Category: Musings

Sanity anchors.

The importance of staying grounded in the face of the oncoming storm.

A few days ago, I exchanged emails with Jon Lavin. In the early days of Learning from Dogs, Jon used to write the occasional post, one of which seems highly relevant some three years later. I will republish it tomorrow.

Jon and I go back a few years and most who know me know that it was Jon’s counselling back in 2007 that opened my eyes to something that, literally, changed my life. For the better, I hasten to add!

In our recent email exchange, Jon wrote this:

Just started back at work today. A bit of a shock to the old system! Am wondering what to set my sanity sights on for this coming year in the middle of almost total uncertainty.

Of course! How obvious! The need to ensure that our lives contain anchors of stability, safe places to curl up in, metaphorically speaking, where we can seek refuge from the winds of change. Otherwise, we run the very real risk of being overcome by the uncertainty of the future.

The resonance with small boats and the sea is obvious, and unavoidable in the case of yours truly.

songbird-of-kent1 — Tradewind 33, Songbird of Kent

For five years I lived on and sailed a Tradewind 33, Songbird of Kent; my base being Larnaca on the island of Cyprus at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. Contrary to the image of the Mediterranean, it wasn’t uncommon to experience some ‘interesting’ weather; there were times when it could turn very nasty!

The comfort, physical and mental, offered by being tucked up in a small bay, listening to the storm about one, while riding securely to your anchor was beyond imagination.

Jon’s comment underscores the incredible importance of each of us knowing what anchors us to a secure place. So, like any sailor, always keep a weather eye open for those early signs of a storm, and cast your anchor in good time.

Needless to say, having a loving dog or two in one’s life provides a wonderful storm-proof anchor.

Essence of wisdom, page two.

Doing the right thing has power.

Thus wrote Laura Leggett Linney. Maybe Laura doesn’t fit into the same folder as Confucius (she’s well and truly alive for one thing) but the quote was perfect, hence the connection.

Yesterday, I offered an overview of the human brain. Today I want to expand on the idea of “how we jumble up how we act with what is best for us” as was put in yesterday’s introduction.

In researching for today’s essay, the power of the Internet quickly found the quotation by ex-President Lyndon B. Johnson that “Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It’s knowing what’s right.” Reflecting on the escalation of America’s involvement in Vietnam that was a product of LBJ’s term of office, perhaps his quotation carries a certain pathos that wasn’t intended at the time of its pronouncement! In other words, it’s not the ‘knowing‘ but the ‘doing‘ that is critical, as LBJ’s legacy so clearly illustrated. Johnson might have better said, “Knowing what’s right is sometimes hard. Doing what’s right is sometimes even harder.”

To illustrate the challenge of converting these fine concepts into the grind of daily life, I’m going to use a recent essay published by Ian Welsh. Ian is a frustrated author who writes about his experiences in completing a book on Prosperity. It struck me as a fabulous insight into the vagaries of homo sapiens and one that lent itself beautifully to what I am trying to convey today.

Ian very promptly gave me written permission to republish his essay on Learning from Dogs. So what I am going to do is to add my own thoughts to Ian’s essay in a way that hopefully supports the proposition that we are far from being logical creatures.

To know what to do is not enough

by Ian Welsh – January 2nd, 2013

For the past year I’ve been writing a book on prosperity, by which I mean widespread affluence. It’s been slow going, not because I don’t believe I know the general technical requirements of prosperity (I do, if I didn’t, I shouldn’t be wasting anyone’s time, including mine, writing the book), but because the real problem isn’t the technical details like eliminating bottlenecks, or redistributing income, or setting up positive feedback loops, or avoiding fraud, or stopping financialization, or any of the dozens of other subjects I either visit at chapter length or touch on briefly. The problem as with, say, stopping smoking, isn’t so much what to do, it is how it comes that we do it. When do we make the decision we’re willing to do what it takes, sufferer the negative consequences of getting to a better place, and then push ourselves through those consequences?

Let’s dally with that phrase, “isn’t so much what to do, it is how it comes that we do it.” On the 1st January, I published an article called Why? It included a film by Simon Sinek looking at the Why, How, and What of human decision-making. The film supports the thesis that those who succeed act, think and do things differently; the crucial point being that spending time on understanding why you do what you do is very revealing. You can see the resonance between Simon Sinek and Ian Welsh, can’t you? If we better understand ‘why’ we want to do something, we can better think 0f what is the best way of achieving that.

Back to Ian’s essay.

This is a huge problem in individuals, as the weight loss, addiction, psychology, psychiatry and self-help industries attest. There is, generally, more money in not solving a problem, as drug makers with their palliatives understand, than in solving it. The people who have power and money and influence in the status quo are not sure that in a new world, with a new economy, and the new ethics which must undergird that new economy, they will be on top. They are right to believe so. They are creatures of the current world, and in being created, have created the world they are unsteady masters of. Their ethics and morals, their way of business, of living, of apportioning power and influence and money must go if there is to be widespread affluence. Their methods have been tried for 40 odd years now, and if measured against the human weal, have failed. They will not, they cannot adapt, not as a group. They were not selected for the skills it takes to create a new type of affluent society, they have not even been able to maintain the mass affluence of the old society, and not just because they have not wanted to. They would be a different elite, made up of different people with different ethics, talents and skills if they did want to.

This paragraph is just laden with powerful ideas.

First, the recognition that millions opt for the palliative rather than the cure. Second, that these same millions live in present times that are controlled undemocratically by plutocrats. Thirdly, changing to a new, better order is not going to come easily. Ergo, for the last few decades there has been a massive failure of wisdom. Applying that failure to millions does not, of course, avoid the charge that each of us, individual by individual, each in our own tiny manner, has contributed to that failure of wisdom.

Ian amplifies this idea, as you will see by reading on.

Ordinary people also have the wrong ethics, the wrong morality. Much is written about why consumerism is bad, but the ultimate problem of consumerism is not how it makes us feel but that the consumer passively chooses from a menu created by others, not to fill the consumer’s real needs, but to benefit those who created the menu. Such a passive people cannot understand that choosing choices without creating choices is not choice, it is the illusion of choice.

So while my book has a lot of general principles of the sort which books on prosperity often have, such as about trade, and productivity and technological change, that isn’t the most important part. The part that matters isn’t about the technical requirements of prosperity, it’s about why and when people do what is required to achieve prosperity, and when they don’t. And when, having obtained it, they throw it away.

“Such a passive people cannot understand that choosing choices without creating choices is not choice, it is the illusion of choice.” Pick the bones out of that!

On we go. Going to let you read Ian’s closing four paragraphs as one piece.

Our society is ours. A tautology, but one we forget too often. As individuals we often feel powerless, as a mass, we have created our own society. There are real constraints, physical constraints on what society we can have, based on the resources we have, the technology we have mastered and what we understand about ourselves and our world, but those constraints are not, right now, so tight as to preclude widespread affluence, to preclude prosperity.

They are, however, tight enough to preclude continuing to do the same thing, led by the same sorts of people, and expect anything but decline, repeated disasters and eventual catastrophe. We can be affluent and prosperous, we can spread that affluence and prosperity to those who do not have it now, but we cannot do it if we insist on keeping the current forms of our economy, including our current forms of consumption. This does not mean doing with less, it means doing with different things, valuing different things. Those new values will be better for us, objectively, they will make us both happier and healthier, just as most addicts are happier once they’ve broken their addiction, or rather once they’ve gone through withdrawal and rebuilt their lives.

We can choose not to do so. We have, in certain respects, already chosen not to do so, as with our refusal to do anything about climate change until it is too late (the two problems are combined, climate change is a subset of the political and economic problems we have). We can, also, choose to make the necessary changes, not only to avoid the worst catastrophes (disasters are now inevitable, there are consequences to failure, stupidity and greed), but to create an actual, better, world, a world in which the vast majority are healthier, happier and doing work they care about.

The monster facing us, as usual, is us. The monsters are always us, our brothers and sisters, and the one in the mirror. And it is those monsters I’ve been wrestling this past year.

Reflect on those three points that I made earlier: how we don’t put the cure as the top priority, how we are dominated by the greed and power of the relatively few, how difficult changing our present society would be. Not a pretty picture!

Then look at yourself in that mirror, either literally or metaphorically, and say to the face you see peering back at you: “This is my society. Yes, I do feel powerless but I have to embrace the cold, hard truth that I am part of my society and that change will only occur if I subscribe to the new values that I require.”

That has real power!

Essence of wisdom, page one.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Thus spoke Confucius, albeit not in the English language! But, nonetheless, those words from so, so long ago (he lived to the age of 73 – from 551 until 479 BCE) resonate very strongly 2,500 years later.

That was the easy bit!

I’m not entirely clear as to why a variety of items that have crossed my ‘in-box’ in recent days seem to offer some sort of cohesive sense. But they do to me and I’m going to draw them together. I will leave you to be the judge as to how well it worked!

Thus over the next three days I am going to reflect on three topics. The challenge of how we humans make sense of the world, how we confuse what we do with what is best for us, surely the essence of wisdom, and the growing gap between the wisdom of millions of citizens and their leaders.

I should quickly add that much of my musings are due to this scribe standing on the shoulders of giants than seeing clearly from his own level.

Today, I shall start with the brain. Your brain, my brain, the brains of humans. The reason this trilogy starts with the brain is that, ultimately, everything we humans think, feel and do comes from this brain of ours. Our brain is who we are.

Let me offer you this video made by Bristol University in England. Just a little over 6 minutes long it sets out the functional story of our brain.

(An animated tour around the human brain commissioned for Brain Awareness Week in 2010)

But there is so much more to this ancient body organ.

The Big Think website has been publishing a series called The 21st Century Brain. The latest episode published on November 6th was called Consciousness: The Black Hole of Neuroscience. It starts thus:

What’s the Big Idea?

“By the word ‘thought’ (‘pensée’) I understand all that of which we are conscious as operating in us.” –Renee Descartes

The simplest description of a black hole is a region of space-time from which no light is reflected and nothing escapes. The simplest description of consciousness is a mind that absorbs many things and attends to a few of them. Neither of these concepts can be captured quantitatively. Together they suggest the appealing possibility that endlessness surrounds us and infinity is within.

But our inability to grasp the immaterial means we’re stuck making inferences, free-associating, if we want any insight into the unknown. Which is why we talk obscurely and metaphorically about “pinning down” perception and “hunting for dark matter” (possibly a sort of primordial black hole). The existence of black holes was first hypothesized a decade after Einstein laid the theoretical groundwork for them in the theory of relativity, and the phrase “black hole” was not coined until 1968.

Likewise, consciousness is still such an elusive concept that, in spite of the recent invention of functional imaging – which has allowed scientists to visualize the different areas of the brain – we may not understand it any better now than we ever have before. “We approach [consciousness] now perhaps differently than we have in the past with our new tools,” says neuroscientist Joy Hirsch.

Later on is this:

So there’s no reason to assume that consciousness is eternally inexplicable. However, it may never be explained through neurobiology, says David Chalmers, the philosopher who originally made the distinction. “In so many other fields physical explanation has been successful… but there seems to be this big gap in the case of consciousness,” he says. “It’s just very hard to see how [neurological] interactions are going to give you subjective experience.”

The fascinating essay concludes:

It’s no different than any other aspect of the brain that we cannot presently explain, she [Hirsch] says:

For example, we don’t understand how the brain creates colors. That’s a perception that is very private – I don’t know that your perception of blue is like my perception of blue, for example. Smells are another one. I don’t know that your perception of the smell of an orange is like mine. These are the hard problems of neuroscience and philosophy that we haven’t made a great deal of progress on.

What do you think? Is the distinction between “hard problems” and “soft problems” useful, or reductive? Does the brain create consciousness? Will we ever empirically understand where it comes from or how it works?

But it was one of the comments to the piece that jumped off the screen at me. From Beatriz Valdes and slightly edited by me, the comment offered:

Human consciousness happens in the human brain. The human brain’s functions are rooted in what the human senses relay to it. Self consciousness, consciousness of what is around us, is the result of thinking. There would be no thoughts if the brain were a tabula rasa (Latin for blank slate), had no input from the senses. Therefore, consciousness is quite local, quite mortal, quite dependent on the gray matter inside our skulls.

Local and mortal. Very profound (I think!).

So, if you like me suffer from time to time from understanding oneself, don’t worry. There are plenty of others – aren’t there? As Professor Dan Dennett makes it all clear below.

Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don’t we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us.

Philosopher and scientist Dan Dennett argues that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes and are not what we traditionally think they are. His 2003 book Freedom Evolves explores the way our brains have evolved to give us — and only us — the kind of freedom that matters.

Good, glad that’s all clear. 😉

Stay with me for ‘page two’ of Essence of wisdom coming out tomorrow.

Sometimes the meaning escapes us.

Much more than a house move.

Today, the 4th January, we have been at our new home in Oregon for exactly 72 days. We knew there would be many differences between Payson, Arizona and Merlin, Oregon all of which could be described as objective, factual differences. However, what was unexpected were the deep, complex emotions associated with moving to this rural part of Josephine County, Oregon. We were utterly unprepared for that.

In fact, I have been staring at this screen for some time unable to put any structure or meaning to this post. So I’m not going to try anymore, just offer some photographs and my reflections in the hope that you can sense where I am coming from.

The Winter storm that came in on the 20th December was, according to locals, unprecedented. We lost our power from the 20th until just before Christmas Eve. It caught us unawares in terms of being ready for this type of winter event. But then the sun came out one afternoon and I took this picture.

It shows the flank of Mt. Sexton, the picture being taken from our deck in front of the house. I found it impossible to describe the effect that this natural beauty had on me; being in awe just scratches the surface of my feelings.

Moving on.

We have been working hard preparing stables in readiness for two miniature horses that we have purchased from our neighbours, Margo and Clarence. Last Tuesday, we were busy at this when I saw another breathtakingly beautiful sight.

Just some growth on the top of an old fence post. But the words utterly fail the image. Here it is.

Then about an hour ago (yesterday), while struggling to write this post, I heard the dogs barking in the bedroom next door. Went into the room and they were ‘speaking’ to some wild deer grazing our pasture land.

Wish I could wrap this all up with some profound view, some wise observations about life and the meaning of the universe!

But I can’t! Can’t make any sense of it at all. How did we get here? How did I meet Jeannie, this most precious woman, back in Christmas 2007? How did I sell up and walk away from Devon, England, with just Pharaoh by my side, to start this unbelievable new life with Jean and all the dogs?

Anyone know the answers?

P1110454-001 — “The silly old sod does mutter on at times!”

Change, as far as the eye can see.

Of the matters of man for the coming year.

Like countless others, when we look back 12 months and recall what we thought 2012 had in store, we now realise that we didn’t have a clue! As the silly expression goes, “I can predict anything except those things that involve the future!”

So repeating the process is stupid; I have no doubt that 2013 will be brim full of surprises. At all levels: personal, local, national and global. But ….. (You knew there was a ‘but’ coming, didn’t you!)

But a conversation that I had with Peter McCarthy on the 27th December resonated with me to such a degree that I felt the urge to pen some thoughts. I worked with Peter some years ago at Clevedon Hall, we shared an interest in flying a TB20 and both of us studied for our CAA Instrument Rating. We became good friends.

Clevedon Hall, Somerset, England. — Clevedon Hall, Somerset, England

So come with me today for a stroll around the grounds of change, possibly an epochal period of change.

Let’s start with what may be the biggest catalyst of change heading our way – our broken political system.

Christine of 350orbust fame published this yesterday.

The view that many western societies are a very long way from being fair is growing. If you want to dig a little deeper into the appalling statistics of the USA, for example, dip into a recent essay written by Charles Hugh Smith that appeared on Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity blog.

It’s a long essay packed full of powerful facts and statistics. Try this one:

6. The assets that generate unearned income are highly concentrated, and as a result so is the unearned income. The top 1% owns twice as much stock-market wealth as the bottom 90%. This income-producing wealth enables the top 1% to act as a financial aristocracy, buying influence and favors from equivalently concentrated political Elites.

Let me go to Charles’ conclusion:

What few dare admit, much less state publicly, is that the Constitutional limits on the financial Aristocracy and the Tyranny of the Majority have failed. This guarantees a future Constitutional crisis as each political class – the financial Aristocracy, the top 24% who pay most of the taxes, the dwindling middle class and the bottom 50% who depend on Federal transfers – will battle for control as the Status Quo collapses under the weight of its unsustainable promises.

H’mmm!

Back to the conversation with Peter. He felt that there was a massive failure of the democratic process in the UK, and by implication in the USA.

Peter continued by saying that many elected politicians, especially at the level of local politics, weren’t smart people. Smart, innovative, entrepreneurial people chose not to go into politics. Those that were elected had too much power and too many vested interests for the good of the societies that they were meant to represent. In the USA the involvement of private money in politics is nothing short of corruption of the highest order; my personal opinion, no less and no more.

In moderation, Churchill’s saying comes to mind. “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

Let’s move on.

No-one can deny that in so many areas of our lives, the degree of change seems unprecedented. Whether we are speaking of the huge social changes at work, enormous technological changes, such as the way that we communicate with each other, medical practises, and on and on. Then add in the consequences of the change in the Earth’s climate, whether or not one sees this as the outcome of man’s activities and …. well, you get the idea!

Here’s a lovely perspective from Alex Jones who writes the blog, The Liberated Way. Just a few days ago, Alex wrote this:

As hard and gloomy as some of my blog posts on the future of humanity have been, I thought it time to offer good news as to where we are heading. I shall call this the global realignment. Few will disagree that the current activities and ideas of humanity in relation to the environment are unsustainable and point to our self-destruction. History also shows that whenever a crisis occurs traumatic events and the ideas of new thinkers causes a paradigm shift in attitudes and thinking.

Contrary to the fantasy of many people, there will be no celestial champion on a white horse riding forward to save humanity from itself. The change will come from a series of traumatic events and individual thinkers which will plant the seeds of change, which will ripple forward as a tsunami of changes of ideas and attitudes on a global scale.

So much change. So much uncertainty. Such a feeling of being lost in unfamiliar lands.

Or have we been here before?

Have you heard of the Kondratieff Wave?

The Kondratieff Wave (Kondratiev Wave or K-wave) theory is proposing the existence of the extra-long, 50+ years long cycles of growth in the modern market (capitalist) economy. The theory was proposed in 1920s by Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev.

Wikipedia has a good summary available here. A Google search will find much more material, such as this chart:

The Wikipedia entry has a simpler diagram, see below, that shows the four stages of each cycle.

So how to draw this to a close?

In a sense, in a very real sense, there isn’t a close. The future has always been uncertain and as history shows change is the only constant.

Peter concluded that a better society was ahead and hoped that he would live sufficiently long to witness it. That gets my vote!

Happy New Year to you.

Thank you for taking an interest in Learning from Dogs.

Half empty, or half full?

Life has a habit of reflecting our own perceptions back to us.

Dear friend, Bob Derham, can always be counted on to forward something amusing or inspirational. The Boxing Day smile was an example of the former. Today is an example of the latter.

oooOOOooo

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck.

One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.

At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water.

Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments.

But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream.

‘I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.’

The old woman smiled, ‘Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side?’

”That’s because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.’

For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table.

Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.’

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it’s the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You’ve just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.

So, to all of my cracked pot friends, have a great day and remember to smell the flowers on your side of the path!

oooOOOooo

Nothing more one can add to that. Well, sorry, there is one thing I can add. That is that dogs love us with all our flaws and quirkiness.

Mirror on my behaviours.

Another fascinating aspect of how we learn from our dogs.

The last week has been challenging, to say the least.

The biggest winter storm in ages hit this part of Southern Oregon last Thursday, the 20th. That day we lost our power to the home around 6.30 pm. We only had it restored around 4pm last Sunday, the 23rd. That meant no access to our well, no cooker, no heating in the house and … well you get the picture.

The wet snow, some 9 inches or so, brought down trees across the property including one that blocked our driveway.

So where’s this leading?

Just that there have been times when I have been irritable to the extreme. My normal patience with the dogs has been lacking from time to time. Moments when I have pushed a dog away from me, or shouted at another when the barking was getting to me.

The dogs have been so forgiving, so tolerant of my irritability. I was able to reflect in my quieter moments about my behaviours. Able to see how well or otherwise I coped. The dogs offered a mirror to me. Allowing me a gently chastisement that getting angry with the world around me was my problem. It was me that was ‘choosing’ my actions and behaviours.

The dogs also chose to respond to me. Here’s how Hazel responded.

Here’s how Dhalia responded.

Finally, here’s how that grand old man Pharaoh responded.

All of them offering me the message: chill out, Paul!

Be that change!

A most beautiful message from Paul Chefurka This republication of a recent item on The Permaculture Research Institute website comes with the written permission of their editor, for which I am very grateful. Nothing from me will add to this very personal essay, so with no more ado here it is.

oooOOOooo

Enough!

Society — by Paul Chefurka December 20, 2012

Whenever I contemplate the spectacular mischief that we humans have wreaked on our world, I am compelled to ask how this could have possibly happened. The despoilment of our planet seems to be the exact opposite of how I would expect a thinking, feeling, caring creature to treat their home. What could have driven us to this, and what perverse qualities could have allowed us to ignore the consequences of our actions for so very long?

At first blush, our problems seem decidedly physical. Dangerous gases drift in the air; acidity rises slowly in the ocean as the fish disappear from its depths; garbage and detritus of all kinds fouls the land where lush forests and grasslands once ruled. All these disturbances point back to human actions.

The proximate causes of this planet-wide distress include economics, politics, and personal and corporate greed – all facilitated by a technological cleverness that rests on a bed of dispassionate science.

I have spent over 50 years of my life trying in vain to understand our environmental problems as purely physical problems. When I viewed them in those terms, the fact that such problems even existed in a rational, scientific culture seemed nonsensical. However, when I recently began to understand them as consequences of a rupture in the human spirit they finally began to make sense to me. Yes, they are compounded by political and economic forces, but in my view even politics and economics are simply consequences of the same qualities of the human psyche.

Since the dawn of consciousness, human societies have been driven by a complex web of factors with their roots embedded deep in our evolved human nature. Power relationships and hierarchies, kinship and xenophobia, selfishness and altruism, competition and cooperation, curiosity and apathy, and countless other polarities mingle together to form the infinite variety of human dynamics.

Underneath it all, though, lurks our self-awareness. Human self-awareness is the root of our sense of separation from the natural world, and from each other for that matter. It’s the crowning paradox of the human condition – at once both our greatest glory and our fatal flaw. It is behind the dualism – the perceptual split into subject and object – that gave us science. It’s the source of our ability to see others as “different yet the same”, giving us the power to act altruistically. It’s also behind the sense of self and other that has allowed us to assume dominion over all we survey, whether animal, vegetable, mineral or human. Our sense of separation is the rupture of the human spirit that has allowed our current predicament to develop.

If this is the case, then no physical, political or economic remediation will heal the wound. The solution to our predicament is not – cannot be – material, political, economic, or simply philosophical. If a “solution” exists at all, it’s orthogonal to all those domains. Only by healing our belief in our separateness will we be able to finally and fully restore our balance with Nature.

When I began to view the situation like this, I was finally able to see that there are in fact solutions, where none had previously been visible. These new solutions don’t attack the predicament directly as a series of material, political, economic or technological problems. Instead, they seek to effect change from the center, by encouraging people to mature into an inter-connected adulthood and assume personal responsibility for their actions.

This approach follows Gandhi’s dictum, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

The mischievous idea of science and technology as a post-modern “religion of salvation” with Ray Kurzweil’s transhuman singularity playing the role of the Rapture and an economist making a cameo appearance as the Devil (think infinite growth on a finite planet…) resonates very strongly with me.

But to be a little more precise, it’s not exactly science that has failed us. We have been undone by a toxic stew of classical economics, technological cleverness, love of progress, an attitude of Manifest Destiny and an unwillingness to accept any limits on our growth.

Technology lets us use scientific discoveries to satisfy human desires of all kinds. When we harness scientific knowledge to human ends, the outcomes we choose to implement are based on our wishes. If our wish is dominion over nature, we will use scientific principles to invent technology like mining machinery, continental energy grids, factory farming and the automobile.

Of course, each of those inventions is presented within our cultural narrative as an obvious, irrefutable boon. One of the points of having a cultural narrative is to put a positive spin on human activity. The spin is always in line with the narrative – or more precisely, in line with the wishes of those who create and sustain the narrative. The fact that these inventions, the technological expressions of science, have a subtext of dominion over nature is carefully camouflaged, and the idea that this might possibly be a bad idea is thoroughly discouraged.

None of this would have been so damaging if people didn’t have such a natural ability to delude themselves into believing that whatever they wish for hard enough is possible. It’s kind of like clapping for Tinkerbell. “The future is always going to be better than the past,” and “My kids will have better jobs, bigger houses and faster cars than I did,” are examples of such magical thinking at its finest.

Those two kinds of wishing – the wish to improve the human condition and the wish to see the human milieu keep growing forever – are not inherently different. I see them more as two points on a continuum. On one end is simple desire; on the other end is unreasonable desire. They are distinguished less by any intrinsic difference than by the attitude and realism of the one doing the wishing.

It can be very difficult to tell when the reasonable morphs into the unreasonable.”I wish to own a small piece of land” becomes “I wish to own an entire island” which inflates into “I wish to claim a continent for my King” and eventually becomes “I wish to rule the world.” The underlying desire is the same; it’s just the scale and reasonableness of the wish that changes.

Whether or not a wish is realistic or deluded depends very much on the one doing the wishing. There are people who wish for our (and by extension, their own) material wealth to continue growing forever. There is no shortage of economists who will tell them that such a strange thing is possible. Are the dreamers deluded? Are the economists deluded? What laws of nature would need to be violated for such a delusion to become reality? How is the worship of the Charging Bull of Wall Street materially different from worshiping the Golden Calf of the Bible, when both imply a violation of the laws of nature?

The world changes only when enough people have made a choice to change themselves. At what point will we each say, “Enough!” and choose a different path? Is anything keeping you from making that choice right now?

As you finish reading this article I invite you to say it quietly to yourself.

“Enough!”

If you listen closely with your heart, you may be able to hear the life that shares our planet say, “Thank you.”

oooOOOooo

You can read more of Paul Chefurka’s writings on the PRI website here. Do, also, visit Paul’s website here. You will not be disappointed.

Finally, let me do two things before closing.

The first is to highlight a sentence towards the end of this beautiful essay. This one. “The world changes only when enough people have made a choice to change themselves.“

The second is to highlight on Paul’s website his Public Domain Notice statement: Any article on this web site may be reproduced by anyone, in whole or in part , in any manner and for any purpose whatsoever, with no restrictions.

Spread the word about you, me and all of us being the change the world needs – and needs now. Thank you.

The end of the world?

Maybe not from a Mayan perspective but, nevertheless, who knows!

For some time now I have subscribed to the online magazine Big Think. Daniel Honan, Managing Editor, has contrived to bring together a group of very interesting authors from a wide range of disciplines, presenting a weekly collection of thought-provoking articles. Despite the volume of emails that seems to assault my in-box each day, it’s very rare for me not to browse the weekly digest from Big Think.

Thus it was that early on the 13th (last Thursday) I read a wonderful item written by Steven V. Mazie, Associate Professor of Political Studies at Bard High School Early College-Manhattan.

A quick telephone call to Dan Honan produced an immediate ‘yes’ to my request for permission to republish the Steven Mazie piece here on Learning from Dogs so settle back and enjoy.

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Googling the Apocalypse: the Web as Epistemological Vortex

Steven Mazie on December 11, 2012, 2:12 PM

Let’s say you’re just now tuning in to reports that the world will end on December 21 when the Mayan calendar resets to zero. Maybe you’re one of the 35 million Americans who fear it will really happen. Maybe the prospect of solar storms, rogue planets and devastating floods is a welcome distraction from more pedestrian anxieties of everyday life. Or maybe you’re just curious how such a ridiculous idea could persuade “panicked” Russians to buy up all the “matches, kerosene, sugar and candles” in town or spur a Chinese man to spend his life savings building an ark to keep him afloat after the catastrophe.

Where do you turn to learn more? To the epistemic umbrella of the 21st century, of course, and here is what Google will show you.

Do you consult the first hit, billed as the “official website for 122112 information”? Do you settle for the detailed account in the Wikipedia entry, listed second? Or do you flick down to the third, an earnest attempt by NASA to explain “Why the World Won’t End”?

If you go with the first site, you will find a bizarre, colorful bazaar of information, perspectives and advice on the approaching doomsday. There is enough to keep you occupied here for a while: a list of celebrities who believe the hype (finding Mel Gibson on the list isn’t much of a surprise, but Janeane Garofolo? really?), an article listing “37 Things You Should Start Hoarding Now” and one remarkable video summarizing the various ways the world might end and calling on world leaders to tell the “TRUTH” about the devastation awaiting us:

The video is a study in epistemic manipulation. Narrated by a man with a severe British accent, the presentation claims — three times — “we just don’t know what to believe anymore” about “the most anticipated date of our time.” Implying that the media, corporate advertisers, the “government-sponsored scientists” at NASA and “even highly respected major religious organizations” are all either mistaken or willfully fooling us, the video appeals to our “gut instincts that something is wrong — something just doesn’t feel right.” It’s a miracle Stephen Colbert hasn’t picked this up yet. “In the eyes of many,” the video announces with no substantiation, “the prophecies of doom have been written.”

The sad hilarity of NASA’s attempt to calm everyone down takes the form of a staid FAQ. There are no bells and whistles, videos, garish colors or flashing links. Just sober, somewhat condescending, straightforward claims: “Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.”

The problem is that credible science often fails to convince the masses. It cannot budge the majority of Americans who continue to deny the reality of evolution. It cannot convince more than 41 percent of Americans that the activities of human beings play a role in global warming. It’s no wonder, then, that so many people worldwide are keeping doomsday supply companies in business, buying up freeze-dried food rations and personal bunkers rather than Christmas presents, or that sites like December212012.com are profiting from these advertisers.

It’s dispiriting to witness the mass delusion of a tenth of humanity. You have to feel sorry for the Chinese ark-builder who will be left penniless on December 22, and you have to empathize with the people who are contemplating killing their pets or committing suicide to avoid the doomsday devastation.

But this unsettling phenomenon is a symptom of a universal human quandary: how to know whom to trust about things we can’t see or don’t understand. In a section on the rationality of belief in his delicious book Cunning (2006), political and legal theorist Don Herzog offers this:

What you believe depends on who you believe. And who you believe depends on what you believe. Your beliefs, your knowledge, your experience, your assignments of what I’ll call epistemic authority, that is, who or what sources are trustworthy on what issues: all are caught up in each other…Whether it’s rational for you to believe something depends on how it fits in with what you already believe, not least about the credibility of those reporting it.

The best argument against the doomsday believers may come on December 22, when, with any luck, most of us will still be around. But as my fellow blogger David Ropeik explained recently, and as Herzog’s analysis indicates, the next epistemological doomsday is just around the corner.

Follow Steven Mazie on Twitter: @stevenmazie

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My judgment is that I should leave this post as it is. As a slightly tongue-in-cheek review of this much heralded prediction.

But I can’t.

I’m going to follow Steve’s article with this (thanks Christine):

More footage from Chasing Ice, an astonishing clip of the largest iceberg calving ever recorded. Arctic sea ice levels this summer hit a record low; according to the U.S. National Snow & Ice Data Centre in September, more than 600,000 square kilometres more ice had melted in 2012 than was ever recorded by satellites before. We are indeed melting our children’s future, and apparently many of us are too busy to hold our governments to account for their lack of action.

If we don’t change our ways on this beautiful planet pretty damn soon, then my guess is that we are headed for a massive depopulation and a return to a much more primitive lifestyle, a future that will be brutally obvious by 2020.

What is relevant, to a degree unprecedented in the history of humanity, is how the peoples of this planet respond NOW!

Historic times indeed.

Just very grateful.

Yet another aspect of what we learn from dogs.

This is Hazel.

As I write these words, Hazel is laying down on the carpet just next to me. She was dumped on the street outside Jean’s Mexican house back in early 2010. Hazel was still in milk and probably had had her puppies taken from her and sold for a few pesos. Who knows!

But her gratitude for being rescued by Jean is boundless. Most nights she sleeps on our bed, curled up tightly behind my back. Her love for her world here in Oregon is beautiful and pure. As they say, dogs do not lie about love.

So what’s this leading up to?

Simply setting the scene for a wonderful TED video by Louie Schwartzberg, first seen by me on Christine’s blog 350 or bust.

Watch and be grateful for all the beautiful things in the world.

Louie Schwartzberg is an award-winning cinematographer, director, and producer whose notable career spans more than three decades providing breathtaking imagery for feature films, television shows, documentaries and commercials.

This piece includes his short film on Gratitude and Happiness. Brother David Steindl-Rast’s spoken words, Gary Malkin’s musical compositions and Louie’s cinematography make this a stunningly beautiful piece, reminding us of the precious gift of life, and the beauty all around us.

As a visual artist, Louie has created some of the most iconic and memorable film moments of our time. He is an innovator in the world of time-lapse, nature, aerial and “slice-of-life” photography – the only cinematographer in the world who has literally been shooting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week continuously for more than 30 years.

Louie was recognized as one of the top 70 Cinematographers for the On Film Kodak Salute Series. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Louie is credited by many with pioneering the contemporary stock footage industry by founding Energy Film Library, a global company with a network of 12 foreign offices, which was acquired by Getty Images in 1997. Motion picture clients of his cinematic artistry include Sex in the City, The Bourne Ultimatum, Die Hard 4, Syriana, Crash, Men in Black and classics such as American Beauty, Koyaanisqatsi and E.T. among others.

Louie went on to found BlackLight Films, a creative production company specializing in producing original theatrical feature, large format films, HD and TV programming.

In 2004, BlackLight Films completed production of the theatrical feature film, America’s Heart &Soul, distributed theatrically by Walt Disney Pictures. In 2006, BlackLight Films completed a series of HD shorts, Louie Films, for the launch of Buena Vista Home Entertainment’s Blu-Ray DVD releases. In 2007, the company produced a 1-hour special, Chasing the Light, which aired nationally on PBS.

Past projects include the 35mm film Seasons of the Vine for Disney’s California Adventure Theme Park and a 26-half hour series, America!, for The Hallmark Channel.

Louie has won two Clio Awards for Best Environmental Broadcast Spot, an Emmy nomination for Best Cinematography for the Discovery Channel Special, Oceans of Air, and the Heartland Film Festival’s Truly Moving Picture Award for Walt Disney Pictures’ feature film release America’s Heart & Soul.

Louie completed production on a feature length nature documentary, Wings of Life, to be theatrically released worldwide, under Walt Disney Pictures’ new production banner, Disneynature. The film was released in France (March 2011) under the title Pollen and won the Roscar Award for Best Cinematography at the 2011 Wild Talk Africa Film Festival.

Louie spoke at the TED 2011 conference in Long Beach, CA and has been a regular presenter at the annual Bioneers Conference in San Francisco. Currently, Louie is in production with National Geographic to produce Hidden Worlds, a 3D Imax film.

To underline the gratitude that I have to be here surrounded by such beautiful countryside, let me close with this picture recently taken from our bedroom window.

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To know what to do is not enough

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Happy New Year to you.

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Society — by Paul Chefurka December 20, 2012

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Googling the Apocalypse: the Web as Epistemological Vortex

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