What is evil?

 

What then is good? The knowledge of things. What is evil? The lack of knowledge of things.

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

Today this could be taken as an ancient comment on censorship and free speech. Dwell on it for too long though - so many hares start running.  

Suppose we take just one big, slow and increasingly arthritic hare which is barely able to run anywhere. Net Zero is obvious nonsense and telling us otherwise, trying to suppress knowledge of its weaknesses is what? 

Evil? Why not?

That which we have long declined to do.

Woman dies after triple shooting in London as police launch murder probe

A murder investigation has been launched after a woman was killed and a man was left in a critical condition following a triple shooting in north-west London.

Describing the incident as a “heinous act of violence”, the Metropolitan Police said officers were called at around 9.15pm on Saturday night to Gifford Road in Brent.

And barely an eyebrow is raised as our weakness shrugs and moves on.

I have just returned from a ride in my litter; and I am as weary as if I had walked the distance, instead of being seated. Even to be carried for any length of time is hard work, perhaps all the more so because it is an unnatural exercise; for Nature gave us legs with which to do our own walking, and eyes with which to do our own seeing. Our luxuries have condemned us to weakness; we have ceased to be able to do that which we have long declined to do.

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

The rise and rise of amoral careerists

These are voices which you ought to shun just as Ulysses did; he would not sail past them until he was lashed to the mast. They are no less potent; they lure men from country, parents, friends, and virtuous ways; and by a hope that, if not base, is ill-starred, they wreck them upon a life of baseness. How much better to follow a straight course and attain a goal where the words "pleasant" and "honourable" have the same meaning!

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD 


As we know too well, modern politicians may be described in all kinds of ways which match their dishonourable behaviour. As a general perspective, the things they say and do are probably best seen as the outcome of what politics has become over recent decades, a dishonourable career for dishonourable people. A career for amoral careerists. 

UK political parties are politically similar because they generally attract the same kind of people for the same reason and that reason isn't altruistic political conviction. Politics at a national and international level offers a career suited to amoral careerists, not altruists. It is much the same at senior levels of major bureaucracies, quangos, NGOs and so on.

National politicians do not necessarily expect to become rich via a career in politics because they are not unusually talented. They do expect to become wealthy enough to be secure while making useful contacts for a a lucrative career if they lose their seat. They may lack the talent to succeed on their own merits outside a taxpayer supported environment, but once acquired, their inside experience of power has significant value.

National politics is a career which attracts people suited to it, generally those who expect to do well out of it. Not all of them are amoral careerists, but the system selects those most suited to its functions, not honourable people.

To borrow or buy a sound mind

I haven’t watched a second of it, but the Olympics circus doesn’t seem to be going too well. For some reason I’m reminded of this quote from long ago.

No man is able to borrow or buy a sound mind; in fact, as it seems to me, even though sound minds were for sale, they would not find buyers. Depraved minds, however, are bought and sold every day.

Seneca - Letters From A Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium (c. 65 AD)

Death in the wheel

Lately a gladiator, who had been sent forth to the morning exhibition, was being conveyed in a cart along with the other prisoners; nodding as if he were heavy with sleep, he let his head fall over so far that it was caught in the spokes; then he kept his body in position long enough to break his neck by the revolution of the wheel. So he made his escape by means of the very wagon which was carrying him to his punishment.

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD


Not what we usually think of as the courage of a gladiator. Not quite the Hollywood image, yet it must have taken a considerable degree of courage because even partial failure was not an option. 

Or is it a Roman urban myth about the courage of gladiators? It must have been remarkably fertile ground for gladiatorial myths. We know that because we know myths and how pervasive they are. We have political parties built around them.

Here's an earlier post on the same subject.

Corrupt speech

Just as luxurious banquets and elaborate dress are indications of disease in the state, similarly a lax style, if it be popular, shows that the mind (which is the source of the word) has lost its balance. Indeed you ought not to wonder that corrupt speech is welcomed not merely by the more squalid mob but also by our more cultured throng; for it is only in their dress and not in their judgments that they differ.

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

Looping back to Jeremy Hunt’s use of the word ‘unfunded’ as applied to tax cuts, it may be worth taking a closer look at it, because it is a strangely corrupt use of the word for a Chancellor of the Exchequer to choose. It also gives the game away.

When applied to tax cuts, the word ‘unfunded’ tells us that government profligacy is not a political concern, not within major Parliamentary parties. We may assume that the permanent administration is comfortable with it too. This lack of concern does not feel accidental.

Our elites clearly see even the most obvious government profligacy as virtuous investment in the public interest. Personal activities such as going on holiday, owning a car or spending our own money in our own way – they see that as profligacy to be stamped out as wasteful. The bizarre term ‘unfunded tax cuts’ may be a corrupt use of language, but it sits neatly with Net Zero.

Weak Words

Why do people in responsible positions say things which are plainly misleading, biased or untrue? Why is this not at all uncommon? Suppose we take just one aspect of it - the language of public discourse which has become progressively shrill yet weaker in it the way it fails to map the real world. Language which is supposedly progressive but no longer pragmatic.

In the not so distant past, weakness and ambiguity in social discourse were opposed by educational rigour applied to meaning, grammar and worthwhile subjects for discussion. Today this pragmatic robustness within public debate has been weakened by political fashions.

From some mysterious point, perhaps towards the end of the nineteenth century, robust cultural conventions came to seem too oppressive and discriminatory to be quite the thing in fashionably progressive society. Holes appeared in the language of right and wrong, good and evil, upright and corrupt. The value of pragmatic discrimination quietly slipped away into what was subsequently presented as a grim and prejudiced past. ‘Dickensian’ became a pejorative adjective.

The slowly meandering result is cultural drift towards indulgently weak public discourse. Under the relentless nudge of fashions and ideologies, names are changed, meanings shift, pragmatic moral boundaries weaken, culture softens to a level of incoherence no sane person would have planned.

The softening is powerfully seductive and correction not a trivial matter. The language of pragmatic discrimination has weakened, faded into a history which is no longer understood by those whose job it is to understand. Priggish denunciation of the past undermines any possibility of learning from it. There has been a fundamental cultural erosion which is probably well beyond remedy because we don’t have enough people who still speak the required remedial language.

A stronger, more pragmatic and less political culture would have to be built on the culture we have now. It would have to be built using language more powerfully rational than the language now settled within public discourse.

It is beyond remedy.

In search of filched time

Believe me, it takes a great man and one who has risen far above human weaknesses not to allow any of his time to be filched from him, and it follows that the life of such a man is very long because he has devoted wholly to himself whatever time he has had. None of it lay neglected and idle; none of it was under the control of another, for, guarding it most grudgingly, he found nothing that was worthy to be taken in exchange for his time. And so that man had time enough, but those who have been robbed of much of their life by the public, have necessarily had too little of it.

Seneca - On the Shortness of Life (c. 49 AD)


It’s a major penalty of modern life this one – filched time. A few decades ago there was an assumption that automation would lead to more leisure time. Behind that assumption was another one – all that lovely leisure time would be ours to dispose of as we chose.

Looking back on those optimistic days, it now seems remarkable that we allowed such a vast amount of our free time to be filched by television. Cinema and radio weren’t so bad, but television filched an enormous amount of time.

Things don’t appear to have improved with the decline of television either. Now it is the internet filching colossal amounts of time via games, videos, shopping, click bait and social media.

We also have green politics to contend with, much of which is about filching the time of ordinary people. Recycling, cycling, walking, public transport and electric cars all nibble away at our free time. Seneca was right - it takes a great man and one who has risen far above human weaknesses not to allow any of his time to be filched from him.

But this fear is witless

Yes, my dear Lucilius; we agree too quickly with what people say. We do not put to the test those things which cause our fear; we do not examine into them; we blench and retreat just like soldiers who are forced to abandon their camp because of a dust-cloud raised by stampeding cattle, or are thrown into a panic by the spreading of some unauthenticated rumour. And somehow or other it is the idle report that disturbs us most. For truth has its own definite boundaries, but that which arises from uncertainty is delivered over to guesswork and the irresponsible license of a frightened mind. That is why no fear is so ruinous and so uncontrollable as panic fear. For other fears are groundless, but this fear is witless.

Seneca - Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD


I’m trying to work up some panic about the Omigod variant but it isn’t easy. I don’t know if it’s a missing panic gene or something, but I can’t find my panic anywhere. Maybe I should watch more television.

In a spirit of priggishness

All those sour fellows who criticize other men's lives in a spirit of priggishness and are real enemies to their own lives, playing schoolmaster to the world – you should not consider them as worth a farthing, nor should you hesitate to prefer good living to a good reputation.

Seneca - Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

I’m not sure how odd this is, but the mainstream media do not appear to have enhanced their reputations during the coronavirus debacle. Odd because it should have been fairly easy and popular to present the essential information and the uncetainties without screeching headlines and political point scoring.

Of course we are so used to the media screeching we hardly notice when it shouldn’t be there. Yet in this case it doesn’t seem to benefit the screechers at all. In which case – yes it is odd.

A change of soul

You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

As we draw near the Paris climate circus, here are four quotes from the Working Group 1 contribution to IPCC AR5. They illustrate just a few of the uncertainties in climate physics - in case circus folk forget to mention it during the performance.

Uncertainty about the lack of warming

In summary, the observed recent warming hiatus, defined as the reduction in GMST trend during 1998–2012 as compared to the trend during 1951–2012, is attributable in roughly equal measure to a cooling contribution from internal variability and a reduced trend in external forcing (expert judgment, medium confidence). The forcing trend reduction is primarily due to a negative forcing trend from both volcanic eruptions and the downward phase of the solar cycle. However, there is low confidence in quantifying the role of forcing trend in causing the hiatus, because of uncertainty in the magnitude of the volcanic forcing trend and low confidence in the aerosol forcing trend. Almost all CMIP5 historical simulations do not reproduce the observed recent warming hiatus.

TS.4 Understanding the Climate System and Its Recent Changes

Uncertainty about clouds

Cloud formation processes span scales from the sub-micrometre scale of CCN, to cloud-system scales of up to thousands of kilometres. This range of scales is impossible to resolve with numerical simulations on computers, and this is not expected to change in the foreseeable future.

7.2.2 Cloud Process Modelling

Uncertainty about models

Although it is possible to write down the equations of fluid motion that determine the behaviour of the atmosphere and ocean, it is impossible to solve them without using numerical algorithms through computer model simulation, similarly to how aircraft engineering relies on numerical simulations of similar types of equations. Also, many small-scale physical, biological and chemical processes, such as cloud processes, cannot be described by those equations, either because we lack the computational ability to describe the system at a fine enough resolution to directly simulate these processes or because we still have a partial scientific understanding of the mechanisms driving these processes. Those need instead to be approximated by so-called parameterizations within the climate models, through which a mathematical relation between directly simulated and approximated quantities is established, often on the basis of observed behaviour.

FAQ 12.1 | Why Are So Many Models and Scenarios Used to Project Climate Change?

Uncertainty about uncertainty

In proposing that ‘the process of attribution requires the detection of a change in the observed variable or closely associated variables’ (Hegerl et al., 2010), the new guidance recognized that it may be possible, in some instances, to attribute a change in a particular variable to some external factor before that change could actually be detected in the variable itself, provided there is a strong body of knowledge that links  a change in that variable to some other variable in which a change can be detected and attributed. For example, it is impossible in principle to detect a trend in the frequency of 1-in-100-year events in a 100-year record, yet if the probability of occurrence of these events is physically related to large-scale temperature changes, and we detect and attribute a large-scale warming, then the new guidance allows attribution of a change in probability of occurrence before such a change can be detected in observations of these events alone. This was introduced to draw on the strength of attribution statements from, for example, time-averaged temperatures, to attribute changes in closely related variables.

10.2.1 The Context of Detection and Attribution

Things change

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Timepieces

I presume I shall be better understood if I day that the month was October and the day October thirteenth; the exact hour I cannot tell you — it’s easier to get philosophers to agree than timepieces — but it was between noon and one o’clock.

Seneca - Apocolocyntosis (divi) Claudii (around 55AD)

Tanning

A terrific day when the doctor, with face tanned like a chauffeur’s, returned to Clerkenwell and resumed his work, calm, prim, impassible as ever!

Arnold Bennett - Elsie and the Child (1924)

Childhood nutrition

He listens; ay, his lips moving perhaps, and a smile on his old face like a child asking for a slice of bread and sugar.

Walter de la Mare - Music (1955)

As a child I remember bread and butter with sugar sprinkled on it. Slightly crunchy and not particularly pleasant

Distance

“How long does it take to go to Westcombe across this way?” she asked of him while they were bringing up the carriage.

“About two hours,” he said.

“Two hours — so long as that, does it? How far is it away?”

“Eight miles.”

“Two hours to drive eight miles — who ever heard of such a thing!” “I thought you meant walking”

“Ah, yes; but one hardly means walking without expressly stating it.”

“Well, it seems just the other way to me — that walking is meant unless you say driving.”

Thomas Hardy - An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress (1935)

Monday mornings

Monday morning is a strenuous but somehow a glad morning in respectable households of regular habits. The clean linen is brought out in lovely white piles from the linen cupboard and distributed over the house, and the dirty linen is collected and shamefully hurried away and catalogued in a place without honour and thrown pell-mell in baskets and despatched, and then everybody has a sweet sense of relief.

Arnold Bennett - Elsie and the Child (1924)

Transport

I have just returned from a ride in my litter; and I am as weary as if I had walked the distance, instead of being seated. Even to be carried for any length of time is hard work, perhaps all the more so because it is an unnatural exercise; for Nature gave us legs with which to do our own walking, and eyes with which to do our own seeing. Our luxuries have condemned us to weakness; we have ceased to be able to do that which we have long declined to do.

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

As the culture ages

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A problematic quote for anyone old enough to observe and also inclined to deplore cultural change.

As the culture ages and begins to lose its objectives, conflict arises within it between those who wish to cast it off and set up a new culture-pattern, and those who wish to retain the old with as little change as possible.

Philip K. Dick - The Defenders (1953)

There must always be a suspicion that deplored cultural changes are merely changes to which younger generations have adapted and will continue to adapt because this is the way of the world. So any perceived decline is merely adjustment as the culture ages and begins to lose its objectives.

Certainly modern times are markedly different from the past, technology, prosperity, communications and general know-how have made it so. In which case there could be genuine problems we can’t see because we haven’t encountered them before. Not that we are much good at learning from the past, but maybe we can’t anyway because the past is too far removed from the present.

Almost two thousand years ago Seneca attributed perceived cultural decline to the vices of mankind and not of the times.

You are mistaken, my dear Lucilius, if you think that luxury, neglect of good manners, and other vices of which each man accuses the age in which he lives, are especially characteristic of our own epoch; no, they are the vices of mankind and not of the times. No era in history has ever been free from blame.
Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

It is as if our faults are always with us but from age to age they vary in their significance, in their contribution to the present. Things could be better but that is always the case and always will be until we evolve into something else, something better. Or possibly worse?

Horses, wine and shoes

Some believe the Good to be that which is useful; they accordingly bestow this title upon riches, horses, wine, and shoes; so cheaply do they view the Good, and to such base uses do they let it descend. They regard as honourable that which agrees with the principle of right conduct – such as taking dutiful care of an old father, relieving a friend's poverty, showing bravery on a campaign, and uttering prudent and well-balanced opinions. We, however, do make the Good and the honourable two things, but we make them out of one: only the honourable can be good; also, the honourable is necessarily good.

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

So with 650 newly-minted honourable members, the House of Commons should be awash with prudent and well-balanced opinions.

Maybe we should wait and see though. I think Cameron's lot may still be swayed by riches, horses, wine, and shoes.

We spend our very selves

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Our stupidity may be clearly proved by the fact that we hold that "buying" refers only to the objects for which we pay cash, and we regard as free gifts the things for which we spend our very selves. These we should refuse to buy, if we were compelled to give in payment for them our houses or some attractive and profitable estate; but we are eager to attain them at the cost of anxiety, of danger, and of lost honour, personal freedom, and time; so true it is that each man regards nothing as cheaper than himself. 
Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

Any reasonably complex society seems to be built on a mountain of expendable human life. It appears to be an essential profligacy of hierarchical societies, a need for stark contrast between high and low. Otherwise what’s the point of aiming high if not to waste the lives of those who never made it?

So previous ages had all those futile wars plus millions of lives spend in worthless servitude, endless drudgery and toil from which there was rarely any prospect of escape. Rule by waste where countless millions of human lives are the waste. 

The expendable many have always supported the less expendable few because that’s the only system we ever devised. Or rather, that’s the only system the few ever devised. Managing vast numbers of people is just too damned difficult even for the rarest of rare geniuses. And elite geniuses are pretty rare so there is much waste.

Moving on to the present day, we have for some time attempted to correct this appalling waste of human life. Well sort of – to a degree. Except we still have the original problem, the problem of hierarchy and we’ve made it worse. Global control-freaks gibber and plan while crazy wars sputter and flare as madness stalks the land.

What’s the answer?

Much stronger local government presumably. Local government where the basic political unit is local enough to tackle local complexities, to find out what works and what doesn’t, small enough to reject a thousand vain political fantasies. 

Many of those vain political fantasies are dreamed up by the big to control the small by wasting their lives in endless futilities, thus preserving the precious hierarchy. But the small can usually control and direct themselves and if they don’t, then at least they suffer the consequences without dragging down everyone else.

It’s called trial and error and it’s how we learned everything from throwing spears to launching satellites. Yet somehow we’ve drifted into a lunatic state of affairs where we must have trials on a vast scale but dare not notice the correspondingly vast errors. Will it work out for the best in the end? What do you think?

To have heard them once

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...just as you are well satisfied, in the majority of cases, to have seen through tricks which you did not think could possibly be done, so in the case of these word-gymnasts to have heard them once is amply sufficient. For what can a man desire to learn or to imitate in them? 

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

Death of a gladiator

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...there was lately in a training-school for wild-beast gladiators a German, who was making ready for the morning exhibition; he withdrew in order to relieve himself, – the only thing which he was allowed to do in secret and without the presence of a guard. While so engaged, he seized the stick of wood, tipped with a sponge, which was devoted to the vilest uses [*], and stuffed it, just as it was, down his throat; thus he blocked up his windpipe, and choked the breath from his body. That was truly to insult death!

* The xylospongium or Roman toilet brush.

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

Not quite the popular image of a gladiator is it? As far as I know there is no reason whatever to disbelieve Seneca's story, yet something makes me wonder if it was an ancient urban myth. I'm not sure why, but it is easy enough to imagine how gladiatorial combat could attract such myths. We are still fascinated by combat in its various forms, still cranking out myths.

A sound mind

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No man is able to borrow or buy a sound mind; in fact, as it seems to me, even though sound minds were for sale, they would not find buyers. Depraved minds, however, are bought and sold every day.

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

Nothing much changes in the ebb and flow of human futility does it? Life is far less harsh and far more comfortable than it was in Seneca's time, at least in the developed world, but we have similar ethical problems. A strikingly similar inability to resolve them too.