In my last message I described what RR Reno believes that the exiling of the strong gods, as well as the ideas that have made that process happen. In this message I will assess what he regards as the consequences.
One of the strong gods to be banned was the idea that communities are a holy thing, and that individuals have obligations to maintain the well -being of their community and that the community has some claim to the loyalty of a person who lives in it. was acutely criticized by Karl Popper:
We are in the temptation to present our collective life as in a certain sense, so that the community gives a rightful claim to our loyalty. Popper considers this to be ‘magical’ thinking, a form of ‘anti-humanitarian propaganda’.
Strong notions of truth – not only moral truths, but even factual truths – are also strong gods. Turn to a weaker god of reduced, personal or preliminary “truth” prevents the kind of certainty that causes fanaticism and motivates atrocities. Strong truths, the kind that is accepted as sacred and is considered unacceptable for question: “Order our loyalty instead of being open to critical questions and empirical falsification.” That is why the idea of strong truths had to be rejected.
This rejection of strong truths is more subtle than simply embracing general skepticism, even with regard to issues of morality. Reno writes:
Our moment is not one of thorough relativism or strict renunciation of moral principles. Instead, it encourages ways of thinking and social norms that are less charged with the urgent truths, which gives us more elbow space to formulate our own customized views of the meaning of life, while the demanding passions from public affairs become Removed … It is less likely to rally on collective loyalty that feeds aggressive politics that is susceptible to conflicts and are conducive to oppressive measures.
Strong respect for inherited traditions is also a strong God who needs banned:
The “never-again” imperatively imposes a compelling and endless duty to banish traditionalists who are loyal to the strong gods that are thought to have caused so much suffering and death. While the students in Paris riots in 1968 stood: “It is forbidden to ban.” Those who prohibit must be censored and silenced – because of an open society.
In the modern mind, the goal is not to pursue the uniting and binding of truths, but the discovery of personal meaning. Binding truth is a strong God and disagreement about such truths to stimulate division. Personal meaning is a weak God – it does not set limits between what is or is not acceptable. But as a weak God it also offers no real guidance on how to lead a meaningful life:
Exactly what we had to grow in the direction of Vague, as it should be when metaphysical questions are kept at bay … man must move forward in the direction of “greater significance”, self-actualization and autonomy “liberation that allows each of us to fulfill our ability to free To create ourselves, “as Hillary Rodman explained to her fellow graduates from Wellesley College in 1969. It is post-conventional, young people can make the content of this code, the highlight of moral development-to make it a social convention.
To tell people that there is a specific goal that they must grow in the direction of the risk that some ways of life are better or more desirable or respectable than others – and this is an insult to the weak gods of openness and non -judgmental acceptance . Reno sees great damage to this. In the end, people are just what we are.
There are not many ways to live to thrive us, but “the paths of disappointment are countless.” The strong gods of inherited cultural traditions have helped to live people through life in a proven way that leads to fulfillment and happiness-not perfect, but can also be expected in an imperfect human existence. Denying the value of this inheritance, and explains that there are no truths that we can jointly consider as a matter of course and you have to go on our way and discover meaning for yourself, people drift and listless about how to live:
One conversation is striking. A younger friend, who hurt about the choices he received, asked for advice. I told him that I couldn’t help much. For me, life was like a train ride. The engine of strong cultural standards drew me through the lifetime of life: lecture, job, marriage, children. In its time the train will take me to my retirement and of course death. He replied: “No, no – life is no longer the case. Now it is a sailing boat that you first control in this way and then to find your way to the destination of your own choice.” It seemed like a tiring way to me To live.
More frustrating for Reno is the fact that the intellectual and cultural elites that argue for the weak gods themselves do not live in the way they argue:
They can participate in the chorus that condemns traditional standards as authoritarian, but they keep their marriage together and their families look like traditional. In other words, they share the fundamental human desire to protect someone’s children, to secure someone’s patrimony, to support and transfer a living inheritance. They protect themselves and those they love – a natural and healthy impulse. The problem is that what our most powerful and capable fellow citizens do private, is at odds with what they insist in public.
But the rule of the weak gods has more implications than its impact on social life. It also has considerable political implications. We will see what Reno has to say about this in the next message.