Just for a moment, follow the bouncing neurons through a few sentences of philosophical history:
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”. Bookmark that premise.
Now jump forward a few thousand years to more contemporary thinkers. The logician Kurt Gödel showed us, via the Incompleteness Theorem, that there will always be something true that we can’t prove, no matter what. The philosopher Karl Popper rubbed salt in that wound with his demonstration that we can only prove that a scientific theory is definitely wrong, or probably right, but never definitely right. Then came chaos/complexity theory, which, if it has any merit, teaches us that, no matter what we think we know, making damn near any long-run prediction is impossible. John Maynard Keynes added insult to this injury by pointing out that, in the long run, we’re all dead. Finally, just for a last kick in the intellectual butt, let’s throw in evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker’s contention that the human mind never evolved the capacity to really think clearly about big questions in the first place, being better suited to a focus on reproducing before becoming a meal.
From this collection of mighty thought, you could make a very good case that we don’t, won’t and can’t know jack about what we should be doing with ourselves, but at least we can prove it. Socrates would be proud.
Such satori, depending on the kind of day you’re having, can turn you into the Buddha or the Joker. Either way you’re laughing.
Why should we care? We are, after all, a practical people, like the Romans. They dealt with philosophical problems by killing Archimedes while he was studying geometry. While they admitted the goof, it remained true that, as Alfred North Whitehead said, “No Roman lost his life because he was absorbed in the contemplation of a mathematical diagram.”
The answer is that we've always cared about our limits; it’s how we got to where we are.
The American Revolutionaries had their own little moment of satori in 1776. No, I am not claiming that the Enlightened One was reincarnated at that point wearing a tricorn hat. However, there is very good argument that the founders appreciated the limits of human knowledge, and worked with that in mind.
I don’t remember who pointed this out (I think it was PJ O’Rourke, with whom I disagree about almost everything else, but hey, he’s funny), but I once came cross the idea that part of the genius of the Framers of the Constitution lies in the phase “more perfect union.” Not “perfect union”. There is no promise of anything like a workers’ paradise, universal brotherhood or a kingdom of God on Earth in that document. For good reason: no one agreed on what was best. It’s almost as Madison and Hamilton looked each other in the eye and said, “I think you’re full of it, and I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you, but I know we can do we can do better this. Let’s write that down.”
Gödel and Karl Popper anticipated in law, right there. I like to think the Framers knew they could never prove what was ultimately the right way govern, but that they were pretty sure they knew chicken shit from chicken salad. They understood that they, and their successors, were going to make mistakes, and they built in measures to limit and correct them via the separation of powers and the amendment process. And for two hundred years plus, there has been a gradual, very painful but real expansion of the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness from landowning white males to the greater population. Imperfect at each stage, but recognized as such by enough people to keep the forward momentum.
That’s being tested right now. William S. Burroughs, out there as he was on a lot things, was sublime in his contention that some of the most dangerous people in the world are those who believe they are absolutely right. There is no progress without doubt.
Doubt is disappearing. This is happening across the political spectrum, but the problem is greatest on the right. For the first time since views on media have been recorded, a majority of the public indicates that they prefer news they believe agrees with them over news they believe is objective. Online, the very fact that opinions are expressed publicly in written statements archived, for all practical purposes, forever, makes it almost psychologically impossible for those who write them to admit a mistake, or for an audience to forgive one. Our ingrained desire to be, and to expect others to be, consistent is trumping any efforts at improving knowledge and its application.
Politics has become trench warfare, with no victory in sight and only waste guaranteed. No idea or accomplishment is now considered without partisanship. Even the greatest deliberative body in the world, the US Senate, has ceased to be a forum for its main purpose: cutting workable deals.
One way to break this stalemate is to recognize, once again, that we will not be able to avoid mistakes. The question we need to ask is: in which direction are we willing to err?
Moving toward avoiding the worst, rather aiming at the best, is not as fun or glorious as trying out the next big thing. But, as Nicholas Nassim Taleb points out very well in The Black Swan, it may be the most sensible course to take. We are overexposed to disaster right now. An increasingly interconnected world dependent on a limited supply of resources run, in large part, by financial giants removed from any risk stemming from their decisions, faces increased chances of internationally spreading disasters every day. If we are to attempt a major societal reform, it had better be something that reduces our exposure to this risk.
First and foremost, we need to minimize the chance for irreversible mistakes. Such include rushes to war that can’t be recalled, permanent destruction of human, never mind wildlife, habitat, and guaranteed energy shortages. It is simple common sense that it’s a very bad idea to put all your eggs in one basket. Such sayings stick around for a reason. It’s better to err on the side of learning more, rather than less.
Second, we must never abandon the duty to challenge ideas, not for the sake of the challenge itself, but for the testing of their merit. Barney Frank has pointed out that it would be foolish to suggest an end to partisanship; out of debate comes ideas. But while there should not be an end to partisanship, partisanship should not be the end. For this reason, we must err on the side of opening debate, rather than limiting it.
Unfortunately, the right has abandoned doubt and embraced risk on every level. In Debt, the First 5,000 Years, David Graeber provide this lovely HL Menken quotation: “For every subtle and complicated question, there is a perfectly simple and straightforward answer, which is wrong.” The right’s answers to the subtle questions of our day illustrate this. Their answer to energy problems is to increase our dependence on a single source of fuel, thus increasing risk. Their answer to national security issues is to promote another Middle Eastern war with no thought to the cost in treasure and lives, let alone the possibility of ever-spreading conflict and economic collapse, thus increasing risk. Their answer to any domestic issue is to reduce taxes in order to let an unregulated private sector, which just caused a recession by ignoring a mounting ponzi scheme, to somehow make things better by repeating the performance, thus increasing risk.
The right is willing to do this because they know that the risk will be borne by others. It’s easy to gamble with other people’s money, and to be brave with the lives of someone else’s children.
I have a feeling that risk and doubt go hand in hand. Having one’s own fortune and life on the line is an incentive to be wise. And even then, you have to be careful, because those who fear the challenge of questions are always ready with the hemlock. Still, we have no choice but to accept that that we know much less than we think. If we don’t, we’ll go over a cliff in a bus driven by a confident fool who can’t see the edge.