Singles community for the single lifestyle in LA

Posted: Jun. 11, 2010 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

For the past year and a half I’ve been privileged to know a very prominent psychologist who combines her discipline with extensive work in the incredible field of neuroscience.

And, recently I experienced some profound changes—I recognized that I had shifted my outlook and way of relating to others in a way that probably was the result of a specific physiological change (possibly in my brain) and asked about it from a scientific perspective when she replied with the words that are the title of this blog: “We really don’t know very much.”

I was taken aback and shaken by this remark for a number of reasons—at first it was a shock because if anyone could give me an answer to why my life had changed by adopting a cat, it was her. She has advanced degrees, years of research and experience, and incredible insight. Yet that was her initial response.

But her subsequent explanation of my response was more poetic and metaphorical than one might expect from a scientist – she said that I had opened a door into another area with unknown results, and I was experiencing a depth of emotion I hadn’t let in previously.

I couldn’t argue with this description. The undeniable reality is that since I let another small living being into my life, and connected and let it attach itself to me and show mutual affection, many things that used to weigh me down seem less significant.

But does that mean the cat is like Prozac? Does it directly affect specific areas of the brain or emotions in ways we can document and understand?

My understanding is that the actual effects of chemicals like Prozac aren’t entirely understood either; for one thing the results vary from person to person. Certainly there are volumes written about how drugs work with the brain chemistry and activate other chemicals like serotonin, or inhibit them.

And science goes on to unearth a tremendous amount of information about how we work, our world, and even the universe; for example, we seem to “know” that the universe is over 14 billion years old.

But returning to the psychologist’s remark, I think what really troubles most thinking and feeling people is that yes – we really don’t know jack about things that are really important.

That’s because despite our worship of science and technology, the really big questions either cannot or will not be addressed by science.

For example, this 14 billion year old universe – what the heck is it? Why is it here? Why are we here? Where did it come from? Where did everything else come from? And so on.

The last time many of us raised these questions we were children and our parents and perhaps a teacher indulged us briefly but then gently patted us on the head and suggested we not concern ourselves with such matters.

When I studied philosophy in college I discovered that the prevailing school of thought in academia simply dismissed these types of questions as “unknowable” and redefined philosophy to those things we could know with conviction, narrowing its scope to a degree that make it, to my mind, irrelevant.

Other schools of philosophy did address areas of “being” and “existence”, but these were excommunicated outside the bounds of holy science and thinkers like Sartre and Camus were seen more as novelists. Other philosophers in this realm, whom I read, remain relatively obscure even though they were courageous enough to attempt to introduce concepts only recently embraced by quantum physics: that knowing anything without taking the “knower” into account (namely that illusive thing we sometimes call consciousness) makes any attempted explanation of reality incomplete and erroneous.

Indeed even Einstein, who probably knew more than almost anyone else on the planet about how things may really be, made frequent mystical remarks about his own relative ignorance in the face of all that might be knowable.

Why is this so important?

Because when we think we really know stuff, individually and as a species, we really screw up.

For example, we know that more is better and more profit is best of all, so maximizing shareholder value is more important than taking into account the well being of the planet that sustains us.

This is only the most currently obvious example of our ignorance of our own ignorance.

Fortunately it may serve to make many more people raise the question of priorities and what is really important and at stake for our species.

At the same time many individuals and groups are engaged in various paths of “personal growth” similar to what ultimately led me to the conversation with the psychologist.

There are many different versions of what may be “other doors” that can be opened at various times that bring a different level of insight and experience beyond the logical.

At the same time, an attitude that must be nurtured to sustain these sorts of activities is one of comfort with “not knowing.” Another psychologist I know uses the phrase “I don’t know is a good place to be.”

On the other hand, when we interact or particularly when we consume mass media, we are bombarded with people who seem to be very certain of a particular truth.

But only relatively recently has the prevailing attitude of the public turned to rampant cynicism, to the point where if you try to sell a product , service or idea, you’d better have more than just facts but the concrete experience of other people to back you up to sustain credibility.

What people are slowly discovering, I believe, is that what is really true is also a function of who and what we are – and as we study that we constantly fall into error, get in our own way, and come up against our own physical, mental and perhaps spiritual limitations in our quest.

Go back to the age of the universe. It’s easy to say the words, “14 billion years” – but can you really grasp the meaning or scale of that span of time?

Is it not likely that anything that “lives” or exists for such a span is beyond the comprehension of a being that lives for perhaps 1200 months, with a brain that evolved over perhaps less than a million years?

And yet we can seem to connect with such an experience, sometimes briefly and fleetingly, but not with the part of the brain that “knows” the age of the universe, but rather the part of the brain that feels it.

That’s why adopting a cat changed my life. It altered my daily experience in ways that are unfathomable without engaging the other part of the brain – that part that laughs at the cat’s antics, loves the feel of its fur, and is constantly surprised by its independent being and vitality, and particularly relishes its love as it licks my hand or nose in greeting and warmth.

Perhaps in the next century geneticists and scientists will map the chromosomes and neural circuits that make these reactions possible, and graph them to within milliseconds of the response.

But they still will not touch the meaning of my connection with the cat, or with other humans, unless they take into account “the other doors” that we sometimes open– those parts of existence that defy our current logic.

Some branches of science – like quantum physics and astronomy are already there – coming up against incongruities in reality that are functions of our own limitations as beings.

14 billion years. Billions of galaxies as big as the Milky Way. Don’t think about it—you can’t. Just feel its meaning—we really don’t know very much.

Human Hubris: "We Created Life (In a Lab)"

Posted: Jun. 3, 2010 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

Several weeks ago we were treated to the following headline on CNN, “Genetics pioneer J. Craig Venter announced Thursday that he and his team have created artificial life for the first time.”

Under closer scrutiny, it turns out that Venter’s team had used code created on a computer to sequence DNA that was then placed in an already living bacteria, and “reprogrammed” it – they used the term “booted it up.”

This speaks again to two important points.

First, that there is an underlying aspect of natural life that follows logical laws and programs that can be altered genetically, just as we reprogram software in our PCs. If I change the code for a web page, for example, it displays differently in a web browser. Turns out if I change the genetic structure of a cell, it behaves differently.

But then the second question arises, where did the cell itself come from? – it turns out that it is life that was already in existence – it was not “created” in a laboratory.

And based on the genetic code, what is it really doing? It is interacting with an environment according to laws being unearthed daily by geneticists, biologists and even quantum physicists and more and more we discover that is doing so intentionally.

Bruce Lipton, in his book The Biology of Belief describes his own epiphany as a biological researcher when he discovered that the same single cell bacteria with identical DNA will behave differently in different environments (they don’t really have brains). It led him to the conclusion that the brain of the cell is not the nucleus (or the DNA, which we can now sequence) but rather the cellular membrane, that exchanges energy with the environment and in effect decides what to do next.

In the computer analogy with life, it turns out that what we can replicate genetically is simply the code, which is amazing enough, but using the web page analogy, it means that we know how to rewrite the HTML, but we still have no idea of how to create a “natural” web browser (the organism that manifests the code and responds to input from the user and the Web (environment) -- or the intelligence behind it.

The problem for our civilization is becoming more and more apparent.

Our incredible scientific achievements have certainly given us what seems like mastery over our environment – until an event like the BP Oil Spill occurs.

I believe that the reason this is so troubling to so many people is that it is a stark reminder that we’re not as smart as we think we are, and that when we follow our analytical minds at the expense of our emotional senses in the belief that “we know better”, we get into some serious trouble.

I might add that it is not just BP that is at fault. Our entire culture has blindly followed the flag of “progress” and technology to this brink of self extermination—to the extent that we drive on the freeway and power our air conditioners, we are all part of the problem.

BP itself is an interesting phenomenon. It is a corporation comprised of organic beings but dedicated to an abstract concept – profit. One could say that its DNA (corporate bylaws?) program it one task – maximizing shareholder value.

Where does its lofty mission statement fit in? Probably in that part of the corporate brain that is similar to our own – dedicated to rationalization and self delusion.

The Oil Spill is just the latest in many events that dramatize our disconnection from the natural universe of which we are a part (and now technologically apart).

If you read the mission statements of credit card companies, tech firms, law firms and any other corporate entity, and compare them to their actual behavior you will see the same disconnect.

Watch commercials on television and you will think these are wonderful companies creating products and services for the benefit of mankind. Get into a conflict with any corporate entity and discover how human they are as you try to navigate through a voicemail menu specifically designed to keep you from talking to another human being.

The same technology that has provided so many real benefits to mankind, and many through corporations that have brought them to market, has also now separated many of us from our own natural feelings and better instincts in order to achieve what the mass media suggests will satisfy us – wealth, fame, a full head of hair, and so on.

No wonder so many people are on antidepressants and unhappy – even when they have attained many of the material rewards our culture can provide.

In his book (and upcoming film) Life Inc., Douglas Rushkoff maintains that “most Americans have so willingly adopted the values of corporations that they’re no longer even aware of it.”

To me that is why the BP Oil Spill is a wakeup call. As we discover inevitably (as 60 Minutes has already reported) that the entire episode might have been avoided if safeguards and regulations had been put into place – but for the exigencies of profit and performance (getting the oil out faster), maybe people will realize the consequences of making real corporate values of pure profit (and not their mission statements) as priorities.

Of course in this case it is so dramatic and tragic how these values impact not only the human species, but all life on the planet and particularly the oceans. While global warming is in the headlines, the oceans have already taken many body blows with toxic chemicals and wastes and many “dead zones” where no life can exist. This will only make it much worse.

The question is whether this will truly wake us up? Many humans and animals will suffer, to be sure, and the extent is yet to be determined—every gallon that leaks into the sea increases the jeopardy for organic life on the planet.

It is interesting that many (and I include myself) see social media as a hopeful sign for calling corporate entities to account and reintroducing the voices of individual humans into the discussions of what matters most in our world.

So far, predictably, there is a movement to boycott BP on Twitter and that certainly has its place.

But I think we need to look much more deeply into our entire relationship with the natural world out of which we come, and in which we live. We need to realize that we still cannot “create life”; we can manipulate it and certainly threaten it and maybe even make ourselves extinct.

Or we can continue our evolution by reexamining our relationship with the natural world, with our scientific breakthroughs as a guide, and realize that whether you believe the natural world was created, evolved or just simply is – it represents a level of mind and intelligence far beyond our own, and when we think we know better, we do so at our peril.

Life, the earth, existence and indeed the universe itself is sacred in a way that transcends all of our arguments about religion or philosophy. We’ve shot a puny spacecraft out of the solar system; the universe is vaster than we can even comprehend or imagine.

We are better served by also feeling and sensing our rightful relationship with what is – and consciously proceeding based on a degree of reverence that it sometimes takes a disaster to make us understand.

Feline with Benefits

Posted: May. 26, 2010 - 3 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

alt

It’s been almost two weeks since I adopted my cat, Eva, and we’ve both needed to adjust and have learned more about each other.

Probably because of her sense of security, Eva is not as affectionate as she seemed to be when she first arrived. She basically conned me into thinking that she was going to be a real snuggly little beast; the first afternoon, possibly because she was unsure, she burrowed into my armpit and let me hold and stroke her.

This continued the next couple of nights, but then abruptly her nocturnal nature kicked in, and she decided that nighttime was for frolicking, not nuzzling. When I left the bedroom door open she would jump up when I was going to sleep, and accept a few strokes, but soon enough she had her own agenda.

Sometimes she wanted to hop on my chest and legs – not conducive to sleep – and then she brought her favorite toy, a little felt mouse, into the bed and wrestled with it. I decided to toss it out the door, which was a big mistake, because for Eva that became an invitation to a game of fetch, and the faster the mouse was tossed, the more rapidly she was back on the bed with it.

I felt bad but by the fourth or fifth night I knew I had to close the bedroom door to get some sleep, and let her explore the living room. I felt really guilty and worried that she would be crying outside the door or scratching to get in, but Eva doesn’t seem to be the sentimental type – she accepted her exile gracefully and was none the worse for it the next morning when I opened the door at 5:30 (out of guilt) to let her in.

Unfortunately she came barreling in with her toy mouse expecting that I was eager to play.

Not so much.

It was at this point that part of me began wondering whether this had been a mistake. But I managed to extend the time before bedroom access until later and later in the morning with no reprisals on her part, and found that flinging the infernal mouse around the room was somewhat cathartic.

Mornings have always been a challenge for me and for better or worse the sudden presence of this other intelligence with its own needs has taken some of the focus off myself and made it easier to bear getting up.

And Eva trained me well, because she would then reward me with a bit of purring and licking, and actually allow me to stroke her very soft fur. Not that she would make this easy – I would have to leave the comfort of my pillow to lean down and pet her.

During the first few days Eva also seemed as she had been when I met her to be fairly nonverbal and quiet. But that also changed.

When she hops on the bed or careens into the bedroom, she announces her arrival with a distinctively shrill noise. She has also evidenced a very unique sound when she is annoyed – as when I reach to pick her up and she doesn’t want to, or if the toy is suddenly placed in an unfamiliar location. As the weeks progressed I have actually noted difference nuances to these sounds to the point where I can almost image her saying, “Oh cool, he’s in the bedroom, let’s play fetch with the mouse!”

Her enthusiasm and energy are contagious, even for a curmudgeon like me.

One thing that intrigues me is how my rather mundane apartment is a source of constant stimulation, intrigue and curiosity. Any new cabinet I open, or closet that becomes exposed, is a journey into a new world for her – sniffing, looking, and inspecting.

Her favorite spots are currently an older desk chair near the balcony window, and the top drawer of my dresser, where she can lie and sleep with only her eyes staring out for hours at a time.

I find myself wondering what she is doing if I don’t see her, and as I come home to the apartment I am already looking forward to hearing her chirping sound and seeing what she’s up to.

I’m not enamored of sifting the litter box and cleaning up after the few times she missed was no pleasure, but I soon was able to balance these unpleasantries against the surge of pleasure I would feel when I was feeling dull, and suddenly a raised tail would glide by and I would realize I was no longer alone.

While the honeymoon is over with respect to nuzzling my armpit, Eva is still affectionate on her own terms. If I get down on the carpet I can sometimes rub her belly and neck – other times she will scoot away – it’s like a mind game.

She will allow herself to get picked up most of the time and seems to enjoy being held briefly – but the fantasy of having her peacefully next to me while I watch the Lakers is not happening.

Maybe it’s because everything is still so new. Birds fly by, the dishwasher churns on, a toilet flushes, and she needs to know what the heck that is.

I have to admit that I never understood or appreciated other peoples’ stories about their pets, and how their cats did “funny” things. But now I’ve become one of those people – imagine that – almost 1000 effortless words about a creature with whom I now cohabitate.

The biggest adjustment for me has been not being in complete control of my environment for the first time -- and being subject to interruptions and distractions at odd moments. But I've begun to balance that against the feeling I get when she grooms and licks my hand and purrs as I gently stroke her.

I wonder what she’s doing now…

Why Is Everyone Angry?

Posted: May. 25, 2010 - 2 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

You can’t watch CNN or the evening news without seeing a segment on “voter anger” with a poll and frequently interviews with disgruntled citizens. A great deal of focus has been given to the Tea Party movement which seems to be a festering, seething mass of pissed off people over various issues.

Certainly a lot of the anger stems from how many peoples’ circumstances changed dramatically in the financial meltdown of 2008. Suddenly many families were under the gun, losing homes and jobs, through no fault of their own—but through the apparent greed and market manipulations of Wall Street speculators and the real estate bubble.

When emergency measures were taken to stem the economic collapse, anger focused on the massive debt that has been incurred nationally – and this has fueled the Tea Party in particular.

To me, the underlying thread to all of this distrust and anger is one central theme – loss of control.

I believe it really started with 9-11, when people suddenly realized that there were hostile forces that threatened them—we were the target of predators.

This survival wakeup call triggered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which gutted our economy in many ways and made the financial meltdown worse than it was.

Combine this with natural disasters like Katrina and the many floods, and our inability to marshal all of the resources normally available to deal with such situations, and people became fearful.

Through the economic collapse and these disasters one heard and read of many families who had counted on our institutions and insurance companies to come through—and in so many cases they were thwarted and disappointed – so fear turned to anger.

On a deeper level, before 9-11 and through the economic prosperity of the 80’s people felt secure and relatively safe economically and socially. Things seemed to work. Now suddenly it seems to many people that matters are beyond the capability of institutions and leaders to address.

Nowhere is this more dramatically brought out than in the oil spill in the Gulf. All of the worst aspects of the previous problems are coming to the surface in this situation: a multi-national corporation that cut costs for safety and lost eleven people through its negligence; an inadequate government and institutional response; and the suffering of millions of innocent people.

It is becoming apparent that BP was able to circumvent regulation of its activities due to its lobbying and connections in government, just as the coal industry was able to overlook safety standards in favor of profit.

In addition, on a daily basis, citizens are up against banks, credit card companies, and bureaucracies of all kinds that take advantage of their power to make profits at human expense. Medical insurance companies that throw older or unhealthy individuals off their books are just one example – we all know of many more.

Worse, cynicism abounds. As you watch television you see the advertising of many of these companies that promise so much, and how they care for you and you’re like family; they have wonderful mission statements but then when you have a problem or need them to address a human concern, their procedures and bureaucracy is strategically designed to avoid communication and beat you down.

So is wholesale anger against corporations justified?

A conservative web site that I read, written by a friend, attackmachine.com, takes the position that corporations are responsible for much that is good in our country:

corporations are owned by free citizens, and are just a way we organize ourselves economically in the modern world
corporations provide the bulk of our employment
corporations produce the wealth that makes our lives easy: the plentiful food, the cars, the drugs and medical innovations that allow our longevity, the amusements that enrich us etc.

And that is what makes it complicated – we all want the benefits, but there is a suspicion that these behemoth entities, many of them multinational, are now running amok.

At the same time, many of us participate in an economy and use social media, for example, build our own brands and support the brands of corporations we use and even admire.

My father was born in 1900 and saw the entire 20^th century for better and for worse; he fled what was then Czechoslovakia in 1949 to escape from the Communists who stifled free enterprise and wanted to control all aspects of the economy and personal lives.

This is the anathema that the Tea Party folks are afraid of as government tries to fix health care and regulate Wall Street—they see government as threatening as others see multinational corporations.

Still, my father saw that the pendulum had swung in the opposite direction by the time he died in 1986; where corporations that had no loyalty to any nation or true ideal were plundering the planet.

The problem is that both extreme positions – that corporations are evil and the opposite, that free markets can be allowed to self regulate have been shown to be fraught with peril; as the pendulum swings between these extremes ordinary people find themselves tyrannized either by government or by corporations.

In a land where citizens pride themselves on self reliance and independence, our media trumpets all kinds of “freedoms” but we assume fewer and fewer responsibilities.

At this point, if you see things clearly, you must come to the conclusion that one’s prime responsibility is to hold oneself and leadership accountable for the circumstances under which we live.

Unfortunately there is a lot that is beyond our control – nature imposes its will regularly. But at the same time we need to remain conscious of our reactions to the circumstances that affect us day to day.

Simply being angry is not a solution. Venting that anger in large venomous groups can become dangerous, as Germany discovered in the last century.

I believe we need to use the technology afforded us by corporations in particular to raise the consciousness of the consuming public – not just consumers of products but also of ideas and information – so that the powerful corporate entities must finally address human needs, even occasionally at the expense of profit.

Just as animals evolved from simple predators to what we now consider ourselves to be – more conscious thinking beings – we need to use the power of critical thinking to make our institutions more responsive to human needs—and also the needs of the planet.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Gulf of Mexico. What we all sense is that life and livelihoods are threatened because an entity that is out of control has had its way for only one purpose – profit.

If you remember, BP ran many commercials “branding” itself as an environmentally conscious oil company.

If the tragedy in the Gulf is good for anything, it must be that our corporations and institutions will need to evolve – with the technology of the Internet and our active participation – into structures that serve human needs and not just generate paper profits for a few of our most powerful people.

The Year of the Cat

Posted: May. 14, 2010 - 5 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

I’ve been living alone for the better part of 40 years; never married and never living with anyone for longer than the duration of a vacation.

Recently friends and colleagues suggested that I think about getting a pet—some suggested a dog while those that knew me best thought that a cat, with its more quiet nature and independence, would suit my lifestyle much better.

To say that I was resistant and scared is an understatement. While I love animals, and am particularly fond of dogs, the idea of having a living creature, unpredictable in temperament and needing my attention, always around and especially waking me up in the morning was inconceivable.

Close friends tried to convince me that until I experienced the payoff I wouldn’t know what I was missing, and that I wouldn’t feel the love until I took the plunge.

I was also told that the right animal would choose me and be obvious, and I doubted all of it, but knowing that I needed to expand in some areas, I started looking.

I checked ads on Craigs List and visited adoption events, getting more and more information. A good friend suggested that the Maine Coon breed of cat would be the best choice for its warmth and affection.

I went to pet stores with adoption events which depressed me; the pets were in cages and the shelves were stocked in ways that made it seem like the animals were an industry.

One morning I went the West L.A. Animal Shelter for the first time and heard the loud barking dogs which reminded me of a prison movie, and visited a few cats in an environment that made me feel awful and want to adopt them all.

I emailed about several animals an never heard back, some events which were scheduled never happened and a lot of flakiness made me wonder whether I was barking up the wrong tree.

I almost fostered a dog that I took for a walk but backed out at the last moment when it turned out it needed medication that had not been mentioned and that was a bit more than I wanted to take on.

Then I met a woman from a rescue organization that seemed very nice and she knew of a Maine Coon that she thought would be perfect for me. I visited the cat, liked it, but when a home visit was to come off the next day there was controversy between the rescue and the foster home, and it became a lot of drama that made me again wonder whether I was doing the right thing.

A close friends with two lovely cats told me I wasn’t doing anything wrong but that I was still on the fence; when she knew she wanted a cat she just went to the pound and got one.

So the next afternoon I returned to the West L.A. shelter looking for a particular dog, and decided it wasn’t right, and visited the cat room on the way out.

A wonderful volunteer told me of “the sweetest cat” and took her out of her cage; I noted that she had never been a stray and had come from a home. The cat pawed at me right away and nuzzled my chest; later I was able to hold her in my lap and she licked my hand.

I knew that it was time to take the fateful plunge – if I ever really wanted to grow and receive love in this way I needed to commit, so I went to the desk to do the paperwork.

Again a tech informed me that there was an infection on her wound from being neutered, and I would have to take her to a vet for antibiotics.

My stomach churned – part of me wanted to back out again, and just go home and keep things comfortable and the way they were – far from perfect but manageable.

But another voice said, “not this time – time to choose change and take a risk—you may suffer but it’s the only chance to also feel the love you’re looking for.”

The volunteer came out with some toys for me to take home and promised to answer any email questions I might have.

I took Eva (named after my mom) over to a vet and fortunately they looked at her right away and I bought the medication and took her home. She also had to wear a cone to keep from licking the wound.

When we got home I figured she had enough to deal with and took off the cone. I got her set up with a litter box and some water and went out to get some food for her and for me.

When I got back and fed her, it was time for my nap. I opened the door to the bedroom not expecting much, since she was still kind of shell shocked from the trip.

Twenty minutes later she was lying blissfully in my arms, her nose in my armpit, purring and licking my hand, as I called my friend with the two cats to tell her what was going on.

Putting in the medication was a huge challenge. Eva did not want to sit still or open her mouth and kicked and fidgeted and I spilled a bit of the medication on my bedspread.

Later we watched the NBA playoffs together, and before bed I put the cone back on her head which kept my up as it banged around the bedroom throughout the night.

As someone who has had complete control over my environment for as long as I can remember, this was a bit of a challenge. As dawn approached I wondered if I had made a huge mistake.

But suddenly a wet nose was next to my cheek and two little paws were burrowing into my arm, and a warm furry snuggly body was pressed against my side. As I slept fitfully through the remaining hours until I got up, I realized that I was in a Brave New World—I don’t know what the future will bring but it will represent a sharp departure from the status quo in which I had been mired.

After breakfast I went back to the pet store for a scratch pad; when I got home Eva was stretched out on her little pillow bed, her face pressed up to the window, soaking up the sunlight.

Owning Life

Posted: Apr. 5, 2010 - 4 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

When I was still in high school I wrote a paper in which I said that I defined religion as “the way one accounts for the existence of Life in the universe.”

For that matter, if you look around and take a deep breath, how do you account for the existence of anything and everything at all?

Whether you believe in a divine Creator, a spiritual force, higher energy or intelligence or even nothing at all, you have to admit that stuff was here long before we got here, and may be here long after we’re gone.

So it was with some amusement and a twinge of horror that I watched the 60 Minutes segment last night on patenting genes. It seems that women have been denied gene therapy for cancer because the rights to any gene that would need to be tested and manipulated for any cure is owned by a corporation.

This is not a new issue; it was addressed in mainstream fiction by Michael Chricton in his thriller, Next.

But the piece on 60 Minutes was not fiction – it involved real people with real lives who were being affected by a legal abstraction for profit over their wellbeing.

Attorneys for the corporation which owned the patent made the usual arguments that research would come to a halt or suffer if ownership is not granted to those who make discoveries in biology that would ensure their prosperity.

Still, it seems to me that the executives of the company which owns the genetic patent in question would still live quite well if they did not enjoy complete dominion over those who needed their discovery to live healthy lives.

But more obvious is the issue of ownership of life itself—or ownership of anything one has not oneself created.

We’re still wrestling with the legitimacy of European colonists claiming lands on which they planted their flags as their own.

With respect to genes, this is the stuff or blueprint of life itself. Has any human ever created life from inanimate matter?

Science now speculates that life “evolved” from organic material, but where did the impetus or energy for living come from?

To me, it is the very height of arrogance and presumption for any person to claim ownership of something that was here before he or she ever arrived--based on its discovery rather than its invention or creation.

To be sure, those who make such remarkable discoveries are to be held in the highest esteem, and should be able to profit from their talents and insights.

But just as we are finally having a conversation over whether health care itself should be a profit-making activity, and insurance companies should be able to withhold care for the sake of their bottom line, it seems that it’s time that we take a deep look at where we stand with respect (pun intended) to life itself.

There is certainly speculation that we are at the point in our scientific advancement where we might actually assume control over our own evolution. Our athletes are faster and stronger than ever, and our science is uncovering the secrets behind life and the universe.

But is getting richer, bigger, stronger and smarter the ultimate purpose of our existence?

Those with children, or believers in something higher, generally espouse another purpose—making life better for those around them and acknowledging their connection with life itself.

Patenting a gene enforces separation—I own this (life) and you can’t have it unless you pay me.

Acknowledging connection brings in a higher level of intelligence and perhaps—love and reverence.

These are human values beyond accounting or a balance sheet.

Some countries do not recognize genetic patents while civil libertarians are challenging their validity in the courts.

But in an age when the Supreme Court has held that corporations have the same rights of individuals to contribute funds to candidates, I have my doubt how that will turn out.

At some point humans may have to appeal to a court higher than the one comprised of Ivy League grads and lawyers.

I have to wonder when the owners of genetic patents might actually meet a Creator. At that point would conscience and fear finally kick in, or would they try to buy their way into heaven with their stock options?

We can have legitimate disagreements about when life begins and even where it came from or what it is—but as to who or what it belongs to—that needs to remain an issue for something or someOne that hasn’t been interviewed on 60 Minutes.

Making Peace with the Past

Posted: Mar. 17, 2010 - 7 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

I had been apprehensive about going to lunch with my two old friends from high school, but William was coming in from the Bay area, and we’d had a wonderful reunion two years earlier, and I looked forward to seeing him again.

Robert had live in L.A. for a long time and we had gotten together over the years a number of times, and he was always generous, warm and cordial. But through no fault of his own, he had had the career that I thought I always wanted. While I floundered as a screenwriter he went from one success to another and is now very successful in the entertainment industry. On a personal level too, he has a family, a house in a wonderful location, and seemingly everything anyone could want.

By many standards I have also done well for myself in high tech, but I couldn’t help comparing myself to Robert.

And as Robert retraced his career for William and me, I realized that he had actually been well-connected in Hollywood when I was writing screenplays. He’d been bi-coastal, but if I’d been a bit more aware, I might have reconnected with him at that time, and things might have turned out differently for me.

We had worked together closely on the high school newspaper, almost as partners; surely if we had been in touch when I was first in L.A., other doors might have opened.

At one point Robert said that he had realized at the time that the movie business was not about writing or creativity so much as it was about deal-making, and that had been what he was doing.

I couldn’t help but wonder, if we’d connected at that time, if one of those deals would not have been mine. But I was 35 at the time—I knew it all—I lived in my own world and was not open to many of the opportunities that the greater world afforded me.

As the lunch continued, instead of enjoying the vibe, questions churned inside me along with feelings of jealousy and regret.

And I did not like myself for these feelings either, so I castigated myself for having them, and after the lunch I told William about my feelings and how I wondered whether I had really missed the boat almost 30 years earlier when I didn’t realize that an old friend was in a position to possibly help me with my career.

William was empathetic and said that one never knows what might have happened. Indeed, I have written in the past about my own demons and how if I had found great success early on, I might very well have succumbed to forces that would have damaged me badly or even killed me.

And there were many other reasons why I probably didn’t connect with Robert sooner. For one thing I never felt comfortable with the entertainment crowd and made my feelings known in ways that often pushed them away – not a very good networking strategy.

I had also assiduously avoided the rat race of “making it”, settling into a comfortable existence that allowed me to play tennis and enjoy my life in many other ways while others were climbing corporate ladders.

It didn’t make a lot of sense for me now to try to reconstruct my choices and come up with alternative scenarios that simply did not come to pass, and wallow in regret, and yet that was what I was in jeopardy of doing.

And worse, I was watching myself doing it and knowing it was unhealthy.

Later when I reflected on this with other people, I remembered how warm and friendly both guys had been, and how much we still have in common.

William is also the child of Holocaust survivors and an immigrant, and he had shared with me at one point how much therapy had helped him understand and come to terms with his own unique background and challenges, and face many of the same demons that have plagued me.

For example, I realized sitting there that in many ways the success I envied in Robert is not something I wanted so much for myself, but for my father, who had struggled so hard for my benefit.

Now that I’ve been working on myself, it was so great to be reunited with William and feel his compassion as I revealed some of my feelings of regret. I also met his son who is graduating from college this year, and William said at one point how wonderful it would be if I moved to the Bay area so we could spend time together—and that we would be like brothers and his son could be my nephew.

I realized how incredibly loving that connection was and still is, and how fortunate I am to have found it now. Somehow I need to shift my focus from what might have happened 30 years ago, and didn’t, to what actually happened just yesterday, and its great promise for the future.

And even my renewed connection with Robert, with all of its negative subtext—and again none of that is Robert’s doing—can be a source of support and enjoyment if I just let it be what it is—an old friend who now lives in Malibu.

So much of the work I’ve been doing concerns a shift from the left brain and analysis and judgment-- to the heart and acceptance of love.

Perhaps this experience is a crucible---literally a necessary test for me to witness the folly of my attachment to dreams that never happened, and an ego that was outsized and out of control.

In many ways, thanks to the work I’ve been doing, I have come out of the isolation that kept me from connecting with Robert all those years ago, and now have some deep connections with people that love and accept me.

I know that I need to join those people in my own love and acceptance of myself, and have compassion for a young man that made many mistakes so long ago—and be grateful for the man that he can still be today. I need to finally let all of those burdens and expectations go, and accept the many blessings I currently have, and the ways things are right now.

Can You Handle a (Cosmic) Truth?

Posted: Mar. 1, 2010 - 3 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

Two events that happened over the weekend impacted me on a deep level – the earthquake in Chile and the death of the trainer by the Orca at Sea World in Florida.

The troubling nature of both has everything to do with that word – “nature.”

In my day to day life I am often content to concentrate on my important tasks – work, social connections, and maintaining the status quo.

Both these events made me realize that no matter how much I try to ignore it, my life is part of a much greater reality.

The earthquake, coming so soon after the one in Haiti, makes me realize that I live on a dynamic planet that is constantly shifting and changing, and transferring energy between its various parts and its inhabitants, along with other energy which we can only begin to suspect with the solar system and galaxy.

Given our own physical scale, and the length of time we spend on the planet, we may be spared these influences and blissfully remain oblivious to them. Because of the lights of our cities, we can ignore the fact that we live in an immense universe of unfathomable scale and power—until an event like an earthquake makes us confront, until the next political scandal takes over CNN, that we inhabit a physical universe of incredible power and with forces way beyond our control.

Nature has ways of getting our attention, and reminding us that we exist, physically here and now, and that our existence is in many ways precarious.

The Orca issue made me also cognizant of the fact that we humans are a species of animal exercising dominion over other species – for the time being – which has moral consequences.

While I felt good that a sizable number of commentators pointed out that an Orca should not be kept in confinement and made to entertain with dumb tricks for a living, the fact that this is not obvious to every human on a deep soulful level is troubling.

Our inability to hold other life, particularly intelligent life, in the its proper reverence has been evident for a long time, and it’s nice that some folks are waking up and science for example has realized just how remarkable these sea mammals are—but one look at the depressed dorsal fin of the animal that killed that trainer would indicate to any sensitive soul that that animal was deeply troubled and if it was filled with rage, who could blame it.

My mother, who unfortunately would have known, once called Sea World a concentration camp for penguins.

But to sense all of this deeply and profoundly, you would need to no longer take your human-ness for granted – you would need to acknowledge that you’re part of a natural order that has consequences, even if you are the “dominant species”.

Both of those issues bring me back to the matter of scale. If the universe is truly 14 billion years old, life on this planet is quite a recent development, we (as a species) have only been here for the tiniest fraction of that time, and as individuals of course we live here for a split second of cosmic time.

Within that period of our lives, many of us think we are in control of circumstances – until an event like Chile or Haiti imposes the reality of the higher scale upon us.

But can we be conscious of our lack of control without such an event, or simply by taking it in?

And what if anything of consequence do we really control?

Some teachings suggest that the only thing we can really influence is our own attention.

If that is the case, then remaining oblivious to the matters of scale that could crush us at any instant is probably part of our survival mechanism – because otherwise we’d be terrified all of the time.

So how to balance the reality that may come into our senses, however briefly and frighteningly, when we watch CNN, with our day to day need to survive mentally and emotionally and yet try to be conscious and sensitive?

It’s interesting to consider that other societies may have used various drugs to let these feelings in on a limited and traditional basis—with the guidance of shamans and priests—while we have science to provide us with frightening “facts” of scale to which we have little relation, and media to scare the crap out of us.

Lately there has been quite a bit of speculation about the Mayan calendar, and its ability to connect with a 26,000 year planetary cycle that some see as ending in 2012.

Not surprisingly books and movies have focused on cataclysmic events that may transpire.

But it would be interesting to know how the Maya really experienced this planet with their combination of science, art and religion—although it seems that if you were a slave in that culture interesting might not be the right word. Or exactly why the Egyptians (or someone) apparently decided to use a million blocks of stone to construct an almost indestructible scale replica of the earth and connect it to the Sun and perhaps even other stars.

But certainly our day to day existence totally denies the reality of the cosmos in a way the Maya and Egyptians apparently did not. Millions of us go through life hypnotized by media and with a certainty that we know what is going on and what our lives mean: a paycheck, a relationship, raising kids, and so on.

Then suddenly for a brief instant we are connected to realities of a much higher scale. Do we ignore them, and simply move on to the next event in our own lives, or can we take them in, connect to their power, and let them influence us in ways that are not merely terrifying, but speak to the potential for our own spiritual or higher purpose and evolution?

Tiger Woods and the Single Guy

Posted: Feb. 21, 2010 - 7 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

To me, the most interesting guest on the many talk shows about Tiger Woods, was John Gray, the author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus—because what is so clear is that both genders see the situation from a different perspective. Another guest discussed how hard it would be for Woods to repair his image with women.

I’m not sure women can understand the extent to which men are conditioned by a culture that demands that they succeed and win at all costs, and that their payoff is sexual gratification with the women in beer commercials and girls gone wild videos. For men, this fantasy is the same as the need for a perfect body is for women—a compulsion they know is self defeating but is deeply programmed.

So for manysingle men like me, there is a sense of compassion and understanding for Woods' situation. While his breaking of vows of marriage is indefensible, I can understand how it happened and I took his statement at face value.

What struck me the most was his discussion about Buddhism and his reference to “attachment.” That is what leads me to feel that he is sincere—because only a sense of surrender to something higher can heal the illusions men carry of what will make them ultimately happy.

Let me admit that I have been in therapy for my own wounds, not nearly as dramatic as Tiger’s but for me very powerful and difficult demons.

When I was in college I came home and told my dad, “money isn’t important to me. I don’t need it to be happy.”

This was a blow to a man who had struggled his whole life to make it here in America after a horrific ordeal in Europe, and who saw money as freedom and the key to fulfillment.

Despite what I said to my dad in college, I eventually began to see things the same way, and embarked on a mission to “make it”. Somewhere along the line I found myself with a nice bank account but it was never enough, and I had no idea of how to love and be loved.

I also bought into the notions of my peers, and my father, that seeking my own sexual pleasure was a worthwhile lifestyle. At a low point I tried to connect to women who I only believed would be with me for what I could provide or give them materially, and my feelings of unworthiness led me to dull my emotions in any way I could.

My romantic fantasies were such that I believed that only another person’s love would complete me and make me a man among men. Women were a prize or possession, not human beings with energies and feelings with whom I could deeply connect. And many women I met ratified those feelings and fears by only granting me their attention and devotion if I fit the image they had in mind as a provider.

Now, in my own work on myself with a therapist, I am trying to ascertain exactly who I am and what will fulfill me—because I tried many of the things Tiger tried. While I wasn’t outed by the media, I realized on my own that it wasn’t working. In my case, I broke up a relationship to pursue my “independence” and deny my need for deep connection—and all it did was make me confront my own loneliness and isolation. I hit the wall and needed help.

And that brings me back to Woods.

From a very early age his own bond with his father made him need to prove himself and make it—and he certainly did.

I would not be surprised if like me he had to deny his childhood wants and desires and become a man very early—his obvious drive and discipline as well as the sense of control testifies to that.

Then his father died, and the main reason he had for living died too—but he kept doing the only thing he knew –competing and winning and he tried to fill the void with the traditional roles of a marriage and a family.

And at the same time he finally felt he had the right to try to satisfy the need to fulfill what he believed were desires that would make him happy—he said that he felt he had earned that right—regardless of the consequences. We can view that as narcissism to be sure, but it is also quite natural.

What Woods has discovered, I believe, is that in his ability to control others economically their love was completely false. Those that truly loved him, and he could not control, were now deeply hurt and distrustful and this sudden awakening left him more alone than ever.

His activities with women, while disgraceful for a married man, still seem to me the acts of someone desperately looking for meaning in his life. He seemingly had everything and it still wasn’t enough. Certainly his confrontation with himself came only when he was discovered, but in his position that was inevitable.

As a single man, my own struggles in this area—mainly stuffing down my feelings and trying to make inappropriate women love me and fill me up—did not hurt anyone but myself.

Woods of course played with much higher stakes and his actions had far graver consequences.

But to me, and many people remarked how depressed Woods looked, Tiger seemed like a guy who finally realized he needed help. He had abruptly realized that what really mattered were the people whom he really loved and who loved him—and that he might lose them.

Unfortunately for him, his actions have driven these people away and created deep feelings of hurt and distrust. And then, when he was discovered, his own sense of shame was such that he began to doubt that he was worthy of their love.

To him right now, I suspect he doesn’t know quite who he really is, and while others urge him to just play golf and win, it has temporarily lost its meaning for him. The self he worked so hard to build and sustain is no longer viable.

For a single guy in L.A., it is hard to develop and maintain a network of people to fill those deep needs of connection and mutual love. People come and go and they are best friends for the evening.

As an only child, like Woods, I was doted on and spoiled on one level, and very alone on another. I learned to meet my own needs in ways that proved to be empty and vacuous. I believed money and control could get me what I wanted and needed and that my own personal comfort was paramount.

And, like Tiger, I spent a long time trying to live up to a notion of manhood and achievement that I assumed would fulfill me, only to learn that it left me empty.

So much of my life was consumed by a fear that I might not make it, or measure up, or succeed and when I did I could not enjoy it or let it fulfill me. Now I am trying to learn to get filled up with love, not fear, and to accept it naturally instead of trying to seize or control it.

Like me, Woods needs to learn to trust others, ask for help, and yield control and become vulnerable.

That doesn’t mean all of his sins should be forgotten or even forgiven—but he is still just a human being—and he deserves some measure of understanding and compassion.

Which brings me back to Buddhism. This week the Dalai Lama is here, and to me his message is, simply put: be compassionate with others and yourself. Observe your own tendencies, emotions, fears and beliefs, and don’t fight them but accept that they make you human and be kind.

My own struggle is finding fulfillment outside of the roles that I took on unconsciously. Meditation and therapy has made me able to observe (but so far not completely change) how deeply ingrained these “scripts” or “programs” are, and how removed my real core self is from the compulsion to follow these impulses.

I’m trying to connect to the person I was before all that programming and conditioning, and it’s hard.

For one thing, those beliefs came from and are connected to those I loved most in the world—my parents. Every act of going against many of these tendencies feels a bit like betrayal. My father’s voice is there often telling me – be tough, keep working and struggling, don’t show any weakness.

My former girlfriend once asked me what my mantra or central belief was, and I said, “don’t screw up.” She suggested I replace it with “let love in.” But it is very difficult trust in love and lose what you think is a measure of control.

In fact, it’s so hard that lots of times I want to go back to stuffing down those feelings or dulling them, or avoiding them with work and achievement.

What I’ve begun to discover is that I need to connect to the little boy I never really got to be because I was so determined to live up to what others wanted. I need to protect and stick up for that core part of me and connect on a deep level with those that truly love me---and not succumb to the pressures of a world that want me to be a winner while I lose my deepest self.

It’s an ongoing battle, and fortunately I have gotten help--and I won’t have to please millions of people by sinking a high pressure putt and selling products for large corporations.

I also have no pressure to be a role model for others. But I now believe that each person who awakens to the need to be loving rather than self serving is an integral part of human evolution. Tiger is no different—except that with his presence and fame, if he can transform he can also be a powerful force for the awakening of others.

Hopefully it won’t be by taking on another role and pontificating, but rather by becoming a quiet and humble example of how compassion for others and oneself can lead to peace and contentment.

A Sense of Proportion

Posted: Nov. 11, 2009 - 5 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

On Saturday afternoon while picking up a prescription, the pharmacist told me that my doctor had asked to be called for a follow up. Before leaving I decided to check my blood pressure on the automatic machine, only to find the reading stratospheric and scary.

I walked around the store sorting it out, and realized that I had let the machine read the pressure through my sweatshirt. Surely that explained the high reading since I’d been normal for some time.

Without the sweatshirt I was lower, but still elevated. I took a few more readings, each one a bit lower, and decided it was heading down to the normal level and that I was okay.

The next morning, just before leaving for breakfast to meet a friend, I opened my laptop to check my nonexistent Sunday email, and found the screen completely white. I took a deep breath, turned it off and turned it back on, and it stayed completely dark; the hard drive light went on for a seconds and then stopped. This happened three times. I left for breakfast considering the consequences of losing my hard drive – data was backed up to my desktop but lot of stuff, like recent email in Outlook, would fall through the cracks.

At breakfast I completely forgot about the blood pressure, and was somewhat preoccupied with the laptop issue, but strangely accepting and detached.

After breakfast, I tried the laptop again, hoping it would magically reappear (maybe it overheated?) but it was dead.

I went to Fry’s and bought a hard drive, returned, figuring the laptop would now work but I would have to reinstall Windows and a lot of other programs, but at least I’d have a laptop.

Unfortunately the same thing happened. The hard drive light went on briefly, then off.

I called Dell and determined that the cause of my problem was not the hard drive, but a defective failed graphics card or motherboard. I was lucky to get this information, because I was out of warranty.

By this time it was late afternoon and I had recorded all the football games. I decided to relax, take a nap and then have a normal dinner and watch sports.

After my nap I took a shower and tried a Google search on my graphics card and my laptop for problems, and found many pages of similar issues; it turned out that on the Dell forums several users had had their laptops repaired out of warranty because Dell had acknowledged this issue.

I called Dell back, and after talking to three reps from India, for over an hour while I watched the first football game muted, I got him to acknowledge that indeed I had the faulty graphics card or motherboard.

This came as we watched three diagnostic lights, one solid and two blinking, and it took me ten minutes of description with him misunderstanding and repeating the wrong sequence to get it right. Then another forty minutes with his supervisor to whom I sent the information from the web sites about those who had been helped out of warranty. He finally promised that he would try to help me but I needed to wait 48 hours for a return phone call.

That evening I relaxed and watched sports, but several times I reached for the laptop to check my email or go on Twitter, only to realize that it was upside down and dead on my coffee table (I turned it over to take out the hard drive).

That’s when I realized the lesson: this machine was my constant companion and I was connected constantly when I was home.

Without it I could still go online and check email, but I would have to go into my office and use the desktop PC.

Suddenly, the intrusiveness of the Internet was no longer a constant reality. Until I fixed or replaced my Dell, I would be forced to be with myself, or with television, but no more multi-tasking.

I observed myself throughout the evening and noted my discomfort, and the frequency with which, during commercials, I went into the office and checked my email, which again, for Sunday, was virtually nonexistent.

The next morning when I awoke I was anxious, but not about the computer, but I was thinking about my doctor and my blood pressure. Shouldn’t I go in and have it checked; after all he had requested me to call.

I managed to get a late morning appointment and went in, only to find that the pharmacist had misunderstood and I had not been summoned. But I told him about my experience with the public blood pressure test, and he took me into the examining room and tested me right away.

“You’re perfect,” he said.

Waves of relief gushed through my body. I had let myself foresee doomsday scenarios based on others’ misfortunes and my own misgivings about my health. Now I had a new lease on life. It was almost a shock to realize that all was well.

It also became clear to me that this piece of news rendered my laptop problem insignificant.

I returned to Fry’s and exchanged the hard drive for an external USB powered enclosure.

Back home I was able to put my Dell hard drive into the enclosure, connect it to my desktop PC, and recover almost all of my important email and calendar information, and other stuff that I had feared would be lost.

I began looking at other laptops online, and also at a few stores, but was overwhelmed by the number of new features, different processors and the potential pitfalls of the new Windows 7 operating system.

I watched Monday Night Football, and again realized the void caused by the lack of Internet connectivity from my easy chair. Very weird.

Dell called me that night, and my supervisor’s assistant informed me that my issue was being looked into. It took me several tries to understand exactly what he was saying.

By the next day the discomfort of not having the laptop made me go out and look at replacements and check Craigs List, but nothing really clicked.

Then I got another call from Dell – a social media and forum miracle – they are sending me a box to return my laptop for repaid and they would send it back to me in a few days after they received it. Wow. Kudos to Dell when that is accomplished. I’ll be tweeting their praises from my easy chair.

Now I am sitting back in the recliner and wondering – what will a week without my computer companion be like?

And what does it say about me that I might find it difficult?

And what about the millions of text messaging and web connected iPhone and PDA users who need their electronic fix everywhere, not just in their easy chair?

Perhaps this is a lesson I should really take to heart (pun intended).

First, my health is good, so nothing is wrong on the most important level.

Second, I can unplug from the Internet while I watch television – maybe – or maybe I should just unplug from the television as well. Could I do it? I meditate daily but apparently there is still a strong pull for my attention from all sorts of sources that don’t really leave room for me, or my “self” while they’re being accessed.

My Fascination with Ancient Wisdom

Posted: Oct. 14, 2009 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

A close friend of mine with whom I often talk about esoteric subjects once commented on how I get to positions that require leaps of faith. He said I work from a place of rationality first, and go as far as I can with scientific or factual notions, and then I extrapolate inside to a place that cannot necessarily be validated scientifically, but which grows within me truth.

That’s why I loved the Da Vinci Code and am looking forward to reading Brown’s latest work, The Lost Symbol. Last night I watched Stargate for the first time in years, and had forgotten the beginning, where a discredited Egyptologist (James Spader) suggested that the Great Pyramid had no hieroglyphics, wasn’t a tomb at all, but instead a repository of ancient wisdom inspired by visitors from somewhere—when someone said the word “Atlantis” everyone walked out of his lecture.

My own fascination with these notions began in my early twenties. When I worked in Cancun a bellman at my hotel actually turned me on to a book about the Great Pyramid by a Mexican writer, Rudolfo Benavides. This was incredibly ironic since I was daily dispatching my tourist clients on tours to see the Mayan pyramid, and the Pyramid of the Sun (Aztec) was in a nearby state.

My young friend fascinated me with speculations about the various mathematical and astronomical relationships encoded in the massive structure, which I later supplemented by reading the incredible Secrets of the Great Pyramid, by Peter Tompkins (author of The Secret Life of Plants and also Secrets of the Mexican Pyramids).

By now of course there has been massive publishing on this topic and notions of the pyramid shape as doing everything from sharpening razor blades to serving as a power plant in ancient Egypt and supplying some sort of electricity of light bulbs that let them work in the dark.

For those who don’t know the various measurements that Egyptologists have taken over the centuries and what they imply, here are a few examples of what the various dimensions of the Great Pyramid may represent:

• The perimeter divided by 2 x the height of the pyramid is equal to pi - 3.1416

• The number Phi – or Golden Mean (used in the work of Michelangelo and the basis for the Da Vinci Code) - Φ equals 1.618 and represents a series of numbers (Fibonacci sequence) – 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89 and so on where each number is the sum of the previous two. This famous sequence is also found in nature and is the basis for much of biomimicry – engineering that replicates these relationships in human structures.

• Aligned to North – knew mass and circumference of the Earth – latitude and longitude

• Set in the precise center of earth’s continental landmass

• Accurate measurement of the day, year, Great Precession (almost 26,000 years for axis of earth to realign)

• Measure of foot and cubit based on earth’s rotation and actual scale

And on and on. Tompkins’ book has an Appendix by a noted mathematician expounding on these relationships, and there is additional reference material suggesting that the 3 pyramids represent the constellation Orion, and that the Great Pyramid is aligned with various stars including Sirius, the North Star, and the constellation Pleiades.

At around the same time as I discovered Tompkins’ work, Erik von Daniken became a worldwide sensation with his book Chariots of the Gods, which went through a long series of ancient monuments and speculated that all of them must have been built or inspired by greater intelligence of space visitors; in many cases they only made sense when viewed from the sky.

Not long thereafter von Daniken was discredited in the mainstream media for various financial shenanigans, and both he and Tompkins, along with their many more recent authors about the pyramids and similar subjects have been the butt of ridicule by conventional scientists and archeologists—just as James Spader’s character was at the beginning of Stargate.

But very little of this really mattered to me—I used my travel privileges to go to Cairo and see the Great Pyramid and regardless of its actual measurements, its scale blew me away.

The fact that it is just THERE is enough to make you gasp. It’s like when you take a deep breath and stop to think, why is all this here? What is the point of existence itself?

This experience was described by Jacob Needleman, a philosopher and writer, at the beginning of his book, A Sense of the Cosmos: Scientific Knowledge and Spiritual Truth. He describes walking past a news stand and seeing a photograph on the cover of National Geographic taken by the new (at the time) Hubble Space Telescope. He briefly read the caption and walked away, but returned a moment or two later when he realized that these weren’t stars – they were galaxies with each tiny speck representing billions of stars. (Also credit Carl Sagan…)

Needleman writes if you stand out at night in a place where you can actually see the stars, and look up, you simply cannot get your “head” around this at all. He responds with the notion that “we need to rediscover how to join the attention of the heart to the powers of the mind and the perception of the senses.” This becomes a stimulus or a pointer to a higher level of being or understanding.

It’s like following the Fibonacci series out to infinity, or trying to conceive of the largest prime (indivisible) number – which it took a supercomputer to calculate but which obviously cannot “really” be the largest…

When you do this, you reach the limits of your left brain – your analytical mind – which science has made the ultimate arbiter of what is “real” in today’s culture.

But at this point you sense in your gut with complete certitude that you’ve just scratched the surface of something far vaster and ultimately incomprehensible to our limited set of senses and neurons.

It is my feeling that by getting “a taste” of these kinds of experiences that our own capacity to know beyond reason can expand – not so much to explain something that our logic cannot truly comprehend – but perhaps to connect with it on some level.

What makes Dan Brown’s books so entertaining is that he fits these puzzles into a genre where the supposition is that there are humans who possess this knowledge today, and who use it, and do not share it with everyone else. This is the basis of esotericism and it is impossible to prove one way or another.

In The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown introduces a character who works with the Institute of Noetic Sciences (an actual organization in northern California). Of course she is ridiculed by conventional scientists.

According to IONS, “Noetic Sciences are explorations into the nature and potentials of consciousness using multiple ways of knowing—including intuition, feeling, reason, and the senses. Noetic sciences explore the ‘inner cosmos’ of the mind (consciousness, soul, spirit) and how it relates to the ‘outer cosmos’ of the physical world”.

What was so fascinating about Stargate was that a particular alignment of symbols could pierce the physical universe as we knew it, and open a dimension into its other side.

Today’s renegade Egyptologists (the James Spader character) propound theories of the time of the Sphinx pointing to the existence of human wisdom far before recorded history. Writers like Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval and John Anthony West suggest that striations at the base of the Sphinx prove erosion—so that it existed in “pre-sand Egypt” – before the area became a desert.

(The DVD version of television special on West’s theories was narrated by Charlton Heston).

Their work has been greeted with the sort of derision by conventional Egyptologists as the lecture by the James Spader character at the beginning of Stargate—but it is literally mind-boggling in its implications.

And now that there are numerous books and movies about the Mayan calendar and the significance of December 21, 2012, many peoples’ minds are being boggled—albeit with catastrophic predictions of the End of Days that make great fodder for special effects.

I still remember an incident when I was travelling in Europe and fainted. While I was “out” I remember inhabiting many worlds and strange places but somewhere in the back of my mind I wanted to get back to my parents and friends in the present – and this desire enabled me to reconstruct a “set of facts” which constituted my location in space (Copenhagen) and time (a date in the 1970’s) and when those facts clicked together like the tumblers of a huge combination lock – my eyes opened, and I was back.

Immediately my rational mind reinterpreted this experience so that it “made sense” as being simply “unconscious”.

It is my belief that these ancient monuments and the wisdom behind them provide the means for us to explore and experience consciousness itself—by taking us beyond what we “know” to be real to a place beyond “knowledge as we know it”—in a space of breathtaking silence and awe when confronted with an immensity and yet a factual existence that we cannot rationally explain or comprehend, but which is simply there and speaks to us at a much deeper level of meaning.

This is the boundless space of existence itself—of nature, mathematics, music, symbol and true wisdom—manifest physically for our senses to experience briefly but for our limited rational minds to ultimately recognize their limitations to comprehend, and leap off into place or time we cannot as yet explain, and perhaps never will.

Is Wireless Just a Metaphor?

Posted: Sep. 24, 2009 - 3 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

There are so many things we tend to take for granted. For me, sitting with my laptop in the living room and transferring files or accessing my desktop, or going online through a wireless network is so routine that I seldom consider what it entails.

Energy is flowing through what appears to be empty space.

What scientific evidence do we have that it’s happening? Well, obviously if the files open or the web page loads, we know that wireless technology is real.

But what about or own technology? Neuroscience has shown that electrical energy actually moves through the brain as we think.

In fact, the stimulation of such energy can occur in surprising ways. There is a phenomenon known as “mirror neurons” that fire not by direct stimuli, but rather just by observation. The Fast Company blog describes the findings of Dr. Marco Iacoboni at the Brain Research Center at UCLA who believes that we are actually “wired for storytelling.”

His research is based being able to measure the differences in mirror neuron activity when individuals were shown images or told stories by people with whom they empathized or identified; the greater the sense of connection the higher the mirror neuron activity.

This is fascinating on many levels, not the least of which is that it is literally a tangible measure of a quality we might term “emotion” in the brain.

In some personal matters I had occasion to connect with an individual in a professional setting, but one which was highly charged with emotional energy—and to feel our connection we held hands. Then I moved back across the room, and was asked whether I still felt the connection, and I joked, “I don’t really believe in wireless.”

But actually I do, and you probably do too.

How many times have had the phone ring just as you “happened to” think about who called?

Where this leads me is to the issue of what science considers “real” -- like mirror neurons – and what it considers irrelevant do to an apparent absence of evidence.

While we may certainly believe in wireless with respect to our laptops, we may not readily admit to such a belief with respect to our own technology – our minds and our bodies.

But the more we connect with either – through meditation, body work or some other “New Age” (and apparently unscientific) method – we can determine the reality directly based on our own concrete experience.

Do you miss someone who died or you no longer have contact with?

Have you ever identified that feeling in your body?

Is it any less real to you than your wireless connection to the Internet?

What about compassion, for others or for yourself?

Do you experience it when you meet certain people, or even when you see a posting on Twitter or Facebook? Do you sense it inside yourself, can you sometimes feel yourself shutting it off, or denying its reality in order to numb yourself to a painful reaction?

In a recent blog entry I wrote about Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation by Douglas Rushkoff as a particularly powerful description of why social media is growing as a response to the pursuit of profit at the cost of humanity. (“A shrill condemnation of how corporate culture has disconnected human beings from each other.”)

But there is an undeniable movement toward reconnection—from the election of Barack Obama to the growth in social technologies—more and more people are accepting the reality of how important the energy of love and compassion is – and its reality as a physical, psychological and real force of nature.

One might speculate as I have that in some ways the Internet is an evolutionary nervous system in its ability to transmit this energy (wirelessly?).

But as many have noted, the key to conducting the energy of compassion, love or any emotion is belief. In another blog I mentioned a book by biologist Bruce Lipton, actually titled the Biology of Belief. (Its new subtitle is “Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, & Miracles”)

Such a concept and much of Lipton’s work is enough to give many traditional scientists heartburn.

What about you?

Can you make the connection between the undeniable reality of wireless energy that performs in our computer technology to the presence of a different flavor of energy (organic but no less real) that permeates our own being?

To me the recent advancements in neuroscience, psychology and quantum physics easily let me accept it intellectually—which can be the first step. But in my own experience, through meditation and sensation, I am finally beginning to know it, profoundly in my depth.

Unfortunately there is no real manual to troubleshoot our own technology – or perhaps there are too many conflicting manuals – from medical textbooks to religious works.

And so there are also no clear answers. But just as my web page loads, and my laptop’s inner state is changed, so too, if I connect with the cells, tissues, organs and senses within me, I can sometimes feel and observe my own state changing.

Who performs the observation? That’s a tough call. But the reality of wireless emotion and thought is no longer open to question, at least for me.

Social Media: The New Humanism?

Posted: Sep. 10, 2009 - 3 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

This morning I briefly insinuated myself into a Twitter discussion between Marsha Collier and Chris Brogan, co-author with Julien Smith of the best seller about social media, “Trust Agents.”

The topic was a story about a lame video posted on YouTube to address concerns by many irate users on social sites about the messaging shortcomings of AT&T’s network for the iPhone.

The video featured a geek called “Seth the Blogger” (not to be confused with Joe the Plumber) using charts and graphs to explain the technical problems AT&T faces in trying to implement messaging properly for the iPhone.

Brogan and Collier discussed how ineffective this approach is at a time of social media, and Collier suggested actually responding substantively to issues raised on the social sites and demonstrating that the company is really listening as a more viable response.

Brogan, an evangelist for social media, has written often about how suspicious people are of corporations and institutions, so that the more influential people on the web, in social media, are dubbed “Trust Agents”. They come by this status not because they are CEO’s or spokespeople but because their actions, over time, have demonstrated competence, credibility and compassion in terms of sharing information and building relationships with others (through blogs and “tweets” and so on).

More recently Brogan recommended “Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back” by Douglas Rushkoff as a particularly powerful description of why social media is growing as a response to the pursuit of profit at the cost of humanity. (“A shrill condemnation of how corporate culture has disconnected human beings from each other.”)

If you watched President Obama’s speech on health care last night, perhaps you were particularly struck, as I was, by his description of frank testimony by an executive for a health insurance company in which he admitted that depriving people of coverage was a policy in line with what Wall Street demanded for the sake of shareholders, in spite of the fact that people were dying and suffering.

This is another blatant example of the corporate trend in customer “disservice” that is perhaps exemplified by the inability in many cases to call a company on the phone and talk to a human, and if one does, the human is reading a script and sounds like a robot.

To me, the growth of social media is, as Brogan and Collier also point out, a movement in opposition to this trend, to reimpose real and tangible human values over those of abstractions like profit and financial gain.

Wikipedia defines “Humanism” as “a perspective common to a wide range of ethical stances that attaches importance to human dignity, concerns, and capabilities, particularly rationality. Although the word has many senses, its meaning comes into focus when contrasted to the supernatural or to appeals to authority.”

In my lifetime the distrust of authority has grown from a soft whisper to a bellowing roar as we have seen the growth of multi-national corporations and the pervasive power of influence in Washington.

While many might still scoff at Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social sites, the fact is that their rapid growth speaks to the need for people to locate and connect with similar sensibilities both for their own nourishment and sanity, and also to counteract the megalithic powers that threaten to snuff out humanistic values.

When United Airlines broke a musician’s guitar and ignored him, his video on YouTube went viral, and suddenly he had power as an individual and the company had to take note and respond.

In this way the democratic aspect of social media is in complete harmony with American values of fairness and individual responsibility and autonomy.

Corporations and governments are certainly not all or intrinsically bad; many of our blessings would not exist without them. But we must not lose sight of the fact that these institutions are frequently run at cross purposes to the needs of many of our citizens.

There was a time when money represented the value inherent in tangible labor, goods or services. Now it has become a blip on a computer screen and an abstraction so that the recent prosperity came at the expense of huge debts amassed by financial wizards with no direct relationship to actual labor, goods or services. Instead financial instruments which leveraged debt at ratios as high as 40:1 on the dollar have made a few wealthy and many destitute.

Some like the Dalai Lama have suggested that this economic crisis was a wake-up call for humanity to reassess its most basic values.

And Social media is in many ways a natural response to these inequities, both in terms of the need for anyone and everyone to be heard and listened to, and also to reclaim the disproportionate power of institutions that abuse their might.

We have seen even more dramatic evidence of the power of social media to inspire and motivate disenfranchised people in places like Iran. The fact is that human needs trump abstractions like a balance sheet, and will be recognized, one way or another. It has become a global phenomenon.

Of course some people will use their own concept of humanism to assert their views over others, but what social media has shown (and Brogan’s term is “social capital”) is that people inherently recognize truth and decency over time, so that those with influence on the Internet generally earn it.

Human ingenuity has given birth to a new global nervous system, the Internet, through which humanity may be coming to its senses--with social media leading the way to a new recognition and reevaluation of priorities--so that people and decency matter more than power and greed, as we connect with one another in networks of community and renewed understanding.

The alternative is not pretty.

Is Technology the Ultimate Answer?

Posted: Aug. 22, 2009 - 7 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

I’ve posted about Juan Enriquez before and his talks on the TED web site. His latest talk about the future of our species is both troubling and exciting on a number of levels.

What Enriquez posits is that we are in the midst of a “reboot” in which our entire civilization will be transformed by developments in genetic reprogramming, tissue regeneration and robotics. He suggests that the developments in these fields will be able to overcome the current economic problems with long term solutions to human health, and generate a new boom economy. In his talk he suggests that without these developments our current economic situation is direr than we even imagine.

The examples that Enriquez points to are amazing—including a fully mobile robot on four legs that moves elegantly and can carry 350 pounds called “Big Dog” from Boston Dynamics. (Don’t bother looking up the stock listing, I did and the company seems to be private).

Toward the conclusion of his talk Enriquez goes through a brief history of the universe and points out, once again, how brief the tenure of homo sapien is on the planet and suggests that any concept that we are the apex of evolution is “a bit arrogant.” Nonetheless, he suggests that the reboot that is taking place is evolutionary, and will result in the ability of humans to control their own evolution (homo evolutus) and that of other species (which is already happening).

Of course it can be argued that we are currently controlling other species mainly by exterminating them at an incredible rate, and that the same may happen to us. Eckhart Tolle, for one, thinks the jury is out on our ultimate survival or extinction, particularly if we fail to respect Life itself.

And that is where I think Enriquez again poses some amazing questions, but falls a bit short with the answer.

It was Enriquez’s original talk at TED on genomics that profoundly influenced me in my current belief in the existence of higher intelligence; the analogy between computer programming (devised by our intelligence) and the genome (DNA programming based on logic and not random events), when considered on the level of a scale much higher than we can imagine, indicates to me that existence is not chance.

In fact, genetic programming is part of the reboot that Enriquez describes.

But science has also found that while Enriquez may certainly be right and we are on the verge of “managing” our own evolution, that evolution itself may not be a random occurrence. Bruce Lipton, in Biology of Belief describes how microbes will change their cellular biology (evolve) to become immune to toxins and survive.

To him as well, and to a growing group of scientists, this is evidence that Life evolves intelligently and not randomly.

So is this impending ability to manage our own evolution just a lucky break for humans (our brains got really big at the right time), or something that is influenced by a higher level of understanding?

My contention would be that the ultimate outcome of homo evolutus will be determined not on the basis of how smart he/she becomes, but on how wise.

It is certainly foreseeable (one need only look at Nazi Germany) that these amazing scientific advances will be used not only for good, but to control and conquer.

It is also fascinating to note that the scientific advances Enriquez touts come at a time when parts of science (quantum physics, biology, neuroscience) are being stretched and teased to venture beyond former materialistic boundaries.

So it would seem to me that concentrating only on mechanistic evolution in terms of reengineering our species is a miss. Without the simultaneous psychological and perhaps moral evolution, our species will still be in big trouble, even if Enriquez’s “reboot” is successful.

The technologies Enriquez describes would fall under the heading of a currently popular buzzword – they are “disruptive.’

In the currently popular social media space, disruptive technologies are hailed as those that revolutionize industries and culture and lead to new opportunities and perspectives; however, the concept of disruptive as inevitably good is misguided.

It has taken over our culture to the point where dark and violent films are incredibly popular, and its opposite – harmonious – is viewed with scorn and derision as “boring.”

Unfortunately, it would seem that being disruptive to life as opposed to harmonious with its innate intelligence has already gotten us in a lot of trouble. Our oceans are dead, our air is polluted, and toxins are everywhere. If anything, it would appear that for the reboot of technology to succeed in revitalizing not just our economy but our civilization, it will need to be accomplished in alignment with the principles and intelligence of life, and not just for profit or the sake of materialistic science.

The ideas that come out of conferences like TED are incredibly exciting, and I find Enriquez’s work in particular thought provoking and inspiring, but if anything it points to the inescapable conclusion that for our evolution to be truly intelligent, it cannot be based only on the ideas in our human left brain, but in harmony with the higher level of intelligence at work in the 13.7 billion year history of the universe. If we continue to celebrate our disruptive capabilities we do so at our peril.

Taking a Twitter Ego-Trip?

Posted: Aug. 1, 2009 - 3 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

In my blog on Social Media as a Woman’s World, I mentioned the shift from considering social media as a standard marketing and self promotion platform to making a commitment to active participation and building relationships.

I still think that this is where Facebook and Twitter are taking us—the well known concept is “don’t sell the dogfood, talk about dogs”, and when we share our ideas and passions about dogs then out of that community a sense of connection, growth and well being can develop which is really powerful.

On the other hand, as we all know, a big part of Twitter and Facebook, is just people telling the world what they’re doing and how great it is.

I may get in trouble here, and I am certainly open to comments, but there is a fine line between sharing something of deep interest to yourself, your art, your passions, your ideas and interests, and talking about the fabulous parts of your life is in a way that may convince others and yourself of your importance.

When our use of social media crosses over into this “I can top what you’re doing” area, it becomes, I believe, what Eckhart Tolle calls “compulsive doing.”

He describes in his books how the ego is constantly trying to be first, to be better, to be more, and how this is such a trap to any peace of mind, because anything you achieve in this state is so transitory.

This kind of grasping is an automatic escape from your conscious self and any effort to be mindful, present and aware, and to listen and respond to the real concerns of others around you.

How many people do we know or see that make a show of how busy they are – frequently as an excuse for not keeping one commitment or another?

I suspect that this treadmill of constant achievement is a big part of what led to the financial meltdown and literal “slowdown” that is taking place today. It is an absolute requirement that people finally take a deep breath and consider what is really important in life.

This was brought home to me by an experience I had during the past couple of weeks.

There is a person who had been on the periphery of my circle of acquaintances whom I finally met at an event, and we spoke for a fair amount of time.

About a week later, I saw this person and our eyes met as we approached but there was not the slightest recognition in their eyes, and we did not acknowledge each other. I had been on the verge of saying hello but pulled away.

Immediately I began thinking about other similar experiences where I had met people on more than one occasion, and they had acted similarly, and I had judged them as either being rude or oblivious.

Then a few days later this person friended me on Facebook.

Now I reexamined the situation and decided that I could have easily lifted the veil between us and spoken up, and reached out to this person, rather than expecting the opposite.

The bottom line is that we were both unconscious in our own way, and in many ways in the grip of a set of fears, not the least of which was being overlooked, being insignificant and probably most important, being completely wrapped up in our own drama and not open to other influences. We were both “busy”.

My ego had made me right as I judged our encounter.

But we were both wrong—actually I may have been more wrong because at least I was present enough to recognize this person and I pulled away.

The same thing happens online.

Some of us broadcast on social media. We ego trip on Twitter and Facebook. But more and more people are learning to engage—to listen and to respond—and even in what some men like me may perceive as idle chatter, this channel is opening up between people as they share things of personal significance.

Of course, no one really knows the motivation behind someone else’s post or update, just as no one knows the motivation behind the blank look.

And we can post online and go a long time without acknowledgment, and then the sheer amount of chatter and information can easily overwhelm us. We can feel more isolated as we begin to think we’re alone in this vast sea of information where everyone else is connected.

That’s the fear again.

The alternative is to participate openly and without expectation of immediate reward or gratification-- which the “experts” tell us is the essence of social media.

Can we truly feel community through an electronic device? I’m not sure and I’m still inclined to view the online world as a conduit for something more “real”—connecting in person (not romantically but humanly).

But if we pay attention to what others post, and our own reactions to it and the motivation in our own online efforts--we can make some amazing connections, not the least of which, to ourselves.

We can begin to observe our own fears and motivations and perhaps grow beyond them, evolving from a space of service rather than the fear that separates us from one another.

On a more mystical or philosophical level, I recently tweeted “What if everyone followed everyone? Then there would only be one Mind—the meaning of Twitter?” No one responded. Oh well.

Hijacking Intelligent Design

Posted: Jul. 2, 2009 - 5 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ]

Category: philosophy, ideas

Since 9-11 it is often asserted that fundamentalist Muslims have “hijacked” their religion from presumably more reasonable and mainstream believers in their faith.

Anyone who has followed the news in science recently might say exactly the same thing about the concept of Intelligent Design, and once again the culprits are fundamentalists who have co-opted a set of beliefs, in this case scientific findings, to virulently promote their own narrow interpretation.

Particularly in the fields of quantum physics and genetics, there is an increasing awareness on the part of scientists that natural phenomena cannot be explained or predicted without taking into account the presence of an underlying mental component. Heisenberg and even Einstein first introduced these concepts in physics; in genetics the implications are more subtle.

We are increasingly told about the genetic code; the genome (which is the code underlying an individual or species) has been sequenced (interpreted as a series of alphabetic letters) and at the TED conference in Monterey last year, geneticist Juan Enriquez described the apple as “an application.” When it receives enough energy from the sun the apple “executes” its code (just like a computer program) and falls from a tree.

If you’ve ever worked with computers you’ve had an experience that points to what this means (and I acknowledge that scientists are uncomfortable with the notion of meaning). You’re working on a new computer program or application, or even installing a peripheral, and it doesn’t work. You reread the manual or maybe even call a help desk, and the problem gets solved – and here’s what happens: You realize that the computer was right.

What you then realize is the device or the program functioned exactly as it was supposed to, but you misunderstood something in the instructions. The malfunction was not some random event – when you understand it from a higher perspective it makes total sense from the vantage point of your new understanding. When you can align yourself with the system that conceived the program or device, suddenly everything about the incident becomes clear – it is no longer seemingly random – it is the obvious result of comprehensible intelligence.

This is precisely the current predicament of science. As it tries to decipher nature its findings are incomplete, but in every nook and cranny they point to something unmistakable – previously the province of mystics and pantheistic religions – there is an unmistakable order, a plan and symmetry at work in nature.

But when they venture forth with these findings the results are not pretty.

Ben Stein is addressing this issue in an upcoming film, “Expelled the Movie”, in which he asserts that scientists who question some of the theories of Darwin are being expelled from universities and ostracized by their peers for being religious kooks. This is of course a frightening prospect; if findings can be empirically verified they should be allowed into science and if alternatives to Darwin’s theories are rational they should be taught.

But it’s a false conundrum. The problem isn’t Darwinism or even Evolution – it’s the issue of what originally started the ball rolling. Strict scientists believe that random acts like lightening could have triggered evolution and hence life is a random event with no meaning or mental component at work. Mystery solved.

But is it? Some geneticists claim they are years away from creating life in a test tube – but have they? It seems so far they have only created one life form from another.

If their scientific colleagues who are brushing up against the evidence of paradox in the form of a mental or intelligent component at work in nature are being unfairly banished from their positions as scientists, that is an absurdity that results from only one thing – the fact that this concept which is entirely legitimate for scientific exploration has been hijacked by fundamentalists in this country.

They want Intelligent Design taught in schools as a theory of the existence of God – essentially an anthropomorphic construct with obvious problems. We do not know anything about the existence of a God, much less which God is the right one, or what His or Her motives may be.

But we cannot allow earnest scientific investigation into a mental component of nature to be torpedoed by such a fundamentalist interpretation when it may yield immense breakthroughs in the area of medicine, space exploration and fields as yet unforeseen.

The finite human mind seems incapable of accepting an effect without a cause, and yet science is coming up against that paradox inside the atom and at the edge of the known universe. Scientists like Mani Bhaumik, inventor of Lasik and author of “Code Name God” have already begun to compare and even reconcile findings in their fields with ancient religious theories – but totally within the context of accepted scientific discovery. But such scientists do not necessarily contend, and in fact Bhaumik would surely not believe, that locating the presence of intelligence in nature proves that the earth was created in less than a week, or that a puppet master was pulling the strings in the universe or directing the lives of individuals on this planet.

Freeing ourselves from the constraints of this dichotomy, between limiting the scope of scientific inquiry or accepting beliefs based only on faith, is very likely a key to the next great quantum (pardon the pun) leaps in both science and health and we must grant our greatest minds the freedom to explore nature in its fullness, even if it leads to the conclusion that far greater minds exist.

bunzel

View All Entries