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August 12, 2007
In The Meaning of Conservatism Roger Scruton argues that two basic views exist of society and politics: the contractual which is the liberal view, and an example of this from everyday thinking is when we speak about a government's mandate. The theories of John Locke are a 17th century example. The other is the Family which is the conservative view and the theories of Robert Filmer are a 17th century example.
Scruton argues that liberalism is about defending abstract human rights. But Scruton says we do not have abstract rights. All the rights we have are given to us by the society we belong to. The conservative is the person who recognizes that his or her life is derived from and dependent on society and whose first priority will be to defend society, not the individual. As modern societies are structured round the nation state, the conservative bias is to defend the state against the individual, and not the other way round.
Secondly, Conservatism is rooted in the common sense of the people. Another way of putting this is to say that conservatives believe that prejudices may be a safer guide to politics than abstract ideas. Thirdly, Conservative is about authority and power. Authority plus power, he says, equals establishment and Conservatives defend the established institutions of society, that is, the establishment. For conservatives, authority is more important than freedom.
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But what exactly is "common sense". It varies from culture to culture and at different times and periods of history. We now live in a totally different world to even a few decades ago.
It used to be "common sense" to stand up when God Save the Queen (and her picture)were played at the beginning of each session at the pictures when I was a teenager. Such an idea is quite rightly laughable now.
It used to be "common sense" that copious lashing of applied corporal punishment were the appropriate way to bring up children in a "god-fearing" and civilised way.
It used to be "common sense" that western "culture" or christian-capitalism was the most advanced development of human culture seen on this planet. By contrast my favourite "philosopher" points out that it (our present "culture") is an advanced form of barbarism, and that it has (inevitably) brought the entire world to the brink of both cultural and ecological meltdown.
Inevitable because it is the inevitable outcome of the assumptions upon which it is based---the drive to total power and control.
Such a copious beatings certainly produced (and produces) lots of suppressed rage and fear, the consequences of which have been described by Lloyd deMause (a History of Childhood) and Alice Miller in her disturbing book "For Your Own Good".
In a related way it was also "common sense" that new born babies, and babies altogether, do not feel anything, or that they are amorpous blobs. This notion was dispelled as a destructive myth by the ground breaking book by Frederick Leboyer titled "Birth Without Violence". The themes of Leboyers work have been investigated exhaustively ever since. Beginning with "Magical Child" work of Joseph Chiltern Pearce has investigated this field. Again Pearce's work is very disturbing---particularly in his book Evolutions End.
It also used to be "common sense" that there was/is a "creator" god and the stories about "jesus" and his "resurrection" were true and real. It is now known that there is not a shred of truth in either of these propositions and their associated stories. And yet Western "culture" as a whole is still founded on these essentially childish parental deity stories---stories which in this day and age are as real as the childhood stories about the tooth fairy, the easter rabbit, and santa claus.
It also used to be "common sense" that there is/was an "objective" world entirely separate and apart from human beings. That proposition is no longer tenable and has even been proved to be not true by leading edge quantum physics research and theory.
It used to be "common sense" that the white man was born to rule the entire world. That was the essential message of ALL the books, comics and films + TV when I was a child and teenager. And that message is still very much part of the western mythology story---Scruton subscribes to it.
The implications of all of the above and much, much more have barely begun to be appreciated or understood.
Meanwhile what we are seeing world-wide in the social, political, economic, and religious domains of the human sphere altogether are a return of a kind of "fundamentalism of the old days, a kind of "retro world" which IS causing a disaster.
This brief essay addresses the implications of our usual (one dimensional) "common sense".
www.aboutadidam.org/lesser_alternatives/scientific_materialism/scientific_materialism.html