"working Model" Options

Imagine if you will, a monkey (lets call him George) in a laboratory cage. Now imagine that a lab technician (lets call him Frank) sets up a device within the cage, which consists of a lever and a chute from which bananas will drop into the cage when the lever is pulled.

In time, George will become aware of the cause & effect relationship of pulling the lever and receiving a banana. But HOW does it work? what brings the reward? How will George explain this newfound sense of causality?

Lets say that George understands the lever to be the phalus of the banana god, Nanner. (now many centuries later, monkeykind will debate at great length whether the lever is truly Nanner's penis by way of transubstantiation, or whether it is merely the symbol of Nanner's universal phallic-ness... but I digress). It is the understanding of George, that if Nanner's phallus is fondled, Nanner will rain down the blessing of curved yellow fruit on the faithful fondler. And so, George's reality is understood to be a small world, with bars at its edges, ruled over by the benevolent god Nanner, who rewards his faithful.

Now then, is George right? Is it actually Nanner who gives him bananas? Or is it just a few gears and a trapdoor? To us, the question seems pretty silly. BUT, George's version of things is an excellent "Working Model". You can say that George's ideology is askew, but when he pulls Nanners yingyang, it rains bananas, immediately. And that's pretty darn powerful magic if you really think about it. It 'works', even if its not true.

The point of all this, is that the issue of 'truth', is not the same as the issue of 'effectiveness'. And further, beyond this, is the larger realization that effectiveness can lead to delusions of truth!

Because of the potency and reliability of George's 'Nanner Magic', he will probably never come to question the validity of his paradigm. And because Frank loads the banana chute every Tuesday, he too will never question the validity of his own concept of what causes bananas to fall from the chute. George will never stop to think, "is it just some mechanical device?". And Frank will never stop to think "am I really just an agent of Nanner's will?".

Of course this is why, on the final day of reckoning, when Nanner begins his reign on earth, Frank will be put up against the wall and peeled with the rest of the nonbelievers.

I realize this is an old topic, but I wanted to post this anyway, because I think about this sort of thing a lot. The question is can we know what the 'truth' is in the most literal and objective sense at all? It may be that we cannot and that metaphors / symbols are all we can work with. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that the most objectively true perspective on reality we can hold is the one presented by quantum mechanics: quadrillions x quadrillions of particles / waves constantly interacting with each other in all sorts of ways. Now we can never directly perceive them, they are just far too small and therefore we can never 'know' the truth experientially in this way, unless we make some gigantic evolutionary leaps.

We already know that what we perceive as light, sound, smell, taste, feeling, are all creations of the mind, and are therefore symbols of reality, but not literal reality. We can laugh at George for invoking the banana god but his metaphor for what he is experiencing may not be that different from what we're doing when we're invoking Thoth, or any god for that matter. In the end, everything we experience are just symbols / metaphors for a reality that might be unknowable. So I wouldn't get too hung up on what the truth with a capital T is, unless you're a scientist for a living.

Belief shifting as part of the Chaote's practice inevitably leads to messing around with our symbols that we use to conceptualize reality. You could think of the universe as software, and you the programmer. Or the universe as a clockwork machine, and you're flipping switches. Or the universe as a giant mind, and you're a decision-making part of that mind, etc. As long as you can really immerse yourself in the paradigm. The truth? Don't worry about it. Effectiveness is better to spend time working on (imho).