When you present people with disinformation they no longer learn about the world, or themselves in relation to that world. Instead, they learn only the world you present them. In a sense, you have taken away their sight, to be replaced with your own.

Tonight the Mercury Messenger spacecraft will spend almost 70% of its remaining fuel in its final major maneuver, with the goal of reaching orbital insertion around Mercury. No spacecraft has accomplished this feat. Mercury’s mass is very small while the nearby sun is enormous, which means the slightest miscalculation in the elaborately-winding path to Mercury will lose the Messenger to the heavy sun.

Disinformation would mean disaster. Even a small, honest mistake cannot be tolerated. The only chance of success is an almost religious adherence to truth – but not only truth; the accurate communication of information without any bias.

That’s not so difficult in the company of science, and scientists. But moving into the world of politics where exerting influence over large numbers of people is the goal, truth tends to become a tool to be utilized rather than an object of aspiration.

In its best light, disinformation is propagated not through lies, but through the strategic withholding of information. We find a current example in the nuclear radiation leaks at the Fukushima reactor in Japan, where scientists are calling for a release of more information so they might better understand and predict the impact of this disaster upon the Japanese people and the rest of the world.

In a worse light we see budgetary crisis with little or no explanation that are exploited to further political agendas and proffer economic prizes within a small circle, while providing citizenry with little more than sound byte propaganda with few and quite selective empirical facts.

And worst of all, the telling of blatant lies, that everyone is aware of – yet somehow these lies have become expected, tolerated and even considered business as usual.

We certainly wouldn’t get to Mercury with practices like that. With such ego-power-centric forces driving us, our Messenger would certainly miss its rendezvous, careening to burn into the sun, or flung out to slowly freeze in deep space.

It is our choice to know and discover truth. It is our choice to withhold what we know, or share it with others. It is our choice to manipulate and deceive people, to suit our own interests. It is our choice, to care or not.

In question is a person’s ability to achieve “higher order thinking”; a state where you can listen to political, cultural or religious “spin” and easily recognize it as such: an insulting manipulation of people.

Perhaps political, social and religious “spin” isn’t insulting, though. After all, if it works on people, then those people aren’t able to fully recognize it and deal with it – and that means you couldn’t possibly be insulting them. You are just simply manipulating them.

And manipulation is fine, right? As long as you play within the “rules of the game” which are the purview of lawyers and police (and pastors and priests).

Unless, of course, you possess “higher order thinking”, which may lead you to consider people and their situations in the terms of a philosophy of ethics rather than simple mechanics (and who can move the biggest gears).

And if you do possess this “higher order thinking” then you do perceive political, cultural and religious “spin” not only as insulting to people, but also as an act of evil which relies upon ignorance and deception to promote an agenda.

Unfortunately (and sometimes fortunately) people who lack “higher order thinking” often distrust those people who do possess “higher order thinking”. As everyone knows, whenever you say something that is not commonly held true, or commonly believed, or commonly known, you are talking crazy talk. And sometimes no matter how much evidence you can bring to the contrary, you remain talking crazy talk to most ears.

And since people with “higher order thinking” usually restrain themselves from participating in the unethical and “evil” acts of political, social or religious “spin”, the only real chance they have of helping people awaken and resist for themselves the never-ending onslaught of manipulations laid upon them is to help them achieve “higher order thinking” for themselves.

But you can’t give someone something they don’t want, unless you force it upon them (almost always an act of evil). Even if you manage to open someone’s eyes to something they did not want to see, they will usually find a way to rationalize it back into a comfort zone that they can safely, subsequently, ignore.

The only way to help is through education where people’s minds can take on their own fires of discovery and questioning that fuel them for a lifetime – and benefit us all through a process of open sharing and collaboration.

Money interests continue trying to convert academic institutions into mere vocational factories that produce graduates with skills complementary only to their money-making desires. Any “higher order thinking” is fine, as long as that higher order thinking is constrained within the boundaries of the money-making interests.

In other words, the trend noticed within this Seattle Times article is not surprising.

So until we collectively rediscover the real and profound value of education and academics, here are some easy pill-popping tidbits:

• Secrecy is not security, nor is it a path to security. Secrecy is secrecy.
• Weapons do not make people more secure. Mutual understanding and respect does.
• Understanding and respect do not come from force. Dominance and submission does.
• Money and economics are not impartial agents of social evolution and advancement.
• Money does not care about nations, borders or people. Money cares about money.
• How anyone appears publicly is rarely anything like their true nature.
• “Supporting your troops” does not require that you also endorse Empire.
• Empire exploits troops, supporting them only enough to maintain effectiveness.
• Empire does not like questions. Empire likes narrow, focused subjects that perpetuate Empire.

I learned before that, though, from my mom, when I was a child, about the home keys. Her typewriter was metallic green. I cannot remember the color of the typewriters in high school. On her old machine, occasionally brought out of its hard case, our fingers sank deeply down with each push — which required force if anything were to be visible. That isn’t easy for a child, nor any adult over time.

Typing was a skill belonging to the realm of women. I can remember being struck by how uncannily silent computers were, when you typed. They just took it in, and there it was, silently there. I imagine I was not the only person amazed by the silence, since so many early computer keyboards took great pains to loudly click as keys are pressed. Perhaps this brought comfort in change.

Right now my mom is dead. There are no telephone lines connected to the house. There is no cable television. Three days ago, I turned off the satellite feed. Only the Internet connection remains. The Internet, electricity, and natural gas. Water. An underground well waters the yards.

The house, in its mid-century modern design has been cleared upstairs. The interiors of the living space are recolored; the hard wood floors, as I type, are being refinished. The process will be slow. Deliberate. Open to reformation.

Three architectural pieces are in mind, to be built. A soon visitor will be bringing more. The stairs are to be ground down, stained neither darkly, nor left light, and sealed against slipping.

The stone of the focus will remain unchangeable, yet its dominance, strategically lessened through all being created around it, will become a grudging strength. The substance is such that it cannot be removed without destroying the house. It cannot be denied. Instead, it will be embraced, and brought down, into the larger home; not nearly as substantial, yet hopefully beautifully livable in its broader and open space.

This rearrangement is happening, in a most intimate way, with full participation.

But for the purposes of this essay I will not argue with them. In fact, I will agree with them in large part. Many things we believe we know are simply illusion, a form of self-trickery, where our more evolved and “larger” mind decides to play a subservient role to the more primitive and earlier-stage part of our minds that deals with such issues as survival, hierarchies, aggression (and love). In this way, we can act in accordance with our self-interests, justifying them through claims to a social order, even with our greater mind’s complete understanding of reasonable realities to the contrary. In other words, we can easily keep doing things and believing things even when we know better. This is a byproduct of our evolving mind that is often at odds with itself in an ongoing struggle between our more primitive adaptations and our more recently-evolved, higher cognitive abilities.

Empiricists believe that you must be able to touch something and measure it before it can be true. In other words, for something to be real, it must be able to hit you over the head and raise a lump. This is very convenient within the context of social orders, of all types, large and small. On the other hand, rationalists believe that something only needs to make rational sense, to be true. Of course, you can rationalize all you want that something is not hitting you over the head, but doing so will not keep you from getting a lump. And similarly, you can affirm all you like that being hit over the head, or hitting someone else over the head, is just the way it is – after all, you can feel it and measure it, right? But perhaps that is no longer a reasonable thing to do. Or perhaps other undiscovered and unmeasured clubs have already been pounding away, that will eventually change everything.

We can go clear back to the 1700′s and listen to Immanuel Kant about this issue. He demonstrated, and pretty well, that rationalists, without empiricism, were vulnerable to fooling themselves, while empiricists, without employing reason, can lose all context and meaning in their measurements and constructions. The interplay between empiricism and reason still happens today through the vessels of their adherents, who adhere strictly to varying degrees. But it turns out, the deftness at balance between the two is what separates the men from the boys. And the rest, who are the largest majority, are more akin to that Middle English poem about bulls leaping and farting in the Springtime.

My kung fu sifu once said, “you do not sing to cows – it is stupid”. That is when I first lost admiration for him. It has also been suggested, on more than one occasion, that I am “singing to the choir”. Could it be that you, reading this, are a farting, leaping animal in my choir of cows? I doubt it. You are all wildly different, with mostly unique backgrounds and certainly different priorities and beliefs. I would bet you are all farters, though, and that, at least, is comforting.

We’ve traveled a long way in our awareness since Darwin brought us back from Saint Augustine’s purely disembodied esoterics, reuniting us with nature, in all our crazy beastliness. Whether or not we are entirely biological machines changes nothing in our ethical imperatives toward one another. We are alive. We all feel pleasure and pain. We all experience hopes and disappointments. We can behave wrongly toward each other, or rightly.

The world of ideas dictates nearly all our actions. Ideas of ourself, and of others. Ideas of economic and political systems. Ideas of religion. Knowing anything may well be self-deception, just as some scientists claim (somewhat paradoxically). We pass ideas between each other, as surely as we pass them down to our descendants. They shape our ability to examine and understand the world and each other. Even the processes we use that lead to new ideas, are themselves, inherited ideas. How can we know anything true, when our very senses are merely tendrils that extend from that nexus we call our awareness? Not surprisingly, this itself is an idea that tends to appeal to and unsettle younger minds more readily than older. But after a while, we become settled within our experiences, having identified which hammers pound upon us and when, or which hammers we might possess in our arsenal to use. And this settling of our nature is the beginning of decay for any individual, and for any society.

Long before Kant, and long before Christianity, lived Socrates. We can trace the entirety of Western thought, the very basis of our intellectual abilities, both purely rational and scientific, through this line. Pythagoras, the “father of mathematics” had already completed his work in geometry fifty years prior to Socrates’ birth. Plato, who, like Pythagoras, was a lover of geometry, was a student of Socrates. However, Socrates was not entirely convinced that 2+2=4, when you really considered the question. Plato was convinced, however, and was even convinced that the mathematics of geometry were the basis for the atomic nature of the universe. In fact, the dodecahedron was so powerful that its existence was kept top secret, lest other, less worthy people, get it into their heads to play god. In fact, the dodecahedron was considered the “god particle”.

Socrates was more of a rationalist, however. He wanted things to make sense. And mathematics made perfect sense, as long as you remembered the context in which you applied it. Pythagoras, on the other hand, believed we could understand the universe through mathematics. He attributed a physical significance to numbers and gained a large following of his teachings, all of whom were tightly-knit collaborators upon their various mathematical equations and theories. Today, we would consider such a following a cult. At one point they were thrown into disarray and turmoil by the square root of two. You see, the universe likes whole numbers, or even ratios of whole numbers, which represent fractions. But the square root of two, they proved, could not be represented by a ratio of whole numbers, and the number two was far too important to exhibit such disturbing and provocative qualities. So the problem was downplayed, and even suppressed. They did not want this truth, even though they discovered it.

Plato, like Pythagoras, happily believed that the universe could be better understood through reason and mathematics, rather than relying on observations of nature, as Thales had said it must be understood. Most historians attribute Plato’s ideas that mathematics and reason are the best way to access the nature of reality as the primary force that kept science from advancing for well over a thousand years. In the meantime, Socrates, his teacher, who agreed that 2+2 may equal 4, but wanted to know what that really meant, was put to death by the Athenian state for embarrassing the ruling class by exposing their inadequacies as intelligent people who are obligated to lead well.

Some of you will see parallels in this, to the self-referential hallucinations that comprise a great portion of modern theoretical physics in its schism with the more sane disciplines of the observational. Some of you will see parallels with the insistently physical foundations of mind and consciousness, versus the more esoteric. And others will be gritting their teeth, wondering what on earth this has to do with the fleecing of the non-rich and the killing and torture of so many people. Still others will be convinced that this has nothing whatsoever to do with beer drinking.

The point is, people do have ideas, even if they’re only spouted when they’re drunk, and people do feel that they know things. And all these ideas have come to us, somehow. If we look back to Saint Augustine, we find a man who helped define what Christianity would mean for everyone who came after. He also was a philosopher, living long after the Greeks I’ve mentioned. He lived after Rome was transformed into something resembling civilization, after they conquered Greece. He lived at the time when Rome decided that Christianity was the one and only religion people could have. Saint Augustine was not a Christian then, but saw the light of Christianity while non-Christians were being put to death. One of his many contributions was giving us the concept of a “just war”, that is, a reasonable way to invade other countries, not because they have attacked you, but because they do not believe the right things, or because you would actually be helping them by invading.

Interestingly, it was around the same time that Rome was increasingly beset by the Vandals. No, they weren’t a punk rock band, but rather a very irritable group of Slavic and Germanic people who felt that they, too, were perfectly justified in doing and taking what they wanted. While Rome played their political games of backstabbing and power grabbing, the Vandals ran about pretty much willy-nilly through the empire. Saint Augustine actually died during a siege of Rome by the Vandals, probably from starvation. It’s certainly an interesting story about the power of the hordes.

Just a few nights ago I was talking, late at night, to a store clerk about the helicopters that always seem to fill the sky throughout the night. She told me that earlier that evening the Arco gas station had been robbed, and that her building had been painted with street images by vandals. She was happy the vandals had been apprehended by police. Also, her young daughter stays with her mom while she works at night, and she is worried about her daughter because she is very sick and nobody can tell her why. She had to move back in with her mother because she was trying to pay medical bills. Also, the thick metallic money vault behind the counter will only drop out $20 every hour, which she can use for making change. While I was there, one hooded man came in, buying lighter fluid and cold tablets.

She has trouble trusting people now because her boyfriend, a salesman, used to beat her when she questioned anything he said, and sometimes just when she was being nice to him. She wanted me to tell her that everything would be okay. Yet somehow, I didn’t know where to begin. What I did say was that I was glad she was standing on her own now, and that she was finding her own strength, which looked to me, to be considerable. And that none of that is me – it is all you.

Sometimes there are so many thoughts or ideas, with no obvious place to begin. Sometimes we may drown in them. An interesting thing about Socrates is that he never produced any writings. He believed that philosophy and discourse was meant to be alive, between people. He believed that it was better for people to consider ideas for themselves, reaching their own reasonable conclusions, despite what others might say, or what others might believe, or what any social order or government might compel. The Socratic Dialogue, or dialectic – the examination of ideas we might erroneously hold as truth, discussed and worked out between people. It is no place for the instruments of power and coercion. To the mind of Socrates, the dialectic ennobles people through the revelation of truth that might otherwise be obscured. A dialogue between people, two-way streets, without fear, with open minds, in the interest of all that is greater.

I couldn’t tell her all this, all at once, but only set a little sign. Small moves, Jenny at the store, as we find the little stepping stones. The paths that lead home, and the winding, rocky trails leading out into the world. Desperation, anger, clinging to the one thing that makes sense, the acceptance of a still decline, turning in one place – when there is no voice: it is illusion. All acts have consequences, as certainly as none do. And this is what creates, the entirety of our lives.

The big young man who got out of his car, as I was returning to my own, moved here recently from Texas. He met his wife while he was stationed at Fort Lewis, nearby, and they were married before he left to spend four years fighting in Iraq. He was overly gregarious and disconnected from our surroundings, seeing in the way only those who have known combat do. I walked up to stand in front of him and took his hand, looking him the face, so that I was all that he could see. “Welcome back home,” I said, “I’m very happy you made it through whatever you did.” Then I moved to stand beside him. “You’ll see more clouds here than you’re used to, especially this winter. Look at them, and pay attention to their shape and texture. Be unhappy or happy. And tell other people about them. We all learn, in the strangest ways.”

I don’t even mind if their fetish is a notion of power instead. Sure, you go have a great time making the laws we must live by, or enforcing them, as long as you must live by them too, and they conform both in letter and spirit to the boundaries we have agreed.

I’m curious how the new Michael Moore movie will portray Capitalism. Will he demonize it, or will he educate us? With Capitalism, like all academic constructs, the reality is, they are meant to be examined and studied — learned from — and only rarely taken as absolutes. They are meant to serve and better us, as humanity, not we them.

Right now a great deal of confusion is being generated through the people and mechanisms of this self-important abstract system, called Capitalism, that we have adopted. So much confusion is generated that we are even turning on ourselves. In essence, it is a holy war we wage, caught up in our own creation, adopted within our cultural myths and beliefs. And on all sides, real human lives are sacrificed in growing numbers upon the alters of progress. But what progress, really?

Is our measure of progress and success an accumulation of numbers, like the bizarre old woman whose attic gets filled to overflowing by her obsessive accumulation of trinkets? Or is true progress and success measured differently, more acutely, as the astonishing and previously impossible undertakings we have shouldered for one another in the interest of progressing our species onward to a better life for us all?

In a very real sense, Capitalism is a primitive structure, rooted in our most primal, and even barbaric instincts: conflict, gaining advantage, greed and strict boundaries. I can imagine no quality of Capitalism that cannot be reduced to at least one of those four. It is a reflection of our current world. It is a reflection of our beliefs, a reflection of work, and a reflection of nations. For most of us, it is a reflection of ourselves, even more so than a religion will shape even the most devout among us.

So what about the big bad word used by politicians and money interests to throw the brakes on any policy, law or even idea that tries to give, even the smallest amount of our public money back to the people who need it most, the ultra poor and even the mostly poor now, middle class? That’s right, I’m talking about the “S” word; Socialism, which, through a long history of propaganda, conjures images of evil Communists, secret police with interrogation cells, constant phone taps on citizens, disappearances, torture, and the invasion of foreign countries around the world to promote their oppressive way of life. Oh, wait. Hmm. Is that us?

Of course, there will be some among us who will claim, through hopelessly wrong reasoning, that it is the few wisps of socialist thinking recently entering into our political dialogue, that is to blame for our descent into that same state we claimed was so evil – evil, that is, when it wasn’t us. But that state is us, committing wanton acts of evil, and we are not a Communist state, nor even by a long stretch, a Socialist state. States become evil when they try, at any cost, to maintain themselves, unchanged.

I am not advocating Socialism, nor any other political or economic abstraction. However, I am advocating a thorough exploration of modern ideas, as well as old ones. It is unlikely that any one system will be good. We know that reality rarely conforms to ideals. Socialism is flawed because it requires that we can genuinely trust one another to adhere to the best principles for us all, through rational means. But unfortunately, we still have far too many liars. We still have far too many people who want things for themselves alone, despite the existence of other people. As long as this is true, more modern and humane systems like Socialism will be in danger of exploitation. We must learn to be honest, and care for each other, and not just in our own self-interest. But that does not mean we should avoid taking steps in new directions. In fact, we should. How better to learn, than to explore, with both our minds and hearts set to the task?

Pure Capitalism does not fulfill our social needs.It is wholly inadequate, and its shortcomings even go a long way to fostering ill for us, socially. Good does not arise, on its own, from greed. Capitalism is not wholly evil, either. But it impact upon our social structures must be tempered by something more humane than mathematics. It must be tempered by our desire to help one another, which all of us, when we are interviewed individually, possess a strong predisposition to do. We want to help others. And there is nothing wrong with that. And there is nothing wrong with making certain that those among us, who have benefited so greatly from us, also, to some degree, return benefit to us. There is nothing wrong with saying that ethics are every bit as important as profit. Doing so is a large step up in our social evolution and is one we are beginning to understand, and believe, despite the monumental efforts of purely capital interests.

Capitalism is not freedom. Nor is Socialism freedom. In the US, our notions of freedom arise from our founding documents, from which all subsequent law must, in theory, conform. Capitalism and Socialism are abstract ideals that we can look to and study, adopting those qualities we feel are right, for a given circumstance. I have heard it said by both liberals and conservatives, that the economic bailout of Wall Street was an act of socialism for the rich. That is not Socialism. Socialism would have that money go to all of us, not the banks, to pay off the mortgages. It was, instead, an act of Capitalism, and a telling example of how Capitalism can actually undermine a democracy – just as the trends in health care reform are also currently headed: a boon for capital interests, at our expense, with possibly something beneficial for us, coming down the road.

You know, I have given up being surprised by how many things lead me back to the general exploration of our universe, beyond all these ridiculous machinations. Those of you who follow NASA are familiar with the Augustine Report, commissioned to study NASA and its programs, then report back to the government. The preliminary report suggests that NASA needs more funding. And the GAO finds that NASA has not done enough to “develop all the elements of a sound business case” for its current human space flight plans.

If we used the money we have spent on the wars, and money we spend on the military in just one year, we would fully fund NASA, and more, for over 100 years, which is twice the agency’s current age. What “sound business case” is there for these wars, let alone humanitarian justification? The justification is oil, and its impending scarcity, and subsequent rise in value, which is also at odds with alternative energy development. Capital interests should not trump humanity’s interests. The question should not be how much money can we make, but rather, how much better can we make ourselves, through our understanding of each other and the universe we inhabit?

Imagine what we might come to understand and accomplish if just some tiny fraction of money were diverted from our military industry, or we decided to transform our military industry into scientific research? If we could just change from thinking in terms of offensive capabilities, to defensive, the savings would be enormous. The resources we could devote to energy, science and exploration could begin a new renaissance in our human endeavor.

I was listening to an astronaut speak a few days ago about his first sight of the Earth during a space walk. He’s a big, goofy Italian from New York, with all the trimmings. He said, it’s one thing when you look at the Earth through the window of a spacecraft, but it’s another thing altogether when you see the Earth clearly, right before your face. This big lug said, he looked at the Earth and words can’t even describe how beautiful it is. He looked away from it and thought to himself, God didn’t mean for anyone to ever see this. Then he looked again. And he thought, this is what Heaven must look like, watery-eyed, and worried that the moisture would do bad things in his suit, and that he would be given hell by his fellow astronauts now for telling this story. And then he thought no, this is not what Heaven must look like, this is what Heaven is.

It’s time we pull our heads out of money, power and war. It’s time we pull our heads out of never-ending ideological struggles that do not elevate us. It is time we devote ourself wholly to our own betterment as a species, not just to our own betterment. It is time we evolve. It is time we remember how, to show the way, by our example.

Anyone who has traveled and had the courage to step out of their protective cultural bubble is forever transformed in inexplicable ways. It is the difference between a traveler and a tourist. A tourist merely looks, from an abstract distance, at the animals in the zoo, while keeping themselves safely separated behind the glass walls that define them. On the other hand, the traveler jumps right in. The traveler may not be fearless, but no one can say that the traveler is not courageous. It is not easy, letting many of our internal definitions slip away. But it is the only way to truly understand other people, as any modern anthropologist will tell you. And in return, it really is the only way we can better understand ourselves.

It is said that through formal education people are also transformed. This is true, to varying degrees. Mathematics and the various sciences, through their rigidly narrow focus, provide some hint of transformation. But they are better equipped to provide logical obsessions to the reasoning area of the mind. And these obsessions can easily distract us from our own humanity, and the humanity of others. But there also exists within academia the study of Humanities. Nearly all science and business students groan at the prospect of having to take even a few Humanities courses as general university requirements. Because, if it were not for those educational requirements, they would rather not learn any more about humanity. After all, they are human, yes? What else is there to know? Just a bunch of crazy gobbly-gook?

What does it say about us, when we are unwilling to explore the incredible diversity inherent in humanity? In a culture where we are increasingly encouraged to find our small niche, or our well-defined cubicle, what place is there for humanity? Everything becomes oriented and limited to our function, rather than our experience of what it is, to be alive. In fact, if we happen to have flashes of self-insight, or question the function we have adopted and defined for ourself, many people are left in a near state of anxiety or panic. The study of Humanities does not exclude function. It embraces function. But Humanities takes it even further. Humanities embraces everything we can possibly conceive or experience, whether it appears reasonable or not. Humanities says, we’re all just human, and we’re all fundamentally different, and we’re all so very similar. Humanities says, sunshine, don’t worry (or do) — it’s okay. Let’s just look at this. Maybe we’ll learn something. And be better off for it.

It should be no surprise that as students increasingly devote their lives to business, humanities dwindle. Business and money are what draws people’s attention, while their their own nature as a human, and their fellow human beings, are less a concern. Of course you can rationalize that students enter into studying disciplines mostly devoid of humanity, with only the best intentions toward some indefinable humanity, and the positive role they might play, in the long run. Just remember that education is, indeed, transformational. Even business education.

Last month Chris Hedges wrote an excellent article called Higher Education Gone Wrong: Universities Are Turning into Corporate Drone Factories. Don’t let the somewhat cynical title put you off. It is worth a read. He is completely correct. I’ll take his piece a little further:

Academia is, indeed, still teaching critical thinking. However, critical thinking is no longer as much about truth as it is about “winning”. Even in the sciences, where truth remains mostly necessary, the motivation is more about the ego of the individual “winning” that truth, than it is about truth in and of itself. Students, and by degrees our society, are loosing the ability to think critically except within the terms that can somehow benefit themselves in some self-interested way.

This also is not very surprising, considering the enormous increase in corporate sponsorship of university schools and research. Public funding of universities and research comes with few strings attached, and as such, truth can be the primary concern. However, public funding of education has been drastically reduced, and in these economic conditions where even states are desperate for money, universities and education will only increasingly rely on private parties for their funding.

As I mentioned a few months ago in another piece related to education, there is a very small, yet interesting, trend happening in the humanities. Even as the number of people who devote themselves to the humanities declines, the number of people devoting themselves to philosophical inquiry is slowly, yet steadily increasing, though nothing as fast as business. Nevertheless, this is a hopeful sign. It means that more people are questioning the very foundations of their lives and their culture. It also means that more people are interested in what truly is right and wrong, independent of what any arbitrary religion or culture might espouse.

In philosophy, the study of what is right and wrong is called “ethics”. It is also no surprise that most students view philosophy students as freaks who are best at chasing their own tails. There is some truth in that preconception. But leaving it at that is a grave mistake. The study of philosophy is no simple task. It is as much about disciplining the mind with the clarity of reason than it is about any historical study of human thought. It is about applying reason to all things, not just the measurable. And to those people unaccustomed to reason truly being applied to their lives, the philosopher might come off looking like a lunatic, or an ass. But trust me, and you will have to, if you have not immersed yourself within philosophical inquiry — the clarity of reason applied to us, in all our many facets, causes most people to run away screaming in fear. Philosophy is the the root and foundation of all science. It is the root and foundation of our ability to understand ourselves and our world, even beyond the merely empirical. And when you apply this rigorous discipline to notions of right and wrong, through the study of ethics, even religion is left far behind in the dust and our lives, through our decisions, and the subsequent manifestation of a greater culture and society, are revealed in vividly naked splendor, both in its magnificence and its hideousness.

It is no wonder that corporate and money interests, and in turn, most students, de-emphasize the importance of philosophical inquiry. It is dismissed as impractical, at least when they are feeling nice. And it is dismissed as subversive, when they are feeling threatened.

Philosophical inquiry is the process of bringing truth, which is often obscured or hidden, out into the light of day. But truth threatens many people. One of the most effective ways of achieving any selfish end is through hiding truth. And in a culture which idolizes the self and the self’s greatness above all else, much truth must be hidden. Then, when lies are revealed or deceptions are unmasked, the perpetrator usually will not confront the truth or even admit any wrongdoing. They just simply, and predictably, attempt to obscure and hide the truth further, a little like a bug trying to hide in plain sight by hoping the colors of its shell blends well enough with the background noise. And, if cornered, the bug attacks.

So, you might ask, why have we given all this money to the people who have just taken all our jobs and money and homes? And who, exactly, are these people? And why does our government have to funnel money through AIG before it reaches the banks, rather than giving the money directly to the banks? And why are these banks, who are receiving our money, not lending the money back to us, but are instead, buying up smaller banks? And why is Obama disregarding the law by not taking these banks from their owners and restructuring them? And why is our Treasury Secretary Geithner saying that banks will need several trillion dollars more before the “toxic” mortgage problem is fixed, when we could just as easily pay off the bad mortgages so that people can remain in a home, and hence eliminate the toxic items?

Selling homes that have been repossessed is a booming business right now, if you have the money to buy them. Banks are selling people’s houses left and right, and the bottom feeder realtors are in a frenzy. Just recently I was asked to do a programming job for a small realty company that sought a better way to make repossessed homes more easily searchable, while at the same time, making people think that those repossessed homes were available only through that realty company. Thankfully the computer store owner who brought me the job, lied about the terms the contract while trying to lock me into other terms, and I could gracefully back out. But I was going to do the work for these carrion eaters, because the owner of the computer store was giving me a gift, and I liked him. And as such, I could rationalize helping these bottom feeders. But my rationalizations were weak, and I knew it. Yet I was going to do it anyway. It is a strange thing being happy that someone you like has lied to you.

Just as I was willing to do, too much evil is assisted and committed by people who rationalize that they are “just doing their job”, or who say “it’s just business”. Neither one of those statements satisfies even the most basic ethical criteria. Such sayings really mean, I know what I am doing is wrong, but I am going to do it anyway, only with a candy coating. Mathematics doesn’t cover this. Business school doesn’t cover this, except as to further business. The humanities do. And philosophy, in particular, covers it completely. That entire enterprise, from the bottom feeders and those who assist them, up to the original instigators, is a giant wad of ethical evil, where a great number of people continue to suffer while a very few people reap the benefits from this suffering, and all the while, the carrion eaters circle to grab what pieces of flesh they can, falling from the carnage. I was so happy when Zane told me he purposefully stayed away from repossessed properties when he bought his house, so many months ago. When I asked him, I expected him to answer that he did buy a repo. He didn’t. Cheers for Zane!

The same weak rationalizations are also used by people to invade other countries. Here, the carrion feeders are the military service industry and the reconstruction industry, both of which, involve Cheney in a prominent position — just like Geithner held a prominent financial position in the banking industry, as did his predecessor, Paulson. We see this, and we are aware of this. Yet somehow, we lack any outrage. We expect that our government will give our money to the bankers. We carrier to noise ratioexpect that our government will claim that we have no money left to help normal people. The essence here is, there is a massive shift of wealth heading up, yet again, to even a smaller few people, and our government is doing all that it can to make certain those few people remain in tact, even though, economically, there is no reason to do so, and every reason to destroy this “too big to fail” mentality.

If we can employ critical thinking, we can see our situation more clearly. Unfortunately, critical thinking is no longer considered useful, or even desirable by many, including universities. For the most part, universities teach facts and methodologies oriented toward specific purposes that align with business. Even in science. Without an ability to critically think and form questions, people are vulnerable to spin and hyperbole. And that is precisely all we get from what few corporate news sources that are left to us. Journalism is dead in the corporate media. What remains is merely propaganda, in the service of the very people who continue to take all they can, in whatever way they can, without a concern for ethics, and often without even a concern for law. And after propaganda comes sensationalism. This is our current American society, even with the harbinger of change in place.

Without an ability to critically reason, our population is left with two choices. Believe what is said through the media outlets, or simply ignore any larger concerns. The majority seems to ignore larger concerns. But either way, those who lack the ability to critically reason will focus almost exclusively upon immediate tasks which are in their own self-interest. From the perspective of the “power elite”, who possess a sea of people lacking the capacity to critically think, and who are well-trained in narrow skills, this is a harvest boon. They can easily hide from anyone those things they do not wish known, while offering up rationales and distractions to keep their machinations hidden. As was mentioned in the previous business ethics pieces, this behavior is similarly and readily adopted by even small business owners. Our culture is no longer an ethical one. It is all about who can get what for themselves. In other words, we have a hard time blaming the bad guys, because more than likely we’re bad ourselves.

But change is here now, right? We should not be looking at what was done in the past, but should instead stay positive and look toward the future. These are even Obama’s words. They are also the words of any business person, or person in power, who wishes to get away with something, and carry on business as usual. Unfailingly. It is a simple, yet effective, semantic trick. After all, who doesn’t want to be positive? Only assholes and crazy people, of course. Well, there you have it. Don’t look. Just keep going. Don’t rock the boat, and don’t be an ass.

As we lose more and more of the incalculable benefits of the Humanities, we find ourselves growing into an increasingly mechanistic lifestyle. This is also excellent news for the corporate state, for we are a vast army of well-trained cogs, gearing up for the battlefield of the newest millennium: the global economy. The war is between the US, Southeast Asia and soon the European Union. We are becoming a world of multiple poles. The Middle East is a strategic resource. Wars of one type or another are always necessary to keep power in place. Of course, we must keep the military/industrial complex happy as well, so really, killing wars will not entirely end.

It is also no surprise that with the blurring between government and business, private military armies are on the rise. Even in the Obama administration. Corporate armies have no allegiance to countries. They have an allegiance to money. And they have the added benefit that they are not bound by a country’s military laws or treaties, which also means that private armies can be deployed on US soil.

It is perfectly clear to even the non-critical observer that our government no longer functions in the interests of its citizenry. Obama has made no real change. He has strengthened our occupation of Afghanistan, he is taking military action within the boarders of Pakistan, he completely supports the suspension of habeus corpus for anyone he deems a terrorists or “enemy combatant”, he continues the Bush Administration’s declaration of a national emergency which grants his office sweeping powers and clouds of secrecy (with Congress’ blessings), he refuses to investigate or prosecute our country’s torturers, nor will he investigate or prosecute the CIA people who illegally destroyed the torture videos in their possession, and he is doing absolutely nothing to prosecute, investigate, or even bring to light any of the wrongdoings committed by the previous administration.  He has, however, invited a boatload of celebrity performers to the White House, including a special performance by Stevie Wonder, who was the reason, he says, that he and his wife were married.

Meanwhile, because some cultures on the planet are not quite as brain and heart-dead as our own, rioting is on the rise. The few media outlets who cover this, label it “class wars”. But the class wars were already fought. The poor and middle-class lost. Now, with their bottomless hunger still unsatisfied, the dominant players in world finance continue to squeeze for more, as people from all classes, except the very few at the top, become even poorer. This is why you see such large police forces in every city, wearing riot gear, and an increase in training academies for them, and consistent technical advances in non-lethal weaponry for crowd control, and body protection for these forces. It is well known that rioting will continue to increase. It is planned for.

But only as a last resort. Until people start rioting, we can expect things like the re-branding of issues that make us furious. After all, for people who don’t think critically, a re-branding will just slide right in unnoticed into happy land. For example, the private military contractor Blackwater has changed their name to Xe. Obama has renamed the war on terror to “overseas contingency operations”. He’s also changed the economic crisis into the bank stabilization plan, while making toxic assets into “legacy” assets — in word, at least, a thing of the past. Let’s just keep positive and look to the future, instead of the past. Never mind who’s getting the money for those “legacy” assets, or why those assets even exist. Never mind that the banks get payments for those mortgages from we people, and they get the properties from us when we can’t pay, and they get the money from selling those properties again with even more mortgages, and they get the bailout money from us, because they over-valued all those houses and assets to begin with, and are now insolvent as a result. Oh, and never mind that the Obama administration is breaking the law by not forcibly restructuring these banks. And yes, those banks are using the money to buy up all the smaller banks that might one day compete with them, and who would benefit from their demise. Change we can believe in. Riots in London at the G20 economic conference. 30,000 protesters in Europe near the German-French border at the recent NATO meeting, with three burning buildings left behind and almost 400 people jailed. Nearly all of Greece in turmoil, near the breaking point. And don’t forget the pirates! Mmm. Pirates.

But is re-branding bad? Looking at re-branding from an ethical standpoint requires that we look at more that just the act of re-branding, which is ethically neutral. We must ask, why is he re-branding? If it is an attempt to clarify issues, then it is ethically good. If it is an attempt to obfuscate issues, then it is ethically bad. If it is an attempt to disassociate himself from the previous administration’s policies, while still adhering to their core, that is simply a re-wrapping; an obfuscation, and that is bad. From an ethical perspective, this re-branding is a very bad thing, indeed.

All this amounts to one inevitable conclusion. Humanity is not as important as business. Is it surprising that students enroll far more in business than in the humanities?

Within the US right now, 1 out of 10 people are on food stamps. They need help from the government just to eat. More than double this number of people have no health insurance. This means that if you get sick, and could be treated, you will be left instead to die because you cannot pay (unless the illness is immediately life threatening). Even if you have money to pay a health insurance premium, but have even some small condition, it is very likely you will not be able to find a policy, unless you are working for a corporation that has an arrangement with a health care provider where they are required to accept you. And right now, we are also approaching 1 out of 10 people being unemployed. However, this is a little deceptive. The figure relies upon people who have been actively seeking employment. The real figure is between 30-40%. Yes, the math in these figures do not really make all that much sense. It’s best that way.

Perhaps our evolution into a corporate government is inevitable. After all, we provide details on all our friends and acquaintances on Facebook, and we even sign over the rights to everything we write, post or send through Facebook, to Facebook. Our personal statistics are analyzed, stored and marketed. We entrust all our personal and business email, and all our curiosities to Google, who similarly analyzes, stores and markets our identity. We allow our government to listen to all our telephone and email communications. And I assure you this is no joke, we even carry around our own government listening “bugs” with us at all times — our cell phone, which the government can turn on to listen at any time, as well as track our whereabouts. The FBI, even under FOIA will provide no details.

Technological developments such as cloud computing further centralize our information and dependence upon singular, larger corporations. Small agricultural farms are practically non-existent, while large, corporate farms grow our crops and livestock with close contractual ties to chemical and genetic companies like Monsanto who also control nearly all seeds. Public utilities such as power and water are being sold to private investment companies. So are our roads.

Many years ago, perhaps more than ten now, Battelle Memorial Institute did their best to convince me to join their ranks as an employee, rather than as contractor. I loved working with Battelle. Their slogan was, “Science in the service of humanity”, and for all that I saw, they meant it. For years they attempted to shed the label of being a “think tank”. They are a non-profit organization that offered a sort of refuge to some of the greatest minds in science, to come together, in a multi-disciplinary setting. However, they also we responsible for running a handful of our national laboratories, and relied heavily upon government funding. As such, before they would hire me, they wanted to sample my urine.

I had no real reason to keep my urine to myself, other than an ethical one. Should a company be able to sample our body’s makeup, or our genetic information, before hiring us? The question is not an easy one to answer. I leaned toward “no”. They ought not to be able to require me to pee for them. But I decided to leave it somewhat up to them. I told the director who wanted to hire me, and the director and staff of human resources that I would give them my pee, but only if they agreed to come out in the courtyard to watch me pee for them. If they could bring themselves to actually face what they were asking another to do, and the humiliation, then I would consider their job offer worthy enough to compromise myself. Needless to say, they would not agree, and I even received a couple unofficial apologies for the requirement. It is certain my life would be very different now, had I compromised my ethics at the time. I do not know how different it would be.

Ethics guides my life, in most respects. It is why I will not help some companies, or people, and it is why I will help others. It is why I try to be honest, even when honesty is not the easiest course. Adhering to ethics sometimes makes me seem like an ass. And sometimes it makes me seem like someone who just can’t leave well enough alone. And sometimes I fail. Other times, I manage to set an example. Almost always, I seem the lunatic.

Most people never bother to ask the foundational questions that arise from what they are confronted with. They simply do what will be best for them at the moment, in those given circumstances. Scientists like to believe they can think critically, but usually their perspective and the scope of their vision is severely curtailed by the edicts of natural law, which are wholly inadequate to critically engage the human and cultural condition. This is why I am encouraged by the slight rise in students pursuing the philosophical disciplines. These students will learn to think. They will learn to see. They will learn how and why and where they should question, and that is everywhere. And most of all, they will learn that few things are just givens, and rarely are things as they appear on the surface.

Ah, the games we play. The beliefs from which we cannot see beyond. And the mazes that contain us. Our hearts, that seek, feel and experience. This is the purview of the Humanities. This is what we must not forget. Because in the end, we always come back to it, if only in our quietest of times, when we are alone. But how much more majestic when we are together? How different would it be, exploring our humanity together, rather than just seeing who can manage to get what from whom? Humanity. Or who can get what from whom?

At the end of the day, our education is unavoidable, one way or another.

That last piece

Here’s a reminder, too. I was criminally negligent in supporting the positions for those three main views of consciousness in the last piece, Am I Alive? I am working under the assumption there is a reason philosophy departments are small. Very intricate and in-depth discussions for each of those positions exist, and are easily accessible if you have an interest in the detail. Even more importantly, distilling those arguments into quick examples lets me be lazy, too.

In addition to being told definitively what consciousness actually was, I was also pointed to a fascinating project within IBM’s Cognitive Computing group. This project just received $5 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the same agency that funded the creation of the Internet, and many other incredible (and dubious) things.

The award funds IBM’s proposal, “Cognitive Computing via Synaptronics and Supercomputing (C2S2)”, which will be the first step in fulfilling DARPA’s “Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE)” initiative. Another company, HRL Laboratories, which is owned by Boeing and General Motors received three times this amount. HRL Laboratories is also involved in DARPA’s Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System, and their Urban Reasoning and Geospatial Exploitation Technology (URGENT) program, which wants to revolutionize urban combat using three-dimensional object recognition.

Anyway, IBM has built a rat brain. Well, not really. They’re simulating one on a supercomputer. Neural networks were long considered the most promising path toward simulating cognitive functions with computational devices. That approach focuses upon the role of neurons in the brain. However, neurons actually account for a very small fraction of the brain’s circuitry. Most of the circuitry are synapses, which connect the neurons together. Many synapses are connected to a single neuron. In fact, IBM’s rat brain has 55 million neurons and 442 billion synapses. That’s pretty much the same as a real rat brain. In comparison, a human cortex has around 22 billion neurons and 176 trillion synapses.

The IBM rat brain is somewhat larger than a rat, though. Their rat brain requires a 32,768 processor supercomputer with 8 trillion bytes of memory. It consumes more energy than 1,000 typical households. That is one fat rat.

And alas, it will probably never be on par with a real rat. Real rat brains, like our own, operate asynchronously, with variable timing (frequencies) and ooze chemicals as well as electricity. Being biological, they are also adaptable and fault tolerant. And most importantly, memory is not so separate from the processing. Traditional computers always keep memory separate from the processor. Then again, rat brains don’t run Linux.

But the IBM folks are well aware of their limitations. This is an incubation project. Cognitive Computing differs significantly from traditional artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence identifies problems, then comes up with ways to address those problems programmatically. On the other hand, cognitive computing does the engineering first (by reverse-engineering the brain) and worries about the more programmatic problems later.

The supercomputer is used only as a simulation. The intention is to build chips and electronics with a similar structure like a brain. They then plan to ram it full of sensory input from sensors all over the world, to create a “world brain”. I tell ya, these military guys are crazy. The idea is actually to overload this brain with sensory input. Part of me is suspicious, thinking these guys are hoping to create a physical structure modeled after a brain, and then by flooding it with sensory data, it might just burst into life with some ability to perform cognitive functions on that data. Or maybe even come alive… No, they would never say that.

What they do not intend to create is an actual rat brain, or human brain. At least that’s what they are saying. But you know mad scientists, particularly when they’re working for the military. They want to create computers that can get closer to the efficiency and power of biological brains, and this is, to them, in large part a structural issue.

What is interesting, philosophically, is suppose they do create a synthetic human brain. Would any mind, or consciousness, that arose from this brain also be synthetic? Or, for that matter, what exactly does synthetic mean? If souls exist, what is mind without a soul? If mind, or consciousness, is simply an illusion, is there anything wrong with just shutting it off and dismantling it, after we turn it on? Or if consciousness is only an illusion, is there anything wrong with just “turning off” a person’s mind?

Before we can deal with any of these questions we must define, if only in very broad terms, a nature of consciousness. Consciousness is something more than illusion. It may be an aggregate of biochemical processes, or it may be something related more closely to a notion of spirit. But to say that consciousness, which we all seem to experience, is merely illusion is to side step, in the name of convenience, the very basis of our ability to reason and perform science. Consciousness must exist or there is no context in which we might ask questions, formulate answers, be curious about matters, or feel anything at all. If consciousness is illusion, what is being tricked, if not consciousness itself? Consciousness precedes itself, when examining itself.

However, to say that consciousness exists is not to say that spirit exists. It may very well be that consciousness cannot exist independently of some physical substance. It is to say, however, that consciousness currently appears to be a more abstract quality than something wholly physical. That is, though consciousness may be dependent upon the physical, consciousness itself may not physical, any more than the processes of mathematics is physical. In fact, it is metaphysical (devoid of the pedestrian connotations).

I cannot touch my consciousness, or the consciousness of another person, nor can I smell it, see it, or measure it. This is does mean that consciousness is an illusion. Consciousness must exist before I carry out any processes of science. In order for me to see, taste, smell or feel, or on higher orders, evaluate, determine and hypothesize, I must have a consciousness. Whether or not this consciousness is dependent upon the physical, I am stuck with its necessity. Even though considering the consciousness illusory may help win some arguments, the problems created by such a proposition far outweigh any gains. Consciousness does exist and it is something metaphysical. It might even remain metaphysical, even if the bridging problem between physical, biochemical processes and the manifestation of consciousness are eventually solved.

This admission should not, in any way, fly in the face of science. Many abstract, not altogether tangible things exist that are, for some reason, wholly accepted by science. One of these things is mathematics. Another is the laws of physics themselves. Scientists have no problem accepting that some abstract laws exist that somehow determine the behaviour of everything physical. The question here is, what holds these laws? Why is there an electromagnetically negative charge and a positive charge, and only those two? What determines the probabilities associated with quantum mechanics? In science’s inference of multiple universes, where even the laws of physics can be utterly different in different universes, how are those laws of physics imprinted into that particular nature of reality? Perhaps consciousness is something abstractly structural like this. But it is abstract, similarly, beyond any given physical system. But again, that is not to say that it is not dependent upon a given physical system.

And now to the meat of things, the reason for this piece, which continues after the last one that left us questioning whether consciousness even exists, as most of us assume it must. For if we are questioning the epistemology of consciousness itself, where does that leave us when we consider other people, or other beings, or things, besides ourself? If we question the very possibility of consciousness, what possible hope is there for any sense of ethics or morality – of right or wrong?

First, I want to distinguish between ethics and morality. Here, ethics will mean something we can think about and discuss to reach conclusions. Morality will mean something that we learn through tradition, or are told. This being said, morality will be left out of the discussion altogether. This is done in the interest of expediency, since morality does not lend itself well to any reasonable discussion. Its basis sits in absolute notions that are generally entrenched and immobile. I leave it for people to shout about on the back porch between beer drinking and farts, until they reach their conclusions through a wrestling match, or a bloody club.

If a scientist or philosopher is of the ilk to question the existence of actual consciousness, it is altogether likely they are also of the ilk to question the existence of a basis for any ethics, let alone good or evil.

When you consider consciousness an illusion it is very difficult to reasonably consider ethics. Ethics seems intrinsically oriented toward life, and becomes more relevant the higher you go up on the complexity of life scale. If there is no consciousness, any notion of a higher order of life scale is arbitrary at best. Would you consider applying ethics to the way a physical cluster operates as individual components? How can mechanical operations be ethical or unethical if no consciousness guides them? Without consciousness, things function as they do. Ethics is replaced by gross domination through a preponderance of purpose, or just simply strength.

However, since we can more sanely say that consciousness is something more than illusion, we can also find a place for ethics. Perhaps not for good and evil, but ethics, most certainly. Here the question becomes, is there such a thing as right and wrong, or good and bad, that exists, similar to consciousness, or the laws of physics, in its own true abstraction? Stay with me scientists…

The question of ethics is a very old one; ancient even. Right now we are looking at these questions of ethics and consciousness, framed by a backdrop of new technologies, during a period increasingly dominated by scientific thinking. It is important to keep in mind that rational thinking is timeless, though not all rational positions remain rational over time. The questions of ethics are richly discussed in texts throughout many centuries, distinct from religion. My one selection here, for your consideration is this:

Let’s say that a dog exists. It’s a good dog, but occasionally bad, as dogs are. There is plenty of food for the dog, and the dog will not harm its environment. It will not overly reproduce. In fact, let’s assume there are no ill effects whatsoever from this dog existing, and there never will be. The question is, is it better that the dog lives or dies?

You would be an unusual person indeed if you claim the dog ought to die, when there are no bad effects from it living. If you just hate dogs, substitute a cat, or a monkey, or better yet, yourself. Particularly when you substitute yourself, even saying that it makes no difference whether you live or die rings a little untrue. Most people would agree that, all things being equal, it is better the dog, or you, should live, rather than die. But what makes it better? This is certainly not something purely mechanical.

Interestingly, you can take this even further back, to address concerns about the origin of the universe. Why does the universe exist? Why did it come into being? Well, is it better that the universe came into being, than if it did not? This is the exact line of reasoning early philosophers used to posit the existence of an ethical universe. Personally, I have a hard time accepting that the universe sprang into being because it was supposed to, along with all its physical laws. Nevertheless, there is something to be said about a natural state of ethics, alongside our conscious determination and use of the natural laws of nature.

It will be interesting, if we manage to create a synthetic, or even “real” consciousness – will that consciousness have a similar sense of the inherently ethical? Will it know that being alive is better than being dead? Will it know that promoting non-truths is bad? Or does it require emotion for such determinations? Does consciousness itself require emotion?

But I think the important thing for us to realize is that science and rational thinking does not require us to throw out any value we place upon life, nor to give up on what we know to be ethical choices. Science is still entrenched in its long war against the domination of religious thought. Unfortunately, it runs the risk of creating a narrow dominion of thought all its own, in the process. If we are to have truly open minds, our thoughts and perspectives must be willing to travel beyond their comfortable and familiar contexts, if only just to take a quick peek.

For all the dogma and doctrine out there, the important thing is that we are all alive, participating in, and affected by what each of us embrace, promote, or even just participate within. Life has intrinsic value that is greater than any equation or any religion. Life’s value is greater than any system of government, economy or social tradition.

It is a quality of life that it must grow. Consciousness must grow. However, reductionism and normalization should only be considered a fertilizer for the soil, and not the cage. Otherwise, we run the risk of scientific oppression that would make religious oppression pale in comparison.

In other words, is your awareness of the world and who you are, simply a condition of electrical and chemical interactions between cells?

This is a very simple question. It’s the simple answer that reveals enormous problems. Yes, or no.

My consciousness is considering the ramifications of either answer right now. Don’t mind me. It’s just some chemicals sloshing about. But consider – the answer, yes or no, is important. If known with certainty, the answer to this simple question would topple many fundamental assumptions we currently entertain. Either way it goes. And most of these fundamental assumptions we do not consider. In grossly simplistic terms, do we have a spirit? What does it mean to be conscious?

If our consciousness is a by-product of chemical interactions, there are few compelling reasons that we should also have a spirit. If I feel joy as a result of something I hear, it’s just chemicals flowing around in one area, which trigger a blob of chemicals in another area which creates a “sensation” (whatever that is) of joy, which in turn triggers more blobs of chemicals in another place which may bring back memories to my consciousness of similar joyful things, in whatever region of the mass of neurons in which the consciousness actually manifests.

However, if our consciousness is spiritual in nature, how do we explain the oftentimes profound alteration of our conscious state through brain injury, biological diseases, or chemical alterations? If we have a spirit, how can our personalities be so radically altered by physical changes to a materialistic brain?

These issues may seem purely academic, with little importance in our daily lives. But the issue is significant. Both science and religion exert tremendous force upon our lives. When considering the nature of consciousness, each “team” plays by a completely different rule book, and their game effects us all both directly and profoundly.

For example, brain drugs are now prescribed to people of all ages, even children, with alarming frequency. These drugs represent a major portion of pharmaceutical profits. They are backed by science and the belief that consciousness is, at least, in large part a materialistic process. But if we believe our consciousness is purely biochemical, why not throw chemicals at our biology? Doing so, we can alter our state of mind to happily accommodate any feelings or perceptions we have of the world, or ourselves. We can alter our consciousness to be content with any stimulus or situation. In essence, we can engineer a paradise for ourselves that is completely independent of anyone or anything in the external world. If we are simply biochemical, why not have this bliss?

Well, for one, the people handing out the drugs could get away with murder. But so what? Isn’t some notion of morality and ethics dangerously close to spiritual considerations? I admit there are possible reasons why not, that do not require us to have a spirit. For example, if we all were engineered happy and content regardless of our environment, we might find ourselves soon extinct as a species. Why does it matter that a plague kills everyone? We are happy. Perhaps there is some biologically hard-coded imperative for survival. If we have engineered ourselves into happiness, have we engineered out this imperative? This could be a valid reason to avoid engineering our biochemical consciousness that is not dependent upon having a spirit.

But even this raises a question toward the spiritual. Is our biological imperative toward survival an imperative for only our own survival, and not necessarily the survival of other people? It would seem so. If many other people were to die, there is less competition for food, for mates, and less chance that I will be killed by someone else. Though rational, this is not how most people think. For some reason we find it important that other people should live, instead of die, even when they are not part of our “pack”. Perhaps we feel this way because mirror neurons in our brain somehow allow our consciousness, whatever that is, to place ourselves in the position of others. And because we can imagine ourselves in another person’s shoes, we choose to want them to live, rather than die. Of course, this argument skips the whole problem that we simultaneously know that we are not that person, yet still choose that they should live. That argument relies upon us having, at minimum, empathy. Who knows what combination of cell types and chemicals would cause our consciousness, in whatever grouping of cells it lives, to experience empathy. But maybe empathy isn’t a feeling. Maybe it’s a purely mathematical phenomenon.

One of the largest problems science faces when trying to explain consciousness is providing an account for consciousness in the first place. Is consciousness inside our brain? Where is it? Does it simply manifest itself somehow as a combination of all biochemical processes which occur in the brain? Would our consciousness exist if we had no body, other than a brain, nor external senses? You see, it is one thing for us to affect consciousness in some physical way, but it is quite another to actually pin it down.

The prevailing wisdom of science says that consciousness does not exist, in and of itself, but is rather an illusory result of electrical and biochemical processes that occur within the brain. What we consider our self, or our consciousness, is really an illusion. Our consciousness is just a systematic and recursive material, or mechanical, process that results in some meta-state that we imagine we experience, which we call consciousness. But really, this consciousness is nothing more than a plethora of mechanical processes occurring, which give us the illusion.

To some, believing this explanation turns us into little more than zombies who wander about doing our mechanistic things. You might appear conscious to me, but really you are a mass of predictable mechanics. I must confess there are times when this seems true. But is it the whole picture?

In the West we have a long history of separating the mind from the body. Our thoughts, and therefore our ability to reason, are dependent upon our ability to sense and observe the world. Our mind, which most agree is the seat of our consciousness, is dependent upon our body to provide the sensory input we use to consider the questions of science, and even questions of our own consciousness.

One of the first questions we must ask is, why would this mechanical process have a curiosity about its own consciousness? Is it another biological imperative related to survival that has trickled up over centuries of evolution, that makes us curious in growingly abstract ways, as our brain power develops? I wonder, also, at what point during our evolution, did consciousness, or our illusion of it, spring into being? Are dogs and cats conscious? It is evident to me that they do, at least, have something equivalent to mirror neurons. Or are they just different models of a machine?

But if we believe that consciousness is an illusion, then what, exactly, is being tricked? Is it an illusion that fools itself?

Something rationally critical breaks when we say that consciousness is an illusion that rises up from materialistic processes. But we can fix that. If we say that consciousness does, in fact, exist, and that it is not an illusion, but is solely dependent upon materialistic biochemical processes in the brain — that works. In this sense, consciousness really does exist, but not without our physical gray matter.

This seems far more likely to me than consciousness being an illusion. But it does little to explain how our consciousness comes into being from these material processes. The best explanation I have heard claims that the brain operates in an electro-chemical “loop”. When it operates above a certain frequency, we have consciousness. Below that frequency, we do not. Perhaps it is just a matter of putting all the materialistic pieces together, and eventually we will have our answer about the nature of consciousness. Or, it may be that we are only side-stepping and delaying the inevitable problem: trying to tie the metaphysical to the physical.

But what is metaphysical about having consciousness arise from something material? The same question confronts the science of artificial intelligence. How can something intangible and unphysical, like consciousness, be created from a machine? Their answer? Well, we find ourselves back to the original, predominant scientific position: that there really is no such thing as consciousness — it is mere illusion. By saying this, science does not have to confront any questions about the metaphysics of consciousness. Consciousness just doesn’t exist. Our sense that we are conscious is an illusion. Then here I am again, fooling myself. Or my consciousness. Or whatever. Brainsss!!

Another way to consider the problem is to return to Descartes. The one thing I can say with certainty is that I have consciousness. Anything I learn beyond this comes to me through my senses which may be wholly inadequate to determine any true reality. In this scenario, our consciousness becomes the most fundamental thing in the universe, while all other things are speculative. There is something comfy in this manner of thinking, but it is also an isolating and wholly inadequate position to explain consciousness.

In a similar vein, we might say that consciousness is our spirit which inhabits a materialistic body. In this, we are back to dualism, and we also cannot easily explain why our consciousness is altered by physical changes to our brains. It just doesn’t work.

So, if we look at big score board so far, it appears the spiritualists lag far behind the materialists — yet of the materialists, the ones supporting a true existence of consciousness, rather than some illusion of consciousness, are ahead. OK. Now let’s give the spiritualists some game.

Let’s think of our life, clear back to childhood. Remember how different you were back then? Imagine how different you were, all along the way of your life, up until where you find yourself right now. Some people can’t believe the things they used to believe. It’s almost as if you were another person. But you weren’t another person. You were you, all along the way. It still is you. But you’ve changed. Your consciousness has changed. It’s evolved. You perceive things differently, yet still the “essence” of what makes you, you — it’s still there. And it’s the same. This is one quality of our observed experience of consciousness that materialists will have a difficult time resolving satisfactorily. Not only do we have a current sense of self, but we also have the sense of a meta-self that has always remained in place throughout our life’s experiences.

In many ways, the older civilizations of the world, such as India, have dealt with the concepts of the spirit in relation to science for far longer than the West. Their philosophical works are an interesting read. Interestingly, a good deal of their philosophy deals with an integration of the mind and body, including through such practices as yoga. Yoga seeks to bring the mind and body into a harmony. It does not treat the mind separately from the body — they are one organism, and that organism is you. They take it even further, though. The mind may have many thoughts and ideas running around within it. The practice of yoga seeks to still that chaos in the conscious mind. In their terms, the content of the mind is constantly changing. However, the context of the mind is unchanging. This contextual representation of consciousness is what we might call a spirit, and it sits beyond both the mind and the body. In this way, if the mind or body is damaged, the spirit remains, while life remains. This is true, even when our mental consciousness appears radically altered — the content of the mind can change, but the context of the mind does not.

In this way, the essence of who we are, or our spirit, escapes the logical problem associated with having a notion of spirit in the event of brain damage. In other words, just because our behaviour or personality changes after physical brain damage does not mean that the essence of our spirit is changed. It is only the mental processes that are changed, much like a broken bone. This escape trick is no worse than the escape trick of saying that consciousness is only an illusion. It also explains how we maintain an abstract sense of self despite radical changes to our consciousness over time, even though the natural acts of learning.

If we can look internally, which is, of itself, another argument against illusion, we can actually get a hint of the difference between the content of our thoughts, and the context in which those thoughts occur. Similarly, most people in the world believe in reincarnation, where after death, and before we were born, we were someone else, or even something else. We might have been male or female. We might have been a dog, or a spider. In each of these, the content of our minds would change. However, the context would always be us.

As rigorously as many scientists rail against any notion of spirit, claiming access to tangibly provable and all-encompassing knowledge, it is somewhat ironic to hear, so often coming from them, this notion that we humans are “star stuff”, and, in essence, the universe trying to understand itself. Perhaps they mean this purely mechanistically. Why would the universe seek to understand itself? Is that mechanical?

Who knows? I like the idea, though. Unless I just seem to like it. But maybe that’s enough. It certainly isn’t going to keep from exploring more. And it’s certainly not going to cause me to just patently accept all sorts of things that stem from people believing one way or another on these issues. Perhaps that makes me a squeaky cog in the great cosmic zombie machine. Perhaps it damns me. I just want it to be an honest game. And this game is far from over.

In physics, the laws governing our existence are expressed as mathematical objects. We do not question whether our existence must, necessarily, obey laws. We assume that reason exists, in at least some form, at all levels, even within chaos. We tie the concept of chaos to randomness, and by doing so, we constrain existence, at least in part, with our mathematical objects. This may be a preconceived bias which limits a broader understanding, but it does impose definitions that we can utilize and manipulate within our framework of pseudo-certainty, that is a mathematical representation.

Language is a similar construct. As creatures with unique consciousness, we vibrate the air in defined ways that represent, more or less, the consciousness we are currently experiencing and wish to communicate to another consciousness. However, each consciousness exists in relative isolation from any other, much like parallel universes could be, and any communication of information between islands is fraught with potentials for error. For example, a word might not be understood in the same way on each island, or a string of words may have differing connotations that have arisen from the other consciousness’ history or bias. An even more challenging issue is the fluidity inherent within the island of each consciousness that is, by its very isolation, patently distinct within its own experiential awareness that changes, sometimes even radically, over time.

Objects we create (words or phrases) that are meant to be shared between islands have nowhere to exist, except within whatever space it is that we might label a mutually agreed-upon landscape of language. There is no metaphysical cathedral that houses the canonical truth of each object we have created, except, indirectly, by our further mutual agreement to imbue selected people with the responsibility of maintaining them, which is itself, fraught with peril. It is something, though. And it is a wonder we can communicate at all, particularly in the more abstract.

Mathematics has an easier time, at least within its foundations. The number “2″ is well understood within our intersubjective landscape. Any misunderstanding or argument between islands about the number “2″ would almost certainly be specious. This is an object that can reasonably be considered safely canonical. Even though it does not exist. I have never seen a “2″, in and of itself. But I have seen the curvy numeral written down many times, and have even determined a quantity of 2 for various things. I know — I lead a wildly abandoned life. But I would be hard-pressed to actually show you a “2″. That’s because it isn’t a thing, but rather a representation of an abstract concept. It is not really physical. Addition and subtraction are also abstract concepts, applied to other abstract concepts. As we’ve discussed earlier, mathematics is an abstraction, tied to the physical in only the most tenuous of ways through the concept of quantity. This has proven to offer us great benefits, but it can also hinder us when it is believed as a canonical representation of the totality of our existence. There is no basis for such an assumption, despite stacks of mathematics on paper.

It seems the human being is prone to adopt beliefs. This is how scientists, even physicists and mathematicians, can believe in God without violating the sanctity of their disciplines: because their disciplines arise from belief, they are accustomed to belief. The only difference between religion and science is the voracity of their self-consistency and their openness to new perspectives. These are constant challenges where religion, more often than not, falls short. But so does science. And like religion, science usually falls short when the canonical caretakers of the holy objects become more interested in their own personal perpetuation than their sacred duty toward humanity and the purity of their calling.

However, these are callings that are far removed from the more humble life we each lead as we return home at the end of the day. At home our concerns turn toward foraging for food, our feelings for the people in our lives, or having a comfy, warm bed in which to dream. While mathematics is removed from us and defined with rigor, the language of our time spent more at rest is sloppier, and is often downright messy. Some would like to bring the certainties of religion or science home with them in an attempt to impose comfort upon the messiness they might otherwise experience, but these are usually vain attempts. The messiness bleeds through. Something about us is wider than any discipline can contain. We are not entirely defined by the dominance of objects created within the outside world. We are aware of our island-hood, and the world we perceive externally is not, precisely, the sum of everything that we are, or might be. Even when we try to impose its order upon ourselves, our gut knows the difference. We will go into the applicability and validity of the discipline of psychology and neuroscience in subsequent pieces.

Language, that is extended to us from our culture, is the defining bridge to the external world. Our senses are also a bridge, but they lack any objective definitions without language. Our senses merely allow us to perceive and experience the external world. Language helps define common sensual experiences between us. The difficulty arises from the fact that our awareness is separated from the awareness that exists within other beings, and the only way we have to bridge these islands is a rickety structure composed of words. This is, perhaps, part of the appeal of mathematics — it is rigidly defined with only a small propensity for misunderstanding and error. However, mathematics is incapable of representing the spectrum that is the diversity within our inner lives. Though less prone to error, its vocabulary is utterly inadequate. We appear to be stuck with the uncertainty and error of language between us. And as an interesting aside, it is also fascinating to note that our understanding of these more pristine maths are formed through the messiness of language and what those words conceptually represent. But we’ll steer clear of that messiness for now.

Our inner experience is rarely what other people perceive. The inadequacies of language are not the only cause. Because of our uniquely individual craziness, we do not always construct language that is a true representation of our inner experience. Also, sometime we hear language differently than was intended, either because of that same uniquely individual craziness within ourselves, or the clumsiness of the person constructing the language toward us. And this is with truth as the backdrop. If we bring in the possibility of deception, we bring a wrecking ball into an already precarious and delicate environment. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, this is all too common and is the source of a great deal of the confusion that permeates our society. Deception is always willful, even when it is simply a will to ignore or disregard the validity of some known or perceived truth. In many ways, this is the worst deception of all. Silence, indifference, or disregard allows deception to perpetuate and flourish. It is selfish, and almost always meant for one’s own perceived benefit.

But what is selfishness, other than a word? How is it possible to say that selfishness is bad, when each self is their own isolated island? The answer is simple when you realize that other islands exist, and are every bit as important as your own. There are lots of people like you, living on their own crazy, isolated islands. Even when they claim they are not. Particularly when they claim they are not. And in that, paradoxically, even though we are completely isolated, we are all in the same boat. If I’m not mistaken, I think that some form of love might fit in well just there. And though love can be considered selfish, it also, paradoxically, is the furthest thing from selfishness. Isolation is, intrinsically, a lonely existence. Though some religions try, they cannot command love between islands. And deception always results in isolation. If connections are to occur, each island must, through its own self-awareness, become aware of its isolation and seek to bridge that isolation in ways that are not based in deception. Or instead, remain in isolation. Anything else is a power play through manipulation.

If a sense of mutuality can exist between islands then an awareness of isolation also exists. Some means will be sought to create bridges in the interest of that mutuality. But if a keen awareness of the isolation between islands exists, how can one possibly avoid having a more passionate response that necessitates creating the most intimate connections possible? Though this situation is rare, here we must take care to balance between the negative forces that stem from desperation and panic, against the far more positive and powerful forces that such passion can engender as a motive for the fulfillment with all its benefits of unity. And even this must be balanced against the necessity of distinction, from which the true beauty and strengths of humanity’s genius emerges. This is the beautiful aspect within the darker nature of Existentialism.

It leaves me asking, as I look out upon the world, what is really important? Between each of our islands, what bridges have we built, or allowed to be connected to us? In what ways does mutuality currently manifest itself? Is it truly proven that deception results in isolation? Does it matter to our isolation if we are the ones deceiving, or the ones being deceived? And the most difficult question of all, why does this state seem to remain, in perpetuity?

I suppose that our self awareness is one thing, while our interactions with the world is another. This is inherently deceptive. Perhaps we must do, to get what we want. It is the exchange of one price, at the cost of something else. I suppose it all depends upon the value we place on one thing or another. And now, I feel like I’m caught up in the mathematics of economies. It is an intriguing symptom.

In that warm, comfy bed of mine, though messy, I had a dream the other night. Some people say I was experiencing random firings of neurons, while other say I was “sifting” through the day’s information. Nobody can say much about the particles. I only know that I had a dream. There was a large, flat landscape seen at a distance, like the world. It ground was a reddish-brown, cracked, clay desert at twilight. Lots of people were walking about in between plastic outcroppings in the plain that were shaped like rounded tombstones, but had brightly-glowing and colorful neon symbols that flowed in pleasant designs. They densely covered the plains while people walked amongst them, absently avoiding collisions with these colorful objects. All our interactions flowed through them, yet we always avoided touching them. Circles were always the most prominent design on the tombstones.

None of this was unpleasant. However, it did make me feel a little like a radio controlled robot, and I knew that everyone else was feeling the same thing. Mountains were off far along the horizon. We knew we were a colony, of sorts, and there was nowhere else to go. As Burroughs would say, “The theater is closed.”

But I woke up and decided to write this anyway. I feel compelled. It might be love. Or maybe religion. But then again, nothing is certain. Right?

Just a bunch of words, tenuously tied to the intimate experience of our unique existence. You can see such awareness in some people. Others might never get there. Still others are terrified. It’s not easy, with such awareness, being deceptive. Unless you are completely ruthless. That is effective evil. And it exists. It is a purity of self-interest.

Mutual interest does not just happen as a by-product of self-interest. Mutual interest strikes deep into the chest. It is undeniable. It is a function of awareness. And that, in my belief, is the mountain to whose heights we must aspire. Any other basis is petty and inevitably mean.

- René Descartes

This was a clever Frenchman, born in the late 1500′s. René was a philosopher and a mathematician. In fact, he invented analytic geometry, or Cartesian geometry. For some reason, truth was important to René. He is also considered the founder of modern philosophy, creating a solid intellectual basis from which the natural sciences could evolve.

René believed we must throw out all ideas that cannot be reasonably proven. Often, he toyed with more abstract mathematics as an exercise to better understand truth. In doing so, he laid the foundations that led to Newton’s calculus. He is also the origin of the phrase, “I think, therefore I am.”

Unfortunately, that phrase is not exactly mathematical. But we’ll afford him some leeway. After all, he was bringing philosophy and mathematics together in new and exciting ways, and the “why am I?” question is an oldie but a goody. However, it does bring to light a certain difficulty that we still face today.

Modern philosophers know that “Cogito ergo sum” is not, actually, a very good proof. But René was hindered in large part by not taking his own advice: doubt, as far as possible, all things. René believed that our minds exist separately from the physical world, and as such, were not really subject to ontological considerations. He did not imagine that our consciousness might arise from the physical properties of our existence. So, in a way, he was putting the cart before the horse.

This is not surprising. The duality of mind and body was a concept solidified within the minds of his contemporaries. It was both a social given, and a spiritual “truth”. Interestingly, he did not believe animals had minds. Nor did they feel pain. This was well-reasoned. He often performed vivisections upon live animals to study them. I wonder how he held to his belief, as the animals cried out and struggled. Perhaps it is one of the powers of science, that allows us to carry on in our convictions despite contrary appearances. At least when our convictions are well-reasoned.

Chris and I have had some fun discussions lately, some of which are related to consciousness and existence. There is always something refreshing about returning our attention to origins. One thing is clear, we live in very different times than René, when Western civilization was taking its first steps toward the Age of Enlightenment. They were trying to make sense of the physical within a world of the spiritual, while we are left trying to find at least some room for the spirit in a world of mathematics.

How different we have become, even those of us who claim to lead “the simple life.” Our electricity flows to us through the equations of electromagnetism. Our shoes, ropes, jackets and food containers, formed by petrochemistry. Our money, an imaginary collection of computer memory addresses, modified by equations. Our minds, altered, repaired or enhanced through specific chemicals, electricity and physical modification. The machine work within the cells of our bodies, re-programmed and turned loose by conscious design. And the very fact that my words enter your mind now, a result of quantum positions within the subatomic…

Who needs a spirit any more? When the cells of my body that somehow comprise the mind that speaks to you, are not even real, but are instead a vibrating collection of particles that both exist and do not exist. And each of them, surrounded by a vast sea of empty space. Who needs a spirit, when I am mostly insubstantial already?

When mathematics has all the answers, what is the difference, if you maximize a ledger balance or not? What does it matter, the risk assessments in war? In the collection of particles, of dust, that we are, that move out with our will, which among them is the greatest? Which is the least? Which is me? When all things are functions to be weighed and solved, playing out from their own accord, what does anything truly matter?

This abstraction, with its dehumanizing characteristics, can be attributed to the inherently metaphysical status of mathematics. It brings us far up above ourselves, where we can look back down. It is a peculiar phenomenon. In science, phenomenology is making observations that lead to some conclusion that pays no attention to how we feel things should be, nor what they actually mean. Quite differently, in philosophy, phenomenology is, in a way, the search for a bridge that might somehow lead out from just yourself, to other people, ideas or things.

In philosophy we reached a crisis of sorts with the Existentialists, after our long passage through the the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment. In a sense, it carries us through the processes of logic and mathematics, then plops us down squarely into meaninglessness. We can observe the processes of our world, but in doing so we must acknowledge that these observations originate from our bodies. However, our bodies and the senses we inhabit, are limited. We may construct machines that extend our senses well beyond their limitations, but only along the narrow lines we designate as extensions, i.e., vision or sound. The question arises, is the truth of truths constrained by our physically perceptual and rationally conceptual human limitations? Such a notion is extraordinarily prejudiced and leads us to consider the absurdity that lives at the foundation of science when it purports to be anything more than an art. Art, which merely hints at truths through the tools of its trade. And like all art, what is pleasing to our aesthetic we grant validity, meditation and devotion.

Mathematics exists within its own universe. It is self-referential — self-contained. It follows a logic more pristine than our human thoughts, nestled within the gross confines of language, can achieve. In mathematics, we can determine with certainty whether something is true or not, yet this truth is only valid within the universe of mathematics. If we choose to apply the universe of mathematics to the larger reality we inhabit, we do so only with risk. The bridge between the universe of mathematics and our universe of existence is a metaphysical bridge. In other words, an atom does not work out the equations of quantum mechanics to decide its next action. Nor can we pass laws in mathematics that force the physical universe to behave in different ways. We shape, and reshape our presumptions within the universe of mathematics in an effort to conform to the phenomena we observe within our own. And in doing so, we claim the prize: physics and metaphysics merge. This is the beauty we attribute with truth. However, philosophers, except for the exceedingly naïf ones, understand that truth need not be beautiful. In fact, truth does not, necessarily, require any aesthetic at all.

In this sense, the aesthetically pleasant merging of the physical and metaphysical universe through mathematics can, at best, be considered a metaphor for truth. This metaphor is constrained by the limitations of our senses. Although science can make predictions and often control our physical universe via its metaphysical tools, it is important to remember its more artistic basis when considering the truth of truths.

As we discover an aspect of our existence, even through science, it is often our first thought to re-shape that metaphorical truth toward something even more ideal. In effect, to “correct” a part of our existence within the physics we believe we inhabit. In other words, we may discover a truth, yet even though our understanding of this truth is incomplete, we might have within our minds an improvement upon this truth, which, through our metaphysical tools, we often seek to modify into an idealized state. This is a dangerous flaw inherent within the belief of science as truth: our incomplete understanding of truth often leads us to alter that truth toward an ideal, founded upon nothing but our own prejudices or desires. This is what leads us to consider the prospect of filtering out gay babies, since they will not procreate or will be evil. This is what leads us to ethnic cleansing, based upon a system of rationality. Or war. where millions can be killed based upon probabilities or the maximization of abstract numerics which we imbue with cultural power. Or pharmaceuticals that restrict our minds within the narrow bounds of some normalized function.

Unlike other art, a strongly absolute and literal validity is bestowed upon science. This is, perhaps, why science, like all art, is often under attack by social forces who are determined to instill their own ideas of truth. There is, perhaps, some characteristic of art that we innately recognize as a metaphor for truth. This can easily threaten ideologies based upon weak tautologies. Science, even more than other arts, can threaten as a result of the profound validity we bestow upon it.

However, this power comes at a price. Unlike other arts, science is incapable of critiquing itself. In other words, science cannot question the foundations of science, within the terms of science. In this sense, as a means of determining truth, science becomes, like mathematics, a universe unto itself, self-referential and solipsistic. As such, it lives in isolation as an abstract construction as all beliefs do. We imbue science with its power through a conscious act of attribution: a belief in its indisputable access to truth. To my mind, as beliefs go, this is better than most.

Interestingly, other arts do not suffer in cold isolation like science. Then again, other arts do not claim any absolutism within their basis. What gives science its power is the same force that isolates it from us: the notion of a purely objective and utterly rational universe, despite the limitations inherent within our humanity to fully experience it.

Caught within our consciousness, we seek that which is outside ourselves. Perhaps we desire to understand ourselves within the boundaries of our own perception. Perhaps we simply wish to feel less isolated. In this way, science and the mechanics of rationalism have led us to marvel at the outside world, drawing our attention to the menagerie of pseudo-objective materials that presumably comprise our existence, while simultaneously discounting the importance and highlighting the fallibility of our own subjective experience, and hence, the subjective experiences of others, even though we sense some inherent access to truth within our own subjectivity. Science can only approach this from the outside, and we doom ourselves to conform to its edicts. However, other arts are somewhat gentler. It is a characteristic of all art that we may discover bridges between what might exist within the world, that can span, at least in part, to our experience of individuality; and across those bridges find, perhaps, something truly meaningful. This is, in part, the philosophical meaning of phenomenology.

When we look at the processes of science, we find two primary symbols: theoretical terms and observational terms. “Good” science is generally defined by observational terms linked to correspondence rules into theoretical terms. That is, theoretical entities do not exist unless they can be shown, through correspondence rules, to be connected to observation. What makes science more of an art is the recent lack of distinction between theory and observation, which correspondence rules rely upon as a given. The result is, any disconcerting observations can always, eventually, be accommodated by any theory. Science chooses theories pragmatically: those which fit best with other theories blessed into general acceptance. Observation is no longer required. This is most certainly closer to art than any truth of truths. And as such, it is as close to the truth of truths as art.

The phenomenological philosopher at the outset finds themselves trapped in the isolation of Existentialists, much like science is trapped within its own objectively solipsistic universe. However, the phenomenological philosopher finds themselves in a somewhat different landscape. We suspend any disbelief in ourselves. We assume that we, as an individual, must exist, in one way or another. And in what others might consider a leap of faith, though there are some compelling arguments otherwise, we assume that other things also exist. Even sentient things. Like, and unlike ourselves. Each of us perceives the universe through our own subjective senses. I have no access to the truth of what you see, except through the objects of language and metaphor that we build and share, both within and outside of ourselves.

A phenomenological philosopher is very skeptical of anything claimed to be an absolute object of truth existing within the shared, intersubjective experience we inhabit. However, they are not ruled out. Nor is any object in the intersubjective world blessed into the objective, as a Truth, lightly. It is here that scientists fail as philosophers. They are hasty and reckless in their determinations, with flawed claims of an objective process that is, largely, metaphysical. However, as artists, and even tortured artists, scientists are magnificent. Most scientists will perceive this as a wild accusation.

But, like all artists, an engrossment within your work can lead to a dangerous myopia. It is also the signature of genius. Any passionate pursuit leads inevitably to the darkened beauty of egoism. It is an irony that, in the endless pursuit of the objective truth, the subjective ego should flourish and grow. “The holy egoism of genius,” the The Art of Noise sang.

It leaves me wondering, when you look into the eyes of another — a stranger — and something profound between you is shared and known, without any words, without any hints, that hits at the gut… Who among us is quick to attribute the experience to an equation? Who is quick to say, this is a spiritual exchange? What we do know, is that it is a phenomenon, experienced by us all. And the meaning is to be found within each of us.