Authority

Warning: long, philosophic (or just sophistry)

It would take multiple lifetimes to achieve mastery in every field of knowledge: medicine, cosmology, quantum physics, psychology, economics, etc. And that is just what we can know without the help of divine revelation, potentially. Accordingly, most of what we know (beyond what can be known through the senses) is founded on the testimony of trusted authorities, in their various forms (ancient books, scientists and philosophers, news sources, parents, etc) or derived from such sources.

Now, why is it that some people trust in some particular subset of authority, whom arrive at a particular set of conclusions about nature of man and the world, and others in a different subset, with their different set of conclusions?
Different news, different books, different authority figures. If reality is objective, why?

I believe that the grounds for trusting our personal authority subset should be given critical examination. Especially if after examination we discover that we trust in our sources because they tell us what we want to hear, or trusting in this authority is common in our particular region of the world, or because we’ve trusted these sources since we were too young to have any discernment, as did parents before us, etc. Because these reasons have no necessary connection to truth or reliability.

We should instead ask these authorities: Who are you? What are your qualifications? What are your sources? What are your methods? What is your evidence? What background assumptions inform your views? In what ways do you work to overcome your own biases? What do your opponents say in response to your views? Why does what you say seem true to me and not others? And so on.

This is part of what I believe is the way forward: trusting in better authorities. And that can only begin through an examination of self.

The danger of unrestrained capitalism

Unrestrained capitalism is no less a threat to our freedoms than an unrestrained socialism, if not more so. We already see its ill effects manifesting in society: how many of us are chained to jobs we hate, can’t start businesses, because healthcare is even more unaffordable without it? How many of us avoid college due to crushing student loan debt? How free will you be when wealth and power are consolidated into fewer and fewer hands, when the wealthy have so much power to influence elections? When we are forced to serve this or that billionaire to survive?

How free are you, really? When we have capitalism/socialism at a reasonable equilibrium, we can see from other countries that society is much better off. But you won’t hear that from our corporatist, far right capitalist leaders. You won’t be taught that in high school, because “freedom.” It’s no wonder we are where we’re at.