Word and reality

Everything is so much more than the words that describe it …than the measurements that describe it …than the chemical and physical analysis that profile it. Everyone is so much more than the words that describe them …than the things you can say about them …than the analysis you can make of them …than the history you can tell of them.

All of these descriptors and analyses, all of these dissections and divisions into elements, all of these photographs and MRI’s, are both profound and profoundly lacking as they attempt to describe life in the most simple day in this world. Limit the space you are describing, limit the time – it is still profound. The truth is beyond our grasp.

We can make significant mistakes in attempting to describe what we see, and great catastrophes can result. We act, after all, based on what we see or think we see. So if we see incorrectly, our actions are unlikely to have the desired result.

But making mistakes about what we see is a minor infraction compared to the great mistake of our time, which is to declare that what we see is the same thing as reality.

Computers simply incarnate the current madness. Computers are about the measurement and description of reality. Life is simultaneously expanded and reduced to megabillions of bits and bytes.

Meanwhile, the most highly developed society of this century, the most highly computerized society of this century, the most thoroughly researched and described society in human history, the most persistently polled society in the world, is rapidly disintegrating into fragments of its former self, more racist, less humane, more frantic.

The study of economics devolved into mathematics and graphs – with no attention to the purpose and success of economies in supporting and building a nation. Look at what we have — an economic policy that consistently maldistributes wealth, destroys cities, reduces wages, eliminates jobs, generates enormous deficits, oppresses subject nations, and devours the common wealth.

The study of politics devolved into polling and prediction – with no serious attention paid to the earnest issues of the time. Look at what we have – the development of competing poll-tested slogans powered by enormous amounts of money. We have mouthpiece leadership by interchangeable candidates in electoral districts designed to be non-competitive.

The study of medicine has concentrated on drugs and machines – with less and less attention paid to the mysterious healing properties of human care. Look at the result – the highest health costs in the world, hospitals that frantically try to expel the patient as soon as possible, pill-based psychiatry, and cost-accounting instead of conversation.

The teaching of children is concentrated on standardized computerized tests – with no attention to the development of the mind or spirit or the true sources of inequity. Look at the result – firing and imprisonment of teachers, higher and higher expenditures on computers and standardized short-answer tests, total ignorance of classroom culture, and the destruction and defunding of public school systems throughout the nation.

The evaluation of society is relegated to statistical measurement of individuals, with little or no attention to the common wealth and the less measureable but easily seen quality of the community. Look at the result – more and more isolated people, miserable affluence and impossible unemployment, long hours in busy isolation on crowded highways, decades of deterioration of public facilities, insufficient or non-existent public transportation, the world’s highest level of incarceration, leaders who think that their own material wealth is the goal of existence, and an increasing number of incidents where someone walks into a public space and sprays bullets into their fellow citizens.

The problem is not measurement that can be quantified and computerized. The problem is that this measurement has replaced other ways of seeing. The closer and more detailed this measurement becomes, the less it sees of the larger realities which really describe and determine human life.

The critical questions of human life and society deal with meaning and purpose, community and love, justice and equity, inclusiveness and value. The critical components of humanity are not only individuals but also families and tribes, cities and nations. The critical questions of economics deal today with preservation, health, distribution, and employment, rather than exploitation, capitalization, consolidation, and monetization of the world’s remaining relationships.

If we do not pay attention to reality, it will not stop reality from being real. We will simply be broken by it. God is unseen, but that does not mean he is not real. He is unimaginable, but that does not mean he is not true. He is unfathomable, but that does not mean he is not kind. And he is by nature incredibly patient, but that does not mean the reality he has created can be ignored. His whole goal is to help us recognize and deal with the great mysterious and unseen reality in which he and we are fully existing. His intention is that we would so live and so love in this reality that we would know our eternal life.

In order to do that, we have to take seriously the things that are unseen – but as clear as the nose on your face.

Rev. Ben Campbell
UPDATE, May 2015