Rationality, certainty, and happiness

A little biographical background on this...

I had a crisis in my life about 2 years ago. Doubt challenged my faith… again… and I retreated… again… into self-convincing recitations. “It is true, it is true, count it true, believe it’s true, it is true, it’s all true, believe, reckon, it is true, yes, yes, true, true.” Then I stopped. “Wait, do I want what is true, or do I want this? I want both. I want THIS to be TRUE. I don’t want what’s not true. So I just want what’s true.” Breakthrough. Oh, man, talk about weight off shoulders. Yes, not “this” (anything, fill in the blank), but true. Just true. Crazy true, familiar true, new true, old true, “wait, does believing that condemn me to hell?” true, “wait, does this mean I get to go to heaven?” true. And here’s the most important one. I mean, this is UNBELIEVABLY IMPORTANT. Here it is: “Life works out like this” true, and “life does not work out like this” true. True. Truth. Whatever it is. Fill in the blank: if ____________ is true, I want it. Here’s how that last one, the important one works in that sentence: if this belief that helps life work out is true, I want it; or, if this belief that ruins the rest of my life is true, I want it.

So, here was the resolution to my crisis: I want what is true, no matter what that means.

This conclusion relieved some pressure on me because I had decided to believe whatever was true, and no longer believe anything because I felt I should, or ought to believe, or became happy by believing , but because I believed the thing was true.

That conclusion worked very well, and set me off onto an adventure of sorts to find what was really true. I remember seeing the world through rational eyes – what I had come to consider “pure” eyes – looking out at this great big universe of data that invites us to come and take and roll its data down the labyrinths of our minds to see where the balls will fall. How exciting! What a thrilling and independent voyage! No gulping down like a lost seafarer the words of a wise man or a wise book, but tasting all, trying all, testing all, and concluding for oneself. And using words like “oneself.”

Failures of Rational Method

Well, that method, the cool, rational, analytical method has come up short. It has not delivered what I expected. I expected to come to very good conclusions by sifting all things through the most reasoned sieve I could find. By good here I mean at least two things: certain and happy. I have not come to good conclusions. I have just (over the past few months) gained a vantage on rational method that dismays my previous expectations. From my current vantage, I can see two portentous (can I say prophetic?) shortcomings in rational method. (BTW, "prophetic" would only apply to me, because this has all been very thoroughly explored by others. Just not me yet.)

Failure #1: Rational method does not bring certain answers to any of life’s greatest questions.

Rational method is tricky. It is a street magician; it fools you with false sense of simplicity. One ball, three cups? Surely I can play this game! Yes, you can. And lose money hand over fist because something else, something you could not expect, is operating. Here’s how rationality fools us: by providing some answers, it repeatedly implies (as often as we have success with it), that it can provide all answers. It cannot. Rationality can tell us that 2+2=4 with absolute certainty, but it cannot tell us with certainty why the laws of logic are in operation. It can tell us that every murderous government in history has been overthrown, but it cannot tell us that murder is wrong. It can explain gynecology, but it cannot tell us where all life comes from, nor what it actually is. It can tell us the shape and size of our planet, the others in our solar system, and even galaxy, but it cannot explain where matter came from. It can acutely calculate how much CO2 will exist in our atmosphere in the year 3000 if we keep going like we’re going, but it cannot tell us where all of life is going, or should be going.

What ends up happening is what’s happened to Richard Dawkins. In one debate with John Lennox, he says,

Now, science has not told us some things, like where matter and space came from in the first place, but it is making progress all the time, and may explain those things eventually. (paraphrase)

Wrong answer Dawk-daddy. It can’t yet because it can’t. If he thinks that science (read scientists) can get a distant enough vantage to see the origin of matter by escaping not only space, but time (which are both necessary to explain the origin of matter), then he needs to read about delusions and the stupidity of irrational faith. But, the worst part about it is that he’s sincere. I think. I think he really thinks science can explain ultimate questions because it has explained so much under them. Non sequitur.

Count this as the rational method’s first failing: it cannot bring certain answers to any of life’s greatest questions.

Failure #2: Rational method does not bring necessarily happy answers to life’s greatest questions.

This second shortcoming of the rational method has just come to me (as a shortcoming) in the last day or two. Now, when I consciously adopted a rational method, I realized that it may bring me unhappy answers (see first paragraph), but I didn’t think I cared. I wanted to know what was true, even if it made me very, very, very unhappy. And at this moment, I still do. However, I recently observed this: unhappy answers to life’s greatest questions cannot survive.

I note three components essential to human existence that any philosophical or scientific answer deprecates to its own demise: relationship, usefulness, and progress. If any answer, regardless of how certain it is, makes relationship, usefulness, or progress impossible to humanity, humanity retches it up like rancid meat. Humans need, absolutely require those three things to live. Without one of those things, life is hardly possible; without all of those things, suicide is hardly impossible.

Humanity expresses these three things in five main ways: marriage/family (relationship), work (usefulness), imagination (progress), government (all three), and religion (all three). Look at the world and tell me if this is not true: where marriage/family are absent, work and/or imagination take its place; where work and imagination are absent, marriage/family and/or imagination take its place; where imagination is impossible, marriage/family and/or work take its place; where religion is impossible, government takes its place; where government is impossible, religion takes its place. “Lacking” can be substituted for “Impossible.”

Count this as the rational method’s second failing: it cannot bring necessarily happy answers to any of life’s greatest questions.

Rational Method vs. Relationship, Usefulness, and Progress

Right now you may be saying, “But, how do relationship, usefulness, and progress at all apply to rational method?” In this way: they don't. That’s the breakthrough for me on this point. Humanity orbits these themes, yet they are independent of rational method. Said another way: these themes will endure though all rationality stands apart from them, or even against them. Our lives function on these themes instead of rational themes as poetry operates on common experience instead of meter. Meter adds something, but it adds to the communicative effect of poetry, and shared experience is the communicative effect of poetry – the “point” of poetry. Another analogy: our lives are about rationality like they are about physical exercise; without any, we cannot function, yet it is about our lives and not the other way around.

We need helpful historical data right here, and I’m finding a dearth in my brain. Call Dr. Bennett, and have him insert a great paragraph of historical data that supports my points:
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And so we see from history that everything I said is unavoidably apparent, and worthy of all agreement.

Loosely compelling generalities

Until I requisition some data from him, though I hate to do it, here are some loosely compelling generalities:
(I want these to support the basic idea that humanity, by and large, regards the categories relationship, usefulness, and progress as far more important than rational method).

• Persons who devote their lives to rational method (academians, modern philosophers) often end up isolated and confused. (may I here say again how much I hate generalizing?)
  
  
• Persons who devote their lives to rational method, yet are not willing to end up isolated and confused often find recourse in other things to have relationship, usefulness, and progress. (generalizing sucks!)
  

• Almost all scientists, philosophers, and otherwise rationally motivated persons get married and have children, even though it distracts from their work. (generalizing should be taken to the woodshed and have its butt beat)
  

• Common sense says that “meaning” in life is found moreso in relationship, usefulness, and progress than in rationally-defined pursuits. (all generalizations should be sterilized so they can't have little generalizations)
  

• Most famous persons contributed to relationship, usefulness, and progress more than to rationally-defined pursuits; the same is true of most historically and globally venerated persons. (generalizations are more pointless than a gnat's toot in a hurricane)(ripped from today's Dilbert)
  

• We are happiest when we spend ourselves on relationship, usefulness, and progress, not when we spend ourselves on rationally-defined pursuits. (are these distracting from my generalizations?)
  

• Most parents hope their children spend themselves on relationship, usefulness, and progress than on rationally-defined pursuits. (ok, that's enough)

• Rationally-defined pursuits seem to speak their conclusions into mainstream society, which operates on relationship, usefulness, and progress rather than BEING the main stream of main stream society.

• A preacher who speaks only to the rational needs of his/her congregants fails, as does a university professor, though to a lesser degree.

• High school students ask, “why do I need to learn this?” instead of, “why do I need to date someone?” or, “why do I need friends?”

• University students ask, “why do I need to learn this?” less often than do high school students, not mainly because they have fallen in love with rationality, but because they have learned how rationality contributes to relationship, usefulness, and progress.

CONCLUSION

Bottom line time: a rationally-defined life is uncertain and meaningless. Rationality is a train that goes to a lot of places – most very interesting, all helpful in some way, some absolutely indispensable. But it does not go to two places: certainty and happiness.

Have you noticed something? We don’t seem to be very energized about or hopeful talking about our recent epistemology discussion. We aren’t posting things and exploring and growing in joy. I’m putting forward weak assertions, you guys are giving shaky comments, and we all feel to be descending into a, as Prof. Lehner said, “infinite regression.” May I ask regression from what? From certainty and happiness. From relationship, usefulness, and progress. That’s what’s moving underneath all of this like an undertow. We’re paddling rationally, but we are being pulled by far more essential desires in a far more human direction.

Here is my charge to you: count rationality’s discordance with certainty and happiness as its failure, and not certainty and happiness’s discordance with rationality as their failure.

Here are a few atypically (word dedicated to WTD) concrete examples of what I’m calling for:

• We should love love and rejoice in friendship, marriage, baby-making, and parenting. If our philosophy has given us a distaste for these things, it has done us a disservice. (relationship)

• We should set ourselves faithfully to any task that falls to us. If our philosophy has given us a distaste for wage-earning or volunteer labor, it has done us a disservice. (usefulness)

• We should do good in genuine hope of improving society around us. If our philosophy has given us a distaste for this, it has done us a disservice. (progress)

• We should believe in an after-life. Unless man has life after life, what we have now is merely death before death. If our philosophy has given us a distaste for this, it has done us a disservice. (progress)

• We should seek to make a life for ourselves at some work, and therewith be content. If our philosophy has given us a distaste for this, it has done us a disservice. (usefulness)

• We should seek out people in our churches and ask personal questions. If our philosophy has given us a distaste for this, it has done us a disservice. (relationship)

Love you guys
David
1 John 1.4