Bloggage Reclaim

Yes, I’m back. Back from blogblivion. A pleasant enough place really…

I began to doubt that my nothing to say was worth saying, so I decided to just shut up. For awhile at least. My original aspiration to pure pointless waffle left me a tad unmotivated. I decided I should aim for something new and true. But then I figured the experts pretty much had it all worked out. Big bang, blip blap blup, bit of nice spinning galaxy-action, and eh, kaputt. Or maybe some kind of expanding/collapsing loop. Either way I thought it best to just tie a bow in it and go back to sleep.

It’s a kind of sci-fatalism that gets me sometimes. Stuff hits stuff that bangs into other stuff and that’s pretty much it. What’s the point? Fields get some status, but not sheep. The rest of us just get depressed. Deflated by the big bang, neuroscience, quantum physics etc., with all of their inpenetrable secrets that are apparently, nonetheless, established facts.

It’s all logical though, we’re told, so keep your mouth shut. And if you can’t contribute in computer-code you’re not worth listening to.

Well here goes:

If (Science = truth),{me = rope + neck}. END PROGRAM.

Facts are the problem. Why do so many people love facts? I reckon they think that just claiming that something is a fact brings you half way to being right. Nobody fucks with a fact. Add some dreary technical language and Schrodinger’s cat is almost definitely in the bag. That’s why economists get so far with that tone of authority combined with unbearably mind-numbing information. You can’t even muster the energy to ask questions.

FACT: Experts hate to say ‘I don’t know.’  What started the big bang? Eh, ahem, disinspontaniaiety hyperdistentuation, a dash of blah blah, due to an inebriate contingency, and eh some very difficult maths. Neurorods, does this count as information? Eh, yes, of course, ehm, clearly – because of Blahinberg’s principle. Quantists, tell me please, if there are infinite parallel universes, is there one where quantum theory has turned out to be a sham? What then?

Bollox, that’s what. Death to determinism! Fight the facts! Balls to the big bang! You are the big bang!

BANG!

Well, maybe a small bang…or a mild thud…or just a fun snap. 

The thing is that with just a few click-clacks of this here keyboard I can project a whole world of shite that science can’t touch. It may be fortunate in that respect, but still. It’s a limited perspective. The way accountants are limited. Dividing total toilet-roll expenses by their number of flat-mates and that kind of thing. Scientists are basically the  accountants of the universe. Sure, they can sort out how the 1’s and 0’s line up, but they shouldn’t expect us all to care – especially when they can’t really help us find that other sock or say the right thing to get out of trouble.

So yeah, lets get a mob together and burn some books! Let us unite in an arbitrary bigotry of our own sophisticated selection!

Ah no. I would be reading by that fire. Furiously. All I’m saying is that you can bang on all you like about science and efficiency and what the experts say, and try to have everything nice and neatly packed away, but when I clock you in the head with the nearest metre stick because the blue fairy that lives in the keyhole told me to, you’ll have to admit that it all hasn’t worked out for you. Not as you expected anyway.

By the time you start arguing why I am in the wrong and calling the police and taking me to the civil courts demanding compensation for violating your right not to be hit with a metre stick, it is most definitely the non-scientific narrative end of things that is winning. A whole mess of data for you to analyse, all purportedly started by a blue fairy, your honour.

Science 0, Narrative 1. And I’m up out of my seat spilling beer and roaring incoherent support. Not that I have anything against Science FC(fact creators), it’s just that the Narrative Rovers are slick. More spectacle, less spectacles. I’d probably root for Science FC if they were playing someone else. Although maybe not. I might like some of the players, but I can’t stand their supporters. Goddamned science hooligans.

These are the red-faced plebs who will passionately hold forth on everything and anything, referring randomly to any scrap of information that they deem to be ‘scientific’. Never studied science in their lives, but they figure reference is their best connection to authority, and as science sits on the throne, they kneel before its mysterious power.

If Hitler was around he’d have them turned into your friendly neighbourhood curtain-twitching snitch in no time. And with the internet he’d have it done in a heartbeat. Unser Feurher just wouldn’t be able to believe his luck if he was around now what with facebook and all. All he’d have to do would be stick guys in white lab-coats and glasses behind his banner ads and it’d be 3rw.googlen.ss in no time.

Because there always were and always will be a majority who’ll just jump on whatever well-populated bandwagon happens to be rumbling by. They just slide things around on their slimey budless tongues, detect consensus, and swallow. The only difference now is that if you look closely you can actually see a dim pulse of the internet in their eyes as it goes down. And once they have their conventional stance they will hold to it with all the vehemence of a bible-quoting zealot of old, pouring disdain on anyone who would dare to introduce a bit of contrary human insight or extend the argument a little.

There’s not much difference between someone saying that there must be a God, quoting Luke 8:3 Proverbs(“And failing to digest their meaning, became ill”) and someone telling me there clearly isn’t one, because, like, quantum physics means that matter just appears, and stuff.

Not saying it’s not an improvement, I just think there’s a bit of an elephant in the lab, that’s all. He may weigh 0 kg, but he should still make the technicians nervous.