Believe In Science To Believe In A Better You
“This is the way it’s been done for billions of years. Small moves, Ellie, small moves…” Contact, by Carl Sagan
There’s enough self help literature in the world that you could insulate yourself in them for years by simply building a house from all the books and cutting yourself off from most of your problems.
Most of your problems, like mine, are caused by living in society. We compare ourselves to others — to other people. We do not compare ourselves to piles of money, or the beauty of sunsets. We feel oppressed due to our race, our sex, our gender, our religion, or our politics.
One thing that doesn’t hurt you, and does help you, however, is science.
When done correctly, science is a system that allows us to discover truth. Truth is a doorway to the good life. For some of us, you might say it is a doorway to the Divine.
The other day I was thinking about all the ways I need to change. It occurred to me that at the same time, you, dear reader, were probably thinking of all the ways in which you need to fix yourself. We are told, constantly, that we are broken. I think this is what breaks us.
We are sold our inadequacy by corporations. But we reinforce the ideas among ourselves. You can buy diet products to be better, buy a particular house to be better, buy a ton of decluttering tutorials to clutter up your mind, or you can buy drugs, soaps, food, or you can buy millions of other things.
I want you to stop buying, or thinking about buying, for just a moment. Instead, think about the millions upon millions of products currently being shipped around the world. Many of them are disposable, as we have crafted the world to be disposable. Many are already on their way into landfills, or waterways, even before you finish this sentence.
Surprise! You belong to the planet, you have microbiomes in your gut, and share a four -billion-year-old history with the rest of all life of which we know.
So, no matter how often you are told you don’t fit it, you are mistaken.
Science, if we study it, has the ability to show us better ways to belong to our planet, and even to our species. When we learn about our shared DNA, for example, we don’t have to be stuck upon the artificially separate categories we are constantly allowing ourselves to be put into.
Are you a white person? Are you a gay person? Are you a re-pug, or a libtard?
The fact is, science tells us you are a person. You are most especially a person if you are reading this, despite a million useless, and divisive, arguments about what constitutes personhood.
I realize that in constantly worrying about my inadequacy, I am ignoring your needs. It is more than likely that whatever your personal shame is, you are doing the same thing.
Science is warning that our carelessness with the planet is leading to thousands of dangers: this week we learned about increases in mosquito populations and the inevitable spread of illness they bring, as an indirect result of heating our world.
But science has its detractors. We have people who deny climate crisis is underway. We have people who don’t believe vaccinations are safe; or genetically modified food.
We have people who do not even think we can affect our lives for the better in some areas, or that it is worth the time and trouble. Some think we can’t have a clean world unless we go back in time. Others think we can’t thrive with a green economy because it’s never been done. Yet.
Some science combatants are living for the next life. A better life. A heaven that some of us can’t wrap our minds around, not for lack of trying, but for lack of evidence. To these people I say, what is your free will — to the extent that we have one — good for? Why not be as loving, caring and humane to the whole creation as we can, especially if we are given the choice to choose the fruit that allows us to know our nakedness, our inadequacy, and the amazing knowledge that we can have knowledge!
The greatest gift of science is that we can comprehend how things work. Once we comprehend how we work, we can improve ourselves. We can, and do, make eyeglasses, computers, and electronic wheelchairs, but we can also make use of knowing our shared origins.
By studying our brains, our motivations and behaviors, we can come to know where we go wrong, and how to go right. We can realize there are such things as implicit bias that cause racism and sexism. We can put that knowledge to work to find our true selves, our better selves.
Let’s take a simple example. You, like me, probably cannot avoid using disposable plastic in the next twenty-four hours. But, if we are to survive, (and have our supportive biosphere survive), as a species we have to come to terms with this issue.
Knowing the facts and figures, not to the detail, but to the gist of getting the big picture, is a start toward better living.
Can’t fix it all? You don’t have to throw up your hands in despair, you can just make a conscious choice to take a bag with you to the produce section of your local grocery store. Or, take any small measure at all that displays to your mind that you are part of a better system.
It’s a small thing. We are programed to think small things don’t matter. And we have a tendency to feel overwhelmed.
In the fantastic movie, Contact, Dr. Ellie Arroway, is reminded by her dad (but also by space aliens — please see the movie) that we make progress only with tiny steps, “small moves.”
But the science of psychology teaches us that even tiny steps toward self-competency are a kind of power. You don’t have to know the whole science of extraction, distribution, consumption, and impacts in the real world.
But you do have to know that there is a real world. When you hold on to that knowledge, you hold on to a kind of empowerment of self. When enough people hold onto to it, we overhaul entire institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow. Or at least we continue to try.
Can you really find more self confidence in say, eating healthier food? Study history, and the origins of our food addictions (alcohol, sugar, fat), and you will begin to realize that every junky food choice we make is in some way tied to oppression and colonization of others.
Some of the others exploited are human. Some of the others are forests. And some of the others are just the consumer who has a programmed addiction to the delicious fat and sugar that lead us to heart disease, obesity, garbage — more disposable plastic here — and finally, more profits for those of us who depend upon the jobs, commerce, and industries of bad food.
I think we will create that better world.
It is encouraging to read books on the topic, and to listen to the wise who have never stopped preaching the possible.
It won’t be a backward world that is great again in ways it never was. It will depend upon all of us sharing and caring about science, technology, equality and humanity.
You can, in fact, lose some of that annoying belly fat that makes you so self-conscious. You can, in fact, be more powerful at work, or in the bedroom. But you can achieve all of this more readily with knowledge.
Find science, and the wisdom it provides, for a fuller understanding of everything. Or as Einstein put it: “Look deeply into nature and you will understand everything better.”
Believe In Science To Believe In A Better You
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