Ohhh...a social life...riiiight...

I've never really been a social person. Don't get me wrong; I've gotten more socially involved over the years, but I still am not what you would call outgoing. In elementary school, I was the kind of kid that didn't care what other people thought about him, happy-go-lucky and without a care in the world. I just did what I felt like doing, regardless of whether it seemed smart/appropriate. In junior high, though, I did retract a lot socially, mostly because I was going to a new environment and also partially because I think that's part of teenage life and finding your identity and stuff. I did learn to open myself up after a while though, and by ninth grade I was almost normal again. During my sophomore year, though, I went right back to the way I was. I went back to Lone Peak with all the friends that I hadn't been seeing for three years (because I went to American Fork Junior High), and it seemed like I didn't know anybody anymore. The atmosphere seemed really intimidating (probably due to my own fears far more than reality), and I was afraid to make contact with other people. However, by the time senior year rolled around, I was socially functional once again. As good as I got, however, I never really was one of those people that always went to every dance, was on the student council, and was involved with every club, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I just wasn't the kind of person that was always involved with social activities. I had a lot of friends, but there were only a few that I really spent a lot of time with, most of which were in my ward or lived nearby (or my Dorchester second family, best street in the world). I never really got the "group of friends" idea, and I preferred (and still do prefer) one-on-one or minimal amounts of people far more than being in a huge circle of people talking to each other. This didn't really seem like a problem, and it probably wasn't, until I came here to college. Saturdays here are what opened my eyes to just how lonely I am. Usually if I stay at college on Saturdays, I really have nothing to do and no one to do anything with (and having roommates that are never here doesn't really help either, but I don't blame them for it). These lonely Saturdays are what helped me see the importance of actually having a social life and going around and doing things with people (even if your most sophisticated mode of transportation is a somewhat-defective bike). A positive side effect of this, however, is that I am far more inclined to go on dates with people because I seriously have NOTHING BETTER TO DO on the weekends. That doesn't mean that I only date people to fill up otherwise empty time in my day, but it is a pleasantly convenient side effect. So far I have learned two major things in college. The first is academic: college is A LOT more about knowing the material than turning in assignments on time, which is harder for me but necessary. Second, that once you're out on your own, having nothing to do and no one to do it with is really hard sometimes. I'm really enjoying the International Cinema and watching Carl Sagan's cosmos and TED talks on Youtube, but those are things that only involve me. Me and a stolid, deaf computer screen. It's not enough. It may be educational and entertaining, but social interaction is one of the basest needs of human nature, and I've been neglecting it. And maybe I'm so socially disinclined that it's taken Saturdays full of empty voids of time to make me realize that I need to get involved. I need to get out more and serve people and be in organizations and committees and whatever it takes so that my prime form of entertainment does not involve myself and a technological device. I feel like Scotty Smalls in the Sandlot having his mom tell him to go out and get in trouble and make friends. I've been too absorbed in myself and doing things that make me happy that I forgot how vital it is to serve others and give of myself. This last Tuesday, Walter F. Gonzalez came to give a devotional about bravery in service, and it opened my eyes to how easy it was to be self-serving in college. And now I finally realize how starved you become living a lifestyle like that. It sustains you for a while, but eventually you start needing people, needing things to do and things to give so that you don't feel like you're simply living as if nobody else exists. I don't blame anybody for the position I'm in; it's me that needs to get out more and do things with people. Not just on Facebook or Blogspot, but face to face. Person to person. Together.

Absolutism vs. Consequentialism vs. Intentionalism

I've been meaning to post this for a while now and have been putting it off, but I just watched something on ted.com (awesome website by the way) about this experiment a graduate student at MIT conducted about the human brain. Basically, she was able to isolate a part of the brain that is involved in making moral judgments about other people's actions, and by doing so, have the ability to measure or even manipulate the extent to which people were able to make personally accurate decisions about another person's character. People who know my ideals well will not be surprised to find that this information immediately struck my mind with cognitive dissonance. I believe in free will and the principle of the human spirit, which are more aesthetic and ethereal. However, I also believe in scientific evidence (for the most part), which, unfortunately, was now conflicting with my belief of free choice. How could someone be stimulated against their will to make improper moral judgments? I thought. It shouldn't be possible that other people should be able to control (to whatever extent) what we think is right and wrong.

Before I go on, I should clarify the premise of the experiment and its results (or you can just go see it in detail on ted.com, search for "reading other people's minds"). Basically, the experiment involved evaluation of a fictitious scenario in which a person named Grace and her friend were visiting a chemical factory (for whatever reasons) and decided to go for a coffee break (and no, it wasn't the prospect of a coffee break that caused my moral duress). Grace is preparing the coffee and sees a container labeled "deadly poison", which, unbeknownst to her, is actually sugar (suspension of disbelief, people). Grace, having murderous intentions (again, suspension of disbelief), decides to put this supposed harmful substance into her friend's cup of coffee. Her friend drinks the coffee and experiences no side effects, much to Grace's dismay. The subjects were asked to evaluate the morality of Grace's actions. As I expected, most of the subjects rated Grace's actions high on the blame scale even though her friend was fine. In parallel experiments, subjects were presented with alternate scenarios: one where the container was labeled "sugar" and it was sugar (the neutral control), and one where it was labeled "sugar" but was actually deadly poison (accident). Thankfully, the subjects rated Grace's accidental poisoning of her friend lower on the guilty scale than her attempted but failed murder attempt (to you consequentialists, I'll explain why I said "thankfully" later). However, when the region of the brain previously isolated was activated with strong electrodes, people tended to underrate Grace's guilt in the attempted murder scenario and overrate Grace's guilt in the accident scenario (relative to the non-stimulated subjects). As previously stated, I was appalled (and rather frightened) that it was possible to sway another's moral judgment of people's actions, no matter how largely.

I was introduced to the concepts of absolutism and consequentialism in the beginning of my senior year when I was participating in Lincoln-Douglas debate. For the sake of clarity, (By the way, whenever I define anything in this blog, it will be according to MY definition and the connotations I hold on the subject, regardless of what the denotation (dictionary definition) is. If you don't like it, don't read my blog.) absolutism is defined as holding a view of universal morality. In other words, whatever moral laws one believes, they have the opinion that these moral laws apply to every conceivable situation and that there are no exceptions to any rule or law. For the most part, I disagree with this view. Consequentialism is interpreted as basing the extent of the morality of one's decisions on the consequences of one's actions. For example, a consequentialist would deem Grace guilty for accidentally poisoning her friend because the situation had the consequence of her friend's death. For the most part, I disagree with this view. There is also an auxhiliary viewpoint known as intentionalism that evaluates morality based on choices regardless of the consequences, that a man should do what he thinks is right in order to be moral. An intentionalist would blame Grace for attempting to poison her friend, even if she wasn't successful. For the most part, I disagree with this view.

So what do I agree with? Well, a recurring theme that you'll see in this blog is that I agree and disagree with all of them simultaneously. (This principle, however, doesn't apply to my interpretation of my religion, I will always believe in my church's teachings and decisions.) The reason why I hold flexible loyalty to absolutism, consequentialism, and intentionalism is that I consider them to be philosophies of man and, therefore, are neither perfectly true nor perfectly false. I disagree with absolutism because it contains components of extremism. I agree with absolutism because it allows for moral constancy in one's life. I disagree with consequentialism because I don't believe that accidental occurences garner blame on anyone's part. I agree with consequentialism because it contains the important societal component of utilitarianism. I disagree with intentionalism because I believe that man is naturally flawed and therefore cannot live morally according to only his own principles. I agree with intentionalism because I believe that attempted murder or attempted suicide should be punished just as severely as if they were successful. I developed most of these standpoint from Lincoln-Douglas debate during the September-October 2009 topic: "It is morally permissible to kill one innocent person to save the lives of more innocent people." (This was, by the way, my absolute favorite resolution of all time and, though I hate to admit it, really the only one I ever liked (sorry, former debate coaches, I was always meant for oratory anyways).)

Finally, I return to the topic I was originally going to address: that of being able to manipulate one's sense of moral direction (to whatever extent). I believe that our brains and bodies are somewhat flawed. I believe that, though our physical bodies are a great gift to us and I am very grateful for them, they are themselves imperfect and consequently cause imperfections in us. This is how I reconciled the disturbing information I learned today with my moral precepts: that the brain, being a part of our imperfect physical body, slightly impairs our once-pristine spiritual powers of moral judgement. I don't mean to say that we were perfect in the premortal life, far from it. But we did live in the presence of God and we did know exactly what was right and wrong, even if it was difficult to follow what we knew. Once we passed through the veil and gained a physical body, we forgot some of the principles that we knew before and had to relearn (using, in part, our brains) what being "good" really was in our imperfect and not-yet-resurrected bodies. This is why we can be morally manipulated, because our physical bodies (being able to be manipulated), influence what we think. Everything we generate on this earth is in some way flawed because we are flawed. An evil fountain cannot bring forth pure water, however small the extent of its evilness. This does not mean that such things as scripture and religion are flawed, because they come directly from God. This is where I reluctantly bring up the heavily-quoted, convenient, but true LDS aphorism that goes "the church is perfect, but its people are not" (and yes, those who don't know me and have not figured it out already, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, popularly known as LDS or the Mormons). I take this opportunity also to say that these blog posts, being a product of my the workings of my physical brain, are also inherently flawed because I am. I don't know the extent to which my religious inspirations influence my blog posts and how much comes from my own sometimes-flawed logic. I agree that my faith has a heavy impact on the material of my blog posts, but I plead for the reader to realize that much of this is only my own forays into philosophy and should not be interpreted as immutable truth. Therefore, I urge you not to interpret the things I write here as "doctrine", no matter how logical or emotionally sound they may seem. I am only a man, and my beliefs fall short of my actions far more often than I wished.

Choices and Opportunities

College has created some ambiguous situations for me. So, basically all throughout high school I was planning to be some kind of family practitioner doctor guy when I grew up. I was fairly solidified with this plan and had some uncertainty, but I figured that once I learned more about the profession in college I would be able to make a more informed and specific decision. The second part of this was true, but what I didn't expect was that the longer I have been in college, the harder it has been to make a decision about what my major/occupation should be and where my future should go. I still think I'm going to take a job in health care somewhere, but after my Intro to Health Professions class I am completely baffled as to what I'm going to do. I've looked a lot into music therapy, mostly because of my love for all things music/psychology/neurology. Especially after reading the books "Awakenings" and "Musicophilia" by Oliver Sacks and "This is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel Levitin (basically the most amazing book I have ever read, besides the scriptures). I absolutely devour everything related to music, psychology, or neurology that I come across, because those topics are of extremely high levels of interest to me. I don't know what kind of job opportunities are in music therapy, but I do know that it's one of the topics that interests me most. After attending a fireside today on personal revelation, I took up the matter with the Lord. A lot of what I learned in that fireside is that most of what we ask the Lord is never returned as an answer, mostly because He wants us to gain knowledge and experience. During the next few weeks (or months, or however long it takes), I'm really going to think about what I want to do in my life and what my earthly mission is. I don't know if I will be going the right way when I choose a path, but two things I learned tonight are: first, that the Lord heard my prayer. I don't know how I know, and I don't know if He will answer it, but I do know He heard me. Second, I know that Heavenly Father will never let me go down the wrong path without telling me so, and I know He can always help me (or anyone) return home if we are only willing to accept his guidance and counsel. As for now, I will be watching.

First post!

Okay, so this is kind of a stolen idea, but after reading my brother's blog, I really liked what he did and wanted to do it myself. Mostly this isn't going to be about my life or anything, just philosophical rants and logic streams and deep thinking like Michael's was. After reading Michael's stuff, I thought about myself and decided there was a lot of stuff that I wanted to talk about, ideas that I had that I wanted to publicize to the world (or at least everyone who cared enough to look at it). There's been many times I've had logical rants to myself and sometimes even written them down, but I feel like they're inherently useless unless I share them with other people. Another reason that I'm doing this is that I want to find other people who share my ideas, because I love to have discussions with people on the same level as I am (qualitatively, not quantitatively). I don't really know where to start, but I guess that's the fun of it all, right?

Dallin