How Can Everybody Be Super?

How Can Everybody Be Super?

By John Taylor; 2006 July 07

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." - William James

As some readers may have guessed, I am subscribed to one of those word-a-day electronic mailouts (actually two of them) and the inflow of new vocabulary on a daily basis is influencing me more than I would have thought. For instance, yesterday's word was hubris, meaning "overbearing pride or presumption." I knew that, of course, but I did not know that it comes from the Greek "Hybris," meaning "excessive pride or wanton violence." A tyrant is proud and violent, the two go together. Built right into the word then is a link between pride and violence that the Baha'i principles recognize, especially in the principle of elimination of prejudice. As every new Baha'i learns, the Master taught that the root of prejudice is pride as much as ignorance, and that all wars are ultimately caused by various forms of pride and prejudice.

Another interesting thing based upon this principle I came across yesterday. In California a new "Museum of Tolerance" just opened up, and it has two entrances, one for those with prejudices and one for the prejudice free. Needless to say, those who try to enter by the second door are blocked. The door is permanently locked in order to make the point that nobody is completely without prejudices. This entranceway, like the Greek word Hybris, has built into it a central aspect of mainline Baha'i doctrine on prejudice, that only a perfect human being is free of prejudice and the only perfect person who was not a Manifestation of God was the son of a Manifestation, one `Abdu'l-Baha.

The idea that freedom from pride and prejudice is the mark of perfection is also pretty central to the teaching of Jesus. For example, when He set forth the beatitudes while standing on the mount He placed this one first:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."

So on one the one side of the spectrum are those with hubris, the sort who would walk through the door marked "for the unprejudiced only" without hesitation, and on the other extreme end of the spectrum are the poor in spirit, those who unhesitatingly and without reflection walk through the doors marked "for the prejudiced only." In theory, the poor in spirit would all be believers in God, since contact, through prayer and reflection, with the supreme Being would inure them, would burn into them a profound sense of humility. In fact God promises to do just that, will we nill we, whether we choose door number one or door number two.

"I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir." (Isa 13:11-12, KJV)

Interesting the juxtaposition here among hubris, being brought down, and ending up "more precious than fine gold." Here are "human values" with a vengeance. And it seems to imply that I was wrong about that spectrum image with the poor in spirit on one side and those inflated by hubris on the other. Like the curators of the Museum of Tolerance, God may expect us to be gulled, to try to get through the locked doors and fail. Then, having been humbled, we can learn what poor in spirit really means. Only then is the Kingdom of Heaven ours. Only then are we reasoning and not rearranging prejudices. Maybe our powers of reason are designed to answer questions cannot be answered, chaotic questions like:

"By what way is the light parted, which scattereth the east wind upon the earth? Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder?" (Job 38:24-5)

This reminds me of a subtext in the movie "The Incredibles," which the kids have been watching repeatedly lately. At an early point in the film the bad guy, who is an arrogant boy rather than a sophisticated man (for once!) makes a very interesting point, "Yeah, special, everybody is special. But if everybody is special, then nobody is special." First time around I happened to be in the room and I almost stopped the video and made a comment, but then thought better of it. Interrupting is rarely appreciated. Second time around I sat in and watched the whole film with them. At the end the bad guy describes the future he is planning where everybody will have super powers like the Incredibles family, and repeats a paraphrase of what he had said earlier on,

"Then anybody will able to buy my inventions and gain their own super power. And when everybody is super, nobody will be super. And you supers will all be out of a job. Moo hahaha!"

Silvie herself stopped the film and asked what he meant. How can it be that if everybody is super nobody is, if everyone is special, no one is. I said that the word "special" implies unique, which happens only when something is utterly unlike any other thing. But if all other things are special also there can be no category "other things" by which to compare that thing's unique quality. QED. They were vaguely unsatisfied. Mom, shouting from the kitchen, jumped in on their side as always and said something to this effect: there is an infinite array of qualities. It is quite possible that every individual thing is similar to other things in most ways but still has a small number of attributes that are unique to it. Hence you can say that this thing is special and also that everything else is special too. QED.

I could only mumble something to the effect that if the bad guy is planning for everybody to be super in order that nobody will be super anymore, it cannot be a good thing. Otherwise he would be the good guy. As soon as I said it I saw the flaw in my own argument. Was I not defending the bad guy's argument that if everybody is special nobody is special? By doing that was I not siding with evil rather than good? My head started to hurt and I asked Silvie to hit the play button again.

We were talking about Bertrand Russell's class of all classes that are not members of themselves. And I figure if Russell spent ten years of brain breaking effort trying to solve that and by his own admission completely failed, I am not going to succeed in a short essay. It seems that after a century, Russell's all destroying paradox is entering popular literature. I guess the reason I sided with the bad guy was that I vaguely remembered `Abdu'l-Baha using the same paradox to convert Sutherland Maxwell from an atheist to a Baha'i. As I recall it, Maxwell said that he did not believe in a God who is everywhere and the Master agreed, a god who is everywhere is nowhere and therefore cannot exist. The only God that can conceivably exist in our minds must be substantiated, must have a locus, a sort of virtual place in space and history, one that we term the Manifestation of God. QED. As I recall, this conversion took place in 1909, a year or so after Russell published the Principia Mathematica but at least ten years before Wittgenstein refuted it in Russell's eyes.

But let us get back to prejudice and reconstruct Marie's perfectly valid argument that it is possible for one thing and all things to be special at the same time. By saying that something is special we are talking about what are called differentia. The Dictionary of Philosophy defines "differentia" as "that part of the essence of a thing that distinguishes its species from all other species in the same genus." The very fact that they are not the same thing gives an object a differentia from all others. This is axiomatic. As long as we assume that A is different from B, they have to differ some ways and be the same in other ways or there could be no comparison in the first place. If this were not so, there would only be A, there would be no B. But, and this is the big question, would B be utterly inconceivable?

I think not. The human power of imagination enables us to create B's and C's and an infinitude of other entities that are the same and different but without reality. This ability is unique to humans. In this world, on this plane we are special and superior, and no other known being is special in this way. Like all powers, this can be good or it can be bad, or both, or neither, as we make it. However, as I understand it, the Liar's Paradox, Russell's Barber's paradox and several other uncertainty principles do not refute this but rob it of cogency. Whatever comes out of it is not persuasive, it is a nugatory shibboleth (to use two words-of-the-day together) that cannot illuminate or say anything meaningful because the conclusion is assumed by its premises.

By the same valid but un-cogent logic it is always possible for a reasoning human to say, "I am better than you, we are superior to them," and be perfectly correct. Not only correct but popular. That is why backbiting and gossip are so common and addictive, because it is always easy to validly criticize someone who is not present. This superficially reinforces bonds by giving a sense of camaraderie with those who are like you and close by. We always have virtues that those not present do not. The meanest intelligence easily finds a way to put others down validly. For in some ways I am always better than you, no matter how bad I may be. Even Hitler was superior to you and me in certain ways. It is always easy to say with validity, as Hitler did, "We are better than them." If he had been a member of the Khoi tribes of Southern Africa or an ant in an anthill, he still could have picked out ways in which his group was superior to others. We are special. We are better. Of course in other ways I am worse, we are worse, but that is never popular to say.

Thinking beings, then, face tremendous temptation. What greater joy is there than being right all the time? A bigot, a Hitler, a person with hubris is consistent, constructs valid arguments to his heart's content, and suffers not the contradiction of cogency. His thinking sounds specious to those of like mind. But the law of justice is clear:

"Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him." (Lev 19:17)

So, to get back to the question that forms the title of this essay, how can everybody be super? It is possible but only, paradoxically, when everybody is humble, courteous, deferential to truth in all its forms. Only poverty of spirit enables beings with super powers to walk the face of the earth -- for spirit is the greatest, the only super power because it is not limited by form and substance. Superman and Mr. Incredible are helpless before the power of the Holy Spirit, and this power inculcates one overweening value, the fear of God, which is the essence of wisdom.

"The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate. Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding; I have strength." (Prov 8:13-14, KJV)

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John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com