Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"It took a cognitive scientist who is also a musician to notice an obvious but scientifically ignored linkage: making music together is something that enables humans to improvise cooperation on the fly. Benzon uses his own experiences as a musician to tie the extensive citations in biology, psychology, sociology, and economics into a sense-making narrative. Benzon believes that when people make music together they create a kind of shared brain-state that exists in no single head, but emerges from the synchronised communications of a group, and uses an impressive body of knowledge to back up his case. Benzon might be proved right and he might be proved wrong, but he uses solid science and creative conjecture to make a highly readable as well as reasonable case."

That's what I have been trying to say, I haven't read the book, but I have been trying to locate this as movement within time and consciousness. Read my diary extracts, posts "overwhelmed", "Bach and TIme", "Time and Self expanded" etc.

John Henry Calvinist, thank you for your contributions, I need to absorb things very slowly and deeply, that is my way, just like a Jazz improviser.

The only line I know by Charlie Parker, is one of my guiding rules.

"Learn your horn and  then forget it."

Cheers.

Craig: “Charles, having not yet found an online version of Sartre's essay, I've gone back over our discussion on the Bingo! thread of last July in which you explained your conception of Cultural Time. Having done this I can see what you are saying about this idea you'd essentially formed from noticing how composers develop their musical language, looking at the times they lived in, who influenced them and why, and trying to picture what might be behind the sounds they create.”

Yes Craig, now go back to the comment titled Overwhelmed in this thread, were I gave my diary extracts, and see if you can work out how I developed those initial ideas in the Bingo thread.

Sartre’s description came to mind because it may be considered an example of Cultural Dissonance in the extreme, I was trying to correlate Sartre depictions to my concerns about paradigms of thought used to describe human and social reality, but which in fact are not representative of a human, social reality. The artists, poets, etc that Sartre describes, are trapped in a dissonant Cultural Time, everything becomes surreal and absurd.

In the Bingo thread, where I gave that thought experiment, I had Charlie Parker, the inventive and original alto saxophonist, who headed the bebop movement in jazz, going back in time and improvising with Mozart in Vienna. And the reverse, I tried to picture Mozart’s aural imagination coming forward in time and improvising in the setting of New York at the time of the Bebop movement initial beginnings.

It occurred to me that this movement in time would create a dissonance, and I tried to think this through as an example of what happens when cultural time frames are juxtaposed.

Depending on which direction in time you move, and depending on whether the movement is cross cultural, you can gauge the dissonance.

For example, if Mozart’s consciousness, represented by the relationship in his inner ear-mind , came forward in time within the same tradition, say to late Beethoven, and forward to Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler and than Schoenberg, Mozart would be exposed to increasing dissonance. If Schoenberg was to go back in time, he would experience the opposite a consonance, because his ear-mind has already been exposed to the tradition, so therefore the tradition has already been absorbed, where as Mozart would have to absorb all the innovations of the future.

Now I than further extended the thought experiment to see how the ear-mind relationship would change if not only the ear-mind relationship was to go forward and back within the same tradition, but to go forward and back within different cultural traditions.

Charlie Parker, the 20^th century African American jazz improviser, going back in time, and cross culture, to Mozart 18^th century, and the reverse.

Both Mozart and Charlie Parker, would become totally dislocated, Mozart coming forward to Beethoven would probably experience mild dislocation, but bring him forward to Schoenberg and he would experience extreme dislocation.

Mind you, this is more of a background movement, not a foreground movement; up close it becomes harder to gauge the dissonance. Maybe Sartre’s depiction could be thought of as background movement, and Nazi Germany as foreground movement.

Craig: “Do you think, Charles, that we face something similar to what Sartre saw in what happened with the Czechs and Slovaks?  Do you sense our creative outlets are being stiffled or strangled in some way?”

Well Craig let me just say we should be vigilant.

In Nazi Germany most never really saw it coming, and if you did, no one would have believed you. It was gradual; let us say coming forward in time in imperceptible stages.

In Sartre’s example the movement was sudden.

I belong to an ethnic minority so, for me this has always been a concern, the dominant culture for me offers little refuge.

Do I think we face something similar, well I would leave that to others to determine, others who have more experience with Political and Social matters.

Charles...I've just been re-reading back through this (very lengthy) thread - and, I think I have some good news for you. But, first, I'll have to take a (rather lengthy) byway through some disciplinary histories/divisions.

Firstly, most of the biology we're frequently exposed to, via the media, is genetics, which has two major (and very different) subsections: genetics "proper", and population genetics - a tradition of mathematical modelling using radical (and long provenly false) simplifications, which is somewhat akin to neo-liberal economics in many ways.

Apart from some scientists (and many more science writers) making wild claims about discovering "the gene for" - rarely true apart from some genetic disorders - almost all of the grossly misleading statements to come out of biology these days seem to come from population geneticists (and their camp followers) who, like neo-liberal economists, are in love with their models, and intent on converting the rest of us.

A somewhat comparable divide exists in modern psychology: between what has (sadly) become mainstream cognitive psychology - the computational/"Artificial Intelligence"-based approaches - and developmental psychology, which has generally eschewed such models, preferring to build on the intersection between neurology, animal experiments, and the tradition of Piaget and Vygotsky...which grew out of their ingenious work with young children. I think you can easily see where my interests lie here...

Now, unfortunately, what has become known as "evolutionary psychology" mainly draws from these two model-obsessive approaches - population genetics and AI - and is, in consequence, more than somewhat dubious in my eyes. However, at the same time as that particular school became popular/established, revolutionary new imaging devices (and a variety of other technical means) changed neurology forever - to the extent that it is now generally known as neurobiology, in recognition of its larger scope.

What few of the laity are aware of, however, is that these two "fashionable" disciplines have very, very different approaches to the mind (basically rationalist vs organicist) - and that, rather than being allies, whilst evolutionary psychology does make (very selective) use of neurobiological findings, most neurobiologists ignore (or are critical of) the approach taken in the former. Pluralism in action?

In direct contrast, as one of the key founders of modern neurobiology, A.R. Luria, was Vygotsky's key collaborator in his earliest work, neurobiology and developmental psychology can easily be viewed as allied disciplines - and are certainly the closest match between any form of psychology and neurobiology.

So...next time you read an account of what some neurobiological finding "means", be very careful to discover where the writer comes from - because I've seen quite a lot of blatant misrepresentation here...particularly in support of narrow (model-driven, excessively modular) approaches that appear to have little or no following by neurobiologists themselves today. Pinker's "How the Mind Works" is a very good example of this, to cite a book already referred to in this thread.

Similarly, (but even more damningly) whilst "memetics" has plenty of followers - amongst those rationalists intoxicated by population genetics - it has produced zero in the way of genuinely new findings, after nearly thirty years of what I would (charitably) call blather. The only scholar I'm aware of that has actually got anything useful out of the idea is W.G. Runciman - and, his approach (social roles and the practices that constitute them) is enormously more limited in scope.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew go on as if the original idea meant something more than a stick to beat the religious with. No cultural historian of any reputation has taken it up - for the simple reason that it is far too vague to be analytically useful. Unfortunately, it's much, much easier to simply "buy into" an ideology than to actually understand all the factors involved, so memetics has turned - see the discussion groups for the evidence - into basically a smug religion-bashing cult. No wonder even Richard Dawkins (its originator, and a religion-basher himself) barely mentions it in his more recent work...

Now for the good news. You seem particularly troubled by two related sorts of ideas re the brain - excessively reductionist models that deny any role to creativity/human volition etc, and the lack of the social element in these and other scientific understandings of the brain.

Well, let me assure you - these (not consciousness) are the epiphenomena as far as the modern (mainstream) work goes in developmental psychology and neurobiology. The former, since Vygotsky's belated impact in the 1960s, has had an inextricably social understanding of human development, as does now the latter...albeit classical neurology (with the exception of Luria and some others) held to a more narrow view, partly due to its reluctance to examine higher brain functions. So, next time you see some science writer suggesting otherwise, be suspicious.

Science is a (very) broad church, and there are many competing sorts of explanations/theories on offer...particularly in a highly fragmented science such as psychology. Now, I have simplified here, as there are dissidents in all areas. For example, Merlin Donald's work has spawned a significant evolutionary approach that is entirely separate from the one I critique above...and one that (with the discovery of mirror neurones) is gaining more and more support.

Furthermore, most biologists and psychologists - if asked - are quite willing to come up with evolutionary speculations re their findings...which doesn't at all mean that they necessarily approve of the foundational modeling assumptions of population biology, or mainstream evolutionary psychology. Unfortunately for the casual reader, therefore, it is often difficult to assess where a researcher is coming from - in terms of their fundamental assumptions - and so, it is all too easy to lump it all together...and assume that the most strident voices epitomize what is going on.

But, as I said, take heart, because the views you appear to find most disturbing are hardly the cutting edge. Instead, they're the increasingly outdated remnants of an excessively "rationalist" turn, rapidly being superseded by a wealth of empirical evidence which has a very different look about it...social/developmental and highly responsive to experience, and whose discoverers appear quite willing to tackle the divides philosophy has built between thought and emotion, creativity and fixed action patterns and, indeed, between what you fear, and what you hope for...

The joke is, actually, that the built world abounds in self-monitoring/correcting systems, from thermostats on airconditioners on up, whilst the evidence of our crucially social nature is all over the place - including, most conclusively, the awful historical examples of feral children. Why, exactly, a clique of analytical philosophers (and their linguist allies), population geneticists, and overly rationalist psychologists should want to deny the possibility of a genuinely powerful, active, and creative conscious awareness which is inextricably social is, quite frankly, beyond me! Just put it down to one of those intellectual pathologies - like postmodernism - I suppose...but, please, don't mistake it for some kind of real scientific consensus... all the best

Charles, thank you for that thoughtful reply...I can fully understand, since (as you can well guess) I was feeling rather testy when I wrote yesterday.

I hope you will check out the reviews, as they are (to my mind) a very good and detailed introduction to the books. I came up with this format due to my dissatisfaction with conventional approaches, since these often told me much more about the reviewer than about the book!

As well, you might like to check out several other reviews on the site, since they have some bearing on your evident interests. In particular, I think the books by Stephen Toulmin, Peter J. Wilson, Merlin Donald, Walter Burkert, Eric Havelock, John Ralston Saul, and Theodore Zeldin you would find very useful, since all - in different ways - seriously address the question of how we create meaning in this world, and how and why this has varied over time (and place). The reviews are here, along with many others I've been accumulating...and, all of books which I feel are crucial to a properly rich form of humanistic understanding.

The governing idea - consilience - has, unfortunately, been widely misrepresented (by the inventor of sociobiology, no less), so meaning that few humanists today have any interest in it...but, it retains its original meaning - which is what happens when people drawing on different sorts of evidence (and, preferably, different traditions of enquiry) come to the same (or strongly concordant) conclusions.

To me, this remains the best way for well informed non-specialists to assess the ideas coming from specialist disciplines and, over the years, I've been heartened to find that its reliability is supported from within - as many then dissident positions I've adopted over the years are now increasingly mainstream, whilst those I rejected on these grounds are more and more embattled, if not largely dismissed, within their relevant disciplinary communities.

Now, onto your broader points, in which I found some surprising resonances. I, too, make more use of old culture than new (particularly in music)...and find its differences both illuminating and connecting with the human condition as a whole - rather than simply the mainstream of today.

Interestingly, outstanding cultural producers (horrible term, I know) almost always tend to do the same - albeit not usually with my theoretical bent - it's only the less influential ones (that allows me to fudge the notion of "genius" rather nicely) who mainly subsist on a contemporaneous diet, so you're in good company, there.

To my mind, the notion of finding one paradigm to understand humanity is a sad relic of typological thinking. Because, as in biology - except to a far greater degree - what we need is both theoretical modesty, and theoretical pluralism...which my site is attempting to promote.

As to our current fix, it's based upon the opposite - hence, I feel, much of the disillusionment with "science", too often (mis)used by policymakers as a club to beat back the pluralism of understandings and ideas we need. However, if we look past the headlines and popularizations, I'd have to say that many (or even most?) of the paradigms we need are actually out there already, and increasingly garnering support from professionals as more and more evidence comes in. This is bad news for the ideologues...but very good for the rest of us, who want a rich, creative, tolerant society that allows us to feel at home.

So, all I can say is that my approach to surviving "the onslaught of a society geared towards mass consumption, and the deadening of the creative spirit" is to learn and create...to take the human condition seriously - in all its variety across time and space - thus giving me a far stronger understanding than those who simply bow to the shibboleths of their age. But, to do so, I've had to read and listen very widely - and pay particular attention to ideas which resonate with one another, and which seem to be well supported by empirical fact, as I noted earlier.

What bothers me most, however, is that this strategy is too laborious for most, thus leaving them in the lurch. Hence one important reason, at least, for the existence of my website. For, I do feel that we need good ideas/theories, as well as creative action, in order to genuinely feel at home as human beings... all the best.

John Henry Calvinist, you're very well read, I just need more time to assimilate everything; maybe I am just too slow. But keep posting links to any reviews that are important, as I stated previously, sometimes a little bit of tension is a good sign, you must have caused something to stir in me.

Fair enough, discussion behind a computer screen is not always easy.

Roger:

My comment on hubris should only be considered as a general comment on the propensity of humankind to place themselves at the centre of the universe and in particular at the centre of the focus of an almighty being. It is this collective hubris that is at the root cause of most of the world's ills

I would agree with you but I feel that there is the other side of the coin.

Societies and groups from within society create meaning, and it is this relationship to meaning that creates identity, but ideas and creative pursuits like everything else in the universe must end, they lose their vitality, and constantly need renewing.

I agree with you, that hubris is at the root cause of most of the world’s ills, but I would further qualify it by saying, that the opposite of having no connection to identity is also not an answer.

What I am saying is that we also need to orientate ourselves to the universe and create meaning, or else we are left bereft of meaning in our lives, and that for me is the paradox.

We don’t know how to let go and let life find its natural balance.

Craig...I've read the Robert Jourdain book you mention and, whilst it does make some interesting points, as you know, the findings of neurobiology have increased dramatically since 1988. If you haven't seen them yet, I can strongly recomend William Benzon's Beethoven's Anvil and Steven Mithen's The Singing Neanderthals – the former's idea (and evidence for) what he terms "neural coupling" through music is very suggestive re your evident interests.

Music, aesthetics and the mind have been central to my research interests for about fifteen years now, but to my mind the really adequate theories – such as Benzon's and Mithen's (which dovetail nicely) – have only really emerged in this century. Admittedly, both are indebted to Merlin Donald's groundbreaking work re what he termed "mimetic culture" (I've done a review, but will desist from linking here as some seem to take this amiss), but Donald didn't directly address music much as such, so it doesn't really count except as a forerunner...

Hope you find this useful.

John Henry Calvinist, fair enough. I actually appreciate your references, gives me more to explore, I shouldn’t really have made that last post, because I was feeling too unsettled and unfocused in my own mind.

It was more a reflection of my own doubt, which is not a bad thing. It’s easy to build up ideas and to gain a certain security from them. If you start to challenge them too quickly, it can leave you with the feeling of having nowhere to place your feet, as if someone has taken the ground from underneath your feet. I don’t think this is necessarily the same thing as arrogance or hubris, but maybe I am mistaken.

It wasn’t only your post in isolation it was a number of them as they accumulated and I started to loose my focus on what was important to me.

Craig, the whole chemical issue is very new to me, so I am really in the dark and have only really given it any thought during this discussion.

Craig I appreciate you telling me about your musical experiences because I can start to compare them with my own.

You may have noticed I have this obsession with time, so my focus is more with listening on a larger time frame, for example I am more fascinated in listening to music and making comparisons with sounds that are separated in larger distances in historical time, for example say Early Church music to Mozart, or Mozart to the present day.

Why do I do this? My answer would probably be because I feel culturally adrift; maybe you could call it old fashioned alienation.

I do not watch TV or pay much attention to modern culture, and the reason for this is that I simply do not feel as if I belong.

The larger time frame gives me more room to compare what is happening in the background, for example political, social etc, and this may be hard for you to understand, but being adrift in time actually gives me a sense of being connected to something much larger, and I achieve a sense of security from this, the more telescoped approach of say reducing the time frame to years and decades would not leave as much room, but does offer its own advantage. Your thinking is more in the foreground to my background.

Not sure if I am making any sense, but basically I guess when I am lost in larger time frames I feel a certain connection to something much larger, and this connection gives me a sense of security that I don’t have in my immediate time.

My concern with the chemical issue is probably based on my own fears: if a person is totally out of step with his social environment, for example because of cultural reasons, inner sadness, depression, grief, alienation, mental illness can result. Now what do you do, if you are such a person, and are trying to find your way, out of the dark?

The wider society may have no idea of what is causing your inner turmoil; all they see is someone who is showing signs of not being able to cope.

Do I take medication to adjust myself to something that may in fact be harmful to me?

Craig, we all have different levels of perception, and I have very serous doubts whether the institutions of this country are placing any importance on what gives a real sense of inner connection with the social environment. What I see happening is a trend towards drowning out all differences. I think people who have no trouble with the dominant mindset and its cultural representations would not feel as threatened, but what happens to people who have different needs, perhaps of a more creative bent?

How does a person alive to his inner being survive the onslaught of a society geared towards mass consumption, and the deadening of the creative spirit?

Whatever paradigm you use to describe the human condition, whether it be chemical, biological, or whatever is the latest concept used to explain the human condition, what if the society itself allows no time for the creative spirit to develop?

Can you see what I am trying to say with cultural time: it’s my way of having a reference point outside my own immediate time, a reference point that gives me a measure?

With this measure I can gauge if I am out of step, or if it is in fact my surroundings that is out of step.

Was Nazi Germany in step with the creative spirit?

In one of the Fascist posts, some one gave a link to a description of how fascism just crept up on everyone without anyone noticing, well what if an individual does notice?

I have been reading some Sartre lately, in particular an essay he wrote, called, Czechoslovakia: The Socialism that came in from the Cold. Do you know of it?

Havel and others describe their experiences with what was imposed onto their culture, and it really resonates deeply with me. Their experiences were of the background type I tried to explain, but what I found interesting was what to me was the confusion of foreground and background, when institutionalised lies becomes so engrossed as to believed by the majority. How does anyone respond with honesty to what is coming out of his depth? Most people are terrified to get out of step; it takes a lot of self confidence and courage in certain periods of social insecurity.

Craig, it would be great if you could get to read the Sartre essay, I would be very interested in what you think of it.

I will take a deeper look at the other links you left.

Charles, your various questions have prompted me to start looking into the subject of music cognition and how an understanding of how the mind makes sense of music as it is heard (not as a score is read) draws on neuroscience, cognitive science and psychology more generally, music theory and musicology, computer science and philosophy.

I came across an idea Robert Jourdain expressed in his 1998 book, Music, The Brain and Ecstasy: How Music Captures our Imagination:

Psychologists have long known that different personality types are attracted to different types of drugs, legal and illegal. There's a parallel here. We "take" a certain type of music to steer our central nervous systems towards a particular condition: hard rock as the frenzied rush of cocaine; easy-listening genres as a martini; cheery supermarket Muzak as a pick-me-up cup of coffee; cool jazz as a laid-back marijuana high; the far flung landscapes of classical music as the fantasy realm of psychedelics.

He's saying that when we hear music the effect on our neurochemistry is similar to the effects of a direct chemical intake. I wonder how far the implication goes and I sense that thinking this through may go some way to answering your questions.

A few years ago I was a volunteer community educator with the beyondblue / Mental Health Research Institute's Depression Awareness Research Project (DARP). We attended a few weekend workshops to learn how to be a community educator and deliver presentations to people in our communities that raised awareness of major depression as a common illness (not a character flaw) that is serious but thankfully treatable. Now the reason for this backgrounding is this: when I mentioned music at one of the workshops everyone in the group of about 30-odd people sparked up and enthusiastically entered into discussion of music and mood. Some focused on 'moody' music that seemed to call on the black dog, whilst others were more eager to highlight how music raises one high. There was also some talk of subcultures and how musical preferences feature so centrally as a kind of cultural knowledge in a subculture.

I reflected on my own life journey and my changing 'taste' in music and my own shifts through various subcultures. (A quick aside here: I first went to write Australian subcultures and then thought they may well have been more global than local in character as I grew up in the lastest age of globalisation).

I remember that despite not being raised in what you might call a musical family I was exposed to a wide variety of musical influences. The choir music I'd hear as a child in Catholic churches as well as the reggae tapes my dad had in his collection for example. I recall classical music filling my grandparents' homes and popular music of the seventies on the radio (particularly in the car and our kitchen). Of all this eclectic influence my ear was most tuned into the reggae and 'surf rock' my old man had been into.

I recall the very first cassette tape I bought for myself with my own saved up pocket money. It was Complete Madness by the British Ska band Madness, and as well as getting into the music I'd entered a far flung outpost of the second-wave Ska subculture that had somehow been taken up by some parts of the skateboard centred subcultures of suburban Sydney. It'll be interesting to look back and try an answer some of the why questions: Why did some surburban Sydney skateboarders get into Ska? Why were we receptive to an influence such as this?

And I could ask the similar questions for some of the other subcultures I shifted into, some as a result of the evolution of skateboarding subculture and others as I explored new ground. For example, I recall my own exposure to some early hip-hop influences and at school I had a number of friends into each of the four disciplines. I remember well the turn from an old school party vibe to gansta rap was mirrored in the culture as much as the music. I can understand why gansta rap emerged on the US east and west coasts but why it caught on in Sydney's western suburbs is anyone's guess.

I recall how for a few years, those hard senior school years when you prepare for your HSC and feel all the horrible stress that comes with it, that I slipped into a stage where I'm sad to say I listened to little else but indie stuff and far too much of The Smiths in particular.

I recall how I dropped the indie scene and had my enthusiasm for hip-hop was energised again when I did a stint at 2SER in 1990 and got into DJing. We were mucking about with a big reel to reel and we recorded a mix of Public Enemy lyrics on a Stone Roses (Fool's Gold) instrumental track. That blend of sounds set me on a course into yet another subculture.

My mates (both old and new friends met through work and university), and me as keen as any of them, took a trip into an emergent subculture in the period from the summer of '89 through the early '90s - we were Ravers. To begin with I was a master of the mix tape and would splice together as close to a seamless Techno or House beat mix as you could get without turntables or computerised technology. Later I got my two Technics 1200s and a simple two-channel mixer, learned some basic techniques and cut all kinds of sounds for fun at home and house parties with friends.

Exploration is the best word I could use to describe the character of the subculture my party people friends and I were a part of. I found fabulously diverse musical histories to explore in the music we used to create an environment of enjoyment at our parties. To this day I'm still exploring them. I've been on the journey through jazz, blues, soul, the funk, and disco. Visited tribal sounds, Brazilian beats, experimental electronica and bangra. Hip-Hop, Trip Hop, Drum 'n' Base to 2Step back into ragga, reggae and roots more generally.

And with each style of music there are the subcultures that spawned it and the subcultures it now acts to sustain in some way. With each subculture comes a new set of memes and many of these are transmitted via the virus like infectiousness of new sounds in each style of music.

Charles, just depends what you mean by "culture" and, of course, what you mean by "institutions". Using inclusive, rather than exclusive definitions, I'd say that, no, cultural transmission is much broader than that - but that it can only be transmitted via human interaction, which I don't think is exclusive to institutions, however defined.

And, no Charles, I don't think it's a sign of hubris to be irritated when people make basic to their arguments incorrect assumptions about an intellectual tradition of enquiry that I have studied at some length. I don't pretend to be a saint - and it also (importantly) happens not to be my "truth" that I'm touting here... merely the work of two very influential workers in these areas, who I happen to know (from other reading) are very inclusive and fair-minded when it comes to assessing/analyzing the truly vast range of evidence. Moreover, the "reviews" you so cuttingly dismiss are mainly composed of lengthy (and very carefully selected) quotes from the books under discussion - they are intended to serve mainly as a precis/introduction to the book's main arguments, not as the self-promoting devices you so unfairly appear to assume. Had you bothered to look at same, before making your assumption, you would have noticed this very quickly.

Hubris, to me - aside from the original Greek meaning - connotes massive arrogance as to one's own opinions... most clearly revealed in the blatant dismissal of lines of evidence which don't happen to fit. Thing is, as I made clear, there simply IS no such "line" when it comes to such statements as "we are all just chemicals". Without the emergence of truly crucial new structuring factors at higher levels of the hierarchy, there simply is no biology... and all biologists accept this so, whilst I'll plead guilty to irritation (and to less than diplomatic phrasing), I really can't see that personal hubris has anything at all to do with it. Meanwhile, I stand by the statement you found offensive: simply because it happens to be true. Had this not been the case, the "issue" of chemicals - at least, tackled in this matter - would've simply been a non-starter. You may not like that conclusion, but it's clearly derived from the evidence provided by this discussion, and reinforced by Ross Chippendale's questioning of me on exactly this issue.

And so, Ross... I think you clearly mistake the point of my argument. It's not that we aren't entirely composed of chemicals (at one level of analysis), it's that biological entities can't at all be usefully explained/understood on this level, as the Ernst Mayr quotation on "organicism" (and the embedded quotes) explained. For example, sure serotonin impacts on mood - as do several other chemicals. But, to even BEGIN to understand how it does so (or why), we need a working understanding of cell action/organization, as well as something similar at the level of the nervous system... and no reductive account of same stuck at the chemical level has, or can, provide us with that. Please try re-reading the Mayr quote, as it does help explain this. Since functional entities at higher levels of organization actively constrain/shape the activities of entities at lower levels of the hierarchy, it is simply not possible to provide a complete account solely in "chemical" terms - we need to understand things in a much more complex fashion. Thus, when I said "vacuous", I meant that literally... since not only do such entirely reductive explanations not exist, they could not exist...

On "quoting someone else's thought" as being "rather trite"... personally, I totally disagree, as do the vast majority of writers, in my experience. Authority, by my estimation, is not merely assumed - that, on the contrary, is fake authority, and best treated with contempt - it is EARNED... by seriously/critically taking into account all of the relevant forms of evidence, and can be usefully assessed (particularly in a relatively mature science such as biology) by the writer's peers in his/her area. That both Stephen Jay Gould and Edward O Wilson (to cite only the best-known of the book's many highly influential scientist reviewers) offered strong praise for Mayr's work is a very good indication of its quality, in my estimation. Moreover, when I make (or read) complex arguments drawing upon specialist knowledges, I vastly prefer to have the original thinker's own words as evidence as to how they thought, rather than merely burying everything in uniform prose. Because, dialogue is simply a much more interesting (and fruitful) form than monologue.

Moreover, this is not merely "opinion" we're talking about here - it's the working (and highly productive) philosophy of an entire science... developed over centuries as the resolution of the long-standing dispute between mechanistic and vitalist approaches, both of which were rejected early this century, for reasons that Mayr explains. Given this history, I do think it's excessively relativistic to put the entire thing down as mere "opinion". To attempt to revive a purely mechanistic/physicalist account of biology, contra the experience/knowledge of biologists themselves en mass, seems to me both ill-informed and hubristic... The reason, quite simply, why readers here probably haven't heard of "organicism" is that it is uncontroversial. Very real disputes exist in biology, true, but they are within this framework, and do not challenge its basic premises, which have rather been strengthened and reinforced by the plethora of new findings and theories in recent years. Unfortunately, many popular accounts, by stressing controversy to make their books more "interesting", end up badly misrepresenting the sciences they write about...and tend to leave their readers with a very poor understanding of the basics which underly such disciplines. And, whilst at least two readers here have felt that, in saying so, I insulted them, I nonetheless will not resile from this position, since nothing that has been said here contradicts it in any way. Me? I'm always on the lookout for quality new books and ideas... and am always changing my understandings of complex issues as a result. But, some things, nevertheless, are basic to proper understandings of any sort and, organicism (rather than its ancestors) is definitely one of these.

All the best.

Labels are very powerful, even if they are only inferred.

Looking back on this thread, especially the last few posts, rational argument has been replaced by labels, for example, in relation to chemicals being political, I posed a specific issue to Roger, that is,  culture can only be transmitted via institutions, now the issue  was totally ignored. There is a very important point to be made here, which is how do we have a multicultural society, when the institutions are made up of very real and specific power groups? Am I being unreasonable to suggest that the chemical paradigm of the brain can be used within a monolithic cultural power group to sedate ethnic minorities or other marginalised groups?

Please Craig or anyone else can I have some feedback on this issue?

I accept that this is an open forum, and I accept the decisions of the moderators, because I believe that it is the only way to structure rational arguments, and let me state that I feel overall that I have been treated very fairly, but the last posts have been more emotive than rational.

For example Ross’s post is incredibly rich in emotive power; it can be read in so many ways, that it is very hard to interpret, and Ross it is very hard for me to respond to your post, because I am not sure how much of it is your PROJECTIONS of your situation on to me and how much of it is an analysis of your predicament. Ross the material is far too personal and emotive, I read your last post addressed to me and I could not work out what was being addressed to me, or what was being inferred.

More examples.

Roger: “We are all these things, from the sub-atomic level to abstractism but as I wrote in my last post to Charles C what we are really good at is hubris.”

John Henry Calvinist: “Little shared by many who spout pop-science exaggerations.”

“And, to be blunt, some on this thread appear to badly need instruction as to exactly what the mainstream in the sciences they invoke actually have to say about life. Perhaps a trip to the bookstore is in order?”

Than John directs us to his web site, so that we can all bask in the light of his truth.

To be fair, John Henry Calvinist also referenced what appear to be very interesting books, which I intend to read.

My question to John is, is it not a sign of hubris to communicate in the tone you choose, and I would like to put the same question to Roger who seems to think that hubris is in the eye of the beholder.

For example in all my dealings with Craig, this has not been the case, I have never felt this way, Craig will simply say, Charles is this what you mean by this term, or something like that., in other words there is no projection or set of inferences put in place, or implied labelling.

I would appreciate a response from the moderators on this issue.

Is it fair that reasonable questions addressed to a person are ignored?

Hamish: it's not against the guidelines to ignore someone's question, and especially as there is not just one moderator it would be impossible to police otherwise. I do consider it courtesy to address specific questions directed to one, and if you feel there is something that can be inferred by someone ignoring a question, do point it out.

Hello Ross,

I have sent you an email, maybe greater clarity will be achieved by direct communication.

You asked the questions about mental health or a balanced and healthy mind. This is rather long but expresses my thoughts and opinions on such questions.

Before I start that I was hoping you, Charles, might be able to point me to where your concept of Cultural Time is explained, or if you could give your understanding of that.

Firstly who decides if you have a balanced and healthy mind? Well there are a few ways this is determined with the mostly accepted one being that society through opinion and medical examination do so. How does society decide this? Well by basically identifying those who appear to "think differently" which is demonstrated through behaviour and interaction with the rest of society. If some people view the world in a totally differnet way to the rest of society the judgement is usually that the few are out of step and thefore cannot be "normal."

Medical science has defined as many mental conditions as they have been able to up to date and each of these has a set of criteria upon which the diagnosis hinges. If a person's thinking, usually as expressed through behaviour, meets sufficient numbers of those defined criteria, or symptoms, then a diagnosis of condition X can be made.

I should state here though that human's understanding of how the brain works is really fairly limited and as such today's opinions, treatments and decisions are made in what may be considered a primitive setting in the future.

So the majority of these decisions are made essentially by medical practitioners, usually though following periods where people who know and interact with a person identify behaviour that is out of the norm or not acceptable to that group. Society judges many to be mentally ill when they don't meet any defined criteria for known mental illnesses. That is just the usual response to someone who does not conform with what most think is "right" or "normal."

Of course the issue of what is normal is a moot point too. I certainly don't believe that society can always make such decisions although it does and of course many just follow along with such opinions simply because they don't want to be out of step themselves.

When it becomes clearer is when a person who behaves in a manner that is dangerous to themselves or others then society and medical opinion and practice may be required to intervene and make a decision followed hopefully by acceptance from the identified person and agreed treatment. Not always so of course.

Many of us don't know we have a mental illness as if you think and act in a particular way for most or all of your life you think it is normal and that everyone feels the same as you. Why would you think any different?

Eventually though there usually comes a time when such an individual cannot avoid the facts. That their thinking and behaviour is indeed out of whack and the person is in need of intervention and help through treatment. Hopefully the person comes to this conclusion before society through family, friends and workmates identify the problem. If the person doesn't acknowledge the problem then forced treatment and confinement may result.

The whole question of what is normal is the key issue I think. What's normal to me may be totally unknown to others and I may not have any clue why others think that. The reverse applies too, in that I may think such a group of opinionated people are themselves off the planet. Who is right?

I don't believe anybody is "right" in such a situation. If the person identified does not acknowledge the alleged illness and lives perfectly unharmed and is no danger to anyone else I cannot see that there is a problem.

Sometimes I think that those who are supposedly insane are either the happiest or unhappiest people on our planet. For instance if someone believes they are Jesus himself, who can harm them? They can accept everything with the style Jesus is reported as having done. Nothing can harm or upset such a person as their belief is true and full. Who knows, they may even be right! Who is to say anyone is not Jesus or any other character from history? Society judges that as does medical science but the person may be complete with their own knowledge regardless of other's opinions.

What is a balanced and healthy mind? I don't think there is a direct answer to that Charles. It's a question more for an individual to answer for themselves. If you feel complete and you deal with life as needed etc then they may well be right too. It's the interaction between individuals and society that really can be the telling factor. I may be totally satisfied with my own thoughts and feelings but also totally unable to deal with other people. That then becomes a choice of isolating (which is not totally possible anyway) or adjusting to what society wants. For example by taking medication an individual may be fully capable of work, life and interaction without any harm or unpleasantries with anyone. At home they may not take medication and act as they wish.

As to chemically balanced, that is fairly well recorded at this time, for the level of knowledge that medical science has. They are able to identify through blood and similar tests whether a brain and body is deficient in a particular chemical or drug and treatment is often aimed at adjusting that chemical's balance or level within the body and/or brain.

Again though, this is only what we know and accept today as normal and best treatment.

Bi-polar depression has extremes of high elation, confidence and certainty, followed by the direct opposite, low or absent self esteem, totally negative feelings about everything, no ability to see anything other than the worst outcomes of any event and so on. The change from one to another varies in time intervals with some experiencing what's called rapid cycling where the mood goes up and down in short periods. That is the worst case as the person and anyone associated with them has no idea what is coming next. Many experience longer periods of either or both which makes it more manageable but no less distressing. For example after a long period of feeling the best etc a drop back to the lows seems like the end of the world and some of those with bi-polar deliberately choose not to take medication simply to avoid that drop back, they sometimes describe it as dying as the loss is so severe.

Bi-polar, or periods of mania and hypomania (milder form of mania) can be brought on by treatment with anti-depressants and this must be monitored regularly by a person's doctor. I would always suggest a psychiatrist rather than a GP simply because they have more knowledge and experience in that field.

I've had one such experience which lasted for about six weeks. I was being treated in Darwin by a complete moron but I didn't know that until after I left Darwin.

As a result I did experience hypomania for that six week period although it wasn't identified as such until I got to Brisbane nearly a year later.

It's hard to describe how the highs of hypomania make you feel and think and I cannot comment on the deeper forms of mania other than from reading but what I can say is that period of six weeks was the best I've ever felt. No drugs or other substances have given me such a feeling of mental strength and power.

I didn't have a negative thought, I saw only positive things in life. The best way I can describe it is to compare with what we function as at so called normal levels. In that state we are told we are using about 10% of our brain's capacity. I think that is still the general consensus.

That six week period felt like my mind had additional resources on tap. Answers appeared instantly, problems began to disappear, everything looked and felt good. My behaviour changed from withdrawn and miserable to outgoing and happy. Like a car used to being in first gear suddenly finding there are actually five gears and they are all available. It was that powerful for me and I was devastated when it stopped, which it did overnight for no apparent reason. Suddenly I was back in the "dead zone" and there I've been ever since although I am on top of managing my depression and anxiety. Like many I know I will need treatment probably for the rest of my life but I'm OK with that as, in the end, anything to avoid the dreadful lows is worth while and makes life liveable, even wonderful some days.

I have also know a couple of bi-polar people who deliberately stop medication when they want to be creative, accepting the risks that brings. They do though have trouble deciding or being forced to resume their treatment, for obvious reasons.

A bi-polar person on a high can be extremely charismatic, charming, convincing, confident and creative beyond their normal capacity. This is fairly well known with quite a number of famous people suffering the condition but still managing to produce wonderful performances of results of their activities. Probably comedians are best known for this. The image of the clown, sad in private but funny in public. Winston Churchill is probably one of the most well know depression sufferers but look at his career.

What am I saying? I don't necessarily accept that how I feel when normal is the state man is supposed to be in. There is more than what we know and feel within our capacity and there is evidence of that.

Mind you the dangers of bi-polar also can be extremely damaging to both the individual and society. Mania can convince a person of almost anything. Mania is mainly unreality, fantasies in our heads, our brains creating images and thoughts that are not real and the danger is in believing those to be reality. Insanity is where it leads.

What does all this have to do with our thinking being affected, indeed determined, by chemical balance? Firstly my experience was brought on by the introduction of anti depressants which in turn were not monitored properly by my medical carers. My thinking, speed of talking and outlook should have told any competent GP that I was in trouble.

It is common knowledge amongst the medical fraternity that anti-depressants may have such an effect and to ignore the signs was blatant incompetence. I even asked my GP and psych at the time if I was expereiencing mania or something similar and they both said NO. How they responded was "If you think you may be experiencing mania then you wouldn't be asking the question". Bullshit, that's a trite old cliche that is false.

Secondly such highs, and lows are controlled by a range of chemicals, drugs as prescribed. Lithium is one such drug. What it achieves is a balance between highs and lows, hopefully an even mood all the time with no fluctuations. That is not an attractive thought if you are feeling as good as I was, or better. Fortunately my experience was ended without any specific intervention and it has not repeated. If it hadn't stopped of it's own accord I doubt I'd be around today as I certainly wouldn't have chosen to end it.

There are a range of "mood stabilisers" such as lithium and they are all capable of evening out people's mood swings. They are usually taken though with other drugs depending on the person's needs and symptoms. Anti depressants and psychotic drugs in conjunction with mood stabilisers achieve the balance for most so they can live a life where such mood swings are not a danger.

Clearly our brains and our thoughts are and can be varied by the addition or subtractioon of various chemicals. Alcohol, marijuana, party drugs, street drugs are all aimed at doing just that although we, as a society, don't know the long term effects of at least some of those. Even where society does know the long term effects, such as with alcohol, there is absolutely no thoughts or actions taken to prevent the dangers. Token efforts are made but in reality our society does not want alcohol to lose it's hold on us. Other drugs though are made illegal when they may actually be less harmful to people.

What is a balanced and healthy mind Charles? Really I think it is something an individual only really knows. Society makes judgements but I don't know that such judgements are either fair or relevant in many cases. Only where behaviour is out of control and a danger to an individual or others should there be a need to intervene.

Throughout our history there have been many "eccentrics" who have lived full lives, frequently in mainly isolation, and have been regarded simply as eccentrics. Such people certainly think and feel differently to the majority but do not harm anyone so they are left alone, a good thing.

Am I advocating mania or hypomania as the way to go? By no means. It creates dangerous unreality for individuals who are convinced their experience is valid and true. The dangers are clear are they not? I'm simply saying, long windedly, that what is considered to be a healthy mind is only assessed by our level of medical and scientific knowledge. This will change in the future as man experiments with the possibilities and there may even be some enlightenment along that road. Although my low opinion of mankind tells me such advancements will be controlled by the few, as usual.

I heard the theory, in that "What The Bling Do We Know" film, that all of humankind's reactions to situations were generated by physiological and psychologocal responses to hypothalamus created chemicals, and that we modified our existences to satiate our addictions to these self-drugs.

If the concept holds water then an artificial chemical reprogramming might, over a couple of generations, considerably increase mankind's self-contentedness. Perhaps the five million clones of my granddaughter, each with a potential lifespan of six hundred years, won't care about their individual survival chances as they're flung out to colonise the galaxy, their internal sense of self-fulfillment having augmented their happiness to participate in a collective experiment.

Cultivated nobility or engineered brainwashing, who can say? The moral of the story? Love your hypothalamus - before someone else does.

I'd like to second here Scott Dunmore's plug for Melvin Konner's brilliant "Tangled Wing" - my review at New Humanities - now (again, after a complete re-write) far and away the best book on behavioural biology around, and the most elegantly written to boot!

Furthermore, as to "chemicals"... I really can't see the point in such statements, as they are in essence vacuous. We could just as easily, after all, say that "We are merely quarks and leptons" - but, again, such an "explanation" actually delivers nothing in the way of understanding... and, to be blunt, it doesn't even firmly support materialism, as the exact nature of said entities is currently the focus of highly fraught (and very technical) debate amongst leading physicists. This is not to say that new age nonsense about mysterious forces is anything but that... merely to insist that reductionism has clear limits - and that no working biologist finds any use in simply "chemical" level explanations...

For, such "explanations" are also in gross contradiction with the basic modern philosophy of biology - hierarchical rather than simply reductionist - most coherently discussed by Ernst Mayr (last surviving great of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and a key thinker in this area) who puts it very well in this account of the development of his own philosophical understanding (from his recent book This is Biology):

More and more clearly, I began to see that biology was a quite different science from the physical sciences; it differed fundamentally in its subject matter, its history, its methods, and its philosophy. While all biological processes are compatible with the laws of physics and chemistry, living organisms could not be reduced to these physiochemical laws, and the physical sciences could not address many aspects of nature that were unique to the living world. The classical physical sciences, on which the classical philosophy of science was based, were dominated by a set of ideas inappropriate to the study of organisms: these included essentialism, determinism, universalism, and reductionism. Biology, properly understood, comprises population thinking, probability, chance, pluralism, emergence, and historical narratives. What was needed was a new philosophy of science.
(Mayr, p.xiii)

This new paradigm [organicism] accepted that processes at the molecular level could be explained exhaustively by physiochemical mechanisms, but that such mechanisms played an increasingly smaller, if not negligible, role at higher levels of integration. There they are supplemented or replaced by emerging characteristics of the organized systems.... According to W.E. Ritter, who coined the term ‘organicism’ in 1919, ‘Wholes are so related to their parts that not only does the existence of the whole depend on the orderly cooperation and interdependence of its parts, but the whole exercises a measure of determinative control over its parts.”...[Hence,] explanatary reductionism is quite unable to explain characteristics of organisms that emerge at higher levels of organization.... To sum up, organicism is best characterized by the dual belief in considering the organism as a whole, and at the same time the firm conviction that this wholeness is not to be considered something mysteriously closed to analysis, but that it should be studied and analyzed by choosing the right level of analysis. The organicist does not reject analysis, but insists that analysis should be continued downward only to the lowest level at which this approach yields relevant new information and new insights. Every system...loses some of its characteristics when taken apart, and many of the most important interactions of components of an organism do not occur at the physiochemical level, but at a higher level of integration. And finally, it is the genetic program which controls the development and activities of the organic integrons that emerge at each successively higher level of integration. (Mayr, pp.16-20)

Unfortunately, such understandings, which clearly suggest that the (sensible) humanities - postmodernism not included - are not at all that dissimilar to any biology properly conceived (albeit w/a further, sociocultural, level added), are little shared by many who spout pop-science exaggerations. As someone who has formally studied both zoology and psychology, I'd have to say that such exaggerations have little or no explanatory value, as opposed to the much more fruitful ideas of people like Mayr and Konner, who seriously attempt to weigh all of the factors involved. And, to be blunt, some on this thread appear to badly need instruction as to exactly what the mainstream in the sciences they invoke actually have to say about life. Perhaps a trip to the bookstore is in order?

All the best.

This piece is coming out on front pages around the world. I had to read it in stages because of the nausea.

[Extract from New Yorker, 17/4/06. Read it all!]

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’”

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’”

I have grave fears that the US is about to instigate its own "controlled" version of the Apocalypse. There's "enlightenment" for you.

Happy Palm Sunday.

Albert Einstein:

“Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society.”

Einstein to me captures the ambiguity I have been trying to express, and why this whole chemical issue is open to so much misinterpretation. What is the difference between a solitary being and a disenfranchised being, forced into marginalization and isolation? What is the difference between a social being and a mass conformist? Do the chemicals in the brain make philosophical distinctions? Does the doctor administering the chemicals make philosophical distinctions? Does the community understand the philosophical distinctions?

The notion of Time was first brought up by me in the context of the industrial revolution, and the context of history and how this forms our sense of Self. Is the Self made up of chemicals a process of inter active relationships or only within the individual? Consciousness from within Cultural Time can only transmit culture if the political institutions and the power groups that make up the society allow it. Complete control of access to all outlets of communication by power groups within a society, control what aspects of culture are transmitted and what aspects are not. The paradigm of the Chemical basis of the Brain has to be placed within a sociological framework. Without this Sociological Framework, the chemical paradigm can be used to justify any action and can be used to blame the victim. Are chemicals that form in the brain intra or inter active, or do they form in our brain in isolation, or from within social and cultural interaction? There are far too many questions left unanswered and unexplored. Justice, Marginalization of groups, cleansing of authentic cultural transmission, Mass Conformity, Corruption, how are any of these explained by chemicals?

All this talk of enlightenment reminds me of the story I heard concerning a lady resident of the Bronx. (She was one who had never learned to use a computer, let alone find the wonders of the internet.)

She was reading a piece in the New York Jewish Post about the Dalai Lama, when her attention strayed to a little snippet about the Most High Enlightened Parabrahm, who was living in a cave in the mountains of Bhutan, and spending nearly 24 hours a day in sublime meditation. She had been taking great interest in New Age literature of late, and decided to go there and seek an audience with the man.

After a nightmare journey from the nearest international airport in buses driven by suicidal maniacs and jam packed with the locals and their livestock; in springless yak carts bouncing over boulder-strewn roads and across terrifying mountain passes; on foot up near vertical goat tracks to altitudes where breathing was only just possible, she finally arrived at the entrance to The Cave.

Sitting lotus-like at the entrance to the cave was a sunnyasin, one of the Parabrahm’s numerous acolytes.

“I want an audience with The Most Hoigh Enloightened Parabroim” declared the lady.

“I am very sorry,” said the sunnyasin, “but The Most Enlightened One is in deep meditation, and is approaching a level of enlightenment never before reached, not even by the greatest of gurus. It is simply not possible.”

“But it’s got to be possible!” declared the lady. “I’ve come a helluva long way!”

After some time arguing, the sunnyasin relented. “All right,” he said. “I cannot promise anything, but I’ll see what I can do.” He disappeared forthwith into the cave.

A short time later he returned, with good news. “The Most Enlightened One has agreed to suspend his meditation in order to grant you a brief audience. But I stress, it must be brief. You may ask him a question or make a request, provided you use no more than four words.”

“Four woids!” said the lady. “Four lousy woids! Is that all I get?”

“Believe me, dear lady,” said the sunnyasin, “just one word, never mind four, is a priceless privilege, especially today.”

She pondered for a moment. “OK,” she said. “I got it. Four words. Agreed.”

The sunnyasin bowed, placed his hands in the prayer position, turned and led her into the cave. It was truly another world, lighted by a few candles placed discreetly into niches in the walls, but with an aural glow of its own as well. It was as if the very rocks were gaining enlightenment, particularly those of the platform on which He sat in a most serene lotus position, smiling beatifically.

Slowly He opened His eyes, but looked past her to infinity. In those eyes for a brief instant she saw the oneness of the entire universe.

“You may now speak,” said the sunnyasin.

So she ignored the universal oneness and said her four words: “Hymie! Come home already!”

“BAGHDAD, Iraq - Suicide bombers, one dressed as a woman, blasted worshippers as they left a Shiite mosque after Friday prayers, killing at least 79 people and wounding more than 160 in the deadliest attack in Iraq this year.” Mosque Suicide Bombers Kill 79 in Baghdad

“Israeli aircraft fired missiles into a car carrying Palestinian militants Friday, killing six people including a bomb maker and his 5-year-old daughter, in the deadliest Israeli attack since the Hamas-led Palestinian government took office.” Six killed in Israeli air strike

“Odette Mupenzi is a survivor of the Rwandan genocide in which an estimated 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. Now in the UK and awaiting reconstructive surgery, she tells the BBC on the 12th anniversary of the start of the killings that she is not willing to forgive and forget the people who murdered her family and shattered her mouth and jaw.” Genocide survivor can't forgive

Reading today’s headlines it’s hard to believe we are heading in the direction of utopia.

We must listen to the peacemakers. Whenever we use violence to solve our problems it always leads into dystopia.

Until we value all life we are not living in an age of enlightenment.

Roger:

In his book The Amazing Hypothesis, The Scientific Search For The Soul, Francis Crick goes to great lengths to discuss the brain structures as much as the chemicals. They go hand-in-hand. Current research into the act of remembering suggest that important memories, those that pertain to our self-image, are laid out in the brain using hundreds and thousands of neural pathways. These path ways are just chemical structures fed by other chemicals and energised by electrical signals (themselves generated by chemical reactions).

Memories and Self-Image can also be a product of human interaction which is culture.

What takes precedence Chemicals or Culture?

Where is Cultural Identity, Justice, Institutionalised deception, love, happiness, sadness?

How convenient to exclude everything that gives life meaning including the Soul.

Roger:

However, to change these important structures requires a considerable effort once they are in place. The price paid in breaking down the pathways is the production of even more chemicals, including hormones.

Another way of saying we screwed up, but were not responsible and don’t expect any form of justice, don’t blame us for the increased production of chemical and hormones.

Roger:

You mention anger. The feeling of anger presents itself when external stimulii raise the production of adrenilin, testosterone and the other chemical ingredients necessary for the feeling. When the levels of these chemicals subside so does our anger.

Off course, cultural humiliation, ethnic cleansing, theft of resources, would have little to do with this external stimuli.

Roger:

I don't know where contemplation of the soul fits into the reality of how our bodies work, but my bet is on more chemicals at work.

Let me bet it is on more Memes to distract from the reality of power.

Roger, if we are made up of chemicals that follows that culture is a manifestation of chemicals. Culture can only be transmitted via institutions.

Okay, perhaps it's time to bring back something into focus - this notion of Transhumanism.

Transhumanism is, according to its proponents (such as the Extropy Institute), an emergent philosophical movement which says that humans can and should become more than human through technological enhancements, ie becoming a new 'post-human' species.

What I see is a movement that has grown out of white, male, affluent, American Internet culture. The political perspective of this movement has generally been a militant version of the libertarianism typical of that culture.

What do you see?

Craig, Ross, Robyn, all of you in fact, I have been following all this for the last week trying to get my mind around the issue while at the same time chopping burrs on the plains. Good progress on the burrs as the hours pass with me deep in thought, hoe constantly hoeing. Not much progress though on the issue of enlightenment, going in ever decreasing circles on that one. I confess the whole issue is a bit too esoteric for me, but I can see a few others going round in mental circles as well so I doubt that I am alone. I think the word enlightenment is open to too wide an interpretation, so people head off in all directions, myself included.

Obviously every age has its advances in knowledge through science (used in its broadest sense) so every age is more enlightened than the next in the narrow meaning of the word. So I guess we live in the most enlightened age in that sense. It is how we use knowlege that is the issue, and we have used it to improve the human condition in many areas, for some people. But we have also used it to destroy and the twentieth century will go down in history for that.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the world's peoples do not share in the benefits of our greater knowledge. Some of us even guard our knowledge jealously denying it to our fellow man, for example, the refusal to allow the poor nations to make their own anti aids drugs at affordable prices. Not much enlightenment there. I think we need to join knowledge with wisdom in order to attain true enlightenment. Wisdom is defined in the OED as knowledge of what is true and right coupled with just judgement as to action, sagacity, prudence, or common sense. The world could use some of that.

Ross and Robyn, you got me headed off on the tangent of the soul, which I do believe in as a religous person. If I apply rational thought to the notion of a soul and of a higher being, then I query my own beliefs, but I then simply chose not to change them, for all sorts of reasons. I just say to my science graduate husband, I see your point, but I see no need to change what I believe.

I have some problem with any notion that we are just a collection of chemical reactions when it comes to emotional responses. Can we expect one day to have a pill that will help us avoid grief at the loss of a loved one; or one to end anger on the spot when we see an injustice and so on? In other words, a chemical to switch off unpleasant chemical reactions in the brain instantly. That would have been very useful the other night when I was so angry I could have committed murder, quite easily. That was after watching Foreign Correspondent, in which laboratory technicians in the Huntingdon Life Sciences laboratory in the UK were secretly filmed bashing up some little beagles for fun, then chucking them into their barren pens, screaming in pain and terror, and there to await being experimented on. Some knowledge has come at far too high a price for me.

So that night was when I answered the question for myself anyway. No. This is no age of enlightenment. Now I am out of here. I am quite out of my intellectual depth and don't mind admitting it. But I do know what is right and wrong, so I'll leave this debate to you all while I take issue with Huntingdon.

Ross, no problems, I am still thinking more about your post as well.

Craig, you're spot on, you have to doubt everything and everyone, its the exploration that counts. An open forum is just that, OPEN to discussion. Discussion is not about throwing around mountains of thought density alone, its about imagination and trying to make connections, even if the connections turn out to be wrong, maybe you're wrong connection turns out to be someone else's correct connection.

The ancient Greeks made some pretty amazing connections. Atoms etc. that took a long time to reach a stage where the concept could be proven. Mistakes are just as important, I would go further, mistakes are more important.

What a disappointment. This thread, like most others, has ended up in a narrow, tortuous, intellectual cul-de-sac, without resolution.

All of the sound and fury that the comments conveyed signify nothing except perhaps to prove conclusively that we definitely do not live in an enlightened age.

Perhaps the management of Webdiary could consider posing a question at the beginning of each article and, before the issue dwindles into its death throes, people could vote. At least then, some resolution might be achieved, some obvious, measurable outcome for the many hours of involvement by contributors (regardless of the agenda they have).