Lately I have been reviving my interest in astrology, and in the ‘paranormal’ in general, here irreverently called woowoo. Air quotes because what was magic yesterday may be explained by science tomorrow.
As always, discernment must be used. Sturgeon’s Law* must be invoked.
For those who don’t know it, Theodore Sturgeon was a sci-fi writer, part of the mid twentieth century wave.
Someone said to him: “Ninety percent of science fiction is cr#p”. Sturgeon’s reply: “Ninety percent of anything is cr#p.”
AND I share the concern of many thinkers about the decline of the rational tradition in Western societies. I am very fond of the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on open inquiry, the scientific method and individual rights.
Without it I fear people start burning witches and worshipping priests again.
How to reconcile this?
Can humans live as materialist fundamentalists, limited to one lifetime with reason alone? It looks like they just invent fresh ideologies, without the benefit of transcendence.
Doris Lessing’s classic novel “The Golden Notebook” describes a woman’s disenchantment with Marxism. The process has all the poignancy of a devout Christian losing faith.
Others, notably John McWhorter and Brendan O’Neill, have pointed out the religious elements of recent social justice movements.
They demand unquestioning support for a certain set of beliefs, especially the more ridiculous ones, lest one is considered a heretic. Question dogma at your peril. The peril in this case is social ostracism, but that can go as far as losing livelihood. All together now: men can get pregnant!
I heartily applaud the movement away from religious dogma, but I also believe that we need some recognition of, and connection with, wider realities.
The farthest reaches of science sound a lot like New Age gobbledygook.
Does anything even exist? Quantum stuff is totally beyond me.
Way back in 1974 I read a little book that made total sense.
In “The medium, the mystic and the physicist” Lawrence LeShan points out the many similarities between the extreme reaches of modern science and the description of reality told by mystics and shamans.
If Truth with a capital T exists, then sooner or later all paths that pursue it must converge.
Meanwhile we are Here and Now, in the third dimension, most of us making do with five senses.
It is one thing to admit that there are realities beyond what our senses show us. It is something else to live daily life in threedee based on what we learn in altered states of consciousness.
I have never had the patience to meditate. Perhaps I am groping towards the insight from this quote by Dõgen:
“Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.”
We are Here, Now, to Do Earth.
In this box of time and place the scientific method, with its basis on reason and insistence on evidence serves us well. Let’s please keep using it, while acknowledging that it cannot answer all questions.
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