8 - RESTORING REASON - I

October 21, 2024

We live in a culture that is increasingly irrational!  In fact, it seems to me that secular Western culture has, in many ways, abandoned rationality, and it continues to do so!  (This is even true of “science.”)1

I sometimes listen to a Classical FM station that claims to provide “Beautiful music for a crazy world!”  (We could substitute “irrational” for “crazy.”  “Irrational” focuses more on the thinking behind the behaviour rather than on the behaviour itself. But, for the sake of argument, let’s stick with “crazy” for now.) 

I find the “crazy world” claim plausible, and I am confident that I not alone in holding that view.  How, then, do we explain this craziness?  How do we understand the culture around us?

In my university days – back in the 1970’s – absurdist philosophy was very much in vogue.  My undergrad course readings included at least two books from this school of thought: L’Etranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus, and Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Sartre was much admired in academic circles as a great existentialist philosopher (Existentialism being an “optimistic” riff on absurdism).  I was unimpressed.  B&N is likely the densest prose – i.e. hardest to follow – I have ever read (and my reading includes three years of legal opinions and treatises in law school!!).  Notwithstanding the English translation (Sartre wrote in French), Sartre’s writing was opaque and unwieldy.  Even if you could make sense of any of his thoughts, he really didn’t say anything worth keeping; B&N was 400+ pages of philosophical nothingness dressed up in big, vague words and long sentences.

The Stranger was much shorter and just depressing.

The root idea of absurdism, and its cousin Existentialism, is that the universe does not, ultimately, make sense; it is irrational and meaningless. The universe is, you see, full of contradictions which cannot be resolved.  So, to believe that the big questions of life have objective, or reasonable, answers is to be naïve and deluded.

Now, please focus closely on this: the claim that the Universe is absurd is a self-contradicting statement because that claim is offered as NOT absurd; the statement itself is offered as something can be, and is, understood; hence there is at least one big question about the Universe for which there is an answer that has meaning and that is not absurd!!! 

With the application of a little basic reason, the absurdist claim falls apart because it contradicts itself!  Again, pay attention to plain meaning of the words: in a single same sentence, what is presented as universally true (absurdity) is, in at least once instance, not absurd and, hence, false.

This list of such self-defeating claims in our contemporary culture is long.  Take, for example, so-called “anti-racism”1 that condemns “racism”2 – actually, some types of alleged “racism” – yet offers more “racism” as the solution.  So, as much as “anti-racism” decries discrimination on the basis of skin colour, its answer to this injustice with discrimination on the basis of skin colour!!  This is self-contradictory and irrational, yet many people don’t notice!

Transgenderism presents an even more obvious contradiction: someone with XY chromosomes (a male) can “identify” as a female (XX chromosomes) – and vice versa.  This is to claim that a biological male can, simultaneously, be female, and the reverse.  In a rational world, this is nonsense.

Camus, Sartre and their fellow travelers in absurdist and existential philosophy don’t get much attention today, but their influence has been both profound and revolutionary, and it continues.  I believe their greatest impact has been in “normalizing” the idea that contradictory truth claims can both be true at the same time, an idea that is now taken for granted in much (most?) of society.

In the next post, I want to begin to explore the relationship between reason and contradiction, as I share some thoughts about the universal principles that underlie reason.

Coming soon: Reality with a Capital “R”

1     For example, the public was exhorted to “follow the Science” at various times during Covid, as the authorities manipulated people to mask up, to (anti-) social distance, and to get jabbed with “vaccines” that didn’t prevent the vaccinated from getting the virus or from spreading the virus, and about which the side-effects were unknown.

2     I enclose certain words in Quotations Marks (Scare Quotes) a lot, sometimes to indicate exaggeration or irony, but very often as a warning that the word is politicized and that its meaning is variable and meant to obscure knowledge and bully the listener.  I place “racism” and “anti-racism” in Scare Quotes to mark them as illegitimate terms because: 1) to the extent they have content/meaning, it is self-contradictory and thus nonsense; and 2) they are used, not for any actual meaning, but for their emotional impact (i.e. as a bullying device).