The Foolish Heart of Agnosticism

Agnostics have thanked me merely for writing the first paragraph of this chapter, and I am grateful to be of service.

The Foolish Heart of Agnosticism

Socrates said, "True wisdom is knowing you don't know" to which I would add accepting our ignorance is how we really come to know anything. Ironically, our ignorance appears to be the source of whatever creativity, free will, humor, knowledge, and authenticity we might possess, but only to the degree we are both aware and accepting of our ignorance. As far as Socrates was concerned this was just a simple fact of life. Assuming you are neither aware nor accepting of the fact that you don't know how to swim, for example, you'll have limited wisdom and humor when it comes to water. This "ignorant wisdom", or love, humor, knowledge, and sagacity acquired by becoming more aware and accepting of our ignorance, is what I think of as the foolish heart of agnosticism. The ability to yet again laugh at ourselves like a child, as if we didn’t have a care in the world, somehow knowing without knowing how we know, wonder remains the beginning of wisdom.

Love for agnostics can include embracing the simple comedy of the newborn fawn struggling awkwardly to stand up for the first time only to fall harmlessly on their butt or the new mother playing peek-a-boo to distract her baby, so she can check the diaper without a fuss. Believers sometimes describe it as the many faces of God parading all around us which agnostics can interpret as the humor and beauty of the truth being reveled. Humor speaks to love and beauty in some fashion no matter how remotely, the simple truth being that, sometimes a stupid joke can make all the difference between laughing, crying, and jumping off a cliff. That's because for anything to be considered funny it must first touch upon at least a little of the foolish truth which, in turn, can soften the hardest of hearts. For agnostics such as myself love begins in our own foolish hearts with the ignorant wisdom of the toddler still naive enough to laugh at the slightest suggestion their mama's love, humor, beauty, and truth are not divine perfection, or could ever require the slightest justification.

Agnostics possess the conviction they don't know whether any Gods exist and some additionally believe it is impossible to prove or disprove whether a God exists. Like any stance it is the strength of their convictions that defines them as being something other than just plain ignorant, confused, or merely uncertain. A newborn infant might not know if God exists, but what distinguishes agnostics is they know they don't know and, therefore, ironically hold the conviction they're clueless. Others insisting that agnosticism be defined as sheer ignorance, confusion, or uncertainty is merely an attempt to undermine the most personal convictions of agnostics (i.e.-that they know when they are ignorant) and deny that both humor and agnosticism present viable alternatives in certain situations.

This is common in ideological disputes where one or both sides will go to great lengths to deny any sort of neutrality or genuine humor is possible because its very existence can harm or even totally defeat their cause. It is the aggressive group mindset of extremists, lynch mobs, and grim pecking orders who insist anyone is either with them, against them, or must remain silent, and ideologues will sometimes stop at nothing to discourage others from establishing any viable neutral ground that might withstand their assaults. Dividing into opposing sides, like-minded individuals tend to reinforce each other's more extreme stances until, before long, their collective sense of humor suffers enough they begin to form pecking orders which actively promote fanaticism and the threats start to fly at every opportunity. The end result is known as the law of contention or the aggressive application of the principle of the excluded middle.

For agnostics the unsolicited attacks from both sides can be a poignant reminder of their personal struggles, and that they need to stop and smell the flowers once in awhile if they are to avoid becoming just as grim, angry, spiteful, confused, sadistic, loveless, depressed, and joyless as many pecking order extremists. Our innate sense of love, humor, and aesthetic appreciation suffers the more we reject them, until the resulting confusion can achieve epic proportions. For example, once someone I was arguing with used a popular conservative political attack accusing me of making him sound cold and heartless when I never so much as hinted at any such a thing. I replied that I merely thought of him as having an underdeveloped sense of humor. That, as far as I am concerned, attempting to understand something like politics without a well developed sense of humor is like becoming infatuated with a blowup sex doll with all the accompanying ugly slapstick and Three Stooges rhetoric you might expect. Left leaning individuals jokingly refer to this extreme fixation with worshiping ideology and mindlessly arguing rhetoric, as an infatuation with an inflatable seven foot Barbie doll who represents every little girl's dreams of idyllic larger than life immortal perfection.

The ability to naively fall on our own butt and innocently laugh at ourselves and each other is an essential aspect of what it means to be human and crucial to our being capable of distinguishing the truth from fiction or even total bullshit. Linguistic analysis and logic are derived to some extent from the same joke Socrates drove everyone nuts repeating, "The only thing I know is that I know nothing" while, increasingly, research supports the position all of human cognition and evolution itself is based on emotions such as love and humor. Thus, possibly explaining a great deal of the controversy surrounding the subject of agnosticism and athiesm over the eons. Descartes famously declared, "I think, therefore I am" which, according to modern science, might be restated more accurately as, "I laugh at myself, therefore I am" and, as much as anything else, our laughter can be thought of as a fundamental networking strategy and an important part of what empowers thought itself on every level.

In suspending our disbelief, we entertain relative agnostic premises, imbuing comedy with the ability to build bridges and make connections where none are otherwise possible. Agnostic and toddler comedy specialize in being able to dive head first into their own surreal "Alice in Wonderland" style bullshit fuzzy logic cartoons where the Cretan Liar's Paradox, "Everything I say is a lie," can make its own bizarre sense because the truth can be, "Everything I say is bullshit". Pragmatists such as C. S. Pierce sometimes use a similar line of reasoning insisting the implied statement is true making the Liar's Paradox imply, “The truth is everything I say is a lie” which is technically considered bad English which, nonetheless, can communicate more information in fewer words depending on the context.

As far as I'm concerned, this is just another fancy way of saying that running around assuming everything people say is a lie or a joke would cripple our ability to use language effectively and, if we knew of a more productive way to use language other than to normally assume people either mean what they say or are merely joking, we'd use it. Which, in turn, can be considered an extension of the essential pragmatic and agnostic assumption that, because we know that we know nothing, if we knew of a better way to get things done on a regular basis we'd use it. Any competent cartoonist can routinely get away with violating the laws of physics, but agnostics can defy metaphysics as well by using systems logic such as the ones in this book.

Systems logic can appear to tease and torment those attached to specific metaphysical views, because their constantly shifting landscapes can change along with the present context inevitably promoting first one set of metaphysics and then another, while favoring none in particular. If someone is unaware of the greater context, that the metaphysics are constantly shifting, they can end up frustrated chasing their own tail without ever figuring out why their favorite metaphysics seem to perfectly explain everything they observe one minute and, then, utterly fail the next. When the changes in the demonstrable context alone suffice to provide the most parsimonious, aesthetically pleasing, and consistently useful explanations of everything observable, all the metaphysical explanations simply become superfluous, which those attached to metaphysical views often have difficulty accepting, for a variety of reasons.

Freed of the burden of metaphysical anchors weighing them down, systems thinking can normalize our view of the world around us in ways no single metaphysical explanation can while, additionally, supporting comedy that is much more spur of the moment and entirely dependent upon the situation. Looking into a fun-house mirror and seeing how our own distorted reflection can be corrected, is an example of the simple kinds of normalization we all perform on a daily basis. Even as adults, we can still play with vaguely cartoonish images in our heads, while holographic theories in physics imply its possible the physical universe itself is ultimately two dimensional. Meaning, we can represent life, the universe, and everything in our heads as a cartoon, with the fun of playing with cartoons being our ability to compare them against our everyday awareness, to see what’s missing from this picture.

As our unconscious mind casually sifts through mountains of apparent bullshit, it inadvertently normalizes much of the data merely by attempting to entertain itself with simple metaphors and cartoons. Our inner toddler may be completely oblivious as to the content of any data it normalizes, which is its greatest strength and weakness. A classic example is the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes" in which a small helpless child, who has little awareness of the content of anything occurring around them, nonetheless, unintentionally manages to dramatically re-normalize the entire kingdom's distorted worldview merely by laughing spontaneously. Simple laughter can dramatically change our mood and make the difference between war and peace, yet modern science still has only the vaguest idea of what humor is about and how laughter works, despite claiming to have made a great deal of progress in pscyhology.

Since ancient times it has always been said only the wisest among us are true masters of the wacky gentle humor of the toddler, while the meanest amongst us will sometimes laugh hysterically at the lamest toddler jokes. Those who never laugh at all don't get the joke and never learn anything new about their own ignorance. Thus, humor can sometimes directly reflect the truth in obvious ways because, evidently, the truth is nobody can know what the greater truth happens to be without first humbly embracing their own ignorance and becoming capable of laughing at themselves gently, innocently, and lovingly without being sarcastic or mocking. Which is why agnostics can sometimes consider gentle humor, in particular, to be the equivalent of "spreading the good word" that the journey itself can be the reward and sparkling laughter is a common metaphor in other cultures for the kind of compelling innocent laughter which the smallest toddlers and some adults are capable of producing.

In the next chapter I take a break from all this talk about chicken brains, dust bunnies, physics, and comedic-philosophical potty humor techno-babble to present classic jokes about Socrates in order to give the reader more of a feel for what it means to be an ignorant agnostic while, at the same time, formally covering a lot of the traditional fuzzy logic involved. The jokes may seem a bit foreign and dated, but I've done my best to spruce them up for a modern English speaking audience. These are classic jokes a lot of westerners still play with trying to write for themselves just like Asians often play with the Tao Te Ching or whatever. I suggest reading these stories in a rambling sing-song folksy voice such as that of the immortal Arlo Guthrie which enhances the yin-yang dynamics of the prose.