While my father was still alive, during the year of his cancer, this is what I would recite to myself when I needed to steel or compose myself:
"The ant's a dragon in his centaur world
Pull down thy vanity.
It is not man made courage, nor made order, nor made life,
Pull down!"
It's from Ezra Pound's cantos and has served me well.
Now that my father is gone, the passage I continue to go back to is in Chapter 1 of Alice in Wonderland:
"First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; "for it might end, you know," said Alice to herself; "in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?" And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing."
I was in the room when Dad released his last breath, and this is what I thought to myself. To this moment I find myself continuing to wonder what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle is blown out...
Lewis Carrol's use of the word "fancy" fascinates me. At some point, I will have to address the role of imagination in ethics -- as the central panel in the triptych that includes interpretation and empathy.
Fancy, interpretation, empathy. "Fancy" as opposed to "imagination" because the former strikes me as suggesting something less willed, something open to channels beyond our own cause and effect.
Side note: The beginning and end of the Greek alphabet is "alpha" and "omega" -- both are gates to the world. "Alpha" is the barred gate because the alphabet must be learned, but to the Greek mind, Omega is the open portal because through language we reach out to both the physical world and the humanly infinite (that is, the humanly inexhaustable -- only a nihilist could believe in an absolute infinite).
It is a very small and subtle difference, but no accident I think that in English both gates are barred -- "A" and "Z". We use our language to bottle things up, to separate and isolate, to our loss.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Intent
The comment on my last post posited two modes of solipsism, one mechanistic, a malfunction of the brain, the second manufactured, developed, nurtured as a defense against the unyielding world. He asked whether one, both, or neither constituted a core cause of evil.
I agree with him that evil, and good for that matter, are initiated in intent. Without intent, acts can be good or bad; outcomes can be joyous or tragic, but they will need other terms to explain their causes.
As a result, all references to "solipsism" in my previous post should be thought of as "willful solipsism." I hope others who come here will view the comment, because there are several additional insights there well worth considering.
Tonight, however, I want to raise the thorny issues that come with assigning good and evil to intent.
The problem, of course, is that we are often capable of shielding ourselves from our own intentions, and are utterly, irreversibly incapable of truly, wholly discerning the intent of another. The classic formulation of this argument is to examine Abraham at the point where God tells him to sacrifice his son.
Who, looking at Abraham from the outside, could assess his intent -- to honor God? As are all people, he is a closed book to us. Relying on intent also assumes a fundamental human awareness of good and evil. Were Abraham to have killed his son -- who among us would not have condemned this as a heinous act? It is undeniable. From Andrea Yates to Jim Jones to Charles Manson, our history records many who killed and claimed to do so under divine mandate -- and truly we do line up to condemn these individuals.
It is at points like these where the difference between good/evil and legal/illegal can, I believe most clearly be drawn. Ethics is not law, although ethics can be applied to law, I do not think that law can be applied to ethics. In fact, I firmly believe that in may ways law and ethics are in necessary opposition to one another -- that the increasing power of law in our nation is the underlying cause of the apposite deterioration of our ethics.
I agree with him that evil, and good for that matter, are initiated in intent. Without intent, acts can be good or bad; outcomes can be joyous or tragic, but they will need other terms to explain their causes.
As a result, all references to "solipsism" in my previous post should be thought of as "willful solipsism." I hope others who come here will view the comment, because there are several additional insights there well worth considering.
Tonight, however, I want to raise the thorny issues that come with assigning good and evil to intent.
The problem, of course, is that we are often capable of shielding ourselves from our own intentions, and are utterly, irreversibly incapable of truly, wholly discerning the intent of another. The classic formulation of this argument is to examine Abraham at the point where God tells him to sacrifice his son.
Who, looking at Abraham from the outside, could assess his intent -- to honor God? As are all people, he is a closed book to us. Relying on intent also assumes a fundamental human awareness of good and evil. Were Abraham to have killed his son -- who among us would not have condemned this as a heinous act? It is undeniable. From Andrea Yates to Jim Jones to Charles Manson, our history records many who killed and claimed to do so under divine mandate -- and truly we do line up to condemn these individuals.
It is at points like these where the difference between good/evil and legal/illegal can, I believe most clearly be drawn. Ethics is not law, although ethics can be applied to law, I do not think that law can be applied to ethics. In fact, I firmly believe that in may ways law and ethics are in necessary opposition to one another -- that the increasing power of law in our nation is the underlying cause of the apposite deterioration of our ethics.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Virginia Tech and the causes of evil
There is evil in the world, and a viable ethics must account for it. Unlike Dante, I begin my quest for ethics in the ninth circle. Where does evil come from?
I assert that evil, and what good there is in the world, comes from people and only from people. A volcano erupting onto a hapless village is not evil -- it is grave misfortune. A random and terrible event, but a disaster that lacks any intent. Evil is initiated in intent. I should also attempt to define evil at some point, but let's defer that for a later date and begin instead with an investigation into the causes of evil.
There are only three of them, and all are actually aspects of selfishness. It may well be that all might just as easily be subsumed under the heading of "desire" -- but again let's hold off on that hypothesis for the moment.
The three causes of evil:
1) Solipsism -- belief that one is the only real being in the universe -- the ultimate selfishness
2) Greed -- selfish desire for gain in several dimensions: power; wealth; sex dominance; etc.
3) Fear -- self-centered orientation towards self-preservation
But of these three solipsism allows for the biggest breaches of ethics. When school shootings happen, we ask the same tiresome questions about "How could this possibly happen?" We act as if it is difficult to understand. But it is very easy to understand, albeit abhorent. What would murdering another matter if I did not grasp the autonomous reality of that other person? Murdering dozens would be no more significant that grinding a heel into an anthill, or worse, tossing out old mattresses that have outworn their use.
We use terms like "dehumanize" or "desensitize" but in essence, a killer is trained, twisted, and/or psychologically predisposed to deny the full existence of their victims. Those victims are props, furniture to be arranged or discarded. If you are not real, and the world beyond myself is in its entirety is not real, what would your life matter to me? And why would the praise or opprobrium of the world trouble me?
One approach to ethics might be to attempt to act in opposition to the prime causes and intents behind evil. Hence the response to #1 Solipsism might be Awareness of Being in the World, consciousness of the reality of our context beyond our own perception and cognition. In short, the world is real, and the lives of all living things within that world are real.
The response to #2 Greed might be Subsume Desire. The response to #3 Fear: Acceptance of our Human Vulnerability.
I will explore this in more depth on my next blog, but for the moment I would like to point out that this third point leads me back to my father. Because I believe my father was in fact a good man, and the crux of the question for me -- which I do not pretend to have resolved -- is whether good people can ever think themselves to be good.
I do not think my father ever truly thought himself a good man, and yet he was. And I am forced to look back on my personal experience and conclude that I never did meet a person who proclaimed him/herself "good" who adhered to anything that I would call goodness. And often in my life I have encountered people who thought themselves "not good," who I would have held up as models of ethical action.
As human beings, we are capable of powerful self-deceptions, and that self-deception arguably begins at the level of immediate perception, before even the conscious mind is brought to bear.
For the Virginia Tech killer, what comes through to me first is the sense that this boy thought himself unassailably, undeniably right -- as a person with access to a truth that, to him, burned so brightly and clearly, that alternative views were not possible. He compares himself to Jesus. He thinks himself a martyr, despite his inability to articulate a cause worthy of martyrdom beyond the self-importance he assigns to his own impotent rage. He is a pile of ash, burning with self-destruction and self-glorification.
If we do not start from the position of "I am not good," I wonder if there could possibly be any other stance that would allow some critical perspective primal enough to intercept our egos. Is it valid to found an ethics on the premise that "I am not good"?
If so, this approach is gravely in opposition to the mainstream culture of our day, where self-esteem is held and cherished as deeply as any religious mantra.
I assert that evil, and what good there is in the world, comes from people and only from people. A volcano erupting onto a hapless village is not evil -- it is grave misfortune. A random and terrible event, but a disaster that lacks any intent. Evil is initiated in intent. I should also attempt to define evil at some point, but let's defer that for a later date and begin instead with an investigation into the causes of evil.
There are only three of them, and all are actually aspects of selfishness. It may well be that all might just as easily be subsumed under the heading of "desire" -- but again let's hold off on that hypothesis for the moment.
The three causes of evil:
1) Solipsism -- belief that one is the only real being in the universe -- the ultimate selfishness
2) Greed -- selfish desire for gain in several dimensions: power; wealth; sex dominance; etc.
3) Fear -- self-centered orientation towards self-preservation
But of these three solipsism allows for the biggest breaches of ethics. When school shootings happen, we ask the same tiresome questions about "How could this possibly happen?" We act as if it is difficult to understand. But it is very easy to understand, albeit abhorent. What would murdering another matter if I did not grasp the autonomous reality of that other person? Murdering dozens would be no more significant that grinding a heel into an anthill, or worse, tossing out old mattresses that have outworn their use.
We use terms like "dehumanize" or "desensitize" but in essence, a killer is trained, twisted, and/or psychologically predisposed to deny the full existence of their victims. Those victims are props, furniture to be arranged or discarded. If you are not real, and the world beyond myself is in its entirety is not real, what would your life matter to me? And why would the praise or opprobrium of the world trouble me?
One approach to ethics might be to attempt to act in opposition to the prime causes and intents behind evil. Hence the response to #1 Solipsism might be Awareness of Being in the World, consciousness of the reality of our context beyond our own perception and cognition. In short, the world is real, and the lives of all living things within that world are real.
The response to #2 Greed might be Subsume Desire. The response to #3 Fear: Acceptance of our Human Vulnerability.
I will explore this in more depth on my next blog, but for the moment I would like to point out that this third point leads me back to my father. Because I believe my father was in fact a good man, and the crux of the question for me -- which I do not pretend to have resolved -- is whether good people can ever think themselves to be good.
I do not think my father ever truly thought himself a good man, and yet he was. And I am forced to look back on my personal experience and conclude that I never did meet a person who proclaimed him/herself "good" who adhered to anything that I would call goodness. And often in my life I have encountered people who thought themselves "not good," who I would have held up as models of ethical action.
As human beings, we are capable of powerful self-deceptions, and that self-deception arguably begins at the level of immediate perception, before even the conscious mind is brought to bear.
For the Virginia Tech killer, what comes through to me first is the sense that this boy thought himself unassailably, undeniably right -- as a person with access to a truth that, to him, burned so brightly and clearly, that alternative views were not possible. He compares himself to Jesus. He thinks himself a martyr, despite his inability to articulate a cause worthy of martyrdom beyond the self-importance he assigns to his own impotent rage. He is a pile of ash, burning with self-destruction and self-glorification.
If we do not start from the position of "I am not good," I wonder if there could possibly be any other stance that would allow some critical perspective primal enough to intercept our egos. Is it valid to found an ethics on the premise that "I am not good"?
If so, this approach is gravely in opposition to the mainstream culture of our day, where self-esteem is held and cherished as deeply as any religious mantra.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Part of what I said at his funeral
Funeral Service – Dr. Pete Soteres
Monday, April 16, 2007
My dad would often read and comment on the works that I wrote and published. In most cases, I could predict what he would say: Keep it simple, son.
So in honoring him here, I’m going to try to keep it simple.
There is only one thing I want to say about my father: He died in a way consistent with the way he lived.
He lived respecting all those whose paths he crossed – and he died with dignity and in peace.
He lived loyal and true to his wife, his friends, and his family – and he died surrounded and comforted by their loyalty, compassion, and faith.
He lived dedicated to easing suffering, to healing, to caring for others – he died selflessly and painlessly, and even as he did so he continued to heal and bring comfort to all those who loved him.
And so, for any who think that life and death as things opposed, I would ask today and going forward that you remember my father and with him the lesson that as we live our lives, so shall we die. So live in charity and respect for others and generosity of spirit. Live in joy and in caring and in peace. Live in love and dignity and hope.
Because, due to my father’s example, I do believe that if we can do these things, we shall also die in these things – and be a comfort rather than a burden to those we must one day leave behind.
I’d like to close with a poem my father wrote upon the death of his father:
Gone, gone, gone away
These tragic words I hear today –
My father’s gone, I now must say
And I must look to find where ended
The plot that winds through all his kindred
What would he do?
What has he done?
The stories there as bright as sun.
Pause, Pause, Pause, Reflect,
And out the corner of my eye
I see his loom against the sky.
The weaver’s gone,
But the pattern’s there.
The needle and thread
Are in good repair.
There I’ll grasp them at this row
And now if only I can sow.
It’s in! The stitch is in this day!
Oh Lord, give me the strength to stay!
And keep the needle on its way
Until another comes behind,
And takes from me the tie that binds.
***
Dad, your sons will do our best to keep the stitching straight and continue to weave the pattern you perceived and wrote about almost 30 years ago.
But I’d want to add that the pattern goes beyond the tightly knit bond of father-to-child – it extends to every one of you here. You all carry threads of my father; I hope you all feel as I do, that knowing him made you better people, even as he believed that knowing all of you made him a better man. I’m grateful for that and take comfort knowing that so much of him still resides with us here – in all of you, in the fabric of our common community.
Dad, we are honored to have known you, indebted to your kindness and guidance, and inspired by your example in life and in death. But most of all, we love you and miss you.
Monday, April 16, 2007
My dad would often read and comment on the works that I wrote and published. In most cases, I could predict what he would say: Keep it simple, son.
So in honoring him here, I’m going to try to keep it simple.
There is only one thing I want to say about my father: He died in a way consistent with the way he lived.
He lived respecting all those whose paths he crossed – and he died with dignity and in peace.
He lived loyal and true to his wife, his friends, and his family – and he died surrounded and comforted by their loyalty, compassion, and faith.
He lived dedicated to easing suffering, to healing, to caring for others – he died selflessly and painlessly, and even as he did so he continued to heal and bring comfort to all those who loved him.
And so, for any who think that life and death as things opposed, I would ask today and going forward that you remember my father and with him the lesson that as we live our lives, so shall we die. So live in charity and respect for others and generosity of spirit. Live in joy and in caring and in peace. Live in love and dignity and hope.
Because, due to my father’s example, I do believe that if we can do these things, we shall also die in these things – and be a comfort rather than a burden to those we must one day leave behind.
I’d like to close with a poem my father wrote upon the death of his father:
Gone, gone, gone away
These tragic words I hear today –
My father’s gone, I now must say
And I must look to find where ended
The plot that winds through all his kindred
What would he do?
What has he done?
The stories there as bright as sun.
Pause, Pause, Pause, Reflect,
And out the corner of my eye
I see his loom against the sky.
The weaver’s gone,
But the pattern’s there.
The needle and thread
Are in good repair.
There I’ll grasp them at this row
And now if only I can sow.
It’s in! The stitch is in this day!
Oh Lord, give me the strength to stay!
And keep the needle on its way
Until another comes behind,
And takes from me the tie that binds.
***
Dad, your sons will do our best to keep the stitching straight and continue to weave the pattern you perceived and wrote about almost 30 years ago.
But I’d want to add that the pattern goes beyond the tightly knit bond of father-to-child – it extends to every one of you here. You all carry threads of my father; I hope you all feel as I do, that knowing him made you better people, even as he believed that knowing all of you made him a better man. I’m grateful for that and take comfort knowing that so much of him still resides with us here – in all of you, in the fabric of our common community.
Dad, we are honored to have known you, indebted to your kindness and guidance, and inspired by your example in life and in death. But most of all, we love you and miss you.
Brief biography of my father
Peter Spiros Soteres, M.D., passed away on April 13, 2007. He was born in Dothan, Alabama on July 22, 1939. After attending high school in Dothan, Alabama, Dr. Soteres attended the University of Alabama. He graduated from the University of Alabama College of Medicine and trained at Southwestern Medical School, Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas.
He served in the USAF as a medical officer at Offut AFB, Nebraska. He completed his training in Pulmonary Medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical College and at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Following a brief retirement from his medical practice, Dr. Soteres joined Hospice of Chattanooga where he was a constant support and strong influence for patients, their families and for the staff.
Dr. Soteres was a respected and beloved doctor in Chattanooga for more than 30 years. In that time he treated thousands of patients and was known for his medical expertise, his warm bedside manner, and his attentiveness to those under his care. Beyond his professional excellence, he treated everyone around him – patients, their families, nurses, doctors, and other hospital staff – with respect and compassion, and in doing so touched countless lives and made this world a better place for us all.
He served in the USAF as a medical officer at Offut AFB, Nebraska. He completed his training in Pulmonary Medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical College and at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Following a brief retirement from his medical practice, Dr. Soteres joined Hospice of Chattanooga where he was a constant support and strong influence for patients, their families and for the staff.
Dr. Soteres was a respected and beloved doctor in Chattanooga for more than 30 years. In that time he treated thousands of patients and was known for his medical expertise, his warm bedside manner, and his attentiveness to those under his care. Beyond his professional excellence, he treated everyone around him – patients, their families, nurses, doctors, and other hospital staff – with respect and compassion, and in doing so touched countless lives and made this world a better place for us all.
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