Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

240 Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion
Don Juan was right. Since he has a purpose, nature must also. The universe
is groping, fitfully, part blindly and part sightedly, but steadily and
progressively toward some end, of which we have only a vague and imperfect
image. For Shaw, religion meant dedication to furthering that purpose
in the best way that we know how, knowing all the while that we may be
completely wrong; knowing that we may be one of the Life Force’s inevitable
“mistakes.”
We do not know nature’s purpose, but we know where to look for it. All
values are to be found in our own souls. That implies an additional and
awesome responsibility. Not only are we charged with creating—becoming—God,
but we have no more certain guide than that fragile, flickering
light from within. If we are to follow Shaw we must not take refuge in
ideals, projecting our values and the responsibility that goes with them
outside ourselves. Abstaining from idealism complicates our dealings with
our fellow creatures; it certainly increases our responsibility toward them.
As Shaw said, when you have finished with all of the labels with which we
paste our values onto other people, “when you have called Helmer a selfish
hound or a model husband and father, according to your bias, you have said
something which is at once true and false, and in both cases perfectly idle”
(Quintessence 198). That realization is, or should be, humbling. We all
know, if we are honest, that we have both mean and lofty impulses, hateful
and loving ones. When we reflect that our inclination to call someone
wicked is merely a statement of our own ill-feelings toward that person,
we should be less apt to justify harming that person. It is easier to brutalize
people we fear and hate in the name of justice than in the name of our fear
and hatred. Two wrongs, as Shaw was forever pointing out, do not make a
right. Barbara Undershaft is correct: there are no good men or scoundrels,
only children of one father.
That profound truth raises the question why we should have ill-will
toward our fellows, why hatred and cruelty exist at all. Blanco Posnet says,
“Theres no good and bad; but . . . theres a rotten game, and theres a great
game,” but that begs the question why the “rotten game” should exist
(Shewing-Up 3:798). Shaw simply rejected the Manichean worldview
without attempting to defend his monistic faith. While there is no strictly
logical objection to the view that the world is intrinsically divided into
light and dark, spirit and matter, and that these represent a cosmic struggle
of good and bad, most people with a logical turn of mind usually prefer a
monistic metaphysics to dualism of any kind. In that respect, the impulse
that led Shaw to his belief in moral equality is not unlike that of the mate-