"Just about this time Narayan Hemchandra came to England. I had heard of him as a writer. We met at the house of Miss Manning of the National Indian Association. Miss Manning knew that I could not make myself sociable. When I went to her place I used to sit tongue-tied, never speaking except when spoken to. She introduced me to Narayan Hemchandra. He did not know English. His dress was queer — a clumsy pair of trousers, a wrinkled, dirty, brown coat after the Parsi fashion, no necktie or collar, and a tasselled woollen cap. He grew a long beard. He was lightly built and short of stature. His round face was scarred with small-pox, and had a nose which was neither pointed nor blunt. With his hand he was constantly turning over his beard. Such a queer-looking and queerly dressed person was bound to be singled out in fashionable society.

'I have heard a good deal about you,' I said to him. 'I have also read some of your writings. I should be very pleased if you were kind enough to come to my place.' Narayan Hemchandra had a rather hoarse voice. With a smile on his face he replied: 'Yes, where do you stay?'

'In Store Street.'

'Then we are neighbours. I want to learn English. Will you teach me?'

'I shall be happy to teach you anything I can, and will try my best. If you like, I will go to your place.'

'Oh, no. I shall come to you. I shall also bring with me a Translation Exercise Book.' So we made an appointment. Soon we were close friends...

We met daily. There was a considerable amount of similarity between our thoughts and actions. Both of us were vegetarians. We would often have our lunch together. This was the time when I lived on 17s. a week and cooked for myself. Sometimes I would go to his room, and sometimes he would come to mine. I cooked in the English style. Nothing but Indian style would satisfy him. He could not do without dal. I would make soup of carrots etc., and he would pity me for my taste. Once he somehow hunted out mung cooked it and brought it to my place. I ate it with delight. This led on to a regular system of exchange between us. I would take my delicacies to him and he would bring his to me.

Cardinal Manning's name was then on every lip. The dock labourers' strike had come to an early termination owing to the efforts of John Burns and Cardinal Manning. I told Narayan Hemchandra of Disraeli's tribute to the Cardinal's simplicity. 'Then I must see the sage,' said he. 'He is a big man. How do you expect to meet him?'

'Why? I know how. I must get you to write to him in my name. Tell him I am an author and that I want to congratulate him personally on his humanitarian work, and also say that I shall have to take you as interpreter as I do not know English.'

I wrote a letter to that effect. In two or three days came Cardinal Manning's card in reply giving us an appointment. So we both called on the Cardinal. I put on the usual visiting suit. Narayan Hemchandra was the same as ever, in the same coat and the same trousers. I tried to make fun of this, but he laughed me out and said: 'You civilized fellows are all cowards. Great men never look at a person's exterior. They think of his heart.' " - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part One, Chapter Twenty-two: "Narayan Hemchandra"

"Satisfaction of one's will is not necessary for true life. Temporal, mortal life is the food of the true life — it is the material for a life of reason. And therefore the true life is outside of time, it exists only in the present. Time is an illusion to life: the life of the past or the future hides the true life of the present from people. And therefore man should strive to destroy the deception of the temporal life of the past and future. The true life is not just life outside of time — the present — but it is also a life outside of the individual. Life is common to all people and expresses itself in love. And therefore, the person who lives in the present, in the common life of all people, unites himself with the father — with the source and foundation of life." - Leo Tolstoy, The Gospel In Brief, Preface

Time being a consequence of consciousness; the way we're inherently able to perceive the past and future, and organize it the way we did. And our imaginations — another consequence of being able to be as conscious as we are to our surroundings, as well as ourselves. However, too much time spent in our heads, with no source of love to keep us in the present, they can also become our undoing.

A life of selflessness offers anyone of any belief a life most lived in the present, rather than becoming a prisoner of our minds, stuck in our heads, the illusions or images of our past and future bred from our inherent worry, need, or fear for ourselves, governing over how we feel today. This is what a life of things like selfishness, self-obsession, pride, and self-indulgence have to offer, and that Jesus warned us of; one where there's no one around anymore to keep you out of your head, so in your head you remain. And if you don’t become a prisoner of your mind (to your conscience) by making yourself the emphasis throughout your life, than a prisoner to men you ultimately become, labeled one amoungst the sea of what we presently consider — based on our still more blind standards, the "worst" of the world.

Jesus did save us, but from ourselves, by warning us, with a knowledge; not from a literal hell that men only a few centuries later invented, but from a hell we potentially make for ourselves in this life — God or not. To warn us that our inherency of building our house (our life) on the sand — like most people, shaping and making our life about all that we can squeeze out of it for ourselves, is exactly what leads us to this hell, becoming a prisoner of our minds, or to men, ultimately. When it's building our house (our life) on the rock, squeezing out as much as we can for the sake of others, this is the life that leads us away from this life of hell we all become convinced is right, true, and just beyond any doubt. It's in the incessant participation, and our inherency to organize ourselves around ourselves individually — around the idea of quid pro quo: something for something (eye for an eye), rather than Jesus' something for nothing that leads us to the death of this "true life." And when the storm of death begins to slowly creep toward the shore of your conscience, where will you have built your house (your life)? Out on the sand? As most people would be inherently drawn to? "And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” - Matt 7:27

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction [selfishness], and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life [selflessness], and those who find it are few." - Matt 7:13

I wanted to explore how a person from 2100s would see us. What would they think about us? What they would say. And I use the lens of us looking at someone from 1900s.

Maybe this is a good starting point for a conversation.
I hope you enjoy this read.

Feedback is always welcome.

Tolstoy: "I am a man [human]. How should I live? What do I do?"

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house." - Matt 5:14

The Light

We're humans. Therefore, how should we live? What do we do? Well, what good is a lamp if it's being hidden under a basket? What good is the gold of being capable of knowing life and the great lengths we humans can act upon this knowledge if it's being smothered by fear for oneself or even contempt for ones contemporaries? Or if it's being used not to make more light for others, but more darkenss? It's our unique and profound ability to retain and transfer knowledge that separates us the most from nature. Thus, "logos" (the Ancient Greek word that's being translated as "the Word" in John 1) — for the shapes we presently call "letters" and therefore, "words," and to give meaning to them to create "speech;" language and conscious reasoning, and with that, divine revelation to any degree; to be capable of giving life to the knowledge of God here on Earth. If there were no humans on this planet, there would be nothing conscious enough to give life to our knowledge of anything — via our ability for logos — including our knowledge of time, the experience, morality, and of the divine, and earth would continue as it has for the last five billion years, void of anything with a great potential to acknowledge and know life and give it meaning and definition, and with that, no great desire and passion to not only act upon, but to be willing to give ones life for the smallest, or even the most despised of creatures.

This is the "light:" knowledge. Without it, instinct would rule over us as it does lesser conscious capable beings; it's what allows us to set ourselves free from our instinct for ourselves that gives way to anger, lust, grudges; pride, arrogance and self-assurance; retaliation; to hate what we hate rather than even considering to find the strength to love it as a means to over come it, and for judging and slandering others and placing them beneath ourselves as they do the same to us. And the regret that enraptures us when met with the sobering knowledge of the influence of our own death for not loving when we hated, that instinct would lead us directly into otherwise, it being the wider, easier, more convenient path that we can't help but be more inherently drawn to; however, we're also just as inherently drawn to reason, rationality, and logic. Which is of course what love is.

Knowledge is what has the potential of saving us humans from our inherency to ourselves, for what's a.k.a. "Sin" (missing the mark; lack of knowledge). This is born from the extent of how much more conscious we are of ourselves in contrast to nature and subsequently how much more knowledge we possess and have the potential of possessing, of ourselves especially, which leads us into the most inherent demand for ourselves. This is what the "weeping and gnashing of teeth" or "hell" people like Jesus was referring to, and the "dying, you die" regarding the story of Eden; dying, as all things are destined to do, we became aware of our dying once we gained the knowledge of good and evil, of morality, while nature is blissfully unaware. Knowledge itself is the curse, but it's also the cure.

With this great capacity to be as conscious and knowledgeable as we are of both ourselves and anything else, comes the increasing of our knowledge of what is right or wrong, good or evil, love or hate, true or false in relation to it — that is, our capacity for selfish and selfless consciousness and how much more we're capable of acting upon the desires and passions that are flamed by the more and more aware we become of both ourselves (selfishness) and everything else (selflessness) as we "age," and what is "right" or "wrong" in relation to it, within the way mankind has made the world up until whatever given point in time. Our knowledge of morality can taint our knowledge of time and the experience and lead to our undoing, but it's also what saves us from the hell we make for ourselves here in this life by living a long life of giving in to instinct and allowing the worry born out of knowledge to govern over us each day, rather than living the "true life" of "this day — our daily bread," freeing ourselves from the anxiety or depression that comes the more and more knowledge we gain as we age and move closer and closer to death.

“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the reign (kingdom) of heaven." - Matt 18:3

'O ye, who see perplexities over your heads, beneath your feet, and to the right and left of you; you will be an eternal enigma unto yourselves until ye become humble and joyful as children. Then will ye find Me, and having found Me in yourselves, you will rule over worlds, and looking out from the great world within to the little world without, you will bless everything that is, and find all is well with time and with you.' - Krishna

The most effective means of gathering the will to push past our instinct for dwelling on our knowledge of time and the experience, and giving into the passions that are flamed by our knowledge of both hate and love, is our unique and profound ability to be capable of knowing "God(s)," and subsequently possess the ability to be willing to believe in, or to have "faith" in the divine; it unlocks a kind of will or "spirit," that's the most potent in aiding this unique ability we humans possess to not only be able to acknowledge our own instincts to begin with, but to push past it, even to the most extreme degrees in favor of where knowledge takes us; to even consider to offer our other cheek in return within reason or "return with gladness good for evil done," and to find the strength to follow through with it when met with the opportunity.

But what comes as a consequence of consciousness and therefore, imagination and knowledge? Ignorance, or simply, lack of knowledge. To be capable of knowing anything, is to inevitably not know things; lack of knowledge is as inevitable in life as needing air to breath. Therefore, anything capable of acknowledging knowledge is doomed to act out of a degree of lack of knowledge all throughout their lives until the day they die. There's no escaping it; no one can know everything, but man as a whole can know the most of what we presently understand of anything.

This is how we're "fallen." Everything was perfect in Eden because we knew everything, as much as even God did, but we lived blissfully unaware of the knowledge of morality. It's desire, stemming from our sense organs reacting to our environment, that leads us into making the fatal mistake of measuring morality in relation to both ourselves and anything else. Which gives way to all the various passions that come as a result. Like fear, as a prime example. We lived in ignorance of any reason to weep or gnash our teeth. This is what leads us humans to "fall short" or "miss the mark" — lack of knowledge; our limits for it.

"Thus says our Father: 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?' " - Isaiah 66

"They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken." - Psalms 82

Lack of knowledge can be considered the equivalent of blindness. No one can see what they don't understand, and no one can understand what they don't know, and no one can know until they know. Do we get angry and frustrated with the literal blind for making mistakes that a person who's lost there ability to see would make? Not to mention those born without the ability to utilize their eyes. Most of all, no one asks, earns, chooses or has any right to their capacity for knowledge; their ability to understand. Autism is proof of this. No one asks for that, it just happens. Vice versa, no one earns the capability for "intelligence," we've all either stumbled upon it or your God made it so.

This is something that becomes smothered underneath all the dogma of the story of Eden ever since, that we made that choice out of ignorance. We weren't aware of what is good or evil; right or wrong when the serpents arrogant influence was introduced to us. This is where God's grace comes from; it's timeless, whole or complete love. That we're not all knowing God's. We're "gods, sons [reflections] of the Most High" (Psalms 82), so of course we shouldn't judge and condemn other puny, limited humans as if we're all knowing ourselves, especially regarding the knowledge of the experience. That would be pride and arrogance (the Adversary; Satan) that leads us to do something so foolish. We should instead do nothing but what we human beings were clearly designed to do: love.

"And our Father said, 'Should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?' " - Jonah 4:11

The Salt Is Selflessness

Can pornography be liberating or does it just promote the hatred of women? Ellie and David discuss the feminist ‘sex wars’ and the pro-porn and anti-porn views that emerged from it. They talk about how the figure of the porn star has changed in the era of OnlyFans, and how porn blends sex with visuality. How might porn endanger women as a class? Can sex in pornography be considered art? And are AI and deepfakes enhancing the harms of pornography?

AI capability doubles every few months. Legal recognition takes decades. What follows when the two clocks driving AI governance run at radically different speeds?

"The truth of this text [the story of Moses freeing the Israelite slaves from Egypt] is revealed in the contemporary struggle between good in the form of freedom and justice and evil in the form of oppression and colonialism. Of the approximately three billion people in our world, more than 1.9 billion — a vast majority — live on the continents of Asia and Africa. Less than two decades ago most of the Asian and African peoples were colonial subjects, dominated politically, exploited economically, and segregated and humiliated by foreign powers. For years they protested against these grave injustices. In nearly every territory in Asia and Africa, a courageous Moses pleaded passionately for the freedom of his people. For more than twenty years, Mahatma Gandhi unrelentingly urged British viceroys, governors general, prime ministers, and kings to let his people go. Like the pharaohs of old, the British leaders turned deaf ears to these agonizing pleas. Even the great Winston Churchill responded to Gandhi's cry for independence by saying, 'I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.' The conflict between two determined forces, the colonial powers and the Asian and African peoples, has been one of the most momentous and critical struggles of the twentieth century.

But in spite of the resistance and recalcitrance of the colonial powers, the victory of the forces of justice and human dignity is gradually being achieved. Twenty-five years ago there were only three independent countries in the whole continent of Africa, but today thirty-two countries are independent. A short fifteen years ago the British Empire politically dominated more than six hundred fifty million people in Asia and Africa, but today the number is less than sixty million. The Red Sea has opened. The oppressed masses in Asia and Africa have won their freedom from the Egypt of colonialism and now move toward the promised land of economic and cultural stability. These peoples see the evils of colonialism and imperialism dead upon the seashore. In our own American struggle for freedom and justice, we are seeing the death of evil. In 1619, the Negro was brought to America from the soils of Africa. For more than two hundred years Africa was raped and plundered, her native kingdoms disorganized, and her people and rulers demoralized. In America the Negro slave was merely a depersonalized cog in a vast plantation machine.

But there were those who had a nagging conscience and knew that so unjust a system represented a strange paradox in a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal. In 1820, six years before his death, Thomas Jefferson wrote these melancholy words:

But the momentous question [slavery], like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. . . . I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away. . . and my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it.

Numerous abolitionists, like Jefferson, were tortured in their hearts by the question of slavery. With keen perception they saw that the immorality of slavery degraded the white master as well as the Negro.

Then came the day when Abraham Lincoln faced squarely this matter of slavery. His torments and vacillations are well known, yet the conclusion of his search is embodied in these words: 'In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honourable alike in what we give and what we preserve.' On this moral foundation Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order that brought an end to chattel slavery. The significance of the Emancipation Proclamation was colorfully described by a great American, Frederick Douglass, in these words:

It recognizes and declares the real nature of the contest and places the North on the side of justice and civilization. Unquestionably the first of January, 1863, is to be the most memorable in American annals. The Fourth of July was great, but the First of January, when we consider it in all its relations and bearings, is incomparably greater. The one had respect to the mere political birth of a nation; the last concerns the national life and character and is to determine whether that life and character shall be radiantly glorious with all high and noble virtues, or infamously blackened forevermore.

The Emancipation Proclamation did not, however, bring full freedom to the Negro, for although he enjoyed certain political and social opportunities during the Reconstruction, the Negro soon discovered that the pharaohs of the South were determined to keep him in slavery. Certainly the Emancipation Proclamation brought him nearer to the Red Sea, but it did not guarantee his passage through parted waters. Racial segregation, backed by a decision of the United States Supreme Court in 1896, was a new form of slavery disguised by certain niceties of complexity. In the great struggle of the last half century between the forces of justice attempting to end the evil system of segregation and the forces of injustice attempting to maintain it, the pharaohs have employed legal maneuvers, economic reprisals, and even physical violence to hold the Negro in the Egypt of segregation. Despite the patient cry of many a Moses, they refused to let the Negro people go.

Today we are witnessing a massive change. A world-shaking decree by the nine justices of the United States Supreme Court opened the Red Sea and the forces of justice are moving to the other side. The Court decreed an end to the old Plessy decision of 1896 and affirmed that separated facilities are inherently unequal and that to segregate a child on the basis of race is to deny the child an equal legal protection. This decision is a great beacon light of hope to millions of disinherited people. Looking back, we see the forces of segregation gradually dying on the seashore. The problem is far from solved, and gigantic mountains of opposition lie ahead, but at least we have left Egypt, and with patient yet firm determination we shall reach the promised land. Evil in the form of injustice and exploitation shall not survive forever. A Red Sea passage in history ultimately brings the forces of goodness to victory, and the closing of the same waters marks the doom and destruction of the forces of evil.

All of this reminds us that evil carries the seed of its own destruction. In the long run right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Historian Charles A. Beard, when asked what major lessons he had learned from history, answered:

First, whom the gods would destroy they must first make mad with power. Second, the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small. Third, the bee fertilizes the flower it robs. Fourth, when it is dark enough you can see the stars.

These are the words not of a preacher but of a hardhearted historian, whose long and painstaking study of history revealed to him that evil has a self-defeating quality. It can go a long way, but then it reaches its limit. There is something in this universe that Greek mythology referred to as the goddess of Nemesis." - Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, Chapter Eight, "The Death of Evil Upon the Seashore"

"Ever since I have grown up, I have never desire to smoke and have always regarded the habit of smoking as barbarous, dirty and harmful. I have never understood why there is such a rage for smoking throughout the world. I cannot bear to travel in a compartment full of people smoking. I become choked. But much more serious than this theft was the one I was guilty of a little later. I pilfered the coppers when I was twelve or thirteen, possibly less. The other theft was committed when I was fifteen. In this case I stole a bit of gold out of my meat-eating brother's armlet. This brother had run into a debt of about twenty-five rupees. He had on his arm an armlet of solid gold. It was not difficult to clip a bit out of it.

Well, it was done, and the debt cleared. But this became more than I could bear. I resolved never to steal again. I also made up my mind to confess it to my father. But I did not dare to speak. Not that I was afraid of my father beating me. No. I do not recall his ever having beaten any of us. I was afraid of the pain that I should cause him. But I felt the risk should be taken; that there could not be a cleansing without a clean confession.

I decided at last to write out the confession, to submit it to my father, and ask his forgiveness. I wrote it on a slip of paper and handed it to him myself. In this note not only did I confess my guilt, but I asked adequate punishment for it, and closed with a request to him not to punish himself for my offence. I also pledged myself never to steal in the future. I was trembling as I handed the confession to my father. He was then suffering from a fistula [abnormal connection of two body cavities or a body cavity and the skin] and was confined to bed. His bed was a plain wooden plank. I handed him the note and sat opposite the plank. He read it through, and pearl drops trickled down his cheeks, wetting the paper. For a moment he closed his eyes in thought and then tore up the note. He had sat up to read it. He again lay down. I also cried. I could see my father's agony. If I were a painter I could draw a picture of the whole scene today. It is still so vivid in my mind.

Those pearl drops of love cleansed my heart, and washed my sin away. Only he who has experienced such love can know what it is. As the hymn says:

Only he, Who is smitten with the arrows of love, Knows its power.

This was, for me, an object-lesson in Ahimsa. Then I could read in it nothing more than a father's love, but today I know that it was pure Ahimsa. When such Ahimsa becomes all-embracing, it transforms everything it touches. There is no limit to its power.

This sort of sublime forgiveness was not natural to my father. I had thought that he would be angry, say hard things, and strike his forehead. But he was so wonderfully peaceful, and I believe this was due to my clean confession. A clean confession, combined with a promise never to commit the sin again, when offered before one who has the right to receive it, is the purest type of repentance. I know that my confession made my father feel absolutely safe about me, and increased his affection for me beyond measure." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part One, Chapter Eight, "Stealing and Atonement"

Gandhi's Thoughts in "Ahimsa"

The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics says that you can have a particle spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time – until you look at it, at which point it definitely becomes one or the other. The theory claims that observing reality fundamentally changes it.

The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster. I don’t subscribe to this school of thought, but it seems pretty popular.

"The intoxication produced by such stimulants as parades, reviews, religious solemnities, and coronations, is, however, an acute and temporary condition; but there are other forms of chronic, permanent intoxication, to which those are liable who have any kind of authority, from that of the Tzar to that of the lowest police officer at the street corner, and also those who are in subjection to authority and in a state of stupefied servility. The latter, like all slaves, always find a justification for their own servility, in ascribing the greatest possible dignity and importance to those they serve. It is principally through this false idea of inequality, and the intoxication of power and of servility resulting from it, that men associated in a state organization are enabled to commit acts opposed to their conscience without the least scruple or remorse.

Under the influence of this intoxication, men imagine themselves no longer simply men as they are, but some special beings — noblemen, merchants, governors, judges, officers, tzars, ministers, or soldiers — no longer bound by ordinary human duties, but by other duties far more weighty — the peculiar duties of a nobleman, merchant, governor, judge, officer, tzar, minister, or soldier. Thus the landowner, who claimed the forest, acted as he did only because he fancied himself not a simple man, having the same rights to life as the peasants living beside him and everyone else, but a great landowner, a member of the nobility, and under the influence of the intoxication of power he felt his dignity offended by the peasants' claims. It was only through this feeling that, without considering the consequences that might follow, he sent in a claim to be reinstated in his pretended rights.

In the same way the judges, who wrongfully adjudged the forest to the proprietor, did so simply because they fancied themselves not simply men like everyone else, and so bound to be guided in everything only by what they consider right, but, under the intoxicating influence of power, imagined themselves the representatives of the justice which cannot err; while under the intoxicating influence of servility they imagined themselves bound to carry out to the letter the instructions inscribed in a certain book, the so-called law. In the same way who take part in such an affair, from the highest representative of authority who signs his assent to the report, from the superintendent presiding at recruiting sessions, and the priest who deludes the recruits, to the lowest soldier who is ready now to fire on his own brothers, imagine, in the intoxication of power or of servility, that they are some conventional characters. They do not face the question that is presented to them, whether or not they ought to take part in what their conscience judges an evil act, but fancy themselves various conventional personages — one as the Tzar, God's anointed, an exceptional being, called to watch over the happiness of one hundred millions of men; another as the representative of nobility; another as a priest, who has received special grace by his ordination; another as a soldier, bound by his military oath to carry out all he is commanded without reflection. Only under the intoxication of the power or the servility of their imagined positions could all these people act as they do. Were not they all firmly convinced that their respective vocations of tzar, minister, governor, judge, nobleman, landowner, superintendent, officer, and soldier are something real and important, not one of them would even think without horror and aversion of taking part in what they do now.

The conventional positions, established hundreds of years, recognized for centuries and by everyone, distinguished by special names and dresses, and, moreover, confirmed by every kind of solemnity, have so penetrated into men's minds through their senses, that, forgetting the ordinary conditions of life common to all, they look at themselves and everyone only from conventional point of view, and are guided in their estimation of their own actions and those of others by this conventional standard.

Thus we see a man of perfect sanity and ripe age, simply because he is decked out with some fringe, or embroidered keys on his coat tails, or a colored ribbon only fit for some gayly dressed girl, and is told that he is a general, a chamberlain, a knight of the order of St. Andrew, or some similar nonsense, suddenly become self-important, proud, and even happy, or, on the contrary, grow melancholy and unhappy to the point of falling ill, because he has failed to obtain the expected decoration or title. Or what is still more striking, a young man, perfectly sane in every other matter, independent and beyond the fear of want, simply because he has been appointed judicial prosecutor or district commander, separates a poor widow from her little children, and shuts her up in prison, leaving her children uncared for, all because the unhappy woman carried on a secret trade in spirits, and so deprived the revenue of twenty-five rubles, and he does not feel the least pang of remorse. Or what is still more amazing; a man, otherwise sensible and good-hearted, simply because he is given a badge or a uniform to wear, and told that he is a guard or customs officer, is ready to fire on people, and neither he nor those around him regard him as to blame for it, but, on the contrary, would regard him as to blame if he did not fire. To say nothing of judges and juries who condemn men to death, and soldiers who kill men by thousands without the slightest scruple merely because it has been instilled into them that they are not simply men, but jurors, judges, generals, and soldiers.

This strange and abnormal condition of men under state organization is usually expressed in the following words: 'As a man, I pity him; but as guard, judge, general, governor, tzar, or soldier, it is my duty to kill or torture him.' Just as though there were some positions conferred and recognized, which would exonerate us from the obligations laid on each of us by the fact of our common humanity." - Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter Twelve: "Conclusion — Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven Is at Hand"

I've wrote this post to discuss if we can infer intelligence from the inside of the machine. I've my own view on the topic, maybe this is something that you folks could enjoy the read.

All feedback is welcome.

When we talk about identifying something there are two interesting ways to do that. The first being with definitions. Where we take a sort of Ideal Form of a thing and go

"If it has 4 wheels, designed to travel at speeds close to 100 miles an hour, has at least 50 horsepower, and can transport at least 2 people then it is a car"

However, these always have a "Diogenes Chicken Threat" in that now someone can strap two electric scooters together and duct tape a jet engine to those and

"Behold! A Car!"

Which is why I think a prototyping understanding of a thing is often better. With the prototyping example we see the more natural way in which humans recognize things. We have a massive brain built for pattern recognition for a reason. So we see a car and we know it's a car. It may be a car that's non functional or maybe it's in a weird context. But we know by some innate thing that it is a car.

Within philosophy, I think we spend a lot of time with the definition approach because it provides something we can do more philosophy with or even the act itself of asking "what is [thing]?" is a core component of philosophy itself.

That said, I think for the type of philosophy that Plato wants to do, it's important to look at something we've prototyped and ask "what is [thing] to me?" Because then we can know our own values in either what we notice or what we find important in our own personal definition, but we're maintaining that this may not be universal. So now we can explore the question of what a thing is with others better.

So with this in mind. I want to explore the question

"What is good?"

This can only be understood in my eyes as an innate feeling. We will look at something and know stereotypically whether or not if it is good.

But the question I want to know is what is the quality good? what does it mean to be good?

And asking this question knowing there is an individual understanding of good for sure and potentially there is a more basic and universal understanding of goodness. Or at the very least there is a actionable definition of good that we can use as a philosophical first principle.

Or maybe there isn't. Maybe good can only be understood as an individual idea and we can share some aspects of it with others. I'm not sure.

So what is good?

"But we must not stop with the cultivation of a tough mind. The gospel also demands a tender heart. Toughmindedness without tenderheartedness is cold and detached, leaving one's life in a perpetual winter devoid of the warmth of spring and the gentle heat of summer. What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of toughmindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hardheartedness?

The hardhearted person never truly loves. He engages in a crass utilitarianism which values other people mainly according to their usefulness to him. He never experiences the beauty of friendship, because he is too cold to feel affection for another and is too self-centered to share another's joy and sorrow. He is an isolated island. No outpouring of love links him with the mainland of humanity. The hardhearted person lacks the capacity for genuine compassion. He is unmoved by the pains and afflictions of his brothers. He passes unfortunate men every day, but he never really sees them. He gives dollars to a worthwhile charity, but he gives not of his spirit. The hardhearted individual never sees people as people, but rather as mere objects or as impersonal cogs in an ever turning wheel. In the vast wheel of industry, he sees men as hands. In the massive wheel of big city life, he sees men as digits in a multitude. In the deadly wheel of army life he sees men as numbers in a regiment. He depersonalizes life.

Jesus frequently illustrated the characteristics of the hardhearted. The rich fool was condemned, not because he was not toughminded, but rather because he was not tenderhearted. Life for him was a mirror in which he saw only himself, and not a window through which he saw other selves. Dives went to hell, not because he was wealthy, but because he was not tenderhearted enough to see Lazarus and because he made no attempt to bridge the gulf between himself and his brother. Jesus reminds us that the good life combines the toughness of the serpent and the tenderness of the dove. To have serpentlike qualities devoid of dovelike qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish. To have dovelike without serpentlike qualities is to be sentimental, anemic, and aimless. We must combine strongly marked antitheses.

We as Negroes must bring together toughmindedness and tenderheartedness, if we are to move creatively toward the goal of freedom and justice. Softminded individuals among us feel that the only way to deal with oppression is by adjusting to it. They acquiesce [accept something reluctantly but without protest] and resign themselves to segregation. They prefer to remain oppressed. When Moses led the children of Israel from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land, he discovered that slaves do not always welcome their deliverers. They would rather bear those ills they have, as Shakespeare pointed out, than flee to others that they know not of. They prefer the 'fleshpots of Egypt' to the ordeals of emancipation. But this is not the way out. Softminded acquiescence is cowardly. My friends, we cannot win the respect of the white people of the South or elsewhere if we are willing to trade the future of our children for our personal safety and comfort. Moreover, we must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.

And there are hardhearted and bitter individuals among us who would combat the opponent with physical violence and corroding hatred. Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems than it solves, never brings permanent peace. I am convinced that if we succumb to the temptation to use violence in our struggle for freedom, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be a never-ending reign of chaos. A Voice, echoing through the corridors of time, says to every intemperate [having or showing a lack of self-control; immoderate] Peter, 'Put up thy sword.' History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations that failed to follow Christ's command.

A third way is open in our quest for freedom, namely, nonviolent resistance, that combines toughmindedness and tenderheartednes and avoids the complacency and do-nothingness of the softminded and the violence and bitterness of the hardhearted. My belief is that this method must guide our action in the present crisis in race relations. Through nonviolent resistance we shall be able to oppose the unjust system and at the same time love the perpetrators of the system. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for full stature as citizens, but may it never be said, my friends, that to gain it we used the inferior methods of falsehood, malice, hate, and violence." - Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, Chapter One, "A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart

• King's "Life at its Best Is a Creative Synthesis of Opposites in Fruitful Harmony"

• King's Thoughts on "Toughmindedness"

I am trying to solidify my understanding of why god is necessarily good in Platonic terms and I think I finally get it, but I would love for a double check if anyone is willing. Here's my shpeel

To the Platonists, our minds are a part of the The One. How this part of the One ended up trapped in a material body is unimportant to the Platonists because they know they cannot know this story only that it must be true (The Timaeus is their "creation story" but it is explicity stated within the Timaeus that it is only a "likely" story). Consider this jump, that our minds are derived from the first principle of the One, as a "leap of faith" (I do think it's a weak connection, but I vibe with the idea.)

So since our minds are just a sectioned off pieces of the great consciousness that is the One, then values that we hold dear must be values that the One holds. We can deduce to some degree that cultivating the mind, practicing moderation, being a just member of society are all good things because they allow us to see, be, and communally create beauty in this world. To the Platonists, goodness is beauty, order, things pleasing to the examined mind.

So the logic goes that I feel some sort of connection to a higher order of thing. I can intelligently imagine things that aren't here and create them. So I must have some sort of connection to the entity that has created this world since I have some similar skill. So assuming there is a god and I have some sort of connection to that god, then that god must share some sort of intelligible first principles with humans.

What do humans value? Beauty, Order, Nature, Creation. These are things that we value so these must be things that god values so these must be good because we find them good. We also value virtues like moderation, learning, justice. These are virtues because they help us grow as individuals and help us strength society.

So, I know God is necessarily good because I am imbued with the values of god. And when those values aren't corrupted by the material world, they only seek to continue to create what is good. It is diverting from the core values of god that cause corruption and thus things we call "evil".

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, less supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels. For context: The Gospel in Brief.

This is a direct continuation of Tolstoy's Thoughts on Truth and Free Will (Part One of Two)

"Every man during his life finds himself in regard to truth in the position of a man walking in the darkness with light thrown before him by the lantern he carries. He does not see what is not yet lighted up by the lantern; he does not see what he has passed which is hidden in the darkness; but at every stage of his journey he sees what is lighted up by the lantern, and he can always choose one side or the other of the road. There are always unseen truths not yet revealed to the man's intellectual vision, and there are other truths outlived, forgotten, and assimilated by him, and there are also certain truths that rise up before the light of his reason and require his recognition. And it is in the recognition or non-recognition of these truths that what we call his freedom is manifested.

All the difficulty and seeming insolubility [impossible to solve] of the question of the freedom of man results from those who tried to solve the question imagining man as stationary in his relation to the truth. Man is certainly not free if we imagine him stationary, and if we forget that the life of a man and of humanity is nothing but a continual movement from darkness into light, from a lower stage of truth to a higher, from a truth more alloyed with errors to a truth more purified from them. Man would not be free if he knew no truth at all, and in the same way he would not be free and would not even have any idea of freedom if the whole truth which was to guide him in life had been revealed once for all to him in all its purity without any admixture of error. But man is not stationary in regard to truth, but every individual man as he passes through life, and humanity as a whole in the same way, is continually learning to know a greater and greater degree of truth, and growing more and more free from error. And therefore men are in a threefold relation to truth. Some truths have been so assimilated by them that they have become the unconscious basis of action, others are only just on the point of being revealed to him, and a third class, though not yet assimilated by him, have been revealed to him with sufficient clearness to force him to decide either to recognize them or to refuse to recognize them. These, then, are the truths which man is free to recognize or to refuse to recognize.

The liberty of man does not consist in the power of acting independently of the progress of life and the influences arising from it, but in the capacity for recognizing and acknowledging the truth revealed to him, and becoming the free and joyful participator in the eternal and infinite work of God, the life of the world; or on the other hand for refusing to recognize the truth, and so being a miserable and reluctant slave dragged whither he has no desire to go. Truth not only points out the way along which human life ought to move, but reveals also the only way along which it can move. And therefore all men must willingly or unwillingly move along the way of truth, some spontaneously accomplishing the task set them in life, others submitting involuntarily to the law of life. Man's freedom lies in the power of this choice.

This freedom within these narrow limits seems so insignificant to men that they do not notice it. Some — the determinists — consider this amount of freedom so trifling that they do not recognize it at all. Others — the champions of complete free will — keep their eyes fixed on their hypothetical free will and neglect this which seemed to them such a trivial degree of freedom. This freedom, confined between the limits of complete ignorance of the truth and a recognition of a part of the truth, seems hardly freedom at all, especially since, whether a man is willing or unwilling to recognize the truth revealed to him, he will be inevitably forced to carry it out in life. A horse harnessed with others to a cart is not free to refrain from moving the cart. If he does not move forward the cart will knock him down and go on dragging him with it, whether he will or not. But the horse is free to drag the cart himself or to be dragged with it. And so it is with man. Whether this is a great or small degree of freedom in comparison with the fantastic liberty we should like to have, it is the only freedom that really exists, and in it consists the only happiness attainable by man. And more than that, this freedom is the sole means of accomplishing the divine work of the life of the world.

According to Christ's doctrine, the man who sees the significance of life in the domain in which it is not free, in the domain of effects, that is, of acts, has not the true life. According to the Christain doctrine, that man is living in the truth who has transported his life to the domain in which it is free — the domain of causes, that is, the knowledge and recognition, the profession and realization in life of revealed truth. Devoting his life to works of the flesh, a man busies himself with actions depending on temporary causes outside himself. He himself does nothing really, he merely seems to be doing something. In reality all the acts which seem to be his are the work of a higher power, and he is not the creator of his own life, but the slave of it. Devoting his life to the recognition and fulfillment of the truth revealed to him, he identifies himself with the source of universal life and accomplishes acts not personal, and dependent on conditions of space and time, but acts unconditioned by previous causes, acts which constitute the causes of everything else, and have an infinite, unlimited significance. 'The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.' (Matt. xi. 12.) It is this violent effort to rise above external conditions to the recognition and realization of truth by which the kingdom of heaven is taken, and it is this effort of violence which must and can be made in our times.

Men need only understand this, they need only cease to trouble themselves about the general external conditions in which they are not free, and devote one-hundredth part of the energy they waste on those material things to that in which they are free, to the recognition and realization of the truth which is before them, and to the liberation of themselves and others from deception and hypocrisy, and, without effort or conflict, there would be an end at once of the false organization of life which makes men miserable, and threatens them with worse calamities in the future. And then the kingdom of God would be realized, or at least that first stage of it for which men are ready now by the degree of development of their conscience. Just as a single shock may be sufficient, when a liquid is saturated with some salt, to precipitate it at once in crystals, a slight effort may be perhaps all that is needed now that the truth already revealed to men may gain a mastery over hundreds, thousands, millions of men, that a public opinion consistent with conscience may be established, and through this change of public opinion the whole order of life may be transformed. And it depends upon us to make this effort.

Let each of us only try to understand and accept the Christian truth which in the most varied forms surrounds us on all sides and forces itself upon us; let us only cease from lying and pretending that we do not see this truth or wish to realize it, at least in what it demands from us above all else; only let us accept and boldly profess the truth to which we are called, and we should find at once that hundreds, thousands, millions of men are in the same position as we, that they see the truth as we do, and dread as we do to stand alone in recognizing it, and like us are only waiting for others to recognize it also. Only let men cease to be hypocrites [actors], and they would at once see that this cruel social organization, which holds them in bondage, and is represented to them as something stable, necessary, and ordained of God, is already tottering and is only propped up by the falsehood of hypocrisy, with which we, and others like us, support it. But if this is so, if it is true that it depends on us to break down the existing organization of life, have we the right to destroy it, without knowing clearly what we shall set up in its place? What will become of human society when the existing order of things is at an end?

'What shall we find the other side of the walls of the world we are abandoning? 'Fear will come upon us — a void, a vast emptiness, freedom — how are we to go forward not knowing whither, how face loss, not seeing hope of gain?..... If Columbus had reasoned thus he would never have weighed anchor. It was madness to set off upon the ocean, not knowing the route, on the ocean on which no one had sailed, to sail toward a land whose existence was doubtful. By this madness he discovered a new world. Doubtless if the peoples of the world could simply transfer themselves from one furnished mansion to another and better one — it would make it much easier; but unluckily there is no one to get humanity's new dwelling ready for it. The future is even worse than the ocean — there is nothing there — it will be what men and circumstances make it." - Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter Twelve: "Conclusion — Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven Is at Hand"

"The first thing we had to settle was the name of the Ashram. I consulted friends. Amongst the names suggested were 'Sevashram' (the abode of service), 'Tapovan' (the abode of austerities), etc. I liked the name 'Sevashram' but for the absence of emphasis on the methods of service. 'Tapovan' seemed to be a pretentious title, because though tapas was dear to us we could not presume to be tapasvins (men of austerity). Our creed was devotion to truth, and our business was the search for and insistence on truth. I wanted to acquaint India with the method I had tried in South Africa, and I desired to test in India the extent to which its application might be possible. So my companions and I selected the name 'Satyagraha Ashram', as conveying both our goal and our method of service.

For the conduct of the Ashram a code of rules and observances was necessary. A draft was therefore prepared, and friends were invited to express their opinions on it. Amongst the many opinions that were received, that of Sir Gurudas Banerji is still in my memory. He liked the rules, but suggested that humility should be added as one of the observances, as he believed that the younger generation sadly lacked humility. Though I noticed this fault, I feared humility would cease to be humility the moment it became a matter of vow. The true connotation of humility is self-effacement [the quality of not claiming attention for oneself]. Self-effacement is moksha (salvation), and whilst it cannot, by itself, be an observance, there may be other observances necessary for its attainment. If the acts of an aspirant after moksha or a servant have no humility or selflessness about them, there is no longing for moksha or service. Service without humility is selfishness and egotism.

There were at this time about thirteen Tamilians in our party. Five Tamil youngsters had accompanied me from South Africa, and the rest came from different parts of the country. We were in all about twenty-five men and women. This is how the Ashram was started. All had their meals in a common kitchen and strove to live as one family." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part Five, Chapter Nine, "Founding of the Ashram"

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, less supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels. For context: The Gospel in Brief.

"Every man of the present day with the Christian principles assimilated involuntarily in his conscience, finds himself in precisely the position of a man asleep who dreams that he is obliged to do something which even in his dream he knows he ought not to do. He knows this in the depths of his conscience, and all the same he seems unable to change his position; he cannot stop and cease doing what he ought not to do. And just as in a dream, his position becoming more and more painful, at last reaches such a pitch of intensity that he begins sometimes to doubt the reality of what is passing and makes a moral effort to shake off the nightmare which is oppressing him. This is just the condition of the average man of our Christian society. He feels that all that he does himself and that is done around him is something absurd, hideous, impossible, and opposed to his conscience; he feels that his position is becoming more and more unendurable and reaching a crisis of intensity.

It is not possible that we modern men, with the Christian sense of human dignity and equality permeating us soul and body, with our need for peaceful association and unity between nations, should really go on living in such a way that every joy, every gratification we have is bought by the sufferings, by the lives of our brother men, and moreover, that we should be every instant within a hair's-breadth of falling on one another, nation against nation, like wild beasts, mercilessly destroying men's lives and labor, only because some benighted [in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance, typically owing to a lack of opportunity] diplomatist or ruler says or writes some stupidity to another equally benighted diplomatist or ruler. It is impossible. Yet every man of our day sees that this is so and awaits the calamity. And the situation becomes more and more insupportable.

And as the man who is dreaming does not believe that what appears to him can be truly the reality and tries to wake up to the actual real world again, so the average man of modern days cannot in the bottom of his heart believe that the awful position in which he is placed and which is growing worse and worse can be the reality, and tries to wake up to a true, real life, as it exists in his conscience. And just as the dreamer need only make a moral effort and ask himself, 'Isn't it a dream?' and the situation which seemed to him so hopeless will instantly disappear, and he will wake up to peaceful and happy reality, so the man of the modern world need only make a moral effort to doubt the reality presented to him by his own hypocrisy and the general hypocrisy around him, and to ask himself, 'Isn't it all a delusion?' and he will at once, like the dreamer awakened, feel himself transported from an imaginary and dreadful world to the true, calm, and happy reality. And to do this a man need accomplish no great feats or exploits. He need only make a moral effort. But can a man make this effort?

According to the existing theory so essential to support hypocrisy, man is not free and cannot change his life. 'Man cannot change his life, because he is not free. He is not free, because all his actions are conditioned by previously existing causes. And whatever the man may do there are always some causes or other through which he does these or those acts, and therefore man cannot be free and change his life,' say the champions of the metaphysics of hypocrisy. And they would be perfectly right if man were a creature without conscience and incapable of moving toward the truth; that is to say, if after recognizing a new truth, man always remained at the same stage of moral development. But man is a creature with a conscience and capable of attaining a higher and higher degree of truth. And therefore even if man is not free as regards performing these or those acts because there exists a previous cause for every act, the very causes of his acts, consisting as they do for the man of conscience of the recognition of this or that truth, are within his own control.

So that though man may not be free as regards the performance of his actions, he is free as regards the foundation on which they are preformed. Just as the mechanician who is not free to modify the movement of his locomotive when it is in motion, is free to regulate the machine beforehand so as to determine what the movement is to be. Whatever the conscious man does, he acts just as he does, and not otherwise, only because he recognizes that to act as he is acting is in accord with the truth, or because he has recognized it at some previous time, and is now only through inertia, through habit, acting in accordance with his previous recognition of truth. In any case, the cause of his action is not to be found in any given previous fact, but in the consciousness of a given relation to truth, and the consequent recognition of this or that fact as a sufficient basis for action. Whether a man eats or does not eat, works or rests, runs risks or avoids them, if he has a conscience he acts thus only because he considers it right and rational, because he considers that to act thus is in harmony with truth, or else because he has made this reflection in the past.

The recognition or non-recognition of a certain truth depends not on external causes, but on certain other causes within the man himself. So that at times under external conditions apparently very favorable for the recognition of truth, one man will not recognize it, and another, on the contrary, under the most unfavorable conditions will, without apparent cause, recognize it. As it is said in the Gospel, 'No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.' That is to say, the recognition of truth, which is the cause of all the manifestations of human life, does not depend on external phenomena, but on certain inner spiritual characteristics of the man which escape our observation. And therefore man, though not free in his acts, always feels himself free in what is the motive of his acts — the recognition or non-recognition of truth. And he feels himself independent not only of facts external to his own personality, but even of his own actions.

Thus a man who under the influence of passion has committed an act contrary to the truth he recognizes, remains none the less free to recognize it or not to recognize it; that is, he can by refusing to recognize the truth regard his action as necessary and justifiable, or he may recognize the truth and regard his act as wrong and censure himself for it. Thus a gambler or a drunkard who does not resist temptation and yields to his passion is still free to recognize gambling and drunkenness as wrong or to regard them as a harmless pastime. In the first case even if he does not at once get over his passion, he gets the more free from it the more sincerely he recognizes the truth about it; in the second case he will be strengthened in his vice and will deprive himself of every possibility of shaking it off.

In the same way a man who has made his escape alone from a house on fire, not having had the courage to save his friend, remains free, recognizing the truth that a man ought to save the life of another even at the risk of his own, to regard his action as bad and to censure himself for it, or, not recognizing this truth, to regard his action as natural and necessary and to justify it to himself. In the first case, if he recognizes the truth in spite of his departure from it, he prepares for himself in the future a whole series of acts of self-sacrifice necessarily flowing from this recognition of the truth; in the second case, a whole series of egoistic acts.

Not that a man is always free to recognize or to refuse to recognize every truth. There are truths which he has recognized long before or which have been handed down to him by education and tradition and accepted by him on faith, and to follow these truths has become a habit, a second nature with him; and there are truths, only vaguely, as it were distantly, apprehended by him. The man is not free to refuse to recognize the first, nor to recognize the second class of truths. But there are truths of a third kind, which have not yet become an unconscious motive of action, but yet have been revealed so clearly to him that he cannot pass them by, and is inevitably obliged to do one thing or the other, to recognize or not to recognize them. And it is in regard to these truths that the man's freedom manifests itself." - Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter Twelve: "Conclusion — Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven Is at Hand"

"Let us consider, first, the need for a tough mind, characterized by incisive thinking, realistic appraisal, and decisive judgment. The tough mind is sharp and penetrating, breaking through the crust of legends and myths and sifting the true from the false. The toughminded individual is astute and discerning. He has a strong, austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment.

Who doubts that this toughness of mind is one of man's greatest needs? Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think. This prevalent tendency toward softmindedness is found in man's unbelievable gullibility. Take our attitude toward advertisements. We are so easily led to purchase a product because a television or radio advertisement pronounces it better than any other. Advertisers have long since learned that most people are softminded, and they capitalize on this susceptibility with skillful and effective slogans.

This undue gullibility is also seen in the tendency of many readers to accept the printed word of the press as final truth. Few people realize that even our authentic channels of information — the press, the platform, and in many instances the pulpit — do not give us objective and unbiased truth. Few people have the toughness of mind to judge critically and to discern the true from the false, the fact from the fiction. Our minds are constantly being invaded by legions of half-truths, prejudices, and false facts. One of the great needs of mankind is to be lifted above the morass of false propaganda.

Softminded individuals are prone to embrace all kinds of superstitions. Their minds are constantly invaded by irrational fears, which range from fear of Friday the thirteenth to fear of a black cat crossing one's path. As the elevator made its upward climb in one of the large hotels of New York City, I noticed for the first time that there was no thirteenth floor — floor fourteen followed floor twelve. On inquiring from the elevator operator the reason for this omission, he said, 'This practice is followed by most large hotels because of the fear of numerous people to stay on a thirteenth floor.' Then he added, 'The real foolishness of the fear is to be found in the fact that the fourteenth floor is actually the thirteenth.' Such fears leave the soft mind haggard by day and haunted by night.

The softminded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea. An elderly segregationist in the South is reported to have said, 'I have come to see now that desegregation is inevitable. But I pray God that it will not take place until after I die.' The softminded person always wants to freeze the moment and hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness.

Softmindedness often invades religion. This is why religion has sometimes rejected new truth with a dogmatic passion. Through edicts and bulls, inquisitions and excommunications, the church has attempted to prorogue truth and place an impenetrable stone wall in the path of the truth-seeker. The historical-philological criticism of the Bible is considered by the softminded as blasphemous, and reason is often looked upon as the exercise of a corrupt faculty. Softminded persons have revised the Beatitudes to read, 'Blessed [happy] are the pure in ignorance: for they shall see God.' This has also led to a widespread belief that there is a conflict between science and religion. But this is not true. There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion. Their respective worlds are different and their methods are dissimilar. Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.

We do not need to look far to detect the dangers of softmindedness. Dictators, capitalizing on softmindedness, have led men to acts of barbarity and terror that are unthinkable in civilized society. Adolf Hitler realized that softmindedness was so prevalent among his followers that he said, 'I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few." In Mein Kampf he asserted: 'By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell — and hell, heaven. . . . The greater the lie, the more readily will it be believed.'

Softmindedness is one of the basic causes of race prejudice. The toughminded person always examines the facts before he reaches conclusions; in short, he postjudges. The tenderminded person reaches a conclusion before he has examined the first fact; in short, he prejudges and is prejudiced. Race prejudice is based on groundless fears, suspicions, and misunderstandings. There are those who are sufficiently softminded to believe in the superiority of the white race and the inferiority of the Negro race in spite of the toughminded research of anthropologists who reveal the falsity of such a notion. There are softminded persons who argue that racial segregation should be perpetuated because Negroes lag behind in academic, health, and moral standards. They are not toughminded enough to realize that lagging standards are the result of segregation and discrimination. They do not recognize that it is rationally unsound and sociologically untenable to use the tragic effects of segregation as an argument for its continuation. Too many politicians in the South recognize this disease of softmindedness which engulfs their constituency. With insidious zeal, they make inflammatory statements and disseminate distortions and half-truths which arouse abnormal fears and morbid antipathies within the minds of uneducated and underprivileged whites leaving them so confused that they are led to acts of meanness and violence which no normal person commits.

There is little hope for us until we become toughminded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance. The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of softmindedness. A nation or a civilization that continues to produce softminded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan." - Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, Chapter One, "A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart

When Tolstoy speaks of Christianity, he's referring to his more objective, philosophical, less supernatural interpretation of his translation of the Gospels: The Gospel in Brief. For context: https://lemmy.world/post/42151959

"They say that the Christian life cannot be established without the use of violence, because there are savage races outside the pale of Christian societies in Africa and in Asia (there are some who even represent the Chinese as a danger to civilization), and that in the midst of Christian societies there are savage, corrupt, and, according to the new theory of heredity, congenital [(of a disease or physical abnormality) present from birth] criminals. And violence, they say, is necessary to keep savages and criminals from annihilating our civilization. But these savages within and without Christian society, who are such a terror to us, have never been subjugated [bring under domination or control, especially by conquest] by violence, and are not subjugated by it now. Nations have never subjugated other nations by violence alone. If a nation which subjugated another was on a lower level of civilization, it has never happened that it succeeded in introducing its organization of life by violence. On the contrary, it was always forced to adopt the organization of life existing in the conquered nation. If ever any of the nations conquered by force have been really subjugated, or even nearly so, it has always been by the action of public opinion, and never by violence, which only tends to drive a people to further rebellion.

When whole nations have been subjugated by a new religion, and have become Christian or Mohammedan, such a conversion has never been brought about because the authorities made it obligatory (on the contrary, violence has more often acted in the opposite direction), but because public opinion made such a change inevitable. Nations, on the contrary, who have been driven by force to accept the faith of their conquerors have always remained antagonistic to it. It is just the same with the savage elements existing in the midst of our civilized societies. Neither the increased nor the diminished severity of punishment, nor the modifications of prisons, nor the increase of police will increase or diminish the number of criminals. Their number will only be diminished by the change of the moral standard of society. No severities could put an end to duels and vendettas in certain districts. In spite of the number of Tcherkessess executed for robbery, they continue to be robbers from their youth up, for no maiden will marry a Tcherkess youth till he has given proof of his bravery by carrying off a horse, or at least a sheep. If men cease to fight duels, and the Tcherkessess cease to be robbers, it will not be from fear of punishment (indeed, that invests the crime with additional charm for youth), but through a change in the moral standard of public opinion. It is the same with all other crimes. Force can never suppress what is sanctioned by public opinion. On the contrary, public opinion need only be in direct opposition to force to neutralize the whole effect of the use of force. It has always been so and always will be in every case of martyrdom.

What would happen if force were not used against hostile nations and the criminal elements of society we do not know? But we do know by prolonged experience that neither enemies nor criminals have been successfully suppressed by force. And indeed how could nations be subjugated by violence who are led by their whole education, their traditions, and even their religion to see the loftiest virtue in warring with their oppressors and fighting for freedom? And how are we to suppress by force acts committed in the midst of our society which are regarded as crimes by the government and as daring exploits by the people? To exterminate such nations and such criminals by violence is possible, and indeed is done, but to subdue them is impossible.

The sole guide which directs men and nations has always been and is the unseen, intangible, underlying force, the resultant of all the spiritual forces of a certain people, or of all humanity, which finds its outward expression in public opinion. The use of violence only weakens this force, hinders it and corrupts it, and tries to replace it by another which, far from being conducive to the progress of humanity, is detrimental to it.

To bring under the sway of Christianity all the savage nations outside the pale of the Christian world — all the Zulus, Mandchoos, and Chinese, whom many regard as savages — and the savages who live in our midst, there is only one means. That means is the propagation among these nations of the Christian ideal of society, which can only be realized by a Christian life, Christian actions, and Christian examples. And meanwhile, though this is the one only means of gaining a hold over the people who have remained non-Christian, the men of our day set to work in the directly opposite fashion to attain this result.

To bring under the sway of Christianity savage nations who do not attack us and whom we have therefore no excuse for oppressing, we ought before all things to leave them in peace, and in case we need or wish to enter into closer relations with them, we ought only to influence them by Christian manners and Christian teaching, setting them the example of the Christian virtues of patience, meekness, endurance, purity, brotherhood, and love. Instead of that we begin by establishing among them new markets for our commerce, with the sole aim of our own profit; then we appropriate their lands, i. e., rob them; then we sell them spirits, tobacco, and opium, i. e., corrupt them; then we establish our morals among them, teach them the use of violence and new methods of destruction, i. e., we teach them nothing but the animal law of strife, below which man cannot sink, and we do all we can to conceal from them all that is Christian in us. After this we send some dozens of missionaries prating [talk foolishly or at tedious length about something] to them of the hypocritical absurdities of the Church, and then quote the failure of our efforts to turn the heathen to Christianity as an incontrovertible proof of the impossibility of applying the truths of Christianity in practical life.

It is just the same with the so-called criminals living in our midst. To bring these people under the sway of Christianity there is one only means, that is, the Christian social ideal, which can only be realized among them by true Christian teaching and supported by a true example of the Christian life. And to preach this Christian truth and to support it by Christian example we set up among them prisons, guillotines, gallows, preparations for murder; we diffuse [spread or cause to spread over a wide area or among a large number of people] among the common herd idolatrous superstitions to stupify them; we sell them spirits, tobacco, and opium to brutalize them; we even organize legalized prostitution; we give land to those who do not need it; we make a display of senseless luxury in the midst of suffering poverty; we destroy the possibility of anything like a Christian public opinion, and studiously try to suppress what Christian public opinion is existing. And then, after having ourselves assiduously [showing great care and perseverance] corrupted men, we shut them up like wild beasts in places from which they cannot escape, and where they become still more brutalized, or else we kill them. And these very men whom we have corrupted and brutalized by every means, we bring forward as a proof that one cannot deal with criminals except by brute force.

We are just like ignorant doctors who put a man, recovering from illness by the force of nature, into the most unfavorable conditions of hygiene, and dose him with the most deleterious drugs, and then assert triumphantly that their hygiene and their drugs saved his life, when the patient would have been well long before if they had left him alone. Violence, which is held up as the means of supporting the Christian organization of life, not only fails to produce that effect, it even hinders the social organization of life from being what it might and ought to be. The social organization is as good as it is not as a result of force, but in spite of it. And therefore the champions of the existing order are mistaken in arguing that since, even with the aid of force, the bad and non-Christian elements of humanity can hardly be kept from attacking us, the abolition of the use of force and the substitution of public opinion for it would leave humanity quite unprotected.

They are mistaken, because force does not protect humanity, but, on the contrary, deprives it of the only possible means of really protecting itself, that is, the establishment and diffusion of a Christian public opinion. Only by the suppression of violence will a Christian public opinion cease to be corrupted, and be enabled to be diffused without hinderance, and men will then turn their efforts in the spiritual direction by which alone they can advance." - Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter Ten: "Evil Cannot Be Suppressed By the Physical Force of the Government — the Moral Progress of Humanity Is Brought About Not Only By Individual Recognition of Truth, But Also Through the Establishment of a Public Opinion"

This isn't perfect philosophy post. This is closer to an exploration on the topic of governance. I think the philosophical minds of this community could contribute with the discussion.

Thanks in advance.