What do I know?
I saw an add for a TV show the other day, ‘bringing up baby’ I think it was. Anyway, the add when something like this: “In the 50’s parenting was all about discipline. In the 60’s parenting was all about Dr. Spock. In the 70’s parenting was all about attachment. Wouldn’t you like to which parenting method was the right one?”
I had to laugh. Why is that we think that we, in the 00’s (sometimes called the naughties), we think we have the ‘right’ perspective on parenting. Don’t you think that in 20 years time someone will be making another TV show saying something like “in the 90’s they thought parenting was about …, in the naughties they thought …, but we now know ….”
Or to put it another way, do you think Dr Spock, or any parents who followed his method, ever sat down and said “we want to parent in a way that is relevant to this decade only. We know there is a right way to parent, but we aren’t interested in that, we are only interested in a parenting method for the 60’s.”
For those of you have seen the TV show you may think I am missing the point. I may be missing the point of the TV show, but I am seeking to make another, far more important point. All things are seen from a vantage point. Perhaps a historical vantage point, as in this case. Perhaps a social, an ethnic, a gender, a generational, or from within a worldview vantage. Everything we see, we are looking at from somewhere, and the place from where we look shapes what we see.
For some of us this is a scary thought – that there is no such thing as true ‘objectivity’. Nothing, not even ‘science’ which at times has claimed to be about ‘objective facts’ is truly objective. Others of us are saying – ‘tell me something new’. ‘Relativism’ in now the way we think. Much ink has been spilt over this topic, some of it helpfully. But let’s not go there.
What was so amazing about the TV add was that it began by acknowledging the ‘contingency’ of knowledge (it depends on where you look from). Then it went on to suggest that the TV show could tell us the absolute truth about parenting. Who wrote that add, and what were they thinking?… Spock was influenced by his era, but we will tell you the timeless truth!
And yet we do the same all the time don’t we. In Australia we have this way of looking down our noses back at the ‘wisdom’ of the previous generations and seeing that their ‘truths’ were little more than projections of their era. We know better now. We know better than to think that smacking is effective discipline; that rote learning is effective; that strangers are the greatest danger; that homosexuality is evil; that immigrants take our jobs and don’t assimilate; that Islam is a false religion; that environmentalists are scare mongers and so on. We know better now.
Do we? …How? …Why? …On what grounds? I think it’s fair say that the above views are widely accepted, they are the ‘new orthodoxy’ if not ‘universal’. But how did they become so? Some came as a result of science we may say. We can prove green house gases have risen and track the correlation to global warming and the El Niño effect for example. Yes, we can, but this science, and all science takes place from a vantage point. Personally I am convinced that our current rates of growing emissions are problematic, and we need to act. But I am also aware that our science, our educational research, our economic modelling, our ethical reflections and so on all take place from a vantage point.
So what do we do? Doubt everything, become a sceptic? You could, but it is not a way forward. Scepticism may be helpful in showing you the flaws of others, but it contains the assumption that via a method of doubting and questioning everything, we will be able to do away with our constructs and be left with the bare essentials. We can then build the house of knowledge upon a firm foundation. Descartes tried this. I think therefore I am. The problem is, it was Descartes who was thinking. Therefore everything Descartes through remained a construct of Descartes. Scepticism will not build you a secure house if knowledge. So what will?
Faith. Faith? Isn’t faith the opposite of knowledge I hear you ask? What about Galileo and the earth centric Pope? Sorry, but that is such a 19th and early 20th Century view of faith and knowledge. As far as theories of knowledge go – the consensus is now that all knowledge is built upon a set of previously constructed assumptions – upon faith. And by the way, most 16-18 Century scientists were Christians, people of faith. Pope Urban VIII holds the minority view.
Anyway, if all knowledge is built upon what we might broadly call a ‘faith’, a worldview, a set of assumptions – then I want to say not all faiths are the same. Galileo was right, and the Pope was wrong. Galileo’s assumptions have proven to be more consistent and coherent with other things we have observed and ‘discovered’.
The implications of this are many and profound. I will simply tease out two. Whatever you think you know – some of it is simply the result of where you are looking from and the general consensus about what you see when you discuss it with those standing next to you. Second, if you want to understand another faith, you need to go and look at it from the inside out, and not from the outside in. Go and discuss what it looks like with the people who are standing in it, not with the people standing next to you.
Who knows – you might discover something of the truth God meant when he said ‘taste and see that the Lord is good.’