The Reality of the Abstract — Chapter 10 of WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST

Chapter Ten:
The Reality of the Abstract
Is Only the Concrete “Reality Itself”?
In a world that is shaped by forces and patterns, what would it do
to our connection with the real world to regard only the concrete
embodiments of those forces and patterns as “reality itself”?
Earlier I wrote that we tend to live our lives in “the immediate and
the concrete.” By contrast, I am asserting here that our destiny is
largely shaped by the battle between two sets of vast but subtle
forces—”the battle between good and evil”—that powerfully shape the
concrete reality we experience in an immediate way.
The question reasonably arises, How real are such forces? This, in
turn, is part of a still larger question of how real, in general, are those
supposed “things” that are abstracted from concrete realities?
My position is that well-conceived abstractions are very real. Or, to
put it another way, are as important for our perceiving our reality as
anything else.
What appears to be a dramatic challenge to that position can be
found in Richard Ned Lebow’s Forbidden Fruit: Counterfactuals and In
ternational Relations.
In the course of exploring some of the philosophical issues raised by
his “counter-factual” explorations, Lebow takes the position that when
we talk about society and politics, we have departed from “reality itself”
as soon as we get away from “first-order ‘facts.’” Our concepts are
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“ideational and subjective” and somewhat “arbitrary.” Our theories are
reflections of “social construction,” and “can only be true by conven
tion.” They “tell us more about our view of the world than about the
world itself.” “Social ‘facts’ are reflections of the concepts we use to de
scribe social reality, not of reality itself.”
In a statement that seems clearly to reject the reality of our abstrac
tions about the human world, Lebow declares: “There is no such thing
as a balance of power, a social class, or a tolerant society.”
(By the way, it is not only in the social realm that Lebow sees this
issue: “Temperature,” he says, “is undeniably a social construction, but is
a measure of something observable and real: changes in temperature
measure changes in the energy levels of molecules.” I do wonder, inci
dentally, whether the notions of “energy levels”—or of “molecules,” for
that matter—are any more factual than that of “temperature.”)
If Professor Lebow were correct, that would greatly diminish the sta
tus of the “forces” that I’m declaring here to be perhaps the major actors
in the human drama. Mere “constructions.” But I do not believe that
Lebow’s assertion is correct that “real” must mean “concrete,” and that
whatever is abstracted from the concrete is less real or even not real.
I would maintain, contrariwise, that these forces—of wholeness and
brokenness, good and evil—are deeply and importantly real, perhaps
even more importantly real than the concrete “first-order” facts.
Here are some of the challenges I would pose to Lebow’s position:
What’s more real, a particular fireworks display in some small Amer
ican town on the 4th of July, or something that could be called “the
American tradition” of exploding fireworks on the 4th of July?
Walking along the street, one hears two people having a conversa
tion. They are speaking in English. Is the exchange of words, or of
sounds, that constitute that conversation—what I imagine Professor
Lebow would call a “first-order” concrete fact—more real than “the
English language”?
Getting still closer to the nature of that “integrative vision” I’ve been
presenting here as an important dimension of how things work in the
human world, I’d ask two other questions:
First, there are a great many human beings walking around on this
planet. Are the individual organisms more real than “the human
genome”? (I’d say that in some ways, the genome is a more fundamen
tal reality than any of us who are temporary embodiments of it.)
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The other question: If we know an individual, and observe a wide as
sortment of his actions and statements, which manifest a degree of con
sistency in their nature and quality, can we speak of this person’s
“character”? And is that character less real—or is it perhaps more
real?—than the various individual behaviors from which we inferred
the underlying “character” of the man?
When the integrative vision being presented here infers the existence
of something large and deeply interwoven into the concrete level that
we perceive, and for that reason “abstracted” from that concrete level, it
employs concepts and ways of thinking parallel to the more abstract el
ements of those four questions, above.
As with the fireworks tradition, and the English language, the ideas
presented here focus on the patterns that get transmitted through time
in cultural systems.
As with the genome, this “integrative vision” argues that the pattern
is more fundamentally real—because it is a more fundamental determi
nant of what happens in our ongoing reality—than its temporary em
bodiments.
It has been said that a hen is an egg’s way of making another egg. I
would propose that this observation be altered to say that both the hen and
the egg are a genetic pattern’s way of perpetuating itself. Similarly, a human
being can be regarded as a culture’s way of perpetuating the culture.
As with the issue of an individual’s character—the “spirit” that’s ex
pressed in the various particular behaviors of the person—the notion of
good and evil forces identifies elements of “spirit” that operate in cul
tural systems through the generations, showing consistency in the na
ture of what they impart.
These forces involve patterns whose mechanisms and character and
effects can only be inferred from their imprint on many more specific
events. They exist, therefore, at a level “abstracted” from that of our
usual daily perception.
Abstracted, but not less real for that.
Realities versus “Mere Concepts”
Not all concepts are “real” in the same way. Some have a reality
through the fact that people’s thoughts and actions are shaped by
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the concepts in their minds. But others—like “biological evolution,”
and “the battle between good and evil”—are real whether or not
people perceive them, or think in those terms.
This is not to go down Plato’s path toward the notion of an ultimate
reality consisting of Platonic Forms. The key question here is not
about our minds, or the categories that exist in it, but about what it is
that shapes our world.
As I recall the Platonic argument, it asserted that because a great
many things are called “table,” there must be an ideal Form of a table of
which each table is but an embodiment. If I recall, also, these Forms are
supposed to be eternal.
So are we then required to believe that that the Form of a “table” ex
isted for some 13.8 billion years before there existed a creature who
wanted a table, conceived of a table, and constructed something that
would serve as a table?
Yes, the concept of a table, or a “Tisch” (German) or a “stol” (Russian)
does have a reality in that in much of the world there are cultures and
minds that employ the concept. And that concept does have an impact
on the world, as people think in terms of “table” as they design, con
struct, buy, and use certain pieces of furniture.
But in such cases, the category gets its reality from the impact on the
world of people having those concepts in their minds.
It is different with what I am talking about here regarding “the battle
between good and evil.” The contention between the forces of whole
ness and brokenness has a reality, I maintain, that is not dependent
upon people perceiving it or thinking in those terms.
Similarly with the evolution of life. Life was being shaped by an evo
lutionary process—involving mutation and natural selection—for 3.5
billion years before Darwin et al. came to understand the nature of the
forces at work in shaping the living world in which we are embedded.
That evolutionary process did not need Darwin in order to become a
real and important part of the earth’s story.
Consider also the “panics” that brought serious collapses of the
American economy during the 19th century and up till the inaugura
tion of Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. The the events of those times—such
as the runs on the banks—could not be understood at the most concrete
level of individual decisions to attempt to rescue their money. It was
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something systemic, collective, contagious—therefore abstract. If that
collective “panic” wasn’t real, how come so many lives were adversely af
fected in such important and concrete ways? Something must have been
real at the collective level to produce such a pattern of human distress.
To see things in terms only of the pieces is to miss the essential di
mension of interconnection so densely woven by the interplay of cause
and effect. To imagine that all our concepts are mere “constructions” is
to deny the claim on our heartfelt allegiance of the basic values at stake
in our human drama.
Our abstractions may not capture reality perfectly, but to conceive of
the really real as only what we can concretely perceive is to deny the
multi-layered richness of the world we live in. “Reality itself” consists of
far more than the concrete.
The Water and the Wave
Here’s an analogy for the different levels of our reality, from con
crete to abstract. Something real is moving across the water in a
wave. But it is not the individual drops of water whose movement
makes the wave. Those drops of water just move up and down. The
water is what a force uses to transmit the wave.
Here is a metaphor for the multi-layered character of our reality.
Consider humanity at the concrete level as so many drops of water
making up a sea. If we look at the water drop by drop, what we see is that
each one bobs up and down. If we step back and look at the larger pic
ture, we see something quite different: we see waves moving across the
surface of the sea.
It is the wave that makes each bit of water rise and fall. And the
movement we observe across the surface, with the rolling wave, does not
involve the water flowing, as in a river’s current. In the crosswise direc
tion of the waves’ motion, each bit of water is essentially stationary.
Only the wave moves.
But isn’t the sea—and isn’t the wave—made up only of the water?
Yes, at the concrete level of the molecules of H2O. But the wave is a dif
ferent level of reality. It is a force that operates, affecting the water, but
existing on a different plane.
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So it is with the operations of the patterns and forces in the human
system over time. We can look at the actions of specific individuals, or
specific generations, or specific societies—and those movements will
make sense within their own framework. But to understand truly the
reasons for those movements, we need to look at the waves moving
through the system of concrete actors, moving those actors and shaping
the overall drama being enacted.
So when I say, in my definition of evil, that I am talking about a force
(or pattern, or spirit) that moves through the human system—and
when I do not talk about “evil” in terms of evil people—I am talking
about the wave, and about how it moves the water but is not the same as
the water.
We Are Not Dwellers in Plato’s Cave, But…
In addition to the reality that is visible to us in our daily lives,
there’s a profound reality of powerful forces operating around us.
The better we understand the mechanisms of those forces, the better
our chance of controlling them instead of being controlled by them.
Not long ago, while floating between being awake and asleep, I was
powerfully struck by an image. It is not easily conveyed, but I will try.
I saw myself crouched on the earth. I understood myself to be repre
senting humanity. The important action, however, was not with me,
down on the ground, but in the sky above. Actually, the sky itself was
only partially visible, filled as it was with great metallic spheres and in
termeshing gears of bronze rotating this way and that, like spherical as
trolabes. In that instant, I understood that as much as we move around
down here on the earth, the gyrations of those spheres, and the meshing
of those gears, were playing a powerful role in shaping the world in
which we operate.
It occurs to me that this is my substitute for Plato’s famous image of
the cave, whose dwellers imagine that they are seeing reality when what
they behold are but the shadows cast by the source of the real light onto
the wall of their cave.
In my image, there’s nothing illusory about what the mass of hu
manity considers reality. But that reality—the concrete, down-to-earth
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level of things—cannot be well understood on the level we can perceive.
We are enmeshed in a world of great forces—those discussed here and
others as well—that can be seen only when we raise our gaze to a higher
level.
The movement of these great spheres shapes both us and our world.
And the better we understand the mechanics by which these forces op
erate, the more chance we have of controlling them and not just being
controlled by them.
Something Worth Calling “Spirit”? The “As If” Factor
There are reasons why, even when regarding these contending
forces of good and evil in purely secular terms, it makes sense to
speak of those forces in terms of “spirit.” That’s because in many
ways they act as if they were vast spirits with a kind of “intent,”
and because their impact touches something of the “spirit” within
the core of our being.
Language is a funny thing. Words have history, and history instills into
words a set of connotations. When a word is used to mean something
that varies to some degree from its historical usage, the question can
legitimately be raised as to whether it is more illuminating or mislead
ing to use the word.
The phenomenon that I have called “evil” raised that question. For
some, the word calls to mind Satan and his minions—which is not what
I intend. For others, it brings up images of bad people, or inborn aspects
of human nature—which is also not what I had in mind.
Nonetheless, the phenomenon I described has so many of the essen
tial characteristics associated with the word—and the power and reso
nance of the word seems so appropriate for conveying what we’re up
against—that I believe it is very much the right word.
A similar set of questions arises with respect to the word “spirit,”
which I propose to use as equivalent, in some contexts, to the word
“force.” If an evil force is something that moves the world in the direc
tion of brokenness (“imparts a pattern of brokenness to what it
touches”), that in itself connects with one of the main connotations of
“spirit” in our language.
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Spirit has long been understood as something that we cannot see di
rectly, but that we infer from the way the things we do see move. The
word derives from words for breath (inspire, expire) and wind. And
spirit is indeed like the wind.
We do not see the wind, but looking through our window we know
there’s a wind from the swaying of the trees. To be “in-spired,” for exam
ple, is to be moved by something. When a team is infused with “team
spirit,” there is something shared by the team members that enables
them to act as a team to achieve their common goals.
Not visible: that’s part of the essence of the meaning of spirit.
Consider “the Spirit of ‘76”—referring to the collective
passion/ideas/values/goals that rose up among a substantial portion of
the population of colonial America in 1776, and that gained expression
in the Declaration of Independence and in the willingness of a great
many people to risk much to gain independence from the mighty
British colonial power.
Such a thing as this “Spirit of ‘76”—which persisted in a powerful
way as an ideal that inspired and moved Americans for generations after
the nation was founded—surely has many of the properties of an entity.
It is not “just an abstraction.” It moves things in the world.
Our world cannot be properly understood in rational and empirical
terms without reference to such invisible forces. One cannot “see” love
or rage or panic, but they nonetheless move things in the world. One
cannot see patriotism or “Christian ethics” or the spirit of hope in the
crowd in Grant Park on Election Night, 2009. But we can see that things
in the world move differently under their influence.
Two other properties might make it appropriate to speak of an invis
ible force in terms of “spirit.”
Speaking that way makes sense if that “force” “touches” that part of
human beings that we might consider “of the spirit.” When the impact
of a force is felt directly on the core values of our humanity, when it con
sistently either enhances life or degrades and destroys it, that force is it
self “of the spirit.”
When Rush Limbaugh, for example, works for a generation to
weaken the force of “kindness” in America—as his hate-mongering
rhetoric surely has succeeded in doing—we can rightly say that the
force that is working through him is expressing a dark “spirit.”
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When we behold such spirits “animating” the way things are moving
in our world, toward good or evil, we are likely to be moved in profound
ways that call forth deep energies that might be called “spiritual” pas
sions.
[NOTE: Think of how we, as an audience, feel when we witness the
contrast, in It’s a Wonderful Life, between two scenarios for our
characters’ society: one called Pottersville, shaped by the spirit of
selfish greed; and one, called Bedford Falls, shaped by an altruistic
caring for others. Think of the words in the “Battle Hymn of the
Republic”—”as he died to make men holy, let us die to make men
free”—with which Union soldiers in the war that ended slavery
went off to battle.]
So there is an aspect of spirit to be found in ourselves, and a corre
sponding aspect referring to vast forces at work in our world.
And that brings us to the second property that makes use of the word
“spirit” especially fitting in speaking of a force: that is when the force
can be seen to be working AS IF it had an intention or purpose bearing
upon those deep values core to our humanity and our fulfillment.
(Of the ideas in this book, this—involving envisioning a force acting
“as if” it were purposeful—is the one I find most challenging to wrap
one’s mind around.)
To be clear, I am not suggesting that any kind of conscious being, an
entity with feelings or desires, is involved when an “evil spirit” is at work.
However, the workings of this network of elements—woven together
into a “coherent force” through cause and effect (as described in Chap
ters 5, and 6)—does operate remarkably as if it were a malevolent force
at work.
And it is here especially that we can benefit from making use of that
ancient, resonant, fraught word, “spirit.”
Where history provides a glimpse of a relatively “pure case” of a force
of brokenness—and in America today we have the dubious privilege of
witnessing such a force unambiguously aligned with brokenness—one
can see a kind of “opportunism” at work. Where the forces of wholeness
have weakened, the force of brokenness advances through the breach—
as if some spirit of darkness were looking to expand its empire.
But this should be understood as, basically, the same kind of “as if”
as when we speak of water “seeking” a lower spot to flow to.
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During the presidency of George W. Bush, when America was being
damaged almost across the board in terms of its values and its institu
tions and, eventually, its power and material condition, I wondered: If
there were some diabolically clever Evil Being that wanted to damage
the nation, how much more effective a course of demolition could it
devise than that being enacted on an ongoing basis by the force then
animating that presidency? The answer seemed to be that the damage
being inflicted by the force operating through that presidency was
nearly as great as a conscious “spirit” with intelligent strategy could
have accomplished.
Again, I posit no such Evil Being. But I do perceive that the forces of
brokenness and wholeness—though they can be explained in naturalis
tic, rational, secular terms—are so vast and enduring, so subtle and
transcendent and opportunistic in their operation, that they do seem of
a spiritual nature—acting as if they were animated by benign or malign
intention.
Finally, I believe it can be useful strategically to employ the word
“spirit” in talking about these forces. For one thing, it alerts us to the in
tellectual challenge it represents to comprehend these phenomena that
are so far removed from what is immediately visible, yet so powerful in
shaping out world. And in addition, it invites us to relate to them with
the same kind of moral and spiritual passion that centuries of our fore
bears brought to their relationship with good and evil.
It is “spirit” of a wholly secular sort. But our world is not without its
vast unseen forces, including those for good and evil. And our inner ex
perience regarding this “battle between good and evil” is not without
spaces of a deep and numinous kind.