Etymologically speaking, reason comes from ratio. ‘Reason’ in Latin but also having to do with ‘reckoning’. With dividing the ‘big picture’ into easier to understandable slivers. Slivers meant to be analyzed and later assembled back into meaning. Into ‘truth’.
Now, which of the two reasons gives birth to the ‘genuine’ truth?
The analytical/synthetic one which attempts to develop reality into meaning or the one which defends and embellishes the already known truth? The revealed truth?
The whole thing depends on the “ends” of the reasoning agent?
Reason, hence truth, depends on the intention of the individual performing the act of reasoning?!?
Quite unreasonable, don’t you think? Truth was supposed to be anchored in reality, right?!? Not on ‘intention’….
Truth as unhiddenness… is a concept developed by Heidegger. Basically, this whole thing is about individuals being unable to discover nor formulate the ‘entire’ truth so a ‘bigger’ truth may be reached only through cooperation. Everybody ‘says’ – unhides – everything they know about a subject and that’s how the most complete truth available at that moment is ‘uncovered’.
‘But this means the Truth becomes fluid. No longer ‘fixed’. Unreliable!’
I’m afraid you’re right! Except for the ‘unreliable’ part. As long as enough people do their part, and honestly speak up their minds, the most reliable truth knowable at any given moment will become apparent to everybody. To everybody who cares to look for it! To everybody who accepts that their reason, while imperfect, can and should contribute to the common effort to get closer to truth. To everybody who accepts that other people’s reason, while imperfect, can and should be listened to in the common effort to get closer to truth. To everybody who accepts to continue this effort knowing very well that no matter how hard they will try, people will never find the entire truth
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. Robert A. Heinlein, Postscript to Revolt in 2100.
Religion is the metaphusical ‘thing’ inside which people who hold a set of tenets to be true are able to build a community.
Religion is sociological phenomenon. Something belonging to the realm studied by those who try to understand how large number of people work together.
Religions – on the other hand – are ‘sets of tenets’ put in practice by various groups of people. Sets of tenets which survive for as long as they continue to help the people who uphold them in their quest to survive as a group. As a community.
Religion cannot be ‘changed’. Religion can be studied. May be better understood. Like physics. You can’t ‘change’ physics! With what? With chemistry? Things don’t work like this. The only thing you may do about physics is to ‘deepen’ your knowledge about it.
Religions can, and sometimes have to, be changed. By the very people who ‘use’ them to survive.
Since nobody can survive on their own, each and everyone of us needs to belong. To a community. To a religion, actually!
And what do people do when they realize survival is impossible in certain conditions? Die or do something about it, right?
Now, which community can survive based on hate? It doesn’t matter whether you are asked to hate somebody inside or outside your community. Whether you hate individually or collectively. Hating – or despising – somebody blinds you and exhausts you. Puts a huge burden on your back. Focuses your attention so tight that you are no longer able to notice the real dangers. Those which actually make you less likely to survive.
And this is valid both for you as an individual and for you as a hating community.
Time, like everything else human, has two sides. Like a coin.
A ‘base’ and an interpretation.
There’s no interpretation without a base – even hallucinations are based on ‘something’ – and there’s nothing which has penetrated human conscience and ever managed to evade interpretation. In fact, human conscience needs to interpret, to assign meaning to, everything it ‘sees’. Everything it perceives. Anything which is uninterpretable, which has no meaning, cannot be controlled.It is, hence, dangerous. If you don’t know what’s going to happen next, you can assume anything. And since assuming the worst – and preparing for it – is far more useful towards survival than sleeping over it, we are biased towards erring on the side of caution. And towards relentlessly searching for meaning.
Time, like everything else human, is both a phenomenon – it happens – and a concept. The difference between the ‘time’ of a star and the human time being that ours has a name – given by us – and that the star cannot do anything about it. While we do!
We can do things to and about time!
We named it, we measure it, we attempt to interpret it…. and we try to do the best of it! We try to do, while alive, what we consider to be ‘the best’.
The best (?!?) for whom?
Tao.
The ‘road’. If everything flows, it has to flow ‘somewhere’. Not only from the start/spring to the ‘end’ (?!?)/never tranquil sea. Everything flowing needs a ‘riverbed’ to flow ‘through’. A plant needs soil to sprout, grow, bear fruit and ‘return to nature’. Even a star needs an Universe in order to shine… besides enough ‘fuel’, of course! I have started this post by saying that there’s no interpretation without a ‘base’ and that we, conscious human beings, need to attach meaning (a.k.a. interpretations) to everything of which we become aware. Same thing here. For anything to happen, a venue is needed. Some wise people in our past have used ‘Tao’ as a name for THE venue. For the venue where everything takes place.
Karma.
At first, when conscience had dawned on us, we were alone in the ‘dark’. And afraid about what was going to happen to us. To assuage that fear, we have identified God. As the ‘the meaning’ of the world. At first, when both the world and time seemed to be endless – to us, consequences came from God. We had to behave. Or else… God was there to punish each and every transgression. Sometimes using one of us as his proxy. After a while, some of our ancestors have learned to write. To reliably transfer information over generations. Very soon, those ancestors of ours have learned the link between cause and effect. Between behavior and consequence. Very soon God had become an outside observer. Or was out-rightly forgotten. But Karma survived.
Future.
I keep hearing that ‘evolution has no purpose’. Like many other human utterances, this one conveys far more information about the utterer than about the phenomenon described by the utterer.
‘This wooden table has 4 legs’. We learn about the table that it is in front of us, that it is made of wood and ‘has’ 4 legs. We learn about the utterer that: It was conscious when uttering those words. Only conscious agents are capable of ‘speaking like a human’. It has, at some point, learned to speak. English, and possibly other languages. It has, at some point, learned to count. At least up to four. And it had conserved that ability up the moment when it uttered those words. It was capable of identifying ‘wood’ as a material. When uttering that phrase, it was in a ‘casual’ state of mind. A ‘scientifically minded person’, a ‘grammar nazy’, for example – when in that mood, would not attribute human ‘abilities’ to a table. Which table is a mere object and objects cannot posses other objects. Tables cannot ‘have’, hence that person was speaking colloquially. Or, given the current ‘technological’ developments, those words might have very well been uttered by a statistically ‘minded’ AI application…. A man made ‘parrot’!
See what I mean?
Let’s go back to the presumably purposeless evolution.
Evolution is a phenomenon. Like a thunder. It takes a lot more time to unfold than a thunder, it’s about as hard as a thunder to predict the exact point where it will ‘strike’ but we know enough about both to be able to point out, quite reliably, a few ‘rules’ about how both phenomena take place. About where, when and how they will unfold. What’s the purpose of thunder? To ‘close the circuit’? To discharge the energy pent up in the cloud? I’m afraid that attributing purpose to thunder is akin to allowing tables to ‘have’ legs. What we have here is a ‘figure of speech’. An ‘implicit’ figure of speech… so implicit that it’s not even considered as such… Same thing when it comes to evolution.
Which evolution is paramount to survival. Just as no cloud can accumulate ad infinitum electric energy – hence thunder – no living thing ever – no species, more exactly – has yet been able to survive ‘everything’. Everything mother nature has thrown at it. Hence ‘evolution’! Which is a mere process which makes life possible. In certain conditions – in a certain Tao – after it had sprung up. And, again, attributing purpose to evolution is akin to allowing a table to own legs.
Then what about ‘future’? If God no longer decides for us – the God we have identified – and if evolution is ‘pointless’… then ‘future is blind’?!?
Not so fast!
Question: Where was God at Auschwitz? Answer: Where was man at Auschwitz?
Could any of those present at Auschwitz have done anything to fundamentally change the outcome? Probably not. Could we, as a species, have done – have behaved, actually – in such a manner as to avoid Auschwitz altogether? Specially after the Armenian Genocide had already taken place? Should we, as a species, have done differently when so many Tutsi had been killed in Rwanda? When 8000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys had been murdered in Srebrenica?
See what I mean? About the future? About our future?
What do we have here? “Eternity and endless return?” Or past mistakes haunting us through time? Until we figure out the way forward? Or else…
Yes, you who have enough spare time to read things like these and are open minded enough to continue. Who don’t worry too much about what you’re going to eat tomorrow and who would like to figure out what life’s about. What’s the meaning of all this which is going on around you.
You who have just figured out you’re different from the rest of the animals. That you’re able to think. And that you’ll never make it alone.
That no matter how smart you are, you’ll never be able to pull it on your own. That no matter how strong you are, now, you’ll always need to be helped by your brethren.
What happened to our capacity to compromise? When did life become nothing but a zero sum game?
Our capacity to compromise – in the good sense of the word – has diminished when religion – the thing which keeps us together – has been split into religions.
And it completely drained out when we’ve become too confident in our ability to think things over.
We’re so confident now that our solution/decision is not only better than any other but the only one possible that we’re no longer capable of considering a compromise.
While religion taught us to respect and trust each-other, religions have split us into factions. Our intellectual arrogance has done the rest.
Your previous actions that were done in error now have consequences. Karma.
My father has cancer. And an eye problem. The cancer is being treated in a public hospital while the eye problem is taken care of at a private facility. In the last couple of days we have visited them both.
Besides the obvious differences there’s a huge, and overpowering, ‘common ground’. The money problem.
No, not the money you have to fork out if you want to be treated in a private facility. The fact that money has been elevated to goal status.
Functionally speaking, health-care is a ‘social function’. By helping each member to remain healthy, the society – as a whole – preserves it’s overall health. It preserves it’s functionality. It’s ability to survive and to thrive. By helping my father with his medical conditions, the society makes it possible for me and my family to remain productive. Instead of taking care of him – which we can’t do properly – we can continue to do what we’re good at.
And no, the subject of this post is not ‘who should pay for health care’. There is no ‘free’ anything so everything has to be paid, one way or another. The problem is the fact that money becoming the main goal has consequences.
Instead of trying to maintain the well being of the population – in an economically sensible manner – the health industry is focused on making profit. Instead of trying to maintain the well being of the population – in an economically sensible manner – the public health system is focused on being ‘thrifty’. The consequences are similar. Overworked doctors, crowded waiting rooms, impatient personnel, long waiting hours, irritation… And no spare capacity to cover ‘mass emergencies’!
Unfortunately, things go way deeper than this.
Do you remember what else ‘surfaced’ in the winter of 2020?
Put two and two together and it becomes a lot easier to understand how and why a huge number of people ended up believing that COVID-19 was a scam. A scam concocted by Big Pharma to convince us to buy their products…
In retrospect, what happened doesn’t make much sense, does it? So many people who had died because so many of us didn’t have enough trust in masks and vaccines… So many of us were convinced that we were being played! For money…
Because it had already happened!
“These consumers were getting a raw deal. They were being exposed to Mylan’s price increases and excluded from the market forces that might cushion them. They were getting ripped off. And it’s no wonder they got angry.”
I have to start by confessing that until yesterday evening I’ve never seriously considered this possibility. Why would anyone bother?
Then somebody – thank you, Jeffrey Mercer – introduced a whole new twist into this conundrum. ‘What if this whole (computer) simulation thing is nothing but yet another attempt to make sense of the Universe? To attribute sense to the Universe? Which whole thing, if anything, is the epitome of anthropomorphism…’ I took the liberty to rephrase Jeffrey Mercer’s words. To make them more ‘suitable’. To fit better my preexisting answer. Yet another ‘anthropomorphic’ thing….
My immediate answer was ‘our world is indeed a simulation. Or maybe not as much a simulation as an artifact.’
Before delving into the matter, I’m going to formulate two questions. Hence ‘the furcula’. If we live in a simulation, what kind of world does the simulator live in? Why would anyone bother? To study us responding to its simulating our senses/minds? Why doesn’t it study itself? Its own self/persona?
Coming back to my initial answer, I have to point out that the key word here is ‘our’. We’re speaking here about ‘our world’. The world we live in. Our reality!
We, the ones trying to make sense of this world/reality, have a few characteristics. We’re made of matter and we have, each of us, a conscience. Having a material nature introduces certain limitations and being conscious widens those limitations. Us being conscious widens those limitations, by introducing a ‘new dimension’, but this doesn’t mean those limitations disappear. A bucket is ‘wider’ than the circle at its base – the bucket has height, hence volume, while the circle is ‘flat’ – but the bucket itself continues to have limits.
Let’s examine the consequences of us being conscious agents of a material nature. Limited conscious agents of a material nature…
Us being conscious means us being aware of our material nature. Of our limits. Having a material nature means the most powerful instinct we have is our ‘need to survive’. Both as a biological organism – a.k.a. animal – and as a conscious agent.
Our consciences – I’m speaking about the individual ones here – are very crafty ‘devils’. They can accept our individual material fate – death – but have a problem accepting their own dependency on the ‘bodies/brains’ they need to inhabit. Hence ‘the soul’.
Which ‘soul’ has been invented – by our conscious selves – as the first step towards building a sense for this world. For the reality we inhabit. Which soul is the building block for all religion. For all religion known/built to/by man.
Are you still here? I have to make a pause here. And to mention the fact that I’ve already cut a few corners… A lot of corners… What I say is probably rather hard to follow. Mostly because I don’t have time/space to explain myself. Not now but certainly in due time.
And yes, what we call ‘religion’ is of our own doing. The Bible itself has been written by us, regardless of the origin of the ideas mentioned there. It doesn’t matter whether we have been the interface between (a) God and ‘the world’, we are the ones who have written the Bible. And all other sacred texts. We have written them, we have believed in them and we have shaped the reality we live in.
We have done all that according to how we have interpreted the teachings we have inherited from our forefathers. And we continue to. Even those of us who consider themselves to be ‘free of religion’. We might not believe but we continue to act as if. Believers and nonbelievers alike hold the same things as being valid. Don’t kill, don’t steal, respect the values which keep society together…
What about where we started from? What about the ‘original’ simulation?
One moment please, I haven’t yet finished with ‘God’. If (a) God made us who/what we are, then who made God?
If someone took the trouble to build the simulation we consider to be ‘home’, what about the ‘real’ world? What about the reality harboring the simulating agent?
There’s no need for an outside agent? The world we live in, our world, is the world we have built for ourselves? Using the things which were at our disposal and the information we have gleaned about how things work? Maybe not always fully aware of what we were doing?
You got it! That’s exactly what I was trying to say!
They call it Cuetlaxochitl. They used to call it that way for a very long time. And it was they who had associated it with the Winter solstice. With the Winter solstice, not the ‘Aztec’ solstice…
At some point, we – or rather after the Christians got in contact them, the mistletoe first and poinsettia later – have associated both with our manner of celebrating the Winter solstice.
In fact, we have appropriated both the celebration itself and the plants associated with it!
I’m not going to discuss whether this was a good or a bad thing. It had just happened. And we have to live with the consequences of all those things having had happened in the past.
All I’m going to discuss in this post is their association with Christmas. With what the Christians consider to be ‘Christmas’ and celebrate it as such.
But is there anything to be discussed about the matter?!?
They have associated each of these plants to their celebrations. We have associated both to one of ours. What is to be discussed here?!?
Do we feel bad for what we – our ancestors, actually – have done to them? And want to atone for what had happened? And for the consequences of what had happened? Which consequences continue to unfold to this day…
We want to make amends – and to get rid of our guilt – by giving them back their plants?!? Really?
How will any of this benefit them?!? ‘Cause this is about them, not us… right?
How about we stop buying the drugs coming from there? Making it possible for them to shake off the drug lords which make their lives miserable?
How about we stop patronizing them? How about we start respecting them for being our ‘brethren’? As in equally-fledged human beings? Instead of we acting as if they were immature children. Liable to feel hurt that we have borrowed their ‘toys’…. For the sole reason that we think that giving them back their ‘sacred’ plants will cleanse our consciences….
Proper = As it should be. As expected. ‘Clean’. Property=Something which belongs to someone. A mutually respected arrangement among the members a certain community which establishes boundaries. Which members have the right to go ‘there’ whenever they want while all others have to ask for permission before crossing that ‘boundary’. A convention among the members of a certain community about what is the proper thing to do in each ‘patrimonial’ situation. A convention about who has the right to do what to the things which happen to co-exist with the members of the above mentioned community. The above mentioned ‘things’ include the place where the entire community happens to live. ‘Their’ land.
Which brings us to who owns the world. The leaders? As many of them assume? Or the humanity, as Dalai Lama has reportedly said?
How about neither? My point being that we are nothing but guests in this world. We come empty handed and we leave empty handed.
Yes, we need property while dwelling on this planet. But only in the sense of who can do what where. And with the limitation that the ‘what’ we do has to be ‘reversible’. Just as we leave this world with nothing – we leave even our hands here, our presence on the planet has to be ‘discrete’. Has to produce as little disturbance as possible and all that disturbance must disappear in time.
We need to keep the world a proper place. It’s the only place we have. No other home for our children. No other place to spend our last days. Properly.
