Truth is Relative
Searching for the Truth through words and speech is like sticking your head in a bowl of glue.
Yuan Wu
Zarah2nd: Word-duos like 'god'-'devil', 'heaven'-'hell' suggest Conflict
0. Getting Started
2. Well known facts
3. Zooming in
4 Rationalism and true Irrationalism
5 Mathematical Thoughts
6 Truth jumps with lightspeed
7. The phenomenon truth
8. Infinite Truth
9. Spectacles
10. Acceleration
11. Emotional Senses grasp part of Truth
12. Symbiosis or war
13. War for Symbiosis or for Gain
14. Astronomy studied Gods
15. Collision
16. Viruses
17. Evolution and Ethics
18. Evolution and Energy
19. Trains to truth
20. Big Wheels
21. Truth is truth, and that is limitless
22. Brainwave
23. A Narrow Path in Limitless Space
Getting Started
There is this saying The Truth Will Set You Free. It might be disappointing, but Truth is a balance selected by evolution from locally succesful behavior.
If brutally letting some 100 of Iraqees die every day appears winning on the very long run, then evolution doesn't mock and accepts dying of Muslims.
But I wouldn't bet on it that such 'rational' tactics holds out another 25 years (better sell your shares, and invest in energy mean activities).
Maybe realizing this patience of evolution before selecting will make you feel free.
You might help evolution by not accepting egoism anymore, and making a creative choice for fun of ALL people.
Your individual wilpower helps evolution to see that there is more successful behavior to select from.
But it the meantime evolution might have tested an agressive dominant culture by seriously testing if it survives catastrophes like super volcanos, ice ages, holes in ozon layer, etcetera). |
Well known facts
In the
space age its about time not only to leave the football-like earth, but as well
to abandon our quite flat ways of thinking. Space is multi-dimensinal, our world in our eyes
is mainly 3-dimensional. In space humans risk being primitive beings,
if not soon we start to use more dimensions.
(And outside universities and front running firms we still tend to use
mainly quasi 2-dimensional procedures)
Researching
space improves the human capabilities to think 3-dimensional, but the ages old
experience in a 2 dimensional world is difficult to get rid of.
The proof of Galileo practiced by Columbus
that this world was round still mainly
influences the thoughts of scientists.
I believe that humans think in much too limited ways for the universe that we are part of.
Maybe the majority accepts Galileo now but in the present way it won't accept the Galileo's of today for another couple hundred years.
It's getting time that 'n-dimensional space' leaves thinking
of only mathematicians and the laboratories of quantum physics
In my view out of limitless dimensions we generally just grasp 3 and do such mostly by only using 2-dimensional practices. Even then things might become awfully complicated (think of an Airbus 380). It shows that our evolution may accelerate but that the unknown worlds visited during 'meditating' always stay unlimited in number. There'll never be a lack of challenges.
Getting away from rationalism is more than appreciating television programmes crowded with vampires or looking at karate movies. This only shows in an odd way that the conditions are improving for another way of thinking.
Zooming in
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Since the scientist and cultural thinker Thomas Kuhn wrote his Scientific Revolutions mid 20th century, by now in the Western World the inevitability of an HUGE irrational world as ccounterpart of the tiny rational one should be known. Kuhn showed with his theory of (Kuhnian) paradigms shifts that different sense-realities are existent. In fact the Hungarian Imre Lakatos without realizing made likely that at any paradigm shift humanity is taking a new direction out of limitless ones. |
Expanding world of thought
Still the
resulting world of thought became in 'rational' view like a flat plane in a very curved
multidimensional space. It was in the Western Word degraded to a virtual absolute 'rational' world.
That process started with Alexander the Great/the Cursed, who annihilated Persian Zoroastrianism and that way for many ages COMPLETELY blocked Europe from Asian wisdom.
The replacing Mohammedans continued trade but could make no sense of the Asian view on life that was ESSENTIALLY different from Catholicism/Mohammedanism.
Not surprising because both Catholicism and Mohammedanism are based on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, the tutor of the murderous Westerner Alexander.
Nicomachean ethics teaches a belief in IMMATERIAL 'spirits' (also after Rene Descartes called body-mind split), and cuts life in 'good' and 'evil'
(or 'good guys' and terrorists). Zorastrianism triggered Buddhism and considers life as The One, with only 'better' and 'worse' as archived in 'common sense'.
'Irrational' is all of life outside the tiny 'rational' fantasy world. But in our thinking it became restricted
to nothing more than views only that were CLOSE to acceptance by
Western 'rationality' (Western Ethics). So in the Western plane of thought, and only there with a moving border.
Every time more procedures are crossing the border in the direction from irrational
to rational. Yet always the 'irrational' world remains HUGE in size compared to the
tiny 'rational' partner-world. That's the advantage of being unlimited.
But there are limitless worlds perpendicular on the tiny 'rational' one. There are limitless histories, called paradigms by the 20th century cultural thinker Thomas Kuhn.
Absolute Rationality and Relative Zen Thinking
Herbert Marcuse saw ratio dominating other views, and spoke about a one-dimensional world. In the meantime fake irrational procedures (in fact just not yet rational) start getting accepted, and it's better to speak of a two-dimensional or flat world. That doesn't change the fact though that Marcuse in "One Dimensional Thinking" made very right observations (ahead of his time).
Space has an unlimited number
of sense dimensions, and all are unities (not split in some value good/evil) but Western World INVENTED an extra abstract dimension (rationalism). This is
because since the inventing of rational logic by the philosopher and priest Descartes end of the Middle
Ages AND since the rise of Capitalism the fantasy ratio-view became common.
Evolution is a subset of Space (or Reality) dimensions. Evolution is a unity of life, human life is a tiny subset) that is until yet partly 'smart' and mostly a failure.
Seen from
fantasy 'rational' viewpoint the views based on sense-data are
weird. Even worse: the general attitude has become of largely regarding the rational fantasy point of view as the ONLY one.
Imagine a human space traveller observing the surface of a new planet
through 'rational' eyes. That must be 'outrageous' for him, while right before
his eyes may be extra-terrestial creativity of level intelligence.
It needs freeing oneself from the dreamworld 'rationalism' to appreciate that real weirdness. That's a TREMENDOUS task, since rational behavior drenched our actions.
Using mathematical logics in the skill-discipline 'engineering' one knows that taking other basic assumptions might result in totally unexpected conclusions. Just by leaving the rational plane of 'IF a=b and b=c THEN a=c'.
Probably modern physics carefully researched such super-rational worlds (meaning neither rational nor fake irrational, but plain reality).
Then probably not all those real worlds are stable like the fantasy rational ones. Sometimes they are there, and the next moment they are gone. A notion well known in statistics and quantum physics, but difficult to grasp completely. Maybe the Star-Trek like idea of opening and closing worlds is not that weird. It was the mathematician Einstein who came up with this weird looking suggestion.
But
whatever strange concepts may cross our path, it will be a matter of
discovering and researching. Our speed of learning may improve but the ways to move
on remains the same and happens in STEPS.
Continuity is fantasy (theory)
PERHAPS Kuhn unwillingly overstressed the difference between sequential Kuhnian paradigms. After a In Kuhnian paradigm shift the new one largely repairs the former paradigm, instead of creating a completely new ethical view. A Kuhnian paradigm shift is more a paradigm extension, in which an old paradigm is extended with some new ideas. That way no knowledge is lost. But 'now and then' a drastic jump in new direction is necessary
Evolution is full of such changes.Anyway IF humans don't
succeed in making computers that function in relative way, THEN in 'rational' worlds these
smart machines will no doubt substitute man in physical form. AND will get stuck in
the 3-dimensional part of space. They must be able to learn by trial and error
to discover and work with other dimensions.
Relax ..., getting stuck won't happen, because that would mean an evolution that ends.
We are temporarily on a semi-continuous 2-lane road, but surely will return to a discrete N-way highway.
At some time in human evolution there'll be a 'Jesus' who shows breaks the temporary semi-continuous fantasy course.
And that prophet will be dead before before being recognized as one.
The following is a very simple way of indicating that there are two essentially different phenomenons.
Reality ß à Sense Experiences translated by our Mind
(energy in different shapes) ß à (complex energy simulations of reality OR knowledge)
As practicers of simulation generally are painfully aware of, their limited models only try to amplify a certain view on things.
In case of the world seen from earth one has on the one side the real energy shape of our world, and on the other side the way our senses make an extremely complex but at the same time awfully limited simulation of it. That might result in Earth being 'seen' as flat, or as a round globe
To make things worse, the real world and its simulation are completely mixed up. In the real world every 'nothingness' (split of a second) hides an infinite Truth (all energy in some complex shape).
In our mind, and while using the our limited senses and limited imagination, we
have fantasies about only one picture album of this infinite Truth. We can't ever even get close to it.
All experience points at the existing of such an Infinite Truth. That's very different though from Absolute Truth. Absolute truth only is a 'frozen' picture of Infinite Reality with a particular camera. High quality camera's can reach extreme hights of local precision, but using a different angle suddenly obviously existent objects become blurred or even appear to be invisible. That may happen in space, when meeting extraterrestrial beings. Then humans might encounter beings that are unworried about nuclear bombs or chemical warfare, but possess frightful unimaginable other weapons.
In every 'circle of knowledge' (Wittgenstein) an own pair of spectacles is used to observe some aspects of Infinite Truth. So in such a 'circle' one sees a tiny part only of Infinite Truth. Different from the one in other 'circles' (bubbles of thought), and showing more difference if these worlds of thought differ more.
Let's say only one aspect of Infinite Truth is speed. But there are limitless aspects, it is plausible that what humans came to see as 'speed', might be seen in MANY other ways.
In for instance in a linear view one sees the speed as a.x
Slightly different one might see a.x + x2
When x is very small one doesn't observe difference , so the two worlds seem superficially in equal flight
Something like
this happened when the Newtonian physics was extended by the one of Einstein.
If your spectacles filter out x2 then you see no difference,
i.e. x2 is outside any only linear view. One simply can't
imagine it.
Albert Einstein still used the superfluous notion 'time'. This lead to weird ideas like 'age' and 'time travelling'.
The best way to proceed is semi-continuously jumping from mind-world to mind-world. Not forgetting about the old one, but every time joining two ways of thinking. Because the basic 'speed' of change and using the temporary spectacles of the former world brought us here. That way one comes one tiny step closer to observing the behavior of Truth. It satisfies both absolute engineer thinking and relative Zen thinking, because local truth seems to expand continuously AND new totally different views may be added
Even on earth exist beings who observe only by smell or hearing. We found out that this is very well possible and even developed aids for humans to help them do the same. But what if some extraterrestrial race possesses only senses yet unknown to humans? Still it might be able to manage quite well, and even be superior to humans. Such difficult to imagine beings use the same Truth, but from its infinity only to humans unknown parts.
We can be confident that our human logic still works, but it's effect could be useless (very small) in attacking this part of Truth. Maybe it takes another branch of logic to unravel this area of Truth. It might be just not the way to approach these phenomena.
When it comes to moods or emotional feelings Western humans already noticed that so called 'objective' rational approaches seem to fail. Since guys like the influential German philosopher Leibniz during European Enlightenment end 17th century we learned to explain 'subjective' as shades of 'objective' 'rationality'. Feeling though is heavily suppressed in absolute rationalist view, but quite existent in relativist Zen view.
Rational behavior seems to destroy being humble, like it creates a world of economic sharks (sorry sharks). Maybe the phenomenon of 'being humble' doesn't belong in the egoist paradigm of rationalism. Nietzsche stressed that the former art of rhetorics had elements that got lost in rationalism but are still cherished in Zen). Maybe joining relative Zen directives with and rational rules might do the trick.
It's not only banning war, but ending any waste of energy. It's brute force approach 'christenizing' made expansion of the ROMAN Christian Church quite succesful. (although having bureaucracy as a nasty energy drain). But war terrorizes resources (as does any form of wasting energy). Seen as a vehicle on the endless road to truth, war slurps thousands of gallons of gasoline per mile. But don't worry, this vehicle finally surely will lose the fight for the market.
| To me the ancient South-American Inca culture, although in some ways 'cruel', aimed at expansion not by destroying enemies, but by INTEGRATING. I.e. their royal families knew conspiracies and were full of fierce and proud people and certainly no softies, but somehow these must have realized the advantage of letting most enemies alive after a show of power. Then afterward with little effort it also integrated their knowledge.
This extremely clever method in my eyes sufficiently explains how, without an invention similar to gunpowder, in a relatively short time this culture could gather enormous power and knowledge. Anyway its typically western to measure a culture only by the warfare power of its aristocracy. Not only did the Incas build temples and palaces and other buildings. They constructed almost 10,000 miles of roads, often in mountainous regions. They built large rope suspension bridges to cross rivers. They designed aqueducts to move water for irrigation. The stone masons were so good at their craft that the stones fitted perfectly without any mortar. Many of the religious Inca ceremonies centered around agriculture - the growing and harvesting of crops - and around curing illnesses. This culture further excelled in spinning, weaving, making fine clothing. Then when meeting for the very first time an enemy that with little effort should and could have been destroyed immediately (a handfull of relatively ignorant Spanish Conquistadores with powerfull weapons) consistent use of the method 'peaceful integration' made this culture utterly defenseless. Killing for the Incas probably was practiced only as a way to give a signal to others. Generally that had proven to be sufficient to break resistance of enemies or satisfy the imagined bloodthirst of their gods. To my knowledge incidently the Incas sacrificed animals or even people to the gods, especially the god of the sun (following certain events like earthquakes or the death of an emperor). Unfortunately the Spanish soldiers were not like them aiming for some kind of traded peace, but for maximum profit at any cost. And inability in leading Inca circles to swiftly alter method then unexpectedly resulted in disaster. |
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The mission of this small group of the special forces of the Spanish troops was to gather wealth at all means. The Spanish crown was not aiming for having colonies, but for fast profit. It was the third looting mission of Pizarro, already living in Panama, after 2 private ones rendered no succes. The Incas valued gold differently, they saw it as sweat of the highly worshipped sun. Gold had only esthetic value for them
as building material of ceremonial objects, or when it was used to
adorn tombs and temples. Important but not like for the Spanish a glittering promise for a rich future. For the Spanish tiny army (180 man) it must have looked like an Eldorado. Defenseless friendly people, weak emperor, using gold like wallpaper. The Spaniards lead by Pizarro melted it down to be shipped.
Pizarro by the way was the illegitimate and poorly-educated son of a Spanish minor noble. The Spanish governor later said to Atahualpa (an Inca emperor), shortly before murdering him: "Do not take it as an insult that you have been defeated and taken prisoner, for with the Christians who come with me, though so few in number, I have conquered greater kingdoms than yours, and have defeated other more powerful lords than you, imposing upon them the dominion of the Emperor, whose vassal I am, and who is King of Spain and of the universal world. We come to conquer this land by his command, that all may come to a knowledge of God, and of His Holy Catholic Faith . . ." Reality behind these arrogant words was, that the Spaniards were on a looting mission ordered by Charles V of Spain, and approved by the pope. High on their horses and using their guns they everywhere trampled and killed Incas like ants. Possibly an extra but unlikely to be decisive reason was that the destruction of Inca culture at this time was foreseen in the stars by its priests. To see the constellation of the stars as a main reason of Inca defeat is in my opinion very clever, typically western, and almost made probable. BUT it is also painfully one-minded, and underestimating the Inca culture. One doesn't construct a huge emperium in such a relatively short time, by relying ONLY on unpredictable decisions of gods. Above I mentioned their method of integration as possible decisive explanation for such rapid expansion. Using gods to justify decisions is practiced by leaders all over the world, that was on a lot of places in history the most important reason for priests having power. Leaders needed them and vice versa. When at present any president says "with God's help" that doesn't mean he goes to church every Sunday, and why his astronomers know so much about space. But it is a suitable explanation for the extensive knowledge about constellations of stars and planets found in Inca culture. |
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Personally I see the collapse of Inca culture as purely the result of a disastrous collision between two completely different systems of knowledge about power. Both heavily influenced by tradition, and one further based on peaceful 'integration' and the other besides that based on the agressive 'power of money'. In the field of
health the symbiosis of the Spaniards with some European viruses proved to an uncontrollable but nevertheless mighty invisible ally, killing more enemies than their bullets. These Spaniards with both visible
and invisible devastating weapons to Inca people must have appeared like gods. Those for the first time met horses, guns, and armoured knights. The Spanish won a first gunpowder empire, or better 'virus and gunpowder empire'. By accident this relatively small mission to gather riches became the first example of successful chemical warfare. This story would make an excellent plot for a colorful SF movie. |
Considering viruses: by far most viruses adapt themselves to living next to humans without causing problems. Now and then by accident a virus becomes a killer, but fighting it only awakes mighty defense forces. Mostly that concerns originally animal viruses that need time to adapt to treat humans only as temporary host. Attacking it means distracting large amounts of energy from this process of adaption. Instead use this fuel to find ways to live in peace with it, then viruses are terrible allies.
In nature on earth there are good examples of succesfull forms of symbiosis. The one between man and dog was one of the reasons of human succes. It supplied humans with strength, speed and a very sophisticated smelling sense. AND that with considerable less energy costs than waiting for the right changes in DNA.
But don't make the mistake of 'dressing' evolution with ethics 'given from heaven' by some religion. Evolution already supplies a thoroughly tested ethics in the duo ( DNA , common sense) It helps to see evolution as a game of applying energy, that 'appreciates' creative use of energy. Seen that way 'evolution' tries to optimize availability of free energy, while wasting least of used energy. Sometimes temporarily complex shapes of energy are more efficient. Think of stars and planets and also humans. But in the end stars explode, planets die and erode and humans .... As long as humanity plays a role in winning energy it is allowed to stay in the game, otherwise it is a jackpot full of energy.
'Ethics' of beings in space will converge to this law of nature, only sub-ethics that save energy will survive.
In the end therefore evolution will 'chose' for symbiosis, because it wastes less energy. SF movies already give fine examples of the potential of symbiosis.
I'm convinced that in space the method of trying to destroy ununderstood and in outlook hostile cultures will prove disastrous. Symbiosis is a preferrable alternative. Far from earth we'll need every ally available. But nevertheless that will take a long struggle between 'powerfull hawks' and 'smart doves'. Because from a society based on wastefull wars humanity must upgrade to a culture valuing all existing knowledge. A luck is that really advanced extraterrestrial cultures already by long should have recognized this law of nature.
On earth 2 approaches to truth became popular.To explain them I'll picture truth as a 3-dimensional space and our present position as a tiny dot (in 1, 2 and 3 dimensions).
Approach 1: expand from the dot via ever more neighboring dots to total space (brute force, stress on continuity and tradition)
Approach 2: accept all dots and unify them to total space (some sort of relativism, stress on progress)
Members of both approaches will agree that:
1. Truth is limitles
2. Only improving within the dot (even if limitless improving) never gives a view on space
3. To expand from x joined dots to x+1 dots needs accepting a greater part of truth
4. An approach 3 being a mix of 1 and 2 is much more 'natural'
5. Approach 1 can be seen as continuous improvement
6. Approach 2 needs paradigm shifts
7. Seen as 'the One-Many Problem', Approach 3 uses unifying principle energy
8. Approach 3 unites 1 and 2, and thus saves a lot of energy. It unites One (absolute truth) and Many (relative truth)
9. There might be 'false' dots, but there remains allways some path to a greater truth
So there are probably unchangeable laws of nature. But there are as well countless ways of looking at them. The results can be astonishingly different, depending on the way of thinking, the method of 'looking'
and on the sense(s) used.
But there remains one essential difference between the 2 aproaches. Approach 1 is conservative and therefore only expands AFTER accepting a different truth.
Approach 2 is progressive and begins with accepting all truths. Both are needed, but without one another are destined to fail. I.e. continuity is needed, but without jumps in fantasy it leads to standstill (or linear progress only)
Think of life as gunfire.
Firing ........loading (pressure replacing from Approach 1 to Approach 2)... firing.
Like the ever accelerating cadance of a speeding train.
Paradigm shift............paradigm shift.......paradigm shift.....para .pprrrrrrrrrr
From slow gunfire to a mitrailleur burst.
Life is somewhere on an endless exponential series, but always moving
Big ... wheels ... keep .. on .. rolling......
In Brahman worship the ancient thinker Srila Prabhupada says:
"Truth is truth, and that is absolute. You may manufacture relative truths, but the Absolute truth is one. If we have no knowledge of the Absolute Truth, we emphasize relative truths."
In this translation the interpretator's use of the word 'absolute', as I see it, is meant in a different way as the general usage of this word in western rationalism. There one would I think say 'limitless', and refer to using only 1 truth as 'absolute'. Absolute truth is one in Brahman way then means the same as the western rational saying: laws of nature are unchangeable. So the first part of the saying should have been translated as: "Truth is truth, and that is limitless". But indeed the path to limitless truth is paved
with countless relative truths.
Why is it that for instance Buddhist belief produced such superb knowledge, and afterwards
in the 'field of thought' became an almost 'dead' belief? The (re)-invention of gunpowder in the western world, and usage for military purposes, must have been as devastating as their later invention
of the nuclear bomb (historians speak about the gunpowder empires). That was killing for Asian beliefs. Agressive Christianity and Islam now expanded even more rapidly. In Asian government circles western ways of thinking were adopted. The beliefs remained
popular 'on the street' but lost their power as centre of wisdom. But luckily they are not really dead, only sleeping.
In Japan an interesting symbiosis can be found of Western Rationalism and Buddhism, that
was already born begin 18th century (see Nishida).
On secondary school I was both intrigated and annoyed by physics.
I loved puzzling with laws, but was frustrated by finding serious flaws in them. That is because those laws were taught to me as being absolute, and that is what I expected.
My study on university only enlarged this problem. Laws suddenly changed but clearly caused in me more confusion than certainty. For me that was reason to fly to mathematics and clear artificial but reliable worlds. |
Evolution can for humans be seen as billions of human beings creating a narrow path in a limitless space. Driven by the human goal happiness (or using another word: freedom). Now and then one of those humans takes another direction, and very few times after long hesitation first a few and finally everybody follows.
Probably future generations will also explore really irrational worlds. By the time that I'm seventy years old the new concepts should be unimaginable to me. More weird than the present television vampires.
100% of my references were on Internet. They varied from articles by Aristotle to views in present postmodernism. I never used material to copy, but just to check and doublecheck my views. Anyway I hate articles with miles of references. If some question remains, just send me an e-mail. This particular article is a result of detailed studying of Enlightenment, Nietzsche and 20th century philosophy (especially Wittgenstein, Popper and Kuhn). It resulted as well in articles on every sub-subject.
Zarah2nd, initiated May 2003, ..jpg)
