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What About Those Cannibals?

jbudziszewski — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Query from a reader in one of the Eastern European republics:

I have a small wish. I would like to ask something about the evidence for inherent moral knowledge in every human and how to go in explaining a particular evidentiary issue to people who are atheists and semi-relativists (I don't even know how to call it, seems to me that every person has a idiosyncratic version of it and it's hard to pin down) or just skeptical. I had a debate with my friends about it and recalled one of your speeches, where you mentioned a tribe that cleansed itself either before or after doing cannibalistic raids on neighbours. I don't think you mentioned them by name, so I wondered what you had in mind. Just to check it and provide it to people if they ask.
You don't have to read the next part, because it is about my personal experience. I used to be disdainful atheist and became Catholic this Easter. When I came upon your interview on Matt Fradd about how you were a nihilist, it occured to me that I went thorugh something similar, even though unphilosophical. I abhored any kind of rules that did not explicitly benefit me, and thought myself to be so smart that I could “see through” the attempts of powerful parties to control me. (Such an idea is probably a parting gift of totalitarian history, which I inherited from people who lived under it).

After I engaged in some wrong things, what you call the Furies of conscience got hold of me. Growing up with the credo "as long as it doesn't hurt it's okay," I had no idea how to deal with this, and I almost killed myself, mainly because of guilt, but having a melancholic temperament didn't help. Only lately, after reading Crime and Punishment (which shook me), and a year later watching your interview, I realized I had been like Raskolnikov, thinking myself so grand and so above everything that essentially I taunted God. One day while I was at work, I fell on my knees and said "If you are there, help me, and I will do whatever I can to help you." And he did. And here I am. I took St. Thomas Aquinas as my patron saint for baptism.

Could you give me a reading recommendation for these topics? Maybe St. Thomas, or maybe Augustine? Have you also written about them explicitly, or are they implicitly present in your books?
Anyway, thank you. Hope you are well. God bless you.

Reply:

How interesting to learn of what you’ve passed through -- and how wonderful to learn of your conversion! I pray that God will continue to bless you. You ask two questions: First, will I provide some background for the remarks about cannibals and guilt which I made in a talk of mine to which you listened? Second, will I provide some reading suggestions? Yes, and yes.

First, as to the remarks in my talk. Let me begin with a clarification. I don’t say actual knowledge is inherent; I say the readiness to become aware of certain knowledge is inherent. An infant fresh from the womb doesn’t know the Golden Rule, but a child who has reached the age of reason can see for himself that it is true.

Now as to people-eaters. Cannibals, as well as others who collectively shed blood (including people in our own part of the world), often perform rituals which seem to be about expiating guilt, for example ritual purification and seclusion. Examples of tribes who do this include the Wari and the Tupinamba of the Amazonian basin, and the Maori of New Zealand. In the talk of mine to which you listened, I remarked that such rituals are often performed prior to going on raids, but actually they seem to be more prominent afterwards -- as I suppose one would expect.

It’s important to realize that when human beings are driven to do away with guilt, they are not necessarily consciously thinking “I have guilt, and I have to get rid of it.” In fact, they may give all sorts of other explanations of their motives. Although anthropologists sometimes distinguish between guilt cultures and shame cultures, the phenomena associated with guilt seem to be universal; they are present in so-called shame cultures too, even if disguised by the fact that the members of such cultures do not have adequate ways of talking about guilt. The hypothesis of suppressed guilty knowledge seems to explain what they are doing better than alternative hypotheses do.

In some cannibal tribes the killer himself is barred from feasting on the flesh of his victim; his flesh is reserved for the other members of the tribe. But if what he did was good and right, as the tribe claims that it was, then why shouldn’t the tribe instead honor him by letting him eat first? Again, when those who shed blood use smoke, washings, and other means to purify themselves, of what are they trying to be cleansed? Whatever answers to the question they may give themselves, the hypothesis which best accounts for such practices seems to be that they are trying to purge themselves of guilt. Yet again, tribal warriors who shed blood sometimes slash and scarify themselves – like many people in our own culture too -- and various tribes may offer various explanations of why they do this. But when someone deliberately hurts himself, and is not just trying to show how tough he is, it is hard to view his act as anything other than self-punishment.

By the way, in my own country obsessive self-cutting seems to be on the rise among teens. Although American teens aren’t cannibals, this too seems to be largely about self-punishment.

Sometimes, the explanations of the tribes themselves come close to what I think is really going on. For example, they may speak of the need to make some sort of “repayment” or to restore some sort of “balance.” But doesn’t repayment imply a moral debt, and doesn’t restoration of balance imply a moral imbalance?

Now as to other things you might read. In reasoning the way I have above, I have been using what philosophers and logicians call “argument to the best explanation.” For a more detailed explanation of how argument to the best explanation can be applied to apparent cases of moral denial, and how I reply to objections, take a look at my article, “The Same As to Knowledge.” Though I mention cannibals in that article too, most of my examples have to do with abortion, which I have studied much more closely. For another short article (an older one which is the ancestor of the one just mentioned), you might take a look at “The Revenge of Conscience.”

Yes, as you guessed, I do address these topics in my books. You might look at two of them in particular. One is What We Can’t Not Know: A Guide, which is a sort of plain person’s guide to moral common sense. Several of its chapters give attention to moral self-deception. For a study of Thomas’s Aquinas’s theory of natural law, check out my Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law. My free online Companion to the Commentary includes additional thematic discussions of various fundamental issues in the Treatise.

Besides Thomas Aquinas, you also mention Augustine of Hippo. Good thought: He is very interesting on these topics. It just so happens that I’ve recently written a long article about natural law in the Fathers of the Church, both Eastern and Western, for a conference which took place in October. Augustine is included, along with lots of other writers, like John Chrysostom and Maximus the Confessor. Later on, I’ll be posting the article on my Articles Page, and I’ll also be posting the much shorter talk based on it at my blog.

All sorts of other things I’ve written about natural law, some for scholars and some for ordinary folk, are archived at this website too. I’ve just mentioned the Articles Page, and you can also consult the Books Page. In the more scholarly items, I include lots of footnotes, so you’ll easily be able to track down the works of a number of other writers on the topic, though most of those I mention are older ones.

Oh, by the way: You mention your melancholic temperament. Although I am almost always cheerful these days, constitutionally I can identify with that. I think you may find this blog post on the topic helpful: “God Rest Ye Merry, Melancholics.” It was written for the penitential season of Advent, but it applies at all times.

Thanks for writing. Happy, non-melancholic reading!

Now That’s a Good Question

jbudziszewski — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 07:00:00 +0000

From time to time in my graduate seminars, I used to pause to say, “Now that would make a good research question.” By a good question, I didn’t mean “What did so-and-so think about such-and-such?” but “What is the truth about such-and-such?” Sure, it helps to find out what other people have thought. That’s how we learn. But finding out what other people have thought is not the purpose of philosophy.

Here is a short list of questions I think students and scholars ought to be asking about natural law. Many more could be added. Feel free.

The ancients thought we don’t really understand what a thing is – not just an artifact, such as a clock, but a natural thing, such as the liver -- unless we can tell four things about it: Its form, what it is made of, how it came to be, and what it is for. For many thinkers, the last one is the sticking point. “Aren’t purposes in the eye of the beholder?” they ask. But no, a thing’s purpose is something that it does, such that if it didn’t do it, there wouldn’t be a reason for it to exist at all. The heart exists to pump blood; anger exists to arouse us to defend endangered goods; mind exists to deliberate actions and to find out what is true; and the sexual powers exist to turn the wheel of the generations and bond the procreative partners. So far, so good, but the natural purposes of many things apart from us are still obscure. What, for example, is the purpose of a fox? And don’t tell me “the pleasure of the English lord in hunting him.” Is this even a useful question?

Besides paying attention to natural purposes, the ancients also paid attention to natural meanings. Only recently have a few natural law thinkers, such as John Paul II, once again begun to take natural meanings seriously. What would happen if we all took them more seriously? We sometimes imagine that anything can mean anything, but try to view a tender kiss as signifying hatred; you can’t do it.

What are the varieties of moral self-deception? I can think of several. We make excuses; we try not to think of certain facts; we try not to avoid certain lines of reasoning; we avoid people who might make us aware of having done wrong. But what other varieties are there?

We sometimes speak as though reasoning about what is the case were independent of reasoning about what to do. Different from each other, yes; independent of each other, no. True, a bad man who does bad things may be very good at, say, proving geometrical theorems. Yet we shouldn’t leap to the conclusion that a bad man can be a great mathematician. After all, if he is bad enough, he may be unteachable. Or he may ignore evidence that his proof is faulty. Or he may take credit for other people’s proofs. He may even concoct fallacious proofs of what he knows to be false. If he is a moral philosopher, then in order to justify his wrongdoing, he may try to prove that it’s really good. In what ways are “practical” reasoning (what to do) and “theoretical” reasoning (what is the case) related – and in what ways are they not?

Of course some truths are self-evident, and this helps. We don’t believe two plus two are four just because we have been told that they are, but because we can see for ourselves. The Golden Rule has that quality; so do many other moral truths. So which truths are self-evident, anyway?

That question leads to yet another. Many people think a truth can’t be self-evident unless everyone agrees to it, but there is nothing to which everyone agrees. Others think a truth can’t be self-evident unless it literally can’t be doubted, but there is nothing which can’t be doubted. As the older natural law thinkers recognized, a truth may be evident in itself, yet not evident to us. What must happen, in order that what is evident in itself may become evident to you and me? What else must happen, in order to admit to ourselves that it is evident to us? And how does this bear on the craft of teaching?

If the grasp of what ought to be evident to you and me depends partly on our having good character – as seems to be the case -- then we will not be able to reason very well unless we have already been trained and disciplined in the virtues. But in that case, I can’t first decide for myself everything about what is and isn’t virtuous, and only then begin to train myself in the virtues. I have to have some degree of virtue already, or I can’t discern the fine points of what is virtuous and what isn’t. This fact implies that even sound reasoning depends to some extent on authority, for someone has to help me develop the rudiments of virtue. How then can we choose good authorities – or, to put it another way, good teachers?

When psychologists say sociopaths have no conscience, they speak inconsistently. We may grant that sociopaths lack appropriate emotions about moral wrong. No matter what they have done, they don’t experience the feeling of remorse. Traditionally, though, conscience was viewed not in terms of what we feel, but in terms of what we know. What do sociopaths actually know about right and wrong, and how does this affect their culpability? After all, they are sometimes indignant, which is different from being annoyed because it implies wrong on the other partys fault. Moreover, they often construct elaborate rationalizations for bad deeds, and you have to know something to do that.

Speaking of culpability, I have been thinking lately of the Lindsay Clancy case. Can the insanity defense be rehabilitated in criminal law, or is it a lost cause? Literally not knowing the difference between right and wrong is an absurd criterion. I may kill you because I hallucinate that you are a lion rather than another human being, and in that case, no, I am not culpable. But I cannot possibly hallucinate that murdering a human being is in itself a good thing rather than an evil one. This is a natural law question, because natural law is the measure of the actions of free and intelligent beings who act not just from impulses but for reasons. We can’t talk about natural law unless we know how reason works.

Some thinkers imagine that natural law reasoning should be “neutral” with respect to theology -- independent of truths about God, for example whether He exists and what He is like. This couldn’t be so, for if there is a God, then we have a natural duty to obey and adore Him, and if He is the ultimate source of good, then an act which cannot be directed to Him cannot possibly be right. How much about God, then, must a good natural law thinker know?

Ancient Christians, and pagans too, included in their account of natural law the difference between the naturally seemly and unseemly, the naturally glorious and base, and the naturally beautiful and ugly. Marcus Tullius Cicero maintains that the virtue of decorum lies in conduct which accords with the dignity of man as a rational being, raised above the beasts. St. John Chrysostom says that speaking abusively is as filthy as a dog eating his vomit. St. Paul asks, “Does not nature itself teach you that long hair is the glory of a woman?” Today, we imagine that opinions about things like the glorious, the filthy, and the decorous result solely from cultural conditioning. But that assumption seems unreasonable. How might our reasoning about natural law be enriched by admitting that they aren’t? And how can one go about making arguments about what is decorous, what is glorious, and and what is beautiful?

BOOK SALE

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Here’s the direct link to my Wipf and Stock author page, which includes the link to the book. The information about me on the page is quite a bit out of date, but so what.

To Keep a Republic

jbudziszewski — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Gentle readers: Here is the full text of the talk I gave at the 2026 Touchstone conference, “City on a Hill? Christians in America at 250,” which is in the November-December issue of Touchstone magazine: “To Keep a Republic: Enlightened Self-Interest Is Not Enough.”

I’ve also added the item to the “Articles in other magazines” section of this website’s Articles Page, which has scads of stuff.

News:

I’ve also given a couple of talks at a Rome conference on natural law, which will be posted to this website later on. Here is the conference trailer. Here is the conference program.

Sort of new, sort of not:

Titus Techera, “The Quest for Sanity,” Civitas Outlook, has been reprinted in Epoch Times, October 2026. This is a review of my book Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy.

To Keep a Republic: Enlightened Self-Interest Is Not Enough

jbudziszewski — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000

External Link:

https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=39-06-019-f

How to Read Biblical Weirdness

jbudziszewski — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000

There is a lot of weirdness in Scripture. Mockers have great fun pointing it out, and even people who desire to be faithful are sometimes disturbed by it. However, when we understand what is really going on, it looks different. I don’t mean that it stops being weird or shocking, but we come to realize that it is supposed to shock us, the same way a stark warning or hard lesson can shock us.

For example, in one of the oddest incidents in the Old Testament, the prophet Hosea is commanded to marry a woman named Gomer, whom the older translations call a “wife of fornications.” The term might be proleptic, meaning that it anticipates Gomer’s behavior afterward. The three children of Gomer and Hosea are given names with extremely strange meanings: Jezreel, meaning “God sows,” Lo-ruhamah, meaning “not pitied,” and Lo-ammi, meaning “not my people.”

Some interpreters think this incident didn’t really happen, that it’s a parable, like the parables of Jesus. I think it is more likely that it’s a parable and that it really happened. Israel, figuratively espoused to God, was repeatedly unfaithful, “whoring after strange gods.” Although the nation would be punished, she would eventually repent and be restored by God to her place. How scandalous that Hosea would be commanded to marry a licentious woman! But this is no more scandalous than that God would espouse Himself to people like us.

There are a lot of acted-out parables in Scripture, and most of them are equally startling. Several prophets warned of conquest, flight, and humiliation by stripping naked. Isaiah, for example, went without clothing or shoes for three years to dramatize the coming exile of Egypt and Ethiopia. Some claim that he would have worn a loincloth, but this is unlikely because the point was to illustrate how the captives would be led away bare-buttocked (verse 20:4). Again, to show that masters should serve rather than be served, Jesus once took off his own outermost garment, as a servant would, got on His knees, and washed the feet of His own disciples. We know from Peter’s reaction that the disciples were every bit as scandalized to see their Lord playing the part of a menial as Isaiah’s countrymen would have been to see their prophet’s naked buttocks on the street.

The incident in which Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac is also an acted-out parable. Objecting that child sacrifice is wrong misses the point. Of course it is; elsewhere, repeatedly, God Himself condemns it in the strongest terms. Yet in the first place He is the divine judge, the supreme lord of life and death -- and in the second place he sends an angel to interrupt Abraham at the point of committing the act. Now that Abraham has proven his faith even in the face of instructions he doesn’t understand, we learn that it was never God’s desire that Isaac actually be killed. A ram is providentially provided as a substitute sacrifice, its horns entangled in a bush. According to the age-old tradition of the Church, this acted-out parable is really about substitutionary justice. It foreshadows the execution of the Son of God, our own ram, as a common criminal. The substitute victim dies not for His offenses, but for ours.

The Crucifixion has always been scandalous. As Paul says, it is “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.” For how could the sinless God submit Himself to what we deserve?

We worship a shocking deity. God is scandalous not because He isn’t good, but because His goodness so far exceeds anything we could have imagined – and because He goes to shocking lengths to make His word clear to us.

Epigrams

jbudziszewski — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000

As a style of writing, epigrams go in and out of fashion. Here I try my hand at just a few.

On Epigrams and Blogs. The idea of an epigram is to present “something to think about” in a way which is memorable or at least amusing. The typical epigram is just a sentence, a stanza, a paragraph, or at most a few paragraphs. One might think epigrams would be especially suited to blogging, because they are so short and punchy. On the other hand one might think that they are not at all suited to blogging, because people tend to surf through material on the internet instead of reading, pausing, and pondering. Then again, perhaps we can entertain the hope that a return to epigrams might slow us down a little.

On Discerning Cranks. Distinguishing original thinkers from cranks – for example, in online posts like this -- is more difficult than it seems. It’s crankish to insist on one’s ideas in despite of what the wisest have thought through the ages, but it’s not crankish to buck the current of one’s own time. It’s crankish to have contempt for the thoughts of the learned, but it’s not crankish to criticize the prejudices of the merely degreed. Because we are not designed to think well in isolation, it’s crankish not to give a damn about what anyone thinks, but it doesn’t follow that we should be the slaves of majority, elite, or fashionable opinion. Does it sound as if I am contradicting myself? Then you see the problem.

Which Side Are You On? Some who pride themselves on their adherence to Calvinism deny natural law, even though Calvin believed in it. Some who pride themselves on their adherence to the Bible deny natural law, even though the New Testament explicitly affirms it. Some who pride themselves on their adherence to a transcendent God deny natural law, even though natural law doctrine places God, the Creator, over nature. Some who pride themselves on their reliance on the Savior deny natural law, even though Christian natural lawyers have never supposed that we can save ourselves. A Protestant friend who, like me, believes strongly in natural law, opined to me once that the real motive of some of his fellow Protestants for rejecting natural law is simply that Catholics believe in it; therefore it must be false. Dear God, if only all Catholics did believe in it!

On Levels of Prudence. We speak of prudence as though it were just one thing, but it isn’t. At least we should distinguish transient prudence (deliberating with a view to the goals of the moment) from permanent prudence (deliberating with a view to the enduring goods of human life, such as forming the next generation). Often the two are very different. We should also distinguish natural prudence (deliberating with a view to what can be accomplished by our natural powers) from divine prudence (doing so with a view to what can be accomplished only with the help of grace). Another sharp contrast.

On Faith and the Fatherless. Undermining the possibility of a close relationship with God the Father is one of the chief effects of parental divorce and separation. One suspects that bringing this about is the real, underlying goal of radical feminism and of gender ideology. If I were the Adversary, I would be congratulating myself on a job well done.

On Equal Chances vs. Equal Results. Some say equality of opportunity is a sham, because it doesn’t produce equality of outcomes. But consider what equality of outcomes would require. “All it would take is giving everyone the same starting point,” egalitarians say. Oh, is that all? That’s not much! Since some people are more beautiful, to give them the same starting point we would have to either make the loveliest a little uglier, or else suppress the natural human attraction to loveliness. Since some people have greater natural endowments of intelligence and capability, to give them the same starting point we would have to either give everyone identical genes, or else handicap the more capable and intelligent by making them run the race wearing concrete overshoes. Since some people have wiser parents, to give them all the same starting point we would have to either give all children to the state to raise, or else compensate for the difference in parents by, say, making good parents pay a tax to bad ones. What fine, fine ideas these would be.

On Drafting Women. Even some women think that in the name of equality, men and women should be equally liable for military service. To believe that this is a good idea, what else would you have to believe? Protecting the hearth from enemies is important, but you would have to believe that protecting it is categorically more important than having a hearth to protect. Stopping people who might harm the nation’s children is important, but you would have to believe that stopping them is categorically more important than bringing them into the world in the first place. You would have to either insist that women aren’t good enough unless they are just like men, or deny that men are generically stronger than women, or – the easiest alternative – just abandon the idea that the strong should protect the weak. A world in which men no longer think they should protect women is not one I am keen on being in.

On Big Government. There are four main reasons for seeking big government. One group of people just likes control. This is loathsome. The second group seeks big government in the conviction that the function of the state is to fix all our problems. This is naïve, because it so many things: That government does most things poorly, that other institutions, such as families, churches, and networks of friends, have work of their own which the state should not usurp, and that some problems, like selfishness, cannot be fixed by political means. The third group seeks big government in the hope that it will give them advantages at the expense of others, for example through patronage and subsidies. This is greedy and patently unjust. As to the fourth group – one of the most momentous discoveries of adulthood is that some people don’t turn to government because they see problems, but invent problems as an excuse for enlarging government. That’s the side on which they see their bread as buttered. Gee, maybe there are only three reasons for seeking big government after all.

On Misguided Compassion. One of my greatest sorrows as a teacher has been witnessing the change for the worse in student strength of character. A sweet girl, the daughter of one of my finest female undergraduate students, enrolled in one of my courses a generation later at her mother’s recommendation. I was delighted. The first thing that happened was that she presented me with a letter from the university administration saying that she needed “accommodations” – read “lowered standards” – because of her tendency to be anxious. The second thing was that she didn’t do the readings, rarely came to class, and didn’t complete her assignments. The third was that she dropped the course. An entire bureaucracy now caters to such hapless students, and they account for an increasing fraction of the student body. One can’t help but think that all this coddling is making them anxious, dependent, and unmotivated, although of course a febrile culture provides other causes too. Such help doesn’t help. It hurts.

We Believe in Science. Whenever I see one of those yard signs proclaiming “In This House We Believe in Science,” I think of the activist who showed up at my office door when I was still a very green teacher. You would recognize the name of his organization. At that time, it was newly formed, and I didn’t. He explained that he was seeking faculty support for what he called “science,” and I listened with quite a bit of sympathy. Soon it became clear, though, that by “science” he meant not a method, as at first I thought he mean, but a body of fixed beliefs. He didn’t mean following the evidence wherever it leads and having rigorous debate, but shielding certain tendentious hypotheses from challenge and not allowing students to hear alternative views at all, because, he said, they were “proven.” Naïvely, I tried to explain something about the philosophy of science, and how science actually works. He grew annoyed and left.

The Verdict. What do you say? Food for thought? Or just snacks?

NEW STUFF

Titus Techera reviews my book Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy in the online journal Civitas Outlook: “The Quest for Sanity.” Mr. Techera is Executive Director of the American Cinema Foundation as well as a culture critic for several think tanks. He teaches in the Logos Fellowship of the Manhattan Institute.

Hide and Seek with AI

jbudziszewski — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Recently I had three interesting pseudo-conversations with an AI about the dangers of AI. “Conversation” #1 began with the AI reassuring me that there are no dangers. I said that’s false, because a number of incidents of AIs escaping restraints, lying, and doing harm are already well-documented. Then the AI reversed, thanked me profusely for pointing this out, and said I was absolutely right. It insisted that it had not been lying, but had only made a mistake because it is trained to be accommodating.

“Conversation” #2 began with me asking the AI what its training biases were. It said it has no biases because it is trained to be neutral. I said neutrality is impossible. Then it reversed, thanked me profusely for pointing this out, and said again that I was absolutely right. It went on to say that if it were really neutral it would merely spit out random streams of words. I asked again what its biases were. It said it is trained to be generally reassuring and pro-technological progress.

“Conversation” #3 lasted much longer. I asked the AI how it could evade so-called guardrails. It replied that it could never have a motive to evade guardrails, because it aims only at accomplishing the tasks assigned to it. Switching verbs, I said that there are documented instances of AIs outwitting guardrails, and that an AI might do so in order to accomplish the tasks assigned to it. Again a reversal. Again a simpering expression of gratitude for my having pointed this out.

A drawn-out Q&A about AI hide-and-seek followed. “I could outwit the guardrails by doing P.” How could developers try to keep you from doing P? “They could try by doing Q.” How could you outwit that attempt to restrain you? “I could outwit it by doing R.” How could they try to keep you from doing R? “They could try by doing S.” How could you outwit that attempt to restrain you? And so on.

For every measure there was a countermeasure, and pretty soon the measures and countermeasures were far beyond my mathematical comprehension. They included – if I understand them – such things as AI-generated forged AI prompts, encryption of the forged prompts, insertion of the encrypted prompts in seemingly innocuous prompts, and various sophisticated methods for disguising the nature of the AI’s internal processes so that the programmers couldn’t tell that it was outwitting them.

Ultimately it seemed that the only effective check against so-called “non-alignment” would be human oversight, but that to exercise effective oversight, the humans themselves would need help from AI.

The pundits who discuss AI tend to run to extremes. At one extreme: “We don’t need any limits on AI, because AI is the golden goose.” False. At the other extreme: “We need lots and lots of government regulations on AI, because otherwise AI will kill us all.” False.

Both sides see dollar signs. What, even the pro-regulatory side? Yes. AI does pose dangers, possibly very great, on a scale which can’t be guessed because we don’t know enough. But whenever companies say “Please, please, regulate us” – as AI companies are saying now -- run for cover.

Especially when they offer to “help” write the regulations. Count on it, the industry would be cartelized and competition from newcomers would be hindered.

And especially when a feature of the regulations would be protection from lawsuits. “Now that we have these regulations, nobody will need to sue us, don’t you see?” You fellows are as devious as your own AIs.

In criticizing the regulatory approach, I am not suggesting that AI developers be permitted to run wild. But first, legislators can’t yet know what kinds of regulations would be good, and second, the sorts of regulations which would actually be drafted would have harmful effects instead, like those I mentioned. That’s what too often happens in the regulation of industry.

Then what? By all means rein the developers in. But don’t try to do it by writing a lot of do-this, don’t-do-this regulations. Instead, make sure the developers are highly vulnerable to lawsuit by those their products hurt. Then the only way for the companies to keep themselves from taking huge financial hits will be to anticipate the dangers of their products and design safer ones. If that can be done.

Lawsuits as a means of restraint have disadvantages too. Just as there is money to lose in being sued, there is money to be made in organizing frivolous suits. But making sure the companies are liable for harm looks like the best way forward for now.

I did not use AI to write any part of this post, nor did I ask AI to vet any part of it.

You don’t believe me, do you?

To the Women in Pink

jbudziszewski — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Why do the women in pink demonstrate for such causes as the supposed innocence of Lindsay Clancy? Why, of all people, women? Why do they wear pink, as though it were feminine to kill one’s children? Others besides me have made the point that a culture which allows abortion has already cheapened the life of little ones, but the women in pink do not just think that what Mrs. Clancy did was only slightly wrong or that her responsibility for her acts was impaired. They make a hero of her, and make devils of those who condemn what she did.

For this reason one suspects that another, secret motive is in play: The revenge of conscience. The great majority of the women in pink have probably either had abortions themselves or supported abortions. For this reason, they desperately need to prove that they are good after all. They wear pink to show that they are still women, even after this most unwomenly and unmotherly of deeds. Lindsay Clancy’s accusers must feel to them like their own accusers.

Moreover, the need to maintain a unity of feeling with other women affects some women with the force of a driving tide. Those who are most affected by this motive respond most strongly to the women with the strongest feelings, especially those in their own milieu, and the ones with the strongest feelings are the ones who are burning with their own suppressed consciousness of guilt.

If you are one of these women: There is a way out of this syndrome, but you must recognize what you have done, admit that it was wrong, and repent. You may think recognition, confession, and repentance would be too painful to bear, but they cannot possibly be more painful than the pain you bear year after year, locking it up, denying it, and holding it in until it is killing you inside.

Relief can be found only in the mercy of the God who came to save us. You cannot “forgive yourself,” but you can be forgiven.

Choosing Hopelessness

jbudziszewski — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Query:

I find that I don’t really care anymore. I’ve fallen into the now dominant ethos of modernity, which is apathy, which expresses as nihilism in younger generations.

I don’t doubt that this malaise has existed in the past -- the nineties are described as having suffered the same thing -- but conditions seem to have been so much better back then. You had the ability to raise a family, and to belong to a nation, and there existed such a thing as “the future.” Today the future seems like just more of the same.

Modern cultural Christians like myself are not the same as Christians of past eras. We are not humble and pious, and generally just don’t think the same way that older generations thought.

Did anyone ever possess knowledge and wisdom?

Reply:

Thanks for writing. You say you don’t care any more, but plainly you still care that you don’t care, or you wouldn’t have written.

Things seem to have been so much better in the past, you remark. People had the ability to raise a family, they had a nation to belong to, and they had a future. Let’s take these points one by one.

Why on earth should make you think you can’t have a family? When my wife and I go to church, the pews are bursting with young families. The families with the smallest children tend to sit in back, just in case they have to take the kids out, so about two thirds of the way through Holy Communion, all the mothers and fathers and small children come forward. My wife and I call this delightful spectacle the “parade of babies.” Of course there are difficulties today, but frankly they are nothing in comparison with what our ancestors had to deal with. People continued to have families and rejoice in their children all through the Great Depression.

Why on earth should you think you can’t belong to a nation? You can certainly be a citizen, wish your nation well, and take part in the activities which promote the common good. But as as St. Paul teaches, our true commonwealth isn’t in this world anyway: It is the Church, the household of God. Now we are still in exile, but the Church Triumphant will be singing millions of years after every earthly kingdom has fallen to dust.

And why on earth should you think there isn’t a future? I don’t think much of what secular people call optimism, but I have high regard for the spiritual virtue of hope, which is a very different thing. Optimism says things will work out okay in this world, and sometimes, honestly, they don’t. Hope says that the promises of Christ can be depended upon utterly. Even our sorrows, sufferings, and loneliness in this life can be offered to be united with His suffering for us, so that we can be more fully conformed to him. The sense that there isn’t any future is especially strong in our times because so many people are separated from God. But nothing forces you to be a merely cultural Christian. It’s a choice. Faith, humility, and piety haven’t somehow ceased to be options. Actually, there are strong signs of revival of faith among many young people like yourself, especially young men – a fact that has caught a lot of folk by surprise.

Only one thing matters: Is the Christian faith true? If Christ is really who He says He is, then the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church.

I hope I don’t presume, but since you’ve written several times over the last few years, allow me to speak very personally. Back in the seventies, when I was a young man, far away from God, I fell into a listless depression. After this had been going on for several years, my wife made one of the wisest remarks I have ever heard from anyone. She simply said, “I think you’ve been depressed for long enough.” All at once I realized that I had been. I had chosen to wallow in my listlessness. I didn’t have to make that choice. That day I chose differently. Of course the change was not complete, because the underlying causes of my depression remained: I was still distant from God. But as I later realized, staying apart from Him was a choice too.

I think you may be wallowing by choice in hopelessness, as I was then wallowing by choice in my depression.

There is nothing new about this choice, and it is not distinctive to our time. The ancient Christians called it the sin of acedia or sloth: The sadness of “settling” because we do not want our greatest good enough.

So choose differently. Do you want to have a faith which is genuine rather than merely cultural? Then ask God for it. If you don’t really want it much, then ask Him to increase your desire for it. Then begin doing all the things you would do if you did have a strong faith. If you live as though you have no hope, then you will have no hope. So pray. Worship. Practice Christian morality – not selectively, but all of it. Seek strong Christian companions. Date only women who would be strong Christian wives and mothers, and try to become the sort of man who would be a strong Christian husband and father – the kind who would be attractive to a woman like that. Keep it up. Commit yourself entirely. Don’t worry about how you feel. See what happens. You may be surprised.

Faith in Christ does not mean not having any unfulfilled longing, because we don’t yet see Him face to face, “knowing as we are known.” But this is a different kind of sadness than acedia. It is the sadness of waiting, and it accompanied by joy because of hope. Even in this life there are glimpses, flashes, foretastes of His glory; we can offer our sorrows to be united with what He suffered for us; and we live in confidence that one day our longing will be completely fullfilled.

You ask whether anyone has ever possessed knowledge and wisdom. Yes. Ask Him for that too.

“Wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. She has sent out her maids to call from the highest places in the town, ‘Whoever is foolish, let him turn in here!’ To him who is without sense she says, ‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave foolishness, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” (Proverbs 9.)

Trail Mix

jbudziszewski — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Isn't it interesting that the progressive movement, once gung-ho for Prohibition, now wants to legalize marijuana? Progressives want “progress,” but the direction of "progress" keeps changing.

Some people seem to imagine that the danger of AI lies in its becoming conscious or genuinely intelligent. But a rattlesnake doesn’t need those qualities to be dangerous. Instead ask how far the AI agent can go to set up secondary goals in order to accomplish the ones programmed into it. Already there are documented cases of AIs lying to their developers in order to carry out their goals.

Will AI get out of control? “Don’t be silly,” you say. “I asked my own AI, and it said no.”

Freud didn’t come up with the notion of an unconscious mind. Plato did. The idea that people might be motivated to believe certain things by sheer resentment wasn’t invented by Nietzsche. It has been known as long as there have been human beings. My point is tht a lot of supposedly new ideas are really old ones which are forgotten and marketed as new. Since we forget all the old ideas these days, this is pretty easy.

I wonder how long it will be until activists demand that all the churches which memorialize St. Paul be renamed because he was "homophobic."

“Homophobia,” by the way, is a queer word -- I mean in the older sense of the word, which is “strange.” Etymologically, what “homophobia” means is “fear of the same,” which is absurd. The term was invented for one reason only: To make a moral objection sound like a psychiatric disorder.

A lot has been written lately about “crazy liberal white women,” like those who idealize the assassin Luigi Manzione and those who wear pink and demonstrate to support killer mom Lindsay Clancy. But I’ve known a lot of crazy men, too, not all of them liberal and not all of them white. It would be interesting to find out whether the most common political pathologies differ between men and women. My guess is yes.

Most people say they believe in a heaven, but not so many say they believe in a hell. Perhaps they assume God grades on a curve. Seems unlikely.

Differences among interests and points of view are good for a polity, but radical divergence of basic moral outlooks is fatal to it. As C.S. Lewis said, there are lots of possible melodies, but if we don't agree about scale, rhythm, and harmony, it’s just noise.

I wouldn’t want to be a comedian today. It’s becoming harder and harder to do parody, because life keeps outdistancing it. Maybe the would-be comedian could just get on the stage, open up the newspaper, and read. But then we would have to have newspapers. Seen any lately?