Truth, goodness and beauty

The Case for Christian Schools Part 1

They took all the trees
Put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone

They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

— Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi.”

The price to see the trees has gone up since Joni Mitchell wrote her song back in ’67. It’s $5 now. Yes, the “tree museum” is real. She was writing about the Foster Botanical Garden in Hawai’i, an oasis of green surrounded by grey roads and high-rise. Just that little bit of paradise left between the paving.

So why not just pave it all? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say. My truth is as good as yours. And for the shopkeepers and homeowners and commuters, roads and buildings are far better than trees. Beauty, truth, goodness: they’re all a matter of perspective. Let’s not get sentimental about them. Leave that to the children. We’ve outgrown such naivety, and our grown-up world is post-truth. Post-goodness. Post-beauty.

Let’s go along with this. Let’s imagine for a moment that beauty really is defined by the eye of the beholder, that it is subjective, relative, no more than the arbitrary expression of human will. What this means, is that what is beautiful is simply what the majority of people decide is beautiful. Beauty is democratic.

But, given all the attention paid recently in the press to the ways in which democracy and the popular will can be manipulated by powerful and wealthy influencers, doesn’t the democratisation of beauty give us pause? And even more so when goodness and truth are brought into the equation. If there really is no transcendent beauty, truth or goodness, nothing beyond human whim, are we not then forced to conclude, in the end, that what is beautiful, true and good is simply what the most influential, the richest, the most powerful manage to manipulate us into believing?

Because if that’s the case, then the pavement is far more beautiful than the paradise.

There is a lot at stake here. If this is true, then beauty can be redefined at will, along with its correlate, the good. If there is nothing intrinsically beautiful good about the natural landscape, if its beauty and goodness are purely subject to human utility and human will –  then why not raze and destroy it? Why not pave paradise, pollute the oceans, make use of animals as we see fit?

What’s more, if we can define the world as beautiful or ugly, good or bad purely according to the will of the majority or the most powerful, then there is nothing to stop us redefining the value of human lives, either. If there is no transcendent goodness or beauty, if these are subject purely to the human will, then we can define people as good and beautiful, or bad and ugly, too. Which in turn would allow us to define it as a good thing to eliminate or even exterminate those the popular will has designated ugly and evil. So man turns his skill in planning carparks to the extermination of Jews. Sure, there may be a minority who fail to see the good of what we are doing in the pogroms and the death camps; but if beauty and goodness are purely a matter of taste, then all we need to do is eliminate those with different tastes until only one taste remains.

This all assumes, of course, that we are the highest intelligence in this world. That’s maybe so for now. Yet already we can conceive of intelligent beings far more intelligent than ourselves, whether genetically and technologically enhanced humans or artificial intelligences. If beauty and goodness are indeed determined by the will of the highest extant intelligence, it might make us wonder just what use a community of digital minds or superhumans would have for the biological environment, for animals – for us. If we can define beauty and goodness by the value of things to us, and establish this definition purely by the exercise of power, then why shouldn’t they? And will there be any room in their ideal landscape for us? Will we become the bad, the ugly, useless, the burdensome parent, the genetically deficient relative, the unwanted child?

Food for thought.

We think that there is something new about our so-called “post-truth” age, where beauty and goodness are defined by the exercise of will or by their collectively assumed market value, but actually, it’s been a long time coming. You don’t need me to tell you about the deleterious effect that it is having on the people of this world, the West especially, and arguably adolescents more than most.

Putting the ‘Cult’ into Youth Culture

I’m in front of a Religious Studies class. They had no choice about taking the subject, and they don’t all desperately want to be there. Nor do I. But we have to be, so we make the best of it.

The topic is the knowledge of God.

“What problems,” I ask, “can you think of with claiming to know anything about God?”

For many of the class, maybe the question is too general. To most, it’s just irrelevant, but luckily for me, they are too polite to say so.

One of the usual two or three who put their hands up does so. He’s a bright lad, inquisitive, eloquent, passionate about causes and self-confident not to be afraid of looking clever. Just the sort of pupil you want in your Religious Studies class.

As he puts his hand up, I am already predicting the answer. I suspect that he is going to articulate the stock answer which many, if not all, of the class are thinking but struggle to put into words, or at least to speak out in front of their teacher.

“The problem is that there are so many gods and religions to choose from, and they all say different things. So how can you know which is right?”

Just as I expected.

This pupil will put forward a more lucid and compelling case than many of his peers, but his conclusion will not ultimately differ much even from the intellectually weaker members of the cohort.

Whenever they are required to make an argument in an essay, it takes a lot of effort and hounding to stop them writing something along the lines of: “Some people think X, other people think Y, but in conclusion, it’s all just a matter of opinion anyway.”

At first, I used to write snarky comments in the margins: “So it’s OK to think that the moon is made of cheese?” Or, “So Hitler was just exercising his freedom of choice?”

That was until I met a Religious Studies teacher at a conference who had heard a pupil genuinely express that point of view. Yes, in executing millions, Hitler was just being true to himself. Then I realised that it would take more than classroom sarcasm to fix the damage that relativism was doing to our children’s minds.

Coming back to the question in the classroom, possibly the most intelligent and free-thinking pupil in my class makes more convincing argument than this, but however much he dresses it up, he still reiterates the same predictable conclusion as his classmates. Whether it’s about God, or politics, or art, or music, it’s all just a matter of opinion, and any opinion is as good as another. Absolute claims to truth have no credibility and worse, are suspicious, because all truth-claims are ultimately relative, and the people claiming they have “the truth” are people to fear.

With one exception: scientists. Empirical observation and the testing of hypotheses is the one and only mode of thought which can possibly yield truth. Only that which can be scientifically verified goes beyond arbitrary opinion.

This total trust in the evidence of the senses, need I say, has been considered suspect by most philosophies throughout human history. But never mind that. Enter the prime Credo of the Post-Truth Youth Cult: everything which cannot be empirically verified is just a matter of opinion.

In the next post, we’re going to unmask the idol that lies behind this progressive myth.