How Positivism Conjures Mysticism

Last week I was searching old iPhone voice-memos. (I was looking for music.) I heard myself say: “Positivism becomes a proxy for assimilationism because they both involve the non-verbalizing of unmentionables.” I must have been driving the car when I thought to record this. I repeated myself: “Positivism becomes a proxy for assimilationism because they both involve the non-verbalizing of unmentionables.”

For me, Positivism is personal; it’s a philosophy I associate with my dad, who was a research scientist. I also associate Positivism with the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. A lighthearted reference to Wittgenstein’s Proposition 7—from his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus—is found in Stefan Themerson’s short story, “Chapter 18”:

…She said, “I must confess that the only thing I still remember of my studies is that last sentence, you know, the sacred Number 7. At my time it was the craze at all undergraduate parties.”

“What was that Number 7?” the White Poodle asked.

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,” said the Black Poodle.

The humor here is that while Wittgenstein’s statement—"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”—is an important foundation of modern philosophical thought, Stefan Themerson’s lighthearted conceit that Proposition 7 applies to undergraduate parties throws a wrench into the statement’s pretensions. Turns out, it just means, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” (According to that subversively Faustian Black Poodle, anyhow.)

I love Themerson’s undercutting of Wittgenstein’s seriousness, because I agree that Positivism should not be taken too seriously. There are lots of things we don’t speak of, for lots of reasons, but those unspoken things do exist! My voice memo identifies a particular thing Americans don’t speak about, something best expressed by a phrase we learned as kids: “The Melting Pot.” Here in the USA, it’s “E Pluribus Unum”—out of many, one. Whoever our families may have been before coming to the USA, we must now blend in and do things the American Way. We must assimilate. (And, if our families didn’t come from far away, but have Native American ancestry, we better acculturate to the mainstream and give up our “old” ways.)

So, Positivism is a good philosophy for Nationalists, because it represses prior claims to loyalty. Positivism endorses the non-verbalizing of these unmentionables, in the interest of assimilation. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Nevertheless, as Themerson clarifies, such pre-USA identities as our families may have bequeathed to us don’t weaken or go away. It’s only that we’re repressing any professions of allegiance to these hidden identities, when we’re the public eye. (Because of social media platforms, nowadays the public eye sees deep into private consciousness.) Just as undergraduates swear they won’t whisper who made out with whom at last night’s party, we strive not to publicly profess preferential loyalty to our private identities and affiliations. We’re using that sacred Number 7 to conceal something that is there, but which we know we mustn’t speak of. We may not even reveal these secret allegiances to ourselves! Yet such allegiances gain even more influence in our lives exactly when we keep them secret from ourselves.

That’s how Positivism conjures Mysticism. And by the way, Wittgenstein was a lifelong Catholic. As for me, I’m a non-Jewish Jew.