Seeing patterns

Kahneman recognizes two modes of mind :

• System One - which is intuitive and emotional, and 
• System Two - which is systematic and rational.

System One is by far the busiest and it jumps quickly to conclusions and thus avoids paralysis by analysis. In its memory it contains an ever changing world view constructed in parts by nature, nurture and chance.

When new information enters through the sense organs System One mind rapidly associates it with past experiences, sees patterns, and thus judges whether to advance, retreat or ignore. The System One mind sees patterns and makes up stories without seeming to make much thoughtful effort.

You can experience this happening in your own mind by playing the following mind game.

1. Gather seven words from a dictionary. Open the book at random and immediately point to anywhere on the page – note the word that is nearest to your finger. Do this seven times.
2. Make a story from the words following these instructions:
3. The first word is the topic of the story.
4. Words 2-4 have to be included in the first paragraph.
5. The story should be less than 250 words

Here are some examples:

Seven words: Theatre: confirmed, averse, cellmate, DJ, enthusiastic, faggots

Theatre:  The charismatic prisoner confirmed that he would not be averse to his cellmate having the star part in the prison’s new theatrical production.

The plot revolves around a DJ who is insatiably enthusiastic about faggots.

Seven Words: Humus: rock, faith, purpose, axiomatic, encephalitis, state

Humus: It was the rock that anchored the gardener’s faith and which suffused him with purpose. The belief that the only constant thing is change.

It was thus axiomatic that his encephalitis would result in a state of being what might be called humus. Change and decay in all around I see.

Seven Words: Bed: crowbar, cockatoos, bigamy, footloose, fantasized, embedded

Bed: There was a bed in the huge bird cage at the centre of the zoo. A missing leg had been replaced by a rusty crowbar. The zookeeper was fond of telling visitors why there were three cockatoos in the cage. One was male and two were female. I was an example of avian bigamy.

But the male cockatoo was not impressed. He longed to be footloose and often fantasized about living in the wild and servicing an enormous harem. But he had been captured and embedded in the zoo. He tried to escape once. That was when the leg broke and was replaced by the crowbar. The zookeeper was a cheapskate as well as a liar.

For more examples see http://s3.spanglefish.com/s/285/documents/existential/six-words.docx

Sensing dark survival

I have various sense organs – eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin for outward sensing; and various other ones for inner sensing eg posture and movement. They are good enough for the species to have multiplied dramatically in the last seven million years - but they have their limits.

For example, the eyes can see only ‘visible’ light. Humans cannot see the infrared or the ultraviolet. And then, within these sensory limits, there is too much going on for us to pay attention to everything.

We notice what our culture and language have taught us to notice and we fail to notice other things. It is said for example that Eskimos have fourteen words for snow and none for butterfly.

If it does not have a name does it exist? Just because it has a name this does not mean that it does exist eg God.

And then, even with the things we notice, we are selective about what is put into short term memory and then into long term memory. I lived in Zambia from 1977 till 1979. There is very little that I remember from those days. And what I remember is not reliable. It tends to be different from what I wrote in my diary at the time about being bombed, quarantined inside a cholera outbreak, and having nothing to eat but avocados from a tree in the garden.

SO – there are fundamental limits on what we can know and report about reality as it is in itself. And we are blind to those limits. But millions of years of evolution have made us this way so it must have its uses.

The function of the sense organs is to inform the brain about good things (eg ripe fruit) and bad things (eg hungry lions). The dangerous things require fast reactions. Best not to sit around philosophizing. Best to act as if “What you see is all there is.” (WYSIATI  ref Kahneman).

What you thought was a snake was in fact a piece of rope – no problems.

What you thought was a rope was in fact a snake – a slow painful death.

Evolution favors the nervy pessimist.

“Always look on the dark side of life”.

Phone, Bus and Jam

Yesterday was non intellectual.

I used my free bus pass to go to Elgin to have my mobile phone fixed. When I lost it I got the online techies to bar and blacklist the handset and the sim card. That was easy and fast. Then I found the phone (duh!) and discovered that getting things unbarred and taken off the blacklist was not so easy.

The Vodaphone ‘chat’ people were painfully polite and pleasant. Twice they said they had found the solution and the phone would be OK again within 2-4 hours - but it wasn’t. The lady in the Phones 4U shop in Elgin was also very friendly and polite. She discovered that both the handset and the sim card are still blacklisted – they should be clear within the next 24 hours. If not, I can go back to her. There was no charge for the use of her time and telephone.

There is a bus to and from Elgin every hour. It takes 77 minutes to get from outside my front door to inside the St Giles Centre in Elgin. There are several mobile phone shops in the Centre – it is marvelously convenient.

The bus journey was comfortable and peaceful. Several of the passengers used their mobile phones as soon as they got onboard – presumably to tell someone that “I am now on the bus”. But then they just sat. Inactivity. Stillness. A social situation where it is acceptable to give up DOING.

So how did they get on with BEING? I had no way of knowing where their heads were at. Maybe in Limbo. It was a warm, sunny day and my attention centre was content to be passively occupied with the changing landscape outside the window.

When I got home I was moved to pick some red and black currants. Most years the birds get to them before me. But this year they are overgrown with long grass. This presumably prevents the birds from finding somewhere robust enough to perch while tucking into the harvest.

Red currants are more fiddly to harvest than black ones. Having picked the red ones you then have to spend time removing the stems. The black ones can be picked without gathering their stems.

I picked 300 gram of blackcurrants and made them into two jars of jam. The process is simple:

BUT – I overstated my case - the day was not entirely non intellectual.

I spent time in the Waterstones bookshop in the St Giles Centre. There was a good feeling to see books that I already own. I am on top of things! There is something pleasing about reviewing books in a bookshop rather than cruising online at Amazon. But then there is no immediate way of checking out new authors. I could upgrade to a smart  phone so I can check the internet anywhere anytime - the buses have wi-fi! - but this is not an urgent issue.

I also cruised W H Smith noting the cute bits of stationary that I did not buy. In the magazine section I bought a publication about WordPress and I read parts of it between Elgin and Portgordon. So ‘I’’ was not on the bus for a while. Attention was non-egoic and out of time and space. Concentration. Lost in a book. Old habits die hard.

Grateful garden

The fronts of my two small cottages are hard against the pavement and close to the town centre. There is also a large back garden surrounded by an eight foot stone wall. Nobody can see in so I have my privacy. This means that I can do what I like with the garden and there is no one to object, no peer pressure in favor of horticultural conformity.

Earlier today I was sitting in the sunshine by the back door with a sandwich lunch. Crumbs fell on the slabs but this was not a problem – there are various sizes of birds with various types of beak waiting to make a meal of them.

I seem to have a thing about letting nature takes its course.

Several years ago I planted apple, pear and plum trees. Other than that there is grass. I used to mow it all and it took two and a half hours. These days I have a couple of small greenies up near the cottages and there are mowed paths around the rest of the plot. Now it takes only 45 minutes to give it a haircut.

The countryside round the village supports monster monocrops. Walls and fences have been removed to make it easier for giant agriculture machines to be more efficient. It is easy to forget the rich diversity of plants and animals that once knew this place as home. It is also easy to forget the enormous amount of brute labour that went in to taming the land in the 18th and 19th century. But there were clearances and the agricultural workforce was replaced by machines.

Most of the green fingered people these days have to make do with small village or town gardens. They have plans for every square inch. The hand of man is openly on show especially on homes and gardens television. And there are many awesome results.

But the green finger habit may be dying. Many gardens are now tarmacked to provide car parking. Others are landscaped with chuckie steens and weed killer to ensure low maintenance. There is no need to grow your own. People with money can buy food from supermarkets that stock an ever widening range of goods that grew in all manner of soils, weather patterns, and socioeconomic scams. There is perhaps too much choice.

It does my head in to think of all the value chains that lie behind the goods for sale in the local Coop which is 320 footsteps east of my front door. The issue of choice in a globalised world!

But there is no immediate need to think of such things. It is enough that I feed the birds with crumbs from an outdoor sandwich lunch and that I am grateful to be in my sun-soaked, private garden.

tethering clouds

Compilations

There is the Scottish saying that mony a mickle maks a muckle. So it is with one-pagers and compilations.

One-pagers can make sense on their own but they can also be compiled in different ways to make larger senses.

I have been churning out one-pagers and compilations for the last 20 years or so. Originally they were objective and for training purposes; more recently they have been subjective and focused on mindfulness, neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Many of them are freely available on websites and on blogs.

In Lesotho I prepared one-pagers in response to the periodic arrival of new books for an education library project. The one-pagers were stored chronologically. This was not very useful! There were over 600 of them between 1995 and 1988.

 ‘Compilations’ were mainly produced in advance of project workshops. The one-pagers were compiled as a series of handouts that were used either during the workshop or as ‘digging deeper’ notes for home use by educators who were particularly interested.

A workshop compilation document was in essence a one-pager of annotated one-pagers on a given theme. Some examples of the educational compilations from Lesotho are available here.  The following two compilations have been made into websites

• Everybody Wins - an exploration of conflict resolution. A set of 17 one-page handouts to inform discussion.  First used as part of a training programme for education advisors in Lesotho. Prepared in February 1997
• STEEPLeS is an acronym for the seven elements of a holistic and systematic development framework for change for the better: Social  Technological  Environmental  Economic  Political  Legal  Ethical Spiritual. This grew out of work with Hakikazi Catalyst in the early 2000s

After Lesotho some of the one-pagers were recompiled to address the concept of Community Economic Development (CED). They were used as part of a staff training program for the EU funded Banffshire Partnership Ltd Access Project. (Access = Advancing Community Capacity for Enterprise Sustainability and Support) For details see the website.  Also on the CED theme, there is a compilation of 30 one-pagers dealing with Project Planning and Management.

Since 2002 there has been a change of pattern. I have been preparing new one-pagers which have a subjective feel. Stories appear from the unconscious and I blog them – they are then on a chronological stack. Every now and then I review the posts and create compilation booklets on an emerging theme. The fact that this is possible suggests that the unconscious is better organized than it sometimes seems.

The recent compilations have been made available through www.scribd.com . They can be read online or downloaded for free as a pdf file.

• With agency in mind - on the road to easy peace May 2011 (34 pages)   A booklet of a website. A rough guide to mind training and meditation - Let it begin with me.
• Muse flows in the zone- below the tip of the iceberg – 09 June 2011 (47 pages)  A compilation of 22 short articles dealing with the influence of the unconscious on patterns of creative thinking and feeling.
• Witnessing the attention centre - switching on the light – 27 June 2011 (37 pages) This compilation uses a range of figures of speech to deal poetically with the subjective experience of (a) an attention centre inside your head and (b) the enlightening possibility of a conscious witness to the contents of that attention centre
• Towards uncommon sense - a spiritual journey - 25 March 2013 (15 pages)   A compilation of seven short essays dealing with aspects of one man’s spiritual journey.

There is some repetition of thoughts both within and between compilations. But I see this as useful in that it helps to consolidate lines of thought and also to demonstrate the gradual evolution of thoughts and viewpoints. There is no end to making sense.

To hold the ‘spiritual’ one-pagers online there were first websites and then blogs. In the following list the first three are now archives. The 4th gets about three new stories each week.

1. The Essence of Faiths - Whispers from everywhere 
2. Let it begin with me - A rough guide to mind training and meditation
3. Existential Soft Rock - mental re-construction through just sitting - be still and know
4. Changing Minds – thinking outside of the box

The one-pagers are like lego bricks. Different people can compile them in different ways to make different themes.

Indeed, mony mickle ideas mak muckle themes

Human Writes

For many years my paid work involved editing and writing. I am now retired and writing is my main hobby and source of joy. “I live alone and work from home” is a present mantra.

My daily pattern of activity has changed over the years. At present it involves being at the computer first thing after getting up. I check the email, Facebook and Twitter for personal and ‘real’ messages and then scan the Guardian online to see what is being touted by the media. I used to scan the Google news as well but I gave that up because it was a media overdose.

After the review of online stuff I open a daily diary page. Its filename is the date (eg 130719.doc) and the first entry is the time. [alt]+i, t, page-end, up one space, [ok]. I then sit for a few minutes waiting to see if attention will be captured by a writing topic.

If attention is not captured by a particular topic then I watch passing thoughts until I am moved to act on a non-writing distraction. I leave the computer switched on with the diary page showing so it is easy to edit as the day progresses. The diary pages are not intended as works of art!

NOTE: over the years I have had an on and off relationship with ‘Brande Flows’. These are ‘stream of consciousness’ exercises where I type nonstop for 20 minutes recording whatever happens to come to mind - if only to say that there  is nothing coming to mind. The original idea came from the classic by Dorothea Brande (1934) “Becoming a Writer”. Every now and then I have a go at a flow. Amazing stuff turns up. Where does it come from?

Sometimes, as for example at this present moment, attention is captured by a topic. In this case it is “Human Writes”. The phrase arrived after reading an article about journaling by the Guardian blogger Oliver Burkeman.) A few minutes ago I made a brief list of short items that might be included. Once an item has become part of the story I delete it from the list.

There was, and still is, an almost unconscious awareness of the direction this short story (a one-pager) might take. I am in flow. The muse is speaking through me. The conscious ‘I’ is not in control of what is going on. There is the temptation to use the passive voice and thus to avoid using the dis-easing words ‘I, me and mine’.

I produced my first one-pagers while working on a proposal for a science education project in Oman. There were some technical terms that could not be avoided but I did not want to spoil the flow of the main text by including long explanations. I therefore generated an appendix of one-pagers to which readers could refer if need be.

The work-related one-pagers were mainly summaries of the thoughts of experts. In Lesotho I produced more than 600 of them dealing with leadership, management and administration in education. In Tanzania I produced a large number of one-pagers related to civil society activities linked to poverty reduction and social development.

However, while in Lesotho, and independent of the official work, I began writing one-pagers dealing with eastern religions in general and meditation in particular. Eighteen of these were prepared for a local newspaper and ended on a web site.

I continued with this topic in my early freelance days where sixty six were published to a web site and of these seventeen were ‘home grown’. The home-grown stories indicate a shift away from herding other men’s cows towards dealing with my own. Rather than regurgitating what others have said, I moved to writing one-pagers about what was subjectively true to my problematic and illusory ‘self’. And I shared most of these by blogging them.

NOTE: The blog “Existential Soft Rock - mental re-construction through just sitting - be still and know” began in Nov 2002 and is now an archive. It contains 506 posts and has had 29,298 visits.
The blog “Changing Minds” began in Jan 2013 and is ongoing. It contains 126 posts and has had 2455 visits

This is a good point to introduce the idea of “no self, no problem”. The writing is an end in itself. It is an effortless action. Stuff happens. Time passes, work gets done, and there is product. The mind has a mind of its own. And the reward, when self-consciousness returns, is to have had time out of self-ish mind; to have experienced the unspeakable peace that passes understanding.

The self-less process of writing is its own reward. The extra job of blogging the one-pagers is easily done and gives an air of finality to an article. And then they are in the public domain where other people may or may not find them interesting. But that is an added extra.

My subjective feelings about journaling and blogging are positive; they facilitate being in the timeless flow of no-self. But my instincts and training steer me towards hard-nosed objectivity and the passive voice. The two ways of thinking can, however, support each other.

The big picture is one of communication. First there was speaking and listening for all and then there was reading and writing for an elite. But it got democratized such that today almost anybody can make their voice known through being a source of human writes.

I live alone and work from home
and channel human writes.
Cool.

Whose insanity counts?

It is the school holidays. So there was none of the usual gathering of students at the bus stop across the street.

My thoughts drifted to the process of moulding the youth such that they function effectively and without causing too much trouble. Education. Enculturation. Brainwashing.


R. D. Laing (1927-1989) was a Glaswegian, Zen, psychiatrist and was associated with the anti-psychiatry movement. I read several of his books in the 1970s while I was dealing with ‘disturbed’ kids in the slum schools of Edinburgh. I was drawn to him in part from his celebrated quote -

"Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world."

In Edinburgh many of the ‘problem’ kids came from ‘insane’ homes – drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, child abuse, willful neglect etc. I was paid to teach them science but in fact I spent a lot of time just listening to their stories. Paying attention!

There was a strong anti-authority ethos among the kids and a corresponding ethos of corporal punishment among the staff. One day I went to break up a fight between two 12 year olds and they began hitting me. I therefore decided that, for the greater good, I would have to get a belt. I ordered a three pronged ‘extra-heavy’ model from the factory in Lochgelly in Fife. I only ever used it twice within a few days of its arriving. Word got round that “Clarkies got a belt” and the norms changed. They behaved ‘better’ not because Mr-nice-guy asked them to (why should they bother?) but rather so as to avoid being beaten (a perfectly normal situation!).

One day I was locking up the lab after a first year class had left when I heard a quiet voice calling my name.  I went back in and looked around but couldn’t see anybody. And then Johnnie Reid appeared outside the window – which was on the second floor. He had been standing on a very narrow ledge. I helped him get back in safely. I was relieved rather than annoyed. He had no explanation for what he was doing. He didn’t have much to say at all. I put it down to attention seeking, to a desire to be noticed. Was his behavior insane?

After Edinburgh I taught in schools in Jamaica, Zambia and the S Sudan. There were few discipline problems. In some cases I found it embarrassing to have pupils stand to attention and salute when I entered the room.

In the high school where I taught in Jamaica there was a 4th year cream stream for particularly bright kids from the local junior secondary schools. There was an element of indiscipline amongst them. For example Rodney the Rastafarian. During my Zoology lectures he insisted on leaning against the back wall knitting his Rasta bonnets. But he was paying close attention to what I was saying and would ask penetrating questions. Several other teachers felt that he was impudent and should be expelled. Whose insanity counts?

Organic mechanics

In the following two lines the left end is mechanical and the right end is organic.

(1) Technical – cultural - political - economic – ethical – spiritual
(2) Classical physics – chemistry – biology – psychology – sociology – anthropology – philosophy

The box lists pairs of ideas. This dramatizes a common either/or where, depending on your point of view, disciplined scientists are pitted against indisciplined wafflers OR creative artists and social reformers are pitted against pedantic and narrow-minded, old paradigm ‘experts’.

I was educated (indoctrinated) as a Zoologist. This put me on the soft end of the hard sciences and their technologies. But much of it is a mystery to me!

Thus I applaud, and stand in awe of, the clever stuff invented and maintained by the mechanicals. The list is endless. There are houses that are wind and water tight with hot and cold running water and indoor toilets, and with electricity and electronic gadgets. There are roads and bridges for cars, buses and monster trucks. There is a huge range of foodstuffs prepared by a global system of farmers and factory workers and distributed to nearby supermarkets. And of course there are computers and the internet.

My appreciation grew through working in hardship posts in various parts of the tropics where the invisible hand of modernity had not yet become a living presence. For example, in the S Sudan I organized a Technological and Industrial Studies Group (TISG) where, amongst other things we worked on more fuel efficient charcoal stoves, on solar food dryers, and on Ventilated Improved Pit Latrines. This was by way of adding a practical aspect to a science curriculum that was too academic.

But I always had an artistic, creative streak and I applaud those brave souls who do their best to tie down the organic socio-cultural side of things. Myth and magic. Hierarchy and status. Academia and the media. Politics and religion. Politics and the globalizing economy. The welfare state. The United Nations. And populist bread and circuses so that the elite keeps the peasants elegantly biddable.

But, arguably, such simple them v us thinking is going the way of the dinosaurs. It is old paradigm. Contemporary thinkers work in multidisciplinary teams and take a holistic view of problem areas. The hard stuff and the soft stuff need each other if they are to make effective and sustainable changes to the way that we live on the planet.

I am particularly chuft to note that the biological and social sciences are working together in increasingly fruitful ways. The paradigm is shifting and I find joy and hope in the synthesis of neurology, evolutionary psychology and meditation; in the growing numbers of people with a globalised and cosmopolitan world view; and in the flourishing of harmonious organic mechanics.

Aristotle and Gove

Michaael Gove

Michael Gove is the pin up boy for the latest set of thoughts about the school curriculum in general and the history curriculum in particular – see  here . The fundamental issue is of contending values and thus of world view.

It is felt by Gove and his like that the formal education system can be the vanguard for radical change. However, educational research shows that formal education serves to reproduce rather than transform social norms and values – reference Bourdieu and Passeron.

The curriculum issue has been around as long as there have been schools. I have been locking horns with it in various parts of the world for more than 30 years.

For example, I served as a Curriculum Consultant to the Ministry of Education in Belize from 1988 till1992. At the time TV was becoming popular and there was an awareness of cultural swamping from the USA. Many of the schools were managed by religious groups. There was thus a clash of cultures and a strong interest in morality and ethics, and of how to influence the value systems that underlay them. Following lengthy conversations, especially with members of the Belize Association of Principals of Secondary Schools (BAPSS), I prepared two discussion papers.

“The School Ethos” (1988) - 5 pages
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56967591/School-Ethos

“Moral and Spiritual Learning Needs (1990) – 18 pages
http://www.scribd.com/doc/56747762/Moral-and-Spiritual-Learning-Needs-a-discussion-Paper

The 1988 paper drew heavily on advisory work I had done in Scotland in helping to prepare policy documents for a progressive and innovative Primary School in the fishing village of Portessie. The 1990 paper recorded the progress of thinking in Belize over two years and proved useful in informing the design of curricula for Social Studies and for Homeroom (pastoral care).

The papers also helped inform the country-wide series of workshops which asked all education stakeholders “What should the children learn in school?” The workshops were part of a World Bank sponsored Belize Primary School Project (BPSP).
 
NOTE: I find it cute that my involvement in education in Jamaica, Zambia and Sudan should have informed my voluntary work in a small primary school in rural NE Scotland: and that this informed later work in Belize and possibly in several other countries via the World Bank education experts that were involved with the BPSP. (evidence?).

The 1990 document contained several lists of values which were drawn from many times and places. Several members of BAPSS were priests and Nuns. There was a strong feeling for at least spiritual universals. We might have been ahead of the game.

In 2004 Martin Seligman et al created a list of universal Character Strengths and Virtues (CSV) which were designed to look at what can go psychologically right for people. – see  HERE   Their list includes six main character strengths – see below – and there are 24 sub entries).

The Wikipedia article notes that  “Other researchers have advocated grouping the 24 identified character traits into just four classes of strength (Intellectual, Social, Temperance, Transcendent) or even just three classes (without Transcendence). This, not just because it is easier to remember, but rather because there is evidence that these do an adequate job of capturing the components of the 24 original traits.

To see the 24 sub-entries  - click HERE -

The virtues to some extent mirror the cardinal virtues and theological virtues of Aristotle and Aquinas: hope, faith, charity, prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance

SO ...

Aristotle, Aquinas, Seligman, Gove?

All that we are

The Dhammapada (see below) is one of the classic Buddhist texts dating back to about 300BCE. It begins with a bold statement of what to meditators is a subjective truth – “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.” It also makes the positive point that IF a man speaks or acts with an evil or pure thought THEN pain or happiness respectively will follow him. This means that, by taking thought, it is possible to rise above what nature, nurture and serendipity have served up.

Humanity can evolve in this direction rather than that - one mind at a time.

But ‘thinking’ involves more than one mental activity. For example when you are asleep the mind state can be with dreams or dreamless. And when you are awake there is a lot of unconscious processing going on.

But there is also a lot of conscious activity which focuses attention on incoming information from the sense organs and how it relates to memories of similar inputs in the past – and whether we should grasp, ignore or reject them.

And also, in people if not in animals, there is the possibility of being conscious of consciousness and thus of being self-aware. Although note in passing that in Buddhism there is no abiding reality to the ‘self’. It is an ongoing illusion and the root of the dissatisfaction that most people feel most of the time.

And then the focus of attention swings forward by 2313 years. Objective science is shifting towards a more interdisciplinary and holistic world view. And it is fascinating to note the parallels between the two traditions. We are stardust and still evolving in the space between the birth and death of our sun. The impermanence of all created things!

This blog contains many posts relating to the two big question of our current times -

How does the mind/brain work? (Neuroscience and Positive Psychology)
And why did it evolve that way? (Evolutionary Psychology and Big History)

The first 8 verses of Chapter 1 of the Dhammapada

1. All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.

2. All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

3. "He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me,"—in those who harbour such thoughts hatred will never cease.

4. "He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me,"—in those who do not harbour such thoughts hatred will cease.

5. For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule.

6. The world does not know that we must all come to an end here;—but those who know it, their quarrels cease at once.

7. He who lives looking for pleasures only, his senses uncontrolled, immoderate in his food, idle, and weak, Mara (the tempter) will certainly overthrow him, as the wind throws down a weak tree.

8. He who lives without looking for pleasures, his senses well controlled, moderate in his food, faithful and strong, him Mara will certainly not overthrow, any more than the wind throws down a rocky mountain.

Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman is an Israeli-American psychologist and winner of the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He is notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology. In 2011, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers.

In the same year, his book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’, which summarizes much of his research, was published and became a best seller. The book delineates cognitive biases associated with two types of thinking, and highlights several decades of academic research to suggest that people place too much confidence in human judgment.

The two different ways the brain forms thoughts are:

• System 1: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, subconscious
• System 2: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious

Kahneman covers a number of experiments which highlight the differences between these two thought processes, and how they arrive at different results even given the same inputs. Terms and concepts include coherence, attention, laziness, association, jumping to conclusions and how one forms judgements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

At Google Talks

>>>>>
I find the book to be compulsive reading. I recognize system 1 and 2 thinking in my own mind/brain and the volume and subtlety of his experiments give weight to the details of how they would have operated to ensure survival in the days of hunting and gathering. I sense that ‘mindfulness’ will be a useful tool for identifying old patterns and for better understanding present day mismatches.
>>>>>

Mindful engagement

This illustrated story tells of a change in my understanding following chats with members of the Caledonia Centre for Social Development and of the Northern Lights Sangha. The basic theme was ‘changing minds’. The thought train was as follows:

FIRST sort your ‘self’ THEN sort other people and things.
BUT it can take a long time to sort your ‘self.’ (ie to know that it is illusory)
THEREFORE – BEGIN sorting your ‘self’ and SHARE your ongoing experiences by BLOGGING about them.

What does sorting yourself involve? The short answer is MINDFULNESS.

Slow down. Make time to put attention on the breathing. Be aware of, and awake to, the thoughts and feelings that enter the attention centre.

Most often the task is to notice their arising and to let them go; and then to rest in the peace of no-self and of being out of space and time. Be calm. Be cool. Be unattached.

Sometimes the task is to engage with other people and the world. This involves viewpoints which are often rooted in either/or thinking. Rise v fall, left v right, socialist v capitalist and so on. The task is to note and thus avoid knee jerk reactions and to promote considered responses: to avoid anger and violence and to promote mutual respect and understanding.

As an individual in a group you can be the peace that permeates the gathering. This will involve noting the various parochial and limited viewpoints which are contending - and encouraging those present to expand their horizons and see a bigger picture.

The context will determine the appropriate details but there is (a) the quantum (very small) to cosmos (very big) continuum in terms of space and (b) in terms of time, the Big History story beginning with the big bang 13.7 billion years ago and evolving through cosmic, biological and cultural phases.

And today, and only very, very, very recently, on planet earth, there are beings that are conscious of their consciousness and are thus potentially capable of directing the future course of evolution. Blips of self aware stardust until, eventually, in about seven million years, our sun goes out.

But in the meantime there are many more or less favorable options for our future. Choosing the more favorable involves changing minds - yours and those of others. This means radical rather than formal education. Individuals can educate themselves or form more or less independent, adult study groups that organize for group action – for ‘social mobilization’.

Social mobilization can be for both socioeconomic (political) and spiritual (ethical and moral) ends.

In the 1960s the Brazilian, adult educator Paulo Friere promoted conscientization. This was a form of critical consciousness that focuses on achieving an in-depth understanding of the world, and allowing for the perception and exposure of social and political contradictions.

In the 1970s the Sri Lankan, social activist Sirisena Tilikaratna promoted a four stage cycle for ongoing social mobilization – (1) gather info, (2) analyze and prioritize, (3) set up mechanisms for action, (4) periodically reflect on progress.

Since the 1960s the concept of ‘Engaged Buddhism’ has been associated with the Vietnamese, meditation teacher Thich Nhat Hahn who has listed 14 precepts of engaged Buddhism. This involves seeking ways to apply the insights from meditation practice and dharma teachings to situations of social, political, environmental, and economic suffering and injustice.

The Dalai Lama now also encourages Buddhists to be more socially engaged. There is also support for the concept from a wide range of western Buddhists.

Arguably this is a good time for a paradigm shift in how humanity inhabits the planet. Many people are still caught up in the old, parochial, xenophobic, dualistic, antagonistic, us/them, and in-group/ out-group modes of thinking. But insights from neuroscience and evolutionary psychology suggest that such mental states are only loosely hard-wired. To be switched on they need a supportive socio/cultural environment: this suggests that a different socio/cultural environment can switch them off. It is never too late to change your mind.

There are more questions than answers. Science will provide objective evidence about how the mind/brain works in terms of its evolutionary history and of its present day mismatches. Mindfulness will allow the emergence and noticing of all types of reactive thoughts and feelings. These can then be used more responsibly while interacting with other minds.

And they can be shared in the flesh with like minded souls in your Sangha, although there might not be many of these in the early stages of the revolution. But they can also be shared with the tens, hundreds or thousands of people who follow and comment on your blog.

Don’t be stingy.
Mindful engagement – yoh!

social expressions

Clifford Geertz

"The concept of culture I espouse ... is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man (sic) is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after, construing social expressions on their surface enigmatical."

Geertz C (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures; Basic Books
https://sites.google.com/site/srds101026/power-of-meaning

Dethroning consciousness

In the history of the West rationality and reason became king. They stood us apart from the animals but they blinded the best ideas people (the philosophers and economists?); and they created a host of one-key-factor theories that did nothing to prevent social injustice, environmental exploitation, and pollution. Capitalist consumerism was on globalised overdrive and it was not a pretty sight.

And then, in more recent times, psychology took a positive and experimental turn based on evolution and neuroscience. Rationality and reason are being dethroned. They still have an important role to play but it is a much humbler one.

It is now apparent that unconscious intuition has a far more substantial role to play in suiting us to survive and flourish in the modern world.

Ref:

Daniel  Kahneman (2011) Thinking Fast and Slow
“(He) presents a view of how the mind works that draws on recent developments in cognitive and social psychology. One of the more important developments is t hat we now understand the marvels as well as the flaws of intuitive thought.” (p10)

Jonathan Haidt (2012) The Righteous Mind – Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
“Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. I explained how I came to develop the ‘social intuitionist model’, and I used t he model to challenge the ‘rationalist delusion”’

Haidt on morality and emotion

Experts in Emotion -- Jonathan Haidt on Morality and Emotion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9_b_yF-huA

How we now know

The paradigm is shifting (in philosophy and theology). What we now know (ontology) changes the thinking on how we know (epistemology).

We can now look through the lenses of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology and realize (a) the origins, structure and function, and evolution of the mind/brain through time and (b) the relatively minor role that rational and empirical consciousness plays in figuring out the ‘truth’ about what happens in your community and the cosmos.

Empiricism, rationality and reason have been dethroned. The new royalty of cerebration is a quirky brand of hard wired intuition which is built into the enormously complex physical and neuro-chemical architecture of the unconscious mind/brain. In terms of the nature/nurture debate, the modern pendulum swings more to the side of nature with its genes and hard wiring.

Rationalism = reliance on reason rather than intuition to justify one's beliefs or actions. Includes the doctrines that (a) knowledge about reality can be obtained by reason alone without recourse to experience and (b) human knowledge can all be encompassed within a single, usually deductive, system. In Theology, rationalism is the doctrine that human reason, unaided by divine revelation, is an adequate or the sole guide to all attainable religious truth.

Empiricism = a theory that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It emphasizes the role of experience and evidence in the formation of ideas, over the notion of innate ideas or traditions. Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence. The scientific method insists that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.

Intuition = a direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process or perception; pure, untaught, non-inferential knowledge; instinctive knowledge or belief; a hunch or unjustified belief.

But there is still confusion regarding the illusory nature of I, me, mine, self, and ego – and by extrapolation me/us (the in-group) and us/them (the out-groups). We are social animals that have evolved to behave differently in in-groups and out-groups.

Much of the evolution since the beginnings of settled agriculture has been cultural and meme driven rather than biological and gene driven. Brute consciousness has evolved into self-consciousness which has also nurtured the evolution of many altered states of consciousness including the cosmic one. This has been in association with the evolution of language.

The last 10,000 years have witnessed the exponential growth of modernity and the human population. But there are limits to growth. Hopefully the memes of modernity will evolve to ensure that humanity develops environmentally sustainable ways of being on the planet.

But what the scientists now know is far from common knowledge and belief. What is to be done?