Reality: The Taboo Against Truth, Chapter 2

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter | TOC | The Binary Circumstance Blog | Contact

Reality

and The Taboo Against Truth

The Greatest Natural Resource

The most valuable natural resource on earth is not gold, silver, oil, or diamonds; it is the human mind. Until a more intelligent form of life is found in the Universe, it is also the most valuable natural resource in the known Universe.

Gold, silver, oil and diamonds are absolutely worthless by themselves. It takes the intelligence of human minds to discover them, mine them, find uses for them and through that process create their value. They only have value because they are relatively rare and man has found a use for them. Because of the economic law of supply and demand, the more demand for a scarce resource, the more valuable it will become.

It is the human mind that discovers these resources, refines them and creates the value by finding uses for them. It is the human mind that takes silicon from sand and turns it into computer chips that can do complex calculations faster than the mind that created the computer. It is the human mind that has learned so much about the physical, chemical and biological laws the govern the universe that rockets and capsules could be built from the earth’s natural resources to fly man to the moon and keep him alive for days in an artificial environment. It is the human mind that finds cures for diseases that just a few decades ago would have taken millions of human lives. It is the human mind that has learned how to use oil, gas, wind, rivers, wood, and the sun to provide energy to fuel our cars and heat and power our homes.

Some will argue that the human mind is not a natural resource in the same sense as gems, oil, or silicon which are inanimate. They would be correct; it is a natural resource of value far beyond gems, oil, or silicon. While the distinction between inanimate and animate entities exists, the human mind evolved in nature through millions of years of selective pressure into the sharpest intelligence in the universe. Similarly, millions of years of pressure causes black carbon to evolve into diamonds, one of the most beautiful gems and the hardest, sharpest cutting material known to man. The human mind, like the raw materials that it has learned to manipulate is a product of natural processes and the laws that govern the universe.

Man will continue to master Universal Reality only to the degree that he knows it and respects it. Universal Reality produced the mind of man. Man is both a product of Universal Reality and a manipulator of it. He is both the created being and a being that creates. It is Man’s unsurpassed capacity to understand the universe to the extent that he can alter it to his advantage that makes the human mind the greatest natural resource in the universe.

The primary function of the human mind is to place a frame around Universal Reality. Science, reason and logic are the cognitive tools by which the human mind performs this basic function.

Science is the study of existence. The function of science is to discover everything that exists and everything that is true with regard to existence. While there are many complex fields of science, the most basic function of scientific inquiry is to discover what exists and what does not exist. Science draws a boundary around Universal Reality which can be verified with hard evidence; this is what separates science from mysticism, pseudoscience and religion. Mysticism and religion rely on faith and intuition or historic scriptures as evidence of what is true while ignoring objectively verifiable evidence. Mysticism and religion blur the line between existence and non-existence, and by default also blur the line between what is true and the false. In contrast, the function of science is to make those distinctions sharp and precise.

Like mysticism and religion, pseudoscience distorts or distorts evidence to support the desired findings. In Why People Believe Strange Things, Michael Shermer distinguishes between the progressive, skeptical nature of science and history, and the political, orthodox nature of pseudoscience and pseudohistory:

Science is different from pseudoscience, and history is different from pseudohistory, not only in evidence and plausibility but in how they change. Science and history are cumulative and progressive in that they continue to improve and refine knowledge of our world and our past based on new observations and interpretations. Pseudohistory and pseudoscience, if they change at all, change primarily for personal, political, or ideological reasons.[i]

In Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer, defines science as “a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomena, past or present, and aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation. In other words, science is a specific way of analyzing information with the goal of testing claims.”[ii]

A more fundamental definition is any process which enables the human mind to accurately distinguish between existence and nonexistence. This definition defines science not just by its intentions or methods but by its results. If an action or method does not produce accurate results, not matter how good the intentions, then it is a flawed scientific method, and cannot accurately be defined as good science. It may have been an honest attempt at science and therefore worthy of an A for effort, but if the goal of science is to understand the universe and existence, then real science will by definition produce results which are consistent with reality.x

The human mind’s innate capacity for reason implies an instinct for judgment. It is not possible to reason without making judgments regarding the validity of data and the conclusions that we or others draw from that data.

Judgment implies and informs reason. Reason informs and implies judgment.

Reason cannot exist without good judgment and good judgment cannot exist without reason. Every mind judges and reasons; that is its function. Just as eyes where mean to perceive light and ears where meant to receive sound waves, the mind was made to integrate information from Man’s environment into meaningful information. Judgment is a Universal Reality that is inherent in Man’s nature. What is unique to the individual is the quality of his judgment and reasoning. The quality of and individual’s judgments and reasoning is dependent upon several factors including the organic functioning of the brain, and the degree to which the individual correctly distinguishes between what exists and what does not exist.

Any reader who is reading this book is judging in his own mind if it is true or it’s false. The reader will evaluate each idea and decide if he agrees with it or not, and if it has value. For some this will be a purely emotional endeavor or they will use only subjective criteria to arrive at a judgment. They will rely on a smaller frame of reality, their personal opinions or perhaps the opinions of other individuals. They will rely on emotions, intuition and preconceived ideas to arrive at a decision. None of these things provide an adequate standard to which this book or anything else can be compared.

For the rational, objective mind, the statements in this book will be weighed against all the evidence that is available regarding existence and the Universe. The approach will be scientific and logical. Each statement will be tested for logic and consistency and in the end a judgment will be made: does value exist in this book or is it non-existent? Is it true or is it false?

If and individual cannot correctly distinguish between existence and nonexistence, his mind will by default be drawing conclusions based on flawed cognitions. His concept of truth, his level of knowledge and his values will all be corrupted because the premises that serve as the foundation of his beliefs and conclusions are not true. If the underlying premises are mystical and not based on things that actually exist, there can be no objective referent for determining truth, knowledge or values. Unless an individual first uses his mind to rationally judge if his core assumptions—his premises—actually exist, he is doomed to pollute his mind with the poison of irrationality and delusions.

Let’s say that an individual makes the statement, “Ugagagas are ansanwa.” The truth of the statement cannot be evaluated if no human being understands the concepts ugagagas and ansanwa. To understand those concepts he would have to have some kind of experience with ugagagas and ansanwa. He would have some evidence that they existed and would be able to describe them. As the statement currently stands, it is nonsense.

If the statement is changed to, “Ugagagas are blue,” an individual familiar with concepts in the English language gets a slightly better picture. He knows that blue is a color, a defined spectrum of light. He thinks about the sky, the ocean, or the shirt that he wore yesterday. He also knows that blue can describe an emotional state. He has first-hand experience of blue so he has a better idea of what he is looking for since he knows that ugagagas are associated with the color blue or the mood blue.

He still cannot evaluate the truth of the statement, however, because he has no idea what ugagagas are. The concept does not exist for him. He must first figure out if ugagagas exist and then he must look at evidence to determine if in fact they are blue.

He likes the color blue and so it has value for him. It gives him pleasure to look at it. He does not know the value of ugagagas, however, because he cannot determine the value of something that he cannot know. Knowledge of ugagagas doesn’t exist for him. Even if ugagagas are blue, he cannot compute a value for them.

Things that don’t exist cannot provide a basis for truth or knowledge. They cannot serve as a basis for rational, real values. If something doesn’t exist, no true statements can be made about it except to say that there in no evidence of its existence. No knowledge can be acquired because there is nothing to learn about it without evidence of its existence like properties and characteristics. There can be no value to something that has no existence, no properties and no characteristics.

The human mind is designed to make judgments. At the most basic level it is designed to make judgments about whether things exist or don’t exist. After that judgment is made, then the mind can make more judgments about identity, characteristics, and from that point make further judgments about what is true. The total body of truth will become his knowledge and from what he knows he can judge its value. He can know if something will help him to survive or if it will threaten his survival. He can experiment to determine if it gives him pleasure or if it brings him pain and suffering.

The instinct for judging is essential to Man’s survival and his happiness. It makes perfect sense that evolution would wire this capacity into the human brain.

There is evidence that evolution has predisposed the human brain to process sensory information, to make judgments and create theories based upon that information. In their book, The Scientist in the Crib, authors Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl postulate that the minds of young children and scientists work in much the same way:

A number of developmental psychologists have argued recently that what children do looks strikingly like what adult scientists do. Children create and revise theories. This idea seems to explain at least some types of cognitive development very well. We call it the theory theory. (The theory is that children have theories of the world.)[iii]

They further state:

We think that children and scientists actually use the same machinery. Scientists are big children. Scientists are such successful learners because they use cognitive abilities that evolution designed for the use of children.[iv]

If evolution has given small babies and children minds like scientists so that they can quickly learn about their environment, it implies that there is an inbred pre-disposition to create a frame around reality; an ability to distinguish existence from nonexistence. The creation of that frame is the foundation for all learning.

With regard to each individual’s instinct for judging, it follows that the frame that his mind puts around reality will to some degree be different from the frame that every other unique human consciousness puts around reality. Each individual is designed to make independent judgments about what exists and what does not exist because each individual has his own genetic makeup and his own mind. Each individual by creating his own frame around Universal Reality will also by default be rejecting any other possible frame that is different from the one he chooses; one frame automatically excludes parts of all other frames. That is not to say that he rejects the right or the capacity of the other individual to create his own frame, it only means that some things which he includes in his own frame will not be included in the other individual’s frame.

The human brain wires itself as it develops. As a result, every individual has a physically unique brain structure.

Because we actually participate in building our own brains, and because each of us has a unique history of experiences, each brain is unique. Eventually the adult brain becomes a complex thicket of particular connections. Estimates are that it takes a quadrillion connections—that’s 1,000 trillion—to wire an adult brain. Your specific pattern of connections, the wiring diagram of your brain, defines you as an individual person. It’s as if we each have our own custom-designed utterly unique program.[v]

Every individual makes different judgments about existence. Universal Reality will be the ultimate and final judge of which man made the correct judgment. Universal Reality is by definition universal; it exists for all individuals and impacts everyone.

One man believes that poisons exist in nature and when ingested can cause death. He also believes that cyanide is a poison. He does not drink it. His life continues.

The second man agrees that poisons exist, but he believes that cyanide is a vitamin beneficial to human health. He drinks it. He dies.

The two individual minds had different frames around existence. The first man’s frame included the beliefs that poisons exist and cyanide exists and the fact that cyanide exists as a poison. His unique consciousness was consonant with Universal Reality and he survived. He continued to exist because his mind was aligned with existence.

The second man had similar beliefs except that he included in his frame around existence the belief that vitamins exist, vitamins exist to nourish man’s health, and cyanide exists as a vitamin. He was correct in his beliefs except for his belief that cyanide has the same properties as a vitamin. His unique consciousness was divorced from a truth about Universal Reality that was necessary for survival; as a result he ceased to exist.

The fact that every individual possesses a mind is a Universal Reality. But just as each individual has a unique genetic makeup and experience, he has a unique wiring in his mind. The uniqueness of each individual is a Universal Reality and a product of the wisdom of evolution. The mind is each individual’s tool for survival and the vast number of unique minds is the human species’ insurance against extinction. Throughout history, efforts to deny the Universal Reality of individual uniqueness have always had devastating consequences for the human race. Religious and state-sponsored efforts to create uniformity are by definition tyrannical; wasting the greatest natural resource in the universe and causing the loss of countless human lives.

Thinking, reasoning and judging are all part of the nature of the individual. Only individual human organisms have this advanced capability; there is no other known entity in the universe that possesses the intellectual powers of the individual human mind.

The authors of The Scientist in the Crib, say that “Not the least advantage of knowing about science is that it immunizes us from pseudoscience.”[vi] They write that “Nature has designed us to understand nature.”[vii] They also say that “Communities have distinctive ways of thinking and feeling as well as dressing and eating, and children must learn these ways of being from the grown-ups around them.”[viii]

Communities do not think, feel, dress or eat. These are all properties of individuals. There is not a shred of scientific evidence in their book or any book to support the idea that a community possesses a mind, a nervous system, clothing, hands to dress itself, or a mouth for the purpose of consuming food. There is no scientific evidence that organic equipment required to perform these functions exists as a property of a collection of human beings. It is only in the nature of individuals to perform these actions. So nature may have designed us to understand nature, but knowing science methods does not immunize us from pseudoscience.

The fact that nature designed every individual human to have his own unique brain wiring is compelling evidence that there is survival value in diversity, not in conformity. If there was survival value in uniformity then all individuals in a community would be identical in brain structure as well as thought, emotions, dress, and diet. In order for science to exist, orthodox ways of perceiving the world must constantly be challenged and tested. Individuals must use their unique brain powers to think unlike others in their communities, to come up with unorthodox theories and test them out.

The notion of individuals forming communities that think, feel, dress and eat uniformly is common to the military, cults, and orders of priests and nuns. It is an assault on the nature and the uniqueness of each individual. It is inherently pro-orthodoxy and anti-science for children to “learn these ways of being” from their parents or any other authority figure, unless the individuals in the community are anti-orthodoxy to the point that they do not “have distinctive ways of thinking and feeling” derived from the commune.

There are numerous examples in nature of organisms evolving to blend into their surroundings as a way of hiding from predators. An organism that does not develop a coat or skin color that blends in with its normal environment will be much easier for a predator to spot and eat; and once destroyed unable to pass along its genes. As a result that non-conforming appearance will disappear from the gene pool. This tendency for an organism to make itself appear like its environment is called camouflage.

The tendency of individuals in a community to express thoughts and feelings that are similar to their follow community members, and the tendency to dress and eat alike are all examples of camouflage. It is also a sign that there are predators who seek to devour anyone who stands out from the crowd. But there are no huge birds waiting to swoop down and gobble up humans who do not blend in with their community, there are only other individuals who desire conformity.

Individuals who use their natural organic uniqueness to think and reason in non-conforming ways have throughout history been a threat to those who promote conformity. The most effective and brutal enforcers of conformity have traditionally been church and state, either acting in concert or independently. In The Dark Side of Christian History, Helen Ellerbe writes of the Dark Ages from 500-1000 C.E.:

The Church had devastating impact on society. As the Church assumed leadership, activity in the fields of medicine, technology, science, education, history, art and commerce all but collapsed. Europe entered the Dark Ages. Although the Church amassed immense wealth during these centuries, most of what defines civilization disappeared.[ix]

The losses in science were monumental. In some cases the Christian church’s burning of books and repression of intellectual pursuit set humanity back as much as two millennia in its scientific understanding.[x]

The authors of The Scientist in the Crib recognize that “It is a sad truth in science as well as politics that one generation’s revolution becomes the next generation’s orthodoxy.”[xi] Because scientists and politicians are human and humans fear diversity, change and nonconformity, science and politics can become like religion. Mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell put it well:

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth—more than ruin—more even than death… Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.[xii]

It is remarkable that scientists who profess to understand the tendency of science and politics to become orthodoxy would seek to institutionalize politicized pseudoscience into law. Apparently some grown-up scientists have never left the crib, insisting that it is the public’s job to take care of them and their children so that they can keep their tax-payer funded, high-paying, privileged jobs in academia. They propose public support for “day-care centers with well-paid staff and realistic subsidies or tax credits to parents.”[xiii]

They state that “We provide publicly supported schools for older children because we know that educating children is a public good.”[xiv]

The phrase, “educating children is a public good,” is similar in structure to the sentence, “Ugagagas are blue.” To evaluate whether the statement is true or not, it is necessary to first determine if the concepts in it actually exist.

“Educating” implies teaching children about existence, since there is nothing that can be learned about things that do not exist. Education implies the acquisition and rational analysis of evidence. There can be no truth or knowledge without evidence because there is no evidence of things that do not exist. It also implies that somebody is doing the educating; a parent, a teacher or perhaps the child himself.

“Children” exist and are the offspring of certain individuals. There is evidence that human children have brains and are capable of learning. It is rational to presume that children can be educated because there is much evidence to support that assumption.

Ayn Rand said of the term “public:” “Since there is no such entity as “the public,” since the public is merely a collection of individuals, any claimed and implied conflict of “the public interest” with private interests means that the interests of some men are to be sacrificed to the interests and wishes of others.”[xv]

“The Public” is not a living, rational being and as a collection of individuals does not inherit the characteristics of human individuals. Therefore “the public” cannot procreate nor can it make a value judgment about what is “good.” Since “the public” which does not capable of thought or feelings cannot make a value judgment about what is good, the combined concept “public good” does not exist. Without an objective referent for the concept of “public good,” the statement “educating children is a public good” is meaningless.

The statement is merely an attempt to assign paternity and responsibility to individuals who are not in any way responsible for the birth of the child. It is a rationalization for slavery; the forced taking of other individuals’ property to provide child support for children they didn’t parent.

There is no scientific evidence of any law in nature that allows one individual or group of individuals to control another individual’s life, to take his property, or to force him to pay child support to those who are unable or unwilling to support their own children. It is a mystical concept that cannot be supported with scientific evidence because no such right exists. Like slavery in the south, the “right” to control others is the creation of those who feel superior and therefore entitled to force others by law to support them and adopt their lifestyle. Like the actions of Hitler and the Catholic Church, it is a calculated effort by a group of individuals to force a uniform system of values on each unique individual, creating a privileged class who impose their beliefs and identity upon others.

If the support were given voluntarily, that would be another matter. The scientists-who-still-live-in-the-crib, however, are proposing that other individuals should be required by law to provide them and other irresponsible parents with day care, education, and special tax benefits. Parents who produce children that they cannot or will not feed, clothe and educate are by definition irresponsible. Like welfare recipients, they shift the financial responsibility of raising their children to others who had no choice in the creation of the children and have no say in their upbringing by using the fraudulent concept of the “public good.” They have total control over the children’s lives without total financial responsibility. They reap the benefit of having children and grandchildren to help and support them in their senior years all financed with other assets that were taken by force of law from others. For those who have to pay, it’s like being forced to pay a mortgage on a house that you can’t live in, or being forced to buy a car that you’ll never be able to drive.

These proposals socialize the cost of developing the greatest natural resource, but the greatest benefit goes to private individuals like the parents and companies who get a better educated workforce, financed by tax dollars.

The human mind is the greatest natural resource and it cannot function properly if it is divorced from the nature environment that created it. The human mind evolved to live in the real world, a world that is supported by evidence. It cannot function as it was designed to function when confuses existence with nonexistence. It cannot know the truth, and it cannot acquire knowledge without studying evidence. Evidence is knowledge and education. Evidence is truth. Evidence has value.

An individual’s philosophy, psychology, politics, beliefs, values, morals and ethics derives from whatever he sees within his frame of Reality. This frame defines an individual’s relationship to existence and everything else in his mind is a function of how well he creates the frame.

Ideally this frame of Reality coincides exactly with existence; including only things that actually exist, and excluding all that is non-existent. If an individual’s frame does not coincide exactly with what exists, he is destined to live in a universe that exists within his mind, a reality much smaller than Universal Reality. If his frame correctly separates existence from non-existence he is free to live in harmony with the Universe of all that is, the Universe that created his existence and his ability to be conscious of existence. That allows his mind and his life to benefit from all that Universal Reality has to offer.

The state of an individual’s mind is dependent upon his ability to judge accurately what is inside the frame of Universal Reality and what is not inside the frame. He sees things as they are, or he sees them through a lens of distortion. To lose the frame around Universal Reality is to lose the mind.

It is unlikely that any individual is completely in touch with Reality or completely out of touch with it. The degree of distortion distributes along a continuum with some individuals who have a solid grasp on reality at one end and other individuals who have a high level of distortion in their perceptions and thinking at the other end. The vast majority of individuals fall somewhere between these two extremes.

The human mind, greatest natural resource, is the highest value in the Universe because it determines all other values based on its instinct for judgment. The value of the greatest natural resource—the human mind—is determined by the degree to which it is in sync with Universal Reality. To the extent that the greatest natural resource is focused on the nonexistent, it has no value because it cannot rationally determine truth, acquire knowledge or form real values.