Rational Philosophy

The Democratic candidates’ remarks on religion.

William Kristol, in a disdainful, patronizing opinion, accuses Barack Obama of making disdainful, patronizing remarks about small-town America in his speech to a wealthy audience in San Francisco. “I haven’t read much Karl Marx since the early 1980s,” Kristol begins… How much more elitist can you get than that? Kristol seizes on Obama’s words, and, despite presenting counter-examples, claims that Obama has let slip his mask. Sadly, Kristol is working too hard to find a reason for Obama’s somewhat pandering comments. If there’s one thing we’ve had reinforced for us during this intensely observed political odyssey it is that politicians say things to attract as many to their cause as possible, while alienating as few people as possible.

For me, Clinton and Obama speaking on faith at the Compassion Forum at Messiah College in Pennsylvania has produced the worst of it yet.

Clinton: “You know, I have, ever since I’ve been a little girl, felt the presence of God in my life,” she said. “And it has been a gift of grace that has, for me, been incredibly sustaining.”

Obama: “I try as best I can to be an instrument of his work … to act in accordance with what I think are the precepts of my faith.”

Here we have the Democratic candidates touting their faith and its guidance as a means to votes. Whether we take their statements at face value or not (although they seem so carefully extruded that taking them at face value requires more faith than I, for one, possess) the trotting out of religious belief as a piece of voter fly-paper goes further than similar sticky sentiments on standard political, economic and social issues.

How far astray are these politicians, these Democrats, from the likes of Thomas Jefferson? Jefferson, in his time, when criticized for being faithless, didn’t even bother to rebut the intended insult. Jefferson also wrote the following:

“I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.”

I’m not condemning Clinton and Obama for having faith, but condemning them for using faith as an implied qualification for office.

From a philosophical perspective, politics is the art and science of determining and implementing the operation of a society. Politicians take office by demonstrating an aptitude for sustaining, protecting and improving society. One could argue that the religious beliefs of American citizens play an important role in our society. And I suppose that would be a difficult argument to negate. But one wants leaders and administrators who can separate religious belief from the practical and pragmatic needs of society. We don’t elect presidents as spiritual guides. And we shouldn’t have to elect someone to the highest office who won’t say things just to win votes.

But back to Kristol for a moment. (Kristol, who hasn’t read much Marx since the early 1908s.) I looked up the preceding context of the Marx quote Kristol gives. It’s this: “[Religion] is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.”

It is clear from this insight that Marx was a true philosopher. According to Kristol, it’s all very well for a German thinker to speak of such things, but not for a presidential candidate. But oh, for a leader who could think like this.

On the difference between holding an opinion and acting in accordance with that opinion. When such dissonance is rational and when not.

The media and Barack Obama’s opponents have focused a great deal of attention on Obama’s voting record in the senate. Robin Toner publishes a thoughtful piece today on whether Obama’s voting record necessarily gives a clear indicator of his ability to build consensus and lead effectively. As Toner points out, senators Obama and Clinton have voted the same way almost without exception. But whereas Clinton apparently accedes to the traditional doctrine that progressive or overtly liberal politics can’t gain traction, since the country leans right, Obama presents the perspective that good ideas and sensible policy changes can be popular with anyone who isn’t rigid in his or her thinking. Obama believes that one shouldn’t underestimate the desire of the country to reverse some of the poor management of the past eight years through making pragmatic and valuable policy changes.

The critical point seems to that Obama’s personal opinion will be only one part of his thinking when it comes to guiding policy and decision making. As Obama himself expresses it: “I’m interested in solving problems as opposed to imposing doctrine.”

While the concept of opinion versus action has particular relevance to politics, it transcends politics and appears everywhere that one finds opinions.

To demonstrate this we need only find an example from our own life. Here’s one of mine: My neighbor has a driveway, which, in Brooklyn, is like gold. Unfortunately for him he is so territorial about his driveway that he spends huge amounts of energy and time protecting the driveway entrance — watching out for people who pull up for a minute to load or unload, calling the police when someone parks part way in front of his driveway.

In my opinion, my neighbor’s fixation on his driveway is out of proportion to its real importance. And, in a congested neighborhood, his unwillingness to accept some use of the space for things like loading and unloading by his neighbors strikes me as poor judgment. But, do I act on my opinion? No. I think he’s wrong, but I also know that to oppose his perspective wouldn’t get either of us anywhere. He is firmly entrenched in his opinion. It’s a situation in which any action on my part would be futile or inflammatory.

This kind of dissonance comes up all the time in families, too. We yield. We compromise. We find ways to influence. Or we don’t. If we forever and only acted in accordance with our ideas and opinions we’d soon find ourselves shunned and isolated.

As Obama understands, expressing an opinion is one thing, forcing it on someone is quite another.

There will always be some opinions about which we feel so strongly that we can’t do other than act on them. But there are many times when we can admit that if we insist on imposing our opinion we won’t achieve the best outcome overall. That’s the kind of change Obama seems to be talking about.

 

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Rattled by its plunging stock price and by threats from competitive coffee vendors, Starbucks has announced a renewed focus on its roots — brewing and serving good coffee. The gargantuan coffee-store chain plans to install Swiss Mastrena espresso machines at three quarters of its stores in the next couple of years. It’s also rolling out a new coffee blend, Pike Place Roast, and swallowing up the makers of the renowned Clover coffee machine so that it can install them at selected landmark stores. In the words of the NY Times’ reporter, these initiatives are aimed at restoring to Starbucks stores an “authentic coffeehouse experience.”

The use of the word “authentic” jarred me. Whatever its success in delivering the promise of great coffee, well made, it would be impossible for Starbucks to return to its stores the authenticity of a coffeehouse, or for MacDonald’s to restore the authenticity of a burger joint, or for Dunkin Donuts to restore to its stores the authenticity of donut shops. In any such chain or franchise the essentially authentic elements of irreproducibility and oneness with the fundamental aim have been removed.

This is not a criticism of Starbucks’ general aim. Better to have a semblance of authenticity, an attempt to brew wonderful coffee in an attractive environment, than no such attempt. But it got me wondering about authenticity as a concept.

Authenticity equates to the concept of being genuine. An authentic coffee house must be genuine. And in its being genuine it must conform to the essence of the idea of a coffeehouse.

Determining the authenticity of a coffeehouse or a burger joint or a donut shop becomes somewhat straightforward. If the establishment is what it presents itself to be, then it is genuine. When it comes to people, things get a little more tricky.

The National Archives and the William J. Clinton library has released Hillary Rodham Clinton’s schedule (11,000 pages) for the time that her husband was in office. As the world peruses this record of her appointments one necessarily asks the question: Has Clinton presented herself authentically in her campaigning, or does the schedule of her appointments reveal a different story? We want to know whether she has exaggerated or skewed her involvement in her husband’s administration.

Likewise, the salient question presented by Barack Obama’s recent speech on race and racism in America was whether he presented himself, his experience, and his views authentically. We sift through his words to try to determine whether he has stretched a point or shrunk from one.

Authenticity in a person does not equate to telling the truth. One can tell the truth without being authentic. Authenticity in a person requires that he or she act without altering his or her actions in order to present an impression of someone other than that which he or she believes him or herself to be.

This brings us to a very profound question: Does consciousness allow for authenticity, and if so how?

Consciousness requires some degree of awareness of self. Any awareness of self, it could be argued, brings with it an awareness of the impression we present. Any awareness of this impression inevitably affects us and, no matter how minutely, alters our presentation of ourselves.

Even the person who claims no affectation “I am what I am” has affected a particular persona — that of someone indifferent and unaffected — and the disclaimer confirms this.

Consciousness burdens us forever and always with the awareness that we cannot be completely unaware.

So, is it possible that we can we conscious and still authentic?

No… and yes.

And here is the twist. We invest the word “authentic” with a meaning that relates to the idea of an object (an authentic coffeehouse, for instance.) A coffeehouse can be authentic just by being. It is what it is. Since we’re conscious we cannot be like a coffee house. But we can be what we are, complete with apprehensions, egos, weaknesses, desires.

For a conscious being — a person — the concept of authenticity comes to mean something more nuanced. It requires a person to be as honest with themselves and others as they feel they can be. Authenticity becomes equivalent to the concept of humility — whether we are arrogant, egotistical, meek or savage, if we have the humility to embrace and recognize that we are one particular aspect or representation of existence then we can perhaps be said to retain our authenticity.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On senators, singers, and security officials. Or, judging books by their tables of contents.

With Mitt Romney’s last flip, his decision to take himself out of the presidential race, it seems a safe bet that we’ll have a senator in the White House (unless Bloomberg decides to run). Something of a phenomenon, this likely senate coup has people asking why senators, despite running often, haven’t often won their bids for the country’s highest office. A Times piece raises several possibilities — the baggage of voting records, the Washington-insider stigma, the lack of executive experience, the relative comfort of the senate. But, being forever on the lookout for an inherently rational explanation, I wonder whether something about wanting and winning a senate race doesn’t take significantly different qualifications from winning a presidential bid.

The senate is a buffer. The constitution encourages the senate to check the powers of other branches of the Federal Government (e.g., by ratifying presidential appointments).

Rationally then, those who seek a position in the senate (unless they have higher goals —Hillary Clinton, I think, viewed the senate as a stepping stone on her way back to the White House) seek to exert a moderating and deliberative influence. That’s very different from someone who sets his or her sights on leading a state as governor or leading the country as president.

But, as has been demonstrated in the current race, while being a senator doesn’t qualify you as a presidential contender, it doesn’t disqualify you either. Clinton may have ducked through the low gate of the senate on her way to a presidential bid, but voters have decided that senators Obama and McCain have qualifications for more than checking and balancing.

As for disqualifications, Grammy-nominated recording artist, Ledisi, reveals that she had about given up on her career after hearing repeatedly that she didn’t have the right look and the right sound to make it. It’s good to hear that in the music industry creating music that people want to listen to can still qualify one for success. (On a personal note, and if you’ll excuse the shameless plug, I was bouyed up yesterday to learn that nerdlitter, a music blog, selected a song of mine amongst its top thirty for 2007.)

And the story of government official Julie Myers who disciplined an employee for wearing an inappropriate, racially stereotyped costume had me scratching my head. The employee was counseled and forced out on leave while Julie Myers, who posed for a photograph with the man at the party after participating in awarding him the prize for the most creative costume, went on to nomination as a top ranking Homeland Security official. “I was not aware at the time of the contest that the employee disguised his skin color,” Myers wrote.

Either Myers is an idiot or a liar (or both). How she can be qualified to make decisions about immigration and deportation policy defies imagination.

Philosophically speaking, qualifications present an interesting set of concepts. A qualification begins by defining some essential skill or requirement for a given role. This immediately calls upon the concept of “that which is essential.” Very often we get into gray area over the difficulty of defining “essential.” This leads to ad hoc exceptions or exclusions.

Defining essential qualities for a leader, for instance, can be quite tricky. People lead in different ways. And people have many theories about what makes a good leader. Easier perhaps to define those qualities that disqualify a leader — like Myers being an idiot or a liar. But even being found out as a liar might not disqualify someone. Leaders lie all the time to gain strategic advantage. It’s not the lying so much as the “what” and “why” of the lying (as I explored in a post the other day).

And this perhaps brings us to the core difficulty of qualifications. When we define the essential attributes for success in a role, we find that they are necessarily recursive. To be a successful singer, the singer must be able to be successful as a singer. The singer need not necessarily even produce wonderful music (Celine Dione is a case in point).

To borrow from Beckett, ill seen, ill said, this then is the insight: Beware qualifications.

 

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On testing in.

Anya Kamenetz today makes a case for lowering the voting age to 16. This initially struck me as a ridiculous idea. But that was before Anya set out the details of her plan: “16-year-olds who want to start voting should be able to obtain an “early voting permit” from their high schools upon passing a simple civics course similar to the citizenship test.” She likens this to a driving permit granted to a young person after they’ve demonstrated that they are qualified.

In this season of political fervour, my daughter’s high school engaged the children in a voting exercise: The result? All (100%) of the children voted Democrat, and the vast majority chose Obama over Clinton. So, while my heart wants me to embrace Anya’s proposal, bless those little idealists, my head says that 16 is too young for the vote, even after getting a passing grade on a civics test.

On the other hand, requiring that voters are qualified to vote strikes me as a wonderful idea. (It reminds me of the conviction of a particularly misanthropic friend of mine that only after passing a parenting test should people be allowed to have children.) To purloin Anya’s parallel, people of all ages need to pass a driving test if they’re going to drive, so why not a voting test if they’re going to vote?  Yes, yes, I know it goes against the very premise of a democratic society, but can you argue with the logic?

The Times Editorial today makes the reverse argument. The editorial complains that the current political contest isn’t helping fix the country’s state of polarization. Obama fans are saying they won’t bother voting if he doesn’t win the nomination. Republicans miffed at McCain’s unamerican brand of conservatism are saying that they’d rather see a Democrat in the White House than see McCain there. “That is not the way democracy is supposed to work,” the Times laments.

Frankly, if Obama fans aren’t engaged enough to vote for Clinton, let them stay at home. It’s the job of the Democratic party to convince them to come out and vote (which is I think one of the points the editorial is trying to make). If Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter want a candidate who passes all their litmus tests, let them want. I for one won’t be unhappy if Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and their ilk are disenfranchised. Democracy as it exists in America today is a ramshackle, unfair, unrepresentative, incredibly flawed system for selecting leaders. If fewer people vote but those who do are less passionately partisan and better-informed, it can only improve matters.

At the risk of being helpful, I noticed something about yesterday’s voting maps. (Democratic map to the left with Obama in green; Republican map to the right with McCain in orange.) The support for Obama is pretty much the mirror image of the support for McCain. Here’s my theory: McCain will likely win the Republican nomination. Ironically, McCain’s support is strongest in traditionally Democratic strongholds (the east and west coasts) and weakest in traditionally Conservative strongholds (the middle and lower states). I would assume that Obama could hold off McCain in the Democratic strongholds if he edged out Clinton for the nomination. And he has a much better chance of picking up votes in the middle states than Clinton does. Judged by the demographics of the primary support so far, Obama then has a better chance than Clinton does of beating McCain.

Of course, if you’re a Republican you can apply the reverse logic and determine that the best way to beat Obama would be to vote for Romney. In which case, I guess you’re pretty much screwed…

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(OK, that’s one of my four lies for today.)

On lying and its uses: Rudy, McCain, Bush, and your average guy.

After Giuliani’s thankfully dismal showing in Florida, the rush to spout fibs found Giuliani and McCain vying for who could tell the biggest whopper. First Giuliani suggested that he had failed in Florida because his opponents had built up too much momentum in earlier primaries, whereas, in fact, Giuliani spent a lot of money and time in New Hampshire before retreating from that state. McCain countered with the gracious and fallacious compliment that Giuliani had “invested his heart and soul” in the race, which of course was exactly what Giuliani hadn’t done, otherwise he would have performed much better. McCain followed this up swiftly with an upper-cut of an untruth declaring that Giuliani had “conducted himself with all the qualities of the exceptional American leader he truly is.” Giuliani tried to recover with a transparent falsehood of his own; that he had run “a campaign of ideas.” But McCain, again, clearly had him beat.

On a less happy and more serious note, the editorial board of the NY Times brings our attention to the latest lies from George W. Bush. If you’re going to tell lies, I suppose that delivering them in a state of the union address endows them with a deep and lasting sense of moment and history. The Bush legacy will be in large part one of mass deception – about weapons of mass destruction, the illegal activities of the government and its agencies, and the intent and actions of Bush himself. As The Times points out, Bush’s reconciliatory rhetoric conflicts with his deeds, yet again, as he refuses to respect certain new legal provisions that would increase oversight of military contractors, their actions, and the acts of government agencies by asserting in his signing statement that these provisions step on his constitutional powers.

Bush is an inveterate and habitual liar. One can presume, by studying his behavior and his words, that he feels no remorse about his lies and that he believes the ends justify the means.

Which brings me to a recent study that finds that people admit to telling about four untruths per day and that two-thirds of those polled don’t feel guilty about lying. Now, statistics can be misleading, but in this case, as one commentor wryly observed, asking people to admit to how many lies they tell will probably result in under-reporting rather than over-reporting. (Another study lends support to this theory by finding that people underreport the number of their sexual partners unless they’re told that they’re hooked up to a lie-detector.)

The actual numbers concern me less than the philosophy of lying.

We lie, it seems, to avoid unwanted repercussions, to sway the course of events by untruth. This applies to the fib “no, you don’t sound bitter” as well as to the deception of a nation so that you can fill your cronies’ coffers. 

Essayist Harold Nicolson defined a person who tells the truth as ’someone who, when they tell a lie, is careful not to forget they have done so, and who takes infinite precautions to prevent being found out.’ This is humorous, of course, but hints at the “humanness” of lying. Surely very few people habitually tell the truth, and those that do would be considered odd and unnecessarily blunt. One generally likes to be lied to if one looks lousy or has made a fool of onesself, for instance.

Is this a distinction that helps us? Lies are OK if the person wants to be lied to.

And what about lies that avoid unreasonable conflict? If we know that someone will react unreasonably to the truth, does that justify a lie?

It seems that we get much more worked up about the lies people tell to get away with something, to avoid being held accountable for their actions, unless the accountability is unreasonable or irrational. (We like the idea of Robin Hood. And we support the concept of the resistance fighter who lies to the oppressing power.)

The intent of the lie and the legitimacy of the repercussions of the truth then seems to be far more important, rationally speaking, than the act of lying itself.

Which brings us to the concept of honesty. When we speak of honesty as a virtue, we are really speaking of the bravery that comes with telling a difficult truth, of risking the consequences. What seems to be lacking in politics today is the bravery to tell difficult truths. One by one the candidates shift positions in order to sound more appealing to the voters, or to cast shadow on an opponent. McCain has done it, Romney has done it, Clinton has done it, Obama has been accused of doing it (did he snub Hillary Clinton deliberately or unintentionally before the state of the union address?)

And I wonder if we were to be served up an honest politician, would we elect them, truth and all, or would we prefer to be lied to?

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“Today, I am not the person I was ten years ago.” Karl Svensson, a convicted murderer, told his Swedish classmates at medical school when his past caught up with him. The prestigious Karolinska Institute eventually side-stepped the unprecedented question of whether to expel Mr. Svensson simply because of his past criminal acts — once a neo-Nazi, apparently, Svensson’s crime had been deemed a hate crime. Instead, the institute expelled him on a technicality — he had falsified his high school records by substituting his assumed name for his birth name of Hellekant.  The story raises two very interesting questions: 1. Can we change? and 2. Should a person who has committed this kind of crime be allowed to practice medicine (or another similar profession)?

The New York Times editorial board has endorsed Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate. Its opinions supporting the endorsement of Clinton for the Democratic and McCain for the Republican vote make fascinatingly candid reading. The Times’ opinion of Clinton again raises the question of whether someone, fundamentally, can change. It left me wondering whether Clinton has changed, and, if so, whether she has changed enough to overcome the disadvantages in her character that have revealed themselves so often in the past — her divisiveness and “I know best” intellectual hardness. The Times uses the example of her “famously disastrous foray” into trying to solve the healthcare issue to support its premise that she has changed and now displays a new understanding of what’s to be done.

I’ve written before about our capacity to change as it relates to the concept of free will and personal development. Being conscious allows us to choose between options, and to select options that may be difficult, unattractive or counter to our immediate instinct. Through this reasoning we can see that it is possible to develop new levels of awareness and new patterns of behavior, to make choices different from those we would have made in the past.

But if we examine the concept of behavioral change we find a composite concept. And we tend to conflate and confuse its constituent parts: When I ask, “can we change?” I could really be asking two separate questions. The first: “Can someone become altered such that the same impulses will lead to different immediate responses?” And the second: “Can someone become altered such that the same impulses will lead to different eventual responses?”

Ten years go, in an angry confrontation, Svensson reacted violently. His immediate response was to be urged to violence. And he acted on this immediate response by lashing out.

To say that Svensson’s immediate response may have changed, we would have to believe that he would not feel urged to violence if faced with a similar confrontation ten years on. I would say that we have very little reason to believe that Svensson or anyone could change in this way simply through reflection and remorse. Our immediate, instinctual response is pre-conscious, and therefore isn’t subject to conscious influence.

On the other hand, to say that Svenssion’s eventual response may have changed seems a much more reasonable and rational conclusion. Svensson, still feeling a violent urge, could now have a modified conscious response and resist the desire to lash out.

Svensson’s classmates were split over whether he should be allowed to stay on. Those that supported him said that he’d paid his debt and, by inference, should be trusted to have changed his conscious response to confrontation. But we can infer that those of his classmates who still distrusted him understood and feared that his immediate response to confrontation (or other stress) could and indeed would still be violent.

Should a violent killer, rehabilitated in his conscious actions, be trusted in the medical profession? To answer that question we would need to understand the degree and range of provocation that Svensson may react violently to, and the strength of his newfound ability to keep his emotions in check. In the absence of reliable ways and means to measure these variables, it would seem reasonable for society not to want Svensson providing medical care. Svensson has rights of freedom, but it also seems reasonable for society to say that he has forgone some of those rights (such as an unfettered choice of career) by his past actions.

So to Hillary Clinton: Although the circumstances are very different, we are confronted with the same logical argument. As I understand it, the instinctual fervor of Clinton’s liberal ideological passion inspired and limited her original approach to tackling the healthcare issue. Her newfound understanding means that she’s better able to consciously override her immediate divisive response. But the concern remains that she would encounter similar instinctual responses in a broad range of political situations.

As we’ve seen with Bush and as tends to happen to those in high office, the stresses and demands of the job certainly don’t make it easier to overcome one’s immediate responses. As the Times’ opinion points out, Clinton has been succumbing to these impulses during her campaigning, underscoring the perspective that we have reason to doubt that she has truly learned to keep her immediate responses in check.

Obama, on the other hand, reveals a more promising character for non-devisive leadership. This then narrows the gap between the candidates that the Times claims to exist, and perhaps even makes Obama the more logical choice. It becomes a matter of character versus experience. I for one would choose character every time.

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In writing yesterday’s post as I waxed on about Bush as a puppet I made a mistake. I realized this last night in the lucid wakefulness that comes between dreams. I allowed my reason to be swept away by my infatuation with the argument I was making. I made unsubstantiated and in some respects improbable claims about the degree to which Bush has been manipulated in his presidency.

I both gave Bush less credit than I truly believe he deserves (for being his own person) and correspondingly more credit than he deserves (for not being responsible for his administration’s blunders). Doubtless the truth lies somewhere between my accusations that Bush is no more than a stooge, and the opposite possibility that he’s largely steered the political and ideological course of his presidency.

I feel better now I have that off my chest.

The title of a New York Times piece on Obama’s Illinois State voting record misleads the reader: “Obama’s Vote in Illinois Was Often Just ‘Present.’” By using the word ‘Just,’ the Times implies that the vote of ‘Present’ must be some kind of lesser vote than ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ Indeed, the piece investigates Hillary Clinton’s campaign claim that Obama’s voting record was softer than he’d like people to think. But instead the piece provides a compelling body of evidence and perfectly good rationale supporting the concept that Obama’s voting record, far from being weak, gives evidence of leadership and careful deliberation. The ‘present’ vote can imply leadership, register dissatisfaction, display a tactical approach. Statistics give the dots, joining them up requires context and detail.

So why did the New York Times choose that headline? It’s beyond me…

What do you know! I go back to the same story and the headline has been changed. “It’s Not Just ‘Ayes’ and ‘Nays’: Obama’s Votes in Illinois Echo,” it now reads. No doubt, after the story was posted, an editor spied the discrepant title and changed it.

In another story South Africa seems likely to elect Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma as its next president. As the article points out, Zuma, like most people and many great leaders, is far from perfect. Facing corruption charges and having been acquitted of raping an HIV positive woman, but admitting to having sex with her, saying she seduced him by wearing a short skirt and posing provocatively, and having also said he showered after having sex with her to reduce his likelihood of catching HIV, Zuma nevertheless seems to be popular because of his admission of human frailty rather than in spite of it.

Failure is a fact of life. Further, failure is a natural and inevitable part of existence. The path of the evolving universe, particles popping in and out of existence, gas clouds swirling, stars imploding, has been one of many unproductive paths and just a few fruitful ones. Life is the same way. The DNA of a living organism mutates blindly. Each mutation knows not what it might bring to the organism, something useful, something harmful, or something of no particular use or harm. Successful mutations we call adaptation. They are successful because they get passed on by natural selection; they hold no special quality other than the fortune of being favorably transmitted.

As human beings, however, we have the ability to conceive of success and failure, to foresee, or recognize and regret our error. It is an interesting parallel to reflect that if we recognize and face up to our errors and try to address them, we are performing our own task of natural selection and adaptation, we are mimicking life by choosing to improve ourselves.

Without our awareness of our frailty we would have no ability to effect positive change. This is why, I suspect, I feel relieved for having admitted yesterday’s failing, why my faith in the NY Times editorial process is reinforced by the change of a headline, despite the original blunder, and why South Africans recognize in Zuma, a flawed man, a leader who may have the power to effect positive change.