Friday, April 3, 2009

Affinity of Truth

Many 'wisdom traditions' speak of some sort of affinity of truth. Light for light; wisdom cleaves to wisdom, and so on. The affinity of truth is identified as a deliciousness; when a new truth is discovered it is recognized as truth because it feels good.

This affinity spoken of is the consistency of truth. There are two separate avenues to ascertain the consistency of a new truth with all truth previously discovered and canonized by the mind: follow the logical progressions of the rational mind to all the seemingly related truths and an intuitive higher level vision of how the new truth fits in with all other truths on all levels. The latter requires the faith previously discussed here. The truth is intuitively consistent, it fits nicely in the jigsaw of all other truth known to this point, and so it is accepted on faith. This faith is an acceptance of something that is true without yet being able to recognize all the causes that make it an accurate representation of reality. But as long as the causes are sought for there is faith.

The one thing that should drive every self-respecting rational being mad is when he discovers an inconsistency in his mind's canonized truth. He should not be able to think about anything else until this is resolved by rejecting the inconsistent 'truth' or by modifying things in his belief set until all is mutually compatible once again. Any being who accepts paradox, supernatural, or otherwise unreal 'truth' is destined for a life of fear and misery.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Check Your Premises

In an effort to rationally and systematically deal with our environment on a daily basis, each of us are required to form a fundamental assumption about the nature of reality. There are basically two options: dreaming and being awake.

Those who assume they are dreaming think of reality as originating in the mind, just like in a dream. The mind has primacy over reality. There can be no absolutes, no hard and fast natural laws. Mastering reality is a psychological battle. When the mind is properly controlled then reality is under control as well.

Those who assume they are awake think of reality as an external state. Reality has primacy over the mind. Things are the way they are independent of the mind. If my mind did not exist or if I did not exist, reality would still exist and be fundamentally the same. The natural laws governing reality are absolute for all minds existing within that reality. Eternalism assumes primacy of reality.

You cannot make more than one fundamental assumption about your relationship with reality. If two assumptions are made and they are consistent, then one is an assumption and the other is a consistent extrapolation. If two inconsistent assumptions are made then your reality cannot be real.

Ever since the Renaissance and the renewal of the Socratic and scientific methods there have been many people who have tried to 'reconcile' centuries old ideas about supernatural phenomena and beings with logic and reason.

The trouble is that truth needs no reconciliation. All real entities, events, and causal relationships are self-consistent. When we choose our fundamental assumption about our relationship with reality, we can choose to believe what our collective experience and observation has led us to believe, which has led to our ability to live day-to-day life, or we can choose to believe something completely contrary to experience that we have absolutely no reason to believe other than it makes us more comfortable not to think and to be accepted by others who also find comfort in not thinking.

Contradictions are not 'deep' or profound. Their primary purpose is to bring to light an inconsistency in one's beliefs. Check your premises. As has previously been discussed on here, many people choose to take the inconsistency between a particular God and observable/experiential truth to mean there is no God. This is a logical fallacy. But so is concluding that observation or experience are less real than the inconsistent God.

We are each free to choose whether our existence is an inconsistent accidental delusion or that our existence is an epistemological progression to greater understanding of our universe and power and control that must accompany that understanding. In a reality where immortal beings exist within limitless space and time, any chosen point in that space and time will be at a steady-state. If it is possible for beings to progress or regress within that reality, there must be beings at both ends: beings who have progressed remarkably and beings who have regressed to pitiable states. And beings everywhere in between. A consistent definition for a God could be one of these remarkably progressed beings. God is not an assumption, but the natural result of a consistent reality. If the universe and progression of beings within the universe were modeled as a stochastic process, individual beings are constantly progressing and regressing but the net total flux in the system remains constant and at steady-state.

If you choose to waste time justifying the unjustifiable you damn yourself to a miserable life where you must lose. Choose to love truth. Choose to challenge yourself. Above all, choose to be happy.