Your Choice

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Josh

There are a few camps around the concept of free-will out there, and whether or not, and to what extent, we have or can exercise choice in our lives.

While I do believe that we can have free will, or free choice, I think that it is extremely difficult to achieve – even once, but especially on a regular basis – and is mostly defined by what “level” of behavior or action you choose to look at.

From the perspective of regular, day-to-day choices, we can choose whatever we want.

However, those choices will be constrained by our environment. If I live in a jungle, I cannot choose to have Golden Grahams for breakfast (let’s say that I actually know of the existence of Golden Grahams). My choice is constrained.

Within social contexts, my choice may be constrained by conditioning I received as to what is appropriate or not. I may really want to choose to go to art school, but my parents have always called art a silly thing, so I go to medical school, the way they want.

I can choose to walk or run (given that I have legs, and a nervous system that complies with that request).

Even below that, are the subtle pre-cognitive signals I receive from my environment that may color my choice in certain areas. If I see a person with a certain countenance, they trigger my mirror neurons, which creates a certain impression of that person and their intentions in my body before I am even able to make a conscious choice about who or what they are or mean to me.

On another level, my friend Mick Dodge would bring up prison. If you want to know what free will is or is not, go to prison. You’ll quickly learn the meaning. That is a very real, physical, palpable level of constraint, and quickly challenges a different, very real, level of the notion of “free will.”

In the end, these discussions are mostly mental masturbation. The concept of free will is only as meaningful as one makes it. Life continues with or without “concepts.”

This post was inspired by this article about the Japanese artist Hayao Miyazaki’s response to the iPad (and to Manga and text-messaging).

Modern technology is not “necessary” for survival or happiness. It is a tool we’ve created. Free-will, to me, is the ability to choose to be a creator or a consumer, as Miyazaki points out. The extent of your ability to choose your actions is the extent of your “free-will.” That can be constrained either by external sources (such as a prison), or by yourself (the prison of your iPad).

My issue with modern technologies is that people are used by them, instead of using them. Choose to selectively use technologies in ways that expand your sensitivity, your awareness, your abilities…or imprison yourself within them.

Technology, Tools, and Progress

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Josh

Another great find by my friend Colin Pistell over at The Fifth Ape Blog got my wheels turning again…here’s my response to the TED talk Colin posted, which I’ve pasted below in this entry. Thanks for the inspiration Colin!

I like the first part…reminds me of a book I just put on my wishlist:

But his finale leaves me befuddled. The “cloud” or network-brain method of technology-making is also extremely fragile. Yes, it creates “innovation” (this question later). But it creates innovation that no one person can recreate if a part of that innovation gets lost.

We used to joke, when I worked at Apple, about what might happen if John Ive (the guy who designed the iMac, iPod, and about everything “i” since) dropped dead. Or worse still, if Steve Jobs did!

We got an inkling of what would happen if Steve Jobs left Apple back in the 90′s, when he was fired from the company. It tanked. And another inkling when he revealed that he had been diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer. The stock tanked!

So, though the head may be good at running the company – the company that coordinates the “hive-brain” that makes the products – if the head dies, the body dies as well.

Question two is about “innovation.” People always tout “innovation,” and “creative solutions” to our “problems.”

However, most “innovation” only creates more problems. It is innovation built upon a problematic foundation.

That is, our “problems” are based on a dysfunctional relationship with ourselves and with ourselves-in-the-world. We feel the need to meddle in things all the time, when sensitive awareness would be much more effective at increasing efficiency, or effectiveness, or whatever it is we think we need to increase (which is also questionable).

Once we’ve created these “solutions,” we have to justify our efforts. When the “solutions” cause more problems (see our “petroleum solution”), we have to create “alternative fuels,” and chemicals that can clean up the messes we’ve made.

Do we really? Is that really helpful? Or should we instead question the path we’re on entirely? Should we question the depths of our consumption? Should we question the notion of “progress” and “innovation,” that has driven us (further and further from interconnection with the natural world that is our home) since the industrial revolution?

I don’t know. I know the Acheulean toolkit was supposedly our mainstay for 1.5 million years.

For how long will the iPhone be useful?

Forgetting the real to construct reality

Posted on July 5, 2010 by Josh

This post is about the story (or stories) we tell ourselves.

I just read Semiotics: The Basics, by Dan Chandler.

It was a fascinating book. Semiotics is the study of signs. Not just “traffic signs,” but anything that signifies something else, and how that signification functions.

There were bits and pieces throughout the book that have given me a new perspective on the way(s) we (actively) construct our world and our lives. One of the claims made by semiotics is that, in language (and perhaps in “thought”) we construct opposites like:
good/bad (or evil)
light/dark
male/female
science/art
reason/emotion
man/nature
nationalism/individualism

What’s interesting about such opposites is that one is always preferred over the other. I’ve put the opposites above in the preferred/non-preferred sequence (or at least, how I perceive those to be in our culture).

What’s even more interesting, is that, once we tell ourselves a story (with its inherent opposing-pairs), we eventually forget that we made up those opposites to begin with. That is, we determined the preference based on something. There is no “objective truth” to the determination of those opposing pairs.

What that forgetting leads to, is an assumption that our story is reality itself. But how “real” is this “reality?” As we’ve seen throughout history, the story changes. In different cultures, different realities, and different preferences within those opposing pairs, prevail.

Again, the story we tell/create/manufacture is what will guide the way we use whatever technologies we develop or embrace, and also how those technologies will use us.

The way I see this process is this – we experience something, then we create a “reason” for that thing happening – we tell a story to ourselves (and/or others) about what happened, and why.

As soon as we’ve told the story, we believe in it. This is called “faith” in certain circles. In order to believe in it, we have to forget that we created the explanation/story ourselves…that is, we made up the interpretation of events that we now accept as “truth” or “fact.”

Why do we forget? I think it’s a matter of efficiency. If we had to question every assumption or “rule” that we follow every time we follow it, we’d never get anywhere. We’d be stuck in a mire of endless self-reflectivity.

Beneath it all, is Reality itself. I think. Semioticians aren’t so sure of this (having accepted their story as reality). To me, there is a common ground that we experience – Nature, Reality…whatever you want to call it. It is how we can create language. We reference the same “ground.”

Are some “realities” (stories) more “real” than others?

I’ve often wondered why European methods prevailed over Indian ways in America. Why did the Indians not fight? Surely, for one, they couldn’t imagine what their future would look like. But I think what lies beneath this is a deeper story.

Science is a tool of the mind. It is a way of grasping reality, taking it apart, and using it to achieve our ends. Any “technology” is a tool – a way of taking reality apart – separating ever-flowing “being” from the process of continual becoming/unfolding – and using it.

Your Personal Story
The other book I’m reading on this, which I haven’t finished yet, is Jim Loehr’s “The Power of Story.” Loehr has taken this process of story-telling, and provided a way for readers to unearth and re-write their personal (or “business”) story. It’s a powerful book, a powerful technology. I highly recommend it.

Ultimately, our story-telling process, our sign-making process, is a technology. It’s a tool we created somewhere in order to be able to survive.

The end to which any technology is always used is that of Life itself. That end, or purpose, is – to expand, to live, to grow, to become.

If we look at all of life, it is all constantly striving to become more of what it is. It acts to LIVE, regardless, in spite of, or directly against the circumstances in which it finds itself.

Having given life to our technologies, they too, like Frankenstein’s monster, seek to grow, expand, become – to live.

Instead of “love will find a way,” “live” or “life” will find a way. And it does.

One thing that we tend to do, in our creating and forgetting, is to mistake the tool we create for life, or Reality.

Then the monster is the ruler. We are at its whim. We are helpless to change things. Until we wake up and see that that is a decision as well…to be helpless.

Recognize the stories in your life. The ones you tell yourself, the ones you were told. Recognize them as stories, and ask whether or not they are helping to create the world and life you want.

Then re-write them, so that they are.

Twilight of the Machines, by John Zerzan – Book Review

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Josh

I read John Zerzan’s book “Twilight of the Machines” recently. A good friend recommended it after my blog post on the book “The Coming Insurrection.”

After twilight...we gon' let it all hang down!

I enjoyed the book. It was very enlightening. Zerzan says that the “problem” with/of civilization stems from the development of symbolic thought via language. That is, that language itself creates a separation between things. This separation leads to the creation of other separations.

Specifically, the next separation to come was an original division of labor, which resulted in domestication. Some people stayed at home, some ventured out. They became very different.

If you couldn’t tell, this was also the beginning of the separation of the sexes, according to Zerzan. The separation or distinction between what is considered exclusively male from what is considered exclusively female led next to the separation of classes.

But Zerzan doesn’t stop there. Which is good, and bad.

Technology, he says, is the hallmark of the current separation. He discusses the ways in which technology has further separated man from himself and the rest of Creation (not in a “Biblical” sense, there – just, the Totality of What-Is).

He talks about postmodernism, and its apathetic relativism, as an outgrowth of this technology.

Like I said, I liked the book, but I had a couple of issues with it.

First, it’s a book. There’s no call to action within, except for a complete abandonment of civilization as we know it now. Which strikes me as odd. Zerzan wrote his book, presumably, on some piece of technology, and technology was used to reproduce and distribute it.

Apparently, he also does extensive speaking tours around the world. Doesn’t he know that airplanes are technology? And that air travel is considered to be one of the most damaging (in terms of carbon footprint)?

My second issue is more serious. It has to do with his critique of technology, and his critique of civilization.

Something happened before language turned us into slaves. What was that? Maybe boredom. Zerzan talks about the fact that there is evidence for the creation of seagoing vessels as long ago as 800,000 years, and that scientists now say that members of the genus homo were roughly just as “intelligent” as it is today, 1m years ago.

So why, if we were just as intelligent, would we suddenly create this new mode? Did it come exclusively from the creation of agriculture? Couldn’t agriculture be much older – as the cultivation of certain crops over others – given that homo has had the same level of intelligence for so long?

Was it boredom?

Or is it a combination of forces? The sudden presence of agricultural “technology,” combined with population density and the accompanying pressures and stresses. It’s interesting to note the development of similar practices in very diverse places in the world at roughly similar times (e.g., the development of culture and technologies in Central and South America, similar to those in other parts of the world, and sometimes even preceding those developments in those places).

Which leads to my final critique of Zerzan’s argument. “Technology” is not an “evil.” There are multiple “technologies” that have been used by various peoples at various times. In fact, the handmade axes of 130,000 years ago mentioned in the article above are “technology.”

Computers, “machines,” as Zerzan calls them, are modern versions of technology. But my computer has not stopped me from being physically active, or from connecting back to the earth. In fact, it has enabled me to get closer than I thought I ever would. Yes, I have to leave this technology for another when I go, but that doesn’t make one “better” than the other.

At base, Zerzan’s argument appeals to me – I do believe in the need for people to return to their own physiologies, and through that, to a deeper connection to and understanding of the earth. But the method he recommends is suspect to me.