Stoicism

Stoicism has a couple of fundamental ideas: one is that a meaningful life -a life worth living- is a life of practicing virtue. And this is virtue in the Greek/Roman sense of the term.

There are four fundamental virtues:

1. Practical wisdom, which is the ability to navigate complex situations in the best possible way.
2. Courage, which is not just physical courage, but moral courage, the courage to stand up for situations and for people.
3. Temperance, the ability to exercise self control, not to go into excesses of any sorts.
4. Justice, which is treating other people with fairness, the way you would like to be treated.

For a Stoic, if you practice sincerely the four virtues, that in and of itself, is both necessary and sufficient to make your life worth living.

The other one is the so called "Dichotomy of Control", best articulated by Epictetus, one of the late Roman Stoics, but present from the beginning of the philosophy, all the way back to Zeno of Citium, its founder, around 300 BC.

Dichotomy of Control says that wisdom and a serene life come out of understanding and internalizing that certain things are under your control and other things are not, and that you should focus on where your agency can actually be effective, that is, on the things that are under your control.

All external happenings are not under your control, you can only influence them. The things that are under your control are your values, your decision and your behaviors, your judgements about things.

[Massimo Pigliucci]

A computational model of mind

The idea that the mind is software is a fairly popular delusion at the moment, but that hardly excuses a putatively serious philosopher for perpetuating it [...]. Usually, when confronted by the computational model of mind, it is enough to point out that what minds do is precisely everything that computers do not do, and therein lies much of a computer’s usefulness.

Really, it would be no less apt to describe the mind as a kind of abacus. In the physical functions of a computer, there is neither a semantics nor a syntax of meaning. There is nothing resembling thought at all. There is no intentionality, or anything remotely analogous to intentionality or even to the illusion of intentionality. There is a binary system of notation that subserves a considerable number of intrinsically mindless functions. And, when computers are in operation, they are guided by the mental intentions of their programmers and users, and they provide an instrumentality by which one intending mind can transcribe meanings into traces, and another can translate those traces into meaning again. But the same is true of books when they are “in operation.” And this is why I spoke above of a “Narcissan fallacy”: computers are such wonderfully complicated and versatile abacuses that our own intentional activity, when reflected in their functions, seems at times to take on the haunting appearance of another autonomous rational intellect, just there on the other side of the screen. It is a bewitching illusion, but an illusion all the same. And this would usually suffice as an objection to any given computational model of mind. 

David Bentley Hart

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-illusionist

Drowned in a sea of irrelevance

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.

Neil Postman

Temor y respeto de sí mismo

Todo hombre ha de entenderlo: no importa su enorme estatura, no importa su valentía, también él puede sucumbir al más ligero desliz. Temor y respeto de sí mismo juntamente, son los que dan entera seguridad al hombre. Ten sabido que donde se tolera la petulante soberbia y se deja que cada uno haga su antojo, por próspera que sea, aunque le soplen vientos propicios, lentamente se habrá de hundir la nave de la ciudad.

Sófocles: Ajax

Fidel

dirán exactamente de fidel
gran conductor el que incendió la historia etcétera
pero el pueblo lo llama el caballo y es cierto
fidel montó sobre fidel un día
se lanzó de cabeza contra el dolor contra la muerte
pero más todavía contra el polvo del alma
la Historia parlará de sus hechos gloriosos
prefiero recordarlo en el rincón del día
en que miró su tierra y dijo soy la tierra
en que miró su pueblo y dijo soy el pueblo
y abolió sus dolores sus sombras sus olvidos
y solo contra el mundo levantó en una estaca
su propio corazón el único que tuvo
lo desplegó en el aire como una gran bandera
como un fuego encendido contra la noche oscura
como un golpe de amor en la cara del miedo
como un hombre que entra temblando en el amor
alzó su corazón lo agitaba en el aire
lo daba de comer de beber de encender
fidel es un país
yo lo vi con oleajes de rostros en su rostro
la Historia arreglará sus cuentas allá ella
pero lo vi cuando subía gente por sus hubiéramos
buenas noches Historia agranda tus portones
entramos con fidel con el caballo

Juan Gelman

La rebelión de las masas

Cuando una civilización no ha logrado evitar que la satisfacción de un cierto número de sus partícipes tenga como premisa la opresión de otros, de la mayoría quizá -y así sucede en todas las civilizaciones actuales-, es comprensible que los oprimidos desarrollen una intensa hostilidad contra la civilización que ellos mismos sostienen con su trabajo, pero de cuyos bienes no participan sino muy poco. En este caso no puede esperarse por parte de los oprimidos una asimilación de las prohibiciones culturales, pues, por el contrario, se negarán a reconocerlas, tenderán a destruir la civilización misma y eventualmente a suprimir sus premisas. La hostilidad de estas clases sociales contra la civilización es tan patente que ha monopolizado la atención de los observadores, impidiéndoles ver la que latentemente abrigan también las otras capas sociales más favorecidas. No hace falta decir que una cultura que deja insatisfecho a un núcleo tan considerable de sus partícipes y los incita a la rebelión no puede durar mucho tiempo, ni tampoco lo merece.

Freud: El Povernir de una Ilusión (1927)

Mozart

Mozart es un volcán. Una avalancha. Un huracán. Hay idiotas que no creen que Dios vino al mundo y se hizo hombre. Hace 260 años, una de tantas veces. El Maestro vive. Nos enseña que hay algunas cosas, casi siempre pequeñas y nocturnas, que hacen de la experiencia humana algo soportable y llevadero. Que el genio es infantil, irreverente y sempiterno. Mozart es la locomotora que hala el tren que nunca alcanzaremos. Es una bengala arrojada al pozo desde donde contemplamos atónitos las sombras. Es el cuerno que derriba la muralla del silencio. Su alma derramada nos salpica y nos empapa de gloria, por los siglos de los siglos.

A new man beyond Europe

We must abandon our dreams and say farewell to our beliefs and former friendships. Let us not lose time in useless laments or sickening mimicry. Let us leave this Europe which never stops talking of man yet massacres him at everyone of its street corners, at every corner of the world.

For centuries Europe has brought the progress of other men to a halt and enslaved them for its own purposes and glory; for centuries it has stifled virtually the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called "spiritual adventure." Look at it now teetering between atomic destruction and spiritual disintegration.

And yet nobody can deny its achievements at home have not been crowned with success. Europe has taken over leadership of the world with fervor, cynicism, and violence. And look how the shadow of its monuments spreads and multiplies. Every movement Europe makes bursts the boundaries of space and thought.

Europe has denied itself not only humility and modesty but also solicitude and tenderness. 

Its only show of miserliness has been toward man, only toward man has it shown itself to be niggardly and murderously carnivorous.

So, my brothers, how could we fail to understand that we have better things to do than follow in that Europe's footsteps?

This Europe, which never stopped talking of man, which never stopped proclaiming its sole concern was man, we now know the price of suffering humanity has paid for everyone of its spiritual victories. 

Come, comrades, the European game is finally over, we must look for something else. We can do anything today provided we do not ape Europe, provided we are not obsessed with catching up with Europe. 

Europe has gained such a mad and reckless momentum that it has lost control and reason and is heading at dizzying speed towards the brink from which we would be advised to remove ourselves as quickly as possible. 

It is all too true, however, that we need a model, schemas and examples. For many of us the European model is the most elating. But we have seen in the preceding pages how misleading such an imitation can be. European achievements, European technology and European lifestyles must stop tempting us and leading us astray. 

When I look for man in European lifestyles and technology I see a constant denial of man, an avalanche of murders. Man's condition, his projects and collaboration with others on tasks that strengthen man's totality, are new issues which require genuine inspiration. 

Let us decide not to imitate Europe and let us tense our muscles and our brains in a new direction. Let us endeavor to invent a man in full, something which Europe has been incapable of achieving. 

Two centuries ago, a former European colony took it into its head to catch up with Europe. It has been so successful that the United States ofAmerica has become a monster where the flaws, sickness, and inhumanity of Europe have reached frightening proportions.

Comrades, have we nothing else to do but create a third Europe? The West saw itself on a spiritual adventure. It is in the name of the Spirit, meaning the spirit of Europe, that Europe justified its crimes and legitimized the slavery in which it held four fifths of humanity.

...

Today we are witnessing a stasis of Europe. Comrades, let us flee this stagnation where dialectics has gradually turned into a logic of the status quo. Let us reexamine the question of man. Let us reexamine the question of cerebral reality, the brain mass of humanity in its entirety whose affinities must be increased, whose connections must be diversified and whose communications must be humanized again. 

Come brothers, we have far too much work on our hands to revel in outmoded games. Europe has done what it had to do all things considered, it has done a good job; let us stop accusing it, but let us say to it firmly it must stop putting on such a show. We no longer have reason to fear it, let us stop then envying it.

The Third World is today facing Europe as one colossal mass whose project must be to try and solve the problems this Europe was incapable of finding the answers to. 

But what matters now is not a question of profitability, not a question of increased productivity, not a question of production rates. No, it is not a question of back to nature. It is the very basic question of not dragging man in directions which mutilate him, of not imposing on his brain tempos that rapidly obliterate and it. The notion of catching up must not be as a pretext to brutalize man, to tear him from himself and his inner consciousness, to break him, to kill him. 

No, we do not want to catch up with anyone. But what we want is to walk in the company of man, every man, night and day, for all times.

The Third World must start over a new history of man which takes account of not only the occasional prodigious theses maintained by Europe but also its crimes, the most heinous of which have been committed at the very heart of man, the pathological dismembering of his functions and the erosion of his unity, and in the context of the community, the fracture, the stratification and the bloody tensions fed by class, and finally, on the immense scale of humanity, the racial hatred, slavery, exploitation and, above all, the bloodless genocide whereby one and a half billion men have been written off. 

So comrades, let us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions, and societies that draw their inspiration from it. Humanity expects other things from us than this grotesque and generally obscene emulation.

If we want to transform Africa into a new Europe, America into a new Europe, then let us entrust the destinies of our countries to the Europeans. They will do a better job than the best of us.

But if we want humanity to take one step forward, if we want to take it to another level than the one where Europe has placed it, then we must innovate, we must be pioneers. 

If we want to respond to the expectations of our peoples, we must look elsewhere besides Europe.

Moreover, if we want to respond to the expectations of the Europeans we must not send them back a reflection, however ideal, of their society and their thought that periodically sickens even them.

For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must make a new start, develop a new way of thinking, and endeavor to create a new man. 

Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth

these mad dogs of glory

Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief
Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town
the impossibility of being human
Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
Mailer stabbing his
the impossibility of being human
Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
Dostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
the impossibility
Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato
Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun
Lorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troops
the impossibility
Artaud sitting on the madhouse bench
Chatterton drinking rat poison
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory
moving this little bit of light toward
us
impossibly.

Charles Bukowski: Beasts Bounding Through Time

Los hombres extraordinarios

La inexactitud consiste en que yo no dije, como usted ha entendido, que los hombres extraordinarios están autorizados a cometer toda clase de actos criminales. Sin duda, un artículo que sostuviera semejante tesis no se habría podido publicar. Lo que yo insinué fue tan sólo que el hombre extraordinario tiene el derecho..., no el derecho legal, naturalmente, sino el derecho moral..., de permitir a su conciencia franquear ciertos obstáculos en el caso de que así lo exija la realización de sus ideas, tal vez beneficiosas para toda la humanidad...

En mi opinión, si los descubrimientos de Képler y Newton, por una circunstancia o por otra, no hubieran podido llegar a la humanidad sino mediante el sacrificio de una, o cien, o más vidas humanas que fueran un obstáculo para ello, Newton habría tenido el derecho, e incluso el deber, de sacrificar esas vidas, a fin de facilitar la difusión de sus descubrimientos por todo el mundo. Esto no quiere decir, ni mucho menos, que Newton tuviera derecho a asesinar a quien se le antojara o a cometer toda clase de robos. En el resto de mi artículo, si la memoria no me enga- ña, expongo la idea de que todos los legisladores y guías de la humanidad, empezando por los más antiguos y terminando por Licurgo, Solón, Mahoma, Napoleón, etcétera; todos, hasta los más recientes, han sido criminales, ya que al promulgar nuevas leyes violaban las antiguas, que habían sido observadas fielmente por la sociedad y transmitidas de generación en generación, y también porque esos hombres no retrocedieron ante los derramamientos de sangre (de sangre inocente y a veces heroicamente derramada para defender las antiguas leyes), por poca que fuese la utilidad que obtuvieran de ello.

Incluso puede decirse que la mayoría de esos bienhechores y guías de la humanidad han hecho correr torrentes de sangre. Mi conclusión es, en una palabra, que no sólo los grandes hombres, sino aquellos que se elevan, por poco que sea, por encima del nivel medio, y que son capaces de decir algo nuevo, son por naturaleza, e incluso inevitablemente, criminales, en un grado variable, como es natural. Si no lo fueran, les sería difícil salir de la rutina. No quieren permanecer en ella, y yo creo que no lo deben hacer.

Ya ven ustedes que no he dicho nada nuevo. Estas ideas se han comentado mil veces de palabra y por escrito. En cuanto a mi división de la humanidad en seres ordinarios y extraordinarios, admito que es un tanto arbitraria; pero no me obstino en defender la precisión de las cifras que doy. Me limito a creer que el fondo de mi pensamiento es justo. Mi opinión es que los hombres pueden dividirse, en general y de acuerdo con el orden de la misma naturaleza, en dos categorías: una inferior, la de los individuos ordinarios, es decir, el rebaño cuya única misión es reproducir seres semejantes a ellos, y otra superior, la de los verdaderos hombres, que se complacen en dejar oír en su medio palabras nuevas. Naturalmente, las subdivisiones son infinitas, pero los rasgos característicos de las dos categorías son, a mi entender, bastante precisos. La primera categoría se compone de hombres conservadores, prudentes, que viven en la obediencia, porque esta obediencia los encanta. Y a mí me parece que están obligados a obedecer, pues éste es su papel en la vida y ellos no ven nada humillante en desempeñarlo. En la segunda categoría, todos faltan a las leyes, o, por lo menos, todos tienden a violarlas por todos sus medios.

Naturalmente, los crímenes cometidos por estos últimos son relativos y diversos. En la mayoría de los casos, estos hombres reclaman, con distintas fórmulas, la destrucción del orden establecido, en provecho de un mundo mejor. Y, para conseguir el triunfo de sus ideas, pasan si es preciso sobre montones de cadáveres y ríos de sangre. Mi opinión es que pueden permitirse obrar así; pero..., que quede esto bien claro..., teniendo en cuenta la clase e importancia de sus ideas. Sólo en este sentido hablo en mi artículo del derecho de esos hombres a cometer crímenes. (Recuerden ustedes que nuestro punto de partida ha sido una cuestión jurídica). Por otra parte, no hay motivo para inquietarse demasiado. La masa no les reconoce nunca ese derecho y los decapita o los ahorca, dicho en términos generales, con lo que cumple del modo más radical su papel conservador, en el que se mantiene hasta el día en que generaciones futuras de esta misma masa erigen estatuas a los ajusticiados y crean un culto en torno de ellos..., dicho en términos generales. Los hombres de la primera categoría son dueños del presente; los de la segunda del porvenir. La primera conserva el mundo, multiplicando a la humanidad; la segunda empuja al universo para conducirlo hacia sus fines. Las dos tienen su razón de existir. En una palabra, yo creo que todos tienen los mismos derechos. Vive donc la guerre éternelle..., hasta la Nueva Jerusalén, entiéndase.

Fiódor Dostoyevski: Crímen y Castigo