A recap
Maybe it would be a good idea to recap where we have been in these blogs.
We started out by asking the question “Why should we do Good?” We argued that doing Good was a response to our caring for “the other.”
But that raised the question of where “caring” comes from. Is it just a biological phenomenon? Or is it merely something we teach each other? I argued that it is partly those things, but it is not completely those two things – that there is something more going on, something beyond just nature and nurture.
Maybe there is a Rulebook that sets out the bounds and responsibilities of caring? Wouldn’t that make things easier! But, no such luck. As much as we would wish to have a perfect path to follow, perfectibility is a myth.
Yet, so many people in the world have decided that they have found The Way, The Law, The Book, The Path. This is the genesis of fundamentalism, which I argued is on the rise in reaction to uncertainty. No wonder fundamentalists are willing to violate the rights of others, maybe even kill “the other,” because they are, after all, on the path to Perfection. How dangerous is that!
And we can see the allure of perfectibility. I called this “giving in.” After all, if there is no perfect path, then life is inevitably uncertain. We may have a sense of what is “the Good,” but we can never be sure.
On the other hand, if life were perfectible, then we would have the moral obligation to perfect. We would become slaves to perfectibility. It is only by accepting our limitations that we start being able to choose what gives meaning to our lives. If perfection doesn’t dictate meaning to us, then we are free to choose. “It is only in our limits that we find our power.”
So, by answering No to the first question on “The Path With Two Questions,” we arrive at “The Box.” We can’t know for sure, because certitude leads us back to fundamentalism. We have to put up with the uncertainty, and yet still try to orient ourselves, our lives, to what we believe is the Good.
OK, that is where we have been. Now we come to an alternative to living INSIDE the Box. Maybe we should just “give up.”
Giving Up
Many people who shun humanism and fundamentalism, and find their way to the Box, and are confronted with the second question “Does life have meaning?” simply answer “No.” This is Nihilism.
We have no purpose, no calling. Life is a cosmic joke, with death as its punch line. If you studied existentialism in college, the people you read were probably in this position: Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche. With no perfect guidance to lead one’s life, we struggle with the assault on meaning and either fight, whither or accommodate. (Professor Nicolas de Warren at Wellesley College offered a course on existentialism with “special emphasis” on “boredom, death, bad faith, anxiety, suffering, freedom. . . .”)
In Sartre’s case, we turn to ourselves as the measure of worth, and strive to be the best “us” we can be.
In Nietzche’s view, we can’t stand to accept the void, the meaninglessness, so we exert our Power. We “will the void, rather than void our will.”
Or we can turn to hedonism. A “good” life is measured by the pleasure we generate for ourselves. He who has the most toys when he dies, wins. These are all Nihilism.
Nihilism has always been an option. Even in Traditional times, there were doubters who didn’t believe the elders’ myths nor the power they were supposed to hold. At each stage in the development of modernity, there have been skeptics. For those who walk this way, and find themselves satisfied by nihilism, life is just something you do between birth and death, waiting, waiting for something you are fairly certain is never going to come. The goal, if there is anything worth calling a goal, must be to pass the time as pleasantly as possible.
If the point of this discussion were to see where, if anywhere, we could find justification for trying to pursue a meaningful, a Good life, then Nihilism is one of the dead ends in that quest. There is nothing that makes any action Good, or one action Better than another. Life’s a bitch, and then you die.
If a retreat to perfectibility in the face of this existential moment is “giving in,” then lets call the acceptance of Nihilism “giving up.” And the popularity of this approach seems to be growing.
Of course, I wouldn’t have spent my entire adulthood trying to teach thousands of students the intellectual foundations that support their desire to do Good in the world if I were a Nihilist.
There are times. . . .
But there are times. . . . Times of doubt, of uncertainty, of recrimination. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is no basis for my moral stances and the political positions I have taken in response to them. Maybe I have been wasting my time and the time of those thousands of students. Maybe life is just a joke, merely a biological happenstance. My sense of the Good is, like the rest of my consciousness, just a story that my physical brain tells me to keep my occupied while it runs my life. The sacrifices that my students make and have made would be for naught.
Yes, there are times that I have thought about “giving up.” But I keep turning back to the Box, and the call of faith. That’s where we are heading next.
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Thinking INSIDE the Box
Giving In
Let me take you back to Figure X. In the last posting, I argued that we should give up the notion that our lives are perfectible, that the hope of perfection as a source of meaning in our lives is an illusion. We have to look elsewhere for how we might lead a Good life.
That leads us to continue down the Path with Two Questions. If life is not perfectible, does it have meaning? We get to this the node that represents this second question, and we might be tempted to answer a simple, untroubled “Yes, I know what that meaning is.” End of problem!
Here we run into a problem with the heuristic device in Figure X. I am arguing that we should reject the certitude of perfectibility and confront directly the question of meaning in spite of that lack of perfectibility. But if life has a meaning, and we can be certain of what it is, haven’t we managed to find the certainty that seemed to be have been taken away when we rejected perfectibility? If we approach this second question in Figure X, and answer it with an affirmation of certitude, there is a bit of a discontinuity, because we are really back on the Path to perfection. If we know the Way, the Path, the Truth, then we are actually affirming our own fundamentalism and are on the path delineated by answering “Yes” to the question of perfectibility.
An example: Assume I decide to reject the certitude offered by a belief in the perfectibility of modern science. If the scientific search for Truth is not the meaning to life, then what is? I am at that existential moment, where I have to try to accept my finitude and yet find meaning. This is a struggle, and I miss the comfort of the certitude of humanism. It was easier being perfectible! So, now what do I use to guide my choices? Well, along comes someone who tells me that they have found the Way. They offer me a new Rulebook, and all I have to do is believe in it faithfully and without question. Even though I might at first look like I am on Figure X’s path to faith, I am in fact down on that path to perfectibility, only this time the perfectibility is not material, but transcendent. I have “given in” to the temptation of perfection.
This is true whether the offered Rulebook is an orthodoxy of Religion, or the humanism of “the New Atheism.” By asking me to reject the uncertainty and to believe in the Rules, this person is offering me the comfort of fundamentalism. And I can see the great appeal of that comfort!
This is the extraordinary appeal of fundamentalism. It provides answers; it gives me certainty. I need only follow the Way, the Rules, and my decisions get made for me.
The Box
So, this “existential moment” mentioned in an earlier posting, where I disavow perfectibility, but have to struggle with meaning, is not a path, but a place, a “Box” we find ourselves in once we accept uncertainty. (Figure X.) We can not be sure that our lives have meaning, because that would provide the certitude that is not ours to have. We can only live our lives in the Box and, day by day, moment by moment, try to orient our lives to a sense of meaning. We implement that orientation through the choices we make.
We are uncertain. But we are free.
Let me take you back to Figure X. In the last posting, I argued that we should give up the notion that our lives are perfectible, that the hope of perfection as a source of meaning in our lives is an illusion. We have to look elsewhere for how we might lead a Good life.
That leads us to continue down the Path with Two Questions. If life is not perfectible, does it have meaning? We get to this the node that represents this second question, and we might be tempted to answer a simple, untroubled “Yes, I know what that meaning is.” End of problem!
Here we run into a problem with the heuristic device in Figure X. I am arguing that we should reject the certitude of perfectibility and confront directly the question of meaning in spite of that lack of perfectibility. But if life has a meaning, and we can be certain of what it is, haven’t we managed to find the certainty that seemed to be have been taken away when we rejected perfectibility? If we approach this second question in Figure X, and answer it with an affirmation of certitude, there is a bit of a discontinuity, because we are really back on the Path to perfection. If we know the Way, the Path, the Truth, then we are actually affirming our own fundamentalism and are on the path delineated by answering “Yes” to the question of perfectibility.
An example: Assume I decide to reject the certitude offered by a belief in the perfectibility of modern science. If the scientific search for Truth is not the meaning to life, then what is? I am at that existential moment, where I have to try to accept my finitude and yet find meaning. This is a struggle, and I miss the comfort of the certitude of humanism. It was easier being perfectible! So, now what do I use to guide my choices? Well, along comes someone who tells me that they have found the Way. They offer me a new Rulebook, and all I have to do is believe in it faithfully and without question. Even though I might at first look like I am on Figure X’s path to faith, I am in fact down on that path to perfectibility, only this time the perfectibility is not material, but transcendent. I have “given in” to the temptation of perfection.
This is true whether the offered Rulebook is an orthodoxy of Religion, or the humanism of “the New Atheism.” By asking me to reject the uncertainty and to believe in the Rules, this person is offering me the comfort of fundamentalism. And I can see the great appeal of that comfort!
This is the extraordinary appeal of fundamentalism. It provides answers; it gives me certainty. I need only follow the Way, the Rules, and my decisions get made for me.
The Box
So, this “existential moment” mentioned in an earlier posting, where I disavow perfectibility, but have to struggle with meaning, is not a path, but a place, a “Box” we find ourselves in once we accept uncertainty. (Figure X.) We can not be sure that our lives have meaning, because that would provide the certitude that is not ours to have. We can only live our lives in the Box and, day by day, moment by moment, try to orient our lives to a sense of meaning. We implement that orientation through the choices we make.
We are uncertain. But we are free.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
“Only in Our Limits Do We Find Our Freedom”
A Slave to Perfection
Letting go of the Rulebook is disquieting, but it also is the source of human free will. Here’s how that works: If we are perfectible, then the only moral path is towards perfection. What is the moral thing to do if we are perfectible? The only moral rightness is to pursue perfection. To do anything less is to be immoral, to be sinful. This is why fundamentalists can so easily condemn those who don’t believe in their Book; they are obviously sinners. It is also why so many fundamentalists seem comfortable with killing those who stand against the Path. They are keeping us all from perfection!
The price of certitude is slavery to the path. If you are perfect, you must perfect. Nothing else is allowed. If we are perfectible, we are all slaves to that belief.
If we let go of the notion of perfectibility, what are we left with? We are no longer bound to perfection. Oddly, this acceptance of our imperfectibility turns out to be a source of power. Only by accepting our finitude, our inability to lead a perfect life, are we free to judge how to lead a Good life. When we reject perfectibility, we reject the slavery that goes with it. We become free to decide what is Good.
An example. If you are like me, you spend your day on a dozen different chores and projects. On any given day, the number of things that I have to accomplish is much greater than the time I have to accomplish them. But so, too, with my entire life. In any given life, we are called upon to accomplish more Good than any of us, even Mother Theresa, the Pope and the Dalai Lama, are capable of accomplishing. There is always more Good to be done than the resources available to doing Good.
If I were a perfectionist, then how would I judge each day or my entire life, as I fell further and further behind on the Good work I am called upon to produce? I would have to judge myself as a failure, since I never managed to achieve the promise of perfectibility.
“Only in Our Limits Do We Find Our Freedom”
If you let go of perfectibility, you are able to reclaim your moral worth. That you did not accomplish everything you were called upon to accomplish is predictable. This is an inevitable part of the human condition. If I can’t do all that I have on my “things to do list,” then I can decide which “things” are most pressing, which things I “ought” to do. When I can not accomplish everything, I have the choice as to what ends I will pursue.
But there is more. As a perfectionist, each day is a marker of my increasing sinfulness. (I wonder if this daily growing awareness of one’s failings, one’s sinfulness, makes it easier for a fundamentalist to commit violent suicide in order to achieve the Perfect End. At least it ends the failure.)
But if I am inevitably finite, then each day provides me a new opportunity to choose that which I consider worthy of spending my day to accomplish. Each day is a challenge, but it is also a fresh chance to live my moral values, to enact my priorities.
If we are able to let go, even for a moment, of our need for certitude, we will actually find strength in this new place. I usually try to capture this in a seemingly ironic statement: “Only in our limits do we find our freedom.” Only when we accept our imperfectibility do we find a place in our lives for making choices. No longer a slave to perfection, we are free to choose.
This is the existential moment. This is the moment when we realize that we are inevitably limited, that our aspirations, our very lives, are finite. And we accept the pressure that this puts on “meaning.” Because, at this existential moment, we must inevitably, ask, “If my life isn’t perfectible, can it still have meaning? If I can’t lead a perfect life, can I still lead a Good life? And if so, how do I know this?” If life isn’t perfectible, then we are going to have to look elsewhere for meaning, and we are going to have to accept our freedom in doing so.
The inevitability of uncertainty
The Inevitability of Uncertainty
One of the main reasons to “give in” to the lure of perfectibility is the desire for certitude. This need for certainty is ancient. In Traditional societies, as the clan was huddled together around the hearth, the darkness just beyond the light thrown by our fires was filled with scary things, wild noises, unexplained deaths, and worst of all, the mysterious, the unknowable. We made up stories or myths to make ourselves feel more at ease with the presence of this darkness.
If myths are the stories we tell ourselves to explain our experiences at the boundary of the known and the unknowable, at the boundary of the hearth and the wilderness, then we made up myths that placed us, that explained us, that gave our lives meaning. We told these stories to our children and to their children. Our children’s children retold the stories. At some point, we wrote those stories down, and they became our Book. These stories capture our best understanding, in a world of obvious uncertainty, what it means to lead a Good life.
Modernity challenged those stories. Modernity is the belief in the ability of reason and science to address our needs. Modernists are the heirs to medieval Arab scientists, to Galileo, Descartes and Newton, the followers of the Enlightenment, the scientists, technologists and builders of the Century of Progress. Modernity said that reason and technology were all we needed to explain, to survive, to prosper. Myths became quaint. We taught our children about the physical world. We invented the social sciences, and we offered each other a path into permanent light, where there would be no darkness, no mystery, only science and understanding and rationally supportable conclusions. People bought lots of books by Dawkins and Harris, who challenged and attempted to vanquish once and for all the “dangerous” myths of Traditionalism.
Post-Modernity
But the promise of modernity has, I believe, petered out. Our complex social, economic, and geopolitical problems resisted easy technological fixes. The darkness of prejudice, of power-madness, of greed, of tribalism were unavoidable. We could fight them, and we did. But they never went away completely, and their rebirth in every generation underscored the magnitude of the over-promise that was modernity. Science and reason were very important, but ultimately not enough.
We fought a World War that started in the tribalism of the Balkan Peninsula. It was to be the last war. Our understanding of the science of economics was not sufficient to prevent a world wide depression of stunning proportions. And Modernity didn’t reckon with fascism and imperialism, Soviet expansionism, or fanatical jihadism. We viewed pictures of the emaciated, skeleton-like survivors of a monumental horror that will never be explainable. We hired “the best and the brightest” from industry to apply their technology to the waging of a war in post-colonial Indochina, only to spend millions of lives proving modernity’s inefficacy, and at the cost of our government’s credibility.
The ultimate accomplishment of modernity, standing on another planet, was a heroic achievement, but left us no better off in confronting poverty and prejudice in the country to which the astronauts returned. At the dawn of the 21st Century, tribal extremists employed one of the most expensive products our technology produces to lay low twin symbols of our modern world.
Uncertainty is inevitable
The lesson of the 20th Century, say the post-modernists, is that uncertainty is inevitable, that the ultimate Truths of our existence can not be known with certitude. For the Traditionalist, all Truths were revealed, first by the Elders, and then by their Book. For the Modernists, all Truths were the inevitable product of science. Post-modernists say that all Truths are achieved neither by revelation nor by rational deduction.
We are never going to explain everything. We are simply going to have to live in a world where some things are explainable and fixable, and some things are mysterious and intractable, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to make perfect sense of which problem is which. The uncertainty that is the ground of post-modernity is disquieting for many and completely unacceptable for too many. We are so much more powerful than our ancestors huddled about the hearth, but for us, too, the darkness that cloaks the wild, the mysterious, is a source of fear.
Many who hear this discussion have a similar reaction to those who read Ehrenfeld’s critique of perfectibility as a denial of progress. If we can’t know for certain all Truths, they say, then we can’t know that anything is true. Everything, including moral precepts, must be relative. No, says Stanley Fish. Even though there is no bedrock, no “privileged” position from which all wisdom certainly flows, there is still wisdom, there are still moral values. It’s just that, from now on, our moral truths will come with bounds of uncertainty that reason and logic can’t reduce to zero. This is not all bad since, as we will see, the line between moral understanding and moral certitude is the same as the line between righteousness and self-righteousness.
Modernity overthrew Tradition with the promises of completeness, safety, certitude. But it didn’t fulfill its promise. Facing Post-Modernity requires acceptance of the inevitability of uncertainty, that there are no rules, that there is no Rulebook.
One of the main reasons to “give in” to the lure of perfectibility is the desire for certitude. This need for certainty is ancient. In Traditional societies, as the clan was huddled together around the hearth, the darkness just beyond the light thrown by our fires was filled with scary things, wild noises, unexplained deaths, and worst of all, the mysterious, the unknowable. We made up stories or myths to make ourselves feel more at ease with the presence of this darkness.
If myths are the stories we tell ourselves to explain our experiences at the boundary of the known and the unknowable, at the boundary of the hearth and the wilderness, then we made up myths that placed us, that explained us, that gave our lives meaning. We told these stories to our children and to their children. Our children’s children retold the stories. At some point, we wrote those stories down, and they became our Book. These stories capture our best understanding, in a world of obvious uncertainty, what it means to lead a Good life.
Modernity challenged those stories. Modernity is the belief in the ability of reason and science to address our needs. Modernists are the heirs to medieval Arab scientists, to Galileo, Descartes and Newton, the followers of the Enlightenment, the scientists, technologists and builders of the Century of Progress. Modernity said that reason and technology were all we needed to explain, to survive, to prosper. Myths became quaint. We taught our children about the physical world. We invented the social sciences, and we offered each other a path into permanent light, where there would be no darkness, no mystery, only science and understanding and rationally supportable conclusions. People bought lots of books by Dawkins and Harris, who challenged and attempted to vanquish once and for all the “dangerous” myths of Traditionalism.
Post-Modernity
But the promise of modernity has, I believe, petered out. Our complex social, economic, and geopolitical problems resisted easy technological fixes. The darkness of prejudice, of power-madness, of greed, of tribalism were unavoidable. We could fight them, and we did. But they never went away completely, and their rebirth in every generation underscored the magnitude of the over-promise that was modernity. Science and reason were very important, but ultimately not enough.
We fought a World War that started in the tribalism of the Balkan Peninsula. It was to be the last war. Our understanding of the science of economics was not sufficient to prevent a world wide depression of stunning proportions. And Modernity didn’t reckon with fascism and imperialism, Soviet expansionism, or fanatical jihadism. We viewed pictures of the emaciated, skeleton-like survivors of a monumental horror that will never be explainable. We hired “the best and the brightest” from industry to apply their technology to the waging of a war in post-colonial Indochina, only to spend millions of lives proving modernity’s inefficacy, and at the cost of our government’s credibility.
The ultimate accomplishment of modernity, standing on another planet, was a heroic achievement, but left us no better off in confronting poverty and prejudice in the country to which the astronauts returned. At the dawn of the 21st Century, tribal extremists employed one of the most expensive products our technology produces to lay low twin symbols of our modern world.
Uncertainty is inevitable
The lesson of the 20th Century, say the post-modernists, is that uncertainty is inevitable, that the ultimate Truths of our existence can not be known with certitude. For the Traditionalist, all Truths were revealed, first by the Elders, and then by their Book. For the Modernists, all Truths were the inevitable product of science. Post-modernists say that all Truths are achieved neither by revelation nor by rational deduction.
We are never going to explain everything. We are simply going to have to live in a world where some things are explainable and fixable, and some things are mysterious and intractable, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to make perfect sense of which problem is which. The uncertainty that is the ground of post-modernity is disquieting for many and completely unacceptable for too many. We are so much more powerful than our ancestors huddled about the hearth, but for us, too, the darkness that cloaks the wild, the mysterious, is a source of fear.
Many who hear this discussion have a similar reaction to those who read Ehrenfeld’s critique of perfectibility as a denial of progress. If we can’t know for certain all Truths, they say, then we can’t know that anything is true. Everything, including moral precepts, must be relative. No, says Stanley Fish. Even though there is no bedrock, no “privileged” position from which all wisdom certainly flows, there is still wisdom, there are still moral values. It’s just that, from now on, our moral truths will come with bounds of uncertainty that reason and logic can’t reduce to zero. This is not all bad since, as we will see, the line between moral understanding and moral certitude is the same as the line between righteousness and self-righteousness.
Modernity overthrew Tradition with the promises of completeness, safety, certitude. But it didn’t fulfill its promise. Facing Post-Modernity requires acceptance of the inevitability of uncertainty, that there are no rules, that there is no Rulebook.
Thursday, March 5, 2015
“Giving in” to perfectibility and the path to fundamentalism
In an earlier blog, I argued that there was no Rule Book, no certain way to know what was Right and what was Wrong. Would it were that life was perfectible – things would be so much easier!
Sad to say that there are many, many people today, and all around the world, who have succumbed to the attraction of this direction on The Path with Two Questions. They answer the question “Is life perfectible?” with an often bellicose bellow of “Yes! And we know the Way! Follow us to Perfection!”
I believe this desire to live in a perfectible world, to avoid the fear of uncertainty is behind the rise in fundamentalism, of all types, that we seem to be suffering.
The Path to Fundamentalism
There is a darkness that comes with this belief in perfectibility. The number of people who want life to be perfectible, who are heavily invested in their own notion of what that the perfect path looks like, is huge and, I fear, growing rapidly. Figure X shows one path for those who answer “yes” to this first question.
Down this path lies all fundamentalism or orthodoxies. We know, say the fundamentalists, the Way, the Path, the Book, the Law. (The sense of that last sentence will be enhanced if it is read with the article “the” pronounced with a long letter e.) Is life perfectible? Of course, they say, and the path to perfection looks exactly like this. . . . Follow these rules, stay on the path, be orthodox in mind and behavior, and you will be part of a perfectible project.
By Ehrenfeld’s definition, all fundamentalists are a kind of Humanist. They believe they know the path to perfection. Not all fundamentalists are religious fanatics. Some fundamentalists are religious and some are secular. That person you work with, who seems to believe that there is a complete set of organizational rules which, if discovered and rigidly followed, would make everyone’s work perfect, is a fundamentalist without regard to his or her religion. The philanthropist who is convinced that more and better testing of school children will make cure the ills of public education, the neo-liberal who believes that heaven on earth is achievable through an unfettered marketplace. If you are certain you know the Way, you’re probably a fundamentalist.
Religious fundamentalists are a type of Humanist (a nod to the ambiguity of that word) who believe that the Path has been revealed, usually through prophesy or the provision of sacred texts. Religious fundamentalists believe they have been shown the Way, and that straying from this Path is sinful. But close adherence to “The Rules” in “The Book” will lead to perfection, often the promise of a messianic age.
Note, however, that in this scenario, it is obvious to even the most casual observer that a lot of people die before the perfection promised by the project appears. I know, says this observer, that we are all headed for a perfect moment sometime in the future, but I was sort of hoping to be one of the people who reached it, not just one of the billions who made progress along the way, but who died before the moment was reached. It is not easy to keep people on the Path when it is clear that all of us keep dying before we reach our perfect place. The promise of a perfect after-life helps to assure compliance with the Rules. “Do what is stated as Righteous in the Book, the Path, the Way, the Law,” say their leaders, “and all will be well with you and with all of us, when we reach our Reward after death. We will all be in a perfect place, for eternity.”
I am not perfectible; none of us are
I find humanism impossible to accept. As much as I would like a perfect Rulebook, there is, I believe, simply no such thing as human perfectibility. Every lesson I have drawn from my experiences indicates that all things human are inevitably subject to error. I reject fundamentalism because no Rulebook that has ever been offered to me felt compelling, in light of my sense of rationality and in comparison with my own experiences. Therefore I believe there is no such thing as a perfect way of answering the question, “Are my actions morally superior to your actions?”
You hear lots of people say that humans are not capable of perfect systems. “To err is human.” But too often, the speaker doesn’t pause to think about the ramifications of that simple notion.
The implications of rejecting humanism and fundamentalism are profound. If there is no perfect road map for leading the Good life, then how do we judge how to lead the life we have? Does life, in fact, have meaning? If we answer No to the first question on Figure X, then the second question is inevitable. A belief in perfectibility would give my life meaning. Under that standard, what does it mean to lead a Good life? It means to follow the Path of perfectibility. But, if life is not perfectible, then does my life have meaning? In other words, if you convince me that the seeming purpose of my life, which was to achieve the “perfect place,” is illusory, then what gives my life meaning? The question of meaning is answered by the perfection project, but if that isn’t going to happen, then I am stuck with the question of meaning again. If I can’t lead a perfect life, is it still possible to lead a Good life?
As we think about letting go of our hope for perfection, and as we look out into a hazy terrain down our path, the uncertainty is frightening. That fear draws us back to humanism and its fundamentalist cousins. The more we fear the uncertainty, the more strongly we grab hold of our hope for perfection. We “give in” to the temptation of the perfect path. If all I get from rejecting perfectibility is dark uncertainty, well, thanks, but no thanks. I’ll stick with my Way. We want so strongly the certitude promised by the illusion that we will fiercely defend, die for, and, unfortunately, kill for the triumph of the Way.
Sad to say that there are many, many people today, and all around the world, who have succumbed to the attraction of this direction on The Path with Two Questions. They answer the question “Is life perfectible?” with an often bellicose bellow of “Yes! And we know the Way! Follow us to Perfection!”
I believe this desire to live in a perfectible world, to avoid the fear of uncertainty is behind the rise in fundamentalism, of all types, that we seem to be suffering.
The Path to Fundamentalism
There is a darkness that comes with this belief in perfectibility. The number of people who want life to be perfectible, who are heavily invested in their own notion of what that the perfect path looks like, is huge and, I fear, growing rapidly. Figure X shows one path for those who answer “yes” to this first question.
Down this path lies all fundamentalism or orthodoxies. We know, say the fundamentalists, the Way, the Path, the Book, the Law. (The sense of that last sentence will be enhanced if it is read with the article “the” pronounced with a long letter e.) Is life perfectible? Of course, they say, and the path to perfection looks exactly like this. . . . Follow these rules, stay on the path, be orthodox in mind and behavior, and you will be part of a perfectible project.
By Ehrenfeld’s definition, all fundamentalists are a kind of Humanist. They believe they know the path to perfection. Not all fundamentalists are religious fanatics. Some fundamentalists are religious and some are secular. That person you work with, who seems to believe that there is a complete set of organizational rules which, if discovered and rigidly followed, would make everyone’s work perfect, is a fundamentalist without regard to his or her religion. The philanthropist who is convinced that more and better testing of school children will make cure the ills of public education, the neo-liberal who believes that heaven on earth is achievable through an unfettered marketplace. If you are certain you know the Way, you’re probably a fundamentalist.
Religious fundamentalists are a type of Humanist (a nod to the ambiguity of that word) who believe that the Path has been revealed, usually through prophesy or the provision of sacred texts. Religious fundamentalists believe they have been shown the Way, and that straying from this Path is sinful. But close adherence to “The Rules” in “The Book” will lead to perfection, often the promise of a messianic age.
Note, however, that in this scenario, it is obvious to even the most casual observer that a lot of people die before the perfection promised by the project appears. I know, says this observer, that we are all headed for a perfect moment sometime in the future, but I was sort of hoping to be one of the people who reached it, not just one of the billions who made progress along the way, but who died before the moment was reached. It is not easy to keep people on the Path when it is clear that all of us keep dying before we reach our perfect place. The promise of a perfect after-life helps to assure compliance with the Rules. “Do what is stated as Righteous in the Book, the Path, the Way, the Law,” say their leaders, “and all will be well with you and with all of us, when we reach our Reward after death. We will all be in a perfect place, for eternity.”
I am not perfectible; none of us are
I find humanism impossible to accept. As much as I would like a perfect Rulebook, there is, I believe, simply no such thing as human perfectibility. Every lesson I have drawn from my experiences indicates that all things human are inevitably subject to error. I reject fundamentalism because no Rulebook that has ever been offered to me felt compelling, in light of my sense of rationality and in comparison with my own experiences. Therefore I believe there is no such thing as a perfect way of answering the question, “Are my actions morally superior to your actions?”
You hear lots of people say that humans are not capable of perfect systems. “To err is human.” But too often, the speaker doesn’t pause to think about the ramifications of that simple notion.
The implications of rejecting humanism and fundamentalism are profound. If there is no perfect road map for leading the Good life, then how do we judge how to lead the life we have? Does life, in fact, have meaning? If we answer No to the first question on Figure X, then the second question is inevitable. A belief in perfectibility would give my life meaning. Under that standard, what does it mean to lead a Good life? It means to follow the Path of perfectibility. But, if life is not perfectible, then does my life have meaning? In other words, if you convince me that the seeming purpose of my life, which was to achieve the “perfect place,” is illusory, then what gives my life meaning? The question of meaning is answered by the perfection project, but if that isn’t going to happen, then I am stuck with the question of meaning again. If I can’t lead a perfect life, is it still possible to lead a Good life?
As we think about letting go of our hope for perfection, and as we look out into a hazy terrain down our path, the uncertainty is frightening. That fear draws us back to humanism and its fundamentalist cousins. The more we fear the uncertainty, the more strongly we grab hold of our hope for perfection. We “give in” to the temptation of the perfect path. If all I get from rejecting perfectibility is dark uncertainty, well, thanks, but no thanks. I’ll stick with my Way. We want so strongly the certitude promised by the illusion that we will fiercely defend, die for, and, unfortunately, kill for the triumph of the Way.
Monday, March 2, 2015
A certain amount of science skepticism is always called for
Let me start this by saying that I am 100% in favor of vaccinations for all kids. I am also completely convinced that climate change is happening and is the biggest public health problem we will face in the next 50 years. And I take evolution as far and away the best explanation for differentiation and change in species.
I say these things first because I am about to argue that a certain amount of skepticism about the opinions of scientists and technologists is a very good thing, and that public policy based, in part, upon science but also based upon what is good for corporate interests should always be viewed with a healthy bit of cynicism. And that we, who want to use science to educate our policy making, should always apply a dose of humility to the conclusions about tomorrow that can be drawn from what we know today.
Having said that, let me now state some sympathy for the parents who fear that current vaccinations and current vaccination schedules might be dangerous to their kids. They are told, repeatedly, that the scientific consensus is that there is no proved relationship, and yet they are skeptical. And, while I disagree with the conclusions they have drawn, a certain amount of skepticism is completely warranted.
Skepticism in the past
Let me tell you about Gwen Molinar. She was a middle-aged woman living in the small town of Wilsonville, Illinois, in the 1970's. When a company decided to buy an abandoned coal mine in the community and turn it into a hazardous waste landfill, this made no sense to Gwen and her neighbors. Abandoned coal mines are notoriously “leaky.” How could liquid hazardous wastes be safely put into one? Besides, she saw, day in and day out, the lackadaisical behavior of the people employed at the site.
The scientists and technologists at the company, and at the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and at the US Environmental Protection Agency all told the people of Wilsonville not to worry, that this was going to be a “state of the art” landfill, with the best technology available. “There was nothing to worry about,” she was told by the scientists and technologists. “We have completely studied this. We know best.”
Gwen and her friends fought the landfill, in the legislature and in permitting processes and in the press. But she was repeatedly told “don’t worry, we know best.” The landfill went in. And, sure enough, two months later it was leaking! Ultimately, a judge ordered the wastes to be removed, and down the road, the citizens of Wilsonville got a settlement from the corporate interests who wanted the landfill sited. To my knowledge, the never got an apology from the scientists and technologists who were so wrong.
In the early days of my career as a professional environmental advocate, I saw this dynamic happen repeatedly. Scientists for the tobacco companies and the asbestos companies told us that there was no evidence that their products caused cancer. Joanna Hoelscher, the environmental chair of the Illinois League of Women Voters, was scoffed at by the scientists when, in 1975, she testified at a Pollution Control Board hearing about the dangers of something called “acid rain.” Many years later, the US and other countries invested hundreds of millions of dollars in controlling this problem.
In 1976, there was a coordinated effort by scientists and technologists (mostly paid by chemical companies) to ridicule the notion that the earth’s ozone layer might be threatened by spray cans. Decades later, after the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer, those materials are now gone from the cans and from our air conditioners.
In 1978, environmentalists were accused of being doomsday predictors when we talked about “the greenhouse effect,” a name changed much later to “global climate change,” an issue where the science skeptics have changed sides.
Also in 1978, environmentalists cautioned US EPA from loosening its health protection standard for “photochemical oxidants” (smog), that the standard in place had a minuscule margin of safety. (I still have a copy somewhere of the testimony I gave at the hearings.) But the scientists and the technologists said that this was unsupported by the science at hand, and EPA raised the limits. Then, 20 years later, they lowered the limits below what it was in 1978, and today, the best available science is that it is still too high.
In the same year, when public health advocates warned about “second hand smoke,” we were told that we were over-reacting, that there was no good evidence linking side-stream smoke to health problems in non-smokers. Only two years later, US EPA issued the first of many reports on the extraordinary health impacts of second hand smoke. And the cultural attitudes towards smoking in the US have changed completely in the intervening decades.
When I was just starting as a professor, it was common knowledge that stomach ulcers were caused by too much acid in the gut, and that this was directly related to too much stress. When, in 1982, Marshall and Warren proposed that ulcers were, in fact, caused by a bacterium, they were condemned as quacks by “serious” doctors and scientists. They shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine for this discovery 23 years later.
In 1984, some people were worried about the possible serious side effects of the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine. The scientists and most of the doctors said that this was a terrible over-reaction, and that vaccination rates had to be maintained in order to control this disease. Many years later, the same scientists were now promoting a “safer” DTP shot, quietly ignoring the inconsistency with their earlier position.
The pediatric profession, a group I have the utmost respect and admiration for, are frustrated by today’s “anti-vaxxers.” Don’t they understand that there are no scientific studies supporting a link between vaccines and autism? In all of the studies, no link has been found. Public health advocates and the media call the parents “irresponsible,” “ignoramuses,” “flat-earthers,” “selfish,” “loony,” “crazy,” etc.
But that same profession, back in the 1950's, offered the scientifically supported conclusion that autism was caused by “refrigerator moms,” the notion that some mothers, at a critical moment in their child’s development, turned their attention and affections away, causing the child to turn inward. My god, if it weren’t enough for the mother to cope with the difficulties of having an autistic child, to have the scientists blame her for the disease!
Humility is called for
How awkward, for pediatricians with some memory of their past mistakes, to be so horribly demeaning to the parents of autistic children today. Even worse, if they have no memory of this past. Some humility is clearly called for.
The best scientific studies that exist today have failed to find any relationship between vaccines and autism, and this has been the result of many studies. That is, I believe, a true statement. But it is usually presented in a slightly different syntax: “Science shows that there is no relationship between vaccines and autism.” That is not a true statement. Failing to find the relationship casts doubt on the existence of the relationship, but it is not conclusive evidence that the relationship does not exist. This is a common fallacy, where failure to find a positive association is offered as success in finding a negative relationship.
Or another statement that is dubious. “We have to rely upon science, which means scientific experiments. We can’t base policy on anecdote.”
As if anecdote were never a part of science. On the contrary, lived experience is the beginning of all science. Before the prospective epidemiological studies and the randomized clinical trials are done, someone has to have noticed something in their lived experience that allows them to get the grants to do the studies.
It is also true that, too often, people worry about things based upon another common fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc. “After this, therefore because of this.” If A follows B, then B caused A.” If my child develops autism after getting vaccinated, then the vaccination caused the autism.
We ought not ignore the many controlled studies that we have, repeatedly failing to find any association between vaccines and autism. But we ought not deride those whose lived experience suggests otherwise, particularly given the long history of careful science and technology lagging behind the anecdote. Calling the parents “crazy” and “loony” and “selfish” is uncalled for.
Then, on top of this, it is also true that many of the studies that we rely upon are financially supported by or conducted by those with a financial stake in their outcome. And there is plenty of evidence that private interests are quite capable of shaping governmental decisions. When the tobacco companies told us in the past not to worry about smoking, public health advocates scoffed. Ought we not apply some of the same cynicism to the influence of the pharmaceutical companies in this era?
In the face of this history of the limits of science and technology, and the potential for bias, isn’t a certain amount of science skepticism warranted? Not so much that we don’t vaccinate our kids, but enough to show some respect for parents struggling with this decision?
A respectful message
Here is how I think that would affect our message. First, we are committed to finding the causes of autism. If it isn’t vaccinations, then we need to know what it is. Second, we acknowledge the role of anecdote, lived experience, in the development of scientific understanding, and we acknowledge the experiences of the parents who have lived these experiences. And, third, we know we are not perfect, and that there are both heuristic and financial biases in the study of medical efficacy.
But, fourth, science is more than anecdote, and we have done many, many studies, and we keep finding no relationship. That doesn’t mean “we are right and you are wrong,” particularly given the financial biases at work. No study will ever say “your are absolutely wrong.” But we find nothing to support the argument that the parents are right. If their interpretation were accurate, we would expect to find some research evidence for their position, but we don’t. The best evidence we have is that the anecdotal information is outweighed by the clinical trials. At some point, we have to act to protect millions of kids, and as the problem of vaccination skepticism goes global, billions of kids.
Therefore, fifth, we will continue to be on the look-out for signs that we are wrong, because we can never know “for sure.” In the meantime, we have to resolve the uncertainty in favor of protecting hundreds of millions of children, worldwide. We will vaccinate aggressively, as this is absolutely proven to be successful in preventing death, disease and misery, and will continue to be one of the most important public health measures available.
And we will continue to be skeptical. Not so much to paralyze us in responding to overwhelming risks, such as global warming. Enough to “temper our assertions with doubt,” but also to temper our doubts with assertion.
I say these things first because I am about to argue that a certain amount of skepticism about the opinions of scientists and technologists is a very good thing, and that public policy based, in part, upon science but also based upon what is good for corporate interests should always be viewed with a healthy bit of cynicism. And that we, who want to use science to educate our policy making, should always apply a dose of humility to the conclusions about tomorrow that can be drawn from what we know today.
Having said that, let me now state some sympathy for the parents who fear that current vaccinations and current vaccination schedules might be dangerous to their kids. They are told, repeatedly, that the scientific consensus is that there is no proved relationship, and yet they are skeptical. And, while I disagree with the conclusions they have drawn, a certain amount of skepticism is completely warranted.
Skepticism in the past
Let me tell you about Gwen Molinar. She was a middle-aged woman living in the small town of Wilsonville, Illinois, in the 1970's. When a company decided to buy an abandoned coal mine in the community and turn it into a hazardous waste landfill, this made no sense to Gwen and her neighbors. Abandoned coal mines are notoriously “leaky.” How could liquid hazardous wastes be safely put into one? Besides, she saw, day in and day out, the lackadaisical behavior of the people employed at the site.
The scientists and technologists at the company, and at the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and at the US Environmental Protection Agency all told the people of Wilsonville not to worry, that this was going to be a “state of the art” landfill, with the best technology available. “There was nothing to worry about,” she was told by the scientists and technologists. “We have completely studied this. We know best.”
Gwen and her friends fought the landfill, in the legislature and in permitting processes and in the press. But she was repeatedly told “don’t worry, we know best.” The landfill went in. And, sure enough, two months later it was leaking! Ultimately, a judge ordered the wastes to be removed, and down the road, the citizens of Wilsonville got a settlement from the corporate interests who wanted the landfill sited. To my knowledge, the never got an apology from the scientists and technologists who were so wrong.
In the early days of my career as a professional environmental advocate, I saw this dynamic happen repeatedly. Scientists for the tobacco companies and the asbestos companies told us that there was no evidence that their products caused cancer. Joanna Hoelscher, the environmental chair of the Illinois League of Women Voters, was scoffed at by the scientists when, in 1975, she testified at a Pollution Control Board hearing about the dangers of something called “acid rain.” Many years later, the US and other countries invested hundreds of millions of dollars in controlling this problem.
In 1976, there was a coordinated effort by scientists and technologists (mostly paid by chemical companies) to ridicule the notion that the earth’s ozone layer might be threatened by spray cans. Decades later, after the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer, those materials are now gone from the cans and from our air conditioners.
In 1978, environmentalists were accused of being doomsday predictors when we talked about “the greenhouse effect,” a name changed much later to “global climate change,” an issue where the science skeptics have changed sides.
Also in 1978, environmentalists cautioned US EPA from loosening its health protection standard for “photochemical oxidants” (smog), that the standard in place had a minuscule margin of safety. (I still have a copy somewhere of the testimony I gave at the hearings.) But the scientists and the technologists said that this was unsupported by the science at hand, and EPA raised the limits. Then, 20 years later, they lowered the limits below what it was in 1978, and today, the best available science is that it is still too high.
In the same year, when public health advocates warned about “second hand smoke,” we were told that we were over-reacting, that there was no good evidence linking side-stream smoke to health problems in non-smokers. Only two years later, US EPA issued the first of many reports on the extraordinary health impacts of second hand smoke. And the cultural attitudes towards smoking in the US have changed completely in the intervening decades.
When I was just starting as a professor, it was common knowledge that stomach ulcers were caused by too much acid in the gut, and that this was directly related to too much stress. When, in 1982, Marshall and Warren proposed that ulcers were, in fact, caused by a bacterium, they were condemned as quacks by “serious” doctors and scientists. They shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine for this discovery 23 years later.
In 1984, some people were worried about the possible serious side effects of the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine. The scientists and most of the doctors said that this was a terrible over-reaction, and that vaccination rates had to be maintained in order to control this disease. Many years later, the same scientists were now promoting a “safer” DTP shot, quietly ignoring the inconsistency with their earlier position.
The pediatric profession, a group I have the utmost respect and admiration for, are frustrated by today’s “anti-vaxxers.” Don’t they understand that there are no scientific studies supporting a link between vaccines and autism? In all of the studies, no link has been found. Public health advocates and the media call the parents “irresponsible,” “ignoramuses,” “flat-earthers,” “selfish,” “loony,” “crazy,” etc.
But that same profession, back in the 1950's, offered the scientifically supported conclusion that autism was caused by “refrigerator moms,” the notion that some mothers, at a critical moment in their child’s development, turned their attention and affections away, causing the child to turn inward. My god, if it weren’t enough for the mother to cope with the difficulties of having an autistic child, to have the scientists blame her for the disease!
Humility is called for
How awkward, for pediatricians with some memory of their past mistakes, to be so horribly demeaning to the parents of autistic children today. Even worse, if they have no memory of this past. Some humility is clearly called for.
The best scientific studies that exist today have failed to find any relationship between vaccines and autism, and this has been the result of many studies. That is, I believe, a true statement. But it is usually presented in a slightly different syntax: “Science shows that there is no relationship between vaccines and autism.” That is not a true statement. Failing to find the relationship casts doubt on the existence of the relationship, but it is not conclusive evidence that the relationship does not exist. This is a common fallacy, where failure to find a positive association is offered as success in finding a negative relationship.
Or another statement that is dubious. “We have to rely upon science, which means scientific experiments. We can’t base policy on anecdote.”
As if anecdote were never a part of science. On the contrary, lived experience is the beginning of all science. Before the prospective epidemiological studies and the randomized clinical trials are done, someone has to have noticed something in their lived experience that allows them to get the grants to do the studies.
It is also true that, too often, people worry about things based upon another common fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc. “After this, therefore because of this.” If A follows B, then B caused A.” If my child develops autism after getting vaccinated, then the vaccination caused the autism.
We ought not ignore the many controlled studies that we have, repeatedly failing to find any association between vaccines and autism. But we ought not deride those whose lived experience suggests otherwise, particularly given the long history of careful science and technology lagging behind the anecdote. Calling the parents “crazy” and “loony” and “selfish” is uncalled for.
Then, on top of this, it is also true that many of the studies that we rely upon are financially supported by or conducted by those with a financial stake in their outcome. And there is plenty of evidence that private interests are quite capable of shaping governmental decisions. When the tobacco companies told us in the past not to worry about smoking, public health advocates scoffed. Ought we not apply some of the same cynicism to the influence of the pharmaceutical companies in this era?
In the face of this history of the limits of science and technology, and the potential for bias, isn’t a certain amount of science skepticism warranted? Not so much that we don’t vaccinate our kids, but enough to show some respect for parents struggling with this decision?
A respectful message
Here is how I think that would affect our message. First, we are committed to finding the causes of autism. If it isn’t vaccinations, then we need to know what it is. Second, we acknowledge the role of anecdote, lived experience, in the development of scientific understanding, and we acknowledge the experiences of the parents who have lived these experiences. And, third, we know we are not perfect, and that there are both heuristic and financial biases in the study of medical efficacy.
But, fourth, science is more than anecdote, and we have done many, many studies, and we keep finding no relationship. That doesn’t mean “we are right and you are wrong,” particularly given the financial biases at work. No study will ever say “your are absolutely wrong.” But we find nothing to support the argument that the parents are right. If their interpretation were accurate, we would expect to find some research evidence for their position, but we don’t. The best evidence we have is that the anecdotal information is outweighed by the clinical trials. At some point, we have to act to protect millions of kids, and as the problem of vaccination skepticism goes global, billions of kids.
Therefore, fifth, we will continue to be on the look-out for signs that we are wrong, because we can never know “for sure.” In the meantime, we have to resolve the uncertainty in favor of protecting hundreds of millions of children, worldwide. We will vaccinate aggressively, as this is absolutely proven to be successful in preventing death, disease and misery, and will continue to be one of the most important public health measures available.
And we will continue to be skeptical. Not so much to paralyze us in responding to overwhelming risks, such as global warming. Enough to “temper our assertions with doubt,” but also to temper our doubts with assertion.
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