De Novo

Two items from the last week:

This photo depicts the Mars Phoenix lander in descent, as shot by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.  Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing says: “How badass awesome is it to be a human? Super badass awesome.”

This is a view of a group of “uncontacted” indigenous people in the Amazon, who were photographed last week from a plane flown by Survival International, a group that advocates for indigenous rights.

While I sit and type on my Macbook Pro, others of my culture are busy sending machines to investigate another planet.  And here on our own planet, we investigate each other: Westerners, using advanced technology, to look at other human beings who have a radically different (but no less “human”) experience of the universe.

Amazingly, this is also the dawn of the first time in Western history when we might be able to actually begin to treat these folks with some respect and dignity – by leaving them alone and preserving the ecosystem upon which their lifestyle depends.  Where previously Europeans might have invaded with hostility and taken their land by force, or, more recently, killed them with kindness in a misguided attempt to “rehabilitate” or “assimilate” the “natives” into a “modern” lifestyle, we are beginning to have enough understanding to be humble about our relationship toward others with an autonomous, self-sufficient way of living.

At Sentient Developments, George Dvorsky ponders the ethics of leaving them in the wild, untouched by the wonders of Western civilization.  He raises the following “ethical issues”:

What if some of these people need medical help and medicine?

Is it ethical for us to not let them know about the greater world around them?

How could we ever have consent for contact and/or cultural uplift? Should it be assumed? Why? Why not?

Are we sufficiently justified in keeping this tribe in a zoo-like scenario?

If eventual contact is unavoidable, why wait until then? Would contact with the modern world ever be ‘on their terms?’

How would we feel if we discovered that we were being observed and purposefully held-back by a more advanced civilization?

Is this the kind of cultural diversity that we want to preserve? If so, why? To what end? Does cultural diversity benefit the lost tribe?

What does it mean to say that we risk their “extinction?” Is it accurate to equate the extinction of a culture with that of a species? What are the consequences of a lost cultural mode for a) those who used to participate in it and b) for those who will never be a part of it? What are the consequences relative to the benefits of adopting a new culture?

First of all, let’s dispense with the notion that by leaving them alone, we’re somehow confining them to a zoo.

This is the wild world, you know, the world that predates our civilization and will outlive it.  It couldn’t be more different from a zoo. Animals in zoos are transported from their natural environment into an extremely confined cage, where they are fed processed food and monitored round the clock. If anyone’s in a zoo, it’s us out here in the “modern” world.

Secondly, it’s telling that Dvorsky’s first impulse is to assume there are people needing medical help and medicine among them.  Probably so, but tell that to the millions of impoverished third-world people deprived of access to traditional medicines AND modern medicine.  The warriors in the photographs look plenty strong and healthy.  Any group of people that can survive in the jungle – surrounded by insects, snakes, wild cats, poisons and dangers of all kinds – is going to have ways of coping with them.

The rest of the questions are amazingly condescending in their premises, assuming that “we” in the civilized world have knowledge to share with them, and that this knowledge only goes one way: that their understanding of the world is necessarily incomplete or naive.  How would we know that?  Presumably, they’ve developed a mythological/religious framework that is well-suited to their environment.  We’re not “holding them back.”  They’re doing what they want on their own terms.

Consider for a moment the possibility that human knowledge exists outside the published canon, and that there are paths to spiritual fulfillment that are outside of the realms of typical Western experience. We’re looking at a tribe which doubtless has a complex system of myths and rituals, replete with oral history, magic, storytelling, probably music and dancing, and (since the evidently have paint) possibly also art. Self-fulfillment is not contingent on a Western lifestyle. In fact, one could argue that the comforts of a Western lifestyle are an obstacle to be overcome.  An intimate familiarity with the bounties and dangers of one’s own environment and an understanding of one’s place within it is a treasure we often just don’t have in cities.

There’s nothing that Westerners can do to “help” these people. They’ve been doing quite well for millennia, and their culture – which includes amazingly advanced technologies for survival wholly incompatible with a Western worldview – would be utterly shattered by any contact with Westerners.

No, we have nothing to offer them. Nothing. Before extolling the benefits of Westernization, let’s see if we can’t clean up its record first by making life better for the millions of impoverished people already living under the grip of industrial society in slums around the world. Then – MAYBE – we can talk. Until then, Godspeed, indigenous people. May this be the last anyone in the West ever sees of you.

UPDATE:

Check out Werner Herzog’s heartbreaking documentary on a well-meaning first encounter gone horribly wrong:

Part one

Part two

Part three

Quantum physics, on the other hand, seems more resonant with those residual dualist hankerings, perhaps by holding out the possibility that scientific realism and objectivity melt away in that domain, or even that thoughts and feelings are, in the end, the fundamental properties of the universe. Explanation of something as special as what makes me me, should really involve, the feeling is, something more “deep” and mysterious and “other worldly” than mere neurons. Perhaps what is comforting about quantum physics is that it can be invoked to ‘explain’ a mysterious phenomenon without removing much of the mystery, quantum physical explanations being highly mysterious themselves.

Now we are not for a moment suggesting that anything like this is behind Penrose’s work, and whether our diagnosis is right or wrong has no bearing whatever on the strengths and weaknesses of his arguments. It may, however, help explain why the very possibility of a quantum physical explanation is often warmly greeted, whereas an explanation in terms of neurons may be considered “scary”, “degrading” and even “inconceivable”. Why should it be less scary, reductionist or counter-intuitive that “me-ness” emerges from collapse of a wave function than from neuronal activity?

Nothing we have said in this paper demonstrates the falsity of the quantum-consciousness connection. Our view is just that it is no better supported than any one of a gazillion caterpillar-with-hookah hypotheses.

– From Gaps in Penrose’s Toilings [a play on Penrose tiling] by Rick Grush and Patricia Smith Churchland, Philosophy Department, UCSD.

Yeah, that Caterpillar-with-Hookah didn’t really have anything helpful to say:

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

`Who are YOU?’ said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, `I–I hardly know, sir, just at present– at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.’

`What do you mean by that?’ said the Caterpillar sternly. `Explain yourself!’

`I can’t explain MYSELF, I’m afraid, sir’ said Alice, `because I’m not myself, you see.’

`I don’t see,’ said the Caterpillar.

`I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,’ Alice replied very politely, `for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.’

`It isn’t,’ said the Caterpillar.

`Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,’ said Alice; `but when you have to turn into a chrysalis–you will some day, you know–and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?’

`Not a bit,’ said the Caterpillar.

`Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,’ said Alice; `all I know is, it would feel very queer to ME.’

`You!’ said the Caterpillar contemptuously. `Who are YOU?’

Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar’s making such VERY short remarks, and she drew herself up and said, very gravely, `I think, you out to tell me who YOU are, first.’

– From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

In his own characteristically simplistic manner, David Brooks picks up on a cultural current that seems to be gaining steam.  He writes in this week’s NYT about “Neural Buddhism“, a new mentality among scientists fueled by new thinking in neuroscience.  It’s worth a read:

… My guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

…

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.

When science offers more spiritual insight than orthodox religious fundamentalism, the days of fundamentalism are numbered.

While digging around the NYTimes website for their glowing obituary of the recently deceased Albert Hoffmann, I uncovered this little gem from 2001. Let’s see if we can spot the manufactured controversy here:

Users of LSD and many psychiatrists who have used the drug in therapy sessions say that [psychedelic] effects provide a window into the human unconscious. When people let go of the past in an altered state, they can dredge material from the deep within themselves.

Or can they? To Dr. Jack Cowan, a mathematician at the University of Chicago and a number of other scientists who study the architecture of the brain’s visual areas, the dancing geometical patterns observed by Dr. Hoffman are not in the least mysterious…. People may find the results helpful or insightful, he said, but they flow not from some mysterious netherworld world [sic] but from the architecture of their own brains.

Sigh. That’s right, the architecture of our brains could not possibly harbor some mysterious netherworld. The statement is not logically false, but neither does it actually contradict the possibilities of mysteries being hidden in the human brain. It’s precisely because of LSD’s interaction with our brains’ complexities that psychiatrists believe it might be useful to us at all.

Comments like this one that betray an utter illiteracy of psychology and anthropology on the part of the speaker, but can also, sadly, aid in perpetuating public misconceptions about a drug that might well offer a valuable gateway into the workings of the human mind.

When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don’t turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist.

– Albert Hoffmann

RIP, Dr. Hoffmann.