I am certain that you are all sitting in your expeditionary force units in mad shock and tedious disbelief, all wondering the same thing: How is WEF4 doing? Well sit no longer! WEF4 is here to quell the many fear that you clearly have (judging by the constant barrage of emotive emails, maniac messages, frantic facebook queries and whatnot.) WEF4 is fine. Better even, WEF4 is actually enjoying employment. (Shocks: the Earth stands still.)
Most importantly perhaps is our discussion of squirrels, the beloved beasts of WEF7. They exist here in greater abundance than I have ever seen before. They prance; they tarry; they are the indigenous species of Princeton and most of us have the sense to bow down to them. (this does not apply to the wee rugby lads who like to use their footwear as squirrel pistols, but I digress..) My first week here a young woman was sitting on a bench reading a book and eating an apple. She placed the apple down momentarily to turn a page. FOLLY! In mere moments a squirrel had sprinted from across the grass, pounced on the unprotected apple, and carried it up a tree. Laws of mere mortals - theft - do not apply to gods. The young woman stared in disbelief.
But on to lesser matter, as the gods cannot take all of our time. My employment is brilliant because the kids I’m working with are AWESOME. And the curriculum is super interesting. I never thought I could tire of talking about the community-freedom divide but we have been debating it ad nauseum for so long that at this point even I grow weary! Worry not. Just in the nick of time we’re moving onto capitalism as an economic structure - one of my other favourites :) It’s really nice to be able to teach all of the topics that I actually study and care about instead of only teaching technology or basic rudimentary skills. It has also made me more confident about perhaps pursuing a PhD and going into academia.
Equally awesome are my fellow facilitators and the organization itself. They are all generally liberal - funders and facilitators alike - but firmly believe (and more importantly, it comes out in practice) that young people should be given the critical thinking skills necessary to arrive at their own opinions on any matter, even if that opinion is in contradiction to their own. This comes out in every aspect of our work. It is really liberating to be around people who are opposed to ideology even while clearly subscribing to some forms on a personal level.
On the Youth Advocacy Network front: I’ve finally finished the site, made a facebook page, and invited people to apply. I’ve realized that after taxes my salary for the summer will be somewhat less than I imagined and have thus decided to return to Cameroon myself unless I find an appropriate applicant. If any of you guys know of people who might be interested I am now offering a living stipend and housing as incentive. http://www.idealist.org/if/i/en/av/Job/385991-295/c WEF6 especially, if you have friends out of college who haven’t found anything in the current job climate please send them my way!
Still waiting to hear back from the one real job I applied to… if I get it I will likely to scampering about to find a more qualified applicant for YAN, as I will be able to support it financially to a greater extent.
And with that, WEfers, I am sure you will all sleep better at night
Like the past several years, I’ve missed you all on Thanksgiving. I hope next year will be very different (but no guarantees).
We all have a lot to be grateful for on this day, but for me I am especially grateful for how the year has turned out.
I’m thankful to God (or whatever higher power you may subscribe to) for getting us through the past year more or less in one piece. I’m also more thankful than I can say for the support of all the family during this period, and I firmly believe that all of you, in each of your own ways, were largely responsible for the the positive outcome.
I hope to re-engage on WExForce once I get back to the States in January. I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all and to let you know what a great and meaningful Thanksgiving this one is for me.
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question . . . [Utilitarianism] enjoins and requires the cultivation of the love of virtue up to the greatest strength possible, as being above all things important to the general happiness.”
-John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
After reading some of Mill’s work, I find myself much more appreciative of utilitarianism. Although I’ve only read portions of this theory, I think, perhaps, that the essence of this ethical system has been popularly misrepresented as, “the ends justify the means”. The proponents of utilitarianism might have well ended up at that conclusion, but the central point of utilitarianism seems to involve something else: general and particular happiness as the end of existence. Mill proves that every human pursues happiness as their end. Mill counters the argument of animalistic hedonism by pointing out that human beings are capable of greater pleasures due to their “superior faculties”. The more virtuous one is, he reasons, the more capacity one has for greater happiness. Pigs can be happy, in other words, but not as happy as a human being. Because utilitarianism says that we should all promote as much happiness in the world as possible, that means promoting the capacity of men and women to be even more happy than they already are. This is done by training in “noble character” and “virtue”.
Nice idea in theory, but even Mill admits that most men give up on noble character and virtue for the sake of bodily health and material power. Further, he conflates happiness with feelings rather than following Saint Aquinas’ contention that happiness is what perfects us as human beings - what is truly good for us. Ultimate happiness, then, isn’t ultimate feelings of pleasure, but an ultimate ‘good’, a treasure that we possess and that perfects us. Pleasure, of course, follows from having attained such a good. But happiness is distinct from pleasure.
Because Mill is unwilling to make this distinction, he never really defines what are the highest pleasures. He only says that those with superior faculties are those who are most capable of judging what are the highest pleasures. When utilitarianism hits the masses - those without ’superior’ faculties, let us say, it becomes an ethics of pigs and fools. Utilitarianism works well with the virtuous, because they already know what is good for them. The failure of Mill to account for what is good or not doesn’t affect those who already know what is good. But for the rest of us, those who struggle to find happiness, who never seem to know where happiness comes from, utilitarianism ends up reinforcing our deluded ideas of what makes us ‘happy’ - in other words, whatever mud we happen to be laying in, feeling quite pleasurable in. Utilitarianism couldn’t handle the onslaught of subjectivism and relativism, where one could claim that happiness, as a feeling of pleasure, is equal in both pigs and saints. Poor Mill! If only he hadn’t disconnected what makes us happy from what is truly good for us! But then you run into questions that lead smack right into meaning and essence - what does it mean to be a human being? Are we mere carbon machines, evolved out of goo randomly? Or are we designed by a source that stands outside of time and space - a source that is not only reason itself, but love itself?
This is the latest from The Wildermuth Game-Works. By the way, there is now an open-invitation to join The Wildermuth Game-Works. It is a worker-owned worker-run venture. We currently need both human and financial resources to make our first official game a reality. We need artists, playtesters, storytellers, marketers, and production staff. But on to the real show - Picture It! Read the rest of this entry »
Modern culture resists any connection between morality and happiness, and tends to equate happiness with bodily pleasures and psychological delights.To suggest that goodness, or virtuous living, leads to true happiness, is to suggest a return to the “dark ages” of medieval ignorance.While ancient man knew limits to the insatiable appetite of the senses, modern man, armed with science, technology, and material domination of the world, seems to have broken through such limits.It now seems possible to sate the senses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, living in a virtual world of digital media and psychoactive chemicals.The senses, far feeling limited an unsatisfied, are now overwhelmed.Where is the value of virtuous living when goodness is relative, when justice is democratic, when emotions are synthesized, when problems are solved with a pill?The value comes from the fact that human nature really does have limits, that human happiness does reside in an objectively ordered good.The foundational (”cardinal”) virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude provide the habitual disposition and unlimited capacity to know this true good of the human person and to passionately seek it.
Man is a creature of habit.What we do forms who we are.The cardinal virtues form us into excellent human beings.Just as Michael Jordan is an excellent basketball player (through practice) some men and women are excellent human beings through the practice of virtue, by which they become “virtuosos” of humanity.The four cardinal virtues perfect four different aspects of the human person:prudence perfects the judgments of evaluation (practical intellect), justice perfects the freedom of the will (rational appetite), temperance perfects the emotions that provoke (concupiscible passions), and fortitude perfects the emotions that sustain (irascible passions).Upon these virtues does the happiness of man ‘hinge’, “for a good life consists in good deeds” and “the entire structure of good works is built on four virtues” (Summa I-II, 57, 5 & I-II, 61, 1) Read the rest of this entry »
