On goals and power

As if reading the wrong chapters wasn't enough I now am quite behind, so I'm giving myself 45 minutes to write, 15 to edit, and then I'm gonna LET IT GO.

This week we read two chapters and end the second part of our text - the Two Towers.  When I was younger I was convinced the towers were Isengard, Saruman's home, and Barad-dûr, Sauron's.  But now I think the references are to Isengard (where the first half of the book ends), and Cirith Ungol, the tower Shelob's Lair leads to - where we leave Frodo and Sam.  Just a thought...

The chapters we read this week are "Shelob's Lair" and "The Choices of Master Samwise."  In them Gollum plays his big trick on the hobbits.  He leads them to the titular Shelob's lair - who is a giant spider.  She hunts down Frodo, though Sam is able to defeat her.  And while she doesn't care about the Ring - her evil is more instinctual than Sauron's (or Gollum's) - we learn of a symbiotic relationship between them:

And as for Sauron: he knew where she lurked. It pleased him that she should dwell
there hungry but unabated in malice, a more sure watch upon that ancient
path into his land than any other that his skill could have devised. And Orcs, they were
useful slaves, but he had them in plenty. If now and again Shelob caught them to
stay her appetite, she was welcome: he could spare them...

So they both lived, delighting in their own devices, and feared no
assault, nor wrath, nor any end of their wickedness. Never yet had any fly escaped
from Shelob’s webs, and the greater now was her rage and hunger.

Here we see a distinct property of evil-doing.  There is no cooperation - only alignment.  Sauron and Shelob are both evil and they can live-and-let-live, but they don't purposefully work together.  Instead, it's more accurate to say they're a little less than apathetic to one another.  Shelob eats Sauron's orcs, but they're just orcs anyway - he doesn't care.  It's worth it, to him, to keep her in that tunnel.  As an unwitting guard she assists Sauron, but not intentionally.  If she lived on the borders of any Elvish or Human realm, she'd surely have been destroyed.  She benefits, too, from evil.

Gollum is similarly planning to use her, but as long as she gets some meat she won't care.  It's all instinct.  But we know if she were hungry enough, she'd also eat Gollum.  And we know if she took the Ring, Gollum would no longer see her as an asset.

While evil can work together, there's a clear limitation.  "Use" is probably the better word.  If you're useful to someone evil you'll be kept around.  Once you lose that use, you're toast.  There's no relationship to depend on - it's all transactional.

I recently played a tournament of Diplomacy, a game I have played for many years.  It's the best way I can experience needing to be opportunistic in this way.  Your neighbors are useful, or they are prey.  When people let underlying relationships dictate their play it can feel unfair.  It's at least always a bit surprising when that comes up.  I had an opportunity to do that in my last game and I turned it down - I don't like to play that way.  Someone else did do that that in my last game, and that required me to rethink my play.

Thinking of relationships as transactional is fun for a few hours over the weekend, but seems  to me like an exhausting way to live.  Constantly calculating if you can get enough out of this person to keep them around, or whether they've become more a drain than an asset.

Frodo and Sam want to save the world not to be heroes, or to reap rewards, but so they can go home and continue to live their old lives.  They want to complete the Quest, but ideally they'd like to also survive together.  Sauron and Gollum want the Ring for themselves to benefit themselves.  They don't want to live their lives - they want to rule everything (Actually, Gollum may want to just live quietly underground - but what kind of life is that?  He just obsesses over the Ring.).

If power is the great evil of our text, good's greatest asset is that it doesn't seek power for its own sake, and stops seeking it once a certain amount has been secured.  Tom Bombadil shows us how this can manifest into apathy, but I don't think this is generally the case.  We all want enough money to live comfortably - go on vacations and not need to panic when we're hit with a sudden bill.  Few of us feel the drive to accumulate more and more, and those that do certainly seem unhappy throughout these pursuits.  If the goal is more (money, time, lovers, followers, power, etc.) you'll never have enough.  A target allows you to, at some point, decide to give up your pursuit and enjoy what you have.  If your goal is power - or to strip your enemy of power - you're gonna have a hard time pumping the breaks.  Diplomacy ends when someone captures 18 Supply Centers not because 18 is a cool number but because, at that point, they have the ability to capture the whole map.  So that's the end of the game part.  But in real life, where there are rarely well-agreed-upon, clear-cut moments of "winning," fights can go on well after things have "settled," and "settled" fights can ignite anew.

I think the best way to approach most of these culture wars is to stake out a position and cling to it - not move the goalposts to turn a victory into "the first of many."  Celebrating victory is important, and allowing the dust to settle and so you can secure your victory is as important as winning in the first place.  Diplomacy isn't a well-known enough game to analogize with, so instead I'll use Jenga.  We all know that risky piece which, if we take, will feel GREAT and really leave our opponent reeling.  That's fun!  But culture wars should not thrive on fun and engagement.  That feeling of enthusiastic and inevitable victory should give you very serious pause!  Securing our goals is more important than the lure of more and more power.

This had been a patreon-supported project, but that proved too annoying to maintain.  If you would like to financially support this project, drop $1.11 (or any amount, I suppose) into my Venmo!

ChatGPT contributed about 0% to this post's final version, because I was in such a rush!

Concerning habits

I have made another mistake!  This week's chapter was supposed  to be a double portion with last week's chapter - whoops!  So instead I'll double up this coming week.  My bad!

This week we read "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol."  Gollum leads Frodo and Sam up those very stairs, the least guarded way into Mordor.  Before they start climbing, though, Frodo has an encounter with the Witch King, whom he sees as he rides out to make war on Gondor.  Frodo begins to worry he will be caught, and he remembers the attack on Weathertop.

Even as these thoughts pierced him with dread and held him bound as with a spell, the Rider
halted suddenly, right before the entrance of the bridge, and behind him all the host stood still.
There was a pause, a dead silence. Maybe it was the Ring that called to the Wraith-lord,
and for a moment he was troubled, sensing some other power within his valley. This way
and that turned the dark head helmed and crowned with fear, sweeping the shadows with its
unseen eyes. Frodo waited, like a bird at the approach of a snake, unable to move. And as he
waited, he felt, more urgent than ever before, the command that he should put on the Ring.
But great as the pressure was, he felt no inclination now to yield to it. He knew that
 the Ring would only betray him, and that he had not,  even if he put it on, the power to
face the Morgul-king – not yet. There was no longer any answer to that command
in his own will, dismayed by terror though it was, and he felt only the beating
 upon him of a great power from outside. It took his hand, and as Frodo watched
with his mind, not willing it but in suspense (as if he looked on some old story far away),
it moved the hand inch by inch towards the chain upon his neck.

I've written before about how the Ring can be a metaphor for bad habits.  Particularly those habits which eventually become maladaptive - and which we should leave behind.  

To quote the first link above: I both love and hate Diet Coke.  But I absolutely hate what Diet Coke does to me.  And yet.  And yet.  I cannot get rid of my desire for it.  I have no will in the matter.  I will drink it.

I think we can all relate.  There's a reason the phrase 'guilty pleasure' is so familiar, or why we call new shows or games 'addicting' when what we mean is "very engaging."  Bad habits are part of life.

And I think we can also relate to the idea that somehow our own willpower is supplanted in the struggle.  I don't know which is worse: To admit we chose to engage in the bad habit, or to admit that the pull of the bad habit overrode our ability to choose at all.  Both rob us of our agency - which is a necessary part of living ethically.  Someone forced to do the right thing, we understand, is not correctly considered a model citizen.  Someone forced to do the wrong thing, too, is not entirely villainous.  Free will is a large part of how we evaluate people - and ourselves.

The good news is we can build good habits - over time.  Unfortunately, even the first paragraph of this undermines the importance of free-will: "What we mistake for willpower is often a hallmark of habit."  People who do the right thing aren't constantly winning the battle to do the right thing - they stack the deck in their favor.  Neurons that fire together wire together and all that.  The more you do an action the easier it is to do again in the future.

We often consider life to be a series of events, choices, and consequences.  Maybe it would be better to reimagine life not as a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story but as a sports match.  Players practice far more hours than the games they play take.  They practice not only to improve their skills but to automate them.  This is why booing and cheering at a sports game, while obviously fun, doesn't really make an impact.  They're very much within their own world, completing plays they have done many, many, many more times in private.

Let's take basketball.  When a player has the option to pass or to shoot, they make that decision based on the hundreds of hours of experience they've accumulated.  It is not event-choice-consequence.  The choice isn't really actively made - they're following a script they trust and have mastered.  It doesn't always work - and of course sometimes they go off script - but imagine playing basketball - a fast-moving game - and constantly thinking about what to do.  That would be mentally exhausting, as well as greatly disadvantage you whenever you pause to think.

The scipt is like a habit.  Similarly, we should strive to not just do good, but to develop do-good habits.  If you can automate good deeds you can avoid decision fatigue (which would make turning a blind eye easier).  Practice, practice, practice.  Your free will may not be engaged whenever you encounter an event-choice-consequence, but that's because it has instead been engaged ahead of time.

Bringing good into the world is too important to be left up to our whims.  We should practice doing the right thing as often as possible - so that when it really matters (and we all know it sometimes matters more than other times) we are more likely to do it not because we want to do the right thing but because doing the right thing is as natural as can be.

Or maybe we practice simply lessening our bad habits.  I do drink less Diet Coke than I did when I first wrote that post 10 years ago.  In another 10 years, who knows?  Maybe I'll be down to just 5 cans a week🙃.  Little victories, and all.

This had been a patreon-supported project, but that proved too annoying to maintain.  If you would like to financially support this project, drop $1.11 (or any amount, I suppose) into my Venmo!

ChatGPT contributed about 2% to this post's final version.

On good in evil

This week we read "The Journey to the Crossroads."  The hobbits part with Faramir and continue on their journey.  As they say their farewells, Frodo says this, 

‘Most gracious host,’ said Frodo, ‘it was said to me by Elrond Halfelven

that I should find friendship upon the way, secret and unlooked for.

Certainly I looked for no such friendship as you have shown.

To have found it turns evil to great good.’

Why does our text have Frodo say "turns evil to great good," instead of something like "is a great good in a time of evil."  Faramir's kindness doesn't just ease the experience of the Quest.  Taking Frodo's words literally, the trials he's endured are not just worth it.  They, themselves, are good.

It's easy to find goodness among evil as an oasis from the struggle.  It's also tempting to see comforts in life as an escape from its regular hardships.  But this kind of disconnect - this either/or - may lead us to unhealthy places.  It could cause someone to want more comforts and less hardship.  But we all know people so privileged they view any obstacle as a deep injustice.  I think regularly experiencing hardship is probably good for people.

If the world was already good, that would seem obviously good.  However, I think the world would also become fragile.  A child who was given a sheltered upbringing, upon hearing about someone wrongfully arrested, is going to be startled such things occur.  Experiencing the imperfections of the world regularly (which encompasses anything from someone being fully evil to simply running into an inconvenience - a restaurant that doesn't cater to your dietary requirements) steels us against them.  If we wish to fight wrong, we must be willing to encounter it.  How will we know where it is otherwise?  Our fight against wrongs strengthens us by giving us practice in fighting wrongs.  At the end, not only do we right wrong X, but we become better equipped for the next fight.

When we encounter wrong, we shouldn't merely gasp at its persistence.  Maybe we will as an involuntary reaction.  How wonderful is it we live in a world where we can go a few days or even weeks without issue!  But after the shock of the reminder wears off we must ask: How can we overcome it?  

My own circle has become worried about the spike in antisemitism at anti-war protests (and other places) around the world.  I take heart in the fact many people disapprove, and that the police are protecting, not attacking, the Jews.  This "turns evil to great good."  I'm not safe from antisemitism because antisemitism is gone - because it may return.  I'm safe from antisemitism because I can count on others to defend me.  Far from make me worry for my family's safety, these protests have bolstered my sense of security, odd as that sounds.

Maybe the lesson of defeating evil is not that it is defeated, but that we proved it defeatable.  And if it can be done once, it can be done again and again and again.  We should therefore expect to repeat these struggles instead of allowing us to believe one defeat is enough.  And each time we win we should celebrate not its defeat but our capability to make the world a better place.

This had been a patreon-supported project, but that proved too annoying to maintain.  If you would like to financially support this project, drop $1.11 (or any amount, I suppose) into my Venmo!

ChatGPT contributed 0% to this post's final version.

On fear

Maybe I made a mistake.  Last week I said "Any principle is better than none, even a bad one."  On further reflection, that's not enough.  I've long said an ethical guide needs to be useful to have value.  It's easy to say what is right in an unrealistic way.  But these weekly deadlines are tireless, and I gotta to hit publish at some point.

Not that "Any principle is better than none, even a bad one" isn't true.  But when writing that sentence I think I should have made the classic correlation/causation check.  If there appears to be a relationship between X and Y, but X doesn't matter, the relationship to Y probably doesn't matter, either.  So if the content of your principle doesn't matter, what is it about having a principle (even if its bad) that makes it worthwhile?  That's what we'll look at today.

In this week's chapter, called "The Forbidden Pool," Faramir wakes Frodo up to show him Gollum, who has found their secret hideout.  He cannot be allowed to leave on his own because he could tell orcs of what he has found.

‘Shall we shoot?’ said Faramir, turning quickly to Frodo. Frodo did not answer for a moment. Then ‘No!’ he said. ‘No! I beg you not to.’ If Sam had dared, he would have said ‘Yes,’ quicker and louder.

Frodo is thinking - what is he thinking about?  I'd guess he is weighing the opportunity to be rid of Gollum against the Quest, and Gollum's necessary role in getting them into Mordor undetected.  The Quest, he decides, must come first.  Sam also makes a decision, and faster:  Kill Gollum.  However, he serves Frodo, whom he doesn't want to undermine.  He holds his tongue.

Both principles (the Quest, or deference to another) require thought.  As I said last time, principles rarely become instincts.  In both cases, their instinct is to kill Gollum.  But natural instinct is not necessarily the way to a higher calling.

Faramir again points out they can't let Gollum go.  Frodo's protests that Gollum probably doesn't even know there's a secret hideout in the area (He's in the titular forbidden pool because he is fishing).  Faramir insists Gollum must be reunited with Frodo, and only then will he allow him to leave him.  Frodo goes down to fetch Gollum, and while they are talking Gollum is captured by the men.  A series of misunderstandings make Gollum think Frodo tricked him for that purpose.  As an aside, Gollum is also shocked to realize he's stumbled upon anything of note - it seems clear he really thought he had just found a nice fishing spot.

By the time Frodo and Sam leave with Gollum, what trust had been between them has been broken.  Whatever part of Smeagol would resist Gollum's plan to turn Frodo over to Shelob is now thoroughly demoralized.  They both agree: Frodo is not to be trusted.

All this happens because Faramir is afraid.  For him, the whole conversation there is a clock ticking - if they let Gollum get away, then there is a danger they have so far avoided.  He doesn't give himself the opportunity to think clearly - because thinking is time spent not acting, and acting is what prevents that danger.

Ethics is doing the harder thing, and that harder thing is waiting.  It is harder to double-check, to take a few breaths, to delay for more evidence, to consider the possibility you are wrong.  It's easy to see why it's harder:  We're almost always up against something.  If not a lidless, all-seeing Eye then the assumptions of other people, or our financials, or an emotional pull, or hunger, or any other source of urgency.  Acting fast looks to be a virtue.  It absolutely has some value.  "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough," is true.  But also don't let yourself be pushed by fear into action.  Don't believe any action is better than none.  Had Faramir been persuaded to do nothing then Gollum would never have known how close he was to their secret hideout and simply left the area when he was done fishing.

Any principle (even a bad one) is better than none because any principle requires you to pause and consider the implications of your actions.

Ethics, therefore, requires patience.  Fear - while also the mind-killer and a step towards the Dark Side - undermines our capacity to do good.  If you see someone pushing another to make a quick decision, they aren't being ethical.  If you see someone use danger to demand immediate action, they aren't being ethical.  A company following a credo of "move fast and break things" won't lead to ethical outcomes.

When we feel pressed - when urgent need pushes us to make a fast decision - it is imperative we grab control of the situation as soon as possible and resist the temptation to follow our gut.  Sure, jump out of the way of the train or defend yourself from an attack or flee from that tsunami - but as soon as you  are able to take a moment to think about your actions.  Where will they lead?  Are they building the kind of world you want to live in?  Are they reflective of the kind of person you want to be?

In our lives those life-and-death examples above are less likely.  But we've all felt urgency in other ways: The oncoming train of social pressure to take a stand; A crude remark from a stranger online or in the street; The tsunami of stress that makes us feel overwhelmed.  An quick response in the moment may feel good but it's probably not the one you'd choose if you had more time.  It's not the one you'd recommend to a friend.

Thoughtfulness, not immediacy, is the ethical way.  Think of your ethical role models.  Whoever they are, they probably spent a lot of time thinking and planning, and less time doing.  Their actions were the result of careful consideration so that their broader goals were met.

Acting on instinct, on fear, is going to lead you astray.  All those examples, whether the train or the stress, make us afraid.  If we don't act fast, our secret hideout may be revealed!  But that fear may be entirely unfounded.  It certainly will not be a helpful guide.

The world's a scary place.  There's no shame in being afraid.  Feeling fear is too natural for me to say "Stop it!"   However, ethics gives us something to lean on when the fear comes.  It gives us something more important than fitting in with friends or than having the perfect comeback.  It certainly gives us a concrete alternative, versus advice to simply ignore those things.

So here's the thing - and apologies for the abrupt ending, but it's now TUESDAY MORNING and, well, these deadlines are tireless y'all.  Ethics is doing the harder thing, which is resisting fear.

This was supposed to go up May 4th, when this connection would have been a bit more natural.  If I ever did a crossover post, it would be interesting to see how not only fear can pull us from ethics, but also hate and anger and suffering.  But we will have to wait for another time for that.

This had been a patreon-supported project, but that proved too annoying to maintain.  If you would like to financially support this project, drop $1.11 (or any amount, I suppose) into my Venmo!

ChatGPT contributed about 5% to this post's final version.