God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
– Reinhold Niebuhr
Scrawled upon a college blackboard before the start of class, back around 1950, I saw the words “Damn the Absolute!”
I wondered if this was the outcry of a soul lashing out at evil or the condemnation of the objective reality from which we draw our very existence.
How do you separate yourself from the generating principle of life without condemning yourself to a dark and lonely limbo? How does anything form or function without constants? And how can anything form or function when destructive variables are included?
How do you win a game with no rules? How do you get from A to B when both A and B are moving? How do you separate yourself from your body (e.g. “trans” mania)? How do you have a life if you meddle with its fundamentals?
Perhaps I misread the message. But if banishing what can’t change did not mean turning against even the source of life, what did it mean? I suspected that this was a desperate effort at “doing something positive” about the ills of the world by invoking Reason.
But is it “reasonable” to reject or condemn the creative force that forms and sustains life because it appears incapable of bringing about a perfect order? Is it the Absolute that needs to be indicted or is it the abuse of Reason?
It was Age of Reason thinkers who dignified the notion that meddling with even the constants of life is justified, in the interest of improving the world. This attitude stems from the belief that intelligence supersedes wisdom, and process is exempt from morality. Numerous disciples of this 18th century “enlightenment” have been busy since then to deliver a man-made “golden age” to humanity.
It should be possible, by this late date, to see how successful “enlighteners” have been. Look around in today’s world to see if intelligent process and dumping morality are bringing about a better world for its inhabitants. I see dismal failure.
What could have gone wrong?
Of the possible explanations, I’ll touch on one that reflects the problem with “enlightenment through Reason.” It is a paradox of rationality – with or without the tools and symbols of mathematics and science – that in dividing things into parts for analysis and synthesis, it is all too easy to lose the wholes. In the case of humans, the parts can slip away, even in the definitions. Words, symbols, concatenations of logic (e.g. algorithms) will not pin down a human being, let alone “grasp” the concept of one. Serious rationalists seem not to be bothered by this anomaly, while they in some way compensate for this lack of “data” with supporting “theory.” For extreme rationalists, the concern seems to be one to laugh at.
And so, this weakness of Reason to grasp the reality of being human provides endless loopholes for abuse to those claiming Reason as the justification for their actions. The inherited credo of rationalists that “man is the measure of all things” is therefore in reality an enormous lie. Why be surprised when countless philosophers, theologians, and people of superior intelligence, over the centuries, have never yet been able to define, once and for all time, just what a human being is?
The author of “Damn the Absolute!” was evidently locked in the habit of rationalists to exclude what is human from reality. This habit from 18th century “enlightenment” continues to make many regard reality as alien to humanity, opposed to us, a stand that invites leaders to assume the authority to control everything anyone can bring up . . .
. . . including all that can’t be known? Such as exactly how matter turns into people? That is an unsolved mystery to science, which does not deal with metaphysical and spiritual matters.
Diehard materialists scoff at such “spiritual stuff.” Objective reality has no place in their brains. Unwittingly they have settled for a game of chance as their default method of action in life, top choice of hardened gamblers, with one big difference: for hardened materialists, the game is won by changing the rules.
This inevitably knocks on the door of relativism. I suspect this is what the author of the blackboard indictment against the Absolute did. But making everything relative is an ever-shifting non-position about what in fact may really be best. In the game of relativism, just say “who’s to say,” and the answer instantly becomes “whoever’s on first.” And the player holding most of the chips wins.
When everything is dumped into a grab-bag of change, and the variables (what can be changed) are mixed together with the constants (what can’t be changed), the relatedness of each thing to the other is confounded, shutting off the power of Reason to navigate the maze of conflicting signals.
Dismissing every “absolute” (except one’s own, of course) is the mark of a reckless willfulness to put even human life on trial for being imperfect. This attitude encourages experimentation with human life that is nothing short of tinkering with lab animals. But if we are civilized, any effort to improve human life begins with a respect for the value of human life.
In fewer words, let our God-given brains experiment with things, not people. And let me add that guarding against the addiction of relativism and upon a total reliance on Reason makes it possible even for “liberals” to appreciate the true value of their lives.
Anthony J. DeBlasi is a veteran and lifelong supporter of Western culture.
Image: Rijksmuseum, via Picryl // CC0 1.0 Dedication
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