Power is Knowledge: Part II

This is a continuation of the series on the essence of knowledge (epistemology) and its relation to power.

II) The Mystique of Power

Power is knowledge, and power has its mystique. The powerful knows something you do not. We can take as an example the mystique of the bureaucrat. The less you know of them, the more powerful they are. The more arcane their character, the more pointless their rules and regulations; the more removed they are from any logical, rational, tangible reality, the better for them and the worse for you. Their counter-intuitive rules are capable of entrenching themselves into the world of things and beings, until jumping through their hoops becomes an accepted facet of existence. Just by their strength alone (the strength of the State) they can carve themselves into reality.

The know-it-all is the smaller cousin of the bureaucrat. They do not express things for any useful end. They like appearing intelligent as a means of controlling others. They are an expression of power as knowledge – their power does not come from knowing anything, but from the pretention that they have an infinite well of knowledge to draw upon. Such a character, desperate to impress, understands the mystique of power. They are deceitful, epistemological sorcerers, who can produce nothing of value, attain no results, speak not a single truth, and yet still maintain power over others.

The mystique of power is what maintains its position. This is why the powerful present themselves as inevitable, eternal, inheritors of some legitimate reign. Power maintains itself when the powerless have no hope. Power hates imagination, because imagination quickly realizes the mystique. The powerless do not only need to know injustice - knowledge is not power. The powerless need imagination, to lead them to hope, and then to wage war against power, until it is vanquished, and knowledge freed from its tyranny.

III) Knowledge is part of us

Knowledge is not something removed from the whole human being. To think of knowledge as some dis-embodied (distanced from the body), floating, transcendent well of information is to forget that we are biological beings. Knowledge is literally attached to the human being, and this means it is entangled with everything that makes us what we are. For instance, the beliefs of a religious fundamentalist cannot be removed from their personhood, nor separated from their emotions. The two are bound together. Far have they carried their erroneous beliefs with them, a companion through the shift of time; a warm body to hold in the cold, existential night.

Knowledge can also become attached, quite literally, to an authority. For instance, in the patriarchal family unit the father is power and it is this power that allows him to dictate what is and isn't true. He is an embodiment of power; it is conflated with him.

Much of our never-ending journey to enlightenment consists in shedding off false-beliefs, with an occasional shift in world view (or rebirth). But evil (untruth) is literally contained inside of us, and that is why it can never wholly be vanquished. Philosophy can only go so far in equipping us with shields against untruth, and no spiritual fire can wholly scorch away our epistemological sins.

Selim Talat

Power is Knowledge: Part I

A well known saying runs thus: Knowledge is power. Whoever has the most knowledge has the ability to exert power over those with less knowledge. In war, the military with greater intelligence can deploy its forces most effectively. A marketing firm can predict what customers will want and tailor their message to manipulate them. A government can keep state secrets where it is in their interests to do so.

This all seems rather straight-forward and obvious. Accumulating knowledge allows an individual or institution to stand on a vantage point and control others. However there is one flaw in the maxim that knowledge is power. And that is the deeply philosophical question of 'what is knowledge?'

Knowledge is not just a fact about the universe. For instance, there are not a hundred trees in that small wood. With language we create the concept of a small wood and categorize the trees as belonging to it. But those trees are just there - they do not add up to a hundred unless you count them first so. You will only make them do so if there is a reason for you to do so. Once you have that reason, the hundred trees in the small wood become knowledge.

Knowledge consists of justified facts about something useful to human interests. On a large scale, what is useful to interests is ultimately determined by power; the most powerful of all being the ones who influence the narrative we all live in. For that is all human reality is, a narrative we grow accustomed to. It is a fiction, and if you dig deeply enough you will discover that nobody really knows anything - other  than their story.

An obvious example of this is the creation of false Gods throughout history. A power group in days of yore developed this idea of God and made him the ultimate source of all knowledge. Thereafter, all ideas of what were or not were not true knowledge were compared to this God.




















What is knowledge, what information is ultimately useful to us, is determined by the power paradigm of the age. It is not the case that human beings looked out into the world, gained knowledge, and then managed to impose their power on others. Power defined what useful knowledge was, and then they wrestled for control of it. This is not just to say, whatever the King says is true is true. Knowledge still has to be justified with evidence. Only, what knowledge we actually seek, and to what end we use our knowledge, is determined by the power structure we live within. This does not mean it is in the control of a secret cabal of human rulers, only that the chaotic juggernauts of power in the human world; what we call States, determines the ends of our accumulated knowledge.

It is only because of the endless power struggle gripping every human era that we are left with the sorry maxim: power is knowledge. In the post-power age to come, knowledge will become power, and knowledge will reign supreme.

Selim Talat

Reverence and Happiness

I just had the fortune of gazing up at a full moon, reflecting the light of the sun through lazy, misty night clouds. The celestial body is so far away that I can't even register it with my sense of depth perception. It is ludicrously huge and distant.

I never made the full moon appear. It was just there, unexpectedly. Nor did I play any part in engineering the sky, which appears massive and profound from this open-air space I call home. From here the sky is not a slither of blue between buildings, as it is for most in the urban sprawl. It is a vast canvas, and I can see the sun rising on one side of the world and setting on the other so much that the process has become embodied within me.

Depth, distance, size and scale is integrated into life out here. Wonder carries with it. This wider sense takes me somewhere further than moment to moment happiness - they create reverence for the cosmos by making me part of it.

Without a sense of reverence and wonder and eternal mystery, how flat our lives.

This is not to promote lack of understanding like some romantic rube. We have scientific tools that can tell us how far the moon is from the earth, or even take us there to have a proper gander at it.

The availability of these facts do nothing to remove the sheer poetic joy of the moon in this moment. For perhaps it is gazing back at me, and feels like I am some small part of its perception.

Imagine not having that sense of art or poetry.

How terrifying it is to think that we may live in a future where vast walls surround us and we lose all contact with the Cosmos which created and sustains us. Once we lose this sense we lose reverence.

And where else can that lead but to the moment-to-moment emptiness of mass-hedonism; the second-rate happiness which plagues our age and tramples the natural joys beneath its clumsy feet.

For there is a difference between the flickering light of a fire and the scientific canopy of a lightbulb. The latter is more useful, but the former is more terrible and passionate and beautiful.
 
The moon is high in the sky tonight, and nothing of human contrivance can match its wonder - except perhaps the conversations in the corridors of philosophers

Selim 'Selim' Talat.

Boredom! and dullness! and dissatisfaction!

Boredom is Time's most evil trick. But like all things wretched in this world, it serves a noble purpose.

Boredom is not death. Death is death. Death is an end and a great mystery. It still contains within itself some hope, and some excitement: for we do not know what comes afterwards: perhaps it will be a final explosive release from the earthly body – exciting times!

But boredom is to be in a dreamless sleep whilst awake. Boredom is not exciting enough to be death. It is hollow and predictable - boredom followed by boredom.

If we had to find a uniting factor which linked every human being of every culture in every instance of history, I would say that those human beings eventually grew bored of things, and that they must always distract themselves from such a feeling.

And why not - boredom is wretched. It is not like tranquillity, at peace with the world. No one ever chose to be bored. I imagine a great number of us would prefer death in 'glorious' battle over a dull, long life in the fields.

But let us not be too harsh on old boredom. We grow bored for a reason - a very good reason. Just as to put your hand into fire causes pain, boredom is the 'pain' of lack of variety.

If we never grew bored, we would repeat things incessantly. If old songs stayed forever young, we would never listen to anything else. If we never grew bored of ourselves, we would lose an immense motive to adapt and change.

Boredom, dissatisfaction, dullness - these are platforms to greater things; necessary stages of pain to force us into growth.

Retreating from boredom is hopeless. The truly great know this. They know that they must suffer to ascend mediocrity, and so when boredom strikes, and when the times are dull, they know that they have to ride it out, not hide from it, or pretend it isn't there, or buy another smartphone app.

Be dissatisfied and boring! Turn away from revelment and joy! Do not try to lead an exciting life! In dissatisfaction be forced into creativity. In dourness be strengthened against life's occasional misery. In dullness expect nothing but grey skies and let every gleam of sunlight be a bonus.

How could such a person ever become bored (for very long) again?

Selim 'Selim' Talat

The Importance of our Artists

The bourgeoisie is alive and well. So are their downtrodden serfs: Y'know, those who are so used to being told what to do that they no longer know what they want to do. Such ambitionless people are open to exploitation. And people in 'survival mode' are the least capable of any ambition.

Clearly we need to encourage the powerless to be powerful. But where does this begin? Where does self-empowerment and risen consciousness take its root?The powerless, from within themselves, must produce great artists - and indeed they do. But let us sing louder praises for these artists of the resistance.

These artists are spontaneous, true, genuine, and they are the voice of the people, not only through their actual art, but also in their very being. The greatest of rebels is not the activist, nor the petty criminal. It is the artist.

The artists of the powerful create meaningless art. Such drivel exists only to demonstrate their decadence, and thus power. Modernist abstract art is the height of this. It is perfect for the corporate world, which thrives on meaninglessness, telling goalless people what to do. The artists of the powerful create whatever they are told, or whatever they think is going to sell. This is the art of authority. 'Art for art's sake', it is really 'art for the status quo's sake'.

The artists of the resistance are soul-enthused with a desire for change. They are the only ones capable of expression for they have something very urgent to express: 'We are in the shit, we don't want to be in it!'

This they express not through appeals to pity, but through encouragement to magnificence. And they are exemplars of this magnificence, for they will spend more time on art, and less on mere survival. This is how genius is born - through self-sacrifice and questing into realms of heroic discomfort. Those who truly succeed in life will push forward with their goals even when they aren't totally secure; they will risk losing 'normality' for a passionate project.

The artists of the resistance 'humanize' all of us who are powerless. The best means of  melting the unequal distribution of power in society is not to blandly show how much we are suffering all the time: that makes us look weak and pathetic. It is much better to show that we are not a different species to the bourgeoisie; that we are creative and that we have decadent moments. It is only by simplifying us, the powerless, that they can exploit us with a clear conscience. Dehumanization is impossible when art is flowing. The full flowering complexity of a person is best expressed by their art, their stories, their creativity. But even though we can be decadent, we are better than our 'rulers', because we do not crush others for our own benefit. We crush a few for the benefit of all! Our artistic decadence is in the service of civilization, and never will we allow it to devolve into their monstrous and cynical crap.

The underclass - all of us who are not of a ruling class - need pride (individualistic and collective) to be recognised as human beings, and the herald of this pride is the artist. The art is not directly useful to our survival, but shows that we are civilized and capable, intelligent and creative, colourful and human. Even on the brink of poverty one can still be a patron of philosophy and art and music. To be poor and artistic is to demonstrate more of a belief in these things as pure entities. For the rich being involved in the arts does not involve living in poverty. That is what makes poorer purer, we must live ideals, we must make more sacrifices, we must live things as ends in themselves.

 A fine example to conclude with are the sapeurs of Congo. These enterprising souls, surrounded by desperate circumstances and less-than-ideal infrastructure, stand out like colourful beacons of hope. To show pictures of the Congolese suffering, or pleas for aid and assistance, does not make us fully recognise them as people. It removes them from our sphere of experience and makes them something abstract. But a sapeur, magnificent as a peacock, by his singular example demonstrates an artistic aspect of humanity we would not expect from such circumstances. He shows us that the Congolese have the same desires, vices and virtues that we do; that they are just as creative and capable, and this makes us realize our common humanity. So don't go around saying artists and philosophers and the like are useless. They can save the world, and they do it by the effortless means of their very existence.

Circle of Protection

I)
The wolves surround him only in the dead of night
When he is alone in the circle of jagged stones.
Only once have paws broken the circle
(Once was enough for an eternity of shuddering)

Something rises and falls within him
A something which vanishes without the misty breath
Of proud canines waiting, watching him with hungry stare;
A something he cannot find alone in his tower
When the sentinels are at the gate

Yet here he is alone, with the wolves and the cosmos
And the moon

He searches through the night
Like a dancer, like a philosopher
Like both at once
The danger his divine inspiration
His body his parchment
His body his inquiry
Embodied, frightened, inescapable

He knows and feels the struggles
Feels the tingles, the scorching biles
He feels close to death
He fears the howls, and the growls
He hates the stench of dog
He wants to destroy them for defying him
Searching for what it is within which makes him so

Why does it not just go away?
Why can his will not wrestle it down?
Why can it not be dreamed away?

A voice answers to himself, from a place of paradox
Within him and yet not him:
'As the taste of water cannot but help grace your lips
As the chill night air cannot help but cover your skin
As your heaving breast cannot help rising and falling
So your sixth sense cannot turn away from peril'

He asks: 'what is that sense, that sixth sense inside?
What does it find, what does it seek'

He is fortunate tonight; another answer!:
'It seeks the world outside.
And what is it made of but Nature itself?
The push of a creature, its natural desires
The torch that cannot be put out
The striving, the unfolding
Its dignity, its distinction
Against the hostility of all things;
The hostility of a world'

A world beyond! A world sensible by intuition
That cannot be an illusion
Something other than he, perhaps more powerful
The creator which will destroy him
A world inescapable, irresistable
Situations and circumstances
And he laments his condition

II)
In the circle of protection the wolves creep
The wise ones wait, a fool may attack
The fool is the danger, the sight of mangy fur his biggest fear
The circle is not enough
His sixth sense knows it, and he searches for something else
A sign, a weapon, a shield, a hole to hide away
He cannot find one
He must find one

Regeneration?
He fears the wounds
Though the body-hurt heals
Heals itself, the wounds heal,
But fear of wounds never does

Strength?
He fears his lack of strength
Though he is strong
He fears his fear of lack of strength!
Sometimes it prevails
But strength tested eventually fails.

Retreat?
He fears what will happen to his spirit
To fly, and fly again, ever afraid
Ever weak and hopeless
He can never outrun the shadow of fear

Lute-song?
He fears the echo of his favourite strains
Will forever haunt him and contain wolves
In between their notes

Allies?
It is dark
There are none here

Virtue?
Something lights in his chest
The pulsing of virtue
Embedded in his heart
Virtue, his ally, his sole ally
Is this his passage from the wolves?

The voice speaks mockingly:
'What do the flesh-eaters know of virtue?
Whatever your disposition, they seek only your flesh!
What good virtue shone upon unscrupulous men
Let alone wolves?'

The dancer and the philosopher answers
Flitting between the jagged stones, growing ever surer
'I am virtuous, I may die peacefully
I may be blasted from my body into the sparkling yonder
Of the earthly heavens.
From the tale I draw purpose and from the purpose i draw virtue
Did you not know that all life was a story, and virtue the rules of its collective author?
Did you not know that I have one choice, to embody virtue whatever the peril?
I could at least always do that!
Fire cannot harm me, nor water drown me,
The gale cannot push me, the earth cannot swallow me
Though they rend my body, I am virtue embodied!'

He grew in confidence, skirting closer and closer to circle's edge
The wolves looked one to the other in concern
The wise one smiling a wry smile

iii)
His heart raced, his blood flowed keenly
And he gained a suit stronger than any mail
Harder than iron, enduring like stone
Virtue, virtue filled him!

He smiled to himself

The wolves never left that night
But he walked through them all the same
And the solemn creatures watched him vanish
Toward the light of the moon
Fearlessly sleeping like a child between the roots of an oak
Trustingly waiting the day

Selim 'Selim' Talat

The Freedom To What?

Freedom of choice is acclaimed in our society as something good. The greater the quantity of choice, the better. More TV channels, more species of chocolate bar, more movies to watch, more persons to fornicate with, and so forth. However, I think this acclaim is highly misguided. Freedom of choice is not a bad thing, I just do not think it is necessarily always a good thing. The ability to choose between various options is not in and of itself of any value, especially if those choices are poor (see all those TV channels!) A simple example of this is as follows: in scenario A you have a choice between a thousand poisons. In scenario B you have a choice between two cups of tea. However much you may dislike tea (a highly unrealistic proposition, but bare with it!) the latter scenario would be superior, despite the fact that there was less choice involved. Just having more things to choose does not mean our situation is any better.

So why do we as a society value freedom of choice, spectrum of choice, and quantity of choice as if it were the single most important facet of being happy and human? Why but because we are what we consume, rather than what we create. We have created a society of, if you'll excuse the cliche, nectar obsessed drones and all of us are responsible. Materialistic, individualistic hedonism is the dominator of our Age, and desperate shallowness the engine of growth. The freedom to have desires satisfied has been placed above the freedom to be left alone to develop and create wonderful things. We tolerate ever more intrusions into our privacy from ever more powerful states and corporations (provided we get our banal TV channels and little treats on the weekend). We have willingly given away true power, democratic power, for comfortable pleasure.

For the average citizen what is there to live for beyond pleasure and status-chasing, in this part of the world they happen to call the West? With little sense of belonging to society or to a meaningful narrative; with no natural blossoming of joy from the mastery of skills and creation of art, we must be given false joy by being constantly overwhelmed by material things and fleeting desires. And in order to shift these things upon us we must first feel inadequate, incomplete. An entire media industry exists to this end, trying to make us feel like we are missing out on something someone else has got; perverting our natural competitive streak into something far more ruthless and twisted.

A huge question mark now hangs over our heads: how long is this going to go on for before we are awakened? In truth, we already are waking up. But we are not enlightened just yet. We still have this entitlement to the bountiful gifts of the earth, and feel like we have earned the right to destroy natural beauty and creatures for the sake of an appetite which can never be fulfilled. Desire is still seen as an end in itself, rather than something to be channelled away harmlessly (or in the extreme, to be flushed away like any other bodily waste).

In this age of desire fulfillment, no one has the moral ground to attack any other. Desire is a universal malaise. The poor are just as desirous as the rich, women just as much as men. We are all desirous. The major problem is not that in our current state some people can fulfill their desires more than others. Balancing out the level of destructive hedonism is not going to make things that much better. The problem is that for the average citizen the highest value is desire fulfillment - rather than scientific endeavour, philosophical discovery, artistic creation, natural belonging, and so on. This is why freedom to choose between pleasures is problematic; it is no real freedom at all, enslaving us all to unfulfillable desire.

I am not arguing that freedom is a bad thing. I am not arguing that oppression of freedom, or conservative fear of freedom, is any form of solution to our goalless hedonism. I believe that individual freedom for all should be the end goal of justice. We should be free to be choose, but we should not use that liberty to choose poorly (the maxim 'harm ye none, do as ye will' sums it up perfectly). Nor should we see quantity of choice as important as quality. This doesn't mean that I believe we should never choose pleasurable (or even self-destructive) options, only that it should never be our ultimate goal, nor a regular occurence, nor something to be proud of.

We can be truly glorious -

We are in this part of the world they happen to call the West, perhaps the most imperialistic gathering of civilizations there ever was. The world has imitated our vices and vitues to a large extent, and because of this we are arrogant enough to consider ourselves the centre of the world - which is not entirely untrue. We needn't continue practicing our vices, which fuel wars in distant parts of the world for material enrichment. With a new value system, we could create a heroic individualism of universal Justice, which measures wealth in human cultivation; education, art, philosophy, science, and sees pleasure as a mere sideshow to these more pressing desires. To choose such greatness is to choose wisely. Our highest honour could be to those most virtuous, not those most self-important and parasitic (the rich!) With our power we could lead the world, not trammel it. We could answer the nihilism of God's death with a heroic humanism and environmental belonging, filling the void in our souls with a spiritual reconnection to the earth and its creatures.

The highest praise we might bestow should be upon the astronauts who risk everything to ascend to the final frontier, the scientists who work toward the nuclear fusion which will end our energy needs, the philosophers who help us make sense of a rapidly changing world and our place in it, the great artists who bring these human achievements to light, and everyone who ever lived for more than just themselves. We must turn away from the vapid, empty, soulless celebrities whose mere mention is enough to soil the whole of this newsletter, and who will leave us empty in our graves if we do not turn away from their sick light. We would have wasted it all for nothing.

The problem is that this transformation of our values requires us to challenge the comfortable, shiny, glamourous world we are fooled into thinking actually exists. I think this would take a heroic departure from evolution's path, the reversal of the natural instinct from danger to security, familiarity to newness, pain to pleasure. We would have to let go of all of our most comforting myths. We would have to be brave to even begin such a change, but brave in an intellectual sense, more than a 'run into a burning building to save a child' sense.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Meditations on Virtue: Part II

In part one of my meditations, I listed as cardinal virtues Self-Awareness and Creativity. Five other virtues I listed as humility, patience, courage, compassion and dignity. However, seven is not enough, so I wish to expound on seven more virtues I feel are most important.

Sacrifice - We cannot always rely on enlightened self-interest to create a good society. It is all too easy for wealth to lock itself behind vast gates, in which case it is no longer enlightened self-interest to concern itself with others. And besides, thinking that people will only do something for others if it is also in their own interests is quite a cynical position. Sacrifice, doing something for the sake of another, even at ones own expense, should be emphasized here. It is an almost mystic experience of selflessness; a transcendence of the individuated self.

Sacrifice is what makes great artists and great genii. Most people will not exchange comfort for hardship, will not exchange convention for daring, will not exchange security for freedom. Only the genius will strive after some creative passion at the cost of everything else. They are capable of so much more precisely because of their sacrifices; the life of a genius being something like one long risk.

Sacrifice taken to extremes is dangerous, as is sacrifice for a stupid cause. It can lead to horrible outcomes and supreme irresponsibility (it wasn't my fault, I was just obeying a higher power / the interests of my nation). Soldiers fighting for their beloved dictator / cabal of corporate overlords are self-sacrificing, but they are certainly not nobler for it! Yet when combined with the other virtues, sacrifice can be a driving force, a transcendent act which should defy cynicism and show our interconnectedness. A simple maxim for this virtue: Sacrifice, but for the right end.

Reliability - Repetition has a vital place in the human being. Religions have been successful at indoctrinating the masses with their maxims, and many philosophers also strive to distil their ideas into the easily rememberable. This is because repetition is important, and so is reliability.

The hum-drum is necessary and beneath no one. Predictability and mediocrity are an unsung necessities for certain tasks, and so too must we cultivate this virtue inside of us.  Honesty, robustness, stability. As drab as these things are, and as mechanical as they are, I cannot help but see them as a virtue in the right circumstances.

Persistence is, as they say, the key to success. Of course, reliability can be wretched if we are reliably being wretched! Reliability comes after the fact - once we know what we need to do, we do it in the manner of a mule. It may mean that we can become inflexible, yet with regular doses of philosophy, we can avoid becoming dogmatic, one-track creatures.

A humourous maxim for this virtue might be: Turning up is half the battle won.

Spirituality - This is a virtue sullied by dogmatic aspects of religion throughout the ages, and soiled in our modern-era by exoticizing 'Eastern' mysticism. Yet we must not dismiss spirituality because of these associations. Spirituality is part of us - all of us. When we feel reverence toward the cosmos, what we might call mystic experiences, and we have faith that it is more than a brain spasm or some delusion, we are accepting our spirituality..

In reverence and awe of the cosmos; gazing up at the immensity of space, surrounded by mighty oaks, observing the complexity of a snail's shell, standing upon the site of an old battle, questioning infinity, observing ancient ruins covered in lost languages, we are anchored to the earth-cosmos-history, feeling our ever-changing place within its bosom. We are experiencing something that came before language, philosophy, civilization. A profound sense of being.

Of all traits of character spirituality is the hardest to pinpoint, the most unpredictable. It is always just beyond comprehension. Yet this mysterious element inside us is not to be dismissed by our scientific. age. The spiritual need only be felt and enjoyed. Such a universal wonder cannot be reliably measured and tested by the empiricist's eye. Nor can it be pigeon-holed into any one religion; which might steal away our shared inheritance. 

Spirituality is a supreme paradox, for at once it is individualistic; no one can tell you how you should respond to these feelings, and also utterly selfless; the self is lost in the greater whole, in supreme moments of understanding. We must not deny it, we must not embrace it. We must let it be. My listing spirituality as a virtue is not to cultivate it, nor to force it, but merely to let it through as and when it comes. This can be a powerful unifying force, as all of us are prone to it. Perhaps it is the knot that will tie all of humanity together into universal kinship. Let us end on a maxim: As being precedes language, so spirituality precedes language.

Aestheticness - By aestheticness I mean two things. Firstly, the ability to literally see beauty, even where it may not be seen. It is not a given that we take notice of beauty. Natural beauty, for instance, can be easily drowned out by garish shop-fronts, bright lights and intruding billboards. It takes time and maturity to do away with the hideous and appreciate the natural splendour of the world. Secondly I mean an appreciation of good art, music, literature and so on. In this sense aesthetics is not literally a sense of beauty (although it can be). Aesthetics is taste, consideration, not being dragged along by convention. There is a world of difference between that which is popular and that which is good. This is not to say that the good is never popular, only that what is popular is often soul-draining tripe.

Such arts should be despised, poorly constructed cash-ins reviled, copies of copies of copies disdained. Such works poison the word art! The good arts are those which rejuvenate the soul, which carry us on journeys and build our empathy, which connect us into them and leave us in awe, which make us feel connected to earth-cosmos-history, which enlighten us to just causes. We must cultivate such tastes.

Animal Kinship -  Of all human contradictions, our attitude toward animals is the most disgraceful. There are animals for keeping, and animals for slaughtering, animals for hunting, and animals for reducing to egg-laying machines and milk pumps. Of course, different animals have different traits: we would not want to keep flesh-eating tigers in our homes as often as we would like a friendly spider-monkey. Yet what we could universally accept is that each animal is an individual, and thus an end in itself, rather than something merely useful to us. In the language of virtue, an animal should be treated with 'Dignity'.

Our treatment of animals is the epitome of moral good, and this has been said from Kant, to Gandhi, to Bentham. Not only is it compassionate to take an animal into your home, and by extension into society, it is also beneficial to us if we are willing to appreciate them, their ways, their vices. I would call Animal Kinship a cardinal virtue, as it is our closest path into nature: as our societies evolve, so do our attitudes toward nature. We shape nature, as we are shaped by it; we are part of it, not separate. An animal for kin, communicating with another species - what else could indicate this truth more?

Intelligence - Intelligence, to my mind, can be boiled down to this - how well we use the knowledge and resources available to us in order to survive. It is a cardinal virtue relating to our brute survival and sanity. It is the thoughtful development of our technology to make the physical world more bearable. A humourous maxim for this virtue could be: Curiosity + Caution = Intelligence!  We take it for granted that we have the basic intelligence to survive, and will continue surviving into the future. I do not think we should take this for granted - humanity is a deeply stupid beast, capable of making immensely idiotic decisions.

Self-destruction seems to be hard-wired into us. Just not destroying ourselves is a supreme achievement which we should praise highly: it is only by cultivating intelligence that we might develop the long-term thinking necessary to survive into eternity.

Temperance - The elder cousin of humility, temperance has rightfully been called a cardinal virtue since the ancients. Indeed, the arch-master of temperance, Mr. Epicurus, predicted the atomizing misery which material excess (consumerism) would bring two and a half thousand years ago! The self-restraint of an Epicurean springs from the real pleasures of life; friendship, independence and an analyized life; filling oneself with goodness. Luxury and debauchery is seen only as a very occasional indulgence, and not something to hate oneself for.

Temperance must be distanced from the romance of religious asceticism, of bodily self-hatred, self-righteous sacrifice and devotion to 'the divine'. We are not practicers of temperance because we are humbling ourselves before some 'divinity'. We practice temperance because it gives us happiness here, on earth.

Excess is dismal, foolish, destructive. Temperance negates excess. One who honestly believes in the virtues must have the temperance to disdain from their destructive appetite; one of the greatest vices threatening our future on this planet. I do not put the sorry state of our moral place in the world entirely down to 'evil' or powermongery, but to the rampant desires of ordinary people, with their false promise of satisfaction. In this day and age temperance is possibly the most important virtue of all.

Cetacean Rights

 

Where could we have gotten the destructive idea that this world is ours to do as we please, that humans are so utterly special that we are the only ones privileged with a 'soul'? Where could we have gotten the destructive idea that we are utterly separate from this whole cosmos thing, that our ability to reason is more important than our ability to feel and that we are therefore above natural instincts, and indeed above all things natural? Where could we have gotten the destructive idea that we are free to put our desire for materials and status above the principle of life, to chase our desires to the ends of the earth, or rather, the end of the earth?

The answers are more nuanced than I can give here, and vary across the world. But here in the West, Judeo-Christian religion, Enlightenment individualism and Consumerism, respectively, would be a good place to start! To carry these prejudices is part of being a 'civilized' human being, as opposed to a 'savage', or, heaven forbid, some form of hippy!

For too long we have confused 'civilization' with striving to be better than everything else, rather than being benevolent toward everything else. The so-called civilized ones chose mastery over mutuality, and imposed binary concepts (nature / civilization, black / white, master / slave, self / other, man / woman, good / evil) upon a world where these concepts are irrelevant illusions. Civilization has not tempered violence out of Man, and indeed, if you look at the superpowers of history, civilization has only given them new and exciting ways to create and / or destroy things. In short, if you move the posts which mark out what is civilized, civilization as we know it does not score terribly well.

It took us long enough to recognise the basic rights of fellow humans in our own societies, let alone those half way across the world. Well, now a group of humans has redeemed us all somewhat and extended those basic rights to a non-human species; the cetaceans.

Perhaps this indicates that our view of nature is finally changing. Maybe the rights of dolphin and whale will be a foot in the door for us to mature into a real civilization. The first step on a long, long path to moral and technological enlightenment! For now at least the Cetaceans populations of India are free from human abuse and predation, and perhaps this will spread across the rest of the world. Cetaceans have the same basic rights not to be harmed or exploited that human beings do (although oddly enough, the environment and prey they need to survive are not necessarily protected). Let us take a direct look at this legalistic morality, from the first seven clauses of the bill of rights found at cetaceanrights.org:

i) Every individual cetacean has the right to life.

ii) No cetacean should be held in captivity or servitude; be subject to cruel treatment; or be removed from their natural environment.

iii) All cetaceans have the right to freedom of movement and residence within their natural environment.

iv) No cetacean is the property of any State, corporation, human group or individual.

v) Cetaceans have the right to the protection of their natural environment.

vi) Cetaceans have the right not to be subject to the disruption of their cultures.

vii) The rights, freedoms and norms set forth in this Declaration should be protected under international and domestic law.

Now that whales and dolphins are by law immune to the harpoon and the net, what of similarly intelligent creatures? Pachyderms are not only beautiful and awe-inspiring, but have brains as complex as our own. Is it right to turn them into ivory or use them as circus entertainment? And bringing things closer to home, what about Primates? Not only do they form complex societies, but some of them can use language in a clever and intuitive way.

Where can the line possibly be drawn? Why does an animal species need to be intelligent, accustomed to 'family values' and fully self-aware for us to stop killing them and plundering their habitats? The principle of life, the axiom of harm not lest thou be harmed, should be enough for us to respect all that breathes, at least to the extent that we do not intrude upon their basic 'liberty' to survive, thrive or perish in their native environments (how arrogant of me to even use liberty in such a way!)

But here is the real rub. Why should I care about a whale, a dolphin or an orangutang when my own economic situation is dire. Lets say I have a child on the way, I can't afford to pay my electricity bills, nor go out with my friends. That guy I hated from school is driving an executive motorized vehicle and going out with a fashion model whilst I am forever stuck on sweaty public transport solutions, going out with with no one at all. Why should I pay interest to such abstract concerns which are so distant from my own?

I guess the obvious answer is that it is not an abstract notion, and that without environmental awareness we are all pretty much dead in the long run - so it is something of enlightened self-interested at the very least. Secondly, the problems facing us are not mutually exclusive. You are not either 'in it for the Whales' or 'in it for the poor' or 'in it for yourself'. If you see the human world as entirely separate from nature, than you might prioritise one over the other to the extent that everything outside of your sphere of experience effectively ceases to exist. A word for this kind of closed-mindedness is 'ignorance' (although 'irresponsible' would probably be better, as it can account for those who know but do not care). If you see us all as belonging to one thing, nature, it is inconsistant to make this separation. You can care about both and all. Indeed, going to that pro-whale protest, you might meet that pro-squatter girl who helps you sort out with your housing problem.

However, I am a romantic mind, and I will go one step further. To care about a distant sea mammal has a far deeper and more resonating purpose. We have lost a sense of wonder, our flat lives dominated by trash entertainment, material excess and soul-crushing labour. Our eyes see nary further than the walls of our city, and it is a rare occasion that we take in the literal depth of a hilly landscape or the sheer wonder of a starry sky. Our trees stand in neat rows, our parks are contrived and dull, our rivers are hidden beneath concrete slabs. Our art is in decay, our heroes are artificial faces and withered heroin-inflicted innards, our natural souls are dying. A bit of wildness will help inject our lives with the real excitement and sense of belonging which cannot be provided by human societies alone.

We need causes to fight for. We need to live for something beyond the four walls of a house and the weekend trip to a shopping mall. This is the vitality of existence. This is the battle that we need to rise up and fight. This is the antidote to nihilism, disconnection, depression, meaninglessness.

Preserving incredible creatures for the future is part of that purpose, and part of our common inheritance.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Freedom and Meaning

I) Imagine you wake up in a white box outside of conventional space-time. A drip feed is keeping you alive by pumping nutrients directly into you, with absolutely no waste products. What would you do? How would you decide what to do? Nothing you do would have any context; there would be no means of discerning one choice from another. For eternity you would be trapped. Perhaps the only choice available to you is whether to tear off the drip-feed and wait to die, or hold out for the hope of escape (which is of course futile, as this is an evil analogy!)

A less evil analogy could be as follows. Imagine you have been invited into the control centre of the universe by an omnipotent being. Before you is a vast computer containing a million switches. There is no way of knowing what any of the switches do, and no way of seeing the aftermath of pressing them. Again, there are no meaningful choices to be made here, and you may as well leave.

A final (slightly more evil than the above but less evil than the first) analogy could be as follows. Imagine you are a sentient mind in a vast box the size of a star, with thousands of liquid-metal tentacles spiralling out from your core. The universe is now your oyster, but would you return to Earth? Would you seek out other creatures like you? What would you do? How would you decide?

II) Context is necessary for meaningful choice, and thus for freedom. We cannot choose without a context to act within. This context is not only our environment and space in the narrative of the world, but also our physical limitations. We understand the universe through our bodies. We are creatures which were generated out of the cosmos and this puts us in common with other creatures. We are human beings, and though we may take this obvious fact for granted, it is an essential part of how we choose and what we choose. Simply put, choice is not something “pure and detached”, but “messy and involved”.

The context common to all of humanity, for all of history, is that we are in relation to nature. The natural phenomena of Earth is a gift which exists before we do, and which we have played little part in generating. We have followed plants and animals through time, and they have intrigued us, given us something to fear, impressed us, or all of these things at once. We have always lived in a world with nature.

A world without nature would be disastrous in and of itself, but also for its effect on us. It would deny us the intuitive pleasure gained in just observing, say, a tree, with no conscious purpose as to why. We cannot articulate why it feels meaningful, but this does not deny its meaningfulness. It demonstrates the remaining mystery of our being, that we are not only the mind which perceives; there is more at work inside us. If we were to destroy nature in its entirety (a scenario which is possible as our technology and greed grows exponentially) we would be destroying the background of every human civilization in history.

III) We are forced into the world, naked and hungry. We are forced into the small personal narratives of our day-to-day lives and the meta-narratives of breathing empires, woven so tightly together that without intending it we can effect distant narratives. We are forced into a language, which creates for us a boundary, or foundation, of word-thoughts. We are forced into a morality, absorbing the values drummed into us whether we like them or not. We are forced into a world-view consisting of all the information we uncritically absorb in our pre-philosophy days. As children we make decisions despite our lack of understanding, and this is our original sin, not some spiritual fall, but our immature actions.

None of this means that our personality is decided for us, nor our choices. For if you accept that context is necessary for there to be meaningful choices, and thus some form of choosing will, the fact that we have circumstances is what grants us freedom.

The fact that we cannot decide entirely what our “fate” will be, that we cannot immediately overcome subconscious forces and bend the world around us is all a necessary part of our freedom. Our will to choose may be messy, it may contradict itself, it may be ponderous and take time to unfold, but it is there. Indeed, it is precisely the time that it takes our choices to manifest inside a context that makes our choices meaningful. Rapid choices which are instantly fulfilled run against our nature. Rapid choice, like rapid change, eventually exhausts all possibilities and leads to a stagnation from which nothing good might be salvaged.

IV) What happens in this nightmare scenario of too many choices, too many entrances, all of them leading nowhere? What happens when we have infinite expectation, no boundaries, no real communities? We are living it.

It is known as Consumerism, although this is a euphemism for materialistic nihilism. Obsession with commodities, rampant and endless desiring, with no meaning even within oneself. This mindless hedonism is divorced from any narratives, it is atomizing, separating, and fundamentally unrewarding. It is fleeting, empty, unattached, and nothing sticks inside the soul. It is the bad form of individualism, an unhealthy individualism where the individual is defined by what they can have and not what they are, a mark so staining that it makes all individualisms seem wretched. Taken to extremes it destroys all connection to the past and all concern for the future, all meaning divorced from its context. The worse it gets the more powerful it becomes; this goallessness is what keeps the wheels of consumerism turning; it thrives on the void inside us and spins an illusion of symbolic rewards to account for it. It is the destroyer of narratives, the generator of irreverence, whose war-cry is “I don't care about anything but my own little buzz”.

It is a negative form of nihilism, where all paths lead nowhere, and there is not even a personal notion of truth. If we say that free will needs to be utterly free to be called free, then we are paradoxically left with the destroyer of freedom.

V) True freedom, therefore, requires a narrative, individual self-discipline, patient cultivation, a rock to push against, harmony with nature, a community to belong to, a great but not infinite variety, a little wildness, a cause to fight for, a truth to seek, a foundation to stand upon, and, of course, a lot of philosophical thinking.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Six Points Against Determinism

I) It is unthinkable to me that a living being can be compelled to move by something outside of itself. Influenced, certainly. Threatened, certainly. But utterly dominated to the extent that it is no longer separate from that which would control it? This is surely impossible. Each conscious living being has its own inner-world. Each living being experiences the world in a way that is shared, but nonetheless unique to it. We are all intertwined, undoubtedly. But we are not all One.

We cannot say, therefore, that it is possible for any outside influence to dominate us; to make us act in a way that was unavoidable, or absolute. Any environment allows us some element of choice. To succeed in any environment requires us to meet it half way. The work is never done for you. Even in the most perfect conditions imaginable, you will still need to be driven into action from within yourself.

If we generated an economic and political system which was fairer (and less stupid) than our current grotesque chimera, we would still see some people meeting life half way and others not doing so. We must always include the 'chance-element' of individual human will.

We should strive to understand the influences which shape our character, and we should try to evolve society into a more equal and moral body. But this does not mean that we can engineer away all of the toxins of Man through a mere system change. Many are the social and material determinists who would say otherwise.

II) Deterministic theories are often used to take away responsibility from certain groups in society. The consequences of such thought might lead to the most supreme elitism: we have the ability to decide our own destiny, they do not. Are we not then granting certain generalized sections of society a free pass to be self-pitying and self-hating? By offering people the chance to fail and deny responsibility, are we not cultivating failure?

By maintaining a system which steals away responsibility from anyone (particularly the poor) we are justifying the woeful institutions which sustain their conditions. By reducing and simplifying the experiences of such groups we are not only lazy thinkers, we are allowing the lazy 'solution' to triumph: “They cannot look after themselves, so they must spend their lives on welfare. See, we are doing our part by considering them!” (Middle Class Liberal 1A, The Book of General Middle Class Liberalisms). Yet we must surely have realized by now the psychic and spiritual poverty which can exist regardless of our material conditions.

Even if welfare pay-outs were to the tune of a million pounds a week I would oppose them, for they would not be able to fulfil the need to feel useful and personally responsible for one's own actions - two necessary conditions for flourishing esteem. They would still deflate and flatten the human spirit!

For a person to be governed from above is insult enough. For a person to be grateful for a subsistence wage is equally upsetting. But for a person to be forced to suckle from the teet of a faceless institution, where grown adults are treated like school-children, is the greatest of insults. And an insult against one individual is an insult against individualism itself, for true individualism must be a universal principle to be just. This is why we must consider the suckling State to be a debilitator, preventing the growth of any empowering consciousness by drip feeding us just enough to survive.

III) “If only I had been born into better conditions; a better school, a better house, with better parents. I too could have been a parasitic Chief Executive of a parasitic corporation.” If this sentence sounds familiar to you, then you are surely in the minority! Advocates of determinism will speak of the most 'successful' members in a society and use them as examples of how economic and social factors shape our chances to succeed. These same advocates of determinism are often, without speaking too generally, of an egalitarian stripe, and are trying to convince us all that our position in society is determined, and that 'success' can therefore be engineered.

Yet surely it makes more sense, if one is an egalitarian, to see the so-called winners in the capitalist system as the ultimate losers - people who were too callous or unimaginative for anything more than accumulation of power and material wealth; the basest and lowest desires available to us. Far from being privileged and enviable, the so-called Great Man or Woman is a soulless slave to their own desires, one who despoils other people's chances for their own twisted ideals of self-worth; one who sees no value outside of monetary gain; the most pitiable and empty creature imaginable, one whom I struggle to call a complete human or feel even the remotest love for.

The fact that there are people from privileged backgrounds who rally against such privilege, the late Tony Benn being a prime example, indicates that we can never remove the individual's reaction to their surroundings from the equation; we can always reject our surroundings once we are mature enough to do so. As much as we are influenced by our surroundings so too can we influence them in turn.

To be successful is not to be a parasite or a dictator or a slavering monster. To be successful is to be just, to be fair, to be creative and to love liberty for all. These virtues of character are available to anyone, and as such any determinist who claims that success is out of the hands of each individual ought to re-examine their own criteria.

IV) Deterministic predictions can be useful in a broad sense. ”If there is an increase in unemployment, an increase in robbery will follow.” This is useful to know, especially if you are in a position of political power. Although it does not mean that the increase in robbery is due to the actions of people being determined by their social and material conditions, only that they are choosing a new means to fulfill their basic needs (there is after all, the percentage of newly unemployed in the example who did not turn to robbery). Our choices may be limited by circumstance, this is a sad and unjust truth, but there are always choices to be made.

Furthermore, these kinds of predictions often assume that the values people have absorbed, or chosen, are some kind of fundamental law of reality. An increase in robbery will follow an increase in unemployment if and only if the people within a society accept the values of that society (i.e. acquisition of material wealth, work ethic, shame and praise, and so forth). I highly doubt a group of newly enlightened zen buddhists would turn to robbery if they faced unemployment!

Deterministic predictions are not so useful in a narrower sense. The nearer we close in on an individual's character, the harder it becomes to make any form of predictions. To introduce a scientific analogy, gravity seems all well and good when you are dropping a hat onto a table, but examine it at a quantum level and it becomes harder, if not impossible, to predict the motion of its infinitesmal components. The more complex the prediction, the less likely it is to be fulfilled. The vaguer and broader the prediction, the more likely it is to be fulfilled. This could put the determinist on the same par as a tabloid horoscope if they are not too careful!

V) Genius! Genius is not predictable. Of necessity, it 'transcends' (or rather just pushes out) the boundaries. Genius indicates that the world is not static, and not entirely predictable. It is in flux, and sometimes it allows an out-and-out genius to flourish and benefit us all. How many men and women of genius will emerge in the next fifty years? What will they bring to the narrative of humanity? Who knows!

VI) To close, let us consider a (possibly) utopian scenario. We can imagine a state where everyone is free to act so long as they do not harm the liberty of another, recognising that liberty springs from society, and society requires equality. In this truly free state, can it be said that anyone's actions are determined by their environment, social and material conditions?

Selim 'Selim' Talat

The Confluence

 

Have you ever been referred to as a consumer? If you have, then you have been insulted. And worse than insulted, you have also been targeted by powerful men for moulding; socially-engineered into something less than you are. You have been belittled and dehumanized, reduced from a Whole being into a single part. You have been made into a statistic to be scientifically examined, reduced to an ever-hungry mouth for the producer to feed. As the producer is a parasite seeking to profit from you, being referred to as a consumer is not so different to being referred to as prey. Greedy prey, stupid prey - the fly who saw the spider's web but crashed into it all the same.

We must not be satisfied with being a feeder, a mere sucking mouth against the teet of hedonism. Ignorance is never bliss, it is uncertainty and frustration, the inability to see beyond the next fix. Ignorance means being unable to make and understand choices; it is the enemy of freedom. We need truth and enlightenment. There is more to us, which we must dare discover; a balanced being, a whole being, a free being.

It was only when reading the work of the world's first self-proclaimed anarchist that I came to realize all of this. And it starts somewhere extremely simple. How we are addressed shapes how we become, in the same way that being praised or insulted might raise or lower our esteem. Proudhon referred to his audience as 'citizen-reader', and it sent me into an upward spiral of thought and discovery.

The confluence -

A confluence is the point where two or more streams form into a single river. How many confluences make up the whole of us is perhaps beyond categorisation. In fact, even categorising things into neat little sections is suspect, as life and being is never so simple. Nonetheless, I will endeavour to present three large and definite tributaries which make up our totality. Ideally, we would all have an understanding and appreciation of these aspects, rather than being trammelled into any individual one. Understandably, we specialize in various places, and are not equally spread across all aspects of our being.

Economic - There are invariably those who value money above all other things, like Dragons upon their golden hoards. For these sorry people the term consumer might fit extremely well, for the concept of a consumer is a creature which exists wholly in the realm of economic transaction (Homo Economicus). They are the ones who want to get things with absolute certainty and familiarity, moving as the crow flies without appreciating the journey. They are easily malleable, and can be satisfied with any conditions provided they get their reward at the end of it.

They obtain their monetary rewards by doing what they would not like to do because they have the promise of spending it on something they want at the end of it. Monetary gain is the consolation for what is often dreary and unimaginative labour. Perhaps we all need to be cajoled into action sometimes and led along by the carrot on the stick a short distance. But to live exclusively for the weekend is to sacrifice five-sevenths of ones life to the machine.

Money is glorified beyond the sum of its parts and becomes a thing of value of itself, rather than a piece of paper used to promise the bearer such and such a sum. It also becomes the main unit of comparison and competition, such that one can never be satisfied with how much one has, for there is always someone with a little more. Thus the value of money is symbolic, rather than useful, and one's attachment to it is not the attachment to one's tools or actual needs, but a symbolic attachment. It is to build oneself on an imaginary foundation (and we call such people 'realists'!) To be disdainful of such a one-dimensional money-clutching character is not elitism - it is simply being something more than an unimaginative creature!

I should like to think that the hypothetical hoarding Dragon I have described above does not really exist. I should like to think that the bulk of our species is somewhat more subtle, and that economic realities are not the be all and end all of existing on this Earth. To the enlightened, economics is but one tributary leading into the river of totality. Economic calculations are a necessary head-ache but one which we would all rather was done away with it. Spending power might illicit the occasional burst of joy, but this would not be an addiction, but an occasional vanity.

Political - Everyone should be political. Not because there is much gain in it, but rather to prevent suffering losses for it. At least in our present epoch of representative democracy (demagoguery), politics is very much a case of damage control. It is equivalent to self-defence.

What is the value of a voice? What is the value of a vote and a movement? I should answer that these things are as valuable as the 'economic' category above. Just as obtaining things by exchanging currency can cause good feelings, so too can discussing things. The difference of course is that discussing important things is free.

The power is there, waiting to be taken, and it costs nothing but effort and time. We should long to have a share of power in government and public affairs, as it is in our interests to do so. The disillusionment with a crooked system (see any currently existing system) only feeds into that system. One of virtuous and balanced character should strive to create something new if the existing surroundings threaten the virtuous. This also is a political action.

Spiritual - The concept of spirituality is one stained by misunderstanding, misuse, and mistrust. Understandably so! Our first introduction to spirituality often comes through dogmatic religion, which drives the dissatisfied toward atheism. Conventional religion is so flagrantly repulsive that it encourages us to denounce spirituality as dangerously stupid, for the most dogmatic of priests oppose all other aspects of human being (such as scientific endeavour) which they consider threatening to their little bubble of perverse power. This might also lead to rational and open-minded religious people being 'tarred with the same brush'.

The necessity of a specific God, or belief in a certain set of scriptures, is also a problem for spirituality. There is nothing worse than competitive religions. Only tolerant religious groups should be tolerated! For that reason I believe spirituality requires total openness and should be proclaimed as an universal individualism. It is a deeply personal experience where, paradoxically, the personal vanishes - for self and all often become interwined during such experiences. But the personal does not vanish forever, and the individual is still left to interpret and ponder their experience, and that is what makes such a spiritual moment special.

I wish here to purify the idea of the spiritual, including within it things we can immediately identify with: to aimlessly observe a white horse grazing in a gladden field; to be lost in a piece of music and to forget time; to see the logic in the absurd; to be part of the unexplainable life of the city; to use language in a nonsensical way; to create art in luminous splendour; to touch the nose of a cat with your own; to imagine one is a sorcerer of a lost race saving a dying realm; watching smoke rise from an incense stick recognising that it doesn't really go anywhere; these are all spiritual experiences.

The spiritual does not align with what is arrogantly called 'the real world', and it is not just a consolation used to maintain a regimented life. The spiritual must be purposeless when all around us demands 'as the crow flies rationality', and accumulation, and severity, and pretension.

Real poverty lies with those who are incapable of fully appreciating this side of themselves. The spiritual does not need to be mutually exclusive with other more 'practical' aspects of our being; they can all co-exist.

Close -

Like any Virtue Ethicist I stand at the foot of the mountain I have raised, dwarfed by its splendour, cast into its shadow. Is it an impossible task to be a balanced and virtuous creature?

Selim 'Selim' Talat