I discovered the local chapter of \u201cSocrates Caf\u00e9\u201d during the summer, after reading something about it on the web. Socrates Caf\u00e9 is an emerging \u201cnationwide movement\u201d, a meeting of people interested in philosophical discussion … semi-philosophical discussion, anyway. The intention is not to regurgitate Plato and Niztche and Hobbes; the idea is to get people to speak about their own unspoken personal philosophies. That\u2019s what Socrates supposedly did way back when; by asking the right questions, Socrates supposedly got people thinking and talking about things like \u201cthe meaning of life\u201d, ways of treating other people, respect or disrespect for government, etc. In sum, today\u2019s Socrates Caf\u00e9 tries to get people\u2019s minds off of immediate things like $2.50 gasoline and Brittany Spears, and on to their reasons for being and ways of being. I\u2019m glad they have a local chapter nearby (so far, there are only about 130 chapters nationwide).<\/p>\n
The discussion topic of a recent \u201cCaf\u00e9\u201d that I attended was \u201cthe value of idealism\u201d. Not surprisingly, that topic was suggested by one of the younger members of the group, a guy in his early 20s. The discussion that evening rambled about quite a bit; it never did pin down just what the young guy meant by \u201cidealism\u201d, i.e. just what idealism he had in mind. (Still, it was an interesting way to spend 100 minutes or so on a weekday evening). Every idealist needs an ideal, and since every person is different, each person\u2019s idealism is a bit different. In fact, the various ideals behind peoples\u2019 idealisms can be very, very different. There are liberal idealists, conservative idealists, Islamic fundamentalist idealists, Zionist idealists, Communist idealists, and on and on. I generally respect the sincerity of most idealists, no matter how crazy their ideals seem to me. However, idealism is generally equated with impracticality precisely because human ideals are all over the place, because people disagree so widely on what the ideal human being and the ideal society should be like.<\/p>\n
When I was in my teens, my favorite type of idealism was pacifism. The Vietnam War was still raging and I was getting near draft age. The possibility that I would be called to serve my country overseas in a very nasty shooting war was becoming quite real. Based upon my religious beliefs, which I believe were sincere, I adopted a Quaker-like belief in pacifism (even though I was a Catholic boy from a white ethnic parish, and had never even met a real, living Quaker). I decided that killing another person was never justified. I would claim to be a conscientious objector to violent military service.<\/p>\n
As it turned out, the cup passed; Nixon ended the draft ended just as I became eligible.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t say that I\u2019m still a pacifist today (yea, I know there\u2019s a scent of hypocrisy in the air — I was a pacifist when it was convenient to be one, and now that I\u2019m well past draft age I can dump it). But I still ponder the social justification for pacifism that I espoused quite vehemently back in the late 60s and early 70s: the idea that pacifists should refuse to kill even in self defense, because in their brave act of dying for such a noble principle, the killers themselves would be converted to pacifism. Once the process of sacrificial martyrdom worked itself through, a world of peace would finally be attained, as everyone would become a pacifist; no one would even think about killing another. Arguably, this has certain parallels with the idealism that lies at the heart of Christianity and its early tradition of martyrdom, although most Christians today never give it much thought.<\/p>\n
This is a beautiful ideal. But the question is, given human nature, would it work? I used to believe that people were ultimately rational and ultimately good, and thus the pacification process would certainly work if only enough of us pacifist-martyrs had the guts to get things going (even though we would never live to see the better world that we started). But now I read more and more that we humans may not be ultimately rational (and as to being ultimately good — who knows, that\u2019s more a leap of faith than a measurable characteristic). A lot of our acts and motivations may be genetically determined, and our genes may still have a lot of instinctual tendency toward violence as a left-over from our monkey ancestors. If that is so, then a pacifist martyrdom strategy could backfire — there would not be any widespread conversion of the violent, as anticipated; instead, the gene pool would be depleted of pacifist influences, ultimately making the average human being more violent, and making society that much more brutal.<\/p>\n
Well, I know that the genetic argument can also be taken too far. The truth about humans and their social interactions obviously lies somewhere between the \u201cnurture\u201d and \u201cnature\u201d extremes. But still, the social rational for pacifism is not an established truth, the Quakers notwithstanding. Radical pacifism may or may not in the end contribute to a better world.<\/p>\n
At the Caf\u00e9 meeting the other night, the group generally agreed that idealism, whether pacifist or otherwise, is good for the soul. It gives people something to live for; it helps to fight cynicism and depression. On the other side of the coin, idealism may be an impediment on the road to the truth; personal ideals are often found to be wrong, or at least not the whole truth. Sad to say, idealism and the search for truth are often at odds with each other. (Albeit, searching for truth may actually be a form of idealism). If truth is your goal, then you may have to move away from your ideals, and that can be a bit depressing. But as I said at the meeting, perhaps the pursuit of truth is worth a bit of depression.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I discovered the local chapter of \u201cSocrates Caf\u00e9\u201d during the summer, after reading something about it on the web. Socrates Caf\u00e9 is an emerging \u201cnationwide movement\u201d, a meeting of people interested in philosophical discussion … semi-philosophical discussion, anyway. The intention is not to regurgitate Plato and Niztche and Hobbes; the idea is to get people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}