We must know! We shall know! 2 comments

29 Oct 2011 @ 15:39, by Max Sandor Note: this article was written as a quadlingual cut-up experiment: every paragraph in a different language. I don't know yet what to make of it. It was certainly more work consolidating the final, 'readable' versions than to work from a unilingual template. This article was first published in Portuguese at Brazil247: http://brasil247.com.br/pt/247/cultura/21148/N%C3%B3s-precisamos-saber!-N%C3%B3s-vamos-saber!.htm German version (and the original multilingual mix) at SimpliGermanissim.us. Italian version at "Adesso Qui"; ................................. We must know! We shall know! by Max Sandor What is truth? How do we find it? How do we know that the truth we found is the real truth? How do we prevent losing it again? Nothing in this world has been conjured more often and more passionate than the concept of 'truth'. Yet nothing has been more distorted, denied, and adulterated as this very concept of 'truth'. To find out the truth, countless men and women have been tortured until death. To prevent truth from becoming known, myriads of human beings have been blackmailed and murdered. Finding truth has a tradition in the professions of man. There are several groups of professional truth finders: detectives and investigators, scientists and philosophers, historians and archaeologists . There are professions of having found the truth: religious zealots, gurus of all kinds, conspiracy theorists, orthodox scientists, to name a few... And then there are those who draw advantage from distorted or tilted perceptions of truth: the pragmatic politicians of pragmatism deal with whatever notion of truth furthers their agenda. And those who simply earn hard cash based on the general perception of something being true. The influence of religious dogmas, politics and economical interests over long periods created a climate of fear and uncertainty within the scientific world, a bed for opportunism and false accusations. We love living in the illusion that this would have changed in our time. It didn't. Or, if it did, it became worse. Philosophy has sold out since the institution of academic institutions. Denouncing the emperor's clothes does not pay a living. Most religions have become dependent and inseparable from its worldly alliances. Investigators and historians have been forced to limit themselves recounting permissible facts and otherwise tell fairy tales dictated by those in power. This is leaving us with the defenders of the bastion of truth, science, and its ordained priests, the academic scientists, its heretics, rogue scientists, and hobby researchers, The priests of truth in our days have changed the appendix to their names from SJ to PhD. Yet, to protect themselves from inquiry and inquisition, they hide themselves behind artificial complexities, patent laws, and economic secrets. As long as nobody except their peers can understand them, they can feel save in their little ivory towers. David Hilbert, an icon of bravery in an insane world of deceit, declared categorically: "A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street." His words are now having a new meaning in our times of freely and rapidly distributed information via e-mail, youtube, and social networks. He realized that the thirst for knowledge is so deeply anchored in the hearts and minds of men that it can never be squelched. No propaganda, distortion, or brain-washing can ever erase this thirst. Just when you thought the flame of truth was extinguished, you find it lighting up again. But in order to liberate it from its distortions, we must filtrate out what has been instilled in our thinking over the centuries. All efforts of unraveling the truth in Nature, in our Universe, and in ouir lives, must begin with dismantling the existing lies and misperceptions. Therefore: - We must separate science from religion and its dogmas, from the speculations of philosophers void of actual knowledge of the processes of Nature, from the politicians that want to abuse it for its own hidden agendas, and from the technocrats who want to use it solely for developing new products which they then can impose on humanity. Obviously they are not motivated by the love for genuine knowledge, in the contrary, they like everybody to be as dumb and numb as possible. Intelligence and education is being held down for this reason to the minimum necessary to still ensure productivity of their prime capital, the work force. - We must also separate science from the technology it helped spawn and we must further separate from its own tools, notably and foremost from the tool of statistics. The mathematical method of statistics can serve as a helpful and vital tool to research and confirm theories and applications but it is NOT science in itself as it can never be used as a proof for anything. The silent consent of today's scientists who tolerate the blatant abuse of statistical affirmations and implications by shrewed politicians and economic peddlers is nothing but treason to their own profession. - We must learn to think and conclude ourselves because we cannot solely depend on the integrity and ethics of the scientists themselves as they are bound within a firm web of financial dependency and the vanity of fame. As it stands today, both their work and the survival of their families depend on ongoing payments from government and industry. “Freedom of research”, if it ever existed at all, now certainly has become an empty shell of words. - We must undo the infiltration of pseudo-sciences such as economics, sociology, and statistics within the realms of traditional natural sciences or at least delineate their scope and position in a more appropriate way. - We must begin to question what we are being presented with by the mass media and its spokesmen. We have to learn to recognize the fake truths of rhetorical affirmations by parties interested in financial gain and political power. This means, we have to learn the rules of logics and the traps of rhetorics. - We must extend our the definition of corruption as a phenomenon to include intellectual and cultural processes and in especially to science and its institutions. - We must increase the quality of basic education and offer our children tools for independent thinking instead of creating a mindset of consumers enslaved by 'memes' and 'brand names' of society and nurture a thirst for knowledge. - We must, in the end, open ourselves to self-critique and end a false tolerance for those profiting from a system of deception. There were always men and women of bravery in our history and we too must wake up to a new passion for truth in our times, just as Hilbert did, asserting, into the face of nacism: “We must know! We shall know!”

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