Genesis 1

Every seeded plant for food. Allocation. Dominion as distinct from free possession. But mainly, placement.

held

You are not forsaken.

Ein deutsches Requiem versus Zeppelin Feld

We are so constituted that we take direct delight in the emergence of order from chaos, whatever may be its end. With Job's morning stars and angels, we burst out singing and shout for joy.

Oh, that the just may come to know it as the wicked do!

Ein deutsches Requiem

Hold your hands in front of you. Let palm face palm, a few inches apart. A box is perceived between the two hands. That box is the moral universe, and your hands, our sense of good and evil.

no problem

When religious, I never went far into the 'problem of evil' issue, partly because it never struck me as dire. It seemed to assume a relatively high weight to the resulting attendant human (and other) suffering. But that weighting, in the mind of God (or a God), isn't knowable except by the assertion (or revelation) that it is weighty. And that isn't useful: what we'd need to know is the relative weight of human suffering compared to the weightiness of producing an interesting human world (for which one needs both good and evil), or of having an exposition (for which things need to play out), and so on.

In other words, the 'problem' of evil is largely the 'problem' of suffering, but there are things worth suffering for in our conception (achievement, freedom, etc.), and the same things, when necessary, are worth permitting others to suffer for - again, in our conception. So it would be no surprise if God had things that were, in his conception, worth making us suffer for.

The problem of evil becomes a productive subject, however, when we step back and consider it in relation to how people accommodate themselves to religion. This is why the problem of evil becomes is more pronounced for a liberal than a conservative theologian.

In fact, this latter point can be backed into a point that isn't specifically religious. One crude account of the conservative impulse (contrasted with libertarian or progressive impulses) is that it flows from, and in proportion to, the considered view that human evil is widespread, salient, and persistent - in which case virtue had better set its jaw, gird up the loins of its mind, and set out into the world armed to the teeth.

My own view, admittedly a heuristic in the absence of solid evidence, is that any human individual, institution, or community is, by default, unless shown otherwise, to be taken as exactly half evil, half good, with the halves admixed: neither offering a division of each in two nor resolving into a third state neither good nor evil. This balance does strange things to conservative, libertarian, or progressive assumptions, and stranger things still to the implicit formulae that result from those assumptions. Those strange things are, I tell you, my convictions. They are why I must be an exile from politics, from religion, and from the other thoughtful societies - my thoughts are sports, neither hybrid nor purebred.

Epstein

Yes, each act of compassion should weighed against the cumulative negative consequences. But since this lesson sticks with the stingy and eludes the generous, it is not well to teach it. That is, whether to teach the weighing habits of law-and-economics be determined in part by questioning whether the teaching act would pass the test that is taught. And that is the path from law-and-economics to Strauss.

perfect answer

Mr. Mayor, a reporter demanded, do you regret the response to the snowstorm?

Mr. Bloomberg, deadpanning: “You know, I regret everything in this world.”

mystery

If there are eternal questions, it is happenstance if mankind knows any of them. Our persistent questions result from, rather than whisper beneath, our social, specific lives.

robe

Uniforms show the beauty, in its place, of impersonality.

displacement

I do not know whether it is because most important questions cannot be absolutely decided, but I do know that the natural state of man involves a great deal of conflict - one might even say that war is man's natural state. But 'conflict' is the more accurate term, because it sets up the true social choice: not between war and peace, but between two kinds of conflict: between violent conflict and verbal, legal and other nonviolent conflict. That we live in a society filled with the latter more than the former is a great blessing, and indicates the true social value of the seemingly craven corporate banker, lawyer -- Wall Streeter. These are, even in their worse days, engaging in a kind of nonviolent conflict and pillage that crowds out a great deal of what would otherwise be bloodshed. It is a case of a lesser evil that is the best seal against a greater evil. Of course there is a great deal of directly virtuous work to be done to keep this state of affairs manageable and tolerable.

felt

One great threat to integrity is that it feels something like success to say "I will succeed"; and something like spiritual integrity to say "I have decided to follow Jesus". That the thought feels something like the doing - or at least it does to those who have never felt the done deed - reduces the incentives to do.

from John Donne

She, she is dead; she's dead: when thou knowest this,
Thou knowest how poor a trifling thing man is,
And learn'st thus much by our anatomy,
The heart being perish'd, no part can be free,
And that except thou feed (not banquet) on
The supernatural food, religion,
Thy better growth grows withered, and scant;
Be more than man, or thou'rt less than an ant.
Then, as mankind, so is the world's whole frame
Quite out of joint, almost created lame,
For, before God had made up all the rest,
Corruption ent'red, and deprav'd the best;
It seiz'd the angels, and then first of all
The world did in her cradle take a fall,
And turn'd her brains, and took a general maim,
Wronging each joint of th'universal frame.
The noblest part, man, felt it first; and then
Both beasts and plants, curs'd in the curse of man.
So did the world from the first hour decay,
That evening was beginning of the day,
And now the springs and summers which we see,
Like sons of women after fifty be.
And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out,
The sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess that this world's spent,
When in the planets and the firmament
They seek so many new; they see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,
All just supply, and all relation;
Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a phoenix, and that then can be
None of that kind, of which he is, but he.

another political one

Yes, a democracy results in poor policy outcomes, and routinely so. It's simply that, on balance, those poor choices kill and injure fewer people, and do less other damage, than would result from not having a democracy.

The project of constitutional government is to configure the democracy so as to perpetuate and extend its blessings while mitigating its harms.

a political one

I'm for an immigration system with four key characteristics:

1. A person who tries long enough, hard enough, scrupulously enough, and lacks demerits, should eventually be able to immigrate and, later, naturalize. The process for such a person may and should be lengthy and tedious, but should not be costly.
2. There should be a material bias in favor of family reunification.
3. There should be a means for rapid and effective humanitarian movement.
4. There should be a very substantial bias in favor of academic and professional merit -- academically and professionally meritorious persons should have every incentive to live here.
5. There should be a high, but absolute, limit on immigrant volume, keyed to the national population.

the old kind

Consider the ant, yes, and the blackberry.

also true

Just another pretty face.

true

I don't want to teach you a lesson, quite. I want to change your mind.

on the subway platform

Regarding some theatrical stunt gone wrong:

Man to woman: "Oh my God, he fell how far?"
Woman: "At least 20 feet. They took him to the hospital. People were screaming"
Man: "I hope he's ok, but I wish I had been there to see that. Is that wrong?"

Yes, it's wrong. In fact, it's straightforwardly evil, the sort of evil common to us all. Rubbernecking is (slightly) more defensible, because there is a slight avoidance motive.

we

Man really is a social animal. Add people, serious interactions, to my day, and I get better, I elevate - even if I don't enjoy it.

grip

The need for some certainty is a great cause of self-deception, but truly a need all the same. Not everyone will be satisfied with acknowledged heuristics and mental habits. Most will want to lean on something felt to be so.