The pursuit of Happiness and the Well-Demoned Life.

~by David Aiken~

We live in a time subjugated by ‘Hallmark Cards’ pseudo- or pop-philosophy, and wir Philosophen, as Nietzsche would have said, “we philosophers,” should definitely be engaged in the quest of examining, eternally and recurrently, the various aspects of this our present maudlin Zeitgeist. The Days of our Lives are being interpreted for us through a lens of sugarcoated fancies. And through our rose-tinted sentimentalist glasses we perceive a world-of-men thoroughly, but implausibly, saturated with saccharine notions of joy & happiness, love & marriage, and ever ready to hum along with the nanny, “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…”

            Then, when we finally stride across the threshold of simple-minded belief to enter into the torrential onslaught of Real-Life, we seem startled to find ourselves roaming around the quagmires of an intellectual Wasteland. And slowly, ever-so-painfully-slowly, we realize that we are also troubled by another disturbing ditty that has begun haunting our footsteps, and which sounds strangely familiar, like something Bilbo Baggins might have softly hummed upon leaving his beloved Shire:

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

Now it may well be that Life is like a box of chocolates, as Mrs. Gump one day informed her naïve young son, Forrest; one could just never know what one was going to get. But surely Life seems much more like an exchange with a Cheshire Cat—ONE DAY Alice finds herself wandering around on an Adventure in Wonderland, and so many people seem to her a bit daft… but then she meets a puss from Cheshire that, maybe by way of wanting to comfort her, explains that in fact everyone is mad, to which Alice responds:

But I don't want to go among mad people"(...)
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

The conversation goes downhill from there, of course, when, as Alice politely asks for directions: "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" the Cat laconically responds:

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to" (…).
"I don’t much care where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Which brings us right the way ‘round to our meander in the intellectual Wastelands of the world-of-men, and to our question about whether Happiness is really the syrupy kind of subjective past-time suggested by the countless voices of our Zeitgeist. Is Happiness a value or a virtue? Is it a goal to be pursued? Is it even desirable to be happy? Opinions abound.

            But just to problematize the question un tantinet reductively, let us consider whether Hitler, Time Magazine’s 1939 Man of the Year, was a happy camper as he was planning and then setting into motion the new Reich’s takeover of the knowable universe. Now just the idea of a Happy Hitler is generally enough to induce a pukefest in the normal John Q. Citizen of the democratic variety. Yet the answer to our question is undoubtedly “yes,” upon appropriate study and reflection, even though most of us prefer to believe that Hitler was one sick f&%# and that he definitely could not have been happy—not really!

So, just intuitively and just maybe it might perhaps begin to dawn on us that Happiness, which at first blush might be thought to be a value in and of itself, probably is not; and that we should take the time to rethink its position on our virtue/value list!

The point to our little excursion into our crazed social imagination is to suggest that, despite its quasi-unassailable status as an Iconic Idea in the popular view, Happiness per se has no universal definition or value upon which we all might conveniently agree. It is both obvious and inescapable that one man’s happiness can easily be another man’s misery. Indeed, this is precisely the philosophical rub.

The text that serves as the primary springboard for our reflection is from the second section of the Declaration of Independence (adopted July 4, 1776), in which Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) posits the following: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

First, though, is it even possible for us Moderns to reconstruct with any precision what the early American philosophe was thinking when he penned the Declarative and Independently minded expression, ‘the pursuit of Happiness’? Well, in addition to the infinite number and variety of pop-philosophical cultural opinions on the question of Happiness, there are also at least three reasoned schools of scholarly opinion on the question of what ideas were informing the 3^rd U.S. President as he penned these famous and, for us Moderns, famously woolly words. As always, though, scholarly debate is worth just about what you would pay to go hear it, and there is a voice for every viewpoint—the good, the bad, and the lame.

One good opinion, which I happen to favor personally, concerns Jefferson, the philosopher of Epicurean or Stoic thought. Stoicism teaches that personal happiness is integrally allied to self-control or self-governance (cf. Jefferson, vol. XV, 219ff. of the 1903 Library Edition). Jefferson writes in especially enthusiastic terms of Stoic Thinking as it was handed down in the writings of Epictetus, and even considered doing a new translation, “for [Epictetus] has never been tolerably translated into English.” A point on which he and I are in copious agreement.

On Epicurus and Stoic moral thinking, Jefferson sets forth the following formulaic definitions (XV, 223ff): Happiness = the aim of life; Virtue = the foundation of happiness; Utility = the test of virtue; Pleasure = active and Indolent; and Indolence = the absence of pain. By Indolence, it is clear from the context that Jefferson is referring both to the idea of body indolence, from the Latin indolentia, which is to be free from bodily pain, as well as to the Stoic notion of ataraxia, or the tranquility of mind that characterizes someone who is free from worry and distress.

The influence of Stoic philosophy was widespread among early American philosophes, and clearly also informed the thinking of the roughly contemporary American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), which is evident in his famous essay, Self Reliance. This well-documented and pervasive Stoic connection, of course, would seem strongly to suggest that Jefferson’s “pursuit of Happiness” should best be construed as a personal philosophical attitude of Independence of Mind toward the world-of-men.

Very predictably, however, there is also a second scholarly school of thought on this question—that it is rather the English Enlightenment philosopher and empiricist, John Locke (1632-1704), who informs both Emerson’s as well as Jefferson’s thinking, and that Jefferson’s “pursuit of Happiness” is best understood in terms of Enlightenment empiricism imported from England. This is a plausible consideration, and is indeed representative of the mainstream scholarly opinion—that the Jeffersonian “pursuit of Happiness” derives from Locke’s political philosophy and is best interpreted in that light.

To be sure, this is certainly a scholarly opinion; although it is arguably feeble. In each of Jefferson’s references to Locke (cf. Jefferson, vols. VIII, 31; XI, 222; XV, 266; and XVI, 19) he speaks, almost nonchalantly, about Locke the materialist; and while he makes specific references to Locke’s writings, categorizing Locke as ‘the man to read’, Jefferson’s enthusiasm on the subject is certainly, well, stoically restrained. This stands in stark contrast to the glowing and vigorous recommendations he gives for the Stoic philosophers, praising both specific thinkers as well as the moral tradition.

What one can find perhaps most persuasive in the argument for a Lockean influence on Jefferson’s “pursuit of Happiness” is, first, that Jefferson clearly says that Locke is the go-to philosopher for wonderful ideas on materialism, which interests Jefferson as an alternative philosophical framing to the normative Christian worldview.

Even more interesting as an unstated argument, however, is Jefferson’s reliance upon Lockian language-music in his creation of the Declaration of Independence. Locke defines property as a person's "life, liberty, and estate." That is a catchy bit of writing from Mr. Locke, rhythmically speaking; and Jefferson’s writing is in no wise inferior when he writes concerning certain unalienable Rights, among which "are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Yet it also seems almost gratuitous to point out that, although it is obvious that Jefferson liked and borrowed the rhythm of Locke’s phrasing, he nevertheless disagreed with the idea of the phrase, thus changing Locke’s English “and estate,” to the American “pursuit of Happiness.”

There is at least one other mainstream scholarly opinion on the question of how to interpret Jefferson’s “pursuit of Happiness,” which is advanced by the historian Garry Wills; but this opinion seems to limp a little too much through the arcane and recherché to be persuasive in the context of this reflection.

§ Wind-up. Additional philosophical support for the interpretation that the “pursuit of Happiness” is best understood as a personal philosophical attitude of Independence of Mind, might also come from Aristotle’s notion of eudaimonia—what Heraclitus might have translated as the well-demoned or well-daimoned life. Let it be said, however, that while there are certainly traces of Aristotle in Jefferson’s writings, relevant to politics, republics, and materialism, there is no indication that he was in any way inspired by the Stagirite’s Virtue Ethic.

For the General Record, though, and because we are reflecting on the question of Happiness as an Idea, it was Aristotle’s contention that we should actually thrive in our lives. Even more, though, according to Aristotle this eudaimoniac-thriving, which we Moderns generally translate as happiness, is in fact the ultimate purpose of human existence. Aristotle’s eudaimonia is linguistically reminiscent of the Socratic Daimon; and we must remember that it is Socrates who gave moral direction both to that philosopher and to Stoic thought in general.

So, even beyond Jefferson’s Declarative Announcement in its favor, there are many philosophical reasons for why Happiness or Thriving or Independence of Mind should come to occupy a prominent place in our hearts and thoughts as a Philosophical Value. Nevertheless, once the foundations of right thinking (read: Philosophy) give way to populist fancies, definitions for ideas such as Happiness become much fuzzier, and we Moderns are left with questions, such as: What does happiness mean to you?, which do not necessarily lead us to meaningful answers, because they also lead us to the admission that Hitler was undoubtedly as happy as a Nazi clam. Any answer to this type of fuzzy question is, philosophically speaking, a castle built on sand.

So, is there more to life than being happy? There are indeed some scientists out there “who are cautioning against the pursuit of mere happiness”; and others who suggest in the same vein that trying too hard to be happy in fact makes us unhappy. Philosophically, however, it might be argued that such an understanding, and therefore research grounded in that understanding, is fatally flawed by Science’s fundamental mis-understanding about the essentially philosophical (read: non-empirical) nature of the question. But then again, just like all the rest of us, scientists are also subject to “zeitgeistic” opinions and attitudes about happiness, and to the sweepingly sugarcoated, saccharine-fueled sentimentalism that continually seeks to supersede the hard work of Informed Thinking.

To answer this question in kind: For us Moderns, at least in the U.S., who have been nurtured directly or indirectly on the Jeffersonian notion of We the People, is it possible for us to conceive as meaningful, philosophically speaking, an individual life where Thriving, either in body or in mind, is dislocated from the individual life? Or is it possible, philosophically speaking, to conceive of as meaningful a personal life where the individual is called to yield up his Independence of Mind, or where his I of M is trained out of him through tutelage in an impoverished educational system? Would this not be tantamount to an unintentional Abolition of the Cogito, which Heidegger actually intentionally argues for in Being and Time? But this implies the disintegration of the Enlightenment Individual, which must inevitably leave us, both as individuals and as a people, vulnerable to every possible form of totalitarian regime?

In and through his Enlightenment writings Jefferson crafted a philosophical Model of the Reasoning Man, into whose hands he put the reins of Political Power. And the only real burden he placed on this Reasoning Man is that he should be educated, in the sense that he should be informed about Things of State. Because there is nothing more appalling to Reason than to put power over the lives of ‘We the People’ into the hands of those who choose a path of willful ignorance and self-service.

Is there more to life than being happy? If, by happiness, one means to affirm the Individual as Self-governing Thinking-Thing moving toward the Virtue of reason, then, no, there can be nothing greater in life. Following in a long line of earlier and like-minded Stoic philosophers, Jefferson invites us to welcome and embrace Happiness as a Virtuous Habit of the well-demoned Mind, so that we might be faithful in working to secure for ourselves, and then perhaps for the world, those certain unalienable Rights, among which are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of this Happiness.

(Original essay reprised and reworked from Phrontisterion, June 2013)

Further Phrontisterion reading on Stoicism:

·      https://nonimprimatur.blogspot.com/p/epictetus-handbooklinks.html

Boredom

~by David Aiken~  

Boredom is not a phenomenon from the world. It is an echo from an inert mind.

In his novel Le Rouge et le Noir, which was published in 1830, Stendhal writes of his protagonist, Julien Sorel, that he frightens his youthful peers because of his excessive ‘energy’.  

Just to introduce the character briefly, Julien Sorel is a bourgeois clerk librarian who is employed by a wealthy peer of the French aristocracy. Sorel is poor, a country bumpkin from ‘lesser’ France (i.e., the provinces), and has the (mis-)fortune to be transplanted from the hinterlands of France into the brilliant and complex aristocratic ecosystem which is at the core of 19^th century Parisian society (i.e., the enriched, the endowed, the entitled, and the ennobled). Although he is not yet a member of the clergy, Julien Sorel is educated in the tradition of poor humanist priests; regrettably, however, he is also socially ambitious in a world where the social classes can never successfully mix. The plot in The Red and the Black hinges precisely on this “caste” tension, where the irresistible force of a socially humble man’s individual merit and ambition is pitted against the immovable rock of society’s lethargically enshrined rules of inherited rank.

            Because of Julien Sorel’s education and personal intellectual merit and efforts, as well as a little pushing from his priestly teachers, once our budding Tartuffe becomes established in his clerical employ in Paris, he discovers that his learning and his reflective habits of mind intimidate the indolent but aristocratic young people in his entourage—those who have inherited their merits and their high-society positions from their wealthy families and connections. From this strain between Julien and his social milieu shall unfold more complexity in the plot intrigue, of course; and so, writes Stendhal about this bourgeois arriviste Julien, “Dans ce siècle, où toute énergie est morte, son énergie leur fair peur.”

So, the first characteristic in this story for our consideration is énergie, which it seems should be understood as being something like intellectual daring, emotional drive, or just simply commitment to an idea that inspires and moves our hero to action. In the context of this description Stendhal creates an additional tension between ridicule, which serves to oppress and enthrall Parisian society in general, and an intriguing notion of personal vitality, which renders certain individuals social mis-fits who seem always to be crusading for some greater fairness in or amelioration of the social context.

To be exact, Stendhal’s narrative reasoning suggests that the fear of ridicule had long since died in his 19^th century, leaving behind a particular hardened ‘moral’ shell for the coming generations of society; and this moral shell of codified and inflexible opinion both dominates individuals and transforms them into a homogeneous flock. This staid mass, in turn, demands from its younger constituent elements that each should conform to inherited ideas and usages, and it uses ridicule and mockery to subdue and beat the wayward down into submission. The idea, by way of metaphor, is that as we grow up we are enculturated through a cookie-cutter mold, which in turn comforts the previous generations of our society because the elders can then rest assured that one young pressed cookie will look just like another and that all cookies will look just alike for the foreseeable future. The promise of success in such a world lies in conformity—like peas in a pod, everyone is and acts like everyone else. [By way of a comparable albeit more explicitly philosophical excursus: in his 1689 “A Letter about Toleration” §4 The limits on toleration, John Locke writes about precisely the same type of cookie-making zealotry that accompanies the imposed and imposing conformity in the Christian religious communities of his day.]

The second characteristic to which Stendhal draws our attention in his novel is to the adhesive that unites the herd, this society, into one homogeneous group. The binding glue for this particular 19^th century Parisian society, which is so tightly girdled and entrapped inside the mold of its received ideas, opinions, manners, etc., is ridicule. The vital piece of information here is that the younger generations are not even bothered by the fear of ridicule, because they have simply slipped into the dead, but actively constraining cookie mold as inheritors of a previous generation’s battle of words and ideas. The young themselves have no intellectual or emotional investment in the mold that is imposed on them, and which they unwittingly adopt. They are taught the “proper” way of doing things, and their world asks of them not that they should have their own ideas and battles, but only that they should conform to what they have received from those who have gone before. The intellectual battles for ideological terrain are long past; theirs is now simply to continue to change the dressings on the metaphorical and never-healing wounds. 

            In his chronicling of 19^th century France, Stendhal minutely observes and dissects the phenomenon of cultural transmission. There is an inherently dialectical and dialogical tension among and between generations. One generation fights for its manners, usages, and beliefs, and then passes that acquired ‘body’ of beliefs and actions onto the children and the children’s children, who receive and believe because they respect or fear their parents and their elders. In the best of cases, from the point of view of a Nietzschean philosopher anyway, as the child becomes the adult of the new generation he will challenge the teachings he has received, fighting his own battles and winning through to his own understanding of the world. In most cases, though, this struggle will not occur (so also says Nietzsche!); and the succeeding generation, aimless, will meekly ramble around until individuals of a same class come together into a free-ranging herd, conforming to and obeying the cookie-press precepts and “truths” they received through the mother-milk.

This brings us to the third characteristic that interests Stendhal in Le Rouge et le Noir – ennui, or boredom. Cookies, per our metaphorical usage, are uniformly jaded. They are not encouraged to challenge their shape, nor the color of their sprinkles, nor their position on the serving plate; they are simply pressed out and expected to sit patiently, in all the glory of their cookie-ness, waiting until whatever in the world is going to happen inevitably happens. And so, goes proverbial wisdom, it should be with every generation’s children. In such a metaphor, coming-into-adulthood, except on the rare occasion, is not marked by the cookie-individual personally doing battle with the dragons that live in the hidden places of our minds, dragons that have snuck in through the education we have received and that have tucked themselves away in the corners of our imagination, dragons that have carefully secreted themselves in our most shadowy places and there patiently await the Dawning-of-Their-Day. (—The image of dragons is from the first discourse in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra; Immanuel Kant would have very properly called such ‘mind-critters’, Verstandeswesen).

            In the social construct that Stendhal is opening up to us, the typical coming-into-adulthood tends to be marked by acceptance of and conformity to the teachings and traditions received from the hands of the Elders. This means that the excitement of discovery for self, the heuristic call of the wild and of engaging in one’s own personal and private ‘heroic’ tussles against the demons that attend us and stalk us, is not only not an outcome desired by the Elders of our societies (including our educational institutions), but it is aggressively discouraged, indeed excluded from those individual right-of-passage experiences that are considered, at least by Nietzschean philosophers, to be healthy and good. So it would seem that we may tentatively conclude that it is therefore ‘the way of things’ in human society that we should be profoundly bored.

           Like Nietzsche after him with his ideas about the world’s Great Men and of social evolution through their Will to Power, Stendhal seemed to understand that each generation is automatically the hero of its own stories. However, while this may be true of generations, most individuals probably will not ever become authentically heroic, precisely because they are being pressed and molded into the societal cookie patterns (teachings and traditions) that require no individual thought or action, but only obedience to the principles of conformity and a passive mind. This irrepressible ennui at the heart of Stendhal’s vision of 19^th century France, whose controlling mechanism is ridicule, is directly translatable today by our alpha-state inducing relationship to education, to work, and to technology, which first lures our eyes to the screen, then dulls our brains and senses.

Ennui – the emotional flat-line of the Nietzschean masses. This is the defining characteristic of the Merseaults (…remember Camus’ L’Etranger) of our world, of the “outsider” who does not remember whether his mother died today, yesterday, or whether she is still sitting at home right now having her afternoon tea and crumpets.

However, we must not become complacent, believing that all is completely undone for the thinking imagination. The world become existential and therefore ultimately unpredictable, still invites the individual to dare. To dare to rebel; to dare to listen to the sound of the different drummer; and to dare to follow the path toward the sound of that new drumbeat by taking the high road of our own thoughts and dreams and visions, that most solitary and desert way which so titillated and so seduced Stendhal’s Julien Sorel and Mlle de la Mole, and which so profoundly enthused Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. To be sure, the terminus of this journey is seldom, if ever, specific happiness. But then how could it be? Are we not, after all, daring to break the pressed cookie mold, and thereby necessarily drawing down upon ourselves the disapprobation, indeed the wrath, of the Elder generations of cookie-makers? But while this journey’s end may not be happiness in the most traditional sense of social contentment, Nietzsche has argued that we will finally find at the end of that road freedom in the truest philosophical sense.

            And what will these new cookies-sans-molds look like? Some will make great contributions to the world of men; some will wreak great havoc. Some will become admired; some reviled. All will be Rebels in courage. Thinkers of thoughts independent. Ayn-Randian-type Architects of their own realities. New-world Iconoclasts. The Ridiculed. The Isolated and Insular. The Street Fighters of the world.  The Alive. And finally –the Dead.

(Modified from an original essay published August 29, 2012)

Further reading: Roland Barthe’s essay, “Toys”.

The Anhistorical Man_Pars Secunda. Will Democracy Survive in the Age of Aquarius?

§ Prologue

            In The Politics (1310a: 12-36), Aristotle reminds us that there are two fundamental ‘goods’ for preserving any system of government, which includes a government of the People, by the People, and for the People. One, is to educate The People into the ideas of that government; and two, is to teach The People that an appropriate education is not necessarily what The People wish for or what brings The People pleasure.

The greatest thing of everything that has been mentioned for preserving a system of government, although this is the thing everyone slights, is providing education in accordance with the system of government. For even the most beneficial and widely approved laws bring no benefit if they are not going to be inculcated through education and the habits of the citizens. Education appropriate for a democratic system of government is not to be guided by what brings enjoyment to the partisans of democracy but rather by what makes it possible to run a system of government democratically.

To summarize from Pars Prima: Act I. Humanities, Crisis, & Inhumanities

There is crisis in the Education of The People, which manifests itself in the study of Humanities, although this should not be the case if Americans are interested in the long-term success of the Enlightenment Project as America’s trade-mark mode of self-expression in the world.

Pars Prima: Act II. Plato's Euthyphro: An Ancient Drama of Religion and Politics

As an explanation and a metaphor for at least some elements linked to crisis in the Humanities, we can look to the various “FAILURES” that were experienced by the great philosopher Socrates, and especially his striking failure so dramatically represented by Plato in the Euthyphro dialogue.

[…] On this reading, does not Plato lead us to the conclusion that genuine “Socratic” dialogue, which should ideally lead us to convert intellectually to the ‘good life’ and thereby transform us into wise men, is in fact futile when confronted with an audience that is disposed neither to conversion nor to wisdom? And by metaphorical extension, are we not guided toward the same conclusion of futility when we consider that the same insurmountable obstacles that faced and finally crushed Socrates, continue to face those who engage in the modern humanistic pursuits?

[…] In Jefferson’s vision of American, however, the education of the people […] strives after the ongoing improvement of democracy’s gatekeepers, teachers of Humanities must continue to argue and to militate for the study of those subjects that keep our eyes riveted upon Power of all sorts, and, how much more, upon the subtle permutations of power into tyranny. We need to study history, and politics, civics and current events in order to keep before our eyes the political institutions whereby Men define and govern themselves; and we need to study foreign languages, philosophy, religions, mythologies and literatures, and all the sciences in order to understand that it is through various and diverse languages and “stories” that we as a people initially begin to frame, and then to flesh out, our political and social institutions, which in turn become reflections of the intellectual life of the American demos. Why do we do this? Because, "[i]f the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education" (Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1818. FE 10:99).

Will Democracy Survive in the Age of Aquarius_Pars Secunda Proper

But, then, do not these Socratic failures also dominate in our own moment in history? Because it certainly seems that, in a post-facto kind of way, we inhabit the antechambers of Enlightenment’s new-age inferno. Enlightenment Man is fundamentally anhistorical, in that he represents an attempt, fairly unique in human history, to create Man entirely and whole-clothe in the image of man. Along with the king’s Crown, the Enlightenment philosophes of the 18^th century deposed the Christian God of Western History. But new intellectual battles lines are now arising whose forms are only starting to become clear. It is the dawning of a new age—the Age of Aquarius.

§ In a galaxy a lot like our own...

Hamlet said a mouthful when he said to his friend Horatio: “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” where ‘your philosophy’ really means ‘what you think you know by your empirical sciences’. According to western astrology there are 12 signs or houses of the zodiac, and therefore twelve astrological ages, each one lasting approximately 2155 years, for a total astrological cycle of 25,860 years. Our Wiki-source unravels the calculations for the cycle of the ages:

The approximate 2,160 years for each age corresponds to the average time it takes for the vernal equinox to move from one constellation of the zodiac into the next. This can be computed by dividing the earth's 25,800 year gyroscopic precession period by twelve, the number of Zodiac constellations used by astrologers. According to different astrologers' calculations, approximated dates for entering the Age of Aquarius range from 1447 AD (Terry MacKinnell) to 3597 (John Addey).

This source continues on to explain the whys and wherefores of these supposed ages, which are certainly based more on a mixture of speculative and historical evidence rather than any verifiable empirical science:

Astrological ages exist as a result of precession of the equinoxes. The slow wobble of the earth's spin axis on the celestial sphere is independent of the diurnal rotation of the Earth on its own axis and the annual revolution of the earth around the sun. Traditionally this 25,800-year-long cycle is calibrated for the purposes of determining astrological ages by the location of the sun in one of the twelve zodiac constellations at the vernal equinox, which corresponds to the moment the sun rises above the celestial equator, marking the start of spring in the Northern hemisphere each year. Roughly every 2,150 years the sun's position at the time of the vernal equinox will have moved into a new zodiacal constellation. However zodiacal constellations are not uniform in size, leading some astrologers to believe that the corresponding ages should also vary in duration. This however is a contentious issue amongst astrologers.

Zodiac Sign for Aquarius

§ The Age of Aquarius.

In the eyes of a whole generation a musical group named The 5th Dimension formally ushered in the "Age of Aquarius," early in 1969, with their eponymous platinum song, which was to go on to become one of the most popular songs of that year worldwide, winning Grammys in 1970 for Record of the Year and best Pop Vocal Performance by a Group. According to Wiki sources, the “Age of Aquarius” is listed at #66 on Billboard’s “Greatest Songs of All Time.”

In their song, The 5th Dimension celebrates a celestial transition that marks the end times of an astrological “age” –the world’s passage out of the Piscean Age, or Age of Pisces, and its entrance into a new age of the world: the Age of Aquarius. Now according to our Wiki-source, the Piscean Age, whose dust we are apparently in the process of collectively shaking off our sandals, is the “Age of Monotheism, deception, & fraud,” and

could be called the “Age of Deception.” Some of the keywords symbolizing Pisces are: deception, illusion, hidden, misled, confusion, fraudulent schemes, fantasy world, secrets, false, fake, mysteries, drugs/alcohol and on the positive side, kind, intuitive, and gentle. It rules the arts and humanities. You can see the “deception” and “illusion” in every aspect of your life; appearance, finances, communication, your home, entertainment, health, the foods you consume, drugs, government, and religion.

 

Zodiac Sign for Pisces

However, the new age of the world, the “Age of Aquarius,” will be marked by “love, light, and humanity.” Whence all the chitter-chatter about ‘new-age’ philosophy, religion, et al.

Traditionally, Aquarius is associated with electricity, computers, flight, democracy, freedom, humanitarianism, Idealism, modernization, astrology, nervous disorders, rebellion, nonconformity, philanthropy, veracity, perseverance, humanity, and irresolution.

All of this sounded delicious to a generation of young Americans in the 1960s and 70s, who were wandering lost through a wasteland war in southeast Asia, and who were being culturally drafted, through ideas, music, and drugs, into an infinitely more desirable vision of a new, peaceful age of the world. The end of an age, the Piscean age, marked by the ravages of war, supposedly had given way to peace on a cosmic level, although when this rather fluid event began to occur is not precisely agreed upon by those in the know.

In 1929 the International Astronomical Union defined the edges of the 88 official constellations. The edge established between Pisces and Aquarius technically locates the beginning of the Aquarian Age around 2600 AD. Many astrologers dispute this approach because of the varying sizes of the zodiacal constellations and overlap between the zodiacal constellations. […] Many astrologers consider the appearance of many of these Aquarian developments over the last few centuries indicative of the proximity of the Aquarian age. However, there is no agreement on the relationship of these recent Aquarian developments and the Age of Aquarius.

The changing of an age, when put to music, might well sound like the music and words of the The 5th Dimension. But in going the extra mile visually, Milos Forman’s cinematographic translation of Hair perfectly translates the cultural spirit of the times, rendering for us the day when America’s youth found itself awakening to a new dawning as the New Age of the World made its hippy-esque entrance into the world of men.

Age of Aquarius (1969) When the moon is in the Seventh House And Jupiter aligns with Mars Then peace will guide the planets And love will steer the stars This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius Age of Aquarius Aquarius! Aquarius! Harmony and understanding Sympathy and trust abounding No more falsehoods or derisions Golden living dreams of visions Mystic crystal revelation And the mind's true liberation Aquarius! Aquarius! When the moon is in the Seventh House And Jupiter aligns with Mars Then peace will guide the planets And love will steer the stars This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius Age of Aquarius Aquarius! Aquarius! Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in The sun shine in Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in The sun shine in Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in The sun shine in Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in The sun shine in Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in The sun shine in Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in The sun shine in Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in The sun shine in Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in The sun shine in Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in The sun shine in Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in The sun shine in Let the sun shine, Let the sun shine in The sun shine in

The times were delicious, and heady, indeed. And then, as the urgency surrounding the war in southeast Asia faded, the peacenik Flower Child movement was slowly subsumed into the Jesus Revolution of the American 70s. It was a transvaluation of Nietzschean proportions, where a movement for political and military peace was co-opted by new leadership in the form of the sometime Son of the war-mongering God of the Jews. Jesus, the Palestinian Jew who had to remind his friends of his warrior status and attitude: "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34), which was clearly reminiscent of his claim to be El-Gadol, the Great Warrior God of Isaiah 9:14, was transformed by the new Jesus Revolution into Jesus, the Prince of Peace. 

            A peace movement morphed into a religious revolution, with all the pertinent military accoutrements of language, metaphor, and overtone.  Which brings us to the problem of the place of Religion in the Civil Society.

§ On Religion and the Enlightenment State: Homo Luminis & Homo Tenebrarum

The various pre-state territories of Europe were embroiled in religious wars from 1524 to 1648. This represents just about 80 continuous years of bloody conflict about Religion among the various European territories, before allowing that the “Holy Roman Empire” (which included the Kingdoms of Germany, Bohemia, Burgundy, Italy, and a variety of other, smaller territorial players) would recognize three distinct Christian traditions: Roman Catholicism, and the two reformed traditions of Lutheranism and Calvinism.

History may well be repeating itself, perhaps just in order to test our collective memories. For Men of Light (Homo Luminis), those who favored the creation of a Civil Society where reason and education hold sway, continue to this very day to remain locked in a philosophical, and ultimately political struggle with Men of Obscurity (Homo Tenebrarum), those who defer to “Other” authorities beyond human ken. So the question for contemporary Civil Society is entirely philosophical in nature. The Enlightenment goal is not to invalidate the religious experience, such as do those who ask the idiotic question of whether, for example, “radicalized people are mentally ill,” and whether “religious conviction can be ‘treated’ by a pill?” Nor is Enlightenment’s philosophical goal, in the sense of this essay, to discern whether or not Religion makes legitimate claims to truth. Rather, it is to determine how men of differing convictions about reality, and knowledge, and truth, can live together meaningfully in Civil Society.

John Locke

For John Locke (1632-1704), the English Enlightenment philosopher who was born while the blood was yet flowing from the various European religious wars, the philosophical challenge confronting England during his life was not that of expunging religion from Civil Society, nor of invalidating or even challenging religious belief, nor, finally, that of denying the possibility of authentic religious experience. Rather, the philosophical experiment was to try first to determine and then to establish how various and conflicting religious traditions could successfully cohabit the public space together with civil and Enlightenment values. It would only be later, however, well after Locke’s time, that the American pragmatic philosopher, John Dewey (1859-1952), would confirm the importance of a Jeffersonian idea as an essential cornerstone for the completion of Locke’s initial philosophical direction, and which would lay a reasonably definitive philosophical foundation—public Education—for the possible coexistence of civil society and religion. Following Jefferson in this, Dewey contended that for democracy to continue existing, society must educate the successive generations of youth in the fundamental precepts of the democratic philosophy. The possibility and hope for democracy lays in public Education. From John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1958, 4):

If a plague carried off the members of a society all at once, it is obvious that the group would be permanently done for. Yet the death of each of its constituent members is as certain as if an epidemic took them all at once. But the graded difference in age, the fact that some are born as some die, makes possible through transmission of ideas and practices the constant reweaving of the social fabric. Yet this renewal is not automatic. Unless pains are taken to see that genuine and thorough transmission takes place, the most civilized group will relapse into barbarism and then into savagery. In fact, the human young are so immature that if they were left to themselves without the guidance and succor of others, they could not even acquire the rudimentary abilities necessary for physical existence. The young of human beings compare so poorly in original efficiency with the young of many of the lower animals, that even the powers needed for physical sustentation have to be acquired under tuition. How much more, then, is this the case with respect to all the technological, artistic, scientific, and moral achievements of humanity!

However, an additional ingredient must be added to Dewey’s witches’ brew of Human Civilized Society, which is an idea suggested by the study of both anthropology and sociology. And that is the ingredient of Religion. In Dewey’s phrasing: every barbarism on its journey toward civilization, ultimately grounds itself in some sort of a religion.

In his A (Very) Short Primer on Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Joshua Broggi reminds us that the question of religion also lies at the very heart of Immanuel Kant’s quintessentially Enlightenment thinking.

I take it that the question Kant is asking in the 1793 Religion is this: How much of

Christianity (or religion more generally) can we responsibly believe and practice, if our decision is grounded solely on some basic skills of reasoning? The answer is, ‘not very much’, and in arriving at that answer, Kant formulates arguments that would profoundly affect how subsequent philosophers and theologians thought about religion. Such a question about religion is not original to Kant, but was widely asked among the vanguard of Enlightenment intellectuals – and their answers covered a range of possibilities, some far more skeptical than Kant’s.

§ Homo Luminis Versus Homo Tenebrarum: The Conflict.

In the New Testament (Romans 13), the apostle Paul makes the case that all authority, political and other, is given by God and that men must submit to that authority as unto God Himself. Christianity, which is inherently theocratic, stands in opposition to the wider conception of the liberal democracy. To extrapolate a more general Enlightenment principle—authoritarianism exists wherever there is an appeal made to any authority whatsoever other than to that of human reason alone. The philosophical challenge that any and all Religion opposes to the Civil Society is therefore obvious.

In media there are an almost infinite number of examples of the multifaceted conflict between Homo Luminis and Homo Tenebrarum.

Source: http://religiondispatches.org/its-the-apocalypse-stupid-understanding-christian-opposition-to-obamacare-civil-rights-new-deal-and-more/

My argument in a nutshell is that the apocalyptic theology that developed in the 1880s and 1890s led radical evangelicals to the conclusion that all nations are going to concede their power in the End Times to a totalitarian political leader who is going to be the Antichrist. If you believe you’re living in the last days and you believe you’re moving towards that event, you’re going to be very suspicious and skeptical of anything that seems to undermine individual rights and individual liberties, and anything that is going to give more power to the state. [insufficient, given Biblical statements]

But their conclusions, broken down to their simplest form are these: We’re living in the church age and we’re moving towards the Rapture. Jesus will Rapture all true believers out of this world, they’ll just disappear, they’ll go up to heaven with Jesus, and then with the loss of Christian influence in the world, Satan will have free rein to take power through a political leader, called the Antichrist, who is then going to rule over the world for seven years. This period is called the Tribulation.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/11/16/in-light-of-the-paris-attacks-is-it-time-to-eradicate-religion/

Religion, it would seem, breeds violence. Far from being great, God might be thought terrible.

                  In a globalized world, the terror of God’s crazy-eyed followers is threatening lives, peace and prosperity of everyone on the planet. We are tempted to conclude: The sooner that humanity either eradicates or quarantines off religion, the better our world will be. This conclusion would be too hasty, however.

                  First, if the hope for the world depends on eradication of religion, we should all despair. Religions are in fact growing in absolute and relative terms. In 1970, there were 0.71 billion unaffiliated or non-religious people, while in 2050, there will be 1.2 billion. That’s impressive growth, until you compare it with the projected growth of religions.

                  Between 1970 and 2050, the number of Hindus is projected to grow from 0.43 to nearly 1.4 billion, the number of Muslims from 0.55 billion to 2.7 billion and the number of Christians from 1.25 billion to 2.9 billion. And due to the immense popularity of the democratic ideal, religious adherents are becoming increasingly politically assertive.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/11/18/does-isis-really-have-nothing-to-do-with-islam-islamic-apologetics-carry-serious-risks/?tid=sm_fb

But if the goal is to understand ISIS, then I, and other analysts who happen to be Muslim, would be better served by cordoning off our personal assumptions and preferences. What Islam should be and what Islam is actually understood to be by Muslims (including extremist Muslims) are very different things.

Source: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2337-mourning-becomes-the-law-judith-butler-from-paris

Those commentators that seek to distinguish among sorts of Muslim communities and political views are considered to be guilty of pursuing "nuances." Apparently, the enemy has to be comprehensive and singular to be vanquished, and the difference between muslim and jihadist and ISIL becomes more difficult to discern in public discourse. The pundits were sure who the enemy was before ISIL took responsibility for the attacks. (Judith Butler)

Source: Salon: “This is the religious right’sradical new plan: The very real efforts to create an American theocracy inplain sight”

Religious Pluralism. This brings us to the very core of the problem: Religious freedom is not about religion vs. irreligion, but about individual freedom vs. institutional coercion.

Source: www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-evangelicals-idUSKBN0TU16M20151211?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter#kZlYdtc6P8wJptxZ.97

Lane and his network of pastors say they are well within their rights to bring politics into the church. “The founding fathers never meant for the church not to participate in government,” said Lane. “They meant for the government not to interfere with the church.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-and-the-cliche-of-civilizations_us_566ad2a6e4b0cdc1831f6863. Levy’s article from Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.686732

 But Levy … deliberately wades into the conflict taking place within Islam itself, a clash within a civilization, between what he identifies as the good guys, the “Islam of the enlightenment,” and the bad guys, the Islamofascists.”

                  […] “Which brings us back to this question of a civilizational conflict. To repeat, there is no clash between Islam and the West, except in the minds of the Islamic State and the ideologues of the “free world” who believe that inside every Muslim is an Islamofascist dying to get out. The real clash is taking place within a civilization, within Islam, over doctrinal issues, the nature of the state, the relationship with the market, and so on — and the Islamic State is largely peripheral to this ideological clash.

                  More fundamentally, an equally contentious struggle is going on within the so-called free world. Here is where the civilizational rubber really hits the road. Will enough good people of conscience — enough moderate Christians and moderate Jews and moderate whatevers in the United States — stand up to the intolerance of our native extremism?

                  As an unknown French wit once said in the 1930s, America is the only society to go from barbarism to decadence without knowing civilization. Bernard-Henri Levy is free to take potshots at Islam. But, honestly, we here on this side of the Atlantic, in the throes of Trumpian decadence, are in desperate need of an Enlightenment of our own.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/skye-jethani/is-this-the-end-of-evangelicalism_b_2499253.html

The role of religion in the civil society

François-Marie Arouet, dit Voltaire

§ I Spy in My Mind’s Eye… what does Voltaire see?

So there was the Prontisterion Puppenmeister, reading along in the Oeuvres of Voltaire (volume 8, “Philosophy,” § 1, Paris: 1847) in the quiet of a fine summer morning, enjoying an early cup of coffee and minding one’s own business in a polite, philosophical kind of way, when, in a very impolite way indeed, Voltaire pricked one’s early-morning, still semi-slumbering wits.

One becomes accustomed to Voltaire’s uncompromising tones when he is speaking about the barbarism of the fanatical mind. He is of course wholly inclusive and non-discriminating on the question of fanaticism, including All & Sundry – the religious, the political, and the romantic barbarisms, and V insists that the barbarically minded, like rabid dogs driven to attack some new victim, will always and inevitably persecute the philosophically minded. Sigh….

In this particular section of Voltaire’s text (p. 126), he takes to task the Welch for rabidly attacking the English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke, and who were entirely focusing their attention on L’s contention that, while it is impossible to make any final philosophical determinations concerning the immateriality of the soul, it is obvious that the soul must be immortal, because God, etc.  Apparently, the Welch were of the mind that philosophers, at least in Wales and for the Welch, ought not, and are not even permitted to, weigh in on such matters, to which Voltaire (p. 127) responds that, O contraire, mes amis: “this is indeed quite permissible and quite useful for the French, and that nothing does more good for the English, and that it is high time to exterminate this barbarousness” (“cela est très permis et très utile chez les Français ; que rien n’a fait plus de bien aux Anglais, et qu’il est temps d’exterminer la barbarie.”)

            Then comes the less than politically correct rub, when Voltaire addresses the reader in an exergue (p. 128): “You reply to me that we shall never be able to complete this task. No, perhaps not among the people and the imbeciles; but among those who are honest you will win the day” (“Vous me répliquez qu’on n’en viendra pas à bout. Non, chez le peuple et chez les imbéciles ; mais chez tous les honnêtes gens votre affaire est faite.”)

There is a disturbing idea suggested in this Voltairean conclusion, which does not bode well for the long-term future of democracy as a political and social philosophy. And it is the intimation that the philosophy of democracy is doomed to failure to whatever degree it depends upon the good graces of either ‘The People’ or ‘Imbeciles’, terms which, frankly, might well be interchangeable in Voltaire’s context. And to add the final bit of bitterness to the Prontisterion Puppenmeister’s early summer-morning coffee, there is then Voltaire’s concluding idea, that the distribution of power among individuals, which is after all the anchoring philosophical principle of democracy, will work, will be effective and therefore fruitful, if and only if we use the tools of thought and persuasion on those who are already in and of themselves ‘honest’. However, because honesty is not necessarily an intrinsic characteristic of the Human Animal, there is cause for fear & trembling among the enlightened.

CH_140916_No 1260/9

§ A Media Muddle Surrounding the Survival Potential of Democracy as a Participatory Political Philosophy

Source: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/democracy-and-the-demagogue/?_r=1

There is however an excellent argument that it is not possible to prevent politicians in a democracy from endorsing antidemocratic attitudes. A chief value of democracy is liberty. Liberty is the freedom for all to pursue their own paths; the common interests are to be found where these diverse paths intersect. But liberty centrally includes freedom of political speech. One might legitimately wonder whether a society that bans antidemocratic speech in the political realm is genuinely a democracy. We cannot force politicians to commit to protecting democratic values by restricting their democratic freedoms, chief among them the freedom of speech.

                  In Book VIII of “The Republic,” Plato is clear-eyed about these perils for democracy. He worries that a “towering despot” will inevitably rise in any democracy to exploit its freedoms and seize power by fomenting fear of some group and representing himself as the protector of the people against that fear. It is for this reason that Plato declares democracy the most likely system to end in tyranny. Plato’s prediction is most dramatically exhibited by Weimar Germany. But more mundane recent examples of his description of democracy’s breakdown and descent into tyranny exist to varying degrees in the cases of Hungary and Russia. The fragmentation of equal respect is a clear alarm for the United States. We must heed it by categorically rejecting politicians who seek to gain office by exploiting the mistaken belief that democratic values are weaknesses.

Source: https://aeon.co/opinions/democracies-fail-when-they-ask-too-little-of-their-citizens

Source: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2015/11/newcomers-must-pledge-to-uphold-dutch-values-sign-contract/

Source: In this article from The Huffington Post.fr, the remedy for democracy, and the unique intrinsic value that, according to this article’s author, we need to transmit to our upcoming generations for democracy to survive, is a critical spirit.

Esprit critique as the cornerstone of democracy? This is equivalent to, as the foundation for philosophical thought, the Socratic elenchus, which only demonstrates a negative truth, i.e., that your interlocutor is ignorant, but it does not necessarily yield up positive or true knowledge. It is for this reason that the reader walks away from the majority of the Socratic dialogues thoroughly persuaded that the non-Socratic speaker is ignorant: per Euthyphro, Cratylus, Glaucon (Resp.), Meletus and the jury of judges (Apology), but neither is the reader any further enlightened as to the true nature of the question debated—piety, language, justice. The critical spirit does not bring us any true or positive insight on the questions we ask, but only shows us that we do not necessarily have or know a right answer to our questions. When we have only a critical spirit to transmit as the summation of our culture, then it is no wonder that terrain is lost in the struggle for Democracy. We are interested in transmitting skills as the framework for Democracy, instead of some kind of real, arguable knowledge. But as a framework, skill-sets are empty of ideas.

Further Readings:

From Phrontisterion:

·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.nl/2015/11/culture-shock-in-ivory-tower.html

·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.nl/2012/09/on-faith-in-god-or-character-of-god_19.html

·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.nl/2015/02/the-divine-right-of-kings.html

·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.nl/2015/03/enlightenment-and-spirit-of-jihad.html

·      http://nonimprimatur.blogspot.nl/2013/09/one-nation-under-god-pseudo-romance.html

From Media Sources:

·      http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/2016/01/21/31002-20160121ARTFIG00170-islam-et-occident-une-petite-histoire-du-choc-des-civilisations.php

·      http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/stop-whining-about-false-balance-w440228

·      http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a48604/donald-trump-tyranny/

·      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-caldwell/christian-dominionism-debt-default-_b_4097017.html

·      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/skye-jethani/is-this-the-end-of-evangelicalism_b_2499253.html

·      http://chronicle.com/article/The-Ties-That-Bind-Jihadists/234161. Scholars explore the “culture” that surrounds radical Islam.

·      http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/politique/2016/09/23/31001-20160923ARTFIG00384-robert-redeker-l-heredite-nationale-est-politique-et-non-biologique.php

·      http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/caroline-fourest/la-democratie-face-aux-pr_b_8627716.html?utm_hp_ref=france

·      Source: http://www.lepoint.fr/invites-du-point/jean-paul-brighelli/brighelli-quand-daech-declare-la-guerre-a-notre-ecole-08-12-2015-1988058_1886.php -- Daech declaring war against public (secular) schools.

·      http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2015/06/13/97001-20150613FILWWW00120-valls-veut-un-islam-compatible-avec-la-democratie.php

·      http://www.politicalresearch.org/2016/01/12/when-exemption-is-the-rule-the-religious-freedom-strategy-of-the-christian-right/#sthash.Bh5RjsjG.dpbs

·      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosanna-Tabor_Evangelical_Lutheran_Church_%26_School_v._Equal_Employment_Opportunity_Commission

·      http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-553.pdf

·      http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2016/january/jerry-falwell-jr-donald-trump-evangelicals-liberty-universi.html

·      http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/2015/06/26/ted-cruzs-secret-weapon-win-right