A Predictable Life

Some abbreviated passages from Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined:

Today the Enlightenment is mentioned with a sneer. “Critical theorists” on the left blame it for the disasters of the 20^th century; theoconservatives in the Vatican and the American intellectual right long to replace its tolerant secularism with the alleged moral clarity of medieval Catholicism. …This colossal amnesia and ingratitude is possible because of the natural whitewashing of history that we saw in chapter 1, in which the reality behind the atrocities of yesteryear is consigned to the memory hole and is remembered only in bland idioms and icons. If the opening of this chapter has been graphic (the history of torture), it is only to remind you of the realities of the era that the Enlightenment put to an end.

Human sacrifice died out…one possibility is that the combination of  a literate elite, the rudiments of historical scholarship, and contacts with neighboring societies gives people the means to figure out that the bloodthirsty-god hypothesis is incorrect. …Another possibility is that a more affluent and predictable life erodes people’s fatalism and elevates their valuation of other people’s lives.

Ah, the importance of accurate history…which might help those “christians” railing against islam as the sole proprietor of terror with their amnesia.

A predictable life, perhaps one where you know where your next meal is coming from and know that you won't be killed from a traffic stop, erodes fatalism and encourages sympathy and ergo, the decline of violence. 

What kind of history are you remembering?

What kinds of policies are you supporting?

If Buddy Miles Is Wrong, I Don’t Want To Be Right.

One night while watching the Colbert Report with my wife I said that Colbert is a national treasure. And he is.

But I want to riff on something I uncovered during his interview with Bill Maher.

Now it was clearly in jest when Colbert intimated that Maher should come back to the Catholic church.

 “Come on back, Bill. The door is always open. Golden ticket right before you, all you have to do is humble yourself before the presence of the Lord, and admit there are things greater than you in the universe that you do not understand, and salvation awaits you,” Colbert said. “Take Pascal’s wager: If you’re wrong, you’re an idiot, but if I’m right, you’re going to hell.”

It is this, or rather these “greater than you” and “salvation” ideas that I want to flush out a little more. And put in reference to the recent Paris attacks. (Oh and you might check the blog for Pascal.)

Attaching oneself to something greater than you can have profound effects. Alcoholics and drug addicts can cite it as part of their recovery, people can find their calling, etc. 

But isn’t it obvious that there are two sides to that coin? Can’t the profound effects also be negative, as evidenced by terrorism in general and suicide bombings specifically?

Stop. This is not an indictment of Islam. This is skepticism of the idea that accepting something greater than you is always a good thing.

The directions from the voice of something greater than yourself can tell you to do good things like kick alcohol or drugs and support your children but it can also, as George Carlin once quipped, tell you to take a shit on the salad bar at Wendy’s, or as evidenced by 9/11 and Paris, murder people.

Next.

Salvation. How do we know which people are getting it wrong? How do we say that the message from one god is right and the other wrong?

Perhaps this is what Maher and Dennett and Dawkins and Harris (and Hitchens) are getting at; maybe we don’t (gasp) need something greater than ourselves to get by in the world? Maybe we might be a little nicer to our neighbors if we had no supposed moral authority to cite? Maybe we’d be nicer to each other if we recognized that, along with Nietzsche, we are “all too human?” Maybe if salvation was earth/time bound, we would appreciate our finiteness (finitude if you prefer) more and accept at the end of the day that we’ve got to live together.

If Buddy Miles is wrong, I don’t want to be right.