Why Free Thinkers Should be Logical

More times than I would prefer, I've gotten to a strange point in political discussions with people who will say something that seems very odd to me, but which seems to be an extremely prevalent idea, particularly among radical leftists.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm basically a progressive myself and even radical in quite a few of my views (although I tend to prefer "free thinker" to "radical", because I'd rather advocate for people thinking freely than ram my own radical ideas down anyone's throats). 

I'll be in a political discussion with some radical progressive and we'll both be approaching the subject with logic (which I would hope every free thinker would do).  The line usually comes somewhere around the time that I or someone else in the room makes a good point that the radical leftist hasn't thought of.  At this point they'll say, "well, you're using logic and logic is a product of Western culture," or something similar.

I understand that there's this concept in anthropology that different cultures at least appear to evaluate logic differently.[1]

What I realized this morning is that the concept that logic is the product of our culture is not only specious, but also a mis-evaluation of even pre-90's anthropology.

This is because no culture is logical, and Western culture is no exception.  In Classical Athens, mainstream society executed Socrates for being logical.  While it's true that, in the centuries to follow, Plato's Academy would become a center of logic, we can see from history that it did not stop people from being illogical.  The common people never went there, and the people in power primarily wanted to rationalize their conquests and egregious behavior.

Some rulers used reason to do sensible things, like resist the urge to expand their empires, it's true. For the most part, however, logic and reason were far from central in Western culture, except among the rare intellectuals who worked seriously at being good philosophers.

Then the Christian emperors of the Constantinian dynasty co-opted what philosophy they could into Christianity, attacked those free-thinkers[2] whose logic led them to different conclusions from the Church's, and, finally, closed Plato's Academy.  In short, post-Constantine Christendom did as the Classical Athenians did to Socrates: they tried to squash free-thinking and prevent free-thinkers from being truly logical.  (It's impossible to be logical if people dictate to you what conclusions you should come to.)

Since then, Christendom supported only theologians who agreed with the Church (which is not logic, since, in order to be logical, one must have the freedom to come to whatever conclusions one's logic leads one to).

From Constantine to the Enlightenment, the West oppressed logic and free thinking.  People who thought differently were often burned at the stake, tortured to death, or at least hanged for it.  Religious wars were fought throughout Europe among different factions of Christians. Each faction thought that its way was the one, right, true, and only way and was intolerant of anyone trying to think freely (and, as I've said, free-thinking is a prerequisite for logical thinking).  Galileo was threatened with torture by the Inquisition for putting logic before Church doctrine.  Michael Servetus, the founder of Unitarianism, was burnt at the stake by John Calvin and others for his conclusions about scripture.

The Enlightenment finally came, and it's been a boon for free-thinking ever since. It's not like the average person ever fully embraced it, though, and I'm not sure how many people have actually known much about it.  Since its inception, societies that Enlightenment philosophers tried to influence have done terrible, and I'd argue illogical, things.  France had the Terror.  The Americans went around massacring Native Americans, out of faith in something called "Manifest Destiny" rather than out of any logic I can see.

U.C. Berkeley cognitive scientist George Lakoff, in "Moral Politics",  tells us that conservatism is not based on logic, but rather on folk beliefs.  That is, conservatives often think that things should be done the way they've "traditionally" been done because that's "better".  (I put "traditionally" in quotes, because I'm aware that "tradition" changes quite quickly and that there never was a time when "people always did things thus" -- but that's another story.)[3]

So, I see no way that logic has ever been integral to Western culture.  Are other cultures different from Western culture?  Certainly, but they're not less logical, because logic is not integral to Western culture.  In fact, I doubt that logic is integral to any culture.

I see logic as an illuminating light that free-thinkers shine into their society.  As I see it, true logic (which, as I've said, always has free-thinking as a prerequisite) often results in dramatic progressive political movement, simply because the illumination of logic into society enables departure--even radical departure--from illogical norms.

It seems ironic to me that my radical progressive friends would be so much against logic.  Yet, logic seems to have become un-trendy and un-cool in radical progressive fashion.  I think it's high time that we free-thinkers embraced it again and used it as the liberating power that it truly is, rather than attacking people for it, as if we're somehow conformists for using it when we're, almost by definition, not.

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1 Actually, it's my understanding that around the turn of the Millennium, anthropologists discovered that certain forms of both logic and illogic are cross-cultural.  I read this in "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" by Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker.

Personally, some well reasoned discourse from a couple of Eastern free-thinkers comes to mind as examples of the logic used in contrast to mainstream societal assumptions.  One is the Four Noble Truths from Buddhism.  The Buddha started with the fairly reasonable first principal that all life is suffering and analyzed it thence to the fundamental goal of Buddhism, which is to transcend suffering.  (The longer version of the sutra in which the Four Noble Truths appear goes into quite a bit of detail about the reasoning behind them.)

The Chinese philosopher and mystic Lao Tzu makes the practical argument against war that the activities of war destroy farmland and thereby bring about bad harvests.  In an agrarian society, he argues, rulers would do well to avoid war in order to ensure agricultural prosperity.  ("Tao Te Ching", chapter 30)

2 Well, obviously, anyone whose logic legitimately led them to exactly the conclusions that the Church wanted them to have was't persecuted--just every free-thinker whose thoughts happened to diverge from what the Church wanted.

3 Some conservatives do have their own logic and I respect their opinions.  My point is that many conservatives, according to Lakoff, base their politics on folk beliefs rather than on logic.  There are, of course, logical conservatives, as well.