on humanism and environmental crisis

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Stories about the invention of language

The stories that help us understand “The invention of language as an ultimate culprit for the environmental and social crisis.”

I liked this essay, but my friends think it could be better. Some conclusions and assumptions were too hastily made. The text was too dry and not personal. My persona, apparently, was too pushy and annoying, as I would act as “the strident scientist who knows all.”

  The language was invented by humans very late, as a simple communication social tool. With the recent dominance of the left hemisphere, it crazily determines our reality.

   Danka was an incredible woman. The times must have been ready for a big, almost magical transformation in the living beings on Earth.

She lived about 50,000 years ago in the hunter-gatherer group somewhere in Eastern Turkey. During her single long life, she witnessed and participated in the invention of a new communication method.  As a toddler, she was saved from a tiger attack by possibly the last surviving Neanderthal, Adam. Later, Adam, recovering after the fight with the tiger, observed little Danka learning to communicate, pointing at objects trying to repeat the sounds. Adam was unusually motivated, loved The Beautiful, Danka’s big sister, and wanted to understand and belong.

The life of these people was simple and routine; it was about executing inborn instincts prompted by a changing environment. Sun was rising, and the men went hunting gazelles, which were plentiful there. The women did the rest- gather nuts, wild grain, and fruit.  Everybody helped with caring for the children, grooming, and making stone tools.

 The desires were simple: safety, warmth, belonging, food, mating, and social position. Algorithms and neurotransmitters determined the actions and planning, felt subjectively what we would call “wants, fears, and pleasures.”

  When I go for a morning walk with my dog, Tex, it is pretty much the same. The clouds moved away, and the sun is shining in Tennessee. I am breathing, walking, and enjoying the park around me. The dog is happy; he feels pretty much the same.

  No words. He sees me happy; I see him happy. We think about the breakfast we will have on return. I will cook eggs; Tex will have his pellets. I feel alive, slightly cold, though, and getting hungry. We both think about breakfast, and we both know what to do and what will happen: some vague images coming to mind: “inside the fridge’, “cutting tomatoes,” “Remember the toasts!” and such. You can imagine that these images and thoughts are the pieces of larger instinctual and learned sequences of instructions in my brain. The events in Tex’s mind are pretty much the same: happy on the walk, chilled, hungry, expecting to be fed on return, all parts of instinctual algorithms and learned routines.

   Deep in my “breakfast reverie’ I am startled by the sudden: “Hello, Tom!”. I bumped into Sam, an old friend of mine, with his dog.

“Hello, Sam, “I exclaimed, “what are you doing here?”.

Normal? Well, it looked normal, but it was a neural tsunami.

Until now, both I and my dog utilized our basal ganglia- like the amygdala, and brain stem, maybe some hippocampal memories.

Suddenly (without a second of hesitation), I started to use language. I jumped into a completely separated reality full of people, things, and ideas- all generated in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas while the previous animal system was still active. I was merging both of my realities seamlessly and effortlessly.

Tex was left utterly alone, now playing with Sam’s dog using still the same parts of the brain as before the meeting. (Animal communication uses completely different parts of the brain- chimps with damaged Broca’s area, unlike humans, communicate just fine.)

But neither I nor Sam nor the dogs were aware of the abyss dividing us. The humans couldn’t imagine how such friendly beings as dogs could be so different so suddenly. As we can not imagine it, our brain “explains’ it attaching anthropomorphic features to the dog’s behavior. ”Happy dog, playing with the friend’- we are denying the divide.

Explanations occur in our language-made reality, left hemisphere-dominated world. It is somehow analogous to nature’s “horror vacui”- the fear of void. It is how the famous “a rabbit or a duck’ picture is always explained- one way or another, but not “I don’t know” or “both.”

When we think about Danka’s people, living 50,000 years ago, we create, all of us; anthropologists included, accepted illusions describing humans (and animals) without language.

It is a strange thing; they had brains almost identical in every aspect to our brains, and yet their world before the invention of language was so, so different!

  Max Bennett, in his book “A Brief History of Intelligence,” describes this beautifully, step by step. And yet, he is so wrong. Talking about early vertebrates living on the young Earth half a billion years ago, he says, “brain decodes the pattern of activated neurons to recognize a specific thing” (the italics are mine). Things have specific semiotic (of meaning) boundaries delineated by human symbolic language. These animals recognized not things but choices of behavior, the only thing that could be conserved by the evolutionary pressure.

People can’t understand my theories because they can’t imagine the world without things.

  Max Bennett is an artificial intelligence guru with incredible knowledge of evolutionary biology. He will show you how we are learning to make machines following the evolutionary development of nervous systems from bacteria to humans. For him, like most of us, ingrained since the cradle, the things are the most certain and “beyond question” features of our reality, more than ideas, spirits, and gods. Despite the author’s intention and understanding, Bennett’s book moving along the evolutionary tree and relating the stages to AI advances can help in making in our mind the picture of little Danka’s community. These people grew up with a firmly established system of daily routines, activities, pleasures, and terrors. They did not know things, did not need them, and they did not have them. They did not want them; things were not “on the list of their desires,” not on their vocabulary, they did not have vocabulary!

We can imagine that the things “lay dormant” embedded inside instinctual instruction codes describing, for example, things to buy online.  Can you imagine the Internet site describing the needs or pleasures that can be satisfied instead of describing what to buy?  Or going to the restaurant and talking to the waiter about your thirst, hunger, and anxiety instead of ordering from the menu? (unless the menu would be called “What’s your problem?”).

  It reminds me of my uncle “teaching” me how to swim. He threw me to the lake from the boat. There were no objects and no things, only survival instinct and trusting my beloved uncle’s good intentions.

Remember my encounter with Sam and language reality mixed with non-language (non-things) reality from before our meeting?

Now, watch with me the mother playing with her happy 6-month-old.

Back and forth, taking turns starts this loving play. The smile, the coo, then pause, the response, the sing-song, the pointing and playing with objects around them. The duo engages and slowly accelerates the sophistication and richness of play. Mom knows that the baby will be like her, a person. She listens to it in the crescendo of exchanges and happiness.

Now, stop. We are going to split this scene in two. We’ll separate it into two generations distance, not “any” generations but the generations when the magic happened.

First, Danka’s older sister plays with her, second, Danka’s daughter Ada plays with her baby. Between them is the mysterious “invention of the language.” Were these two baby plays different?

I wondered if they would be. Which sounds are the words, which just play-sounds, sing sounds, being together, touching toys, maybe naming them, learning about myself together with learning about the outside world, learning about being the mother and the child and the self?

And maybe there was the third person. Early humans were under pressure, maybe on the run, they had a lot of alloparenting (parenting by many different members of the group, rather than exclusively by the mother, like in chimpanzees), and everybody was constantly together, maybe the third person observed the scene and translated that into adult communication? Maybe it was Adam, the Last Neanderthal, desperately trying to belong and to understand the exchange. And the parts of the baby’s babbling become the first Adam’s words uttered in homo sapiens language.

  There would be a crucial difference between the two scenarios (a mere 40 years apart, as the generations were short then). I think that in the first case, before the language, when 2-year-old Danka was playing with her sister, the presence and role of the third person, a motivated observer, is essential. The play of name,  the “namer” and the object, had to be experienced by the person, human, being outside the triangle of agreement.

  The origins of the triangle of agreement (no things yet)

              Agency, or You/I, or Reflecting on the World

                             /.                                          `

        Naming (There is no symbol                  See, feel,

without an agency naming it).                              Hear

                        /                                                          `

Symbol/ Declarative label  < > merge <   >     Perception (a piece  

   Translating                                              of code, program, algorithm)

                           Triangle of agreement

Forgotten side.                                                 Right side, used side

                                 A human (“namer”)

                            /.                             `

             Naming.                            See, feel, hear

              /                                                       `

A name.   >  >        >       same.   >   >   >   A thing

So, the agreement is made. And then? Then, the agreement is used for communication, manipulated, “grammarized”, preserved and conserved like a sacred flame. Where? In things!

The left part of the triangle is forgotten and we use the right side.

The things with their names and shreds of perception, (instruction codes) are the bricks with which our reality was built for every human baby, including  Ada’s daughter.  The objectivity, (like DNA in every living organism), is the way to carry and build upon it.

Ada playing with her daughter doesn’t need any observer. The “outside World” is in objects, food, toys, crib, and Mum. For them, like for us now, each of these objects/names has boundaries worked out by humans and preserved in the language. The system, the game, the agreement, really, the charades with names instead of gestures, once in place, was carried and multiplied endlessly, effortlessly. How simple.

Category:

enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, human nature, nature of reality

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“An ultimate culprit for the environmental and social crisis”.

Introduction

  1. There is a crisis. Humanity more mature, wiser, and more reflective wakes up to see a tragic regression and looming disaster. Media lies are mixed with environmental and social problems. Personal anxieties are mixed with the suffering of millions. Conspiracy theories and overwhelming avalanche of facts are racing for attention of our confused and bewildered minds.
  2. I see the invention of language as the ultimate cause of the crisis. That invention saved us from extinction by giving us communication tools and an unbeatable advantage over all living beings.  But the same tool through the invention of things made over millennia the obsession with power possible.

Power involves the ownership of material goods, but also

  the ownership of the people’s freedoms, on the level of the individual, business, national and religious systems. Slowly but surely, lured by this myth of power we developed a thin, filthy layer of fear and greed.

  • This greed is just cultural and psychological and is too recent to be evolutionary or biological. It is not in our nature, which is why my proposed “no greed parenting” systems can shift our worldviews, desires, and habits in one generation.
  • My solution for these problems is based on the evolutionary explanation of some crucial ethological and anthropological facts in our prehistory.

   Human ancestors evolved from apes: huge brains with a prodigious mixture of sensory capacities-smell, sound, vision, touch.

 These already very social animals, great apes, splintered just 8 million years ago again into a new avenue even more brainy, “betting” on continuous growth of memory and communication, “neglecting” the body’s adaptability to changing environment. They were early humans with their empathy, friendship, and social networks, but without language, without syntax, there were no names or selves. They were living in an instinctual world. We can not imagine that like we can’t imagine “how it is to be a bat”.

In 1976, Julian Jaynes wrote a seminal book called “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”. (His work was analyzed in Marcel Kuijsten’s book, “Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind: The Theories of Julian Jaynes”.) Jaynes tried to imagine these humans as  “listening to the gods”. I would compare their wisdom to insect nest intelligence.

Ethologists and anthropologists understand the “consciousness” of animals and early humans as an instinctual intelligence governed by neural networks interwoven into evolutionarily developed algorithms, a set of “rules” or procedures to be followed in certain critical situations involving choices. Some instincts can be extremely sophisticated (“how to act as the leader of the pack of wolves” or “disgust with eating your own children”) some simple: the eels following electrical potentials.

From the onset, early human intelligence in groups of people such as a family or tribe evolved into a pattern where it was dominantly allocated to an individual: for example, the alpha male or female. All other eusocial species, that is, species showing an advanced level of social organization, evolved into socially complex systems because of group intelligence. For example, bees are a eusocial species; Each bee has limited intelligence, but the bee hive as a whole is incredibly smart.

Reality Models

.Now, with our intellect we, humans, are trying to understand our place in the Universe– so, we are making models. Curiosity and understanding grew into “knowledge about the world’ and from that sprouted “science” with its logic and objectivity principles.

But, alas, we are using “obsolete equipment”, the great ape’s nervous system evolved in the process of working on our niche, making maps of the environment, and creating a “theory of mind.”

Our understanding is made of these animal models, but we described them using our human language: dolphins “playing, singing, chasing the boat” and squirrels “outsmarting us” in the yard. As over the epochs and civilizations our language evolves, so do these models.

I see just three overlapping sets of models of reality.

  1. Ancient, pre-animal ground of being. Like forest intelligence, the spirit of the mountain, Gaia, Sun and Gods. It is a primordial, unexplained, “aha” of existence.

It is also our deepest understanding of physics, mathematics, and cosmology. (For example: in the forest one experiences a myriad of criss-crossing forces creating the forest as we see it. The trees, the fungi, the animals, but also, water and sun exposure, the history of volcanic eruptions, and human exploration, all according to thermodynamics and the laws of entropy.)

Our language can not explain it, (how could it?) but we can feel it. We share this wisdom in our bones, literally, but we know it is beyond us.

AI can’t have this data, and can’t learn it. AI is based on self-learning algorithms, without animals there is no nervous system, and no algorithms to evolve.

2. Pre-linguistic, animal-like, instinctual, emotional, and intuitive.  These models are based on the neural networks in the brains of animals and humans. In the process of strengthening its niche, each species accumulated data in the form of brain algorithms, starting about one-half billion years ago. We observe animals and ourselves, but most of this data we also will never know. It includes our own instincts, pre- linguistic part of unconsciousness, and “collective consciousness”. It’s huge: no sharing of the wisdom, each organism alone, trillions of them.

3. Our tiny human reality, built by each human baby from the ground up, from babbling, grasping, pointing, playing, “bathing” in words, names, and relationships, then, starting in the second year of life, in “things”. It originated in animals acting, and manipulating the material world. The skills are located mostly in the left hemisphere leading to the symbolic, shared language. An Aboriginal Australian man, the famous Captain’s Cook Indians from Tierra del Fuego, you and I, we all share the same one unique reality. It is why we can play charades and chimpanzees or AI can’t.

(Of course, if you attempt to describe the cosmos (#1 model) with human language (#3 model) you’d be literally “lost for words” and justly feel “there is something more”)!

 For every modern human, these models resemble “Babushka” nesting: my own objective reality described by language, consciousness, and reason in the center. (see:#3)

    Outside of that, there is the unconscious instinctual world, a sum of experiences accumulated in neural networks during half a billion years of animal evolution. (see: #2)

     And then we know there is even bigger ground of being, sacred, energy fields, that we know intuitively but also attempt to imagine and meditate about.

When I die, all my ”Babushkas” disappear, when we all die, everything is gone.

Origin of language

This simple, even if startling, concept of reality explains also consciousness, the Holy Grail of neuroscience, psychology and philosophy.

But before that, we have to remember how language was built.

It helps to see the language as a survival communication tool, it is what saved us from extinction, just 50,000 years ago. We built this tool in a similar way a one-year-old baby learns about the world: metaphor over metaphor, over metaphor, each receiving a name and becoming a thing. And the reality was growing as we learned more and more of them. Round things can be eyes, or balls, or apples, or stars… Happy things; Mom, food, toys!

This incredible innovation of communication was similar in its importance to the tool of preserving the structure of the organisms through the nucleotide chains- DNA.

It was based on the concept of eusocial sharing of meaning attached to name (sound)  and perception (things).

Out of these three crucial elements: sharing, sound, and perception, actually only the first- sharing, was really new and very revolutionary. Somehow mother/baby sharing was shifted to the grown-up world. Sharing included the concepts of “you” and “I”. This we later called “self” “reflective” and “consciousness” in different contexts.

Each word is a metaphor, it has similar origins in “social agreement” (context) and contains perceptual, “old” data and a declaration: an agency naming this old data. For example, I say “ocean of your eloquence” or ”apple of your eye”. All words in each metaphor are already simpler, older metaphors.

Sharing metaphors (words) is unique for humans (like DNA for living things), our reality is completely separate from non-symbolic beings. What we see as the mind of animals or AI, with all appearances of intelligence, language, friendship, and happiness are all anthropomorphisms!

No language, no names. No names, no things. No things, no reality. No reality, no consciousness.

See : the “Origins of Language “and ” Triangle of Agreement” diagrams in the next post: “The stories that help us understand ” The invention of language…”

Consciousness

 It is really simple: The reality is everything around you (I mean everything, past, present, and future, down to each of your bloody cells, and each of the distant stars!), the self is you, and the connection and action between the two is the consciousness. These three big concepts are really one.

They are all the gift of language, naturally one can not exist without the others, all just about 50,000 young.

   So, we call this unique feeling, this connection between self and our reality, the state and knowledge related to my active being “consciousness”, but do not fuss about it. You know what I mean, but if you ask me to add some precision, say, into the level of my alertness, it is fine, be my guest. But there is no “consciousness” floating in the universe of information and hominids trying to match it better or worse. Words are just communication tools.

 All animals have some evolutionary wisdom in their nervous system and their group intelligence so they are sentient but not conscious. Some are very, very sentient, they look like us, act like us, maybe feel like us, and we should not harm them.

. Only humans are conscious, by this ancient agreement solely, repeated with every baby, they operate metaphoric, symbolic language, this unique communication system, learned in infancy with names, agents, and things. Most of the time we act instinctually, sharing the sentience wisdom with the rest of our sister beings, sharing the love to nature and to the Earth.

Only humans can at will move one’s attention froma reflection on the meaning of this essay to laughter or crying to the basic certainty of existence. We are the metaphor experts, jumping domains and shifting the reality models in our minds.

. Only we, humans, have a planetary vision, responsibility, and capacity to save us… from ourselves.

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, Explicit and implicit worldview, human nature, materialism, nature of reality, origin of self

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Bi-weekly email from Dr. Tom

What the nature of reality have to do with the environmental and social collapse of our civilization?

Everything. 

But, how can a mere retired pediatrician explain it?

I plan to explain and discuss it bit by bit. 

I  will write as a pediatrician with 50 years of hands-on clinical experience. I will add the worldview of an introverted eco-humanist activist. And an armchair evolution theorist. Then I will root it in anthropology -there I will explore the origins of cognition. 

Like in the full circle, my proposed solutions of the mess we have gotten ourselves in will go back to kids, to parenting and education.  

I will not talk about hoity-toity utopias, but even minute improvement in these woefully sick areas of our modernity can help a lot. 

Let’s start this old conversation anew.

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, Explicit and implicit worldview, human nature, Humanism, materialism, nature of reality

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From an instinctual creature to a person. Different worlds, different realities.

I see faces everywhere. In the clouds, on the tiles in the bathroom, on the old Indian carpet, in Sedona Red Rocks, instead of vortexes, I see faces. There are human faces, animals, aliens, or monsters- most often in upright positions- the evidence that it is my evolutionary (scarred of a saber-tooth tiger) brain makes them.

I am obsessed with my brain producing images, questioning and pondering on our ancestors’ concept of reality.

How can I question reality being a mere retired pediatrician?

The reason is global warming.

( I think the term “collapse of human niche”  is more comprehensive than the narrow term-” global warming”- it includes all our problems not only hot summers. You can say “environmental disaster”- but you have to remember about socio-economic, psychological, anthropological, and even philosophical woes, among others. You know what I am talking about – Amazon fires and Arctic Ice- China and Ukraine.)

What does reality have to do with the environmental collapse?

Everything.

Nobody really questions reality, not the caveman, not the modern man. Yes, there is a sticker “Question Reality”, but it means only “be weird, irritate everybody, especially grown-ups”. Philosophers? They do not count. Moderns see reality as the most stable thing in this crazy World. Even if it is a wild, cruel World into which we were chased from Paradise? Yes. Things (our reality) are so easy, workable, measurable, and reliable. It works now and worked ok forever- on the local scale. Now, lift your head from the screen, look around, and you’ll see that it doesn’t work well anymore. While the intuitive picture worsens, let’s do some rational thinking while keeping the intuitive image active. This will be our introduction to our hybrid mind – more about it later.

 In this essay, I want to talk about the magical events occurring in every human child around 9 to 18 months of age (or so).

This would be a base for this new understanding and as a pediatrician,  I know something about it.

So, If we could shift our understanding of reality and see it just as a clever tool homo sapiens invented recently then the task of re-working and improving this tool might be doable. 

Most importantly this solution, the shift in our worldview, by going straight to the source, would help with all types of niche collapse.

 In my understanding, I tried to incorporate new discoveries and ideas from evolutionary neurobiology and anthropology.

1. The concept of hybrid brain unique to humans. (Merlin Donald)

I’ll explain what it means here, because on internet this means human/robot combination.

2. The concept of the recent, sudden acquisition of symbolic language at the dramatic period when Homo Sapiens were almost extinct.(Ian Tattersall, Noam Chomsky) I know, most cognitive scientists disagree, they are “gradualists”-  getting language slow and gradually.

3. Comparative data from Max Planck Institute (Tomasello) on infant human versus non-human development and behavior.

 100 years earlier, Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, working on intelligence testing, tried to understand this magical transformation he observed- from young infants using mostly instinctual system of “learning” based on sensory and motor reflexes to older infant so charming, alert and intelligent. It was a dramatic discovery then, his stages of cognitive development and a pivotal moment of recognizing “object permanence”. An infant suddenly sees that things and people have this incredible ability to continue to exist even if out of sight, and then, against any reason, are being able to appear again just the same!

I spent 50 years of examining babies, hands-on, in sickness and wellbeing on 3 continents. It was a “medical home” type of practice – I saw the same children, often since birth until they went to college. 

Actually, now I do remember one 6-month-old baby girl I was able to help. I saw little Josie for the first time in the well-baby clinic. 

Mom was worried as Jossie cried a lot and ‘did not talk much”. 

I play with Josie, she lays on her back, I smile, talk to her, take her arms, and pull her gently up to the sitting position. She likes it, holds her head up, and looks into my eyes making some happy noises. She was fine! Later I found that the mother, very anxious and with some labor-related depressive mood, was worried about autism.  So I reassured her, “ Jossie is fine, you need to see a shrink, get some pills and psychotherapy. Play more with your baby, talk, if you too sad- sing, dance with her.” This straight talk was only possible because I knew the mother since she was my patient as a teenager.

What I saw did not fit Piagetian stages. He saw babies as small adults going through stages of more and more adult-like levels of intelligence.

I saw them as building new reality. I saw two distinct processes overlapping and beautifully integrated. 

  1. The first one we share with animals. We, like animals, are born with an inherited set of instinctual behaviors. They are automatic like breathing, and some are part of complicated systems of reactions, emotions, and actions. Especially social animals, they have their individual, intelligence and nest intelligence, being a part of a larger system- like a beehive or pack of wolves. 

2. The second process: the young human infant starts as an instinctual being and continues to grow curious and intelligent. Bathed in the world of language, names, and people, she starts to mimic and understand its environment. 

She sees the things – no name for this yet. But she learned for the last 3 months that the World is full of things and they are peculiar- they have a sound related to them, “name?” and the agent related to them, mom or other people. She loves this play, she tries to sound “ba, ba” and grab the thing and make eye contact. Happy. The difference is huge: babies building their shared social world consisting of things and people with their names and relationships. 

   Over the years, my experience showed me over and over that we were missing something, something so big like an elephant in the living room.

 I was reading books and scientific articles trying to find an explanation. Well, the philosophers did not know pediatrics ( Famous Merlau-Ponty lectured in Sorbonne about child development !) and pediatricians were not interested in the concepts of reality.

Human infants in the first few months of life are propelled by a system of instinctual instructions, some inherited, others improving with daily baby experiences. Breathing, digesting, sucking, turning, smiling, crying then grabbing things. 

At 18 month ,we see the same little person, fully conscious, talking, even arguing, loving and sometimes demanding. Magic!

Well, following evolutionary science we can observe a similar process in our ancestral past.

Hominids, at least 27 branches of them,  including our ancestors passed through the last 8 million years along very similar transformations.

From australopithecus , instinctual, almost animal creature to today’s modern Homo Sapiens. Similarities are not only in evolution of behavior but also in anatomical  and functional brain development. ( Our encephalographic waves, even in this crude reflection the brain activities,  shift through different patterns depending on our activities.)

There is one more crucial component of that parallel story, one more domain. That is the dramatic influence of sociality on our species. 

 It is strange, but there is a lot written about human world – which is very complicated- but much less about the World of animal which is definitely simpler and easier to investigate. 

Von Uexkull described 100 years ago the World of a tick ( today we would say- “ a little blood-thirsty computer”) and then 50 years ago Thomas Nagel famously asked “ What is it like to be a bat” and basically answered, “who knows?”. 

Plenty of communication but no language. No names, so no things,  no persons, others, so no self either,  just behaviors.

Darwinists made it simple: the survival of the fittest- it is what animals do and know and live for. Their behavior is directed by the experience and wisdom of the  nervous system, evolution-created and machined. A computer-like system, recently with an AI twist. A system of instruction codes, which in “higher” animals can be incredibly complicated- from bee dance to the alfa-male strategy of a gorilla.

Animal had it tough, no breakthrough for about half billion of years!

Since the development of multicellular organisms, origins of organs and the nervous system nothing new happened. Just painfully slow, stubborn evolution, working with mutations, improving niche, diversity, on and on, and on. The systems become more and more intelligent. Now people say that cognition or intelligence is not brain only, but body intelligence, nest intelligence , like bees and termites and primates, maybe forest intelligence. Others like Ervin Laszlo  and Budapest Club adding  concept of planetary intelligence, Gaia hypothesis.

We humans have all these intelligences accumulated, combined, working together. 

According to some wise cognitive scientists ( Merlin Donald, Ian Tattersall for example) our mind can be imagined as a hybrid system. From animals we inherited all automatic, instinctual reflexive system, like animals have. On the top of that evolutionary old machinery, we have symbolic language, which we use when we talk, think and write. ( like electric motor on the top of combustion engine in Toyota Prius)

Babies are born with a fully functional old system but are getting a symbolic one within the first couple of years.

There are some dramatic and important differences between these two systems.

  1. Old system deals with subjective, not shared with others, elements like my pain, my skill to ride a bicycle, my anger etc. 

“Not sharing “ requires some explanation: Two bees flying next to each other use almost identical, inherited instructions codes for their quest. But, like your fear or hunger can not be shared with mine, bee’s quest can not be shared with others, even being identical.

New system is shared: when me and my wife see a sofa – it is more or less same sofa, “what’s for dinner?” and even “nothing!” means more or less the same for her and for me.

  1. Old system is not only not shared but being pre-linguistic, the language if we try to describe it is poor and difficult- try to describe your pain, your skills, your anger.

The new system is the tool to describe the items of our reality.

  1. Old system lacks things, objects, persons- there are just instruction codes for evolutionary beneficial behaviors. For example: There is no tree, some tree’s characteristics appears in the  “when you run, avoid this hard thing”, and “when you’re chased by a bear- look for something to climb on” and “ you might find some good fruit there”. Also these codes can not be shared! I have to show you how to pick up apples, can not point for the orchard in the distance and charade picking and eating apples. (no, animals do not play charades). 

The baby learning new system, learns names of objects attached to people naming them. She learns and control them.

  1. In the old system, the codes are not modular,( half bee dance means nothing),they are “evolutionary very expensive” and clumsy for the brain to get them, the longer the worse, they “improve” or “branch out’ very slowly.

“Ball, mom, wall, bed”- easy, modular, ready to use, build on, like Lego blocks.

  1. This one is tricky: paradoxically the old system is subjective, organism‘s own, but in the same time is impersonal, maybe you can say- anonymous. It does not have the concept of “you” , and then “I” doesn’t make any sense. 

The new system, being shared with others has somehow this notion of “you” in it even if not spoken. Like a baby, she learns the names of things and people together with the underlining notion of “namer”, which later is dropped and forgotten. I imagine that for the caveman this original translation was associated with acknowledging the person participating in the process of translating.

Off course in our daily life, these two systems co-exist and cooperate seamlessly- you breathe,(old) then you say “hallo” (new), then you are suspicious,(old) then you say “never mind”(new).

Actually the talking World is small, simple and created by humans only very recently and when I say ”Hello Sister, Hello Brother, my readers” with this “hello” we presently occupy such a tiny place, such a pigeon hole, the World of the symbolic language. When I go for a walk, I breathe and look around and wander. Around me are millions and millions of different worlds, they are ancient, almost eternal worlds of plants and animals. They burst with stories and wisdom accumulated since the beginning of the Universe. And I am a part of these teachings, my body, its structure built by evolution, my heart beating and feelings, sadness, love and fear. Would I try to describe it, our language, this simple recent tool, this tool would be so inadequate, missing the core meaning, so I just say “hello” and you answer …”hello”. And we may start to talk about the recent movie or dinner and all these worlds, mute, anonymous, poised to interact, but presently forgotten, or suspended, are waiting until we finish talking.

Philosophers, they usually do, made this mixture of two systems, the World of” raw’ experience much too complicated.   I think, with having in mind the two systems described above, you can make a clear and simple distinction. 

  1. The tiny world of words, things, we humans named since about 50 thousand years ago. This was a minuscule but useful homo sapiens invention creating a shared system of symbols and words assigned to them for us to communicate ( and trash the planet in the process).
  2. All Worlds and Dimensions include all other intelligence, past, present, and future attached to our human representations of the Worlds of plants and animals- a separate World for each sentient being, whatever your concept of that may be. It also includes our human subjective Worlds, also our Worlds when we are too young to talk, too sad, too stupid, or just too lonely.
  3. Remember: the human reality is only one, comes from caveman 50 ooo  years ago, shared by all humans, via their infants, including Eskimos and Pygmies, but each insect has its own world, as each of us also has ( only humans have two). 
  4. Also: imagine you are in the forest. Unless you came with an axe, your world do not participate in the world of an oak tree, but this oak tree is fully included in your (our) world- when you are there, or talk about it, photograph it, write about it- you know, all the business we do with things.

E.O. Wilson  tells us that the core of human nature contains interest in others, the propensity to communicate, and the urge to belong. While, naturally, great apes share some of those characteristics, we excel in these skills and priorities. He says that we, humans, and 18, (only 18) other specia are eusocial. Obviously, the above characteristics of our nature relate very closely to eusociality. These eusocial guys have intelligence in their brains and they have Nest Intelligence. Each ant or wolf is stupid but the ants’s nest and wolf’s pack are very smart.

 In our human case, language connects individuals to the nest intelligence, to the human culture. This unique capacity gives us the chance to modify our reality. Is it cheating?  No, we cheated 10,000 years ago when we linked controlling material things to happiness (a subject of the other essay).

Happiness, EOWilson would agree, comes from being with others, from belonging and from talking. 

—

Tom Voychehovski

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, Explicit and implicit worldview, human nature, Inventions, materialism, nature of reality, Pediatrics

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Reason for life versus meaning of life

Instead of thinking and brooding about the unanswerable “meaning of life”, much better, more immediate, and urgent should be (is?)”reason for life”.

It is much more dynamic and useful too. I like “reason”- the tools, equipment, and mechanisms are clearly stated  -the reason is the system that can, should, and ought to produce the answer. I like “for” instead of “of”. It implies that life requires, and needs action, that what is, is not satisfactory, but you are in just the right place and time to exert effort toward better. It is almost like in that brilliant question is a very positive and natural beginning, budding of an answer! In contrast, the eternal “meaning of ” smells of linguistic masturbation, wallowing in self-invented doubts, not leading anywhere. It looks to me that, again, in the question of the meaning of life the answer “there is none” is there already.

Or, which means the same: “God” or “know thyself”. It (this question) questions the natural feeling about life. As “it is not it”. You have, it almost demands, invent a new language to name the meaning beyond yourself, like you, as you are now, are not good enough. Like “there is no point in doing anything until you’ll be better, wiser, knowing something more.” But the dimensions of those changes are permanently and immanently beyond you.  Hence: “God”.

Reason for life is so humanistic and encouraging. It retains the philosophical generalization, but by pointing toward “reason”- the tool you are familiar with and toward a big thing-“life” -it suggests a matryoshka doll structure of the answer. There is no one answer, there are many projects inside bigger and bigger goals and directions. You can start right away, today, and know that you can enfold them (the projects) as life unfolds. And as Desiderata says “it unfolds as it should”.

Category:

Evolutionary Reality, human nature, Humanism, Meditation

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Danka’s Farewell

HomoTranslensis

It seems that this simple but allegorical story requires some explanations.

    The subtitle is Homo translensis (human that translates), with pseudo-Latin adjective I invented as distinctive from other names we called ourselves: “sapiens” (wise), “faber” (working), “ludens” (that plays), and “historicus” (the one with a sense of history), etc.

     I think that acquiring the symbolic shared language was a magic trick that made modern humanity, and saved it from extinction. And, as this essay digs deeply into the process related to talking, we will see that some of the events are very close to what we know as “translating”.

To translate you have for a moment to see or understand something in the old way and, at the same time, see or understand the same thing or concept in the new way (or “your way” and “my way”).

      This essay is also a double take. It describes Danka with the burden of the Promethean knowledge –humanity getting the language. Astonishingly in 3 generations, nobody can even imagine “not talking”. ( compare this with the famous Nicaraguan deaf orphans and their sign language,) As Danka struggles to preserve this story, I, the author, am struggling hopelessly with explaining the same thing.

      How can we imagine ourselves as smart, hominids, with huge brains, culture, social structure, cooperation, empathy, love, and planning, but without symbolic language ( they are on the brink of getting it)?

Neanderthals did not have it and they went extinct at only 40,000 years ago. It makes it likely that all of at least 30 branches of hominids died away without talking.

     How can we imagine? Well, modern ethology might help. In the kind of reverse thinking, we are learning so much about animals, our not-talking fellow creatures, who feel, think, are sad and glad, relate to us and we to them. But the smartest parrot or bonobo can not be trained to pass the

level of communication of an average toddler. I hope this essay will help us

imagine how close we are to them. Also, how symbolic language, by ushering us into shared reality creates an unbreachable abyss between our worlds.


Danka is an old woman. 

Many years ago, when she was a curious toddler, she asked her older sister, The Beautiful, “What’s that?” and pointed to an apple. Her sister answered: “Apple”. It is a part of the story “The Last Neanderthal”.

Then, she grew up to be a dancer and a visionary — griot (“Danka’s Self”).

Now she is an old woman. The children, grandchildren, and husbands are all done.

The dances and singing are all done too. Except for the last one.

She has had a great life, five children with Andy, her first husband, her beloved with freckles. The trickster and cave painter. He gave her rings and necklaces and beautiful gowns. He built the biggest hut in the village, the envy of every woman. He was a shaman, and the people gave him presents and jewels to buy luck and protection from evil spirits.

Andy and the second husband are dead and some children are dead and some grown up, gone. She feels in her bones that her time is up and plans for the last dance. Before that, she has to make some visits. 

Her first visit is to her oldest daughter, Ada. Ada is the village teacher. 

“Do you like being a teacher?” Danka asks. They sit at the glowing evening fire, Ada’s children asleep.

“Yes, mother, I do. Sometimes it is tiring, but there is nothing in this world I would rather do. Every day I am learning new things and I am getting to know my pupils better. I teach them about herbs, the weather, and the stars. Also, about our people, I tell them the ancient stories about our ancestors and everything I learned from my travels”. 

“Good,” says Danka. “I am glad to hear it and I am proud of you. I have a lot of jewels, but you are my brightest jewel. When I walk next to the school and hear the kids, I smile. I know they are well taken care of by you.”

Danka pauses a moment, her face turns toward the fire. “Ada, my dearest, I am going to die soon. I came here to remind you: that in daily life, full of struggle, one forgets where the happiness comes from. There are your students and friends’ smiles and your curiosity and awe in front of the unknown. And, trust in the village.” 

Danka continues as if she is about to reveal the real reason she came. 

“Before she died, my older sister, The Beautiful, told me these words, and I need to pass them on to you. You need to know the story of talking. This is what she told me:

     After Adam recovered from the fight with the tiger, he tried hard to understand us. You, Danka, were 2 years old, very curious, into everything, a very bright toddler. You wanted to know everything.  One day you picked up an apple and asked me: What’s this? I said “Apple”. Adam wanted to know: You said “apple”? And I said, “Yes, Adam, I called it apple!” The three of us knew it had a name. Then the three of us started to play the naming game.* You, Danka, kept pointing and asking and I kept naming other things. Very soon other children joined, then my older teenage cousins. In a few years, when Adam and I had three children, they learned talking from us right away. When you, Danka, were a teenager, the village was divided, I know, you don’t remember. The older people communicated in the old way. and our family and the young people talked more and more the new way. Ak’s clan, the village chief’s people, were the last to start a new way of talking. Now, after Ak died and his son Max died, everybody knows how to talk and the story is forgotten. “ 

*Foot note: In this new game: the objects, by “naming” them, appear to exist separately from tasks or instinctual knowing. In every “name” sits the original, but quickly forgotten, the naming action of agent or “namer”. To have a thing you need its name, to have a name you need a namer. 

Then, the names become objects and the game becomes reality.

      “What is the difference? Why does it matter if we remember as long as we are talking?” asked Ada.

      “You are a teacher, Ada. You know how babies are learning how to do things, crawling and grabbing and putting things to mouth to learn the taste, like little monkeys do. They learn about fears and wishes but no “I” or “you”, the same but so, so different. What is out there is part of them. I do not remember well, but it seems in the old days everything was part of the way they functioned, had a… a way to do it. Now our babies “bathe” in our talk. Everything around has a name! Watch them, they are so alert! They live in a world of objects. They manipulate toys and food, better than feelings and relationships. And yet, children grow as in the old days. They do not know anymore that they live in a different shared world. Will they love their Mother the same way they love their toys? Can the desire for a relationship be switched for the desire for play-things, and then for grown-up things?

“But Mom,” Ada was trying to understand this crazy old woman she loved so much. “Of course, they will love us the same. They will learn how to talk well and about the shared world of things, but their parents, their friends are the most important. And for kids- the laughter- they need to play and laugh and laugh”.

“And sing and dance and tell old, old stories like mine,“ said Danka. 

But she thought: Ada cannot even imagine. She doesn’t remember. My eyes are almost blind, but I see the future. In my mind I see kids loving their dolls and toys, and grown-ups loving their houses and jewels.

The two women hugged and cried. They loved each other, it was a sweet farewell.

     The second visit was much more difficult. It was with Ar, from Ak clan, the village chief. He was sitting stiffly on his tiger’s fur.

“What do you want, old griot?” he barked.

“I will dance last time tomorrow and I need to talk to you before that”.

“Talk then and be brief!”

From her pocket, she pulled a gold chain.

“This is for you.”

She observed Ar, his eyes bulging as he grabbed it.

“Hrrr”, he groaned,” big gold”.

“Ar, son of Great Max, I want you to know the story of talking”

“What???”

      “Your grandfather Ak wanted to kill the Beast,( it is how Aks called Adam) and my sister, The Beautiful, to marry your father Max.  But Adam survived, and he saved me from the tiger- this is the scar on my neck. Adam and my sister figured out how to talk to each other and then taught us, kids, how to talk. Your people, Aks, hated this, it is why they were late to learn talking…”

“Shut up, woman, it’s a lie!”

She looked gravely, Ar was getting mad, jumped up, he will be violent…. She gathered her strength and will, stepped forward, stretched her arm like an eagle, and absorbed anger. Ar, the big heavy man was frozen. She knew she had only a moment while the surprise lasted.

“You will not understand it. This golden chain should remind you. This golden chain exists because you are… we are… talking*. Without talking there is no golden chain, no silver chain, no tiger fur, just your anger.

This is the story of talking- for you.“

And she ran out.

“One and two and three “she counted and jumped sideways. A heavy, deadly axe missed her by inches.

“It’s a lie, stupid whore” roared Ar, but he did not chase her.

    She cried all the way home. People do not understand and do not want this story.

She felt like a failure, she’d die and the story would die with her.

The whole night she prayed for wisdom, luck, and fate.

When the sun rose, she knew it was her last sunrise here. She walked out and looked at the village still asleep. The magical place, her love, her life.

Somewhat she found herself at the end of the village.

The last shabby dwelling, and the noise. What is it? Ah… yes.

 Lin was the first potter in the village and he was trying to use the wheel. He came many years ago from far, far away, from beyond the Dawn Mountains. He married Danka’s cousin Emma, a big, strong woman. Emma gave him two children and she made him stay. So, he stayed, learned the local language, and tried to make friends. People did not like him and called him Strange. Danka tried to like him, to know him, but it was not easy. He made a lot of ugly pots and some not-so-ugly. They were poor.

Danka stops.

She is dead tired and dead sad. “Why I am here?” She thinks “Nobody will understand my story”.

Lin comes out from the hut and he smiles “Danka?”

She is still all in her head-” nobody will understand the transition, about learning and naming things. And if she does not tell this to anybody, the story will disappear. Humans will never know that three generations ago they were …animals.“

“Listen, Lin, good morning, I really do not know why I am here, I am sorry…”


“I know why you are here, Danka. I was waiting.”

“What?”

“You came to tell me the story, the incredible secret of talking. Sit down. You look awful, have some tea”.

As he prepares to pour some tea into one of his clay cups, he begins, “My people did not talk.”  He hands her the cup. He is thinking hard, as if trying to understand what he wants to say. “The father was a father, the son was a son, and the wife was a wife, but, “– Lin paused as she took the cup from him in astonishment. “They couldn’t tell about being a father or son or wife, they just lived that.”

“ Alone, each one alone ?” Danka follows Lin’s thoughts.

“Yes… No, not alone, alone was bad, very bad, it was normal, like always, but . . .”

Lin is at a loss for words. 

Danka tries to help: “Without talking you have to understand others… without talking”

Lin tries again: “Not alone, you are with people, but how? You cannot say, I don’t know”

“I remember now,” adds Danka with a sigh, like pushing, dislodging some heavy burden that has been in her way. “When I was young, we were just learning to talk. Adam and Beautiful talked some and they taught children and young friends wanted to learn, especially when they built a dam across the stream to get fish. Old people laughed, making fun of them, saying, “You are babbling like children, squeaking and pointing all the time”

Danka suddenly realizes: “And when my children were born, they lived differently, like, like in a different world.” Danka is looking at Lin surprised, like she’s seeing him for the first time. *

“In my old home, behind Dawn Mountain, I recall some sounds we made, to warn about the danger or to go somewhere. But now, if I go back, I would call my brother: “Brother!”, or “Hey, you!”, or “I missed you!”. Would he understand?”

“No, you’d have to teach, little by little, kids first. They might not like it, like Ak’s and Max’s clan here. They did not want to talk at first, but what could they do if their children talked?”

Danka’s breathing easier, maybe there is some hope, she thinks.

“I want you to tell this story to your girl, Ann, she is the brightest.” 

 “Danka, I will, but she might not understand. I understood because my people did not talk, I was here with Emma and I had to learn myself, like a baby. I am still learning words from my children… and from your singing, Danka. I remember the story of the freckled, is it the right word? Yes, the freckled boy who was killed pretending to be a monster!”

“He was my husband, my love, I told this story when I was 16 years old!” she whispers.

“I am sorry, I did not know,” says Lin.

“It’s fine. I still love him after 60 years.” she smiles, holding Lin’s hands, “Thank you. I did not expect this…I have to go.”

Exhausted, she slept. When she woke up the sun was low. 

“Why am I doing that? For whom? The only way for my grandchildren, the other grandchildren, and their grandchildren to know it is to get it from me.

 And the only way to do it is to sing and dance and then disappear, to die.

Will they remember?  And if not, so what?” she sobs.

Then she knows it has to be done, even without clear answers.

When evening came, she was ready. She gave away all her possessions, jewelry, clothes, and the house. At the fire, she danced and she sang the story of talking. 

But Ar told people not to go and they were afraid and did not go. Only a few old folks and some orphan kids she taught. And they did not understand the talking story. There were no right words, no images. She ran from the place ashamed and devastated.

At home, she prepared the drink that would kill her. She did not want to die. Then she heard footsteps. It was Lin. 

“I talked to Emma and talked to Ann, my daughter,” he said to Danka.

 “I was thinking about that for a long time. Let’s go to my people behind Dawn Mountains and teach them to talk.”

And they went.

*******

Category:

Evolutionary Reality, human nature, materialism, nature of reality, origin of self

Tagged with:

No greed parenting

(Can parenting save the World from collapse?)

I am a pediatrician. I worked with kids and families in Poland, The Gambia (West Africa) and then in the U.S  for the last 40 years. It is no surprise that my solution comes from my experience in that field. I can’t change myself, can you? Forget the existentialists, we can not become anything much better. But as a pediatrician, I’m telling you—we can change the next generation.

Completely? No, but substantially, significantly- yes. I saw it happen many times in my practice.

My research also says: yes.

So, our kids. What we do with the little ones is parenting. With the bigger kids: education. Of course, the younger the child, the deeper and more fundamental changes we’d be able to impart. On the other hand, education, unlike intimate and vague parenting, is more structured, organized, and accessible. Ideally, we should try to address both.

I.   Introduction

Our human niche is severely stressed. Our resources are limited and dwindling. But we,  the consumers want more and more things, gadgets, and material goods. And we’d fight for them to the death.

What is worse is that even if the total number of people is not growing fast (“only” 9 billion by 2050), the number of consumers lifted from poverty and subsistence will double—and they are us, the worst polluters.

But the products need to be purchased. If people would not want them or want less, less will be sold and produced.

This is the beauty of the reversed spiral of capitalism. (The more you grow, the more you must grow, but also the more you shrink, the more you need to shrink.)

 You, my reader, will exclaim: this would be terrible, economies would slow down and people would starve. Well, people will not starve. Actually, agriculture would flourish, while some malls and factories could close. Some people might work part-time, the communities, gardens, not-for-profit occupations, and family life, it is what would flourish. But this is not an essay to convince somebody about the environmental crisis. Deniers, bad luck, don’t read it. Read “Laudate Deum” first.(14)

 Here, the question is: how to make people want fewer material goods, buy fewer gadgets, and be less obsessed about these things, in such a pervasive, pernicious way from birth. How to make us, humans, less greedy?

It is impossible, we are rotten to the bones, I agree.

What we are trying to do, like flushing less toilets, recycling, and such, will not do the trick, really.

And my solution has this neat extra bonus: all real and imaginary powers that enslave us, the governments, nationalisms, religions, corporations, conspiracies, aliens, lizard people—all these powers rely on one thing: our greed. Nobody can force you to go to the mall or click into the amazon.com paradise.

Without our greed they are powerless.

With this in mind, during one of our recent Socrates Café meetings, I asked the participants:

Should we:

  1. embrace the advances in technology and train our children to become specialists as fast as possible and as best as possible, i.e. continue the recent emphasis on science, business, and computer science /artificial intelligence?

Or should we:

  1. make a desperate pivot away from technology and teach our children about lifelong learning and humanities with a new emphasis on the family, relationships, community, nature, history, arts, music, language, literature, and (yes!) philosophy?

The answer was a resounding: “NO” to my call for the desperate pivot. Nobody was ready to compromise our “progress” even if it is responsible for the mess we are in.

I wanted to say, look, guys, alternative education is sprouting everywhere. Well, it was sprouting in my mind. I found these humanistic systems, and they were interesting, but most of them were old, heavy with angels, ghosts, spirituality, and obsolete didactic principles.

Waldorf Schools are the most familiar to me, as my daughter attended this school for a while and my very good friend was the Waldorf School teacher and organizer. The book of M.C. Richards Toward Wholeness (1) makes the concept even more enchanting by the poetic approach of this extraordinary woman—a poet, potter, hippie, and new age teacher at the famous Black Mountain very alternative school. Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy, a weird Christianity of the early 20th century, permeates the mood and ideas behind the school but is not taught to the pupils. The schools are fantastic, there is art, dance, music and play everywhere. Education is vibrant and alive, the teachers are enthusiastic and attached to their students’ learning with strong emotional bonds. No competition, no grades are necessary. The love of learning is everywhere, learning is shared by students and teachers as an exciting lifelong journey.

The parents are involved—they’d better be as Waldorf education is expensive. And still, this network is growing, with 1200 schools worldwide in 35 countries, and numerous grants that make the students’ profiles more diverse.(2,3)

This is the best example of a humanities-saturated education I could find. The others: Montessori education (4) Paideia Schools (Chattanooga School of Art and Science), Quaker schools, Unitarian-Universalist education, and “Forest Schools” are much more similar to “normal” schooling in America aimed to produce rich or at least employable people.

But even Waldorf’s students end up in a mainstream university—maybe more of them studying visual art, literature, languages, or history. But wthey were not told why to dance around the fire and play with dolls without faces, so they experience , by and by fades away.

Some recent research (5) suggests that humanistic education or even writing your personal worldview (6) by engaging in the “big questions” and philosophy, especially with a supportive small group of students, can shift people’s personal goals and hierarchy of values towards less materialistic worldviews.

And then, about 1 year ago I encountered the work of Frederic Lenoir. (7)“The Happiness”, 2012, and “Le Desir” 2022.

He has a philosophy and practical system “on the ground,” all in French and in six Francophone countries (including Quebec!) The courses teach children humanities- mindfulness and critical thinking. Since 2016 more than 100,000 children have gone through SEVE courses. (Savoir Etre and Vivre Ensemble: “Knowing how to be and live together.”) We do not yet know if these children have a less materialistic worldview or if their families buy fewer gadgets, living a simpler life. Or if they are happier and their environment is improving.

Overall, my research into existing systems was deeply disappointing. It is not only that we don’t know how to make children less greedy, we do not want it. We need a system with a clear-cut philosophy, conscious of what we would do with our children and why. 

We need parenting and educational philosophy linking our curricula with the vision of sustainable society, linking the worldviews of the new generations with human niche’s collapse.

And, at last , linking consumerism and greed with this collapse.

Lenoir points out in his new book the importance of desires “Without them, life is not worth it” and suggests “redirecting” them away from consumerism. To me, desires make only the emotional part of our worldview. A person’s character, habits, dreams, obligations, and many other elements decide how we act and how we influence the world and people around us.

While thinking about the direction in which we want to “desperately pivot” (I am stubborn), we need to consider two types of happiness. (“Happiness” might be not the best term and not the one you like. But in the end, what is a better term describing the “desired situation”—your wishes, drives, habits, what you want? So, for the lack of a more comprehensive term, let’s stick with the H word).

The first type of happiness is ancient: inherited from social mammals and then fine-tuned during the last 10 million years of primate and hominid evolution. It is the mother’s and child’s love, safety, satiation, and belonging. Then: the awe of the unknown, the joy of figuring things out, and friendship of cooperation. With language, imagination, and a love of pattern we created art, music, dance, love of beauty, and nature. Then curiosity and social bonds produced storytelling, learning, and the love of knowledge. Notice the pro-social nature of this type: doing this with a friend or family member actually enhances the experience.

The second type of happiness is the opposite, it works like pie—the more you take, the less is left for me. Money, social power and position, and material possessions work like that.

The first type, call it experiential, is sustainable on two levels:

It takes a lot of time and effort to get it, waiting for the beautiful sunset, reading The Tempest, so you’ll understand the play in the theater, and visiting your grandmother. The satisfaction is short and difficult to measure and requires repeated tries. The results are vague. (A good example is marriage.) But, you have less time for shopping. Instead, you meditate or read Ulysses.

I hope that, with the first type of happiness, practiced since birth, possessions appear less important, so you do not seek them so mindlessly and obsessively.

The second type is easy: it is the pleasure of things, money, the ownership: just step into the garage and your glistening new Tesla is waiting for you, no effort is needed.  This type of happiness is responsible for the economy to hum, also responsible for the environmental crisis, societal recession, violence, wars, personal loneliness, anxiety, and despair.

I believe, as I tried to argue in other essays, that this second type of happiness is very recent, less than 20,000 years old, and way too recent to have a genetic base. It is closely related to symbolic language. As we named things and agents, (8) the survival advantage was almost immediate, the incredible invention of language saving us from nearly certain extinction, which was the fate of 26 or more other hominid branches and perhaps 90% of the Homo Sapiens population.

Ah, the lure of things, now we paying for this dearly; the new extinction is looming.

II.   No greed parenting

We should continue our efforts to mitigate the collapse of the human niche (recycling, community gardens, etc…) At the same time, we should redirect our desires, as Monsieur Lenoir writes, or pivot desperately our parenting and education to attempt a shift in the type of happiness the new generation will strive for. As I said, we can’t change ourselves, but maybe the new generation can become less materialistic. I am calling this program “no-greed parenting.”

Most parents want their children to be happier than they are. The most common pathway is to help your child to have a successful life. That usually means improved outside circumstances like better, more prestigious jobs, more money, and a better place to live. Sometimes that “better life” includes more personal elements: being prettier, funnier, healthier, stronger, and friendlier.

But here with “no-greed parenting,” we wish for the inconceivable; to flourish in the future world, our children need a different worldview, one which for us is difficult to imagine. Lenoir in his recent book Le Desir plans to “redirect” or “rearrange the set of desires.” I suggest that we work on the different types of happiness.

The Principles of No-Greed Parenting: ( This is not a manual. This short list should start the conversation and give you an idea. If you know how to implement it, tell me).

  1. Provide secure attachment:

Help children feel safe

Help children feel loved

Help children feel respected

Help children be curious

Help children be joyful

Help children be open to novelty and adventure

  1.  Teach a child to like and play with others:

                         Listen to others

                             Try to understand

                        Express yourself

            Be confident and brave

                 See humor everywhere

3.   Teach the child social skills:

                 Surround the child with family, organize visits, cousins, and friends

Parents and family need to spend time with the child, including housework. Make the child a part of the family team.

No TV, no electronic toys, make the child “bathe” in stories, songs, laughter, and dancing.

4.     Teach the child to use hands:

Play with simple toys

Make toys with the child

Draw, and play with clay and plasticine. Use creativity and imagination.

5.     Use magic: for the first few years, everything is magic.

3 to 7- some explanations are not magic, some are magic.

After 7- everything should be saturated by human imagination, curiosity, and love of beauty.

6.     Play outside, climb, swing, make a garden, become a naturalist.

7. Play instruments, dance, tai chi (9), qi gong, hiking, and nature walks(12)

As a pediatrician, for 50 years I tried to talk about these principles to my parents during every well visit, and whenever was the opportunity. My practice brochure (10) contained also some of these concepts.

          III.  Paleo Café

I had grandiose ideas about designing such education ( 11). Now I’ve scaled it down dramatically to a “Paleo Café.” The concept echoes my ideas of Ovids’s Golden Age societies with early human language. Think Atlantis, Stonehenge, pre-Imperial Meso-America or Göbekli Tepe.- These ancient societies are most mysterious to us, we just can’t imagine social structures creating these immense monuments but otherwise, they make no sense- to us. There are no signs of violence, hierarchies, personal richness- no signs of greed. Shared language brought to these humans immediate control over the material world (13)- counting, sorting, measuring, timing- but the lure and the evil of personal possessions and power developed only slowly later. This concept of two separate phases of human becoming materialistic are just my musings, inspired by the strange book (12) but it fits beautifully with my other theories. I am going to write more about the anthropological concepts of that- see the essay:” Zombies, Idealistic Animals and Radical Anthropomorphism”.

But for now, can we create in our neighborhood a glimpse of Golden Age?

The vision:

A small group of 5 to 10 people meets weekly at a community center or even better in a private home. “Paleo” connotes the idea of the simplicity of the setting. No electronics, simple furnishings, few simple toys, Waldorf style.

No money talk, no competition games, no media, no news, no talk about violence and war. There is a lot of sharing, borrowing, and lending. There are young people with children—the gift for the future community. Probably 2 to 5 children would be easiest to handle. There are also old, retired people—the gift of wisdom for the new generation. Among them are also young people without children—friends, aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors.

They all have fun, there is reading, telling stories, singing, and dancing. The religious overtones are fine but in the “Paleo,” mythic form and distance. Instead, wild imagination, curiosity, and openness to the unknown are encouraged.

Everybody is equal, respected, and helped to express herself.

Some cross-cultural activities are important, maybe there is invited an indigenous person, a foreigner, or a newcomer.

The agenda.

The host greets and welcome each person. The agenda and loose schedule are agreed upon.

Somebody is reading to the children, some are playing on their own.

Somebody may make music or sing/dance.

Some people prepare simple food. Everybody eats together, unhurriedly, with gratitude and joy.

The next meeting, the venue, and the agenda are planned.

There is a continuous weekly thread—a story, a book, a play, the art or garden project.

These groups can happen spontaneously but also can be generated with the help of social workers and the staff from the neighborhood’s cultural center—during the monthly meeting to which anybody and everybody is invited.

References:

1. M.C.Richards “Toward Wholeness” 1980

2. Sharifa Oppenheimer “Heaven on Earth” 2006.

3. Jack Petrash “Understanding Waldorf Education” 2002

4. Simone Davies “The Montesori Toddler” 2019

5. Zachary Swanson’s Master Thesis 2021UTC

6. Tom Voychehovski “My Worldview. Dr.Tom’s Method” Amazon, Kindle.2019

7. Frederic Lenoir: “The Happiness “(2012) and “Le Desir” (2022)

8. Merlin Donald “The mind so rare” 2001

9. Tom Voychehovski, Luke Prater “The Dark Attic”  2021

10. Tom Voychehovski, Comprehensive Medical Care,” Parents’ Brochure,” 2001

 11. Tom Voychehovski “The Rome conference or die”, my blog: ecohumanistlab.com 2023

12. David Groebner & David Wengrow, “The Dawn of Everything” 2023.

 13. Ian Tattersall “ Understanding Human Evolution”. 2018

14. Pope Francis “Laudate Deum” Apostolic Exhortation, October 4th, 2023.

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, human nature, materialism, parenting/education, Pediatrics, wychowanie i edukacja

Tagged with:

Frederic Lenoir (SEVE), “Le desir”. My comments. Polish version.

My comments are in italics. Moje opinie w kursywie.

LE DESIR une philosophie

Vivre aux éclats 

…………………………………………………………….

WNIOSEK

„Gdy pragniemy jakiejś rzeczy, to nie dlatego że jest dobra 

ale uważamy że jest ona dobra bo jej pragniemy”. 

Baruch Spinoza (XVII wiek)

Rozpocząłem tę pracę od przypomnienia imperatywnej konieczności pragnienia: bez pragnienia nie warto żyć. Droga, którą przebyliśmy, pozwoliła nam dostrzec, że istnieją dwa wielkie klucze do zrozumienia ludzkich pragnień. Pragnienie jako brak, podkreślone przez Platona, podjęte przez większość szkół mądrości starożytnego świata i potwierdzone przez neuronauki; i pragnienie jako moc, naszkicowane przez Arystotelesa, zanim zostało w pełni wyjaśnione przez Spinozę, a następnie przez Nietzschego, Bergsona czy Junga. Z mojego punktu widzenia Platon i Spinoza mają rację. 

Słusznie wskazują na dwa wymiary ludzkiego pragnienia, których wszyscy doświadczamy: pragnienie – brak , który sprawia nam przyjemność i który może nas prowadzić do pragnienia poprawy siebie, ale który może również prowadzić do pożądania, zazdrości i trwałego niezadowolenia i pragnienie – siła, która wznosi nas do doskonałej radości, ale które może również doprowadzić nas do dominacji lub arogancji (hubris Greków), jeśli nie jest regulowane przez rozum. Nasza egzystencja bardzo często oscyluje między tymi dwoma wymiarami pragnienia i nie ulega wątpliwości, że jeśli dążymy do spokoju i radości, konieczne jest nauczenie się rozeznawania i właściwego ukierunkowania naszych pragnień. Ale sposób, w jaki kierujemy naszymi pragnieniami, ma wpływ nie tylko na nasze życie osobiste: wpływa również na otaczających nas ludzi, na społeczeństwo, w którym żyjemy, a dziś na całą planetę.

To prawda , a właściwie jej kawałeczek. Bo pragnienie to tylko mała część  mojego świata. “Ten facet ma fajną kurtkę. Chcę ją. W ręku cegła, jestem silny, na bani trochę…” a inny ja, ta sama kurtka, to samo pragninie” jestem starszym panem, co mi tam kurtka, ani mi w głowie jakiekolwiek działanie, zmiana nastroju, planów”Pragnienie to mała część światopoglądu. Model świata, model ludzkości, mnie w tym świecie, co robię , dlaczego, także czego chcę (więc , pragnienie). Ale także sens, znaczenie świata, moje miejsce, dziękowanie , nadzieje, dążenia no i “sytuacja pożądana” gdy nie che się użyć wyświechtanej “szczęśliwości”.

Jak ten model działa na innych- jest to pytanie centralne, nie wtórne jak myśli Lenoir- jako że model jest stworzony- sklecony-majaczony w podświadomości- przez świat socjalny, przez wychowanie, edukację, media, naturę przodków , genetykę itd.  Wszystko to co robimy -myślimy- piszemy -podlega temu modelowi. Zsumować modele wszyskich ludzi i mamy naszą rzeczywistość. Dwa pragnienia o których mówi Lenoir są wtórne-”brak” jako napęd, czy”dązenie/siła” jako napęd. Nie wydaje mi się że to rozróżnienie jest istotne. To zależy od emocji, chwili lub charakteru -passywny/aktywny, Yin/Yang.

Natomiast dwie szczęśliwości są niesłychanie ważne bo decydują co się dzieje w społeczeństwie, decydują jak nasz model sytuacji pożądanej (szczęście, satysfakcja, zadowolenie, radość , “nakaz serca”) wpływa na innych. 

Rodzaj Pierwszy (1) to jak podział tortu, im więcej wezmę, tym mniej zostanie dla innych, świat rzeczy- posiadanie, władza, hierarchia, to co napędza ekonomię, wojnę i opresję. Jest też odpowiedzialny za kryzys środowiska, społeczeństwa, osobistą samotność, niepokój, nudę i rozpacz.

Rodzaj Drugi (2) Miłość, (cokolwiek to jest) przyjażń, sztuka, poezja, muzyka, piękno  naturalne, refleksja, praca nad “wnętrzem”. Ten rodzaj szczęścia jest świetny dla ochrony środowiska ( z wyjątkiem podróży i odwiedzin starych przyjaciół) na dwóch poziomach: – akumulacja dóbr materialnych jest nmiej ważna, namiętna, obsesyjna i bezmyślna. i -czas i wysiłek jest skierowany na działania nie zużywające zbyt dużo zasobów- podziwianie zachodu słonca, dyskusja z przyjacielem.

Czy możnaby nakłonić lub zachęcić ludzi do świadomej zmiany systemu i rodzaju pożądanych sytuacji/dowiadczeń?

 Trudno, tak myślę. Nawet wiedząc że za 50 lat drugi rodzaj będzie korzystniejszy

Latwiej byłoby nakłonić rodziców i edukatorów do zmiany w wychowaniu lub systemu edukacji prowadzący do budowania w dzieciach systemu szczęścia drugiego rodzaju.

.Mieć czy być.

W swojej książce Mieć czy być. Wybór, od którego zależy przyszłość człowieka (1976), amerykański psychoanalityk i socjolog Erich Fromm twierdzi, że od wyboru, jakiego dokona ludzkość między tymi dwoma sposobami egzystencji, zależy od samego jej przetrwania. Bo nasz świat, tłumaczy, coraz bardziej jest zdominowany przez pasję posiadania, skoncentrowaną na zachłanności, władzy materialnej, agresywności, podczas gdy ocalić go może tylko sposób życia, oparty na miłości, duchowym spełnieniu, przyjemności dzielenia się sensownym i owocnym działaniem. Jeśli człowiek nie zda sobie sprawy z powagi tego wyboru, popadnie w bezprecedensową psychologiczną i ekologiczną katastrofę: „Po raz pierwszy w historii fizyczne przetrwanie rodzaju ludzkiego zależy od radykalnej zmiany w ludzkim sercu” 

Nie , w systemie wychowania dzieci.

Ta publikacja z 1976 roku pozostaje jak najbardziej aktualna.

Jedną z osobliwości ludzkiego pragnienia jest to, że jest ono nieskończone. Jeśli człowiek umieści swoje pragnienie wyłącznie w sferze posiadania to będzie on wiecznie niezadowolony i pozostanie więźniem impulsów swojego pierwotnego mózgu, który nie zna granic. Ta niezdolność ludzkiego mózgu do umiaru w poszukiwaniu przyjemności zachęca go do ciągłego powiększania swoich pragnień. Jak widzieliśmy, jest to motorem naszych społeczeństw konsumpcyjnych i przyczyną kryzysu środowiskowego, jak przyznaje Sébastien Bohler: „Kontynuowanie promowania systemu gospodarczego, który stymuluje nasze pierwotne struktury mózgowe, jest niewątpliwie najgorszą rzeczą do zrobienia, i niestety, to jest to, co robimy od ponad wieku, co kosztuje nas naszą planetę.» 

Powyższe paragrafy odzwierciadlają podstawowy błąd w interpretacji naszej przeszłości. Wszyscy ale to wszyscy widzą zwierzęcą walkę o przeżycie, prawa kłów i szponów jako ciągłe z nowoczesną walką o pieniądze i pozycje i o dobra materialne. 

Zwierzęta jako że nie mają języka i osobowści chcą być bezpieczne, najedzone, ciepłe, być także członkiem rodziny, i grupy.  Zwierzęta socjalne mają także instynkty socjalne, cooperacji i altruizmu. Ostatnie 10 milionów lat naszej ewolucji to ewolucja płatów czołowych, skroniowych i języka(komunikacji). Zycie społeczne hominidów dało  tyle poprawy adaptacji że ewolucja “zaniedbała” adaptację fizyczną (duża głowa, wiotkie ciało) i technologiczną  ( kamienne toporki przez ostatnie 8 millionów lat!) Kosztowało to: 26 typów hominidów – wszystkie wymarły. Homo sapiens ok 50 tysięcy lat temu był na wymarciu- 2 do 10 tysięcy zostało. Ci ludzie byli bardzo inteligentni, żyli w małych grupkach o skomplikowanym stylu życia, hierarrchji i komunikacji. Co się stało? Ja myślę że odkryliśmy język symboliczny i osobowość i obiekty materialne nie zależne od intynktów i prastarych algoryrtmów. “ ja nazywam to kamień” “ty przynieś dziecko”. To odkrycie “natychmiast” poprawiło technolgię, nauczanie, organizację grupy.  W tym samy czasie życie społeczne, pragnienia i stosunki w grupie  działaly po staremu. Nazwy przedmiotów , osób były użyteczne ale prościutkie. Tak jak 12 miesięczne dziecko : kilka słów tylko a instyktowne rozumienie, emocje wspaniałe. Tak jak wielki lingwista Noam Chomsky i jego współpracownik Eric Lennebeerg uważali:”(moje tłumaczenie) ludzka mowa jest to całkowicie specyficzne odkrycie ( dar?) nizależne (nie -ewolucyjnie ciagłe-discontinous) od jakielkowiek funkcji zwierzęcej.” Ja też uwazam ze język symboliczny powstał póżno, 50 000 lat temu jako rzadkie(możliwe jako wynik desperackiej próby pororozumienia między plemionami,) nagłe odkrycie. A z nim nazwy i świat materialny a potem, znacznie póżniej- realizacja że przedmitoty dają taką łatwą kontrolę  nad światem i innymi ludżmi .

I odwrotnie, jeśli jesteśmy bardziej zainteresowani jakością naszych doznań, to nigdy nie jesteśmy sfrustrowani ani niezadowoleni: wiedza, miłość, kontemplacja piękna, wewnętrzny postęp, wypełniają nas nie dając nam nigdy uczucia frustracji, typowego dla pragnień ukierunkowanych na posiadanie. Oczywiście zawsze pragniemy nadal poznawać, kochać, rozwijać się, ale to poszukiwanie prowadzi nas od radości do radości i nie ma negatywnych konsekwencji dla innych ani dla planety. 

Znowu “zdrowy rozsądek” i oczywistość prowadzi Lenoira na manowce. Więc znów: radość posiadania. Jest zależna od przedmiotów, dóbr materialnych. Jest bardzo póżno nabyta, ale łatwa, płytka, nie potrzeba wielkiej intelligencji jak się wygra na loterii. Ale z tego samego powodu jest “oderwana” od egzystencjalnych i pięknych pytań, więc powoduje tą pogoń bezsensowną. Radość niematerialna- trudna ale zadowalająca. trzeba się napracować nad przyjażnią i robota nigdy nie jest skończona. Wzrost duchowy, dojrzłość te radości udostępnia. Te radości są przedjęzykowe, praca nad ich językiem to kultura, sztuka, poezja , muzyka, filozofia.

Nie trzeba jednak mnie źle zrozumieć: nie gardzę dobrami materialnymi i jestem przekonany, że należy znaleźć równowagę między materią a duchem, posiadaniem a byciem. Kiedy ktoś żyje w głębokiej niepewności finansowej, trudno jest spokojnie kultywować swoje życie wewnętrzne. Musimy jednak zdać sobie sprawę, że nasz współczesny świat w dużej mierze przedkłada posiadanie nad istnieniem, rywalizację nad współpracą, uznanie społeczne nad poczuciem własnej wartości, a konsekwencje tej ideologii okazują się bardzo ciężkie do poniesienia dla jednostek i dewastujące naszą planetę.

Zgoda, to straszne, tylko że na szczęście radości duchowe, miłość, przyjażń, altruizm, przynależność do grupy, poczucie bezpieczeństwa, są dużo starsze niż materializm, bardziej podstawowe.(patrz wyżej) Są one częścią naszej natury , instynktów wyrobinych ok. 10 millionów lat wcześniej jako podstaw unikalnego Homo Sapiens.

Obsesyjne zakochanie w przedmiotach to powoli narastający trend ostatnich 10 tysięcy lat tylko! Cienka, plugawa powłoczka chciwości.

Każda istota ludzka dąży do tego, aby być tak jak i aby mieć, i kiedy kastruje swoje potrzeby duchowe wyłącznie dla dobra potrzeb ciała, kiedy swoje poszukiwanie nieskończoności zamyka w rzeczach skończonych, kiedy porzuca swoje życie wewnętrzne w trosce o swoje miejscu w świecie zewnętrznym, okalecza się i staje się drapieżnikiem (rabusiem) wobec innych. Niestety dominująca kultura naszych czasów popycha nas w tym kierunku.

W swojej książce Człowiek jednowymiarowy amerykański filozof i socjolog Herbert Marcuse opisuje jako „represyjną desublimację” ten proces zachodzący w naszych społeczeństwach konsumpcyjnych, który polega na odłączaniu różnych pragnień jednostek od ich klasycznych sublimacji, skoncentrowanych na życiu duszy., aby przekierować je, za pomocą agresywnego marketingu, w kierunku zwykłego nabywania towarów. W swojej wspaniałej piosence „Sentimental Crowd” Alain Souchon również wyraża w bardziej poetycki sposób tę rozbieżność między naszymi głębokimi aspiracjami bycia a nakazem posiadania, który od dziesięcioleci dominuje w naszych zachodnich społeczeństwach: 

„Wpaja się w nas pragnienia, 

które nas pustoszą” 

Przywrócenie równowagi między posiadaniem a byciem, między potrzebami ciała a potrzebami duszy jest zatem bardziej potrzebne niż kiedykolwiek. To, co zachęcające w świadectwach tych osób, które decydują się na zmianę swojego życia, oraz tych, o których mowa powyżej, tych młodych ludzi, którzy nie chcą już pracować według obecnego modelu, to upieranie się przy chęci zmiany kierunku swoich pragnień posiadania z posiadania do bycia. Wbrew panującej ideologii coraz więcej ludzi, zwłaszcza młodych, odczuwa wręcz władczą potrzebę zwracania się w stronę dóbr duchowych, miłości, wiedzy, a nie dóbr materialnych. Zamiast komfortu i prestiżu społecznego, jakie daje dobra sytuacja, wolą trzeźwe i szczęśliwe życie, które spełnia ich głębokie pragnienia samorealizacji, sprawiedliwości społecznej i szacunku dla planety. Od dominacji i rywalizacji wolą współpracę. Zamiast odnosić sukcesy w życiu, wolą dobrze ułożyc sobie życie…i żyć w harmonii z innymi ludźmi i wszystkimi żywymi gatunkami naszej pięknej planety. Nawet jeśli nadal są w mniejszości, są pionierami nowych poszukiwań i nowych sposobów życia, które przynoszą zdrową równowagę między posiadaniem a byciem, między zewnętrznością a wnętrzem, między podbojem świata a podbojem siebie, między pragnienie-brak i pragnienie-moc. 

Gdyby  jeszcz ci ludzie mieli mnóstwo dzieci i wychowywali je tak pięknie. Niestety jest naodwrót- im więcej materializmu , tym więcej dzieci.

Pragnienie, Świadomość i Prawda 

Jak często przypominałem, pragnienie jest motorem naszego istnienia i musimy nauczyć się je kultywować, ale także dobrze je orientować. Ten ostatni punkt jest tym bardziej konieczny, że nasze pragnienie tworzy wartość. To pragnienie każdego tworzy to, co pożądane. „Nie pragniemy czegoś dlatego, że jest dobre, ale uważamy to za dobre, ponieważ tego pragniemy” – pisze Spinoza. To krótkie zdanie jest dla mnie jednym z najważniejszych w całej historii filozofii. W kilku słowach Spinoza dekonstruuje cały platoński idealizm, który od tysiącleci przenikał nasze zachodnie społeczeństwa, zgodnie z którym uniwersalne wartości (Piękne, Dobre, Sprawiedliwe itd.) mobilizują nasze pragnienie. 

W rzeczywistości to nasze pragnienia ustanawiają wartość rzeczy i istot, a nie odwrotnie. To dlatego, że pragnę osoby, uważam ją za uprzejmą. To dlatego, że pragnę sprawiedliwości, pragnę ją praktykować. To dlatego, że chcę czekolady, mówię, że czekolada jest dobra (nie każdy lubi czekoladę!). To dlatego, że chcę się wzbogacić, wielbię pieniądze, lub odwrotnie, dlatego, że chcę żyć trzeźwo, jestem wobec nich obojętny. To dlatego, że chcę kochać życie, uważam je za piękne i dobre. W ten sposób Spinoza ustanowił moralność „poza dobrem i złem” dwa wieki przed Nietzschem. Nie oznacza to jednak, że zło i dobro nie istnieją. Oznacza to, że nie istnieją one same w sobie, ale dla każdego człowieka zgodnie z jego szczególną naturą, w postaci dobra i zła: to, co będzie dobre dla jednego, może być złe dla drugiego itd. „Nazywamy dobrem lub złem — pisze ponownie Spinoza — to, co jest pożyteczne lub szkodliwe dla zachowania naszego bytu, to znaczy, co zwiększa lub zmniejsza, pomaga lub utrudnia naszą moc działania”. Dlatego o ile postrzegamy, że coś przynosi nam radość lub smutkiem, nazywamy to dobrem lub złem. Prowadzenie życia jest zatem specyficzne dla każdej osoby i związane z jej szczególną naturą.

 Faktem jest jednak, że aby dobrze prowadzić swoje życie, wszystkie jednostki muszą kierować się odpowiednimi ideami. Jeśli mobilizować ich będę nieodpowiednie pomysły lub ich wyobraźnia, będą realizować smutne namiętności i mogą popełniać gwałtowne lub naganne czyny wobec innych. Dlatego Spinoza stara się doprecyzować: „W miarę jak zdominowani są przez swoje namiętności, ludzie  mogą się sobie przeciwstawiać […]. Ci co żyją kierując się Rozumem, zawsze się ze sobą zgadzają. W ten sposób, kierując swoje pragnienia odpowiednimi ideami, ludzie osiągną radość i będą najbardziej użyteczni dla innych. Arystoteles i Epikur już to podkreślili, przywołując pojęcie phronesis lub „mądrego rozumu”, cnoty intelektualnej niezbędnej do prowadzenia prawego życia. Gdybyśmy żyli w społeczeństwie, w którym wszyscy ludzie zostaliby uwolnieni z niewoli smutnych namiętności, by żyć w wewnętrznej wolności oświeconej ich rozumem, nie byłoby potrzeby ustanawiania praw, zakazów i policji. Prawa religijne i cywilne będą przydatne dla życia w społeczeństwie – a nawet niezbędne dla tego ostatniego – tak długo, jak długo będziemy niewolnikami naszych namiętności, niezdolnymi do kierowania naszymi pragnieniami rozumem, aby wzrastać w radości i mądrości.

Ujmując to trochę inaczej: aby prowadzić prawą i dobrą egzystencję, musimy uświadomić sobie nasze pragnienia. Mam to pragnienie: czy dobrze jest realizować je dla siebie i dla innych? Wierzymy w uświadomienie naszych pragnień, kiedy rozumujemy. 

To miłe uchu humanistyczne gadki. Kognitywistyka , a ja za nią, mówi że podział na rozumowanie i emocje nie ma żadnego sensu w mózgu.  

 Ale w rzeczywistości często tylko racjonalizujemy pragnienie a posteriori, a nasze rozumowanie jest zniekształcone przez siłę tego ostatniego! Zjawisko to obserwuje się nawet w procesie naukowym. Jest to tzw. To pokazuje, jak trudno jest mieć perspektywę na nasze pragnienia, na to, czego oczekujemy, mamy nadzieję, wierzymy. Bardzo często spędzamy czas na uzasadnianiu naszych pragnień błędnymi argumentami, które są jedynie pseudo racjonalnymi alibi. Angażowanie świadomości do własnych pragnień zakłada bardzo wielkie pragnienie prawdy. To dlatego, że bardzo pragnę prawdy, będę mógł wyjść poza moje inne pragnienia, moje opinie i przekonania i obiektywnie podporządkować je prawdzie faktów i rzeczywistości. Na tym polega podstawa podejścia filozoficznego, którego normą jest prawda. Arystotelesa miał wobec Platona głębokie uczucie przyjażni, ale  twierdził, że poszukiwanie prawdy jest ważniejsze od przyjaźni, co doprowadziło go do sprzeciwienia się Platonowi w wielu punktach. 

Skąd bierze się świadomość? To duże i trudne pytanie. Większość naukowców, którzy przyjmują materialistyczną postawę filozoficzną, wyjaśnia nam, że jest ona wytwarzana przez nasz mózg i ma swoje miejsce w korze mózgowej. Dzięki rozwojowi naszej kory moglibyśmy dokonywać racjonalnych wyborów i zdystansować się od naszego pierwotnego mózgu. Oczywiście, ale jak wskazuje Sébastien Bohler, to raczej nasza kora jest posłuszna nakazom naszego prążkowia: „Nasze prążkowie (striatum) jest takie samo jak u małpy czy szczura. To, co odróżnia nas od tych gatunków, to zbiorowe wykorzystanie naszej kory mózgowej. I niestety tak się stało, że ta kora przyjmuje rozkazy z prążkowia. Jedną z przyczyn tego nierównego podziału ról jest natura połączeń w naszym mózgu. Sprowadzają się one do prostej zasady: „kora ​​proponuje, prążkowie rozporządza”. […] Ogromna kora Homo sapiens, oferując mu coraz większą moc, oddała tę moc na służbę krasnalowi żądnemu władzy, seksum, żarcia, lenistwem i ego. Nadmiernie uzbrojone dziecko nie ma już żadnych ograniczeń. Świadomość myślowa Platona, Arystotelesa czy stoików wywodziła się z umysłu, który nazywali noos lub logos. Byli oni również przekonani, że jest on połączony z boskością i nawet jeśli ma cielesną kotwicę w mózgu, to nie mózg jako taki sprawuje kontrolę. To pytanie o pochodzenie świadomości pozostaje zatem szeroko otwarte i niezależnie od odpowiedzi, tym, co nas tu interesuje, jest nadanie świadomości naszym pragnieniom.

Pilna potrzeba filozofowania 

Jak już wspomniałem, wszystko ostatecznie opiera się na pytaniu o pragnienie prawdy. Jeśli to drugie jest większe niż nasze inne pragnienia, możemy rozsądnie rozumować i wykorzystać naszą korę do opanowania prążkowia. U niektórych osób pragnienie prawdy jest wrodzone. Osobiście zawsze miałem tę misję i dlatego, trochę jak Obelix, jako nastolatek wpadłem w garnek filozofii i pasja szukania prawdy już nigdy mnie nie opuściła. Zawsze wolałem bolesną prawdę, sprzeczną z moimi innymi pragnieniami, od przyjemnej i pochlebnej iluzji. Ale dla tych wszystkich, w których to pragnienie jest mniej wrodzone, jestem przekonany, że może ono wzrastać poprzez edukację. Dlatego od 2014 roku jestem zaangażowany w rozwój warsztatów filozoficznych z dziećmi i młodzieżą. W rzeczywistości rozwijają one w młodych ludziach umiejętność myślenia, krytycznego myślenia, lepszą umiejętność słuchania innych i dają im smak prawdy. Ile razy widziałem, jak dzieci zmieniały zdanie podczas warsztatów, bo przekonały je argumenty innego dziecka, a potem mówiły do ​​mnie: „Razem lepiej myślimy. A jeśli razem myślimy lepiej, to dlatego, że wspólnie szukamy prawdy, poza wszystkimi naszymi a priori i uprzedzeniami. Dlatego współtworzyłam w 2016 roku stowarzyszenie i fundację SEVE (Wiedza jak być i żyć razem) pod egidą Fondation de France, aby szkolić instruktorów  warsztatów filozoficznych dla dziećmi oraz stworzyliśmy partnerstwo z Ministerstwem Edukacji Narodowej. Do tej pory przeszkolono ponad pięć tysięcy instruktorów, a setki tysięcy dzieci skorzystało już z tych warsztatów, szczególnie w dzielnicach priorytetowych lub osiedlach edukacyjnych, takich jak miasto Trappes. „Należy pilnie spopularyzować filozofię! wykrzyknął Diderot, a Montaigne był przekonany, że dzięki temu dzieci będą miały „dobrze wykonaną głowę”, a nie tylko „pełną głowę”.

Pragnienie demokracje 

W obliczu dominującego miejsca, jakie technologia zajęła w naszym życiu, potrzeba dobrego myślenia stała się życiową potrzebą. Widzieliśmy to o ekologicznym wyzwaniu, ale to samo dotyczy przetrwania naszych demokracji. W niecałą dekadę sieci społecznościowe zmieniły sytuację. Wybory Donalda Trumpa w 2016 r. sprzyjał intensywnemu wykorzystywaniu sieci społecznościowych do rozpowszechniania wszelkiego rodzaju błędnych informacji i nadal próbował unieważnić wyniki przegranych wyborów z 2020 r. tymi samymi metodami konspiracyjnymi, co doprowadziło Twittera i Facebooka do usunięcia jego konta. Wzrost ekstremizmu, który obserwujemy w większości demokracji na świecie, jest najprawdopodobniej związany z tym zjawiskiem, ponieważ duża część populacji nie uzyskuje już informacji poprzez konfrontację z różnymi i sprzecznymi źródłami, ale za pośrednictwem jedynego źródła sieci społecznościowych, który, jak widzieliśmy, kieruje informacje zgodnie z gustami i pragnieniami każdego użytkownika. Jeśli obywatele słuchają tylko informacji, które wzmacniają ich pragnienia i przekonania i nie są w stanie słuchać argumentów innych, żadna demokracja nie będzie w stanie funkcjonować. Konieczne jest wspólne rozumienie otaczającej nas rzeczywistości, inaczej nie jesteśmy już narodem. A to pytanie odnosi się do prawdy: jeśli nie wszyscy będziemy naprawdę chętni do odróżnienia prawdy od fałszu, nie będziemy już mogli żyć razem. Każdy będzie szukał informacji, które wspierają jego punkt widzenia i pragnienia, niezależnie od ich prawdziwości. W związku z tym nie będzie już możliwej debaty demokratycznej, debaty, która może opierać się jedynie na dobrej wierze i pragnieniu każdego, by szukać prawdy w celu wspólnego dobra. Pożądanie jest zatem „esencją człowieka” i motorem naszego życia: od tego, jak je pielęgnujemy i ukierunkowujemy, zależy nasze zadowolenie z istnienia. Ale przetrwanie naszych społeczeństw zależy również od właściwej orientacji naszych pragnień i nie da się tego zrobić, jeśli te pragnienia nie zostaną ostatecznie spolaryzowane przez szacunek dla żywych, troskę o innych i poszukiwanie prawdy.

Wychowanie bez chciwości! Dlatego bardziej niż kiedykolwiek konieczne jest uświadomienie naszych pragnień: jest to niewątpliwie największe wyzwanie naszych czasów.

Naprzód SEVE, i brawo i musimy to eksportować gdzie się da. Unesco!

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, human nature, materialism, Swiatopoglady po polsku, wychowanie i edukacja, wychowanie i edukacja

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Danka’s Self

    This new essay is similar to the “Last Neanderthal” – it has a narrative, a story, and an explanation of the allegory. That is a philosophical and extremely controversial part. It is actually a continuation of the thought experiment, as it assumes that events from the previous essay- the story- actually had happened, and -again- assumes that my interpretation of them is correct.

 Let me remind you and summarize the story. 

The time is about 50, 000 years ago, somewhere in Europe. Neanderthals are on the brink of extinction, and we follow the fate of one of them. The cold and hunger killed the last two members of Adam’s family, his wife, and his son. They did not have modern language or the ability to start a fire, but otherwise, they were very smart and strong.

  Adam is rescued by Old Woman from the Homo Sapiens tribe and nursed to health by Eve the Beautiful. Adam saves the little girl from the lethal attack of a saber-tooth tiger. This little girl, Eve’s 5-year-old sister, Adam and Eve are creating a shared communication system that (my hypothesis) is growing into Language, Self, and Reality. ( “You called it apple”- it was the first hypothetical sentence understood by these 3 people, it contained: “you called” – the agent, the person, “it”- the thing-perception, sensory firing, a  piece of the old behavioral code, with its name:  “apple”.)

   To continue this thought experiment, we moved a generation forward. The three people who started to use agents and simple objects in communication were bonded by a prototype of a social unit: the shared magic of childhood, love, and of desperate will to communicate. In about 15 years this group grew and their shared vocabulary rapidly expanded. Summers were warmer and there were a lot of fish in the river and berries in the forest and babies in the tribe. Adam and Eve had 3 children Mel 8, Fiona 6 and Sophie 4. The” little girl” is now 16 years old and has the name.

                                           ***

‘My name is Danka, but people call me Dancer. I love to dance. I play the flute, the horn, and drums. I made my instruments with my Uncle Adam’s help and I taught myself to play. 

I go fishing and pick fruit with others, but I am busier and busier with my music.  When I sing and dance the world around me changes. 

My family and others from the tribe come to listen to my stories and to dance with me. Mel, my 8-year-old nephew can play the drums well, but only I can play flute and horn well.

 The stories come to me, I do not know where from, they just come.

Sometimes they come from my dreams and memories of winter and fighting with tigers, and sometimes from flowers and jumping fish. I am teaching kids how to sing and dance and about flowers and animals and seasons.

   Lake Cave Summer Feast is coming up. 

Each year before the midsummer Full Moon young people go to the cave. It is a difficult trip, it takes three days of hiking through treacherous mountains and into the cave. You need to be brave and curious and strong to get there. Last year was my first year, but this year I will lead my people. 

Eve tells me:

“Danka, to make a strong drink we need special berries from the Western  Forest. Take my kids to help you, but be careful, other people live in the West.”

I run like a wind, light and happy and strong.”

 “Who needs the berries

   We need the berries

We find the berries 

    In jungle!

We pick the berries

Magical berries

The sweetest berries 

That dangle!.”

***

Eve’s three kids follow bellowed Auntie, trying to catch up with her, laughing and tumbling. Mel, Fiona, and little Sophia who is just 4 years old.

Danka runs and sings her song “who need the berries”. On the “jungle” and “dangle” she jumps very high, landing on both feet into a deep squat.

Other kids are tripping, trying to mimic her.

Then she skips, then she twirls, still running, three kids after her in the narrow path among giant acacias and prickly raspberry bushes.

Mel is the drummer. He beats the rhythm with his left hand hitting his leather bag. This is not easy because, on his right shoulder, he carries his weapon, a 5 feet long spear. He is also an expert thrower, ready to protect the girls against any danger.

“ But,” he laughs,” all the animals will run away scared from Danka’s singing and jumping”

As soon as he finished his thought he noticed a movement of a shadow among the trees.

Then there is a strange, terrible roar. He has never heard anything like that before.

“WWRAOOOW”

He is ready to kill it.

“ As soon as I see his chest- the beast is dead- whatever it is”- Mel killed a bear and hyena before.

He sees the huge hairy head in the bushes.

“It is mine”, his right arm takes back, and the hips and torso recoil like an enormous spring.

“Wait, wait”- whispers Danka-and he stops at the last moment.

The “beast” jumps out, under the big head there are blond curls and a boy’s laughing face with the funniest brown dots all over it, but most on the nose. 

“What’s your name?!” Danka yells.

But he runs away and he is fast, waving with his “beast” head.

Danka laughs “ Mel, make sure you do not kill silly boys, it was a close call”

She likes this boy. A trickster. She remembers him from the last year, in the cave, he was really small and skinny then. But she remembers the laughter, the freckles, and the funny shadows he made with his hands across the fire in the cave.

 “I hope to see him again next week- if he is not killed by somebody by mistake”- she sighs and smiles.

Next week she will lead her tribe’s youth to Cave Lake. They will eat mushrooms and drink magic foods and potions and then they will dance.

She will dance with them, but her dance is different.

Eve worries about her little sister. 

“ Danka, you’re too much, you just don’t care, you just sing and dance, how can I protect you? Elders are not happy.  Big Man’s older son wants you to be his woman. It is an honor to our family”.

Danka doesn’t care for Big Heavy Max.

Eve sighs and hugs her sister. “Be careful, but when you find the boy you like, go for him”

Danka laughs “ I will, sis”, she twirls with her, then runs away singing and skipping: “I will, Oo-oh, I will, Oo-oh , how I reeeeally will!”

Old women and Eve send them off. About two dozen of young people, boys and girls run away from the village. They run towards the Western Forest and The Mountain. They carry food and drink and wood for fire and they run. They run for hours and hours, then they sleep for a few hours and they run again. Exhausted, and excited thy see The Mountain. And they find the small mountain lake and the cave on the shore. Danka leads her people into the sacred chamber. There are other young people from other villages. 

They are exhausted after a long run but they start a fire and then the drums call them to dance. Their dance is powerful, it sounds like a jungle, like a waterfall and thunder. It sounds like a buffalo stampede or the lion’s kill.

The drinks and food are served by girls, and boys do more dancing and showing off their skills, jumping over fire, and wrestling.

 Soon nobody remembers that they are tired and the dance, shouting and competition becomes more fierce.

 Then Danka jumps out, climbs the elevated flat stone, and blows her horn.

She sees the boy with freckles. And the boy sees her.

She wails and she sings. They understand some but not all words. 

But it is so different, so beautiful. They never heard anything like this: she sings the story.  She shows it, and dances and sings it. They know it, they see it. It is about the buffalo hunt. But also about one hunter- it’s a boy, or is it a buffalo? And he is pierced by the spear, and he falls. He is killed. 

The woman, yes, they see the woman who loved him, she runs and embraces the dead man. 

They scream and then stop and there is silence. The woman, The Dancer, shows how “she lifts the dead body”, and the bloody head mask stays on the ground.

They hold their breath, stunned.

She plays the flute: how beautiful the boy is now and how she loves him.

And then she carries his bloody body and begs and cries.

Wow, she is talking to Sun and Moon, she begs Them- “bring him back for me”.

And they see; that death is final and the only way to be together with her love is..

Is to die. She falls. There is silence. And then… she wakes up, she rubs her eyes- was all this but a dream??

The boy with freckles  runs to her and shakes her,  he wants to tell her: ”I understood, it was me, and it was not!”

Will she understand? He knows what to do.

Andy, ( he has a name now) takes her to his secret place in the cave.

He makes fire- he shows the same story with his hands and shadows on the cave’s wall. He takes her hands in his hands and makes her hands show the boy with a big beast head.

She understands! He says “AAN- DY” She repeats, laughs, and points to him “Andy”. Then he makes shadows of young women.  “She dances”. He looks at her and she says: “DAN-KA”, he repeats: “Danka”.

Their hands do not part, they stay together. They slowly quit wrestling and showing shadows, but start showing young bodies what they want. 

 After they made love, hands still together, they fall asleep, and the campfire’s red ashes glow slowly dying away.

Andy wakes up and a tiny ray of sun lits the stone wall where they played with shadows. Was it a dream? No. He sees a beautiful woman happily sleeping next to him. He gently frees himself from her embrace, gets up, and stretches.

Then he brings the paint they used to make hands prints-thousands of handprints, generations after generations- time signatures, nothing more.

In his head, he still has Danka’s story. In his disheveled, half-woken head.  He shakes his blond curls, curses quietly, and starts painting. 

The world disappears and the pictures come alive on the stone wall.

It is hours later when he looks behind his shoulders.

She is awake, sitting, looking at him and at the paintings, smiling.

She starts to sway into slow, dance-like moves. She sings sweetly and quietly. 

“Andy, Danka, Aaaandy,

Playing by the fire, 

We live and love and liiii-ve,

And then we die.

                                   ***

The real language i.e. the communication between people as a sine qua non for the experience. Shared (?”selfed”?) narrative, music, and visual art as the simple beginning of our reality.

What is an Agent or SELF? All words have human origins. It means that at some point in time, there was a social agreement (usually unconscious) between some humans about a word and its meaning. Because of these social and pragmatic origins, over time these agreements shifted and shifted. I expect that about the word and meaning of say “an apple,” there was no need for much shifting, but such concepts like self or consciousness or soul or ego the agreements shift and shift and for every discussion, it is very wise to renew the such agreement. 

How about attaching “participants, selves or agents” ( “self” as the common language equivalent of “I” and “you” and “he/she”,  while using “agent” to denote “action of an observer”) to the concept of experience? 

Self and experience. 

Self experiences an experience. To have experience is to have self. No self, no experience. Simple and elegant. Again, it harks to the origins: we use language for conversations. That’s what makes an experience. Each conversation has agents (selves), content, and context. But context can only be described by additional conversations. How about the events that look like experiences? Pre-linguistic music, images, emotions, dreams, animal behaviors? Remember the last Neanderthal from my story? He was hungry, dying, and grieving the death of his son. But, by the will of the omniscient author, he had no language yet, then no self, no experiences. (of course- the author and readers- did experience that). He was using his sophisticated instinctual system to survive. Later on, with the magic of love, childhood, and translation, he, the Beautiful and Little Girl acquired the socially shared first word- “apple’ with its meaning of red round fruit (the first thing!). So, later on, he could try to explain his past, using his budding language and self to describe past experiences. It is a dramatic fictional illustration of a hypothetical event. But we live with hybrid minds. Your anger is a mixture of primordial, instinctual sensations and all language/self-saturated memories and concepts. Also: Your awe, love, headache, and friendship. Any difference between conversation and experience? Not much: more emphasis on “from you to me” versus “me with me”- both are social and “selfed”- i.e. language-loaded.

This agreement would also help with understanding, among other mysteries of the universe, our hybrid mind. 

The old part makes almost all nervous system, similar to animals, octopuses, and all. Peripheral nerves, autonomic nerves, whole brain with all myriads of codes, and algorithms. This old mind led us to get more and more complicated through the perils and challenges of evolution, it contains all mechanisms to survive, to outwit others, all instincts and gut feelings, altruism and competition, and anger and love.

It creates a sophisticated world, with emotions and feelings but this world belongs only to this organism. It is not shared and it doesn’t have things. It is extremely difficult to imagine such a being. All feelings and drives but nobody to feel and be driven. All fear, trembling but without anybody to fear. 

And then Homo Sapiens invented language. I described possible scenarios. Most likely I am wrong, but it helps with imagining the process. It started with sharing simple sentences like “I called it apple”

Strange, it had an agent, “self”
But no emotions, no value. The “stone” or “buffalo” is not good or bad. Revolutionary, it had things. The incredible advantage of things over the old system ”behaviors” is that they can be easily controlled! They practically “ask” to be controlled. The “self” controlling “a thing”: the consciousness is born.

The new ( maybe 50.000 years old?) system propelled Homo Sapiens to where we are now. The shared material world was controlled. Greed was born and it challenged more and more evolutionary-developed altruism. This is the core and deep origin of our environmental and social disasters. 

It also points toward the only way we can reverse this.

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, human nature, nature of reality, origin of self

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Eco-humanist’s agenda

What worldview gives humans the best chance to tackle the environmental crisis.

Does worldview matter?

Yes, people should think about their worldview, talk and write about it, keeping a variety of broad perspectives in society is crucial, without it civilization dies. Also, while everybody has a personal worldview, societies have a prevailing worldview. They are created by religions, science, art, and recently propaganda, politicians, and media.

Whether they named it or not, people always trying to be happy, and the common, prevailing worldviews dictate the ways people chase this elusive goal.

There are two distinct modes of happiness: the first is related to material possessions and power, (which is also dependent on material possessions). The new red tricycle you always wanted, the rise, the promotion in the company’s hierarchy, and that woman. The other type of happiness is listening to your favorite music, watching a sunset with a friend, and learning how to do mosaics. The first type is like sharing a pie, the more I get, somebody will get less of it. The other type is the opposite, the more I get the more others can get. The first is regulated by money, and the other depends on the quality of experience, the quality of relationships, and skills. The first inevitably requires using material resources, and the other is much more sustainable.

If we can change the proportions of those two types of happiness in society we could be really happier, freer, living with less violence and with less inequality.

The world is divided: the religious people on one side, the science on the other. Religions are older than humanity and they help to live for billions of people. But they were made to make people passive, resigned with their limitations and powerlessness (except in smothering heathens), awaiting a better afterlife. We need to fix the world now, be joyful, and teach nature new tricks.

The same with science: it teaches misanthropy, “ look around and sulk!”, “insignificant speck in gazillions of galaxies”,” maybe this or that colorful gadget makes you feel better, maybe this pill?” Determinism tells us that everything has already been decided, so what is the point? 

How about humanism?

Most of famous, dead philosophers can be called “humanists’, but who are the real, 21st century, living, blood and flesh, humanists?

They are hidden, let me explain why.

I am a second-generation humanist, my mom was a Catholic and my dad was an atheist, both were humanists. 

Amsterdam Declaration, Humanist Manifesto 2022 is such a concise and thoughtful document but so dry and heartless:

1. Humanists strive to be ethical

  • We accept that morality is inherent to the human condition, grounded in the ability of living things to suffer and flourish, motivated by the benefits of helping and not harming, enabled by reason and compassion, and needing no source outside of humanity.
  • We affirm the worth and dignity of the individual and the right of every human to the greatest possible freedom and fullest possible development compatible with the rights of others. To these ends, we support peace, democracy, the rule of law, and universal legal human rights.
  • We reject all forms of racism and prejudice and the injustices that arise from them. We seek instead to promote the flourishing and fellowship of humanity in all its diversity and individuality.
  • We hold that personal liberty must be combined with a responsibility to society. A free person has duties to others, and we feel a duty of care to all of humanity, including future generations, and beyond this to all sentient beings.
  • We recognize that we are part of nature and accept our responsibility for the impact we have on the rest of the natural world.

2. Humanists strive to be rational

  • We are convinced that the solutions to the world’s problems lie in human reason and action. We advocate the application of science and free inquiry to these problems, remembering that while science provides the means, human values must define the ends. We seek to use science and technology to enhance human well-being, and never callously or destructively.

3. Humanists strive for fulfillment in their lives

  • We value all sources of individual joy and fulfillment that harm no other, and we believe that personal development through the cultivation of creative and ethical living is a lifelong undertaking.
  • We, therefore, treasure artistic creativity and imagination and recognize the transforming power of literature, music, and the visual and performing arts. We cherish the beauty of the natural world and its potential to bring wonder, awe, and tranquility. We appreciate individual and communal exertion in physical activity, and the scope it offers for comradeship and achievement. We esteem the quest for knowledge, and the humility, wisdom, and insight it bestows.

4. Humanism meets the widespread demand for a source of meaning and purpose to stand as an alternative to dogmatic religion, authoritarian nationalism, tribal sectarianism, and selfish nihilism

  • Though we believe that a commitment to human well-being is ageless, our particular opinions are not based on revelations fixed for all time. Humanists recognize that no one is infallible or omniscient and that knowledge of the world and of humankind can be won only through a continuing process of observation, learning, and rethinking.
  • For these reasons, we seek neither to avoid scrutiny nor to impose our view on all humanity. On the contrary, we are committed to the unfettered expression and exchange of ideas, and seek to cooperate with people of different beliefs who share our values, all in the cause of building a better world.
  • We are confident that humanity has the potential to solve the problems that confront us, through free inquiry, science, sympathy, and imagination in the furtherance of peace and human flourishing.
  • We call upon all who share these convictions to join us in this inspiring endeavor.

The last, #4, statement is the weakest, most wishy-washy. And, no, by itself the humanistic worldview doesn’t provide the meaning of life- but is the excellent base to search for it!

For the first time, stringing the line of past manifestos, this one uses the term “worldview”. It is a relief: “I am not a humanist, or not only a humanist, I just have a humanistic worldview. I can be many things at once, including a disappointed Catholic boy, deep in my guts.”

With religion it is not enough-you need commitment and belief – you need to be it!

While this manifesto is the rational, intellectual, and objective description of humanism, at the same time it brings its origins, and motivation to the primordial instinct, and is “grounded in the ability of living things to suffer and flourish”. Our morality, instead of divine scriptures, comes straight from human nature, where else?

Can you sacrifice, and fight to defend “human nature”?

This is the crux (pardon the pun) of the matter. How can you base all your philosophy on something so elusive and controversial as human nature? No surprise that there are fewer humanists in the US than snake-handling and tongues-speaking fundamentalists.

First, make humanistic morality and purpose not so elusive:

It is actually much easier to have a humanistic worldview than the Declaration suggests: you just like humans more than corporations, more than the government, and more than the religious authority.  You need to be a little bit like an anti-establishment hero- do great things for people, against the authorities, monsters, demons ( including those inside you), and even gods. Fun. This gives meaning and purpose. 

Humanism is very old, it is about values, emotions, and instincts. We are not lacking rituals, just our rituals are older than religions and scriptures. Our rituals are concepts of family and community, charity, and of medicine.

Also, the origins of human nature are not so elusive as neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and paleoanthropology converging over the last few decades. Cooperation and altruism was the hallmark of the evolutionary developmental success of our ancestors over the last 8 million of years (and then of Homo sapiens). New data on language and on hypersociality point out that we are more interdependent than we ever dreamt of.*

Second, think about environmental disasters, and here humanism, compared to other popular paradigms, really shines.

Humanists see the world as literally made by humans, messed up by humans, and with humans as the only resource and responsibility to fix it. It is how nature made us, we are curious, resourceful, cooperative, and funny. It is a gift, we need to use it and duck again at the last minute before extinction.

As humanists, we know that we are children of the past but have to think about the future globally and we do not worry about science and religion much- we invented both quite recently… 

To fix the world, the first couple of questions have to be: “what’s wrong?” and “how come?”

The Religion says: we lost love ( or we do not understand /know how it is done). 

The science says: ( as always – long on facts, short on whys)

”We are like overcrowded lab rats, exhausted our resources and fighting each other”

No exit. 

Well, remember we are Houdini -like humans. We have this trick in our sleeve: consciousness ( which is thinking, free will, memory, hopping from paradigm to paradigm, etc). This has already saved us once from the brink of extinction, 50, 000 years ago.

We fearlessly examine our past and boldly design the solution. 

We need utopian social engineering combined with knowledge of the ancient past and the wisdom of religion and science.

The good thing is that we cannot force this type of change- no Orwellian “happiness”.

Old people are difficult to change, but if we teach our children well change is possible. 

Actually, this type of change is underway. 

Young people all over the world try to fight consumerism and environmental destruction, but the philosophical depth of this movement is “ gadgets do not make us happy and nature does.” The program devised by French philosopher Frederic Lenoir and his team teaches children to be mindful and think critically. It is called “savoir etre, vivre ensemble( SEVE)”- learning how to be and how to live with others. The courses are offered in 6 francophone countries, the French Canadian version is closest to the US.

I don’t think, these programs are labeled as “humanism” but it looks non-materialistic and non-dogmatic. Let’s start something similar in the rest of the world.

UNESCO and pope Francis promote education for global citizenship and peace. It is not very popular in the United States because of political or religious overtones. Would SEVE be better accepted or “too much philosophy”? So, the worldview is important, our minds are important, and it is where the fight for species survival is getting some traction. Easy, breezy, idealistic humanism gives a chance to work on the new generations of humans, let’s call it experience society.

                                                     ***

More reading:

Eco-humanism, African cosmology, and ubuntu:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael-Eze-4/publication/321157259_Humanitati

Essays related to covid 19 and environmental crisis- opening for the new world?

Pope Francis’s “Laudato si” and the liberal agenda:

https://store.usccb.org/collections/new/products/moving-boldly?utm_source=usccb.org&utm_me

dium=store_panel&utm_campaign=moving_boldly

SEVE (savoir etre vivre ensemble)

https://www.helloasso.com/associations/seve-savoir-etre-et-vivre-ensemble

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Evolutionary Reality, Explicit and implicit worldview, human nature, Humanism, materialism, What will happen to the mankind

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