Thursday, March 28, 2019

I wrote this blog a few weeks ago, and I've been sitting on it, because I didn't want to commit myself to doing the comparison I promise at the end here. But then the Mueller report came out, and I figure I should go ahead and post this before it loses its relevance.

Today I want to talk about treason.

According to Title 18, U.S. Code Section 2381, the maximum penalty for treason in the United States is death, and the minimum penalty is either five years in a cage or $10,000, depending on how much you value your time. Treason is defined in the law as being when someone "owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere".

So there are three key actions qualifying as treason: "levies war against [the U.S.]", "adheres to their enemies", and "giving [enemies] aid and comfort". Having done some looking around, I concluded that "adhere" and "aid" don't have a explicit legal definitions outside of their commonly understood meaning. So, a more complete understanding of treason requires a definition of the term "War". According to Title 18, USC Section 2331(4),

The term "act of war" means any act occurring in the course of -- (A)declared war; (B)armed conflict, whether or not war has been declared, between two or more nations; or (C)armed conflict between military forces of any origin.
In order to understand that, it would be nice to have a clear definition of "military force". I couldn't find a positive definition, but Title 18 happened to have a negative definition in USC Section 2331(6).

The term "military force" does not include any person that -- (A)has been designated as a -- (i)foreign terrorist organization by the Secretary of State under section 210 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C 1189); or (ii)specially designated global terrorist (as such term is defined in section 594.310 of title 31, Code of Federal Regulations) by the Secretary of State or the Secretary of the Treasury; or (B)has been determined by the court to not be a “military force”.
Honestly, not that helpful, but based on the definitions I found in a few dictionaries, I'd say it's safe to summarily qualify a military force as "an organized group of armed persons, serving as part of a larger military group", where a "military group" would be any group existing for the purpose of carrying out military (violent, either defensive or aggressive) action.

If you do a Google image search for the word, "treason", on the day that I post this, you'll see several caricatures of Donald Trump. The accusation against him is that he colluded with Russia, by means of verbal communication, to undermine the democratic election process here in the U.S.. Whether or not that qualifies as "adhering to the U.S.'s enemies" is not a matter I'm prepared to determine, but given that Russia does not appear to be an enemy of Trump, and in spite of his failures Trump seems to have benefited the economy here, and he is the de facto figurehead of the United States, I lean toward supposing that Russia isn't an enemy, per se. Now, again, whether or not Russia "should" be our enemy is something that I don't quite know how to answer, for lack of Russian troops actively killing Americans on American soil. If Russian meddling by means of a mostly-unverified mix of true and false internet words is an attempt to undermine our democracy, and if anyone attempting to undermine democracy by means of their words is an enemy of the U.S., then I think we would find that many Americans fit the description "enemy". But we protect the free speech of those individuals on the grounds that they are American, and I've never heard anyone propose that we impeach an American president based on the fact that some or most of his followers spread lies on the internet. I'll do what the rest of the media does and avoid talking about whether or not those "lies" are actually "truths" and the opposition's ideas are actually mistaken.

For the record, I, here, with my words, oppose the notion that an American should have more right to share words online, whether the words are knowingly true or false, than any other group of humans, simply on the grounds that those humans are from another part of the world. Suppose the group of people disingenuously spreading true or false information about Hillary or Trump in order to affect the elections were all from Ohio [arbitrarily]. Wouldn't we just call them an activist group? What if they were all SJWs?

For the sake of time, I'm going to close out this post... But I wrote this blog intending to devote a future blog to a closely related topic: blasphemy. I want to eventually compare U.S. feelings and legislation regarding treason, hate-speech, and falsehood to Biblical Law regarding blasphemy, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech.

"...created an opportunity for scammers, given a voice to those who spread hatred, and made all kinds of crime easier to commit."

Friday, March 8, 2019

Baby is still cute. Not much to report there. Chowon still working hard. Good mom; good wife. We're tired.

Today I want to talk about Platonic Forms. The reason I originally decided to read the Republic was to learn about Forms and find out for myself whether the refutation of them that I've heard is accurate.

First, I want to encourage my nonexistent readers to do as I have done. Why read me (or anyone else) telling you about Platonic Forms when you can go read Plato himself? The fact that people are writing about Plato's works means that Plato's works are available to read and criticize. It's the same with any other person. The realization that these works are not out of my reach, and that they are written in common English, struck me like lightning after I graduated college. I've been consuming ancient authors ever since. I recommend it to everyone. It's easy! Don't be intimidated by it!

Alright, now the main point of this post. The problem Plato was trying to solve is the distinction between external objects and our internal understanding of them. He frames it in terms of the One and the Many, which is to ask how we can identify many different types of a thing by means of the same descriptor. For example, there are many different kinds of tables, but we know them all to be of the type "table". Only, we experience much difficulty attempting to describe the perfect representation of a table, in order to apply that to any object and identify it as such (using tables as an example). This is closely related to the issue about how we can identify and accurately classify any true information about the world external to us.

Plato argues that the way we are able to classify an external thing is by referencing our sensory data against a set of perfect forms which exist in our minds. These forms were created by the gods and placed in nature so that we have them in our minds. Furthermore, he says that the gods created just one of each of these forms because they wanted to be able to claim responsibility for having generated the first and most perfect object of every type. For example, we see some platformed object and identify it as a table by comparing it against the perfect form of a table, which some god invented and placed in our minds.

The problem with Plato's theory is that the gods themselves are only identifiable inasmuch as they, themselves, conform to the natural form of a god. So the form "god" had to exist before the first god. But the forms are not self-existent; they are created. Therefore, the gods cannot be ultimate, because they are members of the type described by the Platonic Form 'god'; but the forms cannot be ultimate, because they are created by the gods. It is impossible that a god created the perfect form of a god, because the god's own existence is prerequisite to the form's existence. But then, since forms are created, who created the perfect form of a god? As far as I know, Plato offers no answer for this. So, while there may be some merit to the theory as a tool, it is not a complete epistemological framework. This kind of paradox is symptomatic of a failing system, perhaps due to a faulty premise.

This problem is solved in Christianity (get ready for the super-abridged summary) by abandoning the idea that a "perfect form" exists on its own as an abstract object. Instead, I think we would say that types of things are differentiated according to their compliance with abstract and imperfect forms which we ourselves create, and that the means by which we create those abstract forms is by partitioning and arranging a universal set of "building blocks" (that's not a formal term. I just now came up with calling them 'blocks' in order to illustrate my point). The building blocks are applied logical rules, and we are aware of these rules because they are imbued to us by God. God did not create the rules, and the rules don't exist on their own apart from God; they simply describe God's nature. God has always continually embodied all logical laws perfectly. They are expressions of his unchanging character. We apply them incompletely because of our nature, and we know them incompletely because of our nature; our nature is that we are created in the image of God, containing in our minds an incomplete embodiment of those rules. So, we generate abstractions by applying self-references to our sensory data, and our self-references are references to an expression of God's own qualities, his image in us. In this way, inasmuch as we are correctly applying the logical laws which we contain in ourselves, our self-references are effectively references to an external standard: God's character.

OK, last thing, I am digging into political activism groups around Arizona to learn how activism is done in the U.S.. I've begun to explore Represent-Us, and look into my options for vocalizing opinions to the local legislature. I'm exploring the options, but I have not clarified in my mind what level of involvement is conscionable to me. I'll ramble about it here when I've dug deeper into it.

ETA almost forgot to quote something.

"Like a gentleman stranded on an island populated by a race of indiginous butlers."

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Baby is growing! He's in the 99th percentile for length, and he's right in the healthy middle for weight gain. Chowon is an excellent mom, and her condition is improving, but she still has some serious joint pain.

I just finished book 8 of The Republic. I had to listen to it a few times, because I listen at work and it was dense. Eventually I had a less taxing task to accomplish, and I was able to focus better on it. It was a little bit upsetting to listen to Plato's observations about the demise of his contemporary democracies. America, being a sort of democratic republic, appears to be constantly in the state of being probed for weaknesses leading to the same sort of destruction that Plato describes.

A sweeping summary: the lowest financial class, fearing that members of the highest financial class seek to become oligarchs, (though he notes that the highest class does not necessarily seek to change the system through which they have become wealthy), enlist the middle and most politically active class to "squeeze" the upper class for resources. The upper class therefore does the only sensible thing: they use what influence and wealth they have to take steps to protect their own property. Who wouldn't? These steps, however, make them seem even more like aspiring oligarchs, and serve only to inflame the people against them. The lower and middle class incite fear in one another against the upper class, pressing them harder, forcing them to protect themselves with more serious measures, until the upper class has become oligarchs in reality. At that time, the lower and middle class, remembering freedom, naturally congregate around a political figure, who they imagine will protect them against the oligarchy. That figure, in doing so, becomes accustomed to forcibly destroying what are essentially his fellow men. Every oligarch he overthrows finds him more powerful than before, and his unbridled support is contingent on him maintaining a continuous war against wealth, and eventually against the middle class, becoming the enemy of anyone he can identify as the most wealthy and the most happy. Over time, his actions become recognizably deplorable, and the only way for him to maintain power is by delegating influence to whatever group of people were previously the most impoverished and uneducated. By means of this group of people, he is able to subjugate the rest of the nation. Tyranny.

I hardly did justice to Plato with that paragraph. Read it yourself.

If I am to agree with Plato, (and on many points in his Republic I have disagreed so far), then the various movements concerned with redistributing the wealth owned by "the 1%-ers" (remember "Occupy Wall Street") attempt to be the catalyst for this kind of change, and we may see this change in a matter of just a few generations if America continues to be shaped by those movements. It's true that, not being a pure democracy, we have several safeguards in place to prevent that, but it seems to me that laws are changed in America as soon as they are perceived to be "out-of-date", with the same carelessness that the Bible is rejected on the grounds that it was written by "bronze age goat herders". If people disagree with a law on principle,  then they overthrow the law rather than reevaluate their principles.  Naturally, if that is the case, then Plato's other points follow, and the only way to prevent this is by widespread education about the philosophical grounds for a republic over any other form of government.

But I've been through the public school system. I never even heard of Plato's Republic until just less than a year ago -- not that Plato's Republic, specifically, is the thing that people must learn, but why rewrite a book that's already been written? Why did I have to read "The Kite Runner", but not Josephus? Why did I have to recite the pledge of allegiance, but never read "Civil Disobedience"? Why did I learn about Confucius, but never his thoughts? Why did I learn about Karl Marx, but never take a critical eye to his Manifesto? Why did I learn about Rome, but not Tertulian? Why did I learn about Babylon, but not Israel? Why did I learn about Hitler's attempts at eugenics, but never Margaret Sanger's? Why did I learn about Europe, but never learn about the reformation? Why did I have to learn about postmodernism, but never hear any credibility given to the concept of absolute truth? Why did I have to study 3-point "persuasive speaking", but never learn to recognize logical fallacies? Why did I have to study Hammurabi, but never Moses? Which one established a more successful government?

I don't think we're equipping people to protect their freedom. Our education system, though apparently so heavily influenced by platonic thought, fails its goal of protecting the republic. Plato's republic is sustained by education,  and Plato's education is supported by the republic.  Without one, the other dies.

God help me.  How can I protect my child from these schools?

 [Sometime later, finishing this blog on my phone now]

Speaking of Parenthood, SPOILERS!!! Chowon and I have been watching that series on Netflix these days. It was really good up until season 4, when Drew's girlfriend hired an assassin to kill their baby. But we gave it a chance,  hoping it wouldn't get worse, and we just completed season 5.  Everybody is having sex all the time now.  Drew is in college and is heart-warmingly encouraged by the men in his life to have sex with as many girls as possible.  Haddie is lesbian. Joel and Julia are separated but not divorced, and Julia is sleeping with some guy who the audience doesn't even know really, and all the other ladies are telling her that it's a good thing, expressly because she hadn't slept with enough different men in her life. Sarah is all over the place. Amber is pregnant by a guy who just moved away and broke off their engagement (#consequences). The doctors, after spitting on Hippocrates' grave, offered to kill Amber's baby for her, since she's not married. They sold the family house.... and did I forget anything... oh! If the show is all I have to go on,  than apparently Christians believe that you can't be saved unless you were baptized as a baby.  Not sure if I want to to see how the one "Christian" character in this show handles Haddie. It's gonna be like watching a surgery! Do they paint us as intolerable bigots who can't even be nice to someone who has a gender identity issue,  or do they paint us as jellyfish with no convictions?  Because so far,  pop media has made it seem like you're only either one or the other of those. Maybe they'll surprise me! I'd stop watching it, but Chowon likes shows about relationship drama, and that's what this feels like now.

Dang it Bill Cosby! Why did you have to go and ruin the one good show about family values!?!?

Oh well. That's it for tonight.

"Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art."
Map
 
my pet!