May 29, 2007
Notes from the Confused on Seeking Truth
I’ve been reading politics again. A vice, really, and one my wife detests, because every time I read politics I come away upset and stay that way for hours as I think and snarl through the implications of what I have read. My own political beliefs are mostly what I was taught through A Beka: strongly pro-Republican, very strongly anti-liberal, pro-US, pro-Israel ... etc. Rather common, actually, at least among people brought up in or converted to a conservative evangelical worldview.
My political thinking is ... confused. Very confused. Mostly because I’m no longer as certain of my basic political beliefs as I was ... as I’m supposed to be. I’m not really sure what’s what anymore, who’s right or who’s wrong. It happened because I read things that upset me: read leftist writers who wrote things I at least partially agreed with, or couldn’t refute. Even more confusing, I read rightist people who disagreed with me. I kept running into “good people” who believed differently from me. Strongly. There were supposed to be three kinds of people: the good, the bad, and the deluded. And I was supposed to be able to tell the difference!
Granted, I could classify all the people who disagree with me as “evil” or “deluded.” It’s quite a temptation, to tell the truth. Evil people must be fought, deluded people persuaded or ignored. That’s what I tried to do. But part of the code of fighting people (or persuading them) is to first give them a chance to defend themselves in their own words. I made the fatal mistake of listening. And now I sit on the sidelines of the great wars, arguing (mostly with myself) about which side I’m supposed to be on, which turns on the question of which side is right.
I have at least made up my mind on the most critical of questions—whether it’s possible to be right about anything. (At least, my mind is currently made up and I don’t foresee it changing ... I’m pretty sure of that decision :) ) And there I agree wholeheartedly with my traditional training: yes, at least one side can be right. Even my training never claimed to be perfect, or to have the whole truth. It may have acted like it, but it didn’t claim it. Truth exists, or there is nothing whatsoever worth talking about and no-one (not even oneself) to talk with and no means of talking. And since there seems to be a great deal to talk about and a great many people to talk with, I throw my suspicion on the side of the “truth exists,” adding the caveat that I’m not certain that truth can be certainly known: meaning I’m not sure if a person can ever be sure he or she is right about anything. I’m still thinking on that one, and I’m edging toward a belief that valid certainty is impossible for most things. Like politics.
So I believe that somebody is at least partially right about something: I just have to find out who and what that is. Actually, I think most people are mostly right about most things. If they weren’t, then most of the things they advised or did wouldn’t mostly work. Working is no guarantee of truth, but I think it’s a guarantee of some truth. Things work (or seem to work) for real reasons, and the reasons for which people think that they work might be related.
On another occasion where I mused about the nature of truths, I offered a few guidelines. It seems a good way to end this post: in light of the above musings, that I am confused about truth, but certain that it exists (though uncertain about whether I can be certain I know it), I (try to) use the following two principles as “guides” in my search for truth: beware of elites, and beware of beliefs that make little or no provision for a “noble enemy.”
Beware of elites: this is coming from an elitist; someone who certainly used to be very elitist and almost certainly still is. I don’t trust elites because they are:
- sure that they’re right
- smug in their superior understanding of the world
- condescending to the “great unwashed” that don’t share their exalted wisdom
I don’t like elitism because it goes hand it hand with arrogance, and I especially don’t like either in myself. And I’ve found and find it over and over, try to dig it out, and immediately feel proud of my humility and strength of character. It seems strange: you could call it “the temptation of truth”: knowing (or thinking you know) something seems to immediately invite pride in knowing it.
That’s not to say that elites can’t be right: they usually are, to a large degree. That’s why they’re elites! :) But be suspicious of their being right, because in accepting the truth they’ve discovered, you run the risk of becoming one of them and losing truths they disapprove of.
Beware of codes that make no provision for the “noble enemy”: I say this because it was my discovery of the “noble enemy”—people who were good, decent people who disagreed with me that prompted my current uncertainty. Whatever truth I eventually come to accept had better have a solid place to explain this phenomenon, and a suitable place for them to occupy, or I won’t accept it.
I guess that’s my problem—I struggle with disagreeing with “good people.” It’s not supposed to happen! All the good people are supposed to agree with me about all the important stuff! But they don’t!!
At the moment, the lack of a provision for a “noble enemy” is one of my chief points of conflict with the liberal left. I know that there are good people on the Christian evangelical right; heavens, I was raised with them. Until I find a belief that has a home for them, beyond the “evil, Bible-thumping witch-hunters” box or the “stupid, deluded, mindless sheep” box, I’ll keep looking. I’m as determined to keep a place of honor for the noble people who taught me as I am to find a place of honor for the noble enemies I’ve encountered.
Yet a third principle has occurred to me (doubtless there are others, but this one I want to mention). I guess the reason it didn’t immediately jump out at me is that it was a principle I started off with, not one I acquired along the way. And that principle is this: I am convinced of the existence of evil (and good, but not too many people seem to dispute me on that one) and of enemies. This cannot all end in hugs and kisses and everyone agreeing to get along: there are some evil ideas and evil practices and evil thoughts and people who serve and delight in evil, and they must be fought (hopefully, ultimately destroyed). I won’t accept a code without evil; the world just doesn’t make sense without it. Granted, the world may not make sense, but if it doesn’t, then it and everything in it doesn’t matter (That which does not make sense does not matter? I may need to think about that. Can sense add up to nonsense?), and if that’s the case, this document being, to a large extent, concerned about the world, why are you reading this?
