INTRODUCTION TO THIS POEM IN PROSE: HERE
“Although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks he knows. I neither know nor think I know.”
The greatest religion of the new millennium:
Scientific Fundamentalism
In with the microscope, out with the candelabra
NOW RECRUITING: rationalists for our materialistic dogma
Spacetime was born with a bang, accidentally
14 billion years of future’s past present (fundamentally)
Having all evolved from one warm puddle
In here, The Hard Problem still has us all befuddled
Accidental, though we all appear to be
Carbon & water turned into genetic memory
Fish, amphibians, mammals, then very small hominids
We don’t acknowledge Dashavatara
(we give all credit to the Darwinists)
After consciousness formed our big, smart brains
We decided that must be where consciousness is made
In here, we deny where, how & why it’s felt
We deem unworthy the study of the experience its Self
You say the mechanics of life, love, art & beauty
Are projected onto the experiencer’s screen like a movie?
We think the experience knows what the experiencers don’t
The only way to know a man is to cut him open, head to toe
Dissect the body, the energy, the emotion & the mind
Dissect the water & the earth, dissect the air & fire
Immaterial things are a waste of our dissection of spacetime
It’s not our jobs to experience
but to present our dissections of this life
If you wish to join us in here, you will be required to take
One humongous, un-ironic leap of faith
Consensus reality must be touched, heard or seen
We’ve made strict laws of this capricious belief
We’ve made constant all the universe’s inconsistencies
We’ve made permanence of all the world’s transient things
This mustn’t be that, here mustn’t be there
Speed of light appears constant (must be true everywhere)
So what if electrons are here & there at the same time
Our world is as hard as our own stubborn minds
So what if we’re hurling through space
(like an electron cloud)
Stop presenting obstacles - we have it all figured out!
So your body remembers your grandfather’s disease
Remembers his traumas, his looks & every breath he breathed
So we know there’s more memory in a single strand of DNA
But we’re certain all memories are stored in the brain
Yesterday & tomorrow mustn’t be tricks of the mind
Time is surely linear (our memories wouldn’t lie)
We memorized more facts than most memories will hold
Our memories are how we convince society to think that we know
If anyone attempts to know what cannot be seen
“Un-scientific!” she & he will be deemed
Her grant money will be abruptly taken away
Un-allegorically, she will be burned at the stake
We already categorized all life by taxonomy
The only way to know life is to classify its biology
Drawing certainties from the rubble of the past
(archeologically)
We already wrote the history of humanity’s odyssey
(prodigally)
If new ideas & new insights are your colloquy’s calling
Go join the useless idiots in the philosophy department
Anyone who attempts experiments in metaphysics or ontology
Will promptly be given a right brain lobotomy
The left brain hemisphere is the only one with a purpose
We use logic & deduction
to discern the world’s inner workings
We dissect the earth just as we do human corpses
We supply government & business with brand new resources
We poke, prod, plunder & pillage every crevasse & crack
We present it to humanity as progress
(equipped with new existential facts)
The sun is a ball of gas & earth is an unconscious rock
Your sentience is an accidental physical phenomena
(or else your serotonin needs to be blocked)
“But all ideas come from the right brain hemisphere!”
Nope. All ideas come from deduction in here
“But even Einstein attributed his ideas to intuition!”
We refuse to acknowledge your woo-woo mysticism
“Why then, is there anything anywhere at all?”
Perhaps a rock in the multiverse had a great fall?
“Well, what motivates Being to keep on Being?”
Dissecting the touching & hearing & seeing
“But why does that cockroach have such a great will to live?”
Desire & will are immaterial & material is all there is!
“But there’s desire to BE in every grain of sand”
Take your platonic panpsychism back to Never Never Land
“So what is the consensus on human emotion?”
Well, we put a drop of water on a slide
& now we know the whole ocean
Perception imprints on folds of the physical brain
If you experience anything outside of this
we deem you insane
“But doesn’t neuroscience repeatedly disprove
Cognitive behavioral un-scientific-folly-ology?”
Perhaps, but the magnificent miracle of the human mind
Must fit into preconceived notions of psychology
We made pills to regulate your emotions
(in their physical, chemical form)
By comparing & contrasting you to societal norms
We created the paradigm of human health
Existential dread of materialistic nihilism can’t be seen
(so it mustn’t be felt)
“But that nihilistic paradigm is destroying Mother Earth!”
Just take your pills, shut your mouth & get back to work
“But that paradigm pushes us further & further from truth!”
You’re fired! Earth is an object & so are you
If new things are discovered or new ideas come around
We’ll make sure your new insights & ideas can’t be found
We have our timeline, our paradigm,
& we’ll tell you what’s real
Our consensus is the only reality
no matter what else you experience or feel
Our physics can talk, but our physicians won’t listen
None of our old paradigms will be faced with new resistance
We remain in one space, one time & one dimension
Our dogma won’t be entangled with spooky action at a distance
If you want creativity, join the artists, inventors & engineers
Only ONE empirical truth is allowed in here
In here, we use facts to deduce & deduce & deduce
We only believe physical data with physical proof
We don’t allow experiments on the nature of Being
Unless they involve touching, hearing & seeing
If you join us in here, you already know what’s in store
Leave your Spirit, your Soul & your Being at the door
We are the mainstream! No one else can compete
We monopolized truth & all else is belief
The human is a machine, just a fluke of fate
So we evolved larger lobes than the other, lesser apes
We know historically, truth comes from outside the tribe
Yet we base the old outsiders’ truths on our modern lies
We pretend we’re as certain as the gospel we preach
But we blaspheme science with every faithful leap
We’re academics! We make up the rules
Outsiders beware!
We’ll make the whole world believe you’re fools!
You can’t even get a job without a lifetime’s debt to us
& our institutions are the only ones the world trusts
You may think it irrational to treat human Beings this way
But we academics treat each other exactly the same
Disparaging polarities, tribalism, infighting & hate
We refuse to acknowledge that we’re all irrational animals
stuck within the illogical conundrum of time & space
We rationalists all claim to be led by the facts
“But tell a rationalist he’s wrong, & see how he reacts!
His emotions are what led him to the now & the here
With his illogical desires & his irrational fears”
“Science is a tool & one which cannot fail
But does anyone believe in a hammer or disbelieve a nail?”
We made science into doctrine & threw away the tool!
Our nihilistic materialism has indoctrinated every school
The greatest tool ever known to man
We homogenized into dogma..
to fit the world in a grain of sand
“Yes, science is the greatest of all God’s inventions
But the scientists turned it into another dumb religion”
Newton, by William Blake, trying to fit the world onto a 2D scroll