Our Convictions

   The tree is known by the fruit. With respect to a person’s professed religious or non-religious convictions, there is a simple test to judge the fruit: do they divide you from other souls, your family, your community (if you have one), the nature of your place, the nature of your own body, or a rich inner life. Are the convictions the fruit of an alienated ego? Do the convictions themselves alienate the ego from the soul? Do they undo essential connections? That is the essence of sin: to isolate the ego, to make the ego absolute, its own judge over good and evil, over reality. To undo essential connections. To imprison the ego in its own fantasies, its own virtual reality.

    The whole Israeli-Palestinian Hell, for example. But also on the spiritual micro level: the tendency to de-mean the intrinsically good in whatever way. Think of all the myriad ways people demean others with their self-definitions and ‘identities.’ I’m an x; therefore, I am superior to the entire world of y’s – whereby the y’s also include nature. I believe x; therefore, I am superior to all who believe y.

It amazes me how much of human life - including my life - is determined by this simple principle. Which is in religious terms: determined by sin.

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A disagreement is not necessarily a division. My father and I had many political disagreements, for example, but these disagreements did not diminish the love between us in the least. Neither of us was demeaned by the other's beliefs or arguments in support of those beliefs.

    There is something wonderfully impersonal about the search for truth. We are all limited in so many ways – by our cognitive capacities, by the fact of being born into one time and place and not another, by the limited amount of time we have for inquiry, etc. etc. etc. And thus fallible. It’s like we are all human chess players; every move expresses a belief or an argument supporting a belief. The other player can refute that belief or argument – or not. Often the game ends in a draw. But just because it doesn't end in a draw is no reason to think the belief or argument is therefore proven true beyond doubt. The greatest possible chess player – God, or if you prefer, the most advanced possible computer chess program imaginable – defines Truth (with a big ‘T’), and none of us are anywhere near that level. Our differences relative to the absolute chess player are vastly more significance than the relatively minor differences between our own limited abilities. Therefore, there is no reason to resent a conversation partner who disagrees with you than to resent a chess partner. Of course, unlike chess a genuine conversation is more thoroughly cooperative, lacking the competitive spirit of much chess.  

       We make each other better – we advance our game, our insight and understanding – every time we ‘play’ i.e. converse about what is true, good, or beautiful. I assume I can learn from ‘good players’ from almost all philosophies and religions. Nothing is demeaning in this, even if I have to revise some of my beliefs. It is all quite impersonal, even when it goes deep in us.

     The problem comes only when one person’s different opinion is not the first move in a conversation whose point is to get wiser, but to prove who is better: smarter, better educated, more moral, more fashionable, more patriotic, or whatever. Then we see the presence of the fat, relentless ego. Truth is no longer what drives communication, the form of truth-seeking is perverted into a war of one ego against another; its purpose is to destroy the opponent and elevate itself. Conversation becomes “rhetoric” (propaganda). Words and thoughts become weapons to defend and destroy egos rather than the means by which we erase a bit more of our ignorance, partly through conversations between people who see things differently.

    Jesus, when questioned by Pilatus, uttered these words: "For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice." The second part always puzzled me but now I think I understand. But the Pharisees and high priests were not of the truth. They felt threatened and demeaned, their social status also called into question. It was not about truth for them but defense of the ego. They defended their egos with the cross.

    The same in the corrupted state of American political discourse. Nobody - neither MAGA nor WOKE or any of the other camps - believe they are fallible, and thus it is not a matter of finding the truth, of overcoming one step at a time our deep ignorance. Disagreement about what is true is translated immediately into one person's attempt to reduce and demean another. We can disagree about what is the best policies for the country, but we can't disagree about our "identity" (alienated egos) when the very existence of one is understood as an attempt to demean the other; when indeed the one is defined as essentially demeaning to other other. Disagreement about matters of truth presupposes transcending ego, and disintegrates whenever egos are at stake. 

    And the belief that all search for truth is nothing but such a contest between egos is one of those beliefs that divide one soul from another such that disagreement implies demeaning. I like to remember how far apart my father and I were from that.