In order
to receive the right answer, we must ask the right question. But how do we
determine which kind is the right kind?
We are
finite beings, and the universe is infinite—too vast for us to know the right
questions to ask, let alone know when we receive the right answers. All we can know is what’s right for
us.
We all know what’s right for
us. We’re born knowing right from wrong,
and that what’s right for us is right for every being like us, however much they seem to differ. But as
we grow older most of us forget, and by the time we’re adults we’re more
often guided by what we call passion than what we call reason.
We pride ourselves on being
the only animal that uses reason rather than relying on instinct to determine
what’s right. But we use reason seldom—usually
only after we’ve acted out of passion—in order to rationalize and justify
acts we realize, too late, were wrong.
The ancient Greeks defined—perhaps
even invented—reason. Apparently their model
was the chain of questions and answers by which disputes were settled in their law
courts.
A chain of questions and
answers in a courtroom usually ends in a judgment; but while
that judgment may be as near to the truth as a judge and/or jury can determine, and
is usually accepted as such, it is determined more by which lawyer makes the best
argument than by which is the most truthful argument.
A lawyer is not an impartial
seeker of truth who follows the evidence wherever it leads. He’s an employee, paid to present the evidence
in the way most favorable to his client. He must not break the law by lying to
the court, but he can bend it by misrepresenting the meaning and/or minimizing
the importance of evidence unfavorable to his client. It would be unethical for him not to, because
his duty as a lawyer is to give his client the best defense he can without
actually lying. We all know this, yet we accept, or pretend to accept, the judgment of the court because the search
for truth is infinite and we are finite.
We accept the judgment of the court because the alternative to public
justice is private justice in which each man is a law unto himself, and we can't live together as a community if each man is a law unto himself.
We accept the judgment of
the community—or rather the judgment of those we accept as representatives
of the community: its judges and juries—not because we believe they’re
infallible, but because we value order more than truth. The search for truth never ends, but
order gives us immediate and tangible benefits.
The courtroom’s chain of
questions and answers usually ends in some resolution, but outside the court there can be no resolution because the chain is endless. Every answer raises
new questions. But just as the law distinguishes
between minor crimes, for which the defendant can be judged guilty based a
preponderance of the evidence because the consequences are minor, and major crimes, for which s/he must be found guilty beyond a reasonable
doubt, so do we, when we reason, make decisions in small matters based on less
information than we require when making decisions in large matters. We demand certainty when
deciding matters of life and death, just as a judge requires proof beyond a reasonable
doubt to find someone guilty of murder.
But reason is as imperfect a tool for determining the truth as law is for determining right from wrong.
It’s a rule among lawyers
that a lawyer never asks a question of a witness unless he already knows the
answer. Similarly, when we reason, every question we ask assumes we already
know the answer to a previous question.
If we ask "Does god exist?", we
assume we already know the answer to at least one question about the nature of
god: we know that if s/he/it exists, s/he/it exists as one god, not many. The question "Does god exist?" therefore resembles "Have you stopped beating your wife?" the lawyers’ classic example of
a question that can’t be answered because it assumes the answer to a previous
question: "Do you beat your wife?" Every question we ask assumes we know the answer(s) to previous
question(s)—answers which may be wrong—so we can never be sure we’re asking the
right question.
If the
universe is infinite and we are finite, the search for truth is endless and we can never know enough to know
which question to ask. All we can know of
the universe is that small part of it that is ours, so the only question we should
ask of it is what’s right for us.
Those who
seem to us wise accept that we are finite parts of an infinite universe too
vast for us to ever know it, so it’s foolish to try. But the wise are a minority. Most of us see ourselves as separate not only
from the whole of which the wise believe we’re a part, but separate from each
other as well.
Our first
mistake—our original sin—was to split the whole into parts—usually
two, the first and simplest division. Like Marduk,
who kills Tiamat, his mother, and splits her body into two parts which become
heaven and earth, so have we split our world into two parts consisting of the rulers and the ruled.
Our
ancestors could not deal with the apparent paradox that each of us is a unique individual, yet all of us are alike in being parts of a greater whole, so
they split themselves in two; and those two then turned against each
other in a battle to determine which would rule and which would be ruled. But because we are all parts of the whole,
in turning against each other we turned against that whole; and against ourselves as
well.
But what
if the universe of which we are a part is not the whole?
Those we call mystics believe we're finite parts of an infinite whole which we can no
more understand than a cell can understand the body of which it is a part. We should therefore love each other as we love
ourselves, because we need each other to
be complete. But those we call religious believe the the universe is not whole, but split
between the natural and the supernatural.
Gods are
not a part of the mystic’s belief that all is one. They're part of the religious belief that the universe is split
into two parts: masters, whether natural or supernatural, and their slaves. The attitude we take towards others can therefore be that of a slave towards its master, whether human or divine,
or that of a master—stern but just, or kind and loving, but always superior to its slave—never the attitude that however different we appear to be, both of us are, at some level and in some way, equals. This leads us to the delusion that one of us is superior to the other not only in some way, but in every way. One of us is good, and
the other evil. Or only one of us is real, and the other merely an imitation—or even worse, an illusion.
The belief
that the universe is split into two worlds, only one of which is real and the other an
illusion, is one we associate with religion even though it's older than what we call religion, and not exclusive to it. Most educated people claim they no longer
believe in religion, and now believe in science; but they
still believe the universe is split. Scientists and the religious differ only in how they believe it's split. Scientists say mathematics is more real than the material world we perceive
with our senses, just as the world of ideal forms was the real world for Plato.
Unlike mystics,
both scientists and the religious also believe the universe is knowable. Scientists claim their method of questioning the universe will eventually
enable us to know if not everything about it, certainly everything worth knowing—what can't be quantified isn't worth knowing—while the religious claim they already know everything they need to know about it thanks to the
revelation of a god delivered through one of his prophets. But what was once dogma for both scientists
and the religious—that the universe is knowable because it is uniformly the same everywhere in all
directions, therefore to know a part is to know the whole—is now being
questioned. Beyond a certain point our
telescopes can detect no stars, so our universe has a boundary, and is expanding
into what appears to be a void. But in that void there may be
other universes we can't see.
A finite
universe is knowable, in theory if not in practice—but a void may contain
other universes so distant from ours that we will never know them, confirming the mystic’s
view that reality is infinite and therefore unknowable by us finite beings.
Does
any of this matter?
I’ve
always written only for myself, but now nothing I write matters to me,
so it matters to no one.
We
are social animals. A man must be either
a god or a beast to live as I do, without the companionship of his own kind—or worse, a beast who
imagines himself a god. I’ve never made
that mistake, but I did once make the mistake of believing, or allowing others
to fool me into believing, that I was, or could be, their savior. Perhaps I have helped some, but I saved no one. They didn’t need to be saved because they
weren’t lost. And yet they are lost,
because they believe they are.
They
believe there’s only one way to live, but they can’t or won’t live that way any
longer, and they can’t or won’t find another way; so they’re lost, with no Virgil
to guide them through this hell of their own making. Their only companion is a Mephistopheles whom
they, like Faust, called up not to lead them out of hell, but into it.
