In my earlier post 'Life, the Universe and Everything' I outlined my opinions on why people are superstitious. The inherent moral void we perceive in reality, I contend, is responsible for us filling that void with anything from Christianity to Hinduism to Scientology. Why do we do this? In short, boredom, we can't deal with our own meaningless as without any purpose in our lives we're incapable of surviving. Ideology at least deludes us into thinking we have some kind of grander purpose, whether that ideology is religion, nationalism, racism or simply being an avid football fan. Somebody I agree with on this subject is Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg who said the following on religion-
"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. "
To be fair though, I'd change this quote slightly to-
"With or without an ideology, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; and for good people to do evil and evil people to do good—that takes ideology."
Overall the point is that delusional, non factual belief systems, including religions, can cause people to abandon reasoning and perform terrible or wonderful things. Weinberg then goes onto say almost the exact same thing I've been saying, and I swear I only found this quote recently-
"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless."
Exactly, ergo we become delusional ideologues to try and make it meaningful. It seems this understanding of things may be on the right track if a Nobel laureate agrees with it. But now we're going to go one step deeper, what should we do with this newfound understanding if it is indeed true?
The first option is to follow the advice of someone who can put things far more eloquently than I, George Carlin, one of the greatest comedians ever, in this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o.
In case you don't watch it, he basically outlines how ludicrous religions are, and then gives us this advice -
'So I've been praying to Joe for about a year now. And I noticed something. I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't. Same as God, 50-50. Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe, the wishing well and the rabbit's foot, same as the Mojo Man, same as the Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles, it's all the same: 50-50. So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself.'
Is this wise? Should a good nihilist choose to let himself be brainwashed, assuming that someone can even make that choice? This also brings us back to the old argument over whether it is wise, based solely on reason and not on faith, to believe in God. This is summed up in Pascal's Wager which states that to believe in God brings infinite reward if he (why not 'it', seriously?) is real and little downside if he isn't, while not believing in God would bring infinite suffering if he is real and little downside if he isn't.
The Wager seems to be as clear-cut as 2+2=4. But there are two main criticisms of it. Firstly, the fact that there are many religions and even variations within religions (are any two people's religious beliefs exactly the same? For instance by translating the Bible from Latin into English aren't you surely changing its meaning slightly?) and no obvious way to choose the 'true' religion. Secondly, what part of making a logical decision to simply save your own skin could possibly be worth getting into heaven for? Or for that matter, what part of simply swallowing your parent's beliefs when you were a child and never taking the time to question them makes you worthy of avoiding hell? Surely its just as likely that Jesus, if he was indeed the son of God, was actually testing our reasoning and intends to reward those that have rejected his ludicrous message of faith, as it is that he will reward those who have chosen to follow him by abandoning reason and relying on faith instead.
A further criticism of religion I'd like to add is the sheer impracticality of wholly abiding by most religions. As Jesus said, 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone', surely by the Bible's standards we're all going to hell? (I actually find this thought rather comforting, it has a certain inevitability about it that makes it pointless worrying at all).
So trying to become religious doesn't seem to be much of an option, what's plan B? The rejection of ideologies, including religions, entirely? So what purpose to life is substituted?
Lets examine two people who chose option B. What do Karl Marx and Ayn Rand have in common?
They both founded new ideologies based specifically on, if still the basic tenants that ideologies including religions have relied upon for centuries, a rejection of the notion of a God and any kind of faith and the replacing of getting into heaven with the goal of creating a utopia here on Earth.
Karl Marx may have championed communism and Ayn Rand libertarianism, two economic and social systems that couldn't be further apart on the issue of concentration of authority, but both of them agreed there was no God. Aside from that however, both chose very different ways of replacing him.
Karl Marx, probably still a fan of Christ's message though not a follower, foresaw an idealistic world where, basically, everyone cooperated with each other all the time. Competition (A.K.A. freedom, liberty or imperialism) was strictly taboo. This mirrors Christ's original message of 'love thy neighbour'. Except that Communism was an abysmal failure wherever attempts were made to implement it fully. Less socialist policies however, are often successful (like universal suffrage, healthcare and education) as they strike a good balance between providing equality (an even playing field and so preventing the strong from destroying their rivals instead of fairly competing with them) while still allowing competition. But economics is a different subject entirely to morality.
A possible reason for the failure of outright communist systems was that Marx tried to divorce the idea of loving thy fellow man unconditionally with the faith-based belief in God. Without thinking that they might get into heaven if they continued to act nice to each other according to biblical principles and in the absence of other deterrents to acting malevolently, people quickly lost their motivation to strive for success and equality. Facing this rebellion the Soviet Union began cracking down on dissent with astonishing ruthlessness from its very earliest days, and by the 1960s this combination of long-running state-sponsored terror and economic stagnation had brought the country to near collapse. A few years later Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and soon, combined with the drain of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and possibly outside pressures, the USSR collapsed into turmoil. Secular humanism in its purest form, it seems, doesn't work, and inevitably, as far as history shows, leads to brutal totalitarianism of a kind even more ruthless than the heartless despotisms it has replaced.
As for Ayn Rand, she in my opinion took things a step further than Marx, and there is no doubt that the nightmares of Communism paved the way for the modern neoliberalism she was one of the strongest proponents of. She understood that you couldn't divorce devotion to a fictional God with humanism, for without the former the latter becomes illogical. She named her specific ideology 'Objectivism'.
So what does Objectivism mean? It's the opposite of 'subjective', as in 'of a subject' (i.e. a person). A subjective way of thinking is 'how someone thinks about something', an objective way of thinking is 'how something is/should be thought about'. So if someone gives their opinion on something it is subjective, while a statement of fact is objective.
But can anything be truly objective? Aren't we all different beings with different experiences and slightly different ways of thinking about things? This returns us to the original problem, the reason we delude ourselves is because the truth is impossible to accept. This also couples with the fact that we're emotional creatures, not mindless, immortal robots. So just to what extent can someone unabashedly accept that there are no inherent moral standards and reject everything but logic.
Ayn Rand it seems, had a fair crack at it. Source: http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm
In 1928 a man named William Hickman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Edward_Hickman, carried out one of the most brutal murders in American history. He kidnapped, raped and dismembered the body of a 12 year old girl named Marion Parker and when her father paid the $1500 ransom he dumped the remains of her body on the street right in front of her father while driving away. He was later arrested and sentenced to hang, dying in the gallows in 1928. What did Ayn Rand think of him?
Hickman famously said after being arrested that "What is good for me is right". Ayn Rand enthusiastically described this as "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard". She goes on to say that Hickman "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should."
Hickman clearly remained an inspiration to Ayn Rand throughout her writing career. She said of the main protagonist of her book The Fountainhead, Howard Roark: He "has learned long ago, with his first consciousness, two things which dominate his entire attitude toward life: his own superiority and the utter worthlessness of the world."
In possibly her starkest statement she said Man "is man only so long as he functions in accordance with the nature of a rational being. When he chooses to function otherwise, he is no longer man. There is no proper name for the thing which he then becomes ... When a man chooses to act in a sub-human manner, it is no longer proper for him to survive nor to be happy."
So what does Ayn Rand put in the place of our delusions of meaning?
Hedonism, in as pure a form as possible. She is doing one better than Karl Marx here, not only is she saying morality is a delusion that doesn't exist, but we shouldn't even try and emulate it. However, while millions of innocents may have died in the communist's quest to create their socialist utopia, Ayn Rand's side of the political isle is unfortunately just as guilty of genocide. Communism may have killed 100 million people during the 20th century, but total deaths due to war and genocide that century totalled about 200 million. What killed the other 100 million people? In a word - capitalism (broadly defined as any ruthless seeking of personal profit, so this includes colonialism, imperialism and fascism). The Belgian Congo, the World Wars and all manner of ethnic and religious conflicts were the tragedies that launched communism in the first place. What a vicious ideological cycle.
Taking a look at fascist regimes such as Nazi Germany, they in a way very closely resemble the totalitarian socialist societies they so dearly hated. Both kinds of dictatorships were driven not just by typical greed, but by an ideological agenda that in their eyes reduced their victims to the status of being sub-human. You could perhaps divide the entire history of ideological conflict, including all religious wars, into two groups, the hedonists and the utilitarianists. Groups like Muslims, Colonialists and Fascists tend to fall into the former category and Christians, Buddhists and Communists into the latter. Regardless of which side they were on, the more devout their ideological beliefs, then generally speaking the worse the conflicts they initiated.
So, it seems the key decision we have to make isn't really what religion we believe in or god we worship, its whether we're angels or demons. Religions are merely childish fantasies destined to collapse once attacked by sufficient logic compared to the grander ideological debate. Do we really have to pick a side to give our lives meaning or not?
While World War Two saw an epic showdown between communist and fascist regimes, there was of course a third faction that disliked both - Democracies. Where on the ideological spectrum do these complex political systems sit? Well hopefully near the middle, in fact as close to the middle as possible. The power of corporations should be kept in balance with that of unions. Employers with employees. The state with the individual. Just as the Earth orbits the sun in an ideal 'Goldilocks zone' that is neither too cold nor too hot, the most successful societies throughout history have typically steered clear of ideological extremes. On the right, ruthless tyrants like Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler have quickly built immensely powerful empires only for them to collapse almost overnight, in historical terms. On the left, ultra-religious medieval Christian Europe and the Communist Soviet Union remained locked in dark ages for generations. Societies need to be dynamic, yet stable enough that specialization in the economy can occur to a fair extent.
So to get back to my initial premise, how should people act to give their lives meaning? Left, right or centre?
I'd say, and have tried to abide by this premise for some time now, that the centre is by far the best place to hang out, and this is probably not as boring as you'd think. It is for instance, much trickier to determine exactly where the centre is. Heading to the left or right is easily done, just keep heading there. It’s not like ruthlessness or compassion have set limits, are they not obviously asymptotes? The centre however has no set point, and it can be very hard to determine who and what lies on either side of it. Is Barack Obama a left or right leaning politician for instance? If you ask your average Teabagger they'll adamantly proclaim his socialist tendencies, but if you ask any real socialists they'll say he's just as beholden to corporate America as Bush was. This is what makes being a centrist politician interesting, its more challenging, and thus potentially more meaningful. Bill Clinton, setting up camp in the Whitehouse just after the end of the long ideological confrontation that was the Cold War, talked of a 'third way' in politics besides liberalism and conservatism. A practical middle ground midway between the extremes and the genocidal behaviour they have so often precipitated.
So what's it gonna be? Rand, Marx or Clinton?
