But only among “millenials,” that is (I think) people who “came of age” around 2000. So, don’t trust anyone over 30 … to rank social networking over porn.

And he’s only basing his data on searches, not on actual traffic. Because, well, until the government mandates tracking, accurate appraisals of real internet traffic are slightly impossible to achieve.

Even so, more searches for social network stuff than for naked people is a good thing, right?

I guess, in the way that eating deep-fried Twinkies is better for you than eating deep-fried shards of used petri dishes.

Disconnected from reality, pride always takes a fall

I’ve been in San Francisco this past week, and it’s been impossible to ignore the preparations for “Pride!” this weekend. Trust me, I’ve tried to ignore it. But one reason I can’t is that the whole thing is deeply problematic, right at the root.

I’m not talking about homosexuality. That’s another topic entirely. I’m talking about pride.

Pride has been growing for a while: “I’m proud to be an American” and “proud parent of an honor student” and “say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud” and so on. Even the brand of hand soap where I’m staying is “Pro Pride.” The LGBTQWERTY movement has simply capitalized on it to a greater extent than anyone else, and maybe has cornered the market at this point.

But pride is not a virtue. It’s a vice. It’s the foundational vice, the root of the seven deadly sins.

Not “pride” but joy

Now, I don’t think all the advocates of pride are aiming to “overstep beyond” what they are, which is how Thomas Aquinas defines pride. I think most of them are simply asserting that they are good people. They’re opposing some social stigma, or outright oppression; they’re fighting against depression; they’re demonstrating their competitive advantage or their unity as a group. Whatever it is, they’re trying to say that who and what they are is good.

And they’re right to do so. To forget that it is good to exist, that it is good to be myself, is to neglect the truth and believe a lie.

But pride neglects one important fact: as good as I am, I am neither the source nor the perfection of goodness. I have faults, and I make mistakes, and I even do things I know are wrong. Even if I didn’t, I’m not as capable a mechanic as my uncle, and not as gifted a musician as my friend, and I don’t have the magnetic personality of my cousin – nothing wrong with me, but just limits on what is good. I have gifts that they don’t have, for example, the compulsion to read philosophy, which really is a gift. Really. It is. But that doesn’t make me better than they are, or make them better than I am. It means we are good in different ways.

My response to recognizing my gift in study is not (or shouldn’t be, anyway) pride, but joy.

After all, it really is a gift. Sure, I’ve put some effort into it myself; Thomas Aquinas isn’t always easy to understand, and Hegel is nearly incomprehensible. But neither the desire nor the ability are things I’ve created for myself any more than my friend created her sense of rhythm and melody, or (for that matter) another friend created his own tin ear. There’s the gift of nature, and then there’s what we do with it.

And the first thing to do with a gift is to be happy I’ve been given it. Any child knows this: it’s why birthdays and Christmas are joyful occasions. A gift is worth celebrating.

The thing not to do with a gift is to reject the giver. Thomas follows Pope Gregory I in listing four kinds of pride:

There are four marks by which every kind of pride of the arrogant betrays itself; either when they think that their good is from themselves, or if they believe it to be from above, yet they think that it is due to their own merits; or when they boast of having what they have not, or despise others and wish to appear the exclusive possessors of what they have.

In other words, pride claims control over the gift, whereas joy simply claims the gift is good.

Gifts and giving

So, for example, “Black is Beautiful” makes lots of sense: it’s a simple truth, and counters a prejudicial lie. “I’m Black and I’m Proud” doesn’t make sense, because the color of one’s skin is a gift, just like any other. It’s not something someone can control.

For that matter, even gifts that we can develop, like musical talent or academic smarts, are not ours to command, and they don’t give the authority to command others. I can’t make myself any smarter than I am; I can either use the intelligence I’ve been given to learn, or I can make myself stupid by misusing that intelligence; but I can’t give myself the ability to understand something that’s beyond me. I also can’t make myself smarter than the people around me; if I try, sooner or later, one of them will show me the error of my ways.

But if I simply acknowledge that I’ve been given a gift, then I can use that gift to make my life better … and to help improve the world around me. I can shed a little light from what I’ve learned in the confusion of the world around me. My friend can sing a song that lifts spirits. My uncle can help me fix my car when it’s busted. And we all can be confident that it’s good to be who we are, even if someone calls me a backwards idiot for reading medieval philosophers, or calls my friend a sentimental twit for singing, or my uncle a neanderthal for being mechanical. We know it’s not true. We can rejoice in the truth, and support one another in joy. Because the gift we all share in common is the basic dignity of being human. And that is a gift well worth celebrating.

"Your lovin' gives me a thrill, but your lovin' don't pay my bills..."

I’m giving a talk at my parish tomorrow night (7:00 in the parish hall, if you’re in the neighborhood!) on usury and the morality of economics.

Usury has become a popular word, at least in some circles, for what’s wrong with our current economy. Too many people getting too greedy, and getting bailed out when their greed comes home to roost.

I think usury is one part of the problem, but it’s bigger than that. The other problem is straight up greed, which is not exactly the same as usury. Now, I’m not an economist, and I don’t understand the ins and outs of the whole system. My approach has been to take hold of the basic moral issues involved in economic life. And in my reading and thinking, these two themes have jumped out to center stage.

Reality

It’s no surprise to you who read this blog that I’m a big fan of reality. I think 99% of our problems come from a mismatch between what I think or what I want and what is actually the case.

Usury is an excellent example of this. As far as I can tell, the problem with usury is that the “interest” being charged is not connected to reality. As Thomas Aquinas puts it: “To take usury for money lent is unjust in itself, because this is to sell what does not exist.”

It is not a sin to ask for money to cover expenses that are real, or even to cover profits from lost opportunities. But to charge interest without any connection to some actual cost or loss is simply to demand that new money come out of nowhere. This is wrong because it is, ultimately, false and impossible.

Zippy, who sadly no longer blogs, had a series of excellent posts on why this is the case, and how it applies to our current economy. You can read his analysis, starting here, then part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. He eventually explores the territory of what a creditor has a right to reclaim from a debtor, and a bit on what kinds of “financial instruments” are licit, and why.

Greed is not good!

The other theme that jumped out at me was what today we call “profit motive” and what the medievals called “greed”.

The problem is not that production or trade turns a profit; as many have pointed out, there would be no business or trade without profit. As no less an authority than St. Paul says, “[T]he plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of a share in the crop.”

The problem is, rather, that profit is not good in itself. Profit is only a means to an end. It is both foolish and unjust to try to collect profit for its own sake, whether in the form of money or in the form of houses or artworks or anything else. Profit is meant to be used, not to make more profit, but to give benefit to people.

Now, those people can include oneself. It is good to make money in order to put food on the table. It is good to feed one’s family, too. It is good to feed one’s employees, and one’s stockholders, and their families. All this is putting profits to good use.

Likewise, it is good to use profits to upgrade one’s equipment, or to do research into better ways of making widgets or better ways to bring those widgets to market.

But it is not good to pursue or hold on to profits as if they were themselves the goal, the end of economic activity. In other words, using profit itself as a motive for work or business is greed, avarice, a deadly sin and a mortal vice.

The universal destination of goods

Why is this the case? After all, didn’t I work for that money? Didn’t I earn it? What does it hurt to try to add more to it, or to hold on to it? Am I saying everybody should be poor, or that it’s wrong to be rich?

To answer the last question first: No. Ideally, nobody would be poor, and it’s perfectly okay to be rich.

But there are two things going on here: first, as I hope is clear from what I wrote above, money is not a good in itself. It is a medium for exchange, and a measure of value. But it has no value in itself; it’s entire worth is that it makes buying and selling easier. If money doesn’t buy and sell, then it loses its entire purpose and value.

Second, and more importantly, my right to own things is not absolute or unlimited. The things I own are derived from nature and labor, from the world and the work we do on it. So yes, I have a right to the products of my labor, and to what I can buy and sell with that. But my right is rooted in the nature of the world, which cannot belong absolutely to anyone. I did not make the earth, and I have no claim to it above anyone else. Nature is a gift to all of us, and each of us has an equal claim to what we need from it.

So, although I can claim the good things I have got by working, my claim stops when someone is excluded or restricted from access to the good things they need to get by. The goods of nature are universal: they belong to everybody.

If my pursuit of profit, or my hoarding of money or products or whatever, prevents someone from working, or eating, or living a humane life, then that is wrong. Profit is meant to support the life and growth of human persons, both individually and as a society. I do not have a right to keep good things away from others, no matter how hard I’ve worked for them.

It is not wrong to be rich; but it is wrong to keep riches all to oneself.

So here is where I’ve drawn the line in the proverbial sand:

• No computer games whatsoever
• No TV except on weekends
• No internet before noon

I’m giving these things up, not because they’re bad in themselves, but because in me they are areas of life entirely controlled by the enemy. I’m not capable of playing computer games in moderation, or turning away from TV when I have work to do. And if I start surfing or answering emails before I do more localized work, well, I never get around to the work that needs doing here and now. So I have to fortify my headquarters; I have to build a barricade to insure that my life is not further invaded. Perhaps one day I’ll regain freedom from Sloth in those areas of my life; but that day is not today.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to go on the offensive. The best way to defeat vice is by developing virtue, and the virtue that Sloth opposes is Charity. So I’m trying to fill my time with activities done to benefit others. Yes, there’s a certain amount of self-care that’s important, especially getting enough sleep. But most of my time is spent focusing on my own needs and desires. That’s what leads to Sloth in the first place. The cure, the solution, the victory, is only found in recognizing that all I have is given me so that I can serve others with it. And then actually using my gifts to serve.

This is not a natural love

I don’t like to talk much about sex, partly because I’m ashamed of my own weaknesses in this area, and partly because any restriction on sexual “expression” or activity is seen as “backward” (and I’m vain enough to want to be seen as progressive), and partly because sex is just plain everywhere already and I don’t particularly want to add to the mess.

But what with the foolish hooplah over Pope Benedict’s out-of-context statement on condoms, and in light of some personal questions from a few different friends, and considering a fascinating conversation over at Just Thomism, I thought I’d toss my tuppence into the ring.

Human nature

The human person is made for love.

That sentence has many meanings, because “love” has many meanings. Love could mean, broadly, fellowship or relationship with others. Love could mean, figuratively, sexual intercourse. Both these – as well as other senses of love such as philanthropy or friendship or romance – have some truth to them, but it is important not to confuse them.

The fact is that individual people are dependent on one another, both physically and socially. Love allows those dependencies to fulfill our nature, to build us up both individually and together. In terms of virtue, love directs us toward a good that is at the same time personal and universal.

Our interdependence can be abused, though. We can treat each other in ways that denigrate human nature, usually by pitting one need against another, or by substituting one kind of love for another. That is what the vices do, and particularly the vice of lust.

Lust kills love

Lust does for sex what all the vices do: it reduces the world to some small, solitary good, and refuses to acknowledge the connections of that good to everything else. It reduces a person to an object of sexual satisfaction. That sexual satisfaction may be emotional as well as, or instead of, physical; but it still “objectifies” a person, reduces him or her to a mere thing to be used.

Now, it’s one thing to become momentarily lost in the enjoyment of some good thing. For example, when I’m savoring a truly fine wine, or a perfectly spiced pasta sauce, I take a minute to ignore everything else in the world and simply float in that fullness of flavor. But such moments are gifts, and I soon return my attention to my companions at the table.

Lust seeks to control and command the pleasures of sexual interactions, rather than receive them as gifts. It treats a companion as an excuse or as a tool to achieve a solitary ecstasy.

Where natural, virtuous sex profoundly unites a couple, lust isolates. It refuses to relate the pleasure of sex to the joy of communion.

Sex au naturale

Now, one of the first things lust ignores is the intimate connection between sexual intercourse and procreation. This is, of course, where all the controversy around birth control and homosexuality and so on comes from. None of those approaches to sex are conceivable until the bond between intercourse and childbirth are broken.

I have a great deal of sympathy for couples who can’t see how they could afford the expense of a child, or for people attracted to members of their own sex. I have very good friends who fit into both those categories, and their longing for affection and understanding and security is both deep and genuine. I mentioned above my own vulnerability to sexual temptations as well, and (without going into any detail) I will admit that I have myself sought to avoid the natural course and consequences of sex.

The temptation makes sense: sexual passion is intense and is rooted in the depths of both body and soul. It is easy to let it take over.

But human nature is not meant to be dominated by any single passion, no matter how powerful or profound. Freedom lies exactly in being able to say both “yes” and “no”, and in knowing the best time for each. Reason lies, neither in suppressing nor indulging our passions, but in bringing those passions to their fulfillment in the whole person, and in each other.

True love lies in welcoming and respecting every aspect of others, including their minds, their personalities, and even their fertility. Love, when it meets another, always creates something new and beautiful.

I’m worried about an FBI team who contacts an isolated individual who’s failing to make contact with jihadist radicals, teaches him how to make a bomb, helps him to plan and carry out an attack, and chooses a large and public venue to arrest him.

I’m worried about an Attorney General who claims “that if Mohamud hadn’t come in contact with the FBI, he ‘would have made his plans tragically real.’”

And I’m worried about mass media outlets that just repeat the line that this is a plot that has been “thwarted” or “foiled.”

For the record, it sounds to me like this Mohamud fellow may actually have become a threat on his own someday. He very well may have warranted observation by the FBI. But the way the Bureau pursued this investigation sounds very much like entrapment for Mohamud and fear-mongering for the rest of us.

“Look!” says the FBI & co., “here’s a home-grown terrorist you should be afraid of! It could be anybody! What’s a little inappropriate pat-down compared to the risk of being bombed while lighting a Christmas Tree? What’s a little warrantless wiretapping or email surveillance next to, you know, a west coast 9-11?”

What would have been wrong with just watching this kid, and seeing what he does on his own? At least then, he might have actually led investigators to a real terrorist cell, and could have led to some genuine intelligence of real plots to commit terrorist acts. And, when arrested, he might have been guilty of a real crime.

As it is, he’s just become the solitary target of an FBI plot to … to what? boost their own ratings? I hope not. To foil and thwart terrorist attacks? Not very effectively.

I want good security and I want active intelligence gathering on terrorist activities. But that’s not what this was. At best, this was a colossal mistake. If anyone in the FBI is reading this, please, don’t make the same mistake again.

How can you mend a broken heart?

So there are a couple people in my life that make lots of bad decisions. (I don’t think they read this blog, but I won’t name names anyway.)

I’m not talking about decisions I disagree with, like choosing the creme brulee when there’s chocolate mousse on the menu. I’m talking about undeniably bad decisions, like burning bridges and painting yourself into a corner.

It’s hard to love someone in that situation, for two reasons. First, their bad decisions put up obstacles to receiving love; and second, I just stop wanting to love that person.

The limits of love

To love is to will the good of the one you love. But I’m not able by my own power to make good things happen for those I love. I’m just a guy, a mere mortal, with not much money or fame or power. So it may be very very good for a friend to get a new car, but I can’t afford to buy it for them. A friend may want a spouse desperately, but I can’t wave my wand and make romance spark. Someone may be suffering from an incurable disease of mind or body, but I’m not God that I can heal them.

So my love is limited by my ability to actually accomplish some good thing for those I love. But sadly that’s not the only limiting factor. Love can also be limited by a refusal to accept the good that I can and do give.

I know I’ve refused love myself in the past. (I probably still do more often than I admit to myself.) An obvious example is my lack of gratitude for the gifts my grandparents gave me when I was a child. I was a Star Wars fanboy, and I was obsessed with getting the Millennium Falcon playset – come on, who wasn’t? And I was so focused on getting the one thing I wanted that, when I didn’t get it, I practically spat on the action figures and Darth Vader carrying case that they did give me. I did return some action figures to the store, not because I had them already, but because I wanted something different.

More subtle refusals arose out of fear, rather than greed. I turn down offers of company when I’m feeling depressed, or I turn down offers of help when my pride is hurt, all because I’m afraid of my own weakness or of some imagined future regret.

So love can be inadequate to the need, or love can be refused. But there’s a third limitation as well: my own heart can grow cold.

All those rom-com superlatives, “I’ll love you forever!” and “Nothing can stop my love for you!” really do describe the ideal of what love is about – both romantic love and charitable love. As St. Paul puts it, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” But my emotions come and go, and there are lots of times I just don’t bear all things, or hope all things. There are times when, as a feeling anyway, my love comes to an end.

And that’s where the virtue of love kicks in.

Loving when it’s tough

Virtue is all about actions; feelings (or “passions”) are important only in that they give information or motivation to act. But an emotion is not a virtue, and a virtuous action doesn’t require feeling in the moment. Most of the time, it’s the action that gives rise to the related feeling rather than the other way around.

So taking the actions of love, even when my own heart is cold, is the way to grow in the virtue of love. It also reminds me that love involves the brain as well as the heart and the gut.

Dealing with my friends who are making bad decisions requires me to think things through: what is actually in my ability to do? what are they able or willing to receive from me? and how can I overcome my own fear or resentment toward them?

You’ve got to be kidding me.

They’re basing this, apparently, on how much they think they can get out of him in restitution. In other words, it’s not about punishing crime; it’s about raking in the cash.

And it’s not the victim, either, who’s after the cash. It’s the lawyers.

Hat tip to Mark.

Being a Catholic, and a fan of Gaudi’s architecture, the inaccuracy and bias in these stories is blatant and obvious to me.

If that’s how they report on stuff I know something about, why should I trust them on stuff I don’t know anything about? That’s why I’m always looking for accurate sources of information.

By the way, check out the pix of the building itself available at Wikimedia Commons. That’s where I found this one:

I’ve mentioned before some of the principles I wish were more prevalent in political conversation. Here’s the list again, for those who hate clicking on links:

• Common good
• Subsidiarity
• Interdependence, aka, Solidarity

Many more good things worth talking about certainly belong on the list, but this is as far as I’ve gotten in trying to articulate some essential political principles.

However, while I generally like to focus on the positive, it’s important to recognize the genuine evils out there which undermine any possibility of real human life, liberty, and community.

Recognizing evil

A quick reminder: evil is not any thing in itself. Evil is the distortion or destruction of something good. So when my anger starts rising up, I have to remind myself to look for the good that’s being distorted. I have to remind myself that whoever is committing or supporting evil is actually trying to accomplish something good, albeit in a twisted way.

In other words, if there’s a way to achieve the good without distortion, then I have made my enemy into my friend.

A good thing, like a virtue, can be distorted in at least two ways: too much (excess) or too little (defect). There may be other dimensions of distortion out there, but I’m not wise enough to talk about the much. In any case, a good always falls into the category of evil if either A) there’s just not enough to actually be the good it’s trying to be, or B) it so overextends itself that it ceases to actually be that good thing.

An example: the dignity of the human person is perhaps the fundamental good that government exists to protect.

It is evil when the government fails to actually protect that good, in cases like physician assisted suicide or unjust war, or even in less clear cases like lack of enforcement of environmental or food health regulations.

It is also evil when the government extends the protections of human dignity beyond the human person, for example giving corporations “rights” under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, or giving teachers greater rights than parents over the education of children.

Support an imperfect good, but never support evil

Now, no law is perfect, just as no individual person is perfect. We all make mistakes. We disagree about what the best course of action is.

Thomas Aquinas notes that the moral obligation is to seek the good, not necessarily to seek the best. The best isn’t always possible, and the best isn’t always clear. But it usually is clear when a good is so minimized or so distorted that it ceases to be good anymore.

My friend Mark notes that “10% less evil than the other leading party” is still evil, and therefore not worthy of a vote or any other form of support. He writes in a candidate if both the major party candidates take positions in support of some evil: for example, a Democrat may support unlimited access to abortion while the Republican opponent may support the torture of prisoners. Both positions are distorted at their core: they reject the good of human dignity in favor of some lesser or dependent good – say, convenience or security; so these core distortions are called “intrinsic evils”. Therefore, he won’t consider voting for either of those candidates, and will seek someone who at least does not support some intrinsic evil, even if there’s not much else to agree on.

It’s the least we can ask of our public officials, that they do not promote anything intrinsically evil.

My evil list of evil

I’m putting out here a list of things that are absolute deal-breakers for me. These are things so obviously and intrinsically evil that, if a politician is in favor of them – or even not opposed to them – I cannot in good conscience lend them any support. Sadly, this leaves me with almost nobody in the major parties today that I can vote for. Like Mark, I fear I’ll be writing in most of the candidates I’m voting for this election.

• Abortion – it’s murder, and I can’t condone it; this includes IVF, and any research that takes a human life
• Physician-assisted suicide, aka, euthanasia – again, murder is unjustifiable, for any reason
• Unjust war – I follow the basic criteria laid out by Thomas Aquinas and others; the Iraq invasion was manifestly unjust; the current Afghanistan situation has only the slenderest chance of meeting Just War criteria
• Torture – they’re human beings, even if they’re our enemies

Again, this list is incomplete, but it’s as far as I’ve sorted out at this time. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments.