Socrates: Wonder is the Beginning of Philosophy

μάλα γὰρ φιλοσόφου τοῦτο τὸ πάθος, τὸ θαυμάζειν; οὐ γὰρ ἄλλη ἀρχή φιλοσοφίας ἢ αὓτη.

“Philosophy is very much this feeling of wonder; love of wisdom does not begin anywhere else.”

[Plato, Theaetetus, 155d, Platonis Opera, Tomvs I, Clarendon Press, Oxford, my translation.]

Karl Jaspers: Philosophizing Starts with Our Situation

I do not begin at the beginning when I ask questions such as “What is being?” or “Why is anything at all? Why not nothing?” or “Who am I?” or “What do I really want?” These questions arise from a situation in which, coming from a past, I find myself.

When I become aware of myself I see that I am in a world in which I take my bearings. Previously I had taken things up and dropped them again; everything had been a matter of course, unquestioned, and purely present; but now I wonder and ask myself what really is. For all things pass away, and I was not at the beginning, nor am I at the end. Even between beginning and end I ask about the beginning and the end.

[Karl Jaspers, Philosophy 1, p. 43, translated by E. B. Ashton, The University of Chicago Press, 1969, from Philosophie, Springer-Verlag, 1932, 1948, 1956.]

The Beginning — Start Here!

Blogs capture a moment in time. The most recent entry appears first, followed in reverse chronological order by any previous entries. This works fine so long as no logical dependency exists between postings. But what if an earlier essay serves as the premiss or justification for a later one? Then extending priority to the most recent fails.

I've tried to find a way to make Google's Blogger display posts in chronological sequence, with the oldest appearing first. But it seems there is no way to do this. I rather like Blogger otherwise, in particular the way it automatically formats the blog for easy reading on smartphones and tablets as well as computers. I prefer to focus on creating content rather than engineering how it displays; therefore I have established this workaround. I made a table of contents which index my entries in chronological order. I recommend that if you are new to my blog, that you read it starting from the beginning by clicking through the contents in order. Once you have caught up, you may simply read posts as they appear. Hopefully this will permit me to make — and for you to follow — more extended arguments permitting logical development.

Thank you for taking the time to read my words. Feel free to correct me. For a philosopher, no greater honor exists than to be corrected because we desire truth more than being right!

Who Will Lead Us?

“In a contemplative mood” on Google+, Stephanie L. Davis recently called for a leader to emerge who will speak for the Occupy movement. Davis pointed to Mario Savio, the student agitator who headed the “free speech” movement at Berkeley in the 1960’s, as an exemplar of the type of leader we need today; someone who, in Davis’s words, “can ignite and unify America.” But, do I need remind everybody, that we already do have amongst us exactly such a leader, a spokesperson who happens to be the single greatest orator in a generation. This charismatic visionary is smart as a tack—certainly more intellectually-gifted than me—inspires thousands, if not hundreds-of-thousands, offering hope, evincing change. This articulate spokesperson, additionally, issues from a humble background, pulled himself up through study and hard work, spurned the seductive enticements of Wall Street when dangled in front of him, choosing instead to organize marginalized citizens to work together so they too might gain a voice inside the marbled corridors of power. Precisely the charismatic leader who Davis yearns for has already appeared. His name is Barack Obama!

Barack Obama, of course, does not speak for Occupy Wall Street nor for any of its members. Nor has Obama been particularly successful at unifying America. Quite the opposite. To the vast majority of occupiers, the 44th President of the United States of America is little more than a pawn of Wall Street. Jaime Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, need only pick up the phone to chat with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. But if, say, Stephanie Davis or Leland LeCuyer were to try to call—well, good luck. 

“Is Never too soon for you?”

Let’s face it, the rules are different for different people. The 1% have access the rest of us do not. That’s simply the way it is. But, unlike reasonable people who accept that this is the way things are and leave it at that, a few unreasonable folk do crazy things like camp in Zuccotti Park because they simply can’t accept the fact that things are the way they are. Why? Because the status quo is fundamentally unfair and, as a result, fundamentally unjust. Furthermore, the fact that some individuals, because of their wealth, are granted privileges denied to the vast majority because we are not so fortunate is anti-democratic and completely contrary to the ideals that the United States of America had been founded upon originally. 

Money not only talks but, according to the wise eminences who preside over the Supreme Court, is speech protected by the First Amendment. Thus Dimon gets to bend Geithner’s ear, then Geithner Obama’s, so that you and I end up paying not only for our own money, money that we lent to the bank in the form of a deposit (for technically a demand deposit is a loan issued from the depositor to the bank), but additionally we end up paying through our taxes for the bailout to cover the losses incurred when the bank gambled and lost—lost with the money that we lent them—lost our money!

Perhaps in Lincoln’s day it was reasonable to orate about “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” but today it would be and is entirely unreasonable, not to mention contrary to fact, to utter such blatantly untrue words. So it is refreshing that some few, very brave and very deficient-in-reasonableness campers have come forward to put their bodies on the line, so that these ancient yet forsaken ideals might be brought back once again into the fullness of reality, that once again we can reasonably and without any irony speak about “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Which brings me back to leadership.

More than a few of these idealistic, angry, unreasonable occupiers cut their teeth politically campaigning for Obama. Many have learned the folly of entrusting their fate into the hands of any charismatic leader. It’s not just that their champion may betray them, but they have learned the hard way that power actually and really does reside within themselves—but only so long as they speak together, as one voice. Setting before themselves a leader to speak for them, however brilliantly and stirringly she or he might declaim, would mean surrendering that power to speak for oneself. Let me repeat this. You have political power only when you speak as one. You forsake that power when you appoint someone to speak for you.

The fact that no leader has emerged from the occupiers isn’t a sign of weakness or of lack of political organization. Quite the contrary. It signals that the people will no longer settle for anyone else speaking for them. They will speak for themselves, thank you. 

As you might imagine, Stephanie Davis’s post stirred up several responses. The most interesting, perhaps, was the very first: Timothy Ang suggested that the occupiers pick Davis as their spokesperson. I second the motion. Davis can and should grab the “mic,” speak for herself, and let her words be echoed and amplified by the entire assembly. Then so should you and so should I, each and every one of us. For, frankly, nobody is better qualified or capable to speak for Stephanie Davis except Davis herself. Nor can anyone speak for you other than yourself. Nor me for myself. 

May three million leaders bloom!

Then and only then will we have government of the people, by the people, for the people. Government of the 100%. One nation, indivisible. E pluribus unum.

Responsibility, Not Blame

Ben Kunz recently wrote in Google+ about the deleterious effects of the blame game:

“A recent study by Nathanael Fast at USC Marshall and Larissa Tiedens of Stanford found that blame spreads -- specifically, if you publicly scapegoat a person or organization, even if they are innocent, the odds of your message spreading virally increase. This explains, on the left, Occupy Wall Street's meme about the "1%" holding you down and, on the right, the Tea Party's attacks on Obama's ineptness to reboot the U.S. economy.”

I wrote in reply:

Blaming others is a very convenient strategy to avoid responsibility. But it comes at a cost: by transferring responsibility you also hand power over to those whom you blame. Instead of seizing the moment and empowering yourself, you volley the tennis-ball back to your opponent and leave the outcome up to them.

The most refreshing aspect of the Occupy movement is that it is more than a protest group. OWS has not issued any formal demands, because this would place the onus on others. What America needs right now, more than anything, is to re-examine our commitment to each other, to debate and reformulate the social contract which binds us together into a nation. What do we owe ourselves, each other, and our neighbors? The economic crisis exposed how unfair our economic system had become on top of how deeply this inequality corrupted our political institutions, turning democracy into a cynical sham. People gathering into encampments have triggered at long last this overdue debate. Furthermore, by arriving at group decisions through consensus in General Assemblies, the occupiers have not only modeled and practiced true democracy, but put the burden of responsibility squarely upon themselves. “Be the change you want to see!” has become, if not their motto, their practice.

There's plenty of blame to go around. It's time to move past it and begin to live as a free, self-determining nation again. Unafraid. Unintimidated. Open-minded and open-hearted. And just, above all just. E pluribus unum.

The Constitution of People

Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes — Thomas Jefferson

Actions speak louder than words.

When the NYPD donned full riot gear then stormed the encampment at Zuccotti Park, this confirmed beyond doubt that the powers and principalities do in actuality believe Occupy Wall Street to present a clear and present danger to their regime.

Millionaires are right to fear for their privilege. Occupy Wall Street does, in fact, represent a mortal threat to the dominant order. This movement—which has no leaders and which issues no specific demands—is so dangerous to the vested interests precisely because its members refuse to negotiate with them within existing institutions. Instead people are spontaneously coming together to form their own alternative system of governance, establishing General Assemblies where grievances may be heard and decisions made openly and democratically. For citizens accustomed to being excluded from the halls of power, having a voice that is actually heard is a liberating tonic.

What could be more threatening to plutocrats or their sniveling sycophants?

The founders of the American republic never deluded themselves into believing the conceit that they had established a perfect union. Instead they recognized that the most they could bequeath was “a more perfect union” that would require eternal vigilance and no small measure of sacrifice to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

These blessings were never intended to be restricted to the purview of the richest few amongst us; the fact that wealth and power have become so concentrated, with laws and regulations radically skewed in favor of the rich, indicates that the institutions our fathers left to our care must be fundamentally flawed. Thomas Jefferson, the one founder who did not participate in our Constitutional Convention because he was busy serving his country as its ambassador to France, later diagnosed where his compatriots had erred: the constitution made no provision for local government, where citizen participation might be rendered. For only by electing representatives in town hall meetings can true democratic representation be secured. Otherwise so-called representatives must represent those who secure for them their office: the moneyed interests who finance their electoral campaigns.

This bears repeating: if representatives are not chosen by people who know them because they work alongside them administering local government, these elected representatives can only represent those persons and companies that gain access for them to the mass media. This, in a nutshell, is the origin of the crisis. Do you know your Congressperson? More important, does he or she know you?

How can anyone represent you if they don’t know you?

But Jefferson goes further. Madison and the other conventioneers believed that Liberty might be preserved through an elaborate and highly-redundant system of checks-and-balances, where competing self-interest would restrain the few from taking advantage of the many, regardless of the character of the people involved. Jefferson, to the contrary, thought good government required well-intentioned, well-educated and well-informed citizens. If anything was to preserve the republic, it was not constitutional checks-and-balances, but the revolutionary spirit of men and women. It's the constitution of people that matters!

Which is why Occupy Wall Street is so dangerous and so necessary: the constitution of words is being overwritten by the constitution of people—women and men brave enough to reclaim that which is rightly theirs: their country.