The Key that Opens One Door, Locks the Next

Truth--with a capital "T"--has magic in it. It has an effect on us. The receiver has a distinct sensation of something inside being changed by the encounter. Where before we were closed, so sure of ourselves...now we feel ourselves opened to new worlds and new questions. Real Truth is totally unlike the sea of ordinary information we swim in, and is even of a distinctly separate order from the mental "excitement" that can come from reading titillating theories and speculations.

But of course, one has to be prepared to hear Truth. It comes as part of a process of growth and maturation, the result of efforts made over time. It has to fall on fertile ground, so to speak. Which is why Truth can never be debated, can never be argued, and why doing so brings it down to the level of the ordinary. Or even worse. As Einstein said to a critic of Relativity Theory, "You will be convinced of the general theory of relativity when you have studied it. That is why I am not mentioning a word in its defense". Truth is an intimate knowledge, sacred to the receiver, and therefore should be held closely, offered up only after consideration. Still, sacred doesn't have to mean religious...it may be, and often is, quite prosaic....

For example, I'm remembering the first time I heard that pasteurized milk was really just milk rendered sterile and "dead". In its natural state, milk is a pristine world of pro-biotics, small organisms that play various beneficial roles in the larger organism. Real, unadulterated milk, if properly cared for, does not actually go "bad" but only changes to different states and uses, every one of which has been eagerly cultivated by more traditional peoples for millenia; pasteurized milk left out too long, however, becomes toxic. In fact, the pasteurization process reportedly came about merely as a band-aid measure, because the growing industrialization of the milk industry--factory farms with unclean conditions, long delivery times with inadequate refrigeration, etc.--were causing spoilage and bacterial infection in the "product". To this day, widespread incidents (including deaths) from botulism and other contaminants continue to occur in pasteurized milk, as these harmful invaders become heartier in response. As a result, a new band-aid called "ultra-pasteurization" is now commonly practised.

But try arguing against pasteurization of milk with someone who is not already schooled in the faults and lies of the processed food industry. They'll accuse you of foolishness, heresy, treason, even worse.... The mantra is that pasteurization, like immunization, is one of the flowers of scientific "progress", not only saving lives, but raising us above the unreasoning masses of the world. People were getting sick before, and now the're not. All the questions have been answered. The case has been closed....

Another famous quote comes to mind, from Schopenhauer this time: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." This seems to be speaking more to the introduction of Truth externally, into the wider social sphere. And while I don't know that this could be considered a universal law, it seems to be a recognizable enough experience.

It's interesting that the debate over evolution has been taken up again (actually, I've heard it said that it has been a popularly recurring argument since long before Darwin's theory cast it in a modern light, but regardless...). I've found myself wondering of late whether either side has a conclusive case. Because what we hold to be Truth may also be viewed as just a transient phase in the cycle of maturation, a milestone marker on the road to understanding. And thus we often discover that some newly realized Truth supercedes a previously accepted one. An old saying says "the key that opens one door, locks the next"--that that which was enlightening and helpful for a certain time eventually becomes yet another restrictive dead-end or lifeless preconception.

Just before the dawn of subatomic, "quantum" physics, it was widely accepted that within a few years time Newtonian mechanistic scientists would have grasped and accounted for everything that could be known about the material world. There were just a few niggling little details about those tiny atoms to be worked out....

And in digging at those questions, they discovered...not that they were wrong...but simply that they had been blind all along in believing the material world was a singular, independent, self-contained whole. There were other worlds out there--some larger and some smaller--nested within ours just as ours is nested with theirs.

These musings come about as a result of reading the following passages in William Kotke's The Final Empire (available in the Reading Room next door...):

"It is the self-regulation of each species that gives the eco-system its balance. Because each being lives according to its nature, the whole functions in resonance. The balance of the human population in a forager/hunter band is self-regulating. This ecological maturity is fundamental. The cosmos exists in balance; the life of the earth exists in balance. Within this we see by contrast that the theorists of empire culture invented ideologies of linear increase, ideologies of imbalance. When the new edition of the myth of linear increase was being formulated in Darwin's time, the rationalist philosophers searched for a motivating dynamic in the natural world. They looked for a cause of change, which they could hold up as the force for linear increase. Darwin and Malthus found the motor in population increase. For Darwin, the balance of species is maintained mechanically by predators and starvation. As this flood of population continues it is the "survival of the fittest" that culls out the weak and selects the strong, whose descendants then become the new "evolutionary waves." Imbedded in this perspective is a total irresponsibility, a complete immaturity. No being is responsible to the whole. Each being is only obligated to fight others for its own survival. This pattern is in fact reflected in the culture in which we live. This is why we face planetary suicide. No one is responsible for the life of the earth. One simply struggles for the "individualist" power and wealth held out by the culture."

[...]

"As this mythos expanded, "Social Darwinism" then became welded onto it. In the myth of Social Darwinism, human societies such as the imperial society of Britain rise to the top and humans within societies rise to the top because of their evolutionary superiority. Obviously there is no "top" to rise to in a cooperative forager/hunter band but in an imperial culture based in hierarchy this can seem to be "just common sense." We see the financial aristocracy born with the best medical care, fed with the best diets, tutored with the finest master teachers and finished at the best schools. Given the widest experiences of travel, entertainment, and sport because of inherited wealth and the mental reinforcement since birth that they are destined to rule, we can understand how they would readily adopt a social darwinist perspective. They could easily be persuaded that their kind was superior, while they stand on the necks of those who never had their advantages. In fact their class activly prevents others from having those advantages."

[...]

"By focusing on the matter of balance in the cosmos and on earth we see that some of the basic assumptions by which all of us in empire culture are conditioned, are at great variance from cosmic patterns. The matter of population balance is fundamental to our understanding.

...Robert Augros and George Stanciu in their important new book, The New Biology, survey recent biological studies that describe the self-regulation of populations. They show that elephants, for example, regulate their populations according to food supply and living conditions by raising or lowering the age of puberty and by shortening or lengthening the duration of the period of sexual fertility of females. Augros and Stanciu say that, "Evidence from other field studies indicate that the birth rate or the age of first reproduction depends on population density in many large mammals, including white-tailed deer, elk, bison, moose, bighorn sheep, Dall's sheep, ibex, wildebeest, Himalayan tahr, hippopotamus, lion, grizzly bear, dugong, harp seals, southern elephant seal, spotted porpoise, striped dolphin, blue whale, and sperm whale."1

There are many different ways in which species regulate their populations. One interesting study showed that all of the birds of the same species, in the same region, could vary the number of eggs in the nest in any one season according to food availability and species population density. In a certain year of low food supply all of the birds' nests would have three rather than the usual four eggs.

...In the popular mind the image of ecological balance is the wolf pack and moose herd. This image does represent the balance of the food chain but eliminates the cooperative and holistic elements of ecological functioning. While the wolf, cougar and eagle are dramatic and fit the imperial image of power and violence; these predators are only a handful while there are millions of other species from micro-organisms to redwood trees, whose populations are not impacted significantly by photogenic predators.

Life is wise, mature and self-regulating. The myth of the "red in tooth and claw" has distorted our understanding of nature, but by a review of recent biology we are able to adjust our images to the way nature really works and the way a creative and stable human culture could fit into it. In the contrasts that we have been examining we see that there is a profound shift of image from mindless organisms driven to maximize their numbers, to responsible, intelligent self-regulating living beings.

These are not academic biological questions; they are political questions of the theology of empire. They control the definition of what life is, and define appropriate behavior for humans."

I've read different statements and ideas about the "myth of progress" before. Many times. But for some reason today I read this passage, and reading about it this time, hearing it stated in this way...well, today it suddenly struck me differently. I begin to sense--and not just "think" or "believe"--that I've been living in a preconception, a closed-loop of understanding. I now sense that there is a different level from which to approach the whole idea of culture.

Certainly it's no wonder we have no understanding of balance and cycles, because we've created a world for ourselves apart from them. All our modern advances and technology serve only to further this illusion of independence. Here in America, and indeed anywhere the affluent and influential people of the world ply their trades, we live in climate-controlled buildings, which we travel between in climate-controlled cars. When we experience Nature, we do so on our terms...during the proper seasons and always with a full tank of gas should things get "out of hand". Should anybody inadvertently go more than a couple days away from a car or building, we hear about it on the local news--and should Nature actually impose herself directly in to our lives, it makes the national or world news. The "cycles" we recognize are in the stock market, the economy, in fashion or other social spheres...the ebb and flow of our own little activities and interests within our own little world.

In this "world apart" we don't need each other, because we recognize no power above ourselves which might unite us. We play at "community" in our jobs and social gatherings, but the path to power in this world is paved by our machinations and manipulations of other people. And in this way the traveller choosing this path "apes god", seeking to become the power above all else. And indeed, every aspect of modern society is colored by this struggle, whether one chooses to actively participate or not. We immerse ourselves in the fetishism of doing, and our successes, our failures, even our rejection of this creed serve always to define us on a yardstick of personal worth. Balance and harmony are no longer social imperatives, so they become instead merely personal goals. Cooperation becomes primarily a faceless and impersonal affair of "commerce", while charity a luxury altogether.

Yet all the while we are blind to the these other worlds which permeate and encompass us--worlds in which everything cycles within a lawful balance between growth and decay, life and death. These worlds nevertheless continue to influence us, even to guide our course. They comprise a Truth for us, should we become able to receive it. In these worlds, progress is not a religion, but only a passing season in the sun. And in these worlds, the benefits of community far outweigh the accumulations of pride. They are no less real than this toy of a world we call human civilization, and they await us still...in the form of a question.

Comments

[Igor]

1) sooo : "Truth can never be debated, can never be argued, and ... doing so brings it down to the level of the ordinary"

and what do we do when 2 different persons claim possessing the Real Truth, say, you and George Bush, when those "Thruth"s are absolutely incompatible ?

2) I see you just love speaking in the name of "we" : "we should...", "we must...", "we...", "we...", meaning "we, humanity".

Has it never occured to you, that, probably, you think too much of yourself by hijacking the right to speak in the name of humanity ?

also you say things like : "... we have no understanding of balance and cycles..".

if YOU don't understand something, you should say so - " I have no understanding of...", don't hide behind "we".

3) I strongly suggest you don't try to claim Einstein and general theory of relativity on your side, for the simple reason that you know nothing about that theory or other theories that compete with GTL.

For your information, Einstein never argued to defend GTL not because it is "True", but because in HARD SCIENCE (like physics) a theory is it's own argument in itself and doesn't need "marketing".

Of course you have no idea that GTL is yet to be proved by experiments, as are the alternative theories.

[Clifton]

what do YOU do igor when two people offer different truths?
why do you infer, igor, 'we' is referenced to all of humanity?
and what are you arguing? i'm having a hard time grasping it.
thank you steve for posting your thoughts and ideas. i have found them to be very constructive in my personal journey to develop a better and more rich life.

[david]

In this "world apart" we don't need each other, because we recognize no power above ourselves which might unite us

I'd recommend to you Igor, that you meditate on the above sentence.

Also, theories cannot be proved true by experiment, they can only be falsified. The truth of any scientific theory is only in that it has not yet been shown to be wrong. The potential always remains for it to be shown to be false at some point in the future.

[Segovius]

One day a King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell the truth so he had a gallows erected in front of the city gates and ordered his heralds to announce "Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to a question which will be put to him."

Mulla Nasrudin was first in line. The captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth -- the alternative is death by hanging."

"I am going," said Nasrudin, "to be hanged on that gallows."

"I don't believe you" said the guard.

"Very well, if I have told a lie, then hang me!"

"But that would make it the truth!"

"Exactly," said Nasrudin, "YOUR truth."

[Igor]

RE: Clifton

1) "what do YOU do igor when two people offer different truths?"

I decide for myself. And I am yet to hear a "Truth with capital T" that I don't discard as lunacy,

sooner or later.

and what do YOU do ?

2) "why do you infer, igor, 'we' is referenced to all of humanity?"

here you are some "we" quotes from Steve's original "The Collapse ..." which had started my arguing:

"The civilization we call the Modern World has already begun to collapse ... we must reap the

consequences"

"spirit of our civilization is spent"

"...environmental crisis we face continually..."

"we are ... being called"

"we will need to transform our human culture and society completely"

"we need to break completely with this irredeemable corpus civitas, to be reborn anew as a

species which understands its place and its duty"

"We will need to awaken to our true responsibilities toward Life"

"We are being asked to enter into a profoundly new way of being, both individually as well as

collectively"

and so on, and so on.

Now tell me, if those "we" is not "we, humanity", than what is it ?

3) "what are you arguing? i'm having a hard time grasping it"

can't you read for yourself ? in my last post I am arguing:

a/ the notion of the "Real Truth That May Not Be Argued" brings you to a dead end once 2 different "Truths" are being claimed.

b/ self-appointed (false-)prophets love to speak in the name of "we, humanity"

c/ one should not claim Einstein and general theory of relativity being on his side until he at least understands that theory and it's status within physics.

back to you, Clifton. I have answered your questions, please answer mine.

[Igor]

RE: david

of course you are right, that "truth of any scientific theory is only in that it has not yet been shown to be wrong", though it's a bit stilted to my taste

also I's like to notice that a theory can be proved wrong without experiment - when it is self-contradictory, etc -

- and it is the issue here, in this discussion, as I understand it:

Steve seems failing to disprove my critique of his theory of "The Coming Collapse and Rebirth Through Ecovillages"

and now, I guess, he muses an idea that the "Real Truth" does not need arguing because "It Is True", then just to claim his theory to be The Real Truth That Cannot Be Argued, and nirvana has been reached.

if I understand him correctly.

[Igor]

re: david (2)

it has only just now occured to me what you did mean !! you know, I am pretty dumb...

your saying "theories cannot be proved true by experiment..." refers to my words that "general theory of relativity is yet to be proved by experiments"

well, technically you are right.

Still the words "a theory is proved (by experiment)" has meaning in physics:

the theory in question withstood theoretical scrutiny + it agrees with experiments enough for the critics to be happy, and so on

so scientists do say: "Ah, that theory is proved..." - which generally correlates to a layman's understanding of "proof".

of course, a scientist is ready to accept some new experiment's proving an established theory wrong.

Anyway this thread is un-appropriate place to discuss status of general relativity.

[Igor]

ATTN Segovius

HA-HA !

so when there are 2 persons with different "Truth"s, one of them is destined for the gallows.

[Segovius]

Igor - you may have something there, certainly a brief perusal of history would seem to bear you out.

I was thinking that in line with the original post, truth is 'relative' and subject to change depending on vantage point.

[Clifton]

re:igor
1)I too decide for myself. (adaptation)
2)'We' as in 'sovereign' in the latest post. I don't know, possibly in 'humanity' in another context.

clifton

[Steven Lagavulin]

Igor, I think I'll simply offer up in my defense that perhaps...just PERHAPS...it's not Truth that is relative, but rather the Receiver of it....

(Yes, I know that's not going to satisfy you, but I'm having a busy day.)

Cheers,
Steven

[Igor]

Steven,

No, no, please stick to the relative Truth.

It is not that I argue the NATURE of the Truth, actually I know nothing valid to say here (except for a narrow scientific definitions of a "true" theory, etc)

I just want to know, if the Truth is relative, or, if the Real Truth Is Not To Be Argued, then what do we do (practically) when 2 different Truths are being claimed ?

[Marc]

Igor:

"I just want to know, if the Truth is relative, or, if the Real Truth Is Not To Be Argued, then what do we do (practically) when 2 different Truths are being claimed?"

If there were Truly Something for us to do in the face of two different Truths, then maybe we would end up with three Truths -- the original two, plus the Truth which answers your question -- and then you'd have a new question on your hands, something like:

"I just want to know, if the Truth is relative, or, if the Real Truth Is Not To Be Argued, then what do we do (practically) when 3 different Truths are being claimed?"

So my answer is: "we" do whatever "we" want. Think, contemplate, explore, test, take a break, ask questions, challenge assumptions, ... and after a while perhaps the answer (relative to our particular situation) will make itself apparent to us.

In other words, "if the Truth is relative", then your question is unanswerable except on a case-by-case basis.

Or so it seems to me.

Steven, thanks for the thoughtful post. Koetke's book is fantastic, indeed.

I tend to shy away from the notion of Truth with a capital T, which I think is relevant only insofar as its discovery represents the discovery (by each of us in our own rhythm) of new ways of seeing, feeling, thinking, living.

Further, I think Truth (to the extent I can use the term without affirming its absolute/objective existence) often reveals itself in the form of questions, to which tentative (incomplete) answers suggest new questions, and the process repeats.

The process, I think, is purely a personal one, though our individual processes might share certain common features or characteristics, as with stages of maturity or physical/mental/spiritual development.

Igor: perhaps a more satisfactory answer, which just occured to me, to your question -- what do we do when faced with 2 seemingly incompatible or contradictory truths? -- is: relish the opportunity to set the 2 truths against each other, examine them individually and in comparison, and try to resolve (or understand) the contradiction and find what part of each truth remains.

I think this is one of the best ways to stretch one's mind and sharpen one's understanding.

And it may be that the two truths are not really contradictory, but instead describe different aspects of reality, like two different maps (geographical and subway, for example) of the same region, which differ significantly in appearance and might even contradict each other (if the subway map is distorted or simplified for convenience, for example), but each of which is adequate to its purpose.

In this postmodern/information age, truths are often removed from their proper context, and used/reused for many different purposes, which may or may not fully suit them. One of the pitfalls -- and, at times, one of the blessings -- of online communication.

[Igor]

Marc,

sorry, I just don't get it : if a truth is relative, how do you "set the 2 truths against each other, examine them individually and in comparison, and try to resolve (or understand) the contradiction and find what part of each truth remains", as you say ?

and then you say "may be that the two truths are not really contradictory, but instead describe different aspects of reality...".

sorry, I neither get this one... is the "reality" relative ? if it isn't, how a thruth can be relative ? if both truth and reality are relative, what is the meaning of "describe different aspects of reality" ?

as I see it, if truth is relative, it all boils down to "I say" against "you say" - who is the most eloquent. and if one side still balks, welcome to religious wars... if the truths in question are perceived important enough by all parties engaged.

[Marc]

Igor--

If a truth is relative to an individual, then yes, "it all boils down to 'I say' against 'you say'". Maybe this kind of disagreement precipitates religious wars.

But if a truth is relative to a particular situation or context, then you can have two different truths which coexist, each in its proper context. Hence two truths arising from different religions/cultures can each be understood in its own context, and both can be correct. Maybe this kind of understanding precipitates religious/cultural tolerance.

I think every "truth" -- in the sense of a particular truth (insight) that an individual reaches at a particular point in (or span of) time -- is relative in both senses: relative to the person who receives/apprehends it (through the filter of their own experience), and relative to the particular context in which it applies (and in which they apprehended it). (One could perhaps subsume these two senses of "relative" into a "general" relativity: relativity with respect to the specific experiential context in which an individual apprehends or understands a truth.)

How, then, does one set two truths against each other? Perhaps by recognizing the respective contexts in which each truth holds sway, and searching for a larger context which encompasses both. Like, in this religious context, killing is bad, and in this other religious context, retribution is justified...perhaps if one "zooms out", sees the forest instead of the trees, both truths be understood within a larger context, such that they are no longer contradictory. Or perhaps when one enlarges one's view, one will come to see that one of the "truths" becomes false, and that it only appeared true on account of one's shortsightedness.

Anyway, that's the truth as I see it, in the context of this discussion. Maybe it will reconcile with yours? Perhaps I was not clear enough in my last post (or, indeed, this one), so that you interpreted my remarks (e.g., use of the term, "relative") in a different context than I intended. Or perhaps you understand what I'm trying to say, and still disagree! Then it would seem our different experiences have led us to different conclusions, each (perhaps) true in the context of our own experience.

[Igor]

Marc,

I don't know.

I just know that a "relative truth" exists ONLY within someone's head, and it is what the someone says it is. And he can always say that you "don't understand".

Or, if it is the "truth relative to a context", he can say that "you don't understand the context". or "how the truth relates to the context".

I don't see way out.

[Anne]

In one of my past philosophy courses, we spent at least four weeks trying to hash out the meaning of Truth, capital T style. My instructor posited as such:

On the first day, he drew a line on the board. Above this line he wrote "Truth" and below, "False/Lies". As we progressed in his course, the line came to be filled with other Concepts, such as "Being" above "Nonbeing" and "World of IDEAS" above "World of Representations", and "Knowledge" above "Opinion".

He stated on numerous occassions, "Truth never changes; a person's view of what is Truth changes."

If one can overlook the bipolarisation/dichotomy of the concepts, I believe you can apply Truth to our lives.

What is True?

All living beings require, absolutely need: clean, drinkable water, clean, breathable air, uncontaminated foods, shelter from hazardous elements (in civilised world, chemicals and pathology; in wilderness, weather, etc.). I would posit that from these Truths, we can build a system of thought, a way of being, that coincides with these truthful needs.

What is being debated on this thread is a concept (Truth) that has been debated for centuries, with no one conclusion made. Ever.

I have been studying society, philosophy, and civilisation for several years now. I've read a lot on various topics, and for the past 3-4 years I've been incredibly interested in the destructiveness of civilisation.

In talking with classmates, and random people in bars, cafes, bookstores, anywhere there are people, I've found that there are several types/groups of folks (of course):

Those who have found interest in such topics and have educated themselves and fight to inform and fight against what they see as wrong;

Those who have never been introduced to such topics, but easily become interested and can see the points and go from there;

Those who may understand and acknowledge the destructiveness and oppression, but ignore it; and

Those who refuse to even contemplate that civilisation/their way of being is fucked up.

There are more types/groups of folks, certainly, and folks may not agree with my exact, hurried, terminology/labelling; feel free to add/amend as you need. I'm stating this because this site's name is "deconsumption" so that tips us off that this is not a run-of-the-mill, pro-establishment blog. The producer obviously thinks outside the norms, and questions them. And, like all blogs that deal with the politic, there are readers and commentors who whole-heartedly agree, and those who disagree. I think it's fantastic that we can all have discussions and hack through shit in our minds together.

I question at what point folks need to say, "Look, I've read and written all of this stuff, and I believe in it, and here's some other things that have been written and researched by others on the topic(s), look for yourself and form your own opinion. Let's agree to disagree because my mind isn't changing, and neither is yours." and leave it at that, or to continue arguing opposing beliefs with folks who vehemently hold to their beliefs and convictions, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but we get threads in which folks are quoting every sentence someone says and giving their opinion on it, and the cycle goes on in this way. I love blogs for this reason, a single post can have 500 comments and 37 trackbacks, and that's some real discussion. (This comment of mine probably should have been a trackback, given its length!)

On a related note, I was introduced to feminism in my early teens. At first, I held reservations and denied that oppression could exist based upon something as fundamentally inherent as sex. Then, as I read more and thought more, and looked at the society and culture in which I was born, I began to see what writers and activists had been telling me. Oppression exists based on sex, and even more, based on gender, class, race, religion, etc. And I grew very angry. Today, I am far from being a feminist (once you see one oppression, you can see them all), although it greatly informs my being.

The point is, there is a cycle to the acknowledgement of wrongs, of oppression, of destruction.

We fight like hell at first, because our entire way of being, our paradigms, our constructs, our identities, are being shaken and even worse, questioned, and we are being told that everything we've held dear has been a lie, is false, and is damaging and destructive. No one likes to be questioned. Especially those who have something to lose.

We resist to face reality at all costs.

To share, in case you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend picking up a copy ($25) of Derrick Jensen's _The Culture of Make Believe_ as soon as possible.

[Marc]

Anne:

"I think it's fantastic that we can all have discussions and hack through shit in our minds together."

Amen to that!

In response to your point about resisting paradigms which challenge our own...certainly we can frequently observe this resistance to new (and especially uncomfortable) ideas, and we probably all exhibit such resistance ourselves, to some degree. But it's not necessarily because of a closed mind, or a narrow point of view. Most people, for very good reasons, want to have a coherent mental construct of the world they inhabit and their place within it. Otherwise we would be drifting through life, without purpose or orientation, and it would be very difficult to get along. Life would be hopelessly confusing and senseless, and we would have nothing to hang onto. Perhaps we would be paralyzed by information overload, like a newborn baby or a person recently cured of lifelong blindness, who cannot properly process the onslaught of raw information at first, or even for a while afterwards. Even those of us who pride themselves on being open-minded or curious are probably much more grounded in some paradigm or worldview or ego-construct than we admit or realize.

So perhaps not all, but a great deal of people's resistance to new ideas/paradigms -- such as the critique of civilization or various notions about aliens, UFOs, parapolitics, alternative history, conspiracies, etc. -- is based not on close-mindedness or fear-based clinging to one's current beliefs, but simply on one's present inability to integrate the new information into a coherent worldview that is supported by (or at least not contradictory to) one's experience.

In other words, maybe it could be said of someone who appears (to us) close-minded and resisting a certain point of view which we throw at them (and, let's say, which is well supported by evidence/reason, as we see it), that they *want* to believe us (or are trying to believe us), but are having difficulty resolving the cognitive dissonance between their beliefs/experiences and the new point of view, are presently failing to integrate the new point of view with their beliefs and experience. Therefore, unable to reconcile the new point of view with their experience, they do what anyone in their right mind would do: they reject the new point of view (or, we hope, put it on hold), rather than rejecting their experience, which would be foolish.

People can be close-minded, unwittingly or out of arrogance, and certainly that does play a part in the resistance to new ideas. But I think simple, innocent cognitive dissonance, and the potential difficulties of resolving that, even for someone who is trying wholeheartedly, can also play a significant role in this resistance. To the extent that's true -- and perhaps even if it isn't -- we should strive to be more understanding, for our own sake and for another's, of people who resist (even irrationally) unfamiliar ideas or paradigms, however rightfully convinced we may be of their truth or urgency.

Anne, I fully second your recommendation of Derrick Jensen's The Culture of Make Believe -- I read it about two months ago myself. Very thick book, but it makes for fast reading. I posted a few excerpts at http://unironicm.us/e (scroll down to May 30, Jun 1, and Jun 5).

[P-Tar]

"The opposite of a simple truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great Truth is ALSO true."

Nice semantic arguments, guys. I'll try to retain the good bits for my next philosophical pissing match. I think the original point of the whole "truth" section of the article was that what one accepts to be "truth" when heard is largely determined by what "filters" one uses to sort information. Those using the "Liberal Hippie Douche" filter, for instance, are largely deaf to what people using the "Conservative Ultra-Nationalist Redneck" filter have to say, and vice versa.

On the subject of hierarchy, natural cycles, and us Humans being the only creatures that unbalance the system...

Not to burst your comfy eco-bubble, BUT... chimps, dogs, cats, chickens, lobsters, baboons, lions, and a lot of other animals have clear social hierarchies, with lots of benefits for being on top: food, sex, shelter... and competition for those choice spots in the hierarchy.

The baboons in particular operate in bands with scouts fanning out daily in all directions, whereby the group makes decisions as a sort of distributed neural-net based on the individual's finds and communications. It's clearly outlined in Howard Bloom's books "The Lucifer Principle" and "Global Brain".

Chimps and such build empires of a sort and even go to war; they just never last longer than the lead chimp does before disintegrating. Happens in human cultures too, at least the ones without the right memetic "social glue" where there's an apparent successor. Look at Alexander's empire, as opposed to the modern American one... which is rapidly losing effective glue to the corrosive efforts of target marketing and general contempt for the populace by our elite decision makers.

There will always be hierarchy no matter what people do to try to deny it for cuddly egalitarian ideals. Most people who ignore power structures are trying to covertly set up their own by destabilizing the previous order. Easier to attract followers by pretending that the big dogs don't mean shit.

As to "imbalance" versus "balance": you will only find perfect balance in a totally homogenous, closed system, which requires you ignore large outside areas of your chosen system. In reality, everything is always in motion; populations and resources fluctuate. If your ecologically mature hunter-gatherer band wanders into enemy territory in search of food, and the males get clobbered by another band that's learned the art of throwing rocks and making tools, well, that band goes down the toilet, and their mates are taken by the victors. Both are hunter gatherer bands. But where's the balance? One has clearly dominated the other in territory, genes, and technology. This is progress, growth.

Progress involves death to the non-adaptive and unnecessary. We make sculpture by chipping away at a block, and we pave our driveways with the chips. Death is nature's way of saying that your contribution is no longer necessary, save the final one, as raw material for the up and coming. The only way to avoid death then is to stay ahead of the curve. If the deer had evolved thumbs and a neocortex before we had, then maybe the dominant species of this planet would have antlers. Dinosaurs did pretty well before their lack of spacecraft doomed them. Were they still here, we doubtless could not have evolved to our present states.

Even when we get REAL simple and real big, on a cosmic scale, there may be "balance" mathematically, but there is constant evolution. Gravity brings in the early hydrogen and crunches it in stars to make heavier elements, which are distributed by supernova in big enough stars. Thus, matter "evolves" a more complex shape, mass, size... maybe it gets crunched again in another star, maybe it accumulates into a planet. In the planet's case, interactions between the elements start producing amino acids and such, which become more and more complex proto-lifeforms... ad nauseum.

If this process were a process of "balance" or a "cycle", then there would be no progression: everything would return to how it was. Maybe there'll be a Big Crunch. But the Universe seems to be expanding too quickly. To call it linear progression is indeed a form of scientific myopia: in fact, when viewed from a proper perspective, this "balance" which is really quite imbalanced, grows like a spiral (which looks like a string with a wave function when spiral growth is viewed as cross-section in motion). Common center, always new territory to explore in the outside, and old territory is constantly integrated in the growth... either consumed for material or used as structure for the next wave of evolution, perhaps both.