The Futility of Perfection, or the Two Secularisms
The religious and the secular left love perfection and perfectability, in the next world if not in this. I think we should blame the Persians and the Greeks equally for this dualist concept of perfection: Jesus as Apollo and Ahura Mazda, with all that evil neatly bundled into an alter ego called Satan. HaShem certainly wasn't perfect (all that temper).
My take is that there are two different types of liberalism, with different roots, and you can trace them back to the two definitive revolutions of the West, the English revolution (the 1688 compromise, rather than 1642) which in turn inspired the American, and the French revolution of 1789.
The tragedy of the latter is that the earlier attempt at a French revolution -the Fronde of the 1640s - failed and here the Cavaliers won. Louis XIV's autocracy, unlike previous divine right of kings, had a whiff of insecure totalitarian reaction about it. Couple that with Catholicism and a love of Rousseau, when the Revolution happens it takes the form of a Christian heresy. Progress, mediated by the State, replaces Christ mediated by the Church, seeking the perfectibility of man, a blank slate with only a few basic drives on which society can write its writ. It infected the Anglo Saxon world as well, in the form of Utilitarianism, the ideological root of capitalism. Let us call this hard progressivism, it encompasses liberalism with a small as well as capital L (and thus most modern so called conservatism, in thrall to capitalist ideology) as well as socialism.
The other tradition is sceptical, empirical, agnostic rather than atheist, and intuitively understands that perfection is an oxymoron and that paradox is human. It believes in human nature, and is sceptical but not despairing. It reflects the mentality of real science, but unsurprisingly has few intellectual supporters among philosophers: Locke and Adam Smith and even Kant to some degree, definitely Popper, but not even J.S.Mill (in thrall to Utilitarianism). Add Unamuno, Santayana and Montaigne from the continental tradition. It is embodied in both the British and American constitutions, even if the Founding Fathers were intellectually in thrall to hard progressivism (pursuit of happiness, my arse). It works, it picks up the pieces after hard progressivism and religious idolatry have wreaked their havoc, but it is uninspiring.
It reflects the findings of sociobiology in that there is a human nature, there is both original sin and original virtue and they evolved in man’s self interest; it does not reflect them, however, that unlike religious or secular faiths it fails to satisfy two dark residues of our primate ancestry: tribalism, and the fact that religion has clearly evolved as a highly successful meme to inspire group solidarity. Soft liberalism erodes that belief, not only because of scepticism about dubious mythologies, but also because if you realise that religion is a powerful meme for group survival, and that humans are good at mythmaking, surely that makes it hard to believe. It does not however substitute anything else, so nihilism and hedonistic materialism to pass the time.
Whether we like it or not, the capitalist game has another generation or two to run, until all those Chinese and Indian peasants are rich and bored , if it can be made environmentally possible (yes, it probably can). All the alternatives tried for capitalism in the last two hundred years have been even more disastrous. Meanwhile the West can still do something it is good at, which is creativity. If the East becomes materialistic, the West has a spiritual and ethical challenge. The problem now is not love and compassion – there is plenty of that around, in secular society – it is how to inspire, and how to manage our tribalism and the “faith” that underpins it. I fear that freed of Enlightenment shackles a Christian revival would be just as bloody as all the hard progressive -isms.
Two thoughts: the psyche works on stories, and there is a magnificent and mysterious tale in the evolutionary epic, as yet unexploited: only Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke seem to have attempted it. The other is to take a lesson from Buddhism, and cultivate insight to overcome the dark seduction of faith.
My take is that there are two different types of liberalism, with different roots, and you can trace them back to the two definitive revolutions of the West, the English revolution (the 1688 compromise, rather than 1642) which in turn inspired the American, and the French revolution of 1789.
The tragedy of the latter is that the earlier attempt at a French revolution -the Fronde of the 1640s - failed and here the Cavaliers won. Louis XIV's autocracy, unlike previous divine right of kings, had a whiff of insecure totalitarian reaction about it. Couple that with Catholicism and a love of Rousseau, when the Revolution happens it takes the form of a Christian heresy. Progress, mediated by the State, replaces Christ mediated by the Church, seeking the perfectibility of man, a blank slate with only a few basic drives on which society can write its writ. It infected the Anglo Saxon world as well, in the form of Utilitarianism, the ideological root of capitalism. Let us call this hard progressivism, it encompasses liberalism with a small as well as capital L (and thus most modern so called conservatism, in thrall to capitalist ideology) as well as socialism.
The other tradition is sceptical, empirical, agnostic rather than atheist, and intuitively understands that perfection is an oxymoron and that paradox is human. It believes in human nature, and is sceptical but not despairing. It reflects the mentality of real science, but unsurprisingly has few intellectual supporters among philosophers: Locke and Adam Smith and even Kant to some degree, definitely Popper, but not even J.S.Mill (in thrall to Utilitarianism). Add Unamuno, Santayana and Montaigne from the continental tradition. It is embodied in both the British and American constitutions, even if the Founding Fathers were intellectually in thrall to hard progressivism (pursuit of happiness, my arse). It works, it picks up the pieces after hard progressivism and religious idolatry have wreaked their havoc, but it is uninspiring.
It reflects the findings of sociobiology in that there is a human nature, there is both original sin and original virtue and they evolved in man’s self interest; it does not reflect them, however, that unlike religious or secular faiths it fails to satisfy two dark residues of our primate ancestry: tribalism, and the fact that religion has clearly evolved as a highly successful meme to inspire group solidarity. Soft liberalism erodes that belief, not only because of scepticism about dubious mythologies, but also because if you realise that religion is a powerful meme for group survival, and that humans are good at mythmaking, surely that makes it hard to believe. It does not however substitute anything else, so nihilism and hedonistic materialism to pass the time.
Whether we like it or not, the capitalist game has another generation or two to run, until all those Chinese and Indian peasants are rich and bored , if it can be made environmentally possible (yes, it probably can). All the alternatives tried for capitalism in the last two hundred years have been even more disastrous. Meanwhile the West can still do something it is good at, which is creativity. If the East becomes materialistic, the West has a spiritual and ethical challenge. The problem now is not love and compassion – there is plenty of that around, in secular society – it is how to inspire, and how to manage our tribalism and the “faith” that underpins it. I fear that freed of Enlightenment shackles a Christian revival would be just as bloody as all the hard progressive -isms.
Two thoughts: the psyche works on stories, and there is a magnificent and mysterious tale in the evolutionary epic, as yet unexploited: only Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke seem to have attempted it. The other is to take a lesson from Buddhism, and cultivate insight to overcome the dark seduction of faith.
Labels: Philosophy, Religion
posted by Total Issues at 1:45 pm
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