Solomon lamented that it was all vanity, and his cry has been echoed through the ages.
We gotta change, ya'll. Bruce Hornsby, and later Tupac, sadly declared "that's just the way it is." Aerosmith recognizes "we're living on the edge." Metallica decries the miserable trap of a single mother caught up in a life as an adult entertainer in their cover of Seger's "Turn the Page." Shine-down condemns us in "what a shame." Offspring realized "the kid's aren't all right." Pearl Jam recounts the story of a tortured boy named "Jeremy" and mourns a woman trapped in an abusive relationship in "Better Man." Elvis breaks our hearts singing about children "in the ghetto." Rise Against stirs our guilt over foreign workers caught up in the evil American capitalist machine in their "Prayer of the Refugee." A whole host of other do-gooders beg us to "Feed the World" because this year, at Christmas, the only gifts Africans may get is "life." Nickelback tries to predict what would happen if "everyone cared'; could even John Lennon "imagine" a world like that? Queen's suicidal poor boy thought that "Nothing Really Matters" in their much karaoke-d masterpiece "Bohemian Rhapsody." Black Eyed Peas, considering all this, asks "where is the love?"
How many songs about social injustice can you name? How many songs wishing for a better world can you sing along to? Occasionally, when we get the big date, coveted promotion, winning ticket, passing grade, long vacation, reprieve of punishment, appointment to favor, or witness something truly beautiful we, just for a moment, think to ourselves - what a wonderful world.
But if we're honest about the undertone - it's not such a wonderful world. In fact, it's quite tragic. Against the beautiful Technicolor rose blooming in the foreground is the ravaged, black and white disaster looming just out of focus - that is the world in which we live. In our moment in the sun we fancy ourselves invincible, and it's all worth it. But in the quiet of death we pass into nothingness as those the world is cruelest to are often silenced by the despair that claims them.
The cry "where is the love" starts introspectively and ends as condemnation of the world around us. Indeed, where is the love? Almost cynically I also ask, why do we suspect that there is love? What is that? How can society ask where love is - it's a constant appeal to something they profess not to believe in.
Why would there be love? You are welcome to pause, "youtube" a few nature videos of some wildebeest being mauled by a ravenous lion - or if you want something more exoctic of a giant centipede eating a mouse - and come back and let us discuss further about this love business. Why do we insist there should be such a thing, if the pruning of the weak has produced this biosphere of endless variety why stop it now?
Somewhere amidst the cacophony of human voices me may be able to extract something they would deny if there song did not betray them. We know it's not supposed to be this way. In the noise of youth, if the ruckus of sex, drugs, and "rock and roll", we can drown it out. In the pleasures of riches we can buy our minds of the subject. Adrenaline rushes, binge drinking, good food, good times, loud pipes, big rims, and flashy phones help give us the smirk of "this is alright." But offspring had it right, the kids, they've got issues - and they're definitely not alright.
Many individuals do well for themselves - but no one takes a look at it all and can honestly believe "everything is as it ought to be." We ask, because it begs the question. "Where is the love?"
I know the answer, and it has nothing to do with superstition and everything to do with the most plausible canon of evidence ever produced.
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Sunday, June 22, 2014
We ought
"To each his own." I guess now even that is not generic enough, maybe "To each its own." would be even more fitting to the post-modernist' view. Now, this phrase can refer to individual taste, in which sense I could not argue with it. But more often of late I have heard it applied to matters of principle and governing philosophy. No one who says this actually believes it - it's kinda the "we're for world peace, uh, but we'll hold onto all our nukes and make a few 1000 more if you don't mind - and possibly bomb you in the near future" mentality. We proclaim "to each his own" but don't really settle the conflict between our ideologies - it's a cease fire of sorts for the philosophically weak or morally lazy. Whether knowingly or not, we all reserve the right to take someone else's "own" at a convenient moment. Don't believe me? Please read on.
The human social dynamic is not in equilibrium, so the expectations and demands we place on one another are always active. Let's test this in light of some seemingly opposing doctrines. A pertinent example for the suum cuique creed as applied in moral philosophy is this idea that we cannot tell another adult what he or she may or may not do with his or her body. Sounds fair, right? What's yours is yours and what's mine is mine. What business of mine is it what you do behind closed doors? Maybe it is none of my business, but isn't our collectives business? Check out this fun piece.
In case you did not watch it let me summarize if for you. If you were to hit play you would have experienced a nauseating intro from our former speaker of the house - and then a very heart felt testimony from Sandra Fluke, a then Georgetown University Law Student. Paraphrased she is saying "while you cannot tell me what I can and cannot do with my own body; I am here to tell you exactly what you are going to do with your money in terms of providing for me."
Was that summary I gave a tad unfair? No, I don't think so. That is what's going on here. There seems to be a counterpoint of type going on between the morally loose and the fiscally tight at all times; as if the sonata of right vs. left thinkers is independent for the most part and crosses when one has to pay for the others mistakes. This is a partial allegiance to both philosophies, with a forced choosing of sides when trouble strikes.
We all hold that others ought to behave in a particular way. Even extreme cases of the morally repugnant have a system of expectations for other people. None of us truly believe that everyone may do as he pleases as long as it does not intersect me. We don't believe that because we live in a world where that is not possible, we are connected to one another and thus must seek to understand and define that connection.
In doing so we place demands on one-another. The artificial structure of so many modern interactions reduce the likelihood of having to face the reality that we must have some moral law to appeal to in order to get along.
The climatologist believes we ought to curb greenhouse gasses, the oilman believes we ought to relax environmental regulations, the feminist believe men ought to change their minds about the preconceived notions about women, the traditional family advocate thinks society ought to stop their onslaught about the traditional roles of the sexes.
It is not one-sided all the time. Often one noble group will advocate laws and regulations that work their detriment in service to a higher cause as well. I invite us all to listen closely to the news this week. It is replete with examples of framing a particular action as morally repugnant because a certain standard of behavior was expected but not delivered.
Listen to pop culture, the whining of protestors, the post of culture warriors, the tone of new age media. It is a work of amazing contrast. Against the tapestry of no right and wrong they beg for justice against a new set of self-defined grievances.
What convinces each and every person that others ought to act in a particular way? It is a uniting belief that we all share and a small majority exhibit the true "anything goes" spirit despite a much larger population that professes it. There is a since of right and wrong inscribed in every thinking person's psyche. It is well worth our while to know where it comes from, and to know which way (for they are all conflicting) is the correct one.
The human social dynamic is not in equilibrium, so the expectations and demands we place on one another are always active. Let's test this in light of some seemingly opposing doctrines. A pertinent example for the suum cuique creed as applied in moral philosophy is this idea that we cannot tell another adult what he or she may or may not do with his or her body. Sounds fair, right? What's yours is yours and what's mine is mine. What business of mine is it what you do behind closed doors? Maybe it is none of my business, but isn't our collectives business? Check out this fun piece.
In case you did not watch it let me summarize if for you. If you were to hit play you would have experienced a nauseating intro from our former speaker of the house - and then a very heart felt testimony from Sandra Fluke, a then Georgetown University Law Student. Paraphrased she is saying "while you cannot tell me what I can and cannot do with my own body; I am here to tell you exactly what you are going to do with your money in terms of providing for me."
Was that summary I gave a tad unfair? No, I don't think so. That is what's going on here. There seems to be a counterpoint of type going on between the morally loose and the fiscally tight at all times; as if the sonata of right vs. left thinkers is independent for the most part and crosses when one has to pay for the others mistakes. This is a partial allegiance to both philosophies, with a forced choosing of sides when trouble strikes.
We all hold that others ought to behave in a particular way. Even extreme cases of the morally repugnant have a system of expectations for other people. None of us truly believe that everyone may do as he pleases as long as it does not intersect me. We don't believe that because we live in a world where that is not possible, we are connected to one another and thus must seek to understand and define that connection.
In doing so we place demands on one-another. The artificial structure of so many modern interactions reduce the likelihood of having to face the reality that we must have some moral law to appeal to in order to get along.
The climatologist believes we ought to curb greenhouse gasses, the oilman believes we ought to relax environmental regulations, the feminist believe men ought to change their minds about the preconceived notions about women, the traditional family advocate thinks society ought to stop their onslaught about the traditional roles of the sexes.
It is not one-sided all the time. Often one noble group will advocate laws and regulations that work their detriment in service to a higher cause as well. I invite us all to listen closely to the news this week. It is replete with examples of framing a particular action as morally repugnant because a certain standard of behavior was expected but not delivered.
Listen to pop culture, the whining of protestors, the post of culture warriors, the tone of new age media. It is a work of amazing contrast. Against the tapestry of no right and wrong they beg for justice against a new set of self-defined grievances.
What convinces each and every person that others ought to act in a particular way? It is a uniting belief that we all share and a small majority exhibit the true "anything goes" spirit despite a much larger population that professes it. There is a since of right and wrong inscribed in every thinking person's psyche. It is well worth our while to know where it comes from, and to know which way (for they are all conflicting) is the correct one.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Cause and Effect
It is not so remarkable to hear a very spiritual person blame some fortunate or even unfortunate happenstance on an unseen force. Superstition has always been commonplace. This sort of behavior is usually based either on fear, the innate desire to appeal to something beyond our understanding, or a shared human feeling that there is more to our world than meets the eye. Man's understanding has always seemed to be tethered to how much he can see, and things unseen have always given rise to fanciful stories that observation would either later refine or completely replace. When telescopes and microscopes increased our ability to see; they also increased our ability to know.
I believe this demonstrates that man's own thoughts are inadequate for understanding without the constant feedback which comes from observation. It is our nature to ask and to seek to know how things work. We count our knowledge correct when we can repeatedly predict an outcome with cause under control. Our desire to know meets our destiny to know when what is real is revealed to us - and the correction that ensues steers us ever towards our goal.
Take the understanding of light itself as an example. Light travels very fast - something like 671,000,000 miles per hour. Past a small threshold, big numbers are meaningless to humans, because we cannot easily appreciate the difference between 100,000 miles per hour or 1,000,000 miles per hour and 671,000,000 miles per hour in everyday terms. All those speeds make the time for a trip to the grocery store something smaller than we can perceive (unless you live in Houston).
Knowing what we know now, it's easy to chuckle at Galileo's attempt to measure the speed of light using a mile of separation, an assistant, and two lanterns. But the speed of light can be measured, and it comes out to some number that's quite easy to express on paper. It is limited. You just need the correct scale to measure it upon. Later a Danish astronomer named Ole Roemer found a more appropriate scale upon which to gauge the speed of light - the massive scale of our solar system. Using measurements of the observed timing of the movement of Jupiter's moons he was able to get the first good approximation for the speed of light.
Take a look at the this submerged object to the right. Now, I want to test what you believe about this object. You may have read about it, you may know its history, someone may have told you about it, or you may be seeing it for the first time. What I would like to know is, what do you believe about it's origins? This thought experiment would be even better if you hadn't known anything this object previously and further valid if you had little knowledge about how fluid flow may affect a metallic structure and produce patterns of any kind (also if you couldn't google it either.)
So what do you believe? Did the sea's currents shape this piece of bronze, or did bio-erosion from the coral reef's attached to it? Did a human once shape it and then dump it into the sea? Some submerged statues we know are very old. How old do you think this one is? How would you tell?
If I told you that the waves did so happen to shape this object and there was nothing more to it, would you believe that? No thinking person could settle for that. The drive to resolve coincidence and look for a cause would not leave my shallow explanation alone.
This common human longing for knowing cause and effect, for being able to reason out why things happen, this common suspicion that purpose has origins, that images have objects from which they are derived, this longing for unity, is itself a unifying factor through which all humans can relate to one another.
Some things are too far or too small for us to see sometimes. Without the recorded knowledge that we have modern man would be just as pitiful with some of his assumptions about how the world really operates. But there is truth. Sometimes we don't have the vision to see that truth, and even other times even if we can see it we reject it. We reject it because we already gave up on that question long ago - and we have settled for our substitute answer.
Have you ever studied mythology? It's confusing. Our stories, when untethered from reality, go in every which direction. But I will often appeal to this - that there is only one truth. There are many varieties of things that may be said about that one truth - a variety that is celebrated by the diverse landscape of people we find in our world. However, variety must be tethered to what's real to be veracity. Adding to the belief that there is a single truth, it is true that we have a desire to obtain it. Though at times we settle for something less; our own actions betray an underlying belief that the rational mind demands a logical cause and effect relationship. Finally, we embrace this belief in cause and effect when we look for the answers to who we are and what we are doing here. Though at times settling for an inferior explanations, our decisions and professions betray that we know more about the nature of our origins than we let on. Not that we see it clearly, we do not. It must be illuminated for us. But deceived or not, we all bear this burdening question that we must answer in one way or another: why?
I believe this demonstrates that man's own thoughts are inadequate for understanding without the constant feedback which comes from observation. It is our nature to ask and to seek to know how things work. We count our knowledge correct when we can repeatedly predict an outcome with cause under control. Our desire to know meets our destiny to know when what is real is revealed to us - and the correction that ensues steers us ever towards our goal.
Take the understanding of light itself as an example. Light travels very fast - something like 671,000,000 miles per hour. Past a small threshold, big numbers are meaningless to humans, because we cannot easily appreciate the difference between 100,000 miles per hour or 1,000,000 miles per hour and 671,000,000 miles per hour in everyday terms. All those speeds make the time for a trip to the grocery store something smaller than we can perceive (unless you live in Houston).
Knowing what we know now, it's easy to chuckle at Galileo's attempt to measure the speed of light using a mile of separation, an assistant, and two lanterns. But the speed of light can be measured, and it comes out to some number that's quite easy to express on paper. It is limited. You just need the correct scale to measure it upon. Later a Danish astronomer named Ole Roemer found a more appropriate scale upon which to gauge the speed of light - the massive scale of our solar system. Using measurements of the observed timing of the movement of Jupiter's moons he was able to get the first good approximation for the speed of light.
Take a look at the this submerged object to the right. Now, I want to test what you believe about this object. You may have read about it, you may know its history, someone may have told you about it, or you may be seeing it for the first time. What I would like to know is, what do you believe about it's origins? This thought experiment would be even better if you hadn't known anything this object previously and further valid if you had little knowledge about how fluid flow may affect a metallic structure and produce patterns of any kind (also if you couldn't google it either.)
So what do you believe? Did the sea's currents shape this piece of bronze, or did bio-erosion from the coral reef's attached to it? Did a human once shape it and then dump it into the sea? Some submerged statues we know are very old. How old do you think this one is? How would you tell?
If I told you that the waves did so happen to shape this object and there was nothing more to it, would you believe that? No thinking person could settle for that. The drive to resolve coincidence and look for a cause would not leave my shallow explanation alone.
This common human longing for knowing cause and effect, for being able to reason out why things happen, this common suspicion that purpose has origins, that images have objects from which they are derived, this longing for unity, is itself a unifying factor through which all humans can relate to one another.
Some things are too far or too small for us to see sometimes. Without the recorded knowledge that we have modern man would be just as pitiful with some of his assumptions about how the world really operates. But there is truth. Sometimes we don't have the vision to see that truth, and even other times even if we can see it we reject it. We reject it because we already gave up on that question long ago - and we have settled for our substitute answer.
Have you ever studied mythology? It's confusing. Our stories, when untethered from reality, go in every which direction. But I will often appeal to this - that there is only one truth. There are many varieties of things that may be said about that one truth - a variety that is celebrated by the diverse landscape of people we find in our world. However, variety must be tethered to what's real to be veracity. Adding to the belief that there is a single truth, it is true that we have a desire to obtain it. Though at times we settle for something less; our own actions betray an underlying belief that the rational mind demands a logical cause and effect relationship. Finally, we embrace this belief in cause and effect when we look for the answers to who we are and what we are doing here. Though at times settling for an inferior explanations, our decisions and professions betray that we know more about the nature of our origins than we let on. Not that we see it clearly, we do not. It must be illuminated for us. But deceived or not, we all bear this burdening question that we must answer in one way or another: why?
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