Sovereignty III

Comments about "Assault on Reason," Fatalism

By John Taylor; 2007 September 12, 05 Izzat, 164 BE

I have a long line of audio books to listen to during my daily exercise session, but as soon as Al Gore's "Assault on Reason" came into my hot little hands I bumped it to first in line. I am now on the third chapter. There is a book excerpt from the book, courtesy of Time Magazine, at:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051707R.shtml

And the Wikipedia offers its usual objective, reliable review of the book at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Assault_on_Reason

Although I normally would not touch a US politician with a ten-foot pole, anybody who could produce the world-view exploding "An Inconvenient Truth" has to be of prime interest. In "The Assault on Reason" Gore offers the not unexpected criticisms of the present US Presidential administration, but goes beyond that to point to a stomach-churning decline in the tone of debate in the public forum. Instead of journalists and commentators, we now have propagandists dressed up as reporters. Instead of voters, we have zombies. Instead of leaders serving the public interest, we have corporate stooges. The mental meltdown parallels the outward, physical changes going on in the world's climate.

Gore points out that television broadcasting has an astonishingly strong grip on the minds and imaginations of Americans, who spend virtually all of their discretionary time in front of the boob tube. This explains some puzzling things about what passes for political discussion south of the border, for example, why there was such endless talk of the Iraq invasion's casus belli, its supposed nuclear weapons program. To anybody familiar with the facts, it is strange that anybody could go on and on endlessly about that spurious lie. "That was a lie, wasn't it? Bush lied about Saddam Hussein being involved with Qaida, didn't he?" Evidently a strong majority of Americans believed and still believe that Saddam was cooperating with his sworn enemies in stockpiling nuclear weapons and handing them out like candy to terrorist groups everywhere.

Gore explains why this could be very graphically. Reason has been assaulted by systematic mesmerizing. He tells of how as a kid he learned how to hypnotize a chicken. You hold its head and move your finger around so its eyes follow the finger. This forced attention direction controls what neuroscientists are calling the "orientation response." Television grabs and manipulates this response on a second by second basis, which is what makes it so addictive to the human brain. Anyway, a few seconds of finger waving renders the chicken immobile. You can use it as a paper weight, a doorstop, but not, he warns, as a football. If it flies through the air some sort of reflex kicks in, and it regains full consciousness.

I have been a vegetarian too long, I think. I was a little shocked that, sensitive as Gore otherwise is, he could talk about using a living bird as a football. Imagine if he had said the same thing about a kitten! On the other hand, we are not inured to cruelty to what my 13 year old daughter Silvie calls "cutes" by having institutions like "Kentucky Fried Puppy" or "Southern Fried Bunny." But I guess, cruel as it is for a young boy to kick poultry around, it is far crueler to kick around a stultified nation of three hundred million human souls. It is beyond shocking that, as Gore points out, systematic torture of human prisoners is perpetrated by this soon-to-be Ancien Regime, both openly and in secret. But I cannot help but think that the crisis of compassion runs far deeper than Gore realizes. The fact that he can openly talk about kicking chickens demonstrates that.

Generally speaking, the rot that this book declaims eats far deeper than its author realizes, in the same way that the climate crisis has gone further than he, optimist that he is, dares contemplate. Even -- dare I say it? -- Gore's faith in reason is not entirely iron-clad. Reason has to be combined with several other pillars of humanity, including faith, tradition, inspiration and reverence for life, which now translates as sustainability.

I cannot help but wonder what will come after, what the alternatives are that progressives like him are offering. In my opinion many of his fundamental presuppositions are bankrupt, if not patently fallacious; for example like most non-Americans I do not share his cherished belief that the American political system with its checks and balances is all but divinely revealed. The strict separation of church and state that he treasures (admittedly for good reason in the present climate) is not one that Canadians, or Baha'is for that matter, share. In the long run we are best served if science, religion and government cooperate closely and affectionately. Drawing lines in the sand does not help anything.

In preparing for this mid-book book review, I looked over some of this book's discussion and commentary on Amazon.com. This was, if anything, more distressing than the contents of the book itself. Liberal and conservative in the States have become so fractious and added in so much hatred and denial of each others' point of view that instead of acting like two legs to help their country walk forward, the legs are trying to walk in entirely different directions. Unless something happens to reconcile them, I see imminent collapse for the world's unilateral superpower.

I have read about some frightening possible scenarios for their military forces in Iraq, presently shored up defending to the death the entrenched interests of well-connected corporations like Haliburton. If tensions with Iran flare into open war, their fleet could find itself trapped in the Persian Gulf. Combined with imminent bankruptcy, this could rapidly become a disaster that would make ancient Athen's failed adventurism in Sicily seem minor in comparison.

The book that I set aside for a while to listen to Gore's Assault is a fascinating biography of Abraham Lincoln and his "Cabinet of Rivals." Until I read this book, I had no idea what a genius Abraham Lincoln was. He had as high an IQ as anybody, but so do a lot of complete losers. What he had was very rare, an extremely high EQ and SQ, that is, emotional and social intelligence. He had the unheard of ability to draw together enemies and get them to work together, as he did with his cabinet.

Every man-jack of them had hated Lincoln himself, and each others' guts even worse; but Lincoln somehow persuaded them of a duty to do the impossible, to forget their pettiness and establish a dynamic tension, a unity in diversity that would do a Baha'i consultative body proud. That is the kind of leader we need now, even more than back then (great as was the need then)! That kind of leadership is what women, given half a chance, excel at, and what the present political machinery in the US does more than anywhere else to exclude. Mark my words, once women get a chance to show what they can do given real power, working together synergistically, it will be very hard for a long time for any man to get a job in politics.

Anyway, the biography drew my attention Lincoln's first inaugural address, where the just-elected American president set out a prolonged argument against secession, already well underway as he spoke. This was way back when leaders wrote their own speeches, when speeches therefore meant something beyond spin doctoring chickens into footballs.

In this statement Lincoln made what I think is an essential point. He argued that the reason the founding fathers got together to form a union was to improve the situation, not make it worse. A union, like the Sabbath, is for man, not man for it. The slave states, by breaking up this union, were not improving things. They were not addressing the causes of their grievance. It would still be there when the divorce had gone its course, either way. They were therefore destroying a greater good in order to attain a lesser. A nation union, like a marriage, does not contemplate an end to itself by definition. Love is love, it never dies, it is eternal even in the face of the assault of this ephemeral world. Lincoln said,

"I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever -- it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself."

But this reasoning that Lincoln held so basic, the idea that those founding fathers formed the union for improvement, has to apply to further unions beyond that, to the union of nations into a world entity. If holding to exclusive national sovereignty harms those unions, and if their unification offers the greater benefit of solving problems that national unity cannot, a fundamental duty follows, to modify present sovereignty into something more mature, something compatible with and subordinate to a higher benefit, a more universal unity of all men and women. Everything else is just excuses. Mo Tzu understood and warned against the fatalism that substitutes whining for responsible initiative,

"If the people of the world really desire to have the world rich and do not want to have it poor, desire to have it orderly and dislike to have it in confusion, the doctrine of fatalism must be rejected. It is a great calamity to the world."

In saying this, Mo Tzu showed that he had his finger on the pulse of every political quandary that we are in right now; fatalism, apathy, TV-induced stultification, moral stagnation, failure of will to act on reality behind illusion. I love the Confucian thinkers because they understood that tradition, every bit as much as reason, is a fundamental pillar of order and right. I will close with the great Chinese philosopher's argument leading up to what he said above against the conscious rendering of the human brain into a doorstop or paperweight.

Mo Tzu said: At present, in governing the states the rulers all desire to have their countries wealthy, their population large, and their administration orderly. But instead of wealth they obtain poverty, instead of an increase in population they obtain a decrease, instead of order they obtain chaos. That is, they lose what they like but obtain what they dislike. What is the reason for this? It is due to the large number of fatalists among the people.
The fatalists say: "When fate decrees that a man shall be wealthy he will be wealthy; when it decrees poverty, he will be poor; when it decrees a large population, it will be large; and when it decrees a small population this will be small; if order is decreed, there will be order; if chaos, there will be chaos. If fate decrees old age, there will be old age; if untimely death, there will be untimely death. Even if a man sets himself against his fate, what is the use?"
This doctrine is promoted to the rulers at the top and keeps the people below from their work. Hence fatalists are not men who care for humanity. And their doctrines must be clearly examined.
Now let us look at some of the writings of the early kings. The writings of the early kings that were issued to the whole country and distributed among the people were the laws. Did any of the laws of the early kings ever say: "Blessing cannot be invoked and disaster cannot be avoided; reverence will not do any good and cruelty will not do any harm"? The standards according to which lawsuits were tried and punishments were meted out were the codes of punishment. Did any of the codes of punishment of the early kings say: "Blessing cannot be invoked and disaster cannot he avoided; reverence will not do any good and cruelty will not do any harm"? . . .
Mo Tzu said: I have not enumerated the good books of the empire completely. As they cannot be exhaustively enumerated, I limit myself to the most prominent ones . . . And try as we may, we cannot find any belief in the doctrine of fatalism. Should it not then be abandoned?
Now how do we know fatalism is the way of the wicked? In the past, wretched people indulged in drinking and eating and were lazy in their work. Thereupon their food and clothing became insufficient, and the danger of hunger and cold was approaching. They did not acknowledge: "I was stupid and insolent and was not diligent at work." But they would say: "It is but my lot to be poor."
In the past, wicked rulers did not control the sensuality of their ears and eyes and the passions of their mind. They did not follow their predecessors and so they lost their country and ruined their state. They did not know that they should confess: "I am stupid and insolent and was not diligent in attending to government." But they would say: "It is but my fate to lose it."
If the doctrine of the fatalist were put to practice, top leaders would not attend to government and subordinates would not attend to work. If superiors do not attend to government, jurisdiction and administration will be in chaos. If the subordinates do not attend to work, wealth will not be sufficient... The eccentric belief in this doctrine is responsible for pernicious ideas and is the way of the wicked. (The Ethical and Political Works of Mo Tzu, tr: Yi-Pao Mei, Arthur Probsthain, London, 1929, at: http://www.humanistictexts.org/motzu.htm)