Unemployment and Ancient Chinese Philosophy

Well, I am now good and unemployed. My duties as a professor of philosophy are all over, and I head out to meet a retired philosopher who specialized in Japanese philosophy who only recently moved to town tonight. During my third year review, (which I failed) I wrote and printed a short piece entitled “Miscellaneous Thoughts on Retention in My Position as an Assistant Professor” which consisted of only the following 5 quotes, but I elected not to include it in my 100page+ “retention packet.”

Here are a few things Confucius says about unemployment …

Confucius says “Riches and position are what men desire. If their attainment is to be by departing from the Way, do not have them. Poverty and lowliness are what men hate. If their abandonment is to be had by departing from the Way, do not abandon them ….” (Analects 4:5)

Confucius said, “Ning Wu Tzu was wise when the Way prevailed in the state, but dull witted when the Way did not prevail in the state. His wisdom could be equaled, but his dull-wittedness could not be equaled” (Analects 5:21)

Confucius believed in working, some times one worked for their family, and sometimes one worked for the state or some other employer. Confucius’ own job was mostly training young men who would seek employment, and he has a lot of other subtle things to say about the process (at 10:26, 9:16, or 14:1). But the heart of Confucius’ idea was that good people should be in high office, and offices should be given out meritocratically, not just to the most skilled, but to those with all round virtue. “Raising the Worthy” is the heart of Confucius’ system, his own “Way” and his opponents often think and talk about him in terms of his advocacy of raising the worthy. But Confucius also clearly imagines that taking part in family life is more central than employment (2:21). A virtuous man should be employed when the state is functioning well, but equally SHOULD be unemployed, or rather employed by his family, when the stat is not functioning well, even though this involves poverty or lowliness or dull-wittedness. For Confucius, employment is a good thing, but unemployment is nonetheless sometimes a duty. A job in a state which is not run via the way of virtue, will often put a person in the position of needing to act unvirtuously in order to keep their job, and that is not worth it according to Confucius. Likewise the job can come between a person and their duties to their family, unless the way prevails in the state.

Here are some things the Daodejing says:

“Do not raise the worthy, so that people will not compete
Do not value rare treasures, so that people will not steal
Do not display objects of desire, so that people’s hearts shall not be disturbed/ …”
Daodejing 3

Be apprehensive when receiving favor or disgrace.
Regard trouble as seriously as you regard your own body
What is meant by being apprehensive when receiving favor or disgrace?
Favor is considered inferior. / …

Daodejing 13

The Daodejing has a deeper worry about employment. “Raising the worthy” is already wrong. Raising the worthy leads to competition, and competition leads to problems for the family and state. Rather the sage rules by “emptying hearts and stuffing bellies, by weakening ambitions and strengthening bones” (3). The Daodejing has a profoundly dialectical understanding of employment and unemployment. If the laws are complex, people will become cunning thieves to evade them. If wealth is exalted, people will fight each other and damage the state and themselves to become wealthy. If “merit” is the path to high status, then people will become skilled at faking “merit” in order to be “raised” as being “worthy.” So it is a mistake to encourage either employment of unemployment, “Therefore the sage says: I have no desires and people return to the good and simple life.” The way out of the mess is to re-orient one’s understanding so that favor does not seem desirable but dangerous, so that the good and simple life seems attractive. Humility is considered one of the Jewels of the Dao by the Daoists, but it isn’t a duty or burden like it is for Confucius. It is not enough to desire wealth but refuse to seek it, when it cannot be sought honorably, rather even desiring wealth is already a problem.

But as usual, my favorite thinker here is Zhuangzi. In Chapter 4 of the Book of Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi imagines a discussion between Confucius and his favorite disciple Yen Hui. Hui describes how he is going to go about impressing the rich and powerful so that they will employ him and he can improve things. First he plans to encourage the rulers to reform and act better, and Confucius shoots him down and says that their bosses will just overrule and fire or kill them. So Hui imagines that he will dissemble, being outwardly deceptive, but inwardly retaining his integrity. And Confucius shoots him down again, saying that this won’t work, “You are still being guided by your perceptions.” Instead Hui needs to engage in “the fast of the heart.” When Hui has done this and comes back and describes the experience, Confucius is delighted and says

“Perfect! I will tell you. You are capable of entering and roaming free inside his cage [the prospective employer], but do not be excited that you are making a name for yourself. When the words penetrate, sing your native note; when they fail to penetrate, desist. When there are no doors for you, no outlets, treating all abodes as one, you will find your lodgings in whichever is the inevitable, you will be nearly there.” Zhuangzi, chap 4

For Zhuangzi the issue of employment isn’t ultimately about raising the worthy, and merit, or about the dialectic of striving and competition, rather it is about the true emptiness of one’s heart when one takes lodging in the inevitable. One treats “all abodes:” employment and unemployment, rich houses and poor, states where the way prevails, and states where it does not, as one.

It is not only my job that is over. Unemployment is rising in the US like it hasn’t since the Great Depression, and it will continue to do so for some time. Much about our current collapse is already inevitable. Poverty and lowness are coming and we cannot abandon them whether we would like to or not. Our culture has excelled at “displaying objects of desire” and the peoples hearts will be disturbed beyond reckoning as they become more and more unattainable. Humility is certainly a jewel we should seek. But the truth is more than that. It is time for us to “find our lodging in whatever is inevitable.”

A few pages later, Zhuangzi has Confucius give this following wonderful summary

Confucius said: “Under heaven there are two great principles: one is destiny the other is duty. The love of a son for his parents is destiny and cannot be taken away from his heart. For a subject to serve his ruler is duty; there is no escaping this duty anywhere between heaven and earth. These are called two great principles. Therefore, a son finds contentment in serving his parents in all circumstances: this is the perfection of filial piety. A subject finds contentment in serving his ruler in all circumstances: this is the perfection of duty. But to serve one’s own soul so that grief and joy are not overwhelming, to outwardly handle what life throws at you as inevitable and not to be worried by this, this is the perfection of virtue. One who is a subject, or a son, has to do what he has to do. Caught up in the affairs of state, he forgets his own life. He has no time to love life or fear death. Therefore, dear friend, go on your mission!”

The Value of Despair

Here is a reprint of a article I wrote in Nov of 2007, before I had a blog. Parts of it have been reprinted in various places since then. I've been meaning to repost it up here for a while, and someone at The Automatic Earth asked about it, so here it is.

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The most optimistic person I have ever encountered admitted yesterday that he is sad and scared. Beth Terry wrote a guest blog today entitled “Caring Without Despairing.” Her solution is to just not think about how big the problems are, but to focus on the little bit she can effect, as she calls it, “selective attention.” Smart people who look at America and our world today feel the emotion of despair, and then have to decide what to do about it.

My position on despair is an odd one. I think that despair is, or at least can be, a good thing. Despair is a virtue, a habit of the correct functioning of the human spirit. Despair is not a meaningless blackness, nor a simple lack of hope, it is a more complex psychological state, and one that has a role to play in the healthy mind, not just in an unhealthy mind. Not all despair is valuable despair, properly functioning despair; just as not all humor, or passion, or resoluteness is valuable. Resoluteness can be a form of courage or stubbornness depending on the situation. In moral talk, we say that resoluteness can be a virtue or a vice depending on the situation. In just the same way, I hold that despair can be a vice, a counter-productive mental or spiritual tendency (as pretty much everyone else holds). But unlike everyone else, I hold that despair can also be a virtue, a productive, helpful, right-functioning mental or spiritual tendency.

Many virtues, called moral virtues, exist as the mean between two extremes, the balancing point between opposite errors. Courage is the classic example. Too much fear of danger and one acts cowardly, and fails to take advantage of manageable risks. Too little fear of danger and one acts foolhardy, and takes risks that ought not to be taken. Fear of danger has a useful role to play in our psyches or spirits, but so does resistance to fear of danger. When these two are in proper balance, and we feel the right amount of fear, and the right amount of resistance to fear, we are experiencing the virtue of courage. Similar things could be said about overeating and undereating, or indeed any appetite, or about anger or many other psychological factors. Anger and fear are not bad things simply; they are proper and healthy adaptations to a world that includes injustice and risk. Injustice ought to make us angry, and risks ought to make us fearful. Just not too angry or fearful. And of course, both emotions would have no useful role left in a world without injustice or risk.

But not every virtue works this way. Physical strength, for example, is a virtue (it helps us to act well in the world), and one that a rational person should want as much of as they could get without giving up some other valuable good. Weightlifting takes time that we could be using for other good things, like community service or enjoying our friendships. But if someone invented a way to become stronger without giving up some other good thing, we should take it. Similar things could be said about intelligence or health or beauty or friendship.

Christian philosophers took this rough position on virtue from the Greeks and Romans, and noted that there was one more category of virtues which they called theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. In the Gnostic Tradition of Valentinius gnosis – that is direct mystical experience or knowledge by acquaintance is also a theological virtue. In the Catholic tradition, the theological virtues are ones which can be developed only by the grace of God, not by any human effort. More importantly they are not the mean between two extremes of vice. You can have insufficient faith, but there is no such thing to the Catholic theologians as having too much faith. Likewise, you can never have too much love. You can love the wrong objects (the sinful act, rather than the sinner who does it), you can have too much passion in your loving, but love itself can never be excessive.

My position is that the opposite of a theological virtue is not a vice, but another competing theological virtue. Love has a valuable role to play in the human psyche, but indifference does too. Indifference is the root of detachment, of accepting the good and the bad alike with equanimity. Indifference is the root of justice, of logic, of many kinds of discursive knowledge. Our science works, in part because we can detach our observations, from what we want to happen. We can observe how things ARE quite apart from how we would LOVE for them to be. Indifference is the heart of accepting reality, just as love is the heart of transforming reality. We are beings of power, but not infinite power, and thus we need love to guide our use of our power, and indifference to tailor our use of power to our limits. I am of the opinion that indifference is the true opposite of love, however some think of hate as the opposite of love. I don’t really know anyway for hate to be a virtue, although closely related ideas like anger, or detesting, can be in the right circumstances.

In a being of infinite knowledge and power, faith, hope, love, and gnosis would be virtues without any opposition. There would be no such thing as too much love, or insufficient indifference. But virtues do not work the same way for humans as they do for unlimited beings. For one thing, a being of infinite power has no virtue of courage at all, because it cannot experience genuine risk. Likewise, it has no virtue of moderation in eating, because it doesn’t need to eat or refrain from eating at all. For humans, courage and moderation in eating are virtues. Likewise, so is indifference, the opposite number of love. The opposite of a theological virtue is, for humans at least, is another virtue in dialectical tension with it. Love and Indifference are both good things, even though they sometimes oppose each other. Heraclitus calls this “opposing coherence.” The two work together in tension to create a more powerful effect like the ends of a bow straining against each other to keep the bowstring taut and propel the arrow more strongly,
or the lawyers arguing against each other to try to produce thoughtful justice.

Similarly, the opposite of faith is doubt, and both are virtues for fallible humans. William James has a great discussion of when and why faith is a virtue, a position that is now called Fideism among epistemologists. Sometimes believing something, despite lack of decisive evidence, makes us more able to act well within the world. Optimism is one of James’s favorite examples, we have little evidence that things are going to be alright, but assuming they are anyway helps some people to cope. But the same point can be made in reverse on skepticism. Sometimes refraining from believing something, when the evidence is undecisive, makes us more able to act well in the world.

Even at the level of theology, faith and doubt are both virtues functioning together. Faith allows us to place trust in an imperfect image of the Divine, say our own faltering picture of what an ideal shepherd or an ideal father would be like. Imperfect images are the best images that humans can conjure up, and our own limitations pervade the image. When I imagine the perfect father, I am likely to frame the image as a human of my own race, rather than of some other race, or say a heron. But my images are flawed. Doubt helps me to see that the Divine is unlikely to be of my race or even human in a normal sense. Perhaps I instead use more glorious images (light, rock of ages, etc), or refrain from images entirely and use conceptions. Still my flaws pervade, and doubt calls on me to refine these images and concepts or to do without image and concept entirely. Faith is the cornerstone of positive theology, of saying flawed but still helpful and beautiful things about the Divine. But doubt is the cornerstone of negative theology, of pointing out the flaws in our formulations, and pushing us to improve our understanding of the Divine. Like my favorite theologian Pseudo-Dionysius, I firmly believe that negative theology and positive theology need to work together, and thus (perhaps unlike him) that faith and doubt are both virtues in dialectical tension, properly working together to push us upward.

In the Gnostic tradition, gnosis or direct experience is a virtue. But the opposite of gnosis is innocence. Not knowing, at least not knowing directly via primary experience, is the root of the possibility of learning or discovery. Innocence allows experience to be a source of wonder, and I know of no better paean to the joint values of innocence and experience than Blake’s famous sets of poems, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.

But the hardest of the virtues to understand is despair. I believe that a time of great despair is coming for my people and my generation. That the question of the meaning and value of despair will become more pressing and will not go away soon. And this experience will be hard and bitter, painful even. Further, I think that the research is clear that pain which seems meaningless or counter-productive is experienced as being worse than pain which is perceived as valuable or helpful. If we can find what is good and right about despair, that will simply help us to bear it with far less suffering.

Despair clears the way for the possibility of new hope, of better, more realistic hope. Just as indifferent objectivity clears the way for more realistic love, and doubting skepticism clears the way for more realistic beliefs, (and true Blakean innocence clears the way for more wondrous experiences), so despair clears the way for humbler and more realistic hopes. Despair kills hopes, but only so that other smaller hopes can have a chance to flourish. When we despair properly, we give up an old hope as out of reach of our powers, and we let it go, but we do so, so that we may set our sights on a new hope that is hopefully within the reach of our powers. Proper despair is root of the virtue of humility. It is all about not over-estimating our power in this world. When despair functions properly, its job is to help us let for of a goal that we cannot reach because we have over-estimated our power, even though we badly want to reach this glorious goal.

A despair that left us without anything worth reaching for would be a vice rather than a virtue. And indeed, we may feel like that for a time, while we adjust to the new possibilities that are left over, after we have given up on a long-term goal. But there will always be other, smaller humbler thing that we can reach for instead, after we have despaired of a great hope. No matter how bad things are, or how weak our power is, there are still gradations of better and worse, once we can bear to look carefully. It is always possible to make things a little better, if not for yourself then others. A person dying of a terminal disease, with only a few weeks left to live, who has despaired of survival, can still set lower, smaller goals and work towards them and hope towards them. A society that is addicted to cheap energy and cheap credit which is passing away, and cannot hope to maintain its lifestyle, can still set other humbler goals and try to reach them while watching its lifestyle pass away.

We cannot save our society from the troubles that are coming. It is too late to save the icecaps from melting, the ocean levels from rising. Many of our cities can probably no longer be saved. Our financial system is probably already doomed to collapse soon regardless of what we do. Our way of life cannot be sustained much longer regardless of what we do. In our arrogance, we thought we could spend forever and let the future decide how to pay the bill. We thought that someone later would figure out how to clear up our messes of carbon and methane and debt and oil-dependence. A time of humbling is coming quickly. No one can honestly look at the big picture of where our society and our globe are without feeling despair. Beth Terry can accomplish caring without despairing, only by carefully not-looking, and not-thinking. But “caring without despairing” is the wrong goal! I care, and then I despair. And despair tells me to give up and let go. But despair also tells me to clear a space for new and humbler hopes. I cannot save my society, but perhaps I can save my family, or even my community. And if my strength gives out at that task too, perhaps I can help a few people prepare, or feed themselves, or comfort them in their distress.

A time of black despair is coming, and if you feel like you are drowning in despair be comforted. Despair is a GOOD thing, when it functions properly. Swim in your despair, master it, use it for what it is good for. Use your despair to let go, and set new humbler goals. You are less rich, and less powerful than you think you are, than you are used to being. But you are not without any wealth; you are not without any power. Each breath is riches; each moment is wealth; each choice is power. All work is using our power. Do what work you can, plan, set new goals, and do what good you can. Despair, but do not drown in it, despair to clear a place for humbler goals. Your despair is in reality a valuable friend, helping you to re-prioritize your life, even when doing so is painful and difficult. Despair hurts, but it is a virtue in disguise. The pain of despair is the pain of healing, and adapting to humbler circumstances. All Americans will soon become acquainted with despair. Be assured, despair is a gloomy ally, but it is not in the end your enemy.

Eating Our Children: The Story of Saturn and Moloch

8 years ago I did a fair bit of work on the ethics of Embryonic Stem Cell Research, and even presented my work in a couple of public forums (like being a panelist on it at Association for Practical and Professional Ethics Conference, in 2002). One thing that interested me was the extent to which thinking about ESCR, was dominated by the metaphors of warfare, that medical science was fighting a war against disease and the embryos sacrificed to save the lives of others were like the soldiers on the frontlines, laying down their lives so that others back home could live better lives. This basic metaphor was as pervasive as it was fundamentally disingenuous. The “war” against disease can never be won, and isn’t very war-like, and the embryo soldiers are hardly willing warriors choosing to take brave and noble risks for the greater good.

But what would be a better metaphor? In the end, I explored 11-13 other metaphors (depending on the version) and none was really adequate, although looking at several helped to correct the mistakes of each. I compared Embryonic Stem Cell Research to medical treatment, scientific research, abortion, to Nazi hypothermia research on unwilling victims, to recycling the waste products of an industrial process, to anthropological research on human remains, to agricultural growing and harvesting of “germ-lines”, to the killing pigs in insulin production, to Aztec practices of human sacrifice, to killing an innocent in the criminal justice system, and to euthanasia. Some metaphors make Embryonic Stem Cell Research look just, even noble, others make it look troubling. But my goal to explore the many moral nuances of the idea of “sacrifice.”
But the metaphor that was most haunting for me was the myth of Saturn eating his own children.

I wrote

“The ancient world has a couple of myths about gods eating children. Moloch, a Canaanite deity of power, is famous for devouring children as a means of maintaining his power. Saturn or Chronos, a Greco-Roman patriarch of the gods devoured his own children lest someone succeed him as the ruler of the divinities, until his wife tired of the death of her children helps Zeus escape this fate and overthrow him. In each myth, the story is of an old and powerful god eliminating the potential to overthrow them by eliminating the threat of their own children, and indeed by drawing strength from the devouring of their own children. In both cases, the moral of the story is that time marches on, things change, and that one should promote your children in their efforts to truly succeed you, rather than holding them back out of jealousy and the struggle against mortality. Likewise, we disapprove of a teacher who holds their students back from becoming greater than themselves. What does this have to do with ESCR? Well one important moral dimension of ESCR is its aspect as an intergenerational struggle. In stem cell research the very young and poor and powerless are destroyed to increase the wealth, power and health of the very old and already wealthy and powerful. Some of the diseases which might be benefited by stem cell research effect young and old alike, but most of them are health problems of the old, often specifically of the very old. Who benefits economically from stem cell research? Bio-medical researchers primarily, although some bio-medical companies as well. Why are we spending money and lives to push the boundaries of mortality and old age back even farther, rather than on universal health care for the young, or say education? As in war, the young pay the brunt of the price and the old get the bulk of the reward. Also notice that although embryos are not that much like children, the relevant feature for this story is a child’s ability to be a potential adult.

Now we should not over work this intergenerational angle. Certainly, our society does spend a lot of attention and money on education and the care of the young. But the elderly have an extremely disproportionate amount of wealth and political power, and we need to be more careful than usual at looking for hidden agendas, perhaps even hidden agendas the researchers do not consciously realize they have. Likewise embryos are extremely powerless, and we need to be more careful than usual at safeguarding the interests of innocents who also lack power to safeguard their own interests. Whatever else is at stake we should be leery of the prospect of ending one life, and a young powerless, poor one at that, for the sake of merely extending the last few years of an older, richer, more powerful life. As a member of a young, poor, powerless generation, I often feel the frustrating wish that natural processes of death should hurry up in clearing the oldest generation aside, so that my generation will not spend its life choked by the past still lingering in a not quite dead yet state. Death has an important social function to play in aiding the young in displacing the entrenched power of the old. In many generations the old step aside voluntarily, or aid the young in taking the reins of power. But for a variety of comprehensible generational dynamics, this generation of elderly refuses to step aside and instead consumes everything in their path burdening the young in ways that previous generations of elderly people would have found unthinkable examples of impiety. Moloch or Saturn eating their children, gobbling up the potentials of the future in a desperate effort to stay in power a little long and to stave off the reaper a little more, is a parable for our time; from the third rail of Social Security to the elderly’s taste for gas-guzzling cars. The funding of the destruction of embryos for the sake of maybe staving off Alzheimer’s a little longer is just one more example of a deeper social problem.

There are problems with this metaphor, too. Like the image of the medical researchers’ hands being stained with the blood of aborted embryos, the image of Moloch devouring his children is a symbol of our moral intuitions more than a real argument. The motives of the researchers are not as consciously selfish. They hope to benefit many not just themselves, and to help young and old alike. Taken to extremes this argument could turn into a slippery slope opposing all medical research or indeed any attempt to prolong or save life. This argument has a hard time responding to utilitarian arguments about benefits outweighing nonetheless real harms. What it does capture however is the intuition that if human life is valuable, then human death is valuable too. It is the engine of change and renewal and one of the holiest of mysteries. We can fail to do our duty by holding on to life at too great a cost, or with too little attention to intergenerational justice, just as we can fail by spending too little effort in resisting death, especially the death of the innocent or powerless.”

It is hard for me to think of a more obscene and foul image, than that of Saturn devouring his own children. And while this metaphor doesn’t exactly fit Embryonic Stem Cell Research, it is a much closer match for a wide variety of more nakedly over-consumptive policies whereby those currently in power enjoy all they can and try to push the debt burden for this onto future generations. Bush and Paulson, approving the banking bail-outs are Saturn eating their own children, devouring the future to keep the banks alive, in power, and in style for just a little longer. Obama and Geithner are playing exactly the same game – let us have a little more time now, and let the future pay for it. It is not enough to see them as pursuing mistaken policies; they are worse than that. It is not enough to see them as swindlers, enabling con-men allies to rip off the American public; although they are that too. It is not enough to see them as traitors, deliberately undermining the common good of America, for the personal gain of their allies. They are EATING OUR CHILDREN to remain in power a little longer. They are Saturn and Moloch, the great foul child-eaters of antiquity, recast in modern mythologies. They are blasphemies.
And, of course, so are we all a little bit. We know that we are using up the potential of the future, the things that our children will need to survive, much less to live the kind of lives we have lived, or wish for them to live. We know that our society is unsustainable, and we have a variety of intellectual methods for processing this fact. But we need images, and myths, and narrative methods too. We need stories to make sense of what unsustainable really means to us, because we humans are storytelling, storyhearing, storythinking creatures. What are the great old stories about unsustainability? What are the classics of literature that help us to feel the meaning of unsustainability, rather than just intellectualizing it?
We have very few stories like that. Unsustainable societies collapse, and by and large their stories don’t get told or remembered. We have the story of the fall of Troy and the folk who warned against it, but their understanding of the collapse of Troy is much more one of political defeat than of unsustainable society. We have the story of the fall of Jerusalem, and the Babylonian captivity, and the terrible lamentations surrounding that, (including a passage about destroying one’s children at Psalms 137). But again this is cast more in terms of a failed relationship with God, than of the unsustainability of the society.

But in the myth of Saturn eating his own children we catch a glimpse of another narrative of unsustainability. We see the horror and disgust that other societies feel for unsustainable practices. The point of the story of Saturn eating his children is like the point of Orwell’s 1984, it is a dire warning DON’T DO THAT, understand intellectually and emotionally the terrible foulness of doing THAT. It is not a story of an actual unsustainable society, anymore than 1984 is a story of an actual tyrannical dictatorship. But it is a little primal myth, about how people living in fairly stable cultures felt about unsustainable practices, and they felt horror and disgust. Gusto – is of course, the emotion of wanting to joyously consume. Dis-gust is the emotion that makes us not want to consume something. And the thing that it is most important not to consume is our future. The idea of eating our kids should be literally more disgusting than the idea of eating shit, vomit, or old used tampons. It is the most disgusting image that we can conjure with. And disgust is precisely the emotion that advertising wishes most to suppress, the emotion that is most opposed to our current economic system of promoting as high levels of consumption as possible, and the emotion that we need to rediscover and re-awaken. Sometime we can reach dis-gust best by detachment, or self-restraint, or even ethical consideration. But the primal old emotional route of simple raw disgust, must be part of our arsenal too. We need a literature of disgust to help people who want to consume less, to actually succeed emotionally at consuming less. This literature of disgust would be a kind of companion to the literature of the practical guides of how to consume less, which include the dis-gusting strategies of detachment, restraint, ethics, and celebrating a less-is-more lifestyle, but stop short of serious use of raw disgust itself. We need a novel of vomit-stories that disgusts and transcends its disgust to point the way to emotional purging and cleansing, or a movie of transcendent disgust.