7 - Blue Sky

So, even the most self-righteous person will likely admit he can't be right all the time although he acts like he's right 100% of the time. We are all self-righteous to a certain extent when it comes to our beliefs. If you're willing to admit to yourself that you can't be right all the time, which also means you're wrong at times, what could you be wrong about? If you're willing to admit that, what do you actually know as fact? Knowing and believing are two different things but we often conflate them. We usually believe we know what we actually only believe. So what is your number? You have to believe 100% of your beliefs are correct to believe in them, but how many of your beliefs do you think might be incorrect?

 

Here is another paradox and conundrum. The ego honestly believes that all its beliefs are correct. It has to for it to believe in them. But, rationally, the ego knows that it is impossible to be right about everything it believes. It knows that fact but doesn't really believe it. It believes that 100% of its beliefs are correct so it can't objectively come up with an estimate of how many of its beliefs are wrong. Its estimate is obviously going to be swayed by the fact that it believes 100% of its beliefs. This is the perfect example of what the ego does on a daily basis. It has to interpret and perceive the world based on its beliefs because it can't help but to believe them.

So what is your number? Can you admit that you can't be right about all your beliefs? If you're rational, you must. So what percentage of your beliefs do you believe to be absolutely correct? 90%? 99%? 99.99%?

If you are genuinely curious as to what that estimate is, you have to evaluate your beliefs. To evaluate them you first have to identify them and separate them from facts that you actually know that can be proven true. A beautiful yellow flower is a fact about the flower being yellow and a belief that it is beautiful. When you begin to separate your beliefs from facts, you begin to see how you have thousands of major and minor beliefs and nearly all of them are subjective. You'll see that many of those subjective beliefs you don't consider to be subjective. You can argue that the flower is yellow, but you can't argue it is beautiful. It is your opinion that the flower is beautiful. By your definition of what you believe is beautiful, you believe it to be beautiful. It is a fact to you that it is beautiful to you. But I don't like the color yellow so it isn't beautiful to me. It's a fact for you, but not for me so it isn't an over all fact. Your belief in that flower being beautiful can't be considered right or correct outside of your personal perspective and can be wrong if you apply it to everyone else. It's not absolutely correct.

So when I'm talking about being absolutely correct, I'm referring to a belief as it applies to everyone. Absolutely means without limit or completely. So that's more information than you had before and now that you've seen how many of your beliefs are subjective and simply can't be absolutely correct, has your number changed? Now what percentage of your beliefs are subjective and can't be considered absolutely correct? Is it a third and now you're down to 66.99% of your beliefs being absolutely correct? Maybe half of your beliefs are subjective and are your own personal opinion and can't be considered correct for everyone. Now your down to 49.99%. And you haven't even begun to analyze your beliefs according to the amount of factual information you have supporting them so you can evaluate your certainty of them.

We all have certainty to our beliefs. Beliefs requires that. But absolute certainty is impossible with beliefs. Absolute certainty would require it to be a fact. Facts aren't beliefs. A fact doesn't require any beliefs. But we often consider our beliefs to be facts. You may believe in absolute certainty of a belief, but that is a belief also – not absolute certainty. Even facts themselves are subject to our beliefs. What we consider an undeniable fact might be proven not to be a fact with more information. We might believe something to be a fact even though it isn't. From the information we have at that time, it might appear to be an obvious absolute fact and then we base other beliefs on what we consider to be a fact. But then those beliefs are likely to be incorrect if the fact isn't a fact and what is actually a belief turns out to be incorrect.

For example, something as simple as the sky is blue. When you look at a blue sky, is it a fact that the sky is blue? I can argue it isn't and I'm right. The sky isn't blue. The fact is that the sky isn't blue and I can prove it. If we paid attention in science class, we know that the sky isn't blue. It appears to be blue because blue light is being scattered by molecules in the sky. The sky only appears to be blue. It isn't blue.

You might think I'm trying to trick you. Did I trick you by using the term “absolutely correct?” Did you take the time to think what “absolutely correct” means and how it applies to what I'm saying here or did you immediately make a judgment about my statement? Did that judgment distract you from considering what I actually meant? Did you form an opinion that led to assumptions? I hope so because it illustrates my point. Even though the term “absolutely correct” is unambiguous and straight forward, you might have paid more attention to the implication that you are wrong. Now that you understand better what my point was, were you wrong in any way in evaluating my statement that “we'd be damn lucky if we were absolutely correct half the time.” Do you still disagree with it as much as before? Is it more credible and are you more willing to consider it a possibility? Has more information changed your perception of my comment?

It may seem like I'm arguing semantics. But it isn't a fact that the sky is blue. It is a fact that it appears blue. By not accepting it as absolutely correct and a fact, we are open to learning why it isn't blue and why it appears to be blue. We gain more information and knowledge such as that light contains different colors and it is the blue light that is being predominantly scattered by molecules in the air. If we are learning all this, say, in middle-school, we also need to learn what molecules are and what air is to fully understand. If we don't take the sky as being blue on face value even though it is so obvious that the sky is blue, we learn that sunlight appears white but is actually composed of different wavelengths of light that make up all color. Our teacher might demonstrate that by placing a prism in the sunlight and showing us the different colors and that is what happens when sunlight shines through water droplets and forms a rainbow. Then we can learn that it isn't a fact that a yellow flower is yellow. It appears yellow because it is reflecting yellow light. It's not even an absolute fact that the flower is yellow! Only light has color and everything else simply reflects color. What we are seeing isn't the actual flower but the light the flower is reflecting. This is true of everything we see. We think we are seeing something and can act on it, but the reality is that we aren't actually seeing it at all — we are seeing the light it is reflecting.

Some people might have the tendency to think it isn't that big of a deal because from the light that we are seeing we're still able to function the same as if the flower really was yellow and it really doesn't change things either way and they don't really give a damn, but that is an extremely limited perspective that blocks them off from so much information, understanding, and knowledge. We may now accept this as common knowledge taught in schools, but it has been incredibly revolutionary and changed our world and all of our lives. It led to countless discoveries and inventions. By knowing this, scientists and doctors can understand the workings of the eye. Photography owes its existence to this knowledge. Your radio and TV reception comes from the knowledge of light and the electromagnetic spectrum. Your cell phone, medical x-rays, wi-fi, the microwave in your kitchen and the radar that allows planes to fly safely all owe their existence to that knowledge. The list goes on and on. That knowledge that explains why the flower isn't actually yellow is responsible for our modern day society. Something so basic as a flower not actually being yellow or the sky not actually being blue might rock our world. It already has and maybe we just learned how it has. So we might become curious and want to know more about light because our reality has changed somewhat because we've learned the sky isn't blue and the flower isn't yellow. So we study light and learn some incredibly fascinating things about it. We learn that not all light is visible. That visible light is only part of the electromagnetic spectrum. And then knowledge builds on knowledge and we want to know more.

Something that you just took for granted became something remarkable. Learning about light may have led you to learning a wealth of scientific knowledge. It may have spurred curiosity about physics and other fields of study like astronomy where you learn that light travels at 186,000 miles in one second. Wow! Around the Earth 7.5 times in one second. And then you learn that we see the stars as they were and not how they are at this moment because it might take thousands or even millions of years for the light to travel at that incredible speed to reach Earth. Then you learn that there is a galaxy so far away that the light from it takes 13.4 billion years traveling at the fastest speed possible to reach the Earth and that is how unbelievably and incomprehensibly vast the universe is. HOLY CRAP! The light from that galaxy traveling at a speed to go around the Earth 7.5 times in one second began it's journey 13.4 billion years ago before our sun, solar system and the Earth were even a twinkle in our galaxy's eye. We are literally looking back in time 13.4 billion years!

And then because you've developed such curiosity and interest, you pick up a science magazine and read that the most recent estimate of the number of galaxies in the universe is now 2 trillion and some estimates go as high as 10 trillion. And these galaxies have tens to hundreds of BILLIONS of stars each. You think for a second and make a rough calculation and a simple estimate that if life existed on one planet in one solar system of just one star out of every one trillion stars, life would exist on billions and billions of planets! And that is just one out of one trillion! Maybe the odds are better. Maybe life exists in one out of every billion star systems. That would mean that life exists on TRILLIONS of planets in our universe. Boggles the mind doesn't it? Kind of puts your self-importance into perspective.

Now your mind is absolutely BLOWN and you realize you're pretty darn smart and so you thirst for more knowledge to more fully understand and comprehend this knowledge that your mind can barely even assimilate. You realize how little knowledge you actually have and dedicate your life to acquiring more and more and your life has been transformed. You begin to study physics and then the fun really begins and things really get wild such as an electron being able to exist in two places at once. You learn theories presented by some of the most brilliant minds on this planet backed by huge amounts of knowledge, data, experiments and mathematical calculations. Theories such as there not being anything that happened or existed before the Big Bang because there was no before the Big Bang because there was no time before the Big Bang. And that the Big Bang may have occurred spontaneously out of nothing — not even out of a singularity. Out of absolutely nothing! Also, that all the matter in the universe that trillions of billions (This is a one trillion billion 1,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo.) of stars, planets, asteroids, comets, dust, etc. are composed of is just a tiny fraction of all the matter first created in the Big Bang but then was destroyed by matter and anti-mater canceling each other out. There are physicists that believe, or at least consider the possibility, that there are infinite universes with infinite scenarios and in one, many or infinitely many you would be the President of the United States. (In this universe Donald J. Trump just became president so anything's possible. It must be his turn.) These theories are based on huge amounts of information by some of the smartest men ever. So you try to acquire more and more knowledge and information so you can simply wrap your mind around the possibility of these theories. You acquire so much knowledge that it enables you to formulate ideas on your own that are considered so significant that you are awarded a Nobel Prize. But even then you are well aware of the fact that your knowledge is miniscule compared to the vast amount of information contained in the universe. The more you know, the more you know of what you don't know. The more knowledge you gain makes you aware of how much knowledge you don't have. Ha! And you thought the sky was blue!

This is an over simplified scenario, but it shows how not accepting something as an absolute fact could lead to endless information and knowledge. (But it happened if some physicists are correct about infinite universes.) By not just accepting what you believe is an obvious true fact to be true keeps you open to new information that might just have an impact on your life and rock your world!