BOOK UPDATE & RECKONING WITH OUR “REALITY-BASED” WORLD

77,849 words written. 362 double-spaced pages in length. Starting the writing process during the first week of October 2020, my book was completed on May 31, 2022, nearly 20 months after its initiation and 21 months after the trip was taken which is the focus of my book. Over 500 hundred sources were pulled from the internet, a couple of educational research articles, and a novel were used as references as well as experiencing many of the locations personally during the one week, over 1400-mile drive north. Before publication, the book is getting sent away to a professional editor for some “changes” and then given to a layout artist that will format it correctly for publication on Amazon. Looking back on this book, I hope this will be the first of many. As a person who loves to creatively express myself, everything I write in the future will hopefully evolve from this long and intimidating project. More details later as the book nears publication.
 
Because of this, I have been having a difficult time getting motivated into writing another blog. So the topic that has been swamping my mind will likely be updated in the future with a much longer, detailed, and well-researched post that was given my full intellectual attention. But a moral issue has been irritating me and it needs to be addressed on this blog.
 
I have been wrestling with an ethical dilemma. But to understand it, this blog will require a dive into my childhood. As some of you may know, I went to Catholic School for eight years, specifically St. Lawrence Martyr Catholic Church from 1980 till graduation from the 8th Grade in 1988. Growing up in a religious atmosphere, the ethics spoken about by ‘God’ in the Bible became the foundation of my childhood. Many aspects of this education still linger with me to this day. As I got older and started questioning various teachings of my Church, I became fascinated with alternative ethical systems. Catholic Church was the only educational system I knew and my inherent open-mindedness as a child led me astray of the church after receiving my Confirmation during my sophomore year in public high school. During college, I studied Buddhism and read multiple books on this religion and its foundational philosophy. I even met the Dalai Lama in 1996 at Long Beach State. During these high school and college years, I made friends with a new group of people that diverged tremendously from my friends during the elementary years. They were artists, skaters, and punks who had different philosophical leanings and were often critical of my early childhood religious upbringing. But what set them apart from my Church was their tolerance (Except when it came to me talking about the Church) of alternative lifestyles and viewpoints. It was a refreshing change from the more close-minded and strict church upbringing. As time has gone by and I have met more friends in the television, tech and engineering industries, the people that have surrounded me have become more educated, technical, scientific and a little entitled (Especially my California brethren). But other than a couple of my friends who are incredibly comfortable in their lives because of a strong family or marriage, there has always been something missing from an intellectual or ethical standpoint with some of my long-time acquaintances. I never was able to understand this until recently. Unlike my Catholic school friends, there was a certain lack of confidence and high amounts of cynicism whenever we hung out. Since many of them fell into the Bill Maher, atheist mold, they were highly opinionated about the negative impacts of religion on society. They were not completely wrong. But what type of world were these people trying to propose to me? What was their moral foundation for society? Their lack of belief or integrity and in some cases, morality seemed to be lacking and it felt like this was the foundation of their cynicism What purpose did their life serve? As Darth Vader says in the STAR WARS franchise,

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

When thinking about this, other than being open-minded and tolerant towards individuals (Which is a foundation of many religious teachings also), how did this impact me morally and ethically? Here is where my evaluation of my past begins to disturb me. I DON’T FUCKING KNOW.
 
This article on Dr. Robert Malone’s Substack has to be read. It dives into the basis of scientific discovery and how honest scientists will tell you that there is no fixed truth. Science is constantly evolving and changing with time. This wisdom is also recognized by the best priests and rabbis. This also made me aware of another observation. No matter how often that religious theorists and scientists have been at each other’s throats for thousands of years, neither one is the sole proprietor of ‘truth.’ Throwing in science and engineering’s bastard child ‘technology’ which has its own difficulty with understanding the foundations of human behavior, no one philosophical belief has a monopoly on truth. So how did I come to this conclusion? Paying attention to what has been going on inside our world over the past two years, the “science” of the COVID-19 vaccines has failed miserably. The social experiment of social media has led to mental illness and depression. Technology’s best usage is apparently full spectrum government and corporate surveillance. As a person who came around to “believing” in these ideas, I find myself back at square one. Depending on the Scientific or Technological solution (Like Climate Change), these ideas are about as "truthful" as some of the more fantastical stories in the Bible. Religion has one advantage though. At least it teaches you a form of ethics and morality. Ironically, the best publications during this COVID-19 pandemic have been the religious ones like Lifesite News which often publishes stories about the vaccines and Dr. Fauci that the mainstream media will not touch. So what does this mean Expert? What is your conclusion regarding all of these ideas?
 
Again, I don’t really know. But taking apart the educational teachings and knowledge that religion, science, economics, and technology have shown us, none of these systems can be classified as evil per say. They are neutral entities that just explain a particular philosophical viewpoint related to the foundational understanding of their systems. What makes all these things ‘evil’ are people and institutions involved inside these systems that take advantage of them for personal gain and the accumulation of power. THAT IS THE REAL HUMAN PROBLEM. There is nothing wrong with believing in any of these things as long as you acknowledge the fact that none of them will ever be able to give you all the answers you are looking for. The quicker any human mind can recognize this simple fact, the more evolved it will become.