By nature, I am a political progressive moderate

However, I see the merits both of conservatism (preserve the things of the past that are valuable) and radicalism (improve things that can be improved). What I don't like is the hypocrisy and cynical dishonesty of many people who claim to stand for one of those positions and the emotional oversimplification that polarizes even more.

What is the world made of?

According to theoretical physicist Matt Strassler, "Today, if one wants to talk about the world in the context of our modern viewpoint, one can speak first and foremost of the “fields and their particles.” It is the fields that are the basic ingredients of the world, in today’s widely dominant paradigm."

Common Core mathematics principles

The Standards mandate that eight principles of mathematical practice be taught: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. Reason abstractly and quantitatively. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. Model with mathematics. Use appropriate tools strategically. Attend to precision. Look for and make use of structure. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

Wisdom

Wisdom is an effective theory of life, a coherent set of beliefs that are relatively harmonious with objective reality. Wise people are the most consistently effective human beings (in terms of achieving their goals and having a beneficial impact on self and others) because they best understand the human condition and are working with the most accurate maps of the world. Characteristics of wise people: They are continual students of life, concerned with truth above all else, always willing to modify their beliefs to conform with reality. They are honestly humble, recognizing their limitations as well as their strengths. They are compassionate. They care about self and others. They consider all people to have intrinsic value. They show respect for everyone. They judge behavior and attitude objectively. They do not make ultimate judgments about individuals. They are forgiving of self and others. They are generous, teaching at every opportunity. They do not claim absolute understanding. They do not claim entitlement. They do not claim infallibility. They acknowledge mistakes and errors. They are not attached to fame, status, wealth, or material objects of desire. They know their own emotions. They do not take other people's actions or twists of fate personally. They understand power and use it with discernment mindful of the likely effects it will have. They do not indulge in hatred.

Mythical stories as anchors

Human beings do not like uncertainty. They find it anxiety provoking. Unfortunately, our limited ability to predict the future leaves us in a continual state of uncertainty. To cope with this, we humans often believe things are more certain than they truly are.

Things that change noticeably

In English and many other languages, verbs, of course, describe the action (or endurance over time) of nouns. The sentence "Ralph bit the mailman." summarizes the most important features of a complex unfolding event pretty nicely. Sentences of this sort are very useful in conveying information that allows us coordinate our efforts by calling our attention to important circumstances. They also tell stories, one of the most important human activities. People love stories. Stories help us cope by entertaining us and giving meaning to our lives. A good story teller is greatly valued in human society. When we remember something that happened in the past, most of the time we are repeating a story we've taught ourselves. Long term memory is largely a collection of narrative stories, experiences transferred into words. Research has demonstrated that our narrative stories drift away from the original events they are intended to preserve. For this reason, eyewitness testimony is known to be highly suspect. If two people looking at a video of a sports play see two entirely different things, what about the case where there isn't a recording?

Abstract concepts

"I'm going to the store to pick up a bottle of truth." "OK, would you pick me up a few cans of happiness while you're there?"

Things that don't change very quickly or obviously

Nouns may be thought of as words denoting objects, structures that endure. The sentence "I have a dog named Ralph." indicates I perceive an enduring identity in the ever-changing sensory experience of my pet. I am able to distinguish Ralph from my wife and children, my home furnishings and other dogs. Any yet Ralph, the dog, like every other object in the universe, is a dynamic energy system that in fact does not have a static, unchanging existence. The category of dog and the continuity of existence of Ralph, a particular dog, are linguistic abstractions that give me to believe in their reality as objects in the world. More accurately, like Platonic ideal forms, they are categorical objects in my psyche, the dynamic cognitive process producing my perception of reality. Nouns, like language itself, are our means of simplifying the complexity of the unfolding energy system we experience as the world. Simplifying the world allows us to organize our behavior and environment, and to develop skills improving our chances of survival. By creating a simplified mental world, we do better in the more complex physical one. All words depend upon our capacity for pattern recognition. We apply the pattern in our amazing cognitive process to incoming perceptual data to experience objects as enduring solid structures rather than dynamic flowing energy systems.

The grandeur of the universe

The universe wherein we (the) humans operate is grand beyond our ability to describe. It's very existence is an incomprehensible mystery. One of the most amazing phenomena among the countless wonders is our own consciousness, our ability to observe and reflect on our own presence in the world, our self-awareness. The everyday, undeniable capacity to know what we perceive has perplexed the brightest human minds and challenged the most intelligent and determined philosophers and scientists. It has allowed us to invent technologies that revolutionize our lives over and over. Objective contemplation of the universe using our powers of consciousness should make us extremely humble, even in regard to our own achievements, discoveries and inventions. And, yet, for the most part, consciousness has led us to greatly overestimate our own importance.

How important are we humans? That is a question of judgment, a matter of opinion and faith. There is no correct answer other than to say we are as important as we believe we are. Importance is merely an expression of human cognition, just as grandeur, amazement, wonder, every opinion, and awareness itself are such expressions. There is no scientific evidence we are any more important than anything else we know about, than rocks, trees, sand, snakes, birds, or cosmic radiation.

The winners

Humility is the beginning of wisdom.

"In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of "world history"—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die." Nietzsche

Matthew 18: At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (NIV)

I am a very fortunate human being. In spiritual terms I am blessed. I've managed to live 64 years as a citizen of the USA, to enjoy remarkable health, and have a successful career as a clinical psychologist. My parents were kind and intelligent people who lived comfortably for 89 and 98 years respectively including 65 years of happy marriage. I've been married for 36 years to a wonderful, high achieving woman with whom I have three grown daughters, all beautiful, talented, college educated women with good values and enviable professions. I've got good friends who care about me. I've traveled extensively in the US as well as to Europe and Africa. I've had the opportunity to pursue my passion for playing the guitar and performing with bands and even as a solo artist for appreciative audiences. I do not lack for anything of importance and I have the freedom to determine for myself how I wish to spend the rest of my life, however long it may be. If I die today I will have no complaints or serious regrets.

On a small scale, I am one of the winners in the world game. In my  view of things, all of the blessings I listed do not make me better or worse than any other human being. I've benefitted from having good genes, being born into favorable circumstances, and developing an approach to life that allowed me to build upon the cards I was dealt and gradually to gain a degree of understanding. My goal is to convey that understanding, provisional though it is, in writing in hopes someone else reads and benefits from it.

The world game

The world game is a term I coined to describe the participation of individuals in the global system of interlocking cultures. Advances in technology have brought the myriad local cultures of the world into increasing relationship, allowing individual players to move through time and space with greater freedom to engage outside their home culture. On a global scale societies have become increasingly interconnected and  interdependent.

The term world game reflects the idea that human beings overvalue the importance of their own species and view their culturally conditioned perceptions as reality when in fact humans are simply a small expression of the creativity of the vast unfolding universe of matter and energy. The development of language resulted in verbal constructions that evolved into culturally conditioned belief systems (e.g., religions, ideologies, ethnic and national identities) exerting powerful control over the behavior of individuals and groups in ways invisible to all but a small number of wise persons who recognize the arbitrary limits (blinders) language and belief systems place on our experiences. With very few exceptions, everyone who learns a human language becomes a player in the world game. The isolated human societies who have refused to join in the game are in danger of extinction.

Belief systems produce polarization between different teams (groups of all sizes) and within teams, making it difficult for individuals to recognize that commonalities among individuals and groups are far greater than differences. Manipulation of individuals and groups by skilled and motivated players who lack wisdom produces, exacerbates, and/or maintains many of the species' greatest problems (war, poverty, hatred, disease including addictions, pollution, climate change). Recognition of the basics of the world game puts individuals in a position to develop wisdom, thereby facilitating optimal freedom, competence, and the positive impact of their lives on their species.

Fritz Joubert Duquesne

Another interesting character from history: soldier, spy, big game hunter, prevaricator.

Captain Hermann Bottcher

I often engage in random research on weekend mornings, taking advantage of the web to follow rabbit tracks of information. Today, an item on Ebay, a British Solomon Islands stamp commemorating the Guadalcanal Campaign of WW2, led me to reading about the Kokoda Trail (or Track) Campaign in defense of Port Moresby against a Japanese invasion force. In the accounts of the campaign, I found the story of Hermann Bottcher, naturalized US citizen of German birth, anti-Fascist soldier of the famed Abraham Lincoln Brigade fighting against the fascist forces of Francisco Franco, and hero of the Battle of Buna-Gona (19 Nov 1942- 2 Jan 1943). 

A memorial web site about Captain Bottcher was created by Steven T. Martin who researched Bottcher and contacted veterans who served with him. Tributes included a poem by John Rossen and a painting by Pierre Daura, both of whom knew him in Spain.

Transition

I'm in the midst of a period of transition from active successful professional to retired financially secure citizen. I'm revisiting virtually everything. Nothing is written in stone, all options are on the table. How fortunate I am to be in this position, to have freedom and the means to determine how I will live.

Flexor tendinitis

The next step is probably surgery since I've already had two injections in my left ring finger.

Finished "Zero K"

Best review I've read.

Constraints revisited (again)

We operate within the limits of our resources, our capabilities, our understanding, what's permitted and what we permit ourselves.

Frozen bodies

If a person arranges to be frozen after death with the expectation of being brought back to life later, I presume the person is considered legally dead. If that person is successfully revivified later on, what is his or her legal status? My lawyer friend, Laura Taylor, tells me the law will not be made until a case comes up.

Rocks are

I have a thing for rocks. Holding a rock is a simple and powerful form of meditation. A rock is common, solid, primordial, enduring. Rocks are the embodiment of truth.

A key passage in Zero K describes a visit to a gallery where a large space is devoted to one object, a boulder. A large rock. Jeffrey, the aimless, obsessive-compulsive narrator, quotes Heidegger on being and existence. The visit to see the rock is intended to open something in Emma's adoptive son, Stak, who has announced he will no longer go to school and is in the process of withdrawing from life.

My identity

The common sense way to define who you are is by listing demographics.  "My name is Owen Scott, III, or William Owen Nixon Scott, III, to give the entire thing. I am almost 64 years old, I am a white male citizen of the USA" and so on. If I give my date of birth, home address, and social security number, in a very real way I am specifying who I am. Owen Scott, III is formally who I am in civilized life, who I am to the government of the USA and the State of Louisiana, to banks, to companies who track my movements online. This information pins me down as if it were the coordinates of my body in time and space, the way a butterfly is pinned to a spot in a display box. But what does it not say about me?  What is left out? And is this the most valid way to define me? Or to define anyone?

Of course it isn't. All of the attributes I listed are language concepts used to create the story of our lives. The best way to define me and everyone else is to say a person is a type of animal and an animal is an incredibly complex, creative expression of an amazing biological process that somehow came into being millions of years ago on a certain planet. I, Owen Scott, III, am a current manifestation of a 3 billion year long, unfolding life process embedded in the biosphere of a certain planet, itself an ancient, unfolding energy system. My social identity is a fiction, a character created in order to fit into the predominant story line of my culture. Owen Scott, III, is my icon in the world game.

Note on Elon Musk's theology

You can't get to the creator of the simulation if you're in the simulation.

How does the concept of "self" develop?

What does research tell us?

How to measure Qualitative Attachment to Identity (QIA)?

Jeffrey

DeLillo's narrator is passive-aggressive, angry because he can't have his way, refusing to accept reality, a dedicated victim. Everything is about him. The universe really should revolve around me but it doesn't.

What is the role of shame in QAI (qualitative attachment to identity)? Does the neurotic vs character disorder dichotomy have a place?

Shame is a primary experience, the unlearned emotional response to humiliation that says "What happened is about me- I'm not good enough." Every one of us experiences this repeatedly from a very early age. Primary shame apparently is "wired in" and functions to motivate people to avoid humiliation, typically by surrendering to power and conforming to societal norms. The more "normal" one can appear, the less likely one will be singled out for some form of punishment or ridicule. Secondary shame is a learned response manifested in thoughts, behaviors and emotions reflecting the belief one is not good enough, bad or worthless.

A common strategy to avoid shame is to present oneself as strong and unconcerned, to hide any signs of "weakness," that is, that one is vulnerable and has needs. Many societies encourage this attitude. Many sanction the handling of children who are not controlled adequately through shaming by inflicting punishments such as beatings and scoldings.

Sidman avoidance: We become conditioned to avoid shame early on. It's pervasive, powerful influence over our personalities is profound and yet for the most part it's invisible and we are not conscious of how it is controlling us.

Inability to see oneself objectively is a feature of narcissistic attachment. Persons who have developed narcissistic QAI have no mirrors. These persons believe they are better and more important than others, thus making them entitled to special privileges and outcomes. Does this reflect fragility of the self-concept (underlying shame) or is it a sort of cognitive deficit?

Personalities traditionally termed "neurotic" or "anxious" reflect  sensitivity to  and overt concern about various possible negative outcomes to self- fear of making mistakes, fear of inadequacy, fear of negative evaluation, fear of illness and death. Does the traditional neurotic vs character disorder dichotomy have validity? Is it more accurate to think in terms of three types of QAI, neurotic, narcissistic and enlightened?

For persons living in advanced societies, reaching a healthy or enlightened QAI is achieved through grappling with and coming to terms with shame. This is properly understood as a learning process- we learn about ourselves and human life. The process begins with being humiliated so that primary shame is triggered, like a fearsome monster that leaps out from the shadows. The most natural response to this is a sinking feeling of defeat, anguishing pain and an intuitive perception that one is inadequate, worthless and/or bad. Because it happens early on, we lack the cognitive development to see that what is actually happening is, we are discovering our limitations.

Many suffer with shame throughout life never realizing that limitation is the universal human condition. Everyone is inadequate and no one is good enough. We are all in the same boat. Moreover, everyone is vulnerable to being hurt physically and emotionally. Acceptance of ones limitations as natural and inevitable is one necessary condition of healthy QAI. Along with this comes the realization that everyone is needy and vulnerable, there's no way to be completely safe. The second necessary condition is to believe that everyone matters despite being inadequate, that each and every life is valuable and none is more valuable than any other.

What are the flaws in the classical liberal (libertarian) philosophy?

“There’s something about libertarians where working as a team is inconsistent with the whole concept of being a libertarian.”  Warren Redlich, 2010 Libertarian candidate for governor of New York.

1) Celebrates a self-centered 'every man for himself' ethic while underestimating human interdependency
2) Overestimates our ability to control outcomes through force of will
3) Overvalues ownership of personal property and wealth
4) Undervalues compassion and generosity
5) Requires universal agreement in a community in order to work but fails to foster a sense of community
6) Reflects an immature view of human life

Looking for critiques of libertarianism, I found this interesting one from a Republican blogger and political consultant. His points are very similar to mine, especially that the philosophy has no power to create a community.

The Stenmark twins’ questions

From "Zero K" by Don DeLillo

“There are questions of course.”

“Once we master life extension and approach the possibility of becoming ever renewable, what happens to our energies, our aspirations? The social institutions we’ve built?”

“Are we designing a future culture of lethargy and self-indulgence?”

“Isn’t death a blessing? Doesn’t it define the value of our lives, minute to minute, year to year?”

“Isn’t it sufficient to live a little longer through advanced technology? Do we need to go on and on?”

“Does literal immortality compress our enduring artforms and cultural wonders into nothingness?”

“What will poets write about?”

“What happens to history? What happens to money? What happens to God?”

“Won’t we become a planet of the old and stooped, tens of billions with toothless grins?”

“What about those who die? What about the others? There will always be others. Why should some keep living while others die?”

“What good are we if we live forever?”

“What ultimate truth will we confront?”

“Isn’t the sting of our eventual dying what makes us precious to the people in our lives?”

“What does it mean to die?” “Where are the dead?”

“When do you stop being who you are?”

“What happens to war?”

“Will all traditional limits begin to disappear?”

“But we reject these questions. They miss the point of our endeavor. We want to stretch the boundaries of what it means to be human- stretch and then surpass. We want to do whatever we are capable of doing in order to alter human thought and bend the energies of civilization.”

 “Death is a tough habit to break.”

Implications of my concept of QAI

 Qualitative attachment to identity is postulated to reflect psychological health or dysfunction. My theory predicts people higher on a scale of enlightened identity attachment will function better over time and generate a ripple effect of positive outcomes while people higher in narcissistic identity attachment will function less well over time and generate a ripple of negative outcomes. EIA is incompatible with religious fundamentalism. To believe one religion is correct and all others are wrong one must fail to understand the nature of language, the foundation upon which fundamentalism rests. Belief in a transcendent creator, on the other hand, is fully compatible with EIA.

The world of the Pirahã

According to the person in the best position to know, the Amazonian Pirahã tribe practices a radical empiricism where mindfulness of the present is the only thing of importance. Their language system and culture pokes holes in the dogma of Chomsky's psycholinguistic theory, opening up possibilities of greater understanding of language and culture.

The expert, Dan Everett, former missionary and academic linguist, wrote that "recursion is primarily a cognitive, not a linguistic, trait. He cited an influential 1962 article, “The Architecture of Complexity,” by Herbert Simon, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, cognitive psychologist, and computer scientist, who asserted that embedding entities within like entities (in a recursive tree structure of the type central to Chomskyan linguistics) is simply how people naturally organize information. “Microsoft Word is organized by tree structures,” Everett said. “You open up one folder and that splits into two other things, and that splits into two others. That’s a tree structure. Simon argues that this is essential to the way humans organize information and is found in all human intelligence systems. If Simon is correct, there doesn’t need to be any specific linguistic principle for this because it’s just general cognition.” Or, as Everett sometimes likes to put it: “The ability to put thoughts inside other thoughts is just the way humans are, because we’re smarter than other species.” Everett says that the Pirahã have this cognitive trait but that it is absent from their syntax because of cultural constraints."

Muhammad Ali and Joan Scott Lowe

Two great lives, one known to everyone and one known only to a fortunate few.

Notes on DeLillo "Zero K"

If suddenly you were given the choice to either live forever in your body while staying able and healthy or live out your natural life until death, and you had to decide immediately, would you say yes or no? The perpetuation of human life, health and youth is an old idea. (Elysian fields, Christian and Muslim heavenly rewards, Fountain of Youth, Portrait of Dorian Gray).

I’m currently reading the novel Zero K by Don DeLillo. The narrator, Jeffrey, is the son of Ross Lockhart, a fabulously wealthy man who is immersing himself and his resources in a secret project to perfect the technology of freezing human bodies immediately after death so they may eventually be revived to life, like Lazarus after Jesus raised him from the dead.

embarked on (by underwriting and overseeing) obsessive

The first part of the novel covers Jeffrey arriving at the remote location of the Zero K complex, perhaps in the desert of Uzbekistan. His step-mother, Artis, an archaeologist, is dying of MS and has elected to be frozen to await scientific and technological developments allowing her to be revived and cured. Ross announces to Jeffrey, he, too, will be frozen at the same time, even though he is healthy and has a significant life expectancy ahead. Jeffrey is horrified and enraged at this idea which in essence is an assisted suicide, something the major religions of Islam, Christianity and Hinduism, for a start, would find unacceptable. Ross backs out at the last minute and Jeffrey, paradoxically, views the decision as selfish and cowardly, something beneath the dignity of an iconic man like his father.

As a small child, I learned in Sunday School the story of Elijah being taken up to heaven in a whirlwind as a chariot of fire drawn by fiery horses appears. Struck with fear of dying, I thought to myself 'That's what I want, too!' The desire for continued life without having to taste death is intuitive for most of us (any child would go for this idea) but for a mature adult, what is the appeal of living eternally in a human body? Or maintaining continuity of self and knowledge with the body replaced by some kind of technology?

What's behind our fear of death? Is it the fear of not being? The unwillingness to part with what we know and have? Or the fear of confronting God? Or attachment to ones identity? Or fear of the unknown? The desire for a secure, happy certainty? Just the natural will to survive? All of the above plus? The desire for immortality through technology appears to reflect lack of faith in the universe and/or God. However, the desire to press the limits of human knowledge and capability does not, the Tower of Babel myth notwithstanding.

The narrator calls the Stenmark brothers “adventurers.” They have the mindset of modern artists as described by Alva Noë, the author of “Strange Tools,” whose guided tour of SF MOMA we took. Their goals are to disrupt habitual, rigid ways of thinking and perceiving self and world and to discover what they’re capable of.

In case I go down in flames (Qualitative Attachment to Identity theory)

I was aboard an American Airlines flight from Dallas to Baton Rouge today heading into thunderstorms and it occurred to me should the plane go down, the notes I wrote today about the pursuit of physical immortality and the problems of attachment to identity would probably be destroyed and never seen by my survivors or anyone else. Hence, my next post will be what I have so far in rough draft form. I expect to edit and extend this piece but it's out there now, protected against my sudden demise. It also occurred to me, btw, that with Mary Lou on the plane, too, my children would not only inherit considerable wealth but they would add to that the proceeds from a lawsuit against AA.

Below are fundamental concepts and assumptions of my understanding of human life.

Let's begin with the classic psychological concept of personality. The personality is a property of individual adaptation, an enduring, dynamic pattern of thought, emotion and action that might be described as an individual's survival style. The existence of personality can only be inferred through observation over time so that recurring patterns may be reliably measured. The variability of personality is immense.

An implicit belief in the value of self is necessary to motivate survival. If I don’t matter, why should I take care of myself? Self-care is necessary for survival. The psychological forces that drive us to survive are visceral, below the level of conscious cognition. How you pursue self-care, however, depends greatly upon a critical element of personality, ones identity, your definition of who you are. The development of identity takes place within a culture that necessarily shapes the process. The line of least resistance here is to accept what one is taught, to absorb the cultural assumptions, and arrive at conclusions early on that may never be revisited.

Now I will introduce my original idea: Qualitative attachment to identity (QAI), a bipolar trait dimension of personality reflecting healthy or unhealthy attachment to identity. I call the healthy end of this hypothetical construct enlightened attachment. The unhealthy end is anchored by narcissistic attachment.

Virtually all people define themselves too narrowly, failing to appreciate the richness and vast potential of the psyche, an old term meaning the total cognitive process creating individual consciousness. In effect, each of us develops a cartoon image of self and believes it is an accurate representation. Therefore, I speak of attachment to identity rather than attachment to self. Of course, our ideas of others are also cartoons except generally even cruder, like stick figures drawn by preschoolers.

It's possible to question the assumptions we've internalized. Some individuals are prone to do this from an early age. Others have the experience of awakening or being awakened by a teacher, a trauma or an epiphany at some point in the course of life. Paul on the road to Damascus. Buddha seeing poverty and death. 

Passionate engagement is the ideal dynamic state of the individual human life. It is a necessary (though not sufficient) element of optimal functioning.

Narcissistic attachment to our identity is characterized by indicators or symptoms:

-Need for status

-Need for self-importance

-Fear of injury, illness, emotional and physical pain and death

-Need for the illusion of control

-Narcissism (I am more important than everyone else; I am right and everyone else is wrong)

-Ethnocentrism (My country, race, religion, party, state, team, family is better than all others and has entitlement to what we want and need)

-Selective compassion (only people like me deserve sympathy and preference)

-Others’ actions are taken personally

-Resentment (victim/martyr complex)

-Paranoia

-Hate

-Possessiveness

-Projection of disowned qualities

-Rejection of disowned qualities

-Cognitive exclusivity

Enlightened attachment is also discerned by observing indicators:

-Belief in the value of everyone (intellectual belief vs. emotional belief)

-Acceptance of personal limitations (including lack of control and the inevitability of illness, injury, pain and death)

-Universal compassion

-Pancentrism (respecting and understanding the diversity of human cultures and beliefs)

-Affirmation of conservatism and progressivism as both being valuable and necessary attitudes

-Generosity with time, knowledge and possessions-

-Stewardship

-Ownership of all human qualities (e.g., aggression, sexuality and tendency toward narcissism).

-Cognitive inclusivity

-Others’ actions are not taken personally