Conservative determinism - why we have to pretend

Please do not interpret the title and nature of this essay as screaming ‘TORIES!’ or somehow claiming to read the mind of Boris Johnson at this exact moment. This is not what I mean by ‘conservatism’ here. What I will be speaking of is a general attitude to the reality surrounding us, both individual and in relation to our friends and people we love, and though it certainly can manifest itself politically it is, paradoxically, a very much anti-political attitude. What I mean is an attitude of not having an attitude, something to cool the revolutionary, ‘we’ll-go-and-fix-everything’ enthusiasm (traditionally emblematic of the left, now visible on both sides of the political debate). What I propose is to take a sober look at what we are trying to achieve, not just within politics, but what we are trying to achieve when we are trying to achieve anything political - I shall argue that our goals need drastic reevaluation or even further - that we need to stop having ambitious goals altogether.

But let us not get ahead of ourselves: here’s what I mean. Ever since Hegel and Marx happened, it has been recognised by their intellectual followers (which, in the case of the latter at least, have been all shades of the left) that the way history and social processes work is deterministic. To put it into more contemporary and surely recognisable terms: this is the school of thought which argues, for example, for the restrictions on the freedom of speech, arguing that it constitutes just a preamble to widespread hatred (very often using Nazi Germany as an example here). This is the school of thought which argues that one should avoid ‘mis-portraying’ anything because of the later consequences that depiction might have (deterministically ‘has to have’). Speaking very broadly therefore, this is the school of thought that advocates for our actions to be evaluated and condoned or condemned on the basis of their consequences, however far-reaching and however distant in time.

And such a view is correct. I say this as both a determinist (hardline) and a conservative (sticking to my definition, though). Though the contemporary conservatives still pretend that an individual has a choice, and that we are free from the driving, relentless currents which weave our societies, we are not, and even the conservatives are slowly beginning to see it. I think, though some of my friends on the left may disagree, that even the modern ‘conservative’ governments do realise that implanting an image (say, using the tired analogy, that all redheads are wicked) in one’s head from a very early age, even if it is never said to them directly, is going to have a real impact on their future attitude toward gingers. The earliest to utilise this were, I believe, marketing companies (the whole ‘brand-loyalty’ thing, and modern advertising in general, burning a logo and a slogan on the back of our eyelids); but by now most of us accept this as true. It is. It works.

In social terms, all that needs to be said is that: it is blatant that if we cut off our hands and gouge out our eyes there would not be any of that awful awful violence. Surely, if we put our minds to sleep, there would not even be an evil thought against our neighbor in our brain. Well, I think you see the problem we are faced with, then. The left (or the large, deterministic part of it) knows now that it is possible to create a perfect world. We have to thank the Enlightenment and developments in science in general (not a coincidence that Marx and Engels were writing in the time of scientific ideas being put into practice by the hands of the working people). We know stuff works mechanically, we know there are parts of our brain that make love happen. Though we don’t know which ones these are. Yet. We know the world is but a clockwork, we just don’t yet know how to crack it open. Everything is in our hands.

So why have I, a self-proclaimed ‘conservative’ just spent a page or so agreeing with the ideas I said were emblematic of the left? Here’s why. I heartily congratulate every human being in history who has contributed to where we are now, I stand in admiration of their superhuman achievement but I too tremble in fear of the future. Because I know the future, we all do. Together with the greatest achievement of science in history - making history scientific - we also brought on ourselves all of the problems which science goes together with. Science is mute about purpose, about worth of things (as we feel it, not as we estimate it). There is less and less meaning in life and we try and catch the very last scraps of it, floating in the air. God is dead - science has killed him - and we have reached the end of history. Worry not, however, (or do actually) - I do not mean to resurrect any of the ancient divinities. I do not mean to rebuild the horizon - I do not even think it is possible. I do not think there is a purpose or a meaning in life, I am literally writing this article in the Oxford college of Philip Larkin and that should say enough about where I stand.

The conflict, then, is that we know how to build a perfect world but we have no reason to build it. I’m really thinking ‘WALL-E’ world right now, too. We can make everyone jobless because we would not need humans to work anymore. We can abort all the serial killers in advance or raise them in a particularly programmed, loving household. We can cure cancer and never have to watch our loved ones pass away.

We can make the world flat and then sugarcoat it. We can do all that. But still we will stand under the sky, screaming with silence, staring into a gaping hole in the shape of a God or a purpose. We are never going to mend this. Life is always going to be like that. Once again, Christianity is emblematic of what we do and do not want - what the deterministic (and determined) left promises us is a paradise, a heaven, ceaseless bliss and ‘fully-automated gay space communism’. My point is that even if we could somehow find God and that perfect place he promised us, it will still not be it. The best we can do is to say: ‘what he has in store are things which we can’t even imagine’ - well, great - that ends any discussion. But as we can imagine it, we don’t want paradise, we don’t want things to be easy for all eternity. Because a perfect world folds into itself and the drive to purge absolutely all evil and discomfort from it makes it incredibly empty. Life is longing for something that is impossible to have - that’s what we have to accept.

Returning to the idea of the paradise, which I think we can, with enough time, construct - at the last page of his posthumously published ‘Mortality’, Christopher Hitchens, dying from cancer, notes the words of Alan Lightman: ‘With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great-aunts...and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own... Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.’

The purpose of the preceding paragraphs was to show just how far-reaching our sight is, so far-reaching that we can see the inherent emptiness of the limitless world. What are we to do, then? I say, pretend. We have to establish ourselves a horizon, look only to a self-imposed limit, with full, but unrealised consciousness of the existential dread which awaits if we go over that imaginary line. We have to treat ourselves like children, protect ourselves from the world. I’m really thinking Simba and ‘that shadowy place’ here. We must never go there. We should take the old folk-story of the Chinese empire sinking their fleet to not explore the world further as an example - we are not going to find anything that we need, that we don’t have already. We must not try and create a perfect world. Because a perfect world would not be perfect.

Thus born is conservative determinism or the politics of pretending. And no, I am not telling anyone here to vote Tory - if that’s really all the reader has gathered from this essay, I envy the bliss in which they must live. No, carry on voting for whomever you please. Carry on speaking your mind on politics and ethics and social justice. Carry on helping the homeless, donating to charity. Carry on proving or disproving the existence of God. But keep in the back of your head your answer to this question: ‘If you could make the world perfect, would you really do it?’

Stanislaw Szelag is a first year reading Theology and Religion at St. John’s College