02/29/08 (#0204) Does altruism exist?
Hey Paul,
enjoying your nutty, oops, pardon me, your Nutshells. (Re: TN#203)
One of my fav
aphorisms to share with you: "Blessed are they who
see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing"
(Camille Pissaro). The sense of Wonder in the ordinary keeps one's cup of
life full (and even overflowing!) and, hopefully, keeps one thankful . -
cassandra
Wherever we look, if we look and see, we cannot help but be filled with
wonder. So we're all potentially blessed but not all of us think it worthwhile
to pause long enough to receive the blessing. Some of us have no time for this
nonsense. I believe those who do take the time are also filled with
appreciation. Blessed are the artists...- the Ed
Theory of evolution says no but
human experience suggests otherwise. However, it's only a suggestion.
Let's start with a definition.
Altruism is an intentional action to benefit another person without any benefit to oneself. The italicized part is
crucial. If it's merely a quid pro quo, that is, if
we stand to benefit ourselves by benefitting others, that is not
altruism. On the other hand, if we act to benefit others at a real cost or
disadvantage to ourselves that's super-altruism a.k.a. heroism.
Evidence of apparent altruism among
humans abound. But is it real or merely apparent? Theory of evolution insists on
the latter. It points out that co-operative groups in which at least some
members act altruistically (think teams) have better chances of survival than
individuals alone or relatively uncooperative groups. So joining a team and
being a good team-mate makes evolutionary sense, ergo, it's not really altruism, there is a reward. This merely replaces
individuals with groups acting as individuals. (In fact, each one of us is
already a cooperative and closely linked group of individual cells).
The question arises, just how big a
group can we be members of? Is there a practical limit to the size of a
cooperative group? How about all of humanity? Then
there would be no competitive advantage to altruism within the group it being
the only group. But perhaps we
would be better off, evolutionarily speaking, as a bunch of smaller
competing groups (such as, in fact, we are ) than as a cooperative
super-group embracing all of humanity? Capitalism says yes. Communism says no.
How about altruism between
lovers? In most cases the quid pro quo is obvious
and explicitly stated (I'll be yours if you'll be
mine). There are, however, less obvious cases where one or both parties seem
genuinely selfless in giving their love, for example, a partner taking care
of a disabled one (this doesn't count if done unwillingly or
grudgingly). That sure looks like genuine altruism. But is it?
Evolution shmevolution, whatever. I
say all altruism is apparent. There is no such thing. Here's why: what do we
want, really? We want to feel good. That is the
fundamental desire driving everything we do. The only question is, what makes us
feel good? How do we need to act to feel good? The answer is not
immediately obvious. Some apparently obvious answers can bring us to the
exact opposite - depression, sickness and despair.
The Nutshell has already suggested
the answer on a previous occasion: what makes us feel good is being right. Telling right from wrong at any given
time is a matter of attention, memory (personal and communal), reason (including
imagination) and faith. That is all we have to base our choices on and it
is enough.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/28/08 (#0203) Sense of wonder
(Re: TN #202) Hmm. Speaking solely
for myself, I have yet to meet anyone who seems to me - at least to MY
satisfaction - that he/she has "had all [his/hers] beliefs and notions and
habits of thought utterly destroyed and then restored", and who, as a
consequence, doesn't "take [him/herself] and his/her beliefs too
seriously." - Ardeshir
Well, it may not be apparent. Sudden
expansion of one's frame of reference does not lead to instant
personality change - that is a longstanding habit not easily shaken
off. Besides, unless one makes the effort to remember and apply the experience one soon forgets (since it
is totally unlike the habitual experience of self) and after a
while it fades to nothing more than a strange and distant dream. - the
Ed
Of all the sensations that make up
our experience of being, the second most significant is the sense of
wonder. (The first is the sense of joy/appreciation).
I don't mean wonder in the sense of
"seeking information" as in "I wonder how much this costs?". The wonder I'm
referring to is not an inquiry but a state of mind - awe, amazement,
astonishment, the feeling expressed by the idiom "blown away".
Or "far out, man" as the hippies used to say.
Wonder is a natural psychedelic. It is the exact opposite of
"taking for granted", the state of mind in which we give no attention to the
object or phenomenon in question. As a consequence we learn nothing of or about
it. Wonder, on the other hand, focuses attention and opens our minds to
the full potential of that which is beheld. We drink it in, make it
intentionally (though not always eagerly) part of ourselves.
Wonder leads
either to enjoyment or to fear. All things wonderful (and I can't
think of one that is not) are worth our attention but they are not all
beautiful, useful or harmless. Some are terrifying and dangerous.
The sense of wonder is not just an
aspect of experiencing. We can and do use it creatively in play and work by
imagining wonderful scenarios to enact, whether for pure enjoyment, or to deal
with the needs of the moment, or to give direction and shape to the rest of our
life. Indeed, whatever we do must be inspired with wonder if it
is to have style and grace, i.e. if it is to be worth doing.
As somebody said, it's a wonderful
life. Or, at least, it can be.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/27/08 (#0202) How to go out
of your mind
(Re TN #201)
Pennies for thoughts have found some magic in the Nutshell today. Very much
enjoyed the dance of rhyme and rhythm across the universe. -
Tabs
I can't dance
myself so I get my kicks from making my words dance. Especially since it's
hard to find these days poetry that dances. - the Ed
Once upon a time people used to experiment with drugs not
just for entertainment (as they do in these vulgar days) but for spiritual
enlightment. Somewhere along the way spiritual enlightment got discredited. Oh,
there are still a few people here and there who seek it in mescaline,
psilocybin or LSD, but they are a rarity. The drugs of choice are cocaine, meth,
crack. A different trip.
Well, I
can see why. To begin with, those who expected to be handed free spiritual
enlightment by the psychedelic ("soul-expanding") drugs were sorely
disappointed, and some had bad trips. Unfortunately, that was the expectation of most trippers. Most of them had
no clue what they were doing. At best they got a halucinatory Alice in
Wonderland experience, at worst they went psycho. So people gave up on the
psychedelics.
Medicine could not
figure out how these drugs could be used for the benefit of mankind. Some
limited applications for treatment of certain mental conditions were found but
the side effects were often out of proportion to the desired result.
So they have been discarded as medically useless. And since the side
effects can be dangerous, even life threatening, they have been placed on
controlled substances list. And there it stands.
Except that certain Indian tribes are officially allowed to
use mescaline (actually peyote, the natural source of mescaline) in their
traditional religious services. And, curiously, the Indians are not suffering
any mental disorders as a consequence.
The fact is that psychedelics can be used to expand the soul - or at least the mind -
in controlled circumstances, under supervision of a qualified guide. The
psychedelic experience can be profoundly eye-opening and transforming - in a
positive way. However, without proper preparation the experience can be
disorienting and terrifying, especially to those with well established egos and
set ways.
Essentially, what the
drug does is break down established perceptory apparatus and open up wide
the normally controlled access links among various brain functions.
The result is that one sees as an infant might see, without automatically
categorizing and interpreting the incoming sensory data. However, the fully
developed brain is there with all its memories and associating like, er.. crazy.
Judgement is suspended - everything is equally
significant. Ideas come in a chaotic rush.
What it is is a semantic rebirth. One returns to normality
after having had all one's beliefs and notions and habits of thought
utterly destroyed and then restored but with full memory of what that was like.
After such a shattering experience it's impossible to take oneself and
one's beliefs too seriously. One's imagination has been expanded by orders
of magnitude and one is freshly aware of the vast numbers of alternative
possibilities. I can think of a lot of people who would benefit from such an
experience...
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/16/08 (#0201) The music of the
spheres.
And now for something completely different. Actually
not. It just looks, reads and sounds different.
Black is the radiant ocean,
Black to
the earthbound eye;
But I have seen the glory
Of the blazing, seething sky.
No lonely empty stretches
Divide
galactic spins,
But hurricanes of cosmic rays
And torrents of wild nucleons.
No silent isolation,
No desert stark
and bare,
But hungry gravitation
Pervading everywhere.
I heard the songs of atoms
And
stellar symphonies
Swell a trillion cubic light years
With a vast cacophony.
Silent the roaring radiance,
Silent
to earthbound ears;
But I have heard the glory
Of the music of the spheres.
Perpetrated long ago but I find I still subscribe to
the sentiments.
Not that it matters a ha'epenny's worth.
But it saves having to compose a whole new Nutshell...
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/25/08 (#0200) The
paragon of animals
In the stoned (but melodious) musical "Hair"
there is a reverent and quite beautiful anthem which goes like this:
"What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express
and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The
beauty of the world, the paragon of animals."
Couldn't have said it better myself.
The thespians and the literati
among the Nutshell readers will recognize this as an out of
context quotation from Hamlet's artful speech to Rosenkrantz and
Guildenstern (act II, scene 2). In the same speech Hamlet also
says "...this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory;
this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire - why, it appeareth no other thing
to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." And he follows his
rhapsodic description of man with " - and yet to me, what is this
quintessence of dust? Man delights not me - no, nor woman neither". The joker
is, Hamlet, mad though he may be, in this speech is intentionally faking
madness (as is usual with Hamlet, there's method in it). In view of this,
his rhapsodies take on an ironic cast.
But it's true, it's true! In its abstract potential the
human being is the most wonderful thing in the known universe. Indeed, Man, as I
see it, is the justification for the universe, all of it, from the Big Bang to
Right Now. It took all of that to produce Man. Billions of galaxies of stars
and planets had to form, explode, collide and collapse so that somewhere in
the universe the right conditions would prevail long enough to
allow Man to arise - literally out of the star dust. Nothing less would
have done the job.
And yet, it's
sometimes hard to take delight in your average, typical human being. Most
of us lead an existence so wide of the mark set by our potential that we cannot
recognize ourselves in Hamlet's vision of man. Yet we instinctively believe in
it. Yes, it's what we could be! It's what we're destined to be! In the meantime,
we screw up. Still, we do have our media and sports stars, our supermodels,
our celebrities, not forgetting a few truly great minds and spirits
scattered among us, and, above all, our children, to keep reminding us
what a piece of work is Man.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/23/08 (#0199) An irrational
hope
No doubt about it, under the dominion of homo sapiens, the world is a mess. Functional,
though, sort of, in parts, which is actually amazing considering how much
bigger and more complex it has become in just last hundred years. Can it go on
like this for another hundred?
All right, maybe at my age audacious hope is harder to
come by than at, say, twenty or thirty or forty. Or fifty or sixty.
Nevertheless, I am a congenital optimist. I can't help it.
The reasons the human world is
a mess are same as ever: greed, fear and irrational thinking. That gives me hope
because none of those three are in any way absolutely necessary or
inevitable. We don't have to be their victims. In
most cases they arise from ignorance. For those cases there is an effective cure: good education.
First and
foremost people need to be taught when and how to
think. Unnecessary thinking (especially of the irrational variety) is
bad for us. Yet we can't avoid thinking and most of us are untrained and
unprepared for the task. The results are out there for anyone to see. A royal
screw up.
Religion at its best
offers a different cure: commitment to a moral code on pure faith. The
advantage of this approach is that it is much faster than education and it works
even for those unwilling or unable to learn. There is
a problem with multiplicity of sometimes conflicting moral codes,
but such conflicts are superficial, if occasionally fatal.
Ultimately, every moral code aims to be an expression of the best of human
nature, what we like to call our "humanity".
As an optimist I fundamentally trust human nature. Call me
naive, but there it is. The alternative is despair. Our ignorance may drive
us into desperate situations but I believe that when push comes to shove, when
we have reached the nadir of our folly, in most (but not all) cases we
do find it within ourselves to see things clearly enough
to bootstrap ourselves out of the disaster. In the process, if we survive,
we can't help but become wiser.
This has worked for us so far - the mess we have on our
hands actually represents progress. Things have
been worse. We now have better tools to deal with the disasters we
precipitate. On the other hand, things are happening much faster now. We have
much less time to come to our senses before it's too late. Can we keep up? As I
said, I'm an optimist.
Until
Monday,
Paul W.
02/22/08 (#0198) The camera and I
When I was a kid, back in Poland, probably my second
greatest desire was to [someday] own a camera. This was, of course, like
wishing for figs on a thorn tree. It was wartime and we were just scraping by.
Prospects for owning a camera were zero. Even if I had one, where would I
get film for it? It was hard enough just to find some bread.
But I was just a kid, not yet ten,
and my desire would not be denied. So I made myself a camera out of
cardboard. Just to have one. Of course it was non-functional (I hadn't yet heard
about pinhole cameras which can be made of
cardboard and are functional). But it was a joy to
have this relatively complex aparatus to play with even if I could not actually
take pictures with it. It had all sorts of knobs and adjustments, just like the
real thing.
I didn't get my first
camera until I was fourteen - it was a little plastic Kodak which
cost, if I remember correctly, $3.94, for me, then, a major expense. It was all
I could afford. It was actually much simpler than my cardboard camera, but it
had a real lens and took pictures. Since then I have owned more cameras than I
can remember - dozens. I experimented with various types from subminiatures
about the size of a cigarette lighter to large format which used 8"x10" sheet
film and weighed twenty pounds (without the tripod). I once owned a Leica
M4 which, believe it or not, I traded for Dr. Land's incredible SX-70 foldable
Polaroid camera. That was absolutely the most beatiful, elegant and
ingenious camera ever made by man. Too bad it took lousy pictures. (The Leica
took great pictures - I wish I still had it).
Currently I own two cameras (not counting an old 35 mm SLR
gathering dust on the top shelf of my closet). One of them, the Sony R-1,
enjoyed a brief - like about one year - fame as the dernier cri of advanced digital
imaging technology, which is I why I got it. Obsolete though it
may be (it has now been discontinued) it is still a pretty decent
camera, with capabilities undreamed of a mere decade or so ago. I have hardly
used it yet - maybe a couple thousand exposures. The problem with R-1 is that it
is a large, heavy camera and when you add the weight of the two
massive auxilliary lenses (tele and wide) it's more than I want
to shlep around. It is also conspicuous and expensive looking - a target
for thieves and difficult to handle discreetly in social situations.
On the sage advice of my No.1 I
acquired a second camera specifically for travel photography - a Cannon
S3-IS. It is less than half the weight of R-1, less than half the size, and less
than half the price, but perhaps somewhat more than half the camera
(technology had not stood still). It's a good camera. But I'm still not happy. I
want the capability of R-1 (and more) in a box size of a pack of cards. As
I write this, no such camera exists, yet. But it is just around the corner - I
expect to see one in stores by this fall. I'm poised to pounce.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/21/08 (#0197) Reality
Check
"Reality is that which, after you've stopped believing in it,
doesn't go away" - Philip K. Dick
Faith, belief, knowledge and experience: the four pillars of
our intentional choices. The Nutshell has looked at them before under
various rubrics but not quite from this point of view.
A quick review: "Faith" - the
assumption of the truth of an unproveable (and undisproveable) thesis;
"belief" - a conviction that a thesis is true without testing
for logical or experiential consistency;
"knowledge" - the categorized and organized memories of past experiences
(facts); and "experience" - what is actually observed. All our fully conscious
decisions are based on applying these four to the present moment. (Note: most of
our decisions are either only partly conscious or entirely habitual and
automatic).
The only unnecessary
yet inevitable item on this list is belief. Why inevitable? For several reasons:
1) we're too lazy, too busy or plain unwilling to check our alleged
"facts"; 2) we actually want to
believe some things; 3) we have been hypnotized, enchanted or bamboozled
into accepting something as a fact; or, most commonly, 4) we have arrived at our
"facts" using faulty logic and/or from faulty observation - i.e.
we're mistaken.
Wisdom consists
in the recognition that some of our facts are mere beliefs. The value of
wisdom is less shock to the system when our decisions prove to be
wrong, always having a plan B, and, best of all, instead of being upset
over being wrong, appreciating the reality
check.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/20/08 (#0196) The Art of mere
reproduction
Dear
Nutshell: (Re TN#195) A second round is definitely out of order. It is one thing
to assume the role of a thoughtful Greek shepherd engrossed in insightful
but unanchored thoughts about perceptions. The
notion of sense data or sensation itself is really a part of a scientific theory
of perception, not a philosophical theory. . . Philosophers often have to [NOT!]
rush in where behaviorists fear to tread. A study of modern Cognitive
Neuroscience could be helpful in clarifying the concept of sensations, which are
the big puzzle in a linguistically based theory of mind, but should be more
comprehensible in a neurologically based one. - the Nut.
Et tu, Brute! As it happens, there
is no scientific theory of sensation. Let us
clearly distinguish between sensation and perception. We know all (well, almost
all) about perception of light of various wavelengths. We know nothing about why
color red looks red. Nor can we describe "redness"
in any language, formal or informal. It has no definition and therefore is not
subject to scientific inquiry. A spectrophotometer can perceive
light of the 600 nm wavelength but it cannot see red. Science deals only with the
spectrophotometer's kind of perception and is as blind as a
spectrophotometer to the consciousness of redness (which, incidentally, does not even require
perception). It is precisely where science fears to tread that we,
Greek shepherds, must bridge the gap. - the Ed
When Art with capital A was invented sometime in
the XIX-th century a distiction was drawn between Art and craft (or art
with a small a). Trapped in the fuzzy boundary between the two were, among
others, photographers and illustrators. In the enlightened, post-post-modern
XXI-st century, I am happy to say that photographers and illustrators are no
longer looked down upon as an inferior sort of artists, if artists at all.
However, a certain snootiness
persists with respect to "mere reproduction". I respectfully submit that "mere
reproduction" is impossible. There is no such thing.
For one, no two things are identical. Some things (e.g.
bronze casts, printed images) can be made to look
identical to the unaided eye though close inspection readily
reveals differences. But I'm not talking about copying - I'm talking about reproduction. Copying is a purely mechanical process
which can be accomplished automatically. Reproduction is a recreation of an experience. Which, as I posited, is
impossible. However, capturing some kind of an
evocation of some aspect of the original experience is certainly within the
realm of possibility.
I am
guessing that probably a huge majority of artists, pros and amateurs, are
devoted to [mere] reproduction. These good people, instead of trying to come up
with something completely original and new under the sun, merely try to
reproduce something that impressed them. They are impressionists at heart.
So they set out to reproduce that sunset or that waterfall or those
sunflowers or perhaps that remarkable girl or boy or some slice of life that
caught their aesthetic attention. But of course they can't. The more accurately
and precisely they try to reproduce the scene before them the phonier
it looks. The medium inexorably imposes itself between the reality
and the reproduction.
If
they are good artists they catch on. When they give up on the accurate
reproduction and concetrate on making an image that has a certain feeling to it,
never mind whether it actually resembles the original scene (though it might),
that's when they start creating Art with capital A.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
(02/19/08 (#0195) The mystery of experience
Dearest
Paul: Taking a moment from the slings and arrows of outrageous studio to thank
you for all the laughs.(Would like to hear more from Hedgehog tales).
Thanks also for the
consternation (would that I knew what of the world is real). I should have
entered the chat about “The Magic Flute”. Which mixed media where is a question
for our age. Loved the thoughts about haiku. As a meandering student I started
scattered rhythms in corners of math assignments or French verb charts or across
the map of Canada. They were impressionistic and time and attention
challenged. I called them “pums”. When I learned about haiku I tried my
hand for the discipline of a set structure and implied theme (nature). In Japan
there are, as you know many schools of thought about haiku. Some are traditional
and some very modern, breaking with the set number of syllables. Many explore
themes with no suggestion of season. Although I love to write poetry, I can’t
resist the sketch book approach so l play with my “pums” to honour my own
ridiculousness. Useful for making much of paper placemats at cheap eats places.
- TABS
Can't think
of a more admirable use of accidental paper than "pums" (creative doodling
perhaps comes close). A friend of mine, an occasional poet, indulges in
"pomes", possibly a related literary form. Myself, being metaphorically
challenged, I stick with the micro-essay as the instrument of celebration of
my ridiculousness - come to think of
it, haiku is sort of a nano-essay... I'll be back to the subject
of mixing media, and perhaps other vignettes from life with Prickles. Thanks for
the kind words and especially for faithful readership. - the Ed
This experience thing (TN#
194) deserves a second round. To begin with, what exactly is it? The senses
and the memories send electric impulses to some part of the cortex
where they are mixed, sorted, arranged and converted into sensations or feelings,
i.e. the "experience". We know a sensation or a feeling when we experience one
but as to what it is we have no clue. When we experience "red", for example,
there is no red as such anywhere in the brain. The brain contains the data which
bring about the sensation of "red" in form of electronic currents in specific
parts of the brain which can be detected, located and measured but not the sensation itself. It's a mystery.
That's one interesting thing about
experience - it's ineffable and physically
unexplainable even though it has a physical cause. Another interesting thing
about experience is that it is "subjective". In other words, similar sets
of data sent in for perception and experience at different
times may result in very different sensations/feelings. Part of
it is due to the uncertainty inherent in the system which, like
everything else in this world, is probabilistic. But the major part is due
to the condition of the system at the time the data
is sent and received. The condition of the system is variable and affected
by many things like stress, diet, drugs, disease, etc., but also by the attentiveness and the intentions and expectations of the subject. Call it the placebo
effect.
All experience is, it
seems, to some degree "illusory". It inevitably fails to reflect with
perfect fidelity the state of the larger world, the postulated source of the
sensory data. Much of the time doesn't even come close. Add to this the fact
that the larger world contains other minds some of which are bent on deceiving
us (and succeeding) and we can safely assume we live an
illusion with only rough resemblance to the larger world.
There's yet another variable
affecting our experience, one we can consciously control to some extent. This is
the "volume" or intensity of the experience. Some people react violently to
trifles, some barely react to catastrophic events. Although this is associated
with our physiological and psychological make up, it is within our power to turn up or turn down the volume.
All we need to do is pay attention to what's happening inside and
outside our minds and put it in perspective, something we practice
less frequently than we think.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/18/08 (#0194) Is the world real?
This should be obvious but
apparently it isn't: all experience is real. The
question is, is anything else real, or more bluntly, is there anything else?
Well, there is the matter of the source of experience. I don't seem to
have much (if any) control over what I experience. If my
experience is self-generated, then I don't know much about this self who is
the author of my experience. The source is definitely not me, not the
"me" I know and love.
Analyzing my experience I note
consistent and repetitve patterns of events which I can categorize, relate
to each other, and even predict. I can formulate a self-consistent theory
about the source of my experience by postulating a larger world of which I am a
part. The reality of this larger world is, of course, only theoretical, but
since the theory seems to hold up pretty well in predicting my immediate
next experience, and since I don't have any other theory, I'm willing to accept
the larger world as real for all practical purposes.
In fact, based on analysis of my experience, I know
quite a bit about this larger world and its properties. I can apply this
knowledge intentionally to make changes in this world. To a
certain extent I can control its future and so, ultimately, my
experience. Since my experience is real, the effects
of my intentional manipulation of the postulated world are clearly
real. Evidently, there is something real, something
that behaves like the larger world I have postulated, that I can act
on to change my experience.
However, not all my experiences fit this theory. This is a
problem. In order to preserve the theory which is not merely useful but actually
indispensable for a meaningful life, I have to place experiences which are
inconsistent with the theory into a special category of "illusions". This does
not deny their reality, merely their usefulness in terms of the
working theory of the larger world.
Most illusions are actually readily explained as errors in
perception or analysis. These are not the problem. The problem
illusions are those whose apparent origin does not lie in the postulated
world - the literally otherworldly experiences. These seem to be
creations of the mind, but the nature of the experiencing mind
(consciousness) remains unclear - is it itself a part of the larger world?
Or its creator?
Until
tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/16/08 (#0193) Hedgehog dialogs
I own a hedgehog named Prickles. Or possibly Prickles owns
me. The situation is unclear.
Prickles wears 14 ct. gold hoops and a permanently worried
look. She is always worried because she passionately cares about her duties
which are few but Enormously Important. To Prickles, anyway. One of her
duties is to keep track of the small stuff I tend to mislay. Actually, I don't
know what I would do without Prickles. She guards my wallet, my keys, my hearing
aids, my lists. I know that when I leave them with Prickles I have absolute
assurance they will not get lost. Prickles will guard them with her
life.
She also occasionally gets to guard the car. Did I
mention that Prickles is an attack hedgehog? A word to the wise: you don't want
to tangle with Prickles.
Prickles' one other duty is to Appreciate Sunshine. Of
course, she doesn't get to do this on overcast days, but if so much as a single
ray of sunshine breaks through, she is at it with all the concentration and
vehemence she can muster. Prickles takes her duties very
seriously.
Although this is
not one of her duties Prickles also takes it upon
herself to berate me about the way I keep house. She is Felix to my Oscar. But I
don't mind, laid back as I am, and open-minded. I'm afraid Prickles is more
upset with me than I am with her (which is not at all).
Our conversations tend to go like
this:
Me: "How you doing,
Prickles?"
Prickles: " # " (Note: Hedgehogese is not translateable into any human
language).
Me: "What did you do with the sunshine?
It was here just a moment ago."
Prickles: " ###!! "
Me: "I was just pulling your leg."
Prickles: " ## ## ## ### "
Me: "I'm
still working! Gimme a break! I'll clean up when I'm finished."
Prickles: " ###? "
Me: "Oh in a
couple of weeks or so. Thanks for guarding these bills, by the way. Want to go
with me to the post office?"
Prickles: " ##! ##! "
And so on. Prickles is a simple soul
and easily distracted which is a Good Thing.
Until Monday,
Paul W.
02/15/08 (#0192) The reality behind the
illusion
As you know (or maybe you don't) as a rule I don't read
novels to learn about life. I read novels very rarely and when I do it's
usually for entertainment. Though there are no doubt great many
entertaining novels out there I have no time or patience to seek them
out. So it's only when I stumble across one accidentally that I
may read it - if it captures my
attention from page one and if I happen to
have the time. Once in a rare while I come across a novel of ideas, credible ideas, that is. Those I take time to read.
(And then there is "Don Quijote" which I'm rereading once again, this time in
Spanish).
When it comes to
movies, there's a whole nother dimension to consider. As with novels, I don't
usually look to learn about life from the movies. I watch movies
primarily for entertainment. But what I find fascinating and instructive about
the movies is watching the actors act.
It happens quite often that a mediocre script is
redeemed by great acting. (The reverse also happens - great story completely
ruined by inadequate or inapropriate audio-visuals). Often I am more
interested in the actors themselves than in their characters. Of course,
really great actors become wholly the character and the actor becomes
invisible. But then the character becomes interesting enough to be
worth watching on its own merits. However you slice it, I get an eyeful.
It's the theatrical spectacle (I don't necessarily mean special effects)
and the fact that I am watching reality -
real people really pretending to be someone other
than themselves. The actual reality of the movie.
Naturally, the truly
great movies magically generate a compelling world of their own into which I am
drawn irresistibly and become a part of. Then I ignore the movie's
reality willingly and let its illusion have its way with me. It would be
perfectly silly to
resist.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/14/08 (#0191) Grooving in
In a true love relationship there occurs, at least
occasionally, a kind of psychic resonance when the two lovers know exactly how the other one feels. This is not a
matter of inference or of rational analysis but of true empathy. It's a
direct, immediate knowledge without any apparent medium of transmission.
Somehow, for the moment, the two are perfectly tuned into each other's
state of mind and feeling as one.
This phenomenon is actually very common. It occurs in
virtually all stuations where two or more commit to total cooperation in service
of a common cause. A smooth working sports team is an example. This is, in fact, a species of love relationship.
(Love, contrary to popular opinion, is not necessarily romantic or erotic).
One of the most astonishing (and
underappreciated) examples of instantaneous mind-to-mind resonance is
a musical ensemble, the grandest form of which is the orchestra. There may
be over a hundred individuals breathing and feeling as one to create in
real time a complex work in sound that is one organic whole. Every member of the orchestra is
experiencing simultaneously exactly the same
musical feeling - a condition absolutely necessary to make possible
co-creation by the entire orchestra of the one
music.
It's not that everybody is
on the same page of the score. The music is not on
the page, it is in the mind. A jazz ensemble does not use sheet music at all yet
they all groove in together, as one. Nor can the leader convey his or
her musical idea precisely to every member of an orchestra. He or she can
only help the orchestra to come spontaneously into resonance with it and
each other. At some point, everyone begins to hear and feel the music in
exactly the same way and suddenly there are no longer a hundred individuals -
there is only one orchestra.
The
same kind of resonance can be observed in actions of crowds and committees.
And in the behavior of flocks of birds and schools of fish. If it's not exactly
love, it's certainly a feeling of solidarity, of membership and of a common
cause (for better or worse). These are all manifestations of a communal mind which is not merely the sum of
all the individual minds but an integrated
whole created by the resonance of the individual minds with one another.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/13/08 (#0190) Choosing our shape
(Re: TN
#188) "Wanted: murderers, rapists, sadists, psychopaths and other
recognized allied professionals. Opportunity: do God's work." (It's a
dirty job but somebody has got to do it...) -
The Nut
Three points. Point one: not
wanted; suffered. Point two: the ad's a waste of
money; all you have to do is leave your door open. And point three: there's a
sweet spot in the balance between order and chaos where the effects of evil are
virtually neutralized (in Christian terms that's the "Kingdom of God").
God's work is to find and maintain that sweet spot. Some people seem
to have found it but humanity as a whole obviously ain't there yet and
hiring scum ain't gonna help us get there either... - the Ed.
(Re: TN #189) Could we
have electricity without the wheel? - Ardeshir
Good
question. I believe the answer is yes. The original method of generating
electricity (rubbing amber with silk) required no wheel. No wheels are involved
in fuel cells or solar cells. But steam driven rotary generators are convenient and cheap to operate (and
polluting). - the Ed.
"All the
world's beauty to appreciate and enjoy! Thank God, here's a wall."
The haiku (an example above) is a poem of exactly seventeen
syllables reflecting on human experience. Why seventeen? Why not? It's as good a
number as any and better than some (it's a prime). Not too large and not
too small. Anyway, I didn't pick it, Japanese did. Ask them.
The point is, we must have
limits, boundaries, if for no other reason than to define our own shape. Our
skin is one such, but everything we think, say and
do must be delimited to have any meaning. We can't think, say or do it all - we have to choose chunks of possibility we can chew. What we choose to think, say or do and what we leave
unthought, unsaid and undone is what gives us our shape and direction as a
person. Each of us is a haiku, though generally with more than
seventeen syllables (some of us have more syllables than others, but that's
another story...).
As an artist,
I can't paint the world. But I can paint a canvas. I can't do a Nutshell "All
about everything" but I can do one on any one of an
infinity of possible topics. I can't deal with all the information (and
misinformation) on the Web, but I can pick and choose what I need here and
now, in my little limited world where I know
what I'm doing and why and one I can fully appreciate.
Of course, in settling for a
meaningful shape we give up all else that we could
become. But in order to be able to do anything we
must abandon hope of doing everything. We must fit
ourselves into the seventeen sylables. It's not much but it's something. The alternative is a great big nothing.
Here's the good news: it doesn't
have to be the same seventeen syllables forever. To the extent that we are consciously self-limited we can change our limitations - we can change shape.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/12/08 (#0189) The greatest invention
In the
Nutshell's view, the computer is the greatest invention to date. Our beloved
niece begs to differ. She recently wrote an essay arguing that the greatest
invention to date is electricity. (She meant, of course, the technology of
generation, storage and distribution of electricity - electricity itself
did not need inventing). She may have a point. Take away the electric outlet and
the computer is just so much metal and plastic. The computer's life is
inherently electrical and it was our ability to harness electromagnetic
phenomena to do our work for us that made its invention possible.
Actually, automated computation
was invented long before the general electrification of the world, by Mr.
Babbage, around 1834. And in 1937, Mr. Turing invented the universal computing machine - universal because it
could do every possible kind of computation. Mr. Babbage's computer was
mechanical and did not specifically require electricity to operate, though it
could be powered by electrical motors (or a steam
engine, or a windmill, or a pair of oxen on a treadmill). Mr. Turing's computer
could be made out of just about anything - it could be electrical but it could
just as well be mechanical, chemical or biological. Even a bunch of first
graders with pencils and paper would do. At least in principle.
In principle, a computer does not
have to be electronic. But in practice, what makes the computer the fantastic
invention that it is is the mind-boggling speed at which it computes.
Computation, automatic or otherwise, is nothing new. But computation at the
rates of teraflops per second is something totally new under this
sun. And these speeds can only be achieved by
reducing the size of the entire computer to the size of a chocolate wafer
and letting individual electrons do the computation work.
So yes, the computerization of the
world is wholly dependent on the electrification of the world. And, of course,
the electrification of the world is dependent on availability of natural sources
of energy - coal, gas, oil, fissile uranium, earth's internal heat,
tidal forces, wind, and sun, directly or indirectly. The technology for economic conversion of these energy resouces into
electrical power without making the planet uninhabitable may be the most
important invention yet to be invented.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/11/08 (#0188) Yet another theological
salad
The technical term escapes me at the
moment but, like like the last minute add-on's sneaked into bills under
consideration by Congress, unwarranted statements are sometimes offhandedly
tossed into the salad [the Nutshell? - the Ed]
together with the more substantial ingredients of a thesis. One
such appeared this morning (TN #187): "Love is the spirit of cooperation for the
benefit of all, the root (if not always the branches) of all major
religions, and the glue that holds civilized society together." I'll
restrict my challenge to the middle component of that statement. I don't believe
there exists hard evidence for that sweeping declaration. "If you wish
upon a star ..." was Walt Disney's dream, not an eternal truth. -
Charles
I believe the technical term is "earmarks". If you're
implying that Disneyism is a major religion, that's not a good example because
old Walt was a loving if misguided soul. I think the problem is that I
did not make clear what I consider to be a "religion". But I will not try to weasel out of it. You
caught me. - the Ed.
Chaos and order. The two absolutely
necessary and absolutely inseparable ingredients of creation, God's or
man's. You cannot have one without the other, they are the two ends of the same
stick. In this simple logical truth lies the simple answer to the question
that has tormented theologians for millenia and filled libraries with their
attempts at an answer.
The
question, as formulated by the theologians, is: why does a loving and omnipotent
God allow suffering and evil to exist? The vast quantity of thought
devoted to this question assures that some pretty good, if incomplete, answers
have been proposed. One of the best, inspired by Job's apparently senseless
ordeal, is this: the object of suffering (other than self-inflicted) is to test
us and refine us, it is part of the process of spiritual evolution. What
makes this answer good is that it is empirically true. However, the
premises on which the question as formulated by the theologians is
based (God is loving and omnipotent) make nonsense of it. That
is because the premises themselves are self-contradictory.
There's God and there is the idea or concept of God. In
our thinking, we deal exclusively with the latter
(the experience of God is another matter). As the
Old Man (Lao Tse) said: "what people call God is
not God" - or words to that effect. The notions of omnipotence and omniscience
(terms we have coined and use without understanding their meaning
or implications) have been attached to the idea of God by the
theologians. Yet, understood in the simplest way, omnipotence and
omniscience would actually deny God the power of creation. Where there is
creation there is necessarily chaos as well as order, and where there is chaos,
even if the intent is clear, the outcome is not and cannot be. Continuing
creative attention and intention are necessary to keep the universe,
balanced as it is between order and chaos, on the most
probable path toward the desired future.
The unavoidable casualties on the way are not merely
unavoidable - they are as necessary as the
chaos in the creative evolution of the universe toward its apotheosis. They
serve a purpose, such as exemplified by the Job case, and at the same
time they are an intrinsic and necessary aspect of the mechanics of
creation. In other words, there is no other way to do it. God had no choice.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/09/08 (#0187) Is hate necessary?
Love has been packed into the Nutshell on several
occasions already. The time has come to do it to hate. After all, it's only
fair.
The first thing to note
about hate is that it is practically identical with love. True hate
involves the same commitment and attention to its object as love. The difference
is in the specifics of the intent: love intends to enrich and
please the loved one, hate intends to impoverish and harm the hated one.
The near identity of the two is the reason why love can turn to hate almost
instantly (and, sometimes, vice versa).
The question is why
would anyone hate anyone? After all, love is nicer than hate. The benefits
of true love are impressive (see TN #128). The loved one benefits, the
loving one also benefits, medically and psychologically, and if it's mutual,
what could be better? Love is the spirit of cooperation for the benefit of all,
the root (if not always the branches) of all major religions, and the glue
that holds civilized society together. With all that good press on love's side,
why hate?
I believe there are
three answers to that question. The first one is economic. When there is a
scarcity of necessary or desirable goods and services, competition for them may
be a matter of life and death, or worse yet, of honor and status. Even
where food and shelter are plentiful, there is always a scarcity of
babes and hunks, of social status, of levers of power, etc. Competition can get
fierce. It's a dog eat dog world out there. Your peers are your
enemies and real threats to your potential for enjoyment of the good life.
You can fight them more effectively if you hate their guts.
There is, as we know, an
evolutionary utility to this - the fittest survive and get to the top of the
heap, the weak fall by the side and are wasted. Thus humanity becomes more
fit with passing generations, or at least stays
fit. Or so the Republicans believe.
The second reason for hate is less utilitarian: it is
rooted in a sense of insecurity, of inadequacy, real or imagined. This is
the hate by the weak, the powerless and the deprived. Their insecurity
makes them fearful, and their fear makes them hostile. They are the ones who
usually get the short end of the stick. Their sense of injustice and their
envy of the winners in the life's race fuels their hate. These are the
terrorists.
And then there
are those who crave violence and destruction for their own sake and
seek extremes of sensation and behavior without any regard for anyone else on
the planet. They are the sociopaths intent exclusively on maximum
self-gratification through sense of power without any restraint. Their
emotion toward their victims isn't really hate. Rather it's total disregard. All others are merely their
playthings. However, their feelings may rise to the level of hate if they are
thwarted in their rampage through the world.
We hate because we never have enough, because we feel
inadequate, and because we desire to live as intensely as possible. So is
hate really necessary? No, but unless and until we learn to share, trust
and find fulfillment as a part of something larger than our individual
self, it's inevitable.
Until
Monday,
Paul W.
P.S. thenushell@comcast.net is back
on line.
02/08/08 (#0186) System
failure
Every day I spend several hours in front of this most
marvelous of all inventions to date, the personal computer (that includes PDAs,
pods, handhelds, and the do-everything cell phones). Forget the wheel, the
press, this is far more revolutionary. Truly marvelous though it is, it could be
the death of us, in more ways than one.
One obvious way would be a global system failure
which would bring the world economy to a grinding halt. This, while not
impossible, is unlikely. A less obvious and more insidious way is through the
massive changes the computers are wreaking in our lives and our psyches. We have
let the genie out of the bottle and where it is taking us we cannot even
guess.
The benefits, of course,
are huge. In face of the unprecedented convenience and immense power
bestowed on us by the computers it is easy to forget that there may be some
drawbacks or undesirable (and unexpected) side effects. Once in a while,
though, we get a sharp reminder that the computerized world is not a perfect
one. One such reminder came when we discovered that the stock markets could not
keep up with computerized transactions and crashed. That's been fixed since
then. Now we're experiencing a virtualization and digitization of reality itself
- more and more of us are living in a digital dream which is
sometimes destructive, even lethal, and may be addictive.
On a personal level, I was reminded
of my computer dependence the other day when all my
programs refused to start due to "system error". There are few things in
life so frustrating as trying to restore a system after failure. The
problem is that you have to input certain specific sequences of
symbols into the machine to bring it back to life and if you don't click
those buttons in the exactly right sequence, forget
it. But often it is not clear what these sequences should be: the
information about them may be confusing if not outright misleading, or
hidden, or plain missing. It's like trying to crack a high
security combination. Automated recovery software (at least the one I
have) does not do the whole job leaving a lot of clean up
and restoration to be done manually. Some of the last bits can take forever
to get back to normal (thenutshell@comcast.net address still DOES NOT work at the moment - please
use artystoid@yahoo.pl instead until further notice). And in the
end the system acquires new quirks it never had before, not all of them
welcome.
At times like these it
is easy to forget that a couple of days of intense frustration is a small price
to pay for the thousands of hours of augmented intelligence, virtually instant
global communications, and graphic capabilities beyond my wildest dreams.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/06/07 (#0185) Science and happiness
Science,
whose investigation of love has been commented on here recently (TN#176), has
been marching on. Presently under the microscope: happiness. Now I don't recall
if I have yet addressed the matter of happiness - I talk a lot about joy, probably one of the high frequency words in the
Nutshell archives - but if not, what better time than Mardi Gras which is the
day I am composing this Ash Wednesday Nutshell.
Here's what science discovered about happiness: The happiest
people are not the ones who are the happiest. Excuse me? Evidently we
have here another linguistic confusion. Happiness, like love, means many
things to many people. Science came up with its own definition: "satisfaction
with life". That's a pretty good definition. I'm willing to accept it for
now. The paradoxical observation cited above is based on a graph
plotting the scientifically measured satisfaction with life against the
subject's own assessment of the degree of his or her happiness. The graph
is not a straight line but a curve which peaks and drops off as the reported
happiness continues to increase.
It makes sense. How much happiness can you take, anyway?
After some point it gets to be too much of a good thing. It seems science
made the remarkable discovery that we need a little trouble in life to be really happy. We're verging here dangerously close to
the "no pain no gain" theory which I consider bogus. But we're not
talking pain here, we're talking a degree
of stress, just enough to make one feel fully alive. A totally
stress-free life, on the other hand, can be a pain (and bad for your health). So
can, of course, an excessively stressful one. It's the balance, stupid.
Couple more items to consider. As I said earlier, different
people have different ideas of what is happiness. If you believe happiness is owning gold or goats, then the
more gold or goats you have the happier you think
you are. In other words, in many, if not most cases the perception of happiness
is an illusion. Which brings up the question what is happiness really? What
is "satisfaction with life"? Is it the real
happiness?
I propose
"enjoyment of life" as a definition of real
happiness. The problem with "satisfaction" is that it is static. After you have
been satisfied, then what? "Enjoyment" is dynamic and ongoing like life
itself. And though contemporary English usage confines it to the sense of
"enjoying oneself", the verb "to enjoy" can
actually be both transitive and intransitive - it can mean to en-joy (fill
with joy) self or others. It is in this fuller
sense that I use it in my definition of true happiness - "making life joyful for
oneself and for others". (For definition of "joy" see TNs ##100, 80, 74).
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/05/08 (#0184) My life as an
inactivist
Before psychology was invented people were classified
psycho-somatically according to the proportions of the four humors (blood,
phlegm, choler and bile) in their constitution. Under that system of
classification I belong at the far end of the phlegmatic spectrum. Sorry, folks,
but that's just the way it is. On the other hand, I have very little
choler or bile in me which, as one of my doctors noted, makes me
"a pleasant gentleman".
In the
world of activism, merely being pleasant doesn't cut it. One needs
considerable social grace and a persuasive personality (neither of which I
possess) to lubricate one's progress against the reluctance of the masses and
the direct opposition of the establishment. One needs physical energy and
endurance (which I lack) to keep up the effort all the way to the
tilting point. And above all, one must absolutely believe in and be
whole-heartedly comitted to one's cause. Here my failing is the greatest.
My analytical approach to every
cause leaves me, at best, with a rough estimate of the likelihood
that its advancement will contribute to an increase in general enjoyment of
life. And while, from that point of view, some causes are discernibly more
worthwhile than others, all have drawbacks and potential side effects. The
bottom line is that my comittment to any particular
cause is less than whole-hearted. I have reservations.
Of course, in face of an imminent
threat to general wellbeing one needs to do something, since one's own wellbeing and perhaps
even continued existence may depend on it. One has
to choose some course of action, make a
leap of faith and hope it works out for the best. Then all that remains is to
apply whatever resources and energy there may be at one's disposal toward
accomplishing one's intent. Sometimes even a feeble effort, such as I might
muster, may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. So no one, not
even the least capable of us, has a good excuse for doing nothing if
there is, in fact, something within his or her power to do that
might help reduce or avert such a threat.
Unfortunately, too often we're faced
with an overwhelming choice of options whose relative merits are unclear.
We can't do it all, we have
to choose, but how? All we can do is analyze the situation
carefully to minimize the number of viable options then pick one at random.
Here's where I may be of service because I am able look at events
coolly and rationally, that is, phlegmatically. It's an easy job, but somebody has to do it. Those of the sanguine or
choleric persuasion who are good at getting things done often
have no patience for it.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/04/08 (#0183) Spirit
stuff
We're only beginning to get some idea (not sense, our
sensibilities aren't up to it) of how unimaginably humongous the observable universe is. Yet for all the billions
of galaxies and quadrillions of stars in it, how empty and how lonely. The
chances of encountering other minds that are almost certainly out there
somewhere are virtually zero. There is just too much space and too much time
between us to make a connection remotely probable. Perhaps it's just as
well. Our fond hope that these other minds might have
learned much more of the ways of the universe than we have and
therefore might save us the trouble of having to discover these deeper
truths for ourselves is not only wholly unrealistic but perhaps immoral as well. There may be a reason for the space-time being as vast (and
expanding) as it is: to save us from encountering
such a shortcut to maturity. It could well prove fatal.
There are theories that just such an
encounter with other minds in the universe occurred in the Garden of Eden, that
eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was just such a short
cut (the serpent was an extraterrestrial) and that it resulted in our trading
simple bliss for civilization as we know it. "Odyssey 2001" plays with that idea
in somewhat different context.
And then there are reports of angels who are surely
extraterrestrials, but they may not come from the same space-time in
which we are lost or may not be of the same matter that we are
made of.
Speaking of which,
science has recently brought to our attention that the directly observable
universe, vast as it is, accounts for only 4% of the mass that we seem to be
detecting out there. There are no observable electromagnetic, nuclear or
"weak" force effects of any kind emanating from this invisible stuff
which accounts for 96% of the mass of the universe. Only through its
gravitational effects have we become aware of it.
We can even map out its distribution throughout the universe (it's just as lumpy
as the visible universe of stars and galaxies) but we can't see it, touch
it or do anything with it. It is very like ghost or spirit stuff but
with weight which is the only thing that's giving it away.
So, it turns out that in the cosmic
soup of the universe the stuff we and the stars are made of is merely the
seasoning. Actually, knowing that there is 24 times more stuff out there in
space than we thought, even though we know nothing about it, or perhaps, because we know nothing about it, does make the universe seem just a little less
lonely... and more interesting.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.
02/02/08 (#0182) "The
Magic Flute" redux.
(Re #181) Hey
Paulus, so when do you pray? Luv ya. Praying for you often. Cheers! -
Cassandra With a Hug.
P.S. Glad to get your nutty
chats.
According to the schedule, from
approx. 7:00 AM to 2:00 AM. But, of course I don't follow the
schedule, so the answer is: whenever I am fully conscious which is not as
frequently as one might suppose. Mea culpa. - the
Ed.
True, true, too true. Also, let's not forget the
original black box: the pre-Big Bang void out of
which somebody pulled out the universe... - the
Ed
Just before the end of last year I drew up a schedule to
live by. The idea was that as the 2008 descended upon us I would hit the ground
running with my schedule already firmly in place.
The reason for the schedule was
straightforward: my life as a gentleman of leisure had thoroughly spoiled
me. My days had become formless, a series of whims or idle fascinations, shaped
by whatever chanced to come my way to be appreciated, played with and thought
about deeply. In effect, I was back in the days of my childhood when, as
somebody wrote "a boy's days are long long days and a boy's thoughts are
long long thoughts". Delightful, but as the saying goes "all play and no work
makes Jack a useless jerk". Hence the schedule. (I also bought a chiming
clock for the mantelpiece to remind me of the passage of time),
Here is my schedule: 8:30 AM - Up, having listened to the news on the
NPR. 9:00 AM - Breakfast, then diary while
finishing my coffee. After breakfast until noon: Art Tasks (that could be
anything; usually is). 12:30 PM - To
the gym, or else work out at home. 2:00 PM
- Lunch, then nap. After the nap back to the Art Tasks. 5:00 PM - Mail, bills, trash. 6:00 PM - Dinner. 7:00
PM - Clean up (general). 8:00 PM -
Web stuff; the Nutshell. 10:00 PM -
Entertainment: movies, reading, study, snack. 1:00
AM - Clean up, shower, in bed by 2:00
AM.
The first month of
the 2008 is now by, and I can report that so far I have totally and
happily ignored the schedule.
Until tomorrow,
Paul W.