Individuality versus Structure

I was glancing through the book, Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto the other day, when something caught my attention. In his book, John Gatto lists and describes seven lessons that children get from compulsory schooling. One of the lessons he called emotional dependency. He begins describing this lesson with this sentence: “By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors, and disgraces, I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestinated chain of command.” What caught my attention was how individuality (the kids will) was pitted against structure (chain of command).

So are individuality and structure pitted against one another? I think so. People express their individuality by being different, by following their own lives the way they want to, by trailblazing. This is all well and good, to a point. While it is true that individuality results in the creation of new and inventive ideas and products (how could new ideas emerge is everybody thought the same way), on the other hand, what would happen if we took individuality to its logical extreme? To put it another way, what would happen if everybody was able to freely express themselves with absolutely no constraints? That would be anarchy (every man doing what is right in his own eyes).

Structure (by which I mean, rules, order, and authority) prevent anarchy, but structure can become as harmful as anarchy when human structure becomes absolute (or near absolute). Governments with excessive amounts of structure become tyrannical.

So we have these two competing ideas: individuality and structure. Left to themselves, they work toward opposite ends. What then can be done? Should a balance be struck between the two?

The problem with suggesting that individuality and structure should be balanced is: where should the balance be? One person’s legitimate structure is another person’s intrusion on individuality. Another person’s expression of individuality is another person’s debauchery. For example, one person supports the legalization of drugs in the name of free choice, while another sees unfettered drug use as a deplorable condition some authority should have the right to prevent. Another person does paintings of nude figures to “get an understanding of human anatomy,” while another person seeing nude paintings as a devaluing of humanity.

As an aside, why is it that individuality has such a strong hold in art? Some artists seem to think that it is their birthright to create or perform offensive works or acts all in the name of “expressing themselves.” First off, it is ironic that our society is becoming more and more structured (restricted), often in the name of making sure no one is offended by the public actions of a person, yet artists are free to offend traditional values as much as they want, and get state funding for it to boot. Who were the idiots who first made the argument that nude figures are a legitimate expression of ideas? Who were the idiots who believed them? Nude figures do express “ideas,” things like lust and sensual pleasure, which, if left to grow and develop unchecked, lead to adultery, broken commitments, broken families, and broken lives. Anyway, enough about my anti-freedom-of-the-arts rant, back to the subject at hand.

A balance between individuality and structure can not be found because no two people will be in agreement as to where that balance should rest. What can be done about this? I would suggest that individuality be abolished in favor of absolute authority.

Did I just say that I am in favor of total tyranny? Well, yes. The only thing I did not specify (yet) is who would be the tyrant. Actually, I don’t think it is a matter of specifying who would be the tyrant, it is a matter of recognizing who is the tyrant. Oh, and rather than calling Him tyrant, calling Him God.

Maybe it is because I am a structure kind of guy and I prefer to be given instructions and rules as opposed to being told to make it up my own way, but one of the prominent ways I view God is as the ultimate lawgiver (this is related to the other prominent way I view God: as Creator; He made it, He sets the rules [and we humans are part of the “it” He created]). All Christians should see Him as the ultimate authority in all areas of life, which pretty much describes an ultimate dictator. Now, I am not trying to imply that God is tyrannical (meaning, mean, cruel, and harsh), but if He is the ultimate authority for everything then every aspect of our life has to conform to His will. His will is given in the Bible in the laws and commandments He gave to men. There is still freedom within those laws, areas inside the laws where individuality can be expressed. But freedom and individuality are not entities that exist on their own, they must exist within the confines set for them by God.

So that is how I see the conflict between individuality and structure as being settled: God sets the rules, follow them, and any areas of freedom inside the rules can be used to express individuality.

The Question of Contradictory Reality

What is wrong with the following statement: “We can know nothing about reality.”

A sharp minded person would notice that there is a logical problem: the statement is contradictory. The statement is making a definitive statement about reality, yet it claims nothing can be known about reality. While it is true that the statement is contradictory, I don’t think that would make the statement wrong. The statement, “We can know nothing about reality,” would mean that reality may be contradictor. If we knew that reality was not contradictory, then we would know something about reality, right? So the statement would not be invalidated because it is contradictory, because accepting the statement as true opens up the possibility that reality is contradictory.

What can we say to people who say, “We can know nothing about reality”? These same people will doubt their very senses, for after all, if they can know nothing about reality, how can they trust their senses? Well, I am sure even the person who accepts that he can know nothing about reality to the point that he doubts his senses still lives his life as if he could perceive the world around him. For instance, I would bet that such a person would still duck if he saw someone swing a baseball bat at his head. He may give a philosophical reason why he doesn’t know that the baseball bat actually exist, but when the baseball bat is about to impact his life (more specifically, his head), suddenly, he doesn’t care about the philosophical implications and acts as if the baseball bat is real. Thus, we can conclude that a person who says that, philosophically, he can not know anything about reality, is being a hypocrite, since he lives his life as if he does know something about reality.

However, this brings us back to the first problem: if a person who claims to not know anything about reality is fine with reality being contradictory, then there is no problem with him living his life as a hypocrite. After all, if the world may be contradictory, why can’t his life be contradictory? So I am not sure that these people can be convinced that reality exists by reasoning. However, I do think that if these people continue to deny that reality exists, even when they live their lives as if reality does exist, and even though everybody in the entire world lives their lives as if reality exists, if they can’t see that maybe, just maybe, everybody lives their lives as if reality exists for reason, then we should just treat these people as dumb as a barrel of bricks.

How Transitional Forms are Identified, Pt. 2

This is a continuation of a previous post called "How Transitional Forms are Identified, Pt. 1." There will be at least one more post in this series after this.

Since similarities are not capable of determining whether an organism is a transitional form, is there some other way a transitional form could be identified? In theory, it would be possible to identify transitional forms, if they were to exist at all, by cross-breeding tests. According to the theory of evolution, a new species will first arise as a variety of an existing species. When this variety becomes separated from the parent species and exposed to different selective pressures, the variety diverges enough from the parent species that the two no longer breed together in the wild. It would then be considered to be a different species, since the definition of a species is a group of organisms that interbreed and produce viable offspring in the wild. The creation of a new species in a manner similar to that described above is called a speciation event. While a new species may not be capable of interbreeding with its parent species in the wild, it may still be able to interbreed under domestic or artificial conditions. Thus, interbreeding would be able to reveal a common genetic heritage.

Something interesting to point out is that the previous description of speciation does not contradict creation science. In creation science, there is something called a kind. A kind refers to a group of organisms all of whose members can interbreed with one another. A kind is larger, and more encompassing than a species. Another way to think of a kind is a kind describes a large group of organisms that all have a common gene pool. Individual species in that kind contain limited portions of that gene pool. So speciation can occur as genes get shuffled around, exchanged, and limited to specific groups. Speciation in creation science does differ from speciation in the theory of evolution because in the theory of evolution, speciation events are not limited to an exchange or limiting of existing genes: speciation in evolution will also include (and indeed, requires) the addition of new genes.

Now let’s go back to our speciation event and take the idea further. Suppose a series of speciation events takes place, so that now, rather than having a single parent species and then one daughter species, there is the original parent species, its daughter species, a daughter species of the first daughter species (a granddaughter of the parent species), and so on. Continue this process long enough, and a daughter species may arise that is incapable of interbreeding with the parent species under any conditions. Even at this stage, cross-breeding would reveal a common genetic heritage. For example, let’s call the parent species P, the daughter species D1, the granddaughter species D2, and a great-granddaughter species D3. While species D3 may not be able to interbreed with species P, species D3 could interbreed with species D2. Species D2, in turn, would be able to cross-breed with species D1, and species D1 could cross-breed with species P. So there is still a chain of interbreeding possible, again showing a common genetic heritage.

This chain of interbreeding scenario is now inconsistent with creation science. One kind is not capable of interbreeding with any other kind. So the fact that species D3 is incapable of interbreeding with species P would be evidence that they belong to separate kinds. In addition, there would be no intermediary species (in this case, species D1 and D2) that would bridge the gap between species D3 and P. So the existence of a chain of cross-breeding species would be a genuine example of transitional species, and would be consistent with the theory of evolution and inconsistent with creation science.

Now we have a criterion for determining whether an organism is a transitional form or not: it must be part of an interbreeding chain, where it is able to interbreed with two other types of organisms but the two other types of organisms are not capable of interbreeding with each other. Now testing the idea that transitional forms exist is simply a matter of going out into the world and looking for examples of interbreeding chains.

A survey of the natural world would reveal, however, that there are no interbreeding chains. There are plenty of examples where different species are capable of interbreeding with each other, but these form distinct groups, not chains. For instance, it is well known that a male donkey and a female horse can interbreed to produce a mule. A horse can also interbreed with a zebra, creating a zorse. However, a zebra can interbreed with a donkey as well. So there is no chain of interbreeding present. Rather, interbreeding groups are present. First off, it should be noted that this is consistent with creation science: individual species are limited groups of a larger gene pool, the kind.

There is, however, an explanation for the absence of transitional forms given by the theory of evolution. The modern theory of evolution includes the idea of punctuated equilibrium. This idea says that species remain in equilibrium (they exist without change) for long periods of time. New species are created when that equilibrium is disrupted, usually by outside forces, causing a rapid isolation of populations and eventual creation of new species. Rapid here should not be taken as instantaneous, but rather over a span of hundreds of generations, which is a long time in evolutionary theory. So according to this model, equilibrium is the norm and it is occasionally punctuated by rapid periods of evolution. This would mean then that, at any given time in history, the likelihood of finding a species in the midst of evolving is rare: most of the time, you will just see things in equilibrium. Another explanation for the absence of transitional forms today is that species alive today may indeed be transitional forms, but since we do not see them evolving into new organisms, and since they are sufficiently distinct from their parent species, they are not recognized as transitional forms.

What is needed, then, to identify transitional forms is a record. In this case, the record that scientists look to is the fossil record. Species that are alive today may be sufficiently different from their closest living relatives, but the transitional forms, the steps taken during times of punctuated equilibrium, may have left remains as fossils. So now we turn to the fossil record.

There is an immediate problem with looking for transitional forms in the fossil record: the organisms in the fossil record are all dead. Remember, transitional forms can be positively identified by chains of interbreeding. However, it is impossible to determine interbreeding patterns with animals that can not breed because they are dead. The only thing that can be used as an identification of relatedness of dead organisms is to compare their physiology to that of living organisms. In other words, transitional forms in the fossil record can only be identified based on similarities with other organisms. But as was explained before, similarities of features can not be used to determine whether transitional forms exist versus whether transitional forms do not exist at all. So now we are facing the problem of physical similarities not being able to identify transitional forms all over again.