I find myself actually semi-divided
in my rational “attitudes.” For example, I “know” that once I die, I’ll be dead
forever—as in, once my body is over, shall I say, that is the end of me. I “know”
that whenever I experience a feeling, say what is termed as “falling in love,”
it’s all a bunch of chemicals interacting in my brain. But then, I don’t “know”
this. Because the poet/artist side of me wants to believe I have a soul that is
distinguished from my body. This side of me wants to believe that my spirit
feels connected with another spirit and can indeed fall in love. This side of
me wants to think that my soul will live on after my body dies—though, where it
will “live on,” I would not know.
How can I—with the plethora of
scientific data and research there is today—still be thinking this way? Maybe
we can give Descartes a pass for not having much scientific data, or none at
all actually, on his side to back up this Cartesian dualism we have spoken of
in class (which I find myself semi-possessing and falling for). But how do I
justify my own cognitive dissonance amid the kinds of knowledge there is today?
Then, I wonder, is this cognitive dissonance wrong? As in, is it bad to
embrace these two ideas at once if I can compartmentalize them in my life and
use them when “necessary”? For example, for my own idealistic self that likes
to reach the Muses when writing poetry or that just wants some time away from the
mundane, logical order and rhythm of society, I retreat to this ethereal sort
of attitude I’ve mentioned. But when reality is calling, I know that I can
count on my “logical self” to set things straight, kick that Cartesian
dualistic part of me aside, and say the “right answers.” Now, though, how do we
reconcile—thinking on a larger scale—this split between our Cartesian selves
who want to look inward for knowledge and the world beckoning us, needing us,
to get REAL?
I think that today what is needed
is not only the separation of church and state but also that of church and
science. We must learn to reconcile these contradictory forms of “knowledge,”
as in be able to separate the two and not let one form of knowledge meddle with
the other. In other words, we can individually retreat to La La Land for
vacation, but we mustn’t as a collective let ourselves retire to this way
of thinking about things. For instance, sure… there “is a god” until we
must decide on policies regarding climate change. We have to be able to go back
to work—to the facts—and know that things don’t actually work that way if we are
going to take ourselves seriously.
Your points are very interesting. I think that it boils down to being aware of the meeting of irrationality and rationality in ourselves so that we can understand our weaknesses and limitations in our own thought processes. This is never easy because it can be difficult to be so self aware that you can essentially turn on or off different parts of yourself at will.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you phrased "a separation of church and science" in this blog and I agree with this. I think that we would be in trouble if there was not a separation between church and state even today considering how often religious claims are the basis of many political arguments. Being raised Catholic, I have struggled with my own ideas about the extent to which we (as a society) we should let the ideas and traditions of religion dictate us as people and the beliefs we have about an "ideal" society (especially when religious beliefs are not always backed by science or protect the rights of all people). I think this will greatly influence future generations and the growth or lack there of of different religious groups in this country.
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