Welcome to 2017, may it be unlike 2016! However, the decisions of 2016 suggests that 2017 will be dangerously different, and the eventual outcome will depend on our future individual and collective choices. On the last day of 2016 my family marked this arbitrary boundary in time by hiking up the mountain to watch the last sunset, and then going home to watch Tutankhamun (there’s no logic there, I know). On the way down the mountain, as we walked in the dark with our head torches, scratched by thorn bushes and stumbling over boulders, the future lives of a scorpion (see picture) and I were separated by only a few centimeters. Since I was hiking in sandals (having destroyed my boots on our pre-Christmas trip), the outcome could have been highly problematic for one of us if I had decided to place my foot slightly differently. Consequences are often hyper-sensitive to small changes in decisions. For example, if last year is anything to go by, we now have "life with Trump" and Brexit partly because a small percentage of people presumed their protest vote would not really influence the outcome. There’s lots of instances in life like this; small differences in our moment of choice give rise to big consequences, flipping us into an alternate future. Therein lies the rub: very often the small differences are simply because we fear to face a fact, and so we create our own preferred "truth" on which to base the decision. A classic example is syncretism – which is the mixing and melding of different elements of spirituality to construct a more "acceptable" composite product - a modern day paganism for a post-Christian world. For example, Mark Zuckerburg (yes, that one) has apparently “found religion” and is doing just this. From the report it sounds like he’s constructing a package that mixes his Jewish heritage with strands of Buddhism along with a good dose of humanism (where do they teach logic now days?). It is actually very typical of today's western spirituality. This is, I suggest, largely because of a fear of uncomfortable conclusions that arise when we stick to the facts. Just look at climate change: in the US (and hardly anywhere else) the fear of the consequences arising from a logical conclusion of the facts (especially that personal lifestyles and corporate special interests will be deeply impacted) drives half the USA population (and most of the Republicans) into illogical and indefensible denial. I have a number of friends who are really good people, nice people (they’re my friends, after all). They’re mostly intelligent, thoughtful, courageously facing uncomfortable conclusions in many areas, yet who are fearful in cases when it comes to issues that carry deep personal cost, and then many of them begin to deny that "scorpions have tails". There’s safety in relativism, in cherry-picking the truths we like (even though we don't always live by them much). When faced by an uncomfortable conclusion, we are often quick to use the excuse of mystery: "since I don’t know it all, what seems apparent could really be something else, so I don't need to act”. This attitude to mystery quickly leads to ideas such the popular one that “we might be living in a computer simulation". Raising such possibilities quickly gives an out to all sorts of uncomfortable conclusions about right and wrong, duty, ethics, and even God. But simply because I can postulate something, does not mean there is any credibility to the idea. Perhaps the starting point is accepting this reality. a) I will wake up in the morning and have to engage with life and make choices, and for this I need a framework to guide my choices. b) All I have to go on is the evidence of facts (as best I can know them), my experiences and that of others, logic, and my brain, which together will hopefully combine to give some measure of wisdom. However, we tend to want to avoid the reality that incomplete evidence is nonetheless evidence, and cannot be ignored at will and be supplanted by more attractive speculation. For example, I have NO evidence that I’m an object in a giant computer simulation, but I have LOTS of evidence that suggests I am alive. I could be wrong, but is it more logical to act on a hypothetical possibility versus an evidence-based probability? Until the former accumulates evidence, should I not work on the basis of the latter? The thing about evidence is that it demands to be interpreted, yet if we are true to logic we may not like the answer. So we conveniently ignore or twist the evidence. I have one friend who believes in the historicity of Jesus, and in the wisdom of some of what he said (conveniently ignoring how this contradicts the uncomfortable conclusions of other things he said). This is no more or less than cherry picking, syncretism, and creating one's own truth to avoid an uncomfortable conclusion. I'm not going to argue here the case for Christ, others far more competent than I have done that. All I am saying is that the discomfort of a conclusion to which a chain of logic leads is no grounds for discarding the conclusion. Instead, it is a reason to re-examine the lines of logic - the multiple lines of evidence - to honestly consider the evidence of probability versus the speculation of possibility. It's Plato's cave all over again. This 2017, will we continue to look at the shadows on the wall, and follow a conjecture that never leads anywhere new? Or follow the conjecture that always leads to the one reality, however uncomfortable it may be?
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
|