Archive for July, 2011
One With Everything?
Posted by Scott Erb in Philosophy, Religion, Science and philosophy, Spirituality, Values on July 24, 2011
Picking up pizzas at a local market I watched as the woman in front of me, exceedingly fat though otherwise attractive, paid nearly $200 for a couple cartons of cigarettes. Wow! I was contemplating how glad I am I don’t smoke as I walked out with the pizzas, and saw the woman go into her car with someone I presumed was her mother. The mom was also extremely fat, and the car had a handicapped parking symbol hanging on the mirror. Starting my car I said to myself, “life could be a whole lot worse, I could be one of them!”
Then a thought came to me. Maybe I am. I spent the ride home having a conversation with myself about that philosophical possibility. What if every person or every entity we encounter (or perhaps exists in history) is part of the same larger whole? What if we are one with everything, even though we experience reality as separate beings?
This isn’t a new idea. Eastern religions and neo-Platonist thought (especially Plotinus) put forth the existence of “The One” which was essentially that. We experience difference and separation because we operate from different perspectives. Moreover, it’s really not that hard to envision how that could be.
We know that space-time is an entity that seems to have come “into existence” at the big bang. What’s outside space-time cannot be imaged. Our minds are so shaped by the idea of space and time that to imagine something outside of it — existing in no space at no time — is impossible. That doesn’t mean nothing can exist outside space-time, only that it is beyond even our wildest imagination to figure out what it would be like — I defy anyone to craft a vision of reality that includes neither space nor time (and since space-time is one thing, having just one means you have both).
So if some kind of entity (for lack of a better term) existed beyond space time, it could create a space-time universe. Space-time allows one to experience reality as separate chunks. Instead of being “everywhere all the time” (again, we can’t imagine that outside realm) you can experience reality in discrete places at discrete times. Every location in space-time is different, often distant and not visible to other such locations. If an entity outside space-time created space-time in order to experience such difference, then it’s perfectly logical to assume that it could operate from multiple perspectives to experience reality in diverse ways.
What the “self” (a discrete space-time entity like us) experiences seems to be all we know because we are focused on this perspective. Some part of our brain or mind has to concentrate itself into this moment of space-time with laser like precision in order to be immersed in this reality, the world of space-time. If any part of what we are knows about the greater whole (should this fanciful theory be anywhere close to accurate) it would be deep in our unconscious, expressing itself with symbols or intuitions. To use a crude analogy, it would be like how each cell in our bodies (or every thought and memory in our heads) is separate and distinct, but still part of each one of us individual space-time creatures.
This isn’t that hard to imagine. But what does it mean? For instance, is Anders Behring Breivik, the right wing fundamentalist Christian who acted in a very non-Christian manner yesterday to explode a massive bomb in Oslo, Norway, really a part of me? Well, I can imagine that. That part of me who in a fit of anger would want to lash out (Send a missile into that car ahead of me that just cut me off! Let that irritating politician from the other side be drawn and quartered! Take a stadium of Nazi war criminals and make them suffer!), would simply be acting out on such an impulse. The layer between a fantasy of violence and the act of violence is immense and meaningful, but one can easily imagine circumstances where it can disappear — we read about it every day. In the right conditions, any of us might be pushed to the limit. Its not that these folk are fundamentally different from us, but that they turn impulses we easily restrain or even repress into reality.
In fact, if we look deep inside and recognize our weakest and strongest moments, our wildest fantasies, curiosities or disgusts, we would have to admit that something in our minds connects to the very best and the very worst of all humanity has experienced. Almost all of us can avoid murder, rape, and grotesque perversions of humanity at its worst; most of us are unable to attain the goodness, calm nature and joyful serenity and help/love of both self and others that defines humanity at its best. But if we search inside, isn’t there a stray thought, impulse or moment of extreme weakness where we can imagine at least the possibility of doing evil? It’s in us, somewhere — good and evil.
That doesn’t mean the “one with everything” theory is correct, but we can imagine it could be. In fact, I submit it is more congruent with what we know about modern physics than a purely materialist vision of reality. But if we take seriously the possibility, what would that mean? What does it mean that I am really part of the same entity as those cigarette smoking extremely large women in that car (and why do fat people tend to drive slow?)
The ethical implication would be that whatever I do to others, I do to part of myself. It might also mean that my larger self (Ueber-Self? All that is? Pan-God?) grows and improves as humanity grows and improves. Perhaps the purpose of this existence (these existences) is to, divided out into space and time, work on learning and improving what we are. If that’s the case, life isn’t just about self-improvement, but also about working to create a better world. Each individual self can only do a little, but can make a difference. Ethics, then would be about making choices that help others learn (be it learning to be more self-reliant and responsible, or overcoming a violent angry nature) as well as ourselves.
Of course, we could just be here to have fun — a kind of cosmic virtual reality game like I’ve started to imagine in my quantum life posts. In that case, a key is not to get sucked into living a life that one doesn’t love and appreciate and to figure out how to make the most of a situation.
I suspect it’s a mix of both. Our goal to learn and improve probably has meaning beyond that which we can imagine, but can be seen at least symbolically by what seems “good” and “evil” in this life. There seems to be considerable agreement on the basics of those concepts. The goal to enjoy it probably speaks to how we have to attain a kind of self-mastery in order to take responsibility for our own choices and lives before we can truly play a positive role in making the world a better place. Moreover, there do seem to be different types of people — doers, thinkers, followers, leaders, sufferers, perpetrators…perhaps people are in roles reflecting particular parts of the larger self, with different goals and possibilities.
Or maybe not. Driving home, smelling pizza on a warm summer day with the windows down, it does feel like I’m one with everything. A sense of connection overwhelms the since of difference. But that all could be fantasy. Lacking certain knowledge of what this world is about — what life really means — seems to be an inherent part of life as a mortal human. The good news is that this leaves us free to speculate and play with ideas, no matter how unlikely or strange!
Goodbye, Borders!
Posted by Scott Erb in Consumerism, Culture, Economics on July 23, 2011
My facebook status update today: “Idea for a remake of ‘You’ve Got Mail.’ Tom Hanks is going out of business from his big box book store, while Meg Ryan is running a successful web based downloading service. (Goodbye, Borders!)”
Border’s books, one of the premier original “big box” book stores, is going out of business nation wide. On the one hand, this isn’t exceptional. Large even legendary stores like Montgomery Wards and Circuit City have closed, and throughout the Midwest once prosperous steel and factory towns have lost out as the US manufacturing sector steadily declined to below 10% in the last 35 years. Success today does not insure success tomorrow.
Yet what I find interesting in this is what it says about our reading habits. Last night I was in Barnes and Nobles, in Augusta, Maine. I like going to book stores, especially the ‘big box’ stores that have a wide variety of titles. Often there is a pleasant surprise — this time I found They Fight Like Soldiers, they Die like Children, by Romeo Dallaire. Besides the fact I admire Dallaire for his work in documenting the Rwanda genocide, I co-teach a course on “Children and War,” and this may end up a perfect text for it.
In fact, some of the most powerful books I’ve read — War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges, Before the Deluge by Otto Friedrich and The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene were found exploring that store. I try to buy books locally — we have a great small bookstore downtown, and I ran across the Fall of an Empire book about Attila the Hun by Christopher Kelly there. But the laws of probability state that you’re more likely to run across a book you want when the supply is large, so I still enjoy trips to Barnes and Nobles. The coffee isn’t bad either.
Yet more and more people are not only ordering books from on line websites like Amazon, but they’re downloading material for their Kindle or Nook. In a small device you can store hundreds (thousands?) of books to have with you at all times. Screens are getting easier to read too, especially for devices made solely for electronic reading.
Some people decry the loss of the book — the nice leather (or paper) bound set of pages you can skim through, hold in your hand, mark up, and keep on the bedstand. The book seems under violent attack from electronic media which seek to replace our romantic attachment to the printed word with cold bits and bytes, pages on a screen that are transient and sterile.
The book, of course, got to its position through violence — it has not always been the innocent victim it now appears to be. It came on the scene and challenged the tradition of oral histories and stories. Once we had vast memories and communities learned their past and their traditions in a way that could only be passed down by word of mouth. The printed page — cold and inhuman, just words on paper put there by a movable type press — banished our human memories and the social nature of reciting and singing our histories and traditions to the past. Who needs a memory if you can look it up? Who needs community if your knowledge is personal?
And while I enjoy strolling through bookstores (and stores in general), I’ve slowly become convinced that online shopping can be good, for books and other merchandise. I resisted it for a long time. I like to go to the store, compare items and mull it over. I sometimes leave the store, drive around, think about my potential purchase, maybe stop somewhere else, and then finally buy it (or not). I like to see, feel and hold what I’m going to buy, to know the item I am giving up my money to purchase. To click an image on the computer, give my credit card number and then have it sent seems a gamble. Am I sure I want it? Is it what it appears to be?
Yet living in rural Maine offers limited shopping possibilities. Walmart is fine for supplies like every day items, and basic electronics (Target is better, though that’s in Augusta), but good, enjoyable shopping requires at least a trip to Augusta, and probably to Portland. With kids along its not easy to ponder potential purchases. Living in rural Maine used to really limit shopping options; with the internet, as long as you can accept not being in the store, you’ve got the same kind of choice as someone in New York or Boston.
Beyond that, teaching at a university in rural Maine at one point meant very limited research options for students. The library is small and under funded, and to get journal articles one has to travel to one of the private schools or the campus in Orono (the system’s research university). Inter-library loan improved things, but now you can go on line and with data bases and other resources, have access to more than all but the top research universities used to have available. In fact, many professors are assigning web sights or articles from data bases rather than buying text books. This is hitting text book publishers and university book stores, while also lowering costs for students. I still order books, as for my classes as I haven’t found suitable replacement material on the web…yet.
The hard part about electronic books and buying via Amazon is that you have to know what you’re looking for. It’s not as easy to “browse” Amazon, or to page through a book, jumping from one section to another. And that’s the trouble with the information revolution. Unless you know what you’re looking for, you’re limited. One can’t aimlessly browse, at least not as easily. I like going to a store and just browsing, finding items I might never have known existed, or books I hadn’t heard of before.
So there’s more information out there, but we have to know what we’re looking for. Back 40 years ago there was a lot less news, but it was packaged so that the most important stories were put forth, and people could browse through the newspapers for what interested them. Now we choose our websites, perhaps slanted to the left or right (or to sports and entertainment) and might miss the big stories, or the interesting tidbits we’d run across browsing. That’s a small price to pay for the increased knowledge at our finger tips. Missing out on Borders is a small price for the ease of Amazon and access to just about every book one could buy. I can’t browse Blockbusters anymore, but I can search netflix. It is overall better. Still, there’ something lost when something’s gained.
Worth $50,000
For the last eight years we’ve had a constant family expense that is about to come to an end: day care. Two children starting at three months of age, up until Kindergarten cost just about $50,000 over the eight year period. The oldest was done a few years ago (I’m not including cost of summer camps or after school activities), the youngest will be done in a couple weeks.
When we first started sending the oldest to day care, I was a bit uncertain if this was best. The conventional wisdom is that it’s better for the children to be at home, with a mother or a father. Boy, was I wrong!
Don’t get me wrong — we have fun with the kids, and I enjoy playing and teaching them things. But isolating individual children with one parent is, I believe, unnatural. Think about it. Through most of human history communities survived through hard work by men and women. Children were raised by families, but when work was being done they were most often playing together being watched by women whose job it was to care for children in the community. Other women had to sew, cook, or whatever it was that women did in that particular tribe or culture. Life for humans in much of history was communal, people didn’t isolate themselves into nuclear family units. Since we don’t have extended family in the area, staying home with either of us would have been isolating.
When I pick up Dana (youngest son) he’s usually got mud all over him (in summer), laughing, running around with his friends there, not really wanting to leave. There is no way I could provide him that much fun — not only do I have to work, clean house, and take care of errands, but I’m not a five year old. He’s socializing, dealing with peers, and learning.
To be sure, I did plan to remove him earlier this summer to selfishly do more stuff with the boys. Our geothermal installation required me to pick up extra income (I’ve got another blog post on that coming soon) so I am teaching two on line courses and doing a program review. I hope by early August to be done and then have a few weeks of family time before school starts.
It does matter what kind of child care facility you choose. We’re lucky to be at a university with an outstanding Early Childhood Education program and a nationally certified day care center. Not only are they on campus (so I can stop by or see the kids outside playing) but there are so many student workers (many earning credit) that the kids get lots of attention. We decided that a center rather than a private home was best (it better offers a true communal setting), and were careful in choosing where to send them.
Both kids learned to walk early (9 months) in part because they saw other kids walking and were trying to keep up. They’ve had science experiments, hikes to a pond, a little work shop with hammer, nails and woods (and safety goggles), and loads of books. They’ve raised catepillars into butterflies, caught frogs, dressed up in customs, played little musical instruments, had field trips to the library, and built cities with blocks and toy cars. Days were filled with social play, mud, sand, and lots of laughter. In winter they played in the snow, pulled each other on sleds, and built snowmen and snow castles. Neither child went in with difficulty or expressed a desire not to go — it was fun.
With Dana starting kindergarten in September that era — and that expense — will be gone. But it was worth it. There is no way I could have given them the quality of experience and learning they received, even if I’d quit my job and stayed home. Not everyone can afford such an expense — that averages out to about $6,000 a year, but at its peak it was around $8,000 when both were going. Some parents can’t stand the idea of other people “raising” their children. We made a point to have quality evenings and weekends, and I feel as close a relationship to my sons as I can imagine anyone feeling. While understandable, the fear that others will “raise” the kids is unwarranted.
So parents out there — don’t feel pressure to quit your job or think you’re somehow doing something wrong if you have to send your children to day care. Take time to pick out a good one — stop by and be involved — and make sure the non-work time gets filled with quality interactions. But day care is the natural way children were raised, it’s how they learn to interact with others, problem solve, and develop autonomous identities. It’s not that parents can’t do this on their own — with siblings, an extended family and lots of friends, it’s certainly possible. But as I reflect on the last eight years and recall that I had a bit of guilt and uncertainty when we had to send the kids to day care, I realize in retrospect that I was way off base. It was good for our careers to keep working, good for the kids to learn and grow, and definitely worth the cost!
Attila and Osama
I have finished Christopher Kelly’s intriguing and riveting book The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome. It is a superb read for anyone interested in the fall of Rome, and a period of history where the West slipped into chaotic localism after over 600 years of Roman dominance and peace.
In the second half of the book the Empire falls and we get a much closer look at Attila.
In 447 an earthquake did major damage to the Theodosian walls. 57 towers were destroyed, and much of its defensive ability was gone. Constantinople was vulnerable to a Hun attack. Attila did attack, and the Roman forces lost every battle in an effort to slow down the progress. They didn’t try to come together and decisively win, fearing that if they lost, Attila would rush to Constantinople and take the city. They had to buy time – and did. In an heroic effort to rebuild the walls in 60 days all of the citizens came together and formed work teams. Attila got within 20 miles, and then negotiated a peace. He got chunks of territory along the Danube and a large yearly pay off not to attack.
The result was that by 450 the Roman empire had become a shell of what it was. The western Empire had lost Great Britain, much of Spain, northern Africa and even Sicily. The Eastern Empire fared better. Persia was keeping the peace. By this point, the Emperors were scrambling to keep their empires in tact. Theodosius would die in 450, just before Attila would make a bold dash into France in 451. The Goths and Romans would together defeat the Huns, but only after Attila pushed nearly to the coast and did considerable damage.
They thought that Attila would regroup back on the Hungarian plains, but instead in he attacked Italy in 452, taking Milan and threatening Rome itself. Attila’s forces had cut into the Western Empire in both France and Italy, and had a few times gotten deep into the East near Constantinople. However, in 453 he died. He had taken a new wife and in the celebration after the wedding he died. His sons couldn’t hold the empire and the people they had conquered rebelled and within a few years the Huns were no longer a force in Europe.
Still, the Vandals, Goths and others were too much for the West. In 476 the last western Emperor was deposed. The Eastern Empire, which would morph into what would be known as the Byzantine Empire, would survive until 1453, but only with a shell of the former Roman glory. A great Empire had fallen.
As noted in the previous post, Rome had been built on brutality – on the same kind of cold willingness to kill that so offended the Romans when it came from the Huns. Caesar’s conquests destroyed human life at a pace and scope not to be met until the Spaniards would invade Latin America. A Christian Roman Empire had a different set of values than the pagan Roman Empire.
Thus the Empire did not keep its military science moving forward, culture stagnated, and the number of troops available and the taxes to arm them started to diminish. Instead of taking from those they conquered they started to pay off others so that they would not conquer them.
To the Romans the Huns were savages, lacking Christian values or even the basics of civilization. The Roman historian Ammianus describes them (this quote taken from Christopher Kelly’s The End of Empire, pp. 23-25 — get the book to read more, I’m cutting a lot out):
“The Huns exceed any definition of savagery. They have compact, sturdy limbs and thick necks. They are so hideously ugly and distorted that they could be mistaken for two legged beasts…they are so wild in their way of life that they have no need of fire or pleasant tasting foods, but eat the roots of uncultivated plants and the half raw flesh of all sorts of animals. This they place between their thighs and the backs of their horses to warm it up a little.
…They wear garments made of linen or stitched together from the pelts of mice found in the wild; they have the same clothes for indoors and out…Once they have put on a tunic (that is drab colored) it is not changed or even taken off until it has been reduced to tatters by a long process of decay and falls apart bit by bit.
… Like refugees, all without permanent settlements, homes, law or a fixed way of life – they are always on the move with their wagons…in their wagons their wives weave for them the horrid clothes that they wear.
…In agreeing truces they are faithless and fickle, swaying from side to side in every breeze as new possibilities present themselves, subordinating everything to their impulsive desires. Like unthinking animals they are completely ignorant of the difference between right and wrong. They burn with an unquenchable lust for gold, and are so capricious and quick to anger that often without any provocation they quarrel with their allies…Fired with an overwhelming desire for seizing the property of others, these swift moving and ungovernable people make their destructive away amid the pillage and slaughter of those who live around them.”
The Romans contrasted their advanced culture and civilization – and Christianity – with these godless semi-human beasts. Yet almost all of that was propaganda, reflecting traditional Roman views of non-Romans. Ammianus may have believed it, but he was going on hearsay and bias.
In that same book, Kelly tells of another history of the Huns, written later by Priscus. Priscus could speak Hunnish, so he was sent along on a diplomatic mission from Constantinople to meet Attila. Priscus and the Roman envoy Maximillan stayed in Attila’s city for almost two months. Priscus knew this was the opportunity of a lifetime, and acting like a social scientist he observed and analyzed Hun culture. (The whole story is fascinating, get Kelly’s book to read it in detail!)
The Huns had homes, dressed well and liked fancy clothes. Their food was good and well cooked. They had rituals, customs, treated each other and their guests with respect, enjoyed Roman delights like dried fruits, and were curious about Roman culture. One ex-Roman he met – a farmer who had been attacked by the Huns and ultimately joined them and took a Hun wife – said that Hun culture had the virtue and strength Rome had lost. Priscus puts forth a defense of Roman civilization in his recounting of this encounter, but leaves with the farmer saying that Rome has lost much of what Priscus describes. Priscus does not respond, suggesting that he may agree.
Priscus point is simple: though he doesn’t condone Hun destruction of whole towns and the slaughter of innocents, the caricatured view of the Huns as savages with no regard for the value of human life is absolutely false.
There are parallels between the above example and how some Americans look at Arabs or Muslims. Describing and attacking whole groups as having weird and even inhumane (e.g., ‘they don’t value life as we do’) traits is a common way to portray an enemy. This fed into Roman notions that they were defending Christian civilization from barbarism and paganism. That’s how many have portrayed the US ‘war on terror.’
One could compare Attila and Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden has been portrayed as the inhumane essence of evil. But like Attila, he was shrewd, even brilliant, and rationally pursued his goal. For Attila it was to build the most profitable protection racket he could; for Osama it was to try to get western influence out of the Muslim world. Neither had moral qualms about killing innocents. For Attila this was to instill fear so people would pay; for Osama it was to use the little power he had to weaken and potentially manipulate a great power.
I hopes that there is yet another similarity. After Attila died, the Huns became a non-factor, fighting amongst themselves as the people they once subjugated rose up and crushed the Hun Empire. Osama Bin Laden is now dead; hopefully his movement will also dissipate and the Arab spring will crush violent extremism.
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