I tried to compile a short list of principles that underlie my actions and thoughts. It requires a good deal of "internal vigilance" to keep from using cliches and really get at one's core, because one has to strip every impulse down to its origin. I found that things like selfishness, love, peace, the greatest good or indeed, goodness itself, broke down upon extended analysis.
Faith itself, and as is implied by that, Risk.
Self-Love.
Human Cleverness, Individual and especially Collective.
Inwardly, Vigilance and Outwardly, Sincerity.
Common Humanity.
I assume that Faith would be found in anybody's complete list. The act of assumption is the basis for thought itself. Its corollary, Risk, is the basis for action.
Self-Love provides for a number of things including self-interest, the basis for human striving, and ego-centrism, which is an essential assumption for worldly understanding. Also self-confidence, which is the basis for intellectual assertion, power and leadership. Leadership is essential for people to organize into groups and institutions while intellectual assertion is essential for the expansion of human knowledge, so indirectly, Self-Love is instrumental in the creation of civilization.
This brings us to Collective Human Cleverness. My faith in religion, culture, media, science and vicarious wisdom of all kinds is grounded in a respect for the ability of humans to recognize the greatness of others' ideas. These ideas go through a process of dissemination and selective breeding that requires the conscious and unconscious participation of a huge number of individuals. Because of the imperfections, biases and stupidity of so many people this process doesn't seem perfect; yet it has a twisted sort of perfection analagous to the beauty of evolution. This blog plays a small role in contributing to that beautifully twisted mass consciousness.
Obviously, Individual Human Cleverness exists and can be considerable. However, I also have faith in a subtler, less explicit aspect of the human intellect: intuition. Let us not forget that for all our flaws, the simplest human mind puts even the largest supercomputers to shame in terms of both design and sheer processing power.
I believe in Inward Vigilance, which is to say I believe in skepticism, curiosity and clarity. About what and for what don't really matter as much, just do what's in front of you and try to limit the number of excuses you can make for yourself. It was inward vigilance that wrote this post.
Outward Sincerity is not something everybody adheres to. For many people sincerity is too much in conflict with the stronger principle of self-interest or even altruism. My sincerity is certainly compromised, but I am an earnest person, and where I am not sincere I strive to find ways that I can be so without too much damage to my other ideals.
I guess I kind of book-ended my list with gimmes. Common Humanity sounds as cliche as love or peace, but I can't think of a way around including it. Disagreements are either products of differing assumptions or of poor communication. That is to say, given the correct circumstances, I could be a terrorist, a member of PETA (as if there's a difference) or a fundamendalist Christian theocrat. This article of faith explains my keen interest in equivocating about Obama or Proposition 8.
So that's my list. I challenge you readers to try and distill your own articles of faith and post them as a comment. Don't tell me you are free of faith, because that's a boldfaced lie, and if you seriously write something as banal as "love" or "peace" without a thoughtful rationalization I promise you a swift kick in the rear.
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4 comments:
FIRST!
In your haste to discredit love I think you overlooked emotion as well. Your post is based on the assumption that all impulses are rooted in rationality. This may be generally true but even rational decisions are affected by moods. Each decision you come to as a result of mood may rest on these "articles of faith," however the fact that mood can steer decision making is argument enough for me to consider it a player in its own right.
I'm not sure that I "have faith in emotion" the way I do the principles enumerated. People's decisions are unreliably colored by emotion. That is, too often their decisions are perfectly rational.
That said, emotion is addressed indirectly with the last three articles. Inward vigilance is ostensibly required to deal fairly in spite of emotionality. Outward sincerity presumes the possession of emotion because it urges emotional honesty. Common humanity not only covers my bases regarding emotion, but it further asserts that we have the same emotions.
However, you rightly observe that emotion has been relegated to a black box in my articles of faith (ie. it exists, it acts the way it does, and it must be dealt with accordingly). This, perhaps, is more a reflection on my personality than on any flaws in my explanation of my personality.
I kind of figured it was a result of your personality. Not to say I don't think along the same lines, but I figured I should still mention it after your challenge.
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