Regulated by Science

Yesterday's thoughts were scrambled, not well put together. A lot like most of my real thoughts, probably. It did get me thinking more about sources of information as being relevant to the information itself.

There's a theory in Pragmatism that essentially states that a fact cannot be denounced based on the source it comes from. An insane person could say that the Statue of Liberty is in New York, and it wouldn't magically become untrue because the person saying it also claimed that his feet were made of butter.

I feel like some of this was applied to other philosophers, specifically Nietzsche. Whenever I bring up Nietzsche as a strong influence in my own philosophical life, I get the usual reaction that either points out that he renounced everything he said (untrue), that he went insane at the end of his life (true) or that he died of syphilis (also true). Granted, I was going to a Christian University where students seemed to have a noted distaste for the philosopher who claimed that God was dead.

Their reactions were meant, I think, to discredit Nietzsche either to me or to themselves. It gave them a reason not to buy into his logic. After all, why listen to a man who went crazy and died of venereal disease?

Because an idea must be separated from its source. If this were not the case, no great ideas would flourish for very long. Most great thinkers have lives that a clouded by darkness or are colored by those who wrote history as crack-pots. Socrates was a blasphemer. John, who wrote Revelations, was an exile on Patmos when he wrote it. Jesus was considered a false prophet and put to death for his teachings.

The concept of an idea outliving a person is explored in Alan Moore's novel V for Vendetta. V, also a crazy person, speaks in an ego-less manner, preferring to evoke a sense of the ideas he champions (freedom, passion, art) instead of revealing characteristics about himself. The reasoning is that "ideas are bulletproof". You can kill a man. But you cannot kill an idea.

And yet it pains me when I bring up a controversial thinker like Nietzsche only to hear the same regurgitated blather about his personal life. It's a method of protecting one's self from having to think about something that might not agree with you. It's easier to condemn a man, than an idea. We do it all the time - see it all the time. Politicians bring up personal attacks instead of talking about the issues. We fail to listen to criticism based on who says it. We tend to worry more about a person being judgmental than what their judgment is.

It's impossible to take every idea at depth and examine it, so it's natural to have a vetting process. Sometimes I wonder, though, whether this vetting process helps us or hurts us. It certainly makes us feel good. Keeps us away from stray ideas. Makes us listen to positive feedback or negative criticism told lovingly.

Maybe, sometimes, what we need is a challenge. Harsh words. Something we can't turn away from so easily. Maybe what we need is something that wakes us up instead of patting us gently on the back.