Monday, May 23, 2011
What Now?
So why exactly is it so important that I live this life correctly--or at all? Why would I even care to try and determine what "correctly" actually is? I mean, doesn't that require me to figure out if knowing that is even possible?
Life is that which seeks to preserve its state.
If reincarnation is real, and we presume that the odds are in favor of life on other worlds somehow in the vast universe, then shouldn't we expect to be reincarnated on a completely different planet? Do our souls somehow have the limitation of requiring a carbon-based, oxygen breathing vehicle to inhabit?
Once a soul is released, is there something really so unpleasant about being disembodied that we rush to get into new bodies that can be hurt or get sick?
Maybe when we're dead, there's an authority after all. But maybe it's not God, maybe it's a "Council of Human Souls" which, in the same way political groups do on Earth, compel souls to behave in certain ways.
Which is to say, we can never escape the worst of this life. We can never be OK by ourselves.
Life is that which seeks to preserve its state.
If reincarnation is real, and we presume that the odds are in favor of life on other worlds somehow in the vast universe, then shouldn't we expect to be reincarnated on a completely different planet? Do our souls somehow have the limitation of requiring a carbon-based, oxygen breathing vehicle to inhabit?
Once a soul is released, is there something really so unpleasant about being disembodied that we rush to get into new bodies that can be hurt or get sick?
Maybe when we're dead, there's an authority after all. But maybe it's not God, maybe it's a "Council of Human Souls" which, in the same way political groups do on Earth, compel souls to behave in certain ways.
Which is to say, we can never escape the worst of this life. We can never be OK by ourselves.
Human DNA
another furious debate is about the seeming anti-darwinism of altruism. i stick by my purely darwinist explanation of it, but i sometimes like to think there's a supra-genetic imperative that has guided the development of our behavior.
the basic concept is that you work to see your dna go on another generation, so that it can go again, etc. (why should that even be? no real reason. it's just that the ones that didn't think that way died.) but i think that people also have a deep imperative to preserve HUMAN dna.
in fact, i wonder how much of evolution can be re-stated as pursuing the propagation of human dna itself, yours or someone else's. each one of us is really a collection of cells and microbes working in cooperation to keep our own "condo" up and running. what's so weird about thinking that humans actually feel like a mound of cells of one body? it's not a new idea, that we're all "one", but it's unusual to consider it not in a functional or spiritual sense, but in a literal sense.
and it explains a lot of behavior. altruism is not indirect survival, it is direct survival. when thousands of people are killed in a tsunami or earthquake miles away, it kind of bothers us.
do a thought experiment: imagine we've come down to a time where there's only ten people left on earth. won't you feel just that much more dedicated to making sure someone survives?
i think the darwin explanation should be amended to say, "i will do what it takes to make sure human dna survives, preferably my own."
the basic concept is that you work to see your dna go on another generation, so that it can go again, etc. (why should that even be? no real reason. it's just that the ones that didn't think that way died.) but i think that people also have a deep imperative to preserve HUMAN dna.
in fact, i wonder how much of evolution can be re-stated as pursuing the propagation of human dna itself, yours or someone else's. each one of us is really a collection of cells and microbes working in cooperation to keep our own "condo" up and running. what's so weird about thinking that humans actually feel like a mound of cells of one body? it's not a new idea, that we're all "one", but it's unusual to consider it not in a functional or spiritual sense, but in a literal sense.
and it explains a lot of behavior. altruism is not indirect survival, it is direct survival. when thousands of people are killed in a tsunami or earthquake miles away, it kind of bothers us.
do a thought experiment: imagine we've come down to a time where there's only ten people left on earth. won't you feel just that much more dedicated to making sure someone survives?
i think the darwin explanation should be amended to say, "i will do what it takes to make sure human dna survives, preferably my own."
Weight of Experience
it occurs to me that most people regard their experience in a way that's kind of foreign to me now.
people say, "oh, i want to see paris!" or "i want to ski the alps!" or get a girlfriend.
people are always lustily fantasizing about potential experience. but experience converts instantly into memory. i'd say that very likely 99.999...% of experience is memory, if not more.
yet people take about the imperative of experiencing something as if they will enjoy remembering them in the leisure of their own death.
turns out i'm not totally anhedonic--i've noticed that i seem to enjoy some things more than others. but i always have the same reaction: that's over for good now. it doesn't matter at all.
when it happens, it will seem like the very next minute from now: you'll die. and not only are there very few new-agey theosophical types that think our memories survive death, but religions are strangely indeterminate on this idea. odd religions, like mormons, believe they'll spend eternity with their families. but they're in the minority.
even hindus and buddhists who believe in reincarnation say you can be reincarnated as anything, so what good are human memories to a squirrel?
enjoyment is purely genetically psychological, the most obvious example being orgasm.
people grow up with this deep sense that life is worth living just because it's life, which makes no sense at all, it's like defining a banana as "a banana-like thing".
people say, "oh, i want to see paris!" or "i want to ski the alps!" or get a girlfriend.
people are always lustily fantasizing about potential experience. but experience converts instantly into memory. i'd say that very likely 99.999...% of experience is memory, if not more.
yet people take about the imperative of experiencing something as if they will enjoy remembering them in the leisure of their own death.
turns out i'm not totally anhedonic--i've noticed that i seem to enjoy some things more than others. but i always have the same reaction: that's over for good now. it doesn't matter at all.
when it happens, it will seem like the very next minute from now: you'll die. and not only are there very few new-agey theosophical types that think our memories survive death, but religions are strangely indeterminate on this idea. odd religions, like mormons, believe they'll spend eternity with their families. but they're in the minority.
even hindus and buddhists who believe in reincarnation say you can be reincarnated as anything, so what good are human memories to a squirrel?
enjoyment is purely genetically psychological, the most obvious example being orgasm.
people grow up with this deep sense that life is worth living just because it's life, which makes no sense at all, it's like defining a banana as "a banana-like thing".
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Paradox of Isolation in Mass Society
People are genetically hard-wired to connect with other people. This urge is so strong that if you and me are the only ones on a desert island, we're automatically best friends.
As the population goes up, so do the choices. The fewer the people, the less picky anyone can afford to be. If you live in a village of 30, and one of you is obnoxious, well, you just have to put up with it. But if the population gets to 300, you're less inclined to tolerate this. If the population goes up to 30,000, you're less likely to tolerate even minor defects you perceive in others.
This inevitably leads to a troublesome conundrum, the effects of which we see all around us in modern mass society. We seek to be with other people, but since there are so many options, we get pickier. In a city of 500,000, you just eliminate people who are too young or too old, or maybe people from different backgrounds or of a different economic stratum. Or because of political differences, even racial differences.
At a certain point you become thwarted: with so many options you develop the expectation that you can find someone without critically objectionable characteristics. So you're more likely to reject people for trivial reasons, e.g. this guy doesn't even like the Beatles!
Thus we end up with the weird paradox of people having difficulty finding people to be with even as they're surrounded by thousands of them. Because remember, even if you find someone you can accept, there's no guarantee they're going to accept YOU.
Lonely in an ocean of people. It doesn't make sense, but it seems to happen.
As the population goes up, so do the choices. The fewer the people, the less picky anyone can afford to be. If you live in a village of 30, and one of you is obnoxious, well, you just have to put up with it. But if the population gets to 300, you're less inclined to tolerate this. If the population goes up to 30,000, you're less likely to tolerate even minor defects you perceive in others.
This inevitably leads to a troublesome conundrum, the effects of which we see all around us in modern mass society. We seek to be with other people, but since there are so many options, we get pickier. In a city of 500,000, you just eliminate people who are too young or too old, or maybe people from different backgrounds or of a different economic stratum. Or because of political differences, even racial differences.
At a certain point you become thwarted: with so many options you develop the expectation that you can find someone without critically objectionable characteristics. So you're more likely to reject people for trivial reasons, e.g. this guy doesn't even like the Beatles!
Thus we end up with the weird paradox of people having difficulty finding people to be with even as they're surrounded by thousands of them. Because remember, even if you find someone you can accept, there's no guarantee they're going to accept YOU.
Lonely in an ocean of people. It doesn't make sense, but it seems to happen.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Polytheism, Karma, and Monotheism
It seems clear that man's first impulses toward the supernatural had to do with natural phenomena like rain. "As a child, my mother gave me water, so maybe there's an unseen mother in charge of providing water to the world." This establishes a "rain god".
But these gods weren't like we think of, because they were never assumed to have an interest in us, we would just try to influence them to give us stuff anyway.
People had of course developed social identity, and people were expected to act in a certain way. If you broke a rule, you could expect that a tribal elder would catch you and punish you to reinforce the importance of following rules for the group. Similarly, people need things from other people, and we developed socially to take interest in the needs of others and provide for them if we could.
If someone fell you would help them up, to ensure that if you fell, someone else would help you up.
Then came the invention of more advanced supernatural ideas like karma. Suddenly it didn't matter if another person saw you do good or bad, because these behaviors were now being tracked by a supernatural awareness. Reincarnation came with this, not just to assuage the fear of final death, but to give consequences to the karma you caused by your own actions. Even today millions deliberately do good for others not simply for anyone's immediate benefit, or because you want people to help you, but so that your karmic record will bring you benefits in the next incarnation.
Karma released people from the ultimate necessity of monitoring others or caring for others. People still followed genetically ingrained practices of social interaction and responsibility, but it was no longer ultimately necessary. This idea also helped society because fewer people would break rules because they thought no one would see them, karma sees all.
Finally, the startling invention of monotheism. The word itself can be misleading, because it makes you think it's just about sticking to the single, canonical, authoriatative god, but it's mor than that. Monotheism combines the idea of karma, the all-knowing record of your actions, with the idea of a god that ultimately has a personal interest in each individual.
The rain god didn't know you or care about you; karma records what you do but doesn't really care about you as a person, it's an accounting mechanism. But God, the monotheistic ideal, knows everything and cares.
As people start to move around and break apart socially, this idea becomes important, because people are evolved to have a need to know someone cares for them, that if they fall, even if no person is around, God will help them up.
It's still a social imperative to help people, but now we can release our responsibility to others to God's care.
All this gave a strong boost to the primacy of the individual: you were considered separately by God with His karmic memory. You weren't really responsible for anyone else and they weren't to you either.
This causes a great psychological schism: people are evolved to expect care from other people, but now religion told us not to look to people, but to God. But God is not materially apparent, and He won't really help us up from a fall. What if you find yourself alone, needing help with problems?
Trust in God. He loves you individually, cares about you, and gives you credit, which reassures you that your life is worthwhile. Society is essentially released from its obligation to its members.
Of course, evolution, a material process of this world that predates any belief system, has embedded in us certain social requirements which we can't completely turn away from. Following these imperatives also has the benefit of concentrating power of one person over another.
Monotheism is so important because it reassures us that no matter what we can't be alone, we can't be abandoned, we can't lack for help or purpose, these things are all inherent in our individual universal relationship with a personal, caring God.
This leads to us to modern cultures where we can forget about the sick, the disabled, the elderly, on a personal level. The worldly obligation to care for them materially is passed to the higher political level.
In ancient culture an old person would never be left alone to fend for themselves, they would be taken care of by the same people they always knew. People they knew would always be there, because no one would be allowed to separate, because doing so was anti-survival.
Now, an old person can be put in a home or an apartment and left, with the rest of society chipping in to pay someone to provide them food, and essentially leave their personal and emotional needs to God.
Although this is becoming a norm in the western world, people still sense that this is actually horrible, and they spawn groups, ironically often through the very religious structures that encouraged the abandonment of people to God, to care for people on a personal level.
But as culture has moved on, this has become weak and ineffectual. The fact seems to be that people ARE more isolated and abandoned than ever before. A very conspicuous example can be found in the problem of mental disorder.
In very recent history people who have fallen into a mental disability have been allowed to isolate themselves with the assistance of financial support. But inherent to mental disability is the inability to determine solutions to problems, especially of a social nature. It's theoretically possible for us to give a mentally disabled person a million dollars which they would then spend on a boat and float out to sea with no food.
Our culture has become essentially anti-human. In more cohesive social systems, no one would ever have given large resources to a disabled person and expected that person to make appropriate decisions alone. That person wouldn't ever have faced the possibility of being alone in the first place.
People with cognitive or emotional disorders are now expected to do for themselves exactly what they are incapable of. Even worse, the increasing separation and social isolation of people from a group actually tends to worsen or even induce emotional disorders.
For most of our species' existence we have reserved isolation for the extreme punishment of uncontrollably anti-social people, think solitary confinement. Now our model of society has expanded to accept social isolation for everybody.
For all our scientific innovation, our society has taken a giant step backward. The toll it is taking is already horrendous and it's going to get much worse. God help us, each and every one.
But these gods weren't like we think of, because they were never assumed to have an interest in us, we would just try to influence them to give us stuff anyway.
People had of course developed social identity, and people were expected to act in a certain way. If you broke a rule, you could expect that a tribal elder would catch you and punish you to reinforce the importance of following rules for the group. Similarly, people need things from other people, and we developed socially to take interest in the needs of others and provide for them if we could.
If someone fell you would help them up, to ensure that if you fell, someone else would help you up.
Then came the invention of more advanced supernatural ideas like karma. Suddenly it didn't matter if another person saw you do good or bad, because these behaviors were now being tracked by a supernatural awareness. Reincarnation came with this, not just to assuage the fear of final death, but to give consequences to the karma you caused by your own actions. Even today millions deliberately do good for others not simply for anyone's immediate benefit, or because you want people to help you, but so that your karmic record will bring you benefits in the next incarnation.
Karma released people from the ultimate necessity of monitoring others or caring for others. People still followed genetically ingrained practices of social interaction and responsibility, but it was no longer ultimately necessary. This idea also helped society because fewer people would break rules because they thought no one would see them, karma sees all.
Finally, the startling invention of monotheism. The word itself can be misleading, because it makes you think it's just about sticking to the single, canonical, authoriatative god, but it's mor than that. Monotheism combines the idea of karma, the all-knowing record of your actions, with the idea of a god that ultimately has a personal interest in each individual.
The rain god didn't know you or care about you; karma records what you do but doesn't really care about you as a person, it's an accounting mechanism. But God, the monotheistic ideal, knows everything and cares.
As people start to move around and break apart socially, this idea becomes important, because people are evolved to have a need to know someone cares for them, that if they fall, even if no person is around, God will help them up.
It's still a social imperative to help people, but now we can release our responsibility to others to God's care.
All this gave a strong boost to the primacy of the individual: you were considered separately by God with His karmic memory. You weren't really responsible for anyone else and they weren't to you either.
This causes a great psychological schism: people are evolved to expect care from other people, but now religion told us not to look to people, but to God. But God is not materially apparent, and He won't really help us up from a fall. What if you find yourself alone, needing help with problems?
Trust in God. He loves you individually, cares about you, and gives you credit, which reassures you that your life is worthwhile. Society is essentially released from its obligation to its members.
Of course, evolution, a material process of this world that predates any belief system, has embedded in us certain social requirements which we can't completely turn away from. Following these imperatives also has the benefit of concentrating power of one person over another.
Monotheism is so important because it reassures us that no matter what we can't be alone, we can't be abandoned, we can't lack for help or purpose, these things are all inherent in our individual universal relationship with a personal, caring God.
This leads to us to modern cultures where we can forget about the sick, the disabled, the elderly, on a personal level. The worldly obligation to care for them materially is passed to the higher political level.
In ancient culture an old person would never be left alone to fend for themselves, they would be taken care of by the same people they always knew. People they knew would always be there, because no one would be allowed to separate, because doing so was anti-survival.
Now, an old person can be put in a home or an apartment and left, with the rest of society chipping in to pay someone to provide them food, and essentially leave their personal and emotional needs to God.
Although this is becoming a norm in the western world, people still sense that this is actually horrible, and they spawn groups, ironically often through the very religious structures that encouraged the abandonment of people to God, to care for people on a personal level.
But as culture has moved on, this has become weak and ineffectual. The fact seems to be that people ARE more isolated and abandoned than ever before. A very conspicuous example can be found in the problem of mental disorder.
In very recent history people who have fallen into a mental disability have been allowed to isolate themselves with the assistance of financial support. But inherent to mental disability is the inability to determine solutions to problems, especially of a social nature. It's theoretically possible for us to give a mentally disabled person a million dollars which they would then spend on a boat and float out to sea with no food.
Our culture has become essentially anti-human. In more cohesive social systems, no one would ever have given large resources to a disabled person and expected that person to make appropriate decisions alone. That person wouldn't ever have faced the possibility of being alone in the first place.
People with cognitive or emotional disorders are now expected to do for themselves exactly what they are incapable of. Even worse, the increasing separation and social isolation of people from a group actually tends to worsen or even induce emotional disorders.
For most of our species' existence we have reserved isolation for the extreme punishment of uncontrollably anti-social people, think solitary confinement. Now our model of society has expanded to accept social isolation for everybody.
For all our scientific innovation, our society has taken a giant step backward. The toll it is taking is already horrendous and it's going to get much worse. God help us, each and every one.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Depression and the Perfect Life
I've faced some daunting challenges in my life. Some people would just shake them off. Others fail for much less.
After a lifetime of slogging through my difficulties along with everyone else, I hit a "perfect storm" of stress. Suddenly it was like everything looked the same but was totally different. My responses became helplessly infantile: "No! I won't! I don't have to, I can't, and I won't!"
This leads inevitably to what I call "Cascading Catastrophic Depression", or CCD because I hate typing. As you struggle in the quicksand your life has become, you just sink deeper. You do stuff that makes it worse. Inwardly you practically go deaf from screaming at yourself, "just stop it!" over and over.
If you pick at it it might never heal, but if you leave it alone it may kill you. You try to ignore it, it gets worse. You try to treat it but that serves partly to emphasize your personal calamity--making it worse!
Go? Stay? Do? Don't? Obsessing about depression is one of its least tolerable symptoms. But analysis is key to solving any problem. To arrest your thinking is to preclude finding a solution. Or maybe not.
Every day I create a new "model" to test, to see if it will imply anything useful. Today's Special: the Perfect Life.
Like I said, I was used to slogging through it for years. I was more functional, but I didn't like it. When I hit "CCD", my functionality collapsed, eventually taking a giant portion of my life with it.
Then it occurred to me: this is so awful, I'm never going back to a compromised life again. When I can see a Perfect Life, I'll jump back in. Until then, I'm staying right here. Because I feel that if I jump back in to a compromised life, I will never escape it.
I'll leave the discovery of that irony for the pleasure of the reader.
After a lifetime of slogging through my difficulties along with everyone else, I hit a "perfect storm" of stress. Suddenly it was like everything looked the same but was totally different. My responses became helplessly infantile: "No! I won't! I don't have to, I can't, and I won't!"
This leads inevitably to what I call "Cascading Catastrophic Depression", or CCD because I hate typing. As you struggle in the quicksand your life has become, you just sink deeper. You do stuff that makes it worse. Inwardly you practically go deaf from screaming at yourself, "just stop it!" over and over.
If you pick at it it might never heal, but if you leave it alone it may kill you. You try to ignore it, it gets worse. You try to treat it but that serves partly to emphasize your personal calamity--making it worse!
Go? Stay? Do? Don't? Obsessing about depression is one of its least tolerable symptoms. But analysis is key to solving any problem. To arrest your thinking is to preclude finding a solution. Or maybe not.
Every day I create a new "model" to test, to see if it will imply anything useful. Today's Special: the Perfect Life.
Like I said, I was used to slogging through it for years. I was more functional, but I didn't like it. When I hit "CCD", my functionality collapsed, eventually taking a giant portion of my life with it.
Then it occurred to me: this is so awful, I'm never going back to a compromised life again. When I can see a Perfect Life, I'll jump back in. Until then, I'm staying right here. Because I feel that if I jump back in to a compromised life, I will never escape it.
I'll leave the discovery of that irony for the pleasure of the reader.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)