Not All Slopes Are Slippery

A good blog post sent to me by my friend Cheryl about slippery slopes reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to rant and rave about here for a while now. (Have you ever noticed that you may rant about something and may rave about something and may rant and rave about something, but while you will go off on a rant, you will never go off on a rave?)

In undergrad, one of my majors was in philosophy. Like all other college degree programs, this one had various requirements before graduation. You had to take modern philosophy, ancient philosophy and existentialism. You had to grow a beard and spend at least half the day scowling intently at no one or no thing in particular. You received extra credit for obscure literary or philosophical references tattooed somewhere on your body. You had to do a 150 hour practicum sitting on steps and pontificating over things like whether Plato used the Socratic method or if a philosopher speaks in the forest and there is no one there to hear him, does he really exist? You know, everyday stuff like that. I learned that there is probably no such thing as a triangle and that it is very difficult to properly define a table. Then I also learned some other stuff with less obvious practical application.

Additionally, I had to take the dreaded “Logic” class. Why was this such a dreaded class among philosophy students you may ask? There were a number of reasons. First, logic may not be the strong suit for someone who has chosen to spend an $80,000 education on a major that offers roughly no marketable skills….unless there is suddenly a market for people who can explain the difference between Plato’s philosopher king and Machiavelli’s Prince….(I’m still waiting).

Second, logic as a subject matter tends to quickly and disturbingly begin to resemble math. And math is to philosophy students as tofu is to carnivores. That is to say: quite distasteful. Finally, Logic was a dreaded class because you were required to learn how to write an ampersand which is the doohickey you know as”&”. Surprisingly difficult to write both quickly and legibly.

In Logic, (and this, finally, begins the real point of what I wanted to say), we also learned about various logical fallacies. For example we learned about circular reasoning which is a logical fallacy because circular reasoning is illogical. But there are a couple of fallacies we didn’t study that have invaded modern thought so perniciously that I find myself compelled to speak against them. Whether these are true logical fallacies I will leave to those who went for the whole beard/tattoo/scowl package discussed above. In my mind they are logical fallacies and since this is my blog, that’s good enough. So there.

At least since Franklin wrote Poor Richard’s, and probably since the first OT reading Christian landed in the “new world,” Americans have loved pithy sayings and proverbs. Little “truisms” (especially if they rhyme) routinely take the place of stodgy old relics like “thinking” and “judgment.” Don’t get me wrong, there is more wisdom in the book of Proverbs than I could muster if I lived a thousand years and the same is likely true about Poor Richard’s Almanac, but I often tire of people quoting some out of context, barely understood little diddy instead of giving some issue some rational thought. There are two such sayings that have a metaphysical bee in my epistemological bonnet today.

1. “That’s a slippery slope.”

We all know this saying. The idea is that if you continue a certain path to a presumed logical conclusion and that conclusion is bad in some way, then you shouldn’t get on that path to begin with because you will go tumbling bum over noggin down to that aforementioned bad conclusion. There is often great truth in this notion and regularly good practical application. It is not its use to which I object, but its overuse. There are a number of problems with this notion, but I want to rail against only one (would one ever “rant and rail”? ….hmmmm), by tossing out a pithy little saying of my own: “not all slopes are slippery.”

My issues stem from people using the “slippery slope” fallacy to defend their cowardice or to avoid giving something actual thought. Let me toss out a couple somewhat controversial topics to illustrate my point. (Disclaimer: I have and will again own firearms. I’m not really some lunatic peacenik who hates all guns). Organizations like the NRA (with apologies to my gun toting friends … (I find it always prudent to be diplomatic to the armed)), often make the argument that any law restricting the ownership of guns is bad, not because (allegedly) they are opposed to a world where everyone on your block does not own old-soviet, black market, semi-automatic assault rifles, but because this puts you on the feared “slippery slope” where you will soon slide all the way down to a point where you can not so much as wield a butter knife without being arrested.

Now, I will concede that you could follow a logical progression suggesting that if you allow the government to make laws restricting the use of firearms, the basis for that argument could always be used as the basis for further restriction until you reached the point where not only could you not own your own rocket launcher, but you could not even own a shotgun for hunting, fishing or protecting the chastity of your dependents. And I would never want that. However, just because you can follow a logical progression in your mind, does not mean such a progression will take place or that the people who want to restrict personal private ownership of large caliber machine guns, will automatically want to restrict the ownership of hunting rifles. And more importantly, the mere possibility of an overreaction should not keep you from making a move that is beneficial.

That would be like saying that you should never go down the path to the beautiful mountain lake because if you kept walking on that same path you would fall off a cliff. How about just deciding to stop on the path wherever it is best to stop. Shocking, I know.

But if you take something case by case (or gun by gun) to make a determination, you have to put in the work of coming up with a thoughtful, thorough, well-reasoned argument, as opposed to simply furrowing your brow and declaring “you don’t dare let them take your Uzis because it will put you on a…wait for it….’slippery slope.’” See, that way, you sound like you know what your talking about when really you have just suggested that we should never step to a better place because if we over step and run down to some different place altogether dire consequences will necessarily ensue.

Some of my other personal favorite illustrations from my life in the Church where this “logic” is used vigorously and prolifically, would include:

a. We can’t let women (fill in some act in the worships service such as serve communion) at Church because before you know it they will be Elders and demanding things like that the women’s restroom have couches….what’s that? They already do? Why on earth would you want to lounge in a bathroom? It’s madness I tell you, madness. Wait, what was I talking bout?....

or

b. We can’t accept that any passage in scripture is anything short of historical fact because then we would have to toss out the whole Bible as fiction. E.g., if Noah did not literally have every species of animal on the ark then Jesus never lived. Regardless of what you believe there, one does not necessitate the other.

To this notion of the slippery slope, I have to borrow from brilliant insight once offered by Rene Descartes himself who said, “Poppycock!!” …or something like that.

2. Everything in moderation

Like with the “slippery slope” fallacy, there is some truth in this one and just plain old good sense. Something which might be toxic in excess may actually be good for you in moderation. It also assumes a certain balance in life which for the most part is helpful. But the fact that it is often true, does not make it universally so.

For example, does God call us to be generous in moderation? To love in moderation? Was the love that saw Jesus sacrificed for us “moderate”? Should we care for our children in moderation? Should we give ourselves to God in moderation? Should we commit ourselves to our marriage or spouse in moderation? Should we really eat doughnuts in moderation? Even the freshly made ones? You get my point. There are certain things where extreme behavior is called for. If we seek only moderation, we will direct ourselves toward mediocrity and the sort of luke-warm life that is repellent to the faithful, bold and ambitious.

Balance and moderation is good when constructing a sandwich or deciding how much wine to drink or many other things we could easily name. But be wary not to become so enamored of the concept that you weed out all extreme behavior from your life. Certain things are just better and meaningful only if pursued in the extreme. I don’t try to moderate my love for my wife and kids (see the picture above...how could I?) or my dedication to God. My ego, selfishness, etc. unfortunately moderate those things more than I like, but I do not consciously seek moderation in those areas and neither should you.

In other words, “everything in moderation” is too extreme. We need to moderate our use of that “logic” or find ourselves on the slippery slope to mediocrity.

Tune in some day in the future when I will discuss everything-in-moderation’s ugly step sister, “the truth lies somewhere in-between.”