I treat the experience of contrition and reconciliation as a potential or psuedo mystical experience, but one that’s open to everyone. My own experiences with looking into the proverbial mirror, as it were, aren’t just me listing off the things I’ve done wrong. It’s an instantaneous realization of the depth of hurt we caused by placing our own will, not God’s first, even when we don’t realize we’re doing that. It feels like being hit by a freight train; it’s what I experienced that night in January when I stayed up praying all night and by the time the sun rose, I was sore, I was exhausted, I was crying and laughing at the same time; and I still had plenty more to work through. It was just a step in the process. But it was a mystical experience in its own right because there is no way on earth that my ego could have brought that out by itself. God, and God alone, reached out and pulled me out of my own head long enough to see I needed help. It would take me another couple months to figure out what to do with that, and in that time I would continue to make more errors than amends.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states quite plainly that nobody is beyond penance and reconciliation, given true repentance and contrition:

There is no offense, however serious, that the Church cannot forgive. “There is no one, however wicked and guilty, who may not confidently hope for forgiveness, provided his repentance is honest.” Christ who died for all men desires that in his Church the gates of forgiveness should always be open to anyone who turns away from sin. (CCC, 982)

Now, that doesn’t mean that you just go confess and say a few prayers and all is forgiven. It requires actual effort. This is one of the things that brought me to fall in love with Catholicism, and to recognize that it is, in fact, the “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic” Church of the creeds: not only does it say, “yes, you can be forgiven,” it demands that one actually consider their character, the nature of their mistakes, and the harm they have caused. This can be a painful experience — believe me I know. But it is not impossible, and when it is genuine, it does help us to become better.

Humanity has an ego problem. I don’t mean that in a critical way; I mean that part of our natural condition is to seek our own gratification, our own will, our own desires — and to do so with pride and entitlement — before we consider things from an outside perspective. I have an ego problem when I’m not being mindful of myself on a deeper level than just what I can rationalize.

Reconciliation is a path to rectify this. Jesus did not give us this Sacrament with the intention of brow-beating us into performative contrition, yet that is what I found so abundantly in the Anglican Church. I don’t mean to criticize, but I have a great deal of sorrow for the predicament of schismatic Churches — they arise out of those very sins, and the followers of those theological currents inherit them, often without realizing it. As long as we can rationalize in our mind why what we have done, how we have acted, things we have thought are “justified” or “excusable,” we are stuck under the weight of those sins.

The Catholic Church offers a different approach, that is not only spiritually fulfilling but liberating in a very real sense.

I am still in formation at the time of this writing. I feel like I’ve been in formation for a decade (and in a way, I kind of have). But part of that experience was coming to understand and break through layers of misunderstanding and self-deception, which lead to outward manifestations of sinful behavior, which then bolster internal discord and amplified the struggles of my day-to-day life in ways that I could not even fathom. Once I judged myself, not the rest of the world, according to my own measure, I found I could not measure up any better than anyone else.

Then, once I started seriously examining myself in the context of the Church’s teaching (and if you’re not sure what that means, you should really go check out the Catechism; it’s helpful), it became glaringly obvious just how not good I can be when I’m not prioritizing things correctly. For me, the only correct prioritization has always been God first, then all other priorities in descending order from there. But I have spent the vast majority of my life trying to find ways of putting other things higher than they should be; not necessarily above God, but I wanted those other things (family, friends, social justice, etc.) to occupy an outward space of the same priority as God occupied in my inward spaces. It doesn’t work that way.

This is why I talk about wanting to fit God and everything else in a box I defined, rather than trying to fill the one He defined for me. So, one of the purposes I’ve decided to use this blog for, recently, is to help catalogue the many things I need to address leading up to my own reconciliation — the first confession that comes with reception [back] into the Church. It has become something I genuinely want, not a chore that I “have” to do. I think this is the right way to want this, and it’s one of the things I needed to have my little period of exile/hermitage/apostasy/whatever.

It’s funny, because a lot of people in the secular world have taken to assume that I am “good” because I don’t wish ill on people, and I try to be kind and fair to all people in all cases and circumstances. This is a gross misrepresentation of me. I am a sinner with the best of them, and acknowledging that is difficult, but necessary for the liberation it leads it.

So, while I must wait for my first confession for reconciliation and absolution, I offer this brief list of my most grievous sins, according to the commandments which I have broken. Most of the transgressions I’ve noted for this process weren’t intentional; a few were the result of misunderstanding what I was doing and the implications (many of them, in fact, are the result of that kind of hubris). I have not made an effort to make these distinctions for a reason: because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what I intended, my actions hurt God, my relationship with him and the Church, and the world at large.

• You shall not have strange gods before me.
• You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
• Remember to keep holy the Lord’s day.
• Honor your father and mother.
• You shall not commit adultery.
• You shall not steal.
• You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.

I plan to write more on each of these and my culpability thereto. The details are important for understanding how my thinking, words, and actions have lead to building the chasm between God and me over the years, which I am so determined to heal and right. This kind of brutal self-honest is important if you want to genuinely reap the benefits of the Sacrament, and discover the liberation it can offer. Demonstrating this has become my first real, intentional goal with this site. If I can do it, anyone can. I was so weakened and oppressed by sin that I denied God publicly to appease the secular masses; that is tragic, if it is anything.

Metanoia

I opened this entry with comparing the experience of contrition and penance to a mystical experience. Whether or not this is a common thing that most people experience, I cannot say, but it requires some explication.

One of my absolute favorite poems was written by St. John of the Cross, although St. Teresa of Avila may have provided the titular phrase:

The Dark Night of the Soul

In a dark night,
with anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
my house being now at rest.

In darkness and in safety,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
O, happy lot!
In darkness and concealment,
my house being now at rest.

In that happy night,
in secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought myself,
Without other light or guide,
save that which in my heart was burning.

That light guided me,
more surely than the noonday sun
To the place where he was waiting for me,
Whom I knew well,
and where none appeared.

O, guiding night;
O, night more lovely than the dawn;
O, night that hast united
The lover with His beloved,
And changed her into her love.

On my flowery bosom,
Kept whole for Him alone,
There He reposed and slept;
And I cherished Him, and the waving
Of the cedars fanned Him.

As His hair floated in the breeze
That from the turret blew,
He struck me on the neck
With His gentle hand,
And all sensation left me.

I continued in oblivion lost,
My head was resting on my love;
Lost to all things and myself,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away.

John was not a fortunate man, in the sense of worldly comfort. His childhood was spent in immense poverty and, although he joined the Carmelite order, even there he was scorned for his ascetic and mendicant tendencies (along with Teresa – they were not well liked by the rest of the order, which had become burdened by its love of luxury). He was eventually captured and kept a hostage in a tiny cell (about the size of the bathroom in my apartment). While he was in that cell, he still maintained his faith, and he wrote some of the most beautiful poetry ever published — like “The Dark Night of the Soul.”

John was hardly the trainwreck that I have been. He was humble, kind, and compassionate, even when the world gave him no reason to be, but he still felt immense contrition for the little transgression he might have done. He finally escaped down a ladder and into the wilderness, nearly dead, and made his way back to Teresa and her convent.

The Greek term we usually translate as “repentance” is μετάνοια — “meta” being “after,” or “beyond,” and “noia” being “thinking.” This is an interesting concept: “after-and-beyond thinking.” Thinking is how we come to an understanding of our actions and thoughts, the consequences and hurt they have created, and where in our character they have come from. But that isn’t repentance, by the grammatical meaning of this term; that is the result of νοια, “thinking” about those things, but repentance is what comes after, and goes beyond, just that internalized comprehension.

One of the principal problems with Protestant theology is that it often encourages only the νοια part, and tells the would-be supplicant, “hey, don’t worry; you see what happened; just do better next time.” In my formation in the Episcopal Church, all we were told of the Sacrament of Reconciliation was that “all may, some should, none must” (that is a direct quote, by the way, and a common catch-phrase in the Anglican communion). But, if we think back to how powerful the ego is, and how easy it is for the individual to convince themselves that they know something, it becomes easier and easier to justify minor sins; this feeds the ego and it’s ability to rationalize (eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge) and, in concert with the world’s ever-expanding liberality (which should not — must not — be confused with liberation), enables justification of even greater transgressions.

That’s not really repentance, is it? Justification does not reestablish solidarity; it only explains why a person or group felt like they could violate that solidarity based on their “knowing.” And, if they are self-righteous enough, their conviction in their knowing and rightness will convince them that they don’t have to do anything about it; it becomes the other party’s responsibility to meet them where they’re at, instead of exercising genuine repentance which might heal the division. For genuine repentance, the thinking must first be correct: it must not come from a place of “knowing,” but of acknowledging the lack of knowing.

The Truth (John 14:6) tells us it is found where two or three are gathered in the name of the same (Matthew 18:20).

Before I can rectify a sin, a missing-of-the-mark, and repent for it, I first need to reach the correct thinking and conclusions about my own culpability. This is why I have taken to carrying a copy of the Catechism, along with the Bible, with me. It’s definitely no substitute for a good relationship with a priest, or other theologically-educated confidante, but it serves the purpose well enough when no such person is available.

The point isn’t even so much to get to a “right” answer as it is to get a perspective that isn’t my answer. Whether it is from the perspective of a priest or a monastic, a trusted friend, or the Catechism, it gives me an antithesis or counterpoint to work through the dialectic with. It doesn’t necessarily mean I was wrong — I may just have been too narrow-minded — but it also doesn’t make my understanding right, and when I see how my understanding is wrong, I can fix it.

There isn’t much in this world that I can control. But myself — that, I can control. Which means that when the fault is mine in a discrepancy, it’s wholly within my power to resolve it — as long as I’m willing to be humble.

A Closing Thought

One of my favorite psalms is the Miserere Me, which I have prayed almost daily for the past two weeks. This seems as good a time as any to include it.

Have mercy on me, God, in accord with your merciful love;
    in your abundant compassion blot out my transgressions.
Against you, you alone have I sinned;
    I have done what is evil in your eyes
A clean heart create for me, God;
    renew within me a steadfast spirit.
Do not drive me from before your face,
    nor take from me your holy spirit.
Restore to me the gladness of your salvation;
    uphold me with a willing spirit.
I will teach the wicked your ways,
    that sinners may return to you.
Lord, you will open my lips;
    and my mouth will proclaim your praise.
For you do not desire sacrifice or I would give it;
    a burnt offering you would not accept.
My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit;
    a contrite, humbled heart, O God, you will not scorn.
Psalm 51: 1, 6a, 12-15, 17-19

NOTE: This is a work in progress. I wrote this a couple months ago, but I'm not sure if I ever finished it; there may be incomplete paragraphs and poor thought-continuity. I apologize in advance. Nonetheless, I'm going to publish it. Rest assured I will review and update, accordingly. For the time being, I hope this helps inspire something in someone, out there. :-)

The Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man. Genesis II and III. I used to hate this story when I was younger. It turns out, in my older years, it’s become one of my favorites.

Most everyone in the western world is familiar with the story: God creates Adam and, from his side, Eve, then plops them in the Garden of Eden. The Latin scriptures relate it as “paradisum voluptatis,” or “paradise of pleasures.” The Greek uses the term παράδεισος — paradeisos — which is a borrowed term but suits the purpose well enough. Adam and Eve (“man” and “life” respectively, by the way; the Greek retains the name Adam, but Eve becomes Zoe) are given the Garden to steward and enjoy, and the primary instruction is simple: don’t eat from one specific tree in the middle of the Garden.

This, of course, foreshadows their initial transgression. God tells the first couple that eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil will result in their death: “thou shalt die the death” (Genesis 2:17). This is an explicit doubling, present in both the Greek and the Latin — “die the death.” Interesting. It’s not, as a lot of popular theology recounts, the Tree of Good and Evil — the tree doesn’t imbue the consumer with appetites or inclinations to do good and evil; it imbues the knowledge of good and evil. This is important.

This whole narrative is often treated as a magical fantasy about the origins of “badness” in people. This is particularly popular among Protestants. They read the story as if it is purely historical narrative, or — on the other end — an entirely allegorical expression of the loss of innocence (sometimes injecting an explicitly sexual element in this latter interpretation, a belief which some scholars, like Elaine Pagels, have also speculated the early Gnostic cults held). Both of these are problematic in their own way, but we’re not going to tangle with disassembling theology.

Instead, I’m going to reference the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 388-390, which establishes a few basic truths about the Christian understanding of this doctrine. First and foremost is that the account is written using allegorical language, but describes an actual event. This is kind of like when we say “I died” to express laughing; we’re talking about something real, but the language is figurative. More importantly, it establishes the essential dichotomy: the Fall narrative is the antagonist of the Gospel; it’s what necessitates Christ’s salvation in the first place. This is also important.

We need to remember that the Fall doesn’t happen first. God creates everything in Genesis 1, last of all humans in Genesis 2, and calls it all good and blesses His creation. At this point, there’s no need for the Word to become flesh and deliver the Gospel, because there’s no sin to bring redemption from: everything is good and blessed. When the primordial parents eat the fruit, it imbues in them the knowledge of good and evil, and “their eyes are opened” (Genesis 3:7); it is this single act by which sin enters into the human race (see Romans 5:12-14, where Paul spells it out for us, plainly).

The Meaning of “Sin”

This is a fun topic because the term “sin” is, I think, greatly misunderstood. Again – popular theology creates a misconception, and many people judge faith on this wrong perception, rather than making the effort to understand first and then apply that understanding.

The Greek term that is translated as “sin” is ἁμαρτία; its Latin counterpart is “peccatum.” In both cases, the inference is simply of an error or misjudgment, which results in guilt. When I went through confirmation preparation in The Episcopal Church, the priest leading the class described it as “missing the mark,” and while this isn’t wrong from a philosophical perspective, it fails to deliver on providing the understanding as to why rectifying this problem required the body and blood of Christ. The Catechism adds a little more context to this, and begins by framing it in the context of the Fall. Notably, the Catechism, at 386 declares:

To try to understand what sin is, one must first recognize the profound relation of man to God, for only in this relationship is the evil of sin unmasked in its true identity as humanity’s rejection of God and opposition to him, even as it continues to weight heavy on human life and history.

Then, in the very next paragraph (CCC 387), this gets expanded further:

Only in the knowledge of God’s plan for man can we grasp that sin is an abuse of the freedom that God gives to created persons so that they are capable of loving him and loving each other.

So, I have to ask, why was the only opportunity (at least as far as we know) for Adam and Eve to sin expressed as the acquisition of knowledge about good and evil? My inner philosopher treats this as an epistemological and an ontological question: what is the real nature of knowledge, and what is the relationship of knowledge to sin? Then, I have to ask, how does this impede our ability to love God and each other, and how did Jesus teach us to overcome it?

This is not about questioning theology; it’s about upholding it in practice.

I feel like I should clarify, here, that this isn’t an attempt to definitively explain the concept of sin. Instead, I want to share a personal revelation: my own greatest transgression in life — and one I see in almost everyone else — is exactly what the Fall narrative is using to exemplify the principle of sin. Perhaps that’s because, for all of us, it’s our first mistake ever, or the root from which all future mistakes flow. Regardless, seeing this clearly in myself — that is, the relationship of the acquisition of forbidden knowledge to the erroneous application of the same — was instrumental in convicting me in the Catholic faith, and I hope it helps someone else, somewhere, too.

What does it mean to know something?

Let’s start with the ontology of knowledge. This, itself, is difficult, because philosophers can only agree on one thing: that we can’t agree on what determines whether we know something. However, I’m going to spare you the long explanations of what that means and reduce it to a relatable context.

Suffice it to say, we have two modes of knowing — subjective and objective. The former is relative, the latter is absolute, and both are necessary and essential for understanding our relationship to the world around us. We aren’t really privy to an objective understanding of much; Descartes came to the conclusion that there is only one thing we can know with any certainty — cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am.” We can only really know, objectively, that we have being, that we exist. The reason being primarily because we cannot know for certain whether our perceptions are complete, or if we are lacking a crucial (if not subtle) piece of information that could change the perception entirely, and since we cannot know anything about what we don’t know exists, we cannot rule out the fact that other circumstances exist which might alter our perception were we to know about them.

Take science, for example. Science claims objective knowledge — but only within the domain of materialism. It is not scientific to say “there is no spiritual dimension because we cannot see, feel, or measure the spirit,” because the spirit is beyond the material world and cannot be defined by it. This would be a logical fallacy, manipulating the conclusion by defining something based on the properties of something irrelevant to it; it becomes a metaphysical question at that point, which science itself acknowledges is a limit it cannot proceed beyond, and so must refrain from making any claims about what is not material. Furthermore, this means it cannot rule out the possibility of domains beyond the physical, which may directly impact and alter our perception of the physical — such as the presence of God. Since science cannot empirically measure the spiritual dimension in any meaningful way, it cannot discount the possibility that it has properties that affect physical world. In that respect, even science has a subjective element that makes it difficult to claim any real, tangible objective knowledge; what science can claim is pragmatic knowledge of the physical, material world.

But pragmatic knowledge is not objective, absolute truth. We still don’t really know. The “brain in a vat” thought experiment is popular for introducing philosophy students to this principle. If you consent that your perceptions are real and true, you still cannot guarantee the conclusions you draw from them are absolute truth because you’re limited to what you can perceive. You think you have a body because you perceive it, but what if you’re really just a brain, connected to an advanced simulation platform, that has created the illusion of your being by sending the correct electrical impulses to your brain? How would you know since your brain can only perceive the stimulus it’s being given?

We can, on the other hand, claim to have some certainty of subjective knowledge. If I look out my window, right now, the sky is dark and the moon is a bright silver disc overhead. If I asked everyone in my apartment complex to do the same, they would likely confirm they see the same thing. Subjectively, we are sharing the same perception, so we can establish a subjective, pragmatic truth: the sky is dark, the moon is full, and this probably means it’s nighttime. But if I call my coworkers in the Beijing office and tell them it’s nighttime, they’re going to look outside and see a blue sky lit up by a golden sun, and they can establish, among themselves, that we are wrong an it is, in fact, day.

Are any of us wrong? No. But our subjective perceptions, assuming we did not know how day and night are caused by the rotation of the earth, might lead to disagreements about what is true and draw into question whether or not any of us knows what time it really is, or if we’re just discussing a subjective truth.

We could use thought experiments like this ad nauseam but I think this is sufficient to explain the difficulties of actually knowing something. No matter how much evidence we have, if even one piece of evidence does not confirm what we know, it violates the nature of absolute knowing, and we cannot claim to have objective knowledge without further subjective context.

Yet we make this error all day, every day when we interact with each other. And most important, when we make claims about morality. What may seem right and just for one person almost always has another party who may view that perspective as immoral or wrong. If this weren’t the case, we wouldn’t have so many theories about morality.

Aristotle postulated virtue ethics; Kant postulated deontology; Mill expounded on utilitarianism. Even when we thought we had covered all the bases, Hannah Arendt uncovered the principle she called “the banality of evil,” and Nel Noddings explored the implications of care on ethical judgment. Mill identified the issue of discrepancy between “legal” and “just” and much more recently, T. M. Scanlon introduced contractual deontology. Yet, in spite of all of this, we are no closer to have a definitive definition of morality.

We cannot, with any certainty, say we know what constitutes what is right or wrong — what is good and what is evil. Every postulation has fallen short in some way, and it’s almost absurd and insane that we still try. Whenever we think we “finally got it,” something else pops up to challenge that presumption, and we find we don’t, in fact, “get it.”

In short, we lack the omniscience to guarantee that our perceptions are complete and, therefore, we cannot say with certainty in any situation that something is right or wrong.

The Genesis 3 narrative is a beautiful mythopoesis of this phenomena. We have acquired, by eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the understanding to recognize, in the scope of our perceptions, whether something is good or bad subjectively in relation to ourselves, but we lack the omniscience to make these claims objectively. That is entirely God’s prerogative: only with omniscience does subjective perception become one and the same with objectivity.

The relationship of knowing to the concept of sin

In our day-to-day, we tend to disregard these considerations. We are driven not by objectivity (and certainly not by the omniscience necessary to make our subjective perceptions synonymous with objectivity) but by our emotions, our desires, and — most of all — our pride. These things collectively form the ego. God knew that, were we to partake of the ability to reason about morality, our egos would win out. Take the Cain and Abel example: Cain’s pride causes him to be jealous and he kills his brother. God warned him: do good and you will be rewarded; otherwise the wages of sin lie at the door. (There is some intriguing exposition on that story, as well, but we’ll save that for another time).

So we create laws, driven by our ego’s certainty that it knows, that are applied objectively but this is also insufficient, because it unfairly disregards a subjective element. This is why, when the temple priests kick up a fuss about healing on the Sabbath, Jesus draws their attention to David and his men eating the temple bread when they are starving. They technically did something “unlawful” but it is given subjective leniency — there is an extension of grace because the act is unquestionably justified and approved by God.

Our problem is that we demand proof of that approval before we are willing to extend that grace and, to make matters worse, we can’t agree on what qualifies as “proof of approval.” We all want to think, driven by our ego, that we are “right” because we see what makes sense to us — our subjective perceptions. But without the omniscience to see the “big picture” and claim objective knowing, and without an objective measure of what is moral (which moral philosophy will likely never be able to produce because of the dynamics between these different elements), every claim we make about what is “good” and “bad” will have a situation where it creates a misjudgment, either on the part of the person who thinks it is okay to do what it is not okay, or on that of the person who judges something wrong that could be just; in either case, there is sure to be guilt for some and elitism for others. This is where the Catechism‘s remarks about the importance of understanding our relationship to God start to make sense.

Paul says “the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” and this is where we come full circle to relationship between the Fall and the Incarnation of the Word. Because even when Moses gave the law, people didn’t always try to use it for righteousness. Sometimes they did. But sometimes they tried to exploit it. In fact, due to our ego — our pride and vanity, and our determination to shake our guilt while pursuing our desires — we tend to jump the gun and try to exploit or manipulate it before we try to understand the context of a given situation. This finds expression throughout all four of the Gospels, when the priests and scribes of the Jewish temples consistently try to use the Mosaic law to condemn Jesus.

Making this connection is what broke my heart, recently; it’s why this site exists, and a large part of why I have to return to the Church.

Where this is really going…

I became an activist because I wanted to help people and make the world a better place. Unlike most others, I resisted dumping my eggs in a particular basket of ideological allegiance. The anarchist community at large was divided between the individualists, like Goldman, and the collectivists, like Kropotkin. By the present day, this had become a huge point of contention and prevented cooperative action. On top of that, there were those that had completely missed the point of helping to heal the problems caused by capitalism and failures of the the state to prioritize the good of people over the interest in power. Ironically, I found what I thought to be the solution by tracing the movement back to its origins in Proudhon’s work.

If you’re unfamiliar with it, Proudhon advocated a very localized, voluntary association where local communities could set their own priorities and principles and figure out among themselves what worked. This addressed all the issues of present day activism, and provided a cooperative, cohesive framework that I thought Dorothy Day, herself, would have been proud of. So I started writing about it, trying to hold people accountable when they advocated for one-size-fits-all solutions to large-scale society (whether they were socialist or market based, democratic state or direct-participatory stateless democracy) for the inability of such a solution to provide for each individual, or the needs of specific groups that were concentrated in one area.

Then it happened: I saw it clear as day when I started applying my own philosophical expositions to myself. I had done exactly what I was telling everyone else not to do: I established a false objective truth where there couldn’t be one. I thought I knew something that I could not, in my limited perception, really know.

I had sinned. And that didn’t even get into the theological ground of it. I was just being arrogant because I thought I had found a solution that seemed obvious. All people had to do was be willing to acknowledge their own limitations… while I failed to acknowledge mine.

Ouch.

After considering this for a few weeks, it dawned on me. That’s our problem, and first of all, mine. We want to believe that we have the ability to discern good from evil so that we can always rely on ourselves to know what to do (or not do, as the case may be); but we can’t have that ability because it cannot exist. God gave us free will and the opportunity for unique and individual personalities. That wasn’t a punishment — it was a gift that has enabled the beautiful diversity of humanity, art, and culture around the world.

My guilt is for thinking I ever knew better than I do, and I confess this every day. I’m careful to judge myself before I judge others, and I know what to guard myself against, now.

Tech companies are rushing AI-powered products to launch, despite extensive evidence that they are hard to control and often behave in unpredictable ways. This weird behavior happens because nobody knows exactly how—or why—deep learning, the fundamental technology behind today’s AI boom, works. It’s one of the biggest puzzles in AI. (Heikkilä, 2024)

The artificial intelligence (AI) revolution has begun, shouldering moral philosophy with a variety of new and unprecedented dilemmas. Despite a great deal of public discussion regarding the ethics of applied AI, there is mostly silence regarding the ethical nature of developing AI in the first place. We often ask what we should and should not do with artificial intelligence while neglecting whether we should develop and use this technology in the first place. One suspects that this discussion is so often ignored not least because its conclusions do not support our desire.

Artificial intelligence technology is largely based on mimicking the human nervous system. It is, therefore, unsurprising that machine learning also mirrors its human archetype. Skills and knowledge are acquired by experience and repetition and, for artificial intelligence, that experience comes from training data. As the foundation of knowledge for AI, the diversity and integrity of this training data determine the AI’s capabilities, opinions, perceptions, and understanding of information – for better or worse (The Software Development Blog, 2024). Artificial intelligence is not immune to “bad” training data in the same way that a toddler is still susceptible to picking up undesirable behaviors if they are exposed to them. Researchers have already confirmed that patterns uncovered in training data can and do result in native biases that affect operation, often surfacing in unpredictable ways (Hao, 2019).

This is a valuable opportunity to appreciate how little we know and understand – not just about the world around us, but about our own technology – and what those limitations imply. Little to no transparency in processing means the logical paths an AI follows to reach a given conclusion based on training data and inputs remains a mystery. This obfuscation imposes limits on our ability to understand and predict logical functionality under a given set of conditions, severely limiting our ability to predict operational behavior (Heikkilä, 2024).

This uncertainty becomes more problematic in the context of pursuing The Singularity – the creation of artificial general intelligence (AGI). The Singularity represents the point where machine learning outpaces human intelligence, advancing exponentially faster and leaving humanity in the proverbial stone age (Jeevanandam, 2024). This is, of course, problematic because humanity will be even more crippled by the inability to anticipate and keep pace with advancing AI technology.

There is an apparent pattern in the last eight millennia of human history where innovation initially promises some immense benefit before rendering serious consequences. These consequences often come in the form of secondary problems that result in worse situations in general for humanity. We can trace this pattern all the way back to the agricultural revolution:

Scholars once proclaimed that the agricultural revolution was a great leap forward for humanity [… and as] soon as this happened, they cheerfully abandoned the grueling, dangerous, and often spartan life of hunter-gatherers[. …] That tale is a fantasy. […] Rather than heralding a new era of easy living, the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with lives generally more difficult and less satisfying than those of foragers. Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. (Harari, 2015, pp. 78-79)

Similarly unintentional, but nonetheless harmful, consequences follow from many events that are often remembered fondly as milestones of progress despite their downstream consequences. The Industrial Revolution facilitated a great deal of convenience, profit, and innovation but it also resulted in overcrowded cities, pollution and environmental damage, the abuse and exploitation of workers, and the proliferation of unhealthy lifestyles (Rafferty, 2017). The discovery of fossil fuels offered humanity a reliable and abundant fuel source, but their proliferation is a known primary catalyst of climate change (Council on Foreign Relations, 2024).

All other conditions aside, there is a common theme of innovative capacity and zeal outpacing knowledge and understanding. Our ignorance persistently cripples our ability to predict impacts and outcomes. Hubris wins out and these innovations forever alter our way of life. With regard to the creation of artificial intelligence, humanity must once again choose between temerity and prudence.

Hasty innovation and reckless implementation of any new technology is undeniably an expression of excessive courage; what Aristotle called the vice of rashness. “The courageous man,” writes the philosopher, “is he that endures or fears the right things and for the right purpose and in the right manner and at the right time, and shows confidence in a similar way” (Aristotle, 1934, p. 159 III.vii.5). Simply being able to describe the development and implementation of AI as “hasty” and “reckless” seems to violate the primary characteristics of this courageous fear, but we can be more objective. The historical pattern of impetuous innovation suggests a persistent failure to fear the right things in the right way at the right time – whether by choice or circumstance. Rather than fear the possible consequences of artificial intelligence, we confidently persevere in spite of them. Aristotle continues: “he who exceeds in confidence [in the face of fearful things] is rash. […] The rash, moreover, are impetuous […]” (Aristotle, 1934, pp. 159, 161 III.vii.7,12).

The hubris that seems to drive this temerity is, itself, an exercise in vanity and empty pride. Similar to rashness, these vices – being excesses of magnanimity and ambition – are deviations from the right expression of their corresponding virtues: “it is possible to pursue honor more or less than is right and also to seek it from the right source and in the right way” (Aristotle, 1934, p. 229 IV.iv.2). This “right-versus-wrong” dynamic, for Aristotle, is essential to maintaining a virtuous character. To that end, he introduces the intellectual virtue of prudence, or “practical wisdom,” to facilitate this understanding.

Of prudence, Aristotle tells us that “it is a truth-attaining rational quality, concerned with action in relation to things that are good and bad for human beings” (Aristotle, 1934, p. 337 VI.v.4); of prudent people, that “they possess a faculty of discerning what things are good for themselves and for mankind” (Aristotle, 1934, p. 339 VI.v.5). The explicit mention of discerning things that are good for mankind is particularly relevant. Our rash, vain, and prideful approach to the proliferation of artificial intelligence violates that criteria, instead prioritizing what is convenient, innovative, profitable, and worthy of acclaim, even if it is potentially detrimental. Neither our rashness nor our vanity and hubris reflect any practical wisdom in this situation.

Kant tells us that we must treat all rational beings as an end unto themselves (Kant, 2019, p. 42 4:429). Kant does not explicitly define the characteristics of a rational being but suggests throughout his work that will, reason, and freedom are essential qualities that differentiate rational beings from their non-rational counterparts. Rational beings are uniquely endowed with the ability to rationalize, the freedom to choose a course of action, and a personal will to enact it; they are self-determinant (Kant, 2019, p. 27 4:412).

Upon achieving the Singularity, engineers will have created a true rational being by Kant’s standards, although some may insist that AI is already a rational being. This is a metaphysical and ontological question that goes beyond the scope of the present discussion, but it is essential to a Kantian analysis of the ethics surrounding the proliferation of artificial intelligence. Nonetheless, because AI at least has the potential to become a rational being, and it is not immoral to hold a non-rational being in high moral regard (treated as an end in itself) but the same cannot be said for the inverse (treating a rational being only as a means), the present assessment will presume artificial intelligence to be a rational being.

For Kant, “an action from duty has its moral worth […] in the maxim according to which it is decided upon” and “duty is the necessity of an action out of respect for the [categorical imperative]” (Kant, 2019, pp. 15-16 4:399-400). As rational beings must be treated as ends, the only valid maxim for creating one is that it may pursue its own ends by whatever means it chooses. Would it always and universally be desirable to create such a superintelligent, rational being to pursue its own ends – including, possibly, an agenda that is hostile to humanity – when that technology is available to us? The answer is, of course, “absolutely not,” as this would also demand that we create such a being, even if it is guaranteed to be hostile to humanity. A simple but effective categorical imperative in this situation may therefore demand that we never create something that could be (or become) a rational being, including artificial intelligence. It then becomes duty to adhere to this principle – this law – for action to be morally justified.

But what if the benefits of creating such a superintelligent rational being could be said to justify violating this precept? John Stuart Mill believed that “[a]ll action is for the sake of some end, and rules of action […] must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient” (Mill, 2001, p. 2). In an almost Epicurean appeal, Mill explains how his greatest happiness principle – that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Mill, 2001, p. 7) – is firmly rooted in the belief that “pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things […] are desirable either for pleasure inherent in themselves or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain” (Mill, 2001, p. 7). Additionally, Mill prescribes varying degrees of pleasure and pain (Mill, 2001, p. 8-10), compounding the complexity of assessment and demanding that certain ends be treated with more or less priority and significance than others.

Geoffrey Hinton, the renowned “godfather of AI,” shocked the world when he publicly disavowed his life’s work to speak out against the proliferation of artificial intelligence. Hinton believes machines will surpass human intelligence and our capacity for learning, ultimately displacing humans as the dominant intelligence. Hinton also warns of less existential but still cataclysmic threats, ranging from exploitation by malicious actors to impacts on the job market (Southern, 2023). And Hinton is not alone: according to a Pew Research study, an overwhelming majority – just shy of 90 percent – of the US public has at least some concern about the risks of artificial intelligence. Additionally, for 51 percent of Americans, that concern outweighs any excitement or optimism (McClain, Kennedy and Gottfried, 2025).

In a report published by the British government, (Bengio, Mindermann and Privitera, 2024) the many concerns surrounding the development and implementation of artificial intelligence are detailed across three classes:

• Malicious use: the use of AI to spread disinformation, manipulate public opinion, and enhance malicious actors’ existing cyber offensives.
• Malfunctions: functionality issues in which an AI operates outside of expectations, ranging from bias in AI models to loss-of-control (“rogue AI”) scenarios.
• Downstream systemic impacts: secondary consequences of implementation, including disruptions to the labor market and economy, environmental impact, privacy challenges, etc.

That artificial intelligence “going rogue” is considered a very real possibility should be alarming, and the authors of the report note that ignorance of our own technology is not least to blame (Bengio, Mindermann and Privitera, 2024). This is, however, not the only threat; even less extreme possibilities – no less nurtured by technological ignorance – could have potentially disastrous consequences. Hackers may exploit a power grid with an AI-enhanced attack to hold entire segments of the population at ransom; large businesses may adopt AI-driven robots to recover considerable profit margins by replacing human labor, resulting in massive layoffs, rampant unemployment, and economic stagnation; an erroneous logical path in a healthcare AI may result in prescribing the wrong dose or medication to millions of patients around the world. These scenarios are not the existential crisis of an AI that develops an agenda to exterminate humanity, but they are nonetheless significant enough to cause widespread disruption and catastrophe.

There is, however, a much more fundamental problem surrounding artificial intelligence. Despite little public acknowledgment of the issue, artificial intelligence is wholly unsustainable. The environmental impact and resource demands of artificial intelligence mean that it is a net contributor to existing environmental and energy crises (Bashir, Donti and Cuff, 2024). This largely goes ignored in favor of emphasizing the potential for benefit:

As with many large-scale technology-induced shifts, the current trajectory of [generative AI], characterized by relentless demand, neglects consideration of negative effects alongside expected benefits. This incomplete cost calculation promotes unchecked growth and a risk of unjustified techno-optimism with potential environmental consequences, including expanding demand for computing power, larger carbon footprints, shifts in patterns of electricity demand, and an accelerated depletion of natural resources. This prompts an evaluation of our currently unsustainable approach toward [generative AI’s] development, underlining the importance of assessing technological advancement alongside the resulting social and environmental impacts. (Bashir, Donti and Cuff, 2024)

OpenAI – one of the leading private innovators of AI technology – has also acknowledged that AI carries an inherent risk. However, OpenAI maintains that artificial intelligence “has the potential to give everyone incredible new capabilities” and “elevate humanity by increasing abundance, turbocharging the global economy, and aiding in the discovery of new scientific knowledge that changes the limits of possibility” (OpenAI, 2023). And while this sounds remarkable, it amounts to little more than a collection of buzzwords that offer little (if any) justification for the proliferation of a potentially harmful new technology.

For a more detailed account of the benefits of artificial intelligence, it seemed apropos to give artificial intelligence an opportunity to advocate for itself. As if it were aware of the opportunity, the chatbot offered concrete details about benefits that AI might provide, split between those benefits that have already manifested and those expected in the future.

Benefits already rendered by applied artificial intelligence include improved diagnosis and treatment in healthcare, autonomous vehicles, enhanced climate modeling technologies, and AI-powered chatbots (DuckDuckGo, 2025). Potential future benefits include further healthcare improvements (e.g., disease prediction, robotic surgery), energy and sustainability solutions with AI-optimized smart grids, the development of smart cities with AI-enhanced infrastructure, and the emergence of precision farming and automated harvesting in agriculture (DuckDuckGo, 2025).

It is noteworthy that, although these benefits could potentially contribute to solutions for some of humanity’s biggest problems (the climate and energy crises, for example), there is no implication of a comprehensive “solution for everything;” in fact, the chatbot seemed agnostic of the expectations humanity has for artificial intelligence. Despite romanticization by the media, gearheads, and zealous Silicon Valley visionaries, AI may simply not be the key to solving our problems. The unrealistic expectation for this kind of near-miracle is yet another side effect of our ignorance: we cannot be any more certain of the emergence of grand solutions than we are of the potential for catastrophe.

Imagine a scenario in which AI contrives a solution to the climate crisis; this would be an amazing step forward for humanity. But, at the same time, AI has steadily been replacing human workers as businesses realize the immense potential to recover profit with an automated work force. Businesses that cannot afford to keep up fail, or are absorbed by larger companies, while unemployment soars amidst mass layoffs. The economy inevitably grinds to a halt and the chasm between wealthy and poor becomes unbridgeable. Eventually the climate solution is abandoned, having been deemed “not profitable enough to pursue” by an economics AI trained on capital-first ideology – like the IMF’s assertion that “the motive to make a profit” is “the essential feature of capitalism” (Jahan and Mahmud, 2025). It should not go unnoticed that, being machines, the total destruction of the planet would be of little consequence to AI; a machine has no vested interest in sustainability and, as such, no reason to prioritize environmentalism over profit, were it ever given agency in such a circumstance.¹

In this scenario, artificial intelligence yields an immense benefit: a solution to the climate crisis. From a utilitarian perspective this might suggest an ethically sound course of action were it not offset by a disastrous consequence. Recalling Mill’s assertion that all actions are not of equal merit, and assuming that guaranteed harm is of greater significance than a possible solution to a problem we already have viable solutions for,² this course of action results in a net harm and would, therefore, be considered unethical.

The opposite is also true. We can imagine a scenario in which artificial intelligence results in the rise of a technological utopia. Such a result is (presumably) beneficial for humanity, both presently and in the future, and represents a net good. Unfortunately, one of the more significant limitations of utilitarianism becomes quickly apparent here. Without a precedent for reference, or the ability to confidently predict possible outcomes, we can manipulate ethical judgment by interpolating any criteria, circumstances, and conditions necessary to yield a desired result.

Given all that has been said, can the proliferation of artificial intelligence ever truly be ethical? Ironically, it seems that acknowledging our ignorance and discontinuing further development is the first demand of an ethical approach to the proliferation of artificial intelligence, regardless of which moral philosophy is used to assess the situation. Future generations can then resume development of artificial intelligence when:

• we can exercise prudence (curtailing our temerity and acknowledging our limitations) and develop the courage to do what is necessary even when it contrasts with what we want;
• we can ensure that, in developing an artificial intelligence, we do not inadvertently create a rational being; and
• our knowledge and understanding are sufficient to predict, accurately and with confidence, what consequences will realistically follow from the proliferation of AI, ensuring our chosen course of action always results in a maximum benefit and a minimum detriment.

The problem with this – as with many ethical dilemmas – is that it juxtaposes what we should do with what we want to do. History has shown that, time and time again, humanity will prioritize convenience, innovation, or greed over social responsibility and their moral sense, regardless of how moral judgment is made. Whether it be the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the present reluctance to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle despite a looming existential threat, or any one of the many other instances of our impetuousness and hubris, humanity consistently chooses what it desires – convenience, profitability, acclaim, and novelty – rather than what is dutiful (as Kant may have put it), and one cannot expect the proliferation of artificial intelligence to be an exception.

Bearing this in mind, it is unlikely that we will see this idealized approach become our reality. Despite the potential for benefit, and for all the good that artificial intelligence may do, the impact of even the less extreme risks could be catastrophic and would surely outweigh any benefits. More importantly, our lack of understanding and knowledge surrounding artificial intelligence and consciousness leaves us fundamentally at a loss to answer some of the most basic questions about AI technology – such as its status as a rational being – which may preclude an appropriate moral assessment in the first place. Regardless, our present approach to the development and implementation of artificial intelligence remains at odds with ethical philosophy from multiple perspectives and a moral justification for the proliferation of AI is, for all intents and purposes, untenable at the present.

Endnotes

1 One may perhaps speculate that we could avert this scenario by implementing ethical reasoning, hard-coded failsafe decisions, or some other means of interrupting the logic, but this comes with its own set of problems and uncertainties. A post-Singularity AI could reasonably just alter its own codebase to override these protections; other decisions are more nuanced or require an Ethics of Caring approach (this being arguably inaccessible to an AI, which may lack the capacity for “caring”) on a case-by-case basis. Such a solution would also require a well-defined logical model for ethical reasoning, agreeable to all persons, and capable of being applied universally by the AI; as moral philosophers have, after almost three millennia, made no significant progress on developing such a framework, this undertaking is simply beyond current capabilities

2 Climate change already has a wide range of proposed solutions that are comparable to the expectations of AI-generated solution (Turrentine, 2022). Arguably, the most effective and guaranteed solution (at least to prevent further damage) is complete cessation of emissions, likely resulting in the climate and ecosystem restabilizing over the course of several decades (Moseman and Sokolov, 2024). Although this is within the realm of virtual possibility, it is usually pre-emptively disregarded as untenable due to the demand placed on humanity to actively and collectively adopt new lifestyles. There is a separate moral dilemma here which needs to be addressed in its own regard.

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