I have embraced certain ideologies over the past ten years. I have done this as a result of voluminous reading and long, sober reasoning. I would like to say that most of what I believe to be true and good grows from earnest and open-minded inquiry. Sure, I hold some unexamined beliefs that are purely emotionally anchored, but only a few and nothing that matters all that much. But then again, sometimes I am not so sure that there is a big difference between examined and unexamined beliefs. Actually, it’s more than sometimes.
The scientific method is fairly recent on the stage of human history. It has undeniably made life better for those who have embraced it. Yes, science has given us toxic wastes and weapons of mass destruction. But on the whole, there is a better material life through science.
There was a time in history when the vast majority of people on earth lived according to knowledge made up of simple observation and experience — itself a kind of scientific method — and conventional wisdom and tradition. As the empirical methodological part of knowledge was refined and expanded, the conventional and traditional parts shrank. Yet, to this day, I would say there are only a handful of oddballs who attempt to live entirely by the scientific method and consistently hold conventions and traditions up to scientific scrutiny. Such people I will call the True Believers of science. They are believers simply because there is always a limit to knowledge, and at some point we must proceed on guesses and assumptions. It seems in the 1950s there were more of these bold scientists who dreamed fearlessly of a world without superstition and religion, a scientific utopia. But time has a way of turning up discoveries that cripple scientific theories.
Along with the scientific method of exploiting the material world, there is a scientific approach to the interpersonal human world, which is to say, morality. It is here that science breaks down.
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Recently a friend asked me, “Where do you stand on the death penalty?” I tried to think back to all I’ve read about the death penalty; I tried to remember the specific arguments, facts and figures that bolster the pro and con sides. I had a vague feeling that I was in favor of the death penalty, but then I wasn’t really convinced because I could vaguely remember agreeing with a compelling argument against it. In other words, the death penalty is one of those issues I don’t have a strong emotional attachment to, although I feel a vague ideological tug to the pro side.
In discussing the issue with my friend, I came across as a wishy-washy, complacent fence-sitter because I couldn’t take a definite stand on it. I might also have seemed dull and uninformed. The fact is, while I may not be a really sharp quick thinker, I may yet be too informed. That is, I have listened carefully to both sides of the issue and found it to be a real dilemma. But another dynamic was at work in the discussion, and that was the pull to agree with my friend just for the sake of agreement. It’s nice to agree. It’s not nice to argue.
The death penalty is a strongly moral issue. Every issue is moral, but this one is especially so since it embodies the grand themes of life and death, murder and retribution and justice. On one hand
Times Square in New York City is a place with a lot of lit up billboards on buildings. Add a bunch of people who come from far and wide to look at the billboards and lights and buildings, and bingo, that’s Times Square. How ridiculous.
Sometimes I feel nostalgic and I wonder what old friends have been up to. Then I take a look at their Facebook pages and see they have never seriously challenged their way of thinking. Because they have always stayed exactly in the same mental space and have always surrounded themselves with others of exactly the same ideology, all they need are slogans, bumper stickers, and funny pictures to be happy. Bunch of fucking morons.
As it turns out, I was the Scrooge, the Grinch, and the Christmas spirit won in the end. Funny how that is. Or maybe it’s just because the dreading is over, and there’s a big sense of relief. I think it’s just that it wasn’t so bad after all. It’s just that emotional baggage that makes it seem dreadful. Sure, alcohol helped at first, but seeing it wasn’t all so bad, I kind of wished I hadn’t downed those gin & tonics at home. I think I’ll write a new maudlin Christmas song: “Kinda wish I could sober up tonite”.
I think any festival or holiday is at root a time when people stop what they normally do, gather together, and formally acknowledge each other in some way. This basic function is dressed up in many ways, but basically it’s a time when we say, “We are members in good standing of a cooperative social unit”. It’s taking stock of our in-group. Basic participation in a holiday requires that you acknowledge at least one other person on the occasion, for example, by saying “Merry Christmas” or “Happy New Year”. Sure, you can do it all alone, but even alone you will have to make some sort of symbolic gesture to show that you are observing the holiday, and symbols have meaning only because they are recognized by others. If someone walked in on your private little celebration, they’d have an idea of what you were doing — as weird as that would be. Celebrating alone sounds weird and sad because it’s just the forlorn performance of gestures that in their very conception are intended to be shared.
Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I simply wanted to say that Christmas is a time when obligations are tested. You have to send Christmas cards so that people will know that even though you don’t see them in the ordinary course of life (and probably never will in the future), you are still there, willing to cooperate if necessary (even though these are the last people you’d ever seek out if you needed something). More than that, though, is you are letting them know you’re a good person who remembers people. You are definitely NOT the kind of person that just goes and forgets people. So you write Christmas cards.
Me, I am the kind of person who doesn’t like to make gestures just for the sake of making gestures. If I want to contact an old friend or nearly forgotten acquaintance, I do it when I remember them. I feel stupid participating in Christmas card sending. The fact that I don’t do this perfunctory greeting ritual does not mean that I am a mean old hermit; I am a wonderfully friendly, generous guy, and I spread good cheer well over once per year. I just hate having to participate in it when it’s “supposed to be done”.
However, I must participate in Christmas by giving my kids gifts. I do this, of course, because I want to. But there’s a stronger motivation than that: I can’t stand the thought of how sad and disappointed they would be if they DIDN’T get nice presents for Christmas. Never mind that I support their very existence all year ’round, buying them stuff because I can’t stand the feeling that they envy other kids for having iPods or whatnot. When Christmas comes, I get performance anxiety.
Then comes the hated extended family get-together. Even though we would be happier if the occasion were a funeral — happy with the knowledge that the funeral would be the last dreaded ritual we’d be obligated to perform — we have to perform the dreaded group membership ritual to show that we’re here to help, or we’re grateful for our heritage, or we respect “family” or something like that. Mostly, though, we perform it because we have kids. None of us can stand the thought that the kids would have the kind of extended family that DOESN’T get together at Christmas.
I have intentionally radically altered my view of the world three or four times in my life. At one point I embraced religion and completely changed my way of thinking (I eventually changed out of it, too). I have engaged my mind with certain scientific propositions which changed me. I embraced a foreign language and culture and let that change me. Returning from that culture to my home culture, I embraced a new political viewpoint.
In embracing these belief systems and viewpoints, I didn’t simply decide to relabel myself, like putting on a new uniform. I transformed my thinking by studying and by evaluating my entire thought process according to a new set of propositions. If you truly engage with certain propositions, you will change. If you find your viewpoint pretty much unchanged throughout life, I believe it means you have not really engaged in serious thought.
You might say, well Ned, that sounds a little unstable. You could put it that way, but I call it the continual search for greater stability — which is ultimately an unattainable ideal. You can call a life of defending the same old bias and never looking away from your familiar point of view a stable life. I call that the unexamined life. The examined life leads to a higher plane of engagement in which opposing propositions are entertained and evaluated, not merely ignored or derided and dismissed.
To truly examine a proposition is to entertain it as if it were true; if you really “seek the truth”, you will find yourself confronted with the choice to conform yourself to it or not. There are propositions in life in which acknowledging their truth is synonymous with living a certain way. If you are true to your principles, you will choose to live by the truth you find. One of the hardest things in life is to be true to what you believe, to be principled.
One reason it’s so hard to be principled above all and to live the examined life is that challenging and changing your beliefs often means losing friends. It is hard, as the proverb says, to walk together unless you are in agreement on things. It’s easier — and may be in your best interest — not to change your way of life, and thus not to change your way of thinking.
So in the end it comes to a choice: do you really want to spend a life of mental turmoil in which you can congratulate yourself for thinking deeply? or would you rather live a life of satisfying relationships never missing the intellectual stuff because “ignorance is bliss”? The older I get, the more I realize the wisdom of the latter. When it comes to beliefs, it’s probably best to believe what your community believes and leave it at that.
What would it really matter if the sun revolved around the earth?
The production is kind of hokey, and his delivery isn’t slick, but Paul Jacob always talks common sense:
I would add: Since freedom entails more persuasion and less coercion, then our educational system should emphasize critical thinking and not “causes” and “activism”. It should emphasize the substance of arguments over the correctness of conclusions. I think the “Occupy Wall Street” movement is proof of the failure of our educational system. More on that later.
One of my favorite writers, now in his 80′s, recently said when asked what advice he would give young people: Learn as much as you can before you come to a conclusion. This is not to say we should go around without beliefs, nor that we should go around never coming to conclusions. It is to say that conclusions should always be based on arguments and evidence, pending further study. What matters most is ultimately not the conclusion; what matters most are the details that support or undermine the conclusion.
We are always prone to seize upon some conclusion because it appeals to us emotionally. We hold this belief tightly and shut our eyes and ears to arguments because we do not want our dearly-held belief to be threatened. We then look around for anything that will support our belief and ignore (or deride) anything to the contrary. This selective attention is called confirmation bias — we are biased toward anything that would seem to support our position and biased against anything that would undermine it.
The first step toward wisdom, to paraphrase the proverb, is the acknowledgement of ignorance. All that we can know should always be seen in its proper context, against a vast, eternal background of the unknown. Those who want to learn must be aware of their ignorance and repentant of it. To be ignorant in this sense is no shame at all.
There is another kind of ignorance that is aggressive and unrepentant. It raises up beliefs in slogan form like banners leading a mob of ignorant pitchfork-wielding peasants. This ignorance arrogantly takes any patchwork of hasty conclusions and unsupported emotional beliefs to be equal with other positions that are well-argued and well-evidenced.
Everyone gets emotionally involved with what they believe. This is called being passionate about one’s beliefs. But just as there are two ways to be ignorant, there are two ways to be passionate. We can be passionate about conclusions or we can be passionate about the details that support our conclusions.
The worst kind of ignorance is an unwillingness to engage in the substance of arguments. To be passionate and ignorant is just stupid.
(Notes to self: Foucault does no favors by saying truth is impossible; images are substitutes for arguments…)
This article from Jeff Jacoby articulates what has been on my mind for a long time. An excerpt:
Over the past half-century, Washington has insinuated itself into a thousand-and-one decisions that individuals or local governments are more than capable of making for themselves. Which medicines can you buy? How efficient should your lightbulbs be? Can your children’s schoolday begin with a prayer? Who qualifies for a mortgage? When do unemployment benefits run out? Can you pay an employee $5 an hour if that’s what his labor is worth? Should abortions be restricted? Is health insurance optional? Do artists or farmers or broadcasters require subsidies? Are you in charge of your retirement income?
In Federalist No. 45, James Madison emphasized that under the Constitution, the powers of the federal government “are few and defined,” while those left to states and local communities “are numerous and indefinite.” For the first 150 or so years of US history that was largely the case. But New Deal/Great Society liberalism has turned the Framers’ careful arrangement inside out. Today, there is almost nothing in American life that Washington does not consider itself fit to regulate, control, ban, tax, or mandate.
There are two ways you can look at personal or civil rights: On the one hand, you can do anything you want to do as long as it is not prohibited by law. In this way of looking at it, the laws, or the governments who make them, do not give you rights; they just proscribe certain activities you might want to do. This way, it’s not even a question of whether what you want to do will harm someone else (it’s always possible you might harm someone else, no matter what you do); it’s a question of whether there’s a law against it. You’re basically free, but the government, via a fair judicial process, takes away certain freedoms.
In the first view, a good person is a law-abiding person.
On the other hand, you could begin with the premise that you can do whatever you want as long as it isn’t hurting anyone. People should obey laws, but what makes them good is that they are “enlightened” people (and what makes them bad is that they are unenlightened). They know what hurts others and what doesn’t. But it doesn’t take long before even more enlightened people are needed to keep the average person enlightened.
In this second view, beyond simply passing laws, government can be seen a higher authority which tells you whether this or that is hurting someone (or something). This benevolent authority is looking out for the rights of others because they can see a bigger picture than you can. They are always more enlightened!
Eventually in this system, you will come to look at it as if the government grants you your freedom by not prohibiting it; the good and fair government provides you with a nice, stable society, and you thank them by living the way that they prescribe. “Better” government, after all, is one that “provides for the welfare” of the people. In this scenario, government, by virtue of being “progressive” will come up with new and better ways to provide for people, and the prescriptions for a better way of life will change from time to time as government becomes ever more enlightened.
In the first view, the people just have to find a way to get along with a smaller number of rules, agencies, guidelines, or official prescriptions for a better life. In the second view, people are guided by their betters, an active, compassionate government always progressing for the cause of “providing” for people.
Look at this headline from the UK paper The Guardian…
Apparently these people feel the need to be “given the right” to raise their children in a certain way. The way things are going, their kids are running amok, looting and pillaging under the thin pretense that someone’s government-granted “rights” have been violated, and the way to vent their dissatisfaction is to go around hurting people. After all, if the government has failed to protect us from those who would harm us, we can’t be expected not to harm them back.. or something like that.
If the liberal political system has been prescribing child rearing practices that result in children behaving this way, it sure doesn’t look like being a liberal is fine. If instead these people took the view that people have to work at getting along amongst themselves, and that government really cannot prescribe a better way of raising children, perhaps these riots wouldn’t happen in the first place.
