21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T W E N T Y - O N E L E V E L S

Science adopted the concept of evolution wholesale and whilst the ‘survival of the fittest’ version has become increasingly discredited, there is still an underlying assumption that evolution inevitably implies progress. There are still works that suggest the further evolution of humans to some kind of superhuman creature. Of course, now that process is ‘helped’ by technology rather than as a result of natural environments. We are on dangerous ground.

Science also has an inherent belief that everything is solvable and ultimately understandable by the accumulation of knowledge and by reasoning. Hence the search for the elusive ‘theory of everything’ in physics. If it were ever found it would not really be a theory of everything — it would simply be a way of describing the actions of sub-atomic particles that would perhaps relate to physics and chemistry in the macro world. It would be a theory of everything only in as much as science believes reality to be made up of lumps of dead matter.

Abstract ‘representational’ aims are accepted without question. The possibility of alternatives is not even considered. An abstract goal has no possibility of fulfilment. It is only because Heaven or Nirvana, the theory of everything, the perfect political state and the perfect body are unrealisable that we often fail to see the pointlessness of the endless striving involved.

No boundaries are acknowledged by the ascendant culture. But all of the various elements discussed above should have their respective boundaries. For science a self-

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