What do we know? What can we know? What have we been taught? Of that which we were taught, what was indoctrination of unchallenged dogma? What can we verify? All of the teachings and "information" which I have received and am continuously exposed to, cannot possibly be true and some statements are blatantly contradictory. Recent examples of conflicting "information" propagated before and during the Iraq War compared with the release of leaks and now the knowledge in declassified government documents are illustrative. The Nixon "Watergate" recordings and discoveries published in The Washington Post are a permanent feature of our national memory.
What was ignorantly proposed as science, included the four humors, spontaneous generation and leaching. From the dawn of human history, until only about five hundred years ago, there was acceptance and authoritarian defense of the flat earth and then more defensive denial of the heliocentric universe.
From elementary school we are taught geography with all of the heavily lined borders, pastel colored countries and unmemorable names. When Armstrong and Aldrin photographed the earth from the moon, I was struck by how there were no boundaries separating nationalities and how small and isolated the earth is. Of course, my classroom map lines and colors were not to be seen. This observation seemed self-evident and not subject for debate However, even after four decades of manned and unmanned space missions of several nations, there remains organizations of those folk who contend that the moon landing proved nothing as they are confident that the televised documentation was a staged trick taking place in the Western deserts of the United States.
Testing science: Do I have go back the laboratory and verify atomic structure, acid-base chemistry, the physics of light and optics? Must every idea be discarded if it does not with stand the syllogisms of the hypotheses/test/proof model? What if something obviously works by most people's assessment, when only a few people understand it? Is it no less true? If you are advised to have a high Tesla MR chemical analysis or have your own genome deciphered, do you have to be able to go to the blackboard and explain it to the class before submitting to the procedure?
Doubt, skepticism and examination are core values but if, I, for one, am limited to that which can I can explain, to say nothing of "prove it", my ability to function would be greatly impaired.
So at this time, I have several decades of an accumulated inventory of various categories of facts, observations, stories, opinions and indoctrinated religious and philosophical beliefs which have been strongly held by someone slightly ahead of me in life's journey. Thankfully, some of my mentors gave us some tools with which to examine and review these things. However, I have come to accept that a lot of what we experienced and do, is based on : somethings just seem right and somethings just feel wrong. It is impossible to describe the covenant which I have with my wife and children. I have had a lesser but similar bond with a few teachers, patients and students. There is a moral core of my soul which I received from the example of the life of my Grandmother. Before Gandhi, she knew that: you must BE what you want the world to become.
These things are not scientifically provable, but they are as true as gravity or the proportions of the sides and angles of a right triangle.
As The King said to Anna: "Life is a puzzlement!"
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