the joy of elevated thoughts

Sound bites would have us believe that life is a journey

• from womb to tomb; 
• from cradle to grave; 
• from cot to coffin; 
• from crib to care home. 

And here are three systems of stages to flesh out the fundamental theme:

FOUR STAGES: The ancient Hindu system in India imagined that there were four stages - student (till 24), householder (24-48), hermit (48-72) and wandering ascetic (72-demize).

SEVEN STAGES: William Shakespeare in 16th century England imagined that there were seven ages in the life of man - infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon, second childhood.

EIGHT STAGES: In the 21st century West there is commonly felt to be eight stages – pre-natal, infant, child, teenager, young mature, old mature, retired, geriatric.

I am now 65 years old and retired. I tend towards being a hermit, a pantaloon in second childhood and old mature - but not yet geriatric. My interests and energy levels have changed over the years and this is in keeping with my long term battle cries – “the only certainty is doubt” and “the only constant thing is change”. And I am still going with the flow. And I have no regrets.

I first came across William Wordsworth’s (1770-1850) poem Tintern Abbey when I was a teenager. I took to the idea of there being “abundant recompense” with aging. After half a century the poem still speaks to me, and presumably to many other people:

“For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity, nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power to chasten and subdue.

And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man, a motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things.”

Poetic bullets –

• ‘the still sad music of humanity’
• ‘the joy of elevated thoughts’
• ‘a motion and a spirit that impels all thinking things’

I have blasted beyond the status anxiety that came with the hierarchies of work, play and academic siloes. I can say what I like on a blog and people can love it or leave it. The ICT is almost free and it allows sharing the joy of elevated thought – whether poetic or scientific. Yoh!

http://hinduism.about.com/od/basics/p/fourstages.htm
http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/as-others-see-us.html
http://www.rc.umd.edu/sites/default/RCOldSite/www/rchs/reader/tabbey.html

Confabulated reality

My self image as an OAP in retirement is as a writer. But my Presbyterian conditioning views fiction as a waste of time and thus to be avoided. But there are at least two types of fiction – the more or less titillating, gossipy, kitchen-sink drama type and, contentiously, the serious and thought provoking type that fools itself into thinking that it deals with ‘facts’ about ‘reality’.

As a solemn presbyterian writer I dally with the second type of fiction. My perspective is essentially scientific (best working hypothesis in the light of evidence presently available) but it is influenced by existentialism and postmodernism where cultural relativism reduces all ‘truths’ to myths and magic.

SO – in retirement, I decided to  rationally and systematically investigate the subjective stuff that is deposited in my attention centre by both the conscious and unconscious mindbrain: and I compare what I find with the theories and models of cutting edge thinkers working collaboratively in the disciplines of, amongst other things, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, behavioural economics and mindfulness meditation.

I deliberately ignore my tendency towards rational, conscious control. The self conscious ‘I’ is not deciding what to do. The method is to hang loose until the unconscious delivers some thoughts and feelings, and then to write about them. I have been doing this for several years. There is a compilation of short stories that describes the method in some detail http://toonloon.bizland.com/compilations/muse-flows-in-the-zone/

What has become apparent is the ability of my mindbrain to confabulate. Fresh inputs from the sense organs are churned with memories; and stories are created to link them together in agent driven patterns – the Lord works in mysterious ways! – and how!

You can experience this effortless ability to confabulate for yourself: pick seven words from a dictionary at random and create a story using them. Details of the technique are given here http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/seeing-patterns.html and some of my fictional outputs are available here http://s3.spanglefish.com/s/285/documents/existential/six-words.docx

Here is an example:

>>>>>

Seven random 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.

(35 words)

>>>>>

Post communist manifesting

The kindle version of the 38 page Communist Manifesto (1848) is free to download. It was written by Engels and Marx and comes across as a zealot’s rant from the left end of the political spectrum. But it is short, well written, and makes some interesting points.

The first sentence reads: "A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism." The last sentence reads: “Working men of all countries, unite!” The bath and the bathwater might now be banished but the baby still has some bonnie bits.

As we collectively give thought and feeling to the possible structure and function of an independent Scotland it seems appropriate to cast our ideological net both wide and deep so as to generate options. To help move the process along I have put together a short glossary to some key ideas from the communist classic.

Capital: the wealth, whether in money or property, owned or employed in business by an individual, firm, corporation, etc. used in the production of more wealth

Capitalism: an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.

Capitalist: a rich person who has capital, especially extensive capital, invested in business enterprises.

Bourgeoisie: a member of the middle class whose political, economic, and social opinions are determined mainly by concern for property values and conventional respectability. Typically a shopkeeper or merchant, especially one regarded as being conservative and materialistic or (in Marxist thought) a capitalist exploiting the working class. Often a mediocre, unimaginative, or materialistic person.

Petty (petite) bourgeoisie: the part of the bourgeoisie having the least wealth and lowest social status ie the lower middle class, including minor businesspeople, tradespeople, and craftworkers.

Proletariat: the class of wage earners, especially those who earn their living by manual labor or who are dependent for support on daily or casual employment; the working class. In Marxist thought the class of workers, especially industrial wage earners, who do not possess capital or property and must sell their labor to survive.

The Lumpenproletariat is that layer of the working class that is unlikely ever to achieve class consciousness and is therefore lost to socially useful production, of no use to the revolutionary struggle, and perhaps even an impediment to the realization of a classless society. The term identifies the class of outcast, degenerated and submerged elements that make up a section of the population of industrial centers. It includes beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed, degraded or degenerated elements. In times of prolonged crisis (depression), innumerable young people also, who cannot find an opportunity to enter into the social organism as producers, are pushed into this limbo of the outcast.

Class: there are basically two classes: the middle class bourgeoisie who are the owners of the means of production and the working class Proletariat who are the producers who sell their labour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AF4rxTGYfM I look up to him. (The class struggle)

Am nae feart

I like to think that am nae feart to be part of an independent and world leading country. I voted Yes in the referendum. But there are times when I hae ma doots.

There are lots of contradictory voices in my head. Many have a long history. From moment to moment they shape what I consider to be reality. They make a nonsense of the thought that my thoughts and feelings are rational and evidence based. If I am to approach the ‘truth’ it seems necessary to be objective about my subjectivity.

I was born and brought up on a council estate in a rural part of NE Scotland in the second half of the 20th century. The sub-culture was far from progressive. Scottish Presbyterianism was still alive with it’s humorless, God-fearing lifestyle where the devil finds work for idle hands and where everyone knows their place and when to toe the line and doff their bonnet.

I appear to believe that (a) the rich and poor will be with us always (b) there is an ongoing challenge to prevent the rich from over exploiting the poor and the vulnerable and (c) greed is good as a motivator for entrepreneurs - but it is not so good when it whacks a great wedge between the haves and the have nots.

I like to take the long view. Man is a social animal. In the ancestral days of hunting and gathering there was very little division of labour other than in families. Then settled agriculture and city states evolved, and a pecking order with many social roles came into being.

There were two main groups. A rich, powerful elite emerged as royal and superior leaders who were simultaneously bosses, shepherds and substitute parents. They lorded it over the impoverished, powerless masses who became subjects and inferiors who were the sheepish and childlike workers - many of whom were thought of as work-shy and worthless. This gave rise to ‘them’ the powerful and war-mongering few and ‘us’ the powerless factory workers, consumers and cannon fodder – the silent majority that diz fit its telt and huds its wheest.

That secular point of view marks the end of the pre-scientific age of myths and magic when God was an old bloke with a beard and an inscrutable take on what is right and wrong. It gradually became clear that his mysterious ways were in fact the secular concoctions of his self-appointed representatives on Earth.

So – the infallible popes, and kings with divine rights were dethroned by the Reformation in the 16th century and by the Enlightenment in the 18th century. Scotland punched well above her weight in charting the move towards empiricism, science and modernity which were the engines that drove democracy and power to the people.

So – history has recorded many of the pre-modern myths and magic. And it is clear that many of them are still active. This might be because human mindbrains are hard wired for ‘religion’ whose purpose is to make people accept the cultural pecking order and status quo. This explains the existence of kings and priests with their witch hunts and inquisitions. The fouk were feart.

As a youngster I was totally dependent on, and thus inclined to appease, my omnipotent parents. Then by metaphor I appeased my parent substitutes - the all-knowing teacher, minister, policeman, local and national government official, elected politician and my boss. I thus became a well behaved, responsible and dependable citizen – at least in the workplace!

But – these days I meditate. This involves sitting quietly watching thoughts and feelings coming out of the unconscious and then going back in. It is obvious that ‘I’ am not in control. My mind has a mind of its own.  It also has a long memory that includes stuff that is hard wired (nature) and stuff that was learned (nurture) when I was an infant, child, adolescent, adult and OAP.

When new stuff turns up in my world (eg the referendum) it is churned together with similar stuff from times past. Dad, Mam, auntie Nan, the minister, and various teachers chip in with bits and pieces that originated with John Knox, David Hume, Robert Burns, Charles Darwin, Mahatma Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher and many more.

It may be a sub-cultural thing but I have problems with authority. These go back to my early years when I was accused of plagiarism but the ideas were my own. And there were the hypocrites in hats traipsing into the kirk on Sunday. And I was enthralled by fiery Anarchist literature eg "If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves." [Howard Zinn] Elegant power is when people wear their ball and chain as if it were a fashion accessory and hegemony doesn’t appear to rule.

In my early 20s I graduated as a Zoologist and committed to zero population growth and to finding better ways to be human. A phrase from a Sunday newspaper in the early 70s became implanted in my brain – “neurotic nihilists living in existential vacuums”.

I am now an OAP with lots of foreign cultural experience in my back-story. Even so there are still occasional wafts of (a) existential dread linked to the humble subservience v anti-authority patterns of my early years and (b) cultural relativity leading through phenomenology and post modernism to the Taoist idea that “the reality that can be described is not the real reality”.

So - Ah hae ma doots. But it is not a black v white thing. And, on the whole, most of the time, I am equanimous and am nae feart.

The people keep speaking

The Scottish people have spoken. We have said no to complete independence and yes to some ongoing (possibly decreasing?) dependence.

Do we, the Scottish people, have anything else to say and, if so, how and when will we get our act together to create and go public with our messages?

We could use what are called Multi-stakeholder Processes (MSP). There are some handy words about this:

Stakeholders are those who have an interest in a particular decision, either as individuals or representatives of a group. This includes people who influence a decision, or can influence it, as well as those affected by it.

The make up of Stakeholder groups will vary with the issue. For example, a nine-point list commonly used when dealing with sustainable development includes:

• Women,
• Children and Youth,
• Indigenous Peoples,
• Non-governmental Organizations,
• Local Authorities,
• Workers and Trade Unions,
• Business and Industry,
• Scientific and Technological Communities, and
• Farmers & Fishermen

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) uses a tri-partite system with three groups:

• government,
• employers and
• trade unions

There is an excellent book that systematically outlines what is involved in MSPs that go beyond deadlock and conflict. You can download a free copy as a pdf, or buy it from Amazon (see below for details).

Minu Hemmati (2002) Multi-stakeholder processes for governance and sustainability – beyond deadlock and conflict. Earthscan

http://www.wageningenportals.nl/sites/default/files/resource/multi_stakeholder_processes_for_governance_and_sustainability_hemmati_2002.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Multi-stakeholder-Processes-Governance-Sustainability-Deadlock/dp/1853838705

Daring to Dream

daring to dream

David Cameron suggests that there is no going back from Scottish independence. OK. But who would want to go back to the past?

All kind of futures are now possible. A space has been opened up for politics as unusual. As the song says, “You gotta have a dream, cause if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna  make a dream come true”.

Note that Martin Luther King proclaimed, “I have a dream” and not “I have a detailed action plan”.

And Rabbie hit the nail on the heed during the Scottish Enlightenment

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.

And, more recently John Lennon had his big think –

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

What might things be like after another 300 years?

Who dares to dream?

referendum cheils

Robert Burns

The referendum is too close to call. The undecided are therefore a major target of the Yes and No propaganda machines which use fascinating facts and rousing rhetoric to change minds.

‘BUT - facts are chiels that winna ding,/An downa be disputed’. Or so thought Robert Burns in his 1786 poem A Dream. (The English translation is ‘But facts are fellows that will not be overturned,/And cannot be disputed’.)

!!! what !!!The chiels are fairly dingin these days!

Robert Burns was a key participant in the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century. The movement produced poets, scientists and lawyers whose legacy is/was the hard-headedness of a nation which, at least until recently, had great respect for factual knowledge.

But these are post-modern times. The goal is not to be truthful but rather to be convincing.

Our luminous ancestors must be good-naturedly harumphing in their coffins. Lest we forget, our world leading gurus include:

• David Hume (1711-1776) - philosophy,
• Adam Smith (1723-1790) - economics,
• Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) – sociology,
• Robert Burns (1759-1796) - poetry.

Check them out in Wikipedia. It is fascinating to notice how much of the thinking which began with those 18th century luminaries continues in my 21st century mindbrain.

(Footnote: the mean spirited Presbyterianism of John Knox (1514-1572) is also in the cultural mix – we can’t win them all!)

(John Knox (1514-1572) is alive and well as a voice in Janice's heed - and mine - the Presbyterian curse - nicely written. Will modern Yes thinking help us - and our kids - break free at last?

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/13/voting-yes-scottish-independence-galloway

Morality memes

Geographically I travel by tramping tarmac. The roads were made by walking. But many old roads were built using old technologies. There are still some twisty single track roads with passing places. But there are now also many straight-shooting, six-lane superhighways. I rarely stop in lay byes or go exploring off track. I am a creature of parochial habit well stuck in my limiting ways.

Psychologically I travel mainly on pre-existing roads for thoughts and feelings. I got to know the local, single track roads during infancy, childhood and adolescence and they still occupy the unconscious mindbrain (eg how to moderate a discussion and cook a cheese sauce). Less travelled are the academic and advisory superhighways that were built while acquiring three university degrees (eg Zoology, Agricultural Extension and Education) and working in six countries.

I am a human being and thus a social being. For many years this involved my ancestors fitting in with my social group of 50-100 stone-age foragers in the African savannah. But then the neo-cortex evolved and language came with it. Metaphorical single track roads and superhighways flourished and gave rise to a dynamic churn of myths and magic. In quick succession there was settled agriculture, city states and the Divine Right of Kings.

John Knox

Fast forward to 16th Century Europe. The Catholic Church was mired in scandal about the selling of indulgences and this led Martin Luther et al to establish the Protestant Reformation and create the Protestant work ethic. This was brought to Scotland by the humourless Ayatollah John Knox and is still alive and active in my present day unconscious. The devil finds work for idle hands. The Godly are busy-bodies. The main thing is FAITH.

Fast forward to 18th century Scotland and the Scottish Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a European phenomenon but Scottish intellectuals played a large part in driving it forward. The work ethic was alive and well but its justification was modernised so as to embrace humanism, empiricism, materialism and rationalism. The movement thus promoted the efficiency and effectiveness of the scientific method. It also provided an ethical but ambiguous justification for the hard nosed ‘business’ of empire building – missionaries saving souls and capitalists making huge profits. The Lord helps those that help themselves. The main thing is REASON.

Fast forward to the 20th century. I was born in 1949 in a fishing village in NE Scotland – a brother between two sisters. My father was a butcher who went bankrupt; he ran a concert party. My mother was an auxiliary nurse who often worked nights; she liked her Bingo. We lived in the local council housing estate. One of my father’s sisters was an unmarried primary school teacher who ensured that I studied broadly and with enthusiasm. Family legend has me reading Bertrand Russell when I was four.

Fast forward to the 21st century. What I say and do is rooted in my conditioning as part of a family, of a range of communities, and of nation states. It is as if morality memes manage my units of speech and actions. (A meme is a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition and replication in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.)

Some memes come from external socio-cultural sources while others are home grown. Some are very old and may be hard wired while others are recent creations. Sometimes it feels as if there is an infinite supply of them in that several are more or less vigorously attached to every passing unit of speech or action. I have not yet figured an all inclusive typology of morality memes but the following lists give a flavour of what is involved. The first group is from my early years, the second group from later.

• All social groups involve a hierarchy which puts the good and great in the top positions. These are the powerful shakers and movers. Lesser beings do what they are told rather than think for themselves
• All children and most women should be seen but not heard
• Officials are honest, selfless, hard working, and care about their customers
• The devil finds work for idle hands
• A waste of time is a waste of money
• The love of money is the root of all evil
• God watches and tallies your every thought and deed  - 24/7

• There are better ways to be human
• The poor (in spirit) will be with us always. Society must care for the vulnerable
• Social groups of various sizes are ruled by elites who are constantly trying to control and exploit the masses. At their best they use elegant power and hegemonic forces to convince the masses that they are second rate citizens who should think and act in ways that support the status quo. Otherwise – what will people think?
• Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Many (most) of the elite are insensitive, greedy, selfish and cruel
• Culture canalises – to be free and enlightened you must know your self.
• Mindfulness is the way. No ‘I’, no problem
• The only certainty is doubt
• The only constant thing is change
• We are stardust become conscious

I have problems with authority. Politically I lean towards anarchy. The established good and great of the 1950 and 60s had fatal flaws. The rhetoric demanded that I think for myself as a free-born individual hippie but in reality I was expected to know my place and to toe the line. Several times when I expressed my personal understanding I was accused of plagiarism.  I learned to keep my mouth shut other than for standard pleasantries. I felt that “I had a sermon that never would bear preaching”. The gist was captured in the lyrics to some of my songs.

There's a voice inside you, It's the voice of other men
It's the voice of people dead and gone
Whose preaching makes the world go on -
Or off
(1970) http://www.toonloon.bizland.com/cureblues/track-01.htm

Time when I was inside and the world was all tied up
In ribbons and preconditioned bows
Now I've opened my eyes and I surely realise
That trees are sometimes otherwise than green
(1973)  http://www.toonloon.bizland.com/cureblues/track-05.htm

You'll find plenty question masters
Making quagmires of their brain
The man said, "There is no answer"
They said, "You are insane"
(1978) http://www.toonloon.bizland.com/highway/track-06.htm

We are social beings. We depend on each other for our survival at individual, family, community, tribal, national, global and planetary levels. It makes sense therefore that we should have morality memes to maintain the status quo as it drives along the never ending highway. But it also makes sense that there should be opportunities for opposing forces to carve out new pathways and offer new routes for approaching new realities. Evolution is a vital process that will not stand still.

I am now retired from the institution, of independent means, and thus free from having to tread the corporate tightrope. I have the time and the energy to slow down and (a) watch what my mindbrain (both conscious and unconscious) gets up to, (b) figure why it goes this way rather than that, and (c) compare and contrast the pathways carved out by both tenured and freelance cutting edge thinkers; especially those that embrace multidisciplinary consilience and root it in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology.

Another way of expressing it is to say that by heeding the morality memes while drawing maps of my psychological geography I develop a more holistic awareness of personal footpaths and global superhighways and thus become unstuck from parochial habits and limiting ways. Hmm!

Let us be reasonable

YES

It was a no-brainer – a gut thing. Small is beautiful and subsidiarity makes sense. I will be ticking the Yes box in the Scottish Independence referendum.

The decision was heartfelt, emotional and independent of what passes for the cold, hard facts. It was an unreasoned decision.

This particular cold, hard fact made me wonder about what else is tucked away in my unconscious. What else motivates me to create and direct my intentions?

To find out, I sat quietly and listed the thoughts and feelings that appeared in the attention centre in this time and place. The results are noted in what follows.

>>>>>

There is a lot of chat about the need to regulate and control the iniquity and inequity of the globalizing world where the rich get richer and very little trickles down to the poorest.  There is need for change – for evolution - for revolution.

Rich people cocoon themselves behind physical and psychological walls and gates. They develop a biased world view. They see the world in terms of:

US – the rich and powerful folk – the wise, reasonable and deserving leaders and bosses; and

THEM – the simple minded poor and powerless folk – the non-deserving workers, consumers and cannon fodder.

As a well-to-do expatriate I have lived in gated houses and communities in the Sudan, Belize, Lesotho and Tanzania. This makes it easy to keep the impoverished peasants out of site, sight and mind.

There is a small herd of hardnosed individuals masterminding the contemporary global agenda. They are associated with, amongst other things,

• the military industrial complex
• the oil, gas and renewable energy sector
• Big Pharma
• the financial services – especially banking
• ICT, and the media
• Laundering the profits from drug and human trafficking
• The UN system
• World Bank, IMF
• Davos, G8, OECD

In my earlier working days I was a humble school teacher and did not fraternise with key decision makers. In my later working days I was a Technical Cooperation Officer (TCO). As such I was occasionally invited to socialize with the development divas. I quickly learned that politicians, bureaucrats and business people have a linguistic code that is other than the scientific one (aka rational and empirical) – they seek to be convincing rather than truthful. Many of them are charming but few are to be trusted.

The military/industrial complex is particularly pernicious. It helps to wage wars and to keep them going so the high tech and expensive weapons have to be replaced.

Amongst my souvenirs is a foot long piece of cold, grey shrapnel that is still razor sharp. It came from a South African mortar which was one of several that landed in my school. The South Africans did not intend to damage the school, they were calibrating on a Zambian army emplacement on the hill behind the school. During the preceding night the Zambian squaddies had lobbed some mortars into the SA army camp by way of giving unofficial support to a SWAPO attack. Fortunately it was a school holiday so no students were killed; but a direct hit on a bomb trench decimated a group of school workers and their children.

How much does a mortar shell cost? What difference would that sum of money make to a primary school (say in Sesheke).

If the UK was to scrap the anathema that is Trident (pause to remember Hiroshima) then how much common wealth would be released to use in more valuable and honorable ways?

The class struggle has not gone way. Power, status and riches corrupt and the tighter the relationships between members of the rich group the worse the corruption gets.

In the early 1980s Barry and me were employed by the British Council to help set up a model day secondary school in the S Sudan. The project was a later add on to a World Bank primary school support programme whose goal was to erect over 200 classrooms in various parts of the country. A Portuguese company was contracted to build the classrooms made from prefabricated metal panels from Portugal. The furniture was from Greece. Our secondary school had 10 buildings, the Teacher Training College had 2 buildings and 6 were constructed in the compounds of government Ministers. None of the others were built and when the furniture arrived from Greece it was left out in the rain and rotted. The World Bank produced a glowing report. Barry and me tried to blow the whistle but no one would listen. Not even the British Council.

So what is to be done?

We can use the ubiquitous ICT to unite and mobilise ordinary people to unwrap and expose the parcels of rogues in our erstwhile and new nations (eg the South Sudan and Scotland).

I like to think that our Scottish culture has moved on from the mean spirited, authoritarian and God fearing excesses of the Protestant reformation that were channelled through John Knox (1514-1572) and marked our break with the papacy in 1560. Pleasure may no longer be a mortal sin.

I also like to think that our culture has good humouredly and reasonably embraced the humanist, empiricist and rationalist thrusts of the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment as espoused by world leading gurus David Hume (1711-1776) - philosophy , Adam Smith (1723-1790) - economics, Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) – sociology, and Robert Burns (1759-1796) - poetry.

Let stakeholders meet over a cup of tea (or a wee dram) and be even tempered, reasonable, and up to speed with the evidence.

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan in his orange anarak

There is now a tab at the top of this page that offers youtube links to Carl Sagan's 13 programmes about the Cosmos.

I still find them inspiring after all these years.

neuroscience for dummies

In 1971 I was at a scientific cutting edge with a B.Sc (Hons) in Zoology and personal leanings towards neurology and Primate (including human) Social Behavior. That was 43 years ago. Much has changed in Zoology since then. It has now gone more holistic and shown a marked enthusiasm for multidisciplinary consilience (ref E O Wilson).

My personal interests these days are with how neurology and evolutionary psychology can illuminate the age old existential theme – why are we here? My thinking is that if I can get a handle on the new way of understanding intelligence and consciousness then I can perhaps help to find better ways to be human.

I am particularly impressed by Frank Amthor (2012) “Neuroscience for Dummies”. I find it hard to lay it down. It is accessibly written and presented in five parts:

1. Introducing Your Nervous System
2. Translating the Internal and External World through Your Senses
3. Moving Right Along: Motor Systems
4. Intelligence: The Thinking Brain and Consciousness
5. The Part of Tens

Part 4 is particularly breathtaking. Much developed since the late 60s!

Frank Amthor is a professor of Psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he also holds secondary appointments in the UAB Medical School Department of Neurobiology, the School of Optometry, and the Dept. of Biomedical Engineering.

Thanks Frank

Origin of I

There is a temptation to herd the cows of other people. In this case neuroscience as expounded by Humphrey (1992) and by Amthor (2012). But, rather than accurately summarise their ideas as a set of one-pagers, I hereby (a) acknowledge their influence on the related stuff that is appearing in the attention centre, and (b) record the emergent stuff as it flows in from the unconscious.

Why are there mindbrains?

Ultimately to plan movement towards what is desirable and away from what is undesirable. In simpler living things the stimulus response link is automatic and everything is concrete and practical. In more complex living things (ie multicellular animals) there is a black box between the stimulus and the response. The black box is the mindbrain and it allows some flexibility in the response. Woolly speculation enters the scene – is this where free-will becomes possible?

The human one is the most highly evolved example of a mindbrain. By mammalian and primate standards it has a hugely expanded cortex which serves to coordinate and integrate the activities of the ancestral reptilian and amphibian parts.

Evolution has also provided the human mindbrain with a unique capacity for language. This promotes the woolly and speculative activities inside the black box to a much  higher level. The physics and chemistry of the sensory systems remain much the same as in other mammals but the manner in which their inputs are coded, interpreted, and integrated is on a higher order of magnitude.

In nature there is no doer and no doing but nothing is left undone. “Sitting quietly doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.”

In the unconscious part of the human mindbrain there is a huge amount of activity geared towards controlling the various life processes – nutrition, respiration, excretion, irritability, reproduction etc. Food is digested and absorbed, oxygen is inhaled and carbon dioxide is exhaled, the body temperature is kept at a steady 36 degrees, minor wounds are repaired etc. And ‘I’ have no control over these involuntary processes. There is no self-conscious doer but nothing important is left undone.

Organic beings with a human mindbrain, a community and a language tend to ‘believe’ that ‘they’ are discreet entities that they call ‘me’ or ‘I’. This is the ‘self’ that is part of the idea of being ‘self conscious’. We are not born with it fully formed. The graph shows a 3+1 development process through time.

1. Zygote, embryo, new born
2. Infancy, childhood, adolescence
3. Maturity
4. (optional) transcend the self

From sub to super

The diagram below shows three pathways for psychological growth in time. Normal growth is normal but sometimes things go wrong and sub-normal individuals result. In extreme cases there is neurosis and psychosis while in milder cases there is anxiety, panic and depression. Traditional psychology studied the various sub-normal conditions and developed various forms of psychotherapy to make patients normal again. The super-normal states were largely ignored.

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) developed the idea of a Hierarchy of Needs. At the top of the hierarchy was self-actualization and the idea of peak experiences. It is mainly the super-normal people who experience these mental states. The field of positive psychology has evolved to study these healthy people who are marked by ‘well-being’ and by what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934-ongoing) calls ‘flow’, and by what Martin Seligman (1942-ongoing) calls ‘flourishing’. Note that there is a lot in common between this western notion and the eastern views of enlightenment (eg nirvana and moksha).

An individual’s nature and nurture will influence their pattern of growth through time. It is generally felt that the potential for being sub-normal or super-normal is in all of us to some extent and that a wide range of factors are responsible for turning them on or off.

The three lines in the diagram present an ideal situation. In reality the lines will zig zag – sometimes from super to sub and sometimes from sub to super. Existential experiences, especially feelings and moods, cause the shifts and they can be very short term.

It is generally felt that the super-normal mind states are peaceful, beautific, and generally aiming for the greatest good of the greatest number. In terms of evolutionary psychology why should this be?

And what are we to make of the powerful minds that reaped despair, destruction and death at international level – Gengis Khan, Pol Pot, Mao tse Tung, Hitler, Stalin, Margaret Thatcher, George W Bush and Tony Blair. These are ab-normal minds. But are they super or sub?

It seems reasonable to suppose that the hard wired potential for developing this way rather than that is present in all of us although perhaps more in some than in others. The potentials might be switched on or off by external factors operating at multiple and interacting levels – genetic, individual, family, group, tribe, environment. Many present patterns would have been adaptive in ancestral times.

conundrum of canalization

Maslow has a new word for enculturation – canalization. He gives it a negative spin. When a person gets canalized they become limited and fail to live up to their potential. They tend to support the status quo and thus prevent social and cultural progress. They thus become biddable, salt of the earth, cannon fodder. (ref WW1)

What kind of potential do they fail to live up to? Howard Gardner famously listed nine frames of mind that might be highlighted in a formal education system (see below).

nine frames of mind

Individuals would have different patterns of potential and therefore have different career pathways. Schools should support more than Reading, wRiting and aRithmatic. But schools cannot do it alone. The family, community and employers would have to be involved and this would involve changing minds at the level of subculture and culture.

The idea is that there should be progress which involves change for the better. But what constitutes better and who decides when, where and how?

The state education system acts as a sieve which sorts those who are to be the middle managers from those who are to be (a) the administrators and grunt workers and (b) the self employed.

The overall cultural goal is to canalize citizens into being biddable workers, malleable consumers, and willing cannon fodder when wars are declared and the military industrial complex rubs its hands with glee.

As the rich get richer crumbs fall from their tables and some of the wealth trickles down to the huddled masses (the poor will be with us always?) A rising tide floats all boats - except those with holes. It can also be argued that as the rich get richer the poor get poorer and race to the bottom to work in dangerous sweatshops.

And then, on the bright side, with major inputs from the Internet, there might be a flourishing of the bottom four frames of mind in the above table. Are we beginning to see a critical mass of people able to deal calmly with (a) emotions in themselves and in others, (b) physical environmental issues and (c) the ongoing existential conundrum of canalization for our global age.

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http://www.srds.co.uk/begin/frames.htm

Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow

I am presently re-reading Maslow’s 1962, “Towards a Psychology of Being”.

His writing verges on the timeless and resulted in the growth of positive psychology and the human potential movement. He has influenced the work of more recent luminaries such as Martin Seligman (Flourishing) and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow).

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) was an American psychologist best known for his ‘hierarchy of needs’. This was a theory of psychological health based on meeting human needs in sequence beginning with physiological needs and culminating in ‘peak experiences’ and ‘self-actualization’.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

In his “Towards a psychology of Being” Maslow deals in detail with the structure and functions of peak experiences and self actualisation. In his research he covered the literature on mysticism and also some of the Eastern classics. He is therefore good on the limitations of language to deal with the ineffable. But he remains a creature of his woolly, intellectual times and his Weltenschaaung is not informed by neurology and evolutionary psychology. If he was still alive I am sure that he would love the way that the world view is going.

He is still worth reading

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Maslow, Abraham H. (2013-07-18). Toward a Psychology of Being (Kindle). Start Publishing LLC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow