“Look at that_________ (room object).”

A drunk is usually considered somewhat unconfrontable and he himself certainly cannot confront. One thing he cannot confront is an empty glass. He always refills it if it is empty.

Repeat the command, each time pointing out a room object, as often as required to bring the person to sobriety. Do not get distracted into answering the frequent comment, “What object?” Just get the command carried out, acknowledge and give the next command.

Run until the person is no longer drunk.

Do not ever get angry with or strike a drunk, whatever the provocation.

This process is not intended to handle the condition of alcoholism. There are more advanced Scientology procedures that can be done to handle the conditions that caused a person to be alcoholic. But one can do a lot of good for the person and those around him by using this assist to bring him back to sobriety.

We are not particularly in the business of handling the drunk. But we are in the field of helping our fellow men. In a society where the only alternative is a night in jail and a fine, which is not desired by either the police or the intoxicated person, we can assist both and handle the situation in a matter of minutes.

Life must be so simple, if you’re that stupid…

The intrinsic problem is perhaps the lesser of the two, but we may never really know it’s scope, because of the circularity of the evidence available to us. We compare memories of emotional states we used to have when we believed ourselves to be a certain character, and the margins of error in these reconstructions are vast. In my case, I think I can know it to be the lesser of the two, in that I’ve always seen my tendency towards analysis and detachment as a virtue, meaning that now – when I start realising how hyper-accentuation of those tendencies can be crippling – I can nevertheless present a continuous narrative that consistently recognises the character that used to be, and sees how it has become what it is. So more simply, I feel confident in my ability to recognise myself.

The extrinsic problem, however, is victim of interesting complications. Notably, the case in question involves me having expended serious and diligent effort in constructing the reactions others have to me, in the sense of self-consciously presenting certain attributes as necessary, and also virtuous – both in myself, and as accusations when others seem to lack those attributes. So now one becomes hoisted on one’s own petard, so to speak, because you now have to undermine the interpretations that you’ve spent so much time constructing. And if you were persuasive and effective in constructing them, it’s understandably difficult for people to relate to you outside of those interpretations.

There has been a recent and very strong trend in “Continental” Philosophy to re-examine the supposed virtue of detachment. As an aside: for those of you unaware of the “Continental” label, it’s in opposition to “Analytic” Philosophy, which is the Anglo paradigm. The analytic strand emphasises logic and conceptual analysis, and the continental has far more room for metaphysics and abstraction. And I don’t want to hear from any philosophers regarding this gloss – I know how simple it is. Anyway: I’ve been educated in the analytic tradition, where virtues such as objectivity, rationality, detachment and consistency have been adopted as essential to well-adjusted minds. But the recent trend mentioned above tries to argue that detachment reaches a point where one is no longer engaging with the object as it is, but rather with some laboratory construction of that object.

So people are formalised into patterns of behaviour, and one’s self is – in extreme cases – also treated as a scientific experiment. But in living this way, the information that informs your judgements has been sanitised and filtered to such an extend that it could possibly be described as bearing little relation to the object in the world. So perhaps we sometimes need to acknowledge the messiness of human psychology in a more than theoretical, abstract way, but rather find a way to allow it to inform not only our epistemology, but also our relations with ourselves and others. Most people, one feels, do this naturally, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing either, as I think most people employ their critical faculties too rarely. The challenge, of course, is finding the middle ground, and I’m enjoying that challenge immensely.

In terms of the homesickness and the blues, one can be homesick and bluesy for all of one’s characters, one imagines, as they serve different functions and manifest themselves at different times – and not necessarily the most appropriate times, unfortunately.