Café Philos: an internet café

Earlier, Don and I drove out of town south into a hazy fall afternoon. We speculated the haze could be coming from the large California fires, for there seemed no other source for it. It's happened before that smoke has drifted hundreds of miles into Colorado from large fires as far away as California. Was that happening today?

No way of to be certain. But the distant mountains to the south and west were obscured by the haze while above us the sky still embraced the royal blue depth of a perfect autumn day.

I hadn't driven south of Colorado Springs in well over two years. You forget how beautiful the hills and canyons are. The colors are mostly understated and subtle in the fall. Olive junipers dot the yellow grasses, cling to the sandy red cliffs like freckles. The deeper greens of Ponderosa and pinon pines crowd the junipers, and the scrub oak has copper leaves. All respectable earth tones. But then along the water courses, the light bursts as it falls into the luminous yellow leaves of the cottonwoods.

Gorges and canyons, mesas and buttes. The land seems eternal here. It's hard to believe people own it -- you think more of the land owning them.

There's defiance of the land in some of the houses people have built. Houses whose architecture is traditional in distant parts of America -- in the northeast, for instance -- but not here in Colorado. You can't look at those houses without imagining some newcomer has tried to transplant a bit of the lush eastern United States, complete with well watered bluegrass lawns, to the rocky, thin soils of the arid west. Maybe he got homesick for a more congenial landscape. Maybe he's in denial he no longer lives in Massachusetts, Georgia or Kentucky. Whatever the case, it's not really your problem -- yet in this land, his home is an alien.

Some miles south of the Springs, Don and I turned off the main road and, after a few miles, entered Phantom Canyon. Phantom Canyon is a narrow gorge whose rock walls rise 150 or 200 feet. It winds for miles up into the Rockie Mountains -- right into the heart of the high gold country. The road changed from asphalt to gravel, and then from gravel to earth. The walls were mostly red rock deeply fractured by the weather, like an old man's face; and brilliant cottonwoods lined the floor of the canyon.

It's strange how in some parts of Colorado you can see everywhere the evidence of people -- you are after all, traveling a road built by people -- and yet you almost feel you are the first person to explore the land. Twice in the Canyon cars passed us coming from the other direction and each time the occupants waved to us as if we were the first people they'd seen all month. I think that feeling of being a little bit beyond the boundaries of society doesn't just come from the scarcity of people on the Phantom Canyon road. I think it comes from the way the world rises up 150 to 200 feet above you. I think it comes from the way the trees, the grasses, and the brush obey their own laws -- not some gardener's laws. I think it comes from the uncivilized quiet that confronts you when you finally stop and step out of your car. But whatever the source of it, the effect is to give you a slightly different perspective on yourself.

It's not the beauty of nature that most inspires me to reflect on myself. Nature is not always beautiful. But nature is always indifferent. And it's that indifference that inspires both thought and feeling about the human condition.

You can never really put what you learn about yourself from nature in words because what you learned, you didn't learn from words. Rather, you simply experienced a truth. You can write all the commentaries you want about your experiences, but you cannot recreate them through those commentaries. Words never brought a fractured rock cliff into existence.

At times, it seems that societies revolve around the ego. Perhaps it can even seem they are huge conspiracies to make the ego primary in this world. I think the ego is just as much a part of us -- of who we are as a species -- as our eyes and noses, and I reject any ideology that calls for the annihilation of the ego. Yet, I don't think the ego is of primary importance. I think it has its place, but that place is not central.

I believe I see that most clearly when I am out in nature, away from society, away from its tendency to make the ego primary. Yet, it is also out in nature when I feel I am being most true to myself. Is that a paradox?

The other day I was listening to a bimbo talk show host who was scandalized that a nudist resort in Virginia or someplace allowed teens. He seemed to feel that while it was OK for consenting adults to practice nudity, it was horrifying that teens would be allowed to practice nudity. In fact, he thought it was downright immoral of the resort to allow teens in.

Now, I happen to think the talk show host was making a moutain out of a mole hill. For some years ago, I was acquainted with many teens in this town, several of whom would invite me to go along with them on their various excursions, which were often to a nude resort up in the mountains. I recall a number of things about those trips, including staying up until three in the morning in the sauna listening to the teens discuss relationships, sex and God, or being sought out by one teen or another for private chats about their anxieties, but I don't recall that any kids were traumatized by their experiences on these trips. So, I tend to think the bimbo talk show host was just being a bimbo.

But what do you think? Do you think the bimbo talk show host for once had a point? Is there a danger to teen nudity that I didn't see (wouldn't be the first time I haven't seen something)? Should teens be allowed in nudist resorts?

I'm aware that it has been a very long while since I have posted here. It makes me feel guilty to see my name at the side of this page, particularly because I haven't even conversed with Paul in quite a while.

I hate being one of those subtly-stressed floundering career women who always blame everything on not having enough time. I know that I waste a lot of time chain-smoking and petting my cat. So it would be lame of me to try and justify my prolonged absence. I do enough of that when I call in sick (three cheers for mental health days!).

Instead I will kiss all of your virtual feet and beg for your quiet forgiveness.

An incredibly brief synopsis: Migraines not yet subsided, life in splinters, cat box perpetually dirty, can't find ANY of the twenty some-odd spoons I know are in this house somewhere.
And that is the extent of my knowledge regarding my latent realization that I haven't been happy in months.

Enough whining.

After reading Paul's frighteningly visceral post, "Changes", I felt compelled to share a little secret of mine that makes seasons more bearable and beautiful, even if one hates all four of them.

A long time ago I decided to rename the seasons to suit what they actually DO to me. It's obvious that changes in weather aren't gentle in their violent rearrangement of my outlook and substance. In fact, it may have nothing at all to do with the weather, but rather, my life may follow some twisted cycle of phases that lines up perfectly with Mother Nature's, and it's all pure coincidence.

(Thanks go out to my grade twelve sociology teacher for drilling it into my brain that "correlation is not causation", and forcing me to remove all natural assumption from my daily thought process.)

I don't suggest that anyone adopt the same labels for seasons that I have, as they're likely influenced by my own experience, and the fact that I live in Canada. However, I think 'renaming' the seasons to accommodate one's feelings toward them can promote self-awareness. Because really, who actually knows what the heck "summer" means anyway.

These are mine, respectively:

Boring, Rainy, Miserable Days

Arid, Thoughtless Days crammed full of Denial

Sleepy Days when everything smells Pleasantly Dead

Desperate, Freshly Frozen Days

Also, my personal blog, Lipstick Without Borders, has been flagged for objectionable content. *VICTORY DANCE*
Cheers to my no longer being viewed as the Milk and Cookies of the online literary world.

Some political bloggers are having fun with a study published Sunday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

The study finds evidence the brains of liberals and conservatives function differently. It appears liberals have brains that adapt to sudden changes a bit more readily than do the brains of conservatives. Naturally, liberal bloggers are spinning the study one way while conservatives are spinning it the other. Each side wants to show how the study "proves" folks on their side of the fence are superior thinkers. But neither the liberal nor the conservative bloggers that I read are discussing one of the most interesting implications of the study -- that humans may have evolved innate perspectives or prejudices.

The study was conducted by political scientist David Amodio and his colleagues at New York University. They recruited 43 subjects for the experiment and began by asking each subject to rank his or herself on a scale for political views. One end of the scale was "extremely liberal" while the other end was "extremely conservative".

After the recruits ranked themselves, they were directed to sit before a computer screen and press one of two buttons depending on whether they saw an "M" or a "W". Each time they saw a letter, they had only half a second in which to respond -- nothing like a little pressure to think fast.

Eighty percent of the time (400 out of 500 instances) they saw the same letter. This was to encourage them to expect that letter. "You keep seeing the same stimulus over and over, so when the opposite stimulus comes on it's always a surprise," said Amodio.

When the less common letter appeared on the screen, the people who identified themselves in the conservative half of the scale pressed the "usual" button 47% of the time instead of switching to the correct button. In comparison, the "liberals" achieved the slightly lower error rate of 37%.

Up until this point, nothing about the study was surprising: There have been dozens of studies showing a strong link between political persuasion and certain personality traits. "Conservatives tend to crave order and structure in their lives, and are more consistent in the way they make decisions. Liberals, by contrast, show a higher tolerance for ambiguity and complexity, and adapt more easily to unexpected circumstances (Source)." But Amodio's study is unique because he performed electroencephalogram (EEG) scans on the brains of his subjects while they were performing their task -- thus discovering significant differences in the way the brains of liberals and conservatives were operating.

Liberals had slightly over twice as much activity as conservatives in a region of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. Some scientists think that area of the brain acts as a mental brake by helping the mind recognize "no-go" situations where it must refrain from the usual course of action. They refer to that function of the anterior cingulate cortex as "conflict monitoring".

According to Amodio, "The neural mechanisms for conflict monitoring are formed early in childhood," and are probably rooted in part in our genetic heritage. "But even if genes may provide a blueprint for more liberal or conservative orientations, they are shaped substantially by one's environment over the course of development."

It seems to me Amodio's overall take on his experiment is in line with what most other scientists are saying these days: Genes may predispose us to certain thoughts and behaviors, but environment still plays a major role in how we think and act. But if genes predispose us to certain inclinations, then how and why did those genes evolve?

As luck would have it, Ed Yong has a post on the evolution of personality differences over at Not Exactly Rocket Science that sheds considerable light on the question of how and why personality differences (and by extension, political preferences) might have evolved in us. Basically, it turns out that certain personality traits most likely evolved as ways of answering the age-old question, "Should I have kids now or later?" At first blush, there might not seem to be much of a relationship between reproduction, personality differences, and political preferences, but do check out Ed's article for insight into how those things might be linked.

I think the important thing to realize here is that "liberal" and "conservative" tendencies evolved in us because both tendencies increase our biological fitness -- depending on the circumstances. If one or the other were inherently superior, then natural selection, working over millions of years, would have resulted in that one particular tendency being the only tendency humans have. Either we would all be "liberals" or we would all be "conservatives". But that didn't happen because both liberal and conservative personalities have advantages.


UPDATE: Cognitive Daily has an illuminating critique of the study here. I think it should be read in conjunction with Ed's article, however, because I don't think Cognitive Daily's critique of the "Left-wing/Right-wing" study amounts to an refutation of the notion there may be significant and inherent differences in the way liberal and conservative brains operate.


References:

Homo Politicus: Brain Function of Liberals, Conservatives Differ

Political Affiliation Could All be in the Brain (New Scientist)

Study Finds Left-Wing Brain, Right Wing Brain (L.A. Times)

A while back I mentioned in another post that Bill Atkinson's nature photos often illustrate the close relationship between abstract art and nature. This week, I'm returning to that theme with what I suppose is a very good illustration of it -- a photo of blue rock crystals.

Click on the image to see it full size.

This week, the thought occurred to me that some of you might like a glimpse of an aspen grove. The photo to the left is of a grove on Boulder Mountain, Utah, by Bill Atkinson.

One of the things that often distinguishes Atkinson's work is how close it comes to abstract art. This week's photo is not necessarily the best representation of that, but I think you can still see a bit of the abstract in it. If you go to his website, you will find many examples of photos that prove how surprisingly close nature can be to abstract art.

When the sun falls through aspen leaves, it can create a soft, peaceful light. I think Atkinson has captured that light in this week's sidebar art. The light also tends to make the leaves luminous, and I think you can see that in the young leaves close to the grove's floor. The only detail of this photo that I might dispute is the darkness of the far background. That might be literally true, but in my experience, an aspen grove is suffused with light and one does not notice much in the way of any darkness. However, I'm not criticizing the photo here -- merely pointing out a difference between how things might actually be, as they are in the photo, and how they often feel in life.

Anyone interested in how human and primate evolution helps make sense of our lives today should above all else avoid reading Eric's blog, The Primate Diaries.

That's because if you have any interest at all in the topic -- even just a little interest -- you will discover The Primate Diaries are so remarkable, so beautifully and knowledgeably written, so relevant to how we live today, that you will be inexorably drawn towards your monitor until you find yourself actually licking the essays as if they were the happiest candy in the world. And that could prove extraordinarily embarrassing should your spouse or significant other walk in on you to find you making love to a blog more passionately than you have made love to them all month.

It won't happen, you say? You're just too strong willed to make love to a blog, you say? Fine, you've been warned. So don't come running back here to sue me if clicking on any of the above links leads to your sleeping on the couch while your partner fumes about your betrayal of them.

If you have been paying attention to the attack on the theory of evolution, the debate over abstinence only sex education, the attempt to characterize America as a Christian Nation, or any of several other topics, then you have almost certainly seen willful ignorance in action. Willful ignorance, of course, is not actually limited to the people on any one side of a debate, but in the case of those particular debates you could be forgiven for forgetting that.

Nearly everyone who opposes the theory of evolution, it seems, exercises some degree of willful ignorance. So too, nearly everyone who supports abstinence only sex education, or asserts America was founded as a Christian nation, or denies global warming, or believes gay marriage will undermine the sanctity of heterosexual marriage, or -- or ... on and on and on! -- nearly everyone who takes any of those positions exercises more than a little willful ignorance. So, it's pretty fair to ask, "Why are so many people so stubbornly opposed to learning about those things?'

To put that question in a context: How is it possible that an animal whose survival presumably has always depended on its ability to think clearly about the world evolve such a huge capacity for self-deceit? For willful ignorance is nothing if not self-deceit.

You would think, wouldn't you, that people prone to ignore rock solid evidence for something would have been weeded out of our gene pool sometime during the paleolithic era. Obviously, that is not the case. In fact, given how prevalent willful ignorance is -- not just in American culture, but around the world -- it could even be true to speculate that humans evolved a capacity for willful ignorance. That willful ignorance is not merely a flaw of some sort, but actually something that nature selected for. But why? Why would a lack of realism be of any benefit at all to an animal that in very large part survived the challenges of nature by its wits?

I am frankly stumped to explain how our species could so often be willfully ignorant. Do you have any ideas about it? I'd like to hear them.

I can't recall if I've mentioned this before, but I prefer to think of humans as like snowflakes. All snowflakes are made of the same thing -- water. But each snowflake is shaped differently, so that no two flakes are precisely alike. In the same way, isn't it true enough that all humans share in a common human nature, but that no two of us manifest that nature in exactly the same way?

We all share something in common, and yet we are all unique. And therefore, I have often thought that many political ideologies misrepresent us, because they either over-emphasize our commonality, or they over-emphasize our individuality. They either pretend there are no significant differences between people -- and we can all be treated as interchangeable cogs in a social machine -- or they pretend there are no significant commonalities between people -- and we must be treated as rugged individualists who can at best barely tolerate living in a community. Where in either extreme is there realism?

That humans are unique individuals sharing in a common nature is not a paradox to me but merely a summary description of what seems most obvious about us.

Wondering what the human prospect is these days? You might get some factual insights on that by visiting Trinifar this week.

Trinifar has put together some beautiful graphs showing major ecological, demographic and economic trends in a post on "visualizing sustainability". He then briefly explains each graph in clear, non-technical terms.

Especially worth noting I think are the estimates that the world population of humans will reach 9 billion by 2050, while the maximum sustainable population is estimated between one and three billion. If anything even remotely like that occurs (and something remotely like that seems very likely) some environmental resources will be exhausted by the excess population, perhaps leading to a reduction in the number of people who can live on the earth in a sustainable fashion. That's just about the mildest effect such a disaster will have on the human prospect.

The effect of too many people and too few resources that concerns me most is political and spiritual. Huge numbers of people competing for diminishing resources is quite likely to lead to repressive societies. Then what happens? Will humanities' potential for authentic happiness ever be realized? Will most of us be able to appreciably develop our talents and skills, or stay true to ourselves? Or will only the tiny elite that controls the world's resources have decent lives?

I am reasonably confident that in the long run, the human spirit will rebound. But the long run could take centuries to be realized.

An impressive body of social and political thought assumes that humans are fundamentally rugged individualists who once lived alone, each man or woman to himself or herself. At some point, they discovered they could accomplish more by working together than by working alone and, consequently, they created a social compact. Communities were then born.

What if none of that is true?

What if, as the scientists tell us, humans have always been social animals? What if there never was a social compact?

If humans have always been social animals our cherished belief that we live in groups for purely rational reasons can be questioned. Are our reasons for living in groups really that rational? Do we have "reasons" at all? Wouldn't it be more precise to speak of our instincts for living in groups? Or, of our nature for living in groups?

Social and political theory can no longer escape the fact we are a social animal by positing an imaginary age when we lived isolated and alone. Today it must be reconciled to what we know of our biology, among many other sciences. But that is by no means an easy thing to do. The question of what is human nature has many answers. At the very least, each relevant science has it's own models of human nature. Moreover, those models have moved well beyond simply stating that we are a social animal. Nowadays, scientists are modeling how, in what ways, and to what extent we are a social animal. And not just a social animal.

I recall coming across an article sometime ago in which the Vice-President was described as having a "Hobbesian" political philosophy. In an age of jets, the Vice-President flies a biplane. Perhaps that explains some of his many failings.

Once we hear certain animals, they become a part of our spirit. I don't think you can hear a loon's call without the sound in some way become a part of you. Nor perhaps the calling of coyotes. Given that our species invented music, is it all that implausible that certain sounds should become fixed in our memories as almost akin to a spiritual experience?

A while back, I watched an episode of the Bill O'Reilly "comedy hour" during which Bill pretended to be scandalized that a teacher from a Northern state had vacationed in Florida, and while on vacation, had gone to a night club where she flashed her breasts for all the O'Reillys of the world to see. Naturally, Bill called on her school board to fire her. Bill is the Grand Old Prude of the Republic.

Somehow I got to thinking of that episode tonight, and along with thinking about it, recalled things I'd done that Bill would certainly disapprove of.

When I was new to Colorado Springs, I frequented a coffee shop a block from my apartment. The shop was near a high school, and consequently, the first 200 or so people I met in the Springs were mostly high school kids who frequented that same shop.

Several of those kids befriended me. They took to inviting me on all sorts of excursions -- from dances to rock climbs to road trips to sleep overs. Perhaps because I'd recently divorced, knew almost no one else in town besides those kids, and wanted a distraction, I almost always accepted any invitation from them. That's how, at 40, I ended up somewhat frequently going to clothing optional hot springs with high school kids.

The youngest of those kids was Harriett. When I met Harriett, she was a shy, quiet 15 year old genius bored to death with her school.

We met in the coffee shop when I walked up to were she was sitting alone and challenged her to a game of chess. After that introduction, she fell into the habit of seeking me out when I was in the shop and sitting with me, sometimes for hours -- but seldom saying much and never demanding my attention. Occasionally, we played chess.

So, I was surprised when one day her mother showed up at the place I worked asking for me. At that time, I knew Harriett only from the coffee shop, and then only as the girl who quietly sat away the hours on the fringes of the group I was a part of. But her mother revealed that Harriett had been coming home nearly every day to talk about what I'd said. In fact, Harriett had spoken so much about me to her mother that her mother now believed I had considerable influence on Harriett and thus wanted to meet me.

I started paying more attention to Harriett. I discovered, among other things, that she was exceptionally bright -- probably genius bright -- played the violin, piano and guitar -- was frequently depressed -- had an absent father -- had done modeling -- and knew nearly every artist in town due to her mother's participation in the local arts scene.

A few weeks after we met, Harriett's mother, Liz, and I got to talking about Valley View Hot Springs, and I think it was she who suggested I take Harriett along the next time I went to the Springs with a group of kids.

Valley View is located on the side of a mountain overlooking the world's largest intermountain valley, the San Luis. The nearest town of any size is 37 miles distant as the crow flies, and much further by road. At night, there are a billion stars over the valley in a sky so dark and deep you feel you sipped infinity looking at them.

The owners of Valley View keep the place as undeveloped as possible. You soak in natural pools, on beds of pebbles, sand, and moss. The wind sounds like a river rushing through the pines. In the evenings, you hear the coyotes calling to each other. Sometimes, wild mule deer come to feed on the grass by the pool you're soaking in.

There are people who believe Valley View is sacred, and they speak in whispers when there, as if in a cathedral. The perfect place to be naked to the world.

At the time, I saw nothing scandalous in a 40 year old man taking a 15 year old girl to a clothing optional hot springs. After all, Harriett was something of a sacred girl, and Valley View was something of a sacred place. It made emotional, poetic sense to give her the experience of that place, one of the most beautiful places in Colorado. Yet, looking back on it now, I realize both Liz and I were naive. Had word of that gotten to the wrong ears, Liz could have been charged with child abuse, Harriett summarily taken away from her, and I could have faced an investigation for statutory rape. People so often put the worse possible interpretations on things.

Last weekend, I managed to get up into the mountains. Spring was just coming to them. The peaks were still snow capped, but the days were warm and bright, and some tiny wildflowers were in bloom. I would have liked to stay for a week or two, because it can take me that long to get into the rhythms of the wilderness.

You don't notice it too much when you're in the city, but your senses go to sleep in the city.

You notice it when you're in the mountains for a few days -- then your senses wake up again, sharpen, become more alert than you had imagined they could be.

I figure your senses go to sleep in the city to protect you from all the noise, odors, confused movement, and subtle chaos that are the nature of cities. If your senses were really awake in the city, you'd be overwhelmed.

When I have spent a long time with nature -- enough time to feel a part of it, rather than just feel myself a visitor -- I often have found in myself a sense that the pace, the rhythm, the sights, the sounds of nature are what we are really born to understand. Deeply understand. It seems so much easier, up there in the mountains, to understand life, to accept it for what it is, to want nothing more than what it offers.

I don't mean to trivialize nature. A life lived in nature is hard, difficult, often short, frequently pained. Yet, for all that, our species did not evolve for cities, but for the wilderness. And part of us shall always be asleep in the city.

One of the ways the pseudo-science of eugenics differs from the honest evolutionary sciences is that eugenics claims there is an ideal human standard, an ideal type of human.

Anyone who has made a serious study of human nature knows that claim has little or no evidence to support it, and a weight of evidence against it. Yet, the notion there is an ideal human type persists not only in the pseudo-science of eugenics, but more broadly in our culture.

Hitler really didn't need the pseudo-science of eugenics to tell him there was an ideal human type ("Aryans"). In one form or another, the notion of an ideal human type permeated his culture, and he could have picked it up from nearly anywhere even had eugenics itself not been around for him to draw from. Yet, just as in Hitler's time, the notion, in one form or another, permeates our culture even today.

Perhaps the most obvious example of that notion at work today is in the fashion and entertainment industries -- industries that are notorious for promulgating a single standard of physical beauty. Yet, the realm of physical beauty isn't the only place in our culture where we can find the peculiar notion there is an ideal human type. Simply look at how often someone asserts a single, ideal morality for all humans! Or, an ideal religion. Or, even an ideal spirituality.

The sciences, on the other hand, tell us that we are a diverse species without an ideal type. Just as we show natural diversity in the sizes and shapes of our noses, or in our eye and hair colors, we also show natural diversity in a myriad more hidden ways. For instance: In the number of the various types of neurochemical receptors in our brains.

Perhaps it is time to look long and hard at the peculiar notion there is -- or ought to be -- an ideal human type. Perhaps, rather than look for a single standard of beauty, or advocate for a single economics, or propose a single spirituality -- perhaps, we should take a lesson from our own nature, for we are a naturally diverse species, and ask instead how to manage diversity.

Over on Religious Forums is a very intelligent young man from Saudi Arabia who goes by the username, "The Truth".

Not so long ago, The Truth started a discussion thread in which he asked whether all morality was ultimately derived from religion. From the responses the thread's been getting, it seems some people do in fact believe morality is derived from religion. But is that always true? And, if morality is not always derived from religion, then where exactly does it come from?

Not everyone asks those questions. But it might be a good idea if more of us did, especially in America, where the Religious Right for decades has been hammering folks with the peculiar notion that, unless they tightly cling to conservative Judeo-Christian values, they will set themselves -- and perhaps the entire nation -- adrift in a decadent sea of moral relativism.

In a very limited way, I actually find myself agreeing with the Religious Right. Surely, pure moral relativism is a foundation too weak to build much on. By "moral relativism", I mean the notion that anything goes; anything is alright so long as you or someone else thinks it's alright. That's really moral anarchy, and both I and the Religious Right agree that it would suck for society to widely adopt it.

About everything else, we disagree. Usually, the Religious Right would have us believe we have only two choices: Biblical morality or moral relativism. Yet, that's false.

In the first place, humans have invented many moral codes over the years. The Biblical moral code is only one of many codes that humans have invented, and certainly not the best of them. Therefore, we are not limited in our choice of moralities to just two inane choices: Biblical morality or moral relativism. Instead, we have many options, a whole treasury of options.

In the second place, there is surprising new evidence that at least some moral principles are hardwired into our very nature. That is, we need look no further than human nature to find a basis for some of our morals.

Writing in The New York Times, the Harvard psychologist, Daniel Gilbert makes the point rather eloquently:

Research suggests that we are hard-wired with a strong and intuitive moral impulse — an urge to help others that is every bit as basic as the selfish urges that get all the press. Infants as young as 18 months will spontaneously comfort those who appear distressed and help those who are having difficulty retrieving or balancing objects. Chimpanzees will do the same, though not so reliably, which has led scientists to speculate about the precise point in our evolutionary history at which we became the “hypercooperative” species that out-nices the rest.

Gilbert's remarks remind me of primatologist Alison Jolly's observation in her book, Lucy's Legacy, that humans are almost the most cooperative species known to science. Only the social insects, and a couple species of lower mammals, in some ways out do us.

Yet, our natural moral foundation seems to go far beyond a built in propensity for hypercooperation. Joshua Greene, another Harvard professor, has discovered that in some circumstances, most people will agree on what is right and what is wrong.

Greene studies how people respond to a set of imaginary dilemmas. For instance, in one dilemma:

...you are standing by a railroad track when you notice that a trolley, with no one aboard, is heading for a group of five people. They will all be killed if it continues on its current track. The only thing you can do to prevent these five deaths is to throw a switch that will divert the trolley on to a side track, where it will kill only one person.

What do you do?

"When asked what you should do in these circumstances, most people say you should divert the trolley on to the side track, thus saving a net four lives. [italics mine]" That is, there is a majority consensus among people that a right course of action exists. So far as I know, nothing in the Bible suggests that saving a net four lives by sacrificing one life is the moral thing to do -- yet in those specific circumstances, that's what most people think is moral.

In fact, Greene's colleague, Marc Hauser, has discovered that people of different societies and cultures will largely respond the same way to the same set of circumstances. What an American likely thinks is right in certain circumstances is precisely what a Chinese person likely thinks is right in the same circumstances.

All of the above suggests that at least some morality is derived directly from human nature, and not necessarily from either religion or God. Shocking?

It really should be shocking. Almost all of us have been saturated with the view that religion and God are the foundations of morality. After hearing all that propaganda, the news that science is discovering a basis for morality in human nature should at least cause us wonder.

I predict it will be quite a while before it is widely known and accepted in the West that morality is -- at least to some extent -- derived not from holy scripture, but from human nature. In the meantime, many religious leaders will still promote the notion that their religions have a monopoly on morality.

Do you like to think? Do you like to read blogs? If "yes" seems to you the natural answer to both questions, then the Thinking Blog Award might appeal to you.

Last week, Mystic Wing suddenly honored Anne and I by tagging this blog with the Award. No doubt he was suffering from a momentary lapse of sanity when he did so, but we'll happily accept the Award anyway.

So, what's the Award? Well, The Thinking Blog Award has been making its way around the internet since February 11th, when it was begun by none other than The Thinking Blog. The idea is simple: If someone tags you as a blog that makes them think, then you respond by tagging five other blogs that make you think.

I've discovered that while the idea is simple, executing the idea is not so easy as it sounds. There are so many quality blogs out there that make me think. So I've have some difficulty narrowing my list down to just five blogs.

One thing that helped to narrow the list is that many of my favorite blogs have already been tagged. For instance, Mystic Wing tagged Brendan's Off the Beaten Path at the same time as he tagged Cafe Philos, so that's one down. Again, most of the science blogs I like to read have already been tagged, so that's a whole category all but eliminated. Yet, there are still gobs and gobs of blogs that I would like to tag if I were not confined by the rules to just five.

Having said all that, I shall now present my list in alphabetical order.

Baghdad Burning is by all accounts one of the best and most widely recognized blogs on the net today. It is written in beautiful English by an anonymous Iraqi woman living in Baghdad whose perspective on the war is, to say the least, not that of George Bush, Tony Blair and Al Maliki. She revealingly contrasts the daily lives of herself and her family and friends with the almost obscene spin of the politicians who caused the war. Her writing transcends the immediate conflict in Iraq. It is perhaps some of the best war writing from a civilian point of view of all time. You would be doing yourself a disservice if you missed reading some of the archives too.

Burning Silo, by Bev Wigney, is both a nature and a photography blog. The photos alone provoke thought, but the detailed, professionally executed writing is immensely stimulating as well. When I read Burning Silo, I find myself wanting to get up out of my chair and set off to explore nature -- even if that means exploring only the nature in my back yard. The blog does more than make us think: It restores to us a sense of wonder too.

Church of the Churchless is Brian Hines' wonderful blog for those of us who have, or who want to have, a spiritual life apart from organized religion. Brian is heavily influenced by Taoism and good sense. I don't always agree with him, perhaps because of my notable lack of good sense, but I am always stimulated both by the questions he raises and his responses to those questions. He has another, equally good and thoughtful blog called Hines Sight.

High Plains Buddhist is, more often than not, an account of Todd Epp's insightful application of Buddhist principles to his own life. That tends to make those principles fascinatingly concrete and fresh. We get to see the Buddhist way in action through Todd's eyes, and the result is great food for thought.

Think Buddha is Will Buckingham's profound blog that covers nearly every strain of Buddhist thought, rather than focusing on only one or two traditions. Will writes beautifully, making even some very difficult ideas and principles comprehensible. This blog goes beyond thought-provoking. It's educational, too. Well worth a bookmark, I think.

So, there you have it. My list of five blogs that rise to the challenge of provoking even me to thought. I haven't really done any of them justice here in my brief descriptions, I'm afraid, but perhaps at another time I can give each the detailed review it deserves. I would like to thank Mystic Wing for honoring Anne and I with his tag. It was more fun than I at first thought it would be to make the above list. And perhaps Anne, if she gets the time (she's been very busy lately) will offer her own list of five blogs that make her think.

UPDATE: I've been tagged two more times for this same meme, and post my response to the tags here.

I came across some old notebooks while housecleaning today, and in one of the notebooks there was mention of an ancient penis.

According to my notes of a few years ago, David Siveter of the University of Leicester had recently (back then) discovered a fossil ostrocod, or water flea, that was 425 million years old and had a penis. Now, at the time of Siveter's discovery, that particular water flea possessed the world's oldest known penis, and, for all I know, it is still the world's oldest known penis. But even if an older penis has been discovered since Siveter's pioneering work, the sheer fact that the penis is at least 425 million years old should make us think.

Among other things, it should make us understand just how conservative nature is. Once a useful thing such as a penis has evolved, nature tends to conserve it. Aerobic respiration, for instance, has been around for far longer than even the penis. One could give example after example of things that evolved long ago and which nature has conserved and repeated in one species after another with various modifications.

When we think about evolution, we most often think of change. Of course, there is reason for that. But we should also think of conservation --- the conservation of penises, eyes, jaws, aerobic respiration and nearly countless other things --- for speaking strictly in a material sense, all life is connected to all other life through that conservation of things.

Dear Anne,

One reason I don't do nude photography is because the internet is full of great nude photography -- why reinvent the wheel?

The best nudes make us want to contemplate them. They provoke in us an almost meditative state. Why is that?

I think it might have something to do with the way the best nudes ask us to see the human body in new ways. To see something in a new way is best done through contemplation, if not actual meditation. We must cease to judge it, and just see with an almost childlike simplicity of gaze.

Then again, the contours of the nude you see above are somewhat reminiscent of a Western landscape. Someone --- I'm sure he was French --- once said the body contains every curve to be found in nature. That is very true, and the best nude photography tends to illustrate the truth of his statement.

When I look at the nude above, I feel once again that the human form is both mysterious and inextractably a part of nature.

Paul

The above work comes from FigureArt.net

"The Bible contains no reference to earth in terms of the conservation ethic. Wild life and wilderness are apart from man and inferior. The Christian, and Jew, had no relation to the earth, the air, the waters, or the wild life. He could without fear poison the waters, pollute the air, level the forests, and despoil the land. The Bible and Christianity conditioned men to be vandals, converting everything from alligator skins to mountain ranges to blue waters into dollars. Men took the wealth and left only the ashes."

Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas





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