Reality is created by the sy(mpto)stems of our faith, by the mainaence of our memes, by the keen observation of our wise men, their wonders passed down as by an oracle to be taken as the new faith. How do I know that the earth is round? By the same means as our forefathers may have believed it flat. I was told of its rotundity; I have accepted the facts of my world as a thousand articles of faith, and to that faith I have committed my life. Of course the Earth is round, a thousand trusted sources have told me this, just as I am told that the smallest unit of indivisible matter is an atom. While it may be possible for these things to be proven, the question of my faith in them remains. Why do I believe these things and not others? What grand love of a thousand toothpicks remains the deep and abiding bedrock of my existence? I am a man built upon the assumption of my masculinity, defined by its opposition to femininty, and deeply troubled by the asexual. Reality is defined by the same mechanisms as its maintenance. Our world is known through the relationships we establish with those we trust, with those we do not, with the things we can see, hear, feel, taste, and touch. I believe that cyanide is poison, but I have never seen a man die from it, nor have I tasted its almond scent, pungent with the flavorful odor of death upon my lips. A leap from this and I believe in Japan, Australia, Europe, history, Rhode Island, quantum physics. I believe that E=mc2 even though I have little or no ability to grasp even a moment of its explication. We are not so far removed from Beowulf. Our oral traditions are not so aborignial, not nearly so honest, and no more verifiable. I do not know how my car works, either on a mechanical, chemical, or atomic level. Does this prevent it from starting? Of course not, no more than I am prevented from spending money for lack of economic understanding, or enjoying the weather for deficit in meteorogical familiarity. . The truth of the world supercedes us, it outstrips and outpaces each moment of our understanding. It has been said that there is now more information available in libraries than it is possible to read, process, remember, and understand. The truth of the world is not the acquisition of information, but access to it, and the faculites to contexutalize, order, and eliminate the extraneous. What do we choose as real? Ultimately, it comes down to the body, as all things must. Reality feels right. The rest is only the truth.
Truth is a conclusion
Drawn like a poison
From evidence
Determined by observation
Connected by thoughts
Expressed by words
(Ab)Used by language
Influenced by Culture
Informed by History
Written by Sides
Taken by Tyrants
Supported by Belivers
Resting finally on the bedrock of Faith.
And this is the pathway to enlightenment?
Conclusions are logical
That is they require belief,
Fundamentally in Good old
“If A and B, then C”
the math of logical extension
deduction, abduction, induction
tools of the mind
developed because if something then something else
always a search for that movement
for that something else
Always this desire to put the period at the end of the sentence
Drive the spear into the side
A demand for what we call evidence.
Conclusions are spuious at best
Facts determined by observation.
Funny that cows and philosophers spend so much time ruminating.
Observations limited by our limits
Limits of observation
Limits of machines
Limits of time and history and belief
Observations reduced and fallible.
Facts are disproven by other facts,
Now we have new conclusions
A new end,
An endpoint a new middle.
Facts as ideological constructs are thus temporal
Social
Historical
Facts are not to be trusted, snake oil salesman of the grandest sort.
Periods must be erased
Conclusions redrawn
The well refilled
Truth is a construct
A hope
Rather than a reality
Reality is thus also a construct
And so there goes cause and effect
Cause and effect is an idea
A romance based on logic
The apple fell,
Not because of gravity,
Not because at all.
The apple fell.
There is no past which has passed
No objective,
Verifiable,
Scientific
Then which is provable as having taken place outside of now
There is no history
Only memory
All photos are cropped
All accounts are second hand
First hand having been handed over to the present
And the present jealously guards his time.
If we seek to prove that because A then B,
We will only fail.
All we have is B,
A is an assertion, a guess, a construct, a decision by those in power
That “A” upon which the burden of causation rests doesn’t acutally exist.
A is not.
There has only ever been “B”
There is no “A,” only the assumption of “A,” the desire for “A,” the forgotten remembrance of “A.”
“A” is a funeral card.
We make the links
We remember the dead.
Never because “A” then “B”
There is only “A” (perhaps) and “B”
Because is the formulation
An assumption
A desire to understand
But I’ll tell you this much is true,
I want to die in the summer.
