Antiutopian Trilogy

All things come in threes.

Here I wrote about the antiutopian John Gray, who feels that the most human harm is wrought in the pursuit of perfection, of the all-encompassing system of explanation, of the chimera of complete understanding that will finally lead to complete control.

Here, my new fave, Theodore Dalrymple, debunks the newest pretender to the throne of all-encompassing, all-resolving explanation:  neuroscience.

It will not have escaped the notice of the observant that Marxism  and Freudianism have become a little frayed around the edges of late, and that their adherents are reduced to recalcitrant membership of increasingly beleaguered sects. But the attraction of all-embracing worldviews that explain not only who we are but prescribe how we ought to live remains as strong as ever. Some of the neuroscientists to whom I listened at the conference implied that we were on the verge of such a breakthrough in our self-understanding, thanks to neuroimaging, neurochemistry and neurogenetics and so forth, that Man, proud Man, will no longer be a mystery to himself. The heart of all our mysteries will be plucked out wholesale, as it were; and to understand all will then be not so much to forgive all as to control all, especially our bad habits. [...]

Those who say that we are on the verge of a huge increase in self-understanding are claiming that enlightenment will suddenly be reached under the scientific bo tree. The enlightenment will have to be sudden rather than gradual because, if it were gradual, we should already be able to point to an increase in human contentment and self-control brought about by our already increased knowledge. But even the most advanced societies are just as full of angst, of poor impulse control, of existential bewilderment, of adherence to clearly irrational doctrines, as ever they were. There is no sign that, Prozac and neurosurgery notwithstanding, any of this is about to change fundamentally.

In other words, I think that life will continue to bewilder us for as long as we are self-conscious, thinking, feeling beings. 

And here, Cathleen Schine reviews Katha Pollitt's memoir-in-essays, Learning to Drive, and dissects the conflict in Pollitt between her undying red-diaper-baby utopian longings and her humor and honesty of observation.

She is too inquisitive, too enchanted by the unexpected, by the beauty of the world, and, perhaps most important and striking, by the delight of language, to be a really proper ideologue.

That having been said, Pollitt is drawn, again and again, to the utopian. This occurs with regard to men ("my soul mate, made for me in Marxist heaven"!); motherhood ("Instead of making you less powerful, less central, motherhood should make you more so....Hadn't there been some Indian tribe where the mothers made the big decisions?"); and, of course, politics [...]

A complete and systematic answer to the vagaries of the world tantalizes her. Even when disabused, when the angle changes and her eyes are wide open, she searches for an answer, as if the inverse of a perfect soul mate is a soul mate's betrayal perfectly understood. [...]  Inevitably, Pollitt cannot help but undermine her own quest for an essential truth with her sense of humor, her observation of those bits that don't add up.

(I might add as a postscript, spoilng the symmetry of the thing, that I had my own brief encounter with Katha Pollitt -- one round of e-mails over abortion -- and found her pretty closed-minded, sure that she subscribed to the one true, enlightened view and incurious, dismissive and condescending towards another.)

Anyway, conclusion:  our systems of ideas and ideals are not the best thing about us, and the more overweening they are, the less good.   We can't live without such systems, but as partial representations of reality they shouldn't be (mis)taken for the real whole thing, and moral (and immoral) action under pressure probably comes from a deeper, more spontaneous place.

Comments

[realpc]

"Smart" people can't stand to think they might not be smarter than nature.

By "smart people" I mean anyone whose identity rests on the idea that they are more intelligent, more sophisticated, than most.

You will find more of them among the Democrats these days.

The "smart person syndrome" can be seen in the Intelligent Design debates, for example.

As soon as a smart person finds out I believe in ID, or I don't think the president is an idiot (who was neverthess clever enough to blow up the WTC and make it look like terrorism), or I respect religion, or I don't believe in socialism, they instantly decide I'm gullible and not too bright.

In general, the conservative ideology of the moment is less utopian, less in awe of human cleverness, than is the progressive ideology of the moment.

[amba]

Smart people, of course, couldn't run their own circulatory, endocrine, respiratory, and neuroimmune systems for 60 seconds.