I had an interesting reaction to this post by Scott Alexander: it creeped me out. The post is about a reconciliation of sorts with Chris Kavanagh, a guy Scott Alexander tried to have a ‘beef’ with, and a further elaboration on if it’s worthwhile to try to analyze evidence on one’s own or just defer to expert consensus. All very reasonable, as usual for Scott. And it creeped me out.
Specifically, it reminded me of this scene from Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (which you should totally watch), in which a mountaineer caught in a blizzard is fainting, and an ice spirit comes to lull him to sleep (and death):
I feel like the subtext in that post was essentially the ice spirit’s words: the snow is warm. The ice is hot. And I suppose I feel this because at the time I was writing A Cage For Your Head, where I was trying to summon fire. Coming across icy rationality was not an aid to that. Which leads me to the two dueling and contradictory truths: the truth of ice and the truth of fire.
Truth of Ice
The truth of ice is primarily expressed through reason. You see it in science, mathematics, some philosophy, and some art. I have seen Tolstoy’s work described as a beautiful crystal palace, and while it would perhaps be unfair to say it is an ice palace, Tolstoy clearly does not have the lunatic fire powering Dostoyevsky (at least before Tolstoy converted). Another example of icy art:
And of course, Scott Alexander’s work is a prime example of the truth of ice. He himself has mentioned that he is “uncomfortable with dramatic expressions of emotion”, and after reading him for years, it shows.
That is how the truth of ice earns its name: the lack of emotion, the casting off of emotion.
But to be clear, the truth of ice really is true. You have to do away with emotion to understand certain aspects of reality. It is an angle on reality. But there are other angles.
Truth of Fire
This truth has little or nothing to do with reason. Again, you see it in some art, some philosophy, but where it burns brightest is in spirituality and religion. It has a lot to do with emotion.
In fact, when prompted on this, this is what ChatGPT had to say:
Me: There is a truth of ice, and a truth of fire behind all human words. Describe these truths and provide examples.
ChatGPT: The “truth of ice” and “truth of fire” refer to two fundamental aspects of human communication: the objective, factual aspect (“ice”) and the subjective, emotional aspect (“fire”).
The truth of ice is rooted in objective reality and relies on verifiable facts and evidence. It’s often associated with logic, reason, and scientific inquiry. Examples of the truth of ice might include:
The Earth orbits the Sun.
Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius.
The human body is made up of cells.
These statements are true regardless of anyone’s personal beliefs or feelings about them.
The truth of fire, on the other hand, is rooted in subjective experience and reflects the emotional and psychological state of the speaker. It’s often associated with passion, intuition, and personal perspective. Examples of the truth of fire might include:
“I love you.”
“This painting is beautiful.”
“I feel hurt when you ignore me.”
These statements are true to the speaker’s experience and emotions, but they may not be objectively true for everyone.
It’s important to note that both the truth of ice and the truth of fire are valuable in human communication. The truth of ice helps us navigate the physical world and make informed decisions, while the truth of fire allows us to express our emotions and connect with others on a deeper level.
I disagree with ChatGPT. The truth of fire is not purely subjective. Spirituality is not contingent emotion, but it does have to do with the heart. Perennialist Frithjof Schuon said the truths of religion are seen through the “eye of the heart”. What is this eye of the heart? I’m not sure, but I suspect it is a different faculty from reason and emotion, one that, however, is more closely related to emotion.
The whole reason I am writing this is because of the conundrum of how seeing icy reasoning gives me the sensation I am apprehending truth, but so does reading the Gospels and the Bhagavad Gita. Dostoyevsky famously said:
If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.
I don’t think we have such a stark decision to make, because the truth of ice is not all the truth. The fire also has its truth.
There is such a thing as emotion leading to truth. Consider the Sufi shath, an “ecstatic utterance which may be outrageous in character”. Basically, being so happy that you see the truth. Famous examples are “Glory be to me, how great is my majesty” and “I am the Truth”. These could have been lifted straight from the excellent Advaita Vedantin Ashtavakra Gita which says things like:
How wonderful I am! Glory to me, for whom there is no destruction, remaining even beyond the destruction of the world from Brahma down to the last clump of grass.
How wonderful I am! Glory to me, solitary even though with a body, neither going or coming anywhere, I who abide forever, filling all that is.
How wonderful I am! Glory to me! There is no one so clever as me! I who have borne all that is forever, without even touching it with my body!
How wonderful I am! Glory to me! I who possess nothing at all, or alternatively possess everything that speech and mind can refer to.
...
There is nothing outside of me.
Fire has its own objectivity, it would seem. The perennialists, Ananda Coomaraswamy in particular, wrote much pointing out the similarities of all the religions.
There is also the issue that without emotion, you can’t have morality, and morality is an aspect of the truth. Consider Josef Mengele. What was wrong with him? Was the problem that he was not very good at reasoning? Clearly, his was a deficiency of the heart. The eye of his heart was blind.
But not all scriptures can be called fiery. If the Tao Te Ching is the truth of anything, it is clearly the truth of water. The Ashtavakra Gita or Buddhism are the truth of air or the void. There are many paths available, adapted to different temperaments. They don’t all lead to the same place, but they definitely all lead to something better than ordinary cognition.
Is there an icy spirituality? I am tempted to put forth philosophy. When philosophy started out, the boundary between it and spirituality was quite fuzzy, such that it seems odd to say Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Pythagoras were philosophers and not mystics. Even with Plato, there is definitely something exalting and otherworldly about engaging with his work. Even more, it seems Plato had attained his own sort of enlightenment:
After much effort, as names, definitions, sights, and other data of sense, are brought into contact and friction one with another, in the course of scrutiny and kindly testing by men who proceed by question and answer without ill will, with a sudden flash there shines forth understanding about every problem, and an intelligence whose efforts reach the furthest limits of human powers.
(Quote taken from here). It is very interesting how Buddhism and its nirvana seems to suck up all the air for people questing for esoteric mindstates. I certainly never heard of anyone trying to get what Plato had. I do think I did something weird with my mind, and I even thought the specific weird thing I did is what Plato did, but “understanding about every problem” and an “intelligence whose efforts reach the furthest limits of human powers” are rather high bars to clear, ones that, ironically, I don’t believe Plato himself (or anyone) cleared.
He certainly cleared some sort of bar, however. It is superhuman to have your words be remembered for over 2,000 years.
Interestingly, as philosophy got more and more systematic, more and more icy, it did something sacred: it overthrew itself, giving up on all systems previously invented, and even the possibility of inventing a system that could sort it all out. It’s own version of killing the Buddha on the road. Why is this sacred? Because as the Bhagavad Gita says:
When thy firm soul
Hath shaken off those tangled oracles
Which ignorantly guide, then shall it soar
To high neglect of what’s denied or said,
This way or that way, in doctrinal writ.
Troubled no longer by the priestly lore
Even ice can set you free, if you follow it diligently enough to hit its boundaries and see that the Truth goes on past it.
Like everything, it also has its demonic potential. If you stop at its limits, you can become a nihilist. And collectively, we are not so good at curbing the excesses of the ice, as show by the disenchantment of the world and the withdrawal of spirituality.
We are not good at curbing the excesses of fire either, as shown by the political tribalism and the culture wars. But the answer to those problems is not replacing fire with ice, it is in learning to channel that fire in better ways, into different passions.
Such as love. Love is not some sappy thing. Love can have teeth and claws. I can envision a love that wants to destroy anything that isn’t love. We definitely need some of that.
So bringing it back to the Scott Alexander article that kicked this off, I would rather than the relatively icy reconciliation with Chris Kavanagh we got, Scott had said:
I LOVE YOU CHRIS KAVANAGH!
And since I was critical of Scott, there is only one way for this post to end:
I LOVE YOU SCOTT ALEXANDER!