On Relativism: 5- Pragmatism

The following is a scene from G. K. Chesterton's play "Magic" (which some say inspired Ingmar Bergman's film "The Magician"). A little clarification may be needed. Smith is a Christian Pastor, and the Doctor is a firm skeptic of all things religious. This scene takes place in The Duke of the parish's house, right after his nephew suffers from a sort of shock after he fails to explain a seemingly supernatural event.

Smith: And what harm came of believing in Apollo? And what a mass of harm may have come of not believing in Apollo? Does it never strike you that doubt can be a madness, as well be faith? That asking questions may be a disease, as well as proclaiming doctrines? You talk of religious mania! Is there no such thing as irreligious mania? Is there no such thing in the house at this moment?

Doctor: Then you think no one should question at all.

Smith: [With passion, pointing to the next room.] I think that is what comes of questioning! Why can't you leave the universe alone and let it mean what it likes? Why shouldn't the thunder be Jupiter? More men have made themselves silly by wondering what the devil it was if it wasn't Jupiter.

Doctor. [Looking at him.] Do you believe in your own religion?

Smith: [Returning the look equally steadily.] Suppose I don't: I should still be a fool to question it. The child who doubts about Santa Claus has insomnia. The child who believes has a good night's rest.

Doctor: You are a Pragmatist.

I had wanted to write this post for over a year now, & start it with that particular scene, but didn't quite know how to approach it best.

I think now I do.

What G. K. Chesterton is demonstrating here and later on in the play, is that Rev. Smith is not a believer at all, in fact he is not that much different from the skeptic doctor in that regard. He is merely a pragmatist. He believes that religion affects people positively in the practical sense, hence it should be adopted.

Now consider this:

Someone says they believe in some religious belief, and it suits them. However, they think it might not suit somebody else.

This is becoming a classical relativist statement. Now I'd like to draw your attention to two things, one of them I've always thought is clear as daylight, the other I've only noticed yesterday.

The first is what I referred to before in the second part of this series, how "A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos." as per -incidentally- G. K. Chesterton.

Which I think is pretty easy to understand; you may say that a certain work of art doesn't suit your taste, but a Religion, a Cosmic Philosophy, can't possibly be personal taste. It is about the Universe, not only about you!

Except if...

What if we sometimes think of a Religion mainly in terms of how useful it is to us?

You know, belief in heavenly reward makes people do good things, belief in hell as punishment stops people from doing bad things to each other, religion in general helps answer existential questions... etc.

That is the second implication of discussing religion as a relative idea... that I might be seeing it only in the light of what it brings to me.

If so, then the idea of "suits me, but not necessarily everybody" can be very true!

For example, it suits me to fear hell as punishment, but maybe it'll drive someone else to rebellion rather than submission to God (An atheist I've actually corresponded with wrote that they'd rather believe in no god than believe in my cruel god), therefore it does not suit them.

This means that what we're talking about now, is how said religion affects you, rather than the beliefs of the religion itself.

That is all very well of course, but that is not belief at all!

Like the Doctor said in the scene from the play, that is just pragmatism.

Believing that practical effects of a certain belief are good is not, of course, a bad thing. But believing in a certain doctrine merely for its practical effects, surely is.

It has nothing to do with how true you believe your religion is.

And I thought we were looking for the Truth... weren't we?

On Relativism: 4- Uncertainty

I have been seriously struggling with this idea for a while now...

Why is it not intellectually fashionable anymore to be certain of anything?

Maybe it's because we have gone wrong too many times, that we no longer trusts our minds enough to claim certainty?

And although that might sound reasonable, I'd like to draw your attention to what's really at stake here.

If we'll discuss certainty vs. uncertainty, truth vs. perspective, or the fixed character of virtue vs. moral relativism, we're treading on the borders of insanity and nightmares!

Anybody who's ever been a real skeptic would know what I'm talking about here, but for those who have been spared, I present this story:

(I'm copying the whole thing here rather than just linking to it because my post is too attached to that essay... you could say that this post is holding on to its sanity by copying the whole essay within its body, even if that makes it too fat!)

The Extroardinary Cabman.

By G. K. Chesterton

From: London's Daily News and Tremendous Trifles

From time to time I have introduced into this newspaper column the narration of incidents that have really occurred. I do not mean to insinuate that in this respect it stands alone among newspaper columns. I mean only that I have found that my meaning was better expressed by some practical parable out of daily life than by any other method; therefore I propose to narrate the incident of the extraordinary cabman, which occurred to me only three days ago, and which, slight as it apparently is, aroused in me a moment of genuine emotion bordering upon despair.

On the day that I met the strange cabman I had been lunching in a little restaurant in Soho in company with three or four of my best friends. My best friends are all either bottomless sceptics or quite uncontrollable believers, so our discussion at luncheon turned upon the most ultimate and terrible ideas. And the whole argument worked out ultimately to this: that the question is whether a man can be certain of anything at all. I think he can be certain, for if (as I said to my friend, furiously brandishing an empty bottle) it is impossible intellectually to entertain certainty, what is this certainty which it is impossible to entertain? If I have never experienced such a thing as certainty I cannot even say that a thing is not certain. Similarly, if I have never experienced such a thing as green I cannot even say that my nose is not green. It may be as green as possible for all I know if I have really no experience of greenness. So we shouted at each other and shook the room; because metaphysics is the only thoroughly emotional thing. And the difference between us was very deep, because it was a difference as to the object of the whole thing called broad-mindedness or the opening of the intellect. For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening¹s sake, opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid. I was doing it at the moment. And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and ever.

[Editor's Note - From other writings of Chesterton, we know that the "open-minded" friend referred to here is H.G. Wells. Also, we learn from the paragraph to follow that Hilaire Belloc was another of those present at this Soho meeting. And it is quite possible, even probable, that George Bernard Shaw was also in the party.]

Now when this argument was over, or at least when it was cut short (for it will never be over), I went away with one of my companions, who in the confusion and comparative insanity of a General Election had somehow become a member of Parliament, and I drove with him in a cab from the corner of Leicester Square to the members' entrance of the House of Commons, where the police received me with a quite unusual tolerance. Whether they thought that he was my keeper or that I was his keeper is a discussion between us which still continues.

It is necessary in this narrative to preserve the utmost exactitude of detail. After leaving my friend at the House I took the cab on a few hundred yards to an office in Victoria Street which I had to visit. I then got out and offered him more than his fare. He looked at it, but not with the surly doubt and general disposition to try it on which is not unknown among normal cabmen. But this was no normal, perhaps, no human, cabman. He looked at it with a dull and infantile astonishment, clearly quite genuine. "Do you know, sir," he said, "you've only given me 1s. 8d?" I remarked, with some surprise, that I did know it. "Now you know, sir," said he in a kindly, appealing, reasonable way, "you know that ain't the fare form Euston." "Euston," I repeated vaguely, for the phrase at that moment sounded to me like China or Arabia. "What on earth has Euston got to do with It?" "You hailed me just outside Euston Station," began the man with astonishing precision, "and then you said ..." "What in the name of Tartarus are you talking about?" I said with Christian forbearance; "I took you at the south-west corner of Leicester Square." "Leicester Square," he exclaimed, loosening a kind of cataract of scorn, "why we ain't been near Leicester Square to-day. You hailed me outside Euston Station, and you said ..." "Are you mad, or am I?" I asked with scientific calm.

I looked at the man. No ordinary dishonest cabman would think of creating so solid and colossal and creative a lie. And this man was not a dishonest cabman. If ever a human face was heavy and simple and humble, and with great big blue eyes protruding like a frog's, if ever (in short) a human face was all that a human face should be, it was the face of that resentful and respectful cabman. I looked up and down the street; an unusually dark twilight seemed to be coming on. And for one second the old nightmare of the sceptic put its finger on my nerve. What was certainty? Was anybody certain of anything? Heavens! to think of the dull rut of the sceptics who go on asking whether we possess a future life. The exciting question for real scepticism is whether we possess past life. What is a minute ago, rationalistically considered, except a tradition and a picture? The darkness grew deeper from the road. The cabman calmly gave me the most elaborate details of the gesture, the words, the complex but consistent course of action which I had adopted since that remarkable occasion when I had hailed him outside Euston Station. How did I know (my sceptical friends would say) that I had not hailed him outside Euston. I was firm about my assertion; he was quite equally firm about his. He was obviously quite as honest a man as I, and a member of a much more respectable profession. In that moment the universe and the stars swung just a hair's breadth from their balance, and the foundations of the earth were moved. But for the same reason that I believe in Democracy, for the same reason that I believe in free will, for the same reason that I believe in fixed character of virtue, the reason that could only be expressed by saying that I do not choose to be a lunatic, I continued to believe that this honest cabman was wrong, and I repeated to him that I had really taken him at the corner of Leicester Square. He began with the same evident and ponderous sincerity, "You hailed me outside Euston Station, and you said ..."

And at this moment there came over his features a kind of frightful transfiguration of living astonishment, as if he had been lit up like a lamp from the inside. "Why, I beg your pardon, sir," he said. "I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon. You took me from Leicester Square. I remember now. I beg your pardon." And with that this astonishing man let out his whip with a sharp crack at his horse and went trundling away. The whole of which interview, before the banner of St. George I swear, is strictly true.

I looked at the strange cabman as he lessened in the distance and the mists. I do not know whether I was right in fancying that although his face had seemed so honest there was something unearthly and demoniac about him when seen from behind. Perhaps he had been sent to tempt me from my adherence to those sanities and certainties which I had defended earlier in the day. In any case it gave me pleasure to remember that my sense of reality, though it had rocked for an instant, had remained erect.

The Extraordinary Cabman first appeared in London's Daily News. It was later collected in the volume of essays Tremendous Trifles.

Do you see what I mean now? If you take skepticism to its limit, and wear relativism as your crown, eventually your whole head will disappear!

And I can't stress enough how terrifying that is to me.

Maybe that's why I need Truth, and can't understand for the life of me how anybody can reduce it to a point of view.

On Relativism: 3- Doublethink

“My son, the Giant who had one head was stronger than the Giant who had two. When you grow up there will come to you other magicians who will say, ‘Γνωθε δεαυτον. Examine your soul, wretched kid. Cultivate a sense of the differentiations possible in a single psychology. Have nineteen religions suitable to different moods.’ My son, these will be wicked magicians; they will want to turn you into a two-headed Giant.” The Magician in "The Disadvantage of Having Two Heads" – G. K. Chesterton

Doublethink was introduced in George Orwell's political novel "1984", it is defined as the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs.

This form of doublethink was a very conscious act, it was used by common people & ruling party members alike, & its mechanism was driven by fear more than anything else. It was a means of survival in a totalitarian world, but also a means of maintaining that totalitarian world.

When I consider what it is that I am having trouble accepting in our ambiguous modern mentality, I find it is something remarkably like 1984's doublethink, except that maybe it was driven by different reasons.
Let me explain...

Those who strongly believe in something fight for it, that is essentially true.
And the result of which was fanatics of all sorts filling the world with wars.

What people began to suggest after ages of difference (& because of ages of difference) is that since apparently nothing seems Real to everyone, then maybe everyone's beliefs are Illusions.
So no reason to fight about it, really. It might all turn out to be wrong!
Notice that this isn't saying it is wrong, but that it may be, & this is suggested as a reason to not get too excited about it!

As a proposed solution to religious strife, that is very much like castration as a proposed solution to adultery!
To stop crimes of passion, let's kill passion!
To avoid burning others or getting burned, let's stop making fire!
The result has to be a long and terrible winter.
So people died out inside, at least towards what they believed.

Naturally, this was welcome by Atheists (especially agnostic atheists), but there were also many Theists who wanted to embrace the all-accepting nature of that pseudo-solution to religious strife, and they did.
This resulted in a generation of religious people that advocated belief in a "private" religion.
Obviously, once a religion becomes private you have no reason to publicly profess it, let alone enforce it.

But not only that, once a religion becomes private, it no longer really is a religion at all. For a religion is a belief regarding the universe, it is about the universe, not only about a person. This was elaborated on in the latest entry in this series.

But this "private" religion of a "private" universe -as far as I understand- is backed up & promoted for by Buddhism. Which was getting fashionable at the time when this relativism began to be popular.
In any case many thinkers had no real problem accepting it. It was even considered in style! It became the new "modern thinking".

But I'd like to draw your attention now to the fact that this thinking is actually doublethinking.

To believe in an admitted illusion is doublethink.

To believe in a System of Belief & yet not care if it is false is not Believing at all, it is doublethink.

To believe in a Universal Philosophy & yet believe it to be Non-Universal is doublethink.

Just like doublethink of "1984", our doublethink is done for purely practical purposes, namely neutralizing fanaticism-caused violence.

Also just like doublethink of "1984" had a special sort of language (Newspeak) invented to facilitate its manipulation of reality, our doublethink has its special sort of language as well; as C. S. Lewis put it in the first of the Screwtape Letters as the speech of a wizened old demon to a young unexperienced one:

"Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" of "false", but as "academic" or "practical", "outworn" or "contemporary", "conventional" or "ruthless". Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about."

And just like doublethink of "1984", our doublethink was made possible by promoting that Reality (with a capital R) is either non-existent or unimportant.

Or in a more subtle way, by suggesting that Reality is whatever you make it to be, reducing it to your reality. A practical reality!

And right here, Truth becomes excess baggage.

& I think we need Truth... don't we?

On Relativism: 2- Isolation

"The modern habit of saying"This is my opinion, but I may be wrong" is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong, I say that is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying "Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me" - the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon."

Introduction to the Book of Job - G. K. Chesterton



I have met many people whom after having expressed their opinion, expressed how they considered it merely their own opinion and nothing more. They said that "to them" it was right, however they didn't think that necessarily meant it applied to anyone else's life, or even that they thought it to be it Right in the absolute sense of the word.

This was uncomfortable to me at first because that meant I can't discuss with them any of those opinions. Whenever I'd say something they'd answer back "Yeah, maybe to you that's right!".
Now, what these people were actually suggesting was that they have their own private universe in which these opinions were true. In that universe I didn't exist, hence I couldn't claim that these opinions were either right or wrong.

After a few times of meeting more of those people, & a few more times where I noticed that to those people more subjects seemed to pack up their stuff & move to that private universe, it became downright annoying!

I understand how those people wanted to avoid disagreements. And that may be ok in some cases I suppose, unless they actually believe it! Then the price they pay for that mental peace becomes their sanity!

Many people became convinced that they are apart from all Mankind. In fact, they are quite convinced that all Mankind is quite apart from Mankind!
More people are moving their ideas to a place where they can hear no outside criticism, but the price of that is that they can also get no external help. They have no external point of reference to refer to when in need. A Man alone in a universe isn't a good thing, is it?
This model of thinking as you can see, may lead to an isolation of the individual, if taken seriously.

As I understand it, this translates directly into Hell. Life becomes a place of nightmares & doubts where no external help is noticed or accepted. It's an even more modern angst.

Now for many logical reasons, I'm pretty sure that this private universe people think about does not exist. We may all have different personalities. But there is one Reality and we all live in it.

I'd like to stress here that this doesn't mean that our reaction to that Reality must be the same.

However, when somebody claims that they are satisfied with some belief & that belief describes (& reflects on) that same common Reality. It has to hold true in that common Reality if it is to hold true in someone's personal life.
In other words, it is either Real to everyone or it is actually an Illusion.

In other words, it is either True, or it is not.

& I think we need Truth… Don't we?

On Relativism: 1- Individualism

First of all I would like to apologize beforehand to my friends FW & Python. I am not writing this series of entries now because of our conversations, but rather because this subject has been on my mind a lot lately... Our conversations were one result of that, this series is another.

I want to complain,

I want to complain, not only of myself, or merely of my people. But of nearly all people! For these days they are mostly forgetting to add the word "all" before the word "people".

These are my thoughts & feelings (strong feelings, actually!) on the subject of relativism.

Now, relativism is the faceless daughter of the sweeping popularity of Individualism,

Individualism as a mental school fought very hard to cut the ties people had to their ancestors & their peers. In short it tried very hard to sever all ties between all people.

In stressing that each man should choose for himself, it refused the idea of Common Sense.

In stressing that each person was free to choose whatever he wants to think (which is a noble cause, I am sure), that Men should think for themselves (Ah! if only that could come true), it also refused the use of the word "should"... which is effectively cutting its own throat!

As G. K. Chesterton put it (please don't hate me for quoting him again!) "Individualism kills individuality, precisely because individualism has to be an 'ism' quite as much as Communism or Calvinism.".

Meaning that for Individualism to become a mental institution, people had to belong to it. & when people did belong to it, they no longer thought for themselves anymore. Instead they were once again united under a thought-out idea, and this time it happened to revolve around the self.

"So far from really remaining a separate self, the man became part of a communal mass of selfishness." (conclusion of Chesterton's statement from which above quote was taken)

Which has been proven historically to be an inevitable outcome.

Men will always gather around a flag. To try to tell them to never gather around a flag is useless. The question then arises as to what flag Men should gather around.

Now concerning "should"s, if course there has to be a "should"!

Individualism (with the help of relativism) has led us to believe that we humans are all so different, and that it is quite natural (& healthy) for us to adopt completely different & mostly opposite views on every major & minor subject. It has stressed that this is perfectly OK.

Of course nobody would object to the observations upon which this idea is based, but I will strongly object to closing our eyes to the other plain observations, which show that we are all still humans!

Individualism values Logic above all else, & so implies a common set of rules for evaluating situations & standards. So at least Logic should be common.

But in addition to Logic, we all have the same needs, desires & weaknesses, don't we?

We all are pursuing pretty much the same things & we all are pretty much failing to get them! Now doesn't that mean anything at all?

How have we been led to believe that we are so terribly different?

The ancient thinkers noticed first how Nature was full of goups of things that are very similar. All horses belong to Horse, all men belong to Man. They argued to which extent that made them similar (and maybe even connected). Hiraclites, Plato & others devoted great attention to the problem of universals. They understood that to decide what we mean by Man is to decide whether we can know anything about Man.

It's drawing the line between the objective & the subjective.

It's drawing the border around Truth.

And I think we need Truth... Don't we?