Futurology

When we think of the world's  future, we always mean the destination it will reach if it keeps going in the direction we can see it going in now; it does not occur to us that its path is not a straight line but a curve, constantly changing direction. --Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value p.3e

Futurology is the attempt to predict how the future will turn out. As opposed to less respected forms of fortune telling, it generally attempts to predict sociological and scientific changes, rather than particular events, although it occasionally makes stabs at predicting world wars and similar globe spanning events.

My subsumption of futurology under the category of fortune telling may suggest that I am opposed to it. I am not. We all predict the future all the time. Implicit in undertaking any action is the prediction that one will have time to do it, or at least make headway on it. There is also the prediction that if I do this, then something I want will result at a reasonable cost. If futurology based its guesses on events which had no natural connection with how things will turn out, then there would be a problem, but it instead attempts to extrapolate from current trends.

The task of extrapolating is often done poorly, however. That is the point of the opening quote: we tend to extrapolate linearly. We tend to think in terms of either progress or decline, and see these as both opposed and lacking internal resources for any reversal. It is hard, even when one notices this fact, to resist this tendency. If one looks back at my posts about current culture, one will likely see me falling into this error.

The twists in history come from the fact that not everyone is going the direction of the masses, and not all the masses are unequivocally going the direction of the herd. The herd is an abstraction. Each individual in the herd feels dislocated from the herd. Most people dissent in some way with respect to some view of their group. Some twists occur because there comes to be enough of a certain kind of dissent to crystallize into a new movement. Other twists occur because people change their minds, often because they see their views as conflicting in irresolvable ways.

What should give us hope in the present time, when it seems as though both the left and the right are providing only predictions of decline, is that these twists and turns occur, and are likely to occur. Neither political party is as unified as it seems, and both seem to contain views which conflict with each other. These two elements provide resources for both parties to change direction. In the culture at large and in various sub-groups the same holds, although it is less clear--because the groups are less well defined--where the fault lines may appear.

A responsible futurology must provide an account of the forces which are presently driving the culture, what the forces which are operating at a level that is not efficacious are, what new forces may be produced, what produces and demolishes such forces, and how all these forces and force effecting processes interact. The lazy futurologies which merely continue a trend linearly or expect history to repeat itself the same way every time must be done away with. Cultural and scientific trends are unstable, and history rarely repeats itself the same way twice.

Wittgenstein and Transgenderism

1. What is it to be a man? We are constantly having to remind ourselves not to look at the subjective sense of the word, but at how we would say of someone else that he is a male.

2. Is it possible to be in error about this sort of thing? If I happened to say I were woman, that would be wrong.

3. If someone who appeared to be a woman insisted she were a man, what difference would it make? Perhaps she goes into the men's restroom. Of course, then the sign "Men's" would no longer function as it used to--the sign would have changed.

4. Suppose someone who appears to be a woman to me comes and tells me that she is a man. Under one use of the word, the one we are accustomed to using with infants, she is wrong. How would I convince her? I would explain, "No, you must not understand what you are saying, that word only applies in a context like..."

5. What do we do when we disagree about what a word means (how it is to be used)?

4. When the use of a word changes, the concepts associated with it shift, as it were, and we have trouble matching up what was said before with what is said after.

6. The words "man" and "woman" as they are used by those who affirm the possibility of transgenderism being, at worst, neutral, seem to be subjective terms, like "believe" and "pain". How do I know someone else is transgender? Perhaps there are indications--he acts like a woman. Of course, this requires us to agree on what it is to "act like a woman".

7. Suppose there is nothing it necessarily is to be a man or a woman. Then have these words lost all sense? What difference would it make, then, whether I were a man or a woman? Which bathroom I use? But then I should change whether I was a man or woman simply by changing which bathroom I used. And if we were to do away with the distinction between the restrooms and locker rooms and such...?

8. Why is it that a man who claims to be a woman wants to change his appearance to fit with what we think of women as looking like? Is that what it is to be a woman? But he didn't look like that when said he already was one.

9. If I were to wake up one morning to find I was a fully functional woman physically, would I be a woman? Well, that's how I use the word, and others, too, would be inclined to say "he's turned into a woman!"

10. If there is a particular way of using "man" then there are also a whole host of ways to misuse it. In the new way of using it, what would count as misusing it? If I were to tell someone they were a man, and they claimed otherwise, would I be misusing the word? Then no one can lie about whether they are a man or a woman?

11. I fill out a form which asks about my gender: male/female. At the end of the form, I sign, saying the information in the form is complete and correct to the best of my knowledge. To sign there, does it matter how I answered the gender question? Suppose that were the only question on the form. Then what sense would signing there make? Perhaps I am saying that this is how I normally answer, but why couldn't I be male one day and female on another (according to this new use of the words)?

12. I am giving testimony in court and I say "I saw a woman walk out of the store..." I later learn that she calls herself a man. If the court is now looking for a woman, because of my testimony, will they have trouble finding her? No...

13. Suppose the opposite case happens: I meet the woman and find out that she calls herself a man. I then testify that I met a man... What will they look for now? Someone who identifies as a man? (Perhaps I ought to say "I met someone who claims to be a man, but looks like women tend to look")

14. A burglar discovers he has been described to the police as "a man". He is approached by a detective, "excuse me, but you match this description of a man who burgled the bank last Tuesday" "Oh, that can't be, I'm a woman!" So do the terms "man" and "woman" no longer say anything about the appearance? Should the detective assume the description was just a bit off, or should he keep looking for someone who identifies as a man? Suppose he only has a warrant to arrest the culprit under the description of being a man, then can he arrest the burglar who calls himself a woman?

15. Perhaps we may say that someone is a man, even if he identifies as a woman, but then if he says otherwise we must change. But then, of course, to avoid being wrong we must great every new acquaintance with "Hello, my name is B. B., I'm a man, and you are...?" and the other person will respond in kind. But all this has to do with is what pronouns I use with this other person, and which restrooms, etc., we each use. It can have nothing to do with how I respond to her, according to our new language.

16. If I wish to refer to someone I saw, should I say that she looks like women tend to look? Or may I still say that she was a woman? If I must expand it in this way, perhaps we ought to come up with a shorter collocation.

17. I always think ideas are fishy when they imply odd collocations. "Never say that someone is a woman until you have asked what he or she would like to be called" sounds an awfully lot like "never say 'I know...' only, 'I believe quite strongly...'" or "Always say the qualification 'x'".

18. Someone acts very strangely. May we not say that he has a mental illness until we have determined precisely what is wrong? We may, of course, be wrong.

19. Suppose someone said "If only I looked like a woman instead of a man, then everything would be better!" Well, what would they have done a century or two ago? Surely something could be done about the problem even then, and yet they could not have changed their appearance so thoroughly.

20. If someone says "Thank goodness I live in the 21st century, those medievals were so much more helpless against the problems of life than we are!" then I know they have no perspective--and I doubt they understand what the problems of life really are. (Chronological Snobbery).

21. Perhaps this is all irrelevant to how the language works now. But that requires that we detach--in our language--what we should do from what they should have done. Then I cannot say "The Christians should not have fought the crusades," since morality has, apparently, changed since then.

22. "It has not changed. It would have been good for them back then as well as us now, it is just that now we can" But why? Do we just know these things? Some morals may be embedded in our language, but not those we argue about.

23. "It is good to be true to oneself." Such a mess. What is it to be true to oneself?

24. I decide I feel more true to myself if I murder--does that justify murder?!

25. Our language has gotten so subjective over the past few years. How am I to argue with "I feel..."? What has "I feel..." have to do with it being so? They are miles apart (except in certain cases).

26. How does a child learn the concept of "man" and "woman"? These days, it is hard to imagine. Either it must tie to behaviors or appearances, but our culture refuses to tie gender to either. "Away with stereotypes!" "Your body doesn't have to limit you!" What does, then?

27. Is it now possible to say "I am a martian" and be taken seriously? Why not? If I say I am a martian, what do you expect differently of me? That I am crazy? But not if I said "I am a woman." Why not?

28. We at least seem to agree that there is something it is to be a woman, and that it matters. But what is it supposed to be if it has nothing to do with the body (transgenderism) nor with behaviors (anti-stereotypists).

29. There are those who wish to remove all gendered speech. At least they're consistent. But could you be transgendered then? It would have to be expressed differently, and it would have even fewer implications then than it does now.

30. Watching things shift, one wants to ask what everyone means when they say these words.

31. "Well, you use them all the time. We mean the same as you do." No, you evidently use them quite differently.

Wittgensteinian Ethics

Maurice Drury tells a story about an interaction he had with Wittgenstein where Drury said something about monastic kinds of life being a waste of time. Wittgenstein responded "how can you know what their problems were in those days and what they had to do about them?"

To Freidrich Waismann Wittgenstein said "At the end of my lecture on ethics, I spoke in the first person. I believe that is quite essential. Here nothing more can be established, I can only appear as a person speaking for myself."

It can easily be seen throughout Wittgenstein's comments and actions regarding his life and philosophy that his philosophical work was bound up in his life.

I would like to suggest that Wittgenstein's ethic was a kind of existential ethic. Ethical problems are seen as problems which need solved in life--by a form of life--and one cannot solve an ethical problem without encountering it in a life. We speak from where we are in matters of ethics. My answers to ethical questions are only valid insofar as they are livable, and so the best test for an answer to a problem of ethics, of life, is to live it out. The question is whether the solution can fit into a way of life.

Why are we incapable of speaking about what is ethical? This is an attack on the open question argument, or a kind of agreement with its force. The point, that is, is that we cannot capture the normative power of what is to be done, or what is good, in language. Normativity exceeds what can be expressed. What we should do is what would solve the lived problems of our lives. Why? And the answer is not given in words, so much as by our inability to truly ask the question if we have heard the answer rightly. We must see what is normative, we cannot merely speak it.

Body and Soul: A Normative Relationship

"The human body is the best picture of the human soul." Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations pt.II, iv, section 25.

I use this quote because it is what began the thought processes which led to the conclusions here, not as evidence for them.

My thesis here is that the physical ought to represent, picture, or better yet embody the spiritual (by which I will mean in this post anything one would refer to as mental, spiritual, relating to the soul, emotions, cognition, etc.).

As a Christian, the most obvious evidence in favor of this is in reference to those places where the spiritual is embodied in the context of Christianity. These are, first, the human person, but that is the case we wish to understand by reference to the others; second, Christ, who is God incarnate; third, the Christian sacraments and what went before them.

In the case of Jesus Christ, God became human and thereby took on "sinful flesh" in order to bear our sins, and our sin nature in the flesh, which nature is often referred to as our flesh. He suffered, bled, and died as sinner--in our stead, or as ourselves. He represented all humans and so became human.

I think the sacraments are more obvious, and to those I now turn. In baptism, one exhibits outwardly that one has been cleansed, that one has been buried and raised with Christ. In taking communion, we take Christ in bodily and in so doing show our taking him in spiritually. I take neither of these as salvific, but both as means of grace in which we meet God spiritually in the physical representation. I count neither of these as mere ceremonies or as merely representations, but as also involving the presence of God with us in spirit in a special way. If these were merely physical representations, then they would be of no help in understanding the relationship between the physical and the spiritual in this way.

So much for the particularly Christian points, on to more broadly theistic.

I take it that all of creation pictures God, whether by choice or not and whether in the short term or long. I further take it that, in a perfect (i.e., pre-fall or once Christ returns) world, we would be able to learn directly from creation how things stand regarding the nature of God. Those who take disaster as a sign of the displeasure of God should not be wrong, and likewise those who take riches as a sign of God's pleasure--their being wrong about these things is a consequence of the fall, and so to be lamented as it is in the psalms and by the prophets. Thus I take it that the right structure of the world as a whole was meant to be one of imaging the spiritual in the physical. It may be possible for this to be the case and yet particular physical things not be intended to relate in that way to particular spiritual realities, but I doubt that it is likely that that is how it is supposed to be. That is, I suspect that particular physical realities correspond relatively straightforwardly to spiritual realities as regards what they are supposed to image. Thus, human body is to picture human soul.

On to broadly philosophical points.

Insofar as what I am referring to here as the human soul is what directs the human body, it seems natural that it would exhibit itself in the human body, and insofar as there is design, it seems designed to do so. Thus there would seem to be a malfunction if the human soul was not pictured by the human body.

If the normative in no way shows up in the physical, then we cannot charge anyone with guilt on account of actions performed, but only on account of intent divorced of physical content, e.g., intent to commit murder, but not intent to drive an axe through the skull of a self-moving human body's skull. If the normative does show up in the physical, then I would expect it to do so by means of, at least, what is harmful or beneficial to human well-being, broadly construed. Such things would then indicate what is good or bad to us.

What is conducive to our well-being, broadly construed, is what is conducive to our being what we are as fully as possible. We are humans which are both spiritual and physical, with the spiritual directing the physical, by and large. Thus, what is good for us is, in part, what is conducive to our exhibiting who we are as spiritual persons in what we are as physical bodies.

There is much complication which may follow, such as balancing changing insides versus changing outsides, but the point here is to establish that, all else being equal, one's spiritual person should show up in one's physical body. I take it, further, that this extends to speech and to social life and exhibiting spiritual relations via physical ones, which we do naturally, indeed, instinctively, by adjusting distances between us, shifting foot positions, crossing arms, etc.

Language

Go read the Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Most of what I say here arises from my understanding of what he says there.

A way of acting in the world, combined with humans' nature as language-users, gives rise to a way of speaking. Words, phrases, and so on, thus gain their meaning from the way of life from which they arise. To make some set of sounds is to say something because of how those sounds fit into a way of speaking. As there are various ways of being in the world, so there are various ways of speaking. A musician can say things which are meaningless to a mechanic, and vice-versa.

Call a way of acting or being in the world a "way of life." Call a way of speaking, i.e., a language with its characteristic usage, a "language game." These are phrasings from Wittgenstein.

If we imagine a language game, then there must be some ways of acting which go with it. If there are particular words in the language game, then there must be some actions, events, items, etc., which go with them. These words might refer to quite particular parts of a life: "my left hand," or be vague: "toy." Differences between words might be quite clear: "hat," "mitten," or vague: "jacket," "coat."

Things wind up having a kind of grammar, just as the words do. A sentence like "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" it is grammatically correct as far as the sort of words they are, but when I say that a colorless thing cannot also be green, I am saying something about what I here calling the grammar of those words or concepts. That is, it is a comment about the way our words are allowed to go together. I am also making a grammatical statement of this sort when I tell you that an idea, itself, can't be green, even if it can be of something which is green.

When we want to know the meaning of a word or phrase, then, we are asking about how it is used in the language game. How is it used? What kind of life, or part of a life of what kind, is indicated when this word is used in this manner? A word may refer to a variety of things, some by analogy to others. The vagueness of a word is like the vagueness of a last name, thus Wittgenstein speaks of a "family resemblance" between the meanings of a word. How is go fish like chess, other than both being called a "game"? How are "football" and "soccer ball" alike, other than being confused for one another in writing by some people and both being called a "ball"? We might be able to see some connection between the two, or not, but this does not invalidate our use of the word "ball" or "game" for very different things.

As language is not fully a language apart from the practices which go with it, so the practices of people have meaning. My actions communicate. We read each others body language all the time, and this is a kind of communication. We can say of someone that it would be wrong to call them happy, and we justify it by observations about them. This is what is meant by using a word wrongly. Someone might tell us that, when they call someone happy, they mean that the person has taken to locking themselves in their room for long periods of time. We would say that they do not mean by "happy" what we mean by it, but that, if that is what they mean, then the person--who we would not call happy--is happy. This is a confusion caused by the person using a word in a way that is not recognized in our language game. Thus, they use it wrong, but it would be right if the language game were set up differently--and so they think it is.

We learn to communicate with others better, then, by learning the nuances of how they use the language. Their language game is set up slightly differently from ours, in every case. The mechanic, on hearing the musician speak of tones and fifths and quarter steps, might say "it's all Greek to me," and vice-versa. If the musician were to learn how to play music, though, then he would eventually learn how those words are used in that language game. Even between those in a similar discipline, there might be differences in how they use the language. We can imagine discussing what color to call something, or what we mean when we call someone our friend. Even more obviously, and at the same time more often overlooked, we might differ in what we call a "good day" at a very basic level. Is a day good if you were happy for most of it? If you were productive? If you got to spend most of it in bed? If you were unhappy for most of it, but felt by the end that it was for the best? Might you call a day bad if you spent it laughing and smiling at things which won't matter by the end of the week?

Wittgenstein's Birthday

"I am certain that we will not understand [him] unless we feel some sympathy and comprehension for [his] persistent intention to change his whole manner of life" --Maurice Drury about Wittgenstein


"We tend to take the speech of a Chinese for inarticulate gurgling. Someone who understands Chinese will recognize language in what he hears. Similarly I often cannot discern the humanity in a man." --Wittgenstein
 "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." --the last line of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
"What can be shown cannot be said." --and an earlier one.
"to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life." --from his Philosophical Investigations







So often misunderstood, it seems reasonable to think that his native language has never been common.

What is the use of translating a text which speaks in a completely unknown language? This is more than simply to translate from one language to another, but also to make the context clear. There are some who live in a certain context which is so alien from how others live that, though the language is, at surface, the same, the language is itself quite different. The more different our contexts--our ways of life--the more different our languages. There is enough similarity to be frustrating, and some are lucky enough to have others who speak a relatively similar language, but then there are those who stand in the world and live in a way that is so different from others that the gestures others make about themselves look more akin to the kind which a dog makes by scratching at the door. Sure, the dog gestures toward what seems to be a desire to go out, but surely I ought to expect people who are like me to make more important gestures than that? You want to go here, do that, but so few even bother to scratch at anything of real value. This is what it is to be alone in the world: to find yourself among fools--"persons" who don't care about anything worthwhile. Or perhaps they do... but so often the gestures do not gesture right. They do not treat people as valuable, really. It is as if I were to say "I love cake" but never eat any, even refuse it when offered. People speak, but they do not show, and thus their speech is wasted. And these inconsistencies: at least dogs are consistent! People say one thing, but they lie. Do they care that they say one thing and show another? This at least would show that I am not alone, since I admit I fail to be consistent. But I hate that I am inconsistent, whereas so many laugh it off. Do you think it's funny? Do you think you are here for fun and games? Is that enough? You mock yourselves! Surely there is something that you value like nothing else, with awe and reverence? And yet these words fall flat in front of you, I could write them in Latin or Greek! Fear? You hate fear, but not because you understand it. Don't you think there is anything bigger than you? Something that could destroy you? Haven't you seen the pictures from disasters? If that is the only way to make you stop being chipper, happy without cause, then you are pathetic and shallow. Oh, be joyful, but have a reason! What can inspire joy in the face of such hideous evil but something on your side which may put even death in the position of having this hanging there over its head, able to destroy it. And if you can have joy, if such a thing exists, well, surely it could annihilate you several times over! Does it matter that it is on your side? That gives you joy, but the fear is still proper. If you never really fear, then you have no basis for joy. The exhilarating awe, that is fear and joy. Imagine holding a magnificent, sharp sword in your hands. Fear the blade! It cuts. It doesn't matter that you hold it, and how much more if all you know that the power is on your side. Maybe you don't like it. Maybe it will hurt you to keep you from getting killed. Don't you fear this power? Do you think it is on a leash? Do you think it is predictable? You can fear something even when you are certain that it is for your good. But you don't even know what a "solemn assembly" is well enough to even fake one!

This is the struggle, the frustration of one who looks out on featherless bipeds and hears about video games and movies and drama with no sounds of weeping or awe. No one is unsettled. No one is surprised in their cozy little happy worlds. And then it breaks. Because, if nothing else, we are all squishy mammals, and the world is certainly able to break in, and eventually does, and then you are crushed. Or are your worlds not cozy and happy? Well, then, don't lie to us. Weep, fear, show awe. Gesticulate madly and without thinking, show that you care about something beyond stuff and emotions in themselves! There must be something beyond those that underlie why you care about them. What is it?

So, why do you translate this book? Look: the Bible is utter gibberish if you don't understand the language. And they didn't have an easy time understanding it in its time: look at the disciples' reactions to Jesus. To understand the Bible requires one to see another way of life. One where people are valuable and God is awesome and sin is ugly and God is love. Well! "God is love"! That's easy enough, right? Hah! One might think it is simple because most people have given up trying to figure it out. "Love" Do you have any context for that concept? In the context of an awesome and magnificent and powerful God? Really? Explain! Show this context! Explain this way of life! Or is it rather like this: we cannot speak about this, but only show it? Well, then, how are we to start? To show a concept which no one can explain, we mimic the ones who have seen it. Ah, but has anyone really shown it? Who am I to follow? Jesus? What the Bible says he does is certainly expressing it, but this amounts to circularity: I do not understand this way of life. Is it not, rather, the case that I cannot do what must be done? We can show, sort of, what this love is, but in the end it takes another understanding the language and living in this way of life for us if we are to really get it at all.