I heard from someone with no credentials whatsoever that the second most compelling need for humans is to rationalize - that is, to make sense of any situation. The first need? According to him it is not sex or food or water, but sleep. I find both assertions debatable, but it is also surprisingly true: we need to make sense of things and event in our lives.
Without this, we become unbalanced, even insane. Animals have a built-in sense, but ours is more flexible. This is good, yes, for it gives us creative options, but it can be very costly. The Nazis had the superior race and the superman, this glowing human juggernaut confined by the 'evil Jew' and his insipid lackeys; the communists had the rich, pulling every lever to diabolically engineer a whole society, even the world.
And for some, well, this deviation in rational thought is more personal. A recent item on Yahoo news told of an account by a woman who claimed to have worked for NASA. She said that on the first landing of the Mars rover in the late 70's, she saw its camera on the surface of the planet pick up moving images of men in spacesuits working to fix certain problems with the probe. When she reported this to others, she said, the monitor was removed to a sealed room. The spacesuits of the men, she said, were not like those worn at the time by US astronauts, but those inside them were most certainly humans.
What to think of this? It is most probably a conspiracy theory made by a mentally disturbed person that never had anything to do with NASA - or if she did, she was one of those "brilliant minds" that had a serious kink in it, like a tendency towards schizophrenia. We think this because it does not make sense - why would NASA hide their superior technology? To surprise the Soviet Union? But why not let them know that they are outclassed and, as Captain Picard said, "resistance is futile?
As such, we weed out the irrationals among us, but this weeding process itself can only go as far as the normal minds of the time will allow. Our European ancestors once believed in unicorns and fire- breathing dragons and the Garden of Eden in South America, not thousands of years ago, but only 500. Before that, they thought the world rested on a giant turtle or on the shoulders of Atlas; after that, they long believed that Earth was the center of the universe, the celestial dome a literal dome painted with moving stars and the moon that twirled around us in a giant bubble. Beyond that was heaven. And only ten years ago, they (our experts) believed that margarine was better for you than butter.
There was a hike we had when we lived in Connecticut, and along the way deep in the woods, I saw a crane standing by itself, so large that it at first shocked me. We both were certain of it until nearly upon it, when it finally revealed itself to be a fallen branch. For two years after, though, I always first saw it as a crane. The mind had to make sense of it, and given its shape, turned it into an improbable large bird.
In fact, our reality is just such a Rorschach test, sometimes working on simple images, others on grand ideas. Some realities are verifiable, like the crane and the movement of the earth through space. Others are not, at all. I have often gotten into the grand theories behind quantum mechanics, for instance, in part because it shows how little we know, and also how what might really be true is contrary to common sense. Why, for instance, is there co-variance among atomic particles? Why, that is, is there a mutual reaction by particles that are miles or perhaps even light years away from one another? The experimental results show that, once particles interact, they forever, regardless of time or space, react to a force placed on the other. Since all particles once interacted together (supposedly in the Big Bang), wouldn't every action in one place or time affect another? And even without the big bang, over billions of years, wouldn't most particles have interacted with another? Aren't we just one big billiard table, then, with the hits on one and the other all happening at the same time?
This does not make common sense - but common sense to us is not common sense, say, to a Siberian Shaman, who might see in your illness the work of an evil sorcerer rather than that of microbes you ingested hours ago with that rotten caribou steak. We can confirm some things, like the stick and the crane, but we can only rationalize others through our group thought, a shared vision of reality that science has shown is always inadequate and sometimes dead wrong.
I am reading a book now about the 19th century exploration of Panama to find a path for a canal connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. One cartographer, just after his own exploration, complained that others before him had simply made up their maps and journeys. In hindsight, it was then found that this cartographer, too, made up his own maps and observations. Said the author, 'it was not that he was lying.but rather was confirming the expectations and hopes of he and all others concerned.' That is, even as a professional, his own mind rearranged things to his expectations. Because of this, several men died on another expedition while counting on his recordings.
We, then, cannot be comfortable with our notion of reality, ever. Even with quantum physics, perhaps the co-variance of particles is only a wish by those of a more mystical bent, and they are unconsciously misinterpreting the data. In our daily lives, we too do not know how we are misinterpreting our own data. Much of it is shared, as we wish to conform to others' ideas of sanity, confining us to a narrow view.
The question, "what is reality," makes some people laugh in disdain, but it is a valid question. In the recent disturbances at Ferguson, MO, while it seems perfectly clear to white people that the Grand Jury conclusions were correct, it seems equally clear to many black people that it was a rigged deal. In both cases, we are working from our group expectations of reality. There is a reality in this case, but it will never be universally shared because it does not fit with many's expectations of the universe.
I was talking with my idealistic son the other day about societal issues and the responsibility of certain peoples for their own actions, but had to stop myself: what if we all believed in Christ's or Buddha's understanding of the world, for real? From different perspectives, we would have the same results: there would be no greed, no overpowering physical or emotional desire beyond the spiritual, and, in the end, no overpopulation, no rich and poor, and no class suffering. With the overarching rationalization that God or the Absolute alone empowers the universe, and that our selves are only transitory husks for the dwelling of our immortal souls or Selves, we would have the perfect world, the true Utopia.
In John Lennon's song "Imagine", he speaks of a Utopia where there is no god or heaven or hell. In this he is fatally flawed exactly because he is working from a standard materialistic platform. We have made this reality fit everything just so, and in that reality, idealism becomes only that, a simpleton's dream.
Just a thought or two; a thought that was given to me through others centuries past, and that continues to rumble through our subconscious like so many atomic particles, each connected through the other mysteriously, working, perhaps one day, towards critical mass. At least we can believe. It's at least as good a rationalization as any other. FK
Without this, we become unbalanced, even insane. Animals have a built-in sense, but ours is more flexible. This is good, yes, for it gives us creative options, but it can be very costly. The Nazis had the superior race and the superman, this glowing human juggernaut confined by the 'evil Jew' and his insipid lackeys; the communists had the rich, pulling every lever to diabolically engineer a whole society, even the world.
And for some, well, this deviation in rational thought is more personal. A recent item on Yahoo news told of an account by a woman who claimed to have worked for NASA. She said that on the first landing of the Mars rover in the late 70's, she saw its camera on the surface of the planet pick up moving images of men in spacesuits working to fix certain problems with the probe. When she reported this to others, she said, the monitor was removed to a sealed room. The spacesuits of the men, she said, were not like those worn at the time by US astronauts, but those inside them were most certainly humans.
What to think of this? It is most probably a conspiracy theory made by a mentally disturbed person that never had anything to do with NASA - or if she did, she was one of those "brilliant minds" that had a serious kink in it, like a tendency towards schizophrenia. We think this because it does not make sense - why would NASA hide their superior technology? To surprise the Soviet Union? But why not let them know that they are outclassed and, as Captain Picard said, "resistance is futile?
As such, we weed out the irrationals among us, but this weeding process itself can only go as far as the normal minds of the time will allow. Our European ancestors once believed in unicorns and fire- breathing dragons and the Garden of Eden in South America, not thousands of years ago, but only 500. Before that, they thought the world rested on a giant turtle or on the shoulders of Atlas; after that, they long believed that Earth was the center of the universe, the celestial dome a literal dome painted with moving stars and the moon that twirled around us in a giant bubble. Beyond that was heaven. And only ten years ago, they (our experts) believed that margarine was better for you than butter.
There was a hike we had when we lived in Connecticut, and along the way deep in the woods, I saw a crane standing by itself, so large that it at first shocked me. We both were certain of it until nearly upon it, when it finally revealed itself to be a fallen branch. For two years after, though, I always first saw it as a crane. The mind had to make sense of it, and given its shape, turned it into an improbable large bird.
In fact, our reality is just such a Rorschach test, sometimes working on simple images, others on grand ideas. Some realities are verifiable, like the crane and the movement of the earth through space. Others are not, at all. I have often gotten into the grand theories behind quantum mechanics, for instance, in part because it shows how little we know, and also how what might really be true is contrary to common sense. Why, for instance, is there co-variance among atomic particles? Why, that is, is there a mutual reaction by particles that are miles or perhaps even light years away from one another? The experimental results show that, once particles interact, they forever, regardless of time or space, react to a force placed on the other. Since all particles once interacted together (supposedly in the Big Bang), wouldn't every action in one place or time affect another? And even without the big bang, over billions of years, wouldn't most particles have interacted with another? Aren't we just one big billiard table, then, with the hits on one and the other all happening at the same time?
This does not make common sense - but common sense to us is not common sense, say, to a Siberian Shaman, who might see in your illness the work of an evil sorcerer rather than that of microbes you ingested hours ago with that rotten caribou steak. We can confirm some things, like the stick and the crane, but we can only rationalize others through our group thought, a shared vision of reality that science has shown is always inadequate and sometimes dead wrong.
I am reading a book now about the 19th century exploration of Panama to find a path for a canal connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. One cartographer, just after his own exploration, complained that others before him had simply made up their maps and journeys. In hindsight, it was then found that this cartographer, too, made up his own maps and observations. Said the author, 'it was not that he was lying.but rather was confirming the expectations and hopes of he and all others concerned.' That is, even as a professional, his own mind rearranged things to his expectations. Because of this, several men died on another expedition while counting on his recordings.
We, then, cannot be comfortable with our notion of reality, ever. Even with quantum physics, perhaps the co-variance of particles is only a wish by those of a more mystical bent, and they are unconsciously misinterpreting the data. In our daily lives, we too do not know how we are misinterpreting our own data. Much of it is shared, as we wish to conform to others' ideas of sanity, confining us to a narrow view.
The question, "what is reality," makes some people laugh in disdain, but it is a valid question. In the recent disturbances at Ferguson, MO, while it seems perfectly clear to white people that the Grand Jury conclusions were correct, it seems equally clear to many black people that it was a rigged deal. In both cases, we are working from our group expectations of reality. There is a reality in this case, but it will never be universally shared because it does not fit with many's expectations of the universe.
I was talking with my idealistic son the other day about societal issues and the responsibility of certain peoples for their own actions, but had to stop myself: what if we all believed in Christ's or Buddha's understanding of the world, for real? From different perspectives, we would have the same results: there would be no greed, no overpowering physical or emotional desire beyond the spiritual, and, in the end, no overpopulation, no rich and poor, and no class suffering. With the overarching rationalization that God or the Absolute alone empowers the universe, and that our selves are only transitory husks for the dwelling of our immortal souls or Selves, we would have the perfect world, the true Utopia.
In John Lennon's song "Imagine", he speaks of a Utopia where there is no god or heaven or hell. In this he is fatally flawed exactly because he is working from a standard materialistic platform. We have made this reality fit everything just so, and in that reality, idealism becomes only that, a simpleton's dream.
Just a thought or two; a thought that was given to me through others centuries past, and that continues to rumble through our subconscious like so many atomic particles, each connected through the other mysteriously, working, perhaps one day, towards critical mass. At least we can believe. It's at least as good a rationalization as any other. FK
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