Seeing is Believing, Unless...

Scattered thoughts for clear vision

Oct 22, 2024

Disclaimer: Everything in this blog is pure speculation. I spend every waking moment checking sources, seeing if something I post may be clickbait, if a study I share is disingenuous, etc. Here I give myself the chance to write without clear citations, nuance, filters, or academic decorum. I assure you that, whatever criticism you may have of my writing, it pales in comparison to my own impossible self-expectations. I have decided to write in this melodic form, without rhythm, to say more than I can in ten-slide posts. An essay, after all, is an “attempt.”

“The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both.”

-Karl Marx

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

-Hebrews, 11:1

“It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact.”

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

“What we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”

-Werner Heisenberg

Interpret the quotes as you wish.

In Flannery O’Connor’s 1952 novel, Wise Blood, without spoiling the “plot”—if we might call it that—I can say that an important character decides to blind themselves. After a great failure, two characters consider severing their ability to see, bear witness, or, perhaps, live. One character fails to do so, where another succeeds. Vision serves a silent purpose and later becomes meaningful through its absence. Lives without faith end with vision, and death awaits those who look away. Every one of our senses has its role, but I would argue that for the modern, Liberal, capitalist way of thinking, vision reigns supreme.

There is no greater sin for the capitalist mode of production than the blind; “common sense” lies at the root of “basic economics,” “simple facts” guide you from rural poverty to the Bill Nye lifestyle, and “misinformation” might lead you to think you are supporting genocide, or something (?). Looking toward or away from a problem becomes the basis of morality, the root of solutions, and the guarantee of hope.

Empiricism and induction, divorced from concepts, logic, deduction, and the rest of human thinking, founded the capitalist mode of production and the world we live in. “Nature,” once seen as a totality, as a gift to be taken care of, the means to life and sustenance became a packaged, square quantity marketed for consumption. At least…this is the Romantic view of the Fall we get from Romanticism, Socialism, and every movement indebted to them since, which includes Fascism and conservatism.

In the United States, with the ponderous presence of Literalist Evangelicals who ironically take modern translations of the Bible as the “Word,” Liberal skepticism fights back with its utmost conviction that realism, vision, evidence, and a specific vision of “science” will liberate us from superstition. Thus, one strawman fights another: Scientism versus drunk Theology, incel Atheism contra wife-beating Scripture, single-variable calculus against 2^nd-grade literacy. We are told that if only people looked at evidence, we would have a better society, if only we had more education in STEM, and yet…“Science” has nothing to do with scientific thinking. And yet…our vision seems to fail the test of ethics, revolutionary organizing, action, solutions, it seems that this sense alone leaves us constantly engaged, imbibed in information, and yet poor through the tests of life.

Today we “see” so much that we are tired of it and wish we could sleep if only to close our eyes. If the Epistle to the Hebrews is supposed to be a vision of hope about faith, it seems both science and Theology fail in one important respect: what do we call it when everyone sees but refuses to believe?

We quite literally “see” everything happening today, it is impossible to claim, for our ancestors (if any), that we were innocent in the face of the worst outcomes; from the roughly 327,000 Americans facing homelessness,[i] the 90% of Gazans displaced with their homes in rubble,[ii] the tens of thousands to millions of people seeking basic refuge,[iii] we are constantly reduced to numbers, data, and “content” and yet nothing changes but the sense that our stomach churns a bit differently. The simplest solution is to treat the vulnerable as Others, but we fail to see that no one expects to find themselves in an extreme situation, that we are one moment away from venturing into another existence. There are too many issues we are all facing, but I want to focus, primarily, on the public health crisis we have faced since 1492.

Since 2022, our efforts to return to normal have left much to be desired as we played a Faustian bargain with our collective wellbeing. Thousands of studies confirm that any Covid-19/SARS-2 infection is a disaster for our health. Our public health has especially failed not just the most vulnerable, but those of us who assume we are not until it’s too late. At least 7% of all U.S. adults, or roughly 18 million people, have reported to have Long Covid or PASC as of this year.[iv] With recurrent waves of illness, the problem is far from over.[v] While we measured the pandemic through death rates, we ignored the long-term consequences; each new infection with the virus can result in a number of symptoms or increased risk of health,[vi] ranging from brain fog to more extreme cases similar to ME/CFS, where people can barely get out of bed for months or longer. Patients report worsened vascular, cognitive health and the virus can affect virtually any organ system in the body, regardless of age.[vii] A bipartisan senate hearing on the matter warned that the burden of the disease, social, economic, and otherwise could exceed trillions of dollars due to the many people who can no longer work.[viii] In 2021, approximately 3% of Americans were immunocompromised,[ix] meaning that when we dropped all public health requirements they were left to fend for themselves by either permanently staying at home or risking their lives to do basic daily tasks. With the number now estimated at 6.6%,[x] the risks of chronic illness rising in the United States, and children prone to a variety of health issues we are just beginning to understand,[xi] I would think that seeing=believing fails to account for our current conundrum. Whether in wars, public health, economic ruin, or climate disasters in Florida, Georgia, California, or the 100 current emergencies FEMA is dealing with,[xii] our eyes fail us, repeatedly. It is scary, at times horrifying to stay focused on what feels like doomscrolling, senseless catastrophe, and yet it is from our feeling of horror, our attempts at redress, that vision translates to something else. Without building the foundations, the solid ground for others to walk on, we are failing those who are most in need, those who cannot see but only suffer, who cannot read but only endure. Fuck your positivity.