I take a week off for my birthday every year. I get two weeks of vacation, so why not, its as good a reason as any. I wanted to buy a cd player, and watch some movies, and I saw an old favorite, Psycho Pass, which I have been watching. Now we have to add one more outside influence. One of the top stories of the week has been Milo and his book dangerous, and his remarks on pedophilia. Which brings me back to my anime, they stated talking about Pascal, so I looked it up. Shall we begin?
I remember not long ago some issue about a riot in Berkley to keep a speaker out. I had no idea who it was, it was Milo. This brought on his side a debate about free speech, and how liberals can get to politically correct and silence ideas. Its a few weeks later, and a video came out, and now CPAC has dropped Milo from the speakers list. He went to far, talking about pedophilia.
“We get hung up on this child abuse stuff. … This is one of the reasons why I hate the left, the one size fits all policing of culture, this arbitrary and oppressive idea of consent,” he said. “I’m grateful for Father Michael. I wouldn’t give nearly such good head if it wasn’t for him.”
Yiannopoulos, who’s spouted inflammatory views against Muslims, immigrants and transgender people, also attempts to differentiate between pedophilia and pederasty.
“Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody who is 13 years old and sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty, who do not have functioning sex organs yet, who have not gone through puberty,” he said. “In the gay world, some of the most important enriching, and incredibly life-affirming, important, shaping relationships are between younger boys and older men. They can be hugely positive experiences very often for those young boys.”
At the center of this controversy, we see a classic debate from Pascal 1656, on the nature of sin and grace.
"we hold that God bestows actual grace on all men in every case of temptation; for we maintain that unless a person have, whenever tempted, actual grace to keep him from sinning, his sin, whatever it may be, can never be imputed to him. The Jansenists, on the other hand, affirm that sins, though committed without actual grace, are, nevertheless, imputed;
The question at hand, can sin be a product of ignorance, or can one only sin with the fore knowledge that they commit a sinful act?
We have two actors in this drama, we have the child and we have the priest. Now the priest has foreknowledge of his sin of carnal lust, it is obvious that he has sinned. By taking carnal favors from the young boy, he has acted in a way that he knows to be wrong. This fits the classic definition of the Jacobins
He shows that, in order to make out action to be a sin, all these things must have passed through the mind. Read, and weigh every word." I then read what I now give you in a translation from the original Latin
"1. On the one hand, God sheds abroad on the soul some measure of love, which gives it a bias toward the thing commanded; and on the other, a rebellious concupiscence solicits it in the opposite direction.
2. God inspires the soul with a knowledge of its own weakness.
3. God reveals the knowledge of the physician who can heal it.
4. God inspires it with a desire to be healed.
5. God inspires a desire to pray and solicit his assistance."
The problem with this argument is abrurd, as the Jansenist argues
Blessings on you, my good father, for this way of justifying people! Others prescribe painful austerities for healing the soul; but you show that souls which may be thought desperately distempered are in quite good health. What an excellent device for being happy both in this world and in the next! I had always supposed that the less a man thought of God, the more he sinned; but, from what I see now, if one could only succeed in bringing himself not to think upon God at all, everything would be pure with him in all time coming.
This leads to the crux of the debate. Did Milo sin with the priest?
I'd like to move this into the larger context of Psycho Pass. This has actually become my new favorite anime. This world is twisted, a fascist society that is ran by a computer. It is a perfect utopia, where the computer makes all the choices for people, it is the law. Criminals are a product of a tainted hew. If you are a latent criminal, the computer tells its enforcers to shoot you. Of course the enforcers are latent criminals, and so they have investigators watching them in case they get out of control.
If that's not twisted enough, our villain has no hew at all. He can commit any act of evil, and the computer will not punish him, because he has no hew. He demonstrates this with our hero, her best friend is in his hands. He gives our hero a shotgun, and she also has her official weapon which will only fire if his hew is colored. He tells our hero, if you want to stop me, you must make the choice. She fails to do so, he kills her friend.
Then one final twist, the computer wants to absorb the mind of the villain, and incorporate them to the program. This moves us into the realm of Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. He argues the superior man is beyond good and evil. Thus is he capable to lead.
In truth this whole journey began on Monday. Time wrote an article bringing about the debate of Socrates and Thrasymachus on the question of justice and injustice. They argue which is the better virtue of the king?
Thrasymachus argues
the different forms of government make laws democratical,
aristocratical, tyrannical, with a view to their several interests;
and these laws, which are made by them for their own interests,
are the justice which they deliver to their subjects, and him who
transgresses them they punish as a breaker of the law, and unjust.
And that is what I mean when I say that in all states there is the same
principle of justice, which is the interest of the government;
and as the government must be supposed to have power, the only reasonable
conclusion is, that everywhere there is one principle of justice,
which is the interest of the stronger
to this Socrates answers
Great or small, never mind about that: we must first enquire whether
what you are saying is the truth. Now we are both agreed that justice
is interest of some sort, but you go on to say `of the stronger';
about this addition I am not so sure, and must therefore consider further.
He continues
I shall not make the attempt, my dear man; but to avoid any misunderstanding
occurring between us in future, let me ask, in what sense do you
speak of a ruler or stronger whose interest, as you were saying,
he being the superior, it is just that the inferior should execute-
is he a ruler in the popular or in the strict sense of the term?
then Socrates defines justice
there is no one in any rule who, in so far
as he is a ruler, considers or enjoins what is for his own interest,
but always what is for the interest of his subject or suitable to his art;
to that he looks, and that alone he considers in everything which he
says and does.
Back to psycho Pass, our hero discovers that the program is devised of latent criminals. She is given the choice to destroy the program, or allow it to continue. She decides on the law. That's why she was chosen to make the choice. The embodiment of law is the guiding principle of mankind to preserve what is good in humanity, to bring out what is best. While the law is imperfect, it is far better than the alternative.
This leads us to the existential question of the day. Is justice to be preferred to injustice? Does the greater good demand that we know good from evil?
Let us go back to Milo. He was molested by a priest. He said he was grateful for the abuse. Did he sin? This is the existential question that every survivor asks. The flesh betrays the soul, and it is an Orwellian experience, the greatest of betrayals, it is the betrayal of self. It is the attainment of the knowledge of good and evil. It changes a person forever.
I understand why Milo is angry, I understand his tears. I fear at last, that Milo is a man without values. He's there for the thrill of the chase, its just a game. he's lost himself, all survivors go through this.
For my own part, I can't offer absolution, I am no priest. I do believe this is a powerful topic we need to discuss, yet the words are never there. In truth, I refer now to a beautiful mind. the arguments in the republic never adequately resolve themselves, the arguments of Pascal lead to a never ending contradiction. It is a very simple and elegant solution, right where we started, the middle ground.
Adam smith argued that competition was the greatest virtue, he was wrong. What is best is what is best for both the individual and for society as a whole.
