Courtesy of wikipedia.org
Shakespeare created problems when he wrote Hamlet’s line, “…thinking makes it so.” (Act II, Scene, 2) Pastor Ben Huelskapm seems to take the words literally. His op-ed declares, Let’s be clear, transgender women are women and transgender men are men. Hard stop.
If thinking makes it so, then Huelskapm’s statement ends the transgender debate… at least for him. Conservative thinker and psychologist Jordan Peterson has done some thinking on his own and points out that to perpetuate the human species, nature requires a sexual dichotomy. Feeling like a woman won’t satisfy that necessity.
Because I explored the transgender question earlier, I won’t address it here. Peterson’s remarks about sanity and communal rules interest me more. Sanity is not something internal, but the consequence of a harmonized social integration… Communal ‘rules’ govern the social world—have a reality that transcends the preferences and fictions of mere childhood at play.
Communities define norms and these, as Peterson says, take precedence over subjective assessment. He asks, by way of example, how a psychologist is to treat an anorexic girl. Should the doctor encourage her fantasy that she is overweight? Or might some other “truth” be brought to bear?
Surprisingly, his question opens the door to the Heisenberg principle, a discovery that informs us a photon isn’t a photon until it is seen. If truth is relative to the observer then which is “truthier,” the observation of the individual or the community?
Peterson’s vote goes to communal rules and much of the time, he is correct. Society shapes the bulk of our beliefs. It decides when an individual has the presence of mind to drive a car, work, go to war, marry, serve on a jury, or hold public office. In criminal courts, juries determine an individual’s guilt or innocence regardless of the plea.
These rules aren’t etched in the firmament. They alter over time, the outcome of discoveries, wars, or natural disasters, and sometimes because an individual challenges the view of the many. Henrik Ibsen’s play, Enemy of the People offers a good example of the turmoil that follows when one person’s truth clashes with the norm. As a sidebar, because democracy seeks to harmonize opposing views, in times of change, experts see it as more flexible and therefore more resilient than other forms of government.
Technology has brought constant change to modern societies, forcing the brain to navigate not only between personal views and communal norms but also those found in the virtual world. Borne of nothing more than an electronic sequence of zeros and ones, cyberspace holds sway over both private and public perception. Ask teenagers if social media enhances or diminishes their feelings of self-worth. Ask Fox News followers if the 2020 election was stolen.
Even the mundane banking world is susceptible to electronic truth. Ask a teller if cryptocurrency is real. Switzerland, a hub of the financial world, harbors so much doubt, its citizens are circulating a petition. They aim to make access to cash a constitutional right.
Switzerland isn’t alone in its worry about technology’s influence. Innovators in the field like Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk are nervous as well. Joining over a thousand of their colleagues, they’ve signed a letter to the U. S. government requesting a 6-month ban on further Artificial Intelligence (AI) development. During the interim, they urge Congress to dramatically accelerate development of robust AI governance systems. They worry that without guidelines, job losses will destabilize the economy. Of even greater concern, they fear that if unchecked, AI development might lead to the enslavement or elimination of our species.
Mad or prescient, Blake Lemoine, a former Google Engineer, claims we have already educated AI to the point where it is sentient. If true, what realities have we installed? Ethics seems to be in short supply. Students are using it to cheat on exams and write term papers. At the community level, writer Hannah Getahun has documented countless racial and gender biases within its framework.
Without industry guidelines, some worry that technology can facilitate societal unrest and lead people to abandon communal rules in favor of personal codes. Technology facilities that tendency because it allows individuals to cherrypick data that support their opinions while discarding the rest. Members of the public who insist the June 6 assault on the capitol was a tourist gathering are among these, and Tucker Carlson of Fox News is their leader.
To find truth today, we need more than Diogenes’ lamp. The terrain is no longer linear but resembles Star Trek’s multidimensional chess games. We exist in many worlds at once–personal, communal, and one that is measurable. That isn’t new, but technology adds a fourth that colors all three.
Which plane is the most endangered by it, I don’t know. But I fear for our inner world, the seat of human creativity, and our spiritual nature. Will technology help us confront our vanities or allow us to give into them? If the latter, we become caged birds, free to preen our fantasies like feathers until they fall away and expose the depth of our mutilation. Only one truth is self-evident. We must agree on one plane upon which to meet because we are nothing without each other.
