“What shall I do with the most difficult questions? Consider them the gateway to the path of life.”
“Seek not the paths of the ancients; seek that which the ancients sought.”
If we are all to perish then what is the point of anything? If there are 1000s of ideologies, religions and philosophies all doing their best to tell us the “truth” on how we should live then which of these schools is the right one?
In order to map the world in a way that makes the most logical sense to us, we all tend to allow ourselves to categorise our ideas into a singular bubble/school of thought. In order to prevent our bubble from being burst, we consume information that supports its existence through the use of confirmation bias in an attempt to reinforce our bubble from the intrusive ideologies, arguments, and “evidence” of others and their personal bubbles. This conflict of right and wrong between groups often causes us to assign dogmatic beliefs that our own bubble of truth is the only correct one and no matter what other evidence or argument is presented we will always reject it to ensure that our bubble will not burst. Due to needing our bubble to be unburstable, we surround ourselves with people and groups with identical bubbles in order to project our belief onto the world and suggest that anyone that opposes us is either wrong or is a lost soul for thinking differently.
Even if we share a common ideal with a group, our primary individual belief systems are completely unique due to our direct histories and personal experiences which helped us to understand the events going on around us and our relationship to them in order to map the world. We do this because we need to find some form of justification for both the good and bad in the world and understand that which we cannot control. Sometimes this is often very overwhelming as we understand on an individual scale that we are just a pebble on a beach surrounded by billions more. This can cause us a sense of existential nihilism when we perceive ourselves as meaningless in the grand scheme of the world and the universe and that is why we seek out groups of shared ideals.
Evolution and modern research have shown that joining a group is a necessary function in maintaining positive mental health, the duration of our life, and keeping us safe in ways we cannot be alone. The primary function of being part of a group is that it provides the individual with meaning. Being part of a group allows us to feel that we have an impact on both others and the world that surrounds the group. There is an unconscious understanding that the group will protect and provide for its members even if they disagree on menial subjects. This is often just an interrelational game of understanding the competency of those within the group to understand who should be responsible for what roles are required for the maintenance of the group itself.
Early in life we join and create groups on the grounds of what is available to us within our environment by immediate exposure. We then select the best group that meets our necessary needs of survival and shared ideals. When we get older and we become free to choose the pillars that make our lives, we look to join groups that subscribe to the same larger ideals that justify the means of existence. Some of us don’t consciously choose any group or are herded into consuming and conforming to what is the ideal made up by the masses. Therefore no matter which group we belong to we all look to reinforce the necessary existence of the group and therefore the necessary existence of the individual.
Our initial individual belief systems of understanding the world are produced as a product of our environment and the structures we use to map an understanding of what surrounds us are built as defence mechanisms that justify our past and allow us to cope with the present. In this way, we are all imperfect souls with our own histories and bias’ of the world and so even when we join a group we are now looking for a way to put our understanding of the universe and life into a box that fits within the group ideal. We create this box/bubble as a way to comprehend the truth of the world and our existence to protect us from the pain of what we can't understand and that exists outside of our control.
No matter what group we belong to each one has its own answer to these existential questions and some tell us to not even ask them at all and believe that we should just listen to someone who knows better than us and who has our best interest at heart and to just follow what everyone else is doing. The reason many people don't just upfront reject this is that no single person is smart enough to answer the questions that trouble humanity and to try often causes people to disregard the safety and meaning provided by the group and go on as an individual.
Furthermore, it is much safer and more understood to join a group which have answers which have been shared over centuries that bear the weight of the existential burden of figuring out an existence alone. However, all belief systems are founded on providing both the group and then the individual with answers for what lies outside of our comprehension. The belief of many reinforces the meaning of one, and this is why we try to bring more people into our bubble as it increases in size and if more people believe one ideal it is harder to burst our construction of truth. But as what comes by nature with having a group it invites competition which also invites conflict. Every bubble that exists currently stands in opposition to another and in human nature we are driven more often to winning or being right than we are to peace and understanding. Therefore in a world of many bubbles all with their own justification of truth, individual meaning, and existence it breeds conflict.
This is often the start of conflict due to our individuality and understanding of the world being interconnected like a rope that we attempt to pull as taught as possible so it doesn't unthread, and a lot of conflicts could be eased if we had a lighter grasp and understood that in most of these cases if we were to have lived in the shoes of someone else we may be able to completely understand their viewpoint and why they subscribe to what they do.
“Since ideas are grounded in experience, which varies from person to person, differences of opinion arise not because one mind is equipped to grasp the truth and another is defective, but because the two minds have had different histories.”
For this reason, it becomes clear that if everyone's experiences hold equal validity to the development of their individual belief systems then we cannot overtly say they are wrong for we may be in the exact same place as them if we lived their lives. For this reason, it can also be understood that someone else may possess knowledge that we do not due to their different experiences. For this reason, we must allow ourselves to be open to what else we might learn and understand that a dogmatic belief in one box prevents us from growing and expanding and even deepening our own faith and beliefs.
In the modern world, we have all been put into defensive positions where instead of having open conversations we defend and hold onto our beliefs so much that we actually push others away. This has led many to reject such things as religion purely on the basis that people want the independent autonomy to come to their own decisions on truth and not because someone is telling them they are wrong and they know better. This has led to a generation where many people are falling prey to narcissism because the concept of any identification with any faith has become so stigmatised due to how it is presented to people who don't subscribe that even though it could help give answers and guidance the approach causes the very people they want to save to reject it.
By being so defensive and certain that our truth is the correct one we are in effect causing a universal conflict where so many people are saying their toy/belief is the best one compared to everyone else’s. This makes it so very hard for people to want to listen and so rare for people pushing to allow themselves to be open up to see the value of other people's toys. By straight up rejecting other people's toys as holding any value or truth we actually reduce our ability to play with and understand others. This then prevents us from discovering a more complete understanding of the value our own toy has and provides if we have never experienced playing with others. Furthermore, in shared and open play we may find that we prefer another toy entirely once we have spent as much time with it as our first and favourite one, and we may also find we enjoy playing with our favourite toy a lot more when we use it alongside others.
Using the example of toys helps to express why I believe that being open to understanding other beliefs and their practices can actually assist us in actualising a life more in line with the truth that makes up our primary belief system. One of the main reasons we do our best to categorically claim that no other thought or belief system has any validity is that if we think that there is the possibility that another structure of belief holds any potential of truth then it removes a brick our damn that contains the water that represents our conception of truth. And we fear if a single brick is removed then our entire dam will collapse and our whole conception of truth and understanding of the world will explode in a flood leaving us in nihilism a belief that there is no singular truth.
A Modern Approach to Identifying Truth
I personally believe that by rejecting the idea that another person, belief, or religion has bricks which we could add to reinforce our own wall to increase the depth and volume of truth behind it we prevent the true potential of what we could understand as truth, meaning, and purpose in life. For example, a Christian may reject meditation because it comes from a different school of thought. However, studies have shown that meditation actually grows your frontal lobe which is the part of the brain that is responsible for making decisions. Therefore meditating is scientifically proven to make you “smarter” by improving your capacity to make difficult decisions more easily. In this exact example for a Christian to reject the idea that mediation could help us all denies the possibility of allowing ourselves to develop and grow into more intelligent individuals.
The belief and understanding of the benefits of mediation have always been at the core of Buddhist teachings but it wasn't until studies in neuroscience that allowed for the benefits to become a well-researched and conclusive scientific fact. Therefore this shows exactly how individuals from one school of belief (Christianity) can improve their lives through the practice and teachings from another school of belief (Buhhdism) that was proven by a tertiary school of belief (Scientology).
From this simple example, I would strongly argue that we all need to become more conscious that every school of belief and their subsequent teachings and practices that can help us to grow our own bubble/belief system and reinforce a stronger dam with an increased depth of truth. In doing this we are not saying that our own belief system is any less “true” or “valid” and I would instead argue that this example alone expresses that any and all schools of belief hold some level of truth/value that we could learn from. As proved by the fact that there as many successful societies across the world and across centuries that have been influenced and founded on different belief systems from our own.
I would further argue that to actually begin reinforcing our own schools of belief we need to embrace this process as a modern way of looking into understanding and accepting some of the viewpoints and practices of other schools that have existed for decades and in some cases centuries. This would then allow us to stop dogmatically using a single teaching of the past that we have chosen to only subscribe to as if it falls prey to the potential of being disproved or fallible if at some point in the future one school of thought is proven as complete truth.
To therefore prevent our bubble of truth from completely bursting, and our damn to come crashing down, ultimately throwing us headfirst into nihilism (from such this as the developments of modern science and the decay of time) we need to build/reinforce our damns by finding/understanding the teachings and practice of other schools that surround us. I would argue that in doing this we are able to build bigger, stronger, dam walls with a mix of different bricks that allow us to contain an increased depth of the truth in our primary belief system and if the bricks of our primary belief system were to come crashing down at least we would be left with some bricks to rebuild with.
Our world has never been so open and multicultured where people, religions, teachings, practices, and places of worship have never been more accessible through being more widespread across the entire world and its immediate presence around us. Now more than ever we have the opportunity to understand and learn more about ourselves, our belief systems, and the world around us through what we never had access to before. To therefore still only dogmatically believe in a singular belief system that is a product of the part of the world you were born and to reject the value that other people and schools have to share is the equivalent of never leaving your home town and claiming that the world is the exact same in japan.
The reason I believe in this modern perspective of building and embracing the knowledge and people around us is that the nature of time would dictate that any single school or text cannot still be absolutely correct and infallible with the complete absence of bias. There are so many factors at work where each generation we move further from the inherent truth due to the decay of time and the development of modern science and to dogmatically claim it is the truth is also to live and identify with the past. To ensure that our beliefs continue we must allow them to develop alongside the modern world otherwise, they will be left behind due to the decay of time that acts on all things.
The Decay of Time
The accuracy of “true” events can never be as accurate as pure and direct eyewitness accounts and even in reading these accounts, they are prone to reader interpretation bias. Additionally, every generation brings and innovates new modern developments and alterations in science, language, and perspective meaning that changes how we perceive, understand, and process what we read. Therefore as our modern perceptions change we are not speaking, reading and comprehending the same texts in the same way as a single generation before us. Plus, the interpretation of truth is further limited by psychological developments in how humans record history, events and even personal eyewitness accounts due to the development in the expression of conscious thought and how it is/was recorded.
Additionally, most schools of thought can seemingly be traced back to previous conceptions of reality/truth. Through reading the texts of scholars that came before some schools partial similarities appear that could be interpreted as possible influences on the construction and formulation of what were once new schools of thought and religion. This can be best represented by how if we trace the current books that are being published in the West back to their source of influence we reach the bible due to our society being influenced by its teachings over the past 2000 years.
If you look at the most common tropes of modern-day self-help books they discuss how we should be respectful and kind to others. We should know that we are not perfect but we can live better lives by first improving our relationship with ourselves. How things work out for us if we live intentionally and continually put positive energy into the world. Many self-help books are just extensions and diluted shades of Christian teachings which on some internal level we all hold as being necessary and true to living a good life even if we identify as an atheist and not strict Christians.
Furthermore, if we look at the works of Aristotle and his theory of the prime mover that is a transcendent being that puts all of the universes into action and watches from afar as it all unfolds to his plan. Or if we look at Plato's world of the forms how there is a reality in which there is a perfect representation of everything that exists in this world but in another. Both of these were created independently from Christianity but appear to be along the same lines of suggesting some concept of God and heaven.
This expresses how the idea of there being a singular truth that justifies existence has always seemed prevalent and necessary but it has also been continually developed and altered by new events, teachers, and scholars. This fact shows that for as long as we can remember humans have always needed an understanding of the universe which has always been explained by the level of scientific understanding of that time. We have therefore always been required by myth and science to reinforce the belief that something exists in motion outside of our comprehension that indicates the formulation of some inherent truth and meaning to the universe and our existence is more than mere chance.
If we look at each school individually or trace each school back through each of its thinkers and previous influences, and with also taking into account all the contradictions between each school every pillar of “truth” comes from the same human need to define the answers for the meaning of life. Therefore, for whatever motives good or bad (most often good) and they each try to best represent the most ideal way we can live as a peaceful society with both group and individual purpose and meaning that helps us to strive away from nihilism, anarchy, and chaos.
However, with how humans have tried so hard to articulate truth into independent singular infallible bubbles of truth expresses to me that this human condition for meaning and purpose is larger than our independent and separate bubbles of beliefs. The fact that all of these schools are trying to formulate one singular universal truth and each has produced a functioning society on different values and teachings indicates the relevance that all these schools hold some essence of an ultimate truth that exists beyond the bubbles of singular thought. It seems that if there were a way to combine all our bubbles then it would create a much larger bubble of truth that creates a larger understanding of the ultimate truth and meaning that interconnects them all as one.
Therefore, instead of throwing stones at the other bubbles and dogmatically believing that our bubble is the only correct truth we should instead objectively try and join our bubbles together by unravelling the similarities and differences. Perhaps then we could finally come to creating one singular truth that explains our understanding of the magic of the universe and the universal truth of our existence within it.
This has always been the intention of religions and philosophy. It was to create one universal truth but in the modern day with so much accessibility to other structures that have also worked rather than keep trying to disprove them why not bring them together and create one singular truth that encompasses all schools and all people?
Surely if we define this singular truth, we can create the substructures of a new school of truth that combines all the similarities and analyses all the contradictions and differences then we can create a singular truth that connects all humans, societies, and beliefs resulting in not only in universal peace but we can also have both individual and a worldly shared universal meaning/purpose in life that justifies existence but also it’s inevitable end…
The Issues of a Nobel Ideal
Although it sounds like a noble ideal there are also so many huge issues and even eternal consequences that come with such a simple proposition:
Firstly if a single truth already exists, then by creating an encompassing new and modern truth it would take/tempt us further away from the existing and only truth? In some schools, this would cause complete damnation whereas in rejecting some of the current schools you damn yourself to eternity in oblivion, pain, and/or suffering.
Secondly, it is very possible that we are already way too far gone and entrenched in our current schools of thought. Therefore with them already being so deeply engrained in our histories and cultures, it is impossible to move away from their influence and create something absent of bias. Due to where we are geographically born, who we are born to, and our entire proceeding life experiences makes it difficult for an objective group of people with the necessary categorical difference to come to any objective agreement over whatever is created next would be virtually impossible.
Thirdly, tearing down or even building new institutions, and expressing their virtue/truth, has always been historically known to lead to disaster. What we currently have right now exists on a tightrope and has survived centuries due to its prominence in the hearts and minds of billions. Haven’t we already seen enough bloodshed and death over the noble aim of sharing the truth of our current religious doctrines and philosophical ideologies? Therefore does creating a new school of universal truth invite the possibility of human annihilation before it invites peace? As often the noblest and purest of intentions can be seen to become the darkest of horrors in history purely on a matter of perspective of what is right and true.
Fifthly, when this new school is created and then built upon and left to the interpretation of future generations, would it then by the nature of time become more prominent and find its natural course to prominence should it hold any validity to the truth we may later view as necessary?
Conclusion
To conclude, many myths, religions, and philosophies were created as an antidote to nihilism that has existed at every moment in history. These myths are still needed today as pure Scientology drives to give answers to all things which may also cause absolute nihilism possibly bringing down society as a whole. Therefore in the era where there has been a rise in nihilism and a rejection of (and a decreased education in) religions and philosophical thought does this show that these previous truths have become relics of a past ideal of living? Does this then provide a valid incentive to redefine meaning in this modern era using the gift of retrospect, research, and knowledge? Would this tip the scales towards our own eternal damnation due to moving away from past truths only in the attempt of trying to redefine an encompassing definition of meaning to give more lost people the meaning they currently lack? Or do we need more people who are educated across all schools of thought, without identification to any to be absent of bias, to guide the lost souls towards one of the existing schools of truth that would provide them with the most authentic sense of meaning according to their own internal compass? For if a shoe that fits one person often pinches another, causes me to question if it would be better to move away from trying to be right and to instead work together as shepherds to bring meaning to more people?
However, this whole endeavour raises the primary question:
Does the pursuit of providing more people with the tools and guidance to identify meaning from past and new schools of truth and meaning balance the scales of the potential eternal judgment if the pursuit was taken in order to provide those with no answers a justification for their current existence when they already rejected the current definitions of meaning and won't ever come to accept them due to the stigma that surrounds them due to them being insufficient to their individual existence and needs.
If we are already damned in the eyes of some is the goal of living with meaning in life worth more than having none at all?
Commentaires