It is an odd fact of our present hour that many people have rejected the Western tradition of not just valuing reasoned discourse in practice, but even of principle.
I interact with people on the internet who seem to have never grasped that life has limits, that pain is a part of life, that their side could be wrong, or that we have to make decisions, and that every serious decision precludes necessarily all the other options.
They seemingly believe that life should consist in never-ending cake which they can eat their fill of, and which will magically replenish continually. Because that is their experience: their overprotective, neurotic mother always made more, and in their own lives they traded one mother for another, if they got that far.
What does one do with people afraid of life as it is? Any reasoning which leads down a path which frightens them, angers them. They become filled with rage at the temerity of anyone who would suggest they can’t have it all, and that calling for manna to fall from the sky is anything but the perfection of virtue.
It is hard to know what to think, and even harder to know what to do.
Our tradition is based on the notion that a multiplicity of viewpoints is best able to approximate the truth of a matter, that the best way to form a viewpoint is through the application of reason to the facts as we think we know them, and that the best way to reconcile disparate views is through the use of reason and science.
When one founds ones Reason on Materialism–I would argue all serious logical streams begin with a position on the nature of life–the end result is the meaninglessness of life. This is why, as I understand the matter, Nietzsche argued for passion, for artistry, and in effect for rebellion against life as it is. He argued for myth, in a world denuded of it, which amounted for a call to self delusion, again as I understand the matter.
Perhaps infantilism is the logical end result of this process. If you can’t stand the world as it is, back off, lie to yourself, and pretend. One can only stand heroism for so long, most of us are not born with heroic temperaments, and the air conditioned world, of course, breeds out what courage might remain.
And so we are left with permanently crippled minds and personalities occupying our best universities, preaching drivel, thinking insipid and unclear thoughts, and possessed of the arrogance of youth–a youth, to be clear, which never fades–and universal sanction outside of a few people who remain committed to the ideals of our culture, like me.
As William James pointed out at the very beginning of his lectures on Pragmatism, the question of God is not really A question, but in important respects THE question.
The question of atheism is not “can one find morality”, but “in what direction does this system operate in aggregate, as a result of the complex logic of the system”?
And as I keep saying, the question is empirical. We know psi exists, we have compelling physical evidence to believe the soul and brain are severable, and in the Zero Point Field we have a good guess as to what God might be.
There needs to be a “God Science”. We need people dedicated to researching what, within the various religious traditions, can be scientifically validated.
In my personal view, biology, specifically, needs a massive paradigm shift in the direction of resurrecting currently moribund ideas about life as systemic. As I have said before, the work of Cleve Backster, as the most obvious example I can think of, needs to be revisited. He demonstrated over and over and over and over and over–thousands of times–replicable work which cannot be explained by current paradigms.
Some people generate a sense of self worth and power by feeling like they know everything. Their knowledge is their mastery of the world, and by extension of the people they interact with poorly. Their psychological defects blind them to new truths. Rather than get EXCITED when something challenges what they believe, they become defensive, lie to themselves and others to make it go away, then continue, complacent, stupid, and wrong.
I hope we survive this era. But if we don’t, there is ample blame to share all around. Substantially every biology department in every university in the world will be complicit. So, too, will every Psychology Department. I dealt with that a few posts ago.
Don’t lie. Don’t cheat. Don’t steal. This is a simple enough moral code. This includes “don’t lie to yourself. Don’t cheat yourself. Don’t steal from yourself.”