It’s all about practical magic. Engineers worship at the altar of What Works.

Back in the day, when the best tools you knew of were the bone rattle and shiny stones, that’s what you used. Science came along and provided tools to create stronger magic, and yesterday’s shamans became today’s engineers.

Same as it ever was. The primate brain created engineers. Science wasn’t the cause, it was a tool the primate brain could pick up and use. Best one so far, but never say never.

I’m not slamming engineers.

In fact, I’ve spent my whole working life as a non-degreed engineer, that is, solving technical problems with technology and science/math-based logic and techniques (as opposed to doing research into nature, which is what scientists “officially” do).

In fact, one of my official titles was Senior Software Engineer, it was printed on my paycheck. Although I always preferred to think of myself at that time as a Scientific Programmer. I knew engineers were always a bit protective about that P.E. title.

The second sentence is what engineering is about.

Afterwards, they have no problem figuring out exactly what it was they overlooked.

I really mean it.

We want to believe there is an objective reality…and maybe there is….but it is not ever going to be realized. The very nano second that objective reality becomes humanly realized, we apply *our* uniqueness to it, so it is no longer an objective reality….
and so it goes….

It is the source of much of our conflict that we perceive these values differently, that different equally valid perceptions of the same reality can lead to conflict.

But it is not the different subjective nature of these personal realities that is the cause of this conflict, or even our failure to understand the differences, it is the failure to see that these are simply different visions of the same reality, not wrong, just different. Some people are not even aware that others see things differently and think of things in different ways. They are as naive and childish as are members of a remote tribe so isolated that they find it inconceivable that theirs is not the only language spoken in the world.

The Canadian anthropologist Wade Davis, a man I often disagree with myself, has put it very succintly:

“The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.”

It is a fine line we must thread to be able to accept this fundamental truth, while simultaneously avoiding a paralyzing relativism that allows no freedom of choice or moral distinction at all. But it is a line we must seek and map in great detail if we are to avoid personal impoverishment or reckless war. We must all have these maps readily available to us, and we must also realize our map is not going to be the same as someone elses. Personal and cultural differences in how we view the world give us as individuals, and nations, our humanity. They also drive a deadly wedge between us, especially if we are so provincial we are not even aware they are there.

Stumbling across a remote wilderness waterfall is one of those experiences, like a starry night or a raging sea, that is filled with an almost breathtaking beauty, an esthetic and spiritual experience so profound that it can literally bring us to our knees and bring tears to our eyes.

And yet, to some people, it is just a manifestation of the properties of water and gravity; a fluid naturally moving from one level to another. No big deal.

Both ways of seeing that waterfall are equally “valid”, and there is no reason both cannot coexist in one mind simultaneously, but I know which one I would choose if I had to, and I pity the man who has to live with only the other.

The appreciation of beauty and truth is real, even if it cannot be quantified, or objectively defined. And that beauty, or truth, is just as important and just as real and just as necessary as anything else we might think we know about the universe.

I tried hiking from that lower trail up to the lake one time. It was steep, rhododendrons so thick that the 4 times I fell down I didn’t touch the ground. There were 5 different separate and distinct waterfalls in the 1/2 mile I got in 3 hours, one 80′ to 100′ high, the rest 40′ to 60′. It was spectacular. I took pictures, lost in a box with several thousand others.

I don’t know if anyone else would have ever seen those. There is no reason for anyone go go there. And it haunts me that those waterfalls are there, alive and active, with no one to see. Every once in a while I lay awake, imagining that hiking day, those waterfalls. I also remember the ground-welling bees which could and did sting multiple times through jeans, bing-bing-bing-bing in a line. Hurt so immediately and much that one jumped and fell, onto the rhododendrons and tried to get away. That’s one reality, those waterfalls.

Expanding outward. Each person on this board has a remarkably similar background. Speak English, public schools, raised with newspapers reporting the same events. There are minor differences, for sure. College, military, foreign countries, families, jobs, parenthood are all varied. Only the values we were given as children are different.

And yet each person’s reality is real to them. As much as I have difficulty understanding it, as much as I’m repelled by their values, as much as I’d hate myself if I had the same view, I can’t deny that is their reality. They believe them, to the exclusion of all others, just as I believe mine, to the exclusion of all others especially theirs.

“No man is an island, entire of itself” as John Donne wrote. And yet we are all islands, each with our own reality, all by ourselves in separate bodies and minds.

I had a very similar experience once myself. When I was a student, I was going out one night, and on my way out, as I was wont to do in those days, I smoked a joint. There was a dog barking very loudly from my neighbor’s yard across the alley.
I paid no attention to it. The dogs were always barking.

I hopped into my car and as I spun the car out of my driveway, my headlights illuminated my neighbors’s yard and I saw a terrible sight. My neighbor’s big husky had tunneled under the chain link fence around his yard and under the hedge of ligustrums growing on the other side of it. The dog was under the hedge, all tangled up in his leash, and his choke collar was strangling him. Another husky was unleashed and doing all the barking, and he was really pissed.

I parked my car so the headlights would light up what I was doing, let myself in through the gate, and whipped out my sheath knife to try to cut the dog free. At that moment, the other dog was going into hysterics, but this eerie calm came over me, I just stared him down
and he backed away, he knew something was very wrong, and it was going to take a human to straighten out the mess, so he backed off just out of reach, but continued barking, growling, baring his teeth and acting in a very menacing manner. For my part, I was determined that this dog was not going to die if I could do anything to stop it, and if his pal didn’t like it he was going to just have to wait his turn.

It took me about 5 or 10 minutes to crawl into the hole the dog dug, under the fence and the hedge, and operating mostly by feel, follow the lead around a million branches and roots until it disappeared deep in the dog’s fur. The chain was so tight I couldn’t get my finger under it, and it was almost out of my reach, with my arms extended. I finally managed to cut the lead and dragged the unconscious beast into the yard (these were very big huskys, like wolves, maybe 60 lbs?)

By this time I was exhausted, and after I loosened the chain I actually collapsed on top of the dog. The other animal finally quieted down as if he sensed everything was under control. The dog I had rescued finally came to,
and began to lick my hand.

At that moment, the redneck who lived in the house next door, the jerk who owned the dogs, came out, and said in a drunken voice, “What the hail you doing in ma yard?”