Does it work?

Another condition which effects what we say we know and believe is the prevailing impact of utilitarianism on Western culture. That is, the criteria for evaluating whether a proposition is to be believed or not is not actually whether it is true but whether it works. Perhaps I have put the contrast too strongly: it would be hard to imagine that some element of ‘truth’ is irrelevant in most people’s thinking about what they believe. Pragmatism is a very powerful consideration, and increasingly so since we think we can measure what works in a public and objective way and thus have an actual discussion about it with others. 

This may seem surprising since we live in the age where our heroes and saints are scientists, who seem to have a grasp on tangible reality more than the rest of us and so can pronounce about the truth of the material with authority. But the real power of the scientific paradigm is that it appears to work so successfully in making our lives more pleasurable. It offers us a great deal on truth. ‘The Truth’ itself is, in any case, some distance off from the ordinary person, who cannot possibly hope to evaluate the claims and counter-claims of specialists. 

Now, at the same time, many Westerners have found this materialist pragmatism crass and disheartening – and unspiritual. Counting the bottom line is objective, but it isn’t pretty. And at that level, it doesn’t ‘work’ as it claims it should. It certainly doesn’t produce the kind of happy lives that it promises. And so, many Western people have found themselves attracted to Eastern religions and philosophies. The irony is that Westerners cannot even at this point rid themselves of their utilitarianism – because they find that Eastern religion ‘works’ for them. Adopting an Eastern religion isn’t for Westerners usually a matter of believing various metaphysical propositions, but rather of experiencing the benefits of religious practices: a better work-life balance, a more peaceful inner world, opportunities for doing good works and a healthier lifestyle. 

What matters for people is what will work in the living of life. In a sense this is indisputable: who doesn’t want a life that actually works? What I think needs challenging is the criteria by which we think we rightly evaluate whether things are ‘working’ for us. What are these criteria? How can we accurately measure whether they are working or not? Over what period of time should we consider whether something is working?

There’s two important things that religious beliefs introduce into the discussion here which make an evaluation by the simple criteria of ‘does it work’ even more complex. The first of these is that human suffering might be redemptive in some way. That is, something that might appear not to be ‘working’ might, through divine intervention or whatever means, turn out to be the epitome of human action. This is an alarming thought for relatively comfortable Westerners to confront. And I’d hasten to add that the religions have very different ways of accounting for suffering. Some in the Eastern traditions see suffering as a result of negative karma. Christianity, for its part, names suffering as evil in and of itself, but capable of being woven into the divine plan for extraordinary good. 

The second element of most traditional religious belief is that of the afterlife. Again, the religions differ massively on the details of the afterlife. But an afterlife of any kind offers a point of evaluation for human life that lies beyond this world. It speaks of a perspective on human events that is beyond our knowing at this point. It relativises our contemporary evaluations of the viability of the lives we are leading. We cannot yet see what it mean for life to ‘work’ and so we need a framework that gives us more than pragmatic answers to our most profound questions.