The Power of Paradox

Paradox.

The tension created by two things that cannot both possibly be true. Perhaps one truth negates the other. Perhaps they present an impossible timeline. Perhaps they are trying to occupy the same space at the same time. Whatever the reason, paradoxes arise when two truths are at odds.

When it comes to physical reality, paradoxes are worth paying attention to. If something is inconsistent or impossible, then it should be investigated and you should attend to it accordingly.

But in the realm of the human heart, paradox is not only not bad, but a fundamental part of the way we work. People desire, simultaneously, different, and at times, opposing things. This is totally rational and to be expected. See, people are not mere comparison calculators, measuring the worth of one activity versus another. If we were, there would always be a clear, even if sometimes close, decision. Rather, people are imaginative visionaries of possibility, spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually aligning with different paths, dreaming of how things could be. This is not a mathematical process. It is dreaming, and bringing into being.

Not only do we at times want opposing things, people are capable of being opposing things. One person, at one given moment, concerning one given thing, can be both cowardly and courageous, flustered and composed, engaged and distant.

Now, this impossibly broad range of desire and being can be both good and bad. For worse, it allows us to want the right, and still want the wrong. It means our actions can have deeply rooted inconsistencies that facilitate immoral action and still feel authentic. For these reasons, our paradoxical nature is to be treated with care.

For better, though, it lets us become impossibly perfect for doing good in the world. We can want our good and the good of others. Respect the individual and the group. Be practical and idealistic. We can be skeptical and confident. Brave and fearful. Elderly and youthful. Thoughtful and emotional. Salty and sweet.

No matter what, we are paradoxes. They cannot be eliminated, but that does not mean that all paradox should be embraced. Ultimately, it comes down to what you want your paradoxes to accomplish. What is it about you that makes people turn their head?

Is it how you can walk out of church and cuss people out in the parking lot? Or is it how you can be so proud of your life, but not look down on the lives of others?

Do you want people to wonder how it is you can be so selfish, and still be so unhappy? What about forcing them to think on how it is you manage to meet all your needs only worrying about the needs of others?

So break free of any expectation that you may tacitly live by, preventing you from becoming the greatest possible you doing the greatest possible good. You can be a solid softy. A peaceful badass. Innocent and sexy. Many in the course of human history have let his or her inconsistency bring harm to the world. Its time we let our paradoxes do some good.

The Journeying Universe

Suffering. We've all thought about it. Whether its the ardent atheist or the doubting devotee, the existence of suffering seems to confound our notion of God.

If God is all good, all knowing, and all powerful, we reason... Wouldn't God want a universe with no suffering, know how to make it, and have the power to pull it off?

But here's the thing. Suffering doesn't disprove the movement of goodness in our world. In fact, that we get so indignant that suffering exists is actually a strange kind of proof in God's plan. We sense a wrongness about suffering precisely because the universe tends toward goodness.

The universe exists as a continual outpouring of love. True, sometimes things seem broken, but the true measure of the plan is in its culmination. Suffering is bound in time, and contextualized in the history of the world.

So, the next time the existence of suffering starts gnawing at you, remember: It's all good in the end. If it ain't all good, it ain't the end.

Or, said another way: Creation itself is forged by the unstoppable journey toward completeness.

Whichever way you say it, both represent the simultaneous sentiments of "This too shall pass," and "You ain't seen nothin' yet."

Grace and Ontological Immediacy

The universe is being created now. Every single moment, every instant of time is a vast birthing of all things. The universe was not conceptualized, built, and set into motion eons ago. Rather, it appears to have a causal consistency because at each moment it is gracefully and brilliantly born into being, seamlessly harmonious with the moments before it.

I am made now. Recreated with all my memories, scars, and traits. In this moment I am free, for in the intimate presence of my creator I am given a single moment of honest being. By stringing these moments together, God creates a place for my deliberation, beliefs, convictions, and emotions.

Freedom

Doing good does not restrict my freedom.

It is not an imposition on my actions. Even if morality dictates one course of action amid many, it did not coerce me into choosing.

Acting morally is an act of the will. It is precisely my will that makes choices.

Being free is not chanting, "I have choices, I have choices, I have choices," but rather using choice to pick a path worth following.

Have you chosen a goal worth pursuing? Worth pursuing with conviction?

Would you have beaten your slaves to death?

Would you have raped your wife?

Would you have killed a man for insulting your family?

The first reaction is to say no, of course not. These things are heinous, not thought of as very acceptable nowadays. Think about it a little more. Embedded in the culture of another time and place, would you have done it? What if the prevailing values of the day thought nothing of it? How about then?

Astute thinkers often respond, sometimes a bit depressed, that yes, yes they would have. This is a very important lesson to learn. Your world has tremendous power to influence your value system.

But is is the last lesson to learn on the matter? How, exactly, did those social changes come about? While it is true that most people of the day regarded a slave's life as property, or a woman's sexuality her husband's domain, or a familial insult grounds for killing, there were people who did not. Some of them disagreed secretly and personally refrained. Others openly, challenging the cultural norm with rhetoric and public defiance.

Challenge the cultural assumptions of your time.

Refuse to hide behind the value systems drawn about you by your environment. Sure, be respectful of your culture, and good to its people. But if a situation breaches a deep moral intuition, look into it. Ask courageous questions about how your people view particular persons, places, or things. Attend to moral categories, little inconstancies in the classifications of beings, and the words used to describe marginalized groups.

The only realistic to the above hypothetical questions hinges on how you behave now. Do you go above and beyond the demands of your society to do good? Do you take stances to defend that which is weak or voiceless? Can you see through cultural values that violate deeper truths?

My advice? Rise above. Be fearless and meticulous concerning your actions. That way, the next time someone asks you if you would have owned slaves, you can confidently and accurately say no.

Flip the Script

Most discussions of morality involve the fight between right and wrong, casting humans as fundamentally selfish (or evil, or bestial) creatures that must restrain themselves from doing wrong in order to do right. The moral actor has traits like a conscience to discern, restraint to control urges, and will to persevere.

What I am interested in is the underlying world that supports this mindset. It assumes that selfish acts have a sort of gravity, and that one who is moral must struggle in order to keep their path clear of doing bad. While I believe that some moral issues are indeed difficult, and some people live lives of constant moral tension, this paradigm is by no means ubiquitous.

I have a few issues. First, not all good choices are hard to make. Sometimes doing good is rather easy. In fact, it is the thing a moral actor wants the most! Consider helping your family, or your lover. Those impulses often far outweigh any selfish desire we may foster.

Secondly, this struggling mindset focuses the drama of right and wrong within the actor, which I think is a dangerous perspective. An action is right if it puts the situation in its best arrangement, good exists apart from the actor... at least in my little picture of the world. Seating good and bad within the person, though, makes morality about them. Suddenly people start striving to be good people, which, I'm sorry, while its seems nice, is actually a distraction. People should strive to do good, and if they think of good as in the world, it gets a bit easier to do.

Finally, casting ethical actions as struggles makes the intensity of an action related to the amount of struggle. The harder it was to make a decision, it would seem, the more moral the person who can still do right. While I have nothing but respect for those who make courageous decisions in difficult times, I think that person is both courageous and did good... not that they did more good. Again, the amount of good done is measured by the amount of good done in the world... it being hard to do doesn't actually increase the rightness of it being done. Besides, I suspect that sometimes people lock themselves in drawn out moral quandaries because it makes them better people. If it was really hard to do, that means they are good people. Just not the way I see it.

Now, behaving ethically does have an impact on the person. True, sometimes it is a tense and stressful act. But often it is a joyful one. Let me give you a few examples from my life. I think it is good to treat other people with goodwill. If you have ever met me, I was probably happy to see you and talk to you, and most likely, I treated you with respect. I think I am morally obligated to be generally good to people.

Is it a struggle?

Every once in a while... I'll admit it. People who are particularly rude, mean, or frustrating. And yes, there are some people who are just so annoying that its difficult to have a real conversation with them.

But for the very most part, more than 98% of the time, I'd wager, I really enjoy treating people well. Each new situation isn't another challenge; each new person isn't another burden. As I like doing it, every instance becomes an opportunity, a chance to do good.

Another example. I choose not to eat meat, or rather, I try to avoid any action that contributes to the death of an animal. I reason that so long as I can live without it, any animal death on my behalf is unnecessary. I believe that animals have at least enough intrinsic value that I should avoid unnecessary killing. More on this later.

Is is hard?

Yeah, sometimes. Every once in a while I find myself in a restaurant, very hungry, and I'm staring at a menu with little or no vegetarian options. I have to choose between not eating, eating something truly unappetizing, or eating meat. Tough, no lying.

But most of the time, I am not caught in this crossfire. For one, I avoid those restaurants, so that I don't have to have all that stress. But really, I usually eat at home, and I so long as my grocery trip is veg, my options at home are veg. Not only is it not hard, most of the time it's fun. I love when I find a absolutely delicious vegetarian food. Makes me really happy. Also, I feel a special kinship to animals. Might sound weird, but when I meet an animal, I meet them as something of an equal, and I am proud that I will never meet them as meat. It really isn't that strange, actually. If you helped save the people of a town from floods by sandbagging, wouldn't you feel a swell of pride meeting one of those people.

Doing good doesn't have to be torture. Rather, doing good is an opportunity to demonstrate your respect for the value of something or someone. Externally, it is an act of sanctification, where you bestow an expression of worth onto a person, place, or thing. Pretty cool. Internally, it is an act of compassionate transformation, where you hone your sensitivity and reinforce the habit of right action.

I catch the bugs in my apartment and let them go outside. Now, am I committed to the wellbeing of all insects and arachnids... not exactly. But while it is a bit harder to catch a fly then to up an off him, I am not put out by the extra effort. Rather, its feels really good, probably unreasonably good, to let that small creature into the world unharmed.

The Lonely Road

I once set out to figure out the whole of the universe all on my own.

What an empty, lonely search that turned out to be! And why not? I was the one who decided it should be "all on my own."

As it turns out, "all on my own" is what you call it when you are fit and full of energy, for when you are tired and weak, the exact same arrangement ends up being empty and lonely. I was the one who deemed it should be lonely.

Not only had I hexed the mood of my inquiry, I had filibustered its productivity. Alone, I would only find the truths I had made... leaving out the truths created by communion with others and truths created by God. And come on, when it really comes down to it, those are better than the ones I cook up.

Besides, being with people and with God doesn't make my truths any less true. In fact, it is within relationship with others and the divine that makes my convictions valuable at all.

The Selfish Pessimist

Most cynics don't want to be cheered up.

This is because so long as they begrudgingly ruminate on how the the world has failed to live up to their expectations, they get to enjoy two indulgences.

First, the get to imagine that their standards are so important that other people, the weather, social/political trends, and God himself should all be living up to that measure.  I suppose this also makes the cynic very important to, for having grumped so hard in order to create these categorical expectations.

Second, they get to appear to be aware of the world, despite never actually stopping thinking about themselves.  It is their pain, their inconvenience, their disappointment.  The narrative can move from issue to issue, but so long as the criticisms continue, the self fixation never has to end.

Of course they don't want to be grateful!  Their pity party would have to end.  Gratitude is a supreme act of otherness, as it actually defines our life in terms of the things in it.  

Trust me, gratitude is more fun than resentfulness.  Just another example of how good is its own reward.

Part of the Whole

Each of us a tiny, fragile, unique, and necessary part of a flawless and beautiful whole. We are inrreplacably significant, the only possible and wholly needed answer to the problems we solve, the only one who can fill the roles we take on. We are special, the novel manifestation of a divine plan. We are immeasurably valuable.

Thing is, so is everything else.

Our place in the world is great indeed, but our greatness is not one of dominion. We are amid a holy creation, churning with blessing and providence. We should have no doubt that we are loved, and that our work is good, but at the same time we need not hold ourselves higher than anything else.

So, know that you are needed, and be proud you have holy place in the greatest plan ever made... and at the same time, bask in the glory and beauty of the rest of the grand design, doing good to all things.

Importance

Fight the urge to make your beliefs better than other people's. Rather, work to make your beliefs better.

Your convictions don't need to be older, newer, bigger, simpler, sleeker, more contemplated, or truer than anyone else's. Quit trying to subsume their ideology into your own. Let them represent their own ideas, let them frame them how they will.

Concern yourself with the truth, and how to best work within that truth to do the greatest possible good. Let the value of your ideas ring in your words and actions. If it really is true that everyone should think just like you, then why would all the persuasion be necessary?

Precarious Personhood

Whether or not something is seen as a person is of the utmost importance in moral thinking.  While there are certainly extreme exceptions to the rule, most people in most situations will avoid doing ill to what they consider a person.  In fact, the more exposed to the personhood of the subject (ie - the more we know them), the more the moral actor seeks the subject's good.  

This being the case, it's important for this project to understand what makes a person, or rather, what makes a person seem like a person.  This seeming is for the time what we are after, since we are trying to understand the process by which a moral actor affords consideration to what they perceive as persons.

In order to be considered a person, the thing in question must have a good of its own.  A value to its thriving, apart from its instrumental value for others.  This built-in value is the foundation of moral consideration, for without it, the thing only is given respect earned by the task it can be put in service of, and it can easily be sacrificed for the good of a person.

Consider the chunk of marble.  While it may have value to an artist wanting to chisel it into a sculpture, or the quarry man who wants compensation for his hard work, the marble has no value of its own.  It may be assigned an economic value, but will never get considered beyond its usefulness to persons.

Compare that to your best friend.  While your best friend may too be part of an economy, selling time and effort for money or favors, your friend has a built-in value, a good of his or her own, that is to be respected over and above any functionalization.  This is precisely why we are outraged by slavery, and really any system that mimics slavery.

Many moral thinkers stop with inherent good as the genesis of moral consideration.  I contend there is another attribute that must coexist with inherent good in order for a thing to be a person (and afforded a persons rights).  A thing must also have consideration for the good of persons in order to be a full person.

Consider the pit viper.  The viper clearly has a good of its own.  It wants to live, eat, and bear its young.  But in the pursuit of its good, the viper has no respect for the goods of others.  It violently strikes out at the world to achieve its ends.  We have a word for creatures of this ilk.  They aren't persons.  They are beasts.

Beasts don't follow their dreams, they don't reason, they don't learn.  Rather, they have instincts that drive their actions.  This lack of inner substance, lack of consideration for others, cheapens their ends.  While often left to their hunting, when their actions jeopardize the goods of persons... well, such a violence is unconscionable.

Consideration for the good of others is necessary for personhood.  It should be noted that consideration is necessary for personhood, but not sufficient.  If a thing is simply good for others but has no good of its own... well, it can simply be put in service of that which its improves with no moral issue.  These things are seen as nurturers... nothing more.  Plants are often placed in this category.  They are living, and bear sustenance for others, but have no inherent value.

That which has a good but no consideration is a violent beast.  That which has consideration but no good is a providing nurturer.  Between these two stands the person, with its own good but capable of considering the good of others.

Now, why is this important?  Many people have had their good stripped away by being jostled into the category of beast or nurturer.  Human murderers, enemy soldiers, adversaries of any stripe, possibly dangerous strangers... once a person threatens our good, we can push them into the category of beast.  Once the shift is made, we no longer have to consider their good.  On the other end of the spectrum are voiceless laborers, mothers, subordinates, possibly useful strangers... people who's purpose seems to be to better our lives.  By making them nurturers, they become subjugated to our own good and therefore ultimately lacking inherent worth.

Knowing this, be careful you do not create beasts and nurturers from persons.  A person threatening your good should of course be stopped, but in a way that is respectful to their own good.  Similarly, someone able to help you should of course be allowed, but only in a way that its respectful of their good.

We should also to be more than beast or nurturer.  We dehumanize ourselves when we violate the sacred other by reducing them to mere function in our lives.  We also dehumanize ourselves when we violate the sacred self by reducing ourselves to mere function in their lives.

If you have any doubt that this happens, consider hundreds of years of slavery.  Consider spousal abuse and rape.  Consider ordinary men killing the faceless, monstrous enemy.  

The beast is just waiting put down; the plant is just waiting to be picked.