A number of items in recent days about issues of society and culture vs. individualism, which I will compile and quote without necessarily trying to draw any conclusions just yet… These issues renovate with the Jonathan Haidt book I’m still working my way through.
Starting with Jeffrey Tayler’s latest Salon ‘sermon’ (as Jerry Coyne calls them), David Brooks’ sanctimonious piffle: Sad trees die for gauzy, Hallmark-card nonsense, responding to Brooks’ column from Tuesday the 17th, Finding Peace Within the Holy Texts, in which Brooks suggests that the resolution to current conflict with ISIS, et al, can be resolved by properly interpreting ancient holy books. Tayler objects, of course, but suggests that we *should* read the holy texts:
The danger comes from reading these texts as historical documents, as possessing “truths” that came to man as the product of revelation — the vilest, most improbable notion around. Just pause and consider revelation for a moment. Why would the Lord have chosen to disclose His plan for humanity only to those storied few, and so long ago? Why would he not “reveal” Himself to each one of us? Or at the very least, issue an updated edition of his “holy” texts, perhaps in digital format with hyperlinks to make following their mad plot twists and often crazed characters easier? Seriously, though, the real problem is that those revering “scripture” as something more than of this world can and often do veer into fundamentalism. The Abrahamic canon lends itself to literalist readings, with the tragic outcomes we know so well. The answer to religious violence lies not “within these ancient texts,” but in dumping religion.
No “sacred” truth exists; there is only epistemologically sound, verifiable truth and its counter, falsehood. Either a proposition is true or it is not. Either there is a god or there is not. There exists no sound, objective evidence that there is. We therefore conclude that there is no god, which means all religious texts positing his existence are wrong, and whatever value they have is merely cultural, anthropological or otherwise accidental. All dogmas arising from these texts, thus, deserve to be evaluated rationally and without prejudice, on the basis of the ideas they contain. This means that Brooks’ hallowed “scriptures” merit no more a priori respect than Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” or Georges Bataille’s gross chronicle of incest or Sarah Jessica Parker’s musings in “Sex and the City” or Justin Bieber’s Twitter feed.
I have to mention again that Tayler, in his many essays at Salon over the past year, is spelling out, in blunt language, what seems obvious to many people, including me, who see adherence to ancient ‘holy’ texts as lazy and incoherent, as *obviously* a sort of psychological submission to cultural standards, supported by social cohesion, but without any support by evidence or fact. (Yet my take, my PvC, is that society survives on this sort of delusion, despite its disconnect with what, through evidence and logic, we can conclude is empirically real.)
Religion seems to be a force contrary to the arc of history about the expansion of individual rights, as opposed to the submission of individual behavior that would challenge groups — families, tribes, faith groups, cultures.
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Catholic Bishops Release Anti-Pornography Report (As If You Were Expecting Anything Else)
Because, the article explains, as if it’s not obvious, the Catholic Church disapproves of *everything* that could possibly threaten the expansion of the Catholic Church, that is the expansion of its tribe, i.e. more babies. Thus, all the prohibitions about masturbation, contraception, abortion, and same-sex marriage.
The Catholic Church is a wee bit obsessed with sex in that they believe it’s only acceptable on their terms. No birth control because reproduction is important. No abortion because reproduction is important. No sodomy because reproduction is important. No same-sex marriage because reproduction is important. Don’t worry about physical attraction or orgasms because none of it has to do with reproduction.
Shorter version: “MAKE MORE BABIES, PLZ.”
This position is understandable in the context of ‘group selection’, as Haidt describes and how E.O. Wilson has described. It’s fairly obvious: why wouldn’t groups who promote reproduction at all costs, including reproduction at the expense of the freedoms of individuals to live their lives in ways that might not expand the tribe’s population, prevail over other groups/tribes that are not as adament about these priorities.
And so we see comments like this from Rick Santorum, here.
On the issue of family, I’m a big supporter of marriage and the family. Why? Because it’s best for society. Stable marriages in which children grow up in is, without a doubt, the best situation for a child to be raised in America.
You don’t have to be religious. You don’t believe in the sacrament of marriage. You don’t have to believe that marriage is a religious institution. You can believe it’s a civil institution, but it’s important for children to be raised by what I would say is the birthright, their natural mom and their natural dad in a stable and healthy home.
Setting aside for the moment the factual evidence that children raised by gay parents — who are just an anxious to raise children as straight parents (believe me, I know) — are as happy and healthy as any others, look at what Santorum is saying: Because it’s best for society. For all that conservatives reject any kind of governmental economic control that they would reject as “socialism”, these same conservatives are eager to deny individual rights (of gay parents, for example), in order to promote a social cause, a social welfare, for the betterment of a group, of “society”.
Along these same lines, here’s an Adam Lee essay In Defense of Radical Individualism. He addresses how Christians might respond to the Obergefell decision that legalized same-sex marriage across the US, and how evangelicals define individualism.
The way I see it, there’s not a lot of middle ground here. You either own yourself, or you don’t; either you can make your own choices, or you can’t. How could there be a compromise position on this?
And:
In this context, it’s exactly right to say that radical individualism is a threat to the dominance of Christianity and other religions. The world’s major faiths have always preached that people have a duty to obey their betters and follow the rules, no matter the suffering it may cause. It’s a good thing that people are rejecting this bleak message and taking their happiness into their own hands in this, the only life we ever have.
The Haidt book, though I haven’t quite finished it, identifies aspects of human nature that he sees as crucial to what many people around the world think of as ‘morality’. They entail ideas about sanctity and purity and loyalty as being as essential to morality as ideas about fairness and doing no harm to others are to members of the so-called ‘advanced’ western cultures (US, Europe, et al.) I will summarize his ideas shortly — and explore how his ideas align with the idea (of mine, of Shermer, of Pinker, of Harris) of moral progress, a ‘moral arc’ of history.
