Stream of Conciousness

I have always been interested in the origins of rationality. Logic and reasoning skills are universally useful and are applied every day, subconciously or actively, to solve problems both trivial and complex. Indeed, the ancient Greeks figured that every mystery of the universe could be solved by sitting in their armchairs and thinking hard. And who could blame them? Intuition is such a powerful construct whose daily benefits are massive. From even small assumptions, the Greeks were able to meter out a massive wealth of mathematical knowledge and philosophical views of the universe. Though eventually stumped by various nonintuitive discoveries such as irrational numbers, this view of life as defined by rationality is a noble one, a way to bring sense and meaning to the world around us. The Greeks, with the establishment of mathematical proof, finally captured one of the most elusive yet sought after properties of the universe: Undeniable, undoubtable Truth.

Humans seem to be naturally drawn to truth; it has an innate beauty that satisfies our imagination. Truth is sacred; it is an anchor for our rationality, a diving board for our logic. Whenever we ask "Why?" (and our species seems enamored with the question), what we are really seeking is the truth behind a long chain of reasoning. Culturally, we glorify truth, we paint it as a shining light that breaks through the darkness of obfuscation, cover ups, lies and deceptions. Truth is a universal constant that can never lead us astray, it is by definition infallible, a glowing beacon that lights up our pitch black universe and grants us vision, however dim, of how things really are.

Nevertheless, it is not something we can always pursue. Nobody can specialize in every field of every science. Our biological needs far outweigh our intellectual curiosity. Indeed, the powerful current that drags us through our life often buries our curiosity as we fight instead to stay afloat. How does the human mind cope with truth in this kind of world? How can it juggle our emotional, physical and societal needs and still pursue truth? We need to build a mental castle, one capable of weathering the storm.

From a very young age, we begin laying the bricks for our imaginary castle. In our heads, we start modeling the kinds of truths we need to cope with. Basic truths about life, the universe and everything build up the foundation. We erect high castle walls to protect us. Inside, things are ordered, sensible, reasonable. We establish morality, philosophy, and humanity as fundamental pillars that we need not question. Inside our castle, we are able to cope with the unpredictable hurdles life throws at us. We can deal with loss, sorrow, and pain. We can develop relationships and pursue goals without needing to venture outside these hospitable walls. Every single one of us has this castle of inner convictions in our heads. The questions that really bother us, the questions of good and evil, of pointlessness and purpose, cannot constantly bombard us and we are able to live happy and fruitful lives. But sometimes, that is all we do.

I don't mean to sound condescending. There is grandeur in this view of life, after all. We love our families, make new friends, exceed our own expectations, achieve our goals. This method of building a castle is how we are able to be so happy in such a cruel world. It is not ignorant to remain within these walls and I believe that real happiness is not defined by how much you have ventured outside, how much you've gambled to gain or lose. Our castle is a thriving kingdom, and it need not make itself an imperial one.

This mindset is so hospitable, it makes sense that we never have to leave it. We need not feel afraid of outside dangers, because we are safe inside these walls. But sometimes, maybe after an invigorating rest, when we take a deep breath and all seems calm, we take just a peek beyond our walls. Suddenly, a glimmer catches our eye. Something just beyond the veil, cloaked in shadow but teasing us with its beauty. Truth is out there, just out of the reach of our battlements, just beyond the edge of reason. It is safe to advance, send a scouting party and chance the dangers. Being wary now of getting lost in the metaphor, we question, we doubt, we analyze the world around us, regardless of the answer. Worst case scenario, we retreat behind our walls and ride out the storm. When we grow bolder, we start building legions, little armies of reasoning, to attack into the unknown. We employ intuition, logical reasoning and rationality to supply us with a way to escape our own castle walls. These 'arguments' are almost never perfect. Our Santa Claus theories certainly seemed sensible at the time, but even when they were struck down, it did not hurt us. Despite the loss, we have our sturdy walls to protect us, and we even brought back inside a kernel of truth we lacked prior.

At some point of intellectual blossoming, we reach a critical juncture. Our armies have scoured the surrounding land and we are more than well-adapted enough to live in total mental comfort. But beyond the river that decides our kingdom's border, the glimmer shines again. We face a choice, and I think it is a choice that many people conciously recognize. If we cross this river, this rational Rubicon, we lose our safety net. If our reasoning is not sound enough, if we meet truths we've never considered before but expose us as utterly wrong, there is no turning back. We will not have our castle walls to rely on. Instead, our own beliefs will be violently pushed into the waters and we must accept that they were wrong, no matter how fundamentally it shakes our worldview.

When people have arguments or debates, they often never cross this line. The two castles' armies at war seem to, more often than not, stare at eachother from across the river and shout uselessly. If somebody makes the choice to live within their walls, to never venture past the immediate borders and cross the Rubicon, you will never persuade them of anything beyond self-evident matters such as our Santa Claus example. You cannot break these armchair philosophers because they will never sacrifice their arguments to see the evidence, to critically examine the claims. To them, the castle of mental fortitude is too important and rewarding to risk fracture, no matter what the opposition claims. This may seem maddening. "If only I could present this evidence in another way, show them a line of thinking they've never seen before, then they would accept my argument." This plea is simply wisful thinking; it does not address the root of closemindedness. The argument itself may be more than satisfactory to be accepted, but it will never pierce the castle walls of its target.

If instead we cross the fabled point of no return, what awaits beyond is a jungle of exotic and dangerous truths. To reach this point, we must have made powerful armies of reason. But no matter how vast and well-equipped our legions are, we have no guarentee of safety. This territory is a burial ground for arguments even more robust than ours, a place where, to quote Huxley, many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact. It may seem strange to sacrifice what you had regarded for so many years as positively true by unearthing a single contradictory fact, but in the eyes of the truth we can do no less.

A personal example of this was a lesson I learned growing up. The more I ventured forward intellectually, the more I grew certain I was closing in on a specific inescapable truth. I learned later the truth I was digging at was a philosophical concept known as Determinism. I reasoned that if every action is the result of the action prior, like tracing a billiard ball's path back to the cue, then there could exist only one possible outcome for any one action. Along this vein, if the brain was a series of chemical reactions determined solely by the chemical reaction prior, then even intuitively 'free' thought was predetermined by the thoughts prior. And all these actions were predetermined still by the events prior to them. Thus, if the universe had an initial event, it alone determined the state of all matter at any point in the future, including the thoughts I was having right then. Randomness, as a concept, was an illusion! This struck me as so powerful and yet so elegant that I just had to pursue it. If you strike the billiard ball the same way twice, with the exact same conditions both times, what could make it react differently the second time around? This question would need a positive, provable answer for my reasoning to fall into jeapordy, and I was sure none existed. Valiantly, foolishly, I thrust my army across the Rubicon and exerted it as fact.

It wasn't until my early college years that I met the resistance that ultimately felled my theory. My chemistry professor devoted one of the opening days of class to basic quantum theory. He stated that it acted at such a small scale, all sense of 'ordinary' or 'weird' was out the window. We, as non-physics majors, could only hope to understand quantum theory through simplified models that wouldn't do justice to its potency. However, one of the strangest and yet most profound aspects of quantum theory is its unpredictability. As he reasoned with the class, he made it clear that yes, quantum mechanics were truly random. There was no lurking variable that could explain the results of quantum mechanics in a deterministic way. In fact, it has been proven no such variable could exist. This idea, I instantly recognized, would demolish my entire elegant, articulate view of the universe. I pressed the professor after class, hoping for some defense of determinism, some aspect of quantum theory that was incomplete and held out hope for my dying, beautiful argument. He struck me down. My billiard example failed at a quantum level. Replace the cue ball with the electron and strike it with the same conditions, and it will take a different path. "Unfortunately," he concluded, "God really does play dice."

Without mercy, my army was swept into the churning waters, fated to drown in its heavy armament. No matter how articulate and intuitive and sensible my stance was, it was not the truth, and that made it worthless. I knew I had to go back to the castle with this new ugly truth and re-examine my convictions. I would have loved to have rewound time, kept my army safe on the wet sands of the riverbank and stared across at the professor. "Quantum theory is interesting," I would have thought, "but it's far too messy to be true." His spears and barbs would have bounced harmlessly against my castle wall, while inside I would go about my day, hang with friends and family, work and eat and sleep, and occasionally trot out my army of determinism, convinced in its infallibility.

Why then, would we ever venture outside our castles? Why press our armies across the river if we risk losing them forever? Because the small kernel of truth we gain in exchange is more powerful. No matter how tiny, the very fact that it is provably true makes it infinitely stronger than any contradictory conviction. With this kernel of truth, in this case of quantum mechanics, we can build a new army, a stronger one. We will have to study, employ our logic and reason, critically analyze and rebuild from scratch our army, this time an army of indeterminism. Armed with our new truth, we can tackle any legion that resembles the one we lost. No matter how shiny their armor or how sharp their swords, we have a truth they lack, and that makes us immortal. Until, of course, we hit an ugly fact and once again have our ranks broken. But each time this occurs, we lose less, and we rebuild stronger. This kind of theory-building has been occuring between great minds since the dawn of the scientific method. By now, any curious mind can visit a library and see, inscribed within the pages of history, the great medieval armies that were washed away, and the modern battalions that dominate scientific thought. When we survey these various and vast juggernauts, a tiny fear strikes us that maybe we've found it all, we've dug out every last glorious kernel of truth. But the moment that fear strikes us it is quelled instantly by that glimmer, just past the horizon, just out of reach. We are slowly, piece by piece, army by army, illuminating the universe. This light finally awakens us to the realization that for millions of years we were blind, and yet now we see far into the distance. Just far enough to spot the next torch to be lit, the next vein to be dug, the next truth to threaten our armies, the next chapter in our insatiable intellectual legacy.