The Nature of Empirical Knowledge
And the misperceived validity assigned therein.
As we are being spoon-fed the latest rendition from tenured debutantes on high of ultrawealthy scholastic matrices, truth itself gets drowned out by what we think we know. Plato called it "the cave", a cave of acculturation, in which we receive knowledge about the universe through a one way valve, without any personal involvement or investment in the pursuit of the truth itself.
CURTAILMENT OF REASON AND COMPREHENSION
Throughout the ages, scholastic empires and their initiators of the rich and famous, curate knowledge bases in order to insulate the longevity of their reign. Most famously, and from the recent past, most "peasants" could not even read nor write. Indeed, "knowledge" (in the form of ancient Hermetic truths encoded in the modern Bible) was tightly controlled by the rich global oligarchies. In order to access knowledge, common people had to engage with the aristocracy's hierarchy gatekeepers, in the form of religious clerics, receiving a preconceived, prepackaged rendition that, coincidently, made sense of their deleterious subjugation.
We find much the same facilitations in the modern world, as religious clerics of our day attempt to explain to us that our lives are merely randomized blips in an artificial construct that doesn't exist, which, much like in the past, could not be farther from the truth.
THE FLAT EARTH AND ROUND EARTH PARADOX
The obfuscation of reality tends to be a darling favorite of secretive manipulators who require adherence to false dichotomy as a means of maintaining intellectual servitude in the masses. Indeed, what we think we know serves, itself, as a means to an end, but an end that does not serve the common people, much like in the old days of the modern Bible.
Most people have heard of the fight between flat earthers and globe heads, but such a well publicized contention does not lend itself to the uninitiated, due mainly to the subtilties of dissolution. Here we will dissect the science of indoctrination and ways in which knowledge itself becomes a weapon.
In the flat earth mindset, they espouse a biblically documented firmament, a kind of impenetrable barrier set forth by ancient "gods", that separate the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth.
Coincidently, round earthers, with the help of NASA, of course, entertain a similar belief system they refer to as an impassable barrier of energy called the Van Allen radiation belt.
As we can see here, both contentious members of the aforementioned false dichotomy adhere to information they have no ability to verify, simply subscribing to preconceived thoughts, prepackaged for them by individuals who do not have their best interests in mind.
Let us now examine another disputation between the quaint, totally manufactured belief systems of flat and round earthers, as presented to us by the Library of Congress, NASA and the CIA.
In the meme below, we see a rather strong determination, in the difference between the dissipations of smoke in motion.
Subtleties abound in each of the above renditions; indeed, such mental acrobatics are often happily left "to the experts", but the mental exercise involved in the synthesis of such ideas offers intellectual rewards never contained in the subscription to mere belief systems themselves.
The flat earth rendition presumes that the smoke does not move because it is contained inside the firmament, which itself remains motionless on earth (Library of Congress), while the round earth rendition presumes that the smoke does not move due to the inertia of motion (as earth careens through the universe at 67,000 miles per hour and the smoke itself, from the volcano, moves at the same rate.
Both renditions listed above describe the reasoning to us of the same phenomena, but in different ways that qualify each of their own belief systems inside their respective false dichotomies.
THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION AS INDIVIDUALS
The intellectual qualifications of both thought forms (flat and round earth), as mentioned above, all rely on the nature of personal observation; these points, themselves, cannot be verified nor denied because what we see and think of as "space" could be interpreted any number of ways that satisfy both perceptual frameworks of flat and round earth. In that sense, we simply do not know, for sure, what we are looking at without direct access and first hand experience. What we think we know manufactures a type of hubris inside us, what we perceive as the validity of empirical knowledge.
It may very well be the case that we do not have enough information to make a concrete determination one way or the other, that does not itself come to us from the regurgitation of someone else's belief system, who themselves received their rendition from yet another anonymous gatekeeper. Third party evidence, though "official" and consensus driven, cannot logically compel the thinker in either direction because the degree to which people can be fooled by simple tricks remains a constant.
In any consummate thinker, it should be the case that, red flags arise in the questions being presented themselves, namely: false dichotomy, identifiable enemies, appeals to authority, appeals to ignorance, false equivalences and hasty generalizations.
Without direct access and direct personal experience, we are simply regurgitating the commonly accepted dominant paradigm without any way to verify any of this information other than relying on someone else's account as it is perceived by their own belief system. Although we may feel like we know what the sun and stars and planets are, even though we can physically see them with our own eyes, we actually do not know because we are distinctly separate from these phenomena; they cannot be verified directly by us due to the nature of self-perception as individuals: this is the same intellectual conundrum as presented by arguments regarding the ineffable and its various ideological camps all relying on oversimplification.
Just as the earth, in prehistory, was believed to be flat, and then was believed to be round, due to researchers such as Copernicus, the geocentric model was itself replaced with the heliocentric model, and, the heliocentric model's orbital arrangement was then updated to include the graduation of incremental orbits as the planets themselves follow, in tow, the sun's own orbit about the galactic center. The shortcomings of such a science, as perceived by us, illustrates the fickle nature of empirical knowledge itself, and the misperception of its validity.
Here we are, witnessing a rather intense debate between flat and round earthers, and what they think they know, while neither parties have any direct experience of the matter itself, unless we are made to believe in the fallacy-driven exploits of organizations like NASA. You and I may be able to see the planets, the sun and eclipses, but these are phenomena beyond the scope of our knowledge base, as they are inaccessible by us as individuals, much different than a tangible mountaintop or cliffside that we could theoretically ascend and make concrete determinations.
For example, the sun, some say, is actually not exactly hot like we think (Scientific American, Northumbria University, Physics Forums) but electrical, while the dominant paradigm says it's hot by way of nuclear fusion. There does not exist any coherent consensus of such stellar phenomena, or even, for that matter, what we perceive as space itself. Again, what we are calling "space", for all we know, could very well be the mesosphere or exosphere taking place inside the firmament or Van Allen radiation belt. Two different types of people, in two different ideological camps, both have terminologies that seem to describe the same things, in very different ways, based on their respective schemas.
The intellectual framework I have described thusly, exists beyond the cognitive abilities of most thinkers, due mainly to the subscription to belief systems themselves, and the total confinement of logical thoughts!
As we can see here, in the below conceptual model, simply viewing physical phenomena from a limited viewing aspect can inherently lead the thinker down a road of self imposed misperceptions that quickly turn into beliefs.
