Truth is not what we want it to be, but rather what it is.  In an esoteric discussion of black holes, David Kaiser a professor of physics and science at M.I.T. made an elegant summary of their discussion of science in one sentence.  “What we discover depends on what’s out there.”  Our current situation in this country, the United States is a confusion of ideology, religion, and science. The entire universe contained in those three terms have been dangerously blended into one failed effort of creating a ‘smoothy for the mind.’  Rather than a smoothy we are choking on the failure to understand how ideology, religion, and science must relate to each other while not being one another.  

When Artemis launched this writer actually shed tears, for I have been grieving the assault on both religion and science these past years.  Those two disciplines have been under an assault in that ‘great American blender of thought’.  However this space flight turns out, these several thousand people responsible for this historic event never forgot we cannot know until we experience what is actually out there in space.  Science is a discipline of not knowing.  When the Pope spoke last week it was Goosebumps (see Andrea Gibson’s poem), for I heard someone who had actually heard the message of love contained in the world’s religions.  Religion is a discipline of love. I am now waiting for politics to shed the sacrilege of believing politics and raw power can make the American blender of intellect actually work.  That can never be so we now need to make uneasy peace with the complexity of life.  Civic life is not an entertainment.  Democracy is a discipline of governance.

Modest Proposal for Good

What is a wonk?  Someone who turns simplicity into a mash of incomprehensibility.  What is an idiot?  Someone who turns the unknowable into either a simple religion or ideology.  We need to become disciples of truth.  One can see that life clearly has hard edges and is not a smoothy.  Science is humility that works on a the premise of proving oneself wrong or insufficient in an ongoing of discernment of the direction of truth.  Not all scientists are humble and you can see where that leads. Religion again is humble above all else. Not many religious leaders are humble and we can feel how that is going. Grandiosity is all its forms is bringing this nations to its knees, which apparently is the only direct view of humility.  This modest proposal is for our culture to embrace humility and truth. The disciplined practice of science, religion and democracy could do that for us again. That would be good.