God and Science, and Daniel Dennett

***10-9 See an update to the below (concerning visualizing Dennett's theory) here.

I am using as a jumping off point for this post this interview of Daniel Dennett in the Magazine "Search."

From the article:

"I claim that consciousness is not some extra glow or aura or "quale" caused by the activities made possible by the functional organization of the mature cortex; consciousness is those various activities. One is conscious of those contents whose representations briefly monopolize certain cortical resources, in competition with many other representations. The losers—lacking "political clout" in this competition—quickly fade leaving few if any traces, and that’s the only difference between being a conscious content and being an unconscious content."

Basically, there is no "little man" of consciousness sitting in your brain, editing what comes in and then sending it up to "you," a separate medium, to become conscious content. It is the sum total of the activities of the neurological system that is consciousness itself. This summary is unfairly short, as Dennett says, so for those of you interested in reading more, you can go here, a site at Tufts University with many articles by Dennett that make this point more clearly and more in depth.

I think that Dennett is 100% right here, and yet I think he makes the same mistake that everyone else makes when talking about religion (which, while the quote above doesn't directly deal with, the article does,) confusing religion with the existence of "God." In the non-dual view of being the idea of a separate "God" that is above and beyond the world, transcendent to it, is seen as laughably impossible in the face of the fact that separation is a conception, an appearance. This, substituting "God" for "consciousness" and "the events of the universe" for "the activities of the neural system" could well give a post-post-modern conception of God. This, I think, is an idea that is emerging, and I do not think it conflicts with anything that Dennett says in this article, or the scientific materialists, though they would all dislike the word "God."

When he says that everything is open to the investigations of science, he is perfectly right, and when he calls "Darwinism a 'universal acid,' cutting through every aspect of science, culture, religion, art and human thought," he is also right. But, I still claim that he is wrong in rejecting religion. The spirituality (a word I dislike) of the future does not reject science, nor its findings. The spirituality of the future does not rely on dogma or myth or literal interpretations.

"Consciousness has arisen from the unwilled, unordained algorithmic processes of natural selection," or, in other words, not from the hand of God. Again, there's nothing to disagree with here, it is the historicity of the dogmatic and literalist claim that God is a real "thing," like a toaster, that necessitates the high board of science. God does not perform magic, and any God worth believing in would not need to.

When God is viewed or understood as simply "being," the metaphors of religion make a lot more sense, even ones as clearly literalist as "God created the world." Well, yeah, the world is here, so, being created it. Of course, the wording of this favors the mythology of God, that some giant man like thing created the world in the way you or I would draw a picture. Created here could be understood better as "the flood created a problem for getting through the center of the city." It's not like the flood meant to do this. It's impersonal.

Is God impersonal? Yes. And no. You're a person, aren't you? So God is personal. But the totality of everything, this is impersonal.

The irony is that, in attacking the idea of a separate unitary self-center of consciousness, Dennett is affirming something that the world's esoteric religions have said since the time of the Buddha, and perhaps earlier in Vedanta: "you," do not exist. What you think you are is only a thought, and the reality is much simpler than that.

When Dennett says that there is no truth that religion can claim as its own without science, he is both right and wrong. In the exoteric sense, he is right. Science has domain over everything in the material world. But in the esoteric sense, science has nothing to do to prove or disprove being. It can do neither, being is self-evident. But what it is, what we are, is so obvious that we miss it constantly. As Einstein said, the fish will be the last one to discover water. In the way I think Dennett is using the term, as in "objectifiable exterior phenomenon," I think he is incorrect. No matter what science gets to about the happenings inside one's brain, you cannot experience what someone else experiences. Even if you could "see" what someone else were seeing, or "feel," it, it would be different, because "you" are doing it, with all the different history and the different system for experience you have. Experience is not falsifiable, nor is it provable. This is precisely beyond the realm of science, and something which religion has always dealt with, in both exoteric (mythological) and esoteric (contemplative) strains.

The problem is that anything "non-scientific" gets lumped in with "mythology," or, to put it slightly differently, any attempt at describing interiorality is seen as necessarily involving supernaturalism. There may be no "privleged center" in consciousness, something, again, esoteric branches of religion would be familiar with, but that doesn't discount subjectivism itself. The objectivist description of the world, perfectly legitimate at that, is not an explanation, and cannot exist without subjectivity. What is the sound of one hand clapping? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? What's in a mirror when no one's looking?

This is not to say that reality needs intelligent aware and conscious beings, far from it, it is just to say that without subjectivity, there is no objectivity. Obviously this uses the word slightly differently than the conscious subjectivity we're used to , but it's none the less valid.

The direct experience of being without an object, the experience pointed at by the esoteric traditions, is shrugged off by science as being equivalent to boogeymen.

There is this fundamental problem between duality and what Dennett argues, that there is no Cartesian duality, and yet I would say that they are only two metaphors for looking at the same thing, like the heads and tails of a coin are actually still both only parts of the coin. There is an interiority in consciousness. But this does not make it dual, since it is entirely inseperable from the exterior occurances of consciousness. They do not arise separately, and they are not independent.

In a Vedantic sense of enquiry (or, for that matter, Cartesian,) the only thing that cannot be doubted, that can actually be proved and believed, because self-evident, is being itself, or, in the human mind, awareness of being. What was before the big bang? Whatever it was was the only thing real, the only thing unchanging, the only thing not subject to the laws of impermanence. What was it? Nothing. Nothingness. This is simultaneously everything, it is all that is real. And, the world is this as well. In the Hindu formulation, the world is illusory, Brahma alone is real, the world is Brahma. The argument between Cartesian duality and materialism is missing the point. Against the Cartesians, there is nothing special and separate, no "privliged center." There are not two things. But, against the materialists, that nothingness is not different from existence, is existence itself, and is the consciousness, the open space within which all else happens, and, it is not material.

There is a new world view emerging, one that believes as strictly as Dennett does in the rigorousness of science, and yet makes room equally for the interior experience of consciousness, the subjectivity that is impossible to describe or prove or disprove, except in the first-person perspective, where it is self-evident. I am. I have no proof that you have an interior, but at the very least, I am, or, rather, am-ness.

This worldview, as Dennett says, must pass through the tests of Darwinism, and science. The Religions of the future cannot be ones that believe in the things science shows are impossible. Oddly enough, believers of one mythological system find others absolutely ridiculous, and yet this does not shake their faith in their own ridiculous stories in the least bit. Lao Zi was not 900 years old when he was born. Mary was not a virgin when she gave birth. There is no Garden of Eden, especially not one that looks exactly like a 17th century English manor's garden.

The myths are beautiful, but they are not true. They are stories, rife with meaning, and are as such not exactly fiction, but they are not true.

The worry about science is not really that it can explain God, but that it can explain God away, and it has explained away quite a few things that believers in former times thought of as being sacrosanct, that is, they thought of as providing a pillar for belief of God, but it can never explain away being itself, which is the ground for all of the mythological religions, and the contemplative. The myths arose because there is no rational explanation for any of this, and again, science is really describing things more than explaining them, at least at the deepest levels. But there's no need for words in the contemplative experience. There's no room for them. Whatever form religion takes in the future, to be legitimate, will be centered on the contemplative.

This, it should be noted, is a far cry from what is called "new-aged spirituality" (a term from which my prickling disgust for the word "spirituality" likely comes.) New-aged "spirituality" is a reversion to beliefs in magic, more or less.

Another article, by Sandra Blakeslee, in the magazine "Science and Spirit," on the neurological basis for spiritual experience, highlights what I have been talking about.

There is still an over-reliance on the external viewpoint, and the point of view (I believe mistaken) that these external and objective interactions cause the experiences rather than correlate with them, but it is an improvement on several things. The structures of one's internal consciousness certainly impact your spiritual experience, so, where a Muslim will see Mohammed, a Christian may see Christ, even though what is happening to them is, at its base, and neurologically speaking, the same.

Of course, the science which crows so loudly (and correctly) as it trumpets, say, the fossil record, also trumpets when it sees neurological signs of meditative activity, as if the experiences undergone can be explained away by science. Yes, breakdowns happen, and this is what the meditative traditions have always asserted. The fact that there's a biological basis for this should have been obvious except for those that thought the literal hand of god reached down from his (likely rather large) throne in the sky and touched one's forehead with a golden finger. Of course, I am downplaying that this viewpoint may be prevalent, but still, the main idea is that the scientific proof of different and abnormal brain states during these activities certainly does not reduce them to being no more than "fireworks in the brain." But, it is not that the biological activity creates this, it is that the release of the constraints and constrictions of one's mind unveils this ever-present experience of reality. It is the same as the Buddhist tradition has always maintained; you're not reaching enlightenment, you're getting rid of everything else. Or, if your mind is a room, you don't need to add furniture to get what you want, you need to throw it all out of the room. Or, as Meister Eckhart wrote, "If you empty yourself, God has no choice but to fill you."

And, of course, there is no "God," as such.

Refocus

Trying to get this up everyday has been interesting, but I feel I have gotten a little off track. Writing everyday (or every few days, depending on my work schedule) naturally leads to a less in depth sort of article, and leads to a week of articles whose entries are only vaguely connected, which was not my goal. Originally, I had planned to use this site to write slightly longer passages tying all of these seemingly disparate things together. To do that, I have decided not to bother writing a passage every day, and instead come out with one, moderately long passage every week, tying together certain things out in culture with a new framework to understand them in, which was the goal of this blog anyway, to try out certain thoughts in writing and test them before readers.

So, look for a blog post every Sunday (or early in the week,) giving you a whole week to look it all over at your leisure.

Thank You,

Love ya'll.

Bolt

For those of you that didn't see this live, this is was a truly wonderful moment, one I think actually encapsulates some of the greatness of sport. This one, obviously, is more impressive.
'What?' You say, 'he's celebrating like an idiot, he added time to his total because of this, and his showboating makes his competitors look like chumps. How does this reflect well on sports at all?'

I actually think his reaction came more out of surprise than anything else. I think, like the rest of us watching, when he saw just how far ahead he was (or couldn't see, couldn't see anyone near him when he glanced side to side,) he was in awe, and he just started doing what was natural, and what a lot of the rest of us were doing, which was jumping up and down and saying "holy crap did you just see that!! That was the finals, right? How the hell did that just happen?"

This is different from Leon Lett's showboating that lost the Cowboys a touchdown back when they played the Bills for the first time, because, while that is a rare occurance for Leon Lett to be sure, he didn't have it in the bag, in the first place (the ball was stripped from him and he didn't get to score a touchdown) and in the second place because the whole "game" (race) was over.

It's also really different from what women's (and possibly men's, but I've never seen a men's indoor volleyball game, I'm sure I will soon) volleyball players do after every single freaking point, like that one point is the most important thing in the world. They run around like rabbits, or five year olds, and they hug and slap each other like they've just won, well, something actually significant.

Bolt's (what a great name) run was significant, and he trounced the competition by so much that I don't think any of them could possibly be sore about it. They simply didn't have a chance. It's not like, when one team wins by an inch and then freaks out and rubs it in the loser's nose like they're a thousand times better. This guy actually was a thousand times better, AND THESE ARE THE FASTEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD! That's why I think what he did was incredible, and why the pictures of him floating above the track as he highsteps it at the end are absolutely beautiful, even if he was, just a little bit, saying, "wow, I'm the best thing in the world."

Haha, also, look at the number two guy (the one to Bolt's right.) I don't know if he's so excited because he just won the silver medal behind superman, which basically makes him the fastest human, or because he just saw what Bolt did. Probably the first, but it kind of looks like the second.

Have fun and run relaxed.

Summertime, and the living is, crap.

Interesting assumptions break down here for me all the time. At the beginning of the summer, I had been talking to my students about what summer is like in China. At first, I was really confused, but the more and more I dug into it, the more I understood my students inability to understand what the heck I was talking about.

Summer, I have always felt, is a magical time. Things just feel different. BBQs, the freedom of being off from school, (or taking long weekends at work,) going to the beach, or camping, or a lake, drinking a beer outside with friends, playing frisbee in the park or basketball, the fourth of July, ice cream parlors... this is really just the beginning. In short, summer is really different. I tried to get my students to talk about this earlier in the summer, with mostly black stares coming back.

It turns out, summer is no different in China than the rest of the year, and actually, kind of worse for all concerned. There are few individual vacations, everyone has the same national holidays off, and kids, while they aren't in school, are pressured by parents to take more outside of school classes, (like my English class,) plus, they still have to do a few hours of homework every day for their regular school (this was a real surprise to me) and they don't get to see their friends. Plus, it's too hot. All of this adds up as the answer "nothing" to the question, "what's special about summer in China?"

Kids actually like school, really really like school. They get to play with their friends, and, since there's no alternative, they don't know anything else. You might have liked school too if "not school" actually meant more work and less play with your friends. School, for them, is life, and so, since they like life, they like school.

Keep this in mind as you read about China, about how families aren't grieving after the earthquake (see my last post,) or about the post "A beautiful but disturbing day."

More from the Times Today

Two more quick op-eds from the Times today.

One, from David Brooks, a real strange one about Chinese grief in the aftermath of the Earthquake- I have little to say about it, other than it struck me as just as weird, but that there are perhaps two unfair points: first, directly after the earthquake the drama was huge, and there was a great deal of grief, much of it put down forcibly by the Government, so calling Americans whiners is not entirely fair, though Chinese people don't whine and moan so much at the little things. It gets beaten out of them as kids. (Not necessarily literally.)

And one from Paul Krugman. Krugman's is a post on nationalism and the economic effects of the Russian invasion of Georgia. China is, of course, an overly nationalistic country, but this worries me less than Russia does, for two reasons. Russia has a democracy in name, but has power vested in a very small member of elites, most of whom see the country along the lines of a military power. Also, Russia has not until recently had an overly strong nationalistic sense, or a sense of nationhood, which is one reason why lawlessness and mobsterism prevailed after the USSR broke down. No one in the USSR (or few) actually loved the USSR, and so its breakdown did not lead smoothly into a strong Russian state. That has taken some time to emerge, and emerge it has. But, the problem is the Russians are just starting, as a nation, on this level of development. It takes quite a long time to really go through it to get to the point the west did after the enlightenment. The point is, Russian nationalism is here to stay, and much of the citizenry will be behind it one hundred percent, ignoring rational cooperative concerns for the honor of the Motherland. (Much of this is based on a theory of development I did not myself invent but subscribe to that I will surely be talking about later.)

This contrasts with China, whose leadership, though all agreed on one thing (the continued and unquestioned rule of the CCP) are more cautious, fractured, and numerous than the Russian leadership. China, though strong in her own country (and as Krugman points out, that includes in their minds Taiwan, though recent deals make a military takeover much more unlikely in the short term and hopefully in the long term) and ruthless, are not as likely to go off on somebody else. This is not absolute, of course, and no one knows what will happen as the country matures, but I still feel better about this than about Russia.

The other thing about China is that its genuine and heartfelt nationalism has been rooted and has been expressing itself for some time. Along with that, the western-philes of the country have been undertaking their own Enlightenment, and while this will take a long long time to find a true root and expression in the mainstream culture, it has already started expressing itself in the highest halls of power. (Though is by no means the dominant force in Chinese politics, far from it.)

What may be interesting is a Russia jostling with its neighbor China, both rising world powers and nationalistic neighbors.

But in any case, while nationalism can be healthy, just as self-confidence can be healthy, and is a necessary step for any country or group of people, helping them find an identity, it does not necessarily bode well for world peace, even as interconnected as our economies have become.

So what's the solution? I do not know, but for some time have been thinking of a global organizing body, much more powerful than the U.N. The U.N., of course, has done some good, but its structure is not equipped for the world we live in. Membership, of course, would be voluntary, and governments would only be allowed to participate that exhibited certain features, like direct democracy practices such as having elected officials, and the ability to depose them, a strict rule of law, the ability for direct citizen participation, etc. etc., perhaps on a sliding scale, (the U.S. would not be among the ten highest, if I can remember correctly that would be Denmark) as well as including considerations of population for power-wielding. This could be dangerous, of course (new world order, anyone?) but if a Rule of Law were established, and the countries joining were already culturally proficient in rule of law, there's no reason to believe that this would become an oppressive system. Nor would it exist to threaten other countries national sovereignty. It could merely be a system, a big party, with its doors wide open to anyone who wanted to join, urging countries forward in development. This, of course, is only the slightest sketch.

But perhaps this is just more junk.

Yes. I read the Times compulsively. It is a fault.

And I really know nothing. I am only trying to provoke thought.

A beautiful but disturbing day.

I wrote this in May and sent it to some people, but it seemed pertinent now considering yesterday's post.


This afternoon I had Stone. He is a smart child of eleven and he speaks English very well. Because it was such a beautiful day, and because it is very difficult to get him talking about anything, (we have played monopoly during our two previous classes) and because I was exhausted and didn't want to be boxed up in a room unless I was sleeping in it, I decided we would go for a walk. He strongly resisted this, but as I am his teacher he had little to say. We walked a little way, he complaining all the time. At the underpass of a large road he stopped and refused to continue, so I walked downstairs and waited in the tunnel, figuring he would follow me, and he did, so I led him like this, bit by bit, promising him we could sit as soon as we got to a group of benches in a little corporate park about a five or ten minute walk from the building in which we have class. We sat, and he began to talk, and this was good. We weren't talking about anything in particular, and he, every five minutes or so, brought up the fact that he would much prefer to be inside, but I kept saying wait a little longer, and he did, and we sat, talking and not talking.

He is a boy that loves his freedom, which is rare in China, but freedom to him means the freedom to play games, and little else. We talked about how schools are similar to jails in many respects (an analogy he, not I, made) and about how even inside of a jail one can be entirely free if he is master of himself. I kept poking him with the hints of nature around us, the birds, and the trees, the flowers and the wind, which (in particular) was too pleasant for me to acquiesce to his desire to return to the classroom, a two by two meter room which may or may not have a window on the eighteenth floor of an office building. I stretched out on a bench a few minutes after arriving, my head and arms and legs hanging off of it (it had no back) and he did the same, and I realized something, and asked him, "Stone, you never in your life have a time when you don't have to do anything at all, when you can just sit and enjoy the day, right?" He said "yeah." "Well then," I said, "I am offering you the opportunity to simply sit and feel the breeze and listen to the trees and do nothing, since you already speak English so it's not difficult for you and you want to go back inside? Why?" He said something about having to work during class, about always having to work and study, about not having any time to do anything else, because this was all that was important. I mentioned the irony of his using our class time to play games with me (he didn't bring monopoly this day, I think because his mother brought him, but he did bring a deck of cards, and was, as I said, rather disappointed when I said that we wouldn't be using them) but the conversation died there, more or less.

After he won me over and I'd had my fill of the (relatively) fresh air of spring in Beijing, as we sat in the classroom, I asked an innocuous question about how much he slept every night. Sleep being important to me and apparently impossible for the majority of Chinese students, I was curious. He said he slept usually nine hours, sometimes eight, sometimes ten, and then he said, which made me laugh, "sometimes more than this or less." While laughing I almost missed him say, "sometimes not at all." "Not at all," I said, trying to drag more out of him but not incredulous, as I have more than one student who routinely pulls all-nighters to finish homework and review even though eleven seemed a little young for this and he said "Sometimes my parents don't let me sleep, because I didn't finish my homework." The way he phrased this made me rather aghast, and I asked him how often this happened. In the last year, he said, "only once." I felt a little better. He has mentioned previously and briefly how his mother is always angry at him, and his family life does not seem joyful, to say the very least. I don't remember how this next part came up, it may have been started by some loose questions and comments about his parents, or he may have just started talking, but he then went on to talk about how his parents hit him, about how they beat him in secret, and how they made him not able to scream, and when he said this last part I almost started crying. "Parents don't care about anything," he said a few times, as I told him that western people think that this is wrong, that in America kids would be taken away from parents for this, that in the west we think this is the worst thing that you can possibly do to a child, someone who is entirely defenseless and powerless, the worst thing you can do is hit them. "It's a terrible, terrible thing," I said in the calmest and strongest voice I could, because I couldn't say anything else. "I know," he said, "parents don't care about anything."

There are parents who genuinely love their children, of course, there are a few I can think of in particular whose pure and warm love for their children shines through their every gesture when I see them together, and even these beatings are motivated out of concern for what the parents believe is the welfare of the child, which is what makes them even more twisted. There is a phrase in China that translates roughly into "Use a stick to raise a good son," something akin to our "spare the rod, spoil the child." There's another one that means, "If you don't beat a kid at all for three days, the kids will climb onto the roof of the house and kick the tiles down." Chinese accomplishes this sentiment in only eight syllables, if you can believe this, (it literally says "three days no hit, house on overturn tiles,") but my admiration for this entirely different language is rather besides the point. "Backwards thinking," I said to him in Chinese, so it would have more effect, and so I'd be sure he understood. He nodded and continued looking at the table between us. "Now can we play a game?" he asked me.

I actually might have forgotten about this, busy and tired as I was today, were it not for my last two students of the day, two middle schoolers, Wendy and Joyce, who I teach together. They'd be seventh graders in America. I had only three hours of sleep last night, so I was exhausted, and I had nothing to talk about really. We usually gossip, more or less, and they tell me about their school, and the students (this I could really write a book about, they go to the best middle school in the country, with all that this entails. They are both good students, but there is some serious influence at this school. The President of China gave a speech there this year. That sort of school.)
Today, as I said, I just couldn't keep any line of questioning up, I was way too tired. Eventually for some reason the question popped up in my mind again (again, on topic) "How much do you sleep at night?" Joyce sleeps a healthy amount; Wendy between four and seven hours, a little on the shy side. We then had a long discussion about how lack of sleep hurts students and doesn't allow one's mind to function at one-hundred percent, and then how people need time to themselves during the day or the week or sometime at least when there's nothing that they have to do, which I was comparing to the sleep that the body needs to regenerate, which evolved into a discussion about how people shut parts of themselves off in order to get done what they have to, and how that makes them ultimately weaker and less able to accomplish anything meaningful (my view,) or how this makes one capable for doing what they have to do, to get what they want, and how it is the people who need rest who are actually weak (Wendy's view. Joyce usually disagrees with her when we talk about things like this but I think she feels powerless to do anything about it, she sees the logic and feels what I'm saying but sees no road out.) Without going into the details of the discussion, Wendy, the more talkative but less fluent one said, "we've lost our tomorrows," at one point, which I think is one of the most beautiful English phrases I can remember hearing, and later, when I summed up the conversation by saying, "you're saying to me that in your lives the two of you have no time to just be yourselves," she said, "yes. We have no time in our lives to be ourselves."

This was the connection to my time with Stone. My female student was saying that she can't stop, that she couldn't stop, that she couldn't listen to those parts of herself that she had shut up in order to be able to sleep only four hours a day, in order to be able to study with all of her "free time," in order to go to special classes all weekend etc. etc. I was getting that feeling from Stone as well. Walking outside on a beautiful day, just sitting on a bench in a park watching people walk around made him uncomfortable.

This frightens me deeply, because these are not isolated cases. This is the mindset of the entire society. Every kid is expected, required, and made to do this. One of my older students has a son of five years. He recently went on a trip with his grandparents to Nanjing; she picked them up at the train station the morning of our class. "You let him miss a week of school?" I asked with a teasing disbelief. "How? Why?" "It's Kindergarten," she said. "It's not important." "Would you," I began, knowing the answer, "have let him do that next year, if he were in first grade?" "No!" She said, with a tint of surprise and the same air of obviousness with which I asked the question. "And why not," I asked, "what is the difference between kindergarten and first grade?" "In First Grade," she said, "there have..." she struggled for the word, "kaoshi." She looked at me hopefully. "Tests," I said, "In first grade there are tests." "Yes," she said, "In First Grade have tests."

Little Emperors, Huge Country

A very good essay in Psychology Today about only children in China, and one that covers all of its bases, good and bad.

Just a few highlights:

"You must do this to live:" keeping up with the Joneses x 5. Though China seems more and more like a land of plenty, with 1.3 billion people, there's nowhere near enough to go around. Kids, from first grade, study every single day for hours. This is no exaggeration. Of course, what the article doesn't mention is that, out of the 1.6 million college level jobs for 4 million graduates, the majority go to someone not because of credentials, but because of connections. After all, with such limited space, it's natural that that would provide the crucial push.

Also note that one of the reasons parents push their kids so much is selfish: kids are expected to take care of their parents after they retire (55 for women, 60 for men, though the numbers are growing) and there's no other system in place to do so, nor is it customary for an individual to plan for his or her retirement. It's all on the kids' shoulders. "risky family," indeed.

This I particularly like:
"Back then, every mental problem was seen as anti-socialist," says Kaiping Peng, a University of California Berkeley professor who was among the first generation of Chinese psychologists to receive formal clinical training, in the late 1970s. "If you were depressed, they thought you were politically impure and sent you to a labor camp."

I think even the west is just now starting to understand in a mass way that mental problems don't mean there's something wrong with you as a person.

Also, the point I make to many of my students:
"On your resumé, you can't put, '1988 to 2001: studied 10 hours every day,' " laughs Howe, the Chengdu student. "You have to actually do stuff," though the way I say it is, "you need to have a life, too."

As a freedom lover myself, I find this truly pitiable, and believe it probably makes for a less healthy individual and society.

Anyway, see my post later this week called "Whose Century," for some more.

have fun today.

Taking it personally

Righteousness does not mean self-righteousness. A blog from the New York Times.

The article doesn't really concern me, it's the comments underneath. The vituperative nature of nearly every blog is troublesome. It's not just that people have the ability to carelessly insult others on the internet, it's that people reading these comments take them personally. A dialog is basically impossible on this "democratic" forum, because everyone just trenches in to their position, baffled and infuriated by how wrong every one else's view (but their own) is. They are all, more or less, saying the same things, over and over again, just directed at the opposite side.

Now, don't get me wrong, dialog is not always the most effective solution to a problem (like, for instance, the failure of dialog) nor is it always necessary, but arenas as this, where the worst of each country is displayed, just pushes us all further and further into nationalism, the type that could easily destroy the progress the world community has made as community since the end of World War II.

The most ridiculous thing is that basically everybody's point is stupid. I don't have the time or space (I guess I do have the space) to refute all of this, but basically, the Americans are all openly harping a country they still think of as being the U.S.S.R., and the Chinese people are all defending their country and pretending like nothing's wrong with it. Some Americans take the reverse position, of course, and are even more cynical than the Chinese, but this is even worse. There are points to be made on both sides, and nobody makes them at all, and when they're (rarely) made, people respond to other mistaken posts in a way that shows they often didn't understand the post in the first place!

The other thing that frustrates me is that everyone acts like blog comments are representative of the general population, and that each post were being written by the collected will of the american/chinese people.

Ha. I guess I'm guilty of that too.

Well, for those of us who are willing to listen and dialog but still rebuke, China has an authoritarian government. The United States has a lot of idiots.

China, and Sloppy Thinking (v. David Brooks)

An Op-Ed in the Times by David Brooks, where he summarizes an extremely important cultural difference between the West and China, and talks about several theories on why it may be, though, obviously, who knows?

But there are great problems in thinking this way. I don't have the answers, of course, but I would at least like to add something to the conversation.

"When the psychologist Richard Nisbett showed Americans individual pictures of a chicken, a cow and hay and asked the subjects to pick out the two that go together, the Americans would usually pick out the chicken and the cow. They’re both animals. Most Asian people, on the other hand, would pick out the cow and the hay, since cows depend on hay. Americans are more likely to see categories. Asians are more likely to see relationships."

There are other famous studies exploring the difference in the way citizens of developed nations organize information from rural people in developing nations. What they found was similar to the above: Asked to pick out which object didn't fit in a group, the developed nation's citizens picked "wood," from a group that included "wood, saw, hammer, and ax," noting the relationship between tools, but the rural people were confused, seeing basically no connection, and most often picked "hammer," since both a "saw" and an "ax" can be used to cut "wood."

The point, though, is that there is a relationship between "cow," and "chicken," but it's not a practical one, it's an abstract one. The study, if I remember correctly, was about the effect of education and reading on the way the brain organizes information, and it also showed that adults who learned recently to read also began to make abstract rather than practical connections, that it was not simply children who had been well educated that made this connection.

So, is this an East-West difference, or a difference in educational methods? The East is famous for rote learning, while the West values (ideally) the fostering of thinking itself, as a way to make previously unnoticed connections and to problem-solve. Ask any High school student in China what date an historical event happened, and they'll likely be able to, especially if they're preparing for the Gao Kao, a test that compares to our SATs as The Joker compares to your average bank robber. Ask them why that date is important, and they may be strapped to think of anything. A western student may just be b.-s.ing, but they'll be able to construct some sort of argument, which is ironic due to Brooks' statement that the context is so important to the Chinese. (Obviously, both what and how are important in learning.)

I do not know what the difference is due to, but I would be wary of making claims one way or the other.

He continues:

"But what happens if collectivist societies snap out of their economic stagnation? What happens if collectivist societies, especially those in Asia, rise economically and come to rival the West? A new sort of global conversation develops."

Really? What about Japan? Famously, Japanese companies are run like feudal empires, and are loathe to change (not change of, say, methods or reacting to markets, with this they do very well (look up Kaizen) but structurally, and yes, culturally. But even this is changing. Articles in the Times a few months ago chronicled the rise of employees suing their companies for various damages. Japanese mainstream society has only existed outside of strict feudalism for seventy years, and China, it could be argued, is still mostly a peasant, folk culture, growing towards modernity and away from traditional roots, and it has only been doing this for thirty years. Change appears to happen quickly, if not all-at-once, but, in reality, it is often a painstakingly slow process, especially in the earliest stages. It takes generations, plural, not twenty years. I cannot say that China will become more liberal and Western internally (though externally they have co-opted quite a bit) but I would certainly be sensible enough to be more patient about it. After all, the Enlightenment started hundreds of years ago, and people still aren't all that enlightened, even though they may personally think they're great.

And then:
"For one thing, there are relatively few individualistic societies on earth. For another, the essence of a lot of the latest scientific research is that the Western idea of individual choice is an illusion and the Chinese are right to put first emphasis on social contexts."

This is certainly true, which is (conversely) why I think it is so important to emphasize every individual's development along the lines they wish to pursue. Like economics, where local conditions reflected in prices contain far more "knowledge" overall than central planners can ever have, the individual knows what is best for him/her, and can make choices accordingly, whether those choices are driven by "free-will" or by the context the choices are made in (obviously, this is far too complex a subject to tackle here.) Ultimately, I think the distinction is irrelevant. No matter how the choices are being made, the individual and the society are better off if someone can make a personal "choice." The problem with putting the emphasis on social contexts is that, as in China, where this is overtly so, it leads to a very rigid social structure where one is expected to do one and only one correct thing according to the circumstances, entirely denying that individual difference exists (I have come up against this again and again here. Fortunately, since I am not Chinese, my choices and conduct are taken with a grain of salt, and quite often admired, in the "Oh I wish I could do that" sort of way.) Again, wherever the "choices" are coming from, it is clear that offered different options, different people will do different things.

In any case, the West is not done developing either. Yes, we're depressed, yes, we need healthier communities, yes, we need more social ties etc. etc., but we're coming to see that, and, as individuals, choosing to deal with it. Isn't that preferable to somebody sitting in an office looking at statistics and saying, "hmmm, we should somehow coerce older people into more exercise." Perhaps the example goes to far, but I'm sure you get the point.

This is why I think this article is dangerous, almost.

"The rise of China isn’t only an economic event. It’s a cultural one. The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream."

This dream, as we have seen throughout history, and this way of thinking about humans and the rights of individuals, has led to the worst tragedies of human history, not the least of them in China itself, during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Importantly, free societies never do this, and Authoritarian societies really like to.

And, as hinted at above, the American Dream has always included a social dream. Making it to the top certainly does not preclude community, and often those who have won their American Dream are the most prominent of social benefactors.

"It’s certainly a useful ideology for aspiring autocrats."

Exactly.

I will be writing later on the rise of China economically and politically, hopefully before the Olympics are done.

Keep Thinking.

Root, root root for the home team

I'm watching the U.S.A basketball team embarrass the Chinese. The Chinese have been competitive, especially in the first half, but it was mostly due to a string of three-pointers, a hot streak that didn't hold. The U.S. team has owned the area around the basket, I'd be surprised if more than half of their points haven't come of of dunks and lay-ups.

It's 87-52, this is getting ugly.

Chinese broadcasters seem much less reserved than Americans, and are obviously openly rooting for the Chinese team (which doesn't bother me a bit, I just find it funny) though they are not above complementing the U.S. on having good balls. (An amusing direct translation.)

All in all, looks good for the U.S., crisp and team-oriented play, which seems to be what they were missing four years ago according to everybody on the planet. There have also been some real pretty plays.

The medal count here is gold-focused, listing those teams first which have the most gold medals, not that have the most medals, period, which, of course, is not how we do it in the U.S., though I have no idea how they do it anywhere else. Obviously, this is to serve the interests of having "China" on the top of the board, since are likely to win the most gold medals this olympics, though they may still lose the overall count to the U.S. I wonder if this is the way they counted four years ago. Perhaps I'm just overly cynical.

Also, in the vein of yesterday's "ridiculously sentimental" part of the post, there was a montage of the Chinese men's soccer game, which they lost to Brussels, with a sappy song playing over it that started, "Don't cry, the one I love most." It really is like living in a soap opera here sometimes. Also, the Olympics graphic in the bottom corner of the screen reads, "Watching the Olympics Together."

One big happy family, this place.

Olympics Update 08/09- Olympics Reservations

There have been comparisons between this Olympics and the Munich Olympics of '36, centered on the idea that an oppressive and illegitimate government, the Chinese in this case, will be given the ignorant approval of the world's mood-setting class, much as Hitler's regime was legitimized by Munich, much of the world approving of the Nazi government.

There are similarities with this, but a few important differences as well. Primarily, the international media is much more unified than it was in the nineteen thirties, and so, though the split between the Chinese propaganda (media?) and the western media is great, there is still western media operating in, and reporting on, China, in an investigative capacity that was not the hallmark of 1930's journalism. In short, I do not think the Olympics will make the stories of Sudan or Tibet go away, though they may suffer a lack of attention afterwards. But that's a main and important difference. It is only an analogy, and the insinuated aftermath of the analogy, that there is going to be a major world conflict in the next three years, is hopefully not likely.

As for the similarities: it was an odd experience watching the opening ceremonies, and I actually would not have written this unless I had the experience I did, watching it alone at home, but then in a large, hip crowd at a club's party. The (mostly westerners) cheered for the western countries, boozily and obnoxiously (I was in something of a bad mood because sick) but for no team as much as America, and China, screaming (while the chinese servers looked on) Go China, Go China, in Chinese they had learned in the last week (中国加油，中国加油，for those of you keeping score.)

With the general western business enthusiasm for China (something I will write about later for sure,) and the sort of "wow, look how elegant everything is," middle-classed China tour, the west perhaps is already disposed to think of China's rise as perfectly benign. True to its entreaties for peace and harmony, the theme of the (rather fantastic if also characteristically totally overblown) opening ceremonies, China, I think, will not have the militaristic forays typical of a rising world-power (whether or not China is actually on its way to being a world power I will be discussing as well later in the week.)

But, watching the ceremony (If anyone caught the way the Chinese flag is unfurled as it is raised, that is basically emblematic of the whole tone of official China (official being much broader, of course, in an authoritarian government, than in the west): ridiculous dramatized sentimentality and self-importance again, this is a description of formality, not of the people or the culture at large) I couldn't help but feel terribly conflicted. This has become the realization of the dreams of a billion freaking people, and watching some of the Chinese women around when the torch was (finally) lit, it was clear that they were moved, some nearly to tears, while the general mood itself was one of surreality, an odd dream. Chinese people are people, and I am happy for them, and happy for them to see some respect accorded their country, but it kills me to see it placed wrong, both from the outside and within. I could not help, while watching the ceremony, but feel that a giant mistake was made placing the games here. This peace, and the harmony of the Chinese society, comes at the cost of terrible repression, though officially, of course you would never hear this acknowledged, and it's difficult to get an admission, as a foreigner, that this is the case, though, as you get to know somebody, they are less reluctant to speak their minds and defend their country, which they always feel is under assault from us westerners. As my Chinese is getting more and more fluent, I am hoping to engage some Chinese people (already friends) in a discussion about what the word "peace" could possibly mean if it covers the beating and repression of anybody willing to point out that things aren't exactly fair.

China is a wonderful country with interesting people that has a lot to share with the world, but what is currently being offered is a fantasy, one that westerners are all too likely to accept for one reason or another. It is wonderful, after all, to be a foreigner in China, but I am glad my home is somewhere else, because what is happening now in this country is not sustainable (I mean in the sense that running through central park every night in the mid-80's was unsustainable,) and the dream of this country, and the dreams of its people, may well turn nightmares, all the more likely because stoked by the paternalistic government, at the end of which, hopefully, they will wake up, but don't count on it, it hasn't happened before. Again, I will probably write more about this later. I don't mean to be too pessimistic. What virtually every westerner assumes is going to happen, that the country will slowly become more and more liberalized, is possible. Anything, after all, is possible.

But even this dream is still a cruel and unending joke for the one billion people that live here in abject poverty, and if it becomes a nightmare for the rest of the 300 or so million, it will make all of our sleep a little more restless, and this is what bothers me about westerners glibly assuming the ascension of Chinese liberalism. The Chinese can make whatever arguments they like about sovereignty (this whole peace and harmony thing is in a way a great big deal: we, the chinese say, will not attack anyone else, as long as we're free to use our army as we please inside our own borders) but if the country hits a rough patch, it could well either implode, or explode, and neither of those are going to be good for the rest of the world, interconnected as we are all becoming. Even if it doesn't, the fact that national actions (pollution, for instance) are no longer restricted to national borders means what happens in China, doesn't necessarily stay there.

Also, a side-note, the odd sentimentality that surrounds children in this country was alive and well during the ceremony, if you watched, something else that makes me sick, not just because it's so corny, but because these kids, for whom everything is done, will be forced into a mind-numbing system for the next twenty years of their lives (if they're lucky) and will never have the chance to express themselves as free human beings, the most of them, at the least.

All in all, though, I had a good night.

Keep your eyes skeptical.

UPDATE: a good little essay about this from an actual Chinese-American.

Erk. (Updated)

Well, this was unexpected.

Apparently a knife-wielding Chinese person killed an American at the Drum Tower (a tourist landmark near very touristy areas) and wounded one other, also wounding their Chinese tour guide. They were relatives of a U.S. Men's Volleyball coach, but had nothing identifying them as either Olympics visitors or Americans. This is rare in China, as the article points out, but I'm wondering if we won't see some more attacks like this as a sort of subconscious rage in the Chinese people finds an outlet. Still, I doubt it, but I'll certainly be cautious.

I hope we'll find out more about this, but, since it is China, I wouldn't be expecting anything.

What the World Eats

An interesting photo essay at Time Magazine, chronicling what families around the world eat in one week, and how much it costs them.

I think it's interesting how little fresh fruit and vegetables are in the American's diets, even compared to other first-world families, like the German family. The Mongolians even appear to have more, which is something if you've ever been to Mongolia, I hear. Notice that the Mexicans are the heaviest, and also have the most coca-cola lined up in the background. (In a tangential note, because I think Mexican Coke has sugar and not high-fructose corn syrup, a study recently found that fructose causes your body to store more calories as fat, and that, compared with somebody who drank no fructose, drinking fructose as much as four hours before a meal causes the body to store the meal as fat. One more reason to stay away from processed food, especially in America.)

The Egyptian family is astounding as well, in that they feed all of those people for only sixty-something dollars a week. The Tibetan family feeds a lot as well for only five dollars, but Tibet is a pretty poor area. (They actually may not be Tibetan, I have no idea where that city is, but wherever they're from, it's clear they're fairly poor.)

I was also fascinated by what the people had in their house, what room was chosen as being the best to display things in, what furniture was there, and the level of accumulation of other stuff. Big ups on the Germans for their library.

Chinese Photo Essay

Good photo essay in Mother Jones on China.

My favorites are probably the workers at lunch, the sand crawling up on the door, and the man jumping with joy and a briefcase in an advertisement behind a pedestrian.

There's also an interesting article there, more on this perhaps tomorrow.

Notes on comments from "Eatin' Meat" and Tantra.

Two good comments, much more thoughtful than I was expecting. If you have not read them you can read them under the post "Eatin' Meat."

From nlv, the main thing that I was hearing was the "why is this so repugnant to people?" problem. Why does it bother people so much that others choose to be vegetarians? As nlv said, "Why on earth do people feel so threatened by someone cutting meat out of their diet? Who can i possibly be hurting by this decision?"

I think there are many reasons why people feel so threatened by others' choosing to become vegetarians, but they all revolve around identification. People are creatures of habit, and their habits, and activities, become mistaken for who they are. For just a gross simplification, think of somebody who always goes out with his friends for beers after work. If he stops drinking, or even if he finds a new activity, or a girlfriend, say, his relationship with those people can change drastically. He may find that he was friends with them more out of circumstance than anything else, and they may resent him for this. Again, this is a drastic simplification, but think about how people answer the question, "who are you?" Beyond age, sex, and nationality (still not a real determiner of who a person is,) isn't it most often with a list of activities? I am a mother, I am a soccer player, I am a restaurateur. The work one is probably the answer given most. Who are you? I am a television ad-man, I am a teacher, I am a window-washer. Now, most people won't answer "I am a meat-eater," but they don't have to (see below,) and the point is just that people often mistake what they do for what they are, so when somebody else chooses to do something that seems opposed to one of their activities, they feel like they are being attacked, because, on some level, they're taking it personally.

But with meat-eating especially, because this isn't even a conscious choice. It's so embedded in people's activities, and in the culture, that it seems one-hundred percent natural. That someone would choose to go against this is an affront. (What could be more American than a hamburger with cheese?) And so that somebody else has gone through the conscious process of rejecting this makes it feel (feel being very important, it is an emotional reaction, not a rational one) as if someone has consciously deliberated and debated and come to the decision that yes, you, meat eater you, are wrong as a person. Especially if somebody is close to you, or if you are part of a group with a set of associated characteristics, meat-eating being one of them (I'm thinking, like, a sports-team of manly men big boys beer drinking meat eaters, perhaps, or a frat house...or pig farmers,) your decision to forgo meat could make them feel uncomfortable. You were on their side, they trusted you, and now suddenly, "I don't even know you anymore, man."

There's often a defensiveness in this as well. Your conscious decision, even if it's not paraded in someone's face, can make others guilty, especially if they haven't themselves done the thinking necessary to justify their choices to themselves. You're making them look a little like a slob. I'm not suggesting that most people have thought out their meat-eating, quite the contrary, they haven't, and this might also make them uneasy.

As nlv says, "But what really bothers me about everything is not that i get embarrassed or even harassed for my choices, i can deal with that no problem, it's that i see a cruelty expressed by people when something appears against their own traditions. It has been made so clear and tangible because they are allowed to make fun of me, and their initial reactions aren't suppressed because it's not a big deal to make fun of a vegetarian." This sums up what I've been saying nicely, I think. Why is there a word "vegetarian" but there's no word "omnivoritarian?" Or "carnivorarian?" (Despite the fact that a diet of eating only meat would be ridiculously damaging to one's health I think most omnivores in america would contend in vain against a vegetarian that they were carnivores until the mistake was pointed out to them.) It's groupthink, the tendency to just go with what seems normal, without ever trying to figure out where or why something is normal. What's normal never needs to be defended, it's assumed, which is why there's no word for the "ideology" of one who decides to eat meat, though there is vegetarian "-ism."

I think the feeling of loathing one feels as a meat-eater for vegetarians that I noted in the post comes from this, and is a projection. You feel, as a meat-eater, that vegetarians are attacking you irrationally, because, of course, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing. They're attacking not only one thing, but all the things that you stand for in your life (again, what could be more American than eating a cheeseburger, so someone who loves america and associates america with cheeseburgers is going to feel as if you're trying to change what america is with your transgression of ridiculously "not-eating-cheeseburgers-as-an-american.")

Obviously, I'm not saying that any vegetarians are actually attacking meat-eaters when they become vegetarians, quite the contrary, but that's the point: the identification is a mistake. You can eat meat, but that is not who you are. The more emotionally mature and stable somebody is the less likely they are to be offended what you decide, but, then, perhaps most of the population is not extremely emotionally mature. Fortunately our society is less coercive than most of the societies in history, even if it can still be difficult to make the choices, or, as nlv says later, be the type of person that lives necessarily on the outskirts of mainstream society.

And the other thing is that most people, excepting those close to you, and those who are truly idiots, and those who are partisan for one reason or another, probably don't care that much if you're a vegetarian, even if they might make fun of vegetarians behind their backs, or feel vaguely threatened by it. But, of course, the people who are loud get all the attention. Few vegetarians are militantly so, but those are the ones you remember. Something like being Christian and being constantly identified with Jerry Falwell.


As for Cary's comments:

One word she mentions is "sacrifices," and actually, though I understand what she's saying, I would have to disagree with the word. I think when people make "sacrifices," they're usually making a mistake, or trying to jump into a decision before they're ready for it, or they are simply blaming something else for making them miserable.

An example would be if somebody had a child early, and they feel as if they are sacrificing their youth and fun to take care of the kid. They are always working, and they dislike this, they bitch about it, etc. etc. They feel as if they are forced into it by something, or by themselves, and they end up seriously resenting the kid. But, they are not being honest with themselves, or at least not open with themselves. They are making a choice, and though the circumstances may have forced them to make a choice they wouldn't have wanted to deal with originally, they do have a choice. They are working for their baby. They are not forced to do this. They could desert the child, or give it up for adoption, but they have chosen not to do this. I am not suggesting that they are all good choices, merely pointing out that when you feel forced to do something, you are usually just leaving some possible choices out of the framework. But, by doing this, you are denying the part you play in making the choice. It doesn't make work any better, perhaps, but at least there's the recognition that you have chosen to do this, that, given the circumstances, which you cannot change, it is what you want to do. (yes I am aware of the grammatical problems with the subjects in this paragraph and I don't care.)

Fortunately, no one is going to force you to be a vegetarian, and you shouldn't force yourself to do it either. "I think the biggest issue for me, and I think for others in my boat, is how daunting it seems to take this whole thing on fully." There's a Japanese concept from a mashing of two words that mean "good," and "change," and it's Kaizen, which means, basically, small, constant, incremental change, which takes active engagement with your life. As Cary says, conscious consumerism, or let's say, for here, living a conscious life, demands your attention, but there's no reason you should force yourself to sacrifice anything you don't want to, and that's the point.

Tantra, which in the west is usually associated most with freaky sex, unfortunately, is this kind of active conscious lifestyle. All it asks is attention, and everything else is permissible. So, instead of forcing yourself not to eat that piece of steak, etc. etc., you say, okay, I want to eat this piece of steak, though I feel a conflict as well, I will pay attention to what I'm doing, I will use this steak as a vehicle for awareness. Two things happen. One, you find that your conflicts become less and less, internally, that you stop being so hard on yourself, and Two, that the changes you want to make come anyway, naturally. Let's say you're really paying attention while you're eating this steak. You may come to notice externally (and there's nothing wrong if you don't) that, actually, it's kind of gross, maybe you can see a vein or maybe paying attention to it brings associations (like the bones of the steak with the bones of a living animal or roadkill you just saw) you don't want to make when you're eating, or internally, that actually your desire to eat the steak was coming more from outside expectations or environments than it was coming from the steak itself. These are hasty examples, but the basic idea is that with attention, internal and external, you will less and less desire those things you had before. This is in contrast to the Yogic mindset, which says "This is WRONG, I WILL not do it," detrimental for two reasons. One, how do you know it's wrong if you've never really investigated it yourself, might these ideas of wrongness be received as well, just from another side of the debate? And Two, you're strengthening your ego in this process, in the long run aiding its games and your own helplessness to its whims.

So actually, what you call half-assed vegetarianism, is actually not such a bad thing, provided that you are active in your investigation, and constantly thinking and watching, even if you still want to or occasionally eat meat. Half-assed vegetarianism is terrible, of course, if that means you never think about it and just use it as a way to feel better about yourself relative to other people.

Any ideology is mistaken, the only best thing to do is to think and investigate for yourself. Get to the bottom of it, and when you do, dig deeper. So, do what you can now, and it will seem less daunting to you, but do it with one-hundred percent of your heart and attention. You will find, I think, that if you do this, and continue to do this, and continue to do this, you will get far much more accomplished than you ever felt possible.

By the way, the "conscious," part of "conscious consumerism/ capitalism" is a word that rankles me as much as "vegetarian" used to when I was a teenager, because I think it makes a lot of people feel better than those around them. I am conscious, I am awake, I know, I am right, and everyone else is a jackass. In a way, part of this is correct, someone actively engaged with their life and not just drifting is, in a sense, more alive, and yet this is no license for superiority, because there is none. So I prefer the word "tantra," though I am looking for a better one, if anyone has any suggestions, wrapped up as tantra is with hairy-people sex.

And, of course, this doesn't mean that you don't try, it means that you try as hard as you can to pay attention to everything going on in and outside of you, which, if you do, you will find making everything else around you falling into place naturally, and it will seem as if it all just happened. Do what you can. Those who try and do too much at one time almost always end up making things worse. Either they ruin their cause, or they turn others against it. The Soviet Union tried to force a feudalist society towards communism in strokes of the clock, which was totally missing the historical argument of communism. They were trying to make an infant graduate from college, and those that try and make huge life changes instantly usually relapse in a week, stealing from themselves the motivation and confidence to make further improvements.

Further:

"We don't realize the costs that this mentality and these expectations have on everything". Nope. We don't. But we will. There is no free lunch.

"And until it's easy for people to do the right thing, they probably won't."

That's basically the whole idea of conscious capitalism, and, actually, capitalism isn't that far away from this at its heart, though it gets crapped on by people who don't understand it. (And I wouldn't say the U.S. is a pure capitalist country, just as it isn't an actual democracy.) It's the most efficient way to allocate resources, and I think that we'll find, as this goes on, should it start to succeed, is that we'll see that the fair way of doing things for everyone is also, actually, the most efficient way, like how automakers, who all complained they wouldn't be able to make money if mpg standards were raised in the seventies, all saw their profits increase when they were implemented.

But any way, the moral of the story is pay attention to what you're doing, and don't be willfully blind, because, at the end of the day, there is no universally right thing to do. Just keep plugging.

You are unlikely to change a lot of people's minds, especially in your generation or of those older than you. Those that agree with you were likely predisposed towards your viewpoint anyway, but push on. The differences you make may seem small, but they add up.

nlv- "You can eat all the meat you want or not, i don't think you are a worse person for it. For some reason, i don't think the majority of people can say the same thing." Hopefully one day they will, and people won't find themselves the focal point of the hatred of others for their conscious choices, or, nlv says, simply "because they are different."

Make Connections.

Twelve

"12," is the element that ties this picture together and makes it truly frightening. The picture is from an interesting Times article on the Serbian Genocide.


So, to balance that off...

Have a wonderful day!

The first picture was taken by Staton R. Winter for the Associated Press,
The second picture was taken by Shaun Curry, for the Agence-France Press.


Comment and Connect.

Eatin' Meat

I am not a vegetarian, though I have recently sworn meat off again excepting dinners with friends (excluding my girlfriend,) because I am in China, after all (no more than a rationalization) but a recent article in the NYTimes makes the plain case that our meat habits (both growing and eating, which are, of course, connected) are wreaking havoc on just about everything indiscriminately.

To wit:
-"...assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains," leading to "the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests."

-"...an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production," which also "generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation." (Fortunately, with all those gases in the atmosphere, the percentage of land that's ice-free should be growing rather conveniently.)

-"...2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days."

-"More meat means a corresponding increase in demand for feed, especially corn and soy, which some experts say will contribute to higher prices." As mentioned later, while this is inconvenient for wealthier countries and people, for the not-so-fortunate this can spell famine.

-"Agriculture in the United States — much of which now serves the demand for meat — contributes to nearly three-quarters of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams..."

- The "administration of antibiotics is routine, so much so that it can result in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the usefulness of medicines that treat people."

-"...grain-fed animals, in turn, are contributing to health problems among the world’s wealthier citizens — heart disease, some types of cancer, diabetes."

-"...hog production [yes, 'production'] facilities that resemble prisons more than farms ... pollute streams and groundwater. (In Iowa alone, hog factories and farms produce more than 50 million tons of excrement annually.)" An excised passage provides the technical term for the "manure lagoons."

And this is not even comprehensive, as most of this has nothing to do with how animals are treated in such facilities, or the squeeze rising food prices puts on starving people. (both of which the article and this blog, below, cover.)

Interestingly, the article goes on to say that "[p]erhaps the best hope for change lies in consumers’ becoming aware of the true costs of industrial meat production."

I have not seen much of a better explanation of the emerging ethos that is called "conscious capitalism." (Be wary of that label, though; I feel many people who use it may not be particularly "conscious," or "capitalist.") The basic idea is that with an increasingly open information economy, people can choose to support companies whose values they share, even if it means the product is slightly more expensive, basically underwriting one's values. (Buying organic steak is a simple example of this.) In a way, of course, this is a natural extension of capitalism (buy the things you like that you can afford,) adding only a sort of moral sense or duty, and it is already what has been emerging in the last ten to fifteen years, though it is not exactly main-stream. It is still to be seen whether this ethos will have any sort of effect, whether it's a trend of the baby-boomer and post-boomer middle-class generations, or whether the general apathy of people will vote these businesses into bankruptcy with their dollars.

But it shouldn't be surprising that what works extremely poorly for one reason would also be a disaster in every other arena, which is basically what I take from all of this. As I've said, this blog is a way for me to start testing out ideas and to get some feedback on them, to say a few things and ask a number of questions. A friend asked me recently what I believed in, and I replied that it was hard to pin down, but that basically I believed that things are, and that works. There is a basic underlying reality in everything, and everything is an expression of this, and so, as is relevant here, if anything is wrong, it is never wrong for any one reason, but for an infinite amount of reasons, all of which are really only reflections of that thing's "wrongness." This is far from being comprehensive, and I do also believe that ultimately terms like "wrong" are meaningless, but at this level of discussion, on our subjective planet, basically, something that is bad for humans is likely bad for the planet, something bad for the planet is likely bad for humans, something bad for pigs is probably bad for humans, something bad for pigs is probably bad for the economy, (this may need an entire different post to defend if anybody wants to take an easy objection to this) etc, etc. Everyone wins, or everyone loses. With our factory farming, it is clear that everyone is losing.

But there's got to be a reason for factory farming, right? It's economical, and so how would it have become the dominant model unless a) capitalism is terrible, or b) it's just the best way? Somebody's making big.

From the Times article: "factory farming is ‘optimal’ only as long as degrading waterways is free. If dumping this stuff [that is, billions of pounds of manure] becomes costly — even if it simply carries a non-zero price tag — the entire structure of food production will change dramatically."

Basically, free pollution, not having to concern oneself with the by-products of one's production, is a sort of subsidy for this whole process. On an old farm, or, as the article notes, even 50 years ago in Seacaucus NJ, manure was used as fertilizer for local farms. Here's another chain of problems caused by one broken link: well, if pig farms are centralized and removed from vegetable farms, how will we fertilize vegetable farms? Aha! Dangerous chemicals. And what to do with the manure? Ummm, let it sit! (Not the only broken link, of course, as is well known, antibiotics must be used extensively on pigs b/c the manner in which they are crammed together makes them crazily bite each other's rumps raw, and makes chickens peck each other silly, though the consequences of these reactions are preempted by antibiotics and the removal of the pigs' tails/ soldering of the chickens' beaks, and if you think this is evidence of less intelligence on the animals' parts, imagine what you would do if your whole life you were on an elevator with twenty people. Yeah, it's where you go to the bathroom too. And eat.) Part of the idea above, that everything done wrong (or right) is not simply wrong/right for one reason, but for an infinite number of them, is that, since everything is in this elaborate conjoined dance, anything that disrupts the natural flow of this dance is detrimental. Solve one "problem," cause a thousand far-reaching ones. I do not have the space to write more about this, so let it suffice to say that I am not, however, a back-to naturist (not permanently at least, though someone who doesn't spend some time in forests might not be human,) far from it. Man is not unnatural, though we do some odd things.

Anyway,

There's another and possibly more important reason factory farming is economical, if you don't buy the pollution argument (after all, 50 million tons isn't that much, right? and Iowa's a big state, with lots of farms!) and that's subsidies. Meat is heavily subsidized, as is all agricultural product in possibly every country in the world (I cannot authoritatively say that it is every country) and accounts for 31% of farmers' incomes. Removing subsidies on meat makes all of the extra expenses required for factory farming much less attractive, not to mention that grain subsidies make feed (unnatural food for these animals) more expensive. But if the cows, for example, produced more than just T-bones, it would still make sense (as it always has) to raise them in pastures.

And, in any case, why the hell, if I find the idea of eating a steak morally repugnant, am I paying for a part of yours anyway? Why is that coming out of my (let's assume pleather) wallet? This is a historical relic.

Of course, politically, the odds of removing subsidies are running about even with the odds of having our first atheist anarchist trans-gendered president.

But, as mentioned above, consciousness on these issues may just pull off the end of factory farming anyway (growth from below) along with some other changing circumstances challenging the model.

"'If price spikes don’t change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals.'" An expert is quoted in the article as saying.

Animal cruelty? Well, yes, though only mentioned briefly before, these factory farms are hard on a lot of things, the workers, the environment, our hearts (corn leads to more damaging heart marbled fatty meat than grass, which tastes better anyway,) but probably most of all the animals.

Who cares?

Something of a lucky coincidence that this article appears online at the same time in the Times, an article about eating dog-meat in China. (For my cellphone text messaging the number one collocation for the character 狗，or "dog," is 肉，or, meat. 狗肉。Dogmeat.) If you don't read the article, the point here is, what makes it so cruel to torture a cat or a dog if you can do the same to any number of other animals?

Now, as an ex-avid meat-eater myself (still an occasional meat-eater, just without any of the militarism) who is to say that you shouldn't eat meat? Nobody, and that is another rather important point. Conscious capitalism is the economic equivalent of soft power. As a teenaged meat-eater, I always found vegetarians noxious, a cult of self-satisfied whiners and values snobs. Since I've grown up a bit, I realized that this is only the most militant brand of vegetarianism (emphasis on the -ism) but still, it makes it difficult for vegetarians to have a serious conversation without being branded as these people, like I'd imagine it makes it difficult to identify yourself as "Christian," without being lumped in with Jerry Falwell. But, crusade you must, the manner in which you do it can be much more effective, though. Patience backed by fact is perhaps the strongest tool in the teacher's shed. It may not be as sharp as the hedge pruners, but it's as heavy and inexorable as a sledgehammer, when wielded on the side of what is true and obvious. It takes time for people to accept rational arguments in the face of their emotions, but in time, without shouting, or belittling people (this is an especially strong turn-off) it works.

Of course, it wouldn't work in Soviet Russia, but we don't live there, and this displays a requirement of conscious capitalism: the open and unrestricted flow of information without edit or censorship. Given the facts, people will make the right decisions. This has always terrified governments. We're perhaps not quite there now, though that's a whole other topic, the point is, we're certainly close enough to start moving.

In any case, it's perfectly imaginable that eating meat will be around for as long as there are humans, and no matter how much you hate it, it's not within the scope of your power to change any one else's mind about this without their permission, but with an ideally open society, the concept is that what will naturally happen will be the best for everybody, just as in evolution, what does not work, does not pass, as in economics, if you can do an equivalent service cheaper, your competitor will go out of business, as in everything, what is, is, and that always works. (Maybe not for your perceived benefit, but that's another conversation.)

And finally, for those die-hard meat eaters out there, (you ought to understand that I've got nothing against you as people,) the counter to the age-old protein argument.

"The argument that meat provides useful protein makes sense, if the quantities are small. But the “you gotta eat meat” claim collapses at American levels. Even if the amount of meat we eat weren’t harmful, it’s way more than enough. We each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein. (The recommended level is itself considered by many dietary experts to be higher than it needs to be.) It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources." 'Likely' is almost propaganda here, there are vegan triathletes, for god's sake.

Not to mention that an overload of protein has been linked to higher-rates of cancer. (sorry, but you'll have to search on that page, I'm not so tech-savvy yet.)

So, what's beneficial for you is probably beneficial for everyone else, not in the sense that if a bath is good for Reggie, you need one, but in the sense that if Reggie bathes, you don't have to smell him.

Pay attention.

ALV


P.S. I am planning on writing a number of "Google Knols," since so much of what I think on the small things is wrapped up by what I think on the big issues, so I'd like to get those big issues down as reference, so that I can simply offhandedly refer to one of these upcoming links if somebody would like the reasoning behind the reasoning behind something, and I can just write straightforwardly about the task at hand. I'll keep you updated.

The first article, if you wish to look it up and it's no longer there, was called, "Re-thinking the Meat Guzzler," It's by Mark Bittman, and it first appeared January 27th, 2008.

Freemind

I downloaded a program yesterday that has taken up the bulk of my time since and is basically the coolest thing ever.

It's called "Freemind," and here's the Wikipedia site for it. At their page you can find information on the program, and the website to download it from.

It is a mind-mapping (MM) program, and if you've never done mind-mapping before, the basic idea is that it's a chart of information to help you organize and arrange your thoughts on any sort of subject. I was first introduced to it reading a book called "How to Think Like DaVinci," that I read in a Borders in New Jersey. Or a Barnes and Nobles.

Having mind-mapping software makes the whole MM thing about a million times more powerful, though, as you can continually edit and rearrange different parts, and also hide parts to make it neater and so you can focus on one part, you can link to different files on your computer, and to sites on the internet. I have started four of them already, one for my life in general, one for my dreams, one for Chinese, and one for a book I'm writing (I did say this had taken quite a bit of my time.) I'm planning a few more, and the above mentioned could potentially all fit on one map (and, since they all link to each other in places, they sort of do,) which is the other cool thing about having software: your map can be as big as you like without it taking up the walls of your house. I am writing out answers to questions in the back of an econ book I've just read, something that will be a rather large amount of text, and I'm just planning to do it right in the middle of my normal "life" map. We'll see if it slows the program down at all.

I could see this being helpful and time-saving for just about anybody who uses a computer. I'm thinking of using it mostly to arrange ideas and essays, as well as help me to organize my time and thoughts and studies, but again, whatever you do, this could be a wonderful program.

It could be better, I think, and if possible in the future I would love to make a digital "mind-web," where the parts are less hierarchically arranged, but for now, this will do. This will do just fine.

Glad Face Adorn You.

P.S. Thanks to Dan of the Market, who passed this along to me.

Animals and Personality

This is for anyone who doesn't think animals have personalities or deserve to be treated humanely:

First, a Nicholas Kristof Op-Ed in the Times about Geese-

And second, a you-tube video about a lion that is just great, really, really great:




Have a good day, and scratch your pet when you get home extra hard! My dog Smoky was just put down, and though I was already half the world away from her, I miss her! (Just a coincidence, obviously, it has nothing to do with finding the you-tube video, or Mr. Kristof writing an Op-Ed in the Times.)

Uh, and yes, I did try to find a video that wasn't playing Whitney Houston's "I will always love you," in the background, but the rest of the videos were even more hokey.

Yes Ma'am.

Welcome to my blog.

This blog is more or less subject-less, and while I fear that this may limit my readership in the ridiculously specialized world online, I can't really write about anything but nothing, everything.

I am looking for other people interested in this, which, to put a name on it, might be called something like "the development of consciousness," and encompasses all realms of human learning and experience.

Here is a place for the investigation of ideology and belief, and so I encourage you to hit me in my blind spots, making us all stronger.