Compliance in the Name of Good
It’s hard to imagine a time of when science, theology and political power were one and the same. This was the world of Europe in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
The enlightenment is most identified with rejection of clericalism, religious authority, schism, persecution in the name of good and, coercion spun as obedience.
Those who battled against the tyrannies of militant Dutch Calvinism and Catholic imperialism bore the brunt of violence in the name of good.
Whilst the annals of history might like to praise Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, each turned to replicate the very power they hated the moment they had it. Luther in less than 10 years from nailing his 99 theses to the door at Witenberg against the corruption of indulgences waged a war against Thomas Munster resulting in the death of 6000 peasants (The Peasants War). He was also infamous for drowning Anabaptists. Similarly Calvinism resulted in the most militant brutalism across Europe in the name of god. The dominant values across Europe in these centuries was compliance, intolerance and absolutism. Free thinkers were branded Heretics and Dissenters and didn’t live long.
It was in this climate of brutalism that Alexander Pope stated – ‘to err is human, and to forgive divine’.
At the heart of the enlightenment was a plea for tolerance. Nothing had so damaged the name of Love and Grace than the brutalism of organised religion.
And, it would be wrong to assume that those like Spinoza, Voltaire and Bayle who railed against organised religion were not theological. Most of the philosophers of the period were profoundly theological and spiritual and were called ‘Deists’. They didn’t reject theology but rather rejected the brutalism of compliance in the name of good, embodied in hyper-Calvinism and hyper-Catholicity.
The enemy of intolerance was free thinking, debate and criticism. Compliance was god.
The wave of brutalism in Europe led to a mass exodus of Dissenters to the colonies and the new world such as South Australia (read Pike The Paradise of Dissent). Even here when the Dissenters formed government and exercised power, intolerance was a seduction.
It seems that intolerance is an attraction to those who want to wield absolute power. It doesn’t matter what the rhetoric is, love, god or safety, when power is the dynamic, brutalism and anti-learning is the outcome. There is no greater intolerance to fallible humans than the doctrine of zero. Nothing is more destructive to safety than wrapping dogma up in the politicisation of zero.
The current integration of safety vested in political power, religious fervour, superstition (read Heinrich, risk matrix and TRIFR), soteriology and science as law, needs a new enlightenment.
Dr Rob Long
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cezaryromanhotmailcom says
Very good article. Dictatorship in the name of God, safety or any other title should never find place, but unfortunately there are too many “Gods” trying to impose, very often stupid, rules which very often have nothing to do with reality. One of the reasons could be, that they can always blame others (workers) for what happened. Quite a few companies have accident investigations programs organized the way, that it is always workers fault, when in reality, it not always is.
Rob Long says
Good pick up on the play on words god for Good. The more Safety embraces a religious discourse the more it justifies brutalism in the name of good infused by the rhetoric of zero. It beggars belief how organisations can parade the rhetoric of zero and care in the same discourse. It’s only when one recognizes fallibility that there can be care, absolutism is toxicity for fallible humans.