Being Human: The Search For Order

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Being Human The Search for Order

Seán Ó Nualláin

Revised edition published in Paperback in Great Britain in 2003 by Intellect Books, PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK Revised edition published in Paperback in USA in 2003 by Intellect Books, ISBS, 5824 N.E. Hassalo St, Portland, Oregon 97213-3644, USA First published in Hardback in 2002 Copyright © 2002 Seán Ó Nualláin All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

Copy Editor: Typesetting: Cover Design: Printing and Binding:

Peter Young Macstyle Ltd, Scarborough, N. Yorkshire Accent Design, Blackrock, Ireland Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Electronic ISBN 1-84150-865-9 / ISBN 1-84150-088-7

Contents Preface

1

Introduction

5

1

2

The Current crisis

11

i ii iii iv v

11 26 29 32 38

Our Age of Ignorance i ii iii iv v vi vii viii

ix x 3

The environmental crisis The demographic crisis The economic crisis The political crisis The moral/fideistic/epistemological crisis

47

Noetic Science Physics Biology Economics Technology Psychology Politics and Sociology Religion and Myth viii.1 Universals in religion viii.2 Cosmogony viii.3 The psychology of the millennium viii.4 The problem of human suffering Value Some conclusions

48 59 69 79 87 91 96 98 106 113 115 121 125 130

Theories of Everything Introduction

133 133

i

134 134 137 138 139 141 142 146 148

Dei ex machina i.a The sciences of complexity i.i.a Catastrophe Theory i.i.b Chaos i.i.c Games i.i.d Something for Nothing? i.b Information i.c Computation i.d Buckserologists (Know-it-alls) iii

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iii iv v

Precedence claims and claim-jumps Introduction ii.a Physics ii.b Darwinism Eschatologies Stake Takeover Weltanschauungen v.a Gurdjieff v.b Marxism

153 153 154 155 160 164 180 183 184

Conclusions

185

Appendix A: How does Science Progress?

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Appendix B: The Reduced History of Physics

193

Appendix C: Genetic technologies

199

References

203

Index

211

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Dedication To all who sincerely seek the truth, whether in their study or on the streets of Seattle, Genoa, and Dublin

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Acknowledgements and Errata Barbara Lougheed acted as midwife for this book and I humbly thank her and her family. Likewise, Linda Scales and Accent Design contributed in their different ways. Appendix C was commissioned by me in my role as Irish Green party science and technology convener; I wish to thank Ray Ryan for this. There is a rather noticeable mistake about Rom in the second edition of ‘Search for Mind’, but not in the first. On this point, i.e. that of errata, writing about Ireland was perhaps a mistake, as the subject is perhaps too close. This is exemplified by the hejira of Conor Cruise O’Brien from advocate of Irish unity to revisionist to again supporting Irish unity as the only way of defeating the IRA; their goal of Irish unity achieved, they would rather presumably disband. I thought I was confused! As I write, the rather shocking view enunciated here about 9/11 is becoming commonplace, and more’s the pity that it may even be correct.

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Preface There is a remarkable consensus that something is wrong with the current globalised politico-economic system. Remarkable not only in its diversity, but also in its awareness that no tested viable alternative currently obtains. The green/anarchist/socialist/trades union Seattle mob finds itself singing from the same hymn sheet as George Soros when pointing out where the problems are. When it comes to solutions, however, each faction has its own separate agenda. As on this, the political/economic level, so also on the epistemological and fideistic levels. Yet the act of recognising this diversity is itself salutary; remarkably, unlike our Biblical predecessors, we can communicate to each other the fact that there is a confusion of tongues. Such communication is a central, relatively modest, aim of this book. However, it has the gall to go on to propose solutions, at the appropriate levels, if tentatively, to current environmental and political problems. Moreover, it does so by digging into the academic disciplines which deal with these problems, and related subjects. Finally, it explores apparently unrelated areas of human activity, like religious practice, to determine whether they have any future constructive role to play. The solutions proposed will not detain us here; they are re-introduced, time and again, in the course of this book. It is the second volume in a two-volume series. ‘The Search for Mind’, originally published in 1995, sought to provide a lingua franca for the disciplines that comprise cognitive science. The structure of that book is straightforward; its major chapters are on philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence (AI), and consciousness studies. Areas like anthropology and ethology are touched upon. If a theme emerges independently in two different disciplines, its status is heightened. The response to the book from specialists in each of the component disciplines was gratifying, and it has been updated rather than reworked for the revised edition. However, Alberto Greco’s review in ‘Philosophical Psychology’ questioned whether there was bigger game to be hunted, a more general ‘Noetic Science’, and to some extent this book can be seen as a response to that challenge. We take from the first volume only a certain questioning attitude about the true subject-area of psychology, a dynamic view of knowledge that will be further developed, and the notion that the human mind/body is an opportunistic system capable of adapting over time to enormous changes in the social and conceptual orders. (The general hierarchical format of the first book, with much use of subsectioning, is adhered to; readers of this volume are encouraged to emulate readers of the previous volume in dipping in as they wish to particular sections). There is a strong claim implicit here that ‘psychology’, as currently understood, can tell us little about certain questions in the social and noetic spheres. On the one hand, it is being argued that the political movement ending in the utopian socialism of the Soviet Union needs a level of analysis other than the ‘psychological’ for its explanation. On the other, it is 1

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Being Human: The Search for Order being argued that our acceptance of the truth of findings in areas like quantum mechanics (QM) is, to some extent at least, an act of faith; the limits of our cognitive apparatus have been exposed as we approach the very small, as the very large. As it attempts to tease out where these limits are in the context of various disciplines, this book becomes vastly more ambitious, controversial and potentially significant than its predecessor. The remainder of this preface will look at the potential benefits and pitfalls involved. The first pitfall is, quite simply, professional discourtesy; I regret if any specialist in any of the areas involved here feels slighted by this project. Hopefully, the immediately following discussion will restore any wounded pride. Any project like this one is written at a number of levels; there are benefits and pitfalls at each. In The Search for Mind, as has been noted, the creation of a new lingua franca between the separate disciplines and the emergence of synthesis were the benefits. Another such in the early 90s was quite simply the compilation of salient facts about different disciplines in a single book. This, of course, is now a much less valuable exercise; the facts are readily available, free of charge, on the Web. Moreover, there now is much less excuse for inaccuracy. At the Gradgrindian level of just the facts, then, the potential pitfalls outweigh the potential benefits. Finally, the challenge of providing as good a prose description of many of the concepts here as those available on the Web is a considerable one. The above, however, is not one of the foremost sources of danger. These relate to a complete insensitivity to the disciplines as actually practised, rather than their bald written expression. Such insensitivity can result in the type of obnoxiousness that we associate with the superannuatedly precocious. (Several uncomplimentary references to middle-aged enfants terribles will be made in the course of this book). What these malcontents do not realise is that the whole human psyche is involved in any authentic scientific enterprise; in particular, scientific formation involves the association of certain emotional connotations with certain findings in certain disciplines. Just as we cringe – or, at best, smile bravely – as an eight-year-old plays unfeelingly through a late Beethoven quartet, so do we find revolting a discussion of cosmology without an access of wonder, or cloning without a certain seriousness about the potential consequences. There are analogous patterns in every discipline from the natural and social sciences. Secondly, and much more subtly, practitioners of these disciplines often have robust rules of engagement with their disciplines, and with each other, whereof they remain silent. ‘Be right, or be fun’ is one of them. As any player of a contact sport knows, there are the rules, which are written down and implemented by the referee, and then the code, which is often rather rough justice administered by the players themselves. In an area like QM, the code is altogether more fugitive and yet compelling. Thus, we can understand Einstein’s comments about the early David Bohm that he got his results too cheaply as being about code-violation. Even if laconic in eventual expression, any putative breakthrough in a field must manifest evidence of thousands of hours spent fully engaged. Moreover, in a field like QM, one is serving at least two masters; the dictates of mathematics, and what can only be described as ‘physical intuition’. In that 2

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Preface vein, to take another example, Roger Penrose praises Newton for his superb physical intuition. Attempting to summarise a complex theory in a few prose paragraphs is a dangerous exercise; Richard Feynman would famously erupt if journalists asked him to do so. The danger, of course, is that of a reign of terror by epigram and bon mot as science becomes primarily a journalistic exercise. That said, a second, perhaps related danger of interdisciplinarity slouches toward us; though a committed Francophile, I will term it the ‘French disease’. Briefly, the dynamics of French philosophical dialogue – or continental claptrap, as it is less politely known – rarely succeed in surviving the transformation into English. What look like brilliant interdisciplinary insights in French send antennae quivering for kilometres in English as the flies follow them across the Channel. Alternatively, parody articles get accepted, as has actually happened; Derrida’s response was to express his pity for their author. Thus, we come to the nub of the problem; the sense-giving exercise can differ greatly across cultures. I write in full awareness that this whole book may strike a perfectly responsible reader as pointless. All that said, it is time to familiarise the reader with the different levels at which I believe this book may work, with appropriate caveat lectors. The first level, that of compilation of facts, could be better done with web agents tailored to suit particular interests, as has been alluded to. The second, the sense-giving one of weaving the facts into humanly digestible stories, is beyond the scope of these agents for maybe a decade; yet the web is full of these stories, and I’ve mentioned my concern about emulating their quality. The third level is that of discerning patterns in the future interplay of science and society. Finally, and most ambitiously, is the level of proposing solutions. So what are these solutions? What resources are their to neutralise the prospect that we, the post WW2 generations, will enter the halls of infamy as environmental vandals with selfish high-octane lifestyles, who indulged ourselves in a hydrocarbon feast as we polluted the biosphere irrevocably, producing nothing of lasting intellectual or artistic merit in the process? The first resource is, of course, the capacity to phrase and communicate messages like this. The second is the near-universal acknowledgement of moral lapse, as we revolt at being so labelled. Moral existence is a human ineluctable. The first problem is that for many this realization is not enough; anyone who really believed in global warming could never hop on a plane again. However, the rest of us may be sufficiently appalled by our selfishness to change completely to an environmentally low-impact, if professionally diminished, lifestyle. Therefore, the first level, that of sheer statement of fact, has been sufficient. A deeper level of engagement is necessary for those of us who wish to remain involved at the cutting-edge in the world as it is. Perfectly respected economists have a huge variety of possible solutions; Bush the younger does not lack for economic expertise around him. For some, however, their prescriptions are obviously illmotivated; economics, the steward of the household as dictated by its etymology, cannot consistently uphold a course of action that results in global warming. Coupled with the funding that Bush receives from oil companies, that argument may be quite sufficient for many to take to the streets in protest. A central argument of this book is 3

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Being Human: The Search for Order that such action is itself noetic, that is knowledge-obtaining; those who protest will learn in the manner that Kierkegaard described for conversion, that of a responsible leap of faith. Nothing further will be necessary for the activists who read this book. Alternatively, we may be attempting to find a single sense-giving principle from one or other area of human activity that will help us genuinely to change. We will find several such in physics, only to withdraw as the lack of the biological and specifically human contexts is felt. A central theme in this book is to honour the many real distinctions that exist between disciplines; despite books entitled the ‘Quantum Society’, links from physical finding to social reality are hard to find, and any suggested here are tentative in the extreme. Religion and philosophy used claim to have the capital to set up shop on their own. Here, philosophy is looked at as the application of rational argument in any context. The discussion of the putative future role of religion will bring this section to its close. It is of course a moot point to call what I am discussing ‘religion’. For what I am proposing is something stripped of its temporal as its sempiternal aspects. What I am suggesting for anyone who is not already out on the streets in this time of enormous crisis arises from an altogether fugitive zone. Religion always claimed some exclusive access to the ground of Being; it is argued here, on the contrary, that such access is so common that none of us get through a day without it. Whether through Buberian experience of the other in dialogue, sex, raves, sport, art, meditation, we seek to lose ourselves in the infinite as a practical daily exercise. Ironically, organised religion has historically persecuted such access, when it became a mass movement. The positive social role of religion, in this context, was to point out that self-actualisation through quotidian activity in the world was also important, and part of the same movement toward human wholeness. It is those for whom this final paragraph is anything other than nonsense who will benefit most from this book, just as, in turn, the biosphere and society will in the long run benefit most from them, as distinct from the more immediately activist.

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Introduction It has become a truism that we live at a time of unparalleled environmental and moral crisis. Truisms aside, the crisis is simultaneously deeper and subtler than it first appears. Not only do we not believe anything but, despite the current apparently exponential advances in certain types of technology, we do not know very much either. For example, we lack suitable technological resources to attack certain current environmental problems to a large extent because we lack knowledge about how ecosystems work. The gravity and protean nature of the current crisis begins to impress itself on us when we realise that we lack this knowledge precisely because there is no agency with sufficient moral authority to divert research monies in sufficient quantities to intensive long-term study of these issues. Thus, in general, we do not know because we have not asked. We have not asked because there are no compelling reasons to do so. The reasons there are (for example, environmental destruction) do not compel because our scale of values has become distorted. The imperatives due to next year’s company profit accounts or presidential election override those due to events that, though catastrophic, are perhaps a score of years away. As the environment deteriorates and much of the world starves, hitherto undreamt-of capital and technological resources accumulate in the West. Moreover, we differ from lemmings only in that we will drive, skidoo and fly over the cliff’s edge. It may seem scandalous to suggest, as Part II of this book does, that whatever its other problems, ours is also an age of ignorance. Apart from the currently omnipervasive technological marvels, more research is being done in more fields than at any other time in human history. However, as we’ll see in the accounts of physical and social sciences in this book, here appearances are misleading. For example, physics is ultimately founded on quantum mechanics, an account of reality so strange that Nobel laureates are prepared to submit that nobody understands it. Biology, at first sight, is profoundly atheoretic; its one apparent encompassing framework, the neoDarwinian synthesis, plays host to enormous explanatory gaps. Economics has reached such straits that transnational corporations can use economics professors as hired guns to justify policies whose consequences are unspeakable in environmental terms and in terms of employees’ lives. The gobbledygook that emerges featuring inter alia ‘maintaining competitiveness’, ‘supply-side theory’, ‘downsizing’ and so on is premised on imponderables. The connection with reality is slight when decisionmaking time comes and the axe falls. This bears dwelling on, even now. When it comes to macroeconomics, our situation is Orwellian. In effect, certain economic theories support the major centres where capital has accumulated i.e. the transnationals. Given the spurious nature of several of macroeconomics’ key concepts (for example, GNP) and the lack of any theory whose explanatory framework can successfully handle all stages of the economic cycle, it becomes possible to pick a theory which suits venal purposes. The major media 5

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Being Human: The Search for Order depend on the transnationals for income and will not stand in the way when this highly-selective economic theory gets aired. However, the real damage starts when this convenient set of concepts begins to influence state policy and the lives and tax dollars of ordinary men and women. To fight back involves not only the sound bite-hostile task of exposing the cankered roots of these concepts in the foundations of economics, but doing so in a mass medium which is beholden to the supporters of your opponent’s view. In our moral and epistemological vacuum, the power of money to create reality seems at first glance unassailable. One of the main tasks of this book is to take a second glance. We begin by outlining the separate components of the current crisis in Part 1. This crisis is seen as having five components which interact in various ways. That the first such component, the environmental, attracts much press is a healthy sign. Its many obvious manifestations in our daily existence include higher skin cancer rates, higher asthma rates in children, and species’ extinctions at a rate of dozens a day. Yet, as will be discussed at some length, this environmental devastation has been caused as the result of the industrial activity of just a fraction of humanity. By historical accident, it is the 12% of us of European stock who are responsible for the current mess. If the Eastern Pacific area continues to follow its current path, at least two billion able polluters will burden the biosphere by the middle of the 21st century. In combination with this trend comes another aspect of the demographic problem i.e. the amount of rural dwellers moving into ill-equipped cities. How long can this continue before the cities explode? The rural to urban drift can be thought of as due to a confluence of state policy, economic (mis)management and the innate human wish to broaden horizons. The mention of economic factors begs the question of how to characterise the current global economic state. A school of thought exists (for example, Saul 1992) which contends that, contrary to current appearances, we have been in recession since the 1973 oil crisis. In the meantime, devastating job losses in the corporate West have inculcated massive insecurity (see, for example, Utchitell et al., 1996). It will be argued in Part II that the rationales given for many job cuts are inadequate and are there mainly to provide a smokescreen for the naked abuse of power involved. For the moment, however, we need to focus on such issues as the necessity of tight fiscal policies. To a large extent, individual states are powerless against the might of transnational corporations. It is impossible, according to one account, for even relatively large countries like France to sustain independent interest rate policies, or to peg the exchange rate of their currency. International flight of capital can take place, computerassisted, in milliseconds. One increasingly popular solution has been the creation of much larger and more powerful trading blocks; thus, the EU and NAFTA (and perhaps South America’s Mercosur will suitably expand). However, this justification for creation of these blocks may not survive scrutiny. Just listen to George Soros (1998, p. 194); There are subtle ways in which currency speculation can be discouraged that fall well short of capital controls … in 1992 we at Soros Fund management found it practically impossible to go short of the Irish punt.

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Introduction A second wing of the attack on the nation-state comes from the environmental crisis. Where are the international regulatory bodies with the teeth to arbitrate in situations where Country A has irrevocably contaminated part or all of Country B? Moreover, the supernational trading organisations (like the WTO) claim charter to override individual countries’ environmental (and soon, possibly human rights) legislation. What seems a final nail in the coffin of the nation-state is the ugliness of many current nationalisms. The recent Yugoslavian break-up is a recent example; however, in other places the addition of religious fundamentalism to the tinderbox can create a de facto split (between believers and non-believers). Religious fundamentalism is above all the assertion of considerations appropriate only to the process of the individual’s spiritual formation at particularly sensitive crisis-points in that formation on civic life. (The comment about Savonarola that he was fool enough to believe that, since he could live on top of Mont Blanc for a moment, he thought that everyone else should do so in perpetuum, is appropriate here). Its re-emergence is the most certain sign that we have reached a period of moral and indeed epistemological crisis. The former dimension is partly due to cosmopolitanism and its consequence of moral relativism. The latter is due to our failure to characterise different types of knowledge (for example, the religious as opposed to the scientific) in terms of different movements of the human psyche. We shall spend much time discussing basic concepts in science (and indeed religion), which is the book’s ‘guide for the perplexed’ role. The aim here is twofold. On the one hand, we need a first aid manual against establishment-generated bamboozlement. Secondly, we need to be able to perceive when a theoretically neutral science like economics has been used in the service of partisan politics. Interdisciplinary claim-jumping is all the more dangerous in that one needs to know the elements of both disciplines in order to recognise the boundary. In Part II, then, we analyse the basic concepts from a large range of disciplines. Our gateway to the other disciplines is through a proposed new field called ‘Noetic Science’. This takes from Cognitive Science the notion that knowledge is primarily active and context-dependent, a ‘knowing how’ rather than a ‘knowing that’. In this light, the ancient Persian custom, narrated by Herodotus, of trusting a decision identical both while drunk and while sober makes sense. A decision should make sitting sense and walking sense, as the adage goes. It is argued that scientific theories typically include some real insights into reality coupled with much socially-and politically-conditioned flotsam. Finally, the theories involve hooks which capture the neophyte’s attention by playing on certain psychic structures. Doctrinaire adherence to any theory – for example, Marxism or Chomskyan linguistics – involves a commitment at many levels of our humanity ‘below’ the purely rational. Physics, the supposedly ‘purest’ science, will be our first stop. The eerily beautiful, timeless cosmos-scapes offered by geniuses like Einstein and Hawking will be outlined. The problem of the role of the observer in quantum mechanics (QM) also will detain us. From it we shall derive a compelling metaphor for the vast variety of relationships possible between mind and matter (or, more precisely, consciousness and the physical world). Modern physics has enunciated some new principles for science 7

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Being Human: The Search for Order itself; those of complementarity and the role of the observer will be emphasised. Finally, the modern physics view of the cosmos in terms of fields will be emphasised. Biology admits of a different set of explanatory criteria to physics, including inter alia teleology. The challenges set us by genetic technology are massive and the first major task in this section is to understand this technology. We must also carefully study some of the many controversial issues in the theory of evolution. The first social science to be perused is economics. As economic discourse has achieved a position of great power in our society, we must work hard to understand its basic concepts and consequent theoretical frameworks. It will be concluded that no encompassing theory of economics exists which can justify the current massive upheaval of human lives in the name of economic ‘truths’. Secondly, it will be argued that conscious human effort is the real de facto currency and economic systems should be judged worthwhile, inter alia, insofar as they justly reward this effort. The current situation involving piling enormous mounds of paper speculation on previous such mounds is unsustainable. It took Wall Street until 1969 to emulate its peak in 1929; who will bet against 2041? Our material progress has been due to technological advance rather than the deus ex machina of the market; it behooves us to study technology well. It is argued that it is, of itself, neither good nor evil; its many current misapplications are essentially political in genesis. The danger of its dehumanising us leads into the section on psychology. Here it is argued that instead of the misguided attempt to be scientific in the sense of the ‘hard sciences’, psychology should have concerned itself with the assertion of the reality of all facets of human nature. It is only on the back of a correctly worked-out psychology that an environmental philosophy and a correct aesthetics, inter alia, can be elaborated. A notion of human development involving assertion of all its aspects is worked out. With the compromising of the human bias has come a venal politics and rank conformism in society. Metaphors from biology are used in this section further to underpin the notion of the individual in liberal democracies. This assertion of individual rights is continued in a section investigating human development through use of mythic themes. We then pause for some time to consider the role of religious thought in what is now a secular society. A reformulation of both ethics and aesthetics is one immediate consequence. These basic concepts analysed, we need to take stock to examine what resources exist to deal with the current crises. For example, it may be the case that certain discoveries from the physical sciences constrain reality in interesting and (ultimately) ‘benevolent’ ways. Equally significantly, there may be no such central truths. A whole slew of books has come out in the past twenty years claiming, variously, that modern physics scientifically confirms the intuitions of Eastern mystics, that quantum mechanics strongly constrains the acceptable structure of self and society, and much more. We need to investigate these notions, particularly as they obviously qualify as claim-jumps. A second recent trend is the emphasis on a method of analysis (like complex systems theory) or concept (e.g. information, computation) which claims validity 8

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Introduction across all sciences, though itself belonging to none. Moral consequences are sometimes drawn e.g. the genetic heritage of all species is informationally describable; we are morally obliged to protect genetic diversity. So now we have a moral imperative based on what seems a scientific sine qua non (i.e. information). Moreover, this imperative resonates with our intuitions of what is worthy of preservation in our world; we feel any action we might take in its name is legitimate. Along with the claim-jumps (for example, that of evolutionary biologists into sociology) and dei ex machina, we shall also find other means of dominating what previously was rational discourse. One is the old millennial trick of eschatologizing a trend which, as we shall see, has even reached physics. Another is the old Inquisition trick; essentially, disallow certain types of ideas. This is currently being done quite effectively by the takeover of media by big business. These four moves are quite distinct from systems which are total Weltanschauungen. These involve positing certain attributes of the cosmos and our role in it, and producing an effective personal demonstration of these attributes and processes within ourselves. All religions originally began as Weltanschauungen. They inevitably transcend rational knowledge. Finally, the question is posed whether such Weltanschauungen can currently exist. Can an appropriate one save us? Whether it can or not, we will have learned much. The role of the intuitions of what is worthy of preservation in the world and the search for a scientific holy grail which will affirm them are the twin wings of the attack of this book. We must feel any action we take to resolve the current crisis is legitimized by the most certain knowledge of our day, that supplied by science. Moreover, such action must not only fit our moral intuitions; it must be the result of a moral demand. Hopefully, by the end of this book the reader will experience increased clarity on which of these moral imperatives directly relate to her.

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The Current Crisis

Dickens’ famous decree that the present is always simultaneously the best and worst of times should give us pause when using terms like ‘the current crisis’. This disclaimer aside, the current combination of real environmental degradation, conceptual confusion (the epistemological crisis) and moral paralysis gives us grounds to feel unique. This part briefly outlines the environmental, demographic, economic, political, epistemological and the moral/spiritual components of the crisis.

i. The environmental crisis The metaphor of a frog boiling is often used to describe our relation to the current environmental holocaust. A frog will feel no pain, and take no evasive action, while being boiled provided the water is initially tepid and only gradually warmed. In the same vein, we have recently gotten used to, inter alia, ozone depletion, new extremes in climate, and reduced sperm counts. Our very survival is threatened in the most direct possible way; yet few of us spend any time in agitating for necessary reforms, or even giving these threats the most basic attention. The sheer scale of the figures often makes the environmental crisis seem remote. Worldwide we lose 25 billion acres of topsoil annually, 97 per cent of old-growth North American forests are gone, the largest aquifer in the world will dry up within thirty-five years (Hawken, 1994). However, we don’t seem to be able to respond appropriately even when told that the simple pleasure of sitting outdoors in the sun is now life-threatening. Environmentalism is paid lip-service by all but those like Rush Limbaugh whose profession it is to provoke. However, it has yet to enter mainstream economics (which we deal with later) or – more disturbingly – resolve itself into a coherent ‘ecophilosophy’ (Fox, 1990). For the most radical environmental activists and thinkers, humans are a cancer on a biosphere which has rights equal to ours; ‘The most effective way an individual can protect the global environment … is to abstain from creating another human’ (Hall et al., 1995). A more moderate Green view is simple antiindustrialisation (Sachs, 1990). On a psychological level, environmentalists disagree about how we should regard ourselves in relation to the environment; as just another process in Nature’s dance, as an evil aberration, or (transpersonal ecology) as capable of opening the floodgates of self to experience oneness with the environment. Which of these is most correct, and what is the relevant evidence? As we shall see, modern physics can support anything (or nothing) in terms of such views. The grounding of Green thought in correct physical, economic, and metaphysical frameworks is one of the main tasks of this book. It takes very seriously the arguments that environmentalism has yet to address the North/South economic divide (Athanasiou, 1996) and that, in its radical form, it is actually potentially counter-productive to the task of saving the biosphere (Lewis, 1992). 11

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Being Human: The Search for Order Before revisiting the ecophilosophy debate, let us remind ourselves of the sheer scale of the environmental crisis. We shall first of all review the bare facts of the matter, starting with the influence of artificial chemicals on the environment. We shall then consider the political and commercial opposition to saving the environment. As we shall see, the problem is compounded by the lack of a coherent ‘ecophilosophy’ manifest, inter alia, in the extreme fractiousness of the environmental movement. Finally, some solutions are tentatively proposed. One of the tasks of the remainder of the book is to fill out the details of these solutions. Todd Hayne’s mid-nineties movie ‘Safe’ stars Julianne Moore as one of the increasing number of people who are becoming allergic to the essentially artificial environment in which we live, (try to) breathe, and have our being. That her real problem turns out to be the distance in her ‘intimate’ relationships is the kind of theme which will concern us later (in Part II). One statistic she is given on her way to the health farm is particularly appropriate here: of 60,000 or so (at a conservative estimate) artificial chemicals in our biosphere, only 10% have been tested for safety. The organochlorides have a starring role here. Only one natural organochloride is known to science; not coincidentally, it plays a crucial role in the maintenance of the ozone layer. The others, formed when chlorine and other halogens react with hydrocarbons, include DDT, PCBs and, most currently dangerous of all, the dioxins. These latter compounds emerge as by-products when chlorine is used in a bleaching process. ‘Whiter than white’ has a huge environmental cost. So stable and insidious are organochlorides that each breath we take involves the inhalation and exhalation of between 10 and 20 types of them (Hawken, 1994, 41–3). The danger inherent in these chemicals is best represented by the hole in the ozone layer caused by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). However, and as close to home as could be, they also act to disturb our entire endocrine system by mimicking hormones. One possible result is the 50% drop in sperm counts registered among Parisians since 1938; the finding has been replicated elsewhere. In their monograph ‘Our Stolen Future’, Colborn et al. (1997) detail the cost to the biosphere of artificial chemicals. The human body, like that of any higher animal, has hundreds of different receptors for naturally occurring chemicals. Some of these are derived from those of insects; as a result, humans are sensitive to drugs derived from the coca plant, and other such plants. Let us focus for the moment on the type of factor that may have caused the drop in sperm-count alluded to above. Estrogen, the main female hormone, and testosterone, which probably requires no introduction, are very similar in chemical structure. However, diethylbestrol (DES), first synthesised in 1938, can mimic estrogen, though sharing few points of structure in common with it, leading to speculation that drug receptor capacity derives also from quantum level attributes. Remarkably, the pesticide DDT, first announced also in that seminal (or not) year, and bearing as little resemblance to estrogen as DES, can also cause feminization by acting as a mock-estrogen. The list continues with PCBs, which have been saddled with the blame for some herring-gull colonies featuring many same-sex nests (though, of course, the issue of the prevalence of homosexuality in nature is itself moot). Finally, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), arising from the incomplete burning of any 12

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The Current Crisis carbon-containing material, actually bond with the DNA in the nuclei of cells, causing the relentless advance of cancer (Colborn et al., p. 17). The freak’s gallery of fish from the Cuyahoga river, and androgyny of beluga whales in the St. Lawrence, has an utterly shocking human counterpart not just in sperm counts, but in the consequences of radiation exposure. Even organochlorides are relatively benign over time compared to plutonium (see Bertell, 1985, pp. 22, 209–10, and also p. 399 for further references). Making Plutonium infinitely more dangerous are two separate phenomena, one biological and one sociopolitical. First of all, plutonium is naturally attracted to bone. Secondly, the efforts made to give public relations support to the nuclear industry (we shall use ‘greenwash’ to describe this general process) is unparalleled in recent politics. Bertell (1985, x–xiii) gives several examples of cover-ups of serious nuclear accidents in the USA and Russia by the authorities. In like vein, the French were not informed of any specific danger to their health, post-Chernobyl, even after the massive death rates became known. The English have continually used their superior geopolitical clout when Ireland has complained about their using the Irish Sea as a dumping-ground for nuclear waste. In particular, Sellafield has recently been exposed as full of cover-ups, with a managerial culture allowing fraudulent accounting of waste. Missile envy seems a common thread in all these events. Again, we can seriously err in forgetting the environmental holocaust in excommunist countries. A lake called Karchay near the former secret city of Chelyabinsk can give a lethal dose of radioactivity in one hour to anyone standing beside it (Hertsgaard, 1992). This writer cannot find in his range the capacity to do justice to the horrors that were inflicted on the people of Kazakhstan as the USSR did its human experiments with radioactivity exposure on them; he can only refer to the novelist de Lillo (1998, p. 800), whose Underworld attempts to describe these horrors. It is the victims who are blind. It is the boy with skin where his eyes ought to be, a bolus of spongy flesh, oddly like a mushroom cap, springing from each brow … It is the man with the growth beneath his chin, a thing with a life of its own, embryonic and pulsing. It is the dwarf girl …

Feshback et al. (1992, pp. 73–5) describe the result of diverting the feeders to the Aral Sea. The storms of chemically-laden dust … were by the 1980s poisoning farmlands 1,200 miles away.

Global warming due to human activity is as established a fact as most in the ‘scientific’ canon (Zimmer, 1996). In 2001 the intergovernmental panel on climate change upped the ante considerably on its warnings; the autumn of 2000 was the wettest in Britain since records began in 1766. However, the recent explosion of Mount Pinatubo was a reminder both of how devastating natural events can be to the climate and how resilient the biosphere is. To put things in perspective, I began writing this book from a 13

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Being Human: The Search for Order place in Ontario which is almost 2,000 km. from the North Atlantic. A mere 10,000 years ago, it was a coastal area. With the resistance to the global warming hypothesis, we come to what will be a familiar juncture. Until – and indeed after – the seas come crashing into Ottawa, many scientists will not accept the hypothesis’ truth. Computer models supporting the hypothesis track increases in CO2 from as far back as 1860. The temperature pattern suggests CO2 and sulfates have been taking an increasingly active role in the regulation of climate, proving the global warming hypothesis. The rearguard action fought by some antediluvian scientists allowed several countries to escape their obligations as committed to at the Rio summit by dint of ‘carbon trading’ by providing political capital. Following the more recent Tokyo negotiations, the issue of whether planting trees to compensate for fossil fuel consumption is effective has become moot. Current models suggest that it is only in their youthful phase that trees, through photosynthesis by day, produce more oxygen than they consume, through respiration, by night. Of the Green trinity reduce-reuse-recycle, only the first seems applicable to fossil fuels. We can take it, however, that even in the best-case scenario, where the US breaks the habit of a lifetime and accepts the Kyoto protocol, low-lying island groups like the Maldives are doomed. (Mind you, the events of September 11, 2001, concentrated minds in the US; the previously isolationist Bush administration paid its huge debt to the UN, and may now be inclined to ratify such previously disdained legislation as the 1999 UN convention for the suppression of financing for terrorism. Who will now bet against ratification of other international treaties?) When it comes to forests, the facts are clear-cut (apologies!). Eighty-eight per cent of coniferous forests in Eastern and Central Europe are endangered. Meanwhile, we lose between 0.6% and 3% of our rain forests each year. 1995 saw the worst ever clearing to date of Brazilian rainforest. As Goldsmith (1993, 178–9) explains, this is bad economics as well as bad ecology. Along with their other biospheric functions, rain forests perform a massive cooling role; the cost to substitute this by artificial means is calculated at about 150 trillion dollars (ibid.). Let us very briefly mention some other aspects of the environmental Shoah. Only two-thirds (and shrinking) of the world’s land area supports any appreciable biological activity; we have lost 50% of our original wetlands to our artificial environment. Famously, it was found that several thousands of different species can reside in a single rainforest tree. Millions of these trees with their unknown species are killed off each year. Gell-Mann (1994, 330–1) suggests the extinction rate today may be comparable to any in the earth’s past. However, we will not see the speciation with which nature bounces back (for example, the dinosaurs’ roles were filled by mammals). Extinction is a massive problem also in that we lose many possibly ‘miracle’ cures inherent in the species we destroy. As has been mentioned, the American Ogalola aquifer loses 20 billion gallons of water annually; elsewhere, Libya and Israel have at least got unreplenishable water supplies in common. To replace the extinguishing species, we are producing a glut of domestic animals; chickens outnumber us more than 3 to 1. Nor is there any terrestrial escape; along with the famous ozone hole in the Antarctic we can mention severe air pollution in the Arctic (Zimmer, 1996). With the already-mentioned loss of topsoil we 14

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The Current Crisis can couple massive habitats loss for large mammals (manifest most of all in Africa’s Serengeti plain) and land degradation. Let us now investigate how commercial and political forces exacerbate the situation. Stauber et al. (1995) point out that, since the publication of Silent Spring, corporate interests have worked hard to menace, discredit and undermine environmentalists. Japan’s government recently introduced a cartoon ‘Mr. Pluto’ figure to accustom kids to the joys of plutonium. Even so acute a critic as John Ralston Saul (1992) praised the Anglo-Dutch Shell company who, it is now revealed, actively connived at the genocidal measures of the Nigerian government against the Ogoni people. Shell’s moral nadir was its role in the judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Shell will pop up again and again in the course of this book as a case study of a multinational that, having engaged in questionable activities, saw the writing on the wall and began to mend its ways. As I write (in 1999), viewers of stations like MTV are regaled with video clips of anthropologists who are funded by Shell to study native cultures. Moreover, having realised that even the most optimistic estimates foresee an end to fossil fuels, Shell has begun to invest massively into research in alternative energy sources that are non environmentally-destructive . The PR machine has been hard at work cranking out ads in, for example, the October 1999 Scientific American (Vol. 281, Number 4); Ignoring alternative energy is no alternative. Keeping pace with the world’s accelerating demand for energy and supplying power to remote areas require (sic) Shell to pursue renewable resources like solar, biomass and wind energy. We established Shell international Renewables with a US $500 million commitment to develop these new opportunities commercially. (p. 13)

The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away; some parenthesised weasel words at the bottom of p. 14 indicate that perhaps all is not well; Each Shell company is a separate and distinct entity. In this advertisement, the words ‘Shell’, ‘we’, ‘us’, and ‘our’ refer, in some places, to the Royal Dutch/Shell Group as a whole, and in others to an individual Shell company or companies.

As is observed below, Monsanto, in its new incarnation, will probably be the next company to go this route. Only rarely, in the case of monopolies like Microsoft, will governments even pretend to intervene effectively against transnationals. For the most part, what will happen is a change of heart in the company itself, whether brought on by a fall in the share price (as was the case with Monsanto) or not. Moreover, despite the moral abyss that was Shell’s position in Nigeria, it might claim that its actions had to be seen in the historical context of the attempted secession by Biafra, which SaroWiwa had a hand in thwarting. Its behaviour was nonetheless reprehensible in the extreme and a campaign sustained, inter alia, by the Sierra Club, contributed to the greening of Shell. 15

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Being Human: The Search for Order Let us look at another example of effective action. I can now state openly and without fear of libel action that McDonald’s was instrumental in burning tropical rainforest, because of the courageous actions of two English Greenpeace supporters. This is almost a perfect case study of the right type of action to heal these wounds and we’ll now spend some time studying it. What is also of significance here is that both principals were part of a splinter Greenpeace group which was continually being infiltrated by private investigators hired by McDonald’s et al. Indeed, there were moments of farce when investigator was pursuing investigator; another occurred when one female called, coincidentally, Shelley started an affair with an activist, visiting his family, but eventually leaving behind only her cat as a memento of his dealings with McDonald’s. (Vidal, 1997, 71–2) The two principals in the McLibel case are Helen Steel, a Greenpeace volunteer, and Dave Morris, an ex-postman. In the period 1989–90, together with three others, they distributed leaflets entitled ‘What’s wrong with McDonald’s?’ which criticised the company while focusing on its particular targeting of children. Five years later, all of them received libel writs from McDonald’s; only Helen and Dave refused to apologise. The famously antiquated British legal system does not allow legal aid for libel actions, so the defendants had to proceed without counsel. Adding insult to injury, that same system touchingly assumes standards of integrity and truth from lawyers which are inaccessible to the general public, leaving the defendants at a further not inconsiderable disadvantage (details may be obtained from [email protected] as well as the Vidal, 1997 book). However, the resulting libel trial was the longest in British legal history. During the 80s, this writer remembers seeing a full-page greenwash ad from McDonald’s in a British Sunday paper categorically denying that rainforest had been cut down for beef for McDonald’s burgers. That among other lies has now been shown for what it is (Vidal, 1997, p. 158). Remarkably, it is from within McDonald’s itself that the most palpable hits have come. For example, Robert Beavers, Senior Vice-President of McDonald’s, mistaking a McDonald’s 1984 pamphlet for the Greenpeace factsheet, criticized its confessions about the nutritional value of McDonald’s foods. Specifically, McDonald’s have been forced publicly to confess to being in the top 1–2% of litterers in Britain. Moreover, the wood fibre for their packaging is often sourced from old-growth forests. Its food is low fibre, high in fat, full of saturated fats, and there are strong links between a diet based on these foods and heart diseases and cancer. They deliberately target children; in mid-1990’s Canada, they challenged kids to taste the ‘adult’ Archburger in billboard after billboard. Their treatment of animals in factory farms is cruel beyond belief. Moreover, as anyone who has endured the McDonald’s slogan ‘If you have time to lean, you have time to clean’ can testify, the work conditions are appalling. Low wages and non-unionized staff is one aspect; however, their preference for hiring ex-army personnel to manage their outlets hints at something much darker. Finally, in an act of breathtaking irresponsibility, McDonald’s outlets in the Philippines, Turkey and Hong Kong continued to use ozone-damaging CFCs in their copious packaging long after they had been effectively banned elsewhere. Astonishing 16

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The Current Crisis though its revelations are, the McLibel trial is but the thin end of the wedge. We can take it that, beneath the corporate relations camouflage, acts of enormous brutality and environmental irresponsibility are being perpetrated by many huge corporations. Their major recent achievement is securing more consent from political states in their drive to amass capital. For example, it was seriously suggested in Ontario that high-school students should begin learning the skills specific to today’s software. By that is not meant the useful skills of logical analysis required for intelligent computer use and programming, it is rather the mindset appropriate to Windows XP as distinct from say, Linux. Yet the protests continue. Unfortunately, it took the de facto martyrdom of Ken SaroWiwa to bring Shell’s malfeasance into focus. Suddenly, in the face of opposition from moderate environmentalists like the Sierra Club (the source is [email protected]), Shell confessed that certainly, and contrary to its earlier insistence that no such environmental degradation existed, it would assist in cleaning up this now extant mess. Moreover, there are strong indications that Shell has Ken Saro-Wiwa’s blood on its hands in the most direct possible fashion. Owens Wiwa, Ken’s brother, testified before the US Congress that Shell had offered to intercede on behalf of Ken were the environmental campaign to be called off. A final irony is that having collaborated in the deaths of at least 200 Ogoni villagers, Shell suddenly developed fears about the safety of its own personnel. The greening of Monsanto has been less traumatic. Perish the thought, but this is perhaps because the options open to a transnational in terms of crushing dissent were fewer in England’s green and pleasant land than in a democratically-challenged country like Nigeria. However, at least two martyrs were created, as a grassroots challenge to biotechnology succeeded. GM foods had gained widespread acceptability in the US by the mid-90’s; a pricing campaign that undercut the price of natural food helped greatly. It was confidently expected that the formula could be repeated on the European side of the pond. Trial plantings of GM sugarbeet were initiated in Ireland , and other EU countries hosted various deliberate aberrations of nature. The beet was modified to give resistance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ herbicide, and itself a controversial product. To Monsanto’s surprise, a campaign of uprooting GM crops spread like wildfire across the EU, culminating in the arrest of the British peer Peter Malchett (Borger, 1999). Eventually, a coalition of France, Italy, Denmark, Greece, and Luxembourg faced down the British and Irish in June 1999 at a meeting of EU environment ministers. The stakes were higher for Monsanto even than immediately appeared to be the case. The food giants Cargill and Archer Daniels had just previously announced a policy of segregating GM and non-GM crops(ibid.). This was bad news to their suppliers, the US farmers, who are beginning to wonder why they have been misled so much. Monsanto’s share price plummeted from $62 to $38, a loss in real terms of over $2 billion. It is fair to say that the subsequent offer by Monsanto chair Robert Shapiro to abandon research on the ‘Terminator’ gene, and to explain their position, is a surrender (New Scientist, 16/10/99, p. 7). In the meantime, however, they continue to press their claim of legal expenses of more than £400,000 on Clare Watson, an Irish citizen who took a public-interest lawsuit against them. It is 17

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Being Human: The Search for Order worth noting how frail their line of reasoning was. Clare’s counsel, many of whom acted pro bono, claimed that the EU legislation required that GM planting should result in a ‘close to zero’ risk. The judgement was that a ‘high’ risk would be unacceptable, but that a ‘close to zero’ requirement was gilding the lily (which Monsanto may soon do). A low risk was acceptable. Judges in Ireland are political appointees. Clare’s life is ruined. How low is low? The case of Arzad Pusztai is an end-of-millennium equivalent of the Galileo affair, with the transnationals playing the role of the Vatican, and the scientific establishment playing that of the Holy Office (Coghlan et al., 1999). Indeed, Pusztai now refuses to talk to such pillars of scientific rectitude as New Scientist (ibid.), for which refusal he can hardly be blamed. Pusztai, the author of almost 300 refereed scientific papers, initiated some research at his base in the Rowett Institute with every expectancy of giving GM potatoes a clean bill of health. The finding that, inter alia, intestinal lining is thinned by these crops came as a surprise to him. (Perhaps one of his mistakes was to work on rats rather than the far more media-friendly monarch butterfly, whose being threatened by GM pollen has uncontroversially given pause). The Rowett Institute initially supported Pusztai in his publicising his results on TV; without warning, however, they then suspended him, and published (on the Web) a highly selective excerpt from the research. The Royal Society denounced him; remarkably, the medical journal The Lancet rallied around and published his work. The witch-hunt could hardly have been more blatant; it is easy to pick holes in any paper, however brilliant, and the vitriol to which he was subjected caused Pusztai to have a heart-attack. A subsequent New Scientist editorial (15/09/01, p. 3) revealed that a steep learningcurve had been scaled. The Lancet, in association with the New England Journal of Medicine, intervened to insist that authors, not commercial sponsors, make the final decision on publication of the results of drug trials; These included the case of Knoll Pharmaceuticals, which for seven years blocked publication of findings suggesting that generic thyroid drugs worked just as well as one of its brand-name products. (ibid.)

The transnational companies, as we shall further investigate in Part II, increasingly have the political states in their pocket. In Western liberal democracies, we at least have the right to protest. The protest of non-democracies allying themselves with transnationals is truly a terrifying one. The recent accession of China to the WTO, protested at in the strongest possible terms by John Sweeney of the AFL/CIO American union conglomerate, may in fact usher in a new era of protectionism in response (Hutton, 1999). We get some inkling of the problems facing us with consideration of this kind of public statement from the Indonesian government: ‘… because its 170 million people have the same aspirations as anyone in the United States, 20 percent of its forests must be converted to plantations’ (World Resources, 1990–1). The root system of trees has an enormous role to play in preventing flooding; the recent floods in Bangladesh were soon repeated in Indonesia. Furthermore, those 18

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The Current Crisis same Indonesian aspirations have no doubt been invoked to justify the genocide in East Timor, an act to which the West turned a blind eye (see Herman and Chomsky, 1988, who claim a transnational sliceup of Indonesia took place in the 1960’s) until the summer of 1999. An unholy trinity of Sukarto, McDonald’s and Shell gave one metaphor for the future, a metaphor that still chills after the demission of one, and the partial reform of another. However, matters seem – at least on the surface – a little worse. We have few intellectual resources to help us assert ourselves against this. The production of such is one of the major tasks of this book; let us concern ourselves for the moment with the barrenness of ecophilosophy. This barrenness leaves the field open for the kind of intellectual prostitution we witness when corporatism buys its own academics; in this context, let us briefly examine the role of a certain Prof. Ashworth in the McLibel trial; Professor Graham Ashworth, head of the ‘Tidy Britain Group’ (TBG), a governmentapproved organisation is dedicated to keeping the litter down. TBG got £250,000 a year from McDonald’s … Professor Ashworth said he believed that McDonald’s was involved with TBG out of a genuine concern for litter. (Vidal, 1995, pp. 270–1)

Yet, to take but one example of hard facts, Mcdonald’s advertising campaign itself claimed that the number of burgers it sold between 1955 and 1985 would, if put in a line, go to the moon and back five times over – imagine the packaging! Moreover, ‘McDonald’s has continued to use styrofoam in many places, including the UK … , which breaks down in the body into the carcinogen styrene oxide’ (op. cit., p. 209). Truly, Ashworth was on a sticky wicket. The dearth of consensus in environmentalist thought is dealt with, inter alia, in Nolan, 1992. Probably as a consequence, the fractiousness of Green politics is legendary; due partly to this, the charismatic leader of the early German greens, Petra Kelly, died tragically. At one point, the erstwhile radicals Greenpeace found themselves attacked from the left by Earth Island Institute for their support for a dolphin bill before the US Congress (La Baddie, 1995). The Canadian Paul Watson was too radical for Greenpeace, though his forceful fisheries conservation tactics are now Canadian government policy. Much of this fracas is typical of young political movements; more relevant to the concerns of this book are issues relating to how environmentalists should see themselves in relation to their environment. On this there is absolutely no consensus. Some views are Arcadian myths, with Nature yielding up its bounty and (presumably) wildlife committing voluntary suicide for the dinner table (Goldsmith, 1993, 174). Others, like those featured in Sachs (1990) are profoundly anti-technological. As economics, they agree with Enlightenment French Physiocrats that value is added solely by natural processes. Still others (e.g. Cavan, 1995) are essentially pro-technology and the market system, a kind of ecological hip capitalism. For the moment, we will look at the two most elaborated ‘ecophilosophies’ i.e. deep ecology and transpersonal ecology. Deep ecology has been attributed as many different 19

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Being Human: The Search for Order meanings as ‘paradigm’ or even ‘go’ (the latter has over 60 meanings). It can rightly be associated with strong non-anthropocentrism i.e. refusing to regard nature only in the context of utility for man. However, in the words of its founder, it boils down to a relatively simple statement: The deeper ecological movement tries to clarify the fundamental presuppositions underlying our economic approach in terms of value priorities, philosophy and religion. In the shallow movement, argument comes to a halt long before this. (Naess, 1986)

Naess has developed his own rather arcane mark-up language for explication of his basic system. For example, an exclamation mark following a noun indicates that the concept pointed to by that noun demands reverence, thus, Life! As an early reviewer of this manuscript pointed out, this use of bangs and shrieks ups the crackpot index worryingly. Fox (1990) points out that deep ecology is thus deeply flawed. We might validly start such a system with God! i.e. God should be reverenced. This is of sufficient ‘depth’ to qualify as a deep ecology imperative. From this, however, we can proceed from pointing to God’s giving humans dominion over the earth and beasts of the field to conclude that environmentalism is downright sinful. Fox (op. cit., 149–96) outlines and in turn refutes this and other alternative ecophilosophies. The anthropocentric ones are based on nature’s instrumental value to us and the contrasting intrinsic value theories include biological ethics and autopoietic ethics. The former is best encapsulated by Lovelock’s hypothesis (Goldsmith, 1993) that the Biosphere is itself a living entity which he calls Gaia (Lovelock’s definition of life, it should be noted, is encompassing enough to include coral reefs and any self-maintaining systems). ‘Autopoiesis’ is yet another term for self-regulation due to the Chilean polymath Umberto Maturana; neither of these instrumental value-based ethical systems can satisfy Fox. Goldsmith’s Gaianism, in particular, as we’ve seen, reeks of Arcadianism; he cites Herbert Kraemer’s description of primitive societies, seeking to assuage natural and societal catastrophe by religious ritual, as a desideratum for solution of current problems (Goldsmith, 1993, 174). The attempts by writers like Fritjof Capra to weave a world view from some synthesis of autopoiesis, complex systems and panpsychism will exercise us in the ‘Weltanschauung’ section toward the end of this book. Fox eventually plumbs for transpersonal ecology as a valid ecophilosophy. Perhaps surprisingly, it is again Naess who provides the best introduction to this position: ‘Care flows naturally if the ‘self’ is widened and deepened so that protection of free Nature is felt and conceived as protection of ourselves’ (Fox, 1990, p. 216). Fox argues that all ethical concerns must be preceded and continually informed by some keynote experiences. He argues that the expansion of the ego-boundaries required for true environmental concern is a willed psychological movement rather than some kind of involuntary surrender. We shall dwell on this for some time for a number of reasons. First of all, the restructuring of environmentalist thought affords a vista from which the main themes and style of argument of this book can easily be discerned. 20

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The Current Crisis We shall often take a precipitous descent from the abstract and sub specie aeternitatis to the concrete and immediate. The build-up to the pre-millennial WTO talks that took place in Seattle in late 1999 will allow us see the crisis in green thought at its most stark. It is impossible for a thinking person not to feel impaled on the horns of a dilemma when contemplating the two sides in action there. On the one hand, the WTO claims that its edicts are legally more binding than any other international law. Consequently, Craig Ventner’s patents on human genes, taken out in the USA, will be asserted by the WTO to have legal force throughout the world. On the other hand, the values enunciated by some radical greens (Vulliamy, 1999) are disturbing for ultimately the same reason; as the WTO asserts a set of values in which commercial considerations override what we’ll call (for lack of a better word, the search for which is a major part of this book) ‘human’ values, so also do these greens fail to make a distinction between the human and the rest of Nature. We should not be surprised to find, then, that Deep ecology literature and meetings use the term favoured by America’s right-wing militia movement; New World Order. And the ecologists do find common cause with much of the mystical … culture of America’s neo-Nazi right. (ibid.)

Intellectual respectability is given to such extreme views – a tiny minority among environmentalists – by academic appointments such as that of Peter Singer to the chair of philosophy at Princeton. He recommends, inter alia … legal infanticide in cases when children are born with disabilities … a 28-day period in which parents can decide to let their children live or legitimately kill them.

We shall review an analogous argument by Kitcher (1997), proposing therapeutic abortion in such cases, and further dictats from Singer, later.(Charitably expressed, Singer’s position is a reductio ad absurdum of utilitarianism, as we see below).Why Kitcher in particular does not stress genetic check-up of the parents as a first line of defence is difficult to understand. However, the physically challenged, in any case, have minds of their own; At (Singer’s) first lecture, a protest by 200 people in wheelchairs became so furious that the hallowed campus was treated to the remarkable spectacle of state troopers manhandling the disabled away. (ibid.)

We have already visited Hall et al. (1995) analysis of the environmental costs of US babies. This viewpoint was taken to an extreme in a set of articles in the Earth First! magazine written by Christopher Manes under the pseudonym, appropriately enough, of Miss Ann Thropy which welcomed Aids ‘as a means of controlling the population’ (Vulliamy, op. cit.). The attempt to put forward a coherent vision that preserves the 21

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Being Human: The Search for Order ethos of sustainability while doing justice to the human is, to reiterate, perhaps the major moral concern of this book. Let us return to Fox. What he is proposing as a coherent ecophilosphy is essentially the old Indian notion of Advaita, the lack of differentiation between subject and object. (Nor do more recent analyses like that of Weston (1999) get us any further; the calls on p. 5 for a deeper immersion in the philosophy go unheard, as we end in much the same confusion).It can be traced as a counter-current to conventionally Christian spirituality, particularly in millennial movements like the Brethren of the Free Spirit (Cohn, 1970), right up to the present day. Remarkably, as we shall see, QM, promiscuous as ever in its alliances, provides a proof that it is metaphysically a valid position. The spiritual disciplines like yoga which have been developed to sustain the Advaita insight allow one consistently to allow it inform every aspect of one’s being in its intellectual, physical and emotional form. Though Indian in origin, it came into the West through the teachings of Plotinus. The literal translation of Advaita is ‘not two’; German ‘zwei’ is direct line of descent here. Etymology aside, the questions that we in the West immediately ask are likely to relate to the precise degree of insanity of the idea. I am the Cosmos? Indeed, I generate it? Advaita rests on a personal realisation of an (assumed) cosmic reality and so counts as a Weltanschauung, to be discussed in Part 3. However, some issues can be taken care of right away. ‘I’ tend to identify; one moment I am a Celtics supporter, another moment a father, another moment a hard-edged scientist reading this rubbish (see Ó Nualláin, 1995, chapter 9). ‘I’ rests most securely as pure observation. Secondly, we can factor out mind as thoughts, and body as sensations (Mahadevan, 1977). We can learn exercises which reinforce these realisations. We can also defend ourselves intellectually more effectively than may immediately seem to be the case. We shall soon come across several facts from modern physics which indicate that the advaitic position has as much validity as its rivals’. John von Neumann (1955) long ago proved that physical experimental situations can validly be looked at as consciousness instantiating experimenter, apparatus and phenomenon to be observed. The moment just before observation, when the wave function is dispersed over all of space and contains all possibilities, is for advaitins the essence of reality. There is as yet no duality of subject and object. For advaitins, all else is illusion. The many consequences from Bell’s theorem (Herbert, 1993) include the notion that everything is fundamentally interlinked. I argue below that the decision of where to put the dividing-line between subject and object is the most crucial one possible for metaphysics. Let us return to transpersonal ecology, which now probably seems relatively tame in its claims. We immediately ask how to maintain this indifferentiation. You go to a bank and sign your name; here, at least is absolute subject/object differentiation. Moreover, much of our modern artificial environment with its appalling architecture does not lend itself to immersion. Obviously, a sounder foundation for environmentalism is needed than an occasional psychological opening to one’s surroundings. This tension is recreated in daily life by the unassailable imperatives people need to self-realise. Sportsmen will insist on their being allowed to use ski lifts, golf courses 22

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The Current Crisis and squash courts; academics must often take global-warming-inducing flights; businessmen will insist that some impact on the environment is a sine qua non. Where these activities involve authentic self-realisation, some way can always be found to minimise their negative environmental impact. I shall use the term ‘act of alienation’ as a noun to indicate such activity. An act of alienation is a human act which consciously and responsibly attempts to achieve a state of being characterised by more competence, truth and freedom. We shall soon see business ideas which fulfil these criteria. (This is quite different to Shell’s and McDonald’s activities in their halcyon days). Given the central role of the concept ‘act of alienation’ in this book, it behooves us to give it our attention. Alienation is usually related to Durkheim’s anomie, and conceptualised in a negative manner as; a mode of experience in which the person experiences himself as alien … (not as) creator of his own acts – but his acts and their consequences have become his masters. (Fromm 1963, 120)

Marxian alienation involves the person’s own act becoming to him an alien power standing over and against him, instead of being ruled by him (op. cit., 121). Given that Fromm’s concerns are in many cases identical to those of this book (in that he complains that ‘science, business and politics have lost all foundations and proportions which make sense humanly’ (120)), some explanation is necessary. For Fromm, alienation is a fortiori a negative state of affairs; here, the act of alienation is seen as crucial for how anything comes to be at the fundamental, quantum – mechanical level as for how the cultural products characterising a society are created. As is discussed below, the original Hegelian notion of alienation also has a creative sense. Hegel is concerned with Geist (roughly, the world-spirit) as it constructs intellectual and social edifices and projects itself, so to speak, outside itself (Aron, 1965, 147–8). It is argued in this book that this self-projection is common to whole societies and wave-functions as they differentiate at observation into experimenter and decohered system. (As we see below, Schopenhauer’s ‘der Wille’ is a related concept). Let us investigate first at a psychological level. Fromm speaks of a contrastive state in which one is a ‘creator of his own acts’; how much of the time do we have full control of our acts and their consequences? Occasionally, yes; the result in the long term is crashing boredom. In order fully to realise ourselves, we seem to need to be at various points and in some ways strange to ourselves. A second take on this is the domain that anthropologists, as distinct from cognitive scientists have staked out for themselves (Keller et al., 1996). They look at the religion, law, artefacts and other such manifestation of Geist’s acts of alienation (to put it in Hegelian terms) in the society. If their focus, like the Kellers’, is cognitive anthropology, they then try and characterise the knowledge and beliefs required to behave appropriately with respect to these manifestations, which are considered as having an objective, independent reality. The imperative on the individual arising from the manifestation of Geist in the society are absolute. J.M. Synge, famously found in the Aran Islands a state resembling the end of history in Das Kapital (Kiberd, 1995, 489). Synge’s initial impression was of 23

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Being Human: The Search for Order bilingual renaissance men, who could ‘manage a curragh with extraordinary verve and dexterity … farm simply, burn kelp, … mend nets, build and thatch a house … (quoted in Kiberd, ibid.). The Marxist influence can be detected in it is likely that much of the intelligence and charm of these people is due to the absence of any division of labour, and to the correspondingly wide development of each individual. (ibid.)

However, his own unsuitability for this Parnassus eventually became apparent to Synge. The skills inculcated in the islanders require an utter surrender of self to achieve; eventually, he shied away from the ascesis required to produce this extraordinary culture. It is envisaged in the framework of this book that imperatives impact on the individual from acts of alienation at the level of what we call (for want of a better word) the world-spirit, the nation, the psychological development expected by the society, the family and, above all, the unfolding of his or her individuality. Thomas Mann emphasised that we live not just our own lives, but those of the zeitgeist; indeed, we sometimes dream the dream of another race. Sometimes, we need to find a place to hide from these often harsh imperatives, as well as the mercantilist and other demands which hitchhike with them. The synthesis offered in this book will afford distinction of hitchhiker and invited passenger. We don’t yet need the full apparatus outlined in this book. What is remarkable about Fox’s work is how mired he actually is in the mechanistic worldview which ecophilosophy claims to criticise. The movement which loosens the ego boundaries is psychological; indeed, the whole process is to be an exercise in self-deception. What is real are physical objects and the facts of hard science; overcome by their truth, we are to rearrange our psychic furniture from time to time to include the front lawn. Then we return to our old attitude and work hard on our careers, which now include environmental agitation. Such lines of thought are the fatally inevitable results of over a century of appallingly bad psychology. In the terms of this book, I wish to reserve the word ‘psychology’ for description of acts of mind which are not obviously the results of acts of alienation, or similarly easily validable. (Fromm (1963) hints at something close; ‘The task of the science of man is to arrive eventually at a correct description of what deserves to be called human nature’.) All work we do as self-realisation in authentic existence can be described in purely objective terms. We can talk of the breadth of knowledge of a physicist or the technique of a musician in these terms, which should be the entire province of science. The former is physics, the latter is musical science. That this is a break from the academic psychology tradition comforts me (see Ó. Nualláin, 1995, chapter 2, and 2000a). We explore the enormous consequences of this move below. However, we may need to speak also of the affective qualities of the musician’s work. Here we need psychology to distinguish finer from less fine psychic acts. Technique gives some hints; a better musician will often boast a superset of his inferiors’ technique. Moreover, we now know emotion is informational; what higher 24

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The Current Crisis realms are being pointed to in, for example, Beethoven’s late quartets? Lacking this knowledge as pure science, we need psychology as a buffer. Last century’s attempt to make psychology a hard science must now seem even more laughable. In a recent book review (ibid.) I point to the etymology of the word. ‘Psychology’ is the ‘Logos’ of the ‘Psyche’ which can be rendered as ‘The search for order in human affairs’. Currently, so many popular books describe themselves as psychology that ‘pop psychology’ is an accepted bookshelf category. The search for order therein normally consists of attempt, of wildly varying degrees of sincerity, of imposing structure on a vortex of feelings and thoughts. Education of such feelings to cause their differentiation into emotions and sensations has always been undertaken successfully only in the context of a Weltanschauung. In particular, the moral sentiment can be nurtured only in an environment informed by a system such as the eightfold path or the ten commandments, as interpreted by one’s own culture. The father of the field of evolutionary epistemology, Donald Campbell, put it thus; On evolutionary grounds, it is just as rational to follow religious traditions which one does not understand as it is rational to continue breathing air before one understands the role of oxygen in bodily metabolism. If modern psychology and social science disagree with religious tradition on ways of living one should, on rational and scientific grounds, choose the traditional recipes for life for these are the better tested. (Campbell, quoted in Smith, 1992, p. 75)

This startling quotation is not to be taken as a plea for a return to fundamentalism; Priests who narrow the precious tradition which they transmit to that pittance which they themselves can understand and agree with are neglecting their duty and are guilty of hubris or pretension of omniscience. (ibid.)

Separation of the useful from the destructive in these traditions is one of the major tasks of the age. As shall be seen, the term ‘Noetic Science’ is used to refer to objective expressions of mentation like theories, and artistic and scientific technique (which are covered by a single term in the original Greek). It can therefore be argued that a book like Neumann’s (1955) ‘The foundations of quantum mechanics’, a noetic science artefact in the sense intended here, has as much (or as little) claim to be called ‘psychology’ as, heaven help us, ‘Men are from Mars, etc’. Let us be quite specific. We are distinguishing between cognitive science, the characterisation of mind as an informational system, from consciousness studies, which includes also the currently almost ineffable topic of subjectivity. Noetic science we have already described; these three together constitute the totality of the study of mind and its expression in the world. When we experience the beauty of a landscape, we are coming in contact with a reality as certain (ineluctable) as anything in ‘hard’ science. The act of mind which 25

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Being Human: The Search for Order grasps Newtonian mechanics should not be assumed nearer the truth than that by which one is emotionally ravished by a landscape or by great art. As we learned to say in the twentieth century, both are in equal measure ‘merely psychological’. Consequently, transpersonal ecology, which lacks a metaphysical foundation, needs to be augmented with such and – as we’ve seen – by proper attention to the forces which impel human behaviour. The question immediately arises; whence the imperatives felt by Saro-Wiwa and the McLibel two to assert human values? Again, we have stumbled on one of the major themes of this book. The answer is twofold. Firstly, it was obvious to anyone familiar with the corporations involved that they were grossly immoral. No ecophilosophy is necessary to detect lies and environmental mayhem. Secondly, our full humanity cries out continually at injustice. Helen Steel’s stated feeling about McDonald’s was ‘How dare they’ (ask for an apology)? Somewhere inside us is a memory of truth, of celebration of our full humanity. Let us conclude this section with some other trends which give hope for environmental healing. The first is due to a saner technology. Cars in the US have decreased in size and greatly improved in fuel efficiency since 1973. Corporate status is a privilege accorded by the state: we are ultimately in control of it and can withdraw it if environmental concerns are not met. Many brilliantly innovative solutions to problems like energy generation already exist, for example, the Kalindborg plant in Denmark involves co-operation between very diverse businesses to maximise fuel efficiency (Hawken, 1994, 62–5). Thermolysis in particular shows promise for waste disposal. The major block is going to be demographic, and that is the focus of the next section. For the moment, the work done by intermediate technology adherents (often described in publications like the Whole Earth Review e.g. Cavan, 1995) as well as ethical businessmen like Paul Hawken (1994) gives great hope. Hawken suggests desiderata for business which bear repetition; decrease consumption of energy and raw materials in the north by 80% by 2045; provide authentic employment; honour the market, rather than worship it. In this section, then, we have examined the environmental crisis as a physical and as a conceptual phenomenon. In so doing, we have touched on several of the themes and references of this book.

ii. The demographic crisis The environmental crisis would not be quite so urgent without the burgeoning global population putting the pressure it does on the hydrological cycle, fisheries, the fertilizer-oversated land, and so on. We have managed to ‘advance’ to the current catastrophic state due to the wasteful lifestyles of the fraction of humanity here in the West. India and China, with their combined 2+ billion populations, are catching up industrially. Do we have a right to ask them to be better than us? What possible other leverage can we use? Moreover, with the great majority of the 8.5 billion or so soon to burden the earth (which is the medium projected global peak population) living in illequipped cities, what will be the consequences in terms of social unrest? Is Hall et al.’s (1995) comment above, echoing Borges’ that mirrors and sex are both abominations, in 26

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The Current Crisis that they increase the numbers of men, a justifiable one? To adapt Michael Faraday, what use is a newborn baby, especially given that it will damage the environment? Even the Vatican concurred with the consensus view of the recent UN summit on population growth. How an organisation which imposes its anti-contraception views on its adherents can consistently take this position we shall consider in Part III (short answer; with great difficulty). To complicate matters further, the attitudes to the production of a new human being vary greatly. At one extreme, we have seen Hall et al (1995) echo some medieval sects in suggesting that procreation is sinful; at the other, the conventional attitude in countries experiencing rapid population growth is that children are wealth. Paradoxically, the more wretched the conditions into which the children are to be born, the more children are required. High childhood mortality rates demand an increase in output in order to ensure the survival to adulthood at least of a few. Let us concern ourselves with some of the bare facts. In 1900, the world’s population was 1.6 billion. In 1950, the population had risen to 2.5 billion, and industrialisation had tripled. By 1990, economic activity had quadrupled since 1950, though the population had increased only to 5.7 billion (Kennedy, 1993, 96–7). The world’s population is expected to peak at around 8.5 billion in 2025, according to the middle of the three estimates Kennedy cites (op. cit., 23). Moreover, this population growth is to occur mainly in the most economically disadvantaged areas; Africa’s population seems set to triple to 1.58 billion. Yet, herein too lies a tale. Nigeria may increase its population from 113 to 301 million, and Zaire may triple to 99 million. Both these countries have sufficient natural resources adequately to provide for such populations. That we in the West have effectively supported the Abache and Mobutu regimes makes us collaborators in the Malthusian checks to come. Nor will occasional pop concerts help here; the ‘Live Aid’ broadcast buttressed the very regime that had engineered the Ethiopian famine. We in the First World need to supply judicious aid as a carrot together with using the trading stick to encourage democratization and equal distribution of these countries’ wealth. Currently, the inequality is shocking to contemplate. 1.3 billion people live on 60p (approx 90 cents) a day or less. The top fifth of the world’s population control 82% of the world market, 86% of global wealth, and 74% of phone lines while the bottom fifth score only 1% on each of these indices. Although the west has only 17% of the world’s population, it has 75% of its phone lines. Taking just one simple point of comparison, a computer costs one month’s pay from an average US salary; the equivalent in Bangladesh is 8 years. In the meantime, we establish structures like the ‘officially celebrated, highly secretive and profoundly undemocratic WTO’ (Athanasiou, 1996, P. 47) whose decisions, continuing the tradition of its predecessor GATT ‘… lower some barriers to trade, keep others high, and contain vast and lucrative loopholes that benefit interest groups’(ibid.). The end result of our paternalistic attitude to the third world, incarnate in such funding agencies as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), is shocking. To paraphrase Noam Chomsky, Africa must be an extremely wealthy continent, because between 1985 and 1992 it gave back ‘$81.6 billion in debt repayments and this despite its falling behind on its obligations’ 27

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Being Human: The Search for Order (Athanasiou, 1996, 157–8). In fact, in many cases the World Bank giveth and the IMF taketh away; In effect, money just moves from the World Bank side of 19th street in Washington to the IMF side. (op. cit., 158)

This includes $3 billion from Africa between 1985 and 1990. Athanasiou is prepared to go as far as to say that the IMF is ‘less a planetary credit union than the administrator of an international debtor’s prison’ (op. cit., p. 45). The World Bank, in turn, is focussed on bailing out lenders, a policy that rewards irresponsibility. Instead of alleviating third world problems, we buttress dictators and create waste. It is unfair to call us ‘consumers’; the 36 pounds of material used weekly by a typical US citizen is far outweighed by the 2000 pounds of waste he creates. Typically, combustion of our waste at a medium size unit of the highest efficiency will cause the emission of 777 tons of hydrogen chloride, 87 tons of sulphuric acid, 5 tons of lead and 98 tons of particulate matter daily (Hawken, 1994, 47). Nor should we get complacent about apparent previous successes ‘DDT … its phaseout has barely begun’(Athanasiou, 1996, p. 94). Globally, even with purchasing power limited to the First World, 4.1 billion pounds of pesticide are used each year. Yet the vacuousness of the lives which this wastage services can be gauged by statistics like those relating to our slavery to the car. The average owner spends 1,600 hours a year (just under five hours a day) in service to his automobile; earning money to buy it, driving in it, and so on. Coupled with the sheer scale of the demographic crisis is the problem of its location on the urban-rural axis. The great bulk of this growth centres on shantytowns at the edge of already groaning cities. Meanwhile, the scale of refugee crisis proceeds apace; at one count (Zimmer, 1996) 23 million people are estimated to be refugees. Consequently, we are in an extremely delicate situation. Countries outside the First World with burgeoning populations envy and seek to imitate our wasteful lifestyles. Instead of guiding them to full democracy, we saddle them with unrepayable debt, the benefits of which only ever get as far as their elites, and wait for Malthusian checks to redress their population problems. Obviously, solution of the demographic problem must begin in the First World (which, as we shall see, has a demographic crisis in reverse). If we can reduce our waste production to sane levels, there is absolutely no reason to fear a further world population increase. The response that immediately comes to the lips is ‘That’s impossible, we’re already in economic trouble’. We shall begin to see in the next section that this presupposes an exaggerated notion of the importance of ‘economic’ imperatives. However, the problem remains that we will be unable to reduce our waste production without a fundamental re-evaluation of the value of human lives. Materialism emerges as the dominant philosophy of existence only when we fail to assert the reality of the other facets of our being. As well as the political and economic steps suggested above, we in the west need to show an example to the Pacific Rim 28

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The Current Crisis ‘ex-tigers’ and other newly industrialised nations by voluntarily cutting back. That, in turn, requires a new assertion of the reality of the increased ‘inner’ life with which we hope to replace our external consumption and waste of resources. That assertion, as has been mentioned, is the task of the psychology section in Part II. In summary, then, the environmental crisis is complicated by our current rather bizarre demographics; a burgeoning young population in the ‘third’ world, and an ageing infertile West.

iii. The economic crisis According to some accounts, we have failed to pay adequate attention to these matters in the West partly because we have been in recession for a quarter-century. Real purchasing power has increased for few people since the early 80s. Yet this can occur – and has occurred – in countries for which the seemingly most appropriate economic indicators are all favourable. What do these indicators measure and how does it relate to real life? They ignore such entities as a healthy environment, work done by women at home, the volunteer sector and much else. We shall find that GNP and other such indices are arbitrary and in the present context destructive. However, this can be changed; many innovative and worthwhile suggestions exist for factoring energy use and pollution into the cost of a product and for including real work rather than irresponsible manipulation of financial instruments in the national accounts. We must, however, continue to fulfil our promise of a truly green economics by looking in some detail at macroeconomic theory. For example, Malcolm (Steve) Forbes ran his 1996 presidential campaign by promising a return to ‘happier economic theories’ as a New York Times reporter puckishly put it. Why are economic theories à la carte? We need to examine the Keynesian, Monetarist, Marxist and Green alternatives. This we shall do in Section II. Economic considerations have recently performed a claim-jump into affairs of state. Two recent US Presidents (Reagan and Bush the elder) lauded free markets before free speech. In the meantime, we have lost some political autonomy in the handing over of regulatory power to institutions like NAFTA and the WTO. These favour transnational capitalism; we cannot truly understand this entity without looking at its links to the state. The ‘election’ of Bush the younger in 2000 may be another watershed; having failed to buy the election, he was awarded it by legal fiat. The immediate answer from many economists to the demographic and environmental crises will simply be that we can’t afford to slow down the current rate of biosphere-hostile economic activity. Yet they ignore the influence of business interests on the state, along with much else. The tendency of these days is to consider economic imperatives as of a unique type (sui generis) and absolute. That this allows manipulation of our entire political existence by business interests of the most venal type will be established by the end of this section. However, we need first to look at the two referents of the term ‘economic crisis’. The first is obvious; the global massive levels of state indebtedness, the catastrophic numbers of real unemployed(many of whom just disappear from the registers and/or into prison), the economic misery of third world countries. The second is far less obvious; the conceptual confusion and lack of consensus in the discipline of economics 29

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Being Human: The Search for Order itself. With respect to the first, John Ralston Saul (1992, 1996) has consistently argued that the West has been in recession since the 1973 oil crisis. ‘Following the 1973 crisis, Western governments had desperately sought a way to deal with the economic catastrophe created by their dependence on OPEC oil’ (Saul, 1992, 391–2). The correct response is to create industries which manufacture quality goods at affordable prices, without which step no amount of artificial stimulus to the services sector can succeed. What happened was quite different. Just as our structures and elites prefer corporate manipulation to real production, so financial manipulation comes more naturally to them than the creation of new capital … we create offshore funds and uncontrollable offshore currencies … we run virtually uncontrolled money markets … we permit highly leveraged buyouts. (op. cit., 394)

This experience has been coupled in several countries with monetarist experiments. That several such were publicly justified in terms of a ‘science’ called economics adds to the horror. Their first large-scale application was Chile in the aftermath of the CIAbacked installation of Pinochet. The results were catastrophic: 400% inflation (from 20%), a rise in unemployment from 3% to 25% with a million workers fleeing the country; ‘the reduction of minimum wages by 8% a year in real terms; the doubling of the public debt; and exports overtaken by imports despite food being exported from a starving population’ (Barratt Brown, 1995, 79–80). To visit Chile today is to experience a devastated land, one in which social inequalities and terrible human suffering impress one immediately. That Chile performs well according to various economic indices is the reductio ad absurdum of those indices. New Zealand, where a weaker version of the same medicine was applied, has failed even to pass muster on such tainted indices as GDP. Its growth rate is one of the lowest in the OECD; its economy declined 1% from 1986 to 1992, while that of comparable countries increased by 20% (Richardson, 1996). One area where it has succeeded is adolescent suicide, in which it has the highest rate in the western world. It finally put an end to the experiment in 1999 by electing a centre-left government. The British monetarist experiment has fortunately been mollified by the long history of labour agitation in that set of countries; yet the damage was severe. Industrial output in 1991 was still less than that in 1978, the year of the ‘winter of discontent’ (Barratt Brown, 1995). Nor need North America feel smug. In the US Lester Thurow (1996) has long argued that the recession as measured by such indices as unemployment figures is much deeper than imagined; Canada underwent its own monetarist experiment in Alberta and Ontario. An appalling vista looms in these, the early years of the third millennium, as consumer confidence dries up in the USA. The hitherto insatiable US consumer, who fuelled the latest global boom, may herald the next depression. Questions can sensibly be asked, of course, about whether these environmentally-damaging booms are desirable at all, or indeed whether this corporate capitalist structure isn’t actually a ridiculous way to structure the economy, let alone society. 30

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The Current Crisis Soros (1998, p. 134), if wrong on its specifics, was right about the possibility of cataclysm in the final years of the stock market boom. Who could predict that it was to be a bunch of religious fanatics with Stanley knives, and a CIA ex-director’s son reining in an erstwhile client of that organisation, that provoked the bust? I can already discern the makings of the final crisis. It will be political in character … their success may then shake the foundations of the financial markets.

Viedeman (1992) echoes earlier writers like Schumacher in pleading for an entirely new economics. That will be our concern in Part II, when we shall look at the fundamental concepts of the discipline. As a sneak preview, it is worth noting that there are two current overall models of the entire economic cycle which are taken seriously worldwide: Keynesianism and Monetarism. Their starting-points are radically different. Yet the monetarist economist A.D. Bain (1979, 168) is forced to this devastating conclusion: Since theories necessarily abstract from reality, retaining what are regarded as essential factors and rejecting inessentials, the choice of theoretical approach must depend on the circumstances in which the theory is to be deployed.

In essence, Keynesianism is to be regarded as correct for short-run cyclical behaviour. Monetarism is posited as correct for the long run and for periods of rapid inflation. Whether, as the monetarist guru Milton Friedman claims, his system is only a mathematical variation on Keynes’ is not the point; the issue is the effect on human lives. The moral imperative for a new economics can be re-impressed by the emphasis of the Harvard MBA program (Kelly and Kelly, 1986). The environmental consequences and social role of the corporation is viewed as a very minor issue in fixed-element analysis at the corporation’s start-up. Competitiveness is inculcated as the major virtue by what seems almost a brainwashing process. Saul (1992) comments on the MBA graduates as descendants of the Jesuits and correlates of the French ‘énarques’. Their social role is to impose a biased view of reality for partisan business and political purposes; the Jesuits at least claimed they were doing so for God. Yet what astounds one most is the imposition of theories from this very immature science on people’s lives. Hawken (1994, 59) argues that what is perpetrated on us is chrematistics, the science of the fast buck, passing as economics. Given its fundamental conceptual vacuum, it is possible to dress any type of exploitative policy as objective economics. Saul’s equation of the MBA program and 13 years of Jesuit formation seems remarkably astute. The business of the Jesuits was to impose Roman Catholic policy by ‘reason’ on the affairs of state; likewise, the modern expert justifies genocide of the Ogoni and desecration of rainforest as inevitable consequences of maintaining competitiveness and the standard of living. In a final irony, Thurow (1996) points out that the latter has fallen for everyone except the American elite since the 70’s. 31

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Being Human: The Search for Order It is worthwhile mentioning the work of one such expert. Peter G. Peterson is the chairman of the Blackstone Group and has served on such commissions as the Kerrey-Danforth Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform. He is shyer about admitting his advisor role in Sony’s disastrous foray into Hollywood. In an Atlantic Monthly article (Peterson, 1996) he took on the US demographic problem. As mentioned, this is a mirror image of the Third World one; we in the West are not making enough babies and soon all our countries will have ageing populations. That there is a crisis in the making here is beyond doubt. Peterson begins by chiding us for our overly high expectations of retirement. He then hectors us about the necessity to keep on working past the age of 65. Indeed, he adds, the generation of Americans who conquered polio and sent a man to the moon are capable of sacrifice. Suddenly a sour note is heard: Richard Tumka, the president of the United Mine workers … warns that later retirement is simply not a realistic option for worn-out industrial workers in physically demanding occupations … In any case, our national retirement policy should not be determined by the miner retiring at 62 … or the athlete at 42. (Peterson, 1996, 80)

This equating of miners, who historically have suffered utterly inhumane conditions imposed through economic coercion, with athletes, who can earn tens of millions for sport, gives pause. It is then that one reviews the whole article and checks whether there has been any questioning of the system that allowed CEOs like Heinz’s Tony O’Reilly to pay themselves tens of millions a year. There is not. Economic forces are proposed irrevocable, and we better work later in our lives in a way controlled by these forces. That the entire article is built on faulty and dangerous presuppositions suddenly becomes clear. In short, the ‘economic’ system has to change. A first step is a re-envisioning of what role economics itself has in human life. A second is an interrelation of economic activity with the current environmental and demographic crises. The political will to do such is the next topic.

iv. The Political crisis Unquestionably, liberal democracy with its freedoms of conscience and speech, and its separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers is the most advanced political structure in existence. This form of government is rightly considered sacred in these countries which have achieved it. Yet in one such (the US) political funding laws make plutocracy (dictatorship of, by, and for the wealthy) a real danger. Forbes differed from Perot merely in his lack of success; the younger Bush’s ‘election’ in 2000 was truly terrifying in its potential consequences. Obviously, more participation is needed by the citizenry to keep the state honest. What does this mean? What should one experience as one advocates a particular idea as part of the body politic? How does one know it is correct? Is there (inter alia) some scientific basis? In the fact of ‘Asian’ notions of human rights(for example, Lee Kuan Yew’s equation of the individual with an ant, remarked 32

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The Current Crisis on below), what resources do we have to assert Western traditions? Can we hold out against petty nationalism? Our first difficulty here is the precise identification of a sphere of life we can call ‘political’. The Oxford English Dictionary (1976) gives as its primary definition of ‘politics’ the ‘science and art of government’. Etymologically, we can trace a Greek root; for Aristotle, man was the kind of animal who lived in a polis, or city-state. Now, however, the problems begin almost immediately. Aristotle’s notion of the political was encompassing enough to include man himself, and man in relation to his society and its history. Yet as Aron (1965, 15) points out, Aristotle’s Politics concerns itself essentially with the nature of the political regime. (Let us note parenthetically that Plato’s Republic, explicitly varying on the same theme, is just as concerned with a model of the human psyche; its concern with the state is an attempt to define justice in the macrocosm hoping that the results hold for man, the microcosm. This makes the Popperian ‘Open Society’ attack doubly ridiculous. See Needleman (1982)). This ambivalence about the role of politics vis à vis individual human existences will continue. Aron (1965, p. 15) is concerned with finding a focus of study for sociology in this context. Eventually, he states, ‘the aim proper to sociology (is) … the combination and reunion of the study of the part with the study of the whole’. Where that study relates to the current power structure, it becomes political sociology, which obviously doesn’t leave much of human life out of its analysis, in theory at least. At one extreme, then, we have a notion of the political as encompassing the whole of human existence (and thus inevitably having a moral nature – see Part II, section 9) and at the other, as being essentially about power relations expressed only through official governmental structures. Historically, the role of the state has veered from one extreme to the other. Paradoxically, the latter extreme contains its opposite within itself. To surrender state involvement in such issues as environmental regulation involves a state-upheld surrender to environmentally destructive corporations. We shall see later that the same situation obtains with respect to gun laws. The (fortunately, largely unsuccessful) attempt by Gingrich’s Republicans to roll back such pillars of modern America as the New Deal would effectively have created corporatist tyranny. Remarkably, Lenin had precisely the same minimalist ideas on the necessity for government as Gingrich; the resulting Soviet Union was a wonderful example of bureaucratic bloat. In Britain, the explicitly stated goal of Thatcher’s Tories to replace the ‘nanny state’ actually has resulted in massive recentralization of power. The replacement of local authorities by quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations (quangos) has deeply compromised British democracy. Therefore, the protean nature of the word ‘political’ makes the ‘political’ crisis hard to define. That such exists is beyond doubt (Sanders, 1996, inter alia). Let’s try another starting-point. As Thomas Jefferson stated, we band together into societies to escape tyranny. We create structures, to whom we give our consent and a part of our incomes, and elect representatives. I shall reserve ‘politics’ for considerations relating to the giving and use of this consent and cash. When these gifts are being abused on a large scale, for example by theft and hypocrisy on the part of politicians, we have a political 33

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Being Human: The Search for Order crisis on our hands. For example, Gap (1996) lists the ‘Mother Jones 400’, the most enthusiastic contributors to the USA.’s major (only?) political parties. If it can be established that direct links exist from contributions to political candidates and subsequent favouritism toward the contributor’s companies, and such links become the norm, a political crisis exists. However, there is a second level of meaning to the term ‘political crisis’ as used here. It is the inadequacy of the current political structures to cater to the real concerns of today. For example, the US pollutes Canadian lakes with acidified rain. England does the same to the Nordic countries; France uses the southern Pacific as a nuclear testing-ground. Where are the political structures that can rein in these permanent members of the UN security council? For better or worse, the nation-state remains the fundamental political entity, if only by default (see The Economist, 1995, 337 (7946), 15–18.) To overcome this tension, as Sanders (1996) argues, we must become ‘multiply situated selves’; now a Frenchman, then a member of the international community, later from the Limousin département … or, even better, all at the same time. The role of the nation-state is currently paradoxical in the extreme. Its encroachment into our lives has increased massively this century. In the US of 1929, the state engaged in 8% of all economic activity; by the 60s, that had increased to 23%. Of this, fully 40% was military-based. By ‘employment’ we tend to mean those activities legitimised by the state’s involvement with respect to unemployment insurance and tax deduction. At an individual level, the results of the withdrawal of such legitimization can be devastating; in addition to income loss, a whole series of psychoreactive illnesses follows the initial depression. Yet nation-states rightly protest their powerlessness against many economic forces. The annulment in the early 70s of the Bretton Woods agreement to pay currency exchange rates has given rise to unbridled speculation. (Interestingly, George Soros, who made billions from the delaying of devaluation of the British pound, seems alone among such speculators in being somewhat a Robin Hood figure, redistributing the money first in Eastern Europe, then with rather less success in Russia, and now in various US drug rehab and campaign finance reform movements.) The stupidity of that annulment, and the irresponsible US resistance to Keynes’ international regulatory bodies, means that this powerlessness is real. Instead of such regulatory bodies, what we have instead are bodies like the WTO (World Trade Organization), who act as creatures of transnational corporations in promoting trade across national boundaries almost irrespective of the environmental and human rights costs. It is when states plead their helplessness against corporate forces that we need to take stock. Galbraith (op. cit.) insists that the large industrial corporation can effectively manage its customers. The state provides a benign environment for these corporations; old Keynesian assumptions of wage-price stability are void and spirals occur. (Ironically, as we’ve already noted, corporate status is a state gift; its original purpose was to promote large-scale enterprises by limiting individual liability.) Power resides in the bureaucracies of the military-industrial complex thus established, not in the people. Even a minimal such state would affect our lives in that it ‘provided for a central bank, roads, railways, postal service, land enclosure, company laws … Later it 34

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The Current Crisis was used to protect industries with tariffs, nationalize industrial undertakings, provide a comprehensive health and education service …’ (Barratt Brown, 1995, 289). If such a state is the creature of corporations, it must indeed give us pause. The investigation into how corporations can domesticate the state in this way continues below. One fundamental contention of this book is that within each human is the imperative to choose the good, and that this manifests itself often in inarticulate protest which is nevertheless precisely aimed. What may happen in the future is that, in defiance of the corporation-owned state, more and more people escape from its influence and reject the tainted corporate-based legitimization of their conscious effort it offers. Thus, I have no quarrel with the idea of working after 65, or indeed after 95. What is problematic is that such work should be considered legitimate only insofar as it contributes to an economy whose parameters are set by (often venal) corporate interests. If the state does not free itself from these interests, the Waco, Oklahoma and Montana Freemen incidents are one aspect of the shape of things to come; the other is an increasing number of the highly-educated actively opting out altogether. Therefore, Rifkin (1995) is naive in his futurology. Goods are to be produced by robots; however, the services industry is to provide employment and wealth. This ignores several issues; services-based economies cannot thrive without a corresponding increase in goods production as manifest, inter alia, in Thatcher’s failed attempt to turn Britain into a services-based economy (Barratt Brown, 1995). It is extremely unlikely, in the absence of the kind of psychological revolution proposed in Part II, that the corporate state will legitimise self-realizing work that does not bring material wealth to corporations. The current situation is legitimization only of psychic movement which changes the material world and encounters psychological resistance when being done i.e. ‘hard work’. This book is radically pro-effort in genuine work; however, to adapt an old union slogan, if ‘hard work’ were such a good thing, the rich would indeed have kept it all for themselves. It is to be hoped that we can change things without violent revolution. The nature of the state must be changed to legitimate types of effort other than ‘hard work’ or alternatively, to choose to legitimate none. It is worthwhile in this context briefly looking at the last such massive reconceptualization of the state i.e. Marxism. Marx transmuted the Hegelian notion of alienation we have already encountered. In the Hegelian conception the spirit, Geist, is itself alienated in its works; it constructs intellectual and social edifices and projects itself, so to speak, outside itself. The history of the mind, the history of humanity, is the history of these successive alienations, at the end of which mind will find itself once again in possession of the whole of its works and of its historical past and will be aware of possessing this whole. (Aron, 1965, 147–8)

For Marx, alienation is a psychological and social concomitant of the economic injustice and the term lacks its positive connotation in Hegel, a connotation preserved here in this book. For Marx, philosophy was completed by reformulating Hegel’s dialectic without Geist (here, spirit) in material terms alone, and envisaging the end of history 35

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Being Human: The Search for Order (eschaton) in purely material terms. Moreover, as consciousness was shaped entirely by economic factors in Marx’s schema, economic equality was to be its highest expression. These ideas having been presented, a moral urge is felt to fight against the prevailing regime which supports economic injustice. The courage of Marxists can best be testified to by their role in WWII resistance movements. However, we should pause to note that the economic systems set up in Marxist frameworks did not work (Barratt Brown, 1995, chapters 12 and 13), despite much ingenuity in their constitution. The horrors that preceded these stabs at the millennial state shall concern us in section 8 of Part II. Marx’s ‘economics’ is actually a Weltanschauung; philosophy is to become sociology, and sociology is to be radicalized. One’s very thought-patterns are merely conditioned by economic realities; only by struggling against these forces can we feel the beat of history’s march in our veins. (We need to be very careful about such all-encompassing views; one of the primary goals here is to ensure that the distinct movements of the psyche represented in studies like physics, sociology, and direct political action remain in their correct places). Yet today, the temptation to accept such a schema as Marx’s is great. Let us note, parenthetically, that he predicted precisely the state of affairs which currently obtains; that is a vanishingly small number of increasingly gigantic corporations increasingly trading only among themselves across national boundaries. Moreover, as already pointed out, the role of the state in abetting these corporations is massive. The situation in the US, and the near-trillion dollar bailout of the savings and loan banks and other Reagan/Bush scams is too well-known to merit comment here. Let us examine corporate welfare in its ‘socialist’ neighbor, Canada. It is in fact the Canadian viceregal consort John Ralston Saul (1992, 234) who most neatly encapsulates the emerging new corporatist political structure: The essence of corporatism is that each group has its own purpose, organization and financial strength. These group interests negate democracy, which depends on the contribution of individual citizens.

Saul correctly argues that Corporatism has brought with it a cult of the expert, who uses ‘reason’ to implement its goals. Saul’s remedy , an emphasis on intuition, is but one part of the solution; it is important also to fight the experts at their own game and point out the biased presuppositions and internal inconsistencies in their thinking. Then, and only then, can intuition prosper. O’Hare (1996) comments on his contemporary situation in Canada, whose capitalism has historically been of a less laissez-faire type than that of the US. Seventytwo corporations each with profits greater than Canadian $25 million paid no taxes in 1992. The six main banks’ net profits from 1984 to 1993 were Canadian $39,471 billion, on which they paid only 19.2% tax, well below that of the average earner. Between tax deferrals, deductions and other such excluders, the corporate ‘wealthfare’ in 1991 Canada totalled $91 billion. This is far greater than the $60 billion welfare bill. As O’Hare wrote, welfare cuts were driving people to the wall all across Canada. The comparable figures for the US are, of course, ludicrous. 36

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The Current Crisis How can corporations get away with this? In a nutshell, they can get away with this because they can set the parameters for media discussion of their activity, as they can for the economy itself. Herman and Chomsky (1988, 4) reported that the 29 largest media systems ‘account for over half of the output of newspapers, and most of the sales and audiences in magazines, broadcasting, books and movies’. Such elaborate corporate mating rituals as those involving Ted Turner, Time Warner and AOL will result in even greater such concentration. There was even a good chance that the wonderfully anarchic internet would be privatized as the US government transferrred its backbone to such corporations as IBM and MCI (Shapiro, 1995). The so-called ‘hightech’ stocks emerging from the commercialisation of the internet will be seen as a modern equivalent of the South Sea Bubble unless a total change of direction occurs; given the technological triviality of most of the products, very astute business management was needed and not supplied. (As the owner of a tech business, I confidently expect another boom, based on rather sounder principles, in between two and five years). The separation of content-determination and carrier has to date been sacred; Nader et al. (1995) claim that the recent Telecom Act greatly compromised this. Marx’s argument against the liberal democratic plan to put more egalitarian political structures in place was his insistence that economic structures must first be changed (Barratt Brown, 1995, xxi–xxii). It is obvious that corporatist domination of the mass media requires that we exercise eternal vigilance with respect to their content while agitating for change. It will be difficult indeed; as Gap (1996) re-emphasizes (as if we didn’t know) our politicians are largely in the pocket of corporate interests. An excellent example of the inevitable result was Bob Dole’s conversion during his ’96 presidential campaign to the peculiar SINA cult (smoking is non-addictive). This leap of faith, contrary to all available evidence and all uses of the word ‘addictive’ in the English language, can be explained quite easily in terms of campaign funding. (Interestingly, Philip Morris are willing to state on their web-site that smoking is addictive, by any commonly accepted use of the word; whether they do so in court is another issue). So change the rules of campaign funding, you and I may say. Well, we just did say that and look at the impact! To have any impact at all, we need to get on TV and say so. Let’s say we somehow manage to do so. Having hopefully overcome the intellectual prostitutes paid for by the tobacco industry (inter alia) to debate us, we decide to launch our anti-SINA party whose program includes the change of campaign funding legislation. Corporatist interests refuse to fund us; those they do fund have airtime paid for, and we lose the election and several years of our lives. So much for corporatism. The Atlantic Monthly of March 1996 ran a cover story on America’s search for a new public philosophy. Sandel’s solution to our current crisis, that we need to become ‘multiply situated selves’, already has occupied us. What is at stake is a classical political sociology issue; the relation of the whole to the part. Sandel’s is an excellent solution at the psychological level; Barratt Brown (1995, 357–99) outlines in detail the necessary political and economic structures to support the change. He argues (op. cit., 385) that we should conceive of a new set of structures (with preferred population in parentheses); Wards (2,500), Districts (50,000), Counties 37

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Being Human: The Search for Order (1,000,000), Regions (6,000,000), Nations (10–30 million), Federations (400,000,000) and finally the United Nations. His plan is above all for a ‘decentralized economy with social ownership and democratic control of executive decisions’ (ibid.). Sandel’s pleas is thus being met by Barratt Brown at the level of superstructures. What is exciting about these ideas is that they allow us also to maintain the fruits of western political progress; liberal democracy with its freedoms of speech and conscience and the separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches (Mackay, 1987) while also ensuring that decisions are made as close to the locus of their effect as is possible. Where the decisions concern issues like pollution which affect sites several continents away, the executive, legislative, and judicial bodies must be truly international (or inter-federation); where the issue is selecting a day to collect garbage, discussion within the ward is sufficient. Carter (1996) outlines several precepts for political change: – – – – – – –

The nation exists for its people Some things must take priority Consistency matters Everybody gets to play We must distinguish morality from law, and value also the former Politics must also reflect our higher aspirations Our side should not always win; if we lose, we should not be sore losers

It is through vigorous application of principles such as this that change will come. The public outrage at Republican plans to roll back environmental legislation is an example of this vigour; Saul (1992) considers the success of environmentalist agitation the brightest spot in the current political scene. As Carter points out, we shall have strange bedfellows from time to time as we fight for a re-assertion of the human in politics. For example, only Pat Buchanan in the 1996 Republican presidential campaign (and no-one on the Democratic side) stood up for small business against the corporations. If we cannot abide strange bedfellows in the service of a cause, we have not yet learned one crucial lesson; the cause is bigger than us. To engage in politics in these days of corporate dominance involves learning many such lessons.

v. The Moral/Fideistic/Epistemological crisis With this consideration of action, we return to a central theme in some recent literature. The most often cited is Yeats’ plaint that The best lack all conviction while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.1

1

Recent allusions to ‘The Second Coming’ from which these lines come, include Joan Didien’s ‘Slouching Toward Bethlehem’, a paean to the attempt by the 60’s counterculture to redress its contemporaneous social and political problems without any of the necessary conceptual and financial equipment.

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The Current Crisis Fiction is perhaps the medium in which the fraught relationship between contemplation and morally-inspired action has best been teased out. Consider this; in late 2001, two immensely powerful men, whose families had had business links, attempted to demonise each other using all the resources of their own cultures. Bush the younger assembled a team of Christian ministers to pray for guidance in his (paradoxically) Manichean struggle; bin Laden assumed the robes of a prophet and the characterisation of his ex-business partners as the ‘Great Satan’. What has gone wrong? It is a little-known fact that the Jesuits taught that mortal sin was impossible. To commit one, we would have to be fully aware of the diabolical consequences of an action and actually intend them; that they argued was impossible. Some duality in human nature exists that allows acts like that of September 11, 2001. For writers like Arthur Koestler (1978), it was the human need to identify with groups that allowed abominations like the Nazis; he hoped brain science could excise it. I shall not digress on the topic of reification of the other, or indeed the material interests of Bush and bin Laden in the Middle East. Rather, let’s look at 4 brilliant fictional treatments of moral action, where two seem to recommend inaction. The American novelist John Updike works the idea of lack of conviction out beautifully in ‘Roger’s version’ (1986). The protagonist is Robert Lambert, a theology professor in a New England university. It is quickly obvious that his faith is nonexistent, and his marriage tired. Into his life comes Dale Kohler, a born-again nerd who believes that the kind of coincidences explained (away) by the anthropic principle (see Section II) prove the existence of God. He asks for, and receives, theology department funding for a computer graphics project to test his ideas. Lambert, tired and cynical, envies the animated Kohler and imagines an affair between Kohler and his wife, about which he fantasises a great deal. Spiritual intensity and sexual potency are inseparable for Lambert. However, Kohler’s project ends like several such claim-jumps discussed in Section 3; failure and dejection. Graham Greene’s (1965) ‘The Comedians’ tackles a similar theme. We are quickly introduced to the main characters; Jones, a failed wheeler-dealer who falsely claims Yeats’ ignorance of Gaelic and the populace of his adopted island greatly compromised his work (see Brown, 1972). Even Kiberd, desperately eager to act as an apologist for Yeats, eventually concedes the latter’s distance, both geographical (he lived there as little as possible) and cultural from Ireland: ‘Yeats’ judgement on the callous and irresponsible suddenness of an unplanned and ill-prepared British withdrawal … the ‘Anglo’ side of Yeats … must have felt the precipitate nature of the withdrawal a hard betrayal … ’(Kiberd, 1995, 312). Where he dipped into authentic folk poetry, the result is simplification; for example, ‘The Sally Gardens’ is a travesty of ‘Ye Rambling Boys of Pleasure’. Similarly, ‘The Second Coming’ originates in half-remembered lines from Shelley’s ‘Prometheus Unbound’ (Donoghue, 1986). Brown, (op. cit., 170–1) comments that the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ have been variously identified as the savage British army of occupation in 1921 Ireland, when the poem came out, and the Kerensky/Lenin duo. However, an earlier version of the poem includes a reference to William Pitt.

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Being Human: The Search for Order active military experience; the Smiths, Americans with a mission to save the already ruined Haiti by setting up a vegetarian institute; and the narrator, a worldly nihilistic Englishman. One’s sympathies are initially with the narrator as the Smiths and Jones commit gaffe after crime. Yet the Smiths, driven by an (absurd) moral principle, have the courage to stand up successfully to the Tonton Macoute and realise their foolishness. Jones’ bluff as a military man is called and he apotheosizes into a Haitian hero, finally animated by a real cause. The narrator loses everything, despite his apparent intelligence, and ends his days working for a mortician. The dangers inherent in action in complicated times are well illustrated by other classic works of art. Greene’s ‘The Quiet American’ interferes in affairs well beyond his comprehension with catastrophic results. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is obviously of greater intelligence than those who surround him, an intelligence he uses from time to time to outwit buffoons like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Yet the received image of Hamlet is of a vacillator, a ditherer. In actual fact, these central lines of Hamlet make clear his dilemma: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. (I.iv.90)

The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite. That ever I was born to set it right. (I.v.188–90)

The tragedy of Hamlet is precisely his far-sightedness; he loves action, but is too aware of its consequences in complicated times to engage wholeheartedly in it. Suicide ‘to be or not to be’ he eschews by reminding himself of ‘the undiscovered country from whose bourn/No traveller returns ‘ (III.i. 79–80) to which he would render himself. He would kill his stepfather, ‘Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying’ (III.iii.73) were he not to send him to heaven. The tension grows, and in his anger he kills Polonius on impulse and drives Ophelia to distraction. Eventually a policy almost of Taoist wu-wei (non-action) prevails, and it is left up to the theatre-goer to decide whether Denmark might not be better off with Fortinbras at the helm, and without all the members of the ancien régime. If so, Hamlet’s actions and non-actions in indirectly engineering his own death seem brilliant. ‘The way never acts yet nothing is left undone’ (Tao te Ching, XXXVII, 81, Line 1; Lau, 1963). That we live in times that are equally out of joint is the brilliantly-handled theme of David Fincher’s film ‘Seven’. A serial killer, played by Kevin Spacey, has decided to do his bit to clean up society. Brilliant, devious and financially independent, he commits a series of gruesome murders based on the seven deadly sins. The extirpation of ‘gluttony’ from society requires that an obese man be forced to gouge out a pound of his own flesh. ‘Vanity’ is dealt with by mutilating a society beauty’s face and giving her the choice of calling for help or committing suicide. Despite our revulsion, we cannot but find ourselves condemning with him her choice of the latter and his

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The Current Crisis pronouncement on her internal ugliness. Likewise, few of us are totally unsympathetic when a lawyer is murdered as a defence against ‘Lies’. An old cop/young cop duo played by Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt is assigned to the case. The old cop is weary of his job but has little else in his life. He wishes to retire immediately, citing the horrendous levels of violence in recent killings and (ironically) the apathy of the general populace as his reasons. The younger cop has recently moved into an ill-chosen apartment with his wife, who as he mentions, doesn’t even have cable. When confronted by his colleague’s resignation to evil, he states that he can’t afford to think like that and go live in a log cabin (Again ironically, the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski did just that while attempting a social rectification project similar to that in ‘Seven’; see Johnston et al., 1996) It is precisely the younger cop’s urge to action that proves his downfall and allows him to be used as a means for the criminal’s final production. Insisting that the younger cop is a good man, he yet manages to engineer a situation wherein the ‘good man’ will face a murder charge and be forced eventually to ask himself whether his anger at the criminal doesn’t put him essentially on the same moral level. The moral ambivalence of the situation is so brilliantly handled that one is genuinely grateful to the director for allowing at least some hope at the end; it was not dramatically necessary, and is an affirmation of humanity. The hope consists in the older cop’s decision to remain in the force, where his superior discernment will result in right action (or non-action). I have spent some time on artistic treatments of this issue because of its overwhelming importance, and its yielding better to treatment engaging parts of one’s psyche other than those involved in purely ‘rational’ analysis. Art in general acts on parts of one’s being other than ‘the head’; in particular, one’s emotional and physical aspects. It is the job of genuine religious activity to bring other centres into play. Let us now turn to definitions of the ‘moral’ crisis as such. It revolves around a single question that can be very simply put: where are the current guidelines for distinguishing good from evil? Indeed, is this distinction, right at the core of ethics and morality, a real one? The urgency of this issue can be conveyed by a quick look at the media offerings of any particular day. A typical plaint appeared some time ago in the New York Times, sponsored by the American Family Association (New York Times, Sunday January 21, 1996, 16E). It inveighs against ‘trash’ TV talk shows, sponsored, it should not surprise us at this stage, by corporations like Grand Metropolitan Inc. and Unilever United States Inc. These talk shows (Donahue and Geraldo top the list) include such items as ‘Mom, I’m a teen prostitute’, ‘A woman in love with a serial killer: and ‘Teens who have sex for status’. TV and media exposure in general act as a kind of absolution for many acts, however deviant. In the words of Neil Postman (1985), we are ‘amusing ourselves to death’. (The fact that one of Jerry Springer’s producers has expressed a wish to stage a murder on TV gives pause). Postman argues that TV in particular has wrought havoc in shortening people’s attention-spans. Abraham Lincoln’s public was so literate that they could follow and enjoy debates lasting up to five hours (op. cit., 44–9). The 1996 figure for ideal sound bite length is approximately 7 seconds. Moreover, the vacuity of the medium means that involved logical arguments of more than a few steps cannot survive in its 41

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Being Human: The Search for Order ecosystem(because, as Postman points out, it is not entertainment, the only purpose of TV). Thus, at least temporarily, it is possible for hosts like Jerry Springer (who is cynically aware of what he does) to portray violent and wholly aberrant behaviour as somehow normal. Conversely, it is in the transnationals’ interests to portray normal and life-enhancing behaviour (for example, the pleasures of conversation and listening to classical music on the radio) as aberrant because it does not involve consumption of their products. The most vile and/or pathetic behaviour (consider Mike Tyson and Hugh Grant) can be apotheosized into fun celebrity self-expression with the benediction of TV. Moreover, as Saul (1992) points out, we live in an age of such rigid conformity that the role of stars is to act as a template on which we project our yearning for freedom. Hugh Grant’s paying for oral sex becomes less the pathetic act of a frustrated man than an acting-out of everyman’s fantasy. And don’t mention the Prez. The role of psychology in making real (realising) our inner lives and so leaving us less dependent on TV and its devices will concern us in part II, section 6. It is inappropriate wholly to condemn the wonderful possibilities afforded by TV’s technology. Attention spans all around the world seemed to increase exponentially with the OJ Simpson trial where nothing appeared to happen for hours at a time. Series like ‘Law and Order’ treated difficult matters like theodicy (the problem of how a good God can allow suffering – see II–8). ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘Beavis and Butthead’ perform a welcome subversive role in undermining pop icons. Again, we see the human spirit elevate itself above the dross. This despite the considerable conceptual confusion that exists around such issues as ‘ethics’, ‘aesthetics’ and ‘morality’. We are occasionally given hints about why, for example, jazz may be a better music than what’s termed ‘rock’. Essentially, their relation is set to subset; all the rhythms, harmonic progressions and melodic vocabulary of rock are available to jazz, but the reverse does not hold. The global dominance of ‘rock’ can be attributed to a large extent to corporate control of radio playlists. Yet even here we see hope; once tasted, the superior range of composers like Antonio ‘Tom’ Jobim and Cole Porter hook people for life, weaning them from rock. A second principle is looking for internal contradictions in arguments suggesting particular courses of action. We might find an apologist for transnational corporatism pleading in favour of ‘hard work’ on behalf of his company because ‘survival of the fittest’ is the law of nature. Yet analysis of state subsidies will reveal that his company’s triumphing over small businesses is due to artificial subsidy. A third, related principle is analysis of presuppositions. That argument above also assumes that economic growth is good. Given its effect on the environment, we can also question this. In II–9 we try and establish a more elegant system of distinctions. For the moment, however, we need to stake out a particular realm for ‘ethical’ decision, the practice of morality. Elliot Sober (1993) considers this in the context of sociobiology, which claims that all social behaviour can informatively best be discussed in the context of evolutionary theory. Ethics is thus reducible to consequences from ‘survival of the fittest’; consequently, Sober decides against this notion. The goal of 42

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The Current Crisis ethics, he argues (op. cit., 109) is to guide behaviour. Yet he agrees with David Hume: we cannot, a priori, derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’. Ethics, he further argues, is part cultural and part evolutionary. However, its considerations are sui generis; only joined with an ethical imperative (for example, hedonism, the imperative toward pleasure), can we come to any significant consequences from scientific findings (op. Cit., 111). This will be of particular relevance to us as we investigate Daniel Dennett’s sociobiological claim-jump in III–2. Thomas Jefferson expressed views sympathetic to Sober’s: Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed in this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong, merely relative to this … the moral sense, or conscience, is as much part of man as his leg or arm. (from Jefferson’s letters, quoted in Saul, 1992, 241)

(It is worthwhile noting in this context that Jefferson’s vision of the state was as a provider of man’s happiness (op. Cit., 479–81)). Consequently, we are left from Sober and Jefferson with a notion of an autonomous realm for ethics. We can no more fail to judge issues in terms of right and wrong than we can fail visually to see objects if they fall within a certain range in the electromagnetic spectrum. Morality is a Kantian-type category; it is a lens through which we are forever compelled to see events (theoretically, of course, the ‘moral sentiment’ and Kantian views on the origins of morality are at odds) So much for what Sober (ibid.) calls ‘the problem of explanation’ i.e. the existence of a moral sentiment. What now of the problem of justification, the rationales behind a particular moral decision e.g. the decision to bomb Hiroshima? The answer, in short, is that we only have a very general set of a priori principles to help us here; for example, perform actions which maximise the range of options later available. The variation of this that Peter Singer upholds, preference utilitarianism, leads to absurd consequences if pushed too far. Or as Chandler (2001, 36) puts it; Perhaps bioethics, being concerned with messy real-world problems, is best solved by messy real-world ethics

However, when the moral category is active, many more principles emerge. For example, we cannot justify random violence against people when asked to pass it through the filter supplied by the moral sentiment. Part of the core of this sentiment suggests that actions performed by agent X on patient Y for reason A should be equally valid when performed by Y on X. Random violence for hedonic purposes does not pass muster here. We shall find also that actions which expand one’s and others’ potentials are always valuable. These and other imperatives shall be expanded on in II–9. In short, here are a few hard and fast rules, but moral decision is mainly situational i.e. the application of these rules is context-sensitive. This of course flies in the face of the traditional monopolisation of morality by religion. We term the ‘fideistic’ crisis the fact that we can no longer look to these 43

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Being Human: The Search for Order religions for guidance on these or other matters. One reason is the development of science and technology. It was inconceivable to the writers of Genesis that the earth should rotate around the sun; likewise, such technologies as genetic engineering and in-vitro fertilisation call for responses for which the ten commandments are not an adequate guide. Secondly, the current plurality of religions in the West diminishes each of them. A religion is a smorgasbord of cosmology, psychological wisdom, moral directive and prescriptions for societal organisation which evolved in a particular context. Outside that context, its prescriptions might be downright dangerous. However, the existence of competing religions and of science attenuates the claim of ‘objective truth’ that each had at one stage. We shall consider the external contents of religions and consequences thereof in II–8. Finally, far from being reliable arbiters of right and wrong, many religious organisations have shown breathtaking immorality and – dare one say it? – cynicism. Islam teaches that death in battle ensures a rapture to heaven where ‘bashful maidens’ tend one hand and foot. Of course we are told that the phrase is a translation of ‘houris’, the eye of a gazelle; how many Hamas terrorists and young boys in Khomeini’s ‘human waves’, not to mention the hijackers of September 11, 2001, died with this on their minds? (A truly disturbing incident was the conversion of the Frenchman Zaccarias Moussaoui into such a person. He watched the attacks from prison, having drawn suspicion to himself for merely wanting to learn to manoeuvre planes in the air, not take off and land, at a US flight school in August, 2001. Warning enough, surely?) The Roman Catholic Church has invested in stocks based, inter alia, on arms and contraceptives since 1929 (Yallop, 1984, 95). The contrast between this and encyclicals like ‘Humanae Vitae’ need not be dwelt upon. Its recent insistence on the objectivity of its received truths and the absolute context-free nature of its moral teachings has plumbed new depths in encyclicals like Veritas Splendor. In the words of Fr. Ruttle, one of its TV preachers (on EWTN), the Roman Catholic Church claims to teach you ‘what to think and how to think’. That is approximately what one does to a computer with a good computer program. We shall consider the Church’s claims on the apparati of Western states in III-4. For the moment, let’s take our concerns about the robust history of the Roman Catholic Church, including the papal infallibility declared barely a century ago, to John Paul II; Be not afraid. Have no fear when people call me the ‘Vicar of Christ’, when they say to me ‘Holy Father’. (John Paul II, 1994, 6)

Actually, I for one am terrified at the mental deterioration and increasing authoritarianism of a man who once was a liberal and an authority on John of the Cross. His book abounds in such leaps of logic (for example, Bill Clinton cannot get away with saying ‘Be not Afraid’ to his critics) and studied insults to other religions like Buddhism. (op. cit., pp. 86–7) What we need from religion is not patronisation, archaic cosmology, invective, but rather ‘ideas’ (in a sense closer to one postulated root in Greek ‘eidos’ i.e. a symptom, 44

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The Current Crisis something pointing to a reality beyond itself. For Thucydides, the Peleponnesian war was such) and practices which can awaken all parts of our being. Ronald Eyre (1979) wrote and narrated a fine TV series called ‘The Long Search’ which investigated a multitude of religions and cults. For him, as for many others, the long search ended with a direction to take a different road the next time. What I think we came back to, if we ask (What do I have to do, to change) … is ‘Who are you,’ ‘who’s asking?’ The moment that (original emphasis) question is asked, you get into a real relationship with the Teaching, because you see your lack. (Jacob Needleman quoted in Eyre, 1979, 279)

It is this self which realises its lack of Being that religion can help. Finally, the epistemological crisis, our lack of real knowledge (including of Being itself), will form a theme of part II. The epistemological crisis is our failure to distinguish various types of knowledge; for example, the scientific from the religious. Science’s claim-jumps we shall discuss in such sections as III–1, III–2 and III–3. Let us finish this discussion with an account of the classical religious claim-jump, the attempt to prove the existence of a numinous yet personal God through the things of this world. Jill Walsh’s ‘Knowledge of Angels’ envisages a sailor, Palinor2 arriving in Mallorca around 1450. He is essentially a pagan rationalist and refuses to declare himself as Christian, Moslem or Jew. The Inquisition is called in after he fails to respond positively to the argument from God’s existence from design and the ontological argument. He rightly points out they point to something outside the world as he knows it, which is sufficient heresy to merit his being burned at the stake. The major point is that these arguments took their impetus from church control of the state and cannot work otherwise. Design can attune one to a mystery in nature awakening a particular movement of the psyche; however, it cannot do the work required of it by the ‘argument from design’. As we shall see in II–2, nature abounds in unlikely coincidences which make our existence at times seem necessary rather than contingent. However, the attempt to use it to justify theocracy leads to absurdity. In summary, then, when driven by a moral principle, we undoubtedly are more energetic than in what is now our customary state of doubt. Nor is our problem that we now know too little to believe; it is rather that we know too much. Any new belief system is immediately subject to the standards of evidence demanded by current science. Moreover, we may practise religion only in the context of knowing there are other, perhaps equally valid (and invalid) religions. We cannot believe a single economic theory or political credo because we know alternatives exist. Indeed, science itself is in danger of becoming mere technology as we doubt the efficacy of purely rational enquiry. The only religions which gain ground are those which lay claim to certain aspects of the apparatus of state. For example, as we’ve seen, Roman Catholicism has never renounced its claim on state power and insists on dominating education when it can. The processes of parliamentary democracy are debased by a 2

(borrowed from Virgil’s Palinurus; Ecce Gubernator)

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Being Human: The Search for Order notion of politics as essentially serving economic ‘realities’. This is how we get to the state of paralysis described in the prologue. The crisis has now been described. It is time to look in greater detail at what intellectual resources exist to resolve it.

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Our Age of Ignorance

i. Noetic Science It is the fate of many who seek a Messiah to find one. Our contemporary search may investigate the body of knowledge about the physical cosmos in the hope of certain truth, to ‘know the mind of God’ as Stephen Hawking puts it. In another age, such knowledge might be hoped to lead to a feeling for what actions are in keeping with the nature of the cosmos. Alternatively, the contemporary seeker might choose to investigate political and economic theory in order to understand power relations. The process of Marxist enlightenment, so ably described by writers like Koestler (see the discussion of millenarianism below), convinced many that agitprop activity was in harmony with an underlying cosmic dynamic. Alternatively, with the modernist death of the possibility of intellectually responsible religious conversion, secular religions like Freudianism produced compelling personal revelations. The viewpoint afforded by conceptualising one’s psychic life in libidinal terms also allows a different perspective on history: are not its events the creation of actors with similar psychic structures to ours? We who have progressed this far know that no Messiah or theory of everything exists and that the truth is far more subtle, beginning perhaps with a new set of concepts interrelating agent, belief-system and data. One of the tasks of this section is tentatively to point a way to such a set of concepts. Before we begin the analysis of the fields of inquiry which contribute most to modern knowledge, we need to get some purchase on the notion of knowledge itself. This done, we can proceed to familiarise ourselves with the most important concepts and themes emerging from current physics, biology, economics, psychology, medicine, and applications of these in technology. We then move on to the social sciences and to the less tangible truths hidden in myth and religion. Religion in particular has historically been a theory of everything (a Weltanschauung) as well as a moral guide, the arbiter of which actions were in keeping with the nature of the cosmos and its author; it behooves us to pay it close attention, though we may wish to accord it a far humbler role, or none at all. Knowledge, classically defined as ‘justified true belief’ has historically been treated by a sub-discipline within philosophy, called epistemology. It dealt with such matters as how we can prove the existence of an external world i.e. defeat solipsism. Its (as we shall see, consequential) failure to do this, or finally to resolve such issues as whether knowledge comes only from the senses (empiricism) or from external ‘forms’ (idealism) has given impetus to the development of Cognitive Science, which studies these questions experimentally as well as theoretically. Philosophy is now thought of even by its own practitioners (Ayer, 1982) as rational inquiry in any field. (We shall see why it no longer claims capital enough to set up shop on its own.) 47

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Being Human: The Search for Order The notion of knowledge being overturned in Cognitive Science (CS) is that of a God’s Eye View, for example, a Laplacean set of equations which one can study and, by studying, enjoy fully that form of experience we call ‘knowledge’. CS, on the contrary, is developing a theory of knowledge which is profoundly dependent on the agent’s interaction with the object of knowledge (noema), a ‘knowing how’ rather than a ‘knowing that’. Since this is so critical to the argument of this book, let’s look immediately at some consequences. (I add the disclaimer that there are other, currently equally valid, points of view in CS and that I have taken pains to include them in my work. See P. Scott’s article in my 1997 collection, where he argues that emotion and awareness do not affect the structure of CS). Basically, all our views and theories (economic, political, etc.) help us gather data. A Marxist economist will often gather more data, including data hostile to this view, than a non-partisan economist unanimated by ideology or money (Barratt Brown, 1985, exemplifies this). If you want to get ahead, get a theory. Theories which animate action, even if ultimately wrong (as of course all theories ultimately are) still lead to knowledge, in the expanded concept of it we use here. Gabriele Salvatore’s recent film ‘Sud’ makes this point eloquently. Three Mezzogiorno misfits occupy a polling booth in what is intended to be a token protest at electoral fraud and politico-financial corruption. Accidents happen, and the stakes get raised until a ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ siege situation arises. The Italian army call on the misfits to surrender ‘in the name of the Italian state’. Suddenly they know at a much more fundamental level what they have always suspected: they and their community are being kept suppressed in poverty through naked force. At a trivial level, they have had an hypothesis confirmed by experience; the task of this section is to show there is a much deeper level, requiring a new understanding of knowledge itself. Last century saw the development of scientific knowledge characterised successively in the terms of logical positivism, Popperian falsification and Kuhnian paradigm shifts. It has fallen to CS to characterise knowledge in terms of its development. This will not be the focus here. In this book’s companion volume, a view of mind unfolds which will now be very quickly summarised. First of all, it is noted that all the disciplines concerned with mind compete with each other. Philosophers, in the manner of lawyers, attempt to dominate the agenda by procedural fiat; discussion is to be cut short with appeal to a deus ex machina like systematicity. The Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy domination of cognitive science, as that venture attempts to chart the vastnessses of mind, is reminiscent of their forebears’ arriving at the New World and explaining to the startled aborigines that, since they had documents claiming ownership of the land, the natives had no further claim. Neuroscientists, on the other hand, claim emphatically that since their data are the fundamental ones, no-one else can really speak coherently of mind. It is specifically denied here that neural reality completely specifies conceptual structure in the manner that, for example, the neuroscientist Gerald Edelman requires. Finally, AI researchers often claim that, since implemented systems are what fundamentally matters, the right to pontificate is theirs alone.

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Our Age of Ignorance The cognitive linguistics argument of Edelman and his sources like Lakoff is both formidable and current, and we shall give it an airing. A consequence thereof, made explicit in particular by Johnson (1987) , is that there is no objective structure to reality; A proposition exists as a continuous, analog pattern of experience or understanding, with sufficient internal structure to permit inference. (op. cit., 3–4)

The core concept of these researchers is the image schema, which is … a dynamic pattern that functions somewhat like the abstract structure of an image and therefore connects up a vast range of different experiences. (op.cit., 2)

Our equations have no necessary connection with reality; formal structures are just formulas for ordering symbols (p. 38). However, all Johnson’s case is based on a circularity; he seems to insist that people have some privileged and veridical access to the world other than that given by the flawed evidence of their cognitive systems; Signs can relate to the world because people understand both the symbols and their world and can relate one to the other. (p. 210)

Were cognitive linguistics wholly applicable to mathematics, as Lakoff and Nunez try and do, the game would be up for mathematical physics in that it would be reduced to an artefact of our cognitive systems, with no ‘gate’ into reality. ( Interestingly, the Search for Extraterrestrial Life (SETI) project assumes the contrary; indeed, pi is so universal, they claim, as to be too boring to communicate). However, Lakoff et al. have some exciting ideas; arithmetic is motion with numbers locations on a path, and zero is the origin. Their work affords a deep journey into our first cognizing, as does Lakoff’s more recent incursion into the cognizing of philosophical ideas. Where this approach has greatest currency is areas like literary criticism(Turner, 1991). For example, aporia can be treated as the unexpected failure of the projection of forcedynamic knowledge onto an argument (p. 111) Epigrams like ‘Vanity is the quicksand of reason’ arise because we conceptualise the mind as a body moving through a space (p. 116). On a positive note, ‘The Search for Mind’ assents with the view that we are psychophysical unities immersed in lifeworlds, but adds the caveat that our use of symbols allows us transcend our immediate circumstances; our ability to conceive of ourselves as an object in the world adds a further twist. Refuting Edelman and Lakoff, one can point out that in quantum mechanics(QM), for example, we can catch ourselves in the act of coming to a mistaken view of reality due to shortcomings in our conceptual systems. As Maddox (1999, p. 33) very sensibly puts it; 49

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Being Human: The Search for Order Our intuitive understanding of how objects in the macroscopic world behave(embodied in Newton’s laws) is based on the perceptions of our senses … it is difficult to imagine what selective advantage our ancestors would have gained from a capacity to sense the behaviour of subatomic particles.

Yet we can use the apparatus of QM, which we cannot grasp with our minds, to make the most accurate predictions ever made in science. Neuroscience has yet to come up with any killer data; The catalogue of our ignorance must also include the understanding of the human brain. (op. cit., p. 35)

However, the existence of certain processes seem ineluctably true; interneuronal competition, vector coding of brain contents, etc. In pp. 276–7 the 1995 edition nails its colours to the mast with respect to its own stances; cognition has intersubjective and autistic modes; the former, as a symbolic activity, exhibits syntactic, semantic and ontological dimensions. When, through the action of consciousness, we catch ourselves in the act as a object in the world, the insight therein gained remains part of the habitual structure of cognition. Knowledge initially consists of action schemes (‘if I do this, that will happen’) which gradually become internalised and abstracted from. The result of this abstraction is amenable to symbolic manipulation. Remarkably, due to what Eugene Wigner (1960) terms ‘the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics’ some symbolic systems arising from formalist consideration have reference in the real world when applied in certain contexts. Examples which we shall use in this book include Riemann geometry and Hilbert spaces. The claim from volume 1, then, is that the specifics of the human psychophysical reality do not strongly constrain the set of cognitive achievements available to us. It is indeed possible that we could share a counter-intuitive achievement like QM with extra-terrestrials possessed of completely different bodies. Our ability to use symbols, and to monitor ourselves as we act in the world, ensure this (To adapt one ancient source, humans are machines who can realise that they are machines). More controversially, it could be argued that the political realities of societies, that arise from acts of alienation by the society as a whole, might be shared in ways that might surprise us. Two discontinuities are envisaged. The shift from animal to human introduces symbols, and the associated capacity through consciousness to monitor oneself as an object in the world. The psychological is then supplemented by a realm that we will style for a moment the ‘noetic’, wherein the psychological detail of how an idea is cognized is irrelevant, because the mind accommodates itself, uncompromisingly, to the external reality represented by the concept or social reality. The mysterious process due to which entities like Riemann geometry and Hilbert spaces have a real (intentional) referent has inspired numerous metaphors. According to the memorable Bohm/Pribram model, the mind/body acts as a reference beam in holography. Objects emerge from an ‘implicate’ realm and emerge from apparent chaos 50

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Our Age of Ignorance through the mind/body’s acting as a ‘reference’ beam. We shall work with this metaphor on a provisional ‘as if’ basis. It is worthwhile dwelling on this holographic metaphor for some time. Normal light consists of waves which can destructively interfere with each other to cancel each other out. The technical explanation is that the light from sources like torches contain waves which are ‘incoherent’, i.e. out of phase with each other. The light waves are emitted in bursts which did not behave like parts of a continuous wave. Thus, conventional wave theory is inappropriate for ‘normal’ light. Lasers (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) on the other hand, force light waves to be emitted in step, integrated in a single wavelength, and thus in a ‘coherent’ or ‘in phase’ fashion. A further advantage is that the diameter of the source is maintained as the laser light moves through space; we can, if we will, target a very specific spot on the moon. The myriad technological applications of lasers probably include at least one object in the room in which you currently sit. Let us focus on holographic photography. In this system, light from a laser gets split in two. One part illumines the object and, as it does so, gets split in two. The other, unaffected component is to act as a ‘reference beam’ (see Briggs and Peat, 1984, 265–73). The separate waves are recombined and their image recorded on a photographic plate forming a hologram. A single photographic plate can store many such images. Remarkably, a particular image can be retrieved by shining the reference beam specific to that image at the photographic plate. There are two exciting parallels with the way our brains work. The first is that we function a great deal of the time by association. For example, Proust in ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’ bites into a madeleine (a cake, that is) and experiences a flood of memory sweeping him away. The second is the remarkable phenomenon of the brain called ‘lesionability’. Pribram’s mentor Karl Lashley spent years excising parts of rats’ brains to determine which parts held the ‘engrams’ i.e. the specific locations at which the programs encoding the performance of specific tasks (like running a maze) were learned. He found to his surprise (and in contradiction of the experimental work of the Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield), that no such engrams seemed to exist. Rather, the ability to run a specific maze seemed to deteriorate in direct proportion to the amount of cortex excised. Memory seemed distributed over our 100 billion or so neurons (see chapter 4 of the companion volume). Distribution in this sense is true also for holograms. Destroying part of the photographic plate results in the images being preserved in their entirety but at a lower degree of resolution, rather like bad TV reception. Pribram teamed up with the physicist David Bohm (see Briggs and Peat, 1984, 96–162) to produce the view of our relation to reality which was trumpeted some time ago as ‘the New Paradigm’. Bohm views the scientific process almost in Hegelian terms. A numinous, inarticulate ‘implicate’ reality expresses itself in our science and, one assumes, other cultural products in ‘explicate’ form. Our activity in some sense acts as a reference beam to make the inchoate explicit. This process of ‘holomovement’ contains its opposite within itself i.e. the progressive surrender of other parts of our knowledge to the implicate. As we shall see, this metaphor is a very useful one for grasping aspects of our cognitive 51

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Being Human: The Search for Order activity. Let us try and broaden the context of its application first to include metaphysical considerations. It has already been mentioned that philosophy no longer claims to have the capital to set up shop on its own and largely contents itself with a role as rational inquiry in any field. The days of system-building from purely a priori (i.e. presuppositionless) considerations through to Weltanschauungen, in the manner of Spinoza and Leibniz, are past. However, along with a formidable array of techniques for logical reasoning and linguistic analysis, philosophy can help us entangle the metaphysical assumptions implicit in our worldview. For example, the Aristotelianism chunking up of reality into substance, act and potency is still with us (see Lonergan, 1958). ‘Things, acts and potential acts’ together doesn’t leave much out. Substance itself is conceived as form (for example, the shape of a statue) plus matter (its stone).1 It is in any case unclear how far this schema can usefully be imposed on reality as modern physics has revealed it to us. Herbert (1993) argues that the three most salient phenomena of the sub-atomic world are randomness, thinglessness and inseparability. With respect to the first, QM does not allow us bring our causal notions to bear. Things are, and happen, for some or no reason. Moreover, even the most substantial items, like electrons, that we see at this level are mere manifestations of more encompassing electron fields. Finally, the wave functions of particles include information from all particles that they have ever interacted with, as Bell has demonstrated. Alfred North Whitehead’s (1968) process thought is an effort to break out of the confines of scholasticism to a more veridical worldview. A central theme of this book is a search for a single principle working in the cosmic macrocosm and personal microcosm which will endow meaning on our conceptualisation of both. Process thought goes far along this path (we discuss it in the theological context in II–8). Whitehead’s amazing philosophical achievement is the construction of a system of the world according to which the basic fact of existence is everywhere some process of selfrealization, growing out of previous processes and itself adding a new pulse of individuality and a new value to the world. (Love, 1971)

Whitehead’s is a vehemently interconnected universe; he also refuses categorically to abstract single items and events: The older point of view enables us to abstract from change and to conceive the full reality of Nature at an instant … For the modern view, process, activity and change are the matter of fact. At an instant there is nothing. (Whitehead, 1968, 20–2)

1

(A further step can claim that accidents, external appearance, can be separated from substance. What looks like a piece of bread is (trans)substantially Jesus Christ. We won’t go that far here.)

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Our Age of Ignorance Space and Time themselves are to be dispensed with as absolutes; ‘the notion of space with its passive, systematic, geometric relationship is entirely inappropriate,’ (op. cit., 15). Moreover, ‘there is no nature apart from transition, and there is no transition apart from temporal duration’ (op. cit., 51). Space and time are inextricable; we live in a 4-D space-time continuum, as Einstein’s general relativity (GR) demonstrates. The primary focus in process thought is the event over time, occupying space. Let us take this opportunity to outline the metaphysical stance of this book. We need somehow to fit consciousness, and the constellation of factors surrounding subjectivity in general, into the schema. The 1999 ‘Mind’ conference (see http: //www.compapp.dcu.ie/~tdoris/mind4) included in its call for papers a discussion of Whitehead and panpsychism, the notion that subjectivity is somehow a property of everything in nature, at least in some sense. Whitehead (1949) himself has a more nuanced viewpoint, evident in the statement from Process and Reality; … neither pure physical prehension, nor pure conceptual prehension leads to consciousness. (pp. 242–3)

We are abseiling the explanatory gap that Chalmers (1996), inter alia, has managed to turn into a grand canyon. Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall. In any case, there is one point of substance here; an abyss yawns between scientific fact and subjective experience. Weber (1999), on the above website, attempts to fill this abyss in a framework that is explicitly Whiteheadian; … one of the main achievements … is the destruction of the old concept of substance and its replacement by the concept of societies of actual entities.

We are going to motivate a stance that Weber insists be called pan-experientialism rather than panpsychism; … among the various successive phases in the coming-to-be of an actual entity that Process and Reality distinguishes are … the ‘physical pole’ and the ‘mental pole. (ibid.)

Inevitably, as a result ‘mentality is clearly a question of degree’ (ibid). The distinction between Weber’s enunciated position and panpsychism is made explicit by the claim that, in Weber’s (and Whitehead’s) framework, consciousness is predicated only of … the actualities that are able to appreciate the difference between … physical feelings and propositional feelings. (ibid.)

The above provides most of the basis for the metaphysical framework here, once time is thrown in. I take an ‘emergentist’ position in that I argue that such higher-order 53

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Being Human: The Search for Order attributes as consciousness can emerge only at a later stage in the development of an entropic system. Indeed, the kind of coincidences pointed to by supporters of the anthropic principle are interpreted in this context as higher principles of order’s being presaged in a manner suggesting design. However, the argument that consciousness must somehow be already there in implicit form in the cosmos strikes me as convincing also. Recent work by Hameroff and his associates (see the mind4 website) allows the appropriate via media. What we will now do is to apply this kind of schema to cognition (see O Nualláin, 1995, 2000 for a fully worked-out such treatment). The view to which recent CS set itself in opposition is knowledge as a static set of propositions. We will see how the opposing view works out later. For the moment, we need to do some phenomenology. O Nualláin (ibid., Chapter 9) distinguishes between different aspects of selfhood. The ‘punctual’ self is that which presents itself to introspection. The first important discovery one makes on any spiritual path is how malleable the punctual self is. It consists from instant to instant of urges, strongly-urged beliefs from any random assertion and then its opposite, all supported by the thought ‘I’. The ‘cognitive’ self, on the other hand, works as antibodies do in the immune system (Tauber, in press) and blocks out irrelevant information. You who read this book are not the same as the one who will shortly talk to your partner (or, even more so, your dog). In other words, we are, in a sense, different ‘selves’ in different contexts. Note that I am not claiming for any non-existence or unimportance of the self; indeed, the more ephemeral our inner life becomes, the more manipulable by slick politicians and commercial interests we become (Chapter 8 of Volume 1). However, to avoid information overload, we need in a sense to ‘be’ different selves in different contexts. A second important step in spiritual development is the identification with that in ‘oneself’ which remains constant across the various contexts, and which can hold fast in the tempest of mass media. Well before this identification comes the construction of an identity, a ‘socius’, which encapsulates the social roles one is compelled to take as male or female, doctor or street-sweeper, straight or gay, and so on. Therein we see the first type of ‘act of alienation’ at the psychological level. We discover our authentic roles through leaps of faith. For example, ‘coming out’ is almost a ritual of religious profession. Any technical abilities we gain in attempting to define our roles in society (as distinct from those we do as hobbies) are always first-rate. Truly to become a doctor, a musician or a labourer is an act of alienation. We cannot survive for any length of time in a social role to which our peers and society lend their consensual validation without technical excellence and self-discipline. The Hegelian notion of alienation, as we’ve seen, extends this reasoning to entire societies. The effects of such acts of alienation are manifest in inter alia the products of these societies which are always superbly executed, however ‘primitive’ the technology. Pre-telescope astronomy, for example, is accurate beyond our wildest speculations (sic) in cultures like the Mayan for whom the position of the stars was important. (They also developed the concept of zero and decimal notation.) They should be studied in their own terms rather than in terms of the psychological states leading to their production. We discipline ourselves to the 54

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Our Age of Ignorance point of bracketing (i.e. temporarily excluding) the rest of our existences as we produce them. Rupert Sheldrake (1988) has produced a set of theories compatible with Bohm’s schema to deal with such phenomena. As we shall see, he argues that the drive to selfrealisation in ever varied forms, at all levels from the most primitive (prokaryotes) to people and nations is guided, as if from outside, by morphogenetic fields. We investigate this further in II–3. It has been argued that the results of acts of alienation are manifest in the consensually validated products of culture. One such is scientific theories; as we shall see, Quine (1953 and elsewhere) has argued that these (and technology) are informative expressions of mentation, the workings of mind. The notion of scientific theories as comprising only ‘objective’ statements about reality is absurd, as we emphasised in Part I. They are attempts to treat as much permissible data as possible; their precise structure is largely formed by the requirement that their content be communicable. Consequently, we have to put them in consensual terms. However, their content is thus often dominated by psychologisations. For examples, Newton’s notion of ‘force’ derives from its phenomenal feel as much as anything objective. We have already stressed the socially and politically conditioned nature of these theories; Polanyi (1958) emphasises their origins in intellectual passions and, inevitably, personal biases. The notion of knowledge we are about to discover might seem to run the risk of being prone to accusations of subjectivism. However, as is being stressed, much of our supposedly ‘objective’ knowledge is in fact not objective, but merely consensual. Only mathematics can claim true objectivity and even this in unpredictable applications (Wigner, 1960). ‘Science’ derives from the Latin ‘scio’ (I know); its realm is the consensual rather than the objective. Scientific theories are always the products of alienation and can truly be understood only through the acts of alienation, acts which inter alia force one beyond ‘oneself’. In this schema, true musical knowledge as expressed in good technique or in agreement on, for example, the superiority of Beethoven over Geminiani, is part of science.2 An immediate consequence is the placing on an equal epistemological footing of authentic knowledge about music and about biology. The exile of mind from the cosmos epitomised by Galileo’s characterising most of our existence as a ‘secondary, ephemeral’ quality is over. Those challenged in their imaginative faculties have ever envisaged the ‘end of science’, the notion that theirs is the ultimate state of knowledge that will ever be available to humans. Stent (1969) made the much articulate recent such case, and his argument has been famously echoed by Horgan (1996). The latter’s book in particular demonstrates how much havoc a reign of terror by epigram can wreak. Let us first of all examine Stent’s case. Essentially, Stent argues for an end of science by failure of will. He cites, for example, the recent failure by the US Congress to approve the Texas supercollider project, even after several billions of taxpayers’ money had been spent on it. Briefly, such expenditure is necessary in order to create an environment wherein particles can be accelerated up to 2

Let us note that Beethoven famously saw himself as an explorer of an objective musical space. ‘Beethoven regarded art as a way of communicating knowledge about reality’ (Sullivan, 1964, 12).

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Being Human: The Search for Order sufficient energies to provoke certain types of interaction. At these energies, different theories will be differentially falsified or not. For example, Weinberg (1999, p. 39) confidently expects that, due to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, ‘the very least that will be discovered is a single electrically neutral scalar particle’. In fact, Weinberg (op. cit., p. 40) feels free to say that a zoo of new particles with masses not much larger than 1,000 GeV … should be discovered before 2020.

For Stent, the failure to fund the supercollider project is symptomatic of our slide into the ‘New Polynesia’, an era of hedonistic decadence, in which humans lose interest both in the sciences and the arts. Inevitably, science must end because the realm of the unknown shrinks concurrently with the need to invest ever vaster sums in equipment to perform basic experiments. (Interestingly, Stent, known to this writer as a warm and wise man, is also profoundly anti the kind of green thought exemplified by Singer, above). Horgan, a scientific American journalist with a rapier pen, spent some years interviewing major scientists to buttress Stent’s case. It was no contest; scientists in general are cathected to the uncanny, and eccentric as can be. Thus, we find summary dismissals of Roger Penrose ‘He has made the great mistake of thinking that physics should render the world completely intelligible and meaningful’ (p. 177). In other words, one should abandon oneself to blundering about in a post-modern miasma because ‘Steven Weinberg could have told him that physics lacks that capacity’ (ibid.). One should abandon oneself to unintelligibility? Let us pause for a moment. Speculation about the end of physics peaked just about 100 years ago. Yet brilliant students kept entering the field, drawn by who-knows-what and often opposed by their mentors. The radical new worldview that emerged included the observer and his cognitive limitations as a factor in one interpretation, and his experimental limitations in another. Discovery involves the synthesis, as we’ve seen, of a mathematical formalism like Hilbert Spaces and a physical intuition, as implemented, for example, in image schemas. Such a discovery procedure does not seem to have formal limits, particularly if augmented by a correctly-upheld scepticism about the truth of any new theory one produces. So much for the demarcation of a type of psychic movement as ‘scientific’. Let us continue with Ó Nualláin’s (1995, 1997) classifications. The aim is to restructure the current mess in the psychological sciences, where each science claims de facto dominion over all the others. The processes of mentation, viewed in informational terms and without respect to their (intentional) objects, are the domain of CS. The structures resulting from our attempts to grasp reality in conjunction with their intentional objects is the proper domain of Noetic Science (see below). The brain states associated with conscious experience and the phenomenal feel supervening on these states is the province of a science of consciousness. Psychology deals with the remainder; mentations which cannot immediately be seen to have informational content. It should attempt to examine whether any or all of this content can be moved 56

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Our Age of Ignorance into the consensual domain. For example, it has only recently been established that emotion has an informational component, a component which makes it a fit subject of study for CS. Similarly, the supposedly ‘subjective’ assessment that Mozart is superior to Geminiani is in fact based on the relation of set to subset, and a fit focus of study for noetic science. To return to our holographic theme; this metaphor allows the brain to be looked at as a massive photographic plate operating holographically. A specific context acts as a reference beam which evokes a particular ‘holographic image’, or item of knowledge, presenting it to consciousness. Consequently, knowledge is essentially Whiteheadian; event-based, a ‘knowing how’ rather than ‘knowing that’. The unifying principle of this knowledge is not its consistency in a mathematical system; it is the central self which knows the types of things it knows how to do. It may require some practice to recapitulate that knowledge; however, that too is part of it. (Of course, ultimately, the context and cognitive self are also themselves events.) Pribram, in a personal communication, told me that he believes his schema cannot work for symbolic behaviour in general. I believe this to be overly pessimistic; for example, mathematical structures somehow seem to refer in a manner explained better by a realist epistemology like the ‘New Paradigm’ rather than the constructivism symbolists like Chomsky require. For example, Riemann Geometry, partly a formal game, turns out to be the best model of our four-dimensional universe. The folk psychology suggestion that a theory should make sitting sense and walking sense seems all the wiser now. They imply different reference beams; we can determine if the knowledge made explicit is of a constant nature. On a higher level, the fact that somehow we can on occasion intuit real properties of the cosmos should give us pause to wonder. The objects of such wonder are the topics of the next section. The fertile holographic metaphor deals entirely with physical reality; the actionscheme account further above is due to Piaget. With the American philosopher John Dewey, as with his contemporaries like Pierce, we first encounter a description of how our initially physical experience can lead to structures which represent reality. Some crucial points have emerged; let us summarize them. First of all, the roots of knowledge are in action. Secondly, once the existence of an external world is assumed, there are different types of relation possible between knower and noema (the known object). Along with empiricism and idealism, which we’ve already looked at, the notion that noesis (the act of knowing) involves cognition of objective properties of objects, a notion labelled ‘realism’, is correct for certain noetic acts. Most importantly, however, we realise that knowing is an activity, not a state. In the holographic metaphor, the mind/body’s action will create a different reference beam for each of its states. This has obvious consequences for the different objects it can reveal in the booming, buzzing mass of data that we deal with from moment to moment. One possible taxonomy of knowledge, then, categorises with respect to amount of activity by the knower. The more activity required, the more context-dependent the knowledge tends to be. For example, we tend to know the date the declaration of independence was signed, or the five-times tables, pretty well everywhere; we really know how to swing a golf club or tennis racket, or clinch a deal, only in the situation; 57

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Being Human: The Search for Order we can forget either type of knowledge when drunk. Nor is this an entirely novel approach to knowledge; for Aristotle some types of moral lapse were due to ignorance and – here’s the link – one was held blameworthy insofar as one was responsible for the ignorance (for example, by getting drunk). This extended notion of knowledge has consequences for the roles of theories in cognition and action. All theories (not just economic ones) abstract from reality; all are right to some extent and wrong to some extent. For example, given quantum mechanics (QM), Newton’s physics is incomplete, but works well for macroscopic particles. In economics, Monetarism works well for periods of rapid inflation, Keynesianism for short-run cyclical behaviour, and Marxist economics provides the best long-run predictions; yet all claim to be comprehensive theories. This book is inevitably limited to the types of knowledge that can be verbally expressed; its author, like every other human, has learned much by being in the presence of and physically learning from a teacher in a way that this book cannot imitate. Wittgensteins’s (1922) famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ends with the admonition that the teaching contained in the book is like a ladder that should be kicked away, the better to enjoy the perspective that climbing it affords. Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose adapts this idea brilliantly. A Byzantine plot at the centre of medieval Christendom (sic) is revealed to William (of Baskerville) a Franciscan appointed to investigate it. Each bit seems in place; yet Henry questions whether he discovered anything other than lies he was fed, and (anticipating half a millennium) quotes a Germanic mystic to the effect that his theory was merely a ladder. The thesis of this book puts an enormous burden on the concept of knowledge, as others put on ‘consciousness’; I believe it can take the strain. I do so in the knowledge that this itself is theory – formation and ultimately its ‘proof’ is the legitimation a reader might feel in certain types of action or inaction. Successful theories are complicated plays on external data, the limits of human cognition (and emotion) and – finally – our desire to do something (out of boredom or necessity). As mentioned, for the American philosopher Quine, much of what we call ‘mentation’ is already out there, manifest in our science and technology (i.e. the working of mind). As he later put it, the keynote of the mental is the contention ‘that p’. It follows that our attempts to circumscribe mentation with a set of computer programs are doomed to failure. However, such circumscription is still the dominant trend in CS, with what I believe are unfortunate results. These include attempts to ‘explain away’ rather than explain, consciousness and (up to recently) the demotion of social factors and emotion. Let’s briefly look at the latter issue. The ideal of scientific data has, since Galileo, excluded subjectivity and emphasized ‘primary’ instead of ‘secondary’ qualities. CS has abundantly demonstrated that emotion has a noetic quality; physics, as we are about to see, has reintroduced the observer (as a species of measurement/determination). There is truth and justification in responsible action which turns the belief animating it into knowledge. The truly remarkable fact about our age is despite the media domination (documented above in Part I) by transnational capitalism, it has not yet fully succeeded. People successfully protest about toxic dumps or nuclear testing in 58

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Our Age of Ignorance the teeth of withering put-downs from hired-gun ‘experts’. The prevailing consumerism has met the reef of communitarianism as the native human urge for belonging asserts itself. Within civic society, as distinct from the state, people achieve self-definition through unpaid work. Finally, for this section, people have fortunately also had the native wit to reject the myriad ‘scientific psychologies’ of the 20th century in favour of systems which allowed them retain their humanity. At times, of course, these systems were crassly exploitative; we discuss this below. Perhaps our knowledge may eventually advance to the point that it can characterise one’s activity in applying a theory in terms other than these of the theory itself. Lakoff claims to be there already. Then one could, for example, describe the Marxist ‘ladder’, from which the power-relations underlurking economic realities become apparent, without needing to accept any of the Marxist premises (explained below) even on an ‘as if’ basis. We may also learn in what deep sense the acts of mind required to understand physics are different from those for sociology, a distinction which, once established, would put paid to the kind of claim jumps we shall see in Section 3. It may not be beyond such a Noetic Science to determine what values cause the fine spirits among us to gravitate unpopular political parties like the Greens or demanding and commercially unrewarding art forms like jazz simply because they are better. In summary, then, we have outlined ‘Noetic Science’, one of the purposes of which is to bridge the gap between responsible action and the psychological sciences.

ii. Physics No science has been more prone to hyperbole, to claiming a privileged place in the hierarchy of human knowledge and – more recently – to leap directly into the religious sphere (witness book titles like ‘The Tao of Physics’, ‘The Physics of Immortality’). True, the worldview emerging from general relativity (GR) and QM is strange and there is a certain sense in which other sciences reduce to physics. (See appendix A for a discussion of how science progresses). However, the more far-flung speculations (for example, that the Universe is generated by consciousness) need to be tempered by the mention of alternative frameworks. For example, the landmark ‘Quantum theory without observers’ conference (some papers of which are published in Cushing et al. (1996)) gives a alternative explanation for certain types of observer paradoxes. Nevertheless, physics has recently been responsible for advances under three banners: scientific methodology, general worldview, and links with other disciplines (whether forced or not). Under the first heading, we find ourselves again attacking the Galilean notion that subjectivity can be excluded from ‘scientific’ accounts. We shall review a cross-section of currently valid physics; however, it is appropriate to mention three examples of the observer’s role immediately. The first is the most famous; Einstein’s 1905 paper dealing with relativity. Let two synchronized watches A and B emit signals. Let observer X be at rest with respect to these watches and observer Y be in motion with respect to them. Einstein’s position on relativity is that a judgment asserting simultaneity by observer X based on A and B will not be shared by observer Y. (This type of relativity had largely been anticipated by Newton and Poincaré; 59

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Being Human: The Search for Order Einstein’s innovation is in truth a principle of absolutism [the speed of light] rather than one of relativity). Another type of observer-relativity concerns the nature of electromagnetic fields; the electrical or magnetic aspect of these fields is most salient depending on the relative velocity of the observer. Finally comes the observer notion most abused, that relating to the act of measurement in QM. Already, here is a place in which it’s worthwhile to spend some time; see appendix B for details. We wish to observe a quantum system (a particle, or whatever) and a measurement apparatus to do so. The initial state has now been prepared. We allow the system’s wave function to evolve before asking a yes/no question. The yes/no question may be as trivial as whether the particle is at a certain position X or not. It is important to note how high the stakes are here. Ultimate reality, we are entitled to state, is somehow expressed in this wave function. According to our chosen (and scientifically allowable) interpretation, the act of observation will cause a particular instantiation of reality. We shall shortly describe the situation mathematically; the following paragraphs are a perhaps quixotic attempt to map it onto prose. The wave function expresses the state of the particle or system to be observed. Before observation, the evolution of this state is time-reversible. In other words, we can get back to square 1. As we shall see, the condition of time-reversibility imposes constraints on the type of mathematical operation allowed. Different constraints obtain for the act of observation, which induces a time-irreversibility into the situation. This schema was originally conceived of by Schrödinger, who conceived of its application as universal. It was to work for de Broglie’s ‘matter waves’. The French aristocrat was the first fully to express in modern terms the ancient notion (recently expressed in the Sanatana dharma tradition by Sri Aurobindo) that ‘vibrations’ are, in some sense, at the core of reality. We can gain an entrée into current physics controversies by considering the various interpretations of the wave function that exist. David Bohm, who won his initial reputation in QM, argues that we can consider the system as having a definite position. The wave-function probes the whole environment: the information it gathers guides the system. This ‘guide wave’s’ existence implies that each event at this level is informed in a real sense by the state of the whole universe. For Herbert (1993) the indeterminate and universal nature of the wave function is a design decision: only by engineering things in this inseparable ‘thingless’ way could it be ensured that matter would be based on a substrate flexible enough to be robust. For de Broglie (see, for example, Bernstein, 1991, 174), the wave function also guided the particle, an interpretation which came under fire for its ties to classical physics. As we shall see, these ties cannot be allowed to bind. It is said that each equation in a book decreases its readership (and purchasership) by half. As a mathematical warm-up, calculate what fraction of my original potential customer base remains at the end of this set of formulae. Fortunately, as is evident from the recent rash of popular physics books, there seems to be a commensurate gain in readers who buy books that they can’t possibly understand; it is to you that I appeal right now! Wittgenstein’s adage about popular science that is encourages people to believe they have understood things they have not grasped at all was never more true.

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Our Age of Ignorance The physics in such books as Hawking (1988) and Penrose (1989) is Ph.D. level. Yet we need to buy them and believe that we understand them. * * * Essentially, we’re beginning again from the process which commences at the preparation of the state and ends in observables. There are rules mediating the process which impose certain constraints, and which may or may not be an incomprehensible natural phenomenon i.e. a ‘black box’. The basic terms are represented ô, as operators in Hilbert space. Classical Schrödinger evolution proceeds deterministically. We are therefore constrained to use unitary operators, these for which û+=û–1. Given an operator û, we reflect each element across the diagonal and we form the complex conjugate of its every element to form its adjunct û+. Now, the Schrödinger evolution can be described as
(t) = u (t, o)
(o) or, expanded û (t) = e–iHt/h/ Where H is an appropriately-chosen Hamiltonian and / h is Planck’s constant divided by 2. This is time-reversible; given
(5) (for t = 5), we can derive
(0), the state following preparation, from the following: û+ (t) = eiHt/h/ and thus û+ (5, 0)
(5) =
(0) For observation, there exists a different constraint on the Hilbert Space operators i.e. they must be Hermitian, or self-adjoint. To form the adjoint of ô, we find the complex conjugate of each element in ô and swap all elements across the diagonal. Formally, the Hermitian requirement is that the adjunct of ô*ij = ôji i.e. each ô is equal to its own adjunct. Now, given the wave-function
, we require that our act of observation acts on it to provide a real number.
consists of a (potentially infinite) number of terms with complex number weightings. Let
* be the complex conjugate of
. Formally, we are requiring that be a real number. The classical QM situation is the one we’ve noted, where we ask a yes-no question of nature. Let us summarise the process using the above formalisms 1. Prepare the initial state of system 2. Let the isolated system evolve in time: 3. At time tm measure a yes-no property, effecting the procedure known variously as state-vector reduction and wave-function collapse. The system ends in one of two incompatible (mathematically, orthogonal) states. 61

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Being Human: The Search for Order or The state-vector reduction is effected by ‘decoherence’. Let us expand
*
= |
|2 + |
2|2+ …
*
2+ … ‘Quantum’ computing is essentially the attempt to exploit the vast information potential given by the indeterminate nature of prior to observation. After observation, the alternatives are greatly reduced, as here. The terms which are straight squares of moduli have a clear meaning, which varies according to the interpretation chosen. If we allow
to represent position, we can give either the Copenhagen ‘realist’ or the ‘ontological’ interpretation. |
(x,t)|2 which for Copenhagen realists is the probability that the particle (for example, the electron) is found between x and x + dx at time t. Those of us who favour an ontological interpretation delete the word ‘found’. Obviously, the electron must be somewhere so ∞ ∞ ∞

兰 兰 兰|
(x, y, x)|2dxdydz = 1

-∞ -∞ -∞

* * * Do we really need to explore reality at this level, at which all our physical intuitions and other Kantian categories are as naught? Let us learn from the Nobel Laureate Stephen Weinberg (1993) as he follows Thomas Huxley in musing why a piece of chalk is white. Well, chalk appears white to us because only sections of the electromagnetic spectrum of value less than red and greater than violet are absorbed by chalk. To understand the particular quantities giving rise to experiences like ‘red’ and ‘violet’, we must understand that atoms and molecules are stable only at certain discrete energy states. To understand this, in turn, we need to refer to precise QM equations like the above which you’ve almost certainly avoided. This, in fact, is our last certain piece of knowledge; the speculation begins with an attempt to answer questions concerning why these QM equations look precisely as they do. We now refer to the ‘standard model’; the synthesis of QM and relativity which superstring theory hopes to supersede. The basic entity of this model is the field, ‘a stress in space’ itself: (ibid., 25). Electrons are manifestations of the electron field; (light) photons are manifestations of the electromagnetic field, and so on. The standard model … includes a field for every type of elementary particle: ..lepton fields; their quanta include the familiar electrons … there are fields for quarks of various types … (Weinberg, 1999, p.38)

(Ó Nualláin et al. eds, 1999, includes a paper by Aerts et al. giving the more fundamental ‘quantum foam’ hypothesis) 62

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Our Age of Ignorance Forces between particles arise from exchange of other particles. The standard model, as we shall see, ultimately embarrasses us with its infinities; the question of why these and other fields exist, their precise properties, and the reasons for the privileged status of QM and GR are currently absolutely beyond us. Yet, we must, according to Weinberg, search for ever more encompassing theories. He is a reductionist in the sense that he believes Newton’s physics, a special case of modern physics for particles of a certain size, thus reduces to that same physics. The forces include the familiar categories like the electromagnetic and the gravitational as well as ‘… the weak interactions, the forces responsible for the change of protons and neutrons into each other in radioactive processes and in the stars … also … strong interactions, the forces that hold quarks together inside protons and neutrons and hold protons and neutrons together inside atomic nuclei’ (Weinberg, 1999, p. 36) Weinberg (ibid.), modestly omitting his own role in these breakthroughs describes the standard model as having achieved ‘a unification of electromagnetism with the weak interactions’ QM and its related findings like Bells’ theorem (which, however, is not dependent on QM) are regarded as precisely valid features of the final theory. Yet Weinberg has ‘misgivings about a life in … a theoretical framework that no-one really understands’ (1993, 85). The final theory is to be a synthesis of QM and GR; ‘dual’ superstrings, which are outlined below, may or may not be pretty enough for Weinberg. His 1999 summary features some neat summaries of the current situation. We can conceive of QM and special relativity (SR) together leading to quantum field theory (QFT). Likewise, SR and Newtonian mechanics together beget GR. From this perspective, the problem is a synthesis of GR and QFT. Alternatively, we can regard GR as a synthesis of the theories of universal gravitation and space-time geometry which must be somehow reconciled with the standard model. In Weinberg’s insistence on scientific beauty. we suddenly chance on a strange lode in the unconscious of this great scientist. For example, QM is not ‘an opportunity for a reconciliation between the spirit of science and the gentler parts of our nature’ (77–8). Time and again he returns to this lode; he cannot understand why the garden he looks out on is so beautiful, its glory striking him as excessive, but ‘we should not accept any theory as final unless it were beautiful’ (165). We find the same insistence on the beauty of equations repeated over and again in Einstein’s life and work (Bernstein, 1991). Here we see an a fortiori ‘secondary’ quality, aesthetic rapture, strongly posited as authentic i.e. as referring directly to reality. The task envisaged in section 1 for psychology of assessing the authenticity (in this sense) of various psychic events seems ever a more urgent one. Weinberg abandons himself to rapture in his physics and resists it in his experience of nature. One is ‘real’; the other is the gentler side of his nature, to be fought against. Likewise, musical appreciation is a non-science, a mess of hormones and waffle. Transpersonal ecology cannot trust us simply to revel in our experience of an old-growth forest as distinct from its clearcut successor; we need to make it part of ourselves. The most important task for psychology today is to indicate how feelings like these are authentic, referring to reality, and others (like sexual ecstasy) are consensual. (Pending the completion of this task, the most important and difficult 63

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Being Human: The Search for Order social role for the psychologist is the assertion of the importance of these remote movements of the psyche). There is no physical (or other) basis for trusting aesthesis in math more than art; each is equally likely to be referential. If we find that the particular act of mind associated with the aesthesis is based on, and cannot be experienced without, a mass of knowledge and technique, we find schemas like those advanced in section 9 here of great use. Let us summarise the positions of the two major schools of interpretation of measurement in QM .One, the ‘epistemological’ Copenhagen interpretation, states that the considerations embodied in the math are an index of our knowledge, not necessarily of anything objective. For Born and his colleagues, the square of the modulus of the wave function at any point represents the probability that the particle is found at that point. For those who favour an ontological, rather than Born’s epistemological interpretation, the word ‘found’ is deleted in that last phrase. One word, but a world of difference; ontological interpretations allow the observer a role in creating reality if certain licence is taken, as one is entitled to do. In fact, as we’ll see, current physics issues many licences. Cushing et al. (1996) includes papers (see also Ghirardi, 1995) which attempt to dispense with the observer in various ways; spontaneous localization (e.g. Ghirardi et al in this volume) assumes that, along with wave-function evolution, physical systems are subject to spontaneous localizations (remember the interpretation of the wave function above) which occur at random intervals and affect their constituents. (Roger Penrose proposes that a variation of this effecting orchestrated objective reduction occurs in the cytoskeleton of neural cells, occasioning consciousness).Alternatively, we might decide that each of the two orthogonal values of the wave function is valid each time in a different universe. (The exponential system is a great help here; we can say this generates 123 1010 different universes rather than write down all those 0’s. Frank Tipler, the master of the exponent, will be discussed later). This many-worlds theory has been more tenably rephrased as alternative histories. However, we don’t have to take a viewpoint on this yet; the observer will certainly be allowed as one valid source of state-vector reduction. The great John von Neumann allows us a bridge into considering the worldview aspects of physics. He considered the QM sequence of preparation – evolution – measurement. At measurement, we draw a line above which the system evolves according to QM (Schrödinger evolution) and below which its evolution is classical. However, the apparatus itself is made of atoms; QM, which claims to be a theory of everything, is bound to account for apparatus as well as system. The measurement time is assumed infinitesimal; if so, the wave function representing the interaction of system and apparatus may peak anywhere. In operational terms, we can draw the line between system and apparatus at any point. The reasoning is essentially simple. The apparatus is itself made of atoms, and so is grist to the mill of QM, which claims to be a theory of everything. We now need a further apparatus to detect this new more encompassing system, and so on in infinite regress. Indeed, we may decide that particle detectors and even neural mechanisms underlying conscious experience can be put above the line and consciousness itself below. We shall soon again see the viewpoint of Advaita, presaged here by viewing the state-vector before breakdown and the observer on the verge of 64

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Our Age of Ignorance consciousness as one. However, whatever the ‘truth’ or otherwise of Advaita, here is a compelling (if perhaps metaphorical) schema for the interrelation of ‘western’ systems which claim a sharp differentiation between subject and object and ‘eastern’ systems (like transpersonal ecology) which nuance or eliminate this distinction. * * * Let us again rid ourselves of most of your fellow-readers. We can choose appropriate Hamiltonians for the complex of systems and apparatus together (H), the system itself (Hs), the apparatus itself (H), and the interaction between the two (Hs-a) such that we can write H = Hs + Ha + Hs-a We can conceive of a pointer to the line of demarcation between system and apparatus. The last term can be rewritten in terms of the momentum of this pointer at time t; for the particular species known as ‘strong’ measurement, we find we can ignore Hs and HA. The Schrödinger equation for wave-function evolution, it will be remembered, goes as follows:
(x, t) = e –iHt/h/ We now solve the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. * * * However, we may decide to blur the dividing-line between the system and apparatus. If so, as Weinberg (1993, 82) reminds us, we are committed to the manyworlds interpretation. He is willing to allow humans a causative noetic role, while eschewing the ontological interpretation; in the Copenhagen interpretation of QM, humans play an essential role in giving meaning to the wave function by the act of measurement. (op. cit., 77)

The ontological interpretation, however, still is scientifically allowable. It is at this point that such researchers as Stapp (1993) and the French physicist and religious teacher, Francis Lucille (who has not yet been published but whose tapes are available) step in. For Lucille, the wave-function before state vector reduction is reality, saccidanda (a Sanskrit term – sat chit Ananda – meaning being, consciousness and bliss which one assumes includes the experience of beauty). It permeates the entire universe and includes all possibilities within itself. The advaita schools teach physical and intellectual exercises which recreate this reality at a psychological level. When we first 65

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Being Human: The Search for Order encounter it, it is quite foreign to us, used as we are to conceiving of ourselves as subjects opposed to objects. One is led instead into a mode of experience in which one is identical with ‘objects’, as we have seen, precisely the state prescribed by transpersonal ecology. Nor is there any commitment either to materialism (only matter exists) or dualism (spirit also exists) here. It can claim to be materialism. Given that the act of observation is necessary for instantiation of the wave-function it can also be dualism. What one cannot do is be a materialist who ignores subjectivity/observation. II–1 explores the attempts to cash this phenomenon out in terms of an extended concept of ‘information’ which we’ll see cannot currently bear the burden in any principled fashion. Let us try and resolve this strange theme. It is part of the Advaita concept that the state described above is outside space and time; they are its fundamental (illusory) manifestations. The next manifestation, that of discrete subject and objects, is the concern of Stapp (1993). He argues that the system/apparatus split affords a framework in which all metaphysical systems can be couched and framed. Stapp’s schema places the neural activity corresponding to observation at the ‘classical’ side of the split and the unconscious mechanisms underlying consciousness (and, one assumes, the apparatus) on the other side. This is essentially the position also of Stanley Klein. However, the line can be put at any point, as we’ve noted. If we depend on the apparatus, we are in our normal psychological state i.e. identifying ourselves with thoughts and bodily sensations, inter alia. In the advaita tradition, this is precisely our problem; consciousness has become enmeshed in, and identifies itself with, the mind/body complex. Moreover, while in this state, the avidya (ignorance) deepens as we lust after food, sex, and – with much more long-term consequences – attempt to realise ourselves through work and other projects. It is as if we perceive objects in the external world which resonate with unfulfilled urges inside. Not until we have fully realised ourselves in this worldly way can we begin to locate ourselves in awareness. Truly to embark on the spiritual path, it is necessary to give up on the things of children. The urges toward acts of alienation are absolute. It is characteristic of ‘western’ thought that we identify with, and immerse ourselves deeply in, matter. The alienation (in the negative sense) from our true natures as observation causes us to attempt to create material objects which can so return us, in what Schopenhauer called the action of ‘der Wille’. The act whereby the fundamental reality expresses itself as matter is itself an act of alienation. The illusions (Maya) of space/time, matter, life and finally separate selves are created. Yet there is a goal to all of this, as manifest in the coincidences mentioned in Updike’s ‘Roger’s Version’ (see above). The Maya seems to include patterns of order induction. We can assume that the existence of each of us, and the work we do in acts of alienation is all-important in the relative sense. In the absolute sense, of course, what we each are is satchitananda, out of space and time. The decision of where to put the line between system and apparatus, and to decide what role there is for awareness, is the most crucial one possible for science. As David Chalmers (1996) has famously argued, there seems to be no a priori 66

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Our Age of Ignorance role for subjectivity. We can function as automata quite well; in fact, as we’ll see Gurdjieff argues in 3–5, we essentially are automata and non-conscious. He argues that consciousness is an occasional achievement, an experience we perhaps encounter in our acts of alienation. However, when we are conscious, he argues, the machine which we are runs better (Walker, 1979; Ó Nualláin, 1997). Lucille agrees; everything we are and know is consciousness and the act of observation liberates it to truly be itself. However, I believe that the Gurdjieff schema, as reparsed here, works for all phases of life, in opposition to Advaita which cannot be accepted as the truth until we have performed the essential alienations required by our society. To choose a view on the role of consciousness is to locate oneself along the line between subject and object, to take a stance on the nature of reality and to evaluate the real purpose of our science and religion. So unsettling are these notions that, when faced with the question ‘What is Reality?’, Geoffrey Chew (the inventor of bootstrap theory) blurted out ‘Reality is an operator in Hilbert space’! Things are, and come to be somehow. John Wheeler argues that the act of observation creates reality, and proposes information as the core entity in the universe; ‘it’ comes from ‘bit’. (We discuss this and other information concepts in Section 3). Before leaving QM, let’s note two final methodological dictates. The first concerns the role of theory itself; observation is causative. The systems measured are wave-particle dualities as indeed is everything; Bohr’s principle of complementarity insists that, in order to get the full picture, both wave and particle stories must be separately considered and then combined. Indeed, objective God’s eye viewing is passé in a way not even Michael Polanyi’s (1958) programmatically entitled ‘Personal Knowledge’ fully explores. So far we have two pillars of the worldview structure; system/apparatus nondichotomy and the notion that reality is at bottom describable in terms of frequencies. Since de Broglie’s 1920’s innovation, it has been valid to speak of waves associated also with matter. At a deeper level, in the standard model and arising from the merger of QM and GR, there are fields which are stresses in space itself, as we’ve seen. The standard model is subject to the (for mathematicians) shameful experience of frequent infinities. Among the theories contending to replace it, string theory looks the strongest. (Brane theory, or the theory formerly known as strings, does not yet look as strong). The most fundamental particle is proposed to be a string, about 10m long, which can vibrate at various frequencies. Its vibration at that restricted set of frequencies to which we’re accustomed gives rise to the rather chaotic set of particles currently observable, the ‘particle zoo’. The most recent property attributed to strings, duality, posits that the particle zoo in fact comprises the strings themselves. Whatever the eventual form of this theory, QM itself will remain standing. The notion that vibrations/frequencies are at the root of things (as we shall see, an ancient idea) also looks likely to survive. The consequences of Bell’s work which shows that the information in two wave patterns are forever mutually inextricable (in the absence of decoherence) if they have interacted once will continue to be explored. In short, a 67

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Being Human: The Search for Order worldview stressing interconnectedness, field phenomena and a transparency at the core of apparently solid matter is possible. The advances due to Einstein’s GR are equally capable of taking one aback. It is known there are four basic forces in nature; the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism and gravitation. Einstein, called upon to supply an explanatory framework for the last of these, felt it necessary also to revise our notions of space and time. We live in a universe with three space and one time dimensions; gravitation can distort this 4-D space in a way described mathematically long before Einstein by the purely formal structures of Riemann Geometry. However, there is a point of great interest here for worldview; it is one of the first occasions that scientists have been asked to take a perspective out of time itself. We have come to the limits of our cognition. In like vein, Hawking (1988 (84) proposes that ‘space and time constitute a finite space without singularities or boundaries’. We are asked to call on our intuitions of what space is to explain space. We go out of time to understand gravitation. It seems that modern physics cannot be understood without remote and indeed self-referential acts of mind. Small wonder, given the above, that physicists often run riot when addressing themselves to other subject-areas. We shall deal with the notion of God in process pantheism in II–8; Murphy (1994) equates God with the physical concept of the Hamiltonian and finds the strictures of process thought obeyed. I believe that Murphy’s schema works, on the usual ‘as if’ basis: there is an implied distinction between Godhead, the numinous source of all creation and God, as we experience it. In Advaita, this translates as a distinction between sat-chit-ananda, and Ishvara, God in relation to the world. In the words of the Christina advaitin mystic Meister Eckhart; When I enter the ground, the bottom, the stream and the source of the Godhead, no-one asks me where I came from or where I have been . No-one missed me there, for there even God disappears. (quoted in Cox, 1986, 103)

Murphy points out that Aristotle’s notion of energeia is that which transforms potentiality into actuality. For Gregory Palamas, we can behold the created energies of God, not his essence. The consistency with Advaita stems from its contrasting of the empirical stance (which accepts, post-wave function breakdown, the reality of the world and its creator, Ishvara) and the transcendental stance, which is the cosmic prebreakdown undifferentiation. Murphy uses the concept of the Hamiltonian, which expresses the relation between position, q, momentum p and time t in these terms. H is unaffected by the changes around it. See appendix 2. In Murphy’s schema, then, God is the Hamiltonian, immersed in the cosmic process as continual creation (Teilhard’s ‘radial’ energy) but also unaffected by it. Tipler (1994), the exponent king, wishes to transmute quantum cosmology into a physical eschatology (relating to the eschaton, or end). As we’ll see in III–3, he can find for God 68

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Our Age of Ignorance in the trial provoked by the problem of evil, while supporting process thought; other neat footwork allows Christian notions of bodily resurrection and immortality. Penrose (1989, 1994) decides consciousness will yield up its secrets only to a new physics of quantum gravity. The fact he locates consciousness in the cytoskeleton and so allots it to cockroaches in the same measure as humans does not faze (or even phase) him. The force of physical law is appealed to, implicitly or explicitly, by all these scientists to justify their speculations. As we’ve seen, however, physical laws are also acts of faith, often bootstrapping on our physical experience of the world by exploiting our folk concepts like ‘string’ and ‘space’ to explain everything. We quickly come to the limits of our cognitive apparatus: yet, unquestionably, some of these theories work. And so we come to the mystery of ourselves and our existence. This, as it turns out, of course depends on a host of finely-tuned constants. (However, there is a recent argument by Barrow that this riot of coincidences ceases if we allow that the speed of light has changed since cosmogenesis) Were such items as the mass of the neutron, the strength of the strong and weak nuclear forces, the rate of expansion of the universe and considerably many more such constants in the slightest different, we carbon-based life forms could not exist. (We also see some examples of this in phenomena like the ‘providential’ mutation of the wheat in the Middle East giving rise to the first cities. (Bronowski, 1973, 65–8)) The anthropic principle dictates starting the chain of reasoning the other way around; we are here, so this huge chain of coincidences necessarily has happened. The final anthropic principle constrains the development of the universe to allow the continuation of life. However, unless we happen to meet a conscious mass of hydrogen atoms, the argument that some type of design has occurred in the cosmos cannot wholly be refuted. In this context, we later explore Daniel Dennett’s (1995) work on this problem and the ‘Game of Life’. Like Haines in Ulysses, commenting on Shakespeare, we can conclude physics is a happy hunting-ground for a sick mind. For a healthy one, even at the very least, it alters our views of what science does and what reality is. No small feat; unsurprisingly, many explanatory schemas like Bohm’s and Wheeler’s argue that our action in explaining the universe is a fundamental one. For Wheeler, we create reality; for Bohm, reality has noetic properties which appear to us gradually, the transition from implicate to explicate. Along with Bohm, Advaitins insist we learn to see ourselves as separate from each other and the world. In the implicate realm, which is the true reality, there is no such separation. They can defend their position philosophically using the same arguments as solipsists. They insist that the moment lovers feel as one, or we experience ourselves spread over a landscape, expresses the true reality. Let us examine the biological processes common to us and the landscape.

iii. Biology The first task of this section will be to deal with the most morally pressing technology of our times i.e. genetic engineering. To understand its mechanism and the goals of projects such as the Human Genome project, we need to look at how reproduction is implemented through protein synthesis directed by DNA and implemented through RNA. (See appendix C). In biology, as in several other fields, the technology has broken 69

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Being Human: The Search for Order free from the science; the conceptual crisis at the root of biology is such that the very notion of gene has in the main been dispensed with (Keller, 1996, Rheinberger, 1996). This at a time when the concept ‘gene’ has caught the popular imagination. Maddox (1999, p. 34) is very clear on this point; We are already at the point where deeper understanding of how, say, cells function is impeded by the simplification of reality now commonplace in cell biology and genetics – and by the torrent of data accumulating everywhere … in genetics, it is customary to look for the ‘function’ of a newly discovered gene. But what if most of the genes … have more than one function, perhaps even mutually antagonistic ones?

Biology is of course dominated by the neo-Darwinian expression of the theory of evolution (itself an idea far antedating Darwin, just as the neo-Darwinian synthesis contradicts his views on inheritance). The notion of natural selection underpinning this expression is for Dennett (1995, 21) ‘The best idea anyone has ever had’. Not only from physics do claim-jumps originate. Dennett goes on to apply Darwin’s ‘dangerous idea’ to sundry areas like morality and so qualifies for Part III of this book, where he is discussed at length. Significantly, the theory of evolution has always been contested on much more valid grounds than these of naive creationism. For example, there are difficulties with the rapid morphological change visible in the fossil record. This type of lacuna has led researchers like Kauffmann (1993) to propose self-organisation as an alternative as much as complement to natural selection. Dynamical systems theory for some promises a mechanism by which order emerges from chaos; we explore this and other ‘complex systems’ concepts in Part III. Perhaps we need to be further convinced that there is any problem. To the objections of scientists like Chomsky that the evolution of wings is ‘an embarrassment to evolutionary theory in that the genesis of a complex interrelated system is beyond its explanatory power’, Dennett insists that wings are ‘an embarrassment of riches’ (op. cit., 317). However, the jury is out on this question; there are other examples where the evidence is ambivalent. For example, palmitic acid, a cellular energy storehouse, is manufactured by an assembly line of molecular stations. It is hard to explain this in terms of gradual mutations; there seems to be an immanent ordering principle directing the system toward a particular end in its every detail. Similarly, the shrimp’s organ of balance depends on a tiny weight it inserts with its claws; it is again difficult to see this in terms of a gradualist theory. Examples abound; the propulsive motor of E-coli, the massive transformation from apes’ to humans’ brains, etc. An argument similar to that concerning the anthropic principle will be made i.e. it will always be as possible responsibly to describe these evolutionary changes in terms of an external ordering principle as in terms of random mutation and natural selection. Those in the ‘order’ camp have come up with several beautiful expressions of their insights. Sheldrake (1988) has produced a schema compatible with Bohm’s; cellular epigenesis (development) in organisms involves specialisation of cells into liver or brain cells in mysterious ways. Sheldrake claims that these are explicate expressions of 70

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Our Age of Ignorance implicate forms present in a ‘morphogenetic’ field. As we shall see, a set of genes called Hox governs the details of the mechanism. Hox is recently discovered; in this, at least, Sheldrake’s ideas have become almost mainstream, as we witness below. What has definitely become mainstream is the notion of co-evolution of organism and environment. It seems a priori impossible that a 2-D string of nucleic acid can informationally determine a 3-D protein. Monod came up with a solution; the rest of the information is in the environment. Similarly, neuronal conditions are not preset in the human infant; neuronal groups are programmed to compete against each other to gain access to the environment. Such access refused, they die. The co-adaptation of organism and environment is such that even certain diseases have positive immunological effects (like chickenpox). It is this inextricability which makes the advent of genetically altered organisms dangerous. This particularly applies to transplanting genes which allow disease resistance, without very careful controls. Many alternative theories to mainstream Darwinism stress teleology. For example, Eric Jantsch pointed out that bacteria seemed to spend billions of years of evolutionary history creating an oxygen-rich environment before learning to use oxygen themselves. Yet the dearth of mainstream theory in biology may be more apparent than real. For example, Sober (1993) claims that evolutionary explanation is historical, and should not be judged by the ideals of physics. Alternatively, we find deus ex machina notions like ‘information’ and ‘program’ used to explain biological phenomena. First of all, it’s time to keep a few promises. Let us look, very briefly, at the mechanism for inheritance used in nature, as treated in the companion volume to this one; Deoxyribonucleic acid consists of a long chain of four molecular compounds (guanine, thymine, cytosine, adenine). Sequences of three of these bases are read at a time by a cell, at a speed and time also specified on the DNA strand. Each base instructs the cell on which amino acid to include in a protein, the structure of which also determines the protein’s function. (Ó Nualláin, 1995, 266)

Ó Nualláin (ibid., 266–8) goes on to discuss the alternative Lamarckian and neoDarwinian explanations for the impression by the environment (perhaps acting in conjunction with the organism) of traits which better adapt the organism to the environment. The Lamarckian explanation allows direct inheritance of traits acquired through the organism’s own activity. To the considerable embarrassment of presentday Darwinians, this was Charles Darwin’s own position. The fact it can be used to justify racial policies (or not, as the case may be) does not quite explain the hysteria around this issue. The neo-Darwinian synthesis insists on blind mutation followed by natural selection. Its acceptance is by no means universal (Rifkin, 1983; Sheldrake, 1988). What seems increasingly to be emerging is an emphasis on mechanisms like the Baldwin effect and concepts like Waddington’s ‘epigenetic landscape’. These notions allow a de facto imposition of adaptive characteristics without needing the type of direct imposition by the organism’s form (the phenotype) on the gene line (the 71

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Being Human: The Search for Order genotype) which Lamarckianism requires. The considerations involved in general consider organism and environment as two aspects of an encompassing whole, with each organism’s form and behaviour being exquisitely attuned to and formative of its environment (which includes other organisms). Recent work on Lyme disease revealed an ecosystem of breathtaking intricacy with its occasional imbalances causing an increasing incidence of this terrible disease. Our effects on ecosystems up to the level of the planet have results which we do not even have the scientific knowledge to gauge. In studying those ecosystems even as thorough a philosopher of biology as Elliot Sober is willing to allow the possibility of teleological explanation i.e. explanation which couches itself in terms of the system’s attempts to reach certain goals. Thus is blood circulation explained. At a planetary level, we can behold the influence of systems which work to maintain systems like the atmosphere at a chemical composition appropriate to sustain life; J.E. Lovelock and Lynn Margoulis approach this notion with the concept of ‘Gaia’: The atmospheric concentration of gases such as oxygen and ammonia is found to be kept at an optimum value from which even small departures could have disastrous consequences for life. (Lovelock quoted in Goldsmith, 1993, 187)

Our ignorance of this area is all the more shocking as its detailed observation was in full swing by the mid-nineteenth century: the destruction of the mosquito that feeds the trout, that preys on the Mayfly, that destroys the eggs, that hatch the salmon, that pampers the epicure, may occasion a scarcity of this latter fish in water where he would otherwise be abundant. (Marsh, 1964)

And so to genetic engineering. Here we affect the ecosystems in the most direct way possible by introducing into them organisms whose genetic makeup has not arisen from the standard co-evolution of organism and environment just emphasised. The change involved may be a very trivial one; for example, we may simply insert a gene for resistance to a specific disease (borrowed from another organism) into the DNA sequence of our target organism. Let me stress that the argument of this book is against this technology being used in the large, as a way of ‘perfecting’ ecosystems that we don’t even understand. When such technology is used to alleviate the sufferings of a single human, and particularly given the fact we already live in a largely artificial environment, it is to be encouraged. However, there are some caveats; in particular, the technology of gene insertion has not yet advanced to the point that we can predict with anything approaching total confidence where the new bases will end up. In fact, we may find it very difficult to find them, once inserted. Secondly, there has so far been one definite death, and no permanent cure, from gene therapy, Rhys Evans’ cure may be the first. Much of our DNA is ‘noise’ i.e. it has no discernible function. Maddox (1999, p. 34) comments, in terms which are relevant to this point (as to Ho’s [1999] plaint that 72

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Our Age of Ignorance interspecies exchange of DNA is so prevalent in nature that GMOs are dangerous in the extreme); The human genome is crammed with DNA sequences that appear to be nucleic acid fossils of a time when genetic information was readily transferred between different species much as bacteria in the modern world acquire certain traits (such as resistance to antibiotics) by exchanging DNA structures called plasmids.

The goal in any kind of genetic engineering, be the goal gene therapy or the creation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for profit, is to introduce bases coding for new proteins. Retroviruses have the ability to insert themselves neatly into DNA strands. In general, these viruses are ‘crippled’ so they can’t reproduce and are used as vectors to carry the required gene into the organism. The hope is that the cell into which this strand is spliced will reproduce and that eventually such cells will become the normal structure in the organism in question. However, it should be obvious that the dangers are manifold. First of all, the retrovirus might knock out healthy parts of the DNA strand (Glausiusz, 1996). Study of the use of retrotransposons, which are parts of the cell’s own DNA, as vectors has begun. In particular, a yeast transposon called TY3 seems always to pick a benign spot at which to place itself. It is guided there by the very proteins for which it codes. A less subtle approach, where microscopic gold bullets coated with genes are fired at the target, has been successfully used to treat tumours in mice. A gentler variation on this theme is the use of liposomes (the molecules fat forms when in solution). So far this last method has been used as a test for a possible cure for cystic fibrosis. The major advance so far is that at least it didn’t exacerbate the situation; time will tell whether this debilitating disease, involving massive overproduction of mucous, will eventually be overcome by gene therapy: Three hundred clinical gene therapy trials on about 3,000 patients … have yet to bring

about a full cure of a single patient. McKie, R. (2000, p. 16)

There is currently at least one authenticated case of a death from gene therapy itself (ibid). We cannot responsibly talk for long about genetics without referring to claims that human behaviour is strongly determined in all its manifestations and in a direct way by our genetic makeup i.e. the ‘sociobiology’ school of thought. The net result is always a deification of another unholy trinity: Darwin, Crick and Watson. It helps a lot that Darwin looked a little like his contemporaries’ depiction of the God he supplanted. Dennett we shall examine in detail later but let’s briefly note a few small points. Darwin himself occasionally has to be kept in line: Here is one instance where Charles Darwin himself has to count as a straw man. (Dennett, 1995, 303)

The positing of the new trinity is done at the cost of an occasional inaccuracy: 73

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Being Human: The Search for Order Frances Crick and James Watson had discovered DNA in 1953, but how it worked was a mystery for many years. (ibid., 172)

The Crick/Watson/Donohue breakthrough, a shamelessly self-conscious attempt to win a Nobel prize, was not a discovery of this kind: The discovery that DNA was the genetic material … was reported in an extraordinarily significant paper in the journal of experimental medicine in 1944. (Edelman, 1992)

Edelman (ibid., 53, 55) goes on to add that Avery’s not winning a Nobel prize reflects his lack of political rather than scientific skills. Many Nobel prizes are given prematurely in view of the later careers of the recipients (Brian Josephson is a case in point), for trivia (the Economics prize is largely the result of corporate pressure) or for ephemera (The peace prize is a fortiori a political statement for example, Ireland’s own Betty Williams is a good case in point . In her own words, she didn’t walk away from Northern Ireland after getting a Nobel; she ran, away to America to marry a millionaire). Dennett’s is nonetheless a formidable intellectual construct, which merits the close attention paid in III-3. Less intimidating is that of Richard Dawkins; Equations are not my language … I’m not equipped to answer questions on it. (Dawkins, quoted in Shrage, 1995, 186)

Remarkable humility for one who qualifies for the Dublin term ‘buckserologist’ i.e. a know-it-all. Cherished concepts like ‘free will’ and ‘spirituality’ live in the dark, helical shadows of our genes. He has aroused the ire of England’s religious community by publicly expressing his view that theology is nothing other than a pseudo-intellectual grab bag of charming myths. Dawkins is a fiery evangelist for atheism. (Shrage, 1995, 122)

One point at a time. Dawkins’ earlier position indeed corresponded to that in the first sentence of this quotation. The argument in this book, it should be becoming apparent, is that the role of free will is related to one’s metaphysical stance; in von Neumann’s terms, the position of the split between system and apparatus. To derive conclusions about free will from genes, we would need to know how consciousness arises from genetic expression; that we certainly do not know and Dawkins’ is a ‘category’ error. What is difficult to understand is how Dawkins reconciles a career built on provocative anti-free-will inaccuracies like the above and old-fashioned anti-religious granny-baiting with being a spokesperson for worthy groups like Amnesty 74

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Our Age of Ignorance International. If there genuinely is no objective source of value, it is surely the duty of a scientist to reflect this in his life as in his work, whatever the cost in lost publicity. His incarnation in the hip capitalist magazine ‘Wired’ is as ‘bad boy evolutionist’. I rest my case. Let us continue: Watson and Crick enabled us to see that genes themselves, within their minute internal structure, are long strings of pure digital information. (Dawkins, 1995)

Perhaps it is best to attribute this incomprehension of the Watson/Crick contribution to Dawkins’ self-confessedly limited mathematical abilities. The ethos suggested by titles like ‘The Blind Watchmaker’ (Dawkins) and ‘Chance and Necessity’ (Monod) leads to self-enclosed logical systems. When one predicates phenomena of nature which seem to indicate an ordering principle, a teleology in nature itself leading to our own existence, one is snorted at and told science eventually will explain it. The ‘anthropic’ principle is one such refusal to be astonished at the miracle of our existences and the exquisite order that seems to exist in nature to accomplish this miracle. Dennett (1995, 165–77) sees the problem presented to Darwinism and suggests that ours it the only one out of a myriad universes where, for some reason, order can and does emerge. This is speculation of a rather less than bridled nature. The argument of this book is wholly other; in the cosmic processes leading to the creation of matter itself, in the telos forming ecosystems and – it is argued below – in the patterns of each human life are formative patterns. We can particularly see these in our lives as apparently disastrous events turn out for the good. Let us again consider a correlate at the biological level. ‘The turning-point to the spread of agriculture in the Old World was almost certainly the occurrence of two forms of wheat with a large, full head of seeds … By some genetic accident, the wild wheat crossed with a natural goat grass and formed a fertile hybrid … Emmer crossed with another natural goat grass and produced a still larger hybrid with 42 chromosomes … yet there is something stranger still’ (Bronowski, 1973, 65–8). The even stranger phenomenon is that the resulting ear of wheat, unlike its antecedents, does not break up in the wind. Remarkably, man is required for the sowing and thus the survival of this hybrid; that new social structures are required is obvious. Cities begin, in several locations independently. Such examples are legion. We talk of molecules like antibodies ‘binding’ to viruses by fitting themselves to their shapes. When they do so they show a distinctive chemical structure informed by the antibody’s structure, which is why we can recognise past exposure to the AIDS virus by detecting appropriate antibodies. The original prokaryotic cells lacked a nucleus; eukaroytes, which have a nucleus, had to contend with vast amounts of poisonous calcium in their environment. Remarkably, they learned eventually to use this calcium as a communication mechanism as they progressed to multi-celled organisms. If a little calcium was allowed in, binding to it occurred; the resulting mutated chemicals could be released and detected by other cells. Again, outside formative influences seems to be at work. We have already seen 75

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Being Human: The Search for Order several examples of such; palmitic acid, and the seeding of the atmosphere with oxygen by bacteria, inter alia. In each case, of course, one can just claim that blind chance supplied a solution, and that we’ve been very lucky. As will be emphasised in Section 8’s discussion of suffering, the choice is ultimately an existential one; a meaningless fortuitously structured cosmos or a planned, meaningful one in which the experience and alleviation of suffering are themselves noetic, pointing toward the source. Dennett’s diceman universe was originally Hume’s. That there is a fundamental problem with neo-Darwinism was notoriously exposed by Behe (1996). For Behe, this framework can work only for microevolution, not macroevolution. His argument is exemplified by his analysis at the biochemical level of how vision develops in evolution. His target is the neo-Darwinian approach. According to this, organisms first find it adaptive to have a light-sensitive patch on their skin. Then it is found that putting this patch in a recess like an eye-socket allows the direction of the incoming light to be assessed, a considerable improvement. Behe points out that this ignores the accompanying labyrinthine complexity of biochemical change. For light-sensitivity to occur in the first place, a change in 11-cis-retinol, converting it within picoseconds to trans-retinol is necessary. This latter compound must subsequently be attached to and fall off rhodopsin, before being reconverted to 11-cis-retinol (op. cit., pp. 19–21). Neo-Darwinism is too unsophisticated a framework for this type of process; the responses to Behe’s book have proposed scenarios to explain the phenomena in question in a rather unconstrained way. Arthur Koestler spent his scientific career arguing against the notion that there were no concerted ‘team’ efforts in genetic expression, a notion that, right or wrongly, he saw as central to the neo-Darwinism of his time. One such group of genes has been discovered, called Hox. They govern bone development; keep them on longer and a fin turns into a hand.3 Maddox (op. cit., p. 33) puts it well; The body plans of animals and plants appear initially to be shaped by genes of a common family (called Hox genes) and then by species-specific developmental genes.

It is obviously a more elegant solution (from Nature’s point of view) to set up such a mechanism and vary its duration of application to effect appropriate change than it is to develop new ‘hard’ mechanisms. A famous set of demonstrations by Hans Driesch (Goldsmith, 1993, 12) explored a related phenomena. Cells removed from a frog egg at an early stage in its development can develop into whole frogs rather than specific organs; the damaged egg will develop normally. Later on, such development cannot happen; differentiation has occurred. Rupert Sheldrake (1988) posited morphogenetic fields, artefacts of the implicate order, regulating such development, which we can assume are implemented through Hox. What can undoubtedly responsibly be maintained is that along with beauty, such formative patterns are a part of objective 3

Neo-Darwinism tends to change its spots. For example, not only was Darwin a Lamarckian, he also had no genetic theory. The absurdity of his position in the absence of such a theory was pointed out to him at the time. How did Darwinian evolution get accepted?

76

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Our Age of Ignorance nature. We cannot but ride a wave of history at any given moment. (Let us note also the parallel between the differentiated cell in an organism and the social role in a group.) History shows purpose and is real. The alienations we implement to gain social roles also are real, as are their results. From our viewpoint (if you will, the position that we occupy on the system/apparatus divide), we must assert, against advaita, these realities. It may be useful as an exercise to consider oneself as that which creates the cosmos, including its history from moment to moment; the more veridical view, however, is assertion of our current reality. We cannot but do violence to our lives by calling our most certain experience ‘illusory’. The most we can hope for is to produce acts of alienation of the correct sort and experience ourselves as pure awareness, as the observers of what we term our normal experience. When doing so, we can self-realise through our careers. We can also fight social and environmental evils. For the advaitin, everything is good: being tortured, torturing … everyone, they argue is tortured and dies, simply by being human. This is from their absolute standpoint; from ours, there is good and evil, and we work hard for the former. We realise we are achieving it precisely when we can identify ourselves as awareness. To aid us, the techniques and centredness of advaita can be used. It is not, however, our reality: we live in the West and are not self-realised in this sense. Goldsmith (1993), a past recipient (in 1991) of the ‘Right Livelihood Award’, a more real prize than the Nobel, has produced a Weltanshauung which is essentially advaita plus assertion of the reality of biological processes. Ecology is ‘The Way’, a personal revelation as well as science.4 As science, he correctly argues, it has degenerated in status from the days when whole-properties of ecosystems and of organisms could be discussed. Driesch (ibid., 123) could in 1905 talk about the whole-property, the ‘entelechy’ of the frog, regulating the correct development of the egg. There is an antitechnological subtext in Goldsmith; Gaia is the source of all wealth. The point of view is classical transpersonal ecology, and physiocrat economics of the types already criticised, and to be discussed again below. No! we have a right, in an environmentally responsible manner, to assert the distinction of aspects of human culture from the biological world, to consensually validate the higher acts of mind so generated. However, we must do so in a way which asserts that these, in fact, are such higher acts. They must, if necessary, be asserted over economic necessity, particularly when such ‘necessity’ is a false projection of transnationals’ interests. In the next section, we try to get to the point in our knowledge where we can detect such venality. We cannot leave this section without a full discussion of the moral issues raised, particularly as they relate to transnationals and their interests. The minefield into which we venture is exemplified by Kitcher (1997). His book is a manifesto for therapeutic abortion for such conditions as Tay-Sachs syndrome, which kills after 3–4 years. As already mentioned, the emotional vortex of the abortion debate prevented this writer from properly emphasising alternatives like full genetic screening. We shall therefore briefly discuss the following topics; GMOs (already referred to in the 4

Ecology is the logos of the household; economics, its steward, we discuss in the next section.

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Being Human: The Search for Order giant-killing of Monsanto), cloning (the most publicly noted, but perhaps least consequential), and the attempts to map the human genome best represented by the US Human Genome project. GMOs reached their apotheosis in commercial potential with the advent of the ‘Terminator’ technology, which made the setting-aside of a seed crop for the next harvest impossible, as the seeds were programmed not to reproduce. One of Monsanto’s first conciliatory moves was to abandon research into this technology. Ho (1999) argues cogently against many genetic technologies; In addition to gaining control of the food supply of the South through exclusive rights to genetically-engineered seeds, the food giants of the North can asset-strip the South’s genetic and intellectual resources … the strongest objection to the ‘patenting of life’ is that it has turned organisms, including human parts, into saleable commodities. (p. 31)

I wish at this point to lift the mood of moral earnestness a little to point to the dangers of a lack of humour in green thought. John Seymour is a veteran Irish environmentalist who compares the GMO invasion of Ireland with that of the Normans (op. cit., p. 7). All of us in Ireland, including this writer, are part-Norman; Seymour is itself an nonIrish name. Ho is on much more solid ground when she decries the patenting by WR Grace of Neem, a medicinal plant used in India, ‘whose market price shot up to 100 times its value within two years’ (p. 29). She argues that the existence of mitochondrial, as well as nucleic DNA within the cell makes cloning an unrealized event to date. Kolata (1997) takes us through the history of cloning, in all its disgrace of unreal claims and would-be Dr. Frankensteins. Dolly was herself never proved to be a clone; the fact that Salter, a previous debunker of such claims, wrote an editorial in Nature buttressing Ian Wilmut’s assertion about Dolly’s virgin birth was her main support. The day that we keep a cortex-less cloned version of ourselves on a respirator in preparation for the time that we need a fresh pair of legs can be taken to be some time off. A further difficulty, gigantism and consequent unviability in the newborn, has arisen in many cases; the process ‘imprinting’ iis involved with a suppressor mechanism for this. Finally, the committed Christian, Francis Collins (Collins et al., 1999) directs the human genome project, an attempt not alone to … elucidate all the proteins produced within a human but also to comprehend how the genes that encode the proteins are expressed, how the DNA sequences of these genes stack up against comparable genes of other species, how genes vary within our species and how DNA sequences translate into observable characteristics. (op. cit., 50–2)

Shortly after this project got off the ground, entrepreneurs developed faster sequencing tools that made Collins’ prediction of the full sequence’s being available in 2003 conservative. Where there’s a will, there’s a patent application; for example, Craig Ventner is attempting to patent some of the genes his team are finding. Collins 78

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Our Age of Ignorance et al. (op. cit.) seem oblivious to the Brave New World possibilities; a short course in Marxism, which might perceive this whole project as the Final Solution by the bourgeoisie in creating a terminally challenged underclass, would have done these writers good. To the issues in hand, as Collins et al. are prepared to confront them. We can expect that the ‘3-dimensional structures of proteins (will) be predictable from their amino acid sequences’(p. 52). Synthetic life-forms may be produced ‘If this invented genome crafts a cell around itself and the cell reproduces reliably … such an experiment would also raise safety, ethical and theological issues’. (pp. 52–3). Nice to know; we shall also gain some insight into Hox and its role in determining mammalian structure (P. 53); some phylogenetic trace of human evolution will emerge (pp. 54–5). Another cuppa, Dr. Pangloss? Collin’s and Ventner’s teams eventually published their findings independently in Nature and Science amid much name-calling; the food-fight will continue as the proteome, that which the DNA encodes, is to be decoded. Decoding the sequence is rather like finding out what sound each key in the piano makes; we are far distant from composing the moonlight sonata. In conclusion, there does indeed seem to be an impetus in nature toward increasingly complex forms of adaptation to the environment, expressed in such phenomena as genetic diversity. When filtered through the human psyche, with its tendency to moral evaluation, we experience an imperative to protect the current state of achievement of nature. We do ourselves and the environment damage in refusing this imperative. This, rather than the claim-jump present in work like Goldsmith’s (1993) ‘The Way’ inappropriately presenting ecology as a Weltanschauung, must be the springboard for environmentalist agitation.

iv. Economics Economics, as we’ve seen, shares a Greek root with ecology; the former relates to the stewardship of the household, and the latter to its logos. One of the aims of this section is to reflect this close etymological relationship in a common set of contemporary concerns. As a science, economics is concerned with the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. However, for Saul (1992), it’s basically about counting. In fact, it continues to be portrayed as a value-free metric even now that its basic concepts can clearly be seen to be prone to manipulation for partisan political ends. Supposedly value-neutral ‘facts’ (which are not facts, and essentially tools of a particular ideology) are spouted to justify courses of action which ruin the environment, people’s lives and – above all – centralise power in a few hands. So crucial have economic considerations become to the political process that there is a temptation to postpone this discussion to Section III’s claim-jump part. However, there is a tradition in English economic theory in particular (of which Ricardo and Marx felt part) that refused to consider economic activity separate from the political structures surrounding it. Marx, whose system is less a claim-jump than an allencompassing world view chose to include along with the purely economic and political considerations Hegel’s cosmology and millennial themes. He thus merits a discussion in Section III. 79

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Being Human: The Search for Order The concepts from economics which most affect the body politic are those dealing with large aggregates e.g. national incomes, and consequently we will focus on ‘macroeconomics’. Microeconomics includes many clever ideas like those from game theory but is less prone to political manipulation. Macroeconomics, however, gives free rein to pundits to trace a path from feelings of being put upon (by the rich, by the poor, or whatever) to adoption of massively coercive policies. It is so labile precisely because many of its basic concepts are ill-defined. A crucial notion is that of value itself. In Marxism, for example, value is added by labour and the time socially necessary for creation of use values is critical. In radical ‘physiocrat’ Green economics, value is added only by nature itself. Somewhere in the middle we have conventional capitalist thought which views any extraction of capital resources (e.g. clear-cutting an old growth forest) as income. We need to understand the arbitrary nature of GNP and national accounts systems in general, and also how power is vested in Central Banks (for good and ill). This done, and with some acquired immunity to cant, we can consider how an economics system can be reconstituted to fulfil what surely should be its central goals: just reward for effort, a safety-net for recession and misadventure, and enough dynamism (in terms of monetary reward) to ensure that those people for whom economic activity is their main form of personal expression are not continually thwarted. Economic theories vary among themselves greatly with respect to whether increased demand produces increased output (Keynes says yes, monetarism, no) and indeed whether the level of goods and services in a society are dependent on the money supply (paradoxically, monetarism denies this). The current palette of Western economic concepts allows only theories which pre-empt government intervention to create demand, or even supply a social safety-net. The theory is that healthy growth will appear after a money squeeze, even if the projected full employment is at a low level of wage (as Ricardo predicted). Countries where this theory has been implemented have failed to fulfil its promise; we have looked (briefly) at Chile, Britain and New Zealand. When coupled with a partisan political agenda, this ‘theory’ has massive negative consequences in plutocracy-creation and destroyed lives and environment. We shall look at some other systems; Keynes’ is a demand-based theory, which was successfully used by the American New Dealers (and Hitler) to legitimise government intervention in escaping from recession. However, unlike Marxism, it failed to fully anticipate the current situation where capital accumulates in transnationals. Keynes’ later work in attempting to set up a World Bank with real regulatory teeth unfortunately failed; as we shall see, such an institution is urgently needed. The nation-state is no longer an economically viable (the single exception being perhaps the USA) or (for that matter) ecologically real entity (here, an argument might be made for Australia). Whether the nation-state still has a role to play will be implicitly asked all through the section on Nationalism in part iii. Both feminist and Green economic models have pointed out the absurdity of our notion of ‘value’ and we shall look at both systems, as well as others such as the Arms 80

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Our Age of Ignorance economy model. Yet, undoubtedly, no system works remotely as well in producing commercial dynamism within a society as the market. When uncorrected by values from other realms of human life, it degenerates into the current ‘Asian’ model where human values are not respected; when uncorrected by some government regulation, it is prone to roller-coaster booms and busts. The human values in question are recreations on the social level of the tendency to diversity and autonomy in nature which culminates in the Western notion of the individual. We must be prepared to assert this against the Asian model (which threatens to corrupt us) and, where necessary, the physiocrats. As the Asian ‘tiger’ economies continue to rebound from their crash, their political agenda will increasingly resurface in the West. The solutions proposed here include adapting the market system so that items reflect their true cost in terms of environmental resources consumed, labour and industrial plant used. Some experiments have already been done on this; it is a good example of the benign use of computer technology. Transnational Capitalism eventually has to end; not only Marx, but Schumpeter and Adam Smith saw capitalism as a temporary phenomenon. Secondly, national accounts should reflect as significant any species of human effort other than leisure-time pursuits. The simultaneous re-assertion of regionalism and genuine international regulation (as distinct from bodies like the WTO which indiscriminately promote all kinds of trade) will require much work. Finally, political disenfranchisement by economic ‘experts’ must be ended as quickly as possible. The central concepts of economics are simple indeed compared to those of the other disciplines in this section; far too simple, given the roles in our lives that economic considerations have usurped. Were economics truly to justify its pre-eminent position in contemporary discourse, it would have to base itself on a set of concepts which reflected the complexity of our lives. Its failure to do so is damaging enough; the fact that its relatively primitive concepts have been exploited for political ends make it a suspect area indeed. Let us examine some of these concepts. Gross domestic product (G.D.P.) ‘is a measure of the total flow of goods and services produced by the economy over a specified time period’ (Bannock et al, 1987, 181). It is related to the notion of national income: The total incomes of residents of an economy in a given period after providing for capital consumption. (op. cit., 288)

This includes ‘all payments for the use of the factors of production i.e. wages, salaries, profits (dividends and retained profits), rents and net incomes from abroad, but excluding transfer payments’ (ibid.). National income before capital consumption is equal to the gross national product (G.N.P.); if we exclude income from abroad, we are back to GDP. Let us note straight away that figures like GNP and GDP exclude environmental issues, the quality of life measured by such easily quantifiable indices as education and crime levels, let alone the less tangible ones like what we actually live for. Yet economics is explicitly addressed to this realm: 81

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Being Human: The Search for Order Macroeconomics … is a study of national economies and the determination of national income. (op. cit., 254).

Microeconomics takes many of its basic considerations from macroeconomics and applies it to small-scale individual producers and consumers. Let us take stock immediately. Decisions ruining the quality of life for millions are being taken on economic grounds. Moreover, US firms are patenting the DNA of individuals in other countries for monetary gain. In doing so, they could not be further from the conception of ownership of Thomas Jefferson, who after his invention of the hemp-break wrote thus to a friend; I shall probably describe it anonymously in the public papers in order to forestall the prevention of its use by some interloping patenter. (quoted in Papanek, 1997, xii)

As we saw, Neem has since been patented; why not hemp? Transnationals, however, might argue in reply that Nobel prizes have been given for ‘discovering’ such chemical reactions already existent as the polymerase chain reaction. (Therein, of course, lies a tale where it suited the company to attribute discovery of the PCR reaction to an individual; Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel prize for this discovery, may be protesting a little too much about the lack of royalties. He is in my opinion correct about an issue obviously close to his heart, the corporate takeover of science). If this is original science, they argue, why not patent a sequence of bases that their researchers find holds the key to a disease, or to an immunity? Well, a first take might make a distinction between the animate and inanimate. As this is being written, Craig Ventner is nuancing even this distinction by media-launching a project to find 300 active genes in a primitive organism with which he will create an artificial life. (Interleaving this with patenting human genes will surely leave him breathless). More sophisticated reasoning is necessary in order to address this, the most controversial intellectual property issue of all time. In the absence of such debate, the recent scenes at Seattle and Genoa will seem like a kindergarten dispute compared to street riots to come, as people insist on having a say, having been denied any democratic outlet by WTO fiat. Let us start with a similar component of the human patrimony; folk music. There are three models in current use that we’ll label, respectively, the Hawaiian, Irish and English. The Hawaiian (or WTO) model has allowed a single individual to take out copyright on all these melodies, which he now effectively owns. The Irish model, probably the most sensible, insists that the melodies remain public domain, but allows for copyright being given to an original harmonisation or proven novel arrangement. The English model does not allow for any such copyrighting; this purism can more easily be sustained in a country which has largely managed to kill off its folk traditions. Applied to DNA, the Irish model would insure that ownership of the genetic information itself could never devolve to any individual, but encourage the commercial development of life-saving drugs. 82

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Our Age of Ignorance As we’ve seen, the basic concepts of economics are limited in application. If national income is going to include items like wealth arising from gene-lines in other countries, there is no principled reason, a priori, for excluding anything anywhere, whether nailed down or not. The issue has arisen already of where to draw the dividing-line between ‘economic’ considerations and those arising from other forms of life. If we are one of the 4% of people whose blood is A negative and this becomes an emergency substance, does a company have the right to ‘own’ the chemical formula for A-? What are the consequences? Is any potentially profitable human activity or biological phenomenon a commercial commodity in the making, waiting for a gold rush, regardless of its nature? The answer must clearly be ‘no’. Yes, it does look likely as though the first refutation of current corporatist economics will be an economics which reflects the true human and natural value of as many things and processes as possible, while reflecting also the true complexity of the financial systems in the human world. The goal of this section is to indicate the nature of such an economics, while hoping that its components will eventually schism into the realms of political life, psychology, ecology and so on. Let us begin with a few different economic models. Adam Smith’s emphasis on competition, though wrong in its failing to stress co-operation’s role in human affairs, was a predictor of the vast economic focus to come. As formulated by Adam Smith, some ‘sympathy’ was required to restrain brute competition; the essence of the market system is price-fixing by demand. In other words, ‘sympathy’ for Smith was to play the role that government intervention played for later economists. Let us note also that economics is inevitably political; for example, we need a legally agreed set of behaviours to implement private property. In this version of the market model, Smith made several assumptions about trade which no longer hold true. One such is that plant can quickly be switched from failed mode production. On the contrary; in fact Marx put the period of change of the economic cycle from boom to bust at 15 years due to the delay required in so switching. Kondratieff cycles and other such concepts seem less accurate (Barratt Brown, 1995). The market fixes a price, encourages producers to reduce costs, and allocates resources for success. In the early market model, the owner/inventor (e.g. Watt) was the archetypal capitalist. However, Smith’s system works much less equitably when capital ends up in a very few hands. Even at its best, there is the problem of at what level of unemployment can price stability, as well as equilibrium of production and consumption, be met. In analysing the situation, the English economist Ricardo predicted that wages would go down with increased production, thus prompting the identification of economics as the dismal science. The disadvantages of the market system in its raw state have been best put by an advocate of the market system: The free market may not do much, or anything to distribute opportunities and resources among people in the way you and I might like them distributed … The market may even perform disastrously when inflation and depression are concerned. (Schelling, 1978, 23)

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Being Human: The Search for Order That there is massive potential for abuse is obvious. A capitalist, one with a resource of that which can be added to by economically coerced human labour, can hold out for decades without economic activity; workers, for a year at most. Thus: The social formation of capitalism … is at bottom a system of class domination and mass acquiescence. (Heilbroner, 1985, 141)

Marx’s major insight is essentially a mapping of economic relations onto the forms of life in the society that inevitably result from these relations, and the (he considered) predestined development of these societies. As an economist, he adapted Ricardo’s notion that value derived from labour. Capitalism, he argued, had two inherent contradictions: 1. Capitalists gain their profits from workers who earn less than the value added by their work. Yet these same labourers must be able to afford products. 2. To compete, capitalists must invest heavily in plant. At some point, the amount of capital associated with each worker is such that the surplus value, the capitalist’s profit, decreases. It is inevitable that capitalism in its early days was strongly influenced by Darwinian notions of ‘survival of the fittest’; they are eminently comfortable ideas for a newly industrialised nation which has imperialist plans and has turned a great deal of its northern part into a slave camp. The worship of the market reached its nadir in Nassau Senior’s stated regret that the Irish Famine (1845–1850) was not going to kill as many peasants as he would ideally like. (Senior was Drummond Professor of Economics at Oxford, and served on many Royal Commissions.) In this context, the major attempts made to relieve the famine were the repeal of the Corn Laws so that penniless peasants could ‘buy’ food, and limited provision of public works. This latter concessions by laissez-faire economists ended in 1847 when the most terrible years of the famine began. Meanwhile, livestock and grain continued to be exported from Ireland on a massive scale. The results were extremely politically advantageous for the British Empire; the unruly Irish population had been cut down to a manageable size, where it has remained ever since, and many of the most vital had emigrated. Thus indeed can ‘objective’ economics work. Indeed, Galbraith’s television popularisation of economics used this example to show the power and relevance of economic ideas. The soup kitchens temporarily set up in Ireland showed that the British could feed the Irish, had they wished; however, the Free Trade argument was used, then as now, to perpetrate genocide against the Gujurati and others after the Irish. In the 1860’s, we see a second generation of capitalism emerge with the introduction of limited liability. The intention was to encourage large-scale ventures such as those of the East India Company in subduing a country by allowing risk to be distributed. (It is precisely such privileges as incorporation that we currently need to threaten.) Then comes a third stage, when the state becomes more involved: the British stock exchange 84

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Our Age of Ignorance opened in 1906. From the 1930’s, capital increasingly accumulates within and goods and services move between and within multinationals. We now have enormous divergence from the simplicity of Smith’s schema. England between the wars was prone to periods of up to 20% unemployment. It is at this point that the innovations of John Maynard Keynes and Kielecki become relevant. Keynes argued that demand can be too small for capacity. We could, perhaps, attempt to cut back on imports to stimulate unemployment; however, the results would obviously be to create an analogous unemployment situation in another country. Likewise, leaning on the unions to allow lower wages (sounds familiar?) was self-defeating. Keynes rattled many cages, and only after the publication of his General Theory was he allowed to affect government policy. He argued that the government should intervene to create demand. By raising the propensity to invest and consume, you raised output and employment. The implementation of Keynes’ theories in the US included New Deal icons like the Tennessee Valley Authority’s projects. Hitler’s equally successful applications included massive road-building projects. Keynes’ later attempts to establish a secure international currency and World Bank were unfortunately unsuccessful. It is the New Deal based on Keynesian principles which current rightwing thinking has targeted. Keynesianism indeed has certain problems and works better in the short run; the perception of these problems has opened up the market for statements like: Budget-balancing turned out to be a drag. Forbes led the G.O.P. to happier economic theories. (Rosenbaum, 1996, 1)

Let’s look at one such happier theory: monetarism. It points to the lacunae in Keynesianism in order to attack the policy of spending one’s way out of a recession. Monetarism focuses on balancing budgets to reduce interest and curb inflation. The central tenet of monetarism is that changes in the money supply have an effect on demand because: 1. The demand for money is stable and is not proportional to the rate of interest; and 2. The demand for goods and investment is proportional to the interest rate. Keynes would agree with the latter, but without sufficiently allowing for whether ‘boom’ or ‘recession’ conditions held; the later would encourage savings. He also considered inflation a political issue, the result of union/government negotiations. Another of the central tenets of monetarism is that government-generated demand results only in higher prices. As Bain (1980) puts it, perhaps this is true in the long run. In the long run, we are all dead, as Keynes famously remarked. Bain’s verdict on Keynesianism versus Monetarism we have already remarked upon. What is certain is that the monetarist experiment has been unsuccessfully attempted in three countries at this stage.

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Being Human: The Search for Order Yet the situation in economics is worse even than this. In Galbraith’s TV series, ‘The Age of Uncertainty’, he asks us to remember only one formula (for prices): P = MV + MI VI —————–– T ‘V’ is the ‘velocity’ of spending, a quantity so fugitive that it recently gave rise to an article in the ‘journal of irreproducible results’. M (money) looks O.K.; it is something widely accepted for payment of goods and services and for repayment of debts. The first problems with M arise with assessing the national money supply; do we or do we not include public-sector and long-term deposits? Furthermore, the virtuosotic analysis of the market model by Sraffa indicates that it assumes an equality of input between labour and capital even as it sets prices allegedly to help establish that equality. The consequences of Sraffa’s work are devastating; the nature of technology itself is dependent on who holds capital. The financial instruments about to come on stream with increased electronic communications are largely articles of faith as ‘money’ (Gleick, 1996). Any attempt to understand a stock portfolio reveals a weird wonderland; mutual funds (unit trusts in Britain) and indeed junk bonds are merely the tip of the iceberg. Once can decide to be a pure capitalist and opt for ordinary shares, which pay a dividend normally proportional to the company’s profits, but which can be worthless if the company folds. Preference shares, on the other hand, guarantee full payback if the company folds, but a smaller dividend in the case of its success. Essentially, faith, hope and greed are the basic ingredients of these schemes. We have not even begun to marvel at the disneyscape of company takeover; junk bonds, leveraged buyouts, and so on. These activities are highly inflationary and, as events will tell, grossly irresponsible. The fin-de-siecle mania for ‘Technology’ stocks was a case in point. Companies like Yahoo!, Amazon.com and MP3.com achieved multiple-billion-dollar capitalisations on the basis of the flimsiest of pretexts; having something to do with the internet. Properly to understand Yahoo! and its ilk, consider the number of times that you have entered the name of a friend, or an idiosyncratic word couple, in a web search and been informed that, yes, we can offer you books with that title. The reason is that essentially these companies are low-tech in the extreme, and that an average programmer could put the whole apparatus together in a month. Only recently have search engines like Google begun to show any intelligence in their web-search. The internet is neither more or less that a standardisation of protocols between various networks; it was built on the backbone of a military network whose message-routing had been rendered semi-aleatory in order to improve its chances of surviving a nuclear attack. Remarkably, the first positive result of widespread internet use was a raising of literacy standards, as users sharpened up their self-presentation. No value is added by the web to products; indeed, some is subtracted, as music undergoes compression, and text becomes less legible. Only the commercial investment already present can prevent a catastrophic reaction to the emperor’s new commodity; the situation wherein 86

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Our Age of Ignorance Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates both suggest that their company is overvalued is unprecedented. Any subsequent, post-technology-stock-meltdown recession could yet end in depression; it is possible that this book will be published during a recession. A recession is ‘two consecutive quarters of declining output … a depression is a period of prolonged unemployment in excess of 10% accompanied by deflation’ (Palley, 1996, 45). The cover of the Atlantic Monthly in June 1996 stated the recipe for depression: Mix falling wages, a push for zero inflation, and a bi-partisan drive to eliminate the budget deficit. (Simmer)

Lester Thurow (1996) argued that his contemporaneous official level of 8 million (or 5–6 %) unemployment did not begin to tell the full story. Five million more workers had given up looking for work, and 4.5 million had part-time ‘McJobs’. The true figure, he argued, was 14%. Why the mania about inflation? Perhaps because the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, Alan Greenspan, is a devoted disciple of Ayn Rand. The Social Darwinism being implemented in the US may have its roots in works like Rand’s embarrassing ‘Fountainhead’. At least the SINA cult (see Klein, 1996) is motivated by the ultimately healthier factor of money. The energies summoned to justify current economic policy include hatred of ‘welfare moms’, reverence of ‘hard work’, etc. Some alternative models must be found. Currently, corporatism has managed to socialize itself by making itself economically indispensable and getting rid of many small-time real capitalists; we need to advance past it. In our framework, we have included the Green idea of reflecting the environmental impact of goods in their market price. This seems an essentially good idea. The Marxian notion that value is added by labour, having taken the cost of the technological plant into consideration, is also a valid one. Hawkens’ ecological capitalism offers a via media which gives the market a chance to supply dynamism while including the notion that business is there to serve a higher purpose. In Part I, we discussed the political units which require correlative economic structures. As has been mentioned, we may need to play for a while by the current rules and allow a suitably modified economics the paramount role it has in our lives. Finally, it is obvious that economic remedies must be finely tuned to the circumstances. Application of a Keynesian remedy does not require that one buys into the entire Keynesian system; likewise, obviously for monetarist recipes. We’ll leave it up to economists to provide the necessary metatheory to include all these considerations.

v. Technology Few things have added more to real human wealth than technological advances. We will extend the concept of wealth to include more than its merely financial aspect, to which technology has obviously contributed. Even given the extended concept of 87

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Being Human: The Search for Order wealth we will use in this book, which includes any expansion of the possibilities of human existence, technology has been a great benefactor. We now have direct access to facts, ideas, places, and people which can facilitate the ‘sacred’ human task of selfrealisation. Medical technology has lengthened our lives (if not as much as sanitation has done) as well as supplying such blessings as painless surgery and contraception. Yet this particular human impulse from which technology springs has apparently been responsible for appalling environmental destruction. Given that its main recent role has been to extend mastery over the environment, it is unsurprising that technology is amoral. Given also that the great majority of technological innovations are at least partly accidental (more properly, serendipitous) it is unsurprising that our physical environment is smothered with dioxins and other poisonous technological byproducts. Moreover, given Nietzsche’s adage that the nineteenth century showed the victory of scientific method over science, it should not surprise us if we eventually witness the victory of technology over science. And indeed over culture, if critics like Neil Postman are to be believed. As we shall see, they argue that we live in a technocracy. As we restrict reality to that which can be technologically manipulated, we (conversely) also use machine models to understand ourselves. For good or ill, the computer program has been the dominant model of mind over the post quarter-century, as our companion volume points out. Like the social critic John Ralston Saul, who is discussed below, Postman argues that the only appropriate response is a re-emphasis on the intuitive, artistic side of our natures. In focusing on this alone, both he and Saul are at odds with the type of environmentally-friendly technology proposed by activists like Hawken and Orr (Cowan, 1995). They argue that design can be non-hostile if accompanied by guidelines on protecting biodiversity, living off solar income, and so on. The Whole Earth Catalog is full of ingenious such solutions. However, such brilliant work can be rendered useless without proper participatory democracy. Viable energy alternatives to nuclear fission have existed for decades; their lack of adoption is due to the unwillingness in our centralised Western military/political/industrial bureaucracies of the centre to give up power. Sraffa’s argument now seems cogent indeed. Papanek (1997) begins his celebrated ‘Design for the real world; Human Ecology and Social Change’ thus; There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier. Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others who don’t care, is possibly the phoniest field in existence today … and the skills needed in these activities are carefully taught to young people. (ix)

Pacey (1983) summarises the situation by saying that technologists perhaps misunderstand what is being asked of them by the public. What movements of the human psyche do we wish technology to enhance? Our need to be acknowledged by a community, of common genetic origin or by one of common interests? The universal 88

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Our Age of Ignorance human desire to improve, to broaden the range of one’s experience and competence? The internet has had remarkable influence in the former case; computing technologies which extend the human-computer interface to modes other than the verbal and the ‘rational’ may help for both cases. Papanek (op. cit., p. 4) gives an alternative definition of design as radical as Hawken’s definition of business as service; ‘Design is the conscious and intuitive attempt to impose rational order’. Advances in technology have to reflect advances in science; when science becomes industry-driven, technology gains the whip hand. The advances forecast for technology in the near future (e.g. Scientific American, September, 1995) are all reductionist in inspiration and commercial in current terms. This at a time when we do not know why person A is immune to a virus at a time when person B succumbs to it or how the whole mind/body complex adjusts its immune system to deal with social stresses. (Martin, 1997, cites some preliminary work). We talk about ‘artificial intelligence’ in a teleological (indeed, like Tipler, eschatological) sense when no current computer program can carry on any type of realistic conversation. We set new artificial species loose on ecosystems whose functioning is a mystery to us. What is common to all these examples, apart from the venal commercial motives, is the human ‘needs’ which this venality justifies itself by serving. Apart from being sated in every physically legal way, we buy gadgets which produce bright lights and nice uncomplicated sounds while we vegetate. Current technology caters to only a tiny part of us. The failure of modern psychology to assert the existence of the rest of us is one of the themes of the next section. Consequently, there is no need to abandon ourselves to Luddism. In fact, the perceived contradictions internal to Luddism are such that it even has a web site! What we need is a psychology which can assert the existence of all the life-enhancing movements of our psyche, and a technology which aids and abets it. The Luddites were a response to the inferior products that emerged at the start of Britain’s industrial age, and took it on themselves to destroy factories. Remarkably, open-source free software, which is a response to the totally inadequate software products that currently obtain, corresponds roughly to the Luddites setting up their own factories. Check such web publications as ‘The Magic Cauldron’; the experience of having one’s computer do billions of operations before one can type a word may soon be a memory. Veteran users remember that it was faster to do a letter on an 8088 machine. In fact, the whole Microsoft Windows/Intel (Wintel) hegemony can be viewed as a protection racket. Microsoft produces software that leaks memory; XP requires 128 MB Ram to run smoothly. Intel produces a faster version of its original 1960s 4-bit design, as required by Microsoft, to run this monster. As a result, tens of millions of users junk perfectly adequate PCs with catastrophic effects on the environment. The second scam started when it became acceptable for software to be buggy. (Moody (2001) describes the reaction; the free and open-source software movements, where people volunteered their time to create non-buggy software). So you need an upgrade, which will of course have its own bugs, and so on. The legal shadow-boxing about the Microsoft breakup is a disgrace to the USA.

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Being Human: The Search for Order It’s worth noting how much of the artificial environment (see Roszak, 1972) we live in has been created by accidents, particularly in laboratories. A typical example is the creation of nylon, originally conceived of as an artificial silk. Having given up on trying to replicate the ‘cool drawing’ process whereby the silkworm produces this substance, the lab nerds began playing with the goo that they had produced as an intermediate stage. The results of this playing, as a superior noted, seemed closer to silk. A different type of process is seen in Jenner’s ‘invention’ of smallpox vaccination by previously infecting kids with cowpox. To expose a child to smallpox, as he later did, is monstrous; however, folk medicine in Jenner’s country had already invented this vaccination process in a crude form (Roberts, 1989). The following incomplete list of techniques and substances discovered by accident is frightening, in view of the consequences of many of them; X-rays, ether and nitrous oxide as anaesthetics, Velcro, penicillin, vulcanization (for rubber), celluloid and rayon, insulin, allergy anti-histamines, polyethylene (for packaging), polycarbonates (hard transparent plastics). (op. cit.)

Obviously, more rigorous testing for this kind of innovation is necessary. According to Scientific American (September 1995) we can soon expect faster, but not qualitatively different microprocessers; far superior telecommunications equipment; genetic readouts on request. Little of this technology affects our basic being. Moreover, our lamentable ignorance of energy flows in the body, coherence of which can be termed ‘health’ has prevented the development of adequate medical technology. Half (or more) or the time we return less wise than we parted after a visit to the doctor. People who don’t visit dentists have teeth at least as healthy as those who do, according to a survey by Britain’s ‘Which?’ magazine. The emphasis by the medical profession on costly cure, rather than prevention, is paralleled in its immorality by their campaign against Medicare. The latter has found them strange bedfellows: for example, the tobacco industry is one such. A trustee speaks at the American medical association’s 1960 convention: the senators from the tobacco states have threatened to vote against us on Medicare if we take any formal stand whatever – and, gentlemen, we simply cannot have Medicare. (Klein, (ed.), 1996, 45)

Hope is at hand. Let us forget for the moment about ch’i, prana and ‘subtle body energies’ in general; many of these concepts are culture-relative. However, in such collections as Feinstein (ed.) (1991) there is a set of dietary prescriptions and therapeutic exercises effective against a range of ailments. They should perform the correlated tasks of keeping you in good health and away from the doctor. Let’s briefly look at one key technology. Silicon comes in n-type, with an extra electron, and P-type, with deficient such ‘holes’. The existence of holes has allowed circuitry to be etched in silicon: one result is the decrease in the price of instructions per second of computing power from $100 in 1950 to $0.01 in 1980! The chips simply 90

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Our Age of Ignorance amplify or reverse voltage; the concept of computing vastly antedates them; they are not to blame for abuse of computing technology to engineer unemployment. If n-type and p-type silicon are put together, electrons flow. The ambivalence of technology is well illustrated by pointing out two possible applications. One is TV remote controls which allow us to remain passive; another is clean solar energy. Obviously, we need to look at psychology rather than technology itself.

vi. Psychology Before exploring the prospectus on this topic, let’s recap on the conclusions from Noetic Science. Not only our theories, but all the entities in our consensual reality, including social institutions, are to a large extent constructs of our cognition. Their component parts are initially chosen as much for their fit with our cognitive systems as for their efficacy. Theories must not only be an explanation of data: they must supply aids to their user to attend to the subject-matter for longer periods. A metaphor used by Jacob Needleman (1982) is apposite. A group of mountaineers come from various countries to climb a mountain in a temperate zone. For some, used to the tropics, it is too cold at the base of the mountain, and they need warm clothing; others, coming perhaps from a northern winter, find it warm. They must not listen to each other for instructions on how to dress at this point; to put it another way, they must not adopt each others’ theories. Needleman is obviously thinking of the cosmological and other theories embedded in religious systems, but the message might just as well be applied, for example, to economists coming from different theoretical backgrounds. However, at the final ascent, all are one; all are mountaineers, attempting to reach a higher perspective on things. Theories must contain base-camps and plateaus as well as functioning as the mountaineering equipment itself. The situation becomes even more complicated with respect to theories of mind. Let us take Freud’s as an example; in common with most psychologies of his time, his is rife with Newtonian notions of energy conservation and transfer. Yet Newton’s notions are themselves rooted in psychological concepts. For example, his theory of force is a fortiori an externalisation of the internal experience of force. Maddox (1999, p. 33) approaches this insight; Our intuitive understanding of how objects in the macroscopic world behave (embodied in Newton’s laws) is based on the perceptions of our senses, which are themselves the evolutionary products of natural selection in a world in which the avoidance of macroscopic objects (predators) or their capture (food) would have favoured survival of the species

The question of whether we can truly understand QM is for Maddox a nonsense; of course, we cannot; It is difficult to imagine what selective advantage our ancestors would have gained from a capacity to sense the behaviour of subatomic particles. (ibid.)

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Being Human: The Search for Order However, in approaching psychic life through Freudian theory, we construe in terms of a set of concepts whose legitimacy comes from their roots in physical theory, the origin of which is the intuitive understanding of the world alluded to above. On such a circularity is the dominant psychology of the twentieth century based; we must find a way of breaking out of this vicious circle. Psychology is inevitably circular in this fashion, which is one of the reasons its success as an ‘objective science’ has been limited. Another has already been hinted at; it is only when socially-created institutions do not satisfy that an internal life becomes salient. When the great Tao falls, psychology emerges. The Western concept of the individual has begotten psychology, for good rather than ill. Let us see how it has developed and will further develop. As Ó Nualláin (2000a) reveals, Psychology (the capitalisation is deliberate, and we will make a distinction between the lower- and upper- case versions) is the ‘logos’ of the ‘psyche’, and can be translated as ‘The search for order in human affairs’ (thus the sub-title of this book). In periods of social and intellectual stability, such a search will take place in written manifestations that we call the ‘religious’ and ‘philosophical’ classics of the age. In the old adage, philosophy is the epoch captured in thought. The old Chinese curse ‘may you live in interesting times’ (as is our misfortune) comes to mind for the contrastive, unstable period. The Tao has fallen; only transient states to which we grant terms like ‘feelings’ are now consensual. An example of this progression is that which occurs with the advent of the Sophists, who begin to posit an interior life with this kind of structure. However, there must be a role, somewhere, for a ‘Psychology’ which actively asserts the human. If considered simply as the attempt to describe one’s ‘internal world’ independently of the ‘external world’ which is its manifestation, psychology is doomed to failure. We can take two routes away from this failure. One is a complete externalisation of mind, either as simple mediation between stimulus and response (behaviourism) or as a computer program (classical Cognitive Science). An alternative is to produce a personal psychic revelation so universally shocking that the resultant state of mind is firmly constrained and thus labile in certain definite ways. Freudianism was the major psychology of the twentieth century and achieved its success by the shock that recognition of the pervasiveness of sexual themes in our thought processes. However, Freudianism lacks a coherent theory of the interrelation of the inner and external worlds (such concepts as primary/secondary process and cathexis are inadequate) and, unsurprisingly, has largely failed as psychotherapy. For Marxist thought, consciousness is defined solely by class-relations and so it qualifies as a Weltanschauung, treated in Section III. Advaita is a Section III topic whose starting point is precisely the opposite i.e. consciousness is primary. The Gurdjieff Work conveys its shock by a convincing demonstration of one’s mechanicalness and builds to a cosmology in which one’s action is significant. For us Westerners, these systems have been presented with a psychological component. They merit our attention. For people who prefer their psychologies neat, many competing types will continue to exist. On http: // rampages.onramp.net/watchman /celestin.html is a review of an example of the first, narcissistic kind i.e. The Celestine Prophesy. The review is by 92

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Our Age of Ignorance fundamentalist Christians and it will not surprise us at this stage that, despite this religious affiliation, it is a clear-headed analysis. Other types of psychologies are represented by writers like Deepak Chopra and Anthony Robbins: these promise commercial success by an intrapsychic furniture re-arrangement. In general, future psychologies will tend to the narcissistic or competence-enhancing. From time to time, the human thirst for reality will be slaked by a writer like M. Scott Peck who, whatever his faults, does not try to sell snake oil. It is unlikely, however, that the future development of CS will manifest any awareness of the above issues. As the companion volume points out, CS is academia’s current best shot at an interdisciplinary science of mind. More’s the pity, then, that the following is likely to happen. On the research side, ‘CS’ researchers (spanning a chasm from introspectionist protocol analyzers through neuroscientists) will publish disparate findings on reasoning, memory and neural mechanism in ‘CS’ journals. No attempt will be made to synthesise these findings into an overall coherent system, which is pretty much the recent history of the science of mind. On the applied side, an essentially technocentric definition of cognition, and with it psychology, will attempt to optimise human skill with respect to current technology. For example, HCI will essentially assent to the current image of man as a servant of capitalist economic forces (mercantilism). Performance will be judged ‘better’ if it facilitates the transfer of information for financial purposes. Increasingly, psychology itself will be defined (by people like Don Norman) only with respect to this notion of performance. In short, the worrying about ‘Technopoly’ advocated by critics like Neil Postman will be seen to be borne out. We catch a foretaste of this in Don Norman’s adoption of Soviet psychology in order to explain away the troubling problem (for him) of consciousness. The Soviets defined it in Marxist terms as an artefact of the relations of production. There will be resistance to these trends on the academic and applied fronts. On the academic front, an underground will insist on the complexity of the issues around cognition, mind and consciousness and will produce counter-culture journals and books. Nous Research, in conjunction with the Cognitive Science Society of Ireland, has been doing so since 1992 (see, for example, http: //www.compapp.dcu.ie/~tdoris/mind4.html, where a conference defining the boundaries between CS, consciousness studies, and spirituality is featured). On the applied side, a minority of talented researchers will argue that the technologies deriving from CS should serve us in our full humanity rather than we it and through it, mercantilism. They will ground their work in terms of the natural movements of the human psyche and body and attempt to define the technology in terms of this. In fact, one eventual goal here can be stated as that of making the use of computers become invisible. A start on this has been made in Canada at the National Research Council (see Ó Nulláin and Smith, 1994) and the Archimedes and Sonas research projects in Stanford and my company, Nous Research in Dublin. It is possible that CS will eventually formally fragment into two camps; the Procrusteans and the humanists. For the former, CS, and indeed psychology in general, is the science that studies how to adapt humans to computers; for the latter, Human-computer interaction 93

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Being Human: The Search for Order (HCI), a branch of CS, looks at ways that computers can better respond to natural movements of the psychophysical unity that each of us is. The conclusion of this book is that psychology cannot fully succeed in what seems to be its stated task; only Weltanschauungen can. To make the kind of real psychological and spiritual progress we as humans yearn for, we must make efforts in an objective context (or at least one experienced as objective). There does exist work suggesting the reality of ‘psychic’ phenomena like psychokinesis. Radin et al. (1989), Princeton physicists, point out a constant ‘PK’ effect over all the studies conducted. At a more prosaic level, the reality of our whole being, spiritual, emotional and physical, must be assented to and developed in whatever conceptual framework we eventually choose. It has been stressed repeatedly in this book that the new role envisioned for psychology here includes assertion of the reality of ‘inner’ life. We have been content in this book to allow ‘disciplines’ like economics a temporary claim on ground not theirs, the better to combat their current biases. Psychology, however, is to concede ground to cognitive science (CS) and noetic science (NS); still, the role remaining for it is of the utmost importance. In this context, its history for the past century has been appalling. Behaviourism bracketed the real (ontological) existence of the mental; CS attempted to externalise it as computer programs and only in the past few years have the cracks shown as researchers like Edelman asserted the importance of consciousness (Ó Nualláin, 1995, 222–37). However, the situation had considerably deteriorated by that time to the extent that an attack on the nature of the self could be made. That their contemporary science could not encompass the reality of self gave manipulative corporate interests and politicians free rein to shape it to their will (Cushman 1990, 599 et seq., discussed in chapter 8 of the companion volume). We conceive ourselves as empty, to be filled by useless and environmentally destructive products as we panic; as we’ve seen Papanek (1997) point out, entire professions have been created to produce these products, and convince us that we need them. Therefore, whether originally politically motivated or not, psychology has played into the hands of corporate interests. One is less inclined to suspect a left-wing conspiracy on this theme after consideration of the work of the conservative Christopher Lasch (1985). His insistence that we have settled on a ‘minimal’ configuration of self, and his castigation of the interests informing this shape, comes from the political right. Yet the trend continues; psychology has always found failed artists who attempt to asperse the reality of our inner lives, as their artistic rejection by their contemporaries repudiated theirs. B.F. Skinner was famously a failed writer; his intellectual heir Daniel Dennett, less famously, is a failed sculptor. Dennett’s (‘Consciousness Explained’) attempt to ‘dissolve’ the problem of consciousness has exercised Ó. Nualláin (1995, 293–96; 1997) and other writers. Its reliance on a misunderstood computational architecture is the core of their criticism. Dennett’s (1995) further attempts to posit as real only the principle of natural selection will occupy us in Part III. The core of the ‘argument’ is that only this principle can be attributed reality; Darwin’s ‘dangerous idea’ has all-embracing consequences for morality, psychology and so on. To consider this idea in psychological terms, let us refer to Noetic Science (NS). All our theories, including Darwinism, are externalizations, 94

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Our Age of Ignorance increasingly valuable insofar as they are consensual. They are as rife with psychological and phenomenal concepts as, for example, the theory of music appreciation. What Dennett and his followers have done is to take but one movement of the psyche (basically, that which culminates in engineering) and attribute to it a privileged position i.e. reality. The same attribution in the science of musical appreciation is not allowed; currying the reader’s sympathy, Dennett states that he wishes for his grandchild to enjoy hymns. The first escape for Dennett’s repellent position must be an assertion of the ‘science’ (i.e. a consensual body of knowledge) of artistic appreciation; it arises from an equally valid psychic movement to the engineering one. However, there is a second step, involving examining the totality of psychic movements, and evaluating which are consensual. For example, it has been found that aspects of emotion are informational, and thus consensual; that granted, they move into CS from psychology. A good arts education attunes one to aspects of finer experience which are consensual. Indeed, these are not only consensual; they are as likely to be referential as the imposition of engineering concepts on psychological experience. To say that Joyce is a better writer of English prose than George Eliot is simple; we can simply point to his demonstration of mastery of her technique in Ulysses. However, we may eventually find that proper appreciation of Joyce attunes us to aspects of reality, for example the real penetration of the temporal by the eternal, one of the themes of Ulysses. Obviously, there is great danger in assenting to schemas like Dennett’s. As we shall see, Gurdjieff proposed a ‘table of hydrogens’ which made such distinctions transparent. In the absence of ‘scientific’ confirmation of such hypotheses, we can rest assured that attention to the ‘finer’ things and to our own inner reality is a profoundly political act. To withdraw from the corporate choreographed ‘working life’ and immerse oneself in the classics is increasingly a valid political act. The compensations for our work include embarrassing expensive gadgets which increase passivity; the income spurned by avoiding ‘hard work’ will not greatly be missed. Indeed, the major appealing message of The Celestine Prophesy, that your life has a purpose and that circumstances will eventually allow implementation of this purpose, has been missed by many who recoil horrified at the bad writing (Radfield et al., 1989). Its astounding success shows the thirst for such a message; what I am briefly about to outline is a suggestion putting it on a more rational basis. All successful theories of human cognition have ended up positing some vast reservoir of innate knowledge, expressed as a ‘language of thought’ (Fodor), a ‘language acquisition device’ (Chomsky) or whatever. I argue that we are so constituted as to find an idiosyncratic and wholly personal expression of this in the world. Much of this expression is our ‘acts of alienations’, our unique and vital contribution to the unfolding of the cosmos. The degree of externalisation of ourselves varies from culture to culture, as the line between system and apparatus so varies. Currently, mistrusting the reality of much of our experience, we seek environmentally destructive props like cars and sun holidays to assert it. The message of this book, then, is that assertion of our inner realities, as manifest in the equivalent status of all ‘science’ (whether true musical appreciation or Darwinism) is the core political action for our times. Sure, we need some gadgets; 95

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Being Human: The Search for Order access to the internet, a TV, some means of locomotion; however, we can fully realise ourselves in every way outside the current corporate environment. The task proposed here for psychology, then, is a difficult and paradoxical one. Paradoxical, because like Wittgensteinian philosophy, psychology must, in this version, seek to attenuate its subject area, and will its own extinction. We described it earlier as the study of psychic movements which are neither obviously reified in created objects, nor open to investigation by CS. A paradigmatic example of such a psychology topic would be study of emotion two decades ago; there is now a cottage industry about its cognitive study. We say that aspects of the study of emotion have passed from psychology into CS. Others, decidedly, have not; consider the emotions evoked by the late Beethoven quartets. We are inclined to say that they are finer that those evoked by Puff Daddy. Yet some aesthetic theories (McCorduck, 1991) don’t allow us even to say this. The difficult task of asserting this superiority, in the absence of a ‘scientific’ proof, falls to the psychologist. Another example of psychology’s constructive suicide is Campbell’s paper in our 1999 collection, which demonstrates how Kohlberg’s moral development work was reinterpreted to afford a ‘moral science’ perspective. However, the ideal location for psychology’s suicide is in a Weltanschauung, where all psychic movements have a cosmic co-referent. The task of asserting the reality of all creative human activity can ideally be achieved by tracing back the roots of this activity to a cosmic dynamic. That done, psychology can rest in peace.

vii. Politics and Sociology A metaphor from biology will be used to initiate this section. We have already seen that researchers like Stuart Kaufmann (1993) stress self-organisation as a crucial dynamic in evolution. In embryogenesis, the differentiation into cells of different organs is governed by a field relating to the whole; yet within its own sphere, each cell is its own master, with an autonomous field governing sub-cellular processes. The appropriate metaphor for excessive self-assertion in biology is cancer. Sociology recreates this situation at a higher level; as Aron (1965, 14) puts it, it concerns itself with ‘the combination and reunion of the study of the part with the study of the whole.’ When sociology concerns itself with the political regime, we get Aristotle’s focus of study in his Politics; political sociology. The concepts we have from biology are unfortunately as yet too primitive to be of use here, which is yet another ill effect of the victory of reductionism over holism in recent science. The part-versus-whole struggle has historically been re-created on the political level in such initiatives as the creation of a Bill of Rights in certain countries, and it is at this level we must deal with these issues. Aron (1970) is most sensitive to the dilemma faced by sociologists. Societies, he insists, must be based on some kind of shared myths. The making explicit of such myths by sociologists carries risks to public order; Durkheim, Pareto, and Weber … rediscovered Comte’s idea, namely, that societies can maintain their coherence only through common beliefs … one cannot explain by means of

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Our Age of Ignorance the logico-experimental method what the social order is without destroying its foundation. (op. cit., p. 3)

The tension reaches its apotheosis in the nineteenth century sociologist Pareto, who is ‘obsessed by the desire to be a scientist’ (ibid.) while remaining painfully aware that ‘it is not science which causes men to act’ (ibid.). The prospects of a scientific sociology continuous with the hard sciences have receded, rather than advanced, with twentieth century advances in brain science. It may have seemed possible to Pareto and his contemporaries that paths from social fact to individual action could be traced with brain science. Apart from an occasional eschatologist like the Churchlands, there is nobody today seriously proposing that such a map is possible. Any ‘reduction’ is going to resemble more metaphorical transfer; for example, we have already equated excessive self-assertion on a social level, as might happen in dictatorships, with cancer above. Social facts and springs of action have their own domain and level of analysis. The frozen accidents by which the brain apprehends them within the human species, and in their wide variety across individuals, are incidental; one of the main leitmotifs of the companion volume to this book is just how much of a congeries the brain is. The modern Western state with its guaranteed freedoms is a major human achievement and we must assert it against more primitive feudal and theocratic models. We must do this out of respect for the humanity of the masses in countries like China and Afghanistan. In other words, the argument here is that our future use of trade embargoes against these countries is not patronising: it is an act of respect. However, the full expression of individuality, which we revere, is threatened by several trends within our own societies. Max Weber had already accepted a century ago that there is a fatal inevitable element in modern societies; certain intrinsic characteristics of these societies must be accepted … they leave open two possibilities; respect for the individual and his freedoms, or despotism through rationalization. (Aron, 1970, p. 9)

We have already discussed the role of transnationals in the current Western state, their co-option of ‘experts’ to their cause, and the resulting tyranny. Moreover, there is a much more complicated issue implicit in the relation of sociopolitical part to whole that we will need to discuss. Paradoxically, an over-emphasis on individualism (versus a more participatory ‘republican’ model of citizenship) will lead to greater, rather than less state control in the current situation. A recent edition of the Atlantic Monthly (3/96) explores this paradox in two areas: gun control, and the more general one of the search for a new political philosophy in the USA. The conclusion was that the civil libertarian defence of the right to carry arms can only be used against communitarian movements, which are one of our only lines of attack on Corporatism. It is necessary to reconstruct the notion of the 97

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Being Human: The Search for Order individual vis à vis the local community, the nation state (which will probably survive for a long time as a major locus of power) and, increasingly, the international community. At a psychological level, in Sanders’ (1996, 74) phrase, we must more than ever become ‘multiply situated selves’. We have seen in Part I how this can be implemented in financial terms. At a constitutional level, Bills of Rights must be supplemented with Bills of Responsibilities. At a participatory level, we need to engage ourselves with issues at all levels of government to avoid becoming pawns (for example, created consumers, as Galbraith has shown and Naomi Klein has again emphasised). Such engagement is the only defence against media – and ultimately big money-created ‘reality’. For Marx, as we’ve seen, philosophy was complete; it was to become sociology, which in turn was to be radicalised. He followed a Hegelian notion of the creation of societies: Geist (spirit) worked through projecting itself outside itself through particular societies visible for example in their monuments (think of the Incas, for example, or ancient Kingdom Egyptians). Eventually, social relations were to be perfected in communism, and (a purely material) consciousness would be totally self-aware, in possession of the present and past. The horrors attendant on the actual application of Marxism show the dangers in turning theory into practice; yet the notion of countering self-alienation through projecting oneself outside oneself seems to work for oxygencreating bacteria, each of us in the course of our lives as we create to move to a new level, and indeed some societies. (For example, it may be concluded that, despite the horrors, the French Revolution of 1789 onwards was a good step.) To struggle against an unjust system is an act of such self-development. Engaging in political action is noetic, as we realise the violence used to perpetrate illusions on us. The realm of the political state is validly occupied only insofar as its mechanisms are democratically created and it creates a medium in which the true self-realization of its citizens can occur. There must always be first amendment rights, and the competition of executive, judiciary and legislative domains to ensure none of them dominates (Mackay, 1987). And the return to theocracy (Ireland, with its constitution beginning ‘in the name of the most Holy Trinity’ is one such) cannot be countenanced. Education must reflect our intrinsic notions of value. Discipline can encompass, but not go beyond, acts which a well-formed adult voluntarily endures (as a trivial example, slimming). The main conclusion from this section, than, is that we need to become ‘multiply situated selves’ in order to reflect the continuum of political structures from ward through superstate. Secondly, a reductionist ‘scientific’ sociology is an impossibility. Thirdly, the extraordinary set of rights and responsibilities enshrined in the constitution of many liberal democracies were worth the struggles involved in their creation and, if necessary, their preservation. Finally, we in the first world owe it to our fellow human-beings in dictatorships to use trading sanctions to improve their lot.

viii. Religion and Myth I wish to introduce this section by stating its major theme. In each historicallyvalidated religion (which does not include scientology, astrology, etc) there is much culturally-specific baggage. Their claim to be ‘the truth’ in any real sense makes religions potentially very dangerous, as we’ve recently seen. I argue here that we can 98

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Our Age of Ignorance rescue from religions at least a mystical core, that is identical across religions. This, of course, is the central teaching of Sufism. That core facilitates presence in us; selfawareness in the midst of the business of life. (I have attempted to hint at this in my 1997 collection, pp. 283–99). I am fully aware, as I mentioned in the prologue, that even the best of readers might find this section irrelevant. The failure of science is its mythic poverty. Its unsuccessful attempts to take the place religion held in ancient theocracies by various means (precedence claims, claimjumps, eschatologies) will be discussed in Section 3. We humans need a meatier story which integrates us into the cosmos, our society and ourselves, a musical score for our lives. Religion, one suggested root for which is common with ‘ligament’, served in mediaeval times to bind the populace through myth (and a shared experience of the sacred). That this role is in many countries no longer available to it is a product of its own abuse of state power, which is another Section 3 topic. However, this book is above all a search for resources with which we can confront the current crisis and it behooves us to ask whether such resources obtain in religious thought. Religion’s old theocratic status abandoned, it is freed to fulfil a more important role. Indeed, the freedom of conscience insisted on by liberal democracies has allowed a plethora of religions from Aryan (mainly Indian) as well as Semitic roots to establish themselves in the West. In order to understand these religions, it is necessary to look at their surface content. Some of the specifics of this content have been supplanted by scientific fact. The part of it that hasn’t relates to personal development at a level we can call ‘spiritual’ as distinct from ‘psychological’; an apparent tension between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ forms of spirituality will emerge. One of the tasks of the section is to find a vocabulary in which the self/not self5 and personal/impersonal Godhead contrasts, considered (only with partial accuracy) by many to be central to the so-called western/eastern debate are seen as only apparently dichotomous (after all, ‘western’ religions were thoroughly extirpated by Christendom). Von Neumann’s notions of system and apparatus and observer will be useful here, at least as metaphor; it will be conceded also that some of the ‘mystical physics’ (Talbot, 1991) literature is wellmotivated. We end this section by considering what types of religion can responsibly be practised. Which, of course, leads to the question ‘why bother?’ As, inter alia, the bestseller ‘Knowledge of Angels’ (Walsh, 1994) demonstrated, the ontological argument, the old arguments on the grounds of first cause, and all such attempts to point at the numinous through logic require a now defunct theocracy for their impetus. We can, however, get hints of a possible valid role for religious thought and practice through analysis of certain Judeo-Christian myths. Let us return to one of the central themes of this book: any theory of the world (scientific, religious or whatever) plays on certain 5

Yet a distinction must be made between the ‘I’ in meditation, when no subject/object differentiation exists, like the wave-function before observation, and the ‘I’ in the presence of the body/mind’s action, which ideally is pure observation. The innovation of this book is to claim that during acts of ‘alienation’, we cannot observe in this sense; consciousness is also the striving.

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Being Human: The Search for Order universal psychological structures. We should expect that the structures invoked by religious and scientific descriptions converge as that being described diverges from our everyday experience. In particular, we should not be surprised to find that the current favoured scientific cosmogony (the big bang) is structurally similar to Babylonian cosmogony. The common root, it is hypothesised, is the differentiations and integrations relating to the child’s first interactions with the external world. Similarly, the story of the Fall is significant both as moral and ontological lapse; the fact that our world’s imperfection is the result of a cosmic catastrophe sheds light on what we experience as the meaning (or futility) of our actions. Given the title of this pair of volumes, it is appropriate to look also at millennial and other eschatological thought. The psychologisation of scripture will continue with an attempt to map the apocalyptic onto the process of self-development. Again, this literature gives cosmic meaning to personal struggle. Most sensitive souls find it impossible to believe in God because of the existence of suffering, rather than by the corruption inherent in organised religion, or by being convinced by ‘rational’ anti-religious argument. In discussing this topic, we come across Whitehead’s process thought again. In this framework, God is both contingent and necessary, both temporal and eternal, and every type of effort (including human) has a divine meaning. Again, the notion of knowledge is extended to include that realisation that results from alleviating suffering. The attempt to encompass ‘self’ and ‘no self’ in a single schema will have referenced modern existentialism. We use this as a bridge to the final topic here. Theories and ideas play on psychological structures; the goal of religious constructs was to speak to one’s whole being, as Jacob Needleman has argued. There is a capacity within genuine religious thought to produce transformation to a higher level. Such thought must be non-sectarian and independent of the state; there is no need for an entirely new religion (as Huston Smith has pointed out, it would beget a heretic within a day). That religious expression has historically taken such enormously different forms in different parts of the world indicates that we would err in attempting to find external rituals and teachings which would constitute a ‘universally valid’ religion. The attempt to so elevate a peculiar mix of Aristotelianism and Jewish theological concepts led to that blight on human history called the Inquisition. This writer finds himself in agreement with his clerical friend Brendan Purcell(1996) at least about the peculiarity of the mix; … the range of ideologies and isms that have constituted a form of closed modernity (do so) in opposition to the uneasy Judaeo-Christian-philosophic/stoic-Roman law synthesis we call Western culture. (p. 24)

De Rosa (1988, 168–75) spares us few of the grim details of the Roman Catholic Church’s treatment of heretics. However, it will be insisted on throughout this section that consensual universals do exist at the highest experiential level, the ‘spiritual level’. Idries Shah (1964), in his attempt to re-emphasise the common ground between that 100

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Our Age of Ignorance mystical tradition in Islam called ‘Sufism’ in the West and Christian mysticism, cites the old parable of men in the dark feeling an elephant’s body. Those who feel the tail imagine the elephant as like a snake; those who touch the legs imagine it as like a tree; the tusks seem like stone. The reality can be revealed only by imaginative synthesis, or by the daylight’s breaking. Jacob Needleman (a good sample of whose work is the 1982 collection) uses a metaphor, which we’ve already examined, and which is more comprehensive in that it can cater to all stages of the religious quest. That quest is compared to the ascent of a mountain whose geographical location is in a temperate clime; let us spell out its purely religious implications. Those coming from around the equator will be encouraged by wise religious leaders to use warm clothing at the initial stages; contrariwise those coming from the poles will find it hot there. Thus, it is dangerous to accept the teachings of a religion outside one’s own tradition at this early stage. Yet, in ascending the final pinnacle, the equipment will be identical, as the mountaineers themselves will have been so informed by their experience as increasingly to resemble each other. In fact, the parallels between the final states advocated as valid by practitioners of religions whose starting-points are widely at variance is striking indeed. Morality begins with concepts of not harming others and balance in one’s appetites (if sometimes through initial excess) before the final state is reached, in which one sees a unity between one’s inner core and those of others. In Christianity, we are encouraged to say with Paul, ‘I live; not I, but Christ in me’, a state approached initially with acts of charity and other signs of the ‘fruits of the spirit’. For Kaushik (1977) starting from an almost purely rationalistic basis, ‘Living ethically from moment to moment is practical and concrete, not an abstract idea … true ethical action cannot be hypocritical’ (18–19). He insists on the necessity of a teacher in whom one has faith, be he living or dead (op cit,51). The final state recommended is one in which one’s ‘own’ consciousness is seen as just one manifestation of a universal source of awareness. Advaita may initially seem like solipsism and eventually to end in some type of narcissism. Yet here, too, the end is a state in which the workings of the body/mind which constitutes one’s empirical ‘self’ is held as trivial compared to the vastness of the awareness which we, in our true natures, hold in common. Sufism has a similar concept ‘fana’, the death of self abidance followed by ‘baka’, abidance in Godhead; Sufi martyrs have been killed for their insistence on their oneness with God. That selflessness is the core of the final spiritual state is best illustrated by consideration of the two major paths in Buddhism, that of the Bodhisattva and Arhat. The former refuses to enter Nirvana until all sentient beings have done so; the latter seeks it for himself. Yet in seeking it for himself, he learns the spurious nature of the distinction between him and others. The Bodhisattva, on the other hand, must learn how the eternal pervades the temporal. Eventually they resemble each other absolutely. The major task of religion today is to provide vehicles in which these types of realisations can be reached. The task falls to religion because of the part of the psyche to which it addresses itself. To bring that part to the surface is the first task of the searcher. What Needleman 101

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Being Human: The Search for Order (1982, 9) stresses is that the fundamental religious question is ‘how to be; the question of being in the midst of becoming’. We recall that for Needleman it is that part within the self-structure that most acutely feels its lack of being which a true religious leader can talk to. We live at a time of cosmopolitanism in religion, and the true religious leader of today will recognise this; she will not be dogmatic or partisan. I mention this because of the obvious dangers of brainwashing masquerading as religious conversion. For Needleman, one of the marks of a valid religious expression is that admission therein is difficult, and release correspondingly easy (contrast the Moonies and other such cults). We have ventured beyond the realm at which pure ‘disembodied’ reason works and need to be very careful. But why venture in this manner? Essentially because science (even in the expanded form proposed in this book) cannot speak to the aspects of our nature which are manifestations of the older parts of the brain: the emotional ‘limbic system’ and reptilian lower brain (see Koestler, 1978 for an account of why pathological systems like Maoism have succeeded in so doing). The mechanisms which religion uses to communicate so are tied up with our apprehension of myth. Let us hear Joseph Campbell: Mythology is a function of biology. That is to say, it’s an expression in visual dream energies of the energies that inform the body. (quoted in Boa, 1994, 14–15)

Moreover, on what is termed ‘this business of the gods’: A god is a personification of an energy, which comes either through the external natural world or from the world of our inner nature. (op. cit., 19)

In the Greek and Indian lines, the externalizations were so similar that the theologians travelling with Alexander the Great’s armies to India were, according to Campbell, able to identify Krishna with Heracles (or perhaps Indra) and so on; the Romans used the names of their Latin equivalents for the celtic Gods (op. cit., 20). However, a difficulty arises in considering the Semitic as opposed to the Aryan line; here the main deity is not a personification of the powers of nature, but of the principles and ethics and history of that society. (op. cit., 21).

This is the God who died in the nineteenth-century west. His death does not invalidate the symbols and sacraments which we, brought up in Christian traditions, use to realise ourselves as awareness. Nor is the use of myth in any way an inferior act of mind. Our cognition, that which the supposedly ‘objective’ sciences like physics build upon, is similarly founded on image schemas: 102

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Our Age of Ignorance An image schema is a recurrent dynamic pattern of our perceptual interactions and motor programmes that gives coherence and structure to our experience. (Johnson, 1987, iv)

Our companion volume (1995, 136–8) explains the ‘cognitive linguistics’ program of Johnson and his fellow-travellers like George Lakoff. That book indicates how cognition can build to science and other massive structures from such ‘humble’ origins; we are concerned here with how these expressions of mentation can be re-arranged to produce order. We ultimately make a firm distinction between science and other forms of truth-seeking; but it is a subtle one. In science, we are ultimately trying to establish the validity of one description over others. In spiritual experience, we are trying to sensitise ourselves to the product of the religious expression – be it a gothic cathedral, a dance of the Mevlevi dervishes, a buddhist chant, or a Navajo creation myth – in order to feel the transformation in ourselves that the artefact is trying to achieve (see Johnson, 1995, for an enlightening exploration along these lines). Science cannot accept the postmodernist claim that all descriptions are somehow of equal validity; however, post QM, it must accept that the scientific and spiritual quests now both must attend to the observer himself as part of the data to be examined. In this context, let us make a final visit to Horgan’s (1996) much-overrated ‘The End of Science’, which, as mentioned, threatened to introduce a reign of terror by epigram with its withering one-sentence dismissals of the work of famous and accomplished scientists. Horgan’s literature background forces him to treat the scientists as actors – and it does make good opera bouffe – and their theories as stories. However, something altogether more sophisticated is at work, and it is just as well for the sake of the former that Horgan did not get to meet Richard Feynman; Many scientists believed in a straightforward reality. Others, including Feynman, felt that in the late 20th century it was not necessary or possible to answer a final yes. It was preferable to hold one’s models delicately in the mind … But to physicists the scaffolding was not all. It did imply a truth within. (Gleick, 1992, p. 375)

So a neat demarcation can be made between science and other forms of activity; By means of the peculiar stratagem of refusing to acknowledge that any truth may be as valid as any other, they succeed in preventing any truth from becoming as valid as any other. Their approach to knowledge differs from all others – religion, art, literary criticism – in that the goal is never a potpourri of equally attractive realities. (ibid.)

And woe betide the journalist in search of a sound bite. Let us experience Feynman’s treatment of a science historian, wanting to know whether physics was any closer to unification now than in Einstein’s time; 103

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Being Human: The Search for Order I don’t know how to make this into a sensible question … All these interviews are always so damned useless. (op. cit., p. 434)

For Campbell (1968) myth has a powerful formative role in the creation of each person; he praises attempts like Joyce’s to create new mythic expressions. The goals of myth, Campbell argues, are first to integrate the individual into the social group, and then to foster the centering and unfolding of the individual therein. Finally, myth is to help experience the ground of being, the ‘mysterium tremendum’. We can think of this as a state in which mythic tale and ritual has induced a stillness in which the self can experience itself as pure observation. This, interestingly, was what James Joyce conceived as the purpose of art; let us continue this line of exploration for a moment. The argument of this book is that such experience requires apprehension of the products of others’ ‘acts of alienation’; in our fast-moving age, we need more of these than before. Or, as Needleman puts it, few of us ever get to the point of selfobservation at which ‘religious’ (the term he uses in preference to ‘spiritual’ in this context) teachings can start to work. We are including among those religious teachings such objects as the Gothic cathedrals; I spoke about the different impressions I had in the Gothic cathedrals of western Europe, the sense of being drawn upward within a vast cosmic scale filled with light … I had come to regard the Gothic cathedral – as have others – as one of the few surviving remnants of the Christian gnosis, an example of sacred art in the strict sense of the term, art that guides man toward knowledge of the real. (Needleman, 1980, p. 33)

Ouspensky, also from the tradition in which Needleman writes, views the Gothic Cathedrals as the products of builders who emerge from the kind of secret ‘schools’ that nurtured Socrates, Christ, and the architects of the pyramids. What is certain is that the entire resources of whole communities were swallowed up for centuries by these artefacts; when the bourgeoisie of Reims demurred at further expenditure on their massive church, the king undertook to burn down their houses. These cathedrals are, in the Gurdjieff tradition as interpreted by Ouspensky, exercises in Psychology; they manifest the higher strivings of a whole era in its material and spiritual aspects. No era since, in this interpretation , has been so situated as to express itself in so unambiguous a fashion. We rely on myth; The first function of a mythology is to reconcile waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it is; the second being to render an interpretive total image of the same, as known to contemporary consciousness. (Campbell, 1968, p. 4)

For Campbell, Joyce is on a spiritual quest; 104

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Our Age of Ignorance We are on the way, full steam, to the vision of Finnegans Wake, where the dark hidden Father and his Shakti are indeed to come alive again by virtue of the magic of the lefthand way. (op. cit., p. 262)

He quotes at length from Ulysses, when Manannan Mac Lir, a sea- god, emerges in a brothel and says; It has been said by one: beware the left, the cult of Shakti … I am the light of the homestead. I am the dreamery creamery butter. (ibid.)

This is, of course, a Dublin burlesque of the theophany in the Bhagavadgita 9: 16; I am the ritual, I am the act of worship, I am the food to be offered. (ibid.)

The first aspect of religious teaching, then, is myth and ritual. The kind of savagery readvocated by such as Robert Bly (1991) can safely be dismissed; the process of religious formation, like any other type of education, should involve only disciplines which the initiated will voluntarily impose on himself. As has been noted, one cannot use ‘rational’ thought to determine the ‘truth’ or ‘falsity’ of myth: it is experienced and evaluated at another level. To evaluate religious teachings, we can refer to St. Paul’s insistence on looking at their fruits. For example, the Roman Catholic Church can justifiably claim almost two millennia of disciplic succession and consensual validation of its myths. Yet that same organisation has intervened directly and illegally to prevent repellent sexual offenders being brought to justice in Ireland, the USA and Newfoundland (see Harris, 1990). Its investing in arms and contraceptives smacks of hypocrisy (Yallop, 1984). To echo Palinor in ‘Knowledge of Angels’; if it really speaks of God, it is an amoral one beyond our comprehension. A second type of religious error is the category error. For example, Pat Robertson’s TV ‘700 Club’ involves donations of that quantity of dollars; as we’re told, 20 cents saves a soul for all time. This is a category error, like all fundamentalism; it involves imposing considerations from mysticism (contact with the imperishable within oneself) into a market model. Organised religion can prosper with this model immediately after a popular revolution; the Church managed to do so in 1920’s Ireland. The result is inevitably disastrous as a career structure emerges in the hierarchy and hypocrisy becomes rampant. Robertson’s and others’ racist and bigoted views have given religion an extremely bad name. However, despite the press accorded such rightwing groups as the Christian Coalition, religious groups can just as easily be leftwing. But what is a religion, in any case? Huston Smith (1991, 192–4) predicates six constants of religion, to which I will shortly add a seventh, so allowing Buddhism to be encompassed. Religions for Smith have a notion of external authority, ritual, explanation when the force of ritual is 105

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Being Human: The Search for Order exhausted, tradition, a notion of the cosmos as benevolent (usually manifest as an idea of ‘Grace’) and mystery. Let us attempt a more articulated account. To recapitulate, we discuss (in this order) comparative religion, apologetics, eschatology, and theodicy. (To those who wonder at how the book of revelation made its way in here, I offer two answers; listen to millenniar thought as manifest in present-day Judaeo-Christian and Islamic thought, and attend a nanotechnology conference, where much of the talk is of the paradise shortly to come).

viii.1 Toward a Description of Universals in Religious Experience It is appropriate to begin a short foray into such a vast area with a paradox. To establish the validity of his subject matter, the essayist usually refers to its discernible consequences. The paradox arises here on the realisation that one of the most universal features of religious experience is that its object is a reality not discernible in the normal fashion. Yet, to justify one’s concern with religion, one can refer to immediately perceivable effects. Some are unfortunate e.g. Lebanon’s recent history, the Northern Irish situation. Some are socially constructive; the charitable and educational work of vowed individuals, the social order prescribed in the Koran for the Middle East of its time. The all-pervasive influence of religious experience is best testified to by the fact that an enormous majority of people, even today, govern their lives with reference to some religious system. In order to get some more purchase (from Smith’s 6 categories) what on ‘religion’ is, one must first refer to the notion of the ‘spiritual’. It is a central tenet of the viewpoint taken here that religion involves a social formalisation of spiritual experience. With that context in mind, a spiritual experience is best thought of, as hinted at above, as a personally convincing realisation of a reality beyond that of ordinary experience. In particular, that realisation allows a diminishing of the empirical self, the chattering ego. Religion includes a consensually-arrived-at set of rules which direct the neophyte toward initiation into and continued experience of this reality. These definitions encompass Aron’s (1965) ‘secular religions’ (e.g. Marxism, Freudianism). As shall be demonstrated, both these religions claim an access to a higher reality which can be achieved only through a prescribed pattern of thought and action. Some schools of Buddhism seem to differ from conventional religious thought in their denial of the existence both of God and the human soul.(However, as Johnston, 1978, has remarked, the actual experience by its adherents of such concepts as the Buddha ‘amida’ is close to that of a personal God). Yet they too claim knowledge of a path to realisation of ultimate reality. Here, an attempt will be made to find universals, and with them points of contrast, in the religious experience of mankind. Much of this experience is inarticulable: up to recently, perhaps more was deliberately left unexpressed. Some psychological analysis will then be done in order to arrive at a theory of the future of religion. Any writing on religion which neglects to mention God is akin to a production of Hamlet without the Prince, supporting cast, and stage. Our Western tradition of monotheism worships a God who is omnipotent, benevolent, personal and One. It is hardly surprising that the religions of the Middle East should share this concept, because Christianity derives from them. However, it is surely significant that dualist 106

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Our Age of Ignorance schools within Hinduism worship the same God. It is apposite to trace the history of the Hebrew experience of God, the source of all non-Oriental religion. Many words are used in the Tanakh to refer to different significant aspects of God; e.g., Elohim, Yhwh, Ayin and Adonai. ‘Elohim’, a masculine plural noun of emphasis meaning ‘God’ is used in the first line of the book of Genesis to denote the Creator. Smith (1989, p. 57) affords a neat summary of the perspective in this book on the nature of the ground of being; … all theists will subscribe to a hierarchy of two levels (God and the world), as will metaphysicians … a simple dichotomy, though, is inadequate for the distinctions that are needed.

He goes on to propose the following such distinctions; ‘God unmanifest: Godhead or the infinite God manifest: the celestial plane The world in its invisible aspects: mind. The world as (in principle) visible: space, time and matter’. (ibid.)

We already explored the distinction, in the physics section above, between the uncreated energies of God (the unmanifest), expressed in Murphy’s simplified schema as the Hamiltonian, and the manifest, created such energies. They, again roughly, translate into Eckhart’s dichotomy of Godhead and God. The genius of Moses, like that of Mohammed, was that of legislator as well as seer. Both figures created a social order which was to reflect God’s wishes. In this aspect, God becomes ‘Adonai’, or Lord. The biblical figure Moses is often credited with the invention of monotheism. If this accreditation is correct, and we are going to reference the bible in true academic fashion as the work of Moses et al., 1973, the words of the central prayer of Judaism acquire a new level of meaning: shema yisrael: adonai elohenu adonai echad (Hear O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord).

For Huston Smith (1991), the peculiar Jewish genius is the successful search for meaning in God, in creation, and in human existence. Moses seems to have borrowed freely from Babylonian master-slave compacts in his 10 commandments, and his cosmogony will be commented on later. The Koran (‘recital’) and the associated Islamic religion are conceptually, if not chronologically, the natural consequence of Moses. Mohammed envisaged a nation being built on the foundation of the Koran. He explicitly refers to Moses, though his account of the events of Exodus is idiosyncratic, as is his version of the Gospel story. For Mohammed, Allah was the compassionate and merciful. Thus the central prayer of Islam begins: 107

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Being Human: The Search for Order bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim (in the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful).

The Islamic tradition accords 98 other names to God (‘Grace’, ‘power’, etc)of which one is not freely available. Above all, God is transcendent, powerful yet loving. The present-day vitality of Islam is obvious enough not to need re-emphasis here. Christ was a reformer within the Semitic monotheistic tradition. His major theme is relevant to the distinction drawn above between the religious and the spiritual. What Christ claimed, like Jeremiah before him, was that the Jews of his time had forgotten that their external rites were only a means to an end. He denounced them for casuistry and sophism, and a fortiori for losing God in the forest of rules and ritual. An example is his declamation of those who swore by the sacrifice on the altar, but not the altar. The history of religion is thronged with such reformers, but none has had remotely the same influence as Christ. It will be argued below that the novelty of the rest of his teaching stems from its roots in non-Semitic Oriental spirituality, as we’ve already discussed in pointing out the parallels with Taoism. Apart from criticising the Pharisees for their mania in elevating the socially religious above the spiritual, he introduced new concepts of God and social order. God was, above all, infinite goodness and love. It was far more important that one experience the spiritual than that one be religious in the external, ritualistic sense. The Indian and Chinese spiritual experience in general differs greatly at a superficial level from that of the Semite, as just described. Smith (1991, 20) summarises the activity of sanatana dharma, the eternal truth, that which we in the West call ‘Hinduism’ as pointing out that ‘Life has other possibilities’. Within Hinduism, the Advaita school claims a special place for itself, a true Catholicism; The remark that the Advaitin has no position of his own is quite relevant … his main interest is in showing the direction in which one will eventually come to realise the plenary truth … The philosophical schools and the faiths … can be of help if they can be made to free themselves, as far as possible, from their dogmas and fanaticisms. (Mahadevan, 1977, 126)

The position of this book is that Advaita has a point; its description of physical reality is the purest possible. However, we in the West need be extremely careful about its characterisation of our consensual reality as ‘illusion’. We need to temper it first with its own distinction between the transcendental standpoint, which sees an utter Monism and the empirical standpoint, which posits ‘The world, the soul and God’ (ibid., 123). Ishvara is the creator-God in relation to the world; at the superior level, they are seen to be one. Ishvara is a God who is not yet dead. However, at least one major movement within Hinduism has as its central practise the worship of a personal God. The followers of Chaitanya, among whom are the group of ‘Hare Krishnas’ founded in the West by Swami Praphupada, worship a God who resembles Yahweh, and an incarnation (or rather a succession of incarnations) who resembles Christ. However, one of the central themes of Hinduism, i.e. the idea that God is of the same nature as the human soul, has rarely appeared in the near East 108

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Our Age of Ignorance and West. Exceptions are the Christ of the fourth gospel, Eckhart, and the Christ of the gnostic Gospel of Thomas, prone to sayings like; I am the all, the All come forth from ME and the All attained to Me. (Campbell, 1968, p. 261)

On this point, it is worth noting that, normally, a major difference between the Indian and Semitic systems is that for the former, God is essentially immanent; for the latter, God is transcendent (Griffiths, 1976).’Atman’ describes that potential within the human soul for complete union with ‘Brahman’, ultimate reality. What is the nature of Brahman? The classic answer, we’ve seen, is Being, consciousness and bliss: sat-chit-ananda. Many ‘schools’ (for want of a better word) of Buddhism fall comfortably into the theistic category. The cults of Amida and Sakyamouni himself resemble conventional western cults of Christ. One of the sayings of Gautama in the Pali Canon asserts the existence of ‘an unborn, an unoriginated, an uncreated, an unformed’. A dialogue between Catholicism and Tibetan (and indeed, Japanese Zen) Buddhism has proven fruitful for all parties concerned in recent years. This applies particularly to Mahayana schools of Buddhism. Gautama’s substitution of the eightfold path for the more conventional trappings of religion needs to be tempered with the assertion of deity, and the inevitability of ritual’s developing. Some of the other schools of Buddhism, however, portray a scenario of ultimate reality that resembles Hamlet without the cast, stage, or audience. For them, the final truth is Sunyatta, a void which lacks even an observer. Not only is the initiate’s concept of God to disappear, but his notion of selfhood is to be annihilated by a combination of intellectual disorientation and a difficult physical regime (Johnston, 1978).The closest Western analogue is existentialism. Fiction has proved the most hospitable form for this Western Zen. In Sartre’s ‘La Nausée’, Roquentin experiences destruction of his most precious preconceptions. In Beckett’s trilogy, the characters of the first book dissolve gradually into the unnameable. As the psychiatrist Laing (1969) has pointed out, Kafka’s work makes explicit a complete obliteration of conventional notions of selfhood. Finally, modern atheism normally culminates in a version of reality similar to Marxism or Freudianism. The former system views ultimate reality as history coming to its full destiny through class struggle. The fact that the central tenets of Marxism as eschatology (as distinct from economics) are at least as unproven as those of most theistic religions often escaped its would-be rationalistic adherents. Freudianism similarly claims for a vision of ultimate reality. Since reality has finally to be experienced with a human mind, the structure of the mind should reveal much. Consequently, Freud conceived theism as the projection of the father-figure. Transpersonal experience was to be considered illusory. Instead, one achieved enlightenment by wading one’s way through a morass of arrested libido to the dry land of real self-understanding. It would be comforting to conclude that the experience of a personal God, the following of a particular behavioural regime, or both, is universal in religious 109

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Being Human: The Search for Order experience. By now, it should be obvious that the experience of a personal God does not enter several non-Semitic religions. However, all religions claim for access to ultimate reality, and we have explored some versions of this. The kind of behaviour which is deemed consonant with a life in the spirit varies widely. It is fair to say that most religions advocate moderation and at least a mild asceticism. The eschewing of meat, alcohol, and sex are very common features. Again, the exceptions leap up at us. Several Gnostic and Manichean sects (e.g. the Mediaeval Brethern of the Free Spirit) in the history of Christendom considered it holy to indulge the hopelessly corrupt body, the better to free the soul. Are there any universals in regime? Perhaps the only certain one is an inner turning to the life of the spirit. There are even then many warnings in Buddhism against excesses of ‘craving’ which result in one ‘storming heaven’; the turning must have commitment, but be devoid of personal ambition. Joyce, we’ve seen, is in Campbell’s schema an advocate of the left-hand path, with sensual excess beginning the process of self-transformation. It is essential for the survival of all religions that there should be a period of initiation for the neophyte. This initiation justifies the institutions which constitute the external permanent aspect of the religion. The claim of access to a universal reality and this training period are truly transcultural elements. A realisation which obviously belongs only to non-secular religion is the unknowability of Godhead. In the West, Eckhart spoke most explicitly of this. John of the Cross referred to God as Todo y Nada, all and nothing. The ‘All’ we reach by the cataphatic path, the ‘nothing’, by the apophatic path (see Smith, op. cit., p. 59). This paradoxical nature we have already examined in Buddhism and Judaism. Certain elements of the spiritual vision seem cross-cultural. The idea that ‘all is one’ arises regularly. The absolute transcendence of God we have seen in schools of Hinduism and in Semitic religions. The notion that God is judge, omnipotent and living also strikes many chords. The stripping away of material and finally spiritual attachment to achieve true vision is common to all theism. The Gospel of Christ includes elements of Chinese and Indian Oriental teaching, which perhaps helped ensure its rejection. Yet it can, with justice, be viewed as a compilation of universal spiritual teaching. This teaching directs the traveller along paths of thought and action to higher perceptions. Let’s examine first the most universal aspects of Christ’s teaching, some of which are surprisingly among the least noticeable. A case in point is the exhortation not to worry about the morrow, but to rejoice in nature like the lilies of the field. This emphasis on living for the moment is common with teachings in Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism. For the Taoist, the ideal is spontaneous, unreflective being. The relevant teaching in Hinduism has given rise to the ‘Be here now’ slogan of Ram Dass. For the Buddhist, real experience is dharmakaya, momentary sense-satiation.The Taoist ethos is surprisingly evident in the life and teachings of Christ. Like Lao Tzu (Lau, 1963), Christ insists that the violent shall not come to a natural end; that humiliation and exaltation are reverse sides of the same coin; that the spontaneity of children is a desirable approach to life. Consider the following quotations from the Tao Te Ching: ‘What others teach I also teach. The violent will not come to a natural end. I shall take 110

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Our Age of Ignorance this as my precept’ (Tao te Ching 62: 97) (Lau, 1963: likewise all further quotations are from Lau).’Therefore the sage puts his person last and it comes first’ (7: 19).’Make the small big and the few many: do good to him who has done you an injury’ (63: 148). ‘Therefore it is because the sage never attempts to be great that he succeeds in becoming great’ (63: 150). In common with Confucianism, and with Rabbi Hillel, Christ arrived at a weighty emphasis on the Golden Rule. The central teaching of Judaism was to be the love of God, and consequently the love of one’s neighbour. These imperatives were ethically prior to external accord with religious directive. Suffering and the relief thereof are major issues in most religious systems. The responses often given and mentioned by Christ, are that there is an alternative life in the spirit, either underneath the surface of normal existence, or perhaps after death, exists, or alternatively that a millennial state is imminent. Finally, Christ issued some social and practical directives. Divorce without proof of infidelity, and adultery were anathema; prayer was recommended; his disciples were to renounce possessions. The gulf between these simple commands and the detailed demands of Mosaic, Mohammedan, Buddhist and later Christian practice could not be more obvious. Christendom, like Judaism and Islam, soon acquired the trappings of statehood, a holy book, prescribed ritual, repetition of prayer, a priesthood and charismatic leaders. Buddhism and Hinduism lack only the first element. In fact, for most worshippers, this external plethora of props become inextricable from the spiritual experience at the true core of their religion. In the pathological state they substitute for this spiritual experience, and the religion becomes in need of reform. In all, of the many themes common to various religions, only the claims of access to a higher reality and a training toward initiation are truly universal. Even sin and its forgiveness within the institution are not quite so common, despite their obvious usefulness to the institution. The confession-box was a wonderful means of social control, particularly in rural parishes; the Catholic Church inevitably loses power with industrialisation and urbanisation, and tries to prevent both. The notion that a form of social activity which does not explicitly acknowledge the existence of God is yet a religion shocks many Western minds. Kolakowski (1982) , faced with this problem, defined religion as ‘mankind’s experience of the sacred’. It is not at all surprising that Marxism and Freudianism deny the existence of God. On the contrary, part of the force of these creeds arises precisely from this denial. They scupper the native spiritual aspiration, and substitute for it a purely material cosmos. The non-theistic schools of Buddhism and Hinduism present a much greater challenge. Whether these schools are authentic expressions of the traditions due to their theistic founders is one issue. A more interesting conclusion arises from a comparison of lifestyles of the sadhu, bhikku, and Christian monk. These lifestyles are almost identical. The bhikku may view his successful meditation as ‘the speech of the Lord of the house’; the monk may consider himself to have reached union with God. When taken in the context of their respective cultures, these experiences are identical. Despite his explicit and devout theism, the monk will allow there is an unknowable, shrouded aspect of Godhead. This aspect he realises by the apophatic path, stripping away all sense-experience to arrive at the Unknowable. This new realisation of Godhead is 111

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Being Human: The Search for Order impersonal in nature. The similarities between Eastern and Western cognition of the Divinity far outweigh the dissimilarities. Even Zen’s emphasis on the destruction of self has Western echoes. Christ himself spoke of the necessity of giving up one’s life. The conclusion that many of the supposed contrasts between Occident and Orient are superficial has not been lost on many scholars of religion in this century. Some relevant psychological findings on religion include abreaction studies (Sargeant, 1959) which inform a great deal about the nature of religious initiation. Historically, initiation into all social structures has involved a deal of ceremony at which the initiate endures some cathartic experience. This applies a fortiori to religious initiation. The neophyte is forced into a state of cognitive dissonance and offered a religious salvation. This process can be seen in pure form in Marxist political enlightenment as in Christian ‘re-birth’. Freud’s (Brown, 1961) attempted debunking of theism, in which God is viewed as projected father-figure, surfaces again and again in his work. It is important for the theist, in this context, to remember the difference between the concept of God suggested by ‘Father’ and the real, ineffable nature of God. To view God as a person may be useful, but should be regarded as only part of the real Truth. The power of the religious impulse is best illustrated by the fact in an age of rationality and unprecedented technical achievement, fundamentalist religious movements are again on the rise. For many, the dwelling in a cosmos governed by a divine creator merits much personal sacrifice. Given the strength of the religious impulse, it is worthwhile considering how one can turn religion to the solution of the problems of the age. The fact that all the esoterica which previously required years of travelling to access is now in the bookstores is significant. Can we use tools of the spirit on the central problems of the age i.e. world peace and environmental destruction? The answer is; only with considerable difficulty, given the fragility of the true religious impulse. This impulse arises only when the questioner becomes aware of the source of the question in himself. Such an experience requires a degree of selffragmentation, which is a vertiginous experience. Without it, the formation offered by science, the arts and sport is far more valuable than that offered by religion. However, once the source of the question is revealed, forces are unleashed that allow a complete realignment of psychic contents. A thirst is generated than can be slaked only through the ‘energies’ of religious experience. Whether we can tap into these energies without religion’s belief structure is a moot point; my feeling is that we can. Cistercian monks chant in English 7 times a day about events in the history of the Jewish people; the experience is hardly due to the edifying content of the psalms, but rather the music and sense of a sacred presence created in community. An alternative path is though the creation of a cosmopolitan religion. Here the difficulty is the lack of cultural context and support, which we have seen that Don Campbell valued. The Iranian Bahai faith has attempted this cosmopolitanism. It eschews none of the religions from either the Semitic or what it calls the ‘Aryan’ lives. A historical progression of avatars is conceived, each with their own task. The culmination is envisaged as Baha’ullah and his plan for a new world order. Unfortunately, the attempt to put Baha’ullah on the same plane as Mohammed and 112

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Our Age of Ignorance Christ has caused persecution by Muslims and occasioned religious distaste from Christians. The emphasis in Baha’i of a notion of ‘prosperity’ transcending material wealth is in keeping with the ethos of this book. Obviously, some via media between Fundamentalism and an all-encompassing cosmopolitanism is of the utmost necessity. Let us hence to apologetics.

viii.2. Myth in religious and ‘scientific’ cosmogony Let us look at biblical versus scientific cosmogony to get some future purchase on the role of myth in religious teaching. This may help us understand the durability of religion in a secular age. There are two contrasting rationales for the Biblical accounts of Judaic history. The first, which is proposed in its most absurd form by Velikovsky (1972) claims that the events actually happened as described and that the earth is subject to frequent massive catastrophe. The second account, which may be found, inter alia, in the Harvard neurophysiologist Jaynes’ (1976) claims that the Bible may not be fact as we understand it, but that it is eloquent of the advances in human consciousness culminating in our present state. Jaynes claims that the voices Moses and Abraham hear and the visions of Jacob and Joseph were real to them. However, this is indeed because mankind had not yet reached maturity. At that point, the corpus callosum dividing left and right hemispheres still allowed fantasy and visions produced by the right hemisphere to be perceived as fact by the left hemisphere. Jaynes needs a lot more anatomical and historical evidence for this than he provides. What this section will demonstrate, above all, is that religious writing has its own domain of truth, even when it contradicts scientific fact. That domain is mythic, but often in a psychological sense is more immediate than science. As it approaches the limits of our cognition, science too becomes mythic, often playing on exactly the same ‘image schemas’ as religious texts. The sceptic’s main argument since Darwin has been the Biblical account of creation. He claims that it is directly refutable by reference to the massive span of geological time. The latest estimate is that it was between 10 and 20 thousand million years from the time of the big bang to the time of man’s emergence, not five days. (The stars, of course, were older still, until recently). However, the Genesis account and the related Babylonian cosmogonies, in their mixture of myth and acute psychological insight, contain much human truth. It is worth looking at the scientific and religious perspectives in detail in greater detail, and making an attempt at synthesis. Genesis begins: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God’s spirit hovered over the water’. On the first day God creates light; on the second day, God divides earth from heaven; in the third day, God divides the water from the dry land. The genesis myth is, of course, one of many similar stories arising from a common Babylonian origin, exemplified by this part of the Sumerian story of Gilgamesh; After heaven had been moved away from earth, after earth had been separated from heaven … (Eliade, 1963, p. 36)

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Being Human: The Search for Order All this seems at first in total contradiction to the ‘big bang’ theory, which yet was begotten of the Belgian priest Le maître. About fourteen thousand million years ago, before time itself existed, a massive universal explosion of energy commences the process of creation. It is not necessarily contradictory to theism. One may ask ‘who put the energy there?’ or alternatively opt for pantheism by claiming that God is the energy, the cosmic unity. The other three-and-half days of creation deal with the creation of living things. T.H. Huxley was the first to declare them contradictive of the evolutionary account. They don’t bear on the argument here, and it is worth noting again that evolution, like any other scientific theory, has its controversies (e.g. the notion of punctuated vs smooth evolution) (Another relevant consideration is the later work of Hawking (1988). His current cosmos has ‘no edge in space, no beginning or end in time, and nothing for a creator to do’ (Sagan, 1988, p. xi). Yet Hawking’s work is replete with reference to God, which is more than mere mischief; there is a passionate attempt to understand the ‘mind of God’). For the meantime, it suffices to say that all accounts of creation, not excluding the present scientific one, are in part mythic. They attempt to evoke a response on the listener’s part by playing on certain archetypal experiences. It is on this basis that the Genesis account is superior. Before discussing the particular archetypal experience evoked by the respective accounts of cosmogony, it is worthwhile noting some theories of the origin of consciousness in the child. The great Swiss polymath Jean Piaget (1926, 1972), discussed at length in the companion volume, described the emergence of consciousness as a series of differentiations and integrations of faculties. The child’s first motor response may be a gross, uncoordinated action which later becomes differentiated into a series of coordinated, integrated actions. This theme has been emphasized both by Piaget and the philosopher and scientist Polanyi (1958) who insists that the first stage of consciousness resembles the ‘formless void’ described in Genesis. It is appropriate now to examine the scientific cosmogony described in, for example, Weinberg’s (1977) ‘The First Three Minutes’. With apology to the book of Genesis, it may be paraphrased thus: ‘When the universe was being created, it was a formless void, and the Creative Spirit pre-existed, out of time and space. The Creator said ‘Let there be energy’ and time and space came into existence, time being defined in terms of increase in entropy as Boltzmann has demonstrated. The energy differentiated into strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational forms. Next the energy, subject to the laws of thermodynamics, differentiated into light molecules which integrated to form heavier molecules and compounds … ’. It has been pointed out that both the scientific and Biblical accounts of creation evoke archetypes in order to convey their meaning. More specifically, they touch on essential chords of experience. They commence by evoking the child’s first experience, and proceed to communicate by referring to archetypal events in the emergence of human consciousness. God divides the waters. The child distinguishes self from not-self in the first relevant differentiation. The energy differentiates into electrons, positrons, photons and neutrons. God makes all the water come together and dry land appear. The child learns to differentiate and integrate actions. Nuclear particles emerge, and hydrogen and helium form. 114

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Our Age of Ignorance It is only at the division of earth from heaven that the accounts differ in detail though their thrust remains the same. Water cannot exist according to scientific cosmogony until a much later stage in creation i.e. until the original fusion of hydrogen atoms creating helium is long in the past and the heavier elements have emerged in a particular area. It is precisely at this point that the Genesis account is psychologically superior. The mention of ‘water’ is again an evocation of an archetype. We associate water with origins at an extremely fundamental level, as a result both of our ontogenetic and phylogenetic beginnings. In conclusion, the common Babylonian origins of the big bang theory and the creation myth in Genesis have been discussed; it is argued that both may have their origin in the beginnings of cognition. There may be much of value even in the content of religious fable.

viii.3. Psychology of the Millennium In this section, millenarian thought is discussed. It is argued that millenarianism is a factor in many of the major belief-systems to have taken hold in the West and near East, be these systems theistic or not. Moreover, they have a common notion of the nature of events leading to the eschaton. The individual psychology involved in millenarian thinking is the discussed. The Christian notion of the eschaton is outlined. Finally, the role of technology is discussed in this context. Few ideas have exerted such an influence over men's thought and action as the idea of the millennium. The fascination it compels is best testified to by the variety of manifestations of millenarianism there have been at all stages of human history. Its moral ambivalence is best testified to by concentration camps and gulags on one hand and cathedrals on the other. Its universality has been demonstrated by anthropologists and philologists; for example, For a century the Guarani looked for the Earthly Paradise, singing and dancing. They had re-evaluated the myth of the End of the World and incorporated it into a millennialist mythology. (Eliade, 1963, p. 58)

Several other of the attributes that we shall see Norman Cohn predicate of millennial thinking are presaged in archaic thought-patterns. For example, ‘Stig Wikander has recently demonstrated the existence of a Germanic myth of the eschatological battle, which has the closest similarities to the parallel Indian and Iranian accounts’ (op. cit., p. 61). So Cohn is a little conservative in tracing the origins of the Third Reich back to mediaeval Europe; ‘Behind the pseudo-scientific terminology one can in each case recognize a fantasy of which almost every element was to be found in fantasies which were already current in medieval Europe. The final, decisive battle of the Elect (be they the 'Aryan race' or the 'proletariat') against the hosts of evil (be they the Jews or the 'bourgeoisie); a dispensation on which the elect are to be most amply compensated for all their sufferings by the joys of

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Being Human: The Search for Order total domination or of total community or of both together; a world purified of all evil and in which history is to find its consummation – these ancient imaginings are with us still. (op. cit., p. 69)

We need to clarify a few points immediately. The title of this book series is not intended to indicate advocacy of millenarianism. On the contrary; it is one of many diseases of the psyche that we are trying to avoid. Let us look at what is meant by the word ‘millennium’. In the book of Revelation, God is signified by the number 1,000, which is ‘mille’ in Latin. After the battle of Armageddon and the fall of Babylon, there is a temporary peace of 1,000 years. ‘They came to life and reigned with Christ for 1,000 years. When the thousand years are over Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations.’ (Rev., 20: 5–8). Thus the term ‘millennium’. For the present purposes, the term will signify what Cohn (1961, 1970) intends it to signify ‘any future perfect state of affairs envisaged by a particular population as the end of their course of action’. The millennium is intended to be terrestrial (not in heaven), imminent, total and miraculous. As we shall see, Cohn sees it as having two facets; accomplishment of political aims by force is the first. We see this in forays like Thomas Muntzer in Allstadt and Mulhausen in the early 16th century; for the ungodly have no right to live. (Cohn, 1970, 239–51)

Similarly, the Bohemian Taborites under the military genius Zizka showed this trait; The just … will now rejoice, seeking vengeance and washing their hands in the blood of the sinners. (ibid., 213)

This movement was profoundly communistic and in opposition to the Advaitin quietism in (for Cohn) the equally millenarian Free Spirit: The divine essence is my essence and my essence is the divine essence. (op. cit., 173)

We expected to see all these movements flourish over the next few years; we have so far been happily free of them and only Islam, with its distinct chronology, seems a player. The pursuit of the millennium has motivated a greater diversity and intensity of action than any comparable idea. Some specific examples will be considered in the next section. For the present, it is most apposite to consider aspects of the logic and psychology of the millennium. Cohn (1961) in his classic book on the subject, outlined three stages general to all millenarian movements. The first is an initial period of happiness. The second is a period of discontent, in which increasingly 116

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Our Age of Ignorance repressive measures have to be used both in order to prevent anarchy and also to maintain the fever-pitch of hysteria which is the lifeblood of such a state. These two stages can be observed in mediaeval Münster, in Jacob Frank's messianism, in the French Revolution, and in all contemporary communist revolution. What is unique to our day is a third stage during which cynics and manipulators with no respect for the original millenarian inspiration grab the reins of power. It is at this point that the atrocity of Stalin's gulags and the recent obscenity of ‘Marxist’ totalitarianism become possible. What are the individual psychological states which facilitate the mass hysteria mentioned above? Why is the reasoning faculty so obviously suspended? In an extension of this line of argument, this activity of the psyche will be shown to be authentic only insofar as it is taken to relate primarily to personal development. The ambivalence of this personal but yet collective sense of the end of things is best indicated in religious writing. Even the terms used by religious leaders for the future state of spiritual development reflect this ambivalence. The ancient Chinese ‘Tao Te Ching’ (Lau, 1963) proposes a way in which to gain the Empire. It is no coincidence that the Gospels recount the details of a way to gain the Kingdom (see above). The way in both cases is a prescription both for personal development and for social change. Followers of the way expect to attain peace for themselves as well as the possibility of social change. It is left to a former Marxist, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1973) to describe the dynamics of the third stage of a millenniar state. ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ is a graphic account of the hell experienced by upwards of forty million individuals all over the eastern block. No comparable account has come from Maoist China, but the statistics there are probably even more horrifying. Purcell (1996, P4) summarises the situation; ‘Our century will be remembered as the century prophesied by Nietzsche, devastated by 'wars of the spirit' which have cost perhaps some 200 million lives’. It will be remembered that the millenniar state in its later stages requires an enemy on which to project its faults. For Marxist-Leninist states, the enemy is the capitalist system. All economic and social ills of such a state are blamed on outside interference. It was therefore inevitable that the present military situation of tens of thousands of nuclear warheads ready to be used should still obtain, given that the West felt obliged to indulge this paranoia. Left-wing movements don't however by any means have a monopoly on flawed historicist views. The Third Reich in Germany went so far as to directly evoke the idea of the millennium (Shirer, 1964). Nazi Germany was to survive, like the first reign of Christ in the book of Revelation, for 1,000 years. It differed from left-wing states in its racial bias as much as in its political persuasion. Again, enemies were found both inside and outside the state. The holocaust was a logical consequence of the Third Reich's racial emphasis. For the purposes of this section, the main lesson to be drawn from secular millenarianism is that it evokes scriptural eschatology, often as explicitly as the Nazis did. The book of Genesis contains the first overtures of Jewish historicist thought. In Genesis 12: 2–3, Abram is told: ‘I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; … all peoples on earth will be blessed through you’. Later, Abraham is told his 117

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Being Human: The Search for Order descendants will be as numerous as the stars in heaven or the grains on the seashore. This notion of national destiny has become interlinked with messianism by the time of Moses. Astonishingly, the messianic idea continues to exert a fascination over millions of people. In recent centuries, Judaism experienced two messianic movements, led by Jacob Franck and Sabbati Zevi. Both movements ground to a halt after mass conversions to Islam and Christianity, respectively. In more recent times, a thousand people committed suicide in Guyana out of loyalty to a crazed messianic figure(or the CIA!). The devotees of Sun Myung Moon now number literally millions. The Mormons claim a revelation dating from the middle of last century and superceding previous Christian revelation. The Bahai faith claims Bah'a-ullah was both the avatar expected in Eastern eschatology and the Messiah of Jewish prophecy. The followers of David Koresh in Waco saw themselves explicitly as caught up in an eschatological battle. The fact that their FBI-led opponents behaved abominably, making obscene gestures to the women within, strengthened the belief in Vernon Howell as a Messiah. Reprisals were inevitable. Let us again note the Manichean mutterings of Bush the younger in this context. Jewish apocalyptic thought conforms to the basic pattern of millenarianism. Its first Biblical manifestation is in the book of Daniel. The basic sequence of catastrophe followed by salvation can be seen in Daniel as nowhere else. At the time of greatest crisis, peace is to break out: ‘At that time Michael, your great prince … will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then’. (Daniel, 12: 1) (As promised, all quotations are from Moses, 1973). The Christian Book of Revelation is in direct line of descent from the book of Daniel. The writer is dictated to by a human figure who also shows scenes concerning the reality of which the writer is emphatic. In both cases, the vision concerns the future: ‘Now I have to explain what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come’ (Daniel 10: 14). The book begins; The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. (Rev. 1: 1)

The book of revelation envisages a temporary peace, as we have seen, followed by a permanent peace. After an army of 200 million gathers at Megiddo the first peace begins: The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air and out of the temple came loud voice from the throne, saying it is done. (Rev. 16: 17)

Permanent peace arrives only after the eschatological battle: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. (Rev. 21: 1)

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Our Age of Ignorance The sway that John's vision still hold over the popular imagination can best be judged by the number of bestsellers that take themes from the book of Revelation. It ends with the invocation ‘Maranatha’: Amen. Come Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. (Rev. 20: 21)

‘John’ (of course, the attribution is dubious) wrote for a Christian community which was confident that the end of days was to come within a generation. It is fair to say that most communities since then have at least unconsciously harboured the same expectation. Renaissance Florence under Savonarola and the German province of Munster are only two of literally hundreds of millenniar states which lie scattered over past centuries. Albert Schweitzer addressed himself to this issue in his ‘Das Leben der Jesu Forschung von Reimarus zu Wrede’(1906; translation, 1910). He concluded, first of all, that Christianity must maintain the tension between ‘The Kingdom of God is among you’ and ‘The Kingdom of God is to come’. A more contentious conclusion of Schweitzer's (1913) is that Jesus's thought was limited by the Jewish and apocalyptic forms of his day. It is worthwhile investigating this claim further. At first glance, the evidence seems to weigh heavily in Schweitzer's favour. Jesus predicts the eschaton when He sends out his disciples.: ‘I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes’ (Matthew 10: 23). At another point, Jesus describes the events of the catastrophe in words which explicitly reference the Book of Daniel: ‘For then there will be great distress, unequalled from the beginning of the world until now’ (Matthew 24: 21). The ‘abomination of desolation’ (Matthew 24: 15) is to stand in the holy place, precisely as in the book of Daniel. What Schweitzer ignored was first of all the strength of the eschatological archetype. All generations expect the immediate end of the world, and the signs Jesus proposes are as relevant today as they were in mediaeval Europe or in Roman occupied Palestine: ‘For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and great miracles to deceive even the elect’ (Matthew 24: 24). The Dominican priest Albert Nolan (1994) recently completed the jigsaw in his ‘Jesus before Christianity’. He emphasises, like Schweitzer, that Jesus spoke for a Jewish public and couched his thought in the terms of that public. For them, his prophecies were in fact borne out by subsequent events. Nolan, like Schweitzer, envisages Jesus as coming to consciousness of himself in the course of his ministry. A crucial episode in this context is the one where Jesus identifies John the Baptist as Elijah. According to Jewish prophecy, Elijah was to come again to announce the Messiah. In this simple statement, Jesus announced that the millennium has arrived. John the Baptist, who Isaiah describes as ‘A voice crying in the wilderness’ (Isaiah 40: 3), had announced ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near’. (Matthew 3: 2). This is a time of catastrophe, in which the axe is to be laid to the root of the tree by one yet to come. Jesus, by contrast, announces that the Kingdom has come: ‘Blessed be the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 5: 3). This sequence of events is the foundation of Christianity. Jesus announces that the conditions 119

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Being Human: The Search for Order for salvation have changed. Now tax-collectors and prostitutes can take the Kingdom as if by force, provided they have contrite hearts. Other prophecies from Isaiah now become relevant. The servant of God, with whom Jesus increasingly identifies is to ‘make God's salvation known to the ends of the earth’. This simple statement is our justification as we claim a share in the privilege of the chosen people. The servant is to suffer, with the crucifixion being presaged in detail in Isaiah 52: 13–15 and 53: 1–9; See, my servant will prosper; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. Just as there were many who were appalled at him – his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness – He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

More relevant at the moment are the facts (or material for later interpolations)that the temple was torn apart stone from stone, as Jesus predicted, and that the Diaspora signified the end of the world for many a religious Jew. The beginning of the Christian millennium coincided with the end of the Jewish world. Before returning to the present day, it is worthwhile observing the state of mind of early Christians in three separate texts: ‘The end of all things is near’ (1 Peter 4: 7) ‘We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present day’ (Romans 8: 22–3). ‘Behold, I am coming soon!’ (Rev 22: 7). It should by now be obvious that in one sense our age has no more claim than any other to be the end of history. The quotations just cited surely confirms that view. There are, on the other hand, several ways in which today's world corresponds to the characteristics expected of the eschaton. Voegelin, 1980, quoted in Purcell, 1996, p. 182, expresses it sanely; If the world has not reached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual conflagration, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the middle ages, but … our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the modern era.

It can be argued that the essential difference between this and other ages is not the preponderance of false Christs and their signs, which is characteristic of any age, but rather the development of technology. The fact remains, however, that man has not changed in line with technology. Technological progress resembles a positive exponential or a spiral more than a straight line. Humanity itself has not changed, but our knowledge now has unprecedented historical depth. It is quite often the case in our society that an individual chooses not to be truly conscious. Such an individual becomes a passive consumer of the present cultural resource. The opportunities are there, however, for one to actively project oneself into other cultures as never before. The symbolic products of the whole of human history are available in written, pictorial and occasionally audio-visual form as never before. Therefore, another sense in which 120

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Our Age of Ignorance we now are ready to consummate history is our ability to live out the dynamics of past cultures. We find out more about the past every day, and each item of information adds to our self-consciousness and realization of our inner being. In Chardin's schema, as we see below semi-adopted by Frank Tipler, we are moving closer to ‘Omega Point’. It is possible, of course, that technological progress may be stopped by state fiat, just as the Chinese eschewed the chance to have the first world empire by imperial fiat. However, in summary, our eschatological sense is best satisfied by using technological resources to allow ourselves to, almost literally, be more people.

viii.4. The Problem of Human Suffering In this section, the perennial problem of suffering is discussed both in religious and purely secular contexts. In either case, it is argued, the very realization of this problem brings with it the moral imperative to work at the alleviation of the suffering of others. The existence of suffering, to continue, does not bear one way or another on the question of the existence of God. The nature of God is another matter, and the notion of this nature as antinomial in essence is discussed. The problem of human suffering acquires quite different aspects when posed in different contexts. In a religious context, it is a subset of the larger issue of theodicy i.e. how can a God who is both omnipotent and all-benevolent allow evil, or indeed imperfection of any kind? In a secular context, without any reference to God, the root of suffering is sometimes seen as being due to a worldly phenomenon like social inequality. This section will attempt to take both perspectives into account. Doctorow (2000, 267) puts the dilemma for theists in stark form; Lord, if you were to give evidence of a real hell … with the right people in it, I would have some hope for you as you have been traditionally conceived.

The speaker is an apostate Episcopalian priest. His conversion to Judaism arises from his theodicy; But as it is, I think we must remake you. (ibid.)

In Doctorow’s thought, the Semitic God exists; to progress, we need paradoxically to return to the roots of Judaism. I will take the opportunity here to reintroduce the stance of this book on these issues. If we maintain an image of a constant self, it will make sense also to have a notion of Ishvara, a creator-God, God manifest. Yet we cannot maintain that Ishvara is omnipotent and good, as it will be argued below. So we can either search deep in the roots of Semitic monotheism, or choose entirely a different tack. This sees the cosmos as still being in creation, with each of us having a crucial role. By our creative action, we can come to moments in which the previous sentence is seen to be true, and in the stillness of which we can see our identity with God unmanifest. The role of religions should be to isolate, and then amplify and regulate these moments as needs be. Of course, atheism is perfectly defensible also. 121

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Being Human: The Search for Order It is worthwhile to note beforehand that the core of the religious solution to the problem of evil is trust in God. Indeed, true faith would forestall the questions being framed in the first place, and so much for true faith. Paul tells us that our relationship to God is that of pottery to the potter. As C.G. Jung (1954) so rightly pointed out, Job submits (Job 42 1: 6) after God gives a demonstration of his power (Chapters 38, 39). Jung further notes than the relationship between Satan and the Lord parallels that between Ahriman and Ormuzd in Zoroastrian theology. Satan is a doubting thought in Adonai’s consciousness, a doubt which must be appeased by a human act of faith. This act of propitiation is repeated in the Christian tradition by Christ’s self-sacrifice, on Calvary. Christ’s identity with God, for the Christian, enriches the meaning of the sacrifice. The question of the logic of God sacrificing Himself to Himself remains unasked, here as indeed in John Paul 2’s (1994) opus. We will consider it later in another context. The question of whether the ritual of communion can best be viewed as symbolic cannibalism, and its interrelation with pagan rites, we shall ignore. (Whether intentionally or not, the Christ depicted in the gospels is the Roman Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun; has close ties to the Mithraic cults; and in other ways shows signs of a deliberate manufacture of a synthetic religion). Perhaps the most immediately appealing approach to theodicy is that which proposed a principle of evil existing independently from and opposed to God. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition this principle is personified as Satan, the adversary. The Oriental religions are less likely to accept such a clear-cut dichotomisation. Thus, Hindus feel free to worship Shiva, who is morally ambivalent, and Kali, a bloodthirsty female deity (Griffiths, 1976). The Aztec replacement of the relatively laid-back Quetzlcoatl with the lunatic Huitzilopochtli and his demands for human sacrifice helped the conquistadors immensely. The incarnation of God in Christ resolves the issue for Christians. We are to understand that the love of God for us, when translated into human terms, is a life of epic self-sacrifice culminating in Calvary. Because of the cross, the prince of the world has no power over Christians and they are forever redeemed. The perennial evils of sickness, old age, death, the sufferings of children discussed so well by Dostoyevsky (1958),inherited genetic disorder, suffering due to growth and cosmic disorder may be classified as ‘natural’ evils. ‘Moral’ evil is suffering at the hands of moral agents i.e. other people. It is worth noting that this dichotomisation, which will be taken as valid for the purposes of this section, shows its validity precisely in the excesses of alternative viewpoints. For Luther, as for some millennial outlooks, sin is unavoidable: ‘Esto peccator, et pecca fortiter … vitae haec non est habitatio iustitiae’ (Kolakowski, 1982).(Be a sinner; commit whoppers; this is an imperfect world!) What then of the category of ‘natural’ evils, which seem outside our volition? The classical theological reply has appealed to the principles of variety and contrast. The former principle dictates that created things should be judged for what they are in themselves, not their relations to another, supposedly perfect entity. It is unfair to criticise the rose for not tasting like an apple. The principle of contrast explains that much supposed evil actually shows up the good in higher relief. For example, the 122

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Our Age of Ignorance presence of a handicapped child in a family often evokes acts of compassion that enrich the giver even more than the beneficiary. Atheistic thought will give short shrift to talk about propitiation, variety and contrast. Indeed, many non-believers will explain that the presence of so much human suffering seems to them incompatible with the existence of a benevolent creator. The Dostoevskian account noted above, in which Ivan Karamazov states his inability to believe in a Creator who allows children to suffer, is a classic exposition of this viewpoint. This line of argument acquires further strength when combined with a Marxist analysis of economics. Much of mankind’s suffering, we are told, is due to exploitation of the working classes. The fact that, historically, the church has often been seen to be on the side of the exploiter rather than the exploited adds further cogency to this argument. A Church which refuses to align itself firmly with the exploited is betraying the spirit of the beatitudes (Luke 6: 20–5).If we are to take the story of the Incarnation seriously, we must accept that God is clearly on the side of the oppressed. Otherwise, the socialist’s criticism of ‘the opium of the people’, which acts as an arm of state in distracting thought from the misery here to the glory above, is valid.The insistence of the Gospel message on the necessity for humbling oneself acquires even greater emphasis in Paul (e.g. Phil 2: 6–9). Paul stresses that the humiliation which Christ encountered is meant as a rebuke to potentates. He is confident that the message he preaches will survive despite, and indeed to an extent because of, its humble origins, and its obvious illogicality. This move has of course been much-imitated over the ages; our belief system may not make sense to you, which we now tell you is one of its selling-points. The idea of Parousia is to some extent a proposed solution for the problem of evil in Paul. Both Paul (‘The whole of creation has been groaning as in the pains of birth up to the present moment’) and the writer of Hebrews (e.g. Hebrews 10: 37) believed in an imminent resolution of all human ills. This line of thought is carried on by such latter-day millennarian movements as Jehovah’s Witnesses, and to a lesser extent in the established Churches. The existence of these aspects of human experience in pre-industrial society was yet sufficient to generate the notion of the devil, and of gods who are themselves morally ambivalent. It may be replied that antiquity, too, had its share of tyrants and social injustice. However, we have, with the advent of twentieth-century technology, reached a stage where the media can inform us of natural disaster and where our affluence, now spent on armaments and useless gadgets, could alleviate the suffering of the third and fourth worlds. The moral imperative for us to donate to 3rd world organisations and causes should be obvious. For any developed person, suffering is the fundamental and greatest mystery. On a psychological level, suffering is the knowledge of future recurrence of pain. This knowledge, as C. S. Lewis (Hick, ibid.) has argued, is natural to humans alone. Pain is momentary, and does not in itself constitute suffering. It is the realization that the pain will unavoidably persist which initiates true suffering.The aim of any worthwhile human life is the cessation, as far as is possible, of others’ suffering. This aim is common to the religious devotee and the atheistic humanist. It is perhaps the only issue about which a truly universal consensus can be arrived upon. (This makes the 123

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Being Human: The Search for Order stance of the Catholic Church on such issues as condoms problematic in the extreme; their attitude to Aids and behaviour at recent population summits, where they are forced to admit that human population growth is a problem but that they are going to insist that the number of Catholics increases by not allowing them to use birth control, is risible. Naturally, they got one of my fellow-countrymen to make these arguments for them; soldiers in everyone’s army but our own). Faced by the unprecedented moral evil of the twentieth century, such thinkers as Jung (1954), Hartshorn and Ricoeur (Garrison, 1982) have referred to the experience of God in Exodus, Job, Revelation and in Christ crucified.Their conclusion is that God is not unitary in the sense ecclesiastical theology suggests. He is both transcendent and immanent, both creator and created, both necessary and contingent. Moreover – and here arises the most serious break with tradition – he is evil as well as good. This idea, of course, dates back at least as far as Zoroastrianism. The flavour of this position can best be caught in its treatment of the crucifixion. The idea of God becoming man and sacrificing himself in expiation for the sins of the world no longer holds sway. On the contrary, the crucifixion is said to be significant because it is the meeting of the right hand of God, in Christ, and the evil aspect of Godhead in the crucifixion God allowed. What we are to learn from the crucifixion is therefore the contradiction (or antinomy) at the core of Godhead. This antinomy, we are told, is manifested in today’s stockpile of nuclear weapons as it was in the sufferings of Job. The outpouring of evil at the hands of God, we are again told, surpasses that which Satan is allowed. Our only hope, apparently, is to accept the darkness in God as in ourselves. Jung claims that the shadow in the human psyche is nurtured by its being ignored. In the same way, the nuclear physicist Garrison (ibid.) argues that an outpouring of God’s anger in World War 3 is in keeping with the darkness of God. The first step on the road to avoiding this catastrophe is to acknowledge God’s shadow side. This line of argument is extended to the systematic, institutionalised savagery of modern totalitarianism. It is argued by Garrison and the novelist Dimitriu (1964) that God, in his dark aspect, is in the torturers and death-camp commandants of these states. A story of Elie Wiesel’s (1960) is relevant here. Three men are hung in a Nazi concentration camp. Two die quickly. The third and youngest writhes in agony for much longer. The question is asked ‘Where is God now?’ The answer: ‘He is hanging there, on the gallows’. In the same way, God incarnate chose not to ignore evil. Rather, he immersed himself at the heart of it in his ministry and became a victim of it. That is the true message of the crucifixion. God is himself suffering there, at the centre of the suffering of the world. It is noteworthy that, whereas the theist becomes more convinced in his belief by the experience of suffering, the opposite can often occur to the atheist. For the Christian, suffering leads to a fuller understanding of Christ: for the Buddhist, it lends weight to the Buddha’s cry ‘All is suffering’. The belief that sacrament and prayer have anything to do with the business of life normally remains unaffected. What is likely to change, however, is the depth and quality of conviction. Indeed, it could be said that suffering hews out the channels of consciousness, if the individual has refused to do so 124

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Our Age of Ignorance by personal effort. The pain endured in the human case is what Teilhard means by ‘evil due to growth’. Finally, the suffering endured by any individual can be related to only by the individual. For him, it may make sense and may not contradict his intuition of cosmos rather than chaos. It is commonplace, if more than slightly trite, to end all discussion in this area with the words ‘Suffering is a part of life’. That statement, although true, is particularly unhelpful to one who suffers. Its truth is testified to in nature by the relationship of predator and prey: by decay and death: by the necessity for the elaborate systems of self-defence perfected even by plants. For many humans, suffering presents itself as a problem at some stage when the above ambivalence at the core of nature becomes noticed. The immediate reaction is a fear which in some becomes paralysing. Yet we eventually adjust and resign ourselves, emerging from the experience with our awareness heightened in most cases. The great-hearted among us manage substantially more than resignation. The insight that suffering is intrinsic to the adventure of life results in a compassion for sentient beings who suffer. This objectification of what was previously a purely internal turmoil is central to the revelations of Buddha, Christ and true revolutionary socialism. For people who experience this revelation, life suddenly acquires another layer of meaning. One is now to work at helping others, at ameliorating their lives, by lessening their sufferings. If there is a ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of human suffering, that is it. Those of us who reach a high enough level of awareness to consider suffering as a problem will find happiness only through helping others. All religious and humanistic belief-systems hinge on this central truth.

ix. Value At a time when rituals of punishment for transgression and re-acceptance into the community have been observed among apes, debate still continues about the existence of an innate human morality, whether conceptualised as a sentiment, or a Kantian category, or whatever. At a time when beauty is accepted as an essential part of reality, to the point where physicists insist that equations must be beautiful, aesthetic theories subjectivise the entire aesthetic process. McCorduck (1991, 109) invokes Duchamp’s summary statement ‘The spectator makes the image’ to justify lines of argument like the following; ‘The important point is that meaning resides not in what is communicated but in the art object’s ability to generate that sense of significance’. There is nothing being communicated per se: the experience of meaning in art changes ‘with the state of the culture and, of course, with the viewer’s sophistication, with what he knows’ (ibid.). McCorduck is concerned with putting computer-generated art on an aesthetic par with art arising from a human’s need to articulate her experience of being. Obviously, this agenda dangerously biases her argument. Equally obviously, something needs to be done. Section 3 will include, inter alia, a discussion of the absolute failure of moral principles emerging from Darwinian theory. The fact that Hitler was a strong Darwinian (admitted for example by Stephen Jay Gould) may a priori strike the reader 125

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Being Human: The Search for Order as proof enough; however, brave men like Daniel Dennett have attempted to base a practical ethics on this foundation. (‘Survival of the fittest’ is of course Herbert Spencer, not Darwin; Dennett inclines to the former, not the latter, but there is something of a promissory note involved in looking for a Darwinian morality). The result, as we’ll see, is a type of moral solipsism, which is contrary to the nature of the moral dimension itself. Yet there is a real problem to be solved, even granted the real existence of the moral impulse; cosmopolitanism has introduced conflicting moral imperatives into our single sphere of action. These days, we pick a religion, a morality and – increasingly – an exotic art form. For the latter, in particular, we are given no guidance other than simple pleasure. The line of argument of this part of the book has come to these conclusions: 1. A moral ‘module’ is innate and it is as certain a psychological structure as any with which we engage the world. 2. With respect to the practice of morality, we are asked to evaluate the nature of action Z performed by X on Y for reason A. Reason A is valid only if the evaluation is the same for Y as actor, X as patient. 3. No ‘rulebook morality’ is possible; yet there are certain absolutes stemming from (2) e.g. the biosphere must be saved, we must assert human rights. Rawls (1973) proposed the ‘veil of ignorance’ as a way toward a just society; we choose the ideal for a society, but don’t know whether our role is to be president or rat-catcher. I am aware that ethical consequentialists do not accept absolutes like rights, and we’ve referred often to the preference utilitarian Singer. Cost-benefit analysis about ethical issues without empathy is psychopathic. Ethical decision is closer to artistic creation than computation. The abortion debate occupies much of the moral energy of many countries. For some academics, it is that dream issue; one’s stance thereon can further one’s career in the public as well as the academic domains, if judiciously chosen. Kitcher (1997) takes on two devil’s advocate positions; those of religious and secular anti-abortionists. The former adopt a very particular religious perspective, believing that each individual life expresses some divine plan. (p. 222)

It can surely be argued that, far from being a remote achievement of the deluded, the notion that each individual human life has a meaning in what Purcell labels ‘The Drama of Humanity’ is a sine qua non for a civilised society. Each human life is an expression of this search for the ground, the mysterium tremendum, as interpreted through the cultural artefacts of that society. Purcell (1996, p. 10) comments; As we all know too well, Aristotle opens his Metaphysics with the programmatic ‘All men by nature reach out for knowledge’ … tou eidemi oregontai … consequently, Voegelin

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Our Age of Ignorance suggests paraphrasing the first line of the Metaphysics as: ‘All men (people) are by

nature in quest of the ground’. Indeed, we live in interesting times, when the ground, the ultimate purpose of our society, is much less clear to us than it was to the French king who undertook to burn the homes of the Reims bourgeoisie, as we’ve noted. Part of this lack of clarity is due to the increased human rights afforded to everyone in a liberal democracy, which has set massive energies loose, for good and ill. What we do know is that whatever new vision emerges from this period of chaos will include an assertion of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, in the context of whatever general scientific and metaphysical framework we have decided upon. Whether we use the word ‘divine’ or not to express the value of individual’s contribution to society, it will be the most strongly affirmed process in the cosmos. Let us continue with some of Kitcher’s Tammany Hall populism; Isn’t it cruel to demand that a tenuous, controversial interpretation of texts written centuries ago should compel parents to bring into the world a boy who will suffer the compulsive self-mutilations of Lesch-Nyhan syndrome. (op. cit., p.223)

Well, yes, but such a well-defined syndrome has an equally well-defined chromosomal counterpart, no?; Geneticists already know the basis of a number of other syndromes, all of which bring severe mental retardation and mental problems. (p. 82)

The target changes to secular anti-abortionists; Since the fetus is a person and it is wrong to kill a person, abortion is morally impermissible. (p. 225)

Kitcher has of course anticipated this move; One of the most moving scenes in the film Schindler’s List shows a doctor and a nurse hurriedly preparing and administering lethal injections for Jewish patients too ill to be moved, allowing them to die. (p. 227)

I cannot remember the scene, but this is Gothic. A body of case-law already exists in the USA to determine whether a sexual act resulting in pregnancy had consent or not; only in the latter case do the States in which this apply provide financial support for the abortion. If consent has been indicated by the mother’s not undertaking to bring a 127

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Being Human: The Search for Order civil case against the father, both should be responsible for the child, which must be brought to term. With liberty comes responsibility. It is worthwhile re-examining Peter Singer’s life and oeuvre in order perhaps to intuit the fundamental moral principle; that which we can label in folk-psychological terms ‘humanity’. Granted, this principle is perhaps overused now; we assume, for example, that if politicians have the same weaknesses for alcohol and pretty young things as us, then they can’t be all bad. The process by which assumed vice turned to assumed virtue in less than a century surely merits a book in itself. However, Singer is an unusual case in that not only did relatives of his die in the Holocaust, but his mother has Alzheimer’s disease.( He pays well for her care, and let us pass on in silence on this).His reaction is revelatory; my mother is not suffering pain from her condition, because she lacks the self-awareness that would lead her to suffer from it. So it’s not like the cases of euthanasia that I’ve written about. (Boyce, 2000, p. 36)

The correct question, I believe, is what appalling incident occurred in Singer’s childhood to make him capable of such an attitude. This is aside from the flawed logic of his stance; he is prepared to take a strong moral stance based on a creature’s capacity for ‘rationality, empathy and self-awareness’ (op. cit., p. 35) These are the keystones of his system; Let me rephrase what I use these characteristics for. It’s not exactly the worth of humans and other animals, it’s the question of what makes it really serious to kill a being without its consent. There has to be something. (ibid.)

I leave it to the reader to apply this analysis to the hapless Mrs. Singer, who is consuming environmental resources, and perhaps, Lear-like, considering how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless son. Let us recall that Singer will not rule out experiments on brain-damaged humans; … research on a chimp can only be justified when the experiment is so important that the use of a brain-damaged human would also be justifiable. (ibid.)

With respect to aesthetics, we find a first solace in technique. If form B is a technical subset of Form A, we can agree that Form A is superior if both are engaged in properly. For example, jazz encompasses blues; both are great musics, but jazz allows a wider range of expression (manifest in that elaboration of the New Orleans form we call jazzblues). Similarly, we can trust Picasso’s and Beethoven’s innovations because they first mastered the technique of their times. However, we shall also search for a more elegant way to say this, one that is consonant with the notion of self-development. 128

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Our Age of Ignorance The Gurdjieff system treats these matters with considerable elegance. As has already been mentioned, Ouspensky’s (1947) account of Gurdjieff’s earliest teachings (well before the publication of de Broglie’s work) posits a knowledge of matter waves: The world consists of vibrations and matter, or of matter in a state of vibration … the rate of vibration is in inverse ratio to the density of the matter.

The cosmology involves emanation from the ‘absolute’ to ‘all worlds’, where the rule of the absolute still holds, and eventually to earth before ending at the moon. The moon is trying to become another earth; organic life on earth ‘feeds’ the moon, which determines all our actions. The earth is going to be a sun (particularly if global warming continues). Thus Gurdjieff’s Myth of the Fall; while imagining that we act fully consciously, we are simply dancing to a loony tune (sorry), inconceivably removed from the Absolute, the source of all value. The cosmic laws multiply; at our level, 48, at the moon’s, 96. Only a few humans can break away from this bondage; small wonder that we have reached our current catastrophic state. (We comment on Gurdjieff’s psychology later). The Wachowski brothers’ recent film ‘The Matrix’ treats these ideas in an intriguing science-fiction context. Their myth of The Fall is an eschatological battle between humans and artificially intelligent (AI) machines. The humans lose, and their entire civilisation is destroyed, but they succeed in blocking out the sun with permanent clouds, thus denying the AI machines of their source of energy. The machines, in reply, set up human farms, where humans are grown to be exploited for their energy. And here comes the precise parallel with Gurdjieff’s system; the humans are fed a virtual reality by the machines, making them think they are leading normal, 20th century lives, while in reality they reside in farms two centuries later. I interpret Gurdjieff’s cosmology as myth or fable: Ouspensky takes it literally, and is happy to encounter a notion of organic planet creation. Gurdjieff re-interprets chemistry with respect to his ‘law of seven’. Though aware of the existence of minor scales and modes based on the major scales with different sequences of steps, he posits that the major scale in diatonic music provides a template for comprehension of all activity over time. Matter takes different forms corresponding to certain pure tones; for example, do192 corresponds to air and do48 to our normal sense-impressions. To form higher substances, ‘shocks’ must be applied to the substances in lower octaves to form those in higher octaves. In particular, these shocks involve self-remembering, fully conscious apprehension. I believe there is more than an element of truth in this description, interpreted metaphorically. Finer substances do exist and, as has been mentioned, their assertion is a salutory political act. The amount of fully conscious work involved in its production determines the quality of an action, or art form. Everyone does what he thinks is good; people can become so twisted that these acts might be perverted. Tim Burton’s ‘The Nightmare before Xmas’ handles this wonderfully. A monster from a land of deformed puppets replaces Santa Claus. He tries hard to give nice presents to kids for Xmas; where not homicidal, the presents are repellent. Yet he feels 129

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Being Human: The Search for Order the joy of giving! The point is that charity can truly only be given by a fully-integrated person; the damage done by charity tigresses is legendary. The journal for the hip handicapped, Gimp, encourages its readership to run as soon as the words ‘We’re only here to help you’ are heard. Evil action is essentially the output of fragmentation. To do good, we must first integrate ourselves. To integrate ourselves, we must first do our duties as parents, teachers, and students. Duty done, any charity given thereafter should be, as Christ put it, so done that the left hand is not aware of the right hand’s action. In advaita, however, all is good; the torturer, the torture, the tortured. Like its emphasis on the illusory nature of the world, this statement is untrue at our level. Yet the insistence that ultimate reality can be appreciated aesthetically is valid in physics as it is in advaita. In Gurdjieff, then, there exists an exciting basis for evaluating art and moral action; essentially, the degree of conscious effort from which it emerges; he goes further and argues that among the different centres is a higher emotional centre, corresponding to the ancient notion of the ‘astral body’. ‘Mystical’ states, as celebrated in sentimental art, are misunderstood experiences of this realm. To sustain this kind of state takes much more training. The higher intellectual centre produces the kind of insights we examined in Physics. (Again, this is all ‘as if’). Advaita has a surprisingly similar notion; for Lucille this intellectual centre’s action feels like riding a wave all the way into the shore and feeling oneself being thrown on the beach. This contrasts greatly with the more typical mechanical ‘stream of consciousness’ of the mind. (Interestingly, Roger Penrose [1989, 1994] labels such higher acts of mind ‘consciousness’). Jeddah Krishnamurti (1980) achieved great popularity with a similar vedantaflavoured system. Thought is to be stopped; then can come real awareness. Thought and images about the self are the enemy; Thought is mechanical, isn’t it – because it is repetitive, conforming, comparing. (ibid., pp. 267)

His lack of education hampered Krishnamurti greatly; the earlier theosophical formation endowed him with a Victorian self-presentation. The lack of work on the body and emotions will ensure his system will die off; however, the presence of the man was extraordinary. The position taken here on the qualitative, then, is that a moral sense exists, that our first duty to others as to ourselves is genuine self-realisation, and that some aesthetic theory has done great damage by subjectivising art. We find some invaluable rules of thumb in making judgements; 1. Look for internal contradictions. The capitalist’s claim of survival of the fittest in a free market is dishonest in cases where the market has been biased by governmental decisions in favour of the capitalist. 2. Look for set/subset relations. A monetarist economist may make a case for a particular course of action that looks strong until the assumptions that monetarism makes in the whole space of economic theory are made explicit. 130

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Our Age of Ignorance 3. Occasionally, knowledge will be reinforced only by active protest. 4. Finally, that movement of the psyche described by Adam Smith as ‘sympathy’ and by current folk psychology as ‘humanity’ will remain a powerful determiner of human affairs.

x. Some Conclusions In general, thinkers in the separate fields we have explored must begin to be able to think in terms of competing theories. A Catholic monk should be able to understand his Buddhist counterpart; a Marxist economist (as distinct from revolutionary) should appreciate an authentic monetarist. To do this requires that the aims of each field should be made clear; the domain of human life covered, the scope and aims of the field. The first innovation has been to deny ‘verbal’ knowledge its privileged place with respect to knowledge arising from action. This latter includes also knowledge gained from protest against unjust socially-created structures, the contradictions of which we can feel in the core of our being. However, such action must be informed and responsible i.e. passed through our intellectual systems to determine whether it can result in its stated end, and confronted also with our moral evaluation system. One of the major roles of this book will be that of informant i.e. seizing the reader of the best current concepts from sciences like economics. In tandem, it points out where these sciences are being abused, when they inappropriately cross boundaries, and so on. Sidney Lumet’s ‘The Verdict’ is a good illustration here. Paul Newman plays a failed lawyer trying to make a comeback in a medical negligence suit. Everything is stacked against him; the offender is a world name in his field, he has a spy in his camp, his expert witness is a (very human) nobody and the judge is corrupt. Newman’s character finally stumbles on a gold mine of evidence, but the judge rules it invalid. In despair, the lawyer’s final appeal to the jury is to the truth in each one of them. Initially, we are surprised when the jury finds in favour of the plaintiff; however, the point of the movie is that the verdict came from the core of the jurors’ being, a place immune to legal manoeuvre. So it is with us; yet we must work hard to make sure that the correct ideas are also out there in the market place. For many people, we can be sure, the mere verbal expression of them will resolve anxieties and induce resolute action. For example, an honest economist may receive a sufficient shock from realisation of the ideology-laden nature of his ‘objective’ discipline to become a campaigner against corporate capitalism. The more complicated lines of argument distinguishing ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ and so on are proposed for those of us who remain perplexed. All this is apart from some innovations in twentieth century thought which we have looked at. These include: the active role of the observer, complementarity of descriptions, and design as a manifestation of conscious mind (or not, as we prefer). To choose to affirm it is to see a dynamic of increasing autonomy and complexity manifest in nature up to and including humans. It is to see our western creations of the individual and liberal democracy as part of a cosmic dynamic. It is to see our conscious effort as a personal experience of a universal process. It is also to stand in shock at the 131

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Being Human: The Search for Order existence of suffering and assert process thought against static imperial Gods. It is to responsibly practise non-sectarian religions which have reached sufficient maturity not to claim-jump on science. It is also to accept that the opposing atheistic view is intellectually of equal validity. That done, both sides can work together on the current awesome tasks which confront us. For the moment, we are restricted to old notions and theories and, though realising their provisional nature, do ourselves damage by abandoning them entirely. We have the advantage in some cases of seeing progress (e.g. liberal democracy) when we need to evaluate systems. Now, armed with these realisations, we need to consider what happens when a discipline slackens and crosses its self-imposed boundaries.

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Theories of Everything

Introduction There are several different ways by which a particular focus of study can set itself up as a theory of everything. To put it in other terms, there are diverse methods by means of which considerations relevant to one mode of human existence claim to be valid across the whole of this existence. They can i. Claim cross-disciplinary validity. This we will treat under the ‘Dei ex machina’ heading. For example, the ‘sciences of complexity’ claim that phenomena as diverse as our liking for tonal versus atonal music and the relative susceptibility to totalitarianism of different societies come under their purview. In similar fashion, the concept of ‘information’ has been broadened to the status of the basic stuff of the Universe by physicists like Wheeler and viewed as the royal road to understanding the conscious mind by philosophers like Chalmers. Likewise, the notion of computation has also been used to explain consciousness, to root explanation in biology, and much more. Finally, for this section, we shall treat of the various efforts that have been made to catalogue the sum of human knowledge under some rubric or other. ii. Claim precedence and/or perform a claim-jump. The assertion of some physicists that all sciences reduce to theirs and that therefore its explanations are valid across all disciplines is an example. Sociobiology famously tries to reparse the world in its own terms in similar fashion. iii. Eschatologize. Essentially, as we’ve seen, this involves playing on an aspect of the psyche which millennial movements have exploited. The fundamentalist Christian movements of today that await the ‘rapture’, when the elect will be taken bodily to heaven leaving the rest of us here, are a good example; even better is Frank Tipler’s adaptation of the Christian notion of resurrection of the dead, classical eschatology and modern physics. iv. Take control of the state and use its power to define ‘truth’. Transnationals are currently doing this so successfully that publicly to attack their position invites accusations of irrationality. Moreover, even clearer examples can be seen throughout history when a sectarian viewpoint has wrested control of the state apparatus, for example, the twentieth-century ‘Marxist’ states. Similarly, nationalist forces often wrongly impose themselves on the state. These motions toward domination must be distinguished from the final category: v. Genuine Weltanschauungen. Here we normally have an intense personal revelation in the context of a cosmology in which the revelation has a specific role. Weltanschauungen generally share with religion a notion of the sacred (higher types of substance and higher acts of mind), though their religious affiliations are non-sectarian (or in the case of Marxism, secular). 133

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Being Human: The Search for Order i. Dei ex Machina i.a. The sciences of complexity This field of study has been identified in the popular press mainly with chaos theory. However, ‘chaos’ is a moniker for a de facto deterministic randomness, i.e. systems which require impossibly detailed specifications of their initial conditions to describe their (apparently, but not actually random) evolution. The sciences of complexity, as we shall see, furnish a wonderful set of formalisms for dealing with various natural phenomena. These include (a) catastrophe theory which ably models the discontinuity pervasive in nature (b) dynamical systems theory which gives us a new vocabulary in which apparently unexpected system-level behaviour has a clear expression and (c) logical tangles resulting in paradox. A book like this one which (1) attempts to show the limits of verbal knowledge through verbal knowledge and (2) calls on the reader to go beyond this knowledge by relating it to her personal experience of this knowledge in action may seem at first glance paradox enough! However, I now say that all of the book, including this sentence, is false. This type of paradox (that of Epimenides the Cretan) is of interest to the sciences of complexity. The notion of self-emergence ‘at the edge of chaos’ with its overtones of ‘something for nothing’ has obviously excited interest. This can be treated in the same terms as other explanations of the supposedly spontaneous emergence of order. In these terms, this cosmos sometimes does seem to give us a free lunch, but we can’t guarantee its happening when we’re hungry and broke. In summary, the sciences of complexity provide us with useful tools for thought, content-free themselves and so applicable across many domains.

Introduction Let us look in more detail at some of the terms just introduced. The sciences of complexity arose from a recognition that a new set of concepts was needed to deal with situations in which there was a plurality of interacting components. In C.H. Waddington’s (1977, 30) words: No one has yet succeeded in giving a definition of ‘complexity’ which is meaningful enough to enable one to measure exactly how complex a system is. Obviously it has something to do with the number of elements that can be separately identified in the system, and with the number of ways in which they are related … It is worth pointing out though, that however one might try to define complexity, it tends to increase faster than the number of elements involved.

Waddington’s concern with the science of complexity, like that of Gell-Mann and other major minds, is motivated by the hope that its concepts will afford us solution of the myriad problems facing us as a species in a threatened biosphere: 134

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Theories of Everything We have been trained to think, or have accepted as good sense, that what goes on around us can usually be understood as some set of simple causal sequences … That is only good enough when A causes B but has very little effect on anything else. (op. cit., xi)

Waddington’s first example taken from real life is the impact of western medicine on primitive societies; the proximal effect, that of decreasing the death rate in the short term, inevitably leads to the distal effect of creating famine, as Malthusian considerations enter. As we shall see, complex systems attempts to map such phenomena with the same set of concepts as those applied to embryonic morphogenesis in the constellation of factors attendant on the onset of war, stock market fluctuations, fluid turbulence (the great unsolved problem of classical physics), et al. At the end of his life, Waddington chased even bigger game, what he termed the ‘World Problématique’; … a total problem, in which all of the aspects of the world’s workings are interrelated. (op. cit., xiii)

The Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann has joined Waddington on this particular safari. His current work includes Project 2000 ‘aimed at sketching out paths that may lead toward a more sustainable world in the middle of the next century’ (Gell-Mann, 1994, 363). As was mentioned in the prologue of this book, he feels inclined to accord information intrinsic value, and the protection of the environment is worthwhile because it will lead to sustaining the informational level contained in the gene pools at their current levels of biodiversity. Gell-Mann’s attempts to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ merit some attention; however, he too sees the problems inherent in defining complexity: We define the effective complexity of a system, relative to a complex adaptive system that is observing it, as the length of the schema used to describe its regularities. (op. cit., 56)

For example, the schema may be a grammar of a language which describe the regularities of the language. Indeed, the grammar (in the Chomskyan sense) may also have the task of generating the language in question. However, a serpent enters this particular Eden in the shape of the definition of ‘regularity’ itself. Gell-Mann is astute enough to see the problem (or worse still, lack thereof): Is it really a well-defined problem to identify the regularities in a stream of data? (ibid.)

To do so requires that we have full purchase on a contrastive notion to the ‘regular’ i.e. the ‘random’. That, we do not have (sorry!). We are going to need to anticipate parts of III–i–b and III–I–c in the following, asterisked, discussion. * * * 135

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Being Human: The Search for Order Computation is in some ways a fugitive concept: In the early years of this century, Hilbert challenged his peers to determine whether there existed a generally effective mathematical procedure; that is an algorithm that could solve everything … Turing established that … there exists no generally effective mathematical procedure. (Ó Nualláin, 1995, 244–5)

Turing, following Emil Post, argued that computation could fully be described in Turing Machine terms i.e. an automaton that could move an infinite tape, together with a read head and a write head capable of rewriting 1 as 0, 0 as 1. Specific Turing machines could be designed to solve specific mathematical problems; a Universal Turing Machine (UTM) could be designed to simulate the operations of any Turing Machine. When the automation’s calculation had successfully been completed, it stopped calculation. Turing used a variety of Cantor’s diagonal slash argument (concerning the different types of infinity that exist) to establish that there is no general procedure for proving that a specific turing machine, given a specific input, will halt; Cantor … went insane; Turing committed suicide; I leave the proof as an exercise for the reader. (ibid.)

Or, better still, take time properly to follow Penrose’s (1989) brilliant exposition of these concepts. In conclusion, then, there is no ‘proof’ that Turing’s notion of computation is correct; here, refutation would involve a system of greater or equal formal power with fewer a priori assumptions. Both Emil Post and Alonzo Church produced formalizations which have been proved equal in power to Turing’s. Moreover, both Church and Post agree with Turing that there is a set of problems for which it cannot be proved that there exists a solution in finite time. We have one bend in the road to navigate before we return to Gell-Mann. Though the complexity of computation depends greatly on the data set and other factors, the following is generally agreed where N is the number of elements in the set: … we can talk of (p) problems soluble in polynomial time (n); (NP), or nonpolynomial, and NP-complete, which may be more difficult still. (O Nualláin, 1995, 245)

The words ‘may be’ are judiciously chosen; we cannot prove this. What seems universal among NP-complete problems is that they exhibit a sharp discontinuity with increasing n, where n is the number of data items. Up to n, they seem to behave like classical polynomial time problems; after n, the difficulty increases hugely. Researchers like Shor have attempted to exploit the vast informational potential of the wave function prior to decoherence to develop quantum computers. Certain problems thought NP-complete can now be proven to be solvable in polynomial time using quantum computation. 136

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Theories of Everything There is worse to come. As we’ve seen, to define complexity, we need to define regularity; to define regularity, we need the contrastive notion of randomness. One classic NP-complete problem is beloved of cryptographers; finding the prime factors of a large number. Let us take the simplest possible case where randomness can be suspected, a string consisting of 0’s and 1’s. … 110001111101010 … To prove that this is random is formally equivalent to finding prime factors, as mentioned. We are forced to rest our notion of complexity partly on intuition, it indeed has something to do with interaction of components, and regularity thereof. However (to spoil the story) the cast of this ‘dei ex machina’ section i.e. complexity, information, and computation either refuse to obey our will (for example, by solving the Entscheidungsproblem) or lead us up a blind alley of interdefinition. Chaitin (1998) makes explicit the obvious conclusion. To the extent that the human mind is a kind of computer, there may be a type of complexity so deep and subtle that the mind cannot grasp it. A 100-pound woman cannot birth a 200-pound baby, argues Chaitin. * * *

i.i.a. Catastrophe Theory John Casti (1991, 1994) has written and re-written on the properties of complex systems. We shall consider his and Waddington’s descriptions of catastrophe theory before proceeding to the general case of dynamical systems. There will be a very short reference to game theory as practised by one of this book’s favourite companies (Royal Dutch Shell). Casti (1991) introduces catastrophe theory in the context of two apparently wildly different phenomena i.e. the differentiation between mesoderm and ectoderm in embryogenesis and the onset of that form of mass insanity we call war. The view of this writer is that we have no chance of predicting the transmission of diseases like militant nationalism (always present somewhere in any population), and consequently of evaluating the effect of strong determinants like this in the origin of war. Whatever the pretensions of futurologists like Kahn, the current absence of a real science of psychology forbids this prediction. In short, coupled with their logically fugitive nature, demonstrated in the above asterisked section, our dei ex machina fail also in their inevitable quantitative approach to the as yet unquantified, or perhaps forever unquantifiable. Wars, according to theorists like Holt and Herman, follow from a critical mixture of factors like the level of unsatisfied demand in the system, the length of decision time and the level of threat. These can be plotted in N-dimensional space; the major contribution of catastrophe theory may prove to be the beautiful visualisation and logico-mathematical formalisations treating equally issues as diverse as a species’ path over evolutionary time-spans in its environment and wars. (The hope and disappointments accompanying the origins of catastrophe theory are outlined in Casti (1994)). Similarly, the differentiation of cellular tissue into mesoderm and ectoderm 137

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Being Human: The Search for Order requires a catastrophe of a definite nature, as Zeeman pointed out, (op. cit., 179). A primary wave, a function of space and time, must act as the morphogen; the secondary wave, a function of time alone, accomplishes the differentiation. The analogy with the spread of an infectious disease in the population and then the symptom’s being manifested was considered precise. René Thom’s classification theorem states: A Primary wave must exist. In other words, a frontier forms, moves and deepens, then slows up and stabilizes, and finally deepens further. (Casti, 1991, 171)

Thom goes on to claim that catastrophe theory requires that only a certain number of shapes will obtain in morphogenesis, and embryonic development is thus formally constrained. For example, the elliptic umbilic catastrophe results in sea urchin gastrulation: its spatial interpretation corresponds to a needle or a hair (op. cit. 185). The consequence is that ‘the organism’s final form is the attraction of some dynamical process’ (op. cit. 183). Morphogenesis is guided, as if from outside, by a Platonic Form, in one allowable interpretation. Waddington agrees that catastrophe theory explains why disruption of systems results in only a finite number of different subsequent developmental paths. The visualization used affords a salutary simplification: A branch point, or catastrophe, occurs as soon as this bending results in there being a fold which brings one part of the attractor surface vertically under some other part. (Waddington, 1977, 112)

Part of Waddington’s innovation in biology was to attempt to unravel some of the logical paradoxes of neo-Darwinism by considering species and environment together in an ‘epigenetic landscape’. Chreods, the normal paths of development of species, were attractor surfaces in n-dimensional space. Catastrophe theory indicated that only a limited number of such chreods could exist; this corresponded to the intraspecies uniformity, the canalization of development, we see in nature. The exquisite attunement to the environment which it seemed only Lamarckianism could explain was conceived of in terms of ‘genetic assimilation’, articulated in similar terms. For Waddington, it made sense to speak of the epigenetic landscape of human society, with the rate of change involving a population increasing geometrically and consuming more per head; the advanced exponential mode. These concepts are useful indeed.

i.i.b. Chaos Far more remarkable than moose, polar bears or inter-provincial legal arcana, if the visitor to Canada is sensitive to true weirdness, is the spectacle of the Canadian species of white-water rafting. In this ‘sport’, groups of Canadians, who look old enough to have more sense follow a river as it turns from a smooth flow to white water on a raft which is singularly unequipped for evasive action. This writer, though a veteran of the 138

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Theories of Everything encierro at Pamplona and a robust childhood on a farm in the west of Ireland, cannot bear to watch this. Were he made of sterner stuff, his scientific curiosity would cause him to wonder at the precise conditions for the onset of turbulence. As has been mentioned, this presented a near-insurmountable problem for classical physics. The attempts to simplify it by excluding fluid viscosity led to Johnny von Neumann’s jibe of ‘dry water’ (Gleick, 1992). The conventional classical explanation conceives of the situation as whorls piling upon whorls. At a certain point dependent on the flow velocity and fluid viscosity, and summarised in the Reynolds number, turbulence begins. Ruelle and Takens questioned this approach, and argued that the smooth flow had a transitional ‘quasiperiodic motion’ phase before a ‘strange attractor’ allowed the creation of the vortices associated with fluid turbulence. And so, according to Casti (1991, 69), we get ‘the unexpected new kind of dynamical behaviour that has given birth to the chaos industry’. Strange attractors are associated with systems in which we have ‘instability of all motions, deterministic randomness and sensitivity to initial conditions ‘ (op. cit. 73). The range of instantiations of chaotic dynamics stretches from stock market dynamics to the human heartbeat. Waddington contrasts homeostasis, the maintenance of a steady state, with homeorrhesis, the maintenance of a flow as just described; the epigenetic landscape, and perhaps brain processes are other examples of the latter. The shift in emphasis from static to dynamical systems is salutary indeed; however, we need to explicate all the variables involved before using this theory to predict anything. It is one thing to know that the beatings of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can precipitate a hurricane in Tonga tomorrow; it is quite another to keep track of every Brazilian butterfly.

i.i.c. Games Gell-Mann (1994, 363) is concerned with showing the importance of the modelling process in the following anecdote in which the directors of Royal Dutch Shell were convinced that indeed the price of oil was soon set to fall sharply: The directors were sceptical, and some of them said they were unimpressed with the assumptions made by the planners … the analysis was then presented in the form of a game, and the directors were handed the controls … the main result kept coming out the same, whereupon the directors gave in.

And now for the punchline: Some participants have a different recollection of what happened at Royal Dutch Shell. (ibid.)

And, as we’ve seen, ‘Shell’ covers a multitude. The origins of the application of game theory to economic behaviour is von Neumann et al.’s (1944) application of game theory to economics. They argued that 139

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Being Human: The Search for Order economic theory needed to be grounded on sound mathematical principles; however, their 1200 page tome failed to provide any kind of framework even for non-zero-sum games. That was left up to theorists like John Nash, who suffered grievously from insanity. In any event, game theory has been used, obviously with varying degrees of success, for the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf wars, and for microeconomic analysis, where it often actually works. Zero-sum games are those in which a gain for player A is inevitably a loss for player B, corresponding to what Barratt Brown terms the ‘competitive’ ethos in economic behaviour; the contrastive ‘co-operative’ ethos can be approached with non-zero sum games. Part of the failure of modern economic analysis is its Darwinian obsession with the zero sum situation. Casti (1994) uses game theory to come to some clever counter-intuitive conclusions of some generality. He endorses Nick the Greek’s dictum on gambling: The only way you can keep it from slowly grinding your bankroll to a pulp is to win as much as possible in as few bets as possible (quoted in Casti, 1994, 249).

So infrequent large bets, as can be proven, are more likely to end one in profit than timid play. Moreover, the conventional solution to the classic prisoner’s dilemma solution, that of being nasty to your opponent only in retaliation and attempting to educate her with your good behaviour the rest of the time, does not actually work out well mathematically any more than it does in real life. Let us look in more detail at the structure of the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’; … the police arrest two suspects and question them in separate rooms. Each one is given the choice of confessing, implicating the other, or remaining silent. The central feature of the game is that no matter what the other subject does, each (considered alone) would be better off if he confessed … Confession is the dominant strategy. The irony is that both prisoners (considered together) would be better off if neither confessed – that is, if they co-operated – but since each is aware of the other’s incentive to confess, it is ‘rational’ for both to confess. (Nasar, 1998, pp.118)

Nash’s work on game theory identified equilibrium points, where each player’s best strategy converged with that of each individual in the group; no such point exists for this situation. To broaden the context slightly; Thus, the Prisoner’s Dilemma contradicts Adam Smith’s metaphor of the Invisible Hand in economics. When each person in the game pursues his private interest, he does not necessarily promote the best interest of the collective. (op. cit., p.119)

We shall leave this section on that uncomfortable note.

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Theories of Everything i.i.d Something for Nothing? The recent hype surrounding complex systems theory has centred on its promise to deliver ‘The origins of order’, to cite just one provocative book title (Kaufmann, 1994). However, much more work needs to be done on how order emerges; in truth, we have not moved far from Dennett’s hand-waving about baby universes, a concept borrowed from Hume, and the Game of Life. Wolfram (see Waldrop, 1992) has characterized dynamical systems in terms that echo the Chomsky hierarchy. Wolfram I involves point attractors, Wolfram II periodic attractors, Wolfram III chaos, Wolfram IV the game of life. Further formalization of these concepts is the way forward in this area (see Waldrop, 1992, 225–6 for Wolfram’s schematisation). Kauffmann (1994) has been concerned with applying these notions to biology. He flirts with an anti-reductionistic approach to genetic explanation in biology: If we should find it possible to account for, explain, or predict widespread features of organisms on the basis of the genetic properties of underlying ensembles, then we would not need to carry out in detail the reductionistic analysis of organisms in order to explain some of their fundamental properties. (op. cit., 25)

Kauffman’s essential claim is that certain genetic properties of biological processes can be described using the resources of chaos theory. The lack of success in describing them in reductionist terms might lead to an ‘any port in a storm’ mentality in any case; however, Kauffmann’s is a major initiative, despite the occasional computational error (one such was detected by my colleague Peter Turney at the NRC, Canada and generously acknowledged immediately by Kauffmann). Casti (1994, 263) summarises the mechanisms in complex systems which can generate surprising results. Logical tangles lead one to paradoxical conclusions. The Gödelian argument that systems of a formal power greater than or equal to arithmetic can generate propositions which can neither be proved nor disproven in themselves is one such. Catastrophes he summarises as affording ‘discontinuity from smoothness’. Chaos, we should no longer be surprised to find, offers us ‘deterministic randomness’. The existence of non-computable problems means that there are instances in which the ‘output transcends the rules’. However, it is with the type of emergence of order manifest in the game of life and life itself that we come unstuck. We simply do not know how this happens. Waldrop (1992) is concerned to portray complexity ‘as the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos’ (the book’s title and subtitle). But what are the relations between Wolfram’s I, II, III, and IV? How do we know when a system is going to go ‘critical’ and, in a Wolfram IV mode, manifest the kind of beautiful emergence of order we see all over the natural world? In what is perhaps the critical event of Waldrop’s story, the evolutionary computationalist Chris Langton seems to tie it down:

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Being Human: The Search for Order The balance between chaos and order has begun to shift … right at the transition … Order and chaos intertwine in a complex, ever-changing dance … Langton was electrified ‘There was the critical connection! There was the analog to Wolfram’s Class IV!. (Waldrop, 1992 239–30.

In short, by disturbing ordered systems in a certain way, reminiscent of temperature increase causing solids to become liquids, one could induce a creative state in which all manner of possibilities were explored. However, we now come to the sad part: Langton had no idea why his lambda parameter worked so well, or why it seemed so closely analogous to temperature. (Indeed, no one really understands it yet). (ibid.)

In summary, then, the emerging science of complex systems leaves us ultimately frustrated in our efforts to find a currently available universal panacea. We find defining ‘complexity’ itself quickly loses us in a maelstrom of computational and other paradoxes as we strive to define regularity and randomness. Moreover, even when we stumble on a gem like catastrophe theory, we find ourselves stymied in our attempts to predict the development of social systems by our ignorance of psychology. However, the science of complex systems is perhaps the most exciting development in recent years; but caveat emptor who allows himself be seduced by book titles like ‘Order out of Chaos’.

i.b. Information As we’ve seen, this has been used as an explanatory framework for everything from consciousness to state-vector reduction. Yet it eludes definition: the classical ‘objective’ Shannon formulation in terms of a communication channel needs to be supplemented with models of the aims of (human) transmitter and receiver. Likewise, we find solace in defining information as the micro-level entropy of a system only until we find that adding information to a system intended to do work decreases its entropy. Accordingly, ‘information’ does not seem to be able to bear the burden Chalmers and Wheeler impose on it. What we do know about it is that it can be measured in bits and that it’s best regarded as a metric. Which, of course, brings us to the ‘information’ highway. Here more than anywhere we see the engagement of one part of the whole human being mistaken for the all. What flies down the ‘information’ highway is data; with luck, we can convert it into usable form in limited quantities. In Part II, I already mentioned the work of researchers who are attempting to reformulate the ‘information’ explosion in terms of the natural movements of the human psyche. Let’s take these points in sequence. Information and the related notion of entropy seem to be asked to do the following tasks: 1. Describe how order emerges in the evolutionary process. 2. Give us a way out of the dualism/monism issue. If we separate mind and matter, we cannot (pace, Descartes) ever put them back together again. The ineluctable fact 142

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Theories of Everything of subjective experience i.e. qualia, becomes inexplicable. However, to point the existence only of matter, Descartes’ res extensa, leaves us in the same dire straits. Why not cash out the subjective by the currently all-pervading concept of information? 3. Likewise, we may hope with John Wheeler that information will also provide us en route with a solution to the central problem of epistemology, (i.e. the relationship between mind and world). To wit: We note, for example, that the evolution of conscious life on this planet is due to appropriate mutations having ‘actually’ taken place! It is our own presence which, on this view, conjures our past into existence. (Penrose, 1989, 381)

So Wheeler’s schema explains (1) in terms of a scenario emerging at the quantum level in which decoherence is achieved by conscious observers, whose existence now seems necessary. The solution to (2) is almost advaitin; Consciousness (C) is primary. (3), the ‘semantic’ problem, is trivial; we play a large part in creating the world through our perception of it so our epistemological relation to it is as creator to created. Penrose (ibid.) is harsh in his condemnation of this schema; yet elsewhere (op. cit., 330) he grants Wheeler’s argument about a QM experiment apparently confirming his theory, while offering a different interpretation. ‘Computation’, as we’ll see, takes a run at issues 2 and 3. However, it is issue 1 which is now our focus. The best recent reference on this debate is in Hayes (1996); it is a model of Internet debate at its best. Essentially, the issue is this: can thermodynamic entropy be viewed as an instance of informational entropy? If so, a landmark article by Brooks and Wiley argues that ‘the second law of thermodynamics itself ensures selforganization in informational systems just as in energy processing ones’ (Depew and Weber, 1995, 529). Evolution can be viewed in these items; the DNA-encoded information autonomously self-organizes, leading to progress. Time’s forward arrow is itself the guarantee of evolutionary progress. Let us take a step back: Shannon’s information measure, I, was defined in direct imitation of Boltzmann’s macroscopic entity, S = K log W where W is the universe of all possible microstates and K is Boltzmann’s constant. (Atmar in Hayes,1996)

For Harper, this is anathema: A basic problem … is a fundamental confusion between thermodynamic and informationtheoretic ‘entropy’. (in Hayes,1996)

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Being Human: The Search for Order Indeed ‘there are many entropies … there may be in excess of 500 different entropies defined in the literature’ (ibid.). We are back to our old problem of defining regularity and randomness again; consequently, information cannot shoulder the burden of explaining evolutionary progress. This position stands even in the face of Collier’s (in Hayes,1996) counterargument: The entropy of information is … a measure of the degeneracy of the informational macrostate in terms of lower levels in the information hierarchy, just as the thermodynamic entropy is a measure of the macroscopic physical state in terms of the lower level microstate.

We shall allow this to be the last word. David Chalmers (1996) is rightly radically astonished by the existence of subjectivity. The universe, including us, could function just as well without it; however, ‘maybe, by some law of the universe, consciousness accompanies certain configurations of information, such as brains’ (Wright,1996, 56). The old AI canard of conscious thermostats is raised again; Chalmers is willing to take this seriously. Note that the advaita position, going back in the Occident as far as Democritus, that consciousness is primary, and generates the universe, is just as valid (or invalid). The Gurdjieff position that consciousness is causative, but a rare achievement for humans, seems to give it a more veridical role still. However, Chalmers’ insistence contra Dennett, Flanagan et al on the mysterious nature of subjectivity is salutary indeed. It is difficult to see, on the other hand, where Chalmers breaks new ground. There is an explanatory gap between the physical and the subjective; this was given its most recent expression by Joseph Levine (1983, 1999). Let us explore Levine’s work. Metaphysically, he argues, the gap interrelates with the issue of how a mental state can be identical to, or realized in, a physical state. Epistemologically, the gap corresponds to the way that the physical can affect mental states in detail, an issue explored at length in Ó Nualláin (ed., 1997). Chalmers made a distinction between the ‘easy’ and the ‘hard’ problems, a distinction which, perhaps unfortunately, set a large part of the agenda for consciousness research for a goodly part of the 90’s. As exemplified in the conference described at http: //www.compapp.dcu.ie/~tdoris/mind4.html, a distinction between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ empiricism holds much more promise. The options available to close the gap include a thoroughgoing physicalism, a panexperientialism which endows everything with experience (close to Chalmer’s own position), or the position taken here of combining panexperientialism with emergentism. Chalmers argues for the ‘double aspect’ theory of information, claiming for it both a phenomenal and a physical aspect(op. cit., p. 286). This is his bridge over the explanatory gap; he calls on us to embrace the mystery with him (op. cit., p. 333) Some patent absurdities emerge. Thermostats have experience, but they’re not self-conscious (pp. 293–5). Rocks have conscious subsystems (pp. 297–8). The oxymoron ‘naturalistic dualism ‘is selected as the final position (pp. 298–9). A rather idiosyncratic version of the Everett many-worlds interpretation of QM is adhered to briefly (p. 347) before 144

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Theories of Everything being rejected. Strong AI, the view that a program with the appropriate set of computations is a mind, is upheld (p. 314). It is likely that we need a totally new vocabulary, one that can give correct denotations to ‘entropy’, ‘consciousness’, ‘randomness’, ‘complexity’, before we can coherently talk about these issues. For the moment, this writer is content to consider ‘information’ simply as a bit metric, the better to anchor the others. And, no, pace GellMann, a metric does not facilitate ‘ought’ from ‘is’. Finally, that attempt to attribute human credibility only to a remote subset of the totality of possible human psychic movements that we call the ‘internet’ must detain us briefly. We have already seen that the internet is just a standardisation of protocols and packet-switching; however, the mania to invest in high-tech stocks will make the internet, at least momentarily, of great importance. Dyson (1998) is one of a hopefully short-lived cult of internet gurus who feels free to enunciate an e-Weltanschauung over such pithy chapter titles as 3. Work, 4. Education, 5. Governance, and so on. It makes even this book series seem unambitious by contrast. To call the result e-Thatcherism is only a little unfair. Interestingly, her vision is that the verbalisers in humanity will continue to dominate; The downside of our obsession with the miracle of multimedia is that we lose the power of mere words.. knowledge and understanding. (p. 113)

There are those of us who insist that ‘knowledge’ is slightly broader, as we’ve seen. Her unreflective nature – almost a parody of the European image of Americans – insists on the benefits of real e-community; If we do it right … people will learn to value human connection more. (p. 8)

Some things do not foster community … you need some identity. (p. 64)

… so post to the bulletin board. However, she paradoxically considers it worthwhile that we pay megabucks to attend a conference which offers to the attendees the personal attentions and physical presence of Bill Gates. (p. 161)

This writer believes that the next set of internet companies will emphasise multi-modal access to representations of objects held on remote servers, and that this comment will seem prescient; We have the opportunity to distribute and experience rich sensory signals in ways that are different from looking at the page of a book and more accessible than travelling to the Louvre. (Negroponte 1995, pp. 224)

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Being Human: The Search for Order He is explicit on the copyright implications; ‘Copyright law is totally out of date’ (ibid. pp. 8) and the consequences of megamergers; Bell and TCI is not interesting; Disney teaming up with phone companies is. However, that is of course a dangerous liaison of carrier and content-provider. (A personal note; my music company – see www.mistletoemusic.com – was involved in detecting a massive international copyright scam involving our artist, Melanie O’Reilly. Neither the government nor the music rights society acted until the (Irish) Republican writer Eamonn McCann exposed the scam, a question was asked in parliament by the Green Party and the police intervened. We had run up a $12,000 legal bill asking the music rights organisations to correct the registrations) If used properly, the internet will indeed broaden our range of experience of other cultures without requiring, as now, that we fly to do so. The great fears of living outside cities are, of course, boredom and insularity; webcasting could prevent this. Imagine being able to hear a folk music session, such as happens in hundreds of locations in Ireland every night, while thousands of miles away! The dangerous mating rituals of content and carrier need to be stopped, if not by government, by judicious use of freeware like Linux and the Apache server. For all the doomed head-games about the real nature of information we’ve seen, this is to be the real battleground.

i.c. Computation Information, its conceptual cousin, is a bit metric; insofar as computation is welldefined, we’ve seen it is merely a verdict of mathematical tractability. However, it too has been applied across sufficient inappropriate domains to become an incoherent concept. It has been incorrectly invoked to solve conceptual problems in genetics, the problem of consciousness (again!) and mental processes in general. It has been pointed out that even the claim of syntactic operations in computation is an invalid one (Searle, 1992), a point presaged in Kripke’s slogan that ‘syntax is not intrinsic to the physics’. Smith (1996) seems at first sight to go down the Searleian road. There is a standard computationalist paradigm, called ‘cognitivism’ which, when used in Cognitive Science, posits formal equivalence of mind and computer operations. It suggests that a syntactic parse of representations is followed by semantic interpretation to external ‘stuff’. However, Smith argues that this cannot happen; either the syntax ad semantic systems will fall out of alignment with each other, or true mutual quarantine (isolation) will disappear. Moreover, all the ‘folk’ notions of computation are wrong; it cannot be formal symbol manipulation because the intentional aspect, that relating the cognitive system to the world, cannot sit easily with syntactic analysis. Likewise, the other notions like Boolean logic, effective computability, etc. are misguided. Here, however, Smith(1996) springs a surprise with another slogan: Computation is not a subject matter.

Computation is a fortiori intentional; it is my process of writing and yours of reading. It is essentially all of mentation. Smith’s metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological considerations parallel those in this book. He describes his project as getting these 146

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Theories of Everything concepts back, transformed, after his analysis; ‘object’, ‘true’, ‘formal’, and so on. On the way, he wishes to do justice to constructionism, the notion that we have the central role in perception and mentation, and realism, which projects that role onto the environment; to be pluralistic; to be foundationalist; to be irreductionist. The solution, tentative for now, is a philosophy of presence (op. cit., pp. 347). Let us see how he motivates this solution. Computation, we’ve seen, is to be the keystone of his system. In Smith’s view, we need to do metaphysics and ontology prior to doing computation (p. 69); Computers are … the full-fledged social construction and development of intentional artefacts. (p. 75)

The project is now coming into focus; computer science is the raw material for a new semantics and ontology. Smith is also concerned that his new concept of computation should have ecological validity; it should be as relevant to a geek writing a java applet as to a senior citizen coming to terms with a word-processing program. Thus, following Edwin Hutchins, he calls his desideratum ‘computation in the wild’. The analysis is sufficiently presuppositionless for him to bracket the existence of subjects and objects; No naturalistic … theory of intentionality … can presume the identity or existence of any individual object whatsoever. (p. 184)

The same ascesis applies to subjects (p. 185), who similarly cannot be assumed to exist. Indeed, he is willing to follow at a philosophical level the innovation of von Neumann at the physical level and to nuance the subject/object distinction if necessary (p. 352). The book title, ‘On the origin of objects’, arises from the first, ground-clearing project; To understand how a conception of objects can arise in a substrate of proportionally extensive fields of particularity. (p. 191)

He introduces a term called ‘registration’ which is to do the work of sensation, perception, and (in conjunction with materiality) of syntactic analysis; The underlying spatio-temporal extended fields of particularity … to let go of an o-object is the essence of its function. (p. 241)

The s-object (or subject – my interpolation) thus transforms the apprehension of the oobject from egocentric to allocentric (p. 241) or intersubjective, to use the term of this book’s companion volume. We now come to the point at which Smith is going to need 147

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Being Human: The Search for Order some reference to biology, psychology, and several other disciplines, whether suitably transformed or not; To stabilize … to bring to the world utter presence … requires being alive. (p. 242)

We now come to the perennial problem of universals; how do we register objects as individual and particular? Smith’s computer science background comes out in the implicit reference to specialization of generic methods in object-oriented programming; a generic type of act can have as its content a particular object (p. 274). I am unconvinced by Smith’s argument until I get some further information as to how he intends to handle consciousness, social dynamics leading to action, embodiment, etc., in some principled manner. These will presumably be so treated in the 5-volume series that he has announced. One hopes that he will address the type of issue that has exercised us so much in this book, exemplified by the problem of how experience can arise in a world seemingly consisting of physical objects. We have been compelled to adopt a stance combining features of panexperientialism and emergentism; justifying this stance with a believable story from physics has exercised us greatly. Smith’s oeuvre will therefore be of great interest. I will conclude with two quotes that echo the Tractatus Wittgenstein. For the famous first proposition ‘The world is all that is the case’, Smith produces ‘The world has no other’ (p. 104). Similarly, ‘Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must keep silent’ resonates through There is only one world … but its unity transcends all ability to speak. (p. 375)

On the other hand, the currently favoured theory of consciousness within computer science, the global workspace model, at least has the virtue of being wrong. Dennett (1995) continues to trumpet it: it rests on a misunderstanding of blackboard architectures in computing, and a pious hope about the feasibility of implementing a computer architecture called ‘parallel pandemonium’ in real systems (see ‘What is Consciousness?’ in Ó Nualláin et al., 1997). In conclusion, there are two moves possible with the concept of computation. The first, a la Kripke, minimalises it. The maximalising move that Smith makes will need at least the 5 volumes he has promised for its justification. We will keep it in this book on the short leash supplied by its links with logico-mathematical tractability.

i.d. Buckserologists We’ve had this word before; it is a pejorative term for know-it-alls, used to my knowledge only in Dublin. The thinkers to whom we’re, mainly unfairly, applying this term all address the issue of whether it is possible to unify human knowledge with respect to some rubric or other. Knowing is conceived of as the property of a subject, who can then give a third-person description of reality; the notion, central to a weltanschauung, of a personally convincing demonstration occurring in the person of 148

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Theories of Everything the unity of that person with the cosmos in some dynamic or other is not necessary here. In work with the same implications as Dennett, Barrow (1991) is concerned with considering physical processes (including invention) as computing. He shies away from a claim-jump; his concept of computation resembles ours and a theory of everything, he rightly argues, would be in danger of being vacuous. He argues later in such books as ‘Impossibility’ that there are definite formal limits to what we possibly can know. At his best, his work is an examination of how mathematics can inform our relation to the world. For example, it turns out that music has a characteristic amount of repetition and variety over all time scales, from that of single note onset to the scale associated with a symphony (Barrow, 1995, p. 234 et seq.). Similarly, the appreciation of visual art is informed by rules such that there should be 20% redundancy in the visual image. Mathematics, he argues, are implicit in predator/prey relationships; an example would be hatching of newborn occurring only after a prime number of years, to confound a potential predator’s pattern. Finally, religion can be viewed through the eyes of phenomena like El Niño. Niño’s cycle varies between almost annual and every 50 years or so. One would expect the number of religious monuments built during the latter cycles to increase, as priests claimed responsibility for the good fortune in this kinder cycle. There is some evidence for this. The sociobiologist E.O. Wilson’s (1998) goals in his ‘Consilience’ are similar to those of this book; the positing of some kind of unity between environmental policy, social science, ethics and biology. He follows Francis Bacon’s directive that we must understand nature in order to set mankind, as Bacon termed us, on a path of selfimprovement. The other precedents are the French enlightenment thinker Condorcet, whose beheaded statue still graces the left bank, and the early Victorian Whewell, who coined the term ‘Consilience’ to express a jumping-over to create a unity of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines. Unlike Weinberg, Wilson is not a reductionist, and points to the much greater difficulties of synthesis, as manifest in our primitive science of ecology. Wilson’s work is mainly pious aspiration, fitting enough for a sociobiologist who has not quite yet abandoned Christianity. Fernandez-Armesto (1997) is, by contrast, explicit about his belonging to the kind of hyper-cultivated European Catholicism that will remain forever incomprehensible to those of us who grew in a rather arid and exacting version of the same. He is anxious to attack the postmodern view of truth as at best consensual. The primitive view of truth yet survives (p. 12); moreover, the intuitive sense of truth as ‘a physical object ingested … a pathological condition … pain’ (P. 25) still also has validity. He carries on an extended flirtation with irrationalism, before the inevitable consummation that we’ll note below; Among truth-finding techniques, reason has never had much appeal outside elites. (p. 84)

(For John Ralston Saul, it will be recalled, reason is what defines the elite; and that is not meant as a compliment). Fernandez-Armesto’s general framework, with which I have no problem , continues with congratulating Taoism as regarding grand theory as ‘an intrusion of reason into the workings of wisdom’ (pp. 139–40). The brilliantly 149

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Being Human: The Search for Order sophisticated and elegant writing also affords the best definition of the Hegelian ‘act of alienation’ in his rendering of Schopenhauer’s ‘Der Wille’; … a sort of constructive energy which could project from the subjective self and wrest realities from the world. (p. 208)

The build-up has been so impressive that the denouement, when it comes, is crushingly disappointing. We shall try and be let down gently; No-one should ever feel ashamed of turning back to tradition. (p. 223)

And you all know what tradition I’m talking about; I have no difficulty in deferring to the authority of the church … as superior to my own reason … I find it a comfort and a virtue. (p. 75)

We shall discuss this authority later. For the moment, let’s briefly note the nature of Fernandez-Armesto’s oxymoronic, if not self-contradictory, ‘rational Christianity’; The Bible … and the Church … simply the best approximations we have to the will of God. (p. 208)

David Deutsch (1997) is an ultimately far more interesting thinker; the most important ideas of the new millennium will come from such as he, Penrose and other apparent mavericks. He envisages the confluence of four streams in the prospective grand unified theory; a theory of evolution, an extended notion of computation, a selfconsciousness of the limits of knowing embedded in an epistemology, and finally, as might be expected from one of the founders of quantum computation, a theory of quantum physics. The discipline which he co-founded was initially greatly influenced by the Everett ‘parallel universes’ interpretation of QP; They are parallel in the sense that within each universe particles interact with each other just as they do in the tangible universe, but each universe affects the others only weakly, through interference phenomena. (p. 53)

Deutsch (98, 103) considers the virtual reality scenario like that depicted as ‘The Matrix’ in the Wachowski brothers’ creation as extremely consequential; it proves, he argues, that there are no limits to human sensory experiences, and virtual reality will extend our concept of the human. Ken Wilber’s work (1995), in common with that of fellow-Americans like Michael Murphy, has always been open to some such type of 150

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Theories of Everything extension. He is concerned first of all with the break that he sees the writer Emerson making with the Old World in his doctrine of the Oversoul; The observer in you, the Witness in you, transcends the isolated person in you and opens instead – from within or from behind, as Emerson said – onto a vast expanse of awareness no longer obsessed with the individual bodymind. (p. 281)

This, of course, is the main teaching of Vedanta as represented by Krishnamurti (1980), Francis Lucille, and Jean Klein (1980) in the west; Wilber is correct to identify this insight as the central psychological step of any new world-view. How to contextualise it in an appropriate cosmology is the question of questions, and it’s one that Wilber, for all the ingenuity of his worldview, flunks. What he does manage to do brilliantly is to invoke the name of Friedrich Schelling as that most likely to afford a synthesis of East and West through his continuation of the European advaita tradition pioneered by such as Eckhart. For Schelling, development reaches its apotheosis in a union in which these two absolutenesses (absolute objectivity and absolute subjectivity) are again one absoluteness. (Schelling, 1978; quoted in Wilber, 1995)

Fritjof Capra (1996) attempts to follow Schroedinger in extending his empire from the physical to the biological sciences. The goal is to endow science with a set of concepts, which simultaneously shows a continuity between the biological and physical sciences, and endows the animate with such innate value as to make the job of saving the environment a necessary consequence. Life, then, is a pattern of organisation plus a dissipative structure (à la the whorls of water turbulence) plus cognition. The Maturana/Varela concept of autopoiesis is brought to bear; in common with other autopoietic systems, life is self-perpetuating, and preserves its boundaries. An example which demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of this approach is a storm. It may begin in Africa as a tropical storm; cross the Atlantic to become a Caribbean hurricane; then reverse direction once again to cause gusts in Europe. Not a single molecule need persist from the original African event; yes, it is difficult to see why we can’t think of this storm as alive. We must define life in terms of a cosmology, in terms perhaps of a cosmic dynamic impelling everything toward an unforeseen end, with one sharp discontinuity in the intensity of this impulsion defining life; another, defining consciousness. Let us continue this section with a cautionary tale. Sokal (et al., 1998) famously had his spoof paper ‘Transgressing the boundaries; toward a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity’ accepted by Social Text. He later (ibid.) followed up with a book ridiculing thinkers like Kristeva and Latour. Whether this is wholly salutary, or expressive of an Anglo-Saxon misunderstanding of a Gallic search for truth, is a matter of personal opinion; I incline slightly to the latter viewpoint, while acknowledging the necessity of taking the prolix down a peg or two. We must remain open to the possibility that the curious mixture of flat assertion and extended metaphor that French 151

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Being Human: The Search for Order philosophers use is valid for them; the progress we’ve made in manipulating nature as a result of one movement of the human psyche, the activity to which we accord the name ‘science’, does not privilege that movement to the exclusion of all others. It is now possible to do experiments on fertilised human eggs like fusing them; in the 1930’s, it was possible to do social experiments like Communism and kill tens of millions in ventures like the engineered famine in the Ukraine. The former activity we privilege because it is a successful manipulation of nature; the latter was privileged in all its dire consequences because of the hold on truth claimed by the contemporary political leaders. We must find criteria other than ‘truth’ to assess the human impulse behind actions. In this section, then, we’ve looked at several honest attempts to create worldviews, or to set the parameters for such creation. Let us finish with a brief account of the type of Panglossian thinking that really already looks so second Christian millennium. Writers like Friedman (2000) and Landes (1998) wrote at the cusp of a wave. The latter is in no doubt; Europe colonized because it was ahead, and he uses the trinity of guns, germs and steel like Jared Diamond and the science-fiction writer Orson Scott Card (1996) – who anticipated both himself and Diamond – to establish why Europe succeeded and to justify why so many died. A whole chapter called ‘Pursuit of Albion’ re-emphasizes English superiority in Europe, while ignoring completely the fact that both northern England and Ireland were little better than slave-camps. The alternative to moral relativism and ‘multiculturalism’ is this statement of Anglo-Saxon pre-eminence. Though Landes’ scholarship is of course impressive, it really needs to be emphasized that AngloSaxon colonisation was and is as full of chicanery, blood and gore as anyone else’s. Ask the Irish at least about that and then think again about the middle east; And when they arrived in the US, the Irish already had a long, if perverse acquaintance with an Anglo-Saxon political system. They had learned from the English about electoral fraud, judicial chicanery, and manipulation of the rules for personal advantage. (Coogan, 2000, 275)

Friedman’s (2000) tome, written at the height of the stock market mania, assumes that millennium has indeed come in the promised land; Because our biggest strength – the real source of our strength – is one that they can’t steal. It’s how we live. When the Chinese photocopy that, then I will start to worry. (p. 134)

Friedman is, I hope, already embarrassed by this nonsense. Not only are we to don the ‘golden straightjacket’ to make ourselves pretty for investors by stripping down government, but everybody really knows that globalization is good for them (362), even as we turf them onto the street and deny them healthcare. Klein (2000), who trademarked her non-logo, talks about a ‘citizen-centred alternative to the international rule of the brands’ (p. 446). Or Fukuyama’s advances in ‘social capital’ (agreeing it’s nice to be nice) with an aging population. The attempt fully to articulate that alternative, which can itself be global in a positive sense, is one of the principal goals of the current book. 152

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Theories of Everything ii. Precedence Claims and Claim-Jumps Introduction In the previous section, we visited scientific initiatives which attempted to show the applicability of their considerations to an enormous range of phenomena. In the case of ‘computation’ and ‘information’, the stakes were even higher. Attempts are being made to get these concepts to bear the burden of consciousness, intentionality, and indeed the (ontological) issue of how anything comes to be. The conclusion was that they cannot do so without deforming their meaning as English words beyond recognition. The 500 meanings of entropy have already been referred to; the many roles assigned to ‘information’ can be examined in Zurek (1990). We abandoned this particular ‘search for the ground’. The older sciences will not be dismissed so easily. Two moves are open to them; one is to claim that the phenomena in question reduce to description in their terms. Thus, Weinberg (1993), as we’ve seen, claims that physics is the fundamental science. The Churchland husband and wife team (see Ó Nualláin, 1997) claim that all our concepts of intent, subjectivity and so on are ‘folk psychology’ and will meet their demise with a correctly-established neuroscience. Instead of ‘I want to eat’ we shall say ‘there is an event in neural area x’; These are precedence claims; claim-jumps are subtly different. Here the thrust of the argument is that the discipline which formerly threatened certain issues is now erstwhile. A good example of a claim-jump is Hawking (1988,136). His universe: … would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE.

This claim-jump Purcell (1996), in keeping with this book, labels ‘scientism’. Purcell goes on (op. cit., 30) to argue that Hawking ‘is claiming to answer a question that natural science as such does not ask. The question has to do with existence and its origin’. We return presently to Purcell’s remedy. Needleman (1988) pursues a similar agenda. He tells of his unwillingness to accept membership in a Society claiming charter from Pythagorean mysticism, in which science and religion were one. His is ‘an effort to see modern science as an aspect of ourselves’ (op. cit. 9). Religious teaching enters us through psychic gateways barred to science due to its mythic poverty. The psychic movements which grasp scientific and religious concepts are both valid, and should be kept distinct. That is this book’s viewpoint. Let us revisit one of its main themes, this time with Eric Voegelin as guide. Voegelin (1990), we have seen, prefers ‘All men by nature are in quest of the ground’ to the famous ‘All men by nature desire to know’ as a rendering of the first line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. As we saw, the seeker can attempt to find this ground in myth, or the analysis and experience of power structures; the current popularity of popular science books attests to how urgent the search, as thus pursued, currently is. Purcell (1996) examines the search for the ground in the symbolic structures in neolithic Neolithic monuments like Newgrange, and in Greek tragedy. In this context, Aeschylus’ Oresteia

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Being Human: The Search for Order merits a new reading. The dynamics of the state and its impact on the individual are played out in a theatrical production: … the ‘hero’ of the Euminides, which is the culmination of the Oresteia, is the polis. (op. cit.)

The chorus at one point fragments into a cacophony of different voices, an ‘Unwe’, a point that would not be lost on the citizens of Athens as they faced the demise of their own polis. For us, who live in a much different context, in which the demise of any recognisable social order is mirrored by the epistemological/moral/environmental/ fideistic crisis motivating this book, the path is different. We are trying to reconstruct the notion of knowledge and find correct ways to use terms like ‘Consciousness’ , ‘information’ and so on while giving witness to the reality of all sides of our nature. This task is analogous to that attempted by Voegelin, who is concerned with how ‘ … man has tried … to express his understanding of himself in relation to World, Society and God’ (Purcell, 1996,266). Voegelin argues that natural movements of the psyche lead to notions of cosmogony, ethics, politics and theology. As a society, we arrive at notions of God and State whose structure is compatible with the original, mythinfluenced, psychic movements. Voegelin’s concern is how to reclaim these notions filtered through twentieth-century scientific doctrines which include eugenics as much as Marxism, claim-jumping physics, and so on. Voegelin’s search is very consonant with that of this book. In short ‘myth and philosophy, revelation, mysticism, ideology and post-ideological recoveries, are equivalent to one another, insofar as they express the constant quest … or attempt to avoid it’ (ibid.). The sciences are valid insofar as they reflect natural movements of the psyche. When physics begins to claim-jump and talk about existence, the danger is that people will shy away from it and return to the Celestine Prophecy. They miss much in so doing; it is ultimately to the detriment of any science to claim-jump. As we shall see. the same goes for religion.

ii.a. Physics It is indeed true in a limited sense that all areas of discussion are susceptible to ‘reduction’ to physics. However, physics describes only movements of the psyche which project into the physical external world. Gleick (1992) portrays a Richard Feynman who refuses absolutely to move away from the physical here and now, no matter how abstract the area being discussed; Penrose (1989) particularly lauds Einstein and Newton for their ‘superb physical instincts’. Paradoxically, at the most fundamental level, physics must confront consciousness, that most fugitive of entities. In these psychic movements are included our most certain externalisations of ourselves and some of those which have been categorised as ‘mystical’. For example, yoga involves ‘yoking’, the ridding oneself of boundaries between the body and the external world. The exteroceptive organs, one is encouraged to believe, can just as well be projected to the wall opposite one’s chest as to the surface of the chest’s skin. 154

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Theories of Everything (Remarkably, our self-image is that malleable). Advaitin physicists like Francis Lucille (1993) will argue that, on the physical level, flows of energy and information indeed manifest such an interconnectedness. Moreover, yoga undoubtedly can relieve stress, and the sense of being spread out over space in this fashion can be sustained under certain conditions. Undoubtedly, then, something very valid is happening and a basis in physics can be established for it. The real explanation, however, may be wholly different, involving only processes at the psychological and physiological levels. We in the West often respond to stress by inappropriately tensing muscles, inadvertently encoding the source of stress in this way. The cognitive/emotional structure which each of us is now has a rotten strut. In the relaxed environment of a yoga class, and with a teacher as compassionate as Lucille, we can start to rebuild with fresh materials. Volumes have been written about the convergence of mysticism and modern physics; for example, Capra (1988), and Talbot (1992). Capra’s perhaps ill-advised foray into biology has detained us appropriately briefly. Capra (op. cit., 228) admits getting a slap on the wrist from E.F. Schumacher about his attempts to extend considerations from the physical to the organic and psychological. Echoing Lovejoy, Schumacher insists on the separate categories of matter, life, consciousness and self-awareness. Different laws pertain to each level and each is the focus of study of a different constellation of disciplines. (Any extension of physics to other realms in this book is on an ‘as if’ basis; it is accepted, however, that links across boundaries might happen due to suitably qualified researchers). The notion of spirituality advocated by Capra is strongly influenced by physics; ‘spirituality is the mode of consciousness in which we feel connected to the cosmos as a whole’ (op. cit.,113). However, there is little information about how to use the resources of conventional religion, myth, philosophy and so on to achieve this connection. The later Capra is still peddling a scientistic systems (1988, 143) view; what is above all missing is a sense of connection with the search for the ground in Voegelin’s manner. We need to use the resources of myth, religion and so on before they use us. The type of claim-jump advocated by Capra will be defeated within us by the search for meaning in all movements of the psyche. As Needleman (1988) points out, we do not possess ideas; they arrest and drive us. ‘Eidos’, the root of ‘idea’, has been interpreted as ‘symptom’ and was first used in this manner, as we saw, by Thucydides about the Peloponnesian war. The war itself is just a manifestation. Similarly, Needleman argues that the notion of the universe as alive (Gaia) or a machine (Darwinism) and evolution itself are ancient ideas currently prone to abuse. If we are going to extend the realm of physics by claiming a part of consciousness studies, for example, we must do so while being aware of the part of the psyche from which physics derives. Things have advanced far enough that this part is well-defined after centuries of separation of science and religion.

ii.b. Darwinism The emergence of ordered systems creates the major explanatory chasm of our times. Interestingly, even if we fully accept Darwinism, we must include an autonomous ‘sui 155

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Being Human: The Search for Order generis’ ordering principle in the universe to explain the emergence of living ordered complexity. Darwinism is part precedence-claim and, as sociology, part claim-jump. Daniel Dennett’s application of Darwinism to everything from consciousness to morality to sociology is an excellent summary of this position. Dennett maps a route from chaos to design using natural selection, coupled with the tendency to order inherent in our cosmos. It will be argued that even putting its occasional inaccuracies and many leaps of faith aside, the Dennett case is one which posits reality only of the principle of natural selection. Its thrust is consequently to negate the affective and other such movements of the psyche. His insistence on taking up cudgels against Creationism, whether valid or not, we need to echo with an equally forceful assertion of the reality of all sides of our nature. Section II–3 featured a hors d’oeuvre of the work and errors of Dawkins, Dennett and their cohorts. Dawkins, like his fellow-evangelist Paul of Tarsus, has the capacity to be all things to all men. The non-mathematical bent he displayed in Wired, whose readership is technically literate, disappears by the next year, when it comes time for the New Yorker’s Ian Parker to write a profile in the 9/9/96 edition, p. 44: He returned to Oxford after two years and continued research into the mathematics of animal behaviour, making much use of computers.

Meanwhile, of course, the granny-baiting continues: ‘he energetically scraps with bishops and charlatans’. I include this quote as a prelude to Dennett’s even more terrifying pronouncements, which will of course rock us to our very foundations. Together with the championing of Darwin by Pinker, Dennett, Dawkins et. al., we shall notice a tendency to keep Charles on rather a short leash. He was, after all, a Lamarckian who was willing to concede Mind (nous) an external reality (Dennett, 1995, 321, 185). One is reminded of the scene in Kazantzakis’ ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ where Jesus swoons on the cross, to dream he has married and settled down. He rejects this life only when told by Paul of Tarsus that all the better, you mediocrity, this leaves me freer to invent you. Another strand in current evolutionary thought, we’ve seen, continues to attenuate the reality of the gene, at a time when the scientists on the Human Genome project announce genes for this and that without sufficient disclaimers. (There are in reality genes specified only for deficiencies like cystic fibrosis and blue eyes). For Keller (1995), the value of the concept ‘gene’ is to be found in its very incoherence. Meanwhile, Rheinberger is prepared to explain the scientific process in biology in the same language Kauffmann (1994) uses for evolution i.e. conjuncture, bifurcation, hybridization, criticality reached in an ensemble whose individual members are subcritical. Too rich for my blood; the late Don Campbell, originator of the term ‘evolutionary epistemology’, declared Rheinberger (who is Austrian) a German trying to be a Frenchman. Keller’s caveats about the term ‘gene’, however, merit our closest attention as we hear claim after fraudulent claim. Jacques Monod, not known for touchy-feeliness, insists that the DNA strand plus environment are both necessary for

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Theories of Everything informational characterization of the organism. As we saw, the problem of generating a 3-D organism from a DNA strand is otherwise puzzling. We also noted an error in Dennett in his attribution of the identification of DNA as the hereditary material to Watson and Crick. It looks very much as if all they have to do is die to attain near-Darwinian status: So if you have a gift for reaching hundreds of thousands – millions – of people and enlightening them, I think that doing that runs a close second to making a really great discovery like Watson and Crick. (Dawkins speaking about his work to Parker in the New Yorker profile, p. 43)

The use of the word ‘enlightenment’ has given pause? Unlike Dawkins, Dennett (1995) is a formidable scholar whose work involves more than delivering frissons to the not-so-swift. We shall consider his work in four sections i.e. his actual intellectual position; his hyperbolic missionary positions (difficult to achieve); the logical leaps and errors; the intellectual irresponsibility. Finally, we shall consider whether evolution is a theory at all, let alone a coherent one. Dennett’s system almost counts as a Weltanschauung in that it is a theory of everything; however, he is concerned to deny the reality of our experience, not see it as part of a cosmic dynamic. From his, the correct perspective, we don’t really have subjective experience; it just seems that way and he is concerned to dispel the illusion. One reality we can appreciate, however, is design; the accumulation of design is evolution. To understand his notion of design, consider how to operate a VCR. Design is the result of a computational process: the algorithmic level is the level which best accounts for … the shape of the orchid, the diversity of species. (59)

This, in a nutshell, is Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. There are more nutshells to come. To calculate the amount of design, we must take the physical stance, in which the VCR is a set of circuits in particular states. On the other side is the intentional stance, where we can intuit purpose. For example, we know that archaeopteryx flew because its claws are suitable for perching, not running. These concepts are the core of Dennett’s system; meaning, consciousness, etc. are to be cashed out in its terms. There is only one design space, encompassing the items dealt with in the humanities as well as the sciences, but don’t worry, it’s still beautiful (189). One can stand in awe of the Tree of Life (520) though refusing to worship it. In the meantime: design can emerge from more order by an algorithmic process that makes no use of preexisting mind. (83)

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Being Human: The Search for Order So far, so conventional; we now come to Dennett the evangelist. If this commentary is a little bitchy, the reader will soon see why: human meanings are just as derived as the meaning of two-bitsers and frogs. (411)

If a body politic, or General Motors, can have interests, so can genes. (328)

mindless … molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning and hence consciousness, in the universe. (203)

The agenda should now be becoming clear. We function according to precisely the same principles as RNA phages with respect to meanings, etc. Dennett, as it turns out, does not believe this at all: It is the shaping of our minds by memes that gives us the autonomy to transcend our selfish genes. (369)

… but it sure fires up those grannies. Basically, if meaning, consciousness, etc are of a piece with mindless molecular machinery, then we do not have the equipment properly to apprehend exalted entities like memes. This inconsistency is what makes Dennett’s pronouncements on morality even more dangerous than they would be, were his system consistent: memes have a deus ex machina role for restoring social order. Let us continue: I think that there are no forces more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism … Protestant, Catholic …

Given his own admission (264) that Darwinism has attracted ‘demagogues and psychopaths and misanthropes’ perhaps the list ought to be extended. However, it gets worse. We have already had this line of argument: the birth of meaning in the acquisition of semantics by the nucleotide sequences. (204) and the Statue of Liberty line

Give me order and time and I will give you Design. (221)

However, Dennett feels free to do much more, so sure is he of possessing the stone tablets: 158

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Theories of Everything If you insist on teaching your children falsehoods … that ‘Man’ is not a product of natural selection … those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teaching as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity. (519)

Dennett’s argument on morality hinges on an impossibility i.e. that memes, which we do not have the equipment to understand any more than a bacterium does, create moral nature and thus ‘Man’. Come near my child, who is growing up healthily as far as I know, and I will set the dog on you. Readers who understand the psychology part of section II will also understand the incompleteness of the ‘psychology is engineering’ outlook Minsky shares with Dennett. If the reader is already bored with Dennett, please skip this section, the criticism on the basis of fundamentals. For we now step a few levels up to take a cosmic perspective: there has been an evolution of worlds (in the sense of whole universes). (177)

The palaeological evidence has yet to appear here, but we do know there has been: a purely algorithmic, Darwinian process of world-trying.

In our blessed world, we need only chaos and eternity to generate order; the next step, we’ve seen, is Design. Moreover, stepping down from the cosmic level, the problem of replication soon asserts itself, We cannot have replication without RNA of at least 2000 pairs, nor can we have 2000 pairs without replication. Dennett waves his hands vigorously at this point (160–1) and passes one on to John Maynard Smith with his concept of hypercycles. This reader remained unconvinced. The chain of entities envisaged is ‘macros’, followed by viruses with single-stranded RNA. This is the second major explanatory gap in Dennett’s schema. The chances of progressing without another one along Dennett’s great chain of being ‘From the early design exploration of prokaryotic lineages to the mathematical investigation of Oxford days’ (136) seems slight. In fact, his quarrel with one such Oxford math don, Roger Penrose, seems piquant (437). It should, however, now be clear exactly what is presumed by Dennett. So far, however, he is merely a slightly dangerous charlatan. It is when he searches for … some principles for designing ethics along more realistic, Darwinian lines’ (493) that he begins to do more serious damage. Design is a good in itself (511–13); our memes help us behave. We are about to witness Tipler positioning God as the good guy in a prisoner’s dilemma game; for Dennett such games allow an evolutionary ethics (481). As Lee Kuan Yew, the Senior Minister of Singapore, said things like ‘To us in Asia, the individual is an ant’ we accepted this. 159

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Being Human: The Search for Order As a parting shot, let us consider the worth of Darwin’s dangerous idea itself i.e. ‘Survival of the fittest’. In Dawkin’s nutshell, it boils down to the fact that all our ancestors, on both sides of the family (pace, in-laws), survived long enough to have sex and reproduce. In section II–3, we noted the gaps in the fossil record which inspire researchers like Kauffmann to reach for dei ex machina like self-organization as complements, or indeed as antagonists, to natural selection. The point of view of this book, which even proselytisers like Dennett concede, is that the origins of order are mysterious. We must concede that speciation involves processes which are currently beyond our ken. To the matter in hand. Damin’s dangerous idea sounds dangerously tautological. Who survives? The fittest. How do we know that they are the fittest? Because they survived. To use a more sophisticated version of this argument (from Nyckos in Hayes, 1996): I would, however, go along with any definition of ‘tautological’ that has to do with starting from a set of empirical data and various definitions, and deriving a conclusion without ever inputting any further empirical data. So ‘survival of the fittest’ could have its component ‘survival’ defined with reference to thousands of generations, while ‘fitness’ to only one, and yet it could be tautological … simply by straightforward mathematical reasoning.

Even granting the Darwinians this strongest possible statement of their case, their idea is less dangerous than tautological. This particular claim-jump deserves to be terminated with extreme prejudice, or if without, at least extremely quickly. Spencer, the originator of the term ‘survival of the fittest’, would be horrified by the primitivism of the current followers of Charles Neodarwin.

iii. Eschatologies The work of Frank Tipler (1994) also merits a separate discussion, as below. Its adaptation of current physics abundantly demonstrates the dangers of arguing from current science of any sort to religious/political conclusions. Were it not for the dedication to holocaust victims, his ‘Physics of Immortality’ could be read as an elaborate joke. His assertion of his own agnosticism on his personal viewpoint would confirm that reading. However, it falls readily into the camp of classical millennial literature; we are even regaled with an enemy (in page 87, people who believe in eternal recurrence rather than single cosmological expansion and contraction are labelled Nazis). Norman Cohn (1996) has recently summarised his life’s wok. When people imagine: the dawn of a world which will be perfect for ever, they commonly imagine it as coming about through a cataclysm which will remove all imperfect beings for ever, … that … is the heart of apocalyptic faith.

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Theories of Everything Tipler’s branding of much of the world’s Hindus as Nazis is totally in keeping. In an odd reversal of history, the cataclysm is now arranged to remove the Nazis. Cohn (in Thompson 1996) is concerned with other current movements: One only has to look at extreme forms of feminism or the militant Green movement, both of which display pronounced millennarian features … There is a demand, not for reform, but for a total change in the condition of humanity.

We are about to see a physicist steeped in Southern U.S.A. evangelism possessed by this idea. The condition of humanity is to be paradisal for ever. Let’s get rid of the Nazis first. Viewed as millennial literature, then, Tipler’s book is striking as we shall see. We must prepare for the eventual resurrection of the dead; to do so requires a space colonisation project of unparalleled dimensions to start immediately. Teilhard’s Omega Point (roughly speaking, ‘God’) is defined in precisely the computational/informational terms we have already criticised. Christian notions of morality are transposed into ‘hard science’ through microeconomic game theory. The aim is resurrection of us all in a simulated environment (happily, we can, as in the Koran, enjoy lots of sex); however, this book is sociologically of some significance and will repay our attention. The treatment of ‘The Physics of Immortality’ requires fewer steps than that of Dennett’s opus. Tipler’s line and style of argument is so obviously left-field as to require little pointing-out of its evangelical thrust. Similarly, the import of the argument is that we should drop everything else immediately and start an enormous space project. This will involve sending robots to the furthest parts of the universe. The critique will make only incidental reference to the obvious dangers of this line of reasoning. Tipler’s whole intellectual edifice is built on such shaky foundations that bringing the conventional artillery of criticism to bear on it is tantamount to breaking butterflies on a wheel. Why bother with it at all? Essentially because it is the most thorough going recent attempt to restate Christian belief as fact using current science. The lines of argument we have encountered in Joseph Campbell and Needleman, that the fact religious teachings cause certain rarely-accessible movements of the psyche is sufficient to affirm their utter importance, is eschewed. For Tipler, Christian eschatology and morality are fact, and he’s got the math to prove it. Moreover, he does have a finger on the pulse of certain current theological trends: In an earlier guest editorial of Zygon … I isolated four issues fundamental to the possibility of integrating science and religion; epistemological assumptions, the necessity for progress, the use of a structural teleology, and central concern for the eschatological insight of religion in preference to the ethical. Each of these areas is addressed, whether effectively or not, in Tipler’s Omega Paint theory. (Birtel, 1995, 327)

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Being Human: The Search for Order Tipler’s own métier is global general relativity. As he explains, he began to see the need for chaos theory in this field. One of his crucial assumptions is that, like the situation envisaged by Waddington for catastrophes in general, only a restricted number of possible collapses of the universe from its point of maximal expansion is possible. Information is given the burden we saw it slough off in III-I; the brain is an information-processing device and the soul is a program (xi): A person is a very complicated computer program.

More specifically, we are self-programming Universal Turing Machines (UTMs). Sitting uneasily with this ability to program ourselves is the fact we are deterministic ‘finite 15 state machines’ capable of a total 1010 different states. However, quantum cosmology allows even this procrusteanized image of the human free will (186–205). Tipler has his cake and eats it here; the intent is to allow the possibility of robots that are our equivalent in every way (the strong AI position) and will eventually be vastly our superiors. So far, Tipler has made two substantial and dubious assumptions; that he has anything worthwhile to say on this subject, and the strong AI position. His next such is that we live in a particular type of universe, one in which life continues to the end of time. This, in turn, is predicated on yet a fourth assumption, that life is essentially information-processing: Life is information preserved by natural selection. (125)

We are now ready for the ‘anthropic cosmological principle’, (Barrow and Tipler, 1986), the notion that information-processing (and thus life) can ‘continue only in closed universes which end in a single boundary point and only if the information-processing is ultimately carried out throughout the entire closed universe’ (Birtel, op cit, 320). Thus the urgent necessity to ensure that we initiate information-processing everywhere immediately. Truly, the axe is at the root of the tree. Tipler has much to say on the now urgent issues of payloads and other rocket science issues (55–73) at this juncture of history. This fourth assumption has no other evidence than the requirement that our equations and theories be beautiful. If it is untrue, then ‘Reality as a whole would be fragmented into the relevant and the irrelevant’ (ibid). Omega Point is used in Chardin’s sense, though Tipler has obviously been advised to distance himself from Chardin after his adoption of the notion: The wave function of the unique is the wave function for which all phase paths terminate in a (future) Omega Point. (Tipler, 1994,8 1)

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Theories of Everything Tipler has been much influenced by process thought, and in particular by the work of Wolfgang Panenberg, whose generous review of Tipler’s book follows immediately on Birtel’s. Tipler has to strain somewhat to translate the process pantheist’s God into physics terms. Nevertheless, as ever, he is up to the task and can posit a God, like Murphy’s Hamiltonian; who is evolving in his/her immanent aspect (the events of space-time) yet is eternally complete in his/her transcendent aspect (the Omega Point, which is neither space nor time nor matter, but is beyond all these). (op. cit.,158)

Turing famously proposed as a criteria for machine intelligence that an observer would be unable to guess at a level greater than chance whether the responses she received were coming from a machine or a person. Tipler postulates that, given the Omega 123 Point’s information-processing capacity of 1010 bits, it should be able to pass the Turing test (155). Therefore, we have a personal God. Fiat voluntas tua, Wolfgang. The heat death of the universe is to be avoided by the manipulation of chaotic dynamics: the energy of gravitational shear near the Omega point is sufficient to avoid the heat death. (109)

Taub universes collapse as required (135–55). We ourselves can draw waters with joy from the wells of salvation: the fundamental discreteness of the QM state space is what makes the eventual universal resurrection of humanity physically possible (101).

not through work, or deeds, but through QM. Tipler has thus far succeeded in keeping us alive for 1018 years; his next task is to prolong this somewhat. To eternity, actually. Let us continue with a further assumption: Omega Point-theory … is a quantum cosmology (QC). (169)

We need a QC to ensure our eternal life. QC represents the universe by a wavefunction, Y with three parameters: The wave-function of the universe is that wave-function for which all phase points terminate in a future omega point, with life continuing in the future forever along every phase path on which it evolves all the way into Omega Point. (181)

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Being Human: The Search for Order In fact, the universal wave function is the Holy Spirit. After resurrection, we shall partake of bashful maidens, whom neither man nor djinn has touched (256). Venal though our interests are, our resurrector’s will be even more so; mere curiosity (227). Let me rest in peace, I say. It should be clear that Tipler’s work is full of highly contestable assumptions. For example, as we’ve noted, a person is defined by qualities of mind and soul which are entirely computational. Penrose’s (1994) arguments against this notion are more sophisticated than Tipler’s. Given that QM and QC are so open to wildly varying interpretations, it is unsurprising that Tipler can hammer bits and pieces together into a schema compatible with Christian eschatology. He is less than honest about many of his assumptions (cf the ‘Nazis’ comment above). Moreover, to put it in his own words, though ‘the main purpose of this book had been to show that modern physics requires the God principle’ (261), he himself does not believe his own work, and remains an atheist (305). Don’t buy that rocket yet. Yet there is much to admire, if not to imitate, in Tipler’s work: the restatement of process pantheism is particularly good. One remains unsure about how serious he himself is. Here, I use a set of assumptions (in particular, about acts of alienation and their relation to state-vector reduction) which require a leap of faith. However, unlike Tipler, I believe my schema works! One feels that he might have written a far better book without the centre of narrative gravity imposed by Christian eschatology. More conventional eschatologists like the Montana Freeman, the Supreme Truth cult and others are described by Thompson (1996) as follows Cults with terrifying visions of an imminent Armageddon are uncovered in the very process of trying to bring it about.

We shall see much more of this, and frankly, the eschatological context in which Schweitzer (1910) firmly places some of the sayings of Jesus make these sayings currently irrelevant and dangerous. There is no eschaton, no new dispensation; however we need urgently to work out why humanity needed to think so at various points of social unrest. The manifestation at a social level is the theme of II-4.

iv. State Takeover a. Medieval Roman Catholicism is the classical example of a partisan viewpoint in a particular field gaining control of the apparatus of state. That the lessons from this period can still be learned from is attested to by the recent experiences of Quebec and Ireland, and a possible prognosis for Poland. Medieval Catholicism set the pattern for the ‘Marxist’ states of our century in attempting a centralised bureaucracy which felt free to define ‘truth’ (to the extent of refusing to look down telescopes, since their truths were not to be falsified by observation). That torture and other mechanisms of coercion were used to impose this should act as a suitable discouragement to those of us who would like to erect similar structures. Interestingly, as we shall see in Quebec and Ireland, prolonged engagement with the mechanism of state ruins the possibility of future engagement with genuine spiritual impulse for any religion. For better or 164

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Theories of Everything for worse, Roman Catholicism is essentially finished in the West; it will take Islam a few centuries to reach the same state in the near East, with women playing a leading role. The Catholic Church cannot consistently give up its claim on the apparatus of state, any more that it can consistently refrain from protecting sex-offending clergy from the rigours of temporal law (Harris,1990). It cannot simultaneously uphold its claim on Ultimate Truth, fully realised in a cathecism, and concede an inch to the temporal. It claims possession of an initiation system which can train a young man to transubstantiate bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, to manifest God among us. Moreover, even if a practising pederast, the young man still possesses this power, and the power to forgive sin. Finally, the Church has at least a tenuous link with the beginnings of Christianity, and many true, dedicated labourers in the harvest. Those of us (including lapsed Catholics) who reject the Church do so ultimately because we feel that Ultimate Truth is not doled out in verbal formulae and that sacrament requires more than organizational approval, but some kind of personal preparation. These arguments are logically more compelling than those on the grounds of the Church’s venality and cynicism. Given the Church’s claim on the apparatus of state, manifest inter alia in John Paul II’s (1995) elevation of Church law over state law and calls for civil disobedience, its outlawing should follow. The experience of Mexico is that outlawing doesn’t work. The more conventional response has been the French one, of nominal Catholicism with less than 10% actually practising. The danger here is the loss of that ‘JudaeoChristian-philosophic/stoic Roman law synthesis we call Western culture’ (Purcell, 1996, 24). Quebec, until recently a Catholic entity, now has communion wafers for sale in corner stores. Meanwhile, cults like the self-immolating Solar Temple cult proliferate there. Ireland, where western culture was preserved and which reawakened Europe to its classical past, flails about looking for a replacement to the massive role usurped by a now discredited Church. The only solution that will work long-term is a church withdrawal of its temporal claims, leaving the Christian culture on which our societies are implicitly based to thrive. The following paragraphs will demonstrate the unfortunate unlikeliness of that withdrawal. The alternative is, for countries like Ireland, a reinstatement of their own national churches, whose authority rivalled Rome’s in their heyday, and should do again, in the manner of Orthodoxy. The Catholic Church’s claims on state go back to medieval times, when they may even have had a positive role to play. Their reawakening by Pius IX was ill-timed: Pius believed that the Roman church has the fullest possible grasp of truth in the world, and is therefore divinely pledged to be intolerant! (de Rosa, 1988, 245)

He vehemently opposed the French revolution; on the publication of the Austrian Constitution, the Vatican declared:

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Being Human: The Search for Order We declare these laws and their consequences to have been, and to be for the future, null and void. (quoted in de Rosa, op, cit., 247)

One consequence was Pius’ criticism of the constitution for allowing separate schools for Protestants and Jews. John Paul II is on a crusade to save humanity from itself. During the 80’s, it seemed that the most appropriate allies here were Thatcher and Reagan. As we shall see, he later became disenchanted with them. However, the deep shame many Catholics felt over the past two decades at the Church’s collaboration with a fascist regime in Argentina, with genocide in East Timor (where the Nobel Laureate Bishop Belo was silenced by the Church, helping at least implicitly the 1960’s corporate takeover of Indonesia) and with rampant social injustice over the whole of central and South America (where Leonardo Boff was similarly silenced), suddenly seems inevitable: Beginning in the spring of 1981, the Reagan administration maintained an intelligence shuttle at the highest level between the White House and the Pope, who was regularly briefed by Casey (the CIA head) and by Vernon Walters, a former CIA deputy director (Bernstein et al., 1996).

The Holy Father’s range of interests was wide: Poland, Central America, terrorism, internal politics in Chile, Chinese military power, liberation theology … submarine warfare … Libya, Lebanon … (op. cit.)

The reward?: Up to that point ‘millions of dollars in American aid to family-planning programmes around the world were blocked on orders from the President’. (ibid) However, after the fall of Communism, John Paul II was no longer useful. It is after this point we find the Pope inveighing against capitalism for its exploitation of labour and communism is praised for its wars against unemployed and on behalf of the poor. John Paul II sees himself now as a bulwark against the erosion of western civilisation in total. The extent to which he can consistently argue against the new corporate mercantilism, given his recent history, is a moot point. Essentially, the interference by the Church in temporal matters is always done at the expense of the spiritual. There is a side of our being which thirsts for religious teaching; it demands, however, that it be done without a political agenda. (In Ireland, as we shall see, the Church has historically openly collaborated with the British in order to further its own agenda, as described below). For the Church to interfere with the State is a sign of its lack of confidence in the existence of, and its possible influence over, that side of our being. Paradoxically, in seeking influence on the State, it destroys its own true sphere of influence. Moreover, just as John Paul II was used by the Americans, so many new states accord Catholicism initial massive power before rudely kicking it out. That is one reading of the folie a deux practised by the Irish State with the 166

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Theories of Everything Church. Lacking any racial differentiation from the English, it was useful to emphasise the religion aspect from 1922 to 1990 or so. That stage passed, the Irish now suddenly notice the non-chaste celibates and remember their being sexually abused at school. Alternatively, it is possible to favour a colonialist metaphor for the Church. Like Coca-Cola, it brilliantly markets an insipid and useless product, and integrates itself so completely into the local community that the latter cannot conceive of itself without it. Coke adds Life! Ideas and organisations survive in proportion to their willingness to use force. An idea like Naziism will survive if it can facilitate one’s overcoming one’s moral sentiment in order to perpetrate violence. The Church in Ireland and Quebec considered it legitimate to surrender to a peasant, literalist interpretation of Christianity for these reasons in a nutshell, the Pope wanted to preserve the ethos which was serving the papacy so well in the provision of money, clergy, nuns and an ever-swelling tide of energetic, white, English-speaking Irish emigrants who took the faith with them to some of the more important parts of the world, chiefly the USA, Canada, Britain. (Coogan, 1992, 658)

(The Irish, according to this interpretation, have so poor a concept of nation that they succumbed immediately to theocracy. Indeed, the Irish Constitution still starts: In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority.)

And we all know who on earth is in closest contact with this source of authority. Coogan’s interpretation works disturbingly well. Indeed, the British conquest of Ireland began in earnest under the aegis of the Pope: The Donation (a forgery-present writer) proved to be influential. For example, the only English pope, Adrian IV, appealed to it when he gave Ireland to Henry II of England. (de Rosa, 1988, 41–2)

The occupation of Ireland, which the Englishmen Peter de Rosa calls ‘long and tragic’ (ibid.) and Robert Fisk more pithily terms ‘savage’, dates from this point. Previous to this, Ireland re-Christianized Europe: the long roots of Christianity in Ireland are in danger because of Church intransigence. Is Coogan’s interpretation more correct? Time will tell; if the Irish people succeed in creating a non-theocratic state which reflects political thought since the eighteenth century, Coogan is right. Currently, the jury is out. Part of the aforesaid political thought include the work of Thomas Jefferson (Peterson, 1994), who wished the following engraved on his tombstone: Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and Father of the University of Virginia.

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Being Human: The Search for Order In other words, Jefferson regarded the implementation of a successful separation of realms for Church and State as being one of the three major achievements of a promethean life. I wish to rebut absolutely the anti-Jefferson argument of current obscurantists who claim charter from Isaiah Berlin; theocracies don’t work, and liberal democracies do. Berlin’s argument that liberalism is actually the allowing of conflict between absolutisms is not to be used to support absolutism. To base authority on the people and legitimise government in terms of the people’s desire to escape tyranny, allows the kind of freedom at least non- economically-challenged Americans have as their birthright. Jefferson’s campaign to disestablish religion in Virginia he regarded as the fiercest of his life. His success led to Madison’s introduction of the first amendment of the Bill of Rights: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

De Tocqueville was famously impressed (Peterson, op. cit.,124) by the coexistence in America of the ‘spirit of liberty’ and the ‘spirit of religion’. Historically, the type of leap implemented by the American and French revolutions has proven to be correct. The freedoms granted to and responsibilities imposed upon the individual by the American constitution allow true religion, if it wills, to thrive. The failure of countries like Ireland, and the Church itself, to see this is one of the main reasons for the relative failure of theocracies like the Irish State. In conclusion, religions must forego their claim on the state as on the subject matter of science. Only then will there be any prospect of a socially constructive role for them. b. Nationalism; we can see this in historical terms in operation in countries like England and Serbia. At its worst, it shades into the worst kind of millenarianism. A moderate form of cultural nationalism, in keeping with, for example, a ‘Europe des régions’ will be proposed. In this, we accept that our particular ‘genius loci’ gives us something of significance to contribute to world culture. However, there is another positive aspect to nationalism, which is the uniting of a people under threat of genocide from another. This is nationalism, as it were, from below; the imposition of national sentiment from the state we can term ecumenism. Examples of the former are the military aspects of Irish, Jewish, Chechen and Armenian nationalism, inter alia. This writer has lived for periods ranging from months to years in Ireland, Israel/Palestine, Canada, France, England and the U.S.A. He feels obliged to issue some disclaimers; the only countries he feels qualified to comment on are Ireland and Canada, and his views on Ireland are decidedly not mainstream. They will satisfy neither those who wish to have their animus against the English satisfied through violence, nor those revisionists who wish to potemkinise the savage occupation of Ireland by England for the outsider. I say this because of comments like the following, written by Irish historians in books which, like this one, do not have as their focus the Irish problem: 168

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Theories of Everything The Irish still have difficulty in coming to reasonable terms with their underground past, even though the worst of the bad experiences are more than a hundred years away. (O’Brien, 1986, 331)

In fact, the litany of ‘ferocious and indiscriminate military repression’ (op. cit., 329) which O’Brien admits as the story of post-Reformation Ireland, can be explained as just desserts: … the native Irish began to pay the price of backing the counter-Reformation – and the deposition of heretic princes – against the Reformation sovereigns of England and Scotland. (ibid.)

Nor does the occurrence of a famine, during which at least one million died from starvation, at a time of political union between Ireland and England, require any sort of special exoneration: The worst the British government of the day can be accused of is callous lethargy. (330)

At no point does O’Brien point out that his is regarded as an extreme ‘revisionist’ view of Irish history. One wonders to what extent his early job as a writer of anti-English propaganda has influenced him, or likewise the yearning of the colonised to introject the coloniser. He inveighs violently against Irish nationalism. The argument of this section is that such an entity exists only in reaction to the far more virulent and real English nationalism. A country whose soccer fans must be caged when they travel deserves a little closer interrogation on suspicions of nationalism, considered as a destructive entity. It is actually possible to rescue a positively-charged meaning for ‘nationalism’ without doing excessive damage to its use in English (or cognates in other languages). Part of its destructive capacity comes from its ability to create a ‘we’ separate from ‘they’ among the apocalyptically-minded. The dangers herein have been pointed out above by Cohn. (Remarkably, the late Isaiah Berlin regarded nationalism as mere chauvinism and xenophobia but still believed that, along with liberalism, it was to remain one of the great positive forces in human affairs). This aspect of nationalism we can characterise as millenarianism. The aspect which Monty Python derided as the effort to ‘keep China British’ is partly racism, and partly what Purcell (1996), following Voegelin, terms ‘ecumenism’. This involves imposing a schema resembling that of ‘Queen and Country’ on the foreigner, rather than one capable of ‘articulating the spiritual substance of universal humanity,’ (op. cit., 3). The Russian occupation of the Eastern block and English occupation of Ireland are, by this criteria, ecumenic. Cultural and military nationalism may be the positive response by the occupied. However, following Ignatieff (1993), we shall use ‘nationalism’ for ecumenism. For him, it is associated with ‘blood and belonging’, and life in a state defined essentially 169

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Being Human: The Search for Order by racial ties. (The notion of ‘race’ in this sense is of course a nonsense; people from two separate races can be genetically closer than two from the same, and there is mitochondrial DNA evidence to indicate that humanity springs from the womb of a common mother). The Canadian Ignatieff’s pilgrimage takes him to many of the expected spots – Serbia, the Ukraine, Quebec, Northern Ireland (N.I.) but his take on the latter is surprising. He is uninterested in Irish Nationalism; however, the adoption of British ecumenism by the Northern Ireland Presbyterians engages him(pp. 162–90). Their salvation myth involves their liberation by William of Orange from the papal hordes headed by James II (James VII of Scotland). The facts that ‘King Billy’s’ victory was celebrated by the Vatican, that Orange is in France, and that William accepted honours from the Pope are deemed irrelevant. Their saviour came from overseas, when even perfidious Albion had deserted them; Ulster (sic; only 6 of the 9 Ulster counties are in the UK) worships at 17th century Protestant shrines which mainland Britain no longer recognizes as its own. It elaborates a Britishness which it believes its mother has betrayed. It cannot pass into nationalist rebellion, since it would give comfort to its republican enemies … It is also specifically British in its sense of rights denied and betrayed, and its inability to translate the sense of democratic injury into a genuinely democratic nationalism. (Ignatieff, 1993, pp. 184)

Mckay (2000), in her ‘Northern Protestants; an unsettled people’, describes her own seed and breed thus; ‘It is as if the bigots had captured Protestantism’ British ecumenism exacted an enormous toll from the English themselves, as we see below The British think of themselves as subjects not as citizens, and popular commitment to the civic achievements of British history – the rule of law, the sovereignty of parliament, the stability of the state – tends to express itself in an infantilized idealization of the monarchy. (ibid.)

Ignatieff is impressed that this ecumenism failed in its very first test, i.e. the conquest of Ireland; Ireland proved to be the great failure of British state- and nation- building. The Protestantism at the very heart of British identity made it impossible successfully to assimilate the Catholic Irish into the union. (op. cit., p. 169)

Alternatively and more fundamentally,as the English writer Paul Johnson put it, had France turned Protestant and England Catholic, Ireland could have followed France. The maintenance of Irish culture, through going underground, military resistance and cunning is inspiring enough for a Hollywood blockbuster at least a few times a 170

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Theories of Everything decade. The year 1996 alone saw ‘Michael Collins’ and ‘Some Mother’s Son’; the former is about the first President of Ireland, a revolutionary of such ability that the Irgun adopted his name; the latter is about the hunger strikes. Between 1995 and 2000, the Presbyterians and other Orangemen caused riots by insisting on including marches through Catholic areas as part of their commemoration of King Billy. The number of such marches is increasing exponentially. However, just as the Vatican must insist on the moral priority of canon law over civil law, so does this form of cultural expression require an enemy; British cargo cults are among the most tenacious and enduring in the world … The sashes, the bonfires, the burning Popes and Tricolours … in all my journeys, I’ve never come across a form of nationalism so intensely ritualized … Here Britishness is ritualized because it is up against its antithesis and nemesis: Irish republicanism. (op. cit., p. 183)

There is no native aspect to it; it is simply the adoption by the Orangemen of another tribe’s regalia. However, they do so for their own ends; Yet perhaps that is what Loyalism is – a nationalism that dares not speak it name. Loyalism, on this reading, is really loyal to itself … Loyalist paramilitarism, for example, makes it only too clear what a portion of the Loyalist community thinks of the rule of law, the very core of British civic identity. (op. cit. pp. 183–4)

The Presbyterians, the ancestors of these Loyalists, were themselves dumped on from a height by the English before their imposition on Irish soil from Scotland. The Northern Ireland state that they founded rivalled apartheid-era South Africa for discrimination (against Catholics in this case). The current set of ‘troubles’ began in the late 1960’s with a reformist Northern Irish Prime Minister; ethnic cleansing of Catholics was the response to their being granted civil rights. On 14/8/69 thousands of Catholic families were evicted from their homes in acts of ethnic cleansing, with over 60% of Catholic homes burned in some areas. The IRA, dormant for decades, fragmented into a vaguely constitutional party and the more violent ‘Provisional IRA’. The fact both factions of the IRA were led by men called ‘Billy’ (McKee and McKeever), which is famously a protestant name (after William of Orange) perhaps puts matters in context. This is not about ‘race’; most of the Sinn Fein/Nationalist leadership have British or Scottish surnames (Adams, Morrison, Hume, McGuinness). Nor is it essentially about religion. Historically, many great Irish revolutionaries (Thomas Davis, Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, John Mitchell ) have been Protestant. Rather, it is about the attempt to allow co-existence of a ecumenical force (the British Empire) and an ancient culture, which adopted a celtic language about the third century BC, on neighbouring islands. (Intriguingly, the DNA evidence is beginning to suggest that the remaining speakers of versions of this language are disproportionally descended from the pre-Saxon-invasion

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Being Human: The Search for Order inhabitants of those islands. Great care must be taken with the release of such findings as we try and live together in a way that affirms the diversity of all our cultures). The situation is complicated by the surrender of the Irish to the English language: Engel’s grim prediction was coming true: the Irish were beginning to act like strangers in their own country. (Kiberd, 1995, 488)

For the problem had always been that, just as English history famously has happened outside England, so English national identity was bound up in the creation of an Other, and the Irish were the nearest Others. Unwilling truly to create a true sense of place, a lapse which weighs heavily on them today as they surrender to American culture, the English surrendered to easier options: Ireland was soon patented as not-England, a place whose peoples were, in many important ways, the very antitheses of their new rulers from overseas … the English have presented themselves to the world as controlled, refined and rooted, so it suited them to find the Irish hot-headed, rude and nomadic. (op. cit., 8)

The possibility of genocide has always been part of the English response to Ireland’s otherness. The author of the Faerie Queen, Edmund Spenser ‘wished to convert the Irish to civil ways, but in order to do that found it might be necessary to exterminate many of them’(ibid.). Famines in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries eventually achieved this goal. Nassau Senior, an Oxbridge don and member of several Royal Commissions including those dealing with the Famine, lamented the fact that the Great Famine was killing only a million or so; a sterner cull would be more salutary. Even O’Brien (1986, 329) has to concede that ‘Irish Catholics were deprived of the right to bear arms, and of the franchise, and debarred from entering the professions’. The loss to world culture has been immense. For example, the brilliant poetry of Gaelic Ireland degenerated: It is difficult today to comprehend the extent to which events after Kinsale (in 1601) isolated the lives and sensibilities of the Irish people. (O Tuama et al., 1981, xxii)

The quality of Irish poetry shows a considerable decline toward the end of the eighteenth century. (op. cit., xxxv)

Moreover, the native music, which in the standard European progression had been beginning to synthesise modal with diatonic structures, went underground; the resultant loss of harmonic sensibility can still be heard in Irish traditional music. Essentially, the loss of the Gaelic patronage system meant the unavailability of harps, 172

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Theories of Everything keyboards and other instruments capable of more than one voice. The resulting music, though charming and again gaining in popularity, is not the fully-fledged contribution to the European classical tradition that composers like Carolan, a contemporary of Geminiani, were attempting (see Ó Nuallain, 2002). The worldwide popularity of such melodies as ‘The Derry Air’ gives pause. As Kiberd points out, the much-feted Irish literary revival was due to the rediscovery of Gaelic Ireland. The culture produced by the inhabitants of Ireland acts as a ‘strange attractor’ for all future inhabitants. There is more of the original Gaelic Irish ancestry in North America, which has over 40 million claiming Irish ancestry (even on dates other than March 17) Britain (which also boasts one million native Irish), and Australia than in Ireland. However, just as the characteristically Irish cultural expression must come from the inhabitants of Ireland, so also must the political problem of the two islands be solved in the terms mentioned above (the Celtic and Ecumenic) even now that the Irish are ‘racially’ part-English, and the English ‘racially’ part-Celtic. The revisionist approach to history will not help. Kiberd (1995, 559) summarises Conor O’Brien: He repented publicly of his anti-partitionist past … he translated the mess of Ireland into a rational, enlightenment (sic) discourse which made good sense to his international readers. He revised his view of the Camus-Sartre debate and concluded that Camus had been right.

Ireland has been appallingly badly served by writers like Conor’s namesake Edna O’Brien, Roddy Doyle and Frank McCourt who portray a simplified image of the country. This image is meant to reassure Anglo-Saxon readers of their innate superiority without making any attempt to render the complicated dynamics which make Ireland the apparently boundless supplier of outstanding individuals which she is. Remarkably, books like McCourt’s ‘Angela’s Ashes’, a depression-era memoir about growing up in poverty with an alcoholic father, have achieved significantly greater success than Joyce’s devastating journeys into the universal human unconscious as manifest in Dublin, Ireland. It is difficult to imagine a memoir like McCourt’s but from depression-era Detroit having anything like that success. Ireland has become a reservoir of the projections of other countries; it is of course much safer to have the Depression long ago and far away in a Celtic twilight! The result is that the Ireland which is painfully struggling to emerge as a bilingual modern state with its own architecture and legal-political systems is being suffocated under Angela’s Ashes and Hollywood movies with British and American actors playing Irish parts. For all the public discussion, the Irish self-concept is probably the worst-defined in Europe; worse even than the English; Joyce’s project to create in the smithy of his soul the unforged conscience of his race was prescient. It is essentially an almost entirely anglophone island with two states that have failed to break from their British past; one of the tragi-comedies of modern Ireland was a reversion to the mores of the London 173

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Being Human: The Search for Order Bar after a brief attempt to create a post-colonial legal system. Yet the seeds are there for a fully native expression; to take but one example, given its status as the first official language and the existence of official documents in translation, Irish could become the first language of the island within a generation. The current international cultural role does not help. However, the ascesis involved in revisionist history like that of Conor Cruise O’Brien beggars belief. Answer on an envelope, please; how can one justify hundreds of years of genocide, cultural repression and plunder? On the repression of religion: … the failure of government to make more than token gestures towards enforcement, and the consequent practical freedom of movement enjoyed even in the early part of the (18th) century by the great majority of Catholic clergymen. (Connolly, 1996,23)

Must give us pause. In fact the small number of surviving assize records … indicated that the courts for the most part made only sparing use of the death penalty. (op. cit., 27)

So for a time the Irish could practice their religion with a much reduced danger of immediate execution. The attempt to exonerate the landlords is equally feeble: … the relationship between proprietor and tenant, was more nuanced, and less heavily weighted in favour of the landlord, than had been assured. (op. cit.,22)

The most that three decades of revisionism has come up with in Ireland is the stunning news that Irish nationalism was a varied force. Embarrassingly for them: Nationalism in Ireland, as in most other countries, was a broad and comprehensive movement (which) often found itself in alliance with socialism, feminism and even pacificism. (Kiberd,1995, 642)

The second pillar of the revisionist stance is that, since no Gaelic nation in the modern sense ever existed, the ‘John Bull’s other island’ role is the one most appropriate for Ireland. in short; Frequently too, the new terminology seemed to have originated in the Irish Free State’s policy making history serve national needs by emphasising the state’s links with a Gaelic past, and marginalising its British identity. (Ellis, 1999, pp. 23)

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Theories of Everything A quick refresher course; the Gaelic order preceded British incursions by at least a millennium, for most of which time Britain was predominantly Celtic-speaking. We may as well speak of Britain marginalising its Irish identity. Let us continue; As an Englishman and Tudor specialist, what I found particularly intriguing about early Tudor Ireland was that here was another Tudor province inhabited by peoples who saw themselves as English. (op. cit., p. 22)

This is scarcely worthy of comment beyond wondering at the national self-concept of a country that pays from the public kitty for such garbage to be enunciated at its national university. Perhaps the best explanation is post-famine classical victim behaviour. I ask the reader for some indulgence at this point. He may feel he has stumbled on an intranecine Irish fight. All should soon be made clear. Shaw brilliantly exposed the contradictions in British ecumenism. The British and their imperialism had to appeal to the universal human moral nature. Shaw noted: … the contradiction underlying a religion which sought to evangelize that empire with a faith whose first principle was the right to democratic individualism and private judgement. (Kiberd,1995,418)

In giving up this empire, the British have not blanched at selling out, or even shooting at, their erstwhile allies. So they will also in Northern Ireland. However, several hoops must first be jumped through by the Irish, who with their population of 3.5 million had until 1999 a hopelessly ambitious border dispute about Northern Ireland with the 37 million English (excluding Welsh, Scots and Cornish). The population disparity is due to genocide and Catholic Church/British encouragement of emigration from Ireland. Moreover, as a former imperial power, Britain has a permanent seat on the UN security council. Consequently, neither ‘moral’ nor military force will work. That the ecumenical British state, a racial mixture of Normans, Picts, Anglo-Saxons et al., was not achieved without great cost was obvious to Shaw. In fact, he tended to downplay the Irish famine: The people of England have done the people of Ireland no wrong whatever … in factory, mine and sweatshop, they had reason to envy the Irish peasant who at worst starved on an open hillside. (Shaw, quoted in Kiberd 1995, 54)

In short ‘the English work force was exploited at even closer hand than the Irish by the imperial system’ (ibid). This fits in well with the view that Britain experienced less a true nationalism than an ecumenism. This writer has had the experience of playing in a folk music session with Northern English musicians and hearing them sing the kind of anti-English ballads which the revisionists have deemed politically incorrect in Ireland. 175

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Being Human: The Search for Order It is at this point that he wonders whether the Irish response to colonialism is not, in fact, a universally valid resource. The fact that a Southern Englishman explained the phenomenon as his compatriots’ inability to understand the words corroborates this notion. The point of view here is that one of the most consistent English positions is an attempt to render Ireland as violent a society as theirs; The illusion that Britain is an island of stability in a world of troubles does not survive a day on the streets of Belfast. In reality, there is more death by political violence in Great Britain than in any other liberal democracy in the world. Since 1969 there have been 3,000 political killings and more than 50,000 people have been seriously injured. More people have died, per capita, of political violence in Great Britain (sic)than in India, Nigeria, Israel, Sri Lanka or Argentina. (Ignatieff, 1993, pp. 165)

The recent history in particular has seen negotiations in bad faith on the British side; only when a minority of the Irish resort to violence is the issue at stake in the negotiations conceded. (This violent minority commands the political support of a derisory percentage of the Irish; the movement within Irish society that it represents, that of a total break with Britain, acquires a significant share of the vote only while on ceasefire). Moreover, the violence has to be exquisitely targeted; the principle the IRA used of refusing to target the Protestant population, and continuing to engage the British as one army against another, was counter-productive; An intelligence officer who has written extensively about the CIA told me that Belfast is similar to Berlin during the second world war and is the ideal city for training operatives in man-to-man marking. (Dillon, 1990, p. 408)

In short, Ireland was an ideal training ground for the British army, and it was in their interest to maintain a low-level war there for the purpose of training their own army. The fact that the terms of independence forbid the Irish republic from having a standing army larger than the British dictate helped this training. The ‘Dirty War’ that Dillon describes involves use of torture, passing on government files to loyalist paramilitaries to enable them to assassinate republicans, and such debauching of British civil law as the introduction of internment camps on 19/9/71. Finally, the IRA leadership got the message, and embarked on a twin strategy of bombing commercial targets in England, as well as the peace initiative which seemed to bear fruit in December, 1999. On 10/4/92, a bomb at the Baltic Exchange in the city of London caused £300 million worth of damage; further explosions at the NatWest Tower and Canary Wharf on 9/2/96 are the main reasons Martin McGuinness got a seat in Cabinet. Unfortunately, it is a reward for successful use of force. Home Rule Parties were voted for democratically by the whole island of Ireland in the nineteenth century; its voice was ignored. Home Rule writings had a huge 176

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Theories of Everything influence in the emerging post-colonial world of the twentieth century, including Myanmar/Burma. It would have been wiser for the British to concede to the Home Rulers’ democratically-justified demands; however, the absence of the use of force perhaps worked against them. Let us briefly revisit the two main themes of this section; the assertion of the value of cultural nationalism, and the validity of the use of force to protect this culture; Biological survival includes the community, language, rituals, customs, and so on. Culture is an extension of the individual, so in a sense the urge to protect the culture is part of biological survival. (Klein, 1980, p. 11)

Only after a group of poets staged a theatrical and doomed uprising in 1916, their leaders executed, and a minor war concluded in stalemate, did the British concede dominion status. Two states were created; Northern Ireland was carefully engineered to have a Protestant majority. On 6/1/22 this status was formally put into place; disagreements on the oath of allegiance led to a civil war being initiated on 26/3/22 by the occupation of the Four Courts, where public records were kept. All these records were destroyed in the subsequent fighting, which has left the Irish as a people without a documented past; few of us can trace our families back more than four generations. That, combined with the absence of conventional national self-expression for half a millennium, has added greatly to the angst. The ‘Provisional government’ set up by the 1916 group is still the yardstick for legitimacy of the Irish state and the inspiration for the Provisional IRA (P.I.R.A.) In 1981, some members of the PIRA staged a hunger strike to gain status as political prisoners. This was denied until 10 had died, and they called off the hunger strike. On 5/5/81 the first hunger striker, Bobby Sands, who had been elected a Member of Parliament, died in his 20’s. Likewise, the PIRA unilaterally called a ceasefire in September 1994 (Mallie et al.,1996). John Major’s initially pusillanimous response never warmed up to a desire for negotiations. Obstacle after obstacle was put in the way of talks. In February, 1996, the PIRA abandoned their ceasefire and started a savage bombing campaign in Britain. Suddenly, June 10th, 1996 was announced as a date for talks, without the previous preconditions. The deal which was finally hatched was presaged by the ‘Sunningdale’ agreement of 21/11/1973, whose power-sharing was brought down by a concerted unionist strike and paramilitary activities. The paramilitaries refused to come over to Paisley’s side in the 1990’s. On 15/11/1985, Thatcher agreed to the ‘Anglo-Irish’ deal, to considerable objections by the unionists. As I write, I have confidence that the Good Friday agreement of 10/4/98 will still be in place, and there will not be joint authority under the 1985 agreement, as you read. The vacillating about decommissioning, and suspicions that the fundamental bargain was struck between the current Northern Ireland Minister for Education, ex-Ira head Martin McGuinness, and MI6, makes everything impossible to call. The brilliant post-national solution of the Good Friday deal requires only one actor in bad faith to ensure its collapse. 177

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Being Human: The Search for Order Britain continues to treat the Irish situation as a case of imperial withdrawal, to be implemented as cleverly and with as little loss of face as possible. The fear of a former Northern Ireland secretary, Jim Prior that Ireland could become ‘ a Cuba off our Western Coast’ (Mallie et al., 1996) has subsided with the fall of Communism. If not a Cuba, perhaps Bosnia; Britain’s behaviour also destabilises the republic of Ireland. The fabled ‘peace process’ of the past few years was never sincerely entered into by the British; once the Americans, Ireland’s only hope of fair play, had been locked in to certain declarations, the game had been won. And the British insist on imposing a zerosum structure on it. On one reading, they have succeeded completely; What has been gained? The end of the war, and Sinn Fein participation with the SDLP in administering British government policy. What has been lost? Life and liberty! In 1972 the ‘provisional’ republican movement rejected this package and argued for war. (McAliskey, 1999)

However, one can assume that the presence of McGuinness in the cabinet betokens more than meets the eye. The Republic of Ireland lives and has its being in political terror. We have reviewed its problems of legitimisation; it is essentially the western world’s only revolutionary theocracy. Its claim on Northern Ireland forced it to take an interest in events like the stand-off in Drumcree in August 1996. David Trimble, the nerdist leader of the Unionist Party, was seen fulfilling his childhood revenge fantasies in intimidating constabulary and then Catholics. The PIRA normally perform the role of protecting northern Catholics; its attempt to expel the British was quixotic, and best regarded as a response to ecumenism (Let us remember that in one creation myth Brittan, the founder of Britain, came from Ireland). In 1969 the Irish state was poised on the brink of sending its army in to certain defeat; that possibility is no longer mentioned. A certain role was conceded the PIRA; The Irish government’s intention to provide arms to the IRA began on 14/11/69. (Dillon, 1990, pp. 13)

Mindful of this, the response of the south has been to turn to writers like O’Brien, the spin doctor Eoghan Harris and the ex-soccer player Eamonn Dunphy to re-interpret the history of British rule in Ireland. Their outpourings are inevitably ugly. However, a more mature attitude is possible. The Irish should accept history for what it is, a standard imperialist saga, and use their political independence fully to re-assert their culture. Politically, an effective decriminalisation of IRA membership (insofar as the PIRA are performing their stated task of protecting the Catholics of NI from ethnic cleansing) and simultaneous withdrawal of the claim on Northern Ireland worked wonders. Like Canada, Ireland can view its crisis as an opportunity to enter the postNational era. ( As Peter Beresford Ellis has demonstrated, ‘Celtic’ was always a cultural, not a racial designation) . The good Friday agreement is a polling of sovereignty; its survival depends on ceasefires of the main terrorists groups on both 178

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Theories of Everything sides holding, including groups like the PIRA containing individuals who are opposed to the agreement. The scathing comments on Ireland in this book are mirrored by those of some Irish historians: The performance of the Dublin state in the past half century scarcely provides decisive evidence to persuade unionists of the capacity of Irish Catholics to rule themselves well, much less to rule Protestants. (Lee, 1989,684)

Unfortunately, Lee’s (685) next statement, post-Gorbachev, no longer holds: ‘Stability in Ireland must remain a British interest’. A writer astute enough to condemn British behaviour during the hunger strikes as ‘criminal’ must surely agree by now that, if so, they consistently act against their own interests. The failure of the Irish State is multifaceted. It has fostered a culture that Lee, following Fromm, declares that of ‘having’ rather than ‘being’. Since the foundation of the state, one out of every two adults has failed to find a job here. Many who emigrated were the state’s brightest and best. The misogynist Catholic ethos has led to obscene suppression of women, except in parts of the West where Gaelic mores always hold sway. Nevertheless, unlike England, Ireland had achieved a written constitution. Though theocratic, it invites hope for a secular successor. Unfortunately, the Irish have to wait for a similar English maturation process for political stability to take: until then, assertion of Gaelic/Celtic culture is the duty to humanity of the inhabitants of Ireland for whom it is their heritage. Those on the island with a different heritage should express it; the Ulster Scots language would be a healthier outlet than marching. The Quebec/Canada situation is fortunately less fraught. French has been on the rise in Canada since Pierre Trudeau decided in the 1960’s on the dual strategy of withdrawing its special constitutional status from Quebec, while insisting on bilingualism for the whole of Canada. The original Articles of Confederation (1867) envisaged such a situation in Francophone eyes(but not in Anglophone; witness the contemporary Globe and Mail). This illusion was shattered by the judicial murder of Louis Riel, a Métis (part French, part aboriginal) from Manitoba who led a minor uprising in the late nineteenth century. The Articles of Confederation had been bought into by many of the leaders of an earlier, mainly Québecois, rebellion. As usual in life, one can cover over the cracks only for so long: Confederation’s day may be over. Undoubtedly, Quebec’s is a different society from English Canada; so too are the Portuguese, Italian, Brazilian etc enclaves in Montreal and Toronto and the Algonquin, Cree, MicMac etc. founding people’s. The early Quebeckers interbred with the natives; their later racism is an aberration. In the 1970’s, Quebec was led by the charismatic Rene Levesque, whose motto could read ‘Make me separate, but not yet!’ His 60–40 defeat on separation at the polls had the eventual effect of Trudeau, in 1982, being able to repatriate the constitution in a manner which destroyed Quebec’s ‘distinct society’ status. (Canada’s Prime Minister has been a Quebecker for 30 of the 31 years before the year 2000). 179

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Being Human: The Search for Order Levesque’s creation, the Parti Québecois, was converted to rabid separatism by Jacques Parizeau in the 1980’s. An ex-Tory ambassador to France, Lucien Bouchard formed a national Bloc Québecois to parallel in federal politics Parizeau’s Quebec activities. Unlike Parizeau, Bouchard was immensely personally popular, particularly after a flesh-eating disease saw him become a metaphor for a de-Quebecked Canada in losing his right leg up to the knee. Again unlike Parizeau, Bouchard was not a real separatist, but a sovereigntist; one who wanted a better deal for Quebec within Canada. In final point of contrast, he was a charismatic orator, who could hint at redress of grievance by revenge without having to be explicit. In the ’95 campaign, Parizeau stepped aside as frontman, preferring to allow Bouchard to shoot his mouth off. Miraculously, it worked; while Parizeau worked in the backroom on storing up Can $14 billion against the inevitable assault on Quebec bonds following separation, Bouchard inveighed against white women’s unwillingness to have children (Quebec’s birth rate is the lowest in the world) and Canadian imperialism. (Canada until recently did not have a flag; its national anthem was written by a Quebecker who favoured Canada’s integration into the US). A poster campaign was launched: peace, work, retention of the Canadian dollar and passport ‘deviennent possible’ if one voted for our two heroes. In the meantime, a massive campaign of vote fraud was planned and successfully implemented. It nearly worked. Parizeau’s comment on hearing of the final result that the referendum had barely been lost through Montreal big money (read: Jews) and the ethnic minority vote would have sparked pogroms anywhere other than Canada. For reasons probably related to the brutal winter, Canadians do not rise to that kind of bait. Unlike Ireland, Quebec’s is a brilliantly-calculated nationalism, concerned with wresting as much as possible from the rest of Canada. At no point in the referendum campaign did they complain about living in a monarchy – if only all nationalism would play for such low stakes! It wasn’t even necessary for the US to invoke the Monroe doctrine to force Quebec back into Canada, and impose reality on the situation. In short, then, Berlin’s prediction about the durability of narrow nationalism seems correct. The post-nationalism of the Good Friday agreement may make it too delicate an instrument for relations between Britain and Ireland. Ironically, it could work for Quebec.

v. Weltanschauungen To understand Advaita, our first Weltanschauung, let us reconsider the von Neumann experimental description. It will be remembered that we can conceivably put system, apparatus and the neural mechanisms governing content of consciousness on one side of the line. This leaves us with pure awareness on the other. However, the advaitin argument is that the wave-function just before breakdown is identical with the observer just before consciousness. This Lucille (1993) describes as the essential teaching of Vedanta. To change the metaphor Being-Reality-Consciousness is the cinema screen on which the movie is projected. It remains unchanged throughout the movie. The Advaitin argues that our true state is a state we experience in deep sleep. Yet, paradoxically, deep dreamless sleep seems to us to be the opposite of Consciousness. This tension remains unresolved for me. 180

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Theories of Everything Yet advaita, like solipsism, is logically irrefutable and as an argument it gains its force from a consensually validitable psychological realisation. I am awareness, pure observation. So, of course, are you; moreover, as we’ve seen, the Advaita tradition includes exercises for extending our kinaesthetic and other proprioceptive senses to encompass the whole physical world. Of course, to recapitulate, if I am All, I am less likely to work hard on my career. The failure of advaita to take hold in ‘Western societies’ (which increasingly includes industrially dynamic Asian countries) stems from its inertia. As ‘Westerners’, we tend to locate ourselves at the physical border of the system and apparatus, to use the von Neumann metaphor. Acts of alienation (in the Marxist fashion) see us externalise ourselves in great feats of architecture and social structure. To experience the great cathedrals of Chartres and Notre Dame, visited by millions each year, is somehow to return to silence within ourselves. Yet Advaita can tell us much about this silence and has merited our close attention. It is likely, however, that a structure like Gurdjieff’s, with its similar emphasis on consciousness but greater capacity for ‘westernisation’ will gain more acceptance (if it wants to). Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Wise Blood’ (brilliantly adapted by John Huston) considers the possibility of using the direct path Advaita recommends in the West. A young Southern preacher, Hazel Motes, decides that Christianity, with its cult of blood and suffering, is for ‘niggers’ and preaches the Church of Truth without Christ. He is pursued by the daughter of a competing sham preacher, played by Harry Dean Staunton, whose feigned blindness is to catalyse a change in the young preacher. His is a profoundly religious spirit behind the nihilism and the urge to debauch himself; his girlfriend, putting it in the only terms she knows, complains of his obsession with Jesus. His revelation is to sever the chains of state, and indeed of physical law; he paid for his car so it will continue to run and he doesn’t need a licence. Eventually, of course, reality hits and he feels a need to expiate his murder of a preacher who steals his lines, and expiate also the imperfection in the society around him. Lacking the niggers’ Jesus to suffer for him, he blinds himself, and begins to torture himself, before allowing himself to die. The ‘Wise Blood’ of the title is the blood by which Jesus mediates between God and man. It is also the boast of a loser who attempts to befriend the preacher (but cannot really introject Motes’ message), that he(the loser) has wise blood. O’Connor is arguing against the Manichean urge to evade Matter and go straight to Reality. That Advaita attempts precisely this unmediated path must give us pause. BeingConsciousness-Reality is the fundamental unchanging nature of the world and of one’s phenomenal experience. McHugh (1988) provides a beautifully worked-out analogue of Advaita from a Christian perspective. The generation of the universe by Consciousness is conceptualised as an act of love: Out of nothingness he made, preserves and keeps in being what he created. Every moment of the created is like a new creation. (28)

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Being Human: The Search for Order This precisely parallels the Advaitin notion of creation of everything, including our memories, from moment to moment. Our nature as Atman is reconstructed as the necessity for each of us in every particle of our being (7). Yet, it is precisely because you are as His Love creates that you are fulfilling your mission in life … You are His Confession made to you alone.

Echoing the psalmist who praises himself for not seeking marvels beyond himself, but resembling a ‘weaned child at his mother’s breast’; There never was a moment in this eternal existence when God did not think of you and love you … Don’t go imposing on yourself levels of attainment that God does not want. (24–5)

One should feel necessary rather than contingent. It seems at first sight that the price may be a lower level of worldly achievement. In this context, it should be noted that Lucille gave up his ambitions in the fast-track of the French Civil Service, and comments that failure in public life is necessary for success in the spiritual life. The excitement and dangers of the Gurdjieff system arise from its attempt to cater to all phases of one’s life. Lucille’s comment that meditation is our natural state finds the following echo in McHugh (26): Prayer ought to be as ‘natural’ for you as breathing or walking … God alone is … Prayer is conscious awareness of His presence.

And ‘creation has one meaning – Love’. (27) yet the context is specifically Christian: ‘His Life is loving, the Love between Father and Son, the Holy Spirit’ (ibid). In summary, the relationship between Ishvara and us is love. God’s love for you is all about Being-Existence. You are and You are forever. (2)

Lucille’s advaitin perspective also affords discourse on God, Creation and Love as one moves from the absolute to the empirical standpoint: The supreme truth is that Brahman … alone is … but from the empirical standpoint it appears as God … related … endowed with attributes. (Mahadevan, 1977, 121)

Advaita claims to be a theory of everything; perhaps McHugh’s revelation is its reconstruction in the empirical level. The dynamism inherent in western society may cause the advaitin to seek suffering; time will tell.

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Theories of Everything As has been mentioned, Lucille’s is a formidable intellectual construction, and whatever is really going on in yoga, the physical postures work. The weltanschauung allows statements like ‘to love someone is to love the infinite in them … Enlightenment is the realisation of what we are not … Deep sleep is, death is not’ (Lucille, 1993) acquire an extraordinary resonance. Moreover, any true religious figure is a source, is capable of talking to all aspects of one’s being. This should manifest itself in the pulse rate’s slowing down, in the self who can obtain more being dragging the rest of the psychophysical apparatus to encounter after encounter. In conclusion then, advaita, if mediated through an established religion or through science, has great promise for a genuine third millennium spiritual path.

v.a. Gurdjieff Gurdjieff ‘s Work, as we’ve seen, seems at first sight to involve a classical religious conversion. ‘You are not conscious, but we can awaken you’ sounds like ‘You are by nature a sinner, but we can get you forgiven(we have contacts)’. In other words, one is startled into self-alienation and promised salvation through a commitment. However, the thrust of the work is much more empirical and, if re-formulated in more modern terms (for example, we’ve seen that it does have an outdated cosmology) may become one of the primary vehicles for personal development in the next century. It is worth, even now, looking at its psychological accuracy vis a vis two classic cognitive science problems. Like Cognitive Science and behaviorism, Gurdjieff would agree that we are, in our current fallen state,machines: though the machine is a computer, the effect is the same. Of this unholy trio, only The Work admits of the possibility of another state for man. Cognitive Science historically argued also that consciousness is irrelevant to the discussion of its subject-area (see Volume 1). In the Work, consciousness can be developed through effort and its working can assist one’s performance in any task. Despite the apparent distance from writers like Chopra and Robbins, it may end up capturing some of their adherents. This will mainly be people who have not distinguished in themselves the psychic movements toward worldly success and spiritual fulfillment. The good news first. One of the classic problems in Cognitive Science is the ‘Frame Problem’ i.e. the problem of which changes in the environment are relevant, and which are not so. It has taxed philosophers at least since Berkeley. In The robotics context, it manifests itself in a robot trying to move around a physical environment. The classical (Cartesian-inspired) way of doing this was to build a symbolic representation of the environment and up it with each change in the environment. However, so many changes can occur from the immediately relevant(the light may be turned off) to the unlikely(an earthquake) that the task becomes computationally nightmarish and indeed impossible. The Frame Problem, writ large, manifests itself in animals’ similar dealings with the environment as well as human symbolic action(e.g. what exactly to say when and where). The room problem was solved in robotics by dispensing with symbolic representation in favour of knowledge focusing only on the results of actions, and in 183

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Being Human: The Search for Order the animal case neurons have been found in the hippocampus corresponding roughly to Gurdjieff ‘s ‘moving center’ . Moreover, the role of emotion, if not as yet an emotional center, has been implicated in human assessment of relevant change. These are breakthroughs for Cognitive Science; their being predicted in a system which claims antiquity is impressive. Likewise, though outdated, the cosmology does provide insights. Gurdjieff’s original lectures, a decade before de Broglie, as we’ve seen, showed knowledge of matter waves. The fact that this was an ancient idea reinforces one’s feeling of the reliability of Ouspensky’s report. It is used to structure a theory of different types of matter, which we found useful both in aesthetics and as a theory of different types of human moral natures. The cosmogony treats of successive levels of manifestation of the Absolute. One’s work in self-realisation has a cosmic significance. However, the ‘organic’ theory of the creation of the planets seems like a hangover from pre-Apollo 9 days in which the cosmos could be used as a set of metaphors for various human phenomena, including ontological lapse as handled in notions of the Fall. Given the insistence of this book on current scientific concepts, we did not allow this. Pauwels (1972) includes essays which variously portray Gurdjieff as a lecher, charlatan and religious genius. Ouspensky (1949), his erstwhile disciple, leaves him because of a perceived self-destructive streak. Whatever the cosmology and psychology, Gurdjieff undoubtedly was a source, perhaps the greatest of the past century. The task that remains is reformulating his work in terms of current knowledge. It is possible that today he would use Gaia, computers and – who knows? – Ceili dancing.

v.b. Marxism Marxism we already have treated at this stage as economics, as millenarianism, and as philosophy turned radicalised sociology. What remains for us is merely to point out its notion of psychological conversion, of becoming ‘politically enlightened’, which makes it a full-blown Weltanschauung. As the God that failed, Marxism serves to warn us about extending metaphors useful in understanding any subject immediately to the practice of political economy. Interestingly, capitalism recently has metamorphosed into a weltanschauung. The cosmic process underlying our existence is what Dennett terms a Darwinian process of world-trying; the existence of the natural world is similarly an artefact of natural selection. We humans are not really conscious; it just seems that way. Our phenomenal existence is unreal, and our selves are empty. Survival of the fittest has allowed development of products by benevolent transnationals which can fill this emptiness. As we’ve seen, this highly dangerous account is full of logical leaps and inaccuracies. Its refutation is a salutary political act. Moreover, ‘economics’ as a science has become increasingly the pursuit of mercantilist aims by other vehicles like corporations. So infected is the body politic by these aims that ‘political economy’ has become a tautology. Finally, the Green’s arcadianism is a vote of lack of confidence in a positive notion of humanity. Let us now see how this notion can be developed and sustained. 184

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Conclusions

One of the main themes of this book has been a re-evaluation of the nature of theory. It may seem to be in danger of culminating in a set of negative conclusions. Moreover, given its stated concern with the current destructive role of transnationals and ethical issues arising from new technologies, it may seem to end in unresolved tension. In reviewing its conclusions, I hope to convince the reader to think of this tension as creative. In confronting this tension, we shall of course feel occasional alienation from ourselves. Anomie is how dynamics impelling us to a new type of personal and social formation manifest themselves psychologically. This book will do much if it helps the reader give this feeling its correct name when it occurs, and likewise label correctly the unjust pressures exerted on her by an unjust ruling system as they present themselves psychologically. It is time to recapitulate and summarise the central themes of this book. Three different strands will be manifest. In the first, I am concerned with the noncontroversial conclusions arising from the presentation of facts in this book. For example, the environment is deteriorating; there are several different interpretations of state-vector reduction. Moreover, certain consequences for responsible action follow from these conclusions. In the second strand, I am concerned with articulating the world view hinted at toward the end of Part II. Its assumptions will first be made explicit. Finally, the consequences I see as arising from this world view will be mentioned, and their relevance to current pressing moral issues clarified. The process of the search for the ground cannot ever stop either in an individual’s life or in the historical progress of humanity. From time to time, the dead hand of ecumenical systems attempts to define truth by the use of force. The refusal to lie on this procrustean bed, visible in responses as apparently disparate as the quietist Free Spirit heresy in medieval times and the French Communist resistance to Nazism in WW2, shows the human spirit at its finest. The quest for the ground is today, for good and ill, identified mainly with the scientific process. This process by definition cannot end. Essentially, the exploration of the space of the rational carried on by mathematics marries to new externalisations of some universal psychic processes. A good example of this is Newton’s combined internalisation of our psychological experience of force with the calculus. Such innovations will forever continue. As one prefers, they may be viewed as revealing ever more beautiful and unexpected aspects of the cosmos or simply clever inventions. Portentous statements that the ‘End of Science’ has come are nonsense. A second theme was the grounding of ecophilosophy on foundations sturdier than an ‘as if’ spreading of oneself over the environment. Green thought can take (paradoxical) comfort from several basic facts. First, we are living at a time of environmental crisis. Secondly, the opposing mercantilist arguments are often internally inconsistent and/or make some very few assumptions from a vast space of 185

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Being Human: The Search for Order possible such. The essence of ecophilosophy and ecopolitics is the same as the essence of aesthetics; it is the assertion of all positive facets of human nature. The academic work inspired by this insight can start from empirical observations like the fact that people have always opposed ecumenisms, and created in difficult and unpopular media simply because they were better. This assertion is logically independent of the struggle against mercantilism on its own terms: for example, we can safely suggest in these terms that much modern economics is an ideologically-motivated congeries. Globally, the sacrifice of its consumerist, destructive ‘standard of living’ by the west should be parallelled with an insistence on bringing the new ‘tiger economies’ into the liberal democratic fold. A second issue is education: given that we must assert our full humanity, manifest in the heights of world culture, even more emphasis must be placed on education. At another level, as Ornstein et al. (1989) rightly point out, children should be initiated early into the realisation that resources are finite; that we must live off environmental income rather than capital. The teaching of catastrophe theory and other complex systems concepts in simplified form would help here. However, the assertion of the fully human requires a further education process, one that gives equal value to the progress of humanity in the ‘arts’ and ‘religious’ spheres as well as in the ‘sciences’. This book has attempted to expound concepts in comparative religion, QM, music and literature along with conventional science and economics. The author is convinced that all these subjects are valuable, as are those types of knowledge we call ‘social’ skills, ‘manual skills’ etc. Knowledge is best regarded as an active interrelation of subject and object, a knowing ‘how’. It is the person who knows, including that ‘how’ to retrieve factual information we call a ‘knowing that’. It is possible to make relatively definite predictions about the short-term future in the early years of this new millennium of certain human activities. In each case, negative and positive trends will vie and these lend themselves relatively easily to characterisation. Whether the latter will prevail depends on you and me. Its perceived victory over Marxism will continue to put a spring in the step of transnational corporatism; the new war, that against fundamentalist Islam, seems to the cynical to be mainly about control of oil reserves. The (engineered) absence of prominent independent economic commentators will continue to allow the emergence of a mercantilist ethos. (On which point, it must be said that Osama Bin Laden’s brother was a partner in George W. Bush’s first oil venture; that a plan to invade Afghanistan and capture OBL was in place in July, 2001; that the barbaric destruction of the twin towers was watched from prison by a French Islamist who was arrested for attending flight school without wanting to learn how to take off and land; and, finally, that the precedent of the Pearl Harbour attack is particularly apt in that Japanese military codes had already been broken). Furthermore, this ethos will be so much part of standard political culture that the expression of other views in this context will remain difficult. The result is that western states will become increasingly the creatures of transnationals, with creeping acceptance of Lee Kuan Yew’s notion of human rights. The unemployment indices will be tweakable by the provision of McJobs. The initial political response is likely to be a massive increase in activity in ‘civil society’, as 186

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Conclusions distinct from the state, before hopefully converging on notions of politics and economics similar to that outlined here. In this account, the Seattle riots are a harbinger. A harbinger of what? I wish specifically to predict that the financial wonderland of 1980–2000 has ended and that a new realism will enter economics. That will afford an opportunity for the type of analysis offered in this book to take hold. Culturally, it will be nothing like a 1960’s revolution; indeed, the ‘new Puritanism’ critique has validity in at least that the possibilities for sexual revolution were pre-empted long ago. However, the new metrics in economics will hopefully be founded on more genuine personal autonomy (as distinct from personal indulgence), democracy, decentralisation of decision-making, and cultural diversity. Similarly, religious activity will feel the opposing tugs of fundamentalism and cosmopolitanism. The victory of the latter depends to a large extent on scientists and technologists waking to their moral responsibility. Of course, fundamentalism is a natural human response. An acceptance by the psychological sciences that spiritual disciplines involved some real knowledge would be a good starting-point. Some acceptance of their responsibility by those studying the sciences of mind in academia to bear witness to all aspects of human nature would help greatly also. Their twentiethcentury fumblings with ‘observables’ ensured that the woman on the street, searching for the ground in her personal experience, was more likely to look toward the Celestine Prophecy with its acceptance of her reality than academic psychology which ground her up in its dark mills. Moreover, as has repeatedly been stated here, this assertion of the reality of the human has environmental consequences. Now we come to the second strand, where I state what seems to me as likely to be true. A disclaimer; though non-practising, I had a religious upbringing. Inevitably, I am biased to see the world in terms of creator and created. I await the competing Weltanshauungen of others with great interest. First of all, here again are the assumptions of my systems. 1. There is a continuum of acts of alienation including the differentiation of the wave-function into observer and observed, a person expressing herself by learning an art or science and a society manifesting itself i.e. an act of alienation in the Hegelian sense. We don’t have the physics to handle the social entities of the last two categories; however, attractors and the type of consciousness theory Culbertson (Herbert, 1992) envisaged might help. Briefly, this states that there is no re-experience of an event; it is the same event. Likewise, we as yet have no idea how a unique DNA inheritance can lead to different types of symbolic behaviour. One possibility is slightly circular, but rings true; we create the spaces explore by music, mathematics and so on in such a way precisely as to foster individual expression. 2. There exists different types of object; physical, mathematical, etc. The Platonism we saw accepting strange attractors for explaining biological form shows one type of such object. Secondly, these objects are at different levels; for example, the musical objects that Beethoven creates are at a higher level than rock music . 187

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Being Human: The Search for Order 3. Types of disciplined human activity other than the ‘scientific’ intend these objects; for example, music, prayer. 4. The process of authentic science is scientific discovery, not invention. 5. The truth is rationally apprehendable, and recognisable by every human being. Obviously, QM and QC licence many interpretations; this book comes out in favour of an ontological notion of state-vector reduction and a reformulation of process thought. Creation ex nihilo is accepted; consciousness is the creator, and time and space the first veils of Maya. As Boltzman points out, time does not exist everywhere; for us, here, it is very real. Ishvara and Brahman are one; their difference is relative to our cognition. The energy of creation can be understood positively as love, or negatively through the experience of suffering. Time’s veil accepted, discontinuities appear in the progress of creation; Life, Consciousness, Self-Awareness. In these and in the inventions giving shape to our lives we can detect design. In our societies, we can trace a path leading to the glory of the individual in liberal democracies at the highest point of substance. On an individual level, when we can ride the waves caused by the confluence of the forces present in our society and family and our personal genetic inheritance, we can proceed to a new stage in development. A first task here is realising our ‘self’ in continual monologue as essentially an engineering artefact. We continue our inner verbal interpretation of our actions in order to maintain the illusion of a subject fully distinct from eternal objects. Certain trailblazers can help us here; for example, the later Wittgenstein (O Nuallain, 1995,330) asks us to catch ourselves in the act of linguistically referring to ourselves. The Gurdjieff system invites us to see ourselves as Legion. This achieved, we can realise our nature, as ‘I’, an ‘I’ the same for everybody. Paradoxically, this makes the wonder, necessity and individuality of the body/mind complex we are caught up in even more apparent. We can then see that this consciousness is what transforms the gross into the subtle, and allows truly good moral action and artistic creation. Moreover, our acts in apprehending objective aspects of nature (as in QM) seem fun and beautiful because beauty and bliss are the nature of the reality our minds intend. The viewpoint of this book is that the individual’s achievements leading up to these realisations, though apparently not done in full self-awareness, are also all necessary. Some consequences follow. All arts and sciences require formation which plays on the existence of platonic and other attractors. We are trained to apprehend consensual objects using our Body/Mind complexes. We cannot pretend that the forces which motivated responsible human action before us no longer exist. Belief systems like nationalism must fully be examined rather than jettisoned; that within them which can contribute to universal good should be maintained. Much responsibility must be expected of the individual. For example, the notions of consent and coercion are absolutely crucial. Coercion is always conscious and should be punished with a force equal to its own. Where consent has been given, the individual must bear the consequences. A fertilised egg is not a conscious human; neither is a sleeping man. However, we must 188

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Conclusions draw a line somewhere, and it behooves us to do so at consent. Likewise, the gothic experimentation on and disposal of in-vitro ova must stop. Finally, our knowledge of ecosystems is so primitive that the introduction of genetically-altered organisms should stop immediately. The vast range of creative human activity, manifest in its different sciences, arts, etc, must all equally be honoured. Its higher achievements we can regard as sacred. To decide on whether an object is higher than another i.e. to make a moral judgement, we currently often have no help from science. Hopefully, that eventually will change. However, what is essential is to apprise yourself of all the facts. We don’t yet have rules of thumb, and may not ever again a complete such set; trust yourself. There is no new millennial state, but take it that there will be a whole new millennium.

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Being Human: The Search for Order

Venus

Sun Mercury

Earth Figure 1. Copernican System

Sun Venus Mercury

Earth Figure 2. Ptolemaic System 190

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Appendix A: How Does Science Progress? Let us begin this discussion by taking as an example the change in cosmology that occurred as a result of Copernicus and others. ■ Explanandum; The Sun, Venus and Mercury are never in opposition to each other. In other words, we never perceive Venus and Mars as being on the ‘other side’ to the earth as the sun. ■ Explanations: I.I Geocentrism is true. The ‘Planets’ (including the sun) rotate around the earth (figure 2). They also perform ‘Epicycles’, which explain the perceived phenomena. II. Heliocentrism is True (Figure 1). I is called the Ptolemaic system and held sway until the renaissance. It is due to Aristarchos and Copernicus. It is important to note; 1. Both systems can ‘Save the Phenomena’, that is both can provide a ‘reasonable’ explanation of the data. Indeed, truth to tell, the Copernican system required quite as many ‘epicycles’ as the Ptolemaic; for example, the elliptical nature of orbits had yet to be discovered. 2. There was much more than a merely ‘scientific’ issue at stake. The old testament, from which mediaeval states claimed authority, ultimately assumes a Ptolemaic cosmos. Methods up to and including torture were used to convey the ‘truth’, Galileo was forced to recant. 3. As science per se, what change to figure1 involves is a radical redefinition of all data. ■ Therefore, the issue was being fought out at a variety of levels apart from the ‘objective’. How does science progress? What is science? ■ The root; ‘Scio’, I know. It shares a root with the Gaelic ‘scian’ or knife; we know by chopping the world into categories. In reality, science is generally rooted on logicomathematical truth. ■ Some concepts of the scientific activity. Verificationism: The scientist forms a hypothesis and tries to verify it. If (s)he tries to falsify it, as Karl Popper suggests (s)he should, this is (2)Falsificationism. Otherwise, as Popper argued, the statement ‘it will rain’ is the quintessential scientific statement. Ironically, Popper famously refused to consider that falsificationism might itself be false! 191

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Being Human: The Search for Order ■ Neither of these schemes works for the transition in figures 1 and 2. This led Thomas Kuhn to his notion of ‘Paradigms’. Roughly speaking, paradigms are allencompassing frameworks giving meaning to all observational data. In ‘Normal Science’, verificationism is true. However, at certain critical points, ‘Abnormal Science’ leads to a ‘Paradigm change’. ■ Examples we’ll look at (of paradigm shift): 1. The shift from classical to quantum physics (QP). (Key Figures; Planck, Einstein, Schrödinger, Heisenberg). 2. General Relativity 3. (Possible) A redefinition of QP arising from such current interpretations as the ‘many worlds’ one.

Current Views on Science ■ Feyerabend ( in his book ‘Against Method’): Science is Hostile to Real Human progress. ■ Laudan: 1. Kuhn’s notion of the paradigm is incoherent. 2. Science is simply an extension of the normal activity in the society.

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Appendix B: The Reduced History of Physics Classical Physics (Pre-1925). (CP). ■ Main Theme: While CP reigned, the (Physical) world was regarded as completely deterministic, i.e. the future was completely determined by the past. Laplace’s was the most extreme system along these lines; we now know that it is naïve to assume that since a process is deterministic, it is predictable in the way Laplace assumed i.e. computable. Certain fundamentals were established in the late 16th and 17th Centuries by Galileo, Newton, and others. I Straight-line motion is indistinguishable from rest. II F=ma III Any action begets an equal and opposing reaction Gm1m2 IV Gravity; F = ——–– This was the first of many ‘Inverse Square’ laws r2 V Conservation of energy, mass and momentum. Hamilton’s was the final system along these lines. The Hamiltonian, H, is the total energy of the system: H . H . pi = – —–i xi = —–i xi pi This is very general and can also be applied to Qm. ■ Crucial Events 1. 1687: Publication of Newton’s ‘Principia’. This demonstrated that a whole range of phenomena could be explained wrt a very few principles (e.g. F = ma). 2. Early 19th Century; Faraday and Maxwell introduce the notion of an electromagnetic field). This leads to tension as particles are handled by 6 coordinates (3 momentum, 3 position), and fields by an infinite number thereof. Faraday was the first to come up with a truly modern notion of the field. Maxwell encapsulated their insights thus: 1 E B —2 . —- = curl/B – 4j —- = – curl/E t C t div E = 4e div B = 0

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Being Human: The Search for Order 3. Relativity(R) Special R. Galileo had already introduced the idea that uniform straight-line motion is indistinguishable from rest. Einstein pointed out that if W1 and W2 were judged simultaneous by O1, they would not be judged to be so by O2. O1

W1

W2

➔ O2 The speed of light was a constant. Consequences: i. E = mc2 et al. ii. General R: We live in a 4-D space/time continuum, and gravity distorts this. 4. Quantum Mechanics (Qm) QM arose from considerations like the following: According to CP, electrons should spiral into the nucleus, emitting electromagnetic radiation up to infinity. Planck surmised, on the contrary, that certain stable orbits existed with E = hf. From CP to Qm ■ CP distinguishes ‘corpuscles’ and waves. The former are clearly localized and can be described wrt their energy and momentum. The ‘Billiard Ball’ is not a bad image of corpuscles. Wave phenomena are conceived of as a superpositioning (throughout all of space) of periodic waves, each with a wavelength  and a frequency (f). 1 F = ——— Period 1 Wave number (w) = —  ■ QM on the other hand, insists corpuscles are simultaneously waves and particles. E = hf P = (h)(w. n) Moreover, the energy is continually changing in a discontinuous way. ■ Some classical experiments

Twin Slits Screen 194

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Appendix B: The Reduced History of Physics A single particle/wave seems to go through both slits and ‘interfere’ with itself as evident on the screen. ■ The evidence from spectral lines revealed discontinuities when an atom is ‘burned’; the light can be put through a prism to yield a spectral pattern characteristic of the element in question. Planck, who had expected to live to see the end of physics, had proposed that light was emitted and absorbed in ‘Quanta’, Bohr’s new model of the atom proposed that the spectral lines were formed by the movement of the electron from one orbit to another. ■ This new model of the atom was due to the Dane Niels Bohr. He calculated the possible energy levels of the H atom, and found they gelled precisely with the spectral line evidence. However, further analysis revealed more lines than Bohr could account for. Heisenberg pushed matters further and tried to develop a ‘matrix mechanics’ which did away completely with notions like particles and orbits. In the meantime, de Broglie was pushing wave/particle duality. ■ Schrödinger (who spent part of his life in Dublin) showed that if the single electron in the atom was a ‘standing wave’, it would have frequencies corresponding to Bohr’s orbits and energies as Heisenberg predicted. This solved the problem of the H spectrum. (later, it was found equivalent to matrix mechanics). The exile in Dublin was due to an altogether more pressing problem; being Jewish, the formulator of the wave function was liable to be persecuted in Hitler’s Reich. Being non-monogamous, he wished to bring his mistress along with his wife, which no Anglo-Saxon safe haven would countenance. Only Catholic Ireland, whose Prime Minister was a mathematician, with a PhD stalled by the 1916 revolution, let the trio in. The result was the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies (DIAS), with cosmic physics and Celtic studies branches. I digress, but this appendix has been hard going. The ill-starred night arrived when DIAS was to give its inaugural public lectures. The Celtic studies branch started the night with evidence about successive waves of Christian proselytisation of Ireland. This was followed by a talk on cosmology. Flann O’Brien, in his incarnation as Myles na Gopaleen, the Irish Times’ resident satirist, reported the next day that DIAS had proven that ‘there were two St. Patricks and no God’. DIAS has never quite recovered. ■ Note that a ‘Paradigm Shift’ is well underway. ■ Any solution to Schrodinger’s equation is a ‘Wave Function’ (y) The Schrödinger Equation ■ For each particle,  = h/p 195

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Being Human: The Search for Order Matter waves obey: 2
+ 42p2
= 0
is divided into ‘pure tones’, the speed of each of which is = c2/ the speed of a classical particle with this momentum. ■
is a superposition of all alternatives available to the particle. |
(x, t)2|dx is probability that particle is (found) between x + (x + dx) ∞ ∞ ∞

兰 兰 兰|
(x, y, x)|2dxdydz = 1

-∞ -∞ -∞

-E= 1-2mv2 = p2/2m ⬖p2 = 2mE If the particle is unfree, we also have V, which is potential energy 42

䉮2
+ —– 2m (E – V)
= 0

h2

■ Alternatively, in Hamiltonian terms 
pi
= – ih —– qi where pi is momentum, qi is position ■ We can also think in terms of Hilbert spaces, with requirements on the operators implicated in evolution and state-vector reduction. State-vector reduction, wavefunction breakdown, observation, and decoherence are interrelated; unlike evolution, it is non-deterministic. A major issue is whether observation is necessary. ■ For evolution, the operators are unitary; for reduction, they are hermitian.
*
= |
1|2 + |
2|2 + … +
1*
2+ … Decoherence is the mathematical operation of getting rid of diagonal elements. We must end with a real number. ■ The mathematical constraint is interesting ■ Born argued that |
|2 gives the probability of a particular measurement; for example, |
(x)|2 was the probability of finding a particle at x. This is the ‘Epistemological’ interpretation. 196

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Appendix B: The Reduced History of Physics ■ Two enormous conceptual breakthroughs were made at this time. 1. Complementarity: Bohr argued that the day of ‘objective’ scientific knowledge was gone forever. For example we used to hear both a wave and a particle ‘story’ to track an event. h 2. Uncertainty principle: xp≥ -h -h = —2

(

)

Heisenberg pointed out that to determine the precise position of a particle, we need to send a photon of a particular energy. However, this will enormously alter the momentum. Precision in one aspect was done at the cost of precision in the other. In the meantime, the epistemological interpretation was being challenged by the ontological one. Let us recall that |
(x)|2 is the ‘probability that the particle will be found at x’ is the epistemological interpretation. |
(x)|2 is ‘the real position of the particle’ is the ontological interpretation. It boils down to whether we consider that reality is cognitively penetrable at this level. ■ One less well-known innovation of John Von Newmann is that, at measurement, the line between system and apparatus can be drawn at any point. Qm claims to be a theory of everything; everything is made up of atoms. ■ Different Interpretations include also: Continuous Spontaneous Collapse (dynamic Reduction) Hidden Variables (‘Guide Wave’) (David Bohm) Many Worlds. Relativity (Reprise) ■ The Michelson/Morley work demonstrated that the speed of light was the same in the direction of the earth’s rotation as opposite that direction. The Lorentz/Fitzgerald contraction explains this phenomenon as being due to the ‘squashing together’ of atoms in the direction of motion. Thus, C is going to be measured as the same, while ‘actually’ being different. ■ This is precisely what special relativity argues against. ■ One consequence of S.R. is that moving clocks are (temporarily) slower. Another is E = mc2, as we’ve noted. ■ General R. arises from consideration of gravity and acceleration. The force of gravity, acting to keep the planets moving in curves, indicates that 4-D space-time is itself curved. Geodesics are curves therein; free fall is an example. ■ Penrose extends this notion to consider a 3D event space where every point is an event. ■ This is very much in keeping with the current trend of process thought in philosophy, which starts fromthe notion of Event. In Penrose’s schema, we can track a particular particle through time; the result of this tracking, diagramatically represented, in the ‘world line’ of the particle.

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Being Human: The Search for Order ■ Returning to Einstein; Einstein’s theory predicted the orbit of Mercury better than Newton’s. Eddington’s expedition of 1919, though rigged, showed that the deviation of starlight close to the sun was as Einstein said. ■ Einstein could not defeat probabilistic Qm. ■ This non-acceptance led to his attempts to produce a grand unified theory (GUT), marrying Qm with GR. Such a search still continues with the notion of Superstrings and in particular ‘Duals’. We don’t know: ■ Why nature obeys Qm and GR ■ A Workable Quantum theory of Gravity ■ Why only certain fields exist. ■ Why only four forces i.e. the strong and weak nuclear forces, the electromagnetic and grativational exist. ■ Why there are phenomena of interconnectedness ike that in Bell’s Theorem. ■ What a workable GUT will look like (Duals, a variant of string theory are one possibility; branes, or the theory formerly known as strings, another.).

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Appendix C: Genetic Technologies Background to Genetic Modification Heredity Humans, like all species, owe their biological nature to the genetic material they inherit from their parents. The genetic material is made of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) which is packaged into 46 chromosomes inside cells which are the basic functional unit of life. The building blocks that DNA is made from are called nucleotides of which there are four types in DNA; these are abbreviated as A,T,G &C.

Genes and Genomes The functional unit of heredity is the gene, which is a specific sequence of nucleotides, often a few hundred units long. The collection of genes that an organism has is called its genome. Until recently, the human genome was thought to contain between 60,000 and 150,000 genes; yeast has about 6000 genes, fruit-fly has 13,000. The current estimate for the human genome is less, with 30,000 being proposed by one source. Apparently there is a vast amount of non-functional DNA in the human genome. The determination of the nucleotide sequences of all human genes began in 1991, a study called the Human Genome Project. This task was one of staggering magnitude, both physically and in terms of its certain biomedical and social impact. A basic draft of the human genome was published in June 28 2000 but there is a very long way to go before we have specifically identified all the genes and understood their function .

What do Genes do? The information written in the nucleotide sequence of a gene is in a code form. When this code is read by the appropriate apparatus of the cell, a specific protein is produced. This is the role of most genes. Proteins are made of amino-acids and they are, by far, the most important functional molecules of life. They control the absorption of nutrients, the processing of fuel, the division of cells and the copying of genes, transport and defence functions, etc. It is the specific set of proteins peculiar to a cell type that contribute most to actually giving that cell its identity. Often several genes contribute to a particular protein’s structure. The complexity of function is huge e.g. 30,000 human genes may produce a million actual proteins which interact in a complex manner. Consider a gross feature of a human, such as eye colour, and one is referring to the cooperative function of many genes. If a mutation occurs in a gene caused by chemical mutagens or radiation or an error in the cellular apparatus, the protein that it codes for will also be defective and a human disease may be the result. Currently, more than 600 defective human proteins have been identified as arising from defective genes. The Human Genome Project will reveal many more. The essential focus of 199

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Being Human: The Search for Order biomedical genetic engineering research is the identification of defective genes, their protein products, and attempts to correct defects.

What do Genetic Engineers do? Gene identification, i.e. determine its nucleotide sequence and what the role of the gene is. For example, the gene for human Factor VIII codes for a protein involved in blood clotting. Defective Factor VIII causes Haemophilia. Genetic Recombination : this means isolating the gene, transferring it with or without modification into another organism and inducing expression of the gene in its new host. The DNA of the host is therefore combined with DNA from a foreign source ; the new organism is a recombinant organism and the technology is called recombinant DNA technology. The altered organism can also be called a genetically engineered or modified organism (GMO) or a transgenic organism. Agribusiness TNCs are actively producing GMOs by inserting herbicide resistance genes or genes for insecticidal proteins into plants. In biomedical research, attempts are being made to give patients correct copies of genes for which the patient is defective and this is called gene therapy. Alternatively, for example, transgenic sheep can produce human proteins e.g. -1antiprotease, in their milk. This protein is defective in some forms of human emphysema of the lung. One can then attempt the treatment of the emphysema patient by administration of correct copies of the actual protein itself as if it were a drug. Similarly, the human blood coagulation factor IX, which is defective in some forms of haemophilia, can also be produced in sheep milk. Human proteins can also be produced in plants for biomedical purposes e.g. Hepatitis B vaccine and haemoglobin for blood substitutes. Gene modification : this will alter the properties of its expression or its product. For example, such studies may be performed to investigate the function and mechanism of action of a protein. Cloning : animal cloning began in 1995 when the nucleus of a cell from a 9 day old sheep embryo was used to replace the nucleus from the egg of another sheep. The egg was implanted and the surrogate mother gave birth to a genetic replica of the sheep from whom the embryonic cells had been obtained (Megan and Morag were the names of the two sheep created by this method). In 1997 Wilmut (1998) repeated this cloning but used an ordinary tissue cell, a somatic cell, from a sheep’s udder, as the source of the nucleus. The clone was called Dolly. Whole cultured skin fibroblast cells have also been injected into empty eggs and cloned. Human cloning has not been performed yet. A new possibility arising from cloning technology is to genetically alter the somatic cells in culture and then to clone them, producing an animal with the altered genes expressed in all cells. Such technology could be used to alter genetic characteristics in pigs for example, with a view to using pig tissues for human transplantation (xenotransplantation). If human cells were cloned and the embryonic cells cultured, then these embryonic stem cells could be used to treat diseases or could be 200

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Appendix C: Genetic Technologies differentiated into tissues , also for disease treatment or transplants. Ethical issues abound in this area. A major problem faced by genetic engineers is finding satisfactory mechanisms for the actual insertion, accurately positioned, of new or altered genes into a host and the control of expression of the genes. Currently, routine gene insertion into eukaryotic (more sophisticated) cells occurs randomly and this could lead to problems of safety and control of expression; recently, the first site-specific insertion of a gene (human) into pig foetal fibroblasts was reported1 and scientists in Maynooth University have succeeded with site-specific insertion of blood factors in cultured cells. Another problem of course, are the moral concerns of a fearful and baffled society, watching from the sidelines.

Why are Genetic Engineers doing all this? a) because they can do it ! Why invent the wheel or build a windmill ? Why climb a mountain ? Why write a book ? Why play golf ? The discovery of genetic engineering technology inevitably leads to research and experimentation. In this regard, genetic engineering technology is no different than any other, e.g. solar power or information technology. Exploration is a manifestation of being alive and humans do it more than any other species. b) to make money of course. Multinational companies are planning on making billions from the biotechnological products that they fully expect genetic engineers will produce for them to sell. c) for reasons of altruism. Many scientists do want to make the world a better place by reducing human suffering and improving food production and quality. We may argue with their methods on scientific grounds but we should not always assume their motivation to be materialistic. It should be said that biotechnology in general is not new. We have been unwittingly using micro-organisms for centuries in making wine, bread, cheese and yoghurt. Plant and animal breeders have been the genetic engineers of the past. What modern genetic engineers are doing is not broadly different in principle from their predecessors. The modern methods are more specific, rapid and powerful and more accurate in some senses. However, the new technology is being used to transfer genes across species and genus barriers in a manner that no credible process of nature would achieve. This fact adds danger to the technique because the interaction of the gene with its new environment is unpredictable. In this latter sense, GM is very new and its long-term consequences are unknown.

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Subject Index act of alienation 23-4,35,50,54-5,66, 77,95,99,104,150,164,181,187 Advaita (non-dualism) 22, 64-8, 77, 92, 101, 108, 130, 144, 151, 186-9 Androgyny 13 A new kind of science (Wolfram) see Dei ex machina, iii Bell’s Theorem 22, 52, 63, 67 Bills of rights 96, 168 cargo cults, and imperialism 171 Chelyabinsk, and Lake Karchay, 13 cognitive science and psychology, 91, 92, 94 cognitive linguistics 103 cognitivism 146 Corporatism 36, 37, 42, 87, 97, 186 DDT 12 decoherence 62, see state-vector reduction DES (diethylbestrol) 12 design, industrial 82-3 stance 157-9 argument from 45, 60, 69, 125, 156-7, 188 dioxins 12, 88 dot com bubble 86 East Timor 19, 166 economic theories Keynesian 31, 58, 80, 85, 87 Marxian 24, 36, 48, 58, 59, 79, 80, 87, 93, 98, 123, 131, 184ff monetarist 31, 58, 80, 85, 87, 130, 131 and state takeover 30 physiocrat 19, 77, 80, 81 Sraffian 86

ecophilosophy 19ff, 24, 26, 185-6 anthropocentric theory 20 deep ecology 13,20,21 intrisic value theory 20 preference utilitarianism (Peter Singer) 43, 126 transpersonal ecology 11, 19, 20, 22, 26, 63, 65, 66 ecosystem 5, 42, 72, 75, 77, 89, 189 Elliot waves, see Kondratieff cycles eschatological battle 115 existentialism 109 GDP (gross domestic product) 81 global warming 13, 14, 23, 129 GMOs (genetically modified organisms) 73, 77, 78, see Appendix C GNP (gross national product) 5, 29, 80, 81 Hamlet (Shakespeare) 40, 100 “Hard Problem” of consciousness, see the explanatory gap Health, alternative therapies 90 HGP (Human Genome project) 69, 73, 78-9, 156, see Appendix C Holograms 51 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 27, 28 Internet 86 Keynesianism, see economic theories Knowledge of Angels (Walsh) 45 Kondratieff cycles 83 La Nausee (Sartre) 109 Luddism 89 Microsoft 21, 87, 89 Monetarism 31, 58, 80, 85, 130 Monsanto 15, 17-18, 78

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Name of the Rose, the (Eco) 58 organochlorides 12, 13 PAHs (polyaromatic hydrocarbons) 12-13 pan-experientialism 53 PCBs (polychlorinated biphenols) 12 Polynomial and non-polynomial problems 136 potato famine, and economic theory, 84 Process thought (AN Whitehead et al) 52ff, 68-9, 100, 132, 163ff, 188 proteome 79 Refugees 28 Relativity (special and general) 53, 59-60, 63, 68, see Appendix B retrovirus 73 Royal Dutch Shell 15, 17, 137, 139 salvation 118, 120, 163, 176, 183 Schroedinger evolution, 61, 64-5, see wave function and Appendix B Seattle protests v,1, 21, 82, 187 self, also see advaita punctual 54 cognitive 54

Sellafield 13 Seven (Fincher) 40-1 software 17 open-source software and free software, 89 State-vector reduction, 61, see wave-function ontological versus epistemological interpretation 62, 64, see Appendix B Sud (Salvatore) 48 Tay-Sachs syndrome, and “therapeutic abortion” 77, 126ff terminator gene technology 78 The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky) 123 The Comedians (Greene) 39-40 The explanatory gap 144 The Matrix (Wachowski Brothers) 129 The Verdict (Sidney Lumet) 137 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein) 58 Ulysses (Joyce) 69, 95, 105 Wave-function 22, 23, 52, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66-8, 99, 136, 162, 163, 164, 180, 187, 193, 195, see Appendix B Wintel monopoly 83 Wise Blood (O’Connor) 181 WTO (world trade organisation) 29, 34, 81, 82

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Being Human The Search For Order

Seán Ó Nualláin

This feels like a time of environmental and moral crisis without parallel.... Not only do human beings seem not believe in anything but, despite exponential advances in information production, we do not appear to know much either. This book is a guide for everyone who feels understandably perplexed. The book considers issues as diverse as: • the lure of alternative religions and belief systems • the use of the rhetoric of economics to justify amoral decisionmaking • Green politics and genetically-modified crops • New technology’s power to preserve the status quo, and • the true impetus behind the Human Genome Project. Presenting an explanation of recent findings in science and their relationship with society and politics, the book seeks to give guidance towards responsible political action. Starting from themes developed in the companion volume The Search for Mind, the author attempts to provide intellectual roots for the ‘anti-capitalist’ or ‘anti-globalization’ movement and, in particular, treats social protest as a form of knowledge-seeking. The author brings to very topical and controversial concerns some much-needed clarity. Complete with reader-friendly summaries of current thought in the biological, physical, and social sciences, this book is designed primarily for the popular market but will also appeal to those working or studying in these fields. Author Seán Ó Nualláin is a visiting scholar at Stanford University and the Managing Director of Nous Research. He has written and edited five books in the area of cognitive science. He also works professionally as a folk and jazz guitarist. ‘The emerging science of consciousness needs to listen to this voice in order to keep alive the hope of humanizing modern science.’ Jacob Needleman (author of The American Soul)

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