Schools of thought II

[Undertoad]

A great deal of what you know is wrong. Maybe even half!

How did you get to what you know? Some of it you experienced first-hand, such as the simplest notions you have: fire is hot, ice is cold...

As you grew up you accumulated facts and information about your world. But at some point you started to get more information through what people told you about it. This road goes to Fargo.

And then the explanations needed to become simpler so that you could comprehend them. Gas makes a car "go".

And then the explanations started to contain trivial lies. If you cross your eyes they will stick that way. If you are good Santa will bring you presents.

And then the explanations conflict. And then different people tell you different things. And then people tell purposeful lies. And then people tell you things they believe that are actually wrong. But your head is full of detail and you need to continue to learn.

And then you categorize your information. Some of it you trust as such a known fact that you assume its truth is equivalent to "fire is hot"... when, in fact, you are completely wrong. Some of it you're uncertain about, but put it into the fact pile or non-fact pile on the basis of leaning one way or the other. You can't possibly take the time to verify each fact, and proving the generalities is impossible.

And as you get information from the people around you, you inherit both their truths and their mistakes; you inherit their prejudices and their faiths; you inherit their priorities. As they speak in the same kind of generalities, poorly defined terms, lies, misunderstandings that all of us inherited all along.

And we see how errors must creep in. It is, in fact, pretty much impossible to be error-free. Some of the notions that you, yourself, believe as actual truth -- are as broken as can possibly be.

Look, for example, at the people around you. If you're in a typical situation, most of them grew up in the same culture you did, many at exactly the same time. Sure, they had different parents, but chances are they went to similar schools as you, watched similar TV, listened to similar radio or whatever, participated in similar sports under similar circumstances.

And yet, when you ask them about what they believe, it is sometimes totally bizarre. If you believe in God, for example, and you ask some people who don't believe, what drives them at the root of their being... it is practically incomprehensible. Vice versa... if you don't believe, and you ask some people who do... incomprehensible.

If you are a hard line member of political party A, and you ask hard line political party member B about their beliefs... incomprehensible. But vice versa; if you are a H.L.B. and you ask a H.L.A. about their beliefs... incomprehensible.

If you are from a western nation, and you ask someone from an eastern nation about their beliefs... incomprehensible. But vice versa...

Some folk can't even get along with people with different musical tastes. Is it incomprehensible to enjoy both Motorhead and ABBA, for example? Some would say it definitely is not, and yet these bands represent a single cultural acceptance of scale, rhythm (common time), what is considered harmonious... all these are a "given" to both bands even though they are not at al a given in other cultures. To be able to listen to and understand a vastly different culture's music? Pretty incomprehensible.

This is not to say, of course, that some schools of thought are not more... refined, more likely to represent objective truths. Does this make them better? Not in terms of cultural choices such as music, food preparation, etc. but I would say that progress towards making our beliefs as close to reality as possible is a good thing.

But here's the rub: when you deal with someone whose belief systems are different than your own, you often start from the perspective that yours is correct while the other's is incorrect. But the truth is, there's a really good chance that yours is incorrect.

Simply listing the major religions of the world will show you: most human beings on the earth have provably incorrect belief systems, to some degree. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhist, Taoists, Sikhs, Spiritual-but-not-religious-ists, Atheists. We emphasize what we have in common, but in the end, we cannot all be right.

So why do you think you're the one who's sussed it all out? You're probably wrong. And not just wrong about that, but wrong about all kinds of assumptions that you base your life around. From "eating omega 3 fish oil is a good idea" to "I can smoke this crack and get away with it" to "I will have this baby so my partner will stay with me" to "being a highly-paid professional accountant is a good idea", at least half your notions are probably deeply wrong.

What are you going to do about that?