{"id":1482,"date":"2014-04-21T18:36:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T23:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/toppun.com\/blog\/?p=1482"},"modified":"2014-04-21T18:36:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T23:36:00","slug":"poem-eat-heart-skepticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toppun.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/21\/poem-eat-heart-skepticism\/","title":{"rendered":"POEM: Eat Your Heart Out, Skepticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eat Your Heart Out, Skepticism<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Jaden’s skepticism
\nWas like a cannibalism
\nThat learned to crave
\nThe taste
\nOf it’s own flesh and blood
\nAnd could settle for nothing
\nLess
\nThen a connoisseur
\nOf embalming
\nEmpty vein hopes
\nOf immortality
\nIn some unremitting p\u00e2t\u00e9
\nWith every golden goose cooked
\nIn a dish best served cold
\nA first course
\nAble to stave off
\nMost kind of appetites
\nWith well-bread relish
\nWhere one helping
\nIs too much
\nFor the rank and file
\nOf such a prison
\nMaking ciao of anyone’s best guest
\nToo have your cake
\nAnd not eat it
\nFor what may be
\nInside
\nAnd passably left<\/p>\n

I am very skeptical of skepticism.\u00a0 Skepticism is most warranted when exploring empirical truths, those facts of the physical world, the realm of reductionistic science.\u00a0 Skepticism has diminishing returns, and can even become cannibalistic, when applied overzealously to metaphysical or subjective truths.\u00a0 While skepticism has its place, it can blind ourselves to subtler, higher truths, those of our subjective realm.\u00a0 Many of\u00a0such truths in life can only be taken in with a measure of grace.\u00a0 Those refusing to risk being taken in are at risk for missing out of some of the best things in life.\u00a0 Hope, love, and faith will wither in the face of unrelenting skepticism.\u00a0 If your quest is for passable reasons to bypass hope, love, and faith you will almost certainly be rewarded with their loss.\u00a0 Reducing them to mundane forms of psychological or sociological constructs will strip them of their transcending power.<\/p>\n

Unrelenting skepticism is perhaps most dangerous at home, in one’s inner life.\u00a0 Our own experience is the direct access we have to the world of subjectivity, a world mold-able to our free will.\u00a0 This direct personal evidence cannot be shared in a verifiable or provable manner with others, as the methods of reductionistic science follow.\u00a0 This does not mean that such realities experienced do not exist, or that subjectivity does not exist.\u00a0 It simply means that they fall outside the methods of reductionistic science to examine.\u00a0 Nonetheless, our experience, or consciousness, is at the center of our lives, not just some afterthought.\u00a0 Plus, it can offer insights into others, as experiencers of their own human subjectivity.\u00a0 Knowing thyself is the foundation for knowing others, the most important aspect of navigating the human world.\u00a0 Metaphysics deserves our attention.<\/p>\n

Some committed cynics consider free will an epiphenomenon, a mere shadow, illusion, or ghost, in a deterministic world.\u00a0 Such determination is unwarranted, and cripples our abilities to perceive the world.\u00a0 Of course, most people, and most philosophers, recognize that metaphysical realities exist.\u00a0 To move from perceiving physical realities to perceiving metaphysical realities, one needs to move increasingly from skepticism (doubt) to openness (faith).\u00a0 Such a move is not blind; it is based on experience.\u00a0 Still, it requires a growing acceptance of uncertainty.\u00a0 This veil of uncertainty is somewhat analogous to the veil of uncertainty in reductionistic science.\u00a0 As our observations and experience grow, the veil moves.\u00a0 The key difference is that science moves to include knowledge that we can know with scientific certainty, whereas metaphysical knowledge always includes a much greater degree of uncertainty, and the metaphysical veil can never be fully lifted, since it represents an intrinsic limit to human knowledge.\u00a0 The metaphysical veil has a mysterious nature that becomes self-fulfilling in our approach to it.\u00a0 If we approach the veil with too much skepticism, our knowledge of higher truths will be stunted and the resulting ignorance will appear as justification for a too constricted veil.\u00a0\u00a0If we venture down the rabbit hole of such things as hope, love, and faith, we learn much more of such higher truths, and the territory once bounded by the veil will recede, even revealing vast expanses previously unimagined.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the payoffs of metaphysical knowledge are well worth the uncertainty and risk. As Saint Thomas Aquinas famously pointed out: “The slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things.”\u00a0 Exploring our own hearts, and risking relationships with others’ hearts requires courage, one of the highest things.\u00a0 Clinging only to dead stuff, inanimate matter, because it is the most certain is the height of human foolishness.\u00a0 Here the truth lies, in this grave of lifelessness.\u00a0 Wisdom resides elsewhere.\u00a0 Find it and you will find yourself, and a whole world as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eat Your Heart Out, Skepticism Jaden’s skepticism Was like a cannibalism That learned to crave The taste Of it’s own flesh and blood And could settle for nothing Less Then a connoisseur Of embalming Empty vein hopes Of immortality In … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15],"tags":[103,167,198,280,428,539,432,460,338,263,431,388,359,475,611,273,306,379,413,658,94,110,649,423,260,390,93,265,321,275,421,389],"class_list":["post-1482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","category-political-and-philosophical-musings","tag-acceptance","tag-consciousness","tag-courage","tag-diminishing-returns","tag-experience","tag-facts","tag-faith","tag-foolish","tag-free-will","tag-grace","tag-heart","tag-hope","tag-life","tag-logic","tag-loss","tag-love","tag-metaphysics","tag-nature","tag-physics","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-power","tag-prison","tag-relationships","tag-risk","tag-science","tag-scientific-reductionism","tag-self-discovery","tag-skepticism","tag-subjectivity","tag-truth","tag-wisdom"],"yoast_head":"\nPOEM: Eat Your Heart Out, Skepticism | Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Top Pun's Poetry, Funny Puns, Free Posters, Public Health Radio Show! 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