Category: Parenting, Marriage, Friendship, Life Blog

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Tips for thinking about moral arguments

(The following advice comes from Mark Timmons).1

Imagine a moral argument. For example:

“Suicide is morally acceptable if the prolongation of one’s life would destroy one’s human dignity."

If we wish to understand and evaluate such an argument at a deep level, we might consider taking these steps:

1. Clarify crucial concepts or jargon that are pivotal to the argument.

In this case, an example would be “human dignity.” We should ask: what does it mean, where is it found, of what does it consist, how might one lose it, what does life look like if one loses it, etc.? Might there be disagreements about the definitions and uses of such a term? We must not take for granted that all people agree on a single definition for dignity.

2. Evaluate various claims made within the argument.

Is it true, for example, that suicide is consistent with human dignity? Can one actually lose her dignity, or is it something inalienable? If one can lose her dignity, is such a loss truly worse than choosing an early death? Under which specific circumstance can we call suicide “morally acceptable?”

3. Uncover the basic moral assumptions that operate in the background of the moral argument; they are unstated, but taken for granted.

If we argue, in this case, that suicide is right if it prevents certain bad consequences, we automatically assume that if an action leads to bad consequences it is wrong, and if it prevents them it is right. We also assume, but do not explicitly state, that we believe it is appropriate to morally evaluate the nature and timing of a person’s death. Is this a fair assumption, or are a person’s individual decisions regarding her own death so personal that they are outside the realm of ethics?

4. Map the internal structure of the larger moral theory which generates and supports the argument.

For example, it might appear at first blush that the argument regarding suicide is part of a larger moral theory which makes claims about the deontic status of certain actions, meaning their rightness or wrongness. It is right, the argument says, to take one’s life, under certain circumstances. This means our moral argument is part of a larger theory of right conduct: a system that tells us which actions are right or wrong.

However if we dig even deeper, we see that there is an even more basic moral theory operating beneath the surface, a foundational theory which supports and shapes the theory of right conduct. That deeper theory might go something like this: “happiness is the only intrinsically good thing in the world.” This is what is known as a theory of value: it tells us which things (or states of mind) are good or bad. This particular theory of value tells us that everything in the world, including one’s very life, is only good to the extent that it generates happiness, for oneself and for others. Upon that foundation, we construct a theory of right conduct: it is morally right, perhaps even our duty, to maximize that which is intrinsically good: happiness. Thus, it is morally acceptable to commit suicide, if by so doing we can create more happiness (for ourselves and our loved ones) than we could by clinging to life a bit longer.

A terminally ill person — who cannot rise from a bed, who is constantly in pain, who is completely dependent on others to help her perform even the most basic and personal human functions, who knows that each expensive day she spends in the hospital drags her family deeper into debt and closer to financial ruin, who has lost entirely her sense of human dignity (without which she feels utterly worthless and despondent) — might draw the conclusion that an early death will spare her family and herself much pain, and that this death, chosen intentionally by her, will restore to her some of the dignity she has lost, which will bring her much joy in her final hours, much more joy than she would feel if she allowed her life to continue. In this particular situation, she reasons, suicide is the only act that could maximize happiness for everyone involved. If this is true, suicide is not just morally acceptable, but also her duty. We see here a theory of value informing and shaping the deontic analysis of actions (theory of right conduct). Through this understanding of the structure of these underlying theories, we gain a clearer picture of a broader worldview at work, a worldview which likely shapes many of this person’s moral arguments.

Now, isn’t this more fun than simply arguing back and forth about morality?

Notes

  1. Mark Timmons, Moral Theory: An Introduction (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002). ↩︎
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Do I violate the utilitarian standard by loving my children?

Utilitarianism starts with a basic premise: every person on earth desires happiness.1 Since happiness/pleasure/well-being (I will use these all interchangeably) are universally desired for their own sakes (not desired as means to some other end, but desired for themselves), they must be intrinsically good, i.e. good for their own sakes, as opposed to instrumentally good.2 If we wish to live an ethical life then, we must aim our actions toward achieving that which is intrinsically good: happiness. This does not mean happiness for ourselves only, but also (more importantly) happiness for others. In fact, it is our moral duty to maximize well-being to the greatest extent possible. If we boil utilitarianism down to its simplest message, it might read: do as much good in the world as is humanly possible.3

Utilitarianism requires us all to look outward, and judge our actions based on how they impact the community of persons affected by our decisions. But often there is a conflict between what the individual desires and what would most benefit the community. In this case utilitarianism issues a direct challenge to the individual: if you desire an end that does not maximize general happiness, you are required to abandon your desire. This turns out to be a very strict standard indeed, one that may require us to make tremendous personal sacrifices for the good of others.

If utilitarianism is supposed to be our guide for living ethical lives, we must recognize right off the bat that most of the decisions we make throughout the day do not maximize general happiness. After all, by taking the time to write this essay, I am choosing not to use that time to serve food to the homeless. Does that mean it is unethical to write this essay, because by doing so I fail to maximize utility? Must I strive to meet the utilitarian standard in all my daily actions? This forceful version of utilitarianism seems to demand that we all become saints, constantly subverting our own desires for the benefit of others. If so, then is utilitarianism even feasible as an ethical theory? If the moral requirement is so strict that normal people are incapable of meeting the challenge, is the theory practical at all?

We all have busy lives full of persons and obligations which require our full attention. Our children, our parents, our spouses, our bosses, and our friends all (rightfully) make demands on our time, leaving us very little bandwidth with which to decipher what “the general happiness” means, let alone time and energy to maximize it. For many parents with young children and full-time jobs, it can feel impossible to do anything for the community while trying to juggle such a home life. Faced with such a complex and intractable dilemma, many people ignore completely the needs of the community, and focus instead on the daily demands of life.

We could attempt to justify such a lifestyle choice (from a utilitarian standpoint) by defining a busy parent’s ‘moral community’ in a narrow way: it includes only her family and friends and colleagues; everyone outside that circle is excluded from the community and therefore excluded from the utilitarian calculus. Does a person with such a narrow moral community live an ethical life? Is it ok to define one’s community so that it only includes those persons one is actually capable of serving while still living a “normal” life? Or must a person restructure her entire life in order to expand that moral community, i.e. tailor her whole existence around service to the wider world, even at the expense of her own family’s happiness?

Really I’m asking: whose happiness should we care most about? Jeremy Bentham answers: “the greatest happiness of all those whose interest is in question [is] the right and proper, and only right and proper and universally desirable, end of human action.”4 This is famously known as the Greatest Happiness Principle. J.S. Mill, a few years after Bentham, demands (in a statement which contradicts many other statements in Utilitarianism) that our moral standard be “not the agent’s own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether.”5 Seems clear enough. But for the mother of young children, who has professional, familial, and domestic obligations coming out of her ears, this standard can easily comes off as impractical, useless, even meaningless.

Imagine there are three concentric circles:

The smallest circle contains only your family and closest loved one. The next circle contains all your friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and neighbors, your community, your network. The final circle includes larger populations of strangers, such as your city or perhaps even your whole country. Which of these circles are we to focus on, if we wish to live according to the utilitarian standard? If we dedicate our energies toward creating happiness for one of the circles, we use up time and energy that cannot be spent spreading happiness to the other circles, so a choice must be made. But which is the most ethical option?

If I dedicate myself fully to building the best possible life for my children, wife, and parents (my smallest circle), I will certainly do a lot of good; but such a choice requires that I neglect, to a large extent, the wider world. An afternoon spent playing with my children is an afternoon not spent working at the local food bank; a weekend trip to Arizona with my father requires money that can not be donated to a more worthy cause. Do I truly meet the utilitarian standard if I pour most of my love, care, energy, wealth, and spare time into my family, but largely ignore the happiness of the wider world? Though the happiness within my home will be maximized, and my children more likely to grow up well-adjusted and emotionally stable (compared to children who are neglected), my dedication to the ‘greatest happiness principle’ is questionable at best.

If instead I dedicate my life to spreading well-being to the largest possible number of persons (the outer circles), I might accomplish truly great things!… but at a cost. Those who make such a choice – tireless activists for the poor, traveling community organizers, dedicated and focused union leaders, political dissidents – often make huge sacrifices in the personal sphere in order to fulfill the utilitarian ethic, an ethic which they believe requires them to serve the wider world. Yes my children will be sad if I don’t return at night to tuck them in because I’m working late at the homeless shelter, but so many others will benefit from my actions. If I’m away repeatedly, over the course of many years, my children may develop neuroses and abandonment issues and anger, may grow to hate me, may even have tragic lives. But over those years I could improve the lives of thousands of people. Is this the ethically correct sacrifice: spread joy to the greatest number, at the expense of a few (who happen to be my children)?

Mahatma Gandhi faced this very question, and he chose to serve the widest circle. He was a famously neglectful father, but a saint to a nation.6 Gandhi’s work for the poor, disenfranchised, impoverished, victimized, and low-caste was the ultimate display of utilitarian action.7 He dedicated his entire life to helping the less fortunate; this included extensive travel, the founding of communes, organization of large-scale protests, hunger strikes, the construction of a political party, travel to foreign nations to negotiate with world leaders, and many other activities which demanded his full concentration and energies. In the end his sacrifices and selfless actions improved the lives of millions of people around the world,8 and his legacy continues to inspire people today. However his children felt acutely the sadness and anger that come from having an absent father. His oldest son Harilal, whose relationship with Gandhi was always strained, never forgave his father for the ill-treatment, and later became an alcoholic. It seems there is no way to dedicate our full selves to the service of our closest loved ones AND to the wider world; there will always be a sacrifice one way or the other, and so we must choose.

On the surface the ‘greatest happiness principle’ appears to teach us that the price of a few very sad and neglected children is a reasonable price to pay, if their sadness purchases happiness for thousands of others. But this feels intuitively wrong. How can I be expected to ignore the unfathomably deep love bond I share with my two children? To put it more generally, how can I be expected to care more for strangers than I do for my loved ones? The utilitarian principle seems to insist that if my mission in life is to maximize happiness, it would be absurdly unethical to give special weight to the happiness of two children over the happiness of the larger population. Mill is very clear that one must be “as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator” when it comes to moral questions.9 A truly disinterested spectator would never choose the well-being of her own child over the well-being of many children. But I am tempted to reply (from the gut) that if it is unethical to dedicate my time and service almost exclusively to my children at the expense of thousands of others, then I am content to live an unethical life. Is this my own selfishness at work? Is it nothing more than a self-serving desire to relish the innate, mammalian love bond I feel for my offspring? No there is more to it than that. I genuinely struggle to see the merit in a moral system that tells me it is unethical to love my children (I say love because real love requires time and dedication). I’m ready to state boldly (and obviously) that of course it is ethical to love our children! So how do we reconcile this with the greatest happiness principle?

To begin to answer this question, let’s hit this from another angle: if we universalized the duty to serve the widest circle at the expense of the inner circle, would that actually create a happier world? Imagine if humanity widely practiced such a morality. Many millions of children would wind up neglected and traumatized by parents who felt obligated to serve the world instead of care for their children. Whole generations of young people would carry around the anger, bitterness, resentment, and sense of abandonment that ill-treated children often carry. If this tipped the scales away from general happiness and toward general sadness, if this ended up creating a worse world, we will have failed in our utilitarian mission, even if we intended our actions to create a happier world (this assumes we judge the merit of actions based on actual results as opposed to intended results, which is a debatable question in utilitarian ethics). It seems good for the species if we instead give extra weight to the happiness of our children, and bad for the species to create a generation of persons who have never been taught how to love or how to build lasting relationships. A world of neglected children is a sadder and angrier world. So how can this possibly be the utilitarian standard, if the enactment of such a principle would bring more pain than happiness?

Clearly the greatest happiness principle must mean something besides “always serve the greatest number“. Either that, or the principle itself is false according to its own utilitarian standard, since its enactment would make the world worse-off. It is deliciously ironic that the Greatest Happiness Principle would, if enacted, fail to maximize happiness. It also goes without saying that such a principle would also be completely impractical in the real world, since most parents feel morally and evolutionarily driven to help their offspring flourish. A utilitarian could make a compelling argument that we more fully satisfy the utilitarian standard (we create a happier world) by spending lots of time serving the smallest of circles: our tiny, helpless babies. As Utilitarianism.com says: “As there are obviously good utilitarian reasons to want the next generation of people to grow up to be emotionally healthy and capable agents, there are thus good utilitarian reasons to endorse the social norms of parental care that help to promote this goal.”10

That all being said, there must be some part of the utilitarian standard which does indeed require us to serve people outside our inner circle. We showed above that if we universalized the duty to serve exclusively the outer circle, it would, in the end, likely fail the utilitarian standard, since it would create a worse-off world. Well the same is true if we universalize the duty to serve exclusively our inner circle. Such a principle would require us to maximize happiness for our loved ones and acquaintances, while allowing (or encouraging) us to feel complete indifference or even hatred for strangers, foreigners, the poor, and members of political parties which oppose our own. If we have no moral obligations whatsoever to persons outside our narrow inner circle of acquaintances, we adopt for ourselves an isolationist moral philosophy: my duty of care extends to my own property line, and no further. This state of affairs, which weakens community bonds and encourages a myopic and lonely outlook toward the wider world, sounds tragically like the actual world in which we live.

Clearly utilitarianism, if it is to be useful in this big, scary world, requires a bit of nuance in its application. Mill strives to make utilitarianism a workable and useful theory for every day morality, so he sometimes downplays our individual commitment to the greater good, and tells us we are free to follow our hearts most of the time. This allows us a lot of leeway, but reduces the utilitarian standard to something vague and amorphous, an ethical principle that refuses to state clearly what it requires of us. Are we allowed to substitute the greatest happiness principle for the “create whatever local happiness you feel like creating” principle?

The reality is that real humans do love their children and wish to serve the wider world. Perhaps the answer then is simple: try for a balance. We should give as much love as possible to our inner circles, and occasionally (if we can spare the time) do some work for the outer circle. This seems like a practical solution, but as a moral theory it is weak tea: you’ve got a bunch of love to give, so spread it around in whatever direction feels right. There is some power in the aphorism, “as long as you are loving somebody, you are doing the right thing,” but is this really what utilitarianism is supposed to boil down to?

This idea that at times it is morally right to serve our families, while at other times it is morally right to serve the community, delivers us to the conclusion that utilitarianism cannot be the sole guiding moral law in our lives. Since we are expected to know when it is appropriate to switch between one or the other circle, there must be a principle that we can follow to guide us to the ethically correct decision, a principle which will tell us when to serve our families and when to serve others. Importantly, this principle cannot be utilitarianism itself, because serving any of the circles seems to meet the utilitarian standard in one way or another. A pluralism of ethical theories will be needed to navigate this unending dilemma.

So it seems utilitarianism (at least as Mill and Bentham understood it) cannot properly serve as an end-all, be-all moral system; more lenses are needed if we wish to fully see and appreciate all the complexities of real life. In the meantime, I will love my children, work hard at my job, show love to my wife, and generally work to maximize happiness within my smallest circle of loved ones. Perhaps I sacrifice the Greatest Happiness Principle in order to adopt for my family an “Ethic of Care,” and maybe this is right, even if it means failing to maximize the happiness of the community (failing even to come close to that goal). The necessity, the urgency, the implacability of the love I feel for my children is something utilitarianism simply can’t resolve, unless it abandons (or severely limits) the Greatest Happiness Principle. If it refuses to abandon the principle, it is revealed to be fraudulent as an ethical theory. If it does abandon the principle, what is left of the moral theory besides: “do as much good as you feel like?”

Related article:

Is J.S. Mill’s utilitarianism really “ethics” at all?

Notes

  1. Whenever I quote from Mill’s Utilitarianism (1863), I will cite the chapter/paragraph in the following format: Mill, Utilitarianism, II/2: “The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded- namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.” ↩︎
  2. In Mill, Utilitarianism, IV/8, the intrinsic goodness of happiness is a key feature of Mill’s famous ‘proof’ that utilitarianism is right: “…there is in reality nothing desired except happiness. Whatever is desired otherwise than as a means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately to happiness, is desired as itself a part of happiness, and is not desired for itself until it has become so. Those who desire virtue for its own sake, desire it either because the consciousness of it is a pleasure, or because the consciousness of being without it is a pain, or for both reasons united; as in truth the pleasure and pain seldom exist separately, but almost always together, the same person feeling pleasure in the degree of virtue attained, and pain in not having attained more. If one of these gave him no pleasure, and the other no pain, he would not love or desire virtue, or would desire it only for the other benefits which it might produce to himself or to persons whom he cared for. We have now, then, an answer to the question, of what sort of proof the principle of utility is susceptible. If the opinion which I have now stated is psychologically true- if human nature is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a means of happiness, we can have no other proof, and we require no other, that these are the only things desirable. If so, happiness is the sole end of human action, and the promotion of it the test by which to judge of all human conduct; from whence it necessarily follows that it must be the criterion of morality, since a part is included in the whole.” ↩︎
  3. Russ Shafer-Landau, The Fundamentals of Ethics, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 120. ↩︎
  4. Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (New York: Hafner Press, [1789] 1948), 1. ↩︎
  5. Mill, Utilitarianism, II/11 ↩︎
  6. See Ramachandra Guha’s Gandhi Before India (New York: Vintage Books, 2013) for a heart-breaking look at Gandhi the absentee (yet often still over-bearing) father. ↩︎
  7. Gandhi was actually quite critical of utilitarianism the political philosophy. He saw the ‘greatest happiness principle’ as justification for majority rule and the exploitation of minorities (happiness and economic prosperity are generated for the majority, at the cost of poverty, disenfranchisement, and unceasing labor for the minority). Instead of the greatest happiness of the great number, Gandhi preferred the greatest happiness of all, a concept which he called Sarvodaya, a Sanskrit term meaning “Advancement of All”. Despite this critique of political utilitarianism, Gandhi’s personal actions typified the utilitarian ethic, which requires immense personal sacrifice as a means to generate as much happiness for others as possible. For an example of Gandhi’s critique of utilitarianism, see his article in Indian Opinion dated May 16, 1908, which appears in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Publications Division Government of India, 1999), Vol. 8, 316-319. ↩︎
  8. This is a debatable point. However the debatability of this point might not have bothered Gandhi. The philosophical text which most excited Gandhi was Bhagavad Gita which instructs us to focus more on intentions than outcomes. Like utilitarians, we should aim to do as much good as possible in the world, but we should not allow ourselves to become emotionally invested in outcomes outside our control. God may not allow our plans to come to fruition, and we may even be forced to endure tragedy and heart-break and loss; but we must continue to strive for a better world no matter how many times we fail. This is the key to living an ethical life and flourishing personally. This message was very important to Gandhi, who encountered many failures and set-backs and unintended consequences during his long career. For example, despite Gandhi’s best intentions, his actions as an anti-colonial activist were an indirect cause of the horrible sectarian violence that erupted after the partitioning of India in 1947. So though Gandhi made tremendous sacrifices to improve the lives of his people, the actual short-term outcome for much of the Indian people was a mixed bag. There is a lesson here for utilitarians: though a person may sacrifice much in order to maximize happiness for the many, there is no guarantee that she will be successful at maximizing happiness. If we judge a person’s actions solely according to the actual outcomes they produce, we are forced to condemn a person who sacrifices everything in order to spread happiness to the masses but ultimately fails to increase the general happiness. This would mean that Gandhi was not acting ethically any time that his actions inadvertently led to more pain than happiness (any time he failed to maximize utility). But this feels intuitively incorrect, given the sacrifices Gandhi made in the service of so many persons, and given the limited knowledge all humans have about how our decisions will affect the future. The Gita teaches that if you have an honest intention to do good in the world, you work selflessly toward your goal, and you fail, you are still living ethically. Later utilitarian thinkers have distinguished between the actual utility of a certain action (the actual outcome), versus the expected utility of that action (the outcome we expect), which allows utilitarianism to shrug off some of its consequentialist tendencies: if we judge actions based on their expected utility rather than actual utility, we really shift from focusing on outcomes and instead focus on intentions. This brand of utilitarianism teaches: “as long as we truly intend our actions to maximize the happiness of others, our actions are ethical even if we ultimately fail in our goal”. Gandhi would not have called this concept ‘utilitarianism’, but would have instead called it the message of The Gita. Regardless of what he called it, this ethic formed the foundation of Gandhi’s philosophy of action. See: Uma Majmudar’s “Mahatma Gandhi and the Bhagavad Gita” on The American Vendantist website, published Dec. 6, 2014. If you want to explore the philosophy of The Gita further, read this essay. ↩︎
  9. Mill, Utilitarianism, II/21. ↩︎
  10. R.Y. Chappell and D. Meissner, “The Special Obligations Objection,” in R.Y. Chappell, D. Meissner, and W. MacAskill, eds., Introduction to Utilitarianism, <https://www.utilitarianism.net/objections-to-utilitarianism/special-obligations>. ↩︎
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Progress and goals after two years of study

In May 2021 I picked up An Introduction to Political Philosophy by Jonathan Wolff in a book box. Reading that book was like sampling heroin: I was addicted immediately, my brain permanently altered. Twenty years ago I majored in history, but I only ever took one philosophy class, and no political philosophy classes. I didn’t realize until I read this book what a lost opportunity that was. Since reading that book, I’ve read philosophy almost exclusively, and have developed a strong desire to pursue it academically, to study it to the hilt, to become a philosopher myself. For now I consider myself an undergrad. I have so very much to learn, and I’m restraining my urge to write tons of half baked blog posts based on the scanty information I’ve gleaned over the past two years. My job for now is to read and read and read some more, pausing only to process what I’m reading, take notes, think, and build a research library. My particular area of interest is Marxism, specifically to address the question of whether Marxism is at all a useful tool for solving the major problems of our time, such as income inequality and environmental degradation. But before I can form any opinions on that question (or any other), I need to acquire some background knowledge.

Background knowledge I need to acquire:

  1. The long chain of Western philosophical texts and major ideas that span from the Ancients to today: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Russell, etc., and the political philosophers as well. Also formal logic, philosophy of law, and studies of democracy, liberalism, anarchism, conservatism, and progressivism.
  2. The major socialist and Marxists thinkers that span from the early 19th century to today: Precursors to Marx, Karl Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lenin, Trotsky, Lukacs, Marcuse, Althusser, Habermas, etc. I must study all the threads of Marxism before I undertake to analyze, critique, or judge the tradition.
  3. Modern interpretations of Marxism: humanist, feminist, ecological, democratic, etc. How are they different from older traditions, and what do they have to say about the older traditions? What problems do these new interpretations attempt to solve? Any successes?
  4. Style guides for academic work, argumentative best practices for works of philosophy.
  5. The history of Marxist and non Marxist revolutions that have occurred during the last 300 years. What forces motivated them, what worked and what failed, what parties and ideologies came to the fore, what were the results?

Goals:

  1. Study the history of western philosophy to the fullest extent possible. My goal is not to become an absolute master of the full spectrum of western philosophy, but to develop a foundational knowledge upon which I can build a more specific area of expertise.
  2. Develop a masterful understanding of the history of Marxist ideas from the beginning to the present, including all the tentacles of this labyrinthine tradition, and where the tradition stands today. This is the critical background information. Along the way, write practice essays on whichever topics catch my fancy.
  3. Develop specialties within the Marxist tradition, and compose a larger work (a thesis?) that pertains to that specialty. Specialty 1: Leninism and Trotskyism (the intricacies of the philosophy, how it has been applied around the world, why it has failed to achieve its goals, whether it is useful today). Specialty 2: (unknown at this time).
  4. Develop a foundational knowledge of the international history of revolutions, from the French Revolution to today.
  5. Construct a thorough and well organized research database that I can tap for various writing projects.
  6. Build toward a synthesis that combines the lessons learned from a long study of Marxism (including an understanding of the weaknesses of the philosophy and the ways it has failed) and wields them against the intransigent problems of today. In other words, find a way to adapt and modernize Marxism, find and fix the weaknesses, and assess whether the tradition has anything to offer against our current problems, or whether it is a philosophical dead end.

Progress so far:

  1. I’ve read a some of the foundational works of Marxism and well as some critical commentary on Marxism (including works by Thomas Sowell, David Harvey, and a compilation edited by Terrell Carver. Mostly I’ve focused on Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky for now, but intend to keep traveling chronologically through the history of Marxism. I consider this a modest start. See my Currently Reading page for titles. I’ve only read these works once, so my understanding of them is that of a student newly exposed to a plethora of difficult and stimulating ideas. Based on this limited first reading, I have started to formulate some embryonic responses which in intend to develop further as I read and re-read these challenging works.
  2. My readings of classic texts from Western philosophy is even more limited. So far I’ve read Plato’s Republic, Crito, Apology, and Phaedo, and well as Karl Popper’s damning commentary on Republic. I’ve listened to a couple survey courses on Audible as well, but that’s about it. My knowledge of philosophy, especially outside the realm of political philosophy, is very limited. I’m signed up to take an Intro to Philosophy course in the autumn.
  3. Following the advice of Umberto Eco in How to Write a Thesis, I’ve started a revamp of the research database I’ve been building over the past two years. I am starting to create “index cards” on the app Trello to document my readings and ideas, so that I can organize them use them repeatedly for various writing projects. This will also help me understand better what I actually want to say down the road.
  4. I have developed some very preliminary hypotheses, namely this:
Marx's critique of capitalism, though slightly dated, still has much to teach us about modern capitalism, and has applicability especially in the face of growing income inequality and climate catastrophe. At the very least it is useful as a set of analytical tools that helps us understand the world in which we live. That being said, his prophesies about the future revolutionary collapse of capitalism and abolition of alienation appear both idealistic and far-fetched, very different from the materialist, scientific criticism of capitalism that he developed over the course of multiple decades and presented so forcefully in Capital. So to summarize: Marx’s critique useful, Marx’s prophesies not so much.

Later, Vladimir Lenin mistook Marx's prophesies as scientific proofs, and so dismissed all critics of Bolshevism as opportunists, liars, frauds, charlatans, and traitors. Armed with the certainty of a religious martyr (and a certain blindness in regards to the weaknesses and contradictions of his own philosophy), he sought to engineer a utopia via authoritarian tactics, paving the way for all the debauchery and mass murder that defined the Stalin era. One of the key mistakes in Lenin’s approach was his cavalier dismissal of liberal democracy as "bourgeoisie democracy,” and his preference instead for a “dictatorship of the proletariat” that would somehow eliminate all classes, purge out all the capitalist elements (and capitalist people), and then finally dissolve their own dictatorship; the state itself would disintegrate into nothing. And so, through violence and the complete annulment of civil liberties, he would establish mankind's communist utopia. 

From his safe haven in London, Lenin argued that the very concept of civil liberties was a sham; all the hard-fought progress mankind had made toward the sanctification of democracy was recast as a grand conspiracy perpetrated against the workers by the propertied classes. Therefore it was in the working class’s best interest to abolish civil liberties in order to accomplish their singular goal: the destruction of all classes and the state (Lenin assumes this is the singular goal of all good and honest proletarians). This was a vulgarization of Marxism. Marx understood that the world is a complex place, and his analysis is filled with endless caveats, disclaimers, and footnotes that demonstrate that he did not believe there were any easy or simple solutions to the world's problems, and neither was it useful to categorically blame the world's problems on one single class. Lenin, on the other hand, has no problem pointing out who the enemies are. He paints a grotesque portrait of human history wherein the bad guys (elites, liberals, intellectuals, capitalists, and even the middle class) cheat and swindle the good guys (the workers) out of their rightful inheritance: a world where no man possesses any power over any other man. Counterintuitively, in order to usher in this perfectly egalitarian world, we must first conduct a violent purge of any who disagree with this interpretation, a holocaust of all "bad guys." In other words, if we just murder enough people, we can finally have our utopia.

Lenin pulled the lever so hard toward the “idealism” direction that his Marxism, once rooted in a scientific analysis of “the now,” lost touch with reality and forgot what real people are like. In his writings, Lenin seemed to expect the workers to all think with one mind and fight ceaselessly for one singular goal, as if the real life proletariat was capable of embodying the ideal Form of “proletariat” that existed in Lenin’s mind. Lenin's ideal proletariat is incapable of pluralism; they have no differing opinions on matters of economics, government, or human morality. Instead they exhibit a hive mind mentality, and dream only of accomplishing Lenin's own goal: the establishment of perfect communism. These ideal workers will joyfully limit democracy in order to expand it, they will violently seize full dictatorial power in order to one day voluntarily dissolve their own power, and they will nullify civil liberties in order to create a more egalitarian society. At best, these contradictions render Lenin's theories incoherent; at worst, they provide a ready-made philosophical justification for totalitarian government. 

Lenin's vision of "the people" is highly idealistic. Those who agree with Lenin are “the people” and “the masses.” Those who do not agree - perhaps those who disdain violence in general, or wish to shield their families from war, or voice alternative political/philosophical opinions, or oppose revolution on religious/nationalist/constitutional grounds, or believe that Lenin's narrow road to utopia might contain some potentially catastrophic flaws, or simply hold a different interpretation of Marxism - are not "the people." Since only those who agree with Lenin count as people, many millions of proletarians (the group Lenin claims to speak for) who dissent to Lenin's program will need to be dealt with if the revolution is going to proceed. This will mean mass disenfranchisement, exile, imprisonment, and murder of proletarians. In this way Lenin reveals that, regardless of his claims to the contrary, he cares less about one's class status than about one's agreement with his program. In other words, his version of the "proletarian" dictatorship isn't actually FOR proletarians; it's actually only for people who agree with Lenin. It's a classic one party state - the only thing that matters to the party is that you agree with the party. Agreement with Lenin is the sole real criterion for citizenship; all who dissent must be purged. Thus, "the people" is transformed into "those who agree with the party," which is how Lenin can technically argue that his state is the first state in human history that actually serves "the people" - all persons who aren't part of "the people" are made to vanish entirely.

And so Lenin's new idealistic Marxism predictably dissolved into a totalitarian nightmare; permanent single party rule instead of worker democracy, a new ruling elite instead of a classless society, a totalitarian bureaucracy instead of a dissolved state. It was all right there in his writings, clear as day, before he and his clique ever grabbed the reins of power. Today most people blame the disaster of Soviet totalitarianism on Stalin, but Lenin provided it with philosophical grounding, and certainly got the ball rolling during the brief few years he wielded power.

There must be a way to preserve what is great about Marxism while discarding what is disastrous in Leninism. Most importantly, a synthesis between democracy and socialism must occur if Marxist philosophy is to outlive the revolutionary disasters of the 20th century. We have to drop the notion that a dictatorial “vanguard party” can ever violently establish a classless society, without themselves devolving into a new ruling elite. Without democracy and civil liberties, Marxism presents a recipe for dystopia. But really this assertion demands that we either abandon Marxism altogether (which I do not wish to do), or find a way to combine Marxism with liberalism, without destroying the essence of either.

I believe Marxism may still have a role to play in helping us solve our most intransigent problems, but only if real democracy (not the sham “revolutionary democracy” Lenin promises) plays a key role in the process. Perhaps this amounts to no more than progressivism, or perhaps it will mean more than that. I’m not even close to convinced that it’s possible for humans to transcend capitalism entirely; perhaps progressive capitalism is the closest thing humans will ever achieve to communism, while still preserving democracy. But is modern day progressive capitalism a powerful enough tool in the fight against (capitalism-induced) climate catastrophe? And to question this from another angle, does progressivism actually even lead to increased democratic control over the economy, if the end-result of progressivism is government takeover of industry? If the government is currently run by elites, than transferring ownership of key industries into elite hands doesn't sound particularly democratic either? Is there actually a way to create a more democratic economy, without simply giving in to laissez faire capitalism (which seems to be leading mankind toward climate disaster)? 

I’d like to explore ways that we can use Marxism (in one form or another) to address the big problems of our time, but I intend to stay focused at all times on the way humans really are in the real world, and keep idealism out of my analysis. I believe that anyone who promises a utopia and a permanent end to human suffering (especially if this goal can only be attained through violence and repression) is either misguided or a cynical, power-hungry opportunist. But I also don't believe that liberal democracy holds all the keys either. No system is perfect, and costs must be weighed at every turn. 

Ok so that’s my rough hypothesis, as it stands today.
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Civil disobedience as a moral act: quick thoughts after reading Crito by Plato

At the opening of the short dialogue Crito, Socrates is found sleeping peacefully in his jail cell as his execution day draws near. When his friend Crito arrives (after bribing the guard), Socrates greets him joyfully, and Crito is surprised by Socrates’ serenity in the face of death. Crito then passionately attempts to convince Socrates to escape with him. Crito makes it clear that with his wealth and influence he can easily sneak Socrates out of prison and whisk him away to a foreign land where he can live out his days in safety, far from the Athenian authorities who wish to see him dead. It will be no trouble at all to escape, if Socrates will only allow his friends to save his life.

Crito offers a variety of arguments for why Socrates should flee, chief among them that Socrates has been unjustly convicted by the state and wronged by his countrymen, so therefore he has no obligation to submit meekly (perhaps even shamefully) to their judgement. The honorable action would be to disregard Athenian law and escape while he still can. He could then continue his teaching as a fugitive and exile. One additional perk to this plan would be that by staying alive he would allow his friends and students to have more time with their beloved Socrates, whom they honor above all others.

Despite his friend’s urging, Socrates remains unconvinced. He proceeds (in his typical fashion) to thoroughly dismantle Crito’s arguments, and instead posits that the truly moral act is to stay in prison and face his impending death. Along the way, Socrates makes an argument that has sparked 2,500 years of further debate among political philosophers: it is a moral and just act to obey the laws of one’s country at all cost, even if those laws appear unjust; to disobey an unjust law is in itself an immoral, shameful, and unjust act.

Socrates argues the following: If one is born in a country and chooses to live there rather than flee to a foreign country, he is bound by a sacred vow (or at least, an implied contract) to obey the laws of that country. This is like an early and extreme version of the social contract: if one chooses to live in a country and reap the benefits of citizenship, one thereby agrees to obey all laws, decrees, verdicts, and orders issued by the government of that country, regardless of whether they are just or moral. If one does not consider the laws of his country to be just, he should renounce his citizenship and move elsewhere. Since Socrates had lived his whole life in Athens, married his wife and raised his children in Athens, fought in the Athenian military, and never once thought of renouncing his citizenship all those years, he must not turn his back on his country the moment a judgement doesn’t go his way. After everything the city had done for him all these years, it would be dishonorable to disobey and abandon her in the end, simply to save his own life.

At the same time Socrates argues that one’s country is like one’s father. He raises the child up and nurtures him, directs the child’s education (both moral and scientific), and gives the child a share of his own hard-earned wealth; the child in return must obey and honor his father, thereby acknowledging the debt he owes to the man who raised him. So it is with one’s country, which nourishes and educates its citizens, and therefore deserves the same honor one bestows upon his father.

My first thought upon reading Socrates’ argument that any citizen who chooses to live in a country enters into an agreement with that country to obey all laws whether they are just or not was that this line of reasoning would render all forms of civil disobedience immoral. If a citizen (or second class citizen) falls prey to a discriminatory or persecutorial law (for example a Jim Crow or Apartheid law), Socrates might argue that this citizen is morally bound by justice to obey the discriminatory law, simply because that citizen failed to flee to a new country when he had the chance.

In a world where some citizens are treated differently than others (due to poverty, ethnicity, social status, employment status, etc.), and various groups of citizens fall victim to discriminatory laws, it seems absurd to argue that those most harmed by such laws are morally required to obey them, and that by choosing to live in a country one forfeits his right to publicly object to or protest whatever injustices might be baked into that system. Would it have been a moral act for an African American citizen living in the southern United States in the 1950s to silently accept the gross injustices of Jim Crow, and immoral for him to disobey a racist law? One could argue the opposite: it is shameful to acquiesce to unjust treatment, and honorable (moral) to protest such a system, even if (especially if) that system was legally created by the duly elected parliamentary body (the body that also, of course, makes the rules on who gets to vote on the members of that body).

Socrates was unjustly convicted, but his conviction was done in a lawful fashion. Thus Socrates believes he must obey the sentence and give up his life. But what if an entire legal system or economic system are inherently unjust or imperfect, as all such systems are to various degrees? How could obeyance of such an imperfect system be a perfectly moral act, so moral in fact that the morality defies all context: no matter how unjust the law may be, it is always moral and required that citizens obey it? It seems to me that it can never be a 100% moral act to obey any human institution, since every human institution will be flawed or corrupted in some way and to some degree. There is always nuance, always context. Perhaps it is moral to obey a law that orders one not to kill his child, but it is immoral to stand silently by while an innocent man is sentenced to death because of his ideas, as Socrates was.

Perhaps by protesting such a verdict Socrates could have introduced the idea to the public that one should not be sentenced to death for his ideas, that there should be protections for free speech that even the government (even the democracy) cannot override. And perhaps by spreading this idea, Socrates could have persuaded enough of the populace to actually initiate some reforms. Though this is far-fetched, it proves a point: in this example Socrates would have made his legal system more moral by disobeying the law. This shows that there are examples where it is more moral to break a law than follow it. After all, if by protesting or disobeying an unjust system we make it more just, how could that protest be an unjust act? In this light, civil disobedience can be a moral act, since it can help a country shed some of its more egregiously unjust laws. (Then again, perhaps by martyring himself Socrates accomplished the same goal: to spread awareness of just how grossly unjust and absurd it is to execute a man for his ideas).

Oftentimes (even in democracies) minorities are left with few options when the laws are stacked against them. When the duly elected legislature fails to dismantle these laws, perhaps because of economic/racist/sexist/religious/political motives, it is up to the citizenry to take action. But if a majority of the citizenry supports discriminatory laws, the minority may find themselves in an impossible situation. When all the mechanisms of power are locked away and all the “legitimate” avenues of change are blocked by an elite (or by a majority) determined to keep certain groups out of the halls of power, citizens who are oppressed by the laws have little recourse other than to protest, to disobey, to interfere. Rob them of this tactic (by branding their protest as inherently immoral or even illegal), and they are left only with silent acquiescence. They are to become slaves.

One might argue that if a law is truly unjust it should be left to the democracy to legally overturn it (and therefore we do not need civil disobedience at all), but this leaves minorities at the mercy of the majority. If a black citizen in Mississippi has been “lawfully” convicted by a racist jury and condemned to die by a racist judge (following to the letter the laws written by racist legislators, who were voted into office by racist voters), it is not shameful or unjust for that man to flee in the dead of night (if he is able to do so) and evade his executioners (as Socrates might have done). One only has one life to live. By living in a given country, one does not automatically agree to silently forfeit that life in the event some powerful, entrenched elites wish to see him dead.

It is of course difficult to objectively state which laws are just and which are unjust. A gun lover who believes it is unjust for the state to tell him he can’t bring a rifle to a preschool might believe it is a moral act to protest that law by bringing a rifle into a preschool. Without a clear conception of “justice” we easily sink into relativism: anyone who disagrees with a law can label it unjust and disobey it, and by doing so he is acting justly (from his point of view). I am not trying to argue that an individual has the moral right to disobey any law he wishes, nor that any law a person disagrees with must be an unjust law. Clearly we need a clearer picture of the difference between a truly unjust law and a regular law that certain citizens disagree about.

I’ll have to save the laborious process of defining justice for another day. For now I’ll just say this much: breaking a law is not an inherently unjust act. Laws are human institutions, not some higher, heavenly ideal before which we all must bow. If a law is wrong it must be fixed; if the democracy refuses to do so, then the democracy absorbs the immorality that was formerly localized in that unjust law. In this situation, the oppressed citizen might be acting morally by working (in a legal or extra-legal fashion) to purge the injustice from the system.

The context is key: what is the law, who is affected by it, why was it created, who benefits from it, and who is harmed? We mustn’t ignore those questions when assessing the morality of a political action, as Socrates does. Also: do those affected by unjust laws have any legal remedy, or are all legal and “legitimate” mechanisms closed to them, leaving protest or civil disobedience (or even violence) as the only options? If so, then we should hesitate before calling their attempts to overthrow systemic injustice “immoral.” The real key here is that context matters; questions of immorality are never black and white.

I believe that those who are abused by the state (as Socrates was) have no moral obligation to silently obey their abuser, just as an abused child has no moral obligation to obey an abusive father (to use Socrates’ own metaphor). The state, like a parent, needs to earn our loyalty by acting justly towards us. If a father acts justly some of the time, a child acts morally by obeying in those moments; when a father acts unjustly (for example, by beating his child), the child is not immoral to disapprove of or disobey or flee from his father. The shock of this protest against injustice may even prove to be a learning opportunity for the father (or the state, in the event of a protest against an unjust law). It is difficult for me to see how the very act of protesting injustice could, in all contexts, be unjust.

Socrates makes a further argument: a man who disobeys one of his country’s laws seeks to destroy his country. In other words, any single act of disobedience against the state is the same as declaring war against that country’s entire legal system. Socrates conflates the protest against one single unjust law with the complete destruction of the city, as if recognizing the injustice of one law automatically makes one a traitor to his country; so if Socrates were illegally to flee from his unjust execution, this action would actually be an attempt to destroy Athens itself, just as a child who disobeys his father one time must be trying to kill his father. And since it is usually wrong to seek the destruction of one’s own country (or the death of one’s father), we must therefore offer up our complete submission in all matters to both city and father. Even if one’s father is insane, we must submit; even if a country’s laws are insane, we must submit.1 We must be slaves to both, because to ever disobey either would be the same as treason and murder.

This is a common conflation in Plato’s work: we are forced to consider the city as a whole, rather than thinking clearly about its component parts (which are single laws or individuals). In Republic Plato tells us we are supposed to aim for the happiness of the city at the expense of the individual. Individuals are asked to sacrifice their freedom, political power, and social mobility all for the sake of making “the city” happy, whatever that means. The component part is asked to sacrifice all for the good of the abstract whole; the component part (in this case, a human individual) does not matter at all, only the city matters. In Crito we are asked to accept the entire law code our city puts forth, or else accept the premise that we hate the city and wish to see it destroyed. Again we must ignore the component parts (the individual unjust laws) and focus all of our love and devotion on the abstract whole (the city). An attack on one part is the same, in Plato’s eyes, as an attack on the whole. This is faulty reasoning that demands we only take notice of abstracts, and completely ignore the concrete component parts that actually affect our real lives as humans. We know from experience that this way of thinking is dangerous: a country’s legal code can be full of both just and unjust laws, but if we label as treason any attempt to improve those unjust laws, we will fail ever to innovate, to improve, to grow. The injustice within the system will breed and grow, safe and sheltered from all harm by an ideology that makes citizens too fearful ever to question the morality of any single law, since those citizens will be labeled as traitors and city destroyers. Socrates seems to believe that instead of protesting unjust laws, the best remedy for an oppressed person is simply to renounce one’s citizenship completely and seek citizenship elsewhere. Afterall, as Socrates argues, if one stays in the country with unjust laws, he tacitly agrees that all the laws in that country must be just. It’s all or nothing for him.

Side note: Can I just mention also that it is pretty cavalier for Socrates to state that if one wishes not to follow the laws of his country, that he should simply pack up and leave it. He makes it sound so obvious that one who disagrees with his country’s laws can easily uproot himself, abandon his family, friends, and career, and set off for a new land in search of laws that are more just (and that the persecuted citizen must flee before he has been officially convicted of a crime; once convicted he is bound to stay put and face his sentence bravely). In reality not everyone has the option to flee if one’s country has unjust laws. David Hume once wrote: “Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artizan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives from day to day, by the small wages which he acquires? We may as well assert, that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean, and perish, the moment he leaves her.”2 Socrates seems to forget, or not notice, that most people who are oppressed by the state don’t have wealthy friends like Crito who can simply whisk them away to safety, and that choosing to become an emigrant is an uncertain, heart-breaking, and dangerous adventure that most people choose only out of sheer desperation. Emigration is not the handy solution that Socrates makes it out to be. By ignoring this reality, he finds it easy to condemn anyone who refuses to either leave their homeland prior to a conviction or to obey unjust laws.

Then again maybe I have this whole thing wrong. Maybe Socrates isn’t making a grand statement that following the law is always a just act if one loves his country. Perhaps instead he is only making a personal statement: for him personally, it would be unjust to break the law because of his own unique feelings about his country and his own unique situation. Perhaps for Gandhi civil disobedience was a just act because of his own unique situation. In other words, maybe Socrates isn’t making a blanket statement, but instead arguing that justice is in the eye of the beholder. Therefore it isn’t universally unjust and immoral to flee from prison; it is only unjust for Socrates to do so because of his own beliefs and intuitions. According to this view, we each choose our own version of justice and live our lives accordingly; we will all be judged according to our own internal metrics of justice.

I don’t really think he’s arguing that way in Crito. His language in the dialogue suggests he has a more universal view of law and morality (disobeying the laws of one’s country is always immoral), not that he’s just sharing his own personal take on his own unique situation. In fact the “eye of the beholder” argument is an argument for relativism, which flies right in the face of Plato’s theory of forms (expressed in other dialogues such as Republic and Phaedo). This theory states that there are certain ideal and perfect phenomena (such as Justice) which are more real than our own reality, and pre-date our reality. These ideals provide the meaning behind the words we use, even if we often use the words incorrectly (for example by labeling an unjust act as just). They also demonstrate just how hollow and paltry man’s real-world understanding of justice truly is, and how often we fall short of the ideal. In fact, humans never experience ideal Justice in the real world; the only reason we have any understanding of this concept whatsoever is because of a deep-seated memory of the ideal from a past life, when the world was younger and humans were closer to the gods (this is part of Plato’s proof that the soul is eternal, in Phaedo). It is the philosopher’s job to contemplate the true meaning of Justice and teach others to seek objective and universal truth as well. Philosophers must avoid getting wrapped up in day to day situations and particulars (the way most people do as they go through their daily routines and the challenges of life), and instead keep their eyes aimed up toward the heavens, always seeking universal understandings and higher truths. Since Socrates seems to think of himself as just this kind of philosopher, it seems out of character for him to apply the word “justice” to the narrow context of his own execution, while leaving room for others to follow a different standard and remain just in his eyes. No, when Socrates uses the word “just” he is making a universal claim (he’s no relativist). Therefore disobeying the laws of one’s country is flat-out wrong; civil disobedience is immoral.

Yet I still hesitate to believe that Socrates really thought this way about the law. In another dialogue, The Apology, Socrates argues that divine authority (and Socrates’ own quest for truth) supersede the laws and decrees of Athens. The authorities wish him to stop being a philosopher, but he refuses. That version of Socrates makes it clear that even if the government legally enacted a law banning him from philosophizing, he would be compelled by a higher power (perhaps his sense of justice?) to disobey that law. His purpose on this earth is to help men discover truth, to question, to teach; through these actions he lives a moral and just life. So in this case he is willing to ignore the man-made authority of the city in favor of his own sense of what is right and moral: he will never cease to question authority, search for truth, and practice philosophy, no matter what the laws of Athens may require. It seems then that Socrates does not consider civil disobedience to be an inherently immoral act, since he would in fact be willing to disobey a law if, by so doing, he was honoring his commitment to moral behavior.

So does he contradict himself between these two dialogues? Maybe so. But I think we should let him off the hook. After all, how consistent and calm would I be if I was put on trial for my life, found guilty, and sentenced to death, all because of my personal beliefs and ideas. I find it difficult to judge a man for his beliefs on justice when he has been unjustly condemned and faces his own immanent death. But due to this contradiction, maybe we shouldn’t try to pull some timeless truth about morality and law from Socrates’ words; perhaps it’s pointless to take ideas that are over two thousand years old and attempt to make them seem relevant and true today. Perhaps instead the point of reading Plato is just to allow our thoughts to be provoked. If it gets us all thinking and questioning, that’s worthwhile!

Notes

  1. This paragraph was inspired by Leo Strauss’s essay, “Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Crito,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), 61-62.
  2. David Hume, “Of the Original Contract,” in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1777), paragraph 24, accessed online at https://davidhume.org/texts/empl2/oc.
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Embarking on a course of study: Marxism

So I’ve decided to become an expert on Marxism.

Why? Well that’s a good question. Let me come back to that.

My ultimate goal is this: I want to do something about climate change. How can becoming an expert on Marxism help fight the climate battle? I’m not exactly sure, but that’s what I hope to find out.

First let me talk for a moment about climate change. It isn’t like the other political issues of our time. Sure when most media figures talk about gun control, abortion, voting rights, minimum wage laws, free trade, etc., they act as if the world itself hangs in the balance. But climate change stands above all those other issues. It is a real-life bona fide existential threat to humankind. When I picture in my mind the tribulation my children and grandchildren will face because of climate change, and the ambivalent responses our so-called leaders tend to offer toward addressing the crisis, I’m left feeling empty inside. The sense of frustration, impotence, and hopelessness are intense, I can hardly bear to engage with the issue whatsoever. Climate change is the reason I gave up watching cable news a few years ago; I simply can’t stomach to watch politicians and media outlets obsess about small-ball issues while ignoring or down-playing the actual looming threat that is staring us directly in our faces.

There are many reasons why politicians and corporate media outlets choose to ignore or downplay climate change, or pretend it isn’t caused by human activity, or cast doubts upon climate science itself as a field of study, but I will not go into that here. The point is that I want to do something about climate change. I want to contribute any way I can.

But how?

It just isn’t possible for me to change jobs and start working at a climate-focused non-profit, at least not right now. We have two young children who need our love, time, attention – and our financial stability. Our son Charlie has leukemia, so we need a good healthcare plan and a steady enough income to pay hospital bills. The point is that I can’t simply leave my job and go work for some organization that studies carbon capture technology. I have people who depend on me, so my life must maintain a certain level of stability for their sake. I won’t be switching careers just yet.

I’m also not a scientist. I do not have the necessary knowledge or credentials to work as a climate researcher. I would love to help advance the crucial research efforts that are taking place on the frontier of climate science, but that kind of research is not my strong suit. So I won’t be joining the army of citizen scientists who are seeking some kind of scientific solution to this problem.

And If I am being completely honest, I’m probably also not cut out to play an active role in a climate-focused political party either. Maybe it’s because I just don’t do particularly well with committee politics. Put me in a situation where I’m a member of a committee and we need to discuss and decide on an important issue, and I completely lose my mojo. Maybe I’m a bit too outspoken and tactless when debates gets started, which is not a helpful trait if one is trying to build up a fledgling political party (or trying to talk politics with friends). Or it could be that I have problems with authority; this has been suggested at various times in my life. So I’m not sure entering into party politics is the right path for me. I would still like to join a climate-focused party, but I’d prefer a behind-the-scenes role.

So what the heck can I do to help? How can a guy with no science background or political acumen, possessing very little free time or spending money, contribute to the most critical scientific and political problem facing mankind? I had to turn this problem over in my mind for a long while. What I came up with is this: I can write.

Maybe by writing I can be of some use. But what will I write about? Well I’m not sure about that yet either. I’ve never been especially serious about writing, though I’ve always known I have a certain knack for it. Thus far I’ve mostly only written about music composition. But I feel an intense urge to write something, anything, that might help with this cause. The motivation is there, so maybe that’s how I can play my small part, how I can help move the ball down the field.

Ultimately what I want to write about is not science but philosophy, political philosophy to be exact. Political philosophers study how people solve big problems, and sometimes they develop potential (or even groundbreaking) solutions to those problems. Climate change is the biggest problem we (our species) may ever face, so studying how our species can best respond to the crisis seems a fitting use of my time. Perhaps through philosophy I can help develop some workable solutions, collaborate with others on larger projects, find a suitable role for myself in a climate-focused party, and make some kind of impact. It’s a long shot I know, but it’s better than where I’ve been up to now: frustrated to such an extent at my inability to help in any way, that extreme apathy is my only weapon against despair.

I’ve chosen Marxism as my starting point. Marxism is a philosophical tradition that focuses on critiquing systems that are unjust, exploitative, and oppressive. It rips the mask off and reveals all the layers of rot lying beneath the surface, all the contradictions and lies. It also proposes (sometimes revolutionary) solutions to these problems; it is not a tradition that supports empty theorizing, but instead it seeks to pair theory with actual practice. In other words, Marxism takes a stab at understanding and solving big problems. So I will start there, and see what it has to offer. I’m not sure whether the solutions Marxism proposes will be worth a damn in the climate fight, but as I said it’s a starting place.

I am no expert in Marxism, so I will have to start from scratch. This is going to mean an intense course of study, and hopefully a lot of writing as I process these new ideas (new to me anyways). I genuinely wish to discover what concepts/philosophies/worldviews/lenses exist in the Marxist tradition, and whether any of them can actually be put to good use solving the climate crisis in the real world. And while there is a relatively new thread of Marxist thought that specifically examines the intersection of Marxism and environmentalism (see as an example: Organic Marxism – An Alternative to Capitalism and Ecological Catastrophe by Philip Clayton and Justin Heinzekehr), I will not start my course of study with environmental Marxism. I will start instead with Karl Marx’s own writings, and from there I will branch out into the writings of his predecessors and peers, and then onto the many diverse writers who took Marx’s worldview and extended it in so many directions. Along the way I will also read critiques of Marx and Marxism, as well as writers from other philosophical traditions who shared their views on Marxism, and whatever other angles I haven’t thought of yet. I’m looking to dive deep into this tradition, and see if I come out a changed man on the other side.

I am not starting this endeavor as a Marxist. Though my political leanings have always been on the left, I do not at this time call myself a Marxist, nor do I exactly understand what that even means. Can one be a Marxist if he simply concurs with Marx’s critique of capitalism? Or does one also have to believe in Marx’s vision of a future communist utopia to call oneself Marxist? For that matter, what did Marx really say about the future? Did he really advocate for a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” or was that just something Lenin added in? Did Marx actually believe that we could usher in communism via a worldwide revolution, or was that more of a metaphor for long-term change? How much of Marxism is just pure critique of the status quo, and how much consists of potential solutions to our problems? I want to know what this tradition has to offer a sick, sad world on the brink of ecological collapse. If there is anything useful in there, I want to learn it.

I also plan to separate out the parts of the tradition that are beyond saving: hopelessly outdated analyses, advocacy of programs for which the destructive or dangerous results far out-weigh potential benefits, one-sided or fallacious or propagandistic philosophical reasoning, and critique of a long-past world whose relevance to our own has faded beyond usefulness. One could say I am hunting for a “workable” Marxism, a “realistic” Marxism, one with real applicability in the modern world, shed of its darker or utopian elements. I seek in Marxism a tool that can be harnessed to bring beneficial change. I’m not sure at this time how much of this mission is possible. Critics tell me that it isn’t at all possible. It seems that most conservative (and many liberal) pundits want me to believe that 1) Marxism is evil and dangerous, 2) it will necessarily lead to the destruction of freedom, democracy, our children, religion, America, everything we hold dear, etc., and 3) it is also hopelessly irrelevant, a product of the 19th century that belongs in the dustbin of history. But listening to those guys – those corporate pundits whose large paychecks depend on their ability to endlessly and relentlessly flog Marxism – I get the impression they are really saying “whatever you do, don’t look over there! Don’t question capitalism. The status quo is perfect. Don’t look behind the curtain!” Well I intend to take a peek.

I recognize that Marxism has a checkered past. This philosophical/economic system has been blamed for many epic historical catastrophes, including genocides and totalitarianisms. I intend to discover exactly how the writings of Karl Marx are linked across the generations to Stalinism. I am going to learn in what ways those views were distorted or adapted by myriad thinkers and politicians and polemicists along the way. I want to examine the good and the bad of this tradition, with the intention of cutting out the bad parts and salvaging only what is useful. Are there parts of the Marxist philosophical framework that differ wildly from the dystopian Stalinist nightmare many Americans picture when they think about Marxism, or is totalitarianism the inevitable result of Marxism? Can we have Marxism without secret police, without gulags, without severe limitations on personal freedoms? For that matter, can we have Marxism without revolution, without violence? Based on what I’ve read so far, Marxist scholars have many disagreements on these questions.

Though many Americans likely picture Stalin as the timeless symbol of Marxism, in reality Stalinism is but one thin branch of the enormous Marxist tree. At this early stage in my studies I can already conclude that there is no longer just “one Marxism,” but many. During the past 150 years, a wide range of Marxist scholars and authors have weighed in on this tradition, each adding his or her own unique spin, each adapting or modernizing the tradition to meet the realities of the author’s time, each taking it in a new and exciting direction. In fact Marxism has become like a huge cave with countless labyrinthine tunnels; I plan to explore these tunnels and see where they lead (or where they dead-end). Of course not only Marxists have weighed in on Marxism; moral philosophers, feminists, economists, political scientists, and legal scholars have all explored how Marxism can weave and intertwine with these various disciplines. On top of that, a handful of countries have attempted to implement Marxist programs, and each time the result has been that Marxism combines with the culture of that country and comes away changed (and also Marxism changes the culture of the country as well). To make the tradition even more complex, modern Marxist organizations and parties are each contributing their own novel ingredients to the stew.

Despite all this vibrancy and diversity of thought, Marxism has been declared a dead tradition countless times (especially after the fall of the Soviet Union). Yet the tradition continues to attract talented writers and intellectuals to this day. I suspect there is something of monumental value here, and I intend to seek it out – and to disregard all that is toxic. So I’m aiming for that workable form of Marxism. And if that turns out not to exist (or if it only exists in such a corrupted form that it decays quickly or does more harm than good), then at least I’ll know that. But I’m hoping it exists! Above all, I hope that the collected wisdom of the Marxist tradition can actually help us fix our big problems.

This is only my first step toward becoming a political philosopher; Marxism is just my starting place. I’m uncertain where this study will lead me, but I intend to go as deep into it as I can. I intend to take it seriously. And of course I will always keep in mind my over-arching long-term goal: to work on climate change. But I still need to start somewhere. This starting point will allow me to work on my research/writing chops, build up a kind of foundational knowledge that will make it easier to jump into other areas of study later, and perhaps even uncover unforeseen truths that will help me build a philosophical system of my very own someday.

This graphic lays out the steps of my very rough “how I will help fight climate change” plan:

Obviously there are a lot of gaps in there. I’ll work on filling those in as I go. You may also notice that “enroll in a university” is not currently listed on there. Let me just say that I would love to pursue a higher degree in political philosophy. If I get the opportunity to do so, I will jump at it. However at this moment in my life that just isn’t feasible. I have neither the time nor the money to become an academic – though becoming an academic is my secret dream. Maybe when my kids are older I will make the jump, a step which is probably crucial if I actually wish to accomplish my goals. Not only would I learn so much from having peers and teachers (rather than studying alone), but the academic life would also give me the opportunity to build networks of friends and colleagues, professors and mentors, publishers and journals contributors. If I ever wish to see my work published outside of this website, those connections will be critical. Not to mention that the academic life gives one the opportunity to shine, if one sees fit to take up the challenge. There are endless research opportunities, access to the best libraries in the world, and colleagues with whom to collaborate on writing projects and new ideas; in other words universities offer a support network for those who wish to take their studies seriously, and a platform for those who want to break new ground. I believe I could rise to that occasion if given the opportunity, but that is for another day.

You may also wish to know why I don’t simply skip all the rigamarole and get straight to helping. Why not simply start writing about climate change right now, instead of going through all those extra steps? Why wait!

My answer is: I don’t want to just write about climate change. I don’t want to be a pundit, simply commenting on the here and now (as if I could even do that properly without research). I want to develop solutions! But I don’t feel ready to do that yet; I don’t feel like I know enough. I don’t know what’s possible or what’s been tried. I don’t have foundational knowledge on my topic – not the science of climate change, nor the political philosophies that might address it. If I hastily crank out a bunch of essays right now without doing any research, they will be full of factual or logical errors. They would certainly demonstrate my ignorance and lack of erudition on my topic, but probably would not accomplish much more than that. No, I need to do some studying first. I need to learn how to think and write and argue like a philosopher.

So onto Marx then!

Selected Writings by Marx and Engels

  • “On the Jewish Question” by Karl Marx
  • Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 by Karl Marx
  • The German Ideology by Karl Max and Friedrich Engels
  • Capital (3 vols.) by Karl Marx
  • Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
  • The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx
  • Critique of the Gotha Program by Karl Marx
  • Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engels
  • Anti-Dühring by Friedrich Engels
  • Revolution and Counter Revolution by Friedrich Engels

Some areas I plan to explore:

  • Marx’s general contributions to philosophical/political thought
  • Marxism and Rights/Liberty
  • Marxism and Materialism
  • Marxism and Humanism
  • Marxism’s views on parliamentarism (using the state apparatus to create change)
  • Marxism’s different views on revolution
  • Marxism and Moral Philosophy
  • Marxism and Religion
  • Marxism and Political Violence
  • Marxism vs. Anarchism
  • Marxism and Science (Marxism is sometimes called a science)
  • Marxism and Grand Prophesies about the Future
  • Marxism and Human Nature
  • Marxism and Democracy
  • Marxism and the Dialectic
  • Criticism of Marxism
  • Distortions of Marx’s Ideas (i.e. how the ideas changed over time)
  • Marxism and its application in various countries
  • Marxism today (current Marxist movements/groups/parties and the arguments/tactics they employ)
  • Marxism and Environmentalism

I’m not particularly interested in writing an exhaustive study of how Karl Marx discussed certain themes or issues. I’m not after finding the ultimate orthodox Marxism. Instead I want to study the tradition, which outlived Marx and changed in countless ways as later scholars and thinkers expanded the tradition. The tradition lives on to this day, and changes every time a new writer picks it up. This allows the tradition to change with the times, and adapt to humankind’s changing needs. It’s a living tradition.

Here are some of the different thinkers and schools of thought I plan to study:

  • Predecessors: Epicurus, Democritus, Aristotle, Lucretius, Fourier, Proudhon, Robert Owen, Spinoza, Hegel
  • Classical Marxists: Marx, Engels, Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxembourg
  • Social democrats and reformists: Bebel, Liebknecht, Eduard Bernstein, Lasalle
  • Leninists and Trotskyists: Lenin, Trotsky (perhaps also Alex Callinicos, Perry Anderson, Hal Draper – not sure if these guys would actually call themselves Leninists).
  • Western Marxists: Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Karl Korsch, Ernst Bloch. Sometimes included: Bertolt Brecht, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, Alfred Sohn-Rethel
  • Frankfurt School: Horkheimer, Marcuse, Habermas, Adorno, Leo Lowenthal, Walter Benjamin, Alfred Schmidt
  • French Hegelians: Henri Lefebvre, Lucien Goldmann
  • Existentialist Marxists: Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir
  • Anti humanist, anti-Hegelian Marxists: Althusser, Galvano Della Volpe
  • Autonomist Marxists: Tony Negri, Harry Cleaver, Michael Hardt, John Holloway
  • Analytical Marxists (anti-dialectic): GA Cohen, Jon Elster, Adam Przeworski, John Roemer, Robert Brenner
  • English Marxists: Maurice Dobb, Christopher Caudwell, Maurice Cornforth, Raymond Williams
  • Neo-Marxists (Post-Marxists): Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis
  • Marxist historians: Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm
  • Marxist writers working today: Philip Clayton, Justin Heinzekehr, Zizek, and many many more.
  • Critics of Marx: Leszek Kolakowski, Thomas Sowell, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, and many many more.

This endeavor may not actually lead anywhere useful, but it feels good to try something. It feels right to learn and better myself and expand my mind, even if climate change still kills us all in the end. But who knows, maybe I’ll learn something that makes a difference to someone somewhere. All I can do is try.

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Leukemia Journal 5: Home for Christmas

Today we are home. Yesterday was Christmas, and we were finally all together at home again, the four of us, after nine long days apart. Charlie just got home from a lengthy hospital stay, just in time for Christmas (it was really coming down to the wire). The children could wake up Christmas morning in their own beds, and race to the living room to find that Santa had come. We could all open our presents and cook brunch and watch Christmas movies and listen to the rain falling outside, cozy at home and very much together. In so many ways we are very very lucky.

Today Charlie looks today like a happy, healthy little boy. As I mentioned in previous posts, the doctors were able to put his Leukemia completely into remission within a couple weeks of treatment. All the subsequent treatments (over the course of the next two years or so) are meant to hunt down and eradicate the teeny tiny remnants of Leukemia hiding here and there in his body, in order to permanently prevent relapse down the road. So for the past month Charlie has been essentially cancer-free, which means he no longer has to deal with the bone pain, extreme fatigue, and the generally yucky feeling that comes with having Leukemia. Now that he isn’t in pain any more, his personality has come roaring back. He is goofy and quirky and hilarious most of the time, a ray of sunshine and joy who lifts the spirits of all who come into contact with him. He’s also been gaining strength, and making real progress on his mission to walk again. He’s plump and rosy-cheeked and precocious. These days he really resembles a happy little puppy, crawling and wiggling around the house, hopping up on my lap for a belly rub, happy to be alive.

We have officially entered the second phase of treatment, called Consolidation. I’m not sure what exactly is being consolidated, but I do know that this phase is supposed to be an intense one. It lasts for eight weeks or so, and during that time Charlie will have to endure multiple sessions of chemotherapy (the medicine kind, not the radiation kind), and stay at the hospital for at least four different stretches so the doctors can monitor him while the chemo works its way out of his system. 

On Dec. 13 we entered the hospital for the first of these four stays. Each time we go in for a session like this, it’s always a bit of a bummer because we know that the chemo is going to knock Charlie down a bit, and erase some of the progress he’s made. The drugs make him feel pretty bad, sapping his energy for a while and bringing on waves of nausea. It’s only temporary until the medicine is out of his system, but it still isn’t easy to watch him suffer. Personally, there’s a part of me that feels like it’s wrong to give my child medicine that makes him feel sick (it’s not the cancer making him sick right now, it’s the treatment), almost as if I am choosing to bring on his suffering. However I also understand that we have to proceed with this course of treatment in order to actually cure the cancer. If we stopped treatment early, in order to spare him this discomfort and expedite his return to normal kid-life, the cancer would definitely return in short order. To make it worse, if we leave the cancer cells alone and allow them to rebuild their population, they will adapt and become resistant to treatment, since only the strongest and most wily of the cancer cells have survived these first rounds of chemo. If those survivors are allowed to reproduce and spread, they’ll create a new generation of super-cancer that would be impervious to the chemo. So we have to see this through, even it makes Charlie sick.

This most recent stay was a long one, nine days. It was supposed to be four days, but the chemo just wasn’t leaving Charlie’s system quickly enough, so we had to wait and wait. Predictably, the chemo made Charlie feel gross for a few days. Since the oncology unit practices very strict anti-germ protocols, Charlie isn’t allowed to leave the 5th floor of the hospital during his stays, so we can’t go outside for a walk or explore the hospital or take him to the cafe. Unfortunately Charlie’s life becomes a bit one dimensional when he’s admitted for long stretches. But we try to mix it up however we can. As Charlie slowly got his strength back and started to feel better again, as the chemo left his system, we set up a play mat on the floor of the hospital room and played with cars and puzzles. We watched the Cars movie a hundred times, and watched the hospital helicopter take off and land outside our window. We took a stroller walk around the 5th floor and tried to find all the Christmas trees (we found two).

During that time, as we creeped closer and closer to Christmas, we started to get nervous that we would need to spend Christmas apart. During the hospital stays, Erica and I alternate who stays at the hospital and who stays home with Jack (he isn’t allowed to visit Charlie due to Covid protocols). We really wanted the Christmas magic to be there for the boys this year, we really wanted them to be together. As the big day approached, and the doctors still told us we’d be there “a few more days”, we were working out the logistics of who would stay home Christmas Eve to wrap all the presents and make sure Santa came.

Then, the day before Christmas Eve, they told us we can go home. It was such a narrow window of home time – we return for the next chemo session tomorrow, on the Dec. 27th – but it just so happened that we got to be home right on Christmas. It timed out perfectly, four days at home that landed perfectly at Christmas. We are so grateful for that time at home with these boys. And to top it all off, Charlie looks better than ever, a happy healthy little puppy. After just a day at home, he had bounced right back strength-wise. We know that the next chemo session might last another nine days, and that it will likely make him sick for a little while. But now we also know that he bounces back, that he’s resilient. We used to struggle with administering his daily medicines; now that’s just part of his routine. He used to struggle to sit up on his own; now (after much practice) he can pretty much stand up on his own again. Charlie has demonstrated that he can do hard things, that he can get through the unpleasant parts, which is a skill that will transcend this stage in his life and allow him to survive (and hopefully even thrive) through all the difficult phases that come throughout a long life. 

At least for this moment, the day after Christmas, Charlie isn’t dealing with anything particularly difficult. Today there’s no pain or yucky feeling or chemo. Today he’s surrounded by Christmas presents and people who love him. His only job today is to crawl and wiggle around the house, to play and laugh and eat, to live a care-free lifestyle, the way a three year old should. We’ll go back to the hospital tomorrow, but today is all about fun. Every life is full of these oscillations, where one day is fun and another is hard. We all have to learn that when it’s time to work we must work, and when it’s time to play we must stop working and go play. It will never be all fun all the time, but if we are resilient and clever, hopefully it won’t always be work either. I wouldn’t expect a three year old to understand this lesson, but Charlie has miraculously already learned it. His joy for life is contagious, even when he has to do hard things. I can’t think of an individual better suited to deal with the difficult road ahead than Charlie.  

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Leukemia Journal 4: Slow Gains

It’s been almost a month since Charlie was diagnosed with Leukemia. 

The first two weeks after the diagnosis were spent at Stanford Hospital, where the oncology team used a combination of chemotherapy and steroids to put the Leukemia into remission. The chemo destroys cells that rapidly reproduce, and nothing reproduces faster than Leukemia cells. This is why the chemo works so effectively against this type of cancer, and why Charlie was essentially Leukemia-free at the end of this first two weeks. We’ve heard that in the old days, once the Leukemia went into immediate remission the children would be taken off chemo and sent on their way. But inevitably within a certain span of time the Leukemia would come back again at full strength (apparently microscopic amounts of Leukemia can hide out inside nerves or some other secret place within the body), so now the oncology team’s protocol is to continue treatment for years in an attempt to hunt down and kill every last Leukemia cell in Charlie’s body. This is how they intend to cure him for good.

So after two weeks they sent us home with a bunch of meds and a schedule of recurring hospital visits. Twice weekly Charlie would return to the hospital to get chemo (and undergo other treatments), but after each one he would return home so he could sleep in his own bed, see his brother, and get back to his comfort zone. Unfortunately just four days after being released, Charlie had to be readmitted to Stanford so the doctors could treat some of the unfortunate side effects of the chemotherapy. We spent three more nights at the hospital, at which point the doctors felt that he was ready to re-return home.

We have now been home a full week since that second release from the hospital, and Charlie is showing real progress. On the medical side, the doctors are all quite excited by Charlie’s test results, which seem to indicate that the treatments are working. At home, we have watched Charlie gain more strength day by day. He generally wakes up in the six o’clock hour and asks if he can eat spaghetti (the steroids give him intense hunger and occasional roid rage), then after his morning pasta he usually wants to watch a movie, work on puzzles, maybe take a stroller walk or go with me to get coffee, and usually by 9am he’s ready for second breakfast. His strong appetite is a great sign, since it means he isn’t nauseous from the chemo, and it’s giving him lots of good calories. The doctors told us they never want to see a cancer patient losing weight, but Charlie is doing the exact opposite; his double chin is becoming more pronounced by the day! His hair has also started falling out, and when you combine that with his pasta gut he kind of resembles a very cute 50 year old man. The point is Charlie is showing multiple signs of progress. 

Charlie’s next big challenge will be regaining the strength to walk. One side effect of Leukemia is bone pain, and we suspect that in the weeks leading up to Charlie’s diagnosis he was feeling a lot of pain in his legs. Now that the Leukemia is out of his body, the bone pain has likely gone away, but the memory remains. Pair that with the long hospital stay where he was confined to a bed, and the general weakness that Charlie feels from the chemo treatments… and pretty much all Charlie wants to do is sit in a comfy chair all day. So he’s got some physical therapy appointments coming up to try and bring him out of his comfort zone a bit and build those legs back up. Now that I’ve seen how strong and brave and resilient Charlie is, I don’t see that walking goal as something overly daunting. At first the large number of medicines Charlie had to take each day seemed very daunting, but over time we were all able to work out better systems, and Charlie got used to taking lots of meds. I’m not saying that the meds are a fun part of his day, only that he gets it done, and it is no longer daunting. I’m pretty confident that, so long as Charlie keeps recovering as he has been, he will approach the physical training the same way he’s approached everything else about this process: he’ll work at it and get the job done. 

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Leukemia Journal 3: Returning Home

Days since Charlie’s diagnosis: 14

It has been exactly two weeks since Charlie was diagnosed with leukemia. For most of that time Charlie was stuck in a hospital bed, while various nurses and doctors administered chemotherapy, steroids, blood transfusions, and other treatments in an attempt to put the leukemia into immediate remission. It seems that those treatments have been going well because we have learned that there is no more leukemia visible in his blood (when viewed under a microscope). For this reason (and due to the fact that Charlie is starting to get some of his energy back), the doctors informed us two days ago that we are clear to bring Charlie home and continue treatment there. So that’s what we did.

Charlie is not yet cured; he still has two years or more of treatment ahead of him. But he’s no longer in critical danger or in need of constant transfusions just to stay alive. So now he can be back in his home, where things are familiar, and continue treatment from there (and at the out-patient clinic). Apparently just one week of chemo is enough to put the leukemia into remission, but it will take two additional years to ensure it is completely killed off (so it doesn’t ever return). Charlie will return to the hospital at least twice a week for chemo treatments, spinal taps, and other procedures, but (assuming he stays healthy) he will always be able to return home each night.

The biggest risk to Charlie’s health right now is no longer the leukemia, but instead infection. Though the leukemia is largely gone, the continued chemo treatments will demolish his immune system, especially for this first six weeks home when the chemo treatments are most intense. Charlie is entering the winter with a severely weakened ability to fight against viruses and bacteria, so we have to be ever vigilant for signs of fever or infection of any kind. Unfortunately the biggest infection risk comes from the bacteria within his own body (which we can do nothing to prevent), not from outside sources (which we can attempt to protect him from). The “friendly” bacteria that lives in our gut and helps us digest is usually kept in check by our healthy immune systems. But for Charlie this bacteria might decide to try a jailbreak while the guards are asleep, and start attacking other parts of his body. What is frustrating about this is that we have no control or ability to mitigate this risk. It’ll just be a matter of luck. So Charlie’s winter goal is to survive long enough for his immune system to grow back.

Another challenge for the poor little nugget is that he has to take a pretty massive assortment of medicines multiple times a day. He’s got steroids which make the chemo more effective, antibiotics to fight infection, drugs to help his low blood count, anti-nausea meds, anti-fungal meds, and other things too. They don’t seem to taste so good, and it’s clearly giving him anxiety that there’s so many yucky meds that we keep putting in front of him throughout the day. We haven’t yet figured out a way to deliver these smoothly. In fact I’d say that getting him to take his meds (without causing him to gag due to the quantity/taste) is the primary challenge of this week. If we can engineer a solution to this one, his life will be much more pleasant. The constant meds are his biggest source of suffering right now. And on days when he has a spinal tap (and therefore anesthesia), he’s not allowed to eat or drink anything in the hours leading up to the procedure, but we are still expected to give him meds (some of which are supposed to be taken with food to prevent nausea). This is a real puzzle. Trying to give a ton of meds to a three year old with an empty tummy just seems cruel… but we all soldier on.

In conclusion, the highlights are Charlie is home! He can go on walks and take baths and sleep in his bed and hang with his brother and play with all his toys and cuddle on the couch. That alone is worth a million bucks. The lowlights are he has to take tons of horrible medicine, abstain from food/water every few days, and somehow hide from invisible harmful bacteria that already lives inside his body.

This is going to be quite a journey for the little guy.

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Leukemia Journal 2: Meds!

Days since Charlie’s diagnosis: 6

Charlie takes a lot of strange medicines.

First and foremost are the highly toxic chemotherapy drugs that target and destroy cells that reproduce quickly. Since Leukemia cells are very rapid dividers, these chemo drugs are very effective at making Leukemia cells explode all over the body. When these Leukemia cells explode they release their contents into the bloodstream, which can wreak havoc on the liver and kidneys, so Charlie has to take medicine to flush all this stuff out of his body quickly. Blowing up all the naughty cancer cells and flushing them out is the primary way the doctors plan to put Charlie into remission. Of course it is a bit strange to see my toddler taking cocktails of medicine that is so toxic the nurses wear full body protective clothing any time they handle the stuff. But really what choice do we have?

Charlie also has to receive a lot of fresh blood and platelets just to stay alive. This is because Leukemia cells crowd out the hemoglobin (and other helpful things) in the blood, which essentially renders one’s blood unable to process oxygen or fight against bacteria. When we brought Charlie into the Emergency Room last week, he was in the process of dying from this. The constant infusions do not fight the underlying problem (too many Leukemia cells), but instead they stabilize Charlie so he can stay alive long enough to receive the chemo (which does fight the underlying problem). At first all this blood was more liquid than Charlie’s little body was used to (his heart had grown accustomed to working with scarce resources), so some of the liquid backed up into his lungs and gave him a wet cough that kept him up all night. But more recently the blood has clearly recharged Char and brought back a lot of his former strength. He’s been joking and acting silly these past couple days, wiggling around the bed and getting up to come sit by the window. Seeing the smiles, watching his personality bloom again, seeing him have the energy to eat and chat and laugh… it’s been so very precious. Gotta live in the moment these days.

And then there’s the steroids. Steroids are a big part of the treatment because they help the chemo more effectively destroy leukemia cells, and they reduce the allergic reaction the body has to toxic chemotherapy drugs. Char is getting roided up, so of course he periodically experiences roid rage (roid rage + moody toddler = ridiculous behavior). Even without the steroids, who wouldn’t be mad at being trapped in a hospital bed for days, feeling depleted and yucky and weak, pumped full of strange meds that make you feel weird, poked and prodded by strangers all day and night? From my perspective, it’s very tough to see my little baby suffering with these weighty problems. He’s being given a course in resilience right now, but he’s still so little that I’m not sure he’s ready for such a lesson. But ready or not, here it is.

Tomorrow Charlie will get his second of many spinal taps, where the doctors will check his spinal fluid for Leukemia and inject chemo into his spine. When I type it out it all sounds so wrong, so cruel, so backward. But if we don’t do this thing, the leukemia cells will continue to overwhelm his body (no matter how much fresh blood he gets), and he will die from it. So he’ll take all the chemo drugs, and fluid flushing drugs, and anti-nausea meds, and steroids, and spinal taps, and fresh blood, and other things too, because that seems to be the only road to a cure. The American Cancer Society says that with the new drugs and treatments available today, “the 5-year survival rate for children with [Charlie’s sub-type of leukemia] has greatly increased over time and is now about 90% overall.” In a strange way, that makes Charlie lucky to have gotten this cancer instead of another one, because the doctors at Stanford know how to kill this disease. It can be done by giving my baby a whole big bunch of poison for a long long while. So that’s what we will do.

Side note: Erica and I have been rotating in and out of the hospital each day, so that one person stays with Char at Stanford and the other person stays home with Jack (who is not allowed at the hospital due to Covid). A massive rain storm pummeled the whole Bay Area all day, knocking out the power in our home from 7am all the way until 8pm or so. It’s my night at home, so Jack and I sat there this afternoon watching our house grow colder and darker as the hours passed, sat there in the gloomy and quiet house, listening to the violent storm, thinking about Char and the strange, eerie quiet, and how not too long ago it was summer and we were all out on the open road camping and exploring and being noisy and living life. I know that summer will return again in the future, and that Charlie may in fact heal and go on to live a long and happy life, that there are real reasons for hope, and that we are so blessed in so many ways…. but tonight, when the rain is pounding and the house is so cold and Charlie is so far away, and I know that tomorrow Char won’t be able to eat all day because of his procedure, and that he’s going to be so miserable and confused, and that he will face so many hard days coming up… when I think about that stuff, well, I just get pissed off.

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Leukemia Journal 1: The Beginning

Days since Charlie’s diagnosis: 3

My son Charlie (age 3) has leukemia. We found out three days ago. He was lying in his bed all day long, not wanting to move, not eating, just looking weak and miserable. We video conferenced the doctor, and she said go to the ER. We got to skip the waiting room and go straight to a doctor, as if every medical professional that set eyes on him could tell something was seriously wrong. They drew blood and came to tell us, with absolute certainty, after one look at his blood, that he for sure 100% had leukemia. They could see the leukemia cells right there in the microscope.

Charlie has been exceptionally brave and stoic throughout this ordeal. He’s already been poked and prodded and examined and checked at all hours of the night, tied to tubes and wires, stuck in a bed in a strange place far from home, surrounded by strangers, feeling sick and exhausted and confused. Yet he’s still his goofy self, especially as the treatment starts to give him some energy back.

The first step was to stabilize him by giving him multiple blood transfusions. Those aggressive leukemia cells have been crowding out the other cells in this body – like the ones that carry oxygen to the brain or fight against bacteria – leaving him weak and sick. So the doctors started by giving him blood and platelets to bring him back up to baseline so that he would be well enough to begin chemotherapy. And it really did work; he really did have his energy back today! He was cracking jokes and making silly faces and pretending to be a doctor. Watching him play and be silly reminded me that he has been pretty lethargic for the last month. Now it makes sense why our energetic boy was suddenly so tired and fragile all the time, why he had stopped running or riding his bike, why he just wanted to be held all day.

Today he also took his first dose of chemo. If I am not mistaken, he will now continue to take chemotherapy medication for the next three years. The doctors (here at Stanford) seem to be preeminent experts in treating this very illness, so it appears we are in the best possible hands. They are kind and confident and experienced. I am attempting to find hope in their confidence.

When Charlie is frustrated or confused or in pain, I find it very challenging to stay strong. When I have to wake him up at 4am so a nurse can poke him with a needle, or when he can’t leave the bed for days on end, can’t cuddle the same way or see his brother, when his confusion and pain turns into rage…. that’s when I feel my facade slipping. Charlie needs us to be strong and confident like the doctors are, but sometimes the fear is overwhelming. Fear that we will lose him. Fear that the way of life that we loved so much (before he got sick) is gone forever. Fear that he will be in pain every day for a long long while. Fear that he will never get to live a life, that it will be taken from him, that he won’t understand why, that he will suffer for a time and then be gone forever.

But dwelling on this fear does not seem to carry any benefit. Yes I need to plan for these contingencies, but already I can sense that the fear and sadness are not beneficial emotions, as natural as they might be, They do not clarify my thoughts, nor do they help me navigate difficult moments better. I do not necessarily believe that suppressing the fear and sadness is beneficial (and I am not a trained therapist); I am only observing that I do not find those emotions particularly helpful while I’m down here in the trenches. If they could be gotten rid of, this process might be much more manageable. Charlie is clearly feeling a lot of fear, and wouldn’t it be nice if I was confident like those doctors, so that I could absorb his fear and help him feel secure and supported. Is this possible, is this wise? I don’t know, everything is still so new. It has not yet sunk in that this is our new life, our permanent life. Once that sinks in, once Charlie survives this first month, this first year, maybe the fear will go away on its own.

We can do hard things.