THEORY AND CONTROL
Once upon a time, a long, long, time ago, there were a group of people who closely observed the nature of our physical world, and lo and behold, they made theories of how things worked at this basic level. They were, at times hailed, and at times almost stoned because of the predictions of their theories. Chief among these was Copernicus and Galileo and Di Vinci, whose theories have for the most part been proven out and now stand as fact. These theories helped us control the physical world we live in. And it also was the beginning of the illusion of “theory leads to control”.
Enough of my history lesson. So what is the point and why is that an illusion? Early on in our human time, we did observe mostly the physical world (people like Lao tsu, Socrates, Buddha, etc observed the non-physical living and we still struggle with those observations) and by doing that we created the math, physics, geometry, and all the other physical sciences. And that was good. Because those early “theories” were proven to be repeatable and demonstrated over and over, we found that these theories had a predictive nature. We LOVED predictability, for that gave us the feeling of being in control. And we really, really LOVE CONTROL. Nothing like taking the mystery out of at least some of this complex thing called life.
So, some of these humans decided that if we can make a good enough theory beyond the physical level, then we can hold ourselves up as experts and we can muster the power to CONTROL based on our theories. What a great coup that would be. Problem was, as soon as we moved beyond the simple physical level of living, the dynamics got so complex and the degree of flux and change became so great, that the theories could only ‘approximate” any kind of prediction. Over time, they found that the further they got from the simple physical, the more and more the theories did not hold water. But, this lack of proof did not stop these intrepid “maker uppers of theory”, they pushed on and declared that their theories were correct and accurate, even if they had no “scientific proof” of that. It did not matter since once they were able to convince enough of the population that the “theory” was correct, they would believe it and buy into it, without any proof.
And so was born our modern times. Now we have the majority of all the human race, who sincerely believe in various theories that can not and will never be proven. Not that that is all bad. Good theories do help some people focus their observations in certain ways to see if it gives them insight to how the human and natural world works. But for the most part, these various theories give people a false illusion of certainty and turn them into true believers of whatever the theory proposes. Getting lost here?? Ok, an example.
Economics is one of the best theoretical fields of study. (Government, philosophy, social studies, psychology, and others are also good) I like economics because I once pretended to study it. There are many, many theories of economics and none of them are provable. So why is that, aren’t they a bunch of intelligent scientists doing this work? Yes, and no. Ok, I do not want to bash any economists here, so I will just go to the next part. We can not prove any economic theory because……build tension here…..there has never been an economic situation like the one we have right now. As a matter of fact, there are no two economies alike anywhere on the globe or anywhere in history. It is always a one time event. We really do not comprehend all the factors causing it and all the factors that may alter it. So we guess! And that is not all bad, but it is not a controlled thing. So get over the A causes B mentality.
That is where we all get a little crazy. We want our experts to know and control. We want them to make decisions that work like gravity. Do this and you get that. It does not, not, not, not, work that way. Break out of the illusion of the physical world and you will see this for yourself. And that is not a theory. Tlane 1/26/12
Methinks thou didst have a bit of fun whilst creating this piece.