Re: virus: FAQ: version 1.0

psypher (overload@fastmail.ca)
Fri, 25 Jun 1999 13:41:17 -0400 (EDT)

...as Regards the ongoing discussion between Richard and Carl {Hermit} on the distinction between faith and phaith, if I may be allowed to inject a quotation:



Faith:

The opposite of dogmatism. Individual responsibility and persistent enquiry have been founded upon faith since Socrates.

"If I say that it would be disobedience to God to 'mind my own
business,' you will not believe that I am serious. If on the other hand I tell you to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking, and that examining both myself and others is really the very best thing that a man can do, and that life without this sort of examination is not worth living, you will be even less inclined to believe me. Nevertheless, that is how it is." [1]

Socrates' defence before the jurors trying him for his life is thus that the maintenance of faith in any system requires an enormous and constant individual effort. It can't help but be conscious, existential and subject to anguishing doubt. Modern scientific inquiry is equally dependent on the marriage of uncertainty with faith in the value of knowledge.

Dogmatism replaces faith with the power of structure. We are spared the effort of consciousness and the strain of living with doubt. We can relax into the certainty of a church structure, a corporate interest or an ideological package, each with its fixed dogma.

The defenders of dogmatism, in an approach which has not varied over the centuries - from the Jesuits throught to the technocrats - have made great use of scepticism and cynicism. They attempt to assimilate this with Socrates' examined life, but its purpose is the exact opposite. While Socrates sought to provoke each individual into believing that it was worth questioning everything, the sceptics seek to silence the individual by denigrating her faith in inquiry.



[1] quoted from "The Apology" in Plato, THE LAST DAYS OF SOCRATES (London: Penguin, 1954),71.

The above excerpt is from
"THE DOUBTERS COMPANION: A dictionary of agressive common sense" by
John Ralston Saul (London: Penguin, 1994), 128-129.

...for my part, I'd heartily recommend both John Ralson Saul and Niel Postman to anybody looking for reading material - particularly Saul's
"THE UNCONSCIOUS CIVILIZATION" and Postman's "TECHNOPOLY".

...Saul is particularly good, witness [from the doubters companion]:

"The single and shortest definition of civilization may be the word
Language" [p. 62]

and

"Descartes, Rene: Gave credibility to the idea that the mind exists
separately from the body, which suggests that he didn't look down while writing."

...anyone having got this far in the post may be interested in collaborating with me in a presentation towards the elevation to Virian sainthood of Socrates. Any takers?

-psypher



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