Immanuel Kant in Zombieland

Note: This piece was written for Partially Examined Life and appears in its full context there.  It is an expansion on an earlier entry written on this site about zombie ethics.

A common difficulty with the philosophy of ethics is that it can seem abstract and somewhat difficult to relate to the material in a practical sense.  That’s why I like to think through my moral philosophical frameworks in terms of life in a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland.  And no show does Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham as zombie killers better than The Walking Dead (spoiler alert: this post contains Season 2 plot points).

If we could crudely oversimplify Bentham’s utilitarian philosophy into the maxim “the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the measure of right and wrong” perhaps Bentham’s philosophy might be manifested asThe Walking Dead‘s police officer Shane Walsh.  The hardened pragmatist of the band of survivors, he guides the group with his practical “all that matters is staying alive” philosophy.

Under this form of utilitarian logic an act cannot be judged as right or wrong unless one considers the outcome of that action.  Think here of the classic ethical problem presented to first year philosophy students of the ‘ax murderer at your door looking for your friend’.  A lie should be judged by its consequences.

In a season 2 episode Shane and a fellow survivor Otis are trying to desperately escape from an abandoned school with medical supplies for the rest of the group.  As the zombies close in on Otis and Shane during their desperate escape Shane incapacitates Otis, essentially sacrificing Otis as zombie bait, in order to secure Shane’s own escape and to bring the medical supplies to the rest of the survivors.  It is a cold example of the brutal principle of “better that one man should die than that many should die”.

As Adam Smith’s modern day apostle Russ Roberts loves to point out, the problem with this sort of decision making process is that it often has a self serving bias.  It is no coincidence that often an action is both deemed “right’ under a utilitarian calculation and that the one who makes the decision also happens to benefit from it.

Kant ponders whether his zombie scratch is worth mentioning to the rest of the group.

On the other hand, if Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of morals could be manifested as a walking talking zombie killer, it would be in The Walking Dead’s deputy sheriff Rick Grimes.  Kant’s ethical philosophy, in contrast to utilitarianism, argues that actions are right and wrong in and of themselves, regardless of the circumstances surrounding them.  His categorical imperative is an absolute duty that compels us to choose the right action, no matter how inconvenient the outcome.  Rick is a man who does right for “right’s sake”.

When one of the young girls in the band of survivors gets separated and is lost in the woods, Rick leads the rest of the group in a search for her that lasts several days. When any reasonable person would call off the search Rick refuses because he doesn’t believe that he should live in a world where people don’t look for missing little girls.  It is always right to search for a helpless child, whether you live in suburban America in the early 21st century or whether you live in a post-apocalypse zombie wasteland. If you do not look after helpless children you lose what makes you human.

Rick’s refusal to call off the search ultimately endangers the lives of the rest of the group and leads to even more deaths.  Many die, so that one man can have a clear conscience. Or as Kant would put it, “Let justice be done, though the world perish”.  That’s a problem with Kant’s idealistic philosophy: consistency in principle leads to some insane outcomes.  Kant tells us it is wrong to lie to an ax murderer who is beating down your door because it is always wrong to lie.

Both moral philosophies have sinister sides that play out in self serving utilitarian calculations that are rigged towards the powerful beneficiaries or in the actions of out of touch idealists, clinging to something that once made sense, but which now only hurts those around them.  As for me, if I found ever found myself surrounded by the walking dead, I might prefer having Immanuel Kant leading my band of survivors.

I believe God calls some people to unbelief

I believe God calls some people to unbelief so that faith can take new forms.

~ Christian Wiman

Felix Salmon: how the 1% think about wealth

Felix Salmon with an interesting stance for a financial journalist to take: a take down of the wealthy. I love a contrarian and enjoy his take on high income earning fathers and husbands who work until 11 pm. It's a brave article for someone working in the financial industry.

"Conard takes this reasoning to its logical conclusion: if accumulating obscene quantities of money is good for society, then giving it away must, in fact, be bad for society.

During one conversation, he expressed anger over the praise that Warren Buffett has received for pledging billions of his fortune to charity. It was no sacrifice, Conard argued; Buffett still has plenty left over to lead his normal quality of life. By taking billions out of productive investment, he was depriving the middle class of the potential of its 20-to-1 benefits. If anyone was sacrificing, it was those people. “Quit taking a victory lap,” he said, referring to Buffett. “That money was for the middle class.”

A lot of extremely rich people have persuaded themselves to think this way, even if they’re self-aware enough not to actually come out and shout it from the rooftops. So long as accumulating wealth is a normatively Good Thing, they can even go so far as to take pity on themselves for all the hardships they went through on the way to helping out society so much.

God didn’t create the universe so that talented people would be happy,” he said. “It’s not beautiful. It’s hard work. It’s responsibility and deadlines, working till 11 o’clock at night when you want to watch your baby and be with your wife. It’s not serenity and beauty.”

Does it ever occur to Conard, I wonder, that there are lots of people in America who work very hard until 11 o’clock or much later — just to be able to feed and house their family? Did he even think, as he was saying this, that he retired at the age of 51, an ultra-wealthy man, and can now spend as much time as he likes watching his children and being with his wife and living a life of serenity and beauty?"

Felix's entire piece can be found at his Reuters blog.

A brief history of church and state

313 AD/CE: Emperors Constantine and Licinius issue the Edict of Milan allowing Christians to legally practice their religion in the Roman empire ending official persecution of the church by the state.   Constantine converts to Christianity during his reign and becomes the first Christian emperor.

337 - 361 CE: Constantius II promotes Christianity as the "official religion" of the empire.

389 - 391 CE: Emperor Theodosius I issues decrees banning paganism, extinguishes the eternal fire in the Temple of Vesta, oversees the destruction of many pagan temples and holy sites and declares all pagan rituals forbidden even in the privacy of homes.

A distressing fact about the early church

It wasn't very long after Jesus' death that the church found a way to exclude groups of people also claiming to followers of Jesus from the grace of God.   It wasn't much longer after that for them to find a way to put to death other groups of people who called themselves Christians too - something people don't often talk about when they try to get back to the earliest, purest forms of Christianity.

Line of the day

Don't be afraid... anymore... 

It's only a broken heart...

~ Tom Petty

Withdrawing from a religious tradition

There is a sense in which the bad guys win when you withdraw from a religious or spiritual tradition. By withdrawing you relinquish your claim on the movement's label and what disturbs you about the darker elements of that tradition remains in the movement with one less challenger.

But as I get older I have become more and more disillusioned with any kind of movement.  Even those that start off with good intentions soon get sucked into the politics of our human nature.  The aims of the emergent movement, the post-Christian movement, all of that, I admire, but it is just our nature that these things soon become part of the in-out game and ways of excluding people get drawn up in an attempt to "hold to the truth".

I suppose that all human institutions are subject to hubris and exclusivity so perhaps I'm being overly harsh by criticising the church for not living up to its own claims.  But for me, there's always been a difference between a group people who get together for the purpose of achieving a political or social aim and a group of people who get together and claim to have God's truth.   With a claim like that I find it much harder to simply shrug my shoulders about it.

As a parent, I suppose, part of the trick is to give your child a framework, a spiritual native tongue through which they can navigate life.  To do that without all the parts that made you step outside that tradition in the first place and without defining your spirituality as the opposite of "that".

The theology of Quantum Leap

Remember that great time travelling show in the early 90s with cheap suits and even cheaper special effects?

The premise was that Sam was stuck in a time travelling loop trying putting right mistakes that had occurred in history.  Each episode, he was put into the body of new person in an attempt to prevent some tragedy from unfolding.  If he successfully put right history's accident he was able to leap one more time, hoping to finally leap home, but inevitably leaping into another unfolding story.  

Throughout the show, Sam hints that he believes that God might be the one responsible for controlling his leaps.

But the show takes an interesting direction in the final few episodes.  As he leaps into his own life with the potential to prevent the painful events that marked his own life, the show gets progressively darker.  In the final episode what Sam believes is "God" reveals himself intriguingly in the form of a bartender.   The bartender informs Sam that he can always leap home, he only needs to decide that he has done enough to prevent the tragedies he confronts.

Sam never leaps home...

There is something very appealing about the idea of Sam being out there, travelling, trying make things right on our behalf.  Never giving up the fight, never settling for enough.   There are people in this world just like Sam, better than me, making things right, no matter what the odds, no matter how impossible the tidal wave of injustice that faces them.

Here's to the Sams doing the things that what we won't.

RIP Levon Helm

Thanks for the beautiful music, may you find some peace...

What Bart Ehrman and I have in common

In Ehrman's excellent and influential "Misquoting Jesus" (check out my Recommendations page) he includes the following autobiographical paragraph:

"The book is about ancient manuscripts of the New Testament and the differences found in them, about scribes who copied scripture and sometimes changed it. This may not seem to be very promising as a key to one's autobiography, but there it is.  One has little control over such things."

I feel like such a theological nerd when my friends post stuff on their Facebook wall and I am overcome with the urge to point out theological inconsistencies in their shared link, or that the key point they are making on their post was actually based on piece of text that was never found in the earliest manuscripts.

Sigh...

Whether it is the problem of evil, that modern fundamentalist assertions are just that - modern, creeds that were only passed by a slim majority or simply chain mail emails that are clear hoaxes I think I only irritate myself.  I do my best to hold my tongue and not come across as an overbearing theology geek.  This inevitably leads to me partially typing out a response, realising what an idiot I am being and then quickly deleting the half composed post.  

I have no idea why these things inflame passion in me.   A man doesn't get to choose his interests.

Bill Callahan on this land

One thing about this wild, wild country

it takes a strong strong mind

it breaks a strong strong mind

and anything less anything less 

makes me feel like I am wasting my time

~ Bill Callahan, the Drover

The problem with rejecting the heretic

We often define our beliefs by what we do not believe. It's far easier to tell you that I am not a conservative evangelical than it is for me to say what I actually do believe. It's always easier to exclude than it is to affirm.

There is a very significant flaw with this model. It is a flaw revealed every time a Christian falls in love with an atheist and discovers that atheists were never nihilists after all. Of course, atheists have a sense of right and wrong as suprising as that may be to someone who derives their sense of right and wrong from a divine decree. Spend a little bit of time with someone who believes something different to you and you'll be suprised at how much you misunderstand about their beliefs.

The history of Christianity is one of moving forward on dogma by rejecting the beliefs of what afterwards is called a heresy. The canon of the Bible was formed as a way of officially rejecting Marcion's version. The church creeds were issued as a way to officially reject other variations of Christianity.

I'm not sure how we escape this paradox. We reject these things, but we really don't understand them. We're confident we're not like them, but we really don't understand them.

Bruce Springsteen searches for salvation on the New Jersey Turnpike

"... this turnpike sure is spooky at night when you're all alone
Gotta hit the gas, baby. I'm running late
New Jersey in the morning is like a lunar landscape...

...sit tight, little mama, I'm coming around
I got three more hours, but I'm covering ground...

Your eyes get itchy in the wee, wee hours
Sun's just a red ball risin' over them refinery towers
Radio is jammed up with gospel stations
Lost souls calling long distance salvation
Hey, mister dj, won't ya hear my last prayer?

Hey, ho, rock 'n roll, deliver me from nowhere."

Open All Night - from the Springsteen album Nebraska.

Bazan lyric of the day

And why are some hell bent on there being an answer

while some are quite content to answer "I don't know"?

~ David Bazan

Two ends of Jesus

Luke/John:

"It is finished.  Into Your hands I commend my spirit."

Mark/Matthew:

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Peter Rollins speaking the truth...

Pete on how to be fully human.  If you're not familiar with this theologian, his book, Insurrection, is a pretty good place to start if you're looking for something to believe but find that your old faith is no longer accessible to you.  In his own words "to believe is human, to doubt divine".

I am getting worried about Pete's hair in this video though.  Is this what I have in my future?

Schleiermacher... on God and the world

No God without a world and no world without God.

~ Friedrich Schleiermacher

Orwell for 2012

Courtesy of the Philosophers Stone:

Why evangelicals are better post-evangelicals than I am

Ever notice how everyone has that kind of racist aunt or uncle who despite their intolerable views on race has this weird ability to also do good for some marginalized group, like the poor or orphans?

In the emergent/post-Christian/post-modern/spiritual-but-not-religious community it is pretty easy to throw stones at evangelicals.  We can look down our noses at the way evangelicals discriminate against gays or take the side of the oppressor and support the status quo.  But there is that awkward fact that evangelicals often tend to do more work in our community then some of the post-evangelicals.

I'm not going to talk for a bigger group here.  I'm just going to talk about myself.  I don't do much, I know I am a religious fraud.  You know that, you've been reading this blog.  I'm more like a spiritual addict than any kind of religious role model.  I listen to the occasional Revolution NYC church service online.   I listen to a bunch of Krista Tippet and Karen Armstrong.  I'm obsessed with jarring theology books by the likes of Peter Rollins and Marcus Borg.  I discuss love and forgiveness over several beers at the local pub with my mate Jeff.  I chat occasionally to my local rebel pastor Rev Kev.  But I don't do anything.

I'm not in soup kitchens, I don't really get involved in any form of community outreach.  I'm pleasant enough at work, but that's based only on my opinion of myself.  I like to think I've evolved, that I don't hold the views I used to.  I support women's rights and scientific insight.  I'm on the side of illegal immigrants and the oppressed.  The gays, the transgendered, the atheists, the heretics, the foreigners. But I don't do anything.

It's weird.  We want to label people as good or bad.  Not some subtle shade in between. I love my fellow post-evangelicals.  I really do.  If I'm anything, I'm that.  Post-something or other.  But it doesn't change the fact that the evangelicals we tend to judge, tend to do a whole lot more for others, even by post-evangelical standards.

The problem with hipster shirts for econ nerds

It's become apparent to me that due to the prevailing economic illiteracy among the youth today that my F.A. Hayek hipster economics t shirt is being mistaken for some kind of Hitler t shirt. Needless to say this is causing awkwardness at work. Especially when meeting with suppliers.

Should I be dumbing down my economics apparel for the sake of keeping the peace? It is "A" material... but *sigh* lost on everyone except fellow listeners of EconTalk or PlanetMoney.  I bet Maynard Keynes never had to put up with this. So much for the impact of the Austrian School...

I wonder what would happen if they ever come out with Schleiermacher or Tillich hipster tshirts for theology nerds.