2 – 8 – 17 Temptation, Rationalization, and the Convenience of Beliefs

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Whenever I just wake up, I feel a very intense desire to go back to sleep. As though it were the ultimate in pleasure for me. It’s a very strange feeling because I have this subconscious reckoning that not only will it feel really good, it will be good for me, it is what I need that I’ve been searching for. The thought seems to flash through my mind that if I just went back to sleep for an hour and a half, all my problems will be solved, I’ll be completely blissful.

I do like dreaming. I like dreaming quite a bit actually. So I must have some awareness while I’m dreaming, that I’m dreaming if I’m recognizing it as not being reality, then waking up and wanting to go back to unreality. But once I’m awake, the suggestion that I spend all my time sleeping, or indeed any more than that which is healthy, seems somewhat absurd. Why should I spend all my time sleeping when there is so much to be done, and seen, and experienced in the real world? But on that edge, just near sleep on either side, it seems like the answer to every question and problem.

I think this has some parallel in my spiritual life. When I’m far off from a vice and not currently tempted by it, I don’t really fear it very much as I can see how little appeal it has. As I’m sitting in my Physics lecture at nine in the morning the thought of infidelity or other sexual indiscretions seems ridiculous, I don’t really want the rewards of that badly enough to do much of anything about it, and in comparison with the costs (social, spiritual, and health-wise) I really don’t have any desire to pursue it. But just on the edge of these vices, when emotions are raised and we are in solitude (or worse, in the company of those who hinder us in our morality) this vice will make an irresistible argument. Only to call it an argument is quite inaccurate as it does not appeal to the reason. Were my vices and virtues to battle on an even plain, with only pure reason as the deciding factor my virtues should trounce every vice nearly instantly. My vices attack when my willpower is asleep, at the end of a long day, in an old friend after a lonely couple of weeks. But here is the true genius, the vice disguises itself as another morality, rather than a mere perversion of the true one. It will call out arguments for its own rightfulness to an enfeebled and suggestible mind that is teetering on the brink. But these are not arguments, they’re simply rationalizations made up for the feelings the vice has given us, because we want to feel justified in our actions.

Thereby pride gives a vice incredibly more power. A vice overcoming a humble man is a moment of weakness, when his will and virtue were defeated by a mere feeling. He recognizes this and moves to try to gain greater control over his actions when aroused (I mean in the general sense) and the degrees to which he allows emotions to build.

A prideful man, however, seeks to be justified. If he’s done it, there must be some good reason for him to have done it. Somehow, when this reasoning conflicts between two opposite choices, the worse one is always chosen as the morality of choice. So a man who has had a woman when he ought not have will dream up fanciful arguments of the natural state of competitive reproduction, concede he is only a man whose biological goal is to create many progeny. During these internal processes he does not recall all the times he’s been chaste, what his thinking was at that time. Because being chaste is still acceptable if being unchaste is acceptable. He’s effectively just lowered the standards for his own behavior. Not lowered them because he recognizes he is a poor and ineffectual creature (this is the real reason), but ostensibly because the things he believed back when he was young and foolish can’t really have been true because the current self is so much wiser and stronger than the old and has acted against these ideas.

Thereby pride multiplies a vice’s impact. In a humble man, it has only as much power as the feeling it generates. It’s recognized afterwards as a fault, a misstep, and the man can quite easily repent and try not to do it again. Vice done in pride needs to be justified, and therefore has the enormous power of changing our beliefs to fit our life, rather than the other way around.

How ridiculous of a concept. If we applied it to anything other than spiritual and moral matters people should think we were mad. In my truth the sun is an enormous lamp about a mile up that always happens to be where I am, other people have theirs too. The moon is a dinner plate-like object that is a similar distance above the earth. Stars are mere specks of light etc, etc. Here we contest these claims and find them ridiculous because we know of some objective truth that shows them to be ridiculous.

So it’s quite easy to see that if we agree on a moral objective truth, even if no one knows exactly what it is, it probably won’t be exactly as it appears to us naturally.

Another reason I find changing beliefs to accommodate lifestyles untenable is its quite simple failure in logic. One is saying that some outside thing is defined by their own personal action. Promiscuity is no sin because I am promiscuous is no different than saying that yogurt is inherently the best food because it’s my favorite, and anyone that disagrees is wrong or spiteful.

Now were they presented as such these arguments would be easily flouted, and as such no one holds them in quite this way. They will be wrapped in the nicest looking packages, like utilitarianism. Its self-reported primary end is the happiness of people but there’s two huge holes. It says nothing about equality or time frame. I should actually wager that compared to all conceptions of the universe Christianity is by far the most utilitarian in the long term as it promises us eternal and infinite happiness, infinity times infinity. Though in the short term I must admit it is the harder life, though it may still be more fun than a life of sin.

Now the individual arguments people present are not really the main point. I should have to write all morning if I meant to discredit each philosophy that is a mere justification of the inventor’s actions. But here is exactly where I’m going. The convenience of a belief surely says something about the virtue in believing it. If I see Christ descending during the Second Coming then repent and devote my life wholly to God I am no great saint. Christ even said it, “Blessed are those who have not seen, but still believe.” I don’t think he necessarily meant “and therefore damn those who have to see to believe” but he certainly didn’t include them in that particular group of blessing.

What I’m saying here is that when a man claims his conception of morality is true, he must be claiming it is objectively true, it really makes no sense any other way, we don’t generally talk about morality in conditionals and logistics. So the test of whether his belief in it is valid, not whether the moral system itself is valid, is if he treats it like objective truth.

If we are given a concept in math we may quite enjoy doing it, but we still mess it up quite frequently at the beginning, and those errors never stay far away for someone who isn’t careful about sign errors and the like. Do I see this in my friends who believe they should follow their natural inclinations? No, not at all. If the right is to follow your inclinations then I don’t see how one could err, as anything you do you’ve decided to do. It’s quite an idiotically circular argument once one tries to examine it.

What if we don’t like the new math concept. Well the pupil who firmly believes that there is an objective mathematical truth and that this truth is relevant to him (a mathematical truth may not be relevant to everyone always, but a moral truth should be) will struggle and complain his way through it. He may quit it for a while to come back to later, hoping to have a fresh mind or perhaps some new skill or perspective, but no matter how much he struggles he won’t write it off as worthless. Perhaps he should say it is too difficult to be worthwhile for him, but that is a completely different statement. When a pseudo-morality proposes something that individual doesn’t like, he doesn’t really have a reason to consider it. The only morality he believes to be true is his own, the possession bit is important there. What about if a new, uncomfortable precept comes from within his own ranks? Well he can take exception, say that these folks may make some mistakes in their thinking but they’re still quite more correct than everybody else and therefore I’ll keep my lot in with them. One hears this countless times in regard to political parties. Or he says “damn the whole thing” and leaves.

Note here that I’m not claiming that those of an untrue belief system can never be instructed, that has been proven horrifically false, I’m merely highlighting the different ways people treat belief systems they regard as good or convenient, and those they regard as true. One could never leave or take exception to mathematics the way one could to a political party.

Perhaps the clearest way to see convenience is temporally. When did James start believing it was okay to smoke cigarettes, or rob people, or be selfish, or what have you. If this belief were inconvenient it was long before he did any of these things or felt a real desire to. The belief that entered his mind was incongruent with his current life and would require difficult change. If he, months after developing the belief that he must be a criminal, starts getting criminal urges, then later starts committing petty acts of thievery I should say that belief was two things. First it was inconvenient to the man it came to, secondly it was transformative. Most stories of faith one hears are very similar endeavors, once one replaces the criminality with piety and good judgment.

Consider however, that James started stealing bread from the local bakery because his little siblings were in want. His motive is quite pure, if his methods aren’t quite morally upright. Then Jenny wants a toy so he gets her that, soon it’s new clothes. His little sister is no wretch for wanting toys and nice clothes, and he is no demon for seeking to satisfy her desires, he is reprehensible for his actions, but his motives are pure. He probably recognizes this exact truth and feels the conflict within himself, he’d rather be honest, but he couldn’t get along that way he reasons. So he can go on and prove to himself that his current actions are correct. Five years later James will likely still be stealing, even if his sister is now old enough to take care of herself. Why? Well he decided while he was stealing out of necessity that it was an acceptable evil in the circumstance. And as far as I know people they are terrible judges of what is necessity, myself included. So it will be quite easy for him to see his current situation as another extenuating circumstance. Alternatively, he may have been thieving so long that it is a part of his character, has informed his personality. If he wishes to justify himself then he’s either got to lop off a good portion of what it means to be himself, or justify thievery. He may then believe that thievery is justifiable.

This is a convenient belief to have. At no point did it demand change from James, it in fact insulated him from a very difficult change indeed. It came long after feelings and actions, infiltrating and integrating into his personality through his habits.

A similar process could be seen where the belief starts between feelings and actions, but the concept is extremely similar. I feel this way, feeling this way is part of me, therefore feeling this way is acceptable. This belief allows me to do whatever the thing is that I wanted to do that my old morality held me from. Thus the lustful man concludes that chastity is no virtue before, not after, he visits a brothel, so as to have a clear conscience.