Opposed to All Creeds

As Bertrand Russell noted in 1951 [NYT “The Best Answer to Fanaticism–Liberalism"], “Liberalism is not so much a creed as a disposition. It is, indeed, opposed to creeds.... The liberal attitude does not say that you should oppose authority. It says only that you should be free to oppose authority, which is quite a different thing. The essence of the liberal outlook in the intellectual sphere is a belief that unbiased discussion is a useful thing and that men should be free to question anything if they can support their questioning by solid arguments [evidence and reason]. The opposite view, which is maintained by [believers,] those who cannot be called liberals, is that the truth is already known, and that to question it is necessarily subversive [because doubt and inquiry are a threat to all certitudes/ideologies]. The purpose of mental activity, according to these men, is not to discover truth, but to strengthen belief in truths already known. In a word, its purpose in this view is edification, not knowledge. The liberal objection to this view is that throughout past history, received opinions have been such as everyone now admits to have been both false and harmful, and that it is scarcely likely that the world has completely changed in this respect. It is not necessary to the liberal outlook to maintain that discussion will always lead to the prevalence of the better opinion. What is necessary is to maintain that absence of discussion [e.g. between the right and the left factions who never discuss] will usually lead to the prevalence of the worse opinion [whether right or left]. At the present time, persecution of opinion is practised in all parts of the world, except western Europe, and the consequence is that the world is divided into two halves, which cannot understand each other and which find only hostile relations possible [and each society is increasingly divided into two halves who cannot understand each other, having dissolution as outcome]."

Russell adds,

The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.

Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.

Be scrupulously truthful, even when truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

The word "liberal," in our politicized times, has come to mean its opposite. It refers to those who are liberal in name only, who are true believers in the certainty that all to the right of them are in error.

LIBERALISM

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 2021

Since I left the world I was born into—the world of Somalia, the world of Islam, and all of the strictures that society and religion put on me as a woman—I have always identified as a liberal. I mean that in the most capacious sense of the world: a belief in the rule of law; in individual liberty; in equality between men and women; in due process; and in, yes, a belief that some cultures—namely, liberal and democratic ones—are better [for humans if not the biosphere] than others.

Lately, I worry that liberalism is insufficient. Or to put it another way: that the weak version of liberalism we see across the West cannot compete with muscular ideologies, like Islamism and populism rising on the right and the left across Europe and here in America [e.g. Trumpism, Wokeism].

A value-neutral liberalism that insists that all cultures and choices are equally good is liberalism in name only. For liberalism to win, it needs to stand up to its enemies yet again.

The fate of the West [humanity?] depends on it.

The eighth commandment in Russell's decalogue offers an alternative to irreconcilable differences, to forming factions, to taking sides on any issue, where each views the other as an existential threat that must be destroyed at all cost. Belief-based differences have dissolution as outcome. Each side comes to see the other as irredeemably evil (e.g. as "socialists", or "racists"). The only viable outcome, in the end, is the complete annihilation of the opponent. Both sides come to envision the same outcome: We WIN! Theoretically, one side could 'win' by inheriting the rubble. On the upslope, during a time of growth (e.g. the Industrial Revolution/Modern Techno-Industrial society), the winner does inherent future growth, hence the American colonialist's revolution won a continent for the taking. But on the downslope, the winner will inherent degrowth, i.e. only the rubble they added to.

To avoid, some common ground is needed. Creeds fail. Russell's finding value in intelligent dissent, in questioning everything, in rethinking everything in all due doubt, puts all inquirers on the same footing whatever their starting point (bias or initial guess). Inquiry is only possible by doubting (and listening to Nature), by a willingness to consider the possibility, indeed probability, that one might be wrong about any claim or all claims. The only certainty is that one is subject to error, ignorance, and illusion.

Humans cannot agree upon which humans are authorities, much less which one huiman is the one true authority, because none are, no not one such that they cannot be questioned. My doctor's assessment of my medical condition and treatment is to consider in all due respect, but questioning every claim is entirely appropriate and in a sane society, encouraged. All political and religious belief-based claims, if seriously questioned, must be defended unto death, and may not merit even consideration. Belief-based cultures select for their own failure. An inquiry-based culture is to consider.

Therefore, endeavor to think well, to iterate towards a better view, knowing that you know nothing (with presumed certainty). We humans are the storytelling animal, Homo narrator, that tells no true stories. Our best stories about what is out there is not what is out there. Our stories are social/conceptual constructs, not the thing or system described. Those who can find and meet on a common ground (which excludes all creeds), who can come to understand Gaia and thereby live with her properly, need to compete with those who do not. Sorry about that.

The fate of humanity/posterity and the biosphere may depend on it.

As Bertrand Russell noted in The Triumph of Stupidity 1933:

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points. This was not always the case.

If someone is cocksure, he is likely to be an ignorant dilettante—or someone who is determined to make it by faking it. But unfortunately if you want to be intelligent, you’d also better to be humble—because if you really are smart, you will be smart enough to realize how much there are things you don’t understand.

More Bertrand Russell quotes:

The protection of minorities is vitally important; and even the most orthodox of us may find himself in a minority some day, so that we all have an interest in restraining the tyranny of majorities.

When we speak of anything as “free,” our meaning is not definite unless we can say what it is free from. Whatever or whoever is “free” is not subject to some external compulsion, and to be precise we ought to say what this kind of compulsion is. Thus thought is “free” when it is free from certain kinds of outward control which are often present. Some of these kinds of control which must be absent if thought is to be “free” are obvious, but others are more subtle and elusive.

I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good. Although I am prepared to admit that in certain times and places it has had some good effects, I regard it as belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage of development which we are now outgrowing. But there is also a wider sense of “free thought,” which I regard as of still greater importance. Indeed, the harm done by traditional religions seems chiefly traceable to the fact that they have prevented free thought in this wider sense.

Thought is not “free” when legal penalties are incurred by the holding or not holding of certain opinions, or by giving expression to one’s belief or lack of belief on certain matters… The most elementary condition, if thought is to be free, is the absence of legal penalties for the expression of opinions. […] Legal penalties are, however, in the modern world, the least of the obstacles to freedom of thoughts. The two great obstacles are economic penalties and distortion of evidence. It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search.

William James used to preach the “will to believe.” For my part, I should wish to preach the “will to doubt.” None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error. The methods of increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs are well known; they consist in hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate.

Every man of science whose outlook is truly scientific is ready to admit that what passes for scientific knowledge at the moment is sure to require correction with the progress of discovery; nevertheless, it is near enough to the truth to serve for most practical purposes, though not for all. In science, where alone something approximating to genuine knowledge is to be found, men’s attitude is tentative and full of doubt. In religion and politics, on the contrary, though there is as yet nothing approaching scientific knowledge, everybody considers it de rigueur to have a dogmatic opinion, to be backed up by inflicting starvation, prison, and war, and to be carefully guarded from argumentative competition with any different opinion. If only men could be brought into a tentatively agnostic frame of mind about these matters, nine-tenths of the evils of the modern world would be cured. War would become impossible, because each side would realize that both sides must be in the wrong. Persecution would cease. Education would aim at expanding the mind, not at narrowing it. Men would be chosen for jobs on account of fitness to do the work, not because they flattered the irrational dogmas of those in power.

His [Einstein's] theory upsets the whole theoretical framework of traditional physics; it is almost as damaging to orthodox dynamics as Darwin was to Genesis. Yet physicists everywhere have shown complete readiness to accept his theory as soon as it appeared that the evidence was in its favour. But none of them, least of all Einstein himself, would claim that he has said the last word… This critical undogmatic receptiveness is the true attitude of science.

If Einstein had advanced something equally new in the sphere of religion or politics … the truth or falsehood of his doctrine would be decided on the battlefield, without the collection of any fresh evidence for or against it. This method is the logical outcome of William James’s will to believe. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite.

A great deal of this is due to the inherent irrationality and credulity of average human nature. But this seed of intellectual original sin is nourished and fostered by other agencies, among which three play the chief part — namely, education, propaganda, and economic pressure.

Education should have two objects: first, to give definite knowledge — reading and writing, languages and mathematics, and so on; secondly, to create those mental habits which will enable people to acquire knowledge and form sound judgments for themselves. The first of these we may call information, the second intelligence.

Too much fuss is sometimes made about the fact that propaganda appeals to emotion rather than reason. The line between emotion and reason is not so sharp as some people think. […] The objection to propaganda is not only its appeal to unreason, but still more the unfair advantage which it gives to the rich and powerful. Equality of opportunity among opinions is essential if there is to be real freedom of thought; and equality of opportunity among opinions can only be secured by elaborate laws directed to that end, which there is no reason to expect to see enacted. The cure is not to be sought primarily in such laws, but in better education and a more sceptical public opinion.

There are two simple principles which, if they were adopted, would solve almost all social problems. The first is that education should have for one of its aims to teach people only to believe propositions when there is some reason to think that they are true. The second is that jobs should be given solely for fitness to do the work.

The protection of minorities is vitally important; and even the most orthodox of us may find himself in a minority some day, so that we all have an interest in restraining the tyranny of majorities. Nothing except public opinion can solve this problem.

Some element of doubt is essential to the practice, though not to the theory, of toleration… If there is to be toleration in the world, one of the things taught in schools must be the habit of weighing evidence, and the practice of not giving full assent to propositions which there is no reason to believe true.

The evils of the world are due to moral defects quite as much as to lack of intelligence. But the human race has not hitherto discovered any method of eradicating moral defects; preaching and exhortation only add hypocrisy to the previous list of vices. Intelligence, on the contrary, is easily improved by methods known to every competent educator. Therefore, until some method of teaching virtue has been discovered, progress will have to be sought by improvement of intelligence rather than of morals. One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instruction as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. FREE THOUGHT AND OFFICIAL PROPAGANDA

Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

It must be done by generating an enlightened public opinion. And an enlightened public opinion can only be generated by the efforts of those who desire that it should exist.

Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.

Optimism and pessimism, as cosmic philosophies, show the same naïve humanism; the great world, so far as we know it from the philosophy of nature, is neither good nor bad, and is not concerned to make us happy or unhappy. All such philosophies spring from self-importance, and are best corrected by a little astronomy.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Knowledge and love are both indefinitely extensible; therefore, however good a life may be, a better life can be imagined. Neither love without knowledge, nor knowledge without love can produce a good life.

Those whose intelligence is adequate should be encouraged in using their imaginations to think out more productive ways of utilizing existing social forces or creating new ones.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

The Best Answer to Fanaticism – Liberalism 1951

The more I see of other countries the more persuaded I become that the English are a very odd people. Their virtues are due to their vices, and their vices to their virtues. They are tolerant – more so I think than any other large nation – because they consider ideas [political/religious beliefs] unimportant. In other countries ideas are thought important and therefore dangerous; in England ideas are thought negligible and therefore not worth persecuting.

This was not always the case. In the seventeenth century, England had a spate of ideologies leading to civil wars and executions and thumb-screws, but in 1688 the country decided [the Glorious Revolution ended a century of political dispute by confirming the primacy of Parliament over the Crown] that it had had enough of earnestness and that anybody who believed anything at all fervently was no gentleman [e.g. Oliver Cromwell 1650, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken" which was all but unthinkable]. This decision was made all the easier by the fact that the most fanatical fanatics had gone to America. Ever since, Englishmen who have beliefs are treated as licensed buffoons or court jesters. There are no civil wars and nobody’s head is cut off. This is convenient, but one sometimes feels that a little persecution would be a more sincere compliment.

There is, in the present day, a very general decay of liberalism even in countries where there has been an increase of democracy. Liberalism [a tolerance for doubt] is not so much a creed as a disposition. It is opposed to creeds. It began in the late 17th century as a reaction from the futile wars of religion which, though they killed immense numbers of people, left the balance of power unchanged.

The great apostle of liberalism was Locke, who disliked both Roundheads and Cavaliers [all ideologues], and thought the important thing was to learn to live at peace with one's neighbor, even if, there were matters about which one did not agree with him. Locke based this attitude of live-and-let-live on the fallibility of all human opinion [belief-based thinking]. He thought nothing indubitable. He held that everything is open to question. He maintained that there is only probable opinion, and that the person who feels no doubt is stupid. Such an outlook, we are now assured, is a great drawback in battle, and is therefore to be decried. But the English, while they held this attitude, acquired their Empire, defeated the French and the Spaniards, and were only defeated by the Americans, who had the same attitude in an even more marked degree [until by early-twentith-century they didn't].

Those happy days are past. Nowadays, the man who has any doubt whatever is despised; in many countries he is put in prison, and in America he is thought unfit to perform any public function [e.g. atheists barred from holding office in eight states, but not enforced since 1961 when the Supreme Court held that a notary public didn’t have to declare his belief in a supreme being to hold office]. What you are to be sure of depends, of course, upon your longitude. In Europe, east of the Elbe, it is absolutely certain that capitalism is tottering; west of the Elbe, it is absolutely certain that capitalism is the salvation of mankind. The good citizen is not the man who attempts to be guided by the evidence, but the man who never resists longitudinal inspiration [more so today even within universities].

America, which imagines itself the land of free enterprise, will not permit free enterprise in the world of ideas. In America, almost as much as in Russia, you must think what your neighbor thinks, or rather what your neighbor thinks that it pays to think. Free enterprise is confined to the material sphere. This is what Americans mean when they say that they are opposed to materialism.

Those to whom free use of the intelligence has made intellectual submission difficult find themselves, wherever the government is persecuting, led into opposition to authority. But the liberal attitude does not say that you should oppose authority. It says only that you should be free to oppose authority, which is quite a different thing. The essence of the liberal outlook in the intellectual sphere is a belief that unbiased discussion is a useful thing, and that men should be free to question anything if they can support their questioning by solid arguments. The opposite view, which is maintained by those who cannot be called liberals, is that the truth is already known, and that to question it is necessarily subversive. The purpose of mental activity, according to these men, is not to discover truth, but to strengthen belief in truths already known. In a word, its purpose in this view is edification, not knowledge. The liberal objection to this view is that throughout past history, received opinions have been such as everyone now admits to have been both false and harmful, and that it is scarcely likely that the world has completely changed in this respect. It is not necessary to the liberal outlook to maintain that discussion will always lead to the prevalence of the better opinion. What is necessary is to maintain that absence of discussion will usually lead to the prevalence of the worse opinion. At the present time, persecution of opinion is practiced in all parts of the world, except western Europe, and the consequence is that the world is divided into two halves, which cannot understand each other and which find only hostile relations possible.

There is, of course, a case to be made for edification as opposed to truth, Edification, that is to say the bolstering up by specious arguments of the opinions held by the police, tends to preserve a stable society. It militates against anarchy and gives security to the incomes of the rich. When successful, it prevents revolution, and ensures that kings and presidents will be welcomed by cheering crowds whenever they show themselves to their subjects. When, on the other hand, pure reason is allowed to intrude into political speculation, the result may be to let loose such a flood of anarchic passion that all orderly government becomes impossible. It is this fear which inspires conservative and authoritarians. No one can deny that philosophers in eighteenth-century France prepared the way for the guillotine. No one can deny that philosophers in nineteenth-century Russia undermined the traditional reverence for the Czar. No one can deny that under Western influence Chinese philosophers weakened the authority of Confucius.

I will not attempt to maintain that thinking has never had any bad effects, but where it has had such effects it has been because its lessons have been only half learned. The teacher who urges doctrines subversive of existing authority does not, if he is liberal, advocate the establishment of a new authority even more tyrannical than the old. He advocates certain limits to the exercise of authority, and he wishes these limits to be observed not only when the authority would support a creed with which he disagrees, but also when it would support one with which he is in complete agreement. I am, for the my part, a believer in democracy, but I do not like a regime which makes belief in democracy compulsory.

In favor of freedom of discussion there are several arguments. There is first the argument that it tends to promote true belief, and that true belief as a rule is more socially useful than false belief. There is next the argument that where freedom of discussion is curbed, it is curbed by those who hold power, and is practically certain to be curbed in their interest.

The result almost inevitably is to promote injustice and oppression. There is lastly the argument that injustice and oppression imposed by a dominant caste lead sooner or later to violent revolution, and that violent revolution is apt to issue either in anarchy or in a new tyranny worse than that which has been overthrown.

There have been ages and nations in which an urbane orthodoxy has succeeded, without ostensible persecution, in establishing an almost unquestioned intellectual authority. The supreme example of this is traditional China. All wisdom was contained in the Confucian books. A considerable amount of education was required in order to understand these books. The men who had this education controlled the government, and the result was a system which was civilized, in a sense enlightened, and fairly stable for about 2,000 years. There was, however, nothing in the Confucian books about warships or artillery or high explosives, and therefore as soon as China came into conflict with the West, the whole Confucian synthesis was seen to be inadequate. A similar fate must overtake any static culture, however excellent in itself. Some fifty years ago (the matter is quite different now) there was a thoroughly Chinese synthesis which was inculcated by those who did “Greats” at Oxford. One learned the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle and Kant and Hegel. Other philosophies were ignored as being “crude”. The result had a considerable aesthetic merit but happened not to be adapted to the modern world. There are those in America who hope to spread a cultured atmosphere through American universities by selecting 100 great books and confining education to them. This again is a static ideal. The best books of the past, at any rate where science is concerned, contain less useful knowledge than very inferior textbooks of the present time. And those who have read only the best 100 books will be ignorant of many things that they ought to know. Moreover, vested interests will rapidly cumulate about the best 100 books. Professors will know how to lecture about them, but not about books outside the sacred 100. They will, therefore, use all their intellectual authority to prevent the recognition of new merit. And it will presently happen, as happened, in 19th-century England, that almost all intellectual merit is to be found only outside the universities.

Those who oppose freedom, whether in the political or the intellectual sphere, are men dominated by apprehension of the evil consequences that may result from unbridled human passions. I will not deny that there are such dangers. But I would ask timorous people to remember that safety is impossible to achieve and is ignoble as an aim. Risks must be run, and those who refuse to run risks incur a certainty of much greater disaster sooner or later. It is all very fine to wish to curb human passions, but you cannot curb the passions of those who do the curbing. In imagination of course you see yourself in this position, and you know yourself to be a person of exemplary virtue. This, dear reader, I shall not dispute. But you are not immortal. Others will succeed you in the censor’s office, and they may be less humane and less enlightened than you are. They may build the dukes higher and higher against the flood of new ideas, but however feverishly they may build, their dykes will ultimately prove inadequate, and the higher they have been built, the more terrible will be the flood when the waters overtop them. It is not by such methods that subversive violence is to be prevented. The dangers that frighten authoritarians are real, but no other method of combating them is so effective as freedom.

Perhaps the essence of the liberal outlook could be summed up in a new decalogue, not intended to replace the old one, but only to supplement it. The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

Do not feel absolutely certain of anything. [We know-nothings know nothing apart from tautologies that tell us nothing about what's out there.]
Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light. [Believe nothing: iterate towards better views, towards telling more likely stories.]
Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed. ['Endeavor to think well, that is the only morality' — Blaise Pascal.]
When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory. [Assume error, ignorance, and illusion, that you could be wrong about everything.]
Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found. [Respect only the nature of things, Nature who has all the answers.]
Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you. [Subject all claims to an all consuming doubt and inquiry.]
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. ['Modern science should indeed arouse in all of us a humility before the immensity of the unexplored and a tolerance for crazy hypotheses.' —Martin Gardner]
Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter. [Considering the possibility that you might be wrong is the greater good.]
Be scrupulously truthful, even when truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it. [Never try to fool yourself, for you are sure to succeed.]
Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness. [Be as you are, a know-nothing from the hood who just doesn't get it.]

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