Dear Friends,
It seems to me, nothing discredits a philosophy more effectively than violence. Those that resort to violence, to hold practitioners, convert people to their way of thinking or punish those that disagree, disprove their philosophy more effectively than any logician. Violence is the ultimate admission that one’s ideas are bad, and that the practitioner of violence has ceded the ground of logic and persuasion, proving the wrongness of their ideas. This is a lesson that seems to be lost on societies today. We unlearn this basic simple truth to the detriment of us, our neighbors and our children.
This is not to say we must not defend ourselves. To be a pacifist in the face of violence is to relinquish the future to the evil and pernicious. The lot of humanity would be forever lowered by this, and as rational maximisers, we are duty bound to defend ourselves and our fellows, whenever violence, and thereby fear, is the means of persuasion. Those sophists who would use violence to extend the reach of their bad philosophies, have no self imposed limits on their actions, and would twist logic to their own ends without a qualm… Ends that are clearly not in line with a human hearted civilization.
In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu said, the utility of a vessel is in emptiness. Meaning, if you need to store something and all you have is a full jar, it is not useful. The human mind is a vessel that can have the quality of emptiness or fullness. The amount of knowledge it retains has no bearing on it’s fullness or emptiness however. The attribute of emptiness is a factor of presumption. If someone presumes to know all that is needed then their mind is full and has no further utility. When a person understands that they don’t know, their mind can be said to be empty, regardless of their knowledge.
We must be discerning what we fill our minds with however. If we put dog poop in a bag that bag becomes unsuitable for popcorn. The dog poop effecting the quality of popcorn… and it doesn’t take much poop to corrupt a lot of popcorn. The popcorn does not effect the quality of the dog poop however. From this we can say, if we put evil in our minds then we corrupt the good in them, but the good does not purify the evil. There are several measures we can use to determine the goodness or badness of an idea.
Pragmatism shows us, those concepts that result in lowering the lot of humanity, are bad, those that raise mankind are good. Pragmatism is the quintessential American Philosophy invented by William James. From this we can see that results outweigh intentions. No matter how much we may want some idea or concept to be true, if the results are counter to the good of mankind, it is not. Therefore, we must discard those ideas that are evil, because by holding them they corrupt the goodness in us.
Presumption is the very essence of fullness of mind. Those who presume to know best are, by that very notion, closing their minds to other possibilities. Their mind is not empty, because they are unwilling to accept different ideas, it is closed off. But, as I said before, we must not accept all ideas unquestioningly. We must discern, by pragmatism, what is good and what is bad. To put evil in our mind is not to be open minded it is to corrupt our minds with a vile contagion.
Violence flows naturally from presumption like effluent from a sewer pipe. Once we accept the evil of presumption, we pollute any good intentions we may have had, turning them to evil. The results will be bad regardless of the intentions. To be free of presumption one must have an empty mind. Again, as I explained before, to have an empty mind is not to be ignorant, it is to reject presumption. Violence as a means of persuasion then, is the result of a full mind, (a presumptuous mind), a mind not empty but corrupted by the bad notions we have accepted, crowding out all others. Those bad ideas, ideas that preach violence, whether it is personal violence, State violence or any other violence, discredit those ideas. Just as dog poop corrupts popcorn… violence pollutes intentions. We must be empty of presumption, knowing that results trump intentions and if we embrace the evil of violence, we pollute our very own minds.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
