Safe Spaces

What is or how do we define the word "belong"? Belong is defined as to be in the relation of a member, adherent, inhabitant, etc. It also means to have the proper qualifications, especially the social qualifications to be a member of a group (dictionary.com). Etymologically it means "to go along with, properly relate to". I think through evolution by natural selection we were hard-wired with the need to belong. Our species lived in small groups and communities in which they cooperated and worked together in order to survive and pass-on their genes. We are a social species and being an outcast was detrimental to survival. For example, on the African plains if someone in the group was forced out they were an easy meal for predators, it probably wasn't uncommon to see the remains of an outcast shortly after their removal, and so the need to belong was reinforced. We want to fit in and be part of a group. As a result, when African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, LGTBQ people ask for a safe space they are innately saying I don't feel like I belong here by their fellow students and the institution's actions, policies, and refusal to acknowledge that they do belong. To give you an analogy, imagine a Germany public university putting up statues of Adolf Hitler or buildings named after Nazi war generals, or Nazi war heroes statues after World War II. Yet there are public institutions especially in the South who do such things praising the Confederate State of America's (CSA) treason against the United States of America; for example, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have a statue dedicated to Confederate State of America soldier (i.e. Silent Sam), until recently they had a building named after a former North Carolina leader of the Ku Klux Klan William Saunders, it was Saunders Hall (built in 1922) and 93 years later they changed the name to Carolina Hall. Why did it take protest for the university to change the name? Moreover, you have so-called groups like Students for Fair Admissions or Project on Fair Representation trying to use so-called model minority group (i.e. Asians) as a front for suing Harvard, UNC - Chapel Hill possibly other PWI's (predominantly white institutions) and the Abgail Fisher and Edward Blum of the world who feel black, brown, or non-white students are not qualified to be admitted to PWI universities; they are indirectly and directly saying to so-called minorities you don't belong here and you wonder why they are asking for a safe space. In other words, so-called minorities groups are saying dear fellow students and institution I want to "belong" but your actions say that I don't, for if it did then I wouldn't have to protest. It's just like people saying Black Lives Matter, if they did they wouldn't have to say so. Think about it...

Embrace The Absurd

Like Victor Frankl Man's Search for Meaning, "Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.", in other words, many feel that they can live with limited expectations, but they can't live without hope. What is hope? Hope is defined as to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence, it's also a feeling of desire for something and confidence in the possibility of its fulfillment. I am not trying to be a Debbie Downer, but is hope all that? Henry Miller in a book titled The Cosmological Eye, wrote "Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions." Friedrich Nietzsche in Human All too Human wrote "Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of men". How can we live without hope? We should embrace the madness as "it is what it is" this doesn't mean we become apathetic, indifferent, or passive, but engaged without expectation or hope of anything beyond this. This life may be lived without expectation or hope, because life has never promised us anything. Like being good for goodness sake, or to love truth for truth's sake, we should live life for life's sake. I think this means to survive, pass on our genes (if we're able or choose to), and participate or embrace the absurdity of life for life doesn't have any known destinations it's evolving toward. If scientific predictions are true (which they probably are), then the universe and thereby life will end in heat death. I think we may brush our teeth, exercise, take care of our health, etc. not to escape the absurd but to embrace it, this is our revolt, passion, and freedom. Like The Walking Dead we are all infected and no one will escape, yet they fight to survive for as Strand tells Nick in Fear the Walking Dead, “The only way to survive a mad world is to embrace the madness,” in other words, to make it your own. We may stop living like we got something to prove to ourselves and others, we can stop pretending to be someone we are not because it doesn’t matter and we should embrace this as it is, not escape it with the illusion of hope. As Meursault proclaimed in the Stranger “And I felt ready to live it all again too. As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself-so like a brother, really-I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." I think we should embrace the absurd don't try to escape it through hope or as Camus states it is "to live without appeal", in other words, stop looking over your shoulder for there is no one there who cares.

Why We Need Science

Recently, I had several thoughts ranging from agnosticism to The Walking Dead and the role of science. The conclusion of the many thoughts was that besides luck, my species or descendant species best hope for continuation is the advancement and implementation of science and the creation of technologies that results from the advancement of science . Philosophy and religion got us to science in that they both started with wonder, for example, the questions of why are we here; why is there something rather than nothing, etc., were and still are important questions. Most Religions, especially Judeo-Christian based religions, stopped with a supernatural explanation or agent and didn't advanced from there, they hoped to somehow manipulate the supernatural agent, while Philosophy continued to become what is called Natural philosophy the precursor to science. I don’t think philosophy is dead, I think it has a role in science from asking pertinent questions to guiding the ethics around the result of scientific inquiry. The questions philosophy ask should lead to new avenues and falsifiable theories or explanations that describe who, what, when, where, why, and how of the empirical evidence and phenomena that science is trying to describe or observe. Religion at least in Western societies are stuck on a Judeo-Christian paradigm or model that is no longer relevant for the advancement of my species and its future species. In other words, the Judeo-Christian (and Islamic) model stopped at the supernatural explanation i.e. god did it model and has not advanced, this means it has only put forward a mystery to describe another mystery and this explains nothing. I am agnostic why we’re here and whether the universe has a meaning or point that is objective, this is unknowable or if it’s just a brute fact, it is what it is, and there is no objective meaning only subjective meaning, again this is unknowable without additional data. This line of thinking lead me into thinking about why do we as a species study nature in order to understand how the universe work unless there is a hope that we’re able to find a solution to the eventual heat death of the universe, whether it culminates in the Big Chill or the Big Rip, because of a repulsive force called Dark Energy, the place holder name for an unknown force that science doesn’t know what it is, it is the cosmological constant in Albert Einstein’s theory of Relativity. The better we understand the universe there is hope that we can use this knowledge to our advantage to perpetuate our survival as a species or whatever we evolve into. For example, when Sir Isaac Newton gave us a better understanding of gravity, we used that knowledge to develop technologies to overcome the force of gravity to the point that we used his laws to land on the moon, and still use them to land objects on Mars, and other space missions. Likewise, we hope that a better understanding through the scientific methods would lead to knowledge and this knowledge would lead to technologies that will help our descendants whether they’re an entirely different species overcome the heat death of the universe. For example, science with its track record so far for the betterment of life on our planet has done this, i.e. the advancement of science has developed genetically modified food to feed more people, it has developed pharmaceutical advancements to cure and treat biologically based disease and so science has and continue to get the job done, not religion. If our species or a descendant species of ours is going to survive science is our best hope with the guidance of ethics and other areas of philosophical ideas, not religion, for when you stop with a supernatural explanation that explains everything else, without the same time being explained, you explain nothing for you have not further our knowledge. Especially, if you don’t know if this supernatural entity is doing anything without some type of empirically based or falsifiable evidence. We don’t know if someone goes into remission if it is luck or a miracle, thus until direct evidence of a supernatural effect is known it does not add to our knowledge. With this thought I thought about the hit series The Walking Dead and why do they fight on even though everyone is infected, I think it is the evolutionary instinct that want to perpetuate itself in the gene, for life, consciousness, awareness, and existence itself is what Arthur Schopenhauer called the “will to Live”. It is this instinct that evolved in every living cell, when the first replicating molecule adapted to its environment and became alive and aware or conscious, this desire to survive that drive the survivors in The Walking Dead and (in each of us) to live with, within, and beyond their circumstances and my argument is if they are going to survive it will take science to figure out the cause and effect and the solution through some form of technology to a problem that is or will turn them into zombies, in other words, they currently don’t have an answer, but if they stop with a supernatural answer that cannot explain itself in a coherent way or advance a solution to create an immunization protocol then they are all destined to become zombies and this is no answer at all. Think about it....