oh so habituous

03/16/08

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:58:00 +0000

The Lady in Blue

A story sent by a friend we made in Texas. Follow the link to incredulity...

The Lady in Blue.

03/01/08

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:45:00 +0000

How to Create the Future?

Here is an anecdote:

Xiang Yu was a Chinese general in the third century B.C. who took his troops across the Yangtze River into enemy territory and performed an experiment in decision making. He crushed his troops’ cooking pots and burned their ships.

It comes from a New York Times article called "The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors". Which I recommend you read before continuing.

Here is the abstract from an essay called "Keeping Doors Open: The Effect of Unavailability on Incentives to Keep Options Viable" (link is to a pdf file) from the website (with a name much more tantalizing than the essay title), PredictablyIrrational.com:

Many of the options available to decision makers, such as college majors and romantic partners, can become unavailable if sufficient effort is not invested in them (taking classes, sending flowers). The question asked in this work is whether a threat of disappearance changes the way people value such options. In four experiments using “door games,” we demonstrate that options that threaten to disappear cause decision makers to invest more effort and money in keeping these options open, even when the options themselves seem to be of little interest. This general tendency is shown to be resilient to information about the outcomes, to increased experience, and to the saliency of the cost. The last experiment provides initial evidence that the mechanism underlying the tendency to keep doors open is a type of aversion to loss rather than a desire for flexibility.

The idea behind the anecdote and the experiments? What really motivates us is often the desire to avoid the immediate pain of watching a door close.

Okay, so first go back and read the New York Times article (you can read the essay later, if you want).

Now some thoughts of mine.
I have begun, paradoxically as a result of my understanding myself better, to regret, and to deeply regret, decisions I have made in the past. It hasn't mattered that I have ended up in a place where I am happy and can feel almost tangibly the possibilities still stretching before me: I am still at times overcome with regret for moments of my past, so that I feel like I am falling apart. Isn't that strange? I don't mean it in a figurative sense, but in a real sense -- as if some things unfinished or unchosen have thrown me off some sort of rail and I won't be able to get it straight now no matter what. This is not a constant or particularly persistent feeling, but when I have it it is very strong.

Without making it a matter of morality, these articles and thoughts I found today are reminding me of an understanding I have had at healthier times, when I could admit to myself that this deep regret is on the one hand a valid and important reality, but on the other hand a part of past reality, and it was/is a kind of vanity, maybe, that keeps me from closing those doors, and being able to accept my poor decisions. There are healthy and there are harmful ways of living with/in the past, and I am experienced at least in the harmful ways, which involve ignoring the loss, relishing the feeling of loss, or raging against the loss -- all of which I have done. What are the healthy ways? That is something I can only talk about abstractly and hypothetically. Maybe someone else can comment on how to be gracious with loss. It's hard to talk about when we so rarely need to face it. I guess that's why we're so scared of it, even when playing a little simulated video game.

02/28/08

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:53:00 +0000

A strange thought on laughter, from Elias Canetti

Laughter has been objected to as vulgar because, in laughing, the mouth is open wide and the teeth are shown. Originally laughter contained a feeling of pleasure in prey or food which seemed certain. A human being who falls down reminds us of an animal we might have hunted and brought down ourselves. Every sudden fall which arouses laughter does so because it suggests helplessness and reminds us that the fallen can, if we want, be treated as prey. If we went further and actually ate it, we would not laugh. We laugh instead of eating it. laughter is our physical reaction to the escape of potential food. As Hobbes said, laughter expresses a sudden feeling of superiority, but he did not add that it only occurs when the normal consequences of this superiority do not ensue. His conception contains only half the truth. Perhaps because animals do not laugh, he did not see that our laughter is originally an animal reaction. But neither do animals deny themselves obtainable food if they really want it. Only man has learnt to replace the final stage of incorporation by a symbolic act. It is as though the whole interior process of gulping down food could be summed up and replaced by those movements of the diaphragm which are characteristic of laughter.

Canetti is great because he is not afraid to play around with ideas, and find hidden truths in bizarre places. The easy thing to do is to find him wrong; but what fun is that!? Instead try and discover that he is on to something, and then play around with it yourself. The point is not to be right, but to be better and better at discernment, and this demands flexibility and humor. To laugh at oneself, maybe, when something you were so sure of gets stolen from you at the last moment, gets turned inside out.

Laughter is maybe thought to be vulgar only by those who are ashamed of their need to eat, and frightened by the fact that they may be eaten. The desire to live for living's sake, or eat for eating's sake, makes it impossible to laugh instead of eating; the villain and the glutton only laugh when they have had their fill, and know the food is not going anywhere, that their victims are completely within their control. They laugh between bites. The peaceful and hospitable person is able to laugh instead of eating, to refuse graciously a bite from someone else's mouth, to be merry, if need be, without the food and drink. There is a big difference between the laughter of the gluttonous villain, and the laughter of the pleased host.

Mike 02/03/08

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 06:33:00 +0000

Thoughts on an idea from City and Soul, by James Hillman

The following excerpt comes from an essay a friend sent to me a few days ago. It is from the book City and Soul, by James Hillman, a psychotherapist and prolific author. The primary idea governing the chapter I was given seems to be a call for psychologists to overcome the distinction between a subjective, internal psyche, or soul, and a strictly material, external world, to be replaced by the understanding that the physical world is also psychical, or ensouled, so that it becomes entirely legitimate (and not merely figurative) to say, for instance, that "Our buildings are anorexic, our business paranoid... Our technology manic."

One part especially struck me (and Jessie when I read it to her), probably because it uses as its illustration the situation of marital disagreements leading toward divisive conflict. Jessie and I argue about stuff, of course, and quite often our arguments generate new ways of doing things, or new ways of thinking about things - recognizing the need to adjust something which is causing discomfort or annoyance, or realizing something about ourselves in a different way. But our conflicts are also sometimes caught in an uneasiness, and with being overwhelmed by things which elude us, and which we too quickly take upon ourselves (or push on the other) as a wrong which is ours (isn't it?) but which we are not able to quite get our hands on to do anything about. We are left feeling responsible (and guilty, weary, etc) for things which we do not even understand. The following from James Hillman was helpful yesterday in understanding this problem more clearly:

A decaying marriage [or any relationship, we could say: family, church, office, etc] can be analyzed to its intra- and inter-subjective roots, but until we have also considered the materials and design of the rooms in which the marriage is set, the language in which it is spoken, the clothing in which it is presented, the food and money that are shared, the drugs and cosmetics used, the sounds and smells and tastes that daily enter the heart of that marriage -- until psychology admits the world into the sphere of psychic reality -- there can be no amelioration, and, in fact, we are conspiring in the destruction of that marriage by loading onto the human relationship and the subjective sphere the repressed unconsciousness projecting from the world of things.

The inclusion of these matters into therapy...can have immediate practical effect. The married partners no longer focus only on themselves and their relationship. Together they turn their eyes to the indignities imposed on them by the world. Personal rage with each other turns to outrage, and even compassion... Those who were in couple therapy become the therapeutic couple whose patient is their world.

Hillman is employing standard psychological ideas (like "repressed unconsciousness"), but applying the term not to the subjects' internal world (i.e. repressed memories from childhood) but to actual presences exerting unconscious force and persuasive power in the material world. The objects in our world, if I understand him correctly, would be rightly understood as embodying certain psychological forces just as a human body displays and embodies (if that's the right way to put it) the soul in healthy and unhealthy ways. The idea might sound strange, but the impulse toward retreats or vacations (such as the one Jessie and I are going on next weekend) is testimony to the fact that our surroundings and daily routines are not satisfying our psychical or spiritual needs -- even that they are hostile in some sense (and so we call it a retreat).

My thinking about Hillman's ideas does not involve simply blaming the world for what before would have been considered my own personal problems. It needs to be put differently than that. For me it suggests that the sources of "my" problems do not need to be found inside of me, but in the particular environments I live in. Even if the problems are "mine" in some way, it is not that I need to go into therapy, necessarily, but instead that I need to recognize the fact that I am permeable and am influenced and shaped in even very subtle ways by the things of the world. And so it is part of my responsibility to help fix, or at least to be responsible for my participation in, the things of the world that themselves need a kind of therapy.

That is why the last phrase is the one that attracted me the most: "Those who were in couple therapy become the therapeutic couple." It is a movement away from obsession with personal guilt and personal absolution, and a movement toward recognition of the importance of the things that surround us, the very active role they play on our psyches - on our soul - and it is a movement toward re-crafting our lives and our things with this reality in mind.

Mike 01/22/08

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:46:00 +0000

James Alison: God versus Nothing

In his essay, "Contemplation and monotheism: On the indispensability of irrelevance", Catholic theologian James Alison argues that "monotheism is a terrible idea, but a wonderful discovery." What he means by this is not easy to understand -- especially if you are inclined to believe that most discoveries need to be made up of comprehensible ideas in order for their object to be named. To say, "I discovered monotheism," is different than saying, "I discovered something I don't know what." The first is kind of like an intellectual understanding, where we are proud to put a name to something and distinguish it from other things, whereas the second is more like the beginning of an adventure (perhaps a horror film, perhaps the twilight of a vision quest...). No doubt there is some level of fear, or at least rapt anticipation, in the "I don't know what" that cannot be found in the naming game (where the field guide boxes are checked off and all the wild creatures accounted for). And so isn't "I discovered monotheism" more in the line of the clean and neat naming game than the fearful and adventurous, potentially scary, not-knowing game?

In answer to this question, Alison asks another:
Is this "monotheism" we're talking about a One versus Many type (a monotheistic view up against a polytheistic one)? Or is it more of a One versus Nothing At All?

Alison's own answer goes something like this: If it is a question of One versus Many, than God is not the One and Only, but merely the greatest of Many, and so is in some sense like the Many (since if God is better than any other, there must be some similar basis for this comparison, right?) -- and therefore we are, in a way, playing the game of MY dad is stronger than YOUR dad. Except the monotheistic idea in this case says, "MY dad is so much stronger than YOURS that YOUR dad doesn't even deserve to be counted; MY dad is the only real dad around here."

But of course the other's dad does exist in this picture, and the monotheism claimed here is only an idea, a tactic, a clever maneuver in a game of power and rhetoric. And of course also, the other's dad is actually essential to this monotheist's reality: this monotheism would not have been created if it didn't have a battle to win! And so it is merely a cover-up for an identity that depends on an enemy or a foe to understand itself. (This is a recurring theme in Alison's work, and will come up again in these notes, or future ones...)

Okay then. So what if, instead of a question of One versus Many, it is a question of One versus Nothing At All? In this case, God is more like Nothing At All than like anything else that exists. And if God is more like Nothing At All than like anything we know of, then there is nothing to compare God to, and there is no point in arguing whose God is better, or stronger, or whatever, because there is no rivalry in God at all. God is more like the invisible "I don't know what" we were talking about before than God is like something we could name and set alongside other things, in order to show in what ways God is different.

For this reason it is fair to acknowledge, as Alison says, that, "Atheism, which is untrue, offers a much less inadequate picture of God than theism, which is true. For monotheistic Judaism, as for monotheistic Catholicism…the principal temptation is not atheism, but idolatry."

But let's return to the mystery here: That there is no rivalry in God. That God is up against Nothing At All.

"If God really is true," Alison writes, "then to exaggerate the strength of the wicked other so as to strengthen the faith of the believer is the worst sort of nihilistic atheism."

Again: "If God really is true, then appearances are deceptive, and what look like wicked conspiracies by the wicked other are much exaggerated, because God is much stronger than they." (To say "stronger" is even to risk misunderstanding, it seems, because the type and degree and scope of God's strength is completely unlike, in tactic, intent, and everything else, than the types of strength we typically fear and hope to banish from our holds. It's like "I don't know what.")

So Bin Laden isn't believing a true God when he convinces Muslims they need to kill anyone who threatens their God, and neither do those Christians who believe that homosexuals "could really be such a threat to the order and stability of the Creator of all things" believe a truly monotheistic God (to use Alison's examples).

It follows that those of us who consider ourselves monotheistic Christians should not be too concerned at all, for instance, about who wins the next, or any other, American election. As if George Bush III (or Hillary Clinton for that matter) could genuinely threaten the Creator of the whole thing.

Alison is saying that we do not need to defend God, and we do not need to fight for God, because God isn't "against" anyone!

Instead, says Alison, we need to sit with our fear and the strange pressure of this discovering "I don't know what". It is almost everyone's impulse to explain away this or that uncertainty or jarring fact with a pretended understanding of how God works, or of how the world works, or by blaming one person or thing and taking comfort in another. But all of these are part of the phony demonizing/divinizing game which, occasionally, leads to the idea of monotheism -- which in turn becomes that totalitarian monotheism where we insist that everyone must deal with their problems and stresses and desires the same way as ME!!!

This, says Alison, is not God. This doesn't hardly have anything to do with God (even though it is in these types of contexts that the word "God" is mentioned probably more than any other). What it does have to do with is our fear, our need to be in control, and our need to reinforce our feeling of "being in control and not needing to fear" by subjecting others to the same medicine we used on ourselves -- in this way proving to ourselves again and again that our medicine works. This is called drawing a not-so-perfect circle.

(It also has to do, in my opinion, with a lack of imagination. Like seeing the Oedipus complex everywhere, or phalluses, or Jesus in birthmarks, or the number 253, or whatever it is you think is magical or deeply true because you see it everywhere…)

This post needs to suddenly stop; more thoughts will undoubtedly come out later.

Please, if you want to start a critical conversation, read the piece itself and not just my own thoughts on it! Thanks.

Mike 01/21/08

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:43:00 +0000

Some thoughts on Lars and the Real Girl

A couple weeks ago now I saw Lars and the Real Girl, a film by Nancy Oliver (who wrote for the HBO series Six Feet Under), and thoughts have been coming to me about it ever since.

One stream of the thoughts involve its very peculiar and subtle playing with notions of reality. On the surface it appears to be a very realistic movie; at least, it takes place in what appears to be the real world. It is easy to identify all the people and places being used. And yet there is something deeply fantastic about the world we are made to step into. At every point we cannot help but feel like something very bad or tragic is about to happen -- some violence will be done, or some hidden conflict will rear its head in an awful way, BUT...
(The film, for those of you who do not know, is about a guy, Dagmar, who lives in his brother and sister-in-law's garage, and who does not speak to anyone if he can help it, and certainly does not touch anyone. It comes about, after he orders a very "realistic" looking sex-doll in a crate and dresses it up and treats it like his new, and very chaste girlfriend whom he "met on the internet" that he is delusional. His brother, of course, is slightly distressed about it, but his sister-in-law, and indeed the rest of the northern-Midwest town --Wisconsin, maybe?-- are perfectly able and willing, with some direction and input from the town doctor/psychologist, to play along with his delusion and let it work itself out. Yes, this is all pretty much parenthetical to what I want to say. But now let me get back to it.)

... instead of witnessing an all-too predictable xenophobic tragedy, we are given a glimpse of something of a parallel universe, a truly fantastic and utopian vision of how to live with others' psychological ailments. We are not shown what is realistic (Dagmar being quarantined in the secluded care of professionals, being subjected to mockery and even suffering physical attack whenever he steps out of doors), but instead, the one who reacts most "realistically" or normally to the situation (Dagmar's brother) is shown (in a similarly gentle fashion, by the way) that it is his own "realistic" understanding that if anything helps to produce, or at least prolong, Dagmar's delusional behavior. (This he does by rejecting Dagmar's "fantasy" and trying to show him that the girl is, after all, plastic.) If everyone in the film had reacted in this way it is clear that Dagmar would have been left with the satisfaction of his delusion alone, and probably would have suffered for it. That the town plays along with Dagmar (and plays seriously, not in a mocking way), suggests to me that this movie is more in fact about saying something to those of us who are like Dagmar's brother.
And it is definitely "saying something" -- though again the subtlety of the movie carries over into its morality as well: it simply presents this world, and we are left to imagine our way into it and its way of understanding and relating. There is no pressure, and there is no damning judgment. We are brought into a world that simply suggests that certain possibilities, certain parallel universes, are only a loving condescension away.

Mike 1/10/08

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:49:00 +0000

Birds in the Brambles

Today Jessie and I learned with disappointment that something which we had been hoping would happen for us next fall is no longer going to be possible.

Today on our midday walk I found that some songbirds had shown up, as if spring were here already, and they were darting among the thorny bushes that dominate the south side of a nearby stretch of path.

It occurred to me that I am like those thorns that Jesus describes in the parable of the sower. Especially when it speaks of desiring other things, things of the world, I identify so strongly with it, that it has begun to be a matter of encouragement for me. (I figure it is usually more helpful to be fair in your analysis of yourself than to be tormented by how you might be better, if you don't know how to address the difference. I also happen to believe that creativity demands a willingness to address your desires as they stand, and that good change demands this kind of creativity.) So I'm a thorny bramble and that's what I have to work with.

Is it any coincidence that I find birds, especially the small pretty singing ones (though not only those), to be incarnations of the Spirit in the world? The dunamis of the Spirit is such that, when the farmer's seeds have failed to produce fruit, it sends in birds to liven the dark knots and prove that there is air and hospitality and shelter even in those places that can't be harvested for sustenance in the traditional sense. The birds that pollinate the field, nest in the brambles.

Jesus, when he told us to consider the sparrow (it was Jessie's and my wedding text), spoke to the brambles. Brambles are shelter; in the midst of our daily worrying and our uncultivated desires, we unwittingly host the birds that do not worry or labor in the least.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:50:00 +0000

Quaker Thoughts, part two. The Business Meeting.

Last week at the Friends' Meeting was their monthly business meeting, which they conduct during the worship service, after twenty minutes of silent worshipful preparation. If that sounds strange to you, it sounded strange to me too; who would ever want to take care of business in a time usually set aside for worship?

In the Quaker tradition, monthly Meetings for Business are an essential part of the worshiping community, and as nearly all of the Friends we have met have found time to tell us (from the time we started going there, not just last week, when we finally went to a Meeting for Business for the first time), this practice is an essential part of what it means to be Quaker. In fact, it is, I am told, the only practice that remains ubiquitous throughout the vast diversity of Quaker groups. So we of course felt that we would need to go at least once to see what it was all about. Also, at home before the service last week, and since then as well, I have been reading bits and pieces of the book published by the North Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, Faith and Practice. This has helped a lot in developing an understanding of how the community understands itself, and I have been reading especially about the monthly Meeting for Business, in order to form some thoughts of my own about it.

I think all I want to do here is to quote for you a couple paragraphs from the book Faith and Practice, and offer just a few thoughts. But first of all I should say, if it isn't immediately clear, that the Meeting for Business is just that, and it covers all the practical matters of running a community with a shared set of resources and, hopefully, a shared sense of unity and purpose in the use of these resources. In fact, the achievement of a genuine sense of unity transcending any selfish desires in order that the Meeting may be truly responsive to the Spirit in all of its affairs is why they do business the way they do. Or at least, I think that is more than fair to say! (One thing I am always conscious of here is the way a person can idealize something new because it answers some of the difficult questions/conflicts in the old -- and only after awhile do the questions/conflicts in the new come out and "threaten" the ideal...)

So here are some passages, which I have chosen not because they explain what the Meeting for Business is all about, but because they address directly and practically problems that all decision-making bodies face, and do this in a way that anyone can certainly understand. At least when I read this, I feel very aware of the kinds of experiences and conflicts they are trying to avoid.

Friends are urged to seek Divine guidance at all times, be mutually forbearing, and be concerned for the good of the Meeting as a whole rather than to press a personal preference. Time should be allowed for deliberate and prayerful consideration of the matter in hand. Everyone must want to reach a decision and be open to new understanding. Friends should come to each Meeting for Business expecting that their minds will be changed. It is important that all memebers be heard if they feel concerned to express a point of view. They should speak briefly and to the point, express their own view, avoid refuting statements made by others and give each other credit for purity of motive. When someone has already stated a position satisfactorily Friends need offer only a word or two expressing agreement.
Before speaking, Friends should seek recognition from the Clerk; they should not speak to individuals, and should be hesitant about speaking more than once unless they have new light on an issue. Each vocal contribution should be something which adds to the ideas already presented. (p.75)

This for me addresses many of those problems which I and others face in decision-making settings, including big things such as factionalism and scapegoating, as well as the more subtle difficulties of stubbornness, pointed attacks/criticisms, distracting and unnecessary speech, domination of a single individual, or exclusion of any individual, and just that simple self-indulgence we cater to when we repeat and relish a good point we may have made. I know I suffer from all of these things in my speech (even when I am talking to myself! :) ) and so it was a pleasure to witness a meeting or people attempting to let their community be managed by these kinds of rules for business.

It makes me wonder, coming from a Calvinist background (where we like to manage things as if the Kingdom of Heaven depends on it), why we don't, to the best of my knowledge, have a particularly prayerful or spiritual understanding of conducting this business itself. Is it because of the extreme emphasis on the law, so that there is less need for the dunamis of the Spirit to have a say, less of an idea that the Spirit may have something new to say to any particular context? Calvinists, or neo-Calvinists, or whatever name fits best, are definitely strong thinkers, but when it comes to management of a community or society, well, let's just say I'd rather have lived in Penn's City of Brotherly Love than in Calvin's Zurich! (And that isn't meant to be estranging: wouldn't most Calvinists today also prefer to have been Calvinist in Philadelphia...?)

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:14:00 +0000

Quaker Thoughts, part one. The Silences of Worship.

Jessie and I have been attending fairly regularly the Friends Meeting near the University of Washington (a nice 15 minute bike ride away - or five minutes by car if the rain is too heavy...). Speaking for myself, I already feel surprisingly at home there, and am regularly uplifted and strengthened in a way that I have felt few other places - not that my being uplifted is unique, but the way I feel uplifted is very rare: I believe last week someone said it well when they referred to something they called "tenderness".

What I want to try and think through here, for you to witness and respond to, if you like, is what it is that attracts me to a Quaker worship service, and to a Quaker sense of life in general.

First of all, Jessie and I are both somewhat used to worshiping with a good deal of silence, given our participation at the Faith House Fellowship (a Mennonite group) in Goshen, Indiana, where we regularly kept silence together in the last couple years; -- And it is of course the characteristic of silence, of waiting for the Spirit to speak, that is most commonly associated with Quaker worship. [Though I have learned from one of the ministers here that that is by no means a ubiquitous trait of Quaker groups.] Of course, worshiping with the Quakers (or at least these Quakers we do worship with, who practice silent, or waiting, worshsip) is something else entirely, as the silence is almost total, until the words of worship both slowly and suddenly (so it seems to a "non-speaker" like I have been so far) start to come. But we came here from the Faith House with the understanding that this silence of worship can be just as -and sometimes even more?- essential than the impulse to speak in worship.

I find this practice increasingly rewarding, as I seem to be learning, after several weeks of going regularly, how to not let it be just a time to allow your thoughts to wander, but to genuinely (as far as I know something like prayer to be genuine when I do it) begin to pray in and with the spirit. Irremediably concurrent with this experience (if anything, the genuine prayer is an effect of it, it's so important), is the sense, becoming stronger all the time, that there is some sort of common and dynamic, though probably very vulnerable, unity in the silence of the group of Friends gathered. This is not simply a bunch of individuals gathering together to navel-gaze, and the reason I know this is the case is because I have seen the evidence in what is said and what is testified to in the Meetings themselves.

So that is my first reaction to the Friends, after a couple months with them on Sunday mornings: the silence has not been alienating or remained, as it was at first, just a time to sit with my own thoughts, but has started to grow into a sense of congregation and common worship, giving the idea of the silence of worship renewed and qualitative meaning to me.

[At other Meetings Jessie and I have gone to (including the earlier service at this House) the unity of the group is vulnerable enough to nearly dissolve my experiences there into a feeling of solipsism (and I would guess that this really is due to my own newness to it, and is not a fair description of others' experiences of the silence. The practice, at that earlier meeting, of holding hands in a circle after the hour is through, is a very powerful, if simple, way of denying this interpretation. It convinces me, at least.

I would be interested to hear from Friends who tend to worship in complete silence about their experiences of worshiping that way. What are your motivations? What keeps you returning? What does it mean for the worship if it is not expected that the Spirit will speak?]

[token technorati tag: Quakers]

Monday, December 3, 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:01:00 +0000

Planning a Preemptive Strike Against Allergies: too good to be true? (and/or) My Body Was The Hostile Environment.

Reuters AlertNet - Japan experts find way to block allergic reactions
Scientists in Japan may have found a solution to allergic reactions. It involves blocking the functions of a molecule called STIM1. I'm no scientist at all, but I like to think my presentiments about some things are somewhat valid. So I looked around for other mentions of STIM1 and found this at the Federally Funded Medical Research blog:

the function of STIM1, a Ca2+ sensor in the ER lumen that controls Ca2+ influx into cells, and which also acts as a tumor suppressor.

Seems like the kind of function I wouldn't care to see blocked!
I figure it's btter to bear with them the old way, and, if possible, to fight against them the slow way. In that spirit, here's an old post from last June, when I was in the hayday (groan) of allergies, and found another interesting study, this time by scientists from Poland...

29 May 2007
What makes for hospitable environments?

Yesterday at our "Goodbye, Indiana!" party, I was subject to a horrible attack of my allergies; my eyes were all puffy, my nasal passage was completely packed solid, and my face felt dry and suffocated, like it was about to crack and fall away. Nice, huh? We were forced to leave early and even back in our air-conditioned apartment I was clogged all night, and have quarantined myself today.

What's aggravating about it is that Blue Heron Farm has been a place of refuge or retreat for me during my time in Indiana, as well as the home of close friends. The life that is lived there is healthier and more robust and responsible to the natural environment than most environs I find myself in - and so I feel confronted by the fact that the life I have been living is not up to the test of living, let alone thriving, in diverse conditions.

Investigating this today, I found that some scientists in Poland came up with similar conclusions through their research of small non-specialized farms in that country, and rates of allergy and asthma attacks among the farming populations:

[The] most interesting observation is the possible protective effect of small farms. It seems that the conditions that are very close to natural environment are beneficial to the health condition of the exposed subjects. Probably, the presence of endotoxin plays the key role here. We presume that such a cause– effect relationship could be observed only because our farmers had been living in these conditions since their birth. It is known that once asthma and allergic diseases are established, the relationship is generally the opposite: microbial exposures worsen the course of the disease.
"Small nonspecialized farming as a protective factor against immediate-type occupational respiratory allergy?" by Walusiak, J. et al Allergy; Dec2004, Vol. 59 Issue 12, p1294-1300, 7p

It seems safe to say that the same is true for any lived environment that demands compatibility with many interactive forms of life: that our minds and our bodies are unable to interact or even cope with foreign elements if we don't know how to "plug-in" or address these elements hospitably. Some people are trained (for instance by the military) to be able to survive in the most bizarre and extreme situations, but are made to operate according to a preordained way of thinking about the things they are made to "engage." Others are brought up to think critically and flexibly about a plurality of perspectives...but these philosophers are often helpless once they step outside of their air-conditioned office or library or home!

Before I became incapacitated we had been talking about the "organics" industry, as compared to the, I believe, incomparably more dignified and healthful ways of small-farming -- the kind of local and diverse cultivation that is in every way opposed to mass-marketing. It is not something you can pick up and package and mass-produce in cookie-cutter fashion, because it depends in its essence on a complex interdependency of place and produce, of land and its livability. It takes time for one's body and mind to know the land and its ways of generating life.

My body reacted against the pollinating elements of the field like they were my enemy. It wasn't that I was in a hostile environment, but just the opposite: my body was the hostile environment closing itself off from all apparent "intruders."

[token technorati tag: allergies, STIM1]

25 November 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 17:13:00 +0000

Faith Taking On Up Science

The following is from Paul Davies' recent New York Times article:

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships.

And just as Christians claim that the world depends utterly on God for its existence, while the converse is not the case, so physicists declare a similar asymmetry: the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe.

Paul Davies is calling on scientists to acknowledge their fundamental reliance on a kind of faith when they do their work -- faith in a somehow rational and ordered universe. Do Christians think that they are off the hook, then, for inventing that holy loophole called "blind faith"?

Any of us Christians who are interested in the nature of reality, and the relationship of God to the physical world also have reason to squirm, because we do not believe in blindness, but in revelation. And revelation is not a matter of accepting immediate appearances, but of knowledge, and of understanding.

Of course Christians have different questions than the scientists do. We do not, as Christians, have any fundamental interest in particular as to the operation of the migrations of birds or salmon, for example. But we do claim that the God who created this world was made incarnate, the invisible made visible, made knowable, in Jesus. We also claim that Jesus is the key to salvation, that the revelation of Jesus is essential to the transformation of the entire world, and that our increasing faith in this is a matter of our willing participation in the arrival of the kingdom of heaven. But this is not an answer, only the advent of a question: What knowledge of the created world is made evident, or knowable, in Jesus? How is Jesus, in other words, really the cornerstone to the creation of the physical world?

Just as scientists need to acknowledge the existence of a certain faith in their work which is descended from Christian doctrines, so Christians need to put their faith to work, and claim genuine experimental science as their legitimate offspring. Questioning the nature of the universe is an essential way for Christians to be growing in the understanding of Jesus' revelation. The immanence of Jesus draws us into the actual physical workings of the creator God, and we do this revelation a disservice by turning a blind eye to the parcels of knowledge scientists continue to produce and calling it True Faith.

[token technorati tag: paul_davies]

BookTech

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 20:32:00 +0000

Amazon Reading Device Doesn’t Need Computer - New York Times

There are some pretty convincing arguments that fly in the face of Luddite reasoning, and one of the best I heard recently was a thought experiment that went like this:

Can you imagine human technology evolving backwards?

For example: Say we had somehow come up with cellphones first, that we had gone from face-to-face communication straight to cellphone technology: would anyone ever invent the land-line? Would anyone say, "hey, I have a great idea! Let's create a tool that does just what the cellphone does, but instead of it being mobile it will be tied to one place, and instead of having frequently used numbers programmed in to dial themselves for us, we would have to dial the number each time we used it..."??? No one could convincingly argue that that would ever happen, as far as I can imagine.

Well, the article I have linked to here, on the Kindle e-book technology, has brought that question back to mind. First off, I have thought a lot about the possibility of having books available electronically in this way, and am relatively interested in it. There are some pros to it, definitely: if you had several books you were reading, you could have them all with you at once with this gadget. Also, if they were books you knew you would only read once, and not want to take notes on, etc, that would mean a lot less stuff floating around. I'm sure there are other advantages.

But here's the thing:

When I pay attention to my reactions to things, I really seem to be trying way too hard to convince myself of the value of some technologies, and this Kindle is one of them. But it's more than just Kindle. Often when I am thinking about how to improve note-taking and making certain resources easily available and at-hand, I find myself "inventing" something that looks pretty much like a well-ordered and indexed book, whose pages can be folded and color-coded with tabs and pens and high-lighters and a variety of bookmarks, all of which can be seen almost at once, and whose presence is autonomous in a way. (I mean, I can completely forget about an article or something else I have downloaded onto my computer, but a pile of books created one day and forgotten about the next because of some business or something else which interrupted, come into view the next day -or the next month- and keep me tied to them, remind me of their presence; and this presence stimulates me in my thinking by reminding me of whole thoughts and parts of me. I don't need to open Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language everyday to be reminded at seeing it of that trajectory in my life, and the values it represents. Like any ritual of remembrance, my piles of books visit me and impress themselves upon me every time I visit them, in this case at my desk - even though I did not come to leaf through them, but just to check email or whatever else.)
Of course it is possible to wander through my electronic files and find things I completely forgot about, but really, how often does anyone intentionally wander, looking for things to be stimulated by, when they have so many things to do anyway? If you are a wanderer, all the best! But for those who are busy and overwhelmed by many different obligations, projects, and so on, the digitalization of books is a disservice if it depletes the presence and the company which piles of books exert upon the body and mind of that person. In this sense, the digital mind is very much like a micro-managed and overly controlling mind - and an over-taxed mind. Digital memory may leave us a lot of space, but it ignores the fact that space itself, in being filled, is a form of memory which has its own value, and irreplaceable benefits.

Kindle is a fine idea for recreational books, if, like me, you don't mind releasing the majority of them back into the mix, or the ether, or whathaveyou. But if you love a book and either want to keep it or pass it on to someone else, how can you do that with Kindle? In this sense, Kindle and all e-books are a kind of degenerative technology, which paper books still have an immense functional advantage over, beyond their romance of their smell -- which, of course, cannot be underestimated!!

[token technorati tag: kindle]

In Mixed Slice of Baghdad, Old Bonds Defy War - New York Times

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:41:00 +0000

In Mixed Slice of Baghdad, Old Bonds Defy War - New York Times

This article about a neighborhood in Baghdad that is safe from extremist and sectarian violence even though Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians all live might serve as a reminder that peace takes a long time to create, and it is absolutely not created by preserving (or trying to create a situation of) homogenous religious or political beliefs. Instead, it is a matter of moderation and humor, partly, but more than anything, trust.

So more than being a reason for hope for Baghdad, it serves me as a caution. I don't know too many places where people in their neighborhood know each other well enough that they simply cannot lie, so they consequently trust each other. The trust I feel, usually, is more like a matter of trust in strangers -- a trust which is preserved by our being well-off and, as the article says, living in a place where the basic rules of society are very safe and keep us all amiable to a certain degree.

Making peace is not a matter of creating rules and a stable economic infrastructure, but of creating trusting ties with your neighbors because they are your neighbors.

Our mobility and our extended trans-neighborhood communities based on common values (like driving so far to go to church, for those of us who are believers) rather than simple proximity keep us from feeling the presence of our neighbors in the way we might if the society started to shift and crack even a little bit. And it isn't a reality for us that we might be living near the same people for generations and generations, so that also keeps us from getting to know one another and develop trust in one another. (Especially for those of us who like our privacy and alone time even among people we already love!)

I think the trick is realizing first of all that stability is not peace.

And then also that in times of stability, preparing for peace is a lot easier than when the times of instability come.

Love Your Enemy: Within a Divided Self - by James Alison

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 22:02:00 +0000

Love Your Enemy: Within a Divided Self - by James Alison

Thanks to Joel Miller, who provided me with a link to this essay by the absolutely wonderful James Alison.

Consider him my "guest lecturer" for this week. Though you need to go on a field trip to his site to read it. Have a good time!

uncanny attractions

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 17:43:00 +0000

In my occasional dipping into the area of neuroscience (which for me needs to be intuitively understandable neuroscience...) and more specifically my fascination with "mirror neurons" I came across this article at Open The Future, which discusses one aspect of our ability to empathize/identify on the molecular level with others.
A preamble:
One understanding of mirror neurons is that they are what enable us to empathize with one another - which they do by imitating or replicating at the level of our nerve synapses what we see others doing, as if we were doing it ourselves. In fact, the same neurons fire when we see others do something that fire when we do it ourselves.
Or at least sort of...

ROBOTS
Studies have been done to see when and how strongly our mirror neurons fire when we see certain activities carried out by others. So for instance, when we see a robot pick up a cup, our neurons fire as if we were picking up a cup. In some sense, we can be said to empathize with the robot (cf. Steven Spielberg's film A.I.).

OTHER PEOPLE
On the other hand, studies involving more complicated behaviors, like culture-specific gestures and cross-ethnic communications, for instance, has shown that we are slow to identify a gesture or activity we understand well within our own context/culture/etc if it is performed by someone from a distinctly different culture. Fewer neurons fire, there is less molecular empathy. (find this study here.) There are no obvious conclusions to be drawn from this (for instance, I don't take this to mean that we have some kind of molecular predisposition to xenophobia), except that there are deep links between what is cultural and what is natural.
Our ability to learn and to cultivate our minds and bodies is linked directly to our ability to empathize (or not) with other people and things. Learning to love is therefore a reworking and a retraining of our natural tendency to identify and empathize with others.

OTHER... PEOPLE??
In the primary article I am linking to here, what is being discussed is not the "uncanniness" that results from seeing a robot do something we are familiar with - and so feeling strange about our "instinctive" empathizing/identifying with it. Instead what is discussed is the uncanny and uncomfortable feeling associated with witnessing familiar things performed by people who, well, aren't quite "people" anymore. Or at least that is the 'scary' question: when people are changed in their appearance to a certain degree, and yet still perform familiar tasks, at what point will we no longer consider them quite human? An example quoted in the article refers to people with visible diseases or malformations, while the article itself refers (as far as I can tell) to humanly created self-adaptations. For the sake of argument, let's say "robotized" humans (there's got to be a better word for that), as compared to "humanoid" robots.

[I can't help but think of the X-MEN comics, and movies. If there actually were people like Wolverine, who could heal themselves against almost any physical attack -- and apparently this isn't SO outrageous...(???) -- how would us normal decaying people react?]

As we transform ourselves, applying our new understandings about things to ourselves (who are also things, able to be toyed with, of course), how will we react to our own selves? What do we need to do to maintain a sense of our own self, our own humanity, and that of others? Our "habituous" natures can be cultivated and routed and transformed easily if the right tools are used! I know very well how easy it is to be distracted by something and get swept up by it, only to resurface a long time afterwards and wonder where I had been.

It seems to me that distraction is only a matter of perspective, of prejudice. There is only attraction after attraction after attraction.

We learn, thanks to our mirror neurons, and the people around us, what is attractive and what isn't -- what to stay away from and what to desire. But we also have just a little bit of will of our own, and we can use it prepare ourselves to hate someone despite everything, to love someone despite everything, or to not care despite everything, and any options in between. It is a matter of anticipation and imagination, of being a proactive student. Whether or not we identify with people form other cultures, people with disfigured bodies, robotized humans or humanoid robots, what we need to identify first is that none of these things comes simply naturally to us: it is always a matter of cultivations, of experimentations in empathy and identity, performed as much by our own molecular instincts as by the world around us.

Agapastic Evolution vs. The Survival of the Fittest-Greedy-Master-of-Intelligence

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:39:00 +0000

In 1893, the great American philosopher (and scientist, and logician, and semiotician, etc) Charles Peirce, wrote a bold and rather sentimental essay arguing both for evolution and for the Christian faith -- against the interpretation of evolution that had been offered by Darwin and swallowed up eagerly by many of his contemporaries. The essay was called "Evolutionary Love" and it was published in the The Monist in January of that year. Does it need to be said that Peirce recognized the brilliance of Darwin's Origin, and of course accepted the reality of evolution and adaptation in the world as abundantly evident? He also recognized, thanks to his interdisciplinary style of thinking and analyzing, another spirit, another guiding principle, at work in his society being mingled up with the scientific study of natural processes.

Here is Peirce's characterization of his century:

The nineteenth century…will be called, I guess, the Economical Century; for political economy has more direct relations with all the branches of its activity than any other science. Well, political economy has its formula of redemption too [just as the Gospel of John does -- i.e. love; love "warming evil into life, and making it lovely," as Peirce says]. It is this: Intelligence in the sacrifice of greed ensures the justest prices, the fairest contracts, the most enlightened conduct of all the dealings between men, and leads to the summum bonum, food in plenty and in comfort. Food for whom? Why, for the greedy master of intelligence.

I do not mean to say that this is one of the legitimate conclusions of political economy, the scientific character of which I fully acknowledge. But the study of doctrines, themselves true, will often temporarily encourage generalizations extremely false… What I say, then, is that the great attention paid to economical questions during our century has induced an exaggeration of the beneficial effects of greed and of the unfortunate results of sentiment, until there has resulted a philosophy which comes unwittingly to this, that greed is the great agent in the elevation of the human race and in the evolution of the universe. (354)

I think it isn't hard to see that we are still enjoying the fruits of this philosophy today. In terms of doctrine, the victim of this philosophy is what Peirce calls the doctrine of sentimentalism, which he describes and defends as follows:

[Sentimentalism is] the doctrine that great respect should be paid to the natural judgments of the sensible heart. This is what sentimentalism precisely is; and I entreat the reader to consider whether to condemn it is of all blasphemies the most degrading. (356)

As Peirce notes, "It has been the tradition to picture sentimentalists as persons incapable of logical thought and unwilling to look facts in the eyes." But, says Peirce (a man who needs no proof of his gift for logic and clear thinking--in fact, he wrote "how to" essays about it), "This tradition may be classed with…all those traditions which survive simply because the men who use their eyes and ears are few and far between." (356) Basically, Peirce is out to prove that those who think the heart has no place in deciding how we will or will not proceed as a society in the business of life are making "brummagem generalizations" and creating propositions out of mountains of trash. It is the refuse of thinkers who have become convinced that only one's own self can be trusted, and only the pursuit of individual welfare will end up finally benefiting the welfare of all. (Why is there the impulse to tag the benefits for all among people who believe only in the individual?) But it is into a context where this goes without saying that Darwin came along.

The Origin of Species of Darwin merely extends politico-economical views of progress to the entire realm of animal and vegetable life. The vast majority of our contemporary naturalists hold the opinion that the true cause of those exquisite and marvelous adaptations of nature for which, when I was a boy, men used to extol the divine wisdom, is that creatures are so crowded together that those of them that happen to have the slightest advantage force those less pushing into situations unfavorable to multiplication or even kill them before they reach the age of reproduction. Among animals, the mere mechanical individualism is vastly reinforced as a power making for good by the animal's ruthless greed. As Darwin puts it on his title page, it is the struggle for existence; and he should have added to his motto: Every individual for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost! Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, expressed a different opinion.

But Jesus was no scientist, and that can't help much anyone who wants to study the natural world and learn how exactly it works. Luckily, the Fundamentalist's young-earth creationism isn't the only option to Darwin's theory. After all, if evolution is real, then it bears the possibility for many interpretations, just like the reality of the good news is not solely the property of America's Religious Right. Evolution, says Peirce, doesn't need in the least to be identified with Darwin. There are other options. In fact there are at least two other basic options from Peirce's point of view: one that is good, and another that, like Darwin's type of theory, is simply a perversion of the first.

These three types don't have very market-friendly names...

The first, Darwin's type, is what Peirce calls tychastic evolution, or "evolution by fortuitous variation."

Essentially, all successes of any organism come down to its having acquired by chance features which make it better equipped to survive this or that environmental condition. This is what is called "Natural selection," which process leads to the end result: "survival of the fittest." [There is no concept of an ability for any kind of cultivation among our "natural" neighbors. Instead, people tended in this case to transpose qualities of fateful "natural selection" onto people, going about attempting to prove the natural flaws of this or that community (of course never one's own - a most natural selection…). I know Darwin cannot be held responsible for what became Social Darwinism, but I think the real answer is to enter his own arena and question the fateful randomness of his theory, even as it applies to nature.]

The second type is called anancastic evolution, or "evolution by mechanical necessity." Now, I had never heard of that word before (I hadn't heard of tychastic either, for that matter), and when I looked it up I found the definition very interesting: "anancastic: of, relating to, or arising from compulsion especially in an obsessive or compulsive neurosis." For me, this made something suddenly click. What we have here are two very different ways of understanding how the world operates. Is it a random and vicious world of each creature fighting for its own survival, never knowing what is going to come up next, so that we are best to distrust others and store up for ourselves all available resources against unknown but certainly possible catastrophies? Or is the world governed by clearly understandable laws which, when understood, will carry us through if we ally with them our own dog-gone stubborn will and determination, so that nothing will get in our way and we will not be deterred? Am I wrong to suggest that the first is characteristic of atheistic power-hungry America, and the second theistic power-hungry America? Maybe I'm way off, and anyway, I'm not even American. But I feel like this has got me onto something. In any case, Peirce doesn't think either one really gets at the evidence of what can be seen if we look at the world un-prejudiced by either greed or rigid dogma.

The third type of evolution is called agapastic evolution, or what Peirce calls, "evolution by creative love."

This option will of course get the most attention. The theorist and scientist Peirce goes to for this is a guy by the name of Lamarck. And Lamarckian evolution could also be described as "evolution by the force of habit." (360) Of course, habit is a word that we associate with rigidity and lethargy and dullness, probably. Habits are those things you try to break, or at least that you do without thinking. In fact, that's the point: you develop a habit because you have no pressing reason to question the beliefs that lead you to perform the habit. (Peirce talks about this elsewhere, with enviable clarity.)

Here is a lengthy exposition on Lamarck's basic ideas, as described by Peirce:

According to his view, all that distinguishes the highest organic forms from the most rudimentary has been brought about by little hypertrophies or atrophies which have affected individuals early in their lives, and have been transmitted to their offspring. Such a transmission of acquired characters is of the general nature of habit-taking, and this is the representative and derivative within the physiological domain of the law of mind. Its action is essentially dissimilar to that of physical force… [i.e. "mechanical necessity"] Lamarckians further suppose that although some of the modifications of form so transmitted were originally due to mechanical causes, yet the chief factors of their first production were the straining of endeavor and the overgrowth superinduced by exercise, together with the opposite actions. Now, endeavor, since it is directed toward an end, is essentially psychical, even though it be sometimes unconscious; and the growth due to exercise, as I argued in my last paper, follows a law of a character quite contrary to that of mechanics.

[Habit] is energetic projaculation (lucky there is such a word, or this untried hand might have been put to inventing one) by which in the typical instances of Lamarckian evolution the new elements of form are first created. Habit, however, forces them to take practical shapes, compatible with the structures they affect, and in the form of heredity and otherwise, gradually replaces the spontaneous energy that sustains them. Thus, habit plays a double part; it serves to establish the new features, and also to bring them into harmony with the general morphology and function of the animals and plants to which they belong. (360-361)

This double function of habituous exercise ("habituous" I define as "the propensity to be overcome, to become enriched or defiled, abundant or impoverished, but in any case in every way shaped, led and self-led, by habits") bears striking resemblance, says Peirce, to the character of what a philosophy he described earlier, but which I mentioned only parenthetically until now, namely, the philosophy found in the Gospel of John (although he might better have said the central command of the whole of the Judeo-Christian traditions)--as Peirce puts it so…uniquely: "Sacrifice your own perfection to the perfectionment of your neighbor." What is the double function, exactly, of love? "The movement of love is circular, at one and the same impulse projecting creations into independency and drawing them into harmony. " (353)

Everybody can see that the statement of St. John is the formula of an evolutionary philosophy, which teaches that growth comes only from love, from--I will not self-sacrifice, but from the ardent impulse to fulfill another's highest impulse. Suppose, for example, that I have an idea that interests me. It is my creation. It is my creature; …it is a little person. I love it; and I will sink myself in perfecting it. It is not in dealing out cold justice to the circle of my ideas that I can make them grow, but by cherishing and tending them as I would flowers in my garden. The philosophy we draw from John's gospel is that this is the way mind develops; and as for the cosmos, only so far as it yet is mind, and so has life, is it capable of further evolution. Love, recognizing germs of loveliness in the hateful, gradually warms it into life, and makes it lovely. (354)

Now Peirce in this essay uses evolution of mind as his primary illustration, though he does make reference to molecular development. Today there are others more dedicated to doing the work of applying Peirce's concepts to life-processes at their minutest level. In fact, as far as I understand (though I have not studied zoosemiotics, but have read a very good essay about how birds have an aesthetic sense, by Thomas Sebeok), there are many who submit that Peirce's semiotic theory (which isn't touched on in this essay, but is related) is the best language currently available to discuss how things work at that rudimentary level.

Regarding evolution of mind:

Let us ask what aspect Lamarckian evolution takes on within the domain of consciousness. Direct endeavor can achieve almost nothing. It is as easy by taking thought to add a cubit to one's stature as it is to produce an idea acceptable to any of the Muses by merely straining for it, before it is ready to come. … Besides this inward process, there is the operation of the environment, which goes to break up habits destined to be broken up and so to render the mind lively. Everybody knows that the long continuance of a routine of habit makes us lethargic, while a succession of surprises wonderfully brightens the ideas. … Few psychologists have perceived how fundamental a fact this is. A portion of mind abundantly commissured to other portions works almost mechanically. It sinks to the condition of a railway junction. But a portion of mind almost isolated, a spiritual peninsula, or cul-de-sac, is like a railway terminus. Now mental commissures are habits. Where they abound, originality is not needed and is not found; but where they are in defect, spontaneity is set free. Thus, the first step in Lamarckian evolution of mind is the putting of sundry thoughts into situations in which they are free to play. (361)

Growth, both on the molecular level and on the philosophical level, involves the same kind of process.

On the molecular level,

It consists of the flying asunder of molecules, and the reparation of the parts by new matter. It is, thus, a sort of reproduction. It takes place only during exercise, because the activity of protoplasm consists in the molecular disturbance which is its necessary condition.

On the level of the mind,

The most perfect illustration is the development of a philosophical idea by being put into practice. The conception which appeared, first, as unitary, splits up into special cases; and into each of these new thought must enter to make a practicable idea. This new thought, however, follows pretty closely the model of the parent conception; and thus a homogeneous development takes place. The parallel between this and the course of molecular occurrences is apparent. Patient attention will be able to trace all these elements in the transaction called learning. (361-362)

So what we are doing always and everywhere, unless (and really, even if) we are rigid and convicted by very set ideas and ways of seeing, is learning and growing in one way or another. We clearly do not live in a mechanistic universe, for the details of what is true are changing all the time. But we also do not live in a world where the best mode of survival is to hoard up for oneself, and care only for one's own survival, or for one's own salvation. Evolution is no doubt a reality, but survival of the fittest might not be the best or most encompassing theory of how it proceeds. Distrust and obsessive/ compulsive neuroses are the product of misinterpretations of what change is, and what it does, and what it has to offer. They are able to get a firm hold only because the message is repeated over and over. I believe the recent discovery and attention given to mirror neurons might help here. Our mirror neurons every day are taking in new knowledge about how we cannot trust anyone, how we need to stick to our task even if our hearts are trying to lead us elsewhere. But the very thing that enables us to learn these awful habits is the same thing that, paradoxically, is proving our innate capacity to empathize with and learn from others and their experiences even at the molecular level!

I hope it's about time we abandon our infatuation with simple and mere survival, and become enamored with the idea that we have been created for, say, agape feasts.

[page numbers come from the publication of this essay in

1. Charles S. Peirce and Nathan Houser, The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings (Indiana University Press, 1992).]

How China Got Religion - New York Times

noreply@blogger.com (Mike) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 22:49:00 +0000

How China Got Religion - New York Times

I found this op-ed by Slavoj Zizek in the NYTimes today, discussing how China's new laws "prohibiting Buddhist monks from returning from the dead without government permission" are very like the kind of state control of religion which was created by the Europeans to end the Thirty Years' War in the beginning of the modern era. He writes,

It is all too easy to laugh at the idea of an atheist power regulating something that, in its eyes, doesn’t exist. However, do we believe in it? When in 2001 the Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed the ancient Buddhist statues at Bamiyan, many Westerners were outraged — but how many of them actually believed in the divinity of the Buddha? Rather, we were angered because the Taliban did not show appropriate respect for the “cultural heritage” of their country. Unlike us sophisticates, they really believed in their own religion, and thus had no great respect for the cultural value of the monuments of other religions... Perhaps we find China’s reincarnation laws so outrageous not because they are alien to our sensibility, but because they spill the secret of what we have done for so long: respectfully tolerating what we don’t take quite seriously, and trying to contain its political consequences through the law.

At another point in his article he offers the definition, "your religious belief, a matter of your innermost spiritual experience..."

Is this what we really think? Is religious belief really a matter of only "innermost spiritual experience"? I might argue that that is the kind of understanding which follows after confusing too deeply religious institutions with state power. At the social level, however, although there is of course confusion and no clear lines, the spiritual traditions which maintain a genuine sense of life and continuity through generations are ones that conduct the energy of each individual's inner experiences of the divine toward, and in mutual service to, the social experiences of the believing community.

I see it in one sense as a matter of choosing to be subject to the desire for human power, or the desire for Truth -- in whatever form that takes. I believe that a believing community of any spiritual/religious tradition will be heading toward disintegration to the extent it becomes convinced that it's ultimate truth and reality is a matter of legal force.

On the other hand, a believing community will maintain the necessary resources for life and regeneration to the extent that it is interested in Truth. I remember Gandhi's words: "I used to know that God is Truth, but now I know that Truth is God." It is therefore my very deep belief that genuine spiritual experience, complete with all of its sense of mystery and need for metaphor, is nonetheless better suited to (re)learn its survival skills from the habits of scientists and the scientific community, than from the study of legal battles and propagandizing strategies.

Spiritual experience is a matter of what is real, and when we let the government tell us what is real, or when I only let myself in on what is real (distrusting the spiritual knowledge of others), fragmentation and dissolution begins to occur.

An example of a believing community opting for legal battles and props rather than scientific clarity is the Intelligent Design movement. It claims to be a scientific enterprise, but its primary means to achieving its ends have been through legal or otherwise manipulative techniques aimed at securing a 'majority' or at least a 'stake' in the spinning of its belief systems - for instance in schools. Distrust and the need to control the story are not becoming characteristics for any community that claims to be seeking the Truth. The irony that Zizek is pointing out is that we have let our combined spiritual authority become a matter of "culture" just like Tibet is on its way to becoming the next Disneyland. What is funny about the Intelligent Design movement is that it is using Theme Park type techniques to convince people of its truth, making a very impressive and costly mockery of itself as a legitimate contender for Reality.

I want to argue that the Intelligent Design folk are able to get away with this kind of thing because so many of the rest of us, instead of cultivating a sense of genuine spiritual-ecological truth, which we might have a degree of real knowledge about, balk at the idea that there may even be such a thing as spiritual knowledge, and talk instead about religious belief, which functions as a kind of residual texture from the past, keeping us distantly tolerant and respectful, though, ironically, as Zizek says, not truly believable, even to ourselves.