Just Walk Away

Last night I found myself inflamed with frustration as I was unwittingly defending esthetics from someone clearly without attachment to anything important. There are parts of this city where even the land is not land, and yet those who live on it pride themselves on the fact and compete financially to assure this dubious affiliation. It did not surprise me that my partner in this absurd debate also participated in the aforementioned group hallucination. But this is not about criticism, it's about value. Before a bitter end, I just walked away.

So often over the past years I have found myself lost without a guide, seeking a reality which includes stability and strength but without a knowledge of the origin of such things or a sense of how to choose a path that would lead to them. The "big picture" is commonly associated with a God on a throne, a ruler in the sky, or a message without a justification. I refused to accept a consensus of seizures. That is to say, everyone else seemed to be jostling with acceptance, but if we are to believe what helps us, then there is no help to be found in any of this.

So where to begin? Pragmatism and truth go hand in hand - truth being that thing which is present, which describes what is present, or which in much the same way offers value through benefit.

"Is it raining?" "Yes, it is"

This could be truth, and I can accomodate. This also could be a lie and I would have planned ineffectively. There can be opinions on the subject, but for purposes of deriving benefit in terms of my understanding and my actions I accept that in this case truth is something unequivocal and valuable.

The opportunity for fallacy arrives in the displacement of a truthful description by one that contains no valuable information. Or worse, one that contains harmful information. The negotiation of this difference relies on the intelligence that organizes our senses. It's no accident that we say that something does or does not "make sense." It is in fact simply a higher order overview of visual, auditory, chemical, thermal, electromagnetic, and proprioceptive data that is what we call thought.

As in the example above, it is my senses that verify the truth about rain, and my intellect that uses those sensations to create an emotional position which drives my behavior. Therefore in the state that we seem to find ourselves, I must maintain that a dutiful worship of the senses (where worship means to hold in high regard) is a necessary foundation for clear and rational thought, and the benefit that comes from it.

And so to tell me that a self-made opinion has value despite its complete orthogonality to the data that sensation suggests is an indication that something is gravely awry. And this stubborn attachment to a belief structure that places importance on each person's opinion, regardless of how misguided strikes me as a group therapy session that takes place in every place at once, and has no intention of finding an end.

Of our known 5 senses, only one stems directly from the core of the brain (the other 4 are peripheral adjuncts) in the form of bulbs which scan countless gas molecules for their structure and identify them simultaneously in the form of smell. This behavior is common in many animals and its heritage spans back to the time when single-celled organisms alone colonized this planet, and arguably was the foundation of their ability to detect, adjust, and organize for their survival.

Food, drink, partners, and environments seethe with airborne chemistry, and our ability to inhale it, decipher its codes, incorporate its stories, and adjust our actions for benefit is the backbone of solid intellectualism. There is no rift between art and science, if art simply means worship of esthetics, and science means methodologies for such worship. This is how I take it.

Music, coffee, fresh bread, wild flowers, earthworms, maple sap, sandalwood each have distinct codes mapped to their textures, flavors, and vibrations in light and air pressure. When we detect their codes, we learn something of them, and what we learn becomes a utility. We are after all a dependency in the ecosystem as well as a dependent. And the links must be valid to offer structure.

When a man in a lab coat creates a scent, it is a real scent no doubt. But what does it tell you of the thing its been associated with? In my assessment nothing that can be trusted. Wheat has a scent. But scentless mass-produced wheat held for months in storage silos grown in depleted soil and processed with low attention per unit volume, and then scented by said lab coat aims to hide the truth of the story. Why should old wheat smell new? Shouldn't I be allowed to decide that I'd rather eat new wheat by being given the chance to detect the difference? Any way you look at it, the scenting and flavoring of food amounts to bold faced lying. And its impact on my health and well being is by design suboptimal. For just like things with quick energy tasting sweet and things with rich abundant energy tasting fatty and thick, it is these signs that we use to feed ourselves, interact with others, and build a reliable framework in which to operate.

It is therfore entirely relevant that I avoid lies which harm me. Starbuck's is a lie. McDonald's is a lie. Everything cosmetic is in some form a lie. Why would you eat ugly food wearing makeup, when beautiful food exists? Particulary when ugly often means unhealthy, unsafe, or undesirable and someone is choosing to bring this to you while covering up their tracks to avoid notice.

*sigh* There is a simple answer to complex questions, but the glut of misinformation makes sifting through it taxing to say the least. Starting with the basics is a valuable way to restabilize the foundation, and eventually lift the topmost intellect to a useful and dominant position.

If this is not a valuable thing to worship, then may someone's God help us all.