Where do I begin?

Today’s words come tough to write. It’s funny how the more one seems to have to think about, the less energy we seem to have to make progress on any one particular idea. Perhaps it’s a problem of the weather, more likely the impending solstice has my mind once again turning to just the right way to proceed through these warmest months of the year. The days are as long as they will ever be, the weather as warm as it is going to get, clothes are at a minimum. Even staying temperate is a greater chore – the heat simply comes on in the winter, and it’s cost is included in my rent. The cool, which I pay for of course, is a much harder switch to flip. People have lived in Minnesota since at least 1858 (when it became the 32nd state); most of them simply lived with the weather, so why can’t I?

Enough about Minnesota – it, the ideas about the weather, it’s all just a distraction for a mind well versed in procrastination. A friend asked me recently how I would respond if I learned that everything that I thought was true were not. Aside from the obvious difficulties of “everything I know is wrong”, it brought back into mind a popular question that I’ve asked myself over and over throughout the years, “where do I get off?”

I won’t get stuck on the origin of that phrase (and perhaps I will advance some theories at a later date) but the idea is an important one, and intimately related to the idea of reassuring ourselves that the things we know are true are actually so. Most conflict that we see is based in one party taking an offense to another’s actions, whatever that may be. Another major factor is expectations that are or are not met, and another wedge involves having the facts, the about a particular situation. When I ask myself where I get off (or have the nerve, or the gall or the stones) it implies being reminded of just what basis I have for taking issue with something at all.

And when would that basis be fulfilled? At what time would I be right, to know exactly where I get off? I think I would rightly have to say that I had the “truth of the matter,” but what does that mean? I think it would have to imply being sure you had the relevant facts about the world and the intentions of the animal, vegetable or mineral involved and a good justification for believing these facts are true.

Why be justified? Because in a very real way we have absolutely no reason to be sure that what we see, perceive or even think about has any relation to the world out there. We can with even less certainty discern the internal landscape of some mind not out own. We would think that such an ancient problem that has been bothering thinkers since thoughts began to be thought would have some sort of advance in the idea. The trouble is, we ultimately run into one of two problems when we ultimately try to point to “this is true, beyond all doubt” – on the one hand we have only ideas to justify our ideas, and on the other hand we try to point to something that ultimately does not exist.

Why does it have to be one or the other? In practice, we simply cannot point “out there” to the truth of anything other than perhaps “rock” “tree” or “bean.” Argue if you wish but you will be hard pressed to be taken seriously when you say “look, there is the answer to reproductive rights” or “see those two? That’s love.” Once we conceptualize something we can no longer refer to it as a reason for truth. Just as a baby isn’t a miracle unless you believe it is or a coup was necessary depending on which government you back we ultimately always refer to an idea, a more deeply held belief and conviction.

And I can only look toward my own ideas, as if my ultimate reason is because someone else informed me I am falling more deeply into risk – in addition to asking where I get off I now have to ask where she/he does. I’ll steal an idea from sex ed here – was anyone besides me taught that if we sleeping with someone we’re also sleeping with every person our partner had been with and every partner’s partner and partner’s paernter’s partner and so on. As opposed to an STD however you could end up with something worse - misguided ideas that have no reflection our own experience and yet are pressed upon others without regard to the damage it may cause. I have a hard enough time dealing with my own mess, but who knows what I may have gotten from the “knowledge of others” – I hope there’s a shot for that, or at least some penicillin.

So where do I get off? Nowhere, I can’t really anymore. For as I trace the chains of the “true” beliefs I become less and less assured that I could even pretend to be right. Even the beliefs that seem most obvious still receive an unpleasantly skeptical treatment: I believe that the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated; I believe this because when I read Ghandi’s quote it simply rang true. True to me, yes, and so obvious it seems almost apodictic, but consider the populations that might disagree. Even as I look into more of Ghandi’s writings I find:

“Some of Gandhi's early South African articles are controversial. On 7 March 1908, Gandhi wrote in the Indian Opinion of his time in a South African prison: "Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized - the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals."[14] Writing on the subject of immigration in 1903, Gandhi commented: "We believe as much in the purity of race as we think they do... We believe also that the white race in South Africa should be the predominating race." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi).

I guess if you substitute animals for either the Kaffirs or the South African non white population you receive a cute quote about treating the inferior race well as a mark of progress. Not as flawless a source any more. Of course no one is perfect, but from so universally heralded a man of progress it’s fairly base words.

I am no way no way saying that his later work isn’t to be heralded and his words aren’t true, but where does he get off? I’ll take from his time here the passionate work he did for Independence, and I have no clue where to think that I will find truth that is not ultimately somewhat specious (even the Buddha left his wife and child in the night. Sure he mourned for them and left with the goal of Enlightenment, but it’s a dick move nonetheless). Nor am I suggesting that need run around screaming “Nothing is true in this world anymore!” and become crippled by the decision of whether to drink water or coffee, but it’s a least a call look at the origin of our beliefs. I would guess that most us refer our ideas to other ideas when we need to know its true. The trouble with that notion is that there is no answer to the question of “what if everything I thought was true was false?” – since I had only ideas to refer to, there is a very good chance that I hold something to be true that is not correct and I should not have taken for granted.

I wonder too just how far our beliefs extend into out other thoughts, just what the true reach may be. Could a fractured view of parental love get as far as our interactions with our coworkers? If we believe that hell is an option, can it prevent us from having a healthy sex life? Is the Golden Rule not enough to make a whole person? Or is the belief in something to be false as good as knowing something is true? It was after all Ghandi’s realization of the potential of the Indian nation as a self ruling party (this treatment is false, doesn’t represent what the world should be) or Siddhartha’s realization that attachment is the false knowledge that leads directly to all suffering. What role did those negative truths play in their larger web of beliefs?
And we can’t yet be sure, and it is no doubt confusing just how you find that dictates your life that ultimately falls under “because that’s how I was taught”. Conventional wisdom is only conventional because it’s old and the status quo, and especially with the drastic changes in the way the markets, society and the environment are moving and it becomes quite clear that this year’s warm weather cleaning should include the paradigms that we’ve always taken for granted. A decision is made when we’re tired of thinking about it, but little thought is further taken to make sure that decision goes into the right place in our ontology. My apologies my colleague, but I’m not sure my answer is quite interesting anymore. All I can say is that it doesn’t feel too bad, thanks to the growing suspicion that it may just have already happened, perhaps even has always been and will always continue to be. The question then, is how best to start from the place that best assures it doesn’t happen again?