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Any time a civic, religious, or spiritual leader
asks you to surrender your intellect or check your mind at the door, it is wise
to question his motives. Giving up one’s critical faculties is a kind of
suicide; the self-abnegation it represents is not virtuous, but inexcusably
lazy.
Extinction, apocalypse, the end of days.
There’s something both seductive and sinister about these concepts. From the
suicide bomber to the messianic crusader to the apocalyptic evangelical, there
seems to be a nearly-universal desire to bring the whole human project to a
close. If only the end of the world could somehow be brought about, we could be
done with the whole difficult, thorny problem of being human. In my view, even
the “nirvana” concept—the extinction of self—is (or can be) a strain of this
kind of thinking. Life for us humans--as far as we know, the only animals aware
of our own imminent demise and forced to consider ethical and philosophical
problems--is indeed difficult. There seems to be an innate part of us that
longs for it all to be brought to an end. I think this is among the more
contemptible parts of our makeup, one that demands continual resistance.
What is evolution’s unique gift to us if not our
highly-developed cerebral cortex? The ability to think, to weigh and consider
arguments, to retain the good and discard the rest? Any religion, philosophy,
or party line that demands that you surrender your critical thinking capacity
is more than suspect; those who make such requirements are usually up to
something. They may have a genuinely sinister agenda, such as those who propagandize
young people into throwing away their lives as suicide murderers. Or their
motives may be plainly larcenous, like the televangelist who uses a false
prospectus to separate credulous retirees from their meager savings. In any
case, these and others like them are to be resisted by all those who prize the
life of the mind.
An appreciation of art, literature, music, and irony
is a superior means of developing an ethical and moral compass; it brings one
face-to-face with moral and ethical dilemmas and offers no easy out. Fiction
and mythology tells us truths that are otherwise inaccessible, and music
expresses human feelings for which no words exist. Philosophy invites us to
think deeply about the beautiful, the true, and the transcendent. Humanists are
no strangers to the numinous; in fact, we relish it. The stunning beauty of a
painting, the transcendent voice of a symphony, and the treasures of literature
and poetry-- these are all of inexpressible value to us. It is precisely
because we do not entertain fantasies of living forever that we find the
consolations of philosophy (and the other humanities) so precious.
Goya famously declared that “the sleep of reason
breeds monsters.” We have certainly seen that maxim borne out throughout human
history. It is our reason, our capacity for free inquiry and thought, that
makes us distinctly human. It is too precious a commodity to be surrendered, no
matter how seductively the offer is made.
Copyright
© 2012 by William K. Ferro
All
rights reserved
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