The dangers of absolute rightness

The art of politics is compromise.  Compromise makes adjustments so that the maximum amount of benefit accrues to the maximum number of people.  At least, that is the ideal use of compromise.

Religion does not value nor even tolerate compromise.  When someone or some group believes they have been given instructions from some form of divinity, how can they even consider compromising?  For that reason all religions have splintered into smaller groups from time to time, as various members get a different set of instructions which cannot be reconciled with the previous ones.  There is no “sort of” in “revealed truth”.

Obviously religions, as a general domain, do not value compromise;  in fact, they see it as sinful because it finds changes in the inerrant word of God(s).

When political compromise is useful, religion can block it.  When the political leaders value religion strongly, they become less and less willing to compromise.  Instead of compromise, one side must win, and that side, by definition, will have been the “correct” side.  According to the winners, at least.  

The mixture of religious thinking with political pragmatism results in wars and terrible tragedies, all in the name of unprovable beliefs.

 

Religious thinking is not restricted to deism or theology.  It is based on the quality of absolute rightness.  History teaches us that there are political beliefs that are identical in structure to religious beliefs with the exception that deism is not a necessary quality for absolute rightness.  The early days of fascism come to mind, as does the Soviet regime in the middle of the last century.  Many other examples come to mind.  No state based on absolute values can be a healthy nor happy state, and the people in it will have neither. 

The problem is not religion, per se, though that is a prime and clear example of absolutist thinking.  It is the absolutist thinking itself that is the disorder.  Unless the absolute value includes human life and the quality of that life we could expect to be trampled and crushed between absolute "rights" that do not value us as human beings.

When several states are absolutist, conflicts become inevitable, and since the absolute values do not include human life or happiness, they war with each other, and their people suffer and suffer terribly.

But how can there be compromise with absolute rightness?  We know the answer and we know the cost.  But we tolerate such thinking, because, of course, it is right.