Taking God’s Perspective: Compassion

I contend that compassion is an automatic byproduct of having shut out the outside world for a time to experience transcendence in its religious sense (i.e., reaching beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and emotion). Such experience as prayer, for example, or meditation can result in a heightened sensitivity in perceiving the world, including things and other people who are in proximity. Such sensitivity where other people are being perceived can illicit compassion to them. It is the bracketing experience itself, away from our daily life, rather than what is being prayed about or meditated on that triggers the generalized sensitivity and thus the enhanced readiness or inclination to feel compassion where it applies. I submit furthermore that with some beliefs regarding how God in the Abrahamic religions views us creatures in Creation, we mere mortals can assume to some degree the perspective that, given how God is depicted in scriptures, God would or does have in watching us in our own little worlds.

The full essay is at "Taking God's Perspective: Compassion."

A Hindu Goddess Destroying and Recreating Other Hindu Deities: Contrasting the Christian Trinity

The Saundarya Lahari characterizes the Hindu goddess, Devi, as being the power behind the proverbial throne—meaning the thrones of the three main deities, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Without Devi bestowing her power on those (and all other) gods, they would “return to their primal, dormant state” until revived by the power that Devi wields as signified visually by the weapons that she holds.[1] Are those deities merely dormant, however, or are they destroyed when Devi withholds her power? For there is an appreciable difference between being rendered impotent or inactive, and being zerstört (i.e., destroyed). In Greek mythology, one thing that distinguishes the gods from morals is that of the two, only the gods cannot die. In Christianity, Jesus Christ survives the death of his corporeal body, which is transformed in the bodily resurrection on Easter in a way that would have perplexed Plato. Indeed, it is interesting to compare the Trinity with the relation of the foundational goddess Devi to the three main gods in the Saundarya Lahari, a poem doubtlessly written by a devotee of the goddess.

1. The quoted text is from Francis X. Clooney, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 160.

The full essay is at "A Hindu Goddess vs. the Christian Trinity."

October 12th: Happy Vikings Day!

I contend that the ideological war being waged in the United States by the 2010s over whether October 12^th should be “Indigenous People’s” Day or Columbus Day became real in 2021 when President Biden issued a proclamation commemorating “Indigenous People’s” Day not coincidentally to fall on the same day as Columbus Day. Similarly, though only unofficially, the United American Indians of New England have labeled Thanksgiving Day as “The National Day of Mourning” since 1970. The de facto hegemony of ideology in changing official U.S. holidays, including in the refusal of some people and even businesses to say “Christmas” even on Christmas Eve Day, has proceeded without the premise that ideology should play such a role being debated in public discourse. Instead, the onslaught has been enabled by the vehemence of the conquerors in insisting that their decisions be recognized and not contradicted. Once I went to a Unitarian “church” on a Thanksgiving expecting a spirit of gratefulness, as per President Lincoln’s proclamation establishing the date of the holiday after two years of brutal war between the CSA and USA. The sermon was instead on the need for sorrow instead. I walked out, shaking my head in utter disbelief. Perhaps some Americans might one day insist that a similar mood be preached in churches on Christmas Day. Both the need and insistence come with a tone of passive aggression, and are indeed power-grabs based in resentment, which Nietzsche argued is a major indication of weakness rather than strength, and thus self-confidence. Perhaps the manufactured dialectics, such as the one centered on October 12^th, can be transcended in a Hegelian rather than religious sense at a higher level.

The full essay is at "October 12th: Happy Vikings Day."

Starbucks Bucks Its Workers’ Labor Union

Even though more than 500 Starbucks shops had unionized by the end of 2024, it seems that the company’s management did not respect the new union very much. Unfortunately for the company, one implication that can be drawn is that the company’s management didn’t respect federal labor law very much too. For in not respecting its union enough to negotiate it on reducing employee work hours, the company violated federal law. The “smoking gun,” I submit, was that the management used dissimulation to respond to the government, rather than address the complaint directly.

The full essay is at "Starbucks Bucks Its Workers' Labor Union."

AI Facial-Recognition Software in China: Ethical Implications beyond Political Economy

By the 2020s, the Chinese government had made significant advances in applying computer technology to garden-variety surveillance. To do so, that government relied to a significant extent on Chinese companies, and this in turn encouraged innovation at those companies even for non-governmental applications. I contend that treating this as a case study in business and government, without bringing in the ethical and political implications is a mistake. The ostensive “objectivity” of empirical social science may seem like an objective for scholars, but I submit that bringing in political and ethical theory renders the analysis superior to that which political economy alone can provide.

The full essay is at "On the Ethics of China's Use of AI Facial-Recognition."

Turkey Abusing Asylum-Seekers: Implications for E.U. Statehood

Over 90% of Turkey is not located in Europe, and yet for years the sovereign state has sought accession in the E.U. in spite of Turkey’s non-European culture. That the E.U. did not act in a timely way on Turkey’s application can be taken as a de facto “no.” Reports of abuse of political-asylum seekers in E.U.-funded centers in Turkey may suggest that the country’s government has interpreted the delay as a “no,” or that the country is unintentionally thwarting its own chances on becoming a state in the union. The E.U. was hardly blameless, as the Commission casted off any responsibility for enabling the abuse by funding the centers where it was occurring.

The full essay is at "Turkey Abusing Asylum-Seekers."

On Lord Krishna’s Self-Revealing in Hinduism’s Bhagavad-Gita

Even as much as divine entities reveal themselves to particular human beings, our finiteness cannot completely perceive or know such an entity as it really exists. Created as limited beings with limited perception and far from perfect knowledge, it is impossible for a deity’s self-revelation to be received by us mere mortals in its totality because we are not gods. Even if a divine eye were made available to us, as Lord Krishna does for Arjuna in the Hindu mythic tale, the Bhagavad Gita, our minds are finite and subjective rather than unlimited and objectively able to comprehend reality in itself.[1] Before discussing the Gita, I want to draw on a bhukti (devotional) poem very briefly to demonstrate that human perception and knowledge of the divine in the form of a personal deity only goes so far relative to a deity both not only in regard to it going beyond its form (or forms), but also just in terms of being able to grasp the form (or forms) in its completeness.

The full essay is at "Krishna in Hinduism's Bhagavad-Gita."

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1. Kant uses the expression, “things in themselves,” in contrast to appearances. Shankara also distinguishes reality from appearances.

Cancelled Classes: Harvard’s Far-Left Ideological Courses Take a Hit

I contend that the more courses that are heavily ideological and biased in advocating a particular ideology that a university has, the higher the chances that a university will eventually suffer from a lack of educational legitimacy and perhaps even have to close down for want of students. Even great American universities such as Harvard and Yale are not immune. Their huge endowments could even function as organizational slack enabling a particular ideological bent to percolate throughout the universities for a long time with impunity due to the sheer amount of money in the universities respective invested wealth. When I was a student at Yale, I worked part-time at the Development Office calling alumni to give to the already-wealthy university. I had no idea at the time that being rich could actually harm a university, or allow for educational decadence with impunity. At Harvard in 2024, there was some indication that the students’ freedom in selecting some of their courses was serving a good purpose in putting biased-ideological courses out of business for lack of sufficient enrollment. The student marketplace could substitute for compromised university administration in its educational oversight function. Adam Smith would be proud.

The full essay is at "Cancelled Classes at Harvard." 

On the American Media’s Hyperbole in Politics

If America can be said to have violent cultures, relatively speaking and especially in countries such as Honduras but also in some U.S. states such as Illinois (e.g., Rockford and south Chicago), the media may simply be reflecting the wider culture in writing of political debates by using words like fight and battle in place of argue and debate. One effect is to exacerbate the problem, culturally speaking. Another effect is to garner more attention, which in turn translates into more revenue from selling advertisements. To the media, the latter counts whereas the former does not; the media can blame the “heated rhetoric” of candidates for office and elected officeholders for an uptick in political violence rather than assume some of the responsibility. I submit that journalists are even more at fault when they magnify the significance of a political event to the point of being mistaken, widely missing the actual mark. The lack of any follow-through in the field wherein one media outlet holds another accountable is also a problem, especially when all of the major outlets are on the proverbial bandwagon.

The full essay is at "The American Media's Hyperbole in Politics."

Hungary’s Delusion of Sovereignty

On October 3, 2024, The European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, filed a legal complaint against the E.U. state of Hungary with the E.U.’s judicial branch—the high court of which being the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The Commission had won a case against the state and recently subtracted the amount of fine issued by the court from the federal money set to go to the state because the Hungarian government was refusing to recognize the verdict. Like Britain before it had seceded from the Union, Hungary was operating under the incorrect premise that it still enjoyed full sovereignty even though every state delegates some of its governmental sovereignty to the Union in becoming a state thereof. In the case of Hungary, the state law at issue in 2024 had in its very name the fundamental problem out of which the state’s disputes with the E.U. were emanating.

The full essay is at "Hungary's Delusion of Soveriegnty."

On God’s Holiness and Mystery in Judaism

In The Natural History of Religion, David Hume claims that the human mind has difficulty holding on to the pure (i.e., unencumbered) idea of divine simplicity, and thus tends to apply familiar (i.e., human) attributes or qualities onto that idea (i.e., anthropomorphism), as if hanging ornaments on a naked Christmas tree. Eclipsed or compromised, or even lost entirely, is the quality of God being wholly other, and thus being qualitatively different than us and anything in our world. The Christian theologian Dionysius grasped this idea in his claim that God goes beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and sensibility (i.e., human emotions). The Biblical claim in the Book of Job that God is angry with Job’s “friends” for making statements about God’s ways without knowing them can be analyzed with an eye towards both viewing anger as only going so far with respect to God and being critical of the “friends’” presumption in assuming that God’s ways are within the limits of human cognition (i.e., theories). Rather than go to a negative theology wherein God is thought to be ineffable, I want to stress the value of recognizing both distance and mystery as being indispensable with respect to our relation to God lest we reduce God to our various masks of eternity.

The full essay is at "Holiness and  Mystery of God in Judaism."

Hinduism and Judaism on Deities and Transcendence

A basic tenet of the Advaita (non-dualist) Hindu philosophy of Shankara holds, “If saguna points to brahman’s immanence, nirguna points to brahman’s transcendence. . . . superiority should not be accorded to the nirguna mode of discourse.”[1] Being a non-dualist, Shankara held that brahman is one, since reality or existence is unitary, and thus brahman as existence and reality of all is indivisible ontologically. Applying David Hume’s separability thesis from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, the distinction between nirguna and saguna can be understood as one made only by human reason, which does not mean that nirguna and saguna are separate entities. In short, we make the distinction; it does not belong to brahman itself. Lest it be thought that nirguna brahman has no analogue in Western philosophy of religion, we need only bring in Spinoza, whose nirguna-like God is so different from the saguna-comparable Abrahamic personal deity that both Judaism and Christianity banished his texts; Judaism excommunicated him. The tremendous qualitative difference between saguna and nirguna brahman can be useful to anyone trying to understand why Judaism excommunicated Spinoza, which is not my task here. Rather, taking nirguna brahman as reality or existence of everything, which, like Spinoza’s notion of God, itself has awareness, I want to stress both how much this differs in kind (i.e., qualitatively) from both Hindu deities and the Abrahamic deity, and the more fundamental point that brahman is One. In spite of the qualitative difference, keeping the Hindu concept of nirguna brahman in mind while thinking about the personal deities that are consistent with saguna brahman is useful.

The full essay is at "Hinduism and Judaism on Deities."

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1. Anantanand Rambachan, The Advaita Worldview: God, World, and Humanity (New York: State University of New York Press, 2006), p. 90.

On International Multilateralism: A Harsh Verdict on the UN by a Former Undersecretary

Speaking at Harvard in late September, 2024, Noeleen Heyzer, a former undersecretary and later a special envoy of the UN, related the need for multilateral governance internationally to the need for the UN to evolve. The UN Charter created a system in which both large and small nations would be held accountable to international law in a rule-based order. This would protect the weak from the strong, but the Security Council had long been dominated by the veto-wielding  powerful countries, so the UN has been unable to end wars. The UN had become, according to Heyzer, “severely weakened.” “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must," she explained. Peaceful coexistence that rectifies power imbalances was at the time decimated in Ukraine and Gaza. National vetoes in the Security Council were inflicting much damage in this regard. The implications for the UN, she admitted to me after her talk, are not at all good even concerning whether the international organization can  even reform itself sufficiently to rise above being an abject failure.

The full essay is at "International Multilateralism: The United Nations."

The €35 Billion E.U. Loan to Ukraine: One E.U. State as a Destabilizer

On September 20, 2024, it was announced that the E.U. would “raise a €35 billion loan to support the Ukrainian economy and military.”[1] At a press conference next to Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy, the E.U.’s president said, “Russia keeps targeting your civilian energy infrastructure in a blatant and vicious way to try to plunge your country in the dark.”[2] So the loan stood to impact the Ukrainian people directly and significantly. It would be a shame if the principle of unanimity in the European Council would stand in the way of the Ukrainian people being warm during the upcoming winter. This is a very tangible way for people to grasp just how real the costs are of state governments having vetoes over a significant number of E.U. competencies (i.e., enumerated powers). “The European Union is here to help you in this challenge to keep the lights on, to keep your people warm as winter is just around the corner, and to keep your economy going as you fight for survival,” Von der Leyen said at the news conference.[3] Hungary’s Viktor Orbán stood in the way, however, to securing the collateral for a long enough period to render the loan (an any from the U.S. based on the collateral) secure. 

The full essay is at "E.U. Loan to Ukraine."

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “EU to Raise €35 Billion Loan for Ukraine Using Russia’s Frozen Assets, Von der Leyen Says,” Euronews.com, September 20, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Religious Transcendence

I contend that the core of religion is its quality of transcendence beyond the limits of human thought, perception, and emotion. This is not to say that nothing may be said of the divine, but that the stuff of our realm does not exhaust the mystery. We can’t have God utterly figured out, for it would be impious of creatures of finite knowledge to presume such knowledge that would fill up the dark hole of absolute mystery. I turn to the Christian theologian, Karl Rahner, and to the Hindu Rigveda to support this point, which is valid, I submit, for anything that is (or can be counted as) a religion.

The full essay is at "Religious Transcendence."