probability – GV Loewen

Now you say it, now you don’t (recanting recantation)

What is the character of the take-back? What could have so changed for me that I am myself transformed in return? That what I stated to be the case, either for myself, for another, or for the world, was either in error, ignorant or deliberate, moral or empirical, or could never have been in the first place nearest the truth? In recanting, I must pivot, change my mind or heart, or so be changed by ensuing events, including the contents of my own experiences as a person. Of course, changing one’s tune may be enforced unethically and externally, for instance by an authoritarian parent, but these kinds of recantations are themselves false. A forced choice is in fact no choice at all. Rather, I must be convinced that altering tack is not only in my best interest but as well comes to me, and at the least, as if I had made the choice to backtrack of my own free will.

Three modes of recantation stand out; those of remorse, regret and reserve. They have slightly different ethical inclinations, and thus as motives, carry a somewhat diverse suasion about them. Remorse may certainly be faked, but the conception itself generally has to do with a sense that I have indeed erred and that the error was one of character and not simply act. Regret, by contrast, has in it a sense that I could well feel it even if its source is me being caught out; that I regret not getting away with my error, most especially, in it not becoming a new truth and thus able to stand alone in a more longitudinal fashion. Reserve is the most objective source of recantation. It suggests that something in the world has changed, unexpectedly, or in some other way as unlikely or improbable, and my statement of the facts meant to hold into the near future is thus rendered obsolete. Reserve is built into predictions or even predications from the start, and one might even note this or that possibility as a caveat. The least sophisticated form of reserve is the ‘margin of error’ employed by predictive statistics, nodding both to the vicissitudes of sample size and the foregoing ‘history’ of the kind of test involved. Here, a take-back is also equally simple: once in a while the most probable outcome does not occur.

Importing this sensibility into the ethical life reduces human existence to a mere game of chance. At its most base level, probability does have an agency all its own. Even so, calculating ‘the odds’ and applying them to situations where I either seek to ‘get away’ with something or other, or further, tell myself that it is unlikely I am misrecognizing my own motives by way of a reassurance that I am working for the good, is itself a form of bad faith. This is one reason why reserve is so attractive. Within its probabilistic preserve, I am neither morally nor ethically culpable. Unless the odds themselves have been misrepresented – and in this, one would already have inserted a different kind of source for potential recantation – the numbers stand alone, telling their own tale; there is no ‘school’ to be minded in such cases, and I cannot speak either inside or outside thereof. Yet in its very attraction, reserve seems to promise a way around having to face up to either authentic remorse or being compelled to exhibit regret, no matter the outcome. This is surely why those who are neither predicting the weather, election results, nor yet stock values, are temped to imagine that acts of character are no different than risk assessments.

Reserve is, however, a possible candidate for ethical action if it is employed before any decision or statement is actually made. Though somewhat archaic, we regularly see in literature descriptions of characters who ‘act with reserve’, or who present themselves as ‘reserved’. These are understood by the reader to be observers of the human character, including their own. They neither tilt at windmills nor jump in the fire. They are associated with level-headedness, but of a moral kind and not the ‘cool under fire’ type who may well be a hothead in terms of what decisions he has previously made to place him those kinds of situations. The reserved person is also one whom others seek out for advice or even judgment. Such characters are often more conservative than their peers, but not always. To say to oneself or to another than one harbors ‘reservations’ about this or that decision is to always be ahead of the moment. One cannot be reserved either about action or within its heady movement. Just so, the person ‘with reserve’ is seen as much more likely to have come to the correct conclusion before such action duly commences. It is only when such a character begins to become too enamored of her own observations and predictions that her countenance is altered from one of quiet confidence to a more unbridled arrogance, and this is where both remorse and regret awake to the doings of the day.

A winning record does not by itself produce this change. One can be proved right without anyone else being aware. Entire novels have centered around this type of character, often a child, whose witness to adult doings is unmarred by the accumulated politics of experience. Such a character suffers if she discloses the truth too often, or in too sensitive a condition, but nonetheless she endures as a figure of the truth. The child in literature is oft used as a guileless messiah; she is relatively newly born to a has-been world, suggesting the ‘twice-born’ status of an elect, and she thus as well has no specific loyalty to how that world is itself run, or has been run, in the past. Hence, she is unreserved in her ability to stand back and behold within reserve. She has no agency other than her bare witness, and whatever suffering she endures at the hands of adults, the narrative can either itself take an heroic stand against it, having the youthful character never blink, never break, or in a more tragic tone, gradually but relentlessly convert the child into a wholly agentive, but otherwise utterly flawed, adult.

And herein do we ourselves witness the appearance of both remorse and regret. In the main, the hero feels the former, the anti-hero the latter. Remorse centers around our conception of the betrayal of conscience, and this may include our own as an approximation of that of the other, or, if the other in question does not in fact feel herself to have been betrayed, nevertheless I may have betrayed myself; my own standards of ethical conduct have been transgressed; I have ‘fallen below’ my better selfhood. Conscience, whatever its ultimate source, is both the origin and the destination of remorse. One might go so far to suggest that remorse is best characterized as a wholly internal conversation with oneself, as opposed to regret, which at some point must be recognized by others. The courtroom expression ‘the showing of remorse’ in order to facilitate a lighter sentence or a more compassionate judgment, lends itself to the fakery of charm. Authentic remorse only discloses itself, and that as an elemental ethical aspect of Dasein’s ownmost being; it is never simply displayed. In this, remorse cannot be ‘shown’, only expressed indirectly, either by one’s subsequent actions or yet inactions. Remorsefulness as an emotional state may precede such a disclosure and thence carry through to the point wherein the other has finally pardoned my error rather than merely corrected it – here we speak of forgiveness in the West or forbearance in the East, though the latter term seems to have a wider temporal usage; one can be forbearing in the same way as one can be reserved, for example, while the sense of ‘being forgiving’ or having a ‘forgiving’ personality is more awkward, even a misunderstanding of the concept – or it may become a more permanent fixture, pending on the scope and scale of my error. In mighty contrast to merely regretting an otherwise passing faux pas – here, we are often told by a friend or lover that ‘no one else noticed it, no worries’, or such-like – remorseful being is an ethical inclination of Dasein’s ownmost call to conscience, and indeed, characterizes this call in all of its arcs, returning to itself the very source of its phenomenological disposition as a being who acts as opposed to one who can only enact, such as a God or hero.

While remorse utters a disquisitive discourse in which I am in turn called to confront my own actions, once taken or, for the character whose combination of both reserve and unflinching self-examination is superior, even before any action commences, regret is a concept that is defined only and always after the fact. Regret, thus rather speaks inquisitively; it is always on the make to find out as precisely as possible the chances against it; that is, how likely it is to be compelled to feel itself. Remorse does not seek to avoid its own presence, while regret’s entire predisposition is to the contrary. I do not wish to regret my actions, decisions, words or deeds, nor do I wish to regret my interactions with others, especially those whom I love. But in all this, I am self-interested and to a tee. For regret is the care of the self spoken into being by way of bad faith. Remorse is a part of my very being, an authentic ‘existentiell’ of Dasein’s concernfulness and indeed, a catalyst thereto. It is part of the character of the ‘I can do it again’ as a manner of both basic learning and ethical improvement. Regret, though at first shunning the converse phenomenological realization that ‘I cannot swim in the same river twice’, has to work to overcome itself in order to at least feel a sense of relief, let alone joy, that this is in fact the essential case for human beings. To say one thing in its favor, regret has the ability to reorient my sensibilities to that relief: ‘I do not wish to return after all, I am glad it’s over, I live for today and thence for the future, and I will not live in the past.’ Indeed, regret may be so placed; it is a resident of what has come before, and I do not wish to revisit it. Remorse, in its turn, while not compelling me to return to the source of my regret, does ever move me to consider reserve to be the superior witness as itself an aspect of being-ahead.

Regret at length utters a recantation of itself, generally without changing our ethical character. Remorse recants any such take back, and instead settles in, in order to reshape, however slightly, the interior of our conscience. It seeks to avoid the use of recanting for not only appearance’s sake – this is another reason why it can only disclose and never display – but also as a fail-safe against human ethical error more generally. For remorseful being to work as does anxiety itself, I must orient myself not only to the futural, but as well to understand that any relevant human future can only come about if by definition it speaks no language of the past. Regret seeks the past as succor for its misery, and even remorse must eventually let go its hold over our being-concerned. Even reserve must count as one of its reservations its own self-witness, so that it does not become a simple barrier to change. At the same time, we are, as beings of finiteness and finitude alike, ethically called upon to ‘live without reserve’. How we navigate the situated conditions wherein the dynamic made of contemplation and of action wills its outcome will in turn define both ourselves and our consciences.

G.V. Loewen is the author of over 60 books, and was professor of the interdisciplinary human sciences for over two decades.

By the Grace of Odds Go I (a certain chance, a chance certainty)

The seer’s skill, the ability to discern the future, has always been of great inherent value. But since we humans cannot truly know of such things, an equally great deal of theatre has been created and developed to convince the buyer that the seller is, by way of some unheard-of faculty, authentically in the know. The astrologist’s great year, the haruspex’s steaming entrails, the counselor’s tea leaves, and the visions of the prophets all attest to the diversity of such charades. The key problem they all share is the challenge of communication of ostensible vision. William James famously notes that while the vision has absolute authority over the one who experiences it, it has absolutely none over anyone else. So, the most successful translators of the ‘beyond’ would have to be those whose communication tactics were of the most perfect quality. They were there, but we were not. How then, does the former convince the latter that not only could the vision have occurred to anyone, that even though it did not, it is still of the same import to all those who are merely hearing about it second-hand?

The sense that existence has a design about it is a function of having to work with the seasons. Time’s cycle, a wheel within a wheel, made such an impression upon our distant ancestors that they at once invented science and religion to account for its presence, and specifically, its presence in their lives. Science addresses the first, more abstract question: why does the cosmos exist simply as it is, without reference to humans. Religion responds to the second question: why are humans within that ambit of an otherwise anonymous cosmos? In short, what does it mean that the cosmos appears to us to have a human interest? Though our early observations were the seeds of the much later science as we understand it today, our methods were almost purely religious. In the Roman period, the haruspex read off the disjecta membra of the sacrificed animal, and during the same time and yet earlier, the priestess of the temple acted as a glossalalic vehicle for the Logos of the Gods. The Logos was a pure form, unsullied by human interpretation and requiring, in and of itself, none such thing. Mythos was developed, perhaps ironically, as a response to the difficult work of translation. If the cosmos in itself wanted nothing of us, its resident Gods in fact did. But what, exactly, did the Gods want?

This is the same question, posed in a slightly different context, as ‘what does the future hold in store for us?’ To answer either meant to tap into the oversoul of existence, to touch upon the essence of things, their ‘nature’ as it were, and not the mere passing character of mortal existence. Such a process demanded a special role player. The shaman is likely the earliest version of this liminal figure, giving way to the prophet and thence the priest. Even in our own time we have technicians of various sorts who skirt the edge of essence, using probability theory to take them within earshot of its forbidding boundary. The meteorologist, the doctor, even the lawyer or yet the mechanic and others, make a living from their ability to prognosticate given current events and affairs. Predictive statistics are the most highly valued numbers in politics and economics, as they give the appearance of second sight. Descriptive statistics are the bread and butter of much social science over the past 70 years or so, but these numbers are about the past, what has been the case, and only through an effort of extrapolation can they serve the more profound cause of seeing the future.

It is unlikely, however, that even the most highly regarded prophet or haruspex, visionary or seer, shaman or priestess, was held to have the absolute truth of certainty within their skill each and every time. People knew that even these impressive figures could be fallible, just as we know today the weather report is not a Mosaic tablet. In extreme cases, the seer might suffer execution for simply being off, but generally, all dealings with the otherworld came with a caveat; here is what I see, take it or leave it. The anxiety concerning our shared human finitude prompts us to search out all possible means by which we might be able to predict the outcomes of this or that. We are, quite naturally, disappointed when our hopes are dashed by the way of the world, our dreams sobered simply by waking life. Therefore, we cast an anchor out to windward as against the errata of the seer, whomever she may be in this time or this place. We might seek a second opinion, we might try to descry the thing ourselves, or we might change our plans, sometimes abruptly, when we are finally able to read the proverbial writing on the wall. Nothing is certain, we tell ourselves, and even mine ownmost death, while certain in the abstract, retains as its essence the element of chance. If life has a certain chance about it, then death is at base a chance certainty.

And in that death, the theatre is not abated, though it now must be carried on by the others who yet live. In the Himalayas, the Buddhist inspired ‘sky burial’ proceeds along these lines: the corpse is minced with spices and other delicacies so that the vultures will descend from their mountainous arcs and pick the bones clean, carrying the entire spirit of the person upwards with them afterwards. Then friends and family take the bones and carve them into delicate scrimshaws, wearing them as pendants and other ornaments, thereby honoring their late but still beloved companion. Even if this might strike a Westerner as macabre, it is not unheard of as a practice. In the Norwegian ‘black metal’ scene, one band-member’s suicide was honored in the same way, as his musical mates took some of his remains and carved them, or wore them as accessories, keeping his memory alive. Decades ago, when I was recataloguing the human skeleton collection at the BC provincial museum, as it was known at the time, I wore a wreath of vertebrae from one such tree burial round my neck for a few minutes, partly as a jape upon my colleague, but more seriously, out of the respect for the genius loci of the task at hand. Was there insight imparted to me through this act, or did Raven cast me a narrow look of annoyance? That all these remains and associated artifacts have now been repatriated is a source of modest pride for myself, as our team were the ones to make certain of the original provenience of the items, so that they could belatedly find their way back to their ancestral homes and hearths.

The poet W.H. Auden said this of all such relationships: ‘Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.’ And there is art present, even as we understand it today, in the arts of prediction, and in the artisanship of communicating a vision. Yes, it is a construction, even a contrivance, but its effect is kindred to that of an aesthetic object, or better, an aesthetic abject, since we are often so desperate for answers either way. Caught between the certain chanciness of living on and the chance certainty of that ongoingness coming to an abrupt halt, we humans attempt an artful mitigation of all such prospects. This is the ultimate ‘need to know’ basis: that we, as Gadamer has declared, ‘only have a future insofar as we remain unknowing that we have no future.’ Put less well, we can be said to live on in the face of death and yet in spite of this, life itself carries on. Our own personal existence is supernumerary to the general swing of things, and it is this that is our grace, if you will. By such probabilities I go forth; by the grace of the odds, I continue to live on. The lesson here may well be that there are some odds that are at their best when most uncertain, least susceptible to prediction and thus as well predication. This is no doubt why the seer could, at the end of the day, be taken with a pinch of salt, the very thing that preserved against certain corruption. For in proclaiming that one knows the truth of things, one is immediately at risk not so much of being wrong, but of being wrongfully used. Thus it is that the unknown country of the future is very preservative of life itself.

G.V. Loewen is the author of 57 books in ethics, education, aesthetics, religion and health, as well as fiction. He was professor of the interdisciplinary human sciences for over two decades.