Thursday, December 13, 2018

Kando's Dogma - Part Two



 About a year ago, I posted a piece called. Kando’s Dogma. I now add some further beliefs which I hold to be true:

1. All people are created equal (Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson). There are no inherent differences in intellectual aptitude between the races and between the genders. The science of psychology has not discovered any. Differences in wealth are the result, to a small extent, of aptitude and effort, but much more the result of social class, family wealth and above all: luck.

2. There is no (anthropomorphic) deity, no super-brain which decided at some point in the past to create a world. The universe is a physical reality in which life and mental processes develop. In other words, the universe becomes aware of itself. It is a psycho-physical reality.

3. The nature and processes of the universe are best discovered and understood through science.

4. Science distinguishes between truth and error, and through it, knowledge increases. Humans progress by increasing their knowledge. The total amount of knowledge is infinite.

5. In addition to science, there is philosophy and there is religion (Auguste Comte’s three stages). Philosophy discusses metaphysical questions. These are questions beyond those pertaining to the physical world. Positivist science cannot answer them. Answers to such questions cannot be proved or disproved empirically. Read more...

Saturday, December 8, 2018

Old Age

by


My long distance friend Rebecca came to visit this week. I don’t see her a lot, since she lives in Holland, on the other side of the big pond. She is old, like I am, but charming, sweet and terribly damaged by something that happened in her early twenties. That was when she found out her husband had been cheating on her with her sister from the day they were married. This happened 50 years ago. The husband is gone, the sister is gone, but the wound has never healed. Rebecca is not so much bitter as completely uninterested in her own future and even her present seems to take a backseat to her main preoccupation, scratching and unscabbing this old old wound.

I feel sorrow for her and a good deal of confusion. I also am prone to certain obsessions regarding my past. Who isn’t at my age? There is a drawer in every old person’s head, marked regrets, but I can keep it closed most of my waking hours. Rebecca on the other hand, has lost the key and her drawer is now permanently open, oozing its nasty contents into her otherwise very witty, interesting and intelligent mind.

‘She just needs a good dose of therapy’, I hear you say. But what will that do? Would it take away the hurt? Would it leave a void? Rebecca’s self image is now so fused with what happened all these years ago, that she might not survive the excision.

You see, growing old is a complicated affair. It creeps up on you like a black cat in the night and settles in comfortably. Before you know it, old age has taken over the reigns of your life. You are too caught up living you see. You don’t spend your days thinking: ‘Oh, my God! I am older than yesterday!’ Then, suddenly, you ARE old. Read more...