Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (11 page)

-'an intellectual man, as the world now conceives of him. ,..one who is full of "views" on all subjects of philosophy, on all matters of the day'. Such

'viewiness' is a sign of ignorance rather than knowledge. 'Shall I teach you the meaning of knowledge?' said Confucius. 'When you know a thing to recognise that you know it, and when you do not, to know that you do not know - that is knowledge.'

What is at fault is not specialisation, but the lack of depth with which the subjects are usually presented, and the absence of meta- physical awareness.

The sciences are being taught without any awareness of the presuppositions of science, of the meaning and significance of scientific laws, and of the place occupied by the natural sciences within the whole cosmos of human thought. The result is that the presuppositions of science are normally mistaken for its findings. Economics is being taught without any awareness of the view of human nature that underlies present-day economic theory. In fact, many economists are themselves unaware of the fact that such a view is implicit in their teaching and that nearly all their theories would have to change if that view changed. How could there be a rational teaching of politics without pressing all questions back to their metaphysical roots?

Political thinking must necessarily become confused and end in 'double-talk'

if there is a continued refusal to admit the serious study of the meta- physical and ethical problems involved. The confusion is already so great that it is legitimate to doubt the educational value of studying many of the so-called humanistic subjects. I say 'so- called' because a subject that does not make explicit its view of human nature can hardly be called humanistic.

All subjects, no matter how specialised, are connected with a centre; they are like rays emanating from a sun. The centre is constituted by our most basic convictions, by those ideas which really have the power to move us. In other words, the centre consists of-metaphysics and ethics, of ideas that -

whether we like it or not - transcend the world of facts. Because they transcend the world of~ facts, they cannot be proved or disproved by ordinary scientific method. But that does not mean that they are purely

'subjective' or 'relative' or mere arbitrary conventions. They must be true to reality, although they transcend the world of facts - an apparent paradox to our positivistic thinkers. If they are not true to reality, the adherence to such a set of ideas must inevitably lead to disaster.

Education can help us only if it produces 'whole men'. The truly educated man is not a man who knows a bit of everything, not even the man who knows all the details of all subjects (if such a thing were possible): the

'whole man', in fact, may have little detailed knowledge of facts and theories, he may treasure the En- cyclopaedia Britannica because 'she knows and he needn't', but he will be truly in touch with the centre. He will not be in doubt about his basic convictions, about his view on the meaning and purpose of his life. He may not be able to explain these matters in words, but the conduct of his life will show a certain sureness of touch which stems from his inner clarity.

I shall try to explain a little bit further what is meant by 'centre'. Ah human activity is a striving after something thought of as good. This is not more than a tautology, but it helps us to ask the right question: 'Good for whom?'

Good for the striving person; So, unless that person has sorted out and co-ordinated his manifold urges, impulses, and desires, his strivings are likely to be confused, contradictory, self-defeating, and possibly highly destructive. The 'centre', obviously, is the place where he has to create for himself an orderly system of ideas about himself and the world, which can regulate the direction of his various strivings. If he has never given any thought to this (because he is always too busy with more important things, or he is proud to think 'humbly' of himself as an agnostic), the centre will not by any means be empty: it will be ~fled with all those vital ideas which, in one way or another. have seeped into his mind during his Dark Ages. I have tried to show what these ideas are likely to be today: a total denial of meaning and purpose of human existence on earth, leading to the total despair of anyone who really believes in them. Fortunately, as I said, the heart is often more intelligent than the mind and refuses to accept these ideas in their full weight. So the man is saved from despair, but landed in confusion. His fundamental convictions are confused; hence his actions, too, are confused and uncertain. If he would only allow the light of consciousness to fall on the centre and face the question of his fundamental convictions, he could create order where there is disorder. That would

'educate' him, in the sense of leading him out of the darkness of his metaphysical confusion.

I do not think, however, that this can be successfully done unless he quite consciously accepts - even if only provisionally - a number of metaphysical ideas which are almost directly opposite to the ideas (stemming from the nineteenth century) that have lodged in his mind. I shall mention three examples.

While the nineteenth-century ideas deny or obliterate the hierarchy of levels in the universe, the notion of an hierarchical order is an indispensable instrument of understanding. Without the recognition of 'Levels of Being' or

'Grades of Significance' we cannot make the world intelligible to ourselves nor have we the slightest possibility to define our own position, the position of man, in the scheme of the universe. It is only when we can see the world as a ladder, and when we can see man's position on the ladder, that we can recognise a meaningful task for man's life on earth. Maybe it is man's task -

or simply, if you like, man's happiness - to attain a higher degree of realisation of his potentialities, a higher level of being or 'grade of significance' than that which comes to him 'naturally': we cannot even study this possibility except by re- cognising the existence of a hierarchical structure, To the extent that we interpret the world through the great, vital ideas of the nineteenth century, we are blind to these differences of level, because we have been blinded.

As soon, however, as we accept the existence of 'levels of being', we can readily understand, for instance, why the methods of physical science cannot be applied to the study of politics or economics, or why the findings of physics - as Einstein recognised - have no philosophical implications.

If we accept the Aristotelian division of metaphysics into ontology and epistemology, the proposition that there are levels of being is an ontological proposition; I now add an epistemological one: the nature of our thinking is such that we cannot help thinking in opposites.

It is easy enough to see that all through our lives we are faced with the task of reconciling opposites which, in logical thought, cannot be reconciled. The typical problems of life are insoluble on the level of being on which we normally find ourselves. How can one reconcile the demands of freedom and discipline in education? Countless mothers and teachers, in fact, do it, but no-one can write down a solution. They do it by bringing into the situation a force that belongs to a higher level where opposites are transcended - the power of love.

G. N. M. Tyrell has put forward the terms 'divergent' and 'convergent' to distinguish problems which cannot be solved by logical reasoning from those that can. Life is being kept going by divergent problems which have to be 'lived' and are solved only in death. Convergent problems on the other hand are man's most useful invention; they do not, as such, exist in reality, but are created by a process of abstraction. When they have been solved, the solution can be written down and passed on to others, who can apply it without needing to reproduce the mental effort necessary to find it. If this were the case with human relations - in family life, economics, politics, education. and so forth - well, I am at a loss how to finish the sentence, There would be no more human relations but only mechanical reactions; life would be a living death. Divergent problems, as it were, force man to strain himself to a level above himself; they demand, and thus provoke the supply of, forces from a higher level, thus bringing love, beauty. goodness, and truth into our lives. It is only with the help of these higher forces that the opposites can be reconciled in the living situation.

The physical sciences and mathematics are concerned exclusively with convergent problems. That is why they can progress cumulatively, and each new generation can begin just where their forbears left off. The price, however, is a heavy one. Dealing exclusively with convergent problems does not lead into life but away from it.

'Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it', wrote Charles Darwin in his autobiography, 'poetry of many kinds ... gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also lost almost any taste for pictures or music.... My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of fact, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. ... The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.'

This impoverishment, so movingly described by Darwin, will overwhelm our entire civilisation if we: permit the current tendencies to continue which Gilson calls 'the extension of positive science to social facts'. All divergent problems can be turned into convergent problems by a process of 'reduction'.

The result how- ever, is the loss of all higher forces to ennoble human Life.

and the degradation not only of the emotional part of our nature, but also, as Darwin sensed, of our intellect and moral character. The signs are everywhere visible today,

The true problems of living - in politics, economics, education, marriage, etc. - are always problems of overcoming or reconciling opposites. They are divergent problems and have no solution in the ordinary sense of the word.

They demand of man not merely the employment of his reasoning powers but the commitment of his whole personality. Naturally, spurious solutions, by way of a clever formula, are always being put forward; but they never work for long, because they invariably neglect one of the two opposites and thus lose the very quality of human life. In economics, the solution offered may provide for freedom but not for planning, or vice versa. In industrial organisation, it may provide for discipline but not for workers' participation in management, or vice versa. In politics, it might provide for leadership without democracy or, again, for democracy without leadership.

To have to grapple with divergent problems tends to be exhausting, worrying, and wearisome. Hence people try to avoid it and to run away from it. A busy executive who has been dealing with divergent problems all day long will read a detective story or solve a crossword puzzle on his journey home. He has been using his brain all day: why does he go on using it? The answer is that the detective story and the crossword puzzle present convergent problems, and that is the relaxation. They require a bit of brainwork. even difficult brainwork, but they do not call for this straining and stretching to a higher level which is the specific challenge of a divergent problem, a problem in which irreconcilable opposites have to be reconciled.

It is only the latter that are the real stuff of life.

Finally, I turn to a third class of notions, which really belong to metaphysics, although they are normally considered separately: ethics.

The most powerful ideas of the nineteenth century, as we have seen, have denied or at least obscured the whole concept of 'levels of being' and the idea that some things are higher than others. This, of course, has meant the destruction of ethics which is based on the distinction of good and evil, claiming that good is higher than evil. Again, the sins of the fathers are being visited on the third and fourth generations who now find themselves growing up without moral instruction of any kind. The men who conceived the idea that 'morality is bunk' did so with a mind well-stocked with moral ideas. But the minds of the third and fourth generations are no longer well-stocked with such ideas: they are well- stocked with ideas conceived in the nineteenth century, namely, that 'morality is bunk', that everything that appears to be 'higher' is really nothing but something quite mean and vulgar.

The resulting confusion is indescribable. What is the
Leitbird,
as the Germans say, the guiding image, in accordance with which young people could try to form and educate themselves? There is none, or rather there is such a muddle and mess of images that no sensible guidance issues from them. The intellectuals, whose function it would be to get these things sorted out, spend their time proclaiming that everything is relative - or something to the same effect, Or they deal with ethical matters in terms of the most unabashed cynicism.

I shall give an example already alluded to above. It is significant because it comes from one of the most influential men of our time, the late Lord Keynes. 'For at least another hundred years' he wrote, 'we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.'

When great and brilliant men talk like this we cannot be surprised if there arises a certain confusion between fair and foul, which leads to double talk as long as things are quiet, and to crime when they get a bit more lively.

That avarice, usury, and pre caution (i.e. economic security) should be our gods was merely a bright idea for Keynes: he surely had nobler gods. But ideas are the most powerful things on earth, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that by now the gods he recommended have been enthroned.