Buddhism Is Not Nihilism

Some people reject Buddhism as nihilistic, but perhaps they are simply shooting the messenger. It is hard to deny the basic insight of the four noble truths. What you decide to do about it is another question, and perhaps that is what separates the Buddhist from the non-Buddhist. The first two tenets amount to a definition of what it means to be alive and what it means to be sentient. In the first case, we observe that no one is exempt from suffering. Some suffer more and some suffer less, but we all experience it. The exact amount is actually quite hard to measure with great accuracy, but that is due to the subjectivity of experience and I guess that means we're jumping ahead. That's fine. Let's just be clear that no one is denying that suffering is a fundamental part of being alive, whether or not you are human.

The second noble truth is particular to human suffering. Maybe it is more accurate to say that it spans both sentient and non-sentient life, but only conscious creatures endure its full extent. Buddhism attributes the cause of all suffering to attachment to desire. One can argue that it is a bit of an over-statement to say that all suffering stems from such attachment. What about physical pain? What about neurological disorders? There are definitions of attachment that attempt to generalize it to these things as well. Whether or not we accept that, it is safe to say the Buddhism in practice is mostly aimed at what we might classify as spiritual suffering. After all, the religion originated in a pre-scientific era where there wasn't much you could do about these physical phenomena.

For the time being, let's limit ourselves to the definition of attachment and craving that is straightforward. Think of Maslov's hierarchy of needs. This where we reach our first point of contention. Is it really fair to say that all desire is suffering? Certainly some desires, such as those for food or sex, are necessary for humanity to even survive. I suppose that doesn't mean these desire aren't painful. However, anyone can acknowledge that much pleasure can be derived from the desire as well. I'm not even talking about the satisfaction of the desire. There is pleasure in wanting something as well. There is pleasure in anticipation. And when the object of desire finally comes into possession, the pleasure of having it is magnified by the craving that preceded our acquisition.

I think that Buddhism is merely asking us to acknowledge that we may not obtain our object or that we may lose them after getting them. This causes fantastic amounts of suffering for humans. Moreover, it often causes a chain reaction of suffering, where we inflict pain upon others in response to our pain or to our need to satisfy a desire. Not all attachment to desire to suffering, but much suffering comes from such attachment.

I should also emphasize that the second noble truth is not a moral statement really. For those of us who approach it from a moral universe created by Christianity, it is easy to equate attachment to desire to sin. However, sin is what is dishonorable to a god. Attachment is about what causes you pain. As I said, some attachment inspires us to inflict pain upon others, but a lot of it is self directed. If you choose to acknowledge this or not is your business. If you choose to do anything about it our not, that is also your business. Buddhism is offering some suggestion that might help you, but ignoring those doesn't result in eternal punishment at the hands of an angry god. You just go one living as you have.

That brings us to the third noble truth, which is that we bring an end to suffering by relinquishing attachment to the object of our desires. This is where the charges of nihilism really set it. Are you telling me that I have to become an ascetic? I have to give up family and friends and live a life of complete deprivation on a mountain top? Contrary to popular belief, I think that Buddhist text go to some lengths to adopt the path to many walks of life.

As with the second noble truth, your decision to apply the third truth is mostly about what you want to achieve in life. Yes, to avoid all possibility of suffering, we would have to eliminate attachment to friends and family. It is hardly controversial to say that people die or fall out of love and that by choosing to love we set ourselves up for this outcome. However, it can also be true that it is better to have loved and lost and to have never loved at all. It is not necessarily a question of morality or judgement. It is not immoral to be attached to something or moral to forsake all attachment.

Buddism is asking you to look at the world with open eyes. It is asking you to see the cause of your suffering so that you can make decisions with complete information. If you accept attachment knowing that it may cause you suffering, go right ahead. If on the other hand you see that a problem stems from a form of attachment that is no good for you, then find your way out of that attachment will put an end to that suffering.

The way out is the fourth noble truth. This is the only point that I consider really worth debating. When we see the first three truths with clarity, they are self evident. They practically define human experience. Where Buddhism adds its special mark is when it proposes the forth noble truth, the medicine which heals the sickness. This is not merely meditation, which is sometimes believed as the whole of Buddhism. Meditation is an important part, but it is only one of the eight practices that the fourth noble truth advances. Perhaps there are other ways to live, other ways to address suffering and its causes. The statement that the eight way path is the only path is a little presumptuous of the Buddha to say. Nonetheless, it is a practical plan of action and it works for many people.

Fine, Let's Talk About Star (Insert Trek/Wars)

They say that you can like both Elvis and the Beetles, but you can never like both equally. The same could be said for many people and their attitudes towards the two most popular franchises with "star" in the title. In honor of the release of the new Star Wars movie, Bill Nye weighed in on his opinions about the series. It seemed to come down to his annoyance that Star Wars was not as scientifically accurate as Star Trek. Niel Degrasse Tyson had some similar comments around the same time, although he seemed to be more focused on discussing the representation of science in the new movie and less on whether this made it preferable to Star Trek. Bill Nye, on the other hand, seemed downright offended by Star Wars, which honestly doesn't care about science. It never did and it never will. I think it was pretty clear about that at the start of the relationship, so don't start acting like this is new information.

Didn't George Lucas call his movie a "space opera"?  That should've been a give away. Much of science fiction deals with changes to science, technology and society and their philosophical implications. Even though Star Trek can be just as magical as Star Wars, it makes some attempt to be grounded in the world of known science because doing otherwise would defeat the point. Gene Roddenberry intended it to be a realistic vision of the future. I'd should point out that I think this vision is oriented more towards a civilization that is more humane and sanguine than our own - rather than being fundamentally about fancy gadgets and exotic space phenomenon - but this requires speculation about science and technology too. On the other hand, Star Wars is more like a fantasy in science fiction setting than it is speculative fiction.  Of course it has magic, Mr. Nye. It takes place a long time ago in a galazy far, far away. We're talking about Lord Of the Rings in space here.

Why Philosophy Is Important To Programming

Baruch would like to discuss stretching the concepts of proof beyond mere math.

If your friends and family rolled their eyes at you when you announced that you were majoring in philosophy, I empathize with you. Perhaps it is better to say that there is a part of me that empathizes and there is a part of me that asks whether you are out of your damn Vulcan mind. That more skeptical voice wonders about the practical applications of said major and waxes on about how such questions matter in a world where a degree at a second tier university costs more than a house. Even if you get a free ride or happen to be the progeny of millionaires, is a philosophy major really the best way to honor the blood and sweat of your benefactors?

Don't expect me to answer that last question. Honestly, if you needed that from me then maybe you shouldn't be a philosopher after all. Also, I don't need a lecture on how the importance of philosophy does not rest on its practical applications alone. What I want to do now is answer the skeptical voice's first question of practicality, at least in part. I am sure that many, if not most, people associate philosophy with nothing but mountaintop navel gazing about the meaning of life. (Which somehow they don't regard as a practical devotion?) If the twentieth century has shown us anything, it is that philosophy has a closer relationship to math, science - and dare I say engineering - than we have previously been willing to admit. We have folks like Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein to thank for this. Despite their contributions to the foundations of technical disciplines, I think they are still considered esoteric for many who labor within those disciplines to make their daily dime. We can hope that the twenty first century will bring the philosophical mindset to the masses.

The importance of what these folks accomplished lays in discovering or inventing tools with which we can reason about concepts. The unification of mathematics with set theory and formal logic preceded an acceleration of discovery. One of the most important contributions to twentieth century math after that, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, would not have been possible without it. We cannot find the limits of reason before we have developed some formal way of defining what reason is.

One may ask, what do we need of philosophy if math already has the necessary tools? Set theory began with the question of how to formally define what mathematical concepts are. The set of all "things", however, extends beyond mathematical things. It extends beyond computer science and engineering, but for my part I will turn to computer science. Once a program exceeds a certain level of complexity, we start to talk about design and architecture. We start to collate lower level sequences of instructions and bits of memory into abstract concepts such as routines, objects, subsystems and the like.

Every step along the way, we have to make decisions about the divisions between these entities. While those division may be driven by software's relationship to the real world, they are just as much driven by demands of maintainability, extensibility, and stability, among other things. No one can tell you what the right division of labor is within your program. Often, there are several right ways. More often, there are several ways which are each right for a different purpose and we have to decide which purposes are important and which can suffer compromise and exactly what are the tolerable compromises.

I am not aware of anything quite as well established as set theory and formal logic for reasoning about these things. Each program is a bit like developing a new set theory. We have to start at the beginning, asking the big questions of what it is we hope to accomplish and what is the best way of accomplishing that. While there may not be any tools for answering these questions as one might develop a theorem and its proofs, there are tools that can help us divide and conquer. These tools are found in philosophy. I was go so far as to say that we can adapt more than just metaphysics and all its descendants. Even fields such as ethics and aesthetics may be important in our endeavor.

Unfortunately, I feel that most software developers are left to their own devices. The good ones probably rediscover concepts that may have gleaned from Spinoza or for that matter the pre-Socratics. Is it so revolutionary to suggest that curriculum in computer science should include some survey of philosophy, so at least we can know where to look when we want to find someone who may have traveled down the same corridors of thought?

Two Examples From Inductive Composition

Here are two pieces that I wrote using what I called "inductive composition" in my previous post. I of course need a minimum of two to demonstrate it. These use the same characters and could be a part of a larger story, but I wrote them as independent stories, each centered around a particular idea. I also wrote them in reverse of the order I present them here, which is chronologically. I wrote the second one first and that spawned and idea for the first.

Both stories were inspired by some of the concepts I related in my post on genetic engineering, I also tried to relate these ideas in Divide The Sea, a much longer story. I wondered if I could refine the concepts to their purest narrative form. I don't know If I've succeeded, but in any case I offer these for your consideration.

Flowers And Sand

Compared to anything else that came across her tablet screen, the questions were stark. Their semantic and visual simplicity is what terrified her. Each was a sequence of no more than ten words without a conjunction or dependent clause among them. The eggshell white background and black, monospaced typeface served only to heap more anxiety upon Lizette as she stared at the exam and nearly saw it peering back into her.

The first question out of one thousand read: “Do flowers ever make you feel sad?”

Lizette had answered this with a yes and failed to move on because the next question read:

“Do old friends sometimes feel distant?”

She sensed movement and looked up to see a hazy figure against the ocean and sky. The beach was made of rough sand and it ended in grassy dunes. The person, the only other human Lizette could see, stepped onto a boardwalk that wove among the dunes and ended at the slender brick road on which the house stood. An autumn breeze had descended and was messing around with sand and the grass and the figure’s floral dress.

A moment later, the woman had climbed the porch and entered the large room that faced the ocean. It was cool in there and full of plants, some nearly two stories high. A table stood in the middle and Lizette sat at it, across from the other woman. The tablet lay near the edge of the table, face down. The woman looked at it and raised an eyebrow.

“It’s no use.” said Lizette. “I know what it will say. Lian, do you think I’ve changed so much?”

Lian said, “Are you asking because your husband didn’t come home last night?”

When Lizette didn’t answer, Lian removed a deck of cards from her purse. She lay them face up in a grid. Each bore an image, a title, and a couplet. Lian instructed Lizette to stare at the arrangement for a moment and try to remember what she saw. Then she flipped them over changed their positions, making sure that she moved with enough care to allow Lizette the opportunity to follow where each card went. She assembled them into a grid again.

“Turn over three.” said Lian. “This isn’t a magic trick or a seance. You saw the cards and your brain followed them, even if you weren’t paying attention. Whatever you pick, something inside of you has chosen it.”

The first card pictured a man standing on a balcony and holding a burning sheet of paper,

The top read, “The Perpetual Actor” and the couplet at the bottom said,

He needs no crowd, no audience for his voice

The script is loud and divines every choice

Lizette turned over a second card, entitled “Lover’s Shade” and picturing a man followed by an inverted shadow, a silhouette with a head that touched its owner’s feet. The man covered his eyes from blinding sunlight, but was unable to stop a crack that was splitting open is face. An eye peered through the crack.

Daylight uncovers hollow faces and eyes awake in kind,

hoping strangers lie in places of lovers left twice behind

As Lizette touched the third card, Lian put her hand on top and held Lizette’s hand down.

“You know what this is?” said Lizette.

Lian nodded and let her eyes flood, saying, “I was hoping for something different, but you see things too well. I’m the dishonest one.” She drew a long breath. “None of this is your fault; I’m to blame. Go to my house and you’ll find him there. Hate me if you want, but you should forgive him.”

Lizette left and Lian went back to the beach, where she dialed someone on her phone.

“I went over thinking I was going to tell her the truth, but when I saw her face I couldn’t. She was taking the exam again because she senses that she’s changing and you won’t love her anymore. That poor woman, she doesn’t know how else to live. You were right, if she finds out that you cheated on the test, it will crush her. The only thing she’ll ever think is that you were never meant to be together. Better to let her believe I led you astray.”

Lian held up the third card, the one Lizette had chosen but never seen. It was “The Lock and Key.”

If you think that this key guards a secret then you are wrong

Captive truth wants to flee, but you’ve been the keeper all along

Prophecies Once Spoken

From the distance afforded by the hills, the descent of mortar shells sounded almost calm, like the soft shoed rumbling of a thunderstorm gathering a few miles out to sea. Aaron stood in the archway of his chapel, where morning dew clung to the moss on the stones. He surveyed the steppes cut into the hills on which his abbey stood. Each plateau blossomed in a different brilliant color. They bore wheat and vegetables as well as weedy grass on which pigs grazed. The most important crop was Aaron’s unique breed of peonies that looked like candy because of their glossy swirls in purple and white and blue and gold. Aaron was dismayed the see a depression in the middle of his flower bed. The shadow assumed the shape of a human body.

He crossed the courtyard, throwing corn which chickens pecked from the seams between paving stones. When he reached his peonies, he realized that one of his guests had died. Aaron fetched a cart and took the corpse into the basement of his chapel, where he kept a morgue in which he prepared bodies for their final passage. On the wall hung a dried and pressed flower behind a square of cracked glass. Handwritten words on the backing paper read, “In honor of your first artificial breed, love Elish.”

The next morning, two women and three men climbed the hill. The three men were nearly, though not entirely, identical. The same was true of the women, the most striking difference between them being the blue eyes of one and the golden eyes of the other. They passed a dead pig in the tall grass. Its mouth was turned to the sky and a dark mass of insects flew in and out of it. Aaron had been crouched over the pig and when he saw the group he stood.

He said, “Elish”, as though unsure it was her.

The blue eyed woman said, “The natches burned out our neighborhood.”

“Won’t your own kind take you in?”

“Things with us aren’t good. Perhaps you can pretend to be our kind again?”

One of the men said, “Were you lying when you said he was refined?”

Aaron said, “Yes, I’m not a victim of genetic design. I’m a natch.”

Elish said, “When we met he was pretending to be refined. How could I have known? He was lucky; he was born just as smart and strong as any man designed to be that way.”

The five of them argued and the three men left.

Aaron said to the yellow eyed woman, “I’m surprised you came Lian, let alone stayed.”

Years before, Lian had claimed that she and Aaron were having an affair. Even though the match making program had placed Aaron and Elish together, it wasn’t perfect. Lian was herself a constant reminder of technology’s imperfection. Her eyes weren’t meant to be gold. When Elish pressed Aaron about the fictional fling, she found a truth far more unsettling. Aaron had forged the results that placed them together. He had said it was because he’d wanted so much to be with Elish. His wife concluded it was because he was a natural born who wanted so much to find acceptance among the genetically engineered elite.

Lian said, “When war comes, sometimes you find friends among former enemies.”

Elish smiled and said, “Our argument with the others was a ruse. My kind, as you call us, sent me here to spy on you, but as for me I’d like to make amends. Will you come back down the hill?”

She held out a wedding ring, to which Aaron replied, “You might want to look at something first.” He brought them to the morgue and said, “I get a lot of pilgrims.. They want to be more than they are and blame the regulations of refined society for their impoverished creativity. Unfortunately, the peonies killed this one.”

Elish shook her head, saying, “No, you’re lying, just to drive me away. You never forgave me.”

She left, leaving Aaron and Lian alone. Lian asked what Elish had meant and how she could possibly think that Aaron has somehow arranged the body as a stunt when he didn’t even know they were coming. Aaron explained that Elish understood the truth immediately, but that people believe what the need to.

“You know that.” he said.

“What do you think she wants to believe?”

“I designed my peonies, but now they’re sick. It’s the germs that give them those colors. The effect on nearby animals is a change in pheromones that draw poisonous blue flies to breed in their mouths when they sleep. But it only affects those with a particular gene that is, unfortunately, essential to the engineering process. It is like inbreeding; it weakens us. The result is a complex disease that science cannot cure fast enough. All of you being the same, you lack the happy accident that would reveal the truth. And all of you may die of the same thing.”

Lian nodded, saying, “Elish is an agricultural engineer. It seems her work is meaningless now.”

“In work, as in love, she is insecure. I had hoped she changed, but she hasn’t. She’s like this man.”

The woman considered the man. His mouth was ajar. Behind the teeth blacked by insect waste, she could see a tongue pot marked by thousands of tiny craters. Blue flies inject their victims with anesthetic before borrow inside and laying their eggs. The larvae gestate in a matter of hours. Given that the cadaver’s eyes were opened, it wasn’t unreasonable to think this man had awoken to find himself paralyzed with a mouth full of worms competing to escape.

Lian said, “Aren’t you the happy accident?”

“I don’t know. I’m not so sure it’s happy for you and your kind.”

Inductive Composition And Theme Stories

My Favorite Poet.. Wait, I still have the meaning of that word wrong, don't I?

In his book On Writing, Steven King says he’s a natural “putter-inner”, meaning that as revises his first draft, he tends to add more material. That’s a problem because his goal is usually to make the second draft shorter than the first. I have this same problem, compounded by the tendency to start writing the second draft before I’ve finished the first. The longer my piece, the more likely I will go back to the beginning and started fleshing out material with new ideas. Often, I’m fleshing out stuff that’s already a bit overfed. That usually happens because the characters, settings, themes and other story elements have had too much time to sit in my brain and generate new ideas.

There is more peril in this behavior than merely bulking up a story that may first requiring some tightening. Another consequence is that I spool out new threads of thought that meander away from the central throughline. Sometimes these diversions are okay. I’m comfortable with pinning random ideas to the board and seeing what becomes of them later. Sometimes, however, they take on a life of their own. I become fascinated with a new turn on a story element and want to follow it further, adding more and more and circling back until the sideroad becomes a part of the main product. It can through the balance off or paint me into a corner. I can wind up turning a story that started out with a clear concept into something that is a little confused about what it is. At that point I may be tempted to put the work down and ponder it for a bit before having the courage to sort out the mess. It happens to the best of us, I suppose.

However, lately I’ve been trying to work on shorter stories and poems that are a little more immune to this trend. In particular, I’ve developed a fascination with flash fiction and haiku. My flash fiction is 1000 words or less and my haiku use the tradition 17 syllable pattern. There are many advantages to these literary formats. For example, they are more likely to actually get finished. Also, I am less likely to start messing with the content before I’ve finished a first draft. What’s more is that I have to be parsimonious with my words. I’ve found that this limitation is more freeing than constraining. There is the obvious result that short pieces can be more focused. However, I’ve also found that it appeals to my habit of “breeding” : when things I write generate litters of more ideas that I am then compelled to write also. Short works do not force me to throw out ideas. Quite the contrary.  They encourage me to break those ideas off into separate pieces. Each thought can be developed on its own.

One could ask whether this results in more disjointed results, where one speaks in sound bites rather than complete meals. After all, when I try to write a novel and add more and more ideas, it’s because I think they’re all related in some way. By spinning off new stories (or for that matter poems), have I risked shredding something that had the potential of being a whole fabric? I’ve come to the conclusion that ideas can be multitude, all with inter-relations, without forfeiting individual coherence. I’m not the first to have experimented with the way of writing I’m about to describe, but for lack of better terms I’ve coined it inductive composition and theme stories. Let me explain.

Inductive composition is a little like regular old brainstorming, except that each idea gets self-contained development, and the end products may stand on their own or together. Suppose you have an idea for a basic story involving two characters and a single conflict, something that can be related in a flash fiction format. This may spawn ideas about a continuation of that conflict, or new conflicts, or new characters that may relate to one or more of the original characters. Can each of these become the basis of a new flash fiction piece? Write them, making sure that they can still function independent of the others. The idea is to create a chorus of pieces. Each has an individual voice and together they add volume and new shades to various aspects of the story. At this point, one might rearrange the pieces and put them together in a single cohesive long story. You could do that, breaking their isolated existences and weaving them together. Thus, this becomes one way of coming up with the rough draft of a traditional novel. Or, you could select a subset of these pieces that seem to have a narrative relationship and arrange them together.

The parts may not be as cohesive as that traditional novel. They may even be somewhat contradictory. Nonetheless, it is possible for a general narrative to emerge and become visible to the astute reader.

I call this inductive composition, by analogy to the inductive method of reasoning (not to be confused with inductive mathematical proofs, which are altogether different). The foundations of an inductive argument are facts or propositions that come from independent sources. They weren’t created for any particular purpose. However, noticing a pattern, one may pull them together to argue that in concert they imply a certain conclusion. While better and better inductive arguments can support greater and greater probability of their conclusions being true, they can almost never provide absolute certainty in the way a deductive argument can. Of course, deductive argumentation requires axioms and strict adherence to formal logic, which is not true of reality.

Fiction is sometimes meant to represent reality, which is experienced in a sequence of moments that don’t have an ultimate purpose and which often have lots of blind alleys or observations that are interesting but not lent to absolute conclusions in the absence of omniscience and the ability to integrate such total knowledge. Reality is contradictory and subject. Yet, we press on with hedge bets based on an inductive assemblies of a thousand individual experiences. This is the model of inductive composition.

Them stories take this a step further. A theme story is composed of shorter stories that may not even contain the same characters or settings. Each component represents an individual emotional beat that might be typical in a larger story. For example, consider a plot summary based on the monomyth structure. One could write a sequence of shorter stories in which each piece details the emotional core of a particular stage in the hero’s journey. Don’t worry about continuity with anything else, just write something that evokes that stage the deepest sentiment and clearest representation possible. Then arrange them in their normal narrative sequence. Thematically, it tells a story, even if this isn’t true on the surface.

The major drawback of the theme story is that it makes no sense as a whole with the decoder ring. This may be okay, depending on your purpose. I could use a theme story as a platform for honing particular skills or exploring ways of looking at the larger story problem without being encumbered by commitments and connections that I have established earlier. Perhaps I could use that to write something more traditional. Or perhaps I could let it stand as-is. After all, each of the component story is supposed to stand on their own and should draw their strength from within, so to speak. The thematic progression might actually be clearer than you think to some readers.

I like to think this approach has a loose connection to the concept of nen actions in Zen philosophy. Nen actions describe the chain of thoughts that progress from an initial sensory input. The first nen is the immediate impression that happens when we first receive a stimulus. It is the sensation of colors and sounds without identity as a part of a larger pattern. We simply see blue and hear a string of notes. The second nen, which often happens so quickly we don’t even notice the first nen, is pattern recognition. We now see an entire image in a painting and may even identify it if it’s familiar to us. We now hear a melody and know the words. The third nen turns from passive recognition to active response. This could be a simple internal response, such as a pleasant feeling that comes from the things around us - or even a decision to ignore the input and move on. Or it could be something more dramatic, as when a stimulus triggers our flight or fight reflexes. Though in some sense the first kind if response might be considered passive, down at the level of nen actions we would call it active because it is a response that distinguishes you from a device that merely records its inputs.  

This is of course just an analogy. Writing any sort of fiction requires going beyond the third Nen (come to think of it Beyond The Third Nen sounds like a great name for a story or a prog rock album). However, I like the idea of sometimes just following a stream of ideas without first trying to connect them in some over-arching infrastructure. Sometimes one can be created after the fact, and sometimes themes and narratives emerge organically all their own. You make take a step back and find it there, something you couldn’t have discovered if you went in with a plan.

We Tried Meritocracy And Called It Communism

"Do I contradict myself?  Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."

-Walt Whitman

"Look what I built with nothing but the power of my enormous head!"

People of the developed world, we don't live in a meritocracy.  I know you're all looking over your left shoulder at that Swede and thinking I am only addressing him, but I assure you that I am talking to the Americans gathered here as well.  In fact, I'm looking right at you and if the Swede hears me it's because he happens to be within ear shot.  Capitalist societies don't produce meritocracies.  The ideas are contradictory.  If you like capitalism that is fine and probably healthy, but don't walk around announcing that blue and red are the same color.  People might start thinking you're some kind of genius, and we wouldn't want that would we?  The moment the rest of the world starts calling you a genius, you've lost all credibility.

I would define a "meritocracy" as a society where the people at the top are there because of the innate value of their abilities.  This is a bit of a vague definition, and in some very broad sense meritocracy is synonymous with civilization.  There is anarchy, which by definition cannot exist (ref. William Golding), and meritocracy, which is everything else and thus all there is.  What I mean is that life, whether lived in the trees or in Manhattan, is nasty, brutish and short.  Our fortunes are governed by some form of selection, natural or otherwise.  If one defines "ability" as aptitude for whatever skill spells survival in the current death match, then of course the people at the top are those most well endowed with this skill.

One may scoff and ask whether being born to the right family counts as aptitude. In small doses it is true that many past and present societies have structures allowing some of their most unwitting citizens to assume fame, power and fortune.  Europe has its royals and America has its Congress.  Though in defense of Congress, they are only slightly less effective than monarchy and much less prone to hemophilia.  This situation is not sustainable, however.  Since there is no such thing as absolute power unless you are from Krypton, even the grandest duchess will have to resort to Machiavellian measures to maintain power.  L'etat c'est vous?  If so, then why did you find the need to demolish provincial fortresses and build Versailles?  Sometimes you have to admire the innate ruthlessness of those born to the throne and yet driven mad by the very real threat of loosing it.  That's right, there is no anarchy and no absolute power, only meritocracy filling the negative space between two imaginary regimes.

However, to make the discussion meaningful, we'd probably like to define meritocracy more narrowly.  We have to, if we're planning on boasting that we live in a society where merit is the measure of value.  Kings raised their princes to believe they were appointed by God and had no issue with the idea that some people were born specialer than others.  This didn't remove the very real need to wheel and deal, which wouldn't be necessary with God on your side, but the attitude represents a level of comfort with primogeniture that drives modern man mad.  We're all libertarians now and we don't like the idea that we were born with a leg up or that anyone wanted to help us.  For starters, that would mean having to share and help others, which lord knows is a habit we gave up in kindergarten.  Such a thought would also mean believing that we are not the arbiters of our own fate and that we do not live in a society that empowers all of its citizens equally.

Thus, we refine the concept of merit as a measure of value.  Who decides value?  Well, if I started out with nothing and became successful, then of course whatever it is I did to make that happen is valuable.  Since I believe I rose on the backs of impersonal forces, without the help of anyone with a personal interest in me, I can point to my anonymous peers and say that they have assigned me my worth.  We live in a democracy where people are free to elect whom they choose, assuming they are rich enough to avoid working through voting day and white enough to own voter Id cards.  We also live in a capitalist economy, where people are free to give their money to whomever they want, assuming that someone has convinced us that what is for sale fulfills an aching need.  Most of the time it doesn't, unless you include psychological needs.  In this case, yes everything we buy we need desperately to prop up our identities.  And that is why we buy into the ultimate shill, the fictional capitalist meritocracy.  Like the White Queen, we want to believe six impossible thoughts before breakfast.

Consider this: The Dove Sketches Beauty Scam.  It's a dissertation on the nature of the long con.  When you're going for broke, you make it appear as though you're giving up the game.  A reformed criminal is always more appealing that a man who has stayed out of trouble his whole life.  Likewise, we are easily impressed by an ad that doesn't sell anything.  Tigers don't change their stripes and major consumer products companies don't pay for advertising without a game in mind.  You know this, you aren't stupid, but the power of the long con is that there are too many redirections along the way to keep track of where it's going.  In the end, we have a system where value is determined by the masses and mined from their deepest desires, but under the control of those who know better.  As the above linked article points out, ads such as these depend on making you feel empowered, which you want, while at the same time giving you an authority to validate your identity, which you need though you may deny it.  The authority, therefore, remains, though it is camouflaged.  It has to do more work to project its power, but it has never gone away.  There are no anarchies and you don't live in a meritocracy.  Neither one would be very appealing.

Once upon a time there was a system called communism, and it was horrific.  God, it was just awful, we all know that.  What is the defining feature of communism?  I suppose there were many, but one that strikes me is that it was a true meritocracy.  In order for something to exist, there has to be a univocal definition of merit and a centralized means of enforcing that.  The only way that can happen is when the state owns all the means of production and a single party system owns the state.  That's what you're getting if you claim you want to live in a meritocracy.  What we live in is a market economy, where value is rooted in what we can make people believe they are buying into of their own free will and under the control of an ever shifting balance of power among that various forces that want to create that value.  I'm not suggesting that communism is a good thing.  I'm suggesting that meritocracy is a bad thing, or perhaps more accurately an imaginary thing.

Those in power used to promote the divine right of kings.  Today we say that we don't accept these arbitrary constraints and want to define our own value.  Our response is to create a new divine authority, this time crowd sourced.  We are still reliant on the notion of an independent authority legitimizing our accidental success, but greater self awareness has necessitated more complex rationalizations.  "Know thyself", said the philosopher, but what good has that done most people?  The most natural response to deep introspection is not personal development; it is a resolve to double our efforts at holding off existential angst.   Think of the alcoholic who weaves complex narratives to avoid change.  And you think, wouldn't it be easier to quit?  In the long term, yes.  In the short term it is easier to change identity than action.

Persephone

In honor of the approaching season, I wrote these ten haikus on winter. I intended them to stand on their own as simple juxtapositions of images from nature and observations about human nature. At the same time, as a group I wanted them to represent a version of the story of Persephone and Hades. To read them in that sense, take the order as left side top to bottom followed by the right side top to bottom.

If you like this, consider downloading some Fiction For Free.

I think that I'm not supposed to offer any words on interpretation, but I will anyway. I'm always paranoid that someday I will stumble across something I wrote and have no idea why I wrote it. Therefore, I catalog my thoughts on my work for my own sake and share it with you in case you might be interested. The Internet is useful for something, it seems.

You know the basic story: Hades steels Persephone to the underworld and while there she eats three seeds. As a result, she must stay with Hades for three months of the year and her mother is filled with such sadness that world freezes. I think this basic idea shows in the poem. What I added was the notion that Persephone was intrigued by Hades and his world, then a little repulsed, and then came to accept it. She ate those seeds and actually liked what she tasted. Upon her return to the world above, she thought of Hades with hesitancy. Then she returned to him and saw how he was different from the world of the gods above. They were known for their mischievousness and frivolity. They often did more harm than good. Hades, on the other hand, is left to do his work without the interference of the other gods. He turns out to be a conscientious administrator over the world of the dead, and a faithful companion. That is what happens in my version, anyway.