Is Extremism Logical?

This was the question posed by an article in the Guardian last Tuesday. To answer that question and to cut a short article shorter - yes, it is if you're an extremist. This reminds me of something said by AC Grayling quoted in this blog before:

All religions are such that, if they are pushed to their logical conclusions, or if their founding literatures and early traditions are accepted literally, they will take the form of their respective fundamentalisms. Jehovah's Witnesses and the Taliban are thus not aberrations, but unadulterated and unconstrained expressions of their respective faiths, as practiced by people who are not interested in refined temporisings or theological niceties, but who literally accept the world view of the writings they regard as sacred...that is where the most serious threat lies, because all the major religions in fact blaspheme one another, and each by its principles ought actively to oppose the others...where they can get away with it - as the Taliban did in Afghanistan - fundamentalists continue the same practices...it is only where religion is on the back foot, reduced to a minority practice, that it presents itself as essentially peaceful and charitable.

I think it boils down to something I mentioned in an earlier blog - that such ones put a higher value on truth (rightness) than on any other quality - so love, goodness and natural affection are all subject to the higher law of truth - in other words, love, goodness etc are for all intents and purposes applicable to other people only insofar as they themselves value the truth you value as being most important. How can we love those who don't share our view of the world? The perfect solution to extremism was suggested by Jesus: "Love your enemy". The Guardian article concludes with an interesting point or two about logic:

..logic is limited in two vital ways. First, although there are those who claim that rationality alone provides the source for morality, many others follow David Hume and argue that without empathy we would have no motivation to care about the welfare of others anyway.

Second, even if logic were a perfect tool, we are imperfect users of it. If cold reason leads us to terrible conclusions, it is not logic we should distrust but our own ability to perform it. When you have to bet anyone's life on either logic or human sympathy, you should be very careful indeed before choosing the former over the latter.

And I think that hits the nail on the head: logic isn't at fault, it's our grasp of it: to couch this in religious language, it's not truth that's at fault but our interpretation of it. If we can balance a principle against a human life, and decide that the principle wins, then I submit that our grasp of the principle is wanting, for which truth could outweigh the value of a human life, or even the happiness of a human being?

We can find flaws in the logic/world-view/truth utilized by the person that murders the worker in the abortion clinic, reasoning that he has thereby claimed one life to save thousands (of unborn children). He has removed a life from the world that would have continued if not for him (-1), whereas the lives he has apparently saved do not even yet exist - their life value could be said to be zero (0). Answer? -1.

The Guardian has it right when it sets up faulty logic as potentially opposing "human sympathy": if we ever have to do anything where we feel we are switching our natural feelings off, we have to ask ourselves whether the truth we are submitting ourselves to might not be a tiny subset of the real truth which would enable us to keep these feelings switched on? What is greater, truth or love, law or loving kindness? "The greatest of these is" not truth, not law, not even faith which is the lifeblood of religious truth - but "love".