The abandonment of humility

Self-help "guru" Wayne Dyer died last week at the age of 75, victim of a heart attack. I had not known of him before now, but apparently he was an important force in the lives of many millions of people. He wrote a number of books, including Your Erroneous Zones*, which sold over 30 million copies. Online, there is an outpouring of affection, grief, and respect for the man. To the extent that his work made people feel more free and spurred positive developments in their lives, I tip my proverbial cap. But only a little.

If you feel personally invested in Dr. Dyer and his work, if he has helped you, if you just want to feel good in this moment, you might as well stop reading this right now.

Dyer may have been a force for good in the world. That said, his central position was and is full-on lunacy. Seriously, it is completely divorced from reality. The following picture was posted to Dyer's Facebook page. It appears to be a position for which he strenuously advocated. 

Oh, is that so? Fascinating.

A cursory examination of his cited work online reveals many similarly moldy chestnuts, every piece thereof an absolutely brazen, easily exposed lie. Doesn't it just make you want to laugh at a homeless person and vote for Ron Paul?

In seriousness, words like the above might have some positive consequences. They might serve to motivate good behavior from individuals that otherwise would not have done so. It is possible that appealing to a person's personal power, their freedom, their absolute independence from the universe... it is possible that doing these things will result in that person having a better, healthier life in some important way. I can, though, point to a clearer effect of writing this trite nonsense: there is good evidence that it sells a ton of books.

Cynicism aside, just because someone spins a pleasant yarn and another person buys into it does not mean anything about its truth. And the truth of the matter is that your domain of personal responsibility is a constantly eroding island in the vast rising sea of the cosmos, growing smaller all the time. The life sciences have conclusively shown the following to be true:

Your parents' identities matter a great deal.

Your past relationships have an enormous effect on your life.

Your job and the broader economy are both important to your health and happiness.

Your age, no matter whether young or old, places restrictions on your behavior.

Aside from those painfully clear truths, the following related point is also probably true (though this idea does not enjoy wide acceptance yet):

"Choice" isn't real. You don't make decisions. The world makes them for you.

This is a controversial position and I cannot hope to do it full justice in the context of this post. I think my view will become fully clear over time. Suffice it to say, the idea that one has any real control over their life in any way is not an a priori truth, nor has it been adequately shown in evidence. I find it absurd to think that a person causes their own behavior in much the same way that it is absurd to believe that a baseball throws itself. Just like the ball's trajectory through space, a person's trajectory can always be traced back to external causes. This is perhaps an uncomfortable position to contemplate, but the degree of discomfort one feels regarding it has nothing to do with whether it is true.

And here we come to the crux of the matter. No matter how comfortable or useful an inspirational lie may be, it is still a damnable, dirty lie, and should not be held up as possessing any virtue when the truth can instead be known. I want to know the truth, and I want other people to want the same. Unraveling the fabric of reality is a challenging endeavor, and the history of science reveals many hard-fought and well-earned victories in the face of significant pressure from those that would rather embrace the comfortable lie. We now know the world is not flat. We now know that Ptolemy was wrong in positing a geocentric universe. We now know that demon possession and humours have nothing to do with human health, but germs do. Some wars - climate change, evolution, vaccination - have been over for a long time, but the opposition of the comfortably ignorant continues to struggle, like Japanese soldiers that continued to fight long after World War II had concluded. 

Apologies to the Japanese soldiers for the unflattering comparison.

That probably sounds sanctimonious. It is not intended to be. All I want is to learn about how the world works, generally (but not entirely) through the lens of understanding organismal behavior. I want answers, but they have to be true, and not necessarily comforting. I resent that so many people want to cling to the reassuring lies. And the lie that we are in control does nothing to advance our understanding of human behavior, does nothing to point to real solutions to our environmental problems, and does nothing to suggest a way forward for human culture. All it does is falsely raise the individual to a godlike state, where he can create independently of the world which s/he inhabits.

As Mark Twain wrote, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."