What’s the Deal with the Millennial Generation?

by Michael S. Russo

I’ve just finished reading an article in the New York Times by Ross Douthat that left me more confused than ever about the millennial students that I am currently teaching.

To sum up just a few of Mr. Douthat’s points, members of the millennial generation seem to be living much more prudent lives than those in previous generations:

• They are drinking, smoking and using drugs much less.
• They have fewer sexual partners and a lower rate of teenage pregnancy.
• They are less violent and less prone to suicide. 

But in other ways they are also much less responsible than other generations:

• They are more likely to live longer with their parents.
• They are less likely to get married or have children.
• They more likely to drop out of the workforce.

I found these statistics to be interesting and they seem to support out my own impressions of millennials (which I admit are completely anecdotal).

On the positive side, I have found my millennial students to be more tolerant, more appreciative of diversity, more open to unconventional ideas, and less prone to racism, sexism and homophobia than students that I had taught in the past. They also seem much more ecologically concerned than older generations. I find these changes to be welcome, indeed.

But, I’ve also found that my millennial students have shorter attention spans, less intellectual curiosity, imagination and cultural literacy, and less ambition, drive and stick-to-itiveness than students that I had once taught. They also seem to have more trouble relating to other human beings in an intimate and personal way than earlier students. These negative tendencies, I believe, might have something to do with the overuse of technology on the part of millennials, but this is just a hypothesis. (I can’t tell you, though, how many times during the past five years I have had to use the expression, “Put away your damn cell phones and pay attention.”)

Like many members of my own generation (late baby boomers), I’ve been wondering what it will be like to have adults with these sorts of tendencies running the country in the future. On the positive side, we may have a much more open and tolerant society when millennials are in charge. And that would be a very good thing.

But I admit to also being concerned about having people running things who seem afraid of—or at least uninterested in—long-term commitments and taking on the tedious responsibilities of adulthood. Are we condemned to be governed in the future by selfie-taking, hyper-tweeting, self-fixated, overly-sensitive, perpetual teenagers?

Or am I just being overly pessimistic, like members of all passing generations have been? As Cicero once said somewhere: “Our father’s race more versed in wickedness than were their sires have begotten us, a race more wicked still, duly to beget a even more wicked race.”

Maybe it’s just inevitable that older generations find younger ones to be incomprehensible.  I'm sure that millennials find me fairly incomprehensible as well. 

The Way of the Skeptic

By Michael S. Russo

I’ve been teaching philosophy now for over 20 years, and it always amazes me at how gullible students are. Every year when teaching my Rhetoric course, I come in the first class and inform the students—in a very bad Irish brogue—that I am Fr. Liam McCarthy from County Gallway in Ireland. I then go on with the prepared script:

“Dr. Russo, I’m afraid, has been deemed ill-suited to teach this class and I’ve been asked to take his place. What I plan to do is examine the leadership styles of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, his blessed Mother Mary, and the saints and martyrs of the Catholic Church, including, but not limited to Saints Perpetua and Felicity, St. Odo of Cluny, and, of course, the blessed Barengarius of Tours. Our text will be the Bible, which I plan to teach to you in the original Greek. Many of you, I fear, will not do well in this course, because you are weak of mind and prone to the frailties of the flesh. I want you to know that I have no problem failing every one of you, if you fail to meet my exacting standards. Does anyone have any questions? Good. Then let’s begin our class with a prayer taken from the Catholic rite of the dead.”

I say all this with a perfectly straight face, while at the same time trying to the best of my ability to maintain something like a Barry Fitzgerald-style brogue from The Quiet Man. It’s a ludicrous performance, and no one with any sense at all could possibly believe that Fr. McCarthy could be real. But the students all do. And when I can no longer sustain my performance, break out in laughter, and inform them that they’ve been had, most of my freshmen still don’t know how to react: They sit paralyzed for some time, trying to figure out how they could have believed something so patently absurd to be true.

I know what you’re thinking: how stupid can these freshmen be? But they’re not stupid at all. In fact, only honors-level students take my Rhetoric class. And I would bet that, if you were in this class, you would buy into the reality of Fr. McCarthy, even with his abysmal brogue and his absurd 1950s Catholic worldview. You would accept that Fr. McCarthy is for real, because, like most human beings, you’ve been trained to accept many things on faith that you have no real evidence for at all.

For instance,

• you believe that you were born in a certain place at a certain time to certain parents. 
• you believe that the world you experience with your senses exists as you perceive it. 
• you believe that this planet that we are on is part of a larger universe that is very, very large and contains many other solar systems. 
• you believe in God and that when you die your personal identity will live on in some form. 
• you believe that when you look into the mirror every morning that the person you see staring back at you is the real you. 

Unlike the reality of Father McCarthy, these are all somewhat plausible beliefs, to be sure. You’ve probably embraced many of these beliefs most of your life and people that you trust and love undoubtedly hold to them as “gospel truth.” But how do we really know that any of these so-called “truths” are actually true at all?

Mind Games

Let’s play a few mind games. For these games to work, you’ll have to put aside all the beliefs about your life that you have taken for granted are true.

We can start with your experience of reading this very text. Your assumption, I’m sure, is that you, __________________ (fill in your name), are sitting down in front of your computer reading the words that appear on the screen. But can you really be certain that this is what you are actually doing? Haven’t you had the experience of thinking that you were enmeshed in some activity—hanging out with your friends, visiting a strange, exotic place, making love to a desirable partner, only to wake up and discover that everything you thought was real was actually nothing more than a dream? But while you were dreaming, the dream seemed totally and completely real to you, didn’t it? Well, how do you know that something similar is not going on right now? Perhaps instead of reading this text on your computer, you are, in fact, in deep REM sleep, dreaming about reading this text. Can you really be 100% certain that this is not the case (remember, while you are in a dream, everything seems completely real to you)?

Let’s try another mind game, just for fun. Once again, you are reading this text, imagining that what you are experiencing is real. But I’m here to tell you that the you that you think is you is not really you, and the world that you think is really real is not real at all. You are actually a being of a much more highly evolved species than homo sapiens (You have a body only about 4 feet tall, four fingers on each hand, a huge cranium to support your impressive brain, and no icky genitalia, since reproduction of your species is done purely through mental contact). Every 150 years members of your species go into a coma-like state, called “The Phase” in order to regenerate, and remain in this state for about five years. During that time, it’s not uncommon for beings like yourself to imagine themselves as completely different sorts of creatures on strange new worlds. For example, while you are in your coma-like state, you’ve imagined yourself as _______________ (fill in your name) living in a place called ___________ (fill in your town and country),on a planet called Earth, in a period described as the early 21st century. You’ve even created a bizarre physical form for yourself that is totally unlike the “real” form that you actually possess (pubic hair…yuck!). The further along you are in The Phase, the more elaborate the dream becomes until you no longer even begin to question that it’s real. You establish relationships, develop a career, beget children, etc. But—and here’s the kicker—you are now approaching the end of your five year sleep cycle and very soon will be ripped from mind has created. When that happens, everything you experience in that dream-like state will become nothing more than a vague memory that you will eventually forget completely as you resume your “real” life.

I know that you are probably thinking that both scenarios that I’ve described are completely implausible. You know exactly who you are, and you know damn well that what you are experiencing at this very moment is precisely what it appears to be. But can you really be certain that is the case? In fact, the “certainty” that you possess about just about every aspect of your life is actually more like a belief or conviction—something that ultimately can’t be proven or disproven. You could, in fact, be sleeping or you could be an alien creature in comma-like state. How could you ever prove that you’re not?

The Way of the Skeptic

What’s the point of all this, you’re probably asking by now? The point is to set you on a path that some philosophers have called the ultimate road to self-realization. It’s called the path of skepticism, and its practitioners—called, not surprisingly, skeptics—argue that true liberation comes from embracing the uncertainty inherent in human life. “Dubito”—I doubt—is the motto of all skeptics, and a truly radical skeptic doubts every aspect of his experience.

The way of the skeptic is the opposite of that of the dogmatist. Dogmatists believe they have certain knowledge about the nature of reality, the right way to live, how to organize society, etc. Their supposed certainty leads to conflict with other dogmatists who also believe that they hold the truth. Aggression, violence, war, and genocide are the end results of embracing a philosophy that holds that one’s own truth is absolute and everything else is error, lies, and heresy.

The skeptic, in rejecting the idea of universal or transcendent truth, avoids the tension and conflict that the dogmatist inevitably experiences when his views run counter to the views of others. When the skeptic encounters someone with an alternative perspective on reality, he simply acknowledges the beliefs of the other and moves on humbly and graciously. He doesn’t get angry or frustrated, because he has no personal stake in the debates dogmatists love to have among themselves.

The total suspension of judgment that the skeptic has about what is true or false leads to a kind of inner peace that dogmatist can never possess. Things may “appear” or “seem” to be true to the skeptic, but when he’s shown that this is not the case, there’s no psychic rupture that occurs within him. His beliefs are recognized to be beliefs, and nothing more, and when new beliefs come along that are superior to the ones he’s previously held, he’s capable of embracing them with a cognitive flexibility that the dogmatist could never even imagine.

Not convinced? Try suspending judgment for just a week on matters that you’ve always assumed to be true. For just a week, instead of reacting dogmatically when your beliefs encounter opposition, make an effort to remain open to conflicting viewpoints. You just might find that your life has become much more pleasant by giving up some of your certainty about the truth…and you also might find that the world around you becomes a much nicer place as a result.

___________________


Dr. Michael S. Russo is a Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at Molloy College in New York, the manager of The Sophia Project, an online repository of educational resources in Philosophy, and the author of That's Right: An Introduction to Ethical Theory.  He can be reached atmrusso@molloy.edu.

Considerations on Death

A. J. Grunthaler

One thing that we can all be certain of is that at some point—today, tomorrow, or in the not too distant future—every single one of us will die. And this is true not just for ourselves, but for every human being who has ever lived or is currently living. Although we can imagine a possible future in which technological advances extend life far beyond the limits that we experience today, it seems unlikely that our species will ever be able to prolong life indefinitely. In this sense death represents that ultimate and necessary culmination of our human experience. The meaning of life, in other words, cannot be separated from the meaning of death. 

Death is usually defined as the cessation of biological functions that sustain the life of a living creature. That seems pretty straight-forward in itself. But death is not just a matter of biology for members of our own species. It’s wrapped up with emotions, beliefs, and rituals that give death a significance that is far greater than most of the other events that occur in the lives of human beings. 

Objectively, death would seem to be the greatest of all the misfortunates that can befall any individual. It signifies the end to our human project—to all the dreams and plans we had for our lives. Given a choice, most of us would probably chose to prolong our lives, even if we had to endure considerable pain and suffering to do so, because with the continuation of life there is always the possibility that things can get better. Death, on the other hand, represents the termination of all of our hopes for this life. 

But does death actually represent the end of our human project, or is it simply the gateway to another possible form of existence? All of the great religions of the world posit the continuation of human existence in another form after death. The religions originating in the Middle East—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—all ascribe to the belief that the soul (the non-material, animating spirit of the human being) continues on in the afterlife. Religions like Hinduism and some forms of Buddhism have a belief in reincarnation or rebirth—the idea that the self or the soul takes on another physical form after death. 

The idea that some aspect of our human personality or identity could continue on after the death of the body is the source of considerable consolation for many people. Perhaps this is the reason why we invest so much effort in devising dignified and often elaborate rituals at the end of life—funeral masses, wakes, shivas, cremation ceremonies, and the like. The goal of these rituals is certainly to celebrate the life of the person who has died, but they perhaps serve the even more important function of providing those who remain behind with the hope that the departed loved one still exists in some form. 

But we also must consider the possibility that the belief in continuation of life after death is a fantasy or illusion created by our species precisely because death is so terrifying to us. So instead of accepting that death represents the end of who we are, we create the myth of an eternal soul that somehow is able to live on after the body has ceased to function. For atheists death represents the complete and total oblivion of the self. According to this view when the body dies, our personal identity dies with it. 

Whether one believes in the continued existence of human beings after death or not, death traditionally was understood to be such a traumatic experience that in the past it was recognized that one needed to be prepared philosophically and emotionally for the reality of one’s own demise. This practice came to be known in antiquity and the Middle Ages as the ars moriendi—the art of dying. In the Middle Ages this practice often involved visiting charnel grounds where the bodies of the dead were allowed to decompose and the creating of gruesome works of art known as danse macabre (the dance of death) to remind Christians of the inevitability of death. 

Dance of Death by Michael Wolgemut (1493)

While today we might view the regular reflection on the inevitability of our own deaths as somewhat morbid, consider for a moment our contemporary attitudes towards death. 

In the past, people often died in their own homes, cared for until the end of life by family members. And after death, those same family members would wash and dress the bodies of their loved ones, which were then often laid out for viewing in the family living room. Aromatic flowers were customarily brought into the house to try, as much as possible, to cover up the smell of the rotting corpse. Those same family members might also have been responsible for digging a grave for their dead relative, putting the coffin in the ground, and covering it with dirt. 

Today, most people die in hospitals, cared for by total strangers. They’re embalmed, dressed, made-up, and laid out in funeral out by morticians. At cemeteries we have professionals now to dig graves, but it’s rarely customary any more for family and friends to be present when coffins are placed in the ground and covered with dirt. So once again, total strangers are paid to do this task. 

Far from being morbid, our ancestors probably had a more sensible and psychologically healthy attitude towards death. In the 21st century, we might try to delude ourselves that death is what happens to other people—to old Aunt Sally, to famous men and women in the obituary section of the local newspaper, or some child dying of malaria in Africa—but death, in fact, is what happens to all of us. We can’t escape it no matter how much we may try to delude ourselves to the contrary. So our best bet is to try to appreciate the reality and inevitability of death and to reconcile ourselves as much as possible with it.

After all, what alternative do we have?

The Meaning of the Meaning of Life

A.J. Grunthaler

One of the most fundamental and important questions in the discipline of Philosophy is “What is the meaning of life?” Maybe you’ve never asked this question in precisely the way I just framed it, but if you’re like most people, you’ve almost certainly reflected about the ultimate meaning of your life, even if you’re not fully aware that you have.

Perhaps, one night, while you were alone at home with nothing to distract you, a thought suddenly popped into your head, unlike any thought you may have had before. A crazy thought like this: “What’s the point of it all?” Believe it or not, most people—assuming they’re not completely shallow—will ask a question like this at some point or another during the course of their lives. And this is just another way of asking, “What is the meaning of life?” 

Even if we grant that life does indeed have meaning, another question arises when we consider whether this meaning is the same for all people or whether it varies from person to person. In other words, is the question of meaning objective (applies to all) or subjective (a matter of individual perspective)? If it’s the former, we might call this a “higher” meaning of life—the idea that life has a meaning that transcends our own beliefs, attitudes, and feelings about it. 

But if life does indeed have a higher meaning, this leads to another perplexing question: what exactly is the objective reality or condition that gives life this higher meaning? 

Most human being typically ask the question “Does life have meaning?” when they’re confronted with difficult times—when those they love are sick, suffering, or in pain or when they themselves are sick, suffering, or in pain. It’s at such times that some people begin to think about the possibility of the existence of some kind of Supreme Being or God who gives life meaning. If there is a God, then living according to his purposes (following his will, coming to know or love him, or living our lives according to his plan) would seem to fit the bill for a higher, objective meaning for all human life.

For most human beings, living in most parts of the world up to the present time, this belief in this existence of God—call him Brahman, Yahweh, or Allah, if you prefer—provided everything that was necessary to create meaning in life. Indeed, some form of belief in a Higher Power controlling the destiny of mankind has been part of our experience probably since our species began to develop the ability to engage in abstract thought. 

But what if there isn’t a God? What would that do to the question of meaning in life?

One possibility would be that we’d be forced to recognize that life is fundamentally pointless or absurd. After all, what could possibly be more absurd than to endure all the suffering and pain that are an inevitable part of human existence only to cap off our lives with the stark reality of death—which, in the absence of a God, ultimately means total oblivion. But, not just total oblivion for ourselves. In the end, all of our human projects will be swept away by time, until eventually even our species itself will disappear…as will our planet, our solar system, and possibly even the very universe itself. Confronted with the reality of such oblivion, human life cannot help but seem a bit pointless, can it?

But, even if life doesn’t have a higher meaning or purpose, does this automatically mean that our human lives must be fundamentally pointless or absurd? In fact, we in the West are already living in what is commonly called a post theistic age—an age, in other words, in which belief in God seems fairly unimportant for many people. In fact, the number of people describing themselves as atheists, agnostics, or unaffiliated with any major religion has been creeping upward since the dawn of the 21st century, making “non-believer” the fastest growing religion in the United States. 

And yet despite this lack of belief or interest in the existence of God, many individuals seem to find meaning in a whole host of significant activities that are part and parcel of our ordinary human lives. We find meaning in relationships with family, friends, and lovers; we find meaning in the simple pleasures of life and in the beauty—both man-made and natural—that surrounds us; and we find meaning in living lives of virtue for its own sake, rather than out of any external compulsions . We haven’t lost a sense of meaning in the absence of God: we’ve discovered that meaning all around us. Admittedly, this isn’t the kind of transcendent, objective meaning that theists think is necessary to provide purposefulness and value to our human lives. But it is meaning nonetheless. 

Whether our lives have one objective meaning or multiple meanings that vary from individual to individual, the question of the meaning of life is one that is intimately connected with our very humanity. Members of no other species ask whether their lives have meaning or not. In fact, one could argue that it is our very ability to inquire about the meaning of life that separates humans from all other creatures inhabiting this planet.

The Ultimate Question....What's Your REAL Story?

In the past on this site, we've had debates about the ultimate narrative of the human condition ("Your Story," if you will).  There are essentially two main stories that we human beings tell about why we are here and where we are eventually going--the theistic story and the scientific story.  There are other stories that human beings have told as well throughout our history (existential, nihilistic, pantheistic, panentheistic etc.), but these seem to be the two big options.

The question that you should ask yourself is which story do you accept a the true human narrative and why.  This has major implications for the way you live you life and how you view human relationships and human society.

Here are the two big stories.

THE THEISTIC STORY

1. The universe and everything in it was created by an all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-loving Supreme Being (SB). From before time began, this Being knew that you would come into existence and had a very special plan just for you. You are precious to Him, because you are, in fact, one with Him, and his love for you is constant and all-enduring.
2. Your life has ultimate meaning because it is part of the SB’s ultimate plan for mankind. This plan, furthermore, has been revealed through the SB’s word as it exists in the sacred texts of your particular faith tradition. All you have to do is follow the blueprint for your life as it has been revealed through this sacred text and interpreted by the SB’s anointed ministers and teachers and you will experience happiness in this life and salvation in the next.
3. During your life, you may experience suffering and pain, but these are merely tests to see if you are worthy enough to receive eternal life. Assuming you endure your suffering with equanimity, follow SB’s blueprint for your life, and remain faithful, you can be assured that, despite any adversities you experience, you will receive an eternal reward in the next life. The heavenly bliss that you will experience in the next life, in fact, will make even the most exquisite pleasures of this life pale by comparison.
4. Of course, you have also been created with the gift of free will and can use the freedom you have to transgress the SB’s law, reject his love, or engage in despair about your condition. If you do this, you will experience misery in this life and unspeakable torment in the next (i.e., eternal separation from the SB, the source of all love and goodness). 
5. The world will come to an end, but the faithful who are part of the SB’s chosen people (i.e., the elect) will continue to enjoy supreme bliss with the SB in heaven for all eternity.

THE SCIENTIFIC STORY

1. You were born into this life with no control over where you were born, to whom you were born, or in what social and economic conditions you were born.  You couldn’t decide to stay in the womb rather than being thrust out into the world naked and screaming, and once you were born, you pretty much were handed a dealt deck in terms of your genetic make-up and your environment.   If you were very lucky, you weren’t born in a war zone or to abusive parents or with a life-threatening disability or mentally incapacitated. 
2. For approximately 18-25 years of your life, you grew physically and developed, to a greater or lesser degree, the intellectual, psychological, and social skills needed to navigate your way through life and find your place within human society.  
3. For much of the rest of your life, you put the skills you learned to use working in some kind of job—in all likelihood, one that you didn’t enjoy very much or that didn’t pay you the kind of salary that you thought you deserved.  The money that you earned from working, however, enabled you eventually to leave your parent’s home and pay for those items necessary for survival (food, clothing, housing) and those that contribute to human felicity (cars, Iphones, designer handbags, etc.).
4. Like all animals, you have a built-in desire to procreate and to spread your gene pool as widely as possible to ensure the survival of the species.  If conditions were right, you may have found a suitable partner with whom to produce offspring.  You would then spend the most productive years of your mid-life providing for those offspring, attempting to ensure their survival into adulthood, and training them—with greater or lesser success—to become autonomous individuals in their own right.
5. If you were lucky, you didn’t die accidentally, perish from a disease, or get killed, and made it into old age.  At that point your body began to break down, you got sick, you suffered physically (and perhaps emotionally as well) and eventually died.  Within moments after your death, your body began to decompose, and within a few years, almost nothing was left of you at all.
6. Within one or two generations of your death, you were forgotten by every other human being on the planet (unless you were one of the ridiculously small percentage of human beings who were skillful or lucky enough to make an impact on human history, in which case, you might be remembered a bit longer).  Your grandchildren will probably only have fleeting memories of you and their children will only know who you were through dusty, old photographs that have been left behind (if they haven’t already been tossed away by a careless descendant, that is).
7. Within a relatively short amount of time—planetarily speaking—humanity itself will be destroyed through some kind of global cataclysm or pandemic and nothing will remain of our species.  At some point in time a new species may evolve from the bugs that have managed to survive, but this species will probably have little or nothing in common with our own.  Eventually, the planet, and even the universe itself, will simply cease to exist, and all that will remain will be the infinite void.  

From:  Michael S. Russo, ed. The Problems of Philosophy.  New York: SophiaOmni Press, 2012.

It's All Bullshit!

by Alex Romeo

Anarchist and Performance Artist

This is my contemporary spin on the ideas of one of my favorite philosophical schools from antiquity—the Cynics.  They were the bad asses of the ancient world  and we still have so much to learn from them.  

As the philosopher Harry Frankfort writes:  “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.”  (“On Bullshit”)

American society is pervaded by bullshit.  It affects just about every seemingly important aspect of our lives—politics, religion, family life, education, the arts…you name it.  And bullshit in American society is so omnipresent that there seems to be no escaping it.

From the moment that we are born to the moment that we die, we have purveyors of bullshit telling us how we should live our lives, what kind of education we should have, who we should associate with, who we should love, how we should raise the children that they automatically assume everyone should produce, even how we should die.    

These masters of bullshit have determined the exact formula for “happiness” in life:

• Always do what you’re told by “legitimate” authority (parents, teachers, preachers).
• Obey the rules of society even when the rules seem petty, capricious or even unjust.
• Go to school simply to get a job simply to make money.
• Get married to a respectable partner (attractive, professional, and of the opposite sex), and spawn 2.5 children who have the same potential for upward mobility that you do.
• After the kids are born, try to pretend at least to believe that there is some kind of higher power that rules over the universe (preferable the good old Judeo Christian God) and go through the motions of pretending to worship that higher power…if only for the sake of the kids!
• Make enough money to (1) get a house with at least four bedrooms and two baths in the “nice” part of town, (2) have at least one SUV park conspicuously in your driveway, and (3) go on regular vacations with the kids to Disneyworld or some other equally vapid amusement spot. 
• By the age of 40, your main focus in life should be to assure that you always have more than your neighbors.  This is the sacred rule of American society.
• Never admit that your life feels empty and pointless, because then you’ll have to do something constructive about changing it.
• Die without being too much of a burden to anyone else (i.e., in a hospital, cared for by professionals)

If you do all this, the masters of bullshit assure us that you can’t help but be happy…and, if you’re not, it’s your own damned fault.

What utter and complete nonsense.   Following these sorts of rules is certainly possible, but only at the cost of your soul.  You’ll become fat, lazy shallow, stupid, and self-absorbed just like the vast majority of Americans who are too blind to see through the bullshit around them.

So what’s the solution?

Scorn and rebellion. 

Make it a point in your life to ridicule and reject everything that the purveyors of bullshit tell you is so very important in life.  Scorn is your weapon:  use it like a warrior entering battle against the forces of evil.  Mock those who dare to tell you how you should live your lives and spit on their disgusting bourgeois platitudes.  Once you’ve convinced yourself that all social rules, norms, and values are mere bullshit, you are half-way on the road to liberation:  your mind is now free of the chains dragging it down.

But something more is still required.

You have to start thinking—perhaps for the first time in your whole goddamn life—about how YOU want to live, about what will truly bring YOU happiness and meaning in life.  This is where you become really dangerous.  This is where you become the ultimate societal rebel and outlaw.  For a society like ours—so corrupt, so unjust, so vicious—can’t survive unless all of its citizens buy into the bullshit it spews and live their lives in sterile conformist fashion.

Once you start to say, “No fucking way” and you begin to live life the way you really want to, you become the enemy of all the purveyors of bullshit.  Your mommy will ask why you’re not already married at the age of 30, your friends will make fun of you because you don’t have a high-paying job like they do, the high priest at the temple will point his finger at you and call you “heretic”.

So what!  You can handle it.  And once you become liberated from all the bullshit of our society, then you will truly be a force to be reckoned with.  You’ll stand tall, armed with the knowledge that YOU are living YOUR life in a way that is totally natural and harmonious to YOU.  At that moment you become like a god among men—someone truly worthy of being admired for taking total responsibility for his or her own life.

But you won’t do this will you, because you’re so terribly afraid.  You’re afraid to reject the bullshit that is swallowing you up and become a true rebel.  And so you will live your life like all the other bloated, silly, bores around you and die never knowing what might have brought you true happiness.

How terribly sad.

The Two Jesuses

I'll readily admit that I'm a serious Bill Maher fan.  Every now and then Maher completely nails it, as he recently did in his analysis of the two Jesus--the real one and the Supply Side Jesus that libertarians seem to worship.  

Yes, Maher certainly has a liberal bias.  The question is whether he's right in his claim that there is a fundamental contradiction between advocating a libertarian economic philosophy--one that celebrates "wealth creators" (i.e., the rich) and denigrates the poor--and being a follower of the fellow depicted in the Christian gospels.

You can decide the answer to that question for yourself.... 

Ben Carson was Right (But Not for the Reason He Thinks)

by Michael S. Russo

Much to my own surprise I find myself in agreement with a position made by Republican presidential contender Ben Carson. Last week, Carson got into a heap of trouble when he stated, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.” Expanding upon his remarks, Carson later said a Muslim should not be president because his or her faith would be inconsistent with the Constitution, but suggested that his opposition would apply to any religion that had tenets which would interfere with a president’s abilities to carry out his constitutional duties. 

The firestorm that erupted because of these remarks in the media was predictable. On the surface what Carson seemed to be advocating was blatant religious discrimination. In fact, Article VI of the US Constitution specifically states: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

So how on earth can anyone—and in particular a self-professed progressive like myself—possibly support a position that seems so morally problematic? 

My agreement with Carson’s statements is based upon my understanding that the founding fathers of our nation were products of the Enlightenment and established a government grounded in what they considered rational principles. First and foremost, they believed in the idea of the basic political and economic equality of human beings—a principle that our nation would expanded upon in the 20th century by recognizing the equal rights of women and minorities. They believed that tolerance for diverse viewpoints was essential to functioning democracy and thus emphasized freedom of speech and press. Having liberated themselves from the control of a snooping, intrusive government, our founders also advocated the right to privacy, which means that people have the right to live any way they so choose provided that they don’t interfere with other people’s rights to do the same. Finally, they established an unequivocal right for people to practice the religion of their choice without interference and rejected the idea of any state religion. 

These are not religious principles: they don’t exist in any sacred text that I know of. They’re rational principles—fundamental tenets of political life that our founders thought were absolutely essential to the healthy functioning of any political community. They are also principles that arose out of the Enlightenment, a period in which human beings rejected blind ideology and looked to reason and rationality as tools for organizing government. For products of the Enlightenment like our Founding Fathers, truth was not found in sacred texts or in the pronouncements of religious authority, but in the rational mind’s ability to uncover these truths logically and scientifically.

Unlike Ben Carson and other conservatives who view the Constitution as a sacred document inspired by God, I have no trouble with a president who doesn’t agree with everything in the Constitution (the Second or the Fourteenth Amendments, for example). But I would have problems with anyone running for President who doesn’t understand the basic Enlightenment principles which are the cornerstone of modern Western political philosophy. I would also never support any candidate who thinks that whatever “sacred book” he or she follows should be the foundation upon which to organize political and social life in this country and who takes the words in that sacred book literally. 

With the exception of the Pali Canon—the “bible” of Buddhists—I know of no sacred text of any of the world’s major religions that does not have some crazy talk about the subordination of women, the killing of gays, the support of slavery, and the persecution of non-believers. It’s fundamentalism, therefore, that would seem to be the disqualifier for running for President, not rigid devotion to the Constitution (which is itself another form of literalism and fundamentalism). If it’s true, as some scholars of religion suggest, that Islam by its very nature is a fundamentalist religion—in other words, that it views the Koran literally as the word of God as dictated directly to the Prophet Mohammed—then how indeed could one be a President and a Muslim without rejecting many of the guiding principles of the sacred text of Islam? 

But this same principle would apply to any other fundamentalist religions as well, including, but not limited to, Evangelical Christianity, Orthodox Judaism, Mormanism, and Scientology. Adherents of all these sects reject the basic principles of the Enlightenment upon which the United States was founded and are forced to accept many of the toxic, antidemocratic ideas within their sacred texts as literal truth. If a Muslim shouldn’t be President, then neither, I’m afraid, should any current Republican candidate, because they are all religious fundamentalists to one degree or another.

Please note that I didn’t say that one couldn’t be a religious believer and be president. Roman Catholics, Liberal Protestants and Jews, and many Buddhists, do not necessarily have literalist interpretations of their sacred texts. They accept that their scriptures must be read historically, and that the truths contained within them can be interpreted allegorically or metaphorically. They also have no problem using reason, logic, and scientific evidence as bases for organizing society. There seems to be no incompatibility, therefore, between the practice of these religions and the holding of high office in a country like the United States. 

So, I’m all for Bernie Sanders (a non-practicing Jew) being our next President, but Ben Carson (Seventh-Day Adventist fundamentalist), I’m afraid, just won’t cut it.

Debate on Religion from True Detective

by Michael S. Russo

Molloy College

I’ve begun watching the first season of the HBO series True Detective and I have to confess that I’m greatly enjoying the compelling story lines and complex characters in the series.  But even more than that, I’m really intrigued by the fabulous dialogue, written by Nic Pizzolatto.  It certainly came as no surprise to me to discover, as I did recently, that Pizzolatto was a former philosophy major at Louisiana State University, because the series, perhaps more than any other I’ve seen in a long time, is chock full of philosophical ideas at every turn. 

The third episode in particular blew my mind with its fairly sophisticated treatment of theism and organized religion (see the clip below).  To set the scene up, two detectives, Rust Cohle (played by Mattew McConaughey) and Martin Hart (played by Woody Harrelson) are investigating a ritual murder that leads them to an outdoor evangelical service.  As they listen to the preacher give his sermon, Rust, an atheist and skeptic, shares his cynical views about the nature of religious belief to his fairly devout colleague, Martin, who feels compelled to offer a defense of religion.   As the scene plays out, we see these same characters later on as they continue to reflect on the debate that occurred between them a decade earlier.  

From Rust’s perspective, those who believe in the existence of a supreme being are basically pathetic, irrational suckers who are so fearful of life that they are willing to accept ridiculous fairy tales as truth.  Martin, on the other hand, sees religion as a positive element in society, without which we couldn’t survive as a species. 

Rust’s position is basically a contemporary spin on the psychological critiques of religious belief developed by the great 19^th century “Masters of Suspicion”—Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud.  Although their positions on religion differ slightly, all three see the origins of religious belief in fear of the sufferings of this world and anxiety over the inevitability of death.  Because we are basically cowardly, weak and childish, we create the illusion of a benevolent father figure (God), who loves us unequivocally and who offers us the soothing balm of eternal life with him after death.  True maturity, these thinkers argue, demands that we learn to accept the world as it truly is—full of pain and suffering, Godless, and terminal—and start taking our lives here and now much more seriously.

Martin response is more sociological in nature than theological.  Notice he never argues directly for the existence of God or the truth of religious belief, but instead makes the claim that we need religion for three reasons: (1) It’s a binding force, enabling some semblance of community to exist among individualistic human beings; (2) It keeps us from acting on our more vicious natural instincts by instilling in us the fear of divine punishment; (3) It helps us to function in everyday life, by enabling us to overcome the existential fear that all human beings—even atheists—possess and which otherwise would cripple us.

What is missing in this debate is a truly theological or philosophical defense of religion of the kind that we find in great theistic thinkers like Anselm, Aquinas, or even Dostoyevsky.  The only remotely theistic argument in the scene is the one made by the preacher, who seems to appeal to exactly the kinds of fearful, narcissistic longings that Rust criticizes so well.   So we’re left in the end with two very cynical options:  (1) religion is basically a con game that needs to be rejected outright, though there may be nothing positive in the end to take its place (Rust’s position) or (2) Religion needs to be embraced, not because it’s necessarily grounded in anything true, but because a world without it would be too horrible to contemplate (Martin’s position).    

Perhaps the absence of a strong theistic defense of religion in the series is intentional.  I don’t know what Nic Pizzolatto’s own views on theistic matters are, but it could be that he gets the religious zeitgeist of the times pretty well.  In the end, we don’t really give a damn whether something (i.e., God, the afterlife, original sin, etc.) is true or not.  The only legitimate question for us seems to be “does it work for me?”  If I feel better about my life by believing in a Supreme Being, then  I’ll believe in one.  If I think that it’s necessary for society to be grounded in religious institutions in order to function effectively, then  I’ll support organized religion.  But when religion suddenly starts to seem like something bogus to me, or when it no longer seems to fulfill its pragmatic function in society, then I’m going to ditch it like a handful of smelly dung. 

So maybe, like the characters in True Detective, we don’t really care about religious issues at all.  All we really care about is feeling good.  And if religion makes us feel good about ourselves, then it automatically is valid; and if it makes us feel badly about ourselves then it is just as assuredly invalid.  But, if this is all that religion really represents to the theists and non-theists alike, it seems to me a fairly silly, superficial thing….a kind of spiritual pop psychology for those who lack the ability to think critically and rationally about the human condition.

Or am I, like the main characters in True Detective, missing some important piece of evidence here?  

On the Love of Books

I came upon the following sentiment in the New York Times Magazine and it seemed to capture my own feelings about why physical books are so important:

Reading on-screen tempts us to see things only through the pinhole of our immediate curiosity.  I don’t mean to sentimentalize the Reading of Books, but as a practical matter, when you hold a book in your hands, it is very different from what happens when you are [reading something on] a glassy, featureless screen.  Online, your experience is personalized, but it is also atomized, flattened and miniaturized, robbed of its landscape.  Physical books require you to literally hold some of the context of what you are reading, and that is a crucial dimension of understanding.”  (Maria Bustillos)

Most of my well-educated friends have abandoned physical books and have been reading almost exclusively on Nooks or Kindles, or Ipads.  In recent years, I’ve gone in the complete opposite direction:  not only have I rejected digital texts completely, but I now buy only those books that I can get in handsome hardcovered version.  These are usually first or second edition books with clean pages, tight bindings, and unmarred jackets.  I search for the books I want on Amazon and buy used editions that usually cost less than either an e-version or paperback version of the book.

There’s nothing quite like the pleasure involved in holding a beautifully-made book in your hands.  I actually think that it makes the act of reading infinitely more pleasurable than reading the same text in an inferior print or digital version.

I’ve decided that I only want books around me that I know I will want to re-read in my old age—in the twilight years between retirement and death.  To this end, I’ve been ruthlessly selling my paperbacks, worn hardcovered editions, and those books that, while considered classics, I know that I will never read (sorry Herman Melville).

In my dotage, I see myself in a large spacious room, surrounded by wall-to-wall bookcases, each of which is filled with sumptuous editions of the works that I love.  Shakespeare is there of course, along with Kierkegaard, Jane Austen, Seneca, and Henry James….but so is John Kennedy O’Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces), J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings), and of, course, Helene Hanff (84 Charing Cross Road, the ultimate book about lovers of beautiful books).

As I picture my own death, I’m reading an old favorite—Heller’s Catch 22, perhaps, or maybe Nietzsche’s Zarathustra—in a typically handsome edition.  As I near the end of the book, my heart simply stops and I slump forward, my bald head resting falling gently onto the pages of the book I have been reading. 

Could there possibly be a better way to go?

The Inferiority of the Self

“The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum. . . . it is only an inveterate habit -- the habit of inferiority to our full self.” (William James, The Energies of Man)

I came upon this quote by William James recently, and it struck me that the existential crisis that James described in the early 20th century is even more of a problem today than it was in his own time. 

How do we fall prey to the “habit of inferiority to our full selves” in the 21st century? I can't help thinking that our preoccupation with the seductiveness of technology is what is preventing us from realizing our true potentials as human beings. We’d rather make quips on Facebook or text one another about some inane topic than actually embrace life in all its messy complexity and grandeur. 

Cicero describes the most meaningful human relationships in terms of seeing ourselves reflected in the face of the other. If that's true, then many human beings probably don't have deep relationships at all, because they hardly ever spend enough time just being present to their fellow human beings. The use of 21st century forms of technology—the cell phone, the computer, the Ipad—creates an artificial separation between human beings that makes it impossible to see ourselves reflected in the other. And without access to the “mirror of the self” that the other represents, it is very difficult—if not impossible—to mature as a human being. 

The same is true with our disconnection from nature. Time alone in nature offers human beings the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of life and our connection to the planet as a whole. By separating us from nature, technology, therefore, stunts the kinds of introspective musing that makes philosophical wisdom possible.

I’m not trying to suggest that we can or should revert to a pretechnological society: that would neither be possible nor beneficial at this point. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recognize that the benefits of any form of technology always come at a cost. And the price we may have to pay for our overdependence upon contemporary forms of technology may be the inability to develop a truly mature sense of self.

Humane Punishment?

by Michael S. Russo

Molloy College

I had always assumed that one of the main goals of our criminal justice system was to try to rehabilitate criminal offenders so that they could once again become productive members of the larger society.   This becomes a significant issue in a country like the United States, which incarcerates more of its citizens than any nation on the planet (see chart below).  We lock up more of our citizens per capita than even Russia or China—countries which certainly are not known for their enlightened social policies.
 

I’m not going to address the question of whether the reason for such high incarnation rates in the United States has to do with the fact that we’re one of the only countries in the world to turn our prisons into for-profit enterprises.  There are certainly those who argue that we have a “Prison Industrial Complex” in which there is unending need to maintain prison populations at elevated levels to ensure profits for the corporations that run them.   This is a question that deserves its own post, so I’ll put it aside for now.

Instead, I’ll assume that our elected officials are sincere in their desire to see fewer of their fellow citizens behind bars and to provide those who are imprisoned with the rehabilitation they need in order to succeed once they’ve served their prison sentences.  But, if rehabilitation is indeed the aim of our criminal justice system in the United States, then we are failing miserably at achieving this goal.  A recent study of recidivism rates in the United States shows that within five years, three-quartersof released prisoners are rearrested.  Any company that had a 76% failure rate would go out of business almost immediately, and yet we continue to use the same dumb approaches to incarceration year in and year out in our American prisons.

 

But is there another approach that we might want to consider instead, which might actually improve recidivism rate and provide those imprisoned with an environment that can serve them better when they are released into the larger society? A recent article on the approach taken in Norway’s Halden Prison seems to offer just such an enlightened alternative. 

The question that we have to ask is whether such an approach would work in the United States and would it lead to more preferable rehabilitation outcomes than the dysfunctional system we currently have in place. 

Read the article: 

“Big Home:  TheStrange and Radical Humaneness of Norway’s Halden Prison”

 

The Death of American Universities

A thought -provoking piece by Noam Chompsky about the current state of higher education.  As a faculty member, I can attest to the fact that what he says about the corporatization of higher education is true of most American colleges and universities--even those that profess to being motivated by higher ideals.

THE DEATH OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES

Noam Chompsky

As universities move towards a corporate business model, precarity is being imposed by force.

That’s part of the business model. It’s the same as hiring temps in industry or what they call “associates” at Walmart, employees that aren’t owed benefits. It’s a part of a corporate business model designed to reduce labor costs and to increase labor servility. When universities become corporatized, as has been happening quite systematically over the last generation as part of the general neoliberal assault on the population, their business model means that what matters is the bottom line.The effective owners are the trustees (or the legislature, in the case of state universities), and they want to keep costs down and make sure that labor is docile and obedient. The way to do that is, essentially, temps. Just as the hiring of temps has gone way up in the neoliberal period, you’re getting the same phenomenon in the universities.

The idea is to divide society into two groups. One group is sometimes called the “plutonomy” (a term used by Citibank when they were advising their investors on where to invest their funds), the top sector of wealth, globally but concentrated mostly in places like the United States. The other group, the rest of the population, is a “precariat,” living a precarious existence.

This idea is sometimes made quite overt. So when Alan Greenspan was testifying before Congress in 1997 on the marvels of the economy he was running, he said straight out that one of the bases for its economic success was imposing what he called “greater worker insecurity.” If workers are more insecure, that’s very “healthy” for the society, because if workers are insecure they won’t ask for wages, they won’t go on strike, they won’t call for benefits; they’ll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that’s optimal for corporations’ economic health.

At the time, everyone regarded Greenspan’s comment as very reasonable, judging by the lack of reaction and the great acclaim he enjoyed. Well, transfer that to the universities: how do you ensure “greater worker insecurity”? Crucially, by not guaranteeing employment, by keeping people hanging on a limb than can be sawed off at any time, so that they’d better shut up, take tiny salaries, and do their work; and if they get the gift of being allowed to serve under miserable conditions for another year, they should welcome it and not ask for any more.

That’s the way you keep societies efficient and healthy from the point of view of the corporations. And as universities move towards a corporate business model, precarity is exactly what is being imposed. And we’ll see more and more of it....

Continue reading this piece at Reader Supported News

Why Philosophy Still Matters

by A.J. Grunthaler

I was flipping through this weekend's Wall Street Journal, and I found an interesting article about a problem corporate America is having with our current crop of college graduates.  It seems that a fairly sizeable percentage of these graduates lack the basic critical thinking skills necessary to do white collar work.
 

READ THE ARTICLE IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
 

Having taught college students for over 20 years, this weakness in critical thinking doesn't surprise me at all.   And I was pleasantly surprised by the article's claim that nine out of 10 business owners were aware of--and presumably concerned about--this deficiency.  These same businessmen, however, would probably argue that we need to spend less time focused on liberal arts in colleges and more on basic skills that can be easily transferred to the workplace. 

The problem with this way of thinking is that it is precisely a liberal arts education that trains students to think critically about the world around them.  Philosophy, with its emphasis on logic and reasoning ability, obviously accomplishes this end most directly.  But I think that the study of literature, history, sociology, and even art, helps sharpen the reasoning skills of those studying these disciplines. 

It's unfortunate that the liberal arts are under siege at the very time that the benefits derived from them are more vital than ever to our economy.   Convincing more and more students to major in disciplines like accounting and business management might seem like a prudent thing to do in  difficult economic times, but unless these same students are trained to think rationally, the long-term economic benefits to the larger society will probably be nonexistent. 

The Cult of the Irrational, Part 2

There was a time not very long ago when I believed that most human beings could be reached through reason.  You know:  you make what you consider a solid and persuasive argument, back it up with hard facts, and you assume that the average person will agree eventually with what you have to say.  And if they don't agree, you would hope that it's because they had solid arguments themselves to back up their own positions.

 

But as I've gotten older I've begun to realize that human beings are influenced much more by things like strong emotions (fear, anger, indignation), ideology, and social prejudices than by logic, reason, or rationality.  Case in point:  The South.  The Huffington Post had a wonderful article recently that shows just how backwards the entire region we call the South is on just about any measure of social progress:

 

READ THE ARTICLE FROM THE HUFFINGTON POST

(LOTS OF PICTURES...I PROMISE!)

 

The South is poorer, less upwardly mobile, more unhealthy, and much unhappier than the rest of the country.  One would think that the people who live in these southern states would welcome any sort of governmental assistance that they can get, but that's not the case.  In fact, southern states are at the forefront of the movement to cut government programs that assist the most vulnerable members of the society (children, the handicapped, the mentally ill, substance abusers, the elderly, and pregnant women).   Reason all you want with a southerner who thinks that government is the problem, but it probably won't convince him that many of the social difficulties that he experiences in his state are in fact the result of too little government, not too much.

 

Prior to the last presidential election, film-maker Angela Pelosi tried to understand the anti-governmental attitudes of people in Mississippi, one of the most backward states in the Union, according to the data in the Huffington Post article. While the people she interviewed may be more extreme than the average Mississippian, the attitudes expressed seem to be typical, insofar as the citizens of this state continue to vote consistently against their own self-interest: 

 

 

I'm not trying to pick on the South here.  I'm sure that there are many fine, decent people living south of the Mason-Dixon line.  And I don't think that the cult of the irrational exists solely in the south.   For example, Pelosi also interviewed citizens of New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy to ask anti-government folks there what programs should be cut from the federal budget.  The answers that she received to this question were as painful as they were funny:

 

 

Keep in mind that these were all people who thought that the size of government ought to be cut substantially, but, when they had to explain exactly which government programs ought to be cut, they seemed to become transformed all of a sudden into New York liberals.  Once again, ideology and self-interest trump logic and reason.

 

So, if large segments of our American population seem to be totally impervious to rational arguments and even self-evident facts, how is it possible to persuade such individuals of the "truth"?  Either one has to resort to flagrantly rhetorical appeals to emotion (hardly philosophical) or one attempts to engage in rational discourse, knowing that his or her arguments will inevitably fall on deaf ears. 

 

In short, how can philosophical argumentation work at all in a society where the average citizen hasn't been educated to understand the value of reason in the first place?   It's a dilemma that I don't have any easy answers for.  I can't help thinking, however, that this great love affair that we Americans are currently having with the irrational doesn't bode too well for the future of our country. 

Our Love Affair With Darkness

Michael S. Russo

Molloy College

 


Ten years ago if you asked me if I watched TV, the answer would have been a contemptuous, “Are you kidding?” Television in the late 1990s and early 2000s was what it had pretty much always been: a wasteland of vacuous entertainment, aimed primarily at the lowbrow tastes of cognitively-challenged Americans. Actually, television had gotten even worse by the early 2000s than it had been in the past, with an endless parade of inane reality shows—remember “Jersey Shore” and “The Real Housewives”?—that served to do little more than make viewers feel morally superior to the crass and callous individuals whose train-wrecked lives they were watching unfold on their TV sets. Men and women with any degree of taste and sensitivity ignored television entirely and turned to film or fiction if they wanted any kind of intellectually stimulating entertainment.

But I have a confession to make: I’ve becoming addicted to television again, for the first time perhaps since I was a high school student. Now, I’m not talking about watching shows on network TV, which is still filled with banal drivel (ever see “Two and a Half Men” or “How I Met Your Mother?”). No, what I’m talking about is the veritable renaissance that is occurring on cable TV—what has rightly been referred to as a new golden age of television, one that, in my estimation at least, may actually surpass those two other “golden ages” that occurred in the early 1950s and early 1970s. In fact, Cable networks like HBO, Showtime, and AMC and the Internet giant, Netflix, are producing series that are infinitely richer and more emotionally engrossing than anything that has ever been produced for television in the past.

There are far too many great programs now on cable TV for me to talk about all of them. Instead, I’ll focus on three in particular that millions of Americans like myself just can’t seem to get enough of: “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men,” and “House of Cards.” What these series have in common is that they rely on complex story arcs that span over multiple seasons, focus on complicated, morally compromised characters who evolve as these series progress, and have an almost philosophical preoccupation with exploring the meaning of our human condition.

But there’s something even more important that they all have in common: these series all have at their centers main characters who gleefully embrace lifestyles that can only be described as morally reprehensible and even evil. Walter White (“Breaking Bad”), Don Draper (“Mad Men”), and Frank Underwood (“House of Cards”) are men driven by pure egoistic self-absorption, who don’t give a damn about other people’s feelings or needs, and who will do just about anything they need to (lie, cheat, break the law, and at times kill innocents) to get what they want (sex, money, prestige, and power).

None of these characters would exist, of course, if David Chase, the creator of “The Sopranos,” hadn’t first demonstrated that audiences could come to care about—even love—a completely immoral central character, provided that character was endowed with realistic motivations and feelings that the audience could relate to. Tony Soprano was not just a vicious mobster—although he certainly could be extremely nasty at times. He was a man who was forced to live up to the legacy of his father, had to care for difficult family members, and had his own web of neuroses and insecurities with which to contend. In short, Tony was just like you and me, although his job frequently compelled him to kill people who got in his way. 

 



Cast of the Sopranos (1999-2007)

 

But what is it that we love so much about characters like these who, by all counts, would be considered sociopaths were we to encounter them in the real world? Besides being somehow relatable, all of these characters have one other thing in common: they’ve made the voluntary choice to pursue their own selfish wants, needs, and interests at all costs. Don Draper may have an attractive, desirable wife, but that certainly doesn’t stop him from having numerous sexual relationships with other women. When his daughter catches him in flagrante delicto with a neighbor’s wife, it doesn’t cause him even a moment of introspection or generate any desire at all within him to change his ways. He sleeps around with women—single or married—because he enjoys it and because he can….And morality simply does not enter into the equation.

Walter White, on the other hand, seems to be driven at first by the quite understandable desire to care for his family after he is diagnosed with lung cancer, but this, as we all well know, is just a façade. In a telling scene that occurs towards the end of the series’ run, White meets with his wife, Skylar, one last time in order to provide an explanation for the actions he took that destroyed their family:

     Skyler: If you tell me one more time that you did this for the family...
     Walt: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was, really... I was alive.

Manufacturing and distributing drugs, killing off the opposition, even manipulating those he supposedly cares about—Walter does all these things not out of necessity, but because he loves it, because being a drug kingpin gives him the kind of cool rush and inner satisfaction that nothing else in life can. 

 

Breaking Bad's Walter White

What we’re talking about here is Nietzsche’s will to power taken to its logical extreme. In a world in which the decks are stacked against the ordinary individual, where power, money and sex provide the ultimate meaning in life, where God is dead, and morality is a cruel hoax, the smart person lives completely for himself and does whatever he has to to ensure that his own emotional and physical needs are met. Since other human beings are merely pawns to be used in this process, they are completely expendable. Even an innocent child killed during the commission of a crime in “Breaking Bad” becomes little more than collateral damage in Walter White’s never-ending quest for—dare I say it?—self-realization. 

Without a doubt the character that best embodies this unabashed, unrestricted will to power is “House of Cards” Frank Underwood. Completely understanding the logic of existence in a morality-free universe, Frank has managed to eradicate from his personality any vestiges of humanity and compassion that might make him weak or vulnerable. There is simply nothing that Underwood won’t do to achieve his goal of becoming the most powerful man in the world, and this includes murder if necessary. In Frank Underwood’s universe everyone exists to be used and the ability to effectively manipulate others becomes the highest virtue of all.   



House of Cards' Frank and Claire Underwood

So again why do audiences love these completely despicable, utterly ruthless characters so much? The answer, I believe, has to do with the unique times in which we live. In the first decade of the 21st century, the economic crisis that has continued unabated (at least for the bottom 99%) has made ordinary Americans feel like helpless victims in a cruel and uncaring world and totally impotent to effect any positive changes in their own lives. Say what you want about Walter White, Don Draper, and Frank Underwood, but they are certainly not victims and they definitely are not impotent. I think that what we love so much about these characters is that in a world in which most people are inert whiners and complainers, these men DO SOMETHING. They take charge of their own destinies and are willing to do anything and everything necessary to ensure that they will never be part of the anonymous herd.

Because they act while most human beings remain passive and because they are willing to take risks to master their fates, we are willing to forgive just about anything these characters do, no matter how despicable it might seem. Is it any coincidence that each of these men came from humble origins and had to overcome tremendous odds to achieve what they did? Subconsciously, I think that viewers relate to these anti-heroes because, compared to an economic elite (the top 1%) that caused the entire American economy to collapse and which has actually benefited financially from that collapse, the actions of men like Walter White, Don Draper, and Frank Underwood almost seem reasonable. It’s like one of our own getting back at “the system,” and that, I think, is what makes us root for them. 

By comparison, consider the female characters in each of these shows and how unpopular they are with audiences. Skylar White and Betty Draper—like Carmella Soprano before them—are viewed by audiences as passive but also morally complicit in their husband’s immoral activities. None of these women intentionally choose the life of evil; they simply accept the social and economic benefits that accrue to themselves because of the more deliberative choices that their husbands make. They may bitch and moan, but they don’t DO anything. 

In this sense, Claire Underwood fits somewhat outside the mold of the poor, beleaguered anti-hero’s wife. She’s definitively Lady MacBeth to Frank’s MacBeth. Like Lady MacBeth, Claire is an active partner in her husband’s political machinations, but, like Lady MacBeth as well, there seems to be a limit to how far her conscience might enable her to go (Can you imagine Frank shedding tears after destroying someone who stood in his way?). Since the show is still in its infancy, it remains to be seen if Claire Underwood will prove more popular in the long run than her female counterparts. 

Television viewing at its best is a cathartic experience. In the 1950s and 60s we wanted television to soothe us. We wanted to feel like the world was an intelligible place, that our social and political leaders had our best interests at heart, and that hard work and dedication could lead to upward social mobility. Today we know that none of this is true and we question whether anything we do in life—whether individually or collectively—will make any difference at all. Apparently, we need men like Walter White, Don Draper, and Frank Underwood to convince us that, despite appearances to the contrary, the individual still matters and the deliberative choices a person makes can actually produce beneficial results. 

In the end, I would argue, it’s not the darkness per se of these characters that we love, but their willingness to act on the great stage of life…whatever the consequences. That’s what separates them from the rest of us, and that’s the source of our unquenchable fascination with them.