Random quote
What characterizes tyranny is, first of all, that by confiscating the “common”, it deprives the subjects of all their own good, to the point that they “cannot say of themselves that they are to themselves”.

Tristan Dagron (1954-) discussing Étienne de La Boétie (1530-1563), Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.

In other words, in a tyranny, what belongs to the subjects is considered by the tyrant as his own property, and this goes so far that “his” subjects think that what belongs to them belongs to the tyrant, including their own identities. 

Animal Farm

"Animal Farm", an opera by Alexander Raskatov: the cast receiving the
applause after the performance (March 2023, Music Theatre, Amsterdam)

In his novel Animal Farm (1945) Georg Orwell didn’t want to criticize so much the Stalinist totalitarianism in the Soviet Union, as well as to explain how totalitarianism works. I have explained the mechanism of totalitarian power as described in Animal Farm in a blog three months ago. Orwell saw the need to write his book, because he had noticed that socialists in England easily accepted the Soviet propaganda of his days and thought that if the Soviet leaders (so Stalin) said that something was the case, it must be true. For wasn’t it so that what the English government said was true most of the time, and why should it be different in the Soviet Union? In a Preface to Animal Farm, Orwell said it this way: Although “England is not completely democratic, …. [its] laws are relatively just and official news and statistics can almost invariably be believed. … [Holding] minority views does not involve any mortal danger. In such an atmosphere the man in the street has no real understanding of things like concentration camps, mass deportations, arrests without trial, press censorship, etc. Everything he reads about a country like the USSR is automatically translated into English terms, and he quite innocently accepts the lies of totalitarian propaganda. Up to 1939, and even later, the majority of English people were incapable of assessing the true nature of the [German Nazi regime and the Soviet regime]”
Orwell decided to write his novel as an allegory, when he “saw a little boy … driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.” This allegory was an effective way to shatter the myth that the USSR was a utopia in the making and to show how totalitarian propaganda works. Moreover, because the novel had been written as an allegory, it didn’t only shatter the myth of the Soviet Union, but it got a wider meaning. Being an allegory, the story of Animal Farm could easily be applied to any situation where power and words are used to disguise the facts instead of revealing them. “Because of that allegorical form, the story is also about the mechanisms of power. It is about how the establishment tries to protect its position, how propaganda and threats are used to control people, and how power is exercised through terror. We still see those mechanisms at work today”, so Damiano Michieletto, an Italian stage director.
In this context, it is also interesting what Orwell writes in his essay “The prevention of literature”: “From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. (...) Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.” Here, Orwell writes about totalitarianism, but in a sense, such processes happen also in democratic societies, often not guided by the state but by certain groups in society interested in rewriting history. I cannot elaborate this point here, but look around and you’ll see many examples of such processes. Isn’t wokeism something like that: rewriting history from another perspective? Every time has its own perspective on history.
Also this passage in the same article is revealing: “It would probably not be beyond human ingenuity to write books by machinery. But a sort of mechanizing process can already be seen at work in the film and radio, in publicity and propaganda, and in the lower reaches of journalism. The Disney films, for instance, are produced by what is essentially a factory process, the work being done partly mechanically and partly by teams of artists who have to subordinate their individual style. Radio features are commonly written by tired hacks to whom the subject and the manner of treatment are dictated beforehand: even so, what they write is merely a kind of raw material to be chopped into shape by producers and censors. So also with the innumerable books and pamphlets commissioned by government departments. (...) Papers … abound with advertisements of literary schools, all of them offering you ready-made plots ... Some, together with the plot, supply the opening and closing sentences of each chapter. Others furnish you with a sort of algebraical formula by the use of which you can construct plots for yourself. Others have packs of cards marked with characters and situations, which have only to be shuffled and dealt in order to produce ingenious stories automatically. It is probably in some such way that the literature of a totalitarian society would be produced... Imagination – even consciousness, so far as possible – would be eliminated from the process of writing. … It goes without saying that anything so produced would be rubbish … As for the surviving literature of the past, it would have to be suppressed or at least elaborately rewritten.”
Isn’t this how chatbots write texts today? Isn’t it a warning of the dangers of such mechanically written texts? And doesn’t the end of the quote make us think of the recent attempt to rewrite books by Roald Dahl?
It was just because of this topicality of Animal Farm that Damiano Michieletto got the idea of turning the novel into an opera, an opera composed then by the Russian composer Alexander Raskatov. See it when you have the chance.
Source: Animal Farm opera programme book

Random quote
What’s the use of having one philosophical discussion? It’s like having one piano lesson.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

On giving

In his De Beneficiis, Seneca presents an interesting view on giving, like giving presents, doing someone a favour, helping others, etc. (see my blog last week) His book can also be used  as a guide to giving. Nevertheless, his ideas on giving are a bit naïve and one-sided. According to Seneca, you don’t give in order to receive something back, now or later. That’s making a deal. No, you give because of the pleasure of giving as such. It’s not surprising that Seneca defended this view on giving, for he reacted to the “do ut des”-view on giving in Roman society, i.e. the view “I give in order that you give.” This is actually a kind of tit-for-tat view. But is this really nothing more than making a deal? In order to explain that the situation is more complicated, I want to say here a few words about Marcel Mauss’s famous Essai sur le don (1923-24), translated in English as The gift.
According to Mauss, giving is not simply the transfer of an object, or, if we see it wider, as Seneca did, it is not simply doing someone a favour. No, giving implies building a relationship with the receiver and therefore it is a social action. This means that after the transfer of the object or after the favour has been done – but let me talk here only about the transfer of objects – the connection between giver and receiver does not end. This is possible, of course, but if giving is seen as a social action, it is not strange to expect something in return, sooner or later. We can distinguish then three basic kinds of relationship in which objects are transferred: The market, giving, and altruism. From this point of view, what Seneca discussed in his De Beneficiis is not so much “giving” but “altruism”, while “do-ut-des” is giving in the sense of this tripartite division. It is also the giving of this tripartite division that Mauss discusses in his Essai sur le don. He makes clear that this giving is not simply making a deal, period. Making a pure deal and then the transactors go their way again is a rather late kind of dealing with each other in human development. Such transactions are market transactions, and nowadays a big part of the social relations between humans are market transactions. Nowadays, much of what a person is, his or her identity, is determined by his or her success or failure on the market, like financial success, a person’s status, network, etc. Before the development of market relations, so Mauss, social relations were built on relations of giving and returning. Giving was the basis of your personal identity. By giving you built up your status, your social relations or network, as we call it today, and so you showed your success in life, to mention a few things. But giving as the foundation of a social network, even more as the basis of society, as Mauss shows, implies that the gift must be returned in some way, maybe not immediately but sooner or later. It implies also an obligation to give plus an obligation to receive. A social gift cannot be refused by the receiver. Or, otherwise, there is a right to give and a right to receive. However, there is not one way of giving and receiving. In his book Mauss discusses different systems.
But there is no pure market, no pure giving and no pure altruism. Actually, it’s a continuum, as Baptiste Mylondo makes clear in his preface to Mauss’s Essai sur le don. Based on the work by Sandrine Frémaux, Anouk Grévin and Olivier Masclef he presents a continuum of six types of giving, between market and altruism (I think that it will also be possible to differentiate the ideas of market and altruism in a similar way):
- The gift-exchange. It’s the pure do-ut-des: You give in order to get something back.
- The relational gift. The gift is expected to be returned. You wish that the gift will be returned and you are counting on it to happen. However, the main purpose is not to receive a gift in return but to build or maintain a relationship with the receiver.
- The free gift. A return gift is not expected. There is no obligation to return the gift, although there is nothing against doing so.
- The pure gift. A return gift is not only not necessary but a return gift is out of question. Only after a “period of oblivion” the receiver can give a gift, but this must not be seen as a return gift, which would be an offense.
- The agonistic gift. The gift simply cannot be returned. It’s too big. It is meant to crush the receiver in the sense that the receiver will never be able to do something comparable in return.
- The charity gift. The gift cannot be returned because of the big inequality between giver and receiver.
However, the latter two types of gift are not so much building social relations but they produce social inequality. For receiving a gift and not being able to return it can be lowering in the literal sense. Therefore, giving cannot be considered without the option of returning. Giving is a relation between at least two persons. These makes it a social action with all possible implications that social actions can have.

Random quote
Not even the most admirable machines can make better choices than the people who are supposed to be programming them

Mary Midgley (1919-2018)

Doing a favour

Statue of Seneca in Cordoba, Spain

Everyone knows the problem: When to do someone a favour? When to help someone or when to give a present? And when you give someone a present or does someone a favour, should you expect that he or she does the same to you at a later moment? Moreover, what to give? If you are the receiver of a present or a favour, should you do then something in return, now or later? Even more, should you accept it?
These are questions that people often encounter in daily life and in every culture. Where people meet, people give and receive and ask themselves these questions. However, different cultures have found different answers. Basically, there are two kinds of answers. One is the “do ut des”-answer of the Romans: I give in order that you give. So, I give so that I’ll receive something in return, maybe not now, but anyway in the future. Giving creates an obligation, which is confirmed by accepting the gift or favour. Or rather, accepting a gift or favour is accepting the obligation, and it contains the implicit promise to return it later at the right moment. Maybe it is because this view on giving was reigning in Rome then, that the Roman politician and philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD) wrote a treatise defending the opposite view that giving is an end in itself. You don’t give in order to receive something back, now or later. That’s making a deal. No, you give because of the pleasure of giving as such.
Seneca wrote an extensive “theory” of giving in his De Beneficiis, actually one of his lesser-known works, maybe because of its length, for it consists of seven books and it is about 250 pages long. For a modern western reader, what Seneca writes here is often obvious, sometimes a bit superficial, and sometimes too detailed, so that actually you can better read a kind of compilation – as I did *) – that omits the details that are not interesting for the present reader. But in Rome in the first century of our era, obviously writing such a book made sense, just because of the “do ut des”-view on giving reigning there.
The title of book, De Beneficiis, can be translated as “On Favours”, but I think that you can read it better as a book on giving in general, be it doing favours, or giving presents, or providing a service to someone, or what else. It defends the idea that doing favours, etc. – but here I’ll follow Seneca, who talks about favours – is not something you do for getting something in return. No, you perform this act simply for the pleasure of the act itself: “It is the art of doing a kindness which both bestows pleasure and gains it by bestowing it, and which does its office by natural and spontaneous impulse. It is not, therefore, the thing which is done or given, but the spirit in which it is done or given, that must be considered, because a favour**) exists, not in that which is done or given, but in the mind of the doer or giver.” (De Beneficiis, Book I-6)
In other words: A favour is an abstract idea. The essence of giving, like doing a favour or giving a present is not in the object, so the deed in the favour or the thing you give. No, the essence is in the “spirit”, or I would say, the intention with which you give. The concrete form of the favour is of secondary importance. This makes that you don’t give in order to get something back, now or later. You give simply for the pleasure of giving. You don’t make only the receiver of the gift happy but also yourself by the act of giving.
With this in mind, the rest of De Beneficiis is not more than an elaboration of this idea. It contains Seneca’s answers to the questions I started this blog with; and to many other questions. Take, for instance, the question “What to give”? When you choose your gift keep this in mind: give first what is essential for the receiver, then what is useful. So, in this order, give 1) what is indispensable; 2) what we basically can miss but makes life more pleasant in view of the death, like liberty, a good consciousness, good relations and the like; 3) what is useful 4) the rest, which is mainly redundant and unnecessary but makes life more pleasant. This list seems obvious, but how often doesn’t it happen that someone gives what this person needs or likes him or herself but that is not something the receiver would need or like?
Although in his book Seneca pays mainly attention to the giver, he says also something about the receiver of the favour. Especially the main sins a receiver can commit are worth to mention: ingratitude, forgetting what s/he has received and denying that s/he has received something, or ignoring it. Actually, these sins are an insult to the receiver. Should the receiver then do something about it? No, so Seneca, for these insults don’t harm the intention of the favour. Simply ignore them. So long as the intention of the favour has been good, it is okay. An ungrateful receiver injures him or herself, not you. “What I have lost with him, I shall receive back from others. … It is no proof of a great mind to give and to throw away one’s bounty; the true test of a great mind is to throw away one’s bounty and still to give.” (Book VII-32)

Note
*) The edition I used.
**) I prefer to talk of “favour” instead of “benefit”, as the translator does. Therefore I have replaced the word “benefit” by “favour” in the quotation.

Random quote
Far more often than not, wars are abominations from the moral point of view. Massive endeavours, they consume vast amounts of resources and spew out human carnage and devastation usually for no other reasons than conquest and domination.

Darrell Moellendorf

The sunk cost fallacy

You have bought a ticket for a theatrical performance, but it is boring. After half an hour you think that it’s better to go home again or to go to a friend who lives nearby. Nevertheless, you don’t. It would be a waste of money to leave the theatre, for you have paid for the performance. If you think so, you commit the sunk cost fallacy.
In order to explain this fallacy, let me first tell you what sunk cost means, since this term is confusing if you don’t know it. “Sunk cost” is an accounting term. It refers to expenses you have made that cannot be undone, anyhow. You have bought a theatre ticket and you cannot get your money back, when you don’t go. So you go, even when the roads are dangerous because of a heavy snowfall. Or, an economic example, a businessman has invested much money in a new project, but soon it becomes clear that it is very unlikely that the project will be a success. It would be better to stop with it and to invest the rest of the money reserved for the project in something else. However, the businessman decides to go on with the project only because he has invested already so much in it. Then this person commits the sunk cost fallacy. Since he cannot get his invested money back, anyhow, not the past investment should count, if he were rational, but only the variable costs of the project, its expected success and possible alternatives. But the person who commits the sunk cost fallacy does do so, because he feels bound to what he did in the past instead of rationally evaluating what it is better to do in the future.
Not only individuals commit this fallacy, also companies, institutions and governments do. The fiasco of the Concorde project is that famous that the sunk cost fallacy is also called the Concorde fallacy. In 1956 French and British engine manufacturers and their governments decided to develop a supersonic aeroplane, the Concorde. Much money was invested in the project, but soon it became clear that it would never be successful and that the costs would surpass the gains. Although the Concorde operated yet for 30 years or so, finally it was stopped, because it was a failure. Millions of dollars and much time had been wasted.
Why do people so often fall into the sunk cost fallacy trap? Above, I have given already a hint why this happens: What is rationally necessary is often not what is psychologically seen as desirable. Here are some reasons for this fallacy:
- A feeling of commitment: You don’t want to be the kind of person who easily gives up what you have started. Moreover, you feel a responsibility to bring to an end what you have begun, if others have supported you financially or otherwise.
- Loss aversion: The feeling that a loss feels worse than a possible gain.
- The framing effect: People tend to give positive and negative connotations to what they do. Continuing what you have started is seen as positive; ending unfinished what you have started is seen as negative. This framing effect also happens when stopping is the rational choice. Moreover, stopping a project is risky (so negative) if the future of what to do instead is open, even if it is the better choice.
- Overoptimism: The idea that later things will come right.
- The wish not to be wasteful. The sunk cost is seen as wasted once you stop a project without bringing it to an end.
Stopping activities and projects that you have begun but that you cannot successfully finish is important, not only because not doing so is irrational, but also because it leads to continuing (financial, psychological, etc.) investments in a loss-making business. The sooner you stop then, the better. So, when you are doing something, be it an activity in daily life, like going to a play, be it a financial investment, or whatever it is, and things don’t go as they should be (the play is boring; you’ll never recoup your investment; etc.), then ask yourself whether it is rational to go on. Distance yourself from your feelings and do what is objectively the best. Take the standpoint of a third person and think what she would do. Think of the points just mentioned and ask yourself whether they hinder you to do what you reasonably should do. Ask whether the alternatives are not much better, like going to a friend or invest the rest of your money in another project.

Postscript
I got the idea for this blog when reading an article about ending wars, in which the sunk cost fallacy was mentioned. Because the Ukrainian-Russian War has become a war of attrition (see my blog last week), continuing the war will bring high costs for both parties. However, if Ukraine would stop fighting now, it would not gain much, although many lives would be saved. How much it will be supported by the western countries, it would stay in the grip of Russia for a long time, with all its negative aspects, if it would stop. On the other hand, Russia would only gain by stopping now. Check the points above, and you’ll see that it will commit the sunk cost fallacy, if it will continue the war. By stopping the war, Russia can regain its lost prestige and it can build up again positive relations with the rest of the world; the whole world, not only a part of it. It would not only be profitable for Russia but for every country on this earth.

Click here and here and here for the sources.

Random quote
Sometimes I think a philosopher is like a plumber. If you have trouble with your pipes you call in a plumber, if you have troubles with your concepts you call in a philosopher.

Philippa Foot (1920-2010)