Some questions about consciousness and thus, about life

Moral theology is often separate from science but ignoring science in this modern age would leave it looking reactionary and irrelevant.  In light of some more recent understanding from the world of science, I set out some questions that I feel should be incorporated into moral theology not as a challenge but to complete it.

I have always believed that while religion & philosophy and science do not necessarily conflict, neither is superior to the other.  If anything they feed off each other, with the language & conclusions of religion & philosophy being updated to incorporate science to remain relevant and science owing its body of science ethics to religion & philosophy. It is not the intention of this article to be an article on ensoulment or to challenge existing theology or even to be part of that war between religion and science but I have always wondered how the great philosophical and theological works of the past would have been written in the light of the latest scientific understanding.

Thomas  Aquinas wrote his Summa Theologica in a time when science and philosophy were unified subjects in a way it is not today.  It was written in a scientifically-rational manner but based on the scientific understanding in his days. Would it have been written differently in the light of scientific knowledge of today, other than the obvious ones of language and style?  More specifically, would his replies in Part 1 Question 118 Article 2 be expressed differently to address and incorporate the lessons of cellular science, evolution and other life sciences?

I would not deign to challenge Aquinas but here are some insights that I would ask Aquinas, wherever he is now, whether the following questions would require his Summa to be revised or at least reworded to better enlighten us?  The questions are largely to do with the mechanics of the metaphysical, an approach which Aquinas seems to have addressed constantly in his great work.  

What have souls?

As we understand more about the biology of life, we find the division of all life into the animal and plant kingdoms no longer works as we know that life on Earth is more complex than that.  We now have the fungi kingdom, the protozoan kingdom and the bacterial kingdom - I am just simplifying the terminology here.  So, is the classical Western philosophy classification into vegetation souls, animal souls and human souls (or nutritive, sensitive and intellect souls respectively in the terminology of Aristotle) still good for purpose?  Are the three new life kingdoms intended to fit into the original vegetation and animal souls classification or do they get their own classifications?

In terms of scale, how far do animal and vegetation souls go?  Would single cells protozoa, bacteria and fungi have souls as well?  If they don't, at which point do we cut off which species have souls and which do not, and what is the criteria?  As complexities of species exist within a spectrum of increasing complexity, does the content of animal/vegetation souls also decreases or is it a binary classification - one species has a complete animal/vegetation soul while the next one down the spectrum has none at all.  Would souls extend to below the cellular level - what about viruses, which is even debated whether they are life or not?

Do souls need a minimum threshold to exist, and if so, what is the threshold based on - cellular/electrical/chemical activity, level of consciousness?  Effectively, what is the basis of the soul, where does it resides?  Does it reside in the whole of the cell or in only part of the cell, say, the nucleus?  Or is it not limited to the physical location of the cell as it is metaphysical in nature, meaning that it could co-locate with other souls within the same physical space? 

What has spirits?

In Western philosophy, souls and spirits differ in that only humans have spirits, otherwise known as the human or intellect souls.

Modern scientific research challenges the notion that some traits are exclusively human.  Great apes can use language, including abstract terms - communicating in American Sign Language - with one primatologist with two deaf parents who met Koko, the first ape who signed, reflecting that she has just spoken to another species in her mother tongue.  Tool-making is widespread in many species, some of these are carefully planned and kept for future use, indicating planing and intention.  Abstract thinking, including artistic expressions in works of art (ok, not to the level of the Old Masters but sufficient to display that the 'artist' was trying to express something), creating new words, etc. have been observed and documented in non-human animals. Now, I am looking at rigorous research which excluded as much anthropomorphism assumptions as possible from these seemingly human traits so actions undertaken due to instincts required by their genes are excluded as far as is known.

Are animal souls and human spirits binary (ie., either or choices) classifications?  Or is it a spectrum, with possibility that an animal/individual be at an intermediate stage with part animal souls and part human spirit, or a full animal soul with a bit of human spirit overlaid on it, growing with its increasing humanness?  We know that we share 98.8% of our DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos.  Is the amount of DNA similarity to human DNA the defining criteria for whether an individual has a human spirit (or the proportion of human spirit if non-binary)?

One primatologist noted that a chimpanzee can attain intelligence of a human six-year-old. Today we know that chimpanzees brain structure and hence our mental abilities, differ to the point that the age at which abilities of human babies surpassing that of chimpanzee babies differ with the task involved, and in some tasks human brains will never exceed chimpanzees.  But let's just take age six for this inquiry: if we take a six-year old child to Sunday school, shouldn't we do the same for chimpanzees of equivalent intelligence?  Fundamentally, would a non-human animal qualify for salvation if it could demonstrate a certain level of abstract thinking for certain virtues on which salvation is based - those common virtues of different religions on which mainstream religionists agree enable adherents of other religions to attain heaven.  (I concede that the scientific conclusions in this inquiry does not lend itself to a single age human-chimpanzee intelligence comparison, but whichever the age, there are many similar questions arising, just with different references)

From the classical classification of souls held, it is obvious there pre-humans would once have animal souls.  At which point in human evolution did pre-humans acquire a human spirit?  Was it that the animal spirit reduced in succeeding generations to be gradually replaced by human souls?  If alternatively, the classification was binary, wouldn't that mean that one generation had a wholly animal spirit and their offspring would have a wholly human spirit.

We know today that early humans interbred with Neanderthals and DNA of humans of non-African origins have 1-4% Neanderthal DNA.  Did Neanderthals have animal souls?  Let's assume they did for the purpose of this inquiry (if they had human spirits, then we just go back to a pair of pre-human species which interbred but with one having animal spirit and the other having human souls).  Does that mean that that particular breeding Neanderthal individual had a wholly human soul because of their capacity to produce human soul offspring?  And would the other Neanderthals that did not have the same capacity had animal spirits, meaning that some individuals in the species had human souls and some had animal spirits?  Or did that individual had a part human soul of sufficient threshold to begat a human soul offspring, raising the question as to what that threshold was?

Effectively, there is a broader question that about whether only humans qualify for heavenly salvation, however we define humanness (DNA content, traits, etc) and once we we have that capacity, we never lose that capacity (with the proviso of whether we actually enter heaven or not dependent on one's own actual life actions).  Much like teams in the recently proposed European Super League, never being relegated. 

Multi-level souls?

If single cells have animal/vegetation souls, what then about multi-cellular organisms like humans?  Are there two levels of souls - one at the cellular level and one at the organism level? If there are, what is the relationship between the two, and do the after-life also exists for the subsidiary soul?  If so, does the after-life of one affect the other?

If single cells have souls but cells within an organism do not, do the latter acquire souls when they separate from the organism - fell off, removed, etc? Or they never have souls no matter how long they survive?

Since individual cells could survive the death of the organism, for a certain length of time anyway, do each soul at both levels commence its post-death transition at different times? 

Fetus-in-situ

Fetus-in-situ have always intrigued me.  Basically, these are fraternal twins in the womb, one of which did not develop as a fully viable baby.  The non-viable twin often dies and would normally be reabsorbed back into the mother's body.  In rare cases (about 2 in a million live births) however it is not reabsorbed and the surviving twin grows to envelop it, resulting in the regular stories of patients having a tumour removed, which distressingly turned out to be a sibling.  The non-viable twin may end up dead and is removed as a calcified mass like bone or it was still alive and was removed as a mass of cells like a cyst or tumour, often with recognisable organs & limbs.

If the non-viable twin was eventually removed as a tumour, it is alive insofar as the cells comprising it are alive as it feeds and the cells reproduces, but it has no consciousness of a human and is not alive as a human.  So, does it have a soul or is it a collection of souls at a cellular level?

If it was a fraternal twin, it would have been conceived from a separate sperm and ovum, which often was non-viable from the beginning because of a congenital flaw which only became apparent later on.  If we accept that the soul existed at conception (Note: there are different ideas on ensoulment), did the non-viable twin had a soul at conception and made its post-death transition on becoming unviable or did it never have a soul because it was doomed even at conception due to congenital traits?  Did it have a soul as long as a possibility of viability remains, only to lose it the moment the last possibility of viability was extinguished?

As a separate point on ensoulment of identical twins, how many souls were there before the foetus split up?  Were there two souls at conception because there would be two foetuses eventually, sort of pre-ordained even though it hasn't happened yet? Or was there only one soul, which split up into two souls when the foetuses split up?  Or was there only one soul which continued on after the split, with another soul started its existence from the split - meaning, there is an elder and a younger sibling souls when physically both foetuses have identical age?

Anything that happens in the physical world happened in a mechanistic or mechanical manner, even miracles require a mechanics for it to happen in the physical world.  Understanding the mechanics only increases our common body of knowledge and may even uncover new understanding or insights to our existing knowledge and understanding.  One should never be afraid of understanding how the world works.

Role of theology in America's divide today

We see many Christian references during the Capitol riots of Jan 6 and many wonder if conspiracy theories and political upheaval in United States at least partly rooted in Christian evangelical theology.  In this article, we explore the role of theology in defining the logical conclusion of the rabbit hole that conspiracy theorists find themselves in.

First, I have to declare that I identify as a Catholic and so may not be the most objective of parties if my opinions sound sectarian but I try to leave my personal beliefs out of this little dissertation.  In this article, evangelism is treated as separate from mainstream Protestantism even though I recognise the two identities are often adopted by the same person.  Neither am I saying the evangelical worldview is monolithically uniform.  Much like most thinking in human society, it is incredibly diverse, multi-faceted and interacts with the world differently in different fields.  Similarly, conspiracy theorists exist within a spectrum from those who may consider the plausibility of only one theory to those who with a affinity, nay addiction, with any idea suspicious of establishment thinking and I recognise too that not everyone whom we consider a conspiracy theorist would identify as one.  It would be a disservice to evangelism in particular and the wider Christian community as a whole, of which I am a member, to conflate everyone who identify as an evangelical with a propensity for some or all of conspiracy thinking.

Human society is just too complex for easy categorisation no matter how much students and observers of sociology may try.  We can only hope to identify some of the many social forces that act in varying degrees on a particular individual with a particular persuasion on a particular issue.  It is not my intention to apply a broad brush to describe wide swathes of human society but to identify some possible origin of the worldview of an individual which can be the starting point for understanding of that particular worldview.

With this clarification, we can perhaps start.

Christian background in America's origins

To start at the very beginning, the first English settlements in America were seen as another part of a conflict with Spain.  While these early settlements failed, they were really in a sense partly driven by religious considerations as Protestant England under Elizabeth seeks to outflank the Catholic Spanish incursions into North America, which at that time had reached modern day Florida.  In some ways, the Protestant English settlements built on their experience in colonising Catholic Ireland, creating a link to shared oppression experience with Native Americans for Irish-Americans long before their arrival after the potato famine.

(Interesting note: the country of Britain did not exist yet at that time: that came later in 1707, though the crowns of England of Scotland were united under a common king in 1603 in the person of James I (or VI of Scotland).  That is why Americans colloquially refer the British as the English and never as British because they were originally colonised by England, not Britain.  There were a few Scottish colonies but they all failed)

While the early permanent settlements in North America were set up in the name of the English crown, many of the subsequent settlements were set up by English dissident Christians persecuted in England when the established church there attempted to assert its ecclesiastical authority.  Included in this wave during the turbulent Stuart rule in the 17th century were Puritans of the Pilgrim Fathers fame and the Quakers.

During the Thirty Year War between Catholics and Protestants in Europe 1618-1648, continental Europeans also migrated to America to escape persecutions and pressures to change their religion, particularly from Germany and France which faced the more horrendous religious violence during the period.  This became the basis for a need to separate church and state in a highly religiousified (is that a word?) society, to avoid the experience of religious wars rampant in Europe.

While the religious truce was is largely observed in America, it was by no means universal.  In Maryland, the only colony set up for Catholics, Catholicism was proscribed in three different periods until the Revolutionary wars.  Having said that, Maryland Toleration Act 1649 was a landmark legislation, being the first of its kind in the English speaking world.

Religious tolerance in colonial America is, therefore, limited and largely extend to Protestantism as the 'default' religion.  Even in Maryland, Catholics number a small minority, as they still do today.  Today, Catholics form a >40% plurality in only one state, Rhode Island.  Political and public life in the colonial era was already dominated by WASPs - White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, especially of the Puritan Anglican variety, while most crown governors were drawn from the ranks of establishment Anglicans.  Catholics and Jews didn't get much of a look in, as did some English Protestant Dissenters at least for some time in the initial colonial period.  Quakers were then seen as a threat by the Anglican and Puritan aristocracy, probably because their numbers and organisations.

With the freedom to pursue their religion to their logical conclusion, some Protestants soon interpreted their religion in more Protestant terms, with some describing themselves as 'militant Protestants' and became the forerunner of today's evangelicals.  Having said that, the first of America's religious revivals, which sweeps the country regularly, was more rationalist in nature, heavily influenced by the Enlightenment and science, very unlike how a religious revival would be seen today.

Christianity had always had a dominant role in American politics, being the bedrock for the Prohibition of the 1920s.  It is assumed that everyone should be Christian and it is hard to see an atheist being elected to high office today even though some 9% of adult Americans identify as atheist or agnostics.  The issue of religious affiliation has maligned the candidacies of Romney (Mainstream Christians classify Mormons as marginal Christians at best, due to the use of other books as divine scripture) and Obama (falsely perceived as Muslim by 20% of those surveyed in the run up to his first election as President).  I remember a politician in the 1970s whose name I forgot, who castigated Israelis and Arabs for not being able to settle their disputes peacefully 'like good Christians' - seems like he accepted Christianity as the default value system.

Evangelical theology and antithesis to scholarship

Much of Protestant theology (even with a nod to the diversity in Protestant thinking) is a rather revivalism in nature and very much based on the Bible as the sole source of revelation, rejecting the Church as the intermediary in an individual's interactions with God.  

In going back to the Bible, Luther justified his rejection of the authority of the Church by a Scriptural verse that stated that we are justified by faith.  I often encountered evangelical writings, though, that extended this verse to being justified by faith alone.  Catholic doctrine is that scriptures need to be understood under guidance of Church teachings known as traditions - not the ‘old practices’ type but teachings handed down from the Apostles.  Thus, to read the Bible and to teach Catholic teachings, the Church has built up an entire edifice of scholarship of ever-growing complexity, with lots of reference to writings of early Church fathers.  With all that scholarship comes the interpretative role that Luther eschewed.

In rejecting Church authority to be the sole arbiter of Biblical interpretation, much of the body of scholarship itself is rejected.  More fundamental forms of Protestantism (as opposed to more mainstream forms like the Anglicans, Lutherans and Methodists) believe that one could understand the Word of God unmediated by any intermediary, eg., the Catholic Church.  Evangelicals therefore are wary of scholars who they think are trying to interpret the Bible for them, and this wariness extend to the knowledge and expertise the scholars had.  The rejection of scholarship seeps into more secular fields: in evangelical thinking, it is hard to separate the secular from the religious as their Fatih informs so much of the way they view the world and understand events around them.  So, it is not difficult for rejection of religious authority to be consistent with rejection of scientific authority.

The more extreme forms of evangelicalism reject science altogether.  The more moderate forms co-opt science into their theology, but often with unusual results.  For instance, one university tried to reconcile Biblical veracity with evolution by debating whether God breathed life into a pre-human for him to become the first Adam.  There is even a Creation Museum with a dinosaur display that dates the year of the extinction of dinosaurs as 2348BC, the supposedly year of Noah’s Flood. To us it may sounds like stretching the use of science, but for evangelicals, there is a need to reconcile what they see as truth with what others see as facts.   

This belief in justification by faith alone means that you get to heaven through your own faith and efforts, not by relying on learning (rejection of scholars) and professionals (rejection of priests as intermediaries).  This is why so much of American culture - evident in Hollywood - vaunts the person with little or no training triumphing over experts with their long training.  I find its epitome, or nadir, in the film Armageddon that is based on the premise that it is easier to teach miners to fly spacecrafts than to teach an astronaut to drill holes.

The rejection of scholarship, and also accepted facts by conspiracy theorists, makes it futile to appeal to the logic of more accepted arguments.  Rational arguments are viewed with suspicions by those with an instinctive revulsion of scholarship while those more religious will see the hand of the Devil in arguments trying to dissuade them from the divine truth.  It is no coincidence that evangelicals are proportionately more among the ranks of conspiracy theorists, be they in the Capitol insurrection or in the Flat Earth Society.

Catholic acceptance into American establishment

This story encountered a twist of late.  Catholics tend to be excluded from American halls of power dominated by WASPs.  A Catholic candidate of the Democratic Party lost the presidential election in the 1920s because of his Catholicism.  JFK won in spite of his Catholicism not because - he famously had to declare that the pope did not determine his policies.  In the 1980s with the advent of John Paul II and Reagan, evangelicals began to realise that they have a lot in common with Catholics in their stance against abortion and homosexuality etc.  Not having their own scholarship that can provide coherent rational-based (as opposed to religious-based) arguments to the public, evangelicals began to reach out to Catholics with their tradition of scholarship to provide the needed arguments in their battle for public opinion. 

Catholics consented to this alliance in order to be accepted into the upper echelons of American power.  As a result of this alliance, Catholics achieved their goal and today of being an undisputed part of the WASP power structure.  As late as 1984, Ferraro, Democratic candidate for VP had to defend her Catholicism and the debate then was whether her Catholicism mattered.  It is only with the candidacy of John Kerry, we finally had a major party candidate whose Catholicism did not matter to Protestant voters.  If anything, his brand of Catholicism was more a point of contention with some Catholic bishops.  That, to me, was the moment Catholicism was accepted in the halls of power.

Catholics are the now majority on the Supreme Court (5 out of 9) with 6 of the 15 Catholic justices ever appointed, having served in the last 5 years.  A aspect of this alliance is that influence worked both ways and American Catholicism got more conservative in the last few decades. To many of us in the rest of the world (and I dare say the exasperation of Pope Francis), American Catholicism seems very single-issue cultural warriors.

At this point, I should add that Catholics the world over do try to balance social justice from social conservatism and there is a wing of American Catholicism that prioritise furthering social justice over social conservative values but they seem to be in a minority, certainly less visible.

Danger of religious justification for political action

It should not be an issue for an individual's religious conviction to influence their political choices.  After all, most political decisions are about moral priorities and propagation of moral truths are often where religions are supposed to excel.  But any political action has to operate within the scope of acceptable legal and social norms of the wider society.  Any conflict should be settled using the institutions of the society in which the individual resides and the religion operates.  Otherwise, the social contract unravels.  If an individual subjugate their rights & responsibilities to society to their rights & responsibilities to their religion, the individual cannot be enjoying all the rights of the society any more than a person holding another passport (ie., having an alternative loyalty) have less than full rights in our country.

If this is coupled with a belief that a political position is required by God, who mandates action to realise that requirement, society would be threatened if individuals undermine society's institutions to further that religious mandate.  Often, this appeal to that higher mandate means that the ends justify the means.  We can see the disregard of democratic norms in some places where voter suppression, gerrymandering and other tools were deployed as parties seek to maintain themselves in power in defiance of the will of the majority, sometimes to remould a better society in the image of their ostensible religious values.

After almost 250 years, the American constitution is still a work in progress and the ideals contained in it are still not yet fully realised.  This is because the identity of what makes an American and the value system underpinning that identity were avoided in those early discussions in 1776 & 1789.  The resulting compromise came up with a formula of words which satisfied everyone because each delegation could walk away with their own interpretation of those words suitable to maintain their own hands on the levers of local power.  That kicking of the can down the road then and since, had the cost in the upheavals America faces today.

While it may be late, America needs to have that conversations today avoided all those years ago.  Talking with rather than talking at; Reconciling values rather than triumphing one's own; Focussing on what is common in that identity rather what differentiates.  This will be the test whether America is that melting pot to meld the many into one or will America be building two separate societies on a single but divided land.  Whichever path taken, the world is watching and any failure of American democracy will only weaken the cause of democracy in our fragile world.

What is truth?

We keeping hearing that we are in the post-truth society.  It seems a certainty but 'truth' is never defined.  I would like to explore how truth differs from facts and what it means in our lives.

Is it possible to learn a truth from something that is not true?  Or an event or someone who didn't exist?  I would like to think that most of us have exalted learning so much that we would say yes.    Yes, we can always learn something from anything if we were to look hard enough.  But some will be puzzled.

Do we all think, for instance, that 'slow and steady' sometimes win the race?  If we do, do we believe that a tortoise and a hare had a race, which the tortoise won by being slow and steady?  The lesson of being 'slow and steady' is separate from the story of the tortoise and the hare, which is actually the vehicle by which the lesson is brought to us.  The lesson is the truth of the non-factual variety whereas whether the story actually happened is verifiable by analysis of the facts.

At this point, I would ask that we put aside the philosophical and etymological understanding of truth. I am making the distinction in order to illustrate the difference between two concepts, for which the English language does not seem to have separate words that clearly distinguish them apart without connotations that colour the concepts I would like to put across.  Put it under poetic license.

Facts and truth differs, even though we tend to use the two terms interchangeably.  Facts can be evidenced through our five senses or reasoned out from such information.  They can be proved or disproved in an objective way, or at least, objectively if you understand the separation between facts and truth.  Facts may not change but our understanding of the facts may change, because new facts are uncovered or because new reflections or research linked two previously-thought unrelated facts to give rise to a new understanding.

Facts include evidence presented to court for a judgement or factors considered (or should be considered) when evaluating options or tenders or the like.  They all require a certain level of certainty before they can be regarded as facts.  Scientific facts, as understood in the scientific method, need to be proven to a different level of certainty before it can be accepted by the scientific community - ranging from 95% certainty (meaning that only 1 in 20 possibility it is a fluke event) in social science up to 1 in 2 million possibility of a fluke event in particle physics - a much much much higher level of certainty than is required for a gossip to be a conversation piece.

Truth on the other hand is something that informs how we are to relate to the universe around us.  It tells us what we should do.  It could based on facts or it may not - it could emerge from just our reflections, with no connection with the physical world.  Truth may be personal to each person in that it is aimed at an individual's relation to the universe, but almost all truth are same or similar in almost all persons because of the shared values and worldview of people in the same community.  In itself, there is no right or wrong in a truth as it is personal but the environment (eg., the society and value systems in which the truth is expected to acted upon) may make an individual's action required by a particular truth to be undesirable.

Truth can include personal self improvements (eg., Stephen Covey 7 habits), some insightful lessons from your dad/counsellor/priest moral/ethical advice and religious doctrines.  These truths are contextual to the person - depending on the background, the reason & situation where the truth is to be applied, and most fundamentally, the person themselves.  They are often derived from stories - factual, legends (sometimes a mix between the two with little distinction), personal sharing or any other source.  Whether the source is grounded in fact or not is irrelevant to the validity of the guidance as the intention is not to arrive at a verifiable assessment of the facts but to guide the person in their action (which hopefully will also benefit the wider society).

As an interesting note, the word mythos in Classical Greek originally did not connote factuality or otherwise.  It is just a narrative.  It is a later use of the word that imply a factual falsehood in the narrative and it is with this later meaning the word myth was imported into the English language.

Facts and truth inhabit different realms.  They both have different objectives and have different roles in human societies.  Today, people generally use 'truths' and 'facts' interchangeably, which rather confuses the two separate concepts.  As a result, we have contentious conflicts like science vs religion and the 'post-truth world'.

Allegories and fables used to teach us some truths (like those in tortoise and the hare) often have no basis in facts, but we do not hesitate to accept the veracity of the lesson taught.  Likewise, moral teachings in religious scriptures are often similarly accepted even if the stories that convey them may sound fanciful - though sometimes accepted very grudgingly by some quarter.  Somehow, some quarters seem to require a higher level factual origin from doctrines which gives direction to a person's need for guidance in their personal lives from the same scriptural source.  

In some cases, the focus on truth in religion (as opposed to facts) led to the reinterpretation by religionists of the factual basis for the stories used as a vehicle of the truths, in a way to better illustrate the truth it seek to convey.  With the de-emphasising or retelling of the factual part of the story, the mythical part of the story emerged.  While people of old would not be too bothered with the mythical nature of the stories, the modern scientific world seems to be concerned about the insufficiency of factual content in the myths used to convey religious truths.  It does not help that some of these truths relate to the metaphysical nature of the divinity which most religionists agree is necessary to authenticate the moral truths, which doesn't sit well with some quarters unable or unwilling to recognise the separate realms of religion (religious truths) and science (facts).

In Christianity there was an approach in mid 20th century called demythologisation pioneered by Lutheran theologian Bultman, to strip the Bible of its mythologies so as focus on the truths.  This was probably a reaction against the confusion among Christians with a science-based education seeking to understand non-factual myths.  I think demythologisation found its most infamous proponent in David Jenkins, the Anglican Bishop of Durham 1984-94 who preached as bishop that the resurrection of Jesus may not have been a physical event or that Mary may not have been a virgin when she bore the baby Jesus (apparently at his Easter and Christmas sermons respectively).

My personal view as a Christian accepts the idea of accretion of myths as early Jews & Christians seek to better illustrate (and later adorn) their religious values with myths, which if stripped away, reduces the Judea-Christian tradition to a set of moral teachings necessary to guide a society and individuals on how to organise their lives.  When it comes to that, Christianity has become independent of the factual person of Christ.  Would a Christian still be a Christian without Christ?  I think it would be entirely possible for a person to continue to identify as a Christian even if it is conclusively proven that the historical Jesus never existed.  However, I do think the current scholarship renders such a hypothesis that Jesus very weak and very difficult to prove.  To the chagrin of some of the more militant scientific atheists.

This confusion of course works both ways.  Mistaking truths as facts can lead to superstitions.  People has always felt a need linked superstitions to an observation of nature, which are often tenuous or grounded in intentionality bias.  In a modern society which exalts scientific logic, such justifications became more convoluted to the point they can be considered pseudo-science. If you think scientific evidence is cast iron, take a look at arguments from the Flat Earth Society against every evidence for round earth that we get in our school textbooks.

Religionists who regard scriptural myths as facts often have a literalist reading of religious scriptures, imbuing their scriptures with supernatural origins which many of such scriptures do not seem to claim for themselves, especially when read within the context of the historical human authors.  Sometimes, these imputed notions are dressed up with its own myths, but the resulting origin stories for these scriptures often cannot be verified by historical evidence.  Sometimes, there even seem to be a retrospective application of myths to justify the origin story. Ultimately, if you do not read a mathematics book to learn about geography, neither do you read a book on religion to learn about science.

The idea of a 'post-truth' world is probably more aptly called 'post-fact' world if the intention is to describe a world where people do have a disdain for using facts as a basis for their conclusions. This disdain is more a result of disempowerment rather than a lack of education.  There was a time when every person understand how everything around them works, including the tools for work or daily living.  If their plough breaks down, they know why it is broken and how to fix it (notwithstanding that they may not have the skills or the appropriate tools to do so).  In today's complex modern world, most of us use daily tools without a thought for how they work.  How many of us understand even the basic concept of the internal combustion engine when we drive our cars, much less each of component that makes the car go?  We just trust our safety with it.  If the car breaks down, there is no way we would personally know how to make it work again, sometimes requiring several teams of people to repair it.  

Not everyone is that comfortable, though.  Some people are uncomfortable with their lack of understanding of and control over how things works. They sometimes construct hypotheses to explain to themselves the workings of nature and the world around them and often view with suspicions the institutions that attempt to explain the technology in scientific terms.  Justifications are often riddled with confirmation bias (the selective application of only those evidence that supports one's position) and when their views are coupled with intentionality bias (seeing an intention by design behind random events), conspiracy theories arise.

We have to get used to the idea that truth is not necessarily only of the factual variety.  Not appreciating the distinction of the varieties in minds of people, whether they themselves are aware of it or not, does not serve us well in dealing with problems in modern societies today.  And religion and science will never complement each other, as I think they need to be.

Family in the workspace

One thing that constantly annoys me has been the expectation that because we are professionals, we stop becoming a father, or a mother or a husband or a wife once we walk through the doors of the office. Apparently, we are supposed to focus on the job that we are paid to do during the hours that we are paid for to do it. We can spend the time on our domestic issues during lunch hours, break time or from the time we start walking out of the door. But if we start eating into office time, please apply for time off and let's not talk to anyone about our home problems because everyone is professional in the office.

Unfortunately it is never true. How can it be? We cannot deny our roles which are with us 24 hours a day: our families occupy our thoughts, our aspirations, our worries at all the times that we are working for their very own wellbeing. In fact, we work in large part because of them - why wouldn't they be foremost on our minds? Still, many are made to feel inadequate, unprofessional, not a team player by our managers or a bad parent/spouse/child/sibling in our minds. Does it need to be like this?

I have been fortunate that of late, I have been the one setting the rules. Some time ago, I was interviewing lady for a finance head position with my client. She started the entire interview by apologising for9o putting her child before her work. Poor lady: I guess she didn't expect to be told off for it, "You never ever ever EVER apologise for putting your child before her work. It should be something you should be proud of." I think we have been so conditioned that we feel that being human is not the professionalism expected in the work place.

Many a year earlier, my then secretary came to me asking for advice because she was going for a job interview with a lady boss in a small company. I asked her, "Your son is your priority, right? So, ask her whether you can go off if your son is sick." "But, Jim", she replied, "She's a woman: surely, it's OK, right?" "Ask anyway", I said. She came back to me a few days later saying confusedly, "She said no." "Well, at least you know". Sometimes women can be their own worst enemies.

Which reminds me of an incident when I was heading a governmental agency. I was fortunate that the nature of my job allows my wife and baby to tag along for many of our programmes. The attendees and organisers at these events are quite happy to welcome my wife and baby - well, especially the extremely cute baby, who gets to become the centre of attention & recipient of many gifts that the rest of us will never get. Except at one event. One very apologetic young assistant came to my wife asking her to take the crawling baby out of the room. Cut a long story short, it led to a showdown between me and a lady organiser who eventually had no choice but to leave the baby alone who has been especially quiet and unobtrusive. I do wonder at times whether some (and only some) women feel a need to demonstrate a work place professionalism by being ultra anti-family?

From the commencement of my CEOship, my wife and baby tagged along with me to the office. I am not exactly sure what the team really feels inside (Asian culture being especially discreet in sharing negative personal opinions in person) but I can definitely see the impact the baby has on the team: everybody lightens up when they see the baby. Stress levels go down and morale goes up. Everyone relaxed and performed better. They really do and I do credit the baby for a good part of it. My intention was of course to invite my wife and baby to be part of my work and see & participate in what I do. The effect on the office is only a by-product but I am happy to send the message that family is priority - that they are free to settle their family worries so that they can focus on their work. The culture of the work team as a family - not just as a slogan but where we really know each other's families.

Other than the moral benefits of treating your staff as people, I believe strongly that maintaining family roles during office hours bring much productivity benefits. Mainly, it unlocks people whose availability does not fit into traditional HR manuals. Also, the impact of morale cannot be overstated and people who appreciate being treated as people often try to repay it by going the extra mile. And, how productive can a person be if they spend their working hours worrying about their children? - better they clear the issue so that they can focus on the work, sometimes at 11pm.

What's the cost? The manager has to be flexible and invest more time in managing the team. Managing the team by deliverables rather than time at work is key, but wouldn't we already need to do know how to that with millennials - those who doze off at 10am, play games at 2pm and email you their complete spreadsheets at 3am? I am always happy to send the message to my team that I am paying them for their output, not the hours they work. Scheduling can be a bit more complicated, but nothing that good communication & clear team goals cannot solve. At the same time, we need to be street smart enough to pick up cases of abuse of our good intentions.

Bringing the family into the workspace not only involves micro-management techniques, macro company policies will also help. Workspace nurseries, outsourced or organic, will assuage parental worries and logistical concerns (An office building where I one worked had one and it was quite a fond memory of preschoolers lining up to evacuate during a fire drill). Flexible hours does no harm to the office other than the manager's scheduler (I had always been happy for my staff to align their work hours in accordance with their children school hours). The pandemic has also taught us how to manage staff who work regularly from home (managing output delivered rather than visible effort and timely presence at the work desk). Offsites should NEVER replace the weekend but may overlap with it so as to give staff the option of a family break (Company pays until Saturday morning and staff can pay for a Saturday stay over at negotiated rates).

We were only a small company but it can work if we empower the departmental head to manage according to local departmental needs. Maybe the nature of our jobs where we run youth programs and the the fact that the entire team comprised open-minded youths does help but prioritising the family is no more than an expression of the values of respecting each team member as an individual - each with their own story, people connections, dreams, blessings, fears, burdens. All these make up the person: we cannot take out a part of that person excised from all the other identities and still expect that part-person to function effectively. Ultimately, it is not a resource that deliver for us in the work place but a wholesome individual person and the sooner we recognise that & treat that person with the respect due to a person, the keener the person will deliver for us, fulfilling us in the process.

Postscript: It doesn't only work with people with domestic duties. I once had an accountant who was on a rather expensive short term contract but she initially refused to work on a permanent contract as she loved to travel and require the flexibility to allow her to take time off for her holidays. I said, "Tell you what. You give me your travel schedule for the year since you book a year ahead and we organise the work around that." She agreed and I got my work done while she had her travels with security of a permanent contract. Being bold does pay dividends.

 

Judging past heroes and tyrants

How do we judge peoples of the past - is the past or the present more relevant?

Much has been said about what we do with statues of in public areas of people, whose past achievements for which they were lauded are overshadowed their positions or actions being seen differently by a those with different value systems.  Black Lives Matters protestors want that statue of a leader of Civil War vintage outside the state building to be brought down, confronted by Lost Cause adherents with Confederate paraphernalia.  Or the statue of an obscure personage but now widely-known to have owned slaves.

Most positions on this issue is really a reflection of the politics of that past person in question.  Those who disagree with his (and it is normally a he) politics or actions will marshal arguments to bolster their position, usually about the affront such a person represents to their community or a community they support.  Conversely, those who agree with his politics, or rather the symbolism of the person itself to their politics, will defend the indefensible by appealing to principles, such as equating pulling down statues to Nazism in their rewriting of history.  And people's arguments could change depending on which statue they are talking about - do they like or dislike the person in question.  OK, not everyone puts conclusions before rationale, but, really, those few upright trees is rather hard to see in the dark forests surrounding them.

Let me wade into this debate in my normal brash annoying self and maybe set out a solution that hopefully meets everybody's aims, even if it satisfy no-one.

I have a few guiding principles.  First, sovereignty always lie with people, not ideas, objects, symbols, and least of all not statues.  What is important is that people are able to go about their daily lives without damage to their well being - physical, mental and emotional.  That would include one's self-esteem and self-identification.  And we always have to take people as they are, with their history, foibles and weaknesses, and their value systems (as long as they are valid within the rules and conventions of the society they are in).  Where valid rights of people conflict as they often do in society, we choose the option that minimise damage and maximise benefits to as many individuals as possible and to the society as a whole.

Secondly, people should always be judged by their peers by standards they have consented to, expressly or implicitly including by their social contract with society.  Judging people of the past using the standards we hold today, and not the standards of their times, would mean that we ourselves agree to be judged by unknown strangers in a future in an unknown context and very likely with very different values to what we hold ourselves - that means we are happy to be denigrated by peoples who do not know us.  Well, its the Golden Rule, isn't it?

Thirdly, being offended means nothing to me as my principle is that you can only be offended if you allow it.  A person may be offended by a taunt while their mate standing next to them may be totally unaffected - one did not allow the taunt to affect them while the other did.  Having said that, I do recognise that people may have different propensities to be offended due to reasons outside their control or they find difficult to control.  A person may be more vulnerable to offence because of past experience, their current context or even because of the makeup of their brains or hormones.  Even a normally resilient person may take offence on a specific issue if there has been a lack of reconciliation on that issue - by one or both sides.  So, while a perfect world would have no place for being offending, many or most or all of us are not perfect on this issue, least of all myself.

As you can see, these principles conflict.  I am not quite sure why we feel a need to judge others but if we do, I think it should be with the caveat set out in the second principle above.  While I try not to judge (and probably, failing often), I think it is proper to assess whether a particular outcome it desirable or not.  If it is, how do we increase the likelihood of the outcome and if it isn't, what is the appropriate solution to bring about a better outcome, if one is required.

The continuing conflict over the issues indicate that we are not in a desired situation, desired by either side of the issue (maybe only to anarchists or the like who seek to take opportunities offered by conflict but we can discount them as they do not represent the consensus, or the mainstream in society or even considered as valid views within most societies).  But as always, at the risk of making mountains out of molehills, I would take the broader view of the issue beyond the statues themselves.  Dealing with the statues only and not the broader underlying issue, whichever one it is, would be just treating the symptoms and not the cause (or just placing a bandaid on an amputation - choose your metaphor).

Fundamentally, all societies need to have conversations about who they really are and what values should be defended but such conversations, by their nature can only be as honest and as effective as the completeness of the democracy it takes place in.  If anything, the existence of such fissures on the issue fo the statues until it erupted the way it did, is probably an indication of flaws in the respective democracies.  The American society, and to a slightly lesser extent the British society, has put off this discussion about who an American is and what do they believe in - questions that should have been fundamental in setting up a society and writing its constitution   I won't go any further here, though, because it is a discussion in itself and I will save it for another day.

I do like the solution HBO offered for Gone With the Wind - of prefacing the movie with an explanation of the context of the movie.   This will provide adequate warning about potential offence without damaging the integrity of the movie.  I have not seen the explanation and hopes that its educational value is adequate for the purpose, but I am sure there will be people who who want their preferred information to be included - you are not going to satisfy everyone.

In a similar way, explanations could be placed at statues commemorating persons retrospectively found to be controversial, to provide context of why the person was honoured in their time and its possible divergence from the values of today.  If the intention is to educate.

Whether a statue is to be removed or not, my default position would be to leave it in place with that explanation.  But having seen how Iraqis treated the statue of Saddam Hussein, one cannot but sympathise with the opposite sentiments.  Also, the rapidity of the change in situation in Baghdad would make it impractical to remove statues in the orderly way that I would prefer.

Sometimes the statue is designed in a particular way or is located in particularly public location as a symbol of that society's values.  Robert E Lee's statue on horseback in the capitol building springs to mind.  If the original reason for putting up that statue in the first place is no longer consistent with the changed values in society, it would be appropriate for society to decide that that statue is no longer an appropriate symbol and to remove it.  But, there has to be due process, preferably using the same institutions and processes that placed it there in the first place, adjusted only if those institutions and processes have significantly changed since then.

What do we do with the removed statues?  Many have suggested displaying them in museums with the appropriate explanation to provide the lessons of history to succeeding generations.  Any excess statues are then demolished or repurposed.  It is interesting to note that in the former Soviet Union, though, the residual reverence for these personages precludes their destruction and some public parks around Russia are populated entirely by ghosts of their communist past of Lenin, Stalin and their comrades.  Unfortunately, such reverence provides a pathway for failed values of the past to return into a society unable or unwilling to learn from their own history.

Also, what do we do if the removed statues and symbols are acquired legally for display in a museum commemorating the very values that society feel a divergence with?  For instance, statues of Confederate leaders ending up in a museum commemorating the Lost Cause.  Should the removed statues continue to be owned by the state so that the state can continue to have a say in what happens to the statues.

What about statues in public but not so busy locations?  One can argue that a person walking where an offending statue already exist is choosing to be offended, particularly if there are other routes that avoid that statue.  The local community (do we define that to include outside users who regularly passes by the area?) will have to decide but after proper due process.

Every case is different as different persons are commemorated, in different posture and sizes, in different locations, in different context, in different local communities with different impact on individuals and on society.  The general public's input into the decision is very much dependent on the individual's proximity to the impact.  As in most things in life, all solutions are bespoke and there should be no one size fits all kind of solutions.