My place in the family birth order fated me for rebellion, first against pants and hot dishes, then against the Machine and people's basic tenets of belief. I came to college ready to rail against the received doctrine. I staked my soul to that fire-licked pole, prepared to denounce the dogma of the day, whatever it happened to be. I mounted the pulpit of the blasphemer, ready to shock your tame souls with the spit of Satan, but just as I neared the top I did that thing where you think the steps keep going so you take another step up, but really you're already at the top and you end up slamming your foot down really hard at the same level. When it comes to convictions in an age where T.I. says you can do whatever you like, no one gives a crap what you do. It's hard being a heretic when no one's got the balls to believe in things anymore.
To be fair, it's not that people don't hold beliefs anymore. They just don't have the gall anymore call the beliefs they don't hold wrong. The doctrine of the transubstantiation is stupid and wrong!"" I cried out one day in Library Mall, hoping to incite a torch-wielding mob. No one batted an eye. I screamed louder. ""There are two gods, and they're GAY together!"" I got hardly a glance, though Piccolo Pete did give me a grin and a wink. I became exasperated. ""I DON'T BELIEVE IN DINOSAURS AND GLOBAL WARMING IS A BUNCH OF BOSH!"" That got a few people's attention. A kindhearted woman came over and asked me why I was standing naked wearing an ""All Sinners Just Decompose When They Die"" sign over my front and back sides and yelling at strangers.
I said I was out to rouse the townfolk from their primitive belief systems, or at least get some freebies from the fruit stand. She said the beliefs of university folk weren't primitive; they'd been proved by science, which essentially said that the perceived order of the universe results from sub-atomic interactions predictable by quantum mechanics and that natural selection has led to the speciesization of some entity known as life. I went home dejected. It's no fun to argue with bigots if they're going to be so boring.
The worst part wasn't that she thought she was right, it was that she didn't think I was wrong. The attitude that ""everybody plays or nobody plays"" schtick responsible for making our playgrounds too safe to play on and our fat kids too commonplace to make fun of - somehow that attitude infected our generation's soul, so that now it thinks that everybody's right or nobody's right when it comes to ultimate explanations of the universe.
You couldn't think up a more infuriating philosophy for folks in my line of work. This absolute belief in relative truth makes the whole idea of heresy history. ""You're wrong!"" I'd cry. ""And you're right!"" she'd reply. ""Your beliefs are legitimized by your unique experience in your world, just like mine are true in my world."" A knock on the head would be all it would take to convince her that we happen to inhabit the same world; that wasn't the problem. The problem was coming to terms with the fact that my world is inhabited by saps like her.
Humans are terrible creatures in the fact that they're able to act on beliefs instead of instinct. But they're remarkable in the fact that they, when healthy, can choose which beliefs they will hold. Historically, this has resulted in quite a few tiffs. But it's only recently that we've decided it's less important to find out who's right as it is to let everybody think they're right. The modern doctrine that all beliefs deserve equal respect has been perverted to proclaim that all creeds are equally correct (well, except for Scientology, nobody thinks they've got it right). We're losing our sense that something even is right, which is bad news for heretics such as myself. It's one thing when you won't burn me at the stake for being wrong; it's another to think me right when I call you wrong and still not think yourself wrong. It's a dogma that really binds my hands worse than any shackles ever could; that lapse in logic is a leap of faith no claim of mine can counter.
Is David wrong? Tell him why at dhottinger@wisc.edu.
