“We want the unavoidable and difficult decisions that govern our lives to be taken by someone stronger than ourselves who nevertheless has our interests at heart, as might a stern but benevolent father; or else to be given to us by a practical system of thought that is wiser than we and makes fewer or no mistakes. Above all we want release from fear. And in the end most fears – including the most basic such as fear of the dark, fear of strangers, fear of death, fear of the consequences of our actions and fear or the future – are forms of fear of the unknown. So we are all the time pressing for assurances that the unknown is known really, and that what it contains is something we are going to want anyway. We embrace religions which assure us that we shall not die, and political philosophies which assure us that society will become perfect in the future, perhaps quite soon. These needs were met by the unchanging certainties of pre-critical societies, with their authority, hierarchy, ritual, tabu and so on. But with the emergence of man from tribalism and the beginnings of the critical tradition, new and frightening demands began to be made: that the individual should question authority, question what he had always taken for granted, and assume responsibility for himself and for others. By contrast with the old certainties, this threatened society with disruption and the individual with disorientation. As a result there was from the beginning a reaction against it, both in society at large and (this was partly Freuds point) within each individual. We purchase freedom at the cost of security, equality at the cost of our self-esteem, and critical self-awareness at the cost of our peace of mind. The price is steep: none of us pays it happily, and many do not want to pay at all.” Bryan Magee, Popper. (The US-edition has the title Philosophy and the real world: an introduction to Karl Popper)
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 11:21:07 +0000