Our convictions are the most rational part of us, but humans are emotional creatures. Very often we are driven by personal likes and dislikes that can’t be explained by anything; we just feel like it. The food that we like, the jokes that amuse us, the music that touches us, it’s all largely a matter of taste originated somewhere in our unreflecting personality.
But we want to think that we are rational too and form our deepest convictions from arguments that are neatly ordered by logic. That is certainly the ideal, although when observing other people, we are often inclined to suspect that their talk is not all that well thought through. Still, some humans are rational, and no doubt you consider yourself to be among them. You can recognize a rational argument when you see it even if you don’t agree with it. Clearly, there is such a thing as reason.
But then there is bias, and our skeptics of today, numerous as they are, love to remind us of it. You can never be neutral they say, even in science, because you always carry your past with you. That’s true enough, but it only poses one more obstacle on the thorny path towards knowledge. A bias is not a destruction, but something that one should look for and weed out if possible.
Prejudices can at least be detected by the outside observer and pointed out as a fault, but there is one element of our convictions that can’t be disclosed, yet it is probably always there, not really as a fault, but still not based on reason. Our personal temperament leads us in a certain direction from the very start, determines the path we want to take and thereby the conclusions we’ll make. This is how taste leads the way of reason; it doesn’t exactly interfere, but it makes even dry logic a personal affair.
Those who don’t care, are not radicals. The indifferent go with the flow and are happy to accept anything. If they are pressed on their political views, they proudly present themselves as moderates or even more flattering, as independents.
That’s how liberal western society can keep going: it’s upheld by the lukewarm support of the masses.
Whoever feels passionate about something can’t be a moderate. Of course liberal democracy has many ardent supporters, but their attention is always directed at shortcomings in the system, the need for reform in accordance with original ideas or the export of these ideas to unfortunate parts of the world. People with great ideological interests can never be content with keeping an open-ended political system just as it is.
With this in mind, we can understand why liberal democracy, which feels so obvious to all unimpassionate moderates of today, was so slow to break through even after the general idea had been conceived. The moderates, that is the great majority, can never lend their firm support to anything and they therefore have to be dragged along as a burden to whatever radical change the enthusiasts want to carry out. But once changes are made and firmly established, they will be the greatest security against any reversal or alteration of the new status quo.
Whatever social institution exists, seems to be a state of nature if you don’t reflect on it. It feels so obvious and indubitable and the less you think about it the more convinced you are. The sky must be blue, and democracy must be right.
Maybe democracy is indeed right, and if you want to be certain about it beyond doubt, you better not think about it.
Beware of thinking, it may make you discontent and radical, and a threat to the natural order.
The liberals have won in the West, totally and completely. I’m not just talking about the liberals of America, the Democrats, although they are included, but also those others, the Republicans, who are liberals, and most of the occupants of the European political landscape. They are all liberals: proponents of a so-called free society.
For us who have been brought up listening to the constant praise of liberalism and democracy, it’s almost hard to believe that anyone cannot be a liberal. Yet, it wasn’t always like that.
In Europe in the year 1848 the liberals were radicals who tried and failed to introduce those ideas that seem so obvious today. The demands for free elections and free speech were crushed and it took decades of gradual change to get them accepted.
We may wonder how the people of the time could fail to recognize what now appears so self-evident. If only we could speak to our ancestors, we would tell them how mistaken they were, for we are their future and have access to the solution of history. Or so it appears…
A different time is a different place and we are all products of our environment. If we had grown from another soil, our outlook would have been another. If you, a liberal of the 21st century, had been reared in the 19th, would you have been liberal? Would you have believed in democracy? What makes you so sure that you are right now and would have been wrong then?
Are you a liberal by nature or by nurture? No one can tell, but it makes an interesting thought experiment: “What would I have been if I were born somewhere else?” Don’t be so sure you’d be the same; you probably wouldn’t.
Who is right? You, the liberal of 2019 or you, the conservative of 1848? Are you sure about the answer?
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” This Nietzschean dictum is as obvious as it is reprehensible. Sure, if you get beaten many times, you will get somewhat used to it and it may not hurt as much as it used to. It may enable you to endure suffering of different sorts, and trivialities are made negligible. But so what?
A life full of tragedies remains tragic. Strength is useful for carrying heavy burdens, and burdens builds strength for more burdens. Hardship is useful for more hardship and opens an endless circle of increasing misery. Learning to suffer to tolerate more suffering isn’t a very promising prospect.
Whatever the masochistically inclined martyrs want to tell you, suffering can never be a goal. It may certainly be worthwhile to go through hardship to reach something good, but that final good must at least contain more happiness than pain.
Why would you want to get stronger if nothing good comes from your strength?
But, says the tragic poet, behold all the wonderful art that is born out of human suffering. Contemplate the great beauty that has grown from misery. What would Shakespeare have done if he hadn’t seen the anguish of his day? What kind of music would a happy Beethoven make?
Right, look at those wonders. What is Hamlet and the Fifth Symphony for us? Is it not a pleasure to witness their performance? Is it not a happiness? Beethoven didn’t suffer in vain.
The strength to create great art may come to a few if it doesn’t kill them. The strength of fresh insight may come to you if you survive. But strength for its own sake is weakness; it carries nothing valuable.
What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, unless it gives you strength for happiness. That sometimes happens, but only sometimes.
If there is no evil (as I tentatively argued in my last post), Nazi Germany wasn’t evil either. Could that be true? That regime may have been the most horrible one in the horrible history of mankind, but it wasn’t evil if evil doesn’t exist. Is that conceivable?
Well, millions of Germans were loyal to that government, and so many people can hardly be possessed by evil all at once, but what about that one person? What about Hitler?
For all his cruelty, at least he did what he thought was good for Germany, and as for the world, he thought it would be a better place without Jews. His understanding of what would be good was clearly wildly distorted, but still he wanted what he thought was good and such a wish cannot be evil.
He had a dreadful lack of knowledge and understanding. Most of us know (at least we think we do) that the Jews are good for the world and we understand that the fate of Germany isn’t more important than the rest of the world put together. Don’t we?
Germany is probably not that important to you if you are not German, but the battle cry “My Country First” (or however it goes) may not sound completely unfamiliar. Is that evil?
I choose not to think so. Germany First, America First, Me First are symptoms of sorry ignorance. Anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia are distorted attitudes held by people who think they themselves are good and the others are a threat. They generally want what is good but have a twisted understanding of what it is. That is not evil – it is lack of knowledge.
Everyone wants something they think is good, but some only see a very narrow good – a minuscule version of goodness. It is not evil – it is lack of good.
A Bear - Poles Apart 