January 11, 2003

"Now, wait a second ...", the reader might reply, "what you've addressed here is whether or not the disputant truly believes that life is important, not whether or not it actully is, and not whether or not God thinks that it is". To this, I would respond by pointing out that when a desire is as universal as this one, and can be seen to be such through our actions, whatever our verbal posturing might be, then that the near-universality of the desire speaks to the presence of a basic instinct which may be masked by our refusal to acknowledge it to others and to ourselves, but is always there. The issue as we see throughout "Creating your own religion" is not what God believes, but what our hypothetical Supreme Being would want us to believe, and if He didn't want us to believe something, why would He govern His creation in such a way as to make that belief instinctual? Ockham's razor, the call to adopt first the simplest theory which is compatible with what we have seen would call on us here to acknowledge that His actions would seem to be an expression of His will.

Continuing along this track, we would ask how one is to define the "desirability" or "undesirability" of events, aside from their impact on the states of mind of those capable of holding desires, the mind (in its totality, emotions and subconscious included) being the place where desires exist? The God of standard conception, being all-knowing, and perfectly formed, without blemish and without error, will have thoughts which are in perfect accord with His perfect instincts, because of His perfect self-knowledge. So, if His most basic instincts are best served by our holding a belief in the importance of life, and ours are too, then in what sense could such a belief be said to be undesirable? And is it not prudent to choose that which is desirable, especially when one's natural inclinations make it so easy to do so, and there is so little basis for doing otherwise?

"Yes", will say the stubborn Nihilist, "and some feel that life is unimportant, so, as that speaks to their state of mind, and, as you say, the desirability and undesirability of all things is to be found in those states, then you much acknowledge that for them, death is not undesirable". But that argument confuses our conscious ideas of what our states of mind are, with the reality of what they are, and as anybody even slightly familiar with Psychology knows, there is far more to our minds than their conscious components. There is the subconscious, from which dreams arise. The error of this argument is an easy one to see - it attributes the perfect self-knowledge of a postulated ideal Supreme Being, to a far less than ideal Humanity.

The problem, as we have said, is that emotional states are hard things to quantify. The smiles, laughter, even the sense that one is happy are all merely symbols of a sort, and the meaning of symbols can change. With so little that is tangible in an emotional state for the conscious mind to lock onto, should the meanings of these symbols drift slowly over time, the conscious mind might not even notice. It will be as the man who watches a bank of fog drift past him on a foggy day - in the midst of all of those vague forms, the transit of another vague form is likely to be missed. Sometimes, the drift will go so far, only to be shattered by the return of a familiar experience that leads the perso speaking to say that "he didn't know hat happines was", but sometimes we have to examine our own action, and our own choices, to see that we are living a lie.

What is wrong with Stoicism is that it calls on Man to do just that - live a lie - so that he may rise above his baser desires. The goal may be laudable, but the methods are not. What is wrong with Nihilism is that it calls on Man to live a lie so that he may smirk, as he wallows in those baser desires. When we encounter those, such as Robert, who travel this path, we are not to be gentle with them, for we are confronted with Evil itself, and Evil has no interest in having an honest or civil discussion.

To attempt one would be to create an uneven playing field for this struggle between ideas, as one would be imposing rules upon oneself which the opposition would not follow. To greet incivility in an unfriendly manner, then, is to do no more than restore balance to a situation in which it has been lost, so that ideas may prevail on the basis of their merits, and not on the basis of an arbitrary bias built into the process of discussion. As we so often say, the application of the value of Civility, when understood on an adult level, as opposed to that of the Emily Post fan club, is defined in terms of the Social Contract, not in terms of a categorical imperative. (Much the same can be said of Honor). It is to be xtended to those who do their part in creating n order in which such considerations may be prudently extended. It is not an entitlement to be given out by those who are unwilling to do anything to deserve it.

Click here to continue, as we return to "Creating Your Own Religion".