This is my attempt to understand some things a revolutionary once said about what blinds the human race to Truth, which is a big problem.
From the beginning, there is engendered within us a set of ideas about The Way Things Should Be. This happens in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our schools – read cultural context. As we grow older, we either accept these ideas or reject them, and it is this platform from which (typically) we launch into our adult lives. Now, the reasons we accept or reject them are manifold – peer pressure, or wanting to be accepted by a certain group, is perhaps the biggest – but it is not my purpose to delineate them here. My purpose is to draw out this truth:
Much of what we believe we believe because we want to believe it, and this directly affects our facility to embrace what is true.
The obvious example: Truth as an absolute.
Most people no longer believe in Absolute Truth because our time is a time of pluralism, and no matter how many times the starkly obvious logistical flaw of pluralism (or tolerance) is exposed – that is, the moment you say everyone can have their own truth, you are asserting a claim on truth which is absolute – the average intellectual pushes blindly forward toward a future he or she expects to be all green with love and acceptance.
Why? If you’re starting to have strongly negative feelings, I implore you to try the following: forget that you and I may embrace totally different worldviews and take an objective look at what I just said. Reread it. Pluralism cannot work, and to say otherwise is to denigrate the Reason you so cherish and claim to employ.
Here’s why this happens: It feels right! It just does, doesn’t it? I really want tolerance to work, too, sometimes. I want to believe that everyone can believe what they want and it’ll all work out. “If it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad,” right?
Well, wait a minute. Doesn’t that philosophy encourage the consumerism we all claim to hate? And that’s just one example. How about pedophilia? Oppressive dictatorships? We would call the pleasure these offenders experience twisted, but we gave up the right to say so at the door of broadmindedness.
(I understand that the tolerance camp’s prima regula is that it’s only ok as long as you’re not hurting anyone else, but, honestly, I’ve been at this for three hours now and I don’t have the energy or desire to address the inherent problems of this qualification. They are there, I assure you.)
The point, in summary:
Our desires – what we want and feel – have an incredible power, a terrifying power which carries the potential to blind us, not only to the Truth of God, but to truths like the logical fallacy we just briefly examined.
I said at the beginning that I am not the first to think this, and that’s because of the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John. Jesus told the Pharisees with whom he was speaking that they were blinded to the eternal life standing right in front of them because they sought (or desired) glory from one another. They wanted so badly to be held in high esteem, to be well-regarded, to be the first pick on the basketball team during high school gym class, that the Truth to which they thought they’d given their lives passed before their eyes unnoticed and, worse, maligned.
So. Go ask yourself some hard questions.
Red Like Tango 