Religion has cornered the morality market. Think of it. Functionally speaking, what is the one institution in modern society that teaches morality on any advanced level? Well, a tad in philosophy class (esoteric theory) and maybe a few ethics class (liability dodging). Other than that, it's the churches that teach Americans what they ought to be ashamed of. haha.
I'd like to see that change. I don't know how it will, but I'd still like to see it change.
Since "going secular" this has been a great obstacle in my mind. It was one of my favorite things about Christianity to delve into the moral teaching of Jesus. I found them incredibly rich and stimulating. Can it be replicated or is the magic recipe of frankincense, myrrh and brimestone copyrighted?
So, I'm going to provide a few thoughts/lessons that might be a potential means to gain moral insights from symbiosis. I'm fully aware of the limitations of nature--that it's inherently amoral. As well as my own fallacies--I'm both guilty of the Naturalistic Fallacy and the Moralalistic Fallacy. These teachings are more the result of my own musings and personal internal, subjective heart worldview of late than they are any attempt at a sophisticated system of ethics. You may find them scientific heresy, but hopefully they'll be moral heuristic.
Here's the question: Is it possible to, using the framework of religious moral teaching, gain moral insights from nature and more specifically symbiosis? Let's try. :)
How does religion teach morality? I'll break it down into three categories of didactic methods.
1. Story/Narrative--think about it, what percentage of the Bible is story? Gee-willakers. Practically the entire thing. Why? Because stories are the lingua franca of the common man. They are an incredibly powerful and easily absorbable means of teaching morality. It gives concepts skin, flesh, personality. Be like this person, not this one. Do what this person did, not that one.
2. Principles--Simplistic religion receives this as straight forward divine fiat, but more advanced religion interprets commandments as principial templates that embody the "spirit of the law". Examples: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." "It is more blessed to give than receive." "Turn the other cheek." "Do not remove a fly from a friends head with a hatchet."
3. Progression/Goal/Exemplar--I see this as religion's way dangling the carrot in front of us. It comes in a wide array of different forms. It can simply be--you do this you go to Heaven, but it often exhibits itself in much more complex forms such as: be like Christ, reach Nirvanna, becoming enlightened, absolving yourself of the desires of the world, Scientology levels, and I'd even put Kohlberg's six levels of moral development in this category. It gives a valuable guiding incentive. Even if it's nothing more than the subconscious, "I want to be a good christian."
I will apply this thinking to symbiosis to give an example that in the words of Lewis Carroll, "Everything has got a moral if you can only find it."
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
True Life is Stranger than Fiction
I recently posted as my status on Facebook that I thought true life was stranger than fiction. I was surprised by the response I got. There was one English major/writer that had quite a bone to pick with that thinking. I stand by my statement. Below is a partial response to my friend..
How do you tell the difference between a lie and the truth?
That's a very complex question, but there are always bread crumb trails to follow to decipher the 'truthiness' of a statement as Stephen Colbert puts it. I'll break it down into the classic communication majors matrix:
Sender: does the person have the classic signs of lying--looks up and to the left, blinking alot, repeat your question to stall answering, motivated to lie blah, blah, you know that stuff.
Message: is the message consistent, plausible, simple, overly detailed, under detailed, easily retold the same, corroborated, has a beginning, middle and end, conflict, resolution, involves relationships, intimacy, etc.
Receiver: is it too tailored to the audience to be entertaining, creative, insightful, quotidian, etc.
The bottom line is that even the best fiction is predictable in the way that it's unpredictable. Truly strange fiction would be random, erratic, lacking flow, resolution and any of the meta narrative and structure that we seek.
If that weren't enough fiction has one major limiting factor--it's human made. It's got our finger prints all over it.
It makes me think of aliens in movies.
They have the same basic body set up we do: tetrapodal, thorax, abdomen, head, hands, 2 eyes on head, mouth in front, nose, ears. Even our most creative aliens are really just comical reshapings of ourself. We think we're being creative making them green, but we're not. It just ends up looking less like an alien and more like what a human would think an alien would look like. It's the same with fiction. The more creative we try to be the more we're really betraying the fact that it's the mental product of a highly intelligent ape.
Reality's different, though.
Shit just happens. :)
No creator. No divine mind that's guiding evolution. No particular reason that gravity has to pull. No reason for electrons to spin around protons. No reason light is a wave and a particle. No reason that black matter adds weight to the universe or that black energy is hurtling the galaxies apart. No reason life had to happen, complex life had to happen, multicellular life, sexually reproducing life, chordates, jawed fish, lung fish, tetrapods, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, monkeys, apes, hominids, Homo sapiens had to happen. There are an infinite amount of other possibilities that could have quite easily not resulted in you or anything like you.
But it did.
From whence did we come? To where do we head?
No body knows and if anyone tells you otherwise it isn't too hard to tell they're lying.
Why? Because true life is f***ed up strange.
How do you tell the difference between a lie and the truth?
That's a very complex question, but there are always bread crumb trails to follow to decipher the 'truthiness' of a statement as Stephen Colbert puts it. I'll break it down into the classic communication majors matrix:
Sender: does the person have the classic signs of lying--looks up and to the left, blinking alot, repeat your question to stall answering, motivated to lie blah, blah, you know that stuff.
Message: is the message consistent, plausible, simple, overly detailed, under detailed, easily retold the same, corroborated, has a beginning, middle and end, conflict, resolution, involves relationships, intimacy, etc.
Receiver: is it too tailored to the audience to be entertaining, creative, insightful, quotidian, etc.
The bottom line is that even the best fiction is predictable in the way that it's unpredictable. Truly strange fiction would be random, erratic, lacking flow, resolution and any of the meta narrative and structure that we seek.
If that weren't enough fiction has one major limiting factor--it's human made. It's got our finger prints all over it.
It makes me think of aliens in movies.
They have the same basic body set up we do: tetrapodal, thorax, abdomen, head, hands, 2 eyes on head, mouth in front, nose, ears. Even our most creative aliens are really just comical reshapings of ourself. We think we're being creative making them green, but we're not. It just ends up looking less like an alien and more like what a human would think an alien would look like. It's the same with fiction. The more creative we try to be the more we're really betraying the fact that it's the mental product of a highly intelligent ape.
Reality's different, though.
Shit just happens. :)
No creator. No divine mind that's guiding evolution. No particular reason that gravity has to pull. No reason for electrons to spin around protons. No reason light is a wave and a particle. No reason that black matter adds weight to the universe or that black energy is hurtling the galaxies apart. No reason life had to happen, complex life had to happen, multicellular life, sexually reproducing life, chordates, jawed fish, lung fish, tetrapods, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, monkeys, apes, hominids, Homo sapiens had to happen. There are an infinite amount of other possibilities that could have quite easily not resulted in you or anything like you.
But it did.
From whence did we come? To where do we head?
No body knows and if anyone tells you otherwise it isn't too hard to tell they're lying.
Why? Because true life is f***ed up strange.
Protean Behavior
Game Theory: in essence is the idea that in games it's smartest to not only pick the next best moved based on the principles of the game, but also on the anticipated move of the other player. It's thinking about thinking. It's predictive playing.
Biological Context: there is a constant cat and mouse game (quite literally in some cases) that operates between predator and prey over generations and millenia. The prey that can best anticipate how the predator will hunt them can out smart them and survive. The predator that can best predict how the prey operates or will flee gets the next meal. On some level this can operate along the lines of the Red Queen hypothesis, where both parties are evolving to have greater levels of skill and adaptation, but equally so and therefore are locked on a treadmill going no where (think Alice and Wonderland).
Game Theory in Games: the best move is the unpredictable one. You may have a Royal Flush, but if you 'tip your hand' and people can predict that you do you have no real advantage. Lying, randomness and unpredictability win. Class room example: the game called "Matching Pennies." The game can be played were one person is the 'opposer' and the other is the 'matcher.' Both will either pick or flip their coin at the same time. If both match, then the 'matcher' wins both coins. If they are opposites then the 'opposer' gets them both. Without prepping the kids on the best strategy the game will at first start off quite boring and strategy less with both sides equally winning. The lesson really starts when the students start to anticipate what the other will do and incorporate long runs of the same side to add unpredictability. In the end, the best strategy is true randomness.
Greek Terminology: Proteus was a sea god that could change his shape unpredictably to avoid capture. Protean behavior is the random actions of animals to be unexpected.
Biological Application: Haven't you ever seen a pet gerbil, rat, fish, dog, cat, squirrel or other animal FREAK OUT when startled? That's Protean behavior! I see it with my catfish every time I turn on the light in his tank. Also, I know you've seen it with squirrels that try to randomly jink, zig zagging to confuse your predator car. They're trying to shock, dismay, startle, confuse and be unpredictable to gain a slight edge and avoid capture. Think of it like this, if every time a mouse jinked to the left when startled by a cat the cats would 'learn' through selective pressure to always dive to the left. The same would be true if they went straight, right, up, etc. The best move is unpredictability. Predators exploit the same strategy too. Aboriginals, weasels and other predators have been known for their 'crazy dance' to confuse and mystify their prey and while they're still trying to figure out WTF--WHAMO! Din-din.
Human Implications: maybe that ability was where our creativity first came from!
I LOVE TO THINK ABOUT THIS KIND OF STUFF. AWESOME!
Kudos go to Geoffrey Miller for The Mating Mind, from which a plegorized the ideas for this blog from.
Biological Context: there is a constant cat and mouse game (quite literally in some cases) that operates between predator and prey over generations and millenia. The prey that can best anticipate how the predator will hunt them can out smart them and survive. The predator that can best predict how the prey operates or will flee gets the next meal. On some level this can operate along the lines of the Red Queen hypothesis, where both parties are evolving to have greater levels of skill and adaptation, but equally so and therefore are locked on a treadmill going no where (think Alice and Wonderland).
Game Theory in Games: the best move is the unpredictable one. You may have a Royal Flush, but if you 'tip your hand' and people can predict that you do you have no real advantage. Lying, randomness and unpredictability win. Class room example: the game called "Matching Pennies." The game can be played were one person is the 'opposer' and the other is the 'matcher.' Both will either pick or flip their coin at the same time. If both match, then the 'matcher' wins both coins. If they are opposites then the 'opposer' gets them both. Without prepping the kids on the best strategy the game will at first start off quite boring and strategy less with both sides equally winning. The lesson really starts when the students start to anticipate what the other will do and incorporate long runs of the same side to add unpredictability. In the end, the best strategy is true randomness.
Greek Terminology: Proteus was a sea god that could change his shape unpredictably to avoid capture. Protean behavior is the random actions of animals to be unexpected.
Biological Application: Haven't you ever seen a pet gerbil, rat, fish, dog, cat, squirrel or other animal FREAK OUT when startled? That's Protean behavior! I see it with my catfish every time I turn on the light in his tank. Also, I know you've seen it with squirrels that try to randomly jink, zig zagging to confuse your predator car. They're trying to shock, dismay, startle, confuse and be unpredictable to gain a slight edge and avoid capture. Think of it like this, if every time a mouse jinked to the left when startled by a cat the cats would 'learn' through selective pressure to always dive to the left. The same would be true if they went straight, right, up, etc. The best move is unpredictability. Predators exploit the same strategy too. Aboriginals, weasels and other predators have been known for their 'crazy dance' to confuse and mystify their prey and while they're still trying to figure out WTF--WHAMO! Din-din.
Human Implications: maybe that ability was where our creativity first came from!
I LOVE TO THINK ABOUT THIS KIND OF STUFF. AWESOME!
Kudos go to Geoffrey Miller for The Mating Mind, from which a plegorized the ideas for this blog from.
Monday, January 18, 2010
7 Reasons You Should Want to Be Related to Monkeys
1. We are the latest link of a chain going back trillions of generations and billions of years, a weaving, winding branch with millions, upon millions of radiations since its root--as Darwin pointed out, many of those deceased branches are the rock that we build our houses and the ground beneath our feet. "We" made it through the Archaen, the Cambrian, the Carboniferous, the Jurassic, the Cretaceous, the Pleistocene. "We" battled trilobite, tricerotops, smilodon and spear tip. "We" have swum, crawled, burrowed, stalked, fled, climbed, scampered and sprinted. Watch this vid with a similar idea put to music--http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFLdIGNUKuw
2. It castes the light of understanding on human nature, psychology, and human foibles. Don't take this as an excuse for vice. Those from the religious right often despise this type of thinking since it seems to give a license to behave like an animal. I'm not doing that. I'm not giving an excuse to act like an animal, I'm giving an explanation for when we act like a human. Our finitude, our instincts, the always incomplete process of evolution limit our abilities. We're a work in progress and that's the only way we'll make sense of ourselves.
3. You understand the masterwork of humanity. We are the possessors of the most complex structure in the known universe--the human brain. We, a collection of vibrating molecules, can contemplate our role in the universe, can be moved to tears by the love of another, paint the Sixteenth Chapel and write the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.
4. Truth is always more beautiful than lies. Note: beauty does not equal attractive. The mythological accounts of the creation of the universe and man man be attractive to the reader, but since they're basically founded on lies they can never be truly beautiful, because they're never be virtuous. Reality will always be more more breathtaking because it's real.
5. Accepting that we're the product of evolution at the same time means that the timeline arrow of progress is still going on. Not only can we help shape that by our own reproductive choices, but increasingly more so through harnessing the power of genetic modification. For crying out loud, we've made rats that can glow in the dark! That's awesome. If that weren't enough we can also tantalize our imagination about the future evolution of humanity. What's next?!...
6. We can appreciate animals on a deeper, more empathic level because we understand first hand that their minds aren't that differnt from ours. The emotions they feel are real. Their loyalty like that of our own.
7. Our body becomes a history wonderland. Two arms and two legs becomes the digitless fins of the first tetrapod, five fingers becomes a nostalgic throw back to our amphibian ancestors that first walked the land, a dextrous opposable thumb that could touch the tip of each of the other fingers--an advancement that made tool work possible, our lungs--the modified gulping sacks of fish, our jaws--the revolutionary advancement of the Silurian period fish, our eyes--portals to our past souls that went from eye spots, to a pinhole eyes, to enclosed chambers, to a lensed masterwork with an iris, an iris that if is blue is only as old as 10k +- years.
2. It castes the light of understanding on human nature, psychology, and human foibles. Don't take this as an excuse for vice. Those from the religious right often despise this type of thinking since it seems to give a license to behave like an animal. I'm not doing that. I'm not giving an excuse to act like an animal, I'm giving an explanation for when we act like a human. Our finitude, our instincts, the always incomplete process of evolution limit our abilities. We're a work in progress and that's the only way we'll make sense of ourselves.
3. You understand the masterwork of humanity. We are the possessors of the most complex structure in the known universe--the human brain. We, a collection of vibrating molecules, can contemplate our role in the universe, can be moved to tears by the love of another, paint the Sixteenth Chapel and write the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.
4. Truth is always more beautiful than lies. Note: beauty does not equal attractive. The mythological accounts of the creation of the universe and man man be attractive to the reader, but since they're basically founded on lies they can never be truly beautiful, because they're never be virtuous. Reality will always be more more breathtaking because it's real.
5. Accepting that we're the product of evolution at the same time means that the timeline arrow of progress is still going on. Not only can we help shape that by our own reproductive choices, but increasingly more so through harnessing the power of genetic modification. For crying out loud, we've made rats that can glow in the dark! That's awesome. If that weren't enough we can also tantalize our imagination about the future evolution of humanity. What's next?!...
6. We can appreciate animals on a deeper, more empathic level because we understand first hand that their minds aren't that differnt from ours. The emotions they feel are real. Their loyalty like that of our own.
7. Our body becomes a history wonderland. Two arms and two legs becomes the digitless fins of the first tetrapod, five fingers becomes a nostalgic throw back to our amphibian ancestors that first walked the land, a dextrous opposable thumb that could touch the tip of each of the other fingers--an advancement that made tool work possible, our lungs--the modified gulping sacks of fish, our jaws--the revolutionary advancement of the Silurian period fish, our eyes--portals to our past souls that went from eye spots, to a pinhole eyes, to enclosed chambers, to a lensed masterwork with an iris, an iris that if is blue is only as old as 10k +- years.
Bicameralism
"In psychology, bicameralism is a hypothesis which argues that the human brain once assumed a state known as a bicameral mind in which cognitive functions are divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys." The Almight Wikipedia
perhaps my notion of sensing 'god' in the past is little more than an advancement of the sense/voice of the 'other' in my mind. Here's how this might work: there's has been selection pressure in human evolution to give sexual selection favoritism to those that can easily and adeptly communicate. Part of learning how to do this in an advanced manner very well may have developed from a mental ability to model/practice having conversations in our minds. Think of your own experience. Haven't you on some level experienced a sense of both speaking to another (who is yourself, but a different yourself...) as well as hearing our 'conscience'/Jiminy Cricket which 'speaks' to us from within and without...IT's hard to describe without sounding like a stark raving lunatic, but perhaps you will with very little effort understand what I'm saying. We have a built in "other" inside ourselves--a speech modeling simulator that allows us to have internal dialog with ourselves. This ability may have been valuable to allows us to train to be able to fluently communicate ideas. Perhaps a side effect of this isn't in fact that far off from our sense of 'the other' in spirituality both as a soul and as the presence of a deity.
Much more could be said about how we needed to be able to understand another beings mind, which is a very advanced form of cognition and primatologist debate on how well other primates can do it. No question that we do it so well that we give inanimate objects animation, personification, identities, names and imagine they have a mind. Ever gotten angry at a machine/computer? Then you're guilty. :)
perhaps my notion of sensing 'god' in the past is little more than an advancement of the sense/voice of the 'other' in my mind. Here's how this might work: there's has been selection pressure in human evolution to give sexual selection favoritism to those that can easily and adeptly communicate. Part of learning how to do this in an advanced manner very well may have developed from a mental ability to model/practice having conversations in our minds. Think of your own experience. Haven't you on some level experienced a sense of both speaking to another (who is yourself, but a different yourself...) as well as hearing our 'conscience'/Jiminy Cricket which 'speaks' to us from within and without...IT's hard to describe without sounding like a stark raving lunatic, but perhaps you will with very little effort understand what I'm saying. We have a built in "other" inside ourselves--a speech modeling simulator that allows us to have internal dialog with ourselves. This ability may have been valuable to allows us to train to be able to fluently communicate ideas. Perhaps a side effect of this isn't in fact that far off from our sense of 'the other' in spirituality both as a soul and as the presence of a deity.
Much more could be said about how we needed to be able to understand another beings mind, which is a very advanced form of cognition and primatologist debate on how well other primates can do it. No question that we do it so well that we give inanimate objects animation, personification, identities, names and imagine they have a mind. Ever gotten angry at a machine/computer? Then you're guilty. :)
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