Doorway
I heard once said that doorway mentalities are rich with life only when the person manages to stop standing at the threshold and simply walk across the line between this world and the next. Whatever 'world' the author was intending I think has been lost to us, but the importance here is more specific than not, that our “thresholds”, or “lines in life” are awe-inspiring, and we so often get overwhelmed by their possibility that we shudder and stand frozen, as though the Ice Queen, Shiva, breathlessly caressed our burning portal with majestic frosty touch. Gaping eyes forward, unable to move, we shudder and fall back, unable to see what it is that awaits us on the glowing doorway's converse. Fear is our only comfort until it at last has consumed us whole. When we are left, broken, a disheveled wreck upon the plain, we retaliate against the only thing left before us, the doorway. Instead of a bright new future, a hope, a new possibility, it becomes a place of fear and disdain. We loath the doorway and wish for its destruction. Anyone who speaks in support of the doorway, or who cross it freely are seen as heretics, monsters intent on destroying the stability of life, our own internal equilibrium. But, we cannot stop the tide of reason, for it knows no bound. Wisdom, in her great journey, pushes reason forward. We resist as long as we can, until at long last, it is only when we are left, alone, freezing in the baron waste of seclusion and ignorance that we finally decide to pick up our belongings and walk through the doorway.
This story, while metaphorical, is that of practically every great idea in history. Few have been widely excepted before their time, none without resistance, and certainly none without the fear and discontent of the establishment. History, the philosophy of science, the history of the philosophy of science, and our independent disciplines all recite the countless epics of science's great pursuit. But the irony of most of those stories is that when they look upon the present they all neglect one point, we are still living in that age. It is not a peaceful age when the magic of science is free for all, liberty of education, choice and the ability to freely think what one desires. No, sadly in our age we are still constrained by ignorance and limited rational understanding. But, unlike what the establishment wishes you to believe, it is within its halls, as it has been for countless centuries that the notion of new ideas are generally treated with ill-content. Like a bastard child, new ideas, or even worse, contrary ideas to the dogmatic corollary are seen as motions of anarchy. It were as though a scientist who notioned that perhaps it was some of the axillary hypotheses in the general theory that were in fact false, perhaps even the theory itself was flawed, when no other reasonable discourse could begin to explain the anomalies without drastic complications to the underlying theory.
Ockham's Razor is a phrase classically used [entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, representing the principle that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" and the conclusion thereof, that the simplest explanation or strategy tends to be the best one. This principle is ascribed to 14th-century English logician, theologian and renown Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. I've read it phrased also as, pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate ("plurality should not be posited without necessity")] to represent the idea that systems must not be overcomplicated, quite unlike my tendencies towards prose.
But what does this classically existing problem have to do with the young students entrapped in this inexcusable system of ignorance, hypocrisy and neglect? No more than it does to the aged scientists, scholars and teachers who have walked the halls reason formed before them, endless and unexplored. To each new doorway an infinite of possibility. It is much akin to Donald in Mathemagic Land, where he is in the hall of doorways that is all the knowledge in the universe, and each doorway is a new idea. It is when Donald reaches the unopened doors that the voice proclaims that these doorways are the ideas that are yet undiscovered. Yet, what would happen in a world where new ideas were restricted, and the skills pertinent to wisdom and reason were lost? It is to this future I see ourselves slowly, ever so firmly pacing towards. Much like NASA's Saturn V rockets being rolled into place upon the Kennedy Space Station's, Cape Canaveral Launch Pad, where it is rolled at 2 miles per hour down the long path, until at last it has reached its destination, in preparation for blastoff. Yet, what age? Can we reach such a wonderful future without pragmatic reason? I fear not. The current trend is reaching for the past, but not with foresight and earnest care for the great ideas Wisdom has produced. No. The ideas we grasp for are blind, we are blind; blind to the very history and reason we seek to understand.
So what do we do? It is not as easy a task as we wish it to be. Neil Postman gives us a good start. In his final work he talked about looking to our near past, the Age of Enlightenment, and seeing the great ideas listed there, perhaps farther, but to see the great ideas that fostered our nation and to which help lead a bright new future. Men and Women who saw through the doorway and were not afraid to walk through and see what was on the other side before they judged its merits. They saw the goal of reason, the nature of it. They possessed the necessary tools to critically form new ideas and seek the benefits they provided. We must look to; to a future not blindly seeking the reckoning, but instead looking for the bright future we may yet achieve if only we pick up our tool and begin the hard, long road necessary to turn our lump of marble into a masterpiece. It will not form itself of its own accord, and our skills will not sharpen unless we so desire to use them.
This is the fundamental goal of this organization, to enable people to work together to form the necessary tools, communication skills and relationships necessary for the success of human reason in the 21st Century.
I look forward to working with you all.
