22 June 2024
PART II: Process
Creating Processes for Accurate Thinking & Well-Spirited Actions
As the section above was being written, the following questions were listed. They are an attempt, a sketch, at a way of improving evidence-based thinking.
Improving is necessary, not only based on our current cultural revolution, but based on Steiner’s challenge regarding the Holocaust: We come after…and as such it is our responsibility to do better, to improve humanity’s processes. The essence of that betterment comes through the fostering of individual excellence, the primary thesis of this book.
Bruce Pardy (2023) wrote a helpful review based on an Angus Reid poll of the players within our cultural revolution. These are the players, the numbers, and Pardy’s characterization of each.
Zealous Activists 17% Wolves: zealous grouped radicals attacking the vulnerable
Quiet Accommodators 25%+ Sheep: following the wolves, for approval and belonging
Conflicted Middle 18% Ostriches: unthinking, hiding from unwanted trouble
Frustrated Skeptics 19% Leopards: aware, poised, & quietly camouflaged
Defiant Objectors 20% Lions: opposing cancel culture, safe spaces, censorship
99%
I will proceed based on this explicit and hypothesized premise: The current Canadian distribution of citizenry, toward wokeism, is similar to that in the German population during Hitler’s rise to power. The zealous activists were the Hitler Youth and those possessing equally misguided zeal, a word deserving of attention. “…n. 1. Enthusiastic and diligent devotion in pursuit of a cause, ideal, or goal; fervent adherence or service; ardor; fervor…zealotry, n. Excessive zeal; fanaticism” (Morris, 1975, p. 1,488). (Significantly, that premise was hypothesized after the 7 October 2023 nihilist attack of Israel by Hamas, but before Hamas supporters mobilized on North American university campuses to extoll antisemitism, precisely the concern of George Steiner et al.)
The difficulty with zeal is the fervent adherence. In the same definition, Morris went on to state that the best synonym for zeal is passion. As a literary theme, passion was most frequently juxtaposed with reason. The only peaceable solution to our current malaise, as I see it, is individual excellence based on well-spirited reason. Canadian schools are already banning books and bowdlerizing canonic texts. These are the actions of thought police.
Thought police seek to control agendas or sets of ideas. Cancel culture prohibits the free and open discussion of ideas, instantly creating dark, fearful, ghettos of rebellious thinkers. Dark, hidden thought is almost invariably harmful to humans. In the same way that architect Louis Kahn sought to keep library shelves in the dark centre so the books could be brought to the glazed spaces of light, wokeism creates dark carrels of forbidden thought.
Free thinkers don’t recognize forbidden thought except as it provokes direct harm e.g., run, run, the theatre’s on fire, kill all Jews, etc. Free thinkers welcome the opportunity to openly debate any ideas including cancel culture, safe spaces, and censorship. How can we possibly foster the creation of free, independent thinkers if we promise our students spaces safe from open discussion and then unleash them into protests by Radical Islamists in every city in Canada? In a world in which Thanatos and resentment exist—i.e., any instantiation of humans on Earth—there are no real safe spaces. As such, what is the responsible choice of loving adults: telling our children mollycoddling lies or equipping them to understand evil on their own terms and within contexts of free research, thought, and discussion? Individual excellence is this book’s view of one way forward; a way that embraces open Aristotelian reality while also embracing the need for deep, interpretive views of complex problems. In my view, if we choose not to embrace this option or, if it is already too late, we are doomed to repeat world wars, racial purges, ideological purges…until we come to our openly reasoned senses.
Please return to Pardy’s chart, above. Be honest and admit to yourself which of the five categories you occupy. Does the best part of you, your soul, want to be that person? Who were the best of mankind? Socrates, Galileo, and Rosa Parks—they stood for open, courageous, freely discussed truth.
In pursuit of that love of truth we must have a method, an agreed means of identifying and describing the nature of truth. As above, I subscribe to Aristotle’s logic, values, and the virtues that point us in a well-spirited i.e., healthy, direction.
To be continued next week.
Dan Chalykoff is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying). He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes. He writes to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the bcc’d emailing list.
Morris, W. (Ed.) (1975). The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of The English Language. American Heritage Publishing Co, Inc.
Pardy, B. (2023, 20 September). Woke Wolves Dominate the Culture War Ecosystem—For Now. National Post.
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