Subjective details

In 2013 I churned out 199 posts for my blog about changing minds. The intention was that posts should include subjective stuff as well as the traditional intellectual stuff. Why that intention? Because the subjective stuff is there. It seemed irrational, perhaps even dishonest to exclude it. There was also a feeling to use aspects of Ken Wilber’s all quadrants all levels (AQAL) system.

Goleman’s concept of ‘focus’ is also useful here. He recognises the existence of unconscious churn – huge amounts of it. The default mindbrain churns old stuff together with new stuff and generates bits of stories composed of facts and feelings. A few of these stories are highlighted by the spotlight of attention focussed on them. They then appear for a short time in the conscious part of the mindbrain.

The external stuff gets to the mindbrain by stimulating the various sense organs (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin). The sense organs generate electrical impulses which go to special bits of the mindbrain for decoding. Having been decoded the sense data is made available to other parts of the brain. This makes it easy to have a holistic view of sensory inputs at a given moment in time (eg the rustle of leaves and the smell of a lion).


The internal stuff includes information about (a) the physical state of the various tissues and organs (eg blood supply to the skin, depth of breathing, heart rate etc) and (b) the contents of short term, long term and hard wired memory.

The hard wired memories are instincts. They are located in the part of the old brain that we share with our reptile and fish ancestors. A good example is the startle response (also known as the fight or flight reaction). We do not have to learn those behaviours – they are part of our genetic inheritance.

Long term memories result from cultural patterns of conditioning and enculturation. The facts and feelings that give rise to our world view result from the learning process that goes with us from womb to tomb. Much of what we learned and experienced in early childhood is with us still.

The traditional view of Short Term Memory (STM) is that it lasts for 15 to 30 seconds. There is a Magic number 7 (plus or minus 2) which refers to the number of items that can be remembered at a given time. I have been with my mobile phone for four years. It has an eleven digit number. I can remember the first five but have not been able to memorise the last six digits (wonky STM!).

The simplistic STM model has been replaced by a more elaborate Working Memory Model where there is a central executive combining information from two loops - one deals with spoken and written material and the other deals with visual and spatial information. The central executive also draws on information held in the large database which is long-term memory. Like so many other units in the brain the memory systems are in constant churn

I write stories and publish them on a blog. The individual stories are fairly well focussed. Other people do the same thing. Some people will struggle with the writing process more than others. Those who can enter the state of ‘flow’ will find it easier than those who do not.

Most of the time when I am writing ‘I’ am not there and there is no conscious awareness of being in a particular place at a particular time. The unconscious spotlight of attention will have focussed on an ‘inspiring’ title or lead paragraph. The ‘muse’ will then speak through me for hours on end … But that paints too rosy and clear cut a picture.

Sometimes the spotlight flickers and attention goes out of focus; and stuff irrelevant to the story is deposited in the attention centre. ‘I’ then reappear and note what has happened. There are two solutions. Either point attention to the breath and re-enter flow or, if it is a heavy duty interruption, I get off the chair and wander round the house and garden. It is then usually possible to re-establish  focus and continue writing.

This story is called ‘subjective details’. The catchy phrase captured attention about 10:00 this morning and it is now 16:00. I have left the chair several times but with an easy feeling. I now have faith in the story engine.

The unconscious is churning ideas all the time. I assume that something like that is the engine of authors who write screenplays for soaps, comedy shows and crime dramas. They have a good relationship with their unconscious and the stuff keeps pouring out. Churn and flux.

I used to subscribe to Writing Magazine. Each month there was a Judith Spelman interview with a successful author. They came in all shapes and sizes and there was no obvious average approach. Several of them write regularly in flow but few of those attributed the energy and intention to a metaphysical being. It came with the job. It was the job. I understand it in terms of the bliss of being non-egoic for several hours each day. Is that an existential cop out or a cop in?

I have a rule of thumb. I assume that most readers’ heads churn about in the same way as mine does. There will be differences in the details but there are large cultural commonalities in the general structure and functions. SO – when I deal with subjective stuff I stick with the larger commonalities (the elephants – eg evolutionary psychology and neuroscience) and skip over the personal details (the rabbits- eg childhood traumas and serendipitous events).

Here would be a good place to list examples from the different categories. But an email has arrived calling for help with building a website. So there are changed priorities regarding the topics for focus and attention. Churn and flux

There are intellectual issues about the Content Management System that is www.zenphoto.com. When I am cool and rationale I can handle them easily. I have been promising to help a photographer acquaintance for a long time and it should be like water off a duck’s back.

BUT there are negative feelings at the border between the unconscious and the conscious. These link to a foundation layer of low self esteem. I am fooling myself that I can get on top of the programme. I totally failed to get my head around Dreamweaver. And she uses a Mac and they give me the willies. I sweat a lot of small stuff. So has it ever been.

It is what life is about – there is dis-ease? But we put on a brave face – keep calm and carry on. What good would it do to rabbit on about this cognitive stuff? Is it not better to keep a steady focus on the immediate topic? There are times and places to give more or less weight to the subjective issues. Daniel Goleman, for example, when talking about the management of pain, mentioned that he has a bad back that makes it uncomfortable to sit at his desk. This simple fact made me feel like I know him better.

SO – an occasional anecdote mentioning subjective details might be useful for humanising what might otherwise be a heavy and cerebral story.

BUT, as a general rule, it may be best to keep the two modes of writing separate.

BUT the subjective stuff should not be forgotten. It is good that people (especially high ranking ones) have experience and reminders of the flimsy nature of their worldviews. It would be good if violent, parochial zealotry were to be replaced by peaceful, cosmopolitan mindfulness.

This idea is not new. It has been part of the Buddhist literature for 2,500 years. Thich Nhat Hahn captures the concept when he says – “I will cultivate openness, nondiscrimination, and nonattachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world”.

There were 199 blogposts in 2013. The mood is still around to produce them.  How many will there be in 2014 and how many of them will contain subjective details?

Brockman on the edge

John Brockman

Today I used my free bus pass to go to Aberdeen and come back. A round trip of about 100 miles. But I was so absorbed in my Kindle that I was not existentially on the bus. The physical body was there but the notions of a self and of space and time were nowhere.

I was reading John Brockman’s 2011 book - This Will Make You Smarter - New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking. The book blurb covers the essence  – “What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit? This is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, posed to (over 150 of) the world’s most influential thinkers. Their visionary answers flow from the frontiers of psychology, philosophy, economics, physics, sociology, and more. Surprising and enlightening, these insights will revolutionize the way you think about yourself and the world.”

Some of the contributions include:

• Daniel Kahneman on the “focusing illusion”
• Jonah Lehrer on controlling attention
• Richard Dawkins on experimentation
• Aubrey De Grey on conquering our fear of the unknown
• Martin Seligman on the ingredients of well-being
• Nicholas Carr on managing “cognitive load”
• Steven Pinker on win-win negotiating
• Daniel C. Dennett on benefiting from cycles
• Jaron Lanier on resisting delusion
• Frank Wilczek on the brain’s hidden layers
• Clay Shirky on the “80/20 rule”
• Daniel Goleman on understanding our connection to the natural world
• V. S. Ramachandran on paradigm shifts
• Matt Ridley on tapping collective intelligence
• John McWhorter on path dependence
• Lisa Randall on effective theorizing
• Brian Eno on “ecological vision”
• Richard Thaler on rooting out false concepts
• J. Craig Venter on the multiple possible origins of life
• Helen Fisher on temperament
• Sam Harris on the flow of thought
• Lawrence Krauss on living with uncertainty.

Edge.org  was launched in 1996 as the online version of "The Reality Club," an informal gathering of intellectuals that met in America from 1981-1996. Though the venue is now in cyberspace, the spirit of the Reality Club lives on in the lively back-and-forth discussions on the hot-button ideas driving the discussion today.

The web site makes a wealth of stimulating and cutting-edge material available for free. The vision is rooted in this quote - "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves."

This morning I was physically on a Bluebird Bus but I was existentially cruising a collection of clever clogs with their cutting edge conundrums. Absent minded professors. Yoh!

Making sense of sensations

I spend a lot of time scanning the external environment for new stuff and trying to link it to what is already in my mindbrain. In the past this was limited to words and ideas but, more recently, it includes moods and feelings.

I enjoy the hunt for new cognitive prey - both rabbits (facts and hypotheses – the small stuff) and elephants (concepts and paradigms – the big picture)

For some reason I was not satisfied with my family conditioning and wider enculturation. So, from my early years, I was on the lookout for ‘better ways to be human’. I have lived and worked in six countries so there has been exposure to different cultures. My conclusion is that there is no one-size-fits-all cultural solution to the human condition – there is ongoing churn and flux.

And we are Homo linguisticus; we talk. There are short and pithy aspects of language that may or may not be rigidly defined ie words, phrases, sound bites and slogans. Here for example are some items that have held my attention in recent weeks:

• Nouns - epigenetics, hegemony, evolution, moods, feelings, life, embryology, neuroscience, flow, flourishing, focus, commonweal, consciousness, attention, reality
• Word pairs (adjective and noun) - evolutionary psychology, elegant power, cultural relativism, brain scanning, working hypothesis, neural plasticity, good work, decent work, frontal cortex, free will, self conscious, attention centre, real reality
• Catchy phrases (they close lazy minds) – atoms are indivisible; heavier than air machines cannot fly; a woman’s place is in the home; little children should be seen but not heard; behind every great man there is a great woman; there is no free lunch; the only constant thing is change.

Even when it might be thought of as resting, the mindbrain is busy trying to identify patterns and agents. Fresh inputs from the sense organs are churned up with memories such that judgments of like, dislike or neutral can be made and reactions and responses put in place. Most of this activity is in the unconscious but sometimes elements are passed to the attention centre where ‘I’ can be conscious of them.

As a human being I can be conscious of consciousness.  ‘I’ can have thoughts and feelings that change the physical and chemical structure of the mindbrain and this can create behaviours that change the structure of my kitchen sink or of the planet – for better or for worse.

And there can be attachment to views – either for or against.  I have habits and routines. I have a tendency to position myself in ruts. This might be seen as functional and even desirable in a relatively stable environment. But, if carried too far, this conservative tendency would reduce flexibility to dangerously low levels. This might be why an apparent lack of change generates ‘boredom’ and the search for novelty.

SO - there are words, phrases, sound bites and slogans. There are also speeches and lengthy written articles and books. And, these days, there are ICT social networks and online, electronic memories in Google and Wikipedia. These can deal with things, events and issues that are close bye (parochial) or far away (cosmopolitan) in both time and space. We have now evolved to the stage of being able to contemplate the infinitely and eternally large or small (Big History from quantum to cosmos).

AND - all of the above ideas (rabbits and elephants) are being churned continually in the unconscious flux which is my messy mindbrain trying to make sense of the sensations from my sense organs.

Flat backing

I can be mindful while walking, standing, sitting or lying down.

For several years I have used the concept and practice of flat backed meditation while lying down.

The theme has been revisited several times.

Here are some examples:

1 >>>>>

“In institutional settings you might have to use flat-backed options ie do your own thing in your own way between waking and rising”

http://dodclark.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/how-to-start-your-day.html

2 >>>>>   

“Flourishing flat back mindfulness in schools”

http://dodclark.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/could-beditation-be-answer-to-exam.html

3 >>>>>

“This morning there is energy to write. What about? About one of the topics that appeared in the attention centre while flat backing. There were many topics rolling past in thought trains so why did the focus land on this one rather than on another? In other words what caused the decision?”

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/what-to-write-about.html

4 >>>>>

“I am a recovering workaholic and it is good to notice that there is now only mild guilt about lying in bed in the morning. These days, more often than not, I partially stop the chatter by being mindful of the breath and thus landing fully in the present rather than in the past or future. I think of this as flat backed meditation.”

http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/upgearing.html

>>>>>

Spending our days

This morning I cruised the online Guardian. I was consuming the media and inundating the mindbrain with tittle tattle. The latest book from Thich Nhat Hanh (The Mindfulness Survival Kit: Five Essential Practices) suggests that this is not always a good thing to do. But a thought train was set in motion that may encourage Engaged Buddhism so I will write about it.

Oxfam produced a report in advance of the 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos. The report notes that “the bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people”. That is 85 individuals – they could all fit in a double decker bus!

Another Guardian article gives details about the 85 individuals. They are all worth more than ten billion dollars. Some are self made rags to riches types while others inherited from their parents and are presumably the idle rich – especially those over 80. This led me to wonder how they spend their days? How might it be different from how I spend mine?

I am now retired and a member of the idle and reasonably well off collective (IRWOC). But I am not idle. I shake-up my brain by inputting cutting-edge counter-intuitive thoughts that elicit cognitive dissonance and thus a desire to reinforce my world view by tying up the loose ends that appear. The particular challenge that I have set myself is to pay more careful attention to the subjective aspects of the conscious and unconscious ‘me’.

The methodology is in two parts:

1. Sometimes I am systematically academic and intellectual in discovering what is being thought in the relevant disciplines. Prominent amongst these are mindfulness, evolutionary psychology and neuroscience. Elsewhere I have blogged a list of favoured authors and their significant books. I also watch their video and audio presentations. Sometimes there is the threat of information overload and of failure to focus. So I sit quietly and better systems of filtering the information appear in the attention centre.
2. Sometimes I practice ‘just sitting’ and ‘being still’. This delivers a peace that passes rational understanding. I try to write about it, preferably in ‘flow’. The idea is to switch off the rational intellect and to let the unconscious do the work. There is ‘flow’ which is productive while being non-egoic and outside space and time. Sometimes there is also Presbyterian guilt about this painless ‘something from nothing’. But I now know it for what it is and let it pass.

This work pattern can appear to be self centred. But the goal is mindfulness which encourages selflessness which promotes equanimity, compassion and peace. No self, no problem.

There can be more peace and happiness in the world. Arguably it can develop through a fusion of eastern and western thinking and feeling. The process has begun. Let it be supported by non-egoic ‘me’. ‘I’ will spend my days attending to the altered states of consciousness in my head and ‘I’ will make the outcomes available to others through my blog.

I belong to the transcendental wing of IRWOC. I need to be choosy in how I consume the media. I must beware of tittle tattle and be mindful of how I spend my days.

Consciously animated

There is change. Stuff  happens. There is ongoing churn and flux.

Some of the change is internal (thoughts and feelings) and some of it is external ie outside the mindbrain that senses it. The past and present thoughts and feelings are compared and contrasted to make plans for the future. Each thought and feeling has objective neural correlates.

The changes have causes that can be either inanimate (eg meteorites, volcanoes, and droughts) or animate (eg parasites, plants and people).

To be animated is to have an active mindbrain that is (a) aware of what is happening externally and internally and is (b) capable of reacting appropriately. Arguably all living things are animated.  This includes single celled organisms and plants (eg using tropic movements). Some living things (eg predators) are more elaborately animate than others.

When an animate being is awake to and aware of what is going on around them and inside them they are said to be conscious. But consciousness is considerably less than it seems to be. Recent findings in neuroscience suggest that most of what happens in the human mindbrain happens in the unconscious: what appears to consciousness is only brief, after-the-event shadows. And, of those, only a very small part involves the subjective experience of self consciousness.

Both the unconscious and conscious aspects of an individual human mindbrain will be conditioned and encultured by nature (the hard wiring), nurture (the learning) and serendipity. There is ongoing churn and flux. There is also neural plasticity – it is never too late to change a mindbrain.

Animate beings have reproduction as their ultimate goal and purpose. This is made possible by meeting the needs of the various subordinate life processes – nutrition, respiration, excretion, movement, sensitivity etc. Few people are awake to this. It does not feature in their self consciousness. They are not aware of being consciously animated.

Over the Side With Old Scientific Tenets - NYTimes.com

Over the Side With Old Scientific Tenets - NYTimes.com: The true currency of science, after all, is not faith or even truth, but doubt. It’s hard to imagine a similar effort coming out of the College of Cardinals or the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. In science, as in democracy, everything has to be up for grabs. When the scientists and other intellectuals stop squabbling, then we will know we are in trouble.

Understanding Enlightenment Could Change Science - Psychology Tomorrow

Understanding Enlightenment Could Change Science - Psychology Tomorrow

Churn and flux

Heraclitus was an ancient Greek philosopher. He reckoned that all things exist in a state of constant change and he is best known for noting that you cannot step in the same river twice. This idea is captured in a range of sayings:

• Time and tide wait for no man
• Change and decay in all around I see
• Plus ca change
• The only constant thing is change
• The impermanence of all created things
• Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die
• Gather ye rosebuds while you may.

Galaxies, stars and planets are born and die. Continental drift ensures that the land masses of planet earth keep shifting and that mountains and oceans come and go. A giant meteorite wiped out the dinosaurs. Inappropriate agriculture gave rise to the great American dust bowl. The Amazonian rain forest is being raped for timber. Individual human beings are born, live for a short while and then die. While living, their thoughts and feelings emerge from the unconscious to inhabit the attention centre for a short time and then drift back into it. Everything changes.

It seems to us humans that there is an energy or force that drives the change. It seems as if there is a perpetual churn of dynamic flux. The unusual words make the idea stick out.

A churn involves agitation and mixing where components are stirred and shaken, tossed and blended.

It is perpetual when it is continuous, non-stop and everlasting.

A flux is flowing and exhibits continuous change, passage, or movement.

It is dynamic when it is vigorous, active and everchanging; it makes things happen and gets things done in terms of both creation and destruction.

Stuff  happens. The universe would be pretty quiet if it didn’t. Stuff happens at the level of the very fast and the very small (quantum events) and also at the level of the very large and the very slow (cosmic events).

As human beings we do not easily appreciate the extremes of fast/slow and large/small. Our mindbrain evolved to deal with things that, in terms of size, are between a few millimeters and a few Km and, in terms of time, are between a few seconds, a few days, and about 75 earth years

Unreflective human beings have very simple and elementary forms of intuition and common sense. We know about the outside world because of stimuli impacting on our sense organs. But the sense organs have a limited range of sensitivity. For example our eyes respond only to ‘visible’ light (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) and this does not include the ultraviolet and the infrared.

All individuals have a world view that is rooted in their nature, nurture and in serendipity. Both their conscious and unconscious mindbrains are conditioned by the time and place of their enculturation. This world view tends to be polarised around the notion of me/us and of us/them.

The us/them boundary need not be set in stone. It can expand to embrace humanity, all animals and plants, the fragile ecosystems, and even the rocks and stones themselves. This brings to mind Carl Sagan’s poetic image “We are stardust!”

4.7 billion years ago planet earth came into being and it was inanimate and lacking in consciousness. 3.6 million years ago self replicating macromolecules emerged from the perpetual churn of dynamic flux, and ‘life’ took off.

Single celled beings became many celled. There were plants with chlorophyll that could photosynthesize and provide food for animals. The vertebrate animals began as fish that evolved into amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. When a giant meteorite wiped out the dinosaurs the mammals filled the vacant niches. Monkeys and apes appeared and gave rise to the hominids that were our ancestors. And then about 200,000 years ago human beings appeared who were conscious and possibly conscious of being conscious - especially after language evolved about 100,000 years ago.

Those are the bare bones of the present scientific worldview. That which has been called the perpetual churn of dynamic flux is what other people call God. This is useful as it offers variety that is the foundation upon which natural selection is built. There will be survival of the fittest.

We are star dust that never steps in the same river twice,

is driven by the perpetual churn of dynamic flux, and

is channeled by the natural selection of Darwinian evolution

At 65

Today is the 20th of January 2014. It is my birthday. I am 65 and officially retired - with a state pension to supplement my personal one. I will make some time to reflect on how I have fitted in to the ongoing development process of changing minds.

My actual birth day was the 20th January 1949. That was the day that United States President Harry S. Truman announced his Point Four Program for aid to poor countries:

"we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.

More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas.

For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve suffering of these people. The United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques. The material resources which we can afford to use for assistance of other peoples are limited. But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing and are inexhaustible"

65 years later, to the day, an Oxfam paper is released to coincide with this year’s World Economic Forum (22-25 January) – a meeting of the world’s richest and most influential people at the luxury resort in Davos, Switzerland.

The Oxfam paper notes that almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population and that the bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world. This is possible because of political capture by the rich and a fast increase in economic inequality. This is worrisome because, as US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we cannot have both”.

The Oxfam paper systematically lists the problems that need to be addressed and the policies and practices that might help to overcome them. The paper suggests that the trend can be reversed. It gives examples of the US and Europe in the three decades after World War II, and also several Latin American countries that have reduced inequality in the last decade through more progressive taxation, and an increase in public services, social protection and decent work.

I spent most of my early working life (1974-85) influencing education systems in tropical countries. Then, in my later years, (1981-2009) I worked on social development. This involved popularising the policy making process by presenting materials in plain language.

As I got older I came to realise that (a) the key to everything developmental involved changing minds – my own and those of other people, and (b) being rational and evidence-based is not enough – there is need, especially amongst the key shakers and movers, to change beliefs and values.

Wise people appreciate that their worldviews are conditioned by nature, nurture and serendipity and that they can be changed – it is never too late to change your mind. Wise people do not pollute the environment, operate sweatshops or go to war.

So the key question. “What is involved in changing minds?”

Answer –

• trumping cleverness with wisdom
• expanding your horizons by studying ‘big history’ (beyond parochial xenophobia)
• noticing what you notice and thinking about your thinking
• bearing silent witness to the thoughts and feelings that arise from the unconscious, pass through the attention centre, and then go back to the unconscious
• developing a practice of quiet sitting – on your own and with like minded others
• developing the ability to ‘flow’ and thus to experience the mental state that is non-egoic and outwith space and time (the peace that passes all understanding)
• renouncing feelings of greed, hatred and anger and replacing them with feelings of peace, compassion and joy (in time the renunciations come ‘naturally’ and effortlessly)

SO – although I am retired from the cuts and thrusts of the development institutions I remain active in pursuing the concept of changing minds where the blast of the existential trumpet shouts ‘let it begin with me’.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
References:

Truman’s Point Four Programme http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Four_Program

The World Economic Forum - http://www.weforum.org/

Oxfam (20 Jan 2014) WORKING FOR THE FEW - Political capture and economic inequality http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-summ-en.pdf

George Clark’s blog about “Changing Minds” http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/ and the earlier one on “Existential Soft Rock” http://dodclark.blogspot.co.uk/

George Clark’s web site “Let it begin with me”. http://www.srds.co.uk/begin/

Seligman on happiness

for more on this click HERE

Perpetual churn

The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed: but it can be converted from one type to another. There are nine types - heat, light, sound, chemical, electrical, magnetic, atomic, potential and kinetic (movement). The ongoing interactions make up the perpetual churn that characterises the universe.

So, from a biological point of view, photosynthesis involves light energy from the sun being converted into chemical energy in plants. When animals eat plants the chemical energy is converted into heat and movement. Note that the sun is also the source of the heat that causes water to evaporate and to create the clouds that form part of the ongoing water cycle.

The amount of matter on planet earth stays the same but every day a certain amount of the heat and light energy from the sun arrives and an equivalent amount goes back into space. The correct balance of input and output is vital. Without it the planet would get hotter or cooler. Note that global warming is due to changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere which prevent some of the heat loss and thus the balance in the global system.

I have a problem understanding energy. Presumably it came into being at the big bang. From ‘no energy’ to ‘all the energy there is’ in a brief flash. But that raises the ‘first cause’ issue. Using language we are able to ask “What existed before the beginning of things?”  We (or at least the more scientific amongst us) are not inclined to theorize about things that have no beginning or end. The infinite and the eternal are as yet beyond human understanding except perhaps when a person is in a state of ‘flow’ (ref Csikszentmihalyi) which is non-egoic and outwith time and space. (ref http://www.scribd.com/doc/57468719/Muse-Flows-in-the-Zone-below-the-tip-of-the-iceberg)

So we can ask: “When did energy begin?” and “Why does it not run out of steam?” and “What keeps it churning?” I am not aware of answers to those questions so I will leave them hanging and play with the idea of “perpetual churn being the inanimate and purposeless agent of change”.

Change: can be either towards more complexity (creation) or towards less (destruction). Nothing lasts forever. The only constant thing is change due to perpetual churn.

Destruction: a tendency towards disorder and simplicity. The impermanence of all created things. Change and decay in all around I see. Things fall apart, the centre will not hold. The decline and fall of the xxx empire.  Entropy.

Creation: a tendency towards order and complexity. Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow. After the big bang there was only hydrogen and helium but these changed to form the other more complex elements. Planet earth was chemically quite simple before self-replicating macromolecules gave rise to what was to be life. And, more recently, the parochial stone age became the global computer age.





So, is the glass half full or half empty? Evolutionary psychology suggests that humans have a negativity bias which makes them pessimistic and neurotic and thus more likely to survive than the minority that are optimistic and laid back – but - today I choose to look on the bright side.

For a long time there was the creation and destruction of stars and galaxies; and this process continues. On the edge of the Milky Way galaxy there is a solar system that includes a sun with nine planets.  About 3.6 billion years ago on one of the planets (they call it earth) conditions were right for the creation of self-replicating macro-molecules. Cosmic evolution gave way to biological evolution which in time gave rise to cultural evolution.

At some stage in the development of this complex process the lifeless, inanimate agents of change gave rise to animate ones, to living things. The agent of change was still essentially the perpetual churn but there is a tendency to think that consciousness appeared and the process began to be more animate. Provocative words but to what do they point?

Animate agents are capable of reacting to changes in their internal or external environments. The less complex animate agents do things but are not aware of what is going on. Behaviours are intuitive and instinctive. Such agents are not really conscious. There is no free-will – they are robots.

Complex animate agents are sometimes aware that they are reacting and responding to internal and external stimuli; they might therefore be thought of as conscious. But there are many reactions that rest in the unconscious.

When language enters the scene there is the possibility of self-consciousness. The self thinks of itself as the agent of change and there is a busy psyche industry aimed at promoting robust selves.

But, those who practice mindfulness know that there is no abiding self – it is a misconception. The mind has a mind of its own. The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing about. The perpetual churn keeps stirring the broth. And it does so perpetually at all levels on the cosmic zoom ie from quantum to cosmos.

The perpetual churn is the Oneness that creates and destroys the ten thousand things which have variations on themes. Natural selection prefers some variations and change evolves. The churn led from before nothing 13.7 billion years ago through cosmic, biological and cultural stages. Today the churn has generated entities that are conscious of their consciousness. Without purpose or plan inanimate agents have given rise to animate ones. Myth and magic have been good enough to facilitate human evolution so far. But we are not in control of our ‘selves’ or of the planet – we have not used our increasing complexity to create caring and sustainable cultural forms. We are wrecking spaceship earth.

So what is to be done? Encourage more mindfulness, especially amongst those that make, implement, monitor and evaluate policies and plans. The shakers and movers that are the good and great must be encouraged and assisted to (a) develop a world view that is multidisciplinary, holistic and consilient and (b) learn to lead and manage with a light touch. They can be mindful of the ‘Tao teh Ching’ which notes that “of the best leaders when they are gone, the people say we did it ourselves.”

“Sitting quietly doing nothing
Spring comes and the grass grow by itself”

Reality unspoken

I have a world view that is rooted in my genes and in my early childhood conditioning. And it is coloured by the facts that (a) I speak English rather than Chinese or Inuit and (b) that I have three scientific university degrees. I have been encultured to have this world view rather than that one.

There are many world views to choose from and none have a monopoly on the truth about reality. Although it might be argued that the present scientific world view rooted in evolution, is (a) close to being independent of any particular parochial culture and (b) acceptable to clear thinking individuals from most traditional cultures.

There have been clear thinking wise men and mystics in ancient times who ‘saw’ the relativity problem. The ancient Chinese ‘Tao teh Ching’ begins with an uncompromising statement, “The reality that can be described is not the real reality.” There is an appreciation of the limitations of language. The book does not mince its words – “Those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know.” They are not saying that the reality is unknowable but they realise that language cannot do justice to the perpetual churn that characterises the Oneness and all its manifestations.

The wise men of the Christian era also had views about this. John 3:8 notes that “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” This suggests that there is no clarity about agency or about where we came from and where we might be going. (NB the wind = the perpetual churn).

The theme is taken up in Ecclesiastes 11:5 “Just as you don’t know the path of the wind, or how bones develop in the womb of a pregnant woman, so you don’t know the work of God who makes everything.” But science has moved on. Meteorology can now predict the path of the wind and embryology has charted the development of baby bones during pregnancy. With every increase in scientific knowledge there is a decrease in the need for God/Spirit as an intentional but puzzling force. God works in mysterious ways - engineers don’t.

Ecclesiastes 8:17 comes over as almost defeatist.  “I observed all the work of God and concluded that man is unable to discover the work that is done under the sun. Even though a man labors hard to explore it, he cannot find it; even if the wise man claims to know it, he is unable to discover it.” That is an example of a pre-scientific world view. The clever people in white lab coats have cast light on many things in the last 2000 years.

The contribution of today’s wise-men (and women) remains problematic but arguably there are more of them claiming to know, and able to discover, the work that is done under the sun.

Especially in the industrialised West there has been a rapid acceptance of ‘mindfulness’ amongst people at large as well as amongst intellectuals, academics and health professionals.

This demonstrates a popular acceptance of the ancient Greek injunction to ‘know your self”. But this has two variations

(1) therapeutic – to establish a normal or supernormal and robust self and
(2) spiritual – to transcend the notion of an abiding self and to know the peace that (a) comes with embracing the not-self and (b) passes all understanding - but cannot be spoken.

Agents make things happen

An agent is the he, she or it that makes things happen.

There are animate (with brains) and inanimate (without brains) agents. Animate agents include most living things – single-celled and many-celled plants and animals. Inanimate agents can be arranged along a continuum with quantum entities at the small end, volcanoes, avalanches and meteorites in the middle and galaxies and universes at the big end.

Scientists now reckon that inanimate agents gave rise to the celestial bodies and to our solar system and planet. It is in the nature of stuff (matter and energy) to be in perpetual churn. After the big bang, the churn gave rise in turn to (a) simple elements (mainly hydrogen and helium) then (b) more sophisticated elements (ref the periodic tables of the elements) and so to (c) stars and planets.

It is hard for human beings to take in (a) the vast time and space associated with these cosmic bodies and (b) the comparative simplicity of their physics and chemistry. But these were the inanimate agents whose actions and reactions gave rise to the large and complicated molecules that reproduced themselves with occasional mutations. And the rest is the history of natural selection and the origins of life in all its varied complexity.

It is not easy to draw a line between things that are animate and living and those that are inanimate and lifeless. Where does chemistry stop and biochemistry begin? The nitrogen in the nitrates in the soil is inanimate but when it is absorbed into grass then cows then humans – is it then animate? Is it animate in the bladder and does it quickly change to inanimate as it pours back into the soil?

When we speak we can use the words animate and inanimate. But do the words refer to anything real?

The dictionary suggests that an inanimate agent would be lifeless, lacking perception and volition, and generally sluggish, dull, dormant, and torpid. This is true of rocks and stones but not of tsunamis and volcanoes nor of the creation and death of stars. Inanimate agents made many things happen before there were living things and they will still be making things happen long after our sun stops burning and planet earth with its living crust has disappeared.

An animate agent is alive, motivated and stirred to action with zest or spirit. Being an animate agent implies comprehending a situation and having an intention to change it this way rather than that. Plants are alive and animate. They photosynthesise, occupy space and are key elements of most biogeochemical cycles. They may not be self conscious but they are agents – they make thing happen – some eat insects!

Humans think of themselves as animate agents. There appears to be a ‘me’ that acts and reacts. We are not only animate but also conscious and sometimes self conscious. Michael Shermer suggests that two main processes govern human understanding – patternicity and agenticity.

Masses of data enter through our sense organs and we make sense of it by seeing patterns – for example we in the West look at the night sky and see the Plough, Orion’s Belt and various other constellations. The patterns do not correspond with reality but, as rule of thumb concepts, they can help with navigating at night. Useful fictions.

Pre-scientific people project human style agency into the inanimate world – for example thunder is thought to be the wrathful voice of God – so he has to be appeased by making sacrifices. There are still people who reckon that there is a metaphysical God who is an agent working in mysterious (but broadly human?) ways. But there are many people (Eastern Meditators and Western scientists) who think differently about the nature of agency.

So - what might be said about the ‘reality’ of the patterns and agents that are recognised in particular cultures?

Ancient Chinese Taoism was quite clear – “The reality that can be described is not the real reality”. Taoism also has the notion of wu-wei  which can be translated as effortless non-action.  Taoism recognises that “The only constant thing is change”. This can be observed in Nature when, with great reliability and effortless non-action, night turns to day and winter turns to spring – and there is no forward plan designed and implemented by a higher being.  Taoism also recognises the illusory nature of the individuated self with a clear beginning and ending. “Nothing comes from nothing.”  This ancient pattern of thinking sits well alongside the modern field of developmental biology (ie embryology).

Your father’s sperm and your mother’s egg came together to create the fertilised egg (zygote) that was you. You were once a single celled organism made of a nucleus, cytoplasm and cell membrane.  And in the nucleus were your chromosomes which contained your genes which are coded for by your DNA which will make trillions of copies of itself as you develop.

But the DNA is not exclusively yours. It is the DNA of all your ancestors stretching back through the primates,  mammals and fish and on through the invertebrates and single celled animals and so to the macromolecules that were the inanimate ancestors of the first living things that appeared on planet earth about 3.6 billion years ago.

It is interesting to view multicellular living things as the way that bundles of DNA (and genes) make copies of themselves. This line of thinking pits various patterns of agent against each other. What is the unit of evolution? Is it the gene, an individual organism (eg you), a tribal group (and the idea of group selection), or even an ecosystem? There will be trade offs between the levels.

So – what agent made this story happen? The cause and effect chains go back at least 3.6 billion years. The roots of ‘me’ lie steeped in evolution and found expression first in my mother’s womb and then in my birth culture. Nature, nurture and serendipity ensured that I learned a language and that I absorbed a world view into both conscious and unconscious parts of my mindbrain.

And then I travelled and lived and worked in various parts of the world where thoughts about patterns and agents were different from my natal ones. As an education advisor I was an agent of change tasked with making things happen. It pleases me to think that I facilitated rather than dictated the changes that happened on my watch. But why should that please me? Did ‘I’ freely choose or is it due to my cultural conditioning? Aargh – the perpetual churn!

“Sitting quietly doing nothing, Spring comes,
and the grass grows by itself.”

Imperfect nature

Human nature is less than perfect. This is in part due to having a stone age brain in a computer age world.

Our mindbrains and bodies evolved to be keenly sensitive to life threatening situations involving, lions, snakes and crocodiles, thunder and lightning, warlike neighbors and jealous spouses. To cope with these threats we have the inbuilt fight or flight response which releases chemicals into the blood. These chemicals quickly change how the heart and lungs and other parts of the body and brain prepare us for strenuous action.

The fight or flight response causes us to react quickly without involving the conscious brain. The rustle in the grass might mean a lion. Better a live pessimist than a dead optimist. Avoid paralysis by analysis. Act swiftly. If there is no hard evidence then make something up based on past experience. Assume the worst; be a bit neurotic and paranoid; be anxious and open to panic. Escape. Then, afterwards, you can go back to normal and make babies.

In the stone age the dangerous situations were real but not common. The need to be on red-alert was relatively rare – there was plenty time to be relaxed, fun loving and possibly creative.

In the computer age the dangerous situations are mild by comparison but are common. Road rage getting to work; status anxiety amongst peers who are strangers; reactions to the workaholic boss; and fears for job security when the computer system crashes. You are on your toes all the time and you hardly ever relax. This leads to stress, existential crisis, chronic depression and no babies.

BUT it is not all doom and gloom.
 
Several branches of science are now uncovering the true structure and functions of the mindbrain and its body within its social group. There is a fast growing consilience about this.(ref E O Wilson). Evolutionary psychology and neuroscience are leading the way and are closely followed in the West by the social sciences and even by philosophy, theology, politics and economics. So what is the new world view?

The big bang happened 13.7 billion years ago. Planet earth began 4.6 billion years ago. Life began when simple cells appeared 3.6 billion years ago. This led the way for multicellular life one billion years ago, great apes about 20 million years ago, and for modern humans who first appeared about 200,000 years ago. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolutionary_history_of_life )

And there was no forward planning. There was only chemicals making copies of themselves and sometimes getting it wrong. This gave rise to variations and some of these survived better than others.  I find it comforting that evolution has neither an all knowing creator nor a central planning committee. It is driven and shaped by the energetic churn operating on the various levels of the spatial zoom from quantum to cosmos.

I find it both amusing and awesome that cosmic stardust became conscious and is now conscious of being conscious. It happened so recently and quickly – only 6000 years since the beginnings of settled agriculture - only 200 years since the explosion of science and technology and – only ten years since the mass production of smart phones.

It appears that cultural evolution has outstripped the biological kind – thus we have the stone age brain in the modern world. This need not be a cause for concern. Evolution is a tinkerer rather than a perfectionist. It is not in the way of things to wipe the slate clean and to begin again. The whole jing bang is driven by serendipitious selection from a range of mutations. The cosmos and all it contains is made possible by natural selection from the never ending stream of ‘faults’ that make up our imperfect nature.