Ugliness is in the Eye of the Beholder!, July 9th, 2004
Early DRAFT of a work in progress. This article will evolve as I have time to review and contemplate fully upon Witt's article. Yes, I will eventually run it through a spelling checker and review it for grammar... hey, it's a draft! ;--)

In The Gods Must Be Tidy Jonathan Witt states his view that: It's obvious that Witt is the one seeing the evil.

What I see in Tolkien's message is that even when we prevail in larger battles against organized "evil" such as the Nazis the war and death can and often does continue elsewhere. There are many wars preceeding on our Real Earth right now. When we get caught up in other things, such as victory, others who could use our help can suffer. The fictional Hobbits could have used the help of men in their battle to save the Shire. To me Tolkien's message is clear, don't let your guard down for those who wish to control the masses and cause death and destruction are not stopping. Just look what many Governments are currently doing in the "name of good and god" to see the "evil" that men do in the world.

Witt goes on to imply that the athesist view of reality and the evolutionary view of reality is an "ugly" one. The saying goes that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", this also applies to ugleness! It's obvious from his article that Witt is the one seeing the uglyness. He misses the fact that the universe isn't inherently beautiful or ugly, it simple is the way it is and it means nothing that it is that way. Meaning can only be ascribed by a sententient being. If all one sees is uglyness in a godless universe then no wonder Witt and others seek out a larger meaning to aleviate their own self imposed "torment by uglyness". However, they make the mistake of ascribing attributes to a universe when those attributes have yet to be proven.

It seems outragous of Witt to imply or claim that "beauty" is only possible in a "god created universe".

The modern predilection for ugliness that Witt writes about comes from his own world view that creates ugliness where there is none. While I would certainly agree that the "projects" were ugly I'm very aware that that's my own perception and judgement not something inherent in the universe. In addition the "projects" were clearly the outcome of many poorly made decisions and attempts to group certain people together in a failed attempt to solve a social crisis. To imply that failed human endevaours are ugly is to ignore our ability to learn from them. Witt is typical of those who seek to prove their view by painting a bleak characterization of events and reality.

If you look at the universe vividly with open eyes and silmoutaniously look at yourself from a neutral point of view (known as "coach position") observing your own processes of perceptions to see how your own beliefs shape reality you'll begin to see how much of your "reality" is really your "belief" system presenting itself. Developing the "capacity to vividly see a thing truely" requires practice of observing yourself while you observe the thing you wish to see vividly. As Relitivity notes, the observer changes the thing seen. If this applies then it's the case that the neutral vantage point of "coach position" will change your perceptions of yourself and your perceptions of that which you are attempting to see.

During this process of "vividly seeing" it becomes clear that "stripping" away our "beliefs" as we identify them from the neutral vantage point of coach position brings us closer to reality. We can also see that "adding" beliefs or "trying on new perspectives" also shapes our view of reality. By "adjusting" our view of reality this way we learn that we are indeed flexible in adopting or shedding beliefs. While it might take three weeks to change a habbit beliefs can be changed quickly, especially when we vividly see reality from a new perspective.

When you continue this process of shedding beliefs you might discover the emptyness and meaningless of life, the universe and everything. You also might discover that the only meaning that exists in the universe is the meaning that we, as sentient beings, bring to the universe. It's us that creates the meaning. The universe simply exists. The universe is not even not aware of us since it's not aware of anything. If you think it is aware where is your proof? By the simple process of elimination vivid glimses of the universe can shine through our perceptions, beliefs, cultural biases, and emotional moods that dominate and shape our daily lives. A tremendous power to shape your own destiny derives from the observation of where meaning comes from in our lives. Since meaning comes from ourselves the meanings that we create in our lives is created by us. This has powerful and real consequences if you can change the meaning that you ascribe to events taking place in your life.

Management of your own perceptions, beliefs, biases and emotions is a critical skill that we all need to continually develop.

While Witt's point of view seems to make sense to him there are potentially dangerous elements in it such as the promotion of ideas that have no basis in reality. In as much as those ideas lead to ignorance and "discriminatory" behaviour by people who adopt them there is potential danger. Witt creates his own view of reality, a view that sees ugliness everwhere and that only sees beauty in taking mythic stories as reality. I hate to break it to him, reality is a harsh mistress and mythic stories have nothing to do with reality. The challenge is reaching people like Witt and bringing them to a vantage point where they can see reality through the clouds of their perceptions. I'm not concerned with what they believe as much as I'm concerned about how they direct their impact upon our shared planet Earth by their actions. If the recent military actions by religious zealots of all strips from all corners of the Earth and all levels of society are any indications we are up the creek without a paddle.

Ideas become dangerious when people act upon them and cause danger to others. They become extrememly dangerous when leaders communicate those ideas to followers who actaully carry them out. Levearage is powerful. Religious ideas create division. There is a shared common ground for all humans and that is the real reality that we live in. Connect with people at this shared level of existance. Connect with people by creating the meaning of this shared level of reality to our lives. In a world where we are largely interdependent the actions of one or a few can make a huge difference. Whether we and others perceive and judge our actions as good or evil is to a large extent the result of the meaning that we can assign to it and communicate to them. However that meaning needs to fit within the shared reality and not violate the reality viewpoint that others have. Bomb a village of innocents and it's likely to be very difficult to convience them (or me for that matter) that that act was good. Leaders that don't understand this and that place other priortities upon their real world undoable actions are doomed to create as many or more problems than they solve by eliminating others from existance. Connecting with people at our shared level of existance is a key to our continued existance as a species. You don't really thing that the Earth cares about our species do you? The only ones who care are us.

While were at it let's take care of our fellow beings on the planet regardless of their species or religious stripes, who knows maybe one day well discover that some of them are also sentient beings that create their own meaning of the universe and we'll have a lot to answer for. Oh, too late...

Early DRAFT of a work in progress.
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