Author: Daniel P Collins, MD, Naples Florida
Framers of the Constitution recognized the need for a Free Press to report on governmental action to the citizenry. They accorded unique privileges to the news media to protect and ensure this vital activity. It is now obvious that the media does not know the difference between freedom & license or that privileges always carry concomitant responsibilities. The media has shifted from a legitimate mission of reporting the news to a mission of creating the news. In so doing, it has become the “Fifth Column”, undermining & eroding the Republic from within. The media manipulation of the election environment to insure a close election, great copy for press & TV, calls for encouragement of visceral hatred of various groups: bad for the nation, but newsworthy. They gleefully & dishonestly set to work. After all, the ends justify the means: the creation of news. Honesty, morality, ethics or National Welfare be damned. The Fifth Column has a job to be done!
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Chapter III. Moral Relativism as an Obstacle to Elitism
A constant theme beaten on the drums of the secular fundamentalists is the idea that there exists some natural parity in the cultures of the world. The desire to conclude in 2000, for example (though this argument had its modern hay day in the mid-eighties), that each and every culture is deserving of equal merit is a nicety, but is bankrupt, thoughtless, intellectually untenable and ultimately very dangerous for mankind. I contend a judgment can be passed on whether any thing is inherently good, benign or bad. For instance, in all things created by man, some versions/models are relatively superior & some are relatively inferior. In the natural world we see the same distribution across the spectrum in relation to the mean (mediocre). When we apply one design to various functions, we can demonstrate that certain designs “test better” (or exceed others in the performance of distinct tasks). Averages across an array of tasks enables us to draw some clear conclusions regarding one design relative to others. Some aircraft designs are faster, some more stable, some more lethal, some are overall better suited to commercial purposes than military purposes. Some trees are suited to colder climates, some to warmer climates & some are tolerant of an extreme array of variant climates. Some provide more shade than others, some withstand fire better than others, some are better for climbing. Some creatures successfully survive transitioning to city life from rural farmland or raw nature preserves, while others are pushed over the edge of extension with little but a slight shift in the oceanic currents. Some peoples have a diet that is better served to the general well being of the physical body. Some people are less stressed as a rule. Some humans process alcohol more readily. Some have a higher average IQ. Some folks live artificially long lives due to technology & diet in formative years. Some people are genetically disadvantaged & bound to die at 45 regardless of their lifestyle choices. Some individuals are more productive than others. Some are more laid back. Some are condemned to a propensity toward criminal behavior & violence, while some have an inherent attraction to the same sex. Some are more likely to become physically addicted to nicotine. This is to say that if we give merit to how the individual performs on one count or another, it is likely we will find some individuals who, for whatever reason, perform better against the test than others. It follows that if we establish an array of criterion across a whole spectrum (re: create a bunch of items to test individuals against), we can apply an aggregate, objective relative score to the individual. Further, when we have tested more than one person against this array of individual criterion, we can demonstrate a relative score between the two. Given a group of individuals against the same exam, we can then rank the individuals in relation to the others in our pool.
In fact, we can and commonly do conduct this type of testing to create relative comparisons of individuals in the form of aptitude testing. Professional football teams do this in the form of physical aptitude testing. College admissions boards do this in their review of applications & attending ACT/SAT scores (which, though only part of most applications for admission, are themselves an aggregate score against a wide array of tests which are then weighted & ranked across the entire testing pool). That is to say that in the aggregate, one applicant is superior to the next, and one football player is more talented/developed while the next is less so. Based on this measure, one applicant is superior to the next for the stated purpose of attending to college and one football player is professional grade, while the next is not. And regardless of how we feel about mental or physical inequities, the results still tell a story: the applicants still have their own unique sets of relative strengths and weaknesses and can be set in side by side comparison.
Before we go further, I should make clear that while scores tell a story, scores are based solely on what is tested. What is tested is based on what the tester is looking for. In the case of college, it could be anything from the best & the brightest quantitatively-oriented minds (RE: MIT) or even the best and most promising musicians or artists (RE: Bard), or simply individuals that fit the profile of someone who will likely do well & complete the curriculum. In the case of the college athletic combines, they are looking for individuals that are likelier than the next to succeed in the National Football League. The form the testing takes on is normally determined by committees & the like (also made up of individuals) who agree on how the test will be administer, yes, but more importantly on how it will be graded… and more importantly what threshold constitutes qualification (what is a “passing” relative rank, and what is “failing” relative rank). Every day, in every way we are being measured & scoped out formally in some cases, but informally in most. From what we wear to what we say to how we act, human individuals are subject to and are always treated to objective (in the case of formal) and subjective (in the case of informal) ranking. Is he attractive? Is he more attractive than the guy next to him? Is she too heavy for my tastes? Are her boobs too big/small? Does he have an annoying laugh, does she walk funny, does he wear out-dated clothes, does she drive a nice car???? All day long judgment is being passed. And all tests are rooted in seeking out strengths & weaknesses & passing judgments. We are hard-wired in the humanist sense & even called upon in the spiritualist sense to pass judgment. This will seem to some to run contrary to the popular “argument” employed by those who seem to know no better that would call Christians, for example, hypocrites when they point to injustices or point out behaviors that are contrary to their Christian beliefs. But the truth remains.
We are measured & held to account every day & in every way, both institutionally & socially, in our acts & in our refrain, in what we profess & what we fail to profess. While a dictator may be above the law, he can still be judged to be in violation of it. Similar to excommunication of self from a given church, the judgment passed can be, and in most cases is, carried out in absentia and outside of any court. By your thoughts, words and actions you are known to those around you. But even if you speed through a stop sign unobserved, you are still breaking the law. And in breaking it, you break the covenant of trust & the contract you have written with those who enforce it. Whether or not you are brought to justice on the individual transgression matters not.
On Elitism
One thing I would like to mention here is that I am an elitist in the truest sense of the word. I do believe that the crème generally rises, and should rise, to the top. I believe that the elitist approach in its truest sense serves the general welfare far better than a system based on favoritism and/or quotas. Anything that takes competition out of the equation… anytime one person is given a position based on anything other than relative ability, experience and willingness to fulfill a stated purpose, is in my opinion, a crime against all of mankind. Any measure which clouds an accurate measurement of one individual’s value versus another’s to fulfill the stated purpose is a criminal act against the whole.
There is, to be sure, a place for everyone. But every place is not for everyone. When the founders said that all men were created equal, they meant equal in the eyes of God &, therefore, in the eyes of the law. What they were not saying is that everyone was born with the same gifts, or even endowed with an equal measure of gifts, by the Creator. Indeed, no matter how much I practice nor how much I will it to be so, I will never match the basketball abilities of Michael Jordan, nor the musical prowess of Bach, nor the conceptual abilities of Mills, nor the engineering abilities of my-brother-in-law, nor the painting abilities of Van Gough, nor the architectural abilities of Frank Lloyd Wright.
The idea that we will all shine like diamonds or even excel to a modest extent in all of the activities we pursue is ridiculous and dangerous. I believe it results in a lot of wasted resources being attributed to chasing shadows down dark alleyways. A perfect case in point is the phenomena of televised “talent-based” contests that serve to embarrass the flocks of self-diluted “performers” in front of millions of television viewers. It also has resulted in a whole bunch of expensive drum lessons for kids who do not posses the raw ability to drum at any competitive level. Add to that the amount of time & energy wasted on photos for young women who are very pretty, but are not pretty enough to warrant a cover on Cosmopolitan magazine and you have a lot of people spending enormous amounts of resources on fantasies, as distinct from dreams. This does not mean I do not feel that we all have something profound to contribute to the bottom line, as it were. I do, in fact, believe we are all here for a reason & a unique purpose. But, having said that, knowing how far one’s abilities extend & knowing one’s own limitations is the first step in “figuring it all out” and spending your resources wisely. I tell my reports all the time that half of the battle is in knowing where your talents lie and the other half is in knowing your blind spots. This reinforces the wisdom we hear bantied about before every football game by every sportscaster; one should play to their strengths and away from their weaknesses. It is the best use of one’s resources & the best way to contribute & fulfill your obligations. To those who have been given much in the way of gifts, much is expected… but no one is off the hook. And for progress to be made expeditiously, every individual is called to pursue his own objective(s). Determining what one’s objectives are starts with one’s own self-inventory of one’s own talent & skill-set. That is, in the aggregate, tested against all of the options presented to you, determining how & where to spend your own personal capital to have the biggest impact.
In short, the connotations that spring to mind when Americans are presented with the word “elitism” are sadly misplaced. Elitism is in its truest form in accordance with the plan of God or, if you prefer, the Master Plan of the Creator. Or, if one prefers yet another expression, elitism is the surest way to ensure that one fulfills his obligation to the goal of advancing humanity & the Greater Good.
Elitism & Absolutism
I have made the argument that given a set of independent criterion to perform against, one can objectively make a judgment about the individual in the aggregate. That is to say, if an individual is scored on his abilities against of set of various criterion, we may demonstrate how he ranks (or stands in absolute relativity) against another by applying a weighted average to the individually scored criterion to determine one aggregate score.
I contend that all things may be measured, no matter how crudely, in this fashion and that only in religiously devoting ourselves to this measure can be fulfill our individual obligations to the “greater good” or destiny of self. In addition, in conducting relative strengths & weaknesses, we can establish on a defined continuum where one item stands in absolute and relative terms against the whole.
Further, I contend that Moral Relativism is the chief antagonist to Elitism & serves to cloud the individual from discerning his place in the world & fulfilling his obligations and thus condemning him to toiling in vain.
In fact, we can and commonly do conduct this type of testing to create relative comparisons of individuals in the form of aptitude testing. Professional football teams do this in the form of physical aptitude testing. College admissions boards do this in their review of applications & attending ACT/SAT scores (which, though only part of most applications for admission, are themselves an aggregate score against a wide array of tests which are then weighted & ranked across the entire testing pool). That is to say that in the aggregate, one applicant is superior to the next, and one football player is more talented/developed while the next is less so. Based on this measure, one applicant is superior to the next for the stated purpose of attending to college and one football player is professional grade, while the next is not. And regardless of how we feel about mental or physical inequities, the results still tell a story: the applicants still have their own unique sets of relative strengths and weaknesses and can be set in side by side comparison.
Before we go further, I should make clear that while scores tell a story, scores are based solely on what is tested. What is tested is based on what the tester is looking for. In the case of college, it could be anything from the best & the brightest quantitatively-oriented minds (RE: MIT) or even the best and most promising musicians or artists (RE: Bard), or simply individuals that fit the profile of someone who will likely do well & complete the curriculum. In the case of the college athletic combines, they are looking for individuals that are likelier than the next to succeed in the National Football League. The form the testing takes on is normally determined by committees & the like (also made up of individuals) who agree on how the test will be administer, yes, but more importantly on how it will be graded… and more importantly what threshold constitutes qualification (what is a “passing” relative rank, and what is “failing” relative rank). Every day, in every way we are being measured & scoped out formally in some cases, but informally in most. From what we wear to what we say to how we act, human individuals are subject to and are always treated to objective (in the case of formal) and subjective (in the case of informal) ranking. Is he attractive? Is he more attractive than the guy next to him? Is she too heavy for my tastes? Are her boobs too big/small? Does he have an annoying laugh, does she walk funny, does he wear out-dated clothes, does she drive a nice car???? All day long judgment is being passed. And all tests are rooted in seeking out strengths & weaknesses & passing judgments. We are hard-wired in the humanist sense & even called upon in the spiritualist sense to pass judgment. This will seem to some to run contrary to the popular “argument” employed by those who seem to know no better that would call Christians, for example, hypocrites when they point to injustices or point out behaviors that are contrary to their Christian beliefs. But the truth remains.
We are measured & held to account every day & in every way, both institutionally & socially, in our acts & in our refrain, in what we profess & what we fail to profess. While a dictator may be above the law, he can still be judged to be in violation of it. Similar to excommunication of self from a given church, the judgment passed can be, and in most cases is, carried out in absentia and outside of any court. By your thoughts, words and actions you are known to those around you. But even if you speed through a stop sign unobserved, you are still breaking the law. And in breaking it, you break the covenant of trust & the contract you have written with those who enforce it. Whether or not you are brought to justice on the individual transgression matters not.
On Elitism
One thing I would like to mention here is that I am an elitist in the truest sense of the word. I do believe that the crème generally rises, and should rise, to the top. I believe that the elitist approach in its truest sense serves the general welfare far better than a system based on favoritism and/or quotas. Anything that takes competition out of the equation… anytime one person is given a position based on anything other than relative ability, experience and willingness to fulfill a stated purpose, is in my opinion, a crime against all of mankind. Any measure which clouds an accurate measurement of one individual’s value versus another’s to fulfill the stated purpose is a criminal act against the whole.
There is, to be sure, a place for everyone. But every place is not for everyone. When the founders said that all men were created equal, they meant equal in the eyes of God &, therefore, in the eyes of the law. What they were not saying is that everyone was born with the same gifts, or even endowed with an equal measure of gifts, by the Creator. Indeed, no matter how much I practice nor how much I will it to be so, I will never match the basketball abilities of Michael Jordan, nor the musical prowess of Bach, nor the conceptual abilities of Mills, nor the engineering abilities of my-brother-in-law, nor the painting abilities of Van Gough, nor the architectural abilities of Frank Lloyd Wright.
The idea that we will all shine like diamonds or even excel to a modest extent in all of the activities we pursue is ridiculous and dangerous. I believe it results in a lot of wasted resources being attributed to chasing shadows down dark alleyways. A perfect case in point is the phenomena of televised “talent-based” contests that serve to embarrass the flocks of self-diluted “performers” in front of millions of television viewers. It also has resulted in a whole bunch of expensive drum lessons for kids who do not posses the raw ability to drum at any competitive level. Add to that the amount of time & energy wasted on photos for young women who are very pretty, but are not pretty enough to warrant a cover on Cosmopolitan magazine and you have a lot of people spending enormous amounts of resources on fantasies, as distinct from dreams. This does not mean I do not feel that we all have something profound to contribute to the bottom line, as it were. I do, in fact, believe we are all here for a reason & a unique purpose. But, having said that, knowing how far one’s abilities extend & knowing one’s own limitations is the first step in “figuring it all out” and spending your resources wisely. I tell my reports all the time that half of the battle is in knowing where your talents lie and the other half is in knowing your blind spots. This reinforces the wisdom we hear bantied about before every football game by every sportscaster; one should play to their strengths and away from their weaknesses. It is the best use of one’s resources & the best way to contribute & fulfill your obligations. To those who have been given much in the way of gifts, much is expected… but no one is off the hook. And for progress to be made expeditiously, every individual is called to pursue his own objective(s). Determining what one’s objectives are starts with one’s own self-inventory of one’s own talent & skill-set. That is, in the aggregate, tested against all of the options presented to you, determining how & where to spend your own personal capital to have the biggest impact.
In short, the connotations that spring to mind when Americans are presented with the word “elitism” are sadly misplaced. Elitism is in its truest form in accordance with the plan of God or, if you prefer, the Master Plan of the Creator. Or, if one prefers yet another expression, elitism is the surest way to ensure that one fulfills his obligation to the goal of advancing humanity & the Greater Good.
Elitism & Absolutism
I have made the argument that given a set of independent criterion to perform against, one can objectively make a judgment about the individual in the aggregate. That is to say, if an individual is scored on his abilities against of set of various criterion, we may demonstrate how he ranks (or stands in absolute relativity) against another by applying a weighted average to the individually scored criterion to determine one aggregate score.
I contend that all things may be measured, no matter how crudely, in this fashion and that only in religiously devoting ourselves to this measure can be fulfill our individual obligations to the “greater good” or destiny of self. In addition, in conducting relative strengths & weaknesses, we can establish on a defined continuum where one item stands in absolute and relative terms against the whole.
Further, I contend that Moral Relativism is the chief antagonist to Elitism & serves to cloud the individual from discerning his place in the world & fulfilling his obligations and thus condemning him to toiling in vain.
Chapter II: An Instant in the Garden of Paradise
On a moonlit night somewhere back in the collective memory of our shared past, a woman awoke in a terrible fright. She was lost… or at least she felt what we would describe as lost. She sat bolt upright a gazed in disquieted fear around a hearth crowded with lumps of shadows and near suffocated by the weighty smell of ash & sweat. She moved & this startled her to a near panicked state. Yet, she made no sound. “Where the f*** am I?” was likely her first thought… followed close behind by “What the hell is this place?, Why does it offend my…. ummmm…. senses…. so?”. These were likely the first thoughts any one of us had ever had. The first tangible thoughts of the self to self. Imagine that: the first thoughts ever thought by any one of us… the first thought of all time… being ones of disorientation. The irony, in case it be lost (so to speak) must be spoken. After thousands of years, we still are asking the same questions to self and to one-another each and every day.
In a World Religion class I had in undergraduate school, this idea was professed by one of the worst professors I, or any of my contemporaries, had ever had the displeasure of studying under. His classes were insufferable, not for lack of material, but rather for his inability to communicate his thoughts clearly. He might have been the only man on Earth that could raze the study of world religions to a landscape of wasted sand without a dune or oasis in sight. But that is not to say that the class or his lectures were worthless. To the contrary, the fact that I have ported this idea with me for over a decade & a half, while I have forgotten his name (though not the ‘F’ I eventually received in his class), demonstrates that he had succeeded in something monumental. He had introduced the idea to me & my melon has been chomping on it ever since. That the need to orient oneself is on par with the drive for sex, food & shelter was a breakthrough to the young and impressionable me. It resonated to the depths of my being. It felt right. He described it to the class of 12 half-asleep undergrads in a dark room buried under the cafeteria in the commons (a closet really). And the point was not lost to me that I was probably not the only one thinking “what the hell am I doing here” while thinking of the lunch menu and day-dreaming about my girlfriend in all of her naked glory rather than the shitty Iowa weather. That is to say, while he went on about the origin & probable significance of monoliths erected by Celtic dwarfs and the hypotheses surrounding what propelled long-gone mystical clans of people to erect “alters”, architectural calendars and other runes, he made a decent case. All of us, from time en memoriam have wondered not just what’s for lunch and who we plan to screw next, but at least equally why we are here and when class will end. The way he described the theory that some promulgate that these all represent various peoples’ attempts to orient themselves to the spinning heavens and to the surrounding landscape really spoke to me. And that got me to thinking about even more than when class would end. I continued to think about my girlfriend naked.
Specifically, it got me to thinking about why folks throughout the conscious ages have felt such a strong a need to orient themselves while other bipeds, and presumably, our genealogical forefathers/cousins presumably did not.
The answer I guessed was that something had changed. And, from what little I understand, the best theories at our disposal seem to indicate that something did change & it changed profoundly. Now, there are few among us who would argue with the proposition that software alone makes the machine. Often is the case that the newest version cannot even be loaded onto an older CPU, for want of processing speed, memory, &c.. What is clear about the historic record is that over time, somehow, we did indeed receive a series of hardware upgrades. The mechanism of how it happened or what the old hardware looked like, whether we are a new machine altogether or whether we are a newer version of versions that preceded us is interesting, but not discernable to me. What is of fundamental interest to me is the software we are running on & how we got the software upgrade. That is to say, was there a point in time where one of us homosapien folks received an install on demand download from a creator? Was there one moment in the experience of one of our distant ancestors when the lights went on, so to speak? When a flicker of consciousness beyond that of feeding, breeding & keeping warm entered the fray? When we became… well…. More spiritually like us? I think there was. When & how precisely I don’t know. What I do know is that the story sounds mighty familiar.
When I think about the woman who awoke out of her dreamy haze, huddling closely to her mate in a shelter slightly illuminated by the dwindling embers of the previous night’s fire, I think I can recognize her & empathize with her. She is to me the first one of us. That moment, in my mind, signifies the instant at which we became us. I picture her gazing through the entrance to the clans’ cave, out over the beach & staring, completely captivated, out over the horizon at the First Dawn. That moment marked the first sunrise witnessed by a truly sentient self-aware human. That is to say, morning after morning the sun had appeared to an audience that could not appreciate its eons-old dance across the sky. That is to say, all who preceded this Eve had failed to really process the Sun’s significance, much less their own. Their hardware had been capable, but the software that dictated its machinations had been in grave need of an upgrade. I contend the development of the hardware and piecing together of the model we represent came first. Some Q&A testing went on (supplying eons of intrigue for mankind to unravel) & when all was functioning to project specifications (and enough fodder had been provided to satiate lifetimes & generations of curious creatures), Eve was endowed with vX.0 software package & underwent a system reboot. From a system deployment standpoint, it makes sense to make sure the hardware is capable before one loads it up with software. Ah, but any good tech will tell you to always plan for scalability. If the calculations about the average percentage use of our brain capacity are at all accurate, there is plenty of room for future versions.
The analogy of human psyche/soma as computer software/hardware is surely a crude one which breaks down, as I am reminded by Timothy Witmer, rather quickly. Yet this metaphor holds for sake of discussing the moment described above; the marriage of mind & body, as distinct from the mechanical concert of brain & body that preceded it. We have the benefit, many years later, of more diverse metaphors than previous generations. What seems crude to us would have in the days of old seemed more fantastic and incomprehensible by far than the idea that the Creator “breathed life into Adam” or “made Eve from the rib of Adam”. I confess that to compare the corpus to hardware or the soul to software does not properly convey to the true nature of the body & mind, but the model holds for this discussion.
In a World Religion class I had in undergraduate school, this idea was professed by one of the worst professors I, or any of my contemporaries, had ever had the displeasure of studying under. His classes were insufferable, not for lack of material, but rather for his inability to communicate his thoughts clearly. He might have been the only man on Earth that could raze the study of world religions to a landscape of wasted sand without a dune or oasis in sight. But that is not to say that the class or his lectures were worthless. To the contrary, the fact that I have ported this idea with me for over a decade & a half, while I have forgotten his name (though not the ‘F’ I eventually received in his class), demonstrates that he had succeeded in something monumental. He had introduced the idea to me & my melon has been chomping on it ever since. That the need to orient oneself is on par with the drive for sex, food & shelter was a breakthrough to the young and impressionable me. It resonated to the depths of my being. It felt right. He described it to the class of 12 half-asleep undergrads in a dark room buried under the cafeteria in the commons (a closet really). And the point was not lost to me that I was probably not the only one thinking “what the hell am I doing here” while thinking of the lunch menu and day-dreaming about my girlfriend in all of her naked glory rather than the shitty Iowa weather. That is to say, while he went on about the origin & probable significance of monoliths erected by Celtic dwarfs and the hypotheses surrounding what propelled long-gone mystical clans of people to erect “alters”, architectural calendars and other runes, he made a decent case. All of us, from time en memoriam have wondered not just what’s for lunch and who we plan to screw next, but at least equally why we are here and when class will end. The way he described the theory that some promulgate that these all represent various peoples’ attempts to orient themselves to the spinning heavens and to the surrounding landscape really spoke to me. And that got me to thinking about even more than when class would end. I continued to think about my girlfriend naked.
Specifically, it got me to thinking about why folks throughout the conscious ages have felt such a strong a need to orient themselves while other bipeds, and presumably, our genealogical forefathers/cousins presumably did not.
The answer I guessed was that something had changed. And, from what little I understand, the best theories at our disposal seem to indicate that something did change & it changed profoundly. Now, there are few among us who would argue with the proposition that software alone makes the machine. Often is the case that the newest version cannot even be loaded onto an older CPU, for want of processing speed, memory, &c.. What is clear about the historic record is that over time, somehow, we did indeed receive a series of hardware upgrades. The mechanism of how it happened or what the old hardware looked like, whether we are a new machine altogether or whether we are a newer version of versions that preceded us is interesting, but not discernable to me. What is of fundamental interest to me is the software we are running on & how we got the software upgrade. That is to say, was there a point in time where one of us homosapien folks received an install on demand download from a creator? Was there one moment in the experience of one of our distant ancestors when the lights went on, so to speak? When a flicker of consciousness beyond that of feeding, breeding & keeping warm entered the fray? When we became… well…. More spiritually like us? I think there was. When & how precisely I don’t know. What I do know is that the story sounds mighty familiar.
When I think about the woman who awoke out of her dreamy haze, huddling closely to her mate in a shelter slightly illuminated by the dwindling embers of the previous night’s fire, I think I can recognize her & empathize with her. She is to me the first one of us. That moment, in my mind, signifies the instant at which we became us. I picture her gazing through the entrance to the clans’ cave, out over the beach & staring, completely captivated, out over the horizon at the First Dawn. That moment marked the first sunrise witnessed by a truly sentient self-aware human. That is to say, morning after morning the sun had appeared to an audience that could not appreciate its eons-old dance across the sky. That is to say, all who preceded this Eve had failed to really process the Sun’s significance, much less their own. Their hardware had been capable, but the software that dictated its machinations had been in grave need of an upgrade. I contend the development of the hardware and piecing together of the model we represent came first. Some Q&A testing went on (supplying eons of intrigue for mankind to unravel) & when all was functioning to project specifications (and enough fodder had been provided to satiate lifetimes & generations of curious creatures), Eve was endowed with vX.0 software package & underwent a system reboot. From a system deployment standpoint, it makes sense to make sure the hardware is capable before one loads it up with software. Ah, but any good tech will tell you to always plan for scalability. If the calculations about the average percentage use of our brain capacity are at all accurate, there is plenty of room for future versions.
The analogy of human psyche/soma as computer software/hardware is surely a crude one which breaks down, as I am reminded by Timothy Witmer, rather quickly. Yet this metaphor holds for sake of discussing the moment described above; the marriage of mind & body, as distinct from the mechanical concert of brain & body that preceded it. We have the benefit, many years later, of more diverse metaphors than previous generations. What seems crude to us would have in the days of old seemed more fantastic and incomprehensible by far than the idea that the Creator “breathed life into Adam” or “made Eve from the rib of Adam”. I confess that to compare the corpus to hardware or the soul to software does not properly convey to the true nature of the body & mind, but the model holds for this discussion.
Chapter I: On Evolution & Awareness of the Self
Or “Theistic Evolution”
· Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Phenomenon of Man (HarperCollin, San Francisco, 1959, 1980)
Fundamentalists and literalists claim that Creation (not evolution) most accurately describes mankind’s genesis & that of the universe. Humanists, on the other hand, work tirelessly pointing to irrefutable evidence to support the argument that Natural Selection, rather than the touch of a creator, best explains how we came to be.
What kills me each time I speak to someone who professes the one (whether “creationism” or natural selection) at the exclusion of the other is the lack of imagination & sheer intellectual laziness demonstrated by framing the discourse as a zero sum equation. To me, this is one of the cases where both prevailing opinions are very, very wrong. To assume that creation & evolution are mutually exclusive is evidence that man only sees what he wants to see… only believes what he wants to believe…
There are a few of us who actually believe the two are likely married. That is to say, there are those of us who have no problem whatsoever nodding to the evidence that indicates that evolution is likely a function of creation, rather than its chief antagonist.
That the anthropological evidence supports Darwin’s Natural Selection is not a matter of faith, but rather one of acknowledging fact & truth. The archeological record is written in stone & preserved in resin. It is, in short, undeniable. That the universe is inexplicably & seemingly boundless is also inexplicable. That the system of the world & universe are governed by hard fast & immutable laws and that the heavens, for all the chaos they seem to portend, are predictable in observance of those laws is also irrefutable. For those that believe that to accept Natural Selection is to turn your back on the Creator, as well as for those who have turned their back on creation as a plausible scenario for all things in the universe, the proposition that the two are inextricably con-fused should feel intellectually honest & easy to accept.
Imagine a world where there was nothing to learn, nowhere to explore, no understanding to be revealed. Imagine a finite universe. Imagine the world painted in a palette of grays. Imagine, just for a minute, that there was as much to understand in this lifetime as is contained in your average racquetball court. Most folks would see this as a horribly dull alternate universe. In fact, it is likely that most of us would likely die of boredom given a year or two of suffering it. Sales of Pink Floyd records would spike along with the price per share of the major razor blade manufacturers. But this begs some monumental questions: Who would give a crap whether we were bored or not? Who would bother to assemble bones in the dirt for us to dis-cover? Who would create such an elaborate universe and why? How come we cannot venture any deeper into the sub-molecular level? Why are our efforts thwarted for the first time, not for wont of technology, but rather by our inability to observe sub-atomic behavior beyond a given point due to the “nature” of the building blocks we strive to observe themselves? Is there any credence to the saying, “the more we know, the more we realize how little we know?” What is this perpetual learning curve humanity seems to be on? Is it finite? Will there be a time where the mysteries of the universe are truly known? How much is there to learn?
I leave these questions to those who have the Real Gift. I leave them to the philosophers & the great thinkers of present, past & future. In the interest of furthering this line of thought, I impart a story that I have carried around with me for a long time. Maybe this is why I hung on to this experience for so many years. I pass it on to make what you will of it.
When I was a teenager of about 15, I came home from school to find “Wally” doing laundry. Wally’s given name was actually Walterine Hill. She was hired as help around the time I was born. She had become a member of our family by the time I was 1. She covered a lot of shifts for my mom while she was in hospital & really was like a second mother to me. In any event, Wally would ask me daily what I had learned in school. One particular day I was more interested than usual to share what I had learned in school because I had, in fact, learned something that had truly fascinated me & gotten me to thinking. So, I told Wally that I had learned that the moon shines on account of being illuminated by the Sun’s light, rather than moon-light produced by the moon herself. She found this of interest, but reacted in a way that surprised me. I had explained the phenomenon analytically, but she saw it as something more. Wally saw it as even more evidence that God knew what he was doing when he crafted the universe. “Child,” she said, “you know I never knew that. But it doesn’t surprise me in the least. God works in mysterious ways”.
Now, for some of the more elitist flies on the wall, this would appear an intellectual cop-out of sorts. I mean, it is generally accepted among pop cult-ure devotees that demonstrating how the mechanics of the moving parts operate de facto removes the mystery out of the equation. Essentially, the culture that gives you “let me stick my hand in his side to repair my disbelief” often sees scientific explanations as victories that take god out of contention as the authoring force behind inexplicable mysteries of olde. For Wally, on the other hand, that moonshine functioned this way, rather than that, just reinforced her intuitive understanding of the true nature of the universe. This example sang to her soul & served as yet another instance of God and His majesty at play. “How can that be?”, the Saab-driving, Macintosh using, dual income, no kids metrosexual asks himself & his latte sipping peers. It can be only if you recognize that this universe & everything in it were authored by an incomprehensible chain of events purposefully choreographed & set to a grand waltz of definitively set rhythms, patterns & laws. These pulleys that we see around us… these ropes and weights & bearings… they were created. And they are governed by an equally fascinating set of invisible forces, such as torque, gravity, tension, &c.. Am I telling you that all of these fantastic things, be they planets, satellites, comets, humans, penguins, light, gravity, plants, dinosaurs, fish, birds, black holes, wormholes, were created? Yes. Why would you have me believe such a thing? Because it is infinitely more probable that this monumental apparatus is the work of one Creator, than the fantastic improbability that all we observe is accidental.
Theistic Evolution says that God creates through evolution. Theistic Evolutionists vary in beliefs about how much God intervenes in the process. It accepts most or all of modern science, but it invokes God for some things outside the realm of science, such as the creation of the human soul. This position is promoted by the Pope and taught at mainline Protestant seminaries.
· Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Phenomenon of Man (HarperCollin, San Francisco, 1959, 1980)
Fundamentalists and literalists claim that Creation (not evolution) most accurately describes mankind’s genesis & that of the universe. Humanists, on the other hand, work tirelessly pointing to irrefutable evidence to support the argument that Natural Selection, rather than the touch of a creator, best explains how we came to be.
What kills me each time I speak to someone who professes the one (whether “creationism” or natural selection) at the exclusion of the other is the lack of imagination & sheer intellectual laziness demonstrated by framing the discourse as a zero sum equation. To me, this is one of the cases where both prevailing opinions are very, very wrong. To assume that creation & evolution are mutually exclusive is evidence that man only sees what he wants to see… only believes what he wants to believe…
There are a few of us who actually believe the two are likely married. That is to say, there are those of us who have no problem whatsoever nodding to the evidence that indicates that evolution is likely a function of creation, rather than its chief antagonist.
That the anthropological evidence supports Darwin’s Natural Selection is not a matter of faith, but rather one of acknowledging fact & truth. The archeological record is written in stone & preserved in resin. It is, in short, undeniable. That the universe is inexplicably & seemingly boundless is also inexplicable. That the system of the world & universe are governed by hard fast & immutable laws and that the heavens, for all the chaos they seem to portend, are predictable in observance of those laws is also irrefutable. For those that believe that to accept Natural Selection is to turn your back on the Creator, as well as for those who have turned their back on creation as a plausible scenario for all things in the universe, the proposition that the two are inextricably con-fused should feel intellectually honest & easy to accept.
Imagine a world where there was nothing to learn, nowhere to explore, no understanding to be revealed. Imagine a finite universe. Imagine the world painted in a palette of grays. Imagine, just for a minute, that there was as much to understand in this lifetime as is contained in your average racquetball court. Most folks would see this as a horribly dull alternate universe. In fact, it is likely that most of us would likely die of boredom given a year or two of suffering it. Sales of Pink Floyd records would spike along with the price per share of the major razor blade manufacturers. But this begs some monumental questions: Who would give a crap whether we were bored or not? Who would bother to assemble bones in the dirt for us to dis-cover? Who would create such an elaborate universe and why? How come we cannot venture any deeper into the sub-molecular level? Why are our efforts thwarted for the first time, not for wont of technology, but rather by our inability to observe sub-atomic behavior beyond a given point due to the “nature” of the building blocks we strive to observe themselves? Is there any credence to the saying, “the more we know, the more we realize how little we know?” What is this perpetual learning curve humanity seems to be on? Is it finite? Will there be a time where the mysteries of the universe are truly known? How much is there to learn?
I leave these questions to those who have the Real Gift. I leave them to the philosophers & the great thinkers of present, past & future. In the interest of furthering this line of thought, I impart a story that I have carried around with me for a long time. Maybe this is why I hung on to this experience for so many years. I pass it on to make what you will of it.
When I was a teenager of about 15, I came home from school to find “Wally” doing laundry. Wally’s given name was actually Walterine Hill. She was hired as help around the time I was born. She had become a member of our family by the time I was 1. She covered a lot of shifts for my mom while she was in hospital & really was like a second mother to me. In any event, Wally would ask me daily what I had learned in school. One particular day I was more interested than usual to share what I had learned in school because I had, in fact, learned something that had truly fascinated me & gotten me to thinking. So, I told Wally that I had learned that the moon shines on account of being illuminated by the Sun’s light, rather than moon-light produced by the moon herself. She found this of interest, but reacted in a way that surprised me. I had explained the phenomenon analytically, but she saw it as something more. Wally saw it as even more evidence that God knew what he was doing when he crafted the universe. “Child,” she said, “you know I never knew that. But it doesn’t surprise me in the least. God works in mysterious ways”.
Now, for some of the more elitist flies on the wall, this would appear an intellectual cop-out of sorts. I mean, it is generally accepted among pop cult-ure devotees that demonstrating how the mechanics of the moving parts operate de facto removes the mystery out of the equation. Essentially, the culture that gives you “let me stick my hand in his side to repair my disbelief” often sees scientific explanations as victories that take god out of contention as the authoring force behind inexplicable mysteries of olde. For Wally, on the other hand, that moonshine functioned this way, rather than that, just reinforced her intuitive understanding of the true nature of the universe. This example sang to her soul & served as yet another instance of God and His majesty at play. “How can that be?”, the Saab-driving, Macintosh using, dual income, no kids metrosexual asks himself & his latte sipping peers. It can be only if you recognize that this universe & everything in it were authored by an incomprehensible chain of events purposefully choreographed & set to a grand waltz of definitively set rhythms, patterns & laws. These pulleys that we see around us… these ropes and weights & bearings… they were created. And they are governed by an equally fascinating set of invisible forces, such as torque, gravity, tension, &c.. Am I telling you that all of these fantastic things, be they planets, satellites, comets, humans, penguins, light, gravity, plants, dinosaurs, fish, birds, black holes, wormholes, were created? Yes. Why would you have me believe such a thing? Because it is infinitely more probable that this monumental apparatus is the work of one Creator, than the fantastic improbability that all we observe is accidental.
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