Is it really possible to be neutral?  When it comes to belief, science, religion, politics – does neutral ground really exist?  Our culture holds up the idea of neutrality as a paragon of virtue.  We indulge the idea so much, that we wish against hope that our politicians are telling us the truth when they proclaim that they are post-partisan.  Notice that it’s no longer enough to claim that we’re “non-partisan”; instead, in true Chomsky fashion, we tweak the language to say we’re post-partisan.

What’s at the root of our fascination with neutrality?  I believe that we want to be, and be seen as, reasonable.  Think about politics.  We’re bombarded with the 24/7-news-cycle-red-vs.-blue-shrill-argument-insanity daily.  The one who shouts the loudest, or coins the best slam – that neatly fits into a 15-second sound bite – “wins”.  Or so it seems.  More realistically, I think the “talking heads” are like actors who don’t realize the audience has long ago left them to applaud themselves.  The more polarized the argument becomes, the more most of us simply want to be the emotional baking soda to diffuse the acid of banal “gotcha politics”.  What about religion?  We see men fly planes into buildings, detonate themselves on buses, gun down abortion doctors, preach a ‘prosperity gospel’ that only enriches themselves – the litany could go on and on.  Our culture no longer remembers religion as the chief source of the values that led to our Republic’s unique version of freedom that had never been seen before in all of human history.  If we think of ‘devout believers’ today, a few ‘frightening’ stereotypes are bound to be in the top 10.  Who wants to trust systems of belief that seem to produce, at best, sycophants, and, at worst, murdering psychopaths?  Who wants to be dismissed from being taken seriously by association with such controversial ideas?  The one institution we’ve elevated to be the sole arbiter of truth – science – has proven to be as corrupted and driven by ideology as the others.  One only has to look at the continuing fallout from the “climate-gate” email scandal for a recent example.

It’s an odd paradox in the postmodern West that we simultaneously labor to be seen as “moderate” & “objective” while also adhering to an idea that truth has no absolutes.  Is it possible to be objective if there are no anchors in truth to pull against?  If there’s no standard to which we can compare our ideas?  In fact we often labor against giving truth any sort of finality, unless the ‘truth’ is claimed to be scientific.  Why this one caveat?

Logical Positivism.  A philosophy that found its roots in empiricism, Logical Positivism has had far greater influence on how the average person today views ‘truth’ than many people realize.  The central idea to Logical Positivism is that no proposition is meaningful unless it can be empirically verified.  That is at the heart of why, to this day, we elevate “scientific” truth above all else.  It doesn’t matter that subsequent philosophers have since debunked the central premise:  how can you empirically verify that the only meaningful propositions are ones that can be empirically verified?  Problem is, you can’t.  Regardless, the idea was incredibly popular in a modern-heading-into-postmodern society, and it took deep root.

The resulting cultural schizophrenia is an odd combination of relativism and logical positivism.  In ideological arguments, the person who can successfully portray themselves as “above the fray” and “open-minded” has won the moral high ground, and is, as a result, objective and neutral.  The ultimate trump card is to claim the backing of science.  “Belief” and “fact” are separated from each other, and this becomes the great non-sequitur of our day: that we can exist, first, in a ‘neutral space’, with only facts, and no beliefs.  I will show, in my next post, that the very notion that such a ‘neutral space’ exists, is loaded with belief.