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

62 Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion
injunction to “judge not, that ye be not judged,” than what Shaw called
realism. Idealism—even at its most advanced, progressive, humane, and
enlightened—is moral arrogance, which is why the worst of evils are always
committed in its name. But realism, despite its humility, is always
terrifying and shocking when it confronts our most cherished ideals.
The Ideal of Fair Wages
We are less blinded by ideals today than one hundred years ago, but there
are still realist propositions that have the power to bewilder and amaze—
even to shock. We look upon outdated Victorian ideals with condescending
amusement, for the illusory nature of unfashionable ideals is more obvious
even than the absurdity of outmoded clothing. Currently held ideals
are different: nothing seems more inevitable, natural, and logical than an
unquestioned ideal. Economic justice is such an ideal. It is difficult to find
anyone who does not subscribe to some version of the ideal of economic
justice. It pervades our social life; it is the underpinning of our economic
system; it is even the foundation of our sense of self-worth. There is
hardly a more pervasive illusion than the notion that we should all be
rewarded on the basis of what we deserve. It does no good to point out that
if you insist on a difference in individual deserts you must give up all
logical pretension to a belief in human equality. We are not identical, varying
widely in all manner of skills and abilities, in attractiveness, in wit and
charm, and in any other human quality you can name. If human equality
does not mean equality of worth, it means nothing at all. Yet most people
are convinced that they are underpaid. (It is more difficult to find someone
who believes himself overpaid.) On inquiry it never turns out that they
believe that everyone who is paid as little or less than themselves is underpaid;
on the contrary, they will tell you that some of those more meagerly
remunerated are shamefully overpaid. What can this mean but a hierarchy
of human worth? What does this leave of the ideal of human equality? As
the Reverend James Morell sadly admits: “Everybody says it: nobody believes
it: nobody” (Candida 1:519). If you suggest to these people that they
do not in fact endorse the idea of human equality, they will be shocked and
insulted. Nothing is more sacred than an ideal which everybody professes
and nobody believes, and nothing is more horrifying than the frank
avowal that this is so. One could easily adapt G. K. Chesterton’s aphorism
about the Christian ideal to the ideal of equality and declare that it has not
been tried and found wanting but found difficult and left untried. Like the