Mere Metaphysics

I finally finished Ken Wilber's latest book Integral Spirituality last night. This was a very interesting and challenging book. Challenging both in terms of just trying to understand it, (it has some very subtle and tricky ideas and I'm certain that I didn't follow all of it), but also in terms of forcing me to think hard and perhaps a bit differently about quite a few things. His integral post-metaphysics idea is pretty challenging stuff, though I think that he may be ultimately right about it. It did seem at least a potential way forward from the death-blow to reality that postmodernism seemed to deal out. His view of reality is actually quite tricky and subtle, and I don't know how easy it would be to use in real life... but it may be the way forward anyway.

Anyway, so I've moved on to the book Jeremy gave me for christmas: C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. Oh, dear. Well, let me just say that old Clive has his work cut out for him. Now, he is not helped by my natural reticence to believe in such things anyway, but I'm actually trying quite hard to keep an open viewpoint. After all, he must certainly have some 'truth' to impart. Besides I've managed to keep an open mind through Wilber's very alien ideas, (including the idea that I probably need to look a bit more closely at the spiritual dimension of things), so I think I'm up to the task here. The problem is that Wilber's is a tough act to follow, and furthermore, Integral Spirituality was in many ways pretty convincing about what a modern 21st century spirituality must contend with; what cognitive ideas a post post-modern philosophy must contend with, and lots of examples of how many fail.

So, with this setup I wade into Lewis' book, and, oh my, what a mess! I've only read the first chapter, but in those half-dozen pages he's already made a number of fatal mis-steps! This does not bode well. Still, I'll press on. I found my discussion with Jeremy quite an invigorating experience, and I am eager to continue to engage with him about his beliefs. In many ways we are, well not exactly opposites, as that implies a certain opposition, but certainly we are complements. He is developing a fairly deep spiritual practice, but of a very mythic-literal flavor, which contrasts with my trained skeptic. Perhaps there is something that we both can learn.

Now, what's wrong so far. Well... He starts by pointing out, in a fairly humorous manner, that there is a "law of human nature" which acts as a set of universal moral values. Further he claims that these are unchanged from culture to culture. In a post-postmodern world, however, such a statement just doesn't hold water. Our moral systems very much are shaped, at least in part by our cultural background. Furthermore, they are also shaped by our developmental level.

My morals, for example, are fostered very much by (amongst other things) my western, secular, a fairly 'green' background, a fair bit of cognitive development, a long time steeped in an academic scientific workplace, and a recent exposure to integral philosophy. As a result, I have some strong moral objections to the actions of George W. Bush and his administration, but I also believe that they are honestly doing what they see as the morally right thing. Of course morality a relative thing, (just like the rest of reality, or so Wilber would claim). You don't have to look very far to see that. Just watch Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and the BBC back-to-back. The moment you step outside your own culture and into somebody else's you are faced with alien values. Some may differ more than other's, but there are certainly different values. Furthermore, the limits of moral behavior depend on how far away your horizon of "us' vs "them". After all, you only need to behave 'humanely' to those you consider human. (Or from a more advanced viewpoint, your moral obligations to others depends on the extent to which you view them as deserving of your moral respect. Even pretty green values don't typically worry too much about insulting rocks.) So when when Lewis claims that "What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced?" Well, but the Nazis did believe they were doing the right thing! As objectionable as the holocaust is, those most responsible for it really did believe they were doing the right thing. Go read Mein Kampf if you don't think so. Now give him some slack from writing in the context of the Blitz, but in hindsight, he's just wrong here.

So, moral absolutes, at least as practiced by Human cultures are certainly not in evidence on this planet.

Of course Lewis also tends to argue from a viewpoint heavily steeped in "The Myth of the Given" and thus heavily metaphysical. The real world is just assumed to exist and to correspond to his beliefs: "unless Right is a real thing". Postmodernism would eat him alive for such a statement.

So, at the end of chapter 1, Lewis is 0 for 2.