Existential Placebo

Sartre claims that one of the scariest things in life is our freedom. We are condemned to choose how to live our lives while not being able to see which choice will work out better for the future. Not only that, but we don’t even have an objective way of knowing what constitutes a “good choice.” This leads to a sort of “Unbearable Lightness of Being” where all our choices don’t matter because there is no way of differentiating between good and bad ones.

You might argue that, in fact, there are ways of knowing what constitutes a good or bad choice. For instance, you could talk to older people and mimic the actions of those whose lives you admire and who ended up satisfied. Or, you could subscribe to some sort of an idea of universal morality.

Another perhaps more comprehensive method is religion; it combines the idea of universal morality with an extra sense of meaningfulness, giving you not only advice for the now but also an end goal (telos) to strive towards.

You probably employ one or more of these methods (or something similar) for making decisions. You may think that because you use a method you aren’t subject to this sort of flailing-in-the-dark decision making. In reality, though, you are because you still have to choose which method will guide your decisions.

You may have grown up with one method and stayed with it even after finding others, but once you learned about the others you then made a passive choice not to follow them. And you still have no way to determine which method is best, or even what you mean by “the best.”

Some methods ultimately aim for happiness in this life; but is happiness really the ultimate goal of humanity? Others promise salvation for your eternal soul, but multiple methods offer paths for a soul’s salvation that are often mutually exclusive.

You can never know which method is ultimately the best choice since judging that would have required a prior method of decision making.

The Four Ages of Man

1) Religion:

This, the first thesis of man is characterized by an intuitive understanding of the world, and an world views based on myth.

2) Scholasticism:

The next age is a synthesis of the first and a new idea, Science. Science and logic step in to elaborate on Religion, but start with the basic metaphysical world view that the person already possesses.

3) Science:

In the third age, the antithesis of man’s first thesis, man attempts to give up world views based on or reliant upon unsupported intuitive ideas; and instead trade them for sheer Science and logic, becoming neigh dogmatic in his adherence. In doing so man splits his psyche into two opposing social cabals, academic and theological, both of which hold the other in deep contempt. Members of these cabals are characterized by attacking (often verbally in the case of the academics and physically in the case of theologians though there are instances of role reversal) anyone who disagrees with their Truth, because disagreement to them is not the root of growth but the seed of the destruction of what they know as true.

4) Bilateralism:

In the fourth age of man we return to synthesis, man embraces his dual nature as a rational and intuitive creature; recognizing the place of both functions. However instead of being founded on intuition and elaborated by reason, it is the reverse.

The roles become clear with the application of an example. Long before we understood even the basic rules of physics our unconscious mind, the super processor that it is, was capable of calculating the trajectories of fast moving projectiles, like rocks, and was even capable of intercepting them midair. And while modern physics has allowed us to gain rational knowledge of the movements of projectiles, calculating trajectories using formulas and conscious measurements during a baseball game would be laughable, not to mention counterproductive.

So what purpose does Science have if our intuition is so powerful? Science is in the business of figuring out how things work by repeated observation and logical generalization; which then serves the basis for logical extrapolation. Science allows us to do what intuition can’t, to see from a perspective outside our own, that of generalizations. However intuition is still better suited for every day life.

So it is with Truth, Science makes excellent predictive models about the way the the universe works, but in day to day situations intuition is better equipped to supply us with information that is relevant to our unique perspectives.

So the fourth age of man is characterized by intuition informed by rationality, working in harmony.

::Note::

As the rational mind and the intuitive mind are present in all human beings throughout all of the ages of man there have allways been those who did not conform to their age.

One Bad Atheist Argument

One argument that I’m really tired of hearing from atheists is the “come on, you’re an atheist to Zeus and Thor; I’m just an atheist to one more” argument. I understand it’s an attempt to put the theist in their shoes; but it’s a fallacious argument. Even if you reject every currently conceptualized idea of god you can still believe in god.

And there are current ideas of god that I’ve not seen adequately disproven, like the deist’s view that god created the world and then stepped back. After all, if god merely was the impetus for the Big Bang, then science wouldn’t be at odds with this worldview. In fact, it would only serve to show the incredible forethought that went into the world. Granted, there are excellent probabilistic arguments saying god’s existence is less likely than his nonexistence. But, when backed into a corner, any sophisticated atheist will agree that you can’t prove whether god does or does not exist; you can just make probability claims.