Monthly Archives: October 2010

Hope and History

October 6, 2010 – 9:34 pm

First Things has an interesting blogpost by R.R. Reno, analyzing a post by David Rieff on his World Affairs blog.

Rieff stumbles around his point (in some really stilted prose), but finally gets there:  history offers no hope.  True:  Hegel and Marx are only two of the many, many examples.  And Rieff ends with a rather hollow piece of advice:  get your hope some other place.

OK. But where?  Presumably he means something off-the-shelf from some meaning shop, or something more do-it-yourself from Home Depot.  Home Truth Depot?

Philosophers have long searched for sources of hope, finding them in all corners: in history, in technology, in therapy, in education, in political reform, in “getting in touch with nature.”

Man continues to seek hope everywhere in himself, always coming up empty-handed (and often bloody-handed); all because he thinks so well of himself, that “he just knows there must be a hope in there somewhere.”

It is both natural and appropriate that hope is always sought in triumph over evil.  Therefore, the search for hope is conditioned by our understanding of evil.

And it is here that all modernist schools fall short, while biblical religion sees clearly.  As Reinhold Niebuhr put it, “The Christian estimate of human evil is so serious precisely because it places evil at the very center of human personality: in the will.”

Biblical religion finds plausible hope because it faces clear-eyed the nature of evil.  It therefore offers the only hope that is both plausible and not inconsistent with the observed facts of human nature and history.

So why do so many people embrace such obvioulsy false hopes, while rejecting the most plausible of hopes?

People want certainty, and, as Voegelin observed, “Uncertainty is the very essence of Christianity.”  Of the faith that sustains hope, he wrote that “The very lightness of this fabric may prove too heavy a burden for men who lust for massively possessive experience.”  “This thread of faith, on which hangs all certainty regarding divine, transcendent being, is indeed very thin.”

The alternative hopes of history seem to have no trouble sustaining themselves as “massively possessive experiences.”  A quick reading of Koestler’s Darkness At Noon drives home the point.

By davidsmith4002 | Posted in philosophy | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

My Life Among the PABGoos

October 6, 2010 – 9:33 pm

I have traveled a long road from my Methodist childhood, into my atheist, Marxist radical youth, and into the world.  There I battled through a lifetime of real-world practicality comforted and cushioned by the shreds of an ideology that no longer worked or made real sense of anything.  And I end up here.

I now find myself on the doorstep of a return to the truths of my childhood belief, still unable to cross the threshold.  (Of course, I wonder just how fully I ever really believed back then.  Tolstoy wrote somewhere about his religious beliefs evaporating in an instant when his older brother, seeing him kneeling by his bed, asked “You don’t still pray, do you?”)

Anyway, here I am.  Like Chesterton, I wanted always to be in the vanguard of new thought, always ahead of my time, only to discover that I was 20 centuries behind the truth.

I now find that there are only two consistent philosophical standpoints that are not in serious conflict with the facts of human nature.  Two tenable views.

Either God made us with souls, with a purpose.  Or we exist as accidental results of random materialistic evolution.

If we have souls and a purpose, then morality is a possibility, a choice that our souls can make to be in conformity with our purpose.  If we are evolutionary accidents, then we have no souls, no real purpose, and morality is whatever works.  So real morality, with legitimate authority, becomes impossible.  Moral anarchy is the only possible outcome.

There is of course another, much cheerier world view, one which believes that People Are Basically Good (hence “PABGoo”).  PABGoos believe that all our problems are caused by bad political or economic systems, or not enough social science grants or psychotherapy or public education or whatever.  The fact that it is publicly refuted countless times a day in every city on the globe has not stopped PABGoo from becoming the default feel-good philosophy of our age..  Every time you hear John Lennon singing “Imagine” on a store Muzak system, you are being PABGooed. By now you probably don’t even notice.

By davidsmith4002 | Posted in philosophy, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Becoming a Political Agnostic

October 6, 2010 – 9:32 pm

When I graduated from college, I was agnostic on the question of God and religion, and 100% certain about everything else.

This was especially so about politics and economics. “Social science” clearly bore the only real truths.   So I knew that only a selfish, evil, or stupid person could fail to see these plain truths.  I knew that humanity was a malleable object which we, the clever enlightened ones, could mold, shape, and adapt to our higher purpose.  Our purpose was whatever we decided it to be, so I felt no need to search for any purpose higher than my own preference.

And so, I set about building a better world – that is, one more suitable to my tastes and more likely to place a high value on someone like, say, me.

A lot has happened since then, and I have observed and thought about some of it.  I am now a believer in religion and a near-believer in God (more – much, much more – on this later). So it is no surprise that I have grown agnostic on all politics, economics, and virtually everything else I was once so certain about.  (Indeed, I find that “social science” may be the least scientific thing ever thought up. More later.)

In political debates, I see few issues on which I can whole-heartedly take sides. I see few politicians on whom I would comfortably confer even a small amount of power.

But I know with absolute certainty that men will always make themselves miserable in the absence of a legitimate and consistent system of morality.

What else do I know?

I know that men are driven to make themselves the center of as much of the world as possible. The will to power, egotism, libido dominandi, call it what you will.  It makes men selfish, uncaring, and aggressive.  This drive can be described in evolutionary terms as easily as in religious ones (All the great apes display conduct that is chillingly familiar in these terms.)

I know the institutions of our civilizations are all constructed to restrict these urges and to channel them toward positive results.  Family, religion, government, society of peers, all reward good behaviors, punish bad ones, and attempt to channel energies away from destruction.

I may know a few other things too.  But I don’t yet know the big thing, the thing I really want to know.  I’m still searching.  And I’m getting too old to be too casual about the search.

By davidsmith4002 | Posted in philosophy | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

God, the Horizon, and Me

October 6, 2010 – 9:31 pm

(This post was originally posted on another website, “Mr. Moleman and His Friends“.  Since I am one of his friends, and it derives from a conversation between us, I present it here.)

I have reached the stage of life where I take up the task of making sense of myself and the world, and asking whether it can be done without including God in the ruminations.

So far I have reached three very tentative conclusions.

First,  morality is not derivable or sustainable without religion, and religion (however useful) is false without God.

Second, while random events (such as undirected evolution) may explain much or all of the physical world, they do not explain the human mind, which is more than a super-computer built of nerve ganglia.  Our very contemplation of God suggests that the mind is not fully explained by materialist science; the mind indicates that God exists. It is true that we can imagine things that don’t exist, such as unicorns; but horns and horses do exist.

Third, God may be like the horizon – the framework against which everything else is placed and comprehended.  The horizon exists, though not as other things exist; it is the reference point-line, the directional, the seen and unseen background before which all else is locatable. Of course in practical terms it is the curved falling away of the earth’s surface, and as such it is tangible and measurable (I have heard that it is about five miles away from a six-foot-tall man at seaside or in Kansas.)  But it also has a strong and intangible reality.

But I wonder, what if the earth were flat, unbounded, infinite?  Would there not still be a horizon?  Would it look the same as it presently does?

Maybe the relation of such an infinite horizon is to our actual horizon tells us something of our comprehension of God in relation to God’s reality.

By davidsmith4002 | Posted in philosophy | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Birdsong, Wine, and Thomas Aquinas

October 6, 2010 – 9:29 pm

This morning in my garden, I listened to a cardinal signing his heart out.  The cardinal has a beautiful voice, clear as a bell.  And his songs sound so word-like that I cannot resist rying to learn them and sing along.

“Chew, Chew, Chew, Baker, Baker, Baker” he sings.  Or is it “Beaker, Beaker”?  Or “Weaker, Weaker”?  Or maybe “Boiker, Boiker, Boiker”.  But of course it couldn’t be that.  “Boiker” maskes no sense.

 As hard as I try, I know that no transliteration of mine can fill the bill.(Good one, eh?)

“Two-beer, Two-beer, Two-beer”, that I understand.  Also “Wheat, Wheat, Wheat, Weaker, Chew, Chew, Chew.”  But “Boiker”?

It reminds me of the whip-poor-will I used to hear in New Hampshire.  That bird would sing so incessantly that rather than joining in, I thought about shooting him. If you’ve heard one, you know what I mean.  It’s beautiful at first, but he doesn’t know when to stop.  His song is actually more like “Poor-Will-Whip”, but of course that makes no more sense than “Boiker”.

In either case, trying to use our language to capture theirs just doesn’t seem to work.  It is frustrating to hear such a beautiful song as the cardinal’s (or the first 10 verses of the WPW’s) but be unable to sing along. 

 It put me in mind of the descriptions that you read on wine bottles or in magazine reviews.  “Fruity, with hints of cherry, walnut and cloves, but a strong finish of apple.”  But of course there is no fruit except grape.  No apple, no cherry, no walnut, no cloves.  But what there is, the wine, we lack adequate language to describe.  Maybe once we had it, but we lost it.  Or maybe we never had it.  So we borrow language from the world of non-wine foods.  Like “Baker”, it appears to make more sense than “Boiker”.  But it doesn’t really. 

If we want to truly understand something, we need a language that fits it.  Of course, we can simply enjoy birdsong for its music, and wine for its pleasant taste.  But if we want to think about it, we need to be able to talk about it.  And for that, we need appropriate language.

 In our modernist corners of our modern world, human actions have become as unintelligible as birdsongs.  We sense that they must have moral meanings, but we have lost our language for talking about morality.  As with birdsongs, we know that there is an underlying meaning.  The cardinal sings to attract a mate, or to warn off rivals.  But why that particular song, and not another?  We don’t know.  We can’t even ask.

Alasdair Macintyre has written incisively about this problem in After Virtue.  How can we re-invigorate our morality when we can’t even articulate the problem?  All 12-step programs start at the same logical beginning: Admit that you have a problem.  That implies that we can talk about the problem; that we have a language for it.

 I have found that I do not.  Yet in the past there was such a language, there was discussion that didn’t begin with “For me, personally, I believe that it is wrong to…”

 Where to find such language? 

 Thomas Aquinas, perhaps?  I have begun studying him, reading some parts of the Summa.  Mostly, though, finding TA difficult, I read Thomist studies such as those by Ralph McInerny (I also enjoy Father Dowling, but that’s for another day).

 I find there what is for me a remarkable phenomenon, the Christian philosopher willing to argue his way to God.  I learn that an act’s object, its circumstances, and its purpose must all be good for the act to be judged good.  In other words, not just what (object) and why (purpose), but how, where, and when (circumstance).  TA’s reasoning on human action is reasonable and plausible.  But I find it incomplete.  I find lacking a sense of the innate drive to evil, above all that ultimate drive, the will to power.  I do not find his work includes an active sense of sin. 

That active sense is found in St. Augustine’s Confessions.  Unlike TA, he argues psychologically rather than logically.  But his understanding of our urge to sin is omnipresent, as is the urge itself.  TA often seems to be arguing that we would all avoid sin if only we would recognize our true needs.

 The best modern work on all this for me is The Nature and Destiny of Man, by Reinhold Niebuhr. 

 I see our time is up for the day.  How do you feel about all this?  Click on the “Leave A Comment” thing at the bottom of this post, and let me know.

 Until next time, “Boiker!”

By davidsmith4002 | Posted in philosophy | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Moral Conversations

October 6, 2010 – 9:27 pm

In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre argues that we have lost the language needed to discuss moral questions, and have thereby nearly lost the capacity even to think of them.

Reading him recently reminded me of several recent conversations I have experienced.

First Conversation:  Talking about problems with big corporations, a friend recounts his own experience with a utility. He was approached by a shady character who offered to “fix” his electric meter so that it would record only half of his actual usage.  He took the offer, and got half-price electricity for eight years.  Then the company, no doubt suspecting something, replaced the meter – but not before he had stolen a fair amount of power from them.  My friend recounted this in a pleasant and amusing narrative, and someone in our group remarked “Good for you,” in a “stick-it-to-the-man” tone.

My friend reacted sharply. “No. No!  It was wrong.  I never should have let that guy talk me into it.  I wish I’d never done it.” He was judging himself, in uncomfortable response to being applauded for his misdeed.   

The conversation paused awkwardly.  No one quite knew what to say, so someone changed the subject.

Second Conversation: A group is discussing movies they have seen.  When a particular movie is mentioned – an absolutely ordinary, mainstream comedy-drama – one friend reacts strongly.  “I am just so tired of movies about miserable families making each other suffer from their abuse of each other and their affairs.  I just don’t want to see any more of them.”

She was articulating her rejection of a culture that normalizes dysfunctional behavior.  We all agreed in a perfunctory way, but didn’t know what else to say.

Third Conversation: A man takes part with some friends in a weekly Trivia Contest at a local bar.  Sometimes they do well, sometimes not.  After another losing night in a long dry spell, the man bemoans his poor performance, saying how stupid he felt for not knowing some answers.  He talks of quitting the team.  Another team member responds “Oh, well.  It is humbling, and that’s not a bad thing.”

Instead of the customary words of locker-room inspiration (“We’ll lick’em next time”), she offered a moral reminder about pride.  It cheered the man, but he didn’t know how to respond, except to say “You’re right.  Thanks.”

In each case, when the conversation reached a moral point, there was an awkward pause, a fumbling for words, and a swift turn to other topics.

We have grown accustomed to the lack of moral consideration in our conversations with others.  But once you notice it, you start to find these absences everywhere.

As MacIntyre says, it is a kind of forgotten language – one we vaguely remember from long ago, but are too uncomfortable to use.  I think of those tales of frontier children abducted by Indians, and raised by them as tribe members.  When later returned to white society, they may remember some of English, but not enough to communicate effectively.  The language must be re-learned.

How, I wonder, will we re-learn the language of morality?

By davidsmith4002 | Posted in philosophy | Tagged , | Comments (0)
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