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I Don’t Believe in Science

Oct 3, 2014 //
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I know what you’re thinking. Everything is science! When an apple falls from a tree, that’s science. When the morning sun crests over the horizon  welcoming a new day, the earth’s rotation and the sun’s rays refracting through the atmosphere create a beautiful sunrise: that’s science. How can somebody not believe in a sunrise? Well, the sunrise can suck it.

Science was invented when people discovered that perception was flawed. You put a stick in water, and it looks like it bends. Reality has made you look foolish by telling your brain to interpret this straight stick as bendy. Since reality likes to laugh right in our faces at how stupid we are, we invented science in order to wage unholy war against it. But first, we needed to make something up in order to create science, and what we came up with was numbers.

You see, numbers don’t actually exist. There is no evidence of numbers in nature. Numbers are a human construct created in order to understand the universe. There are ten fingers on our hands only because we created the concept of the number ten in order to explain those silly pointy things sticking out of the end part of our arms.

A byproduct of this human creation is time. There are no days; we just live on a spinny orb thingy that occasionally faces something really bright and hot. Matter moves about, decays, and dies, and we came up with this neato little tool called time in order to measure that transformation of matter. However, it’s not actually real, it’s just a thing we came up with to explain why sometimes it’s dark and sometimes it’s light, and why when you throw enough of those dark/light thingies together, eventually you’ll die. I guess we found these explanations soothing.

The most critical aspect of science is measuring things. If there was no measurement, there would be no science. However, all forms of measurement, be they physical or chronological, are human constructions. They’re made up. They’re not real. And since they are our own fictions, the rules that we create for them will work 100% of the time because they exist within their own realm of abstract thought. 2 + 2 = 4 because our concept of the number two, and another of our concept of the number two add up to the abstract concept known as the number four. Pi works for finding out shit about circles because the circle is a mathematical construction created within the realm of numbers; ie. it doesn’t exist. It’s the equivalent of saying that Jesus Christ can be both the God and the son of God at the same time because within the realm of Christianity, those concepts make sense. God + Son of God + Holy Spirit = God. If that doesn’t make sense to you, it’s because you are not approaching it from within the realm of Christianity.

The rules of math work within the realm of math, just as the rules of Christianity work within the realm of Christianity. The mathematician will point to a single rock and say, that is one rock, and the Christian will point to the rock and say that it is a creation of the Lord and it took Him a day to do it. Meanwhile, reality will say it’s just a rock.

Scientists even know this. Any scientific theory, when applied to actual reality rather than safely residing on a piece of thesis, will necessarily have a margin of error. To calculate something perfectly is impossible, due to the fictional nature of our measuring tools, and accommodation must be made for this if a practical use of science is to be implemented.

Think of real life. You can tell a person from Siberia what warmth is, and even if they fully understand how speeding up particles will increase their temperature, they won’t actually understand until they move to literally anywhere else and experience it. Think of meeting a pretty new girl (or boy, I just happen to be a boy so this gendered story works for me). Is liking her a series of complicated chemical reactions in the brain, or is it listening to the same song over and over because it reminds you of her, and waking up each morning and having your first thoughts be of her?

A sunrise isn’t science; science is only the explanation of the sunrise. A sunrise is a sunrise. Explanations are interchangeable. Liking a pretty girl can be explained either by chemical reactions in the brain, or by Eros shooting you with an arrow. Within the paradigm of each, the rules will always make sense. It is life that is constant. It is life that is real.

Post-script: I anticipate (and genuinely hope) that science nerds will get upset over this. I’m not saying that science is a bad explanation. Science is actually a very good explanation. However, it is only an explanation, and my point is that life should take precedence over the explanations for it, because explanations all have inherent flaws within them.

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Categories Philosophy, Science

The Committee

Sep 20, 2014 //
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This isn’t out of my brain, but from a film from 1968 called The Committee. It provides quite a bit to think about, as well as having a delightful psychedelic element to it. The musical score in the background is Pink Floyd. You can either watch it here, or read my transcript. Or both!

I don’t mean to sound like a snob, but that man, worrying about his car, you know what I mean, he’s not alive. If you can do what you say, why don’t you wake him up?

Just tell me what happened.

You could ask him, but he couldn’t tell you. That’s the point, isn’t it? He couldn’t tell you.

Can you tell me?

I can tell you this. In that car there was nothing, see, nothing, just talk. It’s fair to say, isn’t it, that a man like that doesn’t think. He doesn’t really feel. He goes through the motions of being human because nobody told him different.

Look, you may be the best surgeon in town, but you’re not making yourself very clear. What doesn’t he think?

OK, for all I know he might be a very clever and successful person.

Successful in whose terms?

In our terms.

His terms don’t matter?

Yes, in some sense they don’t matter. I know that sounds awful, I probably don’t even mean it. Maybe I have the whole thing wrong. The only thing to do is to try to make things better.

In whose terms?

Look, I’d like to explain to you about that guy. He’s enclosed in himself. He goes on and on, I get the feeling that he just isn’t concerned. Concerned with other people. I mean, everything else is a matter of taste, a matter of opinion. But if anyone can live on this earth and not care about other people.

So you cut his head off. The thing you really seem to hold against him is typified by what you did to him.

I did nothing to him. He’s okay. I put it back on. The head, I mean.

His head.

Yeah, I put the right head back on. In that car I was suffocating. Not just there, lots of times. We’re helpless really. You as well.

If we are helpless, then we are not responsible. But there is a difference between things. I can hold my breath, but my blood flows regardless.

You can hold your breath for a little while, but if you stop the blood flowing, that’s for good.

In the womb, the baby thinks that it’s the universe, and when the baby is born there is a glimmer of light. “I was there, but now I am here. So now there are two things: me, and the universe. The universe is there for me.”

Then what happens?

Other people. That’s what happens. I’m skipping the details, just hitting the main points. Other people. In thought you can try to clear the deck, but in practice, there is a lot of history. In a way, you sell yourself, but the universe is there for you. Now tell me what happened in the glade.

I did something to myself; like entertainment, like amusement, like a daydream. There was nothing there, and I saw something. I saw his head under the bonnet of the car. You can say what you like, but I saw the Bird of Paradise spread its wings.

And the suffocating? Are you still suffocating?

Not now. Not just now.

Can you put yourself in my shoes? Can you picture how it looks to me?

You know, that’s the one thing I can’t do.

Why can’t you put yourself in my shoes? Because it would mean eliminating me, in effect killing me? Or are you afraid to see yourself? And who am I?

You’re the director. Of the committee. You are the state. The trouble is that before the conversation even begins everything has been said.

Ten years from now, there will be a person wandering around, and people will say that it is you. Now they say that it will be you, but what really is your obligation to him? Suppose he starves. Does that bother you? Can you experience his pleasures?

In a way, yes.

Like you can experience mine? What is the difference between your relation to yourself in the future, and other people now?

I may be the director of a committee in the future… I can’t think anymore. There is something that we’re driving at, but I can’t see what it is.

Do you believe that I have access to knowledge? That I understand something about society?

Yes.

Do you want me to stop the games and just come out with it?

Yes.

Suppose I were to tell you, just like that, in a phrase. Do you have any idea what it would sound like? Do you think you could understand it? Do you have any idea what it would be? Would it even be a sound? What would it look like? Could you even recognize it? And would it always be the same?

I can tell you one thing. You’re just as much a part of it as me, and him.

What interests me about authority is the fakery, and what interests me about rejection of authority is also the fakery.

I think the whole world is a mad house. An extended mad house.

Is that a way of saying that *you* are mad?

As long as the dialogue goes on, there’s a chance of rationality.

Not everyone would agree with that. Let me ask you a question; suppose we could get far enough away from human society to observe it with detachment. What would it look like? A mold? A colony of bacteria going through the familiar phases?

And if so, what would we do about it? Try to break the ghastly chain?

With what means?

You would have to understand the process, or else just lash out, strike at something.

It’s late in the day. Maybe too late. I’d suggest we look for the best shortcut.

Back to the lodge?

Yes, if you like. Back to the lodge.

It’s obvious that my contract with society was not total. I may have cut my head off and put it back on again, but the wound didn’t close up completely. Not completely.

Some people think that the criminals and the mad are the real heroes.

Why not in a corrupt world? In a pointless and vicious society?

But in a reasonable society?

There are no criminals.

So one criminal act can turn a reasonable society into an unreasonable one.

And back again.

To the lodge?

Yes, if you like.

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Categories Fun, Philosophy

The Negative Side of Selfishness: Because we all loved it so much before

Sep 16, 2014 //
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There is a fairly common belief that part of the basic nature of humanity involves some amount of selfishness. That, instinctively, people will look out for number one, and when it really counts, will leave their fellow man behind. This allows things like Capitalism and Liberalism, with their heavy emphasis on individuality and striving to raise oneself over others, to become bio-truths. When the paradigm of the day declares selfishness to be a part of who we are, the exploitation and oppression that arise from it become even more difficult to fight and overcome. If one despot is overthrown, for example, another will simply take his place as that is how our basic chemistry makes us.

Is it true? Are we naturally selfish? I am but a humble blog writer with no relevant credentials, but I would disagree with this assertion. The belief that we would naturally be selfish is based on the idea that self-preservation would allow our ancestors to make sure they weren’t eaten by a saber-tooth tiger. They only had to outrun the person they were with to survive, after all.

It is of course impossible to know for certain what makes up our biological impulses compared to what is nurtured into us, but I believe there is evidence even today that disproves selfishness as a part of our nature. The easiest place to look to see if self-preservation prevails is a place where human beings are being threatened with death every day. So let’s look at war.

The book On Killing by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman tells us that the utmost fear of a rookie recruit going in to battle is the fear of dying. However, the greatest fear of soldiers who have seen combat is letting their comrades down. The conditioning of soldiers is intended to strip them of their humanity until they are unfeeling killing machines, and this typically works. However, basic instincts would remain, and what we see by those who have faced the opportunity to either embrace their allegedly selfish nature, or stick with their friends, is that they almost always stick with their friends. Those who are ignorant of the ways of war maintain the selfish fear of personal death likely due to the common cultural belief that we are inherently selfish individuals, but those who have lived it show that the true instinct lies in our connection with others.

This phenomenon doesn’t just appear in war. Parents on welfare will frequently go without food so that their child will be able to eat. When the situation becomes dire, it seems that our instinct is to take care of those that we love, not abandon them in order to save ourselves.

So… cool? Most people associate selfishness with “bad” anyway, so why am I bothering to disprove it as a bio-truth? Because when we see it as a part of who we are, it seems almost necessary that greed and corruption permeate all levels of our culture. To strike back becomes futile, and the common trend is to join in and try to survive as best you can. We even have philosophies based on selfishness that are wildly successful. To achieve happiness, don’t change the world, change the way you look at the world. Reality is based on our perception and experience, and if one focuses solely on the way they perceive things, they would be able to achieve whatever they want: within the realm of their own existence.

But our reality is not the only reality. Each reality shares an interconnected dependence on all the realities of all the individuals around it. Think of it as a a lake, and every action we take is a stone dropping into the water, creating a ripple. If everyone throws in a stone, each ripple overlaps with all the others, influencing the pattern on the surface. We are not individuals, we are individuals within a community, and to ignore that is detrimental to both the community as well as the individual.

So if our basic instinct is to embrace our love, why is there selfishness? The entire premise of Grossman’s book is to look at what enables one human to kill another, and I believe the conditions that allow us to kill allow us to perform all manner of terrible things upon each other, and I look at this premise more in depth in my blog post here. I also believe that what we call empathy, or our ability to perceive the experiences of others through our own personal lens (oftentimes to the detriment of that other) allows us to act selfishly without recognizing the consequences of our actions as damaging to others.

How do we fight the selfishness that appears to be overpowering our culture? Foster the interconnected in our communities, listen instead of assume, disable the conditions that perpetuate both figurative and literal violence, and above all else know that deep down we are creatures of love. Expand the circle of that love to include more than just family and friends, and a difference will be made.

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Categories Philosophy
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