I read a review of Steven Pinker's latest, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress on NRO, and realized that I ought to read the book. The reason? That Pinker went out after religion.
OK, I said to myself: so what is Pinker's religion? Fortunately, he answers the question on the first page of the book, by answering a question put to him by a young woman: "Why should I live?" Says he:
This uses the word "reason" in its original pre-Greek sense, as a rationalization of your convictions. Yeah, Stevie, reason wasn't invented back in the Enlightenment with dear old Kant and his "Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical Sketch." Reason is an integral part of all religion, pal. That's why we sneer today at Catholic theologians back in the day arguing about how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin. Or why the Jewish Torah typically features on each page a few verses in large type surrounded by tons of rabbinical argumentative commentary in small type.
So, I get it. Steven Pinker believes in basic human flourishing. So do I. He believes in "sympathy," or what we might call social animals. So do I.
So the difference between him and me is that I believe that my convictions, my sense of the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, is my religion. And he does not. Because, I suppose, he imagines himself above all that.
He is wrong, of course. He is wrong because nobody knows the meaning of life, the universe, and everything -- if it has a meaning. But we humans cannot live without an answer to the question: "why should I live," and that answer, always and everywhere, is provided by religion.
To answer the religious question, some people immerse themselves in books, or go off into a wilderness to meditate, or "go into isolation" with Nietzsche's Zarathustra. But most people get their religion prepackaged from a church or a sect; they prefer it that way. Steven Pinker seems to want the prepackaged religion of the Kants and similar folk who wrote in the mid-to-late 18th century. And for him that has nothing to do with "the 19th-century Romantic belief in mystical forces, laws, dialectics, struggles, unfoldings, destinies, ages of man, and evolutionary forces that propel mankind ever upwards towards utopia."
OK. So the Romantics were half-crazed. But their basic religion was that Reason and Enlightenment could not be the whole story: it did not exhaust the possibilities of the meaning of life, the universe and everything. There had to be something else. But what is that "something else?" That's a good question, Senator.
The point is that nothing is carved in stone -- except what Jung carved in stone at his lakeside retreat at Bollingen -- and all our convictions that we protect with a bodyguard of reason are probably wrong, at least in part.
For instance, Pinker clearly thinks that material progress is a good thing, provided we protect against environmental damage, blah, blah, blah, because it promotes "life, health, knowledge, freedom, abundance, safety, beauty, and peace." And little children get to live, and people are not enslaved and women are not patriarched etc.
But the environmentalists correctly point out that this cannot go on forever. They tell us that we will run out of fossil fuels. And they are right, except it won't be next week. Or that we will "climate change" the Earth and destroy the planet. And they may be right. But it won't happen for a century or so, whatever the fake models tell us. Meanwhile, let us wive and thrive and survive, for tomorrow we die.
Here is something even more dreadful. I read years ago someone who said that the human use of energy, increasing at about 3 percent per year, will eventually exhaust all the energy in the universe -- in a few thousand years. Why, because 1.03**3000 equals 3 times 10**38, or 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Which is quite a lot. See, on the notion of entropy, we are stealing energy from other folk -- the animals we eat, the crops we grow, the fossil fuels we mine, the nuclear energy we generate. And it will all come to an end some day. If our notion of entropy is correct.
You can see that the scientists' notion of entropy has a lot in common with religious notions of the End of the World, Armageddon, and the Millennium.
Steven Pinker's answer to that good little girl is correct, as far as it goes. Wiving, thriving, surviving. Good idea. Social cooperation with other humans. Good idea. But, it might all turn out to be a dreadful mistake some time in the future. What he proposes, in my view, is a pretty decent religious testament, based on what we know today about life, the universe, and everything, only he lacks the intelligence and wisdom to realize that his "reason" is really religion. The missing link in his religious testament is that we do not know what we will know in the future. What we learn in the future may make us completely change our minds about what constitutes the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. And that may be too late for some people. Or all people. Or everything on the planet.
It makes complete sense that today's religion for educated people like Steven Pinker is different from the religion of chaps like Martin Luther half a millennium ago, and Luther's religion is different from the religions put together in the Axial Age three thousand years ago, and the Axial Age religions are different from the religion of the Greeks of the Iliad camping on the shore before the city of Troy. When we develop new knowledge then we change our religion.
I believe that Steven Pinker is a man stuck in the past, still infatuated with the religion of the Enlightenment and its superstitions while I have grown out of that benighted age, having read as much as I could of people that have lived since the Enlightenment and have produced credible critiques of the religion of the Enlightenment.
And what I have concluded with my infallible reason and intellect is that we need a religion for chaps like Steven Pinker that includes as a central doctrine a sense of compassion and understanding for all the folk that aren't quite as intelligent and creative as Steven Pinker.
Because, of course, I am right and he is wrong. And these are my reasons...
OK, I said to myself: so what is Pinker's religion? Fortunately, he answers the question on the first page of the book, by answering a question put to him by a young woman: "Why should I live?" Says he:
In the very act of asking that question, you are seeking reasons for your convictions, and so you are committed to reason as the means to discover and justify what is important to you. And there are so many reasons to live!And the reasons? The "potential to flourish" and the "sense of sympathy." So,
[Y]ou have the responsibility to provide for others what you expect for yourself... life, health, knowledge, freedom, abundance, safety, beauty, and peace. History shows that when we sympathize with others and apply our ingenuity to improving the human condition, we can make progress in doing so, and you can help to continue that progress.So, using Cathy Newman dialectics, what he is saying that if you have convictions around notions like flourishing and sympathy, then the reasons for your convictions are that they make a better world for you and everyone else.
This uses the word "reason" in its original pre-Greek sense, as a rationalization of your convictions. Yeah, Stevie, reason wasn't invented back in the Enlightenment with dear old Kant and his "Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical Sketch." Reason is an integral part of all religion, pal. That's why we sneer today at Catholic theologians back in the day arguing about how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin. Or why the Jewish Torah typically features on each page a few verses in large type surrounded by tons of rabbinical argumentative commentary in small type.
So, I get it. Steven Pinker believes in basic human flourishing. So do I. He believes in "sympathy," or what we might call social animals. So do I.
So the difference between him and me is that I believe that my convictions, my sense of the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, is my religion. And he does not. Because, I suppose, he imagines himself above all that.
He is wrong, of course. He is wrong because nobody knows the meaning of life, the universe, and everything -- if it has a meaning. But we humans cannot live without an answer to the question: "why should I live," and that answer, always and everywhere, is provided by religion.
To answer the religious question, some people immerse themselves in books, or go off into a wilderness to meditate, or "go into isolation" with Nietzsche's Zarathustra. But most people get their religion prepackaged from a church or a sect; they prefer it that way. Steven Pinker seems to want the prepackaged religion of the Kants and similar folk who wrote in the mid-to-late 18th century. And for him that has nothing to do with "the 19th-century Romantic belief in mystical forces, laws, dialectics, struggles, unfoldings, destinies, ages of man, and evolutionary forces that propel mankind ever upwards towards utopia."
OK. So the Romantics were half-crazed. But their basic religion was that Reason and Enlightenment could not be the whole story: it did not exhaust the possibilities of the meaning of life, the universe and everything. There had to be something else. But what is that "something else?" That's a good question, Senator.
The point is that nothing is carved in stone -- except what Jung carved in stone at his lakeside retreat at Bollingen -- and all our convictions that we protect with a bodyguard of reason are probably wrong, at least in part.
For instance, Pinker clearly thinks that material progress is a good thing, provided we protect against environmental damage, blah, blah, blah, because it promotes "life, health, knowledge, freedom, abundance, safety, beauty, and peace." And little children get to live, and people are not enslaved and women are not patriarched etc.
But the environmentalists correctly point out that this cannot go on forever. They tell us that we will run out of fossil fuels. And they are right, except it won't be next week. Or that we will "climate change" the Earth and destroy the planet. And they may be right. But it won't happen for a century or so, whatever the fake models tell us. Meanwhile, let us wive and thrive and survive, for tomorrow we die.
Here is something even more dreadful. I read years ago someone who said that the human use of energy, increasing at about 3 percent per year, will eventually exhaust all the energy in the universe -- in a few thousand years. Why, because 1.03**3000 equals 3 times 10**38, or 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Which is quite a lot. See, on the notion of entropy, we are stealing energy from other folk -- the animals we eat, the crops we grow, the fossil fuels we mine, the nuclear energy we generate. And it will all come to an end some day. If our notion of entropy is correct.
You can see that the scientists' notion of entropy has a lot in common with religious notions of the End of the World, Armageddon, and the Millennium.
Steven Pinker's answer to that good little girl is correct, as far as it goes. Wiving, thriving, surviving. Good idea. Social cooperation with other humans. Good idea. But, it might all turn out to be a dreadful mistake some time in the future. What he proposes, in my view, is a pretty decent religious testament, based on what we know today about life, the universe, and everything, only he lacks the intelligence and wisdom to realize that his "reason" is really religion. The missing link in his religious testament is that we do not know what we will know in the future. What we learn in the future may make us completely change our minds about what constitutes the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. And that may be too late for some people. Or all people. Or everything on the planet.
It makes complete sense that today's religion for educated people like Steven Pinker is different from the religion of chaps like Martin Luther half a millennium ago, and Luther's religion is different from the religions put together in the Axial Age three thousand years ago, and the Axial Age religions are different from the religion of the Greeks of the Iliad camping on the shore before the city of Troy. When we develop new knowledge then we change our religion.
I believe that Steven Pinker is a man stuck in the past, still infatuated with the religion of the Enlightenment and its superstitions while I have grown out of that benighted age, having read as much as I could of people that have lived since the Enlightenment and have produced credible critiques of the religion of the Enlightenment.
And what I have concluded with my infallible reason and intellect is that we need a religion for chaps like Steven Pinker that includes as a central doctrine a sense of compassion and understanding for all the folk that aren't quite as intelligent and creative as Steven Pinker.
Because, of course, I am right and he is wrong. And these are my reasons...
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