To Forget, or not to Forget

"We will not forget 9/11."

Have you heard it? I have. It's patriotic. It's a sure sign that whoever says it is a good-hearted, patriotic American who mourns the lives lost on that terrible day and hates the evil-doers who attacked us.

But I've been thinking. Should we actually forget 9/11? Before you start throwing things at me, imagine this: if you were a murderously violent maniac, and you had just successfully killed thousands of Americans, what could you possibly want more than having a massive national occasion in memory of your success every single year?

Timothy McVeigh would love it, if on every April 19, the whole country became silent to remember his attack. But thankfully, we don't do him that service. Perhaps we should consider not doing Osama bin Laden the same.

Now, there has to be a balance here, because victims should always be mourned and respected. What I suggest is that we come up with a way to honor the victims of 9/11 with unintentionally glorifying the attackers and their success. Do displaying images of burning buildings honorably commemorate the victims? I think not. Does talking about terrorists, the war on terror, or ground zero commemorate them? No. Talking about them commemorates them. Talking about their families commemorates them. Not their killers, not their deaths.

There are a host of things we can really hold high when commemorating this occasion, without providing affirmation to our attackers. Honor the firefighters. Honor the survivors. Say, "Yes, we were attacked on this day, and so we want to let all the families of the victims know that we will never forget your loss. We want to thank you for your courage. We want to thank the brave men and women who sacrificed themselves for others."

All without a single one of these: "Let us never forget the day we were attacked... when they struck us... when the buildings collapsed... when thousands died." All this without a single image of a burning tower, or smoke-filled New York City.

It's just a thought. We could give a lot less grace to our enemies if we stopped bragging about their own victory for them. Maybe we should forget 9/11.

Capitalism: for Saints and Sinners

"Socialism would work, if only men were perfect."

Is that so? From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. That type of society would definitely require a very nearly perfect group of people in order to function. But could it thrive? Would it even function?

It has been thoroughly propounded that capitalism works with even the vilest of people. If you are greedy, you must provide value to your customers to become rich. The richest men ever, regardless of their intentions, revolutionized modern living. But it is said that if men were perfect, we wouldn't need a greed-driven system.

Here's where we should stop for a moment and look at what an economy is. It is a system of allocating resources, including human labor, technology, oil, bricks, and money itself. An economy is "good" if it successfully allocates resources to necessary goals, goals which provide for human wants and needs.

Furthermore, the participants' good intentions have nothing to do with how successful that distribution is.

"Oh fellow brother, for the good of humanity, should I build houses or factories?"

"I couldn't say. No, literally, I've lost my voice and the well-intentioned folk at the pharmaceutical company didn't produce enough medicine this month."

I've already mentioned how prices are a form of communication. If you eliminate prices, it doesn't matter how good the people are. They won't know what to make, how much, what to do, or what materials to use. The economy is just too complicated. Only capitalism provides mechanisms whereby economic agents are informed about the scarcity and cost of various options, in contrast with the genuine needs of society at large.

They say the road to that uncomfortable place is paved with good intentions. That road is epitomized by socialism. Its glorious intentions lead us along a road to misallocation of resources, shortages, over-production, recession, and depression.

Socialism would not function even if people were perfect. It would only make our suffering and demise as a civilization a little nicer, because we would all love and care for one another with what little resources and lifespans we would have left.

The Grandest Paradox

We all know the classical argument from the mind, as a proof of God. Materials (physical substances) cannot produce consciousness, only a God with a mind could have. I find it compelling on scientific grounds, but I've taken it further.

Let us assume that material substances alone could, by some poorly understood neurological process, produce consciousness. It does appear that scientists are moving in this direction. Of late, they are becoming more intimately familiar with the processes related to consciousness, which certainly does have a very strong material basis. "Activity in this lobe is correlated with consciousness, spikes in electric output from this area is simultaneous with this chemical over here... " etc. So let's assume that our minds are mere physical constructions.

I introduce to the grandest paradox you will ever behold. What happens when materialism ("everything is a physical substance"), determinism ("natural laws determine all events, and there is only one possible outcome"), and the mind join hands? The world as we know it shatters. It absolutely shatters.

Physical substances are deterministic. We all know the classical argument against free will by determinism. So how can we expect that deterministic substance to produce true ideas? This isn't mere skepticism, it is scientifically reinforced proof of absurdity.

Example: you have a computer, which is capable of deriving logical conclusions. Input "2 times 7", get "14" as an output. Well, not quite... because this computer starts out not knowing anything. YOU are the programmer.

You program it randomly, with processing structures that exist for no reason, without meaning, without purpose. You plug in an input, the electric signals spurt through the processing system instantaneously, and you get a deterministic outcome. Due to the laws of nature, that output is the only possible thing that could have happened.

You plug in "4 times 12" and get 35. That's what the program led to. The program was random. As long as it comes from random origins, the program will always be random.

If your mind is materialistic and deterministic, it is random. Nothing is produces can be true. Furthermore, if the idea that "some statements are false, and some statements are true" is a mental concept, then it is not warranted. It is just a random, abstract, unwarranted illusion. You say that 3 + 4 = 7. But, that thought is merely a pre-determined event caused by particles and forces interacting. That thought is absurd.

Skepticism says that it is possible that our knowledge is illusory. I say that, given materialism and determinism, it is absolutely certain that nothing is true, nothing is false, and everything is absurd.

That is of course a paradox, because I have used empirical knowledge and logic to arrive at the conclusion which destroys those two justifications. But the paradox is compelling.

But what if the mind is not simply a material? What if our thoughts are not deterministic? What if the programmer of our minds is a creative intellect?

Is it so irrational to believe in God that we must accept such an absurd paradox?

P.S. - Many thanks to the friend with whom I've carried on many a discussion and debate about this and similar topics, Jon Siskey.