But Am I Sure?

I recently spent a night on the town with some friends I had made in the Australian Democrats. We get on like a house on fire but I was also reminded how much I admire them. This then got me to wondering whether I have any political heroes. The answer is that I have none. I can respect the ability or commitment of someone. I can think that political figures like Senators Allison and Bartlett and Stott Despoja are fantastic. But it is another thing entirely to say that they are my personal heroes. But what do I think that is anyway?

As I understand it, a personal hero is someone who has had an impact on how we think and feel to such an extent that we elevate them over other humans, and assess them by a new set of criteria, so that the hero becomes someone whose wisdom we accept without question. I cannot do that because someone who would have been a hero of mine made me aware that such hero-worship is a grave mistake.

The person I am referring to is one Jacob Bronowski - a scientist who in 1973 devised and presented the Ascent Of Man documentary on British TV (which replayed on ABC at sometime in my teens). The documentary was a fascinating survey of the history of science and technology (and a direct inspiration for Carl Sagan to do Cosmos) but it went beyond that. Bronowski suggests that the Uncertainty Principle can also be the basis of a philosophy of human conduct and interaction.

In the closing scene of the documentary, Bronowski is standing by a pond at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp and expands on his philosophy. You can see it here or read a transcript here (the audio-visual medium works a lot better in getting the message across). That scene was done in one take. That mud could well have in it the ashes of some of his own family and friends. It is an amazingly evocative moment in television history and it gets me every time I even think of it.

Bronowki tells us that it is a sense of certainty that allows humans to commit the vilest of crimes. Fundamentalists of whatever kind (religious or political) will do the things they do to fellow humans because they are sure that they are right. This one scene in an old doco by some academic in daggy tweeds has done more than anything to make me committed to a pluralistic and consensual form of politics. So - somewhat surprisingly - if I had a political hero it would be a non-politician. But my commitment to constructive engagement makes me very wary of hero-worship which I identify as one way in which we can succumb to fundamentalism.

Some clever sod may well ask me whether "I am sure that I am not sure" but that is just wordplay. We are talking abstracts here and on a day-to-day basis I will have to make decisions on what is right and wrong. But I can be aware that my understanding of things is at best an approximation and that there is something worth considering in the perspectives of others. The risk of embracing what Bronowski calls the Principle of Tolerance is that one can come across as wishy-washy. But compromise is a fact of life in a world made by forces other than our own wishes and imaginings. It is also worth noting that compromise is more than just finding an arbitrary halfway mark between what you and I want. It is a kind of realism that considers as many factors as it can. I would rather the shortcomings of compromise to the dangers of adhering to absolutes.

Do I think all this because Jacob Bronowski told me to? I would prefer you to think that I think it because I decided following much consideration.