DELUSIONS — Pragmatic Realism

by Stanislaw Kapuscinski (aka Stan I. S. Law)

  We seldom find teachers who assume full responsibility for their pupils’ level of advancement. It is true that parents of limited intelligence tend to impose restrictions on the means teachers can employ in their teaching, but the consequences are a general malaise in the educational system.

  Furthermore, the teachers are deprived of being able to impose any form of discipline on the children (the pupils), and thus can hardly be held responsible for the lack of results. Under the circumstances, in order to protect their jobs, teachers are, more or less, forced to lower the ‘pass’ standards of their classes. The consequence of this ‘educational’ system results in hordes of ‘graduates’ unable to read or right.

  Those juvenile delinquents are then picked up by colleges of ‘higher learning’ on the so-called sports scholarships, and eventually enter the adult world with virtually no general knowledge, often with inordinate amount of money, and their bodies full of steroids.

  Parenthetically, in the first decade of this millennium, in the USA, rookies in professional basketball had been paid between $800,000 and $2 million a year. Their average income would rise to $10 million a year, while the ‘stars’ would exceed $25 million. With endorsements, this figure can surpass $35 million annual income. Michael Jordan is said to have earned that much in 2004. Ability to read or write is not a requirement. In baseball, their poor cousins make, on average, only $3 million per year. The premier league professional soccer players in the UK are not far behind.

  Just to sate your interest, an average annual income of a neurosurgeon for an average of 40-hour week (2080-hour year), as calculated by the US Government Bureau of Labor Statistics, come to $219,770, with the upper 10% reaching or even exceeding $300,000. Jackson & Coker (the physician recruitment firm) survey of median neurosurgeon salary in the Northeast of the US places it at around $500,000. Almost one/twentieth of an average baseball player salary, or one/fortieth of a better one. Next time you have a brain tumor I suggest you use a baseball bat.

  By the way, elementary school instructors average $50,500; about one/two-hundredth of an average baseball player. Good luck with your children.

  This absurd disparity between the compensations awarded in professional sport and other non-producing industries is a powerful stimulus for the young to give up education in the pursuit of easier modi vivendi.

  Until this matter is regulated and teachers (and not administrators or even parents) become, once again, in full charge of education, the level of pupils acumen will continue to cascade downwards. Regardless of the teachers’ income.

  At present, the schooling system (barring great exceptions) is suggestive of devolution. One must also remember what I mentioned in Chapter 6—Phase Two. It is imperative that we, humans, take over the process of natural selection, and take charge of our evolutionary process. Regrettably, to date, our efforts tend to weaken even our response to diseases; we rely more and more on chemicals to supplement our immune system developed over millions of years. One could blame the biochemical conglomerates for their inordinate greed, but they, too, consist of individual people who appear to practice the Darwinian creed (actually coined by the British philosopher Herbert Spencer) of the “survival of the fittest,” or, at the very least, the richest. Or greediest? Recently I heard on the News, that more people die prematurely as the consequence of excessive use of prescription drugs that of cocaine and heroin combined. If true, it doesn’t say much for the evolutionary development of our medical profession.

  Still, in School we are supposed to learn, no matter what the cost. Regrettably, few of us do. Hence, devolution.

  Finally, I am often surprised that biologists limit their ‘religious’ inclinations, or more often lack of them, to Darwinian precepts. Noble and pragmatic though they might be, they (I assume rightly) exclude divine intervention from dipping its fingers in the evolutionary process. The word divine can be interpreted in any number non-religious ways. I met women who were simply divine. Some desserts I had…

  Basically, anyone acting proactively, as against reactively, can be considered to act in a divine manner. It is the non-Darwinian, or proactive ethic that stops us from imposing our ‘natural’ sexual instincts on the opposite sex. In the Darwinian sense, this is wasteful and non-productive. In this context the statement by George Bernard Show, “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one,” is particularly erroneous. There is a very fundamental difference (I hate that word…). The believer may be happier than a skeptic by having examined both sides of the equation and having chosen the one which pleased him/her more. The same is true of the opposite conclusion, of course. He/she had made a conscious decision. A drunken man is in no position to make conscious decisions of any nature. He, or his biological makeup, reacts to the stimulus of alcohol. He is slave to his urges, unable to make a balanced decisions; no more so than any animal responding to its conditioning. Thus, he has no idea if he’s happy or not. I have been told that two cats (of the opposite sex) can produce 500 kittens within a period of two years. The question is should they? Can the environment in which they do so support their progeny. They don’t care. Nor would a drunken man. But what of his happiness when he sobers up?

  I am yet to discover what universal forces, or laws, do the evolutionary biologists hold responsible for lack of evolution, (not life only evolution), on the Moon, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and other places of interplanetary interest. Does natural selection only begin when there is something to select? If not, what was non-evolving before the evolution began? Or, simply, what does one select? Was it all a lucky accident? Or is there an inherent energy, a property, in the matrix of the universe that precipitates the onset of the evolutionary process—like a number of other universal laws espoused by physicists. It seems to me that theoretical physicists are much more creative in inventing laws that suit their purposes. Whatever those might be.

  There is another aspect of our psyche that undergoes evolution during this stage. For the first time, we, the nascent individuals, consider the question of dualism of our reality. I do not just mean up-and-down, black-and-white, hot-and-cold. What I am referring to is the dualism which we detect in our own nature. This manifests in the recognition of both the physical and non-physical aspects of our being. I suspect that evolutionary biologists would tend to assign all non-physical aspects of our make up to be strictly reactive. Our non-physical makeup is variously defined as our emotions, psyche, mind, spirit, soul, id, atma and possibly a number of other more esoteric terms.

  Biologists refer to those who recognize both aspects of their nature as dualists. The scientists define them as people who separate their mind from their body. The other group, are referred to as monists. Usually, the scientists regard themselves as monists, as, indeed I consider myself. From the pragmatic point of view, I have no choice but to consider myself a monist. There is a problem, though.

  Most monistic scientists regard matter as the only reality. They believe, and it is definitely an act of faith, that mind is the product of the brain, which has developed, over millions, perhaps billions of years, from an amoeba. I could go further back, but there is no need to confuse the issue. As for this group of monists, in a way, you might say that they regard themselves as very advanced amoebae.

  Well, to each his own. Her own?

  I repeat I, too, am a monist. But I have never been an amoeba. I have, some time ago, used the rudimentary biological structure of an amoeba to find my expression in the dualistic reality, but my reality, my real awareness, has always resided in the freedom of monistic reality. I have always been, and continue to be an indivisible part of an ubiquitous mind: intangible, non-judgmental, timeless, ubiquitous mind. I prefer to define it a consciousness. Mind, usually, performs a function. Consciousness just is, though it seems to contain infinite attributes waiting to be discovered.

  The French philosopher, René Descartes, once defined his being by the fact that
he ‘thought’ himself capable of thought. Of thinking. We all know the phrase. Je pense donc je suis. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. This admonition is known in every language under the sun. What is not known is that very few people show evidence that they think. No more so than an amoeba. No more then is required of them to stay ‘alive’. Well, an advanced amoeba. But, surely, those people still are, aren’t they?

  And here we enter the pragmatic essence of the illusion of dualism. Monists, my type of monists, are people who do not differentiate between the reality of being and becoming. The being aspect is static, undifferentiated from the omnipresent consciousness. The becoming part is the individualization of that state. Let us never forget that in Latin individual means, indivisible.

  After millennia of scientific evolution, the scientists are beginning to reach the conclusion, which the great mystics of the past tried, unsuccessfully, to share with us, the advanced amoebae.

  Maya, they said. It is all an illusion…

  The world, the material reality, is the product of our minds. Essentially, it is empty space. Yes, to repeat, it is 99.9999999999999% empty space. So are our brains. Even the monist scientists agree, though they are yet ready to interpret this fact and draw pragmatic conclusions. And yet, we, the individualized states of the omnipresent consciousness can use them, those highly evolved empty brains of ours, to do justice to René Descartes. Well, some of us at least try.

  Chapter 14

  Atheist’s Delusion

  Let us have but one end in view, the welfare of humanity; and let us put aside all selfishness in consideration of language, nationality, or religion.

  John Amos Comenius

  Moravian bishop, educator (1592—1670)

  For all their denials the atheists, that’s those who don’t believe in an old-fashioned god we’ve created in our own image, are irrevocably tied to the Biblical model of man. Nothing, but nothing that doesn’t resemble man is taken to have any ‘human’ (read intelligent) characteristics. For some unknown reason (actually it’s hardly surprising), biologists in particular cannot imagine life on a non-Earthlike planet. When searching the universe for habitable environment, they search for an atmosphere, gravitation, and other ecological characteristics, which resemble Earth. And they do this in spite of being well aware of both, aerobic and anaerobic life forms right here in our own backyard, not to mention in our stomachs.

  There is one notable exception: J. Craig Venter of the Life Decoded. Peripherally, even though in his interview with Richard Dawkins he admits to playing god, but not to actually rejecting god, he did so on another occasion, namely on November 21, 2010, on the 60 Minutes TV program, by stating that he does not believe in God. In that sense, he more or less repeats the words of Jesus Christ, and Moses. The two references are:

  “I and my father are one.”

  “Thou shall have no other gods before me.” (Me being I AM).

  Playing god, with or without a capital G, is equivalent to belief in oneself. No more, and no less. And attempting to adapt human genome to survive in other than earthly environment is as close to playing God as you can get. The late mystic, Paul Twitchell, once said that, “the only way to be a Master is to act like a Master.” The same thing applies to the concept of god, only this concept is without limits.

  I’ll offer an example, which at first sight might seem juvenile. But, bear with me. Imagine you’re the president of a vast country. Say, like the United States. The citizens in your charge are democrats, and they all exercise free will. Now, humanity develops, and you are elected president of Earth. The United Terrestrial Republics. Like in science fiction. The citizens still exercise free will, but, well, the buck stops at your feet. Later, we develop interplanetary travel. Centuries later (a man or woman like) you becomes the president of the United Planets of the Sol system. Are you getting close to being god?

  But wait. Gravity is conquered, wormholes are discovered (astrophysicists talk about them even now) and, in time, someone is elected the president of the Via Lactis Galaxy. It is still a democratic system, based on free will of the member solar systems, planets, nations. But one person is in charge. Is she a god? And if not, how many galaxies must combine to raise a person to a divine status?

  The point of this exercise is to prove that power does not define divinity. To be god, you must act like god. Or as a man walking this Earth once said, “be perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect.” A tall order.

  The atheists seem to have problems in realizing that; hardly surprising, considering the nonsense that religions disseminated for thousands of years.

  Nevertheless, to my knowledge, while Venter prefers to convert thousands (or is it millions) of planets to earth-like climate through the use of pathogens, only Kurzweil accepts fully that life can become manifest in completely non-biological forms. Of course, Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity is Near), is not a biologist and thus does not define life as a biological infestation.

  Nevertheless, scientists (my hero amongst them) continue to insist that ‘life’ (as they know it) originated on Earth. “Because we are here,” is their typical scientific postulation, bordering on religious affirmation. The DNA molecules, indispensible for the development and future evolution of biological forms of life, may have splashed into one of a million earthly prebiotic soups via a million meteors, comets or other debris falling from beyond our solar system. This is particularly possible since Earth, indeed our Solar System, is relatively young even in our galaxy. While the Milky Way is estimated to have formed some 13.2 billion years ago, our solar system is calculated to be only about 4.6 billion years old. Did the galaxy wait for Earth to come of age?

  As for Dawkins’s desire to spend “money on trying to duplicate the event (of spontaneous DNA formation) in a laboratory,” I hope he proposes to use his own money. Actually, I do hope he’ll save even his own money, particularly since, by his own admission, and as mentioned in Chapter 6, natural selection is a continuous process and thus will assure us of a million new species proliferating our Earth, within just a few million years. Couldn’t he just wait and see? He probably forgot that, being gods, we are immortal. Shouldn’t we rather spend the money on reducing the biological infestation, which has recently passed the 7 billion mark? Gently, humanely, lovingly, using expert scientific knowledge, of course. If we leave nature to do her magnificent ‘thing’, she’ll continue to rely on quantity, in the hope of stumbling upon a rare, magnificent example of quality. Could we not help her, just a little, in the quality department?

  Not by engaging in some pathological version of über alles; but, perhaps, our illustrious scientists could come up and instill genetically in our oligarchies a way of encouraging them to find some relation between personal income and the IQ?

  Religions couldn’t do it, can the scientists? Aren’t they the experts? Or don’t they care…

  And talking of experts…

  My distant cousin wrote his doctoral thesis on the parasites making their home in the excrement of bats. He now is a doctor of biology, a Ph.D., and an expert on, well, on the parasites living in the excrement of bats. I forgot to ask him if he knows how to tie his own shoelaces. What I am trying to say is that a true expert knows almost everything about almost nothing.

  But things get worse…

  Recently, I noticed a veritable onslaught of ‘experts’ pervading all levels of our society. There are experts on every subject under the sun, ranging from the erroneous forecasting of weather (“We’re number one in accurate forecasting” statement virtually guaranties wrong forecasts), to how to save yourself from becoming overweight, from overeating, from not eating often enough; how to protect yourself from insomnia, diabetes, arthritis, or succumbing to a long list of incurable diseases. This is followed by experts on how to enlarge your genitals, primary and secondary sexual characteristics, developing macho pecks, washboard abs, attractive glutei maximi, and any other internal and external organs which, it is purported, will enhance the
quality of your life.

  If you are a non-atheist, (or don’t confess to being one) then, for a mere $600 you can become a Doctor of Theology, Doctor of Divinity, or Doctor of Ministry, or of Sacred Music… which, if you are a seeker of divine presence, will enable you to put Rev., or Rev. Dr., or just Dr. in front of your name, and/or D. Div., or Th.D., or, I presume any letters of the alphabet that tickle your fancy, after your name. I believe that the name itself you must supply yourself. The fee, by the way, includes being ordained…

  Finally, your ever-present TV box will offer you advise on national and international politics, economics, religious beliefs, as well as technology, astronomy, astrology, mumbo-jumbo and an infinite number of self-cures.

  My little research into the subject of expertise will show that the vast majority of experts are as ignorant on the subject on which their pontificate as your average Tom, Dick or Harry (no offence to Your Royal Highness). There are courses offered which, within two hours, or, if you want to spend more money, within two weeks, will certify you as an expert on virtually any subject under the sun, and a few outside the solar system. At this rate, assuming a 40-hour-week, you can become an authority on approximately 20 subjects within a single week, 1040 subjects within a single year. If you prefer ‘in-depth’ 2-week immersion courses, you can develop a TV-worthy expertise in 26 subjects, also within a year. Who needs university?

  And finally there are the Ph.Dicks of the meteorological department of Canada, experts no doubt, who seem unable to look out through the window and coordinate their visual observations with the nonsense they display, daily, on the computers screens. Shame.