In nature invisible forces are in play without which the entire physical world ceases to exist. These largely mysterious forces act collectively to create the scaffolding upon which all matter, including you and me, is formed. Why these forces , and the laws governing them, exist is a matter of consternation for any thinking person, since without the laws, the forces either do not exist, or do not behave consistently and predictably enough to become the foundation for the entire cosmos. Conversely, without the forces, the laws remain invisible and unknown.
Nature's inorganic constituents are governed by the laws of nature and the forces those laws control. A rock perched atop a large hill will, when its footings are sufficiently eroded, obeys gravity's call and rolls down the hill, trussed and directed by an assemblage of physical laws. Likewise the moon obediently idles its way around the Earth day after day, age after age, never once contemplating a move to Venus's orbit. Nope. Around and around the Earth it goes, and will continue to do so until some other force dislodges it.
In the organic world - land of the living- things change considerably, especially as one ascends the pyramid of animal complexity. Simple protozoa can certainly react to stimuli in their environment, but it doesn't involve thought; just an off the rack operating system that aids in keeping the thing viable. Insects make 'decisions' as to which way to respond to a physical stimulus, (move toward it, move away from it). Birds and mammals must evaluate an array of stimuli in order to eat, reproduce, shelter and survive. But these stimuli all have one thing in common: they are without deceit. Light is light, dark is dark, movement is movement, water is wet, snow is cold, and so forth. The world which confronts life forms from amoebas to zebras is eerily simple, more of a 'face value' proposition, despite the myriad of difficulties inherent in their fight for survival.
But a funny thing happens on the way to the apex of the complexity pyramid. For there we are, iconic in our conspicuous place at the top, all of creation beneath our feet forged into some sort of organic pedestal upon which we resolutely bask in the glory of our free will and opposable thumb. From our vantage point, we witness the dullness of the amoeba, the creepiness of the arachnid and the silliness of the chimpanzee. We dissect them, grow them, study them, entrap and confine them. We make every creature subject to our collective will, either directly or indirectly as we seek to influence their survivability and ours. And they let us do it! It is nothing short of astounding. With scarcely a dissenting outcry, we subjugate every kingdom taxonomists have divined with little fear of revolt. It is but one facet of our free will on display - the desire to rule over the natural world - a desire that goes horribly wrong in the absence of an inner moral compass.
Any discussion of free will would have to be lengthy. But painting in broad strokes, we can illustrate it as the difference between merely walking across a deposit of limestone beneath the soil in blissful ignorance, versus quarrying that limestone and harnessing the laws of physics to turn it into cities. It is the force that has allowed civilizations to flourish and add layer upon layer of comfort and luxury to our existence.
On an intangible level we see that the entire domain of civilization owes its existence to a pair of linked intangibles existing only within the aura of free will: Trust and trustworthiness. The whole of human progress can be summed up as the effect of the promise, whether it be Pharaoh's promise of death to slacker slaves building his kingdom, or the promise of financial remuneration to architects, engineers, laborers and bond purchasers in exchange for raising a city. Since the majority of the actions required for civilization to come into existence are predicated upon promises, the critical element in the ascent of human civilization has been, and continues to be, trust. Trust comes into play because free will is in play. And where the free will of human beings is in motion, all bets are off, precisely because humans can -and do - choose to either reveal or obfuscate known truths. Unlike the environments of the rest of the animal kingdom, human interactions deal with words, spoken and written, which convey information that will force others to make a decision. It boils down to information being offered up as fact, or at the very least, theory with a probable outcome, and those encountering the information deciding to act on it by either believing it, or not.
Duplicity is the dark shadow cast by the corruption of man's free will. One need only scan the history books or the morning newspaper to come to terms with the ramifications of broken promises, blurred truths and outright lies. Duplicity is known by other names: deceit; guile; fraud; deception; hypocrisy; and trickery. Duplicity is the intent to deceive, and is always practiced as a means of self-gratification. It is the intentional abuse of trust through the issuance of a false promise. In this manner we find the world of lower animals to be less nuanced and more mechanistic than that of humans. A tree squirrel, for instance, leaves its nest and encounters a world comprised of finding nuts, remembering where he hid the nuts, and chasing girl squirrels up and down the nut tree. Squirrel society is overt and far less duplicitous than human society, simply because the desire to deceive is not wired into the squirrel and its environment. The human environment is a construct of intangible, interrelated relationships which ride the rails of truth and deception, sometimes intersecting with powerfully destructive outcomes. So if the promise is the currency, and thus ultimately the wealth of human society, duplicity is its cancer, and the arbiter of its demise.
Trust cannot be seen, touched, smelled, heard or tasted (and therefore, according to science, cannot exist.) No one will ever study a sample of trust in a Petri dish or under an electron scanning microscope. What then, is trust, this non-existent non-entity powerful enough to create the civilized world? What does it share in common with the invisible laws of nature and the forces those mysterious, supposedly self-existent laws create?
Maybe it is this: the things that ultimately make life possible, and rich and wonderful, invisible 'things' such as trust, love, compassion, and mercy, will never be identified by science and its narrowly focused searchlight of inquiry. (Pity that this has become the anointed alter upon which all truth is divined and bestowed upon the people.) But these invisible qualities ceaselessly resonate within us, invisible fingers strumming the strings of our heart or tapping across the keyboard of our soul, deep calling to deep, beckoning that we incline an ear of a different sort toward the melodious murmuring playing within.
It is a whisper we can trust.
