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Plus a change . . .

from Richard Ostrofsky

of Second Thoughts Bookstore (now closed)www.secthoughts.com

[email protected]

February, 2011

The world changes so quickly these days that it is easy to forget how

slowly some things change. Reading up post-modern philosophy, as I waswriting my first book, Sharing Realities, I was repeatedly struck by the

extent to which French, German and English thought today was still

preoccupied and shaped by issues that go back to the days of the French

Revolution, if not to the Reformation, if not to the Roman Empire and itsfall. Reading the news each morming, I'm struck repeatedly by the extent

to which American foreign policy and global affairs are shaped by myths

and events and conventions that go back hundred and thousands of years.For example, one powerful American myth is its attitude that history

doesn't matter an attitude that goes back to colonial times the 18th

century and even earlier when immigration to that portion of the newworld, meant opportunity for religious and political experimentation, rapid

accumulation of wealth, and a fresh start. (To Canadian settlers it meant

something rather different a fact that partially explains some differences

between the U.S. and Canadian societies today.) Similarly, French

thinking is noticeably shaped by memories of the 30-years war and then ofLouis XIV, when France was the hegemonic power in Europe. British

thinking too is shaped my memories of the good old days of Empire in thetime of Queen Victoria, if not to that nation's struggle for unity and

autonomy in the days of good Queen Bess. The Russians are still

struggling to maintain the hard-won centralization and unity achieved byIvan the Terrible, and still playing catch-up ball with Western Europe as in

the days of Peter the Great. The Chinese do not forget their humiliation at

the hands of Western powers in the time of the Opium Wars, nor its ownEmpire at the Ming heyday when it could see no other real civilization

than itself. One could go on and on this way, for every country in the

world. All have their durable preoccupations, memories and myths.Anyone who thinks that history is a dead subject in this age of modernscience and high technology doesn't understand, doesn't begin to

understand, the world he's living in.

And yet, I believe Americans are right on the whole that the peoples ofthe world would be better off if they could forget past glories and
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grievances to focus more clearly on their current realities and material

interests though they themselves are not doing so, and are mad to think

this will happen because they want it to.The question I would raise here is this: How is it possible for certain

features of our mental lives to be so durable given that knowledge,

technology and society itself are changing so rapidly? Why do peoplecling so durably so stubbornly to their favorite myths, in the absence

of supporting evidence, and indeed, with a good deal of evidence to the

contrary?To answer these questions, I would begin by drawing a distinction

between mere beliefs which express and are vulnerable to empirical

observation, as against verities which are not. If I see a cat sleeping on my

bed, I say that the cat is on my bed and believe that this is the case. If thecat wakes up and jumps down my belief is readily changed, and I will

happily change my belief and say the contrary.

But when Galileo's observations of the phases of Venus (see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_Venus) were published andverified, people could not immediately discard their beliefs in Ptolemaic

astronomy for the reason that rotation of the sun around the Earth wasmore than just a belief. Rather, it was a full-fledged verity, in the sense

that people's mental lives and allegiances and thus society itself depended

on it being the case. Mere observation could not immediately alter the

commitments and relationships involved.More generally, we might define a verity as a belief with structural

significance a belief to which people's epistemologies, worldviews and

existential commitments are pinned. With this definition, it is hardlysurprising that we doubt reported facts and observations sooner than our

verities. Thus, if Daniel Dennett, a skeptical thinker whom I greatly

respect, were to report having witnessed the teleportation of a ball or thebending of a spoon by mental power alone, I would still sooner doubt

Dennett's observations or his sanity than my belief in (what I understand

to be) the relationship between physical and mental events. I am not socommitted to these verities as to rule out the possibility that Dennett might

be correct, but it would take many more such observations and reports to

change my mind.

With this distinction in hand, it becomes entirely understandable thatverities change so slowly, and that people cling to their verities all the

more ferociously in the teeth of rapid change. Verities change slowly

because they are structural members of their social systems and of people'slives within those systems. Typically, they are also self-confirming: not

only dependent on, but strongly reinforcing an epistemology and

authority-structure which makes it easy to muster evidence and argumentsin their favor, but very difficult (if not mortally dangerous) to muster

arguments against. And such verities are needed all the more, not just as
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security blankets but as reference points and pillars of sanity, when social

systems are being challenged by technical innovations that cannotbe

rejected because wealth and power and life itself depend on them.From this perspective, the religious and political fundamentalisms of today

are fully understandable, as were the witch hunts in Europe that coincided

with the Rennaissance, the rise of science and modernity in general. Thefaster the world is changing, the more urgent it becomes that some things

be kept the same. However obsolete and threadbare they've become.

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