A popular gem of wisdom is the idiom "you don't know what you don't know" or "forget everything you think you know" and I believe there's a fundamental truth beneath it. I also think that this fundamental truth escapes most people.

When I say "you don't know what you don't know" I mean that down to the tiniest molecule of understanding. Of all there is to know, we have only grasped the tiniest part of a fraction of a fraction, and with all our limited experience, it's possible, even likely, that something we don't yet know lies in contradiction to everything we do.

Put simply, you believe a lot of things, but you know very little. 

If my hypothesis is correct, it is belief that lies at the center of every worldview, most especially those that are built on "fact" simply because facts, at their best, are placeholders, bookmarks for the accepted conclusions of an accumulation of knowledge based on an expression of faith.

"Woah" you say, "faith? That's for religious nuts."

Is it though?

You more than likely believe the earth is round. So do I. Why do we believe it? Is it because we personally experienced the fullness of the globe in its proper context? Did we do the math and understand every possible nuance that those numbers may represent from the largest collection of interstellar bodies to the singular quantum particle? Of course not, but we're kind of almost pretty sure that someone else did because something we read one time said so. We take it on faith that none of the facts we've been given by the people we trust are false, or that those people didn't make a grave mistake. You can make fun of flat earthers all you want, but at the end of the day, 99% of the rest of us aren't in any better position to argue, except by referring to an  authority higher than ourselves.

Still, it's normal, even expected, that a flat earther will be mocked if they make their beliefs public, even though this is in an era where truth is considered subjective. Phrases like, "speak truth to power" or "that's my personal truth" are also considered normal, but if you don't embrace the communal truths, prepare to be cast out.

As a complete aside, and because this is my journal and I'm allowed to rant, the "community truth" issue is one of the first reasons why I abandoned by brief identification with the LGBT+ community, and why I tend to speak out against it when the subject comes up. I'm a STRONG opponent of anything remotely pedo, but publicly speaking out against MAPs earned me time in the penalty box. They're allies after all. That's when other lights began to click on, like the hidden 40% domestic abuse rate among lesbian couples and the inflated identity numbers to make alternate lifestyles seem more relevant than they are, that there's no sound biological premise for sexual preference and forced representation does more to divide people than foster acceptance. Speak out on ANY of these subjects, even with the intention of cultivating debate, and your membership card will be instantly revoked. Tolerance only extends to skin color and the people you rub your body parts against. Diversity of thought is anathema, which suggests more than strongly that the community truths are in imminent danger of collapsing. Science welcomes questions. Indoctrination does not.

ANYWAY.

It comes down to choices, always choices. They're the only things you can truly own in this life, the only things that can never be taken from you. Choice forms the foundation of belief, and belief lies at the core of our acceptance of fact.

If you want to argue with me I have one prerequisite. Explain consciousness. Elucidate conclusively on its origins and its nature, define its forms and characteristics, demonstrate to me how it's measured and what qualifies sentience without using recursive language, like "sentience is self-awareness" because you can't explain that one either.

Until you can define that, the rest is meaningless, because you can't prove to me that your experiences mirror my own. What you see as a red circle may appear to me as a blue square, I might call it a fish and you might call it spaghetti, and the only reason it makes sense is because our perceptions sort it all out. You can't prove that all of your existence and experience didn't manifest in the past five minutes with comprehensive memories fully formed and intact. You can't demonstrate that we're not four dimensional beings and our "lives" are merely a brief transition through three dimensional space. Are we spiritual beings piloting avatars through a subjective mindscape, or are we bundles of meat destined to be recycled for spare parts on the cosmological scale? One is as likely as the next if you rely only on your ability to know.

This question has deep repercussions, because all of science is based on perception. It means science can only ever be a construct of open questions rather than a sum of acceptable, accumulated facts. It can't even prove itself.

Where does that leave us? A few things remain observable fact, if perception can be trusted at all:

1. People will draw closest to like-minded people, which means ideas have more inherent value than evidence, and as a race we're more dogmatic than intellectual. This isn't a bad thing unless you try to distinguish fact and truth as separate entitles instead of two facets on the same gemstone.

2. It means religion isn't a boogey man because at our core we're all religious, we just choose to sacrifice to different gods, whether its our time, our resources, or our ability to think outside a very small box. In case you missed it, I'm not talking about spiritual beliefs, I mean the tenets of faith you subscribe to, the undeniable, absolute facts that you can't possibly know.

3. We're obligated to pursue the Questing Beast though we're destined to never find it. Like it or not, even if you're the only being in the universe living within a construct of your infinite imagination, the chase must--and will--go on. The choice left to you is how you're going to grow. Will you stretch out in a line in an attempt to connect one point to the next, or expand into realms yet undiscovered?

This isn't as esoteric as it might seem. I'm not saying there's no objective truth, only that you don't know what it is and you need to stop acting like you're smarter than you are based on things other people have said in passing.

Nothing will change the fact that you have to get up and go to work, that you'll crave inclusion into the next social craze, or that you'll end up arguing with someone about something stupid before the week is out. But we owe it to ourselves and to each other to be more open minded, not just to new and exiting diversions and deviations, hedonistic feints at accumulating pleasure, but also to those stalwart traditional structures and values, the disciplines and restraints we like to call oppressive. We need to embrace the "foolish" and listen to the occasional flat-earther, asking honest questions without the intent to undermine or humiliate them.

Open discourse is the only path forward for any culture or society, because unless you've found a way to isolate yourself from the rest of the universe, shared experiences are the only ones that really matter, and rooting yourself entirely in accepted "facts" without philosophy can only limit you. Leave your preconceptions about the material world at the door, and don't dismiss the preaching of the faithful. Odds are good that they're closer to the truth than you are.