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Paul Kurtz, the head of the Council on Secular Humanism, wants to promote nonbelief as a positive alternative world-view. "What we want to argue is the use of reason," he says, "And that's very radical now." Oliver Lebaw. "Godless in America." ABC News online. 10-31-02.
Depending on the poll or study one reads, anywhere from eighty to ninety-five percent of Americans profess a belief on some level in a god. But what is interesting in the quote above by Paul Kurtz is not whether atheism is or is not a valid belief. After all, as the article mentions, some of the worst individuals in history -- Stalin, Mao -- were self-proclaimed atheists.
(Of course, many more tyrants and thugs were devoutly religious. Pick your favorite pope or king or other religious leader who burned or beheaded heathens and infidels or chose to wage war against them and slaughtered countless thousands in order to "save" their immortal souls.)
No, what struck me in Kurtz's words is his contention that reason is "radical," that is, revolutionary and subversive, unusual and different, out of the ordinary, a departure from accepted norms. Regardless of how broadly he meant that judgment to be taken, I believe that adherence to reason and a commitment to follow wherever it might lead -- in all areas of life -- is, indeed, radical...and extremely rare.
Most people give popular lip service to reason. After all, how many individuals would willingly admit that they were "irrational"? (Sadly, however, I have met more than my fair share of those who revel in their rebellion against reason and who hold their irrationality as a badge of honor.)
Americans, especially, take a generalized pride in their "common sense" and their "pragmatism" or appreciation for the practical. Our culture, our nation, our traditions are, after all, rooted in the Enlightenment philosophy and its respect for reason, its focus upon the here and now as a means of improving the human condition -- not just of the royal elite -- but of all people regardless of their stations in life.
Ayn Rand defined "reason" as "...the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses." Even more importantly for the purposes of this discussion, she wrote that reason "...is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice." (Emphasis in original. "The Objectivist Ethics," The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 20.) The purpose of using reason is to learn about and to stay in touch with reality. To attempt to act against or in contradiction to reality is a certain recipe for distorted results, failure, or disaster.
Just as few people would openly announce that they are "irrational," so, too, would volunteers for failure or disaster be hard to find.
So why do so many citizens' engage in behavior that is "irrational" and is a prescription for failure and/or disaster?
"Whoa the hoss there, pardner!" some of you may say. "Most people are rational. You're over-generalizing and over-dramatizing the problem."
Hmm. OK. Consider some of the synonyms for "rational":
Intelligent. Logical. Reasonable. Sensible. Calm. Sound. Cool. Levelheaded. Sober. Stable. Judicious. Prudent. Lucid. Sane.
To me, all those traits sound quite admirable. Indeed, I have observed that most people often or usually demonstrate those characteristics...at least when they deal with certain concrete, day-to-day issues involving their own children, their own money, their own jobs, their own lawn, their own cars, their own meals, their own clothes.
And yet...
When these and other issues intersect with politics and the lives of other people (others' children, homes, money, and so on) or with more abstract principles and concepts, far too many people begin exhibiting the distinctive twitches of irrationality.
Because reason must be exercised by choice, the alternative -- evasion, the irrational -- is always an option for people to select. Being rational -- gathering evidence, evaluating the facts, being logical, being ruthlessly moral, being focused and aware and alive -- requires effort and work...a lot of it. And forever. There are no "time outs," no "safe zones," no "recesses," or as Rand put it, no using reason "...in sporadic fits or on selected issues or in special emergencies..." (ibid., p. 25) for someone committed to being rational.
Many people find such an open-ended, lifelong commitment intimidating, a wearying prospect they feel incapable of handling. So much "easier" to "let Joe do it." Hand over the responsibility, the work, the risk of failure to someone else...especially if in the guise of the distant and self-serving State and its agents.
The State, of course, encourages such intellectual and physical laziness. The less individuals feel they are able or willing to do, the more opportunity for power and control to accrue to the State. Citizens are bombarded in State-run schools, in statist and collectivistic media, and in the overall social milieu by the notion that they can accomplish nothing by themselves. The "village," the "community," the "race," the group, the collective is paramount and will and should coddle and "guide" us from before we are born until long after we are dead.
"Do not depend on your mind. Your senses are invalid. It's all a matter of opinion. Rely on other people, not yourself. There is no objectivity. Logic is a tool of oppression. Freedom is an illusion. All cultures are equally valid. Diversity is good. Differences are bad."
Television shows with hoaxers who "reach beyond" and who prey upon the weak in mind and spirit swell in popularity. Astrology is taken seriously on a wide scale. Belief in ghosts and angels is accepted with sage nods of the head. People pray to unseen, unheard, untouched entities that are simultaneously and contradictorily omnipotent and omniscient, asking these beings to grant them boons such as wealth, a spouse, or a parking spot. Postmodernism is the darling of the intelligentsia.
Subjectivism. Collectivism. Altruism. Determinism. Equality.
Regardless of the mode in which it bubbles to the surface, the cesspool that is irrationality spreads its stench everywhere, befouling all and everyone that it touches.
Unfocus. Suspend your mind. Shrink your consciousness. Refuse to see. Believe in the impossible. Seek out the mystical, the unreal.
Embrace death.
In For the New Intellectual, Rand tells us that, "Irrationality is a state of default, the state of an unachieved human stature." (p. 21.) Those who do default on their responsibility as a human being, who muddle along accepting the importance and validity of reason only when convenient or when they must, create a patchwork of part-time sanity as they limp through life, drawn like moths to a flame by their own lies and the hollow promises of those who would rule them.
It is illogical to believe that you can tax and spend your way to prosperity.
It is senseless to pretend that you are safer when you have no means of defending yourself.
It is unreasonable to suppose that health care is a right that others must deliver.
It is inconsistent to accept personal choice in social issues but to deny it in economic ones.
It is invalid to declare your love for the environment while embracing the greatest despoiler of the land, the State.
It is fallacious to claim that there are "human" rights that are separate from "property" rights.
It is unscientific to pass laws based on fear or lack of evidence while ignoring the facts.
It is unsound to act as though citizens of other countries will love us more the more we threaten and bomb them and interfere in their lives.
It is meaningless to speak of "hate" crimes or "gay" rights or modern "art" or a "benevolent" State.
It is absurd to cling to the fantasy that everyone can live at everyone else's expense.
It is mad to entertain -- even for an instant -- the dangerous and destructive idea that irrationality is of any value to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
And yet...people do just that every where, every day. They accept the irrational. They are irrational, to one extent or another. They simply prefer that you don't, you know...say that.
If it is, indeed, radical to believe in reason, then a radical I am.
I will, however, celebrate joyously when and if the time arrives that "reason" and "radical" are paired no more.
