Weltanschauung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Evolution

  • Doubt and Daemons

    Doubt and Daemons

    While some may appear to lead a life unperturbed by fear and doubt, many are driven by forces less benign.

    Who knows the answers to questions I have spent my life asking. Some believe, fervently even, that they have found terra firma in an ever shifting universe. Others see only an uncaring cosmos which, wondrous as it undoubtedly is, leaves us to make our own meaning, since none is provided out of the box.

    With ever increasing conviction, I believe that the ancient philosophies of the east have the answers. At heart, the infinity we see around us just “is”. And always has been. Live with that, says the Tao. Do not battle the forces which surround you, row your boat gently down the stream.

    Buddhism seems to go a step further. Recognize, it says, your own non-existence. Accept that your “self” is a mere illusion and abandon all attachments that your senses crave. Much like Susan Blackmore or Daniel Dennett might tell us, consciousness is not what it seems.

    I do not believe that this absolves us of responsibilities, nor that it necessarily precludes enjoyment of the material world. Hard as enjoyment is for some of us to find. Nothing obliges us to act in any particular way (“good or “bad”), and I find it increasingly hard to concede that moral absolutes exist in objective reality. And yet we can proclaim our own rights and wrongs, our own morality. We can and must create our own meaning.

    If we do not exist, then in a very real sense we have created a seeming existence out of nothing. For there is indeed “something that it is like” to be human.

    Perhaps we too are creators then. Spawned by inert matter and blind mathematical evolution , we seem to have “emerged”. In a phrase used and abused by science and philosophy alike, we appear to be more than the sum of our parts.

    And in that, a certain beauty may be found, hope even.

    My hedonic set point is below average and yet I see how, as creators, that might be changed. For me, for all. If we arose from nothing, then we became quite something.

    We became beings able to alter our own circumstances. To better ourselves. To develop societies and morals, fire and farmed food.

    And yet, it is said, we do not exist. Perhaps clarification is called for. We exist to the extent that we feel emotions, we have senses. Pain and pleasure perhaps being the most obvious. Anger, greed and lust belonging to the least desirable of those qualia.

    We exist to the extent we have memory, necessary no doubt to be able to navigate our way around a complex physical environment. We exist to the extent that we are aware of ourselves and our world, even if we do not grasp its true nature.

    Now there is duality, if ever that word had meaning. A duality of existence and non-existence.

    We are like a flowing river perhaps, or a candle flame, little more. A physical process which just happens to have evolved a way of being aware of itself and its surroundings. A material interaction commonly known as “life” which on its own, means little else other than biological self re-production.

    None of that is to say that we can not become more. The birth of life from inert matter is a miracle which may be bettered. Bettered by ourselves, bootstrapping ourselves from the level of the beast to a technological prowess undreamt of even decades ago.

    There, then, lies my optimism in bleaker moments.

    In the power of the mind to elevate and improve ourselves. To paint glorious works of art, to build structures of exquisite beauty. To think wondrous thoughts, to write great novels and ethereal music.

    To cure all ills, to provide a world where scarcity becomes a dim memory. Where money becomes an arcane memory.

    Those then are my dreams, my better moments. Where beauty and hope is to be found.

    In the patter of gentle rain, in the pounding of waves on a beach. In the gentle Norman chapel, and the light of stained glass. In the trance of Tchaikovsky, Handle and William Byrd.

    We may not exist in the way we might suppose we do. But we have created something out of nothing. Black horror as well as paradisiacal beauty.

    I dream of more of the latter and less of the former.

  • Gillette Advertisement Controversy

    Gillette Advertisement Controversy

    Good on Gillette: it would be hard to deny that male aggression has played a vast and malignant role in our history.

    With a few notable exceptions, women are absent from the long list of torturers and tyrants who have blighted our society through the ages.

    Consider whether the following list sounds likely:

    Polly Pot

    Adolfe Hitler

    Karen Khan

    The Noreen Conquest.

    Fine, so we have had the occasional Lizzie Borden. And there were some pretty unattractive female guards in the Nazi concentration camps. But by and large violence and aggression is a male characteristic and it isn’t his fault. It’s in his genes. It’s called “evolution” and anyone with even a passing interest in the biological origins of animal behavior, should watch all the way through the superb lectures of Robert Sapolsky, Stanford Professor of Neurology and of Neurosurgery.

    I consider the Gillette Advertisement meet and right because unless we acknowledge and recognize the problem we can not deal with it.  Once we accept that this sort of behavior has been foisted on us by nature, the next task is to agree, as a society, and as individuals, that it is wrong. It is not just about bullying women (although that of course, as well as the question of female equality, needs addressing rapidly).

    The problem is far more basic. We need to acknowledge that aggression is wrong, whoever the victim is. Animal, vegetable or mineral. Or female. Once we (both men and women) universally condemn violence the next stage is to combat it. Laws are all well and good but psychological acceptance is equally if not more important. As individuals we must first accept such behavior as wrong and then stop it, in ourselves and in others.

    In the distant future it seems highly likely that we will be able to edit violence out of our genes. And in my opinion we should. If we accept we want to get rid of it we should start now.  At present its always going to be touch and go. Not everyone will accept that violence is wrong. But as violence becomes socially outlawed by education and other means such as the Gillette initiative, like smoking it should gradually die out. And should we ever be able to alter our genes, well then, perhaps we will all agree that we should.

    In general I am deeply skeptical of the capitalist economic model, even though I have no ideas as to how or with what we can replace it.  I do not like nine tenths of the planet being owned by Jeff Bezos but while it is, I applaud this effort by Gillette to reach towards a better world.  Being cynical I suppose they just want our dollars, but if so, then in my book they are at least asking for them in the right way.

    Bravo Gillette!

     

     

  • Anger – an Evolutionary Curse

    Anger – an Evolutionary Curse

    Anger is an invention of the selfish gene, an evolutionary tool for the survival of the fittest.  Strength, fitness and anger – what better to equip the human genome to survive and prosper in the hideous brutality of nature.

    Anger is an emotion, a subjective experience, a “quale” and something which any student of consciousness must by definition take an interest in.

    I have noticed increasing anger and bitterness in myself over the past few years; it has become very noticeably expressed in my writing. But better “expressed” than “repressed”.

    While it sometimes seems to me that my anger has external causes at a deeper level I know that it does not. I have no reason to be angry or bitter. Born into a prosperous, upper middle class British family and expensively educated by famous names I was given everything a child could expect.

    And my inglorious career began at one of the City of London’s best known institutions and was continued at one of Basel’s.

    And yet there was always anger. I like to think the anger was not and is not my fault and yet I know I must not shirk all responsibility.

    As heart it’s mostly about nature and nurture but you certainly have some freedom to alter your own behaviour (unless you believe in strict determinism, which of course is not without its adherents).

    Why does this post belong in “Science”? Because I am devoting much of my time to studying consciousness and have come to believe that humanity can and will be saved from brutality and misery by science and science alone. I want to be a part of that scientific endeavour, even if at a philosophical level only.

    I know that anger and bitterness should be controlled; it is destructive and pointless in the modern age. It belongs to animals and cavemen.

    If I could choose not to be angry I would.  And I believe one day that choice will be possible and easily achieved. In the meantime it requires steely self control and awareness and even then can only be partly contained in some of us.

  • War – Why do the Nations rage?

    War – Why do the Nations rage?

    War, easy to understand but difficult to prevent, dates back 550 million years.

    Early complex life lived peacefully for most of earth’s history by harnessing the power of ocean chemicals and then sunlight.

    550 million years ago the first proto animals acquired mobility – the Dickinsonia and others began to move around to seek food.  And then arrived bilateral symmetry – a head for intake at one end, a digestive system in the middle and an exit for waste at the other. The evidence of these early life forms can be seen in the fossils of the Ediacara hills in southern Australia.

    Then teeth and claws arrived – the world’s very first weapons.  The evolutionary arms race had begun and humans eventually became the clear winners – they developed a complex brain and the ability to outsmart all other life forms on earth.

    From the very first days man killed his own kind as well as other animals in the battle to survive and prosper. Most other animals do the same thing  – the hawk and the fox being obvious examples.

    And so today from the parish council and the village garden society up to the level of nations we seek our own benefit and are willing to take extraordinary measures to subjugate the competition.

    Old dears viciously competing in the village cake baking competition can be seen as the weak form of Genghis Khan or Pol Pot.  As a society we compete instead of co-operate. We take what we want from the weak; 20th century western exploitation of middle east oil being a good example.

    All it took was modern science to give us the capability to destroy on a global and industrial scale. Zyklon B and the railways, the machine gun and the atomic bomb.

    And the cure? Nothing less than changing our entire nature. Not so easy after 500 million years on the rampage.

    Image: Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944. By Robert F. Sargent