​Hiking the Appalachian Trail with Mark Sanford
 
We have a few causal (non-casual) issues to think about.  They are all related, but my order of presentation will be rather skewed.  First of all, I recently heard (MSBC 11-5-15: 7:45 pm) Mark Sanford who is the former governor of South Carolina and is now a representative in Congress for the 1st Congressional District discussing what to with the Guantanamo Jail in Cuba.  Roughly 112 of the original 780 prisoners are still left in custody.  None have been charged with a civil or a war crime.  What should we do with them?  Mark Sanford suggested that we take them “out back” in the Southern tradition (according to Sanford) and “put a bullet in their heads.”
Now maybe it’s because I’m working on a BIG book on Southern justice in the United States between 1870-1930 that this response is so troublesome to me. 
This is no joke or light hearted matter.
But it causes me to pivot to other non-jokes.  What comes to mind is the fate of Richard A. Clarke and the anti-terrorism team that he assembled for the Clinton Administration in scare of the turning of the millennium, 2000.  This was a very competent, dream team.  Clarke had cabinet level status, but he came from the other side.  George W. Bush dismantled the team and demoted Clarke (who warned about terrorism threats and whose efforts generated the August 2000 memo that there would be a terrorism attempt in September, 2001 originating from a northeast airport). 
This constitutes a policy decision by George W. Bush for which he is responsible.
George W. Bush had empowered Condoleezza Rice, an expert on the Soviet Union (pre-Russian Federation politics, 1990 and before).  Unfortunately, this skill set was not current to 2001—even though she fit the preferred political profile more than Mr. Clarke.  With respect to Mid-East terrorism, she was not knowledgeable. This constitutes a policy decision by George W. Bush for which he is responsible.    
Thus, when there was a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 the George W. Bush administration was content with reading with children a book, “My Pet Goat.”  His mea culpa was, “How could anyone know this might happen?”  “Why do they hate us?”  And then he launched two wars.  The first: Afghanistan was unnecessary.  The reason for this assessment comes from a briefing I was privy to when I was a fellow at the Center for American Progress.  After the 9-11 attack the leader of Afghanistan, Mullah Omar, offered to bring Osama bin Laden to trial according to Islamic law (with the hint that Osama might be beheaded by Muslims in front of an international audience).  This information, to my understanding was not released generally to the American public. If we had accepted the offer, the role of the United States would be far different today.
 The second: to topple Sadam Hussein because he had weapons of mass destruction that he would use against the United States.  This was a spurious claim.  It was being disproven by Hans Glick in his incomplete U.N. report that detailed his search which had found nothing of the sort.  The reason the report was incomplete was because Bush did not let him complete it.  Bush was told by God to invade Iraq and dispose its dictator.  Okay.  Back to the beginning and Afghanistan and their offer to bring Ossama bin Laden to justice.    
But what might this offer mean? 
On one level, we could have had Osama bin Laden “tried and convicted” by his cohort group.  If he had been killed as the result it would have been Muslim justice in the international sphere.  If that had happened, then the colonial intervention that ensued would not have happened.  There would be no abiding anger against the United States.  So why didn’t we go that route?  Because we wanted to be the big dog on the block so that we might get respect for our power. But we philosophers generally accept from Republic I of Plato the five arguments that reject the “might makes right” claim by Thrasymachus (cf. Gorgias). 
So does causation theory have anything to say on this?  Thomas sets out a theory of public causation that says whoever alters the normal (natural) course of affairs is responsible for the consequences.  Others have suggested the trigger theory in which the proximate agent in the event chant is responsible.  Donald Davidson liked this approach, though it has serious counter-examples.  Finally, there is the theory set out by Hart and Honoré in Causation and the Law that creates a joint and several causation theory.  I believe all three are correct within certain restricted contexts. 
So how are we to get beyond this philosophical baggage and judge how we might close Guantanamo Bay prison?  How long must a mistake endure?  George Herbert Walker Bush in his forthcoming book (as told to his ghost writer) suggested that since his son’s freewill was compromised by Cheney and Rumsfeld that he should be seen as a neutral actor in the scene.  Well, since these folks are walking on the Appalachian Trail with others keen on re-writing history in their own favor (sometimes known as “spinning”), we should beg off and take out our inflatable life raft and go down another route towards the port of truth. 
Is it better than becoming a “sell-out” for partial truths, partial lies which constitutes much of what we call current political discourse?  Here I side with William Kingdom Clifford and my friend the late Roderick M. Chisholm who held there was a moral responsibility to exercise due diligence in the pursuit of truth.  To do otherwise is to deny out rational nature.  This is unethical.
 
Michael Boylan
11-10-15
 

​Is Money the Root of All Evil?
 
It is a common maxim that money is the root of all evil.  This seems to put the causal agent for evil on the exchange medium used to enable developed economies to leave barter (an earlier form of goods exchange).  I will argue that this common maxim is wrong on two fronts.  The first and most important error this common maxim makes is that it is not money (which is merely a vehicle of goods exchange) but rather the desire for money that is at fault.  In the children’s story “The Fisherman and his Wife” desire for material goods is shown to increase even as each wish is granted.  Desire feeds further desire.  This, of course, is the central tenet of Buddhism.  In my 2007 novel, The Extinction of Desire, it was shown that monetary windfalls are not necessarily good.  They are bad if they incite greater desire.  Thus, it is not money, per se, that is bad but the desire that is kindled for more and more that is evil.  It is evil because people infuse actual value into the money and material goods when they do not possess any intrinsic value.  Thus the person who is caught in this spiral makes a category mistake: he or she believes that they possess something of ultimate worth when they only possess a material transaction device.  Since the most important goods in life: love, friendship, kindness and charity are not material, a flaw exists in the materialists’ logic.
Money by itself is thus a neutral institutional device that is more efficient than barter for economic transfers.  Too much desire can create a logical error that can confuse the agent into infusing real value into something without any (but expedient value as an economic tool).  This mistake can turn its adherents toward a series of errors in the direction of life.  These errors can cause the materialist true believer into bad (evil) actions.  But it is the desire and the illogic that can follow from it that is the real culprit.
A better candidate for “all evil” might be the illusion that those successful Mammon-following candidates might hold as a personal worldview: I am so powerful with my accumulation of money that I am The Master of the Universe.  This is the sin of ultimate pride—assuming that you are god-like in your power.  It leads to many subsequent errors in judgment which, in turn, lead to bad (evil) actions.  Again, it is not the money, as such, but how one’s attitude about the money that leads people astray.  In this case it is the acquisition of power (cf. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings) that causes the acquisition of false attitudes that lead to one’s downfall. 
Money is not the root of all evil.  Rather it is our attitudes about money that allow it to corrupt the human spirit.
Michael Boylan, Professor of Philosophy, Marymount University.

Georgia--A Trilogy: Part Two is the third book within inte Arche series of books that explore the major structural approaches of the novel.  This book, like Georgia--A Trilogy: Part One intends to be philosophy in the form of fiction.  This is done through character, plot and the 12 book epic structure (each book has twelve chapters).  Beginning each of the 12 books is an essay on narrative art and then some exhibits that situate the chapters in the book to the English litarary tradition and to African American literature.  All exist together, like the philosopher's stone, so that alchemy might result and turn the reading experience into gold.

​Readers are encouraged to post their thoughts here or on other blogs--such as Amazon or Goodreads.  

 From September 20 to October 20, 2016 Georgia: A Trilogy--Part One will be on a blog tour.  Catch up with the Blog Tour by entering Michael Boylan and the book title into your search engine.  Then read the various comments people make about the book.  Of course, if you want to make up your own mind, buy the book and write your own comments.  I hope you do enjoy the book.  It's been 42 years in the making and over 30 complete drafts.  

Michael Boylan’s Archē Series
(The Archē Series seeks to explore philosophical themes within the context of varying novelistic structures that endeavors to define some of the major directions of that fiction form.)
 
Naked Reverse. (January, 2016)
There’s a secret back door to the Ivory Tower.  Follow college professor Andrew Viam through that secret passageway as he goes on an Odyssey into the real world full of love and violence.  Will he survive?  This is an open question.  He falls for a woman, but then she’s running away from a boyfriend who’s into Organized Crime and wants her back.  From the tough city streets of Chicago to the wild woods of Wisconsin, Andrew will have to call on new resources if he wants to make it alive to next term.  It’s a summer break he’d never experienced—and hopefully never will again. The presentation mode is conventional time sequence narrative.  The overarching philosophical position is achieving personal authenticity via action consistent with the personal worldview imperative.
ISBN 978-1-5137-06726
 
Georgia (in three parts, 2016-2017)
What does the novel look like as epic?  Georgia uses this structural device to explore racial identity in the state of Georgia between 1900-1930.  John Dow, is an orphan of unknown parentage who is discovered by a wealthy farmer, Samuel Beauchay, who operates what used to be a cotton plantation that used slave labor.  The farmer raises Dow almost as if he were his own son.  The problem for John and those around him during his upbringing of privilege is whether he is black. Racial identity was very important in the rural town of Varner’s Junction.  John’s real upbringing comes at the hand of Jefferson John Brown who is one of the first African Americans to receive a degree in philosophy at an Ivy League University.  A series of disasters brings Jefferson back to Varner’s Junction where he had been born.  He now runs Samuel Beauchay’s farm for him.  A murder, a fugitive, threats of lynching create a fast pace against the back drop of the decay of the Old South.  Join along to be a partner in history and discover who-done-it! The presentation mode contains the machinery of the epic as developed in the Western Tradition.  The overarching philosophical position concerns the search for personal identity, race, and the shared community worldview of an unstable racist society.
 
T-Rx: The History of a Radical Leader (2018)
During the late 1960s there was a feeling among some young people that the United States was on the verge of a revolution.  The Vietnam War, Civil Rights, new social mores all contributed to a situation in which a counter-culture evolved.  This book explores the story of one counter-culture group led by a man who called himself, T-Rx.  Enter into this world of those who seek to turn the world upside down.  Watch as the FBI tries to stop them.  How far can revolution go?  Is it ever a good thing?  Wasn’t the United States founded upon revolution? The presentation mode is epistolary.  The overarching philosophical position concerns the parallel positions of the extent of individual liberty within an established democratic society and an examination of consent respecting the existing legal system.
 
The Long Fall of the Ball from the Wall (2019)
Human history in the West is sometimes parsed via the Enlightenment as offering an individualistic perspective that countered the existing communitarian worldview.  I have examined this historical change via direct discourse in chapters 2 & 3 of Natural Human Rights: A Theory (Cambridge, 2014).  As fictive narrative philosophy this theoretical construct is examined in term of the early 1960s through the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  This novel examines a hypothetical 2nd gunman behind the grassy knoll and how his personal struggles mirror the larger themes of individual liberty and perceived government/social oppression.  The novel is told via the presentation mode of discontinuous narrative. The overarching philosophical position concerns the dialectical interactions between the role of a given individual and the society at large.  How do these interactions affect free will and determinism?
 

Booktrope published my new novel Naked Reverse

Moving Toward a State of War
 
So we have another mass shooting.  This time in San Bernardino, California.  What should we think about this?  The FBI considers any event in which 4 or more people are killed in an event to be a mass shooting.  Unfortunately, by this definition, the United States has a mass shooting event every two or three days.  Most of these do not make the network news because the victims are black or Latino.  Their lives do not matter as much in the main stream news cycle.  But here we are in which the President talked a couple days ago in France about the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado.  His words were barely off his lips, 24 hours later, when another publicized shooting occurs.
            So how should we think of this and what should we do about it?  In the first place, the United States often thinks about the Middle East and their unstable warlike condition as something that happens to the other.  This is an artifact of an area in the world that is slowly emerging in their move towards democracy.  We can think paternalistically about how if only they had a more robust and fair system of elections and how if only they demonstrated more pure capitalistic conditions that they might attain the status of the United States which politicians from Reagan to Romney have characterized as a shining light upon the hill: a pure goal to which all can aspire.
            Well, maybe not.  If we have mass shootings in the country several times every week throughout the year, then maybe we are moving toward the same warlike state as these countries that we criticize so blithely.  So, what are the facts?  More than 30,000 people in the United States are killed by gun violence each year.  That is enormous.  In Japan the figure is less than 50, western European countries such as Germany, France, Italy, et al, it is around 150, and Canada around 200.  Why are we so disproportionate?  Is it because we were born from violent revolution?  Is it because we are a country where there is huge economic disparity thus giving vent to class anger?  Is it because we are still a racist society that punishes and stigmatizes African Americans and Latino disproportionally at all economic levels? 
            This is a difficult question and beyond the scope of this short piece.  But it should be recognized that in the truly open primary for president, the Republican Party’s leading candidates are outsiders who play to an audience of anger and hatred. 
            This is the foundation of civil unrest.  The United States today has so much gun violence that it can be characterized as on the edge of civil unrest which is another name for war (also called popular insurgency).  Plato, in book eight of the Republic suggests that there can be devolution of political systems according to how lazy the citizens of the state are with regard to their own common good.  His aristocracy (which can be translated to our capitalistic democracy) devolves into oligarchy and eventually to chaos when the common good is ignored for the special interests of the few. 
            I suggest (along with some economists such as Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty) that we are moving in that direction.  The underlying cause for this violence is a society in which wealth is becoming increasingly skewed.  Plato in the Republic thought that the differential between the representative lowest economic individual and the representative highest economic individual should be 10 times.  In my book A Just Society, I extend that to 50 times.  Most of the history of democratic countries in the world would fit into my formula.  Unfortunately, since 1978 we have moved drastically away.  This creates a social tension. 
            When there is clear social tension that is built upon racism and economic inequality, then there will be reactions.  When the United States makes guns so readily available (as I wrote about in these pages in 2012), then it is a recipe for violence and death.  As this cycle increases it pushes the United States into a state of internal lawlessness that borders upon a state of internal anarchy, aka war.
            I have advocated here and elsewhere for the past two decades that gun control is a key component.  The other alternative is that we arm everyone so that we can have constant shoot-outs at the OK-Corral.  This latter alternative (advocated by the National Rifle Association) is a sure avenue towards an escalation of gun violence as every gun owner is the arbitrator of a state of nature system in which civil justice and policing are tossed aside.  Individualism and the hatred of the state (very present in our political climate today) take over.  The logical consequence of this is anarchy and civil war.  This is why the discussion on gun control today is of so much importance.
            How can we stop this process? There is no single answer.  Certainly gun control is one component.  However, there are others, as well.  Decent people owning guns, as such, do not cause these catastrophes. But since guns have a much higher damage coefficient than any other weapon, we must think about access and weapon clips, et al.  If we were to recognize that we are governed by communitarian as well as liberal individualistic conceptions of the just society, then this would be a positive step forward.  I have always situated myself as mid-way between individualism and communitarianism. 
            Gun violence is but one aspect of a society that is blind to both racial prejudice and economic inequality.  When people get mad they turn to the weapon with the highest damage coefficient as possible.  We have to intervene here. 
            Now some libertarians might argue that we all should be as free as possible to do what we like—including owning guns with the maximum damage coefficient possible.  But even here we limit automatic weapons.  But gun control alone is not enough.  This is a complicated social problem that demands an extended tactical response.  If we are moving towards civil insurgency in the United States, then we must meet this threat on a number of fronts. Gun control must be a part of social/racial justice so that everyone in the society can aspire to the American Dream.      
            The time to act is ticking away.  If we are to avert a war within America, we must act immediately.  We have very little time left.
           
Michael Boylan
Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Marymount University.  His most recent books are: Natural Human Rights: A Theory and the philosophical novels, Rainbow Curve, and To the Promised Land.