There's one more perspective on this. When they asked Jesus how he did his miracles, his answer was, "The Son can do nothing of himself but what he seeth the Father do." The polycrisis is getting so bad, it seems this might be our best approach...profoundly responding to how our Creator can enter human hearts and make us GOOD. Perhaps Dr. Seuss was something of genius when he wrote about how the Grinch's heart grew three sizes on Christmas Day when he saw the love of the little Whos singing even when their presents were stolen. Hopefully we learn from these examples...and actually practice them.
Respectfully, scores of those who have suffered often a fate worse than death at the hands of Christian “GOOD” choosers would tell you that perspective isn’t compatible with their personal freedom TO choose. Jesus (or Mohammad, or Buddha, et. al) as a Panacea has not unfortunately balanced the books, thus far.
I’m with you on distrusting Promised Lands and “Net Zero Trauma by 2070”-style projects. I just don’t see how tragic liberalism escapes the hard question: when values clash in practice, and someone’s going to take the hit, who decides whose losses are quietly treated as acceptable so the “infinite game” can go on? And on whose terms?
well said (and good question!) “Because let’s be real,” Pulitzer Prize–winning author and MIT professor Junot Díaz wrote in The New Yorker. “We always knew this shit wasn’t going to be easy. Colonial power, patriarchal power, capitalist power must always and everywhere be battled, because they never, ever quit. We have to keep fighting, because otherwise there will be no future—all will be consumed. . . . This is the joyous destiny of our people—to bury the arc of the moral universe so deep in justice
not really--it's just not neat and tidy. If we are to defend the ideal of the American Experiment and its Infinite Game, there will always be players seeking rent, stacking the deck and trying to win Finite Games within it. They need to be battled a la Diaz's comments. It never ends and its never clean and your original question/problem remains. Only way for it to work is to win the stacked deck Finite Game in order to then call the terms of the next round. Gotta out Machiavelli Machiavelli and then remember you're Gandhi. I wont answer your question directly in subsequent parts of this essay (had to stop it where I did before it branched into a whole nother tangent) but I will try to address John Gray's pessimism about Technological Ratchets and Moral Backsliding. I think it's a little more complicated than he makes out, and we're not quite as bad at this as he makes out. And hopefully you'll be able to glean something from it that speaks to your initial question of ethically adjudicating harms and tradeoffs. (I did do a podcast about Win-Win games with poker champion Liv Boeree if you wanna check that out). I agree with your sentiment tho--enough of utopian Win Win fantasies, in a world of constraints we need to get better (and kinder) at win-lose games
Once you license yourself to out-Machiavelli Machiavelli in service of the Infinite Game, the whole thing hangs on your conviction that you’re the one who’ll remember you’re Gandhi after you win. In practice, every faction tells itself some version of that story.
Perhaps the choice is made by the great wheel in that the generations die and are reborn into new archetypes. Or evolutions of species if you want to take it out of the human-only bubble.
Think of them as new pieces in the infinite game.
Hence the tragic liberal paradox of mere mortal existence that doesn’t achieve the escape velocity to acknowledge the possibility of the ghost in the machine.
Taken literally, that sounds like: don’t worry much about who’s right, the wheel/evolution will sort it out. That’s also exactly how a lot of very ugly projects talk to themselves while they’re running. It feels less like an answer than a metaphysical shrug dressed in archetypal language.
Not so much a metaphysical shrug, more an acknowledgment of the metaphysical possibility.
It depends on whether or not one believes in metaphysical evolution or just biological evolution, does the ghost in the machine exist and if it does, does the energy of one’s actions in this lifetime carry forward and to what degree does that affect the material outcome of the next evolution.
Basically, is karma a real currency the universe hangs its hat on, or just something we made up?
I’m not really disputing the metaphysical possibility...I’m disputing its usefulness as a decision rule. Even if karma and some kind of metaphysical evolution are real, we don’t see the ledger in real time. Every movement in history, including the worst ones, has been able to tell itself that its hard moves were on the right side of the cosmic scoreboard. So at the level Jamie’s talking about (how we justify and constrain power in this round of the game) we need something more down-to-earth than “the wheel will sort it out later.”
Point taken, but down-to-earth isn't where I'm at, and I think that's part of why so many of the philosophers change their stance as time goes on, because they are looking at this life, this thing they can hold onto, feel, touch, smell, look at, as a one way track. They try to identify why people do what they do, and why things don't make sense, and some some to a moral un-grounding, to others, a fatal flaw in the architecture. If we're contemplating human existence as recycled energy, but someone needs to hang their hat on down-to-earth, It's a bit like trying to explain algebra to my cat. And I'm no mathematician. At some point, either me or the cat will see both of us aren't on the same track. And that's ok. I appreciate the back and forth, thanks for chopping it up with me.
I actually like the sound of what you’re saying. That was my native orientation for a long time, and I still find the metaphysics attractive. The hitch, for me, is how often that move (“the real sorting is happening elsewhere, on another level”) has functioned as cover for very ordinary, this-round harms. For now we’re in the earthly realm with real stakes and real casualties, and I can’t embrace that frame as a decision rule anymore. Frankly, it feels less like depth and more like a very elegant cop-out.
Thanks for the necessary, balanced pragmatism, advocating a way through the division of polarities by integrating them. Disagreement should be expected and compromise honored. The infinite game of civilization can keep unfolding without demanding that everyone submit to a single redemptive vision. Otherwise, the finite games derail our human course.
Choice according to Viktor Frankl is a fundamental trait of the human condition. Philosophy and ethics are the human recognition of this in the attempt to make wise choices.
I have rarely found such a density of thought suggestions. My ideas often lead me to biblical history. But I had completely overlooked this possible aspect of “you may” until now. It seems that the ancient writings are indeed full of wisdom, at least in parts. Thank you for the inspiration!
stay tuned-we go next into New Testament, then Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, America's Founding Fathers and the New Jerusalem all the way to today's New Apostolic Revival.
No promised arc of Progress. No final boss fight where we win History. Just flawed humans, clashing values, and the uncomfortable truth that choosing matters. That’s not cynicism. That’s growing up.
Humanity is spinning its wheels with God. Or perhaps in Ezekiel fashion, spinning its wheels within wheels. We've spent some 3500 or so years trying to use the Genesis story to solve our problems. It's not working.
There's one more perspective on this. When they asked Jesus how he did his miracles, his answer was, "The Son can do nothing of himself but what he seeth the Father do." The polycrisis is getting so bad, it seems this might be our best approach...profoundly responding to how our Creator can enter human hearts and make us GOOD. Perhaps Dr. Seuss was something of genius when he wrote about how the Grinch's heart grew three sizes on Christmas Day when he saw the love of the little Whos singing even when their presents were stolen. Hopefully we learn from these examples...and actually practice them.
Respectfully, scores of those who have suffered often a fate worse than death at the hands of Christian “GOOD” choosers would tell you that perspective isn’t compatible with their personal freedom TO choose. Jesus (or Mohammad, or Buddha, et. al) as a Panacea has not unfortunately balanced the books, thus far.
I’m with you on distrusting Promised Lands and “Net Zero Trauma by 2070”-style projects. I just don’t see how tragic liberalism escapes the hard question: when values clash in practice, and someone’s going to take the hit, who decides whose losses are quietly treated as acceptable so the “infinite game” can go on? And on whose terms?
well said (and good question!) “Because let’s be real,” Pulitzer Prize–winning author and MIT professor Junot Díaz wrote in The New Yorker. “We always knew this shit wasn’t going to be easy. Colonial power, patriarchal power, capitalist power must always and everywhere be battled, because they never, ever quit. We have to keep fighting, because otherwise there will be no future—all will be consumed. . . . This is the joyous destiny of our people—to bury the arc of the moral universe so deep in justice
that it will never be undone.”
Okay, but you're borrowing a pretty hard utopian arc to answer a question about how we avoid hard utopian arcs.
not really--it's just not neat and tidy. If we are to defend the ideal of the American Experiment and its Infinite Game, there will always be players seeking rent, stacking the deck and trying to win Finite Games within it. They need to be battled a la Diaz's comments. It never ends and its never clean and your original question/problem remains. Only way for it to work is to win the stacked deck Finite Game in order to then call the terms of the next round. Gotta out Machiavelli Machiavelli and then remember you're Gandhi. I wont answer your question directly in subsequent parts of this essay (had to stop it where I did before it branched into a whole nother tangent) but I will try to address John Gray's pessimism about Technological Ratchets and Moral Backsliding. I think it's a little more complicated than he makes out, and we're not quite as bad at this as he makes out. And hopefully you'll be able to glean something from it that speaks to your initial question of ethically adjudicating harms and tradeoffs. (I did do a podcast about Win-Win games with poker champion Liv Boeree if you wanna check that out). I agree with your sentiment tho--enough of utopian Win Win fantasies, in a world of constraints we need to get better (and kinder) at win-lose games
Once you license yourself to out-Machiavelli Machiavelli in service of the Infinite Game, the whole thing hangs on your conviction that you’re the one who’ll remember you’re Gandhi after you win. In practice, every faction tells itself some version of that story.
Zactly. therein lies the motherfuckin rub!
Indeed. It will be interesting to see how you work with that rub in the next installment.
Perhaps the choice is made by the great wheel in that the generations die and are reborn into new archetypes. Or evolutions of species if you want to take it out of the human-only bubble.
Think of them as new pieces in the infinite game.
Hence the tragic liberal paradox of mere mortal existence that doesn’t achieve the escape velocity to acknowledge the possibility of the ghost in the machine.
Taken literally, that sounds like: don’t worry much about who’s right, the wheel/evolution will sort it out. That’s also exactly how a lot of very ugly projects talk to themselves while they’re running. It feels less like an answer than a metaphysical shrug dressed in archetypal language.
Not so much a metaphysical shrug, more an acknowledgment of the metaphysical possibility.
It depends on whether or not one believes in metaphysical evolution or just biological evolution, does the ghost in the machine exist and if it does, does the energy of one’s actions in this lifetime carry forward and to what degree does that affect the material outcome of the next evolution.
Basically, is karma a real currency the universe hangs its hat on, or just something we made up?
I’m not really disputing the metaphysical possibility...I’m disputing its usefulness as a decision rule. Even if karma and some kind of metaphysical evolution are real, we don’t see the ledger in real time. Every movement in history, including the worst ones, has been able to tell itself that its hard moves were on the right side of the cosmic scoreboard. So at the level Jamie’s talking about (how we justify and constrain power in this round of the game) we need something more down-to-earth than “the wheel will sort it out later.”
Point taken, but down-to-earth isn't where I'm at, and I think that's part of why so many of the philosophers change their stance as time goes on, because they are looking at this life, this thing they can hold onto, feel, touch, smell, look at, as a one way track. They try to identify why people do what they do, and why things don't make sense, and some some to a moral un-grounding, to others, a fatal flaw in the architecture. If we're contemplating human existence as recycled energy, but someone needs to hang their hat on down-to-earth, It's a bit like trying to explain algebra to my cat. And I'm no mathematician. At some point, either me or the cat will see both of us aren't on the same track. And that's ok. I appreciate the back and forth, thanks for chopping it up with me.
I actually like the sound of what you’re saying. That was my native orientation for a long time, and I still find the metaphysics attractive. The hitch, for me, is how often that move (“the real sorting is happening elsewhere, on another level”) has functioned as cover for very ordinary, this-round harms. For now we’re in the earthly realm with real stakes and real casualties, and I can’t embrace that frame as a decision rule anymore. Frankly, it feels less like depth and more like a very elegant cop-out.
Thanks for the necessary, balanced pragmatism, advocating a way through the division of polarities by integrating them. Disagreement should be expected and compromise honored. The infinite game of civilization can keep unfolding without demanding that everyone submit to a single redemptive vision. Otherwise, the finite games derail our human course.
Choice according to Viktor Frankl is a fundamental trait of the human condition. Philosophy and ethics are the human recognition of this in the attempt to make wise choices.
I have rarely found such a density of thought suggestions. My ideas often lead me to biblical history. But I had completely overlooked this possible aspect of “you may” until now. It seems that the ancient writings are indeed full of wisdom, at least in parts. Thank you for the inspiration!
stay tuned-we go next into New Testament, then Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, America's Founding Fathers and the New Jerusalem all the way to today's New Apostolic Revival.
I really appreciate the laser clarity with which this distills so much wisdom.
No promised arc of Progress. No final boss fight where we win History. Just flawed humans, clashing values, and the uncomfortable truth that choosing matters. That’s not cynicism. That’s growing up.
Humanity is spinning its wheels with God. Or perhaps in Ezekiel fashion, spinning its wheels within wheels. We've spent some 3500 or so years trying to use the Genesis story to solve our problems. It's not working.
This is a phenomenal article, Jamie! So much to unpack that I'll need to read it at least one more time.
If having the choice results in annihilation, then was it still a good plan? Perhaps it will be food for the thought for the surviving cockroaches.