Repost: Mark Manson on Being Average

We all have our own strengths and weaknesses. But the fact is, most of us are pretty average at most things we do. Even if you’re truly exceptional at one thing — say math, or jump rope, or making money off the black gun market — chances are you’re pretty average or below average at most other things. That’s just the nature of life. To become truly great at something, you have to dedicate time and energy to it. And because we all have limited time and energy, few of us ever become truly exceptional at more than one thing, if anything at all. [...]

Which leads to an important point: that mediocrity, as a goal, sucks. But mediocrity, as a result, is OK.

Few of us get this. And fewer of us accept it. Because problems arise — serious, “[...] what’s the point of living” type problems — when we expect to be extraordinary. Or worse, we feel entitled to be extraordinary. When in reality, it’s just not viable or likely. For every Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, there are 10 million scrubs stumbling around parks playing pickup games… and losing. For every Picasso or DaVinci there have been about a billion drooling idiots eating Play-Doh and slapping around fingerpaints. [...]

Our lives today are filled with information coming from the extremes of the bell curve, because in the media that’s what gets eyeballs and the eyeballs bring dollars. That’s it. Yet the vast majority of life continues to reside in the middle. [...]

It’s my belief that this flood of extreme information has conditioned us to believe that “exceptional” is the new normal. And since all of us are rarely exceptional, we all feel pretty [...] insecure and desperate to feel “exceptional” all the time. [...]

There’s this kind of psychological tyranny in our culture today, a sense that we must always be proving that we’re special, unique, exceptional all the time, no matter what, only to have that moment of exceptionalism swept away in the current of all the other human greatness that’s constantly happening. [...]

Once you accept the premise that a life is only worthwhile if it is truly notable and great, then you basically accept the fact that most of the human population sucks and is worthless. And ethically speaking, that is a really dark place to put yourself. [Note: this is why "quality of life" is a very dangerous concept by which to measure human dignity.]

But most people’s problem with accepting being average is more practical. They worry that, “If I accept that I’m average, then I’ll never achieve anything great. I’ll have no motivation to improve myself or do something great. What if I am one of the rare few?”

This, too, is a misguided belief. The people who become truly exceptional at something do so not because they believe they’re exceptional. On the contrary, they become amazing because they are obsessed with improvement. And that obsession with improvement stems from an unerring belief that they are, in fact, not that great at all. That they are mediocre. That they are average. And that they can be so much better.

This is the great irony about ambition. If you wish to be smarter and more successful than everybody else, you will always feel like a failure. If you wish to be the most loved and most popular, then you will always feel alone. If you wish to be the most powerful and admired, then you will always feel weak and impotent. [...]

The ticket to emotional health, like physical health, comes from eating your veggies — that is, through accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: a light salad of “you’re actually pretty average in the grand scheme of things” and some steamed broccoli of “the vast majority of your life will be mediocre.” This will taste bad at first. Very bad. You will avoid eating it.

But once ingested, your body will wake up feeling more potent and more alive. After all, that constant pressure to always be something amazing, to be the next big thing, will be lifted off your back. The stress and anxiety of feeling inadequate will dissipate. And the knowledge and acceptance of your own mundane existence will actually free you to accomplish what you truly wish to accomplish with no judgments and no lofty expectations.

You will have a growing appreciation for life’s basic experiences. You will learn to measure yourself through a new, healthier means: the pleasures of simple friendship, creating something, helping a person in need, reading a good book, laughing with someone you care about.

Sounds boring, doesn’t it? That’s because these things are average. But maybe they’re average for a reason. Because they are what actually matter.

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Source: Mark Manson, "In Defense of Being Average," Mark Manson website, June 18, 2015, accessed June 30, 2015, http://markmanson.net/being-average.

Alasdair MacIntyre on the Fiction of Human Rights

[81] I take it that both the utilitarianism of the middle and late nineteenth century and the analytical moral philosophy of the middle and late twentieth century are alike unsuccessful attempts to rescue the autonomous moral agent from the predicament in which the failure of the Enlightenment project of providing him with a secular, [82] rational justification for his moral allegiances had left him. I have already characterized that predicament as one in which the price paid for liberation from what appeared to be the external authority of traditional morality was the loss of any authoritative content from the would-be moral utterances of the newly autonomous agent. Each moral agent now spoke unconstrained by the externalities of divine law, natural teleology or hierarchical authority; but why should anyone else now listen to him? It was and is to this question that both utilitarianism and analytical moral philosophy must be understood as attempting to give cogent answers; and if my argument is correct, it is precisely this question which both fail to answer cogently. Nonetheless almost everyone, philosopher and non-philosopher alike, continues to speak and write as if one of these projects had succeeded. And hence derives one of the features of contemporary moral discourse which I noticed at the outset, the gap between the meaning of moral expressions and the ways in which they are put to use. For the meaning is and remains such as would have been warranted only if at least one of the philosophical projects had been successful; but the use, the emotivist use, is precisely what one would expect if the philosophical projects had all failed.

Contemporary moral experience as a consequence has a paradoxical character. For each of us is taught to see himself or herself as an autonomous moral agent; but each of us also becomes engaged by modes of practice, aesthetic or bureaucratic, which involve us in manipulative relationships with others. Seeking to protect the autonomy that we have learned to prize, we aspire ourselves not to be manipulated by others; seeking to incarnate our own principles and stand-point in the world of practice, we find no way open to us to do so except by directing towards others those very manipulative modes of relationship which each of us aspires to resist in our own case. The incoherence of our attitudes and our experience arises from the incoherent conceptual scheme which we have inherited.

Once we have understood this it is possible to understand also the key place that three other concepts have in the distinctively modern moral scheme, that of rights, that of protest, and that of unmasking. By 'rights' I do not mean those rights conferred by positive law or custom on specified classes of persons; I mean those rights which are alleged to belong to human beings as such and which are cited as a person for holding that people ought not to be interfered with in their pursuit [83] of life, liberty and happiness. They are the rights which were spoken of in the eighteenth century as natural rights or as the rights of man. Characteristically in that century they were defined negatively, precisely as rights not to be interfered with. But sometimes in that century and much more often in our own positive rights—rights to due process, to education or to employment are examples—are added to the list. The expression 'human rights' is now commoner than either of the eighteenth-century expressions. But whether negative or positive and however named they are supposed to attach equally to all individuals, whatever their sex, race, religion, talents or deserts, and to provide a ground for a variety of particular moral stances.

It would of course be a little odd that there should be such rights attaching to human beings simply qua human beings in light of the fact, which I alluded to in my discussion of Gewirth's argument, that there is no expression in any ancient or medieval language correctly translated by our expression 'a right' until near the close of the middle ages: the concept lacks any means of expression in Hebrew, Greek, Latin or Arabic, classical or medieval, before about 1400, let alone in Old English, or in Japanese even as late as the mid-nineteenth century. From this it does not of course follow that there are no natural or human rights; it only follows that no one could have known that there were. And this at least raises certain questions. But we do not need to be distracted into answering them, for the truth is plain: there are no such rights, and belief in them is one with belief in witches and unicorns.

The best reason for asserting so bluntly that there are no such rights is indeed of precisely the same type as the best reason which we possess for asserting that there are no witches and the best reason which we possess for asserting that there are no unicorns: every attempt to give good reasons for believing that there are such rights has failed. [There is also a connection here to that form of relative being within the realm of ens rationis, crucial to the possibility of confusing reality with fiction and vice versa, but MacIntyre doesn't bring this up.] The eighteenth-century philosophical defenders of natural rights sometimes suggest that the assertions which state that men possess them are self-evident truths; but we know that there are no self-evident truths. Twentieth-century moral philosophers have sometimes appealed to their and our intuitions; but one of the things that we ought to have learned from the history of moral philosophy is that the introduction of the word 'intuition' by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument. In the United Nations declaration on human rights of 1949 what has since become [84] the normal UN practice of not giving good reasons for any assertions whatsoever is followed with great rigor. And the latest defender of such rights, Ronald Dworkin (Taking Rights Seriously, 1976) concedes that the existence of such rights cannot be demonstrated, but remarks on this point simply that it does not follow from the fact that a statement cannot be demonstrated that it is not true (p. 81). Which is true, but could equally be used to defend claims about unicorns and witches.

Natural or human rights then are fictions—just as is utility—but fictions with highly specific properties.

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Source: Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2007), 81–84.

Human Rights as Morally Ambivalent

Human rights strike me as morally ambivalent, i.e. they can both support and undermine the moral dimension of man. How so? Consider that the same rights can be used both to protect the autonomy of an individual while also entrapping that individual's conscience to the requirements of the state. Or else consider that a right might protect what is owed by justice as well as what is harmful to human flourishing; it might protect the necessities of life while at the same time creating the space in which individuals no longer have to consider each others' existence. "We can and will do as we please so long as we don't get in each other's ways."

I don't see anything intrinsic to the notion of a right that suggests protection of what is morally good. It may have been used as such and in such a narrative—we uphold the rights of humans in order to protect their good, but the narrative depends on a notion of the good that may not be shared, that may arise from a consideration of ideology rather than reason or nature. Couldn't rights conceivably be used to protect something evil?

Finally, what happens to the status of man as a moral individual when the state takes away or replaces his rights? Or rather, what is revealed about the condition of man under the state when the state removes these rights by diktat. If the state no longer says that man has rights, and rights are political principles upheld by a state, would not man as citizen be reduced to a slave? But if the state can already do this act, doesn't that mean man is already a slave of the state but likes to go on pretending otherwise simply because his "rights" remain present by decree of the state?

Should not morality rather be grounded in nature itself then rather than a political construct? This issue also raises the question of how humans existed as moral and political beings before the concept of rights existed.

Judgment Is the Only Sin

I have heard some people claim that their philosophy is that "judgment is the only sin." They proceed to act as they please and allow others to do likewise so long as the twain shall ne'er harm each other or get in each others' way against their wills.

But what is judgment? The person may reply, "It is to condemn another for their beliefs and their way of life." In other words, it is to say that something that a person is doing or the way a person is—that is wrong. It is to declare something wrong. A judgment in its most simple form is an assertion that something is or ought to be this way. But then to say "judgment is the only sin" is itself a judgment against judgment. Furthermore, to say, "People can do as they please" is also a judgment, a judgment of freedom; it is an apparently positive judgment but still a judgment. To qualify a statement that one can do as one pleases so long as it harms no one else is a restriction imposed by judgment: behavior is good insofar as it isn't harmful. And what is harm? It is up to the judgment of the individual (and practically speaking, the law).

Why is judgment the only judgment prohibited? These same people will then also assert, when pressed, that obviously things such as rape, genocide, pedophilia, etc., are wrong. But who are they to pass judgment? Why can a person do anything they please except those things that harm others? And who determines what it means to harm others? The individual?

This is a morality of solipsism, of individualism. It allows the individual to get away with anything he wants without responsibility for consequences and without regard for others.

Remember, Christ never forbade judgments in Matthew 7; He forbade hypocritical judgments. Christ Himself made many condemnations and was fully justified in doing so.

Judgment is fundamental to human action. Every action presupposes a judgment. Even animals make judgments. This morality of solipsism is simply a justification for sin, and it seeks to alleviate guilt by removing the possibility of judgment, of condemnation for bad behavior. That is why judgment is the only sin: because the presence of judgment means the possibility that I have to own up to my sins, that I can't simply do as I please without regard for consequences, that I am not an isolated individual who schizophrenically has no regard for others and regard for others only when I desire, when I determine.

Emma Watson & What Feminism Is

Emma Watson's UN speech was very articulate and surprisingly moving. A few comments to follow not necessarily on the speech but inspired by it. A prefatory comment, however, is required: to examine and question feminism critically is not in this context meant to denigrate women. That should go without saying, but unfortunately, such uncharitable antipathy happens enough that a preface is warranted.

If feminism is "by definition" the belief that in all cultural affairs (e.g. political, social, religious, economic, etc.) men and women should have equal rights and opportunities and that both sexes are equal (but with respect to what, this equality remains undefined), then the strange situation, which Watson even mentions towards the end of her speech, occurs in which people were feminists before ever self identifying as such (or ever could do so at all)—so-called "inadvertent feminists"—or in which people, after the fact of feminism, wish to maintain the belief that feminism purportedly upholds as defined above without accepting the label of feminist.

What is to be made of this strange alienation and tension? Perhaps it may be that there is a difference between feminism "actually" and the written definition of feminism, that feminism in its totality encompasses more than what it supposedly pursues or self identifies, that feminism has the "baggage" of additional, invisible cultural signifiers that, for good or for ill, make it somewhat if not very unappealing to those who otherwise subscribe to the core belief that feminism seeks to promote, namely, the equality of the sexes.

Perhaps the very ambiguity of the notion of equality, which not only I but many have explored, creates hesitation to accept a label that has capitalized, in some cases unconsciously and in others, consciously, on this ambiguity. This embrace of the ambiguity of a notion of equality has incorporated pursuing ends through various means that I, like others, have found objectionable. Perhaps not only have the means been found wanting but the ends as well. Perhaps because a precise notion of the end of feminism (i.e. its goal/purpose and not its annihilation) and the means entailed by this end cannot be settled or have yet to be settled in the political sphere that I, like others, have hesitated to embrace the label of feminist. (Full self disclosure here, however: I would say the only labels that ultimately matter—and hence the only label that I really consistently apply to myself—are the labels of the holy and the not-yet-holy [I fall under this one] that are best encapsulated by incorporation into the Catholic Church through Baptism and faith, i.e. becoming a committed Catholic, but this is for another discussion.)

Furthermore, generalizations must be made because the culture as such generalizes about feminism; this is the unescapable reality of this movement. Indeed, whether one likes it or not, feminism is a political movement that transcends all of its sub-groups and sub-purposes; it is a mass signifier under the control of the Other. As such feminism must and always remain a generalization, and the less sophisticated (this is not to call them unintelligent; perhaps "naive" or better yet "innocent" would be better than "less sophisticated") self-identifying feminists will always resent this association that is out of their control. (Of course, the real solution then would be to give up the identity and retain the core so as to escape being associated and compartmentalized before one has even finished a sentence; yes, the assumption here is that I see no hope in rescuing the notion of feminism from how it has evolved to its present form, nor do I quite see the practical point in making the effort to do so.)

Finally, the difficulty of generalization and its cultural utility and reason for its go-to is because one is frequently met with comments such as, "For me, feminism is..." If feminism possesses the shades of every individual, then feminism as such is being used as a generalization by the very people who resent its being used as a generalization. The line must be settled: is there a difference in kind or degree among these feminisms, and how shall this difference be adjudicated?

Thus the question must be asked as it is being asked: what really is feminism? Is it simply the assertion of gender and sexual equality? What does this equality entail and why? Etc.

Emma Watson is right in this respect: feminism is culturally associated with aggressiveness, anger, hostility if not hatred towards and of men, a certain subversiveness, etc. This association transcends the power of any individual or even corporate body to control; like almost every other cultural signifier, its deep channels and chains of signification have become mostly cemented in the popular mind, for good or for ill (Watson would say for ill).

Furthermore, Watson is right when she asserts that what is important is not the word "feminism" but the "idea and ambition behind it," i.e. the reality, the impulse, the intention both individual and corporate that works for this goal of gender equality. But what is the implication of accepting this proposition that the reality is more important than the word? Perhaps Watson has overlooked that feminism—the word—has been swept up off of its own feet, out of the hands of feminists and into the public forum as more than the ambition that originally inspired it. Perhaps now the word feminism signifies not just the "idea and ambition" of the most genuine and noble feminists but everything else that is disingenuous and ignoble about the movement. One must ask Watson why she would still accept the label of feminist even after having conceded the foundational premise that leads to the above conclusions. If she is committed to the core reality of feminism and not the word and understands that the word has come to be associated with many negatives, why still push the word feminism and apply it as a personal label?

I really must stress the notion of equality with respect to what because without this clarification, the discussion can never go anywhere. All animals naturally and on the most fundamental level sort objects of experience according to a threefold schema of 1) favorable; 2) unfavorable; or 3) indifferent. Objects are thus sorted unequally. Equality with respect to this schema could mean, and I'm giving only a few variations as examples, every object is treated according only to 1), 2) or 3), or it could mean that the same number of objects are divided equally into all three categories.

Furthermore, as animals we participate in any number of simple-to-complex social games. E.g., a man walks into a bar (this isn't a joke) to find a woman to hit on, and the two are already playing a game before the man ever enters. The game is by nature zero-sum, and men and women alike will experience both rejection and acceptance. What would equality look like in such a situation? What of other games? How far down the rabbit hole does this analysis and application go? Should it go there? Who shall enforce it? How shall it be enforced?

Perhaps these last examples may be called red herrings, but I bring them up simply to draw attention to the original point that equality with respect to what is not a self-evident notion. It is heuristic and requires deep and continued reflection and dialogue. Its application is as diverse as relationality itself.

Intrinsic Dignity vs. Circumstantial Dignity

Experience tells us that circumstances may either dress a man up with nobility or with degradation. When Christ was scourged and crowned with thorns and then shown to the people, such an act was surely not dignifying but degrading. Nevertheless, we know that even in that circumstance, Christ's intrinsic dignity both as God and man perdured. In fact, reflection on such common experiences of public shame and embarrassment show us that it would be absurd to propose that a person's dignity could be annihilated by circumstances.

Intrinsic dignity is that which remains inherent to a person in spite of circumstances, perceptions, and actions. It is why rape is always wrong, even if as some people crudely suggest a victim was somehow "asking" for it or herself guilty for attracting potential rapists. Even if a woman was inviting such a gravely immoral action, the rape is still wrong because it violates the woman's dignity (among other reasons). It is also why many people argue against capital punishment; they say, "What example are we setting by killing a killer?" I'm not here to comment on the rigor of these arguments but am simply pointing out that they imply and appeal to a notion of intrinsic dignity.

Hence, it is clear that to take the life of someone, or for him to take his own life, would be wrong even if all the circumstances of his life were undignified—poverty, lack of hygiene, the absence of loved ones or any support, depression and other suffering, etc. No number of degraded circumstances could destroy the intrinsic dignity of an individual. These circumstances may make a person's life psychologically unbearable to endure, it may be granted, but the dignity remains.

When a person begs to "die with dignity," they usually, but not always, are pointing more properly to the notion of being perceived as dignified. In other cases, such a request points to that individual's self-perception of dignity: "do I see myself as dignified in these circumstances?" In either case, the person ignores intrinsic dignity. Of course, they have the freedom to do so, but they are ignoring it nonetheless.

What is the implication of intrinsic dignity? Does it mean that a person can take his own life? Most cases of euthanasia appeal to circumstantial dignity—the suffering, the dwindling resources, the age, etc. People who commit suicide often do so, if they leave a suicide note, out of circumstances and not an appeal to their intrinsic dignity.

Actually, intrinsic dignity suggests that despite circumstances a person should persevere in the struggle for self-actualization as a human. This would mean, as far as possible, the cultivation of virtue. Intrinsic dignity implies a firm rock amidst a violent ocean to which they ought to cling.

There is, finally, a striking conclusion from the notion of intrinsic dignity. A common and powerful argument for abortion is that a child should be killed before he or she should be made to suffer growing up in terrible circumstances, where a mother may resent the child for being a reminder of when she was raped, where a father is absent, where poverty and frequent abuse is the norm, where an education is practically impossible, etc. This argument presents abortion as an act of mercy to a child. But if we remember intrinsic dignity, then we can see its absurdity. Take a 5 year old who has already been growing up in such circumstances as described in this argument: should the mother/father/society/etc. be allowed to kill the child to prevent that child from suffering further abuse or neglect? What about a 2 year old? What about a 1 year old? What about a baby who has just been delivered? Should it be killed then? Clearly no one would kill a 5 year old because of such reasoning. But why should age be the only differentiating factor, and if it is, when is the child young enough, and why does that age justify the act?

If we would not kill another person because that would be a violation of their intrinsic dignity, which includes in it the right to live and to self-determination, why is the violation acceptable in the case of an infant still in the womb? The infant is biologically an individual despite its physical dependence on the mother, but even such physical dependence doesn't reduce the intrinsic dignity of an individual being; this is again circumstantial dignity which points to the physical dependence. Calling the embryo a "parasite" is again simply an argument referring to circumstantial dignity.

No, the responsible action is, as always, a respect of individuals and of what is properly theirs, which includes dignity and the right to life and self-determination even if an individual is not in the concrete capable of doing so (appeal to circumstantial dignity). The responsible act, then, is to accept the reality of suffering and moral evil AND respect the right of an infant to live despite the fact that it will grow up in the worst of circumstances.

Distinction: Beginning of Life vs. Beginning of Human Life vs. Beginning of Human Person

This interviewer confuses three distinct notions: 1) when does "life" start (whatever that means); 2) when does the life of a distinct biological organism start (in this case, a human); 3) when does a human being become a human person.

The first two questions posed as they are in this context makes them biological/scientific questions rather than philosophical ones as the interviewer intended because both questions can be answered very easily by science:

1) to ask when life starts without any further qualification is similar to asking whether the chicken or the egg came first; the sperm and ovum must both be alive for there to be any conception; when conception occurs, a distinct biological organism forms that is alive (this is the beginning of the life of this distinct human);

2) to ask when this biological organism becomes human is simple: by referring to the genetic makeup of the organism, we can tell what species it is; in this case, human.

The third question might be philosophical depending on whether or how a person distinguishes the notion of human being from human person. A lot of the philosophical aspect of the abortion debate circles around these concepts. The political aspects focus more on the utilitarian and concrete consequences of either supporting or preventing abortion.

Of course, for Catholics and many realists, the human being is always a human person because although the notions may be logically distinguishable, they are not so and cannot be so in the concrete. We exercise such "distinguish-ables" all the time: e.g. "tree" doesn't simply exist on its own but exists in concrete manifestations of trees: elm tree, birch tree, apple trees, etc.; there isn't just a "car" but specific models and makes: Honda Civic 2013, Ford Fiesta 2012, Volkswagen Passat 2014, etc.

Distinction: Right to Live vs. Right to Conceive

Apropos this chilling article on the growth of gestational surrogacy in recent years (http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/gestation-surrogacy-harms-children), I would simply comment that there is a difference between the right to live and the "right" to conceive a child by any means possible. Does such a right exist? I don't think so. Although sexual reproduction and the rearing of children may be inherent to our animal nature, such activity is both unnecessary for each individual's happiness even as human and regulated by natural law. No one would argue that because a person has a "right" to conceive a child therefore another person may be raped in order to satisfy that right.

John Deely on Romanticizing Nature

MT: I guess part of this semioethical realization concerns what real-world consequences all our human actions have, and to what extent the human world practically – ehm – messes with a natural world that is non-human.

JD [John Deely]: Did you say ‘messes’?

MT: In search of a better word – ...or interferes in a non-human world. Isn’t part of the realization that there is not a sharp distinction between what concerns humans and what concerns others than humans?

JD: Yes, but when you start to speak about the human world as ‘messing with’ the world of nature, you’re coming from an almost Rousseauean, romantic idea of nature: that nature is what we need to just leave alone. And that’s completely naive, because we’re part of nature. They’re talking about – you know, it’s so criminal that we would eat the flesh of animals, et cetera. I like the cartoon – I think it was in The New Yorker, where there are these three characters who are very ecologically friendly, and there’s a couple of lions that are trying to eat them. And they’re up in a tree, and then two of them say to the third one: "Would you please explain to this guy [the closest lion] how much we’ve done for him?"

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Source: John Deely, interviewed by Morten Tønnessen, "Tell Me, Where Is Morality Bred? The Semioethics Interviews I: John Deely," Hortus Semioticus 4 (April 7, 2009): 56, accessed March 1, 2014, http://www.ut.ee/hortussemioticus/4_2009/pdf/hortussemioticus_4_deely.pdf.