(Wrong illustration of double-neg values on so many levels!)
I have been banging-on about the inadequacy of double-negative values (including double-negative theology) for such a long time (it seems) that it might be supposed that I am myself immune to this specific deception.
Far from it! It really is so much easier to be opposed to bad stuff, to discover ever-more bad stuff, and to express this opposition - than it is to have positive values and aspirations; that this is a temptation which never goes away!
More than a temptation, double-neg thinking can become a mind-set; so that we end-up scanning our relationships, life (and the mass media, and System-outputs generally...) for things we can oppose. And they're so very easy to find!
And this mind-set gets to be a habit, because it is reinforced. We feel good about ourselves for pointing out bad stuff and our opposition to it; and other people think we are good for doing so.
Even when the bad stuff isn't very bad, we can get self- and other-credit for pointing out that it can become bad - that it is full of hazards, highly risky, may be a slippery slope.
And all the time we can disguise from ourselves and others that either we lack coherent positive ideas; or that our own positive ideas are open to exactly the kind of double-neg critique as we inflict upon others.
After all, how many positive ideals are not open to potential problems?
How many positive values cannot be abused, misunderstood, or exaggerated into something bad?
How many people are there who aren't harbouring sinful motivations?
This, I take it, is the real meaning of the mote and beam in the eye parable in the Bible - which I would guess is indirectly from Jesus's true sayings, but seems to have been misinterpreted, and misleadingly-explained by the evangelist.
The point of acknowledging the beam in our own eye is surely Not so that we can better perceive and cure the motes in other people eyes; but in order that we should cease to focus on the endless and addictive temptations of a double negative value system; and instead strive to build our lives around positive values...
Despite that this really does open us to infinite criticism from the multitudes of highly-motivated mote-detectors!
And even when these positive ideals are (or seem) simplistic and incomplete - better that, than to live by negations.*
*Because, one great and decisive spiritual advantage of positive ideals is that - when they fail or reveal serious limitations - they can be improved by learning from experience.
3 comments:
You saved the best for the footnote!
Litmus tests do focus on bad things but you use them as an aid in searching for good voices I think.
(Painting at the start makes me want to put on safety goggles.)
Unfortunately, I am not immune to this. To me, it seems double-negative values are an example of what Max Scheler referred to as "value delusion."
He cited ressentiment (resentment) as the main driving factor behind such delusion, and I think he was definitely on to something there.
Of course, when he wrote that book (Ressentiment), he was a solid Roman Catholic, and the values he cited were objective objective and heirarchical in nature. He abandoned that RC perspective in his later writings and become somewhat of a pantheist instead. Regardless, his insights into resentment are still pertinent.
i think that to a certain extent this is inevitable - and not necessarily sinful. we are naturally drawn to 'solve problems', and are roused out of complacency mostly only when things go bad. also, we can see where the sun is coming from by where the shadow is cast, so there is knowledge to be gained as well. but the key, of course, is to be inwardly motivated beyond this inevitability, to push for affirmation even without the need for the negative. as you said many times, it's not enough to want to avoid hell, you actually have to want heaven.
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