Like Pascal, I too was
once guilty of pitié. I felt sorrow for the poor souls who were
convinced of things that I absolutely knew to be untrue. College
absolved me of this affliction.
Let me take a few steps
back: when I had my political awakening in 2008, everything became
apparent to me: I had a quantifiable means by which to measure
righteousness, and anyone who didn't see eye-to-eye with me was
clearly a hateful asshole. Anyone who didn't immediately offer a
full-throated defense of the rights of immigrants, LGBT people,
women, people of color, or any group who was a combination thereof
must have considered all of the possible complicating and mitigating
circumstances and taken a position in favor of the aggressive embrace
of discrimination and oppression. Except, none of that was true.
I mean, I did have a
political awakening... but like any newborn child, I knew nothing of
this world which was completely foreign to me. I'm jumping the gun
again here. In 2008, the United States was swept up in a whirlwind
of hope, change, and hating fags. The young Senator Barack Obama was
electioneering his way across the country, inspiring people who had
never done so before to cast ballots in the presidential elections.
Meanwhile, the National Organization for Marriage (deemed a “hate
group” by the authoritative Southern Poverty Law Center) was
working in states from coast to coast to approve anti-gay
constitutional amendments through direct democratic mechanisms. On
November 4, I was a volunteer poll monitor for the San Diego county
Democratic party. I visited my polling place several times during
the day to make sure that everything was working and I made a list of
registered Democrats who had yet to show up, then called to remind
them that it was election day. I bought coffee and umbrellas to
bring to canvassers in my neighborhood (this was back when it
actually rained in California.) I closely watched the news throughout
the day, then gathered for a party with my friends where we watched
results coming in from across the country. At around 7:30PM we got
word that exit polls had California Proposition 8, the constitutional
ban on gay marriage, narrowly passing. We all scrambled to call
everyone we knew and remind them that, as long as they are in line by
8, they'll be able to cast their ballot. As the hour approached, we
all silently crouched in front of the television. We knew that
California would go for Senator Obama and that we would push him well
over the winning threshold regardless of how the uncalled swing
states in the East ended up. The moment that the clock struck 8, as
CNN rolled a colorful graphic across the screen, the room erupted in
a loud cheer. Around the courtyard in the large apartment complex,
we could hear other groups celebrating. Our laughter, celebration,
and shot-taking was momentary, though, as it became apparent that one
of the most progressive states in the union had approved, by 52.24%,
an amendment to our state constitution which specifically precluded
millions of Californians from statutory marriage. Our group was
overwhelmingly liberal and included several gay people, so the party
mood took a quick turn from “bachelor party” to “funeral” and
people started leaving soon after.
The post-mortem began
right away, and anger amongst progressives was strong. Various
people blamed Black voters for the passage of anti-gay marriage
amendments in California, Florida, and Arizona, and a crop of
nouveaux hashtag-activists pushed thinly-veiled racist ideas across
their spheres of influence. For my part, I took a more direct
approach and blamed the Christian set. I had seen evangelical
megachurches actively promoting Proposition 8, and I was angry at
their membership for abandoning the message of love championed by
their saviour in favor of bizarre Old Testament morality rules. In
my mind, these churches met in the dark of night, wearing white
hoods, holding pitchforks and torches, around an altar illuminated by
the headlights of their lifted Chevy pickup trucks. And I pitied
them.
My imagination
notwithstanding, I knew that the votes for Senator McCain and for
Proposition 8 were cast by adult human beings who are thankfully
guaranteed in practice the right to participate in American
democracy. As long as they're not felons. Or women before 1920. Or
Black people before 1965. Or Black people in Mississippi pretty much
ever. But anyways, the 59,948,323 people who cast valid ballots for
Senator McCain and the 7,001,084 people who cast valid ballots to
exclude same-sex couples from civil marriage in California presumably
didn't all march lockstep into their polling place, raise their right
hands in a salute, fill in the appropriate ovals, and then torture an
adorable puppy before pushing their grandmothers down a flight of
stairs.
I mean, I'm like 70% certain that they didn't do
that. These people each had at least 18 years of life experience
which informed their decisions and – as much as I wanted to believe
that they were all insane or bigoted people whose positions could be
marked up to a choice to be racist or misogynistic – I now know
that that is not often the case. People's worldviews are informed by
their values, which are in turn informed by their upbringing as well
as their biology. A person who is raised in a White middle-class
family in a White middle-class town in a White middle-class state may
not have occasion to consider the humanity of non-White people. A
person who is raised in a Southern Baptist family and who is
socialized mostly with other children and families from their church
may not have the opportunity to consider possibilities outside of
those of their faith's dogma. It has been my experienced that, once
a person's values are formed and reinforced by their surroundings,
they are resistant to change. This is why I pitied the Klan
archetype that I had previously imagined: because I thought that they
were helpless, unable to have new experiences or to change their
perspectives on the world, stuck in a sort of hell where everything
is easily predictable and where change was impossible. I thought
that millions of people were exactly alike, and that they were stupid
and pathetic. In that way, I was like Pascal.
In rationalizing his
wager, Blaise Pascal employs hollow tautologies which are reflective
of the world and time in which he lived. Verse 229 cites the natural
world as evidence of the existence of a God, which in itself isn't
wholly irrational based on the observable evidence, but Pascal
switches without explanation from speaking of “a God” in 229 to
speaking of “God” in 230. He provides no mechanism or
explanation for why the creator of existence must necessarily be the
specific Christian god in which he believes. By asserting that our
own existence, as a part of nature, is irrefutable evidence for the
awesome power of the Christian god Abba, Pascal surely knew that he
was in conflict with most other world religions who used existence to
prove the superior power of their deity of choice. Brahmins, Allah,
Abba... using our creation as proof that these gods created us, can
be neither proven nor disproven.
In deriding atheists,
Pascal espouses hatred for their disbelief. Hatred is a strong
emotion and it seems to discourage critical thought, which is a
tenuous position for a philosopher. To explain the apparent
conviction of his faith, it might help to examine his surroundings.
Living in France under Louis XIV, piety to Rome was unquestionable.
With a monarch who decreed in 1685 that “we enjoin all of our officers to chase from our islands all the Jews who have established residence there,” a prominent thinker of the time
might offer up praise of the state-approved religious figures and
heap criticism upon their doubters in an effort to help ensure the
favor of the kingdom. More than 350 years after his death, we'll
probably never know whether Pascal's faith was meant to appease the
state or whether it was sincerely-held.
My
writing to this point suggests the evolution of my own belief system.
I was born into a family that regularly attended mass at a Roman
Catholic church in a small city in New Hampshire, and I did not
question the doctrine until – ironically – I was required to
study theology at my Catholic high school. Being taught in one
classroom to understand how atoms are constructed and interact with
one another, then switching to a different classroom where we were
marked down for asking, ”why” led to a cognitive dissonance which
I could not accept. I eventually decided that atheism was equally
dogmatic because it flatly refused to accept the possibility of the
existence of a higher power. Today, when the question comes up, I
identify as a deist: I believe that something created the universe,
but I reject any explanation that relies on faith or threats rather
than evidence. I recognize my insignificance to the universe and
understand that defending any such explanation would be
embarrassingly arrogant.
By
recognizing my own incompetence – which has been made much easier
by studying at Sciences Po – I see that any offer of pity which I
might make is in itself pitiful, because its sincerity would require
that I be substantially superior to the person to whom it was
offered. Do I really want to assert that, considering the vastness
of the universe, I am really that much better than a human being who
checked a box next to the name of the former governor of Alaska who
once famously held up her executive control over the Aleutian Islands
as evidence of her foreign policy experience?
In
a quotation often misattributed to Mark Twain, American humorist Josh
Billings wrote in 1874 that, “I honestly believe it is better to
know nothing than to know what ain't so.” When I look around at all
of the atrocities of the world, they seem to just about always be
committed by actors who are absolutely certain of something what just
ain't so, and so I elect to embrace my ignorance and not be bothered
by the ignorance of others.
No comments:
Post a Comment