Renault on the social effects of expulsion of strong gods – Econlib

In my last post, I described what RR Reno believes that it motivates the expulsion of strong gods, as well as the ideas that made this process happen. In this post I will review what he sees as a consequences.

One of the strong gods to be expelled was the idea that communities are a sacred thing and that people have obligations to uphold the well -being of their community and that the community has some claims for the loyalty of an individual living in. This was sharply criticized by Carl Popper:

We are tempted to imagine our collective life as in some sense sacred, giving the community a legal claim for our loyalty. Popper views this as a “magical” thinking, a form of “anti -humanitarian propaganda”.

Strong ideas about the truth – not only moral truths, but even actual truths – are also strong gods. Turning to a greater god of reduced, personal or temporary “truth”, it prevents the type of security that gives rise to fanaticism and motivates the atrocities. Strong truths, the species that is accepted as sacred and considered unacceptable to question, “Command our loyalty and not open to critical issues and empirical counterfeit.” Therefore, the idea of ​​strong truths had to be rejected.

This rejection of strong truths is more fine than simply to perceive the skepticism of the blanket, even with regard to the issues of morality. Reno writes:

Our moment is not one of the in -depth relativism or a strict refusal of moral principles. Instead, it encourages the ways of thinking and social norms that are less burdened with urgent truths, giving us more space for our elbow to formulate our own views on the meaning of life, while depleting the demanding passions of public affairs. .

Strong respect for hereditary traditions is also a strong god who needs expulsion:

The imperative “never again” imposes a greater and continuous obligation to banish the traditionalists who are loyal to the strong gods who are believed to have caused so much suffering and death. As the students were annoyed in Paris in 1968, “it is forbidden to ban.” Those who forbid must be censored and muted – in the name of an open society.

In the modern mind, the goal is not the pursuit of unification and binding truths, but the discovery of a personal meaning. The binding truth is a strong god and disagreement with respect to such truths can drive the division. The personal meaning is a weak God – it does not set boundaries between what is or is not acceptable. But as a weak God, he also does not give real guidance on how to lead a meaningful life:

Exactly what we had to grow to remained unclear as it should be when metaphysical issues are conducted … Man must progress to “greater importance”, self-actualization and autonomy-“liberation that allows each of us to fulfill our capacity so that we are free to create inside And to himself, “as Hillary Rodman declared to his graduates of Walesli College in 1969. Lawrence Kolberg’s theory of moral development ended in the post -conventional moral code, which is at one time deep and universal. But precisely because it is postconventional, one cannot teach young people the content of this code, the tip of moral development-this would make it a social convention. One can insist only young people in the direction of increasing “growth” and “development”.

To tell people that there is a specific purpose that they must grow to risk the risk of declaring some ways of life for better or more desired or more respected than others -and this is an attack on weak gods of openness and non -judicial acceptance. Renault sees great harm coming from it. After all, people beings are just who we are.

There are not many ways to live that make us blossom, but “the paths of discontent are innumerable.” The strong gods of hereditary cultural traditions have helped to direct people through life in a time tested in time, which leads to performance and happiness-not completely, but as it can be expected in imperfect human existence. By refusing the value of this inheritance, declaring that there are no truths that we can consider jointly self -evident and you have to go out and find the meaning for yourself, it leaves people innumerable and without appearing how to live:

A conversation stands out. A younger friend, agonizing the choice he has encountered in life, demanded advice. I told him I couldn’t help much. For me, life was like a train trip. The engine of strong cultural norms extracted me through the stages of life: college, work, marriage, children. During its time, the train will take me to a pension and, of course, death. He replied, “No, no – life is no longer like that. Now this is a sailboat that the pilots first and then to make your way to the destination of your choice. “It hit me as a grueling way to live.

The more razoring for Renault is the fact that the intellectual and cultural elites that advocate for the weak gods do not live the way they overlap:

They can join the chorus, who condemns traditional norms as authoritarian, but they keep their marriages together, and their families look traditional. In other words, they share the main human desire to protect their children, to provide someone’s patrimony, to maintain and pass on a living heritage. They shelter themselves and those who love – a natural and healthy impulse. The problem is that what our most powerful and capable fellow citizens do alone, contradicts what they are pushing publicly.

But the rule of weak gods has more consequences than its impact on social life. It also has significant political consequences. We will look at what Renault says about this in the next post.