sixtruths.org

Trying to Explain Things

2008-10-17T23:05:34Z

I don't know how much time I will have to keep this website rocking and rolling but I feel that the things I say from this point forward need to be grounded by the way in which I view reality. Each person's view of the world is obviously constantly evolving but I feel that my development has brought me to a point where I can effectively communicate the core of my set of values.

They should not be taken by you as the ONLY way in which any person can view this world. This is my window, one you are more than welcome to peer out of. My hope is that you might find guidance or solace in these words but that you use them to better help construct a philosophy that suits you - and you alone.

Basis of Thought

The only thing you know for sure is that you don't know anything outside of your perceptions. You can only perceive the world through your senses - both physical and metaphysical. This physical and metaphysical dichotomy manifests itself into your consciousness through both objective and subjective facts, though neither are specifically tied to which type of sensory perception you used to feel them.

Objective facts are those we hold to be self-evident (the sky is blue, for example). Still, they still require an individual to come to a consensus of perception with others around him in order for seemingly objective facts to have actual meaning. By that I mean that people must together agree that they are seeing a blue sky and will call that sky blue. Without that consensus of perception, you have no blue sky.

Subjective facts are debated and then later adopted into a collective consciousness (ie, 9/11 was carried out by Al-Qaeda). Whether or not a subjective fact is true cannot be objectively ascertained because no person can ever perceive the world from a place beyond their senses. A consensus of perception is still required to help explain make these facts as objective as possible.

Notice that both objective and subjective facts are twinned in requiring a consensus of perception. This makes both objective and subjective facts subject to perception, effectively making both object and subjective facts the same. All sensory information is subjective but the key here is to realize neither type of fact is possible without an external consensus to reaffirm what you believe as fact. Truth becomes the ability for two people to agree upon a given perception.

Taken a step further, the very idea of self-consciousness can be thought of as structured realization of your collective perception. Your intellectual freedom requires the constant maintenance of sorting through the perception of a given fact. Because both objective and subjective facts are indeed subjective in this paradigm, you must constantly evaluate the relevance of facts.

This does not assume that we are all one; in fact quite the opposite. Your ideas are very much your own, yet, the facts you use to create your reality are collectively agreed upon. They provide you the basis with which you create your higher thoughts. In a sense, your individual freedom rests on the idea that you need to be able to perceive that freedom through examination.

Would you exist without anyone else to tell you? Probably in the flesh yes but for all intensive purpose, you would not. The things that make you and your sense of self are defined by communities and society in general. You cannot reason alone. Without society, you cannot be human - just a smart monkey with slightly less hair.

Digging Into the Nature of Thought

As everything is merely a collection of perceptions, there is no truth as you might currently think of it. Remember that we have established truth is just an agreement between two parties here. Therefore, consciousness and reality can only be known in terms of how sure you are of the tenets on which you rest. This makes the journey of life an experiment in evaluating the objectivity of your perceived consensus.

For example, I know I believe I exist and that I enjoy bicycles. To be fully sure of that, I must take the bike and experience it. Comparing this experience with others creates the reality of the enjoying the bicycle and ostensibly, the reality that both myself and my control group exist. Without this external reference, the ride itself exists solely as my perception (as does the idea of myself) so neither can subjectively carry any type of judgment, be it good or bad. The very idea of emotional judgment (good/bad, happy/sad) has to be relative to the perspective of the participants making those judgments.

With this background, we can firmly say that these baskets of perceptions are basis of thought. All higher thinking comes as a function of weaving perceptions into thoughts. This action is the essence of reason and what it means to be human.

From Your Thoughts Comes Your World

We have established people are effectively combinations of agreed upon perceptions which we have tagged as 'facts'. Tapestries of these perceptions verified by other human beings becomes what we refer to as reality. Each view of reality is based up on how much community interaction each thought you have was given.

Intelligence is then a reflection of the depth of investigation a given individual has performed on his tapestry, including all perceptions about facts. From this it follows that a community is defined around which facts it can best verify, slowly forming a group united around those general ideas upon which they can be agree.

Globalization has obfuscated this process so look back to simpler times to get a crude sense of what's going on here. Before civilization existed, a simple caveman knew nothing about his surroundings. Sure, the caveman knew what he had to do to eat, survive and such but at that point, he was not very different than any other animal foraging around in the woods. And then, at some point, the caveman realized he could sharpen a spear to take down the other animals.

Observing cavemen may not have understood the interworkings of the spear or the fact it is a tool but they could agree on the results of what they saw - caveman with sharp pole eats more than caveman with no pole. Even at that crude level, the cavemen are agreeing, without words perhaps but still forming an agreed perception around the idea of hunting with tools. The concept of 'hunting' or 'tools' was too advanced at that point but grasping the concept of grasping a concept made them human. Again, reasoning makes us human.

Communities Build a Society

Now we have created two general ideas:

-Collective perception creates the ability to reason and, more generally, idea of being human
-Humans need other humans to collectively perceive, creating communities in the process

We now know human reasoning requires other humans to have actual value, truth in a sense. This forces humans together into communities to examine and validate their ideas further. This gave rise to the first communities who defined themselves based upon the ability to hunt and the first nomadic societies based upon improved hunting techniques.

In modern times, this may manifest itself quite differently. It may mean that the Australian community contributes the best idea of kangaroo to the wider globalized society while the American community best understands the American Civil War, and so on and so forth. Even with those country communities, there are further experts on individual subjects, acting as anchors of their own intellectual corners of the world. Leaders of these communities are likely also the thought leaders with extremely specialized knowledge of certain areas, around which other members of the community can rally (ie, a master architect or proficient molecular biologist).

These same leaders and everyone else can be a part of different communities, testing their knowledge and broadening into other fields in the process. Yet, overlapping communities do not denote intelligence, although a tight correlation should be expected. A master cocaine dealer may not be intelligent in the ways an Yale-tenured law professor would recognize, but he/she would nonetheless command a dedicated community. All these thought leaders would create communities based on a variety of things, but at their core, they would be based upon collective perception - all warping their realities to create a set of facts that would allow them to best function. Each group then contributes their best talents and knowledge back into the great whole, creating our society.

What We Are Doing With Ourselves

In essence, each person is building a layered cake whose inner most layers are what we would call objective facts. Subjective facts, although the same, are layered on top of the objective facts which creates the foundation of thought. These thoughts form morals, principles, helping to guide individual verification experiments or life more generally.

A journey of intense challenge is required so that you know your facts and reality are not abstractions of your own creation. Community becomes the basis for reality - this is why dissenting opinions of subjective fact encounter such hostility. Strong dissent can deconstruct an entire communities' reality, not just that of the individual. This is also why organizational behavior can reinforce alternate realities larger groups may find unfathomable (holocaust denial, for example).

Those closest human relationships we hold become our basis for truth, reality and society; as they dissolve so does our objectivity for life. We become the lone tree on the prairie. Man cannot know he is man without his fellow man.

This extreme, tightly woven relationship helps explain why people put such high value on community, and more broadly, nationality. Attacks on a community or country become attacks on the individual, since it is the individual that makes the community. He is not only a part, he is the whole.

This approach does have drawbacks though. The group also pressures its members to give up their freedom because individual thought can destroy both community and reality. Free thinkers may be forced to leave reality as their challenges could potentially destroy all communities, even society given a large enough issue. They may need to band together, as any other group, to form their own realities. Despite the potential conflicts, each group contributes something to the larger whole to form a society, the outer layer of the cake.

To Go Alone, The Question

An interesting paradox creates itself in the process: groups pressure individuals to be parts of the group but require their individuality to validate the group's existence. Pressure is great on both sides to conform and rebel. A total rebellion resulting in complete isolation could render that person enlightened given enough time to reflect. Without coming back to society at some point, that same person is no smarter than the rocks he was amongst for no one could gauge his intelligence. Likewise, total conformity soothes the community but it may complete impinge on that person's ability to be free - hence the need for outside community interaction. The concept of freedom is complicated though.

On Freedom

Freedom is a central idea that is severely threatened by this paradigm but freedom must be further understood to be examined properly. Freedom is not an inherited right from birth as many may assume. We are all born into some reality, community and society, even an orphan. Various levels of indoctrination are faced by children as they mature but few if any could objectively see this as a limitation on their freedom at that young age.

Few adults even realize the role they are playing in limiting freedom. In some sense, all parental control nullifies the idea of any objective reason from a very early age - and if parents weren't there certainly society would immediately fill that void. Unless someone is conscious of this process, it is very possible they may never be free.

With age, each person must seek the 'other case' - that is a rejection of what is, to them at least, in search of what could be. Outright abandonment of all ties to reality, community and society are not necessarily required. The degree of childhood indoctrination will likely be proportional to the degree of abandonment required by each individual but make no mistake - all people must make this break to be free.

Once a more free, objective perspective can be attained by an individual through new realities and communities, said individual can rightly assert a more objective sense of freedom inside of the original community to which he/she was born and more importantly, back onto their own internal fact tapestry.

Obama v McCain on Experience

2008-09-18T18:33:35Z

As this ridiculous 2008 election soldiers on, I keep hearing that what is really helping Mr. McCain at the polls is the fact he is more experienced than Obama. Honestly, when Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinch left the race, having nearly created my dream ticket, I kinda zoned out. Both remaining choices are part of Congressional body that has a 9% approval rating, yet they are 'mavericks' and 'agents of change'? At least one man wants this charade to end. I digress. [NOTE: above image is a reproduction of a great poster created by PJ Chmiel]

Regardless, this morning, I received a little message that got me slightly involved again:

You couldn't get a job at McDonalds and become district manager -
after 143 days of experience.

You couldn't become chief of surgery -
after 143 days of experience of being a surgeon.

You couldn't get a job as a teacher and be the superintendent -
after 143 days of experience.

You couldn't join the military and become a colonel -
after a 143 days of experience.

You couldn't get a job as a reporter & become the nighty news anchor -
After 143 days of experience.

BUT.... 'From the time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate. That's how many days the Senate was actually in session and working.

After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, leader of the Free World . .. 143 days.

We all have to start somewhere. The senate is a good start, but after 143 days, that's all it is - a start. AND, strangely, A large sector of the American public is okay with this And Campaigning for him.

We wouldn't accept this in our own line of work, Yet Some are okay with this for the President of the United States of America? Come on folks, we are not voting for the next American Idol! Please, please forward this before it's too late!!!!

143 days? I know Obama is young by presidential standards but something about this just seemed 'loaded' to me (and the fact it was from a christian fundamentalist didn't help my suspicions). Seeing as the name of this site is sixtruths, I thought maybe it was time to live up to that moniker. Its been a slow workday for me so I took 30-45 minutes of my time to figure this one out.

Is McCain that much more experienced than Obama? (I also included Bush as a point of reference for experience).

The Facts

George W. Bush never held a federal office before becoming commander-in-chief. He was governor of Texas for about 6 years, which amounts to about 2100 days (Jan 1995-Dec 2000) of experience at only the state level. Being a Texan, I can tell you that in our state constitution the governor position is largely that of a figurehead, akin to how the English monarchy 'leads' the UK. The real power lies in the lieutenant governor position, one Bush never held. Further, he formed an exploratory committee to examine the viability of a presidential bid in March 1999 having served less than 1600 days in state office, zero at the federal level. Sources: http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/02/president.2000/bush/

John McCain joined the US house in January 1983 at age 47, having no prior political experience to speak of, much the same way Obama would join the senate years later. He was a US Congressman for 4 years (1460 days) before becoming a Senator in January 1987, a post he has held to this day ~6800 days. John McCain first formed an exploratory committee to determine if a presidential bid was viable on December 30th, 1999. He had 3200 days in the Senate at that point and about 4600 total days of federal level government experience before launching a bid for the 2000 presidency. Those numbers each increase to roughly 4400 and 5800 days respectively for the 2008 presidential bid (might be off a little).

Barack Obama was first elected to the Illinois senate in January 1997 at age 36, having no prior political experience to that. He was in the Illinois Senate until November 2004, totaling 2700 days. Obama was then elected to the US senate in Jan 2005 and has served there ever since, about 1100 days. He first formed an exploratory committee about a presidential bid in January 2007, having served 3300 days in public service, 2700 of them at the state level and 600 of them at the state level. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011600529.html

Once more...

Just to refresh you, the original email brought into question how many days Obama had in senate experience before (what I assume they are referring to) he had formally launched his presidential exploratory committee, which ascertains whether or not a given candidacy has any realistic potential of succeeding (very debatable - see Al Sharpton).

Here is the quick answer to that question:
About 600 days

The email I received was off by a factor of 4. Now, there is argument to be had in determining how much of that political experience is worthwhile but thats not for here. Determining which days he actually did 'work' is far beyond the capabilities of any chain email to discern, of that I am sure.

To give the email some credit here, Obama may have hinted that he was interested in the presidency far earlier to some source but there are no official references to it, either on the internet or in that email to my knowledge.

This email is especially disingenous because they are trying to conflate Obama's limited politcal experience at the federal level and his vastly greater total politcal experience overall. McCain's experience at the federal level is 8-10X as great as Obama's so the more experienced moniker does fit there. However, in total experience McCain barely hangs onto a his 2:1 advantage. And if you factor in McCain is Obama's senior by 25 years, they are actually relatively similar in public service experience.

A Better Metric

In my opinion, a much more useful statistic with which can compare these men's experience is what percentage of their lives were spent in public service.

Bush - 15 of 62 years or about 24% of his life
McCain - 25 of 72 years or about 35% (jumps to 58% if you count his military time)
Obama - 12 of 47 years or about 26% (jumps to about 34% if you count his time teaching at the university of chicago)

McCain leads the pack by 2X-3X but when his age (72) is compared with Obama (47), again their years in service are more similar (if Obama continues to serve as McCain has).

In Conclusion...

Overall, that email was a complete farse (as I had suspected) but McCain is more experienced than Obama, roughly about twice as experienced. Whether or not that will make him a better commander-in-chief is your decision in November, if Diebold doesn't steal your vote first.

Don't forget those hanging chads...

For the record, I think all three of these men are terrible choices to lead a nation this nation right now, considering none of them have the slightest idea about economics and the true causes of our current recession/depression.

Hello World

2007-04-30T05:23:23Z

I guess its time for that first entry, isn't it?