Tomasius Space

 
Connecting with Reality:
Accepting the Limitations of our Knowledge in Order to Act Upon Those Limitations

2024.0429.1521

Connecting with reality is always something that requires contextualization. Sheogorath may well lack any existence or tangible influence upon the real world, but within the world of Nirn in the context of The Elder Scrolls, Sheogorath is every bit as real as your in-game avatar. The whole point of the RPG is to explore and discover, by personal observation, what the facts are and how things work in the game world. It is most certainly not about believing whatever we are told. Otherwise, we could just dispense with the activity of exploring the game-world and read all about it in the documentation. Where's the fun in that? More to the point, why is it fun to expore and discover things by personal, first-hand observation? Could it be a certain cultural repression of inquisitiveness? "Curiosity", as it is often said, "killed the cat". So we find ourselves trying to satisfy this need to explore, investigate and discover in a game world that offers us a safe environment in which we can learn from our mistakes and get better at investigating the things we need to know without drawing the attention of those who might take umbrage to such discoveries. After all, this is precisely how one must go about cutting through the fog of war; of political deceit and social delusion to discover those "taboo" facts which make life easier and more pleasant.

I think it is safe to say that the acceptance of observable facts is mandatory to functional interaction with reality. On the flip side of this coin, faith or belief is not only unnecessary but is also harmful because faith inevitably involves lying to ourselves by pretending there is certainty when this is clearly not the case. Faith is rationalised with non-factual and often irrelevant arguments to give "substance" and thus illusion to this false admission of certainty in the absence of confirmation and, this is not only considered socially acceptable behaviour, it is considered praiseworthy. Yet, how often do we find ourselves disappointed, deceived or betrayed after slipping into this familiar and widely endorsed pattern of behaviour? The alternative is to abstain from faith. This does not mean that we must demand proof for everything we hear, as per the popular straw-man argument invoked against this point of view. Abstention from faith means to accept the facts for what they are while neither demanding nor fabricating a sense of certainty about things which lack confirmation. When, according to the usual straw-man argument, someone tells us "I love you" we accept it at face value, along with the caveat that people don't always say what they mean, in the context of what we do know about the person saying it. There is no need to demand "proof" on the one hand, nor is there any need to falsely certify the words beyond such facts as can confirm them. This is especially the case when the facts, in question, are staring us in the face.

 
 

Monday, ISO: 2024-April-29, 15:21 hours, UTC.