Think of nothing

Sometimes I wish some intellectual areas were as malleable as others. I mean for instance, science. Even though there are so many past scientific "certainties" that we now know are false, and everyone has heard at least a million times how people were killed for not believing the earth was flat, there are an awful lot of science bullies out there who are trying to force me to believe and not question the science they theorize to be fact. And the more insistent they become, the worse they are going to look when and if what they are saying is disproved by science. And chances are pretty good it will be. Then what will they do? Will they snap into a state of cognitive dissonance and just willfully ignore the truth? Or will they have the strength of character to admit they were wrong? The harder they push, the worse they will look whichever the case may be. But push they do.

How do you think this guy feels?

It is particularly distressing to me because I can think of two science bullies that I absolutely love! I really wish they'd stop doubling down their bets because sooner or later it's gonna cost them. I'm speaking of Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye the Science Guy. I watched Bill Nye's show. It was a bit after I was a kid, but I love science so I watched it anyway. That was his niche. Telling kids not to believe their parents, but to believe HIM is NOT his niche.

Okay, okay, it's quite unlikely that science will find irrefutable proof that the earth is only a few thousand years old, but, still, when you start targeting children's impressionable minds, it sure looks like a desperate tactic.

Then there's Neil Degrasse Tyson. This is a guy I have a ton of respect for! I bet he drinks beer. I'd love to have a beer with him! I've seen him on TV a LOT and he's always very interesting and I almost always learn and agree with him. But not just once, a few times, I've seen him take an all or nothing stance on the losing side. Yes, he's been WRONG about science more than once, but tell me who is going to challenge this man. Even if you're right, he can probably overpower you with the support of his many fans. And if you're wrong, well his legend grows. Here's a recent example.

I'm sensing a very palpable desire during this entire video, almost more of a MIKE Tyson desire, to just thump the listener over the head and say, "Scientists are smarter than you, just believe what we say!" And you know what? That would be great! If science was the way science is supposed to be. But it's not. It hasn't been for a while. Like most areas, science, or certain parts of it, have been commercialized and corporatized to the point where the scientists don't publish, or study what they want, they study and publish what pays. Publish or perish is nowhere more apparent. Ask a scientist. Not a famous one like Neil or Bill, one who's still got 50 thou in student loans. Are they really trying to find new things? No. They're mostly trying to prove or disprove things they're told to prove or disprove. This breaks rule number one of proper science: Above all, remain objective. If you are given a desired conclusion, objectivity flies out the window.

From the facebook page of the very same friend I got the above video, I read one about why marijuana was illegal in the States. It was about a fella in a position of power in the U.S. way back when, who went to 30 scientists and asked if marijuana was harmful. 29 said no, but the 30th, who knew which side his bread was buttered on, said it was harmful. And they tied marijuana use to an axe murder committed by a dude who never actually used marijuana, but nonetheless, it worked. For practically a century, marijuana has been feared in the U.S. More tragically hemp, but that's probably got more to do with Randolph Hearst, Dupont and plastic than anything. A great shame if you ask me. But there again, the greatest crop ever, scientifically transformed into anything from clothes to fuel for a car, repressed. Scientists, who were well paid by the tobacco industry, proved for years and years how safe tobacco smoke is for us. Why, it's probably healthy! And the hardest scientific pill for me to swallow has been the pharmaceutical industry, which I have only a tiny shadow of doubt has cured cancer many times but would rather treat patients for a long, expensive time than cure them cheaply. There are several other areas I've gotten into on this blog before that could be repeated. How many times have you gotten frustrated with wires for every electronic device you own? If science were science, there'd be no wires. We wouldn't even be paying for electricity. But you can thank Westinghouse, Edison and I think J.P. Morgan for the expense and the inconvenience. They wouldn't have made a bazillion bucks if they'd allowed Nicola Tesla to give the whole world free wireless electricity. THIS is why, in my mind, we MUST question science, because it has been successfully repressed in the past and I have no doubt is being successfully repressed as we speak right under the noses of Tyson, Nye and all of us.

The video appears to use four examples of how people who don't know much about science are standing in denial of it. I just gotta include this vid of someone who doesn't know much about philosophy standing in dismissal of it. Anyhoo, there's evolution, which I have blogged about before. Micro-yes, macro-requires a healthy scientific suspension of disbelief to accept as fact. It's not made clear in this video, but I know from past experience with Tyson that he believes in the harder evolutionary theory to believe. Vaccinations, again, if you say vaccinations are bad, I would agree you are just as wrong as if you say evolution doesn't exist. But there ARE and have been vaccinations that contain dangerous ingredients, are not fully tested and are being $old and administered. The government of any country could just as easily decide to use untested vaccines on the general public as they did their armed forces. Maybe they have. This is something we NEED to look into, not just trust science on. It's a trick as old as Moses' shorts to group people into black and white categories that make derision easier. That's what's being done by the science bullies. I'm not an antivaxer or antivaccer or however you want to spell that ignorant word. But I AM against shooting people full of untested drugs so pharmaceutical companies can collect their pay without fully earning it. This makes me an "antivaccer!" Burn him! ANTIVACCER! I believe that various parts of the theory of evolution are still highly theoretical and in fact identical to the metaphysical quandaries innate to religious belief in God. Then I must be against evolution! Ignorance! BURN HIM!

So that's two strikes against Tyson. Global warming I definitely won't complain about that. I trust the science, not the politics in that case, but COME ON, Tyson! GMO's? You want us to literally swallow THAT science whole? I mean, I sure HOPE Tyson is suggesting that the science being done to find harmful effects of GMO's is the science that should be trusted, but it's not clear. I am not going to trust anybody who is making a paycheck to mess with something so physically intimate as my food, thank you very much. And, again, from past experience, I know that Tyson believes GMO's are perfectly safe and it's science that should not be questioned. Strike three, mon ami! It absolutely SHOULD be questioned because we put it into our bodies every day! "I now believe, as a much more experienced scientist, that GMO crops still run far ahead of our understanding of their risks." That's a quote from a scientist who worked with GMO's and doesn't share Tyson's ideas.

Tyson, bless his gullible heart, still seems like he believes in science. And good for him! But, like I said, he's been wrong before. This is science that demands PROOF, not science that treats theories like proof. Apples and oranges. Yesteryear we had the apples, today we get oranges. Respectable scientific journals have printed articles on how the definitions of "theory" and "proof" mean different things in today's science. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say, and I've read, in these same respectable scientific journals, how the Higgs Boson has finally been discovered! YAY! Maybe you might have read that too! It's been printed. But the God particle, as yet, retains its elusiveness. STILL not discovered. But, if the science bullies are to have their ways, we are to BELIEVE that it has been! Well they're, like, almost, sorta, totally positive it's like gotta be true. You know? Go back to painting your nails, I want to talk to a REAL scientist!

Notice in the video how in the beginning Tyson talks about how science is questioned by other scientists and then others. That's the way it used to be and SHOULD be! But then later in the video he says you don't have the option not to believe the equation of relativity. (I can't type the squared). Yes, yes I DO have that option. In fact greater minds than mine have opposed it. Like Nikola Tesla. One of its pillars, if I understand it correctly is that the speed of light is the fastest speed anything can go, yet other scientists have shown, (Tesla demonstrated TO Einstein), that things can move faster. He also said that when you have an established scientific emergent truth, it is true whether or not your believe in it. BECAUSE proper science is a process of constant questioning, emergent truths are being disproved all the time. That's what I call scientific progress. Accepting something because science says so is not.

Science is becoming a subject I don't really want to talk about with friends because stances are becoming too strong. People are willing to go to the mattresses over theoretical ideas that Ray Bradbury wouldn't even include in one of his books because they're so implausible. The Chuang Tsu might say, "Our words fly off like arrows, as though we knew what was right and wrong. We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. We are caught in the current and cannot return. We are tied up in knots like an old clogged drain. And yet our opinions have no permanence: like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away."

Which brings us to an intellectual area that IS malleable and seldom if ever has caused me the stress of scientific disagreements. Philosophy. More accurately, Eastern philosophy. Or even still more accurately, the kind I'm most fond of, Taoist philosophy. Not the modern, Taoism of magic and mysticism, but the more Lao Tzuian concrete aspects of spiritual obviousness that are hidden in distractions all around us. The thing that I may like best about this kind of thinking is that the harder you try, the farther, (or further), away you stray from the "Tao." The way. The WAY or at least the Way, is something evanescent and unattainable without proper instruction. And as Lao Tsu says at the beginning of the Tao Te Ching, "The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao." Which pretty much negates the entire book. One of the best beginnings I think EVER in a book. He's just conditioning the student to expect negation, contradiction, irony, and complete opposition from life. Only in that way will you understand it. But he cannot teach you, (which made me wonder the entire time I read his book, why Lao Tzu wrote it), only you can teach you. "If one is true to one's self and follows its teaching, who need be without a teacher?" Your "self" is an "it" according to Taoism. It can teach you. It is the ONLY teacher that can teach you! I have found in my many years of teaching that the student learns best who thinks he/she is teaching him/her self. Give them hints but not the answers. When they do the work and find the answers, on their OWN, they remember. Everything we need is inside us. In the Bible, Luke 17:21 says that "Heaven is within you."

This is reminiscent of the idea of the Good that Plato talked about ages and ages ago. He said it is at once a creative and sustaining cause of the universe, the condition of all knowledge, and the Summum Bonum or supreme object of man's desire. And here's the part I think is most pertinent to my point here today, he went on to say, "Being a metaphysical entity, it cannot be perceived by the eye or ear of sense, and is therefore ridiculed by the inferior man of little intelligence." This, in my humble opinion, is possibly best illustrated by some men of science. The bullies. They fancy themselves intelligent, but they can't see the noses on their faces. They are like any normal thinking human being and can perceive things in the universe that require a measure of faith. Indeed, they have tried to dress that faith up in scientific garment as best they can, but what it comes down to is, like Plato's cave full of people who glimpse the wondrous light and still return to utter darkness, like Lao Tsu, who in great bitterness of spirit called himself a dullard and a clown for not being able to lead a careless generation to the Tao, which he venerated as the most precious thing under heaven, they cannot abandon their cherished, comfortable, stable positions of darkness.

Great minds of science have written and spoken about the firm place the metaphysical MUST have in a proper understanding of science. Tesla called it the Aether. Charles Darwin till his death was convinced of a "creative force" beyond human understanding. Even Richard Dawkins, as I have blogged, gave God a greater chance than evolution. Agree or disagree with any of this, when you start thinking about the VERY beginning, you get into some metaphysical areas that science would LOVE to claim, but never will. This, along with the growing number of examples in which science proves to be decidedly unscientific, behove us to question scientists. Even well respected scientists like Neil Degrasse Tyson although we may find it hard to do so when a guy has such a cool name. Neil Degrasse Tyson. Hard to doubt. I'll give you that! And, as I said, despite his very occasional wrongness, I love the guy! I just wish he wouldn't be so adamant about being right. I wish he could catch some Tao and just relax and look at what's in front of him and think REALLY hard about it. Anywhere you are you can do this. This is the first test of the Tao. Just sit there. Where you are. For hours if you have to. It'll come to you. I can't tell you what. You have to figure that out on your own. But it's there.

Someday Peter Higgs might say, "You bunch of clods! How can any field be EVERYWHERE? And even if it can, how can something pass through it? I can't believe they gave me the Nobel Prize for this shit!" Someday Satyendra Bose might say, "A particle with no mass? Absurd! I only invented the Boson to beat the thousand other dudes who were trying to save scientific method and make the impossible sound plausible." We don't know. But it could happen. That's why we shouldn't just trust scientists because Neil Degrasse Tyson tells us to.

Here's a fellow who knows a bit about Taoism you might like to listen to better than me. Go right to the end. It's there, it's all there. The key to the big box too! It's there! Just look long enough... lol. Anyhoo, it's what we all need to do. Slow down. Stop the distractions for a short time. Just sit there. It may take longer for some, but it'll come to you if you give it a whirl. Thing is, most of us are kept busy by people who don't want us to discover what's there. But it's there! And when you come to that great epiphany of self and world knowledge at the same time, you realize what intellectual masturbation a lot of people are engaging in. It's enlightenment. It's worth a try, isn't it?