Network Behavior and Christian Ethics

In designing software for computer networks, the Robustness Principle states 

"Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept"

The first half of the Robustness Principle ensures that the program doesn't pollute the network with malformed output, and the second half ensures high uptime. When this code of conduct becomes the dominant design among individual agents, the network as a whole functions smoothly and fulfills its purpose.

Humans society is also a communication network of sorts, where moral norms govern the principles of interaction. The dominant moral code of the modern world is Secular Humanism, a non-theistic descendant of Christianity. It inherits some ideas from its Christian forebears in an attenuated form, especially Human Rights and care for victims.

We take for granted that it is good to help the destitute, or that each human has a moral worth no matter how poor, foreign, or disfigured they are. But these concepts weren't present in the Roman world prior to the rise of Christianity. As 1,700 years of Christian dominance is coming to an end, it's hard for us to comprehend that people once lived in a completely different moral universe.

Comparing Secular Humanism to Christianity, we see that the former is new, rational, and small while Christianity is old, surprising, and syncretic. It is like the difference between a Christmas tree farm and an old-growth pine forest, or a fresh moonshine and an old scotch.

The distillation process that gave birth to Secular Humanism was a rational philosophical movement away from religion, known as the Enlightenment. Many of the moral goals of Christianity made it through the filter of rational analysis, while its ethical principles of conduct did not fare so well and were largely discarded.

This is a terrible loss. Morality (what is good) without ethics (how to act) can and will be abused to bully other humans in the pursuit of status, power, and other scarce resources. We see this dramatically illustrated by the world of social media. Everybody claims to be a good person, at the same time that "cancelling" members of rival factions is a popular pastime. Appeal to genuine moral good becomes a cynical move in vicious competitions among people to dominate and destroy each other.

The lost ethical codes of Christianity can be seen as fences that create and maintain a positive-sum moral commons. They constrain the behavior of each individual to produce more benefit than cost for the community. The result is a community that functions better for everyone. These principles include:

• Anti-Pharaseeism. Prohibition against public displays of piety and virtue (Matt 6:1-8, Matt ch. 23)
• Non-retaliation (Matt 5:38-48)
• Forgiveness (Matt 18:21-22, Luke 15:11-32)
• Self-criticism, rather than criticizing others (Matt 7:3-5)
• Prohibition on envy (Ex. 20:17)
• Avoidance of mind-states and speech that lead to violence, especially anger and lust (Matt 5:21-30)
• Humility (Luke 14:7-11)
• Distrust for mob justice (the Crucifixion)

The underlying principle of Christian ethics can be summarized to something like a Robustness Principle for human networks: be generous in the behavior you accept from others, and conservative in the behavior you impose on others. Elsewhere in the scriptures, there is justification for authority figures to get rid of truly bad actors who repeatedly violate these principles in order to maintain a high quality of conduct within the Church.

The writers of the New Testament are much more aware than we are today of how groups of people with good intentions can go down dark paths. Its ethical norms constrain us from sharpening moral goods into weapons to use against our fellow humans.

What would a networked world look like with a revival of Christian Ethics? I don't know. But it would likely be better than what we have. The norm of forgiveness alone would put a big dent in the worst excesses of cancel culture and other moral panics.

But there is an implementation problem with Christian ethics. If most people follow Christian ethics, it leads to a peaceful, gentle world. But if a small group of people do, they will tend to lose out to people that are more ruthless.

The ancient Christians bootstrapped their moral order into being with a transcendent ideal. They believed that they would win by losing, since the scales of justice would be balanced in the afterlife. It's hard to get a group of people to defy immediate self-interest without such a belief. Observers witnessed their sincerity through the ultimate demonstration of skin-in-the-game: martyrdom.

Today, Christians and people who want to live by Christian Ethics may lose social media battles if they refuse to adopt effective tactics that betray their principles. But it is not so grim for us as it was for the early church. For one thing, the penalties are not nearly so severe. And the digital world is fluid and offers social possibilities that the Roman Empire did not. Christians can fork their own private social networks where the majority of those who opt-in abide by the Christian code.

Over time, if these forums become known for high-quality discourse, outsiders may see them as a refreshing oasis amidst a world of danger and noise. Christ never cancels people. This could lead to a revival of Christian norms, or at least a powerful witness.

On the nature of forgiveness

Forgiveness is not an emotion or a single action. It is rather a change in your ontological* orientation towards the forgiven person, removing them from the category of "enemy". Like love, forgiveness is a lifelong commitment. When you forgive someone you commit to carrying the burden of treating them as if the wrongs they have done you are wiped away.

You can forgive someone and still feel angry or hurt. Forgiveness doesn't depend on our feelings. We do not control our feelings but we always have freedom to forgive. What is required of us by forgiveness is that we do not allow ourselves to be motivated by the negative emotions we feel towards the person who has wronged us. And while we can't make our emotional pain disappear, we can try not to dwell on it.

Forgiveness is an asceticism. Like fasting or abstinence, forgiveness requires the repeated renunciation of desire. The impulse to lash out or complain about the person may arise 10,000 times, and 10,000 times you let it go.

Forgiveness is also a lot like "agape" love. It is not just an emotion or a simple action. You can love someone through having a wide array of emotions towards them. No one action fulfills the duty of love. Rather, love is a change in your ontological orientation towards someone, seeing their being as part of yours, and committing that you will act for their benefit as if it were your own.

Forgiveness is the sibling of love.

I had a hard time forgiving a person because I couldn't stop feeling hurt and angry. I wanted to forgive them but for a long time I couldn't figure out how to do it. Driving my car home today, these thoughts came to me, and I realize that now I can. Hurt and anger may still linger. But the choice to change my orientation towards the person to a forgiven one is entirely within my control.

I felt freedom when I had these thoughts. I laughed out loud in my apartment, astonished that the Nativity Fast had taught me the key to forgiveness of all things.



* I debated using a five-dollar word where a nickel would do. What do I mean by "change in ontological orientation"? An ontology is the map of concepts that one uses to make sense of the world. When someone has a change in ontological status to your eyes, you see them as a different sort of being. It is a kind of revelation. One example is the marriage sacrament in the Orthodox Church. In the sacrament "the two become one flesh" in the eyes of the church, the eyes of the couple, and in the eyes of God. That's a change in ontological status (2 singles, to 1 married couple).

Here I use the word "ontological" to imply the same kind of realness to the conceptual shift.

Building a Better Anti-Capitalism

In my first political awakening, I became an ardent pro-capitalist libertarian. There were some anti-capitalists to debate around my university and on the internet, but the average quality of their arguments were so poor that engaging with these folks deepened my convictions instead of challenging them.

But over the years I have seen first hand some of the failures of capitalism. Burning Man and its ethos of public contribution was a major turning point in my attitude towards capitalism, illustrating the great good that can be created outside of formal exchange relationships. Now I see that there are plenty of circumstances where free markets fail to create an optimal outcome, either by failing to properly incentivize things that we value, or by failing to disincentivize bad behavior. Market capitalism alone is not a complete recipe for growing a good society.

Today the world still suffers from low quality anti-capitalists. To protest capitalism, they break shop windows, burn cars, block streets, and fight with the police. This makes little sense. Plentiful shops and safe, convenient vehicles are some of the good parts of capitalism. And the streets and police are non-capitalist institutions that may be imperfect, but also provide vital services for society. I bet that neutral observers are turned off.

It's because I take the failings of capitalism seriously that I'd like to offer a better playbook for protesting capitalism. Each of the following opportunities for direct action addresses a failing of capitalism while making the world a better place

1. Love thy neighbors. Invite them over for dinner and don't charge
2. Volunteer to pick up trash in your neighborhood for half an hour
3. Volunteer at a Boys and Girls club or old folks home
4. Learn how to make something that you would normally buy. Knit a sweater, grow some vegetables
5. Produce a piece of public art that will delight people, amaze them, or make them think. Put it in your front yard or window
6. Host an adult sleep-over. Talk, play games, and read stories 
7. Perform a piece of music in a public space. Go caroling at Christmas time, or if you're not Christian, offer songs for the holy days of your tradition
8. If it's your thing, become part of a church
9. Sit at a table in a public place with a sign inviting people to play chess with you or converse with you
10. Share knowledge. Offer a free class in yoga, art, juggling, or something else you know how to do at your home for your friends and neighbors. For bonus points, make it a regular event

In a market-driven society, life can be cold. It seems like every option to enjoy oneself costs money. Every smile is a customer service. These practices take back a portion of life's activities and relationships from the marketplace. 

In many American cities, there is little public space where a person can simply be without paying money. For a certain sum, you can buy a temporary right to exist in a theatre, restaurant or yoga class, but when your time is up you gotta get going, buddy. For every hour you spend away from home there is an invisible meter following you, running up a tab. In some small towns, I hear people repurpose Walmart as their public square, sitting and chatting with friends in the furniture aisle, or strolling through the store on a late-night date. Walmart is the closest approximation to the missing commons. 

I suggest we protest capitalism by providing what the market doesn't. Create social connections that are based on mutual enjoyment instead of formalized exchange. And create space and time for people to simply exist without a running meter.

Do you have any ideas for how to better protest capitalism? Leave a comment.

"Too Far"

A common obstacle in personal growth work is the fear of going too far.

For example, I recently attended a retreat to learn how to be more open to connection with other human beings. I had an impulse to hold back. I thought, what if I’m 100% open to everybody? I live in a crowded city full of human suffering. My life would become unlivable if I stopped to take in the humanity of each person that I passed. I would have to become like Jesus or something.

I see the same type of worry about “going all the way” among the participants in a workshop I teach based on the book Radical Honesty. Wouldn’t it be hard to live 100% honest all the time?

As we stretch into new ways of being, the fear of going too far is mostly unfounded. Naturally, I’m about 5% open. Most people are probably ~10% honest (I’m just a little bit more, and I practice it). The chances are tiny that any person will achieve 100% openness or honesty even for a second.

The purpose of personal growth activities is to give ourselves more options for how we relate to the world - more tools in the tool kit. It takes purposeful effort to hold ourselves in the new practice for the hours or days that a workshop lasts. At the end, we naturally return to our old ways of being. Our default patterns of behavior have momentum.

If all goes well, your growth process will look something like this:

So don’t sabotage your learning by holding back. Commit to the practice for a set period of time and play hard. Commitment is an important meta-skill in personal growth.

At the retreat I attended, commitment worked well for me. I went into it knowing that I had some philosophical differences with the leader. But rather than spend the week in philosophical debate I made a commitment to fully engage with the teachings. I’d try it on and see what was good about it.

I caught myself in a cynical mindset holding back from the practice about once every two days. But my commitment to fully engage helped me become mindful of my internal state and dive back into the practice.

The result was that I achieved a new state of openness and empathy that feels good to inhabit. I'm a low-empathy, "tough", independent male who has been shaped that way by circumstances. Practicing empathy is good for me - it corrects my natural imbalances. Having the memory of this new empathic state, I have the option of choosing more empathy in other parts of my life. And I’m still comfortably far from Jesus levels of empathy.

The Fog of Confusion

I live in a fog of confusion. I don’t know, I can’t know, everything about a topic before I speak. And yet I speak anyway. I find that expressing my viewpoint brings me into contact with the viewpoints most important for me to hear.

In order to speak, I must at some point accept my imperfection, accept ignorance, accept certain shame that I was not more diligent before speaking. This is the fastest way for me to learn what I do not know.

In the programming world, there is a saying “RTFM”: “Read the Fucking Manual”. It means that you should do your own research and attempt to answer your own questions before asking others.

But in life wisdom, in politics, in society, what is the manual? It is impossible to RTFM. Let us be ignorant together and have compassion for each others’ ignorance.

A declaration concerning my relationship to human society

I claim the right to be here. I claim the right to participate fully.

I claim these rights by my common humanity. I claim them by the blood of my ancestors, which flowed to America through Europe, and before that through Africa, the birthplace of humanity, and which ultimately originated in the oceans, the womb of the Earth.

It is my duty to be fully me for the good of all beings. It is my duty to dare, to hold nothing back, and to accept the pain of my personal evolution.

From time to time, other people will object to my activity on the basis that it hurts them. I am sorry for their suffering. I am sorry for a world where growth is neither isolated nor painless, and where only collective evolution is possible. I pledge that I will spread more growth and less hurt as my consciousness rises and I become aware of more opportunities to do so.

But despite the costs, I cannot pull back or pretend to be less than I am. For it is my mission to be the blessing to the world that I was born to be. In my fullness and yours, I promise you, we will all rejoice.

Amen.

Optimize for Meaning

The world offers many simple formulas for leading a good life - from the ever popular commencement speech advice "do what makes you happy" to the hippie/Disney incantation that "it's all about love". But no simple formula can capture all the nuance that makes up a good life. Behind the scenes the successful followers of these formulas cheat at the edges, making exceptions in difficult circumstances. It's not clear how a philosophy about the primacy of happiness or love offers guidance in hard times when a person must sacrifice short term well-being for long term gain.

Bending a slogan through enough curlicues of argumentation can apply it to all cases. But if any principle can be universalized with enough argumentation, then none stands out. Each serves as a reasonable map for people lacking any life direction but grows hazy in the details.

Undaunted by the failure of simple life philosophies, I recently made an attempt to fashion my own. Perhaps it is no more useful than the others. But it is mine, so I am allowed to adore it. It is:

Optimize for meaning

It is vague (what is meaning?), but I hope that its very vagueness helps it bridge the distance between the clean world of ideas and the messy world of existence. It seems a better description of the method of obtaining the Good Life than optimizing for happiness, or power, or global average utility.

My philosophy is derived through introspection. I perceive my life to be better when I create and participate in meaningful events. I am also heartened by the fact that it doesn't seem to be obviously unrealistic. A meaningful life still has all the facets of life we are used to - boredom, frustration, you name it. It is not utopia. The only thing it seems to lack is the burden of meaninglessness.

As a advocate of meaning, I'm faced with the question: how is meaning created? I recognize that my life today is far more meaningful than when I was a bored teenager growing up in rural suburbs. How did that change happen? I have no general philosophy of meaning, but I have discovered a few ways that it comes into existence.

The effort of creation - If you are so brusque as to ask a young artist why they bothered to hang one of their own paintings when they could buy better ones at the store, they will answer "because it is mine". It is the same reason why parents love their children, even if their children are not the best children in the world. Effort creates meaning.

A strategy for creating meaningful living environments is to surround yourself with physical artifacts created by you and your loved ones.

The esteem of the esteemed -  Meaning is found in the things loved by the ones we love. The favorite song of a friend can create a strong emotional response even if you don't otherwise like it. It feels important (which may be a synonym for meaningful) in a way which other songs do not.

Time - On my birthday I gave my girlfriend and I matching necklaces featuring black onyx pendants. We have not taken them off since, and each day they are infused with progressively more meaning. Keeping an object close to the body or otherwise giving it part of your scarce space and attention imbues it with significance. So does performing some ritual of care to an object over time. These objects of power can be used to elevate the emotional content of ritual, performance, and gift.

On a larger scale, old religious buildings or natural structures such as trees which are older than any living human are especially powerful things. The destruction of Buddhist statues by the Taliban caused an outcry even from non-Buddhists. But this outcry wouldn't have happened if the stone Buddhas were only 17 years old instead of 1,700.

Particularity - Modern consumer capitalism wipes away meaning by eliminating individuality and creating a feeling of anonymity. I felt good about my fine taste in clothes when I bought a slick new jacket from Uniqlo - until I saw multiple people on the street wearing the same thing over the next few weeks. I was just one of many people with the exact same taste.

Particularity is a rebellion against consumer anonymity. Buying handmade goods from Etsy provides a source of meaning to both buyer and seller. A rock that picked up on a particular roadtrip with a particular friend can never be copied by anybody else.

Sacrifice - Sacrificing an object that already has meaning or value can give meaning to a new event or object. The Burning Man festival is built around a sacrificial ritual - the burning of a giant, wooden man. The sacrifice of the man has a passionate intensity because of the week that attendees spend living in its shadow, with it the tallest and most reliable landmark to navigate the festival. When it burns, it is like burning "North" or the sun - a force of nature goes missing.

Gifting, another tradition associated with Burning Man, produces meaning. Something given to us feels more important than the same thing if we buy it ourselves, perhaps out of recognition of the sacrifice that the giver made to get it.

Religious fasting, a temporary sacrifice, gives meaning to the mundane act of eating. It is a very nice and pleasant thing to bring meaning to the boring necessities of life.

Belonging - Our connections to others give meaning to our lives. Existence in relationship to romantic partners, family, and larger organizations is more meaningful than existence as isolated individuals. Social roles are also important. People find meaning in filling the cultural expectations of a husband, wife, mother, father, or child.

Altered consciousness - Episodes of identity malleability are meaningful events. This often takes the form of transcendent connection, often in context of genuine religious experience or political activism. Connecting with something larger than ourselves (god, the universe, a political cause, etc.) gives meaning and provides some protection from the crippling existential fear of death.

Struggle - Feats of strength and endurance are meaningful. A severe injury, such as a broken limb, becomes an important story to tell people for the rest of one's life. People even inflict physical discomfort on themselves - running marathons and participating in triathlons. Perhaps suffering creates meaning mediated through increasing one's self-confidence. Becoming a more robust individual feels important.

I'm sure there are other things which create meaning that I have missed.

A world that optimizes for meaning looks different from a world that optimizes for happiness, global utility, or power. For example, some utilitarian philosophers want to eliminate all suffering, even that of prey animals. Aside from the strangeness of such a life (can we even imagine it?), it seems to eliminate a lot of the sources of meaning in the world. I am not ready to suggest that we keep around sources of suffering that we can eliminate on purpose, but I suggest we start to look at suffering as more than just an enemy.

Perhaps listing the things which are meaningful can help us understand the crisis of meaninglessness in modern life. For example, it seems that a lot of things which create meaning involve scarcity and effort, and the primary focus of the modern economy is to eliminate scarcity and effort. Could that be the source of our collective ennui?

This exercise helps me understand the fanaticism that I and others feel towards Burning Man. Even aside from the sacrificial burning of the man, it is an event engineered to generate large amounts of meaning. The festival is a celebration of eccentric creativity and individuation. It exists amidst a physical struggle - the temperature extremes, mandatory self-sufficiency, and harsh weather create shared suffering. The final event is a somber memorial of loss - the burning of the temple (loss also creates meaning).

How else can we create meaning?

Aphorisms 2

A worry is a wasted thought

A man is remembered, not for the pleasures he enjoyed, but for the responsibilities he carried

Semper Fidelis

Fidelity is a virtue that is not much heard of in these days - it means faithfulness, or loyalty.

The word popped into my head when I attended a Catholic mass, recited in Latin. In midst of the ceremony, it is easy to imagine people gathering together to perform it for almost two thousand years, a chain unbroken from Roman times. Candles have been lit in front of the cross, the Lord’s prayer recited, and the Eucharist taken by a community of the faithful from generation to generation, during good times and during times of persecution. Semper fidelis.

Faith belongs to the kind of objects that you keep, like a promise - "keep the faith". It is not a single extraordinary act, but a constant duty. Keeping a faith is a responsibility that changes the bearer. It requires you to look ahead, seeing with the eyes of eternity in order to plan for events long after your own death. The charge must be guarded and passed from one generation to the next, like a torch-flame. Each generation must be imprinted with the gravity of it so that they can instill the motivation to keep it into their own children and grandchildren.

As the responsibility of raising a child changes a parent, so too does the practice of faith-keeping transform its bearer into something grander. (The transformative power of long-term thinking is the raisson d'être of the secular Long Now Foundation)

It is remarkable that the mass, a practice originating in Roman Civilization, comes down to us still alive, constantly living, over all these years. “Keep doing this in remembrance of me”, a man once said. And so it has been. It is in my nature to love a thing that lasts.

Is it not possible to love Christmas, for the same reason? I know of people that treat Christmas with disdain - bright intellectuals that view it as an ignorant and outmoded ritual. But is it not worthwhile to keep an ancient flame alight for its own sake? Like an endangered animal species, when it becomes extinct we will not again see its kind. And while we now take it for granted, we may burn with regret when it is gone.

Can we start new traditions, more suited to our present values? It can be done. But not every age has the same capacity for laying foundations. It requires the strength of will not only to bind your own life to the task, but also to bind all future generations. It can only be done in the spirit of the greatest solemnity. The characteristic emotion of our time - irony - is poorly suited to the task.

So I choose to keep the Christmas traditions for their own delight and as a reminder that mankind can build things that endure. I am grateful to those who passed it down to me. I do my own small part to keep the flame alive, and will pass it to my own children someday.

Someday the will to continue may be lost. Mankind may shrink in moral stature and lose the capacity for fidelity, and all of this may be forgotten in the depths of time. But as long as a single member of the faithful draws breath, that day is not yet.

Anno Domini 2013

Aphorisms on a Saturday Afternoon

The mathematician says "I seek truth". The scientist says "I seek science", and imagines they are the same thing. 

A scientist hides from the diversity of epistemologies. The mathematician cannot. 

The mathematician, artist, and theologian have the same soul. 

There is no braver men than priests. Priests do battle with human nature, their own and others. It takes bravery to look into one's self with honest eyes. It takes bravery to admit one's own imperfection, to admit the existence of a perfect standard, and to admit the necessity of striving for it. It takes bravery to tell others to do the same. 

People are ashamed of their flaws, and yet they defend them. Many have been martyred for telling people that they could be better. 

Any life philosophy is better than no life philosophy. The default life philosophy is to be guided by appetites. No one has ever supposed that the stomach is a better guide than Socrates. 

Every day carries with it its own blessing. The wise man will see it. 

Charity: the forgotten virtue

One of the most attractive features of the Christian religion is the practice of Charity. In church, Christians are regularly encouraged to give of their time and resources for the benefit of the poor, sick, elderly, and destitute. They are not required to tithe, but many do anyway. Christian charity is a force for good in the world.

I believe that every person, Christian and non-Christian, can benefit by practicing charity. The paradox of charity is that it leaves you better off, even though it costs you.

One way charity benefits you is by improving your relationship with money. As a founder of a technology startup, my money is a subject that often stresses me out. But giving to charity helps me be grateful for the material blessings I have, instead of worrying about the things I do not have. Interacting with the truly poor gives makes me appreciate the abundance of resources at my disposal.

Recently, I've adopted the practice of giving a small portion of money away whenever I get some. I used Give Well to help me find an effective charity with a cause that touches my heart. Last month I gave about 3% of my income to a charity that provides necessities to Indian street children, and I plan to do so again. 

The desire to help people is common in Silicon Valley. But many people plan to start someday after they get rich, like Bill Gates did. Too often, that someday never comes. If you desire your life to be a force for good in the world, as I do, then why not start now? Why wait for an uncertain future? You may spend all your life consuming and hoarding for your own benefit and get hit by a bus before you can do any good for others. 

Also, by waiting to help others, you miss out on all the benefits that giving does for your peace of mind today. Contributing to charity will make you a happier, more peaceful person. And you can rest easy at night knowing that regardless of what happens, your life has already made a positive impact on the world. 

  

Atheist Sermon 3: How Atheists Misunderstand Religion

Many atheists despise religion because it is not true. They wonder that anyone could be dumb enough to believe such fantastical things as are found in the mythology of religion - all religions, since none are based on a scientific, post-enlightenment understanding of the universe. 

While their devotion to truth is admirable, they are missing the point. People are not religious because they have become convinced of the truth of the myth. Rather, religion is about psychological nourishment; it's about feeding the human soul. 

Let's consider the Christian faith. When people go to church they are told that they will live again with their loved ones who have died. They are told that they are loved by God. They are told that the wrongs that they have done to others will be forgiven. They are told that evil people will be punished and good people will be blessed and rewarded, in the next life if not in this one. 

In short, Christianity fits the shape of the hole in the human heart. It provides an answer for all the features of our world that are tragic and repulsive: we are self-aware beings with unlimited ambitions but tiny, limited lifespans, we are lonely and hunger for love all our lives, we are shamed by our hurtful deeds and words but we cannot undo them, and we wonder at ruthless people prospering while kind-hearted folks are taken advantage of.

This message of hope is wrapped in a profound aesthetic and meditative experience, together with a community of the faithful. It is paired with an imperative to practice universal benevolence - goodwill towards all human kind. This generates an ethic of community, charity, and service that is one of the most attractive features of Christianity.

Atheists who attempt to convert religious people by attacking the truth of the mythology are practicing a futile tactic. They don't understand the human psyche. They don't understand the deep needs that drive the billions of religious people in the world. When they do, they will become better at communicating their message. That's why atheists and religious people tend to talk past each other so much. They have two very different models of religion in their minds. The atheist mind is focused on the truth claims of religion, the religious on the relgious experience. 

I enjoy participating in religious experiences, even though I am an intellectual atheist. I recognize that the peace, the self-insight, the comfort that comes from religious practice and meditation and prayer makes me a happier and healthier person. It's not for everybody, but it's certainly for people like me. I despair at the tragedies of this life, and I long for a better moral ethic than is offered by the materialistic nihilism of this world. I am becoming more culturally Christian, and as I do I grow more proud of who I am. Christianity encourages me to focus my attention outward, on the needs of others, rather than selfishly mulling over all the things I am missing in my life. 

If you would have told me 11 years ago that I wold be going to church again when I was 29, I would  have been incredulous. But here I am. What drives me is my sincere hope is that I may be a blessing to all who know me. If I am, I know the Christian ethic will play a part.

Update: I wrote on a similar theme a few years ago. If you enjoyed this, you should also check out part one in the series on how atheists misunderstand religion.

Don't be a Warrior

Do not think of yourself as a warrior or imagine that the world is filled with enemies. It is too easy for the young soldier to declare war on the wrong target - it is surprisingly difficult to choose the right ones. Many intelligent and honest people find themselves on opposite sides of pitched battles. Frequently they even switch sides as they grow older, fighting ferociously for the position which their younger selves abhored.  

Even if you win your war, you may find that the evils caused by the excess of some thing give way to new problems caused by its deficit. 

Furthermore, the warrior is not an effective agent of change. The very nature of war is to divide people into allies and foes. An attack generates its own enemies, polarizing neutral bystanders into opposing camps. 

Rather than be a warrior, be a builder. Tell a story that appeals to the universal values cherished by human hearts. Synthesize opposing viewpoints into a new worldview that unites former enemies. A fresh story has no enemies and it spreads without resistance, like a fire through dry grass.

In all the teachings of Jesus, he spared hardly a word for the pagan religion of Rome that his religion would replace. He was not on a mission to tear down the old world, but to build a new one. His story of hope, love, and deliverance appealed to Romans surrounded by a brutal and capricious reality. As a builder, he was far more effective than any warrior. The humane, egalitarian ethic introduced by Jesus is still a potent force in the world 2,000 years later. 

That is why my I no longer think of my political activity in martial terms like a "warrior for liberty" or a "patriot". I grow tired of the eternal war between libertarian, socialist, progressive, and conservative. As I mature, I recognized the good motives and valid points of my former enemies. Instead of fighting old wars I'm focusing on building new viewpoints which can help people from all political ideologies create a better world. 

My current attempt is Structuralism. I used to call it "Structural Libertarianism", but I realized that the structuralist ideas are useful for everyone, not just libertarians. By using the term "libertarian" I imported the old conflicts as if I'm so used to fighting that I forgot how to live in peacetime. 

Ethics and Wisdom - what Atheists can learn from Religion

Morality/Ethics is about how we should treat other people. On the other hand, Wisdom is the art of living well and thriving in our personal lives. Both subjects interest me, but few people in the secular world study them in a serious or systematic way. The exceptions I know of are academic philosophers and the small hyper-utilitarian demi-cult centered around Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Religions have a lot to say about Ethics and Wisdom. Since religions survive and spread by serving the needs of the human psyche, we should expect that we can learn something from their approach to two topics so vital to human interests.

Many religions, including Christianity, have the peculiar habit of conflating ethics and wisdom together. They transform the art of living well from an individual choice into a moral duty. This is accomplished by inserting a second person, God, into our private lives. Private actions thereby gain an ethical dimension since they now effect a third party with an interest in seeing us thrive. In the secular world, a similar thing happens when we enter into a romantic relationship.

This explains the phenomena of religious prohibitions on vices, such as smoking or drinking - activities that hurt nobody but ourselves. Religions also push followers to observe positive virtues, such as staying loyal to their spouses, being thrifty, or working diligently at their jobs. Extensive interference in people’s private lives gives religions a pushy quality, and many people find this attractive. They want a third party to force themselves, and their children, to live well. Others are repulsed either because they disagree with religion’s conception of the good life or they simply dislike having their personal life choices audited by an external authority.

I like the idea of being responsible to someone else for living well. My moral feelings are stronger than my will to act wisely. If an action or inaction hurts only myself, I am far more likely to succumb to it than if it also hurts another person. The secular person is by default a lonely creature, and it is hard for a person to live well when nobody is watching and judging. But a religious person always has someone with them.

Atheists resent the old prejudice that one has to be religious in order to be moral. These prejudices go too far, but it is true that religion offers its followers a powerful infrastructure to help them be moral that atheists lack.

The first way atheist moral practice fails is by lacking an explicit moral code. Our ethical principles are absorbed piecemeal from the art, literature, and philosophy we consume over the years and by osmosis from the culture surrounding us. This serves well under normal circumstances, but we are lost when faced with difficult moral trade-offs or high-pressure situations. Religious morality is better codified. When emotions run high, religious people have explicit aphorisms, principles, and parables that their minds can latch on to.

Next, religions teach us that ethical and moral principles are not merely mental facts, they are skills. Like any other skill they must be practiced and honed over time. Just as you cannot read a book about ballet and then perform a perfect dance, you cannot merely read about morality and then expect to behave morally. Religions know that we need regular reminders for moral principles to sink in, so they schedule weekly rituals where their codes of conduct are reinforced. Service events are scheduled to give followers the opportunity to practice altruism.

Lastly, we can learn from religion's understanding of human social psychology. If there is one fact that has become abundantly clear in the age of social networking, it’s the powerful influence that a person’s friends have on his taste’s, beliefs, and actions. Religions have long been aware of the power of social pressure and they surround the believer with a community of faith to help them all live up to their shared standards.

Atheists practice their morality as atomic creatures, lacking a community of like-minded practitioners. They are more likely to stray from their principles and revert to the mean of the world around them.

The combination of 1) explicit morality, 2) regular reminders, and 3) peer pressure creates a powerful incentive for religious people to behave morally. Over the years, many small groups of atheists have recognized the advantages that religions have in propagating ethical behavior and wisdom and have attempted to organize atheist analogues of churches and community groups. None have been spectacularly successful. But we shouldn't stop trying.

Atheist Sermon #2

The idea of God is a picture painted with negative space. He is the man that is missing, the things we wish for that do not exist. We hunger for justice, love, and purpose, so these are the qualities we give to God. But there is no god and these ideals are not intrinsic qualities of the universe. So if we want them, we must fight for them. We must build them ourselves.

Religion crystalizes these ideals in the personage of God and keeps them in the forefront of our mind. It provides a pedal tone, a fixed point that permeates the symphony of our lives. It reminds us of what we ought to be striving for.

Our hearts burn for justice. They cry out for love. They bleed for purpose. So when you are confronted with the Christian gospel, what else is there to do but to think "of course"? Of course, this is the religion that humans would create. This is the shape of the hole in our hearts.

We should all be more godly. Even atheists like me.

There Ain't No Justice*

Justice is a tasteless dish, fibrous and unfilling.

The wise seek mercy, not justice. It is not given unto humanity to see perfect justice in this lifetime. Religions know this and promise it for the next. They know the hunger for justice in people's hearts and they know it cannot be sated.

The cost of justice is too great. Some people sell their entire future for a single morsel. Only seek it if the hunger is so unbearable that it is worth everything to you.

Some of history's biggest winners were terribly unjust. Murdering the families of your enemies turns out to be a spectacularly successful strategy.

If you love goodness, you must pick your battles and take the long view. Seek to spread the love of goodness in the hearts of men. The nihilists are too powerful to face in a set-piece battle. They are far more cunning and effective than those constrained by morality.

Every age has its evil. It is the task of the righteous to work towards its lessening over time, not its immediate elimination. Preserve the goodness that exists in the world. Cut your losses. And never give up.

*Editor's note: This is adapted from a series of tweets. Don't forget to follow me on twitter.