Enlightenment

By Crispin Sartwell

Many suckers just like you come to me seeking spiritual solace and philosophical guidance. "Master," they ask, "what should I believe?"

In a moment of blinding realization, which occurred during a cocktail party, I received the authentic principle of universal enlightenment. With a blushing immodesty that well becomes me, I term it Sartwellianism, and I offer it now to a world beset by confusion: The probability that x is true is inversely proportional to the number of people who believe it. Sartwellianism is almost certainly true precisely because almost everyone - including you - holds it to be false, as neat a confirmation as could be wished.

Most of what most people have believed in the course of human history has been wrong. The best theory of a given moment is eventually overturned, as the fate of everything from animism to Ptolemaic astronomy to Newton's laws of motion attests. I make no mention of the fact that during the Later Neolithic Animist Convention there was a little guy snickering in the corner, nor do I emphasize the fact that he was right.

Now consider a simple disagreement. We have three people: call them Smith, Jones, and Funk. And let's stipulate that Smith, Jones, and Funk are of similar intelligence and, at the outset, possess similar information. Smith and Jones believe that the Great God Yottle is displeased, while Funk disagrees.

People are herd animals, and this is true not only in the Wal-Mart when there is a sale on DVD players, but in the generation of beliefs.

Thus, that Smith believes that Yottle is displeased is regarded by Jones as a justification for his own belief that Yottle is displeased, and vice versa. Smith and Jones confirm one another in an infinite circle of epistemic back-slapping by which each congratulates the other - and hence by which each congratulates himself - on his insight and sagacity. In addition, having dreamed up the notion of Yottle's displeasure, to say nothing of the notion of Yottle himself, they tend to believe any tissue of fallacies which might support them in this belief, which they in turn justify by their agreement on these sophistries themselves.

Funk, on the other hand, must search his mind and the rest of the world as he defies the consensus, and will be pressed for a defensible justification. And if he persists, he persists at a cost to himself. On the other hand, Smith and Jones replace the world with one another. While they gather with their fermented berries to party at the human sacrifice, Funk probes, observes, works.

Once Smith and Jones have latched onto Yottle like cloned barnacles, their conviction persists even in the face of what ought to be regarded as a great deal of evidence against it, some of it no doubt brought forward by Funk himself. Such evidence is repressed as an anti-social subversion of the obvious deliverances of good sense.

Before long they conclude that Yottle's displeasure is directed at Funk, whom they then remove from the gene pool by artificial selection and whose books they burn, so that future generations - and indeed this one - become ever-more committed to unanimity. Funk's approach is extinguished beyond hope of resuscitation, while the glory of Yottle endureth eternally.

Not only did Smith and Jones have a stake in their belief; they had a stake in the principle underpinning it; that is, they had a stake in the idea that the fact that most people believe x tends to show that x is true. This is obviously something that Funk, while he survived, doubted. That is, the idea that what most people believe is true is itself justified by the assertion that most people believe it, as empty a bit of circular reasoning as can be imagined.

The matter is quite otherwise with Sartwellianism itself: it is justified precisely by the fact that most people think it is ridiculous, which, as we have just established beyond quibble, is an extremely good reason to believe something.

Sartwellianism yields a very coherent account of the structure of scientific revolutions. At the moment Newton drew his startling conclusions, he was quite likely right. That likelihood was reduced continuously over the centuries as Newtonian physics gained ground, until the point was reached at which nearly everyone accepted Newtonian physics, so that its probability was negligible. The time was ripe for decisive refutation, which was promptly produced. There is no better way to reduce a theory to absurdity than to disseminate it universally, and once it makes its way into middle school textbooks, it is suitable merely for children and morons.

Sartwellianism can be of use to you even if, like Smith and Jones and more or less everyone else, you are in fact incapable of independent thought. To find the truth, simply consult polls, signing up with the smallest minority on any given question. Alternatively, ask your friends what movies they like or what political party they belong to.

As to the application of Sartwellianism to questions of political philosophy or current events - for example the sacred underpinnings of our republic in majority rule, or the fact that our politicians focus-group their every assertion - I will allow the reader to draw her own conclusions. If I told you what I thought about it, you'd just agree with me.

Crispin Sartwell's book "Extreme Virtue: Truth and Leadership in Five Great American Lives" has just been published.