Combing the non-fiction new book section of the library, I came across an odd book, But What If We're Wrong?, by Chuck Klosterman, the title being written upside down - and the bio on the flap sideways. Yes, odd, as it's supposed to be: it is about ideas that we believe to be true but which most certainly are not. 'Gravity' is at the top of the list (I have read only the first 40 pages though), whose force a physicist proclaimed as probably "emergent" - that is, caused by other forces, leaving gravity as only a sort of sidebar. Then he goes on to literature: what makes a book classic? While much has been written about this, we are told that we still don't really know because we cannot know the context in which future society will judge (take gay marriage, for instance, something unthinkable just 40 years ago, when it was seen as a genuine contradiction of terms). Moby Dick, published in 1851, sat as an unread and under-appreciated book until WWI, wherein it suddenly became the genius work of America, the true Great American Novel. Again, no one really knows why.
I expect greater thoughts from this book, but right now I have been largely filled with curious snippets of knowledge that may or may not be relevant, but are interesting anyway. One of the most unusual, under the bracket of "literature," involves the Wachowski brothers, Larry and Andy, who wrote and directed the mind- bending movie "The Matrix." After I saw it, I wrote a blog about it, because how could I not? While we have no proof that our reality is only a simulation (made by super-smart machines in the movie), it COULD be. More importantly, it got into the subject of this book - that what we think to be true is most probably not. More interesting still, in a tabloid sort of way, is the fate of the Wachowski brothers: they are now the Wachowski sisters, both now trans-gendered (Lana and Lilly). The author used this to inform the readers that the stimulus behind works of art might not be what we think. Had we known of the gender bending of the brothers, we might have seen the movie in a different context: the blue pill of lies being society/nature's designation, and the red pill of truth being what is true outside of our notions of reality (including, of course, nature. We are in a rare atmosphere here).
Fascinating and probably unimportant, but still, the truth is, as the Matrix tells us, that our bedrock reality is not bedrock after all. To what levels does that bring us? I have mentioned before the ethnographic case of a Northwest Coast Indian who was a shaman's apprentice. At first, he was shocked to find that it all seemed like showmanship. For instance, the stone that was sucked out of a sick person's body and announced to be the evil object of the sickness was kept by the shaman in his own mouth BEFORE the sucking. A sham. But then the apprentice was called upon to do his own healing. He went through the motions as an unbeliever, but then, miraculously, the patient was cured. Not understanding how, the apprentice came to believe that his craft was true, even though he could not understand how it worked. It simply did, and that was proof enough.
The same could be at work with our sciences. We know, for instance, that the concept of gravity since Newton has worked astoundingly well, but we also now know that that knowledge is only an abstraction, something that works in the practical world, but does not really explain the phenomena. And forget about social sciences. Yesterday I read in the paper about the Ouija Board, something invented in the 1890's to profit from the spiritualistic fad of the era. Said the newspaper, "social science has now determined that it is the unconscious movement of muscles rather than spirits that move the pointer across the board." Oh? And what motivates this unconscious that moves the muscles? The explanation is a total non-explanation, much like the "placebo" effect, words that seem to solve the problem but do not do so at all.
The truth is - can I even sat that? - that we either use what works, even though the explanation for its working is faulty, or we use what parallels our current mode of thought, even though that explanation might be, on inspection, meaningless. None of it matters to us as long as the world as we know it continues to exist.
The problem is, and as archaeologists have long known, that when the cultural matrix is not fully based on reality - and none are - real damage will eventually occur. For small tribes living in a vast territory, the damage might never be catastrophic. But with large and powerful societies such as our own, the damage will eventually be irreversible. All of the ancient civilizations show us this. Lack of knowledge of weather systems, of drainage patterns, of ecological contingencies, of poisoned products (lead, for instance, used by the Romans to sweated wine), of - well, of so many things, will eventually lead such societies to destruction.
Since this is a blog about the metaphysical and spiritual, it is here that I usually find a message to further explore the truth in religion or spirituality. I could do that here - many religions speak of the unreality of reality, which is another way of saying we do not understand our apparently rock-solid world - but I will sway slightly to say that I well understand the problem with religion today. It is that we know too much about other's beliefs now to say with certainty that ours (whichever it is) is the only truth. On the other hand, we simply have to be like the Matrix hero and not accept the status quo of reality - which now says that religion and perhaps all of spirituality is akin to the "unconscious movement of muscles." It is, after all, probable that something believed in for centuries by perfectly intelligent people has something to it, even if it is not understood, much like our apprentice's healing magic. But that apprentice could well accept electricity or the voyage to the moon without abandoning his craft, knowing that no one - at least no ordinary human - really knows the truth about everything. Thus we follow the strands of knowledge passed to us openly and judge by the results. We might then leave speculation about the "Truth behind it all" for some other occasion - writing in a blog, for instance - until in death, in revelation, in whatever, we might be offered the red pill of truth. My hope is, though - given my age and cultural prejudices - that if that time comes, I will not be signing off on this blog as "Freida." FK
I expect greater thoughts from this book, but right now I have been largely filled with curious snippets of knowledge that may or may not be relevant, but are interesting anyway. One of the most unusual, under the bracket of "literature," involves the Wachowski brothers, Larry and Andy, who wrote and directed the mind- bending movie "The Matrix." After I saw it, I wrote a blog about it, because how could I not? While we have no proof that our reality is only a simulation (made by super-smart machines in the movie), it COULD be. More importantly, it got into the subject of this book - that what we think to be true is most probably not. More interesting still, in a tabloid sort of way, is the fate of the Wachowski brothers: they are now the Wachowski sisters, both now trans-gendered (Lana and Lilly). The author used this to inform the readers that the stimulus behind works of art might not be what we think. Had we known of the gender bending of the brothers, we might have seen the movie in a different context: the blue pill of lies being society/nature's designation, and the red pill of truth being what is true outside of our notions of reality (including, of course, nature. We are in a rare atmosphere here).
Fascinating and probably unimportant, but still, the truth is, as the Matrix tells us, that our bedrock reality is not bedrock after all. To what levels does that bring us? I have mentioned before the ethnographic case of a Northwest Coast Indian who was a shaman's apprentice. At first, he was shocked to find that it all seemed like showmanship. For instance, the stone that was sucked out of a sick person's body and announced to be the evil object of the sickness was kept by the shaman in his own mouth BEFORE the sucking. A sham. But then the apprentice was called upon to do his own healing. He went through the motions as an unbeliever, but then, miraculously, the patient was cured. Not understanding how, the apprentice came to believe that his craft was true, even though he could not understand how it worked. It simply did, and that was proof enough.
The same could be at work with our sciences. We know, for instance, that the concept of gravity since Newton has worked astoundingly well, but we also now know that that knowledge is only an abstraction, something that works in the practical world, but does not really explain the phenomena. And forget about social sciences. Yesterday I read in the paper about the Ouija Board, something invented in the 1890's to profit from the spiritualistic fad of the era. Said the newspaper, "social science has now determined that it is the unconscious movement of muscles rather than spirits that move the pointer across the board." Oh? And what motivates this unconscious that moves the muscles? The explanation is a total non-explanation, much like the "placebo" effect, words that seem to solve the problem but do not do so at all.
The truth is - can I even sat that? - that we either use what works, even though the explanation for its working is faulty, or we use what parallels our current mode of thought, even though that explanation might be, on inspection, meaningless. None of it matters to us as long as the world as we know it continues to exist.
The problem is, and as archaeologists have long known, that when the cultural matrix is not fully based on reality - and none are - real damage will eventually occur. For small tribes living in a vast territory, the damage might never be catastrophic. But with large and powerful societies such as our own, the damage will eventually be irreversible. All of the ancient civilizations show us this. Lack of knowledge of weather systems, of drainage patterns, of ecological contingencies, of poisoned products (lead, for instance, used by the Romans to sweated wine), of - well, of so many things, will eventually lead such societies to destruction.
Since this is a blog about the metaphysical and spiritual, it is here that I usually find a message to further explore the truth in religion or spirituality. I could do that here - many religions speak of the unreality of reality, which is another way of saying we do not understand our apparently rock-solid world - but I will sway slightly to say that I well understand the problem with religion today. It is that we know too much about other's beliefs now to say with certainty that ours (whichever it is) is the only truth. On the other hand, we simply have to be like the Matrix hero and not accept the status quo of reality - which now says that religion and perhaps all of spirituality is akin to the "unconscious movement of muscles." It is, after all, probable that something believed in for centuries by perfectly intelligent people has something to it, even if it is not understood, much like our apprentice's healing magic. But that apprentice could well accept electricity or the voyage to the moon without abandoning his craft, knowing that no one - at least no ordinary human - really knows the truth about everything. Thus we follow the strands of knowledge passed to us openly and judge by the results. We might then leave speculation about the "Truth behind it all" for some other occasion - writing in a blog, for instance - until in death, in revelation, in whatever, we might be offered the red pill of truth. My hope is, though - given my age and cultural prejudices - that if that time comes, I will not be signing off on this blog as "Freida." FK
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