on humanism and environmental crisis

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Deep origins of humans, reading E.O.Wilson

I am reading “Genesis” by E.O. Wilson. I love him for the last forty years since I read “Sociobiology”one of the first books in English , while working in The Gambia and learning about the West. Then ” Consilience” and then “On Human Nature”- he is the closest to the mentor- virtual mentor- I never had a “real” one.

Now, putting together my notes, (I have actually finished the book), I see this text in triplicate. I see Wilson’s problem, similar to modern human’s problem, similar to evolutionary trick which created homo sapiens.

Wilson knows more than any human I know, mostly about ants and other insects, some about other animals, and humans. But he is a hard nose materialist, scientist numb and deaf  to the language of unknown.

The same with modern humans, we forgot how to evolutionary benefit from two languages we have learn, one- the language of science, Newtonian logic, materialism and money. Other – the language of divine, poetry, love and empathy. To survive we have to combine both, tertium non datur.

It was the trick which created us, we have to use it again to survive.

The insight came in two steps. First i was reading about  ants , wasp ant termites ( the cousins of cockroaches!) They built eusociality, incredible empires with the intricate system of members programmed to forgo own benefits for the mother queen. These were genetic traits, they strengthened the colony expressed by members instinct and  pheromones and neurotransmitters. But at what a cost !- the cost of rarity- the more formidable these societies are – the fewer of them exist. And this is the evolutionary  no- no, the dead end. With rarity you have no chances for diversity- thats it, finito.

My old concepts of mechanisms of evolution helped me with the second step.

 

The evolution works  via diversity, complexity and the third element, how to call it? – biomass?  or sheer number of organisms, amount of energy absorbed. All three interrelated, all increase the chances of species survival.

The diversity- a major genetic system is preserved at the expense of he minor variations (skin color) producing phenotypes still interbreeding but improving species niche, energy intake.

The complexity- A. the quality of the description of the behavior to be encoded or remembered. the quality of organism’s Umwelt, the system of senses, memories and feelings- it is what we call- outside World.

B.  sociality, system of competition versus cooperation, group selection, the texture of relationships, altruistic group beats selfish group (  David Sloane Wilson)- working for some ants, wasps bees, termites and hominids.

The number, size of the niche, biomass- balances the cost of above elements increases the chances of rare and difficult things to occur.  More often than not it fails and species is extinct, despite being the “good prospects”- the Neanderthals, the dinosaurs, the whales ( almost extinct).

Each route , as we see is expensive, so wouldn’t be just peachy to combine all?

Quite a few systems combines  3 of 4 ways to survive, but the problem was that the tools for complexity- A. and B. -they compete.  A uses vision, sound, ultrasound to describe Umwelt, B. uses chemicals (pheromones), neurotransmitters , electricity- (chakras??) and other senses- smell, and touch. Evolutionary dead end.

Only humans  developed system of combining all 4 elements within one noncompeting but self enhancing system.

It happens when the description of the Umwelt  (A) had to include the description of the elements of (B) eusociality.  Unidirectional communications – orders, warnings, grooming, dominance, even stories did not need to use so much of the “shortcuts” or “grammar”. The Theory of Mind- sure, animals have it, your dog knows  well what you think, but when the toddler tells his friend: “you do it” and the friend answers , “no, you do it”, this is language.

Only when the mother started to teach this ( above) more and more complicated material to  older and older infant the switch occurred. The infant responded IN LANGUAGE, the oxitocin, the love, however you call it, precluded her from ignoring the invention of the communications reciprocity, the relationship did it, and the rest is  history.

To repeat, there is the chance, small chance, in our dwindling niche, for us not to ignore similar situation. To survive (again, remember last 10 000 sapiens leaving Africa?) we need to combine the language of the Umwelt  description, science, materialism with the language of eusociality –  unknown (poetry or spirituality), experience,  empathy.

 

 

 

 

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Uncategorized

Niche crisis

Niche crisis (this essay has new, expanded version as Niche crisis II)

 

This species is on the brink of extinction. Each species survival relays on the quality of its niche. The resilience of the species depends on ability to adapt to environmental changes. The organisms, members of a species, use energy to build size of the niche , diversity and complexity. 

 Human’s niche is shrinking , diversity is dwindling and the complexity is built to drive these processes  instead of protecting niche and diversity. Quality of life is rapidly decreasing: people are frightened, worried, angry, impoverished physically, emotionally and intellectually.

  This happened before to many other species and they were extinct, including all six species of earlier humans.

  But only our species can observe this happening. 

Can we use this unique fact to  reverse the trend?

 

I will never know, my children might, my grandchildren will know for sure.

 

To survive we need stop fighting- we need to conquer out tribalism, nationalism and religious divides.

 

To survive we need recognise our unity as a species, as a group of fellow travellers on the same leaking boat, develop friendships, admiration to each other and learn how to cooperate.

 

To survive we have to quit being materialistic, learn ourselves   and teach our children from the crib to cherish and be happy with experiences not with things, 

 

To survive we need to shrink our world population and our economies, develop new education system with emphasis on humanities, art, music , theater and philosophy.

Category:

climate change, enviromnental crisis,, Explicit and implicit worldview, free will, human nature, Uncategorized, What will happen to the mankind

Tagged with:

Earth Charter

Ecohumanist Lab officially endorses Earth Charter. Everybody should too, we are a sinking ship and we have to unite under the guidance of UN and science to save this wonderful but still foolish species of Homo Sapiens.

Category:

Uncategorized

Big Question #12: Who or what is God

“Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Robin in Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Subquestions and everyday relevance

  • Are we alone in the universe? about the
  • What about the extraterrestrial intelligence?
  • Is god an extra-terrestial (belonging not to the earth-terra) intelligence?
  • For you, who or what is God?
  • Where is God and where is she/he/it not? The matter, is it all it is?
  • What is spirituality? What are the great Forces?
  • Is Universe’s “intelligence” and our, human intelligence the same thing?
  • How is this question relevant to our everyday life? Maybe not in the “everyday life” , but it influences the way many people spend their weekends.

How to work on your answer to Question #12

I have no idea, just pray. But be authentic you, maybe look in the mirror?  Otherwise, do not bother.

An example by Beth Lilly: “God is the combined consciousness of everything in the Universe. God is everything. God is greater than anything you can conceive of, name, describe. God is that feeling I get sometimes.”

View more answers on Philozophy.com

Psychotherapy

It is a part of “meaning of life” conundrum. If you are without purpose, lonely or not loved enough it can spoil the best afternoon. So, the God is your best chance, getting it from people is much more complicated, getting it from a particular person? forget it. And we love to be loved: the popularity of pets is amazing.

A letter to me by my older brother Piotrus

Nie wiemy, czy jest Bóg. Gdybyśmy wiedzieli, nie była by potrzebna wiara. Wiemy, że jest Biblia, nie musimy w to wierzyć. Biblia jest jak list w skrzynce pocztowej. Otwieramy go gdy chcemy, wierzymy w jego treść lub nie. Jeśli jednak mówimy, że skrzynka jest pusta, a list tam leży, to bardzo niedobrze. Jeśli skarżymy się, że Bóg nie odpowiada na nasze pytania, a nie czytamy listu, jaki do nas napisał, to bardzo niedobrze.

We do not know if God exists. If we would have known, we wouldn’t need faith. We know that there is the Bible, we do not need faith to know that. The Bible is like a letter in the mailbox. We open it when we want, we believe in its content or we don’t. But if we say that the mailbox is empty and the letter is there, that is not good. If we complain that God is not answering our questions and we do not read the letter which He wrote, that’s not good at all.

W tym liście do nas ktoś napisał, że jest do nas podobny. Napisał też, że kocha nas bez powodu. Nie ma innego sposobu, aby dowiedzieć się, kto do nas napisał, jak spróbować. Kochać bez powodu. Jeśli się to nam uda, trochę już wiemy, jaki jest Bóg. Patrz  na ludzi – starych i młodych, pięknych i brzydkich, czyniących zło i krzywdzących się wzajem. Patrz i pomyśl sobie – napisał do mnie list ktoś taki, który potrafi kochać ich wszystkich. Jeśli czynisz dobro, już wiesz, jaki jest Bóg. Taki jak ty. Innego Boga nie ma i być nie może. Czyniąc dobro eksperymentalnie uzyskujesz pewną wiedzę o Bogu.

In this letter, somebody wrote that He and we are similar. Also, He wrote that He loves us without any reason. There is no other way to figure out who wrote this letter, but to try. To try to love without any reason. If we succeed, then we’d know a little bit about the nature of God. Look at the people- the old and the young, beautiful and ugly, doing evil and hurting each other. Look and reflect- somebody who knows how to love them all wrote the letter to me. If you do good, you know about God. He is like you. There is no other God, there can’t be. If you do good, you learn about God like in an experiment.

Dwojaka jest natura zła. Złe jest cierpienie i umieranie. To po pierwsze. A po drugie zła jest nienawiść i wyrządzanie krzywdy. Co z tym zrobił ten, który kocha wszystkich? Jedno i drugie wziął na siebie. Jezus, Żyd z Nazaretu, mówił o sobie, że jest Bogiem. To także można przeczytać w liście, jaki Bóg do ciebie przysłał, to jest w Biblii. Jezus dał się zbić, sponiewierać, okaleczyć, w końcu dał się zabić. Przez kilka godzin męki przecierpiał każdy ból – Twój także. Każdy ból – wszystkich ludzi, wszystkich czasów. Przecierpiał też każdy ból wszystkiego co żyje – od najdalszych epok geologicznych po nieznaną nam przyszłość. Jezus, Bóg, wie jak boli. Wie jak się cierpi i umiera. Wie o tym wszystko. To jest część wszechwiedzy Boga.

Ale to nie koniec. Jezus wie jak to jest być złym, być krzywdzicielem, być zbrodniarzem. Fałszywie oskarżony, ubiczowany i ukrzyżowany nie czuł się niewinny, bo wziął w siebie całe zło, jakie ludzie czynili, jakie czynią, jakie jeszcze uczynią. To też część wszechwiedzy Boga. Tak wyrównał kosmiczny dług wynikający z tego, że Bóg stworzył świat. Na tym materialnym świecie pojawiło się życie i świadomość, cierpienie i zło. Wydaje Ci się, że Ty byłbyś lepszym Bogiem, Ty stworzyłbyś świat bez niewinnych cierpień, bez bezkarnych zbrodniarzy. No, nie wiem. Chyba byś nie stworzył.

There are two types of the evil. Suffering and death are evil. The other type of evil is the hate and hurting others. The One who loves everybody took on Himself all of that. Jesus, a Jew from Nazareth, talked about himself as God. This is also in the letter that He wrote to you, this is in the Bible. Jesus was beaten, maltreated, maimed, then was killed. During the hours of his Passion, He went through all the pain and suffering, including yours. He suffered every pain, the pain of every human since the beginning of the world, also the suffering of everything that is alive, since the beginning of the world to the far, unforeseen future. Jesus, the God, knows about the pain, about the suffering, and about death. He knows all about it, this is a part of being omniscient. And there is more. Jesus knows how to be evil, be hurtful, be a criminal. While falsely accused, flogged and crucified, He did not felt innocent because He took on himself all the evil of the human’ s deeds, the past, the present and the future. This is also a part of being omniscient. That way He evened the score of creating the World. In this material World, there is life and the consciousness and the suffering and evil.  You might think that you’d be a better god, you’d create the World without the innocents suffering and unpunished criminals. I am not so sure, I think, you couldn’t.

Miłość jest dobra. Dlatego Bóg kocha. Trzeba jednak kochać kogoś. Jak nie ma kogo kochać, nie ma miłości. Dlatego Bóg-Stworzyciel związał się miłością z Jezusem Ukrzyżowanym. Kiedy to było? Wcześniej niż potrafisz pomyśleć. Miłość łącząca Stworzyciela i Ukrzyżowanego od zawsze jest tak wielka, że jest osobą. To ten Trzeci, Duch. Wielka miłość Boga sprawiła, że Bóg stworzył ludzi. Chciał, aby byli szczęśliwi. Dał im więc wolność, bo niewolnik jest nieszczęśliwy. Wolność jest dobra, dlatego Bóg dał ludziom tyle wolności, ile się mogło w nich zmieścić. Nie ma wolności bez wyboru między złem i dobrem. To doprowadziło Jezusa na krzyż.  Wydaje Ci się, że Ty byłbyś lepszym Bogiem, Ty stworzyłbyś wolnych ludzi, którzy nie czyniliby zła, ty nie posłałbyś łagodnego i mądrego Żyda z Nazaretu na krzyż. No, nie wiem. Chyba by ci się nie udało. Ale to miłe, że chciałbyś uratować Jezusa.

The love is good, it is why God loves. But one needs to love somebody, without anybody, there is no love. It is why God -Creator embodied love in Crucified Jesus. It happened a long time ago, earlier than you can imagine. The Love connecting forever the Creator and the Crucified are so big that it is a person. This is the Third one, The Spirit. God’s great love created humanity, He wanted them to be happy. He gave them freedom because the slave is unhappy. The freedom is good, so God gave us as much freedom as we could take. But, there is no freedom without choosing between good and evil. That led Jesus on the Cross. And again, you might think, that you would be a better god, you’d create free humans, who would do no evil, you wouldn’t have sent a gentle and wise Jew from Nazareth to the Cross. I don’t think, you could have done it, but it’s nice that you would’ve tried to save Jesus!

Bóg- Jezus za pośrednictwem Biblii opowiedział nam o swoim stylu postępowania z ludźmi. Dawał im trudne zadania, ale nie przymuszał do wykonania, mówił “Jeśli chcesz”. Przykazania, jakie Bóg dał Mojżeszowi mają charakter obietnic. Nie powiedział “nie kradnij, bo ci ręce utnę”. Powiedział kochaj, jak ja kocham, a obiecuję ci, że nie będziesz okradał ludzi. Tak są skonstruowane wszystkie przykazania.

God-Jesus through the Bible tells us about His way with people.  He was giving them very challenging tasks, but instead of forcing, He was saying “if you wish”.The Commandments given to Moses have the character of promises. He did not say “don’t steal, or your hands will be cut off”. He said – love as I love, and I promise, you will not steal. This is the concept and the meaning of all Commandments.

Co do śmierci, to Biblia zawiera przynajmniej dwie wiadomości, w które trudno uwierzyć. Po pierwsze Ukrzyżowany Jezus zmartwychwstał na trzeci dzień po śmierci. Po drugie  każdy człowiek zmartwychwstanie, śmierć nie jest prawdziwym końcem ale tajemniczą przemianą. To się w głowie nie mieści! Ale miliony ludzi wierzyły w to i wierzą. W jedno i drugie. Gdyby i tobie udało się w to uwierzyć, twoje czytanie Biblii miało by więcej sensu. No i nie czułbyś się samotny czując jak jesteś kochany, jak czekają cię po tamtej stronie.  

As for death, the Bible contains at least two pieces of information that are tough to believe. First, the Crucified Jesus resurrected on the third day after death. Second, every human will be resurrected, the death is not really the end, but a mysterious transformation. Inconceivable!  But millions of humans believed in that and still continue to believe. Both. If you too manage to believe this, your reading of the Bible would make more sense.  And, you wouldn’t feel so lonely, as you would feel being so much loved and so much expected on the Other Side.

 

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Uncategorized

Philozophy.com: The Place Where Different Worldviews Mingle

This post is going to be published as a part of Worldview Owner’s Manual.  It is posted on my blog to invite you to cooperate in this project.                                           

 At 72 I am looking in the past and suddenly the idea of “the place where different worldviews mingle” seems like a natural consequence of my life-long folly of mixing cultures, domains, disciplines, purposes and other things.

   In the post-war Poland, I was supposed to be a scientist and I studied immunology. In the early sixties, it was a new science with the excitement of philosophical undertones: “what is self?”, “How can organism tell what is and what is not me?” If the organism has a self-sense, can it also have the sense of “not-self” or a world-sense? Can it be a precursor of the worldview? So, I studied more evolution and by and by I become convinced that while the theory of evolution was more or less victorious in academia, the evolutionary thinking in the philosophy, or even more in society had been only paper thin. With the consequences of the evolution in such a broad spectrum of questions, suddenly the concept of the worldview appeared again! “I have a unique worldview”, I thought, and slowly started to formulate and clumsily write it down. The essay “Plato’s cave revisited” came much later, after five years doctoring in Africa and after an attempt to be the scientist in the USA.  Few years later Clement Vidal published “Metaphilosophical Criteria for the Worldview Comparison”. It was brilliant, it was all I wanted, with the excitement of the new millennium and the global brain very soon the idea of “worldview internet game” was born.

     Naively I thought that everybody will immediately like to play- fill the primitive spreadsheet with their answers. Well, everybody liked the idea, even Vidal himself, but nobody wanted to play, even friends and family. And why? Everybody should have love be around the people with the spiritual depth, lightness, sense of humour and broad perspective on humanness and life. One should love to play and interact and soak the open minds, positive attitudes and freedom of expressions. It would be such an antidote against “small talk”, routine “I let you tell your story, you repeated 100 times, then you let me tell my old stuff”. The chance of the real, important conversation, being intimate with somebody without getting to know the problems with his bowel movements… How refreshing it would be to exchange the ideas , the personal values, and practical wisdom without the uneasiness of talking politics or religion!

      To tell you the truth, we still are amazed how awkward and difficult the process  is.

  1. It is difficult to come up with short answers, what one wants to be a comprehensive definition or “position”.
  2. There is a worry to be too good or too bad, to sincere, or too politically correct, too obvious or too intimate.
  3. Often the answers one come up with do not feel genuine or satisfying and making it more personal feels embarrassing or not for publishing.
  4. Often the possible answer would  offend “persona” or “ego” or “social status”.

So, the original enthusiasm usually ends up like this:

  1. Most often one postpones the hard work, being confronted with the above problems and there are no answers.
  2. To be “done” one comes up with “placement answers” like “I’d like to know” or “whatever you feel like” or “will tell you as soon as I find out”
  3. Making jokes is good and is usually a step up.
  4. Criticizing the questions or the settings is also a good start – “kill the messenger” might start some constructive thinking.

  Undeterred by these painful lessons we are still optimistic and in the next two chapters, I’ll discuss in spite of the above “ why to do it” and “how to do it”  with fun, dignity, and personal benefits. Sophia thinks that the situation will improve with more fun, elegant and interactive site appearance and function while I think that the Manual can alleviate some problems and stimulate the will to create satisfying though always changing a personal worldview. We plan to do both.

If you’re ready to work on your worldview now click here.

Category:

Uncategorized, Worldview Owner's Manual

How to Use this Manual

This post is going to be published as a part of Worldview Owner’s Manual.  It is posted on my blog to invite you to cooperate in this project.                                           

This manual has two parts. In the short part one, we talk about general problems and pleasures of creating your personal worldview. Working on this project for the last two years we learned a lot and I will share with you insights and tricks. Part two consists of 13 chapters, one for each question.

When you want to work on the particular question, you go to this chapter and you find tons of support.  Every chapter has the similar organization.

First, I’ll quote a famous philosopher.  

Then, the pompous philosophical question is softened by the number of “subquestions”.

We were trying to figure out the relationship between the problem representing by the question with your decisions in the everyday life.

Working on the particular question will address specific worries, problems  or even psychological weaknesses- I will point that out.

I will also quote my favorite answer published on Philozophy.com. You will get a working version, maybe a story related to the question, rather than the abbreviated, condensed “end product”.

I will encourage you to study the question by reading “suggested readings” and links to the history of the particular question.

 

   Everybody has a Worldview, but our worldview is mostly implicit. If you, my reader, are like the most of us, humans, this set of personal principles and values lives inside of you in the form of memories, stories, fears, hopes or instincts. A mixed emotional bag, most of which you are even not aware of.  And yet, you function somewhat, you make decisions, choices, you make plans, you can even attach some reasons or explanations to them.

 

   The other part of my thesis is that if you work on building a personal, written down, Worldview, this work creates substantial benefits.

I strongly believe that this work would make you smarter, happier and more resilient in the crisis. Secondly, it would make you more productive, efficient and successful whatever are your projects.

But the third is the most important: it would make you better, I mean “gooder”, more compassionate, non-violent, tolerant and cooperative.

This claim is pretty risky and big isn’t it? I know but look, it is our only hope. The smartest people on the planet, the mystics, the intellectuals and wise men unanimously say that digging into the core of the human nature, brings good, levels boundaries and makes peace.

And it is what you and I embark on.  And not a second too early, I say….

 

I hope we are going to work on this project of the personal worldview together. Of course, I would like that this manual was exciting, captivating, and beautiful. But I am not a writer, and if I’d worry about that, I would never write this thing. I am a pediatrician and I care about children. Naturally, my concern is the most clear and emotional when I think about my own children and grandchildren and the children I know personally.

 

    There are lots of books about the Worldview, most of them, at least in English, about Christian Worldview. Nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is labeling, is boxing yourself in, is the desperate search for the name of your worldview, preferably with the “-ism” ending.

“Oh, it is who I am!” Noooo, you are you, critically and mystically thinking individual human of the 21st century.    The World is trying to define itself. We witness the paroxysms of the violence of the heroism, the faith, and nihilism. But all of that is nothing else but the sum of each human personal struggle. People define themselves by living their lives, and desperately trying to make sense of it. For millennia, some of them attempt to express this in literature, art, and music. For yourself, for your children and for my children, I am going to work with you on building a personal explicit worldview. Yours.

 

    The philosophers distilled the concept of ‘Worldview’ to several basic categories, represented by the infamous “Big Questions”. This is the worldview. It is how you see the World, your opinions, your attitude and your guts. In the innate, experiential form, or implicit form- it is in the everybody’s bones.

In modern times, as more and more people, are educated, reflective, even obsessed with mindfulness and examining your own mind, the explicit (written down) worldview has become more popular. The domain of philosophers, religious doctrines, and scientific theories has become the object of TED talks, self-improvement books and even party conversation.

In Philozophy.com we are trying to encourage and help an ordinary thinking person to work on his or hers worldview. We think that the answer, or as Vidal call it, ”position”, should be short enough to be easily digested and compared with others, but long enough to be meaningful and personal- yours. We arbitrarily decided on the wording of each question, but we included alternative wording or “sub-questions”.

These statements, if they feel yours and true, we believe, can be the very important signposts in your journey to living full and good life.

 

      In our site, we combined personal exploration, almost a “self-improvement” thing, with a game and a social experiment. You will be invited to answer 13 “big questions” with the very condensed answer – 250 characters max. As the philosophers grappled with the answers to these questions for millennia, so how can you or I add anything interesting?

Yes, we can. Every  decision we make is related to our “take on the life”, our attitude, our belief system. They are related to big questions, even you do not think that the way you talk to your friend depends on your opinion of “the nature of the mind” – question #6.

Or does it? How about “origins of evil and good” – #3 and 4, and of course:” how do you find the truth?” – #8.

You pack for vacation, throwing socks and underwear into the suitcase.  But somewhere in the back of your mind, it is the travel, unknown, beginning and ending, and even death – #11, the meaning of life – #9 – and how do you find happiness – #7.

Scrambled in the subconscious puzzle these questions are all there.

 

In books about worldviews, it is always reduced down to 6 to 10 questions, with different exact wording, but they are the same questions, “the buck stops there” questions.

Nobody can change them into “lighter, less philosophical”. They are the concentrated, distilled problems of the human mind and of our civilization.

Look at the questions and start with the one your heart resonate with. Write the answer with the idea that it should be changed and improved and refined many times.

It does not need to be the exact answer, the truth, the definition. This is for you, not for me.

On my hook, please hang your own coat… or hat, or umbrella.  Browse and score the answers of other people, they are all real people, like me and you — some try to be funny, some pompous, some academic or religious.  But they have this in common. They had the courage to answer these questions and share these answers with us.This the sign of courage, of the open mind, of course, but also of freedom. They will read and comment on yours if you’re lucky; otherwise, they will ignore them.

Compose your answer….and edit and edit and edit until when you look at it, you will be able to say: “yes, this is me”. I bet you will be surprised. I was.

 

Then if you have time, pick another one, browse, discuss, score. It is your own brave journey inside your brain and heart – maybe the last frontier.

 

  This text can be interesting in itself, but it is meant to work the best with your browsing and your activity on our website: philozophy.com. The name of the domain is catchy, but it might mislead you. This site not much of the philosophy, most philosophers are very ponderous and not practical. This site is the place where different worldviews live together, they mingle, the participants comment on them, borrow them from each other, discuss whatever they want.

So, this manual has four main separate goals:

  1. Invite you to go with your work to Philozophy.com, browse, express your opinions about others’ work, comment and discuss. .
  2. Assist you and lead you by the hand in this arduous task of creating your personal explicit, written-down worldview, distilled to a philosophical Haiku, 250 characters max.
  3. Encourage you to join others and publish your answers in this abbreviated form, allow others to benefit from your hard work, see what they say, respond to comments and most importantly keep editing your answers.  
  4. Build a social experiment. See if creating your worldview can be interactive. Explore the fears and inhibitions in the society. Can we learn something about us, can the participation be fun?

In case you skipped the “invitation for cooperation”, I will repeat:

Both Manual and the Philozophy.com are completely ideology-neutral. This is the place where different worldviews mingle, all are welcome, their only defense consists of the human values and benefits for humanity. But we have preferences; we are for individualism, for cooperation and for the freedom of expression. We are against mob mentality, mindlessness, and stupidity. We are against the fear of being yourself, against the fear of exploring and against the fear of individual thinking.

 

 

Category:

Explicit and implicit worldview, The Worldview Internet Game, Uncategorized

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Three Worldviews and You.

This post is going to be published as a part of Worldview Owner’s Manual.  It is posted on my blog to invite you to cooperate in this project.                                           

Everybody has a worldview, this is old hat. Philozophy.com users uniquely know that everybody has actually, at least, three.

One sits in the guts, mysterious and unconscious one, showing only sometimes who you really are. You live your life and by your decisions and actions, you declare and stamp out your worldview on the world you interact with. Second is your wishful thinking, how you’d like to be- strong, wise, happy and benevolent.

The third is what you put out for the show, the mixture of the principles you’re trying to live by, of worries, hypocrisy, defiance, and bravado.When you’re growing up, it is what you work on, try to know it, understand it, maybe even modify? It is what you are challenged with when you try to write it down…The relationship between these three reflects your progress in maturation and the level of freedom with which you live your life.

The manual might help you to explore these three worldviews of yours, so you will be able to juggle them, be aware of them and use them in life to your best advantage.

Some people go to the Philozophy.com and work happily on the Big Questions without any help. Others would enjoy Owner’s Manual to explore their personal worldview deeper and better. Nobody reads all manual, people are usually curious about a special aspect of the thing. It is why some parts are repetitive… 

The manual will grow out of my blog. I have been studied the concept of the worldview and have been writing essays about it for 5 years now. My explorations took a new twist and was boosted by my daughter Sophia’st development of  the site Philozophy.com. Moving beyond the idleness of the philosophical musings we gradually were able to work in the “laboratory” of the real people’s worldviews.

We believe, and I will explain this belief later, that participating in our project makes the person happier, smarter and it makes the World a better place.

The major reason that I am going to build this Manual from my blog is that I am counting on your help. In my blog, you’ll find the posts related to all planned chapters – fourteen of them. Some are almost done , some- almost empty. Please comment and discuss the work in progress.

This attitude of transparency and the hope for teaming with you is not accidental.

It reflects the core character of the project itself. In its aspect of the social experiment, it tests the social maturity of the participants, including me- trusting in the goodness of the human nature, in living in the free community without fears or shame, where you are responsible for your life and play and where your life and play matters.

Obviously, your help with the manual is as part of your life as is a reflection of your worldview.

Both Manual and the Philozophy.com are completely ideology-neutral. This is the place where different worldviews mingle, all are welcome, their only defense consists of the human values and benefits for humanity. But we have preferences; we are for individualism, for cooperation and for the freedom of expression. We are against mob mentality, mindlessness, and stupidity. We are against the fear of being yourself, against the fear of exploring and against the fear of individual thinking.

Let’s do it and let The Force be with us, which is very likely, otherwise with whom it would be, like, with Klingons?

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Subjectivity vs Objectivity vs Evolution

Subjectivity vs Objectivity vs Evolution.
http://www.lightouch.com/subjobj.htm:(Maureen Gamble 1998):
“Even Popper’s “World 3” suffers this shortcoming of the objectivity test in that the contents of books,          scientific theory or critical arguments change from century to century as our experience and perception of the phenomenological world change. Examine his example of proof for the existence and value of World 3 with a slight change. Imagine that all machines and tools are destroyed, and all our subjective learning, including our subjective knowledge of machines and tools and how to use them. Further imagine that all the books written since 1000 AD were also destroyed. Our ability to reestablish our civilization would be severely impacted by the inaccuracy and distortion of how the remaining information defines reality. We would, in effect, adopt the shared reality of that millennium as the basis for our facts, until the subjective experience of enough individuals and their interpretation of those experiences brought about another shift in our “scientific” awareness. We can quickly see that factual information is not, of itself, objective, but is a consensual description of subjective experiences.
British physicist-mathematician-astronomer Sir James Jeans (1877-1946) cogently defined science as “the earnest attempt to set in order the facts of experience” (142). He later observed that “Reality is in some sense constructed by the mind, not simply perceived by it, and many such constructions are possible, none necessarily sovereign” (143). Albert Einstein was abundantly aware of this aspect of scientific method. He observed that “our theories are inventions of our minds that we use for practical purposes, and that allow us to make comprehensible what is sensorily given. Fundamentally, in theory building we invent, and from our inventions infer, and then test for accuracy, economy, logical coherence, and scope” (34). It then follows that “theoretical systems”, an important inmate of Popper’s World 3, is actually a product of mind, and is inherently subjective by its very nature.
Those physicists, like Niels Bohr and Nick Herbert, who leapfrogged over Einstein to develop the concepts of quantum mechanics even propose that the distinction between subjective and objective is functionally non-existent. In The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot explains that “there is compelling evidence that the only time quanta ever manifest as particles is when we are looking at them. For instance, when an electron isn’t being looked at, experimental findings suggest that it is always a wave” (34). Herbert comments that this interpretation has sometimes caused him to imagine that behind his back the world is always “a radically ambiguous and ceaselessly flowing quantum soup” (Talbot, 34). Reality, that ultimate test of objectivity, may only be an individual subjective experience created by our participation and observation. Our collective reality may be constructed and rearranged by our thoughts, intentions and expectations. In the light of this “new science”, the relative value of subjectivity versus objectivity, especially for the purpose of scientific investigation, seems to be as meaningless as the pre-Columbian debates over whether there were monsters at the edge of the known world or just a bottomless pit.”

Evolutionary Objectivity
My world is similar to the caveman’s world or my cat’s. Propelled by the evolution, it increased in complexity but it didn’t switch from the subjective to objective . Animal’s world is not dual , it is only mode they have, not subjective (sad dog is all materialistic), and not objective (the love for the master, fear and hunger are probably as real and brain produced as his food.) The animal has only one world- its own. It is real and reliable enough for the survival. I guess the more social is the animal the more “objectivity’ is in its world.
The same is with the infant- non-dual world- just with the human brain, comparing to the animal’s, the building of the understanding spreads like a wild fire. The relationships between emotions, behaviors and perception stimuli, quickly created by the repetition, are seen by an observer as the infant making sense of the world. More of the same and we talk about object permanence, then naming, and very soon the language- first receptive – at 6-12 months, and at 12 months – talking. When we observe this process – and, as a pediatrician, I am doing this daily for the last 40 years- we compare it instinctively or scientifically- to our own making sense of the world.
It is the process of splitting the world from nondual, animal type of the world, into our world, with the division into the personal world, “subjectivity’ and the real world, “objectivity”. This process is very gradual- both in phylogeny and ontogeny. This is the process, which is absent in animals, or almost absent? We do not remember going through it – is it a coincidence , that we do not remember the events occurring in the first two years of life?
The subjective world for the animal “feels’ like real, only world. The same for a child, the same for a caveman , for a shaman in trance, for a schizophrenic with hallucinations, and probably during the dreaming.

But the child grows fast in the hypersocial, human world. She learns from mom, dad , others. The behaviors, the images repeat themselves, becoming consistent, they are beginning to feel normal and “out there” . The child learns to use this world, rely on it, it is fool-proof, real, only world.
In comparison the subjectivity recedes towards the personal , emotional, infamously unreliable place. “ I like it today, I’ll hate it tomorrow, I remember today, I’ll forget this tomorrow- it is annoying and everybody has different take on it. We see things differently, we disagree,” nobody understands me” etc. And now the science and the technology drive more nails into the coffin of the subjective world. If a drunk shaman sings the story, it is one thing, but if millions of white-coated geniuses tell their story, how can you compare this with your toothache.” These are facts and here are you with your misery…and they do not mix.”
It is not enough to say that the observer influences the results of observations. It is not enough to suspect that we do not know about things but only about observations ( it means somebody’s observations). It is more: the things are like they are observed. The philosophers often go half way: “we can not pierce through the veil of the perception”, the “noumena”: they are unobservable phenomena, “everything is seen through the lens of the our senses”. How about : “there is nothing beyond the veil”, there are no “noumena”, “the buck stops at the lens” .
The things are how we see them. Seeing creates the things. There is my universe. This universe tells me that you created a similar one, and you and you and you. But there is no Nobody’s universe.

My Universe is all I have.
It is rather strange place: it is real, solid ,scientific , but it changes. When I learn something it expands, for example- the rhetoric analysis is new thing, also my new tennis shoes. When I forget something- some chinese words, for example, it shrinks. All is real, no division into subjective and objective, all real, but some things are more solid than other, some more reliable than others. The beauty of it is its simplicity; to accept this concept , you do not need to reject anything or believe in anything.
It is just my weird interpretation of the evolution of the nervous system, of my understanding of the complexity .
Every organism builds its own world with its nervous system. The reason for its existence is to direct non-random actions of the organism. Non-random actions (one can call them behaviors) have evolutionary advantage over the random actions. All the organism does is to try to improve these behaviors. The nervous system has to remember them and then attempt to improve them, failure to do it means death. Therefore the organism is programmed to be rewarded for birth and punished for death. The improved behaviors have to “remember’ all previous stages , therefore are by definition more and more complex.
This part is simple as we have the reasonable language to describe it. Of course for this sequence to make sense, the events prior to the creation of the nervous system, have to follow the same algorithm. Even more tricky is the more recent history , when more complex organisms started to reflect on themselves and name different behaviors as they would have possessed different nature. This sure pleased the complexity principle, but it created an awful philosophical and spiritual mess.
I guess people always treated solid things as solids and reliable and shifty things as “subjective”. The division of the world into objective and subjective was the biggest mistake of all. As the initial quotation suggest , Einstein and other scientists, all knew it. But why normal people do not? Nick Herbert felt like behind his back was a flowing soup of quanta. It is not radical enough. Nothing moves behind, the things, or whatever it is behind, do not move. The time , the space, the matter, and the movement are the categories or dimensions or whatever we decided to name and use them as such.
In “The book on the taboo against knowing who you are” Alan Watts tells us about similar world, but more esoteric, mystical and eastern, based on Vedanta. I say that only personal worlds exists, he says that there is no person. He hoped that just a small shift in understanding can change us and the world. He was famous, wrote 20 books, he died in 1973 and nobody knows about him anymore. No shift happened, for sure.
For millennia we were not bothered much by not knowing what we do not know, why now?
The reasons I come up with are feeble and strange. One is that the developments in neuroscience and the knowledge about the evolution of the nervous system made it accessible for such a dilettante as me.
The other , even stranger, almost messianic, is that we urgently need a new metaphor. This new metaphor has three parts:
1. Our understanding of the world is just a metaphor, like the fish’s understanding of the fast , huge object with the open jaw and a lot of teeth, is just a metaphor. For the fish this metaphor doesn’t appear in the language but in the form of the neural network in its brain, and it is also fish’s real world, the only one it has. In our understanding we’ll keep going further and deeper and faster and more beautiful and this is the world for each of us.
2. Beyond our understanding it is an” immobile soup of pre-quanta” and is not behind my back but all around when I half-close my eyes. It has no characteristics, not eternal, neither powerful, like math equation endlessly complex as a possibility, but completely determined, as this is this, and not that, and I am I, and not you. It may even not exist, maybe this is this because we call it “this”? It (literally!) does not matter.
3. In a paradox , the image of our universe being determined and immobile, allows for the image of the journey. We name and explore and categorise and it looks like a trend. It looks like our fate/purpose/system is to figure things out. This trend is the clear part of the evolutionary algorithm, “improve behavior or die”. It can , in different words, ( Llinas’” I of the vortex”) be extended to the evolution of the pre-neuron systems , even pre-life systems.
Can it also be told to the modern world, through the metaphor, through the language powerful enough to save us? If we take away our real, crazy, dying world, and leave humans with Herbert’s personal observations in front, and quanta soup behind everybody, will it be enough? Or in my version, if we leave everybody with his or her personally build world, which we share with others, with the soup of pre-dimensional, immobile forces around us when we half-close the eyes , and nothing else? Linda says that the metaphor of “there is no Nobody’s Universe” doesn’t work. Ok, but how to replace it?
The other metaphor is of the tapestry of our personal worlds, connected like brain’s neurons, all of them, since the beginning of the Universe until the end. There is really no movement there just the view changes–like the image of the fractal equation- this is this and that is that.
Well, so what? If we accept this crazy hypothesis, that here is no nobody’s Universe and
everybody has personal real, solid Universe , so what? Does it help us in the real world, does it tells us what to do, how to act?

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Aside

TER (towards evolutionary reality)- the concepts of time and explicitness

Many complicated concept are greatly simplified and demystified.

The time.

The Universe is still. It is such  and such, mathematically pure and complete.

It is completely implicit, no communications, no axioms, conventions, paradigms.

As I am trying to understand it , I am doing it in the way my mind allows me to do it.

I am naming , making sense, categorising, communicating.

This creates my Universe, the only reality I can get.

I have been creating this and learning about this reality since birth.

Now, almost 70 year old, I believe that that process is common for all beings.

All beings who have nervous system,  create their Universes with the a marked degree of explicitness.

It is possible to prove this by examining their nervous system and find  some description of the reality or understanding.

As we would use our mind for this investigations, we’d find that even very primitive  beings

would “use’ two categories very familiar for us.

1. good-bad category

2. Level of intensity category.

Both of them contain the concept of time in them:

1. “Good” means – live longer- means- bigger number of behaviors/ experiences/ choices/units of understanding/ chances to multiply between birth and death.

2. “Intensity” divides immediately into the energy concentration, distance( space) and time.

This will tell how many of these behaviors can be packed between birth and death.

So, so simple- this is the origin and nature of time in the intellicentrism. Without doing something, without understanding, making sense of something what is time good for.

Remember: there is no Nobody Universe!

The explicitness.

Simple behaviors/experiences/units of understanding shift from implicit to explicit rapidly.

In one pocket you have 2 dollars and in other also 2. Your being 4 dollars worth is completely implicit. Then , ka-boom- you pulled them out – everybody sees 4 dollars, or you just say “ I have 4 dollars” or  just 2+2= 4. or you scribble this on the blackboard- whatever you do – the shift to explicit is rapid and complete. The communication is full across very broad social spectrum. At least most humans , excluding the infants and imbecils, will get it. You feel kind of strange- implicit- then you think- I know , I am hungry!- more explicit, but except for you and your wife, nobody knows. Then you shout”I am hungry”, then you tweet it to the whole Universe, then additionally you gesture ‘ mangiare, mangiare”- more and more explicit. But the concept is more complex and communication less complete, less explicit. (see also “implicit and explicit worldviews”)

With the evolutionary march of complexity, the level of the explicity is very important. The animal’s expression of its life purpose  is mostly implicit- it is the sum of its behaviors experienced by its parents, mates , offsprings and the rest of the social group. Very, very few of these behaviors have the characteristics of communication, even fewer , of the metaphor.

But still, the nervous system has the ability to mushroom complexity relatively easily by increase of explicity, that the other systems of the nature just have no chance. The development of the metaphor, then language, then the culture, then reflective thinking, is so energetically cheap that the rest of the all life systems(eyes, necks, crocodiles, birds and monkeys, civilizations, et caetera, et caetera ) practically stop evolving.

Also, most of the systems have clear evolutionary constrains:

the neck can be only so long – see giraffe’s dilemma,

the brain can be only so large- see pelvic dilemma,

the  population can be only so large- see Malthus, or year 2050 dilemma.

But explicity? Can you see the limits of the depth of communication, closiness of relationships, or how much you understand or love? And all of these with the shift of the hierarchy of the few synapses and a smile.

Written

on July 8, 2014

Philosophy Network “On social engineering”

All of us “philosophers” share the love for broader perspective and for asking big questions.
This make us;
1. closer to the human nature, inquisitive and good.
2. seeing more misery and more hope in the same time.
So, we all have an urge to be social engineers , and we are scare of it , because of the terrible mistakes humankind made.(and is making)
To make this great meeting of minds beneficial, maybe we can agree on some broad principle of doing it , but doing it safely?

I am a pediatrician, so every day , when I tell kids and parents to read books and turn off tv, I do some social engineering, don’t I?
I am also a host of the web site, which encourages building and sharing of the personal worldview (philozophy.com) Well , nobody’s doing it, so this is an example of failed social engineering….

How about starting with 3 points safe social engineering:

A. promote education, reading, thinking
B. promote communication- discussions, cultural exchange, nonviolent communication.
C. promote individuality, being your own person, critical thinking.
..

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