The Anti-Soapbox: Collected Essays

variably dysfunctional, while the modern university system is built around paper-chasing and its socio-academic equivalents, rather than anything truly constructive. It’s no secret that today’s schools train workers for today’s established industries, even if alternative industries might offer drastic improvements. Thus, textbooks reflect the status quo, as do curriculums and the professors who teach them, and the board members who hire those professors (and determine who receives tenor) -- and so that status quo is perpetuated, including its flaws and blind spots. No, this broken paradigm is no secret—yet it is secret, because it must not be spoken of. As it were, this is another reason why the devolution of Science has occurred (and gone mostly unremarked upon): because our shortsighted, industry-minded education system has gone unquestioned to the point of validity, as if it were inevitable and without alternative.

  If the inmates take over the asylum, is it still an asylum?

  So no, our science problem is not so simple as a few overambitious scientists fudging lab results in an attempt at self-advancement. Rather, the causes are much more complicated, and much more inconvenient. It’s a compound problem. First, we have the harsh indoctrination present in today’s education, heavily restricting many college grads in both thinking and function (not to mention in imagination). Next, factor in the many social elements at play, such as media influence, civic incentives and punishments, human limitation, and the mere necessity to put food on the table. Top it all off with the rampant psychological and perceptual blind spots circulating the modern world, and the result is what we see today: a fallacious, dysfunctional “science,” one which is no less crippled for all its practice. Rather than a truly capable Science, we are left with a methodology unable to adapt to new information, or even to interpret known information in light of the unknown. In fact, today’s science often times doesn’t even allow for an unknown, going on the outrageous idea that all is already known (or all the important things, anyway).

  Back when folks believed in a flat earth, they, too, assumed that all was known, to the point of there simply being no question (or the burning at the stake of those who did question).

  At this point, you might be thinking: “If our science isn’t Science, what is it, then?” Today, science is, largely, a vehicle: for business, for career-building, for promotion of agenda and politics, for inflation of the head, for obtaining reputation and peer congratulation—anything but the search to establish, without reservation, What Is. Rarely is the true Scientist seen in action; and, in those few instances that one emerges, they are at the mercy of the legions of “scientists,” who are apt to set upon anyone who dare stray from the accepted. Little has changed since the days of old. Black-sheep Scientists are still brutally attacked and smeared and labeled in an effort to protect vested interests, however legitimate or meaningful the poor Scientist’s work might actually be. In much of international academia, to be a scientist has become synonymous with a shallow, shoddy intellectualism. Somewhere along the way, the archetypal scientist has become confused with Hollywood’s empty perceptions of such, so that wearing a white smock and possessing a large vocabulary is the metric used to judge merit, rather than one’s understanding and application of the Scientific Method in the search for objective reality.

  Yet, I am again hesitant to point fingers and simplify the issue, for I can understand our “science’s” collective dysfunction. As it were, I can empathize with those who constitute and uphold this shambles of a “science,” including their resistance to the ideas expressed in this essay. Putting myself in the shoes of today’s average student, who has grown up knowing only the institutionalized narrowness which has undermined so many of our social- and educational systems, I can see how the very concept of a broken science would appear foreign, if not entirely impossible. After all, our “science” has been the norm for generations, so that the student’s professors and other superiors are infected by the same germ, along with their superiors, and those preceding, ad nauseum. For the modern student, surrounded by this non-science (and the consensual agreement that it is, really, true science), it is all too easy to fall prey to this global omission, to be sucked into the same vortex that has claimed their teachers and peers and parents alike. After decades of an ever-shrinking cage of non-science, any idea of an objective, unbiased, freethinking Science would likely be forgotten.

  These days, true Science is so far removed from that which is merely known as science, it requires a new word.

  What is that word? I can offer no suggestion other than appending quotation marks on its opposite. Likewise, I am at a loss for how to correct this intellectual disaster, and I am not alone in my helplessness, I think—nor am I alone in feeling more than a little afraid. In a world where “scientists” first experiment on their fellow man, and ask questions later; where “scientists” weren’t aware of nuclear fallout until after Hiroshima was bombed; where personal and professional gain come before common sense and simple observance of reality—yes, I sometimes feel rather uneasy in such a world, and am unable to so much as propose a solution. Really, the best solution, as I see it, falls on me: to personally acknowledge reality in my daily life, to accept the state of things so that I might improve them on an individual level. Yes, the results of this sole, personal approach might appear insignificant; but then, appearances can be deceiving.

  For starters, I’ve written this essay, in an attempt to at least state aloud this rather gargantuan problem confronting us today. It’s the best I can do, I think—and, perhaps, all I can do. If nothing else, now at least my reader cannot claim ignorance of our scientific quandary, whether my views on it are judged accurate or not. Agree or disagree, cheer or hiss—either way, it’s a start.

  XV. THE NAMELESS EXPERIENCE

  Recently, I had a memorable experience. In fact, this experience was more than memorable—a magnificent, intricate, novel experience. An experience so interesting and inspiring, I just had to share it. So, this evening, I began an essay to describe this experience—only to find that it is indescribable.

  After several attempts to do my experience justice in the written word, I concluded that it’s just not possible. Thus, my experience must remain nameless, for to label it would be to despoil it.

  The problem isn’t of finding appropriate language, but with language itself. No amount of words could accurately—even half-accurately—convey the experience in question. Even good words, or words invented special, or words arranged in poetic and devilishly clever fashion. Instead, a fundamental incompatibility exists, a blatant contradiction evoking square pegs and round holes. Not that my experience and I are just that unique, exactly; rather, what must be described is of a living, multifaceted nature beyond the scope of language. To force my experience into the confines of words would be akin to describing sight to a born-blind, or to confuse a photo for the flesh. That is, things are lost in translation, vital things, which, when absent, devalue the description to the point of dishonor.

  As it were, the more I tried to describe my experience, the less I was describing my experience.

  So, instead, I wrote this brief essay, in the original’s place. This surrogate is, it would seem, the only true means of conveying my experience: indirectly. This way, my experience is left nameless, and mine alone, but it will be preserved, as to protect it from the acidic touch of words and quantification. I can only say what my experience is not, for to do otherwise would destroy it. In some small sense, my experience is much like God, to be accurately described only in negatives.

  Consider this essay a monument to my ineffable experience and its great many ilk, condemned to the netherworld of the unscribed, eternally awaiting some new medium to allow faithful transfer from the waiting room of human memory.

  And, really, is any experience truly, totally conveyed by today’s mediums? Were we honest with ourselves, it might be admitted that all conveyance ultimately fails, even the most passionate and heartfelt, restricting existential reality to those whom experience
it, and those alone.

  XVI. ON FREEDOM

  If there is one subject addressed by philosophy at large, it’s freedom. Yet freedom remains hugely misunderstood.

  Why? Because of a flawed concept of freedom, reinforced by flawed thinking.

  Freedom is all in the mind. A cliché? Maybe, but that doesn’t make it wrong. In fact, we see here an example of the very same flawed thinking which distorts our view of freedom, that “cliché” equates to “irrelevant.” Mental freedom: without it, no horizon is big enough, no house large enough, no country emancipated enough. By believing freedom to be solely physical or legal, one risks condemning themselves to a cage of assumptions and restrictive thinking. Freedom’s mental counterpart isn’t the icing on the cake, but the cake itself.

  Ignore freedom’s mental lynchpin, and confusion results.

  Take wanderlust, for example. For many a nomad, their urge to roam stems from such flawed thinking and psychological shortcomings. Yes, that next town might keep your stone rolling and moss-free, but only because of the travel’s mental underpinnings, those which say to the mind “You are free” and proceed