Does Idolatry Violate the Golden Rule?
On Liberalism and Negative Theology
There are two versions of the Golden Rule:
1) Treat others as you would want to be treated. (positive)
2) Don’t treat others as you would not want to be treated. (negative)
There are, likewise, two versions of the ban on Idolatry:
1) I am the Lord your God. (positive)
2) You shall have no other Gods before me. (negative)
Nassim Taleb says that the negative form of the golden rule is superior to the positive form.
It’s a mistake to extrapolate from what I want to what others want, but it’s usually OK to extrapolate from what I don’t want to what others don’t want. This is idea is consistent with Taleb’s Humean and Popperian influence, according to which knowledge is ascertained by ruling out what is false, not by proving what is true. It’s also consistent with his Hayekian influence, whereby centralized intelligence underperforms relative to decentralized intelligence. The greatest errors are committed by those who think they are immune to error.
One way to think of idolatry is as a mistaken application of the positive version of the golden rule. You project onto God what you want and imagine God wants the same. In this sense, even monotheists can be idolatrous. “You shall have no other gods before me” is part b) of the first Biblical commandment, but it comes to clarify part a) “I am the Lord your God.” The point is that it’s relatively easy to know there’s a God and to worship God, but it’s difficult to do so in a way that doesn’t project the ego onto God and worship an inflated version of oneself. As Xenophanes writes, “If humans were horses, the gods would have hooves.”
The second part of the ban on idolatry means this:
Don’t treat God as you would want to be treated. Rather, refrain from treating God as you would want to be treated. Just as you would not like to be objectified, don’t objectify God. Just as you would not like to be controlled, don’t seek to control God, etc.
Personally, I’m a believer in what the word “God” points to. But if the word doesn’t work for you, use a different one. The category of idolatry should still apply as a caution against mistaking your own thoughts for what’s true about the cosmos, the finger pointing at the moon for the moon.
Whether the ethical version of golden rule derives from the theological version or vice versa is perhaps a chicken-or-egg type question. What matters is that negative liberty, to use Isaiah Berlin’s phrase, is deeply connected to negative theology.
Liberalism is not the opposite of theocracy. It is theocracy in the mode of negative theology. To the extent that liberalism strives to protect more than just the right to be left alone, it must risk positive theology, and thus, a more robust theocracy, strange as that may sound.
Why am I wrong?
P.S.—My poem, “Elegy for a Special Kid,” is featured in Poetry Daily.
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