The Ground of Being and Models.

I, and almost everybody else, believe that there is an actual reality. There is an existing thing that has a number of qualities.

I, and almost everybody else, believe that we are human beings with physical structures that perceive things about what is around us and think about that world.

I, and almost everybody else, believe that the physical structures that enable us to sense and think about our surroundings are not infinitely powerful. They have limitations in what we can sense, and what sense we can make of those senses.

As a result what human beings have is a limited experience of reality and a limited ability to think of reality. What human beings do, what we must do to make sense of things and what are bodies have evolved to do, is make models of the world around us. We have a series of models for different situations, and without them we cannot function.

We have many models for people, the most obvious and ubiquitous model we have for people is that they are essentially us in different bodies. When we want to predict or understand the actions of others we try to imagine ourselves in that position. Built upon this model are essentially stereotypes, alterations to the standard model based on the categorization of people. For example, we can alter what we predict will be the reaction to watching the Lawrence Welk show according to whether the viewer is a sixteen year old girl or a seventy year old man without any other information at all.

We have models about the Universe around us. There are scientific models that apply to specific regions of experience, but break down at the edges of those regions. There are mythical models for the Universe, involving meaning, intention, fabulous beings and so on. Underlying these models are more basic components, the concepts upon which models are built. But these concepts are models, a god, an atom, a tree are all conceptual models upon which to build other models.

What led me to these thoughts are the relatively recent discovery that Dark Matter and Dark Energy make up 99% of the energy and mass in the Universe. These are the mass and energy of vacuums. These forms of mass and energy pretty much only interact with gravity, and I think a good way to think of gravity is simply as the shape of space+time. What we are dealing with here is the Ground of Being upon which all the manifestations of form and matter are placed. This is the Tao. It is the deep ocean upon which what we experience as "real stuff" are merely the ripples.

This last metaphor, ripples upon the water, was emphasized to me by seeing The Face of Evil wag his sopping wet tail over a smooth piece of water. A perfect arc of droplets landed one after the other on the surface of the water. Each was unruffled, a perfect circle until it met the expanding circle of another droplet.

I though of the water as the Ground of Being, reality. The surface of the water was our consciousness of this Ground of Being. Each droplet was a model we have for experiencing, defining, and explaining reality. Within each expanding circle is a model for understanding reality. While the circle is small it is perfect. Newton's Laws perfectly describe the motion of the planets in the skies. The Thunder God's fury at our sins perfectly explains to a small tribe why the rules should be obeyed and why there is thunder and lightning. For those living in a liberal enclave those who would vote for Mike Huckerbee are ignorant rednecks.

When the circles expand enough they touch each other, and then the circles become troubled and complicated. The models of Free Will, Original Sin, Neurology, Newtonian Physics, Justice all wash over each other and complicate things, as it is quite possible to believe in free will, original sin, that neurologists are good at finding out about the brain, that Newton's Laws work and that criminals should be punished all at the same time. However, these models are incompatible with each other. Neurology and Newtonian physics suggest that while people make decisions, they can only make one decision. If people can only make one decision how can they be held responsible for crimes? Original sin means we have to be forgiven, but if time works in both directions it makes as much sense to say that our lives cause original sin through redemption or the lack thereof as it does to say original sin means we must be forgiven.

This doesn't cause much trouble if you retain understanding that all of your understandings are just models, systematic concepts which attempt to describe portions of our experiences. Newtonian Physics can't explain the actions of quarks, but that doesn't bother scientists too much because they just use the appropriate theory in the appropriate place. The possible absence of free will doesn't bother judges and lawyers too much, the most effective model for a criminal justice system is free will. However, many people, perhaps most people, mistake their models for reality. Someone may have a political model, such that those with differing opinions are stupid, hateful and ignorant and this may be held as reality beyond the ability of other influences to change.

This confusion between models and reality is at the heart of Eastern religion/philosophy. Time and time again Eastern religion talks about the illusion of our ideas, of the calming of our mental models and an appreciation of how things are as they are, without concepts. This is usually considered to be a "higher" level of understanding. The truth is that it is impossible to be entirely free of models and concepts. The idea of Enlightenment is of a unity of consciousness of everything, a feeling of light and compassion, of peace. These are all concepts that make up a model of the Universe. It still isn't the Universe, just a different model.

The final problem I want to address is the concept that if there is no complete, perfect truth that humans can understand that there is therefore no right or wrong answer, or that all cultures, ideas and ways of dealing with the world are equally justified. The thing is that there really is a reality that has qualities that can be determined and measured. That an anemometer cannot measure the color of an apple doesn't mean that you can't say whether the apple is red or green with a high level of certainty. In trying to determine whether a child should receive prayer or medical treatment for meningitis it is possible to make a sensible determination, and it isn't based on how fervently a person holds their belief.

You do not experience reality, and you can never truly experience all that there is in reality. Anyone who tells you differently is wrong. You cannot understand in a complete way any complete and ultimate truth. Everything that you think, feel, or experience is based on models of reality. Models are imperfect, and this means that even if you are equipped with the latest and best models about things, you are still certainly wrong about some things. Our understanding of things improves when we understand how we understand things.