We have allowed scientific language to rob our vocabulary of the language necessary to experience spiritual reality.
The subconscious flocks to language that fits its desires. And why wouldn’t it? Long multisyllabic explanations for laziness, ailments and other less concrete flaws. Coarse monosyllabic curses to spit the grit of experience back into the world. Pithy terms that signal in-group and out-group distinctions. I want to focus on the first category, the one we kill ourselves through over analysis.
If time is the most valuable currency we have then wouldn’t our language also be efficient in enabling life? Succinct? Rich? Efficient? But instead we find ourselves with a seemingly endless lexicon of acronyms, disorders and deficiencies which if one devotes their time and study towards, are robbed of any capacity to live. We’re so far gone down this path that it takes us doctors to tell us to do the things we intrinsically desired as children. Bask in the sun. Eat meat. Work and play. Life begets life. The unhealthy life revels in long explanations to keep itself sedentary, content and explained (or more often than not insufferably inconvenient) to those who could point out otherwise. An unhealthy life’s breath is spent not resolving its problems but rather describing it, allowing the speaker to languish in the lukewarm stew of inaction. And for what? Because an entire digital tribe also enjoys the same soup and can list its ingredients? Ultimately I know it to be fear. Fear that the onus of doing something with one’s life falls upon the one experiencing it. We all do this.
Language is what harnesses conscious experience like the engine captures ignition for a purpose. It grants the handles we can grasp and navigate this world meaningfully. In turn the ideas we believe and the words we use to interpret reality govern the range of possible actions. Just as the efficacy of a motor determines a vehicle’s range, our speech and the words we use set boundaries to what we can conceive of achieving. As an experiment, describe an experience that you struggle to put to words, lean against the walls left untested around your identity. If you do not have an ineffable experience, I recommend to seek it out before it finds you. Redemption. Peace. Contentedness. Perseverance. Rebirth. These ideas are a few antidotes to the long winded defeatism we put on like warm blankets. Scientific language has become the new opiate for the masses; a warm blanket of determinism that consoles and places the impetus upon the prescription rather than the patient. The painful but liberating truth is that the most crucial determinant of a person’s continued environment is the resident. It all begins in the mind and the language that is used. Let your words ignite you. Let your breath burn hot. Let your thoughts run cold. Let your speech be involuntary but aimed. Don’t fear to speak the truth in your heart. Create poetry. If your mouth gets dry explaining why you cannot or must not, know that you at your core want to stay in that space. Don’t be content with that answer, ask why you want to stay. Ask why till you hit a bedrock. Don’t let an industry, ailment or diagnosis rob you of your life. Know that your life must be experienced before it is understood, and for your life to be understood, it must be described as precisely as you can. You, not someone else.
To clarify, I know there is well intentioned science and genuine ailments in the world. I know chemistry is real and I take ibuprofen when my hip hurts. Dismissing the utility of medicine and scientific reason is not my exhortation. My beef is with this societal over investment in science as an arbiter of truth and the subsequent “scientification” of our language which many use to ignore their conscience and in turn forget its language.
Conscience is a subjective experience and a universal one at that. Science is the aggregate of documented subjective experiences. So why are they so at odds with one another today? It would seem reasonable to say, “I’ll put my faith in science”. And why not? Science, ideally, is an unbiased and structured exercise of curiosity. A noble pursuit of truth by means of measuring the material. Materialism is useful but to view life and the soul purely through this lens is folly. Materialism is attractive to the atheistically predisposed who would deny spirit, but fortunately it has a short philosophical path for the atheist. Many a devout atheist are stumped when they inevitably find themselves staring into an infinite complexity tramples the assumption that it is all simply a byproduct of a blind chaos devoid of intelligence. The folly of God is greater than the wisdom of man. The scientific endeavor, as of recent, has been largely represented by those who hold this atheistic assumption with every fiber of their being. This assumption inevitably comes paired with the belief that morality is simply a convenient system that has arisen out of chaos, the adherence to which holds no existential value beyond its contribution to genetic survival. This conclusion, plainly, is a tragedy. And so the aggregate of scientific consensus with its predisposition for atheism has done everything it can to redefine complexity as statistical inevitability and design as emergent patterns in an effort to provide pseudo intellectual solace through hypnotic multisyllabic obfuscations. If an example is desired I recommend George Carlin’s bit on soft language. A brief aside on comedians: today we make our prophets into jesters so we need not heed them when they speak something true.
My conclusion is that morality is not a convenient construct of our own experience, but rather a gift. A ladder from which we are able to escape from the uncaring chaos of nature in order to reach a vantage point from where we craft the chaos into something that can be wielded for use, ideally in love. Science, as a discipline, is an excellent tool making tool. A great servant but terrible master. Chaos is simply the starting point. The media. Something must shape the chaos into order, function and purpose. That purpose being seen as good by its maker. Is that not what we do when we participate in creation ourselves? So this morality ladder ascends from chaos (absolute zero) infinitely into divinity, which inevitably (and fortunately) is inaccessible to our fallen state. The recurring lesson for the believer is to not worship the ladder (legalism). The path for the unbeliever is placing the responsibility of godhood upon its shoulders and while the Stoic Sisyphean identity is admirable after some meditation it is cruel, self prescribed and not one’s true calling. Another great servant but poor master. It is tragic that spiritual disciplines devolve to the worship of their aesthetic rather than letting it flow out of the truths they are founded upon. Trying to recreate the fruit without tending to the tree. The law of morality in our hearts is both a reminder of how infinitely removed we are from perfection and how sensitive and resonant we are to it, akin to homesickness. One of many markers pointing back to our forgotten heritage.
And so we see science is just one arena where we’ve become reflexive in ignoring our conscience and opting to heed the aggregate. Reason would say this is safe, but the truth is that the aggregate is continually pressured and influenced by the basest of motivations; money, fear and the will to power. Our newfound tools for communication and health have yielded great progress but have also been used as herding implements to prod multitudes of individuals into a fruitless limbo in order to benefit those who wield fear and power. More stew for you! For all the good we conjure and the tools science births, it is also the source of life shattering knowledge that threatens our very existence. The antidote is to yield one’s conscience to an ideal that cannot be fully embodied or fully understood. To yield to God.
We’ve established in the last century that reality itself behaves differently depending on if it’s being observed or not. We can assert subjectivity is directly tied with objectivity. What is the medium through which observation flows? Ideas? Emotions? Perception? That intangible but irrevocably real something that manifests and has its way with our reality through our deeds. We are living conduits of ideas and it’s critical that we get choosey about the ideas we let play out in this plane. This is not a plea to ignore poor ideas, but rather a call to entertain the ideas that most offend us and judge them by their fruits openly. To understand the offense is better than to remain offended and a silly idea should be made known to be silly to all. The more this exercise is embraced at the individual level the faster we will collectively steer away from a multitude of self induced cataclysms. Learn to become the observer of what you think and why. If unable, we find trusted peers and seek their observations in the matter. This is a necessity, however when too many delegate this task of understanding we quickly arrive back to deferring to the aggregate which we’ve established is too volatile like a dog being led by its tail. The tyranny of the lowest common denominator. We must study good and evil to identify the fruits of ideologies. Observe what they have done to us and the environment we’ve crafted. No idea will be perfect since it will be bound within human reason; error and experience are our cruel mentors while we reside in flesh and are bound by time. Death and rebirth are the two steps in growth and humility is the catalyst. Our fate is to ride the asymptote towards perfection. Sacrificing our own substance for a transcendent absolute.
When exercised, you’ll realize you’re not alone and others are on this trail too. While a tribe is a beautiful thing, if you find that you are alone don’t be shy. Share. Become the iota of new data that creates a new fractal. Be the start of a new pattern if you dare but always give credit where it is due. Or be ridiculed and pick a herd. I would encourage you to choose the good shepherd.
All glory to God from who all good things flow.