Today was a rather exciting day for me as a political philosopher. My friend Deen Chatterjee is out of town so I had both class periods to myself. Deen does a wonderful job and as a political philosopher, he has the kind of moral clout that someone like Boyd K Packer can only dream of. But I am always itching for the opportunity to spread my love of wisdom.

We are discussing human rights and the way justice holds them all in balance. If you haven't seen me give this lecture, name the time and buy me a cup of coffee and you'll hear more than you ever imagined could be said about human rights. But this is no ordinary job to me. I found out several years ago that ordinary jobs kept me going back to the hospital with depressive episodes so profound I could barely speak.

The political theories that really have staying power, as I have discovered, are the ones that have human rights and justice at their core. Most of the contemporary debate has been sparked by the two most profound events of the 20th Century. One was the holocaust and the other was the struggle for independence in India. The defining moral figure for the 20th Century was my moral hero. Some called him Mahatma Gandhi, I now call him Bapu.

Philosophy in my life has truly been a story of agony and ecstacy. Today, the latter was the case. I've never stood in front of an audience and expressed my appreciation for Bapu before today and right there in front of everyone I had to stop and struggle to regain my speech. I had tears pouring down my face. What kind of person would willfully take one beating after another just to prove a moral point? He let them beat him nearly to death because he knew they would see the evil of their ways and they would have to change. And when millions of people were engulfed in uncontrollable violence, he simply said he would not eat until they stopped. A whole nation was brought to their knees at the thought of losing Bapu. He was a tiny little man in a loincloth, but he had more political power than anyone else in his time. The thing that ultimately took him down was, you guessed it, religious fanaticism! He brought more peace into that nation than the religiously-powerful could tolerate. And he never accepted a penny for it. Instead, his material reward was several grams of lead, delivered right into his perfect heart.

To the child-brides of polygamy, Bapu knew your pain. And if I have my way, I'll teach every one of you about this extraordinary hero of mine.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2010 11:00PM by Troy.

I'm planning on going to India to study and do a bit of teaching of my own. For all of his devotion to human rights, Bapu never received the Nobel Prize. But many of today's recipients of that coveted award think of themselves as "Bapu's children." What a legacy!

Thanks, Troy. Powerful. Your post brought tears to my eyes and goosebumps to my skin.

And wasn't it Gandhi who said something like, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians--they are so unlike your Christ." ??

My ex-wife has been up to her usual and unending attempts to force more cash out of me. She is already receiving much more from me than the law can make me pay, but I don't make it a habit of telling everyone that. When she says she needs extra money for the kids, I come up with it one way or another. But sometimes it isn't enough.

When I was a much younger and more materialistic man, I wanted to have the best stereo system money could buy. I have an impeccable ear for music and I wanted perfection. After I got out of the Navy, I got some retro-pay for my back injury, and I bought my dream stereo. It was phenomenal! I also collected hundreds of rare CD's. Well, a couple of weeks ago, my ex-wife demanded that I sell it to raise cash. She's been asking me to do this for a while now, especially since it is an object of her disgust and derision. But that's another matter.

Selling that stereo isn't going to raise the cash she hopes for. I've abused it over the years, along with my hearing, and it has suffered some damage. It would cost me several hundred dollars to get it working well enough to put it up for sale as the working system it once was. That's if I perform the labor myself, as I'm a well-qualified electronics technician. But when I refused to sell it, she accused me of being more attached to my possessions than my children. Fighting words indeed! In an expression of my outrage at such an accusation, I gave the stereo away! To someone who can't repair electronics, it's worthless. I also gave away my CD collection. I don't care what cash I may have missed out on. I'm never going to let her control me like that again. I have now given away anything anyone could possibly be willing to give cash for. And do you know what? I feel pretty empowered! I have clothes, a few sticks of furniture and my professional equipment and books. That's all I need. I have two excellent kids and my dream career. I don't need anything else.

Oh, but I kept my iPod and several electronic copies of my entire music collection. I'm not throwing that stuff away!

Who did I give all of this stuff to? Mostly to my children. Now, if their mother wants to pawn the stuff off, she has to have their permission and the older one is 18 now!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2010 11:45PM by Troy.

My son has control over my CD collection now and he intends to sell most of it. But he no longer lives with his mother and he has his own bills to worry about!

When my parents divorced, my mom promised my dad that she would never ask for child support raises, even to account for inflation. I don't know how my mom, my sister, and I made it by. My mom had an AA and no work experience past retail jobs in college because she was a stay at home mom like the church told her to be. When they divorced, because my dad cheated on her with hundreds of men (no hyperbole there), she had to work her tail off to help us get by.

My dad was a physical therapist. His choices made it very clear to my sister and me what was most important in his life: the church, his guilt for being bi-sexual, and avoiding "temptation" at all costs, even if it meant not coming to California to visit us.

It's been years since I read of him and and the division of the subcontinent in the fabulous book "Freedom at Midnight" by Lapierre and Collins.

I recall that Gandhi had some oddities of his own, like sleeping (albeit chastely) with his young granddaughters and refusing to allow his sick wife to have an injection of medicine that would have saved her life. Gandhi felt that piercing her skin with a needle was an act of violence and violated his staunch position on non-violence. His wife died and later he regretted that he didn't allow her to have the medication.

They say he died with the name of his god, Rama, on his lips.

He was a fascinating fellow, indeed.

Skunkie
(Turandot)

Sometimes the people who really make a difference in the world have ironies and eccentricities to spare. Socrates was similar. He was probably the most ironic character in Western philosophy.

Socrates had strange ideas about justice, particularly concerning his own case. It doesn't seem like he thought he was doing anything wrong, but when the Athens democracy sentenced him to death for "corrupting the youth" and "not honoring the gods," he accepted it. To him, the law was of utmost importance, even if he may have thought himself innocent of any real wrong-doing. Strictly speaking, however, his sentence was to commit suicide. He saw it as his moral duty to uphold the law and therefore he drank the hemlock without protesting, and died. Plato, among others, had even arranged to spring him out of prison by bribing the guards. But Socrates refused. The law had spoken. Plato then went on to oppose democracy entirely, not trusting the people who had put his own hero to death.

As for Gandhi and his unorthodox method of celibacy, who knows? It's bizarre if you ask me. But he's not a moral authority to me. Nobody is. He was a stunning example of human decency and devotion, but not a moral authority. He actually didn't really even write much theory. His one-liners packed all the punch he needed. But his real talent was in looking inside someone and understanding what it takes to get people to act in the name of something greater than themselves.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2010 12:57AM by Troy.

Diogenes is often considered to be the first cosmopolitan philosopher. In political philosophy, that's the school where I hang out. But Diogenes was a bit of an extremist, to put it mildly.

Being the first cosmopolitan philosopher, he famously said "I am a citizen of the world!" He had little respect for any of the nation-states and his favorite company was a pack of stray dogs. He lived in a broken barrel on the beach, and thumbed his nose at all of the local traditions that he considered ridiculous. Sometimes his behavior was just shocking, like when he walked around naked in Athens. The high society folks were aghast!

Legend has it that Alexander the Great had a conversation with Diogenes. The great conquerer had some interest in philosophy, having been personally tutored by Aristotle, who was considered the most widely educated person alive.

Alexander met Diogenes on the beach where the latter was sunning himself. After a lengthy conversation, Alexander was amazed at the intellect of this odd man. He said to him "I am the king, and I can give you anything you want. You can even have your own school with honors and prestige. What can I do for you sir?" Diogenes replied, "Stand aside, then. You're blocking the sun!"

Over time I've given up the idea of heroes. For a time I searched hoping to find the one guru or philosopher who I could completely respect. I wanted a hero.

I found great things I admired about each one. But I also found things about each one that made me think less of them. It was hard for me to accept that there is not anyone who is going to be a perfect hero for me.

No one has their crap together in all aspects of life and thought. So, I've learned to savor the wisdom from them all and dismiss their crazy sides.

If you could have an evening talking with 10 people (who are now dead or alive) who would you invite?

I would invite these 10 people to see what they are like:

Socrates, Spinoza, Hume, Einstein, Jefferson, Twain, Dawkins, Voltaire, Michelangelo, and Darwin.

(Of course my top 10 changes from week to week.)

I would like to take the things I admire about each of them and mold them into a custom hero designed just for me.

Well, one thing is certain, there is only one philosopher I truly believe in-me. Gandhi was a brilliant human being, but to tell you the truth, I have a lot more theoretical backgound than he ever did in philosophy. But then he knew Hinduism pretty well, and that's more of a philosophy than what we think of as religion.

We had a visiting philosopher from India at the U a few weeks ago. He told of his first experience studying philosophy in the US. He asked the professor "What is the difference between philosophy and religion?" The professor said "You're from India, aren't you?" In that part of the world, the two are inseparable. But in Hinduism, everyone can have their own god or as many as they want, unless they don't want one. Try to imagine that in a Western religion! Hinduism recognizes 30,000,000 of them, but atheism is an option too. Nobody is "required" to "believe in God." That's unimaginable.

In India, there has been a long-standing impasse between Hinduism and Christianity. It isn't that Hindus can't accept another religion, but to them the thought of converting from one religion to another is incomprehensible. Those who convert to Christianity usually say "I am a Hindu, and now I'm a Christian too." Getting the Hindus to give up Hinduism for Christianity must have been an impossible task for the missionaries and an act of complete madness for the Hindus. Giving up Hinduism is like giving up being a person. Eastern religions are 'inclusivist' like this, while Western religions are 'exclusivist.' Most people can't imagine the idea of being Christian and Muslim too. In the East, it's just a matter of accepting another ideology in addition to one's own.

All of this is just part of the richness that Western colonial powers ridiculed in preference to dogmatic monotheism with a dash of loathing for humanity and a healthy dallop of materialistic infatuation. When it comes to political wisdom and experience, India really does have a lot to offer that the West just never learned. And they've had to learn to cope with a much larger population with comparatively fewer natural resources.

Yes, I gave up on finding the right philosopher. I had to become one myself.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2010 02:06AM by Troy.

Fascinating and insightful. You're going to be a fantastic influential teacher, that's for sure.

Perhaps I like the cold but practical idea that there is no meaning to life. We have to give it meaning.

As for religion, mine is well made beer. That and sex.