Forgive my inconsistency. But I'm running across all these really interesting ideas that I need to get down somewhere. Honestly, I blog more for myself than for you, dear reader (assuming you exist).
For my critical theory class we're reading extracts from Bihu Parekh's
Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Last night I attended my first meeting of "Group," which is just that: a couple of my friends belong to a group that discusses religious and philosophical questions every other Sunday evening. Someone brought up a really provoking idea that's given me a lot of pause to think:
As a Mormon, I'm taught that I have, as nasty as this sounds, access to all the Truth and Happiness available in this world through the gospel, where other people lack that - they are shut out from some ultimate Meaning. But that's an uncomfortable idea - why should I think that I have a monopoly on those things - Meaning, Truth, Happiness. Can't someone who has never heard of Joseph Smith live a full life, even in the eternal sense? Why do I get to have it all?
Then as I was reading this article today, I came across a couple of really pertinent quotes. Parekh is critical of the writings of the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico because although "[h]e appreciated that different ages threw up different kinds of good life" - that people from the ancient Japanese to the contemporary Native Americans to the Africans of medieval times were happy and productive and
good - he also insisted that "in any given age only one way of life was truly human, that all others could be graded in terms of it, and that those who had realized or approximated it had a right and a duty to guide and even govern others," treating his own "religion, age and society" as "universal norms" (55).
That last idea is a little complicated, but also, I believe, totally invalid. Let's break it down. Parekh's bone with Vico is that the latter believes:
(1) There is
one culture that's 'got it right.'
(2) That culture has a responsibility to teach the 'poor savages' who haven't figured things out what they're missing.
How much does that sound like Mormon doctrine?
(1) We believe we have the "fullness of the restored gospel" and the priesthood to perform "saving ordinances" - if this kind of language isn't familiar to you, you could
check this out for a bit of linguistic background.
(2) We send missionaries out to share this message.
Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges - that culture and religion aren't really the same thing. This is a tricky issue. On one hand, I don't believe that there is any ultimately "true" culture - the culture of Zoroastrians in India isn't more or less "true" than that of suburbanites in White America or mestizos in the Philippines. On the other, I do believe in a loving Heavenly Father who sent his son Jesus Christ to atone for the sins of the world - and that's an "ultimate reality," as much as I don't like to phrase it that way.
Further, Parekh also examines Montesquieu's ideas on pluralism in his
Persian Letters. Here, Parekh's criticism is that "[h]is thought has ample space for social but not cultural and moral diversity, for a wide variety of customs and practices but not for the view that human existence can be conceptualized and the good life lived in several different and worthy ways" (67).
It is the last part of this quote that I think is the most pertinent to the idea I'm trying to explore. I do believe there are many ways to be happy. I'm not going to fling the door wide open and say that
any path can lead to happiness - committing murder, for example, or getting strung out on coke, aren't going to bring you joy. On the other hand, I don't want to treat happiness as a "closed canon" and think that there is one prescribed way to be happy - and I especially don't want to think that I've got the 'insider's guide'! Mormonism brings me happiness, but aren't there plenty of happy agnostics and Jews and Buddhists and Muslims and Catholics in the world?
I'm still working on this question.
