Category Archives: Filosofi

Fremtidens borgerlige offensiv

Overalt i den vestlige verden har erhvervsledere og borgerlige intellektuelle længe været enige om, at lavere skatter og mindre regulering er vejen frem. Og dog synes kampen for øget økonomisk og social frihed at stå i stampe. Flere borgerlige meningsdannere har i de senere år gjort sig den erfaring, at det er nemt nok at erklære sin støtte til den borgerlig-liberale frihedsdagsorden på papiret, men anderledes svært at få eksekveret disse ideer i praksis.

Derfor var det med stor interesse fra publikum, da tænketanke og borgerlige intellektuelle fra 86 lande overalt på kloden for nylig fremlagde deres strategier for udbredelse af det borgerlig-liberale idegods til den årlige Liberty Forum-konference i New York.

Rammen for mødet lagde ikke fingrene imellem: Det borgerlige maskineri er tilsandet. Der er for meget ”business as usual” blandt tænketanke og borgerlige intellektuelle. Fraser som ”at være en fast spiller i debatten” eller at være en ”anerkendt meningsdanner” har i disse år fået lov at skygge for det egentlige succeskriterium: At ændre verden i en mere borgerlig-liberal retning. Skal liberalismen vinde frem, har de borgerlige brug for at tænke offensivt.

Her er nogle erfaringer fra årets Liberty Forum, som også kunne være relevante i en dansk kontekst.

Fagbevægelser med monopolistisk tilsnit er generelt til skade for den borgerlige dagsorden. I den amerikanske delstat Michigan har borgerlige tænketanke siden 2010 haft held med at vende offentlighedens syn på fagbevægelsen fra helte til skurke. Dette resultat blev ikke opnået ved at tilbagevise fagforeningernes reklamekampagner og argumentation, men ved at gå direkte efter fagforeningerne som organisationer. Som direktøren for Mackinac Center, der anførte kampen, sagde: ”I flere år befandt vi os i en krig, hvor vi blev ved med at slås mod fagforeningernes slutprodukter, nemlig de reklamer de producerede, efter de havde indkrævet penge fra deres medlemmer. Det var først, da vi begyndte at angribe fagforeningerne på deres forsyningslinjer, nemlig de kontingentbetalende medlemmers mening om dem, at vi gjorde fremskridt.”

I Michigan var strategien mod fagforeningerne tvedelt: For det første førte man aktivistiske retssager. Det er velkendt, at fagforeningerne ofte har held med at få det juridiske system til at vende det blinde øje til visse af deres praksisser, der teknisk set er på kant med loven (herhjemme kender vi eksempelvis sagerne om stilladsbranchen, der ulovligt piller konkurrerende arbejderes stilladser fra hinanden i ly af natten). I Michigan begyndte borgerlige tænketanke simpelthen at sagsøge fagforeningerne, hver gang de fik nys om sådanne tilfælde. Og det opsigtsvækkende var, at selvom de borgerlige advokater ikke vandt én eneste af disse retssager, så var selve det forhold, at der kom offentlig fokus på fagforeningernes prakssiser, nok til at vende den folkelige stemning imod dem.

Ligeledes satte man fokus på grimme cases internt i fagforeningerne: Fagforeningsrepræsentanter, der opfordrer kolleger til at stikke hinanden, og pampere, der bor i kæmpevillaer, mens menige medlemmer kommer i klemme og ikke får de ydelser, de har betalt for. Man udstillede den latente racisme, der anvendes som løftestang til at dehumanisere konkurrerende arbejdere, og voldsparatheden, som flere fagforeningsfolk synes at opfatte som moralsk forsvarlig. I Michigan gjorde man sig den erfaring, at fagforeningernes indre mekanik ikke kan tåle dagens lys, uden at folkestemningen bliver vendt imod dem.

Her er et andet eksempel på en borgerlig offensiv fra Liberty Forum.

I det indiske Center for Civil Society har man studeret, hvornår regeringer er mest lydhøre over for policy-forslag fra borgerlige intellektuelle. Det er de i de første 300 dage efter deres tiltrædelse. Når først en regering har fundet sig til rette ved magten, fortaber viljen til at foretage ideologiske ændringer sig i samfundets daglige drift. Derfor satte Center for Civil Society sig for at holde Indiens nytiltrådte til ilden som følger: Hver gang den nye regering ville indføre en ny lov, udpegede Center for Civil Society 10 antikverede love, som med fordel kunne sløjfes. Ved hver lov, som de borgerlige ønskede sløjfet, udgav man en én-sides-rapport om loven, der var holdt i et ligefremt sprog, som ikke-jurister kunne forstå. Ved at få beslutningen til at synes, som om den allerede var truffet for magthaverne, og at de blot skulle give grønt lys for at forbedre alle parters retssikkerhed, placerede man de nytilkomne ministre i en position, hvor det var overordentligt svært at sige nej.

Freudian Personality Types

Anal Types

The anal-expulsive type is often sadistic in conduct in so far as he will attempt to break down the people that he perceives as trying to control his urge towards expulsion upon the world and his ill-planned participation in the events that surround him. In bed, he may be either a sexual sadist (dominator) or a masochist (subjugating himself to the dominance of others). Both of these dispositions hark back to the fundamental immoderation that is the hallmark of this type.

On the other hand, in the case of the anal-retentive type, he is normally prim and proper in interpersonal matters, but may reveal a “background sadism” upon closer inspection – a certain schadenfreude (a delight in the misfortunes of others) is often visible. This schadenfreude is, however, not genuine sadism: It is not there because the anal-retentive type really wants to break others, but rather because he perceives the misfortunes striking others as his reward for “following the rules” as tightly as he does. Unconsciously, the anal-retentive type hates following the rules just as much as the next guy. Contrary to immediate perception, he does not enjoy being a stickler, and doing everything “by the book” drains his life of joy. But since he feels that he has to follow the rules, he must compensate by telling himself that there must also be some reward for doing so. And so the “reward” is that misfortunes of fate tend to happen to others, but not to himself. That is his reward for following the rules.

In bed, the anal-retentive type may exhibit sadistic (dominating) behavior, but again, his true drive is not to bring others down. In bed, his sadism is a manifestation of his need to control an otherwise unpredictable situation by, for example, putting the partner in fetters.

Phallic Types

“Goethe conceived of a human being who would be strong, highly educated, skillful in all bodily manners, self-controlled, reverent towards himself, and who might dare to afford the whole range and wealth of being natural, being strong enough for such freedom.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

The phallic-aggressive type evinces very poor reactions to even minor defeats and has a tendency to externalize the blame for defeats. He tends to have a narcissistic and infantile sexuality. If the aspirations of the phallic-aggressive type are frustrated in early adulthood, the phallic type can become an exhibitionist as a way of gaining the attention which their talents did not allow them to develop and realize in life.

With regards to the phallic type, the themes that unite both the aggressive and the placid version of the type is the wish to be in possession of people and institutions around them. For example, a man who views his mistress as a possession, rather than as a human being in her own right, or the man who defines his mistress in terms of the pleasure that she can provide for him, rather than who she is in herself, might be said to exhibit the traits of the phallic type.

Similarly, in a business context, the man who strives to possess the company which he works for may be a phallic type: Just like the man mentioned above may fuse his own identity with that of his mistress, a phallic type may fuse his personal identity with the company that he works for. Other employees of similar seniority are perceived as rivals, and competing ideas about how to accomplish the same thing for the firm are perceived as personal attacks. The phallic type is competitive, forceful and assertive, but secretly has a fear of collapse and yielding that is often palpable as it sits immediately under the surface.

Owing to these dispositions, the phallic type has a knack for getting himself into situations that he lacks the resources to resolve himself: His domination steers him into uncharted waters in pursuit of the grandiose goals of domination and accomplishment that he glimpses on the horizon, yet when he later capsizes and overturns in unknown waters, he cannot turn back and admit that he made a mistake and that he that was responsible for the faulty course – for that would be a concession to the fear of collapse and yielding.

He is like a driver who, upon losing control of the car, finds himself unable to step on the brake, but slams down the speeder instead. It is like he is inflating a balloon, and as it begins to crack around the edges, he can only inflate it some more.

Sexually, the phallic type is likely to be quite normal (though he may be gloating and unduly ceremonious about sex with a new partner and for the same reason also prone to infidelity). But while normal in bed, he may be sadistic or exploitative in interpersonal affairs. Their aim is to break or incapacitate the other, so that they can dominate undauntedly. On the other hand, where the aggressive phallic type always wants to plot the course, the placid phallic plays the social imbecile with no idea of where to go.

Pinker’s Arguments for Genetic Gender Differences

Geneticists have found that the diversity of the DNA in the mitochondria of different people (which men and women inherit from their mothers) is far greater than the diversity of the DNA in Y chromosomes (which men inherit from their fathers). This suggests that for tens of millennia men had greater variation in their reproductive success than women. (…) These are precisely the conditions that cause sexual seletion, in which males compete for opportunities to mate and females choose the best-quality mates.

Here are a dozen kinds of evidence that suggest that the [biological] difference between men and women is more than genitalia-deep:

– Sex differences are not an arbitrary feature of Western culture (…) In all human cultures, men and woman are seen as having different natures. (…)- Many of the psychological differences between the sexes are exactly what an evolutionary biologist who knew only their physical differences would predict. Throughout the animal kingdom, when the female has to invest more calories and risk in each offspring (in the case of mammals, through pregnancy and nursing), she also invests more in nurturing the offspring after birth, since it is more costly for a female to replace a child than for a male to replace one. (…)

– Many of the sex differences are found widely in other primates, indeed, throughout the mammalian class. The males tend to compete more aggressively and to be more polygamous; the females tend to invest more in parenting. (…)

– The human body contains a mechanism that causes the brains of boys and the brains of girls to diverge during development. The Y chromosome triggers the growth of tests in a male fetus, which secrete androgens, the characteristically male hormones (including testosterone). Androgens have lasting effects on the brain during fetal development, in the months after birth, and during puberty, and they have transient effects at other times. Estrogens, the characteristically female sex hormones, also affect the brain throughout life. Receptors for the sex hormones are found in the hypothalamus, the hippocampus, and the amygdala in the limbic system of the brain, as well as in the cerebral cortex.

– Variation in the level of testosterone among different men, and in the same man in different seasons or at different times of day, correlates with libido, self-confidence, and the drive for dominance. (…) There is a causal effect (…) When women preparing for a sex-change operation are given androgens, they improve on tests of mental rotation and get worse on tests of verbal fluency. (…) Higher-testosterone women smile less often and have more extramarital affairs, a stronger social presence, and even a stronger handshake.

– Women’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses vary with the phase of their menstrual cycle. When estrogen levels are high, women get even better at tasks on which they typically do better than men, such as verbal fluency. When the levels are low, women get better at tasks on which men typically do better, such as mental rotation. A variety of sexual motives, including their taste in men, vary with the menstrual cycle as well. (…)

– The ultimate fantasy experiment to separate biology from socialization would be to take a baby boy, give him a sex-change operation, and have his parents raise him as a girl and other people treat him as one. If gender is socially constructed, the child should have the mind of a normal girl; if it depends on prenatal hormones, the child should feel like a boy trapped in a girl’s body. Remarkarbly, the experiment has been done in real life – not out of scientific curiosity, of course, but as a result of disease and accidents. One study looked at twenty-five boys who were born without a penis (a birth defect known as cloacal exstrophy) and who were then castrated and raised as girls. ALL of them showed male patterns of rough-and-tumble play and had typically male attitudes and interests. More than half of them spontaneously declared they were boys, one when he was just five years old. (…)

Things are not looking good for the theory that boys and girls are born identical except for their genitalia, with all other differences coming from the way society treats them. (…)

Of course, just because many sex differences are rooted in biology does not mean that one sex is superior, that the differences will emerge for all people in all circumstances, that discrimination against a person based on sex is justified, or that people should be coerced into doing things typical of their sex. But neither are the differences without consequences.

Rifkin og Zero Marginal Cost-samfundet

Jeremy Rifkin har skrevet en bog ved navn Zero Marginal Cost Society. Heri argumenterer han for, at kapitalismen er ved at være slut til fordel for en økonomi, hvor folk deler designs for fysiske ting med hinanden gratis, og 3D-printer dem til sig selv billigt. Dette vil ifølge Rifkin sætte kapitalismens dominans under en skæppe.

Det er nemt at være enig med ham i, at der kommer et Wikipedia of Things i løbet af de næste årtier, og at dette kan løfte almindelige menneskers livskvalitet betragteligt. Dog kan er det svært at se se hvorfor dette skulle være dårligt for kapitalismen. Kapitalister er interesseret i profit, ikke omsætning. Den kvalitet af produkter, som vil blive billigere, eller næsten gratis, som følge af et Wikipedia of Things er alligevel mest produkter med høj omsætning og lav profit.

I modsætning hertil kender man lækkerhedsmonopoler såsom Iphone og Porsche. Disse produkter vil ikke blive billigere så længe, der stadig eksisterer intellektuel ejendomsret, tværtimod vil de snarere blive dyrere, da folk nu er i stand til at spendere en større del af deres indkomster på livsstil og luksus. Den udvikling, Rifkin beskriver, sandsynligvis vil føre til bedre levestandard for almindelige mennesker. Men samtidig vil den også føre til større ulighed, da konkurrencen om at levere et produkt, folk vil have på markedsvilkår vil blive så skarp, at færre vil være i stand til at deltage.

Derudover er der intet, der tvinger kapitalister til at sætte prisen i nærheden af marginalomkostningerne, sådan som Rifkin hævder – Google AdSense har f.eks. en zero marginal cost på deres reklameservices. Alligevel tager Google 32% af partnerens indtjening, ikke 1% som de ville gøre, hvis deres priser var bestemt af marginalomkostningerne. På samme måde kan man forestille sig andre aggregatorer og “essentielle led” i hans fremtidsøkonomi vil få et ganske behageligt liv som kapitalister hvor alle er afhængige af deres services, og de egentlig bare kan læne sig tilbage og se pengene rulle ind fra hele verden.

Derudover er det overdrevet at snakke om Zero Marginal Cost som en erstatning for kapitalismen. Hvem skal bo på Manhattan og hvem skal bo i Brooklyn? KBH K og Ishøj? Alle positionelle goder må stadig fordeles kapitalistisk.

Alt i alt: Den er en god idé Rifkin har, og sandsynligvis kommer meget af det, han beskriver til at ske. Men det virker som om, at dette ene facet af fremtidens økonomi, som han beskriver, bliver strukket aaalt for langt i hans bog. Økonomien er kompleks og der opstår hele tiden nye jobs og servicebehov, som ingen kunne have forudsagt. Den udvikling, Rifkin beskriver, kan højest erstatte en del af økonomien, som vi kender den. Næppe den hele, som bogen ellers lægge rop til.

Nihilism in European and Indian Philosophy

keep-calm-and-embrace-nihilism The main tenor of Western philosophy, from Descartes onward, basically leads to some form of value nihilism. This statement may seem astounding.

On the earliest fringes of European philosophy you have names like Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Heraclitus – these people were as much mystics as they were ‘philosophers.’ Then you get Socrates, as basically just another Zeno of Elea. Plato lays the groundwork of later rationalism, by his rigorous and arid analysis of words and concepts, and by postulating a purely intellectual cause that could not itself be affected by other causes (the Forms). Yet there is still something of a mystical or “integral” element in Plato.

With Descartes, two things happen:

(1) Matter becomes “dead” and soul alive. Even animals are basically just advanced clockwork to him. So from the earlier conception of the world as being alive or “enspirited,” the West tends to move towards a conception of matter as basically dead.

(2) Then there’s the rationalization of thought, meaning that thought becomes dislodged from anything in the real world, e.g. the famous dualism which is in contradiction to Parmenides and Plato where thought and the real are mutually interdependent.

And then of course we get Hume who separates ‘is’ from ‘ought’. Now values and morals are not only totally dislodged from the world, but morals are even further dislodged from anything real, being merely a subjective subset of a subjective and unreal activity (mental arguments).

These challenges have never really been refuted in Western philosophy. Although there are of course many theories of morals etc., they are really all quite impotent when compared to the case for value nihilism. Hume and Adam Smith recognized as much, saying that morals come out of our moral sentiments as a fact of human nature. But as should be obvious, if a species has a type of moral sentiment that has evolved in that species because it was beneficial to survival, that basically amounts to saying that *in reality* there is no morality, only an accident of evolution, which endows us with values and morals, and which we can attempt to formalize in different ways.

But as long as Western philosophy is conceived as mere analytical playthings for the mind, they ultimately amount to no more than a curtain strapped in front of a big empty stage to dress up the setting as being not just a void. But ultimately, since the is-ought dichotomy still stands, there is nothing that can go toe-to-toe with the challenge of nihilism and win.

In this way, Nietzsche actually had the right idea when he saw that (1) humans cannot be nihilists; it’s too psychologically self-destructive and (2) there is no rational escape from nihilism.

But Nietzsche then ended up championing dominance and aesthetics as the meaning of life, to fill the void of nihilism. It is easy to agree with his criticism of nihilism and its destructive effects, but on the other hand, also easy to disagree with his solution. This is where Indian philosophy comes in.

Whereas the whole Western tradition is built around dispassionate thoughts that are more or less dislodged from the real, Indian philosophy starts instead from the realization, or mystical vision, that is expressed in the Upanishads, or which was attained by the Buddha. This state seems to exist across cultures and across millennia, and brain scientists are working intensely on figuring out what it is. But, as the cliches go, there is a mode of perception where “all things are one,” opposites are realized as being two opposites of the same coin, and so on. This state is so intense as to negate all doubt and rumination. To the person who experiences it, it is self-evidently true without qualification. Famously, it is completely unlike ordinary thoughts and feelings, nothing like ordinary mental life.

In this state, there is no is-ought. That is just another dualism, which is exposed as an intellectual plaything in Indian philosophy. Basically, where Western philosophy postulates an Is-Ought divide, Indian philosophy postulates an Is-Seeming divide, where Is is the realization of reality as one and beyond dualisms and Seeming is our ordinary empirical consciousness which is full of dualisms all the time. In the Is-state, morality, in the form of compassion for all living beings, is said to follow by itself. Hence the problem of nihilism is solved by Indian philosophy; compassion for all sentient beings is synonymous with the truth.

The hard science reason for this compassion may be that intense meditation thickens the white/grey matter in the brain so that you naturally become more empathic and compassionate. But that doesn’t really matter in Indian philosophy: Whereas the West basically starts with thought in a naked vacuum (Descartes), the Indians start with the fact that there is a state of consciousness that is completely beyond ordinary mental life and which is experienced as self-evidently true. From the existence of this state, all of the rest of philosophy springs.

Now it might be interjected that this state could easily be a delusion, like someone on LSD realizing that things are one. Scientifically, it is true that the effects of meditation and psychedelia have been shown to have a bit in common (though psychedelia don’t strengthen the grey/white matter in the brain). So from a Western standpoint, the criticism is legitimate: The Indians are just tripping!

But if someone, like Nietzsche, felt the plight of nihilism knocking and saw that there really was no escape, the Indian approach represents an alternative way that, at least on its own premises, is practically irrefutable. In this way, philosophy becomes not just an intellectual discipline, but a spiritual one as well (though *not* religious as we understand it).

Review of ‘Parmenides of Elea’ by Martin J. Henn

zcab31yd Though this volume was published in 2003, its influence on the field of Parmenides studies has been negligible.

It was, for instance, not mentioned at all at the international Parmenides symposium in 2007 and nor was it mentioned in the recent ‘Parmenides, Plato and Mortal Philosophy‘ by Vishwa Adluri which otherwise purports to give an overview of the major opinions in Parmenides research. Overall, this omission seems strange.

The book opens with a linguistic analysis of Parmenides as a poet in the Homeric oral tradition. This section is bound to chiefly interest scholars of Ancient Greek rather than philosophers who are merely out to glean Parmenides’ philosophical meaning. The book also takes care to attempt to place the themes of Parmenides (fire and night) in a Greek tradition that must have been influenced by the Persian Zoroastrian tradition to some degree. As the author points out, the Zoroastrian tradition was already centuries old when the Greeks started poking around in it.

Though the author isn’t blind to the spiritual and archetypical content of philosophical themes like fire and night, he nevertheless takes care to put his points analytically and rationally to the reader. Like others have done before and after him, Henn takes pains to point out how Parmenides was influenced not just by Zoroastrian and nascent shamanism, but also by Orphism as well. In the case of Empedocles it is quite evident and generally acknowledged that he was as much a charlatan, magician, and wonder-worker as he was a philosopher, but for some reason, modern scholars keep assuming that Parmenides must be a ‘pure’ philosopher or logician. (Daniel W. Graham is one example of such a scholar. Patricia Curd is another.) But in fact, we are told quite plainly by Simplicius (in Diels 31 A7) that Empedocles was an associate and imitator of Parmenides. So there is good reason to assume that Parmenides may have had some of these histrionic tendencies as well.

Some further points from the book:

  • Author bids us consider that the Homeric tradition of oral recitation was still alive at the time of Parmenides and that Parmenides’ poem may be meant to be recited aloud in this regard. (Readers who want to further explore the phonetic and Homeric implications may want to look into Lisa Atwood Wilkinson’s Parmenides and To Eon – a work that has not yet been perused by the present reviewer.)
  • Author follows Charles H. Kahn in distinguishing between an essentialist mode of being and a so-called veridical one. (E.g. the essentialistic one says: “This is a knife,” and the veridical one says: “The knife is here.”) Parmenides’ understanding of Being is the latter. The premise for Kahn’s argument is that the essentialistic understanding of Being is a lingustic development that post-dates Parmenides. Nevertheless, most modern scholars presuppose that Parmenides is a “super logician” with a fully-formed system of symbolic logic.
  • Author posits a Platonic (or proto-Platonic) interpretation of the doxa as being the working of the senses. I.e. the reason mortals do not have true knowledge of the goddess is that their vision is clouded by the senses. By way of analogy, the doxa is posited to be a version of the realm of the dead with mortals indeed being ‘dead’ when compared to the divine vision that the goddess imparts to Parmenides.
  • The Parmenides poem is scarcely translatable into modern languages, if not downright lost in translation.
  • Patricia Curd’s reading of Parmenides is faulty, anachronistic, and Aristotelian (and the present reviewer agrees).
  • The Persians were conducting a ‘culture war’ against Greece in Parmenides’ youth, which makes it likely that the doxa is to some degree a repudiation of Zoroastrian doctrines. (The ‘backward-turning’ men who ‘wander two-headed‘ are thus deemed to be none other than the Zoroastrians by the author.)

While few full-fledged Parmenides scholars will be bound to accept all of these points wholesale, all of them are original and argued in a way that is satisfying to read and engage with. So much scholarship on the Pre-Socratics is presented in the format “so-and-so is so because I say it is so.” – A form of “argument” that is very frustrating for the critical mind to read. Not so with Martin J. Henn: He offers his conjectures, but he knows that he should aim to convince us, rather than just declaring so-and-so to be true. (A style or argument that is often considered pre-Parmenidian – the irony is palatable when our subject matter is considered.)

Why this book has been so overlooked is and must be a source of wonder to anyone interested in Parmenides research. Perhaps one reason is that its author, Martin J. Henn, is no one in particular: He was an adjunct professor of classics in Kansas when this book was written and it appears that Henn has now left the academic world entirely. Yet if this is indeed the case, Henn’s absence and the lack of further books from his pen on the subject, must truly be considered a loss for the field of Pre-Socratic studies as a whole.

How the academic world has gotten itself into a corner where authors who have nothing but unoriginal re-hashings to offer are promoted to central (and much coveted) positions of scholarship while original authors like Martin J. Henn are resigned to an auxiliary position at a Kansas State University is a mystery that would interest all of the humanities. Hopefully, it will one day be taken up with the same ardor as this author has exhibited in trying to crack the code of Parmenides’ poem.

Monogami er moderne, polygami er passé

Af Ryan Smith

Frankrigs ministerpræsident Francois Hollande befinder sig i øjeblikket i en mediestorm, efter at det franske ugeblad Closer har beskyldt ham for at have været sin partner utro med en kendt skuespillerinde. I november 2012 kæmpede den amerikanske general og daværende øverste chef for CIA David Petraeus en lignende kamp for sin karriere, efter at det kom frem, at han havde været sin kone utro med en kvindelig forfatter. Og i 1998 havde Bill Clinton nær mistet sit embede, da det kom frem, at han havde bedraget Hillary Clinton med en ung praktikant ved navn Monica Lewinsky.

I en traditionel venstreorienteret analyse er magtfulde mænds tendens til udenomsægteskabelige affærer historisk betinget. Sexlysten er ifølge den socialistiske analyse en biologisk konstant for begge køn. Hvis vi mennesker kunne vælge, så ville vi dyrke sex på kryds og tværs, sådan som chimpanserne gør. Men hvad det menneskelige samfund angår, så er det ifølge den socialistiske analyse magt og kapital, som bestemmer, hvem der dyrker sex med hvem. Og da samfundets kapital og magt til alle tider har været snævert koncentreret i hænderne på en lille gruppe mænd, så følger det af analysen, at disse magtfulde mænd sikrer sig den eksklusive brugsret til så mange kvinder, som deres kapital tillader.

Men den traditionelt socialistiske analyse kan ikke forklare, hvorfor JFK kunne slippe afsted med at have stribevis af elskerinder som præsident, når Clinton end ikke kunne have en enkelt. Den kan heller ikke forklare, hvorfor den amerikanske general (og senere præsident) Eisenhower slap afsted med at gå i seng med sin kvindelige chauffør, når nu Petraeus ikke kunne få lov. Og endelig fejler den socialistiske analyse i at forklare, hvorfor den franske præsident de Gaulle kunne have en elskerinde, når nu Hollande ikke kan.

Polygami er en opfindelse

Nyere studier inden for antropologi tyder da også på, at den socialistiske analyse ikke helt holder stik. Snarere end altid at være promiskuøse i naturtilstanden, så lader det til, at primitive jæger-samler-samfund også kender til ægteskab og monogami. Polygami er ikke automatisk givet for den menneskelige natur, sådan som socialisterne troede.

I stedet opererer flere antropologer nu med den teori, at polygami opstod som et svar på de uligheder, der indtraf i samfundet i forbindelse med overgangen fra jæger-samler-samfund til landbrugssamfund. I et jæger-samler-samfund kan stammens dygtigste jæger aldrig blive ret meget rigere end gennemsnittet, da hans kød og bær vil fordærve. Men i et landbrugssamfund med ejendomsret og kornlagre kan den dygtigste bonde blive mange gange rigere end sin nabo. Med ulighedens komme opstod også muligheden for en polygam livsstil, hvor nogle få rige mænd havde penge til at underholde et personligt harem af kvinder, mens fattige, uambitiøse og uheldige mænd måtte undvære.

Således finder vi de berygtede polygame kulturer igennem historien, hvor polygami var institutionaliseret og gennemreguleret. I Osmannerriget måltes husstandes sociale status efter antallet af konkubiner, som manden var i stand til at holde foruden konen. I Inka-riget fik en kejserlig embedsmand en ekstra elskerinde leveret af staten for hver 30 undersåtter, han herskede over.

Kristendom, demokrati og liberalisme

I Vesten har kristendommen spillet en unik rolle, idet den har modsat sig institutionaliseringen af polygami. Men kristendommen alene kan ikke forklare, hvorfor Hollande og Clinton ikke kan have affærer, når de Gaulle og JFK slap afsted med det. Den tiltagende modstand mod polygami kan læses ind i en større civilisatorisk proces, som i øjeblikket er i gang i Vesten. Og denne proces har mindst to andre ophav: Demokrati og liberalisme.

Demokrati og liberalisme giver tilsammen et samfund, hvor borgerne i stadig mindre grad er villige til at acceptere adfærd fra magthaverne, som de ikke ville acceptere fra hinanden. Hvor demokratiet gør, at vi selv vælger vore magthavere, så tilsiger liberalismen, at magthaverne ikke er herskere, men et nødvendigt onde hvis løn vi andre finansierer.

Den socialistiske analyse havde for så vidt ret i, at det var opsparet magt og kapital, som førte til polygami. Men den tog fejl, hvad angår naturtilstanden. Menneskets præference er ikke at dyrke skødesløs sex som chimpanser. Vi foretrækker faktisk en monogam tilværelse med mulighed for enkelte sidespring for os selv. Men adgangen til kvinder er et nulsumsspil, så hvad naboen angår, foretrækker vi, at han holder sig til sin kone og kun sin kone. Jo mindre benovede vi er over magthaverne, og jo færre muligheder de har for at underkue deres befolkninger, des sværere bliver det for dem at få befolkningen til at acceptere deres sidespring.

En parentes, der startede med agrarbrugets komme for ca. 12.000 år siden, er således nu ved at lukkes i Vestens kulturkristne og liberale demokratier. Præcis hvornår denne parentes lukker, og om den nogensinde vil lukke helt, står hen i det uvisse. Men meget tyder på, at mens Eisenhower, de Gaulle og JFK befandt sig på indersiden af denne parentes, så kom Bill Clinton, David Petraeus og altså nu Hollande for sent til festen.

No-self or Not-self? – by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

No-self or Not-self? – by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

One of the first stumbling blocks that Westerners often encounter when they learn about Buddhism is the teaching on anatta, often translated as no-self. This teaching is a stumbling block for two reasons. First, the idea of there being no self doesn’t fit well with other Buddhist teachings, such as the doctrine of kamma and rebirth: If there’s no self, what experiences the results of kamma and takes rebirth? Second, it doesn’t fit well with our own Judeo-Christian background, which assumes the existence of an eternal soul or self as a basic presupposition: If there’s no self, what’s the purpose of a spiritual life? Many books try to answer these questions, but if you look at the Pali canon — the earliest extant record of the Buddha’s teachings — you won’t find them addressed at all. In fact, the one place where the Buddha was asked point-blank whether or not there was a self, he refused to answer. When later asked why, he said that to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible. Thus the question should be put aside. To understand what his silence on this question says about the meaning of anatta, we first have to look at his teachings on how questions should be asked and answered, and how to interpret his answers.

The Buddha divided all questions into four classes: those that deserve a categorical (straight yes or no) answer; those that deserve an analytical answer, defining and qualifying the terms of the question; those that deserve a counter-question, putting the ball back in the questioner’s court; and those that deserve to be put aside. The last class of question consists of those that don’t lead to the end of suffering and stress. The first duty of a teacher, when asked a question, is to figure out which class the question belongs to, and then to respond in the appropriate way. You don’t, for example, say yes or no to a question that should be put aside. If you are the person asking the question and you get an answer, you should then determine how far the answer should be interpreted. The Buddha said that there are two types of people who misrepresent him: those who draw inferences from statements that shouldn’t have inferences drawn from them, and those who don’t draw inferences from those that should.

These are the basic ground rules for interpreting the Buddha’s teachings, but if we look at the way most writers treat the anatta doctrine, we find these ground rules ignored. Some writers try to qualify the no-self interpretation by saying that the Buddha denied the existence of an eternal self or a separate self, but this is to give an analytical answer to a question that the Buddha showed should be put aside. Others try to draw inferences from the few statements in the discourse that seem to imply that there is no self, but it seems safe to assume that if one forces those statements to give an answer to a question that should be put aside, one is drawing inferences where they shouldn’t be drawn.

So, instead of answering “no” to the question of whether or not there is a self — interconnected or separate, eternal or not — the Buddha felt that the question was misguided to begin with. Why? No matter how you define the line between “self” and “other,” the notion of self involves an element of self-identification and clinging, and thus suffering and stress. This holds as much for an interconnected self, which recognizes no “other,” as it does for a separate self. If one identifies with all of nature, one is pained by every felled tree. It also holds for an entirely “other” universe, in which the sense of alienation and futility would become so debilitating as to make the quest for happiness — one’s own or that of others — impossible. For these reasons, the Buddha advised paying no attention to such questions as “Do I exist?” or “Don’t I exist?” for however you answer them, they lead to suffering and stress.

To avoid the suffering implicit in questions of “self” and “other,” he offered an alternative way of dividing up experience: the four Noble Truths of stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. Rather than viewing these truths as pertaining to self or other, he said, one should recognize them simply for what they are, in and of themselves, as they are directly experienced, and then perform the duty appropriate to each. Stress should be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed. These duties form the context in which the anatta doctrine is best understood. If you develop the path of virtue, concentration, and discernment to a state of calm well-being and use that calm state to look at experience in terms of the Noble Truths, the questions that occur to the mind are not “Is there a self? What is my self?” but rather “Am I suffering stress because I’m holding onto this particular phenomenon? Is it really me, myself, or mine? If it’s stressful but not really me or mine, why hold on?” These last questions merit straightforward answers, as they then help you to comprehend stress and to chip away at the attachment and clinging — the residual sense of self-identification — that cause it, until ultimately all traces of self-identification are gone and all that’s left is limitless freedom.

In this sense, the anatta teaching is not a doctrine of no-self, but a not-self strategy for shedding suffering by letting go of its cause, leading to the highest, undying happiness. At that point, questions of self, no-self, and not-self fall aside. Once there’s the experience of such total freedom, where would there be any concern about what’s experiencing it, or whether or not it’s a self?