The Moral Compasslessness of the Radicals

 
 

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Thursday

March 24, 2011

 
 

The Moral

Compasslessness

Of the

Radicals

 
 

 
 

“You only know what they want you to know…

open your eyes, see the lies right in front of ya…”

Lords of the New Church,

“Open your Eyes”

 
 

 
 

Why do some people insist on criticizing religion? Is it because of their devotion to truth, feeling it necessary to point out that religion is factually incorrect when it says the Earth is only six thousand years old? Indeed, we know from science that the Earth is something like four-and –a-half-billion years old.

The supreme reason for this fashionable denigrating of religion concerns something other than religion’s being incorrect about how old the Earth is: the noble denigrating is actually about the war between the unconstrained vision and the constrained vision, as Thomas Sowell has characterized the two schools of thought.

That is, religion is the foremost exponent of the constrained vision, and it thereby is public enemy number one for some people. For them, nothing shall be allowed to hinder the progress of their unconstrained vision, and so allies such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Rousseau, and sometimes Hegel must be recruited to the cause. It’s all about self-interest, not about devotion to truth.

The unconstrained vision surely has a lot at stake, to be sure: lavish pensions, pleasures, power, moral vanity, control of thought and culture, etc. And it will never be defeated, because in order to overcome it in oneself, one must give up the falsity of the ego-image we entertain about ourselves, and instead embrace a less falsified selfhood. Not likely that a mass conversion will take place in this regard.

But on the other hand, the tragic vision of life, the constrained vision we have from Judeo-Christian religion, that too, can never be defeated, but for a very different reason: it has an obviously closer connection to reality. There will always be a market for the clearer perception of reality: the constrained vision believes that human nature is fixed and that it is permanently flawed, whereas the unconstrained vision believes that human nature is in flux and can be indefinitely improved.

Now, the ironic thing here is that this idea of historical necessity, this idea of being in the process of making a better world for the future, is exactly the excuse for all the violence committed against innocent people. But that’s the unconstrained vision! Hardly an image of progress or utopia.

Nevertheless, Christopher Hitchens, a clear advocate of the unconstrained vision, goes so far as to blame – in his desperation – even Hitler and Stalin on religion. But that is absurd, Hitchens. Those two were obviously immersed in the unconstrained vision, whereas religion is the opposite, the nemesis of those two and their wild visions. Religion’s goal would be to stop them, not urge them on.

Do you want to be on the side of kindness? On the side of decency and the highest values? Then embrace instead the constrained view, and avoid the professor’s dialectic stuff about the Brave New World. We should keep in mind that the purpose of religion is not to be factually correct about questions better left to science, its purpose is rather to put us in contact with our true selves, in contact with the most important moral strains in our nature, our better angels.

George Orwell wrote that the coming future is just a dystopian vision of a boot stomping on a human face forever. Orwell was one of our greatest visionaries, and he had no illusions about human nature. Beware, then, the unconstrained vision and its self-righteousness: it’s the vehicle of nightmarish dystopia, coming soon to a heart of hearts near you.

 

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