A Simpler Teleology

Teleology is the philosophical study of purpose. Telos is Greek for 'end', 'purpose', or 'goal'. Teleology has a long history, going as far back as Aristotle (maybe farther), and serves as a goal- or purpose-oriented explanation for why things are the way they are.

Aristotle talks about four types of explanations: the material, formal, efficient, and final causes. The material cause deals with the matter of which the thing is composed. The formal cause deals with the form or design of the thing. The efficient cause deals with the agent by which the thing is made. The final cause is the telos of the thing, the purpose for which it was made.

I often think of these in terms of how we understand the question of why. If, for example, I ask, "why is the sun hot?", I might understand the question in various ways, leading me to give very different answers. Note the answers below are illustrative only and are not intended to be statements of absolute truth.

1. Material: the sun is largely made of hydrogen
2. Formal: the sun was designed to be hot
3. Efficient: heat is generated by fusion, primarily by fusing hydrogen into helium
4. Final: the sun is hot in order to warm the earth and make life possible here

My answer for the material cause above is meaningless unless paired with the efficient cause, as the presence of hydrogen by itself (the primary material contributing to the heat) is not a sufficient explanation for the heat. An alternative answer might be to say that the sun is made of heat, though that wouldn't make much sense in our modern world.

The formal cause here isn't very useful either. I could have said the sun is a sphere, but that has nothing to do with its heat.

An alternative answer of the efficient cause might be to say that God designed the sun to be hot. But I have chosen the more scientific answer to illustrate something.

In our modern world, we tend to favor the material and efficient causes as explanations when approaching a subject logically and rationally. Science favors the combination of these causes to explain various phenomena. In scientific explanations and modern philosophical discussions, we tend to de-emphasize the formal and final causes. But as human beings, we connect well with the narrative implied by the final cause. The final cause connects things to their purpose.

If we focus on the telos, or final cause, we may feel we need to explain everything that occurs by some ultimate, grand purpose of life. If we pursue the teleological chain to its logical end, it may lead us to God as the prime mover or something similar. With such a focus, we may become inclined to offer mystical or supernatural explanations for the efficient cause rather than the purely rational, naturalistic explanations typically offered by science. I'm not suggesting this is a bad thing; it's just an observation.

Teleological explanations can be satisfying to the soul, giving us a feeling of purpose in our lives. That can have a big psychological benefit up to a point. But the need to offer a teleological explanation to everything can also be a huge psychological burden. It's exhausting and can become crippling. Life is a complex web of interconnected beings, objects, and forces whose actions all affect one another in unknown ways. To seek an answer to the question 'why' for anything and everything that might happen in our lives may seem pious to the devout religionist - it's a natural response to a belief in an omnipotent God. If God can control everything, then surely there is a reason that this particular thing is happening to me right now. But that obsession with explaining everything can leave us mentally whirling in endless circles with no real benefit.

Sometimes things just are. There's no why. There's no because. They just are.

Why does the wind blow? Because it does. It didn't blow in order to make you cold. It didn't blow to break your umbrella so you would get wet in the rain. It didn't blow to make you feel good on a hot day. It just blew. It's what it does.

I'm reminded of the song "Roll the Bones" by Rush. To roll the bones means to toss the dice. Lyrics from the song: "Why does it happen? Because it happens. Roll the bones." Toss the dice. Play the game. Live your life. Don't worry about the why. It happened. It's your turn. Roll the bones.

There's a lot of wisdom in that. It's not an attitude of 'I don't care.' It's a purposeful move beyond telos to a life that is lived fully, in the present moment. Getting caught up in the teleology of everything only pulls us out of our lives and gets us stuck in our heads.

So don't worry about the purpose of everything. Let it go. And live your life fully. Joyfully. Every moment.

But that's hard. Teleology, or purpose, is important to us psychologically. What if we can't just let go? How do we handle the question of why? Maybe one answer is that the purpose of this moment is simply to have the experience you're having. Perhaps experience is its own purpose. Each new experience, whether we label it good or bad, helps us grow. Maybe that can be the answer to our soul's longing. Maybe teleology doesn't have to connect everything in one massive logical chain. Maybe the telos, or purpose, of this moment is simply ... this moment.

It's a simpler teleology. No causal chain to invent and maintain. This moment is the purpose. Just this.

The Problematic Ideal

As a practicing Mormon, I sometimes found myself weighed down with heaviness, a symptom of a self-burdening syndrome. Sometimes the syndrome manifests as a form of guilt and self-recrimination. But more often, it's just a feeling of heaviness. A burden we carry by maintaining a set of unrealizable objectives. As an example, I have sometimes tried to add up all the time it would take to do everything that Mormon church leaders tell us we are supposed to be doing. There simply isn't time in the day to do it all.

As I've recently looked at the church from a more neutral perspective, I've come to see the self-burdening syndrome as a natural outgrowth of some of the church's teachings. I'm not trying to slam the LDS Church. I respect it as an organization for what it does for its members and others. But as its teachings hold up an ideal of perfection, we're going to have a lot of people embracing guilt and judgment on some level.

On the other hand, there are many teachings in the church that tend to reduce the effects of the self-burdening syndrome. There are several scriptures I collected years ago that I called the "chill out Gospel". One of my favorites is Matthew 11:30, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” I have seen some church leaders who recognized that there is a time and a season for everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8) and have preached a lighter gospel that sounds something like, “do what you can and enjoy the ride.” Unfortunately, there is also a core set of teachings, and plenty of talks by current church leaders, that feed right into the guilt and judgment.

This syndrome isn't limited to the LDS church. I only talked about that church because it's part of my background; it's what I know best. I think the syndrome is a natural outgrowth of any religion or school of thought that teaches an ideal of perfection, a concept of evil, and a conflict between those two things. In western religion and philosophy, these ideas are deeply entrenched. So deep, I never saw them clearly until I began to step out of them. In the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islaam), there is an ideal good (God/Allah) and an opposing evil (Satan/Shaitan) except, I believe, in Judaism, which doesn't necessarily believe in a devil/tempter. There are numerous scriptures in these religions that speak of a conflict that began before, or at the time of, creation and will last until some promised time of peace. In Mormon/Christian theology, this is the promised millennium of peace following Armageddon.

In western philosophy, I see idealism first cropping up with Plato's forms, a concept of an abstract ideal of which all manifestations are imperfect reflections. Early Christian writers found they had a lot in common with Plato's teachings, and C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors, had quite a bit to say about them. As a beautiful example, take a look at Lewis' culmination of the Narnia series, "The Last Battle". The ideal is the spiritual, the unmanifested, the perfect. The manifested will never achieve the ideal, but is only a crude reflection of it. One day, after we die, we will see the ideal in all its glory. This is a Christian idea, not a philosophic one, but, when framed that way, you can probably see why Plato’s philosophy of forms has had great appeal in some Christian circles.

I think the concept of Plato's ideal forms is beautiful in a way, but also problematic. By imagining that the ideal is beyond our reach, those who strive for perfection in this life will never achieve their goals. Perfection and ultimate happiness must be saved for later. An echo of this is the end-time prophecies, which say we must wait for the ideal form of government and human society (the coming millennium I referred to earlier). Our current forms are corrupt and less than ideal. But the ideal will come.

What I find unfortunate about this line of thinking is that we're always waiting for something to be perfect. Perfection is always just outside our reach. Being forced to wait makes some of us give up on the life we're living right now. We begin to see our life on this earth as dirty, unhealthy, suboptimal.

But I don't see life that way. At least, not anymore. I look at the "imperfection" all around me and I think it's perfect. I've never seen a perfect triangle according to the rules of geometry (one example of Plato's forms), but the triangles I do see are each unique ... and beautiful in their own way.

I live in a pretty nice house, but it’s a typical family home. It's often a mess. The "ideal" home would have everything in its proper place. But the "ideal," could it ever be achieved, would be sterile and death-like. Life is messy. And messy can be beautiful.

In my living room, I have some cracks in the walls. They weren't there when we bought the house, but the foundation has shifted a little, and they appeared a few years ago. That kind of thing used to bother me (OCD personality that I am), and I would want to fix it. But now I look at it as a beautiful reflection of a home that has been lived in and loved. Every mark on the walls is a reflection and reminder of memories, many of them chaotic, loud, hyper, sometimes even combative, but always beautiful. We're planning to paint the walls soon because it's nice to have things clean and sparkly (and that will be beautiful too), but while we have the cracks and the marks, I'll enjoy them.

These realities, these messy things that never measure up to anyone's version of "ideal" are, in my mind, perfect. It is the ideal forms, which have never existed in the real world, that are unhealthy. 

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
  -- Anthem by Leonard Cohen

The idealistic mode of thinking manifests itself in some form, to some degree, in the conscious or subconscious thoughts of many of us. It causes people to compare themselves, their lives, their habits, their thoughts, or whatever to a perfect ideal that simply does not exist. Perfection is right here, in this life, right now. And happiness is best found when life is embraced and loved, not in spite of its imperfections, but because of them.

The Problem of Evil

In Christianity, and any monotheistic religion that worships an all-powerful God, there is a philosophical problem known as The Problem of Evil. It asks the question: if God is benevolent, all-knowing, and all-powerful, how can there be evil in the world? The debate calls into question the existence of such a God.

It's an old question, and I don't have anything new to add, so I'm not going to argue either for or against the existence of an omnipotent God. But I do have a slightly different take on the Problem of Evil as it's typically formulated.

The Problem of Evil

I used to see things almost entirely in terms of good and evil. Everything was colored by that paradigm. Running beneath everything I experienced, felt, or thought, was an ever-present conflict between good and evil. Naturally, I pictured myself on the side of good most of the time. Occasionally, I would recognize that I had done something wrong, feel a bit guilty, and try to get myself back on the good side as quickly as possible. Everything outside the little bubble of what I defined as good was tainted with a twinge of evil. And a few things were just purely evil. Deeply dark and horrific.

Recently, I've discovered a new problem of evil. One that doesn't have anything to do with God. One that simply recognizes that the concept of evil itself is problematic. Not that evil is a problem. The concept that evil exists is a problem.

In recent years, I've begun to see the world through a different lens. One that doesn't require the existence of evil. This probably seems crazy. It did to me for a while. And sometimes, I still think I'm a bit nuts. But I'll try to explain my thinking, and you can decide if it makes any sense.

When I try to imagine the most evil thing possible, I think of acts of hate. Murder, whether on an individual or a massive scale, seems pretty horrific. I can't think of anything darker than that, so let's use that as an example.

Murder

When someone kills someone else, my tendency used to be to judge that person. I would wish for justice and its associated pain so the murderer couldn't be said to have gotten away with it, and so he/she could feel just a bit of what his/her victim(s) and their friends and family must have felt or are still feeling. That seems just.

But now when I think of a murder, I think less of judgment. My tendency is to ask why.

Why did they kill that person?

• It could be rage. There could be a history between the murderer and the victim. That history could be complicated, but rivalries and grudges are rarely one-sided. Perhaps there was some offense given by the victim that would allow us to make some sense of the rage.
• It could be mental illness. The murderer might be psychologically unhinged. How did that happen? Mental illness is complicated, but it likely comes in some measure from some painful experience(s) in the person's past.
• Or maybe the act came about through some twisted philosophy. Some belief system that justified the act in the murderer's mind. How did that philosophy get stuck in their head? Were they the victim of some intellectual abuse or cultural momentum that was itself a product of abuse or pain?

Maybe there are other reasons, but in all of my musing, I fail to find any motivation for murder that I can properly call evil. Maybe I'm just missing something, but I'm inclined to think that the murderer must have suffered in order to bring them to the point where they were willing to take someone else's life. I'm pretty confident that no one is born with the inclination to kill. And if that's true, that the murderer suffered, then the appropriate response is compassion, not judgment.

Of course, it's natural to feel compassion for the victim and their friends and family. That's where the suffering is the most obvious. And perhaps that's why it's easy to judge the murderer. Clearly, that suffering wouldn't exist if the murderer hadn't acted. But perhaps there is hidden suffering in the murderer's past that could evoke some compassion if only we understood it.

Judgment

Feeling compassion for a murderer doesn't mean I condone the act. Society has a right and a duty to hold people accountable for actions that take away the rights and freedoms of others. So I'm not saying there shouldn't be justice or accountability. The proper response is likely to imprison or otherwise punish the crime. If nothing else, this should hopefully deter future crime of a similar nature.

Lady Justice holding the Scales of Justice

Unfortunately, our punitive system of justice doesn't seem to do much good for the criminal. Shutting them out from society and placing them in a prison subculture typically doesn't do much to reform an individual. They often feel justified in further acts of crime as they probably feel that society has cast them out. Maybe there is a better way of dealing with crime, but I don't know what it is. Until we find a better way, I think society must step in to stop and/or punish such acts as best it can.

But as an individual, I don't see any value in judging the criminal. To label someone, or even the action they took, as evil seems unnecessary. There is pain. There is stupidity. There is horror. But I don't think there is such a thing as evil.

Stopping the War

The biggest problem I see with the concept of evil is judgment. For me, judgment naturally follows evil. When I label something as evil, I can't help but judge it. If that evil wasn't here, things would be better. But when I judge anything, a person, a situation, or something inside of me like a thought or a feeling, I quickly become exhausted by the mental conflict that ensues.

Because all judgment implies conflict. When I judge something, I find myself thinking things like: I don't like that. I wish it were different. Why does it have to be that way? And eventually, I find myself in the unhappy position of fighting my reality. And guess who wins that fight ...

In my opinion, the problem of evil isn't that it potentially disproves the existence of an all-powerful God. The problem of evil is that it exists only in our minds. As Hamlet said, "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so". Allowing the concept of evil to occupy our minds and remain a part of our reality is unhealthy, both for the individual and for the larger society.

Growing Up

When we're young, we rely on our parents. For everything. They protect us from the dangers of the world. They provide for our needs. They give us comfort, solace, and answers to our questions. They seem to know everything.

As we grow older, we realize they don't know as much as we thought.

Some of us tend to swing the pendulum a bit too far in the opposite direction. Sometimes we think our parents are idiots. Sometimes the doubt that comes in through a realization of their finite power makes us discredit their power completely. We begin to become independent in our thoughts and our actions.

But some of us enter into that independence a little more gently. Our parents become equals. Or we become our parents' equals. Maybe even a guide to them at times.

I have four kids. I'm not a kid anymore. My transition to adulthood happened a long time ago. Now I'm on the other side of the deal and I'm watching my kids go through this transition.

My oldest son has already become my equal. His life has become more complex. His studies, his relationships, his questions - I don't have all of the answers anymore. And he knows it. I'm honest with him about my lack of knowledge. And most of the time, when he asks me a question, I tell him I have no idea what the right answer is. But thankfully, he still talks to me anyway. And we talk together as friends. As equals.

We muse together. We hypothesize together. We simulate possible futures. We philosophize. But there's very little parent-child teaching going on anymore. He only recently left home, but even before he had left, I had already reached the limits of my parental knowledge and influence.

My second child, my oldest daughter, is reaching that same point. In our discussions lately, I'm finding fewer and fewer opportunities to teach her with solid answers. When she asks me questions or confides in me about her concerns or worries, I find myself answering her questions with more questions. With suppositions. With philosophical statements that lead to no concrete action or even a recommendation of what to do. I just don't have the answers or solutions to their problems anymore.

My youngest two children are not far behind. Their lives are not quite as complicated as the oldest two. But they're often flirting with issues that are too difficult for simple answers.

I see my children growing up and it's a wistful experience. I'm both happy and sad to see their progress. I have loved watching them go through various stages of life. And I sometimes miss some of those stages when they pass. But I'm happy for them to become the wonderful men and women that I see them becoming.

In many ways, even the simple things they struggled with when they were young were too complex for simple answers. But I gave them answers anyway. I don't know if that was for their benefit or mine. I wanted to have the answers. I wanted to make them feel safe. But maybe I was only holding on to my own ego. Maybe watching my kids grow up has forced me to look beyond my ego and to see life more fully, in all of its wild beauty and complexity.

Maybe I'm finally growing up.

The Egg

My son sent this video to the family. I loved it so much, I thought I would post it here. It's based on a short story written by Andy Weir.



Andy is agnostic, so I wouldn't get too hung up on the literal truth of the story as told here. But it's a beautiful idea and well worth thinking about.

It seems to be an extreme view of some concepts from eastern religious traditions - concepts related to the interconnectedness and unity of all reality. I've never seen the idea taken to such an extreme before, but there's something beautiful about the way Andy does this.

If you liked this, let me know. I'd love to hear what other people think about this video.

It's All One Energy

I just heard a quote from a guy named Alan Watts. I've been listening to him on various youtube posts, and I find him fascinating. Here's one of the more beautiful quotes I've garnered from this video. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find out when and where he said it.

Thoughts, you see, belong to the world of symbols. What we experience with our senses is, of course, the physical world, the real world. You may ask me, ‘well, isn’t there also a spiritual world?’. But you must understand that the spiritual world is the same thing as the physical when the physical is not confused with the symbolic. There is no real difference between the spiritual and the physical. It’s all one energy.

Alan Watts

The Present Moment

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.4311

The Wisdom of Uncertainty

From the time I was a child, I was led to believe that knowledge is power. Knowledge of things as they are, an understanding of truth, are to be sought for a number of reasons. And there is truth in that. But somehow, I missed the counterbalance to that lesson.

It took many years of experiences that sometimes knocked on my beliefs and my worldview to come to understand the limitations of knowledge. A study of philosophy helped. I began to see that knowledge, if it exists, is very rare. Much more rare than I had previously supposed. I began to see that certainty, far from being the power I had once imagined it to be, was very often a weakness.

There is great wisdom in uncertainty.

I had been taught that faith was powerful. And developing faith could eventually lead to knowledge ... certainty, which ultimately destroys the faith that built toward certainty.

I still believe faith is powerful. Not because it approaches knowledge, but because it falls short of it. Faith is powerful because it understands its limitations. It avoids certainty.

I used to think doubt was the opposite of faith.

Then I learned that faith's opposite was closer to fear.

I think both of those are true in some sense, but a few years ago, I came to the realization that the opposite of faith was more like certainty.

Faith is powerful. It recognizes the wisdom of uncertainty. And it fully embraces its lack of certainty, its lack of knowledge, and enjoys the humility that comes from not knowing.

Faith is powerful.

And uncertainty is the beginning of wisdom.

What do you think? What does faith mean to you? Is the opposite of faith doubt? Is it fear? Is it certainty? Is it something else?

Do you think certainty is a strength? Is it potentially a weakness? Can it be both?

My Spiritual Journey

I have been a Mormon all my life. Being a member of the LDS church has been great for me. It has given me a set of morals and values and a community of good people to identify with, to associate with, and to look to for examples of how to live a good life.

In the last two or three years, I have begun to distance myself from the church and, though my transition has been very obvious to people close to our family and many people have been concerned about what they perceive to be my falling away from the truth, I have had very few conversations with others about what this journey has meant to me. I think this is due, in some part, to people trying to give me space, which I appreciate. But I also think there is some fear associated with a transition that seems incomprehensible to the faithful. For my part, I find it difficult to initiate a conversation that might seem like an attack on someone else's faith. Partly to help overcome those barriers to communication, this post is my initial attempt to document my recent journey to share with those who haven't asked, to inform those who didn't know there was anything to ask, and to solidify my own thinking about what this journey has meant to me.

About eight or ten years ago, I went through a period of deep questioning that shook the foundation of my faith. Ultimately, I largely came back to the Mormon faith, but with a more open mind and what I considered to be a more pure faith, less cluttered with prejudices and traditions, and more founded on raw spiritual power.

Two or three years ago, I found myself questioning even more deeply than before, something I hadn't thought possible. This most recent spiritual crisis stemmed, at least in part, from a very challenging time at work, a very stressful situation in my church calling, and some challenging things going on in my family, particularly in the lives of three of my children. It was a very dark time, something I have come to believe is a necessary part of life, as these dark times often serve as catalysts for new awakening, enlightenment, greater understanding, empathy, etc.

Introduction to Meditation

I was eventually able to secure a change in my work environment within the same company and, to help me reset from the stress of what I had been experiencing, I took a month off work. As I was on my way out, I was introduced to a book that sparked a deeper interest in Buddhism. I am not a Buddhist and don't imagine I ever will be, but I have had an interest in that religion for some time and, during my month off, I dove into a set of books on Buddhist and other forms of meditation. I spent hours practicing what I was learning and, in meditation, I found peace and solace like I had never before experienced. Though I have always been a Christian, I suppose I had never really experienced what Paul describes as "the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding" (Philippians 4:7) until I was instructed by principles of Buddhism and related disciplines.

Prior Spiritual Experiences

I don't want to minimize the impact of my religious upbringing. At various times in my life, I have felt a deep sense of peace and spiritual enlightenment. Beginning with my teenage years, I had several spiritual experiences that I interpreted as evidence the Mormon church was true because church youth activities served as catalysts for them. One such experience was extremely powerful and the feeling of peace and balance that came stayed with me for months. But even as it faded, I was able, for a very long time, to call it back by simply quieting my mind. But eventually the stresses of life seemed to crowd out my ability to do that ... until recently.

More on Meditation

The deep peace I began to find in meditation was only a part of the transformational power I experienced during that time. Through meditation, I began to develop a deeper understanding of myself and began to extend forgiveness and compassion to myself on a very deep level, a level so deep I had never been consciously aware of it before. I began to let go of past events that had colored my worldview and had developed inside of me some automatic, unhealthy responses to various stimuli, though prior to meditation I hadn't even been aware of such connections. I began to give myself therapy that seemed to me infinitely more effective than anything a licensed therapist could ever do for me.

I also slowly became more aware of connections outside myself. Over time, I felt like my mind became sharper and I could see more clearly why things happened in the physical world as well as connections and causal relationships in the social/psychological world. I began, in many different ways, to experience what I believe ancient eastern traditions term "enlightenment." I was becoming more awake. 

All of this was wonderful, but, considering the darkness I had been experiencing previously, and the bursting forth of light in my new spiritual practice, my questioning of my own faith became more urgent. By clinging to the faith I had inherited, I seemed to only be delving deeper into darkness. The light only came by letting go. I have had a difficult time explaining that phenomenon intellectually, but here's my best attempt based on my current knowledge.

As a Mormon, I had been taught, among other things, to view the world through the paradigm of good vs. evil, that a battle was being waged for the souls of men, and that through diligent effort and relying on the grace of Christ, I could overcome evil, both within and without. This worldview involved kindness and mercy, but also sin, judgment, and guilt. The former ideas were great, but the fruits of the latter including judgment and condemnation, a constant war with evil, and a set of expectations based on duty to God, which led to an ever-present internal pressure to work and keep up (a feeling familiar to many Mormons), seemed to solidify the darkness in my life.

When I began to let go of my old worldview and, as Buddhism and other eastern traditions encouraged, to let go of ... well, everything, I found the peace and other blessings that Christianity promised, but that I was rarely able to fully realize as a practicing Christian. Peace. Understanding. Enlightenment. Joy. But most of all, peace was what I had been craving.

What About Mormonism

So what about all the spiritual experiences I had had as a Mormon? The more I thought about my past and the conditions in place when I felt spiritually uplifted, the more I realized they were all related to surrender, to letting go. Although I took them as evidence the Mormon church was true, I rarely had such experiences in the church's official services. It was much more common for me to have spiritual experiences on my own or in unconventional settings. 

I usually felt good in church, but not necessarily spiritually enlightened. It was just as common for me to feel like I was falling short, an unfortunate side effect of a culture focused on very high ideals. As I've recently created many powerful spiritual experiences on my own, while distancing myself from the church and its doctrines, I have begun to believe the church is not an essential part of my spirituality. None of what I have experienced proves the church isn't what it claims to be (God's true church on earth), but perhaps you, dear reader, can begin to see why I have come to believe that it isn't.

My Circumstances Begin to Change

Right around the time I took up meditation, I began to see changes in my outer life. Recall the three areas of stress I described before. Here's a little bit of what happened. 

Change at Church
When I went back to work after my month off, I maintained my practice of meditation and continued to heal and grow spiritually. About this same time, I was released from my church calling. I had been hanging onto it for the sake of my oldest son and the young people I was working with, but when I was forced to let go, the stress of that situation dissipated quickly. Though I was offered another calling, I declined and my departure from the church became more certain.

Change at Home
The stresses of my family life involve the private lives of others, so I won't share a lot of detail, but as I became more at peace with myself, extending compassion and forgiveness to myself, I found the power to be equally compassionate, loving, and forgiving of my family members. I believe it is that love, more than anything else, that has helped my children work through their challenges. It has been a couple of years in the making, but it seems to me our children are more balanced and happy than they have ever been and our family dynamics are approaching the kind of model I dreamed I could have as a teenager, but eventually gave up on as an adult as it began to seem impossible to attain. As I type this, my children are having a heated argument over something ridiculous, which helps me remember not to take my dreams, or anything else, too seriously. But the truth is, my family is much happier now than we were just a couple of years ago.

Change at Work
At work, my new environment was great, but as it was the same employer, I found myself unable to completely remove myself from the influence of my old group and eventually, things became challenging in familiar ways. This led me, about a year ago, to accept a new job with a small company in town and it has been wonderful. The culture of my new company has been very refreshing and, while the job has had its moments of stress and frustration, those times have been few and I've found a lot of joy in focusing almost completely on technical work instead of managing projects and personnel, which is where my career had been trending at my previous job for many years. I have been reminded why I majored in engineering. And I've been reminded that I'm quite good at it as I've tackled new and challenging projects and have done very well with them. It has been good for my confidence. 

Letting Go

So shortly after I began to let go of many things, including my religion, I began to find peace in the three major stress areas of my life. I believe the changes in my physical circumstances are, in many ways, due to my new spiritual direction, though the external changes have taken some time to develop. But even more wonderful than the external changes is the healing I have experienced inside. I think that healing is the strongest evidence that I'm doing what I need to do for my spiritual welfare at this time.

Summary

So what does all of this mean for me, my family, and my relationship with the church? Strangely enough, not much. In my daily conduct, I act very much like I always have, in private and in public, though perhaps with a bit more patience and kindness than before. But some things have changed. The most visible change is my lack of connection with the church. As the church's doctrines and services are based on the good/evil paradigm I described above, I feel like they are unhealthy for me right now. So while I respect the church and what it does, I don't attend its services regularly. I do sometimes attend to support my family and I enjoy seeing friends when I'm there, but I prefer to seek spiritual experiences in other ways.

In general, my family is still pretty involved in church activities. And mostly, I think that's good. The Mormon church is a wonderful organization that does a lot of good for its members and the rest of the world. My own membership in the church has done a great deal of good for me and I owe much of what I am today to its influence. The ward (congregation) we currently attend is one of the best I've ever seen and I'm hopeful the church will continue to be a good influence on my children.

This most recent phase of my spiritual journey has been interesting and not at all what I expected. But it has been good for me. Where will my spiritual path lead next? I don't know, but I'm not worried. I'm sure whatever comes will be great. That's a strange attitude for a personality like mine, but I have recently come to see the power of surrender and it has changed me. I am happier letting go of my need to understand and control.

Although I am happy with recent developments, I am sure my departure from the church will be disappointing, even heartbreaking, to some of my family and Mormon friends. To them, I would say, "have faith." I am happier and more peaceful than I have ever been in my life; I hope that will give some comfort. And if the truth of God does lie with the Mormon church, as the church claims, then I'm confident I will find it. I have, for many years, been a seeker of truth. And I still am. I will keep an open mind. I encourage you to do the same.

Lila

I recently posted about a book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. I loved it. So I immediately started reading the author's next book called Lila. I finished it the night before last. The big downer in all this is that the author only wrote two books and I want to read more of his thoughts.

In Lila, the author starts out by attempting to do something that initially seemed very foolish to me. He decided to try to create a full Metaphysics of what he talked about in his first book, his concept of Quality. It seemed foolish because Quality was something he couldn't define and seemed diametrically opposed to any kind of dialectic analysis. It seems closer to ideas in eastern philosophy such as the concept of Tao, Buddha, Chi, etc. These concepts appear to be beyond the intellectual realm and so they cannot be directly understood by the mind and are not subject to the tools of intellectual analysis.

But as I dove into the book, I began to change my mind. The author was offering an intellectual analysis of something about which you can't properly intellectualize, but I began to feel that for those of us who are stuck in the intellectual world of western philosophy and science, his analysis may be an excellent way to bridge the gap. 

Although he offers some development of his thoughts, at one point, he just springs on us his fully developed metaphysical structure of Quality and claims that it is exhaustive and complete. I found this slightly annoying at first, but as the book progressed, he offered an impressive number of examples of how this metaphysics, or view of reality, offered a clearer picture and resolved issues and concerns that the classic western view tends to obscure. It was like he was saying, "I stumbled across this pair of glasses as I was wandering and I found they really cleared up my vision. Here, try them on!" And then he proceeds to show the reader just how much more clearly they can see with this new model of reality. 

His Metaphysics says that reality derives from Quality. Other words for Quality might work equally well: the One, the Tao, Virtue, Excellence, Value, the Good. This Quality may be subdivided into two aspects: Dynamic and Static. The dynamic is what eastern traditions such as Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc strive for, eliminating the individual's dependence on static patterns.

But static patterns derive from Quality too. And so he further subdivides static Quality into inorganic, biological, social, and intellectual. This is the division for which the author offers no prior development, but the more I've thought about his structure and have applied it to issues I've been thinking about, the more sense it makes to me. If there are flaws in the structure, I don't see them yet. And I'm learning a lot by wearing the glasses he offered me.

I have no sure method for finding truth, but certain principles help me recognize truth when I see it. The most important idea at work here is whether the puzzle of life fits neatly together given the view of reality you subscribe to. Does your metaphysics explain what you see or does it leave a lot of things unresolved? Does it complete the puzzle or are there a lot of pieces left out? If one pair of glasses offers a more complete explanation than another, I'll keep wearing them. So far, this new metaphysics seems to be working for me. It certainly seems to offer a more complete understanding than the Aristotelean scientific model I grew up with. 

In some ways, the book reminded me of C.S. Lewis' "The Abolition of Man". In that book, Lewis claims we are composed of three things: mind, heart, and belly. You might think of the mind as intellectual, the heart as emotional, and the belly as basic biological drives such as hunger and lust. Lewis claims the intellectual can directly influence the emotional, but not the biological. Only the emotional can control and direct the biological. But our modern intellectual world has waged war on the emotions and has extracted the heart or chest of man, allowing his biological impulses to rage without restraint, and ultimately threatening, in the extreme application of this modern intellectual model, to exterminate or abolish the essence of what makes us men, leaving us slaves to our biological impulses.

Pirsig claims that we are evolutionary creatures composed of four levels of evolution, namely inorganic (matter and energy that obey fundamental physical laws), organic (corresponding to Lewis' 'belly'), social (somewhat similar to Lewis' 'heart'), and intellectual (obviously the same idea as Lewis' 'mind'). He likewise claims that the intellectual, by attempting to solidify its own supremacy, has waged war on society by stripping it of its moral foundation. But society, as a prior evolutionary level, is the foundation on which intellect stands. If society's moral foundation is destroyed, there will be no restraint on biological forces because the intellect will be unable to directly restrain those forces. This, he claims, is one reason for the increase in crime in recent history.

Pirsig spends a lot of time on his divisions of Static Quality and that's what I've spent a lot of time thinking about as I've been reading. But near the end of the book, he comes full circle back to Dynamic Quality, which is the creative force behind the static patterns. Thus, this Dynamic is the supreme Quality. Anything that attempts to place the static patterns above the Dynamic is immoral. So ultimately, we come back to eastern traditions that set aside the static in favor of the dynamic. And although I see great value in his Metaphysics, in the end, developing the metaphysics does almost seem like a pointless exercise. You can't really describe Quality by means of a dialectic analysis because it is beyond the mind. It is at the front edge of experience; before the mind has a chance to fasten on anything, Dynamic Quality has come and gone.

As I've pondered on this idea of Quality, it occurs to me that what is needed in my life is less analysis and more living ... simply living. What I need is to allow the various aspects of my static structure to fall in line with the Dynamic life-giving force to bring about a unity of soul. The biological transcends yet relies on the inorganic patterns of matter and energy and harnesses their power to achieve its own ends. The social transcends yet relies on the organic, biological patterns and harnesses its power to achieve its own ends. And the intellectual transcends yet relies on the social patterns and harnesses its power to achieve its own ends. But ultimately, all is dominated and transcended by a Dynamic element that is not bound by any of these. As we unite with this Dynamic force, perhaps the various static patterns, connected serially to one another, will naturally fall in line like links in a chain as you grasp the chain from the top and shake.

I believe what I am seeking is a union of soul with the universe. This union is not something I understand intellectually and I can't explain it in words, but I feel a compulsion to find this Quality and unite with it. I think the key for me is meditation and quietly putting aside pre-conceived notions of reality so that I can experience reality directly as it unfolds from its source. May I find that Quality and may it fill me.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

There was a book I heard about in the early 90s that I never bothered to pick up. I'm glad I didn't. I wouldn't have understood it and most likely wouldn't have appreciated it.

I recently felt a pull to revisit it and finally finished it yesterday. It's called "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". I'll call it ZAMM for short. It's not really about Zen. And it's not really about motorcycle maintenance. But at the same time, it's totally about Zen and has everything to do with motorcycle maintenance. Mostly, though, it's a book that is deep, profound, and beautifully written.

When I was in school, even in college, I rarely had a desire to read. Books were being shoved down my throat constantly and I've never been a fan of doing what someone else tells me to do. I tend to rebel. So although I would occasionally read books that interested me, I usually avoided reading completely. Being forced to read for academic areas in which I had no interest really stifled my desire to read anything at all.

After college, I began to see the value of certain fields of study that I had never enjoyed before. I started with economics, then hit history, languages, philosophy, and more recently eastern religions and philosophic traditions. In fact, I've been meaning to blog about what I've been learning about Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. But that will have to wait ...

When I heard about ZAMM, I had no background in philosophy and no appreciation for eastern traditions. Without that background, this book wouldn't have done much for me. But with that background, the author has given me insights into things I've been learning about that feel like priceless jewels. He synthesizes some of the ancient western and eastern styles of thought and offers us a glimpse into his own personal journey of self-discovery.

What I find so interesting about the story is his own misconceptions of the purpose of the journey. A major part of his journey began as he studied the word Quality. Later Excellence from the Greek Arete, which is often translated as Virtue. But Quality - what was it? He couldn't define it. This led him to deconstruct the existing classic worldview and create a new metaphysics based on Quality. This new metaphysics seemed to him to be a way to break down some of the problems created by western culture and possibly even reconcile the divide by east and west and between classical (intellectual, dielectic) and romantic thought. He was ready to offer a great thesis to the world that would break down barriers and bring people together. What it really did was break him down.

And this is the most beautiful part. His whole journey was pointless ... from the perspective of his original intention. But what it did to him made the journey worth all the effort. It broke him down and, if I read him right, led him to a fantastic epiphany of self knowledge that is akin to the spiritual experiences of ancient and modern spiritual seekers. In the process, he was deemed insane, and perhaps he was, or perhaps in that moment of self knowledge, he was one of the few sane individuals in the midst of a crazy world. And he experienced reality directly. He found his Quality.

I'm seeking this same Quality and although my journey will be different than the author's journey, I learned a few things by reading about his journey that have helped me see things a little differently and will, I think, help me in my journey of self discovery. For example, in order to find the answers he sought, he realized he would have to step outside the current mythos. He would have to become an outsider of the culture. He would have to be viewed as insane. And that was ok. Another tidbid: one of the last things he did before finding his Quality was to face his final fear. He had faced them all down and finally emptied himself. There was nothing left inside and that was what was necessary for this Quality to fill him up.

I can't possibly convey the power of this book in a short blog post. I absolutely loved it. Have you read it? If so, tell me your thoughts.

Vulnerability

Emily pointed me to an absolutely fantastic TED talk. If you have about 20 minutes, please take a look and let me know your thoughts. I am so struck by the profundity of what this woman has taught me, I don't really know what to say. Except that she pegged me pretty well. And she has given me a lot to think about.


Embrace vulnerability as the birthplace of joy, belonging, and love?

Believe that I'm inherently worthy of love and belonging?

Believe that what makes me vulnerable is what makes me beautiful?

Stop controlling or predicting my life?

What kind of crazy talk is this? And how can I internalize these ideas and become what she's talking about?

I'm just like her ... before her breakdown. I want to be like the wholehearted people she describes.

Lessons from Earthsea

I recently watched a two-part miniseries called Earthsea. A little weird, some parts I definitely don't recommend, but parts of it have given me some things to think about. And it's time to document those thoughts.

The show is based on a series of books by Ursula LeGuin. I was first exposed to her writings a couple years ago when I heard about and later read her short story entitled The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. I was very impressed by her writing and philosophy.

The story of Earthsea revolves around a wizard named Ged who fulfills a prophecy to repair a mystical amulet with power to keep evil at bay ... I'm going to really gloss over a lot of details here. The ultimate reconciliation takes place between him, representing the wizarding world, and a priestess representing the power of faith. Both of these worlds seem to be at conflict with a military power that neither respects nor practices either magic or faith.

There are a lot of really powerful themes and symbols to be explored given that framework, but the one I've been thinking about the most concerns a reconciliation and acceptance on a personal level. Ged, our friendly wizard, summons an evil being as the result of a dare. He didn't intend to summon something evil, but this being, called a Gebbeth, ends up hunting him and for a good part of the story, he finds himself on the run. Eventually, he decides to become the hunter and, though unsuccessful in his first encounter with the Gebbeth, near the end, he recognizes that the Gebbeth is actually a reflection of the evil within himself. He accepts the existence of the evil and decides to 'own' the Gebbeth instead of being owned by it. The two bodies merge into one and Ged, now much stronger, is able to finish his task of reuniting the amulet.

It reminded me of the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde where the opposite occurs. By attempting to separate the evil part of his nature from the good, Dr. Jekyll ultimately succumbs to the evil nature within and becomes Mr. Hyde. Ged, on the other hand, accepted the evil within himself and rather than seeking to cast it from him, he made it his servant. I think there's a lot of truth in these stories. We all have evil within us, but rather than trying to take that part of who we are and eject it, perhaps the solution is to mold it, to own it, to turn a weakness into a strength, to turn vice into virtue. Rather than being half a human by attempting to eradicate evil, perhaps we need to focus on maintaining our whole soul and molding the evil or weakness within to serve virtue.

A scripture in the Book of Mormon has come to mind several times as I've been thinking along these lines. From Ether 12:27:

... if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.

I've also been thinking of a book by C.S. Lewis called The Great Divorce. The story is a fantasy dream of the author traveling from hell to heaven and describes some of Lewis' thoughts on what heaven and hell are really like; some of it would likely surprise many Christians. It's a great book. One part tells of a soul who is burdened by an imp that sits on his shoulder and whispers things in his ear. This man, now a spirit attempting to progress and enter heaven, is speaking with an angel who claims to have the power to kill the imp, but can only do so with the man's permission. As the conversation progresses, it becomes clear that the imp represents lust.

As the man begins to sway toward accepting the angel's invitation, the imp reminds the man of how long they have been together and how much he relies on the imp. He tells the man the angel does have the power to kill him, but because they are so closely connected, if the imp dies, the man will die as well. The man begins to revert to his original position when the angel challenges him by asking if it wouldn't be better to die than to live another day with the imp. The man agrees that it would be better to die than to hear anymore of the imp's whisperings and gives the angel permission to kill the imp. When the angel grabs the imp, both the imp and the man scream and the man crumples in a heap as the angel casts the imp to the ground. Though it appears that both are dead, as the author looks on, the imp begins to transform into a beautiful horse who, when the man revives, carries the man to a beautiful city, representing the home of God, far in the distance. The man's change of heart allows a divine power to intervene and transform what was a crippling weakness into a magnificent strength and the man is able to progress much  more rapidly toward his ultimate goal.

I think we, as humans, being a mix of good and evil, have an opportunity to accept the weaknesses we've been given and seek to turn them into strengths. I have at times tried to cast my evil inclinations far from me, but I find that doesn't work very well. Ultimately, they come back with added power and seek to overwhelm me. I've been much more successful in living a life of virtue when I accept my weaknesses and seek to own and mold them rather than allowing them to master me. Running from them, like Ged did initially, doesn't work. Running from situations that encourage the weakness can be wise, but that's a little different. Seeking to separate our weaknesses from who we are and destroy them, like Dr. Jekyll attempted, doesn't seem to work either. Only by reconciling ourselves with them and owning them, as Ged did at the end of his story, are we able to overcome the evil and, as with Ged and the man in Lewis' story, those weaknesses often become great sources of strength when properly understood, accepted, and aligned with a virtuous will.

That's what I think anyway. What do you think?

Club Unicorn

About a year ago, I posted some thoughts about homosexuality. For the sake of blog integrity, I don't want to change what I posted then, but I came across something today that makes me want to amend it slightly in a separate post.

In a blog a couple of weeks ago, a man with homosexual inclinations named Josh Weed "came out" and described his experiences coming to love a woman and create a family with her. His post is extremely well written and identifies a nuance I didn't capture in my previous post. There is a difference between 'homosexuality' and the act of same-gender sex. My post above identifies a difference between inclination and action, but I used the term 'homosexuality' differently than he did and I think my language becomes confusing. His is very well thought out - homosexuality is something he has dealt with for most of his life. If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend you read his post here. His comments about love and intimacy are worth reading all by themselves. I'll reproduce part of it here:

... sex is about more than just visual attraction and lust and it is about more than just passion and infatuation.... when sex is done right, at its deepest level it is about intimacy. It is about one human being connecting with another human being they love. It is a beautiful physical manifestation of two people being connected in a truly vulnerable, intimate manner because they love each other profoundly. It is bodies connecting and souls connecting. It is beautiful and rich and fulfilling and spiritual and amazing. Many people never get to this point in their sex lives because it requires incredible communication, trust, vulnerability, and connection.

He draws a distinction between love and attraction that I think is helpful for anyone regardless of their sexual orientation. He has purposefully chosen to love and nurture a woman even though he has no natural sexual attraction toward women. His point, though, is that truly fulfilling love and sex have little to do with attraction and a lot to do with choices, communication, connection, etc.

For those who thought that a gay man happily married to a woman was a mythical creature, he offers himself as evidence that such creatures exist and calls them unicorns. Having observed a unicorn firsthand through his blog, I am now a member of the illustrious Club Unicorn. Membership is free; if you're interested in joining, just read his post. And welcome to the club.

I appreciated reading his thoughts. He has given me some things to think about. I have never had homosexual inclinations myself, but I have my own set of weaknesses. I was inspired to read about his life and how he dealt with the decisions he faced as he came to see that his natural inclinations were very different than most of the people around him. It sounds like he had the strength and courage to make the choices he made in large part because of the love, support, and freedom he was given by his parents and others. I hope I can be that supportive and non-judgmental of others when they face challenges.

Emotion vs. Logic

My son shared with me a frustration on Saturday and his argument was irrational. We were at a scouting activity and he was being excluded because other non-scouts had taken all the available slots. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me that people who weren't scouts shouldn't be allowed to participate. I tried to reason with him by telling him it was a family activity and if they didn't allow siblings to participate, families wouldn't want to come. He became more frustrated ... go figure.

Then I realized he was trying to share a feeling with me and the only words he could find were couched in something that didn't make sense ... and he knew it didn't make sense. But it was all he could find to share with me his angst because he felt excluded from the activity.

Feelings often don't seem to be rationally based or, if they are, we can't always find a rational way to explain them. We're too busy feeling them. But we need to share them with each other in order to bond and sometimes in order to deal with the emotions and let them go.

I often forget this in practice, but I think it's so important, when someone is sharing a feeling, particularly a negative one, to just listen. Refrain from giving advice. Refrain from passing judgment. Don't try to use logic. Just listen, empathize, try to enter into their emotion, recast it in your own words to make sure you understand what they're feeling, and let them talk it out.

Women seem to be much more emotional than men on average and I've had to learn this idea with my wife to keep our marriage healthy and happy. Unfortunately, I'm a very logical, left-brain kind of guy and I still mess up a lot .. but I'm getting better.

The Power of Leaders ... or Lack Thereof

Our society, and maybe all societies, tends to give too much blame/credit to our leaders. We blame/bless the President when the economy is bad/good. Really, he's just one among many that sets policies that affect the economy. That contribution can't be a large percentage of the total impact of fiscal and monetary policy. Appointed officials such as Fed governors have more influence on the economy than the President, but even they probably get more blame/praise than they deserve.

Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' gives some great arguments in favor of decentralizing the blame and praise. He also makes a pretty good case that in some ways, the guys with boots on the ground have a lot more to do with the success of an endeavor than the guys sitting behind the desk. One of his characters, Andrei Bolkonsky, consciously chooses a path that puts him on the field of battle rather than serving as an aide to the General because he believes he will have a much greater impact on the war in that capacity. I think Tolstoy goes a little too far with that idea, but it's a healthy counter to the ubiquitous concept that the leader is the one making everything happen.

Prince Andrei Bolkonsky

A CEO stepping into a company, for example, often finds his/her hands tied by the momentum of various projects, a corporate culture that may stubbornly refuse to change, or constraints imposed on him/her by predecessors that the new boss is powerless to change.

Leaders are people just like you and me. Their influence may be greater than the average guy on the street, but let's not overestimate their power. And let's not underestimate our own power either. Each of us can be an enormous force for good in this world. We just have to have a vision of what we want and work with firmness of mind to bring that vision to reality.

The Art of Unlearning

I've been studying neuroscience recently and I believe one of the foundational aspects of how our brain works is its ability to establish correlations. At a very basic level, one of the ways we learn seems to be the establishment of a connection between two or more objects, attributes, events, ideas, etc. Biologically, the synapses, or connections between neurons, are strengthened or weakened based on several mechanisms. The neuroscience community calls this elastic phenomenon 'synaptic plasticity' and it is believed to be an important mechanism by which we learn.

Pavlov's dogs are a good example of this phenomenon. Through repeated experiences, they learned that there was a correlation between the ringing of a bell and feeding time. In their minds, they correlated these two events over time such that one event (the ringing of the bell) would trigger physiological reactions (e.g. salivation) that indicated they expected the second event.

This seems to be why we often require repeated exposure to ideas in order to learn them. The synaptic plasticity doesn't occur with a single exposure to two ideas; it evolves over time as those experiences are repeated. Learning by repetition works really well for my kids and I think that's pretty universal.

So I got to thinking about the idea of 'unlearning' and I think it's a bit harder to do than learning. If learning is, at least in part, fundamentally the establishment of correlations, then one way to unlearn something is to break correlations, but that's not exactly a straightforward thing to do.

Suppose I have been building correlations all my life that connect a certain habit to various stimuli. Let's say I like to smoke. Every time I smoke a cigarette, I'm experiencing new visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli. These stimuli can become correlated in my brain with the stimuli associated with smoking. Over time, a certain image, sound, or smell or even the thought of one of those stimuli can trigger the thought of smoking. If I have made it a habit, then my brain tends to reinforce the action with random sensory inputs that are correlated with the experience of smoking.

In the case of nicotine and other drugs, they actually modulate certain neuro-chemical processes in the brain by blocking or enhancing the reception of neurotransmitters, which makes them even more addictive than an ordinary, less brain-invasive habit. But the concept is the same. Habits and thought patterns can be triggered by association with other ideas and sensory inputs to the brain. Breaking a habit or unlearning a correlation is a lot harder than creating a habit or establishing a correlation.

Instead of associating ideas, to unlearn something, we have to disassociate them, which requires breaking correlations that have been embedded in the mind. I've found many times that I've had to unlearn things I had come to believe as a child or a young man. Some associations were formulated at school, some at home, and some who knows where. I imagine most people face this at one time or another.

I'm not sure I have a good formula for unlearning, but just as correlations are built with repeated associations, perhaps we can decorrelate ideas by thinking about one of the ideas and actively suppressing the other idea. If we repeatedly expose ourselves to cases where one idea is present and the other is suppressed, perhaps the brain will respond by weakening synaptic connections that were previously strengthened and over time, we won't automatically think of the second idea when presented with the first.

This seems like a really important skill to learn. Some people seem to become more closed-minded as they age leaving an unmalleable mind in a 70 year old. Keeping our minds open and flexible requires regular exercise, which requires the humility to admit that we'll always have a lot to learn. I think we also have to find joy in the learning process and be willing to undertake the effort to unlearn ideas we previously cherished when we find them incompatible with truth. In the words of the great Yoda, "[we] must unlearn what [we] have learned."

Adam Smith on the Poor

I did a little more reading in Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' last night. Here's what Smith had to say about the poor in times of growing prosperity.

[A] common complaint [is] that luxury extends itself even to the lowest ranks of the people, and that the labouring poor will not now be contented with the same food, clothing, and lodging which satisfied them in former times. ...

Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the society? The answer seems at first sight abundantly plain. Servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

Well said. I have heard/read people accuse Smith of being unfeeling toward the poor because he advocates freedom of commerce as a means toward building national wealth. Capitalism seems to be harsh at times and would seem to lead to great inequality of wealth. Yet Smith's aim is to study how nations build wealth, not how governments or elites build wealth. As a professor of moral philosophy, he seems to be interested in what is beneficial for the people as a whole, not what is good for the elite.

Whatever might be debated about the validity of his theories, I think the above quote makes his intentions and philosophy pretty clear. I think the man's heart was in the right place. And for what it's worth, I also think there's a lot of value in his theories.

Wealth of Nations

I started reading Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' the other day. I know I have weird tastes, but I love to learn and there are so many classics I haven't had time to read yet. Sometimes I can't get through them (I choked on Aeschylus a few years ago), but if I can get the right perspective on a book and see the beauty of the author's ideas, I usually learn some great things. There's a reason that certain classics endure for centuries.

Adam Smith

One thing that struck me at the very beginning - Smith makes the case that one of the origins of wealth in certain nations derives from the division of labor. When people focus their efforts on a narrower field of study, they can often be much more productive than if they try to master every piece of the process. He looks at several industries (e.g. pin making - who knew?) and cites examples of the productivity achieved by factories that pipeline the process by dividing the labor. Compared to typical production rates achieved by people working alone, the number of products manufactured by the pipeline process per person is hundreds of times greater than the single-person model.

I don't know whether his theory holds up in every industry (I think it does) or if there is some point at which that correlation between increased productivity and narrower fields of study breaks down (I think it may), but according to his studies, that concept makes a big difference in productivity and contributes greatly to the wealth in a nation.

None of that was really new to me, except maybe that pin-making industry :), but then he threw something at me I hadn't thought of before. In order for this division to work, there have to be a large number of people. Towns and cities, for example, would benefit from this model of the division of labor whereas rural settlements can't afford to have 10 people out of a total population of 1,000 specializing to produce thousands of pins a day.

But here's the kicker. Transportation can enable the formation of larger groups of people even if they are spread out geographically. Thus, through trade, groups of people can rationalize even greater degrees of specialization to provide goods and services to people in other places, knowing that other goods and services that they are not producing may be procured from others who are likewise specializing and producing valuable products. So transportation can form larger 'virtual communities' and enable a greater degree of the division of labor, which leads to greater productivity. The advent of cars, trains, and airplanes has probably done more to increase the world's wealth than I had previously thought.

Then I thought that in our age where we place an ever greater emphasis on services, communication may serve as well as transportation when the desired services are based on information. The advent of the internet has probably contributed and will continue to contribute a great deal to our wealth as we seek to provide value through the exchange of information - ideas, solutions, software, etc. These products may have value, but don't require transportation to enable their utility. But they do require communication. And thanks to the internet, we have a pretty large 'virtual community' that continues to grow.

I love it when an idea helps me see things in a new way. As any economist reading this can tell, I'm no economist, but I may know just enough to be dangerous. I've barely started the book, so I look forward to learning more from our friend, Mr. Smith. Maybe I'll share a little more as I get farther along. If you are an economist, or a wannabe like me, please share your thoughts. I like to learn from living people as well as dead ones.