Capital D

Because I am in a philosophical mood today.

Needless to say, I am not Aristotle. Or at least, I have devoted less time to ponder upon my thoughts. Sometimes less can be more, sometimes it can be inferred that too little is not sufficient enough to support justification of one’s opinions. Nevertheless, I am granted with the ability to think. And though metaphysics can be such a bitch, I have had the (un)fortunate fate to visit these abstract thoughts today. Since I am already here, I figured that it would not hurt to translate them into words.

Except that some purists might feel offended with these words. Since I do not like the idea of some purists-with-power coming across this entry through Google search and execute their powers on me, I would try my best effort to mix in a pinch of “intentional vagueness” to make things a bit more subtle than closed-minded purists can understand. Or at least, subtle enough for them to ever arrive at this blog.

Disclaimer, though, I can get really obscure whenever I aim for subtlety. If you still have much better things to do aside from reading my ramblings, which can get a bit too undecipherable for some, need not to proceed. Otherwise, read on.

On a regular day, I would usually avoid to touch on this issue. After all, it is hardly debatable (if possible). Take an example:

It is hard to convince a colour-blind man that an apple is red. But if we are in his shoes, when there is no such visible evidence that apple is indeed red, to accept that apple is red means that he is acknowledging what he is told by the people around him. But popular/dominant notion, though might be acceptable by the standard of the society, is not necessarily the correct one.

What if apple is not really red? Though it sounds absurd, it might as well be that the majority of Earth inhabitants are suffering from a sort of visual/illusionary disorder of which we perceive the world to be more than what it really is. After all, colours are just manifestation of the different varieties in light energy and wavelength. In WikiPedia, it is described that colours begin to exist due to the “spectral sensitivities of the light receptors”.

If anything, it sounds like a more sophisticated form of magic: seemingly true in our eyes, but in reality we are exposed to false perception caused by the (weak?) nature of our eye receptors, tricking our mind to believe in something that might exist only in our mind. It is not the colour-blind man’s fault that our light receptors are (too much?) more sensitive than his. A good deal of people out there with more sensitive eyes can see apparitions, yet we argue that the apparitions only exist in their minds. By the same token, colours are arguably illusionary and they may provide false truth, as they exist only in the world of people whose light receptors are somehow more sensitive.

There is another dilemma. If we are to acknowledge the existence of apparitions just because some people with more sensitive eyes said so, would we not be blindly following other people? First of all, we do not have any evidences that these apparitions exist. Secondly, we might acknowledge that they see something we fail to see because they have more sensitive eyes, but there is still the possibility that they have mistaken what they saw as apparitions.

People are different and they perceive things differently. It is hard to prove which one is more correct when they view something from different grounds. As social beings, we love to make things easier by (over?)simplifying with the consensus that apple is indeed red. But some stuffs are way too complex to be agreed upon.

Enter the Capital D – it is in Latin and not English, by the way.

There are two popular views regarding the concept of Capital D. There are the believers who subscribe to R and the seekers who subscribe to S (plain obvious what R and S are, but at least they are not searchable through Google by unwelcomed closed-minded purists). The two views, unfortunately, grow throughout time to be opposing of each other. Incompatibility of R and S became more prominent as the seekers discover new things which appeal to human’s mind more effectively through the means of logic, while the believers put it clear that a few things in the world (like Capital D and miracles) are simply out of the realm of logic but they are not inexistent. This incompatibility leads the two camps to dismiss each other.

But why oh why do they have to be so incompatible?

Whether you think that Creationism or Big Bang – both have their own fallacies, of course – started it all, we all agree that something began to exist and that something continue to develop to become what it is today. The R camp believes in a characterized Capital D while the S camp seeks for the law of nature, but I wonder if it is just the same after all. Because if what R believes in is “the ultimate truth” and what S seeks for is “the ultimate truth”, then they are going against each other to defend the exact same thing.

I suppose that the Capital D is, after all, the goal of both camps. The only difference is that the concept is understood under different definitions, hence creating troubles and misunderstandings from those who do not give the other camp’s view a chance. If anything, R is something that is constructed by the imperfect human beings to understand the principles of the ultimate truth in a more spiritual way. On the other hand, S is something that is constructed by the imperfect human beings to explain the principles of the ultimate truth in a more intellectual way.

I am not going to argue that it is more superior to be intellectual or spiritual. And although I tend to be more of a seeker (that does not make me a non-believer, though, mind you), I am not trying to convert anyone’s views to agree with mine. Rather, I think that the ultimate truth is beyond both R and S (and can be approached, at least to a certain extent, in both ways).

Sometimes I think that the concept of the Capital D is more characterized by some (but not all) Rs to induce a more personal connection between the believers and the ultimate truth. But it shall be noted than an R does not own the Capital D. First of all, the fact that there are so many Rs in this world (with occasional contradictions between each other) confirm that the Capital D is understood differently by different people. Most people would agree that it is not wrong for someone to personally choose R1 over R2 to believe in, and vice versa.

That being said, it is agreeable that there is nothing wrong for lacking in belief of R1 (please note that “respect” is altogether a different issue from “belief”). The same goes for R2 all the way to Rn. To not believe in R1 does not mean that someone does not believe in the ultimate truth. To not believe in any Rs, to bring it a bit more extreme, does not deter someone from reaching the ultimate truth through his/her own ways. It goes to show that, like what I said before, a certain R does not own the Capital D. It is just a vehicle, but you can reach your destination with other vehicles or even by walking with your own feet.

I wrote the above two paragraphs because I am so sick whenever a believer gets a bit too intolerance by insisting that he/she has the best vehicle (or worse, that his/her vehicle is the only one that reach the destination). I have no objection of beliefs, but have a little bit of respect. Some people are so intolerant as if their Rs own the Capital D. This dismissal causes us to close our minds from others’ point of views, as illustrated earlier through the “apple is red” example.

But oh well, it is easier to reach the consensus that apple is red (“it is the colour as seen by people with sensitive eye receptors whenever 625-740 nm wavelength light is bounced back by an apple object” seems decent and spot on, although too bothersome) than to agree upon the concept of Capital G. The very definition of it needs to be worked upon before it can be discussed by the different people with different point of views. Otherwise, it is a case of a chicken talking to a duck. Or in other words, the R and the S camps will continue to live on without being able to incorporate each others’ views for mutual benefits.

As new things are being discovered to address the previously unexplained, it seems fair that 2009 is a much different world than it was. In order for something to age well as the time goes by, it needs to be conditioned upon the world as it is today. Not that the underlying principles laid a long time ago are no longer relevant, but they need to be fine-tuned and adjusted to a new-and-different context. At the same time, just because something cannot be explained by our current knowledge (like miracles), it does not mean that it is not true. The fallacy of the seekers is that they tend to judge upon something based on rules or formula that is currently known, but it can close our minds from ever seeing beyond what is known now.

I think that the only way to address such an issue in today’s plural society is to stop being closed-minded purists and start to consider others’ views. Purism is too outdated.