New beginnings...

I began working on The Atternen Juez Talen (The Eternal Jew’s Tale) back in 2009. Those days seem like something of another life now. That tale, that literary history, began in 30 CE in Judean Jerusalem, and proceeded to about 1510 CE in the Ottoman Empire’s capital, Istanbul, where it stands now. It is a compendium of tales of Jewish life, real and imagined, tales personal and lived told from a first-person p.o.v. It also includes letters, dreams, and books produced by the characters in the story; stories within stories and books within books.

In the last year I broke my tale out of its chronological trajectory. I began telling the episodes as a montage of interrelated events and ideas. I wrote a Passover montage composed of 8 Passovers in 8 different locations from 150 BCE in Hasmonean Judea to 1950 CE on an Israeli kibbutz. After that I worked on a Messiah Montage about the many and varied failed messiahs in history.

Less than a month ago I realized I had finished the Messiah Montage, or should I say, I was finished with it. And I realized I was done with The Atternen Juez Talen, too. I had begun to leave that story and that life behind already in 2020. But now, wonder of wonders, after months of transitional agony, I could feel a new energy emerging from my depths, a different story that wanted to be told.

Now the world may behold these first images of that newly emerging tale….

Remembrensenz an Deth Jurneez,
thats ware weel start.
Yu say, 'o wo,' 'o dreeree,' 'not me...'


But jes kunsidder.
We ar tole we kum tu this werl
emtee, fresh, a kleen slate.
But that iz an utter fals.
We kum swoddeld in jennettek vaelz,
vast librareez uv knowenz kumpield
uv expereyenz az arktipe us,
embedden, unkonshes intu us:
insteenkt an tallents,
emoeshenz an skilz,
vizhenz an etheks
that nacherlee unfoel
tu respon tu this werl.


Kunsidder:
How eezee an nacherrel
tu lern tu reed.
An yet not a seengel speseez els
kan reed. Not a seengel hyumen
beffor 5000 yeerz uggo
(but a momen in evvolueshennaree time)
evver haz a tex tu reed,
evver red a seengel werd.
An yet az a speseez weer obsest tu reed.
This skil, an mennee unnuther az wel --
     sum we kno:
     myuzek, arts, fillossuffee, maths;
     an sum yet tu diskuvver,
wuz laen intu the thredz uv us,
reddee wen weer reddee fer it.
We kum heer reddee.
We kum heer perpaerd.
We kum heer with a perpessen goel.

An so it mus be
wen we leev this werl
we wil awlso go perpaerd,
tho we kno not how,
tho it seem we hav no knowenz at awl.
But weel go on that jernee wel perpaerd.

So let us kunsidder wut we kno,
wut we wil karee wen we leev this shel.
Wut ar gatherz tu serv ar needz
wen we leev behien ar sensez five,
wen ar werl iz not shaept by nerv?
Wut uv us iz oenlee mien?

Uv kors!
Ar essens iz immajjinnes...

Further Notes on Human Evolution, part 2

Continuing where I left off from my previous post…

… Still, we can glimpse that direction and purpose, using our own direction and purpose to guide our imagination. But more importantly, by seeing purpose and direction in evolution -- as in our own lives -- we can begin to positively effect our own evolution towards a better future, one that I am inclined to imagine would be more peaceful, respectful, balanced, and healthy than the present state of our species and its civilization.

Perhaps predator humans at the crest of local power and wealth waves might prefer to imagine a feudal, slave society that serves them and them alone, but I’d like to point out that human development clearly shows that predator species and predator individuals will be extincted (found less fit) more rapidly than other, less predatorial types. The saber-toothed tiger, the lion, the modern tiger, the cougar, the wolverine and so many other predators are targeted first by humans seeking to build a place for themselves. This is true for the most aggressive humans as well. Nature may create predators but it does not love them. And human nature has a particular antipathy for predatorial types.

Thus I speak of our species emerging into the “teenage” years of its life span, and the implications that has for us human children as we begin to grasp and manage our purpose, meaning, and direction, that is, as we begin to move towards greater maturity.

Like all growth in a population, some individuals will begin to mature a little sooner than others. Some individuals (we often call them prophets, sages, geniuses) speak to and for our future with guiding principles and values. Particularly meaningful to me are teachings that promote one law for all people alike, and for taking care of the needy and most vulnerable in society. Our prophets and geniuses are not perfect, and they may also say many things that are still embedded in adolescent thinking. But they have seen a glimmering of the future, and that can inspire and guide us.

Others speak forcefully and with great popularity, and yet they speak from the moral and social ignorance of our species’ prepubescence. They are fearful of people and ideas that they don’t know (xenophobic); predatorial towards those that are different or weaker (bigoted); certain of their knowledge, though it is profoundly limited (fundamentalist, authoritarian); without regard for or awareness of their impact on the world around them (anti-environmentalist); and/or concerned only with matters of status (idol worshiping). These are people on the back edge of the evolutionary wave, and yet they are often the people whose voices are the loudest or most popular.

One’s status in society is not a measure of one’s moral and spiritual growth. Indeed “high status” may be a measure of a person’s lack of growth, showing s/he is mired in the dogpack values of ego, aggression, vanity, and consumption. The same is true for those obsessed with power. Often very backwards in their moral and social values, those who seek political power are often among the people most resistant to societal growth, and most opposed to implementing legal and structural changes to facilitate unbiased justice, equal opportunity, and a sense of economic security which will enhance creativity and accelerate our intellectual, moral, and spiritual development.

The dogpack mind is very powerful in our psyche, and very essential. But I believe our evolutionary growth allows for the possibility of diminishing its most destructive aspects, such as unrestrained aggression and fear, while enhancing the dogpack virtues of social responsibility and semi-egalitarian authority structures. Individual commitment to that kind of evolutionary growth is a first step in its manifestation.

Further Notes on Human Evolution

Here’s the opening paragraphs to a short essay that continues to develop the logic of a critique of pure randomness in evolution. My thesis: evolution is purposeful and directed, altho we have extremely limited access to what that purpose and direction is.

~~~~~~~~~

As I have suggested elsewhere, we humans are entering our teenage years as a species. In the last 5000 years, in this dawning of “civilization,” we have grown from adolescents, perhaps about 10 years old, to young teenagers, say 13 years old (by way of comparing species-time to individual-time).

We have grown from an innocent but raw and unmediated selfishness, guided by a “dogpack mind” that Darwinians have enshrined as ‘survival of the fittest,’ towards an emerging “teenage” sense of the value of other, and of community, while still gripped by the dogpack mind that drives us towards all kinds of self-serving bigotries and forms of violence.

But let me step back for a moment, to make clear my context.

What is meant by this term ‘survival of the fittest?’ It is generally interpreted as meaning that life and its evolution is changing randomly, that is, without specific purpose and without intended or even definable direction, serving temporary imbalances in nature. Fitness is just a way of describing temporary species survival. Is a lion more fit than a sparrow? Is an oak more fit than a fern or moss or algae? Such an understanding of evolution implies very specifically that the process is godless. Evolution has no purpose or direction. It only serves temporary states of ‘fitness.’

Now, it is conceivable that the universe is purposeless and directionless, but I don’t believe that it is. In fact, I don’t believe that anyone, literally anyone, believes that it is! In our heart of hearts we all believe that there is meaning and purpose in our lives. We also believe there is purpose in our collective lives, as well, although we may bitterly disagree on what that meaning and purpose is. As a species we humans are utterly absorbed in and devoted to matters of purpose and direction. Indeed, the loss of hope in the purposefulness of our lives drives us to suicide. But even suicidal actions that address such a state are in themselves a desperate grasping at meaning, at purpose, in which the suicidal individual can at least direct one last act towards rejecting their hopelessness and helplessness.

And if we human beings are so driven, so utterly absorbed in the idea of meaning, purpose, direction, is this then a species-wide delusion?

I believe not. The very term ‘evolution’ inherently involves direction, and our obsession with exploring our evolution is a function of the purposefulness that shapes our every thought. The ideology of randomness in evolution is the real delusion! It is a positivist reduction and simplification, and while false, it does serve the purpose of helping us collect data with, perhaps, a little less emotional and ideological baggage. In this way it can be seen as having some value, even though it is neither truthful nor accurate in its understanding.

That said, we must be very careful not to assume what we mere humans, a genomic wavelet hurtling forward on the vast tidal wave of life-evolution, have any but the dimmest understanding of the direction and greater purpose of evolution. Indeed, the universe, and the purpose that drives it is arguably something like a quarter-billion times vaster and more enduring than the flickering space-time of our individual lives (assuming the universe is 13.7 billion years old).

Still, we can glimpse that direction and purpose, using our own direction and purpose to guide our imagination….

Just sayin' #2: Thoughts on a new understanding of 'God'

This little essay is adapted from a lesson I taught to some teenagers who preferred to sit in a discussion with me than to sit with the “adults” during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. I thank them for inspiring me to develop this topic.

Let me tell you what I’ve concluded after talking with lots and lots of students and adults about “who or what is God.

God is kind of like Santa Claus, a jolly fat guy who gives treats to good little boys and girls, and who spanks bad little boys and girls.

Of course, they don’t ever say it like that, but that’s what’s deep down in there. It’s like the Wizard of Oz: once you pull away people’s curtains and fancy talk, most people have a 5-year-old’s idea of God. They have grown older and maybe wiser, but their core understanding of God is stuck back in 5-year-old fairy land.
Now, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for a 5-year-old to believe in fairy tales like Santa. But when you grow up, even just a little, then it’s appropriate, and necessary to reject your fairy tale beliefs.
Therefore, I’d like to propose a different understanding of God. But this idea will not come to you as something that is full-grown. It is only a seed. YOU will have to grow it, and that will take attention and effort on your part. Like any seed, like any idea, if it falls on infertile ground, or is left unattended through drought and freeze, it will surely die.

To that end, before you can proceed, there are two issues you must address.

First, you have to ask yourself: do I want to try to grow this idea? Or, in truth, am I more inclined to just ignore it? Or, being totally frank, do I really just want to kill it? That’s the first choice you have with any idea. If you want to grow it, there will be things you will need to do. I won’t take time here to tell you what they are, but you can figure them out. It’s not hard. And remember, like any seed, even if you attend to it, even if you attend to it with great zeal, it may never flower or produce much fruit; it may even die.

Second, there are some serious difficulties with knowing God or believing there is a God:
1. Our senses are limited and we base nearly all our thinking on our senses. But God cannot be experienced, in any way, through our senses. Further, our science is based on our senses. Our science, at least as it exists today, cannot help us find God, experience God, or even understand God.
2. Our experiences are limited and yet we build our knowledge from our experiences. Science teaches us to judge and understand the world through what we can experience and measure. Therefore, if you are inclined to think scientifically, and if you have not experienced God, it will be very difficult for you to believe that there is a God, because we measure the world through our own experiences.
But consider: there are people who have had genuine experiences that can be called “God-experiences.” Unfortunately, most people don’t ever have them, so we need to put aside the fantasy that because we imagine ourselves to be so wonderful, God will step down and tap us on the shoulder and say, “Okay Jack, it’s time for you to wake up!” But if you want that to happen, you have to prepare the ground. It’s not much different than aspiring to become a concert pianist or professional athlete. It takes a lot of preparatory work. And even then, you may not achieve your aspirations. You may not experience God.
3. This world is full of a vast number of distractions, and opportunities to waste our time on entirely meaningless and useless activities, from social networks, to shopping, to TV and internet, to sports. And on top of it, we have to spend a substantial portion of every day going to school, and after that, working, and very little of that time will help prepare your mind (or as some would argue, your soul) to understand God better, or to experience God.
4. We must face the problem of pain, disease, and evil. This is, of course, an enormous stumbling block for many people, and I’m not going to attempt to “solve” it, which is to say, rationalize it. I’ve read many answers and none have greatly satisfied me, and the answers that I’ve tried to compose don’t satisfy me either. I have resigned myself to living with the unknowing and the discomfort. That may be a deal-breaker for you. If so, fare thee well.

So, in short, the world is a hostile place for helping us to find and understand God.

Realizing all that, if you still want to seek a new and more meaningful understanding of the idea of God, then the first step is really quite simple. Consider Copernicus. When Copernicus re-imagined the solar system placing the sun at the center and earth orbiting it, rather than setting the earth at the center, it was nothing more than a change in perspective. It required no new data, whatsoever. But it had a massive impact on our understanding of the universe. Everything changed by simply changing perspective.
Here are 2 perspective changes you can explore, if you want to develop a more meaningful understanding of the idea of “God”.

1. First, we must first rethink what “I” am and what our body is. Our body is but a receptacle. Life/Consciousness creates the body; the body does not create Life/Consciousness.
Consider this metaphor of plumbing:
When you turn on a faucet, it allows water to pour out. That water is under much pressure coming from a vast reservoir far away. Think of that water as “life” and the faucet opening as the germination of a sperm and egg into a foetus, a new life. Like plumbing, life flows into us. Our body does not create that life. Rather, it becomes the receptacle for it, growing as that life-energy unfolds into the world, and aging and declining as that life-energy begins to depart.
Consider: Is a table alive, or a building, or the ocean or a mountain? No. It doesn’t matter how much matter there is, how many chemicals and compounds are mixed together. Atoms aren’t alive, so no matter how many you gather together, you won’t create some kind of strange but living thing. Atoms aren’t alive; therefore, they cannot create life! It’s a simple, scientific fact. It’s like creating something from nothing. It can’t be done.
Think about it:
If a person is in a room and the oxygen is pumped out of it, in 5 minutes that person will be dead. That person’s atoms are all still there. Nothing has changed about their body. But their body doesn’t just spontaneously pop back to life if oxygen is suddenly made available again. Their body didn’t create the life; if it did, it would pop back alive again! No, life departed that body. The door closed. It’s gone, and all that is left are atoms, lifeless atoms.

When a sperm fertilizes an egg, the 2 cells rapidly begin to divide and expand. Life is rushing in, like water pouring through the pipes in your home. The shape of that life pouring in is what shapes the body that evolves. We say, oh no, it’s genetics that determines the structures. No, your perspective is backwards. It’s life that shapes the genetics! Our genetics, our DNA is the effect, not the cause, of the life-energy pouring into the world!
And once you realize your body is not creating life, you realize your life is connected in a direct way to everyone else’s life here on the planet, and, most likely, on other far flung planets, as well. Life is like a vast reservoir of water, flowing throughout the whole universe, connecting us to all other living beings!
And suddenly, our small life is connected to a vastness that staggers our imagination. And yet, although its entirely unmeasurable, it’s right here, the very essence of us.

And seen this way, we can understand Life (or if you prefer, Consciousness) as one of the faces of God. It’s not all of God, but it’s a tangible and accessible part of God. With just this small change in perspective, suddenly God is flowing through your veins. This is no fairy tale god; it is the God that is LIVING YOU. God is in you and living you, and like a canoe on a white-water river, you are paddling hard as you can, to try to control your movement on that rapidly flowing river.

2. Second, we need to actively realize that God is Infinite and Eternal. God is not like our finite, limited world. Forget the word ‘God.’ It’s got Santa Claus attached to it. Think ‘Infinity’ or ‘Eternity.’
The rules that operate in infinity are entirely unlike the rules of logic that define how we think and understand the world.

Consider: In our simple, deeply limited “rationality” 1+1= 2, pure and simple. There’s one answer, and everyone knows what “1" is: one penny, one chair, one person sitting in a chair. But let’s think about this.
What is “1” ? We represent it in writing by a figure, a short vertical line. But really, isn’t it 1 plus a decimal point plus a zero. But what if we write 1.00000001? Is that 1 or 1 and just a little more? What if we add a million zeros and then a 1, is that 1, or 1 and just a little more? When does 1 become just “1"? Can we add an infinite number of zeros to get to 1?
How do we add an infinite number of zeros? We can’t. And even if we could, we could still add a 1, because infinity doesn’t follow our very limited and simplistic rules. In fact, all numbers are infinite and unfathomably complex.

Let’s look at another aspect of the infinity that is all around us, shaping us while we thoroughly ignore it. Is a penny a penny? Of course. I give it to a store clerk and she’ll give me a piece of gum (well, maybe a long time ago I could get a piece of gum for a penny). But just a second. Look closer.
Where does that penny begin and where does it end? If you look at that penny with a very powerful microscope you run into a problem. Suddenly you see that you can’t actually determine where it begins and ends. Some electrons and other sub-atomic particles can jump from the penny into my finger, and electrons from my finger attach to the penny, and suddenly I’m in the penny and the penny is in me.
Same with you. Where does your physical body begin and end? You breathe in air. It’s in your lungs. Is it part of your body? It’s a judgement call. Some of you may say ‘yes’, and some may say ‘no’. Okay, where do the electrons of you begin and end?

You see, we live in a simplistic, rationalistic world where we make artificial, and false distinctions between things. I am I, and you are you. Right?

But in the world of infinity, in the World-That-Shapes-Us, things are much, much different. It’s not that they’re impossible to imagine. It’s just that they don’t follow our simplistic, childish logic.
In this simple 3-dimensional world, mathematicians state that a properly designed equation has one solution. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always hold, but once we start getting multiple solutions, we know we’re in a very problematical realm. If a problem has 10 solutions, which one is the right solution, or which solution applies to the question I’m trying to solve right now? We don’t know. But in the world of infinity, every equation has an infinite number of solutions, and they’re all correct!

In the world of infinity, I am I, but I am also you, and I am not-I, and the not-I of me is also the not-you of you, and on and on.

And most importantly, in the world of infinity, if our minds could grasp such ideas, they would not only make sense, they would make infinitely more sense than our simplistic, childish ideas such as: I am I and you are you, and there’s nothing more to say!

Now, perhaps you’re thinking, OMG, Steve has gone off the rails, and this is all so complicated, and I have better things to do than to imagine how crazy infinity is. But folks, this is not really so hard. What’s hard is that I’m asking you to turn around your perspective, and think in a way that’s a little different than you’re used to.
Why am I asking you to do this? If you want to begin to have a more grown-up and insightful and enriching understanding of ‘God,’ the Infinite; if you want to replace your Santa Claus idea of God with a more substantive understanding, an understanding that will help you grow, and will enrich you and will elevate your sense of purpose and wonder, and that will have a genuine relevance to you, then you have to begin rethinking what ‘God’ is. You have to expand your ideas and stretch your horizons.

One last comment: we humans are growing up. We are beginning to leave the childhood of our species behind. Our holy books are remarkable accomplishments, full of many brilliant ideas. But they were written by, and for a humanity that was in its young childhood. They are not the last word; the are but the first words. We are growing up, and yet we are just as much in need of holiness now as when we were hunter-gatherers, bewildered and terrorized by nature. We are perhaps more in need of moral uprightness, and more in need of an appreciation of the vulnerability of the world and the value of diversity than we ever were before. If so, then our understanding of ‘the holy’ and ‘the divine’ may not be childish artifacts to be thrown away. They may be guiding lights, more needful now than ever.

A phenomenological experience

Another episode where the borders between thought, reality, and dream broke down. As if each thought were tangent to, or a window onto, a whole other world. Images – they seemed like forgotten but internally vibrant dream images – would evanesce up, and it was impossible for me to know if they were dream images or things I’ve experienced in this world. Hazy, just on the edge of consciousness, but brightly ‘colored’. Perhaps simply thoughts that were being amplified somehow. Each seemed to have a whole life behind it.

Perhaps this is a formal description of what I was experiencing:
Fractal consciousness in an n-dimension geometry, each thought a vertex or tangent on another world.

Scary but fascinating, like a taste of higher consciousness. But also out of my control, mysterious, confusing.

On Consciousness/Life and Evolution

Life/Consciousness is separate from matter. Matter does not create Life, and matter does not self-organize into the forms, the vessels that are filled with Life. Science has the causality backwards. Life organizes matter to become a vessel that it may fill and “enliven”. The genome does not spark or form or direct the flow of Life. Nor is matter alive, which it must be if it is the source and cause of Life. Life organizes the genome to take shape, to express the physical aspects of itself, to allow itself embodiment. The multiple genome threads, the living species, are shaped by the thing we know as Life. They are its physical, its outward expression.

How can Life be created from a mere structural arrangement of atoms and molecules? How can the genome create life? Does a wire create the electricity that flows thru it? No, it simply enables it. Thus we must understand that Life is a pre-existing “force”, and that it directs the architectonics of all living things. 

The body is like a crystal formed by the guidance of atomic forces and their structural efficiencies. Or, just as a river’s erosion progressively cuts away layers of soil and rock to expose the underlying geology, so Life progressively makes inroads into earth’s material existence, slowly evolving/expressing more forms and more complex aspects of itself, progressively evolving more building blocks to allow more states, and more complex states of Consciousness/Life to manifest. Our bodies represent 4 billion years of Life’s slow penetration into, and reorganization of the material world.

In this way, Life/Consciousness directs evolution. Evolution is not random. It flows along gradients of Life/Consciousness, as water flows down a gradient; as the surfaces of a canyon are slowly cut away, exposed, made manifest.

The position of modern science is rather like the medieval model of planetary motions. The medieval proto-scientists lacked any awareness of the motive forces (momentum and gravity) that were directing the planets in their motions. So Darwinism falls back on randomness, failing to see the motive force of Life, with its gradients that drive the processes of evolution.

And since there appears to be only one primary genome (with multiple sequences) at the basis of all species, we can conclude there is only one Life source that enflowers our whole world. Is this the One God our Prophets have tried to make known?

But as matter is finite, so the material senses formed by Life are finite and incapable of seeing/understanding/experiencing the infinite nature of Life. Thus logic, reason, and knowledge derived from the senses, or based on the senses, eg science, must be inherently finite, limited and baffled (insensate) to the infinite and eternal nature of Life/Consciousness.

Such a perspective answers more tersely and simply the problems of complexity that the Darwinian evolutionary model cannot answer. The eye is a good example of where Darwinians must project many non-functional steps into the evolution of a complex structure. The eye has few or no traces of prior stages left in the biological record, both living and fossilized. How can that be, if each stage of evolution must be functional (evolutionarily advantageous), and each evolutionary step minute?  But if we see evolution as following gradients (as yet unseen by our science), then we can easily understand large, rapid evolutionary changes as following steep gradients, not unlike a waterfall. Understanding that evolution follows gradients created by Life will also allow us to build an architectural schematic that can be used in predicting new species and species evolution. Such a thing is impossible with a model based on randomness.

Are Life and Consciousness the same thing? I don’t know what might stand as evidence to differentiate the two, so I use them interchangeably.