The propagandistic appeal of Marxism is the most interesting case of (what might be called) the moral force of immorality. For it is the most precisely formulated system having such a paradoxical appeal, and this self-contradiction actually seems to supply the main impulse of the Marxian movement.
– Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 227
Sound familiar? Polanyi wrote that over half a century ago. Marxism may be no longer the most interesting case of the moral force of immorality; it’s certainly not the most contemporary. He was fighting the battle of his day, and we have our own battles to fight.
The suitability of an object to serve as a hammer is an observable property, but it can be observed only within the framework defined by the performance it is supposed to serve.
You have to figure out what something is for before you can figure out if it is good or bad, right or wrong. That’s part of our problem in ethics: if we claim that we do not know what man is for, then we do not have to judge him morally; or if we make false purposes for him, then we can judge him according to those false purposes. This is why question 1 of the Westminster Catechism is as important today as it has ever been. The big question for every action of a human is, Is this action suitable for the purpose for which this human was made?
Both visual and musical compositions are appreciated for the beauty of a set of complex relations embodied in them. And as in pure mathematics, so also in the abstract arts, these interesting relationships are discovered, or created, within structures composed of utterances denoting no tangible object. Among the abstract arts music stands out…In profundity and scope it may compare with pure mathematics. Moreover, both of these testify to the same paradox: namely that man can hold important discourse about nothing.
Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 193
So, it turns out Seinfeld had a philosophical justification after all; but, more importantly, so does math and music. When I want to mess with the teenagers I know, I’ll ask them to tell me what a number is. Do numbers really exist? Can you really show me one? It’s a question that has humbled me in my mathematical studies, and it should humble us all. Mathematics (as well as instrumental music) seeks to incarnate intangible reality; so does Christianity.
All technology is equivalent to a conditional command, for it is not possible to define a technology without acknowledging, at least at second hand, the advantages which technical operations might reasonably pursue…A technology must…declare itself in favour of a definite set of advantages, and tell people what to do in order to secure them.
All technology is, well, technical; as such it demands technique. It offers promises and delivers implicit imperatives. In our cultural and historical setting, the issue becomes this: since technology offers promises that can only be received through obedience (i.e. push the lever and out comes the food pellet, or use this and become cool and popular), the question becomes, Who is the master in this scenario? Are we using technological tools, are they using us, or is someone using us through them?
Do not think for a moment that silicon valley, or Hollywood, or Washington D.C. is blind to this. The problem is that we are often blind to it ourselves. Take care that while you give your iPhone commands that it is not actually commanding you. If it is saying ‘Do this and live,’ then be certain it cannot deliver on its promises. When Google says ‘Do this and find resources on so and so subject,’ that is entirely reasonable, and even wonderful. When it says it will help you live forever, it has gone into a whole other realm.
For some food for thought on this issue, watch PBS Frontline‘s The Persuaders and Generation Like. And while you’re at it, see if you can see the implicit call to idolatry, as a case in point, of this commercial:
When we accept a certain set of pre-suppositions and use them as our interpretative framework, we may be said to dwell in them as we do in our body…They are not asserted and cannot be asserted, for assertion can be made only within a framework with which we have identified ourselves for the time being; as they are themselves our ultimate framework, they are essentially inarticulable.
A crab walks into a bar the ocean and says to a fish, ‘Dude, you should really get out of the water sometime; it would be good for your complexion.’
‘Huh?’ said the fish.
The crab responded to the perplexity of the fish: ‘Seriously bro, you stay wet all the time; you need to soak up some sun.’
‘Blub, blub,’ said the fish, and then he began his soliloquy: ‘Crab, I have no idea what you’re talking about; I’m not wet, I don’t even know what wet is.’
‘Are you serious bro?’ replied the crab…
I could go on, but I won’t. (A while back I wrote a POEM that tries to express the same point) The point is simple: For the fish, the water becomes and extension of himself; it is his atmosphere, his ecosystem. Human minds have ecosystems as well; I suppose you could call them ego-systems. In order for a radical conversion of thought to take place, the fish (yes, back to the fish) must see, 1) that there is such a thing as water, 2) that he lives in it, 3) that the fact that he lives in it has major ramifications, and 4) that there is a possible alternative that might suit reality better.
This won’t work for a fish because water is the only environment that suits its purpose – unless of course the fish is a mermaid, like Ariel, and realizes that the seaweed is greener in another world. Come to think of it, the Little Mermaid had an epistemological crisis of the sort we’re driving at here: she saw a more suitable alternative that fulfilled her deepest longings. But, alas, we have digressed from a brilliant chemist and philosopher to a lame parable to the Little Mermaid; by all means, let’s wrap this up.
Our basic presuppositions are the air that we breathe. In order for someone to abandon them they must be made aware that they exist, see there faults demonstrated, and see that there is another, and more suitable, alternative. You won’t get the fish out of the water, in this case, by jumping in yourself. The task is to get the fish out, not to get yourself in. If you do jump in the water, it must be for the purpose of blowing up the lake (metaphorically speaking of course) so that others will come running out with you.
I will not comment on these quotes at the moment. I only record them for reference. Each is from Personal Knowledge, by Michael Polanyi.
When we use a hammer to drive in a nail, we attend to both nail and hammer, but in a different way. We watch the effect of our strokes on the nail and try to wield the hammer so as to hit the nail most effectively. When we bring down the hammer we do not feel that its handle has struck our palm but that its head has struck the nail. Yet in a sense we are certainly alert to the feelings in our palm and the fingers that hold the hammer. They guide us in handling it effectively, and the degree of attention that we give to the nail is given to the same extent but in a different way to those feelings. The difference may be stated by saying that the latter are not, like the nail, objects of our attention, but instruments of it. They are not watched in themselves; we watch something else while keeping intensely aware of them. I have a subsidiary awareness of the feeling in the palm of my hand which is merged into a focal awareness of my driving the nail (p. 55).
He continues,
Subsidiary and focal awareness are mutually exclusive. If a pianist shifts his attention from the piece he is playing to the observation of what the is doing with his fingers while playing it, he gets confused and may have to stop. This happens generally if we switch our focal attention to particulars of which we had previously been aware only in in their subsidiary role (p. 56).
And he adds,
Our subsidiary awareness of tools and probes can be regarded now as the act of making them form a part of our own body…We pour ourselves out into them and assimilate them as parts of our own existence. We accept them existentially by dwelling in them (p. 59).
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