Faith and Reason

Hey Folks,

Below is part of what I share with highschool seniors four times a year. It deals with a critical divide in the contemporary world.

In "A Man Without a Country" Kurt Vonnegut says:

Human beings have had to guess about almost everything for the past million years or so. The leading characters in our history books have been our most enthralling, and sometimes our most terrifying, guessers.
. . .
We must acknowledge that persuasive guessers, even Ivan the Terrible, have sometimes given us the courage to endure extraordinary ordeals which we had no way of understanding. Crop failures, plagues, eruptions of volcanoes, babies being born dead - the guessers often gave us the illusion that bad luck and good luck were understandable and could somehow be dealt with intelligently and effectively. Without that illusion, we all might have surrendered long ago.

But the guessers, in fact, knew no more than the common people and sometimes less, even when, or especially when, they gave us the illusion that we were in control of our destinies.

A major point of Vonnegut's book is that in the last two-hundred years we have learned so much that we no longer need to or should rely on guessers. But thousands-of -years-old habits are difficult to shake. My comments below suggest why that is.

- Uke Man


October 17, 2004, New York Times Magazine -
Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

-"Are you gonna believe me, or your lying eyes?" - Grouch Marx, Red Foxx, et. al.

Can we KNOW anything? I think we can.
Is it easy to know things? I don’t think so.
Is it good to know things? I think so.
Is it easier to accept things than it is to know them? Sure.
Do people want to know things, or would they rather accept things they are told and act as if they are known? Good question.

It seems that, at least in terms of how things have been run historically, folks prefer to have their “knowledge” placed in their heads by someone else. Every “civilization” that has ever existed has rested on a dream world - created out of whole cloth, but nevertheless accepted by its people as real. Successive “civilizations” laugh at the “silly” notions of defunct cultures, but go to vicious war to establish the “truth” of their own.

There are a lot of possible explanations for why this has always been the case, but I’m not getting into that now. Instead, let’s look at the possibilities of doing it differently. Perhaps if enough people could become aware of the simple truth above about the relativity of cultural “truth,” it could lead to a saner, better world.

Here is a list of options. If forced to decide, which one of each pair would YOU choose?

Science or Faith
Learning or Accepting
Education or indoctrination
Thought or emotion
Knowing or Guessing
Self or Authority
Evidence or Dogma
Activity or Passivity
The Present or the Past
Sanity or Adjustment
Doubt or Certainty
Discovery or Testimonials
Reality or Virtual Reality
Objectivity or Spin
Truth or Fiction
Freedom or Security
Independence or Dependence
Intelligence or Emotion
Courage or Cowardice

Explanations for the dream-world nature of “civilizations” can be found in the second options. The inherent difficulty of the first options – along with the ease of the alternatives - explains the attractiveness of the second options.

In reading an article on the use of aroma in Las Vegas casinos, I came across this comment:"Our olfactory receptors are directly connected to the limbic system, the most ancient and primitive part of the brain, which is thought to be the seat of emotion."

Our ancient, primitive natures DO make it easy for us to FEEL rather than THINK. Isn’t it ironic that many of the folks who most strenuously object to the notion of evolution – the idea that we descended from animals - are the ones relying disproportionately on their ancient, primitive (animal?) brain centers?

Though they may feel a necessity to do so, they don’t really NEED to. Each of us is equipped to make either the difficult choice or the easy choice. It really IS up to us. It all depends on whether we are courageous enough to use our neo-cortex rather than our limbic system.

- Uke Man