The Four Great Dogmas
Dogma, with its authority of force and power, with its reliance on tradition and ritual, cannot be used to discover truth. Dogma is often used by manipulators and liars to control people, and has no 'higher' motives of bettering our understanding of the cosmos, and our place within it. This has been understood by a lot of people, since the dawn of civilization. History is full of thinkers who defied the dogma imposed upon them; not only the great philosophers but also religious thinkers, such as the lollards; the levellers, and so forth. There have always been people who understand that the discovery of truth requires freedom of thought and emotion - the first to explore avenues of knowledge free from authority, the second to ensure that one is not attached to truth because of familiarity or manipulation of one’s feelings.
Freedom can overcome dogma, though it is an endless struggle. For new ideas also become set in stone, and it is not long before we lean on them without realising it. And old ideas grow upon us like old friends, and they are very difficult to overcome.
Descartes came to the well-known phrase ‘I think therefore I am’ by exploring everything there was doubt, being left only with a doubting ‘I’ which can think. The way to truth is found along similar lines: extreme scepticism can remove us of our dogma, like a crab discarding its old shell. Yet like that same crab, being without a shell is not so useful in this sea! And so a new one grows. Our doubting is not a position we hold forever, or else we end up thinking nothing substantial. This is perhaps equally as bad as thinking something purely because we have been told to do so. I will now cover four big categories of dogma I believe to be limiting us. These are the dogmas:
Of the Mind - Constrained by politics which dictate its limits and declares what can and cannot be achieved. By doing so, it creates those same limits. An identity which is shaped and limited by these same politics, and which sees those who disagree with it as enemies who can never be reasoned with. Such obedience is well cultivated, and its basis is rational, grounded in well selected evidence to support its case, whilst ignoring or undermining any evidence against it.
Of the Body - Trained to satiate its desires at a certain pace, ever increasing as the creation of new technology brings about abundance and luxury. Those luxuries, the great wants, evolve into needs and the body is always at a loss to obtain them, endlessly struggling and labouring to satiate itself. Why else are people who live in the most advanced societies imaginable still working so hard; why haven't the advanced machines we construct eradicated the need for pointless drudgery? Why do we confuse simple things with complex, refined bodily desires?
The body is trained long before its commander has matured to the age where it might make choices. The devouring of flesh is a prime example - those who no longer wish to do so must struggle to alter their ways, so engrained are they from a young age, so normalized are they by the culture surrounding them.
Of the Soul - Blackmailed into obedience by religions-of-threat, which condemn people to damnation and then offer them salvation from their own warnings. The more dogmatic strains of religion tend to reign supreme, offering people easy answers and hopeful (highly marketable) solutions to existential problems, all at the price of submitting to a spiritual collective. Such warmth and comfort for the soul is veiled in vague language and historical tradition which make its roots immune to the gardener’s trident.
A morality of after-worlds and divinities can then be created, none of which have any foundation in this world. It prepares people for a life that will never be, like baldly lying to a grandmother on her deathbed about the wonderful existence she will soon be privy to, because it is so convenient to do so.
Of the Heart - Perhaps the most deeply entrenched dogma of them all, flying too low to be detected by our radars of doubt! A heart which loves those immediately around it more than any other. A heart taught to respect sacred bonds of family and marriage. Before it has pounded but once, before it has found its own rhythm, the heart is deemed to love in a certain way, or else risk isolation.
In such an environment as this, how can we tell who is choosing freely, and who is coerced, threatened, prodded, or just going along with the tide? Who has come to their conclusions by searching for the truth, and who has swallowed the four great dogmas whole? We cannot say, and thus we cannot judge people, pointing the finger and declaring them asleep where one is awake. How immodest and evangelical we would be if we did!
However, what we can all do is retreat into total doubt, and see what emerges when we return to face the world anew. This I believe is truth, for from it follows total and terrifying freedom of thought and emotion. Or at worst, it is not truth, but at least it is not falsehood, designed to maintain structures of power and pressure.
Selim 'Selim' Talat
The Philosophy Takeaway 'Truth' Issue 42
