That last piece

Here’s a reminder, too. I was criminally negligent in supporting the positions for those three main views of consciousness in the last piece, Am I Alive? I am working under the assumption there is a reason philosophy departments are small. Very intricate and in-depth discussions for each of those positions exist, and are easily accessible if you have an interest in the detail. Even more importantly, distilling those arguments into quick examples lets me be lazy, too.

In addition to being told definitively what consciousness actually was, I was also pointed to a fascinating project within IBM’s Cognitive Computing group. This project just received $5 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the same agency that funded the creation of the Internet, and many other incredible (and dubious) things.

The award funds IBM’s proposal, “Cognitive Computing via Synaptronics and Supercomputing (C2S2)”, which will be the first step in fulfilling DARPA’s “Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE)” initiative. Another company, HRL Laboratories, which is owned by Boeing and General Motors received three times this amount. HRL Laboratories is also involved in DARPA’s Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System, and their Urban Reasoning and Geospatial Exploitation Technology (URGENT) program, which wants to revolutionize urban combat using three-dimensional object recognition.

Anyway, IBM has built a rat brain. Well, not really. They’re simulating one on a supercomputer. Neural networks were long considered the most promising path toward simulating cognitive functions with computational devices. That approach focuses upon the role of neurons in the brain. However, neurons actually account for a very small fraction of the brain’s circuitry. Most of the circuitry are synapses, which connect the neurons together. Many synapses are connected to a single neuron. In fact, IBM’s rat brain has 55 million neurons and 442 billion synapses. That’s pretty much the same as a real rat brain. In comparison, a human cortex has around 22 billion neurons and 176 trillion synapses.

The IBM rat brain is somewhat larger than a rat, though. Their rat brain requires a 32,768 processor supercomputer with 8 trillion bytes of memory. It consumes more energy than 1,000 typical households. That is one fat rat.

And alas, it will probably never be on par with a real rat. Real rat brains, like our own, operate asynchronously, with variable timing (frequencies) and ooze chemicals as well as electricity. Being biological, they are also adaptable and fault tolerant. And most importantly, memory is not so separate from the processing. Traditional computers always keep memory separate from the processor. Then again, rat brains don’t run Linux.

But the IBM folks are well aware of their limitations. This is an incubation project. Cognitive Computing differs significantly from traditional artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence identifies problems, then comes up with ways to address those problems programmatically. On the other hand, cognitive computing does the engineering first (by reverse-engineering the brain) and worries about the more programmatic problems later.

The supercomputer is used only as a simulation. The intention is to build chips and electronics with a similar structure like a brain. They then plan to ram it full of sensory input from sensors all over the world, to create a “world brain”. I tell ya, these military guys are crazy. The idea is actually to overload this brain with sensory input. Part of me is suspicious, thinking these guys are hoping to create a physical structure modeled after a brain, and then by flooding it with sensory data, it might just burst into life with some ability to perform cognitive functions on that data. Or maybe even come alive… No, they would never say that.

What they do not intend to create is an actual rat brain, or human brain. At least that’s what they are saying. But you know mad scientists, particularly when they’re working for the military. They want to create computers that can get closer to the efficiency and power of biological brains, and this is, to them, in large part a structural issue.

What is interesting, philosophically, is suppose they do create a synthetic human brain. Would any mind, or consciousness, that arose from this brain also be synthetic? Or, for that matter, what exactly does synthetic mean? If souls exist, what is mind without a soul? If mind, or consciousness, is simply an illusion, is there anything wrong with just shutting it off and dismantling it, after we turn it on? Or if consciousness is only an illusion, is there anything wrong with just “turning off” a person’s mind?

Before we can deal with any of these questions we must define, if only in very broad terms, a nature of consciousness. Consciousness is something more than illusion. It may be an aggregate of biochemical processes, or it may be something related more closely to a notion of spirit. But to say that consciousness, which we all seem to experience, is merely illusion is to side step, in the name of convenience, the very basis of our ability to reason and perform science. Consciousness must exist or there is no context in which we might ask questions, formulate answers, be curious about matters, or feel anything at all. If consciousness is illusion, what is being tricked, if not consciousness itself? Consciousness precedes itself, when examining itself.

However, to say that consciousness exists is not to say that spirit exists. It may very well be that consciousness cannot exist independently of some physical substance. It is to say, however, that consciousness currently appears to be a more abstract quality than something wholly physical. That is, though consciousness may be dependent upon the physical, consciousness itself may not physical, any more than the processes of mathematics is physical. In fact, it is metaphysical (devoid of the pedestrian connotations).

I cannot touch my consciousness, or the consciousness of another person, nor can I smell it, see it, or measure it. This is does mean that consciousness is an illusion. Consciousness must exist before I carry out any processes of science. In order for me to see, taste, smell or feel, or on higher orders, evaluate, determine and hypothesize, I must have a consciousness. Whether or not this consciousness is dependent upon the physical, I am stuck with its necessity. Even though considering the consciousness illusory may help win some arguments, the problems created by such a proposition far outweigh any gains. Consciousness does exist and it is something metaphysical. It might even remain metaphysical, even if the bridging problem between physical, biochemical processes and the manifestation of consciousness are eventually solved.

This admission should not, in any way, fly in the face of science. Many abstract, not altogether tangible things exist that are, for some reason, wholly accepted by science. One of these things is mathematics. Another is the laws of physics themselves. Scientists have no problem accepting that some abstract laws exist that somehow determine the behaviour of everything physical. The question here is, what holds these laws? Why is there an electromagnetically negative charge and a positive charge, and only those two? What determines the probabilities associated with quantum mechanics? In science’s inference of multiple universes, where even the laws of physics can be utterly different in different universes, how are those laws of physics imprinted into that particular nature of reality? Perhaps consciousness is something abstractly structural like this. But it is abstract, similarly, beyond any given physical system. But again, that is not to say that it is not dependent upon a given physical system.

And now to the meat of things, the reason for this piece, which continues after the last one that left us questioning whether consciousness even exists, as most of us assume it must. For if we are questioning the epistemology of consciousness itself, where does that leave us when we consider other people, or other beings, or things, besides ourself? If we question the very possibility of consciousness, what possible hope is there for any sense of ethics or morality - of right or wrong?

First, I want to distinguish between ethics and morality. Here, ethics will mean something we can think about and discuss to reach conclusions. Morality will mean something that we learn through tradition, or are told. This being said, morality will be left out of the discussion altogether. This is done in the interest of expediency, since morality does not lend itself well to any reasonable discussion. Its basis sits in absolute notions that are generally entrenched and immobile. I leave it for people to shout about on the back porch between beer drinking and farts, until they reach their conclusions through a wrestling match, or a bloody club.

If a scientist or philosopher is of the ilk to question the existence of actual consciousness, it is altogether likely they are also of the ilk to question the existence of a basis for any ethics, let alone good or evil.

When you consider consciousness an illusion it is very difficult to reasonably consider ethics. Ethics seems intrinsically oriented toward life, and becomes more relevant the higher you go up on the complexity of life scale. If there is no consciousness, any notion of a higher order of life scale is arbitrary at best. Would you consider applying ethics to the way a physical cluster operates as individual components? How can mechanical operations be ethical or unethical if no consciousness guides them? Without consciousness, things function as they do. Ethics is replaced by gross domination through a preponderance of purpose, or just simply strength.

However, since we can more sanely say that consciousness is something more than illusion, we can also find a place for ethics. Perhaps not for good and evil, but ethics, most certainly. Here the question becomes, is there such a thing as right and wrong, or good and bad, that exists, similar to consciousness, or the laws of physics, in its own true abstraction? Stay with me scientists…

The question of ethics is a very old one; ancient even. Right now we are looking at these questions of ethics and consciousness, framed by a backdrop of new technologies, during a period increasingly dominated by scientific thinking. It is important to keep in mind that rational thinking is timeless, though not all rational positions remain rational over time. The questions of ethics are richly discussed in texts throughout many centuries, distinct from religion. My one selection here, for your consideration is this:

Let’s say that a dog exists. It’s a good dog, but occasionally bad, as dogs are. There is plenty of food for the dog, and the dog will not harm its environment. It will not overly reproduce. In fact, let’s assume there are no ill effects whatsoever from this dog existing, and there never will be. The question is, is it better that the dog lives or dies?

You would be an unusual person indeed if you claim the dog ought to die, when there are no bad effects from it living. If you just hate dogs, substitute a cat, or a monkey, or better yet, yourself. Particularly when you substitute yourself, even saying that it makes no difference whether you live or die rings a little untrue. Most people would agree that, all things being equal, it is better the dog, or you, should live, rather than die. But what makes it better? This is certainly not something purely mechanical.

Interestingly, you can take this even further back, to address concerns about the origin of the universe. Why does the universe exist? Why did it come into being? Well, is it better that the universe came into being, than if it did not? This is the exact line of reasoning early philosophers used to posit the existence of an ethical universe. Personally, I have a hard time accepting that the universe sprang into being because it was supposed to, along with all its physical laws. Nevertheless, there is something to be said about a natural state of ethics, alongside our conscious determination and use of the natural laws of nature.

It will be interesting, if we manage to create a synthetic, or even “real” consciousness - will that consciousness have a similar sense of the inherently ethical? Will it know that being alive is better than being dead? Will it know that promoting non-truths is bad? Or does it require emotion for such determinations? Does consciousness itself require emotion?

But I think the important thing for us to realize is that science and rational thinking does not require us to throw out any value we place upon life, nor to give up on what we know to be ethical choices. Science is still entrenched in its long war against the domination of religious thought. Unfortunately, it runs the risk of creating a narrow dominion of thought all its own, in the process. If we are to have truly open minds, our thoughts and perspectives must be willing to travel beyond their comfortable and familiar contexts, if only just to take a quick peek.

For all the dogma and doctrine out there, the important thing is that we are all alive, participating in, and affected by what each of us embrace, promote, or even just participate within. Life has intrinsic value that is greater than any equation or any religion. Life’s value is greater than any system of government, economy or social tradition.

It is a quality of life that it must grow. Consciousness must grow. However, reductionism and normalization should only be considered a fertilizer for the soil, and not the cage. Otherwise, we run the risk of scientific oppression that would make religious oppression pale in comparison.

In other words, is your awareness of the world and who you are, simply a condition of electrical and chemical interactions between cells?

This is a very simple question. It’s the simple answer that reveals enormous problems. Yes, or no.

My consciousness is considering the ramifications of either answer right now. Don’t mind me. It’s just some chemicals sloshing about. But consider - the answer, yes or no, is important. If known with certainty, the answer to this simple question would topple many fundamental assumptions we currently entertain. Either way it goes. And most of these fundamental assumptions we do not consider. In grossly simplistic terms, do we have a spirit? What does it mean to be conscious?

If our consciousness is a by-product of chemical interactions, there are few compelling reasons that we should also have a spirit. If I feel joy as a result of something I hear, it’s just chemicals flowing around in one area, which trigger a blob of chemicals in another area which creates a “sensation” (whatever that is) of joy, which in turn triggers more blobs of chemicals in another place which may bring back memories to my consciousness of similar joyful things, in whatever region of the mass of neurons in which the consciousness actually manifests.

However, if our consciousness is spiritual in nature, how do we explain the oftentimes profound alteration of our conscious state through brain injury, biological diseases, or chemical alterations? If we have a spirit, how can our personalities be so radically altered by physical changes to a materialistic brain?

These issues may seem purely academic, with little importance in our daily lives. But the issue is significant. Both science and religion exert tremendous force upon our lives. When considering the nature of consciousness, each “team” plays by a completely different rule book, and their game effects us all both directly and profoundly.

For example, brain drugs are now prescribed to people of all ages, even children, with alarming frequency. These drugs represent a major portion of pharmaceutical profits. They are backed by science and the belief that consciousness is, at least, in large part a materialistic process. But if we believe our consciousness is purely biochemical, why not throw chemicals at our biology? Doing so, we can alter our state of mind to happily accommodate any feelings or perceptions we have of the world, or ourselves. We can alter our consciousness to be content with any stimulus or situation. In essence, we can engineer a paradise for ourselves that is completely independent of anyone or anything in the external world. If we are simply biochemical, why not have this bliss?

Well, for one, the people handing out the drugs could get away with murder. But so what? Isn’t some notion of morality and ethics dangerously close to spiritual considerations? I admit there are possible reasons why not, that do not require us to have a spirit. For example, if we all were engineered happy and content regardless of our environment, we might find ourselves soon extinct as a species. Why does it matter that a plague kills everyone? We are happy. Perhaps there is some biologically hard-coded imperative for survival. If we have engineered ourselves into happiness, have we engineered out this imperative? This could be a valid reason to avoid engineering our biochemical consciousness that is not dependent upon having a spirit.

But even this raises a question toward the spiritual. Is our biological imperative toward survival an imperative for only our own survival, and not necessarily the survival of other people? It would seem so. If many other people were to die, there is less competition for food, for mates, and less chance that I will be killed by someone else. Though rational, this is not how most people think. For some reason we find it important that other people should live, instead of die, even when they are not part of our “pack”. Perhaps we feel this way because mirror neurons in our brain somehow allow our consciousness, whatever that is, to place ourselves in the position of others. And because we can imagine ourselves in another person’s shoes, we choose to want them to live, rather than die. Of course, this argument skips the whole problem that we simultaneously know that we are not that person, yet still choose that they should live. That argument relies upon us having, at minimum, empathy. Who knows what combination of cell types and chemicals would cause our consciousness, in whatever grouping of cells it lives, to experience empathy. But maybe empathy isn’t a feeling. Maybe it’s a purely mathematical phenomenon.

One of the largest problems science faces when trying to explain consciousness is providing an account for consciousness in the first place. Is consciousness inside our brain? Where is it? Does it simply manifest itself somehow as a combination of all biochemical processes which occur in the brain? Would our consciousness exist if we had no body, other than a brain, nor external senses? You see, it is one thing for us to affect consciousness in some physical way, but it is quite another to actually pin it down.

The prevailing wisdom of science says that consciousness does not exist, in and of itself, but is rather an illusory result of electrical and biochemical processes that occur within the brain. What we consider our self, or our consciousness, is really an illusion. Our consciousness is just a systematic and recursive material, or mechanical, process that results in some meta-state that we imagine we experience, which we call consciousness. But really, this consciousness is nothing more than a plethora of mechanical processes occurring, which give us the illusion.

To some, believing this explanation turns us into little more than zombies who wander about doing our mechanistic things. You might appear conscious to me, but really you are a mass of predictable mechanics. I must confess there are times when this seems true. But is it the whole picture?

In the West we have a long history of separating the mind from the body. Our thoughts, and therefore our ability to reason, are dependent upon our ability to sense and observe the world. Our mind, which most agree is the seat of our consciousness, is dependent upon our body to provide the sensory input we use to consider the questions of science, and even questions of our own consciousness.

One of the first questions we must ask is, why would this mechanical process have a curiosity about its own consciousness? Is it another biological imperative related to survival that has trickled up over centuries of evolution, that makes us curious in growingly abstract ways, as our brain power develops? I wonder, also, at what point during our evolution, did consciousness, or our illusion of it, spring into being? Are dogs and cats conscious? It is evident to me that they do, at least, have something equivalent to mirror neurons. Or are they just different models of a machine?

But if we believe that consciousness is an illusion, then what, exactly, is being tricked? Is it an illusion that fools itself?

Something rationally critical breaks when we say that consciousness is an illusion that rises up from materialistic processes. But we can fix that. If we say that consciousness does, in fact, exist, and that it is not an illusion, but is solely dependent upon materialistic biochemical processes in the brain — that works. In this sense, consciousness really does exist, but not without our physical gray matter.

This seems far more likely to me than consciousness being an illusion. But it does little to explain how our consciousness comes into being from these material processes. The best explanation I have heard claims that the brain operates in an electro-chemical “loop”. When it operates above a certain frequency, we have consciousness. Below that frequency, we do not. Perhaps it is just a matter of putting all the materialistic pieces together, and eventually we will have our answer about the nature of consciousness. Or, it may be that we are only side-stepping and delaying the inevitable problem: trying to tie the metaphysical to the physical.

But what is metaphysical about having consciousness arise from something material? The same question confronts the science of artificial intelligence. How can something intangible and unphysical, like consciousness, be created from a machine? Their answer? Well, we find ourselves back to the original, predominant scientific position: that there really is no such thing as consciousness — it is mere illusion. By saying this, science does not have to confront any questions about the metaphysics of consciousness. Consciousness just doesn’t exist. Our sense that we are conscious is an illusion. Then here I am again, fooling myself. Or my consciousness. Or whatever. Brainsss!!

Another way to consider the problem is to return to Descartes. The one thing I can say with certainty is that I have consciousness. Anything I learn beyond this comes to me through my senses which may be wholly inadequate to determine any true reality. In this scenario, our consciousness becomes the most fundamental thing in the universe, while all other things are speculative. There is something comfy in this manner of thinking, but it is also an isolating and wholly inadequate position to explain consciousness.

In a similar vein, we might say that consciousness is our spirit which inhabits a materialistic body. In this, we are back to dualism, and we also cannot easily explain why our consciousness is altered by physical changes to our brains. It just doesn’t work.

So, if we look at big score board so far, it appears the spiritualists lag far behind the materialists — yet of the materialists, the ones supporting a true existence of consciousness, rather than some illusion of consciousness, are ahead. OK. Now let’s give the spiritualists some game.

Let’s think of our life, clear back to childhood. Remember how different you were back then? Imagine how different you were, all along the way of your life, up until where you find yourself right now. Some people can’t believe the things they used to believe. It’s almost as if you were another person. But you weren’t another person. You were you, all along the way. It still is you. But you’ve changed. Your consciousness has changed. It’s evolved. You perceive things differently, yet still the “essence” of what makes you, you — it’s still there. And it’s the same. This is one quality of our observed experience of consciousness that materialists will have a difficult time resolving satisfactorily. Not only do we have a current sense of self, but we also have the sense of a meta-self that has always remained in place throughout our life’s experiences.

In many ways, the older civilizations of the world, such as India, have dealt with the concepts of the spirit in relation to science for far longer than the West. Their philosophical works are an interesting read. Interestingly, a good deal of their philosophy deals with an integration of the mind and body, including through such practices as yoga. Yoga seeks to bring the mind and body into a harmony. It does not treat the mind separately from the body — they are one organism, and that organism is you. They take it even further, though. The mind may have many thoughts and ideas running around within it. The practice of yoga seeks to still that chaos in the conscious mind. In their terms, the content of the mind is constantly changing. However, the context of the mind is unchanging. This contextual representation of consciousness is what we might call a spirit, and it sits beyond both the mind and the body. In this way, if the mind or body is damaged, the spirit remains, while life remains. This is true, even when our mental consciousness appears radically altered — the content of the mind can change, but the context of the mind does not.

In this way, the essence of who we are, or our spirit, escapes the logical problem associated with having a notion of spirit in the event of brain damage. In other words, just because our behaviour or personality changes after physical brain damage does not mean that the essence of our spirit is changed. It is only the mental processes that are changed, much like a broken bone. This escape trick is no worse than the escape trick of saying that consciousness is only an illusion. It also explains how we maintain an abstract sense of self despite radical changes to our consciousness over time, even though the natural acts of learning.

If we can look internally, which is, of itself, another argument against illusion, we can actually get a hint of the difference between the content of our thoughts, and the context in which those thoughts occur. Similarly, most people in the world believe in reincarnation, where after death, and before we were born, we were someone else, or even something else. We might have been male or female. We might have been a dog, or a spider. In each of these, the content of our minds would change. However, the context would always be us.

As rigorously as many scientists rail against any notion of spirit, claiming access to tangibly provable and all-encompassing knowledge, it is somewhat ironic to hear, so often coming from them, this notion that we humans are “star stuff”, and, in essence, the universe trying to understand itself. Perhaps they mean this purely mechanistically. Why would the universe seek to understand itself? Is that mechanical?

Who knows? I like the idea, though. Unless I just seem to like it. But maybe that’s enough. It certainly isn’t going to keep from exploring more. And it’s certainly not going to cause me to just patently accept all sorts of things that stem from people believing one way or another on these issues. Perhaps that makes me a squeaky cog in the great cosmic zombie machine. Perhaps it damns me. I just want it to be an honest game. And this game is far from over.

Sudden realizations of a profound truth, triggered by something commonplace we notice, where some simple, even unrelated thing, sparks an inner revelation. A startling truth, so obvious by its nature, that it is difficult believing you never realized it before, until the moment of that epiphany.

I think a lot of us are having those lately. DJ explained epiphanies to me, many years ago. Before that, I know I had them, but never knew it.

An epiphany doesn’t have to be spiritual. You can have an epiphany in science, as surely as science can lead to an epiphany.

Epiphanies are usually very personal experiences. It is never talked about, but I think whole societies can have epiphanies together, as a social unit with each other, too.

Once you have one, you can never go back to seeing things the way you once did. It is another bite of that apple. Paradise is lost, yet another paradise appears, up ahead. There are all kinds of paradises.

We have personal paradises, and we have collective ones. Sometimes they are at odds with each other. That is where leaders and followers play out their games. Perhaps if this is considered fully, it will be an epiphany for some.

Life moves toward the wider - the more all-encompassing. Is that my life, your life, or our life?

This is where the leaders and followers play out their games, in a hierarchy of unexamined pragmatism. Where doctrines are followed without understanding the origins upon which they stand, or even if they stand upon anything solid. The game field, where penetrating questions are dismissed as useless or naïve, and so never addressed. So often we find that even following epiphanies, everything remains the same.

But does it truly remain the same? When you have an epiphany about the world, or your life, your foundations change. You become fundamentally altered, even when your routines might continue unaltered. But when those routines are at odds with the revelation, friction and disharmony results. And when this happens, it is routine that inevitably must break. Theories must be altered. Prevailing wisdom must be rewritten for all our collective future. Somehow, our nature compels us to regain a harmony between what we have become, and what we continue to do.

This is the game, with all the leaders and the followers. It is being worked out. Everything is important. Especially life. All of it. More than anything. There is no higher ground, and we each stand upon that same ground. This is worth far more money than we could ever fabricate.

Who can say otherwise? Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

The demons sought to destroy everything good, to rule and dominate all things. The gods, as aspects of the nature of existence, fought against the legion of demons. The gods prevailed against all but one, the great demon Raktabija.

From each drop of Raktabija’s blood spilled in the battle, a thousand new demons sprung. It was not long before the gods were overwhelmed.

In desperation, the gods appeal to Ishvara, the embodiment of the principle of the universe. From his and her third eye, the goddess Kali is born, a whirling multi-limbed dance of death and destruction who rips through the demons, destroying them all and drinking their blood so that no more spring forth.

This leaves Raktabija powerless and his assult is defeated. But Kali, mindless in her dance of destruction and fueled by the blood of demons continues shredding all in her path, across all worlds, even the gods.

Seeing this, the god Shiva, the embodiment of the universe, lays down in the path of Kali. As Kali steps upon the chest of Shiva, which is the container of the spirit, the realization through the embodiment of the universe, of all existence bursts into her mind.

The enormity of this epiphany causes her eyes to go wide and her tongue stick out, and she stops her maddened and destructive dance. Some claim she transformed into a child to weep.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

The better parts of ourselves, even collectively, continue moving forward despite any terrible things others might do. Even as we work to correct any wrongs that are committed, it is important to remember the great and wonderful accomplishments of which we are equally capable.

Some of us believe that money and power should not hold such a central focus for the aspirations of humanity. We believe that the universe itself and our mysterious existence within it is an incomparably better focus for our energies. If there is such a thing as “trickle down”, our better understanding of the principles that define our fundamental reality offers far more to humanity than green paper, numbers stored in bank computers, or the elevation of some individuals who might impose rule over us. If leaders, distant from the realities we all face, are what we must have, my hope is that these leaders learn to rule with a subtlety which enshrines the more noble aspects of our nature rather than our more gross and primitive instincts like greed and territory.

Above is a picture of the Mars Rover “Spirit”, one of two ground-roaming probes we sent to the planet Mars more than four years ago, in January of 2004. They were expected to survive for 90 days. Today, almost five years later, they are still operating, sampling soil and rocks from various terrain and analyzing the chemical composition of the Martian atmosphere as it changes across the Martian seasons.

Some day we might all travel to Mars, just as people traveled to America from Europe on transatlantic ships. We know that Mars used to have water, and still has vast polar ice caps. We currently have several probes both on and orbiting Mars, continuing the exploration. Plans are in the works to send people within the next few years, who will utilize the natural resources we have found to sustain themselves. At this point, humanity will have taken its first real step into inhabiting a far more vast and wondrous universe than we have ever known. What becomes of territorial boundaries, in this?

Spirit, for all these years, generates its power to function by harnessing the light of the sun. But as you can see, Mars is very dusty; an almost powdery dust. If the solar panels get too dusty, no sunlight can be absorbed. But Mars also has many, many dust devils that whirl constantly about, across the landscape, which have, through a happy accident, worked to keep the solar panels clean. It was not just chance that helped these rovers perform their mission so well. The scientists and engineers took their time to design and build good stuff, and do it right. Monetary budgets can wreak havoc with good science. More than half of all “budget” missions NASA has farmed to private sector corporations have failed. However, the missions built in-house at NASA have a stellar success rate.

Interestingly, NASA does not blame private sector corporations for their failings. Instead, they blame the US Navy. Apparently the US Navy produced a report many years ago that suggested private sector companies can do the same work the government can, only much cheaper. Somehow, this report has become gospel. Now, private sector companies, as an unspoken rule of government funding, receive only this fractional allocation of money to get the same job done. And where NASA projects are concerned, this can be disastrous. Most likely, this is true with any leading science-based projects.

Ah, but mortgage lending bankers and assorted usurers need their Christmas bonuses. Just so we know, we could have completed 1,000 comparable Mars missions with this money. Or built 20 more space stations. We could even have started another war! Actually, it would have been nice just to have a tiny fraction of that money to complete the space station we already have, to its original design.

It makes me a little curious. Which costs more money: the wasteful habits of scientists who work in government and academia, or the necessary profits that private companies must produce both for themselves and their shareholders?

It’s an interesting question, with more than few ramifications. It’s not a simple one. What money-people might call waste in an academic setting can lead to unforeseen revolutions in both science and for all humanity — even for all other species on the planet. The big answers we get, the answers that are truly revolutionary, usually happen unexpectedly, hitting us square atop the head from out of the blue. It is nothing something you can pre-plan. This is true for both large, collective issues as well as our own private, individual epiphanies.

And what happens when we channel all of our money into companies whose business is making more money? Why would our money ever leave that corral? Of course, there are appearances generated, intended to lend credence to their purpose. But taken as a whole, the vast majority of the money never leaves that corral. No discovery and curiosity exists in that corral. Only greed, hoarding, self-gratification, and a lust for some abstract notion of power. Any benefit to humanity is merely incidental. Giving our money to money-people is the true waste of money, despite what money-people say.

I wonder what would happen if we gave our money to NASA, who could then hire whole generations of scientists in many disciplines, devoted to their passion of uncovering the nature of our existence. I wonder what would happen if we gave our money to doctors and biologists whose passion was understanding how our bodies work and keeping them healthy. In other words, what would happen if we made our hearts and minds the focus of our energy, instead of money?

In a few days, on November 29th, the orbits of Mars and Earth will position us on opposite sides of the sun. This solar conjunction will block all communication with Spirit for approximately two weeks. Winter is also fast approaching on Mars. The rovers will be commanded to sit still with their solar collectors aimed at some hopefully optimal position to collect enough sunlight to keep them alive through the winter. Spirit is barely finding enough energy to stay alive even now, before the onset of winter, after a recent, large dust storm dirtied much of its panels. Hopefully another little devil might find its way by, to do some accidental cleaning for us.

Right now, the power is so low in Spirit that it keeps switching into a safe mode in an attempt to protect itself. It stores its discoveries for several days at a time, and only speaks to a satellite orbiting Mars via its low power antenna. This satellite then speaks for Spirit, relaying its discoveries back to us. Spirit’s only hope for survival is to avoid its instincts to enter safe mode. Today, NASA is trying to shut down all the distractions so that just a bit of warmth might remain to see it through.

In physics, the laws governing our existence are expressed as mathematical objects. We do not question whether our existence must, necessarily, obey laws. We assume that reason exists, in at least some form, at all levels, even within chaos. We tie the concept of chaos to randomness, and by doing so, we constrain existence, at least in part, with our mathematical objects. This may be a preconceived bias which limits a broader understanding, but it does impose definitions that we can utilize and manipulate within our framework of pseudo-certainty, that is a mathematical representation.

Language is a similar construct. As creatures with unique consciousness, we vibrate the air in defined ways that represent, more or less, the consciousness we are currently experiencing and wish to communicate to another consciousness. However, each consciousness exists in relative isolation from any other, much like parallel universes could be, and any communication of information between islands is fraught with potentials for error. For example, a word might not be understood in the same way on each island, or a string of words may have differing connotations that have arisen from the other consciousness’ history or bias. An even more challenging issue is the fluidity inherent within the island of each consciousness that is, by its very isolation, patently distinct within its own experiential awareness that changes, sometimes even radically, over time.

Objects we create (words or phrases) that are meant to be shared between islands have nowhere to exist, except within whatever space it is that we might label a mutually agreed-upon landscape of language. There is no metaphysical cathedral that houses the canonical truth of each object we have created, except, indirectly, by our further mutual agreement to imbue selected people with the responsibility of maintaining them, which is itself, fraught with peril. It is something, though. And it is a wonder we can communicate at all, particularly in the more abstract.

Mathematics has an easier time, at least within its foundations. The number “2″ is well understood within our intersubjective landscape. Any misunderstanding or argument between islands about the number “2″ would almost certainly be specious. This is an object that can reasonably be considered safely canonical. Even though it does not exist. I have never seen a “2″, in and of itself. But I have seen the curvy numeral written down many times, and have even determined a quantity of 2 for various things. I know — I lead a wildly abandoned life. But I would be hard-pressed to actually show you a “2″. That’s because it isn’t a thing, but rather a representation of an abstract concept. It is not really physical. Addition and subtraction are also abstract concepts, applied to other abstract concepts. As we’ve discussed earlier, mathematics is an abstraction, tied to the physical in only the most tenuous of ways through the concept of quantity. This has proven to offer us great benefits, but it can also hinder us when it is believed as a canonical representation of the totality of our existence. There is no basis for such an assumption, despite stacks of mathematics on paper.

It seems the human being is prone to adopt beliefs. This is how scientists, even physicists and mathematicians, can believe in God without violating the sanctity of their disciplines: because their disciplines arise from belief, they are accustomed to belief. The only difference between religion and science is the voracity of their self-consistency and their openness to new perspectives. These are constant challenges where religion, more often than not, falls short. But so does science. And like religion, science usually falls short when the canonical caretakers of the holy objects become more interested in their own personal perpetuation than their sacred duty toward humanity and the purity of their calling.

However, these are callings that are far removed from the more humble life we each lead as we return home at the end of the day. At home our concerns turn toward foraging for food, our feelings for the people in our lives, or having a comfy, warm bed in which to dream. While mathematics is removed from us and defined with rigor, the language of our time spent more at rest is sloppier, and is often downright messy. Some would like to bring the certainties of religion or science home with them in an attempt to impose comfort upon the messiness they might otherwise experience, but these are usually vain attempts. The messiness bleeds through. Something about us is wider than any discipline can contain. We are not entirely defined by the dominance of objects created within the outside world. We are aware of our island-hood, and the world we perceive externally is not, precisely, the sum of everything that we are, or might be. Even when we try to impose its order upon ourselves, our gut knows the difference. We will go into the applicability and validity of the discipline of psychology and neuroscience in subsequent pieces.

Language, that is extended to us from our culture, is the defining bridge to the external world. Our senses are also a bridge, but they lack any objective definitions without language. Our senses merely allow us to perceive and experience the external world. Language helps define common sensual experiences between us. The difficulty arises from the fact that our awareness is separated from the awareness that exists within other beings, and the only way we have to bridge these islands is a rickety structure composed of words. This is, perhaps, part of the appeal of mathematics — it is rigidly defined with only a small propensity for misunderstanding and error. However, mathematics is incapable of representing the spectrum that is the diversity within our inner lives. Though less prone to error, its vocabulary is utterly inadequate. We appear to be stuck with the uncertainty and error of language between us. And as an interesting aside, it is also fascinating to note that our understanding of these more pristine maths are formed through the messiness of language and what those words conceptually represent. But we’ll steer clear of that messiness for now.

Our inner experience is rarely what other people perceive. The inadequacies of language are not the only cause. Because of our uniquely individual craziness, we do not always construct language that is a true representation of our inner experience. Also, sometime we hear language differently than was intended, either because of that same uniquely individual craziness within ourselves, or the clumsiness of the person constructing the language toward us. And this is with truth as the backdrop. If we bring in the possibility of deception, we bring a wrecking ball into an already precarious and delicate environment. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, this is all too common and is the source of a great deal of the confusion that permeates our society. Deception is always willful, even when it is simply a will to ignore or disregard the validity of some known or perceived truth. In many ways, this is the worst deception of all. Silence, indifference, or disregard allows deception to perpetuate and flourish. It is selfish, and almost always meant for one’s own perceived benefit.

But what is selfishness, other than a word? How is it possible to say that selfishness is bad, when each self is their own isolated island? The answer is simple when you realize that other islands exist, and are every bit as important as your own. There are lots of people like you, living on their own crazy, isolated islands. Even when they claim they are not. Particularly when they claim they are not. And in that, paradoxically, even though we are completely isolated, we are all in the same boat. If I’m not mistaken, I think that some form of love might fit in well just there. And though love can be considered selfish, it also, paradoxically, is the furthest thing from selfishness. Isolation is, intrinsically, a lonely existence. Though some religions try, they cannot command love between islands. And deception always results in isolation. If connections are to occur, each island must, through its own self-awareness, become aware of its isolation and seek to bridge that isolation in ways that are not based in deception. Or instead, remain in isolation. Anything else is a power play through manipulation.

If a sense of mutuality can exist between islands then an awareness of isolation also exists. Some means will be sought to create bridges in the interest of that mutuality. But if a keen awareness of the isolation between islands exists, how can one possibly avoid having a more passionate response that necessitates creating the most intimate connections possible? Though this situation is rare, here we must take care to balance between the negative forces that stem from desperation and panic, against the far more positive and powerful forces that such passion can engender as a motive for the fulfillment with all its benefits of unity. And even this must be balanced against the necessity of distinction, from which the true beauty and strengths of humanity’s genius emerges. This is the beautiful aspect within the darker nature of Existentialism.

It leaves me asking, as I look out upon the world, what is really important? Between each of our islands, what bridges have we built, or allowed to be connected to us? In what ways does mutuality currently manifest itself? Is it truly proven that deception results in isolation? Does it matter to our isolation if we are the ones deceiving, or the ones being deceived? And the most difficult question of all, why does this state seem to remain, in perpetuity?

I suppose that our self awareness is one thing, while our interactions with the world is another. This is inherently deceptive. Perhaps we must do, to get what we want. It is the exchange of one price, at the cost of something else. I suppose it all depends upon the value we place on one thing or another. And now, I feel like I’m caught up in the mathematics of economies. It is an intriguing symptom.

In that warm, comfy bed of mine, though messy, I had a dream the other night. Some people say I was experiencing random firings of neurons, while other say I was “sifting” through the day’s information. Nobody can say much about the particles. I only know that I had a dream. There was a large, flat landscape seen at a distance, like the world. It ground was a reddish-brown, cracked, clay desert at twilight. Lots of people were walking about in between plastic outcroppings in the plain that were shaped like rounded tombstones, but had brightly-glowing and colorful neon symbols that flowed in pleasant designs. They densely covered the plains while people walked amongst them, absently avoiding collisions with these colorful objects. All our interactions flowed through them, yet we always avoided touching them. Circles were always the most prominent design on the tombstones.

None of this was unpleasant. However, it did make me feel a little like a radio controlled robot, and I knew that everyone else was feeling the same thing. Mountains were off far along the horizon. We knew we were a colony, of sorts, and there was nowhere else to go. As Burroughs would say, “The theater is closed.”

But I woke up and decided to write this anyway. I feel compelled. It might be love. Or maybe religion. But then again, nothing is certain. Right?

Just a bunch of words, tenuously tied to the intimate experience of our unique existence. You can see such awareness in some people. Others might never get there. Still others are terrified. It’s not easy, with such awareness, being deceptive. Unless you are completely ruthless. That is effective evil. And it exists. It is a purity of self-interest.

Mutual interest does not just happen as a by-product of self-interest. Mutual interest strikes deep into the chest. It is undeniable. It is a function of awareness. And that, in my belief, is the mountain to whose heights we must aspire. Any other basis is petty and inevitably mean.

The magic performed by magicians is usually a combination of diversion, distraction and sometimes even mentalism. This is performed upon we, the spectators or participants. This magic is an attempt to cause us to believe things other than the truth, so that the magician can benefit and we can be entertained. These magicians are also sometimes called illusionists. When they succeed, we believe things that have no basis in actuality. We believe things that are untrue. We believe false things.

Some people claim that everyone’s beliefs are equally valid. Where illusionists are concerned, this would mean that false things are true. If the illusionist is very good, true things might even be false. But when we go to a theater to see an illusionist, we enter a context where we expect illusion. In that context we can easily maintain our sense of what is true and what is false. Here, we expect that what we see and hear will be carefully choreographed to assault our sensibilities. We expect to be tricked. And because we have purposefully entered this known context, we are protected against trickery. We know that our ignorance will be exploited toward an end. That’s what we paid for. And in this context, it can be entertaining.

But what happens when we meet the illusionist outside the theater context, in the world where we know true and false with inherent certainty? In the theater we are vigilant, intently watching for any sign that might reveal the truth behind the illusion. In the theater we watch for the sleight of hand to be careless, giving up its secrets. And even when we discern no trickery, we are convinced from the onset of trickery. But in the streets, in the world outside the stage, few maintain such vigilance. We are a happier, more trusting people, in the world, that is a stage.

It is remarkable how we have come to create ideas and institutions collectively. Our social interactions at all levels depend completely upon shared beliefs. We evolve socially through collectively determining and agreeing to what is true and false, and to a lesser extent, though just as importantly, what is right and wrong. This process of collective determination is what gives rise to a society. And it is from this process of social formation, both ongoing and adaptive, that a sense and even framework of social justice emerges. As John Rawls says in A Theory of Justice, “If men’s inclination to self-interest makes their vigilance against one another necessary, their public sense of justice makes their secure association together possible.”

The trade and skill of illusionists rests primarily in the subterfuge of generally accepted truth. Perhaps there is an equally valid private sense of justice that can tip the balance of self-interest between people in favor of a certain group, who can, in turn, bring about even more secure associations between members of a society. A private, or hidden sense of justice. Of course, in the light of truth and reason, such obscure reasoning cannot hold. However, illusionists do not deal in the light of truth and reason. Their tools are distraction and deception, to cause the untrue to appear true. And they accomplish this quite reasonably. In fact, they depend upon reason.

But as we know, even well-reasoned things can be shown untrue, given enough devotion to the process of reasoning and the discovery of related truths. Reasoning is simply a process of logic. It is an empty pursuit without at least some objects of truth pulled from our collective baskets. Even with truth as our motivation, the more empty our baskets, the less likely our reasoning will be sound. The fuller our baskets, the more likely our success becomes. Illusionists have very full baskets. They are full of truth. However, their baskets also contain a a good many illusory objects. The tricky part is, these illusory objects are not necessarily false, nor true. They are illusory — a distraction. With these illusory objects in their arsenal, their process of reasoning can be formidable, because most of us don’t feel like carrying big, heavy baskets around with us. We carry just a few things in our baskets to help us along our journeys. And this helps us to think, well, if this person over here has all these many objects in their basket of reason, they must know what they’re about. I’m just happy with my little basket. So sure, I’ll believe it — I’ll play along.

I’m going to give you some objects for your basket. If you already have them, good for you. I know with certainty that at least five of you do, and two of those have some wildly screaming and thrashing eggs in there, too. Now you can both go hopping around pointing and shouting at everyone, “told ya so!” to your heart’s content. Just be careful what eggs you drop into people’s baskets, otherwise you’re not much better than the illusionists.

The last piece I sent out dealt with more humanistic aspects of our current financial situation. Many people were surprised that the trillion dollar bailout actually passed. Some of the more savvy wonderers question where we find this kind of money, to give to Wall Street. I can just imagine Scott growling, “we gonna pull it out of our ass!?” Well, pretty much. But not us, really. Treasury Secretary Paulson will tell the The Federal Reserve to pull the money out of their ass. We’ll just be going into further debt. There’s his signature, right next to George Washington’s face. The credit crisis, and we’re going further into debt to the bankers as well. You should see the interest they charge!

But wait, you ask, isn’t the Federal Reserve part of the government? Well, no. And yes. It’s one of the illusory eggs in their basket. The US Government does not create US money. The Federal Reserve is a collection of 12 regional banks around the country that are privately owned. The Federal Reserve can create money with a few keystrokes. Our government does not create any money, except for small coins from the US Mint. The Federal Reserve also controls the credit markets, which are currently in turmoil. The only ties these private bankers have to our government is a small board of finance people who oversee The Federal Reserve. These people, much like Supreme Court Justices, are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, only with 14 year terms. They generally outlast multiple presidents. However, after Bush’s election, some of the board members resigned their terms early for some reason, and the board is now filled with Bush appointees. They include bankers involved in the economic scandal, and economists of the Chicago School of Economics, of Milton Friedman fame. If you’re interested, you can read more about the Milton Friedman economic ideologies that first took firm hold during President Reagan’s administration.

By far, the majority of Americans do not know that the Federal Reserve is a privately owned central bank. Other banks own these banks, as do other people, both Americans and foreigners, and foreign banks. When US dollars are printed, we simply go into debt to these banks and begin paying interest. They like it when we give a trillion dollars to Wall Street. They also like it when they get to buy up other Wall Street banks, or other failing institutions. During the Great Depression, they planned ahead the takeover of the majority of US farms through mortgage foreclosure, where farmers instead became tenants upon their land. They also like taking out savings and loan companies, and any non-national banks. They like very much being able to control money, even as far as being the ones who create it from nothing. And they love war. We entered into the Great Depression almost immediately after their creation.

The Federal Reserve is far more a Wall Street institution than it is a US Government institution. The same holds true for the Bank of England, and most other European central banks. Their interest is not for the welfare of the people. Their interest is profit for themselves and for their constituents. They can take advantage of economies in our good times, and they can take advantage of economies in our bad times. They can also manipulate and steer the economy into trends of their choosing, while utilizing this foreknowledge. As such, all times are good times for the people behind the central bank. In fact, they rely on the “business cycle” of ups and downs, even the extremes of bubbles and depressions.

When these bankers create money from nothing, it appears in their banks. Then, they loan out this money and charge interest on that loan. Until recently, banks would loan out 10 times  more money than they conjured. Now, in large part due to Treasury Secretary Paulson’s efforts before he came to Treasury, these financial institutions loan out more like 30 times the amount, and collect interest on it all. They also foreclose when companies or people can’t pay.

So there you have a few big eggs for your basket. When you know this, and rationally consider our economic situation, it’s not at all such a crazy-seeming situation. It is all very sensible. It is also all very predictable when you are privy to the detailed financial reports of Wall Street, which we are not, after so much deregulation. These bankers can operate in relative isolation from any scrutiny.

Our nation’s history is filled with struggles between private banking and government. Several times in our history the US Government has created its own money. The Federal Reserve was, I believe, the third instance in which money creation powers were handed over to private people. It was created in the early 1900’s and shortly after its creation we entered the Great Depression. Like now, massive credit lending was the rule. During this time of massive debt, the Federal Reserve reduced the money supply, so there was no money for people, businesses, smaller banks, and farmers to pay their debts. Foreclosures were rampant. Like now, even though the major banks are infused with money, they are not releasing it.

Some people speculate that the business cycle is related to the Federal Reserve pushing money out into the country, then finding a way to get it for themselves. This is the boom/bust cycle. Other people claim that the Federal Reserve acts in the interest of all people, not just the bankers who comprise the Federal Reserve. These people view the Federal Reserve bankers as a benign and stabilizing economic force. It is a pretty egg.

Several US Presidents have fought against the private ownership of the nation’s central bank, as have many other prominent people. The history is quite fascinating. Thomas Jefferson even warned against any private individuals having such power over our money supply. He claimed that freedom would not be possible, since it would create two governments, the stronger of which was in the hands of a few private interests.

The history of privately owned central banks can be traced back to England in the 1600’s, with the founding of the privately owned Bank of England. Even before this, struggles existed between monarchs and the goldsmiths who produced coin and had a powerful influence. They also could manipulate the money supply. One king decided that he would control the money, and crafted a stick with markings that represented monetary denominations. Even though gold coin still existed, these sticks were the only thing the king would accept for payment of taxes. As such, the sticks were in demand, much to the chagrin of the goldsmiths. However, their coins still held value. The goldsmiths simply found it far more difficult to manipulate the kingdom’s economy.

Our President Andrew Jackson when asked what his greatest accomplishment as President was, replied simply, “I killed the Bank”. By this he meant the Second Bank of the United States, which was our second privately owned central bank. It was a terrible battle, though, between the President and the US central bank. The bank even provided Jackson’s political opponent with millions of dollars to help defeat Jackson. This spurred Jackson to take his campaign to the road, to the people — the first President to do so. His campaign slogan was “Jackson and no Bank”. Jackson was re-elected. The chairman of the US central bank, Nicholas Biddle, threatened to plunge the country into a depression if the government did not renew his bank’s authority:

“Nothing but widespread suffering will produce any effect on Congress…. Our only safety is in pursuing a steady course of firm restriction - and I have no doubt that such a course will ultimately lead to restoration of the currency and the recharter of the Bank.”

The US central banks called in loans and restricted the money supply, making no new loans. The credit market was effectively closed. Unemployment soared. Businesses failed. The banks foreclosed on property. And the US central bank started giving money to members of Congress for their campaigns. Newspapers began printing stories lambasting President Jackson, blaming him for the depression. President Jackson was even censured by Congress. But remarkably, Congress was unable to override President Jackson’s veto, which effectively shut down the US central bank. After this, Biddle was investigated, refusing to turn over any financial records. He died, with many civil lawsuits still pending on their bank. Andrew Jackson killed the Bank.

It was in 1835 that the Second Bank of the United States was closed. Also in 1835, President Jackson managed pay off the national debt, after having removed US deposits in the central bank in 1833, moving them instead to normal banks. This was also the year that an assassination attempt on President Jackson failed, with both guns misfired. It was also the only time our national debt was paid off completely.

Then, in 1913, the new privately owned Federal Reserve bank was created and handed back the money power. You know the story from there, don’t you? I’ll leave it to you to find your own new eggs for your basket, if you like. Oh, ok. One more egg. Both the first and second national banks were partially owned by the US government. We gave the bank 20% of its cash, for a 20% stake. The bankers then loaned themselves the money to buy their shares in the bank. And they started making loans of far more cash than they actually had. It’s a good scheme, isn’t it? Unfortunately, if any of us tried it, we would go to jail.

Which brings up an interesting point. What is money? When you ask business owners how much their business is worth, you’re always given the same answer: it is worth whatever someone is willing to pay, that sounds good to you, too. Money is much the same, particularly since it is no longer backed by anything real. If we agreed to it, hairs our our heads could be money. I’m certain the Hair Club for Men would be elated. Money is something we agree to. You can print your own notes, if you like. Last I checked, it is perfectly legal. However, if you are going to exchange products or services, you still must pay taxes, in the money of the realm. Somehow it is very appealing to think of a group of people coming up with their own form of money, just measuring how much they do for each other, in a simple, nice and open manner, free from illusionists. Taken even a step further, it’s just nice being able to do things for people. I wish that worked all-around.

But again, in case you’re still wondering what is going on in our economy, I’ll use a simple analogy. Baby, it’s just that the vacuum cleaner has been turned on. It’s a giant one, and the collection bag sits in the homes of a fraction of that top 1% of the people in the nation who already hold the majority of our nation’s wealth. All the rest is illusion. And so is my analogy, to a small extent, since the central banks of nations are interconnected.

From here, if you still have any interest, check out the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund. Pay attention to what is going on in countries like Iceland. Those poor people — I really feel for them. I hope so much that they find their own freedom and independence after the storm, though. I hope also that we all can gain some sense.

There is also a very long documentary on this subject out there. It’s about three hours long, but it’s packed full of good information, from a very irritating narrator. Money Masters, I think is what it’s called. Yes, it shows up on Google Video. It’s worth a look. It was made in 1995, and I’ve verified much of its content, though I can’t say with certainty about the whole thing. It smells of conspiracy theory. Just keep in mind that sometimes truths we don’t know can smell like a silly conspiracy theme. Personally, I don’t believe it’s a conspiracy. It’s just well played business, devoid of ethics. It’s the golden cow we worship, and the illusionist’s diversions.

Just look at them go! And while you’re at it, be vigilant. See if you can spot the “invisible hand”.

In the culture of United States, being intelligent is not like being beautiful. In fact, if you are intelligent, and have some degree of humility, you spend a good deal of effort trying to hide the fact, almost apologetically. If you do not, you are considered an “asshole” by most, and that’s not so fun for we socially-oriented humans creatures.

Unfortunately, any pressure that causes you to “dumb yourself down”, resulting in silence, even in the interest of being “nice” to others, has consequences. Just look at all these quoted words and phrases I’m using. They’re like soft little cotton balls, you use to tip-toe around idiots, so I won’t be called “mean”. Intelligent people collect a lot of soft, logically fuzzy cotton balls over time. Probably for no other reason than they help us get laid.

For some reason several of you have put aside niceties when dealing with me. I’m not angry about that. In fact, I’m honored. There is no greater gift than a journey toward truth. Notice the lower-case “t” in truth. I don’t know the way, and you probably don’t either. But be assured, if you are reading this in your email, you are someone that at least can recognize truer paths and turns, and are someone who is willing to question what you hold dear, often down to the deepest places. I’ll even risk sounding patently ridiculous for a moment and say, that is enough for me to love you. It is a rare, vulnerable, and oftentimes isolating quality, being someone so open-minded. It is far simpler and easier on the mind to just close things down. Yet you choose to remain open. You choose to look around honestly. And most of all, you’re not afraid to be thought a lunatic. That’s why I love you, in the broadest sense of love. Perhaps it’s as uncomplicated as imagining myself the same, and finding validation that you are, too. I would like think there is a good deal more empathy involved, though. I know there is. Because if there was not, it wouldn’t be love.

So, we have enough of the pleasantries, and it’s off to the matter at hand. I am being hounded to write something on our current political and financial situation, and quickly, as some social overtone of urgency seems to dictate. My guess is that you are remembering previous politically-oriented writing, and are interested in hearing my 2 cents. Perhaps that is conceit. I’m going to go with it, though, and give you something political-ish, nevertheless. Mostly just to cover my ass, ethically, to do what I can do, when I can, in what way that I can. My apologies to those who do not wish to hear me blather on.

Interpreted broadly, everything we write or say has political force. I am aware of this when I write or speak with people. However, the meaning and scope of politics is not limited to solely to institutions of government that are structurally in force. In other words, it is not a government entity that is important. It is our thoughts, beliefs, values and our well-being that is important. Any government entity is simply an outwardly tangible manifestation of our collective will (or lack of will). And, like all orthodoxy, it is prone to manipulation and exploitation by twittering moths seeking the heat of our collective power. It is we, individually, who imbue any orthodoxy with power. We can do this actively by participating in it. We can do this passively by following along, keeping our noses clean. We can even do it inadvertently by just not bothering to think that a government is little more than orthodoxy — that without our collective commitment to an idea, that idea is meaningless and holds no sway.

No, this is not some back-handed promotion of anarchy. That would be a simplistic interpretation that stupidity requires. Saying that orthodoxy holds sway because people buy into it does not mean that orthodoxy ought to be eliminated. In fact, I have little doubt that we can accomplish the most amazing things by working toward our common good. And orthodoxy helps focus this. The question is, what manner of orthodoxy is currently holding sway over our lives? And can it be improved?

First, yes. I believe it can be improved. Nearly all that I write or say has this belief firmly seated within it. But in some way, engaging in governmentally-shaped political issues directly merely perpetuates that orthodoxy. In other words, if you use only the tools of orthodoxy, all you get is orthodoxy. Change must come into orthodoxy from the outside. Orthodoxy is incredibly resistant to change, yet at the same time, it is fragile. This is a characteristic of inflexibility. In this sense, the old metaphor is true: a flexible tree bends in the wind, where the solid tree breaks. Wind, from the outside, is what causes movement. And no, I’m not saying, do not vote. Voting and badgering our political leaders is all we have, unless we take up force. And taking up force would be a tragic and costly turn of events, particularly considering domestic wiretapping, spy satellites turned upon our own streets, and recent military deployments at home being trained to quell civil disobedience.

Instead, my approach is an attempt to help bring clarity, with a tacit belief that, with clarity, we are, perhaps, better people as a whole than we might imagine. In politics, the beginning of this clarity rests in the understanding that government is simply a somewhat solidified orthodoxy. And that all orthodoxy is subject to modification, though not without great resistance, and sometimes cost. I think few Americans now would say that change is not absolutely necessary. But what change? That is very difficult to answer without creating more orthodoxy.

So instead, I will ask a question. If you find someone unconscious and bleeding on your porch, why do you help them? Fear of liability? Fear of some law that compels you to under the threat of punishment? Is it fear that causes you help them? Fear has nothing to do with it. Fear would be ineffectual and possibly even counter-productive. The answer is, you are aware — a living being yourself. And you are aware of this other being, who is completely at your mercy. I ask again, why do you help him to live? Why would many of you even risk your own life to help him?

Each of us is endowed with awareness. You can call it your mind, or you can call it your spirit. We do not consider nearly enough how wondrous this is. You are aware. Alive. You learn. You respect other people’s awareness to varying degrees, based upon your own (prejudices). We would not let people suffer and die on our own doorstep. Somehow, we see ourselves in them. Mike might suggest this is a result of our brain’s mirror neurons that have helped us survive together, mutually, as a species. Whatever the reason, we help them survive because we wish to survive. All of us. We do not wish ourselves, or others, to die.

It is a different matter, however, when the person in need is thousands of miles away, made anonymous behind some abstract categorization of people. Perhaps this is how we determine people who have strongly developed mirror neurons; those of us who still manage see victims on our own porch, even at great distances. But even within our own country, close to home, where do we draw the boundaries of suffering? Does bleeding and imminent death mean that it’s okay to help, but barely having enough food to survive should be ignored? A heart condition that could easily be repaired should be denied, and the person left to slowly die, because the company they worked for went out of business? Sports stadiums should be built instead of housing for more than 10 million people currently out of work?

Our awareness glazes over when confronted with large statistics and issues. It’s hard to see an actual person when you say, 10,000,000 people are without work. That’s a lot of people either out on the street, or frightened they soon might be. Here are a few more glazing statistics, just for fun. 46,000,000 people in the United States have no health insurance. More than half of all bankruptcies are a result of medical bills. Yet strangely, Americans spend more money per person than any nation on the planet, far more than countries where medical care can be freely had, if needed. Our president vetoed a recent bill that would have provided, at least children, with health care, saying it was too expensive. It would have cost us $5 billion per year, for 5 years. It’s strange seeing that small number in comparison to $750 billion, which is something we apparently can afford. Some say, we are “investing” the $750 billion, not spending it. Just like we are investing another $85 billion to buy the country’s largest insurance company, AIG. Maybe some “financial genius” might find a way to provide health care, if nothing more than making it personally affordable, after purchasing such a giant insurance company, with all this other cash laying about, too.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. We are caught up in something. It’s another orthodoxy. It’s called economics. If you think of government as one galaxy, and economics as another galaxy, you will find that they have long ago merged into one. But there is a devil in the details here. The merged orthodoxy considers economics to be synonymous with business interests, and therefore business interests are synonymous with government interests. This is not the case. Business interests are merely tied to economic interests, just as we, as people, are tied to economic interests. As such, what is good for business is not necessarily good for people, just as what is good for people, is not necessarily good for business. However, something bad for either business or for people can have adverse effects economically.

There is another galaxy in rotation, and although it is smaller than the galaxy of people, it is highly dense and gravitationally powerful. This is the galaxy of business interests. Business interests do not, by definition, care if someone is bleeding on the porch, unless that business interest will be adversely effected. Business interests do not have mirror neurons in empathy with people. Business interests are oriented toward their own self-interest, which is the accumulation of money and influence. Anything else is a by-product. It is extreme capitalism that exploits our greed, resting on the assumption that if everyone enshrines greed, our greed will somehow, inadvertently, make the world a better place. It does not even take an intelligent person to recognize the flaw in that logic.

No, I am not anti-capitalism. But here are some more facts. Economies do not require capitalism to function. Capitalism is not the same thing as freedom. Freedom can exist without capitalism. Capitalism has nothing inherent within it that makes a nation prosper economically, as a whole people. Capitalism encourages a Darwinian kill or be killed mentality of competition, with no ethical center. Capitalism reveres money and marketing popularity (power) while completely disregarding any moral or philosophical considerations. This can also be considered a benefit of capitalism. When you hear the word “freedom” in relation to capitalism, this is not freedom as people generally envision it. Freedom in capitalism means freedom for business interests, to avoid any restrictions placed upon their greed. In that sense, we have a very free society.

Now here it is important to distinguish that capitalism is not a political system. However, few would disagree that economic systems have not merged almost completely with political systems. As such, we can no longer truly distinguish our government from business interests. And business interests no longer possess loyalties to any country. Business interests are now multinational. The United States government is one part, although a large part, of global business interests. You can see this in the complaints we are hearing from other world government leaders, that our Congress must act by infusing business interests with our collective people’s wealth. And so, our Congress acts, while our presidential candidates line up to follow suit.

This is where I will loose many of you. That’s okay. I’ll be quick, then on to the more important stuff. Here are some things to keep in mind. Capitalism does not require that a lot of people have money. In fact, it is natural that just a few people will come out on top, just like any feeding chain. The concept of “trickle-down” is a myth. Especially in a global economy. Why would we have workers here, when we can get so much cheap labor in other countries? How could we hope to compete in world markets with the high labor costs of employing people at home? How would this effect world currency values, in relation to one another? The answer is simple: it doesn’t matter. What matters is making money, however and wherever you can. You will find that the truly influential business interests are not concerned, in the least, with any country’s, or their citizenry’s well-being, even the United States citizenry, despite any rhetoric to the contrary. Business interests do not recognize governmental borders. When it encounters any, it works to dismantle them.

Incidentally, this is how fascism arises, when business interests are thrown behind a person or government, and that person or government gives favors back, without regard to its citizenry. US business invested heavily in Nazi Germany, exploiting free prison labor. Yes, the Bush family was involved. Yes, the United States has more people in prison than any other country in the world, in the history of the world, and we exploit their labor. Yes, we are phone tapping our citizens. Yes, we can disappear people indefinitely without charge, and threaten neighbors and relatives with prison if they say anything. It’s called the Patriot Act. No, there is no fear of torture here. Of course private military contractors are bound by Posse Comitatus. But that doesn’t matter, because we’re now deploying the “real” military at home anyway, and training them to combat civil disobedience, amongst other things, with new, non-lethal weapons. Hmm. I did turn a bit cynical there.

Nobody ever thinks they will end up living in a fascist state. We may not. But it is usually wise to keep our eyes open. Have we veered too far astray in our discussion of business interests (money) and the people’s government? Perhaps. But let’s look at a couple more things, briefly.

We know that our political leaders cannot be elected unless they have a lot of money personally, or are supported by business interests. All attempts to break this truism have failed. Breaking the hold of money on our political system would require that we restrict the rights of private entities to speak their minds, in national ads, even if what their minds are speaking is merely propaganda. However, we could limit public servants from entering into business relationships after their tenure in public service. This policy has even been enacted, in a feeble and ineffective way. I would suggest that it might be prudent severely limiting our public servant’s options after serving their office. This would insure that only people truly interested in doing good for more than just themselves, would enter government.

But to the issue at hand, which, I imagine, has forced me to write this: the bail out. It is not complicated. Remember, our government currently exists for business interests, nothing more. The United States government serves business interests, or more accurately, people who gain membership in the power club. Anything else is a smoke screen. And Bill, don’t you even pretend with me.

We as people can invest. It is a wonderful thing that we can buy into corporations that we like, and that we think might do well, financially. That is what Wall Street used to do — they were the brokers who helped bring together buyers and sellers of company ownership. However, over the years, Wall Street has become far more. Today, Wall Street is basically the world’s largest casino, swarmed by gamblers and ruled by organized “crime”. You can sell things you don’t even own, hoping for an insightfully-predicted roulette spin that will gain you some cash. The companies no longer matter. How the horses perform, and their odds, does. The casinos have their godfathers, too. This casino is a significant contributor our gross domestic product. The financial services industry has, for the last couple decades, been the industry with the highest market value. However, recently, that market value has been crashing. This means that people are selling their stock ownership in such companies.

The first major dip downward in value started at nearly the exact time that Paulson left as CEO of Goldman Sachs to become the US Treasury Secretary. Within a few months of him taking over the US Treasury, the financial sector experienced a colossal rise in value for nearly a year and a half. They sold toxic mortgages to people here at home, and sold many of those mortgages to people overseas. In a curious turn of events, Goldman Sachs continued underwriting mortgages, while simultaneously betting against the mortgage industry. Their investors lost a lot of money, and some divisions of Goldman Sachs lost a lot of money, while other parts won big. The value of all these financial companies began to fall around this time last year. Now, the value of the financial industry companies are back to what they were about four years ago. And they want $1,000,000,000,000. The only main competitor to Goldman Sachs left alive today is Morgan Stanley, which is selling 20% of itself to Japan.

Now Secretary Paulson is known to have intimate connections to China’s wealthy elite. China has invested heavily in our mortgage finance markets, as have other nations around the world. An interesting deal-breaker condition for Paulson in any Wall Street bailout is that it must give him the ability to purchase any subprime mortgage ever written, even if it is held by someone who is not a US citizen. In other words, our casino mafia of Wall Street, which Paulson was a founder, sold Americans toxic loans, which they often, snake-ily re-sold and offloaded onto foreign investors. Maybe those foreign investors are angry. They certainly sound angry when you hear them on TV, demanding that our Congress give Paulson money so he can buy back those toxic mortgages. Remember, business interests are not concerned with countries and their citizenry. They are concerned with money. Paulson, Bush and Wall Street thinks that we should pay for these mortgages. However, many would say that this is a private matter, and in the interest of free markets, should be dealt with privately. It’s an interesting situation.

Jeff sent a neat video on this, which I’ll link to. The guy on the video is irritating (to me), but it has some good information. If you’re interested, you can view it on YouTube. It might be worth your 9 minutes. Thanks Jeff. And Dan. And Christopher. And Emil. And Warren. See, I’ve said something now, and done my part. And I have contacted my representatives.

But I hope I have managed to do more than just say, this is bad, we need to do this and such thing… I have little faith that we will progress in any measurable way, unless all of us make it a point to not only question and learn, but to also make the changes we need to make — on a personal level as well as societal. This money could, once again, easily build a national infrastructure of hydrogen and also provide every family with hydrogen storage tanks at their homes. Instead, we are extending tax breaks to the oil companies, which will mean less money for us. We have just passed the largest military funding in history. Yet we don’t have enough money to let kids go to the doctor. We have to piggy-back on Russia to get to the space station. And Wall Street continues the fight to get its hands on our social security money. Milk has doubled in price. Something is terribly, terribly wrong.

I have to ask, can you see what it is? And more intimately, can you see it in yourself? It just so happens that we have many bodies on our porch right now. The question is, are you going to help? And the bigger question is, when will get tired of these idiotic games and do something amazing with the people of this planet? I shiver at the potential we have. Let’s start using it!

- René Descartes

This was a clever Frenchman, born in the late 1500’s. René was a philosopher and a mathematician. In fact, he invented analytic geometry, or Cartesian geometry. For some reason, truth was important to René. He is also considered the founder of modern philosophy, creating a solid intellectual basis from which the natural sciences could evolve.

René believed we must throw out all ideas that cannot be reasonably proven. Often, he toyed with more abstract mathematics as an exercise to better understand truth. In doing so, he laid the foundations that led to Newton’s calculus. He is also the origin of the phrase, “I think, therefore I am.”

Unfortunately, that phrase is not exactly mathematical. But we’ll afford him some leeway. After all, he was bringing philosophy and mathematics together in new and exciting ways, and the “why am I?” question is an oldie but a goody. However, it does bring to light a certain difficulty that we still face today.

Modern philosophers know that “Cogito ergo sum” is not, actually, a very good proof. But René was hindered in large part by not taking his own advice: doubt, as far as possible, all things. René believed that our minds exist separately from the physical world, and as such, were not really subject to ontological considerations. He did not imagine that our consciousness might arise from the physical properties of our existence. So, in a way, he was putting the cart before the horse.

This is not surprising. The duality of mind and body was a concept solidified within the minds of his contemporaries. It was both a social given, and a spiritual “truth”. Interestingly, he did not believe animals had minds. Nor did they feel pain. This was well-reasoned. He often performed vivisections upon live animals to study them. I wonder how he held to his belief, as the animals cried out and struggled. Perhaps it is one of the powers of science, that allows us to carry on in our convictions despite contrary appearances. At least when our convictions are well-reasoned.

Chris and I have had some fun discussions lately, some of which are related to consciousness and existence. There is always something refreshing about returning our attention to origins. One thing is clear, we live in very different times than René, when Western civilization was taking its first steps toward the Age of Enlightenment. They were trying to make sense of the physical within a world of the spiritual, while we are left trying to find at least some room for the spirit in a world of mathematics.

How different we have become, even those of us who claim to lead “the simple life.” Our electricity flows to us through the equations of electromagnetism. Our shoes, ropes, jackets and food containers, formed by petrochemistry. Our money, an imaginary collection of computer memory addresses, modified by equations. Our minds, altered, repaired or enhanced through specific chemicals, electricity and physical modification. The machine work within the cells of our bodies, re-programmed and turned loose by conscious design. And the very fact that my words enter your mind now, a result of quantum positions within the subatomic…

Who needs a spirit any more? When the cells of my body that somehow comprise the mind that speaks to you, are not even real, but are instead a vibrating collection of particles that both exist and do not exist. And each of them, surrounded by a vast sea of empty space. Who needs a spirit, when I am mostly insubstantial already?

When mathematics has all the answers, what is the difference, if you maximize a ledger balance or not? What does it matter, the risk assessments in war? In the collection of particles, of dust, that we are, that move out with our will, which among them is the greatest? Which is the least? Which is me? When all things are functions to be weighed and solved, playing out from their own accord, what does anything truly matter?

This abstraction, with its dehumanizing characteristics, can be attributed to the inherently metaphysical status of mathematics. It brings us far up above ourselves, where we can look back down. It is a peculiar phenomenon. In science, phenomenology is making observations that lead to some conclusion that pays no attention to how we feel things should be, nor what they actually mean. Quite differently, in philosophy, phenomenology is, in a way, the search for a bridge that might somehow lead out from just yourself, to other people, ideas or things.

In philosophy we reached a crisis of sorts with the Existentialists, after our long passage through the the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment. In a sense, it carries us through the processes of logic and mathematics, then plops us down squarely into meaninglessness. We can observe the processes of our world, but in doing so we must acknowledge that these observations originate from our bodies. However, our bodies and the senses we inhabit, are limited. We may construct machines that extend our senses well beyond their limitations, but only along the narrow lines we designate as extensions, i.e., vision or sound. The question arises, is the truth of truths constrained by our physically perceptual and rationally conceptual human limitations? Such a notion is extraordinarily prejudiced and leads us to consider the absurdity that lives at the foundation of science when it purports to be anything more than an art. Art, which merely hints at truths through the tools of its trade. And like all art, what is pleasing to our aesthetic we grant validity, meditation and devotion.

Mathematics exists within its own universe. It is self-referential — self-contained. It follows a logic more pristine than our human thoughts, nestled within the gross confines of language, can achieve. In mathematics, we can determine with certainty whether something is true or not, yet this truth is only valid within the universe of mathematics. If we choose to apply the universe of mathematics to the larger reality we inhabit, we do so only with risk. The bridge between the universe of mathematics and our universe of existence is a metaphysical bridge. In other words, an atom does not work out the equations of quantum mechanics to decide its next action. Nor can we pass laws in mathematics that force the physical universe to behave in different ways. We shape, and reshape our presumptions within the universe of mathematics in an effort to conform to the phenomena we observe within our own. And in doing so, we claim the prize: physics and metaphysics merge. This is the beauty we attribute with truth. However, philosophers, except for the exceedingly naïf ones, understand that truth need not be beautiful. In fact, truth does not, necessarily, require any aesthetic at all.

In this sense, the aesthetically pleasant merging of the physical and metaphysical universe through mathematics can, at best, be considered a metaphor for truth. This metaphor is constrained by the limitations of our senses. Although science can make predictions and often control our physical universe via its metaphysical tools, it is important to remember its more artistic basis when considering the truth of truths.

As we discover an aspect of our existence, even through science, it is often our first thought to re-shape that metaphorical truth toward something even more ideal. In effect, to “correct” a part of our existence within the physics we believe we inhabit. In other words, we may discover a truth, yet even though our understanding of this truth is incomplete, we might have within our minds an improvement upon this truth, which, through our metaphysical tools, we often seek to modify into an idealized state. This is a dangerous flaw inherent within the belief of science as truth: our incomplete understanding of truth often leads us to alter that truth toward an ideal, founded upon nothing but our own prejudices or desires. This is what leads us to consider the prospect of filtering out gay babies, since they will not procreate or will be evil. This is what leads us to ethnic cleansing, based upon a system of rationality. Or war. where millions can be killed based upon probabilities or the maximization of abstract numerics which we imbue with cultural power. Or pharmaceuticals that restrict our minds within the narrow bounds of some normalized function.

Unlike other art, a strongly absolute and literal validity is bestowed upon science. This is, perhaps, why science, like all art, is often under attack by social forces who are determined to instill their own ideas of truth. There is, perhaps, some characteristic of art that we innately recognize as a metaphor for truth. This can easily threaten ideologies based upon weak tautologies. Science, even more than other arts, can threaten as a result of the profound validity we bestow upon it.

However, this power comes at a price. Unlike other arts, science is incapable of critiquing itself. In other words, science cannot question the foundations of science, within the terms of science. In this sense, as a means of determining truth, science becomes, like mathematics, a universe unto itself, self-referential and solipsistic. As such, it lives in isolation as an abstract construction as all beliefs do. We imbue science with its power through a conscious act of attribution: a belief in its indisputable access to truth. To my mind, as beliefs go, this is better than most.

Interestingly, other arts do not suffer in cold isolation like science. Then again, other arts do not claim any absolutism within their basis. What gives science its power is the same force that isolates it from us: the notion of a purely objective and utterly rational universe, despite the limitations inherent within our humanity to fully experience it.

Caught within our consciousness, we seek that which is outside ourselves. Perhaps we desire to understand ourselves within the boundaries of our own perception. Perhaps we simply wish to feel less isolated. In this way, science and the mechanics of rationalism have led us to marvel at the outside world, drawing our attention to the menagerie of pseudo-objective materials that presumably comprise our existence, while simultaneously discounting the importance and highlighting the fallibility of our own subjective experience, and hence, the subjective experiences of others, even though we sense some inherent access to truth within our own subjectivity. Science can only approach this from the outside, and we doom ourselves to conform to its edicts. However, other arts are somewhat gentler. It is a characteristic of all art that we may discover bridges between what might exist within the world, that can span, at least in part, to our experience of individuality; and across those bridges find, perhaps, something truly meaningful. This is, in part, the philosophical meaning of phenomenology.

When we look at the processes of science, we find two primary symbols: theoretical terms and observational terms. “Good” science is generally defined by observational terms linked to correspondence rules into theoretical terms. That is, theoretical entities do not exist unless they can be shown, through correspondence rules, to be connected to observation. What makes science more of an art is the recent lack of distinction between theory and observation, which correspondence rules rely upon as a given. The result is, any disconcerting observations can always, eventually, be accommodated by any theory. Science chooses theories pragmatically: those which fit best with other theories blessed into general acceptance. Observation is no longer required. This is most certainly closer to art than any truth of truths. And as such, it is as close to the truth of truths as art.

The phenomenological philosopher at the outset finds themselves trapped in the isolation of Existentialists, much like science is trapped within its own objectively solipsistic universe. However, the phenomenological philosopher finds themselves in a somewhat different landscape. We suspend any disbelief in ourselves. We assume that we, as an individual, must exist, in one way or another. And in what others might consider a leap of faith, though there are some compelling arguments otherwise, we assume that other things also exist. Even sentient things. Like, and unlike ourselves. Each of us perceives the universe through our own subjective senses. I have no access to the truth of what you see, except through the objects of language and metaphor that we build and share, both within and outside of ourselves.

A phenomenological philosopher is very skeptical of anything claimed to be an absolute object of truth existing within the shared, intersubjective experience we inhabit. However, they are not ruled out. Nor is any object in the intersubjective world blessed into the objective, as a Truth, lightly. It is here that scientists fail as philosophers. They are hasty and reckless in their determinations, with flawed claims of an objective process that is, largely, metaphysical. However, as artists, and even tortured artists, scientists are magnificent. Most scientists will perceive this as a wild accusation.

But, like all artists, an engrossment within your work can lead to a dangerous myopia. It is also the signature of genius. Any passionate pursuit leads inevitably to the darkened beauty of egoism. It is an irony that, in the endless pursuit of the objective truth, the subjective ego should flourish and grow. “The holy egoism of genius,” the The Art of Noise sang.

It leaves me wondering, when you look into the eyes of another — a stranger — and something profound between you is shared and known, without any words, without any hints, that hits at the gut… Who among us is quick to attribute the experience to an equation? Who is quick to say, this is a spiritual exchange? What we do know, is that it is a phenomenon, experienced by us all. And the meaning is to be found within each of us.

This is not really surprising. When you mention Free Software, or Open Source software, most people immediately think of Linux, and the personality most associated with Linux, Linus Torvalds. Undoubtedly, Linus has played a monumental role. However, it is Richard Stallman’s unwaivering adherence to ethics and the cause of freedom that originated the Free Software movement. And it is Richard who continues to act as the little angel (or devil, if you prefer) who whispers within the goodly minds of every Free and Open software developer.

Most end user consumers of Free Software remain unaware of its history and the ongoing forces that drive it. The consumer hears that Free Software is excellent stuff, and that it is free, in every sense of the word. And that is enough to know. That’s fine. In fact, it’s wonderful. Have at it! That’s what it’s there for. Software developers love that you love what they create. They’re happy to help, in fact, they’re usually honored to help. Well, sort of. Sometimes it can be overwhelming, when their creation becomes popular. But strangely, communities tend to grow around such things, and those communities exist to help. They also exist to continue the process of building creations, together. It’s a remarkable phenomenon. In a sense, it is an accidental manifestation of a virtual Socialism. No membership required.

Developers using Free Software for the first time encounter something different than end users do. First, they are happy they haven’t had to pay any money. Second, they are often astonished by the sheer scope and detail that is often available to them within Free Software. It is not uncommon for Free Software developer documentation to exceed any commercial offering by orders of magnitude. I suspect this happens because, as developers, everyone is in the same boat. And that boat should make for a comfy ride. Developers in Free Software also, refreshingly, detect the aura of science behind the tools they employ, rather than marketing. Nothing is hidden, including agendas.

One of the peculiar side-effects of writing with Free Software tools is that your conscience gets tweaked a bit. Even when you are, perhaps, building a system that is meant to be closed and kept secret for some business interest, you feel a compulsion to give back to the community in whatever way you can. This, I believe, is a universal feeling. Perhaps it even speaks volumes about our inherent nature. And it is speaking good things.

But Richard pointed out a few things in that last piece. These are things we should not forget, nor overlook. Speaking of it will require a bit of context. Free Software has been an incredible benefit to the world. As I pointed out, it’s not just about free software. It’s also a statement about freedom. In many ways, we can think of the Free Software movement as a tangible embodiment that represents and vividly demonstrates the benefits available to us from a higher order of freedom. The Free Software movement happened because someone took a stand for freedom, and other people did too. And now, all of us benefit. All of us, except for those who seek to take away freedom, to solidify their own power. There are many ramifications in this, at many levels, both societally and personally. We’ll stick to software, though, for now.

TiVo

I mentioned the TiVo, which created a revolution of its own in home entertainment. The TiVo was the first digital video recorder successfully adopted by the masses. It has always run GNU/Linux. Justin introduced me to the TiVo, and when I first saw it, I was amazed at the capabilities and the sheer beauty of it operation. He had the Series I model, and he could use it just like a normal GNU/Linux computer, as well as a DVR. He could write or install his own programs on it. In fact, a whole community formed around the TiVo where people shared the interesting and amazing new programs they wrote for the TiVo, enhancing its capabilities.

I was sold. I shelled out the money and purchased a TiVo for myself, and now I can’t imagine watching TV any other way. However, by the time I purchased mine, the Series I TiVo was no longer manufactured. I purchased a Series 2. It had a faster processor, more external ports, and more upgrade capabilities than the Series I. However, TiVo had done something bad, too. They began locking down the TiVo, making it impossible to customize it to you desires, unless you wanted to do something risky and radical to gain access. In essence, they continued to take advantage of the GNU/Linux Free Software, but shackled it behind bars, claiming your system as fully their own.

This angered many people, and rightly so. However, TiVo placated the developers by releasing a software development kit, where developers were still unable to access the GNU/Linux system, but they were, at least, able to write custom applications for the TiVo — much like what Apple is doing with their iPhone. TiVo even went so far as to have contests to see who could write the best TiVo application. Many of these applications were very good and eventually found their way onto everybody’s TiVo, through TiVo’s regular software updates. Then, with the release of the Series 3, TiVo closed down all modifications, happily keeping for themselves what others had contributed as part of their own product offering.

Now, although this is somewhat nightmare-ish from the standpoint of freedom, one good thing came about. All GNU/Linux systems are released to the public with legal licensing requirements, just like commercial software. This license is called the GPL (GNU General Public License). When TiVo decided to use GNU/Linux to build their product, they were bound by this license. As a result, and only after a good deal of saber rattling, TiVo released to the public the source code modifications they made to Linux, as was required by the GPL. That may sound a little draconian on the part of the GPL. And it is. This is why:

Free Software is all about freedom (and other good stuff). If someone releases their free software under a GPL license, they get the draconian dragon. It lives within the license for a few reasons. One of the primary reasons is to safeguard the freedom of that software forever afterwards from those would would seek to take that freedom away. The GPL says, in essence, that this software is free! Take it. Use it. Give copies of it to other people. Sell it. Modify it to you heart’s content. But if you do modify it, you must give those modifications back to the community from which the free software was born. And if you sell the free software, or give it away, you can only do so under the terms of the GPL, which basically means, you must always give credit to the programmers who actually wrote it. And other people who accept the software from you must also be bound by the GPL. The freedom dragon follows along, always on vigil.

In this way, once software is made free and released to the world under the GPL, then the dragon works to keep that software free. TiVo didn’t want it to be free. They made some modifications so that GNU/Linux would work with their hardware, but they didn’t want to tell anyone else about it. In other words, they wanted to benefit from Free Software, but they didn’t want to share, and they wanted to lock GNU/Linux into their box. They still do. However, eventually they did release the modifications they made to the GNU/Linux system, which are available for anyone to use.

That is all fairly straight-forward. But as we know, corporations love their money. They like to say, “mine, mine!”, and then make you pay. The record companies are great at this. So are the movie companies. I’m sure many of you remember the CSS encryption fiasco… the young Norwegian boy who cracked CSS encryption that is used to encrypt data on DVDs… Movie companies do not want you to make copies of DVDs. CSS encryption of the DVD data was meant to thwart duplication. However, this boy figured out how to get around that encryption. He nearly went to jail… (thank goodness he was Norwegian).

Similarly, TiVo, to please movie and t