The Meritocracy of Desertolia

The simple, hardworking people of Desertolia had constructed their political institutions in the most ingenious way; all elements of society were structured around the single divine purpose of rewarding each for his or her merit. Those who worked hard got the finest homes and were honored publicly, while those who did not lived in squalor and were rightly condemned through public ceremony. Unlike those societies based on a confusing mix of goals Desertolia was truly unified around its fundamental purpose.

With a judicious eye to fairness the people of Desertolia ensured that children were not unduly punished for the sins of their parents or unduly rewarded for the virtues of the parents. As a result the residents of Desertolia had no need for the warm sentimentality of blood ties and had abolished the family in favour of a form of raising children that truly fulfilled the need to reward all for their merit. If parents were to raise their biological children this would reward the children of the excellent and punish the children of the mediocre as the children of the mediocre would be habituated to act in mediocre ways, while the excellent would be habituated to act in excellent ways. A child born to a mediocre set of parents should not be punished for having been born to mediocre parents, as the child’s future should not be sullied by the status of its biological originators.

Instead of having romantic couples form and raise their biological children the Desertolians had yearly breeding ceremonies in which breeding matches would were chosen by the ruling council in accordance with merit. Those who had properly done their duty and lived excellent lives were rewarded with likewise fine, attractive mates, while those who were mediocre or corrupt were made to breed with others who were mediocre or corrupt. The Desertolians understand that it would be a travesty to the sacredness of merit to have the excellent breed with the mediocre or corrupt. After the children were born to their biological mother, the child would be taken to the Kinderecclesia, a set of public grounds that served to raise children. In the Kinderecclesia each child was cared for according to its merit from the time of its birth to the age of 17. The commitment to rewarding children according to merit within the Kinderecclesia was both admirable and thoroughgoing. Infants who cried too much and misbehaved were justly disciplined, while those who were quiet and pleasant were given fine rewards. Likewise, older teenagers who could recite the Seven Sacred Principles of Merit of Desertolia were allowed to engage in conjugal relationships with one another, while those who could not were barred from engaging in romantic relations of any kind. In Desertolia, the right to pursue erotic love was not something that was accessible to anybody, but only to those who had met an appropriate standard of merit.

The Desertolians rejected both socialism and capitalism as neither properly rewarded each according to his merit. Capitalism displayed injustice because it allowed inheritance and unduly rewarded many who had not worked hard. Socialism was impious because it provided according to need rather than according to what people merited. Instead of capitalist or socialist forms of economic organization, in Desertolia, all goods were distributed by the Economic Commission of Desertolia according to the merit of the recipients. Those who had worked hard and lead morally upright lives were given much, while libertines and slovenly scoundrels were given little. In the past small scale trade had occurred between people in Desertolia, but these practises were rightly recognized as heretical to the principles of merit. If people were allowed to buy goods from one another than the mediocre or corrupt could end up with something that they did not merit, and this would violate everything that the Desertolians held dear. Surely, nothing could be worse.

Tragedy as an Element of Authenticity

I once had a professor mention that the task of trying to find one’s individual path in life according to the notion of authenticity was a Sisyphean task. While I do not agree with this professor, it seems that the task of finding of one’s authentic path in life is far more complicated, and problematic than the way that authenticity is ordinarily understood suggests.

Typically, the notion of authenticity is understand to suggest that the key to living a good life is turning inward and figuring out what you want to do with your life. After one has done this one can then take actions to pursue what one wants to do with one’s life. Consequently, according to this interpretation of the notion of authenticity, the task of finding one’s authentic path is fairly simple and unproblematic.

Furthermore, it is interesting that this popular notion of authenticity tend to gloss over the fact that finding what one wants to do with one’s life need not admit to a singular answer. For example, in my life as I have turned inwards I have realized that I am drawn to activities of artistic creation, activities of philosophical, spiritual and political reflection, and activities of civic/political involvement. But at the same time I recognize that engaging in these activities well requires a large degree of time and devotion, such that I cannot fully commit to all three with the amount of time that I have within my life. In my case thus I have had to make an agonistic choice to primarily commit to one form of activity at the expense of the others. Furthermore, we have little reason to think that my example is particularly peculiar as many people are deeply conflicted regarding the kinds of activities that they want to build their lives around. Consequently, it seems that the task of finding of what one wants to do with one’s life does not admit of a simple, singular answer. When we turn inwards sometimes we realize that there are multiple activities that we want to build our lives around, and that we cannot adequately make time to pursue all of these activities in a way that gives all of them their due. In such a situation we will have to make the choice to devote ourselves to a certain set of these activities at the expense of others that we still find very attractive and valuable.

As a result of the preceding, the turn inwards that is required to figure out what one wants out of life requires us to confront a possibly tragic choice. I call this choice tragic, in reference to the fact that there may be an insoluble conflict between the alternative life paths that one may take. This concept of tragedy is influenced by Sophocles, as a large element of the Sophoclean conception of tragedy has to do with the conflict between incompatible priorities or values. For example, in Sophocles’ Antigone we have the obligations to the city conflicting with the obligations that a daughter has towards her brother. Just as Antigone has to choose to give priority to one set of claims that she finds valid, over another, those who make the inward turn of authenticity sometimes will have to choose between giving priority to one form of activity they find attractive over another that they find attractive. Consequently, the inward turn of authenticity always contains within it the possible experience of tragedy in this Sophoclean sense.

Now, it should be noted that I am not rejecting the notion of authenticity; rather, my issue is that we tend to speak about authenticity as though finding what one wants to do with one’s life will give us a simple, singular answer that we will then be able to efficiently pursue. Within popular culture we tend to speak of the inward turn of authenticity as something that is quite easy to deal with and move on from. However, as I have noted above the inward turn that is required to understand what one wants to do with one’s life can put us in the position of having to make a tragic choice, and there is always the possibility that we will deeply regret our decisions. So, it seems that the inward turn of authenticity is not as simple or as easy to deal with as the popular conception of it suggests, and by stating that it is simple and easy we are deceiving ourselves and ill-preparing ourselves for what we may have to deal with in their lives. For this reason we need to recognize the courage that it requires to make the inward turn and make the commitment to a particular set of priorities over another. Making this choice and facing it requires courage because one has to face the real possibility that one will make the wrong choice, and pursue a life that is meaningless or superficial. Furthermore, another upshot of this is that any person, who after taking the inward turn is confronted by a tragic choice between alternatives and makes the choice for one of these alternatives over the other, may experience a deep sense of loss over what could have been. This sense of loss is not an unhealthy manifestation of a disordered mind, but rather the reflection that a person has made the choice to forgo developing an element of themselves that they would have developed under different conditions.

The deGrasse Tyson Philosophy vs. Science Debate: The Authority of Science, Instrumentalism and Technology

Recently, Neil deGrasse Tyson made some comments questioning the value of philosophy. Massimo Pigliucci who writes on the blog Scientia Salon has addressed his comments directly in a recent article, but the whole debate on the value of philosophy as opposed to the value of science raises some interesting questions and concerns that I would like to consider.

Often, critics of philosophy, condemn philosophy as a useless practise because it does not seem to lead to any tangible benefit for society. This was not deGrasse Tyson’s exact criticism, but this critique is so prevalent within society that it has become a banal commonplace that philosophy is a useless endeavour that does not benefit mankind in any way. Interestingly, this is the same critique that Francis Bacon made of the Scholastics within the New Organon, and the critique that Marx makes of previous philosophers within the Theses on Feuerbach; apparently the philosophers will never learn to just get in line already and devote themselves to improving the world. However the fact that this critique of philosophy is prevalent reveals that the popular conception of value within postindustrial societies is one that is fundamentally instrumental. Or to put this more clearly, it is a conception of value that sees something valuable if it can help us efficiently pursue desirable ends. This instrumental conception of value is theoretically problematic, as it cannot explain some of the most basic experience of value that appear within everyday life. Furthermore, the prevalence of this conception of value is problematic as it reinforces the idea that science’s authority derives from its ability to contribute to the development of technology. Consequently, this conception of value distorts our understanding of authority of science itself.

Our everyday experience of value attests to the fact that activities can be valuable for instrumental reasons, but it also attests to the fact that activities can be intrinsic valuable (be valuable on their own account). For example, even though it is true that we might say that a dishwasher is only valuable because it allows us spending less time washing dishes, and consequently only valuable for instrumental reasons, it does not make sense to say that friendship is valuable only for instrumental reasons. Friendships might be valuable because they open doors for people, but the main value of friendships seems to be an intrinsic one as opposed to an instrumental one, as what we value about friendship is not some end-state that friendship produces, but rather the fact that we are in a position of sharing our lives with another being who we respect or admire. The value of such a state cannot be made sense of from an instrumental perspective, so from a purely theoretical angle it seems that a purely instrumental conception of value is fairly implausible, as it is not able to adequately explain the everyday experience we have of value.

The prevalence of a purely instrumental conception of value which not only condemns philosophy, but also the arts, is not only problematic because it does not stand up to criticism at a theoretical level, rather it has a pernicious influence on the way that people understand the authority of science. People tend to see science as an authority within postindustrial societies and associate science with the development of technology. As a result of this people tend to think that what gives science its claim to authority is that science has lead to the development of extensive technology and technological systems. This is quite clearly not a logical deduction, but if you ask non-scientists why we should listen to science they will ordinarily point to its ability to produce various forms of technology and technological solutions. The awe that surrounds science has less to do with the fact that people find that science explains the world, and more to do with the fact that people think that science has led to the great technological progress that society has experienced. Furthermore, a purely instrumental conception of value reinforces the idea that science’s claim to authority derives from its ability to facilitate technological progress, as a purely instrumental conception of value can only see value in the ability of science to contribute to the production of particular ends like technology, not in the ability of science to develop theories that adequately explain the world. Consequently, the prevalence of a purely instrumental conception of value reinforces the idea that science gets its authority because of its ability to facilitate technological progress.

The notion that science gets its authority from the production of technological progress is deeply troubling because this neglects the fact that science ought to have authority in society, over mere conjecture, not simply because it makes our lives more convenient, but because science give us reasonably reliable way to understand the physical world. Science is not only a machine from which great technological gifts are bestowed upon the faithful, rather it represents the human attempt to understand. Consequently, while a purely instrumental conception of value seems to justify the value of science while rejecting the value of philosophy and the arts, in so doing it encourages the vulgarization of the value of science within the public, as science begins to be seen as an assembly-line for society rather than as a spirited attempt to understand the world. Interestingly enough then a conception of value that can recognize the intrinsic value of truth is better placed to provide the public with a proper appreciation of the authority of science than a purely instrumental conception of value, as the former conception of value can recognize that science has its authority because it provides s with a reasonably reliable way to understand the physical world. In this way it seems that in order to truly appreciate the value of science we must move past thinking of value in purely instrumental terms.

Music, Commodification, Creativity and Beauty

During this week a colleague of mine and I were discussing a band that she quite enjoys. I commented that while I think this band are good at what they do, I find their music derivative and therefore have never really given them much attention. Her response to this was that she sees nothing wrong with a band being derivative if they produce enjoyable, good music. My response to her comment expressed the idea that part of the point of the creation of art is to create something unique and distinctive, as opposed to something that is merely a re-creation of something that already exists. Ultimately, there was no resolution to the discussion, but this conversation got me thinking about the nature of music and its relation to modes of production and consumption within post-industrial society. I will argue that while music may not need to be creative or original to be good, that the presence of original music is necessary in post-industrial society as original music forces us to recognize the beauty of art, so that we can fully appreciate it, rather than merely seeing music as a commodity and consuming it.

Within contemporary post-industrial society music is not only an art form; it is also a mass produced commodity. The commodity nature of music means that we tend to consume music as opposed to appreciating its beauty; we listen to music not as a response to beauty of the music, but rather because we know that we will gain enjoyment from listening to the music. In this sense we look for the musical product that is most likely to give us a reasonable rate of return in terms of enjoyment relative to our investment in the product. As a result of this, beauty becomes dissociated from music as we do not see music as something beautiful that we need to fully grasp, and appreciate, but rather see it as something that merely delivers enjoyment, just like any other commodity.

Derivative music is typically consumed unthinkingly. If I have a heard a particular form of music before, and I stumble upon another band that performs this style well, my experience of their music will not draw attention to the beauty of the music, as the music will simply appear to me as something ordinary that provides me with enjoyment, rather than a beautiful object that needs to be appreciated. In this sense the consumption of derivative music sits fairly comfortably with the dissociation of music and beauty.

On the other hand, original music serves to reconnect music and beauty such that the listener is drawn to appreciate the beauty of the piece of music, rather than merely seeing the music as an instrument of enjoyment. This occurs as original music provides us with a unique experience that pulls us out of our everyday pre-reflective mode of operation. When I hear a form of music that I have never heard before, whether I like it or not, I am drawn to understand that form of music precisely because it is so alien. The alien nature of the music calls on me to grasp it. Furthermore, in trying to understand that form of music I am drawn to recognize its beauty. Consequently, original music as opposed to derivative music allows us to once again realize that music is more than a commodity; rather, it is an attempt to create something beautiful.

Seeing the relationship between music and beauty is important because this relationship is integral to the practise of the composition of music. The composer of music is not a clever entrepreneur trying to create an attractive product, but an artist trying to create some new manifestation of beauty in the world. Therefore, If one sees music merely as something that provides enjoyment one has failed to understand the practise of the composition of music. This failure seems particularly egregious as the creation of music seems to be a significant practise in nearly all human societies and thus to lack understanding of this practise, is to lack understanding of the human condition in general.

So it seems that both my colleague and I made valid points. Derivative music can be beautiful, and consequently good, but creativity is necessary in music, in a post-industrial society, as the experience of creative music ensures that people will be able to see, and fully appreciate, that music is not merely a commodity, but the attempt to create something beautiful.