Reflect for a moment on how everyone on Earth can agree that it is
reasonable to come in out of the rain, turn the heat on when it's
cold, and slip into our pants before putting shoes on. How is it that
we can have such consensus but can't seem to come together on other
things that have to do with how we get along, or that could
potentially ruin health, the Earth, or put us at war? Television,
radio, and Internet blogs teem with animated debate about immigration,
taxation, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, racism, social security,
healing methods, diet programs, sex offender punishment, socialized
medicine, profiling, religion, education, abortion, and free trade.
Last evening as I tried to listen through the cacophony of four people
on a television panel screaming like a mini version of the chaos on
the stock exchange floor, I thought about what a wonder it is that we
humans ever agree on anything. Nevertheless, there is no controversy
about the rules of arithmetic, the correct formula for determining an
unknown angle in a triangle, the value of pi, the atomic makeup of a
water molecule, the organ responsible for pumping blood, or the thrust
needed to get a satellite of known weight into orbit. Our agreement on
such matters cuts across cultures, borders, languages, and political
ideologies. We are one world, one people, and one mind on many
matters. Why can we agree that candy is sweet but are ready to kill
one another over ideas on politics and what God says? Why the
universal schizophrenia? Quite simply, on the one hand, as to whether
sugar is sweet, we let evidence and reason lead. On the other hand,
with politics, religion, social, economic, and environmental issues we
think beliefs come first and tend to use reason and evidence only to
the extent that they support these beliefs. Consider the world's
agreement on the science of math. We approach it with an open mind,
use reason, apply experience, demand evidence, and change our formulas
if the facts demand. There is so much world accord on arithmetic,
geometry, and calculus that they have become common property for
humanity. From earliest childhood we are taught to respect the rules
of mathematics because of their logic, evidence, and proofs. We could
neither pass school nor function in society without acceding to their
truths. With social, political, and religious matters, the cry is for
freedom to believe whatever we like without regard for proofs,
consistency with logic, or evidence. We are free to shoot arrows of
belief in walls, paint bull's-eyes around them, and pretend we have
hit the mark of truth. Thus the world is filled to the brim with every
sort of cockamamie idea. We have even come to believe tolerance and
broadmindedness about such flakiness is like an ethical and
intellectual badge of honor. But our insistence on the world's right
to a vastitude of ignorance and stupidity threatens to hurtle us over
the precipice. Thinking, not belief, must come first. Unproven beliefs
are adopted because they may be popular, make us feel secure, or
because we're urged by some authority to adopt them. The soft things
of the mind and heart, such as desire, will, trust, passion,
convenience, herd instinct, ego, and prejudice become sufficient to
hammer such beliefs into the intellect, making them well-nigh
unassailable. We vote a certain way because that's the way our parents
voted, take any pill a doctor tells us to, eat processed foods because
the label says they're healthy, and enter the race for money because
society leads us to believe that's where happiness lies. Why on earth
are we so intellectually sloppy where it matters most? Why would we
buttress a belief that could result in life or death, health or
illness, on things as flimsy as "That's what somebody told me," or "It
makes me feel good"? The answer—it should be embarrassing to admit—is
our desire for the sense of security and belonging we felt as infants;
a euphoric state of comfort we never really forget or recover from.
When we are young all the rules are laid out for us, answers are
simple, and our every need is someone else's responsibility. But
that's not how grownups should behave. There are consequences for
nursing on our latent desire to return to the swaddled and carefree
security of our parent's bosom. We cannot simply trust the pabulum we
are told as adults or lock away the ideas we were spoon fed as
children. We may grow up in the respect that we assume the
responsibility for our material needs by getting educated and landing
a job. But even then we tend to regress by trying to make our employer
and government our mom and dad by lobbying them to secure us with
benefits, subsidies, entitlements, and other guarantees. We demand
independence, freedom, and the right to take ownership of material
things, but we resist exercising the independence and freedom of our
own minds by doing the hard work of earning what we put there. We want
someone else to tell us what is right or wrong, grace or sin. We want
our moms and dads back. There is a constant tension between taking
full responsibility for our thoughts and actions, and our lingering
desire to return to the womb. When faced with the hard trials and
questions of life, we naturally long for the knowns we had as
children. Children panic if there is an instant of insecurity or
uncertainty. But retaining the knowns given to us by our parents is to
let them live our lives for us. That's fine when we are children, but
as adults we must test those known as well as any others that society
offers up. True knowledge and the security of certainty can only be
owned if earned. True peace with ourselves can only come from bravely
reaching within to find out who we are, and then acknowledging and
living in accord with the honesty we find there. Clearly, we are
capable of finding truths and agreeing on them. It is therefore not
pollyannish to think the world can be one on all the important matters
that affect our lives. The world's consensus on math, science and
other mundane matters proves that. The fantastic (peaceful) advances
of the modern world owe their existence to the power of putting
thinking first. By applying the same thinking process to the issues
that divide us, hope, not disaster and hopelessness, can be our lot.
reasonable to come in out of the rain, turn the heat on when it's
cold, and slip into our pants before putting shoes on. How is it that
we can have such consensus but can't seem to come together on other
things that have to do with how we get along, or that could
potentially ruin health, the Earth, or put us at war? Television,
radio, and Internet blogs teem with animated debate about immigration,
taxation, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, racism, social security,
healing methods, diet programs, sex offender punishment, socialized
medicine, profiling, religion, education, abortion, and free trade.
Last evening as I tried to listen through the cacophony of four people
on a television panel screaming like a mini version of the chaos on
the stock exchange floor, I thought about what a wonder it is that we
humans ever agree on anything. Nevertheless, there is no controversy
about the rules of arithmetic, the correct formula for determining an
unknown angle in a triangle, the value of pi, the atomic makeup of a
water molecule, the organ responsible for pumping blood, or the thrust
needed to get a satellite of known weight into orbit. Our agreement on
such matters cuts across cultures, borders, languages, and political
ideologies. We are one world, one people, and one mind on many
matters. Why can we agree that candy is sweet but are ready to kill
one another over ideas on politics and what God says? Why the
universal schizophrenia? Quite simply, on the one hand, as to whether
sugar is sweet, we let evidence and reason lead. On the other hand,
with politics, religion, social, economic, and environmental issues we
think beliefs come first and tend to use reason and evidence only to
the extent that they support these beliefs. Consider the world's
agreement on the science of math. We approach it with an open mind,
use reason, apply experience, demand evidence, and change our formulas
if the facts demand. There is so much world accord on arithmetic,
geometry, and calculus that they have become common property for
humanity. From earliest childhood we are taught to respect the rules
of mathematics because of their logic, evidence, and proofs. We could
neither pass school nor function in society without acceding to their
truths. With social, political, and religious matters, the cry is for
freedom to believe whatever we like without regard for proofs,
consistency with logic, or evidence. We are free to shoot arrows of
belief in walls, paint bull's-eyes around them, and pretend we have
hit the mark of truth. Thus the world is filled to the brim with every
sort of cockamamie idea. We have even come to believe tolerance and
broadmindedness about such flakiness is like an ethical and
intellectual badge of honor. But our insistence on the world's right
to a vastitude of ignorance and stupidity threatens to hurtle us over
the precipice. Thinking, not belief, must come first. Unproven beliefs
are adopted because they may be popular, make us feel secure, or
because we're urged by some authority to adopt them. The soft things
of the mind and heart, such as desire, will, trust, passion,
convenience, herd instinct, ego, and prejudice become sufficient to
hammer such beliefs into the intellect, making them well-nigh
unassailable. We vote a certain way because that's the way our parents
voted, take any pill a doctor tells us to, eat processed foods because
the label says they're healthy, and enter the race for money because
society leads us to believe that's where happiness lies. Why on earth
are we so intellectually sloppy where it matters most? Why would we
buttress a belief that could result in life or death, health or
illness, on things as flimsy as "That's what somebody told me," or "It
makes me feel good"? The answer—it should be embarrassing to admit—is
our desire for the sense of security and belonging we felt as infants;
a euphoric state of comfort we never really forget or recover from.
When we are young all the rules are laid out for us, answers are
simple, and our every need is someone else's responsibility. But
that's not how grownups should behave. There are consequences for
nursing on our latent desire to return to the swaddled and carefree
security of our parent's bosom. We cannot simply trust the pabulum we
are told as adults or lock away the ideas we were spoon fed as
children. We may grow up in the respect that we assume the
responsibility for our material needs by getting educated and landing
a job. But even then we tend to regress by trying to make our employer
and government our mom and dad by lobbying them to secure us with
benefits, subsidies, entitlements, and other guarantees. We demand
independence, freedom, and the right to take ownership of material
things, but we resist exercising the independence and freedom of our
own minds by doing the hard work of earning what we put there. We want
someone else to tell us what is right or wrong, grace or sin. We want
our moms and dads back. There is a constant tension between taking
full responsibility for our thoughts and actions, and our lingering
desire to return to the womb. When faced with the hard trials and
questions of life, we naturally long for the knowns we had as
children. Children panic if there is an instant of insecurity or
uncertainty. But retaining the knowns given to us by our parents is to
let them live our lives for us. That's fine when we are children, but
as adults we must test those known as well as any others that society
offers up. True knowledge and the security of certainty can only be
owned if earned. True peace with ourselves can only come from bravely
reaching within to find out who we are, and then acknowledging and
living in accord with the honesty we find there. Clearly, we are
capable of finding truths and agreeing on them. It is therefore not
pollyannish to think the world can be one on all the important matters
that affect our lives. The world's consensus on math, science and
other mundane matters proves that. The fantastic (peaceful) advances
of the modern world owe their existence to the power of putting
thinking first. By applying the same thinking process to the issues
that divide us, hope, not disaster and hopelessness, can be our lot.
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