I often become frustrated with radicals…not the kind that produce molecular damage…the kind that push their ideas on you.

Essentially, I’m frustrated with anyone who is arrogant enough to think that they are capable of truly “knowing” anything. Religious zealots, community college english professors, bad bosses, guys on infomericals…you name it. Let me tell you why I feel this way.

I believe that everything that we, as individuals, process is an approximation of what it really is. The Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle is a well-known articulation of this thought. Since different people have different frames of reference, no two perceptions can be identical.

It’s as if each of us looks through a pinhole to understand reality. None of us are right. But if we took those pinholes and combined them over the range of all consciousness, then we’d actually have a tapestry of experience that would, in essence, be that reality.

As such, someone else’s perception of the world is no more or less valid than mine. The abstraction may be universal. But the context cannot be. It’s simply impossible…at least at my level of thinking.

Ergo, how can anyone be “sure” of anything?

From my experience, the zealot is one who is so incredible ignorant to the world around them that they not only fail to understand the nature of the context in which they live…but they actual believe that somehow they are operating at some absolute level.

Reality check.

There are viruses, which by some definitions aren’t even living things, that are capable of selectively changing the behavior of higher order species as to create a more suitable environment for reproduction. Essentially, these viruses specifically change brain chemistry as to illict a response in the host…a “desired response” (not to personify the concept too much).

Maybe I’m not making the connection here as effectively as I could be.

My point is simply that in a world where viruses can “brainwash” us (a little dramatic but not untrue), how can we really think that we know much of anything. How can we be so sure that our view of the world is the only view? That our God is the only God? That my red is your red?

We can’t. And we shouldn’t. We’re all wrong and all right at the same time. It’s the abstraction that is real. The idea. Not the manifestation of it. Kinda like Plato’s forms, except without the pretense.

We should simply try to find what connects us. Not what separates us. We’re not that cool. We don’t know it all. We don’t know anything. We simply uncover what has always been there. Everyone knows the same things. We simply express them in different ways. Only the zealot truly believes that his vocabulary is the only vocabulary.

That’s why relationships and connections are so important. It allows us to understand and incorporate different vocabularies into our imperfect pursuit of understanding (in the bigger sense). This is why ideas such as chaos, network effects, and the like are so refreshing to me. They require us to zoom out of our localized existances. They allow us to everything as unimportant and essential at the same time.

Anyway…I’m starting to ramble…stream of consciousness soapboxing is starting to take over this post…so I’ll sign off.

But one last thought…if only educators could use this concept when teaching our children. If teachers could find ways to truly resonate with our children so that they could speak in the vocabulary (bigger sense) of each child, then the child would be able to begin to understand and untap the potential that he/she has. No one is stupid. They simple haven’t found the way to translate their own personal vocabulary with one that is more “mainstream”.

I’m probably making no sense now.

Oh, well…maybe I need to readjust my vocabulary.