On Rationality and Living As If

There is a recent surge in books and articles about the nature and importance of rationality. It seems like they are being written as an implicit response to all the stop-the-steal craziness and the know-nothing authoritarian cult around You Know Who, as well as real and perceived anti-vax stuff (much of what is called anti-vax is actually objections to mandates). Then there is the parallel phenomenon of woke irrationalism, but that doesn’t appear to be where the rationality writers are coming from, as their critiques seem more of a “defense-of-science” thing. That’s where Steven Pinker is coming from. I like Pinker, but there has always been a limit for me, since the conclusions that flow from scientific materialism don’t sit quite right with me.

For example, from a rational perspective, one shouldn’t believe in reincarnation or even an afterlife since there is no scientific proof for it. Where to begin with how this rubs me wrong? Well, it strikes me as a rather cramped way of viewing life and human experience. It depends on seeing millennia of spiritual and religious belief as mere superstition: They were ignorant until science came along. Like that. It’s precisely because I don’t see life like that, that I did my graduate work in theological studies. So I’m biased in the other direction. Instead of chalking up a deep tradition of human existence as merely wrong, my default is to figure that they probably were on to something important, or at the very least, something interesting.

That is, when I encounter worldviews that predate the modern, my assumption is that they might know something we don’t, since they are closer to the source. Note, I’m not saying science is wrong, rather that the correctness of science is incomplete insofar as it suggests that, say, a dream has no spiritual meaning or that the trance states of mystics and the messages received therein are mere delusion. One of the most fascinating things about The Republic is how it traces Socrates’ philosophic mission to the claim of the priestess Pythia, Oracle of Delphi, that he was the wisest man in Athens. Socrates represents the essence of the rational man, yet he and his peers were not above consulting the oracle for insights unavailable to regular mortals. What Socrates did was to then set about using his powers of rationality to try understand what the oracle meant by this. Each thing in its place. 

Thus, when a science person says it's insane to believe in an afterlife, I just shrug. What am I supposed to do, read a few of the debunking books and suddenly stop entertaining ideas that feel deeply true to me? I'm not even saying I'm right, just a life lived without that sense, that dream, that scenario, is, for me, an impoverished one. Does it give my life meaning? Well, yes. In a couple ways. First, on a basic level, it's just fun and invigorating. It's a creative past-time to encounter visions of the beyond. I've read widely in these matters, from the core texts of the religions to the writings of the great mystics to the best of what is called channeled literature. Oh, and I've read the near-death-experience literature, too (which is of widely differing quality, but that's another discussion). My mind and spirit feel alive when I engage with grand metaphysical structures. On another level, I just have the sense that our task here is to develop the perspectives, principles, and capacities that also pertain in other spheres. All as part of the development of consciousness and being in general. But that's just me. I'm not insisting anyone else see things the way I do. Indeed, that would run counter to one of the core spiritual principles, especially in an Emersonian sense. "Nothing at last is sacred but the integrity of your own mind." In other words, I tend to live as if it is true, without demanding others do the same.

The most fundamental as if orientation occurs in relation to the notion of free will. It has always been a core topic in theology, with discussion centering on theodicy, or the question of why an all-powerful and all-knowing God would allow evil to occur. The main line of thinking is that God has endowed us with free will, so we can take responsibility for our actions. This makes sense. What's interesting to me is that is that if indeed there is a form of existence in which God has allowed for no suffering or harm to occur, it is simply not our world. In fact, it is such a counterfactual that we can scarcely ponder how this would actually function, implying that there must indeed be no free will. But this assumption that suffering must exist or result from choices, posits that that world functions like ours, with existence being experienced as we experience ours. But there's no reason for that to be the case. Either way, the concept of an all knowing, all powerful God is not one I entertain, preferring the concept of God as All That Is, containing infinite consciousness and potentiality. I proceed as if this were true, and I think that doing so frees me from leaning on a moralistic or implicitly authoritarian stance toward life.

That said, any God orientation, no matter how independent it is of established religion, clearly does not comport with the modern vision of scientific materialism, whose core tenets include that consciousness follows the material instead of vice versa, and, of course, the big one, the absence of human free will. I read up a little on this, but it's not clear to me exactly what it means. If it means that all thoughts and actions are conditioned, well, it's hard to argue with that. This corresponds to the Buddhist notion of interdependence, called dependent co-arising. Quite simply nothing can exist independently of anything else, and further, is always changed or changing, thus the animating Buddhist principle of impermanence. But conditioning does not mean that choice has not been involved, but rather the choice or action didn't come out of nowhere. I suppose it is my conditioning that makes it unlikely that I am going to go downstairs now, grab my keys and my phone and my credit cards, and walk right out the door and start driving and never come back. But if a significant enough impetus were to occur that made that course of action plausible or tempting, I would still have the choice to either run or stay and deal with it in some other way. And a choice will have to be made. Should I stay or should I go sang Mick Jones in the great Clash song. It's a question we ask ourselves continually in any number of situations, and one must decide. The theoretical lack of free will doesn't mean that we don't face this choice.

The main scientific idea is that everything is genetically predetermined. Those cases of identical twins separated at birth who go on to live remarkably similar lives are pretty thought-provoking in this regard. But still, a chain of choices went into the mating that produced these twins, with their identical glasses, sweaters, record collections, family situations, and jobs. Indeed, maybe a choice was made one fateful night to use a condom or not. Does my genetic structure determine whether I will order Thai food tonight or make spaghetti? If so, that's some wicked complex programming! You go through your days, you make choices, regardless of what "the research says." And many of our choices are significant to the ark of our lives. Some people get their health under control. They have to make a hard choice each day to go to the gym. 

Ultimately, the thing I find strangest is the intense desire of scientists to get us to change our minds about free will, to disabuse us of our notions of autonomy. It is within your power, they say, to awaken from your irrational slumber and walk in the light of rationality. To me, unless I'm missing something, that sort of puts the lie to the whole thing. To whatever extent free will is non-existent, and I'm willing to concede that on some very, very deep level, be it biological or spiritual, the lack of it may be "true" in a way not understood in any terms of normal living. And this is the point: you can't get through the day without proceeding as if free will is real. I had to make some choices today and muster up the will power to complete this essay. Was it predetermined on the day that I was born I would choose to sit down at the computer on April 9, 2022, and do this instead of watching TV? I guess I don't know, but I do know that I like myself and my life a lot better when I believe that I stepped up, put that clicker down, and wrote this damn thing. Feeling good about making what I perceive as the right choices is good enough for me to wear the mantle of irrationalism with pride.