Café Philos: an internet café

If one thinks of creation stories as containing psychological truths, rather than physical truths, then perhaps those stories in which the world was created out some pre-existing substance are more psychologically true than those stories in which the world was created out of nothing.

I've tried to point out in the post that follows this one how our awareness of the world is limited. That is, we are not aware of the world as is, but only as interpreted. This psychological truth seems to imply, however, that our interpretation is derived from some kind of information we get from the world. Our eyes detect photons. The photons are of the world and pre-exist our interpretation of the world. We then interpret those photons. That act of interpretation can be seen as an act of creation in which we make the world -- not out of nothing -- but out of something (photons).

Yet, if all that is true, and if one wants to look at creation stories as psychological truths, then those creation stories which state the world was created out of pre-existing matter would seem to be more psychologically accurate than those creation stories which state the world was created out of nothing.

My senses tell me I'm sitting in a solid chair. On the other hand, physics tells me the chair I'm sitting in is mostly empty space. How can it be there is a difference between my subjective impression of the chair and what physics tells me is objectively true about the chair?

The short answer is that my brain and nervous system (very much including my senses) do not reconstruct reality as it is. My eyes do not, for instance, see the atoms of my chair, nor the empty space between the atoms. Instead, my eyes take in photons that have bounced off the atoms of the chair. My eyes and brain then process and interpret that information. In the end, what I see bears little resemblance to what is actually there according to physics.

One way to understand the relation between my subjective impression of the chair and what physics tells me is objectively true about the chair is to consider the analogy of a pilot landing an aircraft on instruments. Although the plane's instruments give the pilot very little information about the world -- and even though what information they give him is highly processed and interpreted -- the information he gets is sufficient for him to navigate. Just so, our brains and nervous systems give us very little information about the world and the information they do give us is highly processed and interpreted -- yet it's usually sufficient for us to cope with the world.

We are all like that pilot -- we must cope with the world on instruments alone. That's the position our brains and nervous systems leave us in.

I suppose the short answer is: Evolution. That is, the short answer to the question, "Why is understanding human sexuality so important to understanding human nature?"

From the theory of evolution, we know that reproductive success determines which species will hang around. Then when you combine that with the simple fact we reproduce sexually, you get the short answer. It's not sexual desire that makes understanding our sexuality so important to understanding human nature. It's evolution.

That understanding human sexuality is crucial to understanding human nature is so obvious even some of our politicians know it. That's why they seldom speak of the future in abstract terms -- instead, they speak of "the world we will leave to our children". The distant future is just a fantasy to most people -- until you link it to their reproductive success. Then, of a sudden, it becomes something to be taken seriously.

Sex, of course, is not everything. Human nature is not synonymous with human sexuality, and all efforts to reduce human nature to human sexuality have failed. Yet, our sexuality so pervades us that it is impossible in many ways to understand people without understanding their sexuality. The affair Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky told us at least as much about Bill Clinton the man as his decision to bomb Serbia.

I have always wondered why Clinton chose Lewinsky. A president can pick from a host of women. Why didn't he pick an extraordinarily gifted, talented, sophisticated, and intelligent woman? Put differently, why didn't he pick someone who challenged him, inspired him, made him want to be the best he could be?

This morning, I poured myself a glass of milk and noticed as I poured it that I was thinking the same random thought I'd had the day before when I poured myself a glass of milk. But that wasn't all, for yesterday I'd noticed that very same thing repetitious thought when I poured myself a glass of milk.

Moreover, in recent days, I've discovered more repetitious thoughts. It seems when I put on my shoes, the same thought pops into my head as when I last put them on. When I brush my teeth, I have the same thought as the last time I brushed my teeth. These are all different thoughts -- I don't think the same thing putting on my shoes as I do brushing my teeth -- but they are in each circumstance the same thought today as they were in that same circumstance yesterday.

It seems so many of the spontaneous thoughts I have on a given day are repetitious.

I can guess at a simple explanation for it. Some of the neurons in my brain have made more or less random associations between, say, putting on my shoes and my memories of the weather on a certain day last week. So, when I put on my shoes those neurons are prompted to fire and I remember the weather on that day. It doesn't surprise me that happens. What has surprised me in recent days is how much it happens.

So many of my thoughts are familiar to me that I'm beginning to suspect the brain is an extraordinarily repetitious animal. It seems to like ruts. As I was going to the laundry room a few minutes ago, it occurred to me (for the first time, apparently), "These repetitious thoughts are comforting. They reassure me I am the same person I was the day before. They provide a semblance of stability in an ever changing world. Yet, that semblance of stability is based on the mere repetition of thoughts, the repeated firing of the same neurons, rather than on the stability of events. Is it therefore illusionary?"

I didn't pursue the idea very far. It's one of those notions that can be tested through observation, so I decided to simply wait and watch rather than try to reason it out.

"Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

I think it's ironic that at the very moment communication and transportation technologies are creating a "global world", specialization is fragmenting each of our societies into expert little niches that often do not understand one another.

It's no longer much of an exaggeration these days to say the only people who understand the law are lawyers, the only people who understand medicine are doctors, the only people who understand information technologies are IT specialists, the only people who understand plumbing are plumbers, and the only people who understand carpentry are carpenters.

Yet, all of those people are increasingly using each other's products and services. I'm typing this on a computer whose components are made in several countries to be read by people from several countries -- and yet much of what I know about the world is so highly specialized that I avoid discussing it except in general terms. Likewise, I can only follow general discussions of what my friends for whom I'm typing this know about the world.

It's not just that we are becoming one world: We are also at the same time dividing into many worlds. I think that is one of the reasons the internet is so important to the future of humanity. It seems to have the power to bring together people from diverse backgrounds, from diverse skill and information niches, into unified online communities. Without that, the world could unite economically -- and even politically -- but perhaps not in a very humane way.

Formal philosophy is just as much a matter of unlearning the mistakes of the past as it is a matter of creating new mistakes for future generations to unlearn.

I pulled up an old article published on the web by Discover Magazine this morning and read, "Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser's new theory says evolution hardwired us to know right from wrong." Yet, that's not quite what Marc Hauser is saying.

Instead, it would be more correct to say, Hauser is asserting something along these lines: Our concept that there is such a thing as right and wrong is hardwired into us by our evolution. We have a sort of universal "moral grammar", but not a universal "moral language". For instance: The notion it is wrong to harm an innocent person is universal, but specific notions of who is innocent and who is not innocent are far from being universal.

Yet, most certainly, Hauser is not saying right and wrong exist independent of us. In Hauser's world, man is the measure of right and wrong -- not some metaphysical standard of right and wrong.

Oddly enough, saying "man is the measure of right and wrong" does not preclude a god having something to do with that measure. For, if I were religious, I could always say something like, "God inscribed a universal moral grammar upon the human heart."

Of course, were I both religious and uncomprehending, I could say something like, "God inscribed morality upon the human heart." But that implies there is only one true morality -- and implying that is just as silly as asserting there is only one true human language.

Another way of illustrating the distinction between moral grammar and moral language would be to say morality is hardwired into us much like tool use is hardwired into us. Humans naturally create and use tools. But the specific kinds of tools humans use can vary from culture to culture. And how tools are used can even vary from person to person. So, too, morality is hardwired into us on one level, yet is determined by our culture on another level, and on yet a third level is individual.

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?

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing… after they’ve tried everything else.”

- Winston Churchill

I spent today with my brother, sister-in-law, and my two nephews. Although my brother and his family live just an hour's drive north of me, both my brother and his wife are often traveling on business (one of today's two career families) and so the time we have together is somewhat rare and always precious.

I'm far from being an expert on parenting, so I might have missed a lot of what was going on, but I was amazed at how gentle and patient the two adults are and how well behaved, yet confident, spontaneous and alive, the two boys are.

They are five and six years old -- and I unexpectedly found myself worried about their future.

The last thing I expected today was to be worried about my nephew's future. But there are so many traps laid for children as they grow up. Drugs, bullies, consumerism -- to name just three. As I watched the kids take delight in anything and everything today, I reflected that no matter what opportunities the boys are given in life, no matter how excellent their parents, and no matter how good their education, the risk of tragedy will always be there for them. How do parents do it?

How do parents live with the uncertainty of life without going nuts? If an uncle can feel how fragile the future can be for his nephews, how much more must that feeling be for the parents themselves?

It seems to me that one must learn how to deal with such thoughts.

Four Stone Hearth -- an excellent anthropology carnival -- is up at Primate Diaries. The available articles cover all major branches of anthropology, and Eric's descriptions of them are intriguing and concise. Visit the carnival here.

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?

Folks have been leaving some excellent comments on this blog. I've been at a loss responding to them, but I wish you to know that I've been reading the comments with pleasure. I'm deeply grateful to all who have been commenting. Thank you so much for the happiness you've given me!

I've begun to notice that every three months or four months, my brain spontaneously takes a break from blogging. That's what's happened this past week or so -- and it also happened about three or four months ago for a couple of weeks.

I think it's a bit like what happens when you eat too much of your favorite food. You sooner or later get to a place where your favorite food fails to excite your enthusiasm for a while. This past week or two I've been at a loss for ideas of what to write about. Or, more precisely, the ideas I've had have seemed bland and unappetizing to me. I suspect, though, that I'm coming out of it -- otherwise I might not be writing this.

My blog is a long term project. I plan on keeping it up for years. But perhaps I should just accept as natural that I will want a vacation from it every now and then. Otherwise, I might get permanently burnt out -- which would be as life negating as getting permanently burnt out on chocolate.

I'm sorry to say the blog is getting hit by spam for medications so I've enabled comment moderation for a while. That means your comments will not appear immediately. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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.

The wind sounds so beautiful this morning. Now and then, it brings a burst of rain. With the windows open, I can smell the rain and feel the chill of Fall.

I know I shall refuse to close those windows until at last it becomes too cold this year to leave them open. I don't want to miss the change in the seasons -- not even when I'm inside. Not even for a moment.

I wonder this morning why that's so. What is it about the change in seasons that I love it so much? It's more to me than just the novelty of a new season.

Sometimes I think it's the absolute proof of nature's power I love so much. Inexorable, nature puts me in my place. Only our egos, it seems, want us to be the biggest thing in the world. Something else, something much deeper than ego, wants only to have its proper place in this world. Perhaps it's only when we have found that place that we can connect to the world -- authentically.

In his new memoir, Wesley Clark relates being told by a high up in the Pentagon that neocons in the US had plans to invade seven Middle Eastern countries in five years. Joe Conason has the story here.