Joseph Marohl

In the battle between reason and imagination, I vote for … reason and imagination. Not only that, but I vote for the battle.

Plato proposed a perfect republic in which reason would reign unchallenged—a perfect political society that would require no poets, because it requires no lies. Walt Disney proposed a well-kept and clean magic kingdom produced by imagineers—the interchangeable puppets of It’s a Small World as models of peace and unity.

I see something healthy in tension, though, and I’m not anxious to see the world in which either reason/logic/science or imagination/intuition/magic hold absolute sway. I like both Plato and Disney, by the way.

I can’t concur with Ayn Rand that “contradictions do not exist.” I cannot fully embrace Swami Vivekananda’s spiritual observation that “the apparent contradictions and perplexities in every religion mark but different stages of growth.” Though I’m no believer, my heart responds more to Thomas Merton’s view: “The very contradictions in my life are in some way signs of God’s mercy to me.”

I’m not much of a critical theorist, but I abhor the sentimental hopes some hold for a heaven of pure, unadulterated positive vibes. It sounds not only boring, offending my aesthetic sensibility, but also just plain wrong, offending my moral nature.

It also sounds like a defeat for both reason and imagination.

Without an antithesis, reason does not lead to progress—without rebuttal, you have no debate, and debate is crucial to a free society’s ability to interpret fact and educate its citizens to make necessary judgments.

Without alienation-effect or the simplified conflict of drama, imagination is simply memory—even more boring, a “photographic” memory—and we lose the power of fantasy to envision possible futures towards which to strive or against which to brace ourselves—we’d have no poets and artists to be, as Shelley called them, “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” I don’t think a utilitarian ethics or a purely pragmatic technology is possible or even desirable.

And, as I’ve said elsewhere, I’m not on the side of puritans on either side.

I’m irreligious and strongly oppose state-run churches and church-run states, yet a world from which all trace of religion was erased does not sound good to me. I also oppose a world of therapeutic solutions to every worry, every woe, every spot of the blues. I like escapism as much as the next guy, but a lifetime of uninterrupted amusement and instant gratification would cloy all capacity for desire and joy. I think liberty and security should remain in tension, too. Absolute security at the cost of freedom and absolute liberty at the cost of justice and equality are equally reprehensible—though, if I had to, I suppose I would opt for the second. But only if I had to.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my experience and environment have limited my capacity to reason or imagine purely. OK, then, perhaps. But it remains that I have yet no reason to believe a purely harmonious society can exist. And I cannot imagine a purely harmonious heaven or utopia where the individual human spirit could still survive.

Joseph Marohl

[The following is a part of an online conversation I'm having with Tim, a friend from 30 years ago who now teaches in a seminary in the Midwest, with whom lately I've engaged in long discussions of faith, religion, reason, knowing, connecting, etc.]

One problem with being intuitive is (1) you learn to repress it as you learn that reason and logic are the preferred tools for convincing others you’re right (unless you’re blessed in being surrounded only by people who trust your gut instincts as much as you do), and (2), despite the way that the SciFi Channel and new-age, transcendental philosophies portray intuition, it seems to be no less fallible than any other way of knowing.

My “wiring” may be intuitive, but my programming is linear, detail-oriented, fact-based empiricism.

And while my attempts to make choices “by the book”–drawing up pro/con columns and weighing evidence–have been mixed in their results or accuracy, so have been my attempts to follow intuition. Successes and failures, both ways.

I guess what I mean by “knowing intuitively” is that I let intuition have the last word. This is different from letting intuition have the first word–which basically is to start with a prejudice and then attempt to rationalize it.

Let’s say I have a “feeling” about someone I’ve just met–a feeling of distrust and uneasiness. What I do next is run through all the available evidence about that person’s trustworthiness, evaluating as I go. But in the end I go with what seems “truest” to my “heart”–though this impression is not necessarily the same as the “feeling” I started with–rather than simply weighing the proofs on some sort of scale and going with the preponderance of evidence.

Does that make sense? (Possibly the question I ask others most frequently.)

As I said, my intuitions prove wrong at times–but nevertheless they are the things I go with. In the end. On many occasions I have been presented with all kinds of sensible evidence that would suggest a certain course of action–but because somehow the evidence doesn’t “click” or “ring true” to me, I willfully take a different–even opposite–course of action, which seems to fit …

… kind of like when I shop for shoes. I have high insteps, so occasionally all the usual measurements indicate I should wear a size 9.5 shoe, “C” width or whatever. But in the process, rather than simply trusting the math, I try on four or five different pairs of shoes of different sizes, and end up buying the ones that feel right to me, regardless of the size label–though the measurements do provide guidelines, but only up to a point, and never all the way up to the moment of decision.

So 25 years ago I quit a teaching job in my second year because, in the nicest way possible, the administration asked me to stop using a textbook which some religious conservatives found offensive (because, in an essay I never assigned, the words “clitoris” and “vagina” appeared in support of an anti-pornography argument). Suddenly, and in spite of the fact that the administration was happy to back down and do just as I pleased to address the complaints, it no longer felt right for me to be there.

So my decision was based, ultimately, on what suited me at the moment I had to make a decision … even though I was very aware of how foolhardy it is to quit a job without even a prospect of another one waiting behind it. (In fact, my next job took its sweet time showing up–I got hired and moved just 10 days before the beginning of the fall semester. Still, at no point did I have second thoughts about the rightness of this decision.)

I would like to add, though, that apart from personal choice, it seems entirely right to me that reason and sound argument should rule the day. As a private individual, I would trust my intuitions as to whether I should, say, participate in a war. But as a member of the public, I think it’s my obligation to make a clear, well-qualified statement of my position on the war and then put it to the test by examining relevant facts and possible counter-arguments.

This is my duty as a citizen of a democracy. But as a subjective free agent I will ultimately go with what “feels right” to me.

And, as I have already suggested, my feelings are no more accurate than my arguments–but, to this day, I have never regretted an action made on impulse, but I have had occasions where I came to regret doing the sensible, reasonable thing based on a clear-eyed understanding of my circumstances.

I think the reason is that reason and caution tend to say “no,” while imagination and impulse tend to say “yes”–and “yes,” almost always, for me anyway, is the right answer.

Joseph Marohl

The most crippling aspect of modern democracy is the decline in logical argument.

Logical argument was the invention of the Greeks, along with theatre (once used to bolster the free flow of ideas), philosophy, and Western democracy. All four of these contributions to civilization are posed against the blind acceptance of (or faith in) the dictates of authority and power.

In the first century of the American nation, political debates were actual debates—with set positions argued for and counter-arguments defended against. How great would it be now for seekers of high office to debate a single issue, such as the role of the middle classes in American society or the best policy towards foreign dictators!

At one time, argument permeated the social scene, with party invitations’ commonly instructing invitees to bone up on set topics in preparation for speaking on them with other guests. The middle-brow Circuit Chautauqua, nineteenth-century traveling shows, featured lectures on various topics from prison reform to memory improvement, mixed with band music and Metropolitan Opera singers, followed by question-and-answer sessions involving members of the community.

Much is made of the role of Faith in early American culture, but seldom is Argument credited for promoting progress and establishing America’s character and self-confidence. Ultimately, it was argument, not faith, that abolished slavery, expanded voting rights, and established the 40-hour work week.

By argument, I do not mean shouting people down. I do not see argument in the harangues of Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly. I would not count the glib sarcasm of Stephen Colbert and Al Franken, entertaining and valuable as it is, as argument. Oprah Winfrey, though a goddess of common sense, mainly exhorts and inspires—she rarely, if ever anymore, uses her show as a meeting-place for opposing opinions, as the old Phil Donahue and Dick Cavett shows used to do (and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher still attempts to do).

Argument requires a forum, where differences in opinion are expected, respected, and encouraged in the interest of forming a more complete understanding of the issues under debate.

Argument requires clarification of the dividing lines between opposing positions. It requires a focus on logic and facts as proofs for the rightness of one’s position.

Argument requires that probability, not certainty and not mere possibilities, be put to the test, “proof” meaning, quite simply, the test that an opinion is put to—by speakers and listeners alike.

Today America is full of opinions, but few Americans know how to back them up. Few Americans feel comfortable expressing their opinions, convinced that blithe agreeableness is preferable to taking a position—while others think that bull-headed pontification requires no further explanation or proof.

Things have gotten so bad that to take any position at all more complicated or unusual than what can be fit on a bumper sticker smacks of extremism—or crackpotism.

The old adage forbidding discussion of religion and politics at the dinner table has now morphed into “Let’s just agree to disagree,” a more polite way of saying, “Shut up—I’m not interested in your reasons for disagreeing with me.”

Now that nobody expects anyone to back up anything he or she says in public, all kinds of bullshit pass for intelligent commentary these days. Idiocy is justified on the grounds that idiots sincerely believe in their idiocy.

Sincerity and good intentions are things we cannot evaluate or judge from outside. Facts, logic, and clarity of expression are things we can observe and make judgments on. As long as sincerity counts more than proof, humanity will not see further progress.

The sincerity of your belief and hope for the future is admirable, but what exactly are you saying, and how can you back it up?