Written by Malachi Brown
Beliefs are peculiar things to hold. The fact that we are so passionate about them attests to something. In a society where “open-mindedness” is a chief virtue, it feels increasingly difficult to draw a line anywhere but against people who are intolerant. We live now at the most polarized point in American history thus far. Thousands of people debate on Facebook whether federal policies are helpful or harmful, and millions of arguments happen each day in hopes of convincing the other side.
Two math majors might argue over the answer to a problem, or foreign language students over a translation. Why argue if there is no objective truth? Why would nearly every art critic favor Picasso over a 5-year-old’s painting despite them both being abstract cubism if there is no such thing as beauty? And why does a human rights activist stand any chance of prevailing if there is no such thing as objective good? We must say that there are three concretes: truth, beauty and goodness, otherwise, there is nothing.
Deconstruction of the beliefs we grow up with is a good thing. It helps us figure out why we believe what we believe, and whether what we believe is worth it. Deconstruction is a good thing as long as something is reconstructed. But to stay deconstructed is to say that there is no “good” or “bad,” and that there are only things. Someone who says 2 and 2 equals 5 would be just as correct as someone who would say it’s 4. Someone who says my clay-mug art project from third grade is better than Michaelangelo’s David would be right because there is no standard of beauty. Worst of all, human rights activists would have nothing because there would be no reason for people to be treated well because there is no basis for saying “fair treatment is good” because what is “good” anyway?
These are all humanity strives to find with any argument: truth, beauty and goodness. All beliefs are a grasping for one of these three things, and to have an opinion is to believe that these exist; to believe these do not exist is to trade in all beliefs for mere preferences. To converse, discuss and argue, are all efforts to clarify our ideas of these things, so every opinion you read in this section is a grasp at either truth, beauty or goodness.
