Absolutes miss gray in-between

Are you a head or heart kind of person?

I imagine that some readers of this column have not only concluded that I have no heart, but that I’m a real head case, too. After all, I’ve come down on fundamentalists of a certain stripe, have as much as said that rapture believers are nutty, and I’ve noted that “intelligent design” isn’t.

I’ve said that blind belief should be avoided and that faith should be regularly questioned, if not vigorously interrogated. Various political allusions should make it clear that I don’t belong to the party that begins with an “R” for “wrong.”

Some of you might also wonder if I’m at all a representative sample of secular, humanist critters and whether we have any fun: It’s apparently 24/7 criticize, nag and complain. (Rest assured, we do take vacations.)

I’ve been duly scolded for various wrongheaded opinings. However, I’ve also received a fair amount of praise for these same declamations, which have been deemed “excellent,” “enjoyed” and “appreciated.”

And, from the other end of the spectrum, I’ve been warned that I’m not being hard enough, that I’m in fact a bit of a wimp when it comes to getting after religious wackos.

This brings me to the “head or heart” straw man that I posed earlier. Let’s bring him down. I’m going to give fun a fiefdom in the realm of the heart. We don’t, after all, think of “heady laughter,” do we?

But reasoning and thinking (or what passes for it, in my case) can also be fun, so the two get some land in the same territory.

And there goes the straw man, because the head and heart are, of course, inseparable. No heart, no head, and vice versa. When Marie Antoinette famously lost her head, because of her (probably fictitious, alas) heart’s sentiment – “Let them eat cake!” – both ceased to function.

Sometimes we appear to live more in the head, and sometimes more the heart, but any apparent separation is an illusion. Readers of my food column, also here in The Spokesman-Review, can guess that cooking is a great deal of fun for me. The kitchen, in fact, offers terrific examples of how the heart and head work in tandem.

Many types of cooking are head-oriented; baking, for instance, requires precise algorithms. Using a teaspoon of baking powder when a tablespoon is called for might well be disastrous. And, should a heart impulse rush a bread’s rising, you might as well stick with “It’s a Wonder they call it bread.”

So the straw man falls again. Why shouldn’t a reasoned approach to baking be fun?

But a magician’s trick can fool us into believing that the coin has two separate sides – heart, faith; head, reason – even though we know we only pocket one thin dime. This mirage, the mistake of either/or thinking, can easily poison the oasis.

Then faith is a simpleton: “My country, right or wrong.” “You’re either with us or against us.” Beliefs like these are not only vacuous but morally reprehensible.

“My country, right or wrong” is like approving that your husband’s a wife-beater. And “with or against” immediately reveals its childishness: “You’re either for vanilla ice cream or against it.” I prefer chocolate myself, but won’t turn down vanilla, and a swirl works for me, too.

Reason, without heart, has its own potential problems. It need not lack compassion and mercy – essential components of justice – but often does. Scrooge is reason, a calculating bean counter, rich in only one regard. (And, since he doesn’t enjoy it, his wealth isn’t worth having.) Reason, too, when used for certain “cost benefit” analyses, is surely cruelty incarnate.

It simplifies the picture to see only black and white, then, but it’s rarely an accurate description of reality. Something even so simple as “day or night” is a distortion. It’s not a valid concept everywhere, all the time, as any visitor to Carlsbad Caverns can attest.

The world’s a grim place for many, and “Life is hard and then you die” isn’t a cynical statement. It just pretty well describes the situation for more millions of people than I like to think about.

We need both head and heart to improve this world, never mind heads-or-tails absolutists from either side. A mix of the two appeals to my palate; good artists revel in shades of gray.