Meet Spot: Ninja Cat in Training

Today my wife made this video of our cat. The video is short and it features a cute cat. Isn't that the perfect video for the internet?

Jesus Bits

Note: A video version of this article is available on YouTube.

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I am going to describe myself two ways:  as a “thinking being” (processing perceptions and beliefs in ways we all recognize), and as a “confluence of influences” (explained later).

The “thinking being” part of me is, it appears, based upon my body — particularly my brain.  If, say, I drink a bottle of vodka, or I'm hit on the head with a baseball bat, the “thinking being” part of me will lose awareness as I slip into unconsciousness. If I die, my opinions rot with my brain cells.

If all of my intellectualizing is located in my body, what else is left of me? Am I just my body?

No. The confluence of influences remains.  It is arguably more authentically “me” than the connections my intellect invents by mixing and matching beliefs about reality. That's because I don't actually know much about reality; I mainly know my representations of reality.

I think I know people, but I don't know the actual people. All I know is the models I have of them in my mind. That is all I (or anybody) can ever know of somebody else:  the model one builds in one's mind.  So if Jeff is a friend of mine, Jeff has a model of me in his mind, which he continually updates — especially when interacting with me.

Now note the following:  when Jeff does interact with me, his “copy” of me will affect his behavior. That will in turn affect my behavior.

So when I am interacting with people who know me, I am facing an older version of myself. The model of me in the other person's brain reflects back at me, reinforcing my previous behaviors. This can reinforce any mental image I may have of who or what I am.  So the bits of me that reside in Jeff come back to affect the bits of me within me.

But those external copies of me aren't really me, are they?

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Consider the following ...

My computer's printer broke yesterday. I couldn't fix it, so I was forced to go to the store and buy a new one.  The breakdown of the printer caused a change in my behaviour.  It did not select the precise time, nor did it “decide” to break, but it did bring about the necessary conditions.  The printer was an influence; it caused me to behave in certain ways for several hours: I visited several stores and spent money.  So for a time the printer was part of what makes me “me.” (And since I'm writing about it now, it still is, even though it's no longer here.)

There are countless influences out there, both objective things like printers and subjective things like beliefs.  Science studies objective things carefully and these are becoming better understood.  Subjective things, however, get short shrift by many scientists. Some consider them mere imaginings, unworthy of serious evaluation.

Yet if a group of people share a common belief they will tend to direct their behavior in a similar way; they will act in relative unison. One might say they are an “in-group.” One might say they are a gang, or a tsotl. Alternatively, one might say “they have love among themselves.”

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A prophet such as Jesus of Nazereth gained millions of followers, each of whom has “Jesus Bits” (mental models of Jesus) in his or her mind.  If old copies of my self can be reflected back at me and thus affect and re-create me, then in this sense one could say that Jesus still exists.

Are these just word games? Arguments will surely arise as people debate about that word “exist.”  They may insist that Jesus exists only if he's like a person one meets on the street.  But that probably won't happen, since (as far as I can tell) the man Jesus became a corpse and does not have a body any more.

The fragments of his existence continue on, however, evolving over time, getting reflected back and forth.  All those Jesus Bits are being bounced around just like my Timothy Bits — the pieces of me inside other people's minds.  But of course there are far more Jesus Bits out there than Timothy Bits.

In that sense, Jesus can be considered much “bigger” than I am.  He can even be considered “more real,” if all of the effects of the Jesus Bits are tallied up.  In fact, the sum of the Jesus Bits can be considered more intelligent than me:  More brains are working on re-creating him than me. (John Lennon once noted that there was a time when The Beatles were “bigger than Jesus.”  At the time he may have been correct!)

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The Jesus Bits do not have my intellectual capacity per se. People hold wildly varying views about Jesus, so the Jesus Bits are too contradictory to arrive at the kind of consensus typical of an intellectual conclusion.  Nonetheless, pockets of similarity (such as individual religions) exist, and the people in these pockets can dedicate their creativity to furthering the cause of the Jesus Bits.  Add up all of their creativity and that exceeds mine by a huge margin (until they start arguing, anyway).

The descriptions I'm giving here sound like a bunch of robots running programs. That's one way to look at it.  If this was another century I might have chosen a different way of explaining all this. I might have told parables, for example.

I might find my ego offended by all this.  Am I just a robot?  Am I nothing but an ongoing creation of the world?  Am I simply a sophisticated stimulus-response unit? A pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding machine?

Is that such a bad thing?

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When I perceive my unbreakable connection to reality — this ongoing creation of the thing I call “me” — I see the commonality of my experience with that of others. I also see my own lack of specialness, because I have never created anything from nothing.  All that I do is, ultimately, borrowed from an earlier source — including the inventive connections I was carefully raised, groomed and trained to make.

How does one make sense of this “continually being created” phenomenon?  One solution people have found is to identify with the Jesus Bits they carry around inside their minds.  Once they accept (and come to trust) that powerful influence the other (non-Jesus-based) influences seem less offensive.

How do they accomplish this?  Perhaps they can let the Jesus Bits make choices through what may feel to them like a guided intuitive capacity. What is actually happening may just be neurons firing, but the subjective experience is that of receiving direction — guidance — from a part of the mind that one does not monitor intellectually.  Thus, by “turning their life over the Jesus” they find a way to deal with living with uncertainty in this seemingly harsh universe.

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Alas, many make the mistake of believing their Jesus Bits are something specific — an actual person, perhaps.  This is a dismal downside of religion, yet the phenomena being addressed by the reality-model (for example: the contingent nature of the self) aren't going to go away.

Jesus Bits make life more tolerable for millions. They also hurt millions. As solutions go, it's not ideal.  For now, though, it's all many people have, and it does the job for them.

Do you ever wonder what Jesus of Nazereth would say about what people think he said?

(The original, very similar, version of this article was written Mar. 22, 2007.)

Christianity Versus Original Sin

Note: A video version of this article is available on YouTube.

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Christians say that Jesus died for our sins. But what was the original sin — the one that got all the sinning started?

The Bible says the Original Sin was eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Most people vaguely think that this means they ate an apple and evil popped out of it, rather like Pandora's Box. But note what the Bible says the fruit contained: knowledge of good and evil. If good and evil are merely human constructs, then the tree revealed a bogus distinction. A fake separation. A false dichotomy. Call it what you will.

So in the biblical model of reality, in its creation story, it may be describing the first bogus distinction in the history of humanity.

Note what happens next in the bible story: the first humans feel shame. Now they feel the cost of the sin. They now believe that it is wrong to be naked.

Says who? Says belief, that's who.

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When one accepts “Jesus,” say the Christians, one is “redeemed” (freed, liberated). Freed from what? Well, one can be freed from the (original?) sin of false distinctions — I'll explain how in a moment.

One retains this freedom only as long as one is “turning over one's life to Jesus” (who could be just a mental fiction). Thus, one absolves one's self of guilt in direct proportion to the extent that one can “turn it over” to Jesus. In other words: more faith equals more liberation.

The model may be full of fiction, but it nonetheless provides people a way of freeing themselves from “hamster in a cage” thinking such as worry. The more negativity they can “turn over” in this way, the less fear they feel. In so doing, they are better able to operate in the moment, interacting with people without self-censorship, “hating the sin but loving the sinner” (seeing through the programming and appreciating the person as they naturally are).

How else could somebody truly love their neighbor as themselves, if not by noticing that an actual person exists underneath all that programming?

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I speak of the ideal case, of course. In real life Christianity, most people have no idea what the stories were actually pointing at, so they fall for the words and miss the point entirely. Or so I say. Others will tell me I'm very, very wrong.

(The original, very similar, version of this article was written Jan. 25, 2007.)

A Reflection on SOPA/PIPA Protest Day (Jan. 18, 2012)

Here's a prediction:

At some point in the next five years, the internet will declare war on some other entity, such as a country. 

Yes, I realize that “the internet” does not have a unified political will. But I am considering Marshall McLuhan's statement “The medium is the message.” There are going to be differences in emphasis between various online power groups, but they will all understand that their existence can be threatened by the old guard with their old-style politics.

They're already threatened by people with big money — that's what SOPA/PIPA is all about, isn't it? And with Wikipedia's black-out protest, and the associated copy-cat protests, they're striking back. It's a minor thing this time, but ... next time?

I predict that SOPA/PIPA will get passed within 4 years, in some diluted form, probably with different names, because the power of money is, well, powerful!  And then the rascally tech-heads out there will find work-arounds, such as underground, possibly distributed, DNS servers. If things get really bad, some hackers will set up a parallel internet, using packet radio perhaps.

It's just the old “copy protection wars” writ large, isn't it? Somebody makes a lock, then somebody figures out how to pick that lock.

Let's see how good I am at being a clairvoyant prophet. I'd rather be wrong, this time. But we'll see.

Kentucky Koan Dog

Story # 1

The old man was asked about having his house broken into by thieves. They had been startled to find him in the front room, asleep in his armchair, alongside his ancient dog, who was also asleep. When asked why he kept the dog, he said, “We'll both die in a while, but if she's awake that might be a while longer.”

Story # 2

When asked,“Does your dog have a soul? Does it have Buddha nature?” the old man laughed. “You can take that up with her.”

Way Clever

A million zillion pieces of stupid
making one piece of intelligent.
A thundering herd of industrious ants
Carrying off your picnic.

Thank you, Mark Ty-Wharton, for the idea behind this one.

How Much Thought?

How much thinking is actually necessary?

An iguana, when it catches a largish fly going by, might have a moment's satisfaction. Its satisfaction (and perhaps ours, too) is a lessening of desire. The iguana has eaten that fly and is less hungry by that amount. If there is no peril the iguana ceases thinking.

But it is not inert! On the contrary, it is alert! It is listening, watching, aware to its surroundings. This is all it actually needs at this moment. So, no thinking.

Inside the Iguana

It is tempting for us humans to see an iguana sitting there and suppose that it is having deep thoughts about the universe. But it's far more likely that it is not thinking. No thought is happening.

Inside that iguana's brain, nothing is being modeled apart from the present moment. It doesn't have to project into the future because it doesn't have to work out:

“Where will that fly be, given its speed and probable trajectory, so I can aim my tongue precisely to that point (allowing for the travel time of my tongue as affected by wind and my general well-being)?”

What, you thought it was easy being an iguana? When they need to think about the future, they do so. And they're darn good at it.

Note: Iguanas do not actually think in English. 

Inside the Human

Of course, iguanas don't have the options that humans do. 

Does our bonanza of options mean we should be thinking continually (or nearly so)? Alternatively, can the thinking actually end when it becomes overly arbitrary? Is the thinking ever … done?

Part of the mind — call it ego or programming or whatever — refuses to accept that the thinking might actually be “done.” It will cheerfully get out of the way for a while, particularly if this results in pleasure. But it does not want to be turned off and called up by some other part. It does not want to, well, die. It cannot let go. 

And yet … “it” does let go, sometimes. We've known moments of peace. Why does “it” always come back?

Some sages seem to be saying that it will always be there. But it doesn't have to co-opt the survival instinct, arrogating unto itself the necessity to live, live, live!

It doesn't clearly see that its abeyance is not truly its death. It does not see that it is part of a larger organism,  which can call upon it when it is needed. It does not trust this process, even though it has seen it happen.

It does not see that I, and it, exist as part of a larger context.

Outside the Human

What does it want with me? Oh, yeah, it's made of memes. It's surviving.

It's just another bunch of replicators, doing what replicators can evolve to do: survive. And if that means invading an organism's brain and co-opting its survival instinct, so be it.

This is survival we're talking about. Yes, even memes about love and puppies must infect countless hosts to have a fair chance of being passed on. The better a meme convinces an organism to identify with it, the better its survival rate.

The Blex

The organism can realize that it is spending a whole lotta time on a one-subject thought. Wouldn't the organism get bored with thinking about the same thing? Apparently not. The organism might, however, notice that the memetic infection is rather costly, despite the rewards it offers.

And such rewards it offers! I'm reminded of the story of Jesus taken atop a high place by The Devil, and shown all that could (in theory) be his!

Hmm. What shall we call “it”, though? I won't call it “The Devil”, because that's a fictional character. I won't call it “ego”, because that might sound like something entirely inside us. What is “it,” really?  It is almost entirely made of replicators from outside the physical organism. It doesn't really matter what we call it, but let's call it something. I call it The Blex.  (Short for The Belief Expanse. If you don't like that name, you can call it The Collective Mind or whatever.)

The Blex's program, if activated, offers rewards of accomplishment, riches, sexual excitement, triumph, victory! All this can (in theory) be yours! All you must do is run The Blex's program!

Note: Let's not blame the outside world for the entirety of The Belief Expanse — The Blex. Many beliefs I infer from my life's “story.” I have nobody to blame for these beliefs but myself, but they all get tossed together into a big belief salad. Your beliefs would infect me if they could, and vice-versa. Hence, it's all The Blex.

How Much Guidance?

Unless we opt to live in isolation on an island, some parts of the program (such as social rules) are necessary; some (like how to make fire or operate a computer) are useful. How do we keep only the parts that are edifying? To put it another way, can we pare down the program load to a bare minimum? If so, who  or what decides which bits continue to guide us?

It makes no sense for the program itself to choose which bits are kept resident, but this is indeed what we do. Constantly. In fact, many times we have become confused and genuinely believed that we were the program. A case of mistaken identity! But alongside all that nonsense going on inside us, there's that other part — that right-brainy part, perhaps — that seems capable of deciding when to call up which bit. 

In times of crisis, what is guiding us? When a seemingly higher ability takes us over, and there's no time to think or even feel but still we do the right thing ... what is guiding us?

Jesus?

It seems to me that in such cases a humble, unadorned, unthinking part of us is choosing which bits of the program are relevant. Call it “right brain” if that works for you. If you want to say, “But that's Jesus inside me, guiding me!” (or Jehovah, or Allah, or Pure Doingness) go ahead; this article's almost over.

Could we to some extent actually live in that highly effective state? How much thinking is actually necessary?