Peter Emmerson

6. Our western habituses are structured by absolute-truth hubs which are very resistant to facts and change.

Those who purvey these profoundest, irrefutable truths, offer up possibilities for thacting with absolute authority, control and security in a world that is always changing.  These absolute truths are located in our habituses as mental hubs and as such are default positions which subconsciously structure our thacting in relation to chaotic life experiences.  Accordingly, they are held in highest regard and accrue serious status, as do those theometaphysicians who supply them, whether priests like St Augustine, philosophers like Michael Sandel or pure mathematicians such as Stephen Hawking.  Even so, whilst absolute truths accrue enormous strength and influence from their capacity to make us feel certain and secure, they fail to engage properly with mundane problems, as with my Obama example above: governing ‘justly’ is not possible.  Such a lack of fit between ideal and mundane experiences is accompanied by feelings of dissonance which can be relieved in two ways:-

1. Abandon a relevant absolute truth belief, or;
2. Translate awkward, uncomfortable mundane experiences as aberrations that overlay and obscure a more profound underpinning reality governed by absolute truths that is beyond everyday perceptions. Such a position is a matter of faith, whether religious or scientific.  This is one way of understanding what a scientist is: they are believers in absolute truths.  Engineers by comparison are more engaged with comparatively uncertain mundane experiences and less prone to flights of fancy.

Attendant on abandoning an absolute truth are increased feelings of dissonance which can be so serious as to demand re-assembly of a mental default hub which may have been in place since childhood.  Such hub modification can have wider implications as mental default hubs operate interdependently with each other – a change in functioning of one may well require revising another.  If for example we are confronted with evidence that contradicts our feelings on an ideal such as equality our other ideals may come under scrutiny too: if equality is impossible what about justice?  In extreme circumstances total hub reconstruction may be necessary, which is likely to be seriously disorientating as it involves significant engagement with comparatively uncertain mundanities making self-assurance and control very difficult if not impossible to attain.  I think it’s fair to say that many, perhaps a significant majority of people, will find this experience intolerable and are likely to restore all default absolute-truth hubs and carry on regardless of contradiction even when an absolute-truth belief becomes completely untenable: a recognition that God’s Ten Commandments cannot work in practice does not lead people to abandon their religious faith.  Our unquestioned belief in equality is a secular example.  If we take a verb-oriented approach we might ask ourselves on what grounds can people be equal?  This may evoke answers such as height, weight etc.  Such questions are for engineers and are quantifiable.  However, conventionally equality is a noun, but not in a material sense – equality is metaphysical, it is an ideal most prominently espoused as part of French revolutionary politics.  Equality is a fanciful noun developed by theometaphysicians, an a-t heuristic.  Equality is something existing only in a Cartesian mind, something dreamed up by homo clausus beyond ordinary facts: equality is something super-human, something we can know absolutely through logical analysis.  As a mental ‘thing’, an a-t heuristic, equality forms part of our cognitive absolute truth technology that structures our habitus.  In fact ‘equality’ does not exist at all and cannot be understood as part of our mundane experiences; equality cannot be engineered.  It is a mental construction that offers hope to dispossessed people who need a reason to carry on – who need control.   Equality can never be measured.  It is impossible to assess and yet we continue to pursue it in important contexts such as sexual and ethnic relationships.  Our long-term and continued adherence to ideals such equality not only distorts our perceptions, it impedes our capacity to develop and apply engineering approaches to our problems, especially those of a figurational nature where our emotional well-being is threatened to a serious degree by comparative uncertainties.  However, if we can take a verbal approach then we may find benefits to sorting out how equal we can be, which  may compensate for our feelings of dissonance.