Friday, July 29, 2016
THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE THINKER
Some
of these distances are quite long. Consider humanitarianism. You can go all the
way back to the Hebrew Bible for the idea of equality before the law. The Bible
demands that there be one law for the immigrant and for the native-born. Everyone
gets the protection of the same laws. We still struggle to achieve this. Not to
mention the Bible’s commands not to oppress or wrong the immigrant and even to
love the immigrant. Lo these many thousands of years later, hatred and fear
of the immigrant is still the easiest thing to whip up.
In
the first century, the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus told his readers of a
due process rule that Jews follow. No one may be put to death for a crime
unless he has first had a trial by the Sanhedrin. We have more or less achieved
that, but we don’t always follow it and sometimes when we do, it’s not exactly
a fair trial that is being followed. If we did honor due process as much as we
say we do, there would not be any need for an innocence project which seeks to
exonerate wrongfully convicted persons.
But
we don’t have to go as far back as ancient Judaism to see how hard it is to
advance humanitarian ideals. Let’s just go back to the 17th century
and John Locke. Locke challenged the idea that state sovereignty is a
sacrosanct idea. For Locke, the foundation of society was human rights,
liberty, and equality. No claim to government power could be legitimate unless
it honored and protected human rights. We claim to believe that, but state sovereignty
has a powerful hold on us. We are reluctant to interfere with it, no matter how
badly human rights are being violated by a state. John Locke pushed for the
idea that force can never validate what is not right. It has been over three
hundred years since Locke promoted his ideas and we are still catching up.
The
need for human rights as well as understanding what they are was obvious hundreds,
even thousands, of years ago. But fighting for human rights is a long distance
race. It is not and never will be a one hundred yard dash to the finish line.
The
same is true of seeking for reason in the study of any subject. Whatever
academics in all fields may boast, achieving rationality is no easy matter. We
are still huffing and puffing our way there, despite the noble efforts of so
many who carried the torch long before we got here. Socrates was sprinting
ahead more than two millennia ago. Have we taken it any further beyond his
hopes and dreams? Socrates’s Bible was the Greek language, not the entire
language, just key points in it, like words about the good and the bad, truth,
usefulness, justice, state power, and more. He insisted we reason carefully,
building up slowly from the evidence and taking small, careful steps towards a
conclusion. It’s a dream that we have reached that ideal. Abandoning reason and
leaping towards ideology is still the sacrosanct way to find truth for too many
academics.
But
let’s move up in time from Socrates. Let’s go to 9th century China.
Zen Master Huang Po advised us to reject what we think, not what we see. That’s
what a wise person would do, he said. The fool, on the other hand, rejects what
he sees in favor of what he already thinks. This is a very simple and effective
way of saying that we must not let preconceived ideology control the reasoning
process. Let’s pay attention to the evidence. Who am I going to believe, Judge Marilyn
Milian is always asking litigants when she studies a piece of evidence in her
courtroom, you or my lying eyes? There is one consistent thread when you follow
this line of thought over the centuries. How hard is it to follow Huang Po’s
wise advice? Judging by the way most academics behave, it is very difficult.
When
reason or the essence of human rights first dawned on some caveman eons ago, it
must have come in full bloom. Once you get it, there it is in all its
flowering. He must have thought this is so obvious, everybody is going to be
thrilled when I tell them about respecting human rights or about reasoning from
the evidence. He was in for a very rude awakening. Did he despair when people
laughed at him or stared at him like he was crazy? Did he withdraw for a while
before he returned to campaign for what he believed? Or was he executed? He almost certainly was ostracized.
Most
important, would he be stunned to learn that thousands of years later, we are
still fighting for the same simple propositions?
©
2016 Leon Zitzer
