RSS
 

Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category

Knowledge and Wisdom

30 Jul

wisdom

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
~ T. S. Eliot

I have many friends who would be philosophers, and most of them are of a decidedly pre-modern bent. Philosophy has often been at odds with the idea of ‘knowledge,’ of hard empirical facts, as it were.  Many western philosophers once claimed that knowledge of reality was secondary to the overarching structures of philosophy, which could only be arrived at by pure reason and/or the special revelation of the Creator, while many eastern philosophers claimed that everything we see as “reality” is only an illusion over the surface of the ineffable Real behind it.

This question is often confused by the fact that the terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘wisdom’ are often vague at best. Today, dear readers, I’m going to try to clarify them.

I’m going to approach the issue from a purely pragmatic standpoint. My reasons for adopting pragmatism as a philosophy are not the subject of this essay; I’ll clarify them in a later post. I will, however, say a little more about what I mean by the term. In my view, reality is a dynamic system constructed of an almost infinite number of parts, each of which can be broken down into a further system in itself. Every part influences every other part, and the workings of the tiniest details influence the system as a whole in the same way the rules of the overall system control the workings of its smallest component.

However, at the human level of experience, that system is not chaotic; while it is a pretty idea to think that a drunkard flapping his lips in China might start a vast political storm in the United States, this is rarely the case. And, if it is, a line of cause and effect is present and (theoretically, at least) knowable. So, actions can be taken with effects that follow. Give a starving poor man a loaf of bread and he’ll survive a bit longer; shoot a well-fattened rich man through the heart and he will die regardless of the caloric bounty available to him.

Though there are many useful ways to think about the human mind, the most valuable one to the present question is the model proposed by Richard Dawkins and since expanded on by other thinkers in the fields of neurology and philosophy alike. That is, the human mind functions as a simulator in order to aid our survival–in other words, we have the ability to predict the effect of our actions, and the actions of others, on the world. The effects of this range from the simple–a mother telling a child not to play near the street, because her mind-simulator can forecast possible outcomes of that action, to the profound–Albert Einstein having a radical shift in his perspective towards space-time and gravitational acceleration and forming, seemingly ex nihilo to we mortals, his theory of relativity: a case of mental simulation on an unprecedented scale.

So, how does this concept of the mind as simulator tie in with the philosopher’s ideas of wisdom and knowledge?

Inaccurate mental simulation is at best useless and at worst lethal. Timothy Treadwell, a would-be conservationist who made the news a few years back, provides an example of the effects of inaccurate simulation. His experiences with well-fed and unthreatened grizzly bears in the wild led him to believe that all grizzlies were harmless if treated right. All it took was one bear with a differing characteristic (hunger, or temperament) to fail his simulation. The result, as might be expected, was not pretty.

Mental simulation works by constructing a model of reality inside the mind and then ‘running’ possible actions or environmental changes through it in order to predict results. Note that the model is certainly not to scale–indeed, it is almost absurdly lopsided, focusing the great majority of its resources on our own personal surroundings, environment, and social interactions. We are by our nature extremely egotistical, for if our mental simulations were more “fair,” we would have died out as a species a long time ago while wondering how the mastodons felt about our eating them.

Wisdom is the ability to use these simulations not only to choose those actions which best lead to our long term goals, but also to measure the effects of those goals themselves. Wisdom, in that sense, is power: the power to run an accurate simulation well into the future, in those fields which are central to our lives. “Central” is an important modifier here, because accurate simulation in non-central areas is not generally considered wisdom. An engineer designing the effect of airflow over a wing is not demonstrating wisdom; an elder determining how to preserve a family’s peaceful coherence is. Both are demonstrating sophisticated simulation through complex models of reality, but the life of the family to the elder is central to his immediate community’s life, while the effect of the air on the wing to the engineer is not.

Many reading this will have picked up on the name “Dawkins” several paragraphs ago and have already dismissed the mind-simulation concept as a strictly secular interpretation. This isn’t necessarily so: whether it evolved or was designed, simulation and prediction are inarguably key aspects of the human mind and central to the process of interacting with the world. Wisdom without interaction is nothing, for it has no effect outside the mind of its possessor (apologies to my Taoist friends).

So if wisdom is the ability to accurately predict the outcomes of given causes in meaningful contexts (almost always social), what is knowledge?

This is where the division happens. When we think of knowledge, we think of facts, of floating bits of unconnected detritus that accumulate in the mind and serve primarily to impress people at cocktail parties. Note the similarity to the common conception of history as merely the studies of dates and names.

Eliot’s quote at the beginning of this essay refers to that fragmented type of knowledge, or “information.” This is the same reason many philosophical theorists sneer at statistics, for indeed, what meaning can there be in a list of numbers?

In itself, there can be none. A single packet of information without connection or context is, by definition, trivia. It is like learning one phrase in a foreign language and is often used by the same types of people in the same ways: to convince others that they possess the language as a whole. While it may be impressive to rattle off the date of Constantine’s emigration to the Anatolian peninsula, or a fluent-sounding bit of French, it is useless without the key to wisdom: integration.

Think again of the mind as simulation through model of reality. In order to work accurately, that model has to be constructed on propositions that more or less match aspects of the real world. Those propositions are knowledge after integration. Integration is the process of taking a new fact and connecting it into the mental model so that it can be used. This is like learning the meanings and usages of a word in a foreign language. It is the conversion of a context-less piece of information and converting it to a structural node in a working model of the universe.

Knowledge, then, is necessary for wisdom, but only through the process of integration. This is the difference between a hobbyist and a scientist, and, some might argue, between a bad psychologist and a wise human being. In both cases the first has access to a plethora of information–speed of light, gravitational equations, mental disorders, insecurities–but, without connection, that knowledge is static. In the second cases, the scientist and the wise one have access to the same facts but have integrated them into working reality models, and can then use them to accurately predict and control reality, and to further expand the reaches of their mental models. This is what Arthur Conan Doyle referred to through the mouth of his great fictional detective, Sherlock Homes: there is a difference between seeing and observing. Seeing is merely recording, while observing is putting a thing into its context and connecting it.

Surely this isn’t always so, some will say, I’ve known many people wo were very wise but lacked knowledge. Again, this is due to a misconception as to the nature of knowledge. Remember that we only tend to call wise those simulations which apply to the central, meaningful areas of our life. As it happens, those areas are precisely the ones where knowledge is gained by observation of other human beings and oneself–no formal education required. Indeed, it is often the greatest hardships that produce the most useful observances of “meaningful” knowledge (which lead to wisdom if integrated), while the relative ease and detachment of higher education just as often removes those hardships, robbing the “educated” of what might have been data necessary for what we think of as wisdom.

So, as is so often the case, both sides of a would-be duality are necessary to a successful life. Wisdom is impossible without knowledge, and knowledge is useless without wisdom. The lessons I can see from this are two: first, never dismiss a thing as “mere information,” and second, never assume that possessing that information will be valuable in itself.

 
No Comments

Posted in Philosophy

 

Satan, Demons, and the Black and White

27 May

satan

The Devil goes by many names. Lucifer, Shaitan, the Evil One: these are a few of his Christian and Judaic names. He is called Adversary, the Liar, Old Scratch, the man downstairs. He is called Antichrist, Blasphemer, Heretic. He answers to Illumaniti, Knights Templar, Papism, the Bourgeoisie, the Communist Threat, Anti-Patriotism; in the east he goes by West, and in the west, East. He is called America, he is called Arabia, he is called China, he is called Russia. He is, to put it simply, Evil.

We humans are programmed by millennia upon millennia of scrabbling for survival to think in twos, to make split-second decisions on abstractions of available data. When there is an immediate threat, that response keeps us alive: fight or flight, eat or spit out, kill or capture, attack or negotiate.

The problem is that our species is moving into deeper and murkier waters. These days, thanks to the wonders of civilization, that split-second judgment is only rarely necessary.

And yet we make it anyway. Guilty or innocent, right or wrong, good or evil, for us or against us. Men and women claiming to be leaders shout from pulpits and election stands that there are no shades of gray, and that we will never compromise: as if the only possible response two being faced with two choices is something in the middle and less, and not a third choice and more.

Satan, of course, is behind it all. He’s been behind it from the beginning; can’t you smell the sulfur? The evil in the world is Satan’s doing, and the good is God’s, and us, well, we’re just here for the ride. The only choice we have, the shouters say, is black or white: we will follow God’s plan, or Satan’s.

As you may have guessed from the introduction, Satan isn’t just the Adversary of the Christian church. Satan, or what passes for him, shows his ugly face as the “Enemy” most of our species’ great movements fought against. In any war, he is behind the actions of the opposing force, just as surely as God is behind ours. In any religion, he is behind every belief that is contrary to ours. In any political or philosophical revolution, he is behind the old order of things, while God (or ‘Right’) is behind the new.

The Adversary’s role is to make our decision simple. We are either for him, or against him. Black and white. Pick a side, and remain loyal to it to the end. Obedience without complaint; faith without question; sacrifice without hesitation. It was Satan in the German armies advancing across Poland, whispering in soldier’s ear that maybe the Fuhrer wasn’t as right as he claimed. It was Satan in Luther’s study, arguing that the Catholic church didn’t have a monopoly on truth. It was Satan on Mount Moriah, telling Abraham: forget God, and let your son Isaac live.

This simple interpretation of reality is incredibly attractive. The idea that powers far greater than any of us are warring along clearly drawn lines removes us of any responsibility or need for deliberation. We follow orders, and write off our failings as personal inability to obey. It’s the same idea that draws us to works of fantasy like Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings; the villains are evil, the heros are good, and there is no mistaking the difference. It allows us to simply align our beliefs according to a preset pattern, where every statement can be declared simply ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ and every action placed into boxes of ‘good’ and ‘evil.’

But perhaps most importantly, it gives us a peace otherwise impossible to find. When an earthquake strikes and hundreds die, we can rest in the knowledge that it’s somehow part of the Plan, or perhaps the work of the Adversary; either way, it’s a strategem in a war far above us, and therefore is not our responsibility. We can even sooth our guilt at our inaction through prayer, or whatever passes for prayer in the atheistic manifestations of the War.

The Devil has many names, but he also has a secret. He, like the Power on our side, has no power beyond our belief in him. He exists simply as a thing to blame for all that is not good in the world. The Devil has many names, and the oldest is Scapegoat.

There is no grand master plan. There is no War. We are not pawns. We are not even pieces. We are tiny, fragile creatures in a vast and strange universe, who, incredibly, have begun to think. We are afraid of the darkness of ignorance, so, like children, we squeeze our eyes shut and pretend we have the light of knowledge. We look at the complex intertwinings of pain and love and hate and joy and sorrow that is our world, and, because we cannot imagine how to navigate it, we shut our eyes and pretend that from any given point there are only two paths. We invent demons that cause pain because real pain is much harder to kill. We invent angels that heal, because all too often healing is out of our grasp, and we are creatures that thrive on hope. We invent Gods and Satans because wars are much easier to wage when you’re Right.

We do these things not because we are evil, or because we are sheep, or because we are ‘fallen’ from some past greatness. We do them because we are in the infancy of our sentience, and we are terrified of what the future will bring. So: will we live in peace with our eyes closed and our decisions simple, or will we face our fears with our eyes open and seeking wisdom? Real moral choices do have value–nihilism never gave the world much–but they are never simple questions of black and white. They aren’t even gray. In real life, there are no villains, and very few saints. There are no ten-step-paths, rituals, purifications, payments, or incantations to cosmic success. There is no Right side and no Wrong side; there are no sides at all.

There is no us and them. There is only us.

 
7 Comments

Posted in Philosophy

 

Against Innocence

18 Jan

gardenofeden1818

Sit down sometime, and watch a child playing. Assuming the child’s innate creativity hasn’t been burnt out of it by the drugs and television prescribed by our modern seers, you’ll notice something interesting. The child’s imaginary world is very different than the one he actually lives in. In the imaginary world, animals talk, kings and queens live in high castles, cars and trucks move at his command, and, of course, dinosaurs rule the Earth.

Adults do this too, though perhaps not so consciously. We, too old for playing with plastic dinosaurs (or so we think), enter the imaginary worlds of others: we are riding through an unspoiled and expansive Old West desert; we are normal-seeming citizens with great hidden powers; we are lone survivors struggling heroically against a dangerous and visceral world; we are kissing in the rain; we are Jack’s burning rage against the system. Why are the Harry Potter books so popular among adults if not to let us think that just on the other side of a mundane normalcy is a world full of magic, strange creatures, and life-and-death battles? What are our design mock-ups and finance reports, after all, when compared to War with Evil?

On a more practical level, those imaginary worlds also cause us to make changes in the real world. The imaginations of an ordinary mind, of a bigger paycheck or a new romance, might lead us to apply for a job or talk to a woman. The imaginations of a great mind can and do change the world.

But with that power of imagination comes a near-universal inability to accept the world we actually have. It can’t have always been this way, we think; even if the grass isn’t greener in our neighbor’s yard, surely it was in his grandfather’s. America, say the old, was better off sixty years ago when people still had morals and young people respected their elders. America, say the young, was better off six hundred years ago, when white people were still stuck in Europe and the Native American lived at one with nature, likely spontaneously bursting into song when confronted with fluffy woodland creatures.

And at the dawn of time, Eden. Perfection, or so the Christians tell us. Man without sin, without want, at peace and innocent. In that garden there was only one rule: to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve, being somewhat naive (not outright rebellious like her predecessor), believed Satan’s claim that the knowledge would make her like God, and ate. Adam, being a good husband, did what his wife told him too and ate likewise and, rather than becoming gods, the couple was cast out of Eden and cursed to mortality and the working of the ground.

Compare this to another creation myth: that of Prometheus and Pandora. In the Greek version, Prometheus gives humanity the gift of fire. Their eyes follow the smoke from the ground up toward the stars, and they become separate from the animals; they are mortal, but possess the fire of the gods. Zeus punishes Prometheus for his gift, and to punish the humans, he sends them Pandora: a woman, like Eve, who touches something she shouldn’t and thus brings evil, pain, and torment to the entire future of the human race.

At the beginning of both of these myths, humanity exists in a state of the innocence. Like the animals, they lack knowledge, and thus can only act according to their nature; the only sin they can commit is to seek to become like gods. In Eden, humans are immortal within the garden; in the Greek myths, humans are eternally cyclical, as there can be no names, stories, or remembrance of death.

But then the humans reach out and take something forbidden: the knowledge of the gods. With that knowledge, they become self-aware, symbolized in the Greek myth by looking at the stars, and in the Eden myth by the realization of nakedness. To be like the gods, though, is not free. In both cases, the knowledge grants to humans the ability to choose, a free will that can knowingly take a good path or an evil one. This awareness of self, perhaps brought on in actual history by the development of language, gave humans a concept of evil and good, and the awareness through experience that one day they would surely die.

gustave_dore_bibel_adam_and_eve_driven_out_of_edenWith knowledge came the potential for evil. Sin enters into the Christian’s world, Pandora opens her box, and, (lament the storytellers) man is doomed to a life of work, a struggle towards an impossible perfection, and responsibility for his actions. An angel is set at the gates of Eden, and Prometheus is chained to a rock for the rest of eternity.

The Greek empire and its accompanying mythos are now long since gone, but the concept of Eden and the fall of man is still very present in the western world. We yearn for lost perfection, for peace, for security, for the assurance that we will never die. We are like infants newly born, bawling for the comfort of the womb.

But let us ask ourselves: is the fire of the gods worth the evils of Pandora’s box? It is interesting to note that the name “Pandora” in the Greek means “all-giving”, and that the forbidden fruit contained the knowledge of good as well as of evil. Prometheus and Eden are not stories of the birth of evil; they are stories of the birth of self-awareness and the responsibility that comes with it.

We cry out for Eden because we can’t see past the blisters on our hands and the gravestones at the end of our lives. Like little children with bruised knees, we run to the divine, crying for safety, for perfection, for a world where everything will be all right, where daddy will take care of everything.

Enough childishness. Bruised knees and blisters are part of growth. Sooner or later we have to dry our tears, grit our teeth, and shoulder the responsibility we have been given. And, as we sweat out our Earthly toil, we may begin to realize the gifts we have been given. There is no value in accomplishment without struggle, no value in possession without sacrifice, no value in love without loss, and no value in good without evil. Our metaphorical exile from Eden was no more a curse than the a young bird’s first push from its nest.

We have wept for far too long. It’s time to grow up.

 
1 Comment

Posted in Philosophy

 

Community Without a Place

12 Dec

nomad-tents

There is a certain mode of thought that considers a good sort of life to be a stable one, where you own your own piece of land, cultivate your own garden, and live as best you can off of what you yourself can produce. You will have a front porch with rocking chairs for conversations on warm summer nights, a fireplace or wood stove for conversations on cold winter nights, and your nearest neighbor will be a pipe’s-smoke walk away. This idyllic view of community with a sense of place has a lot of attraction for me, and I’ll probably attempt it myself in a few decades when (if) I’m finally ready to settle down. It strikes me as a good way to retire, after I’ve finished raising whatever children I may have, and am ready to sit down and simply write for whatever days still remain to me.

Fairly often, proponents of the front-porch-and-pipe-smoke mentality go one step further in their reasoning, and say that such a life is the only way to experience true community. Such arguments are generally critical of the “modern lifestyle:” namely, the suburban, technological, fragmented state of affairs common to most of the American middle class. I agree with many of these criticisms: I’ve seen cities, farms, and wild mountains that I’ve loved, but have never yet seen a cookie-cutter two story I wouldn’t have liked better razed. The same goes for the stock attacks against consumerism and materialism (see the works of the philosopher Tyler Durden). The internet, of course, comes under regular heavy fire, ranging from the quaint complaints of  the uninformed elderly to well-thought out pieces like David Carver’s recent article over on Drunken Koudou (nostalgia about the internet–come on, David, I’m too young to feel old).

What’s generally lacking is any kind of alternative to the land-owning, gold-hoarding, gun-toting cabin owner sort of existence.  Here, then, is my two cents: don’t spend them all in one place.

ken-sabuk-camelsTo find my kind of alternative, go back to the good old days. No, not the good old days where everybody lived in a cabin  in the woods. I mean back to the days when cabins were unheard of, and we humans ranged the earth with everything we owned on our backs and horses, and the natural world was still a dangerous place. In other words, when our sense of community and place was not defined by a physical location (cabin or otherwise), but rather by those we were with and the contributions we ourselves could make to the group. It’s hard to make a mansion from a tent, so one’s “place” in a community was defined by merit: the greatest hunter, the wisest woman, and the oldest members of the tribe, in a time when old age was only possible with wisdom, talent, and strength.

Those were difficult and violent times: don’t mistake me for some kind of noble savage idealist. Unless you’re reading this from a yurt in Mongolia (if so, congratulations on your technological determination) you probably weren’t raised in a nomadic society, and won’t ever really be able to immerse yourself into any of the traditional ones. Don’t lose hope. Societies always change, and in this world cultures of every kind are constantly evaporating and condensing. So where are the nomad communities of the modern age? To answer that, one only has to spend the night in a hostel in New York or London, or look for the faces that stand out on a crowded bus in the Balkans.

That’s right. It is possible to find real community even in an internet-addled age, and of the oldest sort: the kind built of a common state of transience.  In my first real foray into the traveling life (the summer of 09) I made friendships that, while brief, were and are still stronger than those I had with many of the people I saw every day for three years in college. In some ways, those friendships were made easier because the sort of people who participate in long-term travel (not week-long-vacation tourists or spring break kids, in other words) generally share many of my interests and are fairly laid-back. You have to be to really travel–depend too much on hard schedules and set itineraries and you’ll eventually just lose it when that Turkish bus driver hands you off to yet another non-English-speaking friend/relative to get you where you’re going.

Really, though, I think the strength of these communities–brief and transient as they tend to be–lies in their shared experiences. In eastern Europe, for instance, I traveled for about a week with a couple of blokes called Alex and Kiril, and experienced stronger friendship in that week than I have with many I’ve known for years. There is the storytelling side of such experiences, of course–the broken train in Bosnia, the double night border crossings on the trip from  Sarajevo to Belgrade, and camping out in the woods next to Pula, Croatia, are stories we will no doubt all continue to tell, and which we will reminisce about should we ever meet again.

Another part of that strength comes from the tests shared experiences bring. You can know someone at work or next door for years, and never really know them, simply because you’ve never seen them react to real difficulty, and never had to rely on them. The shared experiences of travel, especially when you leave the beaten bath, tend to be challenging and difficult. You have to rely on others, and to be reliable yourself. It becomes apparent very quickly when someone can’t handle the stress of travel, or can’t contribute to the group, and I suppose that happens often enough. But when it doesn’t–when you experience and overcome difficult challenges standing side by side with fellow travelers and come out still standing–that’s when real friendships are made, and real community is formed.

So, I say, don’t worry so much about what the internet is doing to your social life. Don’t worry so much about owning a house rather than renting. Don’t worry so much about trying to conform to the standards of your geographical “community.” If you want to experience what real community is, do something hard, and do it somewhere outside of your comfort zone. That could be anything–hiking in the mountains, building a house, learning how to fight. If you’d like my personal recommendation, I’d suggest buying a one way ticket to anywhere, walking out on the road, and sticking a thumb out. The rest will come in time.

 
No Comments

Posted in Philosophy, Travel

 

Giving Thanks

26 Nov

Thanksgiving dinner

It’s that time of year again. Quite possibly the best holiday ever invented, Thanksgiving is a holiday dedicated to eating, and eating, and eating, with a cool-down period of weeks of turkey sandwiches and chilled leftover pie. But wait! say alert readers: Thanksgiving isn’t just about food! It’s about friends, family, community, and, well, giving thanks. And so it should be, as much as our consumption-oriented culture would have us believe otherwise.

But what does it mean, really, to give thanks? What does it mean to be grateful? Be grateful, say parents across the country to stubborn children seated before plates of green beans. There are children all over the world who would love to have what you have. Be grateful, say employers to employees taking pay cuts. In this economy, you’re lucky to have a job. Be grateful, we say: at least you’re not like them.

And I am grateful. I’m grateful for a loving family that supports me in what is rapidly becoming a very unorthodox life. I’m grateful for thoughtful words from friends. I’m grateful for meaningful actions and useful gifts, books read and passed on, and songs recommended.

Today is Thanksgiving. In a few hours my house and I will begin preparing a feast designed to induce good conversation and, after that, a long and heavy food coma. We’re going to do so in a warm house, with good company. And I ask myself: am I grateful?

Today, Americans across the country will be thanking someone or something for the blessings we have. We’re grateful, we’ll say, that we have food on the table. We’re grateful for warm beds and safe streets. We’re grateful for our freedoms. And, God help us, we’re grateful for our big screen TVs, environmentally friendly hybrids, SUVs, guns, flowers, fat turkeys, and fat vegan-soy-turkey-alternatives. We’re grateful for these things because there are millions of people around the world who don’t have them. We’re only grateful for our jobs when the economy’s down, only grateful for our food when we see those who starve, only grateful for our lives when we are confronted with death. No one is more grateful for oxygen than a man who escapes a drowning.

We tend to think of these things as gifts, from God, from chance, from fate, but a gift is something given with no expectation of repayment, as an expression of love. That necklace, that book, yes, even that tie is a gift. A beautiful sunrise, the song of a bird, and the way the air smells after it rains, those are gifts.

So we are grateful; but let us be careful in our gratefulness., for these things you are giving thanks for today are not all gifts. Your social position, your prosperity, your talents, and even your life itself, are not gifts. They are responsibilities. So, when you gather around your feast this afternoon, give thanks for these things, but remember that they’re not free. All of us have a responsibility to act in this world and act well. Whether that means feeding the homeless next thanksgiving, or volunteering for a charity, or even just creating a beautiful piece of music, is up to you.

Being a child is about learning to give thanks; being an adult is about learning to give back.

 
1 Comment

Posted in Philosophy

 

A Crossroads in the Dark

23 Nov

2640305389_014d9a6cef_b


Things are not always as they seem, and the world is full of shadows. What few lights we have are weak and flickering, and our eyes will always strain to make out what is in front of us.

Two things are clear: one cannot know everything, and one cannot know anything for certain. Truisms are only true within themselves. One and one is two for certain within mathematics, it can never be more than an approximation of reality.

And yet we must choose a path, for life always goes forward. But how can we choose, when we have only limited information?

Our minds work in paradigms, or models of what we perceive reality to be. These paradigms determine how we act: a man whose paradigm describes his life as an individualistic struggle against overwhelming odds will act differently from one whose paradigm describes a world ordained by the total providence of God, and differently from one whose paradigm describes a world that is illusion concealing an underlying oneness.

Because these paradigms are the basis for how we act, it is important that we choose them carefully, and change cautiously. Most humans simply accept the paradigm they are given in childhood. Others change their paradigms based on a single emotional experience. Some are based on the closest thing we have to truth: our physical senses, our communications with other thinking beings, and the ineffable inspirations of human souls.

These conduits to truth introduce experiences into our minds. The existence of ourselves, of others, and of the physical world are experiences. So are experiments which demonstrate how closely the language of mathematics can describe those parts of reality which seem to operate according to uniform laws: physics, chemistry, electronics, medicine. So are the perceptions that occur when we hear a beautiful piece of music or read a beautiful work of literature. The look in a lover’s eyes when she trusts you is an experience. The shattering of your heart when a lover betrays you is also an experience.

Paradigms arise to contain and give structure to experiences, in order to make them useful for action. A woman betrayed often by men may form a paradigm wherein men are pigs, and act accordingly. A man for whom women fall easily may form a paradigm wherein women are whores, and act accordingly. A brilliant man like Einstein accumulates a vast array of seemingly unrelated experiences, both his own and those related to him by others, and form a paradigm that changes the world: relativity. A great man like Christ may take experiences of action and consequences, and form a paradigm to give men peace: Christianity. A corrupt man may take experiences of control and material gain by the belief of others, and form a paradigm to wage war in a peaceful savior’s name: religion.

So how may we best choose our paradigms? The easiest way is to simply accept one given you. To accept whole the stories told you by your government, by your pastor, by your employer, is easy, and may result in a sort of peace. For you, peace will be easiest if you are ignorant, for education introduces new experiences which may not be compatible with your current paradigms. If you are clever, you may be able to stretch your paradigm to accept the facts. If your desire for your paradigm is strong enough, you may be able to rewrite your experiences in your own mind, the way a doting wife might willfully ignore the scent of a different perfume on her husband’s dinner jacket.

These are easy. These are safe. These will make you a willing sheep for whichever shepherd you choose to follow, and it cannot be denied that most sheep are at least content.

Reality–the Truth–is infinitely larger and more complex than we will ever understand. Our paradigms will never be more than crude diagrams, and no matter how hard we try, most of them will be wrong. Insisting on forming these paradigms for yourself will result in a life of constant struggle, constant doubt, and little peace of mind. As a certain book says, the way is narrow, and there are few who follow it. So don’t bother–learn little, think little, and whatever it is you believe, believe it with all your heart. Do not question authority, and you will find your place in life as another gear in a great and ponderous machine.

But of course, you are still reading. You are still reading because you know, from the part of your mind that is deeper than words can reach, that it’s the narrow path that’s worth walking on, as steep and long as it may be. It will be lonely: every journey on it will be different, and at its heart, everyone must travel it alone. Take some comfort in the fact that your fellow travelers will make for interesting company.

There is no sign pointing to this path. Here is how you will find it. Question everything.  Question authority, question common sense, question the first glance and the first impression, and most importantly, question yourself. The first step is yours; understand yourself, or you will understand nothing. Always learn, always seek new experience, always seek, always struggle. Pay the most attention to those experiences which conflict with your paradigm; either your paradigm is false, or the experience is. Always look at both sides of an argument, and realize that there are never only two. Always be willing to change, but change carefully–the way is as rocky as it is narrow, and flightiness is the surest way to stumble.

Above all, realize that this is your path. Walking here was your choice. Your mistakes are your responsibility, as are your successes, and only your successes. On this path, you have no right to blame your upbringing for your beliefs, to blame your neighbors for the state of your own home, or to blame the social structures for your own condition. You have declared yourself to be yourself, and personal responsibility is the consequence of your declaration. And if you succeed in your path, try not to let it go for your head; earnest inquiry in any direction will reveal that this universe, this reality, is a far bigger place than any of us could possibly imagine.

You stand now at a crossroads in the dark. Don’t follow the hoof prints and the sound of bleating. Stand straight, breathe deep, and look carefully. What you choose will influence the rest of your life.

Walk well, and keep the wind at your back.

-
Image credit: LostMyHeadache

 
No Comments

Posted in Philosophy

 

Who Is This God Person, Anyway?

14 Nov

Angel of War (Ink on Paper)

As a privileged white male in one of the most affluent societies on Earth, I look around and I see that life is good. There is great food, great literature, great art. There is Beethoven and Bob Dylan, Cormac McCarthy and John Steinbeck, Van Gogh and Alex Gray. There are beautiful places, beautiful beaches, beautiful sunsets, beautiful women. There is Firefly.

But, as a human not entirely blind with a working internet connection and a bit of travel under my belt, I also see that there is a lot of bad. People starve to death every day, overdose on drugs, are sold into sex slavery, are killed in war, are killed for money, are killed for revenge, are killed just because somebody thought it was a good idea at the time. Even here, in the capital city of the United States, people will freeze on the streets over the next few months.

One of the most common objections I hear to the existence of a good God is that such an entity could not allow the evil in our world and still properly be called good. As I see it, there are a few ways to look at this problem. First, you can say that there is no God. If you abandon a higher power, though, you must be prepared to accept the consequences. If there is nothing higher than this, our mortal coil, than wars, genocide and starvation are not evil. They are simply progress. In this view evolution has no purpose; it is simply adaptation to conditions. In other words, whoever wins is “most right.” If Hitler had succeeded in his eugenics programs, the Aryan Reich would have been the future of human evolution. As it is, European colonialism has already proven the superiority of white genetics and culture around the world. If there is no higher power, words like “evil” and “inhuman” are meaningless.

The second view regularly put forward, at least in the west, is the Christian/Muslim/Judaic idea of God: namely, that he exists, and is controlling the events of history and personal lives toward some future goal: “all things work together for the good of those who love him.” It is this view that the objection above refers to, and it is a good one. Every religion has members who present anecdotal evidence of “miracles” and “faith healings,” where a sick loved one recovered against the odds, or the father to a poor family got a good raise. These are all well and good, but the truth is the scales are tipped more on the other side; for every family who gets enough money that they can buy that coveted five bedroom / two bath house, there are a dozen on the streets, and for every miraculous recovery there are two dozen deaths. If God has a plan in all of this, what then? Christians are usually the first to attack any “ends justify the means” argument, but it seems to me there is nowhere this applies more than in history itself. I, for one, cannot combine the idea of a personal God who is controlling history with the sort of atrocities our history contains–let alone the histories allegedly ordered by that God himself (take your pick–from the Manifest Destiny justifications for slaughtering the Native Americans to the Judaic conquest of Canaan, “God” is one of the most popular causes cited in most of history’s premodern genocides).

I see a third option. I see too much beauty in the world, unexplainable by basic evolutionary theory, for our frail mortality to be all there is. I see too much ugliness for it all to be the work of the Christian god. In both–in the beauty and the ugliness combined–I see a gift, and one that is on this planet ours alone. That is the gift of responsibility.

Many naive souls who have never experienced nature will often attribute to it a sort of Disney-inspired, sunlight filled goodness where all the wild creatures work in harmony and accord, to the music of bluebirds’ songs. “Man,” such souls say, self-righteously, “is the only species that kills its own kind.” This is (to borrow a term Americans should use far more often) bollocks. The animal kingdom is full of death: death of prey, death of predator, death of competition, death of offspring, death of mates. In some species of ape the animal kingdom even has war.

And here’s the thing. Such death is beautiful. The way a mountain lion stalks a deer in the deep cold silence of the northern mountains, the way it runs with twenty feet between each bound, the sheer power with which it takes its quarry down, is elegance incarnate. It isn’t Disney, or the garden of Eden, but it is how it should be, and it is good.

So what about us? What is this gift of responsibility, and how does it separate us from the animals? Why is an owl stalking mice beautiful, but not a serial killer stalking college students? If there is nothing higher than us, there is no difference between the two.

I believe there is a God. I also believe he has given the human race as a species something extraordinarily valuable, and perhaps too complex to be properly called a “gift.” That is our consciousness, our language, our responsibility as free individuals and not simply animals acting on instinct and conditioning. Because we are aware of ourselves, of our surroundings, and of that ineffable “Something” beyond ourselves, we have the option of choosing a higher road–and it is that very freedom of choice that makes the lower road wrong. The owl kills because she is made to kill, and she is beautiful for it. We ourselves may even kill an animal and be right doing it, if we do it with respect and out of necessity. But when we kill another human being, when we end another consciousness, that is when we make our choice to be merely animal when we could have been human. And because we have that choice, our being animal is what we call evil.

Now, were God to step in and stop us in such acts of evil, we would no longer have the choice to be animal or to be human. We would simply be acting as programmed–according to instinct, doing “good” just as the owl kills and the cow chews its cud. We would be part of, but not participating in, creation. “Good” would have no value. Likewise, if doing good were always simple and easy, that too would lose it’s value. A fine meal given to a fat child who’s done nothing to earn it is worth nothing. The same meal given to a man who has worked hard for it is one of the best things in the world. A thing that is intrinsically free is also, by definition, worthless. Freedom is not entitlement to good things; freedom is the capacity to work for them.

So yes, the world is full of pain. The world is full of evil men doing evil deeds.  Life is a struggle. But if it were not, what would be the point? Pleasure is worthless without pain, good is meaningless without evil, and our actions only truly resonate when we bleed for them. God is not coming to comfort us, for we are not children any longer. It’s time we stood on our own two feet and stopped looking for help from the government, from fate, from God. There is work to be done, true enough. The responsibility for doing it is ours.

 
2 Comments

Posted in Philosophy

 

Where I’m At

06 Nov

Railroad tracks

Welcome back, gentle readers, to the new and improved GoodAndLost.org. For those of you who were following the blog over the summer, no, I didn’t die in Turkey–I just never got around to writing my final return post. Suffice it to say that I made it back safely, via Thessaloniki and Frankfurt for a (far too short) day, and that since then many things have happened.

At first, I simply returned to my old life–part time work, eighteen credits of classes, old friends. But after only a few weeks of that, I began to realize that after the summer’s experience, simply living that old life was no longer an option. I began to consider alternate paths.

My first divergence was quitting school. I had a year and a half left of a history degree, which would have cost me an additional ten or twelve thousand dollars. As I have the ability to make good money in web design (and hopefully writing one day), I didn’t need the degree to make a living. I had lost all interest in the actual content of my classes as well, as I knew I could learn at least as much at least as quickly by simply reading–and without the thousands of dollars of tuition money.

My second divergence was the publication of my break with the Christian faith. It was a long time coming. I’ve given my reasons elsewhere, and will continue to give both them and the new conclusions I’m coming to in the Philosophy section of this blog.

The third divergence wasn’t so long coming, following only a few weeks on the second. That was my losing my job at Patrick Henry College, because I could no longer sign their statement of faith.

And so here I am, a week into November of 2009, with a thousand new paths open to me. I’m currently trying to build a freelance web design and writing career (if you’re interested in my designing a personal blog or business website for you, you can contact me here) to pay of tuition debts and establish a geographically independent source of income for future travels. I’m also working on a new fiction book, which should be finished in a few months, at which point I’ll begin the process of looking for an agent.

In the meantime, I’ve expanded this blog to six categories: travel, which covers interesting places visited and photos taken; philosophy, which covers personal development, ideas about life, and religion; knowledge, for random, interesting, and/or useful bits of information; culture, for good music, films, book, and art; gear, for stuff worth having; and skill, for ways to become a more useful and capable human.

Thanks for coming: I hope it’s an interesting ride.

 
No Comments

Posted in Philosophy, Travel