A friend advises me that I cannot change things unless I either (a) know the rules of the game or (b) control the rules of the game. Changing things when you control the rules of the game seems easy enough, although whether or not that change turns out to be for the good or the bad can be another matter entirely.
Yet if you merely know the rules of the game you can also change things. The road here is much tougher. One tack is to appeal to those who control the rules of the game on behalf of their rules. Another is to appeal to them on the basis of simple compassion or justice. When these tacks don’t work, you can use the rules of the game against those who control the rules. But this only works if (a) the rule controllers aren’t following their own rules and (b) the rule controllers believe they need to be seen as rule followers, not rule breakers. And, again, that’s assuming you can figure out the rules of the game in the first place.
Another friend advises me that I can in fact change no one, only myself. This is plainly false, as shown by the examples of violence and healing. If I cut you, or if I mend your wound, I have changed you. If this is true for our bodies, why should it be different for head and heart and gut?
In fact, the reason we write rules for our games in the first place is to change the game players. The rules make the players more likely to behave this way and less likely to behave that way. Or do the powers-that-be guard their control of the game rules only out of habit, and not because the rules give them power to change us toward their ends?
At their best, the rules of the game make it easier to be good and harder to be evil. At their best, the rules give all game players a say in the rules. Of course, anyone who chooses to play the game, simply by their choosing, lends support to the rules as they are—otherwise they would not play the game. But not everyone who plays the game chooses to play, or only partially chooses to play, or chooses under duress, or chooses without knowing the rules, or not all of them. And the rules always change, according to need and whim, so who is to say which set of the rules the players all agreed to?
When the rules of the game cause harm, it can’t be excused just because all the game players opted into the game at some point. It can’t be excused because of the greater purpose of the game. Harm caused by the rules of the game can never be excused. It is inexcusable. Those who control the rules of the game bear the moral weight for this injustice.
The rules of the game cannot function without rule keepers who enforce the rules of the game on behalf of those who control the rules of the game. Rules are a powerful game themselves and sometimes seem to act without human agency, as if ghosts in the machine. Yet someone wrote those rules, and someone enforced them, even if they enforced them upon themselves.
You write:
“If I cut you, or if I mend your wound, I have changed you. If this is true for our bodies, why should it be different for head and heart and gut? ”
Yes, you may have changed me physically. But if I believe you to act as someone wishing to bring harm to yourself and the world, then your cutting of my flesh reinforces my belief that you suffer greatly. How have you changed me, then?
Whos is the “who” controlling the rules of the game?
And you state that “harm caused by the rules of the game can never be excused. It is inexcusable.” What about your example of fighting in WWII? Certainly we caused great harm to countless numbers of German and Japanese citizens.
Great post once again! Thanks for exercising my grey matter.
How have you changed me, then?
Yes, you now feel pain, which effects your emotional and cognitive functioning. And you now have a wound to tend to, which will require your attention while it heals. There also might be lingering effects of the assault. You might be much more cautious in similar situations, for instance.
Who’s is the “whoâ€? controlling the rules of the game?
Depends on the game really. Could be anyone(s) or sometimes even the ghost in the machine.
What about your example of fighting in WWII?
Fighting in WWII is the lesser of two evils—killing Nazi soldiers to prevent Nazi conquest. The killing is nonetheless an evil, albeit a “necessary” one. But the harms inflicted on Nazi soldiers, real as they may be, don’t seem to count so much as an injustice. Harming you to prevent you from (further) harming me and mine seems a different scenario.
“Yes, you now feel pain, which effects your emotional and cognitive functioning. And you now have a wound to tend to, which will require your attention while it heals. There also might be lingering effects of the assault. You might be much more cautious in similar situations, for instance.”
I may or may not feel “pain.” Pain is often a value judgement. I agree I will sensation. And attending to a wound need not be treated any differently psychically than tending to dirty dishes. There may or may not be lingering effects. That is my decision to make. And I may or may not be more cautious in similar situations. Again my issue to work out.
So again, I ask, how have you changed me?
And how do you define “ghost in the machine”?
In WWII we killed alot of other people besides Nazi soldiers. Does the collateral damage to civilians not count as much as an injustice?
Oh, believe me, you do feel pain. It was a big Crocodile Dundee knife with a serrated edge and a touch of rust. Tending to a wound is quite different from doing the dishes. I have assaulted your person and left you with quite a nasty wound to deal with.
There’s no option in that. You can, of course, choose how to deal with it, but yet you must choose. There are physical, emotional and probably cognitive and volitional consequences you now have to deal with, a situation I created by wounding you. These are all changes to your person.
You seem to be positing some sort of person-as-essence model that I just don’t hold. We are constantly changed and constantly changing. I am not the same person I was yesterday, though there is certainly a continuity. My own model is something like “the torn soul as self.”
No, the collateral damage to German and other civilians, while evil, is of a lesser order than Nazi conquest. If the Nazi conquest had succeeded, there would be no Jews, Romanovs, Unitarians or homosexuals alive today in Europe. The Holocaust doesn’t excuse Dresden, but neither does Dresden excuse the Holocaust.
Tending to a wound and doing dishes have different values because we ascribe different values to them. They have no value independent of what we claim. Therefore, tending to a wound and doing the dishes can have the same story.
You use words like assault and nasty and then expect me to agree with your meanings. While I understand your meanings, what if I choose not to agree with them? Or use different meaning? How have you decided you are an authority?
You claim there are physical, emotional, cognitive and volitional consequences I have to deal with…so you say.
“There’s no option in that. You can, of course, choose how to deal with it, but yet you must choose. There are physical, emotional and probably cognitive and volitional consequences you now have to deal with, a situation I created by wounding you. These are all changes to your person.
You seem to be positing some sort of person-as-essence model that I just don’t hold.”
No, I don’t believe any of us have any essences that have value inherently. While I agree we constantly change, I do not agree that you have any authority to determine my experiences for me. Nor do I believe that you can engage in some behavior towards me and change me per se. If I say you have not changed me then what?
And you say, “believe me you do feel pain.”
How can you judge for me what I feel or do not feel. That sounds like you adopt a position where you possess authority per se over someone’s inner response to exterior stimuli. Rather like the Omniscient Narrator.
On whose authority can you claim to _know_ that I feel anything?
Again, I claim you cannot change me unless I agree to that change. If you claim you carve out my heart with a big crocodile dundee knife with a serrated edge and a touch of rust, I say respond by thanking you for hastening my death, have you changed me?
Your claims that a Nazi conquest would have resulted in no Jews, Romanovs, Unitarians or homosexuals alive today seems overreaching and conjecture at best.
thanks!
Jay,
Back in the early days of the net, I used to log on to the #aynrand channel on IRC as “nietzsche” and start to postulate there was no such thing as cause and effect. I’m begging to suspect you’re doing the same thing here. ;-)
Honestly, our views of the self are just incommensurable. I’d encourage you to read “Rational Dependent Animals” by Alisdair MacIntyre sometime if you get the itch. In it he argues that radical dependence upon others is the human condition from birth to death, and that individual independence is an abstract illusion that has no bearing in fact. I believe that no one has final say over their own experiences. This is both a blessing and a curse.
And my claim about the effects of an unstopped Holocaust was only for Europe, by the way. If I’m overreaching, it’s not by much.
chutney,
since you have decided “our views are incommensurable” without asking me questions, then i believe you wish this line of conversation ended.
disappointing to me, to say the least.
i had spent yesterday sick in bed and thinking hard about your posts. i had wanted to respond but from your comments see that discussion is closed!
thanks as always for thought provoking posts.