And the models and simultaions we have constructd in our minds have little to do with the real universe that surrounds. But that is all we have to work with, isn’t it?

Consider the imaginary physicist I brought up in my example. He is fighting to advance his career in the backstabbing world of academia, dealing with rivals and superiors, departmental rules and professional standards and customs. At the same time, his kid’s in trouble with the law, he has to keep him out of jail and figure out how to straighten him out and salvage what’s left of his life. Meanwhile, he’s got an outside woman, his marriage is in trouble, and his personal and emotional life is in turmoil. And in the middle of all this, his Volvo loses it on an icy patch of road and he has to drop everything to regain control and get out of the way of oncoming traffic.

All these scenarios are imposed on his world of forces and fields, particles and waves. But they are just as real and just as vital to him. But none would matter if he weren’t there, he has created these universes, he has imposed those realities on top of the fundamental scaffolding provided by earth, air, fire and water. A knowledge of physics and an expertise in the methods of physicists does him no good at all in navigating these personal realities, these personal universes. The point is that even though they are only an issue because of the way they affect him, he must still deal with them. He is lost in the world of his own dreams and they are deadly.

When I think of reality, I think of how we perceive the world around us with our senses. We all experience heat and cold, light and dark. Common to all of us are pleasure and pain, although some of us enjoy mixing the two. We live in a colorful world but I occasionally wonder if my green is your red or something else. How is one to know?

But when you talk about political ideology and attitudes derived from a conceptual environment, you are talking about things like right and wrong and about thought. The physical universe and it’s laws have little to do with human interaction.

We are the culmination of what we were given entering this world, how we were raised (indoctrinated) and everything we’ve experienced.

Have you ever seen a villain anywhere who even suspected he might be mistaken, or acting for himself alone? They always justify whatever they are doing as a selfless and moral act. The Communists saw themselves as abolishing the evils of capitalism and bringing about the Worker’s Paradise, and the Nazis saw themselves as fulfilling the destiny of the Master Race by eliminating the world of inferior and evil species of sub-humans. Both of them described their ideologies as “scientific”, and they borrowed the terminology and methods of science to cloak their lies in legitimacy.

This is the tragedy of Man. Not that he wages war on and enslaves his brothers, but that he feels he has the right to do so. His model of reality is rigged from the start so that he has no choice but to do what is best for himself, and he can prove logically and morally why he has the right to do so.

Still, it isn’t quite as hopeless as all that. Most people are aware that others will defend themselves, just as they have the right to do so, and most people try to avoid conflict as best they can because bitter experience has taught them that it is at its best, a very dangerous affair. Natural boundaries establish themselves, negotiation and compromise help ease the pressure, and when there is conflict, it is hopefully minimized.

But look out for the one who has a model (or a simulation, to use the terminology I introduced in this series of “breast threads”) that requires that model propagate itself to others, and that those who resist it must be mistaken or evil. This is where religion and ideology becomes ways of organizing our personal realities. There is no difference between Crusade and Jihad. They color and interpret all facts and observations so they justify the model, make it inevitable, make it necessary.

And you can judge them by what they perceive as their self interest. It either includes others or not.

You can praise them for acting against their own self-interest in pursuit of some greater good for all.

But when they act against their own self-interest, AND against the public good, simply because they have subscribed to some idiotic ideology or religion, then they deserve nothing but contempt.

It is the programming behind the information received by the which makes for integrity.

A suicide bomber blowing up a “friendly” outpost is perceived as cowardly, whereas a drone strike blowing up a house is a blow for freedom. A mind with integrity can see them as the same kind of acts, each designed to preserve it’s own parochial interests.

It’s in the area of judgment where we get into trouble. As with “original sin”, the knowledge of right and wrong. That is our curse, and that is why we start blinding ourselves with contradictions. We are right, they are wrong, and that’s that!! The GWB foreign policy.

The reality is that GWB is “right” for him, those who oppose are “right” for them, and neither is truly “right”. And there is no contradiction there if one is watching. For those in the trenches this is all bullshit, but only fools are in the trenches any longer than necessary. No sense sacrificing out integrity or lives for their agenda, no matter who “they” are.