Albert Einstein on being curious

RLF: What advice would you give to the young – to students embarking on a course of study at a university, for example?

AE: The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when contemplating the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

RLF: Is that what you have done?

AE: Since I was a child, yes. To the child, newly arrived in this world, everything is an object of curiosity, from the folds of his mother’s clothes to the shape of his father’s chin, from the apron to the school desk, as we might say.

RLF: And do you think this is where our curiosity comes from?

AE: Certainly, and I think it is something we are all born with. Just why some seem to leave off being curious, and some remain curious all their lives is a mystery.

RLF: It seems to go hand in glove with contentment, I think.

AE: That is perceptive of you. Go on, follow your thoughts until the logical conclusion is reached – is that not how we begin, from curiosity to discovery?

RLF: If the object of curiosity is this self-discovery, then it will be a lifelong task. But, if we once allow ourselves the thought that we know enough to get along, then it is the beginning of the end of curiosity, I would say.

AE: As you say, it begins in one’s childhood, with the objects of curiosity being everything – at first, then refined to less and less as the child grows older.

If the child is exposed to as much variety as the parents can muster, then the child’s curiosity will be sustained, will it not?

RLF: That certainly seems true enough, but I would say there has to be something to explain why some retain this curiosity and some let it slip. Perhaps it is something physiological – more oxygen getting to the brain in one body than in another, or suchlike – maybe it is something inherited from parents – maybe, as you seem to be indicating, something in the environment of the child.

AE: Such things are not understood, may never be fully understood.

RLF: Should that fact make us refrain from conjecturing?

AE: Absolutely not, and for the very simplest of reasons; that it is by such exercising of our powers of reason that we increase them and nurture them to grow and expand.

In addition, many a point has been reached by such theorizing, as I may call it. Did not the science of chemistry advance by such means?

Chemistry, the study of the behaviour of the atom and the molecule, of reactions, transformations and aggregations of matter, and the energy and entropy accompanying such processes, and coming from the Egyptian word for Earth – keme.

Since those changes and processes which I mentioned occur on scales generally not visible to the naked eye, early practitioners of what we now call chemistry, were forced by such limitations to their observations, to theorize – conjecture – wonder – and by this means, resorting to a logic partially based upon the logic of numbers, partly on a logic of their own devising, the product of continual observation and recording, to attempt to describe these processes and their most likely outcomes.

Had they not had their own innate curiosity to drive them in their objects of study, what we call the science of chemistry would probably have still been in its infancy.

RLF: In the field of economics, does not the practice of making assumptions and then testing their accuracy as predictive theories of how we behave when spending and saving money stem from similar origins - basically ignorance?

AE: I would go so far as to say that curiosity is the precursor to any form of activity that requires some furthering of one’s knowledge before it can progress. If we take astronomy, or biology, practically any area of thought requires this same curious nature to undertake it.

RLF: That and tenacity, would you not say?

AE: Yes, indeed. That tenacity is probably as important and valuable as curiosity itself is proven by the fact that back in those days when such sciences were in their infancy and any knowledge gained was achieved as much by tenacity as by curiosity.

RLF: In those early days, tenacity would have been of the utmost importance, since data does not yield so readily, merely from being desired.

That data was obtained, speaks volumes for those scientists with their primitive methods and apparatus, viewed from more recent times as these.

AE: We must not forget that the sophistication of the methods and apparatus that today’s scientist use could well be looked upon as archaic in years to come; that we are armed, only with what we know at any point along a continuum starting from the dark of ignorance to the light of knowledge.

RLF: You used the right word – continuum, for one thing we do not know, most certainly will never know, is how far along that journey we have traveled.

AE: We assume that we are well on along it, in our arrogance and our confidence in modern methodologies and modern equipment to aid us. The truth is, as you say, that we do not, can not know with any certainty how far we are positioned on that line.

RLFL All we can say, hopefully, is that we are most definitely moving forward in practically every field – every object of study.

AE: That is true, but I do think that we are much further along some lines, in some fields, than we are in others.

In what are known as the hard sciences, the science of measurement – physics, for instance, we feel that we know much more than we did even a few decades ago, while in the more intractable areas of psychology and philosophy we must admit to being in some arrears.

RLF: It is well that it is so. If we knew the secrets of man, would not that knowledge be put to work, possibly in reining in our urges and our needs, or in oppressing us by them?

The Tower of Babel was created, was it not, that those working upon it foundered because of the lack of intelligibility of each tongue spoken. Is there not a hand greater than ours at work to hide that which would be safer hidden from our eyes, lest we use it ill?

AE: Who can answer that question. All we can do, any of us, is to question what God has made, not to undermine or discredit, but rather to more fully understand and by comprehending, to glorify His work. That is the raison d’ etre of all curiosity, in my opinion; to find, understand and value more fully.
Robert L. Fielding

Bertrand Russell: Civic and personal morality

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell was a prolific writer and populariser of philosophy. He was a prominent pacifist and an active advocate of social reform.

In ‘Talking to Pharaohs’, Russell advocates more importance being given to such things as civic morality as a way of curing the ills of modern day society.

RLF: Why do you say that without civic morality communities perish; and without personal morality their survival has no value?

BR: For the very good reason that if civic morality ceases, the very fabric of our society would become moribund – would die.

Do we not have a share in the benefits of the society in which we live? If one section of it fails, we all fail. That is as true now as it ever has been, and is so despite some politicians telling us there is no such thing as society.

RLF: How would communities perish, if civic morality ceased?

BR: Before we can answer that question, we must first decide what we mean by the term civic morality.

I will say that it is about learning values from each other; from the ways we treat each other and the respect we have for one another. The Koreans have a saying; that If there are three persons, including me, the other two persons must be moral exemplars for me. But we learn from bad examples as well as good ones, do we not?

RLF: I think it is true to say that we learn many things from each other, and do so without being fully aware of the extent and the depth of our learning.

BR: Nor of its source; these influences all around us. So, we can say, can we not, that civic morality is nothing less than the collective behaviour of everyone in society.

RLF: And that is more than the sum of its parts, for if immorality increases by example, the devil’s work is done at some pace.

BR: Yes, and unfortunate though it is, and pessimistic as it sounds, it is learned much faster than it is unlearned. When we are given an opportunity to reflect on immoral behaviour, I am afraid only the strongest shun it. That opportunity is what we used to call temptation.

When someone does something amiss – acts wrongly in a way that involves the making of choices which are moral, its effects are viewed by many with curiosity – what one gets away with, or even appears to get away with, another will try, and so on until it becomes more normal than deviant, accrues some credit by way of its allowing the perpetrator to circumvent some procedures in ways that others cannot.

We have laws, enforced and not enforced, some explicit and written and some tacit but understood – all are placed there to either limit our urges or else rein them in to within desirable limits.

The written ones have the power of legislation, the unwritten only the power of the collective will of the community. If this collective will is eroded, then these unwritten, tacitly understood laws become threatened, and, like I said, the deviant becomes the norm.

RLF: I would go so far, even, as to say that once the rots sets in, once the collective will breaks down, then what was once the norm becomes deviant in some way, until we say that the honest man is nothing more than a fool. Is that not the litmus paper indicative of moral decay?

BR: That is right. If we once allow ourselves to abandon the will to be good, to act responsibly, to be a hundred other things that have positive impacts upon those around us, then we plunge into the abyss of moral decline.

The shift from right to wrong, and from wrong seen as right, or at the very least, as not wrong, is a rapid one. The same dynamics that motivate us economically, become those rails upon which the juggernaut speeds. We are encouraged, taught, to put ourselves first, are we not and all our mercantile dealings are founded upon that one premise, are they not?

RLF: Perhaps that is too strong; perhaps we are taught to put our own family first.

BR: I cannot agree. In acting in the full light of day, under the gaze of our fellows, then protecting the interests of those nearest to us is probably more common than otherwise. But, in acting alone, with only one’s own conscience to guide, and with temptation placed before us, how many will do the right thing, particularly if not doing so means disadvantaging ourselves materially?

RLF: I think that we ere in ways that have moral dimensions when certain conditions apply, or should I say when some other conditions do not.

That faced with the temptation in the passing of just a moment, a man may act in ways that he might not do at times when he is able to reflect.

BR: But here you must allow a condition – that if that man has what we used to call moral fibre, has a backbone, and an ounce or two of grey matter to inform him, or a good family if he has not, then he will let the moment pass, possibly without giving it a second thought. Those who are disposed to do wrong actually go ahead and do it.

And if we do not educate our children in ways that prevent them from even contemplating wrongdoing, then we mistake the purpose of education, which is not merely to equip a person with the skills to earn a living, but rather to equip that person with what is required and no less, to live decently.

RLF: Precisely, and if we only allow a definition of character in a narrow sense, consisting only of a consideration of his desires that provide him with practical reasons, then we do indeed mistake the man and his need to be better educated for living, not just for earning his living.

BR: I think that is right. We should look upon a person’s character as a set of dispositions to respond to reasons, where these reasons bear upon the objects of his desire, instead of what goes for education; concentrating on his power to reason, leaving objects of his desire unquestioned.

Rather, we should be seeking to influence those dispositions as well as those desire. If an education is worthy of the name, it makes us realize that, for instance, material gain isn’t the be all and end all it is made out to be by those who have a vested interest in making us believe it is so.

Once the individual is freed from those shackles, he can begin to see the value of civic morality, and take a part in it. And we must look at the form desire motivates rather than merely at the force of it to motivate.

RLF: That is work for the agents and enforcers of the law to consider, is it not; the force of desire to motivate. We have the perennial problem of young people dependent on addictions, forced by their desires, fuelled entirely by those addictions, to act in ways that lead them into direct conflict with society. A desire is an onerous one if it motivates us to do something that is found to be against our best interests as men and women wishing to live a reasonable life in a community of people wishing the same.

BR: That sounds as good a definition of what we should be striving for – every bit as desirable as material well being. The trouble with the former is that it is not as quantifiable or indeed as visible as the latter, which has the power to convince to an nth power greater to people lacking the moral disposition to respond to reasons we spoke of earlier.

RLF: What of the second part of my question – why, without personal morality their survival has no value anyway?

BR: We come to that part of the question now. Before we attempt to delineate values that are personal in terms of the morality people eschew and those they adopt, we must first say that although every person is autonomous with regard to the power to choose which values she will adopt and be informed by, it does not necessarily follow that every value system can be termed ethical.

More simply put, if a man decides that he is acting in accordance with his own chosen value system, what he does may still be unethical. If all value systems had the same claim to be ethical, then we would be unable to differentiate Hitler from Albert Schweitzer.

RLF: Then how should we judge whether one man’s value system is any more ethical than the next man’s?

BR: The answer to that question is at the root of any analysis of man's character; whether his actions, particularly when they affect others, can be called ethical when measured against some universal yardstick that everyone agrees upon.

RLF: Does such a yardstick exist?

BR: I would say in principle, yes, it does, but in practice, I fear no such device exists. If the people of the world agreed upon that, wars and conflict would become a thing of the past. When in reality, we are a long way from that point, desirable as it may be to reach it.

RLF: Is there some point at which that process of agreement sticks?

BR: To begin with, men are guided by their own assumptions regarding man and his nature. There are those who think man is inherently good and that thought informs them when deciding upon their own values. Then again, there are those who regard man as basically flawed; that we must put certain measures in place to restrain the side of him that tends towards, shall we say, selfishness, as opposed to selflessness and altruism.

RLF: But surely, in making assumptions of that kind, we must first attempt to say whether there is such a thing as altruism, don’t you think?

BR: It seems logical to go back to a first principle and then, having assured ourselves of its existence, go on to suggest whether man acts in that way because that is the way he is. If, on the other hand, we find that such a quality of altruism – acts of selflessness – do not exist, then our assumptions would be critically altered, would they not?

RLF: To be sure, they would.

BR: Let us then set about finding if it is possible to act altruistically or not. It is usual when discussing such concepts to use a real activity as a test of whether altruism is the driving force, or something of a darker hue.

RLF: Let me first outline a situation which we can use to determine whether that quality does in fact exist. Is a man who willingly and readily donates to charity acting out of feelings for others or is he not?

BR: You could say that he is acting thus if he donates without any recognition by others of his having done so.

RLF: But even if he donates money anonymously as most of us do, can it not be said that he is motivated by the easing of his conscience; that giving to the needy makes him feel good about himself?

BR: That cannot be ascertained merely by recourse to philosophical discourse alone. If we wanted to know something more of this individual who donates money to charity, we would have to observe some of his other traits towards those less fortunate than himself before we could say that he was acting purely out of generosity rather than some other sentiment. Don’t you agree?

RLF: I think so. So what you are saying is that regarding just the one act would not be enough to decide whether that man is generous?

BR: That is so, I am saying just that. Suppose a tyrannical leader is kindly disposed to some of his subjects, while generally being unkind to others, we would not think him kind merely because he is partial to one section of his realm, would we?

RLF: I see what you are driving at; you are saying that consistency is one of the main things to consider in deciding if that leader is a good and just leader – good and justice being but synonymous with altruism.

BR: That is so. I am saying exactly that.

RLF: But that hardly answers our question as to whether altruism exists, does it?

BR: I think we could go from case to case without being able to answer that question truthfully, no, it does not.

RLF: Then how can we proceed further if we cannot recognize the existence or otherwise of a quality so central to our quest of finding out if man is inherently good or not?

BR: I suppose by taking each case on its merits, by not comparing, for we are rarely able to compare like with like where the motives of men are concerned.

RLF: Isn’t that what legal systems end up doing, judging each case individually, without reference to other such cases?

BR: If the law is to remain impartial, and to be seen to be so, then yes, it must judge each case on its merits and on nothing else.

RLF: But the law uses precedent to inform it, does it not?

BR: Yes, it does, but it uses precedent not to inform it as to right or wrong, but to find if there is a case to answer. The law must be consistent over time as between cases.

RLF: But surely if one case a hundred years ago was proven, does it necessarily follow that the same will happen today? Surely not, for circumstances alter cases, as we have seen.

BR: The framework of law is no more just today than it was a century back.

RLF: And the law was no more just then than it is today, so would it not be possible for the wrong verdict to have been reached then as now?

BR: I think that unless circumstances are very similar, then the answer to your question must be yes. It is possible that an erroneous verdict was reached, and therefore that any use of it as a precedent would also be amiss.

RLF: If the minutiae of detail surrounding any case are not identical, and how could that be, then we could be acting unjustly in turning to past cases to inform the reaching of verdicts in present ones, could we not?

BR: You logic does seem impeccable, but how does that move us on? We are still stuck on the vexing question of whether man is inherently good or inherently bad.

RLF: Do you not think you are couching this in black and white, whereas in reality, it is grey though not uniformly so?

BR: Bringing in a jury of men and women, members of the society from which the alleged miscreant also originates does remove some of that tendency to regard the spectrum of guilt or innocence as consisting of just the two shades; black or white.

I think that where men come to sit in judgment of other men, we do well to remember that principle.

RLF: And should we not apply it equally properly to judging whether man is basically a good fellow, or a thoroughly bad lot?

Aren’t there so many shades between the two poles of good and evil, even between good and not quite so good, and are we that judge not to be implicated in any bias that occurs in the judgment?

Perfection and imperfection

RLF: If we cannot talk about good and evil as absolutes but rather as shades between them, can we talk of perfection?

BR: By all means, but you ought to realise that we will talk more about its opposite – imperfection, if we apply that word to man.

RLF: Why?

BR: For the simple reason that perfection is an absolute which leaves man but one dimension of approach to it. Imperfection, on the other hand, allows us alternative directions – one by which we aspire, and the other to provide assurance of our own position in the spectrum from brilliance to dullness, from our being fully capable to our being totally incapable of doing something or becoming something.

Perfection wants nothing to improve it. Imperfection can always be improved upon and consequently gives us plenty of scope to improve and by seeking to improve, learn. Imperfection locates us with regard to our relative position to it, higher or lower, superior or inferior. With perfection, we can only be located on one position relative to it – that of the inferior.

RLF: Then what do you see as perfection? Does perfection exist? Can it exist?

BR: Of course it exists, in plenty – in the natural world of which we are a part, though rapidly proving that we are less of a part of it. Still, the world of nature, and I take certain aspects of mankind as part of that world, are perfect.

The beaks of Galapagos finches are perfection, Darwin’s theory based upon what he deduced from them less so.

RLF: And is perfection only to be found in nature – never in the world that we create?

BR: If perfection exists in relation to us, I would say it does so in terms of deities and in our worship of them. In opposition, are the idols we have created, graven images, false gods, call them what you will.

RLF: Would you put money into that category?

BR: Most certainly, but if and only if it is worshipped and coveted for its own sake. What we refer to as money, coinage, the means to exchange goods and services, is as vital a cog in our wheel of life as bread and water. It is in the grasping of it to attain advantage over others that it reaches imperfection, and us with it if we are inclined to worship it.

RLF: Then, if the man-made world is full of imperfections, as you seem to be implying, is there any point in striving for perfection in anything?

BR: Of course there is, and it is in the striving that we come closer to the ideal. It is in our admitting our imperfections that we come nearer to learning how to improve upon them. Recognizing them is the first step along the road to improvement. Whereas thinking or imagining ourselves to be perfect is the first step down a very steep and rocky defile.

There have been those throughout history who have imagined themselves perfect, but who have always been shown to be otherwise. Any title that has the word ‘great’ in it, as Alexander the Great, signifies qualities that are less than the title they imply. That ‘great’ man was known in Persia, is still known as Alexander the Accursed.

RLF: But as the history of the world is generally written by the oppressor rather than the oppressed, the victor rather than the vanquished, can we expect it to be any other way. No doubt Alexander was worshipped by his victorious legions who followed him to the ends of the Earth as Bactria and places like Alexander the Farthermost must have felt before the Earth had been accurately mapped.

BR: That is true enough. Still, can we reach anything like perfection in our comings and goings and in our daily lives – that was what we were trying to determine, was it not?

RLF: It was.

BR: Then I shall make a statement about perfection that will place us relative to it: perfection is that which we should strive towards in our attempts to be morally good. There, won’t that do in place of the endless search for qualities like altruism?

RLF: You are placing perfection so far above our heads, are you not?

BR: Not at all, but in a sense I am. Where else would you have it but above us, always a little beyond our reach, but touchable at some times, less so at others. Read ‘Desiderata’ by Max Ehrmann. He says that everywhere the world is full of heroism.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrenderbe on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;and listen to others,even the dull and the ignorant;they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,you may become vain and bitter;for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;many persons strive for high ideals;and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;for in the face of all aridity and disenchantmentit is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,no less than the trees and the stars;you have a right to be here.And whether or not it is clear to you,no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,whatever you conceive Him to be,and whatever your labors and aspirations,in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
Max Ehrmann

Striving to be happy is something you may usefully take away from those wonderful words. I would only add that we should strive to make others happy too, then this world of ours would be much nearer to that ideal – perfection, as it as ever been or is ever likely to be.

Rarity

RLF: Can a flaw become more revered than something that is perfect, do you think?

BR: In some aspects of life, yes, I think that something that has an imperfection can sometimes be looked upon as being more precious. The simple postage stamp so beloved by collectors is more valued if it has some obviously unique blemish within its four corners.

RLF: Then it is valued more for its rarity, its uniqueness than its beauty, is it not.

BR: It is, and the most probable explanation for that is that rarity make it worth more – it is the cash nexus that impels us to increases its value to us. That peculiarity informed by our attitude to money and those precious commodities made the more so by their being uncommon, should help us to determine the hold money has over us and why we value scarcity in some things whilst wishing for plenty in others.

Diamonds and gold are two of our most precious substances, the one the hardest substance on Earth, the other one of our softer metals, and being virtually useless because of this same property. However, as it is somewhat rare on our planet, and where it is found in relative abundance, is difficult to discover and being once discovered is even more difficult to excavate in any quantity.

RLF: So I suppose that the amount of labour required to extract it or make it available to us increase its value to us.

BR: Exactly so. But thinking of land, for example; its value increases even though it is finite in extent. It is the demand for it that pushes the price up.

RLF: But surely, value is increased artificially by man’s intervention.

BR: What is value but value to man?

RLF: But in thinking that way, we do wrong, for some things are valuable to the form of life they support.

BR: Can you clarify that? What do you mean?

RLF: For example, clean sea water or clean river water is valuable to marine life and to the life in our rivers and streams, though we may not value it overmuch in itself.

BR: The fault of ours in only ascribing value relative to our sense of the word is what is at the root of our problems.

For if we only attach value to those things we alone get use from, how can we expect the planet to sustain us. Specifically, if we squander – treat as worthless, waste, throw away, that which actually has value to other forms of life, to the Earth itself, to the sustaining and maintenance of systems, shall we call them, that keep us alive and make life possible – if we squander those without a thought of replenishing them, how can we live through the coming millennia?

RLF: That is our arrogance, our foolishness, and our gross ignorance of that which sustains us – Earth, that has destroyed much of our island home.

BR: Can that system of value be compatible with the survival of the planet and everything on it?

RLF: We are surely finding out, to our ultimate cost that it is not compatible, not only merely not compatible but most definitely incompatible, that it is detrimental, in fact.

BR: But how to proceed any further with a value system that is at cross purposes with our very survival. That is the question.

RLF: And not only how to proceed, but where to start and how and when to start. For we generally have to be made to veer from our course, particularly when that course is a profitable one.

BR: We need to redefine the meaning of things like profit; what is profitable and what is not, and profitable for whom or for what.

Profit is what is made when revenue exceeds costs, put in plain and simple terms used by economists. There is no mention of cost to the environment, or if there is, it is called an external cost – one paid by others, and this includes costs to the environment.

RLF: We need hardly say that such costs to the environment, although reckoned more in the balance these days, were easily eliminated from the equation to produce profit in former times.

BR: That may be so and yet the environment, which also includes mankind, I might say, counts the cost of manufacturing and primary industry every day. A smoking chimney may be looked upon as not particularly contributing to anything, even as what is burned has to be bought and paid for – bought dear and sold cheap.

RLF: How is that bought dear and sold cheap?

BR: Any fuel from beneath the surface of our planet has to be extracted and changed into a form that is combustible, and having then been burned, produces waste which contributes to the pollution that is staining Earth – is that not buying cheap – considering the Earth’s resources as expendable – in some sense selling dear – the exact reverse of sound economics?

RLF: If you put it that way, yes, it does sound at odds with economic practice. If it is so, why is it tolerated by companies bent on making profit, buying cheap and selling dear?

BR: Principally, I suppose for the reason that the cost to those burning the fuel is at once taken up and included in its costs and then passed on the to customers in its prices – it does not feel the cost – not the true cost of burning that fuel.

RLF: But you have said that the cost of that fuel is passed on to the customer.

BR: Yes, I did, but I also referred to the true cost.

RLF: What is the true cost – how does it differ from the economic cost?

BR: The true cost is that which includes every negative value in every book of accounts.

RLF: But it surely is included in everyone’s accounts.

BR: It appears nowhere in accounts of cost to life. The cost to the Earth and to us is rarely or indeed seriously considered.

RLF: Who would or should do that?

BR: I can think of plenty, but should we all not take our Earth into account before we do anything to harm her?

RLF: We have habitually ignored any cost to her in our headlong rush to profit from her resources.

BR: Biting the hand that feeds us is what we have done and what we still do. I wonder that we think we can do it and never get punished and continue doing it and imagine that we will never come to regret biting that hand. Is that not ostrich-like of us; choosing to ignore what it suits us to ignore, and only taking into account what it suits us to take into account.
Robert L. Fielding

‘Sapere aude’ – ‘dare to know’ – Emmanuel Kant

Emanuel Kant

Emanuel Kant was a German philosopher who came from what was then called Prussia. His main work is ‘Critique of Pure Reason’.

In 'Talking to Pharaohs', Kant discusses using our abilitiy to reason, but also to take into account our emotional intelligence too.

RLF: The phrase, ‘sapere aude’ has been translated to mean, ‘Have the courage to use your own reason’, has it not?

EK: It has, and one needs courage, oftentimes to do that. Of course, in this age in which you live, people are encouraged to use their own reasoning ability, to have reasons, actively and vigourously encouraged, are they not?

RLF: I think we are encouraged during those years of our formal education – at school and later at university, but I don’t know that I would use the word ‘encouraged’ when thinking about what is done afterwards.

EK: Which word would you substitute it with then?

RLF: I would have to say, we are punished if we do not use our powers of reasoning in our life in the world of commerce, of trade and industry, in our careers as well as in our more leisurely hours.

EK: Do you really think we are punished? Is that not too strong a word?

RLF: Not really, no. Men lose their fortunes, their livelihoods, their careers, even their lives if they do not use what God gave them in the shape of their power to reason.

EK: So that is the reason why we are trained in our schooling – in our formal education, as you say, before the real job of earning a living commences?

RLF: It is, and youngsters are taught good and early to use their reasoning abilities almost at the expense of their emotional intelligence.

EK: Do you think that is somewhat counterproductive to how the world – the commercial world turns on its axis?

RLF: I am probably not alone in thinking so. And the world is most probably the worse for it being so.

EK: In what way do you think it might be better if emotion ranked alongside reason in our decision making, for example?

RLF: Emotions stem from our humanity – it is an intense mental state that arises automatically in the nervous system rather than through conscious effort, and evokes either a positive or negative psychological response – and is different from a feeling.

EK: How do they differ, is not feeling an emotion and vice versa?

RLF: There is a difference, though it is a subtle one, I grant you. A feeling is the subjective feeling of an emotion originating from our psyche. Notice that a feeling stems from an emotion but varies in its subjectivity.

An emotion, some hold, has but three base components - physiological arousal, behavioral expression, and conscious experience, the subjective feeling of an emotion – though the intensity may vary from person to person, and from experience (the arousing of passion as a poet might call it) to experience.

Now, to return to your original question: In what way do you think it might be better if emotion ranked alongside reason in our decision making? I would say that to not include or factor in some allowance for emotional workings of human beings is treating us as if we were nothing more than automatons. Does that not sound reasonable?

EK: It certainly does, but if every person reacts differently to external stimuli, how can that be done? Is it not better to take the businessman’s motto that there is no sentiment in business and be done with all that?

RLF: Treat it as if it didn’t exist, do you say? Did I hear you aright?

EK: I only said that since there is no sure way of knowing what part emotions play in our dealings with others, then we should dispense with them – temporarily.

RLF: Is there not a world in which emotions, feelings, are mixed in equal quantities with pure reason?

EK: I know of no such a world. What world is that, pray tell me.

RLF: Why, the world of literature – of written accounts of men and women, going about their business, with their bundles of emotion and reason like so much meat on a sandwich.

EK: But the world of literature – of fiction, is just that – fiction – it is untrue, it never happened, it is unreal.

RLF: On the face of it, you are right, it deals with that which never once occurred – on the face of it.

EK: Your repetition of that singular phrase is – well, it is singular. You will have to elaborate if you wish to have my agreement. At the moment, I cannot concur. We are talking about two entirely different entities, real life and fictional life – how can those two circles be squared?

RLF: Wait for a moment, if you will and allow me to say that where the story in a novel is concerned, it is the effect of emotion in contradistinction to reason that creates something of that vital element in all good fiction – conflict.

EK: But I still say that fiction is one thing and reality is quite another.

RLF: Need it be taken so? Do not the plays of William Shakespeare deal forthrightly and succinctly with the human condition, in all its various forms, taking all extremes of emotion – vaunting ambition in Macbeth, rabid, unraveling jealousy in Othello, o’erleaping pride in Coriolanus, foolish intransigence in King Lear, and so on?

Yet you would be bold in saying those plays did not represent a reality in their essence, albeit for a few short hours on a stage, would you not?

EK: But there you have said it, they are but plays, not real life.

RLF: But are such plays, written in pure genius of insight into human nature, akin to actual life? Where is the unreality of a man torn between his prowess in battle and his need to appear human in his steps towards membership of the Roman Senate? Tell me such is unreal when every day we read of ambition at the expense of lives, at the expense of any real chance of victory. Is that not as real today as it was when it was written, in Eliza’s golden prime?

EK: If you put it like that, yes, I suppose it does create a model against which to judge behaviour that is more contemporary. But will you allow then that not all literature bears that stamp – the stamp of reality – much is written that shows nothing to any effect?

RLF: I will certainly allow that such books do indeed get written. But those that stand the test of time, giving us valuable insight into events that are current – these we call classics of their genre, do we not?

EK: So, a classic is a story that can be as relevant to a reader sitting down today as it was when it was first penned – quill and inkpot standing ready for further chapters to appear on the sere page?

RLF: Those pages were not sere at the time of writing, it is well to remember that. Shakespeare and his contemporaries may look antiquated and strange to modern eyes, but what lies beneath a golden wig was then as it is now – there is no difference in the minds of men – as far as emotion is concerned, in particular.

EK: But in other distinctions, it is very different, is it not? Men must live in this world to appreciate it, must they not? What would William Shakespeare have to do today?

RLF: He would be a successful writer, would he not? Have we not got writers of much lesser ability making pots of gold from stories that children like to read – nothing amiss in that, I grant you, but it goes to show what a writer of real, penetrating understanding could achieve if he were to use emotion to effect in your world of pure reason.
Robert L. Fielding

Max Wertheimer – Seeing is believing

Max Wertheimer

Max Wertheimer was a founder of Gestalt psychology, a theory of mind and brain as operating in holistic, parallel ways. He was interested in perception and published an important work entitled ‘Experimental Studies of the Perception of Movement’.

In ‘Talking to Pharaohs, he discusses whether what we think we see conforms to reality.

RLF: What happened to you to make you realize that we make patterns that are not there, so to speak?

MW: I was traveling on a train, past the villages, towns, and the fields and rivers of my country, I experienced something. I didn’t know what to call it. It was as though telegraph lines were moving in waves, even though I knew they were stationary and I was moving.

I looked at the person sitting opposite me and looked at his eye movements. He was sitting facing the direction in which the train was moving, and I noticed that his pupils were flicking from side to side as he looked out of the carriage window, His head was perfectly still, but his eye movement was so rapid it looked as if he was in some discomfort, though he evidently wasn’t as he sat contentedly staring out across the green meadows.

RLF: Is that all – you deduced something from something as trivial as that – something others must have noticed but never thought significant in any way.

MW: I think that is partly what I was thinking. I had had some training in Psychology – my mind was a fertile plain on which things I perceived and considered – seeds - could easily grow into beautiful flowers. My mind was open, more than open, it was eager to find, to discover. I believe that many students engrossed in their studies feel that way. I know I certainly did.

Well, I began to think about the man’s eyes and what he was seeing, and what I could see through that same carriage window. I knew that what I was seeing wasn’t there, that the movement of inanimate objects was in my head rather than out there in the countryside. I began to see the whole countryside revolving about me as we sped forwards.

What came into my vision began to turn on an axis whose centre was me, my point of view, literally, my point of view. I found this rotation of the land as real as the houses dotted about on the landscape, as valid and true as the trees that provided boundaries for fields, marking one man’s land from another’s.

RLF: It was then that you had the thought that we are inclined to provide more than we can actually see, like the gaps in a triangle, or the lines of particular letters in a matrix of letters, that sort of thing.

MW: Yes, that we perceive things as a whole rather than merely as a sum of the parts, and, more interestingly, we provide logic in the form of patterning in that in which there is no pattern.

A friend of mine was telling me about some patterned wallpaper on his wall at home. He said that it is rows and rows of equidistantly spaced roses on a blue background. He said that as the roses are equidistant vertically and horizontally, diagonally and in size, there is no pattern. However, he found that in counting the roses into twos, threes or fours, he saw all the roses had bunched themselves into those same numbers, horizontally and vertically. He knew that no such significances existed in one reality but that he could easily arrange them so they did achieve a pattern of fours, for example.

RLF: What did he deduce from that?

MW: That if no such pattern exists, the patterns he saw must have been of his making alone. He could explain it in no other way.

RLF: But what of it? Did he, like you, extrapolate from that experience and adapt it to other fields?

MW: He did, though he had no scientific training. That is what we human beings do – we see a whole rather than a sum of the parts, we see patterns where there are none, and movement, continuation, where none exists. Don’t you see, it was from this that I came to think of what we in our language call ‘gestalt’.

Gestalt psychology is based on the observation that we often experience things that are not a part of our simple sensations as I discovered on a train journey on my vacation in 1910. We have since applied it to more phenomenon.

RLF: But to me, it almost seems like little more than a trick of the eyesight, something that happens between seeing and recreating images from our retina in our minds – nothing more than optical illusions.

MW: And I say it is much, much more than that – more than merely an optical illusion, though it is certainly that too.

Gestalt psychology has moved on from visual perceptions to those of a more temporal than spatial dimension. We extrapolate, to use your own word, to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. That is what we do when we write, is it not. We see a sentence even though we have only written one or two words, and that sentence stands for something real or otherwise in our minds, although it is real in both senses to us.

Creativity must come that way, must it not, from taking one situation and realizing that there are other possibilities that could stem from it.

RLF: You mean, for instance, that if I wrote a simple sentence like; ‘The man entered the room.’ Possibilities would open up to me. You mean that, don’t you?

MW: Exactly that. Let us explore your idea further. Substituting the word entered with the word ‘crept’ , which also implies motion, does it not. If we include that word in the sentence then a whole new collection of scenarios creep into our minds, do they not? Words suggest other words, not just words, but, as I said, scenarios – we fill in the whole picture, flesh it out with actions – with words. That is how writing encourages us to think because on one level, writing is thinking, thinking and recording, something we are not able to do as well when merely talking. We can recall what we say, but when we write we are looking at our thoughts written down in front of us, and, as we have just proved, one word triggers other thoughts in our heads and we come up with more words to form the whole picture, even though no picture may have existed when we first began to write.

RLF: But if we are writing about something that happened to us earlier in the day, then…

MW: Then that is something quite different. Our recollections gain a sort of primacy over our production of words – when we look for a word in such a case, we are not creating, but merely choosing from the lexicon we possess as users of language to fit the experience we are describing, the one that actually took place.

It is when we begin with nothing, that we can be truly said to start being creative in our writing. If one word sends us into worlds in which constellations of linguistic significance are suggestive of those new worlds, then again, we are being creative – our thinking is different to our thinking when we are merely remembering an experience we had earlier in the day.

RLF: So, for example, if we were to substitute the word ‘burglar, for ‘man’ giving us; ‘The burglar crept into the room.’ we would immediately be moved into the realm of housebreaking – a world, I might say, few of us have had any experience of.

MW: Exactly, and yet we are able to write about it as if we had.

RLF: Whether a real burglar would find our writing convincing in its recounting of what it is that he does when everyone else sleeps is another matter, is it not?

MW: It is, but would it not be possible to convince the many, with, as you say, no experience of the occupation of housebreaking, that it is just the way we have described it?

RLF: I am sure you are right, it would not only be possible but would be the case, and for the very reasons you spoke of earlier.

The reader will add to the words she reads on the page, filling out here and adding there until she has a better picture of the happenings in the story she is reading. What she is doing as a reader – what every reader does, is to create as full a picture as is needed to believe. We speak of the willing suspension of disbelief when describing what theatregoers do while watching plays, and this is what readers do when reading books. For although it may be fiction she is reading, it must still be a plausible world she is reading about.

MW: But what if she is reading about a world created by a science fiction writer, what then?

RLF: Then, even then, more so, in fact, she has to do a bit more creating herself in order to give some sort of order to the strange world she is reading about. And, do not forget, that the language used by the writer of the story is constrained by syntax to be more or less plausible: ‘The frog flew away.’ is such a sentence. The reader has to somehow imagine a frog is capable of flight – verbs follow subject. “The away flew frog.’ Would make no sense – syntax constrains us, even as vocabulary expands our world – in this case a world in which frogs can fly. That is believable, whereas the other is not. Even writers describing otherworldly experiences must do so in sentences that can be understood in this one.
Robert L. Fielding

Who was Inspector Goole? J.B.Priestley talks

J . B. Priestley

A native Yorkshirman, J. B. Priestley was a writer and broadcaster. He wrote many plays and novels and is chiefly remembered for his novel, ‘Good Companions’ and his play, ‘An Inspector Calls’. His work usually has a political side to it, and in ‘Talking to Pharaoh’, he talks about the identity of Inspector Goole who calls at the wealthy Birling household to enquire about a girl who has just been found dead.


This conversation between John Boynton Priestley and an interested party never took place. J.B.Priestley died long before this supposed meeting. It is not a sham, however, but rather a device to promote discussion by people who, having seen the play, 'An Inspector Calls', would like to think about certain issues in the play and the possible motives that made Priestley write it.














RLF: With the revelation that there was no such inspector at the local police station in your play, ‘An Inspector Calls’ who was the man who came into the midst of the Birling household that night and disturbed the party the family were having?

JBP: If I had a pound for every time I have been asked that question, I’d be a rich man by now.
There have been enough suggested answers to that question too. Some – plenty of folk imagined there was something in the name that indicated who he was – Goole spelt ghoul, if you see what I mean. Some others said they thought the man calling himself Inspector Goole was the girl’s father, brother or some other close relative.

RLF: He was surely a little too cool for that, wasn’t he?

JBP: That sort of depends on the actor’s portrayal of him. There’s plenty there for an actor to use – bringing out anger, frustration, hatred – they choose, they never ask me these days.

RLF: But you wrote enough moral indignation into the part for all those things to play their part, didn’t you?

JBP: That I did. That’s the beauty of something you alone create, though I needed the example of men like Birling to have summat to write about. As I was saying, the beauty of creating something is that you can include what you think is important and leave out what you think isn’t.

I have watched these people and the way they live their lives since I was a lad growing up amongst them. I have come to love most of them and detest some – who could do otherwise in a place where you would think everybody would realize that they are responsible in some way, for everybody else in the community.

A millowner hires and fires as he pleases, treating people like dirt, or like just one more thing to be factored into his financial equations, with capital and plant, machinery and labour on one side of the equation, and profit on t’other.

Life’s like that, but it shouldn’t be. Men and women, aye nor children too shouldn’t be treated as objects to be used and discarded as a person fancies, now should they?

RLF: So who was Inspector Goole – the man who came into the Birling’s lounge that night?

JBP: He was Everyman – me and thee, the social and moral conscience of Everyman. Of course, I had to personify that conscience, and I reckon I did it well, don’t you?


RLF: But why did you have to make Inspector Goole disappear, as it were? Why couldn’t you have had him return with warrants for the culprits’ arrests?

JBP: I wanted something more than retribution – an arrest or two would not have made the points I wished to drive home.

RLF: Which were?

JBP: To show these people up for what they are – arrogant, selfish individuals with wealth and power and who use both for their own ends entirely, even though their wealth was and still is made by people living all around them, even so.

If you notice, old Birling and his wife were quite prepared to forget the whole episode once they discovered that the Inspector wasn’t real.

RLF: But Eric and Sheila were rather more remorseful, weren’t they?

JBP: Yes, I wanted to give some modicum of hope for the future – to show people that the regime of exploitation in the mills and factories of England need not continue apace as it once had.

RLF: And do you think things have changed?

JBP: I am sure they have, from those dark days Dickens wrote about in ‘Hard Times’ – when life was cheap, or so it seems to us now.

RLF: What of the Birlings? Would they have survived the scandal of being implicated in Eva Smith’s death?

JBP: One would hope that they would not, but realistically, unless it was proved they poured the disinfectant down the poor girl’s throat, then yes, I think they would have survived, though greatly discredited and hated thereafter.

You have to remember that there always exists a sort of collection of tops of pyramids, the bases being the workers and the tips the bosses, with each summit aloft, breathing the same air, living a similar life and thus having the same values; to keep the wealth in their hands and increase it.

RLF: With little thought for what suffering they caused on the way to such prosperity.

JBP: Absolutely. So, if you ask a judge at his bench or a chief constable to bring the forces of law and order to bear on our miscreants, the Birlings – Mr. and Mrs. let alone their son and daughter, then I am afraid you would be disappointed – it would not happen. The saying that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor was never truer than it is in England – then and now.

RLF: But what of rights and democratic principles?

JBP: What of them?

RLF: Shouldn’t we expect the rule of law to be respected?

JBP: We should, but it is not much in evidence. Now do you see why I needed something more than legal retribution for Birling?

He didn’t feel any remorse. On the contrary, he seemed to be reluctant to feel any guilt whatsoever, did he not?

RLF: But who does that serve – to show him in his smugness – one might almost say in his innocence in his own eyes, at least?

JBP: Don’t you see, by showing him for what he is, by making him implicate himself out of his own mouth, I showed the audience – the rest of us, what that class are like, what they feel in their hearts – nothing.

RLF: So the real guilt emerged after Goole had departed, did it not?

JBP: That is true. Their real selves, their guilty, remorseless selves were more succinctly illustrated my way than they ever could have been by a mere arrest. On the contrary, had they been shown in some lock-up, brought to a confession on bread and water, they would have been, perhaps, deserving of a little sympathy from certain quarters of the audience, whereas when I had finished with them, they were deserving of nowt but our loathing and our contempt.


RLF: But was Birling guilty of anything – really? He sacked the girl because she had been part of something – some demand, let us say, although it was probably more like a concerted request – for an increase of a half crown a week. Was Birling wrong in sacking her? Was he not merely acting out of his company’s best interests – which is to keep wages low and prices high?

JBP: That is what he did, it is true. But he did not consider her as a human being, with problems of her own – financial ones, no doubt.

RLF: Surely that is not in his remit as an employer, is it?

JBP: Why shouldn't it be? He pays starvation wages ergo he causes people to starve. And, they are not just any old people, they are the very people who make is fortune for him. Should he not have an interest in their welfare, since he is largely responsible for it, or I should say for the lack of it.

RLF: But if he paid more, his rivals would steal a march on him, would they not?

JBP: That is an old argument, and, I may say, an erroneous one.

RLF: But the pot is only so big, any money he pays has to go onto the price of his product, has it not?

JBP: Why should it add to the price, necessarily, why not add to the cost instead?

RLF: Then that would be added to the price.

JBP: You are forgetting that the difference between the two is the profit – Birling’s income.

RLF: And you are suggesting that he should be prepared to take less of a profit for those in his pay, are you?

JBP: That or improve his techniques of manufacture to maintain them. Why should it always be the wages of the workers that bear the brunt – why should those least able to forego some pay be forced by him to do so?

RLF: It’s called the system. That is the way it works. One man hires, another is hired, one man takes all the risk, venturing his resources in a quest to make money and reaps the rewards. That is normal.

JBP: If it is normal, as you say, then perhaps I should have railed against the system rather than against any one perpetrator of it.

RLF: I believe that in castigating Birling, his class and his type, you were in effect doing just that.
JBP: Why do you say that? It was not quite my intention, though it ought to have been. Has not this system, as you call it, been the cause of so much hardship in our lifetime.

RLF: The way you intend the play to be taken is your own business. Any interpretation of the playgoing public is theirs. They are free to interpret a play as it strikes them, as their affiliations dictate, are they not?

JBP: That is right, but I am saying that it was my intention to knock at the door of the property owning classes, specifically the millowners of the north of England – or wherever people are oppressed by others for profit.

RLF: Then you are not only attacking the class but also the system that they play such a prominent part in, whether you like it or not. The one is inextricably linked to the other.

JBP: I do not think that is always necessarily true. There are employers like Salt, Cadbury and others, who had decent village housing built that their employees might have a healthier and better life. Saltaire and Bournville were just such two, were they not?

RLF: Do you not think that Messrs Salt and Cadbury had ulterior motives in providing their workers with decent homes?

JBP: I am sure of it, but nevertheless are they not to be admired for doing such when men like Arthur Birling pay scant regard to the welfare of their workforce, merely concentrating on getting more work out of them for lower wages?

RLF: That is true, when compared with people like Birling, they are kings among employers.

JBP: And do you see Mr. Cadbury losing money and going out of business because of his largesse?

RLF: His company is very successful. So, it may be that high profits have to be earned before men like Birling will part with anything to help his men. Again that is a fault with the system, but it is also a fault in the man too, is it not?

JBP: That it is! A fault in both. Still, I say that greed plays a bigger part than rationality in the way Birling runs his mill. He is not able to countenance any lowering of his margin of profit for the sake of his workers and their welfare. He runs his firm on fear if he sacks folk merely for asking for an increase.

RLF: But his sort would surely say that were he to pay up in the face of a demand for more pay, it would be the thin end of the wedge – that once it could be seen that his men only had to threaten a strike to get more pay, they would be threatening to down tools every time they felt the urge. What do you say to that? Is that not the case?

JBP: Some – not me, say the working man is his own worst enemy, being improvident and impecunious on one hand and ever more demanding of higher pay on the other.

RLF: What is to be done then?

JBP: In some industries now, though not in textiles yet, it seems, men have formed themselves into voluntary associations, the better to negotiate with the intransigence of their bosses.

RLF: And does not that system whereby each man in overalls belongs to one of these associations, as you call them, in what we have come to call a closed shop, does not that system police itself in as much as demands are not made on a whim, but are carefully negotiated to give some leeway to both parties while not biting the hand that feeds them and yet at the same time putting up a united front against an employer who acts greedily or arrogantly where his workforce and their conditions of employment are concerned?

JBP: That way does look like a better way forward than entrusting things to men like Birling, I agree. But will we ever see it in this country – in these mills ‘ dark and S*t*n*c' as they are?
Robert L. Fielding

G.K. Chesterton - Are rights always right?

GKC: To have a right to do something is not at all the same thing as being in the right in doing it.

RLF: Why?

GKC: Chiefly because circumstances alter cases, what is right in one circumstance may not be right in another.

RLF: And yet we would still say that anybody has the right to do it?

GKC: We would, but rights are not just high cards we can play when we want. Rights have been called trumps, which is misleading. It implies that a man may exercise his right to do something as and when he chooses, whereas the truth is that most rights may only be claimed and acted upon in special and particular circumstances.

RLF: Can you give me an example of such a circumstance allowing someone to exercise his right to do something?

GKC: Certainly I can. Man has the right to take life, but only in specific and specified circumstances.

RLF: Those being when he is defending himself and his property.

GKC: Correct. You must also note that in the exercising of this right, he may not use undue force in its execution. If a man holds his fists up, it does not give another the right to shoot him dead.

RLF: That is an extreme case, but I see your point. We must say something like, “Man has the right, if and only if such conditions occur.”

GKC: Exactly.

RLF: But who is to judge whether such conditions were appropriate for a right to be exercised – in this case for one man to kill another?

GKC: I am no expert in legal matters, but most of the laws of our country are set upon two things.

RLF: Which are?

GKC: Common sense and precedent. What could normally be expected to happen when a reasonable, fair minded man acts.

RLF: So the law presupposes the existence of this reasonable, fair minded individual, does it, whether he exists or not?

GKC: Isn’t everything we do, every action from which we expect a reaction, posited on the existence of such a person, facing us in an argument, or in a dispute?

RLF: But the probable truth is that such people are very few and far between.

GKC: Do you really think so? Have you so little faith in human nature that you imagine few fair minded people exist?

RLF: Look around you. Tell me what you see and what you hear said. Tell me, after you have looked and heard, that you do not think the same as me – that there are very few fair minded people.

GKC: You are surely confusing outward behaviour with inner processes. What a man may say he will do is very different from what he would actually do were he be compelled to do something. There is a deeper layer of civilization in us than you seem to believe.

RLF: But the law presupposes such fair minded individuals do exist and are plentiful, whereas in reality, they may be fewer in number than the law supposes.

GKC: The law has to have a sort of benchmark from which to begin. Let us suppose that the laws of England were made by people who only supposed there to be wicked people in the country, what would our laws be like then?

RLF: I suppose they would be heavy, Draconian, which is to say that they would be harsh and cruel.

GKC: And perfectly named after Dracon, the legislator in days of yore in the city of Athens – yes, all laws would be Draconian, and life would be intolerable too, I dare say.

RLF: So are you saying that it is because the law is able to think the best of people that our laws are good ones.

GKC: What would you call ‘good’ laws?

RLF: Laws that protected but did not inhibit, that meted out punishment where it was just and was lenient were lenience was deserved.

GKC: Exactly, and so we have our laws, that serve us well.

RLF: Still, we have people breaking the law. Does that not mean that the laws are too weak or are poorly enforced?

GKC: The answer might be yes to both propositions, and it might not be.

Would you say that laws that are apt to be lenient encourage people to break the law?

RLF: I am sure that applies to some people – those who need very little encouragement to break the law.

GKC: That is well answered. There are some – many I am sure, I hope, that would not intentionally break the law no matter how lenient the law was perceived to be.

RLF: I cannot wholly agree. If the law allowed certain types of behaviour, then surely that sort of behaviour would become the norm, would it not?

GKC: Give me an example to illustrate your point.

RLF: Right. Suppose it was legal, or at any rate illegal but without incurring penalty to dig up a neighbour’s vegetables without his permission, people would go around doing just that, wouldn’t they?

GKC: That sounds as if there is such a thing as a natural law – not of the physical sciences, but of the way people live in harmony together. That men do not go digging up their neighbour’s vegetables without permission may speak in favour of people rather than be any real evidence of the justice or otherwise of a law.

RLF: Then how are laws made, or I should say, why are they made? If nobody ever thought it ill of a neighbour to take a vegetable or two whenever the need arose then no laws would be needed, would they?

It is only when the product of a man’s labours becomes a marketable commodity, that laws are introduced to protect that product. Laws are specific, and if laws are specific, then..

GKC: Then rights must also be specific. Punishing a person for exercising his right to do something would not be received well by the public, now would it?

RLF: No it wouldn’t. What of one’s responsibilities – do you think they should ever cancel out a person’s rights?

GKC: Some say that rights are not rights if they are not accompanied by responsibilities. That only if a person bears in mind his responsibilities to his fellows can or should he be said to have rights.

A parent has the right to bring her child up as she chooses, but if she neglects her responsibilities, both to the child and to the community, then she loses her right to bring up the child.

If a boy becomes the terror of his neighbourhood, for instance, fighting other children, damaging property in his recklessness, then, if it is seen that the boy’s parents did little to restrain him or teach him the error of his ways, then the parents would lose their rights as parents – some of them at any rate, purely and simply because they had not been living up to their responsibilities or taking them seriously.

RLF: That is a common example these days, is it not?

GKC: It appears so if what we are to believe what we read in newspapers – yes!

RLF: So is this not a good example of the thing we were originally talking about?

GKC: That to have a right to do something is not at all the same thing as being in the right in doing it?

RLF: Yes, that, but it also seems to be the case that circumstances alter cases, that what is right in one instance is not right in another.

Letting the people decide

RLF: The majority of the people would like to see much harsher retribution meted out by the courts to those who are convicted of crimes, wouldn’t they?

GKC: That is true, I think, they would like to see longer sentences handed out, and some even call for capital punishment to be returned to the Statute Book. Thankfully, our legislature is not comprised of the same stuff as its constituents. Were it otherwise, I should say we would have hanging or some form of capital punishment back in Britain.

RLF: Do you think that would be such a bad thing? Wouldn’t it deter people from crime?

GKC: We must first decide what incites people to commit crime before we can reason what would deter it, I would say.

RLF: So, what incites people to commit crimes?

GKC: There are as many answers to that question as there are types of crime. We surely cannot speak of the murderer and the pickpocket in the same breath, considering them the same, merely because they have each broken the laws of the land.

RLF: Well, since you mentioned murder, let us consider from what circumstances and motives such a crime stems.

GKC: That would depend on which you were talking about: murder committed in pursuance of another crime, murder as a crime of passion, for instance, or murder from any number of motives and perpetrated in a variety of different circumstances.

People want to have hanging brought back even before they have considered any of the implications of doing so, before they have thought of which sorts of murderer they would let swing on the end of a rope, and before they even consider the effectiveness of such a measure.

RLF: Presumably people want to bring back hanging for its value as a deterrent – the ultimate deterrent, some imagine, I don’t doubt.

GKC: There you probably presume incorrectly. I should say that most people would like hanging to be brought back, not to deter, but to punish. Hearing of heinous crime eggs people on to desire vengeance. That is the real reason for wanting the return of capital punishment, not for its value as a deterrent.

If anything, the existence of the death penalty might force some to be keener to silence mouths that could bear witness to other's wrongdoings. If I knew that I might go to the gallows because of what you had witnessed me doing, would I not be encouraged – perhaps that is the wrong word – tempted, let us say, to silence your tongue for good and all?

RLF: There is surely some truth in that. But isn’t this a sort of mirror image of our earlier discussion in which we spoke of people having rights that can only, rightfully be exercised in certain specific and specified circumstances?

GKC: It does seem to be a sort of mirror image of that proposition, as you say. If we can only be truly said to have rights in certain circumstances, then might not those that enforce the law of the land, which is nothing more or less than a sort of linguistic enshrining of rights, might not those who enforce the law have their right to punish in certain prescribed and limited ways curtailed by recourse to circumstance?

Man does not lose his rights as a human being, at least not in Britain, even when he has caused someone to lose theirs. An eye for an eye is not our way, though it might be if we left it to a referendum on the matter.

Letting the people decide is something only done sparingly, on special occasions and at special times, and within strictly controlled parameters – we call them General Elections. Allowing the public to decide more would be to absolve government of its constitutional responsibilities, and we can never allow that to happen, which is the primary reason why the issue of whether to bring back capital punishment is never put forward as an issue upon which a public referendum is called. It simply would not be democratic, even though on the face of it, it does sounds so.
Robert L. Fielding

Talking to Pharaos - Foreword

Everything is on its way to somewhere – matter is constantly changing – what was once a tree in a northern forest is now a door frame in a penthouse apartment – what had lain beneath the surface of the Earth for millennia is now the centre-piece of a fabulously expensive ring – what was once a coral reef is now a mountainside. The Earth turns and everything that has ever been here still is.

Man can neither create matter nor destroy it, and so it is with thought – what has long since been forgotten is written down somewhere on a yellowing page - the residue of every idea that has ever been is registered in various forms in different people’s heads – any word or phrase that has ever been spoken is uttered again daily in a thousand different tongues by millions and millions of people – nothing is new.

To bring the old into the new world we inhabit, and to change and adapt it is nothing more or less than than the attempt to recreate – a process we call learning.

Adapting the old to the new is vital if man is to continue – problems that exist today have all existed in altered forms in times past. Solutions to those problems coalesce like sediment on ocean floors – in our minds. When we look for solutions, we look in many different directions – looking back and adapting what we find is the most productive direction – it is drawing on the experience of ages of living.

Talking to Pharaohs looks back for solutions to the problems that beset us here and now. It is a carrier-pigeon of wisdom flying forward to us from our elders and landing at our feet. It is thought recreated, reformed and reorganized into something that can begin to be used now. Nothing is new!
Robert L. Fielding