On Purpose

I started this thing almost 19 months ago with no idea what it was for or really why I was doing it. In essence, my reasoning was basically that I wanted to be able to work things out and the easiest way to do that was by taking my time and working it out on paper. I also wanted to be able to find it again later but I'd probably lose the paper.
So this page was started.

A page with no particular purpose beyond it's existence.

And so I ask myself, of what use is something with no purpose. On one level, this question has a simple answer. If there is no purpose, then it is not useful and therefore it is useless.
Now, to my knowledge I've never been accused of sentimentality. I have very little use for anything that's only purpose is to remind me of something that I used to be - what I used to be I generally try to forget. If something has served it's purpose, it is now not useful and is therefore useless.

Which brings me to the purpose of this post, and indeed this page. This page was created with out a cogent purpose, but in the last week or so, I discovered what it was. In conjunction with a couple of other things, this page forced me to think about things in a way that I had never done before. I don't ever think I've mentioned this before here, but it's been my observation that if a mask is worn long enough, it becomes your real face. People say they 'find themselves', I think that's a lie. No one 'finds themselves', they decide who they are.

Over the past two years, I decided who I was.

I moved to Sydney about 20 months ago. In the process, I decided that the things that people thought about me back where I was previous would not be thought about me here. In particular, I had many rough edges that needed to be smoothed off. I failed somewhat at that mission. My edges are a bit smoother, but people still have many of the same thoughts. But what it did do was force me to be someone I hadn't been before. I wore that mask for about 18 months with only very occasional slips and with such regularity, that my previous faces had to shuffle around to make room. What happened without me noticing was I became a person, whole and complete.

As a result of this, the entire premise of this page has become a moot point. I wanted to work things out on paper, and in the process worked myself out.
This has become a thing without purpose. It has ceased being useful and therefore must come to an end.

This next part is somewhat difficult. When I leave a situation, it is my practise to cut ties as much as possible. I don't really want to cut this particular tie since it is something that I actually need to remember. This page will no longer be updated except under exceptional circumstances. You can still contact me through this page but I won't be doing anything more here.

Farewell, and I hope that those of you who decided to take this plunge into the morass with me enjoyed it or learned something from it.
This is Alphonse, signing off.

Cynicism

Well it's been a while and I haven't written anything. So here goes. I probably should have found something better to write about after the break that I had, but my life is fairly boring (so no inspiration there) and I've had no flashes of brilliance or realisation from any real philosophical or intelligent directions and so I discuss this.

I was recently told that I was incredibly distrustful and cynical. The actual words used as far as my memory goes were "Maybe one day we'll be able to get you over your distrust of everything". This followed the same person not being surprised by my ridicule of various administrative processes, bureaucracy and governmental processes in general. In my flawed memory, I replied, somewhat incorrectly that "I'm not distrustful of everything, just cynical of everyone's motives" which makes me sound overly paranoid. While I do have tendencies, I'm not that bad. Rather, this was yet another case of me opening my mouth too quickly and going with exaggeration instead of a carefully considered statement that was both poignant and insightful.

What I should have said instead was "I just don't trust the motives of anyone who holds some level of power". This, while still paranoid, at least leaves wriggle room and puts a limit on the statement. From there I would have to explain. So here goes my explanation.

Humans are by nature creatures that desire power above all else. The problem from there is inherent in the nature of power. Power puts you above at least one other. As a supervisor in your place of employment, you have some level of power and by default, you have been placed above some others. As your amount of power increases, so does the number of people who are by default under you. When you get a position of power in the government, you have essentially been placed over every person who is not you.
This, to me, is in itself a problem. I'm at heart an anarchist. I believe in the human ideal of self autonomy, at least on Earth. Before you say anything, I also believe in social responsibility. Put those two together and you get self autonomy that respects and aids others over most else. So I have a problem with anyone who can say that they have power over another if it isn't qualified with the strictest terms.

We see abuses of power every few minutes. Government employees who take bribes or kickbacks, employers who abuse their employees however they do that, teachers who punish students for imagined or false reasons. I could go on but the point is that power, as has been said many times, corrupts. The converse is also true; while power corrupts, power also attracts the corruptible. And so the story goes.


Now my next problem is that the ultimate goal of power is to either increase or retain the level of power that the holder has. If we have the corrupt and corruptible with this subconscious goal, then nothing that is done by these people can be trusted on any level as it will all (probably) come back to the retention of power.
A good example is tax cuts. No one will ever complain about tax cuts in a time of surplus, that doesn't make sense from anyone's point of view. But let's look at the intention. A Budget Surplus is a good thing to have, it means that everyone's doing well and if something bad happens, everything should be fine. So why give a tax cut if this is desirable? Because the people ask for it. So what does the government gain? The only thing is that the public view of the government in this case will increase. And what will that achieve? Come the next election, they'll get voted back in. That's why you only ever see tax cuts if the government is looking bad in the opinion polls, or in an election year.
Yes, that sounds like the words of a hardened cynic but I can see my point.

So yeah, I'm a cynic and getting me over that will probably take some work.

Actions

Let me preface this with a disclaimer. As with most things, I'm still trying to figure this one out. And as with most things, I'm probably wrong.

There is no object that contains the metaphysical properties of bad, or evil, or wrong. And I think that that principle can be taken further.
There is no action that contains the metaphysical properties of bad, or evil, or wrong IN AND OF THEMSELVES.
The action that you may undertake may be evil, but I don't think that the action itself is evil.

But coming out and simply saying it will never explain it, or make it so. Before I explain it however, I'll explain my motives behind writing this down.

A few weeks ago, I came across a forum discussion from a group purporting to be something along the lines of 'Fundamental, Baptist, King James Bible believing [original not NKJV] Christians'. After reading through this and a couple of other of the discussions I came to the conclusion that these were Ultraconservative 'christians' who were stuck more in their tradition than the actual bible that they said that they read. However, read it they did; they could probably quote whole books of it at you and explain what they thought it meant.
The particular discussion in question was about whether modern musical stylings could ever be considered wholesome, and more specifically, whether they could be used for the purposes of worship. Where I was hoping that the discussion might be an intelligent, civil one, it ended up being little more than a slagging match on all non-hymn music that contained logical fallacies so large that Christopher Hitchens would be able to drive an incredibly oversized vehicle through them with not just room to spare, but also without being able to see the edges, so congratulations for that.
The discussion ranged from things like the associations of rock music being unsuitable for Christian worship (actually not a bad point) to things like the standard 4/4 drum beat employed in rock music was created by the devil to tempt us, and it's obvious since people dance to it (where they got that idea from I still can't figure out).
It contained arguments like, "Parents of children who listen to this music don't listen to this music. Therefore, it is not honouring to the parents to listen to this music and so it breaks the 7th commandment" - to which I thought, it was my parents who introduced me to this music. It also featured this particular doozy: "You wouldn't use the music from AC/DC's Highway to Hell to sing Amazing Grace to" (and yes that was actually the example given), so you therefore can't use any thing bearing any similarity to that style for worship. My thought here was, not only that the music doesn't have the same rhythm as amazing grace and therefore can't be used, but also that Highway to Hell isn't really particularly good musically anyway so why would you want to.

Any backwards and onwards to the original proposition - No object or action is evil. Before the piles of hate mail come in for me saying this, I will clarify.
The physical entity or movements themselves are not evil, they are merely things. What is evil, is the motives.

Let me explain further. Let's take objects first as it's less of an abstract concept and therefore easier to explain. A knife is not evil; it has a function and it carries out that function. The function of a knife is to cut things. It can cut all sorts of things; paper, bread, fabric, light plastic, meat. It is merely a thing with a function.
However, let's consider briefly the function of the knife. It is designed to cut things. Ergo it can cut humans if the user deems that that is what the knife's function should be on any particular occasion. This could be deemed an evil function, but the object has stayed the same. It has not in any way changed or altered its physical or chemical make up, so how can it now be evil?
When you consider closer, even with this theoretically evil function, there are cases when it could be deemed good even with the exact same function. You can cut a human in order to kill, maim or wound. You can cut a human in order to perform life saving surgery.
The Object, no matter the function or the motive for it's existence, says the same and can not be said to be either evil or good, it merely is.

Let's take actions now. Let's take a few different actions and see how they can vary.
We've already considered the action of cutting open a human. It can be done both to injure and to heal. Let's take the example further. Let's now kill the human with the afore mentioned knife. Let's say firstly that it was done simply for the pleasure of killing, to end a life. Most people would have no problems at all deciding that this is an evil motive. But let's now consider another scenario. What about defence for yourself or others? Could that be considered a good motive for killing a human. Certainly in the eyes of the law of most lands it is. Which means that this action is just a thing, neutral at best. So let's try another action.
Let's take an action that many people would not stop to think about. Let's take sex as an example. Sex can be good. It builds intimacy and strong relationships. It builds families which in turn have the potential to be forces for some metaphysical property of good. It is even (or so I've been told) pleasurable. It certainly seems to be off to a good start. What about rape. It is the same action, but suddenly it has a different motive. The motive in this case could be to hurt or injure either physically, emotionally or psychologically. It could be for the purposes of gaining power over an individual. It could simply be for the purposes of gaining pleasure at another's expense. These motives all shift the potentially good action to being what 99.999999% of people consider bad. But the action itself is still just a neutral thing.
Let's now take an action that could never be considered bad or evil. Let's help an old lady across the street. She's struggling with the load of shopping and she's been walking all day in the heat. Good action. Now think about why you're doing it. Did you want to help Mrs Winthrop completely out of the goodness of your heart? or instead did you want Mrs Winthrop to think you were a good person and maybe even tip you for helping out. Unless you can say that the second never crossed your mind, then the action itself was not completely good. If you helped Mrs Winthrop because you wanted to get her away from the crowds before you ran off with her shopping and handbag, then your motives were definitely bad.

I'm not trying to advocate a lesser evil mentality here. Instead what I'm trying to do is write down my still young thoughts on this topic. But it seems to me that the only thing that is evil in all of this is the motives, whether for the action or for the existence of the object, the rest is just a thing.