During this semester in my freshman Honors College class, we read an article called "What is it like to be a bat?" by Thomas Nagel. If you're not familiar with him, Nagel is an anti-physicalist, or more specifically an anti-reductionist, who believes that there is a subjective experience which cannot be explained by a physical description of the world. His argument is as follows.
He asks, what is it like to be a bat? He doesn't mean what would it be like for us to be a bat; he wants to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Take part of a bat's sensory apparatus: echolocation. Bats send out a pitch that is out of our hearing range, receives it after it bounces back, and interprets it in such a way that it has some sort of visualization of where it is or where prey is. Everything about this notion is strange to us, or at least most of us. Ben Underwood, among others, is an exception, although because of the lower sound range of the noises these people make, they can only discern larger objects than bats, and there's no way of knowing just how sharply they can make out the object. In any case, I at least can't imagine using echolocation, or what it is like for a bat to use echolocation, since they way a bat's brain interprets sound is different from the way my brain interprets sound.
Now, just as we can't imagine what it is like to be a bat, which is vastly different from us, we can't imagine what it's like to be a different person, which is similar, but everyone has different experience. Ask someone what they see when he sees red, and he will be unable to tell you other than by saying what wavelength the light is and how his eyes and brain react to it. But he still has the experience of seeing red, just as I do, but it's impossible to tell if I really am seeing the same thing he is. Language is a barrier that doesn't allow us to share subjective experience. In addition, we don't know enough about our brains to be able to draw a connection between the physical and chemical brain and subjective experience. This all makes perfect sense, and I think Nagel is right in these respects.
But then he makes a leap that I think is a little rash and, in a way, ignorant and insulting of science. He says that because there is subjective experience that can't be described physically, then a purely physical description of the world, i.e. physicalism, is false. There are a few things that he doesn't take into account in this assertion. First, he assumes that science has somehow reached its endpoint. Maybe right now we don't know how or where to find subjective experience in the human physical brain, but we can't rule out the possibility that science has yet to discover a way. Many brilliant scientific conclusions were thought to be impossible but have since been proven true.
Another argument brought up by a friend of mine goes like this: imagine we have a computer. We can examine it all we want, turn it on and off, track the electricity as it flows through it, maybe even imagine what it would look like when a monitor is plugged in, but until we actually plug the monitor in and see what shows up, we can't see the computer's "subjective experience." We could even take it literally and say that we can observe a brain, see all the neurons firing and different areas lighting up when electrodes are placed on it, but until we can somehow invent a way to literally visualize the thoughts on a monitor, or in some other way make the subjective experience available to the experience of others, we can't experience that person's subjective experience. But in both of these cases there is a distinctively material cause for the phenomenon of subjective experience.
Another argument is mood-altering drugs, like anti-depressants. A person's subjective experience is changed by a condition such as depression, and an anti-depressant provides a physical means of changing subjective experience.
So to recap, I agree with Nagel in that other people, and animals, have a subjective experience that I can't experience myself, unless I could "jack into" their experience as if I were jacking into the Matrix, which can't be ruled out as a future possibility. But he makes a mistake in thinking that just because I can't share my subjective experience or someone else's that it's something that has nothing to do with the physical universe. But this doesn't rule out Nagel's view completely, or proof physicalism completely. Remember that my philosophy is that anything is possible. But Nagel's method of proof is poor at best, while there seems to be a much stronger argument against him and for physicalism.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Involuntary Skepticism, Revised
He fell of the bed. He perceived nothing, then everything as one. His muscles contracted involuntarily, sending his limbs flailing in every direction and nonsense spewing from his mouth at random volumes. His mother downstairs heard the noises, abandoned her breakfast, and rushed upstairs to meet his father, who was already halfway down the hallway towards the door. When they opened it they must have thought their son was having a seizure. The father grabbed a phone and dialed three digits as the mother threw herself upon her son to contain him and keep him from hurting himself in his wild movements.
The ambulance came and subdued him with liquid in a syringe, and then loaded him up and drove him to the hospital. He awoke later that day and uttered some more vocalizations, though with less intensity than before, and struggled weakly in vain against the restraints on the bed that the doctors had worked him into. His mother, eyes red and flowing, sniffled and touched him gingerly on the arm.
“Robert?”
Immediately Robert stopped moving. His mother froze, unsure of whether or not this was a good thing, but was comforted when she noticed that Robert was breathing, and he was slowly moving his head to face her. His eyes were wide open but staring somewhere far behind her.
“Robert?”
Robert grunted, and then again. His mother let out in a quick breath the sob she had been holding in and then held her next breath. Would he speak?
“Uhh… uhhh…. Uhhhhr… Uhr… Urrahh… Urroo… Urob…”
"Robert!” his mother spoke more urgently, encouraging him to repeat, and his father joined in the chanting.
“Rrrobuh..Rober.. Robert.” He had been gripping the sides of the bed and straining himself as if trying to break the iron bars of a jail cell, but now, apparently exhausted by the effort, Robert slumped back onto the bed, awake but still. His parents grew silent. Their son would not recover quickly or easily.
At school, news spread quickly of Robert’s apparent seizure, although some speculated that it was a stroke or even some kind of suicide attempt via drugs. The doctors were forced to run test after test, all with inconclusive diagnoses. But he slowly became more aware of his surroundings, and his parents hired various tutors who specialized in the education of the mentally challenged. His knowledge of English grammar had disappeared completely, and he could only learn concrete words and concepts, things that he could be shown examples of. When he was first given food after it was deemed he no longer needed the feeding tube, he stared at it. “What is it?” he asked in a stilted monotone.
“Food, honey. Please eat it.”
“Eat?”
His father demonstrated, taking a spoonful of the applesauce on the tray and placing it in his mouth. He took care to keep his mouth open so Robert could see how it worked.
“Why eat?”
“Because you need to. It keeps you alive,” said his mother, welling up with tears.
“Alive?”
After a few months, he was released from the hospital (though his parents threatened to sue the doctors for not being able to treat their son), and to all appearances he was okay. He could speak as well as before, and didn’t seem disoriented or confused, only a little depressed. After a trip to school to visit friends and discuss options with the counselors, expressed that he wanted to go back to school. They agreed and he carpooled to school the next day.
The first class of the day was band. Robert sat in the back and listened. At least his friends presumed he was listening, because he just sat there and stared at the rest of the band, holding a pair of drumsticks in his hands that he twiddled with aimlessly. But he tapped his feet in time, and at one point he started to tear up. A percussionist near him noticed and ran over. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“I think I like music,” he replied flatly, with a hint of a smile on his face.
After band, he and his friends made their way outside for brunch. His friends went and got food. He stood against the wall and watched the people walking by, who gave him sympathetic or furtive looks, depending on the version of the story they heard. He had a feeling in his stomach. “I’m hungry.” A student next to him said, “Hold on, they’re coming back with food.” Robert stood and waited. A girl passed by, and Robert felt like he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. When she noticed, she paused and then walked slowly back towards him. “Robert? Is it true what happened? A seizure?”
“Siezure? No. I don’t know what it was.”
“Um… okay. Do you remember me?”
“I… think so.”
“What’s my name?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s July, Robert. Do you remember who I am?”
“July.”
“No, Robert, not my name, who I am.”
“Well, you’re a person. You’re a girl.”
“I was your girlfriend, Robert. A long time ago.”
“Girlfriend?” Robert had another feeling in his stomach. The word “eat” flitted across his mind, but he stopped it from coming out of his mouth. This was a different feeling.
“You liked me, and I liked you. We went places together, did things. We kissed,” she made sure no one was listening, “we had sex.”
Robert squirmed inside at those last words. “Kissed? Sex?” he asked, a little too loud. July rolled her eyes. The bell rang, and all the other students began to leave. July could see Robert’s friends coming back after along line at the cafeteria, and pulled him away through the mass of students. They went behind a nearby building and July pulled down Robert’s head and kissed him longingly.
His head spun and he found himself looking at July again, at school but this time outside of the cafeteria. She is talking to a few other girls and Robert is hanging back against a nearby building trying to look inconspicuous. “Come on, Robert,” he mumbles to himself, “you’ve been doing this for a month now. When are you going to make a move?” Suddenly July’s friends walk away and she is alone, walking towards the parking lot. He follows her, and with each step he takes, the knot in his stomach grows tighter. He has to do this despite himself. He yells out before he can stop himself, “July!” She stops and turns around as Robert catches up to her. “Will you go out with me?”
She smiles and blushes, and says quietly, “Yeah.”
His head spun again and he was in July’s room, with a motif of blue and green and decorated with pandas. They are lying on the bed, doing homework. July brings up college. “It’s only a year and a half away. I can’t believe high school is going by so fast.” Robert says that they would definitely have to keep in touch. What they have now is too good to lose. He loves her and knows it. “I know,” she replies, “I never want this to end, what we have. I love you so much.” She leans over and kisses him. “And I love you, July. So much. I can never say it enough, or ever describe it. I just know.” She smiles and kisses him again.
Another spin and he was outside of July’s two-story suburban house. She’s hugging him and when she pulls away she has tears running down her face. “I’m so sorry,” she says. Robert realizes he is crying too. “I just can’t do it,” July continues. “Maybe if you had decided to go to college here. But three thousand miles away? I should have realized it before. Nothing in high school is meant to last. High school is too short, and then what? Then we’re three thousand miles apart. It won’t work. I’m sorry.” She turns around and after a long look at the doorstep, walks inside and closes the door. Robert is left on the sidewalk hurt and helpless. He drives home pouring tears and collapses on the bed, sobbing.
Then he was back in the present. “I… I’m sorry, Robert. For what I did before. I figured that we weren’t meant to be together. I thought it would be easier to just let go then than have to have college tearing us apart later. But this whole thing that’s happened to you, it scares me. And it makes me realize how much I couldn’t stand being without you. I love you, Robert. I hope you remember how much you love me.” And with that, she leaned her head back and kissed him again, even more passionately.
Robert rolled out of bed and turned the alarm off before it went off. 6:28. He always woke up a little earlier than the alarm, so there wasn’t much use for it for him, but July wanted it there and set just in case. He supposed he would have to deal with it’s incessant screeches if he could be in a relationship with the love of his life.
He stood up and stretched, then made his way downstairs and out the back door. The pool was still as glass despite the cool morning wind, and the sunrise reflected off of it an array of warm pastel colors. The valley filled with suburban homes stretched before him, surrounded by squat, brush-covered hills. At the foot of the farthest hills was the business park that Robert would be making his way to in a few hours to shuffle papers and enter random numbers into a computer. In the other direction, still hidden in the night’s remaining darkness, was the community college that July taught philosophy at.
Even back in high school she had been very smart about all sorts of abstract philosophical concepts, and she tried to teach them to Robert. He already knew the words “love” and “happiness,” “good” and “bad,” “want” and “need.” But in addition to helping him perfect his English, she tried to teach him what the words meant, what the emotions were. He always said after they got back together that nothing quite made sense, that nothing seemed real and everything could be fake, even his emotions. So she tried to teach him, but he could never understand, really. He often asked, how can you possibly classify something as abstract as an emotion? Or anything outside sense experience, either? When he was around July, Robert had a feeling that he called “love.” When someone was mean to him, he had a feeling that he called “angry.” When he was hungry, he “wanted” to eat.
But now, just as he had done every morning after getting married and moving here with July, Robert stood looking out at another bright new day over the earth, and he asked himself, “Am I happy?” And he couldn’t answer it. He knew the words, and he had all the emotions bundled up and snaking around inside of him, but he just couldn’t put the two together, not after waking up that one day with nothing solid to stand on. He gazed through the cold morning air at the valley, looked down on the business park and the houses and trees and people just waking up to start their day, looked up at the indifferent elegant sky, and then thought back all the way through his life, from the good times to the bad times and to the times he didn’t even remember, and about everything that was and wasn’t and all that could ever be. He smiled. “I am happy.”
And so Robert made his way back inside and woke July with a thousand kisses and hugs, and they both went on living through their days until there were none left.
The ambulance came and subdued him with liquid in a syringe, and then loaded him up and drove him to the hospital. He awoke later that day and uttered some more vocalizations, though with less intensity than before, and struggled weakly in vain against the restraints on the bed that the doctors had worked him into. His mother, eyes red and flowing, sniffled and touched him gingerly on the arm.
“Robert?”
Immediately Robert stopped moving. His mother froze, unsure of whether or not this was a good thing, but was comforted when she noticed that Robert was breathing, and he was slowly moving his head to face her. His eyes were wide open but staring somewhere far behind her.
“Robert?”
Robert grunted, and then again. His mother let out in a quick breath the sob she had been holding in and then held her next breath. Would he speak?
“Uhh… uhhh…. Uhhhhr… Uhr… Urrahh… Urroo… Urob…”
"Robert!” his mother spoke more urgently, encouraging him to repeat, and his father joined in the chanting.
“Rrrobuh..Rober.. Robert.” He had been gripping the sides of the bed and straining himself as if trying to break the iron bars of a jail cell, but now, apparently exhausted by the effort, Robert slumped back onto the bed, awake but still. His parents grew silent. Their son would not recover quickly or easily.
At school, news spread quickly of Robert’s apparent seizure, although some speculated that it was a stroke or even some kind of suicide attempt via drugs. The doctors were forced to run test after test, all with inconclusive diagnoses. But he slowly became more aware of his surroundings, and his parents hired various tutors who specialized in the education of the mentally challenged. His knowledge of English grammar had disappeared completely, and he could only learn concrete words and concepts, things that he could be shown examples of. When he was first given food after it was deemed he no longer needed the feeding tube, he stared at it. “What is it?” he asked in a stilted monotone.
“Food, honey. Please eat it.”
“Eat?”
His father demonstrated, taking a spoonful of the applesauce on the tray and placing it in his mouth. He took care to keep his mouth open so Robert could see how it worked.
“Why eat?”
“Because you need to. It keeps you alive,” said his mother, welling up with tears.
“Alive?”
After a few months, he was released from the hospital (though his parents threatened to sue the doctors for not being able to treat their son), and to all appearances he was okay. He could speak as well as before, and didn’t seem disoriented or confused, only a little depressed. After a trip to school to visit friends and discuss options with the counselors, expressed that he wanted to go back to school. They agreed and he carpooled to school the next day.
The first class of the day was band. Robert sat in the back and listened. At least his friends presumed he was listening, because he just sat there and stared at the rest of the band, holding a pair of drumsticks in his hands that he twiddled with aimlessly. But he tapped his feet in time, and at one point he started to tear up. A percussionist near him noticed and ran over. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“I think I like music,” he replied flatly, with a hint of a smile on his face.
After band, he and his friends made their way outside for brunch. His friends went and got food. He stood against the wall and watched the people walking by, who gave him sympathetic or furtive looks, depending on the version of the story they heard. He had a feeling in his stomach. “I’m hungry.” A student next to him said, “Hold on, they’re coming back with food.” Robert stood and waited. A girl passed by, and Robert felt like he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. When she noticed, she paused and then walked slowly back towards him. “Robert? Is it true what happened? A seizure?”
“Siezure? No. I don’t know what it was.”
“Um… okay. Do you remember me?”
“I… think so.”
“What’s my name?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s July, Robert. Do you remember who I am?”
“July.”
“No, Robert, not my name, who I am.”
“Well, you’re a person. You’re a girl.”
“I was your girlfriend, Robert. A long time ago.”
“Girlfriend?” Robert had another feeling in his stomach. The word “eat” flitted across his mind, but he stopped it from coming out of his mouth. This was a different feeling.
“You liked me, and I liked you. We went places together, did things. We kissed,” she made sure no one was listening, “we had sex.”
Robert squirmed inside at those last words. “Kissed? Sex?” he asked, a little too loud. July rolled her eyes. The bell rang, and all the other students began to leave. July could see Robert’s friends coming back after along line at the cafeteria, and pulled him away through the mass of students. They went behind a nearby building and July pulled down Robert’s head and kissed him longingly.
His head spun and he found himself looking at July again, at school but this time outside of the cafeteria. She is talking to a few other girls and Robert is hanging back against a nearby building trying to look inconspicuous. “Come on, Robert,” he mumbles to himself, “you’ve been doing this for a month now. When are you going to make a move?” Suddenly July’s friends walk away and she is alone, walking towards the parking lot. He follows her, and with each step he takes, the knot in his stomach grows tighter. He has to do this despite himself. He yells out before he can stop himself, “July!” She stops and turns around as Robert catches up to her. “Will you go out with me?”
She smiles and blushes, and says quietly, “Yeah.”
His head spun again and he was in July’s room, with a motif of blue and green and decorated with pandas. They are lying on the bed, doing homework. July brings up college. “It’s only a year and a half away. I can’t believe high school is going by so fast.” Robert says that they would definitely have to keep in touch. What they have now is too good to lose. He loves her and knows it. “I know,” she replies, “I never want this to end, what we have. I love you so much.” She leans over and kisses him. “And I love you, July. So much. I can never say it enough, or ever describe it. I just know.” She smiles and kisses him again.
Another spin and he was outside of July’s two-story suburban house. She’s hugging him and when she pulls away she has tears running down her face. “I’m so sorry,” she says. Robert realizes he is crying too. “I just can’t do it,” July continues. “Maybe if you had decided to go to college here. But three thousand miles away? I should have realized it before. Nothing in high school is meant to last. High school is too short, and then what? Then we’re three thousand miles apart. It won’t work. I’m sorry.” She turns around and after a long look at the doorstep, walks inside and closes the door. Robert is left on the sidewalk hurt and helpless. He drives home pouring tears and collapses on the bed, sobbing.
Then he was back in the present. “I… I’m sorry, Robert. For what I did before. I figured that we weren’t meant to be together. I thought it would be easier to just let go then than have to have college tearing us apart later. But this whole thing that’s happened to you, it scares me. And it makes me realize how much I couldn’t stand being without you. I love you, Robert. I hope you remember how much you love me.” And with that, she leaned her head back and kissed him again, even more passionately.
Robert rolled out of bed and turned the alarm off before it went off. 6:28. He always woke up a little earlier than the alarm, so there wasn’t much use for it for him, but July wanted it there and set just in case. He supposed he would have to deal with it’s incessant screeches if he could be in a relationship with the love of his life.
He stood up and stretched, then made his way downstairs and out the back door. The pool was still as glass despite the cool morning wind, and the sunrise reflected off of it an array of warm pastel colors. The valley filled with suburban homes stretched before him, surrounded by squat, brush-covered hills. At the foot of the farthest hills was the business park that Robert would be making his way to in a few hours to shuffle papers and enter random numbers into a computer. In the other direction, still hidden in the night’s remaining darkness, was the community college that July taught philosophy at.
Even back in high school she had been very smart about all sorts of abstract philosophical concepts, and she tried to teach them to Robert. He already knew the words “love” and “happiness,” “good” and “bad,” “want” and “need.” But in addition to helping him perfect his English, she tried to teach him what the words meant, what the emotions were. He always said after they got back together that nothing quite made sense, that nothing seemed real and everything could be fake, even his emotions. So she tried to teach him, but he could never understand, really. He often asked, how can you possibly classify something as abstract as an emotion? Or anything outside sense experience, either? When he was around July, Robert had a feeling that he called “love.” When someone was mean to him, he had a feeling that he called “angry.” When he was hungry, he “wanted” to eat.
But now, just as he had done every morning after getting married and moving here with July, Robert stood looking out at another bright new day over the earth, and he asked himself, “Am I happy?” And he couldn’t answer it. He knew the words, and he had all the emotions bundled up and snaking around inside of him, but he just couldn’t put the two together, not after waking up that one day with nothing solid to stand on. He gazed through the cold morning air at the valley, looked down on the business park and the houses and trees and people just waking up to start their day, looked up at the indifferent elegant sky, and then thought back all the way through his life, from the good times to the bad times and to the times he didn’t even remember, and about everything that was and wasn’t and all that could ever be. He smiled. “I am happy.”
And so Robert made his way back inside and woke July with a thousand kisses and hugs, and they both went on living through their days until there were none left.
Dietrich Revised
This is the second version of my story Dietrich, revised as per the assignment of my creative writing class. I like the first version better, and only really changed it based on my teacher's suggestions, but I'd like to see what you think of it and which you like better.
I woke up that morning on the stoop of my run-down apartment with a hangover and a black eye. A small group had gathered and was laughing, calling me “drunken master.” From their other scattered comments I gathered that I had taken a few too many shots of Smirnoff at the local bar and then picked a fight with the most Russian-looking bastard I could find, who turned out to be an ex-weightlifter, and whom I blamed for stealing my second ex-wife. I scattered the onlookers with some grumbled incoherencies and vaguely threatening hand movements, and stumbled through the door and up the three floors of creaky hardwood stairs to my apartment.
The red light on the answering machine blinked at me from the side table by the closet, where the rope noose was hanging, and I hit the button on the third try. The usual prank calls, the taunting, the threatening from people I had been drunk or desperate enough to give my phone number to. I twiddled the knot on the noose, untied it, and retied it while the messages played. Something from my landlord involving rent, something else from the bar demanding its lampshade back. I turned back around to delete the messages, and something caught my eye; the corner of a piece of paper stuck out from underneath the answering machine. The plane ticket. I grabbed it and read the time to make sure I wasn’t late. Two hours until it left. I took a quick shower and threw some clothes and the noose into an old dusty suitcase. A cab picked me up on the curb and drove me to the airport. I spent the twelve-hour plane ride staring out the window at the clouds.
Suddenly I found myself in West Berlin. I wished I had seen it like this fifty years ago. No, all I had seen were the burnt-out skeletons of the now-magnificent stone and brick buildings, the smoldering wreckage of tanks, the bodies strewn in the streets. That was when the Germans weren’t humans, when they didn’t even exist—not alive anyway. They were just shadows hiding behind the muzzles of their guns, spewing fire into the streets of Berlin in the last great defense of the Fatherland. They weren’t men. They were metal death, they were beasts, they were demons, and every comrade knew it.
I walked the streets of the city I had once fought to destroy, entered shops and cafes, saw the Wall. Eventually I came to the Reichstag. Somehow it still made my proud to look at it, to remember that I had once stood upon it and looked out over the whole burning city in triumph. I gazed for a while, and then turned to go. As I glanced back once more, I ran into a short grey-haired man in a wool overcoat and a clean pressed suit. “I’m sorry,” I muttered in Russian, and continued walking while taking a quick look at his face. He looked very familiar. I couldn’t put my finger on why I recognized him but as I walked away, I felt the heat of his stare on the back of my head and suddenly I knew who he was.
February, 1945. I am a private in the Soviet Red Army, defender of the Glorious Motherland. The Fascist invaders have turned tail after Stalingrad in 1943 and Kursk in 1944, and are retreating under the crushing force of our sheer manpower and superior resolve.
Stalingrad is why I joined. I lived there with my mother and younger sister, who both died before we were able to cross the Volga to escape the Germans. The Germans attacked the city on their way to the oil fields towards the southeast. I was sixteen at the time, and before the Germans came, Stalingrad was the wealthiest and most prosperous city in the Soviet Union. I had a wonderful life and reveled in it, even took it for granted. But when the Germans came, I sat hidden on the bank and watched the shelling of the city across the river, heard the ceaseless gunfire, watched the flames rear up and lick the sky every night, the soldiers arrive on the train fresh from training, and leave on the same train in pieces. When the winter came, the firefights continued and the soldiers kept arriving and leaving. I kept out of sight, feeding on rats and stale bread, living under railroad tracks and bomb craters to avoid being handed a gun and five rounds and pointed towards the front.
And then, in the dead of winter, the fighting stopped; the Germans were surrounded, crushed. The Soviet Union had turned the tide of the Great Patriotic War in its favor. A Russian officer caught me stealing food from a boxcar one day and almost shot me for being a deserter and traitor until his superior intervened and instead drafted me on the spot as a punishment. At first I was reluctant, but as soon as I felt the smooth stock of the Mosin-Nagant rifle against my shoulder and the cool iron of the barrel in my hands, I felt powerful and angry enough to fight the Germans. The propaganda posters fluttering throughout the city and what the other soldiers spoke of the Nazis only strengthened my resolve: the Germans were nothing but beasts, rabid animals spawned from hell that needed to be put down in the most painful way possible. Not even the women and children were spared. In the cities that were left ruined in the wake of the advancing forces, Russian and German bodies were everywhere. I waited eagerly for the day I could carry out just retribution against the Nazi scum that plagued the Motherland.
And now it is February 1945, and we are about to advance into Germany. This will be my first action, as my unit is finally on the front lines. All of the other members in my squad have seen action in Stalingrad, so they’re going to let me put down the first fascist dog we come across. I can’t wait. Finally we reach the front, and my squad is sent on patrol. We hear a rustling in the bushes, and my adrenaline fires up. Is this it? I just wait until I see it and then pull the trigger? The squad drops to the ground, rifles at the ready in case it’s a large group or a machine gunner. A pair of hands pops up. The squad relaxes and goads me on with encouraging looks. The hands are followed by a dented rusty helmet atop a grizzled and dirty face that at once conveys utmost misery.
The German stands there for a second, or maybe a minute. My finger is on the trigger, but the trigger seems unusually heavy. Something tugs at my brain but before I can figure out what it is, I fire, and the bullet smashes into his chest, and he falls backward into the bush. I scramble up, excited and nervous at my first kill, and I look into the bush at the body. Suddenly, as my eyes meet the German’s as he lies dying on the ground, as my comrades pat me on the back and mill around impatiently, the tugging grows into a gnawing and finally something terrible, something dreadful, something I hoped I would never feel again after Stalingrad. This is a live German, a human being, and he had surrendered, and I killed him. Squad, form up, my squad leader calls. Berlin waits for no man. The German looks up for a while, giving me an unfathomable expression and then rolls over, limp. I reach down and take the lower half of his perforated dog tag and put it in my pocket. I form up with the squad and move out. Berlin waits for no man.
I glanced at the clock. 4:59. I might as well leave now. I’ll pick up the rest of the paperwork tomorrow. I cleared my oak desk, packed my briefcase, and slipped on my black wool overcoat. The phone rang. It was my wife. I told her I would be home shortly and to start dinner. I took the elevator down to the lobby and walked out under the sign on the building: “Dietrich Ostheim Publishing.” It was a cloudless afternoon, and the sky was just starting to turn violet and red. The colors reflected off of the roof of the Reichstag across the street, between my office and my apartment. As I walked across the square, a newspaper fluttered across my path, and I smiled when I caught my name in bold along the top. I had just donated $100,000 to company that helped spread holocaust awareness to allow them to build a memorial to the millions of victims of the atrocities. I followed the newspaper with my eyes as it flew away and suddenly I felt a bump as a large unshaven man in jeans and a grey t-shirt ran into me. He muttered something in Russian, and I was about to say that it was no problem when I glanced at his face. I froze. The man looked at me for a second and then walked away, faster, it seemed, with every step. I stared until he disappeared from view. It was him.
I was born and raised in Berlin, and I will nearly die in it. I was born during the depression that followed the Great War into poverty, into a broken family that seems to hate me more than it hates the Americans. Now I am five years old, and they abandon me to fend for myself because they can’t afford to feed me anymore. I grow up on the streets, but I keep myself informed from stolen newspapers and the conversations of passers-by. I know what the world outside of Germany is like, and so I know that what I have to do is wrong, the results of depraved necessity. I hate myself for stealing food and supplies, breaking into factories and small shops, sometimes hurting other children who threaten my well-being.
But now I am 17, and there is hope. There is talk of a new leader who will change things, make the economy better. Adolf Hitler takes power, and I don’t hesitate to join the Nazi Party. I do whatever I can to help the cause: I hand out pamphlets, speak at bars and clubs, and register members. Suddenly, things turn radical. Broken windows, burning books, yellow stars. I take part in all of it, and I know it is wrong, but I do it anyway, because it is the easy thing to do, because I have my own safety to think of.
War starts. I join the military and because of my standing in the Party, I am promoted and put in charge of a company. I lead my men in the Blitzkrieg through Poland and into Russia, and they leave a trail of death and destruction; pillage, murder, and rape. Stuff of Viking legend. I don’t stop them, once or twice I even take part, though I hated it. Eventually we make it to Stalingrad, I survive the harsh winter and the Russian encirclement, and I am on one of the last planes out, abandoning my men.
Months later I am in charge of another company and we march east again, past the same ruined cities seemingly filled with the bodies of my company’s victims. I decide that I am done. During the next battle, I sneak away to surrender. Most Germans surrender in the west because the Americans treat us better, but I don’t deserve that. I deserve death, torture if I was lucky.
I hear a squad of Russians passing. I put my hands up, and then stand from my hiding place, a leafy bush. A young Communist is standing, pointing his rifle at me. Give me the bullet. Give me the freedom of death. When the bullet finally comes, I praise God. But then it hits me, and I fall, and lay staring up at the sky. Something casts a shadow across me, and I realize that it’s the Russian. He has an odd expression on his face, and suddenly I don’t want to die. Somehow, in all the years of death I faced, all of the horrible things I had done, I never really thought about death. Death was something for old people and martyrs. I was a villain. But it takes my arrival on the doorstep of death for me to realize that I don’t want to die.
I pass out, and when I wake up I’m in the hands of the Americans. They nurse me back to health and I return to what is now West Germany. I turn my life around. I turn everything around.
I woke up that morning on the stoop of my run-down apartment with a hangover and a black eye. A small group had gathered and was laughing, calling me “drunken master.” From their other scattered comments I gathered that I had taken a few too many shots of Smirnoff at the local bar and then picked a fight with the most Russian-looking bastard I could find, who turned out to be an ex-weightlifter, and whom I blamed for stealing my second ex-wife. I scattered the onlookers with some grumbled incoherencies and vaguely threatening hand movements, and stumbled through the door and up the three floors of creaky hardwood stairs to my apartment.
The red light on the answering machine blinked at me from the side table by the closet, where the rope noose was hanging, and I hit the button on the third try. The usual prank calls, the taunting, the threatening from people I had been drunk or desperate enough to give my phone number to. I twiddled the knot on the noose, untied it, and retied it while the messages played. Something from my landlord involving rent, something else from the bar demanding its lampshade back. I turned back around to delete the messages, and something caught my eye; the corner of a piece of paper stuck out from underneath the answering machine. The plane ticket. I grabbed it and read the time to make sure I wasn’t late. Two hours until it left. I took a quick shower and threw some clothes and the noose into an old dusty suitcase. A cab picked me up on the curb and drove me to the airport. I spent the twelve-hour plane ride staring out the window at the clouds.
Suddenly I found myself in West Berlin. I wished I had seen it like this fifty years ago. No, all I had seen were the burnt-out skeletons of the now-magnificent stone and brick buildings, the smoldering wreckage of tanks, the bodies strewn in the streets. That was when the Germans weren’t humans, when they didn’t even exist—not alive anyway. They were just shadows hiding behind the muzzles of their guns, spewing fire into the streets of Berlin in the last great defense of the Fatherland. They weren’t men. They were metal death, they were beasts, they were demons, and every comrade knew it.
I walked the streets of the city I had once fought to destroy, entered shops and cafes, saw the Wall. Eventually I came to the Reichstag. Somehow it still made my proud to look at it, to remember that I had once stood upon it and looked out over the whole burning city in triumph. I gazed for a while, and then turned to go. As I glanced back once more, I ran into a short grey-haired man in a wool overcoat and a clean pressed suit. “I’m sorry,” I muttered in Russian, and continued walking while taking a quick look at his face. He looked very familiar. I couldn’t put my finger on why I recognized him but as I walked away, I felt the heat of his stare on the back of my head and suddenly I knew who he was.
February, 1945. I am a private in the Soviet Red Army, defender of the Glorious Motherland. The Fascist invaders have turned tail after Stalingrad in 1943 and Kursk in 1944, and are retreating under the crushing force of our sheer manpower and superior resolve.
Stalingrad is why I joined. I lived there with my mother and younger sister, who both died before we were able to cross the Volga to escape the Germans. The Germans attacked the city on their way to the oil fields towards the southeast. I was sixteen at the time, and before the Germans came, Stalingrad was the wealthiest and most prosperous city in the Soviet Union. I had a wonderful life and reveled in it, even took it for granted. But when the Germans came, I sat hidden on the bank and watched the shelling of the city across the river, heard the ceaseless gunfire, watched the flames rear up and lick the sky every night, the soldiers arrive on the train fresh from training, and leave on the same train in pieces. When the winter came, the firefights continued and the soldiers kept arriving and leaving. I kept out of sight, feeding on rats and stale bread, living under railroad tracks and bomb craters to avoid being handed a gun and five rounds and pointed towards the front.
And then, in the dead of winter, the fighting stopped; the Germans were surrounded, crushed. The Soviet Union had turned the tide of the Great Patriotic War in its favor. A Russian officer caught me stealing food from a boxcar one day and almost shot me for being a deserter and traitor until his superior intervened and instead drafted me on the spot as a punishment. At first I was reluctant, but as soon as I felt the smooth stock of the Mosin-Nagant rifle against my shoulder and the cool iron of the barrel in my hands, I felt powerful and angry enough to fight the Germans. The propaganda posters fluttering throughout the city and what the other soldiers spoke of the Nazis only strengthened my resolve: the Germans were nothing but beasts, rabid animals spawned from hell that needed to be put down in the most painful way possible. Not even the women and children were spared. In the cities that were left ruined in the wake of the advancing forces, Russian and German bodies were everywhere. I waited eagerly for the day I could carry out just retribution against the Nazi scum that plagued the Motherland.
And now it is February 1945, and we are about to advance into Germany. This will be my first action, as my unit is finally on the front lines. All of the other members in my squad have seen action in Stalingrad, so they’re going to let me put down the first fascist dog we come across. I can’t wait. Finally we reach the front, and my squad is sent on patrol. We hear a rustling in the bushes, and my adrenaline fires up. Is this it? I just wait until I see it and then pull the trigger? The squad drops to the ground, rifles at the ready in case it’s a large group or a machine gunner. A pair of hands pops up. The squad relaxes and goads me on with encouraging looks. The hands are followed by a dented rusty helmet atop a grizzled and dirty face that at once conveys utmost misery.
The German stands there for a second, or maybe a minute. My finger is on the trigger, but the trigger seems unusually heavy. Something tugs at my brain but before I can figure out what it is, I fire, and the bullet smashes into his chest, and he falls backward into the bush. I scramble up, excited and nervous at my first kill, and I look into the bush at the body. Suddenly, as my eyes meet the German’s as he lies dying on the ground, as my comrades pat me on the back and mill around impatiently, the tugging grows into a gnawing and finally something terrible, something dreadful, something I hoped I would never feel again after Stalingrad. This is a live German, a human being, and he had surrendered, and I killed him. Squad, form up, my squad leader calls. Berlin waits for no man. The German looks up for a while, giving me an unfathomable expression and then rolls over, limp. I reach down and take the lower half of his perforated dog tag and put it in my pocket. I form up with the squad and move out. Berlin waits for no man.
I glanced at the clock. 4:59. I might as well leave now. I’ll pick up the rest of the paperwork tomorrow. I cleared my oak desk, packed my briefcase, and slipped on my black wool overcoat. The phone rang. It was my wife. I told her I would be home shortly and to start dinner. I took the elevator down to the lobby and walked out under the sign on the building: “Dietrich Ostheim Publishing.” It was a cloudless afternoon, and the sky was just starting to turn violet and red. The colors reflected off of the roof of the Reichstag across the street, between my office and my apartment. As I walked across the square, a newspaper fluttered across my path, and I smiled when I caught my name in bold along the top. I had just donated $100,000 to company that helped spread holocaust awareness to allow them to build a memorial to the millions of victims of the atrocities. I followed the newspaper with my eyes as it flew away and suddenly I felt a bump as a large unshaven man in jeans and a grey t-shirt ran into me. He muttered something in Russian, and I was about to say that it was no problem when I glanced at his face. I froze. The man looked at me for a second and then walked away, faster, it seemed, with every step. I stared until he disappeared from view. It was him.
I was born and raised in Berlin, and I will nearly die in it. I was born during the depression that followed the Great War into poverty, into a broken family that seems to hate me more than it hates the Americans. Now I am five years old, and they abandon me to fend for myself because they can’t afford to feed me anymore. I grow up on the streets, but I keep myself informed from stolen newspapers and the conversations of passers-by. I know what the world outside of Germany is like, and so I know that what I have to do is wrong, the results of depraved necessity. I hate myself for stealing food and supplies, breaking into factories and small shops, sometimes hurting other children who threaten my well-being.
But now I am 17, and there is hope. There is talk of a new leader who will change things, make the economy better. Adolf Hitler takes power, and I don’t hesitate to join the Nazi Party. I do whatever I can to help the cause: I hand out pamphlets, speak at bars and clubs, and register members. Suddenly, things turn radical. Broken windows, burning books, yellow stars. I take part in all of it, and I know it is wrong, but I do it anyway, because it is the easy thing to do, because I have my own safety to think of.
War starts. I join the military and because of my standing in the Party, I am promoted and put in charge of a company. I lead my men in the Blitzkrieg through Poland and into Russia, and they leave a trail of death and destruction; pillage, murder, and rape. Stuff of Viking legend. I don’t stop them, once or twice I even take part, though I hated it. Eventually we make it to Stalingrad, I survive the harsh winter and the Russian encirclement, and I am on one of the last planes out, abandoning my men.
Months later I am in charge of another company and we march east again, past the same ruined cities seemingly filled with the bodies of my company’s victims. I decide that I am done. During the next battle, I sneak away to surrender. Most Germans surrender in the west because the Americans treat us better, but I don’t deserve that. I deserve death, torture if I was lucky.
I hear a squad of Russians passing. I put my hands up, and then stand from my hiding place, a leafy bush. A young Communist is standing, pointing his rifle at me. Give me the bullet. Give me the freedom of death. When the bullet finally comes, I praise God. But then it hits me, and I fall, and lay staring up at the sky. Something casts a shadow across me, and I realize that it’s the Russian. He has an odd expression on his face, and suddenly I don’t want to die. Somehow, in all the years of death I faced, all of the horrible things I had done, I never really thought about death. Death was something for old people and martyrs. I was a villain. But it takes my arrival on the doorstep of death for me to realize that I don’t want to die.
I pass out, and when I wake up I’m in the hands of the Americans. They nurse me back to health and I return to what is now West Germany. I turn my life around. I turn everything around.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Involuntary Skepticism (Short Story)
This is a short story I wrote for my creative writing class. It's not due yet, I'm still working on it, and I may even write a different story to turn in, but here it is. Enjoy.
He fell of the bed. He perceived nothing, then everything as one. His muscles contracted involuntarily, sending his limbs flailing in every direction and nonsense spewing from his mouth at all volumes. His mother downstairs heard the noises, abandoned her breakfast, and rushed upstairs to meet his father, who was already halfway down the hallway towards the door. When they opened it they must have thought their son was having a seizure. The father grabbed a phone and dialed three digits as the mother threw herself upon her son to contain him and keep him from hurting himself in his wild movements.
The ambulance came and subdued him with liquid in a syringe, and then loaded him up and drove him to the hospital. He awoke later that day and uttered some more vocalizations, though with less intensity than before, and struggled weakly in vain against the restraints on the bed that the doctors had worked him into. His mother, eyes red and flowing, sniffled and touched him gingerly on the arm.
“Robert?”
Immediately Robert stopped moving. His mother froze, unsure of whether or not this was a good thing, but was comforted when she noticed that Robert was breathing, and he was slowly moving his head to face her. His eyes were wide open but staring somewhere far behind her.
“Robert?”
Robert grunted, and then again. His mother let out in a quick breath the sob she had been holding in and then held her next breath. Would he speak?
“Uhh… uhhh…. Uhhhhr… Uhr… Urrahh… Urroo… Urob…”
“Robert!” his mother spoke more urgently, encouraging him to repeat.
“Rrrobuh..Rober.. Robert.” He had been gripping the sides of the bed and straining himself as if trying to break the iron bars of a jail cell, but now, apparently exhausted by the effort, Robert slumped back onto the bed, awake but still. His father, having held back until now, rushed forward in an attempt to rouse him further, force him to regain his senses. He grabbed Robert firmly but gently by his shoulders, and gently shook him. Robert groaned again.
“Robert, it’s your father. Please, Robert.” Robert turned his face towards his father, and continuing to shake Robert, his father said, “Robert. Robert.”
“What are you doing, dear? Are you trying to hurt him?” asked his wife.
“No, just wait. Just wait. Robert. Robert.” Then he stopped shaking him and, making sure Robert was still looking at him, pointed to himself and said, “Dad. Dad.” Then he pointed to his wife and said, “Mom. Mom.” He repeated the entire process over and over again, shaking Robert while calling his name, and pointing to himself and his wife and saying “Dad. Mom.”
After thirty minutes of this, he was about to give up, but suddenly Robert groaned again. “Rrrobert. Dad. Mommm. Robert, Dad, Mom.” Then his finger slowly made its way from down by his side to pointing at his chin. “Robert.” His finger then, more quickly now, swung out into the air until it was pointed at his father as he spoke “Dad,” and then his mother as he spoke “Mom.” He did this a few times, and after his parents were convinced it wasn’t a fluke, they broke into tears of both sadness and joy and hugged each other. But the next time Robert tried to identify his father, his finger only pointed at the space that his father’s head used to occupy. His parents grew silent. Their son would not recover quickly or easily.
At school, news spread quickly of Robert’s apparent seizure, although some speculated that it was a stroke or even some kind of suicide attempt via drugs. The doctors were forced to run test after test, all with inconclusive diagnoses. But he slowly became more aware of his surroundings, and his parents hired various tutors who specialized in the education of the mentally challenged. His knowledge of English grammar had disappeared completely, and he could only learn concrete words and concepts, things that he could be shown examples of. When he was first given food after it was deemed he no longer needed the feeding tube, he stared at it. “What is it?” he asked in a stilted monotone.
“Food, honey. Please eat it.”
“Eat?”
His father demonstrated, taking a spoonful of the applesauce on the tray and placing it in his mouth. He took care to keep his mouth open so Robert could see how it worked.
“Why eat?”
“Because you need to. It keeps you alive,” said his mother, welling up with tears.
"Alive?”
After a few months, he was released from the hospital (though his parents threatened to sue the doctors for not being able to treat their son), and after a visit to school to visit friends, expressed that he wanted to go back to school. He couldn’t actually say what he wanted, but one night after an empty bedroom and a frantic search, he was found at the school trying to open the door to a classroom. So his parents agreed on condition that his friends watch after him and not involve him in any of their “crazy teenager” activities. They agreed and he carpooled to school the next day.
The first class of the day was band. Robert sat in the back and listened. At least his friends presumed he was listening, because he just sat there and stared at the rest of the band, holding a pair of drumsticks in his hands that he twiddled with aimlessly. But he tapped his feet in time, and at one point he started to cry. A percussionist near him noticed and ran over. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“Music,” he replied flatly.
After band, his friends guided him outside, because when he wasn’t physically urged anywhere, he just stood there. It was brunch time, fifteen minutes before the next class. His friends went and got food. He stood against the wall and watched the people walking by, who gave him sympathetic or furtive looks, depending on the version of the story they heard. He had a feeling in his stomach. “Eat.” A student next to him said, “Hold on, they’re coming back with food.” Robert stood and waited. A girl passed by, and Roberts eyes seemed stuck on her. When she noticed, she paused and then walked slowly back towards him. “Robert? Is it true what happened? A seizure?”
“Siezure? No. Nonsense.”
“Nonsense? Um… okay. Do you remember me?”
“Yes.”
“What’s my name?”
“I do not know.”
“It’s July, Robert. Do you remember who I am?”
“July.”
“No, Robert, not my name, who I am?”
“You are a person. You are a girl.”
“I was your girlfriend, Robert. A long time ago.”
“Girlfriend?” Robert had another feeling in his stomach. The word “eat” flitted across his mind, but he stopped it from coming out of his mouth. It was different.
“You liked me, and I liked you. We went places together, did things. We kissed,” she made sure no one was listening, “we had sex.”
Robert squirmed inside at those last words. “Kissed? Sex?” he asked, a little too loud. July rolled her eyes. The bell rang, and all the other students began to leave. July could see Robert’s friends coming back after along line at the cafeteria, and pulled him away through the mass of students. They went behind a nearby building and July pulled down Robert’s head and kissed him longingly. When it was over, she said, “I missed you Robert. I was never really sure why I broke up with you, but I guess it took this whole mess to make me really realize what a mistake I had made. All the old feelings are coming back, but stronger. I think I really do love you.” And with that, she leaned her head back and kissed him again, even more passionately.
Robert rolled out of bed and turned the alarm off before it went off. 6:28. He always woke up a little earlier than the alarm, so there wasn’t much use for it for him, but July wanted it there and set just in case. He supposed he would have to deal with it’s incessant screeches if he could be in a relationship with the love of his life.
He stood up and stretched, then made his way downstairs and out the back door. The pool was still as glass despite the cool morning wind, and the sunrise reflected off of it an array of warm pastel colors. The valley filled with suburban homes stretched before him, surrounded by squad, brush-covered hills. At the foot of the farthest hills was the business park that Robert would be making his way to in a few hours to shuffle papers and enter random numbers into a computer. In the other direction, still hidden in the night’s remaining darkness, was the community college that July taught philosophy at.
Even back in high school she had been very smart about all sorts of abstract philosophical concepts, and she tried to teach them to Robert. She had taught him the words “Love and Happiness,” “Good and Bad,” “Want and Need.” He didn’t really know what they meant, no matter how many times he read Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Sartre. When he was around July, Robert had a feeling that he called “Love.” When someone was mean to him, he had a feeling that he called “Angry.” When he was hungry, he “Wanted” to eat.
But now, just as he had done every morning after getting married and moving here with July, Robert stood looking out at another bright new day over the earth, and he asked himself, “Am I happy?” And he couldn’t answer it. All he could do was take in everything and embrace it. Maybe happiness was everything, all put together into one overpowering emotion that was the world.
And so Robert made his way back inside and woke July with a thousand kisses and hugs, and they both went on living through their days until there were none left.
He fell of the bed. He perceived nothing, then everything as one. His muscles contracted involuntarily, sending his limbs flailing in every direction and nonsense spewing from his mouth at all volumes. His mother downstairs heard the noises, abandoned her breakfast, and rushed upstairs to meet his father, who was already halfway down the hallway towards the door. When they opened it they must have thought their son was having a seizure. The father grabbed a phone and dialed three digits as the mother threw herself upon her son to contain him and keep him from hurting himself in his wild movements.
The ambulance came and subdued him with liquid in a syringe, and then loaded him up and drove him to the hospital. He awoke later that day and uttered some more vocalizations, though with less intensity than before, and struggled weakly in vain against the restraints on the bed that the doctors had worked him into. His mother, eyes red and flowing, sniffled and touched him gingerly on the arm.
“Robert?”
Immediately Robert stopped moving. His mother froze, unsure of whether or not this was a good thing, but was comforted when she noticed that Robert was breathing, and he was slowly moving his head to face her. His eyes were wide open but staring somewhere far behind her.
“Robert?”
Robert grunted, and then again. His mother let out in a quick breath the sob she had been holding in and then held her next breath. Would he speak?
“Uhh… uhhh…. Uhhhhr… Uhr… Urrahh… Urroo… Urob…”
“Robert!” his mother spoke more urgently, encouraging him to repeat.
“Rrrobuh..Rober.. Robert.” He had been gripping the sides of the bed and straining himself as if trying to break the iron bars of a jail cell, but now, apparently exhausted by the effort, Robert slumped back onto the bed, awake but still. His father, having held back until now, rushed forward in an attempt to rouse him further, force him to regain his senses. He grabbed Robert firmly but gently by his shoulders, and gently shook him. Robert groaned again.
“Robert, it’s your father. Please, Robert.” Robert turned his face towards his father, and continuing to shake Robert, his father said, “Robert. Robert.”
“What are you doing, dear? Are you trying to hurt him?” asked his wife.
“No, just wait. Just wait. Robert. Robert.” Then he stopped shaking him and, making sure Robert was still looking at him, pointed to himself and said, “Dad. Dad.” Then he pointed to his wife and said, “Mom. Mom.” He repeated the entire process over and over again, shaking Robert while calling his name, and pointing to himself and his wife and saying “Dad. Mom.”
After thirty minutes of this, he was about to give up, but suddenly Robert groaned again. “Rrrobert. Dad. Mommm. Robert, Dad, Mom.” Then his finger slowly made its way from down by his side to pointing at his chin. “Robert.” His finger then, more quickly now, swung out into the air until it was pointed at his father as he spoke “Dad,” and then his mother as he spoke “Mom.” He did this a few times, and after his parents were convinced it wasn’t a fluke, they broke into tears of both sadness and joy and hugged each other. But the next time Robert tried to identify his father, his finger only pointed at the space that his father’s head used to occupy. His parents grew silent. Their son would not recover quickly or easily.
At school, news spread quickly of Robert’s apparent seizure, although some speculated that it was a stroke or even some kind of suicide attempt via drugs. The doctors were forced to run test after test, all with inconclusive diagnoses. But he slowly became more aware of his surroundings, and his parents hired various tutors who specialized in the education of the mentally challenged. His knowledge of English grammar had disappeared completely, and he could only learn concrete words and concepts, things that he could be shown examples of. When he was first given food after it was deemed he no longer needed the feeding tube, he stared at it. “What is it?” he asked in a stilted monotone.
“Food, honey. Please eat it.”
“Eat?”
His father demonstrated, taking a spoonful of the applesauce on the tray and placing it in his mouth. He took care to keep his mouth open so Robert could see how it worked.
“Why eat?”
“Because you need to. It keeps you alive,” said his mother, welling up with tears.
"Alive?”
After a few months, he was released from the hospital (though his parents threatened to sue the doctors for not being able to treat their son), and after a visit to school to visit friends, expressed that he wanted to go back to school. He couldn’t actually say what he wanted, but one night after an empty bedroom and a frantic search, he was found at the school trying to open the door to a classroom. So his parents agreed on condition that his friends watch after him and not involve him in any of their “crazy teenager” activities. They agreed and he carpooled to school the next day.
The first class of the day was band. Robert sat in the back and listened. At least his friends presumed he was listening, because he just sat there and stared at the rest of the band, holding a pair of drumsticks in his hands that he twiddled with aimlessly. But he tapped his feet in time, and at one point he started to cry. A percussionist near him noticed and ran over. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“Music,” he replied flatly.
After band, his friends guided him outside, because when he wasn’t physically urged anywhere, he just stood there. It was brunch time, fifteen minutes before the next class. His friends went and got food. He stood against the wall and watched the people walking by, who gave him sympathetic or furtive looks, depending on the version of the story they heard. He had a feeling in his stomach. “Eat.” A student next to him said, “Hold on, they’re coming back with food.” Robert stood and waited. A girl passed by, and Roberts eyes seemed stuck on her. When she noticed, she paused and then walked slowly back towards him. “Robert? Is it true what happened? A seizure?”
“Siezure? No. Nonsense.”
“Nonsense? Um… okay. Do you remember me?”
“Yes.”
“What’s my name?”
“I do not know.”
“It’s July, Robert. Do you remember who I am?”
“July.”
“No, Robert, not my name, who I am?”
“You are a person. You are a girl.”
“I was your girlfriend, Robert. A long time ago.”
“Girlfriend?” Robert had another feeling in his stomach. The word “eat” flitted across his mind, but he stopped it from coming out of his mouth. It was different.
“You liked me, and I liked you. We went places together, did things. We kissed,” she made sure no one was listening, “we had sex.”
Robert squirmed inside at those last words. “Kissed? Sex?” he asked, a little too loud. July rolled her eyes. The bell rang, and all the other students began to leave. July could see Robert’s friends coming back after along line at the cafeteria, and pulled him away through the mass of students. They went behind a nearby building and July pulled down Robert’s head and kissed him longingly. When it was over, she said, “I missed you Robert. I was never really sure why I broke up with you, but I guess it took this whole mess to make me really realize what a mistake I had made. All the old feelings are coming back, but stronger. I think I really do love you.” And with that, she leaned her head back and kissed him again, even more passionately.
Robert rolled out of bed and turned the alarm off before it went off. 6:28. He always woke up a little earlier than the alarm, so there wasn’t much use for it for him, but July wanted it there and set just in case. He supposed he would have to deal with it’s incessant screeches if he could be in a relationship with the love of his life.
He stood up and stretched, then made his way downstairs and out the back door. The pool was still as glass despite the cool morning wind, and the sunrise reflected off of it an array of warm pastel colors. The valley filled with suburban homes stretched before him, surrounded by squad, brush-covered hills. At the foot of the farthest hills was the business park that Robert would be making his way to in a few hours to shuffle papers and enter random numbers into a computer. In the other direction, still hidden in the night’s remaining darkness, was the community college that July taught philosophy at.
Even back in high school she had been very smart about all sorts of abstract philosophical concepts, and she tried to teach them to Robert. She had taught him the words “Love and Happiness,” “Good and Bad,” “Want and Need.” He didn’t really know what they meant, no matter how many times he read Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Sartre. When he was around July, Robert had a feeling that he called “Love.” When someone was mean to him, he had a feeling that he called “Angry.” When he was hungry, he “Wanted” to eat.
But now, just as he had done every morning after getting married and moving here with July, Robert stood looking out at another bright new day over the earth, and he asked himself, “Am I happy?” And he couldn’t answer it. All he could do was take in everything and embrace it. Maybe happiness was everything, all put together into one overpowering emotion that was the world.
And so Robert made his way back inside and woke July with a thousand kisses and hugs, and they both went on living through their days until there were none left.
Ethics
So halfway through my grand theory of ethics, I realized something and couldn't write any more: it's impossible to impose a universal ethical principle on every human being. Let's look into it.
My starting point is Kant's "Categorical Imperative." It states "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." This means that before you take any action, whatever it may be, you are implying that you give permission for everyone else in the world to take that same action in the same circumstances. For instance, I'm walking down the street and I think someone looks at me funny. I want to make the choice to punch him in the face. First I have to consider if I would be willing to let him punch me in the face if he though I was looking at him funny, regardless of whether or not I was. So I decide not to punch him in the face.
This seems simple enough. It's really just the Golden Rule, but the Golden Rule seems to imply an "eye for an eye" relationship between two individuals, whereas the categorical imperative applies more the everyone. But when I thought about it, I found some ways to get around it. The first is to take an action and then make sure that no one else can be in the same circumstances. This is easy when one is in a position of power, such as the government of the United States. For example, in the 60s the US government staged a successful coup in Guatemala against it's democratically elected president and installed their own US-friendly dictator, all to benefit the United Fruit Company. Given the US's position of power, it's virtually impossible for any other nation to carry out a similar action against the United States, not only because they are weaker militarily than us, but because the US is strong, is protected by the UN and international law, and because other nations don't hold significant, if any, interests in the US.
Another, more individual example of this is murder or any other crime significant enough to warrant life in jail, or any other action that would remove an individual from society, such as suicide. Given the categorical imperative, an individual in jail can justify his actions by saying that even if everyone else takes his murder and its circumstances as universal law, it doesn't matter to him because he will never be in a position to be murdered given those circumstances because he is removed from society. Suicide is similar, because it might not matter to a person who commits suicide whether or not others will consider suicide justifiable by his circumstances since he will be gone from the world anyway.
Given these loopholes alone, it's obvious that the categorical imperative isn't sufficient. After a lecture on Feminism last week and a meditation on happiness a few days ago, I came up with a new theory: do what makes you happy, as long as it doesn't stop others from doing what makes them happy. But this alone doesn't give provisions for punishment if someone does stop someone else from doing what makes them happy. So I can combine it with the categorical imperative to make this: Do what makes you happy, as long as it doesn't stop others from doing what makes them happy, and act according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
This looks good, but there are still some major problems. Some, or perhaps many, people don't know what makes them happy. Maybe they've lost the ability to categorize their feelings, or maybe they've realized there is no categories of feelings (depending on whether or not emotions really are separate or not, but that's in the realm of metaphysics and/or psychology). Another problem is the same problem with the categorical imperative: some people just don't care about other people, and will do what they want or can, regardless of the consequences or because they know they can evade the consequences. There are a thousand and one other reasons why neither of these theories will work, and so I've reached my final theory:
There cannot be a universal ethical law that can be applied equally to everyone and will be obeyed by everyone. It can't come from outside the world, because since we can't experience what's outside the world, and only experience what's in it, we are forced to live in the world and act as if what's outside holds no sway. And it obviously can't come from us, because everyone is different, everyone has different wants, needs, desires, emotions, feelings, and circumstances. So how do we live ethically? The simple answer: we cannot live ethically as a nation, as a society, or as a global community. But we can live ethically on a local and personal level. We can act given my combined theory with the people we know and meet, and try to spread this idea of ethics as best we can, but we also have to accept that there will be "evil" in the world, there will be people who will hurt other people, who will take advantage and put you down. But that is part of the human condition that we cannot escape. But maybe if we get as many people as we can to live by this principle, then maybe the problem of evil won't seem so formidable.
My starting point is Kant's "Categorical Imperative." It states "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." This means that before you take any action, whatever it may be, you are implying that you give permission for everyone else in the world to take that same action in the same circumstances. For instance, I'm walking down the street and I think someone looks at me funny. I want to make the choice to punch him in the face. First I have to consider if I would be willing to let him punch me in the face if he though I was looking at him funny, regardless of whether or not I was. So I decide not to punch him in the face.
This seems simple enough. It's really just the Golden Rule, but the Golden Rule seems to imply an "eye for an eye" relationship between two individuals, whereas the categorical imperative applies more the everyone. But when I thought about it, I found some ways to get around it. The first is to take an action and then make sure that no one else can be in the same circumstances. This is easy when one is in a position of power, such as the government of the United States. For example, in the 60s the US government staged a successful coup in Guatemala against it's democratically elected president and installed their own US-friendly dictator, all to benefit the United Fruit Company. Given the US's position of power, it's virtually impossible for any other nation to carry out a similar action against the United States, not only because they are weaker militarily than us, but because the US is strong, is protected by the UN and international law, and because other nations don't hold significant, if any, interests in the US.
Another, more individual example of this is murder or any other crime significant enough to warrant life in jail, or any other action that would remove an individual from society, such as suicide. Given the categorical imperative, an individual in jail can justify his actions by saying that even if everyone else takes his murder and its circumstances as universal law, it doesn't matter to him because he will never be in a position to be murdered given those circumstances because he is removed from society. Suicide is similar, because it might not matter to a person who commits suicide whether or not others will consider suicide justifiable by his circumstances since he will be gone from the world anyway.
Given these loopholes alone, it's obvious that the categorical imperative isn't sufficient. After a lecture on Feminism last week and a meditation on happiness a few days ago, I came up with a new theory: do what makes you happy, as long as it doesn't stop others from doing what makes them happy. But this alone doesn't give provisions for punishment if someone does stop someone else from doing what makes them happy. So I can combine it with the categorical imperative to make this: Do what makes you happy, as long as it doesn't stop others from doing what makes them happy, and act according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
This looks good, but there are still some major problems. Some, or perhaps many, people don't know what makes them happy. Maybe they've lost the ability to categorize their feelings, or maybe they've realized there is no categories of feelings (depending on whether or not emotions really are separate or not, but that's in the realm of metaphysics and/or psychology). Another problem is the same problem with the categorical imperative: some people just don't care about other people, and will do what they want or can, regardless of the consequences or because they know they can evade the consequences. There are a thousand and one other reasons why neither of these theories will work, and so I've reached my final theory:
There cannot be a universal ethical law that can be applied equally to everyone and will be obeyed by everyone. It can't come from outside the world, because since we can't experience what's outside the world, and only experience what's in it, we are forced to live in the world and act as if what's outside holds no sway. And it obviously can't come from us, because everyone is different, everyone has different wants, needs, desires, emotions, feelings, and circumstances. So how do we live ethically? The simple answer: we cannot live ethically as a nation, as a society, or as a global community. But we can live ethically on a local and personal level. We can act given my combined theory with the people we know and meet, and try to spread this idea of ethics as best we can, but we also have to accept that there will be "evil" in the world, there will be people who will hurt other people, who will take advantage and put you down. But that is part of the human condition that we cannot escape. But maybe if we get as many people as we can to live by this principle, then maybe the problem of evil won't seem so formidable.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Blast, Foiled Again!
Once again, it seems some jerk a hundred years ago stole my ideas. A few weeks after my post about language, I read Nietzsche's ideas about language, and he has a very similar hypothesis, which is that language is really just a set of metaphors that refer to objects or ideas. He doesn't mention, at least in anything that I've read, that this means that we can't describe anything outside empirical reality, but rather that there is something there, something tangible and real, but that we can never "know" it because language can't refer literally to things. I do agree that we can't really know reality because of the limitations of language, but the way he claims there is empirical reality blocked by language is a little too similar to Locke's theory of reality, or at least objects, as "something I know not what." This is neither acceptable or rejectable, since in my philosophy any possibility has the probability of being correct and false, but most philosophers reject this anyway because it violates Occam's Razor (the simplest explanation is the best, and having just another mystery makes it more complicated). This is why I think it's preferable to think of language as not blocking our access to "something I know not what," but anything and/or nothing. "Something" presumes there is anything out there.
Anywho, sorry for no updates recently, busy with school and such. But I am going to be posting later today or tomorrow about something I haven't really tried to discuss yet, and that's ethics. I had an idea in class yesterday, but I have yet to refine it.
Anywho, sorry for no updates recently, busy with school and such. But I am going to be posting later today or tomorrow about something I haven't really tried to discuss yet, and that's ethics. I had an idea in class yesterday, but I have yet to refine it.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
On Language
More and more I’m reading or hearing about philosophers who attempt to discount the conclusions of other philosophers because there is something wrong in their definition or description of whatever it is they are attempting to conclude. For a while I’ve had a kind of distaste for whoever pulls this, though I wasn’t exactly sure what my complaint was. But now that I think about it, language can’t really describe ultimate reality, so that even those who discount the conclusions of others are at some fallacy in trying to substitute their own conclusions. Here is what I think:
First of all, all philosophical conclusions are based on assumptions. If it’s possible for ultimate reality not to be based on logic, as I’ve explained in my other posts (like a different operating system on a computer, or a life form based on an element other than carbon), then even the simplest statements like “A is A” has the possibility to be false, because it assumes that ultimate reality is based on logic. It still is possible to draw valid conclusions from any premise, however, but the whole argument has to be an “If this, therefore that” format, instead of “This, therefore that.” Basically, as I’ve said in my last posts, everything in doubtable, so even though valid arguments can be drawn from them, they might not be correct because the premise is unverifiable.
That being said, language itself is sometimes examined to find out something about ultimate reality. St. Anselm’s famous ontological argument for God’s existence is a prime example. It is basically: God is “that than which nothing greater can be thought.” This means he is perfect, and part of being perfect is existing. Therefore God exists. This argument is based on the definition of God as traditionally accepted. However, the main fallacy is that he assumes that God really is that than which nothing greater can be thought. He could say that “If God is that than which nothing greater can be thought, and do be this he has to exist, then he exists,” then it could be a valid argument.
Unfortunately for Anselm, it’s still invalid because it relies on the definition, which was written or created by humans. Human language is what I’ll call “referential.” This means that it was created specifically by humans in order to function in the empirical view of reality (which, for lack of coming up with a name in previous posts, I’ll call “the world”). It was created out of necessity for survival, the evolutionary result of a larger brain. It’s referential because it refers to things in the world, or at least what we call “things” because many famous philosophers have problems with distinguishing between different and separate objects, and hold that either all is one or any number of other things. So a caveman might say to another “Look out for that lion,” a scientist might say “the wavelength of color X is Y nm (or whatever measurement light waves are measured in),” and I might look at my closet and say “that is a brown wooden closet.” These statements all function pragmatically in the world.
It’s when we get to abstract concepts that we get into trouble. We can say “good is good,” which is a tautology that doesn’t actually tell us what good is. G.E. Moore held that good was indefinable, what Kant would call a simple idea, something that can’t be broken down any further. A mermaid can be broken down into a human and a fish, and then each of those can be broken down further into organs and bones and such, all the way down to atoms and their components. These, in analogy, would be the “good” if the mermaid is something that is or contains good. But when we say “good is being nice to people” or “good is pleasure,” or that “being nice to people is good” and “pleasure is good,” when we relate good to something in the world through language, we are attempting the impossible. We are trying to relate something that language wasn’t built to refer to, to something that it was. Even in the world, language isn’t an exact description of something. I say “my brown closet” because it appears that way to people whose vision of color is “normal.” I don’t say “my closet with the wavelength of X” because it’s impractical, because it doesn’t help us function in the world. Humans don’t function in what isn’t the world, or at least I don’t since I don’t even know if other humans exist. So especially if ultimate reality isn’t based on logic, how is our language ever supposed to describe it?
So far I’ve talked about “good,” which in the realm of ethics. But this whole idea of language as referential only in the closed system that is the world, and not functional in ultimate reality if ultimate reality doesn’t rely on human logic, applies to metaphysics as well. I can define God as anything, because the only “proof” we have of God’s perfection is the Bible, which could be pure fiction for all anyone knows, and people who claim to have known God, who can’t be trusted not because they just sound crazy, but because I don’t know if they exist and I can’t read their mind if they do. I can say God is fallable, stupid, fat and ugly, and he could be for all we know. This is why any possibility for God’s existence is, well, possible. It’s the same for ultimate reality. Unless the world is ultimate reality, we can define ultimate reality as literally anything, even as not making any sense, and we can anyway because as long as there is even the smallest chance that the world isn’t ultimate reality, we can’t make any assumptions.
So it is for these reasons that not only can language not describe ultimate reality, only this world, but that the world exists as a separate entity only in a certain sense. It’s not like a separate reality all it’s own outside ultimate reality or within in like the yolk of an egg within the white. In my last post I talked about the two ways to view the limits of the closed system that is the world, either immediately outside my sense perception, or from atoms up to the universe in terms of scientific and mathematical principles. The limits of language can be seen as a third set of boundaries for the system, and it unites the two others because it can refer to our sense perceptions of things, and the things we can refer to include calculations and instruments that measure the scientific and mathematical principles.
So this is language and how it relates to the world and ultimate reality.
First of all, all philosophical conclusions are based on assumptions. If it’s possible for ultimate reality not to be based on logic, as I’ve explained in my other posts (like a different operating system on a computer, or a life form based on an element other than carbon), then even the simplest statements like “A is A” has the possibility to be false, because it assumes that ultimate reality is based on logic. It still is possible to draw valid conclusions from any premise, however, but the whole argument has to be an “If this, therefore that” format, instead of “This, therefore that.” Basically, as I’ve said in my last posts, everything in doubtable, so even though valid arguments can be drawn from them, they might not be correct because the premise is unverifiable.
That being said, language itself is sometimes examined to find out something about ultimate reality. St. Anselm’s famous ontological argument for God’s existence is a prime example. It is basically: God is “that than which nothing greater can be thought.” This means he is perfect, and part of being perfect is existing. Therefore God exists. This argument is based on the definition of God as traditionally accepted. However, the main fallacy is that he assumes that God really is that than which nothing greater can be thought. He could say that “If God is that than which nothing greater can be thought, and do be this he has to exist, then he exists,” then it could be a valid argument.
Unfortunately for Anselm, it’s still invalid because it relies on the definition, which was written or created by humans. Human language is what I’ll call “referential.” This means that it was created specifically by humans in order to function in the empirical view of reality (which, for lack of coming up with a name in previous posts, I’ll call “the world”). It was created out of necessity for survival, the evolutionary result of a larger brain. It’s referential because it refers to things in the world, or at least what we call “things” because many famous philosophers have problems with distinguishing between different and separate objects, and hold that either all is one or any number of other things. So a caveman might say to another “Look out for that lion,” a scientist might say “the wavelength of color X is Y nm (or whatever measurement light waves are measured in),” and I might look at my closet and say “that is a brown wooden closet.” These statements all function pragmatically in the world.
It’s when we get to abstract concepts that we get into trouble. We can say “good is good,” which is a tautology that doesn’t actually tell us what good is. G.E. Moore held that good was indefinable, what Kant would call a simple idea, something that can’t be broken down any further. A mermaid can be broken down into a human and a fish, and then each of those can be broken down further into organs and bones and such, all the way down to atoms and their components. These, in analogy, would be the “good” if the mermaid is something that is or contains good. But when we say “good is being nice to people” or “good is pleasure,” or that “being nice to people is good” and “pleasure is good,” when we relate good to something in the world through language, we are attempting the impossible. We are trying to relate something that language wasn’t built to refer to, to something that it was. Even in the world, language isn’t an exact description of something. I say “my brown closet” because it appears that way to people whose vision of color is “normal.” I don’t say “my closet with the wavelength of X” because it’s impractical, because it doesn’t help us function in the world. Humans don’t function in what isn’t the world, or at least I don’t since I don’t even know if other humans exist. So especially if ultimate reality isn’t based on logic, how is our language ever supposed to describe it?
So far I’ve talked about “good,” which in the realm of ethics. But this whole idea of language as referential only in the closed system that is the world, and not functional in ultimate reality if ultimate reality doesn’t rely on human logic, applies to metaphysics as well. I can define God as anything, because the only “proof” we have of God’s perfection is the Bible, which could be pure fiction for all anyone knows, and people who claim to have known God, who can’t be trusted not because they just sound crazy, but because I don’t know if they exist and I can’t read their mind if they do. I can say God is fallable, stupid, fat and ugly, and he could be for all we know. This is why any possibility for God’s existence is, well, possible. It’s the same for ultimate reality. Unless the world is ultimate reality, we can define ultimate reality as literally anything, even as not making any sense, and we can anyway because as long as there is even the smallest chance that the world isn’t ultimate reality, we can’t make any assumptions.
So it is for these reasons that not only can language not describe ultimate reality, only this world, but that the world exists as a separate entity only in a certain sense. It’s not like a separate reality all it’s own outside ultimate reality or within in like the yolk of an egg within the white. In my last post I talked about the two ways to view the limits of the closed system that is the world, either immediately outside my sense perception, or from atoms up to the universe in terms of scientific and mathematical principles. The limits of language can be seen as a third set of boundaries for the system, and it unites the two others because it can refer to our sense perceptions of things, and the things we can refer to include calculations and instruments that measure the scientific and mathematical principles.
So this is language and how it relates to the world and ultimate reality.
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