Most of us claim to want to know the truth. I sure do. But there's reason to wonder the extent to which this is -- I have to say the word -- true.
A memory comes to mind.
As a child, most summers my mother would take me from our home in California to see relatives back in Massachusetts, where I was born and my mother grew up. Once I remember my uncle (mother's brother) greeting her with, "My god, Carolyn, you've gained so much weight!"
That shocked me. Not because it wasn't true, because it was. Because that wasn't the sort of thing people would say to someone they hadn't seen for a long time.
We all shade the truth for one reason or another. The truth can be harsh. It can be painful. It can be unwelcome. Every husband learns that the best answer to your wife asking "Do you think this dress makes me look fat?" is an emphatic "No, absolutely not."
In general, though, I've figured that truth is a positive thing. I still feel that way, but the more I read about modern neuroscience, the more I understand why one of my first posts on this blog, "Just have faith," was a bit off-base.
Back in 2004, I wrote:
Here's how to tell the difference between true faith and false faith: Imagine that you are standing in the middle of a bare windowless room. Two doors lead out of the room. Both are closed, but can be opened with a turn of the doorknob. The doors are marked with signs that describe what awaits on the other side: (A) Reality, (B) Belief
After you open a door, you have to walk through it. The door then will shut and you never will be able to leave the place you have entered. Choose Reality and you will know things as they really are, from top to bottom of the cosmos. You will know whether or not God exists and, if so, the nature of this ultimate divinity. You will know whether death is the final end of your existence or if it is the beginning of another form of life. You will know whether there is a meaning to the universe beyond what human beings ascribe to it.
Or, choose Belief and you will know only what lies within the confines of your current suppositions about the nature of the cosmos. For the rest of your life you will be confident that what you believe to be true, really is. Any evidence to the contrary will not make an impact on your mind. You will remain doubt-free, faithful to the beliefs you now hold about God, creation, life, death, and the purpose of human existence.
Which door would you choose to walk through?
Before answering, consider carefully the potential ramifications of your choice. Reality is an unknown, a mystery. It could be frightening or fabulous, painful or pleasurable, warmly loving or coldly uncaring. Do you want to embrace absolutely real reality? Or would you rather hold on to your beliefs about what is real?
Someone with the type of faith extolled by the Church of the Churchless would unhesitatingly choose Door A and boldly stride into Reality. For their faith is not in anything particular, but is a faith that truth can be known, should be known, and, indeed, must be known.
Nice sentiment. However, in his book, Fluke, Brian Klaas says this in a chapter called "Why our brains distort reality."
Imagine two creatures: we might call them the Truth Creature and the Shortcut Creature. The Truth Creature sees everything exactly as it is...Nothing goes unnoticed.
...By contrast, the Shortcut Creature can't see any of that detail, but instead only perceives and processes that which is most useful to it. All else is either ignored or is invisible to that creature's perceptions. As a result, the Shortcut Creature cannot sense most of reality.
Which creature would you rather be?
We are tempted to side with the truth. But that would be a fatal mistake. Shortcut Creatures always win. Thankfully, that's exactly what we are -- a species that has evolved to perceive reality in a stripped-down, simplified form, so we can make sense of it to survive.
That conjecture has been validated by something called the Fitness Beats Truth theorem, an idea proposed and tested by mathematicians and cognitive scientists -- and popularized by Donald D. Hoffman at the University of California, Irvine.
What they've discovered inverts our commonplace ideas about how the world works.
Most of us assume that truth is, by definition, useful. But consider it a bit more carefully, and it becomes clear that's not the case. We do not see reality, but rather a "manifest image" of it, a useful illusion that helps us navigate the world.
...The cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker put it like this: "We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness."
...Walking through the world is an information explosion. We couldn't possibly pay attention to everything. If we did, it would overload us, blinding us to what's important. To cope, our brain has a laser-like focus on detecting helpful patterns and potentially threatening abnormalities, while discarding that which is less useful.
This makes sense. But since I've only read a bit less than a third of Fluke, I'm pretty sure that Klaas will be talking about how what was useful for most of the time us Homo sapiens have been around may be quite different from what is useful now, in the 21st century.
This is how Klass ends the "Why Our Brains Distort Reality" chapter. It comes after a discussion of how male jewel beetles search for the distinctive coloring, larger size, and dimpled shell pattern of the female. That worked well until an Australian beer company, "by complete chance, created a virtual replica of a female jewel beetle's traits in its bottle design."
As you might be able to guess, the male beetles began trying to mate with discarded bottles, not exactly an evolutionary plus. Klass goes on to say:
These mismatches from broken shortcuts are known as evolutionary traps. They arise when the old ways of survival become incompatible with a newer reality. Unfortunately, as we'll see, humans trying to navigate the unimaginable complexity of modern society are now facing an evolutionary trap of our own because our minds didn't evolve to cope with a hyperconnected world that relentlessly converges toward a knife's edge, in which one tiny fluke can change everything in an instant. The Shortcut Creature doesn't do quite so well when navigating a new, more complex world.
>> Reality is an unknown, a mystery. It could be frightening or fabulous, painful or pleasurable, warmly loving or coldly uncaring. Do you want to embrace absolutely real reality?<<
Probably humans need belief and faith in order to face their uncertainties related to their survival in unknown territory ... or even board and airplane.
Without believe and faith .. probably everybody would sit frozen in a corner with their hands in protection over their had.
Without believe and faith .. no activity.
They hunter of old had to believe his arrow would kill the ferocious animal etc ....
Posted by: um | March 05, 2024 at 02:03 AM
I know the concept of truth or reality is mainly academic and it is a thoroughly interesting and worthy of scientific research into reality. To a chemist reality is an atom or a molecule; to a physicist real is what the constituents of matter are – quarks etc. To us, it is the world we have evolved with.
It is also well known that from the basic elements that constitute matter we create our world. But is reality a mystery? How elementary particles come together to make matter – bodies, brains and minds is (to me anyway) a mystery, but it is not a reality that I would embrace – apart from a casual interest. And it is perhaps relevant to know that we evolved to only experience that aspect of reality that enables our survival.
The world we inhabit and which our particular physiologies construct and makes sense of, ‘is our reality.’ It undoubtedly helps to understand the mind or thought processes that pollutes our biological reality with various beliefs and expectations that have no actual standing in the reality we have evolved to live in.
I can sympathize and relate to Fluke’s point that: “… our minds didn't evolve to cope with a hyper-connected world …” to which I would add that I believe (think), to be immersed into such a world to the extent that it is felt to be a true and real world is to invite suffering. It is possible that we – or rather our minds, our thought processes – have strayed so far from the reality of our true biological natures to perhaps invite a form of disconnectedness from the real world.
Posted by: Ron E. | March 05, 2024 at 08:51 AM
One thing about evolution: Evolution helps us understand ourselves, how our drives have been formed, all of that. But what it doesn't do is prescribe how we must act.
For instance: Evolution is about propagation of our genes, and survival of the fittest. But that doesn't mean that we should necessarily act such that we place personal survival and personal "fitness" above everything else. Nor does it mean that we must necessarily strive to propagate our genes as best we can.
That is, evolution tells us who we are, and how and why we are who and how we are. But it does not tell us who we should be, and how we should be. We're free to reject the impulses of evolution, that is up to us entirely. Evolution does not dictate how we must act.
So that, regardless of whether evolution has equipped us to seek truth or to seek shortcuts; and regardless of which is better suited for survival, whether the truth thing or the shortcut thing: but we're free to seek out whichever we want to.
What I'm driving at is: I take your point, Brian, that shortcuts serve us well in a static environment, but that it is truth that helps us when the situation is dynamic and uncertain and changing fast. And it is good to understand the hows and wherefores of it. But, at the end of the day, we're free to seek truth, regardless of whether that ultimately makes for survival. We as humans have evolved to that capacity, the capacity not to be unthinking slaves to evolution.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | March 05, 2024 at 10:04 AM
To be clear: I'm not saying we can magically go beyond our evolution and attain to free will. That isn't where I'm going with this. What I'm saying is, to paraphrase in brief what the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has so eloquently (and authoritatively) argued in that book of his, it is a terrible idea to take our ethics and our morals and all of that from evolution. While it is fascinating to discuss in what circumstances truth serves us better than shortcuts, in evolutionary terms, and in what situations it is the opposite: but none of that speaks to how we *should* conduct ourselves.
Many make this mistake, of conflating evolution with morals, of conflating the descriptive and explanatory aspects of evolution with prescription for how to act. (Not that I'm suggesting you're doing it! Just, pointing out that it's up to us to choose what we will --- heh, without getting into the whole free-will rigmarole at this point.)
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | March 05, 2024 at 10:12 AM
@ AR
WHAT has evolved?
Nature or culture?
People identify with roles, concepts, imaginations. but they cannot change their nature.
We are natural human beings, like the crows are natural beings.
People have created an artificial nature and in that sacrificial environment and humans act in it as natural beings.
Posted by: um | March 05, 2024 at 10:37 AM
"@ AR
WHAT has evolved?
Nature or culture?"
----------
Hey, um.
I'm not an evolutionary biologist myself, so pinch of salt: but, thinking this through, it is *we* that evolve, not our culture. We do speak of culture evolving, but that is just a figure of speech. Culture does evolve, in a manner of speaking; and evolution can both inform culture, as well as be shaped by culture; but I don't think culture per se "evolves", not in a strict biological sense.
----------
Not sure about the rest of your post, though. Care to elaborate? Basis what I tentatively understand you to be saying, I think I'll disagree. We do evolve to a capacity for culture that is far far more complex than a colony of crows (a "murder", they call it, I think, God knows why) --- so that, in that respect we're very different than crows. Specifically: Crows haven't evolved to a capacity for a complex culture, so a complex culture is not natural for them; but we humans have evolved to a capacity for a complex culture, so having a complex culture is natural for us.
That doesn't mean that our complex culture cannot be dysfunctional. Obviously it can. But it isn't dysfunctional or "unnatural" merely by virtue of being complex, or merely by virtue of being culture, is what I'm saying.
(That, assuming I've read your second portion correctly. If I've misunderstood what you were trying to say, then please go ahead and elaborate on what you'd meant.)
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | March 05, 2024 at 11:20 AM
@ AR
I do not know how you read my words.
For me humans have not change biological more or less that anything else.
As part of nature they interact with nature, nothing more nothing less.
Nobody can change that ..not even our thoughts about our selves and nature.
We differ from other species, as I have so often mentioned, only in the sense that we have an extra freedom to interact with nature. Humans in contrast to other sentient beings etc, can recreate their original, their natural habitat wherever they go.
What does that mean?
The original human, natural being lived in a place where he could survive in the same way as all other species. No inventions, no tools. Let us call that the garden of eden, the paradise.. When humans were forced out of eden or chose to go out of eden, they did not change their natural needs, they were still human.
Before there was no need of fire, or any shelter as the climate was such that it was nor needed. Moving into colder environments, needing his body temperature to stay at 37 degrees Celsius, he was forced to invent all those things that help him to keep his body at that temperature with only a slight variation up and down of one degree. So he invented clothes, fire shelter ..all these things are just inventions to keep the natural human .... AS IF ... he is in eden, wherever he goes., ...WITHOUT ...changing him. ... as that is impossible.
Humans have also given the tool to do so ..our BRAIN .. it was given for that reason and we are using it for that reason.
CULTURE ..AR, is nothing but an very complex variation of what I described and it started to have an impact on humans of its own .. as if it is reel. Culture has all aspects humans previous encountered in nature, Culture has all the elements of nature in a fictive, artificial way and we act in it as if it was nature.
If you bring an indigenous person from one side of the planet into the environment of another tribe he will be puzzled, know knowing what to do etc etc. That is what we see today due to the emergence of the regional cultures on the "global market place" of the media what causes frustration among all the peoples of the world.
So, humans have not evolved more than any other sentient being ..he still struggles to survive and find new ways to do so no longer in Eden but always having that as an pilosophers stone deep hidden inside himself.
He wants to live a natural life in a natural way, he longs to recreate it and as he does not know how he is frustrated and always finding new things.
That memory of EDEN is de key en it cannot be found in the streets.
It is all as simple as the coffee I am going to make now ...hahaha
Posted by: um | March 05, 2024 at 11:46 AM
@ AR
It is said that humans are spiritual beings going through a human experience but maybe one can add or chage it into:
We are natyral beings going through a cultural experience.
Posted by: um | March 05, 2024 at 12:13 PM
Eden? Do you mean the African savannah? It wasn't particularly "natural", in terms of being welcoming of us homo sapiens. Exactly the opposite in fact, we very nearly went extinct, many times, and only by happenstance, only by sheer luck, managed to survive that initial period, when our intelligence, and, yes, our culture, hadn't developed much beyond the level our non-human cousins'.
Or do you mean Eden literally, as in the Biblical superstitions? That's woo woo nonsense, and not really worth talking about; except maybe in a purely literary vein, as one might Lothlorien from Tolkien.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | March 05, 2024 at 12:20 PM
@ AR
I mean that BEFORE we as humans were in need to make any invention to survive, we were alive in a place were we could live, a place that gave us food all year around, where the temperature differences between day and night were such that no shelter was needed
that place i cal paradise, Eden
We are still as BEFORE, Our bodies work the same way and whereever we go, be it the moon or elsewhere, we have to RE-create it ....have a look what all we do for our astronouts. ... it is nothing but creating for them natuiral environments to survive ..the circumstances of eden.
Posted by: um | March 05, 2024 at 12:31 PM
"We are natyral beings going through a cultural experience."
Yes, that's how I'd understood you the first time. And expressed my disagreement with your POV using the crow metaphor you employed.
To put it in this more direct idiom: We are not really separate creatures removed from our culture. We have created our culture; and equally, our culture has shaped us. We are who and what we are because of our culture. Had we not had our culture, we'd have been very different creatures.
We can stand apart from our culture, sure; just like we can stand apart from our evolution, to an extent. If that's all you meant, then sure, I agree 100℅!
But if you mean we're somehow separate from and independent of our culture, then no! We are creatures of our culture, just like we are creatures of evolution. That we can stand apart from these to an extent is itself a function of our culture and our evolution.
(In other words, and thinking this through tentatively: I don't think the Buddha went beyond conditioning and culture, not literally; he merely distilled his understanding of such, and controlled his participation in such to a far greater degree than his compatriots.)
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | March 05, 2024 at 12:43 PM
Just read your second comment, posted 12:31 PM. (Have got off of my desk, and am on my phone, so I'll not quote it, and I'll be brief.)
I think we *have* evolved a lot beyond those early African savannah days. Our brain, that is where it has happened, our evolution since then. (For instance, the bicameral mind thing? To take just one instance.). I think we are very very different creatures than the homo sapiens of 50,000 years ago, even though like them we have two hands and two legs and no tail.
(Take this with a pinch of salt! I'm only thinking this through. It would take an actual evolutionary biologist to say authoritatively whether what I've thought through is correct or completely wrong.)
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | March 05, 2024 at 12:54 PM
@ AR
What ever cuisine we create, we still feed ourselves as natural beings.
Our cuisines have changed over time but not the workings of the body
Culture is like a tool ..it is like the 4 poles in the ground interconnected with wire what we call a meadow to keep cattle .. so we need no go out to hunt ... hahaha
Culture is like democracy an mental invention ... it is some thin like children believing that a shoe box is a garage and a match box a car.
It is that simple to see.
Posted by: um | March 05, 2024 at 12:59 PM
@ AR
YOU,...WE ...do not longer identify ourselves as natural but as cultural beings and that is an illusion.
Posted by: um | March 05, 2024 at 01:08 PM
"Our cuisines have changed over time but not the workings of the body"
That's just an unsupported ipse-dixitism, though, isn't it?
You think our physical selves have not changed in the past ~50k years. I think there have been radical changes, particularly in the brain. ...But, and like I said, both these are unsupported ipse-dixitisms. We'd need an evolutionary biologist who has studied the actual fossils from then, to tell us basis actual evidence which of us is right. We can't just go around manufacturing our own facts to suit our pet theories. We need to first look at the facts, and have our theories fit with our facts, and not the other way around.
(I'm assuming that, like me, you've not actually looked at the science on this. Apologies if that's not case! If it is the case that you're saying this basis what you've read or heard some evolutionary biologist say about whether or not our bodies and brains have changed over the last ~50k years, then absolutely, I'll readily take my objections back and agree 100℅ with you.)
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | March 05, 2024 at 01:37 PM
@ AR
Before Einstein formulated his formula ..he had an idea and for that idea to be clear to him he did not need his own formula.
BEFORE the formula, was his idea.
If I throw up a stone, I KNOW it will come down and also approximately where that will be.. The scientists that developed the laws of gravity etc knew that first.
What is there so difficult .. I need not make you to understand it, let alone to prove it. What I wrote is as clear to me as throwing up stones and catching them
Posted by: um | March 05, 2024 at 01:49 PM
@ Ar
science is like a game, like sport...every sport is restricted by its own rules
but there is more to life than science.
Posted by: um | March 05, 2024 at 02:32 PM
Dear um,
I just now hammered out a response to both your comments. I kind of let myself go, and went beyond just a barebones response and on to some more expansive observations. And I was just about to press ‘Post’, when a thought struck me. I’d missed this subtext until now, but the part where you say that you don’t need to prove anything to me? It seems to me that maybe, just maybe, this close examination of your closely held beliefs might be causing you distress. Is that right, and is my surmise correct?
I’m enjoying this back and forth, um, and the insights it brings up; but I most certainly don’t want to keep doing that at cost of inadvertently causing you distress! So I simply cut out that comment, and am typing this one instead. It’s “cut”, not deleted, so it sits now in my clipboard. I’m logging off now, but before I do that I’ll paste it onto a notepad file or a word doc. ...Should you now assure me, um, that my surmise was incorrect; and should you assure me that you’re enjoying this process as much as I am, and will welcome that further probing of your beliefs as represented in those last two comments of yours: well then I’ll be happy to directly paste that comment here and post it after all. …And if you don’t, then that’ll mean that my surmise did hit the mark; in which I’ll just delete the thing, and we’ll just call this thing off for now.
Your call, um, I’m perfectly cool with either option. Either which way, enjoyed talking, cheers!
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | March 06, 2024 at 10:23 AM
@AR
You are right in your surmise but not in the way as you think it to be.
What better can I say to help the both of us out in understanding what is going on by putting before you the saying of that Hungarian Lady that I met as a youth in the train in Italy:
"Young man, you are like my son, an artist without art"
She said many more things and it is astonishing to realize how correct she pointed the finger to the moon.
Maybe I reach out to that part of you that is hidden in the house and hardly ever is seen when he opens the door. when somebody passes by..
For quite a while now I have been considering no longer to participate here realizing that my pleasure in doing so, should not become like the proverbial sand in an well oiled machine. ...in not participating according the rules of the game.
Posted by: um | March 06, 2024 at 11:34 AM
Ah, ok, so I was right after all! ...As for the rest, um, I've no idea what that means, in context of what I'd said!
But like I said, I won't do this unless we're both enjoying the process and gaining from it. Am on my phone now; but once I get back and am on my computer again, I'll delete that message I'd typed out.
Cheers, old friend.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | March 06, 2024 at 11:58 AM
By the way, you're not impeding anything. I've no idea where you got that idea from. ...Heh, that surmise, at any rate, is completely unfounded.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | March 06, 2024 at 12:02 PM
How and where can one even begin to make the right choices when there are So many bent Babas like Gurinder Singh Dhilion waiting to take your soul on the nasty path of Radha Soami.
Which is evil in nature as its the very nature of Kaal the Devil who spares none.
Gurinder Singh Dhilion gives you KAALS initiation and tells the initiated to sit 3 hours every day and repeat this hell road mantra
The soul gets even more entrapped by this and the nasty Gurinder takes advantage of this by coming to give darshan and using black magic with his eyes on all the sangat which in return subdues the soul further and he can control the individual to get what he wants them to do
This world is a prison and Gurinder Singh Dhilion and Radha Soami Cult binds you even more to reincarnation and not as he says out of it
Gurinder is a Liar as we know and his Father is the King of lies Satan
Path to Hell
Posted by: Trez | March 06, 2024 at 12:31 PM
@ AR
Yes I certainly do enjoy the process.
It is unfounded seen from your point of view and you are right..
I will not go into it but it has nothing to do with you but only with my view of the world.
Posted by: um | March 06, 2024 at 12:34 PM
If only you could realise that gurinder singh dhillons vessel is used by kaal/ the deciever/ satan/ the devil. Look how craftly kaal has moulded himself as the image of a guru - how else is he gonna decieve the masses. It's just like mafia disguised as a political leader, there's no honest leader in the world that genuinely truly cares about people.
RSSB is the vehicle , Gurinder is the vessel for kaal to trick souls. Gurinder Singh dhillon initiates using a satanic mantra. The first name is Jot Nirunjan which literally means "light of the devil". The others are onkar, rarunkar, sohung, satnam (satan). Do not repeat them and do not get initiated. Gurinder also does black magic, through his eyes , and calls it dreshti, and sends evil spirits to all initiates. He even speaks about the angels on your shoulder in satsangs.
You have been warned. Gurinder has to pay the heavy price for his lies , hypocrisy and deceiving souls.
Posted by: Kranvir | March 07, 2024 at 12:56 PM
If only sangat could wake up and realise that gurinder was actually living the incarnation of kaal/ the deceiver - the very opposite of god energy. And what kaal , the negative power does best is lie and decieve - what better way than to hide as a perfect living master to fool innocent sangat while in private is the cunning mafia style crook - but they are 2 sides of the same coin (evil disguised as good)
In this modern day rssb is the vehicle and gurinder is the vessel for Lucifer to trap souls as people drift away from mainstream religions - Kaal never gives up trapping and tricking souls. Gurinder Singh dhillon, you have been exposed, there is no smoke without fire, you will have to face your karma. The funny thing karma is the system you and kaal invented to punish us, and now you must be punished by it.
Posted by: Kranvir | March 08, 2024 at 02:07 PM