Tag: philosophy

The Ethics of Fruitarianism

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A sliced pomegranate

Compassionate lessons from Eastern philosophy

a sliced pomegranate
Photo by Pixabay

Due to the compassionate nature of Eastern philosophy, many Hindus and Buddhists choose to be vegetarians. I became a vegetarian myself at a young age to due to my feelings of empathy for animals. I also began studying religion because of my curiosity about the unknown.

I later learned more about vegetarianism, and found it to be a good expression of care for the natural world, more generally. Factory farming leads to vast amounts of ecological destruction, animal suffering, and human suffering. Being vegetarian or vegan is a good way to protest that status quo. It’s an effective form of protest that actually drives the markets that produce food. 

I also learned more about the early history of religion, like that vegetarianism is related to the principle of nonviolence in Hinduism and Buddhism, which is called Ahimsa in Sanskrit.

Jainism practices the principle of Ahimsa as well, some of its adherents going as far as to sweep the insects out of the way with a peacock-feather brush before sitting down in order to avoid violence to animals. Jains also have practices to avoid harming plants. Some Jains avoid eating root vegetables and try to only consume plants that they can harvest the fruits of without killing them. 

Vaishnava Hindus tend to believe that the ultimate reality of the universe is a deeply personal thing that can be known about through introspection. Jains and Buddhists have similar beliefs.

I believe that the introspection required by these non-violent Eastern faiths is what led to the compassionate ethics of vegetarianism in these faiths. If you’re trying to learn about the reality of the universe by self-reflecting, you aren’t going to get very far without thinking about what it’s like to be someone else. Meditate on that for long enough and you start to have empathy for every living thing. 

The utilitarian argument for fruitarianism

Meat eaters will often playfully tease vegetarians with the idea that plants might feel pain. While that argument might seem silly on the surface, it’s actually a great thought experiment.

In Western utilitarian ethics, the emphasis is on reducing the amount of suffering and to everyone involved in a situation. Strict utilitarians often become vegetarians or vegans for the same reasons as Hindus and Jains: to avoid causing pain and suffering to living creatures.

We don’t know if plants feel pain, but they are living things, and the idea that our compassion should extend to them isn’t that crazy. If you don’t believe plants have feelings, you can still make a pretty good utilitarian argument for fruitarianism on the basis of sustainability. Harvesting only the parts of the plants that you can eat without killing the entire plant, or only harvesting some of a plant and leaving the rest of its kind are both sustainable practices. 

Just thinking about the idea that vegetables might be conscious is a good ethics exercise. It’s more important to consider this type of idea than you might think, even if you’re only concerned about human suffering. Like vegetables, groups of human beings have been often accused of not being able to feel pain.

For example, Black people today are chronically under-treated for pain. This is probably a systemic echo of an early racist trope that Black people couldn’t feel pain or had a higher pain tolerance than white people. There are similar harmful stereotypes with similar historic roots and currently present consequences related to women and disabled people. For some disabled people there is the additional obstacle of an impaired ability to communicate about their pain.

This line of thinking also leads to other questions, like, does eating mostly fruit necessarily lead to less suffering overall? There’s a lot of human suffering and animal suffering associated with the industrial production of plants, as well. Humans suffer because of labor practices in agriculture, and animals suffer because of practices like deforestation. It’s a nightmare of utilitarian calculus. 

Ghandi, fruitarianism, and me 

One of my role models is Mahatma Ghandi, who is well known for teaching the principle of nonviolent Ahimsa. Influenced by his Vaishnava parents, Ghandi was a vegetarian for most of his life.

I learned from Ghandi’s autobiography that Ghandi was a fruitarian for several years, but stopped that diet due to health problems. Ghandi also ate meat for a period of time as a young man.

Like my mentor Ghandi, I also ate meat for a period of time after being a vegetarian for many years, during a period of time when I was questioning my identity. Later I reverted to my old ethics, became a vegetarian again, and now am mostly vegan. I avoid meat and dairy products and if I eat eggs I try to be particular about how the chickens are treated. 

Ghandi said in his autobiography that he tried meat because a friend of his older brother told him that it would make him stronger. The friend even argued (using an offensive poem) that eating meat had made the English stronger, giving them the power to rule over Indians. 

This story made me think about the impact of people practicing nonviolence in their daily lives overall. Was there a connection between the kind of hierarchical thinking associated with meat eating and the kind associated with colonialism, like what the British did to Indians? If more people thought about the suffering that they caused to other living beings on a daily basis, would we be able to avoid bigger and greater instances of authoritarian violence? 

Ghandi referred to his fruitarianism as “penance” for the guilt he felt over his various sins. I felt like doing “penance” as well for my meat eating after I stopped doing it. So I considered trying a fruitarian diet as a way of becoming more conscious of the things I eat. I tried to eat more fruits as a way of balancing the karma of the meat that I consumed during the period of time when my moral fiber had wavered. 

Is a fruitarian diet healthy? 

Besides helping me feel better about my own meat eating, I thought that a fruitarian diet might be a good option for any person who is trying to think about the utilitarian impact of their actions. 

It’s tough to get adequate nutrition eating only fruit, so I thought about what the Jains had to say about eating only the parts of the plants that one can harvest without killing them. This broadens the options a bit from a fruits-only diet. Then the diet could include nuts and seeds which are rich in fats and protein, and vegetables and grains and legumes which could provide more carbohydrates, protein, and other nutrients.

Assuming you’re keeping track of your micro and macro nutrients to make sure you’re getting enough healthy proteins, fats, carbohydrates and vitamins, a fruitarian diet with those restrictions is possible to maintain. The biggest problem I see with this diet is the difficulty in getting Vitamin B-12, which can be difficult in any vegan or vegetarian diet. Good vegan sources of B-12 include mushrooms and seaweed. 

Are mushrooms the “fruit” of the mycelium? You can certainly harvest them without killing the entire network beneath the soil. And seaweed can be found washed up on the beach, already dead. I could also harvest it, theoretically, without killing the entire seaweed plant. 

This thought experiment also got me thinking about the lack of Vitamin B-12 in other plant-based sources besides mushrooms and seaweed. While there are trace amount of the vitamin in many fruits and vegetables, it’s not as abundant as it is in say, the state mushroom of my home state Oregon, the chanterelle. 

Is this the result of industrial agriculture breeding plants for high yield instead of nutrition? I’ve heard from numerous sources that nutrition in produce in the United States is declining due to unsustainable farming practices. Maybe if we bred more fruits and vegetables for their B-12 content, everyone would get better nutrition? 

Why diet is important to personal ethics

One thing that pretty much begins to learn about when they begin to embark on any kind of restrictive diet is where they food they eat actually comes from. You can’t be vegetarian or fruitarian or keto or wheat-free without starting to read labels.

It is said that “you are what you eat.” That’s true, in a sense from a nutrition perspective, but I also think it’s true from a kind of cosmic, karmic perspective. Eating is a big part of the life of any living organism. Since food is such a big part of our lives, the story of where it comes from is important. 

We carry the suffering associated with the food we eat in a moral way the same way we might carry extra pounds if we eat too many calories. Still, it’s not a hopeless position to be in. Even if you eat meat, you can still reduce the suffering involved by choosing meat and dairy products that come from farms or hunters who have better practices. 

While factory farms are well-known to be awful, there are many things that farmers can do to reduce suffering to animals and to reduce the impact that farming animals and plants has on the planet. And many are doing it! Check into the environmental and labor practices of the companies that you’re getting you’re food from.

If you’re able, I recommend checking out a local farmer’s market. Eating locally-produced goods is one great way to eat ethically and sustainably. This is because of reduced shipping costs, the production of native plant and animal products, and the ease of following up with the farmer. Cut out the middleman and get your produce directly from the farm! 

As for me, I’ve been eating more fresh fruit and nuts as part of my diet. I’m still not fully fruitarian for health reasons, but keeping fruitarianism in mind is making me think more about where my food comes from overall. When it comes to eating ethically, that’s all that really matters. 

Elephant Epistemology

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Ceramic sculpture of Lord Ganesha hiding among the shrubbery.

How perspectivism can make you a better thinker 

Ceramic statue of Lord Ganesha hiding among shrubbery
Photo by Chinna Hyderabad Jalsa

Storytelling is one of my favorite ways to communicate ideas. I remember stories more easily than I remember boring lectures.

Have you ever heard the story of the blind men and elephant?

The story goes like this: several blind men approach an elephant. The first man grabs the elephant’s trunk and thinks that it is a rope. The second touches the elephant’s leg and thinks it is a tree. A third blind man touches the elephant’s ear and thinks it is a blanket.

The story goes on like this. Each of the blind men has a piece of the truth, but none of them can see the whole elephant.

My elementary school librarian introduced me and my classmates to this story as a child in the form of the children’s book Seven Blind Mice by Ed Young. In the book, the role of the blind men is played by mice. I remember thinking about it a lot as a child.

I’ve heard several different versions of the story since then. I discovered through research that the story has its origins in the folk mythology of the ancient East. It was popularized in the West by John Godfrey Saxe, who called it “A Hindoo Fable.”

The story is currently used by the Peace Corps to teach about cultural differences. It’s also a great story for teaching perspectivism.

What is epistemology?

Most Americans barely (if at all) even know what epistemology is, but it affects each of us in our daily lives in countless ways. For those who don’t know, epistemology is the branch of academic philosophy which deals with knowledge production.

Epistemology is what helps us distinguish the ideas we consider to be factual and true from the ideas that we consider to be subjective opinions. It helps us establish the “Overton Window,” the socially acceptable boundaries of the arena of public discourse.

Nietzsche and Eastern Philosophy

When I was going to college for philosophy and doing research on Friedrich Nietzsche, I found lots of evidence that his epistemology and ethics were influenced by Eastern thought.

I first read Thus Spoke Zarathustra when I was about twenty-two, and I found the spirit of the book to be too similar to stories from Hinduism and Buddhism to ignore. The protagonist of this book is named after Zoroaster, an Iranian prophet similar in character to many of the Buddhist Bodhisattvas.

In the story, Zarathustra speaks to a dwarf who I recognized as resembling Vamana, an incarnation of Vishnu, who is the preserver and balancer of the universe in Hindu mythology. Vamana made sense to me as the deliverer of information about eternal recurrence in Nietzsche’s mind, as Vishnu is the upholder of moral order and associated with time.

Another avatar of Vishnu, Krishna, declares himself in the Bhagavad Gita:

“I am mighty Time, the source of destruction that comes forth to annihilate the worlds.”  

Like the god Shiva, who is better known for being the the “destroyer” of the Hindu canon, Vishnu is often depicted with snakes, or nagas in Sanksrit. Shiva is usually depicted as holding a snake named Vasuki wrapped around his neck while Vishnu is often depicted as reclining on a snake named Shesha. Shesha represents the fabric of space and time in Hindu metaphysics. 

Snakes are associated with the eternal cycle of death and rebirth in Hinduism, and also in Western culture in the form of the Ouroboros symbol, the snake eating its own tail. I believe this mythology was part of the inspiration for Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence.

Perspectivist Epistemology 

When I was in my late twenties, I started doing further research about Nietzsche and Eastern philosophy, and I began to seriously consider the elephant story again.

Part of what separates Eastern perspectivism from Western Kantian epistemology is the idea that the noumenal world (the “real” world that is never fully knowable to us through empirical observation as the blind men in the elephant story) is at least partially knowable through introspection, like the kind encouraged by Eastern meditation practices. 

Arthur Schopenhauer, one of Nietzsche’s influences, made a similar argument.

I found that this story, while helping me to explain Nietzsche’s perspectivism, also provided an eloquent introduction to Eastern views on epistemology more generally. 

Western philosophy is more likely to tell you to look outside yourself for an answer to a philosophical question, while Eastern philosophy is more likely to tell you to look within yourself. While this might seem self-centered on the surface, in practice, it actually leads to greater empathy and understanding of opposing perspectives. 

When I looked at both Eastern Philosophy and Nietzsche’s ethics, I found mostly Virtue Ethics, which are basically just theories about how to be a good person. Virtue Ethics is also a theme throughout many stories about Eastern sages: they tend to be tales about the many different ways that there are to be a good person.

You can’t have ethics without epistemology, as it determines where you get and how you interpret the information on which you base your values. You can’t have epistemology without ethics, because your values inevitably guide your knowledge-seeking. I think that virtue ethics naturally follow from a perspectivist epistemology. 

Eastern Philosophy and Nazis

For Nietzsche, a misinterpretation of his perspectivist epistemology resulted in his ethics being misappropriated and warped by Nazis.

Nazis learned about Eastern philosophy from Nietzsche and from a Hindu woman named Savitri Devi. They used Nietzsche’s work as a vehicle to misappropriate and warp the principles of Eastern philosophy that Nietzsche admired. Some of these stolen ideas became part of Nazi philosophy and culture.

This was some of the most effective political propaganda ever created. Centuries earlier, European Colonialists used the same kind of ideological misinterpretations to exploit the Hindu caste system. Both this and the Nazi misinterpretations of Hindu ethics influence modern Hindu nationalism and Nazi occultism.

I think that the Nazis wanted to appropriate and smear Hinduism because Eastern asceticism, like fascism, preaches a disciplined lifestyle. The difference is that Hindu ascetic discipline comes from within, while fascist discipline is forced on a population by corrupt authority figures.

The Nazi misinterpretation of Hinduism is fundamentally a misinterpretation of what it means to be powerful. Nazis preached the power of the boot and the fist while Hinduism preaches the power of self-discipline and fearless compassion.

Smearing a symbol

Probably the most commonly known example of this philosophy mistake is the story of the swastika symbol. The symbol adopted by the National Socialist Party in 1918 originated as a Hindu symbol for peace. There are also many similar-looking symbols in other cultures.

The swastika is sometimes thought to be originally based on the swirling shape of galaxies in the cosmos, or on the shape of the movements of the sun in the sky. Because of the Nazi smear-job, the symbol seems to be permanently associated in the public consciousness with Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Nazi regime.

So why is epistemology important?

Mistakes like this are common throughout history in both philosophy and science, and they serve as ridiculous and terrifying examples of why the disciplines of philosophy and science need each other and always will.

Epistemology is a critical intersection of philosophy and science, because it’s the part of philosophy that convinces us that we should trust science in the first place, and whose science, and why. It’s also a critical intersection of philosophy and politics because it tells us which politicians we should trust and listen to, and when, and why.

When the consequences of a philosophy mistake are the facilitation of the literal Holocaust, it makes sense to pay attention to how that mistake was made and how to avoid that mistake and other mistakes like it in the future.

That’s what I’m aiming to do by telling you this story.

A horrible epistemology mistake led to the peaceful, compassionate philosophies of the East being misinterpreted by Westerners (and some Easterners) as the building blocks of literal fascism.

I want to show you how to avoid making the same kind of fatal mistakes in your own thinking, and how to correct them when they happen.

Elephant Epistemology

Another thing about elephants: it is said that they have excellent memories. It is said that they “never forget.” I’ve never forgotten the lesson of the elephant story.

Now, every time I think about my own epistemology, I start by thinking about the elephant. Since my perspective as a single human being is limited, I can only perceive one part of the elephant at a given moment.

When I begin pondering how much I know about something and why I know it, I keep in mind that the other perspectives on whatever I’m pondering are probably different. That doesn’t mean that what I’m seeing is right and what others are seeing is wrong or vice versa, just that I have to keep an open mind to the parts of the elephant that I can’t see.

The thing about life is this: just when you think you have it figured out, there’s always more to the story.

How to use Elephant Epistemology

By talking about the history and practice of epistemology in a more casual and less academic format, I’m hoping to get people interested in a way of seeing the world that will broaden their perspective and empower their ethics and decision-making.

The sad truth is that people mostly think about their own perspective and the perspective of those like them in most situations. That’s not the best way to get an accurate picture of what the world looks like.

The best way to do epistemology like an ancient Eastern sage is to gather your knowledge from a variety of viewpoints and to try to think from the perspective of each of those viewpoints.

It’s the old story of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. The other person might be living, dead, or not even a person at all. Try thinking from the perspective of a plant or animal, for instance (maybe an elephant?). Then you’ll start to get a feel for the kind of epistemology that I think is effective for producing good knowledge.

Remember that, like the men in the story, your own perspective is always going to be limited to whatever part of the elephant is near to you. No one is omniscient (not even God, in my opinion), and learning is best approached with as much humility as you can muster.

A word from Lord Ganesha

In the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharata, the Hindu god Ganesh is creatively credited as the one who wrote down the tale as dictated to him by the Hindu sage Vyāsa.

The elephant-headed god Ganesh is depicted in the story as having written down the story with one of his tusks, which he removed and dipped in ink after the feather pen he was using broke during the dictation. This story highlights the importance of the elephant in Hindu culture as a symbol of the processes used to obtain knowledge and wisdom.

Ganesh is seen in the Hindu faith as the placer and remover of obstacles.

An important lesson from this story about Ganesh: when you are searching for the truth, you will always encounter obstacles. What’s really important is your ability to overcome these obstacles and adapt your thinking to your changing perspective on a changing world.

Keep the elephants of Hindu mythology in mind as you embark on your journey to find the truth.

Your Choices Matter

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Hard determinism is for defeatists

road sign with two arrows pointing to the left and right in the desert
Photo by Rosie Steggles

In philosophy’s problem of free will there are three major schools of thought. 

Determinism is the idea that there is no free will. Determinism says that everything that you and that everyone else does is predetermined and that there is pretty much nothing that you can do to change it. 

Free will says that you do have a say in your own choices and, probably, so does everyone else. 

Compatibilism is sort of in between free will and determinism. It’s the idea that some things are predetermined but that we have some degree of freedom. 

I’m a compatibilist. I believe that many things are beyond my control but that some things are within my control, and that the same is probably true for you. A person’s stance on free will says a lot about who they are as a person, because it can give you a clue as to what kind of reasons are driving the choices that they make. 

Why determinism sucks

It’s easy to fall into a deterministic mindset when it feels like things in your life or in the world are out of control. The problem that I have with hard determinism — or the very strong idea that all actions are predetermined, is that it encourages an attitude of passivity and helplessness in people. 

If you think that nothing you do matters, why do anything? Why care? Why try? Also, if we have no real control over the events around us or even over our own actions, how can anyone ever be held accountable for theirs? Is it just to punish someone for doing something bad or to reward someone for doing something good if they had little to no control over the act or over the outcome? 

We can’t know for sure 

The thing about free will and determinism is that it’s one of those problems that doesn’t really have an answer. It also doesn’t look like we are going to be coming up with an answer that has any kind of real certainty behind it any time soon. 

The free will problem as a philosophy problem is a fun thought experiment, but to solve it for real in the tangible, physical world in a way that you could depend on, you’d probably need an extremely brilliant physicist. Or, like, a team of them. 

So, if you can’t answer a question like this, why would you try to answer it anyway? 

I’d rather be free

My thinking on the problem is this: since I don’t know if I have freedom or not, it’s best for me to act as if I do. 

Why? 

Because if I feel powerless and trapped by the unending procession of time, I will be less motivated to do stuff. Also, if I am, in fact, responsible for my actions– or even if I’m not, I might face consequences for them. If I do have a choice, my actions are more meaningful, for better, or for worse. 

If I really knew for sure that nothing I did really mattered, I would probably do some pretty crazy stuff. But if that meant that hard determinism was true, then wouldn’t I have done the crazy stuff anyway, regardless of whether or not I wanted to or honestly attempted to? 

I really don’t know. But I’d rather live in a reality where I have a choice. And, I think, so would most people. 

I have no hard evidence for the idea that I have free will. Honestly, it’s a matter of faith. 

Reality is bleak either way 

If I think about the problem of free will for long enough I often arrive at the conclusion that, no matter who is right, reality is terrifying. 

I prefer a world in which I have at least a little bit of creative control over what kind of terrors I experience. 

So, even if I don’t have free will, I’ll pretend I do. 

Just in case. 

Love, Understanding, and Blessedness

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Spinoza on freeing ourselves from emotional bondage

woman looking at graffiti that says “freedom”
Photo by Hanna Zhyhar

In his Ethics, Baruch Spinoza explains that we are inextricably tied to our emotions. He teaches that we must learn to accommodate our bondage to our emotions in service of the good. We can overcome the emotions which assail us from the outside with the power of the emotions that come from our essence, the part of ourselves which seeks the good. If we do not understand what is good, we will be ruled by the less-powerful emotions that do not serve the good.

Spinoza believes that there is only one substance, and that this substance is God. Since we are all a part of that substance (God), we cannot act in our own best interest without considering the best interest of what we truly are: a vast and connected whole. We overcome our emotional bondage by doing what is within our own power to advance the pursuit of the good.

Understanding Emotions

Emotions are stronger according to how many external causes arouse them in us at the same time. The more we are personally affected by something, the more powerful our emotions about it will be. An emotion that can be attributed to many different causes is less potentially powerful than an emotion attributed to a single cause.

Emotions are only bad as far as they interfere with our ability to think. We are only ruled by our emotions as far as they interfere with our ability to use reason to determine what is good, and to work towards that good. Clearing this noise from our minds is how we attain freedom. Our emotions can only have power over us when we don’t understand them and their causes.

Good and Evil

We call things “good” or “evil” based on how they affect us positively or negatively emotionally. Emotions that we consciously cause in ourselves are stronger than emotions that are caused by external factors. We are more affected by things in the present, the recent past or the near future than things that have long ago passed or that are in the distant future. Emotions that we believe are necessary are more powerful than emotions that we think are unnecessary.

Emotions are also more powerful when they exist in relation to a thing that we believe is possible (while not currently existing), than when they are in relation to things that are subject to chance. Our emotions are more powerful when we believe we have the power to change something.

The power of our passions, as well as their persistence in existence, are determined by the measure of our own power against the power of external causes. Passionate emotions can best be overcome with contrary emotions. We can even more easily control our desires when they are concerned with what is contingent rather than what is present. Emotions that arise from pleasure are also stronger than emotions that arise from pain.

The carrot in front of us is a stronger motivator than the stick behind us. We are more powerful when we concern ourselves with seeking good than when we concern ourselves with escaping evil.

Using Reason

Reason should guide us towards acting in the best interest of all people, and this is the only way we can truly act in our own self-interest. An individual who is truly doing what’s best for themselves is someone who is doing what’s best for humanity. We can use reason to understand and to subsequently change our emotions. When we are guided by reason, our emotions can exist in service of the good. Reason allows us to organize ourselves in such a way that we will not be easily affected by evil emotions.

Reason leads to the understanding which allows us to identify the good, and our emotions will align with this understanding. We can use reason as a pathway to modify the mental world, which will in turn modify the physical world. The mind has power over emotions to the degree that it understands that all things are necessary. It’s not that “everything happens for a reason,” but rather that “everything happens.” Truly understanding this is the path to freedom from our emotional bondage.

Emotions as a Path to Blessedness

Our emotions are tools which are meant to steer us towards the good (what is useful) and away from evil (what interferes with finding what is useful). Emotions are “good” when they serve the good, and “evil” when they serve what is evil. One cannot truly act in self-interest while acting against the interests of others, because we and others are part of the same divine substance.

We rightly seek our own best interest, but we are only doing so skillfully when our own interests are aligned with the interests of others. To truly do what is best for you is to do what is best for the world at large. Real selfishness is, in fact, selflessness– since to be truly selfish is to act in the best interest of others, who are no different from us, in essence.

God is without passions– it does not love or hate. No one can hate God, because God is perfection, and we are God. If we want freedom, the love of God must occupy our consciousness. To love God is to love ourselves. To love ourselves is to love God. The love of God can never be turned into hate. It is not contingent upon receiving the love of God in return. It cannot be stained by envy or jealousy. By freeing ourselves from emotions that run contrary to our nature, we may be free to sculpt our universal body to match our universal mind. The physical world will come to reflect the mental world.

We cannot change what we cannot understand. The more we understand ourselves, the closer we get to God. Understanding ourselves is the key to understanding the world and to attaining freedom. Blessedness occurs when we are driven by a love for God, which is also love for ourselves, a love for others, and love for all things.

Originally published on medium.com on August 12th, 2021.

The West Desperately Needs More Eastern Philosophy

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Americans would benefit from more diversity in their spirituality

monk greeting the sunrise with “namaste”

Photo by THÁI NHÀN

I feel like being a spiritual or religious person is almost becoming taboo in my culture. People who are really into their religions tend to be seen as eccentric by your average, reasonable person.

Religion can seem a little crazy to anyone who is rational, and I certainly understand why. But I think a lot of people are sort of missing the point when it comes to religion. This isn’t their fault! It’s based on a lack of education on the matter.

I think it’s time that religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism made a serious comeback in the West. I’d like to see the histories of these religions taught in schools more. I’d also like to see their philosophies taught in colleges more alongside the plethora of Western traditions available to college students.

Religion isn’t really about the supernatural. It’s about the natural. It’s a way of explaining the vast beauty of the natural that is beyond human comprehension. Eastern traditions helped me understand that, and I think they have the potential to help many people understand that.

Religion, in general, needs a comeback

Religion can offer a lot of things that many modern Westerners are really missing in their lives, like a sense of purpose, stronger connections to their local and/or faith community, a higher degree of self-mastery, and a greater ability to understand oneself.

A lot of people are sort of burnt out on religion in the US, where I live. Some of them have had bad experiences with it. They aren’t very willing to consider it as a possibility when it comes to life changes that could have a positive effect on their quality of life or on their family or community.

Religion, when done right, in my opinion, should make you a happier and better person. It can and certainly has been done wrong throughout history. It has also been done right on many occasions.

Religions and religious people have also done an immense amount of good in the world. I believe that we are undervaluing this potential for good in modern societies, especially in the West.

Religion can be traumatic and a lot of people hate it

Something I’ve noticed about all religions is that they all tend to preach peace, but the folklore and history behind them always tends to be wrought with violence. I think that people misunderstand their religious texts and believe that the violence of the Gods is something that is meant to be wielded by human beings.

Many Americans have religious trauma from growing up in major religions like Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. There are also a variety of cults that reside in the West. I’ve met a lot of people who have left religions or cults, often complaining of things like sexual abuse, psychological abuse, or ideological hypocrisy.

Personally, I’m not totally clear on what separates a cult from a religion besides the number of followers. The two seem pretty similar to me. I think that most people join cults because they are looking for meaning in their lives. The negative social connotations around cults come from the fact that cults are often scams which advertise spiritual meaning but don’t provide it to their followers. Religions can, unfortunately, be the same.

All faiths have good things and bad things in their histories and current practices. There will always be predatory or sanctimonious people within pretty much all of these communities. There will always be religious groups that will be nonfunctional as far as giving people the personal answers they seek on their spiritual journeys.

Changing religions can help

Some people become atheists or agnostics when they leave religion, sometimes because they’ve lost their faith in God or the divine. People also sometimes do this because of the bad experiences they’ve had with being raised in a religion or cult or with joining a religion or cult as an adult.

Some people still believe in the divine or in God but don’t want to associate with the religion, cult, or other spiritual group that traumatized them or to be reminded of it. Or perhaps there are things about the belief system or religious practices of the person’s religious alma mater that just don’t sit right with them.

It’s possible to feel negatively towards religion because of certain experiences you’ve had but also to still benefit from religion and spirituality. Offering Eastern traditions to people in the West gives them the chance to experience religion, spirituality, and philosophical questioning in a new way that might feel or function better for them.

Eastern traditions mostly preach peace

While there is violence in both the scriptures and history of the East, just like there is in both the scriptures and history of the West, Eastern traditions have a big emphasis on peace and nonviolence. Many Buddhists and Hindus, for example, are vegetarians and are vegetarian as an act of compassion towards animals. These kinds of acts of compassion are encouraged in Eastern traditions.

Eastern traditions have a lot in common, philosophically, with Western traditions, like the idea that stealing or murdering is wrong or the idea that prayer will produce good results in your life. They really aren’t that different, but I think some people get confused about things like their personal ethics when they learn them from Western traditions.

Something about Eastern religions that drew me to them more than I was drawn to Western religions is that I found it easier to make a connection between the religious practices and the positive results in my life. Certainly, this kind of tangible connection is possible in any religion. A Muslim might get a sense of community and belonging from daily prayers with other Muslims. A Christian might find a sense of purpose by feeding homeless people or caring for the sick. A Jewish person might gain a sense of personal identity from their Bar Mitzvah rite of passage.

Religious diversity and tolerance are good things

I think that different religions have a better chance of causing tangible positive changes in people’s lives based on what kinds of practices and beliefs are best suited to them. Everyone is different.

For me, certain beliefs and practices ring true and serve me better more than other ones. I think this is true for many people, partly because of how there are differences in the ways that different people’s brains work and because people have different life experiences and preferences, more generally. It’s kind of like “learning styles”– certain people “learn” religion better in different ways because that’s how they are wire.

More diversity in religion and better tolerance of different religions and religious practices would, I think, give many people an incentive to pursue a spiritual path. Spiritual paths can be long and winding. They aren’t always happy or fun, and sometimes they can be scary or painful. Doing spiritual work in your life is worth these risks, and people deserve as many opportunities as they can get to do that work.

Eastern religions can cut out the middle man

One thing that led me to Eastern spiritual practice is the idea that practice is often possible without the aid of a priest, monk, or other religious official. Something that people often don’t discover for way too long of a stretch on their spiritual path is that the answers they are looking for are usually available through internal reflection.

Eastern traditions, like meditation, encourage the kind of internal reflection that is necessary for spiritual growth. They also don’t necessarily require that you go to church or consult some kind of guru in order to have a relationship with the divine. They encourage a relationship with the divine that I feel, at least for me, is more personal. I think that more Western religious leaders could and should take note of that and encourage that kind of divine relationship in the faithful who follow them.

No one can really tell you who you are, what to believe, or how to behave in the world. Only your God or Gods really truly have that power. If you’re an atheist or agnostic, one thing you might have an easier time doing than most religious people is recognizing the strength of your internal power.

Personally, I believe that God/s lives within all of us and that everyone has access to spiritual truth through their own thoughts, words, and deeds.

If Christianity or Islam hasn’t been working for you, try Buddhism or Taosim! If you’ve just left a religion or cult, try reading religious scripture or making up your own religious rituals. You might find that some of the things you previously found fulfilling or comforting about your spirituality are still there! You don’t have to give it up entirely.

If you’re an atheist or agnostic, and you’re looking for more structure or meaning in your life, I’d recommend giving spirituality or religion another try. A belief in an anthropomorphic or wrathful supreme being actually isn’t necessary. You might also find that many religious practices work great when applied to a secular lifestyle!

Westerners: please give the peaceful traditions of the East your attention and consideration. I can’t promise anything, but you might find something there, even if it wasn’t what you were looking for.

Previously published on wordpress.com and medium.com

The Eurocentrism of Academic Philosophy

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How an imbalance of cultural perspectives robs the next generation of thinkers

a model skeleton posed so that it looks as if it is thinking
Photo by Mathew Schwartz

In their New York Times opinion piece, “If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is,” Jay L. Garfield and Bryan W. Van Norden made a strong argument illustrating the current lack of cultural diversity in academic philosophy curricula.

The two professors provide a troubling piece of evidence:

“Of the top 50 philosophy doctoral programs in the English-speaking world, only 15 percent have any regular faculty members who teach any non-Western philosophy.”

This issue alone seems big enough to be cause for alarm, but the authors also raise several others, like the facts that “of the 118 doctoral programs in philosophy in the United States and Canada, only 10 percent have a specialist in Chinese philosophy as part of their regular faculty,” and that “no other humanities discipline demonstrates this systematic neglect of most of the civilizations in its domain.”

Garfield and Van Norden proceed to exhaustedly declare that it would be “futile to rehearse arguments for greater diversity one more time,” because of the apparent commitment of the academic philosophy community to its Eurocentric perspective.

They continue with an ad absurdum argument, suggesting that any philosophy department offering courses in only Western philosophy declare its true intentions by renaming itself “Department of European and American Philosophy.” While amusing, this argument is not particularly compelling.

I disagree with Garfield and Van Norden in their assertion that it is the “intention” of the philosophy community to teach a curriculum heavily weighted towards Western thought. Instead, I believe this situation to be a lingering side effect of broader and more complex systemic issues.

Everything in our world needs constant updating as our cultural and global values evolve. While other academic disciplines do appear to be leaving philosophy in the dust in their pursuit of diversity, this is not intentional, but is rather due to the common nature of those who choose a life of contemplation: we often consider it to be superior to a life of action.

This trait is often disappointingly revealed in our all-too-frequent unwillingness to act. It’s not that a majority of us within the discipline stubbornly refuse to change, it’s that we are often paralyzed by own analysis and that we are prone to make excuses for ourselves on that basis.

I also disagree with Garfield and Van Norden’s claim that to continue to argue for diversity is “futile.” Not only is it worthwhile to argue this point, but it is also our specific responsibility as philosophers to argue such points.

As John Stuart Mill explains in On Liberty:

“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case, he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”

We in philosophy must hold ourselves justly accountable for the injuries brought about by our inaction. As philosophers, we cannot condone this kind of intellectual or moral laziness, as this is the antithesis of every goal at which philosophy has aimed throughout history.

Garfield and Van Norden conclude their case with a Stoic adage: “The Fates lead those who come willingly, and drag those who do not.” It is true that those sticks still stuck in the mud are likely to find themselves “dragged” forward into a more diverse future; but what about those of us who would come along willingly?

There are some obvious consequences of keeping things the way they are, like supporting an overall cultural narrative rooted in xenophobia, and further marginalizing the groups whose ideas have been left out of the discourse. However, there’s another group being cheated by this paradigm: philosophy students.

When an LA Times op-ed asked why it was that “Like the Oscars, #PhilosophySoWhite,” it wasn’t just a question of “political correctness,” but a cry for correctness in cognition. The authors of this article, Myisha Cherry and Eric Schwitzgebel, cite troubling statistics regarding the lack of diversity in philosophy departments, like the fact that only 28% of philosophy PhDs are women, and only 2% are African-Americans. They go on to explain a possible reason for why this is:

“It’s not that white men are innately better philosophers than women and people of color. It’s that white men have better command of the cultural apparatus of seeming smart.”

In a culture with many conditions that favor white men, it’s much easier for white men to appear wise and insightful. Illogical as it obviously is, this appearance is key when it comes to getting recognition in academic philosophy circles. The fact that our archetypal image of a philosopher is a white, Western man hurts the credibility of anyone who doesn’t fit that mold before they ever speak.

We are committing a collective ad hominem fallacy by poisoning our own well of ideas. This must certainly discourage women and minorities from entering any debate. While this is bad news for these groups in both the context of the philosophy community and the world at large, it’s also bad for everyone else in philosophy, and as a result, bad for society.

We are ironically sabotaging our own community and culture with our own bad logic. “Before you listen to her, let me remind you that she’s been in jail…”

Even if we completely ignore the race and gender-based political implications of what is happening here, we are still left with other ethical issues, as well as practical ones.

We shouldn’t change the academic philosophy narrative just because refusing to do so is racist, misogynistic, archaic, and wrong; we should do it because there is an undeniable intrinsic value to cultivating broader views of life in our society’s future thinkers, as well as to cultivating diversity in the pool of said thinkers.

Without politicizing the issue at all, in maintaining the status quo we are still guilty of failing to do our jobs as seekers of truth. The motto of my university is, “Let knowledge serve the city.” We are failing to facilitate this, though ours is the department that is perhaps most concerned with how knowledge serves us.

I, myself, serve as an example of someone who was frustrated with the lack of cultural diversity in my department’s curriculum even before I started reading the opinions of others on the subject. There are many parallel ideas across cultures, and exploring their similarities and differences can help us to better understand the nature of human thought.

Excluding non-European thought from the academic philosophy narrative doesn’t just hurt the interests of non-Europeans overall, it also hurts the ability of students like me to learn the thinking skills which we are studying philosophy in order to obtain, and narrows our perspectives of the world. These are serious consequences when it comes to nurturing our minds, because our minds will be responsible for passing on the legacy of humanity’s centuries-old pursuit of wisdom.

The ancient Aztecs believed that a good life is a life spent doing what is worthwhile. It was a common aphorism in their culture to say that the earth was “slippery.” They thought it was unrealistic to live a life in which we are expected not to make mistakes.

According to philosophy professor Sebastian Purcell:

“The Aztecs held, in short, that it’s unrealistic to think that anyone can lead a perfectly good life, one in which you never slip up. A better goal, then, is to try to lead a rooted life, which they called neltiliztli: literally, rootedness. In this kind of life, one is able to manage the mistakes and slip-ups well, rather than avoid them altogether. The reward is not happiness necessarily, but the promise of a worthwhile life.”

Purcell goes on to mention that public drunkenness was severely punished in the Aztec capital. Nobles could even be put to death for such careless behavior. Among my own friends, when someone behaves carelessly like that, we say that they are “slippin’.”

According to Urban Dictionary, this colloquialism is defined as, “Off guard, not paying attention to your surroundings and not putting in the right effort.”

Philosophy: You are slippin’.

Those of us who have chosen the contemplative life have a responsibility to ourselves and to the world to relentlessly pursue knowledge. In this worthwhile pursuit, we must learn to manage our mistakes.

Originally published on medium.com on December 9th, 2019. 

The Problem With Porcupines

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Stop avoiding the spiky parts

a porcupine
Photo by Dušan Smetana

The hedgehog’s dilemma, also called the porcupine’s dilemma, is a metaphor used to illustrate the more difficult aspects of human intimacy. Arthur Schopenhauer and Sigmund Freud both used this dilemma to describe how individuals relate to society and to each other.

The dilemma asks us to imagine a group of spiky mammals, who are trying to move more closely together in order to share body heat on a cold day. However, the spikiness of these creatures presents a problem. The closer they get to each other, the more they get hurt.

Since the critters are unable to cuddle without sticking each other with their spines, they aren’t able to achieve the close, symbiotic relationship that they are all aiming for.

“In the same way,” wrote Schopenhauer,

“the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature.”

The main idea that this story hopes to communicate is a great irony of the human experience: we can’t have relationships, or indeed, even interact with each other, without risking harming each other.

Anyone who has ever experienced a bad breakup, a family fight or the end of a friendship can attest to the risks we take when we get close to each other. Really, the same is true for anyone who has ever met a rude stranger, cleaned up someone else’s mess, or been or cut off in traffic.

The potential negative consequence of this situation (besides the obvious pain that we can cause each other), is the fact that this may cause us to become overly cautious.

Our fear of mutual harm alienates us from each other and weakens our relationships. Since our hearts have been hurt, we build walls around them in order to protect ourselves.

This problem has never been more relevant than today when our technology seems to be enveloping us in individual, solipsistic wombs.

You can press a button on your phone, and your groceries will be delivered to your doorstep. Really, if you had enough money, you could go basically your whole life without ever having to leave your house. In Japan, there’s even a word for a person who lives like that: hikikomori.

The fact that we can be social through our media doesn’t exactly incentivize us to participate in what one Reddit forum calls “a free-to-play MMORPG with 7 billion+ active players,” or Outside, also known as the real world.

You certainly don’t need to go anywhere to socially interact with people– it’s just a click away. It’s too easy to become disconnected in this day and age, be it physically or emotionally.

It’s safer in our private bubbles, comfortable behind our manufactured images of ourselves and our two-dimensional perceptions of others. It’s neater and clener– anyway, who wants to deal with all that messiness?

That’s what humanity is– messy. It’s not edited for political correctness, smoothed by a filter, cropped into a square, or optimized to appeal to a target audience.

When we get close to people in the real world, we aren’t just seeing the highlight reel. Or at least, in my opinion, we shouldn’t be. If we never let the people we’re close to see us for who we really are, are our relationships even meaningful?

It’s becoming harder to want to be seen, warts and all. I think we’re starting to forget what warts look like.

I understand why it’s tempting to retreat into the relative safety of shallower interactions.

It’s just so much easier to see the Facebook version of your college roommate, smiling in photos with his husband and kids, than to hear about his sister’s cancer or the medication he started taking for his depression.

You don’t really want to argue about the merits of capitalism with your out-of-work, out-of-touch uncle or hear about the alcoholism your ex-girlfriend’s new fiancé. Your Instagram doesn’t have to include details about your childhood or your relationship with your parents. The Twitter user agreement doesn’t ask us to be honest with others or ourselves.

Even outside, when people ask us how we are, we say “fine.”

We might say “good,” or “great,” or “okay.” It’s rare that we say anything like: “I’m overcome with bliss,” “I’m overwhelmed by grief,” “I feel awkward in this situation,” or even “I’m having a bad day” or “my butt really itches in these pants.”

Those things are too prickly.

Why not leave these intimate details at arm’s length, and avoid getting poked? Why not mind your own business, and leave well enough alone?

Because raw, authentic human connection is a huge part of what makes life worth living. If you ask that girl out, she might break up with you, but if you don’t, you’ll never travel the world together.

Because we can’t ever have trust without placing our faith in people. If you confide in a friend, they might judge you, but if you don’t, they’ll never understand what you’re going through.

Because no one can ever really know you, or appreciate you, for who you are, if the only version of you they ever get it one that you’ve created to make others feel comfortable. Because joy doesn’t mean anything without the knowledge of pain.

Take the risk.

People aren’t always soft; sometimes they are sharp as hell, and sometimes they’re going to hurt. Still, screw the spines. It’s cold out there, and I would rather be warm.

Wouldn’t you?

Originally published on medium.com on February 3rd, 2020. 

The Ship of Theseus and Human Identity

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Are you still the same person you were yesterday?

old shipwreck washed up on a beach with people looking at it
Photo by Vasiliki Volkova

The mythical hero and founder king of Athens, Theseus, sailed into battle on a famous ship. Legend has it that the ship, displayed in a museum, began to rot and gradually had its pieces replaced.

The Ship of Theseus is a philosophical thought experiment that can help us to understand the metaphysics of identity. The basic question that it raises is if an object which has had all of its fundamental components replaced is still the same object.

With all of its original pieces replaced, is the Ship of Theseus still fundamentally the same ship?

This idea has interesting and uncomfortable implications when applied to our theories about the human mind and body.

For example: would you dare to step into a Star Trek transporter? If your atoms were disassembled by a tractor beam, would it be the same person reassembled on the other side? Could you tell the difference? Does it matter?

In an age when science fiction seems to be transforming into science fact at an alarming rate, we can’t help but begin to wonder about things like the continuity of consciousness.

Futurists imagine a world where human beings might attain a state approaching functional immortality through the use of technology. Some theorize about a technological singularity, in which the human race fuses with and becomes indistinguishable from our technology.

One day, will we be able to upload our own consciousness into clones of ourselves, or artificial bodies with a much later expiration date than our flimsy human ones? If we were able to do something like this, would we still be human? Would still be ourselves? Does this idea of ourselves even hold water?

These ideas are explored in many places in modern media, particularly in works of science fiction.

In the 2015 film Advantageous, a mother considers transferring her mind into a younger body in order to serve as the spokesperson for a corporation offering this service.

In L. Frank Baum’s turn-of-the-century novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Tin Woodsman’s origin story remembers him as a human who had all of his limbs gradually replaced with tin. The question of whether he is still the same man, Nick Chopper, is a running joke throughout the story.

The Tin Man eventually meets another version of himself, created from his discarded flesh. Which one is the real Nick Chopper?

In the 1999 film Bicentennial Man, we watch a robot slowly transition towards humanity through the slow replacement of his parts, much like the Ship of Theseus. Robin William’s leading character, Andrew and the Tin Man share a similar problem: if they only had a brain!

Stories like these hint at the idea that the brain– particularly the prefrontal cortex– might be part of what makes us human.

There are many proposed solutions to the Ship of Theseus problem, and how we decide to answer this question says lot about how we see ourselves, our lives, and our future.

Here are a few possible answers:

No identity over time

This theory suggests that there is no continuous “ship” which exists across time, but rather that the ship in each instant is a separate ship, an event existing only for that moment. Do you see yourself this way, a different being from moment to moment?

Continual identity over time via final cause

The Ship of Theseus had a purpose, after all; transporting the hero into battle. This purpose is the ship’s final cause.

Aristotle had the idea that there were four causes or reasons for a thing to be:

The formal cause is the design of the thing, like the ship’s shape, or the way the bones of your skeleton hang together.

The material cause is the type of matter the thing is made of, like the ship’s wood, or the cells of your body.

The efficient or moving cause is the agent that changes the thing, like the passage of time rotting the ship’s wood, or the experiences of your life, shaping your character.

The final cause is the intended purpose of a thing or the mystical possibility of an oak tree that lurks inside of an acorn. This final cause is the essence and identity of the ship, its reason for existing in the first place.

You might relate the final cause of the ship to the meaning of your own life, your telos, your ultimate aim. This way of solving the problem suggests that the ship is the same ship, as a function of its intended purpose.

Gradual loss of identity

This theory suggests that perhaps the ship was once the same ship, but stopped being that ship as it began to decompose.

If our identity is a function of our purpose, what happens when that purpose is unclear? Are we still ourselves if we aren’t serving the same purpose that we once were? If the parts of ourselves which once made us ourselves are gradually replaced, have we lost the essence of who we are?

There is no ship

Conceptualism argues that the ship is just a concept we invented. The new ship and the old ship are separate concepts. They must not be the same ships, then. Otherwise, how would we compare these ideas?

You can think about yourself this way, too. One could similarly argue that you are just a concept that you invented. There is no “you” only your ideas about who and what “you” are.

So, what is the ship?

Nobody actually knows.

How do you choose to view your identity?

Are you a fleeting part of the “now,” existing only within this moment until you become something else in the next moment?

Are you a function of your purpose, an instrument of the reason why you exist or the ideas by which you choose to live?

Are you a gradually degrading being, becoming less and less you as you age and your concept of yourself becomes fuzzier?

Do you have an identity at all? Do any of us? Are we all “special, unique snowflakes” or “all part of the same compost heap?”

What are you?

We’re moving into a future where our ideas about our identity and our humanness are becoming more important. These questions are no longer just abstract food for thought to ponder in the moments when we feel ideologically confused.

The time is coming when we’ll have to make tangible, materialistic ethical decisions related to the abstract concepts of our selves, our identity, and our humanness. We’ll have to decide which choices we’ll make when it comes to the ethics of our technology and our conscious evolution as a species.

What will the future of humanity look like based on those choices?

Regardless of what happens with clones, cyborgs, AI, data clouds, or anything in the science-future of the world, we also have to consider our perspective on this when we make decisions in our daily lives.

Our beliefs and our behavior are closely tied to our identities. Our ideas about who, what, and why we are influencing how we live our lives and how we will feel about the choices we make.

Who are you?

Why are you?

What makes you, you?

Think about it.

Originally published on medium.com on October 29th, 2019.