Obama has lost everyone but the MSM, and they are ready to jump ship. Remember that Democrats eat their young. If they had a sense of loyalty they would not be so likely to be Liberal. The Scott Brown victory in MA has destroyed any shine the O-man had. It brought a spotlight to the Olympic loss, and earlier losses in VA and NJ. Democrats are running scared, and the MSM matters less and less all the time.
O's biggest problem is that being Black is not enough anymore. It was fun to have the first Black president and we could all congratulate ourselves, but the shine is off that turd. Now IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID all over again, and for the first time in his life O cannot just find a professor to turn his C grade into an A. He can turn his fortunes around if he can turn the economy around, but he is running out of time. He should have done the tough sledding a year ago and brought the banks down, forcing them to disgorge assets which would have cratered the economy at the time, but those non-performing assets would now be being returned to useful life, creating jobs in the process. This is still the only decent road to take, but doing so will cause Democrats even greater pain than they face now this November. Obama should pull a Clinton and do it anyway, because if the economy does turn he will be reelected regardless. I don't think he has the intelligence or the testicles to do this. I think he will go down with the Liberal ship and be seen as a martyr, probably to win more Peace prizes in the future as he builds huts for the poor in his native Kenya.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Thursday, December 17, 2009
What We Believe
Polarization of Post-Enlightenment Western Thought
The purpose of this essay is to trace the root causes of the increasingly polarized views in Western politics and culture that show themselves most starkly in the description of Liberal vs. Conservative. I have found it interesting to see how friends and neighbors, and even siblings can be raised under nearly identical circumstances and yet see the world in a very different way. I will make certain assumptions in looking at these differences without attempting to prove those assumptions. The first is that biology is not a uniform predictor of world view, but people come to their differing understandings through their experiences, education, and choices. Likewise very similar education and choices, and even results are no uniform predictor, leaving us free will and how people use it to form their world view.
Let’s start with Socrates not because that’s where philosophy started, but that is where Western thought as we know it today began to assert itself. The Socratic school believed that it was possible for a man to describe a thing with enough clarity to translate his experience of it to others, and that with enough of such a knowledge base one could use both inductive and deductive reasoning to draw conclusions about the world and the things of the world. This is most easily understood by an example. The Sophists (pre-Socratic) or Hindus might describe a dog by their experience of the dog. They would tell you it was a well behaved dog, or an angry dog. A Socratic like Aristotle might describe it as a white and tan Springer Spaniel weighing 35 pounds that barks too much. The classification of thought allowed for more specific details to be understood more easily (think about the mental image you formed of a ‘good dog’ versus a ‘white and tan Springer Spaniel), and so it became possible to build up a much larger body of basic knowledge through which it was thought that certain more general truths could be derived. It is important to note that many contemporary cultures do not share this way of viewing the things of this world which is where we get the divide between Western and non-Western thought. In fact the college professors who rail against ‘Dead White Men’ are actually to some extent railing against centuries of Socratic logic in action with the complaint that any conclusions drawn from such logic are culturally biased in favor of white males, or the dominant culture in which such conclusions are drawn. They generally reject the notion that values can be known or described without this bias. The result is that the individual experience of the dog is given more importance than the classification of the dog. To broaden this a bit think of deconstructionism which holds that only the reader’s experience of a text is valid without regard to the author’s intent. In short, nothing can be described accurately (without bias), but only experienced.
Compare this to a Conservative who may be more likely to stress the classification of the dog in describing it, and certainly more interested in an author’s intent in a text than a reader’s experience because they believe values can be known and taught without bias, so all educated readers should be able to come to very similar understandings of a text which they believe is the correct understanding. A Christian fundamentalist who believes in the literal inerrancy of every word and story in the Bible is obviously quite opposite in their approach to texts than a deconstructionist.
With this as background I want to attempt to summarize the differences in world view and then build up from there to show some of the background to this As described above, Conservatives believe the world can be known and accurately described without bias. The result is that trusted values and qualities can be learned from others and then known absolutely. Liberals believe that nothing is certain but the true essence of a thing that can be known only through direct experience, but then cannot be described without bias. The result is that this essence can be known and even described, but not taught as dogma.
A conservative reading this may feel smug that her views are easy to understand and make sense, and seeing this described so directly makes this ever so plain. A liberal in return may feel some pride at seeing how she understands the nuance of the world in a way that a simple conservative cannot and there it is laid out for all to understand. More likely both are scratching their heads and wondering what I am getting at.
We will move on from the Socratics now to note that while the Greeks were forming their logical world view the Jews were describing the world through Revelation, a view later picked up by Christians and Muslims. Revelation describes the belief that God revealed himself directly to individual men and women. These people then used what God revealed to them as the foundation of their world view which they taught to others. Those taught trusted their teachers enough to accept the stories and doctrines as absolute truth and then continued teaching it in an apostolic succession. It becomes more encompassing for Christians who believe God actually became man, and describe this as “the Word made flesh.” What is most important philosophically is not whether or not revelation is true, but that people of faith accept the wisdom and experience of their forefathers as truth, and look to these truths to form the foundation of their world view. In short, they rely on teaching rather than starting from logic or experience.
To recap, Socratics drew on observation which they classified and categorized to be able to pass on as education to those who had not directly observed. From this body of knowledge they believed they were able to arrive at deduced truths. The Revelationists relied on the described observation of their forefathers as revealed truth which they accepted on faith. They grew to dominate Western thought for over a thousand years through the Christian faith until a third major movement in philosophy began during what is commonly called the Enlightenment. This movement turned back toward direct experience and logic as summed up by the well known statement, “I think, therefore I am.” This does not mean that thinking makes you what you are, but that the fact that you can think proves that you exist, and so you can know with certainty that you do exist. This may seem confusing to many who know they exist because they get up in the morning and brush their teeth, and wonder why some egghead has to use logic to try to prove this. Consequently the conclusion drawn (that the thinker exists) is not a very valuable conclusion for those already certain of it. What is instead valuable is the idea that certainty can be reached through direct observation, and only through direct observation, and also that not even the obvious (that I exist) should be taken for granted, but should be tested as thoroughly as possible. This hearkens back in some ways to the pre-Socratics who relied on personal observation, but the difference is they drew opinions from that observation (well behaved dog) rather than clarity (white and tan Springer Spaniel). In Enlightenment thinking direct observation ties with logic to build a body of more certain and predictable knowledge. But note that while logic forms the foundation of this philosophy, it is a logic informed by the value and priority of the individual through which all knowledge and hence value comes. This concept is most firmly rooted in the revealed belief that humans are made in the image and likeness of God, and are destined for eternal life and so have infinite value. The Enlightenment methodology of direct observation can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God and so is agnostic like the Socratics, and yet holds fast to the concept of the central importance of the individual either on faith or cultural bias since there is no proof of this either.
Let’s take some time to focus on what I have just said, that using the central value of the individual as a jumping off point for your world view is a value judgment that is not inherently logical or subject to proof. Note how the United States Declaration of Independence deals with this: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal’. This statement does not prove that all men are created equal, only that ‘We hold’ that they are. One way to deduce that this is a value judgment is to observe that other philosophies and other cultures do not all share this bedrock value, so it must not be a universal truth, or at a minimum is not ‘self-evident’. So that while it is commonly believed that the Enlightenment overturned the views of revelation, we now see that they share belief in a basic revealed truth. In fact a most obvious example of this is the concept of the brotherhood of man, which is first promulgated by Jesus Christ as a revealed truth and not a logical or tested hypothesis, but is adopted whole hog into Enlightenment philosophy. What the Enlightenment did strip away was some of the dogma of Revelation we see most clearly in the differing understanding of the relationship between the earth and the heavens. Pre-Enlightenment Christians held that the earth was the center of the universe, with the sun and the stars spinning around her. Indeed the casual observer has the earth as his center point and seems to see the sun revolving about her on its course through the sky. But if one questions the obvious he may come to different understandings based on observation and not assumption. In the case of the earth we now accept that charting the courses of the planets and the sun shows with clarity that the earth travels around the sun, and does not seem to be in the center of the universe, but only our central focus since we live here. Perhaps a more stunning example of this change in thinking is determining the number of teeth in a horse’s mouth not by determining how much lower on the ‘Great Chain of Being’ God put a horse than a man and then using this relationship to deduce how many fewer teeth a horse has, but simply by counting the horse’s teeth. Direct observation provides a simple path to a clear and verifiable answer. By extension, trusting that observed things can be known with clarity allowed man to trust mathematics and the scientific method and so produced an explosion of empirical knowledge and predictable results that continues to stun us with new advances to this day.
So let’s review again where we are. Pre-Enlightenment Western thought was largely Christian, and uniformly based on Revelation. This means that man accepted truth as something handed down from others and not achieved through personal experience, experimentation, and study. In fact Bibles were forbidden to be translated into native languages. The result was that only the learned class could read them and then explain the readings to the masses. People were not expected to come to their own experience of truth. There was a homogeneous culture in which all drew knowledge from the same well and differences of thought or view were based on levels of education rather than course of study. Indeed a burning philosophical question of this time was said to be determining how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, which is decidedly not subject to observation. There is scant evidence that such debates actually took place, so the origin may be a sarcastic reference from Enlightenment thinkers revealing their lack of respect for any philosophy not grounded on observation. Indeed Enlightenment thought undercut the culture’s uniform view of revealed truth, yet did not replace it with any certainty of its own. On the contrary intellectuals were expected to come to their own understandings through personal observation, though the religious circles still held fast to revealed truths as the basic building blocks of world view, even while gradually accepting more empirical descriptions of the things of the world like the earth revolving around the sun. The religious uniformity broke down still further with the Protestant Reformation, as aptly represented by the translating of Bibles in native languages so individuals could more easily study their faith on their own. In this the Protestants borrow the value of direct observation and apply it to indirect learning (reading), believing that reading from the source can be superior to being taught by others about what is in that source.
We now have the background to describe more fully the Liberal versus Conservative world view. While there are obvious disagreements on surface points they share more similarities than differences. Both are children of the Enlightenment so their views converge on most points along logical lines of description and classification. Both believe the earth revolves around the sun. Likewise both root their philosophies in revealed values. For Liberals this value is the supreme importance of the individual where they believe knowledge must necessarily begin. Conservatives share this value, but go further in believing individuals can come to knowledge of truth through other people’s descriptions which in some cases can be trusted as absolute truth.
While belief in God does not split cleanly along Liberal/Conservative lines how one may or may not come to such faith provides a good example of their differing views. All people may get to knowledge of their existence through self-evidence (I think therefore I am), but it is not possible to get to the same certainty about the existence of another since we cannot know what they are thinking. We can only experience them indirectly through our own senses and not their consciousness. Any knowledge we might come to about God is even more abstract. Logic cannot prove the existence of God. A Liberal, trusting logic, rejects the notion that anything can be proven outside of an individual’s direct experience, and so rejects the notion of revealed truth (making an exception for the supreme value of the individual without perhaps realizing this is revealed truth and not logical, or else consciously accepting it for the positive feeling it brings them with apologies to logic). Their experience convinces them, however, that some things are true. They have an innate sense of what is good and what is evil. A basic description of this that Robert Pirsig gave is that even a single cell amoeba in a Petri dish knows to move away from sulphuric acid. We do not even need to think to know help from harm, yet without any truth to objectively agree on each individual must come to their own knowledge of truth from their innate sense of right and wrong and not from any logical categorization of knowledge that is uniformly accepted. In short, Liberals use logic to reject Revelation, then push it into second position behind ‘essence’, which is to abandon logic as the determining point of their view from that point forward, though since it forms their starting position they believe themselves to be the champions of reason.
Conservatives go further than Liberals in rejecting logic outright as a starting position. They start with faith that some things can be known even if not experienced, and so may accept the truth of Revelation though God never revealed himself directly to them. From this point forward they reclaim the banner of logic and reject all that is not logical, including any ‘essence’ they cannot back up with logic. They do not believe in an innate sense of good and evil, but a God given sense that is universal and not individual. No personal feeling or experience supersedes their sense of objective truth. So they reject logic in favor of Revelation, but from that point forward cling doggedly to logic, thus believing themselves to be the champions of reason.
Logic itself tells us that both sides cannot be correct, and an understanding of this essay shows that neither is. In fact their most fundamental point of agreement is not logical at all, but the revealed truth of the supreme value of each individual. It is only because of this common base that they are able to live together in a cohesive society. The point of this essay, then, is not to prove where one view or the other is correct, but to explain the differences so any disagreement can be traced to the source rather than argued fruitlessly at some tributary where logical points are bandied back and forth without providing clarity because the participants do not understand that their beliefs on where logic does and does not apply do not agree.
Let’s jump in to one of these arguments and apply the principles laid out above to see where it gets us. Abortion is a divisive issue and so perhaps a good place to start. A Conservative places his faith in things outside of himself and so can believe an unborn child, even at the point of conception, could certainly have as much value as he himself has. His starting point of belief is Revelation, with the infinite value of life a revealed truth that holds any subsequent truths subservient to it, including any argument about the rights or beliefs of the child’s mother. A Liberal trusts only things that can be known through experience, and believes logically that a child at the point of conception cannot have experiences and so knows nothing. Nor can a Liberal know with any certainty what is right for another person since they do not experience the world through that person’s senses or consciousness, and so cannot be in any position to tell a pregnant woman what is right to do with her body, or a child in her body. A knowing individual has a right to determine what to do with her body even if her actions harm an unknowing product of conception. Note the change in description of the child. A Liberal believes individuals are created equal and are of supreme importance, and so if an unborn child is an individual it has rights which certainly muddy the waters on what the mother’s rights are. If there were logical proof a Liberal could accept that the product of conception is an individual then most would change their view of abortion, or be forced to change their philosophy itself into something akin to what Orwell describes in Animal Farm as “some pigs are more equal than others.” In fact some who are Liberal and without religious faith do hold that abortion is wrong because it harms an individual. On the other hand, were a Conservative offered logical proof that a child before some point of development was nothing more than a product of conception and had not yet become an individual his view would not likely change at all since he relies not on logic for his jumping off point, but Revelation. I do not mean to be silly here but wish to illustrate the point still further by adding that if God were able to communicate that a product of conception did not become an individual until a certain point of development a Conservative with faith in this God would have no problem with abortion before that developmental point. In fact some with religious faith who support some forms of abortion can get there by believing that God exists and is the author of life, but does not imbue personhood on a developing fetus until some mid point of gestation.
What about the rare case where a mother’s life may be in danger if she does not abort? What about the even more rare case of a mother and her small child facing dehydration with only enough water to save one of them until help can arrive? Here we have an issue where both most Liberals and Conservatives share a common belief in the supreme importance of the individual and recognize a right of self-preservation, though many in both camps might believe a woman who saved her child to be a paragon of what is best about humanity. The Conservatives do not face a contradiction here because their morality is based on the supreme value of life, so in a situation where only one life can be saved and one will be lost either choice preserves life.
Let’s keep this topical and talk about homosexual rights and homosexual marriage. Again the points of agreement are on the supreme importance of the individual. Both philosophies hold that a homosexual, like any other individual, has infinite value (though certainly not all individual followers of these philosophies practice what they preach). As we have seen, points of view diverge from there. As we have seen a Liberal is hesitant to judge the behavior of others for reasons outlined above, especially when that behavior does not harm an unwilling participant. Logic may indicate that people, like many other living things, were made male and female for purposes of sexual reproduction, and so it follows that sexual value lies in sexual activity between male and female. Yet if a Liberal knows several homosexual people that she trusts are wonderful, caring, and productive people then she is going to give this experience much more weight than any logical argument that homosexual activity is contrary to the sexual purpose for which we were created female and male, and hence unproductive. It may even outweigh empirical evidence that male homosexuality is unhealthy as evidenced by the significantly lower life expectancy of male homosexuals versus male heterosexuals, or perhaps the Liberal may believe these statistics are skewed by social factors such as lack of acceptance of homosexuals in the greater society leading to shorter lives rather than unhealthy effects of their lifestyle. Our Liberal may also point out that this life expectancy differential does not hold true for lesbians, yet most Conservatives believe that practice unproductive as well. In any case logic will carry less weight than feeling and so homosexual lifestyles are unlikely to be frowned upon. A Conservative, after accepting certain truths based on faith, is going to cling to logic like a dog on a bone. A phrase that some religious Conservatives use to describe their views on homosexuality is “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” This points to their belief in revealed truth, that God made humans male and female as partners, and so heterosexuality is the will of God. This is backed up by their logical view that humans sexual purpose is to mate as male and female. While it is difficult to argue with the obvious fact that heterosexual mating provides a sexual purpose not met by homosexual mating, a Liberal might argue this is no more obvious than seeing the sun revolve around the earth every day. Logic shows that heterosexual mating is productive, but it does not necessarily follow that homosexual mating is without value. A Liberal could provide a long list of values of homosexual mating including pleasure, forming bonds, freedom from the duties of raising direct offspring allowing greater focus on helping others who also have needs. Also, unlike the abortion issue where a Conservative view is based upon the supreme value of life to which all other values are subservient, there is no such dominant value regarding sexuality, which is itself of less importance than life. Accepting the wisdom of those who have gone before who describe homosexuality as a sin may suffice for them, but if they wish to be champions of reason they must look to logical arguments as well. Looking to their ancestors for guidance on why sexual morality was shaped along the lines it was might be a good place to start. This essay will not go into exhaustive historical detail, but will point out that containing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases was of paramount importance in the formation of this morality. One indication of this is reference to pre-European Hawaii which was reportedly universally polyamorous in the absence of sexually transmitted diseases. With no diseases to contain there was no public health advantage to a strict morality aimed at limiting sexual partners and practices. The opposite was true in lands where sexually transmitted diseases were common. Note the warnings couched as morality but with apparent reference to public health risks in Numbers 31:15-18 “And Moses said to them: ‘Have you kept all the women alive? Look, these women caused the children of Israel … to trespass against the Lord … and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately.’” Presumably the virgins would be free of sexually transmitted diseases and so did not pose the same risk and were kept alive. It is a well known epidemiological fact that limiting sexual partners limits the spread of disease, and can certainly be argued using the above examples among others that the main goal of restrictive sexual morality is to limit the number of partners. It is also apparent that some social groups contract sexually transmitted diseases at greater rates than others, including homosexual men as well as others who do not follow more traditional Western morality. It follows that a morality that sought to limit the spread of disease might want to discourage homosexual activity as well. It is also true that in agricultural economies of the past children were of great economic and military value and so vital to the success not only of the family but the society they lived in. This provided another obvious reason to encourage heterosexual mating and discourage homosexuality. The fact that this value is calculated differently in the West today may account for the relatively greater acceptance of homosexual activity. The fact that the spread of disease is still of concern may provide some logical reason why such acceptance is not more universal, yet interestingly has become more acceptable for women than men where there seems to be less risk of disease transmission.
It may strike some readers as odd that I have not stoked the fires by choosing sides since we have become accustomed to rancorous debate. I had found it curious how two people of very similar backgrounds could come to such opposite views of the world. It made no sense to me that one of them was just wrong, and so I sought to explore the issue as described above. I believe we have a common base in the shared value of the importance of the individual, but views become polarized from this point. Understanding why the other guy believes what he does can be valuable and it is in that spirit I offer this essay.
There are many other values we can hold up to the light of this Liberal/Conservative divide, and it could also be interesting and illuminating to hold up non-Western thought as a foil as well, though that will wait for another day. I would first like to hear back from readers on any points they agree or disagree with to try to refine the prism. I would like to add that this is not intended as a scholarly work, and so many of the matters referred to have not been fact checked or foot noted. If you see something that looks incorrect please let me know. I am most interested in feedback and so will provide a message board for comment. Please feel free to forward this essay with any comments to any you feel may be interested.
The purpose of this essay is to trace the root causes of the increasingly polarized views in Western politics and culture that show themselves most starkly in the description of Liberal vs. Conservative. I have found it interesting to see how friends and neighbors, and even siblings can be raised under nearly identical circumstances and yet see the world in a very different way. I will make certain assumptions in looking at these differences without attempting to prove those assumptions. The first is that biology is not a uniform predictor of world view, but people come to their differing understandings through their experiences, education, and choices. Likewise very similar education and choices, and even results are no uniform predictor, leaving us free will and how people use it to form their world view.
Let’s start with Socrates not because that’s where philosophy started, but that is where Western thought as we know it today began to assert itself. The Socratic school believed that it was possible for a man to describe a thing with enough clarity to translate his experience of it to others, and that with enough of such a knowledge base one could use both inductive and deductive reasoning to draw conclusions about the world and the things of the world. This is most easily understood by an example. The Sophists (pre-Socratic) or Hindus might describe a dog by their experience of the dog. They would tell you it was a well behaved dog, or an angry dog. A Socratic like Aristotle might describe it as a white and tan Springer Spaniel weighing 35 pounds that barks too much. The classification of thought allowed for more specific details to be understood more easily (think about the mental image you formed of a ‘good dog’ versus a ‘white and tan Springer Spaniel), and so it became possible to build up a much larger body of basic knowledge through which it was thought that certain more general truths could be derived. It is important to note that many contemporary cultures do not share this way of viewing the things of this world which is where we get the divide between Western and non-Western thought. In fact the college professors who rail against ‘Dead White Men’ are actually to some extent railing against centuries of Socratic logic in action with the complaint that any conclusions drawn from such logic are culturally biased in favor of white males, or the dominant culture in which such conclusions are drawn. They generally reject the notion that values can be known or described without this bias. The result is that the individual experience of the dog is given more importance than the classification of the dog. To broaden this a bit think of deconstructionism which holds that only the reader’s experience of a text is valid without regard to the author’s intent. In short, nothing can be described accurately (without bias), but only experienced.
Compare this to a Conservative who may be more likely to stress the classification of the dog in describing it, and certainly more interested in an author’s intent in a text than a reader’s experience because they believe values can be known and taught without bias, so all educated readers should be able to come to very similar understandings of a text which they believe is the correct understanding. A Christian fundamentalist who believes in the literal inerrancy of every word and story in the Bible is obviously quite opposite in their approach to texts than a deconstructionist.
With this as background I want to attempt to summarize the differences in world view and then build up from there to show some of the background to this As described above, Conservatives believe the world can be known and accurately described without bias. The result is that trusted values and qualities can be learned from others and then known absolutely. Liberals believe that nothing is certain but the true essence of a thing that can be known only through direct experience, but then cannot be described without bias. The result is that this essence can be known and even described, but not taught as dogma.
A conservative reading this may feel smug that her views are easy to understand and make sense, and seeing this described so directly makes this ever so plain. A liberal in return may feel some pride at seeing how she understands the nuance of the world in a way that a simple conservative cannot and there it is laid out for all to understand. More likely both are scratching their heads and wondering what I am getting at.
We will move on from the Socratics now to note that while the Greeks were forming their logical world view the Jews were describing the world through Revelation, a view later picked up by Christians and Muslims. Revelation describes the belief that God revealed himself directly to individual men and women. These people then used what God revealed to them as the foundation of their world view which they taught to others. Those taught trusted their teachers enough to accept the stories and doctrines as absolute truth and then continued teaching it in an apostolic succession. It becomes more encompassing for Christians who believe God actually became man, and describe this as “the Word made flesh.” What is most important philosophically is not whether or not revelation is true, but that people of faith accept the wisdom and experience of their forefathers as truth, and look to these truths to form the foundation of their world view. In short, they rely on teaching rather than starting from logic or experience.
To recap, Socratics drew on observation which they classified and categorized to be able to pass on as education to those who had not directly observed. From this body of knowledge they believed they were able to arrive at deduced truths. The Revelationists relied on the described observation of their forefathers as revealed truth which they accepted on faith. They grew to dominate Western thought for over a thousand years through the Christian faith until a third major movement in philosophy began during what is commonly called the Enlightenment. This movement turned back toward direct experience and logic as summed up by the well known statement, “I think, therefore I am.” This does not mean that thinking makes you what you are, but that the fact that you can think proves that you exist, and so you can know with certainty that you do exist. This may seem confusing to many who know they exist because they get up in the morning and brush their teeth, and wonder why some egghead has to use logic to try to prove this. Consequently the conclusion drawn (that the thinker exists) is not a very valuable conclusion for those already certain of it. What is instead valuable is the idea that certainty can be reached through direct observation, and only through direct observation, and also that not even the obvious (that I exist) should be taken for granted, but should be tested as thoroughly as possible. This hearkens back in some ways to the pre-Socratics who relied on personal observation, but the difference is they drew opinions from that observation (well behaved dog) rather than clarity (white and tan Springer Spaniel). In Enlightenment thinking direct observation ties with logic to build a body of more certain and predictable knowledge. But note that while logic forms the foundation of this philosophy, it is a logic informed by the value and priority of the individual through which all knowledge and hence value comes. This concept is most firmly rooted in the revealed belief that humans are made in the image and likeness of God, and are destined for eternal life and so have infinite value. The Enlightenment methodology of direct observation can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God and so is agnostic like the Socratics, and yet holds fast to the concept of the central importance of the individual either on faith or cultural bias since there is no proof of this either.
Let’s take some time to focus on what I have just said, that using the central value of the individual as a jumping off point for your world view is a value judgment that is not inherently logical or subject to proof. Note how the United States Declaration of Independence deals with this: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal’. This statement does not prove that all men are created equal, only that ‘We hold’ that they are. One way to deduce that this is a value judgment is to observe that other philosophies and other cultures do not all share this bedrock value, so it must not be a universal truth, or at a minimum is not ‘self-evident’. So that while it is commonly believed that the Enlightenment overturned the views of revelation, we now see that they share belief in a basic revealed truth. In fact a most obvious example of this is the concept of the brotherhood of man, which is first promulgated by Jesus Christ as a revealed truth and not a logical or tested hypothesis, but is adopted whole hog into Enlightenment philosophy. What the Enlightenment did strip away was some of the dogma of Revelation we see most clearly in the differing understanding of the relationship between the earth and the heavens. Pre-Enlightenment Christians held that the earth was the center of the universe, with the sun and the stars spinning around her. Indeed the casual observer has the earth as his center point and seems to see the sun revolving about her on its course through the sky. But if one questions the obvious he may come to different understandings based on observation and not assumption. In the case of the earth we now accept that charting the courses of the planets and the sun shows with clarity that the earth travels around the sun, and does not seem to be in the center of the universe, but only our central focus since we live here. Perhaps a more stunning example of this change in thinking is determining the number of teeth in a horse’s mouth not by determining how much lower on the ‘Great Chain of Being’ God put a horse than a man and then using this relationship to deduce how many fewer teeth a horse has, but simply by counting the horse’s teeth. Direct observation provides a simple path to a clear and verifiable answer. By extension, trusting that observed things can be known with clarity allowed man to trust mathematics and the scientific method and so produced an explosion of empirical knowledge and predictable results that continues to stun us with new advances to this day.
So let’s review again where we are. Pre-Enlightenment Western thought was largely Christian, and uniformly based on Revelation. This means that man accepted truth as something handed down from others and not achieved through personal experience, experimentation, and study. In fact Bibles were forbidden to be translated into native languages. The result was that only the learned class could read them and then explain the readings to the masses. People were not expected to come to their own experience of truth. There was a homogeneous culture in which all drew knowledge from the same well and differences of thought or view were based on levels of education rather than course of study. Indeed a burning philosophical question of this time was said to be determining how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, which is decidedly not subject to observation. There is scant evidence that such debates actually took place, so the origin may be a sarcastic reference from Enlightenment thinkers revealing their lack of respect for any philosophy not grounded on observation. Indeed Enlightenment thought undercut the culture’s uniform view of revealed truth, yet did not replace it with any certainty of its own. On the contrary intellectuals were expected to come to their own understandings through personal observation, though the religious circles still held fast to revealed truths as the basic building blocks of world view, even while gradually accepting more empirical descriptions of the things of the world like the earth revolving around the sun. The religious uniformity broke down still further with the Protestant Reformation, as aptly represented by the translating of Bibles in native languages so individuals could more easily study their faith on their own. In this the Protestants borrow the value of direct observation and apply it to indirect learning (reading), believing that reading from the source can be superior to being taught by others about what is in that source.
We now have the background to describe more fully the Liberal versus Conservative world view. While there are obvious disagreements on surface points they share more similarities than differences. Both are children of the Enlightenment so their views converge on most points along logical lines of description and classification. Both believe the earth revolves around the sun. Likewise both root their philosophies in revealed values. For Liberals this value is the supreme importance of the individual where they believe knowledge must necessarily begin. Conservatives share this value, but go further in believing individuals can come to knowledge of truth through other people’s descriptions which in some cases can be trusted as absolute truth.
While belief in God does not split cleanly along Liberal/Conservative lines how one may or may not come to such faith provides a good example of their differing views. All people may get to knowledge of their existence through self-evidence (I think therefore I am), but it is not possible to get to the same certainty about the existence of another since we cannot know what they are thinking. We can only experience them indirectly through our own senses and not their consciousness. Any knowledge we might come to about God is even more abstract. Logic cannot prove the existence of God. A Liberal, trusting logic, rejects the notion that anything can be proven outside of an individual’s direct experience, and so rejects the notion of revealed truth (making an exception for the supreme value of the individual without perhaps realizing this is revealed truth and not logical, or else consciously accepting it for the positive feeling it brings them with apologies to logic). Their experience convinces them, however, that some things are true. They have an innate sense of what is good and what is evil. A basic description of this that Robert Pirsig gave is that even a single cell amoeba in a Petri dish knows to move away from sulphuric acid. We do not even need to think to know help from harm, yet without any truth to objectively agree on each individual must come to their own knowledge of truth from their innate sense of right and wrong and not from any logical categorization of knowledge that is uniformly accepted. In short, Liberals use logic to reject Revelation, then push it into second position behind ‘essence’, which is to abandon logic as the determining point of their view from that point forward, though since it forms their starting position they believe themselves to be the champions of reason.
Conservatives go further than Liberals in rejecting logic outright as a starting position. They start with faith that some things can be known even if not experienced, and so may accept the truth of Revelation though God never revealed himself directly to them. From this point forward they reclaim the banner of logic and reject all that is not logical, including any ‘essence’ they cannot back up with logic. They do not believe in an innate sense of good and evil, but a God given sense that is universal and not individual. No personal feeling or experience supersedes their sense of objective truth. So they reject logic in favor of Revelation, but from that point forward cling doggedly to logic, thus believing themselves to be the champions of reason.
Logic itself tells us that both sides cannot be correct, and an understanding of this essay shows that neither is. In fact their most fundamental point of agreement is not logical at all, but the revealed truth of the supreme value of each individual. It is only because of this common base that they are able to live together in a cohesive society. The point of this essay, then, is not to prove where one view or the other is correct, but to explain the differences so any disagreement can be traced to the source rather than argued fruitlessly at some tributary where logical points are bandied back and forth without providing clarity because the participants do not understand that their beliefs on where logic does and does not apply do not agree.
Let’s jump in to one of these arguments and apply the principles laid out above to see where it gets us. Abortion is a divisive issue and so perhaps a good place to start. A Conservative places his faith in things outside of himself and so can believe an unborn child, even at the point of conception, could certainly have as much value as he himself has. His starting point of belief is Revelation, with the infinite value of life a revealed truth that holds any subsequent truths subservient to it, including any argument about the rights or beliefs of the child’s mother. A Liberal trusts only things that can be known through experience, and believes logically that a child at the point of conception cannot have experiences and so knows nothing. Nor can a Liberal know with any certainty what is right for another person since they do not experience the world through that person’s senses or consciousness, and so cannot be in any position to tell a pregnant woman what is right to do with her body, or a child in her body. A knowing individual has a right to determine what to do with her body even if her actions harm an unknowing product of conception. Note the change in description of the child. A Liberal believes individuals are created equal and are of supreme importance, and so if an unborn child is an individual it has rights which certainly muddy the waters on what the mother’s rights are. If there were logical proof a Liberal could accept that the product of conception is an individual then most would change their view of abortion, or be forced to change their philosophy itself into something akin to what Orwell describes in Animal Farm as “some pigs are more equal than others.” In fact some who are Liberal and without religious faith do hold that abortion is wrong because it harms an individual. On the other hand, were a Conservative offered logical proof that a child before some point of development was nothing more than a product of conception and had not yet become an individual his view would not likely change at all since he relies not on logic for his jumping off point, but Revelation. I do not mean to be silly here but wish to illustrate the point still further by adding that if God were able to communicate that a product of conception did not become an individual until a certain point of development a Conservative with faith in this God would have no problem with abortion before that developmental point. In fact some with religious faith who support some forms of abortion can get there by believing that God exists and is the author of life, but does not imbue personhood on a developing fetus until some mid point of gestation.
What about the rare case where a mother’s life may be in danger if she does not abort? What about the even more rare case of a mother and her small child facing dehydration with only enough water to save one of them until help can arrive? Here we have an issue where both most Liberals and Conservatives share a common belief in the supreme importance of the individual and recognize a right of self-preservation, though many in both camps might believe a woman who saved her child to be a paragon of what is best about humanity. The Conservatives do not face a contradiction here because their morality is based on the supreme value of life, so in a situation where only one life can be saved and one will be lost either choice preserves life.
Let’s keep this topical and talk about homosexual rights and homosexual marriage. Again the points of agreement are on the supreme importance of the individual. Both philosophies hold that a homosexual, like any other individual, has infinite value (though certainly not all individual followers of these philosophies practice what they preach). As we have seen, points of view diverge from there. As we have seen a Liberal is hesitant to judge the behavior of others for reasons outlined above, especially when that behavior does not harm an unwilling participant. Logic may indicate that people, like many other living things, were made male and female for purposes of sexual reproduction, and so it follows that sexual value lies in sexual activity between male and female. Yet if a Liberal knows several homosexual people that she trusts are wonderful, caring, and productive people then she is going to give this experience much more weight than any logical argument that homosexual activity is contrary to the sexual purpose for which we were created female and male, and hence unproductive. It may even outweigh empirical evidence that male homosexuality is unhealthy as evidenced by the significantly lower life expectancy of male homosexuals versus male heterosexuals, or perhaps the Liberal may believe these statistics are skewed by social factors such as lack of acceptance of homosexuals in the greater society leading to shorter lives rather than unhealthy effects of their lifestyle. Our Liberal may also point out that this life expectancy differential does not hold true for lesbians, yet most Conservatives believe that practice unproductive as well. In any case logic will carry less weight than feeling and so homosexual lifestyles are unlikely to be frowned upon. A Conservative, after accepting certain truths based on faith, is going to cling to logic like a dog on a bone. A phrase that some religious Conservatives use to describe their views on homosexuality is “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” This points to their belief in revealed truth, that God made humans male and female as partners, and so heterosexuality is the will of God. This is backed up by their logical view that humans sexual purpose is to mate as male and female. While it is difficult to argue with the obvious fact that heterosexual mating provides a sexual purpose not met by homosexual mating, a Liberal might argue this is no more obvious than seeing the sun revolve around the earth every day. Logic shows that heterosexual mating is productive, but it does not necessarily follow that homosexual mating is without value. A Liberal could provide a long list of values of homosexual mating including pleasure, forming bonds, freedom from the duties of raising direct offspring allowing greater focus on helping others who also have needs. Also, unlike the abortion issue where a Conservative view is based upon the supreme value of life to which all other values are subservient, there is no such dominant value regarding sexuality, which is itself of less importance than life. Accepting the wisdom of those who have gone before who describe homosexuality as a sin may suffice for them, but if they wish to be champions of reason they must look to logical arguments as well. Looking to their ancestors for guidance on why sexual morality was shaped along the lines it was might be a good place to start. This essay will not go into exhaustive historical detail, but will point out that containing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases was of paramount importance in the formation of this morality. One indication of this is reference to pre-European Hawaii which was reportedly universally polyamorous in the absence of sexually transmitted diseases. With no diseases to contain there was no public health advantage to a strict morality aimed at limiting sexual partners and practices. The opposite was true in lands where sexually transmitted diseases were common. Note the warnings couched as morality but with apparent reference to public health risks in Numbers 31:15-18 “And Moses said to them: ‘Have you kept all the women alive? Look, these women caused the children of Israel … to trespass against the Lord … and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately.’” Presumably the virgins would be free of sexually transmitted diseases and so did not pose the same risk and were kept alive. It is a well known epidemiological fact that limiting sexual partners limits the spread of disease, and can certainly be argued using the above examples among others that the main goal of restrictive sexual morality is to limit the number of partners. It is also apparent that some social groups contract sexually transmitted diseases at greater rates than others, including homosexual men as well as others who do not follow more traditional Western morality. It follows that a morality that sought to limit the spread of disease might want to discourage homosexual activity as well. It is also true that in agricultural economies of the past children were of great economic and military value and so vital to the success not only of the family but the society they lived in. This provided another obvious reason to encourage heterosexual mating and discourage homosexuality. The fact that this value is calculated differently in the West today may account for the relatively greater acceptance of homosexual activity. The fact that the spread of disease is still of concern may provide some logical reason why such acceptance is not more universal, yet interestingly has become more acceptable for women than men where there seems to be less risk of disease transmission.
It may strike some readers as odd that I have not stoked the fires by choosing sides since we have become accustomed to rancorous debate. I had found it curious how two people of very similar backgrounds could come to such opposite views of the world. It made no sense to me that one of them was just wrong, and so I sought to explore the issue as described above. I believe we have a common base in the shared value of the importance of the individual, but views become polarized from this point. Understanding why the other guy believes what he does can be valuable and it is in that spirit I offer this essay.
There are many other values we can hold up to the light of this Liberal/Conservative divide, and it could also be interesting and illuminating to hold up non-Western thought as a foil as well, though that will wait for another day. I would first like to hear back from readers on any points they agree or disagree with to try to refine the prism. I would like to add that this is not intended as a scholarly work, and so many of the matters referred to have not been fact checked or foot noted. If you see something that looks incorrect please let me know. I am most interested in feedback and so will provide a message board for comment. Please feel free to forward this essay with any comments to any you feel may be interested.
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