a defense....

[Peter Kropotkin]

in light of recent political events, for example the banning
of "drag shows" and the attacks upon trans and gay people,
I believe that there is a need for a defense of reason/rationality....
but a little, a little historical understanding is needed to
make sense of my arguments....

the Enlightenment as one long defense of reason, or
as Kant put it, "Sapere aude" dare to know, have
the courage to use your own reason...and this is the
bedrock of Enlightenment thinking...dare to be wise.....
not to trust the institutions that determine what we can
or cannot believe in....institutions like the church, the state,
the monarch.. all telling us what we can or cannot hold
to be true...

the next stage of intellectual history was German Idealism...
which was the working out what reason actually is...is
reason something we should be basing our lives on
or should we hold to faith? This argument is still
going on today in the attacks on "drag shows" and other
culture war attacks...we are still fighting the battle that
preoccupied Kant and his time period.... from Kant to Hegal
and beyond, lies the continuation of the battle between
faith and reason...

thus modern day philosophy is a record of the war between
reason and faith...the existentialism of Europe after Nietzsche,
is just another battle front...existentialism by the way is an
argument for faith and against reason....and how do I know this?
Existentialism is about our emotions, about the angst of our
times, existentialism is about the "terror of existence"
and that is about emotions, not reason...the emotional
response that we make about our situation in life...

the entire book of philosophy since Kant has been the war between
faith and reason....

I have gone on record stating that we still have to finish
the Enlightenment project... of making reason the basis
of our thinking, not faith..

in America today, we have a small but very vocal minority
demanding, yep demanding that we return to the religion
of our forefathers.. that the bible be taught in public schools
and in fact, we must turn America into a theological state,
a Christian state, where the laws are based on the bible
and religions... in other words, turning America into
the western equivalent of Iran...a theological state....
not a secular state, as the founding fathers wanted it to be...
turning America into a faith base society, not a scientific or
reason base society....

but just as reason has it flaws, the entire basis of philosophy
during the German idealism era...faith has it flaws...
and I hold those flaws to be fatal for the formation of
a Christian state...

at best, faith is a belief in a temporary idea or situation....
our faith in man, human beings, god, justice, love, hope
freedom has been shattered time and time again....
the history of a single human being can be written
as the loss of faith in a variety of ideas, people, events...
we hold our faith in a Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny
and in the Tooth fairy as children... faith shattered...
and we might hold our faith in our family or parents,
and once again, for many of us, faith shattered..
and we might hold faith in the state or god or
in democracy... and once again, faith shattered....
the problem is that faith itself is short lived....
we hold faith until we don't... and there is nothing
in life that we hold faith in all our lives.....
faith is a temporary as this morning cold...
a little sun, a little heat and it is gone...
and that is faith... a little sun and it is gone....

I too have had faith in people and ideas and institutions
and I too have lost my faith...the object of faith, be it
idea's or people, is temporary, brief, provisional... the loss
of faith in religions, and science and politics and philosophy
marks the history of the human race...for example, the loss
of faith by Luther in the Catholic church has been
the history of Europe over the last 400 years...but the loss
of faith by one man isn't necessarily history.. it must take
the loss of faith by millions of people to create/make history...
and millions did lose faith in the church and thus rewrote history....

this search for faith, for something to believe in, is one of the
fundamental aspects of being human....and in many ways,
the focal point of philosophy.. what should we believe in?
One of Kant's questions along with "what am I to do?" and
"what should I hope for?" is "what should I/we believe in?"
what should we have faith in?

and one of philosophy's answers is reason.. and thus we return
to the original question, what is reason? and why should we
believe in reason and not faith?

one of the attacks on reason lies in a fundamental aspect of
humanity...in the indoctrinations of children into the
beliefs and values of a state/society/civilization.....

the ideal of reason is to see reality via facts and evidence...
but this indoctrinations of children into a faith base beliefs
make this act of reason difficult...
it is hard to see reason when our indoctrinations have hidden
our understanding of reality under a mass of beliefs...
for example, take the childhood indoctrination of a belief
in god....when we become adults, it is hard to break free of
that childhood indoctrination... people hold to the belief
in god, often for no other reason than that was their childhood
indoctrination....they were told over and over and over that
god existed.. and one of the fundamental points of education
is this indoctrination of children into the faith and values
of a state/society...

people hold onto the faith of their childhood indoctrinations
in god, not because of any evidence or facts, because there
are no facts or evidence supporting the theory of god...
in fact, one of the arguments for god is the idea of
putting faith before reason.... having faith is a measure
of being human, or so we are told...

but the faith of modern society is an easy to swallow faith
of believing in the simple, easy things... faith is a race
to the lowest common denominator...have faith and go to heaven,
repent and all your sins will be wiped away... no complicated
or demanding believes here.. just simple mass majority beliefs...
where the doubts of Kierkegaard are never heard...
faith is reduced to the lowest common denominator.. faith in
god, faith in country, faith in Christian values...
a person who actually struggles with faith is denounced
and dehumanized...but read, really read the Old Testament...
and see how that entire book is about human beings wrestling with
god...in fact, the book of Genesis, in the bible has Jacob wrestling
with god all night long... and was named Israel for his troubles...
Israel is etymologized as "contends-with-god.. or wrestles with god...

that is a man with faith, true faith because he is a man who
has wrestled with god.....(some have wondered why I have a
strong interpretation of faith...to have faith means to me to
struggle and wrestle with god or questions of being human..
to struggle with god is the only path I see to having faith...
if you haven't struggled with god, you don't have real faith)

but few if any take the hard line approach to faith,
to wrestle with god is the only path to faith...
people would rather take the easiest path of resistance to
god/faith...

as for reason, reason by definition is a harder path...
for reason requires reasons to be...I just can't accept
god or accept faith as the answer because that is the
easy path...reason requires us to evaluate the evidence
and facts or reasons for us to hold those beliefs....

working out the facts or evidence takes time and effort...
unlike faith, you can't just accept the facts or evidence
as given....why is a democracy a better form of government
than a dictatorship requires us to seek out facts and evidence
to make a decision...having faith doesn't require any work,
whereas holding to reason does requires, in fact demands
us to work out the facts/evidence to reach a decision....

why reason instead of faith? because in reason, I can
work out the reasons, facts, evidence for a decision
and I can be reasonable sure of my decision if, if I make
an honest appraisal of the facts/evidence...

now is life always about reasons and facts/evidence?
no, in fact a great deal of life exists outside of and
beyond evidence/facts... love for example..
to be in love has nothing to do with facts or evidence
or reasoning.. to be in love lies outside of and beyond facts/evidence...
I love my wife... that there are no facts or evidence to support my
choice outside of love, facts/evidence doesn't negate my love for her....
and some might wonder, why can't you love god like that?
I can see my wife, I can hear and touch and smell and taste
my wife... I can establish her existence via my senses...
whereas I cannot establish god's existence via my senses...
I have to take his existence on "faith" with no reasons or
facts to support that choice....

and every single day, millions fall into and out of love with god...
some have their faith strengthen and some have their faith
weakened... for that is the very nature of faith.. to change,
to wax and wane with the days and nights of our existence....
and how strong can faith be if it can be torn asunder by a simply
even or person? the death of a loved one can destroy one's faith
in god or a death of a love one can strengthen one's faith....
and how tenable is faith if it is a flexible as a reed? bending
as the wind blows...bending until it breaks with a strong enough
wind...

In looking over my life, all 64 years of it, my bad decision's,
the ones that created a great deal of trouble in my life,
have been emotional, faith base decisions...I believed
and so, I jumped... a salto mortale and quite often
leaps also mean we crash and burn...and I have...
I have the scars, mental, physical and psychological scars
enough to see the problem with "salto mortale" ....
having faith enough to leap, isn't enough reason to leap....
or to say it another way, I am old enough to be cautious
about a leap of faith...but to be young enough to throw
caution into the wind and leap? I don't have that courage anymore....

to reason one into a leap is much harder for the evidence/facts
aren't always clear enough to justify a leap of reason.....
my job is killing me, between the stress and the nihilism
of capitalism, is killing me, but I have reasoned out that
I can retire in about 2 years if lucky, and 3 if I am not that
lucky... I can last another couple of years after working for 45 years
already...reason has saved me from leaping into a retirement that
isn't fully funded...but reason also tells me that given the
life expectancy rates, if I retire at 67, 3 years from now, I will
only live for 9 years after my retirement... that is a very small
payoff for 45 years of working... and given I must expect to be
in poor health the last 4 years or so of my retirement, which gives
me, maybe, maybe 5 years of good health during my retirement...
a very small payoff indeed...the payoff after working decades to get
a minimal number of years of retirement doesn't seem worth it...

so the act of reason gives us a path into the future... perhaps I should
take an early retirement which means less money, but more years
of life before death, is my payoff...
I can reason out an answer to my future... and what I should do....
can faith do the same?

Kropotkin

[Iwannaplato]

Let's not forget that the Enlightenment justified colonialism in many ways. Yes, there were seeds in it that also justified eradicating some parts of colonialism, but overall the supposedly smarter enlightened Europeans saw it as correct that they ruled those who were not enlightened.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/en ... and-empire
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2012/04 ... olonialism
The we are rational and you are not has led to all sorts of atrocities.