I just finished my philosophy degree and decided all philosophy is nonsense… but just when I thought I was out, moral philosophy dragged me back in.

I heard some people arguing over moral realism and subjectivism…

Moral realism says moral truths are discovered through human reason, rather than invented by society (SEP). For most moral realists, Good comes from God. Others say that morals just exist in the world the way arithmetic exists in the world (SEP). We didn’t invent the rules. They were here all along.

Moral relativism (SEP) says morals are true within a social group, but they change as the culture changes; Subjectivism (SEP) takes this further and says morality depends on your personal opinion: there are no absolute rules of right and wrong. You might prefer that people don’t kill each other, but others might have a different point of view.

I think evolution has something to say about morality.

Some moral values exist in all cultures, but they evolved as we evolved. For example, kin selection gives humans a responsibility to care for our children (SEP). These are not rules we made up for ourselves, and they did not come from God. They did not exist until evolution decided what was best for us(wiki).

And it’s not just humans who follow kin selection rules.

Orangutans care for baby orangutans, and worker bees care for baby bees (Penn State). Other animals don’t care for their young at all — some fish just lay their eggs and swim away — but like us, they are doing what evolution decided was best for them (SEP).

The basic idea behind kin selection is simple. Imagine a gene that encourages an animal to share its food with its family. Everyone in a family will likely have that gene, and if one member is hungry, others will share, and all are more likely to survive because sharing their food improves their evolutionary fitness. Animals without the gene behave selfishly, and their young are less likely to have food. They go hungry and are less likely to survive. Kin selection favours families that share.

Kin selection was developed into a formal theory by William Hamilton. Hamilton showed that kin selection is worthwhile if the benefits exceed the cost.

Altruistic behavior is worthwhile when the relatedness (r) multiplied by the benefit (B) is greater than the cost (C), expressed as rB > C

Hamilton’s Rule

Donors and recipients are more likely to share genes if they are closely related (SEP), and sharing goods with family members makes the altruism gene more likely to survive.

Richard Dawkins takes this gene-centric idea further in The Selfish Gene. While moral realism says moral truths exist independently of history, these truths can be explained as survival strategies given to us by natural selection.

Reciprocal altruism is a similar rule and involves doing a favour knowing the favour will be returned, but it does not depend on family relationships the way that kin altruism does (Trivers). For example, a vampire bat will care for another bat’s baby while she goes off to suck someone’s blood, and the grateful mother will return the favour next time around (SEP). There is little benefit to sharing with non-altruists, so non-altruists are less likely to survive, and the animals in the next generation are more likely to be altruists.

Altruism is not restricted to one-on-one kindness; some animals will risk their lives to save others. Vervet monkeys alert their fellow monkeys to predators, and they have even developed different calls for different kinds of predators. Vervets can tell leopards from snakes and eagles, and their calls tell other monkeys whether to run up the tree or down it. This variety of altruism doesn’t even require shared genes to be profitable; the benefits of saving a fellow monkey justify the risk of being attacked (SEP).

We might say that altruism as a moral principle has been around since before humans came along, but nonetheless, it hasn’t always been there. It evolved over time.

In addition to the morals that evolution has given us, we humans have figured out some rules for ourselves, though moral realists tell us they are objectively true, and religious believers say they came from God.

For example, the Book of Exodus has rules against stealing, murder and coveting thy neighbour’s ass. Most civilisations have these rules, though, even if they have had no contact with God. If we are to say they came from God, we have to explain where other godless societies found them.

Religions say God gave us these rules long before they were written down in the Bible, but moral realists would say we have always had them. Derek Parfit argued that moral truths are objectively true, independently of any human desires (SEP). When we say it is wrong to torture children, it’s just wrong, regardless of what we think. Similarly, we don’t have to argue why the area of a circle is πr²; it just is, and morals aren’t something we came up with; they just are.

Like Derek Parfit, Peter Singer came to believe that moral truths are self-evident and need no explanation (YouTube). Parfit and Singer claim that when we make moral assertions, we are reporting facts about the world, while subjectivists say morals aren’t even facts; they are just ways of expressing our preferences. Morals are neither true nor false any more than it’s true or false that chocolate ice cream is nicer than strawberry ice cream; we just choose the one we like best.

Taking this even further, emotivist A.J. Ayer would say that when we say something is immoral, we aren’t even sharing a preference; we are just sharing an emotional reaction. A subjectivist might say, “I believe that stealing is wrong”; but an emotivist would say this is nothing more than saying “Boo to stealing!” [SEP]. When people disagree over a moral decision, they are not contrasting opposing opinions; they are simply expressing their emotions.

Our moral attitude to slavery poses a challenge to the various theories of morality. Most of us agree that slavery is wrong, but why might that be?

Moral realists say the rules against slavery are just part of the fabric of reality. It makes no difference whether a person, culture, or legal system agrees it is wrong; it is wrong anyway. Slavery is wrong in the same way that a mathematical truth or a physical law is true. We did not decide they are true; they have been like that all along. However, slavery has been front and centre in almost every civilisation for thousands of years.

The morality of slavery was argued in the decades before slavery was abolished, and both advocates and abolitionists used passages from the Old Testament to argue their case. Abolitionists claimed slavery was punishable by death (Exodus 21), but a few books later, the bible says that slavery is just servitude — and it’s normal to have servants (Leviticus 25).

But it turns out, those rules only apply if you are making slaves of Hebrews. It’s a different rule for strangers.

Moreover you may buy the children of the strangers who dwell among you, and their families who are with you, which they beget in your land; and they shall become your property. And you may take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them as a possession; they shall be your permanent slaves.

Leviticus 25

The Hebrews may have been moral realists, but Jewish believers haven’t always followed the same rules, and their rules are different to ours.

Christians started well, and slavery decreased in the early years (wiki), but Catholics in Spain and Portugal became very efficient slave traders. Portugal was the largest slave-trading nation in history, and Pope Nicholas V gave them authority to conquer and colonise West Africans to become more efficient traders (College of Charleston).

The Pope issued a mandate to King Alfonso V, and instructed him … to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever … and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.

Papal Bull of 1455

William the Conqueror banned the slave trade in England in the eleventh century (History Extra), but it was not until the Somerset v. Stewart Case in 1772 that slavery formally became illegal. When one slave-owner brought his slave home to England, his slave, James Somerset, escaped and was later recaptured (wiki). Somerset’s friends appealed to court, and the Chief Justice declared that slavery “is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law.” (English Heritage). Somerset was set free.

While Spanish slave owners could take their slaves home with them, British slave owners had to leave them across the ocean.

While Chief Justice Mansfield declared that slavery in England was illegal, he made no judgment as to whether it was immoral, and slaves continued to be bought and sold, as long as they weren’t bought and sold in England. The slave trade became one of the greatest atrocities of the last several centuries, but the everyday man on the street was not involved; all the money went to royalty and the rich. Even the Church of England made a few million quid out of it (CofE).

If we are going to claim, as moral realists might, that rules against slavery are part of the fabric of the universe, we should note that slavery was around for thousands of years before someone uncovered the rules. Even then, the ruling classes and the church had little to say about it.

Perhaps the moral status of slavery was not guided by religion or other sources of moral realism after all, and a more subjective view merely decides which rules are most profitable.

Britain was one of the first countries to ban the slave trade in 1807, and other countries followed. But what took them so long?

Slavery in America is probably the moral crime that we are all most familiar with. American revolutionaries fought for their liberty in 1776 while 20% of the population was in chains. These honourable fellows — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — pursued Domestic Tranquillity and the Blessings of Liberty, and at the same time, owned hundreds of slaves between them.

Jefferson is an interesting case because he was a moral realist (Monticello) who believed that slavery was wrong. He believed Blacks to be morally equal to other Americans, and to have the same rights. He worked hard to eradicate slavery, and yet owned hundreds of slaves himself (SEP). Perhaps, rather than a moral realist, Jefferson was an emotivist who would say “Boo to slavery!” when he was at work, and “Hooray to slavery!” when he got home.

Where a moral realist would say that slavery is wrong by some universal standard, subjectivists would judge it based on their personal feelings or the opinion of society. Attitudes have changed over time, and our attitude to slavery reflects our current feelings and not some eternal truth.

It could be argued that subjectivists’ criticism of slavery is weak because it has nothing to say about the same moral crime in history. But, it seems to me, this is the only moral stance that explains our modern, passionate opposition to slavery while accepting that earlier civilisations found it acceptable. Even the Christians who campaigned so hard to end slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries had different beliefs from the Pope who granted the right to enslave West Africans 400 years before them. It wasn’t until 1917 that the Catholic Church said the “sale of humans into servitude” was a crime (1917 Code of Canon Law). When we claim that religion is the source of our morality, we need to explain why the rules changed so often (Women’s Ordination Campaign).

Subjectivism does leave us with a problem when different cultures have conflicting moral standards, and we are unable to address it. Female Genital Mutilation, for example, is almost universal in Sudan and Somalia, and the most we can do is express our displeasure by saying, “Boo to Female Genital Mutilation!” Subjectivism encourages us to respect the opinions of other cultures, but perhaps subjectivists can collect their displeasure and oppose what they perceive as moral injustice, just as France did when it banned burqas.

While it may be true that we believe the moral rules regarding rape, slavery and murder should be universal for humans, these rules must have come from somewhere. The Catholic Church says that they came from God, while Parfit and Singer said they are just part of the fabric of reality.

Darwinists would say that morality is a mix of rules chosen by evolution to help us to thrive. There is no realism. We might think evolution is just discovering the rulebook written by God, but we must still wonder why it took us so long to find it.

It seems to me that subjectivists have the best claim on the source of morality. It’s easy to dismiss because it allows different societies to choose different sets of rules, but societies choose them regardless of what moral realists have to say. Societies choose their own set of moral rules to match their own cultural habits, and as cultures across the world converge, we can only hope they choose a set of moral rules that we all approve of.

Let’s say I have an essay to write. The deadline is a week away. The prompt is Why did the existentialists believe that it’s important to live authentically?

Writing essays on philosophy might not be your cup of tea but I really enjoy it. Writing about a topic forces me to focus on what I really understand and really believe; there’s no faking it like I might in a hand-wavy conversation. How to live authentically? is a question that is always on my mind and, in the week before my essay is due, it occupies every waking moment

I usually end up writing the whole essay in my head while staring into my beer at the Grain Barge or watching the ducks in the harbour with Pearl. All that remains is to write it down. But there is something else I need to get done first…

Before I can write my essay, I have something important I need to finish for work. I have to generate quotes from the Smart Patients community that can be shared on social media as a way to attract new members.

The code for generating quotes is easy but tedious. I’d much rather be working on my essay but as a conscientious worker, I can’t give myself permission to work on the fun stuff while there is important stuff to get done.

But the quote stuff is boring and my mind drifts back to my essay. I end up working on neither and waste my time doom-scrolling on Twitter instead. Maybe tomorrow will be better. That deadline is getting closer. I really need that deadline.

As with essays, so with life. John Lennon said that ‘Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans’. I bet we all have challenging and fun ideas that we’ll get to just as soon as we fulfil our other obligations. Sartre had something to say about this.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) defined existentialism as a philosophy of freedom. The name itself comes from Sartre’s observation that, for everyday objects, the essence of an object—its nature or purpose—is conceived by its designer. For example, consider a knife. The essence of a knife is that it is sharp and used to cut things. The knifemaker has the nature and purpose in mind before the act of creation and thus the essence of the knife precedes the knife’s existence.

Earlier philosophers, such as Descartes and Leibniz, believed that humans were given meaning and purpose by God but for Sartre, since there is no God, we are forced to find our own meaning after we come into existence. Thus, for existentialists, ‘existence precedes essence’ and existentialism guides our quest to find meaning in our lives. Having been thrown into the world, we alone are responsible for the choices we make, starting with our search for meaning.

The responsibility to choose often collides with obligations imposed by society’s conventions or family expectations but Sartre said we must choose nonetheless. To allow others to tell us how to live and how to behave is to act in bad faith. To live authentically, we must face up to the choices in front of us even when society might disapprove.

To illustrate, consider a young man who grows up in a mining village where everyone is expected to become a miner when they finish school. Our young man dreams of becoming a writer but his father and grandfather before him were miners and his parents expect him to contribute to the household with a miner’s wage. To live authentically, he must decide whether to follow his dream or his family’s wishes. To deny that he has a choice would be living in bad faith. Sartre took a hard-line view of our responsibility to choose but this view was contested by other philosophers such as Beauvoir.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) agreed with Sartre that the burden of freedom is heavy and it’s tempting to ‘flee freedom’ by denying the possibility of choice. For Beauvoir, women and girls are especially prone to accept the constraints of convention and to avoid the heavy burden of freedom by denying it and many women feel unable to make the difficult choices that would enable them to live authentically. Even so, men and women alike face the ‘anguish and stress of authentically assumed existence’ and must choose how to live. To live authentically is to accept responsibility for one’s choices and for finding one’s own purpose in life but the stress of choosing often leads to anguish. For many of us, it is easier to deny this responsibility entirely than to face the anguish of choosing.

While I agree with Beauvoir that we are often constrained by family or career obligations, I’d note that there are usually more choices available to those who dare to look for them. It can be difficult to recognise all the choices and, even when we do, it is stressful to choose between them. In my own life, I have made many unconventional choices: I left home and school at 16; I’ve lived and worked in several countries and changed careers twice when it would have been safer and more comfortable to stick with the status quo. But, as I get older and accumulate responsibilities, it becomes harder to ‘up sticks’ to follow a dream and the mere act of contemplating another, more exciting option leads to a feeling of ennui or, to use Beauvoir’s term, anguish as I consider the things I might lose should I leave this life behind. But contemplate it I must, all the same.

Sartre said that to live an authentic life, we are condemned to choose. I agree enthusiastically. While there are certainly extreme situations where no choice is available, in most situations the choices are there if we look for them and to live the best life available we should force ourselves to ask which option we would take if we were free to choose. That option is often available if only we are willing to pursue it hard enough. The obstacles in our way, formidable though they may appear, are surmountable if we are determined.

But, as with essays, so with life. The sands of time are running out and if I am going to make choices, I need to make them while there is still sand in the top of the glass. Just as the obligation to work on my day job prevents me from starting the essay I want to write, the obligations of everyday life prevent me from pursuing my next adventure and I end up doom-scrolling instead. Unlike with my essay, my deadline seems to have been postponed for now.

Making choices was never this hard before. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Going to see the river man
Going to tell him all I can
About the ban
On feeling free

— Nick Drake

• Is it about the knowledge of the great philosophers?
• Or is it about ‘doing philosophy’ and demonstrating one’s own ideas?

It is very much the latter. There’s hardly any memorisation of facts and most of one’s grade seems to come from explaining an idea clearly and making a good argument for or against it regardless of whether the conclusion of the argument is correct.

Most of my essays took this form:

• Explain what X is.
• Explain what Philosopher Y said about X.
• Explain why Philosopher Y is wrong (*) about X.
• Guess what Philosopher Y might say about my argument.
• Explain why Philosopher Y is still wrong.

Fortunately, the great philosophers were mostly wrong so there is a lot to work with!

(*) You could argue that they were right about X too of course but that’s boring. And you can still get a good grade without introducing any original ideas, but that’s boring too.

I especially liked that we were encouraged to disagree with both the great philosophers and with our tutors. As long as you make a good argument, you can agree or disagree. It’s all good. It’s hard to imagine another class like that. I’ve just started my next class about the Classical World and I doubt that I’d get a good grade for arguing against my tutor’s explanation for Achilles’s long sulk in the Trojan War but in philosophy, it’s expected.

Looking back at the philosophers we studied, I wonder if they were chosen specifically because they were so wrong. Let’s look at a few examples…

John Locke (1632-1704) believed that someone continues to be the same person if and only if they have the same memories. If your 40-year-old self doesn’t remember what your 15-year-old self did then your 40-year-old self is no longer the same person.

I think Locke was wrong.

Continuity of memory is not a reliable way to determine whether someone is the same person. People lose memories for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes they lose them temporarily and recover them later. Does this mean that they were briefly a different person? Sometimes we forget some memories but remember others. Does that mean we are a little bit the same? Of course not. Derek Parfit would disagree but he is wrong too.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) said that doing something right simply to feel the warm glow of satisfaction of doing the right thing has no moral worth. Conversely, striving to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing is morally valuable even if your efforts will inevitably come to nothing.

I think Kant was wrong.

Doing something that makes the world better has moral value whether or not it makes you feel good, whether or not it follows your conception of duty and doing something that you know to be futile has no moral value either way.

René Descartes (1596-1650) believed that we are made of two distinct substances—the body is made of material stuff and the mind is made of immaterial stuff. Furthermore, the immaterial stuff is the part that constitutes the ‘real you’ because we can imagine what it is like to live without a body but we cannot imagine not being able to think.

I think Descartes was wrong.

There is no immaterial substance and the mind is simply what the brain does.

John Rawls (1921-2002) argued that people with natural talents or with a natural tendency to work hard do not deserve to be rewarded for their talents or tendencies because, ultimately, they acquired their talents and tendencies through the luck of genetics or their upbringing and no one deserves to be rewarded simply for being lucky.

I think Rawls was wrong.

People who work hard deserve to be rewarded regardless of where their ability or motivation came from.

Not every philosopher we studied was wrong about everything but most were wrong about most things. Was this just a big coincidence? Or perhaps the course designers deliberately choose philosophers who are wrong so we could argue against them?

Most of us would probably agree that dying is the worst thing that can happen to us. Being alive is always better than being dead.

But wait! While death is pretty bad, it’s not as bad as being tortured. You probably don’t want to watch your children get murdered either. Maybe dying is not the worst thing that can happen.

Dying is not the same as being dead, though. You are still alive while you are dying. Dying can drag on and on, bringing pain while your organs shut down. Once you are dead, your pain will be gone — but your pleasures will be gone, too. You won’t have any awareness of being dead, and you will be dead forever (Belshaw). But before you have to die, you have to live, and that’s where we’ll start.

How long do you want to live?

Dying young is the saddest time to die. Someone who has been around a long time will usually be more prepared to die than someone who just turned twenty. But how long will be long enough?

Philosopher Bernard Williams says that most of us would prefer to live forever. Some people would be happy to just sit and look out of the window for an infinity of years, and Williams calls this just living. But while just living is good enough for many, the rest of us need more excitement to make life worthwhile. But how much excitement?

Imagine you are Eric Clapton and you are pretty good at playing the guitar. You know quite a few rock songs and can play them well. If you practice for a few more decades, maybe you can learn to play all the songs. But eventually, you’ll get bored with playing the guitar. Maybe you can learn something else? Try the piano? Drums? They’ll all get boring after infinite days. Painting? Science? Cooking? Visiting Polynesian Islands? The list is finite, and you’ll eventually be bored with all of them. You’ll end up just living, and who wants nothing but just living for the rest of time?

Williams says we pursue some desires, like eating when we are hungry or sleeping when we are tired, just to stay alive. Other desires, like raising a child or achieving a lifelong ambition, give our lives meaning. But when we are done with all those, living forever doesn’t sound so appealing. Satisfying the same desires forever is no longer desirable.

The arguments so far are hypothetical. We don’t really have the option of living forever to satisfy our desires. In the real world, we have our three score years and ten —and maybe just a little bit more — but is that long enough? Learning the guitar and raising those grandchildren fits into an average lifetime. You could even visit Tahiti or live in Manhattan, too. But once you get past eighty, visiting Tahiti seems less appealing, and eventually, just living will be all that fills your days.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

— Psalm 90, KJV

Epicurus says we should not fear death because we won’t even be there. Lucretius, too, asks: if we aren’t afraid of the time before we were born, why should we be afraid of the time after we die? What is there to be afraid of?

These arguments from Epicurus and Lucretius say we should not be afraid of death, but they say nothing about how much we can enjoy being alive. Even if being dead isn’t so bad, we’ll miss out on the things that make us happy.

The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it’s all that matters.
— Audrey Hepburn

But being happy doesn’t last forever. As we get older, our ability to enjoy life’s pleasures declines. We get sick and endure pain. Our bones get weak, and our senses fade. Eventually we might decide that dying wouldn’t be so bad (Williams). But how do we balance the good things against the bad things? How should we choose when to die?

Thomas Nagel has a little thought experiment for us. Imagine that every Monday, after your cup of coffee, you are given a choice: you can live one more week, or you can die painlessly in a few minutes. Nagel says he would always choose to live another week. What would you choose? Would you make the same choice forever?

According to Williams, it’s nearly always too early or too late to die. The simplest solution is to do nothing and just accept the day that death arrives. If we are lucky, we’ll die just before it becomes unpleasant to stay alive. Tacitus had something to say about that.

Tu vero felix, Agricola, non vitae tantum claritate, sed etiam opportunitate mortis.

[You were truly lucky, Agricola, not only in the brilliance of your life, but also in the timing of your death.]

— Tacitus

But what if you are not lucky?

We’ve talked about those who die in their 20s — non vero felix! — but what about those who live to eighty or ninety? I expect it’s always too early for some — many will want to watch their grandchildren grow, or walk in the park with an elderly sweetheart — but what about when that is all over?

Just living will be enough for some, but not for me. I have my early death booked already, even if I haven’t picked a date yet. Whether that involves a trip to Switzerland, some opium poppies or an uninvited visitor in my brain, I’d prefer an early departure to just living.

Betty said she prayed today
For the sky to blow away
Or maybe stay
She wasn’t sure

— Nick Drake

People die in many different ways. Which way would you choose, if you could choose? The easiest option is to live until you are 90 and then let nature take you away — but that’s not what I would choose for myself.

Many would rather die suddenly, with no expectation that the end is coming. Maybe you are flying over the Alps, and the captain announces that you are going to crash. You have a little time to say your prayers. You can even call your wife and tell her you love her, but you won’t be coming home. Even better, perhaps the plane explodes before you even know what’s going on. You have no time to regret all the things you haven’t done yet, and no time to be afraid of the death that will take you away. You are just gone. If this one’s your favourite, you could learn rock climbing or white water kayaking.

Too many people have to face a horrible disease that keeps them around for a few days… or months… or years. Or maybe the disease is not so horrible; it’s fatal, but without the excruciating pain. You don’t know exactly when death is coming, but you know it is coming, and you have time to teach your family to pay the electricity bill, test the smoke alarms and organise their taxes. You’ll have lots of hugs and kisses before you go, and you’ll eventually drift off into sleep and won’t wake up. This one sounds good to me. This is the one I would choose.

But what if that horrible disease really is horrible? Lots of pain. Drooling. Anal leakage. You’ll suffer in bed for weeks and months while your wife and family take care of your bedsores and change your bedpan. When you finally reach the end, you will choke until you choke your last breath. Most of us wouldn’t want anyone to die like this, unless they are one of those politicians in the House of Lords who blocked the Assisted Dying Bill.

Dying might go on for a while, but dying only happens while we are still alive. When we are dead, it’s all over. Assuming there is no afterlife, there is nothing more. There are no memories, no hopes, no pains, and no dreams. We won’t even be aware that we are dead.

Belshare shares a fairy tale where two young lovers enjoy a candlelit dinner. Jazz band, Champagne, oysters. A first kiss. After their romantic rendezvous, they drive home, but the young lady loses control of her car and hits a bridge. She is killed instantly before she is even aware of what has happened. She dies without pain, and she experiences no fear.

The young lady’s death brings sadness to her family and friends. Relatives bring flowers to her funeral, and her lover sheds many tears. However, the young lady knows nothing of her death. Did anything bad happen to her?

Most of us will say, “Of course! She had her full life ahead of her. And now she is gone.” Isn’t that obviously bad?

Epicurus and Lucretius argued that death isn’t bad for us after all, and we shouldn’t be afraid of it. They both believed the world is made of particles (long before scientists discovered atoms) and after we are dead, we go back to being particles once more. Being dead means nothing to us because we no longer exist. If Epicurus and Lucretius are correct, it’s wrong to say that this young woman is harmed in any way. She had no fear or anxiety, and she did not suffer at all. Her family mourns her death, but she knows nothing about any of this (Belshaw).

What obligations does the deceased’s family have? Before you die, you tell your family, “When I die, I’d like to be buried on the edge of the woodland in a cotton shroud with a small choir singing English folk songs.” Your family promises to satisfy your wishes, but what happens if they break their promise? Who will be hurt? Keeping the promise pleases no one, and breaking the promise hurts no one, either.

You should make those plans anyway, even if your wishes might not be followed. If your family decides to ignore your wishes and sends your body for cremation, there’ll be no one to be bothered. But if your family does decide to celebrate your life, they won’t have the burden of worrying how. They’ll just have to buy that cotton shroud. Extra bonus: if they follow your wishes, you won’t end up in an expensive mahogany coffin with a plush velvet interior that costs twelve thousand dollars.

C.S. Lewis wrote about the death of his wife in his memoir, A Grief Observed, and I have often wondered whether mourning is easier for Christians who believe in an afterlife. Is it easier to accept the death of a loved one if you are sure that you will meet again? Lewis says it is not.

A Grief Observed begins with the unbearable pain that came from losing his wife (he refers to her as H.), then takes us through his changing emotions as he comes to accept her death: still suffering in each phase of grief, but suffering in a different way.

By the end of the book, Lewis still feels her absence — “like the sky, spread over everything” — but where once he felt that he shared his body with his lost lover, now his body is just an empty home.

He takes us through the stages of their loss — through dying, death and mourning. Even when H. is dying of cancer, they still share the joy of living together; their joy continues to flow even when all hope of living is gone. After she passes away, Lewis contrasts the joy of living with the grief of being without her. According to Lewis, the one who survives will never understand what it is like to be the one who dies — this much is true. But he also asserts that it will always be worse for the one who dies, but I think he has this wrong. In the tragedy he describes, where the lovers have time to prepare, it is so much harder for the survivor to understand what it will be like to live alone, while the other has nothing to do but die. It is harder for those who will grieve.

But that grief does not stay the same forever.

What does it matter how this grief of mine evolves or what I do with it? What does it matter how I remember her or whether I remember her at all? […]

Already, less than a month after her death, I can feel the slow, insidious beginning of a process that will make the H. I think of into a more and more imaginary woman. […]

But won’t the composition inevitably become more and more my own? The reality is no longer there to check me, to pull me up short. […]

What pitiable cant to say ‘She will live forever in my memory!’ Live? That is exactly what she won’t do. […]

What does it matter how I remember her or whether I remember her at all?

— C.S. Lewis

Lewis’ mourning begins with a cry that his pathway to God was shut and bolted by his loss, but later, he wonders if it was his own need for grief that slammed it closed. This might be true, too, for those who need help from their family — While our grief is fresh, we have to suffer it alone, and we have to re-learn how to ask for help.

Most of us don’t understand what a complex business it is to die. The agony of preparing to die can be hard, but it’s harder for those who will be left behind. In addition to visits to the hospital, your family has to learn to pay the bills and figure out where the money is hidden. Of course, if you die suddenly, you have none of this to deal with. But if you know what’s coming, you can be ready, and you can share your ability to know the future with your family, so that they can know, too.

Then you can share in the joy of living.

• Christopher Belshaw (2005). 10 good questions about life and death.
• Bernard Williams (1973). Problems of the Self.
• The Holy Bible: King James Version.
• Lucretius (Ancient Rome). De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things).
• Epicurus (Ancient Greece). Letter to Menoeceus.
• Thomas Nagel (1970). The Possibility of Altruism.
• Tacitus (Ancient Rome). Agricola.
• Nick Drake (1969). Riverman.
• C.S. Lewis. (1961). A Grief Observed.

If you enjoyed this post, maybe share it with a friend?

I just read Chapter 11: What is the meaning of it all?

At the start of each chapter, there is a short vignette that tells a little story from a case study. Chapter 11, tells of an elderly woman, Elizabeth, who has an undiagnosed health condition that is making her sick. Her daughter, an ER nurse, becomes her champion and takes her from doctor to doctor, test after test, treatment after treatment while Elizabeth’s health continues to deteriorate. Eventually, Elizabeth announces that she doesn’t want to do this anymore.

Her daughter was stunned. “I thought you wanted to fight this”, she said.

I find this metaphor – “you have to fight” – terribly unhelpful. I think, instead, you have to try to have a good understanding of the choices available and to make decisions that are likely to lead to the best outcomes, even when your information is incomplete.

For my own cancer, a diffuse low-grade glioma, there is very little evidence that surgery is helpful and yet the standard of care is to have surgery. My neuro recommended surgery at our first meeting. Almost everyone I know with a glioma has chosen surgery and many are on their second or third surgery because gliomas almost always recur. Surgery for a brain tumour is very taxing, the recovery is difficult and the benefits are questionable. It’s like the healthcare business has a directive that says something must be done and this is something.

So what is the meaning of it all?

I’ve been studying existentialism for my philosophy degree. Jean-Paul Sartre says that we humans don’t come with any predefined meaning or purpose. We have to find it for ourselves. I find meaning in relationships — family and friends — and in leaving the world a little better than how I found it. I don’t find meaning in racking up more months or years on the calendar.

Sartre also says that once we have found our meaning in life, we are required to make choices to realise that meaning. Most people go through life without ever questioning its meaning and, rather than making choices of their own, they accept whatever option that society or convention or family obligation puts in front of them. To truly live meaningful lives, we must make choices. We are condemned to be free.

I think it’s a shame that our society puts so little emphasis on finding meaning and making choices. It’s a shame that the chapter on meaning is the second to last chapter in a book about the end of life. I expect that more people would lead fulfilling lives if they knew that there were more options available than the school-university-marriage-mortgage-children treadmill that conventional society presents us with.

Using ritual to find meaning

Another part of chapter 11 talks about using ritual to create meaning at the end of life.

I’ve just read an article in Aeon magazine that contrasts the hide-bound rituals of Confucianism with the relative freedom proposed by another Chinese philosopher, Zhuangzi.

This is my first exposure to Chinese philosophy, so forgive me if I am misrepresenting anything.

Confucius recommended a series of rituals to ease the pain of loss when someone dies and to make all kinds of transitions (marriage, business arrangements, political decisions) easier to process. Zhuangzi, by contrast, proposed a more free-wheeling approach to life.

Zhuangzi shares a fable to illustrate the limited worldview of someone who knows only ritual.

There is a well-known story in the Zhuangzi, the ‘Fable of a Frog in the Well’. It is a conversation between a well frog and a sea turtle. The frog brags about its own comfortable abode and way of life in a caved-in well to a visiting sea turtle. When the turtle describes for the frog what the sea is like, the frog is completely dumbfounded, not knowing what to make of the turtle’s description. This is a tale about the limited world of the well for the frog in contrast with the limitless world of the sea for the turtle.

Most of us live our lives like a frog who can’t imagine a world outside his well.

Zhuangzi goes on to talk about a butcher, Cook Ding, who creates a ritual way of carving an ox that respects both timeless tradition and the particular circumstances of the task in front of him.

Every touch and every move of Cook Ding’s is conducted in perfect rhythm, as if he was performing some grand ancient ritual, for a highly scripted occasion. His execution is exquisite and precise, hitting all the right notes, and smoothly cutting open the ox’s body without hacking his way through.

I find comfort in ritual. When I returned to England, a few years ago, I was eager to immerse myself in the ancient rituals of my country. A pint of beer in front of a roaring fire on a wet Sunday afternoon. The glories of Evensong in the soaring space of Bristol Cathedral. I believe the words of the funeral rite in the Book of Common Prayer have brought comfort to untold millions over the centuries.

But there is a conflict between following rituals and making the choice to live one’s life freely. I expect Sartre would say that rituals are good when they are freely chosen.

I appreciated chapter 11’s suggestions to create personal rituals to ease the pain of loss and to remember the person who has died. My daughter and I have created a few mini-rituals, like doing jigsaw puzzles together and drinking cocktails at The Broken Dock.

One day, she will be doing a jigsaw and she will remember me and smile.

None of us knew much about the topic, and we started by not agreeing about much at all. We began by talking about what we meant by reality, and we immediately disagreed over that, too. Can something be real if you can’t see it or touch it? Is an agreement with your friends a reality? We agreed that things need to exist to be real — chairs are real, but unicorns are not — but do you need to experience them? We disagreed over that. We know chairs are real because we can touch them. But electrons? I’ve never experienced one. Or llamas.

Someone suggested that perhaps there’s a civilisation that has never seen a chair. Would chairs be real for them? We decided that the chairs would still exist, even for people who don’t know what they are. We can show them a chair and say, “This is a chair,” and they’ll say, “Oh, yes. A chair.” They’ll understand that chairs were real even before they saw one. 

So chairs are still real, and unicorns are still not real. Because… why? I’m not sure. What if we just haven’t seen a unicorn yet? When did the unicorn become not real?

Someone suggested that an opinion like “this cup of tea is delicious” represents reality for the person who holds it, but we didn’t agree on that. One extreme said the opinion represents reality for the person who holds it, even if others disagree. Others said that a single person can’t create reality just by having an opinion, but perhaps if everyone agrees… perhaps that makes it real. Another said opinions don’t represent reality at all. Physical things like chairs are real. Opinions are not.

It’s not always useful to think of things as real or not real, and some things are more real than others. We came up with a scale that captures how real something is. The scale goes from “this thing is definitely real” to “that thing is definitely not real”, with lots of ground in between. We agreed that physical things exist at one end of the scale, and imaginary things go at the other end. But what about ideas like “this tea is delicious”? Where do they fit in? And what about money? Or the law? Are they real, or are they just things that some humans just came up with?

Here’s our scale.

So, coins and notes are real, but is the money they represent real? We can see coins, but coins won’t be around for much longer, and then the currency will only exist on computers. Are things on computers real? What about Donkey Kong Jr.? Currency is only real now because we agree that it’s real. Does it remain real when we lose confidence in it, and it goes away? The Zimbabwean Dollar and the Yugoslav Dinar lost their value and disappeared from circulation. Are they still real? At what point were they no longer real? (We didn’t agree on any of these points)

Laws are tricky, too. What if we don’t agree on whether a law is correct? Does that law still exist? Some people just ignore some laws. For example, there’s a law against using your phone while driving, but most people ignore it. Is it still a law if no one follows it?

It was about now we decided that whether something is real does not mean it needs to exist in reality — one’s an adjective, and one’s a noun. We also decided that there are separate categories of ”fact” that can represent reality. Some facts represent physical things in the world, while others represent things in our minds or things we have agreed on between us. They are both real, but they mean different things.

I did a little reading this morning to see what the proper philosophers say about it. John Searle’s summary of the two kinds of reality agrees with what we came up with. Clever us!

Searle defines brute facts as realities that exist independently of society, language, or thoughts, while institutional facts are realities that exist when human communities collectively agree about them.

Brute facts are true whether humans acknowledge them or not. They include natural phenomena like the laws of physics, mountains, hydrogen atoms, or snow on a mountain.

Institutional Facts are built on human agreement. They require human institutions, culture, and collective agreement to exist and include things like love, laws and money.

We came up with the same categories of reality; we just had different names for them.

Back in the Stone Age, humans built huts and caves, but they are all gone now. We agreed they were real back then, but are they still real now that they are gone? I think they are real, but we didn’t agree on that.

There are even ideas that we all agreed exist, even if we don’t agree whether their reality is a brute fact or a human agreement. For example, we humans see colours out in the world, but do colours really exist out there, or are they something that humans create in our brains when light rays enter our eyes? Other animals can see colours too, but they see different colours from us. Are their colours still real?

And what about numbers? Is maths a brute fact or an institutional fact? Do numbers exist independently of humans, or are they just something we agreed on? The square root of 144 is 12, but is that something we invented? What about negative numbers and imaginary numbers? I don’t think they existed before we came up with them. Others disagree. Plato believed that mathematical concepts (according to Gemini), like circles, triangles, and numbers, are eternal, unchanging truths in a separate realm, but Aristotle rejected Plato’s realm and said mathematical objects have no independent existence. Mathematics is just something that humans do.

Even within the category of physical things, we still had some dispute about what belongs to reality. Chairs exist, sure, and carbon atoms, but what about quantum particles? There’s definitely something there, and we know what they do, but we don’t really know what they are. Do they really exist, or are they just something we have agreed on? 

“Quantum mechanics describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And yet it fully agrees with experiment.”

— Richard Feynman

There were other areas of dispute.

Are ethics real? And do they come from human agreement like institutional facts are supposed to? For example, all mammals care for their babies. Searle said that it’s only an institutional fact if humans came up with it, but evolution gave us the rule to take care of our babies about 200 million years before humans came along, so maybe that one is a brute fact. There are plenty of other rules and morals where it’s ambiguous when or whether we invented them. We disagreed noisily over whether slavery was immoral for the five thousand years before we agreed that slavery was immoral. Perhaps there are moral rules that exist, even if we haven’t agreed on them yet.

Does god exist? Most people are sure that either He does or that he doesn’t. Perhaps we will only know the true reality when we go off to meet our maker.

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 provides a different kind of challenge. Does Beethoven’s 5th come and go, depending on whether someone is playing it? Or is it there all the time? Does it only become real when an orchestra is playing it in a concert hall? What if someone is just playing the intro on a violin? What if it’s just on a CD or if the score is written on a music sheet? Do they all count as Beethoven’s 5th? We agreed the symphony is real, but we don’t agree on what makes it real or even when it’s real.

I’ve never given the topic of reality much thought, but we had a cool mix of new people and old people at our table last night, and it was a pleasure to discuss it. We still didn’t agree on much by the end, but we ended up closer than we began. It was a great discussion.

We go to the pub for Café Philo every month. Some of us have been coming month after month, and some are coming for the first time. There’s no expectation that we will agree on anything, but as long as we get our thoughts out there, it’s all good.

Leave a comment below if there is something you disagree with.

Some tips:

Introduction

Write the introduction first. It will get you started and saves you from the agony of staring at a blank page for hours. Once you have decided on the argument you want to make, the introduction will write itself.

It will usually be something like this:

Philosopher X described how XXX. In this essay, I will begin by explaining XXX then describe what X claimed about XXX. I will also explain why philosopher Y disagreed with X. Finally, I will explain why X is wrong (or right) and include examples to show why XXX does not (or does) make sense because ZZZZ. I’ll start by describing XXX.

Write more in the introduction than feels comfortable. I usually write about 80-100 words. Include the gist of your conclusion in your introduction and say how you will go about proving it. Your introduction should tell your reader everything you plan to say: don’t leave any surprises until the end.

Build an outline first

I used to just write-write-write until I got to the end but I found that building an outline gives me a bit more control over what I am writing (Thanks, Dr Stuart!).

Your outline will vary depending on the question you are answering but will usually be some variant of:

• Introduction
• Here’s where I give some background and some definitions so you know what I am talking about.
• Here’s a philosopher and here’s what they thought.
• Here’s another philosopher who disagreed with him.
• Here’s what I think.
• Here’s why.
  • Here’s why the other philosophers probably think I am wrong.
  • Here’s why I am right and they are wrong.
• Conclusion

Sometimes, I might drill down a level in my outline. For example, if I think five things about XXX, I’ll list the five things under the ‘Here’s what I think‘ section.

Fill in the details

This is the hard part.

Make sure you understand what the question is asking. Make sure you answer the whole question, especially if the question has multiple parts.

Follow your outline as you write your essay. If you have 6 things in your outline and you have to write 1200 words, plan on writing about 200 words on each thing, more or less. If you write more than 200 words on one thing, you’ll have to write a bit less on another thing. I always end up writing way too much and have to edit it down to fit the word count. Usually, the stuff I end up deleting was crap anyway.

The outline gives you a bit of flexibility to move things around or to add or remove bits as you figure out what you really want to write.

Make sure you stay on topic. You have to be relentless about this. If what you are writing doesn’t answer the question, don’t write it. This is what I find hardest and it’s what I agonise over most after I hit SUBMIT.

Conclusion

By the time you write your conclusion, you should have already proven everything you want to prove. Don’t include anything new in your conclusion and don’t claim more than you have proven in the rest of the essay.

Some bonus tips

Know your audience. You are not writing for your tutor, you are writing for an intelligent reader who knows nothing about your topic. This means you have to explain your terms every time you introduce a new idea.

You don’t need to write a mini-biography of your philosopher like you might in other humanities essays. Maybe just provide her dates the first time you mention her.

When you write the ‘what I think’ section, add a bit about why X might disagree with what you said and then explain why X is wrong. You probably want to note several objections like this.

Be sparing with your quotes. It’s better to paraphrase than to quote. Your tutor wants to read what you have to say, not what Philosopher X said. Make sure you add an inline reference every time you quote or paraphrase. I try to limit myself to a couple of quotes per essay. If you do include a quote, say why it’s relevant then explain it or restate it in your own words.

Use lots of signposts so your reader can figure out where they are in your essay. When you finish writing a section, summarise what you just said and then hint at what you are going to say in the next section.

No need to struggle for synonyms like you might in a creative essay. Once you have picked a word for a concept, use the same word every time.

When you are done with your essay, go back and fix your introduction to match what you actually wrote because you almost certainly changed your mind while writing the essay.

Read your essay five or six times. Make edits each time to make the sentences tighter and to clarify any points that are fuzzy. You might decide that your argument works better if you move your paragraphs around or even delete whole paragraphs that don’t really support your argument.

When you are sure your essay is as good as it can be, leave the essay for a day to let the words settle and then edit it again.

Good luck, aspiring philosophers!

I got lots of ideas (and stole a few) from here: https://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/akind/intro01s/writing.htm

The Best Flute Players
The purpose of a flute is to make beautiful music. For a flute to fulfil its purpose, it should be owned by the best flute player.

Rich People
Flute prices are set by the market. The best flutes are expensive and the only people who can afford them are rich people. Perhaps the rich people with the best flutes will hire the best flute players or perhaps they’ll lend them a flute occasionally. Or perhaps they won’t. Perhaps they’ll keep the best flute in a safe place to sell for a great price later. They can do what they like because they are rich.

The State
We can’t trust capitalism to distribute flutes efficiently. It would be better if all the flutes were owned by the state which could distribute flutes according to need. Perhaps we could establish a National Flute Academy to nurture and reward the best flute players.

Poor People
It’s not fair that either the rich people get all the best flutes or the best flute players get all the best flutes. We should distribute flutes to the least well-off in society.

The Worst Flute Players
It’s not fair that the best flute players just get better and better. It’s because they have access to the best flutes. If the worst flute players had better flutes, they could be great flute players too.

The Children of Rich People
This flute has been in my family for four generations. I’ve been meaning to learn to play it but I’ve been busy you know. But my flute is my property and I am entitled to do what I want with it. I choose to give it to my eldest son.

Slovenians
The oldest flutes were discovered in Slovenia. The flutes were 45,000 years old. Flutes are part of Slovenian culture. For anyone else to play a flute… that would be cultural appropriation.

Ethnic Minorities
Flute playing is a white European thing and ethnic minorities have been excluded for too long. We should decolonise flute playing and give the best flutes to ethnic minorities.

The Best Flute Players
For any decision, we should consider which choice will result in the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. If the best flute players have the best flutes, they will be happy and the rest of us will be happy to hear them play.

Epilogue

Another clown pointed out that it wasn’t obvious that the flutes were just placeholders for some limited resource. I wrote a follow up post to explore this a bit further.

I learned later that the two dudes were old friends who see each other once a year to hang out and catch up and argue philosophy. They covered all the good topics. Is patriotism good for society? When does patriotism shade into nationalism? Is that bad? Should we encourage immigration from other cultures? One was arguing from what I will call the Daily Mail position while the other was more Guardian — though they were both smart dudes and able to address each other’s point of view intelligently and with charity and good nature.

At one point, Mr Daily Mail said something outrageous and I blew my cover by laughing out loud so they invited me to join them. Before long, Married Couple joined in too. It was a fun afternoon. Mr Daily Mail bought us all drinks and we solved many of the philosophical problems that have challenged philosophers down the ages. We were even able to classify all the lines of Alanis Morriset’s song according to whether or not they were actually ironic (Mr Afraid-To-Fly: yes; free ride when you are already there: no; rain on your wedding day: only if you are a meteorologist, don’t you think?). We also declared that the international unit of irony is the KiloSpoon.

With the irony problem solved, Mr Guardian announced a new topic.

“I’ve got one!” he said. “Imagine that you’ve just been told that you only have a short time left to live. What would you do with your time remaining?”

“Well,” I said.

“I’ve just been diagnosed with a brain tumour. It’s terminal. There is no cure but they can extend my survival time with surgery, chemo and radiation. I don’t know the tumour type yet but median survival ranges from a few months for a glioblastoma to a couple of years for an astrocytoma to about 7 or 8 years for an oligodendroglioma. I’m not dead yet so it’s probably not a glioblastoma. I just had another MRI and I should find out more next week. What should I do with my time remaining?”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. Researching too. Of the dozens of papers that I have read, most say that surgery for a diffuse low-grade glioma (LGG) is controversial. The benefits are questionable, the recovery times are awful and the risks of brain damage are considerable. Still, the standard of care for an LGG is to have a craniotomy to remove the tumour and, depending on the molecular profile of the tumour, to follow that with radiation and chemotherapy. However, there are no (zero) studies that compare the outcome of surgery vs no surgery (similarly, there are no studies that compare the outcome of jumping out of a plane with a parachute vs no parachute — it would be unethical to do that study so we have to guess at the likely result).

I found several studies that compare survival times based on extent of resection (EOR). If they get 100% of the tumour, overall survival (OS) is X. If they only get 90%, OS is a bit less (and so on, for 80%, 70% etc). All these numbers vary according to the age of the patient, where the tumour is, how big it is, what the grade is and how long it has been there. LGGs are very rare anyway so the numbers involved in computing these stats are tiny and mine is the rarest tumour of all: there is only one of me.

So there seems to be a strong correlation between EOR and OS. But, hold on! Why would they only remove 90% of the tumour? Is it because that last 10% is in an important bit of brain? The bit that would kill you if they chopped it out? Maybe that apparent correlation is about where the tumour is rather than how much they are able to chop.

While we are talking about brain-chopping, how do they know which bits to chop? There’s a magical fluorescent dye that shows you which bits are tumour and which bits are healthy brain tissue. Unfortunately, it only works on high-grade tumours and we won’t know the grade until after surgery. And you thought brain surgery was easy!

There is a thing called a ‘needle biopsy’ where you can take a sample of the tumour to analyse its molecular profile without full-on surgery. But gliomas tend to be heterogeneous — different bits of the tumour will have different mutations — so needle biopsies are unreliable.

Most craniotomies are done ‘awake’ these days so the surgeon can talk to you while he chops. This allows him to prod a bit of brain and see what it does.

Hmmm…. This bit makes his right hand twitch. Let’s not chop that bit.”

They also give you little tests like:

“Count to ten for me.”

“One two gargle bloop sslllllpp”

“Ah. That’s the speaking bit. We won’t chop that bit either.”

That famous philosopher, Donald Rumsfield, might point out that there are limits to this technique. The surgeon can figure out the known unknowns but how does he know which bit has Dave Gilmour’s guitar solo from ‘Shine on you crazy diamond’?

Which bit knows the capital of Iceland or the colour of my true love’s hair? There are no stats about that in the scientific literature.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who has chosen to not have surgery for a glioma. The smarter members of Smart Patients might say that’s because they are all dead. My surgeon is definitely pro-surgery (he would be, wouldn’t he?) but I need a little more evidence before I decide whether it is right for me.

Whenever the topic of Steve Jobs comes up on Smart Patients some members get really angry that such a smart man would try to cure his cancer by drinking vegetable smoothies. Do they not wonder whether perhaps Steve Jobs knew exactly what he was doing and he knew that chemotherapy would not have cured his cancer either? And that vegetable smoothies are a lot more delicious than chemotherapy.

He will die one day. But so will everyone else.

I know one cancer patient who refused treatment and is now driving around America in a van having the time of his life. He insists that ‘You are not “refusing” you are “choosing.”‘

He is going to die one day. But so is everyone else.

What it all boils down to is that I am going to have to make a difficult decision with very little data. If surgery is gonna extend my life by 9 years, maybe it’s worth a shot. If it’s gonna extend it by 6 months and I am gonna spend 9 of those months recovering from surgery then, maybe not. And no one’s really got it figured out just yet.

Lilli sent me a poem yesterday. She said it reminded her of me (though Lilli doesn’t know me in real life). I’m honoured by the comparison.

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view,
and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.
Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
even a stranger, when in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people and grovel to none.
When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.
If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.
Abuse no one and no thing,
for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die,
be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death,
so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time
to live their lives over again in a different way.
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

Chief Tecumseh (1768-1813) 

Chief Tecumseh (translated as “shooting star” or “blazing comet”), led the Shawnee tribe and saw his people’s lands, culture, and freedoms threatened by the aggressive white settlements. I wonder if we are related.

PS. Nick & Duncan — my two dudes from the pub — if you are passing by, please leave me a comment. I’d love to hear from you!

But the one subject that they really need to teach more of is rhetoric. Jay Heinrich believes that every parent should teach their children to argue and I agree.

To disagree reasonably, a child must learn the three basic tools of argument. I got them straight from Aristotle, hence the Greek labels: logos, ethos, and pathos.

Heinrich goes through each of the elements of rhetoric in turn and illustrates it with examples from arguments with his children.

Logos is argument by logic. If arguments were children, logos would be the brainy one, the big sister who gets top grades in high school. Forcing my kids to be logical forced them to connect what they wanted with the reasons they gave.

Mary won’t let me play with the car.

Why should she?

Because she’s a pig.

So Mary should give you the car because she’s a pig?

Repeat the kid’s premise (she’s being a pig) with her conclusion (therefore she should let me play with the car), and she has to think logically.

Logos is the one that gets technical people in trouble with their non-technical wives. Ethos is what gets them out of trouble. Sometimes.

Ethos, or argument by character, employs the persuader’s personality, reputation, and ability to look trustworthy. (While logos sweats over its GPA, ethos gets elected class president.) My kids learned early on that a sterling reputation is more than just good; it’s persuasive. In rhetoric, lying isn’t just a foul because it’s wrong, it’s a foul because it’s unpersuasive. A parent is more likely to believe a trustworthy kid and to accept her argument. For example, if both children – the entire list of suspects – deny having eaten the last cookie, ethos becomes important.

Me: One of you took the cookie.

Dorothy: Have I ever stolen cookies before?

Me: Good point. George?

Careful with pathos. Especially if you have a daughter.

Then there’s pathos, argument by emotion. It’s the sibling who gets away with everything by skillfully playing on heartstrings. When a kid learns to read your emotions and play them like an instrument, you’re raising a good persuader.

Dorothy: Dad, you look tired. Want to sit down?

Me: Thanks. Where did you have in mind?

Dorothy: Ben & Jerry’s.

The article was even better the second time I read it. You should read it too.