Sylvan Reverie

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary …
- Edgar Allan Poe

During my midnight pondering, it dawned on me just how much I loathe passive approaches to knowledge. I’m one who looks at most broadcast news as a form of light entertainment, or as an appetizer for the things I’ll later educate myself on. I’m not just informed because I’ve been informed, I’m informed because I’ve taken the trouble to inform myself. I don’t regard this as a tremendous feat of intellect, nor do most of the people I call friend.

Interestingly enough, I happened to notice on television some people who were dressed in the latest fashions, who seemed to know what the latest hit songs were; yet couldn’t intelligently converse about what’s going on with the US economy, or why US economics and politics could soon have a major impact on the world. They could discuss global warming, but had no grasp of the science behind it. These people were in their late 20’s, perhaps early 30’s, seemed to have no major intellectual deficits, but were nonetheless ignorant and apathetic about anything that wasn’t directly related to music television … the desire to look beneath the surface, to question what they saw and heard, seemed utterly non-present in these people. That’s when it hit me, just how much I detest such a state of mind. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I detest people who lack the desire to self-inform and self-educate, because I understand that everyone has their own needs and their own paths to walk in life. It’s apathy and ignorance in my own mind that I can’t tolerate, and my reaction to these people clarified this for me.

I’ll probably do an extra hour of research tonight, in case my mind was inadvertently tainted by ignorance.

Fate laughs at probabilities.
- Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton

While pondering reality, an activity I engage in more often than I would prefer to admit, I was struck by the odd notion that Einstein’s thoughts on predetermination, which his special relativity theory seems to support (by suggesting that for the occurrence of any event, there exists a perspective from which it seems the event has already taken place), might have been quite right. In a perverse sort of way, it makes sense to me that the end either precedes the beginning, or coincides with it; and if this is true, then it’s reasonable to believe that our end exists prior to our beginning, which is predetermination (but not necessarily fatalism).

For those who might wonder what the difference is, determinism is a philosophical position that events depend on an unbroken sequence of prior events – essentially, the present is created and defined by the past. Fatalism is a more extreme form of this, arguing against free will and chaos, where all events are subjugated to a predetermined fate. My personal preference is somewhat outside these two, in that I consider myself a compatibilist, or someone who believes predetermination and free will can coexist.

Expressing it in a context somewhat related to the original subject of this post, I believe it’s reasonable to say that while the ultimate end of one’s path in life exists prior to one’s ultimate beginning, the path itself is determined by free wills that are influenced to varying degrees by prior events.

If you take the sacred things
The things that we hold dear
Empty promise is all you’ll find
So give me something

Something to believe in …
- The Offspring

I somehow or another wandered into the observation that, in the 1950’s, it seems like nearly everything was believable. In the 1960’s, people started to learn that governments can lie and mislead – not just ‘other’ governments, but our very own – and started to question the supremacy of various religious institutions, too. This trend has continued to present day, where it seems like more and more people are believing in less and less; and where the most commonly-enjoyed reality is a virtual one. Drawing on the premise of consensus reality, where things are real because we believe them to be so; and considering other factors like a rise in reported cases of mental illness and a quick review of the things we actually call entertainment; I’d say Western society’s looking at another fifty years before reality rips itself apart and runs screaming off the edge of existence. Pity for us, but at least the Zen Buddhists will have more company (they’ve been saying for years that it’s all an illusion or delusion).

As we continue through a war that seems to have no end in sight, myriad reports of civil violence and predation, water supplies contaminated with medications urinated back into our water sources by the masses, greed, corruption, global warming and extinction of one species after another, I think that the Offspring had it right: what we need are things we can believe in again. When we have things we believe in, we unite to protect these things – when we find that the things we’ve believed in so strongly have been used for little more than petty power struggles, we are sickened in our disillusionment. Freedom and democracy, used to expand oil interests, or used as an excuse to permit torture and war – or benevolent gods used as banners to justify the wanton destruction of the world and people we attribute to their creative powers. We need something ….

At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable …
- Henry David Thoreau

Something that I would like to explore is a capitalist society in which the price differences for all brand names of any given commodity are eliminated. This way, manufacturers would be encouraged to define profit by quality of unit, rather than cost, and people would still retain the ability to choose for themselves. In having to justify costs to regulators, companies might just have to be a little more honest about their manufacturing processes, as well. I’m not naive enough to suggest that we apply this idea to our own society, and I’m aware that there are inherent problems with attempting this kind of regulation. I would like to see this in the context of a fictitious society, created by economists and socialists, and thus also see how various resulting problems could be solved by this society.

Remember that what pulls the strings is the force
hidden within; there lies the power to persuade,
there the life, – there, if one must speak out, the real man.
- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Last year, in my post titled “Bilboards in the forest,” I briefly touched on the influence of advertising. Given what I’ve seen recently on the Internet and in the news, I would like to revisit this theme. When I was in the seventh grade, my class was taught how to recognize and analyze basic advertising techniques. Sadly, we weren’t taught to analyze these techniques in any great depth – just enough so that we would avoid basic pitfalls and schemes. For example, we weren’t taught the implications of advertising messages needing to first be approved by their sponsors. We didn’t learn that when a commercial played on our fear, it was because the commercial’s sponsor at some point decided they wanted us to feel fear, and they wanted to profit from our fear. We also weren’t taught that these tactics could be used by more than just the commercial sector – we were left to figure that one out for ourselves. At the very least, we were taught to keep an eye on who was pulling our strings and why they were doing so. (more…)