Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Philosophy in Pubs 8 June 2010 Cumberland Arms

We listened to a Philosophy Bite on The Problem of Evil by Stephen Law

http://philosophybites.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=223611

Summing up after discussion of evil:

Do logic and rationality produce a counterweight to evil? Other factors complicate the issue such as emotional response.

Belief in evil, it is just a belief, needs to be struggled against so that we do not give in to our irrational fears.

Evil does not exist. Things happen and we are not really in control of our actions: our belief in control is an illusion.

Is evil or good innate? Good can be regarded as what is good for oneself. Self-interest

rules.

There is no such thing as evil. The concept of evil is embedded in religion and imbibed with it through life. Is killing evil? Sometimes it can prevent a greater evil.

Everything that we are including evil such as Xenophobia is a result of our evolution and at some time helped as stay alive in the face of various threats to our existence.

It is subjective and bound to religion and its moral codes. Ac Grayling: ‘bad people do bad things, it takes religion to make good people do bad things

Perhaps one can do nothing. Avoiding evil but also the situation where doing good might lead to evil.

Evil exists in our minds- it is some idea put into people rather than found in their actions.

A childish concept of right and wrong, black and white. Some happenings are not explainable. Understanding why things happen is the best we can do.

Socrates suggested evil was a symptom of lack of knowledge of the good. Plotinus that it resulted from the inevitable imperfections of the world.

Someone suggested that that the word evil originated from Eve and the idea of original sin. An intriguingly misogynistic story. The word derives (Chambers Dictionary) from the Old English word ‘ yfel’  meaning over or up, and thus conveying the idea of transgression.

Charity

We had a brief verbal introduction to Zizek’s ‘Against Charity’. A recent talk at the Royal Society of Arts.

Capitalism has a paradox in that it allows ‘creative geniuses’ to get very rich, e.g. George Soros and Bill Gates, while other people are poor . However, they often end up giving much of it away to the poor and deprived. It would be better to give everyone a basic income and reward the creatively gifted minority in some other, more meaningful way. Revolution was partially avoided by the very existence of charity as a brake on poverty. The check provided to envy and resentment of these rich men by their possession of great wealth by either acquiring it by chance or to the non talented e.g. George Bush; therefore offering and hope consolation to the not so successful.

An argument for charity was presented from the work of Peter Singer: “if it is our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought to do it.”

Some views:

Charity on the whole is a good thing but it makes people dependent on it. People give to ease their consciences. Some people rely on charity rather than doing a day’s work- people choose to be homeless and a burden.

From my familiarity with the charity sector they are hierarchical and compete with each other like a ‘ beauty pageant’ for resources.

Charity sustains the whole capitalist system- the rich make themselves feel better than others by giving.

Summing up:

Charity has many aspects to it- any society has loopholes through which people fall.

Individualised workers have lost connection with others. The community does not work as it should- some of us are so greedy that some people get excluded.

I think that charity should not exist. Those who ask for it do not need it and the others who do need it do not want to receive it.

How do you identify those genuinely in need?

Everybody needs help now and again, not necessarily from a charity but no one should be ashamed of asking for help.

I am now more confused about charity: caring and sharing on one hand or offsetting the system of gain. This issue seems to run deep as we have become so agitated.

Only communities are self-sustaining. The notion of charity goes against and undermines the idea of community.

This word has different meanings in different situations. We need to be clearer about what it means. For instance, it is one of the theological virtues.

Charity is crap! If everybody took care of everybody else there would be no need for it.

Fairness is more important. The receiver of charity is put in a bad position although the giver may feel good. But lots of things need to be done: animals, the environment, diversity charities need support.

Football matches and charity are similar. Both bring feelings of catharsis and acceptance of the bad things in society.

This discussion is going nowhere. What are we going to achieve change when we leave?

It is a discussion not a manifesto! Although I am very experienced in this I can’t decide about the issues- perhaps it does prevent revolution, as Zizek says.

It may be that the urge to give to others, whether less fortunate or not: whether one can afford to or not: is part of our social evolution and being.

I am a dependant on charity: both as a frequent charity shop customer and on the social good will of others: As a philosophical principle also, since I would like my words to be represented and interpreted in the way most favourable to my case, to be given the benefit of doubt.

Joint Questions:

Is it possible to waste your life? And If we don’t feel a sense of purpose in life should we seek one?

In one group three members could not identify a purpose to their lives although the others felt there was. Perhaps this depends on ones sense of self..

Someone thought that purposes change from moment to moment therefore there could be no overall life plan. Another thought they could find a steady thread running through their life: in this case to make the world a fairer place. Although over the years the once global dimensions had shrunk a little.

Some discussed the elements needed for a conception of purpose and was surprised that religion was barely mentioned. Others though drives were underlying our actions and beliefs, for instance, the drive to produce children.

Purpose could be seen in terms of a personal duty either to others or to societal pressures. The whole of ones life may have a purpose but this is not always the case.

The group considering if one can waste ones life generally thought that having any experience or relationship cannot be considered wasteful even negative ones. If people took risks with their lives that did not mean that their life was wasted.

Surely this question is in fact an example of a category mistake. Is it possible to waste life as if it were time?

Perhaps life is about ‘just being’?

Does it matter if you can have a better time idling about e.g. sun bathing. How can waste be quantified? Too many value judgements are made.

Thinking about thinking creates a pressure that we ought to evaluate our actions. Life is just life -let’s get rid of value judgements. Relaxation and wasting time can be a good healthy thing.

A friend of mine spent his life berry picking in France and travelling the world; another concentrated on doing well financially. Maybe he was conforming to the pressure from modern life and the other gaining more fulfilment.

Can you live life without a purpose? Religion used to provide this but when it was dropped it left a gap in our beliefs.

Actually you need a criterion from which to discuss things. How can you waste your life? The only judge is your children or yourself. Everyone’s purpose is to be happy although what constitutes happiness varies between individuals.

How do you know its wasted?

Co-existence with others is more important than having individual purposes- being connected. In order to develop ourselves normally we need the stimulation of others.

I want to stand up to contribute -but now I feel nervous- so I will sit down. I’m not used to being in a group like this but thanks for having me.

Since we are all heading towards death- it provides a biological arrow to our living. What you impute to it is personal. We can learn from one another and from old texts and philosophers.

Thanks for wasting my time!

Response: My pleasure.

Philosophy in Pubs Cumberland Arms 27042010

We listened to a Podcast of Professor Hugh Mellor discussing the nature of Time

He took the view that our experience of the flow of time as tensed was useful but false. Time has only earlier or later occurrences apparent as part of the causal nature of the world. In some ways his view was similar to Einstein’s block time.

Summing up:

Hugh Mellor is right to look at the meaning we give to time. Time is not a thing, a phenomenon in itself. It is an artefact of the human mind, useful to us in operating in the world. Change occurs and so does experience but not within a flow of time as such.

It is part of our brain/mind function necessary for the different ways of measuring time. E.g. clocks. Also it assists in reflection, imagining and projection therefore we need to conceptualise this. Different processes run at different rates in the brain: cycles intermingle and interact.

I have a personal perspective on time. Most of my work life is spent attending to deadlines; to he regime of the clock. Yet the rest of my time is spent differently so that I can stand outside the drivenness of my working life. You finish work and go with the natural flow and lose that stress: although time has travelled on. As I get older the thought of death can give a greater sense of urgency wondering how I can live well in the time that remains.

When I was much younger I visited a old lady of great age. I asked her how old she felt. She said, oh about seventeen! That’s the problem: I feel like that inside too, it seems nature plays a trick on us all.

We appear in our culture awareness to see the future as stretching in front of us and the past safely behind but I know of some cultures that reverse this direction. The future creeps up behind to surprise and perhaps frighten you!

Time is useful to measure how much something changes over time but it is possible to do without strict measurement. Not to be dominated by the clock. We can measure day length by the sun, seasons by the weather patterns. The cycles of nature are our real measures.

The problem with time is that it is used in different ways: scientific, biological, cultural. Somehow these get confused. I am not sure that I agree with Hugh Mellor though.

Although time might have begun with the big bang some ideas seem even more mind boggling such as geological time which occurs in immense non-human scales. Hugh Mellor thought time travel to be impossible and in our discussion we mostly agreed with him. There was some discussion of variant themes such as Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance ideas and Jung’s Collective Unconscious, these suggest putative extra-dimensionality though regarded as highly speculative.

An example was given of monkeys first discovering how to wash yams and the almost simultaneous transmission of the habit to distant and spatially separated monkey groups.