What is it, in our day-to-day lives, that prevents us from stepping back—perhaps lowering the arm presently occupying (or occupied by) some gadget—and examining the aspects, and indeed limitations, of humanity? We have stuff to do. Time is money. We’re not getting any younger and our daughters have ballet rehearsal at six and oh shit we forgot to pick up our jacket from the dry-cleaner! Is there still time? Nope—I suppose we’ll just—oh wait, it’s our wives/husbands texting us, telling us we’re out of Cheez-Itz®, Clorox® disinfecting wipes, Charmin® Ultra Soft toilet paper, Crest® Extra Whitening toothpaste, and Jif®, not Skippy®, Jif® creamy peanut butter and could we please pick all that up at Wal-Mart® on our way home from our cubicle under which a flickering light we have been complaining about for two weeks has yet to be replaced?
Is this what happiness feels like? Are these facets of the good life? Would we even think about these things, and does any of it matter? Were commerce, the stock market, credit default, et al inevitable? Are we sacrificing happiness for goodness, or vice versa? Can we achieve both? Is one dependent on the other?
If Grayling is correct in stating that philosophy is “opposed to on-size-fits-all nostrums, to authorities ancient and modern who claim to have all the answers”, I think the world at large, and American society in particular, could benefit greatly from a restitution of many such schools of thought. Philosophy is not dead, as Stephen Hawking inappropriately proclaimed, because thinking is not dead. Hawking said this in a rather different context, but without a philosophical curiosity, our everyday lives would still be overcast with shadows of general ignorance, because from whence came the drive to the development of our scientific methods? Discovery is a philosophical endeavor accelerated now by scientific tools, which we acquired by our philosophical quandaries on the nature of things. There are many questions which do not yet have answers, many answers which should continue being questioned, and perhaps even questions which have not yet been asked.
These multifarious, bite-sized essays deliver quick bolts of thought and, importantly, don’t purport to arrive at unassailable truths (even if well-established facts do factor into his quandaries). Neuroscience, for example, is a vast frontier in its infancy which, in time, could erode certain notions about various aspects of the mind, and solidify others. Grayling wonders what implications could be discerned regarding morality and relativism if so-called ‘mirror-neurons’ in the motor cortex can be shown to influence one’s social behavior (with some researchers already proposing a link between mirror-neuron dysfunction and autism). We’re largely treading on speculative and hypothetical ground when it comes to neuroscience, and should be cautious, but moral philosophy should take great interest in this developing field. This specific subject is covered by Grayling in little more space than I have just provided it, and its conciseness has the added benefit of making for a terrific discussion starter for groups and classes, as any of the subsequent essays would. Morality and ethics play parts in several of the entries, as one might expect (moral hypocrisy, Darwinian ethics, human rights, poverty, self-abusive religious practices, water use and conservation, business and profit, remorse), and far from using these terms interchangeably, he scrupulously includes a discussion on the philosophically loaded terms, morality and ethics, and suggests that, for instance, pundits and politicians should be more restrictive in their use of the word moral, because “ethics includes morality”, but I wonder if ethics shouldn’t supersede morality, not only putting an end to the confusion, but also to do away with the buzzing mosquito of religious insistence upon objective morality, the exceptions upon which they are of course equally insistent. Could this be beneficial, or detrimental? Perhaps, after all quibbling, a pragmatic Aristotelian view is superior, if only everyone could agree that “doing one’s moral best” is as easy as being honest and forthright, but who knows how much this flies in the face of human nature?
Interlude:
(Don’t get me started on hypochondria versus valetudinarianism because I’ll start naming off all the terminal conditions and viruses with which I have convinced myself I am afflicted. Much appreciated.)
But other questions on health are less anxiety-inducing, such as the benefits of laughter (being a necessary response to the absurdity of life), abstaining from food (specifically calorie-intake, to promote longevity) and the harmful effect of restrictive drug laws, which is important to consider because if addicts could be directed on how much could be administered before it becomes a lethal dose, treatment would conceivably be easier, and they would at least be conscious (recognizing that, as with alcohol, there will still be abusers) of its dangers because it could contain those medical directions right on the box of narcotics (oh, and that drug war is a right fucking mess, isn’t it?)
Those familiar with Grayling’s philosophical canon will know that a frequent target of his critical inquiry is religion, and one of his longer essays in this collection is on the intersection of science and religion. He defines his terms in using science, specifically, in this case, referring to Darwinian evolutionary theory, and religion, or ‘religious belief’, ascribing to it “any belief in the existence and activity of supernatural agencies, or one such agent (a ‘god’), either in the universe or outside it (‘outside it’ because allegedly outside space and time) but somehow operative in or on it.” He stakes his territory on matters such as these, and becomes more tendentious, and I support him in doing so, but we must be willing to hear what others would define religion as, or entailing, provided it’s nominally coherent. This definition however, is simple and clear enough to work with for his piece. A lot of theological and pseudoscientific rhetoric finds its way into the science-religion debate, and it never seems to clarify whether science is of their god, or whether it’s just wrong and heretical. Most educations religionists claim the former now, but go on to deny a plethora of established scientific discovery, most notoriously evolution, but also, and more immediately dire, climate science, because, you know, ‘God destroyed the world with a flood once, and He said he wuddn’t gon’ do it agay-un’, so we’ve got nothing to worry about. Relax.
In short (nudge, nudge), anything discussed in this book could be, and has been, the subject of many exclusive tomes, but it wouldn’t hurt to read one of these daily (if you have time to take your vitamins and brush your teeth, you have time to read one in the morning) and bring it up in conversation with someone along the way, or return to this thread and discuss any specific entry (many of which I haven’t even mentioned), and hopefully they will do the same, and we can be more thoughtful in our daily, wind-and-grind existences that get so tedious we forget to ask ourselves what we’re all doing here anyway.