I read an article recently in the Nation about Nietzsche and Hayek. I'm not certain the author firmly establishes the link to Hayek--the main thrust of the argument seems to be that they were both from late 19th century Vienna--although some quotes near the end may nail his thesis, namely that Hayek did not favour liberty for the masses, but only for the elite. Frankly, I've always thought Hayek's work on distributed systems of information supported democracy and egalitarianism, but Hayek himself may not have seen it that way.
But what I was struck by, yet again, was the crude elitism of Nietzsche's philosophy, the ebuliant rush to kneel before the ubermensch. Yet despite all of his appeals to classical standards, Nietzsche's overman is a hero without virtues. All forms of morality are simply the imposition of the masses upon the Great Man. And the obvious question is that, if someone really is a Great Man, how is it that the masses were able to tame and subjugate him?
The answer is, they don't, nor was Christianity the origin of the virtue of charity. Generosity has always been the trait of great leaders; in the early sagas of northern Europe and Iceland, the great king is called the ring-giver, a man, or woman, whose exercise of charity and generosity sometimes takes them to the point of penury, and in this way inspires the loyalty that makes him or her a great leader. Christianity did not make charity a virtue, it simply recognized what was already regarded as a virtue in the ancient world, for Christianity owed as much to the philosophy of the Greeks and Romans as it did to that of the Jews. And in all of these cultures, charity was a virtue.
The truly great man or woman will rise in any society, and will do so with the blessing of the masses, because they will combine at least some of the classic virtues that all admire: generosity, humility, loyalty, courage, intelligence, creativity, honesty, wisdom, and knowledge. Any system of governance that discourages these or does not reward them will be quickly surpassed. Competition does not merely exist between individuals, but between groups. And any society that does not respect the full range of virtues will find itself in trouble.
Moral realism is a consequence of epistemological realism. If nothing is true, nothing can be good, and conversely, if one recognizes that there are facts that are the case, one must eventually accept that there are certain rules of social conduct that are better than others. Curiously, Nietzsche fell prey to a vestigial dogma; when he gave up Christianity, he did not give up the idea that all morals came from God. But he was no fan of evolution either. If he had been, he might have realized that we have evolved a conception of what is fair and good--indeed, we came to this point before we were human. All of the great apes share this sensibility. A chimpanzee, given a root vegetable when his neighbor is given a piece of fruit, will throw the vegetable away in protest, even though he is hungry. Even dogs know what is fair; a dog who plays roughly, and who does not bow and apologize for too rough play, is ostracized--a penalty that is usually lethal.
Because Nietzsche ignores the virtues, he became the champion of mediocrity, however much he wanted to be otherwise. Everyone thinks they are the ubermensch. Everyone thinks they are above average--it's a well known cognitive defect of our species. By stripping the hero of virtues, Nietzsche made it possible for anyone to claim to be a hero. His lowbrow descendant, Ayn Rand, painted greed as the mark of the hero, a development that Nietzsche would have despised--indeed, he despised most of his descendants. His sister married a proto-nazi, whom Nietzsche despised, and they came to blows with Nietzsche the loser.
It is astonishing how many intellectuals praise the marshal ethic, even though it is at best the willingness of the strong to protect the weak against thugs, while at worst (and most often), it is simply the ethos of the thug. Physical courage is of course a component of intellectual courage, but this does not mean a willingness or the capacity to beat people up. Rather, it means a determination to stand ones ground against physical threats. This is the essence of the Hegelian Master-Slave dialectic, in which the master becomes master by his refusal to accept any other role, and the slave overthrows him by doing the same. Christopher Hitchens, who, after forty years without physical exertion could not even be reasonably expected to be able to run away, much less fight, still stood his ground against physical threats and made no attempt to hide himself from those who meant him harm. Feminists would do well to take note; physical prowess is not required for physical courage, only the determination to stand one's ground. Only when feminists do this without resort to the protection of male officialdom will they be taken as equals, rather than delicate flowers to be coddled--and managed--by the man folk.
And yet, the thug is another example of the ubermensch gone to seed; the man of a single virtue, and a dubious one at that. A person with the virtues to avoid war, and to defeat the thugs with words, is worth a thousand who can win a war, because if you are at war, you've already lost.
Nietzsche didn't understand that. And so, we have the Goobermeschen.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Friday, December 07, 2012
Invocation of the Supernatural
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." - Seneca the Younger
I have come to the conclusion that most of religion has always consisted of the invocation of supernatural beings for material benefit. Sophisticated theology was never of interest to the rank and file of believers, but was to those who are, when you get right down to it, so far off the beaten path that they were heretics, or for all intents and purposes, atheists. I disagree with R. Joseph Hoffman when he claims that Spinoza and Einstein were not atheists. Spinoza was considered an atheist by the religious people of Amsterdam, who certainly knew a great deal more of what it means to believe in God than any of the atheist-buts in circulation today. As a former believer I can tell you that the dividing line is not whether you use the word God, but whether you believe you can pray to the thing and expect some sort of result. To be of the faithful, you must be open to the possibility of the miraculous. Close that door, and you have quit the church--all churches, forever. Both Spinoza and Einstein closed that door and locked it shut.
So much ink and invective is spent on the divide between those who believe religion to be true and those who consider it false that almost no attention is paid to Seneca's third party, the rulers. I'm talking about the likes of Karl Rove, Osama Bin Laden, and Vladimir Putin. Rove says in public that he is not fortunate enough to be a man of faith; in private, he calls his base "the crazies"--yet Rove can still play pied piper to that base, and deliver it reliably to you by playing a two note ditty of fags and fetuses. When W. met Putin, he said he knew he could trust him when he saw that he wore a crucifix. But a man who can easily exchange the hammer and sickle with a crucifix does not believe in God, he believes in nothing. And Bin Laden worshipped only himself, and called that Allah. The New Atheists never really concerned themselves with the dreams of the people, until it became clear that those dreams had became weapons in the hands of the rulers.
You might consider the invocation of supernatural beings pointless, given that they don't exist. But politicians invoke God to great material benefit, and it seems to work. They get elected, or gain power in other ways. It's a little bit of magical realism that intrudes upon the mundane. Now here's another bit of magical realism: you know that bit about not taking God's name in vain? I don't think that was about what you said when you hit your thumb with a hammer. I think that when those ancient Hebrews invented the whole damn business, they discovered that their leaders could not help justifiying themselves in the name of God, and this is what those surly, smelly old bastards wandering in from the desert were so upset about when they came up with that particular stricture. This has been going on a long time, long enough to get its own commandment.
Now, why this works has a great deal to do with one of the primary motivations for adherance to religion. Reason and evidence is great, but only if the person you're talking to has made an allegiance to the truth--that is, they are determined to know what's true regardless of whether they like it or not. Not many people have this conviction. This goes beyond science, beyond academic philosophy, and enters into the realm of philosophy as a way of life. Most human beings follow fashion; the loudest voice, the greatest number, the biggest celebrity, the most popular, the most successful, the biggest budget. If you speak for God, you are Oz the Great and Terrible, you speak with a Voice of Thunder, and you are always in fashion. And this applies whether you are a pundit, a politician, or just some idiot trying to shout down your neighbours.
All of which is terrible religion, and would have any self respecting prophet tearing their hair and gnashing their teeth. It's against the rules--their rules, as well as ours. But that's just sophisticated theology, and really, who cares? But it might be interesting to throw this in the face of the next believer who tries to shout at you with a Voice of Thunder.
I have come to the conclusion that most of religion has always consisted of the invocation of supernatural beings for material benefit. Sophisticated theology was never of interest to the rank and file of believers, but was to those who are, when you get right down to it, so far off the beaten path that they were heretics, or for all intents and purposes, atheists. I disagree with R. Joseph Hoffman when he claims that Spinoza and Einstein were not atheists. Spinoza was considered an atheist by the religious people of Amsterdam, who certainly knew a great deal more of what it means to believe in God than any of the atheist-buts in circulation today. As a former believer I can tell you that the dividing line is not whether you use the word God, but whether you believe you can pray to the thing and expect some sort of result. To be of the faithful, you must be open to the possibility of the miraculous. Close that door, and you have quit the church--all churches, forever. Both Spinoza and Einstein closed that door and locked it shut.
So much ink and invective is spent on the divide between those who believe religion to be true and those who consider it false that almost no attention is paid to Seneca's third party, the rulers. I'm talking about the likes of Karl Rove, Osama Bin Laden, and Vladimir Putin. Rove says in public that he is not fortunate enough to be a man of faith; in private, he calls his base "the crazies"--yet Rove can still play pied piper to that base, and deliver it reliably to you by playing a two note ditty of fags and fetuses. When W. met Putin, he said he knew he could trust him when he saw that he wore a crucifix. But a man who can easily exchange the hammer and sickle with a crucifix does not believe in God, he believes in nothing. And Bin Laden worshipped only himself, and called that Allah. The New Atheists never really concerned themselves with the dreams of the people, until it became clear that those dreams had became weapons in the hands of the rulers.
You might consider the invocation of supernatural beings pointless, given that they don't exist. But politicians invoke God to great material benefit, and it seems to work. They get elected, or gain power in other ways. It's a little bit of magical realism that intrudes upon the mundane. Now here's another bit of magical realism: you know that bit about not taking God's name in vain? I don't think that was about what you said when you hit your thumb with a hammer. I think that when those ancient Hebrews invented the whole damn business, they discovered that their leaders could not help justifiying themselves in the name of God, and this is what those surly, smelly old bastards wandering in from the desert were so upset about when they came up with that particular stricture. This has been going on a long time, long enough to get its own commandment.
Now, why this works has a great deal to do with one of the primary motivations for adherance to religion. Reason and evidence is great, but only if the person you're talking to has made an allegiance to the truth--that is, they are determined to know what's true regardless of whether they like it or not. Not many people have this conviction. This goes beyond science, beyond academic philosophy, and enters into the realm of philosophy as a way of life. Most human beings follow fashion; the loudest voice, the greatest number, the biggest celebrity, the most popular, the most successful, the biggest budget. If you speak for God, you are Oz the Great and Terrible, you speak with a Voice of Thunder, and you are always in fashion. And this applies whether you are a pundit, a politician, or just some idiot trying to shout down your neighbours.
All of which is terrible religion, and would have any self respecting prophet tearing their hair and gnashing their teeth. It's against the rules--their rules, as well as ours. But that's just sophisticated theology, and really, who cares? But it might be interesting to throw this in the face of the next believer who tries to shout at you with a Voice of Thunder.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
In Defense of Modernity
When discovering facts about the world, there is one method that is proven to work, and only one. It is usually called the scientific method, but it might more properly be called the modern method. It consists of discovering evidence, reasoning from that evidence to a conclusion or general principle, and then submitting both the evidence and the argument to the review of our peers, so that any flaws can be picked out and critiqued. This is the method we attempt in our science, our courts, our journalism, our history, our politics, and in any other area where we need to understand facts about the world.
This approach is now under attack from two directions: pre-modern understandings of the world, which include religion and old folk tales, and post-modern philosophies, by which all models of the world are equally valid. Post-modern arguments are now enlisted to defend pre-modern opinions--in the absence of absolute certainty, post-modernists have made the colossal mistake of assuming that nothing is true, and that all opinions are equal--leaving the field open to pre-modern opinions, not only of religions, but of other pre-modern cultures.
Although Marx made critiques of capitalism that cannot be ignored (or that we ignore at our peril) he also set the stage for post-modernism, with the idea that claims about social relations are not objective, but are always made in the context of the existing political economy, and are therefore relative to the current status quo. But his attack was only upon dominant opinions concerning social relations, which are aggregates of subjective opinion. It has no bearing upon facts. My pen in on my desk, and this fact falsifies all opinions which hold that my pen is elsewhere. Post-modernism jumps from the subjective to the objective, and from the denial of Truth with a capital T, to all truth. Their claim upon Marx as the father of this folly is almost entirely without basis, except that he seems to imply that there is nothing about human social relations that are matters of fact and not subject to revision (a public denial which will, I believe, bury Stephen Jay Gould's reputation in ignominy.) This is the basis of the nature vs. nurture debate, in which Marxists resolutely deny all influence of nature, genetics, evolution, or inborn talent or proclivity. Indeed, this is an attitude which persists across the entire left, which makes them blind to a number of social challenges. Try to talk to someone on the left about the uneven distribution of intelligence, and you will meet a brick wall. In an information age, in which everyone is expected to adapt to rapidly changing job requirements, how can you possibly address the problem of the permanently disenfranchised if you do not come to grips with this? What happens to the ditch diggers, the farm hands, the street sweepers, when all of these jobs are replaced by a man who must be smart enough to run an expensive machine that replaces them all? And so the most burning question of our age will be ignored by the right, who have no interest in solving it, and by the left, who have no interest in addressing it.
This blurring of subjective opinion and objective fact is encouraged by both religions and political ideologies, who find themselves in an empirical deficit, and seek to undermine the very standards of truth to get a free ride. The problem is particularly acute for theologians, whose discipline evinces all the trademark symptoms of an art, rather than a domain of knowledge: endless branching, proliferation, varying styles, forms, schools, a cacophony of opinions without recourse to any means of resolution, with many theologies beginning with outright contradictions, upon which anything can be proven. Certainly there are clever reasonings; Russell's proof that he was the pope, from the premise that 1 = 2, was a flash of brilliance, but utterly fallacious for all its genius, as Russell made clear. The faithful aren't stupid, but their intelligence yields only elaborate rationalizations, not truth. The problem, for theology, is made worse by the absence of any method of resolution. But as Orwell made so clear, without truth or a method to establish it, there is only the boot forever stamping on the human face. This is the Triumph of the Will; without reason and evidence, without truth, there is only force. Religion has no recourse but the boot. And it will always seek the power to stamp out its opposition.
Our modern habit of reasoned discussion and resolution is not shared by advocates of pre-modernism and post-modernism. They believe that there is no method leading to truth, and all opinion is established by force, and must be changed by force. The political correctness they advocate is enforced by the power of the police. The likes of Stanley Fish are court jesters who have long since ceased to amuse, perpetual adolescents under the protection of a king they no longer serve. Not Lear's fool, who spoke truth to power, but a populist fool who does not believe in truth.
If the protection of modernity were ever removed from these fools, they would be consumed by the chaos they invoke. Unfortunately for us, and fortunately for them, they are protected from that by the defenders of modernity, who know very well that there is nothing but the boot for those who abandon it.
This approach is now under attack from two directions: pre-modern understandings of the world, which include religion and old folk tales, and post-modern philosophies, by which all models of the world are equally valid. Post-modern arguments are now enlisted to defend pre-modern opinions--in the absence of absolute certainty, post-modernists have made the colossal mistake of assuming that nothing is true, and that all opinions are equal--leaving the field open to pre-modern opinions, not only of religions, but of other pre-modern cultures.
Although Marx made critiques of capitalism that cannot be ignored (or that we ignore at our peril) he also set the stage for post-modernism, with the idea that claims about social relations are not objective, but are always made in the context of the existing political economy, and are therefore relative to the current status quo. But his attack was only upon dominant opinions concerning social relations, which are aggregates of subjective opinion. It has no bearing upon facts. My pen in on my desk, and this fact falsifies all opinions which hold that my pen is elsewhere. Post-modernism jumps from the subjective to the objective, and from the denial of Truth with a capital T, to all truth. Their claim upon Marx as the father of this folly is almost entirely without basis, except that he seems to imply that there is nothing about human social relations that are matters of fact and not subject to revision (a public denial which will, I believe, bury Stephen Jay Gould's reputation in ignominy.) This is the basis of the nature vs. nurture debate, in which Marxists resolutely deny all influence of nature, genetics, evolution, or inborn talent or proclivity. Indeed, this is an attitude which persists across the entire left, which makes them blind to a number of social challenges. Try to talk to someone on the left about the uneven distribution of intelligence, and you will meet a brick wall. In an information age, in which everyone is expected to adapt to rapidly changing job requirements, how can you possibly address the problem of the permanently disenfranchised if you do not come to grips with this? What happens to the ditch diggers, the farm hands, the street sweepers, when all of these jobs are replaced by a man who must be smart enough to run an expensive machine that replaces them all? And so the most burning question of our age will be ignored by the right, who have no interest in solving it, and by the left, who have no interest in addressing it.
This blurring of subjective opinion and objective fact is encouraged by both religions and political ideologies, who find themselves in an empirical deficit, and seek to undermine the very standards of truth to get a free ride. The problem is particularly acute for theologians, whose discipline evinces all the trademark symptoms of an art, rather than a domain of knowledge: endless branching, proliferation, varying styles, forms, schools, a cacophony of opinions without recourse to any means of resolution, with many theologies beginning with outright contradictions, upon which anything can be proven. Certainly there are clever reasonings; Russell's proof that he was the pope, from the premise that 1 = 2, was a flash of brilliance, but utterly fallacious for all its genius, as Russell made clear. The faithful aren't stupid, but their intelligence yields only elaborate rationalizations, not truth. The problem, for theology, is made worse by the absence of any method of resolution. But as Orwell made so clear, without truth or a method to establish it, there is only the boot forever stamping on the human face. This is the Triumph of the Will; without reason and evidence, without truth, there is only force. Religion has no recourse but the boot. And it will always seek the power to stamp out its opposition.
Our modern habit of reasoned discussion and resolution is not shared by advocates of pre-modernism and post-modernism. They believe that there is no method leading to truth, and all opinion is established by force, and must be changed by force. The political correctness they advocate is enforced by the power of the police. The likes of Stanley Fish are court jesters who have long since ceased to amuse, perpetual adolescents under the protection of a king they no longer serve. Not Lear's fool, who spoke truth to power, but a populist fool who does not believe in truth.
If the protection of modernity were ever removed from these fools, they would be consumed by the chaos they invoke. Unfortunately for us, and fortunately for them, they are protected from that by the defenders of modernity, who know very well that there is nothing but the boot for those who abandon it.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
We Only Visit Objectivity, But We Do Not Live There
Skepticism is a recurring theme in philosophy, but Descartes introduced the theme of radical skepticism, doubts concerning all knowledge. Modern philosophy was a war with partisans on all sides: idealism, materialism, spiritualism, rationalism, empiricism, and so on. This war reached the twentieth century with two camps still obsessed with certainty, Truth with a capital T. The Anglo analytics sought Truth in empiricism and rationality; the postmodernists observed the failure of the analytics to attain it and decided that there was no truth. But notice the loss of the capital T. The failure to find Eternal Truth does not mean that there is no truth. There is still truth in the particular sense: the cat really did sit on the mat. This does not mean that all cats sit on mats, but the particular event is still a fact. There is also truth in the provisional sense: this model of reality is, to the best of our knowledge, true, until contrary evidence disproves it and a better model is found.
Pragmatism took the approach that there is no truth, but we adopt what works. The problem with this approach is that the model that works best is also the most accurate, precisely because accuracy lends itself to unintended uses. A model of reality which simply proved useful would be useful only in those areas which had already been explored or exploited. But truth, by this model, should make technological innovation impossible, simply because there is no reason to assume that such pragmatic solutions, found workable in one application, would be applicable in novel situations. Take our model of the shape of the world. Because the curvature of the earth is so slight (about 0.000126 degrees per mile,) a flat earth was a workable model for farmers, or for navigators on the Mediterranean. To travel to the Americas, navigators needed the model of the world as a sphere. Newton predicted that the world would be an oblate spheroid; there is, in fact, a difference of about 44 kilometers difference between the radius at the poles and the equator. Useful for telemetry of orbits, perhaps, but not for navigation on the ocean. It later turned out that the earth is ever so slightly pear shaped, with a slight bulge in the north. Interesting, but not of much use unless you needed precise positioning down to centimeters.
But as Isaac Asimov remarked in The Relativity of Wrong, "...if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." The accuracy of our model of the world lends itself to novel and unintended results and uses. A purely pragmatic idea of knowledge does not provide for that.
We actually do know things. These may not satisfy the expectations of Truth, but they are true. These truths constitute knowledge, and knowledge narrows the possible. You can believe whatever you like, but you cannot know whatever you like; to actually know something, it must be true. The fact that my pen is on this desk means that it is not in the billions of other places that it could be. Indeed, it is the nature of knowledge to do so, to settle conjecture upon a single point. And this distinguishes knowledge from expression, which is the business of art, and which is as varied as individual experience and opinion. But no truth may contradict another truth. There are not many truths in the postmodern sense; you cannot affirm A & ~A without accepting nonsense and the death of knowledge. There are only many truths in the scientific sense, truths which link together to form a coherent model of the world. And while a model of reality is not reality itself, there is an isomorphic relation between the two. The model maps onto reality in a consistent way.
True, knowledge may consist of knowing someone's opinion of something, or of knowing the contents of mythologies. It is true that Tolkien's elves were immortal, which is of great interest to aficiandos of Tokien's mythology (of which I am one.) But this does not mean that elves exist, and one cannot spin this into knowledge of basic reality. Theology is knowledge of opinion and mythology, and a form of expression, but it must never be confused with knowledge of reality. Mythology tells us nothing about the world. But it does tell us a lot about ourselves.
Human beings are not very good at discovering truth, and are utterly incapable of discovering Truth. We are, however, very good at motivated reasoning; starting with a conclusion, we're very good at coming up with reasons to believe it. This comes in handy in convincing ourselves and others, but to actually figure something out, we need to submit ourselves to the discipline of evidence and peer review. That is, we need to be willing to admit it when we are wrong, and this is not something that comes easily to us. The material world, the world that exists independently of us, is not the world we live in. It is a world we visit with great effort and expense, and rarely at that.
We live in a world of ghosts. Memes are not ideas, nor clusters of ideas, for ideas have no emotive value. Memes have personality; we take them on because they fit into who we are. They are ideas or mannerisms that we like, usually fragments of people that we identify with, and we build ourselves out of these fragments. We live in an ocean of social currents, dreams, metaphors, longings, fantasies, and biases. Stories are a remarkably efficient means of compressing general ideas regarding the social sphere, about what it is to be human and to live with other people. But the creatures of myth are hyperbolic representations of ourselves and others. not real beings or events in the world. By confusing mythology with fact, the faithful lose these deeper meanings. The myths are about us. Science is about the material world, and world we visit only rarely and see only dimly.
We have no talent for cosmology. Our minds are adapted for the middle world, and the scales of the very large and very small are intuitively incomprehensible to us, as anything beyond space and time would be. Mathematics gives us some grasp on scales outside of our core competence, but mathematics without evidence is simply conjecture, and we will never have any evidence of something beyond our own universe--not any evidence that we can understand. Any question that includes "why" talks about intentionality, but intentionality is rooted in time, in the linear and temporal form or intent, followed by action, followed by consequence. To ask why there is something rather than nothing is an attempt to impose social explanations upon the material, and worse, to project intentionality beyond space and time itself, where intentionality as we understand it cannot possibly operate. This is both a category error and a colossal failure of imagination.
If we are actually going to know anything, we have to accept our limitations, and be willing to admit that we don't know when we don't know. This is not an open invitation to fill the void of ignorance with assumptions. To say that we don't know only means that we don't know; it doesn't mean that therefore, X could be true. X could be anything, and to say that anything could be true is the same as saying that nothing is true. We have to be content with our ignorance, and not fill that void with conjecture.
Pragmatism took the approach that there is no truth, but we adopt what works. The problem with this approach is that the model that works best is also the most accurate, precisely because accuracy lends itself to unintended uses. A model of reality which simply proved useful would be useful only in those areas which had already been explored or exploited. But truth, by this model, should make technological innovation impossible, simply because there is no reason to assume that such pragmatic solutions, found workable in one application, would be applicable in novel situations. Take our model of the shape of the world. Because the curvature of the earth is so slight (about 0.000126 degrees per mile,) a flat earth was a workable model for farmers, or for navigators on the Mediterranean. To travel to the Americas, navigators needed the model of the world as a sphere. Newton predicted that the world would be an oblate spheroid; there is, in fact, a difference of about 44 kilometers difference between the radius at the poles and the equator. Useful for telemetry of orbits, perhaps, but not for navigation on the ocean. It later turned out that the earth is ever so slightly pear shaped, with a slight bulge in the north. Interesting, but not of much use unless you needed precise positioning down to centimeters.
But as Isaac Asimov remarked in The Relativity of Wrong, "...if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." The accuracy of our model of the world lends itself to novel and unintended results and uses. A purely pragmatic idea of knowledge does not provide for that.
We actually do know things. These may not satisfy the expectations of Truth, but they are true. These truths constitute knowledge, and knowledge narrows the possible. You can believe whatever you like, but you cannot know whatever you like; to actually know something, it must be true. The fact that my pen is on this desk means that it is not in the billions of other places that it could be. Indeed, it is the nature of knowledge to do so, to settle conjecture upon a single point. And this distinguishes knowledge from expression, which is the business of art, and which is as varied as individual experience and opinion. But no truth may contradict another truth. There are not many truths in the postmodern sense; you cannot affirm A & ~A without accepting nonsense and the death of knowledge. There are only many truths in the scientific sense, truths which link together to form a coherent model of the world. And while a model of reality is not reality itself, there is an isomorphic relation between the two. The model maps onto reality in a consistent way.
True, knowledge may consist of knowing someone's opinion of something, or of knowing the contents of mythologies. It is true that Tolkien's elves were immortal, which is of great interest to aficiandos of Tokien's mythology (of which I am one.) But this does not mean that elves exist, and one cannot spin this into knowledge of basic reality. Theology is knowledge of opinion and mythology, and a form of expression, but it must never be confused with knowledge of reality. Mythology tells us nothing about the world. But it does tell us a lot about ourselves.
Human beings are not very good at discovering truth, and are utterly incapable of discovering Truth. We are, however, very good at motivated reasoning; starting with a conclusion, we're very good at coming up with reasons to believe it. This comes in handy in convincing ourselves and others, but to actually figure something out, we need to submit ourselves to the discipline of evidence and peer review. That is, we need to be willing to admit it when we are wrong, and this is not something that comes easily to us. The material world, the world that exists independently of us, is not the world we live in. It is a world we visit with great effort and expense, and rarely at that.
We live in a world of ghosts. Memes are not ideas, nor clusters of ideas, for ideas have no emotive value. Memes have personality; we take them on because they fit into who we are. They are ideas or mannerisms that we like, usually fragments of people that we identify with, and we build ourselves out of these fragments. We live in an ocean of social currents, dreams, metaphors, longings, fantasies, and biases. Stories are a remarkably efficient means of compressing general ideas regarding the social sphere, about what it is to be human and to live with other people. But the creatures of myth are hyperbolic representations of ourselves and others. not real beings or events in the world. By confusing mythology with fact, the faithful lose these deeper meanings. The myths are about us. Science is about the material world, and world we visit only rarely and see only dimly.
We have no talent for cosmology. Our minds are adapted for the middle world, and the scales of the very large and very small are intuitively incomprehensible to us, as anything beyond space and time would be. Mathematics gives us some grasp on scales outside of our core competence, but mathematics without evidence is simply conjecture, and we will never have any evidence of something beyond our own universe--not any evidence that we can understand. Any question that includes "why" talks about intentionality, but intentionality is rooted in time, in the linear and temporal form or intent, followed by action, followed by consequence. To ask why there is something rather than nothing is an attempt to impose social explanations upon the material, and worse, to project intentionality beyond space and time itself, where intentionality as we understand it cannot possibly operate. This is both a category error and a colossal failure of imagination.
If we are actually going to know anything, we have to accept our limitations, and be willing to admit that we don't know when we don't know. This is not an open invitation to fill the void of ignorance with assumptions. To say that we don't know only means that we don't know; it doesn't mean that therefore, X could be true. X could be anything, and to say that anything could be true is the same as saying that nothing is true. We have to be content with our ignorance, and not fill that void with conjecture.
Friday, September 02, 2011
The Heroic Ideological Myth
A plucky band of adventurers pit themselves against an evil empire, led by (what else) an evil Emperor or an evil Cabal. But with assistance from a mysterious power, the adventurers, by defeating the malevolent power behind the empire, will establish a better world, a world guided by the mysterious power.
This is the plot of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and dozens of other works of science fiction, fantasy, and mythology. It is also the plot espoused by dozens of religions and political ideologies. It was the plot that Stalin used to justify the Gulag, and Hitler used to justify the Holocaust. It is the most popular plot in the world.
For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong. If your solution follows this plot, it is almost certainly one of those.
So let's pick out the basic elements of the myth. There is a plucky band of adventurers struggling against an Evil Empire, led by an Evil Emperor or Organization. There is a Mysterious Power of Good which will both aid the adventurers and guide the outcome. There is a Malevolent Power to be overcome, and a Utopia that will result.
So, Star Wars:
The Rebels pit themselves against the empire, led by the Sith Lords. But with the power of the Light Side of the Force, the Rebels, by defeating the Dark Side, will restore the Republic, which will by guided by the Light Side of the Force.
The Lord of the Rings:
The Fellowship of the Ring pit themselves against Morder, led by Sauron. But with assistance of the Valar, the Fellowship, by destroying the Ring, will restore Gondor, a kingdom ruled by a just king guided by the Valar.
Harry Potter:
Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the Order of the Pheonix pit themselves against the Death Eaters, led by Voldemort. But with the power of love, Harry and his allies, by destroying the Horcruxes, will restore the wizarding world, a world guided by love.
Those are the myths of fantasy. These are the myths that operate in our own world:
Fundamentalist Islam
Faithful Muslims pit themselves against the Satanic forces of the West, led by the President of the United States. But with the power of Allah, True Muslims, by defeating the Great Satan, will establish the Caliphate, a world guided by Allah.
Fundamentalist Christianity
Faithful Christian pit themselves against the Satanic forces in the world, led by Satan himself. But with the power of God, Christians, by defeating the forces of immorality, will establish the Kingdom of God, a world guided by Jesus.
Marxism
The Proletariat will pit themselves against Capitalism, led by the Capitalists. But with knowledge of Dialectical Materialism, the Proletariat, by defeating Capitalism, will establish the workers paradise, a world guided by egalitarianism, the final product of Dialectical Materialism.
Conspiracy Theorist
Those in the know will pit themselves against the World Order, led by the Illuminati. But with the power of the Truth, the Informed, by defeating the Global Conspiracy, will lead the sheeple to enlightenment, a world guided by the Truth.
Post-Modernism
The postmodern critics shall pit themselves against the dominant narrative, led by cultural hegemons. But with the knowledge of Critical Theory, the postmodernists, by defeating the narrative of dead white European males, will establish a truly multicultural world, a world guided by Theory. (Theory here is a catch-all which may be replaced by dialectical materialism--many postmodernists are practicing Marxists.)
Libertarianism
Libertarians pit themselves against government, led by the liberal elite. But with the power of the market, libertarians, by defeating socialism, will establish a libertarian utopia, a world guided by the free market.
You will notice that liberals and conservatives are not on this list. Both positions are complex enough that they do not fit a mythological narrative, although there are members of both camps that do fall into this template (not surprisingly, the most strident of the lot.) But the luminaries of both positions do not fall into this trap: Keynes, for example, despised state-run economies, while Hayek supported the welfare state. Radical culture warriors on both sides, however, may fall into this trap, identifying each other as the Malevolent Power or Evil Empire. The curious thing is that both may look to the same Mysterious Power of Good (the people, the founding fathers, Democracy, etc) for victory amd guidance.
The particulars are irrelevant and can be easily replaced, so changes in any of the basic elements--the adventurers, the Evil Empire, the Evil Leaders, the Mysterious Power of Good, the Malevolent Power, or the Utopia--are not important. The essential thing here is the form, which is the same in all cases.
The adherents of the myth are the adventurers here, and this is a rather flattering position. Everything depends upon them. They alone have the secret, the aid of the mysterious power, and the knowledge of the enemy. Because the enemy is the personification of evil, they are good by definition. Theirs is a holy mission, and anyone who opposes it is in the wrong. Whatever is done in the cause is justified. They alone can lead the way to the promised land.
The Enemy is likewise special, in that they wield the malevolent power, but they are both wise and foolish--wise in that they can wield this power, foolish in that they have not chosen the true power. They are almost gods themselves, in that they have conquered the world and seem to be able to control it through near omniscience and omnipotence. But the adventurers have the true power, which evil cannot touch or understand, and this will lead to their inevitable victory.
The Utopia that will result will not be a result of hard work or understanding, but will be the automatic product of the ascendance of the mysterious power. All will be well. There will be no messy details to deal with, because everything will fall into place. The right people will rule, justice and wisdom shall rain from the skies, and a perfect world will spring back into being, just as it was meant to be.
But it should also be noted that the adventurers, or adherants, are to become the new rulers. For mythologies that supposedly take place in the real world, the gods, theories, principles, or knowledge that constitute the force for good are accessible only to the adventurers. In other words, they themselves are to be the mysterious power and the guiding force. What they propose is not anything resembling a democracy, but a dictatorship of the ideologues. This is obvious when considering the communists (and even the post-modernists), and the fundamentalists (conspiracists will never gain power unless allied to another ideology.) But this is also why I consider libertarians to be the new bolsheviks, who also promised the end of the state.
The comparison between bolsheviks and libertarians may seem a stretch, but consider this: capitalism requires the protection of the state. The state must enforce contract law, permits and facilitates incorporation, and enforces criminal law. Let us consider what seems to be the least problematic: criminal law. Your life is worth a price. You may be outraged to consider how low that price may be--in a place like Somalia, it might be as low as ten or twenty dollars. This is the free market in action. What the state attempts to do through criminal law is to make goods like your life prohibitively expensive. It is the business of the state to interfere with the market. And the libertarians, once in power, will quickly realize this, as the bolsheviks quickly discovered the limitations of their own ideology. What other restrictions might they put on the market--particularly when self-interest, their universal justification, comes into play? Might the powerful rob the weaker? Might they skew contract law in their favour? And if you find their regime onerous, might they prevent people from voting with their feet to leave their "utopia"? The bolsheviks did. Why not the libertarians?
The real world is far more complex than the heroic myth can deal with. Progress is made on a halting basis, two steps forward, one step back. We must constantly submit to evidence and peer review, argue with people who disagree with us, check our facts, and find ourselves surprised by unexpected information. Reality is messy, difficult, and counter-intuitive. Human beings usually rely on heuristics that mislead them. The heroic mythology, like the god in the sky, is an amateur's first guess. Humility alone should convince us that it is wrong.
This is the plot of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and dozens of other works of science fiction, fantasy, and mythology. It is also the plot espoused by dozens of religions and political ideologies. It was the plot that Stalin used to justify the Gulag, and Hitler used to justify the Holocaust. It is the most popular plot in the world.
For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong. If your solution follows this plot, it is almost certainly one of those.
So let's pick out the basic elements of the myth. There is a plucky band of adventurers struggling against an Evil Empire, led by an Evil Emperor or Organization. There is a Mysterious Power of Good which will both aid the adventurers and guide the outcome. There is a Malevolent Power to be overcome, and a Utopia that will result.
So, Star Wars:
The Rebels pit themselves against the empire, led by the Sith Lords. But with the power of the Light Side of the Force, the Rebels, by defeating the Dark Side, will restore the Republic, which will by guided by the Light Side of the Force.
The Lord of the Rings:
The Fellowship of the Ring pit themselves against Morder, led by Sauron. But with assistance of the Valar, the Fellowship, by destroying the Ring, will restore Gondor, a kingdom ruled by a just king guided by the Valar.
Harry Potter:
Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the Order of the Pheonix pit themselves against the Death Eaters, led by Voldemort. But with the power of love, Harry and his allies, by destroying the Horcruxes, will restore the wizarding world, a world guided by love.
Those are the myths of fantasy. These are the myths that operate in our own world:
Fundamentalist Islam
Faithful Muslims pit themselves against the Satanic forces of the West, led by the President of the United States. But with the power of Allah, True Muslims, by defeating the Great Satan, will establish the Caliphate, a world guided by Allah.
Fundamentalist Christianity
Faithful Christian pit themselves against the Satanic forces in the world, led by Satan himself. But with the power of God, Christians, by defeating the forces of immorality, will establish the Kingdom of God, a world guided by Jesus.
Marxism
The Proletariat will pit themselves against Capitalism, led by the Capitalists. But with knowledge of Dialectical Materialism, the Proletariat, by defeating Capitalism, will establish the workers paradise, a world guided by egalitarianism, the final product of Dialectical Materialism.
Conspiracy Theorist
Those in the know will pit themselves against the World Order, led by the Illuminati. But with the power of the Truth, the Informed, by defeating the Global Conspiracy, will lead the sheeple to enlightenment, a world guided by the Truth.
Post-Modernism
The postmodern critics shall pit themselves against the dominant narrative, led by cultural hegemons. But with the knowledge of Critical Theory, the postmodernists, by defeating the narrative of dead white European males, will establish a truly multicultural world, a world guided by Theory. (Theory here is a catch-all which may be replaced by dialectical materialism--many postmodernists are practicing Marxists.)
Libertarianism
Libertarians pit themselves against government, led by the liberal elite. But with the power of the market, libertarians, by defeating socialism, will establish a libertarian utopia, a world guided by the free market.
You will notice that liberals and conservatives are not on this list. Both positions are complex enough that they do not fit a mythological narrative, although there are members of both camps that do fall into this template (not surprisingly, the most strident of the lot.) But the luminaries of both positions do not fall into this trap: Keynes, for example, despised state-run economies, while Hayek supported the welfare state. Radical culture warriors on both sides, however, may fall into this trap, identifying each other as the Malevolent Power or Evil Empire. The curious thing is that both may look to the same Mysterious Power of Good (the people, the founding fathers, Democracy, etc) for victory amd guidance.
The particulars are irrelevant and can be easily replaced, so changes in any of the basic elements--the adventurers, the Evil Empire, the Evil Leaders, the Mysterious Power of Good, the Malevolent Power, or the Utopia--are not important. The essential thing here is the form, which is the same in all cases.
The adherents of the myth are the adventurers here, and this is a rather flattering position. Everything depends upon them. They alone have the secret, the aid of the mysterious power, and the knowledge of the enemy. Because the enemy is the personification of evil, they are good by definition. Theirs is a holy mission, and anyone who opposes it is in the wrong. Whatever is done in the cause is justified. They alone can lead the way to the promised land.
The Enemy is likewise special, in that they wield the malevolent power, but they are both wise and foolish--wise in that they can wield this power, foolish in that they have not chosen the true power. They are almost gods themselves, in that they have conquered the world and seem to be able to control it through near omniscience and omnipotence. But the adventurers have the true power, which evil cannot touch or understand, and this will lead to their inevitable victory.
The Utopia that will result will not be a result of hard work or understanding, but will be the automatic product of the ascendance of the mysterious power. All will be well. There will be no messy details to deal with, because everything will fall into place. The right people will rule, justice and wisdom shall rain from the skies, and a perfect world will spring back into being, just as it was meant to be.
But it should also be noted that the adventurers, or adherants, are to become the new rulers. For mythologies that supposedly take place in the real world, the gods, theories, principles, or knowledge that constitute the force for good are accessible only to the adventurers. In other words, they themselves are to be the mysterious power and the guiding force. What they propose is not anything resembling a democracy, but a dictatorship of the ideologues. This is obvious when considering the communists (and even the post-modernists), and the fundamentalists (conspiracists will never gain power unless allied to another ideology.) But this is also why I consider libertarians to be the new bolsheviks, who also promised the end of the state.
The comparison between bolsheviks and libertarians may seem a stretch, but consider this: capitalism requires the protection of the state. The state must enforce contract law, permits and facilitates incorporation, and enforces criminal law. Let us consider what seems to be the least problematic: criminal law. Your life is worth a price. You may be outraged to consider how low that price may be--in a place like Somalia, it might be as low as ten or twenty dollars. This is the free market in action. What the state attempts to do through criminal law is to make goods like your life prohibitively expensive. It is the business of the state to interfere with the market. And the libertarians, once in power, will quickly realize this, as the bolsheviks quickly discovered the limitations of their own ideology. What other restrictions might they put on the market--particularly when self-interest, their universal justification, comes into play? Might the powerful rob the weaker? Might they skew contract law in their favour? And if you find their regime onerous, might they prevent people from voting with their feet to leave their "utopia"? The bolsheviks did. Why not the libertarians?
The real world is far more complex than the heroic myth can deal with. Progress is made on a halting basis, two steps forward, one step back. We must constantly submit to evidence and peer review, argue with people who disagree with us, check our facts, and find ourselves surprised by unexpected information. Reality is messy, difficult, and counter-intuitive. Human beings usually rely on heuristics that mislead them. The heroic mythology, like the god in the sky, is an amateur's first guess. Humility alone should convince us that it is wrong.
Monday, July 25, 2011
How I Became an Atheist
I came to be an atheist by an unusual path: I had a period of intense religious satori when I was 25, lasting several months, during which I realized that the experience of prophetic or messianic consciousness was mundane--that is, anyone could experience it, and that the essence of the experience was emotive rather than propositional. The ineffable was truly ineffable; the emptiness of the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem equated to Socrates claim that "All I know is that I know nothing." This meant that the worship of historical messiahs, prophets, and their utterances was bald idolatry. Those who did claim that their experience of the ineffable was unique were taking expedient advantage of their followers. This experience also led me to a position of radical apophatic theology, via the Tao te Ching; "The way that can be spoken is not the true Way." All of the scriptures were merely subjective reports of personal ruminations. These had contemplative and psychological value, but held no epistemological weight regarding objective reality.
It took another 15 years for the other shoe to drop. You see, I desperately WANTED to believe. Peter Hitchens' claim that atheists are atheists because they don't want to believe in God is patently false--like me, most of the atheists in my neck of the woods fought tooth and nail, at great personal expense, to remain believers. Hitchens the younger would, of course, like to imply, as all believers do, that it is our wickedness that leads us astray; we don't want to believe in God because God would impose morality upon us. But he ignores the laments of many atheists, like Sartre who said "God doesn't exist... the bastard!" What is pathetic, and indeed tragic about this, is that not only does he not understand atheists, but he does not even, nor can be bothered to, understand his own brother. Lifetime atheists like Christopher Hitchens take their conception of God by survey from the majority of believers, who really do, as the elder Hitchens has pointed out, worship a celestial version of Kim Jong Il. Believers, and former believers like myself, cherry picked from their religion a version of God that was far less totlitarian and much more kind. Only when we give up the need to believe in it do we take a serious look at what our religion really had in mind. It's really no surprise that we don't want to believe in a cosmological petty dictator. The wonder is that anyone would think we would want to.
My rejection of God and religion rests, not on my wish to disbelieve, but on my desire to believe--it's too damn convenient. In the absence of evidence, the only thing left to be explained is the persistance of the belief, and in a battle between faith and the truth, I have chosen the truth. Faith, after all, is the deliberate maintenance of a confirmation bias. Knowing that, one must abandon it to see things as they really are, and let the evidence speak for itself. But the evidence is silent, because there is none. Believers claim that we atheists know nothing about theology, but what they really mean is that we do not take speculative ramblings of theology as proof. They believe that the evidence is somewhere in their theology, but none of them can point out exactly where. A dozen weak arguments constitute a strong argument only to those whose reasoning is motivated--that is, to those who already agree with the conclusion. But in reality, a case is only as strong as its strongest argument.
Most of the current weak arguments rest on ambiguous definitions of God, by which God is "so powerful that he doesn't exist", and similarly nonsensical deepities. If God can mean anything, then the word means nothing. But whenever you define God, you claim to know what you cannot, and you commit idolatry. On the one hand everything you say is nonsense, and on the other, everything you say is blasphemy. There is no room, in philosophy or religion, for belief. As for "the God beyond God", the defense of this vaporous idea falls to people who begin their argument with the words "I'm an atheist, but..." These are the atheist butts, or the Newfangled Atheists. Believers and atheists alike have contempt for the lot, and the contempt is well deserved. This is often touted as the best argument for theology--but if it doesn't even convince the people who advance it, how can it be considered the best argument?
It took another 15 years for the other shoe to drop. You see, I desperately WANTED to believe. Peter Hitchens' claim that atheists are atheists because they don't want to believe in God is patently false--like me, most of the atheists in my neck of the woods fought tooth and nail, at great personal expense, to remain believers. Hitchens the younger would, of course, like to imply, as all believers do, that it is our wickedness that leads us astray; we don't want to believe in God because God would impose morality upon us. But he ignores the laments of many atheists, like Sartre who said "God doesn't exist... the bastard!" What is pathetic, and indeed tragic about this, is that not only does he not understand atheists, but he does not even, nor can be bothered to, understand his own brother. Lifetime atheists like Christopher Hitchens take their conception of God by survey from the majority of believers, who really do, as the elder Hitchens has pointed out, worship a celestial version of Kim Jong Il. Believers, and former believers like myself, cherry picked from their religion a version of God that was far less totlitarian and much more kind. Only when we give up the need to believe in it do we take a serious look at what our religion really had in mind. It's really no surprise that we don't want to believe in a cosmological petty dictator. The wonder is that anyone would think we would want to.
My rejection of God and religion rests, not on my wish to disbelieve, but on my desire to believe--it's too damn convenient. In the absence of evidence, the only thing left to be explained is the persistance of the belief, and in a battle between faith and the truth, I have chosen the truth. Faith, after all, is the deliberate maintenance of a confirmation bias. Knowing that, one must abandon it to see things as they really are, and let the evidence speak for itself. But the evidence is silent, because there is none. Believers claim that we atheists know nothing about theology, but what they really mean is that we do not take speculative ramblings of theology as proof. They believe that the evidence is somewhere in their theology, but none of them can point out exactly where. A dozen weak arguments constitute a strong argument only to those whose reasoning is motivated--that is, to those who already agree with the conclusion. But in reality, a case is only as strong as its strongest argument.
Most of the current weak arguments rest on ambiguous definitions of God, by which God is "so powerful that he doesn't exist", and similarly nonsensical deepities. If God can mean anything, then the word means nothing. But whenever you define God, you claim to know what you cannot, and you commit idolatry. On the one hand everything you say is nonsense, and on the other, everything you say is blasphemy. There is no room, in philosophy or religion, for belief. As for "the God beyond God", the defense of this vaporous idea falls to people who begin their argument with the words "I'm an atheist, but..." These are the atheist butts, or the Newfangled Atheists. Believers and atheists alike have contempt for the lot, and the contempt is well deserved. This is often touted as the best argument for theology--but if it doesn't even convince the people who advance it, how can it be considered the best argument?
Friday, February 25, 2011
Determination and Conscience
In the eulogy that I wrote for my father, I said that while determination may make bullies of us all, conscience makes cowards of us all. The second half is from Macbeth, and while the character was hardly a reliable witness, I think Shakespeare was right. W. B. Yeats echoes this in The Second Coming: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst \ Are full of passionate intensity." He is almost certainly talking about conscientious people as the best, and ideologues as the worst. Ideologues are but the latest incarnation of men of certainty--the type that founded our religions and most of the major political movements.
Of course, there have been lot of bad religions and political changes. "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ to consider that you may be wrong", said Oliver Cromwell, yet he seemed to be immune to second thoughts himself, and scarcely ever considered himself wrong. Cromwell was one of the lowest points in English political history--he beheaded Charles I, became king in all but name, and employed his New Model Army to impose draconian policies both in England and in Ireland, even abolishing Christmas. If you are determined to change the world, the last thing you can afford is cowardice. If your intention is to be the overman, you cannot afford doubt, unless it is about the opinions of others. The conscientious, on the other hand, sometimes harbour doubts only about their own opinions.
And yet, if it is disastrous never to question yourself, it is equally disastrous, if not outright immoral, to be paralysed in the face of opposition. There is evil in the world, and opposing it requires that we take a stand, even if we cannot be certain of all the details. But certainty is an unrealistically high standard; human beings never really get to be certain about anything. Many try to finesse this certainty by invoking God, but this is no more than projecting their own beliefs onto the stars. For while they may convince themselves that they are acting upon the standards of their faith, it is they that choose the religion, the pastor, minister, imam, or guru, the interpretation, and they who choose which parts they like, and which doctrines they discard. All religion is a la carte. In the end, it's just us.
And yet, we are social creatures. We have evolved moral instincts which are shy on particulars at the outset, but are quite emotionally demanding, because they are instincts which encourage us to live harmoniously with other human beings--a minimum requirement for human survival. We despise injustice, cruelty, dishonesty, and selfishness, particularly when we suffer it, and we value truth, beauty, justice, and mercy. These are what we need to live, and we appreciate those who act in accordance with them, and will punish, even at our own expense, those who violate them. We are not rational self-interested actors, however much some economists might suggest we are. We will often go out of our way to punish those who transgress against these values. Through the medium of culture we have reflected en masse through the centuries upon these core sentiments and have arrived at principles which we believe best express and support them.
These advances are neither individually nor culturally relative. Human nature and human circumstances are real and non-negotiable. Years ago I read Satre and thought him great and wise; I recently re-read excerpts of Being and Nothingness and realized that, like much of late 20th century continental philosophy, it all hung upon the assumption of the blank slate, the conviction that there is nothing fixed in human nature. This is false, and so the whole edifice collapsed before my eyes. We are done with Sartre and the relativists. But that does not mean that anyone has the final answer, the perfect solution--nor should anyone be required to. Certainty breeds monstrosities, but neurotic perfectionism is a self-indulgence we cannot afford.
The West now seems transfixed in a state of moral cowardice. Embarrassed by our less than perfect past, we forget that other people in other cultures may be planning a less than perfect future. Many in the West are transfixed by the accusation of Islamophobia, forgetting that the egotism of Mohammud has held an entire culture locked in place for a thousand years that could have been better spent learning about themselves and the world. China and the Middle East have not given up on the idea of a colonial empire--they are buying up arable land in substandard Africa. What will the Africans eat? Nothing. We are on the brink of the worst genocide of human history, because millions of conscientious hand wringers cannot be bothered to look beyond their own navel.
The most assertive figures remain the ideologues; people who start out with a fixed idea and stick to it no matter what. When the facts come in, they are suspect, the work of a conspiracy; the more compelling the evidence, the bigger the conspiracy. Ideologues are at war with reality. In Canada, we now have a government that wants to shut down Statistics Canada, and is at war with our Public Service because they don't like their recommendations. They are convinced that these people have a liberal bias, but as Stephen Colbert quipped, the facts have a liberal bias. No one can win a war with reality, and not only is the cost of waging such a war prohibitive, but everything spent in it is lost.
In service to this war on reality we have a war on science, often justified by appealing to Thomas Khun's theories on scientific revolutions. But Khun was wrong. Science does not change by radical paradigm shifts, throwing everything away. Even Copernicus himself did not fit this pattern; he maintained the Ptolemaic idea of orbits, simply swapping the Sun and the Earth in the scheme. Galileo built on Copernicus, Newton on Galileo, Laplace on Newton, and Einstein on Laplace and Newton. The relativistic and quantum terms vanish on scales of the middle world--nearly all engineering applications still rely entirely on Newtonian physics. Only in extremely large or small scales do we need the mathematics of relativity or quantum mechanics. If we see far, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Khun implies that nothing needs to be known of the achievements of the past, because all can be swept away in a heart beat.
Epistemological relativism is attractive because it allows the ignorant to claim equal footing with the educated. It's another form of the blank slate; everyone starts from scratch, so anyone can spin theories to their heart's content and demand equal time. But reality is no myth. "I am who am" says the God of the Old Testament--in other words, I am reality. Note that this is not the same as saying God is real--that is an invitation to invent reality, rather than taking it as it is and understanding it. To say that something is real is simply to assert the reality of something regardless of its essence, but to say that something is reality is to define that essence. Religion was an attempt to put a human face on reality, but the mask won't stay put. What has not changed is that reality is still as cantankerous and destructive as ever when ignored, as vengeful as Old Jehovah. Any attempt to create your own reality, however determined, will fail if you ignore the truth.
Of course, there have been lot of bad religions and political changes. "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ to consider that you may be wrong", said Oliver Cromwell, yet he seemed to be immune to second thoughts himself, and scarcely ever considered himself wrong. Cromwell was one of the lowest points in English political history--he beheaded Charles I, became king in all but name, and employed his New Model Army to impose draconian policies both in England and in Ireland, even abolishing Christmas. If you are determined to change the world, the last thing you can afford is cowardice. If your intention is to be the overman, you cannot afford doubt, unless it is about the opinions of others. The conscientious, on the other hand, sometimes harbour doubts only about their own opinions.
And yet, if it is disastrous never to question yourself, it is equally disastrous, if not outright immoral, to be paralysed in the face of opposition. There is evil in the world, and opposing it requires that we take a stand, even if we cannot be certain of all the details. But certainty is an unrealistically high standard; human beings never really get to be certain about anything. Many try to finesse this certainty by invoking God, but this is no more than projecting their own beliefs onto the stars. For while they may convince themselves that they are acting upon the standards of their faith, it is they that choose the religion, the pastor, minister, imam, or guru, the interpretation, and they who choose which parts they like, and which doctrines they discard. All religion is a la carte. In the end, it's just us.
And yet, we are social creatures. We have evolved moral instincts which are shy on particulars at the outset, but are quite emotionally demanding, because they are instincts which encourage us to live harmoniously with other human beings--a minimum requirement for human survival. We despise injustice, cruelty, dishonesty, and selfishness, particularly when we suffer it, and we value truth, beauty, justice, and mercy. These are what we need to live, and we appreciate those who act in accordance with them, and will punish, even at our own expense, those who violate them. We are not rational self-interested actors, however much some economists might suggest we are. We will often go out of our way to punish those who transgress against these values. Through the medium of culture we have reflected en masse through the centuries upon these core sentiments and have arrived at principles which we believe best express and support them.
These advances are neither individually nor culturally relative. Human nature and human circumstances are real and non-negotiable. Years ago I read Satre and thought him great and wise; I recently re-read excerpts of Being and Nothingness and realized that, like much of late 20th century continental philosophy, it all hung upon the assumption of the blank slate, the conviction that there is nothing fixed in human nature. This is false, and so the whole edifice collapsed before my eyes. We are done with Sartre and the relativists. But that does not mean that anyone has the final answer, the perfect solution--nor should anyone be required to. Certainty breeds monstrosities, but neurotic perfectionism is a self-indulgence we cannot afford.
The West now seems transfixed in a state of moral cowardice. Embarrassed by our less than perfect past, we forget that other people in other cultures may be planning a less than perfect future. Many in the West are transfixed by the accusation of Islamophobia, forgetting that the egotism of Mohammud has held an entire culture locked in place for a thousand years that could have been better spent learning about themselves and the world. China and the Middle East have not given up on the idea of a colonial empire--they are buying up arable land in substandard Africa. What will the Africans eat? Nothing. We are on the brink of the worst genocide of human history, because millions of conscientious hand wringers cannot be bothered to look beyond their own navel.
The most assertive figures remain the ideologues; people who start out with a fixed idea and stick to it no matter what. When the facts come in, they are suspect, the work of a conspiracy; the more compelling the evidence, the bigger the conspiracy. Ideologues are at war with reality. In Canada, we now have a government that wants to shut down Statistics Canada, and is at war with our Public Service because they don't like their recommendations. They are convinced that these people have a liberal bias, but as Stephen Colbert quipped, the facts have a liberal bias. No one can win a war with reality, and not only is the cost of waging such a war prohibitive, but everything spent in it is lost.
In service to this war on reality we have a war on science, often justified by appealing to Thomas Khun's theories on scientific revolutions. But Khun was wrong. Science does not change by radical paradigm shifts, throwing everything away. Even Copernicus himself did not fit this pattern; he maintained the Ptolemaic idea of orbits, simply swapping the Sun and the Earth in the scheme. Galileo built on Copernicus, Newton on Galileo, Laplace on Newton, and Einstein on Laplace and Newton. The relativistic and quantum terms vanish on scales of the middle world--nearly all engineering applications still rely entirely on Newtonian physics. Only in extremely large or small scales do we need the mathematics of relativity or quantum mechanics. If we see far, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Khun implies that nothing needs to be known of the achievements of the past, because all can be swept away in a heart beat.
Epistemological relativism is attractive because it allows the ignorant to claim equal footing with the educated. It's another form of the blank slate; everyone starts from scratch, so anyone can spin theories to their heart's content and demand equal time. But reality is no myth. "I am who am" says the God of the Old Testament--in other words, I am reality. Note that this is not the same as saying God is real--that is an invitation to invent reality, rather than taking it as it is and understanding it. To say that something is real is simply to assert the reality of something regardless of its essence, but to say that something is reality is to define that essence. Religion was an attempt to put a human face on reality, but the mask won't stay put. What has not changed is that reality is still as cantankerous and destructive as ever when ignored, as vengeful as Old Jehovah. Any attempt to create your own reality, however determined, will fail if you ignore the truth.
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