Meaning Less?

From the documentary “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control“:

When I think about it, I can almost see myself as being made up of thousands and thousands of little agents doing stuff almost independently… But at the same time I fall back into believing the things about humans that we all believe about humans and living life that way. Otherwise, I think, if you analyze it too much, life becomes almost meaningless.

– Rodney Brooks

This was a fascinating documentary. It seemed to leave me (I think intentionally) with less certainty of meaning and purpose than when I started, but in a good way. I don’t think that this means we have cause for despair. As many of us have come to reject the notion of ultimate, preordained meaning in the universe, and accept the realization that we are merely an emerging process of selfish genes, it’s easy to doubt.

Yet, we have somehow trudged along  thus far in our (relatively) blissful ignorance. With the rejection of religious explanations, we realize that conscience is not suddenly absent. We can see other societies with other religions reflecting similar behaviours. We may also realize that our own have not always been as wonderful as we assumed they always were.

With the sudden absence of an old narrative which used to explained our ethics, it does not simply cease to exist. Our ability for evil and good are there as ever before. As such, our ability to have a sense of purpose need not change, but you might have to embrace the fact that you are not logical, and even some “illogical” thinking. Some practical “delusion” may be in order.

” Blasphemy!” you might say. But as you are reading this you may be thinking about yourself as a discrete person, with an identity and clear delineation of  psychological boundaries between you and the next person. Is this not itself a delusion according to the body of knowledge that led you to this dilemma in the first place? (Did I just give you a migraine?)  There’s a very simple reason to continue with this set of delusions including the existence of a self and a general sense of purpose. It works!

“A theory about a thing does not change the thing the theory is about”
– B.F. Skinner

It is not beyond the ability of the human mind to operate in an intentional “delusion” or mental narrative and still realize it’s not precisely true, without getting carried away in it. We do it every single day. I think of it like the realization that we are made up of atoms. We know it’s true, yet does that fact that causes us daily stress about whether or not we’re suddenly going to fall through the ground or have our matter suddenly explode at the speed of light in every direction? I think not. It’s a comfortable delusion to think of our body as a solid contiguous mass rather than one that’s full of gaps and made of the same mundane building blocks as the dirt we’re walking on, yet we seem to be fine with it… because it works!

We can still go on about our lives, but with a greater sense of wonder and renewed hunger for answers to our new questions.

I choose to be, therefore I am.

Trickled Pink

(This post sprang out of comment posted on the blog of a lovely couple I know, which you should read for context)

I myself came to the same epiphany a few months back. I was thinking about technology and how we’ve had so much advancement in technologies that are designed to simplify and speed up many of our tasks.. and yet we’re busy as ever. Then it occurred to me how markets always re-balance (if you can call it balance) by means of competition.

So for example, if everyone suddenly has a new dishwasher giving them more time and energy in the evening, these can become more resources which some will put towards competing in the job market. If not with hours of work, it will go toward more education. Sounds fine, even natural doesn’t it?

Except that the more educated people there are for a particular job, the more it gives employers the advantage to be selective and choose those who are most willing to put themselves out and further degrade their quality of life. We convert this concept and couple it to a righteous emotion, summed up with the descriptor “hard working”. This can be in terms of working more hours, taking on more stress and even taking less pay. It’s not only a theory that for some people. For some, life has become a death march.

Some people are working so many hours, or with so much pressure/health issues/etc that they are losing their faculties, their health, and especially their children in the process.

It becomes exceedingly difficult to nurture your children in such circumstance,  and we can see all too readily the social breakdown around us or in our own lives. We can scoff at the “bad parents” who neglect their children, and while there is such a thing as personal responsibility, everything has a cause and in this case it’s a systemic one. People don’t just randomly “go bad”.

Enter religion.

Regardless or conscious design or not, this is where religion has the effect of glossing over these systemic flaws and turning our thoughts to moral conjecture in place of investigation and understanding. People are behaving immorally, so they must either convert to the very dogma that serves to undermine them, or be judged and written off. It also helps to keep us unaware. It gives us a sense that if we’re doing well, we’ve earned it, and that if we’re not it’s purely our own responsibility. It blinds us to the myriad of factors that may have benefited us; from our birth into our parents’ socio-economic status to the invisible benefits of our racial identity, religious identity, gender identity, mental health, physical health and everything that those things have afforded us.

Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that there’s a one to one relation where religion tells us that poor people are bad. In fact it may tell us that they are blessed. It also tells them not to complain or get too angry. More importantly though, it turns our social and ideological lenses into a binary scope of good or bad where everything is framed in terms of the relative morality of individuals. Even those who have divorced themselves of religion tend to retain this framework. I could go on and on with other intersecting issues and ideas, but I digress.

So in this way what really happens is not “trickle down” of wealth, but instead it’s people’s lifeblood and effort (which is essentially what money represents) trickling up to those with the means to create demand through their actions in the pursuit of wealth (greed). This is the true nature of the “magic hand” of capitalism. All of us, even those in the 1%, seem driven blindly along with dogmatic ideas that don’t lead us into happiness or fulfillment , or even match reality.

Again, it’s so nice to know people who understand! 😀

I applaud you!

The Secret Lives of the Possibilians

Yesterday, I saw the familiar face of one of my favorite atheist icons on Facebook and did what any bored atheist, I.T. guy at work would do. OK besides making him my avatar and flaming all the christians in my friend list with his blog articles and telling them they’re minds are warped by religion. That’s the stereotype isn’t it? Sometimes they fit, but sometimes stereotype do. But that doesn’t mean they’re all true, mostly true, or even true at all. Even if they are, it doesn’t mean they’re useful or appropriate. Really, I just clicked ‘like’…honest!

So the first feed to come from Mr. Harris was a link to a post on his blog. It features neuroscientist David Eagleman, author of “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain” sharing his thoughts on what I would have to call hard atheism versus devout religiosity. I happened to get busy again so instead of reading the actual post, I just fired up the video and listened to it in the background.

I found that what he was saying resonated with me, especially the following:

“…these are very smart people on both sides that are spending all of their energies polarizing each other, and arguing against each other’s details. I feel like there should be another voice in there somewhere…”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past year, and not heard many others in the skeptic community express this sentiment, and I feel it’s an important one. Without too much thought, I threw the link back onto my wall, recommending it to others.

Today I went back and read Sam’s thoughts which suggested to me that I should listen to it again. It would appear to me that despite making some really excellent points (and he does) he is also using a pretty broad brush in referring to all of neo-atheism as being strict atheism that claims certainty of no god existing. In my experience, most atheists are not in that category. More than that, I’ve always seen it as being like a kind of right-of-passage in a way to understand the fact that we can’t claim that as certain. To claim that is to fail at science after all, but have I missed something? I haven’t actually read the books of the “four horsemen” yet, but this just doesn’t seem very accurate to me.

Then he seems to kind of re-invent the wheel of soft atheism and claim it as his own idea:

“In every generation, scientist have always felt, that we sort of have all the pieces of the puzzle…we should be able to get it all from here. It has never ever been true in the history of human-kind, yet…that we have all the puzzle pieces.”

Aren’t most of us in this community already pretty comfortable with the idea of the vastness of things that we don’t know? Both the things that we know we’re ignorant of, and the probability of things we don’t even realize that we’re ignorant of and can’t even conceive of yet?

I think that most atheists, scientist and skeptics are not in that category. I seem to recall hearing funny stories of centuries past when “scientists” used to believe some pretty silly things. Our understanding of the subjects that science tackles, the advancement in our technologies, and our understanding of how to do science (tool-box as David puts it) have all improved, dare I say exponentially? Yet from every scientific talking head I’ve heard, I get the impression that they have only grown more humble in terms of understanding the minute scope of our collective knowledge of the universe.

I have to heartily agree that there is something being missed in the intense polarization of our atheism vs religion culture war. Yet in the way he chooses to call it out, he’s making it even more black and white than it really is. He seems to be pushing the neo-atheist straw-person to the left to make room for himself.

Where I think David is right is what is implied (by who his audience is) more than what’s stated. I think it is going to have to be the Atheists who eventually take the high road. Not because we’re the bad ones. Not because it’s our fault or definably our responsibility. And I don’t mean that we should stop fighting our legal and political battles to keep religion out of our schools or to be afraid to call out religious logical fallacies or social distortion for what they are.

Instead, like so many things in history that had to be done by someone… we’re the ones who are more capable. Or at any rate, we should be if we can just bring our rationality and humanity together. I think that beyond the rationality embedded in the subject matter of our arguments, we need to have openness to possibilities within our personal philosophy. How we think of and value each other, how we think of and value ourselves, the possibility of our own cognitive biases and emotional ego-blindness…these are some of the things where we need to remain open to other possibilities of understanding. Even beyond this, there are radical notions worth exploring. For example: Spiritual Atheism

Considering the assertions of religion in the name of keeping scientific possibilities open is a fine idea as a premise, but one that has failed over and over again to produce anything to justify itself. However, what’s important is the idea of affirming the value of the human beings who hold them and keeping it with us when we debate. “Love the sinner, hate the sin” was something they touted a lot when I used to be church-goer. This is the principle that needs to be flipped over. Love the religious, hate the religion. Or at least, hate the harmful falsehoods and misguided ideas that they promote. I think that this is maybe what Mr. Eagleman really had in the back of his mind, but was probably just too busy “geeking out” 😉

It’s OK David, just be like science:

Get up and try again.

*cross-posted to The Winnipeg Skeptics blog*