One Reality

I have decided to start a blog to explore my ideas regarding the nature of reality. I believe having a clear understanding of what reality is and the method of distinguishing fact form fiction to be fundamental to the acquisition of all other goals. I believe that my ability to obtain a clear view of what is real is far from where I'd like it to be and I find it is all the more difficult to obtain my goal of clarity when the world around me seems to have a complete disregard for reason.

One of my pet hates is the idea that it's ok for people to believe different things to be the truth. It is a necessity of preserving liberty that we do not force people to believe as we do, however we should not allow the spread of ignorance to go uncontested. We seem to romanticize people believing different versions of reality like it is an important part of cultural diversity. This seems to be a clear misunderstanding about what is culture and what is ignorance. Culture is about a lifestyle preference where you choose to live a certain way because you feel it is the way you want to live. Ignorance comes in when you feel compelled to live your life a certain way even though you have no sound basis for that belief.

I think this is particularly a problem when we look at indigenous people. We leave indigenous people in these stone age world views completely stripped of any benefits they may gain from a 21st century understanding of reality because of our romanticism about their beliefs. They have no hope of integrating into 21st century society if we say it's ok for them to have a 10,000 bc understanding of what is real. We treat them like zoo animals rather than human beings and we make claims of protecting their freedoms as our defense. If someone has been brainwashed into believing the truth to be evil then is their choice to be ignorant truly free? In an ideal world we should take our science into these communities and debunk and discredit the nonsense espoused by witch doctor's, shamans and so called 'wise' elders. We should educate with physical examples of how wrong these people are. People complain about the disparity in the quality of life between indigenous and non indigenous people. I believe the major cause of this is the misguided belief that you protect a persons liberty by allowing them to remain ignorant.

In an ideal world we could solve these problems but unfortunately we do not. We live in a world rife with superstition and ignorance that extends far beyond isolated indigenous communities. Everyone is too afraid to debunk the other's superstition out of fear that someone will debunk theirs. It is sad that there are so few people who actually look forward to the day that their own superstitions are revealed to be false and so are able to move forward into the light of greater understanding.