On the Death of the American Town

A few years ago when I came back to the US after many years in Ireland I was talking to a good friend about the collapse of many American towns. The businesses seemed to be moving out of the towns to line the roads between the towns and the towns were becoming ghosts of their former selves.  Well that is not quite correct. The local businesses in the towns were not moving out, they were shutting down and new super stores were being built in the agricultural land with large seas of car parks. I was really disgusted and bewildered by this. I could not understand why the American people were simply letting this happen. But when I asked my friend why the towns don’t establish good planning controls, I was shocked by my friend’s shock that I would even ask that question. His basic response was that this was not Russia! In America people are free to do what they want with their land. And why should anyone else tell you what to do, especially the government? His response made me feel like I was some sort of communist agent trying to infiltrate the US and destroy the American Dream!

For a while after that I was not sure what to think. I really respect what America stands for, and I certainly did not want to turn it into a communist state. But that said I also saw such destruction of what was once a beautiful cultured landscape. How could it be that our towns must die so the American Dream can live? It simply made no sense. Why must every American restaurant look identical to a thousand other restaurants?

I want to offer a simple thought on this topic. America prides itself on the freedom of the individual; the freedom of man to create his own destiny, a freedom that reflects the true dignity of man. This is certainly a noble ideal and worthy of fighting for. But there is more to it than this. It reminds me of the divorce law. Many people claim that the law must allow divorce because it is beneath man’s dignity to force him to stay married to a person that he does not want to be married to. But they forget the more important aspect of man’s dignity. What if he wants a law that reflects the vow that he makes “For better or worse, till death us do part.” Should this not be reflected in the law? Why should a man not be allowed to make this sort of binding contract? Is it not so much due to the belief in man’s dignity but rather in the lack of belief in man’s dignity, a belief that no man could possibly be held to such a vow!

Now you may wonder what has this do to with the death of the American town! Well, besides the terribly destructive effects of divorce, the example also shows the consequences of reducing or limiting your understanding of man and his freedom. In the name of respecting the dignity of man you disregard one of the most important aspect of man’s dignity, his word. This same thing is true for man on a community level. For the sake of the “individual’s rights” you disregard man’s right to create a town with his fellow man. And instead you subject him to the whims of the “individual rights” of every other man and for that matter every corporation. The essential thing to note is not that you need to reduce the individual’s rights for the sake of the community but that you need to increase the individual’s rights for the sake of the community, so that it reflects the true nature of man. Just as man has a right to protect his house so also man should have a right to protect his community and town.

This broadened view of individual’s rights has many interesting consequences. Instead of an overly simplistic, monotone approach to law it becomes much richer. You simply cannot consider an individual’s rights in isolation but you need to consider all individual’s rights. This allows for a more diverse culture, a culture where the true dignity of man can shine! Life is not black and white or shades of grey, it is multi-colored.

The Ever-Present Miracle

(Reflections on Consciousness)

"They mean to tell us all was rolling blind
 Till accidentally it hit on mind
 In an albino monkey in the jungle,
 And even then it had to grope and bungle,"

From ‘Accidently on Purpose’ – Robert Frost 1962

I was thinking about consciousness and about the possibility of creating it on a computer. This may not sound like a very significant question but I think it sheds much light on consciousness itself.

Certain aspects of human consciousness can be replicated on a computer such as memory, logical reasoning or doing things like playing chess. Other things cannot be replicated but can be modeled, such as gravity and indeed all physical phenomenon. You don’t create a wind tunnel or a sound chamber in a computer you model them. The model is not the thing itself but it creates a mathematical model of the physical objects and insofar as the model represents the physical it can be very useful for certain tasks. For example, if you accurately model the acoustics of a concert hall it is possible to feed a ‘pure’ sound signal into the hall at any location and hear what it would sound like at any other location. It would also be possible to test how a car or plane will behave at different speeds and under different weather conditions. However in this case we also see the shortcomings of a model. No matter how accurately a car is modeled on a computer it will always entirely fail at the actual function of the car. A computer model of a car will never move you from point A to point B. From this we can see that the physical nature of the car is an essential attribute of the car. Unlike the case of the wind tunnel which if accurately modeled the model can be just as useful as the tunnel itself if not more useful. And can even remove the need of the physical wind tunnel.

It is clear to see that although computer modeling can do many things it will never be able to do others. You can have the most perfect model of a hammer but it will never drive a nail into the wall.

Now you may ask, what has this to do with human consciousness. Well, under our current scientific understanding the brain is always explained as some sort of complex neural network computer with countless number of interconnections. And from this it is hypothesized that consciousness simply materializes or maybe I should say etherealizes. But whatever you call it, consciousness is considered to be the product of the working brain. It is as if the brain is running a very complex ‘consciousness modeling’ algorithm. When this program runs consciousness appears.

To a certain degree I understand this hypothesis. It recognizes the fact that there is something other about consciousness. That somehow consciousness sits above the brain. That it transcends the physical matter of the brain, much like a computer algorithm transcends the matter of the computer!  But there is also something deeply flawed with the hypothesis.

How many mathematical equations does it take to make a thought? How many combinations of logical expressions do you need to get an idea? How many ‘0’s and ‘1’s must you combine before you get an ‘I’? You will never do it! Just as no amount of complex modeling can produce the tiniest amount of actual physical matter so also no amount of complex modeling can produce the tiniest amount of consciousness. Conscious beings are generally rational beings (some more than others) and as such it is possible to logically analyse them, to predict what they will do under certain situations, and then to model this behavior. With much effort it may even be possible to write an algorithm that would mimic human behavior to such a degree that someone could be fooled into thinking that the computer is conscious. But has any consciousness been created. No, not the minutest amount. Modeling conscious and consciousness itself are too totally different things. You might as well be saying that if I model a hammer accurately enough it will eventually be able to drive home the nail! But of course it will not.

Unlike the case of the model of a hammer where the essential missing attribute is the physical matter, it is not physical matter with consciousness. You might call it 'conscious matter', or you might call it a miracle!

What is the Question?

When we were children we constantly asked our parents questions. Why is the sky blue? What makes popcorn pop? Where do babies come from? And on and on and on and on… Sometimes we were happy with the answers, sometimes we were not. But in either case you can be sure that more questions would follow. Not only was this questioning crucial for us but it was also thrilling! We discovered and entered new worlds! The more we understood the more questions we had, and the more wonder we experienced.

There was a deep desire to understand! An uncontrollable urge to make sense of it all! It would be completely futile to ask a child to stop being curious, to stop wanting to understand. It just won’t happen. Every new experience is the cause for a hundred new questions. And every answer sparks a hundred more. This desire comes from the very core of the child. It is not like the satisfaction an old man gets when he completes the crossword or when he finally gets all the cards up in solitaire. Unlike the old man the child is not deciding to do this. He is not doing it to fill some time. It is not a hobby or an interest of the child. It is the child!

As we grow we understand the world more and more. Things make more sense. We have explored the trees, observed seeds sprout, we have seen the water babble in the stream and watched those little creatures crawling amongst the pebbles. We have seen so much and wondered so much! But something changed, we stop asking questions! We seem to have moved on. The desire to play in the puddle and to feel mud between our toes lessens.  And we are sad, and we do crosswords and play solitaire to fill the time.

But what has changed? Why do we content ourselves with the mundane? Are our hearts not still longing for answers? Do we not still have the desire to discover new worlds? Do we not ache to understand? Maybe the problem is not that we gave up on looking for answers but that we do not know the right questions to ask?

On the Upcoming Election!

How are you going to vote? Well I have been thinking about this lately and it is not such an easy question. I am no expert on the American political system but on a basic level we have the 'left' democrats, the 'right' republicans and then everyone else the independents. Sounds nice and balanced doesn't it? But it is blatantly clear from looking at our country that we are anything but balanced. We are like a person with a major case of bi-polar disorder and I don't think balanced is the right word for that even if they are experiencing pure euphoria as often as they are suicidal. What is more, up until recently we seem to becoming more and more polarized as a nation! "It is quite clearly George Bush's fault that we are in this terrible situation! Only for him and the Republican party everything would be great!" "No, no, no! Are you still blaming him? Obama had his chance to turn this country around but he has made things far worse than Bush ever did!" So what do we do? The people on the left swing further left and the people on the right swing further right, so as to keep the balance!

But just maybe this is exactly where the established political parties want us to be. As a people we are so divided that we are not even capable of talking to each other let alone having a nuanced discussion on the real matters at hand. On one side of the divide is social responsibility, protection of the environment and women's rights, on the other is freedom of the individual, reduction of government control and the protection of all human life. And for some reason we are all lead to believe these are mutually exclusive, so all we can do is hit each other over the heads with our idea hammers.

Now my intention is not to over simplify the matter, but it strikes me that we are a 'led' people. We are all doing what we are supposed to do. If you put a gerbil in a wheel he will run and if you were to ask him I'm sure he would say that he wants to run. But that is only because he does not know any better. There are not too many wild gerbils getting into wheels, are there? Given his alternatives I think I would get into the wheel with him. But that is precisely the point; if we want to be free we cannot let other people set our frame of reference. We cannot simply choose between two 'givens'. As this is no different than the gerbil! We need to discover the true frame of reference and choose accordingly.

It is no wonder that we are a divided people, as we have been asked to choose between two half-truths! And we pick what we consider to be the lesser of two evils. I can assure you that the people on the other side of the divide are doing the very same. But now you may ask why would anyone want to divide a people? What benefit is there to that? The more divided the people become the less the government has to offer the people to satisfy them! "Because after all aren’t they better than the other side!" "I know this politician is not great but at least he has a chance of getting elected. The person that I really like does not have a hope so I won't vote for him." But little do you know, all you are doing is getting back into the wheel. Some people claim that the country is in too bad of shape to vote for the person they want. It is better to tow the party line. But I say we can't NOT vote for the person we think is best. It is only by doing so that we can make these corrupt political parties redundant. We have to start believing in the power of the people again and not in our politicians. We have to start thinking long term and not just the next political cycle! And what is more if we did manage to elect good politicians we might even find that the people are not so divided after all!