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Reality
Back in my high school days (1947) that were full of fooling around, going swimming, riding bikes and hanging out, thoughts of reality never entered our minds.
We did have one classmate named Tom Difloe, however, that seemed to stand out mentally above the rest of us.
We had a class of some pretty smart kids and Tom didn’t receive top honors.
I think he enjoyed life too much and let enough classes slide to keep him out of the top two grade point earners.
Back in 1997 our high school class had a big push for the 50 year reunion.
I searched for Tom and found him out in
“Reality is a jigsaw puzzle under assembly.
It is not just any jigsaw puzzle, it is a most unusual jigsaw puzzle.
It does not come in a box, with a determined number of pieces and a picture on the lid that illustrates just how the finished puzzle is to look.
It is instead composed of pieces that are created as the puzzle is being assembled.
The number of pieces is unknown and unknowable.
As to what it will look like eventually, man does not have a clue; and that is rather important because it is man, the most advanced life form, possessed of the most advanced intellect, who is currently assembling it.
Man is building reality: finding pieces, fitting them together as best he can, wondering what the next piece will look like and where it will come from, wondering if there even is a next piece; and he does this with absolutely no certainty that he is correctly positioning the pieces.
In effect, he is not proceeding to the solution of a puzzle, he is proceeding from the origins of a puzzle.
His only guide is the shape thus far developed, and even that shape is imperfectly known.
He is left with the necessity of constantly testing each piece, again and again, never accepting with finality the correctness of the fit with the possibly incorrectly assembled shape to which he joins it.
But man is not aware of what he is doing.
He is, for the most part, absolutely convinced that all he is doing is identifying pieces that are already in place.
He does not know that, when he finds a piece and tests it for fit, that that piece did not exist until he put his fingers on it.
He does not know that, when he adds the piece to the puzzle, he has altered reality itself by the addition.
He also does not know that every new thing that is realized as something new, upon being realized is found to have always existed”
I like this version of reality because it clearly demonstrates the position that mankind is in.
Maybe in the future when the cosmologists, the astrophysicists, and the mathematicians give us a broader picture of reality we will be able to expand this version.
I personally do not have a confident concept of reality because of the lack of a developed, consistent and reasonable theory concerning how and why life began.
For now it will have to suffice to accept the evolutionary concept that our purpose in life is to procreate and maintain life.
It is not a comfortable or acceptable version to live with but at least it is based on some pretty solid evidence and reasoning.
The great attractive power of sexual behavior can hardly be denied and the end goal of this attractive power is to maintain life.
What can be done to make for a worthwhile existence during our stay on earth is to assimilate those ideas and practices that have been proven to be beneficial to mankind and to reject and oppose those ideas and practices that have proven to be destructive.
The great religions and philosophers of the past and present have given us a plethora of worthwhile guides for living the good life.
The problem is that a person must screen out those beliefs and practices that are harmful to others or self destructive.
Religious practitioners often slide into a form of fanaticism that can be very harmful to a community.
We have plenty of evidence throughout history for the difficulties involved in keeping a balanced, productive perspective when
religious belief is concerned.
Due to the unresolved
nature of different concepts of reality, this area of consideration will have to wait for further development before it can become a part of my first category of belief.
This subject is still very much on the table and may be there for a very long time.
Perhaps our grandchildren will be able to contemplate a much more complete version of reality than is possible at the present moment.
Concepts of reality change very slowly and maybe several generations will not suffice to register a change.
In his 1904 novel The Sea Wolf, Jack London cast his two main characters with concepts of reality at extreme opposites.
The story revolves around a young, sophisticated author named Humphery from a well-to-do family.
He is involved in a boating accident and is set adrift in the ocean.
He is picked up by a sealing vessel called the “Ghost”.
The captain of the sealing vessel, named Wolf Larson is the very antithesis of young Humphery.
Wolf Larson refuses to let Humphery leave the ship but instead assigns him the duty of cabin boy.
Wolf Larson is very intelligent and well read from a self-taught point of view but, in contrast, his philosophy is grounded in atheism and violence.
The clash between these two characters is what the book is all about.
The following is one of their many conversations.
(Page 45)
“What do you believe, then?”
Hump countered.
“I believe that life is a mess,” Wolf Larson answered promptly.
“It is like yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour, a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move.
The big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the weak that they may retain their strength.
The lucky eat the most and move the longest, that is all.
What do you make of those things?”
He swept his arm in an impatient gesture toward a number of the sailors who were working on some kind of rope stuff amidship.
“They move; so does the jellyfish move.
They move in order to eat in order that they may keep moving.
There you have it.
They live for their belly’s sake, and the belly is for their sake.
It’s a circle; you get nowhere.
Neither do they.
In the end they come to a standstill.
They move no more.
They are dead.”
“They have dreams,” Hump interrupted, “radiant, flashing dreams–“
”Of grub,” Wolf concluded sententiously.
“And of more----“
”
Grub. Of a larger appetite and more luck in satisfying it.”
His
voice sounded harsh.
There was no levity in it.
“For look you, they dream of making lucky voyages which will bring them more money, of becoming the mates of ships, of finding fortunes–in short, of being in a better position for preying on their fellows, of having all night in, good grub, and somebody else to do the dirty work.
You and I are just like them.
There is no difference, except that we have eaten more and better.
I am eating them now, and you too.
But in the past you have eaten more than I have.
You have slept in soft beds, and worn fine clothes, and eaten good meals.
Who made those beds? And Those clothes?
And those Meals?
Not you.
You never made anything in your own sweat.
You live on an income which your father earned.
You are like a firgate bird swooping down upon the boobies and robbing them of the fish they have caught.
You are one with a crowd of men who have made what they call a government, who are masters of all the other men, and who eat the food the other men get and would like to eat themselves.
You wear the warm clothes.
They made the clothes, but they shiver in rags and ask you, the lawyer, or business agent who handles your money, for a job.”
“But that is beside the matter,” Hump cried.
“Not at all.”
He was speaking rapidly now, and his eyes were flashing.
“It is piggishness, and it is life.
Of what use of sense is an immortality of piggishness?
What is the end?
What is it all about?
You have made no food.
Yet the food you have eaten or wasted might have saved the lives of a score of wretches who made the food but did not eat it.
What immortal end did you serve?
Or did they?
Consider yourself and me.
What does your boasted immortality amount to when your life runs afoul of mine?
You would like to be back to the land, which is a favorable place for your kind of piggishness.
It is a whim of mine to keep you aboard this ship, where my piggishness flourishes.
And keep you I will.
I may make or break you.
You may die today, this week, or next month.
I could kill you now with a blow of my fist, for you are a miserable weakling.
But if we are immortal, what is the reason for this?
To be piggish as you and I have been all our lives does not seem to be just the thing for immortals to be doing.
Again, what”s it all about?
Why have I kept you here?”
“Because you are stronger,” Hump managed blurt out.
“But why stronger?”
Wolf went on at once with his perpetual queries.
“Because I am a bigger bit of the ferment than you?
Don’t
you see?
Don’t you see?”
“But the hopelessness of it,” Hump protested.
“I agree with you,” Wolf answered.
“Then why move at all, since moving is living?
Without moving and being part of the yeast there would be no hopelessness.
But—and there it is—we want to live and move, though we have no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life to live and move, to want to live and move.
If it were not for this, life would be dead.
It is because of this life that is in you that you dream of your immortality.
The life that is in you is alive and wants to go on being alive forever.
Bah!
An eternity of piggishness!”
Wolf Larson’s view of reality, except for his violent disposition, is not all that unusual.
Many people, especially this past 150 years,
have drawn conclusions about life and reality that are not basically all that different from Larson’s.
Fortunately, many also draw
the conclusion that regardless of your opinion about the metaphysical aspects of reality, there are plenty of positive things to work for in our present lives.
