Daniel Dennett=Asshat

In high school philosophy (yeah, that's right--and? It wasn't even a Jesuit school. OPRF Huskies in the hizzie, yo!), we read an essay called "I Am Daniel Dennett's Brain." Like all 17-year-olds, I was happily entertained by the mind-blowing thought experiment of parsing off your consciousness into an entirely different place and not even realizing you're not, technically, in the body you consider to be "you."

So all due props to Mr. Dennett for being a wicked smart mofo.

But that said? The guy is an asshat.

Maybe that's an occupational hazard for philosophers--I imagine a couple middle aged Greek guys were effin' pissed at Socrates' bone-headed refusal to seek a compromise that didn't result in him drinking a hemlock latte.

Recently, Dennett had some fairly complicated health issues, and against all expectations, some people prayed for his recovery. When Dennett was well enough to set hand to keyboard, the first thing he did was chastise those folks for embracing a kind of medieval voodoo anti-science. "Thanks, I appreciated it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?" is an actual question he's refrained from asking his compassionate acquaintances.

I am ashamed for Dennett that he can't make this very fundamental leap. Whatever people say, the vast majority of our actions are motivated by self-interest. Let's not make a big deal out of it. You know, self interest is like boogers. Everybody's got some in there somewhere. If you don't, you've got a much bigger problem on your hands.

Look, I don't doubt that many religions claim that various rituals and sacraments are for the benefit of someone else, but c'mon! If you've ever prayed in your life, you know who it benefits first and foremost: The pray-er, not the prayee. So much of the torment of human existence is denying what you really feel, what you really think. When you pray, the first thing you do is give in and admit what is most on your mind. That in and of itself generates tremendous relief.

Now, I know, in some traditions, prayers often take the form of hoping fervently to be something other than what one actually is. But isn't that too, a fundamental acknowledgement of what is foremost on your mind? I don't want to be gay. I want to be pregnant. I don't want to die. Before you can say those things out loud, don't you first have to say them to yourself, privately? And yes, perhaps, you will be persuaded to hope for things that are not strictly good for you. But if that's the case, it's not that you don't know how to pray. It's that you don't know your own heart.

(If my definition of prayer sounds a lot like meditation, well, duh.)

So can someone explain to me why I, who took and dropped logic 3 times before I finally passed, can figure this out and Dennett cannot?

Or how about this? Why do I know that it is a shitheel move to chastise people who wished you well? Maybe crapping all over people is Dennett's version of a coping mechanism, but if so, crapping all over Dennett is mine. Here's my prayer: Don't let me slip into such hard-hearted obstinacy that I push away the good will of others, rather than acknowledge that not every moment of life is best used for relentlessly proving that I'm right.