On Friday night, Lindsay and I were part of a discussion group with some college students, and the topic of note was ‘truth’—truth about myself, about humankind, about the kind of world we live in.
What struck me in the course of the discussion was that there is a premise that underlies our concern with finding truth and aligning our lives with it. For authenticity or veracity to be at all compelling, we’ve got to agree first that IT IS GOOD TO BE IN REALITY.
Ironically, I could think of a variety of worlds that would fail to meet this criteria. For example: Would the above condition be true…in an ultimately chaotic world? In a purely material world? In an unavoidably doomed world? In a simply agonizing world?
In his renowned essay, “A Free Man’s Worship,” Bertrand Russell encouraged his readers to embellish and soften a “brutal, evil world” with their projected ideals of goodness and beauty. In other words, Russell suggested that in a naturalistic, ‘Darwinist’ universe, it would be better to knowingly perpetuate a fantasy than to restrict oneself to ‘mere truth.’ In some ways, it’s hard to disagree with that part of his argument. Enter C.S. Lewis.
In The Silver Chair (Book 6 in The Chronicles of Narnia), a fascinating confrontation between the story’s nemesis, a sorceress, and the small band of heroes, presents a remarkably similar situation. The scene takes place in an underground kingdom; with a combination of incense, music, and entrancing lies, the sorceress has been weaving a spell, aiming for a singular result—to remove all memory of a sunlit “Overworld.” Then C.S. Lewis’ character, Puddleglum, makes a striking reply—and one that the witch is unprepared to counter:
“One word, Ma’am…one word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one… That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it.”
Now this is intriguing. Is there a point at which ‘reality’ becomes so awful that it becomes more attractive to subvert the truth than to adjust to it? I feel myself leaning (if possible) in both directions.
I am a big fan of Truth. But this is because I believe in a God, Jesus Christ, who blends love and justice with lovely and radical perfection, and who has created this world with a purpose, and plans to redeem it. If I am a hard-core materialist, I’m not sure truth has the same allure.
We’re all just a bunch of molecules interfacing. The person I love is a collocation of atoms who will eventually disintegrate into raw dust (mostly carbon). So what? These 'facts' grate on my mind like nails on a chalkboard. Purposeful delusion might well become a favorite pastime.
What makes all this so interesting is that for many people, purposeful delusion has become a favorite pastime. The naturalistic worldview has succeeded in creating a race of people who would just as soon forget the ‘truth’ about this world (an accident) and our lives (meaningless). Truth has become a null proposition, except in terms of chemical equations, for fairly obvious reasons.
If reality sucks, why should I be concerned with aligning my life with it? It seems to me that one of the insurmountable challenges facing the materialist ‘faith’ is this irrelevance of truth to living. When reality becomes of questionable relevance, there are some screws loose at the very heart of the philosophical machine.
20 comments:
good insight! One question though, what would say to those that are "spiritual"? Do they have an equal aversion for "reality"?
I know you didn't post this as a Limelight piece, but I am co-opting it as one, as this topic is one that profoundly fascinates me. I've written a post in response. See it here. I have also linked back to this post.
Cheers-
Rob, I think that "spiritual" is not an overly expressive adjective. We're all spiritual in some sense. Suppose I told you that my favorite place to spend the weekend was one of those "physical" places you often hear about.
The beauty (or sticky-ness) of spirituality lies in the details of one's faith. Illusory 'worship' (like Bertrand Russell's variety) can end up serving as a veneer to hide life's harshness. In other words, 'spirituality' divorced from the rest of life is still a sham. On the other hand, I argue that a spiritual life that rests squarely on reality (revealed via the Bible) is not only truthful but infinitely fulfilling.
Thanks for the co-option, Tim. I'm headed your way right now...
You know, the first time I read this, I kept thinking, "Plato's cave, y'all." This is indeed the Platonic take on things, no?
Just yesterday I was reading, in a very different context, that "objectivity" and "neutrality" are not the same thing. It seems to me one could make a little metaphysical hay out of an exploration between that idea and the distinction you make here between truth and reality. Some things ARE better than others, and demonstrably so whether or not they presently exist in the Real World; their value can be measured by more people than an individual and his/her particular value systems. To say otherwise would be adopting a neutral position/accepting reality--that is, acquiescing to the present state of things--and not choosing . . . and passively continuing to subscribe to the notion that "reality sucks."
In leaving a comment at my site, JohnB referred me here. Good discussion going on. And deep. You mentioned that you are "a big fan of Truth" BECAUSE of your faith. The implications of that and the trailing thoughts might be taken to mean that those with convictions different than yours would either NOT be seekers of Truth, or the Truth they might find is different (read inferior). By definition, Truth should be held universally, and anything outside that definition might be considered opinion.
Help me with this, please.
There must be something in the water. I've been seeing a lot of posts on various journals about what constitutes reality. I wonder whether we humans think about that more when the events swirling around us are incomprehensible or seemingly out of control.
Great Stuff.
Cheers.
By definition, Truth should be held universally, and anything outside that definition might be considered opinion.
I agree with you, Winston. My comment about being a big fan of truth was simply intended to point up my main point: some worldviews fail to make 'truth' (as understood in that system) desirable.
While I don't say it outright, I'm implying that such 'reality' is, in fact, "inferior" - because it's NOT actually true. I believe, for example, that the materialist worldview is deeply flawed, and one evidence of this is the irrelevance of 'truth' to that perspective.
John, I'll have to go back and read my Plato again. No doubt there are some echoes of the real versus the ideal here. But I think that the final arbiter of reality has to come from God, most notably via his written communication to us...
Ariel,
No argument. Personally, I see no essential conflict between Christianity's claim that God's truth is revealed in the Bible and Plato's claim that the ideal (his forms) reside with God and do not exist in the material world. The Bible LEADS us to God; it shouldn't become a stand-in for God (cue Job here).
I'm with you, John, the glaring exception being the point in history where real and ideal collided - during the life of Christ. Plato failed to make allowance for those 33 years of contagious perfection.
Ariel,
I hadn't considered my comment to be excluding the life of Christ, the record of which is present in the Bible. Does not the Bible ideally (no pun) lead us to the eternally-living reality that is the Christ? Or are you drawing a distinction between Jesus' physical presence on the planet and the written record of that presence (a material representation of the Ideal?) in the gospels?
I hope you understand that I just want to make sure I'm understanding your meaning here.
I think we're on the same page, John; it's merely our semantics that are at odds. :) To use your phrase, I was drawing a distinction between Jesus' physical presence on the planet and the written record of that presence.
I'm no Plato scholar, but I thought the actual, tangible presence of The Ideal walking the earth was probably a contingency he hadn't allowed for.
I'm no Plato scholar, but I thought the actual, tangible presence of The Ideal walking the earth was probably a contingency he hadn't allowed for.
I suspect that that's the case.
Well this is the Existentialist conundrum, isn't it? (I mean Sartre & co, the atheistic brand of existentialism). 'Ignorance is bliss' precisely because knowledge/truth/reality is hard, and you have to work at it every day of your life. However, given the bothersome non-existence of God, there is no a priori goodness, which is where Existentialism always comes up short, since Sartre ends up tying himself up in knots trying to argue that you can't count on other people to make the world a better place, but you have to believe that if you do your darndest, then others will too. In this argument there is still a latent idea that fascism, for instance, is 'bad', and that only the lazy or inept would allow fascism to be established.
But this is just the problem; the death of god is not something to be celebrated, because through that man is damned to the freedom of having to decide for himself. The existentialists never succeeded in solving the problem, so I'm buggered if I'm going to do so in this comment, nor am I declaring myself an existentialist, but I will say this — and please don't think I'm trying to start a fight or just being obstreperous with this whole 'god is dead' thing, I'm simply delineating a position:
You say above that the 'truth' of someone who doesn't believe in God is 'inferior' to yours because it's not real. Well that's a bit of a contentious point, don't you think? Positivism may be underrated, but you don't exactly have empirical proof of His existence, so how can you know for sure? Your friend Bertrand Russell once wrote that 'Can human beings know anything, and if so, what and how?' was 'the most essentially philosophical of all questions'. To my knowledge it has not yet been answered.
You could argue (if you were in that kind of mood) that Christianity (and religious faith in general) is a cop-out, truth-wise. In accepting that God created the world, and has a plan for us all, you are accepting an a priori assertion that reality is good because God is good. Thus this is the best of all possible worlds — a comforting thought, to be sure, but not necessarily True — and suddenly we are back in the eighteenth century.
Sorry, I'm sure the above sounds like I'm really trying to have a go, which would be like having someone show up at a dinner-party unannounced and start arguing with everyone. That is, I assure you, not my intention. I simply feel that before you can question whether reality is good, it must first be established what reality is. And if the answer to that is, 'I'd rather not find out, because what if it it's, like, nasty?' then I'm afraid you're not as much a fan of truth as you claim to be.
Damn, it's hard to talk about these things without sounding categorical and snarky (it is for me at least). Once again; I mean no offence by anything I've just said. But I do mean it.
I mean 'overrated', naturally.
Hey Fearful, I've been enjoying the discussion this post has sparked, and your comments are no exception.
"given the bothersome non-existence of God, there is no a priori goodness
I'm with you there.
You say above that the 'truth' of someone who doesn't believe in God is 'inferior' to yours because it's not real.
Right. My statement has a kind of contentious ring to it, which is based on my suspicion (deep and lingering) that we do live in a world where truth is detectible, and that I've found it.
However, I'm not exactly breaking a sweat in my rush to prove the existence of God 'empirically.' I believe there are a number of good arguments for belief in God, but none of them amount to deductive certainty, and that's fine. God is not interested in coercing people into belief - not "even" with impressive theoretical proofs.
Can human beings know anything..?
I know entire volumes are devoted to this very question, but I'm going to dispense with epistemological prolegomena and attempt to answer your question with a single stab: Yes. (How un-postmodern of me...)
I guess I don't feel the need to agitate over this issue because no one lives as if they don't really know anything. Reality has a way of asserting itself whether we believe it makes a respectable case for itself or not. And the existence of God is one of those apprehensible things.
...Christianity (and religious faith in general) is a cop-out, truth-wise. In accepting that God created the world, and has a plan for us all, you are accepting an a priori assertion that reality is good because God is good.
On the contrary: if I am to be an honest Christian, I'm compelled to believe that truth and evidence are essential. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, "If Christ did not rise from the dead, we [Christians] are of all people most to be pitied."
I think it would be irresponsible to reason backward to a personal Creator with the desperate goal of preserving a 'friendly world.' I'm also convinced that the evidence for God, generally, and Jesus, specifically, is very good. Thus, the fundamental reality of Christ creates in me the desire to enjoy and preserve all experiential forms of truth.
I simply feel that before you can question whether reality is good, it must first be established what reality is.
In a roundabout way, I think I agree with you again here. The problem, of course, is that there are these various warring versions of reality. We each think we know what the real world is like. And since the process of apprehension will never become entirely error-free (your point), the best way to find real reality is to let these worldviews claw and scrape at each other, and see which one carries itself with the most verve and precision in answering life's first order questions.
I think our various experiences of reality do give us enough in common for dialogue like that. Which was the underlying premise for this post.
And clearly you're basing both of your arguments on some sort of understanding of what you believe to be true. To have sides, you must have an object at the center. Perhaps the only way to find that object - that truth - is to keep trying to describe that which we see.
Well, I'm kinda late in commenting, but I really enjoyed this post, Ariel. I posted some similar thoughts in response on my own blog.
Now this is intriguing. Is there a point at which ‘reality’ becomes so awful that it becomes more attractive to subvert the truth than to adjust to it? I feel myself leaning (if possible) in both directions.
When things get bad for me and I just feel like "life sucks", I do sometimes have to remind myself that this is a temporary reality. God is our reality here, but I will see Him in His fullest reality when I leave this world. I want to know Him more because He is ultimate reality.
Ok, I don't know if that made any sense,but that was my comment. :)
Rebekah
"In accepting that God created the world, and has a plan for us all, you are accepting an a priori assertion that reality is good because God is good."
As long as we have the freedom to disobey God (and do), this isn't so. God as creator, his plan for us - these things tell me that reality could be good, not that it is.
"Is there a point at which ‘reality’ becomes so awful that it becomes more attractive to subvert the truth than to adjust to it?"
Yes. Denial, multiple personality disorder, excessive drinking/drugging (to forget, to lose fears, etc) are good examples of that.
But who says that 'subverting the truth' or 'adjusting to the truth' are the only two options? How about changing it? And that's where fantasy looses its attractiveness. Without reality we're just bodies powering The Matrix - unable to make effective decisions or change anything about the world we live in. And the more reality sucks, the more we should seek the power to change things.
In the end I'd always take the red pill.
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