Blog Posts

The Meaning of the Creative Act

5/22/2021

I am reading Nikolai Berdyaev, the philosopher of freedom (which he also refers to as creativity). I have embedded a useful video from a Russian philosopher who effectively outlines the ethics of creativity. In the video, ethics means the type of paradigm or framework the human person uses to direct their activity. For Berdyaev, the ultimate ethic is the ethics of freedom or creativity. She draws on his work in the Destiny of Man, but I am drawing on his work, The Meaning of the Creative Act. The quotes below are from it.

Freedom from law or convention does not mean anarchic chaos. “There is nothing creative in chaotic revolt: this is always reaction and deserves denunciation by the law. Creativity is cosmic, not chaotic, hence it lies outside any denunciation by the law which is always oriented towards the ancient chaos. Creativity is least of all anarch”. Creativity is a wellspring of life that emerges from consciousness and is completely subjective although it may have social and political impact.

"Only the creative epoch will lead to the human person’s positive consciousness of themselves, will liberate the human person from an exclusively negative self- consciousness. The ethic of creativity will give inspiration towards new and hitherto unknown life. This is life in the Spirit, rather than in the world, life spiritually free from reaction to the world and everything worldly. A new evaluation of the social, also, will flow from the ethic of creativeness."

In real terms if we adopt a new paradigm in our minds FIRST, changes in the world will follow and flow from that creative process.

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Heidegger and Technology

4/21/2021

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Martin Heidegger is an interesting but difficult philosopher to understand. He is most famous for the concept of “dasein”. By that term, Heidegger meant that the historical building block of all the world is interpreted in classical philosophy as being (sein). As a particular form of being, (dasein) denotes how the human being interprets what it is to be human in history. That does not mean there is a historical unfolding of dasein that is careening to a particular zenith. It means that in history, human beings interpret what it is to be human or what is natural in specific ways in history. Thus being and to be human are inseparable but nonetheless at least intellectually (or noetically) distinct. Being is not an abstract principle of nature but signifies something about the human being in that the human being seeks to know and understand the world.

This brings him to the phenomenon that he observes in current history of technology in this 1969 interview. He is not opposed to technology but sees in technology a creative element that can manufacture the human being. Because technology, by its nature, is about building and manufacturing, humanity will eventually have the capacity to build and manufacture itself. Thus, the human being eventually finds themselves as the slave of technology in a literal sense even though, this very technology, is created by human beings. The human being is not free, but is instead enslaved to the very creating of their techne.

He argues that philosophy has historically been able to think through the problem and distinctions between, for example, being and human – distinct but not different. He sees with technology the rise of “the event” also interestingly referred to as the singularity. Technology becomes less of an instrument and more of an end to which we aspire. But what is technology? It is an instrument - something done by someone who controls it. But who decides what the use of technology is?

The current pandemic is something completely and totally new. This is a phenomenon that can have no direct comparison. Mass media, social media, science, technology, politics, are converging and it will be interesting to see what consensus, if any, in terms of shared life emerges. And if it does what is that new consensus? Does it mean that working from home is the new normal? That, in fact, social relations will be mediated online in the digital as opposed to physical space. What is it going to mean to be human? To be a free agent? To be in community?

I don’t expect that we will have the answers but philosophers, sages, and other knowledge keepers should not be absent from the conversation. They can help us “enframe” the issues properly, carefully, and with linguistic and conceptual clarity.

But, he laments, if shared language and shared philosophy dies away, how will we communicate, and debate these ideas in the world? Are we destined for endless flame wars on the internet? The same tribal wars between so called left and right?

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The Mercantile History of the United States

3/2/2021

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The US has historically resisted political, regulatory discipline to restrain its expansionist desires related to trade. In 1914 Charles Beard wrote An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Beard argues that the spirit of commerce was much stronger than the spirit of justice and fairness.

Government was conceived as driving capital and reinforcing private property even more than John Locke (who I tend to favour for reasons in a later post). The framers of the US constitution did not contextualize their notions of freedom and liberty in quite the same way Locke did. Locke had an appreciation of the Commons. The framers jettisoned the idea of a commons and opted for cementing privatized commercial interests and enshrining their rights to commerce within the new constitutional order. According to Beard, soaring rhetoric of shining city on hill, beacon of freedom, and other Puritan ideas are subsumed in private commercial interests.

James Madison in Federalist 10 reinforced and absolutized private property to an almost sacred character even more than principles of justice, equity, and fairness. Commercial interests needed to be codified and advanced. Referencing Madison’s article in the Federalist, Beard notes:

Here we have a masterly statement of the theory of economic determinism in politics. Different degrees and kinds of property inevitably exist in modern society; party doctrines and "principles" originate in the sentiments and views which the possession of various kinds of property creates in the minds of the possessors; class and group divisions based on property lie at the basis of modern government; and politics and constitutional law are inevitably a reflex of these contending interests.

The idea that the framers of the constitution were philosopher-kings concerned with the common good and creating a commons where people can exercise what we now understand as political, social, cultural, and religious rights is absent. Driving the constitution and the country is mercantile interests.

The colonies had been supressed (in their view) by the King and the colonists wanted to trade freely and engage in commerce within the colonies. Moral principles were not part of the union. The economic question loomed large. This is why slavery was tolerated in the Southern states and why they rejected King George’s Royal Proclamation that granted customary or prior occupancy rights to the Indigenous inhabitants. The Indian Removal Act was a genocidal act aimed at dispossessing Indigenous people of their land without remedy. And in fact, they now have no remedy or recourse under the constitution because that constitution reinforced the owners' mercantile interests.

Those who argue for a rethinking of American and the constitutional order are not wrong – and revisiting Charles Beard is useful in considering the greatness that America is undoubtedly capable of when it comes to economically, culturally, and spiritually supporting its people.

America can reinvent itself, but it must do so beyond just rhetoric but examine the deep structural problems that currently exist and refashion the republic to better correspond to workers' needs. Beard argued later on in 1930 that the USA should be a workers republic.

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Seneca and Social Media

2/22/2021

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I have been marinating in the philosophy of the ancient Greek and Roman Stoa and, in particular, Seneca's letter. Seneca was one of the great Roman bureaucrats, orators, and philosophers. His letters weather well, and even though, obviously, Seneca did not have access to modern technology, I wonder what his opinion of the media-scape would be.

I think, on the whole, Seneca would be negative. Social media is mostly a narcissistically driven enterprise interested in clicks, emotive baiting, uncritical thinking, partisan rancour, and censorious attitudes.

Yet, it has helped me access content and has provided fodder for my contemplation - provided that I take the time to contemplate and not plunge into the media-scape for more information. But alas, J'accuse!

But this problem lies with me, of course, and here the Stoics help as well. Still, Seneca's caution about using words in his letters is as proper today as when he wrote it.

Seneca is responding to a friend who listened to a philosopher, Serapio. We don't have Seneca's friend's letter but based on Seneca's response, we can glean what his friend thought of this philosopher's delivery. Seneca's response is a good one for anyone posting on social media, including me.

'His words,' you say, 'tend to be tumbled out a tremendous pace, pounded and driven along rather than poured out, for they come in a volume no one voice could cope with''. I do not approve of this in a philosopher, whose delivery - like his life - should be well-ordered; nothing can be well regulated if it is done in a breakneck hurry...You should take the view, then, that this copious. and impetuous energy in a speaker is better suited to a hawker than to someone who deals with a matter of great importance and is also a teacher.

We, who use the media and produce content no matter how small (such as this blog) or large (such as networks and popular content creators) should take Seneca's letter to heart.

Seneca argues that we should avoid polemics or inflammatory prose in our language. Instead, "language, moreover, which devotes its attention to truth ought to be plain and unadorned. This (the political and popular media rhetoric of his day and ours) has nothing to do with truth. Its object is to sway a mass audience, to carry away unpractised ears by the force of its onslaught. It never submits itself to detailed discussion, is just wafted away. Besides, how can a thing possibly govern others when it cannot be governed itself.

I think we need vigorous, sustained debate on many of the economic, social, and cultural policies affecting our world, particularly post-pandemic.

The Stoics argue that fear should not govern our life, and this emotion should not drive what we know to be the social good. Yes, we need to protect the vulnerable but the cure cannot be worse than the disease. This advice applies to pandemic responses and responses to so-called dangerous ideas on the internet. Free expression and free flow of ideas are essential for humanity. It is part of the divine logos that inheres in each of us who are part of the cosmological whole.

So free expression - YES. At the same time, take heed, though, people communicating on the internet or cable t.v. should embody Seneca's advice on their use of language!

A way of speaking that is restrained, not bold, suits the wise person.

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The Cosmopolitan Stoic

2/8/2021

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The term the cosmopolitan conjures up in the popular mind the image of the wealthy jet setter moving around the world and travelling to different countries with ease on their private jets; sipping champagne and oblivious to the provincial arguments of national politics. In this sense, the cosmopolitan could be the economic, neo-liberal globalist. This is not an attractive look for most progressives these days.

There is deeper sense of the cosmopolitan and one rooted in the Stoic philosophers. It is this Stoic sense of the cosmopolitan that I want to discuss. Much has been written of Stoic cosmopolitanism. The genesis of the term is widely attributed to the Cynic, Diogenese (the polar opposite of what we would understand in the popular mind as the cosmopolitan). When asked where he was from, Diogenes famously replied, “I am a citizen of the world (kosmopolites)”. There has been a wealth of commentary on what Diogenese meant by this phrase. Philosophers and historians agree that the Stoics inherited and developed the idea of the Cosmopolitan directly from the Cynics. There is excellent analysis by Martha Nussbaum and John Sellars on this very question. Sellars' article, in particular, is very good if you want a comprehensive history of the idea of the cosmopolitan in the context of Zeno’s Republic. But I want to offer my own take on what Diogenese may have meant when he said that he is a citizen of the cosmos.

One clear, fundamental doctrine of Stoic philosophy is that the cosmos is ordered and filled with Divine light and intelligibility. This is in contrast to the idea of chaos being a characteristic of the universal order. The Greeks often juxtaposed chaos and cosmos in their narratives and this interplay can also be seen in the first chapter of Genesis as well. Because nature (or the cosmos) had such order and intelligibility, we should strive to live in accordance with its rhythms argued the Cynics. In some ways, we also possessed the light of the cosmos in our consciousness suggested the later Stoics. The mode of this light or wisdom in human consciousness was debated - but what wasn’t debated was the fundamental nature of the cosmos as order, intelligibility and light.

Our lives need to be ordered to the cosmos and not social conventions which actually thwart and frustrate that ability. For this reason, the Cynics eschewed social conventions and the Stoics also argued that the acquisition of wealth or external status would not lead to a fulfilling life and would not make one a philosopher (lover of wisdom). One had to give themselves over to wisdom which in some way had a divine character expressed and shaped by the cosmos. This does not mean that the Stoics believed that wisdom was a revelation of the Divine order (as the Christians would argue). Instead, humans resemble the divine to the extent that they can order their mind as the cosmos orders nature.

But, in order to do so, one had to first discipline the mind and the appetites through struggle. The image of the one struggling or the wrestler is invoked by some of the Stoics. It is this psychological struggle that enables one to break free of provincial attachments and social conventions and manifest the divine wisdom and spark (or fire) of human consciousness.

This brings me to what I think Diogenese meant by being a citizen of the world (cosmos). He was not necessarily referring to political identification with the planet, or even the human species (pace Nussbaum). I think Diogenese meant that his identification was with the transcendent reality of the cosmos. It was this reality he belonged to and lived out of. Whether others shared in that collectivity was not something the Stoics were concerned with. Their politics was in that sense anarchic; they desired neither to rule over or be ruled by anyone. Theirs was a collectivity and “citizenship” based on style of thinking or temperament or philosophical outlook. In that regard Sellars’ analysis of Zeno’s republic is on point in that there is a kind of community or group of people who are “citizens of the world”. But this citizenship cannot be an affectation but must instead be an experiential mode of being – almost like secular monks - but even freer than monks who are often bound by a monastic rule. Nonetheless, there is a rule that the monastic/philosopher/Stoic adheres to and it is the rule of the cosmos as expressed by the sages. But it is different than a vowed life of monasticism although it is a committed lifestyle (and yes an ascetic one at that!)

There is a resurgence of popularity of the Stoics and this cosmic dimension of their philosophy is not something that can be denied as anachronistic and bound in pre-Modern notions. Instead, the idea of the cosmos as, in some sense Divine, is part of the foundation of their ethics and physics. Certainly, the mathematical and scientific representation of the physics can change - and so can the mode or presentation of the conception of cosmos. But one thing is clear – the cosmos is well ordered, logical, and full of life (if not Life itself). Living in accordance with this cosmos is the very foundation of what it is to be a Stoic. And it was this that I think Diogenese was driving at and which animates my philosophy of life as well.

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What is in a meme?

2/1/2021

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The meme is an interesting phenomenon that has accelerated since the internet. Meme’s are primarily very in-group styled images or terms that have deeper resonances to certain ideas or impulses that are part of the community.

It has usually been the right that has had an uncanny ability to create and generate meme’s that circulate widely and then take on different interpretations for different groups for different reasons. Alt tech and different groups develop these meme’s sometimes to denote irony. The meme takes on a life of its own as it is circulated throughout the online community.

This brings me to the Bernie meme. This is an interesting one on multiple levels. The Bernie meme has even surfaced in Canada with Justin Trudeau using it and sharing it on Twitter. But what does it mean?

The meme shows Bernie Sanders sitting in the cold of the inauguration with a winter jacket and hand-made mittens looking bored and curmudgeonly.

I am less enthusiastic regarding the meme as others. They argue that this a new era of just good fun. I do not see it that way. I doubt that I have to share with readers what Bernie Sanders represents in terms of economic and domestic policies in the US. He ran for president in the Democratic primary twice. Both times establishment Democrats moved aggressively to sideline his candidacy.

Neo-liberal economic policies currently drive the planet and the US is a primary leader in that global economy. This ideology largely drives all parties in North America. Those who stand outside of that ideology exist, but as long as the establishment can contain those movements as essentially rump movements that provide a valve for portions of the population so they feel they have a voice in the democratic life of the community, the establishment is happy.

BUT if those movements get too large and dominant, they need to be quashed and crushed quickly. This meme has the effect of representing Bernie as the harmless, eccentric, old uncle - ranting and raving about economic justice as the kids‘ eyes glaze over. They chuckle and say – good old Uncle Bernie. Funny, maybe right in some ways, but essentially harmless.

This meme provides the perfect context to create a powerful image of Bernie in the minds of people. It is a way to contain the ideology he represents to a humorous meme that exists as a sub-culture but will never rise to prominence in the economic order.

Bernie is playing, and being played as, the fool. But you readers should not be fooled – stay alert, awake, aware, and engaged.

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Canada's Apartheid ?

1/25/2021

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Much has been written about the linkage between Canada’s historical Indian Act and the South African story of Apartheid. As the story goes, the South African government was exploring ways of developing and enforcing a kind of “separate but equal” system and visited Canada. They were inspired by Canadian officials and the Indian Act.

So prevalent is this story that it has worked itself into the lore of Canadian history. There are definite parallels. As former Justice Giesbrecht notes Both used status cards that classified people by race and both granted people of one race entitlements not given to others. And his insight has been amplified and diffused throughout Canadian journalism and academia.

The problem is that the evidence to support this actually occurring seems thin. I found a South African article that discusses, in part, this issue. It is entitled Terminologies of Control: Tracing the Canadian-South African Connection in a Word.

The article is more of a philological and deconstructive analysis of the term “apartheid” inspired by the work of Derrida and Michel Foucault. However, the author, Maria-Carolina Cambre does note that there is in the historical archive this specific mention. “At last, Bourgeault gives some indication of specific policy material being copied by writing: ‘The South African Land Settlements Act of 1912 and 1913 was patterned after Canada’s Dominion Lands Act (p. 8). He also adds that “the first of many pass laws were then implemented based on the Canadian experience (p. 8)”

Whether that is enough to construct clear historical evidence (and it would be interesting to see historians explore this question) of the relationship between Canada and South Africa with respect to Apartheid is a separate question from the fact that this kind of thinking was prevalent at the time. The author seems to find fault with not locating Britain as the main exporter of this kind of colonialism but I think that is a bit tendentious. Canada, at that time, was a British colony. The corollary between Britain and Canada, especially then, was remarkably strong. Besides, Canada had a much more analogous political context with the Indigenous of South Africa than Britain had in the UK and so, on a balance of probabilities, the evidence points to Canada primarily and not Britain.

I tend to think rather than looking for a smoking gun with respect to Canada and the practice of South African Apartheid, we should instead look at the broad historical practices of “separate but equal doctrines” that were part of the warp and woof of a wide array of colonial practices – then and now. The use of the term Apartheid is a signifier of a particularly odious form of governmentality and one that we rightly want to resist. Maria-Caroline Cambre makes that very point in the article linked above.

We can learn much from South African apartheid but to pretend that the mechanisms and underlying political philosophy that drove apartheid there was not present all over the Western world is naïve. And to position South Africa as a pariah nation is unfair scapegoating.

What we need to do is learn from our global, primarily Western European, collective mistakes in terms of public policy and craft much better inclusionary politics. In fact, our politics must avoid all forms of nativism that would target immigrants or racialized others in pursuit of national political objectives.

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The Case of Viola Desmond in Nova Scotia – Black History Month

1/17/2021

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I must confess that I was not aware of this case that occurred in the province of Nova Scotia in 1947. As the Canadian Museum of Human Rights recounts:

In November 1946, hair salon owner Viola Desmond went to a film at the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia… Unaware that the theatre was segregated, the Black Nova Scotian chose a main‐floor seat. When she refused to move to the balcony, where Black patrons were expected to sit, she was arrested and dragged out of the theatre.. In Canada, there were no official laws enforcing separation of Black and white Canadians. However, communities and businesses such as shops, theatres and restaurants made their own unofficial rules.

Then on “November 8, 1946, Viola Desmond was convicted and fined for defrauding the government for sitting in the wrong place at the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Although she offered to pay the difference between the upstairs and downstairs tickets, she was still arrested and detained” as Madison Veinotte writes.

Veinotte goes on to describe how the Supreme Court failed to take up the appeal on weak (in my view) procedural grounds. Nonetheless, Veinotte quotes that Justice Hall (part of the Supreme Court that denied taking up the appeal), “One wonders if the Manager of the Theatre who laid the complaint was so zealous because of a bona fide belief there had been an attempt to defraud the Province of Nova Scotia of the sum of one cent, or was it a surreptitious endeavor to enforce a Jim Crow rule by misuse of a Public Statute.”

While couched as a rhetorical statement, the answer is clearly yes. Enforcing a privatized from of Jim Crow is precisely what the manager of the business was doing. The case illustrates the insidious nature of racism and the limitations of using the court to redress wrongs. While the Supreme Court of Canada, post Charter, has written some landmark rulings and has set a solid foundation for human rights in Canada, this particular ruling of the Court is a blemish on its history in Canada. Further to the foregoing, while this ruling was pre-Constitution and Charter, it is, nonetheless, regrettable that the Court stood on ambiguous procedural grounds in its refusal to consider the appeal. Profiles in courage it is not!

This case underscores, however, precisely why human rights needs to be part of the consciousness of free people acting in a noble manner that upholds the dignity of every person irrespective of race, gender or gender expression, creed, sexual orientation, or class to name just a few.

The strategy must be both the heart, mind, and even body. Legislation and jurisprudence has its place – Martin Luther King famously said that while legislation will not change the heart, it will restrain the heartless – but work also needs to occur in our consciousness and this happens through education.

And part of that education is in Black History month beginning February .

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Stoicism - Ancient Wisdom for Modern Anxieties

1/8/2021

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Much unrest, anxiety and unease in the world today due to the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic, the events in the US capital, and apprehension about the future.

The Stoic philosophers can contribute much to helping modern people navigate turbulent times. Three of its most prominent ancient representatives come from diverse backgrounds. Epicetus (d. 135 CE) was a Greek slave, Marcus Aurelius (d. 180 CE) was a Roman emperor, and Seneca (d. 65 CE) was a Roman politician. Each drew on something very important and one of the most important insights from Marcus Aurelius influenced CBT or at the very least is very similar to it.

Marcus Aurelius said famously that it is not events that disturb people, it is their judgements concerning them. This is a profound quote and one that we will all have to contemplate in our minds. We may resist the truism of this quote in times of great distress, but, actually, this is profoundly accurate. Often events happen outside of our control and in this age of social media we are accustomed to feeling as though we need to somehow be disturbed or disrupted by them. Or even events in our own lives can rock and destabilize us. However, the height of conscious agency is to realize that the thoughts we form about those events and the narratives we create are just that - thoughts and narratives. Consequently, we need to cultivate the habit of being self-critical and not assume that our narratives of the event is useful especially if it disrupts our interior tranquility.

In fact, interior tranquility and freedom is the goal of Stoic philosophy (and I would add psychology). When our inner tranquility is challenged in some way, we need to step back and consider the source of that discord. That discord may be because we are not living in a way that is integrated and we may feel we lack integrity. In this case we need to take steps to become more integrated. Here, the Stoics do support a certain degree of asceticism both in terms of intellectual asceticism, emotional asceticism, and lifestyle asceticism. This kind of detachment is difficult but it is the way to become spiritually free. In this regard, one can see congruence between Stoicism and Buddhism.

But Stoicism also clearly influenced many forms of Christian spirituality and certainly monasticism.

Take time, therefore, to drink deeply and hear the muses of this ancient wisdom.

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Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

1/6/2021

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William Butler Yeats said it best and feels timely today

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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