1
When
tyranny, oppression, or genocide appear, what nations do the most to
oppose them? When a society wants help pulling itself out of poverty,
who is willing to lend a hand? In certain ways, modern Western
society is heroic. It has some of the strongest principles of any
culture in the world. We are willing even to go to war to bring
democracy, equality, and freedom of speech to other nations.
Whether
there are other motives also involved in some of our wars is beside
the point. Despite whatever economic or cultural struggles we might
be undergoing, Western civilization remains an example and ideal in
politics and civic virtue.
But
if this true, if our principles do indeed provide such a powerful and
shining exemplar, how then can it also seem that we are the most
relativist, nihilistic, and anti-ideological culture? How can we, on
the one hand, unwaveringly denounce the treatment of women in certain
societies, while at that same time believing that all such values and
principles are subjective? How can we send our young men and women to
fight and die to overthrow a foreign dictator while at the same time
preaching that all ideology is harmful? How is it that militant
atheism and non-spirituality is so common among our intellectuals,
yet we consider the persecution of religion under the Soviet regime
to have been an absolute wrong?
It
could be that a culture is not the sort of thing that has ideological
consistency. Perhaps ideological inconsistency is essential to the
ecological vitality of a culture. This could be an interesting line
of thought, but it’s not what I’m getting at. To understand my
point, consider what we hate about our own society. It’s too
sheltered; there’s not enough adventure or danger; there are too
many technical rules and regulations and laws; politicians don’t
talk about the important issues, not honestly; we have it so good but
everyone feels so “entitled” to more; too much advertisement and
propaganda, billboards and web banner ads; a media too biased toward
the establishment; the hopelessness (or at least extreme slowness) of
trying to oppose or change this establishment.
Perhaps
what we really hate about our own society is our own lack of
principle. We lack adventure because we lack courage, and we lack
courage because we lack strong principle. We have so many rules to
make up for having so few principles. Our politicians lie because
they lack the courage to stand up for principles, and we lack the
courage to vote for politicians that stand up for principles. Because
we lack principles to stand for, we stand for our own “entitlements.”
We listen to the media and to establishment because we’ve stopped
to listening to our own consciences.
If
this is true, the problem is not special to our time. The most
powerful civilizations in history have always tended to spoil their
citizens, at least a bit. Rome did so with feasts, plunder, and
gladiator fights.
Like
those of the Romans, our principles may be falling victim to their
own success.
2
C.S.
Lewis wrote: “Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good
at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain
mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the
characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old
books.”
So
lets turn to old books. We can a learn a lot from the literature of
previous civilizations. It’s the whole point of recorded history.
In
his book, “The Western Canon,” which attempts to establish what
the most important books in our culture are, literary critic Harold
Bloom spends several pages ridiculing Freud’s theory that
Shakespeare’s plays were written not by Shakespeare but by an
anonymous nobleman, while praising Freud’s essays as some of the
best ever written. Interestingly, Bloom himself has written an entire
book, The Book of J, arguing that much of the Old Testament
was written by a non-religious, very-intellectual woman of King
Solomon’s court, and that much of it was satire. Only later,
according to Bloom, were the “pious” parts of the Bible added so
that it could become a religious text.
Could
it be that the source of the principles of Western culture, the
Bible, was originally written as an entertaining story and nothing
more?
One
lesson we might take from this is that literature has a life of its
own. As it is passed down it evolves into a shape that best helps its
culture survive. We don’t know much about William Shakespeare to
begin with, so what difference does it make if his name was
different? It is the plays themselves that have beauty, and perhaps
truth and something of goodness.
But
the real point of Bloom’s argument is that the Bible doesn’t have
a divine source. Bloom takes this idea to the extreme, I think. He
writes as if literature and religion exist in a vacuum, as if they
were not the source of the principles we live by.
People
are always saying we need to give up the idea of scripture as
authority, that we need to replace it with arguments based on
evidence.
This
idea is not new. It goes back to the Greek philosophers. There is a
lot to recommend it. Obviously if you’re looking for facts, it’s
better to study scientific experiments than holy texts.
Facts,
sure. Get them from science. But what about principles? What about
values? A lot of philosophers hold to a stronger version of the above
idea: “All beliefs, even principles and values, should be
established by rational argument based on evidence. Nothing
whatsoever should be based on sacred texts. The morality they teach
is outdated. Do we really want to go back to the Law of Moses?”
The
difference between a value and a fact is that a value is imperative.
A value tells you what you should do. Facts are not imperative. A dog
can know his way home but never come home because he doesn’t want
to. It’s the dog’s values that are wrong, not his facts.
The
philosopher G.E. Moore called it the “is-ought fallacy.” You
cannot prove an ought from an is. You may know how to
build a nuclear bomb, but that doesn’t mean you should. You may
know that our government is corrupt, but that doesn’t mean it
should be.
You
can argue logically concerning values. You can prove, using logic,
that one should do something. For example, if the dog should eat, and
it can only find food at home, it follows that the dog should go
home. But notice that we proved this ought based on another
ought. Since you cannot prove values from facts alone, you can
only prove values with the help of other values.
Imagine
that you have a chart of all your values. You want to the try to
prove them all. To avoid circular reasoning, each value will have to
be based on some stronger value. Charity is based on love. Law is
based on justice. Reason is based on honesty. At the base of your
tree you will have some value or values that are strongest. And these
strongest values are unprovable.
Take
a moment to think about what that means. The most sacred values are
the ones you cannot prove.
This
is why it’s nonsense when people say that science should replace
religion. You cannot prove your most sacred values. Evidence simply
doesn’t matter. No other values can be brought in. They simply are.
You
can do this analysis with anyone’s set of values. Every value tree
has a root. You cannot argue over this root.
We
live in a complex world, so in a healthy person or society, this root
is something extremely complex and robust. It’s not easy to sum up
the values of any belief system. It typically takes years to master
the doctrines of a certain philosophy or religion.
While
you cannot disprove the root, it can still become corrupted and
rotten, and your values can collapse. I think normally this is called
madness. Conversion can happen; people’s values can change; but
unless the new values are something time-tested, you can’t predict
what will happen. (If you could then life would be uninteresting.
We’d all simply pick the evolutionarily-best value system and never
think again.)
This
is why I’m worried that we keep talking about tossing religion.
3
My
beard has grown quite long recently, and after my wife compared it to
Jesus’ beard I suddenly wondered how we know that Jesus had one.
Doing a little online research, I found that the traditional images
of a bearded Jesus originated around the 4th century AD. Before then
images of Jesus were very rare, because religious illustration was
considered idolatry. The few illustrations of Jesus that we do have
from before 300 AD were mostly unbearded. There are no descriptions
of a beard in the New Testament, or of long hair.
The
beard and long hair first appeared in illustrations based on
traditional portraits of the Byzantine Emperor. Typically emperors
had beards. Beards were more imperial. As King of Kings, Jesus would
have been expected to have a beard.
But
who cares if Jesus had a beard? Is it any more significant than what
Shakespeare’s real name was? Isn’t it more important what he
actually taught?
Some
argue that Jesus of Nazareth probably never existed at all, that the
story evolved from earlier myths about a Virgin birth, or at best
several different stories about would-be messiahs in Jerusalem around
that time.
But
all of these questions are factual. The truth is we lack records. The
teachings of Jesus themselves are no less at the root of our values.
The Sermon on the Mount would be no less sacred if it turned out it
was uttered in jest by the Queen of Nabatea, or offered ironically by
a Thracian beggar, or sung drunkenly by a pig from Gaul.
"Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or the age to come." Jesus, Matthew 12:32.
Just
as you cannot convince a nonbeliever by appealing to scripture, you
cannot disprove religious principles by attacking their source in
scripture. The existence of certain sheets of paper with text on them
is a fact, and bears no weight either way. It is always the spirit of
the law that matters, not the letter, not even the physical ink on
the page.
4
“They
say that this world is unreal, with no foundation, no God in control.
They say it is the result of sexual desire and has no creator other
than lust. … They believe that sensory gratification is the purpose
of human civilization. Thus until the end of life their anxiety is
immeasurable.” This is from the Bhagavad
Gita,
which is thousands of years old.
Why
is it that high civilization tends toward the belief that material
wealth and physical pleasure is the purpose of life? In our culture
this is called “utilitarianism” and it forms the basis of the
most popular theories of ethics taught in the universities. We
believe this because we have spoiled ourselves. To have deeper
principles than material gain takes courage, and courage takes
effort.
5
The
correct way to read philosophy: change your life.
6
Sacred
values can’t be argued, nor can they be persuaded. To persuade you
must appeal to something deeper.
One
of my friends said to me, “Religion needs to stop trying to
convince us to be moral by appealing to the afterlife.”
But
the truth is you cannot appeal to anything else at all. You can only
appeal to the most sacred value, Goodness itself.
To
criticize religions for using sacred texts is silly because how else
would you record your most sacred values, but with paper and ink? And
if you can’t make a rational argument for them, should we be
surprised that there are so many non-arguments in scripture?
7
The
new conventional wisdom is that moral values aren’t real, that
they’re arbitrary and subjective.
Maybe
they aren’t literally real in the sense of being actual objects,
but a lot of important things aren’t actual objects, like the
number two, triangles, and freedom. And what’s wrong with being
subjective? Arbitrary is defined as “subject to individual will or
judgment.” But on what basis do you judge values? On the basis of
more sacred values.
8
I
once asked the president of an atheist society where to find values,
if not in religious texts. He vaguely mentioned the Humanist
Bible, a book he hadn’t read. The New Yorker describes
it as “A marvel ... written in a crisp, beautiful English.” In
this book’s version of Genesis, instead of an allegory about
humankind’s fall from innocence, we get the story of Newton seeing
the apple fall from the tree, and the unambiguous conclusion, “Those
who first set themselves to discover nature’s secrets and designs,
fearlessly opposing mankind’s early ignorance, deserve our praise.”
I
prefer the inflected debate to the monotone conclusion. Was there not
something beautiful, too, in our innocence?
I
prefer the Old Book, the Living Book, whose purpose and authorship
remain obscure, to the New and Improved Book, contrived and
sterilized and obvious. If I must I will pray to an ancient tree,
knotted and gnarled and half-bare. But I will not bow before a new
radio tower, no matter how crisp and beautiful its tune.
Perhaps
later, when it has aged, and gained hard wisdom, and become tainted
with life.
I
told him if I had to choose a non-religious source of values I would
go to Plato. He dropped the topic and went on to his proofs and
arguments.
9
But
purpose is the first thing to decide.
We
must teach our children values. It’s a sacred responsibility.
10
Why
do we keep forgetting that principles must bottom out, that the tree
must have a root? Even objective reasons must bottom out.
Mathematical systems need axioms.
Our
excessive rationality might be to blame. Reason compartmentalizes. It
focuses on the argument and not the assumptions. It forgets the
context, the big picture.
Reason
is not really a foundation. It’s a way of building on a foundation.
It requires unproven assumptions to get off the ground. But we’ve
become so obsessed with reason that we have started to think of it as
a foundation, and fool ourselves that we are being broad-minded and
principled when in fact we are being narrow and sacrificing what is
most important.
A
close friend of mine said she kept worrying about what other people
thought of her personality. That maybe they were finding her unfunny
and annoying. It was making her depressed. I said that I overcame my
anxiety by forgetting about getting people to like me and resolving
to stick to my principles even if they were unpopular. If they
disliked me for being principled, I finally decided, their opinion
didn’t matter.
If
you care about your “personality,” or what people think, or
fashion, or not looking foolish, or looking rational and not
touchy-feely, or seeming pious, or being perceived as successful,
then you are sacrificing your own personal fulfillment for something
far less important. It matters what people think. But it matters more
to stick to your principles.
This
is what it means to be broad-minded. You don’t judge based on
popular opinion, but on your own rich intuitions of virtue. This is
not the same as open-mindedness, to suspend all judgment. Without
judgment there is no principle.
11
We
hear this a lot: “Humanity had always thought it was at the center
of the universe. But then we realized that the Earth actually goes
around the Sun, which is just another star at the edge of our galaxy,
which is just another galaxy among billions and billions in the
universe. We thought we were the highest of God’s creatures, but
we’re just latecomers on the scene of evolution, a blip in a drama
which has been going on for billions of years. The truth is that the
universe just doesn’t care about us. Reality is cold, hard,
uncaring, and unloving. Morals, values, principles, philosophies, and
religions are all purely subjective. We invented them. The objective
truth is that the universe just doesn’t care.”
Why
should certain objective truths trump all subjective truth? The idea
that objective, material reality is more important than subjective
value, this itself is a value. No objective facts about atoms and
galaxies and evolution determine by themselves what we should value
most. You cannot derive an ought from a mere is.
Of
course material reality is unfeeling. We’re talking about
non-living matter. We shouldn’t expect it to care. But why should
we value the material perspective more than the human perspective?
If
values are subjective, why not value subjectivity more than
objectivity? Humans more than atoms? Why not posit humanity as a
primary value in the universe? We may not be at the geometrical
center of everything (wherever that is), but that doesn’t prevent
us from being of central importance.
12
Once
you start valuing material goods over spiritual goods, you’re on a
path to destruction.
Recently
I got into an online debate with an extremely intelligent and
well-read historian of philosophy. He argued that Greek tragedy
ruined Greece because it made its soldiers less willing to die for
the glory of their nation.
I
responded that Greek tragedy has survived for thousands of years, but
no Greek nation-state has survived that long. I said that Greek
tragedy has taught us many human truths.
He
believed that America should teach its young men courage again and
conquer the world.
I
replied that world conquest means little, that the armies of Genghis
Khan, though they created the largest empire that has ever existed,
had less an influence on human evolution than Tibetan Buddhism, whose
wisdom has never conquered physically yet has changed the world
spiritually.
He
scoffed, saying that Tibet had failed to keep its people free from
Chinese rule.
Later,
he began making white-supremacist jokes publicly online, saying that
we should enslave the Blacks and Jews, and I broke off our
correspondence.
If
your fundamental value is material power, then your duty is to use
any means necessary to enslave the world. But if your fundamental
value is spiritual goodness, then your duty is the quieter, more
fulfilling, and more everlasting feat of teaching the world.
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