Baha’i Leaders imprisoned in Iran

The madmen are at it again. After murdering 18 national elected leaders of the Baha’i Faith on the return to Iran of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, the new administrators realised they needed a system to support the 300,000 Baha’is in Iran. They agreed to an appointed group called ‘The Friends’. Now, in what seems to be an escalation of a progrom, some features of which I have previously reported, the madmen have arrested the 4 men and two women leaders. Not only do these Baha’i leaders have only the best interests of Iran in all of their actions, and purposefully keep well clear of any political machinations, their incarceration is a sign of the deprivation of spirit among the power hungry in that country.  The vile, greedy, ignorant, madmen who perpetrate these acts against the Baha’i leaders, are perpetrating the same act against their whole country. No one in that country is safe. No matter what religion. These madmen are determined to destroy Iran. Like all tyrants they are, even now, and more and more over time, in their paranoia, turning against their closest allies. While we must speak out against the barbaric behaviour agaisnt peace-loving people, we must also recognise that this barbaric behaviour will not stop with people who are not muslims, nor with only moderate muslims. It will only stop when the government of that country enforces Justice. What you will see in the following video clip is not Justice, but pure evil.

Black Mountain

A friend invited me to a regular bushwalk he and a few others do in the Kuranda area. I went over today. They decided on Black Mountain. Drive about 20 minutes from Kuranda into the National Park. Park the car off the road and find the first coloured tag in the nearby forest, because there is no real trail. Send someone ahead with a machette to clear the ‘wait-a-while’ from the path. Follow through looking for the next tag. Finally, after 3 hours we climbed up a rock outcrop through the canopy of the rainforest to have lunch overlooking the coastal strip between Cairns and Port Douglas. The walk was mostly steep, so hard on the cardiovascular fitness going up and hard on the knees coming down. Everyone fell at least once coming down as it was wet and muddy. Exhausted by the end but a worthwhile adventure with good comapnions. Photos on Flickr.

Natural is not that Natural

A passing comment recently made me think (yet again) about how difficult  we find communicating a clear idea.  The comment was about  whether something wasn’t natural.

So I did a web search about the word ‘natural’ and was quite disappointed with the offerings, so just went to the dictionary. It had 18 meanings of the word ‘natural’, some of which don’t make entirely good logical sense and present a bit of a circular argument. It had 20 meanings of the word, ‘nature’.

However there wasn’t a clear definition for the natural as used by the comment which was about a science-fictional situation in which a man converted himself into an underwater creature. Thereby the comment, ‘that ain’t natural’. And I wondered about the usage which I have commonly heard for an action, usually an elite skill. Now the action does take place, so the meaning is not that it doesn’t exist in nature. Even in the sci-fi, the desire of the writer seems to be to impress upon us that it was a ‘real’ ‘existing’ thing. So why might we say something is not natural, even when we see it right before our eyes.  Like a perfect 10 dive  in the Olympic Games.  So it seems we mostly means something out there at the small end of the bell curve or outside some normative situation. So when we create our identity in society, most of us must be trying to find a  socially comfortable place, a place where most people exist. Or maybe we all want to be the king, but when it becomes clear that we won’t be the king, we put our efforts into being properly ordinary (even if with a few tickets on ourselves). Our sense of our being ordinary, therefore translates into the natural thing.

We probably have a tendency then, perhaps strongly at adolescence and young adult hood, to bounce off everyone around us in an effort to find whether our ideation at the time is picked up by others. If it is, we add it to our collection of ‘natural’. If it doesn’t, we add it to our collection of un-natural. If we have persuasive capabilities, we might become a setter of what is natural for others, and there acquiesence will reinforce for ourselves that we were correct to see the idea as ordinary, natural. And if we are insecure, we might find it in our interests to agree with the ideas of the big talkers, and thus accept that those ideas are ‘natural’. It seems that, if this situation is part of our ‘natural’ development, then society is always at risk of being sucked into a stagnation of social behaviour that follows the loudest talkers, often the traditionalists, but in this modern world, any audacious message boosted by media outlets.

Traditionalist voices of ‘natural’ is quite likely to stall the progress of society in ethics, social interactions, knowledge. The audacious voices of ‘natural’ may stall progress by simply having society turn very fast in limited circles, providing the impression of progress, but really just providing circuses. But there is a voice of ‘natural’ that, I think, is viable for progressive human society. It is the voice that says it is natural to learn, to care, to communicate, and competing to be the best at these things.

I speak therefore I am

The human being is discriminated among other mammals and primates as being able to ‘mirror’ the state of mind of other humans. We are also able to ‘look’ at our own state of mind. The ‘looking’ and ‘mirroring’ doesn’t come alone. It comes with responses at an habitual reflex level of our brain (immediate emotional responses due to cascades of neurohormones from well trained neural circuits) and a dialogue (our thoughts, really our speech centers describing for us what we are seeing, what we are feeling and then why?).

Ultimately we know we are humans because we speak to ourselves.

What is more interesting is that our speech revolves around our sensory perceptions. We have, by a synaesthetic effect caused by some ‘cross-over’ in our brain functions, been able to build words from generating sounds that sound like the look of the object we are talking about. For more detailed information hear Ramachandran’s 2003 Reith Lectures. So all our words reflect the metaphors of our sensory systems. All our descriptions both internal (spiritual, emotional) and external (science, art, religion), are guided by this limitation.

We have to live with this. But it does give me pause to reflect whether by so defining, we are also not really able to talk to ourselves and each other about many things. Does it therefore create in ourselves, blindspots for investigation of the reality around us?

Fear of Death: Part II

In part I, I wrote about the biological nature of the fear of death and its importance in the survival of the species. In Part II I am asking, What does religious insight have to do with the fear of death?

I would like to note that most religious and scientific commentators on this subject find themselves a little lost because they have neither been scientific or religious about the issue. By this I mean that science must not treat religion any more tritely that any other subject their scientific career might depend upon, yet many do. The religious student must have complete faith in God that He is no deceiver, nor every hides the bounty of His blessings of knowledge.  For to be so distrustful of the Creator is tantimount to rejection of God, and well deserves the criticism that they have made God in their own image, while they have no reason to believe in themselves at all. Rather it is important to recognise that the unfoldment of the evolutionary process has created a species with the ability to far over reach our fundamental mammalian responses. Yet nothing in our neocortex provides the content by which to guide its flourishing adaptability.

For purposes here I will accept that the mind is an emerging quality of the neocortex of the brain of homo sapien sapien. However I am not convinced that the emergence of mind was synchronous throughout the new species. At this stage I will draw a longish bow from Baha’u'llah’s teachings on the Manifestations of God by suggesting that there was initially one person of the new species who was born with that extra capacity to build on the inherent powers developing with the neocortex. Perhaps it was, as now, an extraordinary capacity to use voice, and motivate a new behaviour.

Later, as we wrote in part I, the insight about death of others and its reflection in our own natural life, would result in the development of funeral rite. Religion, therefore played an important role in the amelioration of the potentially destructive psychological responses to the fear of death. Religion therefore played a fundamental role in human life, in resolving the tendency for the neocortex to  devote its vast power on whatever information is in front of it, and becoming absorbed in it.

The earlier or older evolved aspects of the homo sapiens are commonly known as the reptilian and paleo-mammalian brains. These are the fundamental drivers of our biological being. The neocortex , that vast computing power, is really not a driver of the biology, but rather a receiver and an amplifier. As  the neocortex developed, as indicted earlier, unless there was some educational feature in the environment, the outgrowth of the neocortex could easily have been the failure of the species. For much of the development of homo sapiens the species has been drawing mostly upon the messages being boosted to the consciousness from the older brain areas. And it is clear from research on habits of thought that most humans spend most of their day thinking about things that older mammals don’t even need to think about: sex, food, grooming. Of course, again, it doesn’t tak a lot of computing power to realise that spending all of the neocortical computing power on sex, food, grooming, is an obsession to social stagnation.  Rather the gradual evolving of the religious ideas, has provided a much needed higher order content for the neocortex, the  mind.

Initially with rites, and then with stories of the sky (the unreachable land of little fires), and then the stories of the dwellers, and then with stories of our past, then the stories of our coming into being, and the Creator, and then with stories of our future, the stories helped the development of our ability to hold the metaphorical, the abstract. Along with the development of language, by the time we learned to write, the rites and stories were becoming increasingly elaborate. And while the tendence for the neocortex is to get somewhat obsessed with its information, the ability of the mind to step away from all information, to look at the unknowable (the future), and in religious terms, the Great Unknowable, the derivative of everything, has been the real source of its inspiration.

Religious ideas initially helped homo sapien to manage his fear of death.  It has used that management to loosen the obsession of the mind around death, and apply the mind to the future, to travel, new spaces, new herbs, new animals. There has always been that balance being found between the new idea and the potential obsession with the old, with the fear of death for survival and  the excitement of the future even death, where everyone survives.

Yet modern religious ideas have taken on additional complexities. At some time the idea of the afterlife as an ameliorator of phobia, became less important. A more complex idea entered religious thought and carries through today. This idea seems determined to reinforce the fear of death. This is, of course, the idea of hell, the afterlife that is hurtful. I will suggest that this idea was brought into play at a time that the progress of society was powerful enough to provide the neocortext with enough material that the fear of death was no longer so significant in any case. This was probably a time in social development in which many, at least the leaders, were well protected from the immediate predators and elements. These people then lost their empathy for all humans in pain and danger. The religious idea that your lack of provision and protection for others will lead to an afterlife of misery for you, restores a necessary element for the progress of society.

Today, Baha’u'llah has turned that on its head again. By teaching that there is no essential heaven or hell, just a state of more near or more far from the Creator, or more approaching or more retreating from the bounties of God, Baha’u'llah has placed the behaviour of our lives in our own hands. This is supported by teachings on the prayful life, education, scientific endeavour, striving to find social mechanisms to bring the world of humanity into a unity. Baha’u'llah’s teachings are directed at minimising the lower brain messages for a more complete observance of higher order messages: metaphor, arts, sciences, communication.

Religion saved humanity from the fear of death. Now saved, religion will be a primary force in the progress of human capacity as a spiritual and technological society.

The Fear of Death: Part I

Over the years I have read many comments relating the reason for religion to the fear of death. By and large, these comments have been without any strong supportive discussion, either on the nature of the fear of death or the processes of alleviation. Here are a few thoughts I have had on the subject.

Let us look firstly at the nature of the fear of death. Many people I have spoken to say they do not fear death. Yet mostly they mean, ‘I do not fear death as long as it is abstract to me, or appears in the distant future’. Yet if you say to the same people, if a very large man ran into the room brandishing a knife would you be afraid’ They would say, ‘yes’. Afraid of what? ‘Of being hurt or killed’. Now I will back up here because if we are really honest, we only attribute a reason to our fear ad hoc. The fear is directly related to the threat. By this, and sorry if I am taking a long time to attend to what is now well known to undergraduate students as the fight and flight mechanism, we can understand that our minds are strongly wired for reaction to the appearance of threat.

It seems sensible to deduce that the evolutionary process has wired the brain for this response in order that the species will survive. There are some strange aspects to this affect. One is that many young men who have not already passed on their genes seem to be in a state of loss of fear of death or seem to enjoy the feeling of the fear of death, and so entertain high risk taking behaviour. Many of these die without producing off-spring, although many do live long enough to have off-spirng. So the species survives with the ability to avoid death and entertain death at the same time. This changes by the time males are over 25 years od age, and I suspect, when they have offspring (although of the latter there may be confounding historical evidence so culture may play a very important role). Still I think we can confidently say that fear is, essentially, fear of death, a hard wired mechanism to ensure the survival of the species and the potential for a long lifespan allows the adaptive process for long nurturing of offspring, and, by extension, the whole community.

The adaptive process is very important in this discussion. For while fear gets us off the block and running, in this endeavour to be the most adaptable species on the planet, the development of our brain’s neocortex over the past 2 million years, has provided us computing power to inspire us to be the most adaptable species in the galaxy (and Why not?, the Universe). So how has this adaptability been harnessed? And here come the key role of religion.

My reading suggests that at some stage, the evolution of the neocortex created the insight that we also will become like a person who had died, lifeless. To the extent we have evidence from several tens of thousands of years ago, the first glimmerings of religion was the care of the body of the dead person and some ritualised grieving and good bying. The reason’s we needed to this is as complex as the total psychology that the neocortex has induced, and to couch it in terms of fear of death alone would be trite. For example, death was everywhere for the ‘caveman’. Fear would normally be a short term arousal around an event. But once an insight from memory and self reflection had developed, fear may well become a constant aspect of life. We see this today in the abundance of anxiety disorders, how fear can become a habit of our internal life. The potential inadequacy that such constant fear would induced in the homo sapien would create problems for personal safety and food supply. Without adaptability to this state of being, Homo sapiens may not have survived this stage of cognitive development.

Yet some early human’s, perhaps even one, had the additional insight that the best way to deal with death among the clan, was to orchestrate a goodby, admit that we will all follow that path, and maybe intmate that the consciousness, the life, that is not within the body, has now moved to another place. I can imagine that early religion attributing that other place as an easy hunting ground with no predators. Thus religion not only started but would have quickly recognised the great governing power such stories provided by which the clan could get bigger, more organised, safer, and mentally healthier for being surrounded by death in themselves and other species, everyday. We can certainly see the same trends in our religious and cultural practices around death, today.

However it would be inaccurate to say that where we are today is just the same as then. Certainly our brains don’t seem to have become any bigger, but then, we have plenty of adaptive capacity in there. As those insights we now call religion began to build and motivate the community of homo sapiens, then the religious insights also had to change. It must be fairly clear that an insight by one person is only ever going to be as good as it’s relevance to the knowledge base already existing in the other members of the community. An insight that is too good is useless as an adaptive practice if it makes no sense to anyone eg the earth is round is quite irrelevant to people whose world is as far as they can walk in a generation and that goes up and down and flat occasionally. But eventually a motivated Homo spaiens will reach a point where the old insight is not quite enough to keep them motivated. So the tribe become consumed with wrangles over its authority, its rituals, etc.

I will take up the primary message of Baha’u'llah, here, by suggesting again, that everytime the clan found itself in troublesome stagnation, at least one person was stuck with a level of insight that enabled them to wrestle the ideological control out of the minds of the clan, and replace it with a new invigorating set of constructs. Not so new that they were alien, new enough that the authorities defended against them with ferocity. What does this have to do with the religious repsonse to the Fear of Death?

TO BE CONTINUED

Anarchism

“It is just a easy to think about the Universe and everything, as to think about some specific thing. But it takes a lot of effort to make a small change in the world and 10 x the effort to make a slightly bigger change. Philosphers are not doing enough. They play very little role in the public live. This is a failing of the people who are philosphers”, retiring Philosopher on Anarchy, Robert Paul Wolfe interviewed on the Australian ABC’s ‘Philosopher’s Zone 3rd May 2008.

Having not spent much time learning about anarchism, already categorising it as a permanent fringe idea (how can any complex society work without governance?), I was delighted with this interview. The references to Kant and the autonomous human moral being raised for me some very important questions about how we develop a vigorous society that celebrates the independent investigation of truth within a collective governance. I am not talking about a philosopher’s discussion on these issues, but as a purpose of every man and woman of action (philosophically that would be everone). So each investigation, each question, each answer or part answer, fosters an action in the world. How does governance, which is an action that is supported by a heavy foundation of answers, invite, encourage, enthuse, the independent investigation of truth and the actions that every ignorant one, pursues?

God, The All Knowing

Tonight I was mulling over some things I had read from some scientist and was struck by the tendency / need to communicate our ideas in an anthropocentric manner. One way we continue to do this is by our anouncements to each other that we now know everything that is necessary, that there are just detail left, and no knowledge revolution is expected. There is really no difference to this attitude today with the flat earthers and the Ptolemicists. While modern scientists often just blame those old time religionists for the problem of insight, they fail to see that the problem is in our genes. We humans have a number of well developed traits that like or not, we have to manage, whether scientists or religionists (and some of us are both). I would include in these traits: faith, belief, ideology (or a simple direct solution solves the problem).  Primal faith ensures the babe that the food will come tomorrow,  belief that the unknowable is human friendly (I suggest this is a possible motivator for the homo sapiens exodus out of Africa (across the planet), ideology that a set of known strategies are good for any new situation (protect the group, kill the prey, find the water).

Modern religion (since sometime pre-agriculture) has been a progressive insight to convince humans to make further use of that neocortex. While evolution scientists are proud to portray a theory of the development of religion that doesn’t require acknowledging an intelligence vastly greater than our own, and in this exposing their anthropocentricism, it is possible to construct a theory of the development of religion that includes the vitality of an agency that is not just flesh and blood. Such a theory suggests that spiritual or religious insight matches the development of capacity of the human being to use the adaptation. The reptilean and paleo-mammalian brains have a big drag on our responses, even while we are trying to use our neocortex for very smart things. The Great educators have provided insights, motivation (that no ordinary philosphers or leaders have managed), and neocortical training approaches, to launch successive phases of growth in society and civilisation.

Baha’u'llah, likewise, now reassure us that we can have faith in, and believe in the outcome of the scientific approaches. He reiterates that the mot important thing to learn is “O my God, thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. I testify to my powerlessness and Thy might,my poverty and Thy wealth.There is none other God but Thee, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting”. This teaches that  our place in reality is nix.  Our humility is requisite.  Faith in God is survival in the ongoing adventure. Belief that His teachings will give us access into the unknown far future. Baha’u'llah’s teachings once and for all raises a great edifice over the foundation ideologue.

Whether the seeker desires belief or disbelief, the biological organism that is human requires submission to function outside of their anthropocentric tendency. It is tempting to suggest that, without this, science itself may stall in a loss of insight. however Baha’u'llah has already raised an edifice for an expectation of 500,000 years of building, so it becomes rather a moot point now the motivation is out there.

Baha’u'llah also teaches to expect the finding of life everywhere in the Universe. Yet how would we respond to another intelligent form? Baha’u'llah recommends that His teachings will create the conditions for the appropriate response. This is a true directive of belief. To loosen our hold on our own anthropocentric analysis, we need to contemplate the All-Knowing, God, and our deepest humilty before that course.

God, The Unknowable.

In the argument about the place of science in human culture, there is a point at which all arguments breakdown. That point in some ways is the point at which all science breaks down, at the ( place/moment) of the big bang. I bracket place/moment because we cannot ascribe any value to this event at all. The ability for human language, even mathematics to ascribe any value has also broken down. We can’t talk or think about this. So already we have entered the unknowable and all amount of logic cannot save us at this point.

There are other issues that could be raised. Previously I have written about the lack of evidence for the mathematical constructs of the point (zero dimensions is something that cannot be experienced by any human sense or extrapolation by implement yet exists to be understood perfectly by the human mind but is it a real thing because the human mind only understands real things or might the human mind have evolved to make logic about unreal things; is something that is unreal, non-existent, or do we mean something else?; how trustworthy then is our mind for we premise our survival and our glory upon its trustworthiness.); likewise the line (one d) cannot be experienced, nor the planes (2d). We believe we can experience 3d because we have collections of nerve cells that create experiences for us about it. We do not yet at all believe that there is a 4d let alone a one millionth d space, although a logical extrapolation would demand us to.

We don’t like the unknown, we humans. We do not like that, logically speaking we don’t exist at all, at least not as we think we do. We don’t like it that we cannot, logically speaking, rely upon our senses and its extrapolates for a full understanding of this (event)  we live within. We don’t like it at all that there is a logical horizon, beyond which logic itself breaks down. We really despair about this. We quiver at the voyage into the unknown an alternative view might instigate within us. Shall we go mad? or Shall we find more sanity and more future for humanity past our wildest expectations?

Baha’u'llah teaches that we do need the Great Educators of Humanity to guide us forward on this path. For indeed, insanity awaits the reckless, while a quagmire awaits the afraid. Only those few extraordinary souls who insinuate themselves, calmly but suredly, on human society, at periods of great deprivation, raising a call to draw our minds to the horizons,  battling with extraordinary sanity the forces of chaos around them  without loosing one thread of their vision, can be our guide. They who stand unafraid and in communication with the Unknown, and without one moment of recklessness but steadfast courage, they are our guides.

We should use the exciting aspiration of the scientific approach to maintain our minds on a steady course of cultural  progress within these 3 dimensions, expecting that our explorations will ever push back the closer horizons. But we will become callous beyond regard or despondent in existential loneliness, if we fail to develop the insight that ties us to the guidance of the Great Educators and their teachings, Who connect us to the Unknowable Essence.