Do you believe the universe has a justice system? Ask me on
any other day and I would say absolutely not; justice, right & wrong are
human engineered concepts, nature does not know good/bad, right/wrong,
good/evil, it simply is.
I attended my first memorial service in over ten years tonight. It
was for an individual I had only met for a few moments, but someone I can say this of: he left
this world way too early – a trite statement as long as the person it’s spoken
of isn’t full of ambition and light and promise as he was. Often when a person dies young it’s attributable to a drug overdose, car crash,
motorcycle accident – some lifestyle choice or other with expected consequences
that statistically must manifest. This beautiful human being died of lung
cancer at 35, having taken top care of his body and never smoked a day in his life. He is the brother of one of the surgeons I work for, and not one ounce less brilliant. The project he was working on during and after having graduated from
Berkeley is an online standardized test prep service that provides a solid
& affordable alternative to the giants/monopolists like Kaplan and
Princeton Review. His business is called Magoosh. I actually made some use of Magoosh while studying for my GREs, and it was extremely helpful. So in a way, he played a part in my working toward my lifelong dream, and getting into my PhD program. At the time most students in business school go out and look for internships to work for other companies and learn the lay of the land, Hansoo decided to just...start his own business.
When I find myself thinking about his death...my insides shout, “This simply
does not seem fair;” and thus my own in-built expectation that the world at large would look out for people like this, brings itself to the surface, that there must be some kind of
justice to the universe, that such a vibrant, intelligent, and enterprising
human being who has participated in no way whatsoever in a lifestyle that might
put him at risk for such a lethal disease would be given the chance to continue
to live, love, create, grow, and contribute to positive changes well into old age, and deepen the propitious mark on the world that he began. However
ridiculous a justice system belonging to the universe, pure and independent of
human bias, history, opinion may seem… I can't escape the sensation infiltrating my heart that...this...just, isn't, fair.
His family & friends set up a fellowship at UC Berkeley in his name and his honor, for the Haas business school, to be awarded to new students in their first two years. If you or anyone you know has experienced the plight of graduate student life and struggled to gather together crumbs of income, you know what a difference an award like this can make in one person's life, even for just one year. I had to donate, even a modest contribution. Here's the information for supporting future students in the name of this wonderful human being: The Hansoo Lee Fellowship.
Read more about Hansoo; there's plenty online. Even his obit reads more like a vibrant biography than an announcement of death. As I said, I did not know him, but there are few real-life stories of life, love, and loss that I feel so moved by. As more than one of his friends said tonight: "a true loss for all that is good in this world.", "the world has lost such an amazing, kind soul."
Philosophical Exploration/Addendum:
This subject sparked a conversation with a friend of mine later on last night, who rightly pointed out that my above articulation (that, despite myself, my emotional reaction appears to be revealing my belief in some kind of universal justice), is a case of what sceptics refer to as "the just world fallacy" - the illusory belief that there is some kind of universal justice involved in human fate, when in fact the only meaning that exists in the world is the meaning we bring to it. Intellectually I do believe the sceptics and the existentialists are correct here. But the human need to believe there is more going on than that, and our power to do so, is quite remarkable. Ultimately, I am of the mindset that if a system of beliefs 1) doesn't harm yourself or anyone else 2) serves you better than to not maintain it, then it's better than not doing so. I'm not an advocate of truth for truth's sake. "Truth" should be what serves our greater good - our sense of self, our confidence, our will to be alive, and treat our fellow creatures with care and respect. MANY people will disagree with that, but eh. They can take the blue pill and eat nasty tasteless food and resign themselves to the horribleness of reality. I'd rather enjoy my life. If you find the idea of defining "truth" as what serves us and enhances our lives abhorrent and completely wrong, give just a few moments' thought to the fact that even the way in which we define our physical environment (separating mountain/valley, leaf/stem, dry/wet) are human ways of carving up the world. Some creature of significantly different scale (size) and with an entirely different set of senses at its disposal would certainly define things differently. So in a sense we are already defining what is true/not true based on what serves our needs as human creatures. But obviously our needs go far beyond physically navigating the world we find ourselves in, and in situating ourselves in it.
The 19th Century British philosopher William James - one very near and dear to my heart - went so far as to say that a definition of "truth" or theories of how the world functions that do not fulfill basic human need to have something of substance to believe in is not a definition that cannot prevail. As long as we are, in a sense, makers of our own world insofar as we choose how to define it - he said - why not uphold a definition of the universe that satisfies our emotional, spiritual psychological needs, as long as we're in the business of servicing our other more immediate needs as well? He believed that theories about the world we live in that do not substantiate our basic emotional, spiritual and psychological needs will simply not prevail, which he articulated in a couple of beautiful essays, The Sentiment of Rationality (PDF version here) and The Will to Believe. The latter is religious but holds much of interest to those not necessarily religiously inclined. I choose to believe he is right. I believe even the driest, most sceptical and heard-headed scientist holds in his/her heart at least some morsel of this...dare I say...Romanticist view.
One quote from James in the Sentiment of Rationality captures my thoughts exactly:
His family & friends set up a fellowship at UC Berkeley in his name and his honor, for the Haas business school, to be awarded to new students in their first two years. If you or anyone you know has experienced the plight of graduate student life and struggled to gather together crumbs of income, you know what a difference an award like this can make in one person's life, even for just one year. I had to donate, even a modest contribution. Here's the information for supporting future students in the name of this wonderful human being: The Hansoo Lee Fellowship.
Read more about Hansoo; there's plenty online. Even his obit reads more like a vibrant biography than an announcement of death. As I said, I did not know him, but there are few real-life stories of life, love, and loss that I feel so moved by. As more than one of his friends said tonight: "a true loss for all that is good in this world.", "the world has lost such an amazing, kind soul."
Philosophical Exploration/Addendum:
This subject sparked a conversation with a friend of mine later on last night, who rightly pointed out that my above articulation (that, despite myself, my emotional reaction appears to be revealing my belief in some kind of universal justice), is a case of what sceptics refer to as "the just world fallacy" - the illusory belief that there is some kind of universal justice involved in human fate, when in fact the only meaning that exists in the world is the meaning we bring to it. Intellectually I do believe the sceptics and the existentialists are correct here. But the human need to believe there is more going on than that, and our power to do so, is quite remarkable. Ultimately, I am of the mindset that if a system of beliefs 1) doesn't harm yourself or anyone else 2) serves you better than to not maintain it, then it's better than not doing so. I'm not an advocate of truth for truth's sake. "Truth" should be what serves our greater good - our sense of self, our confidence, our will to be alive, and treat our fellow creatures with care and respect. MANY people will disagree with that, but eh. They can take the blue pill and eat nasty tasteless food and resign themselves to the horribleness of reality. I'd rather enjoy my life. If you find the idea of defining "truth" as what serves us and enhances our lives abhorrent and completely wrong, give just a few moments' thought to the fact that even the way in which we define our physical environment (separating mountain/valley, leaf/stem, dry/wet) are human ways of carving up the world. Some creature of significantly different scale (size) and with an entirely different set of senses at its disposal would certainly define things differently. So in a sense we are already defining what is true/not true based on what serves our needs as human creatures. But obviously our needs go far beyond physically navigating the world we find ourselves in, and in situating ourselves in it.
The 19th Century British philosopher William James - one very near and dear to my heart - went so far as to say that a definition of "truth" or theories of how the world functions that do not fulfill basic human need to have something of substance to believe in is not a definition that cannot prevail. As long as we are, in a sense, makers of our own world insofar as we choose how to define it - he said - why not uphold a definition of the universe that satisfies our emotional, spiritual psychological needs, as long as we're in the business of servicing our other more immediate needs as well? He believed that theories about the world we live in that do not substantiate our basic emotional, spiritual and psychological needs will simply not prevail, which he articulated in a couple of beautiful essays, The Sentiment of Rationality (PDF version here) and The Will to Believe. The latter is religious but holds much of interest to those not necessarily religiously inclined. I choose to believe he is right. I believe even the driest, most sceptical and heard-headed scientist holds in his/her heart at least some morsel of this...dare I say...Romanticist view.
One quote from James in the Sentiment of Rationality captures my thoughts exactly:
"If
thought is not to stand forever pointing at the universe in wonder, if
its movement is to be diverted from the issueless channels of purely
theoretic contemplation,
let us ask what conception of the universe will awaken active impulses
capable of effecting this diversion. A definition of the world which
will give back to the mind the free motion which has been blocked in the
purely contemplative path may so far make the world seem rational
again."
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