Illusionary Fate
Several weeks ago
I noticed an advertisement on a billboard inside the Teaching Complex here at
the University of Algarve that made me cringe in irritation.
It was advertising astrology courses.
I know that's not very important. That everybody has their right to believe in
whichever they want.
Still, in an institution whose main goal is in forming people for the job market
and providing a space for scientific activity, it's highly irregular to have the
University allow this to be taught as a valid area.
This brings me to all sorts of over-deterministic approaches to predicting the
future and analysing the past.
First and utmost are the scores of disciplines that promise to predict the
future and help you in your life's problems.
Face it, what you need is psychological help and that's not just because you
went to an astrologist or diviner.
Before resorting to the esoterical, ask yourself what's wrong with your life and
no matter how difficult try to change it.
Before blurting out your insecurities to a stranger discuss them with a friend,
as they'll know you and understand you better.
All the help astrologists and others provide is a sense of false predestination
that you can't do anything to change what will happen, or just give false
reasons for what may happen to you.
All they say is so vague or so normal for the type of person they perceive you
to be that they seldom are said to be mistaken: mostly because people can't
think of them being so. I myself remember that a diviner when asked how many
children an almost-famous couple would have, he skilfully dodged the question.
That just shows how difficult it is for astrologists and their ilk to make
predictions more specific.
To attribute your faults to a bad alignment of the stars is cowering from the
problem you should face with courage and determination. That's why, although it
should be used as a last resort and as bad as admitting it may look, a
psychologist is always a better help.
Then came along the deterministic bullshit of the "anthropic principle": people
tend to have a fixed view of history, especially natural history. As if every
step of the way was built around and for our species.
Let me give you the low-down: success of morphology is given in the number of
species a group that sports that morphology has. The only bearers of the human
morphology are ourselves, not having a single non-primate that similes our form.
Rodents are a great history of success with over two thousand species, they
range in every habitat and even the most conservative of them, squirrels, have
tens of species to count. That's morphology success.
This means that the rodent body plan has more in it for evolution than has the
body plan of humans. Though we've got more than enough species success, a mere
twig, as we are, of the Tree of Life is ill-positioned to withstand mass
extinctions.
It's time for people to start interesting themselves more about there origins so
sayings as "The universe exists because we are here” are turned into "We exist
because the universe allows it".
Why do people have to attribute to history a fixed state as if it would happen
that way every time we played back the "Film of Life" erasing the results after
each view?
Do you think your life would be the same in every respect if the same was done
to it?
"Life is made of little nothings" as the singer once said. Little nothings that
amount to much I add.
What if I hadn't been more perseverant in getting an account here? I wouldn't be
here ranting away for, I hope, your amusement and enlightenment.
One real test can be made to the "Film of Life" hypotheses: look at the variety
of living creatures. The divergences, the faunal interchanges and specially the
convergences and isolation derived faunas tell us how things could have been.
One glaring example is the parallelism of North American horses and a branch of
South American litopterns that developed hooves on a single enlarged finger and
were cursorial herbivores. Another quite abundant example is the bizarre fauna
and flora islands have.
As someone said "The meek aren't remembered in history" so just because ours is
the only account it doesn't mean it's the only one that could've existed.
The other thing determinism has is a grip in biological sciences that for
historical sciences as they are it shouldn't be so firm. As in most things, if a
middle term is possible then it's the best option.
One such case is of Socio-biology, where a case for biological gender and even
class discrimination is defended. They postulate that task segregation was the
cause for propurted differences between genders. Tough these may’ve existed in
the past, it should be remembered that social conventions took hold as we
evolved. As social evolution is many times faster than biological evolution, any
genetic predisposition that may've existed doesn't matter as it would if social
activity didn't bustle so much.
Though it should be noted that we are not "tabula rasa", we do have hardwired
reactions and a brain development pattern although they can be suppressed or
circumvented.
People should strive to have a greater understanding of the world they live in
as truth will always be stranger and more complex than fiction.
Unless otherwise noted, all artwork, texts and webdesign are © 2006 Renato Santos