The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

1972 SIX IDEAS TO KEEP US HUMAN 721tiative is giv~n over to environmentand man only reacts; hedoesn't act. Adjustments to theenvironment, comfort, and easethen come to be the goals of life.If we accept the dictum of a greateconomist that "the end, goal oraim of any action is always therelief of a felt uneasiness," thenwe have given up on life, for we'llnever rest easy until we're dead!To live is to strive for greater intensityof life, and this means thatwe may choose adventure, heroism,suffering, and maybe evendeath.The issue of free will constitutesa battleline of first importance.A people among whom theflame of life has burned so lowthat their philosophers preach determinismwill be severely handicappedin the game of life. Theywill find it difficult to put theirtrust in reason and, as we mightexpect, reason itself is now underattack from several quarters.RationalityThe second of the big ideaswhich make man man is this: Manis a reasoning being who, by takingthought, gains valid truthsabout himself and the universe.The attack on the rational mindcomes from several quarters. Philosophicalmaterialism and mechanismassumes that the ultimatereality is nonmental; only bits ofmatter or electrical charges orwhatever are, in the final analysis,real. If so, then thought is but areflex of neutral events. "Ourmental conditions," wrote T. H.Huxley, "are simply the symbolsin consciousness of the changeswhich take place automatically inthe organism."Evolutionism, popularly understood,is materialistic and mechanical.So viewed it conveys the ideathat living things began as a stirringin the primeval ooze and becamewhat they are now by randominteraction with the physiochemicalenvironment, moved byno purpose, aiming at no goal.Darwinism offers an account oforganic change which has no needof intelligence to .. guide it.From popular psychology comesthe notion that reason is but rationalization,that conscious mentalprocesses are but a gloss forprimitive and irrational impulseserupting from the unconsciousmind. Psychoanalysis discreditsmind by subordinating intellect tothe id.From Marxianism comes the notionthat class interest dictates aman's thinking. There is one logicfor the proletariat and another forthe bourgeoisie; and the mode ofproduction governs the philosophicalsystems men erect, and theirlife goals as well. The unfortunatelyplaced middle class forever