*(A line from a Springsteen song, in case you didn’t know.)
With the “Supreme” Court and it’s viciously ideological rightwing members now stampeding the United States full-tilt to all-out fascism, there is little to celebrate this July 4th. Even if Trump does not run or does not win (for whatever reason, including federal indictments), even if, by some incomprehensible miracle, the moves the court will make in its next session do not entirely erase the majority of voters voices from our political enterprise, matters remain dire.
It is clear that the overwhelming majority of the Republican party has abandoned any pretense of decency, of reason, and most certainly of democracy. Absent a series of what appears, as of this writing, to be highly unlikely events, the experiment that was the United States is done for. So, on this holiday, I leave you with these “postcards.”
(I add this last one for those who think there’s no difference between the two.)
So this evening while you’re testing your luck at whether or not you blow your hand(s) off, and terrorizing the dogs, cats, birds, veterans with PTSD, etc, in your neighborhood with explosive devices, perhaps cast a thought to little things like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, and whether these things actually matter to you, or if all you care about is feeling good about white supremacism and other fascist instruments of hegemonic domination.
Getting to this place where I can write what is obvious.
It is not an accident that within a matter of a couple of days, this “Supreme” court has viciously curtailed human rights while indefensibly expanding gun rights. But take a look at the picture below. Look at it carefully. This is not a person.
This is a variant on the AR-15 assault rifle. Infantile purists will delaminate if you say “AR” stands for “assault rifle.”
But if you are a woman, if you are non-binary, LGBTQIA+, it basically has more rights before this court than you do. In other words, before this court, you are not a person. Add BIPOC to the previous list, because unless you are white and male, if you go parading around with an assault weapon you are unlikely to be allowed to survive, never mind pass unharrassed, by our massively militarized Law Enforcement.
With the savagely ideological “Supreme” Court prepared to erase the rights of actual human beings on on no other account than that they are women (and consequently, don’t count), it seemed like a timely moment to set down my other projects and cast an eye upon the subject of abortion. Now, Whitehead himself never addressed the topic, so no pretense can be made to declare what his thoughts on the subject might have been. We can say, however, that his personal conclusions, were he to have any, are not really relevant here, as we want to develop a view of the subject within the context of process metaphysics, and not any one scholars individual declaration. That being said, it must also be added that other ways of working out conclusions other than those offered here will also be possible within the stated domain.
First off, what is a “person”? We should immediately drop any thought of conflating “person” with “human being.” “Properly developed” human beings seem clearly to be persons, but not all persons will be human beings, developed or otherwise. Non-terrestrial intelligences, for you science fiction enthusiasts, are clearly persons without being human. But many would argue that terrestrial non-human animals are also persons, deserving of our care and ethical considerations. These (humans) would be those variously involved in animal rights activism and concerns. It is a tricky subject that I’ll not pursue here, though I admit to being a little troubled by my failure to embrace vegetarianism. I’m sure you’ll have noticed by now that I’ve not tackled the previous scare-quoted qualifier “properly developed.” I promise, we will get back to that.
But more needs to be said about “person.” A person is an agent, and an agent is something capable of intentional activities, behaviors, and/or stances. There is a philosophical school known as “Personalism” that takes this as a metaphysical “primitive,” which is to say, first premise. There is what we might call the “lite” version, that argues persons are metaphysically primary because there can be no interpretation of the world without intentional agents actually interpreting the world. As stated, this position is very hard to dispute, since any attempt to do so cheats by presupposing an interpreter in the form of a “God’s eye view on the world,” while pretending to be “objective.” But that “God’s eye” is an interpreter, an intentional agent. Then there is the “Heavy” version of personalism that says everything is a person (in some sense.) An electron is “interpreting” it’s world via it’s electromagnetic field. This is a trickier position, but one that deserves serious treatment, regardless of one’s final conclusions. But the subtleties are beyond the scope of this current essay (or pretty much any essay of only 1450 words.)
Please do not confuse your Google search with my doctoral degree.
So proclaims a t-shirt of mine; one of my favorites, I should add.
In this age of anti-vax infantilism, few things can set my teeth on edge as some uneducated buffoon declaring, “I’ve done my research!” (Some “unprofessional” language is going to appear in this blog post. So prepare yourselves.)
“I’ve done my research!” No, in point of fact, you have not, you ridiculous turdwaffle. Because it is damned near a mathematical certainty that you have never done any REsearch in your entire life. You did an internet search, at best, and counted yourself special for having done so.
The company name “Google” has become synonymous with an internet search engine in much the way the company Xerox became synonymous with a photocopier, long after the company itself had lost any real dominance in the field. They were knocked of their thrown by Canon, in particular, yet photocopying remained “xeroxing,” even unto this day. Google, despite its despicable and absolutely ruthless pillaging of its users’ privacyi has yet to suffer such a well deserved fate, but time may yet tell. In the meantime, I will resort to common usage, and speak of “googling” something, without necessarily speaking of Google itself. (You’ll know which one I speak of by whether or not the word is capitalized &/or comes with a gerund.)
A scientist is someone who engages in inquiry to discover new facts
An engineer is someone who engages in inquiry to discover new applications for known facts.
A technician is someone who engages in inquiry to maintain known applications.
We can add to this the mode of inquiry which characterizes philosophy
A philosopher is someone who engages in inquiry in order to discover new meanings, and fully understand old ones.
Philosophers aren’t alone in this latter form of inquiry, but as I am a philosopher that is what I am working from. (Arguably, the philosopher’s position is more generalized and abstract than, say, that of the novelist.) I highlight the above so that we may take a poke at that most maddening and obscure subject, the meanings of Whitehead’s terms, (mostly) in his philosophical works. Because you’ll never learn the thinker’s meanings if you do not first learn the thinker’s language. With Whitehead, this means two things. First, you must “get inside” the structure of the man’s thinking, a step the overwhelming majority of scholars have categorically refused to do. The second is that you must disabuse yourself of the notion that, just because Whitehead uses a term that you find familiar, Whitehead is therefore using that term in a way that is familiar to you. This latter is the part that really drives some people – most especially myself – absolutely bananas.i We’ll approach these in order.
Now, while the second issue can drive one over the edge, I will add that the first one is pretty frustrating as well. In point of fact, it really, really annoys me. I mean, it REALLY annoys me. Let me illustrate it with a non-Whiteheadian example.
I recently went through major surgery. It was laparoscopic surgery, and involved five fairly small incisions, so in that respect it was relatively low on the trauma scale. On the other hand, the robotic instruments that went in through those various incisions removed two feet of my large intestine, from the right lower up to the right transverse section. Now, the large intestine in its unmodified, factory original adult condition is about six feet long all told. Nevertheless, one can say with some fairness at this point that my colon is now a semi-colon. In any event, the surgery went quite well, I’ve been home for well over two weeks now, with no pain and very little soreness to report.
Nevertheless, there is an ever-present awareness that my body has been cut into. I would not describe it as “acute;” rather it is more like an amber-tinged, quietly lingering sense of shock. One of the aspects of this lingering sense is that it is neither sub- nor un- nor pre-conscious. (Some philosophers have argued that the first two, at least, don’t even exist, and that the appeal to them by various psychiatric and psychological doctors is an error. This is not a topic I will explore, however.) Rather, the experience is a fully conscious one. But it is a consciousness that is entirely felt; there are no words attached to it until after I focus my attention fully upon the experience and begin to verbalize it via secondary and tertiary processes with respect to the primary experience itself. I’m characterizing this consciousness as nonverbal rather than as preverbal, because the “pre” suggests an ordering with respect to other conscious modalities that I am inclined to reject. So after saying a few more words about my own experience here, I hope to leverage that data to illuminate various philosophical ideas, mostly from Whitehead (of course) but not exclusively. Along the way, I also offer the following as my own little testament against toxic masculinity and its attendant infantilism.
A recent interaction on social media reminded me of the widespread – and commonly enough, absolutely willful – ignorance of basic political distinctions that are rampant among so many people in the U.S. In particular, I was rather aggressively informed by an individual whose education ended somewhere in the 4th grade (regardless of how much time they actually spent in school) that communism and fascism were identical. Now, one need not be an especially enlightened thinker to recognize what galactically infantile nonsense on stilts such a clownish identification obviously is, but I thought I would use the moment to challenge myself to generate shoestring characterizations of both that, while undoubtedly insufficient by an expert’s criteria, might still serve as a useful thumbnail sketch for those of us who are not experts.
First, let me state what is implicit in the above: I am not an expert. Social/political philosophy is not any of my areas of scholarly expertise. However, I do have a Ph.D. in philosophy, so I am at once a fairly educated and articulate human being, and I’ve had a better than average exposure to such ideas. So scratching out such rough and ready comparative characterizations is nominally well within my reach. The trick that makes it entertaining for me (and possibly useful for others) is creating such formulations in a short and handy way that provides an adequate indication of each position.
Second, a word of caution: as Aristotle pointed out over 2300 years ago, requiring scientific precision of non-scientific topics is manifestly foolish. The shorter form of this caveat can be summarized as, “definitions are dumb.” Unless you are working in one of the mathematical disciplines (in which group I also include such things as computer programming, theoretical physics, formal logic, and such) then anything presented as a definition is never more than a guiding heuristic, not a rigidly absolute rule. Many people seem not to understand this (or deliberately ignore it in the hope of scoring “points), especially when dealing with matters of politics. Hence, any person demanding rigorous definition of, say, either communism or fascism is either guilty of ignorance, disingenuousness, or both. Hence my insistence that what follows are “guidelines,” “characterizations,” “sketches,” and the like. So let us begin.
Like many people who have worn the uniform, that phrase makes me uncomfortable.
Uncomfortable, mind you; not angry or upset as it does for many Vietnam (and these days, I suspect, Afghanistan) veterans. Just uncomfortable.
Because, you see, I did not swear the oath, I did not don the pickle suit, for you. I thought I was doing it for “me,” though 45+ years after the fact I recognize I scarcely understood at the time what that meant. I strongly suspect that even those adorable naifs who are certain they are acting purely out of love for God and Country (who nominally ARE doing it for you) were and are every bit as clueless about what they were saying as I was; even those remarkable few who, after how ever many years, are even more certain now than they were then that they were/are acting for God and Country. Because whatever the character of their certainty then, it is most certainly not the conviction they live by now.
Regardless what they might believe at the time, nobody really understands what they are committing to when they take that oath. And it feels really awkward for being congratulate for having put on a blindfold and then running off a cliff, when you don’t even know IF there is a bottom, much less where the bottom might be to that cliff.
Two things you should understand here. The first is a matter of objective fact. And that is the difference between Veterans day and Memorial day.i It is a really easy difference to understand, which is why it is so sad that so many people do not understand it.
Veterans day is for those who came home.
Memorial day is for those who did not.
Which is part of the awkwardness (for me) of when people say, “thank you for your service.” It is a little like saying, “thank you for not taking up space in Arlington.” Because I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me. But I didn’t know at the time what that meant.
I was in the US Army from 1975 until 1978. For context, Saigon fell in April of 1975, and I went active (into Basic training) in June. From ‘76 until I rotated out in June of ‘78 I was stationed on what was, at the time, the East German border, assigned to an IHAWK anti-aircraft missile battery. The closest I ever came to combat was cocking snooks at the Russians, some 12 or so klicks to the east. But for all of that, I did take my duties seriously. Because – and I didn’t really understand this at the time (I’m saying nobody ever does) – swearing the oath changed me. In particular, I came to understand that some 35 years or so after I raised my right hand, I realize I still consider myself bound by that oath. In particular, the part where I swore
to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.
That’s some powerful shit right there. In particular, it means that Fascist animals like Donald Trump are persons I am oath bound to oppose. Because for these people, the Constitution is nothing more than toilet paper to wipe their butts on. But even as my entire body shifted at the time of the saying of those words, I am still learning what they mean for me. For me, mind you, not you. And I’m still learning what that means
For example, I have, for some years past (though hardly forever), taken up carrying a copy of the Constitution on my person at all times. This habit was triggered by the TV show The West Wing, where they consistently referred to it as, “the Owners’ manual.” But the reason that show allowed me to realize that doing so was important was precisely because it reminded me that my oath was to the Constitution and not, for example, to the flag. Don’t every let anyone fool you on this point: the flag is a rag. Nobody ever died “defending the flag,” except for sorry-assed buffoons who were too illiterate to pay any attention to the oath that they actually swore. Refulgent in mythological imagery – yet devoid of any cognitive content – the flag is something rightwing fascists go into apoplectic histrionics over. It is not an accident that they only mention the Constitution as though it were itself nothing more than another flag to wave.
So this evening I had a very nice meal at O’Charley’s, which has a very generous offer of a free entree (and the local one included the first beer) for veterans on this Veterans’ day. I find being surrounded by people in a moderate state of noisiness, who are otherwise uninterested in bothering me, to be an excellent context for reflection. Having an external world to tune out makes it easier to concentrate on my thoughts within. (I basically wrote my dissertation with Metallica on a loop, so … yeah.) I frankly thought it was more appropriate to tell the wait staff and cooks, “thank you for your service,” than for anyone to say as much to me. But it was an opportunity to spend some time in my own thoughts, with my body quieted by an environment that included a good meal and non-intrusive environs (non-intrusive in their presence rather than their frantically demanding absence).
And so I’m going to leave this somewhat less than ideally connected stream of consciousness with this one final observation.
When I was in the Army, we never even observed (much less “celebrated”) either Memorial or Veterans’ day. Maybe that has changed since I was in uniform. But back then we never did, and it was only today, 45+ years later that I made that connection.
And it seems right.
To “celebrate” Memorial day, for someone in uniform, is to make a mockery of those who have given “their last full measure.” And to “celebrate” Veterans’ day is like dancing up and down shouting “Yay me!”
The wrongness just doesn’t get any wronger than that. And maybe that’s why having people say, “thank you for your service,” just feels uncomfortable. I didn’t do it for you, even if I came to discover that I did it for my country and my Constitution.
So I’m not going to get angry, I’m not going to be confrontational, I’m not going to be upset.
But at the same time, I wouldn’t mind if y’all just stopped doing that.
I can’t speak for other cultures, but phrases such as the above and others akin to them are fairly commonplace in American conversation, particularly when the topic involves the foolish choices made when we were young. While often accompanied with an eye roll and a shake of the head in signs of regret, there is just as often a tinge of wistfulness as well, a longing for a return to that kind of vivid recklessness and the electrifying sense of being alive that was at its core.i There is certain legitimacy to that longing – even, and even especially, for the mistakes – at the metaphysical level. For every act of creation is, in an important sense, an error, a mistake, a “failure” to follow the “correct” path. So it is worth a moment to take a look at such things.
Before going any further, I want to dismiss one kind of mistake that is grotesque in its calculated refusal of any possibility of creativity. That is the kind of action “celebrated” by the despicable Jackass films and shows. These aren’t errors of any kind. They are acts of willful stupidity pandering to the lowest element of human character, “entertainment” predicated on laughing derisively at others for pulling absurdist stunts devoid of any talent or art. These programs are simply an extension of the “Good Ol’ Boy’s last words” jokes.ii There is nothing interesting or amusing about such behavior or the people who wallow in it.
The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, Seek simplicity and distrust it.”
– Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (end of chapter VII.)
Ultimately, the only way we know how to measure the complexity of some process or phenomenon – beyond excruciatingly vague and unhelpful statements like, “this is really complicated” – is by measuring how hard it is to solve the mathematical equations used to characterize the problem. All the rest, even when palpably, indisputably true, is just hand-waving. Sometimes hand-waving makes us feel better, because we need to burn off the energy pent up in our frustration. But it never really tells us anything. On the other hand, we really do have some effective means of measuring how hard it is to solve some mathematical equation or other, and we’ve refined such measures significantly over the past fifty years because such measures tell us a great deal about what we can and cannot do with our beloved computers (which includes all of your portable and handheld devices, in case you weren’t sure.)
Some problems simply cannot be solved. This even despite the fact that the problems in question seem perfectly reasonable ones that are well and clearly formulated. (Actually, being well formulated makes it easier to demonstrate when a problem cannot be solved.) Some problems can be solved, albeit with certain qualifications, while still others are “simply” and demonstrably solvable.i However, saying that a problem is “solvable” – even in the pure and “simple” sense (notice how I keep scare-quoting that word) – doesn’t mean that it can be solved in any useful or practical sense. If the actual computation of a solution ultimately demands more time &/or computer memory space than exists or is possible within the physical universe, then it is unclear how we mere mortals benefit from this theoretical solvability.ii It is these latter considerations that bring us into the realm of computational complexity.
THE QUANTUM of EXPLANATION 