By
Chen Yehezkely / May 2004
As a student of philosophy, I find myself at odds
with my past. I am an Israeli, a Jew, born and raised on a kibbutz, and an
ex-member of The Emin Society, which I joined after military service.
The Emin Society is a small esoteric group, considered, if at all, a kind
of a cult. One common feature to all of my past and present identities –
Israeli, Jewish, kibbutz, and Emin – is that they all turn around one
aspiration, the aspiration to better humanity. They differ, of course, in that
each has its own peculiar vision of a better humanity, as well as its own
peculiar way for realizing its vision. What all these aspirations and visions
share, however, is their filling their bearers with a sense of purpose, or, to
use Bernard Shaw’s expression, they make them world-betterers. Unfortunately,
they all come in package deals ─ together with hostility to any doubt and
any dissent, especially criticism, dispute, or controversy.
I know: numberless groups answer to the same
description. Many of my good friends fit this description as well. Of these,
some are political activists, some are spiritualists, some belong to religious
or philanthropic communities, and so on. With almost no exception, they all are
very kind souls. Yet they express frank and open hostility to doubt and to
dispute. This puzzles me. It does not make sense. Their kindness clashes with
their hostility. And so do their noble aspirations for a friendlier world.
Moreover, their sharp disagreement between themselves on a thousand and one
issues clashes violently with their firm condemnation of all doubt and all disagreement.
If engagement in criticism and dispute disqualify one from serving as a world‑betterer,
then, I dare say, there is not a single world-betterer in the whole world. Are
they aware of this? Does it bother them?
It is hard to tell. Some put efforts into showing
that world-betterers cannot really disagree, that at heart all their diverse
teachings are one. This has become one of the trendiest spiritualist ideas
worldwide: all great teachings are one. This trend sounds ultra tolerant.
Sadly, I differ. On the contrary, it seems to me to be a distinct expression of
the hostility towards doubt and dispute. It seems to me an attempt to present a
picture of a world that is neatly divided into the virtuous, the wicked, and
the indifferent. In this make-believe world the virtuous are never in dispute
amongst themselves, and they have only two problems, the problem of vanquishing
wickedness, and the problem of recruiting the indifferent to the cause. Once
the common cause is met, we will have Heaven on Earth.
The hostility towards doubt, criticism and dispute,
is so deeply rooted, that most people accept it as too natural to require
justification. Still, if you are interested, there is an entire arsenal of
justifications, each of which, in its turn, is very popular and deemed
undisputed. Amongst the most common are the ideas that doubt weakens, and that
controversy and criticism are expressions of hostility. These ideas are so
deeply rooted and so generally endorsed, that they have become part of
language. That is to say, people take “doubt” to be synonymous with “weakness”,
“faith” with “strength’, “controversy” with “strife”, and “absence of
controversy” (or “unity”) with “peace” (or “harmony”).
Anyone who relinquishes these views ─ as I
did ─ must marvel at their almost unparalleled endurance and popularity.
This has a few sources. Central amongst them are utopianism, infallibilism,
loyalty and circularity. Utopianism (more precisely, “the Utopian approach”, to
use the name given to it by Karl Popper, who was the first to bring it up for
discussion), is the idea that without perfect knowledge of the ultimate truth
(or goal, or end) we cannot act rationally or responsibly, progress, or hope to
improve matters. This is because progress is by definition the advancement
towards a set end, which gets its power by being, in itself, a step towards a
higher end, up to the ultimate end. Given this, doubt not only weakens us; it
renders us downright helpless.
Infallibilism is the idea that we (or some of us)
possess perfect knowledge. Doubting or disputing such knowledge is, at best, a
waste of time and a diversion. Those who know cannot engage in doubt or
dispute, and those who do not know cannot do better than follow those who do.
The demand to do so is loyalism. More particularly, it is the demand to be
loyal to one’s beliefs and to the beliefs of one’s group, as well as to the
group itself and to the group leaders, who are in the know.
At the last resort, circularity can always help. It
is not a doctrine but a technique that comes in several variants. One variant
is the self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, those who believe that doubt
weakens learn to feel threatened by doubt, and it thus weakens them. Those who
believe that dispute is hostile, react to it in hostile ways. Another variant
is the logical cycle: those who believe that it is good to be loyal to a
belief, apply this belief to itself recursively.
World-betterers endorse utopianism, infallibilism
and Loyalty without fail, and as a matter of course. Thus they institutionalize
(mostly unofficially) incentives and penalties to encourage consent and
discourage dissent. These immediately reinforce circularity: rewards for
loyalty to one’s group’s beliefs, and penalties for disloyalty to them, render
loyalty strengthening and doubt weakening indeed. They thus render loyalty
rational and responsible. This is how I read Hans Christian Anderson’s “The
Emperors New Clothes”. Most commentators view the two swindlers of the tale as
pivotal. But I believe that they are insignificant: the plot could have
remained unchanged if they were honest believers in the ideas that they
advocate, particularly if the source of these ideas was tradition. Even the
irrationality and the irresponsibility of the emperor and all his staff, are not
the crux of the story. The crux, rather, relates to the presence of a wrong
system of incentives and penalties. That system caused the idea that
responsibility prescribes dishonesty not merely to seem true, but also
to become true, especially for those who had families to support.
Indeed, just as related in the fable, under such circumstances, truthfulness
can only ever be expected from the naïve child who has no responsibility.
Perhaps the most zealously avoided disputes concern
the Manichean worldview that divides the world to black and white, and puts the
white always above dispute amongst themselves. In principle, every dispute
within the camp of the virtuous is an obvious refutation of the view that there
are no disputes within the camp of the virtuous. The refutation sometimes leads
to an adjustment. The denial of the existence of disputes then gives way to a
denial of the existence of disputes on fundamentals. Thus, disputes on
minor, say practical, or tactical questions are tolerated with relative ease.
Take, for example, the personal question about any
given person: is this person a world-betterer or not? This is considered a
legitimate question. Not so the general question, what is minimally required of
individuals for them to qualify as world‑betterers? Such questions as the
personal questions may seem petty and dull, but for many a world-betterer they
come as top priority. It troubles world‑betterers every time they make
new acquaintances: do these belong to our crowd? Or do they belong to the enemy
camp? Are they indifferent, perhaps? If so, do they merit the effort to convert
them? Such questions, to repeat, are considered completely legitimate,
providing you avoid taking them up one level of abstraction, since then you
will be opening the door to wide disputes within the camp of the faithful.
Outsiders also do not ask this question, but this
is because it usually occurs only to world-betterers. The only way this
question can interest outsiders is when it is taken to be a variant of another.
It is this: what are the minimum requirements for responsible attempts to
effect progress? What, in other words, is the minimal responsibility of anyone
who wishes to improve matters?
This last question engages a different kind of
world-betterers, namely, the simple folk who, on the most part, do not even
view themselves as world-betterers at all. Take, for example, the child who
sees a wounded animal and feels the urge to help it. If this is its first time,
the child will help with utter oblivion to responsibility and thus may even
cause damage. But then he will have acquired the lesson that responsibility
comes first and, with the right support, he will also have learned not to take
this as a discouragement, or as an obsessive drive, such as comes with an
over-developed sense of responsibility. This is why child psychologists
recommend encouraging children to have pets. Children and simple folks can
easily learn both about the need for responsibility, and about the dangers of
over-responsibility, namely, that over-responsibility is, quite simply,
irresponsible. They learn, in brief, that responsibility means minimal
responsibility, such as the effort to avoid causing damage while trying to do
good. This lesson is not inborn, but it is easily acquired and hardly
forgotten.
We can crudely divide the organizations of
world-betterers in accordance to their view of responsibility. Some completely
ignore it and even reject it. Some say that the responsibility of a
world-betterer is maximal: to stick unwaveringly to a clear vision, to invest
all of one’s energies and resources in the right goal etc. Some add to this
opposition to violence. Some add to this the demand to stay within the bounds
of the law. And some say, all the above is excessive, since the minimal requirement
should suffice to avoid doing obvious irreversible great damage. This requires
no more than openness to criticism, which in turn, requires no more than the
admission of our fallibility.
One who says this is called a fallibilist and a
critical rationalist. One sides then with the child and the simple folk in that
one equates responsibility with minimal responsibility. Usually this elicits
some expression of amazement. It seems bizarre: given the truly horrid state of
humanity today, and that there is so much that needs to be done, why should we
permit minimizing the requirements?
The answer to the last question is simple: Although
minimal responsibility is no guarantee, quite obviously any failure to meet it
constitutes irresponsibility. Also, the requirement for over-responsibility
makes the identification of minimal responsibility less likely. This is the
commonsense of the open society: the requirement for over-responsibility
invites irresponsibility, as was demonstrated in Anderson’s story in which
demand was made for knowledge and wisdom. This demand is an unrealistic excess
responsibility. In the story, the outcome is hardly problematic. In real life,
however, the outcome all too often tends to be catastrophic.
Thus, to institutionalize the possibility and the
incentives for responsibility, we need to view responsibility as minimal, and
to ask repeatedly, what it is. This view is at the heart of so many of our
democratic institutions, up to, and including, democracy itself. It is at the
basis, for example, of such items as the separation of powers, the institution
of standards, democratic control, transparency of government, parliamentary
committees, and the prevention of conflict of interest as much as possible,
which means, of course, the prevention of conflict of responsibilities. All
these institutions and principles rest on the view of responsibility as
minimal, and on the insight that excess responsibility leads to
irresponsibility.
This is all there is to the social and political
philosophy of critical rationalism, the originator of the latest version of
which was Karl Popper. The failure of all other philosophical schools to
exhibit honest interest in the question of minimal responsibility leaves the
critical rationalist school alone on the scene. Translated to our present
discussion it says, the minimal requirement from responsible world-betterers
(as is from us all) is that they should avoid doing obvious, irreversible
damage. This requirement is lower than even the Hippocratic maxim – “first
– do no harm”. This is no guarantee, since we do not know. But it opens the
door for learning, both on the personal and on the social or institutional
level: since what is obvious to you is not obvious to me and vice versa,
we need each other’s criticism, and we need disputes, and we need research, and
we need experimentation and refutations, and we need open democratic, public
debates on controversial questions of all sorts. And we need to learn to
welcome criticism in good grace and even in gratitude.
The popular umbrella title for this cluster of
practices is “learning (or progressing) by trial and error”. Karl Popper
prefers the term “conjectures and refutations” to “trial and error”. Another
term is “the practice of open-ended rationality”, and, let me add to this the
term “the practice of open-ended responsibility”. “Open-ended” signifies the
admission of imperfection and of fallibility, the open recognition of doubt and
of ignorance.
The demand ─ from others or from ourselves
─ to be more and to do more (say, to be in possession of a clear vision,
to commit ourselves without wavering, etc.), inevitably results in compromising
the minimal demand that we should openly recognize our fallibility and exhibit
a friendly attitude towards criticism. In brief, responsibility that is more
than minimal is, in truth, less.
The above is in complete clash with the commonsense
of all ages. This commonsense prescribes hostility to criticism and dispute.
Critical rationalists hold that this hostility is the major obstacle on the
path of progress and hope everywhere, especially where it is agreed that
progress and hope are most desperately needed. This claim was first made by
Plato 25 centuries ago, and last by Popper, 50 years ago. His followers are
repeating it at every chance they get and in every way they can, but are mostly
ignored.
The hostility of world-betterers towards doubt,
dispute and criticism causes them to do great damage to their own, admittedly
noble and urgent causes. At best, they block the way. By undertaking to further
a given cause, they attract resources and attention, and raise hopes. These
resources and hopes are then monopolized, thus prevented from being critically
invested. Yet, the damage is even greater. In fact, the damage of the hostility
towards doubt and dissent is as great as the cause in question is truly noble
and important, or expressing the urgent needs of a great many people, often of
the entire human race. The questions that pertain to the means for furthering
these needs, or serving these causes, must be controversial. Blocking the way
towards the open, democratic debate of these questions, is blocking the way to
improving the service that we give to our own cause. In addition, it leads to
the exclusion of many good people whom we may otherwise recruit through
rational debate.
When critical rationalists criticize the Manichean
division of humanity into black and white, the virtuous and the wicked, they do
not mean to deny that some people are wicked or that some disputes are
expressions of bad faith. Rather, they mean to deny that all people who are not
virtuous are wicked, and that all disputes with the virtuous are expressions of
bad faith. The Manichean view that all disputes are wicked rests on the view
that my views are obviously true. At times even this Manichean view may be
true. For example, we should not contest the view that pollution destroys our
environment and that this destruction threatens our survival. Also, we should
not contest the view that both terrorism and the suppression of human rights
are intolerable and dangerous, or that the mortifying poverty of billions of
people on earth is unacceptable. Dispute about these obvious truths is, indeed,
a cause for suspicion of bad faith. Thus, the dispute pertains, or should
pertain, not to the truths of these and similar assertions. It pertains, or
should pertain, to the vital questions that these assertions give rise to, such
as the question, how can we stop and reverse these dangerous processes? How can
we better our world in significant ways? How can we bring humanity back to
humanity? We have no good answers to these questions, and any reasonable answer
that anyone can offer should be a welcome item for our agenda for public
debate.
One of the central items on the agendas of almost
all world-bettering organizations is the campaign for raising public awareness
to their causes. Raising awareness to a good cause is always good, need one
say. Yet they all too often try to raise awareness to their causes, in the fashion
of preachers, on the assumption that some assertion of theirs are not
controversial at all. Thus, like preachers, they present those who dispute them
as misguided indeed, if not outright wicked.
Treating people as though they need convincing that
a good cause is, indeed, good, is an insult to them. The same is true about
insinuating that if they embrace the cause, they must also embrace your views
on how to best serve it. By speaking fervently in support of an obviously noble
cause, one may easily give the impression that the nobility of the cause is in
dispute. By speaking about the means to further an obviously noble cause, as if
these are not disputed, one suggests that there is no room for dispute where
there is. More often than not, the truth is the exact opposite. We are all for
the rescue of the environment, for the quick implementation of human rights,
for world peace, for the control of nuclear weapons, for the protection of weak
minorities, and so on. We all agree that those who are not for any of all this,
are not our friends. But we do not know how, and we are divided as to how,
these truly noble causes can best be served. Preachers, to repeat, create the
false impression that the exact opposite is the case, i.e., that those who
dispute them in regards to means, in truth are enemies of the cause. Thus they
invoke hostility on the one hand, or uncritical acceptance, on the other, both
of which attitudes are counterproductive and self-defeating.
For the sake of contrast, let us compare two campaigners.
One who preaches to the converts about the value of the cause, and who whips up
enthusiasm or guilt alternatingly. The other campaigner takes it for granted
that we all are aware of the importance of the cause, and invites us to offer
answers and to partake in the debate on the controversial questions that
follow. Picture vividly these two campaigners and compare them to each other,
and I rest my case.
The rejection of doubt, controversy and criticism,
can also be taken as an expression of the idea that they bring nothing good. It
is thus the denial of the benefit of the doubt. The idea of the benefit in
doubt, in dispute and in criticism, was formulated and put forth as a
comprehensive philosophy by Sir Karl Popper, who traced it back to
Socrates and
even to some of his forerunners. To repeat, Popper called it critical
rationalism. The title itself suggests an answer to the question, what is
the benefit of the doubt? Namely, it suggests that the benefit of the doubt is
its rationality, and, let me add, responsibility. Popper and his followers
claim that where there is no doubt, no criticism, and no dispute, rationality
and responsibility are impossible: open-ended, fallible and imperfect
rationality and responsibility are the only rationality and responsibility that
are humanly available. The benefit of the doubt may seem wonderfully huge to
some, and disappointingly tiny to others, but, huge or tiny, in the end, it is
all we have.
To embrace doubt, criticism and dispute, we should avoid the extreme positions: we are neither perfect nor entirely helpless. Those who reject doubt maintain that fallibility must lead to helplessness and helpfulness comes from perfect knowledge alone. Thus, they conclude, we should not be friendly to doubt, criticism, and dispute: for perfect knowledge renders them pointless and in its absence they will be of no use. This is refuted, of course, by the way babies learn, by the way science progresses, by the way democracy keeps reforming and improving itself. All these things, as well as many others, refute the view that the enemies of doubt and dissent advocate. Still, they are unimpressed. Their knowledge that without perfect knowledge we are helpless, and that there is no benefit in doubt, seems to be perfect and beyond doubt. This philosophy is truly hopeless, and so are we, so long as we cling to it. Responsibility requires that we try even without being assured of success.
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