This post might seem a bit controversial on first reading, but controversy is not always a bad thing. (Just as how war is often a horrible, misguided practice, it can also affirm to us that there are ideals worth fighting and dying for.) And it's my blog, so I can write whatever I want! (No one reads it anyway; and the ones who do read it I hope are open-minded, and that they embrace the idea of ideas.)
I recently upgraded my iPod touch's OS to OS 4.0. It allows my iPod to perform a whole bunch of cool new functions, such as grouping applications into folders, and allowing my iPod to receive push notifications while in Sleep mode. All welcome things.
It also allows me to access Apple's new eBook reader, and to download content from their online book store. One pleasant surprise about their book store is that they offer hundreds upon hundreds of public domain works entirely for free! This pleases me, because I would never imagine buying a new novel to read on my iPod. The screen is just too tiny (though that doesn't make the text tiny. The text is scalable in size to suit your eye.) However, I'm more than happy to download free classic books that are pretty much impossible to find at your local bookstore.
If you like, you can download the entire works of Edgar Allen Poe, or Rudyard Kipling, or Dante's Inferno...there is so much public domain content out there to explore.
It is pretty much for this reason alone that I would love to get an iPad, so I could read these books on a more comfortably sized screen. (Are these public domain books also available on the Kindle? The Kindle is so much cheaper...)
One of the authors I've been downloading a lot of work by is Gilbert Keith Chesterton, who I've mentioned here and there on this blog before. He is another writer I've discovered on what I call "The Chain."
What is the Chain? It is when one writer leads you to another. When I was younger, I learned about the writing of Neil Gaiman, which I consumed with such rapidity and ferocity it was as if his writing were relieving me of a starvation that I didn't know I previously possessed. It is no exaggeration to say that his writing changed my life forever.
From Neil Gaiman I learned about the writer Gene Wolfe, and so I moved on to his writing. I think I've now read most of what Gene Wolfe has written, and once again, he's changed my life forever.
Now through Gene Wolfe (and also Neil Gaiman) I've moved on to G. K. Chesterton, a writer who was so prolific in his time, it would be hard to beat today. He wrote mostly from the turn of the 20th century, up until the 1930s, when he died.
He wrote some wonderful, often hilariously satirical fantastic fiction, but also wrote on a wide range of controversial topics of his day and age.
(Perhaps one of his most famous quotes, a quote worth living a life by, is this: "Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist; but they tell us that dragons can be beaten.")
He wrote a lot about Theology and Morality (and how the two are NOT the same), and criticized a lot of what he saw as the great failures of his society.
And always he used logical argument as his primary tool.
Anyway, I was up late last night reading on my little iPod his book "Heretics". This was a book primarily meant to explore a serious problem he saw with the modernity of turn of the century Europe. (He followed this book with one called "Orthodoxy", which is where he offers a number of solutions to this problem.)
As I was reading, I found myself in agreement with him, and could see that many of the problems he spoke about over a hundred years ago are still relevant today.
He argues that in the modern society, people act as if a person's philosophy about the universe does not matter, when it is in fact the most important thing about a person to consider. To explain how this is so, he uses the example of the heretic and the orthodox.
Back when people were burned or tortured as being heretics, the heretic could not imagine describing him or herself as being heretical. To the heretic, it was the rest of the world that had become heretical. If the heretic could stand by anything, it was that they stood for orthodoxy. The heretic did not rebel against his society, it was his society that rebelled against him. Even the anarchist planting a bomb to kill innocents would feel that, if anything, he is standing up for truth and orthodox. After all, a person does not fight with the whole force of his being to support what he believes to be a lie.
But nowadays, people take pride in being labeled a heretic, as if to be a heretic is to mean being right, and to be orthodox is to mean being wrong. Chesterton argues that the only explanation for this is that people no longer care about whether they are philosophically right. That none of it even matters.
There is a quote that I love. It reads:
"It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter..."
This is a dangerous way of thinking for a society to build itself on, and I think we can see the results all around us. Without serious argument and discussion about what the role of the human is in this universe, we effectively leave ourselves blind to what ultimate goal we should be pursuing. We embrace the idea of being efficient, but with no understanding of what we need to be efficient for. We leave ourselves with a very clear definition of what is hell, but no dream of the heaven we need to rise to. As Chesterton says, "What is the good of begetting a man until we have settled what is the good of being a man?"
He uses the clever example of Oscar Wilde to show how ridiculous a society without a driven desire to differentiate what is right and what is wrong can become.
"In the fifteenth century men cross-examined and tormented a man because he preached some immoral attitude; in the nineteenth century we feted and flattered Oscar Wilde because he preached such an attitude, and then we broke his heart in penal servitude because he carried it out. It may be a question which of the two methods was the more cruel; there can be no kind of question which was the more ludicrous. The age of the Inquisition has not at least the disgrace of having produced a society which made an idol of the very same man for preaching the very same things which it made him a convict for practising."
So philosophy matters. Arguing about what is right and wrong matters. We shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that it is all just a question of subjectivity.
A similar problem I see in our world today is what I guess could be characterized as "the oneness of religion." There is a widespread conviction that somehow all religions are really not that different from each other.
But to say this, I think, dismisses the importance of religion. It delegates it to the same level of importance as a person's hobby.
To say that all religions are pretty much the same is to simply shirk from discussion on the matter. It is saying "this discussion is far too difficult, so let's not bother having it."
Even the atheist who rallies against religion, claiming it to be as awful as any criminal act, and that all traces of it must be wiped clean from the Earth, at least does not make the mistake in thinking that what a man thinks about the meaning of the universe doesn't matter.
And we don't have the discussion not because we are reaching for some great good, but because we wish to avoid the evils and dangers that come with the discussion. But does that make the discussion not worth having? Should the only good we do on this Earth be out of our fear of the consequences of evil? Or should the good that we do instead be for the pursuit of an idealistic perfection? Which of the two is the more wholesome way to live?
But in order to live that wholesome way, we must have serious discussion about what the idealistic perfection is.
I think there is a problem with our world today where we are afraid to tell anyone else that what they may think or believe is wrong. It can be very dangerous to think that our existence in this world is a purely subjective experience, where we may believe what we wish, without fear of criticism. That can lead a person to believe that there is no such thing as consequences. What people think or believe MATTERS. To discuss these things, and to tell someone that they are wrong, does not mean you view that person, or their beliefs with derision or hatred, it means you are interested in discovering truth.
To simply say that a person may believe what he believes, and I have no right to criticize it, means that you believe truth to be a trivial thing of no importance.
An islamic extremist may commit great evil by setting off a suicide bomb and killing innocent people, but at least he doesn't make the mistake of thinking that his philosophy doesn't matter. In fact, to continue viewing the world in a purely materialistic sense, without giving any serious thought as to what it means to be right, we only ensure that such violent acts continue to happen. The extremist will continue believing in a grievous lie, because no one has bothered to discover the truth, and then tell him about it.
I myself have fallen into this trap on many occasions. I myself am often afraid of debate and argument. I myself am afraid of being proven wrong, or of being asked to defend, with logic, what I believe.
But I am trying to get better. I am trying to define my life by the light, not by the dark.
There is a wonderful parable that Chesterton writes at the end of the first chapter of Heretics, where he states that it is his intention to go back to the beginning and discuss the fundamentals a society should build itself upon. He writes:
"Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good-" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, today, tomorrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark."
