Cool Head Warm Heart

Take One: On Scientific Thinking

How many white swans do you have to count to prove and conclude that there is no black swan?

Before the discovery of Australia in seventeen century, it was considered scientific fact that all swans were white. After all, millions had been seen and they were all white. When the black swan was eventually discovered in Australia, besides proving NOT all swans are white, it gave an insight on deductive logic: we couldn’t prove that there was no black swan, as David Hume argued, by counting (even millions) white swans.

Therefore we cannot prove there is no God, or no Bodhisattva, or even no Santa Claus. How many Christmases without a real Santa Claus are required to prove there is no Santa? By not seeing him around doesn’t mean he does not exist. It just takes one next Christmas with that snow sleigh flying cross the winter moon to prove you (well, us) wrong.

We cannot prove their non-existence. And off course, I am agreeable with you that we can neither prove their existence.

My good friend told me that she had never tried to convinced her child to believe in Santa Claus. “Why create illusion?” I agreed. The conversation developed into religions. She said she was “science person”. I paused. And disagreed.

Believing that Santa does not exist is BELIEF. There is nothing “science” about it. In a way I do believe Santa is our imagination, but I reckon this is, too, a belief. We simply cannot prove non existance of black swan by counting white swan. There is no fact to proof that Santa does not exist.

Take Two: On Belief

Before I continue, things that its existence can be proven, like gravity, we “know” it exist. We don’t need to believe its existence. Things that we cannot prove by science, we choose to “believe”.

(To know is simple. They are all proven by science. To believe the “can’t-be-proven-yet”, takes efforts.)

So when I choose to believe in their existence, I am not based on scientific or empirical conclusion. When you choose to believe their non-existence, neither are you in a scientific thinking. Both are beliefs which cannot be scientifically verified or proven.

Intellectually, we are the same level. We both choose a side to BELIEVE something that cannot be proven by science, i.e. spiritual existence and/or non-existence.

A true scientific mind or a critical mind would reckon that “there is a possibility that they exist and there is a possibility that they do not exist”. And just stop there. True application of science and its methodology lead to open mindedness instead of suffocating imagination and killing the world of possibility.

I told my friend to tell her daughter that may be Santa does exist… and this is a scientific mindset.

Take Three: On Openmindedness

Then why we choose to believe what cannot be proven? The answer is why it has to be proven? Openmindedness includes more than mere scientific mind as discribed above.

It can also include a intellectual position that…standing on facts, choosing a belief yet awaring that such belief is not supoorted by empirical evidence and accept the possibility of being wrong.

A gullible mind is usually a unscientific, narrow and fixed mind that ignore possibilities despite new empirical evidences. I disagree with Richard Chappell that “Rationality must remain as a filter” because rationality itself is reason/ logic (therefore a way of belief) and not empirical facts. By practising “Rationality as filter” we are selecting facts to believe. And if we are strong in believe in our such “filtered view based on rationality”, we can be dangerously blinded from seeing new empirical evidence. Gullibility is exactly such insistance of rationality filtered knowledge despite new facts proving otherwise. For instance, before 4th century it would be considered real gullible to believe that the earth is round. The fact was that “sky is up and earth is down”, with “Rationality must remain as a filter” we would insisted that the earth is indeed flat and would sent Galileo Galilei into house arrest.

I have been searching for a similar quote like this one…

Nationalism couldn’t do it, not for me. I had this teacher once who liked to wear a tartan tie; he marked me down for saying that patriotism was just another kind of gangsterism. “And what gang do you belong to?” he asked.

“The cinema-goers,” I said. — Andrew O’Hagan’s film choices

Well, not the cinema-goers part, but “patriotism was just another kind of gangsterism”. Who was the one who first said it? So wise.

About living in every moment.

A few years ago I went back to university studied part-time for post-graduate degree. While enjoying every moment of attending lectures, taking notes, reading books, writing research paper, these tasks also enabled me to complete the degree. At that period, I lived every moment to the fullest in the process, yet the very same tasks enable me to achieve the goal of getting a post-graduate degree.

This experience of doing single task to ‘live today’ and still ‘for a better future’ prompted me to challenge a convention notion that rooted deeply in our culture, i.e. we were taught we have to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow.

The limiting notion

Objectively, every moments or seconds are the same. As natural phenomena there is no difference between this moment and a particular moment in the future. From a person’s subjective perspective, therefore, a particular second should be as important as the next second to maximize life. Time is therefore homogeneous.

So why should we sacrifice one for another?

The idea of ‘live now’ or ‘seize the day’, do not have to be in contradiction with ‘working for a better future’. They are not mutually exclusive. The usual misconception is, life is either about ‘live now’ OR about ‘suffer now for a better future’. People swing between the two extremes. Or worse, they simply live in the balance space between the two extreme. They would say, let’s strike a balance; let’s compromise the two.

I disagree.

To have both

Living today and working for a better future are not mutual exclusive. There is no balance to strike; there is no need for compromising. In an ideal situation, when doing a specific task, we can have the 100% “live now” and concurrently preparing for a 100% better future. We do not suffer now for future, as we do not sacrifice future for this moment of pleasure. We can have it both, present and future, at 100% satisfaction.

We spend time in the process of achieving goals. After getting the goals, we spend time enjoying them. With the notion that the importance of every moment in life is equal, we should enjoy the time spent in the process as much as the time spent in ripping the fruit of reaching the goals. The logic of this argument becomes apparent only if we considered from the perspective of “sudden death”.

Let’s say I died before the completion of my degree. Since I enjoyed every moment of returning to school, my satisfaction did not depend on the achievement of goals only. Even though I died and did not finish my degree, the years spent in the process of attaining the degree were not wasted. I lived to the fullest during those years. But if I hated the process of gaining the degree and my satisfaction came only from the achievement, die without attaining the degree means I wasted all my efforts. I had never lived.

Satisfaction

One may argues, “If I have extra $100.00, I can only choose either to save now spend later, or spend now with no money later. Yes, I can also strike a balance to spend $50 today and spend $50 tomorrow. But isn’t this compromising. I can’t choose to spend $100 today and spend $100 tomorrow. How about that?”

Let’s admit the fact of life that our physical resources, like money, are limited. It depletes when we utilize it. One of the badly misguided concepts that taught by our Western economists is the infinitely positive relationship of human satisfaction and material consumption. While we cannot deny the importance of money (therefore material consumption) in bringing security, satisfaction and happiness to our life, we also know that there is a limitation of what money could bring. There is a bigger space in our heart and life that money & material consumption could not fill.

We are lucky to live in a society of abundant that our basic needs and wants could be easily fulfilled and that we could ask for more than mere material needs and wants.

So I could decide to use $2.00 to buy myself a cup of coffee and keep the remaining $98.00 in the bank. Sitting outside the cafe right beside a busy street, I take a sip of the aromatic Mocha and think “This is 100% life satisfaction.” Or I could decide to keep all $100.00 in the bank instead. Walking pass a beautiful garden, I take a deep breath of the cool morning breeze and think “This is 100% life satisfaction.” I could decide to give away the $100.00 to those who is in need. Sitting under the starlight and wondering the mystery of life and universe, I think “This is 100% life satisfaction.”

You see, once the basic needs fulfilled, life satisfaction has got nothing to do with the extra $100.00.

Now and future

We all know ‘now’ matters but remember ‘future’ one day will become ‘now’. Today, we maximize our ‘now’ life, and yet improve and do not sacrifice our future. When the future ‘now’ arrive, we maximize that moment of ‘now’ at a higher level with more resources available.

Part 1: Now and future, the principle
Part 2: Apply the principle in goal setting

This post is from one of my old blogs at blogspot that I did not attempt to expand. I wrote it about two years ago.