Who's blind?

We've got a bit of dilemma again. We'd like to think we live in a just society, but we don't. Justice should be blind, but she isn't. One of the cornerstone values of what we moderns hold sacred and extremely high value is little more than an illusion. How did we get here?

There could be a lot of reasons, and I don't know if any one of them is t-h-e reason, but one of them is certainly: we're confused. Most of us just don't know what to believe anymore, so we start grasping wildly at straws, mostly to no avail. Some find their solace in science, others turn to religion, but both are full of uncertainties and contradictions that make others suspicious of their one-size-fits-all answers. Besides, who really takes the time anymore to look into a subject such as this one and try to think it through? Right. That's what I thought. Yes, it's lonely out here. Nevertheless ...

To see if I can't get a synapse or two firing, let me share with you a quote I read recently. It's from John Locke. Many will have heard the name, few will be able to place just where. Locke was one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding is considered by some as a threshold treatise on the Western conception of self, of the individual. He was a big hit with the Founding Fathers and many of his ideas found their way into the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and more.

But, Locke, as many writers and thinkers of his day, presents us with a problem. Even though we love some of the things they say and call upon them as witnesses for our our positions when possible, they also said, wrote, and believed things that we might have trouble with today. But, in keeping with the notion of justice raised in my last blog post, I couldn't resist this quote:

Where there is no property there is no injustice.

Sort of flies in the face of that whole American Way of Life, doesn't it? It appears to imply, at least, that where there is property, there is (most likely) injustice. Considering the materialistic bent of that American Way of Life, it would seem that he managed to put his finger directly in the wound with this one. What to do? What to do?

Legacy of the Enlightenment

For most of my adult life, I firmly believed that reason would prevail. Now, I'm not so sure. Oh, I wouldn't mind being wrong, but doubts are starting to rise. Why? Well, just chalk it up to experience.

My recent trip abroad did little to resolve those doubts. How can reason even stand a chance if there's no dialog? I'm not talking about the friendly, idle chit-chat and small talk that occurs at the cash register in the store. I'm not talking about the let's-get-caught-up-on-the-time-apart of family get-togethers. And, I'm not talking about what passes for discussion when it broadcast after or around the news. No, I'm talking about real people discussing real issues with each other in real time.

Maybe I just missed it, but politeness and political correctness seem to have moved so far into the foreground that honest expression of a position on an issue makes too many people feel uncomfortable. When the semblance of a dialogue takes place, it is more like a statement and re-statement of positions, not a back-and-forth of ideas and facts supporting contentions and arguments. Whatever you do, don't confuse the issue with facts.

It's too bad, really. Though the US seems to be stuck in the times of its founding, it has lost much of that Spirit of the Enlightenment which drove much of the discussion of the time: in the Enlightenment, the unstated ideal was that the best argument would prevail. What I'm seeing though is the position that carries the day is the one whose proponents simply persevere in presenting.