What follows are Excerpts from
MANY PATHS TO THE SAME SUMMIT – a DRAFT of my
manuscript, which you can read more of on my website. (Constructive
feedback is very welcome.)
***(fyi, *** means chapters have been skipped for our purposes: you can find missing chapters on the
website)
On the Living Word
Consider how those who live in primal
cultures might spend their days, coming together
around a campfire after work and play to share
the ultimate intrinsic goods of food and drink,
talk and laughter, music and dance. If ancient
and indigenous peoples understand one thing
better than those of us raised in modern cultures,
it is the power and value of the living word as
part of life’s play, perhaps chief among the
intrinsic goods of living.
In the words of esteemed religious
historian Huston Smith, those who still practice this ancient and healing habit are, “Like
bands of blind Homers,” who “gather each evening around their fires” to “revere and
rehearse their heritage endlessly…original language breathing new life into familiar
themes…each supplementing and correcting the accounts of others.” [p.234]
This daily habit of putting their heads together in dialogue is a more joyous
experience than might conceived, at least those of us in the modern world who habitually
retire every evening to the isolation of our homes where we live vicariously through out
televisions. By contrast, ancient and indigenous peoples
were and are more inclined to make the most of this time
and the good fortune that brings them together with family
and friends to enjoy the ongoing discussions that give
meaning to their lives, as well as structure to their
education.
This practice encourages all to be both students and
teachers as they share what they had discovered with all
who might benefit from their learning experience. One can
imagine how ‘the hunt’ or ‘the meal’ or ‘the children’ or
‘the teachings of the ancestors’ could arouse a wonderful
discussions, all contributing their perspective to the whole
ongoing dialogue. And the first advantage of this is that
those who live in oral cultures are never lonely for long, for
the daily lessons they learn in solitude are nightly shared in
the company of their family and friends.
But there is more going on here than what Parmenides calls mere “idle talk.”1
Collective learning comes about as individuals seek answers to intrinsically generated
questions. As Socrates says, “Nothing is an answer if you haven't asked the question.”
And it’s in the dialogue that depth of understanding is achieved, one of several key
insights the ancients called dialectic thinking.
The Hindus, for instance, understood various religions to be ‘many paths to the
same summit,’ which embody the notion that “Truth is one; sages call it by different
names.”2
“At first this may seem
surprising; if there is one
goal, should there not be
one path to it? This might
be the case if we all
started from the same
point, but in actuality
people approach the goal
from different angles, so
multiple
paths
are
needed… The result is a
recognition...that
there
are multiple paths to god,
each calling for a
distinctive
mode
of
approach.”3
And when we inquire of anything from all angles, every new point of view adds
perspective to what could be seen or understood with less (as we’ve said, just as two eyes
give depth to what can be seen with only one). In this way, the whole truth becomes a
meaningful ideal. Weaving perspectives together in this dialectical fashion is precisely
what the mind is good for, and it was for this very purpose that the ancient primal people
gathered each and every evening to celebrate the fortuna of their continued existence, the
way children gather to play.
“What is important for us to understand,” Smith says, “is the impact of this
ongoing, empowering seminar on its participants. Everyone feeds the living reservoir of
knowledge while receiving from it its answering flows of information that stocks and
shapes their lives.”4
And “[T]he overriding advantage of speech over writing is what it does for
memory.” “Everything their ancestors learned with difficulty, from healing herbs to
stirring legends, is now stored in their collective memory, and there only." 5 In other
1
(Plato, Parmenides, p.*)
2
(Smith, p.56)
(Smith, 26)
3
4
5
(Smith, p. 234)
(Smith, p.234)
words, this emphasis that primal peoples put on what Smith calls “the living word”
ensured that, "They remember what is important, and forget the rest."6 And what is lost
without this ongoing process is no small matter – indeed, nothing less than the
understanding of what is important.
“If exclusive orality protects human memory," Smith says, “it also guards…the
capacity to experience the sacred through non-verbal channels," leaving "their eyes free
to notice other sacred conduits (other than books, that is)," such as "virgin nature and
sacred art…"7
By contrast, cultures that look to their sacred texts for revelations also tend to
“marginalizes other windows to the divine.”[p.234] For the fact that might surprise some
of us is that, “during most of human history people have found their sacred texts in song
and dance and paintings and stone more than in writing.”(p.6)
***
On Revelry, Readiness, and Revelation
Primal peoples might remind us to keep in mind that, without
or without words, the revelation of truth was understood to be purely
experiential, an inner phenomena or “rushing progression of
understanding” that can be beyond words altogether, purely
experiential, as is for instance, love. Far from a mere spectacle to be
read or watched from outside-looking-in, philosophy in this sense was,
like music, dance, and poetry, understood as something meant to be
experienced from the inside.
The Bagavad Gita puts it this way:
“what we read are only words. We cannot know the taste of a fruit or of a wine by
reading words about them; we must eat the fruit and drink the wine.”
Like “The seers of the Upanishads [who] did not establish a Church, or found a
definite religion…the seers of the Spirit in all religions agree that communion
with the Highest is not a problem of words but of life.”(p.17)
Again, as Zen masters conceived it, words are pointing tools, but what they point
to in this case is an inner experience that can be ‘known’ only directly, prior to words,
and then only by what the ancients called the ‘initiated’, which is to say, those who are
ready. Unfortunately, we don’t get much initiation in our culture, nor is our learning
process sensitive to student readiness. This process involves a sort of ‘purging’ or
rethinking what we thought we knew, reevaluating what matters. But while words alone
cannot ‘teach’ this kind of understanding to anyone who hasn’t experienced it first hand,
6
7
(Smith, p. 234)
(Smith, p. 234)
they can go a long way toward illuminating the meaning of this experience between
people who have this first hand knowledge, i.e. gnosis.
Also relevant here was the discovery by Pythagoras (582-507 BCE, during a more
folk or primal age of ancient Greece, prior to what we call ‘the golden age’) of the
mathematical ratios of the melodic intervals that gave rise to an understanding of the
rational basis for musical theory. Music was understood by the ancients in its broadest
sense, as any of the arts or sciences that came under the power of the muses (imaginary
maidens who were the daughters of the heavenly Zeus (who represents the creative urge)
and the earthly Mnemosyne (human memory). The muses had the power to inspire
humans to remember their divine origins. In its literal sense, music meant 'remembered
inspiration'.
Music was considered synonymous with order and proportion, and an
understanding of it seemed to be the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe. An
understanding of the order underlying music allowed ancient seers to see the order
underlying so much seeming chaos. “Interestingly, the Greek word nomos, meaning
‘law’, also had the musical meaning of ‘melody’.”(Ehrenreich, p.24)
And while music consists of three things, words, harmony, and rhythm, Plato was
careful to emphasize that harmony and rhythm must follow the words; they pick up
where words leave off. The inarticulate sound and gestures of singing and dancing are
what people resort to when so overcome with feelings that words fail. Hence the reason
that music was primarily considered in relation to literature, drama, and dance (an
Athenian dramatist was responsible for writing the music and training the chorus, as well
as for writing and staging the play).
The Greeks had an elaborate theory that drew out the relationship between various
major or minor modes or scales and the moods and emotions that are associated with
them. In the highest sense of the term music idealized being in tune with the cosmic
forces, having harmony between the physical and the metaphysical, and thus being able
to hear ‘the music of the spheres,’ which was integrally interconnected with immortality.
It's true that this sometimes had sexual overtones for the Greeks -- for discourse is
to the mind what intercourse is to the body, the means by which humans might reach the
heights of human ecstasy, the moment when the human meets the divine, where the
material meets the spiritual, where the visible meets the invisible...the moment when
human beings can, if properly purified
in preparation for the experience, fully
participate in the ‘music of the
spheres’. Call this orgasm, if you like,
but the Greeks would like us to
remember that what we these days
think of as a purely physical
experience,
not
only
has
psychological/spiritual components, but
that there is an orgasmic state possible
in a simple meeting of the minds,
without any physical interaction at all.
Platonic friendship is not a step back
from intimacy, after all, but a step toward it.
True to their conviction that all living things have higher and lower potentials, and
therefore healthier and unhealthier states of being, these primal Greeks aimed to
understand the proper – i.e. healthy – function of music. Following Plato’s conviction
that there is a right and wrong way to use words, so there is a right and wrong way to use
music. It was understood to have a fundamental influence on both personal and social
health and well being. And we are only now beginning to appreciate this medicinal
value of the intrinsic goods of music and dance.
This understanding of the role of music in health gave rise to certain linguistic
images that are still familiar to us today. For instance, when a person is healthy and
happy, they are thought to be like a well-tuned instrument. When they are too tense, they
are said to be high strung, and when they come apart they are said to be unstrung.
And so this state of proper attunement was understood to be the purpose of the
dialectic method, the ultimate stage in the progressive refinement of the means of
attaining ecstasy is ultimately reached, but it’s important to remember that wine, dancing,
laughter, and even sex are all part of the whole of the art. But far from a mere spectacle to
be watched from outside looking in, music, dance, poetry and philosophy and even sexual
intercourse are meant to be experienced from the inside looking out.
This is far better understood in many ancient cultures than it is in ours today,
which perhaps accounts for the sad state of our educational methods. Plato held that the
best education consisted of a balanced curriculum of music for the soul and gymnastics
for the body. Music, in this sense, included everything we might consider to fall under the
umbrella of a liberal education (although, curiously, while there were muses for lyric
poetry, drama, dancing, and song, and even astronomy and history…but there were no
muses for the visual arts, such as architecture, sculpture, and painting…although this
didn’t seem to hold them back, as the Greeks excelled at architecture, sculpture, and
painting).
This is how our ancient betters would recommend we daily celebrate our great
fortune in being alive – by way of these intrinsic goods that are means by which we grow
from our lesser to our better selves, and able to share in this magical experience in this
heavenly place.
As Aeschylus put it in his play, The Bacchae:
For his kingdom, it is there,
In the dancing and the prayer,
In the music and the laughter,
In the vanishing of care.
“Dionysus, whom the Romans called Bacchus – was a democratic god,
accessible to the humble and mighty alike, and had jurisdiction over wine and
vineyard…more spiritual responsibility was to preside over the orgeia…where his
devotes danced themselves into a state of trance…”(p.34)
Some of our cultures of origin have taught us to be suspicious of this kind of
revelry as ‘pagan’, as if it somehow has the devil’s handprint on it. But in the Gospel of
Thomas, Jesus says when asked by his disciples, “When will the kingdom come?" – ‘the
Father's kingdom is spread out upon the earth, but some do not yet see it.’(Gospel of
Thomas)
Indeed, these were the original pagans, and can teach us, if anyone can, that it is
not depravity and decadence that motivates the love of such joyous celebration, but full
appreciation and gratitude for all that is heavenly here on this earth – where mind and
body meet.
Socrates ultimately puts it this way:
“The purpose [of dialectic education] is to bring the two elements [mind
and body] into tune with one another by adjusting the tension of each to
the right pitch. So one who can apply to the soul both kinds of education
blended in perfect proportion will be master of a nobler sort of musical
harmony than was ever made by tuning the strings of the lyre."(Republic,
p. 102)
And this ineffable nature of truth does not diminish
the role of words in the dialectic process, but only
emphasizes that words alone are not enough.
Understanding resides in the soul, prior to words.
Hunnington Cairns, for instance, notes that "the word 'soul,'
with its accretions of meanings during the centuries, is an
unfortunate translation of the Greek word psyche. It is
more properly translated, according to the various contexts,
as Reason, Mind, Intelligence, Life, the vital principle in
things as well as in man; it is the constant that causes
change but itself does not change. “
Here again then, “one explanation of [Plato’s] use
of different words to describe” this inner mind, or what he
called ‘the invisible world,’ “suggests that he hoped to
make us realize that meaning lies not in words but only in
that for which words stand."8
As Aldous Huxley once observed, ‘It is with their muscles that humans most
easily obtain knowledge of the divine.”(*)
In her book, Dancing in the Streets, Barbara Ehrenreich argues that, “Ancient
Dionysian revelers and Christian glossolaliacs believed that their moments of ecstasy
were the gifts of a deity.”(p.94) Ehrenreich discovered in her research “the almost
ubiquitous practice” of dance and what she calls “ecstatic ritual”…which has “an
extraordinary uniformity, in spite of much local variation, in ritual and mythology.”(p.1)
“Ritual dances provide a religious experience that seems more satisfying and convincing
than any other.’”(p.33, Quoted from Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, p. 271)
8
(Plato, "Introduction"in Collected Dialogues, p. xx-xxi.)
“[I]ngredients of ecstatic rituals & festivities – music, dancing, eating, drinking,
or indulging in other mind-altering drugs…-- seem to be universal,” she says.(Roger D.
Abraham, in Turner, 1982, pp.167-168 ] Indeed, “[A]nthropologist Erika Bourguiguon
found that 92 percent of small-scale societies encouraged some sort of religious
trance….most cases through ecstatic ritual.”(Goodman, p.36)
Apparently, most humans throughout time have spoken “the language of extreme
experience…with the idea of over extending the self…stretching life to the
fullest…”(Roger D. Abraham, in Turner, 1982, pp.167-168)
Clearly, dancing “did not seem like a waste of energy to prehistoric
peoples.”(p.22) “At one recently discovered site in England, drawings on the ceiling of a
cave show ‘conga lines’ of female dancers, along with drawings of animals like bison and
ibex, which are known to have become extinct in England 10,000 years ago” (Pickrell,
National Geographic News, August 18, 2004) “So well before people had a written
language, and possibly before they took up a settled life style, they danced and
understood dancing as an activity important enough to record on stone.”(p.21)
But “[D]ance cannot work to bind people unless…it is intrinsically
pleasurable…whatever the ritual dancers of prehistoric times thought they were doing-…-- they were also doing something they liked to do and liked enough to invest
considerable energy in.”(p.25) As all intrinsic evidence suggests, “dancing is
contagious.”(p.25) Which is perhaps why dance is “the hallmark of so many ancient and
indigenous religions.”(p.87)
“Dance, whether of the ecstatic or more stately variety, was [also] a
central and defining activity of the ancient Greek community…dances at
regularly scheduled festivities or what appear to have been spontaneous
outbreaks, dances for victory, for the gods, or for the sheer fun of it.”
(p.32, Lawler, pp. 238-39)
“The religion of the ancient Greeks was a
‘danced religion’, much like those of the
‘savages’ European travelers were later to
discover around the world,” to which they often
reacted with great revulsion. But “the
ambivalence and hostility found in ancient written
records may tell us more about the conditions
under which writing was invented than about any
long-standing prior conflict over ecstatic rituals
themselves. Writing arises with ‘civilization,’ in
particular, with the emergence of social
stratification and the rise of elites.”(p.44)
“Ecstatic rituals…build group cohesion, but when
they build it among subordinates – peasants,
slaves, women, colonized people – the elite calls
its troops.”(p.251)
out
As it turns out, “The aspect of ‘civilization’ that is most hostile to festivity is not
capitalism or industrialism – both of which are fairly recent innovations – but social
hierarchy, which is far more ancient. When one class, or ethnic group or gender, rules
over a population of subordinates, it comes to fear the empowering rituals of the
subordinates as a threat to civil order.”(p.251) “Hierarchy, by its nature, establishes
boundaries between people – who can go where, who can approach whom, who is
welcome, and who is not. Festivity breaks these boundaries down.”(p.252) “The rise of
social hierarchy, anthropologists agree, goes hand in hand with the rise of militarism and
war, which are in their own way also usually hostile to the danced rituals of the archaic
past.”(p.44)
By contrast, “Dionysus was a lover of peace…and like Jesus, he upheld the poor
and rejected the prevailing social hierarchy,”(p.39-60) Whether “Jesus was, or was
portrayed by his followers as, a continuation of the quintessentially pagan Dionysus,”
there is much evidence that the two had much in common. “Strikingly, both are
associated with wine; Dionysus first brought it to humankind; Jesus could make it out of
water.”(p.59)
“Women, above all, responded to Dionysus’ call”… and Like Jesus, “Dionysus
had a special appeal to the women of the Greek city-state, who were ordinarily excluded
from much of public life.”(p.34) Both represented “A feminine, or androgynous, spirit of
playfulness versus the cold principle of patriarchal authority.”(p.55) So it is no surprise
that and why later fathers of the Christian Church could not do enough to disassociate
their doctrine with all things ‘pagan’ – which means only ‘Greek and all things before’.
“The most notorious feminine form of Dionysian worship, the oreibaia, or winter
dance,” which “looks to modern eyes like a crude pantomime of feminist revolt.”(p.35)
But as Ehrenreich emphasized, “Whether the women’s dances were really lewd or only
appeared so” through Christian eyes that wilfully misread them is a matter of some doubt.
“The most famous literary account of maenadism, Euripides’ play, The Bacchae, clearly
refutes the notion that sex or even drunkenness was involved.”(p.37) “Given the
persistent tendency to confuse communal ecstasy and sexual abandon,”(p.71) and the
failure to recognize the “Greek understanding that collective ecstasy is not fundamentally
sexual in nature,”(p.39) this practice is better understood as an attempt to “achieve a state
of mind the Greeks called euthousiansmos – literally, having the god within
oneself.”(p.35)
Early Christians, taking
their cue from the Delphic
Oracle, called this “inexpressible
love” glossolalia, much the same
phenomena that is later called
‘speaking in tongues.’(p.70) As
this ‘gift’ carried some prestige
and is also all to easily faked
(p.69), it was rebuked by Paul as
excessively
enthusiastic,
impossible to verify, and
ultimately unintelligible.(p.6869)
“If we know one thing about Paul, it is that he was greatly concerned about
making Christianity respectable to the Romans, and hence as little like the other ‘oriental’
religions – with their disorderly dancing women – as possible.”(p.66) “Clearly, concern
over the integrity of Roman manhood was chief among” the worries of orthodox church
fathers who would later proclaim as the excuse for forcibly suppressing them (following
the Roman historian, Livy), that “women in general ‘are the source of this evil thing,’
meaning the entire Bacchic ‘conspiracy’.”(p.54) Which inverts the comfortable hierarchy
of power that serves the powers that be.(p.103)
“[T]he Church was determined to maintain its monopoly over human
access to the divine” and would go to great lengths to see to it that
“ordinary people [never] get the idea that they could approach the deity on
their own (as did, for example, the ancient worshipers of
Dionysus).”(p.84)
So dance was treated by the powers that be as a “form of heresy: Nothing is more
threatening to a hierarchical religion than the possibility of ordinary lay peoples finding
their own way into the presence of the gods.”(p.86) For “Dionysus…did not ask his
followers for their belief or faith; he called on them to apprehend him directly.”(p.256)
As we will see, it wasn’t long before the “Church began to crack down on
religious dancing, especially by women.”(p.73) But we moderns can hardly conceive that
“These occasions were, in an important sense, what men and women lived for.”(p.92,
E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common, p.51) Nor that “Festivity – like bread or freedom –
can be a social good worth fighting for.”(p.94) Something “we need much more of on
this crowded planet, to
acknowledge the miracle of
our simultaneous existence
with
some
sort
of
celebration.”(p.261)
Organized religions
(p.77-117) and organized
sports (p.225-245) have tried
to fill this gap, to little avail.
Indeed, as Emile Backtin’s
great
insight
indicates,
"carnival
is
something
people create and generate
for
themselves.”(p.95)
Hence, the reason why
spontaneous rock concerts
and festivals serve this need
somewhat better than those
that are organized. (p.207224) “This is how danced
rituals and festivities served
to bind prehistoric human groups, and this is what still beckons us today.”(p.251)
Emile Durkheim claims it is the ecstasy of dance that “defines the sacred and sets
it apart from daily life…”(p.39, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, p.250)
“…something we might call meaning or transcendent insight. In ancient Dionysian forms
of worship the moment of maximum ‘madness’ and revelry was also the sacred climax of
the rite, at which the individual achieved communion with the divinity and a glimpse of
personal immortality.”(p.95)
Ehrenreich asks, “why have we forgotten them, if indeed we have?”(p.19) “We
can live without it, as most of us do,” Ehrenreich says, “but only at the risk of
succumbing to the solitare nightmare of depression.”(p.260)
In their misunderstanding of the practice, “The early Christian patriarchs may not
have realized that, in attempting to suppress ecstatic practices, they were throwing out
much of Jesus too.”(p.76)
“The ecstatic rituals of non-Western peoples often have healing, as well as
religious, functions…and one of the conditions they appear to heal seems to be
what we know as depression.”(p.150) Jesus is said by many to be “a cure for
depression, alienation, loneliness, and even mundane, all-too-common addictions
to alcohol and drugs.”(p.256)
“[D]epression is now the fifth leading cause of death and disability in the
world.”(p.131) It is “characterized by an inability to experience pleasure – can kill by
increasing a person’s vulnerability to serious somatic illnesses such as cancer and heart
disease.”(p.132) It is a “disease that strikes the poor more often than the rich, and women
more commonly than men.”(p.132)
And yet the “demonization of Dionysus began by Christians centuries
ago…thereby [rejecting] one of the most ancient sources of help – the mind-preserving,
lifesaving techniques of ecstasy.”(p.153) As it turns out, Ehrenreich argues, what many
ages call “madness” may also be a cure for madness, and depression.(p.41)
“[I]f all they found in their religious ritual was a moment of transcendent joy –
well, let us give them credit for finding it. To extract pleasure from lives of
grinding hardship and oppression is a considerable accomplishment; to achieve
ecstasy is a kind of triumph.”(p.178) “A psychic benefit is no small thing.”(p.178)
Whereas many of us have learned to pray for what we want, primal and
indigenous peoples would pray to express appreciation for all they have. For all the
struggles and suffering that the body endures, it can also taste the most delicious fruits,
smell that scents of flowers, hear the sounds of music, touch and be touched by a lover,
and see the beauty of both the physical and the metaphysical world. If life is an
opportunity for humans to touch the divine, it is ironically through our mortal bodies that
we experience and best appreciate this heaven. Indeed, as Brad Pitt’s Achilles suggests
in the film Troy, the gods have reason to envy us.
Anyone who goes through this purification process by which it is achieved may
understand it, but it cannot be put into words for someone who has not earned the
experience. As Zen masters would say, ‘A finger is used to point at the moon, but let’s
not confuse the finger with the moon.” Words are pointing tools, but what they point at
when they talk of truth is an inner experience that cannot be seen by the uninitiated.
Which is why the Eleusian mysteries (the folk religion that most 5th century BC
Athenians still participated in) were practiced continuously for over two thousand years
without anyone ever revealing the secret (although some playwrights hinted at it in ways
that almost got them prosecuted). Part of the taboo was a sort of honor code, to be sure –
(similar to that against giving away the ending of a movie to someone who has not yet
seen it). But it was also a recognition on the part of the initiated that the experience
simply cannot be put into words; if it could, there would be no need for the purification.
Far from an ‘immoral’ activity, the ancients pushed the limits of this ecstasy with
a long an grueling process of moral purification prior to celebration, including talk, food,
wine, music and dancing as a means of spiritual uplift, which became refined in time into
poetry, drama, and philosophy. It was a multifaceted process that might include fasting
and resolution of interpersonal conflict as the means by which the ultimate ecstasy of
one’s highest potentials might be reached.
***
On Hinduism
Intelligently
and
Seeking
Pleasure
After having been taught to think of all
things pagan as more demonic than devine,
many of us experience with surprise coming to
see the deep moral code that guided these
ancients, who knew full well the wisdom to
“seek pleasure…but only intelligently,” that is
according to the inexorable “law of karma
[that] renders the cosmos just,” and in the end,
good.
The concept of karma has a history that goes back long before any of these
traditions became identifiable in and of itself, but it comes to us most explicitly by way of
the evolution of eastern thought.
Consider the following passage offered us in the first pages of the Hindu Upanishads:
“The good is one thing; the pleasant is another. These two, differing in
their ends, both prompt to action. Both the good and the pleasant present
themselves to men. The wise, having examined both, distinguish the one
from the other. The wise prefer the good to the pleasant; the foolish,
driven by [shallower] desires, prefer the pleasant to the good. Blessed are
they that choose the good; they that choose the pleasant miss the
goal.”(p.3)
Ancient Vedic Hindus help their young understand this distinction by way of a
story about a magic wishing tree, called Kalpatura, which has branches that reach into
every human heart. Kalpatura grants all wishes, together with all consequences of those
wishes. And naturally, like children, most people will at first shower the magic tree with
requests. But, as children learn, so do we all, that with too much candy comes
indigestion. Likewise, all desires come with an inexorable price. Not all pleasures are bad
pleasures, but those that bring bad consequences might not be worth their cost. And so it
is that, with learning, a wise person will come to choose their wants with careful
discretion. 9
Kalpatura,
the magic wishing tree…
Ancient Vedic Indians would tell their
young a story about a magic wishing
tree, called Kalpatura, to illustrate the
nature of desire and pleasure, and the
dangers of unbridled want. Kalpatura
has branches that reach into every
human heart, and grants all wishes,
together with all consequences of those
wishes. Naturally, like children, most
people will at first shower the magic
tree with requests. But, as children
learn, so do we all, that with too much
candy comes indigestion. Likewise, all
desires come with an inexorable price.
Not all pleasures are bad pleasures, but
those that bring bad consequences
might not be worth their cost. And so it
is that, with learning, a wise person,
who wants true and good pleasures,
will come to choose their wants with
careful discretion. (Huston Smith, p. 50)
There is nothing wrong with
seeking pleasure…as long as one
does so intelligently! (that is,
according to the moral laws of the
universe).
As Huston Smith shows, “Hindu literature is studded with metaphors that are
designed to awaken us to the realms of gold that are hidden in the depths of our being.
We are like kings who, falling victim to amnesia, wander our kingdoms in tatters… We
are like a lover who, in his dream, searches the wide world in despair for his beloved,
oblivious of the fact that she is lying at his side” all along.10
As we will see, the ancient Hindus - like empathic parents - understood that we
are always growing, always learning, hopefully for better rather than worse. We are born
with attraction to pleasure and aversion from pain for good reason, because our survival
depends on choosing wisely between them. But people being different from one another,
at different stages in their learning process, and even different from themselves at
different stages in their lives, also differ in their desires according to what they have
learned about what is better and worse for them.
9
(Smith n.d., 50)
(Smith n.d., 25)
10
They understood and taught that want of various kinds of pleasure is perfectly
understandable and even good for us, as long as we want what’s actually good for us, and
are learning from the experience. So desire is not to be condemned across the board. But
the human ego can become confused about what is good, and the more it wants of what
isn’t in its better interests, the less satisfaction it actually achieves. And the reverse is also
true: as Epicurus put it: the less we desire, the easier it is to experience satisfaction. And
so a wise person will indeed seek pleasure, but will do so intelligently, so to learn in the
process the difference between true pleasure and imposters.
Others insights can help guide us, but it is ultimately from our own experience
that we come to see what’s worth trading for what. So enjoy those true and intrinsic
goods that are widely available in human life…and learn their difference from seeming
goods that ultimately bring more pain than pleasure. Good pleasures will have good
consequences, whereas bad pleasures will make us regret them, in one way or another.
Even if gods and men never know, as Socrates says, we’ll know…b/c one cannot run
away from one’s own memory, wherein one’s self-knowledge resides. (This would be
argument enough against the death penalty to convince me, btw. People who have created
such memories for themselves ought to have to live in the hell on earth they’ve created
inside their own being.)
Aristotle too argues this controversial
point, concluding that, just as a ‘bad’ person’s
suffering sometimes cannot be seen by others, a
good person’s pleasure will be theirs alone to
enjoy, an experience unavailable to a person of
lesser character. Though outward signs may
abound, “The pleasure of a just man can never be
felt by one who is not just.”11
We might rightly wonder who is to say
what true happiness actually is? Who has a right
to declare one kind of pleasure qualitatively better
than pleasure in another sense? Aristotle would
answer – it is the person who has experienced
both. That is the point of view from which the
difference can best be seen, known only by the
empathy in memory in those who’ve learned
better.
As you can see, the ancients held a view of
human nature that is more generous than the
typical western view – one that understands that all are always learning. They understood
that we are born fundamentally good, though it may be difficult to maintain, and
ultimately buried deep within us, beneath “an almost impenetrable mass of distractions,
delusions, and self-serving instincts…[of] our surface selves.”(Smith, 22) But just as “a
chimney can be covered with dust, dirt, and mud to the point where no light pierces it at
all,” so “the human project is to clean one’s ‘chimney’ to allow the light within to
11
(Nicomachean Ethics)
radiate” outward.(Smith, 22) For indeed, inside the human being “is a reservoir of being
that never dies, is never exhausted, and is unrestricted in consciousness and bliss. This
infinite center in every life, this hidden self or Atman, is no less than Brahman, the
Godhead.”(Smith, 22) And the integration of Atman-Brahman – the human self,”(Smith,
22) is the very purpose of human life. Happiness itself depends on this earned potential.
On Yoga
To understand this better, consider the concept of yoga, which grows from this
conception of diverse paths converging on a common goal -- actualizing the human
potential for strength, wisdom, and joy. Which is to say, “the infinite ocean of life’s
creative power,” which “we carry…within us…but it is deeply hidden.”(Smith, 26)
Of
all
the
religions,
Hinduism tends to stand alone is
recognizing “different spiritual
personality types,” Smith says, each
of which more naturally prefers one
of the “multiple paths to God, each
calling for its distinctive mode of
approach.” But “Hinduism is
exceptional in the attention it has
given the matter; it identifies the
principle types and delineates the
programs that are suited to each.” 12
The word yoga comes from
the same root as the English word yoke, connoting integration or union with one’s divine
creative power. The purpose of yoga is to actualize the ultimate human potential, to
“direct personal experience of ‘the Beyond within.’ Its method is willed introversion, its
intent, to drive the psychic energy of the self to its deepest part, “the infinite ocean of
life’s creative power,” (p.26) and ultimately to become “in full what one always was at
heart.”(p.27)
And “the spiritual trails that Hindus have blazed toward this goal are four.”(p.26)
They are:
 jnana yoga (emphasizing knowledge, reflection, the shortest and steepest
path)
 bhakti yoga (emphasizing emotion, love)
 karma yoga (emphasizing work, energy), and
 raja yoga (emphasizing self-experimentation)
“Different starting points here really refers to different types of people.”(Smith,
26) Still, “No individual is solely reflective, emotional, active or experimental, and
different life situations call for different resources to be brought into play. [Still] most
people will find that they make better time on one road than the others, so will keep close
12
(Smith, .26)
to it: but Hinduism encourages people to test all four and combine them in the ways they
find most productive.”(p.38) So just as “all hands of cards include all four suits. But one
normally leads with one’s strongest suit.”(p.26)
However, in keeping with the founding principle of karma, the ancients
understood that there are “moral preliminaries common to all four yogas, for unless one’s
personal life is in reasonable order and one’s relationships harmonious, there can be no
hope of deeper self-knowledge; the surface waters will be too choppy.”(p.34) But as the
Taoists will say, “Muddy water let stand will clear.”(Tao Te Ching)
“The first step of every yoga, therefore,
involves the dismantling of bad habits and the
acquisition of good ones.”(p.26) For “to discern
the self’s deep-lying divinity, the scum on its
surface must be removed. Selfishness muddies
the water, ill-will skews objectivity.”(p.26)
But “To the mind that is still, the whole
world surrenders.”(Smith, p.131) And it is this
ultimate concentration that is the goal of all
paths. And meditation is often used to turn this
from a chance occurrence to a controlled
skill.(Smith, 37) For “When all the senses are stilled, when the mind is at rest, when the
intellect wavers not – that, say the wise, is the highest state.”(Katha Upanishad, Smith,
38)
So what is this highest state or summit toward which all paths lead? Nothing more
or less than a genuine understanding of what is truly good for us, as distinct from what
we merely think we want. This is the lesson our young need us to pass on for their sake,
so one we would do well to consider more deeply than we do.
It is by way of such metaphors that the ancient Hindu sages understood the nature
and danger of misunderstanding human want in a way long lost in our modern world.
And it could take us a long way toward helping one another and our young learn the
difference in what we merely want, and what we truly need, and indeed, the difference in
what we think is good, and is actually good for us.
Indeed, much of our suffering, as Buddha would later teach, results from wanting
what’s not good for us, and both getting and not getting what we want, as karma would
have it.
On Karma
The word karma literally means work, action, or deed, and is “the mechanism by
which spirit works.”(Radhakrishnan) As revealed in the Rig Veda, the earliest of the four
Vedas, in about 1400 B.C.C.
“The law of karma is the counterpart in the moral world of the physical…law of
the conservation of energy.” 13 Or, as we put this idea in the biblical west, “’As a man
sows, so shall he reap.’”(Smith, 49) And just as we understand in the west that “for every
13
(Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Chapter 4: The Philosophy of the Upanisads, Section 19.
Karma)
action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” so the law of karma “brooks no
exceptions.”(Smith, 49) There is “nothing uncertain or capricious” about it – “we reap
what we sow. The good seed brings a harvest of good, the evil of evil.”(Radhakrishnan)
In other words, in as much as “Karma is a blind unconscious principle governing
the whole universe.” it requires no judge to administer it, no higher principle to direct it.
It is thus not subject to the control or the exception, even of God.(Radhakrishnan)
“Anthropomorphically we can say a divine power controls the process,”(Radhakrishnan)
but one cannot count on one’s personal relationship with said God to get one off the hook
when it comes time to pay ones dues. Indeed, we should not expect a good God to play
favorites anyway, any more than we would expect a good parent to make exceptions for a
favorite child. What would that teach them, after all, except to try to cheat by kissing up
to the rule maker? We might see in this latter-day belief the root of injustice, whereby
humans begin trying to ‘cheat’ if you will.
Indeed, karma “renders impossible any arbitrary interference with moral
evolution.”(Radhakrishana) Rather, karma keeps the spiritual universe absolutely just,
and encourages personal responsibility for the direct and intrinsic connection between
one’s goodness and its ultimate rewards, rather than encouraging an ulterior and extrinsic
motive for creating the mere appearance of goodness in the eyes of a god, a church, or the
world. And while karma is not incompatible with the idea of God, it holds that even God
– indeed, especially God – is bound by the moral law.
“The divine expresses itself in law, but law is not God. The Greek fate, the Stoic
reason, and the Chinese Tao, are different names for the primary necessity of
law.”(Radhakrishnan) And because the law of karma is always fair, it will not advantage
some and disadvantage others, as a god who plays favorites might. All can learn to be
good, though not all will in a single lifetime.
And for this reason, Rhadikrishnan tells us, any “attempt to overleap the law of
karma is as futile as the attempt to leap over one’s
shadow. It is the psychological principle that our life
carries within it a record that time cannot blur or death
erase.”(Radhakrishnan) Which implies, importantly,
that a proper take on karma must understand that, just
as “Every deed must produce its natural effect in the
world,” so “it leaves an impression on or forms a
tendency in the mind of man.” And just as “all deeds
have their fruits in the world,” so to they have their
“effects on the mind.” For this reason, so-called good
and bad karma cannot be measured in extrinsic
fortunes. “Every little action has its effect on
character…[and] conscious actions tend to become
unconscious habits.”(Radhakrishnan)
But by this cause and effect necessity, karma
does not eliminate freedom, for while the conditions
from which we act have been dealt us by our past
actions, the will remains free to choose how we will act
and react to our present situation. “Whatever happens to us in this life…is the result of
our past doings. Yet the future is in our power, and we can work with hope and
confidence” that virtue will bring good.
And so, as the practice of yoga illuminates, “By self-discipline we can strengthen
the good impulses and weaken the bad ones.” And in this way, “our karma limits our
freedom, but it does not eliminate it.” For “freedom and karma are [but] two aspects of
the same reality.”(Radhakrishnan)
Still while “every decision must have its inexorable consequences…the decisions
themselves are freely arrived at.” And the “course that a soul follows is charted by its
wants and deeds at each stage of its journey.”(Smith, 49) To return to our card playing
metaphor, Smith says, “The hand that a card player picks up he dealt in a former life; but
he is free to play it as he chooses.”(Radhakrishnan)
And so, while many may consider their fortunes to be gifts from a divine giver,
these ancient sages saw such blessings as the just deserts of a potentially divine chooser.
For “there is a soul within him which is the master,” and the “more he realizes his true
divine nature, the more free is he.”(Rhadakrishnan)
The ancient Hindus teach us then to consider our progress carefully so to advance
toward perfection or spiritual excellence (that is, toward life, wisdom, and happiness)
rather than away from it (toward death, ignorance, and misery). A soul just beginning its
psychological journey will naturally follow a path of desire that will begin with want of
immediate pleasures. And indeed, to the hedonist, Hinduism would say, go for it – just
use good sense and follow the moral law of nature, for our pleasures ought not to cause
others or ourselves pain. Ultimately, by way of this learning process, we come to see that
it stands to reason that, “Small immediate goals must be sacrificed for long range gains,
and impulses that would injure others must be curbed to avoid antagonisms and remorse.
Only the stupid will lie, steal, cheat, or succumb to addictions. But as long as the basic
rules of morality are observed, you are free to seek all the pleasure you want.”(Smith, 18)
Even though physical pleasure is at the bottom rung of other higher pleasures one
might choose, it is nonetheless one of the four legitimate life goals that Hinduism
recognizes. And therefore, there is nothing shameful in its pursuit. “Quite the contrary;
the thought of children without toys is sad. Even sadder, though, is the prospect of adults
who remain fixated at their level.”(Smith, 20) For just as a child learns to enjoy ever
more challenging toys over time, so each of us who learns will discover the delights of
the senses,” however, those “that seemed exhilarating when the experience was new may
very well come to seem unfulfilling over time.(Smith, 49) And when they do, the wise
spirit will choose to advance upward through higher stages of pleasure toward
understanding of ever higher goods.
Mind you, it is because psychological maturity may not correspond with
chronological age that the ancients were compelled to consider the possibility of past
lives. People are different, and the Hindus understand this, in part, as the result of past
learning, or its lack. Hence the reason we see wise children and old fools. Still, while not
everyone decides to advance in this life, everyone can who choose to learn.
And so next along the path is desire are accomplishment and worldly success,
usually taking the form of wealth, fame, and glory. But “Wealth, fame, and power are
exclusive, hence competitive, hence precarious….as other people want them too, who
knows when fortune will change hands?”(Smith, 18) “Unlike mental and spiritual
treasures,” these zero-sum (extrinsic) goods can easily be lost. What’s more, even when
they can be maintained in abundance, these too will ultimately come to seem trivial and
unfulfilling. Smith observes that, “To try to extinguish greed with money is like trying to
quench fire by pouring butter over it.”(Smith, 19)
All the same, many people are content with their material lot, sometimes for
entire lives, though they don’t know what they are missing, and are often deeply aware
that they are indeed missing something. “It is people who place these things first in their
lives who cannot be satisfied, and for a discernable reason.”(Smith, 19) Sadly, it is often
these who will pursue this futile process indefinitely, somehow expecting different
results. But just as money is not an end in itself, but a means to other ends, so all
excessive wants are ultimately unsatisfying, because “you can never get enough of what
you don’t really want” to begin with.(Smith, 19)
What we really want are the ends to which these pleasures are only means, such
as security, comfort, and freedom. But for those who do not recognize this, the process
can be unending. Indeed, “The parable of the driver who kept his donkey plodding by
attaching a carrot to its harness comes from India.”(Smith, 19)
So the attentive spirit will come to see that all wants are mere means to other
ends, all desires are paths to higher goals. These wants are, Smith explains, like apertures
that let in a little light at a time, and it is by way of these windows that we come to see
what is beyond our seeming wants, toward the higher and deeper goods that are what we
actually and ultimately want. Or, if we resist what is shown us by way of our learning
experience, our wants can also limit and
blur our awareness, getting in the way of
our potential vision of those more
rewarding of life’s purposes.
In fact, it turns out, “Pleasure,
success, and duty are not what we really
want, the Hindus say; what we really
want is to be, to know, and to be happy.”
Indeed, what we really want is liberation
(moksha) from want altogether. We want
“liberation from
everything that
distances us from infinite joy, infinite
awareness, and infinite being.”(Smith,
22) In fact, what we really want is those things in infinite degree.”(Smith, 22)
So it is that by learning from ones experience of pleasure and worldly goods, a
wise soul will advance on up the ladder, beyond the self-centered path of desire and
toward an other-centered path that leads beyond those less fulfilling goods, which can be
traps by which a spirit becomes tethered to dissatisfaction. But again, not everyone will
choose the path of maturity in this life, and some of them, not knowing what they’re
missing, “will die with a sense of having had a good life.”(Smith, 21)
But for those who do advance in their spiritual understanding, the will to get will
ultimately turn to the will to give, and the will to win turns into the will to serve.(Smith,
21) On this higher path of renunciation, the psychologically maturing spirit will come to
seek the higher goods of respect and self-respect that come with friendship, community,
love for and duty to others. What “it renounces [is] the ego’s claim to finality,”(Smith,
21) “a momentary pleasure for a more significant goal.”(Smith, 21)
But ultimately, even this duty will “leave the human spirit unfilled…Faithful
performance of duty brings respect and gratitude from one’s peers. More important,
however, is the self-respect that comes from doing’s one’s share. In the end, though, even
these rewards prove insufficient.”(Smith, 21) Even these prove to be “a revolving door.
Lean on it and it gives, [until] in time one discovers that it is going in circles.”(Smith, 49)
And so over time and with learning, one comes to understand that one already has
what one has been seeking all along, And ultimately one comes to see that one might
achieve in this way the ultimate and eternal goal – that is, liberation from want and
desire, which allows contentment and true satisfaction -- the end of all desire. When we
find that we actually have within us what we wanted all along, i.e. to be, to know, and to
feel love, there and then, one finally becomes “in full what one always was at
heart.”(Smith, 27)
Gandhi gives us the concept of satyagraha – which means, he says, truth (satya)
and firmness (agraha) -- “the force that is born of truth and love.” It is a term he used to
explain his all encompassing conception of ‘passive resistance.’
“It is a force that works silently and apparently slowly. In reality, there is
no force in the world that is so direct or so swift in working. Satyagraha is
a force which, if it became universal, would revolutionize social ideals
and do away with despotism and ever growing militarism under which the
nations in the west are growing and being crushed to death… It is totally
untrue to say that satyagraha is a force to be used only by the weak so
long as they are not capable of meeting violence by violence…This force is
to violence, and therefore to all tyranny, all injustice, what light is to
darkness. It is desire to do the opponent good…. Even if the opponent
plays him false twenty times, the satyagraha is ready to trust him the
twenty-first time, for an implicit trust in human nature is the very essence
of his creed... A satyagraha is nothing if not instinctively law abiding, and
it is his law-abiding nature which exactly from him implicit obedience to
the highest law, that is, the voice of conscience which overrides all other
laws.”
Everyone is bound to learn eventually, ancient Hindus say, that what we really
want is simply to be, to know, and to feel joy, which behooves us to avoid that which
diminishes these. But again, not everyone will learn the true means to these ends in a
single lifetime, or perhaps even many, for one must do the work to gain the insight.
And so we may advance by fits and starts as we zig-zag our way toward our
higher potentials, sometimes even by way of some steps forward, and some steps back.
Whereas the unwise will put lower and selfish pleasures before all else, they will find
them impossible to satisfy, and perhaps even make themselves miserable in the process.
But if we are wise, we will want pleasure in proper proportion, and thus find such desires
easy to satisfy.
So it is that the ancients teach their young that, rather than deny the value of lower
or base pleasures, we ought to recognize that wants are the means by which we grow to
understand higher goods. So we ought to learn to want what is actually good for us.
Again, there is nothing wrong with seeking pleasure, as long as we do so intelligently!
That is, according to the rules of morality, the “moral law of cause and effect,” that
commits us to “complete personal responsibility” in a “completely moral
universe.”(Smith, 49)
On Higher Happiness
And so, only by learning from of the consequences of our choices will we
advance through the stages of desire and renunciation of what seems to be good for us,
toward a higher understanding of what is truly good for us. Until we ultimately discover
the truth of reality, as the song says -- “It’s not having what you want, but wanting what
you have” that matters.
Here then one can finally see that the very condition of one’s inner world is the
result of how one has lived. For this is where karma takes its direct and inexorable toll.
“The present condition of each interior life – how happy it is, how confused or serene,
how much it sees – is an exact product of what it has wanted and done in the past.
Equally, one’s present thoughts and decisions determine one’s future
experiences.”(Smith, 49)
“Each act that is directed upon the world reacts to oneself, delivering a chisel
blow that sculpts one’s destiny.”(Smith, 49) And so our every choice feeds back on us,
such that even how much one sees is a product of one’s karma; thus, one’s very
intelligence or ignorance will be a manifestation of the rewards of one’s way of living. It
is in this way that the ancients understood how it is that there are many paths to the same
summit.
And perhaps only at this point does the human spirit notice that it was never alone
in this journey, but has been traveling with a “constant companion, the Friend who
understands,” that is “the god within.”(Smith, 50) Which perhaps explains why the Hindu
sages proclaimed we should, “Leave all and follow the Self! Enjoy its inexpressible
riches.”(Upanishads, Smith, 40)
However, our modern western habit of perceiving the objects of our knowledge
from outside-looking-in inclines us to think of the self itself as an object, rather than as
subject, from inside out. “Our word ‘personality’ comes from the Latin persona which
originally referred to the mask an actor donned as he or she stepped onto the stage. The
mask depicted the actor’s role, while behind it the actor remained hidden and
anonymous.”(Smith, 27) Likewise, the “word ‘my’ always implies a distinction between
the possessor and what is possessed.” So when I “speak of my body, my mind, and my
personality, [this] suggests that in some sense I think of myself as distinct from them as
well.”(Smith, 27)
And so a proper understanding of the self in eastern thought compels us to
reconsider our ways of knowing, so to see the self as the ancients conceived it – not as
something to be looked at, but as that which we see through. As the equally ancient
Taoists put it, “not merely, ‘things perceived,’ but ‘that by which we perceive.’”(Tao Te
Ching, Smith, p.131)
The “enduring Self” that the ancient understood to be the self-same with God, is
not “the transient self” that comes to mind when we, in the west, consider our ‘self-
interest’.(Smith, 27) We must “distinguish between the surface self that crowds the
foreground of attention and the larger self that is latent and out of sight.”(Smith, 27)14 For
knowledge of this deeper self “is identical with being.”(Smith, 27)
As we’ve said, the earliest Christians also seem to have understood that “to know
oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God: this is the secret of gnosis,”
Elaine Pagels tells us. “Self–knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are
identical.”(The Gnostic Gospels) And ‘The way to ascend onto God is to descend into
one’s self’.”(Suzuki, p. 43) But we might wonder if such insights, that we at its
foundation, have been so neglected as to weaken that foundation.
At any rate, the Hindus call this deep self Atman,(Smith, 50) and the universe that
it traverses, the Sanskrit word for which is Brahman. And with this complex conception
of Atman we only begin to glimpse the grand truth of the interactive universe we inhabit.
In Hinduism, “the world’s metaphysical status” is, “one between dual and non-dual
points of view,” which “divides the personal from the transpersonal view.”(Smith, 52)
The word Brahman derives from dual origins, including “br, to breathe, and brih,
to be great.”(Smith, 47) Great breadth! And its attributes include “sat, chit, and ananda;
God is being, awareness, and bliss.”(Smith, 47) Bere again, we come up against the limits
of language, for what is finite cannot describe the infinite. But again, “words and
concepts are inevitable, for without them we get nowhere. They are indicators that point
us in the right direction without delivering us to our destination.”(Smith, 47)
And so we resort again to metaphors, pictures, and stories.
If we wish to put the life span of Brahman into human time scales, it would be
“staggering,” Smith says. But try this:
“The Himalayas are made of solid granite. Once every thousand years a
bird flies over them, brushing the range with its wings. When by this
process the Himalayas have been worn away, one day of a cosmic cycle
[or breadth] will have elapsed.”(Smith, 52)
“Nirguna Brahman is the ocean without ripple; Saguna Brahman that same ocean
alive with waves and swells. In the language of theology, the distinction is between
personal and transpersonal conceptions of God. Hinduism includes superb champions of
each view, but on the whole accepts them both, in something of the way scientists accept
both wave and particle depictions of matter.”(Smith, 47)
Ancient Hindus understood that “the world appears the way we see it, but that is
not the way it really is.”(Smith, 53) Like dreams, if we ask what they are, “our answer
must be qualified. They are real in [the sense] that we have them, but most of their
images do not exist in the real – i.e. waking – world. Strictly speaking, a dream is a
psychological construct, a mental fabrication.”(Smith, 53) (We will see this distinction
14
again in Aristotle’s comparison of primary to secondary substance, the first of which
exists prior to us, while the second exists because of us.)
Hence the reason the Hindus say that the “middling world” is all maya (which
comes from the same root as magic, “seductive in the attractiveness with which it
decorates the world,”(Smith, 53) “deceptively tricky in passing off its multiplicity,
materiality and dualities as ultimate”(Smith, 55), and “trapping us for a long time within
it…postponing our wish to journey on.”(Smith, 53) Thus, the world is also lila (“the play
of the divine in its cosmic dance”(Smith, 55). Like a children’s “game is its own
reward.”(Smith, 53)
It is for this reason that Hinduism is lighthearted. “It is no accident that the only
art form India did not produce was tragedy.”(Smith, 55) As Deepak Chopra puts it, the
ultimate meaning of enlightenment is to lighten up.
This “middling world” is somewhere between better and worse worlds (heavens
and hells) and is “woven of good and evil, pleasure and pain, knowledge and
ignorance.”(Smith, 52) And just as “the fourth grade remains the fourth grade while
different pupils move through it,”(Smith, 52) so this world remains a hill to be climbed
by all, “a training ground for the human spirit.”(Smith, 52) And despite all our utopian
dreams of a fully realized paradise on earth, it is beyond hope that all humans will
become fully realized and reach the summit at once. Each being is in process of
becoming, and the best the world can do is to help facilitate that process, beginning with
the ways in which we educate our young.
Paradise – Life As It Could Be?
My name was a gift from my mother. My grandfather was Moses Levi Paradise.
He ran our small town bottling works in northern Wisconsin, where *. But he invented
toys for his grandchildren in his spare time, and was a man of few words.
My parents owned a small downtown restaurant – Hunt’s Grill. My father cooked
while my mother baked, and I free-loaded every day after school. My dad rented a body
shop across the alley from the grill, where he designed and built off-road vehicles in his
spare time, and snowmobiles, before their time,.
In hindsight, it may have been my father and grandfathers who inspired me to
dream about what is still and always possible in this world, but they were enabled in
these pursuits by my mother and grandmothers, who didn’t have spare time to be
creative, at least not in ways most would notice. But that doesn’t mean these women
didn’t dream, or invent, or create – only, as Virginia Woolf rightly observed has been the
condition of women throughout time, they “didn’t have a dog’s chance” of having it
noticed in the world such as it has been for most women. Those of us who loved them
noticed though.
So this is reason enough to hold fiercely to my mother’s maiden name. Gratitude
to all those unnamed women who came before would reason enough, but that she asked
me to carry it on cinched it, of course. But it is an added gift that the word paradise
represents such a beautiful metaphor – and can recall for us, in its full etymology, not
merely what is past, but what is still and always possible in this world.
This practice of examining the senses in which we use our terms is close to the
heart of true philosophy – but widely neglected in our time. As is the dialectic
understanding that reality looks different from different points of view, which is why
words can come to mean different
things to different people.
The word paradise is a concept
with its roots in many cultures, tailored
by each to in its own mythology, seen
by all as something of an ideal,
uncorrupted, pristine, life and nature in
its healthy and harmonious state of
being. For some, it summons images of
life before the fall. For others,
especially older wisdom traditions, it
was not a lost ideal, but a target to be
found, a potential to be actualized.
The word paradise is a good
example of single word that has come
to mean different things to different
people, and is understood in different
senses that are worthy of more
consideration than we tend to give to the words we use.
The word paradise entered the English language via the French paradis, which
was inherited from the Latin paradisus. The Romans had taken it from the Greek
parádeisos (παράδεισος), which originally, came from the Old Persian root, Pardis -meaning a place that uplifted and protected the human spirit, such as a beautiful walled
garden where life flourished in a lush oasis. Though rare, the ideal of paradise was
understood in this sense as an earthly place, what humans saw as potential here on this
beautiful planet – a state of peace, prosperity, and happiness, but not necessarily of
luxury and idleness.
Eventually, the Abrahamic faiths associate it with the Garden of Eden -- the
perfect state of existence prior to the ‘fall from grace’ – the world before it was tainted by
evil, before it was dominated by injustice. In this, it was a target, a potential that might
still be actualized, though good leaders were needed to hit the mark.
The Celts too (who called it Mag Mell), and the Norse (who called it Valhalla)
considered paradise, not an afterlife destination, but an earthly realm that could be
reached by the living by means of honor and glory. The Egyptians (who called it Aaru)
and Native Americans (who called it simply Mother Earth) considered the concept of
paradise to be an ideal earthly condition, and eternal hunting and fishing grounds filled
with an abundance that could not be depleted.
This widespread connotation of paradise as an earthly land of plenty, an existence
beyond want, filled with the intrinsic pleasures of music, dance, and love -- is a powerful
counter-image to many of the miseries of human civilization, from which escape and
relief proves so difficult or so many, except by death. It may be difficult for many of us,
especially in what we call developed nations today, to conceive of the suffering that is
still ubiquitous throughout the world, as it has always been, throughout the rest of the
world in all times and places. But it was from the reality of this condition that the ideal of
a paradise beyond these earthly limits began in the minds of those who were not close to
the earthly Pardis garden, not privy to the comfort and contentment of earthly realms
often usurped by the few, and who longed for this harmonious and fair existence to which
the souls of the deserving might somehow find their way. Thus, the concept of paradise
became conflated with the idea of heaven, able to be reached only by the worthy after
death.
Given the reality of
injustice in so many human
cultures, along with the
disparity between wealth and
poverty this entails, this
conception of paradise as
heaven came to be associated
with a prior and afterlife, to
which the worthy might
return when the day comes
they could transcend, not
only
their
physical
limitations, but also the
suffering of poverty and
deprivation
that
human
existence so often entails. Who is and is not worthy of entrance into this afterlife has been
the subject of much speculation across many cultures for many centuries, and paying the
price of that entrance has kept generation after generation jumping through hoops set up
by those who claim to hold the keys to this heavenly place.
It was Buddha, himself born into relative splendor in that early tradition of the
Hindu sages, who brought this blissful realm back to earth, teaching that salvation in this
life is the best we should hope for. The Vedic Indians knew that there is suffering in
every life, and longed for a bliss beyond the body, but escape from the karmic cycle of
life was understood as psychological maturity and liberation from desire, which was not a
place beyond this life, Buddha taught, but a state of being within it. Still, the dependence
on an afterlife (upon which the fixed caste system was founded by later Brahmins), might
be seen as a mere rationalization of earthly injustice. And some might wonder if the later
Christian emphasis on ‘fallen man’ and the difficulty of achieving justice in this world
might actually have had the same source. We tend to think of this as long ago in time, a
decision made early in the childhood of human history, but it is more likely to be a state
that exists early in every life, and so not long lost, as we tend to suppose, but rather, born
fresh with every generation., though maintained only by those who learn how.. Hence the
importance of teaching the young well….good habits from the start, not selfish. Self
interest and selfish are not the same, after all. True self interest lies in what’s actually
good for us, so ancient cultures taught their young, from the start, to be good…and
assumed that goodness from the start. Latter day notions of ‘fallen man’ might have
shocked those who understood the power of self-fulfilling prophesy….better than we do
today.
Heaven or paradise is not unlike the conception of ‘best existence,’ in this sense,
as seen in the Zoroastrian Avesta, or simply the highest function of a healthy human
being in a healthy human society, as Aristotle conceived, in which each of us lives up to
our better selves.
The Greeks (by which we mean the best of them, not the rest of them) knew that
they did not know, and with their great sage, Socrates, the father of philosophy, they
understood that whatever else we might want to believe (or have others believe), humans
simply cannot know on this side of death what will be found on the other side. We may
have beliefs, but because people are willing to believe many things, some of which
stretch logic and are contradicted by actual evidence, beliefs, in and of themselves, are
not knowledge. They may actually turn out to be true beliefs, in the end, and "True
opinion [may be] as good a guide as knowledge for the purpose of acting rightly,"(97b-c)
Socrates admits. But true opinions "are not worth much until you tether them by working
out the reason...once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable. That is
why knowledge is something more valuable than right opinion. What distinguished one
from the other is the tether."(98)
For this reason alone, there’s no need to fear death, as Socrates showed by the
noble way in which he himself faced his execution at the hands of his political enemies
who had usurped the first democracy. Indeed, “for all we know, death may be the greatest
good,” Socrates said.(*) But, not knowing what’s to come, we need only live as well as
possible while we’re alive. Indeed, perhaps we only fear death at all if we think our just
reward will not be good? Because we do indeed have different just deserts, death itself
has different meanings for different people. So one way to eliminate fear of death might
be to change our just deserts, as the Hindus taught.
Of course, there is the other side of this view: there are those who, seeing no good
in this life, actually crave death, thinking it the cessation of their suffering, and perhaps
even believing it to be a better place. The ancient view can help with this too, for if we
understand life’s suffering to be opportunities for learning, chances to advance in our
spiritual growth, and add to this the understanding that we have come a very long way to
get this far, to get to this opportunity, then death – especially willful death – would
represent only the need to start all over again, not just in another life, but perhaps even in
the cycle of lives. Throwing away a life that represents the culmination of perhaps many
lives that it took to get this far, and which offers us opportunities that many others who
suffer more would trade anything for, in the process ignoring so much good that need
only be realized by our efforts, might be understood in this light as the equivalent of
slapping the universe in the face. Whereas seeing life as the opportunity that it is allows
us to appreciate it more fully, suffering and all.
There is a scene in Thorton Wilder’s play, Our Town, in which a young woman
who had died in childbirth at only eighteen is given a chance by her spiritual guide to go
back to revisit just one day of her life. Her first impulse is to choose a very special day,
her sixteenth birthday, or maybe the day of her marriage. But her guide warns her to
choose a perfectly ordinary day, for even that will seem so truly miraculous as to be
overwhelming…through the eyes she now has, able to see the good of living for all it’s
worth. The same experience is offered us when someone we love dies, or leaves us; what
we wouldn’t give for just one more day? As the old saying goes, we hardly know what
we’ve got until it’s gone. If we could only remember and take the time to ‘see’ what we
truly have through the eyes we would have if and when those blessings are gone, then we
would truly love every day of our lives more deeply, and we would be able to recognize
our challenges as the blessings they ultimately turn out to be.
Here again we see the power of words. When most people hear the word
paradise, they think of uncorrupted innocence and harmony…in one form or another.
And with it comes the conflated idea that all such times are past, that such idealized
conceptions are mere memories, at best, like dreams of lost childhoods that were simply
too good to last, and thus no longer potential for ‘fallen’ humanity.
Poor Plato is widely ridiculed for suggesting that such utopian potentials are
actually realistic, indeed, born again fresh with each generation, perhaps even with every
new life. But we’ve neglected and almost forgotten this too, and instead have drawn
broad conclusions with far reaching implications about fallen human nature and what is
and is not possible, either for individuals, or for human kind. Passing on a belief in our
inevitable sinfullness, humans have abdicated their responsibility for teaching the young
right reason and choice of virtue, and instead raised them to replicate the very
characteristics we teach them come naturally – leaving them not choice, says Socrates,
but to play along. And so, as if by self-fulfilling prophesy, selfishness, greed, and the
incapacity to do the right thing for the right reason become habits that set in from a very
young age, seeming to be our nature, when it fact, this is the result of a misunderstanding
about our nature, indeed, nature itself – setting each new generation up for their own fall
in the process.
On Reincarnation
And throughout this ongoing process, arises the logic of the transmigration of
souls, all in keeping with the inexorable “law of karma [that] renders the cosmos just,”
and in the end, good. For just as all life inhales and exhales, so it stands to reason that
“souls repair between incarnations according to their just deserts.”(Smith, 52)
Ironically, it is Socrates who best illuminates this potential (which, he
emphasizes, we can only speculate about, since humans can’t actually ‘know’ in the
strong sense of the word what really happens after death). It’s ironic because, of all
cultures, the Greeks are not associated with this belief
in reincarnation. But true to their dialectic ways, they
are willing to take all voices seriously, because true or
not, they might be instructive just the same.
It is in this vein that Socrates tells a story (at
the very end of Plato’s masterwork, the Republic)
about Er, the son of Armenius, who had lay ‘dead’ for
ten days after falling in battle. But just as they were
about to light the funeral pyre, his body, which had
been unaffected by decay, suddenly returned to life.
And so Er lived to tell of what he had seen in
the other world while he lay between this life and the
next. [RepJ BookX 614] Waking up was, he said,
like returning from a journey of a thousand years.
After receiving a fatal blow on the battlefield,
he said, Er found himself in a beautiful meadow, where comers and goers gathered to talk
together and to tell each other of the lives from which they had respectively returned.
Some talked of glorious joys, and some cried who suffered their memories .[RepJ BookX
614-615] Some, to make a long story short, told of suffering tenfold for every wrong they
had done to anyone on earth.[615] They told of living ten lifetimes, ten times in a
thousand years, the time it took to make right what they had made wrong.
There were four thresholds in the meadow, he said – two departing and two
returning, one each by which the just ascended and returned from heaven, and one each
by which the unjust descended and returned from hell. It was a most dreadfully horrible
scene when some tyrant, trying to escape from hell, was sucked back in to the vortex for
yet another round of his dues -- his karma, if you will.[RepJ BookX 615]
A new cycle of life was awarded on a first come first serve basis, said Er, and
genius and destiny were not allotted, but chosen. [RepJ BookX 618] There were an
infinite variety of lives to choose from, so enough even for the last comer.[RepJ BookX
619] And virtue was free, and anyone could take as much as they wanted.
Some who come first, as Er told it, not having thought out the whole matter,
choose lives of tyranny, in which they would be free to do whatever they liked. But the
best choice, as was reported by those who had learned the hard way, was that life which
was undazzled by wealth and other temptations to do wrong to others, for which he
would ultimately suffer yet worse terrors himself.[RepJ BookX 619] ] So, rather than
foolishly choose pleasures that would be fraught with pain (usually chosen by those who
had had it too easy, and not been schooled by trial of experience), comers were cautioned
to choose soundly from the first, that they might be truly happy in their life, rather than
merely appear happy to others who did not know it’s true nature. Those who chose virtue
we cautioned to also choose philosophy, for the habit of virtue is not enough without
being accompanied by the search for truth and wisdom. [RepJ BookX 619-620]
This then is the knowledge we need, Er said, and we can forget all the rest. For
true happiness involves the ability to discern between good and evil, so to choose always
and everywhere, as the opportunity arises, the better over the worse life [RepJ BookX
618] A man must take an adamant faith in truth and right to choose always the mean of
any virtue, and avoid the extremes of excess and deficiency. This is the way of happiness
[RepJ BookX 619]
Er told how, having chosen their next life, individual souls would pass eventually
from the meadow toward center of the universe, which swirled in a circle, one inside
another, going opposite ways, like a spindle of necessity, weaving souls together, as if
into the seashell of time.[RepJ BookX 616-617] They
went, with their guardian genius, and were drawn into the
revolution of the spindle, ratifying the destiny they had
chosen.
And as they passed beneath the throws of
necessity,[RepJ BookX p.396] and over the plane of
forgetfulness and the river of unmindfulness. Those who
drank, forgot what they had seen and experienced in the
meadow.[RepJ BookX 621] But Er had not, and
apparently neither had he, Socrates said, for he found this
story to affirm his own intuitions. So perhaps the tale had
been saved, Socrates says, to save us – so that we might remember to choose well how to
live, now and through eternity.[RepJ BookX 621, p.397]
So we can see perhaps why Socrates argues that, “It is better to receive injustice
than to deliver it,” for one’s soul can only truly be harmed by one’s own error and
wrongdoing. Treating another with injustice may indeed make their life more difficult,
but rather than harm them, it may actually do them good in the long run, if they learns
from it to choose otherwise. Whereas one who delivers injustice may have to pay for it
ten times over before he truly learns.
This view of incarnation “posits a self that threads successive lives in the way a
single life threads successive moments.”(Smith, 25) As Buddha would conceive it, it
illuminates a self that is more like a wave than a particle.(Smith, 78)
And so we get a glimpse of what they mean when they talk of the ultimate reality
that is Brahman, that which each individual Atman lives to explore. Whether as the
“Creator (Brahma), Preserver (Vishnu), [or] Destroyer (Shiva),” in the end Brahman
“resolves all finite forms back into the primordial being from which they sprang.”(Smith,
47)
In this ancient conception of ultimate reality, the universe itself is alive, and so it
breathes, coming and going from “a state of pure potentiality” into full actuality and back
again, eternal and imperishable as God respires.(Smith, 52)
On Buddha and Buddhism
Buddha, the man, is perhaps the best example of a mere human being who lived
up to his highest divine potentials. Born a Hindu in 563 B.C. in what is now Nepal, his
given name was Siddhartha, and his family name was Gautama.
Legend has it that when Siddhartha Gautama was born, a prophesy reached his
father’s ears that he would either become a great world conqueror or a great spiritual
leader. His father, who ruled a small kingdom in what was then India, wanted none of the
latter for his son, and set out to make
sure that the gifted and handsome boy
was raised in such a way that the his
destiny would fulfill his father’s dreams
for earthly power.
Siddhartha’s upbringing is said to
have been luxurious, and all efforts were
taken to see that his every desire was
indulged. But despite his sequestered
youth, it was inevitable that he would
ultimately become aware of the realities
of suffering in the world. And sure
enough, when one day Siddhartha
escaped the attention of his attendants and the confines of the palace, he discovered as he
wandered the streets f a nearby town the realities of poverty, disease, old age, and death.
And when this knowledge took root in the heart of the thoughtful boy, so did the many
other paths he might take through life.
With this revelation, Siddhartha lost his appetite for the pleasures and indulgences
he had enjoyed throughout his early life, and renounced the external riches that had
nearly spoiled his character, and turned him into a person even he could not respect.
Siddhartha remembered having had an experience as a boy during which he
achieved an uncommon level of absorption, one which he recognized as the first step on
“the way to enlightenment.” It was as much out of nostalgia for more of this deep
experience, as it was disillusionment with the overindulgence of life as he knew it, that
put him on the path of spiritual growth…not merely toward a new philosophy, but a
”change into a different kind of creature.”(Smith, 75) He desired to change himself from
one with a poorly focused mind into one that sees clearly by “direct perception,” to be
free of the “three poisons” of “’extirpation of delusion, craving, and hostility.’”(Smith,
75)
Siddhartha Gautama was twenty-nine when he bid his wife and child silent
goodbye in the night, and went out into the world in search of truth. He shed his fine
clothes and set out first to learn what he could from his elders, the Hindu masters. He
joined a band of ascetics, and for six years outdid his teachers in austerity. But eventually
Gautama grew weak, and came to see the wisdom of what he would call ‘The Middle
Way’ between the extremes of self-sacrifice and indulgence.
[*golden mean…]
Sidharths’s final enlightenment story is “reminiscent of Jesus in the
desert.”(Smith, 63) Sensing that a breakthrough was at hand, Gautama sat down one
evening under what came to be known as the Bodhi (enlightenment) tree, and faced the
final temptations of Mara, the evil one. These included sexual temptation and all manner
of human pleasures, as well as shame for the audacity of his quest. But Gautama was not
discouraged. When tempted finally to give up his mission on the grounds that mere
human beings would never get his message, Buddha resolved that, “There will be some
who will understand.”(Smith, 63) And so his temptations were ended, and with this
Gautama became Buddha, the enlightened one.
For the next 45 years, Buddha “maintained an interminable schedule of public
preaching and private counseling.”(Smith, 63) His life “was powered by a strong sense of
mission,” for “he saw in his mind’s eye the whole of humanity – people milling and lost,
desperately in need of help and guidance.”(Smith, 64)
Buddha practiced a “pattern of withdrawal and return,” in which he moved
between his work with others
and his work on himself.
Each day, month, and year
was divided up into portions,
and just as “each year
was…divided between nine
months of teaching and three
months in retreat,” so “His
daily cycle, too, followed this
mold. Three times each day
he withdrew from his duties
to meditate.”(Smith, 63)
Like
Socrates,
“Buddha was gifted with preternatural
insight into character,” and while “surface
distinctions meant so little to him that he
often failed to notice them,” he was able
to see, where he found it, “the marks of
sainthood” in others too -- ‘shining within
[them] like a lamp in a jar.”(Smith, 64)
He was “[A]ble to size up, almost at sight,
the people who approached him, he
seemed never to be taken in by
appearances but would move at once to
what was essential.”(Smith, 64)
Like Socrates, Buddha did not put
himself above others, and “made no
attempt to conceal his temptations and weaknesses – how difficult it had been to attain
enlightenment, how narrow the margin by which he had won through, how fallible he still
remained.”(Smith, 64) “It is perhaps inaccurate to speak of the Buddha as modest, for he
knew he had risen to a plane of understanding above others.”(Smith, 64) But he was
humble in knowing this was not out of the reach of all, and lived to set an example.
In his self-regulating humility, he was not above asking his students, “I summon
you, disciples, to tell me: have you any fault to find with me in word or in deed?”(Smith,
64) No one was ever more human, but even still, “there was constant pressure during his
lifetime to turn him into a god.”(Smith, 64)
He was often asked, ‘What are you?’ ‘Are you a god? An angel? A saint?
Buddha answered, ‘I am awake.’(Smith, 60)
And so Buddha got his name from “The Sanskrit root budh,” which “ means to
awake and to know.”(Smith, 60)
Buddha, like sages before him, “saw ignorance, not sin, but as life’s prime
adversary.”(Smith, 75) “All we are is the result of what we have thought.’”(Smith, 75,
from The Dhammapada) Feelings, moods, and emotions are “not permanent parts of
us,”(Smith, 75) and while it is wise to understand and even enjoy them, it is unwise to
react to them in such a way as to give them power over our actions. To “keep the mind in
control of the senses and impulses, rather than being driven by them,”(Smith, 75) is
necessary to overcome ignorance, because “freedom – liberation from unconscious,
mechanical existence – is the product of self-awareness.”(Smith, 75) Buddha was a
rationalist, to be sure, and indeed, “Every problem that came his way was subjected to
cool, dispassionate analysis,” but it was “balanced by a Franciscan tenderness…and
infinite compassion.”(Smith, 64)
Buddha refused to speculate on what cannot be known in this life. Buddha’s
teachings were “devoid of the supernatural” elements that so many religions are founded
on. Buddha did not adhere to the idea of a personal God, but did seem to think that
something like it (what one follower likened to the wind) does exist, but defies
expression, and indeed is “incomprehensible, indescribable, inconceivable and
unutterable.’”(Smith, 77) Like Aristotle, he distinguished between “the formed, the
made, the compounded” (Smith, 77), and the “Unborn, neither become nor created nor
formed,” putting the Godhead, Brahman, and nirvana in this camp of that which is
unconditioned,
“permanent,
stable,
imperishable, immovable,
ageless, deathless, unborn,
and unbecome.” (Smith,
77)
He also abhorred
the apparent fatalism of
the reincarnation cycle that
suggested
there
was
nothing could be done to
advance the process but
endure it. By his lights, the
body has no soul, per se
(atta in Pali, atman in
Sanskrit) that moves and survives it. The spirit’s existence after death is neither of the
extremes we tend to wonder about, not a continuation of consciousness, nor an end to it.
“Authentic child of India, he did not doubt that reincarnation was a fact, but he disagreed
with the way his Brahamic contemporaries conceived of it – as some sort of psychic
pellet that migrated from body to body. Rather, his alternative view is captured by the
image of a wave.”(Smith, 78) “Verb rather than nouns fit his world view, for everything
is in process, everything is in change… everything is impermanent, transitory, and yes,
dying.”(Smith, 78) “’Waves follow one another in eternal pursuit.’” “It is a single wave,
and “Yet at no two moments are its molecules identical.”(Smith, 78) Likewise, ’Life is a
journey; death is a return to earth. The universe is an inn; the passing years are like
dust.’”(Smith, 78) “We cannot say much with certainty [about life after death, but…”
while identification with one’s historical experience may disappear, experience itself may
continue and be enhanced.
“Nothing that is in my next incarnation will be identical with what is in me now,
but I will still be ‘me’ in the way the wave retained its identity while moving through it
successive stages… What continues from life to life and unites them is…a causal chain of
karmic propensities. Causal connection…but no entity…passes from life to life…subject
always, never object.”(Smith, 78)
“As an inconsequential dream vanishes completely on awakening, as the stars go
out in deference to the morning sun, so individual awareness will be eclipsed in the
blazing light of total realization.”(Smith, 79)
Buddha postulated Four Nobel Truths. They include:
1. Recognizing that “life as it is normally lived,”(Smith, 70) is suffering,
or dukkha, which “restricts movement (blocks creativity), and causes
undue friction (interpersonal conflict).”(Smith, 71) This is worst when
“life’s shoe pinches” most during disease, trauma, old age and
approaching death. (Smith, 71) But “There is a path to the end of
suffering,” he insisted. “Tread it!”(Smith, 68)
2. Recognizing that life can be regenerated, as we come to understand
tanha, the cause of dukkha, that is, the desire for private good, “selfish
inclinations that make demands for oneself at the expense, if necessary, of
others.”(Smith, 71) In this sense, “tis the self by which we suffer.”(Smith,
71);
3. Recognizing that tanha, the cause of suffering, which is selfishness and
narrow self-interest, can be overcome;
4. As Buddha was a physician of the spirit, Buddhism treats the symptoms
that cause suffering, conflict, and diminish creativity as “life’s crippling
disability.”(Smith, 72) Diagnosis of the cause is tanha, or ego, “the
devouring cancer that
causes sorrow.”(Smith,
71) Thus, it is the craving
for that which isn’t
actually good for us that
makes us unhappy. But
we can remove the cause
by understanding and
pursuing what is actually
good for us -- and the
cure involves a course of
treatment that is the
Eightfold Path.(Smith,
72)
The Eightfold Path includes:
1. Right knowledge, which is to say, begin with the lay of the land, things
“as they really are,” which is knowledge of the Four Nobel Truths, the
fourth of which is the Eightfold Path;
2. Right aspiration, notice what it is we really want, not merely the means,
but the ends, rising above distracting wants, rising above toward
liberation;
3. Right speech, one of three “switches that control our destiny,”(Smith,
74) little do most of us realize how often we deviate from truth, let alone
use language to mean-spirited ends;
4. Right behavior, means do not overindulge in that which corrupts the
spirit. Some take this to mean abstinence, but as balance is a key value in
the Buddhist way, it is more likely that the Golden Mean should govern
our desires;
5. Right livelihood, as work occupies so much of our waking attention,
one must choose an occupation that does not conflict with or pull against
our spiritual progress, such as various form so of profiteering.(Smith, 75);
6. Right effort, meaning “moral exertion” of the will. Buddha said, “Those
who follow the Way might well follow the example of an ox that marches
through the deep mire carrying a heavy load. He is tired, but his steady,
forward-looking gaze will not relax until he comes out of the mire. Only
then does he relax. …remember that…you can escape misery only by
earnestly and steadfastly preserving in the Way.”(Smith, 75);
7. Right mindfulness, meaning continuous self-examination so “to see
everything ‘as it really is.’”(Smith, 75)
8. Right absorption, not unlike raja yoga in its goal.(Smith, 75)
“Unlike Hinduism, which emerged by slow, spiritual accretion, the religion of the
Buddha appeared overnight. In large measure it was a reaction to Hindu
perversions.”(Smith, 67) Buddha “ridiculed the Brahamic rites” as mere superstitions,
mere “trappings – irrelevant to the hard, demanding job of ego-reduction.”(Smith)
Indeed, Buddhism, as a religion, “arose out of celebration and its opposite,
bereavement, both of which cry out for collective expression. When tragedy strikes or we
all but explode with joy, we want to be with other people.”(Smith, 67)
All the same, Buddha rejected the six features of religion that Hinduism and most
other organized forms since have championed, including authority, ritual, explanations,
traditions, grace, and mystery. In Buddha’s day, the authority of religion “had become
hereditary and exploitative,” rituals “had become mechanical,” explanations “had lost
their experiential base,” tradition “had become dead weight,” grace “was being misread
in ways that undercut human responsibility,” and mystery had led to a “perverse
obsession with miracles.”(Smith, 67)
Buddhism emerged in the beginning as “a religion almost entirely devoid of each”
of these. Buddha rejected authority and tradition, “challenged individuals to take
responsibility for their lives,”(Smith 68) He denied that mere grace can save us, and
though that “mystery was
confused
with
mystification.”(Smith, 67)
He taught, rather, that “’This
our worldly life is an activity
of nirvana itself. Not the
slightest distinction exists
between them.’”(Smith, 96)
“’This earth on which we
stand, is the promised Lotus
Land, And this very body is
the
body
of
the
Buddha.’”(Smith, 96)
So “Do not go by what is handed down, nor by the authority of your traditional
teachings,” he said. “When you know of yourselves, ‘These teachings are good or not
good,’ only then accept or reject them.”(Smith, 69) Rather than follow the directions of a
priesthood, he said, “Do not accept what you hear by report, Be lamps unto
yourselves.”(Smith, 68) 68)
And like Socrates and other who have taken this position, Buddha “accepted in
return the resentment, queries, and bewilderment his stance provoked.”(Smith, 63)
Buddha “did not commit his teaching to writing,”(Smith, 77) but within a century
and a half a plethora of writers poured forth ideas that were “consistent enough to permit
us to think that they came from the Buddha himself.”(Smith, 77) (Examples of
Buddhism’s culminating texts include the Perfection of Wisdom sutras, Pali Canon, and
The Dhammapada.)
Different forms of Buddhism share a common metaphor in understanding the path
to spiritual growth as being a voyage across life’s river from the bank of ignorance to the
shore of wisdom and enlightenment. The two shores of this river of ignorance…are one
human, one divine, and crossing it, one sees that the practices of Buddhism (e.g. the
Eightfold Path) “are vitally important to the individual while he is making the crossing,
but they lose their relevance for those who have arrived.”(Smith, 95) “Travel…erases
lines of division, the [traveler] now sees in his original world [what] he had to travel to
first discover.”(Smith, 96) “The realm of the gods is no distinct place; it is where the
traveler now stands. And if he returns to his original home, he sees it from the perspective
his travels have imparted.”(Smith, 96)
“Where to eagle vision the river can still be seen, it is seen as connecting the two
banks, rather than separating them.”(Smith, 96) “Insight has dissolved the opposites that
reason pushed apart.”(Smith, 96) “The noisy disjunction between acceptance and
rejection having been stilled, every moment is affirmed for what it actually it. It is Indra’s
cosmic net, laced with jewels at every intersection; each jewel reflects the others,
together with the reflections in the others.”(Smith, 96)
Thus, the basic differences in forms of Buddhism are understood to be merely
different kinds of ferryboats or rafts (yanas), 1. the little raft, 2. the big raft, and 3. the
diamond raft…each a different way of traveling in the hero’s spiritual process. At first,
the bank underfoot seems solid, and the far away bank seems beyond reality, and it will
seem this way until something prompts us to want to learn what’s on the other side. If we
decide to make the journey, we may travel as individuals in a boat we build ourselves,
and this is the ‘little raft,’ called Hinayana (hina=little). This raft if for “those who,
relying upon themselves only, not looking for assistance to anyone besides themselves.”
According to Hinayana Buddhists, “it is they who will reach the topmost height.”(Smith,
68) “’No on saves us but ourselves; no one can and no one may. We ourselves must tread
the Path; Buddha only shows the way.’”(Smith, 82) Hinayana Buddhist hold that
“progress [comes] through wisdom, not grace,”(Smith, 81) and so we must, “’Work out
your own salvation with diligence.’”(Smith, 81) In the original texts of the Pali Canon
(Smith, 81), the little way is conservative, more monastic. They saw Buddha as a teacher
and sage, and saw Buddhism “as a full-time job.”(Smith, 81) It is practiced in this form in
Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia.
By contrast, Mahayana means ‘great raft’ (maha=great), but such Buddhists
prefer the term Theravadic, meaning The Way of the Elders. This vessel is a bigger boat
that takes an entire group “the great way.” It tends to be more liberal, to hold a higher
opinion of women and laity, and to see Buddha as a savior, the bodhisattva, who “works
on our behalf.”(Smith, 82) Such a bodhisattva is “a person who vows not to enter nirvana
‘until the grass itself is enlightened.’”(Smith, 84-85)
Buddhism was also manifest in a third form, called the diamond raft, considered
first by its proponents because a diamond cuts other substances, but cannot be cut itself.
Called Vajrayana Buddhism, it symbolizes power, interrelatedness, and interwoven lives
during which developing the strength to realize compassion and wisdom is thought to be
able to advance one to nirvana in a single lifetime. This is accomplished, not by denying
the senses, but by using them all to their fullest. Hence the adherence of some of its
devotes to Tantric sex, that is, “sexual love [which] is the divine’s clearest epiphany. At
the moment of mutual climax, where what each most wants is what the other most wants
to give, it is impossible to say whether the experience is more physical or spiritual, or
whether the lovers sense themselves to be two or one.”(*) This much is understood about
sexuality in most religions, but what Zen and raja yoga try to rise above, the Tantric
Buddhists celebrate and aim to master the art of. “What distinguishes Tantra is the way it
wholeheartedly espouses sex as a spiritual ally, working with it intentionally and
explicitly…” Indeed, “Only one of the four Tibetan…orders is celibate.” (Smith, 92)
This includes Tibetan Buddhism, of which the Dalai Lama is considered the
leader. He is said to have been incarnated thirteen times in the last several centuries “for
the purpose empowerment and regeneration of the Tibetan tradition,” who consider
themselves to be the souls of this planet “as rain forests are to the earth’s
atmosphere.”(Smith, 93) Vajrayana Buddhist hold that one can be accelerated to nirvana
in a single life
Zen Buddhism was profoundly influenced by Taoism. Followers of Zen
“discerned in (Gautama’s) message a higher, subtler teaching”(Smith, 87) that “cannot be
impounded in words.”(Smith, 88) This is the same reason Buddha was called
“Sakyamuni, ‘silent sage (muni) of the Sakya clan,’” for he was a “symbol of something
that could not be described.”(Smith, 65) Keenly aware of the limitations of language,
Zen Buddhism – which came some time later -- is profoundly experiential. “From the
Zen perspective, reason is too short a ladder to reach to truth’s full height.”(Smith, 89)
For words are not meaning, in the same way that a menu is not a meal and a map is not
that which it describes.(Smith, 89) “The mind has other ways of working than its normal,
rational way, Zen is convinced; and it is these latent ways that zazen is designed to call
into action.”(Smith, 89) So practitioners of Zen supplement them with koans, which
means problems or riddles that aim to illuminate by insight what is beyond words. “By
paradox and non sequitur [the use of koans] provokes, excites, exasperates and eventually
exhausts the rational mind until it sees that thinking is never more than thinking about.”
Instead, “it counts on a flash of insight to bridge the gap between secondhand and
firsthand life.”(Smith, 89) “Though its preparation may take years, the experience itself
comes in a flash, exploding like a silent rocket in the unconscious mind to throw new
light on everything.” (Smith, 90)
Satori, like gnosis, is “an intuitive experience,”(Smith, 90) what the jnana yogi
might consider “an intuitive discernment that transforms the knower into the likeness of
what it knows,”(Smith, 27) which is, in a sense, “the culmination of the religious
quest.”(Smith, 90) It “brings joy, at-one-ment, and a sense of reality that defies ordinary
language.”(Smith, 90) “Wisdom (bodhi),” is understood as “profound insight into the
nature of reality, the causes of anxiety and suffering, and the absence of a separate, selfexistent core of selfhood.”(Smith, 82) The arhat is said to be the ideal, and nirvana is the
goal of life. The root of the word nirvana is “to extinguish” or “to blow out” those private
desires that blur vision and restrict life, but nirvana itself is an experience so far beyond
the power of words that Buddhism is nearly silent on it, except to say, “’Bliss, yes bliss,
my friends, is nirvana.’”(Smith, 77)
Simply put, Zen facilitates “a sense of life’s goodness,”(Smith, 91) “’you wake up
in the morning and the world seems so beautiful you can hardly stand it.’” Second, it
habituates “an objective outlook on ones relation to others; their welfare seems as
important as one’s own.”(Smith, 91) “Dualisms dissolve, and one feels grateful to the
past and responsible to the present and future.”(Smith, 91) Zen breeds “determination to
fuse the temporal and the eternal; to widen the doors of perception so the wonder of the
satori experience can flood everyday life.”(Smith, 90)
Zen returns to “a world newly perceived,”(Smith, 91) able to see the divinely
extraordinary in the ordinary, and to “discovery of the infinite in the finite.”(Smith, 91) It
keeps us in harmony with daily activities, as “’Drawing water, carrying firewood, This is
supernatural power, this the marvelous activity.’”(Smith, 91) “If you cannot find the
meaning of life in an act as simple as that of doing the dishes, you will find it
nowhere.”(Smith, 91) “What is the most miraculous of all miracles? That I sit quietly by
myself.”(Smith, 91) Zen breeds “a spirit of utter tranquility combine to epitomize the
harmony, respect, clarity, and calm that characterize Zen at its best.”(Smith, 91) It helps
us “to pass beyond the opposites of preference and rejection,” to an attitude of acceptance
and agreeableness, to take things as they come.(Smith, 91) A king once remarked, on
observing an assembly of perfectly disciplined monks, “Would that my son might have
such calm.”(Smith, 64)
Smith emphasizes that Buddhism was originally (and at heart, still is) unique and
instructive in just these ways:
First, it is empirical, meaning it asks us not to take anyone’s word for anything.
Rather, “A true disciple must know for himself.”(Smith, 68)
Secondly, it is scientific, meaning it asks us to see for ourselves by testing it in
“the quality of [our] lived experience.”(Smith, 68)
Thirdly, it is pragmatic, in that “Buddha likened his teachings to tools whose
value is in their usefulness; as a “raft that help people cross rivers, but are burdens
thereafter.”(Smith, 68) “We nevertheless remember our gratitude for the splendid ship
and crew who have brought us safely to what promises to be a rewarding land.”(Smith,
95)
Forth, it is therapeutic, as Buddha put it – there is “One thing I teach, suffering
and the end of suffering. It is only ill and the ceasing of ill that I proclaim.”(Smith, 68)
“There is a path to the end of suffering,” he said; “tread it!”(*)
Fifth, it is psychological, in that “Buddha began with the human predicament and
the solution it called for.”(Smith, 69)
Sixth, it is egalitarian, in that “Buddha rejected both the inequalities of the Hindu
caste system and the traditional prejudice against women.”(Smith, 69) “He insisted that
women were as capable of enlightenment as men. And he rejected the caste system’s
assumption that aptitudes were hereditary.”(Smith, 69).
And lastly, ancient Buddhism was directed to individuals, in that Buddha
“appealed to the secret workings of the inward heart.”(Smith, 69)
In keeping with his observation, that “All compounds grow old,”(Smith 63)
Buddha ultimately died after eating poisoned mushrooms. And despite all his efforts
during his lifetime to keep his a faith of the individual human spirit, “all the
accouterments that he had labored to protect his religion from came tumbling into it”
after his death, “but as long as he lived he kept them at bay.”(Smith, 68)
Buddhism was ultimately vanquished in India, the land of its birth, but Buddha’s
teaching “was not so much defeated by Hinduism as accommodated within it.”(Smith,
97) As Mahayana organization set in, “Buddhist teachings came to sound increasingly
like Hindu ones.”(Smith, 97) Indeed, “almost all of Buddhism’s affirmative doctrines
found their place or parallel” in Hinduism, including “its strong ethical emphasis
generally”…its “stress on kindness to all creatures, on non-killing of animals, on the
elimination [or reduction] of caster-barriers.”(Smith, 97)
Paradoxically, a wisdom tradition that began by denying authority, ritual,
speculation, grace, mystery, and a personal God, ended up embracing them. “Thus in the
end the wheel comes full circle. The religion that began as a revolt against rites,
speculation, grace, and the supernatural, ends with all of them back in force and its
founder (who was an atheist as far as a personal God was concerned) transformed into
such a God himself.”(Smith, 85)
Three questions are left for us to ponder, Smith says: 1. Should individuality or
mutuality predominate? 2. Is the universe friendly, indifferent, or hostile? 3. And should
reason or compassion, mind or heart, lead us? Which is the better part of humanity? He
puts these to us, along with the added question -- would the ancients themselves even
consider such questions relevant?
Isn’t the real challenge not either/or, not to choose between compliments, but to
reconcile and balance them? Isn’t that how the universe is rendered friendly, rather than
hostile? As the sages said, “insight dissolves divisions,” until “what each most wants is
what the other most wants to give.”
***
On Dialectic Thinking and the Many-Sidedness of Knowledge
“It’s as if all lines of discourse converge on a
common center.” (Plato’s Republic)
In light of all this, we might consider the
following a priori argument and its implications
for education. P
It was put forth first by the ancient Taoists
and Greeks, that it stands to pure reason that any object of knowledge can be seen from
any of many – even infinite – points of view. And it can easily be ascertained in this way
that just because no one happens to be looking from a given perspective at any given
moment in time, this does not change that the perspective itself continues to exist. Indeed,
reality is, in this sense, nonlinear, which is to say that all points of view exist at all times,
whether we attend to them or not. And thus, anything meaningfully worthy of being
called the whole truth would need to include as many of those perspectives as is feasibly
possible, or at any rate, as many as are relevant.
One might imagine an ancient sage tossing his sandal into the center of the circle
to make this point. It would become immediately apparent to all who consider it that this
single object nonetheless looks quite dissimilar from different points of view. And it is
easy enough to see that this is true with regard to almost any object of our knowledge.
Again, we are like the blind men of ancient lore, who each perceives and describes an
elephant as something vastly different, e.g. a tree trunk, a wall, a snake, etc. The whole
truth about the elephant includes all of these, and it is in the interest of each to consider
the perspective offered by all the others.
As Socrates puts it, "the genuine lover of knowledge (i.e. philosopher) cannot fail,
from his youth up, to strive after the whole of truth."(191)
Considering that we all have different points of origin, different experiences come
of living different lives and following different paths, it naturally follows that we all see
the same world, and every object of knowledge in it, from different points of view. This
does not entail (as some relativists might conclude) that we all see a different world, a
different truth, or that our diverse eclectic perspectives are somehow irreconcilable. On
the contrary, as we’ve said, just as two eyes add depth to the vision of only one, so the
integration of different perspectives and voices adds depth to our understanding of the
objects of our knowledge.
Thus, the whole truth about anything will be an ideal we approach only by
gradual inclusion of diverse points of view. And whether the object of our knowledge are
as concrete as a sandal or as abstract as our conceptions of justice, beauty, love, or god -none of us defines the truth about such things by virtue of any limited or privileged view.
This is a conception that should be familiar to those of us
living in a digital age, who should be able to conceive of say, Neo
suspended in midair in the Matrix, which we can view full circle
and imagine ourselves moving freely around it. Dialectic thinking
is not unlike this kind of flexible eclecticity, except that it calls
upon us to practice this stretching of the mind at all times, in all
discussions, with all the objects of our mutual knowledge – abstract
as well as concrete, metaphysical as well as physical. This
nonlinearity of reality compels us to recognize that, in principle, all
of these perspectives do exist, and continue to exist, whether we
pay attention to them or not, and to admit that any limited point of view, especially one
that does not recognize any others as valid, cannot make any claims to ‘knowledge’ of
that about which it speaks, the whole truth of which involves so much more and
cumulative perspective than any one or few points of view can provide. The lenses
through which we view the world and the concepts with which we frame our knowledge
are all relative to this experience through which we have learned it. And still, anyone
with an aim to seeing the truth has an interest in seeing more than just his or her own
limited view.
We see this collective dynamic at work today in what Al Gore calls “the
unbelievably rapid explosion of ‘wikis,’ most prominently Wikipedia. Wikis are Web
sites that compile public information about particular areas of knowledge… The idea
behind wikis is that, in general, people as a group know more than any one individual.
Anyone is allowed to contribute information to a wiki,” and thus it “operates according to
a meritocracy of ideas”(Gore, Assault on Reason, p. 264-265) that “has always been the
beating heart of democratic theory.”(p.75) For “when ideas rise or fall according to merit,
reason tends to drive us toward decisions that reflect the best available wisdom of the
group as a whole.”(Gore, p.75).
So it follows that, as Socrates says, that while every person is entitled to their
opinion, not every opinion is equal to every other -- in fact, not every opinion is as good
as any other – if only because some people have simply thought things through better
than others. In fact, there are no privileged perspectives, but there are those that have
gone through this dialectic learning process better than others. And this is the reason we
should distinguish the ‘smart’ from the ‘wise’, and look to the latter for direction –
because they have better considered the whole truth of most matters. Here again, there are
different senses of the word intelligence, and some are simply closer to the essence of the
matter.
Hegel is often credited with developing this dialectic method.15 He presented it as
a three-fold process by which the mind advances through stages of understanding. It
begins by developing a thesis, which gives rise to a contradicting and negating reaction,
or antithesis, and in the friction between these there arises a resolution in the form of a
synthesis. What is most interesting about this process is that in the synthesis, there is
contained a new thesis, and
The Dialectic Thinking Process
so a new antithesis comes
Abstract
forth, and thus there is
Synthesis
ultimately
a
new
Synthesis
synthesis…and so on, and
Synthesis
Antithesis
so forth, upward as the Objective Analysis
Synthesiss
Antithesis
mind
ascends
from
Synthesis
Antithesis
ignorance to understanding.
Toward a better
understanding
of
this
Concrete
dialectic conception of the
Subjective
mind,
our
thought
This model is often attributed to Hegel, but he himself never used that specific termimology. Hegel attributed this
formulation to Kant. But in fact it appears to have been used first by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus, and others, including
Fitsche, popularized it. The dialectic was actually stated in the form by (The Accessible Hegel. Michael Allen Fox.
Prometheus Books. 2005. p.43. Also see Hegel's preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1977), secs. 50, 51, p.29. 30.)
15
experiment addresses the ubiquitous – and potentially fortuitous – ‘problem’ that we all
see the same world differently. What the ancients propose is a method of conflict
resolution, for while the natural diversity of our perspectives is a condition that could
enrich our understanding, instead, in the world such as it is, it seems to make agreement
and mutual understanding difficult at best, and accounts for much of the relentless and
deep-seated conflict that is becoming increasingly ferocious in our world.
Whatever scale of interaction we explore, we are plagued by the
misunderstandings that invariably arise by our failure to think things through in full
consideration of the points of view of others. For this reason, dialectic reasoning is, at
heart, both a method of education and a method of conflict resolution, because it is useful
to quell both the conflict between us and the conflict within us. And for this reason, it
deserves more thorough examination than it gets in our modern world.
It seems worth summarizing the logic that leads invariably to the conclusion that
the only truth worth pursuing is the whole truth, and that dialectic thinking (intrapersonal)
and deliberative dialogue (interpersonal) is not only the most direct, but quite possibly the
only way to true intelligence, that is, wisdom.
Consider what we call reality, and our knowledge about it. We tend to assume we
know what is ‘real’…but in the course of teaching philosophy the question arises time
and again, do we? The whole truth about reality would call for a more thorough
conceptualization than we have given it. And if such a thing is possible – as the ancients
believed it to be – then it compels our cooperative attention. What, in truth, does it mean
to know something? And what does this tell us about reality?
On the Whole Truth as Object Plus Subject
There are many different ways to discuss this interaction between the objective
and subjective worlds, most of which lead us to the conclusion that the subjective
observer defines the ‘surface’ of what he perceives such that what we see depends in
large part on what we look for, and the background against which we sees it. Any object
of our knowledge exists in many potential forms, in more or less concrete or abstract
senses, and the surface itself is created by the focus of attention by the subjective focus of
the mind that is observing it.
Take a book for example: it may seem like an object, but:
"The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first
lines, and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its
autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books,
other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network….the unity of the
book, even in the sense of a group of relations, cannot be regarded as
identical in each case. The book is not simply the object that one holds in
one's hands; and it cannot remain within the little parallelepiped that
contains it: its unity is variable and relative. As soon as one questions
that unity, it loses its self-evidence; it indicates itself, constructs itself, only
on the basis of a complex field of discourse."(p.*)
Thus we see how, according to French philosopher, Michel Foucault, the
objective world does not exist as objects per se; rather we make ‘objects’ out of the world
by using our subjective minds to draw boundaries around ‘things’. Something need only
have enough surface, that is, enough difference from its background, to attract our notice
in order to qualify as an object of our study. 16 Like books, most of the objects of our
knowledge are not all merely concrete and objectifiable -- they exist rather somewhere in
between the extremes of concrete and abstract.
By this logic, it stands to reason that the objects of the world exist not merely in
physical form, but on a continuum that stretches from the concrete to the abstract, from
the physical to the metaphysical, 17 depending on the degree of substance they entail.
Ideas, for instance, like numbers and words, are as real as rocks, they are just more
abstract. So, for the sake of seeing the implications of this, let us picture that continuum
on which the objects of our knowledge exist, a continuum that ranges from one extreme
that includes the merely concrete/physical/visible, to the other extreme that includes the
purely abstract/psychological/invisible.
16
Douglas Hofstadter put it this way in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Godel, Escher, and Bach,
showing that “all things in all of time and space are inextricably connected with one another. Any
divisions, classifications, or organizations discovered in the universe are relatively arbitrary. The world is a
complex, continuous, single event.” (p.*) Alan Watts, in his book The Way of Zen, agrees that "a doctrine
of relativity…[shows] that all things are without 'self-nature' (svabhava) or independent reality since they
exist only in relation to other things. Nothing in the universe can stand by itself -- no thing, no fact, no
being, no event--and for this reason it is absurd to single anything out as the ideal to be grasped. For what
is singled out exists only in relation to its own opposite, since what is is defined by what is not…"(p.*)
Gregory Bateson argues that the idea of surface leads inevitably to the reality of paradox: "[I]t takes at
least two somethings to create a difference. . . i.e., information, there must be two entities (real or
imagined) such that the difference between them can be immanent in their mutual relationship; . . . There is
a profound and unanswerable question about the nature of those 'at least two' things that between them
generate the difference which becomes information by making a difference. Clearly each alone is--for the
mind and perception--a non-entity, a non-being. An unknowable, a Ding an sich, a sound of one hand
clapping.”(p.*)
17
See Plato’s sun and good in Introductory Thoughts.
Consider Figure A, which represents the continuum of objective matter.
Abstract
O
B
J
E
C
T
I
V
E
Concrete
To complicate matters further, not only do the objects of our knowledge have
various degrees of substance in this way, but we can also look at those various objects of
our knowledge in different ways. For instance, the mind has the power to analyze the
various objects of our knowledge (looking close up and with ever finer resolution,
breaking them up into their constituent parts). Or, by a matter of degree, it has the power
to synthesize them (to step back to see their interconnections and relationships with other
things). Analysis is necessarily ubiquitous in our world and scientific method, but the
unifying power of synthesis goes largely unnoticed in our most widely used methods of
knowing. So this may be a concept from which we still have much to learn.18
It is important to note that, while the concept of synthesis has been largely ignored by our contemporary
methods of knowing (though it is one of the components in Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives), the
process of synthesis has not been neglected in the history of philosophy. Immanuel Kant, for one, in his Critique
of Pure Reason, emphasized that understanding depends upon this intuitive activity, without which no real
knowledge would be possible. “Pure synthesis, represented generally, gives us the pure conception of the
understanding.” He added that, “by this pure synthesis, I mean that which rests upon a basis of a priori
synthetical unity,” that is, universal and necessary knowledge, as distinct from a posteriori, which involves
contingent and particular knowledge.(Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Bohn’s Philosophical Library, trans. By
J.M.D. Meiklejohn, Henry. G. Bohn: London,, p.63) “By synthesis, in its most general sense, I understand the
act of putting together different representations, and of grasping what is manifold in them in one knowledge.”(
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: concise text in a new, faithful, terminologically improved translation exhibiting
the structure of Kant's argument in thesis and proof. Scientia, 1982. p.37) Kant emphasized that it is in this
way that the mind itself makes a transcendental contribution to its knowledge (an idea that influenced Einstein
(Issacson, Walter. “Einstein: His Life and Universe.” p.20)). That is, the subject supplies the laws (which exist
objectively but are applied subjectively) by which the understanding of objects is possible. That is, the mind
18
Logically, the whole truth about any given object of our knowledge would have to
include all these relevant perspectives, but we often settle in our ways of knowing for
what is most obvious. Thus, we tend to study the mere parts without seeing their relation
to the whole.
Socrates observed in the 5th century BCE that this unnecessarily limited way of
knowing was already taking hold.19 But if we were to have taken his advice, we would
instead recognize that there is an intersection where the subjective mind meets the
objective world, and this is where the concepts of knowledge and intelligence begin to
take on meaning.
Consider Figure B, which represents the intersection of the subjective and
objective aspects of reality -- that is, where mind meets world. See Figure B.
does not merely perceive the world as it is, but filters what it sees and hears and synthesizes information about
perceptions of the world, giving order to knowledge (which amounted to a non-empiricist critique of rationalist
philosophy). In this, Kant initiated a paradigm shift that put the subject at the center of inquiry, such that the
objective world is only understood by the active function of the mind that constitutes understanding by
constructed schema. However, in order for the ultimate synthesis to be objective, it must connect a posteriori
with a priori knowledge. In other words, it is not enough for a perceiving subject to connect two a posteriori
intuitions, for this could amount to a subjective distortion of reality. In order for knowledge of reality to be
objective, and thus hold good for all people in all times, the subject must connect its particular (a posteriori)
knowledge with the universal (a priori) knowledge. As Aristotle puts it, the learner must move from what is less
knowable to what is more knowable.
19
(Charmides, n.d.)
Interesting things happen at that point where mind meets world, beginning with
how the different functions of the mind tend to naturally converge. Such that the very
least that shows itself to exist is not merely object and subject, but a complex interaction
between the two, which compels us to rethink much that we thought we knew about
various ways of knowing and the relationship of mind to world.20
For instance, what is it that we are doing when we are analyzing the concrete
world, if not science? And when we are analyzing the abstract objects of the world – if
not math and language? And when we synthesize the concrete world, are we not doing
ecology, or psychology, or various forms of social sciences, depending on the objects of
our study? And when we synthesize the abstract world, we are probably doing something
more like mysticism, maybe music, or various forms of art. All these different ways of
knowing are, as the ancients would argue, just different aspects of the whole truth of any
20
Studying Einstein, for instance, we learn that different observers perceive things differently because of
the time it takes light to travel from the object to the observer. The motion of either the object or the
observer changes how each perceives the same reality differently. This is explained in the theory of Special
Relativity. In the theory of General Relativity it is shown that this is not only a matter of changing
appearances, but an actual effect, such that objects (mass) in motion actually bend light (energy), such that
two different observers – one in motion relative to the other, who is at rest – will experience the effects of
time and space differently. In fact, one will grow old sitting still while the other will stay young traveling at
the speed of light. Add to this the quantum effect (whereby seemingly objective matter turns out to react to
the observers subjective expectations), and we have very strong philosophical and empirical evidence that
mind and world are not independent of one another. In fact, they work together in such a way that what is is
in fact, both subject and object. Add to these modern scientific discoveries the ancient dialectic insight
about how our points of view interact, and we can ‘see’ these relationships more clearly, and in a way that
illuminates, not only how the humans mind works, but the full scope of our individual human potentials,
were we to take it more seriously in our educational purposes. And for this reason, it behooves us to
understand this interaction better.
matter. And a full intelligence of any of them would require a better understanding of all
the rest.
We might also consider how, within each individual, in every mind, there is this
intersection where attention meets the world, and how the point where attention focuses
at the cutting edge of time is nested within a complex system of peripheral vision.
The fact that any object of knowledge might be viewed from different outsidelooking-in perspectives helps bring home the objective complexity of matter. But the real
complication comes in, however, when the object of our knowledge is also a subject –
itself living.
Looking at the world only helps us understand reality as objects, not as subjects -arguably the most important way. No amount of outside-looking-in perspective will
suffice to constitute the whole truth of a subject, which has its own inside-looking-out
point of view. If the object of our inquiry is itself alive, perceptive, conscious, then even
an infinity of outside-looking-in points of view is not sufficient to constitute 'knowledge'
of it. It ‘knows itself’ in a way that no number of outside looking in perspectives, by
themselves, can capture. And so we have infinity – plus one.
In viewing it this way, we can account for how the mind has capacities for
gathering knowledge by way of the senses (concrete/analysis), intellect
(abstract/analysis), intuition (abstract/synthesis), and emotion (concrete/synthesis).
*
All of which gives substance to a conception of the whole truth as a meaningful
ideal for us to aspire to in relationships, in politics, in science, even as it will remain, in
principle, forever out of reach. And as Aristotle and Mill argue, finding the whole truth
by way of dialogue in any given matter is thus going to involve a process of reconciling,
which is to say, finding the balance between complementary perspectives.
When Neils Bohr introduced his principle of complementarity in 1928, he called
it, “the oneness of the observer and the observed,” and “the undivided wholeness of the
entire universe.”21 He held it to be “reflective of the need for understanding mutually
exclusive opposites as parts of a whole in every discipline” (Jones, 320-322)
(Bohm, Science, Order and Creativity, 4) Bohr’s ‘principle of complementarity’, put forth in 1928, stated that,
since the behavior of phenomena such as light and electrons is sometimes wave-like and sometimes particlelike, and since it is impossible to observe both the wave and the particle aspects simultaneously, a complete
knowledge of phenomena – that is, the whole truth – requires both wave and particle properties. Therefore,
knowledge of phenomenon (certainly at the sub-atomic scale, and arguably at every scale) is essentially
incomplete until both aspects are known.
21
In this principle of complementarity, Bohr expressed the ontological implications of quantum physics -- which
“implies the impossibility of any sharp separation between the behavior of atomic objects and the interaction
with the measuring instruments which serve to define the conditions under which the phenomena appear.” As
a result, “evidence obtained under different experimental conditions cannot be comprehended within a single
picture, but must be regarded as complementary in the sense that only the totality of the phenomena exhausts
the possible information about the objects.”
Bohr saw this principle extending way beyond the scope of physics into an entire philosophy of life. And “In
his last years Bohr tried to point out ways in which the idea of complementarity could throw light on many
aspects of human life and thought. “(www.britannica.com/nobel/macro/5000-79.html) In 1947, he designed a
coat of arms in the center of which was a yin-yang symbol.... The motto read ‘Contraria sunt complemnta’ or
‘Opposites are complementary’”(French and Kennedy 224)
“What is needed,” Bohr said, “is for each person to be able to hold several
points of view, in a sort of active suspension, while treating the ideas of
others with something of the care and attention that are given to his or her
own… In this way it may be possible to hold a number of different
approaches together in mind with almost equal energy and interest. In this
way an internal free dialogue is begun which can lead on to a more open
external dialogue” (p.87)
Bohr’s complementarity introduced into the Western mode of thinking the
concept that “seemingly irreconcilable points of view need not be contradictory”
(Kothari, p.325 in *), and extended a “message of reconciliation” to the world. (Jones, p.
324 in *) This is the reason that, “in earlier times, [when] science was called natural
philosophy…there was such a general vision of the universe, humanity, and our place in
the whole…Science, art and religion were never really separate.”22(p.10)
So it stands to reason, as the ancients knew, that if the whole truth is our goal,
then the mind is always in need of balance, to see the opposing point of view. What’s
more, if the object we seek to know is living, then no amount of outside-looking-in views
will suffice, and we must learn to perceive living objects from their own point of view,
from inside-looking-out.
Intellectual humility, perspective, empathy, curiosity become necessary learning
skills then, that is, if the growth of intelligence is our aim.
Unfortunately, while every object of knowledge might be know from a rich
plethora of such points of view, including its own, reductionist science does not consider
anything ‘real’ that it cannot objectify, that is, cannot view it from outside-looking-in,
which unfortunately excludes many subjects worth knowing, including consciousness,
love, and the whole truth about anything living. Still, it’s an indisputable fact is that not
all substance is dead matter. While we are fond of following a method of science based
on our love of physics (physics envy?), we would be wise (especially in our study of
ethics) to use a method based rather on living systems for several reasons. The main one
being that this way of understanding the world allows for us to look not simply at the
world out there, but from the world in here. It calls for us to use empathy along with
It “would be interesting to think about what would have happened if different pathways that were available at
the time had been fully explored in the past.”(p.14) “While Bohr and Einstein are now dead, it is still not too
late to engage in such a dialogue between…quantum and relativity theories…”(p.87) “More generally, the
opening up of a free and creative communication in all areas of science would constitute a tremendous
extension of the scientific approach. Its consequences for humanity would, in the long run, be of incalculable
benefit.”(p.87)
22
(Bohm, Science, Order and Creativity,10)
observation, and employ the elasticity of our imagination, in order to understand what is
really going on in the subject/object systems we observe.23
As we have discussed, there are infinite points of view from which one and the
same object can be viewed -- like radii converging on a single point of origin. Likewise,
for every point of view, there are an infinite number of points of focus, near or far. How
we look at something matters as much as what we are looking at…all of which makes for
an infinitely complex ‘reality’ – and what’s more, each mind will perceive it uniquely,
with infinitely complex individuality. Unique, but still, as it is living, ideally is it always
growing toward a better grasp of the whole truth of any matter.
So if a better understanding the whole truth is our goal, then we must learn to
perceive living objects from their own point of view, that is, to consider our objects as
subjects, from-inside-looking-out. Again, the whole truth about any living thing will
always involve viewing it from an infinity of points of view – plus one.
And if the whole truth is our goal, then it is imperative that we go about our
learning cumulatively, taking seriously this infinity of points of view, and continually
stretching our minds to take as many views as possible, for again, as two eyes add depth
to our vision, so two heads are better than one. Multiple perspectives add depth of
understanding to any single point of view.
It follows from this model then, that while everyone is entitled to their own
opinion, not every opinion is as good as every other. There are no privileged
perspectives, but there are those that have gone through the learning process better than
most others, have gathered ever more points of view and depth of understanding. And it
is worth our while to take such voices seriously.
Consider Figure C:
There is a theory from the biological sciences called ‘hierarchy’ or ‘systems theory’ that helps makes
sense of this. "[C]omplexity,” writes Tim Allen, “…is a function of the way the observer looks at the
system. Hierarchy theory is a form of general systems theory, and that body of theory is emphatic in its
inclusion of the observer in the system. . . The form of the data, whatever they are, are always a reflection
of the restrictions imposed on the observer and the choices he makes…. Observation is the stock in trade of
science and the very act of observing necessarily employs a point of view."(p.*) (*put Heisenberg) What’s
more, if the subject is aware of being observed, this might have an interference effect.
23
A Lesson in Humility
When viewed in their dialectic/complementary relationship to one another, this is
how the voices of philosophy might arrange themselves. There is a lesson in humility
here, of course, because if anything that can be known can be viewed from an infinite
number of points of view (including, if it is alive, inside-looking-out), then what does it
mean to talk of 'the truth'?
“The answer,” physicist David Bohm says, “does not lie in the accumulation of
more and more knowledge. What is needed is wisdom.”(p.4) What is needed is “a
creative dialogue between different points of view.”(p.87)
Given this model, it becomes clear that no one ever completely understands
anything. The goal of dialectic education could never be, as we’ve said, to reach full and
complete understanding of the whole truth about anything, let alone everything, since
there is simply no end to this process. As Socrates might say, while the perfect person
would be all people put together, not only is it not possible for any person to be perfect,
but perhaps not even desirable. For continual learning is among the great joys of life. So
we should not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. The recognition of how the
mind, in a sense, grows by what it feeds on leaves us with the highly desirable process of
seeing that all things are well considered. We might call this skill eclectic empathy, that
is, stretching the mind to see from ever expanding and dialectic points of view, which
would bring our higher human purposes back to healthier educational endeavors.
This model reminds us that everyone has much to learn, and consequently, the
challenge for all is to learn and teach our young to listen with eclectic empathy, and then
to teach what we have learned so that others might not have to learn the hard way.
As Paulo Friere put it, “Subjectivity and objectivity thus join in a dialectical unity
producing knowledge in solidarity with action, and vice versa.”(Pedagogy, p. 22)
The impossibility of perfect knowledge should not discourage our learning and
moving toward the development of individual excellence of mind, for all of us approach
our own highest potentials by incremental approximation. That’s how we improve one
another, which is what Socratic dialogue in its truest form gives us means to do.
The ancients tried to teach us that the only truth worth pursuing is the whole truth.
And it is the person who is best able to see from as many points of view as possible who
has a claim to be the wisest, although the truly wise remain humble enough to know how
much they still and always have left to learn. (Which explains why Socrates is not found
among these relationships, because we would have to put him, ideally, everywhere on
such a graph. Socrates made the dialectic mind and method his object of study, and in so
doing, would have integrated what we call the scientific and the Socratic methods into a
conception of Socratic science, the goal of which would be to integrate the subjective and
objective aspects of reality into something always approaching the whole of truth.
On Balance and the Nature of the Mind
It follows from this model that, while everyone is entitled to their opinion, not
every opinion is equal to every other. There are no privileged perspectives, but there are
those that have gone through the learning process better than others, have gathered ever
more perspective and depth of understanding. Seeing that ‘everything is’ and that reality
is both this complex and this simple, the ancients understood that the only truth worth
pursuing is the whole truth. No human being is ever perfect, as the perfect person would
be all people put together, but the person who is best able to see from as many points of
view as possible has a claim to be the wisest.
Perhaps John Stuart Mill makes this point best:
“On every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth
depends upon a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting
reasons....He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of
that....nor is it ever really known but to those who have attended equally
and impartially to both sides and endeavored to see the reasons of both in
the strongest possible light....the only way in which a human being can
make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject is by hearing what
can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying
all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No
wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the
nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner…"
In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of
confidence, how has it become so? Because has kept his mind open to
criticism of his opinions and conduct…it has been his practice to listen to
all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was
just...The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by
collating it with those of others...being cognizant of all that can, at least
obviously, be said against him, and...knowing that he has sought for
objections and difficulties instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no
light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter--only he has
a right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any
multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.”(p.25)
It "is owing to a quality of the human mind, the source of everything
respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being, namely,
that his errors are corrigible. He is capable of rectifying his mistakes by
discussion and experience."[pp.24-25]
The whole strength and value, then, of human judgment depending on the
one property, that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be
placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept constantly at
hand.
“So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and
human subjects that, if opponents of all accepted truths do not exist, it is
indispensable to imagine them and supply them with the strongest
arguments which the most skillful devil's advocate can conjure up.”(p.4446)
“[T]here is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it
is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and
truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth by being exaggerated into
falsehood. And since there are few mental attributes more rare than that
judicial faculty which can sit in intelligent judgment between two sides of
a question, of which only one is represented by an advocate before it,
truth has no chance but in proportion as every side of it, every opinion
which embodies any fraction of the truth, not only finds advocates, but is
so advocated as to be listened to.”(p.63-64)
Which is why, he says:
“I should like to see the teachers of mankind endeavoring to provide a
substitute for [this learning method] – some contrivance for making the
difficulties of the question as present to the learner's consciousness as if
they were pressed upon him by a dissentient champion, eager for his
conversion…” Indeed, “no one's opinions deserve the name of knowledge,
except in so far as he has either had forced upon him by others or gone
through of himself the same mental process which would have been
required of him in carrying on an active controversy with opponents.
(p.52-55)
“That, therefore, which, when absent, it is so indispensable, but so
difficult to create how worse than absurd it is to forego when
spontaneously offering itself! If there are any persons who contest a
received opinion, or who will do so if law or opinion will let them, let us
thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoice that there
is someone to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard
for either the certainty or the vitality of our convictions, to do with much
greater labor for ourselves."[pp.52-55, "On Liberty"]
“But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have lost those
they formerly had. The Socratic dialectics, so magnificently exemplified
in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this description. …“[T]he
modern mind owes far more to [this dialectic method of learning] than it
is generally willing to admit, and the present modes of education contain
nothing which in the smallest degree supplies the place either of the one
or of the other. A person who derives all his instruction from teachers and
books, even if he escape the besetting temptation of contenting himself
with cram, is under no compulsion to hear both sides; accordingly it is far
from a frequent accomplishment, even among thinkers, to know both
sides; . . . and until people are again systematically trained to it, there
will be few great thinkers and a low general average intellect in any but
the mathematical and physical departments of speculation.”(p.52-55)
On the Yin and Yang of the Androgynous Mind
Virginia Woolf made this point in her classic book, A Room of One’s Own:
“What does one mean by ‘the unity of the mind,’ I pondered, for
clearly the mind has so great a power of concentrating at any point at
any moment that it seems to have no single state of being. It can
separate itself from the people in the street, for example, and think of
itself as apart from them, at an upper window looking down on them.
Or it can think with other people spontaneously, as, for instance, in a
crowd waiting to hear some piece of news read out. It can think back
through its fathers or through its mothers, as I have said that a woman
writing thinks back through her mothers. Again if one is a woman one
is often surprised by a sudden splitting off of consciousness, say in
walking down Whitehall, when from being the natural inheritor of that
civilization, she becomes, on the contrary, outside of it, alien and
critical. Clearly the mind is always altering its focus, and bringing the
world into different perspectives. But some of these states of mind
seem, even if adopted spontaneously, to be less comfortable than
others. In order to keep oneself continuing in them one is
unconsciously holding something back, and gradually the repression
becomes an effort. But there may be some state of mind in which one
could continue without effort because nothing is required to be held
back. And this perhaps, I thought, coming in from the window, is one
of them. For certainly when I saw the couple get into the taxi-cab the
mind felt as if, after being divided, it had come together again in a
natural fusion. The obvious reason would be that it is natural for the
sexes to co-operate. One has a profound, if irrational, instinct in favor
of the theory that the union of man and woman makes for the greatest
satisfaction, the most complete happiness. But the sight of the two
people getting into the taxi and the satisfaction it gave me made me
also ask whether there are two sexes in the mind corresponding to the
two sexes in the body, and whether they also require to be united in
order to get complete satisfaction and happiness. And I went on
amateurishly to sketch a plan of the soul so that in each of us two
powers preside, one male, one female; and in the man’s brain, the man
predominates over the woman, and in the woman’s brain, the woman
predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of
being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually
cooperating. If one is a man, still the woman part of the brain must
have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in
her. Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is
androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully
fertilized and uses all its faculties. … Some collaboration has to take
place in the mind between the woman and the man before the act of
creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be
consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to
get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with
perfect fullness. There must be freedom and there must be peace….
The writer, I thought, once his experience is over, must lie back and let
his mind celebrate its nuptials in darkness.(Virginia Woolf, A Room of
One’s Own, pp. 101-108) (emphasis added)
So we must also consider this important aspect of ancient thought -- their emphasis
on the parallel relationship spirituality and sexuality, and the importance of uniting the
masculine and feminine elements into one whole androgynous mind.
***
On Healthy Argument by Good Reasoning
As a teacher at a small northern Wisconsin community college, I was always
struck that so many students made it all the way to college knowing little or nothing
about Greek philosophy, about Socrates (but what they learned from Bill and Ted’s
Excellent Adventure), or even what a fallacy is. I don’t know why this should surprise
me, since I myself had had the same experience, and until I became a philosophy major,
did not know that there was a difference between good and bad reasoning, let alone that it
can make the difference in an authentic or inauthentic life. I too was well on in years
before I realized that there are patterns of reasoning that may sound like they make sense,
at first blush, but upon further reflection, simply do not make sense. This is what a fallacy
is. And that further reflection is what philosophy is all about.
The original purpose of philosophy – the search for truth -- was to help its
practitioners, and their students, to understand the difference in good and bad reasoning,
in healthy and unhealthy argument, in sincerity and deceit, all necessary skills in sorting
what is true from what is false. Contrary to how most of us have learned it, philosophical
argument is not about conflict or disagreement, as we typically think of it, or even about
winning at all. It is, rather, about making a case so to be better understood by someone
who does not see some part of what is true. The other side of this process is listening to
the reasoning of others in order to better understanding them. Learning to discern when
someone is making a good case, when something does or does make sense, does or does
not follow from something else, is not merely an interpersonal skill of communication,
but is – arguably -- a skill that promotes what might properly be called 'mental health,' or
perhaps more to the point, moral health. For good reasoning is the foundation of effective
communication, mutual understanding, and healthy relationships – with oneself as well as
with others.
Mind you, this is not to say that most Philosophers are themselves good examples
of mental health. In fact, to the contrary, too many go into capital-P Philosophy because
they enjoy subtle manipulation of reasoning so to seem smarter than others, to become
ever better at rhetorical banter and tripping up opponents in word games.
So let us be clear at the outset then that, degree or no degree, Socrates – who was
the father of philosophy -- would not have called such folks philosophers at all. Rather,
small-p philosophy is not about making a career of verbal trickery (that he would call
sophistry, his pet peeve). Rather, it is about using words for the true power that they have
when used well, i.e. the power to help us find the truth underlying the deceptively
powerful cloak of that words, used badly, can become.
The Greeks are remembered for their reverence for reason – by which they meant
that inborn power we are born with that allows children to know intuitively when
something is not fair. It allows those who learn to master it to discern what makes sense
from what does not. It is an apriori understanding, which is to say, a truth that exists prior
to all learning and all experience. And it is incessantly inquisitive – which is what
prompts children to ask, sometimes ad nauseum – Why? In the same way that we can
mathematically figure out, by way of numbers, that 2 + 2 equals 4, and that this is true for
all people in all times, so we can logically figure out, by way of the careful use of words,
that a given conclusion follows from a given line of reasoning, and that another
conclusion simply does not.
And so all humans, like all children, want to know the reasons for why things are
as they are, not simply what something is, but how and why it is as it is. By contrast,
when reasoning fails to make a good case for a particular conclusion, we can sense that it
simply does not make sense, which is to say, it does not add up. All of which requires
that we have some exercise in this reasoning process, which can, apparently, atrophy
when left unused.
And so the function of small-p philosophy is to help us give ourselves and one
another just such exercise, to use words, language, and reasoning to express, as correctly
as possible, why something is true and something else is not. Something may or may not
be true, without anyone ever speaking explicitly of it, but when we do speak, the things
we say may also be true, or they may only sound true, when in fact they are false.
The Greeks believed in the power of words, well reasoned, in healthy dialogue.
And it fell to them especially to make use of it, for while humans had always sought for
truth, in a sense, it was not until the birth of the first democracy that this search requires
the use of our reasoning tools. For democracy, unlike all other social arrangements,
enjoys the freedom of speech that allows, and even compels us, to master the art of
dialogue, so to bring out the best in one another, and work together to grow a healthy,
self-regulating, community.
Seeing it had this power, the Greeks considered the skill of reasoning to be our
divine legacy, a gift from the gods, if you will, that gives us the potential to be god like
ourselves – which is to say, it gives human beings the power to reach those highest
potentials of understanding, mutual understanding, and social excellence, which are all
available by way of the process of good reasoning.
Reasoning may be a talent or a skill we are born with the potential to develop, but
we are responsible for using it well. It is a gift, an inheritance, if you will, that we need to
invest, a tool we can sharpen, a muscle we must exercise -- pick your metaphor. It is, as
the ancients understood, nothing short of the highest function of the human mind.
Now, let me digress just a bit to qualify this claim, because those of you who have
studied Eastern Philosophy may bristle at this last claim, and rightly so. What’s more,
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle would probably be the first to agree with you…if you are
thinking that there is an understanding that exists beyond words, beyond reason, and
which is entirely ineffable, and grasped only in the depths of one’s being, that is, one’s
soul. These philosophers would agree that nothing could be more true, in that sense, and
it is here that the limits of words quickly become apparent. As Alan Watts put it, “words
are useful,” but only “for communicating with those who have shared a similar
experience.”* As one Zen master put it, “A finger may be used to point at the moon, but
let us not confuse the finger with the moon.”24 Physicist David Bohm put it this way:
“Whatever we say is words,” but “what we want to talk about is generally not words.”25
Words are like fingers, i.e. they are pointing tools, but what they point to in this case is an
inner experience that can be ‘known’ only directly, prior to words, and then only by what
the ancients called the ‘initiated’.
Plato called this gnosis – and it is perhaps the most important concept in
philosophy. It is about that inner flash of understanding that comes as a “rushing
progression of understanding,” and only to those who reach for it
So it is important to recognize that the Greeks were entirely aware of the limits of
words, and that we come up against these limits when we try to discuss this deepest form
of understanding with someone who does not themselves possess it. And it is for this
24(Suzuki
25(Peat
1964)
n.d., 8)
reason that one might be tempted to think that Greek philosophy as a step down from the
use of the mind aspired to by eastern visionaries. And in a sense, you would be right, and
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle would be the first agree with you.
As Aristotle puts it, there are in his view (at least) five levels of mind -- and the
uppermost is beyond words. The deep understanding that might be called 'nirvana' by
some, or 'satori' by others, or ‘gnosis’ by still others, is what Aristotle would call this
highest level of knowledge, one we simply cannot reach with words alone. As Aristotle
rightly observed, this realm of knowledge is beyond, in an important sense, above that
which can be grasped by words. Still we reach to understand it in order to act wisely. And
to this end, words can help lift us ever higher, until we might ultimately have this higher
knowledge in sight.
That said, he argued, we can discuss the other levels very fruitfully, and should,
since deep communication is possible among humans, and words, for all their limitations,
do give us the power to conceive of and exchange abstract objects (thoughts, ideas,
concepts, images, arguments, conclusions, theories, etc.). These concepts are as real as
rocks, they are just more difficult to apprehend. As Aristotle emphasizes, the knowledge
that grows between us in this process is a secondary reality (or substance), but it is
nonetheless worthy of our best efforts, as it can uplift us, individually and collectively, to
our better selves.
As Socrates would argue, words are necessary that we might climb toward this
better understanding of what is, as well as a better understanding of one another. Words
are the best tools humans have for communication and mutual education, and while selfknowledge may be the ultimate end of all learning, we do have a great deal to learn from
one another in the process.
And so even those who have reached this highest level of knowledge must come
back down (as Socrates once learned in a dream), back to the use of words in order to
help uplift others to that higher, albeit ineffable, understanding that might ultimately be
reached by way of climbing through these other levels of understanding.
Many are tempted to think of Socratic dialogue itself as the art of dialectic, and to
some extent, it is. Socratic dialogue is a form of dialectic thinking, but dialectic thinking
is not merely Socratic dialogue, as some have surmised. But it is the beginning, and even
this dialectic art does not get its due in academia. While practically every course you will
take in college will draw some of its legitimacy or origin from the ancient Greeks, few (if
any) actually practice the art the ancients taught. Much as we all love our jobs, most
educators will readily admit that academics are quite fond of calling their method
‘Socratic’ - as if to add an air of moral legitimacy to their teaching - even as they twist
that method to their own ends that usually have less to do with advancing truth than
advancing their careers.
Questioning the authority of so many experts is practically unheard of, even in
graduate programs where one might expect it, let alone in undergraduate institutions,
where there is too often a virtual dearth of true dialectic dialogue.
And not only is this postmodern conundrum unnecessary, but seen properly, the
diversity of our perspectives would prove to be our greatest blessing. Dialectic reasoning
understands that two heads are better than one for the same reason that two eyes perceive
depth that one eye alone cannot. In a world so hostile to relativism (a subject we will take
up at length), the fact that we all see the same world differently is made to seem the
source of so much conflict, rather than the rich source of deeper understanding it could
be...if we understood what the ancients were trying to teach us. They clearly knew
something that we have forgotten, and I’m fairly convinced that rediscovering it may be
our only hope of healing the ubiquitous and increasingly hostile conflict that plagues us.
It does seem necessary that we discover this means to intellectual peace before we can
ever hope to achieve peace politically. What is war, after all, but failed dialogue?
By recognizing the value of all voices in their proper associations, this diverse
group of perfectly ordinary minds illustrate by example how the principle of multiplicity
in unity might actually work – and that is, only if each and every citizen masters himself
instead of each other. It is a principle of dialectic education, which is still and always
fundamental to a healthy democracy, though widely neglected in our own time. Until
human beings learn to honor the worthy and trust the just, the ancients learned the hard
way, human interests will continue to be dominated by those who least deserve power
precisely because they are most in love with it—rather than those who do deserve it
because they are in love with truth and justice.
Hence, the necessity of reasoned dialogue and deliberation, for it is only possible
to discover together what is objectively real and true—no matter how you look at it—as
distinct from what is merely constructed by any few who would have us see it their way.
One can imagine Socrates illustrating this point by tossing his sandal into the center of
the circle. We all have different points of origin, different experiences come of living
different lives and following different paths. Thus, we all see the world and every object
of knowledge in it from different points of view -- which does not entail that we all see a
different truth, nor that our diverse eclectic perspectives are somehow irreconcilable—as
some sophisticated relativists might conclude. For just as two eyes add depth to the
vision of only one, so the integration of different perspectives and voices adds depth to
our understanding of anything worthy of being called the whole truth—an ideal which we
approach by infinite approximation, if at all.
And whether the object of our knowledge is as concrete as a sandal or as abstract
as our conceptions of justice, beauty, and love, none of us defines the truth about such
things by virtue of any limited or privileged view. Since no one ever completely
understands anything, they surmise, there is always incentive to listen, to learn, and to ask
questions—for truth comes to light only by all things considered. Indeed, it may be that
our worst enemy would be our best teacher! There is a lesson in humility here, for if
anything that can be known can be viewed from an infinite number of points of view
(including, if it is alive, inside-looking-out!), then so what does it mean to talk of 'the
truth'?
Thus, philosophy, in its truest sense, turns out to be the ability to see the
connections between things. It is by this dialectic process of gathering new perspectives
that the human mind grows. So it is that by stretching their minds to the proper
consideration of points of view other than their own, the Greeks got a glimpse of that big
picture which has eluded those with narrower minds since.
The Danger of Empty Rhetoric
Philosophers aim to help themselves and others to sharpen their reasoning skills,
for dull tools make it impossible for most people to see if and when they are being
deceived, for deceitful words are the source of most of the ignorance and injustice in the
world.
The enemy of good reason is bad rhetoric -- relatively empty words that may
sound good, and often play on our emotions, but which do not actually add up; that is,
they do not make sense.
Rhetoric can take many forms, and most often employs simple fallacy to persuade
us to do, or buy, or believe what we would not, if we were thinking better. Mind you, it is
important that we distinguish one sense of the term rhetoric from other senses you may
have learned along the way. In and of itself, rhetoric is not necessarily manipulative or
deceitful -- it is possible to speak or write rhetorically toward just and honest ends. But
words can delude, can hide the truth, and can as easily lead to evil as to good.
Words are often used to simply manipulate and confuse, rather than to reach
understanding. Socrates laments those sophists who fight over words “like puppies fight
over meat,” and in the process, turn young minds off to ideas altogether, and “make them
hate the whole business when they get older." 26 This effect, which Socrates calls
misology,27 come of hearing contradictory things both called true. In this way, empty
rhetoric is thus likely to prove unsuccessful in bettering the condition of one’s partner in
dialogue.28 He himself would have been turned off, Socrates says, if he had not had "so
deep a passion" as to adhere him to the exercise of philosophic inquiry all his life.29
For this reason, one of the most important functions of philosophy is to sort the
true sense of the words we use from lesser senses. And only then can we discern the
difference between a good argument, and a lesser one.
For instance, we may call someone a friend -- but do we mean they are a friend in
the truest sense? Or are they merely an acquaintance? Or that they are useful? Or perhaps
pleasurable? If one is a true friend, Aristotle would argue, then we mean that we care
about them, not as means to our own ends, but as ends in themselves, that is, for their
sake, not for ours. A friend, in the truer sense, is what Aristotle calls “another self.”
Anyone who gives it sufficient thought will agree that there is this difference between a
friend in the lesser sense that we typically use the word, and this truer sense.
For instance, to ask what is pleasure is not the same as asking what is true
pleasure. To ask what is love is not the same as asking what is true love. Because words
can be used in many different senses, one purpose of philosophy is to distinguish one
sense from another, to sort the mere appearance of truth from the real thing. In order for
the world to live up to what it could be, we must discern what we call, say, justice, or
courage, or wisdom, from what is actually just, or courageous, or wise.
In our day and age, as you are well aware, we are awash in manipulative rhetoric
and fallacy – words used in less than the true sense specifically for the purpose of
manipulating us to do, or believe, or most often, to buy this or that product or candidate
or value system. From advertising to political campaigns to religious purposes -- we have
been taught from day one to simply follow along with what we are told, to buy it...as if it
is true, whether or not it really is. In fact, more often than not, it is in someone else's
economic or political interest to persuade us that it is. We are persuaded, by way of what
(Plato’s Theaetetus168bc)
(Plato, Pheado n.d.)
28 (Plato’s Theaetetus168bc)
29 (Plato’s Theaetetus169c) (Plato, Theaetetus n.d.)
26
27
we come to believe to be in our best interest, to do, or believe, or behave in certain
particular ways it seems to be good for us -- whether or not it really is.
And lest we think that truth will always win, Mill reminds us that while this much
is true, that:
"The real advantage which truth has consists in this, that when an opinion
is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the
course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it . . .
"[p.36]
"[T]he dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those
pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into
commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with
instances of truth put down by persecution."[p.34]
"Mankind can hardly be too often reminded that there was once a man
called Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public
opinion of his time there took place a memorable collision. . . . [T]his man
. . . handed down to us by those who best knew both him and the age as the
most virtuous man in it . . . acknowledged master of all the eminent
thinkers who have since lived . . . was put to death by his countrymen . . .
for [the] impiety in denying the Gods recognized by the State . . . and
immorality in being . . . a 'corruptor of youth'. . . [pp.20-30, "On Liberty"]
Consider another tragic example:
. . . the event which took place on Calvary rather more than eighteen
hundred years ago. [To] the man who left on the memory of those who
witnessed his life and conversation such an impression of his moral
grandeur that eighteen subsequent centuries [twenty now] have done
homage to him as the Almighty in person, was ignominiously put to death,
as what? As a blasphemer. Men did not merely mistake their benefactor,
they mistook him for the exact contrary of what he was and treated him as
that prodigy of impiety which they themselves are now held to be for their
treatment of him. The feelings with which mankind now regard these
lamentable transactions . . . render them extremely unjust in their
judgment of the unhappy actors. There were, to all appearances, not bad
men--not worse than men commonly are, but rather the contrary; men who
possessed in a full, or somewhat more than a full measure, the religious,
moral, and patriotic feelings of their time and people; the very kind of men
who, in all times, our own included, have every chance of passing through
life blameless and respected. . . . most of those who now shudder at his
conduct, if they had lived in his time, and been born Jews, would have
acted precisely as he did. . . . [pp.30-31, "On Liberty"]
Let us add one more example, the most striking of all, if the
impressiveness of an error is measured by the wisdom and virtue of him
who falls into it. If ever anyone possessed of power had grounds for
thinking himself the best and most enlightened among his contemporaries,
it was the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Absolute monarch of the whole
civilized world, he preserved through life not only the most unblemished
justice, but what was less to be expected from his Stoical breeding, the
tenderest heart. The few failings which are attributed to him were all on
the side of indulgence, while his writings, the highest ethical product of
the ancient mind, differ scarcely perceptibly, if they differ at all, from the
most characteristic teachings of Christ. This man, a better Christian in all
but the dogmatic sense of the word than almost any of the ostensibly
Christian sovereigns who have since reigned, persecuted Christianity.
Placed at the summit of all the previous attainments of humanity, with an
open, unfettered intellect, and a character which led him of himself to
embody in his moral writings the Christian ideal, he yet failed to see that
Christianity was to be a good and not an evil to the world, with his duties
to which he was to deeply penetrated. Existing society he knew to be in a
deplorable state. But such as it was, he saw, or thought he saw, that it
was held together and prevented from being worse, by belief and
reverence of the received divinities. . . . The new religion openly aimed at
dissolving these ties; unless, therefore, it was his duty to adopt that
religion, it seemed to be his duty to put it down. . . . the gentlest and most
amiable of philosophers and rulers, under a solemn sense of duty,
authorized the persecution of Christianity. To my mind, it is one of the
most tragical facts in all history. . . . No Christian more firmly believes
that atheism is false and tends to the dissolution of society than Marcus
Aurelius believed the same things of Christianity; he who of all men then
living, might have been thought the most capable of appreciating it.
Unless anyone who approves of punishment for the promulgation of
opinions flatters himself that he is a wiser and better man than Marcus
Aurelius--more deeply versed in the wisdom of his time, more elevated in
his intellect above it, more earnest in his search for truth, or more singleminded in his devotion to it when found--let him abstain from that
assumption of the joint infallibility of himself and the multitude . . .[pp.3133, "On Liberty"]
So even the greatest of minds can easily be deceived by appearances, and the
greatest of souls can be extinguished because words can be used as sheep's clothing for
wolves. Though there is not always ill intent:
"[T]he principal causes which make diversity of opinion advantageous,
and will continue to do so until mankind shall have entered a stage of
intellectual advancement which at present seems at an incalculable
distance . . . [are] that the received opinion may be false, and some other
opinion, consequently, true; or that, the received opinion being true, a
conflict with the opposite error is essential to a clear apprehension and
deep feeling of its truth. But there is a commoner case than either of
these: when the conflicting doctrines, instead of being one true and the
other false, share the truth between them, and the nonconforming opinion
is needed to supply the remainder of the truth of which the received
doctrine embodies only a part. Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable
to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth. They are a
part of the truth, sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller part, but
exaggerated, distorted, and disjointed from the truths by which they ought
to be accompanied and limited. Heretical opinions, on the other hand, are
generally some of these suppressed and neglected truths, bursting the
bonds which kept them down, and either seeking reconciliation with the
truth contained in the common opinion, or fronting it as enemies, and
setting themselves up, with similar exclusiveness, as the whole truth. "…
there is never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions; . . .
But [again] it is not the minds of heretics that are deteriorated most by the
ban placed on all inquiry which does not end in the orthodox conclusions.
The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole
mental development is cramped and their reason cowed by the fear of
heresy."[p.41-42]
"[T]he price paid for this sort of intellectual
pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human
mind… while that which would strengthen and enlarge men's minds--free
and daring speculation on the highest subjects -- is abandoned."[p.40-41]
"Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising
intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any
bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should land them in
something which would admit of being considered irreligious or
immoral?"[p.41-42]
The latter case is hitherto the most frequent, as, in the human mind, onesidedness has always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. . .
. Such being the partial character of prevailing opinions, even when
resting on a true foundation, every opinion which embodies somewhat of
the portion of truth which the common opinion omits ought to be
considered precious, with whatever amount of error and confusion that
truth may be blended. . . . so long as popular truth is one-sided, it is more
desirable than otherwise that unpopular truth should have one-sided
assertors, too, such being usually the most energetic and the most likely to
compel reluctant attention to the fragment of wisdom which they proclaim
as if it were the whole.”30
“Thus, in the eighteenth century, when nearly all . . . were lost in admiration of what is called
civilization, and of the marvels of modern science, literature, and philosophy, and while greatly
overrating the amount of unlikeness between the men of modern and those of ancient times,
indulged the belief that the whole of the difference was in their own favor; with what a salutary shock
30
And it is "the exclusive pretension made by a part of the truth to be the
whole must and ought to be protested against;"[p.62-63] For "only
through diversity of opinion is there, in the existing state of human
intellect, a chance of fair play to all sides of the truth."[p.58-59]
Philosophy, if it is good for anything, can help us sort the mere appearance of
what is real, true, good, and right from the real thing. It can help us sort truth from deceit.
In other words, it can help improve our BS meter! This is part of the reason that
philosophy teaches a very practical skill -- for what could be more valuable than to be
better at being able to discern when we are being deceived? Especially considering we
live in a world that is awash in fallacy.
So what is a fallacy? To understand this, we first have to understand the
philosophical concept of an argument. In order to understand what makes a fallacy a bad
thing, we must spend some time considering what makes good reasoning a good thing.
Arguing to Understand, Rather than to Win
What is a good argument, in the philosophical sense? And why does argument
matter to good reasoning?
Reasoning begins in the practical need to know 'what really is' so that we can
survive and flourish. These are the fundamental questions from which all others follow:
What is real? True? Right? Our good is summed up in all these, and we all want what is
good for us, but not everyone knows what that is. Arguably, only those who have asked
and answered these hard questions ever really understands this good, and even then, few
would say they know it in a strong sense – only that they have learned it in some
important sense.
But people have learned different things through their different experience, and
when they know the healthy way to argue, they can carry on a discussion to very
satisfying ends -- that is, to the point of mutual understanding -- by definition, the most
desirable of human experience.
However, the will to understand can be quickly lost when the will to win kicks in.
And this is why our purpose in dialogue matters critically. Understanding eludes those
who don't aim at it, but instead, have 'winning the argument' as their purpose, thus
precluding any higher goal. But the higher goal exists, but is found only by those who
did the paradoxes of Rousseau explode like bombshells in the midst, dislocating the compact mass of
one-sided opinion and forcing its elements to recombine in a better form and with additional
ingredients. . . . there lay in Rousseau's doctrine . . . a considerable amount of exactly those truths
which the popular opinion wanted; and these are the deposit which was left behind them when the
flood subsided. The superior worth of simplicity in life, the enervating and demoralizing effect of
the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial society are ideas which have never been entirely absent
from cultivated minds since Rousseau wrote; and they will in time produce their due effect . .
."[pp.55-57, "On Liberty"]
search. It waits for anyone who understands the truer value and purpose of words and
argument, which is to help us understand, not merely what is, but one another as well.
If one could only know what one learns from one's own window on the world, one
would be unnecessarily limited to a very narrow slice of reality. We can learn from the
experience of others, at least from those who can be trusted to tell the truth and have
themselves truly learned, by way of their inner voice, as well as from trust-worthy others.
"A great deal of our knowledge comes from other people in this way. Because we
can communicate what we experience, human beings can merge their separate
windows into one giant window."31
The fact that we all see the world from different points of view is what makes
dialogue necessary, and the fact that some see through broader windows necessitates that
we learn to argue well – because some have learned more and better, and so see more of
the whole truth than others, and learning from those who have such expanded points of
view can broaden us all.
This is the very essence of learning, but learning from others can also involve a
sort of game of telephone, for they themselves may have been taught badly.
So how can one trust what one hears from others? The written word can
sometimes help prevent confusion and deceit from taking root, but it can also proliferate
untruth when the lie itself becomes written. It is this inevitable uncertainty about what
comes from outside of us that requires that we use a more certain method, if we have one,
by which the truth can be discerned, a method that goes beyond trusting the source.
For this reason, "we proceed by means of reasoning. When we reason, we use
relationships among propositions to push our knowledge beyond the limits of what we
can experience directly."32(p.88)
The study of logic is the study of that reasoning process. It is a study which
purports to be able to discern the "general principles that apply everywhere,” because the
good thing about the truth is that it stays true, which is to say, “rivers in Tai wan must
behave like rivers in our own environment."
This process of reasoning is, by its very nature, dialectic – back and forth –
question and answer, thesis and antithesis. It matters not whether it dialogic, that is,
between individuals or groups, or is within an individual who is arguing with him or
herself, that is, deliberating. The whole point of reasoning is to determine the truth or
falsity of propositions that we are not in a position to verify directly by sense
perception."33 Dialogue or deliberation is necessary, as Socrates says, "because nothing
is an answer unless you've asked the question." Seen in this light, it is easy to see why
the ancients understood that the source of both good and evil in this world is the right and
wrong use of words.
And so we must distinguish between good reasoning and mere rhetoric, because
not all reasoning is equally respectable. Bad reasoning is particularly insidious, especially
today, since it is ubiquitous and can be broadcast to every corner of the world. And what
31
32
33
(Kelly n.d., 88)
(Kelly n.d., 88)
(Kelly n.d., 105)
it too often does in our age is create what the ancients understood to be the very source of
suffering – human want. It is for this and many other reasons why it is critical that we
learn to sort good from bad reasoning at a young age. Unfortunately, as noted earlier, we
don't learn in our part of the world – early or sometimes ever -- what makes an argument
good.
Put simply, a good argument is "an appeal to evidence in support of a
conclusion," and technically, that is any "set of propositions in which some propositions
– the premises – are asserted as support or evidence for another – the conclusion."34 We
make an argument whenever we make a case by citing reasons to draw one conclusion
over another from the available premises. "An argument can also be described as an
inference," because "the conclusion is inferred from the premises."35
By the time we are mature, we are in the habit of inferring much from what is said
to us, and we recognize the basic organizing principles or structure underlying the
language we use, though we've long since forgotten the rules of language by this point,
and instead we just use them as if they're hard wired into us. We intuit the different
patterns of communication, and can easily see the difference between different forms -including narration (sequence of events being the organizing principle) and description
(which tells us facts about something) neither of which involves arguments. An
argument, by contrast, uses reasons to logically convince us that something is (or is not)
true. These patterns differ further from an explanation, which goes on to show why
something is (or is not) true.
"In an argument, we reason forward from premises to the conclusion; in an
explanation, we reason backwards from facts to the cause or reason for that fact." 36 In
both cases, we use indicator words (such as as, because, since, for this reason, assuming
that, in as much as, etc.) to indicate premises we are citing as evidence. And we use
others (such as therefore, thus, so, consequently, hence, as a result, it follows that, which
means, or which implies) to indicate that a conclusion is being drawn.
We analyze arguments, not for their own sake, but for the sake of evaluating their
logical strength. "A good argument is one that establishes the truth of its conclusion."37
The goal of the study of logic aims to establish standards for measuring logical
strength. And the reason we need these is because when something doesn't make sense,
these standards will help us locate the problem, the error in reasoning, and ideally, can
help us correct it. Certainly, logic can help us sort out what's wrong with other's
reasoning, but – as the ancient well knew – it is best used to help us sort out the errors in
our own reasoning – before anyone else has to point it out to us. In this, it is an essential
learning tool, and yet, few of us get the benefit of this skill that was the foundation of the
first and truest form of philosophy.
A good argument has two essential attributes: its premises must be true, and
"must be logically related to the conclusion in such a way that, if the premises are true,
the conclusion is likely to be true as well."38 That is, the truth of the premises gives us
reason to think the conclusion is true. This "capacity of the premises to support the
34
35
36
37
38
(Kelly n.d., 89)
(Kelly n.d., 89)
(Kelly n.d., 91)
(Kelly n.d., 105)
(Kelly n.d., 105)
conclusion" is what we refer to (the referent) when we speak of the logical strength of an
argument. This is what we mean when we say that something or somebody makes sense.
One important kind of argument, which we call deductive, is one in which the
conclusions follows necessarily from the truth of the premises. This means that, if the
premises are true, the conclusion also must be. We call a deductive argument valid when
it has this kind of logical strength.
Arguments can be simple or complex, and can have a single premises or a whole
network of dependent and independent premises. (When we diagram arguments, we use
arrows (<= =>) to represent the logical connections between premises and conclusion.)
All told, an argument is only as strong as its strongest link, and "a chain of
reasoning is no stronger than its weakest link." However, a web of reasoning "may be
stronger than any one of its individual strands." 39
Premises that are assumed, but unstated, are abundant in all our communication.
They are implied (implicit) rather than expressed (explicit), and very often, it is the
unstated assumptions that are the most controversial, which is to say, they call for more
discussion -- indeed, argument -- than they are given in a particular context.
Arguments often seem more plausible than they really are because the weakest
links go unstated. Indeed, to truly understand most people's arguments, we must supply
the assumptions they are making in order to make sense of their reasoning. We fill in the
gaps in the argument, without going beyond it.
For this reason, understanding other requires not only logical skill, but a kind of
generosity that logicians call the principle of charity. This involves the faith that all
parties of an argument are committed to not only listening without prejudice, but to
helping the other along in making his or her case. We sometimes find that we even have
to supply the conclusion itself. This is what tells us when someone is arguing only to win,
rather than to understand, because they will not only not help make sense of the others
case, but will often even try to make nonsense of it. Unfortunately, too many of us learn
early on to use words as weapons, and this explains the prevalence of fallacy in our daily
conversation. If you have ever tried to argue with such a BSer, you know that the
experience is absolutely confounding, if not dumbfounding, because such a person does
not even want to understand or reconcile, but aims specifically to confuse the subject in
any of many ways that such fallacies make possible. Among the most powerful of such
diversionary fallacies commonly used to kill discussion (and sometimes relationships
altogether) is the best defense is a good offense, a form of fallacy called tu quoque,
(meaning back at you or you too), often used by a scoundrel to divert attention from his
guilt by attacking when he should apologize. Another is the fallacy of complex question - such as that involved in the question, Have you stopped beating your wife? This one is
built into the assumption that whoever brings up a problem is starting a fight; they may
indeed be starting the discussion, but the problem itself started elsewhere, or there would
be no need to bring it up. What’s more, whether it becomes a fight or not really depends
on how the other reacts – with sincerity or BS. These are only a few of what are many
examples of how easy it is to muddy the water of what might otherwise be a fruitful
discussion.
39
(Kelly n.d., 108)
In the world as it is, many tend to advocate or oppose positions as if it is all just so
much opinion, which is to say, as if a mere belief is good enough to make a case on. But
in fact, "questions of truth and falsity…are appropriate."40 Indeed, as is presumed in the
very word philosophy – i.e. love of truth – truth is to be loved above all else, even and
especially winning, because winning does not advance anyone’s understanding, least of
all the apparent winner. Ideally, philosophical argument should not lead to actual
quarreling, but rather to mutual agreement and, ideally, mutual understanding and growth
in learning – and nothing can be understood that is not actually true.
On Fallacies
By contrast, logical fallacies are patterns of bad reasoning, errors of logical
structure that look plausible on the surface, but when you consider them more
thoughtfully, they simply do not make sense, do not lead to true conclusions, and
certainly do not lead to mutual self-improvement. They are arguments that offer only bad
reasons for their conclusions, though at first glance, they seem to make sense, and for this
reason, can be especially difficult to refute.
For instance, Circular reasoning or begging the question is good example of a
fallacy that gets much traction in our culture. 'The Christian God is the only God because
the Bible tells me so…and the Bible is the word of God, so it must be right.' The
conclusion is assumed at the outset. Sometimes these take the form of an appeal to
ignorance, such as saying that we should believe in God because no one can prove that
s/he doesn't exist. Or shifting the burden of proof, as if the fact that you can't prove that
I'm wrong suffices to make me right.
Changing the subject in the middle of an argument is the fallacy of diversion. This
is sometimes called a red herring when combined with an emotional appeal, because the
scent of a red herring is so powerful that it will throw a dog off a scent it was trying to
follow. This shows up all the time in personal discussions when a person changes the
subject by subtle slight that draws the others attention from what was earlier being said.
Likewise, on a social scale, support for a politician’s policies, for instance, can easily be
undermined by even the whiff of scandal, with or without evidence. Indeed, as we have
seen many times in democratic ages – from Pericles to Clinton – even the search for
evidence to support the emptiest of accusations is enough to divert the public’s attention
from the truth of the case or any good work that is being or might otherwise be
accomplished.
A person who argues with fallacies in this way often walks away feeling like they
have accomplished something, and indeed, even made sense, though his or her partner in
debate may see perfectly well that the case that was made was pure nonsense. For this
reason, a BSer often think they are making progress, when in fact, they are only leaving a
trail of partners turned opponents, because trust is difficult to recover once lost.
Examples of fallacies abound. Many fallacies appeal to our emotions, such as
those that are called an appeal to fear or appeal to pity. If someone says or implies that
you should believe this or that because I or someone will harm you if you don't -- well,
40
(Kelly n.d., 89)
that may be a good reason to defend yourself -- but it not a good reason for thinking
something is true.
Examples of an appeal to fear include friends who implicitly, or even explicitly,
threaten to ostracize you if you don't, say, turn your back on another friend or another
group. A student recently called this kissing up and kicking down, and cited it as the
reason high school is so difficult. This may seem, on the surface, to be an appeal to
popularity, another popular fallacy, but it is not: an appeal to popularity would be when
someone suggests that you should think or do this or that because ‘everyone is doing it,’
or that you should do or be or think this or that because it is not normal. John Stuart Mill
called this the tyranny of the majority, and it is a process of stigmatizing that enjoys a
particularly powerful efficacy in our age. This fallacy involves the implicit assumption
that the majority opinion is infallible, as if to say, if large numbers of people believe
something, it must therefore be right. In fact, millions of people drink to excess every
day, but this does not mean that we should agree that millions of people can’t be wrong,
or just stupid. The truth is, it may be the case that many or even most are or do this or
that, but there is nothing to say that we should do it too, that we should all be alike, or
that being average or mediocre is in any way wise or good. Because everyone else is
doing something is not, in and of itself, a good reason for you or I to do it too. Parents
sometimes come back in response to this claim with the retort, 'Well, if everyone were
jumping off a cliff, would you do it too?' Unfortunately, these are often the same parents
who encourage their young to fit in at all costs, so the conditioning of one generation
after another is undoubtedly a big part of our problem.
Another example of an appeal to fear involves a parent, friend, or partner whose
support depends on your maintaining a particular belief or attitude (say, a particular
religious affiliation or political party). This is actually a form of bullying, and again,
while it can easily win our compliance, this does not make it a good reason to think either
this religion or party is in any sense right or true. Consider also a teacher who suggests
that only those who agree with him or her will get good grades. Like a friend who holds
that only people who dress, or look, or act a certain way are worthy, these too are
attempts to breed conformity by intimidation. They can be very effective in controlling
our behavior, but they should not carry weight with our thinking, for none of these
provide good reasons to believe or think in any particular way. At the very most we
might admit there could be a price to pay for being different or going against the pressure
to conform, but there may also be hidden benefits, perhaps even many.
An example of an appeal to pity would include a case where, in court, someone
says, 'You shouldn't find me guilty because I have small children to feed.' This may be a
reason to feel sorry for someone or their children, but it has no bearing on their guilt or
innocence. (This is one defense that Socrates refused to use in court...though as a 70 year
old father of toddlers before an assembly known for being easy to sway, he might have
lived had he used it.) Another common example of an appeal to pity is the politician who
complains that his or her opponent is running attack ads. That may or may not be true,
but this is no reason to think the opponent wrong or to vote for this person, for those ads
may very well be true.
A slippery slope argument typically involves fallacies based on emotion. For
instance, the claim that 'Same-sex marriage will destroy the family structure as we know
it' is a form of slippery slope argument; it plays on a person’s affectional ties to the
traditional family to stimulate a knee-jerk reaction against the supposed threat. There
seems no good reason to believe that recognizing some alternative families would
therefore destroy other more traditional forms (unless you think folks would leave their
traditional marriages if the alternative were open to them, but this then doesn’t say much
for those marriages either). Another would be the claim that limiting assault weapons will
lead inevitably to outlawing all guns. Or that legalizing marijuana will lead to legalizing
all drugs. These claims appeal to our emotional attachment to our families, our guns, and
our way of life, and often play on a misunderstanding and mistrust of what one doesn’t
know and can’t predict.
Mind you, it’s important to note that not all slippery slope arguments are
fallacious, for some slippery slopes do actually exist. For instance, to say that “if we
shush people from expressing their political views, we run the risk of disempowering the
First Amendment” we have given an example of a slippery slope argument that actually
is correct. Another might be the claim that preventing a given faith from expressing itself
will undermine the constitutional protections of others faiths to express their faith as they
see fit. Such claims are based on the suggestion that a little violation of the constitution
won’t hurt, when in fact, it is a matter of where to stop – for if we can rationalize
shushing some people or limiting some religions under some circumstances, then where
is the line over which we will not step? It will be very hard to make a case for why we
should not do the same under other circumstances. The question becomes, where do we
stop? There is no clear line of demarcation between some cases and others, hence the
slippery slope.
The difference between a fallacy, and what only appears to be a fallacy at first
glance, is sometimes one that involves very subtle reasoning. Whether something is or is
not a fallacy depends not merely on it’s surface form, but on whether there are good
reasons to believe it is true, or not.
Similarly, there is the appeal to tradition ('that's the way it's always been done'),
or the appeal to the future ('new is better'). Both are gross generalizations, and the truth
requires looking closer at the particular case. Just because modern medicine has more
shiny gadgets than ancient medicine, and we really like shiny gadgets, this is no reason to
believe that modern medicine is inherently better than ancient or alternative medicine.
The truth depends on a more even-handed weighing of the actual evidence about different
methods of treating disease or viewing health.
Another fallacy is the appeal to the limits of what we've learned, such as the claim
that, ‘That's just the way I was raised.' We may have habits, but this is no reason to think
that our habits are necessarily good. Related to this is the true for you or subjective
fallacy; the claim that something may be true for you, but it's not for me. Just because a
given person doesn’t see or want to be aware of the truth, this does not mean that it
doesn't exist, or that we can agree that truth is untruth. Truth, by definition, stays true, so
it is true for everyone -- though we may not all see or be willing to look at it with
veracity. It’s important to remember here is that the active root of ignorance is to ignore.
Appeal to authority is another widely used fallacy, very popular in advertising. To
say you should buy this product because a popular celebrity endorses it is playing on our
esteem for that celebrity or maybe our desire to be like him, but really has very little to
do with his credibility as an authority about the worth of this or that product.
This can also take a serious form, such as when we hear something like, "Industry
should not have to limit its CO2 emissions because corporate studies show no evidence
that this has any effect on the environment.” Such a statement ignores that corporate
studies have an interest in not finding a causal relationship that would cut into their profit
margin. Another oft-heard proclamation these days is that “climate change is not being
prompted by human activity,” as evidence by 53% of media reports that indicate
scientific doubt about its causes. Never mind that 99% of scientific studies leave no room
for doubt whatsoever. We don’t seem to know the difference these days between the
authority of rigorous scientific inquiry and the mere beliefs and opinions of those who
may not know what they’re talking about, especially when they have an interest in not
seeing what they don’t want to see.
Another popular and especially effective form of fallacy is called ad hominem, or
'below the belt' reasoning, sometimes called 'mud throwing' -- attacking the person
themselves instead of their record or their argument. Here is where political attack ads
often are fallacious – when they do not show something true about the candidate they are
opposing, but instead play on mere suggestion to create an adverse, usually emotional,
reaction in voters minds. Very popular these days are claims that someone is a ‘radical
environmentalist,’ or is ‘pro-abortion,’ or has a ‘homosexual agenda.’ Calling someone a
‘big spending liberal,’ or even a ‘socialist,’ who will ‘raise your taxes’ is very effective as
well, especially when and because so much of the population is economically insecure
and fearful of being even worse off. This is partly a survival instinct, and partly because
we have raised out young to care more about money than any other goods, and to think of
the function of leaders as protecting their immediate interests, rather than any of the other
goods that government is charged by our constitution with seeing to – such as protecting
people and the environment from exploitation by profit mongers, or protecting personal
freedoms from unjustified constraint by government.
More than this though, we are vulnerable to empty political rhetoric because we
have been raised to misunderstand the very meaning of the words that are being tossed
around in such debates, such that people get away with using emotionally charged buzz
words to push people buttons. Few would guess that not long ago, it was Republicans
who were the liberals. Indeed, one of the most effective rhetorical devices is what we
might call ‘the pot calling the kettle black,’ used most often by ‘wolves in sheep’s
clothing.’ You might think that the proper response to such spin would be to say, ‘Look
who’s talking?’ But this too can be a form of tu quoque, and it is seldom very effective,
considering that two wrongs don’t make a right.
Ironically, one of the most effective claims are those made against what is called
‘big government,’ by which they mean, government that taxes those who can most afford
it, and won’t let business operate unhindered at all costs to the broader interests of the
people. Again, economic insecurity makes it easy to create the appearance of shared
interest with those who have a short-term interest in jobs, or simply the conditioned will
to accumulate wealth above all else, even if and when it opposes the long term interests
upon which they truly depend in (such as safe products, a healthy environment, and even
personal freedom and a right to government protection from large scale exploitation). But
in fact these are used most often by those who would use government to usurp personal
freedoms, such as a recent campaign commercial that in one breadth denounces
government health care, claiming that it comes between doctor and patient, and in the
next breadth advances a position that both doctors and patients (even those who have
been raped, including those who have been raped by their own relatives) should be
prosecuted for having or performing an abortion. Indeed, the same party that most touts
this ‘big government’ banner is the same one that would prevent individuals from
choosing who to love and how to constitute their families, bringing the weight of law
directly into the bedrooms of individuals whose sexual orientation it judges wrong.
Sadly, what makes such deceit so effective is that we have been raised and raised
our young to be incapable of telling the difference in what is truly good for them, and
what is not. And this begins in a failure to educate that becomes a conditioned inability to
tell the difference in bad reasoning and that good reasoning used by our forefathers to
design a constitution that would protect the personal rights and freedoms that government
under the inordinate influence of corporations (what they called fascism in Mussolini’s
Italy) would override.
Another powerful example of this shows up in the claim made by those who
purport to protect religious rights that ours was meant to be a ‘Christian nation.’ Ironic,
again, that while our forefathers were, by and large, Christian (in a deist, rather than
theist sense), it was specifically to protect every person’s right to think and believe as
they choose that our constitution was designed to protect religious freedom itself, not the
rights of any given group – even Christians – to impose their view on all. Apparently it
doesn’t occur to most who adhere to this ‘Christian nation’ view that Christians
themselves come in many denominations (such that in a classroom that identifies itself as
90% Christian, there are sometimes no two who share the same church identification).
And as often as not, each of them has learned to judge all other so-called Christians as
wrong. Indeed, having grown up Catholic myself, most of them are fairly sure I’m not a
Christian at all – especially if I don’t identify with the part that waves that Christian
nation banner. And if they were to get their wish, that is, the political power to impose
Christianity on all Americans, what would prevent such leaders from circumventing their
religious rights to be the kind of Christian they want to be? Apparently it has escaped the
notice of most such folks that Jesus himself died, not for what we have since come to call
Christianity, but for religious freedom, specifically his right to profess a faith different
from the Jewish fundamentalism into which he was born. 41
41
John Stuart Mill had this to say: "Far less would I insinuate this out of the doctrines and precepts of
Christ himself. I believe that the sayings of Christ are all that I can see any evidence of their having been
intended to be; . . . that everything which is excellent in ethics may be brought within them, . . . But it is
quite consistent with this to believe that they contain, and were meant to contain, only a part of the truth;
that many essential elements of the highest morality are among the things which are not provided for, nor
intended to be provided for. . . "[p.61, "On Liberty"]
“While "everything which is excellent in ethics may be brought within…the doctrines and precepts
of Christ himself….but they contain, and were meant to contain, only a part of the truth…"[p.61]
And the consequent is that "it is scarcely too much to say that not one Christian in a thousand guides
or tests his individual conduct by reference to those laws. The standard to which he does refer it is
the custom of his nation, his class, or his religious profession. . . . The doctrines have no hold on
ordinary believers--are not a power in their minds. They have habitual respect for the sound of
them, but no feeling which spreads from the words to the things signified and forces the mind to
take them in and make them conform to the formula. Whenever conduct is concerned, they look
Perhaps the most effective spin at work in our age is called the straw man fallacy,
which is a form of poisoning the well. We all know how easy it is to ruin another
round for Mr. A and B to direct them how far to go in obeying Christ." With the consequent that the
truths of Christianity become "dead beliefs." This "decline in the living power of the doctrine"
happens when "the sayings of Christ coexist passively in their minds, producing hardly any effect
beyond what is caused by mere listening to words so amiable and bland…."[p.48-52] By striking fear
into the hearts of its followers, "Christian morality…is essentially selfish in character…it is essentially
a doctrine of passive obedience, which inculcates submission to all authorities…"[p.60-61]
"I believe, too, that this narrow theory is becoming a grave practical evil, detracting greatly from the moral
training and instruction which so many well-meaning persons are now at length exerting themselves to
promote. . . . I believe that other ethics than any which can be evolved from exclusively Christian sources
must exist side by side with Christian ethics to produce the moral regeneration of mankind; and that the
Christian system is no exception to the rule that in an imperfect state of the human mind the interests of
truth require a diversity of opinions. . . . The exclusive pretension made by a part of the truth to be the
whole must and ought to be protested against; . . . If Christians would teach infidels to be just to
Christianity, they should themselves be just to infidelity. It can do truth no service to blink the fact, known
to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and
most valuable moral teaching has been the work, not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew
and rejected, the Christian faith."[pp.62-63, "On Liberty"]
Again, "[I]t is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that
this collision of opinions works its salutary effect. Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but
the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil; there is always hope when people are forced to
listen to both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself
ceases to have the effect of truth by being exaggerated into falsehood. And since there are few mental
attributes more rare than that judicial faculty which can sit in intelligent judgment between two sides of a
question, of which only one is represented by an advocate before it, truth has no chance but in proportion as
every side of it, every opinion which embodies any fraction of the truth, not only finds advocates, but is so
advocated as to be listened to. . . . We have now recognized the necessity to the mental well-being of
mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the
expression of opinion . . ."[pp.63-64, "On Liberty"]
"Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction: it is, in great part, a protest against
paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than active; innocence rather than
nobleness; abstinence from evil rather than energetic pursuit of good; in its precepts . . . 'thou shalt not'
predominates unduly over 'thou shalt.' In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism which has
been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of
hell as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below the best of the
ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character, by
disconnecting each man's feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow creatures, except so far as a selfinterested inducement is offered to him for consulting them. It is essentially a doctrine of passive
obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established; . . . What little recognition the idea
of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from
Christian; . . . a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of
obedience."[pp.60-61, "On Liberty"]
person’s reputation by spreading rumors or even lies about them. High schools would not
be as they are were if not for the fact that we are so willing to believe everything we hear,
even in the absence of any credible evidence. These devices are particularly effective
when we want to make sure an opponent’s case is never heard, for if someone believes
the water is poisoned, they will never drink it to find out for sure. This occurs when
someone caricatures an opponent's argument, reducing it to one or a few absurd claims,
in order to discredit it entirely and thus shoot it down easily. Two common examples are,
'Feminists are just man-haters,' or 'Environmentalists are just tree-huggers.' Fear of such
ridicule is enough to persuade many people from ever even trying to understand a view
that would be convincing, if they heard it, but instead, they reject it out of hand, so as
never to be associated with it.
There is a particular politician-turned-educator in our age who has been the butt
of a widespread campaign to discredit his urgent and especially credible message. Having
won a presidential election that tested the metal of our democracy and ultimately proved
that political power lies, not in the voice of the many, but in the vote of the few at the
pinnacle of power (in this case, that of a single Supreme Court Justice who prevented the
vote of the people from being counted), and his is a case that is especially worthy of
examination. Not only because his message aims to save us from our lesser selves, that
are so prone to fallacious thinking, but because the intelligence he would encourage
would thwart the profit-at-all-cost purposes of corporations that are “running the world
like a business in liquidation.”(*) Al Gore’s message – which is that governments ought
to limit industrial CO2 emissions – is blocked at almost every turn by appeal to the fears
and biases of those who most need to hear it. For instance, one of the most effective tu
quoque fallacies at work in our age is that which aims to discredit such teaching with the
claim that a person’s being wealthy (even when one’s living is made by advancing public
understanding about global warming) somehow makes him a hypocrite. A claim that a
person lives in a beautiful home would seem to suggest a whiff of hypocrisy, IF, in fact,
his argument was that people should not be wealthy. While there does seem to be some
correlation between irresponsibly acquired wealth and environmental destruction, there
are indeed both better and worse ways to make a good living. So this attack against a
wealthy environmentalist might hold water if such a person was claiming that people
should never acquire wealth. On the contrary, since there is a right and a wrong way to do
anything, the challenge for all of us, especially environmentalists, is to learn to earn our
living in ways that advances awareness of sustainable practices. And as the world wakes
up to its higher goods, there might be many a good living to be earned in this way.
In fact, there is no denying that our cities are increasingly surround by homes that
look like they were built for what Bill McKibben calls “entry level monarchs,” and no
one would think it environmentally sound to simply destroy them all. Rather, the question
becomes, who will live in those homes? Indeed, who will we honor and even uplift to
positions of privilege in the future? Will it be those who have earned their wealth
responsibly by offering the world something it desperately needs in a way that is
sustainable, which is to say, just? Or will it be those who take their profit at all cost? In
fact, Gore’s message would not discourage the accumulation of wealth, except that
accumulated irresponsibly. But it would have us consider what true wealth actually is.
For our challenge is fundamentally “a crisis of spirit,”* that is an opportunity to rethink
our truer interests, and perhaps save our children’s children from the future hell to which
we are currently condemning them. To this end, Gore would promote what he calls
sustainable capitalism (arguably closer to what Adam Smith had in mind) that does not
discourage the accumulation of material wealth by honorable means, but would rather
help us see that we are selling our souls and our children’s future – arguably, our truest
wealth – for its sake.
This project – helping us see – is the mark of a great teacher, and the difference in
a mere politician and a true leader. Less than true leaders master the most insidious
rhetorical devices instead, such as hasty generalization -- including the claim that a given
dictator must be taken down, however great the potential costs, because his political
enemies have claimed he is hiding weapons of mass destruction. Half truths fall into this
category, such as when a speaker or writer consciously or unconsciously draws a
conclusion without all the relevant facts. An example that comes to mind might be a
presentation to the UN Security Council of a model vial of anthrax and vague satellite
images as ‘proof’ of a substantive collaboration between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Stereotypes too are a form of hasty generalization. We can generalize from the
part to the whole, such as claiming that the 9/11 terrorists were Muslim, therefore all
Muslims tend to be terrorists. Or we can generalize from the whole to the part, such as
claiming that Christians tend to be good peace-loving people, and therefore all Christians
have good peace-loving motives. Indeed, any generalization drawn on a small amount of
evidence falls into this category. For instance, the claim that 'Most people who live in the
town I grew up in are conservative Christians, therefore, America is a Christian culture."
Another particular dangerous form of fallacy is black and white thinking or false
alternative, which oversimplifies a choice so as to offer only two of what might be many
choices; 'You're either with us or you're against us.' Really? Are those the only choices?
What if you agree on the ends, but not the means used to get there?
There are many others familiar to anyone listening to public dialogues today. For
instance, there is false analogy (Obama is like Hitler); consecutive relation (the bailout
happened just as Obama took office, so it’s fair to call it Obama’s bailout); irrelevancy
(the American constitution is based on great principles, and therefore the death penalty is
a good law); and false cause (such as the appeal to 'weapons of mass destruction' –
enough said.).
Living in an Age of PR-BS
Meanwhile, while the rest of the country goes on to follow (or, at any rate, tries to
follow) the ‘reasoning’ of behind our public discourse, others have gone on to teach what
too many of us have yet to learn. Indeed, the Taoists might argue that his ‘losing’ that
election turned out to be the best thing for Mr. Gore’s cause, for it freed him to do much
great work (that won a Nobel Peace Prize), and made him the subject a great film (that
won an Academy Award). In this, Gore put a truer power to work to greater ends than
any political office might have allowed.
In his *2007 book, Assault on Reason, Gore illuminates the consequences of our
failure to teach our young the difference in good and bad reasoning. “The science of PR”
has become in our time “the principal language by which communication occurs in the
public forum – for both commercial and political” and – I would argue – educational
purposes.(p.94) In the same way that “the raw power of electronic mass advertising” is
“capable of artificially creating demand for products that consumers had had no idea they
needed or wanted,”(Gore, Assault on Reason, p.95) our educational methods use
effectively similar “techniques of mass persuasion” to “shift America from a needs to
desires culture.”(Assault on Reason, p.94)
As discussed earlier, it was Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, who
would be considered “the father of public relations as he “adapted the [so-called]
revolutionary insights of his uncle to create the modern science of mass persuasion –
based not on reason, but on the manipulation of subconscious feelings and
impulses.”(p.93) Giving rise to forms of advertising that use this associative form of
conditioning, appealing to unconscious needs to sell wants to the American public,
Bernays began a form or social control that has arguably been responsible for the moral
degeneration of human kind.
When Paul Mazur declared that, “People must be trained to desire, to want new
things, even before the old have been entirely consumed,” did he realize the sin against
humanity this would become? When he took on the take of reshaping “Man’s desires [to]
overshadow his needs.,”(in Assault on Reason, p.94) did he understand that this
enterprise would result in the vast suffering it has caused? Did he foresee that
undermining human reason would be the evil that could plant the seed of our destruction?
Probably not. Few recognize how much power a bad idea can ultimately have – until it’s
too late.
So you can see why fallacies are especially effective in a busy world, because we
do not have or take the time to consider them more thoughtfully. And sadly, the resulting
confusion and distraction has become the norm in our time. And what’s more, we are not
well enough aware of such patterns to recognize or see through them when they are being
used at our expense. For this reason, they are an especially effective means of social
control, to override individual thought. Indeed, as indicated earlier, if you’ve ever argued
with a person who depends on fallacies to make their case, then you know that and why
they are simply dumbfounding – and this is how they manage to be so effective. There is
simply no intelligent way to respond to them, which often leaves the receiver, and the
listening audience alike, simply stumped. That an intelligent partner in dialogue
recognizes them for what they are often has no effect on the less than reasonable person
who uses them because he cannot think of a better argument or, for that matter, anything
intelligent to say, and probably does not believe the person or people he is talking to are
intelligent enough to see through them. Indeed, if fallacy and empty rhetoric are allowed
to become the stuff of public discourse, this effect will become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Socrates and Aristotle were the first to bring this force of confusion and deceit to
our attention. And it is an especially important thing to be aware of in a democracy,
where persuasion and even confusion of the many is often used to get and keep power.
The ancient Greeks concurred that democracy had no chance without healthy
dialogue and deliberation at every level. “When the public merely watches and listens
and does not have a speaking part, the entire exercise is fraudulent. It might be called
American Democracy: The Movie. It looks and sounds almost real, but its true purpose is
the presentation of a semblance of participatory democracy in order to produce a
counterfeit version of the consent of the governed.”(Gore, p.77-78)
On the Critical Importance of Dialogue in Democracy
As Brookfield and Preskill argue in their book, ‘Discussion As A Way of
Teaching,’ the practice of dialogue in our schools is essential to the process of
democracy. As they put it:
It “enlivens classrooms…helps students explore diversity and
complexity… sharpens intellectual agility…endorses collaborative
ways of working and the collective generation of knowledge.”(B&P,
p.x)
It reveals “the diversity of opinion that lies just below the surface of
almost any complex issue…[and helps us develop] a fuller
appreciation for the multiplicity of human experiences and
knowledge…[encouraging] even the most reluctant speaker to
participate.”( B&P, p.3)
It “emphasizes the inclusion of the widest variety of perspectives and a
self-critical willingness to change what we believe if convinced by the
arguments of others.”(B&P, p.xv)
It “expands our horizons and exposes us to whole new worlds of
thought and imagining. It improves our thinking, sharpens our
awareness, increases our sensitivity, and heightens our appreciation
for ambiguity and complexity.”(B&P, p.20)
“This exposure increases our understanding and renews our
motivation to continue learning.”(B&P, p.4)
Education based on dialogue promotes healthier democracy, they argue, by
“[moving] the center of power away from the teacher and [displacing] it in continuously
shifting ways among group members…[which] parallels how we think a democratic
system should work in the wider society.”(B&P, p.xv)
“In the process, our democratic instincts are confirmed: by giving the
floor to as many different participants as possible, a collective wisdom
emerges that would have been impossible for any of the participants to
achieve on their own.”(B&P, p.4)
“Discussion and democracy are inseparable because both have the
same root purpose – to nurture and promote human growth.”(B&P,
p.3)