| THE REMOVAL OF THE VEILS Many years ago the sun first shown on a new species. A species which at that time was no different than the monkeys which it could call its brethren. But it would create a new paradigm in the sphere of life, a species which would someday develop consciousness, someday understand itself, and someday redefine the purpose of life. And this species, our species, will someday realize these goals and remove the uncertainty of these issues. It is a process which has been ongoing, one which in geological time has occurred very rapidly, but one that has not been completed by any means. What will the result of these self reflected inquiries be to man. Will he be pleased with what he has achieved, will the final consciousness of what he is make him proud to belong to a planet of his own? Or will he look to history with envy of those before him who were not burdened with the knowledge of what they truly are. Ignorance is bliss. Words uttered by those who view themselves as neither ignorant or bliss. A certain pride can be seen in viewing yourself as not ignorant, the bliss is not so easy to rub away. What is it, this bliss that people hold to be so perfect. Is it caused by ignorance, or does it simply not exist. Is it happiness, and if so, is that the goal of all life? And does knowledge make it harder to attain or, rather, can both be present at the same time. Happiness is bliss but knowledge, in and of itself, is not. It cannot be, although it may seem to be so. I ask you, when have you been happy when you, all alone and lost in the realm of knowledge, with no ambiguities clouding your vision, have not been ignorant? As you sit back, your mind reeling with past recollections, trying to remember a time, let me first point out what ignorance is. It is the desire for recognition, it is desire for money, and it is all those things which at first make us think that knowledge is desirable, while all along it was actually these things which were desirable. So keep asking yourself this question, keep it in your head and try in vain to look at it objectively, or close your eyes as I attempt to remove the vail. Again I attempt to define ignorance, but this time with a sharper knife. I don't believe that it is the absence of knowledge, but rather the belief in incorrect truths. Not looking at those things you hold to be truth, not questioning the certainty of those things which you base your life on. I speak of faith, not just spirituality but all processes which require it. The belief in something without complete knowledge of it. Viewing the wizzard without pulling back the curtain, believing in Santa Claus. Faith makes bliss possible. You may think that by labeling ignorance as faith I am not doing justice to the word, to what it stands for, but don't forget that I have already said that ignorance is bliss. Faith makes bliss possible. If that be so, what does knowledge do? What do objectivity and reason give to us? Can someone completely devoted to either one of these experience bliss. One must be careful here, because to be completely devoted would imply faith, for (using reason and objectivity) reason and objectivity are only methods, not truths, and we cannot say for certain that they are the best methods. Can they produce bliss though, or is it the truths which do that, the certainties. If you say yes, then I ask you to apply that reason and objectivity to the root of the bliss, to find out whether you were truly devoted to knowledge or whether ignorance lay deep within you. What ignorance could be deep within us, within the mind of the Homo sapiens. I believe that it is the incorrect belief that we truly know ourselves, that we are fully conscious and that we understand our actions. We most certainly do not, and the ignorance and ill applied faith that we use when we think we do prevents our objectivity from being truly obtained. We are rewarded for our knowledge, for the instances where we apply objectivity and reason, be it through recognition which fuels our survival instinct or the progression of knowledge and its applications which further bolsters our ill-conceived faith in knowledge and its applications. This may be the conflict with knowledge and ignorance, this cyclic reasoning which lacks the foundation, the truth, which it thought it was built upon. This conflict which does not allow both to be present, for you cannot have faith in your reason, and to use reason to bolster faith requires a truth which is not certain. We require truth, that has most certainly been a trend throughout the history of our species. Knowledge has searched one out, in vain, for all eternity. Faith has labeled many, but none which did not conflict with another. And when they conflict, and reason is used to discern which truth is correct, how can it objectively do so? Inductively with an approximation due to the finite amount of data in a world of infinite time? No, faith cannot allow that, it would be based on an approximate truth, close to truth, possibly truth itself, but just as possibly or even more possibly not truth. And yet this approximation can bolster faith, can make it stronger because reason has said it is possible. But reason says that everything is possible, that any situation could occur. And true reason would say that there is no way to ascertain any approximate truth, no way to say that this is any more likely than that, for to truly be rational we must think in the realm of infinite time. And yet we search for these truths, these truths which always seem to elude our grasps. Through looking at this trend can we find our errors? All endeavors to search out truths through reason can be classified as introverted reason or extroverted. Either we try to combine the parts to find truth in the whole or deconstruct the wholes and use reason to make sense of the parts. When we put the pieces together we find relative simplicity, when we try to understand the parts we are meet with increasing complexity. What does this trend mean? If we apply Occam's razor then the possibility of achieving a truth in this way would be unlikely, because it would imply an end to the spatial dimensions. It would imply that the world is not infinite, that there is such a thing as the smallest particle or the largest conglomeration of particles. These patterns of hierarchical systems are present in nearly all forms of knowledge. A sociologist finds patterns within the trends of groups of people while the psychologist finds intricate complexities in each single individual. Even further down the line chemists can find duplicable results in chemical reactions involving many molecules while the physicist, when looking at a singular molecule, can not say, given a situation, exactly what will happen with certainty. It is not only science which adheres to these hierarchical patterns, but our social systems seem to be based as well on them. A given law in society, when looked at from a refrence point viewing the whole of society appears well and good, yet it may apply incorrect justice to a single individual, it may not account for the individuals particular circumstance. How is it that a hierarchical system has been applied to a social situation by humans? Through reason. Reason and knowledge have told us that hierarchical systems are the best patterns to mold our societies with, the best way to organize our minds, the most efficient way to deal with individuality while still preserving a distinct and well organized conglomerate. We have modeled ourselves after the universe. How can a conscious being reconcile its finite nature, its distinct reference point, in an infinite world? It is limited by what it can observe, what information it can receive from its senses. We, as Homo sapiens have a distinct scale of objects which we can view. Even with the aid of telescopes and microscopes, which continually enlarge our breadth of sight, at best we are limited to a distinct number of hierarchical levels observable to us. How can we reconcile this limited scope? One of the first ways is to believe that we do not live in an infinite world, to hope to find a smallest particle or hope to see the end of the universe. If one of these could be found, then we would have a truth, a place from which we could start our systematic studies of the rest. But this starting point eludes us. |