Apart from showing up at my desk every morning these days for a writing session in the interests of turning out a new book, I am following the news cycle like a maniac. I just have to believe that good eventually wins the day, that right causes do prevail, and so my eyes are glued to every development in this "forest fire" of a presidency to see if water is going to eventually put it out.
I have a dog in this fight, which is my belief in a moral universe, not a universe that adheres to the laws of Moses, but just a sense that all our striving and fighting for causes is heading us in a good direction, that there is such a thing as "the good" at all.
People argue with me, the secular humanists, the new atheists, claiming that, No, there is nothing good or bad except that we make it so. Thank you, Will, from four centuries ago - I do know it applies for the most part: you can cross yourself all you like and go to church and join the moral majority, but it's only because you were told to.
But if you push people like Sam Harris, or Yuval Harari, there would be some thing they would have to admit was just good in and of itself. Yuval Harari cares a great deal about gay and animal rights - would he want to say that the good in those things is just a figment of his imagination? No, some things, maybe only one or two things, we hold to be self evident - that all men, for instance, are created equal; that beings who are loved move in a more positive direction than those who are not. I don't know where in the universe lies the value that makes those truths the case, and always the case, but, contrary to the secular humanists, we have come to know very very little about "the universe."
Scientists can attest to 4% of the universe being atomic and thereby perceptible. But the rest is divided between dark matter and dark energy, and no one, not even Sam Harris - God, I loathe the arrogance of these people! - knows what that is or could possibly be. It might be God for all they know. I'm not going to go that far, but I think there is a moral value in this space/time continuum we inhabit a teeny weeny corner of. Some things, though not much, are just self-evident. Gravity, for instance - science hasn't figured out what it is, though we can recognise its effect in space/time events. Sam Harris is married and has children. Does he love them? Where does that love reside? In the grey matter between his ears? Really? No surgeon has ever found it there?
I suppose I am a Taoist in the end, because I believe that the universe flows in a certain direction and you can either go with the flow or resist it. I hope it is in the flow of things that the corrupt inner circle of a corrupt government will finally implode. I don't need God for that hope. I just need it to be self-evident. And for this reason, I am hanging on the news for dear life, waiting for the sun to come out over the hill.
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