Disbelief

December 30, 2008 — xanthippa

Perhaps it seems counterintuitive to define ‘disbelief’ before defining ‘belief’.  Yet, in this case, approaching things ‘from behind’, can allows a definition of what does not constitute belief.  Since belief is such a complex matter, it may, in fact, be effective to define ‘disbelief’ first so as to better focus on the different concepts we all lump together as ‘belief’.

Disbelief is simply ‘absence of belief’.

If I were to present you with the statement:  ‘my great-grandmother’s eyes were blue’, and if you would have no way of knowing if it is true or not (no facts are supplied along with the statement and there are no means for you to obtain the facts/you do not dig for the facts).  You would now be faced with two choices:

 

1. Believe

Having read some of what I have written, you could conclude that I am a reliable source and that if I say that ‘my great-grandmother’s eyes were blue’, then they truly were.  While this particular belief may not alter your life to any significant degree, you  invest your trust into me  and accept the statement at face value. 

You believe that at least one my great-grandmothers indeed had blue eyes.

 

2. Disbelieve

You may find that even though there is no reason for my statement to be false, without any supporting evidence, there just is not enough there for you to believe the statement. 

The following sub-categories of ‘disbelief’ are in not somehow official, scholarly, or in any way learned from any source.  Please, do not consider these divisions as somehow ‘authoritative’ or based on any specific philosophy (something I chose never to train in – but that is tangential to the issue….) – they are just my way of looking at the principle of ‘disbelief’.  Yet, I hope they will help to clarify the concept of ‘disbelief’, because it seems to me to be terribly misunderstood in current popular culture.

  • Tentative acceptance (conditional acceptance) 

You may decide that the information came from a credible source, so it is likely to be true.  You have no reason to doubt it.  Yet, you reserve committing to belief  in the veracity of the statement: if more information were to come along (like, say, a statement from several people who knew my great-grandmothers, or some other unforseen event which provided contradictory data), you would have no problem changing your mind on the matter.

On an intellectual level, in the absence of further evidence, you tentatively accept the statement as true, but you do not putt any emotional investment into its veracity.  Were you to learn that the statement is false, you might change your opinion of me as a source of information, but it would not greatly trouble you.  Though, for now, you may behave as if the statement were true, the absence of any ’emotional investment’ in its veracity means you disbelieve it.

This is why I contend that Pascal’s wager  does not constitute belief, but tentative acceptance.  Therefore, in my never-humble-opinion, it is a form of disbelief:  it is an acceptance on an intellectual level, but not on an emotional one.  The emotional investment is, in my opinion, necessary to constitute ‘belief’.

The tentative/conditional acceptance is what, in scientific terms, is termed a conclusion.  It is similar to belief, but not quite there.  It asserts that according to the best information currently available, this seems likely – it is the best conclusion from currently available information – yet, this conclusion is open to ammendment as additional information comes to light.  This is as close to belief as science ever gets….and, irritatingly (to me, anyway), many scientists refer to their conclusions as beliefs.  In reality, when a scientist replaces conclusions with beliefs, they cease being a scientist!

  • Possibility/probability assessment

Here, instead of believing the statement, or tentatively (conditionally) accepting the premise pending further data as truth, you may entertain its veracity as a distinct possibility.  Perhaps you might even give it a ‘probability rating’ – whether scientific or subjective.  Whether this probability is 1% or 99%, it is still a probability assessment – not a belief.

Back to scientists:  if a scientist assesses a conclusion to have a  high probability of being true, they may express this.  Again, this is not in any way the same as belief:  it is a probability assessment, without the emotional investment necessary to cross the boundary between possible or probable on the one hand and belief on the other.  Irritatingly, many people (including scientists – most of whom are not really all that up on liguistics and the nuances of expressions, and many of whom are rather deaf to ‘social nuances’ to start off with) erroneously lump this position in with belief when they speak about it – yet they do not, in any way, imply belief in the religious sense..

  • Absence of opinion

You may read the statement, file away in your mind that I had made it, but make no conclusion about its veracity.  You simply do not care enough to believe it.  It’s there, you can recall that this statement had been made, but that is really the end of it for you. 

  • Belief in the opposite

OK, I admit it:  I am uncomfortable including belief in the opposite into the category of disbelief.  Why?  Because unlike the other positions, listed above, it involves holding a belief.  Not a belief in the statement itself, but rather, a belief in the opposite of the statement in question.  What would be the opposite?  Here, you might believe that my great-grandmother’s eyes were green or brown, so long as you believe they were not blue.

This is disbelief=withholding belief with respect to the statement in question, even if it is not general disbelief. 

  • Belief in unknowability

Again, I am not happy to include this positive belief in the category of disbelief, but, it must be included because it constitutes disbelief with respect to this statement.  The positive belief held here is that there is no way of finding out whether or not the statement is true:  that the veracity of the statement is unknowable.

 

This is not a perfect division – and I am aware that not everybody will agree with the lines I have drawn up to distinguish belief from disbelief.  Yet, I have attempted to apply logic consistently throughout.  I would welcome any and all comments which would help enrich this discussion.

 Aside:

If you are interested in a great documentary on the topic of disbelief, I would recommend ‘Jonathan Miller’s Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief’.  While I am not sure if I agree with everything he says (I’ve only been pondering it for a little over a year – and I am a slow thinker), it is interesting and thought provoking.  It is available for sale, or order over the internet in various places.

Alternately, the 3-hour series can be found many places on the web…  YouTube has many channels which feature it.  One of them has broken it up as follows:

Part 1.1,   part 1.2,  part 1.3,  part 1.4,  part 1.5,  part 1.6

Part 2.1,  part 2.2,  part 2.3,  part 2.4,  part 2.5,  part 2.6, part 2.7

Part 3.1,  part 3.2,  part 3.3,  part 3.4,  part 3.5,  part 3.6

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Posted in atheism, freedoms, human nature, ignosticism, language, philosophy, politics, religion, science, society. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Muslims Against Sharia: ‘Hypocrisy in Action’

December 27, 2008 — xanthippa

Here is an interesting post on ‘Muslims Against Sharia’s’ Blog:  ‘Hypocrisy in Action’:

After listing a number of headlines from many various ‘news sources’ from around the world which unanimously decry the Israeli air raid on Gaza, Muslims Against Sharia ask this key question (emphasis and colour accent is theirs):

Where were Egypt, Russia, OIC,

EU, Britain, Sarkozy, US and Austria

when Hamas was pounding Israel

with daily barrage of rockets?

 

Where indeed…

At least, many people are now asking the question.  (Yes, I am an idealistic optimist…)  And, ‘questioning’ is the first step towards change. 

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Posted in debate, opression, politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , , . 34 Comments »

Corporate censorship – tip of the iceberg…

December 26, 2008 — xanthippa

‘The Economy of Ideas’ by John Perry Barlow, the co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is an excellent (if a little long – but well worth reading) essay published in 1994 in Wired Magazine.  I would be a visionary essay were it published today!  Here, Barlow warns us that in the coming years, corporate censorship could be the greatest danger to our freedom of speech.

A provocative – but well reasoned – position, to say the least. 

“Throughout the history of copyrights and patents, the proprietary assertions of thinkers have been focused not on their ideas but on the expression of those ideas. The ideas themselves, as well as facts about the phenomena of the world, were considered to be the collective property of humanity.”

…

“Notions of property, value, ownership, and the nature of wealth itself are changing more fundamentally than at any time since the Sumerians first poked cuneiform into wet clay and called it stored grain. Only a very few people are aware of the enormity of this shift, and fewer of them are lawyers or public officials.”

…

“Whenever there is such profound divergence between law and social practice, it is not society that adapts. Against the swift tide of custom, the software publishers’ current practice of hanging a few visible scapegoats is so obviously capricious as to only further diminish respect for the law. “

…

“I believe that law, as we understand it, was developed to protect the interests which arose in the two economic “waves” which Alvin Toffler accurately identified in The Third Wave. The First Wave was agriculturally based and required law to order ownership of the principal source of production, land. In the Second Wave, manufacturing became the economic mainspring, and the structure of modern law grew around the centralized institutions that needed protection for their reserves of capital, labor, and hardware.

Both of these economic systems required stability. Their laws were designed to resist change and to assure some equability of distribution within a fairly static social framework. The empty niches had to be constrained to preserve the predictability necessary to either land stewardship or capital formation.

In the Third Wave we have now entered, information to a large extent replaces land, capital, and hardware, and information is most at home in a much more fluid and adaptable environment. The Third Wave is likely to bring a fundamental shift in the purposes and methods of law which will affect far more than simply those statutes which govern intellectual property.” (my emphasis) 

Barlow makes the case that corporate interests will, if allowed, protect their investment in the ‘ideas’ which are the ‘currency’ of the Third Wave – and that could involve significant curbing of our freedom of expression.

Interestingly enough, I have come across this video (and there are many others which raise this issue) that might just demonstrate a tiny little bit of what Barlow is talking about:

It is something to ponder….

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Help fight Sharia

December 22, 2008 — xanthippa

It took the Western society several centuries to separate the Church and the State. I like that.

No longer are great thinkers like Bruno (and many, many others) burned alive for the crime of saying what they think… It took a lot of work and many lives, but we have achieved a wonderful thing: we govern ourselves by laws which are made by men (I use the term inclusively) – so they can change to accommodate our evolving society. As flawed as this system is, this system respects our human rights, regardless of who we happen to be.

In contrast, all forms of religious laws are necessarily oppressive: they are dictated by immutable dogma which does not evolve along with the society. Here, I should be clear that I am not critical of religious laws that people choose to impose upon themselves in addition to the society’s legal system. I do not mean the term ‘religious laws’ in this sense. What I am describing is using religious laws as the legal system of a society. That is a very different thing.

The effect of dogma-based legal systems are always to freeze the society in the time and place where these laws were formed. As the circumstances of the society change, this society has no room to evolve to accommodate these changes… Social stagnation necessarily follows.

We have seen this replayed in many societies, in many different times. That is why I find it so surprising that some Western democracies are returning to this oppressive system.

As many of you may be aware, Britain has instituted Sharia courts as part of its legal system. Yes, it is true. Sharia court decisions are now legally binding in Britain. Yes, it is true. Even though the Sharia courts operated in Britain in an unofficial capacity for years (and this was widely reported on early in 2008), their ‘official’ status is not all that widely known about, especially in the USA. Perhaps this is because this happened in September of 2008….when much of the Western media was busy covering the US presidential election (and not much else).

I must be honest here – Sharia scares me. It scares me a lot. As an immigrant (and as someone who still helps immigrants learn English), I get to meet a lot of people who come to Canada from all kinds of places: including places where Sharia is the legal system.  They have helped me understand exactly how Sharia works…  And even though we have succeeded in exorcising the spectre of official Sharia in Ontario, there is more and more ‘Sharia creep’ in our society. 

This makes me feel powerless and frustrated.  Which is why I was very happy to find that there IS something every one of us can do to help stop Sharia’s growth!  It may not be much, but every avalanche starts with a snowflake…

The above link is a petition which people worldwide can sign to protest the institution of Sharia Courts in Britain.  One does not have to be British to sign it.  Every signature counts:  it was the large scale protests by Muslim women in Europe that helped avert the imposition of Sharia on our Canadian Muslims. 

So, if you, too, think that separating state from religion – be it a church, a mosque, a temple or a coven – if you think separating these is a good idea, here is your chance to stand up and be counted.  (Well, actually, more like ‘click and be counted’, but you get the idea..)

Here is the statement from the petition:

Global Statement

Sharia Law is discriminatory, cruel and barbaric.

People of all nations should be unequivocally supported in their struggle against Sharia law and should be able to live in societies where universal human rights and nationwide citizenship rights are guaranteed.

There is no place in the 21st century for Sharia.  Full stop.

The full manifesto is here.

You can sign the petition here. 

(edit – adding in a video on it)

Go forth and sign!  And don’t forget to share the linkie with your friends!

 

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The rise of ‘Unions’ – Part 1

December 20, 2008 — xanthippa

This is part of The Big Picture series of posts – my attempt to explain what is happening in the world around us.

Trade Unions  (labour unions) had been a puzzle to me for years:  I could not reconcile their stated goal, their self-proclaimed ‘raison d’etre’, with their behaviour. 

For years – while a teen, I watched my parent’s employers and their attitudes towards their employees.  My mom worked for a large crown corporation – a union shop – while my dad worked for a huge, multinational hi-tech company (no union). 

I had learned in school that unions were there solely to protect the employees from the ruthlessness of the employer – yet, my mom’s militant union constantly bullied her and caused her incredible stress.  Even when the union was not planning a strike – there were a lot of tentions raised by them in everyday life at my mom’s work.  And whenever the union ‘pushed’ the employer, the employer ‘pushed’ right back, leaving the employees stuck in the middle.  It was stressful, to say the least.

Contrast that with my dad’s employer:  they had first class benefits (my mom often used my dad’s ‘family member’ plan, when her own union-won plan would not cover things), they had much higher salaries (OK – so it was a high-tech company, but even their secretaries were better paid than the secretaries at my mom’s work), there was hardly any discord or any of the ’employer-employee stress’ that was present at my mom’s work.  There were family picnics and all kinds of ‘family stuff’ at my dad’s work (like summer jobs for employees’ kids, if they wanted them) that were completely unthinkable at my mom’s work.

It seemed to me that while my dad’s non-unionized employer motivated their employees with the proverbial ‘carrot’, my mom’s unionized place of work employed what could only be called a ‘double stick’ – one weilded by the employer, the other by the union.

Since then, I have worked a number of jobs – two of them unionized.  I have had good employers whom I would go to the end of the world for – and bad ones, whom I would like to leave at the end of the world.  And, I have started a number of small businesses which employed people – so, I guess I have had a ‘job’ as the employer, too.  Yet, I must admit, that my two unionized jobs were by far the most stressful environments – way more stressful than figuring out how to meet payroll in difficult times.

So, why unions?

Of course, history answers that one – that is a no-brainer! 

Yet, I cannot but think that the very reason why unions came about is also the reason why they are no longer a positive influence.  It all has to do with the whole ‘Scaling up of communities‘and ‘scaling up of caring’ rant I have been on lately… 

What started up as a small group to protect the rights of its members grew – and grew – and grew…  until it became too big to ‘care about’ (represent) each member of the union as an individual.  Just as we have seen with states, the ‘scaling up’ of any organization requires the introduction of governance structures which necessitates replacing ‘caring’ and ‘social bonds’ with ‘rules’ and ‘procedures’.

That is exactly what happened with unions!

Instead of being a small, yet ‘caring managable’ sub-group which represented each member, unions became a separate organization of its own – there are now even ‘unions of unions’, umberella organizations which organize the unions ‘from above’ and remove the ability of individual members to affect significantly the course of the union’s actions!  In effect, the unions have now become an additional layer of highly bureaucratized management which battles with the employer’s management structure for power over the employees…

And all because the unions grew to a size where they lost the ability to ‘care’!

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Scaling up ‘caring’

December 18, 2008 — xanthippa

We all care deeply about our ‘loved ones’ – be they family or friends, or even pets.  We also want to be loved and respected.  We thrive in the knowledge that someone cares about us – not for what we are, but for who we are.

This is a very strong human need.  Some would point out that this need is not unique to humans – all ‘social beings’  share it:  and they would be right.  Our pets agree to adopt us as much as we adopt them.  And we are all aware of inter-species bonds in nature, too.  But, I am off on a tangent again…  This post is part of the current discussion of ‘The Big Picture’, which is focusing on human society in particular – so I will limit this look to humans…

In the Scaling up communities segment (to which I will be adding more posts), I have tried to look at how the process of living in ever-larger social units – communities – has necessarily affected the way we organize our societies, how we interact and govern each other.  Yet, this scaling up of communities has also affected us on very personal levels:  how and whom we interact with and what our expectations of ‘caring’ are, of others and of ourselves.  And that is what the posts ‘congregated’ here will concentrate on.

 

Back to The Big Picture

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Scaling up communities

December 16, 2008 — xanthippa

This is a series of posts which are part of The Big Picture – or what is happening in our society.

We can only care – truly care – about a limited number of people at any one time. 

Yes, we can ‘care’ about ‘all of humanity’ and ‘all on Earth’ and ‘all existence’ – but this type of caring is very philosophical, because we cannot possibly know every human being, or every being, or every ‘thing’ around us!  But, we care about all these issues in a more detached way than we care about our parents, kids, or closest friends.

Why?

Perhaps the answer is in how our brain is structured:  the Dunbar number is just about the limit of our ‘Monkey Sphere’ – the better we know someone, the deeper inside our Monkeysphere they get.  This is the reason why the death of a loved one affects us more than the death of someone we have never heard of before – and whose name or specifics we do not know.  My take on this is in Scaling up communities – Part 1. 

As our small, primitive communities grew to larger ones – culminating in our current political structures, called states.  These are much larger than our original communities, so we have had to find new ways of administering our societal structures.  I explored this in Scaling up communities – Part 2.

Yet, our modern ‘states’ are just social and philosophical constructs – and are unable to ‘affect’ anything without the aid of people who act on their behalf.  In Scaling up communities – Part 3, I look at the general concept behind being ‘an agent of the state’.

What happens when the state contracts a class of citizens to perform a certain collection of tasks on its behalf?  Scaling up communities – part 4 looks at what happens when a whole class of citizens who deem themselves ‘independant professionals’ are contracted by the state – as in the case of physicians in a state which provides socialized medicare – and how these professionals are not free to act according to their conscience while they are forced to be nothing other than ‘agents of the state’.

The story is ‘to be continued’ – and updated as it is continued.

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Scaling up communities – part 4

December 12, 2008 — xanthippa

As part of capturing The Big Picture of our society, I have been examining the benefits and costs of scaling up of our communities.

In Part 3, I looked at the establishment of governance structures as a necessity to administer our societies which have scaled up to become states.  The people who enable the governance structures are, in the core meaning of the term, ‘agents of the state’.  (The lead-up posts can be found here:  Part 1 and Part 2.)

The moral dilemma which agents of the state face is simple in its mechanics, but complex in its resolution.  Perhaps it cannot really be satisfactorily resolved – only ‘put up with’, or managed, in one way or another.  And, in a way, this dilemma is also the ‘last check’ on the power of the state…

There is an inherent dichotomy between being an individual – with individual moral views and opinions – and being an agent of the state whose very purpose is to carry out the will of the state.  This cannot be easy, as it is unlikely that every agent of the state will agree with every single policy of the state – yet, it is their job to implement them all.

An ‘agent of the state’ is anyone who is directly hired by the state (civil servant) or who is officially licensed (contracted) by the state to deliver a service on behalf of the state.   (In this series of posts, I use the word ‘state’ in its core meaning:  it could mean provincial, municipal, federal, state, or whatever other political unit has sovereignity of a specific geographic area within a specific sphere of influence.)

This is not the ‘licensing’ – as in certification, where the state accredits someone to practice in a specific field on their own – like, say, plumbers or electricians.  Plumbers and electricians (etc.) may be ‘licensed’ by the state, but their clients contract them privately, not to deliver a government-mandated service.  (There are exceptions, where the state may hire private contractors also licensed to practice by the state, but that is ‘special case’.)

It is a different kind of ‘licensing’.  This kind of licence contracts the licencee to perform services on behalf of the state:  it is this ‘on behalf of the state’ which makes such a licensee an agent of the state. 

When delivering services to its citizens, the government is bound by a different set of rules than a private citizen, or a private business, is (or, at least, it ought to be).  A private contractor may bid on a job – but is not obligated to enter into a contract to pave someone’s laneway in pink interlock brick, if pink annoys him. 

The government already has a pre-existing contract with each citizen to deliver certain services in return for the taxes already levied upon its citizens.  Once a citizen chooses to exercise their part of the contract, the government is obligated to deliver such services.  And, the person who has accepted to be the government contractor is obligated to deliver this.

To put it into different terms:  if I run my own soup shop, I may need a business licence – but it is my shop and I pick what is on the menu.  If, on the other hand, the government got elected on a promise to provide 5 specific kinds of soup in soup kitchens, free to every citizen once a day, and if I get contracted by the government to run a soup kitchen, I cannot then turn around and say I will not make pea soup (that being one of the 5), because it is against my convictions or conscience or whatever!  Either, I open my own shop, and run it pea-soup-free – and get paid by my clients.  Or I accept to be paid by the government, in which case I will indeed be serving pea soup. 

This, of course, translates into areas much more controversial than pea soup….which, by the way, I rather like. 

Socialized healthcare, for instance, is one such area:  each and every physician who does not hand a bill directly to the patient (or their insurance company), but is paid by the state – each one of these physicians is an agent of the state.  And, each and every one of them is obligated to serve pea soup – or prescribe ‘the morning after’ pill, or perform abortions, or whatever other medical procedure the government has agreed to provide to its citizens, as long as the physician is profesionally qualified to perform such services. 

Yes, I know – many of my conservative readers may not like this.  It seems repugnant to many of us that a physician who is opposed to abortion on demand may be forced to prescribe ‘the abortion pill’…. 

I agree – it is WRONG. 

But it is not wrong because the government is forcing the physician to ‘act against their conscience’.  The government is doing no such thing:  the physician had agreed to abdicate his or her personal convictions or beliefs when he or she accepted to act as an agent of the state!

So, the fault does not lie with the demand that agent of the state actually deliver the services they are contracted to. 

The fault lies in forcing physicians be the agents of the state in the first place!

If a physician has a private practice, there is no way a government should be able to compel him or her to perform a procedure the physician does not want to – whether through moral convictions or because the doctor is having a bad hair day.  Independant professionals ought not be compelled to perform services against their will.  

But, it is a completely different situation if the physician is an ‘agent of the state’ … 

If the agents of the state refuse to carry out the very tasks the state has mandated – ones necessary for the state to fulfill its contract to its citizenry, that state will cease to function.  If not remedied, the state will cease to exist. 

This is the ‘last check’ on the state which I mentioned earlier:  by refusing to carry out the will of the state, should the action be too abhorrent, its agents can indeed bring about the end of such a state!

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Scaling up communities – Part 3

December 9, 2008 — xanthippa

We, humans build communities.   As our societies grew, since the dawns of history, so did the size of our communities – and we reaped a lot of benefits from this.  Yet, the ‘scaling up’ process -while raising our standard of living – has some costs associated with it, too…

Part 1  of this series looked at the significance of Dunbar’s number (about 150):  the number of people who comfortably fit into our Monkeysphere (that is, the people we relate to as individuals, rather than statistics).  This is about the maximum size of our community, before we start ‘scaling up’ by perceiving ‘others’ as concepts, rather than individuals….the reason why the suffering of our parent or child ‘touches’ us more than that of a stranger.  

In Part 2 , I tried to demonstrate how scaling our communities up meant heaving to sacrifice some of our individuality (having to interact with more people than can fit into our Monkeyshpere – and whose Monkeyspheres we cannot fit into) but that the benefits of this,  specialization and greater productivity, benefits us by allowing us to reach a higher standard of living.  The side-effect of this scaling up of communities is the emergence of governance structures.  

Here, I would like to look at one of the many implications of scaling governance structures up – and the emrgence of a specific group of people to administer them:  the ‘civil servants’.

I cannot remember which king is said to have uttered:  ‘I AM the State!’ – perhaps there were many.  Yet, most ‘states’ (and here, I use the word state to mean a political association with sovereignity over a defined geographic area) today are not ‘a person’. ‘State’ is a concept which only exists when real flesh-and-blood people act as its agents. 

In other words, a ‘state’ cannot ‘do’ anything ‘physical’, because it is not a corporeal being in and of itself.  A ‘state’ cannot pick up a stapeler, or a gun – or write a constitution.  It is individual people, the agents of the state, who act on behalf of the state:  they carry out the actions necessary to establish the state’s existence and perform the physical actions needed to fulfill the obligations of the state in the social contract between it and the the polulace which created it.

As we have already seen in the earlier parts, as we, humans, get more successful at ‘community building’, our communities get bigger and we can no longer decide each ‘common position’ in the same way we used to:  we no longer know every other member of our society personally, so the methods of the ‘smaller scale community’ are no longer applicable. 

By ‘scaling up’ our communities, through our social contract, we have chosen to give away some of our individual decision-making choices and agreed, in certain areas of our life, to abide by the decisions that ‘the group’ has arrived at.  The group may choose to accept the decisions of its leader, or each citizen may be able to vote on every desision, with the majority opinion becoming binding on the group – or any number of other methods…but that is not the point of this post.

The point I am making is that once this ‘group decision’ is achieved on a specific topic, it becomes the ‘law’ (OK, I am simplifying the process – but not the principle) or ‘policy’ of the ‘state’.  This ‘group decision’ is implemented/enacted/put into practice/fulfilled through the governance structures of the state – with ‘the civil servants’ acting as ‘the agents of state’ who carry out the actions necessary to enact (enforce, fulfill, etc.) it.

In democratic systems – and I am specifically referring to our ‘Western Democracies’ – it is not likely that every citizen will agree fully with every ‘law’ or ‘policy’ of the state.  And, in our Western systems, that is a good thing, because it is through open debate that we grow.  (OK, so this bit is more theoretical, lately, than most of us would like, but in principle…)

And this is where we run into a real problem, a bit where the ‘scaling up’ of our community creates a moral dilema:  what happens when the civil servants – the very agents whose actions are the only means for the state to act in order to fulfill its social contrats with its citizens – what happens when these agents of the states personally disagree with what they are obligated to implement?

While they are ‘off the clock’ as private citizens, they have every right to be the individuals they truly are.  Yet, while they are acting as agents of the state – what should govern their behaviour?  Their inividual views and opinions, or the policies/laws the society has agreed to accept? 

Difficult question, to say the least.

IF they should follow the ‘social contract’ mindlessly, they risk becoming the very agents of injustice, of ‘tyranny of the majority’ – and atrocities like the Holocaust could NOT have happened without ‘agents of the state’ refusing to enact immoral policies, blindly putting into practice the unthinkable.  Never again!

On the other hand – what happens if the majority of the citizens approve a just law, yet one which is not favourable to the civil servants?  What if it is designed to protect a minority – but not a minority that (for some unknown reason) the majority of civil servants do not respect?  Or, what if it is meant to curb the intrusion of civil servants into citizens’ lives?  It is not unprecedented that most of the agents of the state would be morally opposed – or, at least, personally unwilling – to bring these policies/laws into practice…

So, where does the balance lie? 

At which point should the civil servants set aside their individuality – and their morality – in order to perform the will of the group?

Difficult question, to say the least.

Without the civil servant’s denial of their individual morality, while acting as agents of the state, the state cannot effect its will – and so it will effectively cease to exist.  Yet, without applying their ‘morality’ to their actions, the civil servants may be empowering immoral laws or policies.

Where does the balance lie?

In my never-humble-opinion, the civil servants are the ‘last check’ on the state:  they cannot but evaluate their own actions based on their personal morality.  Yet, while they are acting as agents of the state, they may not act upon this personal morality.  It is up to them to weigh the balance between continuing to act as agents of the state – or not.  If they choose to no longer act as agents of the state, they must abdicate their role of ‘agent of the state’….

In other words, if enough civil servants resign over moral objections by refusing to enact the will of the state, the state will cease to exist.  This must be a heavy weight on the conscience of each and every civil servant!

Return to ‘The Big Picture’

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REAL cultural tolerance!!!

December 8, 2008 — xanthippa

A few days ago, I had an experience that proved to me something I think most of us already know:  the ‘official bureaucrats’, ‘brave and steadfast guardians of multiculturalism’ (in the name of which they are ready to oppress us) really have no clue what ‘being multicultural’ is all about!!!

Having arrived a little early for my son’s ‘parent-teacher interview’, I walked around a little, admiring the pictures and poems posted in the school hallways.  Unusually, in front of the library door, there were a couple of chairs and a desk.  In these chairs sat two girls, I’m guessing about 12 years old.   They were supervised by one of their Mom’s (sitting off to the side) – their smiles betrayed the heritage.  Both mother and daughter wore a hijab – so I am making a presumption that they were Muslim.  The other student, the daughter’s friend, did not wear a hijab. 

Yet, the two of girls were obviously good friends – and they made an awesome team.  These two girls decided that it was important to help kids less fortunate then they – and they figured out a way they could make a real difference in the world!

In order to raise money for a charity helping kids in Africa, they focused their creative efforts.  Taking up card-stock, delicately ornate origami paper, glue and calligraphy markers, they made a whole slew of Christmas cards to sell to parents coming to the parent-teacher interviews!

When I asked, they told me they came up with the idea together.  Their eyes shone with pride of ‘doing right’!  And, they were justly proud – their cards were beautiful!  At a $1.00 a piece, I saw every parent passing them (including myself) dump all the change from their wallets and walk away with a stack of Christmas cards.

The Mom was the ’empowering parent’:  not only did she agree to supervise the ‘sales’, she was the one to buy the supplies, too.  The Mom was happy when other parents stopped and asked questions, and she looked downright ‘parentally proud’ when someone complimented the two girls or their Christmas cards – or their greater goal! 

And the girls deserved every compliment they got!  Many young people have awesome ideals, but these two girls had actually figured out a way they themselves could have an impact in making this world a better place for others.  My deep respect goes to them!

Now, I would like to repeat the reality of this:  I (an ignostic) have just bought a whole pile of the most beautiful Christmas cards ever from 2 very young people, one of whom wore the hijab (and, thus, was presumably not a Christian).  And the adult supervisor/enabler was (in my best guess) a Muslima.  I have no clues as to the cultural or religious thoughts of the third person.  Not one of us found anything in the least offensive in making, selling and buying cards wishing everyone to have a ‘Merry Christmas’!

To me, that is a perfect example of the way that people – without government imposed ‘official multiculturalism’ and the bureaucrats who force us into cultural apartheid – will do that most human thing ever:  build communities! And it proves we can do it without regard as to our background culture, religion, or any other superficial means of labeling us, classifying us and dividing us! 

That whole ‘divide and conquer’ will only work if we allow ourselves to be divided!  And if we allow ourselves to be divided, we will be conquered and our rights and freedoms will be taken away!

We must not be hiding our cultural icons from each other, for fear giving offence!  If we hide them, we cannot share them – nor can we rejoice in them!  We can learn from each other by sharing in each other’s festivals, ideas and thoughts.  That is the most human thing ever – and we must not allow those who wish to rule us by dividing us into ‘cultural solitudes’ to succeed!

We can understand that anything which celebrates the human spirit and the beauty of caring and sharing can help us build our community and grow as human beings.  And, at times, our young people can even teach us how sharing in each other’s celebrations can help people whom we do not even know!

That, in my never-humble-opinion, is REAL cultural tolerance! 

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Posted in freedoms, human nature, ignosticism, immigrants, opression, philosophy, politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 3 Comments »
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