Places of privilege

The rhetoric of identity politics is debilitating. As both Peter Gelderloos and David Graeber point out, the issue with identity politics is that its rhetoric tends to crush possibilities. For instance, the result of theoretical identity politics upon the possibilities set forward by the desires of the Zapatistas was one of denial. Being Maya originally, identity politics suggests that they could only assert the right to continue to be Mayan or to be recognized as Mayan. “But for a Maya to say something to the world that was not simply a comment on the own Maya-ness would be inconceivable" (See Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology 68). Gelderloos puts the problem succinctly by pointing out that the Authorities that lie behind the construction of the identity determine the possibilities that are permissible for those under the identity  (Lines in the Sand 6).

Given such a point of view it really isn’t any wonder that many white male anarchists cannot accept the labels being thrown their way. The incredulity that one might show here towards Meta-Narratives, a piece of good postmodern philosophy, is the greatest ally in rejecting the story of privilege. I am not a ruler; it wasn’t me that colonized indigenous people. But Gelderloos also notes, importantly, that meta-narratives help to make sense of one’s position in society (4). From this I can reason that I did have the luxury of a better education than most (although it was religious), and that my parents have managed to make a lot of money for themselves. Is it plausible to suppose that this has something to do with systematic privilege? Did blessings fall onto my parents because they are white? Is there supposed to be more to the story than that inference from generalizations? Simply casting this story as a story of systematic privilege does no justice to these objects; what does justice to those objects is what those objects contribute to the goodness of the fit. So the matter cannot be simple.  


This may be the reason for Gelderloos' remark that identities may be useful (for some purpose) but are "never valid" (ibid, 1). My ability to construct an identity for an other may be useful, but the persyns under the identity must determine the fit. So it's better for a person that does identify with an identity to determine the scope of the identitity. Of course, some believe that identities are unnecessary--that they must necessarily miss the point of what I am. 


Gelderloos' point is that Identity labels do not sit well, if one isn’t related to them in any experiential way. More succinctly, if one identifies with anarchism, if one feels it in their bones, then one cannot make sense of the idea that one is also part of the ruling class. Others may feel that a white anarchist has more privilege than others; but here we have an example of an Other constructing an invalid identity for an Other. While useful, such is never valid. So whatever story an anarchist thinks that I need to understand in order to understand systematic privilege, it may or may not be a story for me.

The purpose of an identity construction is to give a name to something that goes to work; but the conclusions of the work must be a matter of individual determination. However, in clarifying how these terms suit us, how they are justifiably applicable, we must not forget that identities have not been designed by us, but are rather a function of society and in particular the machine that we together hope to destroy. In short, they are functions of social (non-anarchist) parameters (an apparatus) and in using these terms we are the voice-pieces of Leviathan. Hence there is something wrong with the general belief that by relating an anarchist to a privation within non-anarchist society, it is likely that the functional term (male, say) will fit. In the very least, such explains why using terms that are prevalent within non-anarchist culture for persons within anarchist culture is often met with hostility and resistance. Such terms of Leviathan do not generally function as a part of an anarchist’s identity (if one has one).--Such terms are designed to hold-back, to make open possibilities seem impossible.

Obviously defining what one means by the term ‘male’ is part of the problematic. If it is a function of social parameters, in the voice of whomever, anarchism means I don’t have to take it seriously. If it is being used differently, it should come as no surprise that the definition will be contested because now we are talking about how I am to be identified. If anarchism has any virtues, surely they include self-determination. So you can bet that anarchism means that I will have something to say about my resultant, relevant, identity.

Most vegans are douche-bags!

Gelderloos' piece http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Peter_Gelderloos__Veganism_is_a_consumer_activity.html

on veganism as a consumer choice is bang-on. However, a number of his arguments deserve a response if only for the purposes of correct thought on the matter. I worry that anarchists might read his text as an excuse for eating meat--as though hierarchy as such ought to be tolerated in anarchist circles. Before we get to the heart of the matter, it would seem that there are two qualifications that require clarification. On the one hand, Gelderloos claims that he does not purchase meat in any way--that such would be a matter of taking part in capitalist consumerist culture--and on the other, that he would not take the life of an animal close to his ken, only those with whom he would not be able to form a relationship.

First, I want to thank Peter for the following points.

1. Veganism, as a culture, is definitely not holy in any sense given that Capitalism is essentially unholy. It is impossible to make capitalist consumer choices without killing animals. So vegans can get off their high horses. "You can't be a capitalist environmentalist."

2. Moreover, pace PeTA, you can be a meat-eating environmentalist. Industrial Capitalism is rather late in the history of human history and within that history one must include indigenous persons, and so, a way of co-habitating with life that is at once environmental and meat eating.

I agree with Peter on these obvious two points, but it is important to note that by arguing (2), all Peter has done is justify meat consumption today for lots of social "justice" activists. (Of course, it is absolutely essential that these activists qualify their meaning of justice advocacy because they are not interested in justice, just social justice.) Moreover, it is important to note concerning (2) that PeTA is targeting a particular sort of person; the person that eats meat from factory farms, and not the person that eats meat from dumpsters, or steals it from the supermarket.--So not Peter Gelderloos. This appears to be a general problem with interpreting PeTA ads--of course, such is the nature of making a controversial ad. Also, it should be noted that fetishizing indigenous culture in such a way has done nothing more than justify patriarchy. Man over Nature! Hoo-rrah!

But this kind of argument (2) raises an interesting problem in the movement. It is impossible to criticize indigenous behavior because indigenous persons have been displaced time and time again. Similarly it is impossible to criticize Black males for being sexist--you are then being racist. (So I cannot criticize Gelderloos for saying that Black people do not need meat or animal products. Of course, some evidence for this claim would be alot more helpful than some empty appeal to intuition). The problem is that the nature of the target of criticism permits easy withdrawal into a totally ridiculous identity politics, from which one can generate all sorts of absurd ad hominem arguments.

Second, it appears to me that Peter's argument is insufficient to make his conclusion stick. Lot's of vegans are conscientious consumers insofar as they purchase anything. When we are not eating out of dumpsters, we head out to local markets and eat in season. Some of us refuse GMO's and some of us even try to get involved in human-issue (social justice) based activism, although this often frustrates because of all the evident hierarchy present in these purported anarchists. Part of the problem here is that Gelderloos conflates lifestyle veganism with consumer veganism. But I think Gelderloos undermines his whole point when he says you cannot escape capitalism (1); it seems that no one can be an environmentalist. But surely there is a difference between being a hierarchical douche-bag anarchist and a lifestyle vegan.

Gelderloos' ethics....

Gelderloos admits that he cannot eat an animal that is part of his community but that he would have no problem with eating one that is not. The trouble here is that he is speaking from a position of ethics and yet he is not realizing the totalizing nature of ethics. What Gelderloos has to ask himself is whether the interests of an animal, and he admits that they have desires, are less important than his taste-interests; if the answer is yes! he has to answer why this is the case given the fact that eating animals and animal products is totally unnecessary in our consumerist culture. If he can steal meat, he can steal B-12 pills.

Celebrating the diffused self

And the choice is: greasing the gears or being legion…

The individuated self is a mystery that has often perplexed the ablest thinker. What is this self that gets beyond concepts and refuses to submit to identity politics? Is it entirely empty and so, controllable by way of economics, technology and the latest political image?; or is it infinitely complex and already related and therefore not reducible to any particular effability? Is the self one—something that must be made one, ‘panoptically’ as Foucault famously suggested—; or, is it legion, and is that preferable?

We have a desire to believe that there is something that all humans share in common, a common humanity. It is hoped that with some satisfactory definition we might be able to at last ground ethics metaphysically. In the very least we are numerically differentiated; you are you, I am what I am—however we are distinguished and despite the manufacturing of fashion that precedes us and defines what we are. As we each undergo change, we are told that we are the same thing, a consuming thing that differentiates itself from everything else as it consumes.

The self must be empty so that it can be filled, again and again. And the self must be filled, for if not, it has become nothing. To be something, then, is to be filled with whatever muck you are told makes you complete, whole.—Ritalin. If it is possible to be complete, it is possible to be completed.—You will either be completed or you will complete yourself, and everyone else will make you feel like you’re an outcast if you do not grease the gears!

Science tells us that consciousness is reducible, it promises it, in a faith like way. It is accordingly not very fashionable to reject this picture; indeed it may even be too religious to do so—whatever that means. Philosophers and psychologists tell us that we have to get our lives in order—that we should take drugs so that we can better grease the gears. Part of the lie of the self has been perpetuated by way of a lie concerning time. The self can “look” at itself—can consider itself as an event. This presupposes that the continuity of time is made up of parts going from part to part, and that the self transcends the parts in order to bring the parts of the self that seem disordered into better alignment. The claim then is that the bare self is stable—it can reason, it can think—the other parts of self—what one has done—are events that must be brought into alignment with the stable self. There are two lies here. The first is that continuity is made up of parts. If time is made up of parts then there must be no spaces. But parts presuppose space. So, either time is not continuous, or it is and there are no events, only generalized events that we imprecisely take to be events. The second lie is that the self transcends time. The truth of the matter is that the self on the psychologist’s clock is in time, and is considering events as an event. From this it follows that the greasing gears self itself is a construction as much as considered events, events perceived to be problematic, are constructions. Thus, the truth of the self is that it is time for a time, and that it can only be legion just like time.

Part of the reason that we are cautioned to not think this way, cautioned to not celebrate the diffuse self, is that if we find out that we are infinitely related to everything else rather than a unified self when perfectly aligned with our nothingness, we are impossible to manage and impossible to control. It is better then to be legion, to be weird, to keep ’em guessing. We play into their hands, we deliver ourselves if we are predicatble.

On the other hand if we take control of ourselves pragmatically and inconsistently, in a way that is unpredictable, perhaps we might steal the night.

That's Sexist!

The distinction between semantic meaning and speaker meaning is a distinction that actually makes a practical difference. In what follows I hope to clarify this distinction and specify how its import can help to build better bridges between us, ineffable objects that we are.

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty and Alice have a bit of a spat over the meaning of a word. Humpty says: “When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less” and Alice responds saying that “The question is… whether you can make words mean so many different things.” The inter-textual play here may not be obvious, so I’ll try to briefly unpack the idea before teasing out its difference-making point.

Humpty Dumpty seems to be suggesting an absurd idea, an idea that pushes Alice to dispute it. So Alice seems to be saying: If there is to be only intentionality behind a word, how can I understand what you mean? Or, in other words: how is it that if what Humpty is saying is true we can even use language at all? The whole point of language is to convey meaning, intentionality; but this has to be a matter of inter-subjective agreement; otherwise there doesn’t appear to be any way of saying anything.

If I say “pass me the salt shaker”, by the ordinary rules of English discourse this simply conveys that the speaker would like for me to grab a salt-shaker in order to pass it to the speaker. (Here we are overlooking the uniqueness (‘the’) explicit in the order).  In response I may or may not pass the shaker. But this largely assumes that Humpty is wrong. If Humpty is right, on the other hand, it would seem that he might mean whatever he might mean, in which case I can neither take his words literally, nor know whether my metaphorical interpretation, supposing that I’m onto his game, is even remotely correct. Thus, Alice’s response might be a warning signal of a complete collapse in meaning, whereby X might even mean its’ complete and total opposite, not-X. Evidently there is a pressing instance here that demonstrates the absurdity of a wholesale endorsement of Humpty’s point; but is there something to be said here about how Humpty is right, or does this loss of communicative meaning force us into a wholesale rejection? Are we to be mastered by our words, no matter our intentions, or is there something to be said about mastering our own words? More importantly, how do we decide?

It is often the case that what one means is simply not what one is taken to mean. Our opponents often make mince meat of our words, playing on communal interpretive points, despite the call in our later words that should make any caring individual shift conclusions about what we were actually saying. How often do we protest: that’s not what I meant! Of course, there are instances where one did mean what one was taken to mean; and there are instances where what one meant is not clear. It seems to me that in the latter case there is a worthy protest to be had; for when what one says cannot be given a solid interpretation unless the speaker provides clarification, we cannot justly impose an interpretation. In the former case, when what one says is clear as crystal, there is an opportunity to correct what one means, despite referring to something transparently.

The other day I was at an anti-racism rally, and a fellow in the crowd taunted a Jewish Defense League mercenary to come out and fight in a public space. (Apparently JDL hires larger kids to marshal fear in peaceful opponents that verbally challenge its racist, colonial agenda—an agenda masked by Holocaust rhetoric.) Of course, the JDL “thug” backed off. Perhaps it was the police; perhaps it was his cod/dling superiors; whatever. However, in backing off, the anti-racist protester referred to the masked JDL fearmongerer as a ‘Pussy’. As soon as the words came out of his mouth, a number of people in the group were quite perturbed. The reasoning was that no matter how one spins it, such is a sexist comment and reinforces sexism in society.

However, according to the difference between speaker meaning and semantic meaning, we cannot simply assume that that particular speaker intended to relate that particular person to women, of which he thinks, all are weaker than all men. He may have had none of that in mind (and it's unlikely that he had all that in mind). With the above distinction it seems that we have to try a little harder to figure out what one means, and especially if the term has ambiguous connotations. Pussy seems to fall under that class of terms, at least as much as referring to cops as pigs.

Suppose for a second that we buy into the absurd binary distinction between male and femle. (I say absurd because there doesn’t appear to be a way to distinguish the sexes that does justice to “deviant cases”. And I doubt that the point can even be given any sexual grounding). Here we are playing the game that society plays, a game that subjugates womyn (and men) to loathsome categories of displacement. Men are supposed to make lots of money and drive fancy cars; womyn are supposed to do chores and raise children. Fuck all that—and fuck whatever anyone might say about what I am; but society plays this (reductionary) tune. So if person X takes this step and refers to Man Y as a ‘Pussy’, then it would seem that Man Y is going to be psychologically affected.—He think’s he’s a Man, not a WoMan! So, it seems that in some instances it may be rhetorically affective to play the one side of the absurd binary against one that buys into the other side. Given that reading it would seem that one might, as a matter of fact, say something that is sexist (because the binary is sexist) but not be sexist himself. It may also not be wrong to say it, especially if it calls a Man to doubt His Manliness—that’s always good! 

Of course, it seems rather convoluted that in a moment of charged anger one would even take such a step. But it’s no more convoluted than supposing that anyone thinks in structuralist terms—that there is some essence that unites all womyn; that anyone in the post structuralist milieu buys into the binary. What is more likely is that one is not associating female genitalia with some bad category, associating the lovely vagina with weakness, but simply using a term colloquially. In most colloquial cases, pussy just means weak, just like weenie means weak; but sometimes we abstract from these colloquial instances and try to tell a story about what the words mean—how words mean already, how we are (always) mastered by them. One might try to inform us that there are these large categories of sexism "in place” in society and that certain words are a reflection of this point, no matter how much you try and fail to master them. Interesting myth. I refuse to buy it.

Of course, before one misunderstands my meaning, as anarchists we should not attempt to replicate problems perpetuated by other sexist individuals. There are surely sexist assholes. So, we should try not to endorse and thereby validate binary privilege by way of language, however we use words. In the very least, we might speak and generate patriarchy or matriarchy by our words, despite our 'good' intentions. We simply must take responsibility for how our words are interpreted. We simply must take responsibility for the harm they might cause. We simply must take responsibility for the furtherance of oppression that those words may generate by way of other actors. But we must also take account of the intentions of the speaker using the words; for the matter is a lot more complicated than often assumed.

If I say, 'he's such a cock', I may be interpreted as setting up an oppressive inverted binary that is no better than patriarchal oppression. However, we generally do not police such terms. We colloquially let matters go. For it would be absurd to suggest that one is being sexist by using such a term as cock, dick or balls. However, the oppression is the same. The intuitive reason that one ought not to make a big deal about these remarks is that when one says that one has made a sexist remark, the person being accused, usually, does not feel that they are sexist; instead they feel that the remark was innocent, a colloquial remark. But if it's good for the goose then it's good for the gander. Since we do not typically smash matriarchy by way of calling out people for objectifying men, negatively or positively, we can understand why we should have patience with people who make sexist remarks. Everyone can improve.

The point that the above remarks suggest is that we ought not to focus on the words that one uses, but rather on the intentions behind the words. In the very least, rather than presume what X means by a remark, we should ask the speaker to clarify what they mean. For a cavern of difference yawns between a sexist person and a person, and there is no sharp way of distinguishing these by way of words.

It seems that the first step towards healing is a matter of letting speakers speak for themselves, thereby not confusing the means they use to establish their ends. But also, as people, we ought to move forward by not perpetuating the oppressive binary, whether privileging womyn or men. Let us not intend to cause harm with our words, whether directly or indirectly. Let us not replicate features of sexist individuals in our own communities. Our communities ought to be safe spaces for everyone.

Wagering for a better life.

A variant on Pascal’s wager suggests that since we are unable to be certain that there is no afterlife—that there is a 50/50 percent chance—we might as well "take our chances" and be good. This way, we might have everlasting life for just such a reason; for it is intuitive that people that do bad things haven’t a chance in the world. Of course, lots of people simply assume that there is no afterlife, or, analogously, that there is no God. But the argument suggests that since one cannot be certain that there isn’t one, it is better to be good than bad, given the chance that it may be rewarding to be good. Therefore, the argument suggests that one should be good, if only to escape eternal damnation.

Notice that I have recast this argument in order to minimize the problems that its original formulation provided. First, I am not suggesting that one must suppose that God exists. As far as I’m concerned, there is no theory-neutral way of going about defining what one means. Thus, it avoids the argument from inconsistent revelation. (Many argued that Pascal’s argument wasn’t sufficient to make one believe in Yhwh. In other words, many Christians might take this argument to be proof that it is rational to believe in Yhwh, without realizing that the very same reasoning can be used for any God, even Science.) Second: the argument is completely ambiguous what it means to be ‘good’. So, it doesn’t suppose that one must live a Christian life, with prayer and lots of kneeling, nor that a life filled with the absence of such things would be a life that is better; rather, it suggests that being good, being a moral exemplar, is open to proof. I suggest that this would be best carried out in the manner of the ancient Greeks: to find out what it means to be ‘good’, we compare exemplars. (And wouldn't that be revealing!)

I want to focus for a second on the above argument. According to that argument it is rational to be good. If we are good and there is an after-life reward in being as such, then we have everything to gain for being good. On the other hand, if we are good and there is no afterlife, then at least we were good. On the other hand, if we are bad, then if there is infinite punishment, we lose everything we might gain by being bad. Besides, we end up being jerks. On this reading, the gist of Pascal’s argument is that even if there is no reward in the afterlife for being good, it is still best to be good, because then we would be moral exemplars. The trouble of course, is that we have no idea what it means to be good.

It seems to me that the real pressing trouble with the above dichotomy is that it suggests that we should pursue the good life, because of the ‘rewards’ that await us possibly in the afterlife; and in particular, that the rewards that await us in the next life are better than the rewards that await us in this life. The sort of desiring experimentation problematically generates dystopian apathy about our world. By virtue of such potential hopes (for better rewards), we overlook the 100 percent certain fact that we are alive (not dead), and that it is 100 percent possible to be moral exemplars. We shouldn't be better people because it may reward us; rather we should be better people because being better is rewarding.

Of course, by comparing the rewards in this life with the rewards in the next (whatever these may be), it was thought that one could thereby distract everyone from the obvious fact that being good just isn't rewarding in any material sense. So by being good, it was reasoned that one would be rewarded with spiritual blessings. Furthermore, by focussing on the afterlife, it seems almost automatic that one is less likely to make an effort to improve present conditions. (But religion has bever really been that insterested). If we deflate this idea by focusing on spiritual blessing in life, rather than in the nothingness that may be after-death, it seems we are well on our way to realizing heaven on earth by being good. But couple the vague idea of 'blessing' (material and spiritual) with the absurd logic that God blesses the faithfully obedient, and you've got a pretty good explainer for why lots of the faithful wouldnt even come close to being moral exemplars by an reasonable observational standard.

Perhaps what we really have is not a world that is shot to hell, a view that almost necessitates a positive, hopeful, answer to the 50/50 question, is there a heaven?; but rather, a world in which one is living hell and reaping rewards and a world in which one is living heaven by reaping infinite blessings. How then might this appear? How might heaven, like Eden, or the practices of the early Christians (Acts 2:44-6)--Paris 1871--be on earth? Here's a story.

Perhaps becoming a moral exemplar is a matter of simply not being leviathan, a matter of resistance to the mega-machine that grinds us to the point of desiring more and more for ourselves. The machine takes, and we, in turn, take more. Perhaps then the infinite blessing in our 100 percent certain alive life today is simply giving more and more to the earth and its inhabitants, without any intention to receive. Not a holding-in for ourselves at the expense of others; rather an out-pouring of spirit, a pure immanent dance with each other. If we resist leviathan, we become human, ineffable perhaps; and if we realize our infinity through resistance to the megamachine--that we are not simply objects to be manipulated and controlled--and we make that our daily prayer, even if an afterlife could be better than that, it may not really matter.

Realism, Pragmatism and Neo-Pragmatism.

Rorty has charged his interlocutors with two points that are quite true. I want to tease out what these points come to in an effort to dissolve any disagreement that they might perpetuate.

The first point is that when a belief is justified, calling it true doesn't add anything; for after an application of the pragmatic maxim, one can only be sure that one has a justified belief. When D. Vaden House made the objection, I responded saying that 'justification' does not add anything to true belief because if true, it would be justifiable. The reason is that a belief if true to what it is about is justified because it is true to what it is about. That it is justified, or justifies itself, or in relation to us, that we could justify it to ourselves, is already given in the point that it is true to what it is about. So, literally, justification doesn’t add anything. Does 'truth' add anything?

Of course, Realists, note the capital ‘R’, would want to say that a belief is Correspondence true, if it is true, and that does not depend on what you, I, or anyone else may think about it. So they might want to insist that verifiability has nothing to do with the truth of a belief (and therefore that justification is an addition). I think Realists are right in a sense. If a cat has a patch of white fur under her head, the fact that she does has nothing to do with our ability to verify that she does. But pragmatists are also right in that saying that she does have a white patch, and thereby making the very point against the pragmatists, surely does rely on verification. So, it would seem that we need to make a distinction. There is a difference between being verifiable at time t and being potentially verifiable at time t+k. The fact that you just read ‘this’ has already been verified; the fact that a diamond (at the bottom of the ocean) has the same properties even if it cannot be verified by any of us presently would be verified by any of us.

It is true that the fact that a diamond is hard does not depend on our saying that it is hard. Even if all the perceivers were to cease to exist, the diamond would still be hard. It is not true to suppose that if no one is looking, everyday things behave in ways out of the ordinary. So, a tree falling in a forest makes an unverifiable sound. Of course it does not make a verifiable sound; of course it makes a sound that would have been verified.

The view that facts—where facts are just real objects in real non-abstracted relations—do not depend on our verification, according to Realists, overrides the difference between ‘is’ and ‘would be’. Realists want to insist that even in the case of a verified (as true) belief at time t, that the belief is true does not depend on our calling it true. From this point, they insist, arguing from the simplest explanation, that the same follows for as of yet unverified beliefs. I must confess that I am in agreement with the view that the truth of a fact does not depend on verifiability. It is not the case that because something is verified it is thereby and thenceforth true. This point is important and brings me back to my original point.

I am not saying that a true belief would not be verified. I am saying that a fact may be unverifiable. In the latter case, if the fact is true, it is so independent of verification. But in that case we cannot call ‘the fact’ true. So a fact may be true/real, despite the point that we cannot call it true, despite the point that it hasn’t yet been verified, despite the point that no one has a belief that would be verified by any of us. From this all the traditional notions follow. The goal is to have beliefs that mirror reality, beliefs that are true to their facts. But if a belief is true, it would be verified, unless it cannot be called true. But again, just because something cannot be called true does not mean it cannot be true.

What’s the point? If a belief is true, the fact that it is true does not depend on our calling it true. Of course, it may or may not be verifiable. If it is not verifiable, we can neither call the fact true nor false, but it may be either. If the true fact is verifiable, then the fact that it is called true, does not make the belief any more true than it is; the objects the belief is about do that. So calling a true belief justified does not add anything, to use Rorty’s rhetoric.

It seems to me that the difference between the neo-pragmatist and the pragmatist can be clarified by considering the following. Realists do not want to say that verifiability has everything to do with truth because they want to say truth is a matter of metaphysics, whereas verification is epistemological. Neo-pragmatists like Rorty want to say that metaphysics is empty if it is considered outside of epistemology. But it seems that the neo-pragmatist’s intuitions surrounding verifiability do not play well to the metaphysical norms that govern epistemological practise. Realism suggests that a belief is true because it corresponds to the fact it is about, and along with this point comes certainty. If verifiability follows from this point, as I suggested above, then it seems that all is well. The trouble with Rorty is that there is no certainty to be had—there is no norm outside of us.  It is this particular view that leads him in his anti-realist moments to say that while most of our beliefs must be true, any may not be true according to purposes to come. But if any our true beliefs may be false, then we are no longer working with the norm of truth, and we have undercut our knowledge claims.

Rorty wants us to believe that truths are true because they are verified; from this it follows that any of our beliefs may not be verified according to purposes to come. But if what I am suggesting above is correct that Rorty has simply ignored our realist intuitions—particularly those that stem from Berkeley’s shocking and silly thought experiment. There are beliefs that are justified because true to the facts they are about and thus called true, and beliefs that are called true because justified by the best of our lights. These latter beliefs may be false according to purposes similar to ours (e.g. preserving the truth). But, of course, while the Realist is right to suppose that a fact (or, possibly, an unverified belief) doesn’t depend on justification, calling a fact true presupposes justifying it, and that has everything to do with verification. The question then is how a realist can talk about a fact without calling it true—and that may just be a silly bit of rhetoric.

Religion? Or, in what sense?

Religion has fallen on hard times. With writers like Dawkins selling books like The God Delusion like pancakes, there may very well be widespread agreement that belief in God or something larger than life is silly, irrational or misinformed. Of course, not everyone can be easily fleeced.  I’m not convinced that a life without religion is worth living, but not because I want to serve something larger than life-- something outside space and time and something desirous of our affection. Rather, God is in everything and unites everything; it is a religious outlook upon everything all together that yields real meaning to the maxim, ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’—a maxim that ought to be co-opted for ecological purposes.

Some philosophers argue that religion is inescapable. On their reading, even atheists are religious in some sense. But it seems to me that if one were to make such an argument, one has made the term meaningless.  Perhaps, a better way to get at the term ‘religion’ is to say it means something like ‘open-ness to the mystery’, where ‘mystery’ is defined by way of one’s own personal (or communal) theological notions. In the very least, we will thereby respect the atheist that disagrees with the Christian religious imposition that all are restless until they rest with God. It is simply not true that everyone cares. Being atheist then is being closed to the mystery of life. Moreover, having made this definition ours, we will thereby be in a position to say that many religious people are not religious enough, or that they look for religion in all the wrong places.

A good way to get to the heart of the issue that I want to address is to consider a contemporary philosopher that has a rather interesting relationship to religion. Richard Rorty wants us to forget religious impulses (‘conversation stoppers’), unless they can be used to increase human solidarity against economically and racially impoverishing castes (See Philosophy and Social Hope 249). Whether or not his rhetorical suggestion is religious, in some sense, is not a very interesting question. It wouldn’t make a difference. The trouble is that it isn’t fruitful enough, because not only does it naively suppose that human solidarity (fraternity) can weather the storm, it isn’t clear whether he truly desires economic castelessness (ibid.). We should seek a way of speaking that allows us to fully appreciate the mystery of the Wholly Other, not just the human other. Fraternity should have no limit, and we should seek unity with Nature.

If we make a distinction between religion in the sense of ‘blind faith’ and religion in the sense of being  open to the mystery, it seems that we can move beyond older naive forms of religion, as well as naive and blind faith in technology and science. In this sense, reformational philosophers were on the money. To tie the notion back to Rorty, we might say that Rorty was rightly critical of religion in the first sense, as we should be, but not open enough in the second sense. However, while being open to the mystery of religion doesn’t protect us from being open to the possibility that technology may have some answers for our problems, it does protect the life-filled object from scientific reduction. If we foster a deep religious respect for Nature and our relationship in it, as one species among many, we may stop ourselves from totally annihilating ourselves and the rest of the world.