A Chilling Lesson From Two of History’s Most Important Philosophers
It’s the birthday of the father of modern philosophy, Rene’ Descartes, who began his professional life as a prominent mathematician and scientist in 17th Century France. His much better-known explorations into philosophy came as an accident, when he realized that doubt was a requirement to the scientific method. Famously, he called everything he knew into question, but then began to fear that perhaps there was nothing we could know with any certainly about ourselves and the world around us. This is when he had the discovery for which he is best remembered today, i.e., regardless of the lack of certainty of everything in the universe, as long as I think, it’s necessarily true that I exist.
Fast-forward 350 years to another mathematician-cum-philosopher, Bertrand Russell, and what he had to say on the subject: The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
It is with great sadness that we observe the obvious parallel between Russell’s remark and the current state of U.S. politics. Americans, in general, have suddenly become a very doctrinaire and dogmatic people, characteristics that don’t align too well with the kind of clear, objective thinking that is so important to a just, peaceful, and sustainable civilization on Earth.
A computer can progress from one bit of logical data to another in a far more rapid progression than is possible for human beings. Will we one day have computers tell us that they have a right to “person hood” because they think?
Humans have the potential for multiple levels of thinking and we seem to have the potential for intuition: the ability to jump to a correct conclusion bypassing the logical steps. We call the savant a genius for just this ability.
I would go further and suggest that it is human intuition that is the basis for the hypothesis that is part of the scientific method. The brilliance of the scientific method is that it asks that hypothesis to be tested. We often focus on the hypothesis to “not be confirmed” until it it is tested. We could just as easily suggest that it not be denied until it is dis-proven.
Until our intuition or hypothesis is confirmed or denied we are left with a “belief.” There is a place for belief. It may not be comfortable for those only familiar with logical steps but it can help to fill in the void left by the unknown and the unknowable.
Sadly there are also many who don’t want their beliefs tested or challenged. This is true not only of political and religious fanatics but some adherents of the scientific method.
I also often wonder about the limits of computers vis-a-vis human thinking. It’s normal to believe that emotions are going to be hard to program, and so many of our daily lives are wrapped up in what we feel about a certain thing or person.
Of course, this is anything but a new idea. A huge reason for the success of Star Trek is the quirkiness of Mr. Spock, a brilliant who did all he decision-making based on logic, since he and his entire species was born without emotion.
When I was a young man, I kissed some pretty girls. It’s hard to image that my thinking before, during, and after the kiss could be reduced to ones and zeroes.
But who knows where this is going to end, or if there will ever be an end.
Indeed, Yeats observed the same phenomenon as Russell in these lines from his poem, The Second Coming:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Bukowski put it less artfully and perhaps less accurately, by equating intelligence:
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubt, while the stupid people are full of confidence.”
Intelligence has some overlap, but there are more than a few brilliant yet horribly misguided people (Ted Cruz comes to mind).
I’m not unique in this next observation, but it’s long appeared to me that deep thinkers (not necessarily the most brilliant) tend to think more independently, cherish their independence, and are more driven by data than shallow thinkers. Meanwhile, shallow thinkers tend to congregate and reinforce each other’s perceptions, and are driven more by emotion than deep thinkers.
I agree with every word of this. Great comment.
Thanks, my friend.
So it seems that level of intelligence is less a factor than level of humility when trying to make a difference in the world
Early in our marriage which is going to be 36 years this May my wife Annie and I attended a talk at Lehigh University by Igal Rudenko a pacifist with the War Resister League. His talk was about pasivism and he was talking about how firm your commitment to non violence must be when someone is violent with you.He was explaining how you must build a personal reality that is very strong to be non violent. He said that when building this reality you must leave room for the assholes. He got a good laugh, but that truth comes back to mind more often.I find myself having to leave more and more room for the assholes these days and it is cause for concern.
As the second commenter to bring up the term “asshole” tonight, let me acknowledge your wonderful story and refer you to what I wrote to Robert Stang. That really is a terrific tale; thanks so much for sharing.
Thank you Craig and others who have commented. Descartes had a huge effect on my life until recently. I accept all the comments above. Those comments are clearly from individuals with good intentions for the benefit of all. I find that for me to peacefully put up with assholes I have to expand my consciousness which is somehow deeper and more fundamental than my brain “thinking” it. It requires all of my human attention. Consider this, there is some recent research into parts of our body, like our hearts (https://www.heartmath.org/), that process information and have intelligence. And it is sad that we have to put up with so many assholes these days!
Yes, I’m heard that theory about the heart and I’m intrigued, though skeptical.
Re: “assholes,” obviously, it’s not incumbent on kind and civil people to hate them, but to understand them and back them down from their horrible situations. (Do you think they’re happy? No. They desperately want, whether overtly or subconsciously, to be led into another direction.)
It’s also incumbent upon us to understand the conditions by which hateful people come to be. This is why I’m a Bernie Sanders guys. If elected, he will deal with the major issues here that knock the moral foundations out from under everyday poor and lower-middle class people:
Most importantly, being told that they’re losing their minute portion of wealth because of illegal immigrants, food stamps, etc., where a rational analysis shows that this is not the case at all.
Being systematically made relatively poorer via the game rigged in favor.
Having a huge percentage of our population sent to incredible prison terms because of lack of access to quality education, and other sociological issues by which they have little or no chance to participate in the American Dream.
Thanks so much for raising the point, and for staying in touch over the many years.
Here’s an essay I wrote not quite a year ago that comes to mind when I read this post and the thoughtful comments on it…
EVIL – WHAT IS IT?
According to the Dictionary of Word Origins by John Ayto, the word “evil” “…comes ultimately from ‘upelo-“‘ a derivative of the Indo-European base ‘upo-,’…, Sanskrit ‘upa,’ at, to, and English “up” and ‘over’), and so its underlying connotation is of ‘exceeding due limits, extremism.’ Its Germanic descendant was ‘ubilaz,’ source of German übel,’ [meaning] evil as well as English ‘evil.’ ”
Universalist Gary Amirault observes that an example of this distinction is found in Ezekiel Chapter 16 verse 49. When most Christians think of the sin or evil of Sodom, they usually think of the “immoral sexual sins” of Sodom of which homosexuality is commonly considered the height of their depravity. Yet, instead, this is how the literary voice of the Creator describes Sodom’s condition:
“Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”
We’re talking about the rise of excessive pride – and its more extreme offspring, greed – and the lack of compassion thus engendered.
A peer-reviewed academic resource, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, notes: “[Hannah] Arendt’s first major work, [On Totalitarianism], published in 1951, is clearly a response to the devastating events of her own time – the rise of Nazi Germany and the catastrophic fate of European Jewry at its hands, the rise of Soviet Stalinism and its annihilation of millions of peasants (not to mention free-thinking intellectuals, writers, artists, scientists and political activists).
“Arendt insisted that these manifestations of political evil could not be understood as mere extensions in scale or scope of already existing precedents, but rather that they represented a completely ‘novel form of government,’ one built upon terror and ideological fiction. Where older tyrannies had used terror as an instrument for attaining or sustaining power, modern totalitarian regimes exhibited little strategic rationality in their use of terror. Rather, terror was no longer a means to a political end, but an end in itself.”
“For Arendt, the popular appeal of totalitarian ideologies with their capacity to mobilize populations to do their bidding, rested upon the devastation of ordered and stable contexts in which people once lived. The impact of the First World War, and the Great Depression, and the spread of revolutionary unrest, left people open to the promulgation of a single, clear and unambiguous idea that would allocate responsibility for woes, and indicate a clear path that would secure the future against insecurity and danger.
“Totalitarian ideologies offered just such answers, purporting discovered a “key to history” with which events of the past and present could be explained, and the future secured by doing history’s or nature’s bidding. Accordingly the amenability of European populations to totalitarian ideas was the consequence of a series of pathologies that had eroded the public or political realm as a space of liberty and freedom.
“These pathologies included the expansionism of imperialist capital with its administrative management of colonial suppression, and the usurpation of the state by the bourgeoisie as an instrument by which to further its own sectional interests.
“This in turn led to the delegitimization of political institutions, and the atrophy of the principles of citizenship and deliberative consensus that had been the heart of the democratic political enterprise.
“The rise of totalitarianism was thus to be understood in light of the accumulation of pathologies that had undermined the conditions of possibility for a viable public life that could unite citizens, while simultaneously preserving their liberty and uniqueness (a condition that Arendt referred to as “plurality”).”
Here we see that Arendt clearly identified the root cause of both totalitarian states – one emerging from “left wing” rhetoric and the other from “right wing” rhetoric (and yet both states soon severely betraying the core ideals in their rhetoric).
We can see the unbroken line from the Sanskrit “upo” to the English “evil” carried in the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, “The love of money is the root of all evil.”
In today’s language of political philosophy, and through the lenses that Ayto and Arendt have provided us, Paul’s admonition might better be phrased as follows:
The greed of the elite is the source of all socio-political pathologies.
Wow, that’s very interesting. Thanks!