Riffing on a WSJ piece by Cato’s David Boaz, Will Wilkinson goes off on the politics of meaning:
Is sacrifice for grand collective projects really meaningful? Probably it is. But the reward, the compensation for sacrifice, is indifferent to the content of the project. Probably genocide is meaningful for those who devote themselves to it. Religion is meaningful, too. But it’s a pack of lies. Meaningfulness is too promiscuous, justifies too much. I suspect there’s little sense in mounting an argument against meaning, per se. Everybody wants it, even if we badly overestimate how much we need it. But I think we’re obliged to do better in discriminating between sources of meaning and their effects. We tend to indulge people’s irrational fixations when they claim that they find them “meaningful.” But why? That it is “meaningful” to X may be a reason to be especially hard on X, if X is dangerous and meaning is really so attractive. Collectivism is meaningful, but it is mindless, pathetic, and the essential fuel for greatest [sic] cruelty. That it does feel sublime to submit to the will of the whole, to lose oneself in something bigger, that it is a special kind of bliss to transcend the small grubby thing that is one’s own small life, is why human beings will so cheerfully slaughter one another. This should probably be discouraged.
It probably goes without saying that I disagree with Will about religion (only some of it is a pack of lies), but … yeah. The fundamental problem seems to me to be that while there are plenty of non-collectivist projects – raising a kid, say, or working a job, or planting and tending to a garden, or cooking dinner, or even (perhaps) writing a blog – that are meaningful, they don’t always feel that way, and we no longer have the philosophical resources to explain why such feelings misguide us. We all want (“to be a part of”) something bigger than that, something better than that, something … well … something more meaningful than that.
Which brings me to Freeman Dyson’s claim that the present concern for the environment is nothing less than the manifestation of a (secular) religion:
There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.
Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists — most of whom are not scientists — holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.
And it is also a religion we can share even if we reject the demand that serving as a “steward of the planet” must manifest itself in nation- or world-wide attempts to reverse its warming. (For the record, my own private jury is still out on this question.) We can, as indeed I think we should, recycle, and compost, and use cloth diapers, and avoid wasting water and electricity, and try to eschew the use of harmful pesticides and fertilizers, and minimize our “carbon footprints”, and so on – that is to say: we can do all of these things as persons – without thereby thinking that we ought to force, whether at the point of a gun or an economic carrot, the rest of the nation or the world to do the same.
“But that is not enough!” – one wants to say. “We need to do something that makes a difference!” Your actions do make a difference, though: by treating your corner of the planet with care and acting as a responsible steward of its resources, not only are you breaking free of a cycle of waste and destruction, but you are also, at least to this limited extent, living well. And this, I would submit, is the ultimate in meaningfulness, the very thing that makes your life “worth living”.
Collectivist projects, on the other hand, are decidedly not worth their while unless they do something more than that. (Signing on to the (ultimately disastrous) Kyoto Protocol, for example, would not have made any sense at all unless it was going to go a significant way toward solving the problem of global warming.) And this is what makes them so dangerous: there is nothing noble in the trying; it’s only the end that counts, and so the means must be subordinated thereto. When we have lost the knowledge that there is something valuable, something meaningful, something – yes – dignified in the proper flourishing of even the “small” and “grubby”, we have lost … well, I was going to finish this thought after I came back from the grocery store, but Jim Manzi helpfully took care of that for me.*
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* Though nota bene: nor do I think that the solution is to devote one’s life to the improvement of the national economy.
Filed under: conservatism, energy, environment, government/law, religion
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