I learned of this quote from a friend on facebook, who felt that this was somewhat profound. Perhaps it is. I think that many that will see this quote won’t think about it. They’ll give some superficial ascent to its apparent message simply because it comes from Buddha or because it doesn’t come from a dominant western philosophy. They’ll it quote because they think it demonstrates to others that they are intelligent and urbane.
What does it mean though?
What does it mean to believe only those things that we are able to reason through on our own and understand that it agrees with our own common sense?
Mirriam-Webster dictionary defines reason as “the power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking especially in orderly rational ways.” We must be able to comprehend fully anything which we are to believe. Put another way there is no room for faith. Now I exercise faith in many things. For instance, I am exercising faith in the chair I’m sitting on. How? Well I can’t explain how it is able to hold me up despite being made up of atoms which are mostly empty space. I can’t explain it, but I still sit in the chair. I am therefore exercising faith.
The second thing we must test any potential truth or fact against is our common sense. In my experience common sense is relative. Many claim to have it, but it seems that few exercise it. What seems like common sense to me may not be for many others. For instance, I think its common sense that one should not live beyond their means, and they shouldn’t borrow more than they can pay back in a reasonable frame of time; yet there millions of people in the West that do live beyond their means and borrow far more than they can reasonably expect to pay back in any time frame. In fact many nations in the West act in this same manner.
So either, common sense is relative to the individual and therefore not an absolute in terms of determining truth, or humans aren’t rational. Of course if we aren’t rational how do we properly utilize reason which relies on our rationality?
Where I am I going with all of this?
I think that if we are honest with ourselves we will acknowledge that people are lazy in many different ways and to varying degrees. One of the way in which people are lazy is intellectually, people tend not to think critically. If they come to believe in something, they will tend to only listen to, read, and engage in things that reinforce that belief. They will avoid those things that challenge their beliefs.
People want to feel safe and content. Part of this is comes from the removal of doubt which can lead to worry. So by not seeking challenges to our life’s philosophical underpinnings we are seeking internal peace and contentment.
An example of this can be seen in American news viewership where it would be unsurprising to find out that the predominant political stance held by viewers of Fox News is “right wing” whereas the predominant political stance held by viewers of MSNBC is “left wing.” Both of these networks are known for their politically slanted news coverage targeted at like minded individuals. They don’t present such slanted coverage as a means of opening a dialogue or public discourse, but rather as a means of making money by tapping into an already segmented audience defined by their political leanings.
Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society commented on this reality in relation to the internet at the 2010 TED Global Conference. Despite the internet’s ability to open the world up for the individual this isn’t what is happening. Rather, people’s use of the internet might actually be narrowing their world-view rather than expanding it.
Mr. Zuckerman argued that despite the internet’s ability to provide news and information from global sources unimagined by earlier generations, rather than making us a more widely informed populace “it’s making us ‘imaginary cosmopolitans,” a problem exacerbated by social networking that more easily allows people to share information with those who share our world-view.
People use the internet much like they use television news sources. They find those sources of information that agrees with their already determined world-view and allow those sources to filter the world’s news for them.
So we create for ourselves self-instituted echo chambers that help to reinforce our perception of the world and our preconceived notions of reality.
Who doesn’t like a good ‘yes man’?
This is of course dangerous, because we come to place an inordinate level of trust in our sources of information due to our unwillingness or inability to think critically concerning the information we receive or even how to find differing viewpoints and to give them a fair hearing.
I had read an article once that spoke about a study that showed that people will rarely change their mind on something, even if they are shown that what they currently believe is false (I wish I could find the link to the article. When I do, I’ll post it here). They weren’t talking about big things like is there a God? Rather they were looking at things such as the cause of the Iraq War or Obama being a Muslim. If a person had heard something, and it matched with their preconceived notion of the world, then it was nearly impossible to get them to change their mind even when shown evidence that what they heard was false.
This all leads me to an article that was recently passed around by a friend of mine on facebook. The article entitled “Obama Created World’s First Superstate With US-Canada Merger” got me interested in a hurry. It’s opening paragraph was quite alarming.
“In a shocking coup d’etat said to rival Nazi Germany’s 1938 Anschluss (German for “link-up”) of the Austrian Repbulic, the United States this past week effectively took control of Canada creating what is being called by Russican diplomatic officials as the world’s first 21st Century ‘Superstate’.”
Wow!
Now as a Canadian I was alarmed. In no way did I want Canada to cede control or power to another entity, especially to the United States. So I read further.
I read that there were evil machinations taking place behind closed doors and being covered up by “diplo-speak” that would see the autonomy of both the US and Canada compromised and that democracy was dead in both countries as “no votes [would be] allowed by either of them ever again.”
I read about the “shock and uproar” in Canada protesting Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s betrayal of Canada and how the American people were being kept in the dark by a corporatist conspiracy that controlled the nation’s news agencies.
One of the most damning claims made against the idea of the merger was that business leaders endorsed it and as such it was sure to be bad for everyone else.
It was an alarming piece of leftist propaganda innocently passed on by a friend who thought that others would want to hear of such nefarious goings on labeled as nothing short of “a capitalist corporate takeover of both the United States and Canada.”
In support for the article the EUTimes quotes at length the Pacific Free Press who talks about a conspiracy to keep the public in the dark concerning these secret deals where the people in power were able to not only keep all the media outlets silent on the issue but also social networking sites, environmental groups, union and the other political parties as well.
Despite this total information black out they reference not only the previously mentioned PFP, but also the Toronto Star and the National Post who managed to run stories concerning the high level negotiations. Support for the total outrage from Canadians must come from the lone PFP article, while the NP article is used to demonstrate how the US is being kept in the dark as it talked about the NY Times’ failure to mention the border talks, even thought the Wall Street Journal did report on it; yet another breach in the media blackout.
According to the NP, the reason that they aren’t talking about the issue within the US is that they simply don’t care. It’s an issue that is negatively affecting Canadian exports to America and as such the Americans could care less about appeasing Canadian business interests given that they are in two wars, fighting a sluggish economy and ramping up to another election cycle.
According to the White House press release that the EUTimes referenced the two governments are seeking to work together at “coordinating, simplifying and ensuring the compatibility of regulations, where feasible.” It goes on to state that both governments are working “to provide early notice of regulations with potential effects across our shared border, to strengthen the analytic basis of regulations, and to help make regulations more compatible.”
This is of course the nefarious diplo-speak that shows how the US and Canada are now a single entity under a yet to be determined dictator.
As to who these Russian diplomats were that likened the deal to the German – Austrian Anschluss we aren’t told.
I received the article from a friend who got it from a friend (from there I don’t know). It is written with obvious political bias in order to further an anti-capitalistic platform. It’s also a good demonstration of what I spoke about previously; the echo chamber that we create about ourselves when it comes to seeing the world.
If the world is to move forward the people in it need to look at the world without blinders on. They need to see where the world has come from in order to provide context for the present to inform our actions in the future. We shouldn’t lie to ourselves or think that one political ideology or another has all the answers. To paraphrase Chris Rock, if you think you already know the answer before you’ve heard the question, you have a problem.
People bitch and moan about how news outlets like Fox News operate, but they don’t see that Fox News isn’t the problem. The problem lies with them and their inability or unwillingness to look outside their preconceived notions of the world and to see reality for what it is. They don’t take a moment to cease from constructing their echo chamber to actually listen to an opposing point of view. People need to understand that we don’t know everything and that there is no magic answer to all the world’s questions.
At least, I do.
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