The Radical Notion of David Hume

The Radical Notion of David Hume

If Hume awakened Kant from his philosophical slumber, perhaps we should take a closer look at Hume’s thoughts.  Hume’s thoughts may be more radical than is commonly thought, and perhaps Kant’s response to Hume was a spectacular failure.

Furthermore, if we take Hume seriously, and if we take science seriously, we must figure out what we are to do.  Hume’s critique attacks and destroys a major assumption of science itself.  If there is no serious answer to Hume, then science has no philosophical foundations, if we assume that Empiricism is true.  Perhaps Empiricism is not true, after all.

Taking notes on Kasser’s lectures a little over a year ago, I wrote the following:

Dave Hume’s conclusions are more radical than Berkeley’s.  Hume takes empiricism to some of its logical conclusions.  Hume wanted to bring experimental methods to philosophy.  Applying this rigorously, Hume discovered that some of our crucial notions have a questionable link to experience.  Experience merely reveals one set of sensations followed by others.  These sequences of sensations do not reveal any causal link among themselves, and thus, our notion of causality (cause and effect) has no grounding in experience.  Our sense impressions are always changing, and thus, we do not experience anything enduring.  Even our sense of self does not endure.  Hume also speculated that we may not be thinking beings, but beings that experience one series of impressions followed by others. 

Can we call anything evidence that we do not experience now?  Can we be sure that our memory of experience and impressions is real, accurate or true?  This reasoning process ends in a deep form of skepticism.

Among Hume’s conclusions was that some of our core notions are meaningless or have no basis in experience, or mean something different from what we would think on first impression.  With this, Hume questioned philosophy’s position with regard to science.  Where does philosophy fit in with regard to scientific empiricism?  Hume also concluded with a notion of what is called “Hume’s Fork.” Hume’s Fork claims that meaningful statements must be in one of two forms:  (1) relations of ideas, or (2) matters of fact.  (1) can be things such as logic or mathematics, while (2) can be the empirical sciences.  Hume, as one would expect, was interested in matters of fact.  He saw his project as discovering the laws of the mind as Newton discovered laws of nature.  

This is a very shocking conclusion drawn from a major philosopher.  Perhaps Kant was justified in thinking for many years upon what Hume was getting at.  Kant, perhaps the greatest thinker of modern times, was fully aware of this devastating conclusion that Hume drew from strictly applying the philosophy of Empiricism.

After the aforementioned notes, I made the following comments:

In contrast to Hume’s conclusions questioning the legitimacy of philosophy, he demonstrates the exact opposite.  If one claims that empiricism justifies science, Hume’s reasoning demonstrates the potential illegitimacy of empiricism, not philosophy.  Philosophy investigates and then subsequently poses questions.  If these investigations reveal the lack of grounding in philosophy for empiricism, the philosophical critique holds.  To conclude that this line of reasoning undermines philosophy is backwards.  When a messenger (philosophy) delivers a message (empiricism has no rational ground), one is not credible in questioning the messenger (dogmatically holding to empiricism and assuming – not proving – that philosophy is the culprit).

This discussion contributes to a widely held notion among defenders of science that lack of evidence to any idea places the idea outside the bounds of knowledge.  Even empirical science has to abstract several stages from experience to reason toward physical laws and principles.  Furthermore, scientists will question the evidence itself when such evidence contradicts an established theory; this common practice is a spectacular contribution to the demonstration of the legitimacy of philosophy.  When one rejects evidence on theoretical grounds, one is doing philosophy.  Finally, the empiricist assertion cannot be taken seriously when one considers the entire realm of mathematics, where one can reason completely within a system of thought without any evidence whatsoever.  It would be foolish to claim that mathematics is not knowledge.

In conclusion, we know from observing scientific work that evidence of the senses – experience - contributes to science, but it is not clear how to connect evidence to theory.  This effort was a spectacular failure of the classical empiricists.  Their promise of a method to connect experience to theory, and thereby setting all other knowledge outside the bounds of knowledge, does not work.

So, does experience reveal one set of sensations followed by others?  It seems that Kant attempted to make the mind active in taking the input from the things in themselves, with the mind actively processing these things, thus accounting for cause and effect within things as they appear.  We can marvel at Kant’s spectacular efforts in his Critique of Pure Reason, but this gets us nowhere further from Hume.  Kant did not escape Hume’s trap that if we are Empiricists, one set of sensations follow another.  Who cares if the mind organizes and processes this information?  It still leaves us at square one. 

Hume’s devastating attack on Empiricism, I think, was a final blow.  The problem is that Kant followed him with a dazzling brilliance and ability for analysis, that, perhaps we forget Hume in the bright light of Kant.  It appears to me that Kant sidestepped this issue with a philosophical sleight-of-hand, as it were.  He does not address the core issue, but attempts to move cause and effect around to sooth us, but not give us an ultimate answer.

Let us make this very clear with an illustration.  You are performing measurements on the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  You have a thermometer.  You are taking a serious of measurements.  Every half hour, you look at the thermometer and record the temperature in your laboratory book.  If you believe in Empiricism, that we must base all our theories on experience, what connects one measurement to another measurement?  Between the first and second measurement, what happened?  You do not know, because you did not observe it.  You can only infer what happened.  Wait – but if you infer what happened, you are not relying on observation to tell you what happened between measurements.  If we cannot infer what happens between measurements, we cannot do science as Empiricists.

We cannot say, under any circumstances, that we rely only on evidence for our knowledge and theories. 

So, what are we to say?

Freddy Martini

The Radical Notion of David Hume

The Radical Notion of David Hume

If Hume awakened Kant from his philosophical slumber, perhaps we should take a closer look at Hume’s thoughts.  Hume’s thoughts may be more radical than is commonly thought, and perhaps Kant’s response to Hume was a spectacular failure.

Furthermore, if we take Hume seriously, and if we take science seriously, we must figure out what we are to do.  Hume’s critique attacks and destroys a major assumption of science itself.  If there is no serious answer to Hume, then science has no philosophical foundations, if we assume that Empiricism is true.  Perhaps Empiricism is not true, after all.

Taking notes on Kasser’s lectures a little over a year ago, I wrote the following:

Dave Hume’s conclusions are more radical than Berkeley’s.  Hume takes empiricism to some of its logical conclusions.  Hume wanted to bring experimental methods to philosophy.  Applying this rigorously, Hume discovered that some of our crucial notions have a questionable link to experience.  Experience merely reveals one set of sensations followed by others.  These sequences of sensations do not reveal any causal link among themselves, and thus, our notion of causality (cause and effect) has no grounding in experience.  Our sense impressions are always changing, and thus, we do not experience anything enduring.  Even our sense of self does not endure.  Hume also speculated that we may not be thinking beings, but beings that experience one series of impressions followed by others. 

Can we call anything evidence that we do not experience now?  Can we be sure that our memory of experience and impressions is real, accurate or true?  This reasoning process ends in a deep form of skepticism.

Among Hume’s conclusions was that some of our core notions are meaningless or have no basis in experience, or mean something different from what we would think on first impression.  With this, Hume questioned philosophy’s position with regard to science.  Where does philosophy fit in with regard to scientific empiricism?  Hume also concluded with a notion of what is called “Hume’s Fork.” Hume’s Fork claims that meaningful statements must be in one of two forms:  (1) relations of ideas, or (2) matters of fact.  (1) can be things such as logic or mathematics, while (2) can be the empirical sciences.  Hume, as one would expect, was interested in matters of fact.  He saw his project as discovering the laws of the mind as Newton discovered laws of nature.  

This is a very shocking conclusion drawn from a major philosopher.  Perhaps Kant was justified in thinking for many years upon what Hume was getting at.  Kant, perhaps the greatest thinker of modern times, was fully aware of this devastating conclusion that Hume drew from strictly applying the philosophy of Empiricism.

After the aforementioned notes, I made the following comments:

In contrast to Hume’s conclusions questioning the legitimacy of philosophy, he demonstrates the exact opposite.  If one claims that empiricism justifies science, Hume’s reasoning demonstrates the potential illegitimacy of empiricism, not philosophy.  Philosophy investigates and then subsequently poses questions.  If these investigations reveal the lack of grounding in philosophy for empiricism, the philosophical critique holds.  To conclude that this line of reasoning undermines philosophy is backwards.  When a messenger (philosophy) delivers a message (empiricism has no rational ground), one is not credible in questioning the messenger (dogmatically holding to empiricism and assuming – not proving – that philosophy is the culprit).

This discussion contributes to a widely held notion among defenders of science that lack of evidence to any idea places the idea outside the bounds of knowledge.  Even empirical science has to abstract several stages from experience to reason toward physical laws and principles.  Furthermore, scientists will question the evidence itself when such evidence contradicts an established theory; this common practice is a spectacular contribution to the demonstration of the legitimacy of philosophy.  When one rejects evidence on theoretical grounds, one is doing philosophy.  Finally, the empiricist assertion cannot be taken seriously when one considers the entire realm of mathematics, where one can reason completely within a system of thought without any evidence whatsoever.  It would be foolish to claim that mathematics is not knowledge.

In conclusion, we know from observing scientific work that evidence of the senses – experience - contributes to science, but it is not clear how to connect evidence to theory.  This effort was a spectacular failure of the classical empiricists.  Their promise of a method to connect experience to theory, and thereby setting all other knowledge outside the bounds of knowledge, does not work.

So, does experience reveal one set of sensations followed by others?  It seems that Kant attempted to make the mind active in taking the input from the things in themselves, with the mind actively processing these things, thus accounting for cause and effect within things as they appear.  We can marvel at Kant’s spectacular efforts in his Critique of Pure Reason, but this gets us nowhere further from Hume.  Kant did not escape Hume’s trap that if we are Empiricists, one set of sensations follow another.  Who cares if the mind organizes and processes this information?  It still leaves us at square one. 

Hume’s devastating attack on Empiricism, I think, was a final blow.  The problem is that Kant followed him with a dazzling brilliance and ability for analysis, that, perhaps we forget Hume in the bright light of Kant.  It appears to me that Kant sidestepped this issue with a philosophical sleight-of-hand, as it were.  He does not address the core issue, but attempts to move cause and effect around to sooth us, but not give us an ultimate answer.

Let us make this very clear with an illustration.  You are performing measurements on the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  You have a thermometer.  You are taking a serious of measurements.  Every half hour, you look at the thermometer and record the temperature in your laboratory book.  If you believe in Empiricism, that we must base all our theories on experience, what connects one measurement to another measurement?  Between the first and second measurement, what happened?  You do not know, because you did not observe it.  You can only infer what happened.  Wait – but if you infer what happened, you are not relying on observation to tell you what happened between measurements.  If we cannot infer what happens between measurements, we cannot do science as Empiricists. 

We cannot say, under any circumstances, that we rely only on evidence for our knowledge and theories. 

So, what are we to say?

Freddy Martini

Existentialism Part 2

This paper is a book review and a synopsis of, “Existentialism for Dummies,” written by Christopher Panza and Gregory Gale.  It is also a partial essay on Existentialism.  The author strongly recommends the aforementioned book.


The book is available at Amazon here.

See Existentialism Part 1 here.

Part Two

Our unique way of existing in the world

What is the meaning of human existence?  What makes human existence unique?  What is the meaning of existence?  There are things that we may call beings, such as common objects: pencil, stove, sink, car, road, rock, book, etc.  These are objects or beings existing in the world around us.  When we move to the question of existence, the mode of language shifts slightly from “a being” to “being” or “existence.”  It is one thing to be.  It is another thing to question everything – i.e., everything in the universe and in our minds – and ask as Heidegger asked, “Why does all this exist rather than there just being nothing?”  Not only are we asking why do we exist as humans, but why does anything exist at all.  It seems that Heidegger was the first to investigate this aspect of philosophy with seriousness. 

How do we investigate existence?  Science is not the answer, since science only looks at things as objects – from the outside.  A human being is not an object that can be observed from the outside after which one can write a coherent theory on this sample or multiple samples of humans.  Again, man has interiority, or, intentionality, that is unavailable for access by any scientific instrumentation.  Technologists may invent amazing machines to perform brain scans, but they will never be able to understand how you experience a red apple.  This experience is not available to anyone or anything exterior from a person.

Engagement

The human method of existence according to some existentialists, such as Martin Heidegger, involves being engaged with the world.  Humans must exist within a social context and must live life through engagement with projects and goals.  Animals may have goals of survival, but it is not likely they have projects.  The social world and the physical world provide humans with tools and equipment to engage in the world.  Our lives are oriented socially and toward activity through projects, goals, tools, and equipment.

Space

Another aspect of existence is Space.  As expected, this concept is not the scientific sense of the term involving meters, centimeters and square kilometers.  It is the space of engaging with the world within your existential situation.  Where or how are we situated?  How are we acting with reference to our social situation, our goals, or our equipment?  Some concerns are closer to you.  Other concerns are foreign to you.  How far are you away from West Indian cooking recipes?  How close are you to the politics of your local library’s elections for Director of Procurement?  How close are you to your work and your goals?  How close are you to the concerns of your family and friends?   So, the space of our existential situation is a way of describing the connection and intensity with regard to the particulars existing within our situation.

Meaning

Existentialists claim that humans can live without many things; however, humans cannot live without meaning.  Men will give their lives in charging a military position, if they know that their mission or cause has meaning to them.  However, our lives, as we are given, have no inherent meaning; we must create our own.  Creating meaning in our lives is not an easy task since the old systems are no longer able to give us confidence in their efficacy; we must start almost from scratch.  Perhaps we can use pieces of the old systems, but we must create meaning ourselves for ourselves. 

Since we are engaged in goals and projects, we need tools.  The essence of the pursuit of something implies that we will use things available to us as tools or instruments to pursue our values.  Sometimes tools are readily available to us.  At other times, we must search for them. 

Heidegger explains that, in living in this world, it is necessary to come into contact with other beings like ourselves.  We are using tools to pursue our projects.  Some of these tools we create, and other tools are created by others.  In the first years of our lives we are completely dependent upon others for our survival.  As we become more competent, we develop the ability to create our own tools, make more choices, and interact with others in trading one value for another.

However, in our interaction with others, we risk becoming inauthentic if we simply accept the social values and social trends around us.  To go along to get along puts us at risk to pursuing the values of others, possibly to the detriment of our own.  To be authentic, we pursue our values, and we must be honest with ourselves in what we are doing, and not passively accept the values of the social situation we find ourselves in.  Sometimes this is not easy; but, being authentic is always a struggle.  It is especially a struggle if our values are much different from those within our social situation. 

Passion in our lives

Existentialists suggest that we need passion in our lives.  In the pursuit of our values, we must increase our risk, accept the struggles and fights accompanying such pursuits, and engage in life with a large dose of zeal.  We are to be engaged with the people and the things around us.  Our tools to pursue our projects, the people with which we interact in life and our work are all potential objects of our passions.  It is not exactly what you do that concerns existentialists; it is how you do it.  Life is to be worked with, fought with, wrestled with, and engaged.  It is to take your life seriously and to seriously live your life.  This passion is focused and intense.  It is focused upon being a Subject that chooses how it interacts, instead of a passive object to be acted upon.  

Finding Something Worth Dying For

We should find a cause in our lives that expresses our values, and expresses our lives.  We should find a cause such that it is worth dying for; one must find a reason to live such that one stakes one’s life upon it.  Living otherwise is undignified.  Choosing this cause will undoubtedly include some measure of mystery and risk, since we are not guaranteed success or failure.  We cannot predict how things will turn out after we make certain decisions.  Since life has a large element of absurdity, some of the consequences may be strange and senseless, thus mysterious. 

Engagement to Live in Truth

Existentialists make the bold claim that when a person engages with life in a passionate way as we have heretofore described, this person exists in the Truth.  Typically, when we loosely speak of truth, we mean objective truth.  However, existentialists are more interested in subjective truth.  Instead of something externally discovered, it is something that we appropriate and make our own.  This does not mean that we ignore objective truth.  It just means that when determining how to live our lives, we must know it subjectively.  Subjective truth implies how we are involved and engaged with the world.  When we speak of objective truth, we know about the properties of an external object.  When we speak of subjective truth, we speak of how we subjectively know something, how we are connected to something with meaning – what does this mean to me?  The objective truth says that this table is made of wood.  The subjective truth may claim that this table is a symbol of the strength of my family when I can remember them gathered around the table each night for dinner.  One can be put to a scientific test with instrumentation; the other is inaccessible to the scientific method from a physical perspective.

One paradox that Kierkegaard notices is that the more one pursues the objective truth of the object of our passions, the less passionate we become about it.  Thus, the passionate pursuit of our truth value involves some uncertainty about its objectivity.  This is another aspect of Existentialism that illustrates that risk and uncertainty are important aspects of the pursuit of our goals with passion.    

In shifting to a subjective view of the Truth, one can find a Truth that is yours and yours alone.  An objective Truth belongs to all, a subjective Truth may or may not. 

In uncovering Truth that is yours and yours alone, it is important to understand that crowds of people do not find this type of Truth.  Since subjective Truth is yours and yours alone, you must look for it apart from the crowds.  You must find this Truth within yourself.  This can be scary for those accustomed to seeking consensus from others, but living according to one’s values requires us to make the effort.

Modern Temptation Toward the Easy Life

Modern life is dull.  It drains us of passion. We are encouraged to pursue the easy life.  We look for ways to distract ourselves from facing existential questions and engaging existence around us.  This is the age of mediocrity where we are encouraged to pursue the average, or pursue a bourgeois life of well-being with a minimization of risk.  Simulation of engagement is another aspect of this: how many people play video games to simulate passionate and dangerous situations?  We want the feeling of danger without the real danger.  People want to attend protests, but they do not want to risk arrest, jail or death; feeling like one makes a difference instead of actually making a difference.  Often people get together and write up revolutionary documents, publish them, and then go home feeling as though they made a difference.  Often, playing it safe in our modern age seems like the smart move.

Media as an Instrument of Untruth

Kierkegaard attacked the media.  He saw the crowd as a threat to subjective Truth.  However, with printing, one gets wide distribution of the voice of the crowd or the “public.”  Media tempts us to get involved on issues and subjects about which we know very little, and about which we would care little otherwise.  Often media issues are very far removed from issues that are concrete to us and “close to home” to the point where we neglect many things “at hand” in our lives for things far away and often irrelevant to us.  The media also gives the crowd an appearance of strength, and even Truth, which makes it extremely dangerous.  It is easy to deal with others’ issues since it does not involve any risk; it illustrates another case of moderns not confronting the issues in front of their own lives.  The press invites us to spend time and effort on fake issues, and in the meantime, the minutes of our lives slip away on unimportant things at the expense of our values.  Also we are spread so thin among a variety of issues to the point where we cannot focus a sufficient amount of time on a single issue so that we know the issue competently; this produces superficiality about subjects about which we know little, and upon which we are tempted to pontificate. 

 Freddy Martini

Existentialism Part 1

This paper is a book review and a synopsis of, “Existentialism for Dummies,” written by Christopher Panza and Gregory Gale.  It is also a partial essay on Existentialism.  The author strongly recommends the aforementioned book.


The book is available at Amazon here.

Part One

Introduction and Summary

The word “Existentialism” implies something about existence.  This is true.  It is about the unique way humans exist.  It also implies another aspect of humans: non-existence.  All humans will eventually stop existing; this non-existence is another aspect of engaging in the unique way of human existence. 

Some think Existentialism began with Nietzsche.  He is certainly one of the Fountainheads of the movement.  Others include Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, among others.    

Existentialism has many common themes often misunderstood by dilettantes.  “God is dead” is perhaps the most provocative theme, although, if taken literally, this statement is mistaken.  Absurdity is another theme as the writers deal with the infinite capacity of people to make sense of the world, with spectacular failure.  Authenticity and freedom, along with avoiding being swept away in the notions of the crowd, are some of the other themes. 

The philosophy encourages us to take a closer look at what it means to live in modernity without the guides to life that former generations had.  We are thrown into this volatile age, and then we have to deal with it with passion, meaning, and authenticity.

“God is dead,” and what this really means (It not to be taken at face value)

We hear about the Existentialists phrase, “God is dead.”  However this is not meant literally in many cases, because there are Christian Existentialists.  This is also not a cause for celebration; those who read or hear the phrase may take the meaning the wrong way.  This is rather an observation about the state of things.  This is reality as we experience it in this age.  More precisely, universal systems of thought are no longer functional or useful to humans.  The time when there was a broad consensus on the systems of religion, philosophy and thought is gone.  Society is fragmented on these systems.  Contrary to some, the God of reason is no substitute for the church, because men are inherently irrational, even when one claims reason as his primary tool of living.  Science is sometimes seen as a replacement for religion.  However, science does not deal with questions of value; it only deals with questions of physical fact.  Science cannot attach meaning to life, nor can it issue any useful guides to living one’s life. 

In losing universal systems of thought, such as religion, reason, or science, we must depend upon ourselves to determine what we will use as a replacement.  We are virtually free to choose any system of thought we wish.  We can determine our values and choose a system in congruence with those values.  Also, we are thrown into a world with no value system, and, thus, we are without compass.  We are no longer broadly instructed on the correct systems of thought.   Whatever we choose could turn out successfully, or it could turn out to be a serious mistake.   

Moods in an empty world

One way to determine how we interact with the world is through our moods.  Our moods reveal to us how we are engaging with the world at a particular moment, and also in general.  As we strive and thrust our way into the world, we experience anxiety.  We do not know if our decisions will be successful or not.  We can choose something at one point, and the consequences may not be what we expect.  We also face tough decisions in life, and these moments induce dread often because any choice has consequences that we would rather not deal with.  Angst is another mood flavor accompanying the general feeling that we do not have an overarching compass given to us at birth with which we can navigate our lives.  The idea that we are free, and that we have thousands of options and choices, can make us feel dizzy.  A life path predetermined with all the correct choices laid out neatly is comforting.  However, with free choice and no systems other than those of our own making to help us choose wisely, we can feel like we are not standing on solid ground; vertigo or dizziness is usually a consequence. 

Challenge: Absurdity and Authenticity

We are thrown into a world of choices and consequences.  Often, this world does not make sense to us.  The world is fundamentally irrational with regard to our engagement with the world.  Yes, there is logic, and something called a scientific method, but there is no encompassing rationality as to how we should live, what we are to choose as our values, and which values are more valuable than others.  Accidents are everywhere: innocent children die in senseless car accidents, people fall and become disabled for life, and people develop misunderstandings between one another on seemingly accidental events or actions.  We are inclined and often feel compelled to make sense of the world.  We are an order-imposing species.  When something senseless happens, such as the death of a child, we will often make up narratives like “it was meant to be” in order not to face the fact that it was completely senseless, and has no other meaning other than that which we give to it. 

How can we be genuine?  How can we live life as we choose to live and how do we determine how to live it?  How do we become authentic when there are so many things out there fighting us from being who we wish to be and preventing us or slowing us down from making the choices that we wish to make?  Authentic people are in control of themselves.  They are in control of their value system, and make choices in congruence with their values.  These are genuine people.  Worldly authenticity involves surveying the fashions of the day, and then conforming one’s choices to the herd or the crowd, or perhaps confirming to the group one just happens to be a part of.  To allow a group or a crowd to determine one’s values is not living life authentically. 

What kind of being are we?  We are different from inanimate physical objects because we have life; however, a dog has life, and we are also different from dogs.  We have the ability to think about the past and the future, and to create new objects and ideas with our imagination; it is unlikely that dogs or any other animals have this ability.  We have an interior world.  We are not just an object, but we are a subject.  Our interior life is what is most important to us.  It is where our values are, and it is the point of view whereby we interact with the exterior world. 

Being a subject also implies that science cannot help us figure out the meaning of life.  The scientific method always deals with objects.  Even when psychologists make claims about people, they are still observing the person as an object.  The interior subject is not accessible through the scientific method.  Only the subject may access his interior, and perhaps choose to communicate the contents of this interior only as he is able and as he wishes.  The interior is not an object for observation from anyone except the subject – the person.  

There is much absurdity to humanity.  Humans have the capacity for reason, but in practice, this is not always the case.  Perhaps it is rare for humans to be reasonable or rational.  Every state has a need for a criminal justice system to punish the wicked.  Wars break out between civilized nations with unbelievable carnage.  Women cheat on their husbands, and then get killed by a jealous man.  Bar fights break out after too much drinking.  Teenagers have to test their mettle by getting into trouble.  People get bored, and begin to make trouble in various ways.  Even though humans have the capability of reason, it seems that nature also hardwires our behavior toward destruction, crime, and violence.  We go to work with the purpose of producing a product or service with the cooperation of our fellow employees.  However, inevitably, disagreements break out, misunderstandings happen, people get angry and people get fired, only to be replaced by another set of people who begin the cycle again.  Even seemingly good people have no choice but to get involved in these skirmishes and fights.  Strife is everywhere, and rationality is rarely the rule. 

To choose the path of least resistance is to pander to the crowd, avoid fights and conflicts, and to please everyone as much as possible.  However, if we do this, we lose a lot.  We lose our authenticity by following the crowd, and pleasing others at the expense of our values.  The path of least resistance is easy.  Being an authentic individual is hard.  Engaging in the world to create and obtain our values is not easy, and one cannot obtain their values using the path of least resistance.  Following the crowd is not living life authentically.  Seeking the approval of others is not the path to authenticity. 

Perhaps the easiest path that avoids all the strife required to obtain our values is suicide.  Then again, this is not the path to pursuing our values, because suicide destroys all our values.  Perhaps the cowardly suicide is the path of least resistance par excellence. 

If life is continuous strife and striving in the process of the pursuit of our values, how can we make sense of this?  What is the point?  There is the legend of Sisyphus.  King Sisyphus was condemned to roll a bolder up a hill, and just before this bolder went over the hill, it would roll back down the hill, forcing the King to push the rock up again and again.  This was punishment for the King for thinking that he was cleverer than Zeus.  Sisyphus is a symbol for pointless work and effort.  Existentialist writers use this symbology and often speculate that Sisyphus has a smirk on his face.  The smirk implies that the King embraces the absurdity of his situation.  Camus speculates that there is no fate that cannot be overcome by scorn, and he even recommends an attitude of revolt toward the world.  Perhaps if we face the absurdity of life with a smirk and scorn, we can be free to accept the situation as it is, and continue to press on as we can toward our values, even if we do not obtain them, and even if we face absurd situations in the process. 

Continue reading Part 2 here.  

Freddy Martini

Effectiveness: Avoiding Procrastination

Effectiveness: Avoiding Procrastination

It is a man’s responsibility to conquer his world.  This involves setting goals, planning, and execution of such plans.  It also involves constantly updating goals and plans, and strategies of execution.

One problem is the setting of goals.  How does one know which goals to choose?  I tend to come from the Stephen Covey School of personal effectiveness, and it has not failed me in the pursuit of long-term goals.  One needs to assess both one’s self and the outside world.  Thus, a man needs to evaluate three things:

• Strengths
• Skills
• Market Needs  

Do not try to make complicated elaborate schemes at this point.  As in war, the simple plans are complicated enough, and a complicated plan has too many facets involving risk management when one is first beginning with this exercise.  Look at this diagram:

This Venn diagram can take you very far, and it helps you to keep things simple.  The Sweet Spot is where your skills are strong, and these skills are in your strength zone and the market demands your skills.  This is the best place to be, and every man needs to pursue the goal of getting in the Sweet Spot if one is to be successful.  The old Biblical concept of “what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul” is implicit in this diagram.

So, do you procrastinate?  This is s signal that this particular thing is not within your strength zone, but you are pursuing it for some reason.  Often it is a dead end job for which we think “we need the money.”  Sometimes it is the pull of family into tasks that are not suited to our nature.  In any case, this usually puts us into the Burnout Zone.  When any market demands of you something you are good at, but for which you have no passion in your soul for it, eventually, you will likely burnout on this task.  Perhaps you should delete this task from your list.  Perhaps you can outsource this task to someone else, or hire someone to do it.  There is a danger in staying in the Burnout Zone too long.  One loses perspective, strength, passion, and one can become depressed.  In fact, being depresses, lacking any physical problems usually, usually has its roots in burnout, and burnout almost always involves doing things outside of our Strength Zone.

What are you to do?  Find out where you are on the diagram above, and draw an arrow from where you are toward the direction of the sweet spot.  Then evaluate your life on how to move in line with this arrow.  And, evaluate yourself every week or so.