ANSWERS

I've been asked my thoughts on David Berlinski's book, 'The Devil's Delusion.'  Here is one small section of it:

                   THE HEART OF MATTER

In the early years of the nineteenth century,....Thomas Young demonstrated that light behaves like a wave.  After shining a beam of light through two slits, he observed interference patterns forming on a screen placed behind them.  Wave crests met wave crests to form bigger crests; wave troughs met wave troughs to former deeper troughs; and when crests and troughs were not meeting companionably, they interfered with one another in order to extinguish themselves.

     What could be simpler?  Light is like a wave.

     Ah, but on the other hand, Einstein demonstrated in 1905 that in order to explain the photoelectric effect, it was necessary (or at least convenient) to assume that light comprises particles.  Send a beam of light toward a metal surface, and electrons pop out.  Plainly they pop out because they have been knocked off.  To accommodate both popping and knocking off, Einstein found it necessary to think of light as if it were composed of discrete packets of energy.

     What could be simpler?  Light is like a particle.

     It was not entirely clear how in the matter of Young v. Einstein, both men could have been right.

     The consortium of physicists who created quantum mechanics in the third decade of the twentieth century--Neils Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, Max Born--finessed this problem by declaring Young v. Einstein a draw.  Light, they argued, is both like a wave and like a particle, and what is more, it is like a wave and like a particle on the level of individual photons themselves.  Photons, physicists came to understand, interfere with themselves, and if deep down no one had the slightest idea how to picture auto interference, what physicists were willing to give up was the picture and not the interference.

     The finessing required, as one might imagine, a good deal of finessing.

     A quantum particle--an electron or photon, say--is here, and somewhat later, it is there.  The old here-and -there, Schrodinger specified in terms of the properties of a wave.  It is here where the wave mounts and there where it dips.  Passing through two slits, the wave peaks at the left and peaks as well at the right, flowing, as waves tend to do, through both slits at once.

     But a wave is intended to track the moving position of a single particle, and it is here that the formalism of quantum mechanics commits the physicist to a form of legerdemain that has to this day resisted all attempts at explication (emphasis mine).  It is one thing to say that a wave may pass through two slits;  it is quite another thing to say that a single particle may divide its allegiance in just the same way.  Nonetheless, this is just what physicists were forced to say.  By now, they say it without a second thought. The particle that could be here or there they represent by a wave that is here and there.  If that is where the wave is, the particle enjoys a doubling of its position in space, with each position corresponding to a distinct physical state.  Somehow both physical states are real and they are real at the same time.  They are, as physicists say, superimposed.  They exist together.  There is no getting rid of them.  Superimposed states are themselves described by the undulation of a wave, which is generally described as a wave packet to signify the extent to which it embodies a variety of different states and so a variety of different waves.  It is Schrodinger's equation that describes the wave packets' undulations.

     The formalism of quantum mechanics, physicists at once realized, defeated all efforts to picture the quantum world.  If no pictures were available, neither was there a link to common sense.  Light is both a wave and a particle, and it is both a wave and a particle at the same time.  This conclusion embodies a mystery, one that no subsequent analytic efforts have dissolved (emphasis mine).

     ....In 1926, Max Born...suggested...that  quantum mechanical waves.....might be understood in terms of the probabilities that they reveal.  Thus the amplitude of a wave is a sign that quite likely there is a particle there and so a clue to its position, and the distance between wave peaks is again a sign that the particle is quite likely traveling with a particular momentum......

     Under Born's interpretation of quantum mechanics, the identity of a particle undergoes further deconstruction.  The old here-or-there has long since passed to the new here-and-there, but what is here and there is now a matter of chance.  Having impossibly divided itself between two slits, a single photon undergoes further demotion to appear in quantum mechanics as the ghost of its position.  It could be here, it could be there, and somehow it could be at both places at once.

     These divided allegiances come to an end abruptly when an observer, padding in from outside the quantum system, undertakes a measurement.  So long as no one is looking, the electron is all things to all men.  But let the physicist have a look, and boom! the particle that could be here and there becomes here or there all over again.  The wave packet collapses into just one of its possibilities.  The other quantum states that it embodies vanishes, and they vanish instantaneously.

     No one knows why (emphasis mine).

     Niels Bohr........embraced this interpretation of quantum mechanics, whence it's designation as the Copenhagen interpretation.  It has become canonical.

     It has not, however, explained the connection between the quantum realm and the classical realm.  "So long as the packet reduction is an essential component [of quantum mechanics], the physicist John Bell observed, "and so long as we do not know when and how it takes over from the Schrodinger equation, we do not have an exact and unambiguous formulation of our most fundamental physical theory."

     If this is so, why is our most fundamental physical theory fundamental?

     I'm just asking.

I must include one more section of the Devil's Disciple to give a full response.  Here it is:

     Now when Schrodinger first came to appreciate the mysteries of quantum theory, he devised a thought experiment to explain his own perplexity. Imagine that a cat has been placed in a sealed container, together with a device that if it goes off will kill it-a revolver, say, or some sort of radioactive pellet.  Whether the device goes off is a matter of chance (emphasis mine).  So long as no one is looking, the cat exists in a superposition of quantum states, at once half dead (the gun might fire) and half alive (it might not).  As soon as an observer peeks into the box, that interposition gives way.  That cat is either dead or alive  and there are no two ways about it.....

Schrodinger's cat is a part of the mythology of quantum theory, and according to the Copenhagen interpretation, it is there for the count, because no one can imagine how to get rid of the poor creature (emphasis mine).

Before we move on, a few words about the author, himself, David Berlinski.  You may be able to tell from the above excerpt that Berlinski is sarcastically amused by the pretensions of science.  In fact the subtitle of the Devil's Delusion is "Atheism and It's Scientific Pretensions."  A scientist and a philosopher, Berlinski takes great joy in revealing that when it comes to the basic questions of life, 'Who are we?'  'Why are we here?'  and 'How did we get here?' scientists are really just as confused as we are.  Better, from Berlinski's perspective, to have faith in a God that provides the comfort of looking like ourselves and being responsive to our prayers.   To the extent that he revels in unmasking the assumptions and pretensions of science, we are compadres and I really enjoy reading and watching him (videos of Berlinski are available on the internet).  To the extent that he believes in a God that he assumes looks like him and answers his prayers, a God who must be believed in rather than known, or experienced, that is where we differ.  I'll discuss this more at the end of the post.

The parts of the above quote that I emphasized in bold letters all refer to the unsolvable mystery of both the wave/particle duality and the superposition of quantum states, as in Schrodinger's cat who is both dead and alive at the same time until someone opens the box and observes that cat.  That observation determines which of the two states the cat is actually in.  It also elevates to an extraordinary degree the power of human observation, while completely eradicating the power of the cat, who, at least to my understanding, is also an observer; one who may not be able to make the intellectual distinctions that a human observer can make, but can certainly make simple observations about its immediate environment, including whether it remains within a functional organism, or has moved elsewhere.  But we'll get back to that a little later.

So here is an explanation of the particle/wave duality.  This explanation is not original to me.  It comes directly from a spiritual understanding that was prevalent around the world prior to our industrial age.  The thing I find most pretentious about Western scientists is that they, including Berlinski, ignore this ancient wisdom that still remains as the foundational understanding of acupuncture, palm healing, aryuvedic medicine, yoga and other spiritual and healing approaches.

There are no particles.  What appears to us as particles are stable, or fairly stable, configurations of two forces that I will call yin and yang (although they are referred to by many other names in different cultures, including the North African/Middle Eastern cultures where they were referred to as Heaven and Earth ("In  the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth,"  and mind you two days, or two epochs, before, according to the Judeo-Christian Bible,  He created the actual planet earth and three epochs before He created the sun and stars.)  I have mentioned in several earlier posts the horribly frustrating search for 'solid' particles, for any matter, what-so-ever, that has been conducted by Western scientists ever since the time of Democritus and now at gigantic particle colliders such as CERN.  The further we peer into the infinitesimally small reaches of the universe, the more we discover not matter, but spaciousness, not solidity, but the interplay of forces (yin and yang).

The center of every naturally formed particle, from electrons and quarks, to protons and atoms, to planets and stars and whole galaxies,  is yang and the periphery is yin.  Yang is an inward force that pulls everything in it's vicinity toward it.  It is what Western scientists refer to as mass, when they are talking about the object (the yin/yang configuration) itself and what Western scientists refer to as gravity when they are talking about the inward pull of the yang force as it extends beyond the periphery of the object.  The dimensions of an object, it's length, width and depth, are created by yin. The contours, the boundaries of an object are created by yang.  Picture this:  a few very strong men are standing at the center of a circle with their backs to each other.  Each of them holds a rope in his hand and each rope is attached to a wild horse.  The horses are dying to break free and they gallop around in a circle, all the while straining to break away (with centrifugal force) but being restrained by the centripedal force being exerted by the men holding the ropes.  Put this in three dimensions and you have the spherical form of what is called a particle.  Now for the sake of this example, each man is accompanied by his young child, who is also pulling on the rope as best as the child can.  One of the horses gives an extra effort to break loose at a moment when the man holding that particular rope is inattentive.  The horse breaks free and takes off away from the man, curving this way and that, as fast as he can, but being restrained a bit by the child who is still holding on to the rope.  This is a wave.

The particle is a yang dominated formation with the yin periphery being held back from expanding out into the universe, and the wave is a yin dominated formation, spiralling away from the yang center that it split off from, but still being restrained somewhat by the tiny yang force at it's center.  Everything is both yin and yang.  Pure yang and pure yin exist but are not part of the physical universe until they combine.  They do not attract each other so much as they entrap each other.  The real attraction is between smaller yang and larger yang.  So the yang center of the moon is attracted to the yang center of the earth, which is attracted to the yang center of the sun, which is attracted to the black hole at the yang center of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is attracted to the black hole at the center of the universe around which all the galaxies revolve.

Pure yin moves at infinite speed, which means that it is impossibly fast and absolutely still at the same time, since it can traverse the entire universe and return to it's original spot in no time.  If this is too  hard to imagine, think of your own consciousness.  The speed of light is the fastest speed that a thing can travel; pure yin is not a thing.  Within the light wave (yin) is a tiny stream of yang, the smallest accumulation of yang that we know of.  We know there is yang there because the light wave has a certain contour and wave length.  Without any yang, it would just disperse at infinite speed into the universe.  The tiny stream of yang at the center of the wave is not a photon.  When a measuring instrument, or an electron encounters the path of a light wave, the stream is attracted to the measuring instrument and as it continues to move forward, it piles up until the stream has enough yang force to stop the forward momentum of the wave, and the wave circles around it.  This momentarily stable configuration is what we call a photon.  This is what was knocking the electrons off the metal in Einstein's photoelectric experiments, and this is what registers at the measuring device on either the right or the left slit of the two slit experiment.  When the light wave passes through both slits, the yang stream is either closer to the slit on the right, or the slit on the left.  It changes from moment to moment as the wave undulates.  At the moment it passes the measuring device, the stream will pool up at whichever slit is closest, the forward momentum of the wave will be confined to a circle (or a sphere in three dimensions) and a 'photon' will be registered on either the right or the left.*

So all this nonsense about ghost particles and superpositions, and the particle traveling all through the universe and eliminating all paths but one, or the creation of an entirely different universe where the 'particle' lands on the left while in our universe it lands on the right, all of that stuff is just rubbish.  And this simple, straightforward explanation comes from a 'mystic,' someone who doesn't have their feet on the ground like the no nonsense materialist physicists with their cockamamy theories based on  a complete misunderstanding of the physical universe.

This guy I know, William of Ockam, was kind enough to lend me his razor.  Anyone need a shave?*

And then there is Schrodinger's cat, and super positions and the awesome power of human observation determining life or death, and other universes where the dead cat is alive or where the live cat is dead.  Wow!  The clue to this great mystery is in the phrase "Whether the device goes off is a matter of chance."  Guess what?  There is no such thing as a matter of chance.  No where, no how, never.  Every event is caused by forces.  If there are too many forces at work to calculate, then an event may not be predictable because of our limited powers of measurement.  But that doesn't mean it happens by chance.  The ball on a roulette wheel falls into a particular slot, not because of chance, but because the force exerted from the wrist of the person who drops the ball, the speed at which the wheel is turning at the time of the drop, the angle of the table, the amount of oil in the turning mechanism, the tiny imperfections in the spherical shape of the ball, the exact spot where the ball is gripped when it is dropped, the temperature and the humidity in the room; all of these factors plus others, effect the forces impinging on that ball and that wheel and determine where exactly the ball will drop.  Impossible to predict, but always a product of a combination of forces, never by chance.  The same, of course, is true of any hair trigger device or radioactive material in a Shrodinger box.  Whether the gun goes off or there is a radioactive release is purely the result of the interplay of forces, not observations made after the fact.

I am not, by the way, eliminating free will.  Will is a force.  Every living creature is attached to a metabolic organism that creates energy that can be used to accomplish things.  The force that beings use is will.  The force that God uses is will.  So natural forces, whether they are created passively from previous interactions or intentionally through the use of will, are at the cause of every event.  There is no such thing as chance.

And lest you think that I am straying from the duality of yin and yang, let me explain.  Will is yang.  If one is too yin, they lack the will to realize their dreams and their conscious life consists of a lot of restless, circular thought.  One can be too yang, and too assertive in reaching their goals.  The ideal is balance.  Without yin, their is no expansiveness, no imagination.  You push toward your goals (really, since yang is the inward force,  you pull your goals to you) but your goals are too short term and selfish and you alienate others in the process.  With a balance of strong yin and strong yang, you have the imagination and the sensitivity to others to have goals that have a broader vision and that include the happiness of others, and the flexibility to achieve them by listening to others and adapting your approaches along the way.

So the interplay of yin and yang create both the stable configurations that we call things, and the energetic things that display movement and power, that we call waves.  This, of course, is true in the quantum world as well as the visible world that we are familiar with.  In fact, there is no real separation between the quantum world and the visible world.  It is a world of waves that  appear as solid particles when we focus on them.  When we explore the subatomic world of the quantum,  the illusion of solid and stable particles is impossible to maintain.   

Our observation alone does not create events, although it does shape how we perceive events.  We live in a world of waves.  Our observations collapse waves into particles, and each of us living beings, humans and otherwise, have our own particular way of creating particles from waves.  So the parasites in my intestine sense a world that is very different than the one that I sense.  An infinite number of ways of perceiving the world, ways specific to each species, and specific to each individual within each species.  But it is one world of waves, made up of configuring forces, that we particularize in an infinite number of ways to create our own personal world of things.  Not an infinite number of worlds perceived, if we are really being scientific, in the same, objective way.

Elsewhere in 'The Devil's Delusion,' after a discussion of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica,  Berlinski writes,

 "On December 6, 1273, Aquinas, while attending mass, fell into a prolonged and rapturous mystical state.  Thereafter, he ceased to write.  When urged by officials of the Catholic Church to continue his work on the Summa, which he had left unfinished, he replied, "I can do no more.  Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written now appears to be of little value."

So beyond atheism and faith, there is a third option that Berlinski mentions but does not really consider.  A God that can be experienced does not have to be deduced; thus Aquinas' reluctance to continue with the 'Summa.'  The mystical tradition of every religion, in fact, is a tradition of actual experience.  It is not a question of logic or faith.  Faith is future oriented.  I could ask you why you are going to a certain movie, and you can say, "because I heard it was good,"  or "because I believe that I will enjoy it."  But after you've seen the movie, you no longer have to believe anything regarding it.  You have already experienced it.  It was either, for you,  good or bad.  No belief required.

When you experience God,  you discover that God is not a physical being who lives somewhere, who is here but not there, or there but not here.  God is the subtlest essence of everything.  God is found within.  That is why all religions have traditions of repetitive prayers, or repetitive movements, or mantras, or breathing exercises.  The purpose of all of these is to slow down the mind.  The closer you get to your center, the closer you get to God.  But most of us, scientists and even clergy, have never been relaxed enough, indwelling enough, have never slowed our minds down enough, to experience the Divine essence within.  We are too busy battling each other over who believes in the 'right' God, who is doing the 'right' thing, etc.  All our desires, including the desire to win arguments, moves our attention toward the physical world around us and away from the spiritual world within us.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.  We all are here to accomplish something.  But imagine a world where people were able to pursue their goals, but also, to, on a regular bases, go within to reaffirm the understanding that the Divine essence is within all of us.  If that were the case, there would be no need for endless discussions about right and wrong, about how to treat our children, our friends, our competitors.  It would all become automatically clear when we realize the true preciousness of every life including our own.



*A more thorough explanation of this quantum phenomena can be found in my post "Understanding the Quantum" 2017.

*William of Ockam, an early fourteenth century British philosopher, was famous for 'Ockam's Razor' a principle by which scientific explanations which explain facts more simply and require fewer assumptions are probably more accurate than wildly elaborate ones that require many assumptions.




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THE WAY THINGS AREN'T

Harvard historian Stephen Greenblatt's  book  "The Swerve; How the World Became Modern" is really an homage to another book, a very long poem, actually, "On The Nature of Things," written by Lucretius, a Roman, shortly before the time of Christ.  Greenblatt does note that many of the things Lucretius mentions in his poem, written before the advent of modern science, are ludicrous to contemporary readers.  He writes,

 "Lucretius believed that the sun circled around the earth, and he argued that the sun's heat and size could hardly be much greater than are perceived by our senses.  He thought that worms were spontaneously generated from the wet soil, explained lightning as seeds of fire expelled from hollow clouds, and pictured the earth as a menopausal mother exhausted by the effort of so much breeding.  But at the core of the poem lay key principles of a modern understanding of the world."

The Swerve is very much the story of how this book was lost and then recovered fifteen hundred years later, and then formed the intellectual framework, according to Greenblatt,  that made the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and our modern age possible.  According to Greenblatt, none of the great inventions of modern science would have been possible without the foundational insights of Lucretius.  His (Lucretius') understanding liberated us from the Dark Ages, from religious war, from the cruel and pointless proscriptions of various Christian sects and the horrific torture, murder and oppression meted out to members of opposing sects and religions.

It is these 'key principles' of Lucretius that Greenblatt discusses at length in his chapter called "The Way Things Are."  And it is these key principles that I want to focus on in this post.  It is my contention that, given not just modern science in general, but the latest contemporary scientific findings and some simple, common sense introspection based on one's actual experience, that those 'key principles' of Lucretius may be as anachronistic and ludicrous as the rest of it, and the quicker they are recognized as such, the better it will be for all of us.

The gist of Lucretius' revelation is that the world is made up of two things, tiny particles of matter and void.  The proof that there is void is that these tiny particles move, something that would be impossible if there were a plenum (a condition where there is no void, but only space stuffed to the brim with matter).  These tiny particles, that Lucretius calls matter, are indivisible and eternal.  There are many different types of these basic particles and they combine and recombine endlessly to form things.  No particular combination of particles is eternal, including that combination of particles that we call human beings,  but the individual particles that make up all things, including ourselves, are, themselves, eternal.

What we human beings, are, then,  is a particular combination of these tiny particles and the void between them.  That's it.  There is no soul, no destiny, no purpose and no after life.  At death the particles disperse, reorganize elsewhere and  that is very much the end of that.  There is no God, no guidance, no destiny, just accidental and temporary assemblages of particles; and once you accept that fact, as Greenblatt has done, you can get on with what is truly important in life: the pursuit of pleasure.  And it is the liberation from thoughts of an after life and the prejudices and fearful assumptions about a harsh and judgemental God, that have held down human society and it's almost limitless power of invention, imagination and capacity for pleasure.

Okay.  So there are two basic things: these tiny particles, that Lucretius calls matter, and the spaces between them, that he calls void.  And Lucretius knows there is void between particles because they move.  If things were stuffed to the brim with matter, Lucretius reasons, there would be no movement possible.  Movement proves the presence of void.  Very good.  But how do they move?  These tiny particles could not possibly be self-propelled.  In truth, they do not move, but they are moved.  And if they are moved, what is moving them?  Let's not go to the very depth of this problem for a moment and just say something that, I think, everyone can agree on.  These particles are moved by forces. In fact it is the regularity of these forces and the movements that they engender that allow us to live in a world that is, to a great degree, consistent.  Although there is always variety within that consistency, it is the consistent framework within which that variety takes place, that allows us to live a life that is, at least to some degree, predictable, safe and familiar.  In fact, the study of these forces and an attempt to understand the regularity of the movements that they cause--whether the people that are studying them believe that they are the random result of a series of accidents or the handiwork of God--this study has been the main thrust of theoretical physics ever since anyone first wondered about the way this world works.

I know that part of the appeal of Lucretius is its simplicity; that it may be comforting to think that all that there is are particles and void, but to this list, simple logic and the most rudimentary observation demands that we add at least a third element....forces.  Now some people will even contend that these forces are particles, but they do not contend that they are particles of matter, in the usual way we think of particles, but rather are bundles of quantized energy.  Whether there actually are quantized bundles of energy or whether it is our measuring devices that collapse waves of energy into bundles, is not entirely clear.  Yet even if forces are quantized bundles of energy, they are not just bundles of energy.  They are 'lawful,' guided bundles of energy.  What is it that is guiding them?  How are these laws of physics and thermodynamics and chemistry enforced?  Gravity moves matter in a certain trajectory; electro-magnetism in another.  Where is that trajectory?  Is it matter or void?  Particles generally move faster in heat and slower in cold.  But aside from the particles, the heat and cold, itself, which is the context of this movement, is it matter or void? If I step off the roof, I will fall.  That is the law and that law is there at the edge of my roof, whether or not someone or something is actually falling off it at any particular time.  In fact, the entire universe is criss-crossed with forces that are not visible, but are only detected when we see objects moving, (really being forced to move) in certain directions and at certain velocities because of them. The entire universe of planets and stars and galaxies and black holes, are all held in place by the balance of these forces that are neither matter nor void, but that are absolutely essential to our existence.

Unlike human laws which must create methods of enforcement outside of the laws themselves to make them effective (jail time, loss of licenses, fines and such); natural laws somehow contain their own enforcement.  The force is the law and the law is the force.  These laws are neither matter nor void, but are there as surely as I will hit the ground if I step off the roof.  So in this insightful compendium that makes the world and life and death so simple and clear, and that enables all these followers of Lucretius (and actually of Epicurus a thousand years earlier in Greece, from whom Lucretius got many of his ideas), to lead a worry free and wonder free life, and devote themselves exclusively to the pursuit of pleasures, we have to add to matter and void another ingredient.....forces.  Whatever they are, they do 'force' particles to move in consistent ways, and they are neither matter nor void.

And what about us?  Lucretius and many of his modern contemporary followers try to be 'objective,' which, to them, means focusing always on what they observe but never on the observer.  So they never consider that  observers may affect what it is that they are observing or that the observer is, also, very much a part of the universe, as much as are particles, void or forces.  Even if they try to be objective about their observations, if there is a way that perceptions are interpreted that is particular to not just our culture or the contemporary zeitgeist in which we are living, but is particular to the entire species homo sapien and our sensory systems of perceiving and defining in basic ways those perceptions, then our observations will yield information as to the way humans perceive the world and not necessarily information about the way the world actually is.

But first let us discuss one part of the universe that we are very familiar with, even more familiar with than infinitesimal particles and voids.  We may accept particles and voids because someone we respect, perhaps a scientist or a materialist philosopher, says that that is how the world is made up, but no one, including those scientists and philosophers, have ever directly observed or experienced anything that is either a truly solid particle or a completely empty void.  What we do know, both from our experience and our observation, are forces.  

Love is neither composed of infinitesimal particles nor is it a void.  We know that love is there because we experience a fullness rather than a void.  Oops!  Bad word.  Not a void, but rather an emptiness which is not really empty but is filled with thoughts of isolation and feelings of loneliness.   Love is a force that emanates toward, and if you are lucky, from, the object of your love.  So is hate.  So is fear and jealousy and joy and ambition.  We contain within us forces that run counter to other forces.  We are, at times, conflicted.  The force of fear makes us want to retreat, but the obligation or commitment to do something, also experieced as a force, pushes us forward against our fears.  Our inner world, far from being a void, is, at times, a maelstrom of conflicting forces.  And even if we are not in conflict, there is a force that moves us to metabolize energy to accomplish tasks.  That force is desire and the will to follow that desire through to the completion of the tasks that our desires lead us to accomplish.  Everything that our species has created and continues to create, from great masterpieces of literature and music and art, to houses and meals and homework and the simplest tasks, like tying our shoes, are done because someone, ourselves or someone who has power over us, wants them to be done.

We don't necessarily do these things eagerly.  Sometimes we do them rather than face the consequences of not doing them.  The fear of negative consequences is yet another force that can over ride whatever else our desires are pushing us to do at the moment. Lack of normal desire leads to depression and lack of activity.  Absence of desire leads to catatonia and stupor.  Desire is a key ingredient to life.  Feelings lead us to desires and will leads us to marshall the energy to rearrange whatever collections of particles (things) that we need to rearrange in order to satisfy those desires.  They also lead us to attempt to rearrange those collections of particles that we call people.  These people  may or may not be rearrangeable, however, because, they too, like us, are more than just a collection of particles, but have their own wills and desires and feelings that may lead them to want to do things that run counter to the things that we want them to do.  Will and desire and feelings are not matter made of particles and they are not void.  If we must label them in one general category, let's include them with forces.  I should note, however, that forces and minute particles do not fully explain us.  As opposed to things, we are beings.  We are not arrangements of particles or forces, but we are the context in which things and forces, including will and desire and feelings, are experienced.

The physical universe, just like the universe within ourselves, is criss-crossed with forces and is either in balance or is somehow moving toward balance.  Whether we have yet been able to accurately articulate all of these forces, they are there, in every nook and cranny of the universe.  So not only must we add forces to our list of essential universal ingredients, but we can safely eliminate void.  Whatever balance and stability there is in the universe, it is held together by forces.  If we say there are episodes of instability, it is because of the 'seemingly' chaotic movement of forces, which themselves are moving in waves with a certain wavelength and in a certain shape and at a certain velocity which is the product, of the forces that are within and without this wave, and not randomly moving through a 'void.'

Let's talk about matter.  If, as materialists contend, everything is matter, and anyone who believes in anything else is either naive or superstitious, fine; but what is matter?  Lucretius spoke of a great variety of particles, too small to be seen,  that configure and reconfigure to form combinations which include all the visible things of the physical universe.

Although Lucretius never mentioned 'atoms' by name, we assume that those are the tiny particles that he was speaking of.  But Lucretius thought that these particles were solid, indivisible and eternal.   The atom is anything but solid.   Within the atom, the entire nucleus is roughly the size of a pea in relation to the race track size (a sphere whose diameter is the length of a race track), of the entire atom.  The puny electrons are one thousandth the size of the nucleus.  And the atom is certainly not indivisible.  Electrons leave and join atoms all the time.  During radioactive decay sections of the nucleus of the atom leave, changing the basic quality of the atom, and in nuclear fission one atom separates into two or even three new atoms of lighter elements.  Naturally occurring radioactive decay and the now commonly accepted Big Bang Theory which has the explosion of forces preceding the formation of atoms, prove that atoms are not eternal.

Lucretius was also talking about a wide variety of these minuscule basic particles.  He would be surprised by how little variety there is.  Atoms are made of three basic elements: electrons, neutrons and protons.  Each of these elements which I will refer to as particles for the moment, are identical with each other.  In other words, a proton that finds itself in an atom of gold is exactly the same particle as a proton that finds itself in an atom of hydrogen.  The same for neutrons or electrons.  All the visible matter that we see is made up of various combinations of these three basic elements.  That's it.

In fact, it is the proton that is really at the center of the remarkable variety of matter.  In the stable form of every element the number of electrons equals the number of protons.  If there happen to be one or two more or one or two fewer electrons than protons, those are ions of the same element.  These ions, if they are negative,  are eager to combine with other atoms and share their extra electron with them.  If they are positive ions, they are eager to share an extra electron of another atom to balance out their own insufficiency.  Aside from this increased reactivity with atoms with which they can share electrons, ions are the same element with the same chemical and physical properties as the stable form.  Atoms of the same element may also have some variety in the number of neutrons they possess, but this still does not change the element, but creates isotopes of the same element.  Isotopes of the same element have different weights, but, again, they are the same element with the same basic chemical and physical qualities.  It is the number of protons that determine which element the atom is.  Looking at the Periodic Table, one proton would produce an atom of hydrogen.  Two would be helium.  Three would be lithium.  Four would be beryllium.  Five would be boron and six would be carbon.  Jumping to the heavier end of the periodic table, seventy-eight protons would yield platinum.  Add one more proton and you get gold.  Add one more and you get mercury.

What strange alchemy is this?  And what kind of a particle could a proton possibly be to yield that much variety that by simply adding one more particle you get an entirely different element, often entirely different than the element that has one more or one fewer proton?  When we think of particles we think of little solid capsules, usually spherical, like those diagrams of atoms that we all have seen with protons represented as fairly large balls of one bright color and neutrons represented by solid balls of the same size but a different bright color; while the electrons are represented by smaller balls of a third bright color.  But these particles, if indeed they are particles, are not encapsulated and neither is the atom.  It's not that an atom of carbon is encased in a sphere made out of carbon.  There is no casing.  The particular number of protons in relation to the particular number of neutrons and electrons is the carbon.  That's it.  These particles each must produce somehow a force and it is the intermingling of these forces, the particular force fields created between these particles that create all the different qualities that we think of when we consider all the different elements.  In fact every adjective that we use to describe every aspect of the material world in every language on earth is created by our perception of various arrangements of protons, neutrons and electrons.  Is the world as richly varied in texture and strength and color as it appears to us, or is this a function of the way our brains and nervous systems discriminate between these slight adjustments in the force fields between the nucleus and the surrounding electrons within atoms?

 Yet we associate atoms with solidity.  If they are not completely impenetrable and indivisible, they certainly require a huge force to penetrate or divide them.  How can that be if the great, great majority of the space within the atom is absent of particles? It must be the force field and not the particles that is impenetrable.

If we've never actually observed them and our only understanding of them is conjectures about the forces that emanate from them, then why do we consider electrons, protons and neutrons to be particles in the first place?  Because although we can't see them, we can measure a certain spin, a certain charge and a certain mass in discrete places within the atom.  Spin must be measured from some point beyond the surface of the particle, if, indeed, there is a particle there.  If our measuring device penetrated the surface of the particle it would either stop the spin or spin, itself, out of our control.  Spin is a measurement of force not matter.  The assumption that the force is taking place just beyond the surface of some kind of particle is purely an assumption.  Charge tells us something about a force emanating out from the particle, which we call negative, or in toward the center of the particle, which we call positive.  Again, charge like spin, is a measurement of force not matter.  It is only the  consistent and recurring reading of mass that let's us know that these subatomic particles are, indeed, particles, because mass is matter.   The more mass, the more matter and the less mass, the less matter.  But what matter could it possibly be?  If the mass of a proton is made of matter, what matter is it made of?  

As I said, the proton that happens to be in an atom of gold is identical to the proton that happens to be in an atom of carbon.  So the matter within the proton is neither gold nor carbon, nor, itself, made of any element that we know of.  If the proton is matter, if it contains some sort of solidity,  it is some kind of matter that underlies atoms, and that is much, much smaller.  The only matter that we know of consists of atoms and molecules that are held together by forces and it is the strength and pattern of these forces that give us the variety of matter as we experience it.  If there is any matter there it must be within these tiny subatomic particles.  And if that is the case, then how is this subatomic matter held together, if not by opposing forces?  We are talking, then,  about some substance so indivisible and so impenetrable that it does not need to be held together by force and that pervades every single atom in the universe and yet has entirely eluded our detection for all these many years of research.  The only detection of matter in subatomic particles is the detection of mass.  The entire materialist philosophy, and our only bases for assuming the existence of any solidity in the world at all,  rests entirely on the assumption that the reading that we call 'mass' is identical to matter and that  matter is identical to the reading we call 'mass.'

Although the total mass of the protons, neutrons and electrons of an atom is given as its atomic 'weight,' weight is really a changeable reading, depending on the gravitational field that the atom finds itself in.   Mass is really a measure of resistance to acceleration; of the amount of inertia that exists within an object.  That is the agreed upon way that it is measured.  Acceleration is a force.  If mass is measured by the amount of force required to accelerate an object, why can't mass, itself, be a force, a force that resists the force of acceleration; a force that creates inertia?  How could that be?  I will give you two examples, one of which I have used in previous posts.

1.  You are holding a rope in your hand, say the thickness and weight of a clothesline.  At the end of the rope is tied an object that weighs perhaps a pound or two.  You start rotating your wrist in a clockwise fashion so that the rope with the weight at the end of it starts spinning around in a circle.  Now the rope has centrifugal force and working against this centrifugal force is the centripedal force that I am exerting on the rope between my fingers.  This centripedal force in relation to the opposing centrifugal force of the object at the end of the rope, is the force that is keeping the rope taut and spinning in a defined circle.  If the rope and the object at the end of it is exerting a force that is outward and clockwise, so that if I let the rope go it would fly off in a direction that is a combination of the clockwise and outward components; the force that I am exerting between my fingers is the resistance to that force.  This force is inward and counterclockwise.  It is exerted in a very small area, at the point where my fingers touch the rope and it is not obviously visible.  What is visible is the big spinning movement of the rope.  The centripedal force is the hidden force, that, although it is not seen, it is the force at the center of this circle, that constrains the outward flight of the rope and establishes the boundary of the circle.

2.  A discus thrower holds the discus in his hand and spins his whole body with his arm taut.  This rapid movement creates a lot of potential centrifugal force in the discus.  When he releases, the discus flies off at a distant commensurate to the amount of centrifugal force and the momentum that his spinning has created.  The discus thrower's job, in addition to practicing ways to spin around with as much speed and force as possible, is to restrain the discus with his own centripedal force before releasing it.  This restraint takes place at the shoulder of the discus thrower.  The most common injuries to discus throwers are in the rotator cuff muscles and the glenoid labrum tissue of their shoulders, which comes from exerting this restraining, centripedal force, in opposition to the centrifugal force that is finally liberated when the discus is released.  Again, what is seen is the discus and the whirling body of the thrower.  What goes unseen is the centripedal resistance, at the center of this movement, that keeps the discus rotating in a constrained orbit until it is released.

From this perspective, spin is the circular movement of the rope or the discus thrower measured just beyond the surface of the rope and the discus.  Charge is the excess of inward energy (positive) or outward energy (negative) measured just beyond the perimeter of these circles, and mass is, like positive charge, the amount of inward force, but measured from within the perimeter of the spinning rope and spinning discus.

In the pre-industrial world, the universe was looked at as an interplay of opposing forces.  Sometimes those forces were called Yin and Yang, or In and Yo, or Baca and Fana, or Shiva and Shakti, or Heaven and Earth (as in the Judeo-Christian Bible) or Father Sky and Mother Earth.  I talk about these in greater detail in other posts ( If Einstein Were a Taoist; Understanding the Quantum; The Particle/Wave Duality; What's the Matter with Matter?; The Complete Theory of Nothing; and Yin, Yang and Beyong), but suffice it to say, for now, that 'things' are made from the inward 'yang' force which is always at the center of an object and exerts a pull on all the parts of that object toward the center, and a yin force which exerts a force outward.  Their balance creates stable objects, or the appearance of stable objects which are really force fields, the dimension of the object created by the outward force and the boundary of the object created by the inward force.  From this perspective, there is no matter. The apparent world of matter is created by the interplay of these opposing forces.  Instead of a world of particles and void as Lucretius and modern materialists see it, there is, beneath this illusion of void and solid particles,  a world of forces.

And there is one other thing, which is you.  You are consciousness.  You are the context in which this dance of opposing forces is experienced.  This precious thing, that is not a thing, but is the essence of what you are, is what allows you and all beings to experience things and to pursue desires which emanate from consciousness.

It is extremely interesting that Lucretius' poem begins with, of all things, a dedication to the God Venus, who stands at the center of the pantheon for Lucretius.  Here's what he writes:

Venus, power of life, it is you who beneath the sky's sliding stars inspirit the ship-bearing sea, inspirit the productive land.  To you every kind of living creature owes its conception and first glimpse of the sun's light.  You, goddess, at your coming hush the winds and scatter the clouds; for you the creative earth thrust up fragrant flowers; for you the smooth stretches of the ocean smile, and the sky, tranquil now, is flooded with effulgent light.

You must admit that that is a rather odd dedication for the father of materialism. How do you explain this passionate dedication, only a short part of which I quoted above,  which seems to run counter to everything else that Lucretius is saying?  And if we take him at his word, then Venus or the power of Venus infuses every aspect of the physical world, so there is no void, but there is an unseen guidance that is neither matter nor void.  This is the underlying schizophrenic position of the materialist.  You cannot with any seriousness, possibly believe that eternal, although they are not eternal, and indivisible, although they are not indivisible, atoms and their accidental collisions have been responsible for the creation of something as dazzlingly complex as a human organism.  If you believe such a thing, you are either woefully ignorant of the complexity of your own organism, or you have been so inculcated in dogmatic materialism that you are totally incapable of rational thought.  Also, can you not see the unbridgeable gulf between inanimate matter and life, which includes a unitary consciousness with the capacity to experience and desire attached to an organism capable of fulfilling the specific desires that that consciousness pursues?

I know that materialists think that they have evolved past the silly superstitions and dangerous beliefs of religion, that has caused so much fear and suffering.  But religion is not evil because it is too spiritual.  It is evil because it is too material. It materializes God into something that exists apart from you, that you can either believe in (good) or not (bad).  But if God permeates everything, then God is at the center of everything, and is not separate from you.  In fact the more that you are able to get to the center of your self, the closer you get to God.  God is not opposed to anything.  Ultimately there is nothing that is not God.  So at the center of your neighbors and relatives, of friends and strangers, is something that is unfathomably precious.  Whether you believe that or not, imagine a world in which, not only everyone did believe that, but everyone practiced ways of actually experiencing that for themselves.  What kind of a world would that be?

You don't have to give yourself a spiritual lobotomy to free yourself from ancient religious superstitions.  And what kind of a world is created when people believe that they are nothing more than collections of particles?  You know the 'enlightened' followers of Epicurus, from whom Lucretius copied many of his ideas,  as they were attempting to discern which paths would yield them the greatest pleasures; they were lying on cushions arranged for them by slaves, drinking wine poured for them by slaves and eating grapes served to them by slaves.  And why not?  If human beings are nothing more than the arrangement of particles, then what could be the problem with slavery?  There is none.  Epicurus does not even discuss slavery as a problem and neither do his followers.  In our more sophisticated times, when people thought that we were nothing more than a collection of genes, then why not have eugenics and cull out what you consider the weaker genes from the giant gene pool that we call humanity?  That is what led directly to the atrocities of Nazism.  If life at base is nothing but a random arrangement of particles, then why not pay your employees slave wages so that they cannot possibly afford a minimally decent and healthy life, while you reward yourself with a salary four hundred times greater than theirs?  What's the problem with that?  Why not create hierarchies where the person who has the most money, or the most fame, or the most physical or mental ability, is worshipped, while people that are not so blessed are ignored and considered worthless?

Until the materialists realize that they are more than particles, that they are consciousness with the capacity to experience and to love; that their children are not just a collection of genes and you either luck out with good talented kids or you lose out with untalented bad ones, but that each and every child is absolutely precious; and until religious sectarians realize that the God that they love and feel  overwhelming gratitude for, does not have a specific name or a specific location, but pervades every molecule of the universe, and can be accessed at the very center of one's being, whether you are in a church or a synagogue or a mosque or by a waterfall; until that time, we are doomed to be two separate populations who do not understand each other, and who fear and scorn each other.  Beyond and beneath the separations of left and right, of culture and race, this is the true schism that keeps us in an age of 'endarkenment' and away from the light.

One final word about the highly lauded 'pursuit of pleasure.'  I have no problem with pleasure, as long as it is not harming or diminishing in any way another being.  My problem is with the 'pursuit.'  The frantic pursuit of pleasure is based on the assumption that pleasure, if it is to be found, is located somewhere out there, outside of your self.  What is missed in this outward fixation is the pleasure, not of pursuit, but of stillness.  It is within, through meditation, prayer, spiritual exercise, that happiness is found at the core of your being. And that happiness spreads out so that you realize that pleasure and true joy exist, not necessarily somewhere else, but right there and with the people and the house and the neighborhood and the country that you are already in. 

This is not to say that conditions everywhere are ideal.  Far from it. But great love and powerful bonding exist when you recognize that your neighbors are, in essence, the same being that you are, and that their suffering under these conditions are identical to your suffering.  Then a life of great passion and beauty and struggle awaits you as you bond with your brothers and sisters to work to change those onerous conditions. 

Curiosity is great, exploration is great, but not as enjoyable, not really as pleasurable, when it is driven by the conviction that happiness rests on the ability to escape from ones self or ones conditions,  or the even more convoluted conviction that the self does not even exist.


I look forward to your comments.

MORE THAN THE GENOME

In Douglas Axe's wonderful new book, 'Undeniable,' he writes,

     Forget the old textbook definition of life--something to the effect that being a self-perpetuating, nonequilibrium process based on carbon chemistry and driven by the influx of solar energy.  That never resonated with anyone who mused on life.  No, life must be something much richer, immeasurably more worthy of our attention. Life is mystery and masterpiece--an overflowing abundance of perfect compositions.....the physical forms of life are expressions of something deeper, something immovable, something perfect.

We do sense, as Axe claims, that each species is a perfect creation, but what can we possibly mean by that when we look at species as radically different as platypusses, vampire bats, dragonflys, stingrays and orangutans?  Further, if we consider how many individuals of those species, including our own,   suffer from a variety of defects and illnesses, it makes it that much more difficult to comprehend this perfection.  And yet, this sense of the perfection of each species is undeniably there.  In fact,  if  individuals of each species suffer 'imperfections' that very word implies that there is a perfect specimen from which these individuals vary.  So what makes this perfect specimen, not only perfect in relation to less well endowed members of its own species, but perfect in an objective, non-comparative sense?

The answer is that each living being is born not only with a remarkably complex and synchronized and precise array of equipment that we call an organism, but also with a remarkably specific sequence of desires that perfectly aligns with the equipment that it is given.  This biological equipment allows us to fulfill our desires, and to sometimes struggle, and learn and grow stronger and wiser as we attempt to fulfill those desires.  And this remarkable alignment between desires and the equipment to fulfill those desires is an essential part, if not the central part, of this idea that species are perfect creations rather than haphazard works in progress, as Darwinists would have it.

Much has been written recently about members of our own species that are born into male bodies but have female desires, or vice-versa, and the confusion and suffering that that mismatch creates.  But imagine if you were born into a human body with the desires, not of the opposite gender of your species, but the desires of a different species.  Simply, that condition, of having humming bird desires, or earthworm desires, or elephant desires, and being trapped inside a human body,  would be not only insufferable, but not even survivable.

Do you know Mary Oliver's poem, 'This Morning'?  Here it is:

This morning the redbirds' eggs
have hatched and already the chicks
are chirping for food.  They don't
know where it's coming from, they 
just keep shouting, "More! More!"
As to anything else, they haven't 
had a single thought.  Their eyes 
haven't opened, they know nothing 
about the sky that's waiting.  Or
the thousands, the millions of trees.
They don't even know they have wings.

And just like that, like a simple
neighborhood event, a miracle is 
taking place.

Now you can say that the chick's innate craving for food is the result of a genetic arrangement which is the result of a long and slowly perfecting process of evolution.  But does that make sense?  We are not talking about gradual improvements here.  We are talking about life and death.  For this system to work, not only must the chicks be born with an overwhelming desire for food, they must have an innate response to that desire by making sounds loud enough for the parents to hear them.  And they must have parents who have an overwhelming desire to provide that food.  They must be sheltered in a nest that is elevated, protecting them from all the ground dwelling prey that could end their brand new existence.  Their parents must be able, not only to have the know how and enormous agility and muscular control and precision to build that nest, but to have the unwavering desire and commitment to do so, plus having the startling aerial precision to deliver that food precisely into the beaks of their unseeing children once they do arrive.  Could this have happened over a Darwinian length of time, of untold generations? 

Now we are talking about life and death here.  Were these bird children first born with no desire for food, and then gradually evolved 'hunger,' because only the ones that were fortunate enough to accidentally get the right genetic mutation evolved a desire for food?  Of course not.  As I say, this is life and death.  There is no time to waste on an excruciatingly long and random Darwinian process.  These children must be born with hunger from the first inception of life and they must be fed.  What about the parents?  How did they ever reach maturity if they didn't start out their lives with an overwhelming desire for food and the ability to cry out for it; and if they didn't, themselves, have the parents with the know how and commitment to provide that food for them?  And then of course, there is the problem of the parents of these parents and their survival to maturity, and so on.

No.  If there is to be survival, the whole system, of synchronized genes and synchronized desires, must be in place from the beginning, not only in the chicks, but in the parents of the chicks that produced them and cared for them.  And don't forget the perfect food, perfect for young bird digestive systems and young bird development, must be available and have grown and developed in that same environment; and the parent's ability and desire to search out and remove that best food  for their children, must be there as well.

So the chicks innate desire for food, the chicks innate response to that desire, to call out, the parent's innate ability to recognize their own chick's voice and to know how to respond to it, the parent's remarkable ability to locate the food, and gather the food, and their dazzling aerial ability to return that food to their children's mouths, and their passionate desire and commitment to do just that; and their children's desire to eat that perfect food and their ability to digest it and transform it into the materials for their growing bodies; all of that is perfect, isn't it?

When human children are about a year old, they start having an overwhelming and persistent desire to stand up and walk.  This continues in spite of numerous and sometimes painful failed attempts.   This desire is inextricably linked to their developing vision and their developing ability to recognize objects at some distance from them, and to identify those objects as either things that they would like to get closer to, or things that they would like to get further away from.  They also, at this time, begin to develop an unrelenting curiosity to explore everything about their environment.  To look under and over each object.  To smell, taste and touch them and to listen to them, if they makes a noise, or if the child can manipulate them in some way to create a noise.  Why does every human baby have this overwhelming desire to explore this world that they find themselves in?  Could it be that this is the environment that they chose to be in, that they wanted to be in when they chose to attach themselves to this particular organism prior to birth?

Foals, on the other hand, are born with the desire to stand up immediately.  It takes them about thirty minutes to master this skill.  Of course, even though they were just born, they arrived with the leg muscles and coordination to be able to do that, and they are driven by the overwhelming desire for their mother's milk, which can only be accessed by them standing.  Mother, of course, is waiting right there, her udder's swelling with the absolutely perfect food for her hungry children and with an overwhelming desire to feed them.  The mother, as well, is born with the know how to nurse, and the foals are born with the know how to suckle.  Perfect, yes?

The caribou are the most migratory land animals on earth.  Some large herds migrate three thousand miles a year.  Caribou calves are often born as their mothers are in the process of migration.  Caribou calves can run within ninety minutes of their birth, and within a few hours they can follow their mothers across the tundra, galloping along at up to forty-five miles per hour!  Again, perfect and miraculous.

When Watson and Crick discovered the arrangement of nucleic acids in the DNA molecule, they thought they had discovered God.  When, some forty or fifty years later, when we could sequence all the genes in a genome, we, again, thought we had discovered God.  But God is not a separate thing that can be studied in pieces. God pervades the whole.  There is the genome, but far, far more complicated than that, is the system whereby the specific genes of the genome are fired in precise sequences, trillions upon trillions of times, and trillions of times simultaneously, to allow fertilized eggs to grow into children ready to be born.  And more complicated than that is the system whereby each of these genes are copied and then translated into amino acids, which are then folded into proteins, which are then sent on their way to the precise location in the body where they are needed.  And more complicated than that is the way one cell, one fertilized ovum, in the process of  many, many mitotic division, differentiates itself into the two thousand different types of cells that make up a human fetus, and each of these cells, although they all contain the same sequence of over six billion nucleic acid base pairs, that we call the genome; these genome copies are folded in two thousand different ways so that the gene sequences needed for transcription are exposed to the nucleoplasm of the cell where the proteins that direct the transcription have access to them; each type of cell specializing in the manufacture of a different set of proteins coded by a different sequence of genes unique to that cell type.

But beyond this dazzling complexity, which, by the way, has always been there, even in bacteria,  the very beginning of life, or life would not have been possible at any level; there is also the environment into which the newly born finds itself.  And this new born greets its environment with an innate sequential set of desires which will make it powerfully desire to do the things it needs to do, not only to survive, but to thrive and derive intense pleasure from this environment. Yes, mother's milk, whatever one's species, is the biologically perfect food for one's developing body, but it is also the food that the young one craves.  Nursing is not just a matter of survival.  It is a matter of ecstasy, for both the child and the mother.  Walking, as well, is, again, not just necessary for a human's survival, but increases the child's ability to explore a world in intimate detail, a world that it finds wondrous.

All of this is part of the perfection of life.  Of course, with our 'modern' understanding, we have reduced embryonic development and childhood development, into a tedious exercise in one's ability to survive. The result of a series of uncanny 'accidents' producing a result that we, willy nilly, are 'stuck' with.  Childhood, and one's relationship to one's parents, has been reduced to a minefield with the possibility of 'traumatizing' events lurking around every corner.  And, as a continuation of our infernal materialist perspective, life has become a rapacious quest for the acquisition of material things, even the rapacious acquisition of other people. If not people that one owns outright, as in harems and slavery, which still thrive in many places, then people that are within one's hegemony of power and dependency.  It may be too direct, too gauche, to outright brag about how much one has in the way of cash and stocks and houses, and cars and boats; but to gloat about how many people you employ, as if this is your gift to society, and not, what is really meant,  a way of profiting from each and every one of them, so that you, the listener, can just barely imagine what kind of money the speaker makes.....well, that is perfectly acceptable.

Now some of you may say, Matt, it's the genes that create the desires.  The genes create certain proteins and they wind up, after an excruciatingly complex process, stimulating neurons in the brain that create desires.  If that were the case, it still would be an absolutely remarkable process of staggering complexity that defies a simple process of evolution, and that would need to begin with staggering complexity in order for there to be any survival.  But desire is an experience.  You can try to explain our human experience by material things, but you have to come up with a ridiculously far-fetched notion of random accidents to account for the complexity and you still have not explained what you cannot explain by material means, the leap from material to experience.  The leap from an electric current running through a neuron, to a sensation.  From my perspective it is the desires, or the desire to have a certain kind of experience, or the desire to provide a certain kind of experience that creates the material complexity and the complexity of design, and not the other way round.  Certainly that is how our world of human creation works, isn't it?  Every human artifact and creation is there because someone wanted it to be there, and that desire, which is a non-material, immeasurable wisp of an experience, begins in consciousness and ends in a material creation.  

You may also say that many of those behaviors that we do are based on things that we learn as we develop and that other creatures learn.  They are taught to us and to them by parents and teachers.  True.  But, as anyone with any experience in education knows, there is no learning unless there is a desire on the part of students to learn and desire on the part of teachers to teach.  Animals may learn the details of hunting techniques, and evasion techniques and building techniques from their elders, but all of that learning would not be possible unless it were grounded in the young animal's desire to learn and the older animal's desire to impart that learning.  And that desire, for both the young and the elder is not, itself, taught, but is innate, not in the genes, but in the spiritual make up of each separate being.  And these things that are being taught are the very things that are essential to the survival of the newer generation.  Perfect!

In a natural world, all of this would be so evident as to not even justify calling anyone's attention to it.  But in our flat, de-mystified, materialist society, life has become a tedious and draining chore of survival.  Our joy of life is demolished by the fearful way in which we were reared by our terrified parents, convinced by the latest psychological fad, that any false move in child rearing is sure to cause permanent trauma; our natural health is ruined by mass produced, chemicalized food that advertisers seduce us into eating; and excessive medications that materialist doctors insist that we take; and our naturally boundless curiosity about the world is extirminated by the anxious and tedious schooling that we have received and that is organized, not to provide us with a deeper and richer understanding of life, the natural world and human accomplishments, but to stressfully prepare us for a tension filled competition for entry into a rapidly disappearing middle class.  But underneath all the layers of bad education, and bad religion, and bad advertising, and fearful child rearing, that we have inherited, we can still glimpse and intuitively sense the perfection that underlies it all.



I welcome your comments.

ONE IN A BILLION

Elon Musk said, the other day, that there is only a one in a billion chance that we live in a base reality.  It is almost certain, according to Musk, that we are surrounded by, not a base reality, but a computer simulation created by some advanced civilization.  

And Elon argues for the likelihood of this being the case.  He puts forward an 'irrefutable' argument; that if you look at the forty year evolution of computer games, from, say, Pong, which consisted of two rectangles and a dot; and then you move forward to contemporary games with photo-realistic simulation and millions of people playing them; and you project this growth moving forward for many years, even at a much slower rate; then, it is almost inevitable that we will be playing games where we will come to believe that our entire reality is a computer simulation.   And that, of course, makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Well, it certainly seemed to make sense to the rest of the panel and the audience of the talk show that he was appearing on.  But is it really sensible?  Let's consider.

First of all, what makes games real?  And how real can they get?  Games are made real not because of the realistic trappings of the game, but because of the involvement of the players.  If you 'really' want to win the game, then you accept the 'reality' of the game.  In the nineteen eighties I was a very good Ms Pac-Man player.  So much so that I had a more or less permanent callous on the inside of my middle right finger which was where I operated the joy stick that controls the Ms Pac-Man.  The highest score that anyone had ever received on any particular machine was posted on that machine. My goal was, always, to top that score; a goal that was rarely achieved.  But within the context of the game, I knew that if my Ms Pac-Man was eaten by any of the 'men' chasing her, (actually any of the men chasing her three times in succession) then the game would be over and I would not reach my goal.  

So, emotionally, the power of those chasing 'men' and my ability to outmaneuver them became very real for me, when I was playing; hence the callous on my middle finger.  And the opposite is also true.  If you have no interest in the game, any game, then the whole endeavor seems rather silly.  All those grown men running around in shorts and sneakers trying to get a ball to fall through a hoop seems ludicrous to someone with no interest.  As do horse races, and poker games and boxing matches and anything where there is a competition based on the arbitrary rules of a particular game.  

For a professional gamesman, like a professional athlete, the outcome of these games has some consequences in terms of one's finances and one's reputation in the real world.  And competitors on the basketball court or the football field can become real life enemies off the field.  Although, more often then not, that enmity ends some time after they stop competing.  If they were hugely successful they realize that their success was due to the interest that people had in these competitions and that was fueled by how closely matched they were with their competitors.  It turns out that the more fiercely your rivals fight or play against you, the more that motivates you to stretch to greater heights to defeat them.  So both your growth as a player and your success is due, in large part, to the skill and commitment and ferocity of your competitors.  Many rivals realize that long after they are finished competing and, like Ali and Frazier, and Magic and Bird, become good friends, or have a very affectionate relationship with the other, because they realize that, ultimately, although they were rivals, they were really playing the same game, and their fame and  fortune fed off each other.

So in the computer games that I know, the player is controlling a man or a woman or some kind of simulated being who is trying to win by avoiding a series of things that might 'kill' this being.  Although the involvement in this game, while playing, may get very intense and all consuming, so that you want no interference from the outside world,  you are still never confused about the basic fact that you are controlling your 'man' and not that you actually are your 'man.'  You are controlling your man by using your fingers which are connected to your nervous system and your brain which, in turn, are being controlled by your eyesight and your perception of what is happening on the screen and your perceptual and mental and nervous system response to what you are perceiving.  You never get to the point (do you?) where you believe that you are no longer the person that is playing the game but that you are actually the simulated character who is in the game?  And if you do, do you believe that your eyes and your retina and lens and optic nerve and visual cortex and brain and muscular system are also simulations?  What about the blood vessels that nourish these parts of your body?  Simulations also?  If we get to the point where these games are surrounding us and the game 'board' becomes a three dimensional environment; can we touch this environment? does it have any resistance to our touch?  If so, is this environment a simulation as well?  The materials that the simulation is made out of, do they contain atoms and molecules, or are atoms and molecules and the Periodic table, also simulations?

By Elon's logic, if we can advance computer games so quickly, isn't it common sense to suppose that some earleir society, more advanced then ours, created these super simulated games that we now have confused with base reality?  And if we, who are already living in a computer simulation, will undoubtedly become so advanced in fifty or one hundred years, won't we create computer simulations that will convince yet another society that they are living in a computer simulation, which will really be a simulation of our simulation?  And what about a simulation of a simulation of a simulation?  Where does it end?  And how did it all begin?

There is no known break in the history of humans on this planet where we suddenly became part of a computer simulation.  Was this done without our knowledge?  Or was this done before we arrived here?  Were dinosaurs, bacterium, the origin of the solar system, the Big Bang, were they also part of this simulation?  Or were the researchers and scientists that put forward this understanding of the universe and our understanding of our bodies, were they also part of the simulation?  So is this a fairly recent simulation and all the stuff about heredity and genetic backgrounds and evolution and geological formations was all that fabricated as part of a consistent simulation that would satisfy us intellectually about the logic of the simulation and has nothing to do with the real world?

What about birth and death?  Also simulated?  The fertilization of ova, embryogenesis, the replication of DNA, the differentiation of cells,  all of genetics, also a simulation?

This society of advanced creatures that created the simulation that we live in, what were they like?  If they were not simulations themselves but were the real, base reality,  (highly unlikely by Elon's logic) how did they, those creatures living in this base reality, how did they get born and grow and sense the world around them?  Were they not made of molecules and atoms? Did they not procreate and have bodies that were founded on the relationship between amino acids and nucleic acids?  And if they had another system, how do we know that that system was the real system, and not another simulated notion foisted on them by an even earlier, even more advanced society, that had yet another way of organizing their own biology?

To create a three dimensional simulation that has all the qualities of weight and density and color that we have, and to create organisms that have all the abilities and complexities that we enjoy; not just something that 'looks' real, but something that actually feels and tastes and weighs and behaves real, well that is no more simple than actually creating a universe.  If there is no way to tell the difference, then there is no difference. 

The most brilliant people, starting from faulty assumptions, wind up with the most preposterous conclusions.  In the world of computer games and simulations, the only source of those games are human, intelligent designers.  These human designers use their brains, which they did not design, and their intelligence, which they did not design, to manipulate electromagnetic laws that they did not design, and arrange materials like silicon and silicon carbides, whose chemical qualities they did not design, to give the illusion to humans, whose eyes they did not design, whose brains and nervous systems they did not design, that what they are seeing and hearing are, in the context of the game, real.  To go exponentially further, light years further than that, and get to what Elon Mosk is talking about, is simply not achievable in this generation or any generation.

And nowhere in Elon's speculations is the notion of consciousness even considered.  We may not know what consciousness is, but it is who we are.  It is what enlivens each of us to be able to experience and to desire to experience and to participate in things like computer games.  In fact, the ultimate, the base reality, what we really are, has nothing to do with simulations or non-simulations.  It has nothing to do with what we experience.  It is rather the ground, the context, of experience.  We are not what we experience.  We are the experiencer.  Consciousness, not physics, not chemistry, not computer simulation, not information, but consciousness, is what we actually are.  The base reality is consciousness. 

In a sense, but not in the sense that Elon Mosk is talking about, our entire existence really is a simulation.  The Periodic table, atoms, molecules, organisms, planets, stars, galaxies, those too are all simulations.   They are all made of configuring forces that give the illusion of matter.  Each organism, with its unique set of desires and its unique system of perception, defines this world of configuring forces in its own particular way.  This simulation was created, not by an advanced society of humans, but by the creator of humans and societies, by the Divine, by the Cosmic Consciousness, by God.  And we, in our essence, are part of that Divine.  We come from that Divine.  We, not as separated organisms, but as one Cosmic Consciousness, designed this simulation so that we could attach to an organism that interacted with and experienced this physical universe, from the perspective of a unique set of desires that are either fulfilled or unfulfilled in this 'game' of life.  And just as Ali and Frazier and Magic and Bird, realized that they were not rivals after all, but were playing the same game; we, too, will realize that our rivals, our enemies and our friends, are all here playing, each from their own unique perspective, the exact same game.  

To enlighten oneself about the true nature of reality has nothing to do with discovering the hidden projector behind the scenery, and unmasking the 'super-brainy' society that really controls us.  It has to do with getting to know one's self, which lies beneath and within this world of material illusion.  It has to do with being able to separate one's self from the desires that continually press our noses up against this material illusion and step back to see this world for the beautiful and painful, tragic-comic game that it really is.

Comments always welcome.