The reason that the entirely obvious ideas behind Radical Functionalism have not been more widely adopted (despite being brought up in various forms many times over the years) can be directly traced to the mental infirmity of the Human Animal. By this, I mean the emotional and intellectual immaturity that causes Humans to avoid solving their problems because the solving of them will prick the pride of some pompous self important bloviator.
The fundamental truth is that there are not enough quality persons to go around, and so sub-standard persons find themselves given power that they are not qualified to have. And so, in their insecurity, their egos inflate and become more sensitive than a maggot ridden sore.
There is a direct correlation between the size of a person's ego and the magnitude of their insecurity.
Having to tiptoe around a person's insecurity is a truly rage inducing experience. Should a person coddle a mewling bratty child every time they throw a tantrum, or should a person respond in the responsible way, rewarding such spoiled behavior with a sharp slap and a quick reprimand?
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Friday, July 6, 2007
Radical Functionalist
Sorry I haven't updated. I've been very busy. No promises on updates, but I'll get them up as I produce them or to continue the discussion. As a side note, Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason, ties in a lot with what has been bothering me. Seems I'm not the only one disturbed by the death of critical thought.
Here's something to chew on:
Radical Functionalist
Introduction
In witnessing the sudden collapse of reason and critical thinking, I have come to a conclucsion not unusual in the course of history. It is said there is nothing new under the Sun. Rejection of reason in favor of a comfortable lie is a historical pattern that is so oft repeated as to be comfortable for many people, like an old well-worn slipper.
I find myself unable to join those vast ranks of the willfully ignorant, however. Something in my fundamental makeup requires that I assertively reject this condition.
It is from this that I have determined to rejoin the ancient conflict between passion and reason, on the side of reason. To this I bring an old idea reconfigured in a new manner, a meme rebuilt to thrive in the current environment.
And so, reader, I give you Radical Functionalism.
Radical
To be called a radical is often considered derogatory or insulting. Radicals are often assocated with words like angry, short-sighted, or even anarchist.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines radical as:
adj.
1 Arising from or going to a root or source; basic: proposed a radical solution to the problem.
2 Departing markedly from the usual or customary; extreme: radical opinions on education.
3 Favoring or effecting fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions: radical political views.
4 Linguistics. Of or being a root: a radical form.
5 Botany. Arising from the root or its crown: radical leaves.
6 Slang. Excellent; wonderful.
What a great word.
Here we have a concept that means both departing from the normal, and yet cutting away all needless complexity and getting to the basic heart of a matter. A word that says that we favor fundamental changes in current practices, and yet also indicates growth from the roots.
And, of course, it also means "wonderful."
So don't act surprised if we bask in being called radical, if we embrace it in all of its meanings. No, don't be surprised if we lift a flag and raise our voices in a shout to shake the very heavens themselves as we announce to the world, yes, we are radical.
For in being radical, we are alive.
Functionalist
Ah, but to be radical alone is not enough, for we live in an objective reality, and we must find our way in life. We must do what it takes not only to survive, but to thrive. We must do that which needs doing, and do it well.
Functionalism means we do not shrink from this duty, we use our minds and our reason to determine the best way of doing something, as dictated by our goals and our values, and then we do it.
As we are radicals, we question everything with no limits. As we are functionalists, we pay attention to the answers even if they aren't the ones we want to hear.
Foundations
The foundation of Radical Functionalism (hereafter refered to as RF, or ref) is self knowledge. The ancient wisdom tells us: first, know thyself. And so we must, if we are to live happy, fulfilling lives. To know ourselves, we must first understand our values and our needs.
Foundations: Values
Our values are the core of our being. We must understand them, cutting away all that our society, our upbringing, our culture, and our personality have layered on top of them. We must look within and find that which lies at the core of not only who we are, but who we want to be.
A value is that which forms the basis for all of our opinions, beliefs, and actions. From the core of our values, both core and peripheral, come the arguments through which we make decisions.
A value is a statement of meaning and worth. It is internal to each of us, and guides us in every thought and deed. Some values are simple. Some people believe that property, the possession of things, is the central value from which all morality flows. Some believe life at any cost is the ultimate value. Values are not correct or incorrect, they are by definition subjective choices.
A value can be complex and contextual. An example might be "leave the world a better place than it was when you arrived by increasing human happiness and decreasing human suffering." This is no less valid than the simple value statements of life and property above, and no more valid. Those who agree with it will find it more noble, those who find the property value to be their core value will disagree. Even still, however, people with different values can often live together in spite of their disagreements, as long as their central values are not put into direct conflict. From this principle civilizations are built.
Sometimes, we discover a dissonance, a stark difference between the values we truly have, the values we wish to have, and the values we think we're supposed to have. Sometimes who we are, who we want to be, and who we think we should be are three different things.
No person can discover true happiness without coming to a peaceful understanding in this inner conflict.
Perhaps our true core value is selfish gain, yet we long to have a core value of making our families happy, and yet the culture we live in says that our core value should be selfless sacrifice for our fellow humans.
How can a person reconcile these things?
To strive for personal change and growth is as natural as breathing. To better oneself is noble, for by enriching our own internal lives we enrich the lives of those around us. Sudden change, however, is not only dangerous, it is often impermanent. True and healthy change takes place over years.
Babies do not become adults in the course of a night.
And this is the lesson to be learned: simply because we realize our core value we have is not the one we wish to have is not a reason to punish ourselves. Instead, we should celebrate, for we have taken a step on the way of change.
And change is life.
Take a moment, smile, and ponder the beauty around you.
Awareness is a gift from our ancestors, from the first struggling cells floating in the ocean to our parents, who through whatever means concieved us and gave this frail matter a chance to be self aware, to think and reason and feel.
Perhaps our core value and the value we wish to have are in harmony, but there is a third challenge we must pass. We must understand what value those around us would have us live by, and understand why. We must decide if this is a value we can take as our own, either as a core value or a peripheral value, or if we must reject it.
To go against the herd is often difficult, but if we do so in order to embrace our true values, or in order to strive for the values we wish to have, then the effort will be worthwhile and rewarding, for we will know that we do the right thing.
Peripheral values are those that we hold, but that will always be subordinate to our core values. When forced to choose between our core values and our peripheral values, the choice is often (though not always) simple.
Values are creations of our subjective mind, however, and sometimes they are not in conflict with other values but with the objective reality of needs. It is at this intersection that we find ethics.
Foundations: Needs
Sometimes values arise from needs. Property rights lose value when one person is starving and the other has bread. All but the most stubborn will resort to stealing bread if their family is starving, even if they would not steal to feed themselves.
Needs temper the implementation of our values. Perhaps our core value is that of life at any cost, and so we oppose abortion, birth control, euthenasia, and any unneccesary risk to life and limb (as those found in many sports). This, however, is tempered by our need to continue our own life, to provide food, shelter, and medicine for our loved ones, and so on. Thus we may pursue our value indirectly, by working hard at a good job and donating money to a cause that furthers our values. Even then, some amount of money will be held back to maintain our own lives. We do this because if we do not meet our needs, our overall impact over the course of our lifetime is lessened. We choose to make small efforts over a long peroid of time instead of a single big push because we believe that in the long term, the sum of those smaller efforts will better further our value of life.
For this same reason, we do not give all of our money to the unemployed homeless, we do not surrender our houses and our clothing to those who have neither.
At times we feel guilty, for our short term immidate actions to satisfy actual needs lead us to push even our core values to the periphery. The functionalist, however, understands that true furtherance of values sometimes requires us to serve our needs first, and our values second.
The risk of this is that we begin to lose sight of our values. By subverting our values for a need, it becomes easy to turn the means to meeting that need into our new core value. It is in this way that people lose their way and become obessed with things which they do not truly value. Because they have lost sight of their core value, they can never find happiness, and thus they begin to destroy themselves from within.
Ancient wisdom tells us that a camel will sooner pass through the eye of a needle than a rich person will find happiness.
This is because most humans do not value wealth more than they value smiple things like the happiness of their family, or the love of their partner.
The balance must be struck. Needs must be met, but the means to meeting needs must never be seen as a core value, they must be kept firmly in our minds as a means to the ends of furthering our values. When means become the ends, we place happiness forver out of reach.
There is also the risk of letting the ends justify any means, and yet we tend to ignore the long term costs of subverting our values in order to meet a percieved need. Often, when we subvert a value to meet a need, while that need is met in the short term we create for ourselves greater needs in the long term, which require us to subvert our values again and again, in a cycle that becomes impossible to break without some sacrifice, one that is often greater than what we gained.
When our family is starving, it might be justified to steal bread, but only if we've first gone to the person who has the bread and asked, first, what need of the baker we might meet in order that they meet our need for bread, or perhaps looked to see if there is a way we can bake bread for ourselves.
Sacrificing a value to meet a need must always be the last resort, or we work against ourselves for no true gain.
Radical Questions, Functional Answers
It is at this meeting of needs and values that we find the concept of Radical Functionalism.
When we find ourselves forced to make a choice, we must first discern what our true choices are. Often, a problem will be presented to us along with a selection of answers, as if we only had a few paths to choose.
As radicals, we reject this and use our reason to analyze the situation, and then discern what answers to the problem further our values. Then we choose that which we prefer, based on the interaction of our core values, peripheral values, and our needs.
Here's something to chew on:
Radical Functionalist
Introduction
In witnessing the sudden collapse of reason and critical thinking, I have come to a conclucsion not unusual in the course of history. It is said there is nothing new under the Sun. Rejection of reason in favor of a comfortable lie is a historical pattern that is so oft repeated as to be comfortable for many people, like an old well-worn slipper.
I find myself unable to join those vast ranks of the willfully ignorant, however. Something in my fundamental makeup requires that I assertively reject this condition.
It is from this that I have determined to rejoin the ancient conflict between passion and reason, on the side of reason. To this I bring an old idea reconfigured in a new manner, a meme rebuilt to thrive in the current environment.
And so, reader, I give you Radical Functionalism.
Radical
To be called a radical is often considered derogatory or insulting. Radicals are often assocated with words like angry, short-sighted, or even anarchist.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines radical as:
adj.
1 Arising from or going to a root or source; basic: proposed a radical solution to the problem.
2 Departing markedly from the usual or customary; extreme: radical opinions on education.
3 Favoring or effecting fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions: radical political views.
4 Linguistics. Of or being a root: a radical form.
5 Botany. Arising from the root or its crown: radical leaves.
6 Slang. Excellent; wonderful.
What a great word.
Here we have a concept that means both departing from the normal, and yet cutting away all needless complexity and getting to the basic heart of a matter. A word that says that we favor fundamental changes in current practices, and yet also indicates growth from the roots.
And, of course, it also means "wonderful."
So don't act surprised if we bask in being called radical, if we embrace it in all of its meanings. No, don't be surprised if we lift a flag and raise our voices in a shout to shake the very heavens themselves as we announce to the world, yes, we are radical.
For in being radical, we are alive.
Functionalist
Ah, but to be radical alone is not enough, for we live in an objective reality, and we must find our way in life. We must do what it takes not only to survive, but to thrive. We must do that which needs doing, and do it well.
Functionalism means we do not shrink from this duty, we use our minds and our reason to determine the best way of doing something, as dictated by our goals and our values, and then we do it.
As we are radicals, we question everything with no limits. As we are functionalists, we pay attention to the answers even if they aren't the ones we want to hear.
Foundations
The foundation of Radical Functionalism (hereafter refered to as RF, or ref) is self knowledge. The ancient wisdom tells us: first, know thyself. And so we must, if we are to live happy, fulfilling lives. To know ourselves, we must first understand our values and our needs.
Foundations: Values
Our values are the core of our being. We must understand them, cutting away all that our society, our upbringing, our culture, and our personality have layered on top of them. We must look within and find that which lies at the core of not only who we are, but who we want to be.
A value is that which forms the basis for all of our opinions, beliefs, and actions. From the core of our values, both core and peripheral, come the arguments through which we make decisions.
A value is a statement of meaning and worth. It is internal to each of us, and guides us in every thought and deed. Some values are simple. Some people believe that property, the possession of things, is the central value from which all morality flows. Some believe life at any cost is the ultimate value. Values are not correct or incorrect, they are by definition subjective choices.
A value can be complex and contextual. An example might be "leave the world a better place than it was when you arrived by increasing human happiness and decreasing human suffering." This is no less valid than the simple value statements of life and property above, and no more valid. Those who agree with it will find it more noble, those who find the property value to be their core value will disagree. Even still, however, people with different values can often live together in spite of their disagreements, as long as their central values are not put into direct conflict. From this principle civilizations are built.
Sometimes, we discover a dissonance, a stark difference between the values we truly have, the values we wish to have, and the values we think we're supposed to have. Sometimes who we are, who we want to be, and who we think we should be are three different things.
No person can discover true happiness without coming to a peaceful understanding in this inner conflict.
Perhaps our true core value is selfish gain, yet we long to have a core value of making our families happy, and yet the culture we live in says that our core value should be selfless sacrifice for our fellow humans.
How can a person reconcile these things?
To strive for personal change and growth is as natural as breathing. To better oneself is noble, for by enriching our own internal lives we enrich the lives of those around us. Sudden change, however, is not only dangerous, it is often impermanent. True and healthy change takes place over years.
Babies do not become adults in the course of a night.
And this is the lesson to be learned: simply because we realize our core value we have is not the one we wish to have is not a reason to punish ourselves. Instead, we should celebrate, for we have taken a step on the way of change.
And change is life.
Take a moment, smile, and ponder the beauty around you.
Awareness is a gift from our ancestors, from the first struggling cells floating in the ocean to our parents, who through whatever means concieved us and gave this frail matter a chance to be self aware, to think and reason and feel.
Perhaps our core value and the value we wish to have are in harmony, but there is a third challenge we must pass. We must understand what value those around us would have us live by, and understand why. We must decide if this is a value we can take as our own, either as a core value or a peripheral value, or if we must reject it.
To go against the herd is often difficult, but if we do so in order to embrace our true values, or in order to strive for the values we wish to have, then the effort will be worthwhile and rewarding, for we will know that we do the right thing.
Peripheral values are those that we hold, but that will always be subordinate to our core values. When forced to choose between our core values and our peripheral values, the choice is often (though not always) simple.
Values are creations of our subjective mind, however, and sometimes they are not in conflict with other values but with the objective reality of needs. It is at this intersection that we find ethics.
Foundations: Needs
Sometimes values arise from needs. Property rights lose value when one person is starving and the other has bread. All but the most stubborn will resort to stealing bread if their family is starving, even if they would not steal to feed themselves.
Needs temper the implementation of our values. Perhaps our core value is that of life at any cost, and so we oppose abortion, birth control, euthenasia, and any unneccesary risk to life and limb (as those found in many sports). This, however, is tempered by our need to continue our own life, to provide food, shelter, and medicine for our loved ones, and so on. Thus we may pursue our value indirectly, by working hard at a good job and donating money to a cause that furthers our values. Even then, some amount of money will be held back to maintain our own lives. We do this because if we do not meet our needs, our overall impact over the course of our lifetime is lessened. We choose to make small efforts over a long peroid of time instead of a single big push because we believe that in the long term, the sum of those smaller efforts will better further our value of life.
For this same reason, we do not give all of our money to the unemployed homeless, we do not surrender our houses and our clothing to those who have neither.
At times we feel guilty, for our short term immidate actions to satisfy actual needs lead us to push even our core values to the periphery. The functionalist, however, understands that true furtherance of values sometimes requires us to serve our needs first, and our values second.
The risk of this is that we begin to lose sight of our values. By subverting our values for a need, it becomes easy to turn the means to meeting that need into our new core value. It is in this way that people lose their way and become obessed with things which they do not truly value. Because they have lost sight of their core value, they can never find happiness, and thus they begin to destroy themselves from within.
Ancient wisdom tells us that a camel will sooner pass through the eye of a needle than a rich person will find happiness.
This is because most humans do not value wealth more than they value smiple things like the happiness of their family, or the love of their partner.
The balance must be struck. Needs must be met, but the means to meeting needs must never be seen as a core value, they must be kept firmly in our minds as a means to the ends of furthering our values. When means become the ends, we place happiness forver out of reach.
There is also the risk of letting the ends justify any means, and yet we tend to ignore the long term costs of subverting our values in order to meet a percieved need. Often, when we subvert a value to meet a need, while that need is met in the short term we create for ourselves greater needs in the long term, which require us to subvert our values again and again, in a cycle that becomes impossible to break without some sacrifice, one that is often greater than what we gained.
When our family is starving, it might be justified to steal bread, but only if we've first gone to the person who has the bread and asked, first, what need of the baker we might meet in order that they meet our need for bread, or perhaps looked to see if there is a way we can bake bread for ourselves.
Sacrificing a value to meet a need must always be the last resort, or we work against ourselves for no true gain.
Radical Questions, Functional Answers
It is at this meeting of needs and values that we find the concept of Radical Functionalism.
When we find ourselves forced to make a choice, we must first discern what our true choices are. Often, a problem will be presented to us along with a selection of answers, as if we only had a few paths to choose.
As radicals, we reject this and use our reason to analyze the situation, and then discern what answers to the problem further our values. Then we choose that which we prefer, based on the interaction of our core values, peripheral values, and our needs.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
What is Radical Functionalism?
I write today to tell the world about the philosophy that guides my life. It is not an ideology, but it does replace ideology. It is not a Religion, but it helps understand Religion. It is not difficult to use, but it can be difficult to explain.
I call this thought-construct "Radical Functionalism," or RF.
It is, in fact, exactly what it sounds like. Functionalism is, in this case, defined as a belief that the best overall solution to any given problem should be preferred, or that the best action to be taken is the one that most advances the core values of the actor.
The radical part is important, as it emphasizes that all assumptions, beliefs, and dogmas are open to question. A person who practices RF will be willing to question anything. Equally important, however, an RF will pay close attention to the answers to those questions.
The problem with liberalism and conservatism is that, as established and widespread ideologies, they have certain set answers for a wide host of issues. Both have certain issues that are considered sacred, not to be questioned. Both sides also have a twisted view of what the other believes.
RF, on the other hand, is not a list of beliefs and positions, it is a method of arriving at functionally useful goals that further one's values. RF places the highest regard on the use of rhetorical argument to arrive at the truth. A true practitioner of RF will, when confronted with evidence that invalidates their beliefs, re-evaluate those beliefs to match the newly learned facts.
An example of how the traditional American liberal might benefit from RF is the issue of gun control, specifically handguns and concealed carry permits. A strong body of evidence shows that making gun ownership a crime means that only criminals will have guns. In areas with concealed carry laws, violent crime actually drops. In areas where handgun ownership is highly restricted or illegal, violent crime increases. A traditional liberal practicing RF would conclude that their stance on gun control was simply wrong, and modify their belief system accordingly. Perhaps they would push for gun safety classes in public schools and a background check for concealed carry permits.
An example of how the traditional American conservative might benefit from RF is the issue of sexual education. Research shows that abstinence only education and misinformation on proper birth control procedures actually increases the danger to children, whereas proper sexual education and easy access to condoms shows that STD rates and unwanted teen pregnancy decreases. A conservative exposed to these facts and practicing RF would realize that across the board opposition to any exposure of children to sexual education is harmful to the children they are trying to protect, and would perhaps seek to ensure that the sex education curriculum was implemented in a proper, informational way that informs without encouraging.
So how does it work? The first step is to reduce any question or problem down to a values level. Using the above gun control example; the liberal values safety. In order to protect their safety from violent assault with a firearm, they seek to restrict the ability for people to get firearms. Unfortunately, their action actually works against their value, as making firearms illegal actually emboldens those most likely to use one in a violent fashion and takes away any fear those criminals might have that they will have to face return fire. Added to that, their measure actually does little or nothing to reduce the access to guns that criminals have. Functionally, the liberal has made themselves less safe.
The gun control policy, originally a means to an end, has become an end in itself. So much effort has gone into supporting it that it is hard to let go. And yet, any continued attempts to restrict the gun rights of law abiding citizens actually ends up serving only the ego of the gun control activist and the violent criminals who will take advantage of a disarmed population.
The sex education example above breaks down in a similar way. The original functional purpose of restricting sexual activity was primarily to reduce the amount of children born outside of support structures sufficient to maintain their health and growth. The core value was human happiness. Unwanted children are a danger to civilization, and since infanticide and abortion are clearly not preferable options if pregnancy can be prevented in the first place, the idea was to prevent pregnancy at its source. However, once again we have a situation where means have become ends. It is simply true that sexual desire is, for many people, a strong motivating force; especially for young people going through hormonal changes as they finish growing into adults. Instead of using a strategy that is primarily designed to make adults feel good about themselves (abstinence-only education), the best way to deal with sex and to prevent the unwanted pregnancies is to make sure that young people have enough information on the risks they are taken; and to make sure they have access to health care and contraceptives. Distributing condoms free or inexpensively in school nurse offices in high schools might be one of the most direct, effective steps to curb unwanted pregnancies among teens. A conservative who was actually attempting to support their core value of increasing human happiness would choose the more functionally useful approach currently available, not the approach that was functionally useful thousands of years ago in the desert.
RF is a means of self examination, a framework to build a philosophy around. It is mental infrastructure based on a minimum of simple rules and assumes that truth is best defined as that which is supported by the best argument. Anyone who wishes to practice RF must first commit themselves to honesty. Lies obstruct and obfuscate overall functionalism, and while they may make things easier in the short term it is almost inevitable that they undermine functional value in the long term. Often even the short term gains are tainted or decreased in worth due to the lie. If one lies to rob a bank, one could find oneself suddenly hundreds of thousands of dollars richer, but with a new host of problems an order of magnitude more difficult to solve than the ones they had before the robbery.
Once a person commits to the truth, they must learn to be honest with themselves about their own flaws, shortcomings, and mistakes. This is difficult, and for many it will be a goal that can not be attained. Even so, striving for it is vital if one truly wishes to live according to one's values.
This brings us to our next point: values. A person practicing RF must strive to understand and accept their own core values. These values have, in some form or another, shaped all of that person's decisions and actions throughout their lives. Perhaps their core value is personal satisfaction. Perhaps it is achievement and recognition. Perhaps it is the increase in human happiness and decrease in human suffering. By bringing these values up from the depths of their subconscious and into their conscious mind, the RF will find themselves living with more personal happiness and satisfaction as they begin to work towards things that functionally advance their core values, instead of towards things that only superficially pay homage to those values.
Once values have been determined, it is simply a question of considering when faced with a choice which option most likely will advance those values. Some choices will be easy and clear cut. Some will be clouded by multiple conflicting values, and will require extensive internal and external debate. Sometimes, a person may find themselves compelled to do something against their values, or without consciously considering the full scenario. When this happens, the RF has an advantage over many people as they are, at the least, aware of the fact that they have made such a decision and can ponder it later, evaluating their own performance.
This is the first draft, a summary of the radical functionalist meme. It is still in need of deliberation and outside debate to make it stronger and resistant to corruption. I welcome any and all comments at radicalfunctionalist@gmail.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)