Chesterton II

"If you cannot both laugh at something and believe in it, then you have no place in a puppet show. Or the world, for that matter." -- Alarms + Discursions, ch. 2.

The Perfect Game

By G.K. Chesterton, 1909:

We have all met the man who says that some odd things have
happened to him, but that he does not really believe that they
were supernatural. My own position is the opposite of this.
I believe in the supernatural as a matter of intellect and reason,
not as a matter of personal experience. I do not see ghosts;
I only see their inherent probability. But it is entirely
a matter of the mere intelligence, not even of the motions;
my nerves and body are altogether of this earth, very earthy.
But upon people of this temperament one weird incident will often
leave a peculiar impression. And the weirdest circumstance
that ever occurred to me occurred a little while ago. It consisted
in nothing less than my playing a game, and playing it quite well
for some seventeen consecutive minutes. The ghost of my grandfather
would have astonished me less.

On one of these blue and burning afternoons I found myself, to my
inexpressible astonishment, playing a game called croquet. I had
imagined that it belonged to the epoch of Leach and Anthony Trollope,
and I had neglected to provide myself with those very long and
luxuriant side whiskers which are really essential to such a scene.
I played it with a man whom we will call Parkinson, and with whom I had
a semi-philosophical argument which lasted through the entire contest.
It is deeply implanted in my mind that I had the best of the argument;
but it is certain and beyond dispute that I had the worst of the game.

"Oh, Parkinson, Parkinson!" I cried, patting him affectionately
on the head with a mallet, "how far you really are from the pure
love of the sport--you who can play. It is only we who play badly
who love the Game itself. You love glory; you love applause;
you love the earthquake voice of victory; you do not love croquet.
You do not love croquet until you love being beaten at croquet.
It is we the bunglers who adore the occupation in the abstract.
It is we to whom it is art for art's sake. If we may see the face
of Croquet herself (if I may so express myself) we are content to
see her face turned upon us in anger. Our play is called amateurish;
and we wear proudly the name of amateur, for amateurs is but the
French for Lovers. We accept all adventures from our Lady, the most
disastrous or the most dreary. We wait outside her iron gates (I
allude to the hoops), vainly essaying to enter. Our devoted balls,
impetuous and full of chivalry, will not be confined within
the pedantic boundaries of the mere croquet ground. Our balls seek
honour in the ends of the earth; they turn up in the flower-beds
and the conservatory; they are to be found in the front garden
and the next street. No, Parkinson! The good painter has skill.
It is the bad painter who loves his art. The good musician
loves being a musician, the bad musician loves music. With such a
pure and hopeless passion do I worship croquet. I love the game
itself. I love the parallelogram of grass marked out with chalk or
tape, as if its limits were the frontiers of my sacred Fatherland,
the four seas of Britain. I love the mere swing of the mallets, and
the click of the balls is music. The four colours are to me
sacramental and symbolic, like the red of martyrdom, or the white
of Easter Day. You lose all this, my poor Parkinson. You have to
solace yourself for the absence of this vision by the paltry
consolation of being able to go through hoops and to hit the stick."

And I waved my mallet in the air with a graceful gaiety.

"Don't be too sorry for me," said Parkinson, with his simple sarcasm.
"I shall get over it in time. But it seems to me that the more
a man likes a game the better he would want to play it. Granted that
the pleasure in the thing itself comes first, does not the pleasure
of success come naturally and inevitably afterwards? Or, take your
own simile of the Knight and his Lady-love. I admit the gentleman
does first and foremost want to be in the lady's presence. But I
never yet heard of a gentleman who wanted to look an utter ass when
he was there."

"Perhaps not; though he generally looks it," I replied. "But the truth
is that there is a fallacy in the simile, although it was my own. The
happiness at which the lover is aiming is an infinite happiness, which
can be extended without limit. The more he is loved, normally speaking,
the jollier he will be. It is definitely true that the stronger the
love of both lovers, the stronger will be the happiness. But it is not
true that the stronger the play of both croquet players the stronger
will be the game. It is logically possible--(follow me closely here,
Parkinson!)--it is logically possible, to play croquet too well to
enjoy it at all. If you could put this blue ball through that distant
hoop as easily as you could pick it up with your hand, then you would
not put it through that hoop any more than you pick it up with your
hand; it would not be worth doing. If you could play unerringly you
would not play at all. The moment the game is perfect the game
disappears."

"I do not think, however," said Parkinson, "that you are in any
immediate danger of effecting that sort of destruction. I do not
think your croquet will vanish through its own faultless excellence.
You are safe for the present."

I again caressed him with the mallet, knocked a ball about, wired myself,
and resumed the thread of my discourse.

The long, warm evening had been gradually closing in, and by this
time it was almost twilight. By the time I had delivered four
more fundamental principles, and my companion had gone through five
more hoops, the dusk was verging upon dark.

"We shall have to give this up," said Parkinson, as he missed
a ball almost for the first time, "I can't see a thing."

"Nor can I," I answered, "and it is a comfort to reflect that I
could not hit anything if I saw it."

With that I struck a ball smartly, and sent it away into the darkness
towards where the shadowy figure of Parkinson moved in the hot haze.
Parkinson immediately uttered a loud and dramatic cry. The situation,
indeed, called for it. I had hit the right ball.

Stunned with astonishment, I crossed the gloomy ground, and hit my ball
again. It went through a hoop. I could not see the hoop; but it was
the right hoop. I shuddered from head to foot.

Words were wholly inadequate, so I slouched heavily after that
impossible ball. Again I hit it away into the night, in what I
supposed was the vague direction of the quite invisible stick.
And in the dead silence I heard the stick rattle as the ball
struck it heavily.

I threw down my mallet. "I can't stand this," I said. "My ball has
gone right three times. These things are not of this world."

"Pick your mallet up ," said Parkinson, "have another go."

"I tell you I daren't. If I made another hoop like that I should see
all the devils dancing there on the blessed grass."

"Why devils?" asked Parkinson; "they may be only fairies making fun of
you. They are sending you the 'Perfect Game,' which is no game."

I looked about me. The garden was full of a burning darkness,
in which the faint glimmers had the look of fire. I stepped across
the grass as if it burnt me, picked up the mallet, and hit the ball
somewhere--somewhere where another ball might be. I heard the dull
click of the balls touching, and ran into the house like one pursued.

Relative maturity

It's well established that boys and girls emotionally/intellectually mature at different rates. Generally, it's said that girls mature more quickly. And I certainly always felt that way. Growing up, the girls my age always seemed more put together than the boys.

Warning: blatant sexism follows.

I wonder, though, about the cause.

Premise 1 -- There are two broad categories of motivations -- subjective and objective. Subjective motivations are those social norms and expectations we internalize from our environment. Objective motivations are things in the external world (aside from the expectations of other people) like rocks, motorcycles, and corporations.

Premise 2 -- Girls tend to be (but are not completely) more subjectively motivated than boys, and vice versa.

I think that subjectively motivated people tend to mature more quickly up front, because they attune to the expectations of their peers and parents, internalize them, and emulate them. However, I think they plateau at some point, because they do not challenge and question the objective nature of things and their own behavior -- they do what's expected, and fail to challenge it.

I think that objectively motivated people tend to mature more slowly up front, because they are not attuned to expectations. They don't particularly care what pleases others, because they are focused on things. However, I think that in the long run, these people tend to continue to mature long after the subjectivists plateau, because once they develop behaviors through trial and error, they grasp the essence of the reasoning behind those behaviors, and continue to develop.

For example:

A girl learns that people respond positively to you when you dress pretty, so she dresses pretty. However, she also judges people who don't dress pretty, because they aren't doing what's expected.

A boy doesn't notice or care how people expect him to dress, and so he dresses poorly. He also doesn't judge people that dress poorly, because he's attuned to the essential -- it's what's inside that counts. After a few years, however, he learns that if he wants to succeed in a career he likes and make money he wants, people will judge him if he does not look professional. As a result, he begins to dress better when necessary, but without being pretentious about it (recognizing that it is merely cultural), and without judging others. Thus, more slowly but ultimately in a superior way, he learns the essence of how and why to dress well.

Applying this model to a broad generalization, I'd say this might explain why girls (who tend to be more subjectively motivated) mature more quickly than boys up front, but in mid to late adulthood, men surpass women in maturity.

As always, this does not necessarily apply to individuals. I know girls who are objectively motivated and boys who are subjectively motivated, and I've seen boys plateau and girls surpass. Also, some boys are more objectively motivated than other boys, and the same with girls. Even so, the application of this causal mechanism to explain the general trends of maturity would still reflect itself in gender maturity rates, due to the general tendencies of the genders.

Religion, government, and libertarianism

Ayn Rand writes, regarding the reading of Genesis from the moon during Apollo 8:

"When, from the distance of the moon, from the height of the triump of science, we expected to hear the astronaut's message, and heard instead a voice reciting the mouldy nonsense which not even a slum corner evangelist would not have selected as a text, reciting the Bible's cosmology. I, for one, felt as though the capsule had disintegrated, and we were left in the primordial darkness of empty space."

I find this fascinating. Throughout her writing, Rand portrays Religion and Government as the foes of Reason and Science. Yet in Apollo 8 we have a government program operated (at least in significant part) by religiously motivated people. The perfect counterexample to her premise. But instead of grappling with the contradiction to her fundamental beliefs, she lashes out against religious symbolism in the context of scientific achievement.

Instead of asking herself, "How were religious government employees able to accomplish this feat!?" she is angered that the astronauts were religious when (we all know, I suppose) that the religion to which they ascribed was antithetical to the science they were performing.

Why? And why do so many see science and religion as fundamentally antithetical, despite all evidence to the contrary?

I wonder if it's a failure of religious creativity. That is to say, I wonder if all they know of religion is one particular dogma or set of rituals -- and they do not understand that religion is a fundamentally fluid, creative enterprise. To place "Religion" against "Science" is to implicitly assume that it is impossible to invent forms of religion consistent between the two? One reading of Genesis may be "anti-scientific." But why all readings? They don't seem to understand that there is no unchanging monolith known as "religion" -- but that religion is a fluid, abstract label we use to group an enormous diversity of fluid, creative means of understanding the world.

And they appear to be so stuck in that way of thinking that when they see government, religion, and unprecedented scientific achievement operating in perfect harmony, they feel only anger that the scientific achievement was somehow poisoned by a religious outlook which, ultimately, they do not understand.

Life

"Life's tough......It's even tougher if you're stupid." -John Wayne

Dialectical thinking

I like to think dialectically. I define dialectical thinking as looking to opposing sides of an issue, and seeking to find an answer that integrates the truths in both sides, while freeing itself of the falsehoods of both sides.

Dialectical thinking is premised on two philosophical positions:
1) All people are at least partially rational -- that is to say, any honestly held belief ascribed to by any reasonable number of people must have, at its center, at least a kernal of Truth.
2) Reality is consistent -- that is to say, if two people disagree on an issue, then their disagreement is necessarily the result of error on the part of one or both of them.

Consequently, when I look at debates, I approach them with the premise that there is most likely truth and falsehood on both sides -- and I dive into the issues, to figure out what they are. I then synthesize a new, creative answer that (to the best of my ability anyway) distills the good from the bad.

For example: Creationism and evolutionism. The kernal of truth in creationism is that life, and the universe, show attributes that we commonly associate with design, and that design-free theories of origins are riddled with errors and outright lies. The kernal of truth in evolutionism is that supernaturalism is philosophically indefensible (as for anything to interact with the physical universe, it must do so through causal mechanisms, making "supernaturalism" fundamentally meaningless), and dogmatism of religious creationists is profoundly irrational -- that is to say, placing utter faith in the text of a book (without critically evaluating its credibility) pretty much embodies superstitious thinking.

So I take both of those truths, and I integrate them. Eliminate the supernaturalism from creationism, and you have the hypothesis that life was designed by natural agent(s), by natural means. Eliminate the dogmatism from creationism, and you have hypotheses of historical creation based on historical sources, which are tentatively accepted, just as any historical document might be, with a critical eye toward the possibility of their being some combination of history, fiction, and error.

On the evolutionist side. eliminate the a priori rejection of the above hypothesis, and intelligent design becomes a vastly more reasonable explanation for the origin of life than naturalistic abiogenesis -- as we have seen the mechanisms of genetic engineering, but have not seen how the ooze came alive.

Or take abortion. The kernal of truth in the pro-life side is that the organism in the womb is biologically distinct from its mother -- with separate DNA, separate sensations, and organs of its own. The kernal of truth in the pro-choice side is that the organism in the womb is not social -- and that in some cases, babies are conceived in circumstances which are very difficult for the mother (and baby) to thrive.

Put those together, and what do you get? In this case, not so much an answer as two fundamentally unanswered questions -- what makes us human, and when do humans have a right to life? Are we human based on our genetics, or on our independence? Do humans acquire a right to life when they interact with the world, or when they become human?

I don't think we have solid answers to these questions yet -- but dialectical thinking at least gets the questions asked. Only then can we try to develop the tools to find the answers.

The result of dialectical thinking, in my experience, is an almost extraordinary capacity to anger both sides of a debate. Yet I cannot help but do it, because it is a natural outgrowth of the two philosophical premises which started this article -- premises in which I am a passionate believer.

Categories

Reading Aristotle's logic. He treats "attributes" as real entities, just as mathematicians sometimes treat numbers as real things, much to my disdain. Thus, he talks about "essential attributes" -- those which cannot be separated from the thing while the thing remains what it is (e.g. "wet" is an essential attribute of "water" -- if it's not water, it's not water) and "accidental attributes" -- those which can be separated from the thing and yet the thing remain what it is (e.g. "black" is an accidental attribute of "dog" because a dog may be black, but may also be something other than black and still be a dog).

This strikes me as reflecting the same Realism as sometimes shows up in math -- treating "2" is a real entity, rather than merely a linguistic tool we use to describe a particular group of items in reality, or a particular concept in pure math. Or how we sometimes describe "perfection" as a real entity or attribute, rather than simply a linguistic tool we use to describe something that embodies what we wish it to be for a particular purpose.

But these attributes, like numbers, are merely artifacts of our categorization. "Brown" may be an accidental attribute of "dog," but not of "chocolate lab." The attributes have no real existence, except insofar as they are useful ways of categorizing reality in a way we can comprehend.

Does that make the labels useless? By no means. But once we start treating those labels as real, it seems to me that we get in trouble. In this case, we start arguing about whether a particular attribute is "essential" or "accidental" with respect to a particular entity. Is God "necessarily perfect" as Anselm argued? The whole discussion, unfortunately, is meaningless -- an argument over labels, and without substance.

That fundamental distinction between "reality" and "concept" makes thought so much clearer.

Concept is our way to describing reality, because without concept, we cannot relate to reality. Concepts without corresponding physical reality may be useful (e.g. "Love" describes a particular state of mind, but has no defined physical reality) -- however, they should not be treated as having reality as an entity (e.g. "God is Perfection and Perfection existsn, therefore God exists").