In part #10, the penultimate blog on this topic, I want to look at the concept of meliorism and the view that the world is capable of improvement by us by rightly directed human effort. Will it help?
In the final blog on this topic, #11, I will offer a resolution of the Paradox of the End. A way to find meaning where so far we have found none in the coping strategies offered by philosophy and religion. Strategies created to ward off the sense of meaninglessness we find in pursuing and achieving our goals or 'ends'; but ultimately fail.
#10 Meliorism
From the foregoing discussion on optimism and pessimism it might be thought the totality of human perspectives had been given voice too. However, polarities pervade much of the conception of the world; being and consciousness, theory and practice, mind and matter. In each case they are perceived as norms between which no middle ground is commonly thought to exist. Optimism and pessimism similarly form opposing poles with respect to tempers of mind. Yet there supposedly exists a middle ground, a mediating way, in the form of meliorism and I would be wanting in rigour in choosing to ignore this perspective.
Meliorism, like optimism and pessimism, is offered as a temper of mind that does not deny the facts of existence. So perhaps meliorism will provide a temper of mind to make the consequences of some of the foregoing strategies palatable, in particular transcendent ends, activity as an end, and perhaps duty.
In its simplest form meliorism is proffered as the view that the world is capable of improvement by rightly directed human effort. Here rightly directed human effort is taken to mean that life is neither good nor bad, as the optimist and pessimist would have us believe, but rather life is what we make it - that the world is capable of improvement. In other words, meliorism takes neither the view we will, regardless (optimism), nor the view that we never will, no matter (pessimism). Rather, the meliorist doctrine is perceived as sitting between the inhibiting and delusory extremes of optimism and pessimism; just as courage or fortitude sits comfortably, or is the mean, between rashness and cowardice. Supposedly, then, while we can characterise optimism as expecting something, and pessimism as not expecting something, we can characterise meliorism as doing something. Given these characterisations the two extremes are regarded as passive while the mediating way is seen as being active. In this capacity the function of meliorism is therefore seen as maintaining the tension between optimism and pessimism. A tension which when lost, in giving way to the ascendancy of either extreme, slams the door on meaningful activity.
In Scientific Meliorism its author Jane Hume Clapperton makes explicit what she wanted meliorism to achieve. While much of her agenda for action is dated the basic tenet of meliorism is the promotion of activity outside the convention of dualistic thinking. For Clapperton the alternatives of optimism and pessimism seem ill-contrived by comparison with the eternal optimist needing to be made of extremely stern stuff not crack under the sheer weight of human shortcomings and fallibility which surrounds them. This analysis seems plausible and one is inclined, albeit tentatively, toward assent. For sure, regarding the world as a place where everything is ordered for the best requires the eternal optimist to occasional swallow some pretty bitter medicine when continually confronted with evidence to the contrary. As for the pessimist, who incidentally always refer to themselves as ‘realists’, they live a life of equal disappointment in expecting the worst and getting it, like all self-fulfilling prophecies. The only difference between the disappointment experienced by the pessimist and optimists seems to be that the pessimist expected it!
On this reading meliorism, in contrast, does seem to provide us with a practical conception midway between the extremes. But is Sully right when he says ‘[m]eliorism ...escapes the final contradictory outcome of a life-theory’? In other words, does it furnish us with a practical creed that affirms our capacity to make life meaningful?
Taken on face value the basic tenet of meliorism appears to set no limit on our discontent; a requirement to accept that the worth of our actions are not established by an inventory of consequences; adherence to a gospel of endurance rather than of hope; the embracing of a causal nexus which leaves us powerless to make a difference; to encourage us towards sloth, indolence and quiescence in respect of our higher aims as detailed respectively in the foregoing chapters. But wholehearted endorsement of meliorism as a perspective would be premature.
At the beginning of this chapter meliorism was characterised as sitting between the extremes just as courage sits between rashness and cowardice. If so, then in a similar way that courageousness is part composed of rashness and cowardice in that someone acting courageously recognises the danger (like the coward), yet does not give way to fear in acting with boldness of spirit (like the rash). So meliorism, in its supposed mediatorial role, should be part composed of optimism and pessimism. Yet meliorism asserts that life is neither good nor bad, but what we make it. It does not contain elements of either of its supposed defining perspectives. Consequently, it cannot be the mean between optimism and pessimism it claims to be. Rather meliorism is a detached doctrine concerned with action devoid of sentiment. At best, if one is generous in one's characterisation, meliorism might be characterised as optimism without sentiment - it recognises that the world is capable of improvement, but detaches itself from the very sentiment which might motivate one to improve their condition. This makes it no better than optimism as a weltanschauung, and nothing worthy of commendation without it. Meliorism, then, seems not to be alive to the universal aspects of the human condition such as joy, loneliness, despair, courage, pain and horror brought on by an optimistic or pessimistic temperament. Moreover, meliorism’s remoteness from just those sentiments that colour the world good or bad make it unworthy of endorsement as a perspective.
So, in denying meliorism its mediatorial status it is a perspective unworthy of adoption. This leaves us with optimism and pessimism, neither of which is capable of encouraging much other than indolence or quiescence in respect of higher aims, or the coping strategies outlined, which impart give voice to these perspectives, which equally leave us with unpalatable choices.
In #11, the final blog on this topic, we have to conclude that none of the strategies so far have resolved the paradox they - are all absurd. If so then it seems that all striving towards our goals, our ends, is utterly meaningless. So perhaps we should just embrace the absurd. But will it resolve the problem?