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And if the
blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit.
(Matthew 15:14)
Author’s Introduction
Classical Boundary Conditions
On 11
September 2001 terrorists under the direction of Osama Bin Laden
hijacked and crashed four passenger jets, two into the World
Trade Center in New York, and one into the edifice of the
Pentagon, killing thousands, changing the New York skyline,
creating havoc, pandemonium, destruction, chaos and disorder of
unprecedented proportions. They killed innocent
civilians—fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts,
grandmothers, grandfathers, butchers, bakers, physicians,
accountants, janitors, firemen and peace officers. They caused
economic losses amounting to tens of trillions of dollars, stock
market closures and wholesale layoffs, not to mention the
compromise of national and civil liberties.
What was “911” all about? Religion? Politics? Ideology? In truth
what happened in New York on 9/11/2001 was nothing new. The
history of the world is full of violence, terrorism, war,
reduction, destruction, pogrom, genocide, holocaust and ethnic
cleansing. It has been said, for example, that from the dawn of
recorded history until today, a period of almost 6000 years, the
world has known only three days of uninterrupted peace! That is,
only three days in which man’s inhumanity to man was taking a
holiday on earth—only three days in which members of one faction
were not murdering members of another. Only three days of peace
in 6000 years? Something is wrong here. Something fundamental.
Something systemic. Something that goes to the core of human
nature itself. What might it be, and why can’t we recognize it
for what it is? Is there something wrong with us? If so, why are
we so blind that we can’t see it?
The contradictions that abound in the world and history would
seem to be telling us that there is indeed something wrong with
us. What is it? What devil is there in us that would drag us
down into disorder? We had better find out before we fill the
next millennium with violence and destruction. But this is where
we run into a paradox and a catch-22. In order to arrive
at the truth about our own irrational nature we would have to
engage in rational thought. But if we could engage in rational
thought, how could our nature be irrational? We are like blind
men trying to set up a double-blind experiment.
In his work A Brief History of Time the scientist Stephen
Hawking speculates about the nature of this catch-22 :
Now, if you believe that the universe is not arbitrary, but is
governed by definite laws, you ultimately have to combine the
partial theories into a complete unified theory that will
describe everything in the universe. But there is a fundamental
paradox in the search for such a complete unified theory. The
ideas about scientific theories outlined above assume we are
rational beings who are free to observe the universe as we want
and to draw logical deductions from what we see.... Yet if there
really is a complete unified theory, it would also presumably
determine our own actions. And so the theory itself would
determine the outcome of our search for it!
1
If an
individual is born with eyesight and then loses his sight, he is
then able to comprehend the meaning of “blindness.” But
individuals who are born blind are not capable of
comprehending the idea of “blindness” by themselves. Those who
are born blind are up against a similar catch-22 situation. To
recognize their blindness, they would need “sight,” in which
case they would not be blind. But being blind, they do not
possess the means of recognizing “blindness.” Many individuals
are born blind in this world. If they realize that they are
“blind,” it is only because they have been informed by family
members who can “see.” And it is no small miracle when they
recognize and acknowledge their “blindness,” having never known
such a thing as “sight” in the first place.
But what if all men were born blind? A troubling question. Who
would inform them of their blindness? Having never known such a
thing as “sight,” they would stumble about unaware of their
handicap. They would eventually learn to find their way about
with the use of canes, for instance. Their building tools would
be the tools of the blind. Their institutions would be the
institutions of the blind. They would develop their own systems
of sightless communications. All of their books and their
writings would be in braille. Some of them would periodically
fall into this and that “pit,” but they would get used to that.
This dilemma, “falling into a pit,” would provoke some
philosophical discussion among their wise and learned, but in
time they would blame the whole thing on “fate,” or “human
nature,” or something like that. After a while their entire
blind race would condition itself to the business of “falling
into a pit.” In the end they would merely shrug their shoulders
and say, “ah well, that’s life I guess! We will just have to
learn to live with it.”
Perhaps we should stop at this eleventh hour and ask if we are
suffering from some such “blindness.” Some deep intuition would
seem to be warning us that this may in fact be the case.
Certainly the Bible has been warning us about something similar
for thousands of years. And if the warnings of God were not
enough, there’s the evidence of history itself. The evidence is
all around us even today. In our own day we see that all men,
all cultures, all races and all nations desire peace and
prosperity. But alas there doesn’t seem to be any end to war and
poverty. Somewhere in the world children are starving to death.
Somewhere in the world the “shelling” continues and the death
toll keeps rising. Somewhere in the world an unsuspecting farmer
is stepping on an old landmine. Somewhere in the world human
beings are needlessly suffering. Somewhere in the world people
are dying violent deaths.
Our God-given conscience bears witness, for example, that
injustice, prejudice, hatred, racism and antisemitism are
irrational and injurious. But these demons continue to flourish
here and abroad. And the same may be said of the seven thousand
vices that have attached themselves, leech-like, to the human
condition. Deceit, iniquity, murder, larceny, graft, corruption,
perversion and obscenity have become fixtures of our existence,
or so it seems. Why does it have to be this way?
Science and technology have all but harnessed the forces of
nature to the service of man. Every technological ingredient
necessary for the arrival of global peace and prosperity is at
hand, but the harvest does not come! The vintage of true
civilization fails! In spite of every advance, every
improvement, every breakthrough in science and industry, we keep
sliding closer and closer to the abyss. We now know, for
example, that the entire human race can be sustained at the
highest standard of living on its daily quota of solar energy
alone. But alas nations continue to sink deeper and deeper in
the quagmire of pollution, congestion, waste and want. And
although deep down we know that our very survival depends on
earth’s vital resources, we find ourselves destroying them as
though we had no control over the situation.
What is the efficiency of our so-called “civilization”
presently? How much is being spent on the munitions of war and
destruction? How much is now wasted that would allow the highest
standard of living for every man, woman and child on earth?
Whence this monstrous contradiction between reality and hope?
Why does it have to be this way? Whence this veil of
tears? Why is there so much evil in the world? Why can’t we
replace it with good? Why should that be so difficult? What
exactly is the stumbling block?
The contradictions are all around us. The most powerful and
resourceful institutions on earth are those that underwrite
fear, debt, disease and pollution. There are now more people
employed by the cancer industry than actually dying from the
disease. And someone has calculated that nations have stockpiled
enough weapons of mass destruction to allocate fifteen tons of
TNT for the destruction of every man, woman and child living.
What does this say about our race? What manner of madness is
this that we have become accustomed to, accepting it with a wave
and a shrug?
Where is the caput nili? Where is the source and origin
of this deeply irrational component in human nature? And why
should it be so inclined towards everything that is
unproductive, ruinous, injurious and destructive? Why should it
defy every attempt at explanation? Are we ourselves? Do we
choose freely? Or are the choices and decisions being made for
us by some unknown principle or principality? Are we acting on
our own “free will?” Or are we under the influence of something
that remains hidden from us? Is there a rational, scientific
explanation for the root of depravity in human nature? Is there
a rational, scientific explanation for the pattern of failure
observed in the laboratory of human history?
Why do men continue to practice what they despise in others? And
what about man’s inhumanity to man? Do holocausts, atrocities,
genocides, pogroms, massacres and other acts of mayhem transpire
arbitrarily? Or is there some underlying imperative, order or
principle directing them? Do these destructive traits exist
arbitrarily? Or are they the outworkings of some underlying
principle, nature, property or orientation? Are we rational
beings? If we are, we would be behaving rationally. But is this
the case? No it is not. And what can we infer from this? We can
infer the existence of some contrary principle at work within
our material nature.
How are the contradictions in our nature to be explained? Do
these contradictions exist because
we are not yet “educated” enough? Would they go away if every
human being on earth had a college degree? Would they go away if
everyone had lots of money, a mansion, a swimming pool and two
cadillacs in the garage? What is the answer? Where does the
solution lie? In the prescriptions of secular humanism? In a
pretense of tolerance and consanguinity? In an Orwellian
paradigm of conformity and homogeneity? In a United Nations
inquisition to enforce uniformity? In the structural adjustment
programs of the IMF and World Bank? In privatization? In junk
commercialism and “market morality?” In so-called “rational
design?” Will the perfectly-designed city produce utopia on
earth? Will technological advances improve the morality of
mankind?
Are we to believe that there is no answer? Are we to believe
that the human gene is inherently defective? What then? Does the
answer lie in the science of genetic manipulation? In behavior
control? In “paradise pills?” In resignation and escape? In
virtual reality, neural implants and the seven thousand vices
that mankind is still innocent of?
Living in our modern era, we pride ourselves in our
civilization. We like to say that we are not like our barbaric
ancestors. Yet our own age is rife with barbarities and
blood-lettings that put the mayhem of our ancestors to shame. As
Will Rogers once said, “You can’t say civilization isn’t
advancing: in every war they kill you in a new way!” Where does
the problem lie? Does it have something to do with “religion?”
Does it have something to do with “politics?” Does it have
something to do with “money?” Does it have something to do with
“ideology?” Does it have something to do with “nationalism?”
Does it have something to do with “social conditioning?” The
philosophers of our age are not in agreement as to what the
problem might be. Their models of human nature reveal as great a
confusion of ideas and thoughts on the parts of their authors as
one can imagine.
What a fond hope it was that welled up in us when the Berlin
Wall came down, when communism began to collapse and Vaclav
Havel stood on the balcony in Prague’s Wenceslas Square to face
cheering crowds. We all thought that those happy events would
herald a new age of peace and democracy. How wrong we were! Even
before the echoes of the cheering crowds could die down, seven
thousand repressed demons came out of their closets to demand a
ransom in wholesale new bloodletting. And as the Bosnian demon
was massacring innocent men, women and children, we stood in
silence, dumfounded, stunned and paralyzed by the deficit of
rational explanation. And even as the scenario repeated itself
in Rwanda, we did nothing but throw up our hands and make the
old excuse—“Ah well, that’s human nature for you!”
Let us pause and take inventory of our own record. Let us
consider something written by the distinguished British
journalist Michael Ignatieff in his book entitled Blood and
Belonging. Ignatieff went rummaging through the burned down
rubble of the former Yugoslavia, trying to find some sort of
rational explanation for all the destruction and killings going
on over there. Here are Ignatieff’s words in regards to the city
of Vukovar, for example, reduced to a heap of ruins by the Serb
militia:
Some quite uncontrolled adolescent lust was at work here. The
tank and artillery commanders could not have seen what they were
hitting. It was all abstract and as satisfying as playing
machines in a video arcade. 2
Ignatieff tried to find some sort of rational explanation for
all the mayhem and disorder. After looking at the enigma from
every possible angle, after exploring all of the issues of
“religion,” “past history,” “bad blood,” “an eye for an eye,”
“nationalist delusion,” etc., after rummaging through all the
debris, ruin and destruction, after visiting all the mass
graves, he writes the following:
There are puzzles which no theory of nationalism, no theory of
narcissism of minor difference, can resolve. After you have been
to the wastelands of the new world order, particularly to those
fields of graves marked with numberless wooden crosses, you feel
stunned into silence by a deficit of moral explanation.
3
How
often have we seen this same spirit of resignation? Great
philosophers, poets, writers and thinkers agonize over the human
condition, only to run into the same brick wall and resign
themselves to despair. This element of despair can be found in
the lamentations of all the great authors of mankind from Homer
to Shakespeare, from Omar Khayyam to Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Even
the eminent William Faulkner, having agonized over the nature of
man, seems to be telling us that we will never know the answer
to the human condition.
With all of their pretensions of mind and power the politicians
of the world don’t seem to know the answer either. They too
grapple with the same ineffable “blindness.” They may propose
this and that “solution,” and some may even succeed in producing
spasms of social reform. But the spasm is all too soon replaced
by the familiar regression into disorder.
CLASSICAL BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
The
human race seems to be up against some sort of classical
boundary condition. Perhaps we can define the
condition as follows:
You can’t fix something that’s broken on the basis of the same
set of assumptions that broke it in the first place—you will
just bounce off the same walls and end up right back where you
started.
What
exactly are the boundary conditions of human failure and
disorder? What are the fundamental assumptions that need to be
changed? Whatever they may be, we need to discover and overcome
them soon. It is now very late and “business as usual” won’t cut
it any more. It is time for another tectonic shift. The old
model of human nature is now a bankrupt enterprise. Any
continuance of the old model would spell ruination. The
conventions of the past are inadequate for the present. Whatever
is wrong with us must be discovered and fixed, otherwise we will
continue to bounce off the same walls with devastating
results—more war, more terrorism, more biological warfare, more
destruction, more hate, more genocide, more holocausts, more
ethnic cleansing, more reduction, more degradation, more global
warming, more disease, more pollution, more congestion, more
waste, more perversion, more obscenity, more banality, more
crime, more imbecility, more poverty, more famine, more
starvation and more mass misery with no end in sight.
The ignorance of man may have been sufferable in ages past when
the world was such a big place and the partitions of time and
distance working insulators. But the world has grown small
suddenly. The differentiations that were yesterday insulated
from one another are now rubbing raw against some imperative
that does not allow peaceful coexistence or harmonious
multiplicity. If the nature of this imperative is not
understood, and compensated for, we can only guess at the field
day that the devil is going to have among the dissimilar
factions of the human race. The lateness of the hour and the
unprecedented distress of mankind now render the former
ignorance deadly. It is time to lay the axe to the root. It is
time for another tectonic shift in the collective consciousness
of Man. It is time for a Great Awakening, a Sea Change. It is
time for an Exegesis and a Revelation that can relate God, Man
and Cosmos in a rational and holistic formula.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TRUTH
Truth
is the guiding principle of all inquiries. God who desires man
to be truthful, has endowed him with the capacity to
mirror reality with the use of words. Truth is an honest
representation of reality by means of words, allowing mankind to
perceive entities and relationships as they really are. This
honest reproduction of reality, by means of words, is the
foundation on which all inquiry and justice depend. For only
according to a truthful description of things can we understand
their relationships with one another, and behave justly. Truth
must be consistent with reality—a faithful description of
reality by means of words. If this description is carelessly or
deliberately falsified, the fabric of “right” and “justice” will
be pulled out from under the feet of mankind. For then, given a
false reality, human behavior will be falsified as well, along
with the whole gamut of human existence.
God has knitted together the community of man with the golden
threads of truth. Truth is the fabric on which religion,
philosophy, science, law, government and justice, depend.
Distort the truth and you will tear the very fabric of human
existence. Truth is the basis of all good on earth, falsehood
the basis of all evil. He who misuses words to distort reality
communicates a falsehood to his brother, who may then stumble
and fall. He who denies truth to his brother violates the most
basic of human trusts, calling down a curse on his brother and
all mankind. Every violation of truth is not only a curse on the
violator, but an attack on the health of society. The liar
steals the most precious thing on earth—truth. The liar is more
dangerous than a thief. The thief steals only the material means
of life, whereas the liar and the propagandist steal from life
itself. Just as God links the supreme good of all men to truth,
so also He links the greatest of all evils to lies, even calling
the devil “the father of lies” (John 8:44).
The liar and the propagandist extinguish the Divine spark, not
only in themselves, but also in those who are gullible enough to
believe the falsehood. Deceit and propaganda are contagious. One
falsehood leads to another, and another, and before you know it
truth has fallen in the public forum and society is no longer
capable of discriminating between reality and delusion. This is
why we are made to swear that we will tell the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth in a court of law.
In an irrational age in which society has rejected all absolutes
and jettisoned all frames of reference, in a postmodern age in
which mankind has rendered all moralities “relative” and all
truths “subjective,” we should begin our inquiry by providing
some guidelines about the absolute nature of truth:
Truth
is non-contradiction.
Truth is consistent with reality.
Truth is the essence of successful prediction.
Throughout
history great thinkers have looked for some underlying truth
that will enable them to make sense of it all. The milestones in
this process of rationalization have produced tectonic shifts in
the collective consciousness of Man, allowing successive
abrogations of the institutions that were built on wrong
knowledge. Every tectonic shift in Man’s understanding of the
universe has shed one more layer of error from his mind and one
more demon from his soul. Whereas each shift has brought the
mind of Man a little closer to an understanding of the nature of
Reality, it is now time to press for the goal itself.
Half-measures won’t do any more. Our goal in this publication
will not be to perform superficial patchwork on existing models
of human nature. What we have in mind is a new model that is
fully grounded in Reality. One with universal truth-anchoring.
Find out more on the author's
website.
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