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The End of the World

Jan 24, 2015 //
6

I don’t mean the end of the world as in a form of an environmental or man-made Armageddon, either through global warming eliminating the human race, or an asteroid obliterating the planet, or a series of massive volcanic eruptions making Earth unlivable. I mean the final stage of our planet, as in our sun dying, rendering any kind of life on Earth impossible. Or incinerating the planet, I can’t remember which is the case, but the idea is the same.

There are two scenarios that can come to pass if humanity has miraculously managed to last that long: either we have developed scientifically to the point that we are spread out among the stars and mankind survives, or we have not, and we die with our planet. There isn’t really a third option.

The majority of people look at this as the obvious need for scientific progress, as they believe that the continuation of our species is the preferred option. Humans as individuals cannot live forever, but we can, as a species, expand for an eternity if we make science and reason the focal point of our development. Human beings have achieved great things in the past, and it is not unlikely that we could continue to achieve them into the future if we maintain our path of rational enlightenment.

Let’s look at some of the progress we’ve already achieved. Has any of it come about without some atrocity or another? The achievements of the past, like the pyramids, the cathedrals of Europe, the Taj Mahal: these wonders of engineering that tourists of today clamor around in order to take kitschy photographs of themselves next to were all built by slaves. If you throw enough human suffering and death at something, you can create anything. These things we look at as great achievements are often created for the most superficial of reasons. The pyramids are the self-aggrandizing tombs of the rulers of the land who considered themselves gods, and felt they deserved to be treated as such in death. The Taj Mahal is a tomb for the Shah’s favourite wife. The cathedrals are testaments, not to the glory of God, but to the glory of His representatives on Earth. All these achievements, from all that suffering, for vanity.

But what about the scientific progress that leads to the improvement of society? The industrial revolution and the advent of the machine promised to reduce our workload to almost nothing, increasing both the leisure and overall health and happiness of humans across the globe. In reality, however, the industrial revolution lead to inhumane working conditions, class stratification, and the destruction of the environment.

Even today, our computing systems would be impossible without the continuation of the horrific working conditions now hidden from view in third world countries, and the polluting effects of mining the necessary toxic heavy metals, and the waste that comes with the inevitable obseletion of the electronic device, and its subsequent trip to the landfill.

If this trend continues, and we are lucky enough to survive and surpass the destruction of the earth, we would be barbaric conquerors of the universe. Pillaging each planet we came across, either oblivious or apathetic to the carnage that would follow in our wake. And for what? To what purpose do we continue to progress towards infinite expansion across the stars? Do we simply desire immortality? Are we really only Pharaohs, wishing to be gods, uncaring about the suffering it requires to get us there? Do we want to live forever simply out of vanity? What meaning is there to immortality?

Look at the life of an individual. Do we want to be the person who, in their ambition, crushes those on his way to the top, who cares not for the world around him as he blindly revels in his wealth, his achievements? What are the regrets most people have on their death bed? An article from the Huffington Post lists the top five, and the running theme is wishing that there had been more time for a truer connection with oneself and with others. The meaning of life is revealed by those who are about to lose it, and the life lived with meaning, with connection, is the one worth living, not the one dedicated to progress or ambition.

As a species, who do we want to be? Which is the preferred end of the world scenario? Do we want to be the heartless conquerors, who subjugate the universe with the hubris of our imagined divinity, or do we want to be the species that dies with our planet, content that we lived with meaning, and have accepted our fate as mortals? I would rather die with a smile on my face, knowing I had lived and loved to the best of my ability, and I would prefer the same life and death for our species as well.

I am not suggesting that the two are mutually exclusive. It is not impossible for us to achieve peace on Earth without abandoning our dreams of a scientific utopia. However, our culture is still incapable of extricating the avarice, aggression, and dominance that has so far accompanied scientific progress, and trying to fix that problem with only more scientific progress is a self-defeating process. To achieve the best of both worlds, we need to prioritize the world with connection and meaning, because that is the ideal. That is the world, the universe, worth living in.

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Categories Philosophy, Science

Skepticism

Nov 29, 2014 //
2

Skepticism is the belief that nothing can be defined as true, including the belief that nothing can be defined as true. The authentic skeptic questions even their own dogma.

I’ve basically already wrote this, but I feel as though I need to go a bit more in-depth into the subject, because I believe it to be important. Plus, that previous post focused more on experiential uncertainty, such as whether or not there is a God, or if Paul is a dick or actually a pretty cool dude, whereas now I hope to question more assumed knowledge, such as whether or not a table is solid.

This all stemmed from a dinner, sitting around the dining room table, discussing whether or not the table we were all sitting around was solid. Everyone asserted that it was, save for myself who suggested maybe there was more to it than how we all perceived it to be. For example, the table was wood, and someone who is accustomed to working with steel might not think it was all that solid. Or a Hindu might not believe there is a table at all, but an illusion to blind us to the ultimate reality. A Buddhist might see it as a transient object, and with its inevitable deterioration, would claim it to be empty, rather than a solid object. Or even someone taking hallucinogenic drugs might see it as fluid, and before you dismiss this as hogwash, remember that there are shamans who believe that drugs are a way of opening up the mind to reveal the true nature of things. These are but a few of the infinite ways of looking at a dining room table.

Yes, the popular opinion was that the table was solid, but if we adhered strictly to commonly-held beliefs, Copernicus would never have changed the way we look at the solar system.

Of course, we can’t prove that a table isn’t solid, as each different belief set has a way around simply knocking on it with your knuckle to check its durability. Does this lack of proof mean that those views are simply irrelevant? Should we, the knowledgeable ones, ignore the viewpoints that disagree with what is so clear to us? It seems just as likely that any arguments we make about the solidity of the table to those who view it otherwise would sound just as ignorant.

Skepticism was founded as a school of Greek philosophy from the mind of Pyrrho. As with all the early Greek schools, the premise was to divine a system of thought that would allow for an upstanding way of living. Skeptics believed that to doubt everything meant to have an open mind to all ways of thinking. Sextus Empiricus, a scholar in the Greek school, gave arguments both for and against the existence of God, as well as attempted to disprove death. This universal agnosticism, in turn, would theoretically make you less of an asshole. Certainty is the enemy of compromise. Why would you bend on something that you’re certain of, after all?

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Categories Philosophy

Another proof of God

Nov 25, 2014 //
12

Perhaps you might recall my earlier proofs of God, well here is another.

We live in a flawed reality. We use language with its limitations to describe things that we perceive with our imperfect sensory organs. The label of a thing is not that thing; it is merely how we as human beings are able to understand it to the best of our abilities. However, presumably there is actually a thing that we are perceiving and experiencing. It must have an essence that makes it what it is, despite us as a species being unable to objectively ratify it. The tree-ness of a tree, for example, that goes beyond a green leafy-looking thing that may or may not get rid of its green leafy-looking things every autumn.

The idea that things must have an essence that truly make them things was first theorized by a German, Immanuel Kant, and he referred to that essence as the thing-in-itself. While unable to be appreciated by our insufficient intellect, Kant suggests that there still must be an objective reality that transcends our experiential one, and defines it from the outside.

Arthur Schopenhauer, another German, built upon Kant’s theory of the thing-in-itself by suggesting that the Will is what makes a thing a thing. It is what drives us that defines us. Circumstance, character, environmental factors (note: all of these would be phenomena, existing within the experiential universe) may all focus or direct the Will, but the Will itself exists outside. The subject to the universe’s object.

Of course, there are gradations to the Will. The Will as it exists in a human being is a much stronger representation than the Will that exists in a fluffy bunny rabbit. The further down the scale, the more devoid of knowledge the subject becomes, and the more it must conform to laws. Animals are more susceptible to instincts, and plants only have the drive to grow, bear seed, and die. The bottom of the scale would be inanimate objects, mere pawns of physical laws.

Now what does the Will as the thing-in-itself have to do with God? Well, if the Hindus are to be believed, the Atman (the Self) is the same as the Brahman (God). The Will, as Schopenhauer envisions it, permeates all of eternity, and we are individualized portions of it, focusing it in our actions. If our Selves (our Atman) are all the representations of this Will, then we are all disillusioned into thinking that we are individual people, and to achieve salvation, or moral well-being, we would have to recognize the unity in all things, and act accordingly.

Another possibility of this theory accounting for a God is if each individual person/creature/object has their own thing-in-itself, rather than a generalized one that encompasses everything. For example, my Will would exist strictly within my own consciousness, and would not be a focusing of a larger/greater Will. If this were the case, and each Will of each person is their essence, each Will of each fluffy bunny or of each stone, then there would be a thing-in-itself of Being as well. Existence would require its own thing-in-itself, and following Schopenhauer’s proposition that the thing-in-itself is a Will, then there would be a Will behind the universe, this being God. Of course, Schopenhauer followed closer to the Hindu model and didn’t investigate this more individuated method (so far as I know), so this is just my own theory as to how the Will as the thing-in-itself is a potential for a proof of God.

Do I agree with this? Nope, still atheist. However, it is an interesting proof, and does answer the problem of Free Will that I look at in my previous post. Should I offer my refutation as to why I don’t believe it? Ehn, it’s getting kind of late. Maybe I’ll let you, dear readers, figure this one out for yourselves.

 

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Categories Philosophy, Religion
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