Intolerance - Why Is Saying "You Might Be Right" So Difficult?

The history of the Early Church is interesting because during the Second and Third Centuries Christian theologians debated the principles of the religion that most people today take for granted.  The Trinity, the nature of Christ, the doctrine of grace, the meaning of Christ’s suffering and the remission of sins; and the ineffability of the Word were all debated and little was settled until the Council of Nicaea in the latter part of the Fourth Century.

Vigorous debate is not surprising given the complexity, subtlety, and often opacity of the many allegories and parables in the Bible. Christ deliberately made his parables abstract and allusive in order to challenge the belief and faith of his followers. The synoptic Gospels are consistent, but quite different in tone, style, and often content.  The Gospel of John reflects the core principles enunciated by Matthew, Mark, and Luke but is more purely theological, explaining the nature of the Word, God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
 

          www.covert.org

Paul in his role as evangelist for the new religion was instrumental in setting forth a code of principles based on the Christ’s teachings; and early theologians of all schools used his Epistles as the point of departure for their own exegetical interpretation. Paul’s letters to the Romans, Ephesians, Galatians, and others, although consistent in theme and purpose, were each different, for he tailor-made what he wrote to place Christ’s radical ideas within the familiar context of Jewish tradition, Roman polytheism, and Greek logic.


       www.catholictradition.org

The point is that Donatists, Monatists, Neo-Platonists, Gnostics, and Marcionists – as well as the traditional and orthodox Augustine, John Chrysostom, Jerome, and Origen – all based their philosophical constructs on reason.  The legacy of Ancient Greece and the logical tradition of Plato and Aristotle was alive in well in the early centuries of Christianity; and early Christians knew of no other way to construct a theology. Whether one believed that Christ always existed, or was created by God was a matter of interpretation and logic.  What were Greek and Mesopotamian antecedents of creation,  pre-existence, and divinity? 


   www.departments.bucknell.edu

Gnosticism was perhaps the most radical departure from Christian orthodoxy:

In the Gnostic view, there is a true, ultimate and transcendent God, who is beyond all created universes and who never created anything in the sense in which the word “create” is ordinarily understood. While this True God did not fashion or create anything, He (or, It) “emanated” or brought forth from within Himself the substance of all there is in all the worlds, visible and invisible. In a certain sense, it may therefore be true to say that all is God, for all consists of the substance of God. By the same token, it must also be recognized that many portions of the original divine essence have been projected so far from their source that they underwent unwholesome changes in the process. To worship the cosmos, or nature, or embodied creatures is thus tantamount to worshipping alienated and corrupt portions of the emanated divine essence (The Gnosis Archive)

Possible image Demiurge, www.en.wikipedia.org

Plotinus (Third Century) gave a vigorous reply to the Gnostics, and contested their notion of good and bad emanations:

He answered the challenge of accounting for the emergence of a seemingly inferior and flawed cosmos from the perfect mind of the divinity by declaring outright that all objective existence is but the external self-expression of an inherently contemplative deity known as the One (to hen), or the Good (ta kalon). Plotinus compares the expression of the superior godhead with the self-expression of the individual soul, which proceeds from the perfect conception of a Form (eidos), to the always flawed expression of this Form in the manner of a materially derived 'personality' that risks succumbing to the demands of divisive discursivity, and so becomes something less than divine (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

            www.aetherforce.com

Paul, especially in his Letter to the Galatians, sets for the principles of the Doctrine of Grace, essential to the theology of Martin Luther and the Calvinists many centuries later. He went to great pains to convince the Galatians that good works were not essential to salvation, and that it was only through God’s divine grace and the compassion of his son, Jesus Christ could it be attained.  This was not an easy sell, because unless Paul expressed his idea with precision and care, one could be left with the impression of a capricious God, one who decided willy-nilly who was saved and who wasn’t.  The doctrine of grace flew against intuition – most human activities were either rewarded or punished; and therefore how could belief and faith be enough to attain the Kingdom of God?



His arguments are those of a logician, a rhetorician, and a a salesman; and his well-constructed, logical exposition formed the basis for one of the most fundamental principles of Protestantism.  Yet centuries later the Catholic Church dismissed Paul’s interpretation of Christ’s words and made it clear that not only were works important; but that they were more important than faith.  This conclusion was again the result of Biblical exegesis, disciplined logic and interpretation, and rational analysis.

Twentieth Century popes have spoken out against Protestant ‘cultism’ on many occasions, stating that the way to Christ and to salvation is through logic and faith and not irrational histrionics. A complete, thorough, and comprehensive understanding of the principles of the Church only makes faith more satisfying.  Appreciating the subtlety and complexity of the Word, the Trinity, Christ’s humanity, and the nature of suffering and free will provides the foundation for ultimate faith.



Tolstoy grappled with the question of faith for decades.  He studied philosophy, mathematics, logic, history, science, and literature to try to discover insights into the meaning of life.  He could not; but realized that blind faith was no answer either.  In A Confession, his biographical memoir about the road to faith, he describes how he finally comes to faith.  He realizes that if billions of people have and do believe, there must be something to it. However, after A Confession Tolstoy wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a novella about a man like himself who at the end of his life grapples with the meaning of life and death. Christians have interpreted the ending of the story as proof of his new faith; but just as many others have seen a return to his old Nihilism.

In any case, Tolstoy could never reject logic as a means to revelation; and as much as he may have found faith, Ivan Ilyich shows that he was still intellectually and logically debating it.


                       www.telegraph.com

Why then, are progressives so unwilling to accept Christian belief? Anyone with only a cursory reading of the Bible can appreciate the religion’s sophistication, complexity, and universality. It is not enough to dismiss fundamentalist beliefs as exaggerated misinterpretations of the Bible.  While the fundamental theological principles of all religions have been distorted to justify personal or political ends; given the disciplined and rational efforts that have resulted in religious canon and the logical principles that underlie it, critics should at least grant the possibility that a fundamentalist Christian position is right.

Perhaps the Trinity is more than just a theological construct and is a model for an ideal human configuration.  Christ’s relationship with his father was both as a human son and a divine one. Mary was his mother, but although the Catholic Church has sanctified her, other Christians have not and follow more closely Christ’s own words which emphasize the more important paternal relationship.  Should these principally male relationships be completely dismissed in the light of the evolution of secular thinking?  Should key passages of Jeremiah, Psalms, Genesis, and Exodus which refer to the sanctity of life be ignored? Should the injunctions against homosexuality in Deuteronomy as ‘an abomination’ be dismissed out of hand?

In short, it is not enough to say, “I respect what you say and will defend your right to say it”.  Only “You may be right”, will do.

Conservatism and liberalism each have a long, storied, and complex history; and the origins of both can be traced back millennia. The most important distinction between them is philosophical.  Conservatives believe in an ineluctable, permanent, and unvarying human nature – one that is self-interested, self-protective, territorial, aggressive, and ambitious. As the Shakespeare critic Jan Kott has observed, history is a Grand Mechanism, constantly revolving back upon itself.  If one were to lay out and read all Shakespeare’s Histories in chronological order, one would find the same expressions of human nature albeit by characters of different name, title, rank, and status.



Liberals believe in the perfectibility of Man and that there is no such thing as permanence. They reject the evidence of history, the more pessimistic interpretations of The Fall, and the repetitious examples of the same acquisitive human nature at the level of family, community, town, region, and country.  There is no evil in the world, said Augustine, trying to justify misery in a world created by a just and compassionate God. Only the absence of good; and based on this optimistic conclusion, liberals have felt that there is hope after all.  Man can repopulate the world with good.


         www.blogs.longwood.edu

Yet, despite the logical conclusions of theologians, philosophers, historians, geneticists, and social scientists, neither side can say, “You might be right.”  Liberals cannot possibly entertain the idea that human nature is immutable; and that the only meaningful relationship there can possibly be within that construct is that of the individual with God.  Nor can they admit the rationality of the Hindu caste system which goes against their core beliefs of secular societal progress but which was devised by the Aryans as a means of attaining enlightenment.


               www.ebay.com

Conservatives are so convinced of the rightness of their beliefs – how can anyone see progress in a world which has become even more violent and predatory? – that they refuse to admit that perhaps the right configuration of individual-community-society-government has not yet been aligned.  “You might be right”, is an inadmissible statement.

People have trouble focusing on the logical center of arguments, and conflate the illogical excesses on the extreme margins with the mainstream.  Those who value and promote individual freedom and personal liberty as Enlightenment principles, for example, are confused with the crazy militias holed up in northern Idaho who are preparing to fight the invasion of Obama’s army. Because America is awash in unfounded conspiracy theories, insanity infects the logical core from which they are derived.  It is harder and harder to say, “You might be right.”

Nevertheless “You might be right” is the most important first step to reducing intolerance, and it is worth a try.

Swarm Intelligence - Ant Colonies And American Capitalism

Swarm intelligence is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. The concept is employed in work on artificial intelligence.

SI systems consist typically of a population of simple agents…interacting locally with one another and with their environment. The inspiration often comes from nature, especially biological systems. The agents follow very simple rules, and although there is no centralized control structure dictating how individual agents should behave, local, and to a certain degree random, interactions between such agents lead to the emergence of "intelligent" global behavior, unknown to the individual agents. Examples in natural systems of SI include ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, bacterial growth, fish schooling and microbial intelligence (Wikipedia)

                       www.theatlantic.com

In other words ants build colonies, forage, fight, defend, and survive with no organizational leadership. Each ant has limited intelligence, only enough to perform the tasks that evolution has assigned to it.  Ants are differentiated by task – workers, soldiers, drones, princesses, and queens. The workers carry out the basic tasks of foraging, and colony construction and repair. The soldiers defend the colony and fight invaders. The princesses are ‘virgin queens’ to be inseminated by male drones.  There are no alpha males which fight for dominance and then rule until deposed; and no rule of tooth-and-claw to determine social order.  No one in the colony is in charge.  No one gives orders through pheromone exchange. Ants have evolved to collectively perform complex activities in a coordinated way and have – without instruction, discipline, or commands from above – created efficiently functioning colonies of over half-a-million individuals.


                      www.news.vanderbilt.edu
The ants, however, do not simply perform routine activities.  They do not always forage in the same place, construct identical colonies; but respond to the complex, changing environment around them.

In the Arizona desert where Deborah Gordon studies red harvester ants(Pogonomyrmex barbatus), a colony calculates each morning how many workers to send out foraging for food. The number can change, depending on conditions. Have foragers recently discovered a bonanza of tasty seeds? More ants may be needed to haul the bounty home. Was the nest damaged by a storm last night? Additional maintenance workers may be held back to make repairs. An ant might be a nest worker one day, a trash collector the next (Peter Miller, National Geographic)

How is this sophisticated job allocation accomplished without the oversight of a general manager?

Ants communicate by touch and smell. When one ant bumps into another, it sniffs with its antennae to find out if the other belongs to the same nest and where it has been working. (Ants that work outside the nest smell different from those that stay inside.) Before they leave the nest each day, foragers normally wait for early morning patrollers to return. As patrollers enter the nest, they touch antennae briefly with foragers.
"When a forager has contact with a patroller, it's a stimulus for the forager to go out," Gordon says. "But the forager needs several contacts no more than ten seconds apart before it will go out." (Peter Miller)

                     www.alexanderwild.com

Scientists have used swarm theory to improve the operation of complex systems. Southwest Airlines, for example, improved efficiency by simulating ant behavior.

So [Southwest] created a computer model of the airport, giving each aircraft the ability to remember how long it took to get into and away from each gate. Then he set the model in motion to simulate a day's activity.
"The planes are like ants searching for the best gate," Southwest’s Don Lawson says. But rather than leaving virtual pheromones along the way, each aircraft remembers the faster gates and forgets the slower ones. After many simulations, using real data to vary arrival and departure times, each plane learned how to avoid an intolerable wait on the tarmac (Miller)

Crowdsourcing is another application of swarm theory.  In a now famous experiment, random subjects estimating the number of gum balls in a jar were always more accurate than mathematicians who applied sophisticated analytical principles.  Not only were they accurate, but were always one or two gum balls off the actual number. Bettors have always shown to be better odds makers than experts.



One of the most recent applications of swarm theory is robotics.

By demonstrating the power of self-organizing models to mimic swarm behavior, Reynolds was also blazing the trail for robotics engineers. A team of robots that could coordinate its actions like a flock of birds could offer significant advantages over a solitary robot. Spread out over a large area, a group could function as a powerful mobile sensor net, gathering information about what's out there.

If the group encountered something unexpected, it could adjust and respond quickly, even if the robots in the group weren't very sophisticated, just as ants are able to come up with various options by trial and error. If one member of the group were to break down, others could take its place. And, most important, control of the group could be decentralized, not dependent on a leader (Miller)

On a recent walk through my neighborhood I noticed all the construction activity going on. Residents were adding new rooms, building decks, landscaping, and doing extensive replacements and repair.  Each homeowner decided that market value, income levels, and increasing family demands for space all made the decision to expand, remodel, or reconstruct made sense.  The work done on the houses was done by a variety of different contractors – roofers, landscapers, carpenters, electricians, and builders – all of whom worked in small enterprises that had been started by individuals who had worked on their own, organized, financed, and created a legal entity; and expanded within the DC metropolitan area.

Each of the services that enabled these entrepreneurs to get started followed the same trajectory.  The banks who approved the small-business loan, the lawyers who drew up the legal documents, and the accountants who set up the books all started small and grew according to ability and demand.

A few years ago I traveled in what is known in American history as the Old Southwest, a region including Western Florida.  The story of the region’s growth is interesting. Early American investors saw that the burgeoning economic activity north of the Gulf coast offered unlimited potential; and if they could build the infrastructure to expedite the movement of natural resources and finished products to market, they would become wealthy.  The pooled their resources, bought land, and built ports, improved lower waterways, constructed roads, and made a fortune along with the businessmen who supplied the products to be sold in New Orleans, the Caribbean, the North, or even Europe.


           www.fsuspecialcollections.wordpress.com

There was no local, state, or local government at the time; no overarching administration to plan and manage these complex operations. Private interests coincided, supply and demand operated, and only after business was well underway did business people see the need for public oversight – a judicial system to adjudicate disputes, to keep law and order, and to maintain public services.

All of America in fact was built this way.  No one told private entrepreneurs what to do or when to do it.  They operated on their own guided only by basic economic principles and an understanding of the nature of supply and demand.  Government did not precede private enterprise. Just the opposite.

In other words, a snapshot of 19th Century America would be little different from that of an ant colony. No one told ranchers, farmers, industrialists, shopkeepers, homemakers, preachers, and laborers what to do or how and when to do it. They were, like ants, guided by evolutionary givens – human nature is self-interested, territorial, expansionist, and self-protective; and performed tasks that best corresponded to given levels of intelligence, strength, savvy, creativity, and ambition.

With or without intellectual endowments, both ants and human beings act individually to produce collective outcomes. No investor in Apalachicola in 1830 envisaged the growth of the city, the region, or the trade. The earliest settlers in New York never imagined what the city would become. Cities grew not because anyone planned them, but because individuals, cooperating in an open environment, added to their incremental growth.


                      www.hometowncurrency.org

Forced collectivization – the imposition of a priori communal ideas, programs, and concepts on individual enterprise – has never worked and never will.  As even the most committed ‘progressive’ will eventually realize, individualism is the engine of productive, private cooperation.  There is no need to enforce ideas of collaboration, teamwork, or communalism. Human beings have worked together because of mutual self-interest for millennia and will continue to do so.

Big data, crowdsourcing, and the emerging recognition of the collectivity of random individuals will eventually marginalize outdated interventionism.

The human ant colony works just fine.