Bleeding to heal. The Earth is flat. Earth is at the center of the solar system. Zeus lives on Mount Olympus. The divine right of kings to act even as tyrants (e.g., Henry VIII of England). Hitler died in his bunker. Turning the heater on in a local bus kills coronavirus. These are things that were thought in their respective times to be uncontrovertibly true. In some of these cases, the power of the establishment was not subtle in enforcing them even when they should have been questioned. How presumptuous this finite, mortal species is! If ignorance on stilts is bliss, then why is it such in need of power? Subconsciously, the human mind must realize that its assumption of not being able to be wrong is flawed. We are subjective beings with instinctual urges—one of which manifests in the unquestioned assumption that what we know cannot be wrong, and furthermore that we are entitled to impose our “facts” on others. As the homo sapiens (i.e., wise) species, we are too sure, and too proud, concerning our knowledge and especially beliefs. We would like to have the certainty and objectivity that computers have, but we are subjective biological animals, not inert machines.
How much do we actually know? David Hume claimed that we do not really understand causation; we don’t get close enough to it to understand how one thing causes another thing. Worse still, we often take a positive correlation—that one thing is related to another (e.g., rain and seeing umbrellas)—as meaning that the one thing causes the other. Rain does not cause umbrellas; nor do umbrellas cause rain. Descartes was of a rare breed in that he was willing to critique his entire edifice of knowledge. With an open plain filled with the debris in front of him, he wrote that he could only be sure that he was thinking and therefore that he was existing. Cognito sum. I think, therefore I am. That he went on to reconstruct the very same edifice may suggest that he was still too taken with his previous knowledge. At the very least, his rebuilt edifice cannot be reckoned as progress.
Generally speaking, pride/ego plus knowledge is a retardant to progress and a sycophant to the status quo. New ideas must break the glass in order to breath and circulate even to reach peoples’ consciousness. Well-established beliefs clutch at us even in the face of strong arguments and empirical evidence to the contrary.
Hikes and stake-outs on Mount Olympus could have demonstrated to the ancient Greeks that immortal giants did not live there. The Greeks who scaled the peak tended to say that they felt the gods there—that the gods were invisible, as if they were merely spirit. Such contorting and even pruning when necessary is not uncommon in cases in which religion over-reaches; the core of the religious belief itself must endure even in the face of contravening empirical evidence. Sadly, not much progress has been made on the mind-game in the domain of religion; the human mind itself may be susceptible, with denial protecting the mind from recognizing its own susceptibility.
By the time that the ancient Greek religion became extinct, people were willing to conclude that no such gods existed (or had existed), and the belief that they lived on Olympus was simply wrong. Few if any people, however, were then able to consider that their own living religion could be wrong too. It’s the other guy who is wrong; this time, the deity really does exist. The firmness with which this belief is held, as if it were knowledge, is a sign of excessive defensiveness, and thus of unconscious doubt. Perhaps the unconscious is more honest with itself than consciousness is with us.
How many Christians consider that perhaps people could be wrong that Jesus literally rose from the dead (i.e., historically, as an empirical, historical fact)? How many Jews consider that historical evidence is lacking to support the belief that Moses was a historical person? Josephus, an ancient Jewish historian who lived in the first century, wrote Antiquities, which refers to a man named Jesus (albeit with probable later Christian parenthetical additions that a Jewish historian would not have accepted). To go from a man named Jesus to Jesus Christ involves a religious claim/belief that Jesus is divine. We have left the territory of historical accounts, which are in the past tense, to make use of faith narratives, which, as myths, can be in the present tense. For example, myths such as the Christian Passion story can be reenacted in ritual each year as if Jesus’ passion is once again to be felt. The religious experience is presently experienced, having been triggered by myth (religious story) and ritual (couched in drama).
In short, in looking back at the ancient Greek religion, we dub the stories of Zeus and the other gods as myth. Yet we instinctively resist even the possibility that the ongoing religions could include myth, for it and historical writings are two different genres and we clutch at the added certainty that can be provided by historical accounts. Why is additional certainty believed to be so important? Religionists don’t want to even consider that their particular religious beliefs could be wrong or over-stretched. To be sure, a myth-writer (or orator) may reference historical events, but his point is not to convey the veracity of them. Rather, historical events may be used (and adapted) to make religious points. For example, the Gospels differ on when the Last Supper occurred relative to Passover because the writers wanted make different religious points. None of the writers of the faith narratives would have subordinated religious points to historical accuracy. Therefore, the added certainty is a mirage. Rather than essentially reclassifying religious belief as knowledge (empirical or through reasoning), matching religious belief with its own kind of confidence would be more in keeping with the domain, and thus with human experience therein.
Unfortunately, religion does not rest with the exogenous certainty; the inhabitants in the domain not only try to conquer (and thus control) each other; other domains are fair game too. Run through the circuits of a human brain, religion tends to be infused with pride such that the religious domain may have a propensity to encroach onto other domains, even assuming the prerogative to dominate them. How uncouth! Hence Christianity got into trouble when it tried to control science and claim history for itself. The assumption that religion should constrain scientific knowledge not only conflates two different categories, or domains, but also was ignorantly taken as infallibly true. Furthermore, a faith-belief could be taken as a historical fact, which in turn could be used to justify the belief. Such a closed, self-reinforcing cognitive loop is not easily broken open even to the scalpel of an inquisitive, self-questioning mind. How rare such minds have been and are even in the midst of robust technological progress and greater knowledge available to mankind.
Christianity also got into trouble with itself, without realizing it, when it over-reached onto the military domain, which is not at all friendly to loving thy enemy. When the Roman Catholic popes became partisans in geo-political rivalries in Europe, the Church became closed in effect to its rivals and thus short-circuited its own mission—that is, the mission in the religious domain to save souls by leading people to Christ. We can count as progress the success of other domains in pushing religion back within the confines of its own turf. To presume to know the native fauna of another land better than the native plants on one’s own land, and then to presume to weed that land without sufficiently weeding one’s own is like arrogance on stilts; the toxic attitude of superiority should be underwater. Thus the high are made low, at least in theory.
In surveying world religions, I see progress at the point when the extant religions (with the exception of Satanism) came to no longer believe that human sacrifice appeases deities. When Judaism and Christianity had gained enough traction in ancient Greco-Roman culture that religion itself was no longer just a matter of ritual, but also had moral content (e.g., the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes), religion itself may have progressed. Why not more definite? Friedrich Nietzsche, a nineteenth-century European philosopher, argues that modern morality borne of weakness and foisted on the strong to make the latter voluntarily renounce acting on their strength. Meanwhile, the ascetic priests, who are weak (literally in being celibate) are free to unleash their urge to dominate by controlling their respective herds and in confronting the strong with, “Thall Shalt Not!” Even our surest knowledge of progress can afford to be questioned.
Unfortunately, once the Greco-Roman religion that was merely ritual to appease the gods and included human sacrifice was extinct, continued progress has faced a strong headwind from the still extant religions that were created roughly in the “second generation” (1800 BCE-650 CE). Even though the ancient cultures within which those religions formed are by the twenty-first century oceans of time from modern-day cultures, religious strictures grounded in the formative cultures die hard, if at all. These strictures are sustained at in part out of a fear that beginning the project of separating the divine from (human) culture would lead to anything goes (i.e., cafeteria-style religion). What if the divine in revelation is itself cultural reflected on high? Change itself faces an uphill battle even though the sheer difference between modern and ancient cultures suggests that changes are necessary in order that moderns are not to be held captive by the arbitrary limitations in long-ago cultures. This is particularly true in religious moralities. That Paul thought that women should not preach in Christian churches is not sufficient for churches today to be obligated to treat Paul’s opinion in his letters as if it were divine revelation. Even that Jesus’ disciples in the Gospels are men does not mean that Jesus sought to limit his disciples to men. Writings on Mary Magdalene discovered in the twentieth century support this point. Put another way, even mere opinions in ancient letters are held so firmly that human opinion is essentially divinized. As a writer, I am well aware that mistakes are in writings. Correcting for those errors, such as the Christian overlay on Josephus’ historical account on Jesus, has largely been inoperative when the human mind entertains religious belief (i.e., dogma).
My point is that the self-retarding mechanisms of the human mind can slow down progress and enclose us in ignorance that cannot be wrong. We tend to overrate both the freedom of progress from human nature and the knowledge and beliefs we have both individually and as a species. This is not to deny the existence of progress through history. Gladiators killing each other in stadiums has been replaced by football (both sports) fighting for a ball. A general increase in the value of human life has occurred in enough societies to suggest an upward trend for the wayward dictators to measure themselves against. Nietzsche aside, moral progress has also occurred, again in enough societies to demonstrate an upward trend. The incredible technological advances in the twentieth century can also be taken as progress because they have expanded human potential. For one thing, people could write beyond daylight, electric lights being brighter than candles. Just think how long candles were relied on, then all of a sudden, in the turn of a switch, the initially-feared new light was on and could spread. The danger, it seems to me, lies in the assumption that the biological fixity of our species becomes less of a hindrance as technology becomes even more advanced.
The coronavirus pandemic in 2020 hit the species even in spite of our technological advances, even in the field of medicine. Boris Johnson, the prime minister of the UK at the time, initially swore off precautions. The fact that he held high office did not prevent him from having to go into intensive care at a hospital. As far as a virus is concerned, we are not apart from Nature; rather, we are biological. Our minds, being corruptible in terms of knowledge and judgment, can limit what technology can do to stave off a pandemic.
For example, according to a local bus driver in Phoenix, Arizona, the bus company’s management was urging drivers to turn on the heat when the temperature outside was not prohibitive and close the windows (hence trapping the airborne virus) because “the heat kills the virus.” The closed windows meant that plenty of airborne virus could be expected to be trapped in the buses. Perhaps the treatment of bleeding would have healed the brain-sickness of managers. Unfortunately, they were able to use their authority to enforce their ignorance that could not be wrong. So could grocery-store managers there—in a state in which public education is ranked 49th out of the 50 States—who did not even notice that even their own employees were not keeping at a physical distance from each other and customers (who behaved as herd-animals incapable of altering a well-grooved habit even to protect themselves!). The improved knowledge available from medical experts didn’t matter. In fact, by the month of April, most customers and employees of grocery stores in Phoenix were wearing the surgical masks that the virus can easily pass through; such masks were to be used by the infected so they don’t spit on, and thus infect, the healthy. Of what value is progress in knowledge if a major metropolitan area in a developed country acts regardless? A meat manager at one grocery store there told me that one guy touched a number of meat packages after having gorged on some chocolate. The customer rebuffed the manager, saying, “My fingers going from my mouth to the packages won’t get anyone sick.” An uneducated opinion was presumptuously dismissing science. In this way and many others, the benefits of progress in human knowledge are held back by human nature—specifically, by ignorance that cannot be wrong, and even presumes to trump knowledge.
It is ironic that progress has been extolled even in times held back by the status quo. “We are in an age of greater transparency,” a person interviewed by the BBC said just after the British government tried to have it that the prime minister, Boris Johnson was hospitalized for tests and because he had symptoms. The lightness of this announcement is belied by the fact that he went to a hospital during his Queen’s speech. He surely would not have wanted to take away from the speech, and yet he was going in for tests, so why did he not wait until after the speech? Why the urgency if he was going in for tests? The implication that his hospitalization was not urgent was undone the next day by press reports that he was then in intensive care. So much for transparency, at least from the government. The primitive instinct for security surreptitiously stepped back from, and thus nullified at least in part, the contribution that technology had made on transparency in the press on government affairs.
Similarly, even though a French agent reported to the French intelligence service that he had recently seen Adolf Hitler and his wife attending an opera during one of its three performances in South America after World War II, the world, including the U.S. Government, stuck publically with the Soviets’ story that the couple had died and then been burned in Hitler’s bunker in April, 1945. Even after the Soviets tested the couple’s DNA and found that both people were women, the world and its governments continued with the story that Hitler and his wife had died in the bunker. That Hitler might have lived the rest of his life in South America, even conniving with his expert on dropping a nuclear bomb on New York City, apparently triggered the security instinct such that the progress in intelligence-gathering and analysis was for naught. The tyranny of the status quo against progress is subtle, yet more enduring than the rule of a tyrannical ruler.
Why was it insisted historically in Europe that the Earth is flat even without any evidence? The “scientific fact” was even defended by threats of death, but then it was more a matter of religious belief masquerading as fact. Why is the human mind so hesitant to say, “It’s a theory, but we really don’t know.” The pride of a mind is and the fear of uncertainty are human qualities rooted in the instinct of self-preservation. Pride is thought to beget power, which aids self-preservation. So too does having greater certainty of the environment. Such bloated pride can motivate a Christian king to become convinced that the divine right of kings justifies even tyranny that is hardly in line with Jesus’ teachings. Even Christian clerics intoxicated with their temporal power may suppose that burning a scientist for claiming that the Earth orbits the Sun rather than vice versa is in line with loving enemies. Being more in love with temporal power than with Jesus’ preachments is yet another example of the religious costs of trying to dominate in another domain.
Whether in religion, politics, or higher education, does cognitive difference really make someone an enemy, or is the human brain prone to overstepping, emotionally speaking, in applying emotion to cognitive differences? We humans are overwhelmingly utterly unaware of the games our minds play on us. We assume that we are in control of what we think, and that we use reason impeccably. Nietzsche claimed that the content of ideas is instinctual urges, and thus reasoning is a subjective tussle within loose strictures that may themselves be urges. How much do we really know even about ourselves? Yet we would not tolerate someone saying that what we are absolutely sure we know may yet be incorrect. We are so sure that we grasp for authority to enforce what we know on others who resist. Hence, if we were to go back in time and refuse to be bled, a physician may dismiss our claim that bleeding actually weakens rather than cures a person and use his authority as a physician to subject us to the treatment. The weak—in this case, the ignorant with power—think nothing of dominating the strong; in fact, the resentful enjoy it.
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