Poem in 6 min. of Less...Go!

In Lax, New Years Eve

Japanese girls in hooker-boots,
Hare Krishnas Gita-thumping in the lobby,
complements my stash then requests cash
Pasty white americans, bleached by LA smog,
and their children on cell-phones,
dreaming of runnig the suburban off the road
while talking with Brad Pitt.
Fake palms seem healthier than real ones,
Asian mini-skirts show healthy asian buns.
The celibate watches, waits,
ignores the ignoble fantasy.

In Defense of Not Knowing

Delivered to the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Missoula MT, Dec. 10, 2006.
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On Exactitude in Science

...In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of an Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers guild struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

Suarez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes,
Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658

--Jorge Luis Borges, from The Maker, reprinted in The Aleph and Other Stories, trans. A. Hurley.

In his book, Sense and Science, Alfred Korzybski coined the phrase, "the map is not the territory." What he meant by this was to remind us that those conceptions, paradigms, and belief systems with which we interpret the reality that surrounds us are maps of the territory of reality, not reality itself. Due to his firm belief in what, on the face of it, seems a rather self-evident assertion, Korzybski declared that the word "is", along with its various conjugations, should be expunged from our vocabulary, since the very word implies a confusion of map and territory, model and reality.

For instance, I might say, the shirt I am wearing is green." This statement would, however, be incorrect, according to Korzybski, because it fudges the distinction between map and territory. My shirt appears to me to be green because green light-waves are reflecting off of it, while red light is being absorbed, but to say my shirt "is" green is to confuse our perceptions, our maps of reality, with the reality itself.

Our tendency to gloss over the distinction between map and territory, implicit in the very language we use to think with, leads to no end of confusion, especially in the sciences, which we generally expect to explain to us what reality "really is". And this tendency may lead not only to confusion but to outright contempt or even hatred. This usually occurs when two people using different maps of reality attempt to communicate, one or both of them believeing their map to be reality. One refers to a landmark, clearly labeled on her map, the other consults his map and, finding no such landmark, blithely contradicts her. Name calling and fisticuffs ensue.

Many people, when confronted with statements that contradict their own map of reality, assume the propounder of these statements must be un-educated, deluded, or just plain crazy. It doesn't occur to them that maybe the other, spouting these absurd statements, is simply refering to a different map of reality, which may show different aspects of the landscape than their own, or bear different labels on major landmarks. This particular form of close-mindedness stems, of course, from mistaking one's own map of reality for reality itself, and is as prone to strike "open-minded" liberals as "closed-minded" conservatives.

If you're like me, this kind of thing can be accepted on an intellectual level rather easily, but to accept it practically, existentially, is somewhat more difficult. I may intellectually consent that my views of reality are just that: views, with no more "objective" claim to reality than anyone else's, but when I am actually confronted by another with a different viewpoint, I find it hard not to assume that they are just wrong. The reason for this difficulty, I think, stems from our linguistic conceptualization of Being.

Something either "is" or it "isn't," but never both, never neither. If my view "is" right, than a contradictory view must "be" wrong. It is difficult to concieve that two contradictory statements might both be true, or that a statement might be both true and false, the structure of our language all but prohibits it. If I admit that a contradictory view "is right", I must be assuming that my view "is wrong." It is this false dichotomy, created by our linguistic conceptualization of Being, that leads us to so violently reject the value of views or opinions that contradict our own, after all, who ever admitted they were wrong without a fight?

Fortunately, reality is much more nuanced than language, and the universe has no problem affirming contradictory truths. For instance, I can tell you that right now I am simultaneously sitting still, writing this, travelling at hundreds of miles an hour, and moving at near-light speed. All of these statements are true, depending on my point of reference, that is, depending on the relevent map of reality. Viewed from here in this room I am standing still, viewed from the moon I can be seen to move around the axis of the earth, viewed from the center of the solar system I can be seen to move also around the sun, viewed from the center of the milkyway, even greater addittional movement is percievable. No one of these perspectives is objectively right or wrong, and so none of the seemingly contradictory statements derived from them are objectively right or wrong. This type of relitivity applies to other types of truth as well: emotional, spiritual, psychological, philosophical and otherwise.

For instance, say a person is experiencing depression. A neurologist might claim that the cause is a chemical imbalance in the brain, a priest might say that the cause is demon-possession, while the psychoanalyst claims that the root cause is repressed childhood trauma. Which of these is truly the case? The answer depends, of course, on the map of reality to which one is refering. We might protest that "obviously" demon-possession can be ruled out wince we all know that demons don't exist. The problem with this is that excorcisms have been known to work. In the final analysis, our judgement of the truth of these competing claims must rest upon their efficacy. We might say that effective excorcisms are merely the placebo effect, but then we committ the sin of speculating beyond the evidence (not to mention that "placebo effect" is simply euphamism for our ignorance). The priest, we should add, committs the same sin when he claims that his effectous excorcism is proof of the existance of demons. All we have really is the phenomenological data: patient depressed, excorcism performed, patient no longer depressed. And the same goes for psychoanalysis and drug therapy.

The question is not which belief system is true, but rather which belief system is relevant. In our example of the depressed patient, the question is which belief system allows him to recover. Whichever one that is will provide him with the "correct", that is to say relevant, map of reality. To insist that an effective reality map "is wrong" because it does not agree with our own map, even if our own map has proven ineffective, is simply to display our own prejudice and intellectual bias. It is always possible that some excorcisms are effective because demons do exist, just in some way we haven't yet considered.

Our culture, for the last few hundred years, has been obsessed with scientific truth and with the material technology that the quest for that truth has engendered. Scientific knowledge and material technology, however, have proven quite ill-suited for application to many of the problems which we humans face. True, for certain problems, science and technology have been quite effective, but when I am confronted by another being with whom I must interact, all our super-string theories and international space stations help me not one jot. Unfortunately, in our fervor for ever greater heights of scientific learning and ever more grandiose feats of material technology, we have completely rejected the validity of other reality maps that could help us in just these situations.

If I am in the midst of a difficult relationship, which do you suppose would be the more helpful reality map: that God is Everything, God is Love, I am Love; or we're all headed for Oblivion, there is no higher consciousness than my own, Existance is meaningless? For obvious reasons, the first of these two belief systems is more liekly to lead to a positive outcome in a difficult relationship than the latter. Sadly, many a rational person will flatly deny the truth of the former belief system on the grounds that it conflicts with their intellectual beliefs.

And can we not say that our intellectual , scientific beliefs are "more true" than unverifiable religous beliefs? Well, for starters, only about 4% of all the "stuff" in the universe is percievable by humans, even with the aid of our most sensitive scientific insturments. Of the remainder, 23% is Dark Matter and 73% is Dark Energy. We know virtually nothing about Dark Matter and Energy, other than that they must exist; as to their nature and composition we can only speculate. As David Cline put it in Scientific American, "The motions of...visible matter reveal that it is merely flotsam on an unseen sea of unknown material. We know little about that sea. The terms we use to describe it, Dark Matter and Dark Energy, serve mainly as expressions for our ignorance."

Matters hardly improve when we move from the scientific sphere to the psychological sphere, where we actually spend our lives. Here we have not only to contend with our physical perceptual limitations but also our own ideosyncratic cognitive biases. These stem from our linguistic programming and from our socially constructed maps of reality. These maps tell us what is right and what is wrong, what is acceptable and what is not, what is common sense and what is sheer folly. It should go without saying that these maps are quite varied from culture to culture and from person to person, and none of them can be said to be "objectively" correct or incorrect, as none can be judged but with reference to some other subjective map. What is common sense from one perspective may be sheer folly from another perspective, but the reverse may also be true, and how can we choose beween competing versions of common sense, when as Albert Einstein put it, "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18"?

What I am trying to get at here is this: all of our "truths" are only truths from a particular angle, from a particular perspective on reality. There is no way to get around this. Perception and cognition both require that vast amounts of information be tuned-out or disregarded. As the sons of the Cartographers discovered in the opening story, a map that doesn't disregard much of the territory is utterly useless. If we could see radio waves and cellphone transmissions, not to mention infra-red and ultraviolet light, we would be functionally blind, our visual reality map would be worthless.

This means, of course, that all our perceptions and all our understandings are necessarily incomplete. We must keep in mind that there may, in fact, be truths that we simply cannot percieve using our accustomed maps of reality. And while a particular reality map may be useful in many situations, that doesn't mean we should cling blindly to it when it ceases to be effective.

Once we have accepted the validity of opposing viewpoints, the real fun can begin, because once we have stopped rejecting them as invalid we may ourselves step into them occasionally, to there glean some truth which otherwise may have escaped our notice. In this manner can our own existances be enriched, by drinking deeper of the infinite ocean of Meaning. Also, our ability to understand and communicate with others will be improved. We need no longer dismiss the fundamentalist Christian as a wacko, but can rather enter into his perspective for a time, and express ourselves using the language of his reality map. After all, it is the meaning that is important in communication, not the vocabulary used to convey it.

So this is my wish for the upcoming year, that we might all keep in mind that the realities which we experience are but a tiny fraction of true Reality, of the Universe as it is, and that we allow this knowledge to make us less judgemental of others whose realities may seem strange to us, and that we might even try to step into some of these other realities, to see what truths we might discover there.

An Epigram of Kabir

Kabir:

The hut was made of sticks
And all ten sides caught fire;

Pundits, pundits--

they burned inside

While the fools ran out

and saved their lives