July 23, 2023

“The seat of knowledge,” said William Hazlitt (1778-1830), “is in the head, of wisdom in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.”

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What can “feeling right” about knowledge mean in a head stuck on politics, and what wisdom can come from a cold heart? How can “feeling right” connect to justice when the realities of being human are dismissed – as, for chief example, by progressives and fake liberals? 

At the heart of the matter, frequently though incorrectly framed as a conflict between liberals and conservatives, is the difference between ethics based on the politics of the day and ethics reflecting centuries of human experience. The “progressive” posture disregards unity between generations (“progress and change are equal”), while the so-called “conservative” stance is mindful of the organic continuity between generations. The one relates all justified action to a vertical Now, the other to a horizontal Always.

Which of the two stances of mind and heart makes better sense regarding what is “right” and what is “wrong,” what is “acceptable” and what is not “acceptable,” what is “justified” and what  is not “justified” in political action and social conduct? Which of the two “attitudes” is essential to “feeling right” about morality?

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This is an idle question only to those who turn their back on justice for whatever reason – gain and convenience at the top of the list. But it happens to be front and center to those who are serious about justice to humanity.

The following may help ease the old subject of morality out of a darkness it has drifted into . . .

It is rarely noticed that the social and political sciences have nothing to say about greed, plunder, revenge, and other negative tendencies of the heart and the mind, once called “sins,” as though these adverse qualities are not relevant to the right conduct of human affairs. The so-called social sciences necessarily depart from the needed rigor of scientific methodology, which exposes them to political manipulation. The “liberal/progressive” take on “what is acceptable” depends on such fungible “science” to make its case and move forward in “progress.” The unfortunate result is that what is deemed possible finds its way from hypothesis to law, free of filters for destructive extremes.

“Is there a right to murder?” or “is it right to kill or plunder those who disagree with a given worldview?” are the kind of question that is let out the back door by social and political “sciences” or is assigned to perpetual “studies” to keep them out of the way. What else to expect when possibility is put ahead of validity?

How plain can it be made that possibility and justification are not equivalent, and why morality enters every human equation? Should hands always do what they can, based on the pos­sibilities? Hands that feed and caress and hold from falling can as well strangle and destroy and pull triggers. Science (both real and fake) does not provide the wisdom to distinguish between what is possible and what is the right thing to do. Ethics based on what is possible regarding human life gives political radicals a license to turn “justice” into an asset for their agendas.

The basics of our existence – how we grow, breathe, experience pain, pleasure, etc. etc. – may be understood scientifically but being human in its totality is off the radar screen of scientific inquiry and cannot be controlled scientifically. Biotechnology (for example) is a great tool for mending bodies, but if the attempt is made with it (or any science) to own the forces behind our existence the result must be failure. The fact is that our chronic ig­norance regarding all the most important aspects of life is as profound today as it was B.C.