When I was studying in UCSD, I noticed an unsettling trend which has since been confirmed and reaffirmed by many observations. The students entering as freshmen had, by and large, some system of belief that they grew up with and held fast to. By senior year, their instructors, professors and TA’s had successfully torn down any vestiges of conviction that the students may have had in ANY sort of truth, creating yet another graduating class of rationalist, relativist individuals joyfully joining the ranks of the overeducated minority.
The goal was pure and noble, of course: teach the students to think for themselves, to be able to analyze an issue from multiple points of view and respect different perspectives.
We took the proverbial glass and examined it as half full, half empty, as an illusion, as a symbol of purity, as a vessel of truth, as a chemical substance, as an ecological environment. We took it apart and didn’t put it back together again, we studied it and digested it and reinvented it. And in the end, we were able to both see it and NOT see it, to know simultaneous that it was half empty and half full. We mastered the 101 tricks of the master orator who could turn any fact or fiction to benefit his cause. Yes, by graduation time, we were armed to the teeth. The only thing we lost was our ability to distinguish Truth.
Yes! The only loss was our capacity to actually have an opinion, to actually see something as Right or Wrong.
Most of us do not even notice that small price we paid. We are socially versatile, intellectual, competent. We can hold our own in any political or scientific debate, switching from one side to the other without batting an eye, seamlessly streamlining theories and ideas we picked up in our humanities and psychology courses into coherent conversation. Ideas from books we read merge with TED talks and the latest views posed by pop culture science icons, and everything works splendidly until a lesser educated individual makes the mistake of asking us, “Yeah, but what do YOU think? What do YOU actually believe on this subject?”
Then we are stumped in earnest.
We have not been taught to discriminate. In fact, we have been taught that all views have a right to exist, and if rationally argued, are all equally valid. How convenient.
Recently on another blog a simple question was asked about whether all children deserve to live with the same good living conditions and chances to a happy, successful life. The readership, which represents the cream of the crop in terms of intellectual/philosophical development, mostly averted the question altogether. Some eagerly jumped on the terminology of the question (“deserving assumes merit, and unborn children cannot merit anything…”), others were glad to discuss the various socio-economic repercussions of having too many children living in favorable circumstances. Others still began discussing the finer points of curating such dialogue on social media. When pressed by the moderator to actually answer the question, readers presented more theories and possible relativist answers, but were still hesitant to claim any answer as their own. All the while, the answer is so painfully obvious!
I must confess that I fall victim to this too. When a friend of mine who has not been brainwashed indoctrinated with a post-secondary liberal arts education asks me what I think about a certain topic, I involuntarily delve into the various theories existing “out there” on the issue at hand. He immediately makes the perfectly understandable assumption that I am actually stating my personal view, and starts arguing with it. The conversation falls apart when I try to explain that I was just playing the devil’s advocate, and stating the said view point for sake of argument. This frustrates my friend, who just wants to know what I think, and it frustrates me because I am used to talking in theories and propositions, at a comfortable distance from myself and my own personal action.
On the flip side, as my friend explores different points of view and from day to day adopts a different one as his own, I irritate him in my not-so-humble way by coyly identifying each view as nihilistic, or hedonist, or existential, or absolutist, or what have you, making references to this thinker or that, and thereby nullifying the sincerity and intensity with which my friend believed the view to be transcendent Truth. It is that maliciousness in me that wants to destroy something beautiful (ie. his conviction) that is showing its ugly head. Immediately after I make my blow, I regret it.
But I digress.
The bottom line is a curious one. While reason (logos – that same logos that was there In the Beginning…) is supposed to help us get at truth, most of us end up using it to avert truth for the sake of convenience and dialogue. The tool of reason, handled by inexperienced hands, disfigures Truth to the point of no recognition. Through our ineptly handled ability to reason, we begin to believe the fallacy that absolute truth and, by extension, morality, does not exist.
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April 5, 2011 at 8:59 am
Lenore Diane
Hmm… I have a confession. I’m not a fan of TED Talks. In my opinion, the consensus is that whatever is posted on TED Talks must be good; furthermore, whatever is posted on TED Talks must be passed around and shared with others.
That’s not to say that nothing good exists on TED, merely the assumption that if it is on TED it must be .. Does that make sense? I feel I am in the minority with that opinion. Please pardon me while I duck and cover. Before I seek shelter, I quite enjoyed your thoughts. Thank you.
April 5, 2011 at 9:42 am
Anya
Lenore, there’s no need to duck and cover, because the point I am making is exactly what you’ve alluded to: we take the latest, brightest, pop-science thinkers’ words as fact without analyzing them to see whether their ideas are something we believe or not. In fact, the whole notion of having a view and holding to it seems lost. You may be in the minority, but that is the minority which choses to have its own opinion, and THAT is a good minority to be in, IMHO.
April 5, 2011 at 10:21 am
Lenore Diane
Maybe you should duck and cover with me, Anya. (smile) I understood your point to be just as you stated it, and I figured I would just leap over the imaginary line by coming out and saying I do not like TED Talks. Still, I have to look around when I say that. I fear a mobbing!
April 5, 2011 at 7:31 pm
Rina
Anya, I get your point, and your frustration, or some other feeling of being unable to JUDGE. But we do judge every step of the way, whether we’ve been educated, over-educated, or undereducated. By the way, the undereducated people tend to be more judgmental. Yes, or no? I’d venture to say “No.” Ha, what a preposterous thesis I am suggesting here! It would appear that way, wouldn’t it? That too much liberal education deprives us of the capacity to have a firm opinion, to know the difference between right and wrong, black and white. It’s annoying at times, because a person who cannot always tell what he or she REALLY thinks (I assume it’s that TRUTH you refer to) may appear to others as “weak” (a questionable notion, in my book), as “flip-flopping” (again, some people didn’t get to be presidents because they couldn’t tell the difference between right and wrong, allegedly – BS, that was never true), or as lacking the proverbial backbone (even though we all know that there is a lot more cartilage and soft, vulnerable matter in the backs of all people.
Excuse me for disagreeing this time, Anya (even though I totally get what you are saying, and I have often felt that myself, too – in the past, not now), but everything is, indeed, relative. And there is no such thing as “over-educated.” One cannot get enough education, ever. But yes, much knowledge multiplies sorrow (paraphrasing Ecclesiastes). This is human condition. The more we know, the more we are prone to doubt, because we know how much we don’t know.
However, I am WITH you on TED talks. And that is an entirely different matter. Some of them are good, others don’t impress me. It’s a sort of a party line, to like TED talks. It’s like a fashion statement for some liberals (and I consider myself the latter, except that I refuse to toe any party lines, as, I am sure, you understand).
I think that what you are really speaking of here, Anya, is about some social attempt of making particular into universal. And, just the very fact that you wrote this post serves as a great testimony (for me, at least) that they have taught you well, and that you do have opinions, and that it’s difficult for you to be judgmental (which is a good thing). And those who want black-and-white, yes-or-no answers can wait, or go get themselves some more education:)
Great post, as usual.
Rina.
April 6, 2011 at 8:34 am
Anya
Rina, I think what I was trying to allude to, though I didn’t say it outright, is that there is a moral education, if you will, that is lacking. We are given the tools, but aren’t taught how to use them. And too often “we” (“educated folks”) end up using these tools to excuse, condone, or even approve inaction in the face of injustice.
I think some moral issues are not relative…but what matters is that I believe most people would agree that they are not up for debate. Like, pedophilia, or rape, or genocide. In your gut you feel that this is wrong, but reason has been used to justify all of the above. Or a better example: you come to an accident, and a person is moaning in agony on the side of the road. The question is: do I help this person or not? Maybe I am an idealist, but I would venture to say that most people would want to help, instinctively. They would know it’s the “right thing to do”. But their education might stop them. Questions would arise: what if I accidentally hurt this person while saving their life? What if they sue me afterwards? And what ARE my civil responsibilities to a total stranger? I don’t HAVE to help, I won’t be put on trial if I just ignore it…or if I just call the police or something (while the person suffocates…).
As for “overeducated” – indeed I value education and believe in lifelong learning. But again, exploring the relationship between the level of morality and the level of education, I would venture to say that perhaps a not-very-virtuous person can become outright criminal when given the tools of education. Maybe they’re not overeducated in knowledge but under educated in ethics…We’ve witnessed so many cases lately where highly educated individuals committed gruesome, violent crimes. But this is a slightly different topic for a different post…
April 5, 2011 at 8:33 pm
Anastacia Strots
I think that the issue with education, formal and informal, is that the more you learn, and the more skills you develop to analyze things, the less black and while the world becomes. Though I am working on my post-secondary education at the rate of continental drift, I can still relate to what you’re saying. But I think that the more you strive for truth (in a non-spiritual way, of course; that would be a whole ‘nother discussion) the more relative it becomes.
April 6, 2011 at 8:46 am
Anya
I like that comparison: working on your post-secondary education at the rate of the continental drift 🙂
You’re right in assuming that I’m not refering to spiritual truth…but what I mean is the kind of truth that is true not just for me. In a way it seems a contradiction in terms to have “relative truth”. If it depends on conditions, it’s not True (rather, it’s just an observation of the way things are at the current moment). But I think some things ARE true, even outside the religious/spiritual realm. For instance, it’s True that throwing a baby over a cliff is bad, right? I think it, and you think it, and that subsistence farmer in Thailand thinks it, and the millionnaire in the UAE thinks so too. Frighteningly, the more some people learn, the better they get at reasoning away “correct” common sense moral decisions. What do you think?
April 5, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Sasha G.
I suppose I would fall into the “undereducated” category- being that I have not gone to college- but I find myself caught in the same mind-boggling internal arguments about “truth” myself. I can never seem to be settled about it- not for very long, anyway- and that has colored (possibly even tainted) the past year-or-so of my life. It feels like it will not end, but life continues as it will even when my questions go unanswered, however agonizing it may be.
I have my opinions, but I don’t want to be so defensive about them. I feel like I have to be.
I am very grateful for this post… You have explained clearly the reason I have been so frustrated lately 🙂 I feel understood.
April 6, 2011 at 8:59 am
Anya
Sasha, I am glad that this post was comforting, and that you dropped by! I think the internal debate about truth should be life-long, but I believe there are at least two stages to it. First, you have to determine whether you even believe that some Truth exists. This Truth-with-a-capital-T is the kind that is true for everyone (and there’s actually more of this truth than people realize…). The second stage is discovering/finding/determining what this Truth entails (if you come to the conclusion that it exists in the first place). It seems that the first stage can be very tumultuous and painful, especially if you oscillate in this period for a long time. Once you’ve come to a decision, then maybe it’s less painful and more enjoyable to seek out your Truth, or to be at peace with believing that all truth is relative…
I hope that makes sense 🙂 …
April 7, 2011 at 8:33 pm
Rina
I should make a slight correction: when I said everything was relative, of course I was being facetious. I wanted to make the debate more lighthearted. The truth is (one of them) that we all use moral judgment, whether we are aware of it, or not. Well, maybe some people don’t weigh out their every step consciously, but even subconsciously, most normal people (oops, what is normal? another topic) consider others when acting in one way or another. And considering how our actions affect others is a moral act. So… what I am saying is, we are all moral, whether we acknowledge it, or not. And no tools in the world can stop that. In my opinion, of course:) I can talk about myself, inasmuch as I know about myself: when I am about to say or do something of importance, I usually think of all the people that come to mind who might be affected by that act or word. And that’s a moral act in itself. It’s a natural impulse we all have – altruism (yes, chimps have it, too, as they have found out recently), or the desire to either do good unto others or, at least, to do no harm. The latter is what I always attempt, never knowing whether I succeeded or not. The intent counts. So do the actions. Now, another moral act that comes naturally is facing the consequences of a previous moral act, and, if those are bad, considering making amends. And this brings us to a whole different topic again. Sometimes the intent is enough to say that a person meant well, regardless of the consequences. An example: a parent mistreats his/her child at the supermarket. I interfere and tell the parent to stop. A moral act, Anya? I think it is, because it’s similar to your example of helping someone in an accident, regardless of the consequences. The latter could turn out bad for the said child, because, if the aforementioned parent is abusive, s/he will come home and take out his/her anger at me on the child. Should I have interfered, or not? This is why, when I said all was relative, I meant that most cases (not the extreme cases, but sometimes even those) are hardly ever black-and-white. And, we choose our words and actions according to our own moral compass, but the latter is different for each person, methinks. Yes, it was a bad thing to support Hitler, but many people had no idea of the evil in which they participated until it happened.
I agree with you that relativism can backfire at those who preach it, by virtue of its abuse by those less inclined to consider how their actions affect others. What, then, should be proposed as the golden standard of values that need to be taught as indisputable?
I don’t have answer, only questions:)
April 13, 2011 at 6:30 am
dennett
самое главное, как мне кажется, в этом вопросе – полнота жизни, которая требует, чтобы в какой-то момент ты свое существование “ставил на карту” – принимая решения, предаваясь идеям, вступая в союзы, давая обещания. без этого – чистый академизм – в конце концов разрешается унылой бессмысленностью.
April 13, 2011 at 10:03 am
Anya
Да. Увы, именно так и получается. Но кажется, что некоторые не понимают или не знают о том, что надо себя ставить на карту. Ложное ощущение насыщенности, происходящее от того, что человек начинает владеть большим количеством информации, может привести к заблуждению и самодавольствию…