Morose Delectation

“Morose delectation” A Philosophical Reflection

Consider an appetite. It is just an “appetite”. It need not be expressed. I might want to get angry at someone. I might harbor lust towards someone. I simply have appetites. There is no action that gears into the outer world. But even if the whole thing is just “inside” we already orient our thoughts. We orient our appetites.

· So, for example, I orient my anger—without blowing my top—towards someone. I might be moving in daily life nurturing anger towards someone. Each time I see this person I choose to get angry although I do not show it. Deep inside of me I am boiling.

· In terms of lust, I orient my lust towards some persons even without doing anything external. I might go through daily life choosing to be lustful towards particular individuals. So each time I encounter a person who is “my type”, I choose to be lustful although I keep my composure and avoid externalizing this appetite.

There is actually already a choice. Of course we may decide not to show anger. We may decide not to express lust. But we choose to dwell with the appetite. We take delight in the appetite.

· So I am glad (a delectation) with my anger towards this person.

· I am glad (again a delectation) with my lust towards this person.

Consequently, we provoke ourselves. We call ourselves and awaken ourselves to direct the appetite.

· I call myself to be angry at this person.

· I call myself to have lust towards that person.

As we make this call—this “self-call”—if we can term it so, we allow the rising movement of our appetite. We do not check it. We do not keep it in abeyance. We say “yes” to the appetite. We see it arising and we continue to let it arise. We refuse to drive it away and we stick to it.

In our bodies we feel something. The appetite is not totally dis-incarnate. It has a body component. We know this when we are angry. The heart beats, we feel some pulsations and blood pressure rises. We know this in lust. We feel parts of the body “acting out”. The breath gets shorter and the lungs expand irregularly. Already the body gives signals. Psychologists might even add more “psycho-somatic” signals here and there.

Here is where the word “morose” comes in. Morose means “delay”. There is a “delay of time”. What do we delay? We delay the passing away of the appetite. In street basketball we hear the phrase “one to sawa”. The points made start with one and the play continues until the kids get fed up—sawa na. The kids playing basketball delay the end of the game. They do not fix the limit. They might agree on “one to twelve” points. Reaching twelve points they stop playing. But “one to sawa” holds the agreement that they stop when they get fed up. Morose has something of this “one to sawa” feature in it. We dwell on an appetite until sawa na.

Actually, if we just observe an appetite, a while ago it was not here. Now it arises. Later it will pass away.

Take an example. A while ago I was walking down the street and I was not lustful. I have not been having this appetite. It was absent. But suddenly a person “of my type” shows up. Now the appetite of lust arises in me. Here I am encountering this person and my imagination starts to build up. My body begins to give signals here and there. After a while, even in the absence of that person, I refuse to let the lust fade away. I decide to stay lustful from “one to sawa”.

So, in the bus I continue recollecting the memory of that person I just met, and I might even add more images—maybe of other persons. Although the brief encounter is finished—it has passed away—I decide on letting it stay. I delay its passing away from my mind. This is morose.

In morose an appetite “touches” the mind, so to speak, and we refuse to let it pass. We delay its passing. This may look safe but it can be dangerous—if not harmful—if we dwell on evil thoughts. It is not always true that we are so reasonable and lucid and clean all the time. There are moments when we see arising in us very crazy thoughts—like thoughts about harming others and rejecting their dignity. How often do we decide on clinging on to those thoughts?

Let us face it, we have seen the ruin that morose delectation can do when a person not only harbors evil thoughts but expresses externally those thoughts in action. The actions can be withheld but morose delectation, because of its “one to sawa” characteristic, sustains them. A person keeps on exercising harm and violation on someone else because of that indwelling morose delectation. If that person is in such a powerful social-political position, imagine how the morose delectation of that person can direct unjustifiable actions and, at worse, even create institutions justifying the actions.

Because of the powerful person’s morose delectation and its externalization, the lucidity of seeking objectivity in actions and decisions is bracketed. Priority is given to the bloated contents of the morose delectation. We have no legal power against a hideous morose delectation because it stays internal to the person holding it. But, the way to address a powerful person of hideous morose delectation is to “nip the morose delectation in the bud”. More than the legal and political, there is the moral.

A Happy Society

A Happy Society
Francisco C. Castro

A “happy” society presupposes that we respect and revere each other. I can predict that the person in front of me respects and reveres me. He or she recognizes my “owness”. We are not “at war”, we are not using each other, we are not objects of each other’s desires, we are not rivals out to be simply practical and diplomatic. Respect and reverence are predictable. This marks societal “happiness”.

In a “happy” society we are not opaquely “alone” within each other’s desires and agenda. We do not have to first negotiate our moves with each other—worried that the other person will “pull a fast one” on me. We are not out to always guess what is the next move of someone else. We know that we will respect and revere each other. Social life is not lived on the basis of suspicion. This is a “happy” society.

To survive—and live in order to survive—is “way of life” wherein we have to suspect each other, wherein we first have to negotiate our dealings. It has become a moralizing way of life. If it marginalizes moral discourse, it has become moralizing. It has offered the dominance of a particular way of behaving. It has imposed norms of its own: Be “strong”, “fast”, “perfect”, “successful” and “sexy”. If you are not any of these, then stay in the margins.

Let us take an example. Let us talk about political life and governance. We can have all the beautiful laws passed. We can even assume that the laws are respected. Yet, politics and governance cannot move without the “morality” of its functionaries.

Now, political people and government officials have all the right to prefer their political interests over and above people’s interests. Persons in the government can prefer their partisan-institutional survival over and above their “love and concern for the poor”. There is no law prohibiting them from this mentality. No legal text will prohibit them from loving only their career and only themselves.

This is one reason why it is possible for a government administration to suspend from time to time its “moral ascendancy” for the sake of its institutional security.

Of course we can talk about morality today. But what morality are we referring to? Is it a traditional one marked by a certain religiosity? Can we still“agree” to respect and revere each other recognizing that none of us is omniscient? How do we situate moral discourse in our country today?

Triumph of Indolence

The Triumph of Indolence

Francisco C. Castro

What is “indolence”? We associate it with laziness. Indeed, it can mean this. But it has a deeper meaning which is “indifference to pain”. For example a student “takes pains” to study hard for an exam. An office worker “takes pains” to finish a project due very soon. Parents “take pains” to raise well their children.

Indolence refuses to do “pain taking” acts. This refusal is in the word “indolence” itself.

There is a poem, "Dolores, Our Lady of Pain" (by A.C. Swinburn). The name “Dolores” precisely indicates pain. So indolence etymologically has something of “in-dolor” to it: “no pain”.

Indolence is indifference to pain—the pain of making efforts, the pain of doing more than what one is doing now. It can also mean indifference to the pain of others. A parent who “takes pain” to raise well the children is also concerned about the possible pains that the children will face later. The parent is vigilant that the children will manage to face the pains of their own lives.

Indolence is not interested in the pain of self-effort nor in the pain of others. This is why we associate it with laziness. In laziness there is no “pains taking”. Laziness is just taking it easy without considering the consequences.

When there is responsibility, the indolent will choose the easier path—the path without “taking pain”. If and when possible, the indolent prefers little or no responsibility in order to take it easy.

Indolence seems harmless in very ordinary affairs. But when it is an attitude that reaches social-political proportions, indolence can be very dangerous. When a person of official standing is indolent, for example, his or her work is affected. Very likely, the whole group with which the indolent works is affected.

An indolent society will not feel the need to pursue the veracity and objectivity of its questions and suspicions. To inquire really needs pains to be objective. Consider accusing someone. To prove his or her guilt requires a lot of effort. It is easier to reverse the situation by first assuming guilt and leaving the burden of proving innocence on the shoulders of the accused. Judge the accused guilty and let the accused struggle to disprove. This is easier for the indolent. Trial by publicity, for example, is such a strategy. Let media bloat the allegation; then let the accused struggle to debunk.

Indolence becomes “callousness”. One lives in the futility of a darkened imagination because of indolence or “callousness”. The indolent is “callous” both to self and to others. These two—my pain and the pain of others—are inter-related. We might grieve over the pain of someone else as we sympathize with his or her pain. The ability to respond (responsibility) to the other person’s pains is awakened, it is asked to operate and function. Indolence, however, resists and refuses this responsibility.

Some ethical standards would require responsibility of never treating a person as a means. This responsibility requires effort. It assures that at any point of dealings, the other person’s rights and dignity must be recognized. Even if the person is suspected of wrong doing, never must we violate his or her rights and dignity.

The indolent finds that this is asking too much. The indolent will prefer the easier path by assuming that the end justifies the means. If the dignity and rights of accused are respected, it will require efforts to be objectively clean with accusations. So the indolent will seek the end by doing any means possible, even at the cost of human rights violation. This is callousness. The indolent, resisting the “pains taking” objective verification of suspicion will short cut the process. “Torture” is not excluded then. It does not matter for the indolent that there is a disrespect of the human dignity of the accused. What is important is that, hopefully, in the end the suspicion is made true.

We can have a society of indolence. We can have a society in which many people stay callous in the comfort of “public opinion” based on gossip. We can have a society where many people will not feel the need to inquire beyond propaganda and publicity. It might already be asking them too much to check their information and to review their opinions.

To prefer taking it the easy way while indifferent to the pain of exerting effort to be better informed and morally decisive is to be indolent. It is a moral choice. No, indolence is not gullibility. To be gullible is more of the condition one is in. To be indolent is to choose indolence. It is to opt to be indifferent to the pain of those suspected and accused even to the point of stepping on the human dignity of and torturing the suspected and accused.

On Suspicion and Indolence

A Reflection on Suspicion and Indolence

Francisco C. Castro

It is possible that a society takes the cause of suspicion as already real even if the cause is still imagined or at best yet without evidence. What we suspect is already true even if it is just a suspicion.

What is, first of all, suspicion? We can try the root meaning—from specere—which is “to look at”. Someone is suspicious because he/she is someone to look at. Hard evidence is not yet available, we still have to inquire. But suspicion has something attractive in it. Why? One root meaning of suspicion is the root meaning of “scope”. “Scope” implies to look at something or someone with an aim, a purpose. We have an aim in looking at that person whom we suspect. Suspicion, therefore, is not just a cool and relaxed “looking at someone”. When we are suspicious of someone we “look at him/her secretly”, and possibly “distrustfully.” We spy on that person.

“Spy” and “scope” and “suspicion” have a common root meaning. To suspect someone is to look at that person with the aim of spying on him/her. Remember there is no evidence yet of what the suspicion is all about. Up until now, everything said about the person is still imagined. There is a distance with which we can reach the person and that distance is bridged not by hard evidence but by imagination.

What is the aim of suspicion?

• One possible response is to draw out evidence. We watch and we wait, hoping for proof and hard evidence that will corroborate our initial impression of the person. In this case, we rely on what will manifest—a “revelation”. This requires patience and, in some instances, “research” and some effort to know objectively. This stands on the principle that the other person, because he/she is still a suspect, cannot be judged without evidence. Judgment is suspended until evidence is given.
• Another possibility is to already give an accent of reality to what is imagined. We “look at” someone intently not necessarily to extract evidence but to make real what we imagine to be real even if it is not yet real. Here, there is a “leap of faith” involved. Even without the availability of hard evidence, we jump into believing the suspicion to be true already. Evidence can be taken to be a mere corollary. We already believe in spite of the absence of evidence.

Suddenly, I begin to think of the word “indolence”. Suspicion can be an act of indolence when we rest satisfied with belief without need for evidence. Indolence implies insensitivity to pain. In indolence we are free from the dolor, the pain of effort. Hence in-dolor. There is even the absence of “grieving” over pain. There is no “taking pains”.

In the Christian tradition, indolence can be “callousness”. To be indolent is to be “callous”. One must not live in the futility of imagination darkened in understanding (and alienated from the life of God), says Saint Paul in his letter to the Ephesians,…because of indolence or “callousness” (see Ep.4/19). Indolence can be exempting myself from my pain and also exempting myself from considering the pains of others. I am “callous” both to myself and to others.

These two—my pain and the pain of others—are inter-related. We might grieve over the pain of someone else as we sympathize with his/her pain. The ability to respond (responsibility) to the other person’s pains is awakened, it is asked to operate and function. Indolence, however, resists and refuses this responsibility.

How does this tie up with suspicion? Suspicion is resting on imagination in the absence of evidence. There is pain—dolor—in the effort to gather evidence. It can be tedious. There is also the responsibility for justice—and this is concern over the pain of the suspected person. In suspicion we are worried about the pain of the suspected person—what is he/she going through and what “healing” might he/she need?

When indolence steps in, suspicion stops at the comfort of simply making the imagination real. Belief is assumed in the absence of evidence and there is no more need for the “revelation” of evidence. The suspicious person exempts himself/herself from the pain—dolor—of effort to know evidence. The suspicious person exempts himself/herself also from the pain—the dolor—of the suspected. Instead of gathering evidence, the indolent “tortures” the suspected person. Instead of researching for evidence, the indolent person pre-judges the suspect even to the point of propagandizing the prejudice.

Now we might find a whole social behavior that builds itself on suspicions of all sorts—in the absence of evidence. It becomes a society of propaganda from all sides and people start believing intently on their bloated imagination. Then, that behavior starts to turn to “torture” in the hope that vindictiveness over the suspected is achieved. It can happen on all sides.

St. Paul terminates his verse on indolence. The indolent—or the “callous”—“ have handed themselves over to licentiousness for the practice of every kind of impurity to excess” (Eph4/19). In this situation, we cease treating each other as “brother or sister”. In the next verse, St. Paul writes: “That is not how you learned Christ” (4/20).

Possible Sources of Information

Possible Sources of Information

Francisco C. Castro

A big part of what we know have been communicated or handed down to us by others, like parents, teachers, newspapers, books, etc. The information that we know originate from different sources. Let us try “categorizing” some of them:

• Let us name one, the “eyewitness”. What the “eyewitness” knows seems to be credible and believable. We believe in the report of the eyewitness inasmuch as the “eyewitness” is a “first-hand” source of information.
• Then there is the source of information derived from someone who is an “insider”. The insider has not seen or directly experienced the event witnessed by the “eyewitness”, but we still might think that the “insider” is a credible source. The “insider”, we say, should "know it better" because he or she is “closer” to the event that any of us.
• Then there is the opinion based on facts collected from some source or another … arranged and grouped according to a system of interpretation. This knowledge comes from someone we shall call as “analyst”. The “analyst” is neither an “eyewitness” nor an “insider”. But the “analyst” has access to the information from an “insider” or even an “eyewitness”.
• Then there is someone we shall call as the “commentator”. The “commentator” is someone who has read or heard from the “analyst”. The “commentator” may have gathered a lot of materials from many sources of information; and he or she may have sorted them out. The “commentator” is not an “eyewitness”, not an “insider”, not even an “analyst”. The “commentator” is already far from the event. He or she might even have to rely a lot on books and websites to frame an opinion. He or she might even have to be creative in concluding an opinion.
• Finally, there is someone who we shall call as the “gossiper”. We know that gossip is a statement whose reliability and truth is not confirmed. It is not a reliable source of information but it can be persuasive. The “gossiper” is not an “eyewitness”, not an “insider”, not an “analyst” and not a “commentator”. The “gossiper” makes a statement whose source is anonymous and cannot be verified.

Our “categories” are a bit crude but hopefully they can help. They show zones of proximity and distance, zones that are very close to events and zones that are distant. The closer we are to the “eyewitness”, the closer we are to the actual fact. The closer we are to the “gossiper”, the farther we are from the actual fact.

But why do we believe in derived information? Here is one reply: I believe because if I were in the “shoes” of others, I suppose that I would have the same experience as they had. Others believe in their experiences; so I suppose that “in their shoes” I would believe the same.

Following this line, we allow ourselves to consider the weights of our sources. If we know that the source is an “eyewitness”, then really we know what it means to be in his or her shoes. We weight statements made. If the source is a “gossiper”, then we would be careful in assenting to a belief.

However, in daily life we are often not very inquisitive about our sources. We do not always go about checking the objectivity of our sources.

To a certain extent we rely a lot more on what is “approved”. Any knowledge receives additional weight if it is accepted not only by ourselves but by others, especially those we trust a lot. What I believe in as true, correct and beyond doubt is what others corroborate, others like my parents, teachers, the parish priest, the neighborhood charlatan who is my friend, the boss of my uncle, etc.

The power of social approval can play a central role in what we conceive as true. I may not have full information, but I believe in a given information because it is what my “peer group”, “my neighbors”, “my friends”, “persons I admire” believe in. My accent of belief relies on their approval.

Socially approved knowledge is so authoritative; it influences the effort to access objective information. Polls, interviews, and questionnaires try to see the opinion of “gossipers”, for example, who do not even seek for objectivity. The opinions of “gossipers” can and often do attain the status of being socially approved at the expense of informed opinion.

This is why “gossipers” are a risky source when they are considered the main source of public opinion. “Gossipers” have no direct access to the actual event. We cannot be assured of the veracity of their statements. Yet, their statements can have authority because they are approved. Eventually, we might have a society wherein everyone “gossips” as if what everyone says is objectively true.

The prestige given to the opinion of the “gossiper” can pose a danger. It is the duty and the privilege, therefore, of the well informed citizen to make her or his views prevail over public opinion based on “gossip”.