An Impossible Stew: Ideas Have Consequences

Ideas Have Consequences

by Richard M. Weaver

This book brings up real problems and questions still relevant today despite it's 1948 copyright.

Sometimes this was a difficult book for me to read because Dr. Weaver would reference philosophical ideas or people without explicitly identifying them. More than once, I reread paragraphs (or chapters) when I realized he was using words I knew, but with different definitions. (For example, "materialistic" for him did not mean someone overly focused on possessions and money, but someone focused on the "material" world, rather than on abstract ideals and virtues.) Once I even asked my philosopher-turned-theologian husband to read through a paragraph and tell me if it really meant anything; there were so many philosophical terms all jumbled together, I couldn't tell if it contained any real ideas (like a mission statement gone horribly wrong). My husband assured me it did indeed mean something, "That's just how philosophers write."

I would need to write a blog post on every chapter to do justice to this book, but I don't want to devote that kind of time right now, so I'm going to try to condense my thoughts as well as I can.

In the Introduction, Dr. Weaver brings up materialism as it developed in the nineteenth century. (Remember, he's talking about limiting our explanations to the material world.) Darwin and his contemporaries made it "imperative to explain man by his environment" (p. 5). According to Dr. Weaver, science forced all of mankind to accept physical and only physical explanations for anything and everything, including his institutions, economy, and psychology. Certainly we have seen such a focus. Perhaps it is even prevalent in society today, but I do think there is a substantial number of people and institutions who have maintained the connection between mankind and our "transcendental glory" (p. 5). It's possible I feel a more balanced appreciation for the contributions of the nineteenth century scientists (and today's scientists) because the Catholic Church has continued to strive for salvation, seek the divine, nurture modern saints, and also encourage scientific investigations. I don't feel the same disconnect he insists must occur. Dr. Weaver seems to be suggesting we should deny all of these theories and lines of inquiry.

On the other hand, he writes things like:

For, as the course goes on, the movement turns centrifugal; we rejoice in our abandon and are never so full of the sense of accomplishment as when we have struck some bulwark of our culture a deadly blow. (p. 10)

There are some people who seek nothing so much as to destroy all that has come before, with a complete assurance there is nothing worth saving. The debates we hear and see every day regarding "cancel culture" are evidence of Dr. Weaver's insight. I would argue his insistence that we keep every single part of the past, retaining and admiring all of it, is just as flawed as that of those we seek to destroy it all. The best path is probably a very messy discussion and compromise to end up somewhere in the middle.

Dr. Weaver seems to be against the idea of equality. 

Where men feel that society means station, the highest and the lowest see their endeavors contributing to a common end, and they are in harmony rather than in competition. It will be found as a general rule that those parts of the world which have talked least of equality have in the solid fact of their social life exhibited the greatest fraternity...Nothing is more manifest than that as this social distance has diminished and all groups have moved nearer equality, suspicion and hostility have increased. (p. 39)

This is a difficult paragraph for Americans to read, primed as we are to value equality above almost all else. He provides little actual evidence for this assertion, and I'm not sure I believe him. Not that I believe we have an equal society. (See my post on The Tyranny of Merit and read that book for an excellent discussion of equality in America.) He extends this idea of equality later to include gender equality in addition to social equality. His ideas about the role of women were just as frustrating.

In chapter two, Distinction and Hierarchy, Dr. Weaver writes:

But all hinges on the interpretation of needs; if the primary need of man is to perfect his spiritual being and prepare for immortality, then education of the mind and the passions will take precedence over all else. The growth of materialism, however, has made this a consideration remote and even incomprehensible to the majority. Those who maintain that education should prepare one for living successfully in this world have won a practically complete victory. (p. 45)

Here I think he's identified a problem and its source perfectly. Remember, Dr. Weaver's definition of "materialism" isn't just about buying and surrounding ourselves with lots of stuff. Nearly everyone will argue against that as a goal. Instead, he's talking about aligning our lives as if only what we see and feel in the material world is relevant. If we lose a belief in an eternal world and our potential participation in it, there's no reason to focus on anything other than a job, having enough food, and a comfortable life, even if we don't anticipate a luxurious one. Our educational goals, therefore, would adjust to ones that are centered around preparing for a career with adequate or ample compensation. It's almost impossible to blend these disparate views of education.

The chapter called The Great Steriopticon is one of the most baffling. He has some great insights:

In summary, the plea that the press, motion picture, and radio justify themselves by keeping people well informed turns out to be misleading. If one thinks merely of facts and of vivid sensations, the claim has some foundation, but if he thinks of encouragement to meditation, the contrary rather is true. For by keeping the time element continuously present--and one may recall Henry James's description of journalism as criticism of the moment at the moment--they discourage composition and so promote the fragmentation already reviewed. (p. 100)

Note, Dr. Weaver is not talking about meditation as a practice of mindfulness (I sense he'd shudder at the thought), but of a thoughtfulness, a serious consideration of whether what was read or heard was true. Just imagine if he were around today to comment on the proliferation of instant news and social media! 

On the other hand, his solutions to the problem of news filtered by a few media sources is to suggest the elimination of the free press and limiting the literacy rate. He seems to believe that, because children who learn to read often grow into adults who choose their reading material poorly, we should somehow choose who is to learn to read and who should not. Though he doesn't touch on how we should separate the masses from the chosen, it doesn't take much thought to conclude many of those not chosen would be non-white and poor. To be honest, I can't even contemplate limiting free press or access to literacy as possible solutions. They feel much more dangerous than filtered news.

You may sense that I was swaying constantly between disagreeing with Dr. Weaver and agreeing with him. In the end, I feel conflicted by the book. I think there were a lot of statements that have proven prescient, predicting very well the modern world we live in today, but there were also a lot of chapters that careened too far, ending in bitterness and an undue preference for the old simply because it is old (think Mozart; Beethoven was the beginning of the end). As I said above, the Truth is probably somewhere in the middle, and discovering it requires a more nuanced conversation than Dr. Weaver appears to provide in this book.

The foreword by Roger Kimball ends by claiming:

Weaver's work is a heady, sometimes an impossible stew. But it is one from which we can learn  "something of how to live" or (what is almost the same thing) something of how not to. (p. xvii)

I can agree with that. 

By finishing this book, I read from front to back two of the three books I received for Christmas. The final book, The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor, is probably one I shouldn't read cover to cover straight through, for the benefit of my mental health. I have, however, signed up for a book club based on her stories, so the book won't sit sadly on my shelf.

I have received nothing in exchange for this post. I received this book as a gift. Links to Bookshop are affiliate links.