Category Archives: Philosophy/Ideas

Mennonite Mothers are to Blame

Conspiracy Theories, Critical thinking, Death of Truth, Epidemics/Pandemics, Ethics, Health, Mennonites, Philosophy/Ideas, Rebel, religion, The Sleep of Reason, Trust and Distrust

 

Let’s get back to Mennonites.  We have noticed that in many places in North America the resurgence of measles on account of vaccine resistance has occurred in areas with a large number of Mennonites. Why is that? Is that a coincidence?

In my view, the problem is that many Mennonites live in a culture of belief. What I mean by that is that often Mennonites robustly indoctrinate their young. From a very early age, Mennonite mothers (and of course fathers) are careful to foster Christian faith in their offspring. They teach those children that they must have faith. Faith in God and the inerrant word of God evinced in the Christian Bible. I know that many religious groups do the same thing, but Mennonites definitely do and they do it thoroughly. Their children must believe what they believe without evidence.

 

Personally, I consider this a mistake. That is a very bad habit to get into. By doing that Mennonites (and others who do it too) shackle their children. If parents don’t give their children the opportunity to think for themselves their children will not learn to think for themselves in the real world. They won’t learn if they are not given the opportunity. That means they must be allowed to make their own mistakes. Even if we think they are wrong. We should give them evidence to encourage them to change their minds. Not indoctrination. Children must learn to think and think critically. This is true even when it comes to important matters such as choosing to believe or not to believe what their parents have taught them. In fact, this thinking skill is most important in the most important matters.

If children do not learn to think for themselves, they will be constant prey for charlatans, con-men, and hucksters.  That goes for religious hucksters as well. And there are legions of them. They are ubiquitous. It is much better for children to learn to think for themselves and make decisions based on evidence and logical arguments or inferences rather than faith inculcated by their parents. Thinking is a good habit to get into. Believing without evidence is a very bad habit to get into. I know when we are very young we need to believe our parents to keep us out of children or get hurt. But when we are old enough we must learn to think for ourselves or we will be in big trouble. And if enough children overly credulous when they get older society will be in trouble.

Those are skills that are worth much more than any belief. Such skills are literally invaluable.  That is what parents should teach their young charges.

To take away their right and obligation to think for themselves is to rob them of what they will most need after their parents are gone, namely, the ability to think and overcome challenges which they will inevitably meet. I know parents mean well when they try to inculcate their children, but they are misguided when they do it after their children are old enough to think for themselves. And to the extent they are old enough, they should be allowed to make decisions for themselves.

It is only by trying to think that we can learn to cultivate a spirit of questioning, of scrutinizing evidence, of weighing evidence and making rational decisions.  These are the skills children will need as they grow and have to make important decision such as whether or not to take vaccines. Robbing children of that skill could be considered child abuse, because it robs them of one of the most important skills they will ever need and they will otherwise be unable to learn.

Parents can guide such learning and offer help to them in learning these skills, but to take away their decision-making power is unfair to them.

Children must also learn to avoid the trap of wishful thinking. It is one of the easiest traps to fall into. The most difficult thing in the world is to disbelieve what you want to be true.  The easiest thing in the world is to believe what you want to be true.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said it was not important to have the courage of one’s convictions. It was much more important to have the courage to attack one’s convictions.”  That is what we have to learn to do. That is the basis of critical thinking. It is perhaps its  most important element.  Nietzsche also said, “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”

He also said, “if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire”

Nietzsche realized he was radical in this respect. He showed thinking is fun. He said, “I am dynamite.” I think he meant to say that he was on this earth to break up encrusted ‘truths.’ He was here to attack them, to expose them.

I think many Mennonite mothers, but not all of them, and many Mennonite fathers, but again not all of them, have taught their children to believe what they have been indoctrinated to believe, and that is a dangerous thing as is shown by the fact that too many Mennonite children  have refused to believe measles vaccines are better for them than the alternatives, such as, in extreme cases, such as the woman in Ontario, eating wild flowers.

 

 

Will to Believe

Death of Truth, Epidemics/Pandemics, Ethics, Mennonites, Philosophy/Ideas, reason, Skeptical Philosophy, Trust and Distrust

 

We live in a dangerous society. We see that every day.

One of the problems is the willingness to believe that is so prevalent among people.  For example, Professor Arthur Schafer said that in 1970 there was a strong willingness in the Canadian public to believe that we faced a likely insurrection just because 2 politicians were kidnapped.  The evidence of insurrection was extremely weak, yet when Pierre Trudeau implemented the War Measures Act and civil liberties such as Habeas Corpus were suspended and hundreds of people in Quebec were detained on very thin evidence that they posed a threat, people loved Trudeau.  He was tough. This was his most popular moment. People should have suspended their belief, but instead took a leap of faith. They wanted to belief it was true. People love to do that.

More recently, many people believe that immigrants are the major cause of crime. There is no evidence to support that and a lot of evidence to undermine that belief. Yet it is commonly believed.

This is exactly why irrational beliefs are so dangerous. They can spread like a virus leading to others believing what you believe, even though there is no evidence to support that belief, but even worse, can lead others to believe other irrational beliefs because they have been conditioned to do that by the culture of belief.

It is an obvious fact that some politicians lie.  Some —we know them well—even lie all the time.   The evidence of weapons of mass destruction concocted by the CIA to support actions President George W. Bush who wanted to take against Iraq in order to invade it are just one example. “Credulity is a rampant disease in modern societies,” according to Arthur Schafer. Not only that, but it is one of the most dangerous diseases our world has ever faced.

It is very easy to confuse people. We are not a skeptical rational society, even though, according to Schafer, our very capacity to survive, not just flourish, is dependent upon our diligently, conscientiously, and thoughtfully looking at evidence to support our beliefs.

We can’t always wait until we have decisive knowledge either. Take the case of climate change. The issue is so important because we are facing possible extinction. Sometimes we have to act on probability based on the best evidence and analysis that we can muster. It would be nice if we had perfect knowledge but that is seldom found in the real world. Really, that is never found in the real world. Probability is the best we can muster.

Do we have to pretend that we have certainty? Will people not act unless we exaggerate the level of certainty? Can we live useful effective lives while living with uncertainty? The problem is that there is so much that is uncertain and so little that is certain we really have to learn to embrace uncertainty.

Schafer said, “if you don’t have a healthy scepticism, you are really sunk. As a society we don’t have nearly enough.” We don’t need more credulity. We have to learn critical thinking.  Being infected with irrational beliefs is not healthy. That is asking for trouble—serious trouble. That is why it is so important to root out irrational beliefs that are not based on evidence—genuine evidence, not wishful thinking.

Of course, in recent times we have learned another problem, namely, that many people don’t trust authority anymore. That is what has happened with vaccines. Too many people have lost confidence that they are getting the straight goods from government and are not willing to believe authorities when they tell us it is vitally important for almost all of us to get vaccinated.  We need a rational scepticism in other words. We need to look critically at claims by authorities that vaccines are safe. Then if there is no good reason to doubt them, we should believe them.

We must also turn our sceptical lenses on to the critics. If Robert F. Kennedy for example, is not giving us the straight goods on vaccines we should reject his criticisms.  Irrational criticism—criticism that is contrary to the evidence—is just as dangerous as irrational belief. Neither belief nor criticism should be based on wishes, hunches, or instincts. All must be based on good evidence. The best evidence in fact. Sometimes this makes our job hard because it is not always easy to choose which side is right or rational.

As a result, Schafer concludes that Clifford has got it right and those who feel a liberal tolerance to those who espouse superstitious or irrational beliefs have got it wrong. “It is not permissible to believe whatever makes you feel good,” says Schafer. It is ethically wrong. And we ought to be willing to say so. According to Schafer those who take the attitude that it is permissible to believe whatever makes one feel good is sort of like stealing. “Such beliefs are equivalent to stealing from your fellow citizens by making yourself credulous” says Schafer.

We have to remember that giving up reason and evidence, as the only valid basis for beliefs, is not just unwise it is dangerous. If we base beliefs on sacred texts, authority, or wishful thinking we can come to believe absurdities.  Voltaire got it right when he said, “Those who make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

We have to remember that irrational beliefs can have very serious consequences. We should not do anything to encourage them. We ought to do everything we can to stamp them out. We should be cultivating a spirit of questioning, of careful scrutiny of evidence, of diligent searching for the best and most reliable evidence, and of conscientious analysis of arguments based on evidence. We should do everything we can to foster critical thinking for it is in such horribly short supply and our lives depend on it. That’s why it is unethical to believe without evidence. The ethical life is the rational life. The superstitious life is based on moral flaws.

That’s why we should not tolerate irrational beliefs such as the belief espoused by that Mennonite woman in Ontario who said eating flowers was better at combating measles than vaccines.

 

Infectious Beliefs

Ethics, Philosophy/Ideas, reason, religion, The Sleep of Reason, Vaccines

 

The British philosopher William Kingdon Clifford said “we should not believe anything except those propositions for which we have good evidence and that the confidence we place in our beliefs should be proportional to the amount of evidence that supports them.”  According to Clifford we have a moral duty to engage in the hard work of looking at science, or our own good work in order to consult the best available evidence conscientiously and honestly before we commit to believing.

 

We have to be open-minded. That means that we have to be willing to accept evidence that contradicts our cherished beliefs or that contradicts those propositions we would really like to be true and we must be willing to discard or modify them if the evidence entails such actions. Only on that basis are we entitled to belief something. Only on that basis can a belief be ethical.

 

The fundamental basis for Clifford’s position is that the harm, the evil, the tyranny, the cruelty of humanity is a function of our superstitions, ignorance, and prejudices. As German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, “we have to have not the courage of our convictions; we have to have the courage to attack our convictions.”

 

The basis of all superstition is that people believe things that are false and for which people have no good evidence.  Some people say believing something without evidence is acceptable provided we don’t act on it.  Clifford denies this. People often say that they live most of their lives based on rational evidence and if they choose from time to time to base their beliefs and their actions on horoscopes, or hunches, or perceived answers from God to our prayers, or perceived dictates from ancient sacred texts that is no one else’s business. We should be free to do that. Clifford disagrees.

 

Clifford says that if we believe a statement without evidence because we want to believe that, we are conditioning the mind to do that again. It will then tend to believe another statement without evidence just because we also want to believe it is true. This is really a kind of slippery slope argument. Credulity leads to ever more credulity. It is not possible to sequester such beliefs in order to avoid contamination. Contamination will follow inevitably from our acceptance of beliefs without evidence in one case. Our mind is so trained to think that this is acceptable.

 

Schafer gave an interesting example from his experience as an ethics consultant with hospitals.  If you accept beliefs, such as religious beliefs, without evidence, you are more likely to believe that they should let their children die rather than giving them a needed blood transfusion. One irrational belief leads to another and that other belief may be seriously harmful. In fact, this is what we might be experiencing now with  the explosion of anti-vax beliefs for which there is little or no evidence.

 

Another example that Schafer gave was the father of Turrel Dueck whose father was a fundamentalist Christian who believed that chemotherapy for the treatment of cancer was not appropriate. As a direct result of that irrational belief Turrel’s life was put in eminent danger. His father took him to Mexico for scientifically untested medicines that proved wholly useless. Irrational beliefs lead to more irrational beliefs. As a result of some irrational beliefs some have come to believe that homeopathy is a valid discipline, which Schafer said is total garbage.

Part of the problem is that people pass on their superstitions and their prejudices and irrational beliefs to their children. As a result, ordinary people in ordinary situations can infect others with their irrational beliefs. Irrational beliefs are never innocent. They often have seriously harmful consequences.

Schafer said “Clifford sees irrationality as a kind of infection.” The analogy Schafer employs is that of the person who knows she or he is infected with the aids virus having sex with an unprotected and unaware partner is committing a serious assault on that other person. So too with the person who relies on irrational beliefs. According to Schafer, “the penis or vagina in such circumstances can be a lethal weapon.”  The same is exactly true of irrational beliefs that are accepted without evidence. The people who knowingly engage in unprotected sex without telling their partners of the risk are engaged in spreading infection and ought to be punished. It might be that the criminal justice system is not the best forum for this but the principle remains and is equally applicable to those who adopt irrational beliefs.

“There is no such thing as an innocent religious belief, if religion is irrational,” says Schafer. If it’s not rational it shouldn’t be believed.

 

 

There are no innocent beliefs

Conspiracy Theories, Death of Truth, Epidemics/Pandemics, Ethics, Health, Philosophy/Ideas, Pluralism, reason, Skeptical Philosophy, Social Democracy and Trust, Sociology of Knowledge, Trust and Distrust, Vaccines

 

According to Professor Arthur  Schafer, if we are credulous people then we can easily believe the Christian story, or the Muslim story, or the Jewish story.  Or we can believe as the Mennonite woman interviewed by the CBC believed that eating flowers was as effective at defeating the measles virus as vaccines.

 

If we are credulous, we can believe anything because it makes us feel good. Then we can believe horoscopes because that makes us feel good, even though there is absolutely no evidence to support such beliefs. Even reputable newspapers publish horoscopes. It makes their readers feel good. Then they are more inclined to purchase the newspapers.

If we are credulous people, we can believe that Bill Gates implanted tiny chips into vaccines so that he could control the world, or kill millions of people, without any evidence at all. If we are credulous people our political leaders can make us believe that an election they lost was stolen by the opposition, even in the complete absence of any evidence.

If we are credulous people, we can believe that ivermectin can kill the coronavirus just because it is very effective at killing parasites in livestock even though we have no evidence to support that belief at all. If we are credulous people we will believe anything at all,  just because our political leader who has virtually no scientific knowledge at all, tells us to believe it. Credulity is a very dangerous thing. Not just for individuals, but for society. Society does not work well unless we believe our leaders when belief is rationally justified and do not believe them when the evidence does not support their claims. We cannot afford credulity.

The fact is, according to Arthur Schafer, that our society which many of us think of as secular, is actually “impregnated with a lot of irrational superstitions.”

Today almost no one agrees with William Kingdon Clifford, says Schafer. Schafer says instead, people believe things just because authority figures, such as Presidents, or mothers, or church leaders tell us to believe them. They are willing to accept all manner of irrational beliefs. According to Schafer, many people believe what they have been told to believe by their parents as they grew up, without challenging those beliefs at all. They require no evidence to support them.  As a result, children born and raised in a Muslim home usually become adherents of Islam. Children born and raised in a Christian home usually become adherents of Christianity. Parents want their children to believe them, even when they give no good reasons for doing so.

As a result, Schafer argues that people are entitled to believe what they want to believe, but are not allowed to enforce those views on other. This is called tolerance. In a pluralistic society, we must tolerate diverse views provided they don’t hurt others. To get along with others we must learn to respect their diverse views and must reject their harmful views, that are unsupported by evidence,  but in such a way that we can still tolerate each other. We have to learn to live together. Sometimes that is not easy.

This is the attitude of tolerance. This is a liberal good—a very important  good at that. We tolerate the fact that others have irrational beliefs. We tolerate that they believe any kind of superstition no matter how nonsensical as long as they don’t try to impose it on us.

But Clifford goes farther than that. Clifford is different. He doesn’t believe that your belief in horoscopes is innocent. According to Clifford, says “there are no innocent beliefs.”  All beliefs have consequences.  Many liberals hold that I have the right to believe whatever I want, so long as I don’t harm anyone else. Clifford says that by believing irrational things we are exposing ourselves and the societies in which we live, to serious potential harms. As long as we would harm only ourselves that might be acceptable. But by our actions we are actually exposing many others to serious harms as well through our credulity. That we are not entitled to do. That is morally wrong, he says. Credulity is a harm that we must work hard to suppress. Tolerating irrational beliefs is a sure way to encourage such harms.

 

Credulity is Bad

Conspiracy Theories, Critical thinking, Epidemics/Pandemics, Morality, Philosophy/Ideas, reason, religion, Skeptical Philosophy, The Sleep of Reason, Trust and Distrust

 

 

The philosopher William Kingdon Clifford argued, that to believe anything because it comforts you, or makes you feel good, or sustains you in life, or makes life a little less intolerable, is not just epistemically wrong, not just intellectually wrong, but morally wrong. In fact, if the decision that needs to be made is serious enough, such as whether or not to send people to war, or whether or not to cut health benefits to millions of people to raise money to give tax breaks to wealthy people, or whether or not to encourage  vaccines to fight serious diseases or encourage eating wild flowers instead, the decision could amount to one of the worst crimes that you can commit. That’s a pretty drastic statement. According to Clifford  It is a travesty and has some horrible consequences.  We will get to those later. In any event, according to Clifford this is a morally wrong. I think it is hard to argue with that. Serious decisions must be made on the basis of serious evidence, analysis, and scrutiny before they are made and innocent people suffer.

 

Arthur Schafer, a wonderful philosopher and ethicist from the University of Manitoba, and the first philosopher I ever heard speak in person, is a fan of Clifford’s reasoning. According to Schafer, Clifford sees our reliance   on illusion on false pictures of the universe, as amounting to creating in us a walking time bomb. As Schafer said at talk to a talk given to the Winnipeg Humanists, Atheists, and Skeptics, Society,  “to put it a little less dramatically, when we believe things because they make us feel good, rather than because we have good evidence for them, as Clifford argues, we make ourselves credulous people.” That Clifford says is wicked. Schafer agrees with that conclusion. So do I.

 

Again, we are talking only about serious important issues here. We are not talking about a decision to pick a red jelly bean rather than a white jelly bean from a cup. For those decisions we are completely free to make them on the basis of a whim, or an inkling, or an instinct or even on a guess.  But we can’t justify decisions that seriously affect the health or welfare of other people on such a basis.

 

If we are credulous people we can easily believe, as the Mennonite woman interviewed by the CBC radio did, that eating wild flowers to combat measles is better than taking vaccines. If we have been conditioned by our parents to be credulous, they are partly responsible. Credulity can be dangerous—to ourselves and others. That is why Clifford and Schafer said encouraging credulity is dangerous for society. Not just for the believer, for society.

We can believe whatever we want but we should be careful about helping to create a credulous society. As we are now seeing everywhere, that can cause a lot of harm.

The Big Ideas

Books, civilization, Classic Books, Philosophy/Ideas, Religious Quest in the Modern Age, Truth Seeking

 

The Brothers Karamazov is often called a book of ideas.  In some respect that is an apt description.

In the novel The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky asks big questions.  Does God exist?  If not, can we do whatever we want? And Ivan asks Alyosha the question that is so vital to him, does Alyosha love life more than the meaning of life? Alyosha’s answer is surprising but clear. “love should come before logic…Only then will man be able to understand the meaning of life.” So he tells his brother he should “bring back to life those dead of yours.” He was referring to the great thinkers and artists. And that brings him back to civilization and the eternal verities. The big questions, the big ideas that drive Ivan.

Ivan loves life and loves ideas. He is passionate about both, though usually we see only his love of ideas. Ideas excite him. Ideas drive his life. He doesn’t just want to chase  wine, women and song, but the big ideas, what he calls “the eternal verities.”

Ivan realizes that his younger brother Alyosha, is also driven by ideas, the spiritual ideas, for he too is on a religious quest. That is why he went to the monastery. That is why he has made Elder Zosima his mentor.  He wants to find the spiritual path. As Ivan says, “we callow youths, we have first of all to settle the eternal verities.” Usually, it is often thought, the big ideas must be settled by wise old men, but Ivan disagrees.

What are these big ideas?  He tells Alyosha

“those eternal verities such as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. And those who do not believe in God will bring in socialism, anarchy, and the reorganization of society according to a new scheme…But it really boils down to the same damned thing—they’re all the same old questions, they’re just approached from a different angle. And there are many, many extremely original boys who spend their whole time nowadays debating these eternal questions.”

 

And Alyosha admits to Ivan that these are the most important problems, especially for Russians. But Ivan says what really surprises him is not that they say if God does not exist, they would have to invent God, which is what Voltaire said, but rather that such an idea would have ever occurred to “a vicious wild animal like man. For that concept is so holy, so touching, and so wise that it does man too much honour. For my part I’ve long since stopped worrying about who invented whom—-God  man or man God.” There’s a big question for you.

There is a lot to be passionate about in these ideas. And the Karmazov brothers, are passionate about those ideas and that makes for fascinating reading. And a fascinating life.

 

Chief Seattle: An Old Attitude to nature can provide a New Attitude to Nature

Affinity, expansive religion, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, New Attitude to Nature, Philosophy/Ideas, religion

 

A few years ago, in New Zealand I purchased a poster containing the complete text of the response by Chief Seattle to the President of United States to his offer to purchase land from his tribe, which I posted about yesterday.  I had only read part of it before.  It was one of the most eloquent statements I have ever heard about a genuine approach to nature that was, to some extent, the position of  many North American indigenous people.  It was radically different from the approach of the arriving Europeans.

I recognize that there is controversy over the extent to which this version or any other version accurately records what Chief Seattle said to the President, but I believe the general tenor of the letter records a profound philosophy which I am content to ascribe to Chief Seattle as I don’t know who better deserves the credit for it. I certainly think the thoughts deserve our attention.

The renowned English philosopher A. N. Whitehead once said, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” I think the same things can be said about Chief Seattle. At least as far as environmental philosophy goes. And to think I learned absolutely nothing of it in 4 years of university studying philosophy, proving how deficient my education was at that time, nearly 50 years ago.

Chief Seattle was a Suquamish and Duwamish chief in what we now call western North America. The city of Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington, was named after him.

As Chief Seattle said,

 

“We are part of the earth and it is part of us.

The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers.

The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man—all belong to the same family.”

 

Another way of saying is to say we are all kin. All people and all creatures of the natural world are kin. This basic premise has profound philosophical consequences. For if we recognize that we are all kin we ought to treat each other, and other creatures too, with respect.  I will get to Darwin later, for he gave the scientific basis for this view. I cherish the idea that indigenous philosophy and western science are deeply interwoven. Realizing that also has profound consequences.

To many of the First Nations of North America, they saw themselves as a part of their world.  Their philosophies vary from tribe to tribe, but a common thread, is the recognition that the Earth is our Mother and we are all together. We are all connected. We are all part of Mother Earth. Earth is not separate and apart from us. We are woven together.  This is profound fellow feeling. This philosophy recognizes that what we do to nature we do to ourselves. That is what I call affinity.

 

This idea also has profound significance in the history of religious thought.  The Indo-European word “religio” , which is the root of the word religion, means “linkage” or “connection” and is in my view the basis of all major religions. In fact, it is the core of all religions. More on this later.

I never learned any indigenous philosophy while I pursued a 4 year Honours Arts program in philosophy and English literature. I never even heard of indigenous philosophy. I did not even think such a thing was possible.

This philosophy echoes or even sums up much of what I have learned over the years, starting with German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s concept of being-in-the-world.  Only Chief Seattle was much more clear and easier to understand, without being any less profound than Martin Heidegger.  The natives of North America often felt a deep connection to the land.  They felt that they were a part of it.  To the Europeans on the other hand, nature was a resource ready to be exploited.  And from these two disparate attitudes springs much that is wrong with western society.

This is an old attitude to nature, which I am proposing as a new attitude to nature. It owuld be a worthy replacement for the old western attitude,.

Chief Seattle’s statement is a stunning statement about humans and nature, and all the more amazing because a “savage” (as he was wrongly called made it in 1854. Who was the savage?

 

Pursuing Truth and Beauty

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Arizona Photos, art, exotic flowers, Philosophy/Ideas, photography, Poetry

 

When I saw this cactus in Green Valley Arizona, south of Tucson and near the Mexican border I thought it might be the most beautiful cactus I had ever seen. I was on a church yard, so I thought I could walk and photograph it without fear of being shot.

 

When I first retired I said I wanted to stop spending my time in order to make a living and feed my family, I wanted now to pursue “truth and beauty” as John Keats said. I have done that. And it has been great fun.

When I went to university, in my first English literature course, taught by Jack Woodbury, one of the best professors I ever had, the first poet we studied was John Keats. English poet. He published only 54 poems before he died at the age of 25.  That is 54 more than I have published. And many of them were great poems.

John Keats was an English Romantic poet, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and others. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when in 1821 he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. Talk about brief beauty!

 

One of the poems we read was “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”  This might have been the 3rd or 4th poem I studied in university. The poem describes an urn with an image of  a young shepherd pursuing a beautiful young woman who he wants to kiss. But of course, in the image he never catches her. She is forever, a “still unravished bride of quietness.” She never speaks. Their love is never consummated, but their love never turns stale either. It is a love that never withers. The shepherd is also a piper whose song is never heard.  But this too is fine. As Keats says in the poem, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.”

The last two lines of that poem go as follows:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

 

There has been much critical debate about what those words mean. Many, including me, have puzzled over the meaning of those words. I think they make sense in the context of the whole poem. In a way it is a summation of the poet’s thinking expressed by the previous 48 lines.

By beauty I think he means beauty in a wide sense. Beauty basically is art. And art is true or it is not art. So beauty is truth and truth is beauty. Some cactuses bloom only for a day. What a dreadful pity.

So a beautiful cactus flower, caught in a silent moment by a camera, is a work of art (beauty)  that never withers. It  is an eternal thing of beauty. If is it good, it is good forever.  It never changes. That is truth which also is truth forever.