Believing, waiting, and morality

I’ve been reading a book of essays by William James, called The Will To Believe. It has a critique of science, the scientific outlook, and its impact on moral life, which is very relevant to right now, when STEMlords are literally destroying the state, openly, from within the government itself (as opposed to just through corporate power, as had previously been the case).

The will to believe basically is contrasted with the so-called duty to wait—to wait until totally incontrovertible evidence appears, and only then deciding to believe. The problem with this, for James, is that this experience never actually materializes—it is itself the kind of airy fantasy that the scientific mind so often mocks, in all systems of belief, religion, so-called soft sciences, the humanities, etc. Clearly, this duty to wait has totally won, and dominated any will to believe that has tried to exist, over the years.

The neoliberal democratic consensus—epitomized by Obama—was the inevitable conclusion of the victory of the duty to wait, over any kind of will to believe. Neoliberalism lacked all will, all beliefs, and was characterized by its weirdly dutiful sense that data, objectivity, and being calm and measured were somehow the best values.