Parent Category: Ideas
Category: Philosophy
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This essay is most of all about understanding; what we can know and what we think we do know. It is an outline originally written for my children and I have tried to avoid jargon or to assume the reader's in-depth familiarity with any of the subjects I touch on. I began it in 1997 when my youngest was still a small child and parts are still written in language I used with her then. I hope this makes it clear and easy to understand for my children and anyone else. 

What is this identity you call 'Me'? What is culture and what is knowledge? What is truth? What is goodness? What is success in life? Why are we here? Are there any rules? How do our culture, upbringing and nature work to make us what we are? Can we talk about the 'meaning of life' at all, or simply about 'the presence of life'?

Others have told us most of what we think we know. How can we trust them? Why do we believe what other people around us believe? We tend to believe trusted messengers and to be suspicious of untrusted ones irrespective of the message. How do messengers gain our trust?

Ideas and speculations are fundamental to what it is to be human, unique among the animals of this planet and probably in this universe. I hope you will enjoy mine and find something useful in them.

 

The title: The title is well tried but it amuses me as both a wink to an essay of the same name by John Anderson (of Sydney Push fame)[1] and to Monty Python. Since 1997 I've added and amended it a number of times and as I am now reaching maturity and may not have a lot more to add I've added a subtitle 'things I have learnt' ..

 

 

 

 

Introduction

I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.
All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?
Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him? [2].

This essay has a number of themes. Notwithstanding this insightful quotation from Ecclesiastes (in the Christian Bible and Jewish Tanakh), central to all is my belief that the way to truth and understanding; knowledge and worth; purpose and happiness; is not through an appeal to the authority of wise men of the past (or their writings) but through a sceptical analysis of contemporary ideas and values, some of which do indeed owe their origin to the ancients.

This analysis is central to what I have called The Great Human Project, the understanding and mastering our immediate universe. This is a collective endeavour that gives a purpose to the otherwise fleeting existence of humanity. It goes beyond purely individual goals; like a sporting record; becoming a millionaire or the acquisition of power or fame.

The Great Human Project distinguishes humans from all other animals on this planet through the expansion of real knowledge and collective capability. But to accomplish this we must learn to sort the good ideas from the bad.

The principal test of an idea is its utility in correctly predicting otherwise unknowable outcomes and that it survive our concerted attempts to prove it wrong. Because we cannot personally test every contemporary idea this involves a reliance on trust in others. But I suggest the ways we might approach this problem.

Out of this systematic scepticism we have come to accept those ideas that have been arrived at by 'scientific method' and to reject ideas that cannot sustain 'scientific analysis'. These 'truths' are highly dependent on place and time. As our knowledge changes so does the 'received truth'.

Using these methods it is now believed the universe came into existence in a primal event about 13.8 billion years ago. The earth is a little more than a third of this age; bacteria infected it quite soon; developing multi-cellular plants and animals a little over a billion years ago. Humans, along with other modern mammalian species[3] have been here for about one seventy thousandth of this time. The universe will continue for many tens of billions of years after our sun and earth are long gone, together with all earthly life forms.

Each higher animal (including each of us) is a constantly evolving colony of cells and symbiotic organisms (from mitochondria to gut and skin bacteria). These cells, that come and go during our lives, form the super-organism that is us and service its functions just as they do in any similar super-organism from the 'higher animals' to plants.

Variation is introduced by sexual reproduction, structural variation and imperfect replication. Continuous environmental change favours one design over another. The functional designs for each animal and plant are tested against success in the prevailing environment and the more successful multiply while the less so are reduced.

Humans fill an environmental niche, unique to this time and place, that substitutes social cooperation and the processing of ideas for advanced physical attributes. This has enabled us to move from a highly threatened species, on the edge of extinction, less than one hundred thousand years ago, to world over-population today.

In this sense 'the meaning of life' has nothing to do with us. We are simply an accidental and probably redundant part in the continuum of a series of physical, biochemical and evolutionary processes under the influence of the formative circumstances and present characteristics of this planet. But in this essay I want to go beyond this 'reason for life' to the human experience; our perception of a life of meaning and purpose; and our belief in our ability to be an active agent in the flow of our lives.

Most if not all animals are 'aware'; they seek food and turn from danger. They 'enjoy' being comfortable. Even plants turn to the sun and attach themselves to things and some catch insects. But only a few animals are aware of being aware. As far as we know only humans are aware of ourselves, and others, being aware of being aware. It is this 'meta-awareness', the awareness of our own awareness, that leads us to the illusion that we have a 'mind' that exists separately to our 'body'.

Our intellectual and social capability is a two edged sword; it has given us unprecedented control over our environment but also a grandiose view of our own importance both as a species and as individuals ': for all is vanity'.

 

different words

Source: all cartoons are from The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker 1925-2004, unless otherwise indicated.

I will argue that it is our ideas that distinguish us; that are fundamentally important to being human and to being the person that we are. Just as we are capable of formulating ideas that have utility in improving our survival and wellbeing and that have enabled us to make initial forays to other planets and to alter the fundamentals of terrestrial life itself; so we are capable of holding ideas that are wrong and harmful, indeed the evidence is that we are very attracted to wrong ideas.

In this essay I will try to suggest the ways in which we can escape harmful ideas and value, enrich and enjoy our lives, notwithstanding their fleeting and ephemeral nature.

Although the 'truth' of any proposition lies in its utility this does not mean that it is true in every context. I will argue that all human knowledge is contingent and uncertain. Newton's laws are useful and adequate to for predicting the path of a space shuttle or the next lunar eclipse; Maxwell's equations for predicting the behaviour of light or radio waves; and Rutherford's atomic model is a fair approximation of an atom for use by chemists and biologists; but none of these stands up to detailed relativistic or quantum analysis. I will explore some of these ideas in more detail.

Being human involves a lot more that beliefs about ultimate purpose, creation or 'truth'. We share with other species needs and desires for food shelter and reproduction and like other mammals and communal species we depend on our parents when young and value the support of others.

Other animals gambol and play but we alone have evolved ideas, cultural diversity and civilisation. We alone have organised entertainment; music, painting and literature; we alone value ideas.

I will spend a good deal of time considering what it is to be human, with reference to important thinkers that might profitably be read in the original.

We are a combination of our genes our experiences and our ideas. Like all other organisms we inherit our genes from our parents and our experiences from our environment. As humans we also inherit our ideas from our parents, our peers and the community at large.

Together with the context of our birth and accidents that later befall us, these collectively determine if we will become a scientist, athlete, priest, criminal, king, pauper, diva or drug addict. Yet as I will argue each has his or her place. Each irrevocably changes the future and all that will be; some to a much greater degree than others.

But for each of us, ours is the only universe there is; we each live in our own unique field of perceptions. When we end, all this ends 'all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again'. There is no more.

 

life tradeoffs

 

Each of us has a choice of 'project' for our lives. For some it may be selfish; an Olympic medal or wealth or fame; to be admired for our beauty; to own something; to collect stamps; to spot trains; to play with a ball in public; or a thousand other individual goals.

For others it may be to mobilise society towards the great collective goals; exploration; knowledge; technology; capability. These things cannot be accomplished alone.

A theologian or mystic might 'sit alone beside the fire', like Descartes, and arrive at almost any profound position. They can be independent of society. But even the most reclusive rationalist must 'stand on the shoulders of giants'. I too have stood on many shoulders in writing this essay.

The Great Human Project can only be achieved corporately, with each player taking their part: on the stage; behind the scenes or creating the theatre.

So what can we aspire to in this brief candle? I will let the reader decide. In the telling of these ideas I will touch on the place and importance of our culture, art and religion, personal relationships and love, children, economics and market forces and the impact of new scientific ideas and discoveries on us all.

This essay is written in sections that are loosely linked but stand alone, so you can skip around without 'losing the plot'.

 


Ideas

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify... into every corner of our minds[4].

Ideas are what make us human, not just any human but the human we are; and they are what make humans different from other animals.

All our actions are driven by our conscious and unconscious ideas, whether those ideas are the conscious weighing up of alternatives or unconscious emotions. The way someone thinks of himself or herself, is both an idea and a collection of ideas.

When it comes to art and science ideas are everything. Every conscious note in a piece of music; every deliberate brush stroke in a painting is subject to our ideas. Many more are the result of our unconscious ideas, passions, desires or fears.

 

 

monet
Source: all cartoons are from The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker 1925-2004, unless otherwise indicated.

 

Many ideas stem from our human perception of 'reality'. As we will see later 'reality' itself is a very strange idea.

Even accidents only briefly escape our ideas because we are instantly cleaning up after them; working around them; incorporating them into our next idea.

Like the software in the computer that I am using to write this, many (and maybe all) of our ideas only work in a human brain like ours. We prefer some ideas because we have human bodies that have evolved as animals: ideas about food, friends, recreation, sex and pleasure; a very long list.

Anthropologists now believe that all humans on earth have their roots in a single group who lived in Africa around 100 thousand years ago. This group were essentially the same as us. They lived much like village people in Africa do today. They had ideas and dreams and desires and friendships and fell in love and played and sang and danced just like we do. They were just as bright or stupid or talented or incompetent as we are.

Yet some human ideas, like the ones that allow us to go to the Moon or Mars; to change and swap genes; to repair hearts and brains; to fly around the world; to talk on the telephone; to watch TV or to use a computer; are very new. Many of these ideas are younger than I am. None of these things was possible when my Grandmother was born. 100 thousand years ago mankind had not yet domesticated animals or invented the wheel let alone developed writing.  When they wanted to pass on ideas they used face-to-face teaching, storytelling; song and dance; and drew pictures.

For nine tenths of the time humans have existed we have had the ability to hold these modern 'enabling ideas' but we have held other ideas instead.

The ideas that enable technology depend on previous ideas: movies on photography, in turn on chemistry, in turn on alchemy; TV on radio, in turn on electricity; astronomy on astrology; and genetics on breeding and mathematics, in turn on farming and building and maybe music; and so on.

These are all human ideas. Maybe they could have happened in a non-human brain but it is very unlikely that they would have come from the same starting ideas. These new powerful ideas also depend on the new ways human society has organised itself.

Structure is fundamental to ideas. All our ideas; feelings, memories and beliefs are due to messages passing between the cells in our brains and hence to how those cells are arranged. But the idea you get is very dependent on how ideas are arranged by society (our culture) and upon your place in that society.

It is clear that some ideas are wrong, harmful, result in pain, suffering and hardship and can be evil, while others are useful, helpful, increase access to well-being and happiness and empower people.

It is not very many years since this contrast was at its greatest; when some groups of humans still subsisted as head hunting cannibals, with lives that were short, brutish and diseased, while others lived for well over seventy years in comfortable houses, enjoyed classical music and wrote poetry in their correspondence to loved ones.

Most ideas we now use are less than 500 years old but we still use some, that enable us to live together harmoniously, that are more than 5,000 years old. Humans were just as capable of having useful ideas 100 thousand years ago as today; but with no structure for preserving ideas and passing them on they failed to accumulate.

That it has taken so long to accumulate this knowledge also makes it likely that the development of useful and good ideas has been held back by the success of older wrong, misleading and harmful ideas.

Later in this essay I am going to talk about some ideas about how ideas come about and some ways to tell the difference between 'good' and 'bad' ideas; how we can 'escape from old ideas, which ramify into every corner of our minds'.

 


Bad Ideas

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one[5]

There are lots of examples of ideas that are not good for our health. These range from fashions for smoking (and other drugs) to fashions for body piercing or tattoos and junk food. Others may prevent us finding happiness or personal achievement (or are these ideas that make us promote them as goals?).

Ideas are not 'fittest' because they are true or right or good or beneficial but because they appeal to us, fit well with other strong ideas and are passed on by those able to multiply them most effectively. Hence 'my' ideas are just those to which I have been exposed and which fit best with others I have and all these together form my 'world view'.

 

 

movie ideas

 

Clearly humans are very susceptible to silly ideas. I have already said that we only progress by building on past ideas. It follows that already existing ideas are the powerhouse of our technological capabilities, artistic and intellectual advancement and civilisation.

But in this there is a grave risk. This is that when ancient or even recent ideas gain the status of Truth, these ideas cease to be open to question. Certain historical spokespersons for the ideas of their day are often held to have a special access to certain Truths and become irrefutable authorities for these ideas. Candidates for this special status have included: Moses; Aristotle; Socrates; Pythagoras; Jesus; Confucius; St Augustine; Marx; Darwin; and Einstein.

In everyday life we may fail to adequately question someone who claims to be an expert simply because they have worked in an area or have nothing more than a PhD in some related area. The title: 'Doctor' works magic,

One of the worst of all ideas is the appeal to authority; that certain ideas are beyond doubt just because 'I' or the Priest, the Establishment, our culture, our dreaming (or a God we set up for the purpose; The Bible) says so. The corollary is always that certain other ideas are not to be freely discussed. Authority is an idea that demonstrably holds us back from holding other, sometimes good, ideas.

 

closed to ideas

 

In my life I have seen many occasions when people with so-called qualifications have been seriously wrong when put to the test.

Of course, like all of us, I am often wrong. But it is one of the benefits of being knowledgeable in areas where you not an 'Authority', that you can be wrong without disgrace and right because you are right.

As a result I have learnt from others, more foolish or unlucky than I, never to say, 'I am right and you are wrong because I have such and such authority, position, status or qualification'. Rather you should always put the arguments for your belief and be ready to be corrected if wrong.

The Enlightenment, that I will speak more of later, was the period that marked the beginning of the modern world of scientific and medical breakthroughs.

The first breakthrough idea of the Enlightenment was to make all ideas subject to doubt; including the idea of God and mankind's status as the object of Creation at the centre of His Universe. The second was to evolve a system for testing ideas for their utility (scientific method - logical positivism; discussed elsewhere).

For the great part of the past one hundred thousand years we have been capable of holding any human idea, including how to go to the Moon or decode DNA, but bad ideas prevailed to hold us back. As a result for most of that time we lived lives that were short, brutal, diseased, and conflicted.  Our were ideas constrained by our physical surroundings and our imperfect human senses, elucidated by, often harmful, metaphysical interpretations.

As I have already remarked the oldest technologically empowering ideas are but a few hundred years old the great bulk a few tens of years old. In general these ideas have dragged other ideas and social structures behind them. Our social structures now accommodate IVF and a wide range of new media and communications. Since rejecting some limiting ideas we have cured many diseases and life expectancy and well-being has risen.

I admit to having held bad ideas and I probably still hold many. One common source of bad ideas is the prejudices from our upbringing, early education and bad experiences.

I came to Australia with my parents just after the end of World War Two. The Korean War was current while I was in Primary school and there were strong political and religious (Christian/Christian) divisions in society. We settled on the outskirts of Sydney in Thornleigh, which was still semi-rural. Parochialism, and racism, was strong. Attitudes towards 'New Australians' (including English boys like me), Asians and Aborigines were unreformed.

To fit in to this society we all had to accept certain values. I have had to explore each of these and test it against later experience and knowledge. In this I have found my education, subsequent reading and international work and travel most useful in eliminating at least some of my prejudices; but also in confirming other beliefs and ideas as sound.

Until I met and worked with a wider range of people I was inclined to believe that there was a racial difference between people that justified the prejudice that I grew up with; for example that although Ethiopians could run longer, faster they were unlikely to win a Nobel prize for Physics. But experience and education has shown me that race is no predictor of who will win a race.

As Martin Luther King Jnr said:

I have a dream; that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

There is far less variation in ability between races than within them. The principal difference between individuals is their experience, exposure to knowledge and access to education, based on good ideas; in other words: culture.

In this context a postmodern view is that all cultures and cultural values are equal. This is a bad idea. I have said elsewhere that the only significant difference between a child brought up in modern society and one growing up in Africa 70,000 years ago is that the modern child is born into a civilisation with the established institutions and methods that lead to a different set of perceptions and behaviours.

There is far more to a modern culture than meets the eye. Although modern social infrastructure, like systems of education and justice, the postal system, public transport, electricity, communications and water supply rely on scientific, philosophical and legal traditions that have evolved during 500 years or so, underlying social values and interactions are much more mature.

The cultural values that govern social behaviour; that we learn from our parents and our peer groups, have ancient roots. An Elizabethan would be totally bemused by a mobile phone, a car or an aircraft. Yet Shakespeare's or even Homer's characters still speak to us in a cultural voice we understand; with which we empathise. I discuss culture further later in this essay.

The life you lead is governed by the culture into which you are born. Too often we ignore this when we claim intrinsic cultural values of primitive societies.

While it is difficult to deny a higher 'intrinsic value' for a primitive artefact than say a picture dashed up in a couple of hours by a Pro Hart disciple; or between native music and the work of a group of 15 year old musicians in a garage, these comparisons are made in the context of our culture.

We have art galleries; we have a music recording industry; and we have a cultural art market. Primitive cultures do not. By applying our standards in these areas to primitive cultures we have contributed to the dysfunction of many of these societies and helped make their continued existence in their ancient form impossible.

I do not believe that primitive cultures are the equivalent of ours. Cultures ought to be judged by their results.

Those in which people live longer, healthier lives with opportunities to travel; to become educated; and to pursue a wide range of personal goals, should be judged superior to those in which people are condemned to an early death and a life of squalor.

Yet there are well meaning people (apart from those that derive a living from the exploitation of native people or their artefacts) who defend dysfunctional primitive 'cultures' as if they were noble and need to be perpetuated, even in their corrupted form; and in doing so condemn those who cannot escape them.

Although we have made progress in reducing racism, sexism and religious prejudice, our present culture is by no means perfect either. It maintains a huge 'dung heap' of useless and harmful ideas that it adds to daily. You can actually get a degree in 'alternative' medicine (a contradiction; if a medicine satisfies the test of scientific verifiability it can no longer be alternative).

Horoscopes, gossip, fashion news and sports coverage fill our papers. Pop singers, dress designers, models and sports stars are paid more than medical graduates or engineers. Much of the 'News' is nothing more than gossip, with no immediate relevance to the audience. The advertising industry is expert in purveying nonsense. I could fill a couple of pages.

But perhaps the worst, and most widely held, of all bad ideas is the totally unverifiable, improbable idea that there is a life to be participated in after we die. It is related to the equally unsupported idea that a 'soul' gets handed out to a human foetus (but only a human foetus) at conception that then becomes an eternal feature of the Universe.

These ideas would fall into the wrong but funny and harmless category (like astrology) if they did not encourage religious fanatics of all sorts to believe that antisocial attacks on others will be rewarded in the afterlife (9/11, Bali, the UN Mission in Iraq and McVeigh in Oklahoma City) or impede the development of a world population policy. I discuss this idea at length elsewhere in this essay.

This is a rather bleak conclusion to this chapter so let's move on to something more amusing.

 


 
The following chapter was written with my children in mind - adults might skip forward to 'Perception'

Words

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God[6]

Humans have had words and complex language for at least 100 thousand years. Yet only in the last tenth (some would say one thousandth) of that time have we unleashed their power.

Words and groups of words stand for ideas, but individually they are the ideas themselves. Some think words are the only ideas we can have. Words are certainly essential to what it is to be human – to think in a human way.

For us words have hidden meanings associations and poetry that belies their apparent simplicity.

Consider a haiku of a few simple words:

Road from Banbury
A man spilled from his crushed car
Dead eyes full of rain

A whole drama in three lines. And we know Banbury from childhood. It's where you go 'to see a fine lady upon a white horse'.

Many words are so familiar they seem simple but very few words are simple. In this section I want to show you just how subtle words can be.

The deconstructionist French thinker Jacques Derrida is famous for the saying 'il n'y a pas de hors-texte' or 'there is nothing beyond the text', meaning (perhaps) that our experience can only be through words we inherit; without them there would be no experience; no meaning; no ability to think. I will talk more about this later and I will explain why I think this is going too far unless the word 'word' is used in an unusual way.

 

no verb

 

Some words are like pictures we each understand (mum) sometimes they stand for all the things of that kind (mother) and sometimes their meaning can only be explained with lots of other words (feminine, sibling, mammalian, social security).

Even so, when someone says mum to you, each thinks something different. And you don't quite know what the other thinks or feels about that person. So you see, often people mean quite different things when they use the same words. People reading my words might get a different picture from the one I intended when I wrote them.

If we have owned cats; have watched them eat and lie in the sun and play and fight and have kittens; we know that different cats have different 'personalities'. When we talk to others about cats we might bring these things to mind; and the things special to a particular cat. But if the person you are talking to knows no more about cats than you do about penguins, you might have to do quite a bit of explaining if you wanted to tell them why you feel as you do about a particular cat.

Before a child can read a book, they look at the pictures and they tell a story. Sometimes the story is like the one written in the book. But other times the child sees a quite different story in the pictures; one they make up themselves. In one sense each word is its own picture. As soon as I start using words I have to be careful that the story that I mean to tell is the one my audience will see or feel in my word picture.

Lots of words have two or more meanings depending on when they are used. To understand them we have to have learned the concept that the word stands for. We also have to understand which meaning is intended by looking at the other words around it or at when it is said (its context). 'Cat' is the simplest of words but like many it can only be explained using many other words and then only 'through a glass darkly'.

Many jokes require familiarity with cultural norms or traditions.  This one relies on your recognition of a 'tongue-twister':

 

tongue twister

 

Jokes often rely on using words or concepts out of context or on changing the context unexpectedly.

In the joke 'My dog has no nose' - 'How does he smell?' – 'Terrible' the word 'smell' has two meanings. The joke Relies on the first meaning: the dog can't smell because it has no nose; being set first. The joke is that the second meaning; the dog stinks; is the one intended. Changing the context unexpectedly makes us laugh. 'How does your dog smell'; 'Terrible' is not funny.

This illustrates yet another problem; word meanings are not stable over time. The word 'terrible' has changed its meaning. Once it would have meant that the smell terrified us.

One person not understanding the other causes a lot of the arguments between people. This might be because the words used make some listeners see a different picture or feel a different thing from that intended by the speaker or it might be because the words have no meaning for some listeners.

If we don't understand words we can't use them but they can't scare us either. At one time the names Tyr, Woden, Thor, Freya and Saturn, the gods the days of the week are still named after, caused a feeling of awe or fear in the listener. You might have prayed to Freya for love or beauty. If you used a god's name in a joke or dismissed it you might be struck by lightning or have something terrible happen to you.

Until recently Englishmen prayed:

'Scatter our enemies and make them fall;
confuse their politics;
frustrate their knavish tricks;
on thee our hopes we fix;
God save us all'.

This is the second verse of 'God Save the Queen'. When I was at school it was still the Australian National Anthem and I wondered why we would always sing the first and the third verses only.

Nowadays reference to an almost forgotten God might raise your interest, make you bored or make you think, 'What on earth does that word mean?' In addition to the days of the week other Gods were once feared or revered. Easter is named after the Goddess Estre (of spring; if you don't give eggs and revere the hare on the last full moon in winter; no crops this year; no oestrous for women and animals and possibly no sun in the east).

All words stand for, or are themselves, concepts in the minds of the speaker and the listeners. They only work because when we learn a language we are learning to understand the concept that the word stands for and how and when it is used.

 

thesaurus

 

In George Orwell's book '1984' the ruling party systematically limits the number and meaning of words, corrupts their meaning and revises the history of the events they refer to. This prevents people expressing their ideas or feelings. But it might do more; it might prevent the ideas ever forming; more about this later.

During the war in Vietnam some Americans suggested using the atomic bomb on the North Vietnamese. But it was said that to threaten them without actually using it was useless because the ordinary people there had no concept of an atomic bomb. For the same reason the United States decided to drop the first atom bomb on 200,000 people in Japan rather than demonstrate it on some deserted island. People quickly learnt what an 'Atom Bomb' was.

In some languages nouns that have no gender in English are considered to be male or female. Sometimes the same kind of thing is female in one language and male in another. 'Bridge' and 'key' have different genders in German and Spanish. Studies show that speakers of these languages associate different ideas with these words. They see the female objects as shapely, graceful, poetic or beautiful while the male objects are seen as strong, brutal, reliable, jagged and so on.

Poets (and pun makers) know that words are not just bound to a meaning but they have a sound and a spelling, which are equally parts of their identity. So a rhyme, or a similarity in spelling, might tie two quite different ideas together or set them against each other. It might be funny, it might cause us always to think of two things together (sometimes when we don't want to) or it might even start a war.

 

puns

 

Here are some common examples of rhymes and puns and word use. The quotations I have used are ideas that have special meaning for me. I could have found a much wider variety but I wanted to use some that you are already, or will soon be, familiar with (you will have heard many of them before).

The first is a patriotic defiance of imperial power, when the United States retained their independence from Britain (in the war of 1812)[7]. It gives their flag a very special place in their hearts and still inspires Americans to believe that their country is or could be a Utopia (or at least the best country in the world) and to fight for the ideas that it stands for:

And the rocket's red glare, bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say, does the Star-Spangled Banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

The very threats (bombs and rockets) illuminated their courage and defiance; freedom was fought for through the night (minute by minute); the banner (a message or declaration) is likened to the heavens (star-spangled) and its wave rhymes with 'the free and the brave'.

The Japanese in December 1941 and al Qa'ida on September 11 2001 might have researched this 'birth in blood' better before bombing America; the most powerful country on Earth.

Equally powerful are the following words that also inspire people worldwide:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Although the word 'Life' is redundant (unnecessary) since it is implied by the other words, it adds rhythm and alliteration and makes the phrase a slogan.

The next example is a joke Limerick that plays on the similarity of the words phalluses and fallacies and the fact that Freudian psychoanalysis is obsessed with phallus (penis) envy and sexuality:

The girls who frequent picture palaces
Set no store by psychoanalysis.
Indeed, they're annoyed
By the great Doctor Freud
And cling to their long standing fallacies.

 

 

sexaganarian

 

A poem by Blake, set to music, has become an anthem in England (and elsewhere). It has inspired both Christians and Socialists to seek social reform while at the same time suggesting that England could be the Promised Land:

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

In the next Limerick the rhyme suggests different words to the ones used. But is quite clean, if a little odd, to the 'pure of mind'. Here the words are not even present (though the ideas they represent are):

There was a young maiden of Dee
Went down to the water to swim.
A man in a Punt
Stuck his pole in her eye
And now she wears glasses you see.

In Alice in Wonderland, Pat who works for the White Rabbit is digging for apples. This is a joke for children learning French because in French apple is 'pomme' and potato is 'pomme de terre' or earth apple. Pat is Irish and around a million Irish people died in the late 1840's when there was shortage of potatoes. Alice is full of this kind of multiple meaning.

One of the most famous statements about words and the things they attach to comes from Romeo and Juliet. Juliet has fallen in love with the person and character of Romeo but he has the name (and all that goes with it) of her enemy. Can he be the boy she loves by some other name?

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy...

O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name...
[8]

The audience knows Romeo cannot cast off what it is to be a Montague and it will end badly. To make this point, Shakespeare uses a rose as his metaphor. He is reminding his audience of the Wars of the Roses that tore England apart through feuding between noble houses. Even 'rose' has several meanings.

Words can be rich and they can be terrible. Some people fear words and ideas because they know that they make us what we are (and different to them).

Lolita, recognised as one of the ten greatest books written in the 20th century, is periodically criticised by people scared by its power to influence (many of whom haven't read it). They think that people who do are (often, sometimes?) turned into child molesters. Lolita is about a forbidden, destructive relationship and shows us subtleties in relationships seldom so clearly expressed. The author, Nabokov uses words in the most extraordinary way and has the power to change the way we think about things. It is a book everyone should read.

 

rude words

 

Because all concepts are constructed (made up) from other words there can be no idea that is not a construct. Some thinkers say that lots of things, that are generally believed to be true by us, may be just ideas that our society has made up (constructed) and given words to.

This is one of the ideas behind postmodernism and deconstructionism (see Michel Foucault[9] and Jacques Derrida). Postmodernism uses deconstructionism to oppose theories of everything and to question society's power structures and cultural assumptions. In particular postmodernists are suspicious of science based on 'logical positivism'.

Logical positivism is sometimes called scientific method. I will tell you more about this later. The postmodernists' dislike of logical positivism is a bit odd because postmodernism is pretty well a theory of everything and logical positivism says that nothing can be certain.

People once believed in fairies and unicorns. We believe in atoms and dinosaurs. How is that different? Most scientists think it is different but many postmodernists would claim they are wrong. As I said earlier unless we define the word 'word' in a very strange way, the idea that words or text can fully describe the way we think seems to me ridiculous.

For example if I think about a simple problem like '50 ways to crack a nut' I can do this entirely without words. I imagine devices like pliers or ones that wind-up, like a vice, or ratchets or weights that drop or spring-loaded or pump-up devices. To communicate these effectively to others I would be more likely to draw them than try to write about them but I might have to do both; just to describe ideas I see quite clearly and can play with in my head.

If I ask you to think about the theme to the 'Simpsons', or about a tune you like, you don't put it into words or musical notation, you hear it in your head. If you had to communicate it, you might sing it to me.

If you need to go to the Supermarket you don't have to put the route into words or even think it out, you can go there because you 'know' the way. What's more, you can go there on the way home from somewhere else by a new route. You don't have to go home first so that you can follow your usual route. You have an idea about the relationships of the places, streets or buildings in your head but you don't have to see it like a paper map.

If you think about a picture you are drawing, you don't think it out in words first. You draw your ideas directly onto the paper. Similarly you know a lot about places and people that is never put into words at all. Think about touch and smell and sounds: leaves rustling, sun glinting, water rippling, the feeling of surf, fresh sheets or the smell of fresh bread.

Many of these non-verbal ways of thinking probably evolved before we had words and have gone on evolving since. So words are not essential to thought and thought may well evolve beyond words.

 

 


Perception

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.[10]

I have inserted this chapter as Julia turns eighteen as it provides a quick summary of my philosophy of perception that was not accessible to the five year old I began to write for; but my concept of perception implicitly informs the remainder of this essay.

 

Philosophers discuss perception within two traditional contexts:
Epistemological, the philosophical theory of what we can know; and
Ontological, the systematic account of entities that are assumed to exist in the epistemological context (and the relationships between them).

This is, of course, jargon.  Jargon is the shorthand used between professionals in a field of knowledge.  It has the, sometimes deliberate, effect of excluding those who do not possess the same esoteric (possessed by a few) knowledge.

In a contemporary information management context we have a parallel: Data, a collection of facts - like a list of people and their telephone numbers; and Metadata - data recording how a system stores, processes and retrieves that list. 

You needn't be bluffed by jargon.  For example, most of us these days can understand once obscure medical jargon.  So you and I and almost everyone who has visited a hospital now knows that 'cardiac' relates to the heart (thus myocardial to the tissues of the heart muscle and so on) and 'oncology' relates to tumours and/or cancer. 

Remember, we are all humans and with a modicum of education and a little bit of application most people of above average intellectual ability can understand almost any concept, short, perhaps, of advanced mathematical physics, that anyone else can.  You just have to commit the time and effort.

Thinkers, philosophers, at least as far back as Socrates and probably tens of thousands of years earlier have known that we each construct our own reality. As Descartes and more extremely, Bishop Berkley, pointed out we cannot be certain that anybody, or anything, exists except ourselves. Berkley thought that perceptions only remain consistent from one time to another and (apparently) from one observer to the next because God moderates the process.

There are as many variations on the theme of perception as there are philosophers. Plato thought that there was a higher reality than that we immediately perceive. Hume argued for a position of scepticism in which we cannot be sure of anything; more of this later.

Some assert that the world exists just as they perceive it. This is called a 'naive realist' epistemology. I think this is demonstrably wrong. I think the indirect realism of Ayer and Russell[11] is closer to the truth.

It seems uncontroversial that we do not perceive the world as it 'really' is. We are relatively easily deceived. We accept a series of still photographs as a moving image. We can be made to see the same photograph or movie two different ways; to feel ice as hot; to think salt is sweet; to fear the harmless; to fail to perceive harm; to be tricked by sleight of hand; and many other illusions.

Of course I, like you I imagine, can conjure up fantasies in my imagination. But I can generally tell the difference between dreams, fancy and fantasy and my day to day surroundings. I regard those that can't, perhaps due to the effect of drugs or mental illness, to be psychotic or to be temporarily deceived or deluded. And I know that a little brain damage or drugs often induces delusions of this kind.

 

just dream

 

I am persuaded that you are reading this and therefore exist and you and others have similar perceptions to mine. Although we all inevitably see, hear and smell the same cat differently, depending on timing, lighting and relative position; to say nothing of experience, prejudice and knowledge; it is nonetheless the same cat.

Similarly, I know that I can't see a cat in the infrared or ultraviolet unaided; I can't see the bacteria on its skin. I can't smell it as well as a dog can or hear it as well as a bat. Without testing I know little of its health or breeding. In fact, I don't perceive very much about the cat at all; so if I don't simply ignore it, I need to make a lot of guesses about it to fill out my picture: where has it been, what might it do next? I know that some of my mental story might be similar to yours but very probably there are major differences in our accounts.

I don't just do this for cats. My brain is running on doing this for everything in my perceptual field. It is constantly separating and individualising objects from my visual and auditory fields; mostly without ever bringing the objects to my conscious attention. Why do I regard the cup as separate to the saucer and both as separate to the table? Someone who has never experienced a cup and saucer or table might assume them to form a single object. I can often think back over a recent experience and realise that I noticed a lot more about it than I brought to my conscious mind at the time. Where did I leave my keys?

While I am awake my brain is continuously processing my perceptions and building a 'world view' from them.

When watching TV, even though I see a two dimensional moving picture created by pixels changing brightness and colour my brain has no difficulty identifying the Prime Minister on the news or in saying how many people there are on screen. Even in the middle of a party I can listen to one person or to another in the general cacophony.

My perception of time is even more complex and mediated by my brain. Suppose I want to see a speeding bullet. I know the fastest thing I can see needs to be held within my field of view for about a twentieth of a second, so I can't see it directly. I need to set up an apparatus to photograph it. I will probably follow the usual method of a very short duration flash or a very fast shutter (and suitable optics) and I will get a nice picture like lots you can see on the Internet.

If I want to photograph something even faster I need better equipment. Nowadays even individual atoms have been 'filmed' moving about using a succession of very fast photographs.

So the 'real world', the one I photograph, has a 'present' that is much shorter in time than my 'present'. I might need some very sophisticated equipment to find out if the minimum stretch of time forming 'now' is continuous and infinitely small or if it is a quantum (granular) entity and has a fixed minimum value, determined by the Planck Constant.

When I say 'now' in human terms I really mean a stretch of time during which I formulate the intent to say 'now', assemble my various perceptions and then build my mental story. As we will see elsewhere this could be several seconds or it could be quite short depending on the context. 'Now' is a very fuzzy concept.

If I'm driving at 150 km/h, my present includes a forecast of the immediate future as well as the immediate past, otherwise the world might be a perceived as a series of jerky disconnected pictures (probably very few before one involving a broken windscreen and blood). I can't allow a delay of a second before acting, as in that time I will have travelled nearly 42 metres to my probable death. Instead I allow my skill (brain and body working as one) to take control, I perceive the world to be a continuous moving story in which objects are behaving in a more or less predictable way. I brake or turn before being consciously aware of why I do; but I feel relatively safe. Of course more skilful drivers, and pilots landing a plane, can accurately predict the future well beyond a couple of seconds allowing them to travel at over twice this speed quite safely.

We did not evolve this ability to read the immediate future in order to drive or fly a plane, we need it to simply walk; or eat; or type. All moving animals need it. Watch a flock of birds or school of fish all turn together.

It seems that the present is a very strange place, one we really never perceive. In our minds we live in the past and the future. The present is like the fulcrum of a seesaw that moves long the board under us sometimes ahead and sometimes behind.

Although all animals can do this to some extent, as far as we know humans are the only animals that spend a lot of mental time in the more distant past and future; that make elaborate plans; that savour memories or have regrets. It is not surprising that to some the 'now' of their minds seems so separate to the 'now' of their body.

Nevertheless I am a realist to the extent that it seems obvious to me that the perceptions I have originate in a 'real' world that is essentially the same one that you, and others, perceive albeit from different perspectives and with a variety of differing mental processes interpreting that perception. That real world is the one that is accessible by experiment; that produces consistent results each time it is tested; that contains entities we call cups and chairs and atoms and galaxies; in which apples fall and computers process.

But at the interface we are constantly creating a narrative to make sense of our sensations; our experiences. And all this is mediated by our extraordinary brain that not only interprets the external world but manages and directs many bodily functions as well: how we perceive pain; how fast our heart beats; which hormones wash our cells; are just some examples. How we experience pain; or fear; or happiness; or sexual pleasure is moderated by a process of internal interplay between our brain and the rest of our body.

Medical researchers are very familiar with the Placebo Effect and the need for double-blind testing of new drugs because the test subject's brain is very likely to produce the expected result quite independently of the drug's actual effect, while the researcher is likely to inadvertently reveal which is the drug and which the control; or to misperceive or misreport the results.

The subject's pre-existing state of mind heavily influences the impact of the Placebo Effect. A highly sceptical approach can completely negate the impact of acupuncture for example. But it is real alternative to drugs in many cases. In an MRI brain scan the Placebo Effect can be seen to actually change the subject's physical brain state, and correspondingly, related bodily functions, in the same way as psychoactive drugs.

 

placebo

 

Thus a sincere belief that a faith healer will cure one, or kill one, can have the same physiological effect as a powerful drug (an effect that has been exploited by witch doctors, faith healers and priests since the beginning of humanity).

Research shows the Placebo Effect is considerably enhanced by appropriate psychological preconditioning. In the modern world this might involve a professional certificate, white coats and medical smells (or a TV Evangelist or parting with a lot of money); in pre-historic times might have involved ceremony, a mystical place, sensory confusion or deprivation, dancing and/or mumbo-jumbo.

That our reality is a function of our physical being (bounded by our body) and our wider environment (interactions, knowledge and ideas) seems obvious. Like a computer on a network, your brain interacts with the environment in which it operates. And like a computer, external data forms part of its inputs and outputs in a similar way to its more direct connections with other parts of your body through your nervous and hormonal systems. An external bionic ear with a cochlear ear implant can restore hearing to the deaf; and a user reports that it seems like a part of their body. A skilled pilot or driver feels their vehicle through its controls, vibration, sound and even smell as if it is an extension to their body. They know how wide or high their vehicle is, they can feel a skid and know if an engine is not running properly. In 'fly-by-wire' aircraft the pilot's feel is restored to the controls so that she can sense an imminent stall or turbulence.

Similarly we may have a feeling about our family extending beyond the bounds of our own being; we sense our child, sibling or partners' pain or joy from the clues and feedback they provide to our experience.

In some situations the external can seem more relevant than the internal and this is particularly the case when it is anticipating or remembering experiences. This applies both in the 'now' of immediate pain or pleasure and in the longer term processing of say, post-traumatic stress, loss or happiness.

Reality must be contextual and for each of us 'reality' has to be a unique experience. But it is surprising how often this mundane realisation is treated as revelation and variously disputed, venerated or interpreted as evidence for people existing beyond our bodies, in philosophical and religious writings.

It seems obvious and trivial that for everyone 'reality' is in our head and for each of us it must be subtlety, sometimes extremely, different. This reality begins when as children we realise we can do things that change our world; we are no longer simple observers. From that moment on, this increasingly complex universe we create in our head; the tale we compose; is the only reality we have. Creating it has evolved to be the main function of human brain, and it ends for each of us when our brain stops.

I can, and I assume that you can, mentally stand outside our bodies or imagine an internal 'homunculus[12]' that looks out through the windows of our eyes. But this does not need to be explained in some metaphysical way.

I accept it as obvious that my computer is quite a small machine but becomes much bigger when I log onto a network. It can connect to vastly more data and can use other computers to do some or all of its processing for it. Thus it becomes part of a metaphysical supercomputer that exists in 'cyberspace'. But I do not think this is heaven or that it departs mystically to another realm. It is still here, CPU fan running, and if I remove the power or injure it physically or even programmatically it will cease to function.

It seems obvious that the same can be said of a person; that each of us participates in an experience that extends well beyond our physical bodies. But I see no reason to believe that this is mystical or that our perception of the 'real' is anything but a local mental process. It need be no more than a purely functional outcome of the physical interaction of around ten billion neurons (more about this later).

Indeed my computer is much more able to extend its 'out of body' processing than any human can. It can functionally tap into many others and carry out substantial parts of its processing within a remote host, without even knowing where this is or how it carries out its functions. We have constructed these machines, and their increasingly complex network of relationships, for this very purpose, so that we too can 'hitch a mental ride' beyond the physical monitor, mouse, microphone, camera, speakers or keyboard.

Using more sophisticated interactive haptic and 3D interfaces, for tactile and visual communication, gamers can already enter a new increasingly convincing artificial reality in 'cyberspace'. And amputees can already use such devices to restore feeling to an artificial hand. The otherwise disabled can partially restore other lost senses (like basic sight) by drafting and stimulating nerves elsewhere, in place of those lost.

But again, I do not pretend that an organised collection of electronic components has some separate 'mind', as opposed to the process in which it participates, or that any of this persists, independent of its physical existence, if I turn it off.

That our mind interacts with the universe beyond our physical body, and forward and backward in time, is a simple matter of fact; if we came with a 'user manual' this would be described as part of our functions; like the functions of any machine. It provides no evidence for a mind-body dualism; or for a belief in another separate, unperceived, metaphysical world.

 


Experience

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience[13]

Our ideas and words may be what define us human but ideas do not make us alive. Other animals, plants and even individual cells are alive. Many of these living things could be described as more successful, individually, than we are. Some trees are longer-lived, much larger and command more of the earth's resources than we do.

All living things experience life; they may not be able to put this into thoughts or to have complex ideas but to survive they must be able to respond to their environment and have at least some sort of memory. At the simplest level this memory might be just that those individuals that respond appropriately survive and so this survival strategy is stronger in their group.

We might argue that a tree or bacterium can experience events without comparing the experience with an earlier one or without trying to work out what it means; but even they seem to learn from experience and to respond to their environment. The more complex the plant or animal the more need it has for learning and to be able to respond to its environment (or vice versa).

Quite a few animals seem to experience life very much like we do. They seem to have feelings and emotions. When we watch a cat lying in the sun or when we play with a dog, we feel that we understand their experience; it's like our own.

We know or feel that animals have some kinds of thoughts; they tell us that they want food or to go for a walk; they have friendships and enemies; they find ways of doing things without being taught. Some animals seem to have more complex thoughts than others. Many animals respond appropriately to circumstances they have never encountered before. Cats are very good hunters; dogs can round-up sheep; chimps, other apes and some monkeys have self-awareness similar to ours and appear to empathise with others.

In our culture it is common to hear feelings contrasted to ideas or beliefs. Listening to the radio the other day I heard an interview with an ex-priest (now dying of AIDS) who was asked about his belief in God. He replied that, 'I no longer believe in God; I now 'experience' God'. Children may be told to 'experience life' or to 'get in touch with their feelings'. In Star Wars Luke is told to 'Let Go! Feel the Force'.

The idea that pure experience is the essence of living is very old and is still very common. A number of religious sects practice abstinence, physical hardship or pain to achieve a greater awareness of God or 'reality' or 'self'.

Followers of the Marquis de Sade believed that 'natural' passions even of a sexually harmful, painful or brutal kind should be embraced to live life to its fullest. Hippies of the nineteen sixties like Timothy O'Leary argued that reality was heightened when he was 'high' on acid or other drugs.

Epicureans, followers of the teachings of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, argued that pleasure is the supreme good and main goal of life (and an antidote to fear of the afterlife). Epicurus preferred intellectual pleasures to sensual ones but later followers often reversed this.

Many ordinary people believe that their life is best understood as a series of experiences; meeting friends, swimming, eating, missing the bus, visiting Rome, getting caught in the rain and so on.

 

artificial life

 

Some believe that they are only living to the full when they are having some extreme experience. They might like risking physical injury or like extreme sports like skydiving, bungee jumping or white water canoeing. They may like taking financial or sexual risks or they might take drugs or like to party. Some of these look for ever stronger experiences: sexual; pleasurable; mind altering; or painful. Sado-masochists, serial killers, sexual enthusiasts, seekers of religious ecstasy, drug takers, gamblers, sport and exercise addicted and even the lovers of fine foods are each in their way living for the next experience.

Others believe that religious experience, revelation, or the experience of nature (getting back to nature), is the only thing we can really know.

Counselling and psychoanalysis and many 'New Age' and religious 'formulae for living' stress 'feelings' over 'analysis'. Some of the adherents believe that experience is only real when it is about feelings, emotions, reactions, which are thought to be different to ideas, thinking or 'intellectualising'.

When we watch children growing we can see that they feel things in a 'purer' way than do adults; they have the feelings they were born with, with little or no thought involved. These feelings might be pleasure in snuggling or suckling; or a pain in the tummy.

It used to be popular in Europe to believe that wild humans 'savages' were 'children of nature' and lived entirely by experience; that they had no deep or civilised ideas that corrupted their innocence. Of course this belief in the 'Noble Savage' quickly evaporated when people got to know other races and discovered that they have just as many ideas and complex beliefs about the world as Europeans do.

Similar arguments were made by the educated (the writers and recorders) about people of different classes; the working classes were supposed to experience life rather than think about it; intellectuals were incapable of experiencing life as it 'really is'.

Typical of this view was the English author DH Lawrence who argued that ideas can get in the way of experience and that this was a kind of failure to live. According to Lawrence, and many other writers, the rural workers of the past were nearer to living life 'as it should be lived' because its members were not (believed to be) so bound up in ideas or knowledge. Nor were they sacrificial to the money god, like the new middle class (although they may have been seen as beasts or cannon fodder to their masters).

The car ploughed uphill through the long squalid straggle of... blackened brick dwellings, the black slate roofs glistening their sharp edges, the mud black with coal-dust, the pavements wet and black. It was as if dismalness had soaked through and through everything. The utter negation of natural beauty, the utter negation of the gladness of life... all went by ugly, ugly, ugly... Primitive chapel, primitive enough in its stark brick... Wesleyan chapel... of blackened brick Congregational chapel... the new school buildings... gravelled playground inside iron railings... the suggestion of a chapel and a prison. Standard Five girls were having a singing lesson...: a strange bawling yell that followed the outlines of a tune. It was not like savages: savages have subtle rhythms. It was not like animals: animals mean something when they yell. It was like nothing on earth, and it was called singing... What could possibly become of such a people, a people in whom the living intuitive faculty was dead as nails, and only queer mechanical yells and uncanny will-power remained?[14]

This was written in 1928, similar passages can be found in contemporary American literature like 'The Great Gatsby' where industrialisation is a kind of corruption and the 'Great War' had recently displayed its horrors.

Writers like Lawrence argue that we should just experience the beauty of a flower without analysing it; as soon as we classify it eg by counting its petals we are intellectualising it and this destroys the purity of our initial experience; its beauty. Modern science is to be feared - we should get back to our animal (natural) roots.

This all sounds quite reasonable; I can experience life without thinking too much about it; but can I? Isn't all our experience felt in the context of previous experiences and our ideas, physical condition and knowledge?

 

familiar form

 

Can we apply the same rules to music or a painting? These were created through the ideas of their makers. Surely we understand and appreciate the work better if we know something about music or painting? Our enjoyment is improved not destroyed. I would argue that the same is true in nature; more understanding increases the value and enjoyment of our experience.

If I show you a spider or a snake you may experience fear but only if you have something in your past that makes you fear spiders or snakes. You can just as easily be taught to experience wonder or admiration of nature. If you have a snake as a pet you may feel protective and loving towards it.

When you ski you may feel quite comfortable or have no particular emotion when others experience fear. As you get more experience things that once scared you are no longer frightening. This is why some people, who want to feel daring, need to do more and more dangerous or difficult things.

All our feelings are like this: we can only experience them in relation to other feelings. There is no doubt that we can just enjoy those things that animals do; relaxing, physical exertion, sleep and so on, but as soon as we start relating to others or to our own past we are dealing with ideas.

Friendship, love, hate, laughter, excitement, sorrow, fear, pain, pleasure, birth, sex, death and revelation are just some of the feelings that signify human experience; but can we feel any of these without recalling a past experience or something we have been told; without it depending on ideas and leading to knowledge?

Later in this essay I am going to look at some of these ideas in more detail. Then I hope that you will agree with me that our experiences are very bound up with our ideas. Once our brain has begun to grow we humans can't have pure experiences; every experience is felt in the context of our ideas formed by past experience, our inherited characteristics (eg taste preferences, innate fears, sexuality) and the things we have been taught.

Because our nerves take a finite time to communicate and our brain takes time to register these feelings, everything that happens to us is a recollection of something in the past. As we shall see, it is clear that 'I' am a result of a complex interaction of thoughts and experiences. What's more, the senses that give me information do so through a lot of processes before the conscious 'I' gets that information. Sometimes this takes microseconds and at other times, minutes. You know the joke:

'How do you make a blond laugh on Monday?
...Tell them a joke on Friday'.

Everything we know comes to us via our senses but, unlike some organisms, we humans can never have any experience that is not is felt in the context of our previous experiences or subject to our existing ideas. Indeed far from seeking 'pure' experience it is human to seek understanding; and it is the quest for knowledge and understanding that distinguishes us from animals.

 


Knowing

We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. The real nature of things we shall never know.[15]

Thinking humans have realised for thousands of years that we don't see the world as it actually is. There must be things we are not seeing or that we are not seeing correctly.

For example nearly 2,400 years ago Plato proposed the theory of 'forms' or pure ideas that lie behind the world of senses; that we see only shadows of. This idea has been influential ever since. It was imported to Christianity (via St Augustine) and to Islam and is still believed by many today.[16] That 'reality' is different to perception is a common theme in Science Fiction.

If our perceptions are wrong what can we know 'for sure'?

You can say that you know that two plus two equals four because that is what 'four' means (one plus one plus one plus one and this is the same as two groups of two). In the same way you can say that you know that 'the sun is somewhere in the sky during the day' because that is what the 'day' means (the time between sunrise and sunset). There is no need to look; if the sun isn't there it isn't the day. These statements must be true because of the meaning of the words used.

In philosophy they are said to be true 'a priori' (from a cause: the day is the time between sunrise and sunset; to an effect: the sun will be somewhere in the sky during the day).

If we say we 'know' that there are trees in the back garden it is probably because we have seen something in the back garden that we recognise as the kind of thing generally called a tree. But if we are not looking at them when we say it, we may need to be pretty sure that trees are not in the habit of walking off when we are not looking. You couldn't say, 'I know that there is a bird in the back garden' unless you could see or hear it (or you had locked it up or stopped it leaving some other way).

In philosophy this kind of knowledge is called 'a posteriori' (from effect: the image in your eye and brain; to the cause: the 'thing' that looks and behaves like a tree). You can only know these things by experiment (looking in the garden). Because a priori statements must be true and a posteriori statements need to be tested; a posteriori statements are more interesting and more useful.

350 years ago René Descartes wanted to know what we can know for certain. He wrote the words Cogito, ergo sum, in Latin this means, 'I think, therefore I am'. This was apparently an 'a posteriori' or experimental truth that had the status of an 'a priori' truth, because it can't be wrong. Philosophers argue about this but individually we each can say, 'something exists that I call myself', even if we can't prove anybody else exists. Maybe I have made up everything in the universe, including you, in my mind; whatever that is. 'I' may be an illusion but something exists.

 

descartes
I think therefore Descartes is

 

Since Descartes wrote 'The Cogito' people have tried to find other things we can know for certain but it turns out that we can only know most things on the balance of probability. They might be 'very likely true' and sometimes they are clearly wrong.

The word 'know' has a number of different meanings. If I say in the street, 'I know that person', I generally mean that, 'I recognise that person'. If I say, 'I know the way to the kitchen', I mean that, 'I recognise (or I can work out) where I am now and I remember (or I can work out) how to get to the kitchen from here'. In a similar way I might say, 'I know how to make a cake' or 'I know how to use a computer', meaning: 'I remember and understand how to do it'. I can do it again even if things are a bit different next time.

None of these is the same thing as 'knowing' that there were dinosaurs. We only know that there were dinosaurs because other people that we believe have told us so. Maybe we should say we 'believe' that there were dinosaurs. Almost everything we know is this kind of rather uncertain knowledge (about animals and stars and planets and atoms and the environment and other countries and how a car works; just to name a few).

The past, in particular, falls into this area of uncertain knowledge. First, our own observation of events as they happen is frequently limited or incomplete; what did happen? Next, different people at the same event see it differently. Then, some people at an event deliberately lie about it or exaggerate or make it more interesting when they retell it ('put a spin on it' as journalists say). After all that, our memories are notoriously faulty and can easily be manipulated so that we can become convinced we experienced things that we did not. This is the basis of so-called recovered memories, re-birthing experiences and the like, that are planted in the victims heads by the unscrupulous or naïve.

I have deliberately put these types of knowing in this order because they are less and less certain. The first kind really doesn't tell you anything new; just that you understand the idea behind the words. The second kind depends on your understanding of the words and believing that the things you see or hear or feel or smell are real; that you are not being tricked or dreaming or mad or on drugs. The third kind depends on these things and also that you remember and understand things. And the last kind relies on all these things and on other people telling you the truth or on your being able to tell when they are wrong or lying.

So to know things this last way you have to work out if other people are telling you the truth. This is very difficult. They may be deliberately lying to you or other people may have lied to them without them realising. Nobody may be lying but they might be wrong for other reasons. People are often wrong about things. It might be that the words we use and the concepts they stand for are wrong. Often we are just ignorant; no one knows.

One way we do this is to decide if we can trust them. Most people believe a University professor, a teacher, a priest or journalist more than say a sales person. So if a sales person tells us something that is true and a professor tells us that it is not, unless we have some other way of checking, we will tend to believe the professor.

 

untrust pride

 

The order in which we trust them might in turn depend on how we were taught by someone else. Many people believe that a priest is the most plausible of all. Most believe an encyclopaedia more than a TV show and we believe some newspapers more than others.

In recent times some radio commentators have been passing themselves off as journalists, when in fact they were sales persons. As a result people, who would otherwise have been justifiably suspicious of what they were saying, may have believed them.

I know that if I had been brought up in the thirteenth century, and had been one of the fortunate people to get a good education, I would accept as an absolute and obvious truth that: 'God made the world in seven days and placed it at the centre of the universe'.

As you go through life you will find yourself constantly amazed by the messengers that other people seem to find plausible. But why do we have different views?

A lot of our knowledge, belief and experience are tied up in the words we use and how we have learned to use them. This is why I talked about words first. You had to learn what a cat is before you could use the word cat properly and so did any person you want to talk to about cats. The same goes for atoms, dinosaurs, love, God or government.

We can only have some kinds of complex thoughts because we have the words to express them and we only have those words because someone before us had similar thoughts.

Knowing changes as words change and little by little we can change our words or make new ones and know more. If all words and ideas are available to us we can use the useful ones and not use (but don't completely forget) the ones that don't seem to have much use.

Scientists test ideas to see if they are useful. One way is to see if ideas or propositions can be used to predict something (if they can't they don't have much scientific use) then to see if the thing they predict actually happens. This is known as scientific method or empiricism.

Many of its ideas go back 250 years to a Scottish philosopher, David Hume. 250 years seems a long time but it is only about three modern lifetimes. British, German and American philosophers like Locke, Kant, Wittgenstein, Russell, Dewey and Popper, have refined them since.

Empiricism says that any statement that cannot be tested is meaningless. It argues that all we can know has to go back to the things we can observe (things we see, feel, hear or smell; maybe with the aid of an instrument like a microscope) and the relationships between them.

Earlier I said that the postmodernists are unhappy about Logical Positivism. Like empiricism Logical Positivism argues that scientific theories are hypotheses that must be testable by observation. It adds that the test should be experiments designed to falsify the hypothesis. If a hypothesis survives all efforts to falsify it, it may be true.

If this is so, no scientific theory can ever be fully tested because we can never test a hypothesis enough. So science, nor anyone, can never prove an idea beyond all doubt. Everything is in some degree of doubt but we can know some things more than others.

 

lets assume

 

The hypothesis of Logical Positivism is of course itself subject to the same kind of doubt and stands ready to be changed or improved if we find a better method. In the world of science and technology these methods have applied selective pressure to our ideas for two centuries.

Because of the idea of empiricism we are now able to think in ways that no one has before, in the hundred thousand years that mankind has been trying to find out why we are here. This is the reason we can now do things that we could never do before; like going to the moon, sending e-mail or changing the genetic code. But one of the outcomes of empiricism is that we have confirmed that the world is a lot stranger than we used to think it was.

At the subatomic and universal levels scientists now talk about quantum weirdness and more than three dimensions. There are other complex things going on, including the conservation of quantum information that are difficult to understand. We can't see atoms, or the particles that we deduce that they must be built from, and we do not feel time or gravity in a way that makes logical sense when we consider all the evidence. The way we feel and see our world is very human; and not anything like it must be. I will discuss these things in more detail later.

Empiricism is a method of finding out which ideas are useful in a practical way and which may be more useful as insights into how people think and feel and need to believe in our culture. It tells us that astronomy is useful to science and understanding but astrology is only useful to sell media and hope and to make people feel better.

Thomas Kuhn has argued that scientists do not make fundamental discoveries by systematic application of Logical Positivism. He suggests that fundamental discoveries are those that break with 'accepted paradigms' in the history of science.

A scientific paradigm can be likened to a jigsaw puzzle; all the pieces must fit together to form a coherent picture. Finding a verified fact, that does not fit, requires a paradigm change: we must undo the whole area that does not fit and rethink it from the beginning.  So it is important that facts are properly verified: they do not stand alone but as a part of our currently validated 'world view'.

Thus discovering that there really are angels or fairies or that Astrology is valid would require some pretty drastic revisions to the presently verified scientific paradigm.

For example: not long ago computer programs were a lot simpler than they are today. Computer programs were 'procedural'. This means they might tell the computer to do something like 'ask the user for a number; do something to it (like work out the cube root or add it to other numbers) and then print the answer on the screen or save it for later'.

But this was not much good for games. When you design a game you might want a little character to run about on the screen and react to other things (like monsters or rewards) as if it was an individual. This requires a new kind of computer program that creates classes of objects of a particular type (characters, monsters, rewards) that can move about on the screen independently.

These need to react differently in every game you play and seem to have 'a mind of their own'. To do this they need to have computer code that can change some of their characteristics (like their position or colour or size) without changing their basic design (like their shape or how they react to being shot at). This code needs to be owned by the character and to be activated only when that character is created or reacts to something.

This would be very hard to do if every character had to be fully rewritten every time it moved or changed colour. This led computer programmers to invent Object Oriented Programming.

Object Oriented Programming allows a programmer to design a class of objects (like monsters) and use this to create lots of monster instances when the game is run. These inherit the general properties of the monster object from their class but they add their own variations (like colour or position on the screen).

It turns out that not only is this idea good for writing computer games but it also led to programs that use a computer 'mouse' to drag things around on the screen and helped Microsoft to invent 'Windows'. As a result almost all new computer programs are now written this way when just a few years ago they were almost all procedural.

This is just one example of a complete change in direction of ideas and our way of thinking.

At different times in Science and in life we have dramatically changed our basic ideas. People once thought the earth and then the sun were at the centre of the universe. They thought there were only four elements. Until recently they thought that atoms were solid; like little grains of sand. At first people did not accept the theories of evolution or of relativity.

These people were not stupid. If you had lived then, and been an educated person, you would have believed the same things.

It is certain that we will find new ways of thinking in the future. We call fundamental shifts in the way we think about things 'paradigm' shifts.

The interesting thing about these shifts is that we are often quite happy with our old ideas; until a new way of thinking quite suddenly proves to be more useful. You may have seen a picture of a woman that can be old or young depending how you look at it. Sometimes ideas are like this.

Another view is that it is the very failure of old ideas to pass the test of verifiability that result in an accumulation of pressure to look at the data from a different perspective. Empiricism provides the day-to-day test by which data and ideas can be filtered.

The vast majority of scientific discovery and invention requires systematic analysis and not fundamental changes in direction.

 


Life

(Life is) the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic and dead organisms [17].

As this example shows, our culture has surprising difficulty in defining the word 'life'.

The Columbia Encyclopaedia confirms that there is no universal agreement on a definition of life but says that life can be recognised by its manifestations:

  1. organisation;
  2. metabolism (the ability to organise non-living material for its growth and to provide energy);
  3. growth (of its parts);
  4. irritability (response to stimuli);
  5. adaptation (accommodation of a living organism to its environment); and
  6. reproduction (replication to create more of the same).

Organisation is clearly important.

 

 

lifes meaning

 

 

If I took all the atoms needed to make a person and put them into a cylinder (an urn or a coffin?) they would not come to life let alone have feelings, beliefs, knowledge, memories or the power to communicate. A recently dead person is still dead.

Some attempts have been made to define life as an organising principle alone eg:

The power that unites a given all into a whole that is presupposed by all its parts.[18]

Complex organisation (design) is the most fundamental principle of any organism and is often evidence of the presence or action of life.

All machines and organisms are organised but not all are alive. If I took a hammer to this computer (that I am writing on) it would not work anymore. All the parts would still be there but the many immediate and ephemeral processes it undertakes to convert magnetic marks on a disk into this text on the screen would cease due to lost organisation. Its ability to process electronic signals would cease. In this case its 'thoughts' are implicit in metadata, physically represented by switches; representing strings of 32 1s and 0s; held in one of four central processors; each changing state 2.4 billion times a second. Its working memory consists of 64 billion switches.

Maybe life can be defined in terms of the kind of messages living things carry and process.

As Milton said of books:

Books are not absolutely dead things but do contain the potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them[19].

Milton seems to be talking about the message carried by a book.

This computer has both a complex design and can carry many more messages, in many more sophisticated ways, than a book.

Like this computer lots of machines also have the ability to react to stimuli. Take, for example, a set of traffic lights. Traffic lights spend their day reacting to stimuli. They have loops in the road that sense the cars passing over them and buttons for pedestrians to push. They have different programs for different times of day and different days of the week. They can be in touch with other lights in the vicinity and they can react to traffic density in different streets at their intersection and at others around them.

Yet I do not want to say that this computer, traffic lights (or a book for that matter) is actually alive. But like a fossil or a frying pan, their design and the messages they carry are clear evidence that something was alive. If you went to a desolate place and found any of these things you would conclude that someone had probably been there before you. Life is not just an organisation but an organiser.

If my computer reproduced itself one day I would be a lot less confidant that it was not alive. If, in addition, future replications were better suited to the environment through survival of the fittest I would be convinced that they were alive.

Computers do do this of course; but at the moment they are not themselves alive because they need humans to do the replication (design and metabolising). In this respect they are like houses or clothes or any other symbiotic technology (idea) that has become a part of the human condition.

Life must be defined in terms of a particular kind of organisation with certain necessary attributes.

A combined definition:

Life is the organising principle in any replicating structure that contains mechanisms to:

  1. collect and process materials and energy for growth and replication;
  2. change its characteristics in response to stimuli and its environment; and
  3. actively manage these processes.

Because even the simplest life forms are highly complex, and because their design or organising principle is in effect a message, all life forms require sophisticated message storage and processing capabilities.

One thing is now certain; life has been on Earth for most of its existence and has survived a number of cataclysms so far. We expect that it will continue long after humans disappear. If phenomenon 'life' has a 'meaning', this meaning preceded humanity and will succeed it.

One of the problems scientists and philosophers would like to solve is how life arose in the first place. We know as a general rule that in our universe energy attempts to even itself out: hot things get colder; organised things get jumbled; the universe is expanding and getting colder. This is called entropy: the tendency to disorder.

Life uses energy differences to create order, to assemble patterns and to store energy by creating substances that are at a higher energy state than they would be without life. These include fossil fuels and many chemicals processed within cells. We do the same with information and in our physical constructions.

Some theorists have pointed out that when life does this it actually increases total apparent entropy because this activity itself consumes energy and accelerates the consumption of energy differences. They see life as a means by which the universe can more quickly reach a fully expended state when all energy is levelled out.

If this is so life is an outcome of entropy, like water running down hill. We can expect to find life everywhere in the universe where conditions allow its existence.

Simple life forms do this well by being very numerous. Complex life forms do it better by adding organisational complexity. It follows that complex human activities that accelerate entropy are simply a response the laws of this universe.

If this theory is correct, we can expect to find other active organising systems that are like life in that they accelerate entropy.

 


Genes

They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence ... they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.[20]

All species that are here with us today are the descendents of the original life forms and have been equally successful at surviving. When we consider life on the planet we see animals and plants that live for hundreds of years and others that live for a few hours; or even less in the case of some bacteria.

So survival as a species does not depend on individuals surviving for a long time but on the way the species has organised itself to survive collectively. No doubt many survival strategies have been tried at some time since life has existed but those that failed have, by definition, not survived.

 As you know, genes are sequences of genetic code that provide the instructions for building cells in animals and plants and determine the relationship of each cell to the remainder.  They are stored and copied on very long molecules called chromosomes.

Chromosomes are long single chemical molecules of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) that are encoded with genes along their length; like the songs along a recording tape.

Thus our genes determine the development and functioning of our organism (the colony of cells that is us): that we are human, our size, shape and colour and our various other natural characterises and abilities.

Human cells each have 23 pairs of  chromosomes (22 pairs of autosomes – one from each parent - and one pair of sex chromosomes), giving a total of 46 per cell.  For convenience the autosomes are numbered according to molecular size (1 to 22).  This number differs from creature to creature but 46 is critical to human viability.  For example three copies of the small chromosome 21 causes Down Syndrome.  An extra copy of a larger chromosome causes the cell, foetus or infant to be non-viable.

Sex chromosomes are described as X (female) and Y (male) because of what they look like under a microscope. Girls have two Xs and boys have XY . We all need at least one X to survive – it contains some important genes.

As with all chromosomes we get one of these from each parent. Thus mothers have two Xs from which to choose (randomly) while fathers have only one X. The Y chromosome of boys only comes from the father (mothers have none); thus the father's spermatozoa that succeeds in fertilisation determines the sex of a child.  We have known this for little over half a dozen generations.

Not all of our chromosomes are equal;  some carry a lot more genes than others and each has a lot of 'none-coding' DNA, the function of which is still being investigated.

Individually genes might decide what colour our eyes are. But particular collections and relationships of genes carry the design for successful organisms and through that design, their survival strategy.

We share genes with almost every living thing. Genes can be taken from plants and put into animals and vice versa. Some of these genes go back to the beginning of life on earth. In this way it is genes that survive not the plants and animals that carry them. Not of course the actual gene, but the message it carries, has been repeated over and over for billions of years. This characteristic has led biologists to see life as the 'selfish' struggle of genes to survive.

Genes like, the tunes on a recording tape, are just message (idea/design) carriers. So this struggle is a struggle of competing ideas (designs).

We all start as one cell that first divides in two then four, eight and so on. DNA tells each cell how to develop, what it will do and how it will work with other cells. These messages decide the kind of cell it will be and if a cell will grow into a tree, the dog that pees on the tree or the person that is the dog's master.

We think that complex life, like trees, dogs and people, evolved from very simple cells that began between 2 and 3 thousand million years ago and have been competing for resources (like, space food and energy) with each other ever since. There are now many kinds of cells and many are very complex; like towns. But it is not the cells that compete to survive but the building instructions; the messages carried in the DNA.

Just as a line of computer code won't work alone or without a computer, messages in genes can't work alone or without a cell that can read them. They need to be part of a successful team. This consists of a cell, to carry out their instructions, and other genes, which together make a complete instruction.

Like this sentence each word alone (although very good in its own way) is pretty useless without the others and by rearranging the number of each and their order I can get lots of different messages and meanings. As I discussed above this meaning might include the way the sentence looks or rhymes or its metaphor or simile.

Successful genes are those that are already members of a successful message in a successful cell, so this message is passed on to lots more cells. Unsuccessful genes do not result in as many cells that can compete and their message is in less and less cells until it is lost altogether.

To survive genes need to be in messages that code for cells that divide quickly, are themselves good at surviving and pass on their genes without errors. So messages that help cells have these properties have won over those that were not so good at surviving over the past 2,000,000,000 years.

One way cells/genes have found of surviving is to build clusters, with different versions of themselves changing to do different things. We call these clusters of cells an animal or a plant. The instructions for building a cell also include the instructions for organising copies of itself into a bird, a bee, a tree or you.

Now all surviving cells are very good at passing on genes and genes are very good at building animals and plants that can, in turn, compete for survival and resources. Everyone and everything alive today is designed and built by successful messages carried by genes; those that survived at the expense of others. We are in that sense the products of the most ruthless, opportunistic and lucky messages, genes, cells, animals and human ancestors.

 

untrusted plants

 

Of course if genes were always copied (inherited) exactly, the very first successful messages would still be building the first successful cells. The planet would have only one kind of cell for each environment and there would be no need to change things until the climate or some other external factor changed to create a totally new environment.

It seems that very slow change was the case for a long time. Replicating molecules took about 1,000 million years to evolve into the first cells and these took almost as long to evolve into the first bacteria and algae. These took a further 3,000 million years to release enough oxygen into the atmosphere to support complex cells. Complex life has only been around for about 500 million years.

In more complex animals genes can change more quickly, new ones are constantly being created and are tested against the old. Genes even evolved sex to speed this process up. Rapid evolution then led to the large dinosaurs about 100 million years ago and to the first mammals about 60 million years ago. Different versions allow different animals to compete for the same resources. If a new version doesn't compete effectively it won't survive; but if the changed animal works better, the new gene will be passed on to new users.

All animals, plants and bacteria on this planet have cells that are the ancestors of the first successful cell (and the first successful designs carried by genes). By looking at these cells we can tell that we all originated from the same original cells (cell?). The family tree of life on earth can be represented by the letter 'Y', with archaebacteria and bacteria at the top and eukaryotes at the bottom. The last universal common ancestor (known as LUCA to scientists) is in the middle. We are in the minority, at the bottom, with all the other multi-cellular organisms (plants, animals, and insects).

So you are the distant cousin of the flowers in the field, the tree, the bird on a branch, the worm in its beak and the bacteria in its stomach.

In all our cells (but maybe only by accident) the genetic information is stored and passed on from one cell to another by copying the way just four chemicals are arranged (in base pairs[21]), over and over again, along long double helix shaped molecules called DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid). Cells are built out of protein molecules. Genes are discreet parts of the DNA message that each carries the instructions for building a part of their cell's protein.

In 1999 a nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans for short) was the first animal to have its genes fully decoded. It has over 18,000 genes, coded within around 100 million base pairs. Roughly 95 per cent of most animals' DNA (including ours) does not contain or control any genes. This non-coding DNA has been called 'junk DNA'; possibly old bits of genes that have accumulated as animals evolved.

This junk DNA has at least one function. During meiosis when sex cells (sperm and eggs) are produced; the 46 chromosomes that we got from our father and mother are torn in half to make 23. But this splitting happens in chunks; just like getting some scissors and cutting the DNA into random lengths. If the all the DNA meant something this would destroy its message. But because the genes are relatively short and scattered down its length the chance of them being cut is small. The junk helps genes survive sexual reproduction and may have other functions, as yet not understood[22].

In 2001 the human genome was mapped (first draft in 2000). The human genome contains 30,000 to 40,000 genes. This is a lot less than scientists had thought before the work was done. This means that some genes must be coding for more than one kind of protein molecule.

One way of thinking about genes is as words that need to be linked together into sentences; sentences that describe an organism. So like all messages, it may not be just the words but their order and number and other genes present that are important. A lot of attributes are probably the outcome of relationships between genes rather than the result of having a particular gene.

An interesting thing is that over half the genes in the nematode worm are also in us. Even more interesting, there are less than 1,000 genes that are different between a chimpanzee and us. DNA analysis shows that chimpanzees and humans share a common ancestor that lived about 5 million years ago while gorillas branched off over 6 million years ago, orang-utans nearly 14 million years ago and monkeys over 25 million years ago. Indeed chimpanzees are so close that some scientists want them to be classified with us in the genus 'Homo'. Yet the remarkable thing is that you or I can program a computer or design a plane but a chimp cannot.

On the other hand when you are eating dinner; reflect that it is at least 1,000 million years since you shared an ancestor with the broccoli.

 


Evolution

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us... Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object we are capable of conceiving, namely the production of higher animals, directly follows. There is a grandeur in this view of life.[23]

Evolution is the way plants and animals change their design if their environment changes or if another plant or animal begins to compete with them for food or territory or when they benefit from an accidental change in their DNA that gives them an advantage over others.

Three conditions are necessary and sufficient for evolution. They are inheritance (or replication), variation and selection. Any system that contains objects with these properties will display evolution. Because this self-perpetuation happens as a result of the way the Universe is (without any need for a plan or external driving force) some scientists have described things acting in this way as 'selfish replicators' (eg Richard Dawkins: 'The Selfish Gene').

It is possible to design a computer game in which objects have the properties of inheritance, variation and selection and then to set it going and watch them evolve. You can even buy one today that uses these rules.

Around one hundred thousand years ago the first modern humans appeared; probably in Africa. It took many millions of years for us to evolve and we have not changed a lot since that time.

We know this because various groups of humans were separated at about this time and some went south through Asia to Australia while some kept going all the way to South America and others to Europe and as far north as the arctic circle; yet we are less genetically different than almost any other species. An Eskimo or native Australian, European or Asian can, with the same amount of difficulty, become a pilot, brain surgeon or concert pianist (that is, a small proportion of us can, with a lot of study and application).

 

ive evolved

 

Similarly, all humans are excellent communicators; can learn to do very fine work with their hands (like needlework or watch making) and all have an advanced mechanical aptitude. Many nineteenth century examples exist of native people teaching themselves to read and write in English soon after being exposed to English speakers.

We can deduce from this that our common ancestors had already evolved the abilities needed to possess all these common skills over one hundred thousand years ago.

So why has it taken us so long to land a person on the Moon?

It is thought that Agriculture required systems land ownership and seasonal planning and this lead to other cultural developments like commerce, writing, specialisations and class structures, building substantial structures, cities and government.

Agriculture seems to have developed in several parts of the world quite independently. The earliest evidence of agriculture is around eleven thousand years ago in modern Iraq. There is also archaeological evidence of agriculture in China and New Guinea as long as nine thousand years ago while it may have been practiced in the Americas up to four thousand years ago[24].

As in New Guinea, agriculture may have developed in earlier times without writing, rulers and cities resulting.

About twenty thousand years ago the sea began to rise and by seven thousand years ago much of the low-lying land, on which early farms and even cities, may have existed was flooded.

Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence hunting and gathering but no evidence of substantial structures (stone buildings, water irrigation canals, granaries, substantial storage systems etc) or writing, before eleven thousand years ago.

So we can conclude, with some certainty, that for the first sixty to ninety thousand years after leaving Africa, the predominant life style of humans on the planet was hunting and gathering; just as it was for native populations over most of the planet's area until 200 years ago.

We have acquired the ability to read and write; to analyse our environment; to construct complex systems and to organise socially; to create satellites and mobile phones; and to sequence a genome; in only the last ten thousand years. The change from hunting and gathering to 'advanced' civilisation is predominantly, perhaps entirely, a change in culture, the knowledge and ways each of us inherits from society, the things a child learns after their birth.

Indeed, the theory of evolution itself has been highly influential in the development of our culture; and controversial, particularly in the US.   This is illustrated by this cartoon from The New Yorker in 1925:

 

evolution crime

 

Most of the technical skills and knowledge required are less than 500 years old. Many have been discovered during my lifetime (the structure of DNA, metal oxide and field effect transistors, integrated circuits, lasers, open heart and transplant surgery; a very long list) and many of the discoverers are still alive. So, again, what kept us? We could have been doing these things ninety thousand years ago.

Anthropologists have remarked that if it can be sustained in a comfortable climate, hunting and gathering is a better lifestyle than being a serf or industrial labourer; provided populations remain at a sustainable level or fall back to those levels during hard seasons. Hunter-gatherers typically work no more than 20 hours a week, have social structures that are essentially democratic and mutually supportive and life can be joyful. On the other hand life expectancy is low, physical injury and disease is common and a lot of time is spent brutally; killing for food and fighting others. It is documented that Australian Aborigines feared being forced to live like the Europeans (they were initially observing a penal colony) and consistently resisted early attempts to 'civilise' them.

Very likely the thing that triggered the first necessary steps to going to the Moon and decoding DNA was selective pressure. Selection, not applied to our genes but to our society; to our ways of doing things; to our ideas. It may be no accident that civilisation originated in areas where climate or the environment changed dramatically and has developed fastest in times of upheaval since; just as genetic development was dramatically altered and ultimately accelerated by past mass extinctions.

Clearly the developments that allowed us to send incredibly brave (or foolish) men to the Moon were cultural (the evolution of ideas) not genes. In recent times the very ideas themselves are causing rapid change and creating their own upheavals; in turn applying selective pressure to our ideas. Much of the rest of this essay is about these ideas.

A scientist, Richard Dawkins[25] first suggested the idea of the 'meme' that is very like the constructs talked about in postmodernism. The theory and study of memes is now growing all over the world[26]. Memes are said to be 'replicators' like genes. Copying someone else is a kind of replicator called a meme. Instead of messages on bits of DNA, memes are ideas, ways of doing things, fashions, mannerisms, stories, pictures, music etc that are copied or handed on from others.

When you copy someone you have replicated (inherited) his or her idea or behaviour. You may do this accurately or you may make some changes (variation) others may then copy you if they like the idea or behaviour. Otherwise they might take up a competing idea or behaviour (selection). An example of a meme is kids wearing their hats backwards. This competes with no-hat or hat-forwards or a different sort of hat style. It also goes along with other memes for that sort of person.

For a meme to have spread three other things need to have happened (just like for successful genes). It had to survive long enough to be copied, most of the copies had to be accurate and there needed be lots of copies made. This can happen because lots of copies are made each time (maybe an admired TV star dressed this way) or because it gets copied from one to another very quickly (maybe it is really easy to turn your hat around).

Some behaviour is not due to memes. Memes are copied ideas and behaviour. Things we found out by our own experience (the way most animals learn) or behaviour programmed by our genes, are not memes because they do not fulfil the requirements for a replicator. Of course others might copy behaviour first based on trial and error and it then becomes a meme.

Postmodernists talk about words as socially determined constructs. Words can also be seen as memes or parts of memes and they evolve. Each of us can make small changes or add new meanings to words. But these changes can't be so big that they seem nonsense to our listeners. Our listeners will try out these changes and if they find them useful they will hand them on to their listeners and so the word will evolve in society, just like animals and plants do in the environment. The way we do things can evolve in the same way.

Modern Biology holds that all life is perpetuated by the mindless struggle for survival by our genes. We seem to be the outcome of their survival strategies. If this is so, and if ideas work the same way, then ideas too may mindlessly seek to survive. Just as the richness of life seems to be the outcome of genes struggling to survive, so our ideas and culture may be nothing more than the expression of 'survival of the fittest' memes.

Like Genes, memes would succeed because they are good at multiplying not because they are in our interests or good for us. They are selfish. But we have to use the available memes to think and communicate and to find purpose and these ideas are the successful ones that have spread throughout our culture.

That ideas themselves are driving the process worries some people because if we ever make computers (or computer programs) that evolve without our aid, memes may find computers a better medium for their future survival and evolution. That would threaten our existence or make us the unwitting slaves of technology.

In any case humans, as we know us, probably have a very short life expectancy as a species with genes and memes at work changing us. The average lifetime of a species is somewhere between one and fifteen million years; depending on complexity and exposure to change.

Even without memes at work, mammal species are created and at a very high rate, compared to the average for other animals and plants. We have already been around for about 100,000 years. We might expect to die out or evolve into something else well before the next mass extinction[27].

 


The Environment

Welcome! Sulphur dioxide
Hello! Carbon monoxide
The air, the air
Is everywhere
Breath deep, while you sleep
Breath deep[28]

From biblical times until the Elizabethan era the human population of the planet is believed to have fluctuated between around 150 million and 400 million depending on food availability, disease and social stability[29]. With the advent of rationalism, leading to the application of science in engineering and medicine, exponential population growth in Europe and parts of Asia began in the 17th century.

By 1970 world population was approaching 3.7 billion and many people had become aware that human over-population was starting to threaten the planet's environment. Large areas of forest and native plants had already been cleared for food (grains and grazing) and the production of mind altering substances (for example the production of tea, coffee, grapes and grains for alcohol, tobacco, coca and opium).

 

trees alone

 

The use of fertilisers, insecticides, and the disposal of sewage was adding nutrients and poisons to streams that fed into the sea. Industry expanded rapidly on the back of population growth and technical innovation. It too had become very polluting.

Private cars, a luxury item in 1950, had become essential for residents of rapidly expanding sub-urban areas, replacing bicycles and public transport as the main means of urban transport. Indeed much of the earlier public infrastructure became uneconomic and was either subsidised or removed (trams). The burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas was beginning to increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at an alarming rate. A number of other greenhouse gases were also being generated in increasing amounts including fluorinated hydrocarbons (causing ozone layer damage).

Many commentators began to state the obvious; continued exponential growth was unsustainable.

In 1972 The Limits To Growth was published by The Club Of Rome, this projected that unless something was done population would continue to increase exponentially to around 10.5 billion by around 2060 and would then collapse catastrophically back to about 6 billion by 2100.

The unpleasant early death of 4.5 billion people would be occasioned by a dramatic decrease in the world's exploitable resources, including food production, the collapse of government and industry and consequent starvation and disease.

This report was criticised as being far too pessimistic by other think-tanks, including the Hudson Institute, led by Herman Kahn. With hindsight it can be seen that The Limits to Growth concentrated too much on the depletion of resources and too little on the impact of pollution and human inroads into previously uninhabited areas.

The increase in carbon dioxide, already evident, and its potential to alter the climate is noted but given a minor role because the report assumes that the world would soon use nuclear power for most energy production. In this the Club of Rome and Herman Kahn agreed. He believed that we were headed for annihilation not because of resource depletion but because of third-world nuclear proliferation and mutually assured destruction (MAD).

In 1980 Herman Kahn published a report on the future of Australia called 'Will She Be Right?' This reflected a rather pessimistic view of Australia based largely on his having seen a bumper sticker in Sydney saying 'I'd rather be sailing' and the fact that Australian workers get paid more for being on holidays than when working. This led him to believe that Australia was a kind of 'Lotus Land' where no one cared for anything serious. Nevertheless the New South Wales government subsequently engaged him to provide a strategy for the future of the State (a State Plan), which he never saw implemented. Herman was a very large man and died prematurely; as did the diminutive man who hired him. They were so comical together (large and small) that it would be nice to think there was a Heaven just for the ongoing rye amusement.

Like all predictions of the future, both of these reports got a few things right and an awful lot wrong (so if you read this in 30 years please forgive me). For example The Limits to Growth projects that by 2000, China would have a GNP per capita only 0.9% that of the US (and nearly 40% behind India) and Japan would be over twice as wealthy, per capita, as the US.

In fact today, per capita, US Americans (with Australians not far behind - contrary to Kahn's prediction too) are around 37% wealthier than Japanese, Chinese are six times wealthier than projected and per capita, Indians are less than half as wealthy as Chinese.

Population growth was the one prediction that was very close to the mark. Although birth rates have fallen in the developed world since 1970 this has had little impact on population change, due to people living longer.

In this cartoon from  1964 the US population is shown as 192,512,078.  By 2012 this had risen to 314,959,000.

 

another one

 

Rates of growth in Africa and some areas of South America are higher than expected despite regular famine, disease and/or social breakdown.

This essay was originally written in 1997 and revised in 2008 when I wrote:  

In consequence the world population is a little over 6.6 billion in January 2008 and on current trends will reach 9 billion by 2042[30], pretty much in line with the Club of Rome projection. But, as Herman Kahn correctly objected at the time, world resources have not run out[31] due to technological advance and substitution resulting from market forces (see elsewhere in this essay).

Today some predictors of the future say that we are facing six metre rises in sea level and the extinction of a great number of the world's species. The focus is almost entirely on the role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. All of the other environmental concerns appear to have faded into the background.

Politicians are more likely to argue for population growth to stimulate the economy than against. Religious zealots actually sabotaged attempts at population control throughout the second half of the twentieth century, subverting any attempt to promote female education, contraception or abortion, in Africa, South America and the Indian sub-continent with the consequent early, unpleasant, deaths of many already and many more to come. Fortunately for the world they did not succeed in China.

It is as if we tried to defuse 'the population bomb' and failed, so now we have given up and are treating just one of the symptoms; global warming.

That the climate is getting warmer is a fact. There is a good deal of evidence that temperature naturally fluctuates wildly over a long period of time due to our changing proximity to the sun, solar activity, the disposition of the continents and volcanic activity. According to ice cores and other evidence atmospheric carbon dioxide levels closely correlate with global temperature over very long periods of time.

Recently, and very dramatically, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased (from .031% in 1950 to .037% today) and are still rising. This may be due to more carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere as temperature rises or to human generated carbon dioxide causing the temperature rise through the 'greenhouse effect' or both. As the present rapid rise corresponds to a six-fold increase in human generated emissions (resulting from the rapidly increasing consumption of fossil fuels) almost all experts now agree that 'anthropogenic carbon dioxide' is contributing to the temperature rise.

The environmental implications of warming are many but the geographical change in agricultural viability as rain patterns change and sea level rising are most often focused on.

Sea levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age as land based ice has melted. The total rise has been very large (120m) and about eight thousand years ago separated New Guinea and Tasmania from the Australian mainland. The sea certainly inundated early human habitats and migration/trade routes. Some populations were isolated and became seafarers (Polynesians); some may have been wiped out.

For the last 7,000 years the rise has been more modest (2 to 3 mm per year for the past 6,000 years) or in old money about a foot in the past century. In many parts of the world movements in the earth's crust are much faster than this. For example in the Mediterranean, towns that were ports in Roman times, like Ephesus, which was once on a navigable bay, are now many kilometres inland while other Mediterranean ports are under water.

The alarming scenario is one in which positive feedback (more greenhouse gas release, changed ocean currents and reduced solar reflection from snow) accelerates warming to the extent that the Greenland ice sheet melts. Apart from the Antarctic ice sheet this is the last great land based ice sheet (melting sea ice actually lowers the sea level) and has the most potential to result in sea level rise.

Nevertheless despite recent temperature rises resulting in accelerated glacial activity in Greenland, sea levels have not yet reflected any significant deviation from the 5000 year trend and where islands are becoming inundated there is generally an alternative explanation.

The big change would come if the Antarctic Ice sheet melted as well, as sea levels could then rise up to 200 metres (the pre-glacial high). London, New York and Rome, to name a few, would have to be abandoned and rebuilt inland. But to begin melting the main Antarctic ice sheet would need a global temperature rise of such a great amount that global food supplies and/or civilisation will collapse first. The present mean annual temperature in Antarctica is around minus eleven degrees Celsius and for this to begin to melt Sydney temperatures would need to be around 30 degrees in mid winter. Indeed increased water vapour, and thus precipitation, would probably add to the Antarctic sheet long before it melts and help to slow the sea level rise.

A few reputable scientists still dispute anthropogenic climate change but no one can dispute the impending impact of an extra three to four billion people over the next forty years on land use, resource needs and energy demand.

Human beings are headed, headlong, for a fall and global warming is just one symptom of this coming disaster. There are just too many of us. If we seriously want to protect the environment we should take immediate steps to get back to our population in mid 1960's; about half what it is today.

I remember that time well.  The world population then, and the consequent consumer market, was perfectly economically viable.  It could have been grown substantially by achieving greater global income equity; increasing demand and thus consumption and thus production.  But of course this requires special effort and policy direction, whereas simply allowing exponential population growth to occur naturally requires no such intervention.

Given the number of poor in the world, there is absolutely no need to increase population to stimulate demand for goods and services.  Growth in production can be more equitably be achieved by giving the poor the means to become productive, through universal education and the increased application of technology, to earn incomes and thus to become consumers.  

 

 

cooped up

 

Alternatively, and far less desirably, they can simply be given sufficient means (money) to fulfil the role of consumers. The latter practice is surprisingly commonplace and is achieved through social security at home and foreign aid internationally.  

When such aid and social support serves to encourage the education of children and personal development of adults it is far more beneficial, supplanting the need for population growth, but when it simply provides unearned wealth to the elite and supports populations that have grown to a size that can no longer feed themselves, it rots the social fabric and is the harbinger of future famine and death.

Concurrent with the alarm over global warming is a resurgence of concern about future energy availability.

The harnessing of energy has fuelled technological progress and allowed human civilisation to free people from slavery and serfdom.

Early non-human (worker/slave) energy sources included fire, domesticated animals, windmills and water-wheels. But in the industrial revolution fossil fuels became increasingly important. The development of modern fertilisers, broad acre agriculture and bulk food transportation all presently rely on fossil transport fuels and chemicals. Thus fossil fuel sourced energy has underwritten present population explosion.

These fuels are finite. A number of experts believe that we have already consumed over half of the available extractable petroleum oil and within the next 100 years may extract over half of the available coal.

The discovery and development of a new source of non-fossil energy is becoming critical if we are to save the environment and circumvent and the premature deaths of millions of humans.

There is presently a limited number of realistic contenders.  In India, SE Asia South America, China and some other countries there is a possibility of increasing the output of hydroelectricity.  In some places wind power can play a part and in others geothermal or ocean energy (wave, tide currents) could contribute but none of these can supply more than a few percent of global energy needs.  

Solar energy has great potential to make a similar contribution to, say, hydroelectricity that is presently by far the largest renewable energy source.

But the only realistic replacement for fossil sourced base-load electricity is nuclear power.

Present nuclear power based on fission depends on a finite resource (uranium and perhaps thorium) but if we can move to fusion (based on deuterium) then reserves will satisfy human needs for the lifetime of the species.

We have already proven the practicality of fusion power in the hydrogen bombs of the mid 20th century. But as yet we have not found a way of releasing this energy safely on a continuous basis. More science and engineering is required.

Solar power is theoretically sufficient to meet much of our electricity needs but it is highly variable during the day (and night) and the seasons; and is affected by clouds. 

This means that in order to satisfy energy needs in winter many more collectors are required than are necessary in summer; particularly in higher latitudes.  Many parts of the world are too distant from good high altitude sites; daylight hours are too short in winter; or frequent cloud cover makes solar power impractical.  Simply to provide continuous supply over 24 hours some form of energy storage is required and this degrades efficiency and is typically more costly than the collectors themselves.   Thus the cost of using solar energy to supply base-load electricity is inordinately high.

Depending on design location and aspect, collectors may capture only a few percent of the available energy (typically less than 10%).  This means that solar energy needs to be collected over a very wide physical area. Simply mounting thousands of square meters of collectors can be very expensive.

At the present time these panels convert solar energy to a tiny percentage of Global electricity production; less than one percent.  But electricity is not the main source of energy consumed. Electricity delivers just 36% of Global energy requirements.  Well over half of Global energy supplied is consumed as transport; other engine; cooking; and heating fuel.

Of course solar energy already powers life on earth; predominantly through biological photosynthesis in plants; that are subsequently consumed in the food chain; and in a limited way as fuel.

Already used to supply ethanol, biological photosynthesis has the potential to provide a more significant replacement for fossil oil and gas.

Whereas photovoltaic solar panels require some further advances in materials science to lower cost and improve efficiency, lowering the required surface area, biological photosynthesis requires further developments in genetic engineering combined with extensive field testing before these engineered organisms could be released on a scale sufficient to provide a meaningful input to our energy needs.

Again, more science and engineering is required.

 

lab life

 

Does any of this matter anyway? I don't expect to be here in 2050 and those of you who are will be in a first world, largely protected from starvation and disease. You may, or may not, have to fight off the starving hordes of teenagers from over populated neighbours, or move out of low-lying coastal areas (which would probably improve town planning and boost the economy anyway).

But as I have shown elsewhere in this essay, the Earth was around for a very long time before we arrived and will be around for a long time after there are no longer any humans in a form recognisable to us. The same can be said for all other present species on earth.

This brings us once more to questions of morality and our responsibility to the future. These questions are also examined elsewhere in this essay.

Does the environment have an intrinsic value that is external to the needs of humanity? Do we see the extermination of all chimpanzees to be an evil but the elimination of malaria to be a good? Most people would say so, but why? Both are examples of life based on the standard DNA model. Both have their unique characteristics. Both have evolved over the same period of time from a common ancestor.

In a billion years from now the universe will still be going strong but human beings, chimpanzees and malaria will be gone, together with every other plant and animal we know today. Others may be in their place or the earth maybe a sterile place. What we do today will have an impact on this future but which of these futures will be better than another? There is no way of knowing.

But I would like to suggest some principles we might adopt.

First is enlightened self interest. We should not do anything we believe will result in avoidable harm or suffering to other humans. Everyone is going to die but I would argue, as no doubt would you, that each should have the opportunity to live a long, happy and fruitful life and not die young of terrible disease, violence or starvation.

In particular, we should not allow the population of the planet to reach an unsustainable point, from which it must fall back, encompassing the deaths of millions or perhaps billions of people. We should not; through poor management of farms, fisheries, forests or waste products; cause the extinction of important species that sustain human food supplies or provide us with other benefits.

Second is to support The Great Human Project, the understanding and mastering our immediate universe. This project goes beyond the mere survival of as many humans as possible. The project gives a purpose to the otherwise fleeting existence of humanity. It goes beyond purely individual goals I have discussed elsewhere; 'Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies[32]'; becoming a millionaire or the acquisition of power or fame. It goes beyond building oneself a huge mausoleum, like the Great Pyramid of Giza (Cheops: 'not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops'[33]), a temple to the Gods, or conquering a nearby country or people.

It distinguishes humans from all other animals on this planet and raises us from a mere brief step in the evolution of life - from amoeba[34] to the final extinction on this planet.

Learning to control our environment is a significant part of this Great Project and deserves our full support, just as we should support astronomers, physicists, biologists, engineers and philosophers as well as the many other scientific and rationally based disciplines that go to the expansion of real knowledge and human capability.

Third is a humane approach to other species. As far as possible those that we are going to use or kill for our purposes should be managed or farmed to live healthy and productive lives, protected from the usual dangers of the wild. We should leave naturally occurring wild animals alone.

Emily will expect my standard argument here, so here it comes. Several billion cattle exist today and enjoy their lives in which they socialise, reproduce, enjoy child rearing, are cared for medically and protected against a painful lingering and/or violent death precisely because we eat them. If we did not they would never have lived and indeed the same goes for almost every commercially farmed animal[35].

Perhaps our compassion needs to extend to both plants and animals as we all come from the same ancestor. Who is to say that a plant does not enjoy good soil and growing conditions? At a cellular level there is no distinction between plants and animals; a cell thrives or it does not.

But we need to consume other species to survive and the more humans there are the more other species are consumed and/or driven to extinction, ultimately to our own demise. Again we need to limit human population so that a substantial part of the planet can be reserved for wild species where poaching is prohibited and human encroachment is controlled.

 


Our Brains

'The Answer to the Great Question... of Life the Universe and Everything...' 'Is... Forty-two', said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm... 'I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.' [36]

One of the problems for humans is that we may be just smart and knowledgeable enough to understand that existence is a mystery but not to be able to solve it.

Because we (or something) are here, it could be that we already have the answer but don't understand the question. This is maybe to do with the way our brains work or because of the words we use.

 

head contents

 

Most of this essay is about ideas and things that happen in our brains. But I started out by making the point that most, if not all, of this happens because of the animal (machine) that we are. We cannot forget our bodies.

Indeed, our bodies obsess many of us. This may be with good reason. Our body allows us to participate in the world. It helps to attract a mate and to influence others, it helps us to earn our living and to engage in activities that give us pleasure, it collects information gives us our experiences. If we suffer serious ill-health many of these qualities of life also suffer.

As you and I know, our brain is the centre of our intelligence; the place in which our thoughts arise. But it may surprise you to know that right through the middle ages until the period of enlightenment, many people still believed Aristotle's view that the heart is the centre of intelligence; or sometimes the spleen. Although some medical and scientific authorities realised the importance of the brain as early as the 11th century, and a significant dissenting view was published in the 16th century, the prevailing view in the Church and many universities remained with Aristotle.

It really was not until the 19th century that developments in microscopy and neurology finally put paid to the Aristotelian view. In the Bible (KJV) the word 'heart' appears 975 times. The word 'brain' appears 0 times.

When you appreciate this level of ignorance it is much easier to understand how intelligent people were mystified as to the source of human intelligence and thought. It is easy to understand why some believed that these functions must be independent of the body, possibly mystically located heaven. This might be an independent 'soul' that exists separately to the body; that is in some way on a temporary visit to a body; or involved in a 'trial of strength' on earth.

Modern medicine demonstrates that if I give you a new heart, kidney, face or leg, you will still feel like you. You will have had a new experience and maybe have some new abilities like being able to walk up a steep hill, but you will feel like the same person. We know this because this sort of operation is commonplace and we can talk to people who have had it done or experience it ourselves. But we know that even a small physical change in the brain can give people a new personality or remove abilities they once had.

It seems that your personality, what you feel, what you believe, how you react; everything about you; is stored in (and expressed by) the physical arrangement of (and relationship between) cells in your brain and to a much lesser degree by nerve cells in the rest of your body.

If I take the hard-drive out of this computer and put it into similar machine its entire content, settings and appearance are transferred and the other box becomes this computer. Because two machines are physically similar, all I have to do to swap a computer's identity is to transfer the information stored on one machine to another.

Many dislike using the computer analogy or metaphor in relation to the human brain; we need to remember that there are very significant differences despite interesting similarities.

But as I have already discussed; analogies, similes and metaphor are fundamental to ideas and thought.

No two people are physically identical but we can be confident that if we transplanted a brain and related nerves from one person to another their personality, their sense of self, would move to the new body.

Suppose the brain (with linked nerves) was from a champion tennis player. Then initially they might feel like someone who had suffered a serious injury or a mild stroke; unable to hit the ball as well with muscles that won't respond. But given a good healthy body and with some intensive practice they might soon be back at the US Open, whereas the same body with its original brain may have had no aptitude for tennis. Our sense of 'me' would go with our brain.  We would have no serious concerns if our old body was then incinerated, just as we are unconcerned about the fate of our surplus hair left at the hairdresser or of our previous heart after a transplant.

Our brain apparently evolved from the brain of the very first crawling things. We still have a primitive brain at the base of ours. Our brain is built of structures called 'neural networks'. Neural networks are a system that has evolved to allow biological organisms to learn by experience. Ours is the most advanced neural network we know about.

Neurons are special nerve cells connected together so that they trigger, like the flash in a camera. When other nerves in an organism sense something neurons 'fire' in a particular sequence so that they cause the organism to do something (like run or change direction). Each neuron grows long strings to others that look like roots and branches growing on a seed. One type is called axons and the other is called dendrites. They work like wires connecting by sockets called synapses. Neurons are like little batteries and send electrical signals when they are activated. When these reach the synapses they produce chemicals that cause matching sockets to send a message to adjacent neurons. These are the chemicals that are interfered with by mind-altering drugs (like opium derivatives, LSD and amphetamines).

The pattern of connections in an animal's brain records memories or experiences or determines behaviour. Julia and I have built a little robot with just two circuits each equivalent to a group of three or four neurons that runs towards a light. Spiders have many thousands of neurons. Human brains have about ten thousand million neurons[37].

A spider might run away when it sees your hand but might run towards a fly in its web. This is because its neurons have been set (by survival of the fittest) to run away or hide if something might be big enough to eat or squash it but to run towards food that might get away. All spiders with the same genes build similar webs and will react in much the same way because in small short-lived creatures their genes mainly program their neural network. Yet their webs are highly individualistic and the same spider will build them differently depending on the changing circumstances during construction, just as the same ant will not forage in exactly the same way on successive outings.  Bigger animals with bigger brains and longer life spans may need to learn to recognise and react appropriately to the difference between a hand and a bird.

Some informed people still believe that it is impossible for a machine to think (to reason or to have a soul). But a majority now supports the observation: 'I'm a machine and I think'. It's not that a machine can't do it; it's that the machines we presently build can't.

 

playing possum

 

There are more neurones in your brain than grains of sand on a moderate sized beach. Nevertheless this number is not out of reach of modern electronic technology. We can model simple neural networks in a computer to see how they work. These models already have some uses like recognising speech or handwriting. But as they get more complex even our biggest fastest computers (similar in design to the one that I am using now) can't match their speed and ability. If we want to match a large neural network like our brain we will have to use a differently designed computer.

If I show you the picture of a cat and ask you what it is, you can tell me instantly. Suppose I give you a ball and ask you to throw it at any cat picture you see as I put it up, but not at any other picture. Not only can you do it for lots of different cat pictures you have never seen before, but as soon as you throw the ball you can tell if it is going to hit the picture or miss it. To you this is simple. Your brain does it easily. But a present-day computer can't do this. If I ask you to multiply 234 by 567 you will take some time and might get it wrong. You might think that people who can do sums like this very quickly are very 'brainy'. But a computer can do it almost instantly.

The above was written in 1997. Since then big strides have been made in artificial intelligence (AI). While still much slower than a human brain AI now (2018) supports face recognition that is superior to most human observers in that it is tireless and potentially ubiquitous.  Many other once exclusively 'human' abilities, like driving a car in a random and complex environment, will soon be overtaken by AI. Yet this intelligence will remain 'artificial', until it become self-aware.

We know that in many ways our brain is limited by having evolved from animals that only needed to survive. We have trouble trying to imagine more than three dimensions, our brain is quite slow and we see only a limited number of colours. If it was any faster or we saw more colours we would not be able to see movies, television or computers; they would be an annoying series of poor quality pictures.

All mathematical relationships within a given number set are derived a priori from the (usually limited) initial assumptions.

Suppose you had a brain like a present-day computer (you don't your brain is quite different) then if I asked you 'what is the cube root of 578?' the answer would pop into your head instantly, just as it does in this computer when I click the mouse button.

This would be because all the mathematical relationships springing from the initial assumptions would seem just as obvious as a cat does to you now. More interestingly, it wouldn't matter which way you went across the equals sign. It would be equally instantaneously obvious that the cube root of 578 is 8.329954, as it would be that the cube of 8.329954 is 578.

It seems that the language of mathematics can describe lots of things in the universe. But a lot can't be described this way because a lot of the Universe appears to be random; including some numbers; and it also seems that knowing some things prevents us knowing others. Heisenberg first proposed this in relation to sub-atomic particles but it seems to apply to a wide range of things and to be to do with how much information is allowed to be carried by an object.

We can use computers (artificial brains) for more than just solving mathematical problems. We can use them to test scientific hypotheses. I have already used the example of testing evolution by natural selection. This suggests that if we only had the right kind of brain a lot more things might appear obvious to us.

Some time, probably in your lifetime, the first thinking computers will be developed and then we (or they) may know more about this.

Evolution has resulted in larger and more complex neural structures that still allow innate knowledge/ experience (like the spider's) to be passed on from one generation to the next but also allow animals to learn to react differently; to learn by experience in their own lifetime.

Animals, including us, use a combination of instinct and experience so that we can decide quickly on basic or limited information. Research into how animals make decisions suggests that they don't even attempt to weigh-up all the evidence before making a choice to run, attack, eat or mate. Innate knowledge or experience particularly relates to survival, to finding food and to reproduction. It often governs seemingly complex relationships with others of the same species.

Humans are particularly good at learning from others. In addition to the behaviour programmed in by our genes and that learned by experience, we are excellent copiers (mimics) and have evolved many methods to learn from the experience of others; like talking, mimicking, drawing, writing, music and mathematics.

Whenever we learn a new thing it is stored in our brain as a pattern in the connections between our neurons. No doubt people with the same belief, information or skill have similar patterns in the cells in their brain.

Again using a computer analogy, when I store this paper on my hard drive, as actual physical changes in the magnetic state of the coating on the drive, it will be split up by the software and put into available spaces. These spaces depend on the other data stored and the things I have recently deleted or changed. So every single computer in the world stores the same paper differently. But the computers can all recover the data and reproduce the text without error because they can reverse the process.

Everyone with the same idea has made actual physical changes in their brain such that the idea can be expressed in future but those changes might not involve the identical neural connections. So a belief in the North Pole, understanding 2 + 2, or the ability to play cricket has an actual physical structure in your brain that's unique to you.

Our brain is remarkable. By comparison with other similar sized non-extinct animals it is very large and has more complex organisation. Anthropologists have found evidence of a number of other large brained hominoids that are now extinct. At least one of these, Neanderthal had a brain larger than ours. Large brains may not in themselves ensure survival as a species.

Modern humans seem to have coexisted with Neanderthal for many thousands of years.  When I originally wrote this, last century, before the genetic mapping of both the human and Neanderthal genome, I said: "but genetic evidence shows that we did not interbreed (if interbreeding was possible, like lions and tigers, horses and donkeys, the children might have been infertile)[38]."

Now that a Neanderthal mapping has been done this turns out to be wrong [see also footnote 38].  The completion of the first Neanderthal genome has shown between one and four percent of early European and Asian ancestry to be in common with the Neanderthal; indicating limited interbreeding soon after modern humans first left Africa.  A lot of work followed over the next decade and by 2017 New Scientist was able to report on the work of three of scientists working on the discovery:

Neanderthals still control our genes

Andy Coghlan [New Scientist - 4th March 2017]

THEY may have been extinct for 40,000 years, but Neanderthals are still affecting the illnesses some people develop and how tall they are. This is thanks to the Neanderthal DNA inherited by people outside sub-Saharan Africa from ancestors who mated with our cousins some 50,000 years ago.
Evidence that Neanderthal control of human genes endures comes from an in-depth analysis of DNA from 214 people of European descent in the US. By comparing their DNA with that from Neanderthals - whose genome was sequenced in 2008 a team led by Joshua Akey at the University of Washington in Seattle identified which Neanderthal gene fragments had survived and were still active in 52 different types of human tissue. 
"Neanderthal sequences affect how human genes are expressed, including for height and health... Strikingly, we find that Neanderthal sequences present in living individuals are not silent remnants of hybridisation that occurred over 50,000 years ago, but have ongoing, widespread and measurable impacts on gene activity," says Joshua Akey.
"The results add to increasing evidence that these effects are often the outcome of changes to the genetic switches," says Tony Capra of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
"The implication is that these variants that came into the human gene pool around 50,000 years ago are still affecting human biology," says Sriram Sankararaman at the University of California at Los Angeles.

 

Some have even speculated that certain other 'outside sub-Saharan Africa' traits, like blue eyes and red hair, are remnants of Neanderthal DNA.

This cartoon from 1927, mocking 'Bright Young Things', turns out to be surprisingly prescient:

 

neanderthal evolution

 

Neanderthals had fire and tools, seem to have had language, and were artistic. They left grave goods and were probably religious. They were more physically robust than us but did not develop our high technological or cooperative social skills. Consider the social difference between chimpanzees, who hunt and defend territory as a group, and individualistic gorillas.

These social skills enabled us to learn to cooperatively herd animals and to grow crops, exploiting climate change at the end of the last interglacial, when Neanderthals were still hunting and gathering. But they may have been even better at hunting than we are. They certainly possessed some competitive advantages as they successfully coexisted with us in Europe for at least 10,000 years. 

Hunting and trapping, hominid-style, then herding and farming, requires big brains.  These activities rely on the ability to communicate complex ideas, to learn from our own and other's mistakes and successes, as well as individual imagination and mental dexterity. We can't naturally swim or ride a horse; or use a bow and arrow; or fish; or train a dog but we can be taught any or all of these things.

Assisted by our unprecedented language skills, modern humans can be extremely quick to learn to do some other extraordinary things. Almost all adults can quickly be taught to drive a car at speeds of over 100 km/h or to fly a plane or use a mobile phone. We cannot have evolved to do these things but obviously we have designed mechanisms, cars and planes and phones to match some extraordinary abilities that we have evolved as successive iterations of hominids learned to make tools and handcrafts for survival in otherwise hostile environments: clothes and shelter for the cold, weapons and traps and boats to hunt with and so on.

So we have evolved the abilities to design, make and assemble tiny clockwork mechanisms like watches or do fine needlework. Many of us can design, in our heads, complex mechanical devices of pulleys, gears and levers or know in advance what a billiard ball will do if it is hit a certain way. Many can mentally compose computer code or imagine new electronic circuits.

Frank Lloyd Wright held the three dimensional vision of complex architectural designs for buildings in his head. To the amazement of his colleagues, he translated one of his most famous designs[39] onto paper, without a pause or erasure (complete with dimensions in plan and elevation and with perspective views) while the client was driving to see him.

We have wonderful imaginations for story telling and myth-making honed by hundreds of thousands of years sitting around a fire telling tales and millions of hours, with only our own thoughts for company, waiting patiently for our prey to fall into our trap or an ambush; or to take a bait.

Mozart and Beethoven (and many others after) wrote their music in their heads, complete with complex orchestration, and transcribed it to paper, frequently without corrections, at one sitting. Beethoven wrote some of his greatest works after he was deaf.

When you start to program a computer you will realise that most of what you are telling it to do happens in its processor and memory. Only a few messages and inputs from the user ever appear on the screen. Like a computer, very little of what is happening in our brain comes up on 'the screen' of our consciousness.

Brain research reveals that a different part of our brain processes words that we hear from those that we read and when we listen to a song, the words are processed in one place, the tune in another and the rhythm in a third. Some parts of your body can continue to function even if no longer connected to your brain; they have a mind of their own.

Research into how humans make decisions shows that like other animals we make decisions quickly by using simple tricks or 'heuristics' like ignoring information that experience tells us is not much use or by recognising familiar patterns in events[40]. It turns out that recognising a pattern is often a much more successful way of making a decision than weighing up all the evidence.

 

 

change mind

 

 

Research tells us that if I make a decision to get up from my chair, my subconscious is already preparing for it before I am conscious of making the decision to do it. On the other hand it seems that some conscious thoughts anticipate a result that our unconscious brain hasn't even finished processing.

Even more interesting, if people are persuaded or tricked to do something unconsciously (for example by hypnotism or because of brain damage) their conscious brain will justify the action with some made up reason. They might then be quite convinced that this was the reason they did it; even though we may have seen a hypnotist place a bizarre idea their head, just to amuse an audience. It is as if we had a public relations department making up reasons for the actions of the organisation after the event. It seems that different parts of our brain are working independently of each other and most of this work is unconscious.

When Pooh is composing his song 'Sing Ho for the life of a Bear', he tries to let the song do the work before his brain works:

'Very well then', he said, 'I shall sing the first line twice, and perhaps if I sing it very quickly, I shall find myself singing the third and fourth lines before I have time to think of them, and that will be a very Good Song. Now then:'

Pooh's songs and hums usually come into his head without him thinking about them too much and we can guess that AA Milne is really talking about his own experience when he gives this quality to Pooh. A lot of artists say that this is how they work.

As humans evolved we leant to rely more on education and experience and less on innate knowledge and behaviour. But it is often these basic drives that give us a sense of purpose and achievement.

If we didn't share with all animals a basic instinct for survival then we would not be here today. Humans share with all mammals a strong, genetically programmed, drive to attach to our mother. This is quickly extended to a drive to affiliate with others. This means we want to join groups, have friends, be respected, be liked or even be hated; but never ignored.

Unlike most other animals we are sexually active at all times and care for our children for around twenty years. We have stronger and more prolonged sexual and child nurturing drives than most other animals.

 


Personality

Cause you got Personality,
Walk, Personality
Talk, Personality
Smile, Personality
Charm, Personality
Love, Personality
And of 'cause you've got
A great big heart
So over and over
Oh, I'll be a fool to you
Now over and over
What more can I do?[41]

Personality describes our interactions with the world; our perceptions about, and our relationship to, others; and how we react to worldly situations (our behaviour).

As we each have different biology (genes), upbringing, experiences and knowledge, these perceptions, interactions and responses are extremely complex. Thanks to Kinsey[42] we know that there are as many personalities as there are people. But this does not discourage psychologists and psychiatrists from attempting to classify us into standard types nor does it prevent social engineers and demagogues (Fascists, Islamists, Communists, Christians etc) from attempting to proscribe certain personality characteristics or extol others.

Huxley makes the point that in different cultures different personality types are held to be ideal. He suggests that personality types go in and out of fashion. We see this today in fashions for 'Sensitive New Age Guys (SNAGS)' and 'Metrosexuals'; who might have had a hard time of it in the court of Genghis Khan; or even fifty years ago in Sydney.

Sigmund Freud and CG Jung developed the common psychiatric classifications: Libido (innate sexual drives and the will to live); Ego (social self-awareness); Super ego (socially endorsed ways of thinking and behaving); and the subconscious (or Id).

An erotic neurotic named Sid
Got his Ego confused with his Id
His errant libido
Was like a torpedo
And that's why he done what he did

 

Some analysts believe that they understand personality simply by classifying it. This is like thinking that reorganising your books alphabetically or by author's name or by title or by subject matter adds anything the collection, their meaning or the ideas they represent. Such classification may help us find a book but is only adding to knowledge if it leads to new insights about the content.

Freudian analysis is opposed by the more scientific approach of 'behaviourism' (proposed by people like Watson and Skinner). Behaviourism is famous for experiments like ringing a bell every time a dog gets food, so that eventually ringing the bell alone makes the dog dribble saliva.

As discussed above, our brains incorporate a complex neural network. In neural networks things happen as a result of other things. Effect follows from cause. Reward reinforces behaviour and lack of reward discourages it. On the basis of success we build up patterns of thinking and ways of acting; habits. Behaviourism makes the point, which now seems obvious, that much of our behaviour is learned by experience (consequences).

But behaviourism fails to take into proper account the variations people are born with or how much our personalities are changed by the sharing of ideas. Quite often the relationship between all these factors is very complex.

Psychologists and psychiatrists are interested in the balance of how these influences are reflected in our behaviour and abilities and how these differ from one person to the next.

Throughout the twentieth century people debated the role of nature (our genes) and nurture (our upbringing) in the development of our personality and our abilities; with many taking extreme positions on prejudice alone.  More recently behavioural scientists have attempted to put this on a more scientific basis by studying fraternal and identical twins who have been separated at birth, compared to those brought up together; and now by identifying genes that confer certain traits, abilities and behaviours. 

 

 

heredity

 

Our personality is formed in three main ways:

  1. Perhaps the most important of these is what we are conceived with; the physical structure of our body as formed by our genetic code. We inherit a mix of genes from our parents and grandparents. They determine that we will be human and not a cat or a worm. They also determine many human characteristics. Which are inherited characteristics are most obvious in identical twins. This determines the starting structure of our brain and our organs; including how we appear physically to others and our basic abilities (like how quick or healthy or smart or sexual we are).
  2. Next are the things that happen to us; how others treat us (what happened in the womb, parents, brothers and sisters, place in the family, school, friends etc), what we eat, what we observe and experience directly, the consequences of our actions and, importantly, accidents.
  3. Finally are the ideas and abilities we learn by communicating, the passed-on experiences of others (ideas, memes, words, images, etc).

Personalities also evolve through survival of the fittest. To succeed in the country or in health care or as teachers people need special types of personality. Society rewards some types of personality and punishes others (child molesters, thieves etc). We call this complex process education, experience and even wisdom. Most of our innate behaviour has evolved to support humans being tribal, family and achievement oriented. It also gives us a sense of purpose that can provide a reason for living.

Society encourages and rewards us for certain ways of thinking and behaving. Deconstructionists and post-modernists (mentioned elsewhere) often represent the person as a blank slate upon which culture works (ideas words etc) but this too is naïve, humans are just as driven by their inherited animal needs and innate behaviours as by ideas or learned behaviours. Society rewards beauty and ability and it might be argued that fashions in appearance or ability are ideas imposed by society but there is considerable evidence that beneath this veneer of fashion is an underlying animal appreciation of reproductive, physical or intellectual capability.

We should try to understand all the influences that constrain or direct our behaviour and not be distracted by a doctrinaire focus on just one.

For example forming habits is how our brain works and is essential to learning so we sometimes have trouble with unwanted habits. Genes are an important influence but so is conditioning. The seven deadly sins are all common habits. Some of us are overly acquisitive (wanting to own or control things) some eat too much and others get addicted to drugs.

Personality changes under these many influences and governs how we learn to think. Once set it is very hard for us to think any other way. Edward de Bono makes lots of money by finding ways to change our set ways of thinking. Like books, every personality is different. There may be some broad commonalities but we defy easy classification.

 

 

 


Progress

 

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. [Ecclesiastes 3 1-8]

All progress is technological. [Richard McKie]

 

Today many of us take it for granted that progress is a fundamental characteristic of the world.  Things change.  Most people regard beneficial progress to be the fundamental  role of government. Democracy is about government by the people for the people or in other words to make things better for people.  Improvement requires change and together that's progress.

In my brief lifetime, since the middle of the 20th century, there has been massive change.  But changes during my grandparents' lives from the first half of that century seemed even more dramatic because that's when the modern world of cars and planes and telephones and disease control and radio and electricity and clean water in the home first arrived for most people.

 

 

Critics of change were generally those who's old privileges or beliefs or comforts were being challenged.  But even the most strident critics of change took it for granted that progress was a legitimate goal of Government.  They simply disputed the definition of an improvement.

So it may come as a surprise to realise that for centuries, each spanned by four or five generations, people thought the world was more or less static. This is clearly the assumption made by the Preacher in Ecclesiastes (above).   Under this view intervening wars; changes in leadership; acts of god; and accidents of fate; are seen to take place against a constant background of the seasons.  Everything old is new again: change is temporary. And a person is destined to do one of the jobs that someone like them in the previous generation did.  The skills and tools needed to do a job don't change.  Knowledge and skill is constant and handed down one generation to the next.

To some degree this kind of thinking persists.  At school it was an accepted lesson of history that cities or empires are like any other organism they grow from some seed of advantage struggle for survival into youthful vigour mature into adulthood until time, ennui, hubris and internal corruption lead to weakness and collapse.  So we learnt of the Minoans; the Greeks; the Phoenicians; the Inca and Aztec; the Egyptians; the Romans; the Byzantines; the Ottomans; and as time passed the Spanish; French; Russian; British empires all collapsed.  The list might also have included the various dynasties in China and the Khmer empire in Cambodia had we been interested in Asia back then.

The traditional view might have been that at each collapse the clock is more or less set back to the earlier state of general chaotic disorganisation and individual survival until a new organising principle arose and a new civilisation developed, like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

But very recently, perhaps from the 16th century, Europeans noticed that this was not the case.  At last civilisation had surpassed the achievements of the ancient Greeks Romans and Egyptians.  Not only that but the advances had become exponential.  This was no longer a fixed cycle of developing to a point of aging and death to be reborn and repeat the cycle. Certainly individual politicians; political movements; leaders; alliances; and associations; still flourished then failed.  But human capabilities and with them, overall wellbeing, continued to expand notwithstanding. 

As I asserted above, all change is technological.  If we consider the great changes in human capability through history social change has followed the mastering of ceramic firing; writing; metal smelting; and new insights in mathematics; mechanics and architecture.  Thus the Romans advanced from the Greeks. It's when technology becomes static that human society begins again the cycle described by the Preacher of the Old Testament.  But at a new level of capability.

The renaissance famously restored a level of technology that had been partially forgotten since ancient Rome and Greece.  But to suggest that it was just a return to that ancient learning and technology is wrong.  In the Muslim world significant advances had been made in mathematics; astronomy; navigation and medicine during a time when Europe returned to the Preacher's times for planting and plucking; peace and war; gathering and casting asunder.  So it was the Muslim advances and their conquest of the Byzantine Empire that re-awoke Europe and ultimately called into question the religious assumptions that had stifled technological progress. New ways of thinking, unconstrained by religion, were unleashed.

By the early 18th century European technology led the world facilitating superior ships, navigation and weapons.  New understandings about Nature allowed Europeans to conquer most of the world. A century later railways and the telegraph and new business and medical practices consolidated these gains. Soon electricity would be exploited as a means of energy transmission to substitute for human and animal muscle power, for lighting and to enable electronics. By the middle of the twentieth century nuclear power would destroy two cities, disembowel several islands and provide clean electricity to much of Europe. Large warships would become independent of regular refuelling, or the need to return to the surface, and confirm a new age of superpowers.  Soon mankind would leave the planet for the first time.

Reviewing the past historians realised that the earlier civilisations too had risen and fallen against a steady increase in human capability from the stone age to smelting found metals like gold to reducing metallic ores like copper and tin to alloying these metals then reducing iron ore with parallel developments in ceramics and glass and transportation and machinery and supporting this had been writing; and teaching; and apprenticeship.

If we wanted a metaphor or simile we might imagine a set of technological stairs, thought time, upon which children play a fantasy game with LEGO plastic figures. On each step any change in wellbeing is entirely due to the plastic figures' institutions and organisation like their legal system and who's got the upper hand over whom.  Technology and their knowledge of how the world actually works (science) is static. 

New scientific knowledge and the changes in technology this allows creates a step up.  On the bottom step bottom there are no metals -just wood and stone and string and resin.  On the step up the seasons and seeds are understood and there are farmers; above that there are large stone buildings; then swords and chariots; and so on; until we reach sailing ships and cannon; then steam trains; and then aircraft and radios. 

On each step the plastic people go about their business in cycles just as the Preacher of the Old Testament says.  They play politics and power games; they mate and fight; and succour and care for others; and do all the things that humans do. The chattering classes chatter or pursue fashion; things are made and are thrown away; the rich and powerful exploit the poor and weak; power-struggles between the elites in society carry the average plastic person along in the flood.  All the plastic figures have a role in the game until they crumble to dust.  Then they are replaced by others recast from that plastic dust; and the cycle repeats.

At the bottom our metaphorical steps are wide, extending for thousands of years and each technological jump-up is small.  But as time goes on, the time between major technological advances grows shorter and the jumps-up become higher.  So that instead of steps we now have a steep ramp, where there is no stable platform for the old cycles to take place.  None of the old plastic certainties are certain any more and each successive generation of plastic people is faced with an entirely technological new world. 

We might expect much the same uncertainty in our flesh and blood world where progress and technology are now almost indistinguishable.

If technological progress stopped tomorrow could we expect that we would return to a society in which each generation would more closely mirror their parents lives, save for the usual externally imposed cyclical cycles of drought and flood or the occasional catastrophic incidence of tsunami or meteor impact?  Of course dictators and demagogues would come and go as always; the chattering classes would still chatter; the rich and powerful would still exploit the poor and weak and  power-struggles among the elites in society would still continue but there would be no advance on mobile phones or present generation aircraft or driverless cars.

The answer is no.  There would be significant falling back from our ability to do and make these things.

Our present economy relies on continuing technological change and would quickly collapse without it.  For example agriculture and medicine are only sustained through continuous innovation and unless we find new ways of storing or collecting energy we may be doomed.  The resulting economic collapses would devastate world populations and many abilities we now have would be lost as a result of billions of premature deaths. 

In advanced countries like Australia only about 5% of post school qualifications relate in some way to science or engineering - and that includes the engineering trades. In the case of devastating social collapse resulting in mass starvation the people who could fix anything at all complex or even explain the theory behind how say the electricity; water; gas; telephone; or cellular radio (mobile phone) systems worked could well be reduced to unworkably small numbers.  Can you repair your mobile phone or even your modern car?  Do you know enough about how they work to make one, even if you had the right tools? 

Eventually humanity would recover and go on as before but on a lower technological step.  Many of us could build a basic car or steam engine, for example.

So the question implicit in the quotation from Ecclesiastics remains:  If everything is just repetition, what is life all about anyway?  Is one step actually any better than another? Was my great-great-grandmother in Victorian times any worse off than my daughter, in terms of the things that count in life?

The explanation that we exist simply to amuse the gods, playing with us like the children on the stairs, or just one God, is not satisfactory to me.

As to the second question.  I'm inclined to think that the ability to fly to anywhere on the planet that takes her fancy is a big advance on having her horizons limited to the same town that constrained my ancestors, condemned to relatively unchanging amenities in housing, domestic appliances and health.  Similarly, my daughter can enjoy a wider range of cuisines, unconstrained by the season of the year, clothing is no longer for survival but a relatively trivial fashion interest and everyone is freer to pursue a wide range of other interests no longer limited to our particular trade or employment.

Even for those who can be easily amused, for example by spending many hours watching teams of other people endlessly running, kicking or hitting balls around a field, the ability of television to get in close to professionals in action is a big leap from having to go down to the village oval to watch an occasional match between amateurs.  

But for me: regular international travel; or the ability to learn about the human genome or cosmic background radiation or other advances while sitting at my desk; or to see my grandchildren in real time in Germany on my phone are not abilities I would ever want to go back from.

 

 

 


Society

'Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can't get into it do that.' [43]

For most of recorded history human society has been organised by class based on wealth and position. Christian worship makes numerous references to knowing one's place, honouring one's betters and giving charity to those beneath us.

With the change from the feudal system; the social inequities of that social model, and growing rural unemployment, developed to the point that many people were seen as useless (or worse).

In 1764 Cesare Beccaria promoted the view that the function of society was to take the 'essential man' and turn him into a citizen by the application of laws arrived at by consensus. This idea was taken up across Europe and refined by thinkers like Thomas Malthus[44] and Jeremy Bentham. These argued that the State is responsible for society and for how people behave; for moulding how people behave so that all may live better.

Early economists like Ricardo and Adam Smith, who argued that labour rather than land was the source of wealth, reinforced these ideas. From the late eighteenth and through nineteenth centuries these ideas led directly to social reform experiments like the establishment of New South Wales and later to calls for universal education and democratic social reforms.

By the twentieth century a number of competing social models had developed. The model on which the United States, Canada and Australia were founded, and which most Western Countries came to apply, drew on thinkers like Jeremy Bentham and John Stewart Mill. This model emphasises individual striving for wealth as a means of individual and social improvement.

 

hate the city

 

'Eastern Block' countries applied a model based on the thinking of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Amongst the ideas promoted was 'from each according to his ability to each according to his needs'. But to achieve this in practice they proposed an economy in which the State owned most of the businesses producing goods (like things we use or eat) and services (like banking, communications and entertainment). Marx believed that this model was superior and would succeed by historical inevitability but others believed that it could only succeed 'out of the barrel of a gun'.

It seems that both were wrong. For a while countries like Australia, Britain, Italy and France tried a mixture of private and State owned businesses but by the end of the century most countries in the world had privatised most State owned businesses.

Different societies make the claim that they are or could be 'the best of all possible worlds'. The French thinker Voltaire satirised this idea in Candide (a short book that you must read). Elsewhere Voltaire supported Beccaria's view that providing work would make men honest citizens.

Sometimes people argue that there should be no government (anarchy) or that 'society' is a fiction. But we know that when government fails the responsibility for enforcement of social order falls to the most powerful and this is often-tyrannical. To restore social order after a breakdown the first thing that must be done (after securing and clean water, food and shelter) is to re-establish the rule of law.

Experience shows that the primitive model (with a chief or King) is unable to compete, economically or in producing successful ideas, with one in which rules are set by some means of social consensus (agreement by most people).

Advanced societies presently achieve consensus (commonly held beliefs and values) on social rules and structures through the interaction of lots of competing forces. These include: representative governments (democracy as we practice it); direct participation by lobby groups; the 'spin' applied by the media, advice from and management by the public service; legal decisions based on precedent, the common law and judicial bias; international agreements and the (hopefully enlightened) self interest of big corporations. Improved communications are changing how societies develop consensus.

Apart from providing basic law and order, all presently successful societies give government the ultimate management of land use and the responsibility to provide some common services. Streets and pavements; their location; the things that run under them like water, drains, telephones, electricity and gas and over them like busses, cabs cars and trucks are all regulated and sometimes provided by government. The exchanges, dams and catchments, water treatment plants, gas & coal reserves and businesses they lead to cannot exist without government imposed rules of ownership and commerce.

Advanced societies have found that it makes economic and social sense to ensure that people do not live in abject poverty or suffer excessive social disadvantage or ill health. It adds to social success to maximise consumption and thus production, to avoid social unrest and to satisfy our desire to do 'what is right'. Successful societies value education and make sure that the State provides quality education to all capable of benefiting from it.

Whether government runs businesses or not, for societies to be successful, governments must impose rules for citizenship and structures that limit, encourage or direct business activities. It doesn't matter which society you live in, it will have rules and structures that have evolved like other ideas and designs (this is discussed more later on). Citizens are expected to conform to these or to suffer the consequences. All societies seek to civilise children, to set limits to individuality; to create citizens.

Because societies promote stereotypes, for many people, the meaning of life is defined by their position as a member of society: 'I am a doctor, a solicitor, an accountant, an architect, a bricklayer, the Prime Minister', and so on. They might even believe that God sets the social rules. Such people have a certain nationality, class, religion, place in a family, job, activity or social position that is 'them' and are very uncomfortable when others want to change definitions.

For existentialist thinkers like Kierkegaard, Kafka and Jean-Paul Sartre this kind of existence, in which people are reduced from a person into a thing, is a contemptible denial of being (or bad faith). But for most, success in life (in contrast to meaning in life) is provided by our place in society. Success is measured against society's values: becoming a leader, making money, being a member of the elite, being a good parent, being a good worker, giving time to charity and so on.

 

 

juntas

 

Those who are able might struggle for social improvement or to extend human knowledge.

Our culture also has a long tradition of cynicism about the ultimate value of social position and particularly unearned wealth or privilege. Our religion holds that spiritual values are more important than physical or worldly things (like wealth or position). Christ disapproved of materialism.

Shakespeare puts the words:

Be not afraid of greatness:' 'twas well writ:
Some are born great.
Some achieve greatness.
And some have greatness thrust upon them.[45]

(via a letter) into the mouth of one of his most archly drawn objects of derision; the stuck-up, social-climbing Malvolio. It is amusing that these words are sometimes quoted to provide some meaningful insight, when they are intended to make the speaker seem a fool.

 

greatness

 

Elsewhere Shakespeare is at pains to suggest that greatness (leadership, destiny, royalty) is a mantle taken up by an otherwise ordinary person. 'And what have Kings that Privates have not too, / save ceremony ...'

Today we might replace Malvolio's 'greatness' with 'wealth and privilege'. We can respect those who achieve (earn) wealth or privilege but have difficulty respecting those who are born to wealth or privilege; like Pooh-Bah:

'I can trace my family back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently my family pride is something inconceivable.
I can't help it. I was born sneering.'
[46]

or simply get them by some other chance; like lottery winners.

Yet, as I will point out later, all of us are to some extent inheritors of wealth; both material and intellectual (ideas, knowledge and the means to benefit from them).

In statistics there is a 'law' called the Pareto principle. This was first developed from the observation that in every society he looked at Pareto found that a small number of people have most of the wealth (typically around 20% have 80% of the wealth). This applies to many situations in society and in Nature (eg 20% of the farms produce 80% of the exports). It has nothing to do with the worthiness of the successful but rather with their exploiting advantage the instant they get ahead of the pack. Wipe out one wealthy class and a new one will rise in its place.

Succeeding in a society can be the source of pleasure and a sense of value. But a society is not an end in itself. Society only makes sense if it gives something to individuals that they could not achieve alone. This could be fast cars, a boat, nice clothes, watching meaningless activity, hanging out, Prozac, Viagra, uppers, downers, pot, heroin or coke, or just a big TV set; many think so.

 

skiing

 

But you might come to agree that it has more to do with access to ideas (art and science) acquiring skills and knowledge and maybe, even, the achievement of wisdom. You don't have to become a thing or deny your potential as a person.

Rather than fitting into a stereotype (school, university, job, marriage, children, retirement, death) life can be seen as a journey through a series of adventures. The heroes and anti-heroes of literature are often depicted this way. Jobs, locations, relationships can all change. In this view of the world it is a bit harder to work out who is successful and who is not but life is a lot more interesting. Maybe the increasing divorce rate is not a measure of social ills but of richer lives.

Changes in technology are leading to social change. It is likely to result in more people working globally (eg via the Internet or for transnational businesses) but living locally and this is likely to result in big changes in how we each see society in future.

 


Fame

What is the end of Fame? 't is but to fill
A certain portion of uncertain paper:
Some liken it to climbing up a hill,
Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour;
For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,
And bards burn what they call their 'midnight taper,'
To have, when the original is dust,
A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.
What are the hopes of man? Old Egypt's King
Cheops erected the first pyramid
And largest, thinking it was just the thing
To keep his memory whole, and mummy hid;
But somebody or other rummaging,
Burglariously broke his coffin's lid:
Let not a monument give you or me hopes,
Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops[47].

***

In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes[48].

Shakespeare refers to fame as a bubble (in the course of a life), Kipling derides men who seek fame (rather than do their work for its own sake) but Graham Greene (and no doubt Byron before him) gets to the reason some seek fame, when he claims that fame is a powerful aphrodisiac. In this respect humans have a lot in common with birds - consider the elaborate courtship displays of birds of paradise, bowerbirds or peacocks.

As I will argue later, everyone in the 'here and now' influences the future just as everyone in the past is responsible for the 'here and now'. It is obvious that you would not exist if any of your grandparents had not existed; and they if any of their grandparents had not. But more than that; you would not exist if the exact sperm of the tens of thousands of possible sperm had not fertilised the ova that became any of these people; if for some reason, any one of your ancestors had not conceived the next in line at the exact time they did.

We now understand (from complexity theory) that events are so intertwined that the smallest change in the past would mean that neither you nor anyone else alive today would be here if there had been the slightest divergence from what happened. I am going to talk about this in more detail later.

Because of their influence on past generations and world events, it is easy to see that you and I would not be here if Hitler, Napoleon, Stalin, or Churchill had not existed. But our grandparents (or people around them) attending a play or movie or reading a book or going to a dance or church or having an argument may well have been just as important. By influencing the instant they conceived the next generation (had sex) Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby or Ernest Hemingway may well be equally important. Anyone who is famous affects the present but their fame arose in the past and represents the influence of the past.

One function of fame then is to be a commonly accepted representative of the past. But it is worth remembering that the actual agents of change (people and other living things, going about the business of living) were not necessarily famous at all.

How do people become famous? There are obviously many ways. Like greatness, one can be born with fame, seek it or have fame thrust upon one.

 

zoo success

 

You can be the child of famous parents, inherit social position like Prince Charles or be chosen by some other process like the Dalai Lama. You can have wealth that allows you to buy fame. But many gain fame by taking advantage of events initially outside of their direct control.

Hitler, Stalin or Napoleon could well have become no more than an opinionated drunk at the end of the bar, or a general annoyance to their friends, if it was not for others who shared their beliefs or were persuaded by their arguments. In each case events outside of their control thrust them forward.

 

don juan windmils
Hitler seemed funny in 1930

 

So, one way of becoming famous is to become (sometimes accidentally) the leader of a group of people with similar ideas (or gang). Karl Marx was an interesting example: he spent a good deal of his life as an eccentric scribbler in the reading room of the British Museum. He never led a gang; but several gangs took up his ideas.

I learnt early in life that gangs are dangerous. When I was about eight the son of the local postman was the leader of a gang. I was an outsider because I came from England; something the gang leader would not let me forget. So I thought it would be a good idea to join up. The initiation was to climb up the outside of the footbridge over the railway at Thornleigh (very dangerous) but I wanted to be in the gang and wouldn't back down. I was good at climbing and passed the test without being hurt.

Once in, I was included in a raid on the local Newsagent to steal several large blocks of chocolate and some cigarettes, which were consumed in the bushes beside the railway tracks.

But I quickly realised that I was the only member who had had to climb the bridge; and that these were no more than common thieves. There was also the matter of a valuable stamp stolen by one of these boys from my good friend Colin who lived next door.

I promptly left the gang and the members became my mortal enemies for a time. This involved being stoned and chased with sticks. I have been very cautious about gangs ever since.

Fortunately I had an avenging angel; one Mona Camus; who came from the Holy Lands (or thereabout - Algeria) to smite the infamous gang leader with a cricket ball to the head; thus reducing him to a slobbering idiot (for all time?) and evaporating his following. This taught me several more lessons including: cricket is a dangerous game, boys from the exotic lands can be good friends and; no one can become a gang leader, despot, tyrant or demagogue without the help of others; some of whom will do anything to belong; to lurk in the shadow of the leader.

So if you ever find yourself with lots of others shouting the same slogan; trying to drown out the voices of others, take a step back and ask: have I joined a gang; why am I here; am I on the side of reason and good; is there someone I admire leading us; am I playing to someone else's tune; and who is really running this?

Some think fame is a goal in life. At the funeral of my Uncle Jim I was taken aback during his eulogy with a comment that he was not famous. The implicit suggestion was that this was in some way regrettable. We sometimes confuse respect, value and praiseworthiness with fame. Everyone seeks respect and praise from those that count. But this is worthless if it is just the uninformed adulation of those who don't know us or whose opinion we don't value. Fame is often so.

 

fleeing fame

 

I remember my Uncle as a witty and urbane man who rose to a very senior position in business. He was very well known and respected in the electrical power industry. He was dedicated to his children. They lived comfortably in a good suburb and occasionally travelled overseas. Yet, that he had little interest in fame and lived modestly seems to have counted against his life in the minds of some.

If we compare my Uncle's (or my Father's) life with that say of Marilyn Munroe or Lady Diana (the late Princess of Wales), perhaps at one point the most famous persons on earth, we see in contrast (to sad and silly, immature, unstable, self promoting, consorts of dubious lovers), dedicated parents who kept businesses running, who improved technology and added to the world's knowledge and wealth. No doubt my Uncle's celebrant would have much preferred to have been eulogising the 'Princess of Hearts'. Such is fame.

 

named for me

 

We might echo the ode by John Norton; Sydney larrikin demagogue (the Allan Jones of his day); for Queen Victoria's 73rd birthday:[49]

The Queen has lived for 70 years, for seventy years and three,
And few have lived a flatter life, more useless life than she;
She never did a clever thing nor wrote a clever line,
She never did a noble deed in coming times to shine,
And yet we read and still we read in every magazine
The praises of this woman, who the English call the Queen,
Whom the English call the Queen,
The dull and brainless woman whom the English call 'The Queen'.

This is not to say that every famous person has come to fame by birth or accident. Some have earned fame. But fame has also become a commodity. The star system in Hollywood, the management of pop stars, popular TV and many others set out to manufacture fame in order to sell it. Often the fame makers are themselves far less well known, actively avoiding the fame they create in others. This is because they know that fame has many drawbacks and seldom improves the lives of the famous.

Fame may go together with power. To get preference a famous person may say to a waiter 'don't you know who I am?' This is usually unnecessary; waiters usually know. Fame is now a good (or better) alternative to a title for getting preferred service. But true power is often held by people who try to avoid everyone knowing who they are.

 

a nobody

 

There is a joke in Russia: The Premier is unhappy with the speed his driver is going. The driver says he is not prepared to break the speed limit. The Premier (exasperated) tells the driver to get in the back; he will drive. The car is stopped for speeding but the Cop lets him go. When the Cop gets back to the station the Sergeant tells him that the Premier is not allowed to break the law and should have been booked. The Cop says the Premier didn't worry him; it was the unknown man in the back, who had the Premier as a driver, who scared him.

For every famous person there is at least one equally (or more) powerful person in the background. We should never judge people by their fame but by their achievements.

 


Markets

There were no Cucumbers in the market this morning sir, I went down twice.
No Cucumbers!
No Sir. Not even for ready money[50].

Markets are one of the things that distinguish human society. Like genes and the ideas we receive, markets have a great influence on our lives; how we will earn our living, how wealthy we will be, where we will live and what we will do.

Co-operation for survival between animals and plants and the process of natural selection (for genes and memes) are very like the interplay of market forces. This is because the forces that govern both markets and the success of plants and animals are an outcome of individual specialisation.

Like the processes of natural selection, markets do not automatically or necessarily act in our best interests.

Our word 'market' comes from the idea of a trading place (perhaps a town square) where people take produce to sell and others go to buy what they want. In some primitive societies markets might be restricted to swapping fruit for some meat or food for clothing but as soon as we specialise in producing fruit or meat this doesn't work.

If I grow cucumbers and you produce wool it is unlikely I would give you cucumbers in return for wool; I probably want clothes not wool. So we need something we all agree is valuable; that I can get in return for cucumbers and you can get in return for wool. I can use it to buy clothes and you can use it to buy food (or whatever else we need).

We call this 'means of exchange' money. Means of exchange have been invented in some form by every society that has evolved specialisation. It might be metal tokens issued by the government or promises to pay if called upon (like checks or bank notes). It might be shells or beads or gold bars or salt. In the early days of NSW it was rum.

Yet money, in some form, remains at the heart of all economies in which people specialise as tinkers; tailors; soldiers; or cucumber growers. It has been shown that even monkeys in captivity can learn to use money (and spontaneously exchange it for sexual favours).

But how do we know how much money you ought to get for a bail of wool and how much should I get for a cucumber?

Well, the marketplace will do it for me. If I take my load of cucumbers to the market and lots of people want my cucumbers (or people want lots of my cucumbers) the ones who want them the most will offer more than the others and I will get a good price.

But if lots of other cucumber producers turn up at the same time we all might have to lower our price; so that even people who might have come for carrots think cucumbers are a bargain and buy them instead.

If we cucumber growers get good prices we will decide to grow more. As we do it will eventually cost more for each extra load we try to produce (cucumber producing frames will be harder to get or position) and more cucumbers in the market will lower the price. Some cucumber growers will then decide to grow something else. If we grow less we may get a good price per item at the market; but too high a price will discourage people from buying cucumbers and will encourage others to start growing cucumbers.

So there is a price and quantity in the marketplace at which we growers get enough money to make it worthwhile growing cucumbers and they remain cheap enough for people to want to buy all we produce. Each grower decides how many to grow by looking at the price they get and how much time and money it costs to grow cucumbers. Buyers look at the price to decide how many they will buy. When the buyer's price and quantity match the grower's price and quantity everyone is happy. This is called supply and demand equilibrium.

This is very like the way plants and animals compete for resources and comparative advantage that decides their number and variety.

For this to happen everyone needs to know the prices being set and everyone must be allowed to buy or supply the goods or services in demand. People and resources must be free to move in and out of the market. Changes must not be too fast for producers and buyers to react to and there must be no restrictions on producing anything (or trade secrets about how to do it). If an area of country is discovered to have an advantage for production, people must be free and willing to move there.

If they worked like this, markets would ensure that we don't produce more than people want (at a particular price) or charge too much or too little for what is produced. Carrot and wool producers; all producers; would get the price for their product that reflects the value consumers attach to their product and nothing is overproduced or overpriced. People would move to the best places to do things. Natural resources would determine the size of the population and every community will have the same average wealth; the only way to be richer than average would be to work harder or to be smarter.

In this environment no one would make high profits for very long because others would immediately start competing. The general price of things would be set by the general standard of living that people expected for the amount of effort they were prepared to put in.

In reality markets seldom work like this. As Pareto found, some people are much wealthier than others who work just as hard and are just as smart. As you will find out, many wealthy people don't work much at all and quite a few are stupid. They often achieve their initial advantage by preventing markets setting a proper price for their work[51]. Ways of doing this include clubbing together to keep others out, keeping production knowledge secret, controlling access to essential inputs (including capital) or by controlling who can buy or sell.

 

overproduced

 

Doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, cab drivers, chemists and newsagents all try to prevent too many others joining their ranks. Unions try to set labour costs, manufacturers protect their products with patents; artists protect their ideas with copyright. Media moguls try to limit the number, scope and ownership of spectrum licences, others try to form monopolies or cartels and communities shut their borders to immigrants.

Real life markets are complex; like the interplay of organisms in nature. They encourage innovation like new species evolving to fill new niches and co-operation like the cells in our bodies. But they are not always in our best interest. The wolf on the fold, a fox amongst the chickens, the cuckoo in the nest, plagues of locusts and cane toads all have their equivalents in our marketplaces. Markets can foster waste and addiction (how many computers or mobile phones are dumped? how many cigarettes or amphetamines are consumed?). They reward short-term advantage and accidental success. We are human and our markets are also breeding grounds for fashion, ideas and self-imposed rules.

In the end, the value of money is equivalent to what people are prepared to do for it. All human exchanges can be seen as the interplay of market forces. Markets in various forms are central to the study of Economics. But there are several Economic schools of thought ranging from highly mathematical to cultural. At one end of this spectrum are those who believe that provided the money supply is set correctly markets can be relied upon to do the rest. At the other end that this only ensures 'the rich get rich and the poor get poorer' (In the meantime in between time; ain't we got fun[52]).

 

wall street

 

There are many complex factors at work and the way we organise markets is also fundamental to politics. John Maynard Keynes British economist (1883–1946) famously wrote:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back[53].

Markets themselves are an idea; a human idea. Some people conceive of a perfect marketplace in which competition is the only mechanism that needs to be preserved in order for all else to fall into place. Others (like John Maynard Keynes) point out that market equilibrium, based on perfect competition, guarantees neither full employment (job for everyone who wants to work) nor social equity. Indeed because markets are dynamic, due to all sorts of external impacts ranging from climate and technology change to fashion and expectations (human ideas), market equilibrium is never achieved.

Again we see these things in a fundamentally human way; determined by the ideas that together define us, and the world we live in.

As Michel Foucault, the French philosopher (I have already mentioned) observes:

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine... Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas ... that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.[54]

Today we have markets for everything from houses, clothing, and food to collectibles (stamps, jewellery or paintings) and ideas. We have markets for money and for the future price of things that don't exist yet. Instead of a market in the local town to which the locals brings their produce, we have the global marketplace. We now market many things (including bull semen, electricity and shares) by the Internet. The price of everything is measured against the price of everything else.

Indeed cultural economists point out that we don't really know the value of anything in isolation from that of other things or our culture. What is the real utility of a mobile phone? I once got on quite well without a phone at all. Why am I prepared to pay what I do for it? Do I really get the same utility as you? Why do I prefer this house over that? Has my utility really risen with property values? Why do my buying behaviour and price expectations change? Why do advertisements increase sales, even for well known and traditional products like beer and cars?

Often government makes laws or takes action that interferes in markets. This is not just because of powerful lobby groups. Some economists and political scientists believe that intervening in markets, for the benefit of society, is the central role of government.

These days we have money that can't be found on the beach - although rare minerals on a beach can be very valuable. Our money supply is now largely virtual with only a small fraction in the form of tokens (coins) or notes with promises to pay (bank notes). And it's volume is carefully regulated, institutionally, to match market requirements. Too much supply and the currency loses too much of its value (excessive inflation); insufficient and the marketplace (the economy) will be hampered and unemployment, of people and resources, will rise.

I'm simplifying, because Central Banking becomes much more complicated than just regulating the amount of money being created by the lending banks, regulators also need to take into account external trade; investment; capital flows; borrowing; Government fiscal policies; and such externalities as drought; floods; other disasters (current and projected); and foreign relations.

Just as weeds take resources from useful plants in an untended garden, and weeding thus increases productivity, so society works better when markets are regulated. Health is far better today than before public hospitals; indeed modern medical science has its roots in public health. Public education is the driving force behind every advanced nation. The community best funds many public works. Innovation works best under patent and copyright protection.

Unregulated land development degrades cities and the environment and diminishes the quality of life. Private police or security guards do not best keep law and order. A gang of vigilantes would not best administer the courts. The right to exploit resources is not best established by who has the most powerful private army. The list goes on.

Governments are under constant pressure to increase regulation in some areas; to get tougher on people with no respect for property ownership (a form of market regulation) or to protect the environment (by limiting market forces leading to exploitation) but to remove regulation in others. Most advanced societies balance demand for more regulation with demands for deregulation. Getting the best social outcomes from the resources available has been defined as the fundamental role of Economics.

As our understanding of the Universe has expanded, and with it the effectiveness of technology,  machines have progressively replaced muscle power.  Slaves servants and working animals have been supplanted by motors and the mechanisms and machines that they drive.

Almost all material goods are mined; grown; processed; and/or manufactured by machines.  Electronic devices, that can be programmed once and then repeat a task indefinitely; and make increasingly elaborate decisions themselves; are increasingly replacing human intelligence too.

Some describe this as the post-industrial economy where goods are plentiful and inexpensive and where some classes of good become cheaper as the volume increases; so that higher demand lowers the production cost, and potentially, the price.  

Such an economy is no longer constrained by scarcity; the cost of production; or the 'sweat of the workers'  but by consumer demand.  A contemporary remedy for declining growth is to put unearned money into the hands of the most avid consumers.  This can be as crude as a cheque in the mail or might be achieved by a combination of quantitative easing and increased social benefits.  

Thus social security programs based on the Communist (Marxist) conception 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'; or the simple humanist, egalitarian principal that every child should be given the means to reach his or her potential; are supplanted by the principal that everyone should be given sufficient means to consume hamburgers, the latest fashion in clothes, time at the gym, holidays and popular music.  As wealth increases, and basic material needs are met, consumption patterns in these markets move in the direction of services, fashions, entertainment and recreation. 

Taxation and wealth redistribution by government have become fundamental to the development of the post industrial societies.  State interventions in the operations of the many markets involved; together with the laws and regulations established and enforced; defines effective government.  Efficient effective taxation is central to this success; for example governments should avoid excessive complexity or taxing the same person that they are providing the benefit to (tax someone and then give it back - after deducting administrative costs).

 

robinhood

 

Just as wealth is not evenly spread between individuals, people in some countries are wealthier than in others where people work just as hard and are individually just as smart. The success of a State in supporting the wealth of its members is dependent on the institutions (particularly its government) the community has evolved and how these intervene in its markets. Success is the mark of a successful culture.

 


Culture

Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.[55]

The word 'culture' describes how we relate to others in our society of generally like-minded people and the people who live in our community with us. It is not a very exact idea because sometimes it embraces one group and sometimes another. For many, to be 'cultured' is to understand the rules of etiquette, manners and decorum; to be able to move in polite society.

Aboriginal people often use the word 'tradition'; as in, 'in my tradition we are the custodians of the land, not its owners'.

For many people our culture gives us a reason to live. The greatest part of our most influential books, films and ideas are concerned with the meaning of life, a reason for living or ways of living. In his movie 'Manhattan', Woody Allen asks, 'why is life worth living?' then he tells us that for him the things that make it worthwhile include: Groucho Marx, the second movement of the 'Jupiter Symphony', Louis Armstrong's 'Potato Head Blues', Swedish Movies and so on. Unlike other animals, we humans love stories and art and music. You will find that things in our culture make life more worth living for you too.

 

raison detre

 

Humans are the first animal we know of to gain self-knowledge to the level that you have it. Most apes seem to have it to some degree but no other has developed our kind of culture.

In the Bible self-knowledge was the original sin that caused God to send Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. It is the source of our happiness but also of our sorrows.

It has been suggested that it was the advantage we gained from the ideas multiplying in our heads that drove our genes to evolve bigger and bigger brains. Our brain now consumes a higher proportion of our total body resources than any other animal. The size of our heads causes problems being born and threatens our biological survival.

We like to gossip. One researcher says we gossip so much that this is the real purpose of language. We invent myths. We invent and make useful things but often we just make things for the sake of it. We have evolved to communicate. We need other people for these things.

The rules for relating to others have been evolved by society and some of them by our genes (like relating to our mother and other adults when we are babies). Some have been made into laws (like not stealing) and some are general rules of behaviour in a particular society (like being polite or not eating with your mouth open). But lots are just how we relate to our friends and to others (what do you talk about? what do you like?).

Because we need others, they can make us happy or unhappy by how they act and what they say. Some people are so dependent on others that they are dominated by peer pressure to act in ways that is not in their own interest. This can be quite unhealthy.

Our culture encourages self-reliance because this is what has worked in the past to make its members most able to contribute to its survival. We admire and encourage some solitary activities like scholarship, creating art or sciences, training for sport or meditation, that have the effect of strengthening the individual and creating new ideas.

Personal skill and knowledge is a good place to look for sources of personal strength. Learning something difficult (like playing the piano) or training for sport or some kinds of job gives us personal strength and self-esteem. People with this kind of goal are likely to be less reliant on others for their happiness and sense of personal worth.

But to be happy we all need friends we can relate to. If we are unhappy: changing our friends, setting some new goals, changing our job, getting some new interests or playing some different games can help.

In our culture we often set goals: like winning a game. But that is not why we are playing. We are playing because we like playing the game; we just like it more if we can win occasionally. It is the pursuit of the activity that is our real purpose, not the goal that we set:

To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd.... Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.[56]

When asked why he climbed Mt Everest, Edmond Hillary said (echoing George Mallory who failed in 1921), 'Because it was there'. The top of Everest is not a particularly great place to be. Hillary climbed to it because he liked climbing mountains, not to be at the top.

If we are playing a game only to win it is not a game anymore; we have lost the purpose and it has become an obsession or a business; like the Olympics.

To make choices in life we must have free access to all relevant ideas.

Be very cautious of anyone who wants to limit your access to ideas (or anybody else's). Censorship is a tool of repression used by dictators and extreme religion (and sometimes even democratic governments) usually by demagogues claiming that they are protecting minds weaker than their own.

As a general principle, it is much less dangerous to have all ideas allowed (even racist or extreme religious views), than to have a society in which important ideas are suppressed (no matter how well intentioned).

 


Creativity

Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.[57]

For me, the most satisfying and self confirming activity a person can engage in is creating something.

I gain a great deal of personal satisfaction from writing something, like this, designing and building something 'from scratch', like the staircases in two of my houses, writing computer software, creating a picture or planning and executing a project. Often the creative satisfaction comes from something as simple as doing some gardening or baking a cake.

I like to be applauded and acknowledged, by those whose opinion I respect when I do something well but often I create entirely for my own satisfaction. I have often noticed the same creative motivation in others. In particular, artists, poets and so on, will often persevere even if they have no admirers and derive no income from their art.

Possibly as a result of my own creative impulse, I am filled with admiration when I see something well executed or conceived like the Empire State Building, the beautiful Degas drawing: Après le Bain in the Art Gallery of NSW or Darwin's formulation of the theory of evolution.

As is evident from the quotations in this essay that the work of the author of Shakespeare (if not himself), of Byron, Einstein, Frank Lloyd Wright, TS Eliot and dozens of others is inspirational.

 

inspiration point

 

When I recruit members for my team I look for this motivation because I know that if their achievements are acknowledged and they are protected from unjust criticism or unrealistic demands, they will do their best no matter what else is happening around them. And I will admire their accomplishments and like them as individuals.

Yet I also know that not everyone is motivated by the stimulation and sense of personal satisfaction creativity brings. I worked too long with the 'one idea inventors', who have had a single flash of inventiveness and now expect it to make their fortune, to believe that all creativity is solipsistic or non-financially motivated. And my worldly experience has taught me that other motivations are much stronger in many people.

For example I have worked with and met just as many people who for reasons of politics, status or power, pleasure seeking, social approbation or simple jealousy, are more likely to destroy the creative efforts of others than to create something themselves.

Many people are motivated by competitiveness, recognition or other needs. These can be confused with the creative impulse. One might question which most motivated someone like Andy Warhol (a genuine pleasure in creation or competitiveness, notoriety, narcissism, or onanistic preoccupation) or what motivates Jeff Koons and other similar 'artists' today.

Although it would be easy to dismiss most sportspersons and compulsive gym goers as simple competitors and/or narcissists, it is obvious that many people engage in sport with no prospect of ever winning, gaining recognition or even of improving their appearance or health. So the motivation to build a muscle or to be anorexic may be closely related to creativity in our primitive brains.

 


Art

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to to make others see.[58]

'Art' has a wide range of meanings ranging from skill to the expression of culture. Again this is a subject that fills libraries and I do not intend to say more than a few words. I want to talk for a brief moment about pictures. But much of what I say has parallels in the other arts.

When children are little they quickly learn to draw pictures. In our culture they first draw a face then they may attach limbs; arms where the ears should be legs out of the neck. Similarly they draw a house or a tree as a symbol; not as a realistic (photographic) drawing. So from the earliest time we use pictures as a means of communication or expression; not a representation of how the world really looks.

It is only very recently that artists attempted to use art to show how the world actually looks. The perspective that we see in a photograph, on TV, in a modern landscape or any other 'realistic' two-dimensional representation of the three-dimensional world has been understood for less than 600 years.

For all of human history preceding this understanding, pictures were a kind of conversation between the artist and the viewer. Many artists want this to remain the case.

Great art requires both a shared understanding with the viewer and something important to say. Traditionally art has been allowed to express things about passion, both the human sexual condition and closely related religious passion.

These were not allowed to be expressed, or would be difficult to express, in words. A quick look through a museum catalogue will confirm that greatest part of our most highly regarded art is about basic human passions. These are mainly sexual or religious (as repressed sex for example: ecstasy, martyrs and myths), quite a bit is about ways of seeing nature and the remainder is mainly about asserting social status or sometimes politics and a range of other cultural issues. Very little is about composition or beautiful brushwork.

In recent times other media has taken over some of the things that paintings and drawings once did exclusively. This started with black and white photography but now extends to moving images in colour and interactive computer based images. This has removed the scope for much literal depiction of nature or documentary art and has encouraged impressionism and non-figurative forms.

 

literal artist

 

Art continues to have conventional symbolism; a 'language' based on the work of those who went before. This leads to schools of art and fashions in the language of art: Religious iconography, Classicism, Expressionism, Cubism, Modernism, post-modernism and so on.

The problem for artists is that many of their viewers do not speak the same language (some forms may take years of art education to comprehend) and so their message is either misunderstood and taken to mean something entirely different or disregarded altogether.

The problem for viewers is that many artists either have nothing interesting to say or that what they are trying to say is onanistic; poorly executed; or drivel; dressed up by the mystique of 'Art'. We might expend the effort to understand the artist's language only to find some trivial, untrue or distasteful message (what is Juan Davila on about).

Worse there are some who simply repeat a meaningless commercial image with the single intention of making a sale. This may be 'craft' but it is not art.

We all need to give art (and music) some attention and effort. A rounded person needs to have a basic understanding of the main languages of art and to be able to use art as a means of communication, either by making it or by using it in their lives.

 


Fantasy

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.[59]

One of the abilities of the human brain is to imagine or fabricate situations and experiences that have not occurred in life. Fantasy is the basis of drama and much of our literature.

In ancient times tragedy was a form of religious observance and it plays an important part in many religions (particularly Eastern ones) today. In these religions truth, reality or awareness is reached by leaving the body or through ecstasy. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition fantasy in everyday life (although not in Saints) is viewed with suspicion. Christian Monks observe God in the everyday: washing, cooking, gardening. For them prayer and observance should be anchored in the here and now; in reality.

A recurrent myth in our culture is of someone being offered mastery in an unreal world in place of despair in the real world. This happens to Faust (and is one of the themes in the film The Matrix). Faust was a scholar who was supposed to have sold his soul to the Devil in return for scientific knowledge (There are many stories; later versions include eternal youth and magic as the benefits).

Addiction to a fantasy world is seen as fundamentally un-Christian; particularly by the Protestant reformists who associated it with the Devil. Protester priest; Martin Luther made the Faust legend famous through his preaching.

Our cultural doubts about fantasy probably stem in part from a fear of madness and in part because of the apparently infinite possibilities it offers. We know that the mad, confused and drug-addicted have difficulty functioning as human beings. Most of the fantasies we are capable of are of limited utility in the 'normal' world.

Yet we admire flights of fantasy in art and in science. This is because fantasy is close to vision; our dreams or fears for the future. Fantasy can help us gain insights into the actions and aspirations of others and can unite us in a common goal. Even progress in science involves a complex interaction between speculation (fantasy) and experiment.

 

urbanfantasy

 

 

Our cultural experience is that it is wise to avoid courses that offer a total escape from reality; drugs or perhaps virtual-reality.

 

 

youve been drinking

 

 

These come with a long tradition of warnings: from the lotus-eaters of Greek and Roman legend to films like Matrix. The lotophagi (lotus-eaters) ate the fruit of the lotus tree and forgot their friends and homes and lost all desire to return to reality.

These warnings should be balanced against the need to leave ourselves open to (and practice) flights of imagination and daydreams.

 


Religion

Nothing has shown more fully the prodigious ignorance of human ideas and their littleness, than the discovery of [Sir William] Herschell, that what used to be called the Milky Way is a portion of perhaps an infinite multitude of worlds![60]

Humans have practiced some form of religion from our earliest existence as a distinct species. Our cousins the Neanderthal people may have too but our nearest living cousins, chimpanzees do not.

Thus religion is probably less than 200 thousand years old and is associated with the way we humans think about our environment; how we deal with the unknown; and the scary. 

View an interesting academic discussion of these origins and interactions: Science, Magic and Religion

We all learn about religion as infants.  Most of us will go on to hold to the religion we were taught by our primary carer, usually our mother, our father and maybe a grandmother or nurse, when we learnt our first language.  Like our language it is a cultural artefact - possessing no absolute truth. 

Many societies thrive and prosper with entirely different, often contradictory, religions - just as there are many different functioning languages. 

There were no Christians or Muslims in Plato's Athens.  Totally different religious beliefs were just as firmly held and taught to their children by the women of polytheistic ancient Athens. Yet Athens gave us democracy and the foundations of mathematics, systematic rational thought and ethical analysis.

In another way religion can be seen as simply a subset of the social and cultural interactions that we more generally call politics.

Politics is, in turn, the widening of one-to-one interactions we had as a child.  For example, our relationship with a sibling might be widened by drawing-in a parent in family politics: 'we want to go to the beach'; or 'Lachlan's taken my pencil'.

We would not want to ascribe anything mystical to politics; particularly to those of political parties.  Politics is obviously the process and outcome of human interactions.  It is an emergent quality that arises out of human interactions between two or more people; in the same way that a tune arises out of two or more notes; a concept out of a collection of words; or intelligence out of a collection of neurons.

Organised religion is closely associated with politics.  Organised religion is essentially the application of politics to primitive mysticism; awe; and fear of the unknown. 

 

In the Beginning

Most 'primitive' religions are about our relationship with nature; the environment; other animals; and the climate. These religions tend to have many gods (are polytheistic) or many spirits. 

A modern variation on this is pantheism; in which nature itself and humankind, particularly on Earth, is seen as a single organism and maybe identified with God or a 'universal spirit'.  This can be seen in the extreme green or 'deep green'  movement of today.

 

naturalists

 

Prior to settlements and civilisation humans were nomadic herders of hunters and gatherers.  Religions were animistic and attributed magical properties and/or souls to animals, plants and places. Such beliefs persist in subsistence communities to this day. 

But as settlements grew into towns then cities these beliefs began to be merged with the rules necessary for people to live together; politics.  Settlements and towns are based on agriculture and with it the seasons assume increased importance. Tracking and forecasting the seasons requires a calendar of some sort usually based on astronomy; the movement of the stars or positions of the rising or setting of the sun and phases of the moon. These astronomical cycles become linked to the flowering of plants; to flooding of rivers; to the first snow and so on.  

A causal relationship may then be assumed.  Things in the heavens seem to be causing events on Earth.  Whereas today we would want to say that the story is much more subtle: the seasons are caused by the Earth's attitude and orbit in respect of the Sun; but the Moon also has an affect on the tides and continental drift.  Only occasionally do events outside the solar system like supernova or the close passing of other stars have an impact; unless, perhaps, solar storms are induced by external factors.

The repetitive cycle of seasons and of birth and death suggests a never ending universe, in which souls are associated with a life force; and pass to a creature as it comes to life then to another when that creature dies.  

In almost all ancient religions a priesthood of people skilled in the prediction of the seasons gained increasing importance.  In most early religions the priesthood also developed rituals for the transition of souls from the dead to the living; or to another world. 

Soon the animistic spirits of nomadic humans become the gods of settled communities and heavenly events become associated with important terrestrial events or activities. All early religions in settled communities have multiple gods; each responsible for particular classes of event and in many cases lending exclusive support to a particular population, city or town.  These gods are generally given the power to move between realms and often in and out of material objects; in ancient Greece and Rome heroes could become gods.

But occasionally this idyllic wheel of life (Great Mandala) is disrupted by cataclysmic events: a terrible storm; fire; flood; pestilence; or plague. Climate variation might result in a series of poor seasons; or the area may be subject to earthquakes; tsunami; or a volcano.  Agriculture requires making provision for the future.  Ground must be prepared; water supplied; seed sewn; and seed must be set aside for the next season and perhaps more.  Food must be stored.  Failing to set aside enough will lead to disaster.  In all such communities the practice of making offerings to nature; and then to a variety of gods arose.  This happened quite independently across settled human communities; so that sacrifice is an almost universal theme of all world religions. 

In an attempt to pacify the gods, who were accredited with imposing these hardships, almost all organised religions passed through a phase of increasingly extreme sacrifice, escalating from: foodstuffs; to prized animals; to firstborn children; and sometimes virgin girls.  As it eventually became evident that cataclysmic events continued notwithstanding.  Most then progressively softened these practices; quite often by making captured enemies proxy for the sacrifice; and then by making the sacrifice entirely symbolic.   Now, for example, Christians are saved from sin by the death of Christ as proxy; and by the regular (symbolic or transubstantiated) consumption of his body and blood.  But in South America, we were told, human sacrifice is still practiced in some areas; with a similar goals (mortal and immortal).

Present religions are a few thousand years old or less. Some like Islam and Christianity can clearly be seen to have evolved from Judaism (with a bit of Greco-Roman thrown in) that in turn evolved from earlier cults. But those of us with Northern European ancestry got on perfectly well with a succession of pre-Christian religions that allowed our ancestors to prevail over all sorts of 'heretics' (those with differing beliefs who failed to thrive) for tens of thousands of years.

 

prophet

 

Even the briefest acquaintance with archaeology or anthropology, let alone comparative religion, exposes the evolutionary and sometimes revolutionary nature of religious belief. That these are human ideas developed and given credibility by men (and women) is immediately exposed.

 

Monotheism

Monotheism is an interesting departure from more common polytheism. Unlike these religions it has an immediately obvious problem in explaining the existence of evil; or alternatively an apparent lack of concern for human wellbeing.  So in some formulations it posits an anti-god or devil; and in others it allows other heavenly beings who can intercede; and is thus actually polytheistic.

The three principal monotheistic religions each trace their history back to Abraham, a nomadic chieftain of around 2000 BCE.  He is said the have left Ur and settled in Canaan (Israel) in the Middle East. Archaeologists have found evidence of several such migrations; one of which is associated with Abraham and has been dated to 1850 BCE. But it seems that this was not yet true monotheism - other gods Baal and Yam were still accounted real; but those of other tribes.  Abraham's god; a version of El (the Canaanite High God) was the one god to be exclusively recognised by his tribe; on pain of death. This was a god who took human form and liked to drop in to Abraham's tent for a chat. 

As a result of a severe famine the Canaanites then emigrated to Egypt where in 1346 BCE the sun god: Aten became the only god worshiped. This was short lived with the other gods being restored upon the death of Pharaoh Akhenaten 1334 BCE. 

Some elements of the Bible can be traced to Egyptian sources - in particular the earliest Psalms. For example Psalm 104 paraphrases The Great Hymn to the Aten, found in the tomb of Ay and is attributed to Akhenaten:

image of hymn
Part of the actual hymn - source

 

eqyptian poet

 

According to the Bible several generations of the tribe passed in slavery in Egypt until around 1300 BCE when they were liberated by the Egyptian Prince: Moses. Various scholars have suggested that Moses fled Egypt with his followers as a result of the restoration of polytheism.  But the best records from the period are Egyptian and they contain no mention of Moses or the associated events; except a mention of roaming bands of warlike Hebrew.

It was important to the subsequent return to Canaan that Moses could be shown to be in the paternal line from Abraham; just as two early Gospels establish the paternal line of Jesus back to Abraham via Solomon and David.  The Bible therefore contains the improbable, and completely unsubstantiated, story of him entering the Egyptian court as a foundling.  

It was Moses who elevated the god of Abraham to Yahweh; the incorporeal God of the subsequent monotheistic religions; and who is accredited with initial authorship of the Bible.

Politically, monotheism has been successful in civilisations where the supreme ruler or sovereign takes authority from a supreme God; in the case of early Christianity; having been anointed by a bishop of the Church. 

 

The Problem of Scale

Religion is very human. Our brain is a very inadequate instrument for understanding the universe.

This essay is about meaning and possibly the purpose in life. But life has a universal reality that is quite independent of humanity. We are brief observers of 'life'. The entire duration of humanity has been, and will be, an infinitesimal flash of time in the great lifetime of this universe.  Life has been here from very early on, and very likely, will continue 'til near the end of time.

If you doubt this, look up at the night sky where you will see the stars in our galaxy: the Milky Way. The Milky Way contains about 100,000,000,000 stars, give or take a few billion, of which our sun is one. This is more than the grains of sand on every beach in the world. As telescopes have become more powerful, Astronomers have seen more and more galaxies. They presently estimate that there are more galaxies than there are stars in our galaxy (the Milky Way)[61].

 

gods son responsiblity

 

Light and other radiation reaching us from stars shows that the Universe is very large; and very old. Because we know the speed of light; how frequency shifts depending on the speed an object is travelling (that is how the police catch speeding cars with radar); and the frequency at which the light was originally generated (by electrons jumping between energy states - called atomic spectra); the speed and distance of a star can be calculated.

The light reaching us from the furthest away is thousands of millions of years old. We can also estimate the age of the Universe from the cosmic background radiation. The present best estimate for the age of our Universe (from the WMA Probe[62] in 2003) is 13.7 thousand million years. What has happened in those parts of the universe since? In this part of the universe, life and intelligence has evolved in that time.

Let us suppose that the evolution of intelligence has taken a similar time elsewhere where the environment is similar, for example on rocky planets orbiting similar stars at a similar distance (30,000 light years) from the galactic centre. There might be several within a few thousand light years.

By mid 2007, 236 planets had been discovered orbiting nearby stars. New planets around other suns are now being discovered daily and one of the successors to the Hubble Space telescope, the Kepler Space Telescope, is specifically designed to find rocky earth like planets amongst them. [2012 update: now over 700 exoplanets have been found in 672 planetary systems; of which 7 may be habitable]

As we have been incapable of sending a message beyond this planet until about a hundred years ago (less than a two thousandth of our 'intelligent' presence), there may be many inhabited planets with developing cultures similar to those of Neanderthal Europe, Stone Age Australia or ancient Judea, with beliefs and societies that are presently anathema to the development of their version of science, a deeper understanding of the universe (necessary for the development of communications technology).

There may be many life-forms that have surpassed us but their messages are still several thousand years from reaching us. Such cultures will be completely invisible to us in present circumstances.

If this is so there may be tens of thousands of intelligent species in our Galaxy. And ours is but one of over a hundred billion galaxies in the Universe.

If 'life' has a 'meaning' it need not involve humanity, any more than it involves dodos.

 

extraterrestrials

 

While the existence of this Universe could denote a Creator; the idea that this same Creator requires the unique presence of humans to praise Him; or that His creation was intended to culminate in Man is reduced to absurdity.

It would be ridiculous in this tiny part of the universe for us to claim that we do or can ever understand everything or even a fraction of everything. Even if we did this to our satisfaction, it is unlikely that a differently structured intelligence would be satisfied.

Until we understand everything we cannot know that there is no God, until God is revealed we cannot know that there is a God:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.[63]

Human ideas have now evolved to the point where our brightest minds cannot be certain about anything. Doubt about what we can know is common to all major strands of western philosophy and is also evident in the major (thinking) religions.

 

Our Religious Heritage

The religion of our culture is Christianity and, more distantly, its related cousins: Judaism and Islam. Just as we would not been here if every one of the tyrants and saints that went before, had not been; so our present shared ideas would have been different with a different religion. Those who want to understand our culture must understand the religion that goes behind it and once dominated it; out of which it grew.

For example, scholars of comparative religion point out that Christianity is one of the few religions that hold that the future can improve on the past. It sees existence as a progression to a better future whereas most religions argue that the world is unchangeable, subject to the whims of the gods or cyclical. Thus Christianity may have been the only available 'jumping off point' to a modern secular humanist position. And it was certainly the protestant reformation that created such doubt as to admit the possibility of atheism.

Religion still supports some of our wisest people and amongst these it is possible to find some of the most interesting we can meet. Whatever our personal views, we should remember that it was Christianity that set the starting point for most of our most fundamental ideas about what it is to be human, what is real and what we can know.

To be a Christian, in the traditional sense, a person should believe the Apostles' Creed, including that:

This is a very brief outline of the basic beliefs and has none of the subtlety, drama or passion of a system of thought that occupied our brightest minds for nearly two thousand years. If you had been born a thousand years ago (or a week ago in some places) you would believe all this unreservedly but today many 'Christians' recite the Apostles' Creed but do not believe it literally and/or without doubt.

Even in a monotheistic religion like Christianity some believe in powerful but lesser god-like identities 'thou shall have no other gods than Me' (which are they?), The Virgin, Saints, Angels, The Devil etc. Others would say that most of these identities have no support in scripture and holding to them (like holding to more than two sacraments; Communion and Baptism) is heretical.

This issue of heresy has caused the suffering, death and sometimes torture of countless believers and/or their victims over the past 2000 years.

It has been said that religious faith is the corollary of doubt (some say antidote to doubt). My experience is that the most profound religious thinkers are often fighting off doubt.

Of course it is still possible to bring up a child so that they will experience no doubt but to do this you have to prevent them being exposed to contradictory ideas. Religions often try to censor ideas for this reason.

 

fundamentalist

 

People sometimes ask, 'What is the purpose of religion'? Of course you might equally ask, 'What was the purpose of Hitler'? The answer may be that religion 'just is' it evolved in the minds of people like butterflies or snakes did in nature. Biologists have argued that religion enhances reproductive success by imposing rules on its adherents that limit promiscuity and favour child rearing.

A common argument for religious belief is the apparent occurrence of miracles. Miracles have been the source of a great deal of debate and dissent amongst theologians but remain a component of sanctification in the Catholic Church to this day. You can do no better that read David Hume's essay on this topic for a philosophical introduction. Miracles must be metaphysical or paranormal events as if they are not they are normal physical events and subject to and caused by natural laws. The difficulty is that no one has ever satisfactorily isolated such an event.

Modern miracles fall into three broad categories: visions; cures and unlikely events.

We are unable to know what another actually perceives. I do know that your green may be my red; your sour my tasteless; your perfumed my odourless; but I can't be absolutely sure that you are not a figment of my imagination. As a result no one is qualified to fully judge someone else's perception of reality. But I find myself generally sceptical of the reported perceptions of someone who claims to see the world significantly differently to the way I see it unless I can replicate their experience. Otherwise I might suspect they are deluded, psychotic or hallucinating. And so it is with visions.

While faith healers can apparently 'cure' diseases that are susceptible to the placebo effect, may be psychosomatic or may be subject to natural recovery, remission or strengthening they have never successfully caused the regrowth of a severed limb; even though a number of nonhuman animals are able to regrow limbs.

As soon as the 'cure' has a rational explanation it ceases to be a miracle. And we know that if present stem-cell research makes lost limbs grow back, the very people who lined up against the research will be lining up to pray for new limbs for their victims.

In the third category are the: "everyone but me was drowned but I was saved by these extraordinarily unlikely circumstances"; or "I was in a terrible accident but against the odds survived"; type experiences.

If a gardener wants to rid a pot plant of an ant's nest, she takes a bucket of water and submerges the pot. Almost all the ants drown but a few will always get the surface alive. Perhaps they are trapped in a bubble or cling to a little floating thing. If there are many she might use fly spray too. A few usually manage to climb out of the bucket but thousands are killed. If they were human, the survivors might fall to their knees and praise her for saving them. Just such praise is offered to any convenient god after every tsunami, earthquake or hurricane, not that such events are similarly deliberate.

If only Christians; Jews; Janes; Hindus; believers in Zeus; or any one of the hundreds of other human gods; invariably survived disasters while others invariably perished it would indeed be evidence of divine intervention. But it would still not be a miracle, as then it would be a simple fact of nature: 'follow Woden and you will survive disasters'[64].

Most religions contain both a powerful but un-testable promise and a threat (like reward or punishment in the next world). Some have argued that religion is positively harmful in this world. According to Karl Marx 'religion is the opium of the people'. Richard Dawkins has likened religion to a virus in the mind. Woody Allen says that considering all the suffering in the world, the best that can be said about God is that He is an under-achiever.

Wars, conflicts and terrorism often have a religious motivation and religion is seldom a force for peace, co-operation or compromise between nations:

Only one more indispensable massacre of Communists or Capitalists or Christians or Heretics, and there we are – there we are in the Golden Future.[65]

Religions often support existing class and social structures and resist change or the more equitable distribution of wealth. Until Vatican 2, the Roman Catholic Church still supported monarchies over democracies and actively rejected modernism.

Christianity claims to be a religion of peace but of course it would not have survived if it had always 'turned the other cheek' in the face of other religions. The very claim that it is a religion of peace is to be implicitly critical of (and an act of aggression against) other religions. When we talked of peace on earth and good will to all men; traditionally this meant a 'Christian peace' and 'all men who will accept our way of thinking'.

Christianity has been one of the world's most successful religions. To survive it had to proclaim some special position or truth not possessed by other religions. It had to have some special ability to capture the hearts and minds of people to make them fight for its survival and its spread.

In part it has done this by absorbing powerful ideas from other religions (like Saints, Christmas, Easter, angels, the apocalypse, devils and demons) and in part its internal conflicts created the chaotic and rich intellectual environment in which scientific thought could evolve.

 

Ethics

It used to be thought that religion was the source of our ethical standards. Now we believe that it is our culture that embodies our ethics, just as it creates and supports our religious beliefs. For example, the profoundly humanist instruction to 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' was not original to Jesus but can be found widely in earlier non-Christian cultures. Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist and a long tradition of Jewish thinking along these lines.

The now widely held beliefs that: 'all people are created equal' or that society's goals should be to secure each individual's rights to: 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness' are Humanist/ Utilitarian values not Christian ones. They came to Christianity (and the US Declaration of Independence) through the Unitarianism of Franklin and Jefferson (at least); Unitarianism is the belief in a singular God, as originator, and a denial of the Trinity or the divinity of Christ. It is 'enlightened' and strongly secular in its moral outlook.

Several of our strongest held moral taboos are not mentioned as crimes in the Bible, paedophilia (sexual attraction to children) for example. Others, that are mentioned (like homosexuality), are no longer regarded as crimes. The Bible is racist and regards slaves like 'parts of the furniture'.

Most moral standards are social rules that have been found to work. Often religions pick them up and give them the authority of God's word but just as often religions endorse rules that are more sinister. These are rules that are intended to protect the powerful or entrench social position or convention. Examples include those making women subservient to men or establishing social casts.

 

 

moral outrage

 

International covenants on human rights specifically exclude appeals to a deity (God) for establishing their values but find it necessary to protect against religious, intolerance, persecution and discrimination. One of the few human rights guaranteed by the Australian Constitution prohibits the establishment of any religion the freedom from religious test or enforced religious observance[66].

You can test the moral value of religion by considering the religious beliefs of very bad people and of those who contribute to a better world. In my life I have found very little connection between how good a person is and their religious beliefs (one way or the other). If we don't need religion to establish our moral framework, maybe we need it to answer the big questions of life?

 

Purpose

When people ask, 'what is the meaning of life?' they may be asking a religious question. They are not asking the meaning of the word 'life'. Nor are they asking what it is to be alive. Nor are they asking the 'purpose' of life in the normal sense. A doctor or a policeman or a priest has a list of purposes or functions (like a computer or a fry pan). But if you answered that the purpose of life was to be a doctor or a policeman or a priest, it is probable that they would not be satisfied.

The word 'purpose' seems to imply some owner or creator that is not just an employer or a parent. The question seems to anticipate an answer with God in it like: 'what did God put us here to do' or 'is there a divine plan or pattern to my existence'?

These questions seem to have meaning because we understand the words in a day-to-day context. We can make something useful or employ someone to do something for us. But to work in a metaphysical context they must first assume that God or some other planning agent exists and that He has made us for a reason. These questions are meaningless if God or another architect does not exist and so they shed no light on His existence.

But why would the creator of the infinite Universe need our help? Why are we so insignificant in that universe in size and in time? And if we are fulfilling His purpose, why is it so mysterious?

Some believers are determined to make the Bible version of creation agree with the scientific evidence. To do this they say that the word 'day' just needs to be redefined. But if God created the universe in six days: then a day lasts around two thousand million years; primitive life appeared a couple of days ago; the dinosaurs died out about an hour ago; humans appeared about 10 seconds ago; and His Bible was written less than a tenth of a second ago. If He then rested for a day, we still have a long time to wait for His return.

Some argue everything must have a creator so the universe must have a creator (and that is God). In that case who or what created God? If something doesn't need a creator, why does the universe need a creator?

Elizabeth Ann
Said to her Nan:
'Please will you tell me how God began?
Somebody must have made Him. So
Who could it be, 'cos I want to know?'
And Nurse said, 'Well!'
And Ann said, 'Well?
I know you know, and I wish you'd tell.'
And Nurse took the pins from her mouth and said,
'Now then, darling, it's time for bed.'[67]

Using empiricism, questions of this sort are scientifically meaningless because they can't be tested. Yet we do find evidence of order in the universe. That is what science is about. And if we choose, we can call this ordering principle: God. We were certainly created by the workings of 'the laws of nature'. But this God is at one with the universe, so when we look at anything we are looking at God. This is another way of saying that as far as we can tell, God doesn't do anything unusual; like intervene on our behalf or interfere in our lives in an unnatural way.

 

angry gods

 

The main use for statements or questions about God, that can't be tested by science (like: God loves me), is cultural, to give us insights to the way that people think and feel about things, not to tell us anything special about existence.

Religions often separate mind from body. The idea that the soul can live on, after bodily death, is very widespread in all human cultures. It is probable that every animal has some sense of self. The thinking process that decides to stalk prey, or run and hide from danger, probably seems much as it does to us; a thinking 'Me' that is telling my body what to do. But we know that this is entirely the result of message processing in a machine (the animal brain). The separation is an illusion.

That this separation could continue after the brain is 'turned off' is an idea takes many forms and as far as we can tell, is held by humans alone. Our culture inherited it from the Greeks and Egyptians into the Bible. The Old Testament is ambiguous on the subject but the New Testament is not. This separation between body and soul, allows the soul to exist independently or move between one body and another, to go around endlessly between bodies or universes or even skip into animals rock or plants. So when our body dies our soul might live on.

The 'life after death idea' has always been attractive to wealthy and privileged people. The Egyptian Pharaohs and Chinese and Roman Emperors made elaborate arrangements for the afterlife. Will Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, the Queen and the Pope just cease to be when their body dies? Wouldn't it be nice if they could go on enjoying their worldly advantages after death?

We can understand why the wealthy and privileged might be attracted to the 'life after death idea' but they are hugely outnumbered by the poor and suffering. In the New Testament the poor and under-privileged in this life are favoured in the afterlife:

Again I tell you, it is easier for a rope (Camel) to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God[68]

One of the great attractions of Christianity is that it offers the poor hope for a better life in the (sweet) hereafter. At the final reckoning the tables (with their bosses and oppressors) will be evened up. But the Old Testament Bible says that the belief in an afterlife or that our achievements are lasting is vanity (see the first quotation in this essay).

The idea that a person can survive death has probably been the cause of more human suffering than any other in history. It is the progenitor of a wide family of unsupportable related concepts (heaven, hell, reincarnation and so on) that cause people to live their present lives in expectation of a future chimera; to martyr themselves in religious causes; to fear the dark and unseen forces; to oppose humane and loving outcomes for the living and the dying in preference to drawn out misery or the not yet born; to misdirect economic activity in the direction of useless edifices and even to murder others to accompany them to the hereafter; to attribute special provenance to the rich or powerful; and to engage in pointless disputation, schism, wars and hatred.

As our culture has evolved and our thinking has changed, it is difficult now to believe that culturally fabricated religious stories, that were once believed absolutely, are anything but cultural parables. The German thinker, Friedrich Nietzsche is famous for proclaiming, 'God is dead'.

 

nietzsche

 


Death

Life is a sexually transmitted terminal disease.[69]

***

Death is generally taken to mean the irreversible loss of capacity for consciousness combined with the irreversible loss of capacity to breathe. [104]

 

We can be quiet certain that all life on this planet will eventually die out and that the physical Earth will be destroyed some day.

When it runs out of light gasses to fuse into heavier elements, the Sun is expected to supernova (explode in a huge flash of energy). Even though life will die out long before this we can be reasonably sure this will not be for about five thousand million years, so you need not worry about that. Of more concern, objects in space often hit the Earth's atmosphere. You can see them on a clear night in the country; shooting stars. Sometimes these collisions are big enough to hit the ground and leave craters.

On five separate occasions almost all plants and animals on earth been have wiped out. These big collisions are rare and have been hundreds of millions of years apart. The last big one probably wiped out the dinosaurs. In my mind these extinctions, and the constantly changing cycle of life despite them, calls into question why we would want to protect the environment for its own sake. Preserving it only makes sense in the context of protecting humanity.

As I have already said modern humans have been around for a short blink in this time and will no doubt be followed by other species. The animals that follow us may be more or less intelligent. If they are intelligent they will certainly see our ideas and culture as an interesting curiosity or grounds for academic study, but of no day-to-day relevance, just as we observe other animal behaviour and social interactions.

When humans change or die out, not only will our bodies be gone but so will be our ideas, memories and our works.

Individually death is inevitable; we are born to die. When our body stops working we are dead. We cease to think or to have new experiences (in so far as the words 'think' and 'experiences' have any meaning). There is absolutely no evidence or possibility that our brain continues to function after we die. Indeed, if we accept the British Medical Association definition of death (quoted above) if it did continue to support consciousness we would not yet be dead.

Individually, death comes two ways: by accident (or a combination of accidents accumulating to the ultimate certainty; including disease, injuries, being murdered etc) or by our own choosing: suicide. Suicide is now the greatest single cause of death for people under 30. Before you are very much older someone you know will probably suicide. So you need to think about it.

... To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:
... But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;[70]

When people get old and their quality of life degrades to the point where they can no longer do the things that give them enjoyment they may want to die. I think my father willed himself to die; and I am glad for his sake that he did.

Suicide is a very common theme throughout our literature, including Shakespeare[71], and our culture in general. For some existentialists it is the ultimate existential act; the ultimate break with bad faith.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night[72].

As discussed elsewhere the widely held idea that one can go on living, in any meaningful way, after death, fails even the most modest sceptical analysis. It clearly springs from a primitive context in which lives were (most) often short and brutish and when personal relationships were very close and fundamental to survival; when the heart, not the brain, was thought to be the source of the soul; and it was believed that the Universe was created for humanity, not humanity by the Universe.

Today we know that mankind has no special place or time. This universe is around 13.7 thousand million years old, there are billions of billions of planets and life in many forms is very likely commonplace throughout.

We know that the heart is just an organ. We can replace a heart and most other organs with no substantial impact on the personality. But a personality will change dramatically if certain areas of a brain are damaged or even temporally stimulated. We often see these effects after a stroke or traffic accident and we know the effects of drugs or oxygen deprivation on the brain.

Addendum:

In 2016, nineteen years after I wrote this chapter, I had a personal experience of death, when I underwent heart surgery. This is part of what I wrote:

'I was recently restored to life after being dead for several hours'

The truth of this statement depends on the changing and surprisingly imprecise meaning of the word: 'dead'.

I was no longer breathing; I had no heartbeat; I was limp and unconscious; and I failed to respond to stimuli, like being cut open (as in a post mortem examination) and having my heart sliced into.

Until the middle of the 20th century the next course would have been to call an undertaker; say some comforting words then dispose of my corpse: perhaps at sea if I was travelling (that might be nice); or it in a box in the ground; or by feeding my low-ash coffin into a furnace then collect the dust to deposit or scatter somewhere...

Throughout my recent procedure I was totally unconscious. I experienced nothing and time was meaningless: was it a second or a week? I had no thoughts; no dreams; no hallucinations; nothing; just an indeterminately long moment of blackness. There were in total three procedures requiring anaesthesia and I experienced this same nothingness three times. In each case I woke suddenly to a new reality: place and time and physical condition with no recollections; and no dreams.

I now attend Cardiac rehabilitation with a number of people who have had a very similar experience. Most of us have the same tell-tale scar down our chests. I have asked several if their experience differed from mine. None has reported anything but 'blackness' (nothingness).

Read more...

 

The idea that a personality survives death requires that the brain continues to function, in such a way as to sustain the present personality after a person is dead (or even to regress to a previous personality if there was a stroke or brain degeneration late in life). But every brain is massively damaged by death, so what sort of degraded personality passes on (disregarding the question of where it goes to; and by what means it is supported there)?

If there is no 'Other' place then the universe begins and ends for each of us with our perceptions of it, just as a peasant may live and die oblivious to anything beyond their village. For the ancient Romans (and Hebrews) what happened in China may just as well have never happened; it was outside their field of perception.

You are the only one who perceives your universe and yours is the only 'real' universe there is. Thus when you either die or suffer serious brain damage, the universe will end or contract, just as it did not exist until you arrived and then it expanded, with your perceptions of it. We each live in our own unique field of perceptions. And each of us can potentially end the universe by killing ourselves or sustaining sufficient brain damage.

A personal philosophy that nothing can matter once your universe ends is perfectly rational. The past, discussed at length elsewhere in this essay, is done and can't be changed. The future, beyond your death, is only important in so far as it impacts those you leave and care for; or your desire to be remembered. In this reality, personal values become focussed on your own lifetime. For example: your wellbeing, friends, family, place in society, or perhaps physical or mental stimulation.

A consequence is that the prospect that all humans on the planet may be wiped out, painlessly in an instant, say by a solar flare, or over an extended period, by evolution, is non-threatening.

Religion may rank very low in such a value system, unless as a means to secure an individual's 'lifetime' values (eg strengthen friendships). Some fear that such a philosophy may lead to anti-social beliefs or behaviour for them the separation of body and soul continues to be an essential theme in our culture.

Another explanation for the widespread success of the idea of an afterlife could be its cultural power to discourage suicide, as an action likely to result in distress to our everlasting soul.

For me the realisation that there is no afterlife is an argument for not committing suicide. I believe that this life is all there is. There is no second chance or reincarnation. You have the fortune to be here and to be able to appreciate that fact. You have one chance to play a part in world. How pointless it would be to step out earlier than you have to; something interesting might happen tomorrow!

Although there is no evidence that our mind (or soul) can exist without our body, and there are now a lot of scientific reasons for thinking that it cannot, we can believe in a 'soul' if it is another name for the ideas or information I leave (pass on to others).

We know that messages (ideas or instructions) can pass from one medium to another without changing meaning. I can write the first bars of Beethoven's 5th symphony on paper, play it on the piano, record it on tape, transfer it to a record, then to a CD, play it on a car radio, a sound system or computer or store it away dozens of different ways without changing the idea.

Many now believe that the entire universe can be reduced to information or messages (eg beliefs, ideas, genetic code, quantum theory and information theory in which the qualities of fundamental particles are constrained by the information they are able to carry). But if I were sending a message describing you it would be very inadequate if it failed to describe your body. You are your body; your brain is made of cells, even your memories and ideas are physical structures and events within your brain. It is no longer possible to believe that 'we' exist in isolation from our bodies. There can be no afterlife without them.

The realisation that we are alone in the vast Universe with an uncaring, distant or non-existent God and that when we die there may just be nothing is supposed to be frightening. But I think the opposite could be true.

In the movie the Truman Show[73], Truman discovers that his life is just an entertainment for others; that since his birth his whole life has been created and manipulated. He is given the choice of continuing to live in this protected 'heaven' or to leave to an uncertain, dangerous, 'godless' existence. Weir shows us that freedom is the only true 'life choice' and we applaud as Truman escapes.

I can't even begin to comprehend the idea of living without my body into the infinite future. If there was such a 'heaven' imagine how God would feel with many tens of billions of detached souls clamouring for His attention; forever.

Culturally we have a very ambiguous relationship with death. We can fear death but enjoy taking risks. You already enjoy dangerous recreations (skiing, rock climbing etc) and will likely add more. Most humans enjoy some danger, probably because success requires a degree of risk taking. Testing risk is probably a successful survival strategy favoured by our genes. Although we might be prepared to take personal risks we take great care to avoid risk to loved ones.

Society is much the same; we spend millions to avoid a single death in some areas while accepting death in large numbers in other areas. We even glorify some kinds of death. A soldier, sailor or pilot will be expected to risk their life 'for your country' or, more realistically, just to succeed in the action at hand. At other times you may choose to risk your life to save others (eg fire fighting or in a rescue). You have good genes and traditions for doing this, if called on, as many of your ancestors have done.

 

trust yourself

 

At the beginning of this essay I said that we are all defined by our ideas. I then argued that ideas are messages that we receive from others or our environment and I pointed out that genes are messages passed from generation to generation.

Each of us is a unique collection of messages. If you write in the sand and your message is washed away, where does it go? Its message may survive (as an arrangement of neurons) in the mind of anyone else who reads it. It might also survive as a photograph (a passing satellite perhaps or in any other medium) but the sand is rearranged.

When I die my genes and my ideas may go on in others, things I have said may be remembered, things that I made or wrote might survive me and changes I made to the way things are done or in the lives of others may leave my mark; but I will be gone. You might believe your purpose is to leave something you made, children or ideas for posterity but this is your choice not a principle of life.

At my father's cremation I concluded by saying:

'...it would be his fondest hope that we remember him as a good and honourable man; one who will go on in our hearts; through those he taught and helped and employed; through those improvements that he made to the world through his inventiveness, management and consulting work; and through his children and grandchildren.'

If you believe in improving 'the world' that's the best that anyone can hope for. When Woody Allen was asked if he wanted to achieve immortality through his films, he replied that immortality was of no interest to him since he would not be around to enjoy it. Don't sacrifice now for the hereafter.

 


Love

By the time he swears you're his
Shivering and sighing
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying
Lady, make a note of this,
One of you is lying.[74]

Our relationships sustain us and all the things I have talked about drive us to relate to others. We share with all other animals the desire to do those things that will lead to having children and carrying on the species.

Economically and physically it is easier to live with someone with whom we can share responsibilities and experiences, who has similar or complimentary interests, who we can trust with our secrets and can rely on if things go wrong.

When we meet someone who seems to have the potential to be our ideal partner; who attracts us sexually and seems equally attracted to us, who is fun, who has ideas, interests, knowledge, abilities, aspirations, a family, social group, job or other things we find attractive; we fall in love.

Sometimes this lasts; but often we find that we were mistaken about the person for some reason. Most of us have trouble finding someone who truly meets all our needs. Because we can easily be mistaken (on both sides) it is wise to test relationships by progressively sharing experiences and intimacies to see if you both are still attracted.

 

living together

 

I have some experience in this area and could make this the sole subject of this essay, so I am just going to list a few important observations:

 

 

wives

 

 


Children

Never have Children, only grandchildren.[76]

Life is defined in terms of reproducing organisms. The reproduction of the species is the intrinsic objective of human life and human society. If you are a member of society and do not participate in reproduction you effectively dedicate your life to the children of others (your boss' children the children of those on welfare and so on).

With too many humans on the planet already, not to have children may be a rational decision.

 

baby unmarried

 

Children are very resource consuming. Not only do they physically consume their mother's resources as infants, they consume family resources until they are able to fend for themselves. People that do decide to have children are committing to twenty to thirty years of reduced income and individual options.

Once children were seen within society variously as: security in old age; a punishment for lust out of marriage; an inevitable outcome of sex in marriage; a source of labour or domestic assistance; a way of keeping property within a family; reliable allies in dealings with other families or the world at large; or a religious or social duty.

Many if not all of these things have changed. Now you can have sex without risking children and many children live half way around the world from their parents. As people live longer, handing over family property to a 60-year-old child seems a bit odd.

Today we respond almost entirely to nature's compensations; children are a source of joy and both an object and a source of love. They can still be a source and object of personal pride and achievement but better still they develop before your eyes as a new complete human being; in turn processing their own experiences and ideas. People in committed relationships are happier than those who are not and there is no more committed relationship than with one's children.

We are programmed by our genes to want children; to enjoy and even need these things. To confirm this, watch a childless person with a pet; in their garden; or in their relationships with others.

 

only dog

 

Of course by having our own children we are responding to the urge in all animals to hand on the messages contained in our particular genes. But perhaps more importantly, we are handing on the ideas that our children get from us.

If you doubt that in humans genetic and cultural programming extends to passing on ideas, consider that many people are quite content to bring up children who do not have their genes. Others are irate that children with their genes were 'stolen' and brought up in another culture, with the ideas of others.

Childless people are often content that ideas, inventions and discoveries are handed on; that they or their ideas are remembered. Who knows or cares what happened to the children of the greatest artists, composers, writers, architects, scientists, engineers or leaders. Passing on their idea messages can be far more important than passing on their gene messages.

 


Good and Bad

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest[77].

***

When I'm good I'm very very good, but when I'm bad I'm better.[78]

Ethics describes the rules by which we decide between good and bad. Though it is probable that societies can only operate when some common basic rules apply, some ethical ideas vary a lot between cultures. We do not generally approve of eating people, for example.

If you study ethics, you may be asked: 'would it be possible to be bad or immoral if you were alone on a desert island?' You might reply that it would be bad to deliberately harm yourself or you might think it would be bad to damage other animals or plants. But suppose that you knew for certain that the Earth was about to be destroyed by a collision with another planet or a black hole or the Sun exploding. Is there anything you could do that would be bad just before everything, including the environment, was destroyed?

I think not. But as soon as there is an animal to be cruel to or another person to hurt or enslave or steal from you can be increasingly bad. So ethics is how we relate to others in our culture and a process of natural selection, to support that culture in its present form, has evolved its ethical rules.

Of course a religious person might say that to lose faith or to fail to praise or honour God would be bad, even for the last person left alive.

Over the centuries a vast amount of intellectual time has been dedicated to this subject and I do not intend to make it central to this essay. I would not do it justice in a dozen such. But it is tangential to almost every other topic I am covering; and you need to think about it. For example, if we have no freewill are we responsible for the evil, or good, we do?

In biology success is good; failure is bad; and so the good (not the meek) will inherit the earth. Of course they will not be human (we will be long gone). So maybe it is not good? The same applies in the marketplace. Success is proof of worth, failure of worthlessness. These kinds of goodness are fleeting. There is always another to successfully succeed.

You will hear some naïve theologians of an evangelical bent who feel that ethics is mainly about listing ways that you can be bad or immoral or sinful. But, as Jesus taught in the 'sermon on the mount', it is not sufficient or even necessary to be 'without sin'; you have to be trying to be good (free of thought crime – in Big Brother[79] terms).

To decide your own moral standards, rather than dwelling on sin, which is often culturally variable (like eating pork, blaspheming, showing your ankles, abortion or capital punishment), it is more useful to list the qualities of goodness in people; qualities that you would like to have.

 

right from wrong

 

For me, good qualities include honesty, trustworthiness, wisdom, compassion, courage, perseverance, creativeness, knowledge and a sense of humour. Good behaviours these lead to include, helping others, standing up for what seems right, being truthful and reliable (and good company) and trying to understand and improve the world.

These are the kind of qualities that are admired in every culture because these are the glue that keeps societies functioning. Because your ideas and values have evolved in our culture, if you follow your own ideas about what is right (sometime called your conscience) you will like yourself and be admired by others. You will be thought to be a good person.

What is wrong or bad is a bit more complicated. You could say it is the opposite of the qualities you believe are good. But sometimes people can't help being stupid or dull or wrong or uncaring. We wouldn't want to say this was being bad or evil.

In the book, and the more optimistic movie, The Cider House Rules[80] Irving presents us with abortion, adultery, incest, 'grand lies', forgery, racial issues and other violations of rules and norms; yet the characters committing these 'crimes' are not driven by malice. We sympathise with these people few of whom are 'bad'. It's just that they have no better ('gooder') options. At the end, the real rules of a 'good' life are just too hard to draft in any universal form.

To try to resolve this we have evolved laws that list the ways a person can clearly be bad and in what context (eg its unlawful to deliberately kill someone; unless you are a soldier or a hangman, or sometimes, defending yourself or a loved one).

Yet we don't believe that someone is good or admirable just because they obey the law and we might not always agree that someone who breaks a law is bad.

In Australia we are trying to build a better society with one of the greatest levels of ethnic and cultural diversity in the world. To succeed, it is essential that we build on our common ground of what is good. It is most important that we do not let individual ideas about sin or what is wrong; ideas that are not shared by everyone; hold sway. To that extent we all need to give up a bit of our culture for the common good.

 


The Truth

Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. [81]

A lot of this essay is directly or indirectly about truth. I have talked about knowledge and what we can know and I pointed out that we rely on others for almost everything we believe.

Society would not work very well if people had no regard for the truth. But what is the truth?

One of the problems for understanding truth is the way we bundle events and actions in our direct experience with cultural insights (like stories or parables that seem to reveal a truth) and with scientific hypotheses (contingent facts).

Telling the truth often involves reporting actions or other events honestly; 'who stole the tarts?' I could be untruthful in a number of ways. I may have stolen them and deny it. I may have seen them stolen by someone but deny it or I could claim to have seen the tarts stolen by someone when I did not. But it is also possible that I honestly thought I saw the Knave of Hearts steel them when it was someone else, or it was not the tarts that I saw taken but a tea cake.

Our experience is subjective. If I am blind or psychotic I might perceive the same events quite differently. My truth may not be your truth.

It gets even more complicated when I am retelling someone else's report of the theft of some tarts. Not only might I make mistakes in the detail but I might feel the need to add my own interpretations or to make the story more interesting. People feel freer to lie in these circumstances, because it is much easier to do without being caught and being called a liar. A special case is reporting our own memories of some event in the past.

I discuss scientific hypotheses at length elsewhere. Truth in a cultural context is altogether a different matter.

 

too trusting indulgent

 

People often lie or don't tell the truth. In many cultural situations we demand or prefer not to hear the truth. We understand that telling the truth is not always socially acceptable or wise behaviour. To tell a host, or an employer, that: 'I think you're really ugly and smell terrible', would be very impolite and/or very foolish.

It seems that the more you can be described as intelligent (are good at tests of reasoning or are able to influence others), the better you are able to play with the truth without being detected or others objecting. People interpret the truth and select 'facts' to suit themselves. I am doing this right now.

Truth often has to be seen in context. Sometimes you are expected to lie and sometimes you will be punished if you are caught lying. I have already said that we admire people who are honest and you should try to be honest. Perhaps this means that you should be able to discover the truth and to use it wisely.

In a law court, skilled practitioners (lawyers or expert witnesses) are all but useless at reaching the truth because they are experts at persuasion and know how to select and present facts to support their case.

 

A large part of this skill is making opponents reveal facts that they want to keep secret while withholding facts damaging to their own case. Having ascertained which facts they are working with:

'I said the sparrow, with my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin',

Lawyers put these facts into cultural context by arguing about ethics and the letter of the law. Was the confession extracted unlawfully? Was it accidental? Was it self-defence? Was it justifiable for some other reason? Is it unlawful to kill robins anyway?

 

justice triumphs

 

We often find that fiction seems to tell us more than a 'true story' but when someone is telling a story they made up we expect them to let us know it is fiction. They don't have to put a warning label on their work; they expect us to understand the clues they give us. We learn to understand hundreds of these clues; like setting the story in the present or the future, presenting the story from a character's viewpoint or including obviously fictional or fantastic elements. We get particularly upset if they try to make us think it is a true story when it is not.

As we grow up we learn the signals that tell us when someone is making up a story or flattering us or lying in some more direct way. We also learn how to detect when they are leaving out something important. These signals include body language as well as what they say or do.

We also learn how to deceive others the same way and how to be polite. We learn how to play an elaborate game in which each understands the other is not telling the whole truth and guesses what is not being said. We call that being diplomatic.

 

whole truth

 

We learn to collect and use information that builds the patterns (view of the world) that help us to realise that others have been deceived or believe something that is false. For example, different religions believe contradictory things; even if one of them is right, a great many people must believe things that are false. Most important, we need to learn how to relate to those who do not believe what we do.

 


Freedom

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing, that's all that bobby left for me [82]

One of the core values of our form of democracy is freedom also described as 'liberty'. Soldiers are inspired to kill in its defence, politicians and revolutionaries post it on their banners. But one person's freedom or liberty is often another's constraint, cost or annoyance.

Freedom of speech can mean freedom to incite violence to engage in abuse or otherwise to give offence. Freedom of action could imply the freedom to injure or to put others to risk or to impose costs on others. What is this 'freedom' that we hold so dear?

Philosophers tell us there are three different concepts implicit in popular enunciations of 'liberty' and it is often convenient for politicians to confuse these when lauding 'our hard won freedoms' or 'liberté, égalité, fraternité'.

The meaning given to liberté by some demagogues (as it came to be used in 'the terror' that followed the French Revolution and by some socialist movements) is sinister, this is the so-called 'liberty' to realise one's full potential according to some ideal (to be a valued citizen, a good person, a Christian, a champion swimmer, to be educated). This is sometimes called positive liberty (or constructive liberty) and is of course just another word for 'slavery' to someone else's ideal.

The normal meaning in our society is termed 'negative liberty', the liberty not to have boundaries set, to be generally unconstrained, for example to come and go at will, to make our choices (but still within some framework).

The third meaning has come to be called 'republican liberty' (after the Roman republic) this is 'true liberty' where there is no external constraining principle.

 

free to hit

 

For example with negative liberty your parents might allow you to express any opinion or your employer might allow you to eat at work but with 'republican liberty' no other person has the power to decide if you can or not.

You are free to resign from your job and, if an adult, to leave home but you are not truly free. Any employer you go to will impose rules and protocols and any place you choose to live will also have rules written or not. Simply walking down the street you are expected to obey the laws of the State and to behave according to the normal social conventions.

Thus your freedom is always constrained to one degree or another and the freedoms we have are indeed hard won. These should not be given up lightly. Freedom of opinion and belief, freedom from the imposition of the beliefs of others, sexual freedom (with informed consent), freedom to express one's views, freedom from unnecessary physical constraint, freedom to die when you wish all need to be defended.

We would want to say that a religious group that believes that early abortion or even contraception is murder or that human cell lines are in some way sacred, on the grounds of divine insight, has every right to hold and expound their beliefs (but no right to impose those beliefs on anyone else).

But what if their belief goes further to believing that children should not be immunised or that they should be denied any medical intervention if ill? And what if they believe children should be severely beaten or enslaved or cared for by people who have been denied any normal sexual outlet? Should Society impose limits on their freedoms and actions?

Again we come back to the principle that we need to evolve these rules as we go and be prepared to select that which works in this time and place. We should not be resorting to divine authority or philosophies from the distant past to determine what is right here and now.

 


Free Will

'I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, Sir,' said Alice, 'because I'm not myself, you see...
I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'

The obvious argument for 'freewill' is that we seem to have it. I seem to want to write this and I consciously strike these keys. Even though I know that this is actually driven by brain processes in my subconscious and conscious brain; even though this structure is the outcome of my biology, my experiences and my knowledge, set in my present context, it is Me that is doing it.

From our earliest childhood we are held responsible for our actions. If we deliberately broke or stole something, and got caught, we were usually punished; if we did something good we were often rewarded. Because we choose to do things, most of us feel we have freewill; that we are able to make decisions about the future.

If you tell me that I'm not able to decide to have a coffee; stay up late; or cross the road when I see an opportunity; I will reply that you are wrong. I regularly make these decisions and a thousand more. I experience the freedom to choose and indeed sometimes choices are difficult to make and I might ponder before deciding.

But as I discussed early in this essay our experience, and the intuitions we draw from it, is notoriously faulty. It is counter intuitive that a feather and a cannon ball fall at the same speed in a vacuum, that white light is made up of many coloured lights or that magnets attract or repel at a distance and right through other materials.

So our experience needs to be extended by these wider experimental observations.

After the basic equations of physics were first described by Newton, the view that everything was determined from the beginning of time became widely held. Newton showed that the planets move around the sun in a predictable way and these fundamental rules (Newton's laws) of motion seem to apply to everything and allow all physical movements to be predictable.

People became concerned that this meant that 'freewill' could not exist. If every decision we make could in theory be predicted it is just an illusion that we make choices; because each choice is the one we are bound to take. Our decisions are the ones we must make in the circumstances, given our inherited genes, the ideas we have, what has happened to us in the past and the stimuli of the moment; none of which we personally control:

Where are there are two desires in a man's heart he has no choice between the two but must obey the strongest, there being no such thing as 'free will' in the composition of any human being that ever lived.[83]

If our decisions are those that we inevitably make; the ones that could be predicted, knowing us sufficiently well; then freewill is an illusion.

 

universe unfolding

 

The idea of 'free will' is closely related to our concept of time, discussed in more detail later in this essay.

If I steal that book the future of the Universe is irreversibly changed to a lesser or greater extent.

Thus asserting we have 'freewill' is the same as asserting that each of us can choose to change the future of the Universe.

But can I really 'choose' to change the future?

In one view (philosophers call this the Block Time view), time is an equivalent dimension to say length and we are simply passing through a pre-existing landscape like the frames of a movie passing a lens. All you will ever do is already predetermined and 'freewill' is an illusion, due only to complexity.

Or possibly the future is contingent upon our immediate decisions and all creatures capable of making a 'free' decision create it as we go (I will call this the Naïve Realist view).

I discuss ways in which alternative futures, that permit freewill, may be possible in a later chapter. But can we tell the difference? After all, any theory of time relies on common perceptions (data) and each theory fails if they do not yield the same perceptual result. In other words a theory doesn't even 'make it to first base' if it predicts an outcome that is not consistent with our experience (the perception that we have free will).

If I can't tell the difference between: making a decision because it is my nature and destiny to do so; or because I genuinely have a choice; is 'freewill' the issue at all?

Some scientists (and some religions) think that it is our belief in a 'self' that is the illusion and so the question of 'freewill' is irrelevant. There is evidence to support this.

As I discuss again later, psychologists and brain scientists have demonstrated that a decision is often made subconsciously, many seconds before we are consciously aware of it. Our conscious process is one of justification after the event. The conscious 'me' is not 'me' but a sort of public relations department. Of course I can now 'decide' to write a line of 'aaaaaaa' or get up and have a cup of tea. But who is 'I' and could my action be predicted in the circumstances?

Can this 'I' be held morally responsible for my actions?

When we play with a dog we might have a ball or a stick and pretend throw it. Sometimes the dog will be tricked and go rushing off but other times the dog will be 'on to us' and wait. The dog seems to be making a decision. She weighs up the situation and decides whether we have really thrown the ball on not. On other occasions the dog might steal something from the kitchen and we punish her.

But we don't punish her because she is evil, we punish her because she is the dog and unless we teach her the correct thing to do, she will steal something from the kitchen again. We know that dogs are pack animals and we must establish a higher 'pack order' than the dog, otherwise the dog will try to control us, possibly by growling and biting the hand that feeds it. We know this is a dog's nature.

When a Rottweiler or a Doberman kills a child we 'put it down' and the media says: 'These dogs are dangerous and no one should breed them.'... 'It is the nature of Rottweilers and Dobermans to be vicious and the people who are attracted to them must have an underlying psychological problem and probably mistreat them.'

There is there is an assumption that dogs do what they do because of their nature or how they have been treated; that they have no 'freewill'. Dogs are constrained by their breed, how they have been trained and treated and what accidents or experiences have befallen them since they were puppies (they might have been the runt of the litter, run over by car or attacked by another dog).

Yet, it is very difficult to distinguish the dog's moral choices and actions from those of a child. The same things will govern the child's behaviour: whether he is tall or swarthy, strong or stupid; how he was brought up and what he has learnt; and the accidents and circumstances of life, like birth order or who he happens to meet. If the dog has no freewill then why does the child?

In society we punish thieves and murderers; so that the prospect of punishment is one of the things that they and others consider when deciding to steal or kill; or in some cases to reform them by changing their character; or simply to remove them from society so that they can't do it again. In this view, laws are conditions that have evolved in our culture to modify the decisions that people make. They impose the social will on individuals.

The law and primitive societies is often driven, instead, by rules of revenge. Sometimes this leads to running tribal feuds that can go on for generations. The, often overwhelming, human desire for revenge is an inherited animal emotion that may have lead to a survival advantage in primitive societies but does nothing but exacerbate the problem of crime in modern ones. In civilised societies we try to avoid or circumscribe the calls for revenge that may come from the victims of crime, their relatives, 'shock jock broadcasters' or political demagogues.

Revenge and a belief in freewill seem to be closely connected. In the case of a child killing Rottweiler, seldom do we hear that the dog should be painfully tortured before being killed. More often we hear appeals to put the dog down humanely or not at all. And if there is any desire for revenge it is often against the owner or breeder.

Yet if an abused young man commits the same crime there will be calls for revenge against him, often involving pain or torture. There is seldom any call for the young man's parents or teachers to be whipped. Presumably, this is because the young man is supposed to have freewill and the dog has not.

The issue of 'freewill' is of serious concern for Religion. Punishment in religions, that have their roots in primitive societies, often embraces this desire for revenge. But if we do not have 'fee will' why would God punish sinners or unbelievers, particularly after they are dead and can sin no more? They are just responding to their 'God given nature', the things others have taught them and circumstances over which they have no control. If they choose not to believe, or to repent, it is not their doing; it is because of things they have been taught, events they have experienced or genes they have inherited.

 


Certainty

...a red hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and...if you drink much from a bottle marked POISON, it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.[84]

In general, events in our universe seem predictable. But how predictable are they? Just because one event has always followed another in the past does this mean that it always will in future?

Philosophers call this the problem of 'induction'. How can I know that the rules that operate today, and have always operated in the past, will apply tomorrow? This is often illustrated by the turkey that is well fed and looked after so that for his whole life he knows that when the farmer comes it will be to feed him – until Christmas Eve.

As we can never test every present event, let alone future events, we can't be sure that things will behave the same way tomorrow. As a result we have realised that nothing can be absolutely certain. Instead we look for events that disprove a rule that we think might apply. We establish an 'hypothesis' (a rule we think might apply) and then attempt to disprove it. This is the essence of Logical Positivism, which I have already mentioned.

We know from astronomy and geology that the laws that govern the movement of planets stars, atoms, molecules and sub-atomic particles have been the same for a very long time. Our attempts to disprove them have either failed or caused us to find new laws that can't be disproved. As a result we expect these laws to be the same in the future.

If we knew enough about the laws of the Universe could we work out the future from the present?

 

proposal

 

Imagine we used a computer to model dice in a cup so you could see a picture of what was happening on the screen. We could then put into the computer just how two dice start in the cup and show what happens in the cup as it is shaken. If we know exactly how the cup is shaken we can work out how the dice will bounce and we could show exactly how the dice would fly out of the cup and hit the table, where they would stop and which face would be up when they stopped.

If we don't change the equations, every time we ran the computer program the result should be the same. In the same way, if we had a dice throwing machine that could exactly repeat its movements we would expect that the dice should end in exactly the same spot with the same numbers up every time. If they didn't we might assume that our machine was not exact enough or we had not eliminated some variation, like gusts of wind or dust on the table.

Manufacturers make this kind of assumption all the time. They know that they can reduce variability in their machines by improving their tolerances and accuracy and by demanding consistency in their materials. When all these are right they can get very close to the same result every time the machine runs.

We are pretty used to thinking we can predict things if we have enough information. People have been able to accurately predict eclipses of the sun and moon for many hundreds of years and we can now do it with accuracy measured in fractions of a second. Captain Cook came to map the East Coast of Australia because his expedition knew in advance that Venus would transit the sun at a particular time and that this would be seen from a particular part of the Pacific Ocean.

In the same way NASA can accurately calculate where a satellite will end up in space before they launch it. If it isn't quite right they assume that the rocket speed wasn't quite right or they didn't make the right adjustments for variations in atmosphere or gravity.

On a Universal scale, if everything is predictable then everything in the universe must have been pre-ordained from the beginning of time; the universe must be like a script written the instant it was formed. With the same starting conditions, it could be run like a video over and over, with exactly the same scenes repeated each time; one event inevitably following another; with only one, inevitable course. As time is one of its dimensions the universe is already complete and unchangeable.

Relativity made this possibility even more probable because to make observed relationships, like gravity, fit the equations time has to be a dimension like height, width and depth. Just as a distance exists between any two points; any two points are also connected by a time. Thus two times (or all times) must already exist in some way. Just as space has distance it has time.

We see only one instant on the time dimension (the present; the past is memory) so we are just turning the pages of our little chapter in time to see what happens next, because what we do and when we do it is already determined. And we do not have freewill. As Shakespeare wrote:

'All the world's a stage. And all the men and women merely players.'

To see the future, maybe all we need to do is build a huge computer (a big version of the ones weather forecasters use) and play the universe model forward to find out what will happen next; and I would write these words again and again and again every time the universe was replayed.

But what if events can go different directions from the same starting point; and there is a range of possible outcomes?

 


Why are we here?

We're here because
We're here because
We're here because we're here;

...repeat for the rest of the tune[85]

Seen from the past, it is impossibly unlikely that you would be here. For you to be born and not a brother or a sister, your mother had to get pregnant and it had to be just that sperm and that ovum that would become you and not your sister or brother. An average ejaculation releases over 59 million sperm; only one of which can fertilise a receptive egg. Which that will be is sensitive to the slightest change in conditions and timing.

It was, in the same way, very unlikely that your mother or father would be who they are. It was quite improbable that our parents would meet at the right times or be attracted to each other or get together at just the right times to have us. The same goes for our grandparents and their parents and grandparents.

 

ancestors

 

If we go back each event in history was also impossibly unlikely. For example it is perfectly possible that an intelligent animal other than humans would have filled this ecological niche. Had a meteor not hit the world (if that is what happened) then the eventually evolving intelligent animal might have been a reptile. Maybe without the various disasters the world has gone thorough there would be no place for intelligence.

We have been identifiably human for around 5,000 generations. Everyone has four grandparents; eight great-grandparents; thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents and so on cumulatively. In only fifty generations (just under a thousand years ago) everyone has theoretically had 2,251,799,813,685,250 ancestors, assuming no interbreeding.

This number is over seven million times greater than the total number of humans that were alive on the planet in 1000 AD. Because of this we know that we must be descended from our shared ancestors by many different lines (many of the couples were distant, or not so distant, cousins).

It would be tempting to argue that every one of us must be descended from everyone on the planet that was alive in the year 1000 seven million times over; or that by two thousand years ago the number is so large that everyone is related to anyone you like to mention (Julius Caesar, Nero or Jesus). But this is clearly not the case. As recently as five hundred years ago groups of humans were still very isolated in particular countries, villages etc and in many places had strong taboos against interbreeding with other races and even with other classes.

It is quite common for quite small communities to be isolated for many generations and some of our ancestors certainly came out of such isolated areas. Further, many people were unable to reproduce or were forbidden to reproduce. As recently as one hundred years ago, working class girls in service in England were forbidden to have children.

Nevertheless the fact that you are here means that your ancestors were amongst those who did reproduce. In the past wealthy and powerful people reproduced more successfully than the poor and weak. People with European ancestors are almost certain to be related to one or many early European kings, queens and landowners.

Almost anyone with an ancestor who was born in Australia before 1940 (when large scale immigration began) will have at least one aboriginal ancestor. Similarly anyone sharing a language will share at least one relatively recent ancestor. Because of the huge number of ancestors you have you are closely related to many people you may see in the street, or even meet overseas.

Because some of our ancestors did not breed or had children who did not, the others had correspondingly more influence on our existence. As we have seen the impact of this accident is well over than a million-fold after only a thousand years.

It is obvious that your presence is contingent on many hundreds of millions of successful copulations. And if just one of these ancestors who produced many lines had mated at a different microsecond or had a slightly different experience, a vast section of the population would not exist as they do. Someone would have existed in their place but not these particular people with these genes.

Every one of these events seems to have been an incredible accident.

This is a mystery that has worried thinkers since humans were smart enough and knew enough to understand the problem; how is it that I am here, thinking these thoughts, when my existence is impossibly unlikely?

It seems I am here by an infinitely small chance, but here I am. Everything else here seems just as unlikely and many of them are just as complex, like a grasshopper, and work so well.

 


Uncertainty

Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, dass der nicht würfelt. (At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.) [86]

Not long ago (less than a lifetime) some scientists and philosophers (Niels Bohr and others) argued that some things must be able to go different ways even when the starting conditions are exactly the same.

Albert Einstein (originator of the theory of relativity), who had already shown that Newton was only partly right, did not like this idea and argued that 'He does not play dice'.

Bohr won the argument by using the 'Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle' that says that you can never accurately know both a particle's position and its momentum. But Einstein was never happy with the outcome.

Maybe some events in the universe can jump different ways, given exactly the same starting conditions. We know from chaos and complexity theory that even a tiny event can rapidly multiply to make huge changes in everything. If the tiniest thing is unpredictable then we are wrong in believing we can predict everything.

Events and conditions over which you have no control influence every event in your life. If you run out on the road a car might kill you but only if one is there at that second and only if the driver can't stop and only you are hit in a certain way.

 

meteorite swing set

 

There is no complex decision you can make that might not turn out unexpectedly. We can reduce this uncertainty by knowing as much as possible about the related events but we can never fully predict how related events will flow.

In other words the uncertainty principle says we can never know everything about the future. Of course in life we find there are lots of things too complex to predict, from horse races to our own future. But the uncertainty principle seems to say that some aspects of the future are unknowable even if we could get past the complexity.

It is important to know how much we can't know (is impossible to predict). It must be very small. If a lot was unknowable, we couldn't rely on gravity working tomorrow or things being where we left them, or anything working the same way twice.

We are now in the information age. When we collect and try to use information we are sending or getting a message. When we look at, feel, smell or hear anything, it is sending us some kind of message.

At a party, if you sit in a circle of people and whisper a message to the person next to you, then each person whispers it to the next, by the time it gets back it is quite different. Until we had radios telephones and computers people assumed that all mistakes in messages were due to mistakes that people made (because they usually were). Then we discovered that no matter how hard you try you can never eliminate all mistakes.

When a message is sent by any method it has two components: Signal (the data being sent) and Noise (everything else; like the fuzzy bit in a TV picture, the crackle on the radio). We can get rid of a lot of the noise by improving our machines and methods but it turns out that we can never eliminate it completely. Information theory attempts to describe these relationships.

Of course we always have known that messages can get confused or changed with repetition and so we have lots of natural checks to indicate that they may have got garbled. Rhyming in poems and songs are obvious examples. Natural grammar appears to be programmed-in by our genes and of course we invented pictures and writing.

Now when we want to send an exact message, for example from one computer to another, we know to send check bits that reveal if it has mistakes, so the parts with mistakes can be sent again.

It turns out that the little bit of noise we can't ever get rid of is similar to our uncertainty about atomic particles. The only way we know where particles are is because of the forces that they seem to exert on each other. These can be described as messages they exchange. Some think that these are just different ways of looking at the same thing.

This absolutely unknowable bit of a message is a measure of the uncertainty in our universe, the proportion of events that we can't ever predict with certainty. And it looks like this might be a property of our universe that might be different in other possible universes. So again it is related to us being here.

Observing events is receiving their message. Some messages sent by sub-atomic particles have interesting feature. They can remain uncertain until they are read. Of course you immediately say, 'What's so unusual about that? Every message is uncertain to the receiver until it is read'.

But in the case of a quantum particle the message is not written until it is read! It is uncertain to the sender too. This can be demonstrated by making a quantum pair then observing one half. This causes the other to change state. More bizarre, physicists believe that reading a message from one half determines the state of the other anywhere in the Universe; instantaneously. The observer changes the message.

Our culture or spring often takes up scientific ideas just as science uses ideas from our culture. Several authors and filmmakers have explored the idea that observing events interferes in them; changes their outcome. The act of observing can be subtle or crude, depending on how the message is used afterwards and how aware the observed is of the observer. Are messages sent back; is there a conversation; is it passed on to others; is it garbled or twisted?

In computing and the media we make the distinction between one-to-one messages and one-to-many messages (broadcast). In the first case I expect acknowledgement; some kind of reply; or I may conclude that my message was not read. In the second I assume many will read it and take it or leave it. The message I send, and the impact it has on me, will be quite different depending on whether it is broadcast or sent selectively to others we know. We might be slobs at home but get dressed-up and brush our hair to go out.

Awareness that they are observed, or could be observed, changes the behaviour of the observed. Newspapers television, radio and the Internet change the events they report. Journalists now change the outcome of wars; not only when they stage news stories or give strategic information to the enemy; but also when they behave ethically and responsibly. Their impact will be greater the more obvious is their presence and the more they interfere.

Even in disguise and using hidden cameras, the publication of a story causes a change. For example the observed may learn that hidden cameras might be used or that others respond to their actions (without knowing why) and change their behaviour. Journalists have increasing impact because their messages are broadcast increasingly quickly and widely and the observed quickly realise that they are observed.

Because of their importance, you can see how small random changes (noise) in messages could easily change the future. If the Universe was replayed from exactly the same starting point, some messages would be slightly changed and some events and behaviour would not be repeated.

We are just starting to have the concepts within our society and to get the words to talk about these things (uncertainty, chaos, information theory and so on). You need to read about them and think about them if you are going to be educated and informed and to have any chance of understanding the modern conception of the universe.

 


Different Futures

Time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea...
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.[87]

If uncertainty means that some events have an equal chance of happening, then the story would be different if the universe was run again from the beginning with exactly the same starting conditions. Millions of different but equally likely outcomes would contribute to a different future each time.

Instead of one time line (like children draw at school) there could be lots of branches leading outwards from every point at which uncertainty is possible. This would make time more like a plane than a line. I'm sure that this is in part what Einstein objected to. Of course we only see one line in the past; only one line leads to us. But we have lots of choices from now on, only one of which we can experience.

The problem seems to be tied up with our idea of time itself. For physics to reflect what actually happens in the Universe we have found that we must incorporate time as a space-time dimension like width height and depth. Like the three spatial dimensions its meaning is defined by relationships within the Universe. There is no time without the universe; just as there was no width height or depth. And it has no meaning to ask what was 'before' the Universe.

In the world of direct experience we experience height, breadth and depth (3 physical dimensions) and time. There may be additional dimensions, more about these later, that we can infer but do not experience directly.

But time is experienced in a different way to the other perceived dimensions. We only know about time because one event seems to follow another; a second passes and that scene is now only a memory. The next second is a prediction. The present seems instantaneous. Without memory there would be no experience of time and consequently no expectation of future. But memory is an entirely biological feature of our organism. Thus our experience of time may be unique to our biology or the human brain.

Our human, common sense, concept of time may be entirely due to the way we perceive the here and now.

For example we know from repeated experiments to test relativity that an observer in a different frame of reference (travelling at a different relative speed) experiences time differently. The clocks that set GPS positioning from satellites do indeed run at a different rate according to their relative velocity.

In order to explain and predict electro-magnetism, static electric force (the force that makes your hair cling to a comb) gravity and so on, all four dimensions have to be considered as a continuum (Einstein's space-time continuum). The future and the past are as real and existent as the present.

The space-time continuum means that all four dimensions are closely bound together and all four can be stretched or bent according to relative velocity, mass (and therefore energy) defining a system. We know this is broadly true because it underlies most modern technology, allows accurate prediction of certain classes of event and if it were not at least a good approximation of reality, our technologies like GPS navigation and computers would not work.

Using the movie metaphor, the whole movie is already 'in the can'. You can start it anywhere you choose and the story will flow as it did before, as when first run; the characters having no knowledge of what will happen next. If this is so in reality you could be anywhere in the time dimension spanning your life. But it will always feel the same, as if say, you are twenty (or 30 or 60). At any point you will have identical memories of the last second and no idea what happens next.

 

inevitable surprising

 

This 'next' is defined by the state of your perceptions at that point on the time dimension.

When we dig a little deeper it becomes ever more apparent that the idea of time is moulded human perception. This instant is not infinitely short. The brain processes that give rise to our perception of the 'present' themselves take time and the 'present' is made up of a series of events that do not occur simultaneously. For example it is well known that showing a human being a series of pictures changing more often than four per second appear to us to be a continuous moving image. In other words we are unable to fully process more than four images in the second.

Other brain processes take even longer:

Brain scanner predicts your future moves[88]

In other words there is around a seven second delay, like the one used by talk-back radio to allow the host to censor an unwanted remark. During this delay our unconscious brain is at work but not reporting its activities to the conscious brain. We only become aware of some decisions seven seconds after 'we' actually made them. Numerous other studies reveal similar neurological processing delays.

These studies indicate that when we want to react to something very quickly we apply a predefined set of rules. This is why we can't learn to drive a car or to ski from a book; we have to program a subconscious and nervous system so that it will react appropriately, without time consuming processing.

At the Australian Institute of Sport, elite sports players wear occlusion goggles during training, to blank out of their view of a high speed ball's flight to their bat or racquet, because this view can't be processed in time and actually confuses the brain's effective processing of the situation[89].

Each of us is an enormous corporation of cells and neurons like a giant business corporation; and as in a business the chief executive only learns of many decisions long after she is supposed to have made them. Her role like our 'conscious self' is to clean up after any mistakes and 'sell the outcomes' to the stakeholders.

So my 'now' on the timeline is a bit fuzzy. Some of my conscious 'now' and some of my 'future' are already past. As a result I have a built in perception of time and of the direction of time being driven by causality. If I stand on a pin the pain in my foot precedes my consciousness of it.

The command to get something to stop the blood was actually put into action by the troops seven seconds before the General thought of it.

This may be why time seems to fly in one direction. You have a sense of the past but less of the future. Well actually you can't see the past you can only remember the past imperfectly; again you brain is selective in what it sees and keeps. And indeed you have a fair expectation of drawing another breath, another heart beat, the world about you not suddenly disappearing and that person continuing to drone on as before.

The time dimension itself is measured out by the direction of causality. Past things result in present things and present things result in future things. One measure may be increasing entropy, the tendency to chaos, or cooling, as described by the second law of thermodynamics but this is not essential to one thing needing to happen before another can.

If this Block view of time is true then time travel is not possible as a perceived 'travel event'. We may well travel back or forward on the time dimension but no change is permitted so our perceptions are identical to those we had the first time or the six millionth time. We have no way of distinguishing one from the other; each visit is a unique point perceived, while there, as the very first.

But if different futures are possible, for example if we can change the future through the decisions we make, then time travel becomes a possibility (not a certainty), as differences (due to different choices made by billions of life forms) may well result in a Universe where this can happen.

Let's assume that Humans exist for some time into the future and continue to advance technologically so that time travel, if possible, becomes available. And let's assume the Universe is sufficiently vast in scale and duration for time travel to be developed elsewhere. This would allow space exploration across the entire universe as the speed of light ceases to be a constraint.

If this were true we should already be receiving visits from a vast array of future humans and travelling aliens.

The fact we are not is evidence that time at least up to now is 'set in concrete' - although we may be able to jump forward in future, something prevents the future interfering with the past.

This gives support to the idea that time (defined as a series of events in a specific order) is unchangeable into the future, as well as in the past.

The verifiable arrival of a time traveller would instantaneously refute the Block view of time, as being unchangeable and thus, amongst other things, affirm freewill.

It seems probable that time is a single dimension in this universe. If every one of the six billion people on the planet (and possibly animals and plants; not to mention life on other planets in the universe) is able to change the course of time simultaneously by exercising freewill, then which line do we collectively take? If different versions of each of us go in all possible directions then it may have to be in multiple universes.

When you decide to go to the pictures tomorrow night you do not annihilate all the people on the planet who have simultaneously decided to go down a different future road. But you might find that you get a better offer or the car broke down or the movie was cancelled. All decisions must somehow be taken into account in a common future (or futures).

Some people in remote countries may change the future enough for their choices to be quickly felt in Australia. But if they are living in a remote village and are not even known well in their own country, their influence may take hundreds of years to be felt here.

The problem is that they or say, some creature in another galaxy have made a decision you can't possibly know about but which will need to take yours into account if we are to go the same direction in time.

For a moment let's consider the possibility of other intelligent life. Planets have been detected around several nearby stars. It is safe to assume that there are trillions of trillions of planets like the ones in our solar system. Some, or many, of these may have life on them and sometimes this life may be intelligent.

The trillion to one chance is most of these creatures would be in other galaxies. The nearest of these is Andromeda; 2 million light years away. Most are many hundreds of millions of light years away. Even if we received a message from a creature like us in Andromeda the creature would be long since extinct before the message reached us.

Our best bet for actually meeting other life forms is on another body in our solar system or if a stray planet (without a sun; which may be in the majority) comes close some day and it happens to support life. On earth intelligence is rare (only one living species has it) so by that standard it is very unlikely that this life would be intelligent. But on balance these considerations suggest that human decisions are probably not changing cosmic futures.

Even though it seems unlikely that we are constantly going in several directions in time (but looking back see only one route to this version of you) there is a possibility that this really does happen in a limited way. Some events inside atoms may be intertwined so that decisions that change the future are instantaneously communicated throughout the universe. In this way the options for change may in some way be limited and shared by the change agents.

Some theorists now propose ten or eleven dimensions[90] (super string theory) for their calculations to explain all the various sub-atomic forces and particles and to get to a single theory explaining the laws of physics. All but four of these dimensions[91] do not seem to be evident in our physical universe. Physicists say the other dimensions are 'curled up'. Maybe one or more of these gives our universe a little extra dimension, just sufficient to stop us getting all the information from a message or knowing both the position and momentum of a particle.

In our world what looks to us like choices we make, flow out from the event like ripples on a pond to provide new options to others over time and space. So the things my father did before I was born directly resulted in my existence but things he has done since have had less and less influence on my life.

Even if there is a possibility of multiple futures, true acts of 'freewill' may still be limited to a very few events; just enough to make the future unknowable. Possibly, as some have speculated, quantum states play a part in the way that the neurons in our brains work, at a molecular level, and it is 'quantum uncertainty' that gives rise to 'freewill'. But quite clearly our brain works in similar ways to that of a chimpanzee or a dog or a spider and if this speculation is true, quantum states play a role in their brains too.

If animals have 'freewill' their indecisions too must 'Disturb the universe'. It could be that a different kind of brain to ours might see these ideas more clearly.

 


Alternative Universes

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change...
When you take the UNCF model that, what a waste it is to lose one's mind, or not to have a mind is being very wasteful, how true that is...
The other day [the President] said, I know you've had some rough times, and I want to do something that will show the nation what faith that I have in you, in your maturity and sense of responsibility. Would you like a puppy?
People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.
Sayings of Dan Quayle [92]

 

That you and I (and Dan Quayle) can change the future seems certain to us.  We either call it planning ahead or 'going with the flow', reacting to what others throw at us, but in either case we believe that we make a decision and that that decision influences the outcome.  It seems to me that I can 'decide' to go this way or that way to the city and change my mind if there is a problem with my first choice.  It doesn't matter why, perhaps if I'm following some hidden sub-conscious agenda or acting under the combined impact of my genes, knowledge and environment, yet I am sure that I'm making decisions and I'm sure you are too.

In other words you and I and everyone else change the future.  And as we have seen humans, pre-humans and even plants and animals have been changing the future, second by second, minute by minute, individual be individual, since life began.  It's been an infinity of new universe possibilities, only one of which led to the infinitely improbable moment at which you are reading this.

So the possible futures like the possible pasts and presents seem infinite most of them populated by entirely different people and different cultures; or no people at all.

Suppose a truck dumped load of sand in a playground sandpit and you visited after a week to find the sand spread out.

For a Science or Art project you decide to map the position of every grain and its present orientation.  You decide to show that the pattern that has formed is almost infinitely unlikely. 

To get an idea you look up the number of ways of shuffling a deck of 52 cards (52 factorial) and discover that the number is 8.06 x 1067 a bigger number than all the atoms on the planet.  Then you think: but the number of permutations for 52 grains of sand is vastly greater than for cards because the grains aren't just one on top of the next, they're irregular little rocks and can be rotated and they are in many relations to each other (north south east or west up and down at varying distances).  Then you think there are not just 52 of them but around 6x109 grains of sand in a ton. Thus the possible ways a ton of sand might be organised is vastly larger than even an incredibly huge number, like all the subatomic particles in the observable universe (1080).

Yet trucks of sand arrive in playgrounds everyday of the week and sand is spread out by children playing.   No one marvels at the pattern of sand resulting even though each sandpit is totally unique. There is no mystery. The sand has to be some way and it's just the way things happen to be after all that play.  This is just one of billions of everyday events that have a totally unique outcome depending on the other events that surround them.

Just as our truck can tip its sand in an almost infinite number of ways, cosmologists believe that the universe may have developed in an infinite number of ways after the big bang.

Some theorists believe that because this is possible it has actually happened; with a different universe for every pattern of sand; for every possible truck; for every possible playground; for every possible planet for every possible life form; for every possible arrangement of particles in every universe that might exist.

If every universe that can exist will exist; there is a very, very large number of different universes, an infinite number; and thus it is certain that you will be in one of these (as you are).

This is like our truck repeatedly tipping sand and the children playing, almost infinitely, until every possible pattern has been explored. When children play in the sand the number of possibilities is almost infinitely multiplied because their possible actions are variable to a very large degree.

If you have freewill (the ability to influence which universe you will be in in future), there may have to be a new universe for every one of your potential indecisions. And for the indecisions over every other living creature that has freewill.

Decisions your parents might have made, including your potential unborn brothers or sisters, maybe by different mothers or fathers, would be in other universes. These other universes might be parallel in time, happening now; or they might be what happens when successive universes are played over and over again in infinite time, from the big bang (this may be the same thing depending on your view of time).

Such multiple universes are used by some theorists to explain why our present universe is structured to allow human existence. This is called the anthropic principle: 'The only universe we can see is one that supports life. If it were a different type of universe, we would not exist to see it'. But of course this is not sufficient to explain why I am here; for the argument to stand there must be sufficient universes of that class to allow my (and your) existence.

For that to happen there have to be vastly more universes. Not just those that have the conditions necessary for life but those in which all the events that led to me and you, my reader, being born and getting to this instant in time, not to mention the present status of all those playground sandpits.  And surely we don't have to have sufficient universes for every sandpit, or for that matter every beach, to run through all possible permutations of grain location, rotation and juxtaposition?

Suppose that you are a God and are able to observe our universe from outside over a very long time (there may be many others universes you can see as well [93]). There are thousands of trillions of planets (and other potentially habitable objects) in this universe and on some of these the conditions are right for life to evolve. On at least one of these (Earth; and probably on millions) conditions are right for animals to evolve to become intelligent enough to question their own existence.

To all these intelligent beings it seems incredibly unlikely that they should exist when all around they see conditions that preclude life. Yet to 'God you' (the observer) their existence is not strange; it's like the pattern of sand in a playground, an outcome of the conditions and accidents in this particular universe.

To 'God you' it is like 'real you' finding sea anemones in a pond. They are there because conditions are right there, similarly, 'God you' sees little pockets of intelligent beings wherever the conditions happen to be right; even if it is only on one planet in a billion. But in every one of these places the intelligent beings are saying 'why us?' So would be the sea anemones in your pond, if they could think.

This might explain the presence of humans; if we were not here we would not be asking 'why us?' but why me and why Now?

During the last 4,000 years or so the human population of the planet is thought to have been relatively stable at between a quarter and half a billion people. For the preceding 70,000 years the population was considerably smaller. But in the last hundred years the population has grown exponentially. There are now 6.7 billion people still alive and this number is likely to reach 11 billion before stabilising. Anthropologists estimate that between 90 and 110 billion human beings have already lived. So the chances of any human being here now, instead of at any other time, are about one in fifteen and these odds are getting shorter[94].

It seems obvious that the world each of us sees is either the result of an incredibly unlikely set of accidents or is an inevitable outcome of the space and time fabric of universe we live in.

Can we resolve this?

The presently most useful view of the cosmos suggests that time exists and has existed, like the other dimensions, as part of the universes structure. I this is so, the future too already exists and we are simply trapped in the space time continuum like the characters in a movie.

Suppose that some weeks after the first truck dumps its sand you commission another truck load but amazingly, after the children play exactly the same pattern forms, with every grain in the same place and the same orientation.

If you have not mixed your results you can only conclude that you must have been transported back in time. Exactly the same sequence of events must have repeated: a truck with exactly the same particle's in the same starting positions; tipping in exactly the same way; the same mothers arriving with children at the same times; the children behaving in exactly the same ways; the same gusts of wind; and so on. All of the things that led to those mothers and children being there must have been the same; and all the things that led to those; and so on.

Thus the same pattern could only happen in a singular instance of space and time.  Yet although it would be like the movie Groundhog Day you would have no awareness that you had done it all before because your brain would have exactly the same awareness as that previously; and that to follow, perhaps an endless loop?

Every instance in our lives is similarly complex and can only exist in a unique point in the space time continuum.

In this view you are a character in a pre-written story, like a movie you are seeing for the first time. Your freewill is an illusion. Every moment you will do what you must, in response to unforseen but inevitable events.

The illusion of freewill results from your hugely complex interactions with other living creatures (people, animals, plants, bacteria, viruses) that are responding to equal inevitabilities, in their own lives; and interdependent physical events (the weather, things breaking, tides, lightening, earthquakes, sunspots).

Alternatively, if you have freewill there might be a different universe for each of your possible decisions.

But in either case you are only aware of one universe, this universe that has you, as you are today, in it. We know this because anything you experience or can measure defines what we mean by our universe. This is true (a priori) from the idea of a universe; all we are aware of.

 

parallel universes

 

We can't be in or know anything about any of the other universes because if we could they would become part of our universe. By observing them we make them part of our experience in this universe.

So, there may be an infinite number of other universes, in which case it is certain that you would exist in one of them; or there may be only one, in which case you may have been inevitable the instant the universe was created; just a part of what is, in the only Universe, the result of billions of incredible accidents. But your experience is the same in each of these.

You can't know anything about any other universes and needn't care, because the only thing you do know for sure is you are here in this one.

We are here now and quite soon we will be gone. You might be here as an inevitable part of the fabric of the universe, from the beginning of time or you may be part of a recent combination of accidental events. Can you tell the difference?

On balance it is a lot simpler to believe that there is only one universe, and implicitly, that 'freewill' is probably just a very compelling illusion.

But you can be sure that you are part of the totality of what is. Inevitable or not, you are an essential element in the fabric of everything that is now. And so is everyone else at this instant, including that drunk unconscious on a park bench.

We may be just following a pre-written script or we might really be making choices that cannot be predicted but we can't tell the difference. We have the belief that we make choices. It feels like we can change the future. That feels like a pretty important position to be in.

 


The Past

I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering and that was the fact that it is past; can't be restored...
For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment.[95]

We may or may not be able to change 'here and now' or the future but we certainly can't change the past that has led to 'here and now'.

I don't have to go back far in history to realise that if all the evil, and good, things in history had not happened I would not be here, nor would you or anyone else here today.

If Hitler had been killed in the First World War (it must have been close on several occasions) then the world as we know it would not exist. Maybe something like it might but it could not be the same. I would not have been born; and would not exist to think about these things; and nor would you.

I can condemn the idea of anybody repeating his actions. But suppose I wished he had not existed, and done those evil things, and my wish was granted. Then I wouldn't be here to make that wish. So my wish is either dishonest (I know it will have no effect and am simply engaging in moral hubris) or impossible (because if granted I would not be here to wish it).

Hitler, in turn, was no doubt the direct outcome of the actions of some Saint. The same logic applies to most things in the past. They are essential to and bound to the present. They are part of this existence. So things and particularly people in the past, and many in the present, are essential for my being. Almost everything in the universe is essential to your being.

We can have no regrets about the past that are not also dissatisfactions about the present. If you want to be content in life you must learn not to regret the past.

When we look at the past we can see that on our time line all the people in the world and all things in the universe worked together to get to where we are now. We can see lots of what seem to be chance events and the personal choices that went into that outcome.

Once in a while, I'm standing here, doing something. And I think, "What in the world am I doing here?" It's a big surprise.[96]

A myriad of events went into the fact of your being and you're reading this. Some events, immediately preceding the lovemaking that led to you, were so contemporary or were so remote that they had no impact whatsoever on the exact timing of the act and the exact conditions of both parents physiology that determined which sperm got there first and if the zygote survived. So a person scalding their hand in Dubbo; a baby crying in India; even some major event that was, as yet, unknown was not essential to you. But those events might well have led to the existence of someone in your life or World history since.

The impact of events becomes more real as you trace the relationships with other events back in time. Until even things that happened in distant parts of the globe including natural events in the Universe (that changed the weather or the apparently random mutations of life) are essential to your individual existence. And most of the 'big events' of history had to happen just as they did or you would not be reading this.

 

civilisation layers

 

When you hear that, the Tsar of Russia (and all his daughters) were executed by Bolsheviks or that six million Jews were murdered by Nazis you should be shocked (about the latter anyway) and hope it won't happen again, but recognise that you would not be here to hold that view (or any other) unless it had happened just as it did. Thus you should treat most of history prior to your birth as essential (neither good nor bad). Apart from establishing your dubious rights to property or status, events prior to your birth are useful only if you are using them to understand the Universe or as an object lesson for the future.

There are some certainties here: we can do nothing about the past once it is past.

This reason alone is sufficient reason not to bring children up with the belief that Protestants or Catholics or Serbs or Croatians or black men or white men ruined their past or stole their land. Such beliefs can demonstrably ruin a person's life by tying it to the past.

A recent study of successful, happy and still alive people over 80 found that taking the best from the past is an important life skill. These people were able to be able to distil the positive from their life experiences and to leave the negative behind.

Sometimes others will do us evil. They will do this because of something in their past. They may do it because they envy us or hate something about us (our skin colour our race our religion); because it suits some other purpose (maybe their desire to advance themselves); because they are a criminal or mentally ill; because they are a pawn in someone else's schemes; because they are a victim of some philosophy that has them do this on principle; because it is the rule or law; because it is their job; by accident or mistaken identity; or because they are taking revenge for some real or imagined deed of ours.

Our culture tells us 'to forgive those who have trespassed against us'. The author of Mathew tells us that Jesus belaboured this point in his Sermon on the Mount and he reiterates it in the Lord's Prayer. This is good advice. It means that you should not hate others or bear animosity (that interferes with your own mental state). There is no point; 'what's done is done'; and animosity is bad for your health.

Trespasses come in lots of colours and sizes. Our loved ones and friends can trespass against us, as can others we meet in everyday life.

 

trespassers forgiven

 

In general it is wise to let the bad, once past, go; but not if it is a lesson for the future:

What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on, I can no longer believe you[97].

Elsewhere I have talked about how animals learn. This requires that we do not repeat things that are unpleasant or harmful; or if we do we need to be very cautious. In this way the past helps, or hinders, us in our dealings with the future.

Most important is our relationships with those we love or have loved. When I look back to the past I remember the good things, the times and things we enjoyed together, the reasons I liked that person and why we were together, I find I often feel good; tender and loving in these moments. I try not to remember or count against my partners or friends their real (or possibly imagined) trespasses against me; and I hope they do the same for me.

Forgiving the past is good for you. But forgiving does not mean you have to forget or to be open to everyone who has done you evil, or to treat him or her as you would others. It's a fool who trusts those who have repeatedly proven untrustworthy.

Some people will never be your friends. If you can't simply avoid people who have proven untrustworthy or malicious the first step is to try to understand why they act as they do.

You should take appropriate precautions when handling poisonous snakes. You might befriend, tame or constrain them so they won't, or can't, bite you or you might ensure their fangs are removed.

A little fang removal can lift the spirits and be a salutary lesson for them too, for their future.

 


Lessons

Start by admitting, 'from cradle to tomb
it isn't that long a stay'...life is a Cabaret[98]

I have argued in this essay that we individually exist between birth and death: that there is no afterlife; that we can experience. We are 'brief candles' and we need to make the best of this life.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.[99]

We can choose to suicide, or to retire to bed and never do anything, or we can decide to set ourselves goals that satisfy us. The goals you set may be about gaining experience and knowledge and, perhaps, making a better world for others (than if you had never existed).

We are not just individuals. We are all a part of the universe and have an impact on it, and on those who share it with us. Much that you do in life will be about obtaining the cooperation, help and regard of others. I hope so.

We must learn to accept that that past is essential to this present and should have no regrets. That we can do nothing about the past once it is past is also reason not be too disheartened by mistakes or to dwell on things in our own lives, once they are past. But we can learn from them; after all they are how we got to now, with all its possibilities.

So make your choices as best you can, for the future you want. If we make no decisions or plans and take no actions we still get somewhere. But if we want to get somewhere in particular we must plan and act or it is unlikely that we will get there:

'Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where – ' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

Your choices about where you want to go and your decisions about how to get there will define your life. As I have discussed you do not have to be famous or wealthy or even caring to have 'a life well spent'. If you feel that you are using your brief time wisely; that is all that matters.

Of course the things that make us feel that we have a 'life well spent' vary for each of us. Some seek personal well-being, others the acknowledgement of, or power over, other people. Some are collectors; of wealth, fame or experiences or just stamps, old cars or train numbers. Others are driven by sexual or family needs and yet others set personal or physical goals or seek wisdom or knowledge.

 

meaning life secret

 

In this essay I have argued for The Great Human Project, as providing a purpose to humanity. But this is my personal choice. You may well decide that entering Australia's Next Top Model will fulfil you better.

A recent survey of people and how happy they were found that your genes are the most important factor in happiness (you can't do much about that; so moving on) the next most important was relationships (marriage, partners, friends, and children), contributing to society or the well being of others also made people happy.

Being moderately well off also helps but importantly the ability not to want too much or to be too concerned about your own appearance (to be too concerned with comparisons of status, wealth or beauty; to covert other's status or possessions) also led to greater happiness.

Many wise people have pointed to our ability to take reward from the here and now, to enjoy what we do and take pride in doing it well. You can have as much reward tending your garden, making something or writing something as living 'la dolce vita'[100]: the good life.

The 'physical you' is the result a rich mix of genes and ideas; a collection of cells designed by millions of years of genes competing to be reproduced. In addition, ideas, beliefs, feelings, hopes and desires, change the physical structure of the cells in your brain. As I said earlier you are a unique collection of messages.

The 'emotional, thinking, self-aware you' is coded in, and an expression of, the relationships between those cells. Many of our ideas are borrowed. They originated in the brains of others. In turn, we have similar power to change the structure of the brains of others.

500 years ago Francis Bacon wrote, 'knowledge is power' but knowledge (the collection of beliefs, skills, ways of doing things and remembered experiences) together with our genes, defines the knower. We control very few of these things that define us. Does knowledge give us power or does it have power over us? Is the Me I feel (the one that is because I think) the sum of my knowledge?

The motto of the Delphic Oracle (and of Socrates and of my high school) was 'Know thyself'. But how can you decide the skills, ideas and behaviours that define you?

'I know myself', he cried, 'but is that all?'[101]

We can't do much about our genes but we can be selective about ideas and by investigation of 'what is'.

I started talking about words as the carriers of ideas. Although words are important, it is the ideas that they stand for or encapsulate that are the essence of understanding and of their usefulness.

Most of our ideas come from our culture. To learn more go to plays and the opera, art exhibitions, read books, listen to radio, watch TV selectively, and talk to and mix with cultured, competent and knowledgeable people.

But don't be gulled into believing that culture is the domain of the past. Someone who only understands Latin texts, European poetry, art or music is not cultured (especially if they are commentators and not practitioners).

The words 'television', 'plane', 'computer' or 'microwave oven' cannot be fully understood without an understanding of physics, chemistry, manufacturing processes, energy and media markets, government regulation, economics and many other things. As a result no individual fully understands these words. We understand them more or less fully, and slightly differently, depending on our education and other knowledge that we have.

To understand many of the words and ideas that we use in everyday life, that are essential to comprehending our world and culture, you must be up-to-date in a wide variety of contemporary ideas and particularly in scientific thinking.

It once took six months to travel between England and Australia. Now it takes around a day and I can talk someone in England as if they were in the next room while walking down the street in Sydney or Dubbo. Children chat around the world via the Internet. These abilities are a direct outcome of our culture's improved comprehension of the Universe.

Just as we look back at the lack of knowledge of in the past that led to restricted cultural choices, so people in future will look back to the present. In this respect our choices are expanding. The challenge is to use the options we have effectively, to improve our lives.

Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises,
sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then in dreaming,
The clouds, methought, would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.[102]

Shakespeare still seems to be full of insights after 500 years. I suspect that it is because our culture and the ideas we have absorbed through our education and upbringing have incorporated these ideas. When we read or see a Shakespeare play we are going back to the English renaissance, the trunk from which grew many of our inherited beliefs and ideas.

All ideas are not equally valid. Most useful ideas only work in context. Contrary to the deconstructionist view, all cultural claims are not equal. A belief in fairies is not the same as a belief in atoms.

We only have so many voices, sounds and dreams we can listen to. Many ideas are clearly wrong, others are useless in our time and place and yet others are harmful. Which is which?

We must learn to recognise meaningless questions and not spend too much time trying to answer them. All ideas need to be treated sceptically to see if they can withstand our attempts to disprove them.

Experience in different cultures and places can give new insights and allow us to find ideas and skills that work together for people.

Cultural success can be an indicator of utility but it is not infallible.

Intelligence ... is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.[103]

As I and others have argued, passionately held or fashionable ideas and ways of living are likely to be self replicating or deliberately engineered ideas in which the adherents are simple carriers; like the hosts to a virus.

The degree of one's emotion varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts -- the less you know the hotter you get[104].

The success of an idea, fashion, is not always due to it being true; or in the interest of the person who holds it. We should be sceptical of fashion and argue out ideas with those that might test them or teach us something new.

Our culture gives us, unlike any time in the past, a special ability to get nearer to understanding of our universe. Increasing knowledge gives us more options and helps us find new ways to get a sense of personal achievement and self-worth.

Personal understanding allows us to see wonder in everything natural. It also helps to understand our social institutions and cultural values. It helps us to distinguish value from price.

Like the visitor from a more advanced land, a person who is intelligent (in the Sontag way: with good taste in ideas) can stand aloof from unearned privilege and:

The insolence of office and the spurns
that patient merit of the unworthy takes...[105]

or the adherents to strange beliefs.

But we are human. Relations with other people sustain us. The mystical enriches our lives. We have a powerful sense of wonderment and poetry in our natures that can give great pleasure. We can find pride and pleasure in skill. Life is to be enjoyed.

 

 

1997-2017

 

 


Footnotes

[1] Professor of Philosophy Sydney University from 1927 to 1958

[2] Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth), Chapter 3.1-3.9, 3.18-3.22

[3] A taxonomic group whose members can interbreed

[4] John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

[5] Samuel (Dr) Johnson. (1709–1784)

[6] The Bible: John 1:1

[7] The independence of the US set in train the events that led to Australia, as we know it.

[8] William Shakespeare, 1564-1616 Romeo & Juliet, Act II Scene 2.

[9] 1926–1984

[10] Leonardo da Vinci - Painter, Sculptor, Architect and Engineer 1452-1519

[11] Sir Alfred Jules Ayer: Language, Truth and Logic (1936); The Problem of Knowledge (1956). Bertrand Arthur William Russell (Earl Russell) OM, FRS (1872 –1970): co-author Principia Mathematica; A history of Western Philosophy; On Denoting; Nobel Prize Laureate.

[12] Little person, invented by the alchemists – thought to reside in sperm and to be passed to a woman at conception – see also Stewie in Family Guy

[13] George Bernard Shaw

[14] D.H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley's Lover Chapter 11

[15] Albert Einstein

[16] The great mathematician Alfred North Whitehead described the history of philosophy as simply "a series of footnotes to Plato".

[17] Macquarie Dictionary. This is tautological; life as the absence of death is not a very useful definition.

[18] Coleridge

[19] Milton Areopagitica

[20] Richard Dawkins 1941-The Selfish Gene (1976) ch. 2

[21] The bases are adenine (A); thymine (T); cytosine (C); and guanine (G) A bonds only with T, C with G.

[22] Written in 2000 – we now know a lot more, look it up

[23] Charles Darwin 1859 English natural historian 1809-82

[24] New Scientist 28June 2003 P20

[25] Richard Dawkins 'The Selfish Gene'

[26] See Susan Blackmore 'The Meme Machine'.

[27] Unless, of course, we cause it.

[28] Air from the Musical 'Hair' 1968

[29] U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division quoting McEvedy, Colin and Richard Jones, 1978, "Atlas of World Population History,"

[30] U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division

[31] Not even oil – long predicted to be the first cab to run out of fuel

[32] Catch 22 – ibid

[33] Byron; Don Juan - ibid.

[34] More strictly the Last Universal Ancestor (LUA) AKA Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), the unicellular organism or single cell that gave rise to all life on Earth three to four billion years ago.

[35] I will leave you to ponder our moral obligation to the unborn (or never to be born) both human and no-human – if any.

Every sperm is sacred.

Every sperm is Great.

When a sperm is wasted God gets quite irate.

– Monty Python's Meaning of life

[36] Douglas Adams - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[37] Encyclopaedia Britannica 2002 – Form and Function of the Nervous System

[38] This is the prevailing view at the moment but it is in dispute and some leading scientists think that Neanderthals bred with pre-humans and were absorbed.

[39] Fallingwater

[40] See New Scientist 4 Sept 1999 pp 31

[41] Song: Lloyd Price Personality 1960

[42] Alfred C Kinsey Sexual Behaviour In The Human Male 1948; Sexual Behaviour In The Human Female 1953

[43] Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest Act III

[44] First Essay on Population 1798

[45] Twelfth Night Act III Scene IV

[46] WS Gilbert - Pooh-Bah in The Mikado

[47] George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) - Don Juan

[48] Andy Warhol – Andy Warhol's exposures, Studio 54

[49] Sydney 'Truth', 1892 (note the use of grammar to add scorn)

[50] Oscar Wilde – Lane the butler in The Importance of Being Earnest.

[51] Of course a few are just thieves like Bond or Skase.

[52] 1921 song. Kahn, Egan & Whiting - Ain't We Got Fun

[53] The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money –Chapter 24 (1936).

[54] In Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault (1989, trans. 1991). "Les Reportages d'Idées," Corriere Della Sera (Milan, Nov. 12, 1978).

[55] Walter Lippmann

[56] Joseph Heller Catch-22

[57] Franklin Delano Roosevelt - 32 President of the United States

[58] Edgar Degas

[59] Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Physicist & Nobel Laureate

[60] Horace Walpole (1717–1797), British author. Horace Walpole's Miscellany 1786-1795, p. 58, ed. Lars E. Troide, Yale University Press (1978).

[61] In 1999 Hubble Space Telescope images were used to estimate that there are over 125 billion visible galaxies in the universe

[62] The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) - a NASA satellite launched on June 30, 2001 to survey the sky to measure the temperature of the radiant heat left over from the Big Bang.

[63] Shakespeare – Hamlet, Act I Scene 5

[64] At least 'til Thursday (Woden's day Thor's day)

[65] Aldus Huxley Time Must Have a Stop 1945

[66] Section 116

[67] AA Milne - Now We Are Six, "Explained"

[68] Matthew 19:16-24, Mk. 10:25, Lk. 18:25 (Rope: kamilo in Greek was originally mistranslated as Camel in the English Bible)

[69] graffito

[70] Shakespeare Hamlet's soliloquy Act III Scene 1

[71] See also Romeo, Juliet, Ophelia, Gloucester (in Lear) etc.

[72] Friedrich Nietzsche

[73] The Truman Show - written and directed Peter Weir (1998)

[74] Dorothy Parker

[75] Samuel Butler Way of all Flesh

[76] Gore Vidal Two Sisters

[77] Mark Twain 19th Century Author

[78] Mae West

[79] In George Orwell's 1984; not the TV Show

[80] Book: John Irving - Screenplay: John Irving, based on his novel The Cider House Rules

[81] WS Gilbert – The Mikado

[82] Janis Joplin - Me and Bobby McGee

[83] Mark Twain - Eruption

[84] Lewis Carroll – Alice in Alice in Wonderland

[85] Anon. Song Tune: Auld Lang Syne

[86] Albert Einstein 1879-1955 - Letter to Max Born, 4 December 1926; in Einstein und Born Briefwechsel (1969) p. 1 (often quoted: 'Gott würfelt nicht [God does not play dice]')

[87] TS Eliot - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

[88] NewScientist.com news service 13 April 2008

[89] Wired Magazine: Issue 15.06

[90] 9 or 10 space dimensions and one time dimension.

[91] Three space and one time dimension.

[92] Sayings of Dan Quayle US Vice President, 1989-1993  https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dan_Quayle

[93] We do not presently know any reason for the cosmological constants that determine the shape and laws of our Universe, to be as they are. There is every prospect that there are or have been other Universes in which life could not exist.

[94] Using this logic, we might be concerned that there will not be many more billions of humans in future, else why weren't we born then.

[95] Mark Twain - Letter to Mr. Burrough, 11/1/1876; Mark Twain and I

[96] Donald Rumsfeld US Secretary of Defence - May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times

[97] Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

[98] Cabaret – Fred Ebb, J Van Druten / C Isherwood.

[99] Speak, Memory - Vladimir Nabokov

[100] A movie by Frederico Fellini 1960. Fellini no doubt had more reward making a great movie than the characters he portrayed did in partying and spending money. Fellini is dead – but his film goes on.

[101] F Scott Fitzgerald – This side of Paradise

[102] Shakespeare – The Tempest Act III, Scene II

[103] Susan Sontag, U.S. essayist. Notes on 'Camp', Against Interpretation (1964, repr. 1966).

[104] Bertrand Russell

[105] Shakespeare – Hamlet's Soliloquy

[104] British Medical Association

 

 

 

 

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