The Thinking, Walking Biped, part five. Famous Nature Walks: Rousseau Thinking about Himself

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (he called himself J.J.) was a famous writer and thinker of the eighteenth century. His specialty was to pugnaciously disagree with political and religious philosophers. One of his ideas was the social contract. He said that humans were basically good—not passionately good, but inclined to enjoy being good to one another. They did not need political systems (kings, knights, dictators, etc.) or religions (the threat of excommunication and hell) to be good, but just to be given the chance to form a contract of goodness with one another. I realize the full idea is more complex than this, and you are welcome to read more about it.

Rousseau was a great and almost daily walker. It is easy to assume that he used his daily walks to think of new and inspiring ideas about which to write. He stopped in a wooded area after visiting Diderot in prison in 1749. The hike was only three miles, but it is where he had his revelation about the social contract. This was not a wilderness area, but within metropolitan Paris. Still, it was not in a house or library or church, at least. Many writers, including myself, get a lot of ideas while walking. Is this why Rousseau walked?

For the most part the answer is no. His personal views can be kindly described as utter despair, and were most likely paranoia. His daily walks were to forget his past and to be the good man that Nature intended him to be. He described ten walks in his Reveries of a Solitary Walker. None of them were actual walks that he had taken, but were mostly unsorted piles of gripes and complaints. In his First Walk, Rousseau said that nobody could force you to be miserable. He was calm, because, he said, there is nothing more his enemies could do to him. He continued his self-pity in Walk Three, where he said he hoped for little, and received less. But he kept walking, saying that “I need to endure the miseries of my life.” He almost gave up trying to figure out his tribulations; I found myself wishing he had, in fact, given up. He said Solon, the Roman thinker, learned something new every day. But Rousseau said his old brain was worn out and he could not learn anything new. I just hope that as I get older I will never believe this about myself. He believed himself to be the most miserable of humans because literally everyone hated him, except his wife. And so on, with Walks 8, 9, and 10. He had to be a solitary walker, he said, because to understand society he had to stand outside of it. Also, I’m not sure he would have been such a good traveling companion for anyone.

He had some reason to be paranoid. When he lived in Môtiers, France, his house was stoned, breaking his window. The hostility of the local people was probably because he questioned the goodness of religion. During Rousseau’s life, many pamphlets were published against him. Some were apparently written by Voltaire. As Will and Ariel Durant describe it,

In Voltaire and Rousseau we see again the old clash between intellect and instinct. Voltaire believed in reason always; but Rousseau had little faith in reason; he desired action. In spite of his disagreement, Voltaire respected Rousseau’s right to speak what he believed in… Voltaire didn’t agree with Rousseau’s denunciation of civilization. He informs Rousseau that man is by nature a beast of prey, and that civilized society means a chaining of this beast…

But I have not seen evidence (not being an historian, this is not surprising) that people were preparing false and defamatory documents to be inserted into his works to be “discovered” upon his death. Rousseau was not an easy man to like; he could like you and then, as with David Hume and Dénis Diderot, change his mind about you completely.

For most of his life, Rousseau’s walks were nearly blind, as he thought only about himself. He looked at his path only enough to keep from tripping over sticks and stones. But for a brief time, this was not the case. See the next essay.

Darwin Meets Albert Schweitzer

It is likely that few of you in the newer generation have heard of Albert Schweitzer. He was famous in the middle of the twentieth century. He lived a long time in the city I now call home, Strasbourg, France. I just posted a video about him.

Schweitzer was most famous for doing what almost nobody does anymore. He was a polymath, that is, a genius expert in what seems to most of us like unrelated fields. His fields were:

• Music: He was an expert at playing and building organs.
• Philosophy.
• Theology: He wrote about the historical Jesus and the mystical Paul.
• Medicine.

Unlike many of us, who are certified in one field (mine is plant ecology) but who know a lot about other fields because we have read a lot about them, Schweitzer actually had degrees in music, philosophy, theology, and medicine. Some examples of people who have thought broadly about more than one area of inquiry are:

• Isaac Asimov, the biochemist who wrote about science in general and even about theology; he even had a joke book;
• René Dubos, the microbiologist who wrote about human nature;
• Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary biologist who wrote about everything, even baseball;
• John Polkinghorne, the physicist turned priest.

Schweitzer felt called to be a medical missionary in Africa. He was criticized because his field hospital in what is now Gabon was not up to the medical standards even of the time. But in its first nine months the clinic had 2000 patients; some of them traveled for days and hundreds of kilometers to go there. Could somebody else have done a better job? Probably, but there was no one else.

He won the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize not just for these things but also for his activism against colonialism and nuclear proliferation.

Was there a theme that tied all of these things together? I think it was reverence for life. The aspects of music, philosophy, theology, and medicine that he emphasized were those that made life better for humanity, which he loved.

Today it is difficult or even impossible for a scientist to be an expert in more than one major field of human thought, because every field of thought has grown exponentially; at least, science has. He was not trying to get people to know more scientific facts, but to celebrate how science (in this case medicine) can improve people’s lives (this is my message to the science blog readers). Nor was he trying to get people to believe certain doctrinal points. He was an evangelist, but not of doctrine; rather, of a reverence for life—this is my message to the religion blog readers.

Happiness Is Fill in the Blank

I’ve been looking through a dull but well-intentioned book from 1937, 101 of the World’s Greatest Books. That is, five to ten page summaries of them. They were the ones you would expect from the era which continued with Great Books of the Western World, whose numerous volumes filled many library shelves even in small towns because teachers and librarians thought these were the books that everyone ought to know about to be considered educated. Great novels, epic stories, great scholarly works, great plays, great works of philosophy, almost all of which were outdated even in 1937. I wasn’t expecting much, not having much interest in the classical authors (Dante was especially silly), but just in case I missed something, I wanted to check.

Rather than to discuss the summaries of the “great” philosophers, which would lull you to sleep, I have chosen one narrow question: What is happiness?

Aristotle answered this question in a prolonged and painful contemplation of the obvious. His was the doctrine of the golden mean, which says that happiness is where you have enough, but not too much, of everything, from wealth to strength. Is there anyone who didn’t already know this? Some people act as if the right amount of sexual pleasure is as much as possible, but even they get worn out once in a while, and they will probably admit this. Some people act as if the right amount of sexual pleasure is none at all, not even accidental thoughts of sex. They are not happy, protestations notwithstanding. But the vast majority of humans already live by the doctrine of the golden mean. I certainly do.

While the golden mean seems obvious, there are lots of people who say that happiness is different for every person. Let me cite, rather than a philosopher, the mid-century musician Ray Coniff, whose song said that “Happiness is different things to different people” (“To a beatnik, it’s a beard, beard, beard…”) In the 1960s, when as a little kid I was absorbing television, I heard the tobacco corporation version: “To a landlord, it’s a great big rent, to a smoker, it’s a Kent.” (I’ve never heard this song on the radio since the 1960s. I assume the tobacco company bought the rights to the original song and is hoarding them.)

I think we all, regardless of philosophy or religion, know that there must be some universals to happiness (except among psychopaths). And, I maintain, many of these universals match the behaviors and feelings produced in our species by evolution. We can only be truly happy when we can honestly feel we are doing the right things with our lives—that is, altruism. We actually enjoy being good (up to a point), and having allies rather than having only enemies and competitors. And having a sense of purpose—which is also the product of evolution—and not just disconnected events.

Happiness is, therefore, not just whatever rings our bells, or floats our boats, or tickles our fancy, or verbs our object. It is a product of evolution, just like language and toenails and the cockles of your heart.

Philosophers Thinking about Science: Nothing New

Philosophers have been thinking about science for a long time. Some, like Karl Popper, focused their attention on how science should be done. But many others have thought about what the discoveries of science mean for the future of the human species. One of these philosophers was Max C. Otto (1876-1968), who spent most of his career at the University of Wisconsin. Chances are that you have never heard of him. I ended up with an old copy of a 1949 book, Science and the Moral Life, which reprinted some of his previous writings. The pages of cheap paper are turning brown and flaking away. I’d better tell you about it now, before it is lost forever.

One of the most interesting things about the book was its cover. That perennial symbol of science, the chemistry flask, is divided in two. One half has roaring predators, representing the violent animal ancestry of mankind. The other half shows a 1940’s family looking into the brightness of the future: A tall man, his slightly shorter wife behind him, and the two kids, so so blond, the brother slightly older than the sister. It is clear that science, and the philosophy that unveils it to our understanding, is the key to future happiness. Something that looks like a heart is flying away to the upper right.

This book follows in the tradition of other popular works of philosophy, such as Philosophy Made Simple: Everyone has a philosophy. You might as well think about your philosophy, because if you don’t, you might end up with a bad one. Like Philosophy Made Simple, Otto wrote in clear and powerful sentences.

Otto begins by asserting that human nature today is not what it was in our bestial ancestors: “Man is what he is, not what he was.” Evolutionary scientists today dispute this, pointing out that beasts are not always “bestial.” But, regardless, we all agree that humans have some degree of control over how we think and act—over the development of our human nature. But Otto does have a point: “Man is capable of doing and suffering in a way that his animal brother is not. He is tortured by fears and lured by hopes to which the ape is stranger. No ape brews the venom of human hatred nor does he transform passion into love. Apes speak no language, accumulate no tradition, never see the tragic or the funny side of things.” Modern scientists may dispute these last assertions, but not much.

Otto continued. To Francis Bacon, all science had to have a practical purpose. “The idea in Bacon’s mind was simple and clear. It was to domesticate the untamed forces of nature as wild horses had been domesticated; to put them into harness, hitch them to the human enterprise, invite mankind to climb in and ride away to wealth, health, and felicity.” That is why science had to be brutally honest: “It is designed to lay bare the truth, no matter what it hurts, whom it hurts, or how it hurts.”

Many people have said (I was probably one of them, somewhere back in my flotsam of publications) that all roads of sincere inquiry lead to the same place, which some people call God. Otto said, regarding this, “I say frankly that this seems to me plain hocus-pocus...How would it sound if you put it this way? No one can tell where your road leads to; no one can tell where my road leads to; which proves that they both lead to the same place. You and I are fellow travelers who refuse to stop anywhere but in the city the whereabouts of which are unknown. Hence our slogan must be... “Step on the gas!”

In order to let science lead us into a better future, Otto claimed, we have to let go of traditional religion. In 1943, he wrote that religious forces are taking advantage of our confusion. “The springtime of our church religion dates back many hundreds of years. The thirteenth century was its summer. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the bronze and the yellow of autumn. From 1859 on [he just assumed his readers knew this was when Origin of Species was published] the oaks joined in the pageant, and industrialized science was the cold November rain.” Religion, Otto claimed decades earlier than John Shelby Spong, must change or die. Religion has no more facts to give us; only science can do this. We cannot go back to not knowing what we know now, back to the simple faith of the past. For religion and science to coexist, Otto said, religion must become pure feeling, without doctrinal assertions.

Max Otto, emerging from the crisis of World War I and observing that of World War II, dared to hope that science would lead to a new world in which our old, destructive ways of thinking would be extinct. How wrong he was! He wrote, “Pure tribal spirit has been outgrown, and the trend of human emotions is away from it; so distinctly away from it that the outstanding temper of our day may be said to be the audacious hope [my emphasis] of re-creating the world in the interest of all mankind.” He wrote those words in 1924. How disturbed he would be to see the ethnic selfishness that now rules our thinking, especially by those who hate the memory of Barack Obama, one of whose book titles (The Audacity of Hope) looks like it emerged directly from Otto’s quote!

Alas, in contrast to Max Otto’s assertions, we will be animals forever and we have to learn to make the best of it.

This essay also appeared in my science blog.

Cynicism for Fun, Health, and Profit Part One.

I here begin a series of essays about the philosophy of cynicism—not necessarily the same as the ancient philosophy by that name, and certainly not in the general sense with which the word is used today. These are episodic thoughts rather than a reasoned argument such as I will develop for my eventual book on the subject.

When you think of a cynic, you probably think of a person who assumes the worst about anyone he or she does not personally know well, that is, about almost everybody else in society, and assumes that the world is out to get them, and that the worst thing that can possibly happen always will. This person, you assume, must be sad and depressed, certainly someone you would not want to know.

Well, there are cynics like that. But that is not what I here propose. What I will now describe is empowerment through cynicism: how cynicism can make you live better and be happier.

Really.

The first step is to recognize that cynicism is the correct interpretation of the facts of daily life, politics, and the economy. Without cynicism, when the inevitable catastrophes come, you will be shocked off of your feet and incapacitated with impotent anger, followed by dejection, and probably by wild drunkenness. If you are a cynic, you will not be taken by surprise. Whatever you need to do next, whether it is important work or truly refreshing recreation, you will be ready to do it right away.

The second step is to use the knowledge conferred by cynicism to make preparations to keep yourself safe. If you know that our politicians are leading us toward a white supremacist totalitarian state, you can make preparations; some people can make more, some less. You might want to move out of a red state if you live in one, or even out of the country, while you have plenty of time to make the transition smoothly, rather than waiting until you have to be a refugee. A cynic knows not to trust anything a major financial corporation says. Most of us already drive defensively, but a cynical driver knows that a small but significant number of other drivers would just as soon kill you as not. If you drive like a cynic, you are less likely to be their victim. By letting cynicism forewarn you of even just a few of the nearly infinite number of evils that await you, you can be able to instantly react to them in a constructive fashion.

The third step is that, by acting pre-emptively, you can feel more in control. A great deal of modern suffering comes with feeling that you have no control, utterly no control, over the circumstances of your life. A cynic, acting pre-emptively, avoids this feeling precisely because he or she IS more in control of the circumstances of life.

The fourth step is that, by feeling more in control, you can stop worrying about all the things that might happen. You know they are going to happen; you are ready for them; you are in control, as much as any wretched weak human being can be; now you can focus on the big picture—getting the most out of life, enjoying every day. Take a walk. You know that dozens of dog walkers have left piles of dog shit on the path; so, you frequently look down, and that way you don’t step in them. There’s nothing like a steaming pile of dog shit on your shoes to ruin a nice walk. A cynic would never let that happen. We all know that a lot of people let their dogs poop in public parks; but here in Tulsa I have seen people scooping dog poop out of their yards into public parks. This is a deliberate insult against one’s fellow citizens. But the cynic smiles and says, “I was expecting this.”

You can even enhance your sense of humor. Think about some of the most lovable, and the most effective cynics: Lewis Black, Paula Poundstone, Dave Barry, and the late George Carlin. They knew or know how to make cynicism work for them. (And earn them some money too. Please buy my book on this topic when it comes out.)

Fifth and last, if there is a God in Heaven, it must be a kind of God Who does nothing to prevent all these evil things, large and small, from happening. Back before I was a cynic, when I expected the world to make sense and God to help us out, even just a teeny weeny little bit, I spent a lot of time in agony over the evils of the world. Now I seldom think about it, except when I am writing essays like this.

In upcoming essays, I am going to focus on some specific and, I hope, interesting examples of cynicism at work.