How and why?

Some people sometimes ask, “How and why are we here?” New answers are emerging.

Most people, when young, are conditioned to accept the answers given by their culture. There is thus cognitive consonance and peace of mind. The cultural ‘story’ is based on myth and helps to unite the in-group (us) and to distinguish it from the out-group (them). In happy times the ruling hegemonic elite wields elegant power. The seemingly unstoppable growth in the human population suggests that there must be something ‘right’ about this. Great.

BUT, with the old system there is a tendency towards selfish parochialism and xenophobia. Billions of people are ground down by poverty at the expense of others. So the present system is not right for everybody; and neither is it right for the environment and the planet. Not so great.

Most of the present computer age people (less than 60 years) are still tuned into ‘traditional’ myths that have their roots in the history of our species – hunters and gatherers with stone axes became farmers and then there were city states, civilizations and now globalization with ipads. Great.

BUT, it becomes obvious that traditional ways of doing things are no longer relevant or sustainable. Socially there are the problems of the gap between rich and poor widening, and of competing belief systems spawning violent zealots. Environmentally there is loss of biodiversity, overexploitation of material and energy resources, and pollution. Not so great.
SO – how are we here?

The Big History Project outlines the modern ‘Bright’, scientific, evidence-based story which begins 13.7 billion years ago with the big bang. Something (matter and energy) came from nothing. Simple chemistry became more complex and the cosmos evolved. Then our solar system and home planet came into being. Then came life which evolved into modern human beings who can be partly conscious of their consciousness and thus quickly create new cultures.

These changes are all driven by the creation of variety and by natural selection awarding the survival of the fittest prizes at gene, organism and group level. Novel genes and memes evolve and complexity increases.

Looking forward, our sun will die in about 7 billion years. We may have destroyed ourselves by that time but, if not, we will be very different from how we are today. Evolution whether cosmic, biological or cultural, cannot stop – change is part of the fabric of the universe.

SO – why are we here?

How is that question to be answered?  We could seek evidence of ‘purpose’ and ‘intention’? If so, where is it located? Does it precede the Big Bang? Did it begin with the Big Bang or did it appear during or after the cosmic, biological or cultural evolution phases?

When we look backwards it is tempting to impute a plan – a pre-ordinate strategy with blueprint – a design. Logically and linguistically this calls for a planner; and the inbuilt human tendency is to use the analogy of planner as person (eg father figure God as designer). But there can be other analogies where everything goes ‘according to plan’– but what plan, whose plan?  for example (a) plate tectonics and continental drift, (b) the weather and the seasons, and (c) human embryological development.

As human beings we are not privy to the vast majority of what goes on in the cosmos, in other living things, in our own bodies, nor even in our own mindbrain which has both conscious and unconscious parts. But there is an enormous amount of highly detailed and complex stuff going according to unplanned plans.

In the hunting and gathering days there was limited division of labour. But as we progressed through farming to city states and civilizations various forms of expertise evolved whereby competent individuals came to know more and more about less and less. This proved enormously useful in creating new cultural items but there was a tendency to lose sight of the big picture.

In the last 50 years or so there have been moves towards big picture holistic systems thinking. This      involves multidisciplinary approaches referred to as consilience and it may be thought of as a new paradigm. Many subjectively aware mindbrains are getting to grips with the mindbrain using a wide range of techniques – especially those of neuroscience and evolutionary psychology.

So there is now a new story with which to culturally condition the mindbrains of our children. Big History. No myth, no magic. Reduced parochiality and xenophobia – we are all passengers on spaceship earth. We can root ourselves in evidence based facts which are mind blowing and wonder-full.

Let the consilient poets speak about why we are here:


Sitting quietly doing nothing
Spring comes
and the grass grows by itself



Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin:
yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.

Almost mindfulness

I have just finished re-reading Edward O Wilson (1998) Consilience – the unity of knowledge. I have been dipping into it for over a month. In every chapter there was so much to absorb that I hit overload after only a few pages.

I feel very much at home with his root viewpoint as a scientist (biology flavor) and with his focus on the ‘cosmic zoom’ and what later would be called ‘big history’. The breadth, depth, and multidisciplinary nature of his understanding of the human condition in space and time is awesome and mind bending.

He was greatly inspired by the Rio Summit (1992) and with the resultant Agenda 21: where the spotlight was put on biodiversity and sustainability and the triple bottom line – environment, society and economics (ESE).

But mainstream politicians and economists - with their entourage of narrow focused academics - have not made the paradigm shift to systematic and multi-disciplinary holism. There is need for a change in the types of evidence that are produced and in how they are used.

He points to the need for meta-cognitive understanding but realizes that better rationality is not enough on its own. Feelings, emotions, instincts and intuitions are also involved and must be handled in appropriate ways. Creative artists and secular religions have their parts to play.

In dealing with the concepts of mind and consciousness he draws on the work of Dennett and Pinker amongst others:

“All that has been learned empirically about evolution in general and mental process in particular suggests that the brain is a machine assembled not to understand itself, but to survive. Because these two ends are basically different, the mind unaided by factual knowledge from science sees the world only in little pieces. It throws a spotlight on those portions of the world it must know in order to live to the next day, and surrenders the rest to darkness.” (p105)

“There is no single stream of consciousness in which all information is brought together by an executive ego. There are instead multiple streams of activity, some of which contribute momentarily to conscious thought then phase out. Consciousness is the massive coupled aggregates of such participating circuits. The mind is a self-organizing republic of scenarios that individually germinate, grow, evolve, disappear, and occasionally linger to spawn additional thought and physical activity.” (p120)

The description is not bad for a non-meditator. But I reckon there is a greater consilence emerging eg between Thich Nhat Hahn and neuroscientists. (And also between the Dalai Lama and  western scientists.)

The new view is that mindfulness meditation can rewire the brain (wipe the dust off the mirror) such that there is re-emergence of renunciation, compassion, wisdom and a range of other potentially desirable mind states which are ancient, hard-wired aspects of living in a hunting and gathering in-group. The instinctive mind states associated with the out-group will be more difficult to handle using mindfulness. But I am now seeing it as almost the only way to affect mind change on a mass scale.

Peace in a sane society

In the late 60s I had a summer job as a ward orderly in the local mental hospital. I worked mainly in the secure wing where the patients looked and acted ‘normal’ most of the time. But many of them took ‘turns’ and had to be held down and sedated. For example Dennis who was little and fat would head butt the wall with great severity after being wound up by Aboo who was wheelchair bound but was expert at throwing his spit into other people’s faces. So most of the inmates were sedated most of the time and just sat around waiting for meals. A negative atmosphere.

About the same time I served as an occasional volunteer at the Camphill School in Aberdeen. This was part of the international Camphill Movement which aims to create communities where vulnerable children and adults, many with learning disabilities, can live, learn and work with others in healthy social relationships based on mutual care and respect. A positive atmosphere.

R D Laing

This practical experience of two very different approaches to mental health fed my understanding of Psychology which I was studying at the University in Aberdeen. The experiences drew me to the anti-psychiatry movement and, in particular, to the work of R D Laing the Glaswegian, Zen rebel. I read three of his books and the margin jottings include several uses of ‘ouch’.

(1960) The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness

(1967) The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise.

(1976) The Facts of Life.

Here are a few quotes to give a flavor of the man:

• Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.
• Creative people who can't help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane.
• Madness need not be all break-down. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
• The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.
• We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.
• We are born into a world where alienation awaits us. We are potentially men, but are in an alienated state, and this state is not simply a natural system. Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings.

I am presently working my way through an online ‘Introduction to Psychology’ Course (a MOOC from Udacity). So far it has introduced only material that I was taught in the 1960s. But it might get more advanced as the lessons proceed.

My garbled impression of Psychology is that it took a couple of unfortunate turns during the 20th century. There was the psychiatric disease theory of Freud et al (subjectivity only) and the black box behaviorism of Watson and Skinner (objectivity only).

But Abraham Maslow introduced a ‘hierarchy of needs’ which was topped by self actualization and thus transcendence. This triggered interest in positive psychology and the Human Potential Movement. These prompted a move towards understanding what makes people supernormal. Key concepts include Flow, Flourishing, and Happiness.

Neuroscience has developed techniques for picturing the mindbrain in action – this has led to new interest in transcendence and cosmic consciousness; especially as these relate to meditation as a tool for affecting mind change.

And Evolutionary Psychology is a fast growing field which illumines the nature v nurture debate and works in consilience with a wide range of other disciplines. We are building an ever increasing body of theory about what went on during our 200,000 years of evolution as hunters and gatherers.

On the whole I am hopeful about the future. We can now obey the Oracle’s call to ‘know yourself’ in a radically new way. In a way that includes non-action (wu-wei) by a no-self (annata). Cool dudes in charge of global issues. A new view of Plato’s Philosopher Kings? Peace in a sane society. Peace in our time.

Mark Epstein

Mark Epstein (born 1953) is a practicing psychotherapist and an experienced meditator. He is a leading authority on the link between psychotherapy (goal = a robust self) and mindfulness meditation (non-goal = no-self. Of his many books I have read and enjoyed:

• Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness (1 Jul 1999)
• Thoughts without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective (23 Nov 2004) 
• Psychotherapy Without the Self: A Buddhist Perspective (31 Oct 2008)

His latest book is “The Trauma of Everyday Life” (15 Aug 2013) and it is now out in hardback. He talks about it in this audio interview.  His psychological profile of the Buddha throws new light on the concept of suffering (dhukka) and how to live with it.

See also:
http://www.psychotherapy.net/interview/epstein-buddhism

A life time of learning

I have given up paid work but, as a lifelong learner, I am not retired. There is still a strong element of ‘teacher teach yourself’. But I am presently enlisting the support of others via the recent phenomena that are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC).

The Big History Project is stunning in terms of its subject matter – everything from the Big Bang onwards. Its underlying curriculum development and materials production processes are also impressive. The key shaker and mover is the Australian historian David Christian and the project is enthusiastically supported by Bill Gates.

There are ten units covering eight thresholds which are located on a timeline. You can dip in at places that interest you or work your way from beginning to end. There is built in support for school teachers to include the package in their overall teaching programme. It is a multimedia extravaganza with external links for those who want to dig deeper. I am in the process of working through from beginning to end. It is gob smacking.

I am also signed up to an Introduction to Psychology course organized by San Jose State University and made available through Udacity.com. There are sixteen lessons presented by three attractive instructors - Susan Snycerski, Greg Feist, and Lauren Castellano. They make slick use of video and ongoing mini quizzes which between them capture and hold my attention. The content is not as gob smacking as Big History but the package provides a free, user-friendly and fairly comprehensive Introduction to Psychology delivered from the USA to my home in Portsoy.

And then there is teacher teach yourself. This includes the old fashioned reading of cutting edge articles and books and converting some of the ideas to one-pagers. But there is also the new-fashion of listening to or watching radical thinkers on audio or video files and even of tracking them in real time via their websites, blogs, and social networks – particularly Twitter.

My present interests lie in improving the consilience of my thoughts and feelings about my thoughts and feelings. Mental stuff is conceptually mapped in different ways by different people.

My particular interest is in mapping Buddhist thinking on to neuroscience informed by the new approaches to psychology – behavioural, positive, and evolutionary. (Note – the Introduction to Psychology course (see above) does not tackle positive and evolutionary psychology – they are not yet mainstream.)

The concept of ‘neo-Buddhism’ appeared during the sangha meeting yesterday. Thich Nhat Hahn has been exchanging ideas with neuroscientists and there is consilience about how the brain works: particularly the potentially liberating notion of neural plasticity.

The only constant thing is change!

A Buddha mindbrain

BOOK - Rick Hanson (2009) “The Buddha’s Brain – the practical neuroscience of happiness, love and wisdom”.

My first and lasting impression is that the book is down to earth and very well written. But, from the jacket blurb, there are warning lights – “You’ll learn how to activate the brain states of calm, joy, and compassion instead of worry, sorrow and anger.”

I feel that Hanson is too optimistic about the power of ‘nurture’ to massively overpower ‘nature’. He puts a lot of faith in the potential inherent in neural plasticity. He suggests that the mindbrain can close down some neural pathways and open up others. But this begs the questions of agency and scale.

AGENCY - Who or what is the ‘I’ that judges? The goal seems to be a robust and happy self (living a typical middle class existence) rather than the non-action (wu-wei) of the no-self (anatta).

SCALE – Nature’s hard wiring is plastic to some extent. By taking thought the mindbrain can, to some extent, change itself so as to better fit the particular physical and cultural environment that it inhabits. Individuals can change themselves but this can be tough going. A therapist/ teacher/ guru can help to steer and support - as can a group of like minded souls (Sangha). There are also the options of social engagement and of evangelism for the new way of thinking.

It is the old nature v nurture debate. There are nine possible viewpoints  – see here

Hanson openly and prominently acknowledges many leading, American meditation teachers. I know most of them as students of the Goldstein, Kornfield and Salzberg triumvirate working mainly out of the Insight Meditation and the Spirit Rock Meditation Centre. Vast numbers of audio talks of many of my favorite spiritual teachers are freely available from here. I used to listen to at least one dharma talk a day. They were excellent mood changers. But I grew out of them.

My impression was that many of the retreats serve psychotherapeutic rather than spiritual ends. The original retreat centres were obviously meeting a need and there are now many more of them. The worried well will pay lots of dosh for the experience of being with like minded and supportive people.

BUT – I have a ‘thing’ about ‘changing minds’. This blog is evidence of the fact.  The mindbrain is an ongoing process of reacting and responding to changes in the world as recorded and reported by the sense organs and associated mindbrain modules. The modules are self sustaining but plastic enough to make radical changes. Change your mind and change the world. Action reflection cycles are the way to go if there is to be a flourishing of Buddha mindbrains.

Genetic Supermarkets

Yesterday I drank a coffee in the Marks and Spencer’s restaurant in Inverurie. I was aware of genes driving shoppers whose ancestors evolved to be hunters and gatherers in the African savanna; and I noted that their stone-age, mental frameworks have now to work in the computer-age.

In the savanna there were many edible plants and animals. Some were available all year round while others were seasonal. There were fruit trees offering a superabundance for a short while and then nothing for a long while. So people moved around their territory to take advantage of the different harvests.

The edible parts of plants could be high up in trees (eg mangoes), at just about ground level (eg raspberries), or underground.  (eg potatoes). Most animals can move quickly and are therefore hard to catch and kill. Tools had to be invented, and hunting usually involved teams capturing their prey from land and water homes.

Our human ancestors first appeared in East Africa about 200,000 years ago. They multiplied and moved out of Africa to occupy most of the world. They managed this while organized as hunters and gatherers. It was only about 10,000 years ago that settled agriculture became the main cultural form and only 5,000 years since the development of ‘civilizations’ with their elitist divisions of labour. An axial age from 800-200 BC saw the emergence of self consciousness in several different civilizations. This was when most of the world’s major religions began.

Modern industrial society began about 250 years ago and the rate of change and invention since then has been ferocious. And the M&S coffee shop in Inverurie was built well within living memory.

There are territories in the supermarkets. The fresh fruit and vegetables come from many far-flung parts of the planet and end up beside each other. There is also a meat section. This includes prawns, mussels, fish, chicken, sheep, pig, and cow. No horse, dog or worm meat in Inverurie and no amphibians or reptiles. There are ancient and unwritten rules about what is acceptable. Other sections include those for bread, alcohol, dairy products and ‘ready meals’.

In supermarkets there is breathtaking, sumptuous abundance with a wide range of choice which is increased by special offers and value lines. And there are other supermarkets (eg Tesco, Asda, and Lidl), that target shoppers from different socio-economic categories. Your social status and place in the hierarchy are intimately linked to where you shop, what you buy, and how much you pay.

The standard story is that, in ancient times, men did the hunting (especially for big game) and women did the gathering. In M&S on a late Wednesday morning most of the shoppers are grey haired and female and they will be bringing home the bacon. In Tesco in the evenings and at the weekend more men are involved. Perhaps they have a lot to say about what items from the animal sections go into the trophy basket. I will have to pay more attention to this in future - both in myself and in other hunters and gatherers! 

When the breadwinner brings home the bacon s/he makes a round of sandwiches for the team.

Angry Questions

On Saturday past the dharma talk in the Sangha was about anger. This seems to be a real issue for many people. It generates deep questions. When did anger evolve and what is it good for? Is it adaptive and functional or is it collateral damage left over from the evolution of something else?

It appears that anger is most commonly prompted by thwarts to the doings of ‘I’ or ‘mine’. It can be cheekily ennobled to the level of “righteous anger” when it deals with moral issues. But who puts the right in righteous? (Ref – Haidt “The Righteous Mind”)

We are social animals and we each belong to a culture with sub cultural variations. Some combination of nature, nurture and serendipity will have caused us (consciously and unconsciously) to adopt this rather than that point of view and pattern of values. Although we are each unique we are at the same time representative of our culture and subculture.

Sometimes we stand for ‘I’. Sometimes we stand for ‘we’. Normally we are opposed to ‘them’; and the nearby them are more of a threat than the far away ones.

But what is anger? It is an abstract concept rather than a real thing. This becomes obvious when you ask:

• What is its shape and colour?
• How big is it?
• How long does it last?
• If it leaves the attention centre for a while and then comes back is it the same “thing” that comes back?
• Where does it go to at the end of a session?

In Saturday’s Sangha there were several ideas about how to deal with anger but most people agreed that Thay’s approach was often effective. This involves taking the viewpoint of an imaginary, internal witness who notices anger arising and can therefore say, “Hello my little friend anger, how are you today?” This creates a split in “consciousness” where the angry me has to share space in the attention centre with the calm me. The calm me refuses to let the angry me monopolise the attention centre and this causes a partial defusing of the anger. To summarise – refuse and defuse

Note that the imaginary, internal witness can also deal with other thoughts and feelings – good, bad and neutral. I have found it useful over the years to imagine a “cool dude” who notices what is going in and out of the attention centre and can get involved where necessary to refuse and defuse my stone age instincts.


When you are on autopilot a particular type of stimulus will cause a particular type of reaction. This is because your genetic nature has hard wired your mindbrain by creating inbuilt neural pathways to ensure that stimulus x generates reaction x. There are huge numbers of these inborn reflexes and instincts. (eg we close our eyes when we sneeze). Note that there are also learned responses that operate from the unconscious (eg after having learned to drive a car)

But the cool dude can step in to slow things down (Ref  Daniel Kahneman “Thinking Fast and Slow”). Thus stimulus x will eventually generate response y. “Please engage brain before opening mouth”. “He who knows does not speak.”

These radical thoughts may be upsetting people and causing anger to rise in them. So I might be as well to stop for the moment. The longest of journeys go one step at a time.

Who thinks?

When you accidentally touch a hot stove you immediately move your hand away. The reaction happens before the news of what is happening gets to the bits of your mindbrain that ‘understand’ what is going on and can ‘learn’ from the experience.

You are ‘hard-wired’ to make that kind of reaction to that kind of stimulus. You do it ‘without thinking’.

Along those lines Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) famously noted that “the heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing about”. But, in his day, there were no bicycles or motor cars. If there had been he would have noticed that it takes time to learn how to control them. But, once we have learned, we use them “without thinking”. This begs the question of what we mean by “thinking”. Does it include our ‘heart’ learning new reasons?

Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) gave us the pithy saying, “I think therefore I am” (Cogito ergo sum). But this in turn begs the question of who or what am “I”. It seems fairly obvious that I am closely linked to what I am conscious about and have control over. (I have “free will” over these things?) But can I be held to account for what goes on in the unconscious – for those hard-wired instincts that are part of our evolved human nature? (I am “determined” by these things and should not therefore be held responsible for them?)

If you think about it you will realize that the vast majority of what goes on in your mindbrain does not feature in consciousness. Another way of thinking about this is to say that there is an abundance of mental activity that does not occupy the mindbrain’s attention centre.

Also, there is evidence showing that what appears to consciousness in the attention centre comes a fraction of a second after related happenings in the unconscious.

(Put a decision maker in a brain scanner and get him to report when he makes a decision. The scan shows that the brain lights up in the decision making areas slightly before the decision maker is conscious of making the decision.)

If you make some time to sit quietly doing nothing you will notice that the mind is in constant churn. Even experienced meditators know about their monkey mind – sometimes the monkey is hyperactive and with fleas! The good news is that when, by taking thought, the chatter dies down you experience a deep peace – but that is another story for another day!

When is a blog useful?

If a teacher teaches but the students do not learn, has the teacher really taught? This is a particular problem with lecturing. A blindfolded lecturer could deliver to an empty lecture theatre. He gets paid for delivering the lecture not for the extent to which students learn anything.

The lecturer could send along an audio or video version of his lecture. This could have been professionally crafted and thus be more inspiring than his basic talk. There is the option of getting a professional communicator to present the lecture. It could be made available on the internet. This already happens (eg www.udacity.com ). The innovative phenomenon is called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

As it is with teaching/lecturing so it might be with blogging. A blog can be kept personal or opened to a limited audience or to the world. If the blog is offered to the world but the world does not visit has the blogger really blogged?

This blog is made available to the world but I do not promote it. The stats suggest that there have been about 3000 visits since it began seven months ago and that it now gets an average of 17 visits per day. Some of these will be from search engine spiders. Some will be from real and virtual friends. There are a few real friends who visit fairly regularly.

 I seem keen to feed this blog but I don’t know why. I could brainstorm it:

• Old habits die hard – I gather info and present lectures. Monologue. Chalk and talk.
• But I also facilitate learning – drop thought/feeling pebbles in the consciousness of others. Fascinating facts. Novel ways of understanding. Share what excites me. The paradigm shift.
• The blogs are not so much lectures (impersonal rational) as stories (personal intuitive).
• There is the technology to invite comment from visitors but very little arrives
• I use my subjective self as a case study. This goes against my scientific training. But research patterns are changing.
• Experimental, positive and evolutionary psychology is linking with neuroscience to demonstrate that the neutrality of the scientist is bogus. The scientific way is still ‘best’ but there is need to be mindful of the subjective biases built into scientists.
• The Bright approach to how the mind/brain evolved and now functions is gob smacking. Freud and Skinner both led psychology on wrong directions.
• I have adapted in various ways to the Parkinson’s Disease. There could be a list. But there is the agency problem. To what extent is the thought/feeling caused by the PD, the medication, old age, mindfulness – or just by the ongoing story that is me.
• I am no longer as anxious as I was. But there is still an undercurrent of depression that manifests as ‘can’t be bothered’ (CBB). This links to procrastination and laziness.
• These blogs are based on ideas that are already in the brain. I am no longer into the one-page summary approach to other people’s ideas.
• I am promoting the paradigm shift. Being ‘bright’ rather than ‘super’. I am part of a notional team. A cause. A purpose. I am presumably hard wired to belong and be motivated.
• The downside = the CBB. (Part PD and part life stage) The upside = the paradigm shift
• Lyrics from the 1970s - “He has a sermon that never will bear preaching”; “He rationalized his thought about everything he sought”. But it is different now.
• I have forgotten how strongly I was influenced by Howard Gardner. One of his books is called “Changing Minds”. He puts the variables on a matrix and maps them. Powerful stuff. He is highly recommended.
• Because of the paradigm shift there is awareness of the ongoing mental churn. Concentration involves focus but this can flicker on and off as attention shifts to accommodate the ongoing monitoring process. Absent minded professors are lion fodder unless they are surrounded by more attentive group members.
• “It takes a whole village to grow a child.”
• “Give me the child till he is five and I will give you the man.” – says who?
• AHA – change gear – move to the cutting edge - The Thinking Ape: The Enigma of Human Consciousness - October 10, 2012 Featuring: Steve Paulson, Nicholas Schiff, Daniel Kahneman, Laurie Santos, David Chalmers - Watch on YouTube 
• A video group blog rather than a text one.  It could serve as resource material for a MOOC.

The happiness question

When I put the word ‘happiness’ in the open search box in Amazon.com there are 83,537 returns. When I use the books search box there are 26,409 returns. It is a popular concept!

Most of the books ride the bandwagon and simply shovel and rearrange the key ideas from a relatively small number of ‘experts’. Most of the experts are hard nosed and make sense rather than non-sense.

I have read several of the highly recommended authors who now come from an unexpectedly wide range of disciplines. In what follows I mention a few of the intriguing ideas that I have come across.

Gross National Happiness

The wealth of nations is measured by economists using the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But this measures only brute economic conditions. In Bhutan they have given up on GDP and measure the Gross National Happiness (GNH) instead. It has four pillars:

• promotion of sustainable development,
• preservation and promotion of cultural values, 
• conservation of the natural environment, and
• establishment of good governance.

These are broken down further to include:

• physical, mental and spiritual health;
• time-balance; 
• social and community vitality; 
• cultural vitality; 
• education;
• living standards;
• good governance; and
• ecological vitality.

These are the components of wellbeing of the Bhutanese people, and the term ‘wellbeing’ refers to fulfilling the conditions of a ‘good life’ according to the values and principles laid down by the concept of Gross National Happiness.

Positive psychology

Abraham Maslow identified a hierarchy of needs. At the top was the need for self transcendence brought about by peak experiences. This led to a new and more positive approach in psychology. Not only making the subnormal normal but also making the normal supernormal.

“Positive psychology is a recent branch of psychology whose purpose was summed up in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:

"We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise, which achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving individuals, families, and communities."

Positive psychologists seek "to find and nurture genius and talent" and "to make normal life more fulfilling", rather than merely treating mental illness.

Positive psychology is primarily concerned with using the psychological theory, research and intervention techniques to understand the positive, adaptive, creative and emotionally fulfilling aspects of human behavior.” (Source: Wikipedia)

Csikszentmihalyi gave us the concept of ‘Flow’. Seligman gave us ‘Flourishing’.

Evolutionary Psychology

What is the adaptive purpose of being happy? Did it evolve and become represented in our genes and, if so, to what end? How does it ensure the survival of individuals or groups? Subjectively it feels good to be happy but how does that promote survival? While we were hunters and gatherers might it not have been more functional to be anxious and neurotic. Happy optimists let down their guard and become lion fodder? I do not remember reading about that topic.

No self

I am most happy, peaceful and content when ‘I’ am not present. This is when ‘I’ am in flow in the zone with the unconscious muse exhibiting non-action. ‘I’ am also ‘happy’ when just sitting in mindfulness and dropping off body and mind.

A few good reads

• Lama, Dalai   & Howard C Cutler (1998) The Art of Happiness  A Handbook for Living
• Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi (2002) Flow  The Classic work on how to achieve Happiness
• Haidt, Jonathan (2006) The Happiness Hypothesis  Putting Ancient Wisdom and Philosophy to the Test of Modern Science
• Hanson, Rick (2009) Buddha’s Brain  the practical neuroscience of happiness, love and wisdom
• Seligman, Martin (2011) Flourish  a new understanding of happinesss and well being
• Layard, Richard (2011) Happiness  Lessons from a New Science

 World Book of Happiness

A comprehensive and user friendly introduction to ongoing research into happiness is to be found in Leo Bormans (2012 ed) The World Book of Happiness.  He asked 100 experts in 50 countries to write 1000 words. There were four rules:

• He wanted insights founded on research-based knowledge not on spiritual philosophy
• Conclusions should not only concentrate on individual happiness but also on the happiness of groups, ecosystems, organizations and countries
• Conclusions should enable a cross-fertilization of ideas within a global vision for universal happiness
• The texts should be written in a language that ordinary people can understand

A link is noted between happiness, subjective well being, and life satisfaction. Contemporary research is mostly rooted in positive psychology. I used it as a dip-into book. It gives off a happy vibe.

In and out of attention

It has been three days since I blogged. There is no impressive excuse. Several small distractions turned up and I footered with them.

They included working towards archive indexes for the pastandpresent photos; experimenting with close up photos in the garden; and figuring how to make macros in MSWord. There were more than this but the rules of rhetoric suggest limiting lists to the magic number three!

Today I took another step towards qualifying for my middle class wanker badge. The Guardian has a new series explaining what the development jargon means. I made two comments under ‘civil society’; and I have been back several times to see if anybody has commented on my comments … Nope.

There is presently an urge to write a story - but no topic is coming to the attention centre other than that no topic is coming to the attention centre.

Aha … Imagery and metaphor. (For details see HERE)

Topics/thoughts/feelings enter the attention centre, hang around for a while and then disappear.

Stuff moves from the unconscious into consciousness and then returns to the unconscious.

The stuff is in flux. This ensures that new inputs from the sense organs are related to stuff in the memory banks in terms of like, dislike, or neutral. These judgments determine the patterns of reaction/ response.

We tend to understand these cerebral goings on as ethereal and psychological but they are grounded in the wetware as electrical and chemical activity (physiology) within networks of cells.

The visioning can be in terms of the mind or the brain or indeed of these being two sides of the same coin. Two ways of viewing the same reality.

Aha – ‘reality’!

Reality is produced by the whirr and clunk of the mental machinery as it processes a never ending stream of sensory signals about the immediate social and physical environments. And some of the processes are governed by hard wiring (instinct) while others are learned.

• Do you have a mind/brain fit for purpose in the Euroamerican 21st century? 
• Where do you sit on the continuum stretching from parochial xenophobia at one end to Big History at the other? 
• For how much longer will the euroamerican model be the dominant one?

• What do you think? 
• Why do you think this way rather than that? 
• Can you change?

Hesitant rebellion

The planet is not yet a perfect place. Most of the present prickly problems are a result of the recent rapid rise of the hyperactive naked ape. But there are still 7 billion years before the planet is completely destroyed. Surely we can make the world a better place in that time frame!

Humanity has evolved biologically and culturally at an enormous rate in the last 200,000 years. Changes in body and brain have included a capacity for language. This has made it possible for at least some of us to think in increasingly complex ways.

For about 90% of our time on the planet we lived as hunters and gatherers in groups of about 50-100. Different groups constituted themselves differently and there was competition for limited resources. There was group selection and survival of the fittest. Within groups there would have been the concept of US facing up to THEM. There would have been conflict and tension within and between groups demanding that attention be given to status and hierarchy.

We are here in ever increasing numbers. This is a sign of success. But there are limits on the carrying capacity of the planet. Expectations for everyone to consume like a middle class American cannot be met. Humanity must downsize its expectations. It would be good to have fewer people consuming less.

Having fewer people should not be a problem.  In the developed countries family size is greatly reduced. If we can solve the poverty problem (children are your old age pension) the population problem will take care of its self. For example when I was an impressionable youth I committed to zero population growth and contraceptive devices. I am now an over sixty SINK (single income no kids) – and there are no regrets.

Reduced consumption may not be as tough a problem as it seems. The desire to consume is mind made. It can be unmade through mindfulness. Frivolous fads and fashions come to be viewed for what they are – implants of the advertising companies. “The noise which men call fame, the dross that men call gold.” Step back. Think about thinking. Notice what you are noticing. Frugality arrives by itself as if it is built into the genes.

We spent 200,000 years of cultural evolution living in small groups of hunters and gatherers. Particular behaviours came to be hard wired into our systems. We developed a stone age mind and most of it is still with us today. But, by taking thought, it is possible to nurture the useful stuff and to leave the less useful bits to wither away.

BUT – mind change is not as easy to do as to say. For example, I was born into the upper working class in the rural NE of Scotland in the middle of the 20th century. My default position was to view my elders and betters as the good and great. Those in local and national authority were to be respected and obeyed. This was classic stone age stuff – status and hierarchy.  But happenstances arranged an education and thus a passport to positions in far away corridors of power. I rubbed shoulders with the elders and betters in various cultures and saw that they were rarely good and great.

The mismatch between expectation and reality made me anxious. I was not ‘born to rule’ ie I had not been encultured by Eton and Oxford like a tortured toff. I was not conditioned to be an alpha male and leader. I was more comfortable in my early work years as a teacher and, later, in a support role, as an education advisor and, latterly, as a trainer of agents of change. I learned to think and feel in increasingly complex ways.

I am now retired on a pension with no wife, kids or mortgage. Renunciant frugaltity rules. Much time is spent subjectively investigating mindfulness. And I am a massively unread blogger.

Through being a better meditator, I become a better person - especially through links to other secular and spiritual agents of change. Then, in a small way, even though I still hesitate to rebel, the world will be a better place.

Preaching and teaching

Gary Younge notes that Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech truly arrived when he put aside the script and extemporized. And it worked – sort of. It has gone down in history but it was vague enough that zealot’s of many colors make favorable references to it.

In terms of methodology the speech could be seen as an example of ‘flow’. He let the unconscious have its own way. And it came up trumps. But this is not magic. It is not a case of something from nothing. Over many years he had built up his preaching skills – he knew how to engage and excite an audience. His genius lay in his trusting his finely tuned inner forces to rise to that momentous occasion. This is similar to inspirational teaching.

Preaching and teaching. Engage and excite.

In the South Sudan I taught Biology with enthusiasm because I found it to be a fascinating and relevant subject. Most of the kids were from rural villages and they were intimately familiar with the benefits and dangers of the physical environment. Some of their indigenous technical knowledge (ITK) was ‘true’ and some was not. For example it was commonly believed that if a woman eats boiled eggs when pregnant the baby will be born without hair. My teaching from the scientific point of view was to ask, “Is that true, how can we be sure? What are the causes and effects? Show me the evidence!” The kid’s nickname for me was ‘Mr nothing comes from nothing’.

I was in the Sudan in the early 80s and had already been teaching since the early 70s in Scotland, Jamaica and Zambia. There was thus considerable cross cultural experience under my belt and thus expertise to underlie my heartfelt enthusiasm. There is the apocryphal tale of students dodging their other dull classes and sitting in on my energetic biology ones.

The Sudan School Certificate biology curriculum was a mess. I was cobbled together over the years. Most of it was at fairly standard ‘O’ level but there had been later high level insertions especially concerning health. The sections of ecology and genetics were straight lifts from the first year University of Cairo curricula.

The official biology textbook was in Arabic. It contained several errors of fact. But from the examiner’s point of view the correct answer was what it said in the text book. This meant that I had to teach the ‘truth’ but explain that the correct answer for exam purposes was different.

In the end I converted my lesson notes into a 169 page textbook with backup from a 152 page teacher’s guide. This was much appreciated by other biology teachers many of whom were not biology graduates. But lesson plans are like jokes – much hangs in the way you tell them.

But I digress. The underlying issue when facing a communication challenge is whether to give the unconscious its head in ‘Flow’. There is no magic. Nothing comes from nothing. There needs to be a solid basis in experience and expertise.

AND – there is something glorious about creating engagement and excitement. The ‘facilitation of learning’ has the foremost place among contemporary mind shapers but my mind is shaped to keep sight of the good, old fashioned, charismatic preaching and teaching.

Abnormalising the unthinkable

a flu on the wall

If you gave a sound recorder to a fly on the wall of a typical household you might be struck by (a) the lack of force and originality in the conversations, and (b) the large number of commonplace platitudes which give an overall mood that is trite and banal. Sound bites, slogans and catch phrases.

Basil Bernstein gave us the concept of ‘language codes’. Not only do the working, middle and upper classes read different newspapers, they also have different vocabularies and accents. A couple of words is enough to identify a person’s class and to call up the standard thoughts, feelings and associated words. Stereotypes are activated and everyone knows their place. Power to the people!

Note that the codes of the different classes need not be seen as stretching from poorer to richer or from powerless to powerful. Think of Robert Burns the ploughman poet and of the oratorical skills of Jimmy Reid and Arthur Scargill. But these may be exceptional cases.

There is also the concept of ‘elegant power’ and of ‘mind policing’ by the agents of the exploitative business, political and economic elites. The artists and media people are in bed with the academics and the elites to map out an acceptable world view to which ‘there is no alternative’.

Those freelance philosophers who suggest that there is another way are viewed as terrorists and revolutionaries who are insane and need to be locked away. (Some more ‘reasonable’ ones may be allowed as the acceptable face of opposition.)

When power is elegant there is peace for a time but the rich are systematically shafting the poor and the inequities (the lack of fairness and care) gradually become apparent - and inelegant power is used to suppress the popular uprisings. This can get nasty with women, children and innocent bystanders becoming collateral damage. Think of Hiroshima, of the Holocaust, and of the various murderous messes of wars in recent times. Much of what is going on is hidden from, and therefore unthinkable to, most people.

But there is the concept of ‘normalizing the unthinkable’. Responsible sounding ‘talking heads’ make their elitist views known through the various communication channels. But, until very recently, these have been, in large part, controlled by the media moguls and their lackeys.

There is the concept of the ‘people’s journalism’. The social networks made possible by the amazing rise of affordable ICT means that almost anyone can develop their views and make them known. This would include ‘abnormalising the unthinkable’. Morally acceptable ‘truth’ will rise like cream to the surface and may even be recorded by the elitist flies on the wall.

Everyone has a world view that has its origins in their ‘nature, nurture and happenstance. These world views can be more or less parochial and xenophobic. But trite banality is not acceptable in these modern, globalised times. We owe it to ourselves, other people and the planet to think big and to engage in forceful and original conversations. If Big Brother is watching you then have a good story for him.

Doodles – so what?

This morning I found myself flicking through a folder of hard-copy, hand-written diary notes from 2005. The collection included more than twenty elaborate doodles. Most are based on the human head but there are other more abstract ones.

The doodles were produced in ‘flow’. ‘I’ was not present while they were being constructed. The process was therefore peaceful and relaxing. But it begs the question of agency and thus of meaning. Is it a form of creativity, of invention? And if so, so what?

Michael Shermer (2011 “The Believing Brain”) reckons that the human brain is hard wired to see ‘patterns’ in the inputs from the sense organs (including when these are mixed with inputs from memory). The brain is also hard wired to postulate human-like, causal ‘agents’ behind events. So there is an ongoing and vital churn of patternicity and agenticity generating ‘reality’ on a moment to moment basis. It can never be the real reality but it serves its purpose if, when faced with a hungry lion, it allows for fast cognitive closure and thus freedom from a slow paralysis by analysis. (ref Daniel Kahneman (2011 “Thinking fast and slow”).

I am inclined to view my doodles as the result of a wakened brain ticking-over in neutral. In limbo. Well fed and watered and with no immediate threats from social or other sources. There is possibly a research-based literature mapping a typology of doodles and linking this to a variety of psychosocial and cultural factors. I might get round to looking it up!

On a whim I extracted the 2005 doodles from the folder and then photographed and digitally edited them before putting them online using Picasa. You can see them HERE.

Cabbages not cows

There is a dark side to nutrition.

Plants make their own food. They are autotrophic (self feeding) thanks to photosynthesis (light together puts). Carbon dioxide plus water, in the presence of sunlight and chlorophyll, are transformed into sugar plus oxygen. The light energy from the sun is converted into chemical energy in the sugar.

Animals do not make their own food. They are heterotrophic (other eating). There are three types – carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. They get their energy by burning the sugar made by plants. The process is called respiration and it is like photosynthesis in reverse. Sugar plus oxygen are converted into carbon dioxide and water and the energy in the sugar is made available to the animals.

Most plants (autotrophs) are rooted in one spot and, between them, demonstrate a stunning range of ways to ensure pollination and then fruit and seed dispersal. They do not have much of a nervous system but they have ways of responding to changes in their immediate environment. Growth responses are called tropisms and these come in various flavours eg phototropism (light), hydrotropism (water), geotropism (gravity)

Most animals (heterotrophs) move around to find food. They therefore have sensory systems (eg eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin etc) which enable perception of good things (eg food) and bad things (eg predators). Most animals also have locomotor systems that make it possible to move through their particular medium – land, sea and air – in response to perceptions.

lion teeth

Heterotrophic nutrition requires a digestive system. This involves a tube connecting a mouth at the head end to an anus at the other end. Dead plants and animals are taken into the mouth where they are physically broken down by teeth and passed along the tube to where they are chemically broken down by enzymes. The good stuff is then absorbed through the wall of the tube and taken to the liver for processing. The waste products are compacted at the rear end of the tube from where they are periodically egested.

All mammals have teeth and intestines but there are differences in the details depending on whether they are carnivores (dogs and cats), herbivores (cows and rabbits) or omnivores (mice and pigs). Human beings have the teeth and guts of omnivores. And as a species we evolved as hunters and gatherers with a very varied diet.

SO … what is it about vegetarianism? Lions would suffer if they took up a herbivorous diet – that is not what they evolved for. Cows would suffer if they took up a carnivorous diet – that is not what they evolved for. People would suffer if they took up a herbivorous diet – that is not what they evolved for

OR … does our omnivorous structure and biochemistry allow us wiggle room? And, if so, why should we wiggle this way rather than that?

We need a good balance of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, mineral salts, water and roughage. And these need to be linked to a healthy life style. But to what end? Which world view is dictating the ‘correct’ needs?

In terms of InterBeing why might it be thought OK to eat cabbages but not cows.

Time for betterment

planet earth

First the bad news:  the sun will go out and planet earth will disintegrate in about seven billion years.

Then the good news: there is still plenty time for individuals to make themselves better people and to make the world a better place.

The idea of ‘better’ includes environmental sustainability, and fair distribution of the planet’s resources. These in turn call for a redirection of capitalism so that there is (a) widespread renunciation of frivolous consumerism and (b) greater commitment to fairness, and to caring for the more vulnerable.

More good news: renunciation comes effortlessly to those people who make a practice of mindfulness. The essence is the idea of InterBeing; of Oneness; of no-self.

More good news: mindfulness is gradually becoming more mainstream.

So what is to be done?

• Help promote mindfulness. Get the word out. 
• Individual practitioners make more time to “just-sit” and they also join sanghas – communities of like-minded souls.
• And then individuals and sanghas blog their stories so as to spread the idea and the practice of mindfulness. This will promote global coverage

In a nutshell:

• practice mindfulness and renunciation
• blog the process on social networks 
• build the community of renunciants and peaceful social activists,
• make more better people and, 
• make the world a better place.

types of questions

"The Buddha divided all questions into four classes:

• those that deserve a categorical (straight yes or no) answer;
• those that deserve an analytical answer, defining and qualifying the terms of the question;
• those that deserve a counter-question, putting the ball back in the questioner's court; and
• those that deserve to be put aside.

The last class of question consists of those that don't lead to the end of suffering and stress. The first duty of a teacher, when asked a question, is to figure out which class the question belongs to, and then to respond in the appropriate way. You don't, for example, say yes or no to a question that should be put aside. If you are the person asking the question and you get an answer, you should then determine how far the answer should be interpreted. The Buddha said that there are two types of people who misrepresent him:

• those who draw inferences from statements that shouldn't have inferences drawn from them, and 
• those who don't draw inferences from those that should."

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/notself2.html

Consilience with the ahumanists

E O Wilson

I am presently re-reading E O Wilson (1998) “Consilience – the unity of knowledge”. He was born in 1929 and is still going strong.

I first came across him about 1975 regarding ‘Sociobiology’ which, if I remember correctly, I linked closely to my ideas of Humanism which I understood, at the time, as following from the notion that ‘mankind is on its own’ ie I was, and still am, encultured to the Naturalist (Bright) perspective.

I am presently at p40 of the book and I have been introduced to a history of mainly Western thought since the Ancient Greeks and focusing on the Enlightenment. Wilson reckons it began well but lost its way.

“The Enlightenment or Age of Reason was a cultural movement of intellectuals in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its purpose was to

• reform society using reason, 
• challenge ideas grounded in tradition and faith, and
• advance knowledge through the scientific method.

It promoted scientific thought, skepticism and intellectual interchange and opposed superstition, intolerance and some abuses of power by the church and the state. The ideas of the Enlightenment have had a major impact on the culture, politics, and governments of the Western world. 

The Scientific Revolution is closely tied to the Enlightenment, as its discoveries overturned many traditional concepts and introduced new perspectives on nature and man's place within it. The Enlightenment flourished until about 1790–1800, after which the emphasis on reason gave way to Romanticism's emphasis on emotion, and a Counter-Enlightenment gained force.” (Based on Wikipedia)

So we are back with the simple minded either/or debate featuring emotion v reason. BUT we can now come at it from the point of view of evolutionary psychology (linked to neuroscience) and this calls for multi-discipline and multistakeholder teamwork.

Around the table we might have, amongst others, biologists, ecologists, geneticists, geographers, historians, archaeologists, paleontologists, psychologists (various flavours), sociologists, anthropologists, politicians, economists, media people, lawyers, philosophers, and a sprinkling of ahumanists

Ref: http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/brights-and-supers.html

Wilson is very quotable: “This is the cardinal tenet of scientific understanding: Our species and its ways of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution.” (Consilience, p33)