I’ve blogged elsewhere before about my take on full-blown karma, that it’s both as illogical as western monotheism’s heaven/hell, and personally, at least as offensive.
But, what about “karma-lite,” the non-metaphysical, or less-metaphysical, generic claim that “what goes around, comes around”?
There’s a better, scientific explanation from evolutionary psychology. It’s called “reciprocal altruism,” or, in even easier layperson’s terms, “tit for tat.”
Animals with enough memory intelligence to remember past good or bad actions by their fellows and attribute them to specific actors, especially amongst highly social animals, can and do practice this. In the case of bad actors, it’s the old “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” schtick. Intelligence social animals can and do remember who cheats in the old game of back-scratching and won’t let Mr. or Ms. Cad play in any more reindeer games.
It’s that simple. Nothing metaphysical needed.
And, scientists are finding the first genetic support for reciprocal altruism. The gene in question appears linked to dopamine production and a similar gene in voles that promote social bonding, which makes sense to me. Reciprocal altruism certainly promotes social bonds, and a dopamine-based “feel good” feeling for doing it would be the reward individuals get to be good group members.
So, do altruism cheaters lack a copy, or good expression, of this gene?
Friday, November 02, 2007
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Fall is the time for poignant reflections
North Texas is not Michigan or Washington State. The days of fall, on average, don’t become perceptibly more overcast as they shorten. Nor does the amount of daylight in each day lose three or four minutes, unlike these northern locations.
In short, our area does not feel like it’s becoming sunlight-deprived as October rushes into November, with December looming on the horizon. So, the area is not a prime location to produce sufferers of Seasonal Affective Disorder, normally known by its acronym of SAD.
Nonetheless, this is a time of year I get poignant, to use a nice, high-dollar word.
Why?
In a word, or two acronyms, it’s the change from CDT to CST.
Our annual time to pay the piper for all those extra evenings of summer sunlight is now upon us, as we prepare to “fall back” to Standard Time.
I’m not awake early enough in the spring to notice my “lost” hour of dawn at the start of Daylight Saving Time, just my “gained” hour of evening.
I think a loss gets noticed more easily than a gain, though. And, being a night owl, not a morning person, I’m more likely to notice an evening loss, too.
To sound a bit John Madden-like, all of a sudden, BOOM, there goes an hour of daylight. And, I’m left feeling, well, poignant, among other things.
I hate using the word “ineffable” about the word “poignant.” Nonetheless, I think a complex emotional state like poignancy has to be experienced, has to be felt, to be fully understood; words alone can’t do it justice.
And, with the change from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time being pushed a week later this year, I will probably have that feeling of poignancy intensified a little bit this year.
Even though I just said that “poignancy” might not be easily definable to a person who has not felt poignant, I’ll nonetheless make an effort at it, and perhaps wax a bit poetic in the process.
To me, it contains wistfulness at the process of change, whether that’s change in seasons and sunlight, or other changes. It also contains a bit of melancholy, a gentle tinge of sadness as I once wrote in a poem, at how life is passing onward. But it also has a warm glow from memories provoked by thinking about life’s ever-changing flow.
So, no, the complex emotion of poignancy isn’t a “bad” emotion, not that “bad” emotions are bad, anyway, when felt at appropriate times and expressed appropriately. It’s a very human emotion, one that distinguishes us from lower life forms as much as our abstract-reasoning human intelligence does.
In other words, poignancy is an emotion about being alive, fully alive. It’s about being aware of life as it surrounds us, of how changes in life impinge upon us, and how we can awarely interact with our larger world. Either other people or changes in the natural world can stir it up in me.
And, with that said, I can think of two reasons why I think the one-week delay in the change back to standard time may increase those feelings.
One is that the daylight will be a little bit shorter with the time change a week later than it has been in the past.
The second is that, with the time change occurring another week into fall, more fall foliage changes will be out there for me to see. A few more leaves will be yellow, orange or maybe brown. A few more will be falling from their branches, pinwheeling and tumbling to the ground. The smell of various types of red oaks, and their decaying leaves, will provide an aromatic fall backdrop, accompanied by the aural filigree of the sound of those leaves, and the occasional acorn or pecan, crunching underfoot.
Fall may not be a season of hope in the way that spring is. But, it can be a time of taking stock, of appreciating and accepting where our journey of life has us at right now, a nature-based equivalent of Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past.”
And that, in a native pecan nutshell, is what poignancy is about.
In short, our area does not feel like it’s becoming sunlight-deprived as October rushes into November, with December looming on the horizon. So, the area is not a prime location to produce sufferers of Seasonal Affective Disorder, normally known by its acronym of SAD.
Nonetheless, this is a time of year I get poignant, to use a nice, high-dollar word.
Why?
In a word, or two acronyms, it’s the change from CDT to CST.
Our annual time to pay the piper for all those extra evenings of summer sunlight is now upon us, as we prepare to “fall back” to Standard Time.
I’m not awake early enough in the spring to notice my “lost” hour of dawn at the start of Daylight Saving Time, just my “gained” hour of evening.
I think a loss gets noticed more easily than a gain, though. And, being a night owl, not a morning person, I’m more likely to notice an evening loss, too.
To sound a bit John Madden-like, all of a sudden, BOOM, there goes an hour of daylight. And, I’m left feeling, well, poignant, among other things.
I hate using the word “ineffable” about the word “poignant.” Nonetheless, I think a complex emotional state like poignancy has to be experienced, has to be felt, to be fully understood; words alone can’t do it justice.
And, with the change from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time being pushed a week later this year, I will probably have that feeling of poignancy intensified a little bit this year.
Even though I just said that “poignancy” might not be easily definable to a person who has not felt poignant, I’ll nonetheless make an effort at it, and perhaps wax a bit poetic in the process.
To me, it contains wistfulness at the process of change, whether that’s change in seasons and sunlight, or other changes. It also contains a bit of melancholy, a gentle tinge of sadness as I once wrote in a poem, at how life is passing onward. But it also has a warm glow from memories provoked by thinking about life’s ever-changing flow.
So, no, the complex emotion of poignancy isn’t a “bad” emotion, not that “bad” emotions are bad, anyway, when felt at appropriate times and expressed appropriately. It’s a very human emotion, one that distinguishes us from lower life forms as much as our abstract-reasoning human intelligence does.
In other words, poignancy is an emotion about being alive, fully alive. It’s about being aware of life as it surrounds us, of how changes in life impinge upon us, and how we can awarely interact with our larger world. Either other people or changes in the natural world can stir it up in me.
And, with that said, I can think of two reasons why I think the one-week delay in the change back to standard time may increase those feelings.
One is that the daylight will be a little bit shorter with the time change a week later than it has been in the past.
The second is that, with the time change occurring another week into fall, more fall foliage changes will be out there for me to see. A few more leaves will be yellow, orange or maybe brown. A few more will be falling from their branches, pinwheeling and tumbling to the ground. The smell of various types of red oaks, and their decaying leaves, will provide an aromatic fall backdrop, accompanied by the aural filigree of the sound of those leaves, and the occasional acorn or pecan, crunching underfoot.
Fall may not be a season of hope in the way that spring is. But, it can be a time of taking stock, of appreciating and accepting where our journey of life has us at right now, a nature-based equivalent of Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past.”
And that, in a native pecan nutshell, is what poignancy is about.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
If enlightenment is “ineffable” …
Per a claim of Zen Buddhism, how can anybody claim that someone else is not enlightened? The obvious answer is, “They can’t.”
How can anyone claim that someone else’s use of certain words (or physical actions, drawings, music or whatever) to talk about enlightenment shows in and of itself that the person talking isn’t enlightened? The obvious answer is, “They can’t.”
For that matter, how can a person who claims he or she is enlightened actually defend that claim to any other person? The obvious answer is, “They can’t.”
The observations above are NOT about the “paradox” of a religion like Zen Buddhism that bases itself on satori is some other enlightenment that is claimed to be ineffable. No paradox is at issue here.
Rather, what IS at issue is failure in logical thinking skills. Of course, defenders of Zen will claim that this itself is part of Zen: its anti-logical stance.
OK, I’ll accept that for the sake of argument.
But, that goes right back to my point. If Zen Buddhism is anti-logical, or anti-linguistic, for that matter, you cannot defend it. Arguably, any attempt to defend it, in fact shows that the person making the attempt is unenlightened, no matter how much they claim to be enlightened.
How can anyone claim that someone else’s use of certain words (or physical actions, drawings, music or whatever) to talk about enlightenment shows in and of itself that the person talking isn’t enlightened? The obvious answer is, “They can’t.”
For that matter, how can a person who claims he or she is enlightened actually defend that claim to any other person? The obvious answer is, “They can’t.”
The observations above are NOT about the “paradox” of a religion like Zen Buddhism that bases itself on satori is some other enlightenment that is claimed to be ineffable. No paradox is at issue here.
Rather, what IS at issue is failure in logical thinking skills. Of course, defenders of Zen will claim that this itself is part of Zen: its anti-logical stance.
OK, I’ll accept that for the sake of argument.
But, that goes right back to my point. If Zen Buddhism is anti-logical, or anti-linguistic, for that matter, you cannot defend it. Arguably, any attempt to defend it, in fact shows that the person making the attempt is unenlightened, no matter how much they claim to be enlightened.
Some further thoughts on defining religion
Based on my own readings in existentialism, and psychology of religion, I offer the following psychological definition of religion:
“Religion is an attempt to escape from the condition of being human in life. It is based on two facts. One is that there is something psychologically wrong with being human. The other point is philosophical — a belief that humans can be something besides being human.”
The only condition in which the second is true is with a .45 slug to the brain. Camus knew that when he said suicide was the ultimate question of philosophy. (He probably would have called existentialism, at least with the way he answered that question, as a psychology, not a philosophy.)
Psycho-philosophical escapism does sound a good way to define a religion, especially when he connect it with the sociology of religion observation that religions consist of certain defined rites, rituals, etc., such as prayer, worship, liturgy, etc. And, the psych-philosophical definition, of escapism, gets at the heart of what motivates religious people without even talking about whether a personal deity or not.
In other words, to riff on Paul Tillich, for the religious, escape from the human condition is the matter of ultimate concern.
“Religion is an attempt to escape from the condition of being human in life. It is based on two facts. One is that there is something psychologically wrong with being human. The other point is philosophical — a belief that humans can be something besides being human.”
The only condition in which the second is true is with a .45 slug to the brain. Camus knew that when he said suicide was the ultimate question of philosophy. (He probably would have called existentialism, at least with the way he answered that question, as a psychology, not a philosophy.)
Psycho-philosophical escapism does sound a good way to define a religion, especially when he connect it with the sociology of religion observation that religions consist of certain defined rites, rituals, etc., such as prayer, worship, liturgy, etc. And, the psych-philosophical definition, of escapism, gets at the heart of what motivates religious people without even talking about whether a personal deity or not.
In other words, to riff on Paul Tillich, for the religious, escape from the human condition is the matter of ultimate concern.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Apparently even many scientists don’t think James Watson is racist
A World Science poll has the following findings about Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, James Watson:
1. Some 57 percent of respondents find his comments about black intelligence legitimate opinion, 26 percent racism, and 17 percent unsure.
2. A full 75 percent said the London Science Museum was wrong to cancel a lecture he had scheduled.
3. Even more, 79 percent said the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was wrong to suspend Watson as president.
4. A similar percentage, 74 percent, said this would chill scientific discourse.
5. Between two responses, for two different reasons, 70 percent said Watson’s critics should leave him alone.
6. Just over half of respondents to the poll were scientists.
I’m not advocating censorship of legitimate opinion, but, this went beyond opinion. It was racism.
And, in science terms, it was pseudoscience, clear and simple.
Now, per a reader of Talking Points Memo, it turns out this is nothing new from Watson. In fact, he’s got Read this SF Chronicle story. He made similar comments in a conference at Berkeley seven years ago. Had anybody short of a Nobel-level scientist said this, we’d immediately label him as nutbar.
Read the whole thing, if you have the stomach for it. The reporter notes that Nobelist William Shockley, inventor of the transistor, was ostracized for years because of similar comments. Why wasn’t that done years ago to Watson?
Being dismissed now as president of Cold Spring is less than punishment enough.
1. Some 57 percent of respondents find his comments about black intelligence legitimate opinion, 26 percent racism, and 17 percent unsure.
2. A full 75 percent said the London Science Museum was wrong to cancel a lecture he had scheduled.
3. Even more, 79 percent said the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was wrong to suspend Watson as president.
4. A similar percentage, 74 percent, said this would chill scientific discourse.
5. Between two responses, for two different reasons, 70 percent said Watson’s critics should leave him alone.
6. Just over half of respondents to the poll were scientists.
I’m not advocating censorship of legitimate opinion, but, this went beyond opinion. It was racism.
And, in science terms, it was pseudoscience, clear and simple.
Now, per a reader of Talking Points Memo, it turns out this is nothing new from Watson. In fact, he’s got Read this SF Chronicle story. He made similar comments in a conference at Berkeley seven years ago. Had anybody short of a Nobel-level scientist said this, we’d immediately label him as nutbar.
Witnesses were flabbergasted when the 72-year-old discoverer of the double helix suggested there was a biochemical link between exposure to sunlight and sexual urges. “That’s why you have Latin lovers,” Watson said. “You’ve never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient.”
In a lecture hall jammed with more than 200 Berkeley students and faculty members, Watson showed a slide of sad-faced model Kate Moss to support his contention that thin people are unhappy and therefore more ambitious. …
Botchan, who presided over the session, said Watson was merely trying to call attention to a protein (pom-C) that helps create several different hormones: One determines skin color (melanin); another enhances a sense of well-being (beta endorphins); and the third plays a role in fat metabolism (leptin).
Botchan said Watson was wondering out loud why evolution had linked these hormones, and whether the interrelationship of these mood and behavior-influencing compounds might be affected by exposure to sunlight.
Unfortunately, said Botchan, Watson advanced his hypothesis with “comments that were crude and sexist and potentially racist.” But Botchan, who did post-graduate work under Watson, said he doesn't think the Nobel laureate is racist or sexist, merely insensitive. …
Berkeley genetics professor Thomas Cline said Watson's lecture ``crossed over the line'' from being provocative to being irresponsible because the senior scientist failed to separate fact from conjecture. …
Berkeley biology professor Susan Marqusee walked out about a third of the way through Watson's hourlong lecture. …
A spokesman at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research institute on Long Island where Watson serves as president, confirmed the gist of his remarks and said Watson has voiced similar sentiments at other scientific gatherings.
Read the whole thing, if you have the stomach for it. The reporter notes that Nobelist William Shockley, inventor of the transistor, was ostracized for years because of similar comments. Why wasn’t that done years ago to Watson?
Being dismissed now as president of Cold Spring is less than punishment enough.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Patriots, gurus, scoundrels and martyrs
If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, alleged misunderstanding is the last refuge of a martyr. That’s doubly true if the martyr is a religious, metaphysical leader or similar type of guru.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
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