Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

- Max Ehrmann, 1927

This poem was quite popular in the late 60s and early 70s. I only recently discovered it, in a frame at a thrift store.

To The Best of Our Knowledge

"A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow the other person to do the same to us." - attributed to Donald Winnicott

"We believe our interpretations of reality intensely, and we want other people to join us in our interpretations to make us feel secure. We believe our interpretations are reality and if we can get enough votes we will prove it."

(For the gentleman we encountered last night.)

As usual, this blog post reflects a combination of things that have crossed my path or been on my mind recently. This post is about, in a word, skepticism. More specifically, it is about the intersection of skepticism and compassion/empathy. And the point I'm trying to make is illustrated in the following (true) story...

Some time ago I found myself in a conversation with an older gentleman during a reception. Having never met this man before, we began with the usual exchanges - where do you live, what do/did you do for a living, etc. Nothing about his responses was out of the range of the perfectly ordinary. But at some point (and I forget what the trigger was) the conversation took a distinct turn. He began to talk about UFOs, and then about shape-shifting aliens that lived among us.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, there are no shape-shifting aliens living among us. Which is to say, I have never met a shape-shifting alien. I have never personally known anyone (other than this gentleman) who had met or believed in the existence of shape-shifting aliens among us. And I had never seen any pictures/videos, etc., that suggested to me that there might be shape-shifting aliens living among us. Granted, I had never gone looking for such evidence, nor had I ever really given the matter much thought.

Curiosity runs strong in me, and this gentleman seemed sincere, though part of me suspected that he might just be waiting to see how long it would take me to call 'Bullshit!'. But it mattered not a whit to me that he be convinced that my view about shape-shifting aliens was the correct view. He seemed to want/need to talk about the topic of UFOs/aliens at some length, and something about me seems to say 'sympathetic/non-judgmental ear', so the conversation continued with a minimal amount of back channeling on my part. An occasional 'Wow' or (my personal favorite) 'I don't know what to do with that' was all that was required to keep him talking, until we were joined by another gentleman who was more insistent upon redirecting the conversation.

Perhaps the point I'm getting at with that story is that, once I was not concerned about establishing agreement about 'the truth' of the topic under discussion, I was free to enjoy (or at least try to understand) this person for who he was. Perhaps the point I'm getting at is that agreement about 'the truth' should not stand in the way of compassion. Perhaps the point I'm getting at is that I find myself experiencing a growing distaste for the sale of 'the truth' to one group of people at the expense of another. Or perhaps it's just a growing distaste for the dogmatic insistence upon one's own particular view of the truth.

Perhaps I'm just acquiring a new appreciation for the phrase "to the best of my knowledge"...

The Good Shepherd (Pt I)

"I am quite aware that it is necessary for the success of any complex undertaking that one man should do the thinking and directing and in general bear the responsibility. But the led must not be compelled, they must be able to choose their leader."

What I wish political elections reminded me of... "He who takes the greatest danger, he who bears the heaviest burden, that man is King."

What political elections actually remind me of... "All history is only one long story to this effect: Men have struggled for power over their fellow men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others, and might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others."

People are reasonably smart about choosing a leader. In small groups. In real-world settings. In situations where they have seen the options in action.

They will follow the person who is the smartest. Who has the best information and/or can use it the most effectively. Who can communicate to the group what the group needs to know. Who acts for the good of the group.

They do respect the person who takes on the dirty or difficult jobs that no one else wants to do. Who will bear the responsibility of a bad outcome without trying to shift the blame. Who does not have unreasonable expectations of them. Who is not afraid to consult them about what they know.

So why does the process of choosing leaders for much larger groups (e.g., states or nations) deviate so much from these simple yet effective criteria and observations?

That's largely a rhetorical question. I have no intention of trying to summarize the psychology of political elections. I am merely baffled by the discrepancy in how people behave in elections and how they decide to follow/nominate a 'leader' in their immediate circumstances/environment. And since I have a blog wherein I can rant about such things, here are just a few thoughts on leaders and leadership...

• A leader should fill a recognized need of the group. A group may need direction in completing a task, or they may need a representative voice, but they should have a clearly defined need before seeking a leader to fill that need. A leader should also be clear about the needs that s/he has been called to fill, and how s/he will go about filling those needs. The absence of a need should mean the absence of a leader.
• A potential leader should be assessed on his/her merits alone, not in comparison to 'the other guy'. Nothing is so dispiriting to the group psyche as feeling like you have only chosen 'the lesser of two evils'. Nothing (to me) embodies the antithesis of leadership so much as a potential leader who will encourage any perception of 'I'm not as bad as...'.
• Leadership is a burden that should be borne gracefully, not a title that should be sought desperately. Leadership should be a situation-specific response, not a coveted status. Nothing makes a leader so useless to his/her group as his/her own self-interest in preserving the status of 'leader'.

I've cast my votes in this election already, but not without thinking a great many thoughts in line with those stated above...

The Second-Class Employee

"Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world."

"The company also expects to use 150 to 250 seasonal, or "casual," employees who would do the same work as regular, full-time employees but for less pay and no benefits." (q)

Welcome New Employee,

We are pleased to have you on board as a [casual/seasonal/temporary] worker here at Company X. If you've been reading the newspapers lately, you'll have noticed that positions like yours are becoming an increasingly-popular way for companies to cut labor costs. Of course, you're probably just happy to have a job at this point, but let me spell out a few things for you about your new position...

The most important thing is, of course, that you are expendable. You were hired to fill a need, but that you will also be the first to go once that need has been met, regardless of how well you perform and/or how poorly the permanent employees perform in comparison to you.

You will have no benefits. This is the primary difference between you and a permanent employee. We don't want to incur the additional expense of your health insurance and your paid time-off. Voila! To avoid this expense, all we have to do is lay you off every now and then.

Because you are expendable, it will be assumed by everyone that eventually you will no longer be here. We will act accordingly and not invest too much effort in getting to know you. Also, the fact that you make less money and have no benefits makes us uncomfortable and reminds us just how close we might be to losing our jobs/benefits. So be prepared to only socialize with those sharing your status.

There's a good chance that we permanent employees sold you out to save our own jobs, but no gratitude will be forthcoming. We'll mostly just assume that you are stupid for agreeing to do this job for less pay and no benefits.

You will have to work harder than a permanent employee to be perceived as valuable. Since you aren't going to be here that long, we aren't going to invest a lot of time or effort in your training, so you'd better catch on quickly, and don't ever let us see you slacking.

Insecurity is your new companion. Really. You have to keep in mind that this job will soon end, and you should be thinking about what you're going to do after this. We also reserve the right to move up your end date at will, according to our needs.

Good news! We might keep you on longer than we said we would. Nothing about your status changes though, so don't get comfortable. (It'll be up to you to notice if we are violating any labor laws by having you as a de facto permanent/full-time employee without compensating you as such.)

Perhaps the most valuable piece of advice we can give you is this - It is not in your interest to help us improve our processes. Any such improvements will only result in us no longer needing your services that much sooner.

Like we said before, you're probably just happy to have a job - any job - right now. This isn't the kind of job you take out of anything except need/desperation. We know this, and frankly, it doesn't raise our opinion of you. Expect us to act accordingly. But do keep showing up to work with a smile on your face!

We can't tell you how restructuring our labor force to include [casual/seasonal/temporary] workers is not contributing to the development and perpetuation of a caste-system in the American labor force. We can tell you that 1) we will realize substantial savings in our labor costs, and 2) we will be reluctant to let those savings go once we can no longer plead this as a necessity of 'the economy'. Ironically, the continuous flux of you [casual/seasonal/temporary] workers in and out of the work force might actually contribute to a much slower economic recovery. But that's not really our problem.

Any psychological problems you might be having as a result of your second-class status can be directed to our Employee Assistance Hotline. But we advise that you try not to dwell on the inequalities. After all, doing a job well is its own reward!

Welcome Aboard!

Your New Employer

Free To Be... Disabled?

"...by intentionally bringing a child into the world who has a disability, it significantly violates the child’s right to an open future."

"The capacity to empathize with others is undeniably a revered characteristic in our society." (q)

"But if we want to continue to have exceptional, creative geniuses, those pathological traits are an absolute necessity."

Ask and ye shall receive.

For a few weeks now, I've been chewing on the issue raised by this post: Is it morally correct to select for a genetic trait that most people consider to be a disability? The post uses the example of non-syndromic, autosomal recessive deafness, but also touches on the autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In both cases, advocacy movements have formed to promote (among other things) the right to intentionally reproduce atypical/disabled offspring. In the case of non-syndromic, autosomal recessive deafness, preimplantation genetic diagnosis makes this possible (though not yet with ASD).

In some more-recent, unrelated web surfing, I came across the idea that people with Asperger's syndrome actually had higher levels of (affective) empathy than neurotypical (NT) controls. (Additional web surfing brought me to numerous instances of aspies affirming this claim.) That brought me right back to this section from Buchman's post... "This is because of the “dual nature” of ASD, that is, while these individuals may have difficulties negotiating the social world and possess other traits that might be regarded as disabling, some individuals with ASD tend to be intellectually gifted and others even possess savant-like qualities. Indeed, Ludwig Wittgenstein, arguably one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, was believed to have had Asperger syndrome. Since Wittgenstein’s (and others) intellectual giftedness is inseparable from other traits causing disability, then obliging to not bring such individuals into the world would be a loss to society as a whole. This latter dilemma is what Gillett refers to as the unwitting sacrifice problem: the ethical challenges that arise when selecting for disabilities that can cause suffering in the individual, but can also be advantageous to both individuals and society. Gillett notices that, in selecting for disability, these individuals are born as unwitting sacrifices to society’s or parent’s desire for certain genetic traits that are deemed valuable. Ought we permit somebody to be an unwitting sacrifice?" (My emphasis.) Does increased empathic sensitivity (and its presumable decrease in the desire to cause suffering in others) add to the balance to 'justify' selecting for individuals with Asperger syndrome, and how is that weighed against the suffering of the individuals involved?

[SIDE NOTE: Creativity seems to be another area where the advantage/disadvantage line might get a little blurry.]

Historically, people have been mostly free to mate with whomever they choose, with all the incumbent hopes of capturing a portion of something from that person in the resultant offspring. The genius, the athletic prowess, the personality, or the simple outward aesthetic. In this respect, the child was subject to the whims of the parents. Any damage or disadvantage to the child as a result of that particular genetic pairing may have been deemed unfortunate, but the child could not hold the parents to account for his/her misfortunes. Obviously, genetic testing technology changes that critical portion of the relationship between parent and child. Before 'genetic awareness', a parent could not be held responsible for the genetic 'condition' of the child. A child could not blame the parents for wilfully inflicting a genetic disadvantage upon him/her, or for failing to give him/her any specific genetic advantage. After 'genetic awareness', a parent has a new set of choices to (possibly) regret later, and a child has a new criterion by which to judge his/her parents. I can't help but wonder how the parent-child relationship will change as the parent's ability to design the child increases.

But what finally prompted me to write this post was the following thought...

We currently know quite a bit about what is needed to successfully nurture a child, yet we do next to nothing to regulate the environment, stimulation, etc. that a parent must provide for their child. Why should we presume any greater responsibility in regulating how parents choose to 'nature' their child? If parents are free to make poor choices with regards to the nurturing of their children, are they equally free to make poor choices in the 'naturing' of their children? (And at what point do 'differing values' become 'poor choices'?) How have adult children responded to the knowledge that their parents (knowingly) did not give them every nurtural advantage, and what might this tell us about how children will react to being given a natural (genetic) disadvantage?

[This is not intended to be a definitive opinion on the topic of genetic selection, but rather a small contribution to a larger, longer discussion.]

A Creed for the Third Millennium

"Give these pages to the world, and there shall be another mighty religion, another priesthood, another Us and another Them, one set against the other. In a hundred years, a million will have died for the words we hold in our hands; in a thousand years, tens of millions. All for this paper."

(Because I've now heard 'non-overlapping magisteria' one too many times in recent weeks.)

Who knew? Certainly not I, back when I decided to study science. Or the person I was when I was a professional scientist. I even managed to make it through graduate school without getting seriously immersed in (or even really being aware of) the idea that science might be at war with religion. Or that the idea of 'God' was something on which a scientist would/should ever be pressured to comment. All this I learned from the blogosphere. (sigh)

In my head things are a little simpler. (And devoid of Latin.)

• Spirituality - The individual experience of the Unknown. The curiosity, the anomalous, the wonder, the introspection, the yearning. The subjective experience, and its consequences.
• Religion - The communal enterprise with respect to the Unknown. What Man chooses to share with his fellows. The objective experience - what is done with/for/by others with respect to the Unknown.

Having defined religion thusly (and distinctly from spirituality), it is (only) now possible to compare science and religion. Gould's idea of the relationship between science and religion - called non-overlapping magisteria - has been summarized as follows... "[T]he magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value." I think that this is an absurd statement, for reasons you may be able to infer from my above description of religion.

Religion was the precursor of Science in Man's attempt to explain the past and predict the future. Because Man benefits by perceiving Order rather than Chaos, those explanations which most satisfactorily explain the past and enable successful predictions about the future survive. When (and where) Man had insufficient facts with which to explain or predict, he (historically) sought to establish Order in his perceptions via the simplest route - a single source, generally conceived in the image Man knew best... his own. A God, whose motivations and desires (being similar to Man's) might be understood, and having been understood, might be acted upon in a way that would benefit Man. Because Man also benefits by being part of a cohesive social unit, and cohesion is defined in large part by shared beliefs, it behooved Man to instruct his fellows and control the behavioral cohesion of his social unit.

This has been the historical function of Religion (the communal enterprise) - to explain and predict, and instruct and control. To perceive 'explain and predict' as the sole purview of Science is to ignore the entire historical context of Religion, and the foundation by which Religion holds its ability to instruct and control. (It also fails to acknowledge those aspects of human experience that (mainstream) Science has not (yet) adequately explained. Like it or not, Religion still offers an explanation for many of these experiences.)

Yet, to function as it was intended, Science cannot be concerned with exerting social control. Control requires suppressing contradiction and stifling contention in favor of maintaining cohesion. Such is contrary to the nature and spirit of true Science. This means that Science, though it can inform us, cannot and should not be held up as the final arbiter of what human beings should do. Science can say 'If you do X, then everything we have observed to date tells us that Y will happen as a result." But Science must stop there, and remain our servant in that respect, and Scientists must never become another set of masters to whom we defer. Science cannot give us a creed, set in stone, without ceasing to be an enterprise of inquiry.

As the explanations offered by Religion are challenged and surpassed by those offered by Science, it becomes possible to challenge the instructions and controls passed down by Religion as well. In many areas this is overdue. Yet this does not mean that any idea put forth by Religion as a moral restraint or control is necessarily a bad idea. It simply means that the dialogue about what is right and what is wrong will have to continually evolve as humanity wrestles still more self-determining power from the realm of the Unknown. Scientists should be prepared to engage in that dialogue, but without assuming the demeanor of conquerors or kings.

Advancing Humanism vs. Transhumanism

"Well, if you insist on tagging me, call me a meliorist."

This post started to percolate when I read this... "The cowardice I see out there is astonishing. Smart, productive, de facto transhumanists that are just too damn stodgy to use the T-word to describe themselves."

It continued to brew after I read this... "All humans have the right to become transhumans. If not, then the transhumanist movement is no longer humanist."

And what would a blogpost be without controversy? "An international, intellectual, and fast-growing cultural movement known as transhumanism... intends the use of biotechnology, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence as tools that will radically redesign our minds, our memories, our physiology, our offspring, and even perhaps... our very souls."

Seven or eight years ago I had a real fascination with transhumanism. It seemed like the kind of cool, progressive movement that a smart, sci-fi loving geek like me could relate to and embrace. Yet here I am, 'regressed' back to ordinary humanism. Why? What changed?

• I began to feel that the transhumanist movement was limited in its unflagging reverence of technology. Like the man said, "At best, we can say that we have effectively become 'slaves' to the technology we create." (q) Technology was/is presented by transhumanists as the only, the inevitable, and even the superior course through which humanity can, will, and should evolve. I began to believe that there was another way for humanity to evolve, and for the definition of what it means to be human to significantly change; one that did not involve the hybridization of man and machine.
• I began to believe that transhumanism was too focused on the far future, and was dangerously disconnected from the problems that we currently face. Don't tell me about the glories of a cyborg body; tell me about the various expressions of humanity that stand to be wiped out by improvements in genetic screening technology. Tell me about the current sociological consequences of our rush to seek 'normalcy' via neuropharmacology.
• Transhumanist writings began to seem more like the fantasies of an isolated elite, and less like a practical, mainstream philosophy or an attempt to address current real-world concerns. Yes, on some level we like to be entertained with visions of the future, but where/what is the transhumanist approach to hunger, poverty or illiteracy? What does transhumanism have to say about the fact that coveted biological 'amplifications' aren't available to everyone?

I appreciate that it's exciting to talk about and plan for a far future; one that might be utopian or dystopian, as your mood permits. Even I find it more exciting to talk about the possibility of mind-uploading than the future of Brazil as an agricultural world power.

But I also want to talk about what happens when you force the ordinary factory worker to engage a slow, flawed piece of software for eight hours via voice recognition. How does the company's desire for increased productivity rate against the psychological and neurological change (one might even say 'damage') that the new technology inflicts upon the worker? And I want to talk about the freedom to resist the pressure to modify one's consciousness according to the current social norms.

Embracing the race toward a better future via technology is transhumanism. Being concerned for those who suffer along the way is humanism. We really shouldn't be transhumanists without first being humanists...

My Name Is Memory

"A poem is but a thought, a mere memory caught at play. From hand onto paper, bleeding thoughts emerge."

Where were you, and Who am I.
Catching moments passing by.

Buried deep, yet a sight away.
A song evokes another day.

Little things, like what you wore,
All of this and more I store.

Holding love, and loss: identity.
Feed me well, but cautiously.

Mark this day 'save', and this 'forget'.
Season nothing with regret.

As the moment comes again,
the time returns: another when.

Yet swear by me not, for I deceive,
Colored by what you want to believe.

So we dance together and you try to lead.
Held in check, I accede.

But today I held the upper hand,
Not quite under your command...

Labor Day

Yours truly is still learning about humanism.

It seems to me that humanists would/should have something to say about labor and the conditions under which people labor. Googling various expressions of 'humanism' and 'labor' brought up nothing so frequently as it did Marxist-Humanism. Having been brought up in the era of Marxism=Communism=BAD, and having little direct knowledge of the man's work, I didn't know quite how to react to this association. But it's made for some interesting reading...

"He must constantly look upon his labour-power as his own property, his own commodity, and this he can only do by placing it at the disposal of the buyer temporarily, for a definite period of time. By this means alone can he avoid renouncing his rights of ownership over it." (q) (I seize upon the word 'temporarily', as I can imagine nothing so frightful as a voluntary captivity of 20+ years with a single employer.)

"The workers’ antagonism to the machine has traveled a long way from the time when they simply wished to smash it. Now what they want to have done with is their very work. They want to do something entirely different – express all their natural and acquired powers in an activity worthy of them as human beings." (q) (Self-actualization, anyone?)

"Marx's aim was true man - living under emancipated conditions of labor and not disintegrated by the division of labor. His vision of humanity's future was founded on the assumption that such a man was not only possible, but the necessary result of social development and essential to the existence of a truly human society." (q)

"More specifically, real liberty does not exist unless workers effectively control their workplace, the products they produce, and the way they relate to each other. Workers are not fully emancipated until they work not in the way domesticated animals or robots work, but voluntarily and under their own direction." (q) (My emphasis.)

"The opposite of war is not peace, but social revolution." (q) (Just because it's an interesting thought...)

And speak to me like you know me - the theory of the alienated worker...

"The most basic form of workers’ alienation is their estrangement from the process of their work. An artist, unlike an industrial worker, typically works under his or her own direction; artists are in total control of their work. (That is why artists usually do not mind working long hours and even under adverse conditions, because their creative work is inherently meaningful, and an expression of their most personal desires and intuitions.)... In modern industry, however, workers typically do not work under their own direction. They are assembled in large factories or offices, and they work under the close supervision of a hierarchy of managers who do most of the important thinking for them. Planners and managers also divide complex work processes into simple, repetitive tasks which workers can perform in machine-like fashion... " (q) (Yours truly never considered herself an artist, until she started blogging.)

"In what, then, consists the alienation of labor? First, in the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., that it does not belong to his nature, that therefore he does not realize himself in his work, that he denies himself in it, that he does not feel at ease in it, but rather unhappy, that he does not develop any free physical or mental energy, but rather mortifies his flesh and ruins his spirit. The worker, therefore, is only himself when he does not work, and in his work he feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor, therefore, is not voluntary, but forced--forced labor. It is not the gratification of a need, but only a means to gratify needs outside itself. Its alien nature shows itself clearly by the fact that work is shunned like the plague as soon as no physical or other kind of coercion exists." - Marx (via) (Shunned like the plague, people.)

"A person with very few possessions, but with an intensive life, comes much closer to Marx' idea of a happy human being than a well-paid worker who can afford to buy many consumer goods, but who is neither informed enough to understand the society in which he lives, nor has the motivation to shape, in cooperation with fellow-workers, his working conditions or the political system in which he lives. A worker who is overweight, who spends most of his time watching commercial television, whose main conversations with colleagues deal with the sports page, and who is too tired or apathetic to participate in the political process--such a worker is not well off in Marx' eyes, but a victim of a system that is ripe with alienation in every sense. Marx was not so much interested in what people might have, but in what they could be. He was interested in people being alive, informed, and in control of their destiny." (q) (Yours truly was just commenting yesterday that the two most-miserable years of her life were the years when she earned the most money.)


Some things to think about this Labor Day...

Religion Did This

"There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness."

"I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there."

I'll comment. My opinion on putting a mosque near Ground Zero? Do it.

Remind the world that religion made this heinous thing possible. Remind everyone what happens when men cede their secular influence to those who claim to know the will of God. Remind people that they cannot seek knowledge of or comfort from a God via other men without also being knowledgeable and wary of the flaws of men. Remind us all about the dangers of dogma and unquestioning belief.

Remind us that there are people in this world who so despair of their condition and place in it that they will live and die based on promises of an afterlife. Remind us that there are men who will exploit that despair for secular gain.

Remind us that the structures of organization feed everything that is bad about religion.

Of course, putting only a mosque near Ground Zero for those reasons would feed the illusion that those dangers are only present in the religion of Islam. And who else looks at the Christian churches near Ground Zero and sees in them everything I've just said? Only the idea of a mosque near Ground Zero triggers such an outcry. And that tells me that we are not having the necessary discourse on this topic. Because only when we no longer see the terrorists of 9/11 as Muslims, but rather as men who were preyed upon by other men, will we have truly understood what happened that day and made real progress towards a world free of terrorism.

Let the proximity to Ground Zero be a reminder to everyone who walks through the doors of any nearby church, mosque, or temple that what you seek in there should not be 'found' without a great deal of questioning and doubt on your part. Let all religions build a sacred space near Ground Zero, and let their proximity to each other remind us all of our common humanity and our common fallibility in presuming exclusive knowledge of the unknown. And let the proximity to Ground Zero serve as a reminder that suffering is universal, and that what is good about any religion is that which seeks to alieviate that suffering with something other than unprovable words and empty promises.

The Jungle

"He had learned to hate poverty, and the limitations it put on his desire for learning, as well as its crushing effect on the dignity of men and women... Now here it was in its ugliest aspects, the worst of which was the ignorance of its victims themselves. With the exception of a very small minority, they had no idea that they had the right to a better way of life. It was moral, spiritual, and physical degradation, a 'jungle' in which humans lived barely above the level of animals."

So fundamental is the idea that a person must labor - that is, exchange something of themselves (be it time, intellect, or physical exertion) for the necessities of life - that few people question it, or the conditions under which, or the reasons why, a person can reasonably be expected to surrender something of themselves. While the idea that one person can own another outright is no longer acceptable in the civilized world, we are only slowly catching on to the potential for oppression of identity and spirit represented by currently acceptable forms of labor. We have coined the terms 'wage slavery' and 'intellectual slavery' to indicate that we recognize an extreme imbalance of power inherent in certain labor situations, and we routinely despair of and satirize the conditions under which many of us labor. So, while physical labor conditions have certainly improved in the last centuries, we seem to agree that there is still room for improvement in other aspects of what it means to 'work'. We would all like to feel as though we did not labor under conditions of "moral, spiritual, and physical degradation", yet few of us would consider our jobs to represent ideal conditions under which to spend our time. And so the question becomes - What is this "better way of life" to which we are told by Sinclair that we have the right to? Would he be content with the labor reforms set in place since The Jungle, or would he agree that we have fallen short of some ideal condition of labor?

I first came across The Jungle many years ago in the R&D library of a company that will remain unnamed. Having already battled a former boss about the laws regarding overtime pay, I was sympathetic to the labor plights that Sinclair had intended to be the focus of his book. Unfair treatment of workers remains something of a hot button with me. But now I'm also interested in broader questions with respect to labor...

Transhumanist thought on labor seems to deem it sufficiently ideal for machines to simply take over 'manual' labor. AI proponents would like to think that a sufficiently advanced intelligence could remove the needs for many forms of intellectual labor as well. Are we destined for (and do we desire) a future where all that remains for us to do is to create art, and to have as many experiences of ourselves as we desire and no more? Thinking about a future with no 'labor' as we now understand it can give us a great deal of insight into what labor currently represents... For example, does mitigating the need for any form of labor contribute to a more equal perception of individuals? How much are our ideas about 'personhood' and equality (historically and currently) based upon judgments what that person can potentially contribute in the form of labor?

I find, however, that I'm ultimately more interested in discussions aimed at improving current conditions. What practical corrective measures can be employed today to give us more-ideal conditions under which to labor until the need for us to labor is gone?

It's interesting to me that the Buddha, who supposedly had reached a state of detached enlightenment, felt compelled to state the importance of 'right work' when he laid out the Eightfold Path to the cessation of suffering. On the surface, this is simply an instruction to ensure that one's livelihood does not harm other living beings. Note that harm to oneself is not addressed in the standard interpretations of this instruction. Yet is the current state of 'working' in which most of us find ourselves more degrading to the psyche of the worker, or ennobling? And when one's options for employment are forcibly limited, how easy is it really to find meaningful, useful work that does not directly or indirectly produce harm to oneself or others?

I hope to devote more time and energy to the topic of labor in the year to come. The question I'm going to leave you today with is this... If the ideal conditions under which to labor are ones that permit self-actualization without harming others, then how do we create or embrace an economic system that rewards such an intangible outcome?

Good Samaritan Health Care

"Go and do likewise."

A recent blog post prompted me to resurrect an almost-post of my own from some months ago...

[DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about universal health care or its merits. This is a post about the perils of using the Bible as the primary justification of your argument. I try not to get involved in these kinds of things, but the guy who presented this argument was a lawyer. And the argument annoyed me.]

[DISCLAIMER: All religious puns are completely intentional.]

It annoys me when people use the Bible in an attempt to justify public policy. It really annoys me when they do it badly.

Unsuspecting Me recently attended a talk ('sermon' would be a more accurate term) called The Moral Dimensions of Public Policy. Unsuspecting Me was more than a little disappointed that said talk was nothing more than a singular argument for universal health care. While I have no problem with a discussion on universal health care - indeed, I think that it should be widely discussed - I do have a problem with the fact that the speaker's sole justification for universal health care was the story of the Good Samaritan. For ease of reference, I'll insert the relevant Biblical passage here...

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

The speaker removed certain elements of this story and twisted them to suit his argument for universal health care - namely, that the idea of 'neighbor' transcends tribe, ergo everyone is our neighbor, and our instruction to do 'likewise' means that we have an obligation to provide health care to everyone.

And here's why that argument simply won't do. Let's examine what the Samaritan actually did...

• He did stop for an injured man that he came upon while travelling.
• He treated the man with his own materials and knowledge.
• He transported the man at the cost of his time.
• He spent a further day caring for the man upon coming to the inn.
• He paid for the injured man's care at the hands of another when he (presumably) could no longer stay himself.

...as well as what he did not do...

• He did not compel anyone else to give money or care to the injured man at their expense.
• There is no indication that he bankrupted himself (or was willing to) to provide for the injured man.
• He did not specify for what care he would or would not pay.
• He did not assume any future health care burdens beyond the immediate recovery from injury.

Perhaps the most irksome point of this lawyer's presentation came right before yours truly was about to speak her piece. The lawyer mentioned that his own sister did not have health care insurance, and that he was worried about her. Seriously - the mic was in my hand when he said this. Of course what I was about to say would now fall on deaf ears. (sigh)

As you may have guessed, my response comes down to this...

• The Samaritan responded to an immediate need that was before him. Universal health care is a level of abstraction that shifts our attention away from what is going on in our immediate environment. Upon hearing stories about sick people without health care insurance who are going without care or treatment, how can our only response be to gripe/argue/whine about the need for universal health care? Take the person to a doctor! Help them buy their meds! Don't "pass by on the other side" and wait for someone else (i.e., universal health care) to show up on the scene and save the person; if they need a doctor now, help them get help now. Yes, it may cost you, but that is the point of this parable. Individual action and sacrifice makes the difference.


• The Samaritan did what he could with what he had. HE did it. He did not compel anyone else to help him at a loss to themselves. Universal health care legislation is about compelling others to bear financial burdens that are not their own. The Samaritan voluntarily gave what he could. The difference between what one does voluntarily and what one does because one is compelled to do so is huge. One could even argue that the most critical point of this story is that the Samaritan was not compelled to give aid, and yet he did. And while he did give aid, there is no indication that the Samaritan bankrupted himself (let alone anyone else or future generations) in the process of caring for the injured man. He did not make himself a victim by failing to live up to his own pre-existing obligations.

It's probably a good time to repeat that this is not a post about universal health care. It's a post about my annoyance with an argument that assumes that 1) the moral authority of the source would permit only the speaker's interpretation and conclusions, and that 2) because one is presenting an argument that is based on the Bible that one's argument is rendered unimpeachable.

But if this post also makes a few valid points about universal health care, I can live with that.

We Lose Them At Our Peril

You may recall my passion for libraries... I certainly wouldn't be where (or who) I am today without them. Here is the text of a recent opinion piece from the L.A. Times on libraries...

U.S. Public Libraries: We Lose Them At Our Peril

by Marilyn Johnson (author of This Book is Overdue!)

"The U.S. is beginning an interesting experiment in democracy: We're cutting public library funds, shrinking our public and school libraries, and in some places, shutting them altogether.

These actions have nothing to do with whether the libraries are any good or whether the staff provides useful service to the community. This country's largest circulating library, in Queens, N.Y., was named the best system in the U.S. last year by Library Journal. Its budget is due to shrink by a third. Los Angeles libraries are being slashed, and beginning this week, the doors will be locked two days a week and at least 100 jobs cut. And until it got a six-month reprieve June 23, Siskiyou County almost became California's only county without a public library. Such cuts and close calls are happening across the country. We won't miss a third of our librarians and branch libraries the way we'd miss a third of our firefighters and firehouses, the rationale goes … but I wonder.

I've spent four years following librarians as they deal with the tremendous increase in information and the many ways we receive it. They've been adapting as capably as any profession, managing our public computers and serving growing numbers of patrons, but it seems that their work has been all but invisible to those in power. I've talked to librarians whose jobs have expanded with the demand for computers and training, and because so many other government services are being cut. The people left in the lurch have looked to the library, where kind, knowledgeable professionals help them navigate the government bureaucracy, apply for benefits, access social services. Public officials will tell you they love libraries and are committed to them; they just don't believe they constitute a "core" service.

But if you visit public libraries, you will see an essential service in action, as librarians help people who don't have other ways to get online, can't get the answers they urgently need, or simply need a safe place to bring their children. I've stood in the parking lot of the Topeka and Shawnee County Library in Kansas on a Sunday morning and watched families pour through doors and head in all directions to do homework or genealogical research, attend computer classes, read the newspapers. I've stood outside New York city libraries with other self-employed people, waiting for the doors to open and give us access to the computers and a warm and affordable place to work. I've met librarians who serve as interpreters and guides to communities of cancer survivors, Polish-speaking citizens, teenage filmmakers, veterans.

The people who welcome us to the library are idealists, who believe that accurate information leads to good decisions and that exposure to the intellectual riches of civilization leads to a better world. The next Abraham Lincoln could be sitting in their library, teaching himself all he needs to know to save the country. While they help us get online, employed and informed, librarians don't try to sell us anything. Nor do they turn around and broadcast our problems, send us spam or keep a record of our interests and needs, because no matter how savvy this profession is at navigating the online world, it clings to that old-fashioned value, privacy. (A profession dedicated to privacy in charge of our public computers? That's brilliant.) They represent the best civic value out there, an army of resourceful workers that can help us compete in the world.

But instead of putting such conscientious, economical and service-oriented professionals to work helping us, we're handing them pink slips. The school libraries and public libraries in which we've invested decades and even centuries of resources will disappear unless we fight for them. The communities that treasure and support their libraries will have an undeniable competitive advantage. Those that don't will watch in envy as the Darien Library in Connecticut hosts networking breakfasts for its out-of-work patrons, and the tiny Gilpin County Public Library in Colorado beckons patrons with a sign that promises "Free coffee, Internet, notary, phone, smiles, restrooms and ideas."

Those lucky enough to live in those towns, or those who own computers, or have high-speed Internet service and on-call technical assistance, will not notice the effects of a diminished public library system — not at first. Whizzes who can whittle down 15 million hits on a Google search to find the useful and accurate bits of info, and those able to buy any book or article or film they want, will escape the immediate consequences of these cuts.

Those in cities that haven't preserved their libraries, those less fortunate and baffled by technology, and our children will be the first to suffer. But sooner or later, we'll all feel the loss as one of the most effective levelers of privilege and avenues of reinvention — one of the great engines of democracy — begins to disappear."

(my emphasis)

If you've ever used a library, think about how you can support the libraries where you live now so that we can all continue to enjoy those privileges.

The Art of Loving (Pt III)

"Having a relationship with [her] is like waking up to discover there is a unicorn in your garden... It's a completely unique circumstance and something of a shock. You've never encountered anything quite like it. Suddenly, standing there in the middle of your life, is something that proves the presence of magic in the universe. You've always believed that the magic was real, but now you can actually see it - and almost touch it. Almost, but not quite. Because first you have to get closer, and yet how do you approach such a skittish, exotic creature? Do you even dare? And are you worthy? There is no frame of reference for such an encounter, no one can tell you how to go about it.

Then there is the issue of that very sharp horn. As lovely and gentle as the unicorn appears to be, you have a strong sense that it could also inflict serious injury, even mortal wounds, intentionally or not. Magic cuts both ways. So while it is beautiful and enchanting, and you know that you have been somehow blessed by its presence in your garden, it's more than a little dangerous - and also highly disconcerting for the average mortal..." - The Book of Love, by Kathleen McGowan

(Couldn't resist that one. ;)

"The practice of the art of loving requires the practice of faith.

What is faith?... Is faith by necessity in contrast to, or divorced from, reason and rational thinking?... [R]ational faith is a conviction which is rooted in one's own experience of thought and feeling. Rational faith is not primarily belief in something, but the quality of certainty and firmness which our convictions have. Faith is a character trait pervading the whole personality, rather than a specific belief...

In the sphere of human relations, faith is an indispensable quality of any significant friendship or love. 'Having faith' in another person means to be certain of the reliability and unchangeability of his fundamental attributes, of the core of his personality, of his love. By this I do not mean that a person may not change his opinions, but that his basic motivations remain the same; that, for instance, his respect for life and human dignity is part of himself, not subject to change.

In the same sense we have faith in ourselves. We are aware of the existence of a self, of a core in our personality which is unchangeable and which persists throughout our life in spite of varying circumstances, and regardless of certain changes in opinions and feelings... Unless we have faith in the persistence of our self, our feeling of identity is threatened and we become dependent on other people whose approval then becomes the basis for our feeling of identity. Only a person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others, because only he can be sure that he will be the same at a future time as he is today and, therefore, that he will feel and act as he now expects to... What matters in relation to love is the faith in one's own love; in its ability to produce love in others, and in its reliability...

To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern - and to take the jump and stake everything on these values...

To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love. Can one say more about the practice of faith? Someone else might; if I were a poet or a preacher, I might try. But since I am not either of these, I cannot even try to say more about the practice of faith, but am sure that anyone who is really concerned can learn to have faith as a child learns to walk." - The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm

Einstein's Exasperation

"Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message."

"Be ye lamps unto yourselves."

(This one's for DFB. Because he asked.)

It annoys me when people talk about Einstein's vision of God. It annoyed me when Dawkins did it. It annoyed me when Epstein did it. And it was really annoying me that there was a book out there called Einstein's God. (As it turns out, there are two books out there with that title, but I'm referring to the recently-published book by Krista Tippett.)

As if Einstein had some special insight into God and spiritual truths. As if we should place more importance on his vision of God than any other. Let me restate my position on God, just to be clear...

• I'm an apatheist. For me, the question of God is not important. I think that debating Its existence is distracting us from other, very real problems. (Religion, however, as an institution and a societal force, is worth discussing critically.)
• I believe that no man should place himself between another man and God. I also believe that no man should place another man between men and God. That's why this idea that Einstein's vision of God should be worth understanding or emulating bothers me.

Aside from the Einstein issue, I'm enjoying Tippett's book, which is subtitled Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit. It's essentially a collection of interviews that she has conducted over the years, interspersed with her commentary. (A collection of interviews, by a journalist, with a title that annoys me... This sounds familiar... ;) I like hearing what people think about the overlap between science and spirituality. I like the fact that I don't know who some of these people are. But I am intensely annoyed whenever the conversation is directed towards what Einstein (or Darwin) believed.

Perhaps it's because the issue of authority is so problematic within our current religious structures. Perhaps it's because people appeal to the authority of Einstein or Hawking to justify their own views on issues of god and science. (I'm thinking of a recent episode of Nightline. Once Einstein was invoked/quoted by Deepak Chopra, Harris (or Shermer, I forget who) fired back by invoking Hawking.) Almost everyone falls to the temptation of fighting appeals to authority by using appeals to authority.

I suggest that the 'enlightened' atheist would support and foster independent, critical thinking on the part of the individual regarding any idea, religious or otherwise. The unenlightened atheist is simply interested in transferring the allegiance of the individual to structure in which he holds power. This unenlightened atheist is the one who projects the idea that his beliefs are right. He is in line with (or seeks to emulate) the Great Ones within his power structure. He knows the truth, and is happy to tell it to you. Forgive me for believing that Einstein was 'enlightened' enough to reject the idea that his views should become the new dogma.

The next time you hear someone quote Einstein on religion, think of this...

A quote out-of-context is blind. A reference to authority is lame.

The Art of Loving (Pt II)

"What does one person give to another? He gives of himself, of the most precious he has, he gives of his life. This does not necessarily mean that he sacrifices his life for the other - but that he gives him of that which is alive in him; he gives of his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humor, of his sadness - of all expressions and manifestations of that which is alive in him. In thus giving of his life, he enriches the other person, he enhances the other's sense of aliveness by enhancing his own sense of aliveness. He does not give in order to receive; giving is in itself exquisite joy. But in giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brought to life reflects back to him; in truly giving, he cannot help receiving that which is given back to him. Giving implies to make the other person a giver also and they both share in the joy of what they have brought to life. In the act of giving something is born, and both persons involved are grateful for the life that is born for both of them."

- The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm

The Role of the Radical Intellectual

"Now watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical,
a liberal, fanatical, criminal."

Noam Chomsky came to town this week to accept an award for "lifetime contribution to critical scholarship." I know of Chomsky mainly for his work in linguistics and cognitive psychology, but he is even more well-known for his political views/writings. He gave a talk entitled "The Role of the Radical Intellectual: Some Personal Reflections." Foreknowledge of this event filled me the kind of anticipation that one reserves for something that they believe will be especially profound.

Foreknowledge is a dangerous thing. For a week, I tried to figure out what the great man would say about the role of the radical intellectual. In my head, I tried to construct what I believed to the role of the radical intellectual, and I tried to identify (based on my definitions of 'radical' and 'intellectual') any radical intellectuals of my generation.

Chomsky argues that with the privileges conferred "from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression" comes a responsibility "to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest" and "to speak the truth and to expose lies." He is particularly concerned with social wrongs and the deceptions of governments. Yet as a scientist, his work spoke to almost none of this. This was Chomsky as something more than a scientist. And nowhere (that I've found) in his arguments does Chomsky confuse the role of science in determining moral right and wrong. "Science studies what’s at the edge of understanding, and what’s at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated."

At some point, while I was sorting through my thoughts on intellectuals, scientists, and their relationships and responsibilities to morality and political agendas, I came back to something that I'd thought about before... I believe that you are only ever an authority on one thing - your own experience. Even if the rest of the world acknowledges you to be the authority on, let's say, string theory, you are really only an authority on your experience in studying string theory. If you misread or misinterpreted or failed to investigate just one thing, your experience is not the absolute truth of string theory.

In thinking about morality and responsibility, I finally broke down and watched that 20-some minutes of video that's been the 'buzz in secular circles'. I am loathe to talk about it because I think Harris does a disservice to science. But in the spirit of 'speak the truth to power', I'm going to rant about it just a little bit...

The fatal flaw in his presentation comes when Harris himself is willing to disregard the expressed opinion of the individual in favor of what he perceives to be a greater moral truth. "I'm happy." "You can't be happy; this is wrong." "No, I'm pretty happy." "Well, then you've been brain-washed. Don't worry; I'll save you." Chomsky addresses this issue, albeit with respect to Communist China rather than women in burkas. "Nothing is said about those people in Asian cultures to whom our 'conception of the proper relation of the individual to the state' may not be the uniquely important value, people who might, for example, be concerned with preserving the 'dignity of the individual' against concentrations of foreign or domestic capital, or against semi-feudal structures (such as Trujillo-type dictatorships) introduced or kept in power by American arms. All of this is flavored with allusions to 'our religious and ethical value systems' and to our 'diffuse and complex concepts' which are to the Asian mind 'so much more difficult to grasp' than Marxist dogma, and are so 'disturbing to some Asians' because of 'their very lack of dogmatism.'"

Harris has effectively placed his interpretation of moral right and wrong, and the perpetuation of that definition, ahead of individual equality. However, it is not necessary to capitulate to moral relativism in order to avoid making this mistake. Indeed the foundation of any worthwhile-definition of morality must be respect for the integrity of the individual and their ability to express their wants, desires, and feelings. You cannot simply declare such expressions to be invalid because you believe you know better. (You may, in fact, know better, but that does not allow you to impose your will on another human being, simply to bring them in line with your vision of how the world should be.) Each person must be treated as the authority on his/her own experience.

This brings me to my second gripe with Harris. Arguing against religion is not, and should not, be the same thing as arguing for science. Science is not a viable alternative source of morality. Science acquires and examines information, but scientists frequently fail to agree on the interpretation of data, and occasionally they can even fail to agree on whether the data exists at all.

The institution of science is no more capable of deciding what is morally right or wrong for the rest of humanity than an individual scientist is. The process of reaching consensus by which scientists agree on facts about the world is not a process of argument and reasoning that is unique to science. Critical thinking is not limited to science, nor should scientists assume that they are the best at it. I doubt that Harris intends to exclude the rest of humanity from such a debate on morality, but he appears to want to give science the key role of arbitrating the facts from which such judgments can be made. However, these facts don't exist in a vacuum; they exist within the limited scope in which they were collected. And Harris would do well to note that science has not given us morality. It has given us knowledge, but those who apply that knowledge have not been guided by the moral intentions of the scientists involved in its discovery. Though science has not given us morality, the converse is not true. Morality and moral considerations have given us science, largely by dictating what type of research can/will be permitted/funded.

Harris also fails to consider that the function of science and the function of religion are diametrically opposed. The function of science is to progress in our knowledge and understanding of the world, which means abandoning ideas once they are no longer supported by evidence, while the function of religion is to maintain a sense of certainty based in the past. (Spirituality allows for and encourages progress, but religion fights it every step of the way.) The function of religion is not to provide morality, but to provide certainty. And certainty is something science cannot provide. To claim otherwise is to grossly misconstrue the nature of science. While Harris could have made a much more compelling argument for the role of science in the dialogue of morality, he damages his case by misunderstanding what science provides relative to religion.

So what is the role of the scientist with regards to morality? Can the scientist confine herself simply to the "technical problems", and leave the "ideological types" to "'harangue' about principle and trouble themselves over moral issues and human rights"? Is the scientist simply another employee, paid to employ a specialized skill set? Or does her proximity to knowledge and revolutionary discovery convey upon her the added responsibility for moral judgment that Chomsky expects from intellectuals? Is the scientist an arbiter of morality, a servant of it, or something else?

I don't have a remarkably 'radical' opinion on that issue... The individual scientist should always be guided by her conscience. In this way she is like every other human being. She should not be coerced into using unethical research practices, either by overt or implicit threats regarding her employment status.

But the scientist (particularly the academic scientist), is contracted to collect and publish data. He is not paid to filter his findings based on his own moral judgments. In this respect he is being asked to give blind allegiance to the higher imperative to disclose data in the face of what he might perceive to be negative moral consequences of doing so. How is it that we can demand this type of unthinking obedience of these paragons of critical thinking? And what does it say about the relationship between science and morality if scientists are asked to blind themselves to the potential moral implications of their work?

Chomsky's work is not relevant to this point, nor does Harris address this issue. Nor (sadly) can I think of any particularly salient piece of writing on this topic. Which probably means that I'll be blogging about it again...

Rebirth and Renewal

Some thoughts on rebirth and renewal...

What is Life? by Samuel Coleridge

"Resembles Life what once was held of Light,
Too ample in itself for human sight ?
An absolute Self--an element ungrounded--
All, that we see, all colours of all shade
By encroach of darkness made ?--
Is very life by consciousness unbounded ?
And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath,
A war-embrace of wrestling Life and Death ?"



"Sweetly the summer air came up to the tumulus, the grass sighed softly, the butterflies went by, sometimes alighting on the green dome. Two thousand years! Summer after summer the blue butterflies visited the mound, the thyme had flowered, the wind sighed in the grass. The azure morning has spread its arms over the low tomb; and the full glowing noon burned on it; the purple of sunset rosied the sward. Stars, ruddy in the vapour of the southern horizon, beamed at midnight through the mystic summer night, which is dusky and yet full of light. White mists swept up and hid it; dews rested on the turf; tender harebells drooped; the wings of the finches fanned the air - finches whose colours faded from the wings how many centuries ago! Brown autumn dwelt in the woods beneath; the rime of winter whitened the beech clump on the ridge; again the buds came on the wind-blown hawthorn bushes, and in the evening the broad constellation of Orion covered the east. Two thousand times! Two thousand times the woods grew green, and ringdoves built their nests. Day and night for two thousand years - light and shadow sweeping over the mound - two thousand years of labour by day and slumber by night. Mystery gleaming in the stars, pouring down in the sunshine, speaking in the night, the wonder of the sun and of far space, for twenty centuries round this low and green-grown dome. Yet all that mystery and wonder is as nothing to the Thought that lies therein, to the spirit that I feel so close.

Realizing that spirit, recognizing my own inner consciousness, the psyche, so clearly, I cannot understand time. It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly floats in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life. Here in this moment, by this tumulus, on earth, now; I exist in it." - Richard Jefferies

Future Most Probable

"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."

When I think about the future, I see a complicated web. Attempting to isolate one problem or issue to discuss is difficult, but here goes...

A couple weeks ago I had occasion to be in the pharmacy section of a large drugstore chain on a busy Saturday. And the pharmacy was handing out prescription after prescription - both at the counter and at the drive-thru. Prescriptions frequently came with verbal admonitions ('warnings') about possible side-effects. Several things occurred to me in those minutes...

1) Culturally, we have a 'there's an app for that' approach to illness, rather than a holistic approach to health.

2) Belief in the power/safety of the app is more important than understanding the actual workings of the app.

3) Our individual willingness to invoke an app is generally not equalled by our individual ability/willingness to measure its effects or critically examine the outcome.

Pause for a story...

We'll call our protagonist Lady. Lady was experiencing episodes of extreme emotion (sadness) in her life. She knew that these episodes were 1) out of character for her, and 2) did not correlate to any easily-identifiable psychological triggers. She had done a fairly-thorough assessment of her life to try to determine if there was in fact something psychological going on. Was she unhappy with her job? (No.) Was she experiencing a mid-life crisis? (No. She was mostly content with what she had.) Having talked to Lady extensively during this time, I was impressed by the depth of her introspection.

Eventually Lady began to look for a chemical explanation for these episodes. Were they tied to her menstrual cycle or birth control? (No.) Perhaps something she was eating? Through a combination of internet research and an elimination diet, she was able to isolate Chemical X as the causal agent. Eliminating this chemical from her diet also eliminated the episodes of extreme emotions. Reintroducing the chemical brought them back. Lady 1) suffered unnecessarily for a period of time, but 2) was able, through introspection and rational analysis, eliminate the source of her suffering.

This story is representative of much of what I see (and hope for) in the near future. I see a continuing growth in the realization that simply because something is available does not mean that it is safe. I see our increased reliance on pharmaceuticals and artificial chemicals bringing us to a crisis point with respect to the issue of Safety, and also with respect to the issue of Identity.

To some degree these two issues are intertwined, and there very well may be an Event in the near future that captures our collective attention and highlights this. (It's amazing to me that we still have as high a tolerance/acceptance for pharmaceutical intervention as we do, given all the stories about ineffectiveness and unintended side-effects that have surfaced.) But it is not difficult to predict that as more people gain more experience with a wider range of pharmaceuticals/chemicals and their psychological consequences, the issue of Identity will be brought to the forefront of our collective consciousness. Questions like What am I if a drug can make me do/feel this? will demand answers as never before.

The nature of human-ness, consciousness, and our sense of identity will be topics of increasing popular interest. When I think about where people will turn for the answers to these questions, I see no ready area of information. The word 'spirituality' comes to mind, but I would like to see that word replaced by something that indicates an informed, supportive environment that can facilitate introspection and self-awareness, as well as provide knowledge (scientific knowledge) about the phenomenology of consciousness. This does not currently occur in our educational system, nor in most systems of religious instruction. It is something that must be sought out and/or developed by the individual; it is not currently a part of our societal awareness. I hope that this will change, and there are promising indications that this can happen.

I predict that we will also need to increase the scope and breadth of our collective dialogue as to our responsibilities to the next generation. To what degree do they deserve (and can we impose on them) modification without representation? Several months ago I sent a letter to the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, asking (among other things) about the status of their organization. It seems to me that their public activities (publishing, etc.) have fallen off quite a bit since the mid-2000's. I still have not received a reply. This disturbs me because I think that we are only beginning to see the complexity of the issues that will arise as neurological modification becomes more prevalent.

I should take a minute to point out my own biases in this area. I am generally hyper-aware of the cognitive effects of drugs in my system. I can distinguish and describe the cognitive effects of ibuprofen and acetaminophen, even though neither drug is intended to produce them. I came of age during the height of the 'war on drugs', and that may have predisposed me to have a negative or cautionary view of pharmaceutical intervention. (It's a possible bias; I acknowledge it.) I have a background in biology and an appreciation of the complex role that a single chemical can play within a living system. Perhaps this is why I have reservations about casually introducing a chemical into that system, especially if all of its potential effects are not know up front.

So perhaps I am projecting my own concerns into my vision of the future. Or perhaps there really will be an increasing collective movement towards understanding the conscious experience that we call 'human'. Perhaps we will take up the following questions together... Who are we when our Identity - our behaviors and the way we process information - has been visibly altered? When our conscious continuity with the past is significantly disrupted by artificial means - when we are no longer predictable in the same way as we were before - how responsible are we for those changes and the resulting actions? What responsibility do we bear to others who have lost their much of their Identity to something like Alzheimer's? Upon who, and why, and how, can we inflict attempts to modify Identity for the better, or to serve our own ends?

It's easy to tout individual responsibility (and I am very proud of Lady for the way she approached and took control of her own well-being), but this ignores the issues surrounding those who are dependent on us and who cannot make informed decisions for themselves. And it ignores the ethics of exercising power over others because we feel justified in doing so.

I guess it's pretty clear by now that I see this as one of the most pressing and challenging philosophical and ethical issue that we face in the near future. I am happy to see conferences attempting to address these issues. (I'll be at this one, and I plan to blog about it.) But so much of the thinking on these issues remains isolated within the academic/intellectual realm. So much of what is in the larger sphere - what the general public is exposed to - seems to be a reinforcement of the 'there's an app for that' mentality. Selling the app, and convincing us that we need it: these are the media images that surround us.

The lack of general knowledge and appreciation for biological complexity, combined with easy access to pharmaceuticals, is beginning to be socially-problematic, yet we have no targeted approach for educating children (or adults) about these issues. (Our Fair State only recently OK'd teaching birth control in sex education classes. I have never understood how perpetuating ignorance solves a problem, but that's a topic for another post...) It's easy to say that education is the answer, but I believe that the answer is going to be whatever facilitates an appreciation for the fragility and malleability of consciousness and identity. We will need to socially reinforce the idea that integrity of mind is sacrosanct. How exactly this should be accomplished, I do not know (though I have some ideas), but I do see it as the most-probable philosophical and ethical crisis point for which humanists and transhumanists should be preparing.

The Future of Aging

Change is the constant of sentience.

I'm staring down the barrel of another birthday and, although it's not one of the 'big ones', for some reason I find that I am acutely aware of aging. Perhaps it's because my hair started to go gray en masse this past year. Perhaps it's the unsolicited invitation to a fertility clinic that I received a week ago, based (I presume) on nothing other than my age.

Yet, though I am faced with physical reminders of age, I don't feel old. I feel like there is so much that I haven't done, therefore I can't be getting old. I haven't been married, born children, or owned property, therefore I can't be getting old, right? Right? I know; I'm confounding physical age with a more-ambiguous trait that is the product of experience. [Insert various platitudes on 'age is a state of mind'.] But physical aging creepeth up on me and perhaps this makes for good future-fodder for the blog...

A seemingly-unassailable position of many futurists/transhumanists is that aging is a bad thing, or, at least, that it is an obstacle to be overcome. Aging, you see, is the road to death. One transhumanist says this of aging and death...

"So we tell ourselves curing aging will cause too many problems and that aging has a lot of natural beauty to it and creates a lot of meaning and that all of that is good. But I think there is one other reason. Imagine we suddenly discover we can cure aging. It’s simple, cheap, universal, and we manage to quickly adapt society to deal with an undying population. All of the impacts described by bioconservatives don’t exist, anti-aging is a glorious and beautiful time and everyone lives for centuries.

The cost is the realization that every death was preventable. That billions of people have been, in effect, tortured for decades by nature and because we could not change it we described it as beautiful and honorable. The crisis in our collective psyche would be something of unparalleled magnitude. Our species is a master at making virtue of necessity, but what becomes of our virtue when that necessity ceases to be? Does it cease as well?"

When I pause to reflect on myself, I see a heavily-modified consciousness walking around in a comfortably-owned body. The heavily-modified consciousness is a topic for another day, but the comfortably-owned body is worth discussing. Certainly that body is not perfect. It's probably quite far from anyone's definition of perfect. Knowing this, I might ask myself - Why haven't I done more to change it? Why haven't I pushed harder to lose those extra pounds? Why have I accepted the damage that has accumulated over time?

Munkittrick's question was 'Why do we accept aging?', but I do not think that the answer is as 'We accept it because we have no choice.' Certainly there are people who fight it every step of the way, with diet and exercise and (sigh) surgery. The primary objection to aging seems to be to the deterioration of the physical body and the reduction of its capabilities, yet there is a large portion of our society that is all-too-willing to engage in activities that prematurely or unnecessarily damage the body, or who at least seem unwilling to take proper care of their bodies. (That whole diet and exercise thing?) It's like we're inviting aging, and challenging it to ravish us. Do we do this because we're faced with inevitable death, and happiness can only be found in embracing, nay hastening, that outcome? I don't think so.

Age also marks various degrees of status, and life seems to be a race to get to that pinnacle age/status, followed by a prolonged battle to stay there. Evolutionary biologists will tell you that our genes are programmed to seek prime reproductive material, and that we respond to signs of physical age accordingly. Presumably this is also the source of all our efforts to camouflage our physical age. So what happens as we become better and better at hiding those signs of age? And what happens as physical age becomes further-dissociated from one's ability to reproduce? What status/traits will replace physical age as the primary determinant of desirability, and how will they be signaled? [Here I pause for extensive thought on what and how I am/should be signaling with respect to reproduction and the fact that, while I have relationship aspirations, I don't have an overwhelming desire to bear children and would be perfectly happy not doing so. Should I quit coloring my hair and display the markings of age with pride, or continue to engage in the youth-is-beauty driven attempts to 'stay young'? My introspection is messy; this post has been heavily-edited to remove most traces of it.]

It may take quite a bit of time before we evolve past our (genetic?) reaction to the physical signs of aging. In the meantime, we'll continue to fight the physical process of aging with science and technology. As we do so, we must not ignore the pressing social issues of aging that we are currently faced with, such as care and quality of life, and the right to die. We can't ignore the fact that a great many people live lives that they wouldn't necessarily want to prolong. We should strive to have a firm handle on these ethical issues before we are gifted with greatly-extended lifespans. (Fodder for future posts.)

Having managed to find my soapbox again, it's probably time to stop writing, but after spending several hours thinking about how I felt about aging, I find that I am not so troubled by my gray hair. I believe in what I've done with my life so far, and I do believe in the platitudes that say that age is a state of mind.

"None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm."

"People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born."

Back to the Future... The Prisoner's Dilemma

"Transhumanists have inherited the tension between Enlightenment convictions in the inevitability of progress, and Enlightenment’s scientific, rational realism that human progress or even civilization may fail." (q)

The thing I've always like about transhumanism is that it is focused on the future. (Regular ol' humanism seems to be largely concerned with the past, or at best, the present.) So, because this is my blog and I can do anything I want with it, I'm going to arbitrarily dedicate the month of March to blogging about the future. [Insert ooh-ing and ah-ing.]

And a good place to start is with an interesting perspective on progress vs. risk...

A common conception of the future now includes the idea of a technological singularity. Briefly, this singularity is the point at which some form of superhuman intelligence (usually conceived of as an AI, rather than augmented human intelligence) has evolved beyond our capability to understand or control it. Enter human extinction scenarios, as we start to worry that "superhuman intelligences may have goals inconsistent with human survival and prosperity."

So... 1) The Singularity will (probably) be the result of man's work in deliberately advancing computer intelligence to this point. 2) There's a very good chance things won't end well for us once this intelligence gets outside of our control. Probably a better chance that they won't end well than that they will, though I'd like to see a statistical analysis on that.

There are two approaches to avoiding our extinction at the hands of an uberintelligence... 1) Don't make an uberintelligence! 2) Convince yourself that your uberintelligence will be different and/or incapable of harming humanity, and blissfully go about creating it.

Enter the Prisoner's Dilemma... (The classic version of this dilemma is presented below.)

"Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies (defects from the other) for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent (cooperates with the other), the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?"

Now I'm going to overlay the structure of the Prisoner's Dilemma to the issue of the Singularity.

There is currently insufficient advancement in the technological realm to support an artificial intelligence that would be capable of reaching 'singularity'. In order to ensure that this critical state of technological development is not reached, each 'player' must forgo certain potentially beneficial advances in computer technology/algorithms. This is the only way to ensure that no participant suffers with respect to negative consequences of a technological singularity. If one player defects from that objective and begins to experiment with AI, he may wind up with a 'better' short-term outcome for himself (in terms of job, prestige, etc.), but in a very real sense, he is willing to risk the potential futures of every other player (and the rest of us). He is gambling, and his rewards may come at the expense of everyone else. He is the betrayer in the Prisoner's Dilemma. (And don't buy that "devoted his life to improving the lot of humanity" crap.)

In some sense, this argument can be made about the development of any potentially dangerous technology. And so we must weigh our belief in progress vs. the risks that progress represents. If the history of progress has shown us anything, it is that there is always going to be somebody who is willing to plunge on ahead, perhaps out of deluded self-confidence, or in search of glory/fame, or just because s/he can, risks be damned. The rest of us are just along for the ride. I'll echo Hughes at this point...

"Remaining always mindful of the myriad ways that our indifferent universe threatens our existence and how our growing powers come with unintended consequences is the best way to steer towards progress in our radically uncertain future." Unfortunately, wisdom is largely the product of hindsight.

"We need to carefully deliberate how best to reduce risks and expedite beneficial applications. We also need forums where people can constructively discuss what should be done, and a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented." Welcome to the month of March in my blog, wherein I'll try to do some of this.

But today I'm still bothered by two things...

• If much of the work on AI is driven by a desire to avoid the negative consequences of a technological singularity, why don't we simply stop working on trying to produce an artificial intelligence that's capable of reaching a singularity point? (The argument seems to be 'Well, somebody's going to do it; it might as well be me because I can do it better/safer.')
• What benefits do we expect to derive from the creation of an artificial intelligence that outweigh the potential risks? (Maybe I should read this...)

Update 03/05/10: I don't intend to do a lot of debating about the issue of AI, but I'm more than happy to give you access to both sides of the story. Heck, if I hadn't come of age in the era when computer languages were still ridiculously simplistic, I might have been intrigued enough by the idea of AI to work on it myself.