A Bear – Poles Apart

We are indeed children of our time. Our habits will naturally adjust to the environment we live in and so will our thinking and sense of reality. It’s inevitable, but it’s also rather unfortunate.

If there is a Truth, it must be timeless, and if there isn’t, any time, including our own, is a fumble in the dark as insignificant as any gloomy age preceding.

The scientific search for truth has progressed through the ages; it’s difficult to doubt that. Our understanding of the physical nature and how to conquer it, improves with every technical invention, but there is no reason to believe that our age has grasped the essence of life any better than the previous ones.

If anything, our time is characterized by an unprecedented skepticism. That wouldn’t be so bad if it made us examine our beliefs more carefully and turn over the evidence one more time before reaching a conclusion, but that’s not at all how the offspring of our age go about formulating their view. Instead skepticism has simply led to indifference. In the absence of obvious truths modern man refrains from actively believing, but since it’s not possible to go about the world without passing judgments on experience, the dominant view of the world is quickly adopted.

In the age of critical thinking, uncritical thinking is the norm. We believe in what we see because it passes for the absolute reality, but it is actually just an interpretation filtered through the fashionable perspective of our time.

Wouldn’t it be better to be puzzled? Wouldn’t it after all be preferable to imagine the possibility of fanciful fairies and demons causing oddities to appear? Instead we don’t even ask but accept the arbitrary judgment that the contemporary world has instilled in us.

Wouldn’t it be better to be a child again, not limited by our time but open to any time?

It’s easy to follow rules. Then you don’t have to go through the agony of doubt and there’s no need to figure out for yourself the difference between right and wrong. If the law says it’s right, it’s right, and you can safely suspend your own thoughts and become a model citizen and a moral example.

If you think life is more complex than that, you are unlucky. You can never be sure about anything and there’s no rest. You may be wrong.

The rule abiding robot man gets it all. He is esteemed by society, proud of himself and he doesn’t need to work hard. He may be lazy but has the reputation of diligence.

No society truly wants people to think for themselves, for that would mean questioning that very society and lead to disobedience. But to get an illusion of freedom we are given safe pockets where the laws don’t apply and “free thinking” has no consequence. (In a secular society there are no laws of religion, for example, so of course you can think what you want about religion.)

Praise and blame are bestowed where the rules are valid, and reward and punishment are distributed according to the law. If you ask if the laws are right, if you think for yourself, that is, you only make it difficult for yourself.

An ethically minded person is one who searches for the difference between right and wrong and acts accordingly. A legally minded person doesn’t search and acts from precepts that are made by others. He doesn’t ask what is right but still get praised for doing it.

The rebel does the hard work. He has to figure out what to do contrary to the path that is laid out for him and he gets no reward on the way. But that’s exactly why his action may have moral worth.

We shouldn’t call people just anything. They like being addressed by their name and so do we. It’s a matter of basic respect.

But from this elementary starting point, people often development a hypersensitivity that has very little to do with the fear of name calling.

Most of the time names are not used to address people, but to refer to them, just as we need names to refer to objects. Then it shouldn’t matter what we call them as long as there is a common understanding who the names refer to.

Words that denote race are the most notorious examples. A group of people used to be referred to as negros, then it changed to blacks, then African (American). Others were dubbed yellows, then Orientals, then Asians. The first item of each list is now considered insulting without there being any internal logic to it. (The color yellow is insulting but not the color black.)

Supposedly, if you don’t belong to one of these groups, you are not allowed to question it; it’s their feelings, not yours. Sure, we don’t have the right to doubt anyone’s feelings, but sometimes we must be allowed to point out the irrelevance of a feeling. If someone feels insulted because of something that was said, it may be appropriate to suggest that they were not actually being talked to.

Addressing someone in racial terms is usually insulting because it reduces their character to membership of another race. I for one don’t think I would like hearing “Hey, white guy!” being shouted at me.

Name calling is always derogatory, but name referring is usually neutral. Herein lies the misunderstanding. When a word has been used for name calling it seems to lose its neutrality, and one thinks it can’t be used for referring to anything again. It is as if the word has been contaminated which is obviously a rather irrational sentiments since no superstitious power can be attached to a mere word.

Be very careful when you address people, but it shouldn’t matter much how you refer to them.

Nothing has any value except what we value. There’s no real worth in anything other than what people want. Money is the perfect measure of how much we collectively esteem things and it can never be wrong: If it’s expensive, it’s valuable.

Value can be created by creating. An item can be produced that people simply want. It didn’t exist until it was made and when it came into being it increased the total wealth of the world; a true creation, that is.

But then value can also come about without any real increase of anything. Since the measure is in us and not in the things themselves, the worth of the thing can change without any real change having taken place. This is the magic of advertising. We don’t know what we want until we are told, but once we know, it is as if something new has been created.

Thus if we were only sufficiently illusional there could conceivably be a society of immense wealth where nothing existed for real. Of course it doesn’t quite work like that since the bubble usually breaks long before it reaches that point, but the fact remains that a great deal of the existing riches at any time are based on illusions. Things become valuable because they are valued, and valued because they are wanted, and wanted by some because they are wanted by others.

Actually, in economic terms it makes no sense to speak about illusion because anything that is in demand is as real as anything else. If people want trash masquerading as art, that is as objectively valuable as gold or nutritious food.

There is no such thing as a real value; whatever is wanted is valuable. However, it is possible to question if our wants are real. We may be illusional about ourselves.