Entitled To Your Opinion?

Just because no one has the answer does not mean it is ok to believe whatever you want.

Having no definitive answer has always been the case. As Buckminster Fuller put it, “there is an a priori mystery that precludes absolute understanding.” No human authority is infallible. No one has all the answers. Humans grope in the dark for an answer to settle on, hoping to rest the mind, but the truth evades us, always demanding a deeper level of understanding than we previously held. Every time we break down a concept into its component parts to comprehend them, we realize that those parts too can be broken down.

This is the struggle for all of us. Don’t give up and just believe whatever is convenient. Truth, however unattainable, is the great ideal that unites us all. Truth brings us together in pursuit of it, superseding our other instinctual goals of domination.

Science attempts to take a theory and test it against reality. If it is repeatable, then we can agree and build on that test. More theories, more tests, and we inch closer to understanding reality as it is. While some ideas are too big to test empirically at this point in time, that doesn’t mean we should disregard science and believe whatever feels good. That is actually damaging for society.

You see, we have an extended mind, sharing concepts of reality with each other, trusting other’s ideas in order to build a collective paradigm. No one of us has the capacity to understand everything humans have figured out, so we store it collectively across the species. Every generation, we hope, we are gaining more knowledge than we lose. That requires everyone’s active participation.

If we have people spreading false ideas as if they were true, large groups of the population can become deluded and fight against the best science of our day. A false idea can look just like a true one only it doesn’t have evidence and a warrant and a positive test to support it. False ideas can lead groups of people to do stupid things that endanger not only themselves but others as well. The less we are united in the pursuit of truth, the less confident people become in the concepts we are sharing, and the more likely we are to give up on truth altogether. Information overwhelm in the internet age, millions of self-publishing opinions on social media, poorly data-vetted opinion-based journalism, political spin and blatant lying by our leaders is enough to make us apathetic toward truth and settle for whatever is convenient to believe.

But we can’t give up. Our hi-tech world demands that we understand how to maintain it let alone progress beyond it to more sustainable methods of civilization. If we are always striving to understand the truth, whatever it may be, then we are practicing being conscious, practicing giving up old ideas and paradigms for newer ones, practicing critical thinking and investigation, applying the scientific method, always attempting to find the right place for the pieces in the grand puzzle. And when we are doing this, we are engaging the super-mind of the human species to solve the mysteries of the universe. All of this is for the love of truth, whatever it may be.