Self Defeating Code of Honor

Most of the Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire milleu maintains internal sense, although there's magic and other mysterious stuff.   But occasionally, deep illogic creates terrible, fatal battles for which there is really no need.  I'll cite two examples that really bother me. 

 The fight between Arthur Dayne and allies versus Ned Stark and his allies outside the Tower of Joy is just stupid.  Arthur Dayne had been ordered to protect Raegar's new wife Lyanna, who is also Ned Stark's sister.  His absence at the battle of the Trident may have cost Raegar his life, although Raegar had no way to know that.  Arthur Dayne fights Ned to the death, and Ned wins.   But this makes no sense.  Arthur Dayne is protecting Lyanna, who is Ned's sister.  Ned would never have caused Lyanna to come to harm.

The back story is that Lyanna had been betrothed to Ned's good friend, Robert Baratheon, and he was in love.  Raegar "stealing" Lyanna away was ostensibly the cause of the war.   When Robert found out that Lyanna had betrayed him, he might have killed her, and more likely her newborn son, so to some degree she did need protection.  But Ned would never have hurt her, even had his friend ordered him to.  When Arthur Dayne realized who it was that he was fighting, and that his prince had fallen, reason dictates that he should have renegotiated.   Ned and Arthur were itching for a fight, but this fight just stretches credibility.  Ultimately, they both wanted the same thing: Lyanna and her heir's survival.  A tiny bit of renegotiation would have changed things.

When I read the books, it was clear that Lyanna was dying in Childbirth, although it was never explicitly said.  That Jon Snow was the outcome of this childbirth already seemed pretty likely, and what Robert would have done with him.  Ned, for all his loyalty to Robert, was even more loyal to his family and would have protected Lyanna and Child, even against Robert.  

Sandor "the Hound" Clegane had been traveling with Arya.  He seemed to have a special care for the Stark girls, although his stated goal at the start was to "Sell" Arya to her aunt, Lyssa.  But Lyssa was murdered and they continued north.  By this point, Arya and Sandor had become good friends.  After arriving too late to deliver her to her mother and brother--murdered at the Red Wedding--they continued on, and stumbled into Brienne of Tarth and Podrick.  Once again, the goal of these two "teams" was entirely aligned--they wanted to protect the Stark Girls and deliver them to safety--a little discussion before starting to fight would have stopped the whole thing.

I'd hope that real fighters in these situations would have had a discussion and worked things out.  In both cases, there was honor at stake, but the people the promises had been made to were dead.   Loyalty to your "team" is important, but these incidents seem designed to show that there is always ambiguity as to which team you are on.   Human interrelations are always complex.    Picking teams almost never is.   Sports makes a terrible metaphor for these situations.  There were numerous cases of brothers fighting on opposing sides in the US civil war.  Lyanna's love and marriage with her families ostensible deepest enemy could have been turned into a huge alliance and improvement for the world, but stupid adherence to codes of honor prevented it. 

A lot of the fans of the show like to see the battles, and indeed these two were among the better ones.  There was a lot of clamoring for "Clegane-Bowl", and the showrunners acceded to it.   That one was less dumb.

 

The Most Harmful Philosopher

I've read the works of quite a few philosophers and people who think of themselves as philosophers.  All, I think, mean well,  but quite a few had ideas which can be taken to justify people doing really harmful things, often flatly contradicting the intent of the philosopher themselves.

Socrates, Aristotle, Hobbes, Leibnitz, Kant and the other ontological philosophers really don't rate as harmful.  Socrates objection to elective democracy has been borne out by the corruption of the western countries in the last few decades.  His suggested improvement was benevolent dictators. A few dictators have been benevolent but mostly not.  Many of the others wrote about politics too, but their ideas have been predominantly used for good, with a few exceptions.

Locke and his heirs are responsible for the ideology that led to the American political system that worked so well for two centuries.

Descartes, Berkeley, Hegel, Sartre and the other epistemological philosophers are even less harmful.  They're interested in how we understand things.  Their direct effect on the world is pretty minor, although the consequences on how we think about things can be profound.  Newton, for example, figured out what we call the Scientific Method, which is an approach to proof and elimination of confirmation bias.  Heidegger was a big booster of the Nazis, but his own philosophical ideas were irrelevant to their project.

Finally we come to the political and religious philosophers.  There are surprisingly few important ones.   The Abrahamic arc includes Moses, Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Mohammed, etc.  The modern political arc starts with Locke and includes many of his disciples, such as Jefferson, as well as other thinkers, such as Nietzsche.  The economic arc includes Smith, Marx, Keynes, Hayek, Rand.

Moses and Jesus were very much men of their time, recognizing what was wrong and advocating ways to improve it.  Both stood against religious institutions being exploited for profit, and were wholly well intentioned and it's hard to find positions in their thought which were directly used for evil.  But their subsequent disciples incorporate some bad thinking...Paul's silliness with the afterlife, and Augustine's with universal conformity--by force if necessary--led to many of the worst atrocities of all time.  The inquisition, the crusades, and much more, including the Nazi horror to some extent, stem directly from Augustine.

Locke, I think, was wholly well intentioned and most of his disciples were too.  American political theory almost entirely stems from his thought, and while there has been lots of corruption, I think it is the opposite of stemming from his or his disciples thought.

Nietzsche is interesting.  Like Socrates, he's an elitist.  Like Socrates, he's deeply interested in the welfare of society, even to the cost of some of its members, including eugenics and a number of other controversial ideas.  Hitler used the germ of his thinking to rationalize his eugenic programs, but he didn't really understand Nietzsche, and Hitler's elites were what Nietzsche would have regarded as lowbrow thugs. An imaginary version of Nietzsche played a role in the Nazi origin fantasy, no more real than Siegfried or the Valkyries or other heroic Germanic fantasies.

Smith and Keynes were scientists, and with Marx and Newton, the only ones on this list.  They figured out how a lot of the economy works and came up with the beginnings of a system to make it work better. Smith was opposed to laissez faire--he understood that a too-free market will promptly be corrupted.  Something similar is the case with Marx: he was primarily a sociologist but he came to a new understanding of the social dynamics of the forces at work in the economy.  One of his lesser ideas has been taken to be the mainstream of his thought and many societies have purportedly been based on it.  It's not really fair to tar Marx with the harm that the ideology derived from this has caused, but Augustine didn't mean ill either.

Friedrich von Hayek was considered an economist by a lot of people, including many bankers and political conservatives.  He was a pretty bad one though...in the face of lots of empirical data, his theories have pretty much flunked.  He wrote an influential book called "The Road to Serfdom" which suggests that political liberalism will lead inevitably to government control of everything and ultimately the enserfment of almost everybody, and that the unregulated free market is the only solution.  As Smith pointed out, the unregulated free market leads only to corruption and monopoly--a much more direct path to serfdom than via liberalism. 

Hayek's contemporary Ayn Rand wrote a series of fantasy novels which have been taken as economic gospel by an amazing number of people, especially on the far right.  Their appeal is mainly to teenagers, desperate to break from parental and societal control. Alan Greenspan was a particularly devoted admirer and through dishonesty, corruption and a great deal of schmoozing, was one of the major causes of the economic crisis of 2008.  Rand's world has no particular bearing on reality and the characters are totally unrealistic.  In particular, in her world, Gresham's Law does not hold and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis does--the opposite of reality.

My ranking:

Nietzsche's ideas were a tiny part of the Fascist horror that killed tens of millions--but being incredibly generous I can only give him 5% credit or so, so he ranks in a distant 4th place.

Ayn Rand and Hayek have killed tens of millions so far and have ruined the lives of hundreds of millions and will kill lots more before they are done.   I give them a solid third place with a real chance to move up.   It's important to recognize that their followers are applying their ideas as they were intended, which is wholly different than what's going on with Nietzsche and Marx.

Marx was only a small part of the communist ideology that's killed about 100 million, and more appropriately applied in Sweden and Cuba and other places, those same ideas have saved millions.  But places like North Korea, and Cuba to a lesser extent are still misapplying his ideas and will kill plenty more before they are through.

St Augustine's ideas have been behind over half of the religious wars that have occurred since his lifetime, 1600 years ago.  He's in effect killed hundreds of millions, in the hands people following a fairly literal version of his ideology.  Lots of others--Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist fanatics, have behaved in ways that fit his ideas.  The Augustinian Heresy: that you must believe as some authority demands or die, is easily the most harmful idea. Augustine himself would have been horrified, and I'm sure would have reversed course had he comprehended.

Usury

Strictly, Usury is a general term for a lender taking unethical advantage of borrowers.  Nearly always, this takes the form of exorbitant interest rates although technically there are other abuses.  The bible speaks against it and Nicea banned clergy from collecting interest on loans, and from the 12th century, required that all Christians practicing usury be excommunicated.  (this was often interpreted to mean collecting any interest at all, effectively banning Christians from the banking industry--opening the door for Jews). 

Most states have limits on the interest a lender may charge a borrower.  These rates vary.  Minnesota had a very low rate: 8%, while most other states had higher limits.  First of Omaha, which was able to run a nice credit card business in Nebraska, where the limit was 16%, tried to expand into Minnesota, but discovered that there wasn't much profit to be made when they were limited to 8% interest.  So they sued and in 1978 the Supreme Court decided that a bank could charge up to whatever the limit in their home state allowed, irrespective of where the loan was being made.  Within a few days, a great many banks had legally incorporated in states with higher limits and several states, attempting to corner the market on this new business, including South Carolina and Nevada, did away with the limit entirely.

Prior to this misguided supreme court decision, very few people had a credit card and the vast majority of legal loans were business and mortgage loans.  But afterwards they sprang up like weeds, and the brand new predatory lending industry came into being.   Today, the average household credit card debt is about $7K and the average individual with credit card debt has $11K of it.   A high fraction of this is interest on unpaid interest.

Predatory lending serves no public need whatsoever and creates a lot of misery and corruption.  It should be banned.  Credit cards are useful, but there needs to be a mechanism to limit abuse.  Usury limits will do both things.   Limiting interest to about 8% above inflation is enough for the lenders to make a small profit, but too low to make extremely short term loans profitable, and will force the lenders to be diligent about who they are lending to.  For most people, requiring their credit card to be paid off at the end of the month, or whenever their paycheck is issued, is the right limit.  The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has already done a great deal of good, but republicans have been too successful at weakening it. 

Takers and Followers

Broadly speaking, I think, people can be put into three categories:  Takers, Followers, and everybody else.

Followers are people who, through lack of imagination, inculcation through school, church or parenting, do what they are told.  Period.  Psychologists refer to this as having an Authoritarian Personality.  I'm pretty sure this is a majority of the population: nearly all political conservatives and moderates (except for a small group I'll describe later) and even a large number of otherwise fairly progressive people are followers. Even if they know better, they believe that morality comes from a given authority, usually someone who purports to speak for a deity.  They believe that only through obedience can there be social order.   I'm pretty sure most of them started out with a mind of their own, but it was driven out of them over time.

The second group are the Takers.  These are people who will will take advantage of whatever situation they see or can construct for themselves, never mind the consequences to other people.  Most of these are simply thieves, but a lot of them understand how to manipulate Followers to do their bidding.  Mitt Romney is a defining example.  The welfare parasites that Romney alluded to in the "47%" comment are takers, although they are only a tiny fraction of those who collect government benefits and pay low or no income taxes.  These are people who wouldn't take a job if one was available, but have found some scam to live on.  They are at most 1% of the people who collect some sort of welfare.   Welfare frauds cost a negligible amount of money, but they do a lot of harm because they give credence to monsters like Romney, Pete Peterson, the Kochs, and Fox News. Most evangelist preachers are takers, and I'm pretty sure all televangelists are, although a few seem to have good intentions to go along with their rapacity.  Bernie Madoff is a taker, and so is Jamie Dimon.

The final group is the rest of us.  Utilitarianism demonstrated that the vast majority of Judeo-Christian, Buddhist or any other,  morality can be derived from very basic principles, mainly the golden rule.  We don't need to follow anybody, we just need to recognize that not hurting each other is important.  Many of us aren't utilitarians, but you don't need to be.  School is good at teaching this stuff, and it could be better.  Religion could be too...but it has been co-opted by Takers.

We all fall into the temptation to be followers.  If the leader has good intentions, this can be harmless.  But we must always be aware that the Takers are out there.

Morality

 I wrote this a week after the Hurricane Katrina disaster.  Even though it wasn't widely distributed, I got a lot of mostly positive comments on it, including a few suggested improvements (what I called a corollary is really a derivation)

You can’t get morality from a book.  Morality is a skill, just like hitting a baseball.  A book can’t give you a skill, but it can teach you how other people have learned the skill, and how other people have practiced.  It can offer you suggestions for how you might improve your skill, or teach it to others.  The bible is the best of these books.  It is full of stories and parables that teach us how to practice the skill of morality.

One of my favorite examples is the parable of the drowning man.  What if, asks Jesus, we come upon a drowning man on the Sabbath?  The old teachers taught that we are to keep the Sabbath holy, and do no work.  Jesus points out that this is a terrible reason to not rescue someone.  The man is drowning.  We must rescue him.  The old rule is still valid, but the drowning man trumps it.

Philosophers call these things “razors”, because they help us cut fine distinctions in the face of complicated or confusing, or even contradictory information.   Jesus gave us the best moral razor ever: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  Over the centuries to follow, other philosophers have paraphrased this golden rule into all sorts of corollaries.   “The greatest good for the greatest number”.  “When considering any act, consider the consequences if everyone were to do that same act.”  Corollaries help us think about hard issues, because they express the same ideas in ways that may fit the particular facts better.

About 1800 years after Jesus, a man named Jeremy Bentham figured out something even better than a razor.  He figured out a formula for deciding which of a number of alternatives should be taken.  It is simply this:  When you are comparing alternatives, add up the good things and bad things of each alternative.  Which ever gets the best score is the right thing to do.  So, for example, what if someone is robbing you?  Should you shoot the robber?  Using Bentham’s system, you ask: “Do I think he plans to hurt or kill me or my family?”   If you think the answer is no, then you should not shoot him.  Robbing is bad, but shooting is worse.  If you think the answer is yes, then the arithmetic of morality gives us a different answer.  “Killing him would be bad”, you would think, “but he was planning to kill me.  Moreover, the reason he was going to kill me was bad in itself, and he was going to rob me too.  Three to one.  I must shoot him”

Bentham’s idea is pure genius.  It is one of those solutions that are completely obvious when you see it.  But nobody thought of it before. The problem with Bentham’s system is that sometimes these situations come up fast, and you have no time to decide.   This is why we must practice the skill of morality every day.   Being good at morality is about being able to come up with the right answer fast.  Memorizing a bunch of rules can help, but it doesn’t always work.  Situations that surprise us happen all the time.  That is why we must practice, and study current events, and think about morality all the time.

When we need to balance various good and bad things against each other, we call it relativism.  Relativism is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but it is a necessary part of the skill we need when we are practicing morality.

Last week the federal and state governments dithered until public outcry became so loud that they finally brought their forces to bear.  Whether this happened because they didn’t understand how serious the problem was until they heard the public outcry, or because they didn’t realize that every weatherman in the country screaming a hysterical warning was something that merited their full attention, is at this point immaterial.   They needed to understand that a city with half a million people below both the poverty line and the water line, with fully a fifth of them having no access to a car whatsoever, needed help evacuating, before the hurricane hit.   For either reason that they failed to understand this, it was a failure of morality.  People died, perhaps thousands, because these administrations made the mistake of thinking that reading the book was enough.  You can learn a lot about morality from a book, but you have to practice and study other things, every day, things like current events and science, to get good at it.

Right now, these distinctions don’t matter.  Right now we need to finish the rescue and recovery, and start the rebuilding.  When it will be important is when we are trying to figure out who should get extra training, and who to punish.  Harry Truman had a little sign on his desk which said “The buck stops here”.  That is as good a moral razor as any.

                                                                                                                                           08 Sept 2005