A short talk for my old school: BOTH/AND - NOT - EITHER/OR

Preamble

I was reminded the other day that at school, we would have guest speakers brought in once a term to give a short address to a whole school assembly. That school was Bristol Cathedral School and the full school assembly took place in the Cathedral.
If I was asked to do this, I may say something like this.
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Since the Age of Enlightenment started in the late 17^th century; [perhaps with hind-sight better called the Age of Making Science God], the mistake has been to see the ‘old’ God, the religious God, as a person; like us just with super-hero powers; a physical entity; an old man with white beard in the sky;
a ‘thing’.
And because the new God, Science, can’t see, analyse or measure that ‘thing’, then de facto, the ‘thing’ doesn’t exist.

The old God is dead; long live our new God.
[Shhh - we mustn't let the cat out of the bag by calling it that!]

But let’s consider one of the (supposedly) biggest arrows in the ‘God and religion is nonsense’ quiver - evolution.
That’s not a physical entity; not a ‘thing’ either is it?
You don’t walk down the street and trip over evolution or spot it on the other side of the road nipping to the shop for a pint of milk. You can't point a telescope at it or put it under a microscope, can you?

Evolution is a process within Creation.
It does not tell us how life began only what happened after it began. [Even our most prominent professional atheist, Richard Dawkins, admits this – see his interview on the Within Reason you tube channel].

God is a process within Creation.
The process doesn’t tell us precisely what God is but it can move us toward a better understanding of our possibility; a better, wiser way of thinking and acting that makes us more-rounded, thus more useful people.

‘Oh’, the atheist says, ‘but we can see the outcomes of evolution. Some outcomes of evolution seem bad (e.g. creatures went extinct or lost their ability to fly), others seem good, (they adapted and have thrived)’.
But it’s the same with God. There are many who say they can see the evidence of God in the world both in an abstract way (beauty, love) and directly in their own lives. Like evolution, some things that happen in life are bad and some are good.

We need to understand that ‘God’ is just a word; just a name; just an inadequate label we use to try and describe something we cannot and can never wholly understand.
Namely, the infinite transcendent. The Oneness of all creation; the origin and Being of Life, the Universe and Everything.

We are only human; and just because we think of ourselves as being the most marvellous cognitive beings in creation, doesn’t mean we are anywhere near being able to understand the infinite transcendent; the Oneness of all creation. That’s just our arrogance.

All holy writings, for example but not only, The Bible, are attempts to describe & explain ways of seeing and moving toward that Oneness.
Some of it is literally true and some is allegory, parable, symbolism.

We, to the essence we label 'God', are like ants are to us. Some ants are aware of our existence and some, say they live in a desert or the Brazilian rainforest, are totally unaware of our existence. But even the ones that are aware cannot possibly fathom our Being; our greater cognitive ability; our greater knowledge and understanding of how creation works; our different sense of time and place.
How can they?
Their only metric of ‘knowing’, however much evolved from their starting point, will never be able to match ours.

Similarly, if your ONLY metric of ‘knowing’ is human-derived material science, you will never realise the existence of the Oneness, OR you will mistake it merely for what we know via scientific materialism, and thus will miss out on the benefits of embracing the whole essence of our possibility.

A little tale to make this point:

A scientist enters the laboratory one evening and finds a single rose on her desk. She takes the rose and conducts all manner of experiments on it to find out its biological & genetic properties. The following morning, when her research assistant arrives, she thanks him for leaving the test exhibit, saying she thoroughly enjoyed working all her experiments on it. The research assistant is dismayed. It was St Valentine’s Day yesterday, he reminds her. That rose had a totally different meaning and purpose to the one you ascribed to it. The research assistant leaves the room, clearly upset. The scientist is non-plussed by this turn of events. It had never occurred to her that there was anything of any true worth outside the purely scientific way of considering anything. She now had a choice: To shrug it off and continue with her narrow focus or to embrace the things outside of that focus and integrate them into her way of life for the betterment of both her scientific work and her own Being.

Here’s another thought along the same lines.

Why did Sherlock Holmes move into 221B Baker Street?

One answer is that he was looking for somewhere to live and wanted a room-mate to share the cost, bounce ideas off etc.
Another answer is, because the author, Conan Doyle, needed him to do that in order to advance the plot of the story.
These answers are both true depending on the resolution of thought with which you consider the question, and importantly, they do not compete against each other.
But to claim that only one of the two ways of considering the question is valid, and the other invalid, is narrow-minded and thus restricts your ability to properly consider all aspects of the question to your own detriment.

What’s my point?

Science and Theology are not in competition unless your focus on either of them is too narrow, too up-close for you to see the wider, bigger, far more important and far more exciting picture.

It’s BOTH / AND.
BOTH science AND theology or religion or spirituality, whatever inadequate descriptive word you feel comfortable using.
But it’s NOT either/or.

I urge you to open you hearts and minds to do just that; have the courage and wisdom to seek and find that bigger BOTH / AND experience.

As much as anything, it affords far greater personal growth opportunities and very importantly, with those greater opportunities comes much more fun!

New Year thoughts

 At a time traditionally said to be of peace and goodwill to all, here are my New Year rambling thoughts, which to some extent are a re-hash of some previous posts with added extra wanderings.

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Does anyone else get fed up with posts telling everyone to be nice or kind and care more for others?

Firstly, the implication is 'be like me and I am all these things', which is pretty self-righteous and narcissistic;

Secondly, how many of us know anyone personally of whom it can reasonably or honestly be said that they are not a nice person? That they wouldn't help an old person who fell over in the street or try and help someone knocked off their bike or wouldn't lend their neighbour some milk?

For 90%+ of us the answer will be NONE!

We can't all agree on larger socio-political issues, largely because they are complex and there's always more than one way to tackle complex issues, none of which are perfect.
As Thomas Sowell cogently commented, ‘there are no solutions, only trade-off’. And I often think it’s the naïve or arrogant idea that we can create a perfect world that is behind a lot of strife we see.
Utopian idealism has a flaw in that it only sees the bad of the current system and assumes only good from itself. Unintended consequences from huge and rapid social change are ignored, all ‘for the greater good’. Change is necessary but HOW you change is vital.

But this moralising at everyone issue is worse in the age of social media.
Even more than in the past, media is not objective journalism, giving you facts to weigh-up, it’s entertainment; and entertainment doesn’t need to be honest, it just needs to grab your attention, stir your emotions (negative emotions do best, sadly) and get you coming back for more.
These days media is both a means of distraction (via entertainment & negative emotion triggers) and control (propaganda).

We can cope with complexity, but only if we can agree on the basics. But we simply can’t agree on basic truths any more. And that’s because we can no longer agree on what has taken place.
Here’s an example.
The pandemic.
There are those who think the virus was responsible for killing millions who otherwise would not have died and importantly, we ourselves were only saved from death or serious illness by the swift and decisive action of the government, the authoritarian nature of which was entirely justified.
Others think it was a total hoax and was just an excuse for a test exercise in seeing whether fear on a mass scale could be used to control the behaviour of the population.
Others think the virus was real but the adverse effects were exaggerated due to institutional group-think and cowardice to admit error, and others think the virus was real but the policies put in place to combat it took no account of the damage done to important other areas of society resulting from those policies etc etc.
So we can’t agree on what actually happened or why and we have so many differing stories and opinions available to us these days that that isn’t going to change.
There are other examples of course around climate change and the trans-gender debate where we have a similar plethora of differing opinions which all add up to us collectively, as a society, not being able to agree on the truth or even the basic premises on which the truth may be gleaned.

Anyway, back to my original thought on the ‘be nice, be kind’ posts prevalent these days – as if those words mean the same thing to everyone in every instance or that life is as simple as that.

Can we stop the attempts to accrue virtue to ourselves by telling others how they should behave in order to fit our definition of 'niceness' or 'goodness'?

But if you really need to, try this.

Assume that everyone means well; that they want the best outcome for as many as possible even when their view of what that looks like or the path to get there is different to yours.

Note I said to ASSUME that everyone means well i.e. have an open mind until they behave in such a poor way that they no longer deserve your good will.
And by poor behaviour I do not mean simply having the temerity to disagree with the all-knowing and wholly righteous YOU!

I mean that abusive/rude comments are unacceptable.
The deliberate and known telling of lies either by commission or omission are unacceptable.
But reasonable and polite discussion, acknowledging points of agreement or good argument along with points of disagreement reasonably explained should be encouraged and engaged with.

Good faith dialogue means that we can learn from each other and move forward as amicably as possible in a complex and imperfect world.

Closed minded self-righteous 'I'm right & you're wrong' thinking leads to authoritarianism through the dehumanising of anyone outside our tribe.
This is so even though the beliefs and dogmas of our tribes are rarely if ever put to anything but the shallowest test; that of thinking just enough to tell ourselves why we’re right and ignoring views/evidence to the contrary. i.e. we allow ourselves to be part of what is closer to a cult than a society that combines rational empiricism and the human need for spirituality and morality in fair good-faith honest discussion.

And for those who don’t like the description of us falling into dehumanising cults, just consider this. If you insist on fighting to the death (literally or metaphorically) you will either win and become a tyrant or lose and become a slave. These should not be and are not the only options but they become so when we stop assuming the best intentions of anyone ‘not agreeing with me’.

We can and must do better than we do now, but it has to start with the humility to accept that we might be, at least partially, wrong and that we are not automatically the moral superior of anyone that doesn’t agree with us. So much strife and aggression can be sourced back to moral self-righteousness.

But it’s so hard not to think this way isn’t it?

"A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." — Euripides

Of course if what we’re told happens to coincide with what we already think or what we would like to be true, we give no further thought to it. Unless the subject is something we have currently no knowledge about at all, or perhaps, a subject we don’t care enough about to have any view one way or the other, we don’t decide whether to believe something based on the arguments for and against, it’s often simply, ‘does it agree with my current view or not?’
And we rationalise from there why our current view is, obviously, the correct one.
We do this mainly by ensuring we only get information from sources our experience has shown will tell us what we already think is correct.
So much of the evil in the world comes from people believing things that aren't true but which, for their own reasons, make them feel comfortable or good about themselves.

How much of what we think we know, do WE actually know, as opposed to having been told by someone else in one form or another.
WE on an individual level know very little.

Rather we outsource our knowledge, views, opinions to various others, many of whom themselves get their information the same second-hand way.

Can the sources of our information be trusted?

Do we enquire as to the motives and biases of those who provide much of our information?
Well, I suggest that we do if what they say makes us feel uncomfortable; we give them a very hard time, or simply refuse to engage with what they say at all, which is cowardly but psychologically safer.
But if what they say makes us feel comfortable, we just nod along unthinkingly, patting ourselves on the back for our intelligence and virtue.

Of course, I understand that we can’t personally get to the bottom of everything ourselves, even if we had the ability to do so, but we should and must understand the danger of manipulation, of propaganda, that outsourcing information and opinions to others, particularly a small but powerful sub-set of others, puts us in.
And I accept that we must take a view, we can’t just sit forever on the fence, but that view should be held lightly, so as to be changed without too much prideful agonising when better information becomes available, not cast in stone never to be questioned.
The latter is just pride and very much the bad version of pride.

We can ignore realities but we won’t be able to ignore the consequences of ignoring those realities.
We ignore realities from cowardice or for personal gain, (for example, convenience).

And worse, it will be our children and grandchildren that bear the brunt of our cowardice or self-righteousness because many bad decisions take decades to come back and really bite us.

For example, birth rates are declining almost globally but especially in the West and Westernised countries.
In South Korea for example, on current trends there will be a 94% drop in population in the next 100 years and this cannot be reversed easily other than by immigration because 60% of the population is already over 40. Yet, it is not a mainstream discussion. Heads are in the sand.
Why?
Because the causes are the selfishness & short-term pleasure-seeking that comes from decadence which are not things to be proud of; but it suits many of us to behave like that, so we’ll look the other way.
And the rest of the world, particularly what we think of as ‘the West’ is not far behind on the same trajectory.
[For more on this see this you tube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwIeDuHwXJY ]

On a whole range of vital societal topics, are we heeding our better selves clearing its throat in the room next door? Or are we convinced of our own intelligence and righteousness such that we have closed our eyes, and put a set of headphones on shouting ‘la la la, I’m not listening’ to anything or anyone who casts doubt on our stone-cast axioms that we erroneously believe must be defended at all costs?

Again, is it pride messing with us?
Whatever, the cognitive dissonance (holding opposing views at the same time) we all engage in is dangerous for ourselves but importantly for society, especially now social media is making us ever more tribal and ever less prepared to discuss and converse calmly and open-mindedly with the assumption of good faith in the other.

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." Orwell

As we are currently finding out with our history & culture being trashed, negatively interpreted and mocked, mostly by people who have directly benefitted from it and who think it makes them morally superior to do so.
It doesn't!

“People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient then repent”
Bob Dylan (a true although hardly original thought)

But we're excellent at convincing ourselves that those two, what we believe in and what is convenient for us to do, are the same. It certainly saves all that unpleasant self-examination stuff.

Oh, and even the repenting is rarely honest. It's usually a short-lived bit of guilty conscience which we tell ourselves is sufficient atonement to wipe the slate clean, ready for us to behave the same way again whenever it suits.

I just think we can do so much better, indeed we must, to create a better and stable society.
But it must start with all of us as individuals. We can’t say, ‘I’ll only do it if everyone else does’. That’s just an excuse not to change.
But we have to want to. We have to see the need to. We have to realise that looking the other way if, at the moment, the nonsenses of the day happen to make us comfortable is foolish, not wise.
For those powers and forces of influence and control will one day switch such that the boot is on the other foot.

It’s the behaviours that should be the priority, not the outcomes.

If the behaviours (the process by which outcomes are obtained) are good, it’s much more likely the outcomes themselves will be good; or at least better than those arising from a selfish dictatorial Machiavellian ‘the ends justify the means’ attitude.
If the behaviours are poor and self-serving, the outcomes will be less than optimal and not be acceptable to many, and then we’re back into tyrant or slave territory.

Here's an example:

Democracy (even the weak version we currently have) is under threat across the world. Politicians impose huge societal changes on spurious, often purely ideological grounds without proper public consultation. Also, the high and wholly undemocratic influence of massive corporations, wealthy individuals and un-elected global bodies that use money and propaganda to sway attitudes and opinions.
And as I say, if you wave this away saying it’s not a problem because they are currently doing things you like, you are being foolish.
If you give them the power to decide what ‘ordinary’ folk can do and say and think; if you remove political power too far from the individual voter, one day things will change and they’ll be forcing YOU to do, say and think things YOU don’t agree with. And what will you do then? Because it may well be too late to reverse the process, at least without a lot of strife.

IT MUST BE GOOD BEHAVIOURS THAT WE WORK TO CULTIVATE FOR THE BENEFIT OF SOCIETY AS A WHOLE, NOT SIMPLY PERSONALLY DESIRED OUTCOMES

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And finally, something to consider for the New Year.

Is the lack of certainty about the future (whether personal or societal) energising & exciting to you or is enervating and frightening?
Do you seek adventure (on whatever scale is right for you) or do you seek certainty and safety at all times and at all costs?
Do you risk failure for the excitement and potential of unknown possibility?
Does the fact that success and failure are so close together that at any moment something can happen to tip you from the one into the other frighten you or do you see it as a vital part of being alive; a challenge to be met?

These things will matter to how your life pans out because they will govern the choices you make and thus are worth proper consideration.

A thoughtful and peaceful New Year to you all!

Better answers?

I’ve been struck recently when watching interviews on various subjects that I would have given different answers or at least made additional points to the ones the interviewee gave.

For example, the idea that certain forms of comedy should be banned because they are offensive.

One interviewee was a comedian, I forget his name (no-one famous), but he had been banned from certain venues because of his supposedly offensive material. The other interviewee was talking about hate speech and punching down and victimisation of powerless groups etc.

The comedian responding started talking about free speech and the wrongness of censorship by a small number of zealots basically threatening trouble for the venue if it didn’t prevent the comedian from performing there. He said that this sort of authoritarian mob intimidation is how the NAZIs started off in the 1920s and that the number in the audience should decide whether his comedy is too offensive to listen to or not.

And look, there is validity to what he said but I would have started from the basic principle of how humour works in the brain, which is step 1, not at step 2 which is where the critic started and to which the comedian felt compelled to respond.

Step 1 is that the trigger inside your brain that decides if something is funny or not is an instant reaction.
It’s not a careful post-hoc analysis of the precise words used plus subject matter and then whether on balance, you think it is in some way helpful or harmful in a socio-political sense, and then based on that you laugh or sit stony-faced. If you do this, whatever it is, it’s no longer comedy, even if in the end you decide it was funny.
Neither are you correctly dealing with humour if you pre-determine that you will or won’t find comedic material funny based on the socio-political standing or reputation of the comedian. 
Such agenda-driven analysis, whether before or after the event, is politics; nothing to do with humour, with comedy as such.

Some people are like Jack Point in W S Gilbert’s The Yeomen of the Guard, ‘For, look you, there is humour in all things, and the truest philosophy is that which teaches us to find it and to make the most of it.’
Others are like Margo Leadbetter in the 1970s sitcom, The Good Life, where in one episode she says that she can tell when she’s supposed to laugh but doesn’t know why it’s funny.

Both these extremes, the laugh at everything and the utterly humourless, are a bore and most of us are somewhere happily in the middle.
But it’s not wrong to find something funny if the joke has been well-crafted, even if it the subject matter is close to the bone and may offend someone.
Firstly, the taking of offence is a choice;
Secondly, someone will be offended by just about anything said, joke or otherwise, if it suits them to be; and
Thirdly, why is any individual’s or group’s taking of offence justification for depriving others of the opportunity to decide for themselves if the comedian is funny or not?
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and to voice it, but no-one should feel entitled to use mob intimidation tactics, which threatening boycotts or disruption of venues certainly is, to coerce the actions of others.
This is the attitude of authoritarians and dictators through the ages.

Then you can say that in the end, the number paying to be in the audience would decide whether the comedy is too offensive to listen to or not and if you don’t like a particular brand of humour, you are entitled simply not to go.

I’ve posted before about the mistake of starting discussions/arguments at Step 2 and taking Step 1 for granted. In this case, that there is comedy that is, without question, pre-determinedly offensive and thus worthy of censorship, so that the discussion is merely about what comedy is on the ‘right’ side of the dictator's arbitrary line.
It’s an old trick but we shouldn’t fall for it.

Bring any discussion back to Step 1 and often the criticism becomes more clearly and blatantly weak or biased or absurd.