Church of the Churchless

Perplexed by Nazi behavior at Auschwitz, I get some clues in the Selfless book

This morning I watched a recorded episode of 60 Minutes while doing my stretching and flexibility exercises. It was about the discovery of a photo album that belonged to a Nazi officer who took part in the horrendous killing of 1.1 million people at Auschwitz, about a million of whom were Jews.

You can see the episode via this You Tube video.

The photo album mostly showed the everyday side of living at Auschwitz from the German perspective. Several photos showed a Nazi shaking hands with his dog, just as many dog-owners do. There were pictures of smiling Germans listening to a man playing the accordion, along with Nazi officers flirting with female secretarial staff. 

A man talks in the 60 Minutes episode about how he was surprised to see his grandfather in the photos, as I recall that he said he didn't know much about what his grandfather did in the war. A family photo showed the grandfather at a post-war gathering, looking like a kindly senior citizen. Asked to describe his relationship with his grandfather, he said it was normal.

Yet his grandfather was one of the Nazis who murdered over a million people at Auschwitz. Most would say that anyone who did this is horribly evil. But after the war, his grandson didn't view the man as evil. He was just an elderly relative.

There's no end of theories about how otherwise kind and gentle Germans turned into Nazi war criminals. I'm not at all an expert on this, and what I say below is very much open to criticism. While it makes sense to me, I realize that some will feel that I'm being too easy on the perpetrators of the Auschwitz horrors. So be it.

After I watched the 60 Minutes episode, I did my usual pre-meditation reading. I began reading a book that I'd bought after I'd seen it mentioned in a comment on my blog by Ron E., who has similar views on the mind, neuroscience, and selfhood (or the lack thereof) as I do. I just had time to read the Introduction to Selfless: The Social Creation of "You" by Brian Lowery, a social psychologist and Stanford professor.

Wow. Very impressive writer and thinker. I was instantly taken both by Lowery's style and message. Here's how the Introduction ends, with a summary of his central thesis.

I won't pander to what we want to believe about ourselves: that there is someone in there, inside you, waiting to be set free, to live the life of your dreams. Or that we are, or can be, in complete control of our lives or even know our selves deeply and truly.

We live our lives in complex relation to people and systems. Your parents, siblings, friends, and romantic partners affect who you were, are, and can be. The way we operate within society's institutions limits what we can do, and what you can conceive of. 

Daydreams of who you can be, what your life might be, or have been, are limited by the cultural materials you have to work with. We can only create from what's available to us.

You are the product of the social world you inhabit. As such, there is no simple formula, no paint-by-numbers route to "fixing" your life. To change your circumstance -- to take care of your self -- is a collective effort. 

Others create us and we create them. If we want to understand our selves, we must first understand this give-and-take.

In the 60 Minutes episode, when asked to explain how tragedies like Auschwitz could happen, a woman said that it is when a government gives permission. She didn't say that evil people are responsible. After all, there is no such thing as an evil person. This assumes that we humans come with simplistic labels attached to us: good, evil, saintly, sinner, genius, idiot. 

Which almost certainly isn't true, because it goes against what we've come to know about human behavior. This is very much in line with what Lowery says in his Introduction.

It's obviously not just who we love. What we think of as right or wrong, for example, is also deeply affected by the social world we inhabit. Should children be allowed to play away from their home without supervision? At what age is marriage appropriate? Under what circumstances, if any, is it okay to kill another human being? 

Answers to these questions have differed across time and continue to differ across cultures and communities. 

If you read any of the wildly popular self-help books out there, you might get the impression that we should not want to be shaped by our social environments. Many of these books focus on helping you be unapologetically, unreservedly, your true self.

This book doesn't argue against this aim as much as argue that it's not possible. People want and need social engagement, which means we can't live completely free of external influences and constraints. 

...What you believe about me affects the way you interact with me; your beliefs and actions, in turn, affect the nature of my self. Whether I accept or reject your view of me, it will change me. We bring multifaceted selves to our interactions, and in these interactions co-create each other again and again. 

Selves don't emanate from some ineffable light within people. Instead, selves are created in relationships. 

During World War II, social causes and conditions led the man's grandfather to become a Nazi who cruelly participated in the killing of over a million innocent people at Auschwitz. After the war, social causes and conditions led the same man to be a kindly grandfather to his family. 

Different selves arise in different social circumstances. This happens with all of us. It just is much more dramatic when it happens in a setting like Auschwitz. 

Reality always has the last word

It's difficult to encapsulate the essence of reality in just a few words. One reason is that reality, physical reality at least, isn't founded on words. Only human reality is. This human capability is what allows me to write this blog post and for you to read it.

But my favorite adage about reality is Philip K. Dick's Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. I've praised this sentence quite a few times on this blog, as in a 2015 post, "Best statement about reality, in just thirteen words." In that post I shared a quote from my first mention of the adage in 2006.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see a white hold-the-newspaper-down rock on the patio table where my laptop sits. Whether or not I believe in the rock, it’s there. My wife senses it too. So does everyone else who walks onto our deck. The rock is real, no doubt about it.

On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve thought once about God today. Certainly not this evening. I was focused on playing ball with our dog, eating dinner, and then watching a recording of the Oregon State—Boise State football game. 

God hasn’t been in evidence, unlike the rock. Ditto for Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, Holy Spirit, Tao, Big Foot, Godzilla, King Kong, and every other entity that requires a thought to bring it into existence. Beliefs are sustained by thoughts. No thoughts, no beliefs. (Or so I believe; I could be wrong; but even if there is such a thing as a thoughtless belief, I’ll bet that it was born through thought).

We humans are advanced lovers of language. This is our superpower. Language, which is comprised of words, is how we communicate our knowledge, culture, beliefs, desires, fantasies, and so much else. All of these things are indisputably real, though not in the same sense that gravity, trees, oceans, buildings, and slot machines are. 

Language often points to non-human reality. It isn't reality itself. It isn't what remains when humans are absent. It isn't what sustains the cosmos when thoughts and beliefs about the cosmos fall silent. This is why we need to be careful about ascribing more reality to our inner and outer speech than is deserved, because sometimes our words don't point toward reality, they gesture away from it.

Here in the United States the Trump administration has been deleting all mentions of global warming from web sites operated by federal agencies. Obviously, failing to acknowledge the reality of global warming doesn't change the Earth's climate. It simply is an attempt to impose a blackout on speech that points to this reality.

Similarly, fundamentalist religions have stringent rules against blasphemy and in favor of censorship. They hold that religious belief is so fragile, it must be protected from words that deny the One True Faith - which, of course, differs from other faiths believed by their followers to be a supreme unitary truth.

Having been an avid writer for most of my life, I'm intimately familiar both with how language and beliefs can bring us closer to reality, and also farther away. To my mind, it comes down to understanding the limit of language and beliefs, in line with Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

Stated differently, Reality always has the last word. It earns this honor by not being comprised of words. So if all of human thought, language, beliefs, and concepts were to fall silent, what remained after the last word passed into nothingness would be the really real reality that doesn't require thought, language, beliefs, and concepts to maintain its existence.

This is one of the reasons I'm so pleased to have deconverted from religiosity. I rarely think about God or the supernatural now. This is far different from the 35 years I spent devoted to an Eastern religion that taught the importance of keeping the guru, believed to be God in Human Form, front and center within one's mind as much as possible. 

We disciples were supposed to visualize the face of the guru when we meditated. Photos of the guru were in our homes. We were to thank him when things went well in our lives, and when they didn't, to be grateful for the guru's grace that supposedly "turned a sword thrust into a pinprick."

(Not sure what we were supposed to feel if we suffered from an actual sword thrust; maybe be grateful that we weren't slowly torn to pieces by a pack of rabid dogs?)

I'm happier now living in reality that doesn't require constant believing to keep it afloat. This is how I put it at the end of my 2015 post about Dick's adage.

Religious believers sustain their faith through (duh...) believing. Without concepts, thoughts, ideas, emotions, and such, God or some other form of divinity fails to exist.

So when religious people talk about God making a difference in their lives, that actually isn't true. Their believing brain is what makes the difference. No beliefs, no difference.

Sure, religious believers feel good when they worship; they are uplifted by their rituals; they get consolation from the words in holy books. And so on, and so on. All of these positive feelings arise from thoroughly worldly experiences.

Being in a church. Taking part in a ritualistic action. Reading books. Sensing a supposedly sacred object or person. 

These are part of the reality Dick speaks of which doesn't require belief to exist. These things don't go away when belief does (though the inner experience associated with them likely will change). God, though, does go away when believing in divinity disappears.

There's nothing wrong with believing. We all believe in things that aren't objectively true, because doing this makes us feel subjectively good. Believing is part of being human.

However, we should keep in mind that everything within our mind isn't part of objective reality. That's the beauty of Philip K. Dick's one-sentence metaphysics -- perhaps better termed ontology.

It reminds us that not believing in something is the best way to determine whether it is part of the reality outside our own head. 

For example, stand on a first-floor balcony and get yourself to believe that an invisible floor extends beyond the railing. Which is equivalent to not believing in falling through empty space. Then jump off the railing. See what happens.

If you fall to the ground, hopefully without breaking any bones, you've learned something about the reality that doesn't go away when you stop believing in it. 

You can do the same with God, of course.

Stop believing in God. I've done this, as have many others. What I've found is that nothing changes. Nothing went away, other than my belief in God. Because, I'm quite sure, there is no God outside of human belief.

If woo-woo is true, it's scientific, so all woo-woo is based on faith

I haven't spent a lot of time in my life pondering the deeper meaning of woo-woo, but the word has come up on this blog recently, so I might as well dive into the murky woo-woo waters. Let's begin with a Google AI definition.

The term "woo-woo" is used as an adjective and a noun to describe beliefs or practices that are considered unconventional, pseudoscientific, or based on irrational superstition. It is often used to dismiss or mock beliefs outside mainstream science or accepted norms, particularly in the areas of spirituality, mysticism, and alternative medicine.

 

Here's a breakdown of its meaning:

 

Adjective: Dubiously or outlandishly mystical, supernatural, or unscientific. Example: "He made a living out of woo-woo beliefs".

 

Noun: Refers to any force, phenomenon, or process without a clear scientific explanation, regarded as mystical or spiritual by some, but illusory or fraudulent by others. It can also refer to a person who readily accepts such phenomena.

 

While it might seem harmless, the term "woo-woo" can be considered derogatory and dismissive, particularly towards spiritual practices and traditions that have been passed down through generations in different cultures.

Today regular commenter Appreciative Reader, who isn't a fan of woo-woo (to put it mildly), left this response to a mention of "true woo" by another commenter.

"true woo"

No such thing, Umami. Such of "it" as is true, isn't woo at all, and needs no dodgy defense employing dodgy means by dodgy woo-peddlers. And such of "it" as is true, is ultimately validated by science (witness the core of Buddhism vis-a-vis the core of Christianity).

Sorry, that was going to town beating down a stray throw-away comment, but I believe that's an important point, one completely apposite to what this place is about, and you I believe are one of the few people remaining with whom discussing this won't be a complete waste of one's time.

Science isn't necessarily about materialism. It is about empiricism and rationality. It is just that materialism is what it has yielded so far: so it is reasonable, so far, to subscribe to materialism. There is no reason why real ghosts (whence the actual woo-woo music that gives us that cool descriptor), should they really exist, should not be fully amenable to study via the methods of empiricism and rationality, aka science.

Woo is woo, all fake. It is what charlatans peddle, and gullible fools fall for.

I think Appreciative Reader makes a strong case here. One of my favorite putdowns of unfounded supernatural assertions is that they lack demonstrable evidence. 

Sometimes I wonder whether that word "demonstrable" is needed. Wouldn't "evidence" be enough? No, is the conclusion I keep returning to. The reason is that there's plenty of evidence in favor of God, angels, heaven, miracles, and such. But that evidence is always hidden away within the minds of people who believe in supernatural entities and events.

Books abound about the supernatural. Web sites abound about the supernatural. Personal experiential accounts abound about the supernatural. Problem is, there's no demonstrable evidence about the supernatural, evidence that can be assessed, inspected, and critiqued by other people.

So it's entirely appropriate to call all claims about supernatural stuff to be woo-woo.

Though believers in God and realms of reality beyond the physical may dislike that term, I encourage them to substitute "lacking demonstrable evidence" or "unproven scientifically" for "woo-woo" in their own minds if the word bothers them.

As Appreciative Reader correctly pointed out, science isn't inherently materialistic. Rather, it is inherently based on demonstrable evidence.

If some supernatural phenomenon was accompanied by demonstrable evidence (for example, God proclaiming "let there be two moons," and suddenly there is another copy of the moon orbiting earth with predictable tidal effects), it would fall within the domain of science.

Meaning, science would need to expand its boundaries to embrace the now-proven supernatural phenomenon -- which wouldn't be woo-woo, but a new fact about reality. 

Now, I understand the reasonable argument that asking for physical evidence of a supernatural entity is like a fish living in the ocean depths asking for evidence be presented to it of dry land. It just isn't possible. I've made that argument myself in my religious-believing days. 

It's a decent argument, for it might be the case that some people are able to experience a supernatural side of reality that most people are closed off from. They could have a vision of God, or whatever, and tell others about that vision, yet be unable to present any demonstrable evidence of the vision.

Dreams are like this. We can have a memorable dream, describe it to a friend, and have to trust that they believe we're accurately describing our nighttime experience. Similarly, there could be supernatural phenomena experienced by some people that have to be taken on faith by others. 

Which would put the phenomena in the category of woo-woo, because there is no way to distinguish between a private experience of an actual objective reality, and a private experience of a fantasized subjective reality.

Once woo-woo is transformed into fact through the alchemy of demonstrable evidence, it stops being woo-woo and starts being a scientific truth. This is why all woo-woo is based on faith. If woo-woo is based on demonstrable evidence, it no longer is woo-woo.

If you want a fresh self, a right-brain one is worth considering

One of the reasons I'm so attracted to modern neuroscience and ancient Buddhism is that each discipline agrees that the unchanging Self most people believe they have is an illusion -- the reality being that we have multiple selves popping into existence all the time.

Cognitive neuropsychologist Chris Niebauer speaks about this in his book, No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology is Catching Up to Buddhism, which I wrote about a few days ago. Here's a compelling passage from his "Pattern Perception and the Missing Self" chapter.

Noting just how many "yous" appear in a day works to dismantle the illusion of a singular "you" behind it all. A sense of freedom can emerge from the realization that you are under no obligation to be consistent. You need not try to glue the continuous change in the world into one single thing.

Anger may appear with one "you," but that is only one page of the flip-book, which will soon be replaced with another emotion, another perception, another thought. Like the sun rising and setting, these "yous" will come and go. There is no need to cling to some and avoid others.

There need be no conflict between these selves -- so you can abandon the wrestling match between "sinner you" and "saint you." This frees up an enormous amount of mental energy and fundamentally changes how we can experience the world.

Lastly, you can try to notice that in between the yous there are moments when you are so engaged in some activity that the self isn't even noticeably around. This points to a central question of this book: where is the self when no one is thinking about it?

In his next chapter, "The Basics of Right-Brain Consciousness," Niebauer starts off with the fascinating story of Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who had a stroke that took much of her left brain off-line. I wrote about Taylor in "Brain Damage = Enlightenment?"

The stroke caused her inner voice to fall silent, as it affected the side of her brain that deals with language. But as pleasant as this may seem to those of us (which is virtually everybody) afflicted with monkey mind, Taylor had to undergo years of therapy before she could return to her scholarly work. I shared some quotes from her in my blog post. Taylor said:

I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading.

...So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world.

Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is.

Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the "we" inside of me.

This is entirely consistent with Niebauer's perspective. He correctly observes that because the left brain is the primary handler of words, language, and concepts, it has the upper hand in determining how most people view the world. Namely, through the lens of words, language, and concepts. 

But there obviously are other ways of experiencing reality. When we walk, ride a bicycle, dance, reach for a glass of water, and such, we Just Do It. We don't think about doing it. We don't talk about doing it. We just do it. Sure, we can also think and talk about those actions, but our doing is distinct from the speaking.

Evolution has brought us a brain divided into left and right hemispheres. So clearly both the left and right brain have important functions. Niebauer summarizes some of them.

In many ways the right brain is the yin to the yang of the left brain. For instance, in the same way that the left brain is categorical, the right brain takes a more global approach to what it perceives. Rather than dividing things into categories and making judgments that separate the world, the right brain gives attention to the whole scene and processes the world as a continuum.

Whereas the attention of the left brain is focused and narrow, the right brain is broad, vigilant, and attends to the big picture. Whereas the left brain focuses on the local elements, the right brain processes the global form that the elements create. The left brain is sequential, separating time into "before that" or "after this," while the right brain is focused on the immediacy of the present moment.

...Another way to summarize the differences between the left and right brain is that the left brain is the language center and the right brain is the spatial center. While admittedly this is reductive, it is a helpful way to summarize decades of research.

Language is categorical; it looks at one word at a time with a narrow focus either as you read or as you speak. When we process the space around us, we deal with the whole at once, not individual parts but how the parts are all connected as they are in any picture.

Niebauer recommends some right-brain activities: yoga, meditation, mindfulness, tai chi, qigong, Since I've been practicing tai chi for twenty years, I resonated with his observation about moving forms of meditation.

When done well, one is conscious of movement within space without verbal labels.

Well, based on my experience, it is possible to do both: be in the right brain flow while still engaging in some left brain verbiage. In my 2008 post about Taylor, I shared this anecdote.

There are lots of ways to get more in touch with our right brain – meditation, dancing, athletics, drugs, sex, to name a few. Getting into "the zone" is a good thing. But for sure, it's not the only thing.

Yesterday I felt great in my Tai Chi class. At the end of it we did the long form, 108 moves that should take around 20 minutes to perform (or "play," in Tai Chi parlance).

About a third a way into the form I thought, "I'm flowing today." About halfway through I thought, "There's no way I'm going to stumble or make a wrong move."

As soon as I said that to myself, my analytical side responded with, "Oh no, you shouldn't be thinking that way. You're going to jinx yourself. You're going to talk yourself out of the zone you're in."

But I didn't.

I kept on feeling in the flow. Part of me was in the zone, and part of me could say "You're in the zone." The two parts weren't interfering with each other, as they sometimes do. I didn't have to shut off half of my brain to play the long form proficiently.

Balance. Not going to extremes. The middle way. Accepting what is. Flowing flexibly. This is the way to approach the left brain/right brain thing. Here's another tip from Niebauer that appeals to me.

Once a day, do something for no reason at all. As one cannot plan to be spontaneous no matter what your left brain tells you, allow for moments of opportunity to arise. If at some point you feel like getting up and taking a walk, do so -- not because you want the fresh air or because work is boring but because you had the inclination and now are acting upon it "for no reason."

Obvious, but needs repeating: our conceptions may seem true, but often aren't

It had been a while since the Great God Amazon blessed me with another book about how our usual conception of the self is an illusion. But after prayerfully searching for "neuroscience" titles, my faith was rewarded with No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology is Catching Up to Buddhism, by Chris Niebauer.

This won't be my favorite book is this genre, but I'm enjoying the first part of it.

I did peek ahead to a later chapter on consciousness and was disappointed to see positive mentions of Rupert Sheldrake. That's an annoyance. However, what I've read so far seems neuroscientifically correct. Niebauer has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuropsychology so that's to be expected. I'll give him a pass on the Sheldrake mentions if that's the only woo-woo stuff in his book.

On the plus side, after I read his chapter on "Language and Categories" this morning I had a strangely satisfying insight that left me feeling lighter and more relaxed. I say strangely because Niebauer didn't say anything that I didn't already know. He just said it in a way that made me feel a bit differently about my own beliefs and conceptions.

The lead-up to that chapter was "Meet the Interpreter." Here Niebauer described the experiments with split-brain patients whose connection between the left and right parts of the brain was severed, often in an attempt to prevent serious epileptic seizures. These experiments demonstrated that the left part of the brain is where language happens, providing interpretations of sensory information known to the right part. 

For example, a split-brain patient had a picture of a chicken's foot presented to the left brain only, and  a picture of a snow scene was shown to the right brain only. Then the patient was shown several pictures to both sides of the brain at the same time and asked to pick which was the most related to the original image they were shown.

The right brain pointed to a picture of a snow shovel while the left brain pointed to a picture of a chicken. Then the experimenter asked "Why is your left hand pointing to a snow shovel?" (The input and output from each side of the body is processed by the opposite side of the brain; so the right brain used the left hand to point to the snow shovel.)  Niebauer writes:

Keep in mind, when the experimenter was talking to the split-brain patient, he was talking only to the patient's left brain, since the left brain controls speech. The left brain should have said, "I haven't talked to the right brain in a long time, I don't know why it does what it does with that left hand," but it didn't. 

Without hesitation, the left brain said, "Oh, that's simple: the chicken foot goes with the chicken and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken coop." The patient stated this with absolute confidence. Here is what's most important about this: the talking left side of the brain easily came up with a plausible and coherent, but completely incorrect explanation based on the evidence it had available.

That's interesting, but few of us are split-brain patients. So what meaning does that have for me? Niebauer explains.

Now I would invite you to think about the interpretive mechanism of your own mind in light of what I've just told you about these experiments. For instance, if something noticeable happens, say a person cuts you off in traffic, someone gets up and suddenly runs out of a room, or an attractive person looks at you a second longer than normal, you hear a voice in your head that creates an explanation of the event: "He is a jerk," "They must have forgotten something," or "He or she is interested in me."

Notice that those are all interpretations; they may be true or they may not be. However, because many people are not conscious of the left-brain interpreter, they can't even consider that their thoughts are interpretations, but rather feel secure they are seeing things "as they really are."

This passage moves the interpreter from the outside to the inside of us.

Because the left brain looks outward and only focuses on objects, categorizes them, and labels them, is it possible that it also looks inward and does the same thing? In other words, does the left brain see thought happening in the brain and continuously create a "thing" out of the process of thinking, which it then labels "me"? 

Is the sense of self related to seeing patterns in randomness? Is it possible that the self we invest so much in is nothing more than a story to help explain our behaviors, the myriad events that go on in our lives, and our experiences in the world?

Have you ever looked up at the stars in the night sky or the clouds during the day and been convinced some pattern was out there? Is it possible that you might be making that same mistake every day when you look within and find an ego or self?

In his next chapter, Niebauer talks about categories.

Another characteristic of the left brain is its constant propensity to create categories. In fact, almost everything the left brain does, from language to its perception of objects in space, is categorial in nature.

What do we mean by category? Categories are just another type of map of reality. They are mental representations that don't exist "out there" in the world, but rather they are only in the human mind -- the left side of the brain to be specific.

Categories are based on the left brain's ability to see differences and create opposites and are formed when things in the world that are continuous are grouped by some common features and then treated as one unit.

This has many benefits for us humans. But it also can lead us to wrongly believe that we know more about the world than we really do. This passage resonated with me. It left me with the aforementioned "lightness of being," because it reminded me that my beliefs, and everyone's beliefs, shouldn't be taken as seriously as most of us do.

Simply becoming aware of the interpreter and the endless categories it creates through judgment frees you from being tied to the inevitability of these judgments. That is to say, when you become conscious of the interpreter, you are free to choose to no longer take its interpretations so seriously. 

In other words, when you realize that everyone's brain is constantly interpreting, in ways that are subjective and often inaccurate or completely incorrect, you might find yourself able to grasp this as "just my opinion" or "the way I see it" rather than "this is the way it is."

You being to see your judgments as simply a different line in the sand than others. When someone approaches you with a "this is the way it is" attitude, you can appreciate that this person is dominated by the left brain, that they are a servant to its master. 

As a result, there is no need to take their actions or attitudes personally; it's a biological function that they have not yet recognized. This small perspective shift is enough to change how we live with each other and ourselves. 

Intriguing idea: chain of causality comes to an end in quantum realm

We live in a world governed by causes and effects. Everywhere we look, this causes that, while that in turn causes something else. This determinism both enables science to be successful in explaining things, and allows we humans to navigate our daily life in a predictable fashion.

The only exception appears to be in the realm of quantum mechanics. While there are disagreements among physicists about the meaning of quantum mechanics, the prevailing view is that probabilities rule in the realm of the very small.

So in the case of an electron, for example, it is impossible to say where it is, exactly, before a measurement takes place. All that is known is the probability of the electron being in various locations according to the wave function.

Interestingly, the wave function evolves deterministically, but the outcome of a measurement is probabilistic. Here's what Google's AI summary says about this:

Yes, the wave function in quantum mechanics evolves deterministically according to the Schrödinger equation. This means that if you know the wave function at one point in time, you can precisely calculate its future evolution. However, when a measurement is made, the wave function appears to "collapse" into a single state, which is a probabilistic event, not dictated by the Schrödinger equation.

 

Here's a more detailed explanation:

 

Deterministic Evolution: The Schrödinger equation, a fundamental equation in quantum mechanics, governs how the wave function changes over time. If you know the wave function at a given time (its initial state), you can use the Schrödinger equation to predict its state at any future time. This evolution is deterministic, meaning the future is predetermined by the present state.

 

The Measurement Problem: While the wave function evolves deterministically, the act of measurement introduces a probabilistic element. When a measurement is made, the wave function "collapses" from a superposition of states into a single, definite state. The probability of obtaining a particular outcome is determined by the wave function, but the specific outcome itself is random.

 

Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics: Different interpretations of quantum mechanics attempt to explain this apparent conflict between deterministic wave function evolution and probabilistic measurement. Some interpretations, like the many-worlds interpretation, suggest that the wave function never truly collapses, and all possible outcomes exist in separate branches of the universe. Others, like Bohmian mechanics, propose hidden variables that determine the outcome of measurements, while still maintaining deterministic evolution.

 

Probabilistic Nature: Despite the deterministic evolution of the wave function, the probabilistic nature of measurement is what leads to the statistical behavior observed in quantum experiments. While the wave function predicts the probabilities of different outcomes, the actual outcome of any single measurement is random. 

A Letter to the Editor in the May 17, 2025 issue of New Scientist presents an intriguing reason why this state of affairs in the quantum realm is necessary. Though speculative, it makes sense to me.

Getting to the bottom of the quantum world
19 April, p 28
From Bernd-Juergen Fischer, 
Berlin, Germany

You say there is no clear reason why the behaviour of subatomic particles can't be governed by deterministic laws, and the fact that they aren't demands an explanation.

Well, here is one: we are working our way down the chain of causality. This will either end or it won't. If it doesn't, then either the search keeps going on and on or causality becomes cyclic and causes may cause themselves.

If, on the other hand, the chain of causality comes to an end, then what? The last part can't have been caused, so it must have been brought about without rhyme or reason, which is a non-scientific way to say randomly.

The fact we find only probabilities in quantum theory shows that, with quantum theory, we have come to the end of the chain.

This seems to assume that quantum theory is the rock-bottom foundation of reality. It may be, but currently there is no viable explanation for how quantum theory and relativity theory fit together. Einstein's equations of space and time, including gravity, which are just as scientifically proven as quantum theory is, don't involve probabilities.

It may turn out that gravity can be included in quantum theory. This seems to be the most common assumption of physicists, that the unbroken smoothness of Einstein's general theory of relativity actually rests upon a deeper law of physics where gravity is quantized by the discovery of an elusive hypothesized particle, the graviton. 

In that case, the letter writer could be proven correct. Cause and effect does come to an end in the quantum realm, which now incorporates all of the known forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force.

God gets credit for saving a girl, but not blame for over 49 flooding deaths

Giving God credit for good things but not blame for bad things in the aftermath of disasters is typical among religiously-minded people in the United States, who are usually Christians.

Using a plane crash as an example, if one person survives, while 200 other people on board die, the sole survivor is held out as evidence of a miracle by God. But if God can save that person, God had the power to save the other 200. 

Of course, hardly anyone expects religious belief to be rational or consistent. I certainly don't.

Religions are constructed by humans to meet human needs. Being in accord with reality isn't a must or even a maybe. It simply doesn't matter to believers that their chosen faith is demonstrably true, just that it feels good to them.

Here in the United States, recent devastating floods in the hill country of central Texas have killed at least 49 people with the death toll expected to increase well beyond that as the missing become reclassified as deceased.

The authorities are being quite secretive about the number of people missing along the Guadalupe River, which rose extremely rapidly after thunderstorms fueled by moisture from the Gulf of Mexico stalled out and dumped massive amounts of rain on the area in just a few hours. 

What is known is that 27 children are missing from Camp Mystic, a Christian camp along the banks of the Guadalupe. These are the youngest children at the camp, aged 7-9 I believe, as they were in cabins nearest the river while older children were in cabins on higher ground.

The flooding occurred in the middle of the night. It must have been terrifying to have a wall of water several stories tall come rushing down the riverbed in darkness. This is a horrible tragedy. 

It's understandable that people seize on scattered amazing survival reports to lessen the pain of all the death and destruction. Today I heard a man talk on a news program about finding a girl clinging to a tree who had been swept down the river for many miles after her family had to leave their car when it became submerged in floodwaters as they were trying to drive to safety.

The man said that the girl had stayed afloat in the rushing water for four hours as all kinds of debris, including mobile homes and houses, rushed by her. She was injured and is recovering in a hospital. He said that it must have been the hand of God that saved her -- a miracle.

Well, almost certainly not.

It would have been hugely more accurate to praise the girl, rather than God, for being able to tread water for hours as the river in record flood stage carried her along. But if someone wants to ascribe a miracle to God for saving that girl, they need to explain why God is excused for letting more than 49 other people die, likely including the 27 missing children from Camp Mystic.

Disasters point out the absurdity of religious belief.

The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has declared a state Day of Prayer for the victims of the Guadalupe flood. It's impossible to conceive of a more useless act. A Day of Prayer does nothing to help those affected by the flooding, nor does it do anything to prevent a tragedy like this from occurring in the future.

The National Weather Service and a private firm, AccuWeather, issued flood warnings hours in advance. Yet the county where the worst flooding occurred didn't issue an alert because the county doesn't have this capability, preferring not to spend taxpayer money on an alert system. 

We don't know why Camp Mystic staff weren't tracking the storm more closely. Maybe they thought God would protect them, being devout Christians. Unfortunately, their failure to protect the children in their care likely resulted in 27 lives being cut way short. Fixing that doesn't require prayer. It requires a determination to do better.

The Trump administration is slashing staff and money for the National Weather Service. The New York Times has a story about how budget cutbacks at the National Weather Service appeared to have harmed the ability of NWS employees to issue timely accurate warnings in advance of the flooding. Prayer won't help strengthen the National Weather Service. Undoing Trump's budget cuts will.

This is a problem with prayer and religious belief in general. Looking to God for help with problems lessens the motivation to find genuine solutions to those problems. Governor Abbott and President Trump don't believe in global warming.

Yet global warming is causing weather disasters like the Guadalupe flooding to become much more common. Unfortunately, probably many more people in Texas are going to be content with praying for the flooding victims than for addressing the problem of how to adapt to a rapidly warming world where torrential rainfall, hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, and such occur much more frequently.

Zen and Jack Reacher have this in common

My wife and I just got back from a trip to Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, where we spent several days with my daughter's (Celeste) family -- Patrick (husband) and Evelyn (my granddaughter). They live in southern California and came up for Evelyn's orientation at the University of Oregon, where she'll be a freshman this fall.

Yesterday we made a trip into Sisters for lunch and to browse Paulina Springs Books, a wonderful small town bookstore where I always find something to buy.

Two of the three books I purchased were Lee Child's Make Me and Hiking Zen by two Zen monks, Pham Xa and Pham Luu.

I'm a big fan of Lee Child's books about Jack Reacher, a kick-ass ex-Army MP who travels around the United States with just a toothbrush and the clothes he's wearing, getting into adventures and trouble not of his own making, since Reacher has a strong sense of duty to help people he encounters who are being victimized by someone(s) with power and influence.

It had been a while since I'd bought a Jack Reacher book. But I buy Zen books all the time. This one appealed to me because we were in a beautiful natural setting in central Oregon, and we live full time in a beautiful natural setting in western Oregon's Willamette Valley. 

I didn't expect I'd find any commonality between a thriller book and a philosophical book. Yet I did. Jack Reacher thrillers rarely, if ever, include any descriptions about how Reacher views his life that make me pause and think, "Wow, I resonate with this." In this case, I liked the sentence so much, I committed it to memory as soon as I read it on page 4 of the book I'd just bought.

He had no place to go, and all the time in the world to get there, so detours cost him nothing.

Nicely put, Lee Child. It kind of fits with my oft-repeated meditation advice to myself, "Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to become."  I described it this way.

Nowhere to go… Here I am, stock still on my cushion. No place else I need to be for the next 30 minutes or so. This is It.

Nothing to do… No mental place I need to arrive at either. I don't need to think, feel, imagine, perceive, or do anything else inside my head.

No one to become… Even more, no transformation of my basic being needs to happen from on high, or down below. Like Popeye, I am what I am (or, I yam what I yam).

This centers me in three dimensions of space, time, and being – exactly where I am. I realize that every movement from this center, on what spiritual traditions call a "path," is going to take me farther away from really real reality, not closer.

That's my theory, at least.

I'm also just a few pages into the Hiking Zen book. Here's some passages that struck me as Jack Reacher'ish. Or maybe it was these passages that made me think the Lee Child sentence was Zen'ish.

Often in everyday life, we walk to arrive somewhere. Hiking Zen's most basic principle is to arrive in each step we take, to stop losing ourselves in thoughts about the past or future.

...The unknown can be scary. It may feel more comfortable to be indoors in a house or to drive to work in a car. Observe, though, how the boxes we spend so much time in affect our minds. The mind mirrors its habitat. If we aren't careful, our worldview is drawn with very clear borders: this is mine, that is yours -- we become territorial, overly attached to our boxes. 

...Observing nature, we realize everything changes, and our habitual fear begins to loosen its grip. 

...To claim our sovereign nature as free, wild, endlessly creative, and beautiful creatures, we need to train ourselves by untraining ourselves. We need to step out of the boxes in which we find ourselves and unravel our contemporary conditioning.

Do we really need life to have meaning? Here's an argument for why we don't.

It's a delight when I write a post on some subject and get a comment that makes me think, "Wow, good points; I've never thought of that before."

This happened with my previous post, What's been most meaningful for me usually wasn't very pleasurable. I've always assumed that meaning is something that is universally valued by people. After all, we hear "That meant a lot to me" and "Doing _______ was one of the most meaningful experiences I've ever had."

But I admit that I've never given much thought to what meaning really means. It's just been a word that I've used for most of my life (I don't recall saying it much as a child, which is interesting) without doing much, if any, contemplating what meaning consists of or why it is valued.

Ron E left a comment on the previous post that I found intriguing, because it provided a fresh perspective on meaning.

Can’t say that meaning or meaningful experiences have played any particular part in my life. I can understand for example that certain signs and symbols such as language convey meanings, but am at a loss to see why we attach meaning or significance to life.

It is said that we are hardwired to seek patterns, purpose, and explanations for the events in our lives. I suppose that can point to a survival reaction or response when assessing natural events or people’s motives and actions. It is not very far removed from assigning supernatural reasons to things. I guess it all comes down to our perceptions and how we habitually interpret life’s happenings.

Apart from our investing things with qualities, essence or meaning, all that remains is emptiness (sorry to bring up a Buddhistic term but it fits). I just don’t see much difference in investing meaning to something and to investing things with essence.

It’s our human tendency, our habit of aligning everything with our levels of self-importance where we allocate assumed importance to what we think and believe. Undoubtedly, our actions are important and have consequences, but unless they are executed for particular reasons such as intent (or meaning) toward a particular outcome, I see no reason to assign thought created meanings to them.

I agree with just about everything said here. Yet I still am attracted to meaningful experiences. This could be akin to how I agree with just about everything Robert Sapolsky said about free will, or rather the lack thereof, in his book Determined, yet I still feel as if I have free will even though I find the arguments against it highly persuasive.

We're all influenced by genetics, upbringing, culture, life experiences, and other factors that go to make us the type of person that we are. It seems entirely reasonable that some people don't have nearly as strong a desire to find meaning in life as I do. Sounds like Ron E is one of those people.

Today I was doing some reading in Hans-Georg Mueller's book, Daoism Explained. Here's some passages I came across this morning that show how Daoism, which I resonate with, has a conception of meaning that seems fairly close to that espoused in Ron E's comment.

It is clear that for Guo Xiang, the fishnet allegory does not say that the Daoist sage "gets the meaning" (de yi), but rather that he/she will be left with "no ideas" -- this is just what he literally says. Guo Xiang obviously read the fishnet allegory in this way: Once a Daoist sage no longer has ideas, then he/she will have attained the "desired" speechlessness.

Thus, when two Daoist sages with empty minds meet, they can hardly start a philosophical conversation. There would simply be nothing to say! They could not discuss any "true meanings"! According to the "Aristotelian" interpretation of the fishnet allegory, the true philosopher will have to go beyond words to in order to "get the meaning." According to Guo Xiang's Daoist reading of the fishnet allegory, the sage has to discard all ideas in order to realize Daoist silence.

...The fishnet allegory is by no means about how to catch and keep some deep thoughts or ideas. It is, on the contrary, about the method of getting rid of thoughts and ideas in order to arrive at a perfect Daoist silence. It is about how to become permanently satisfied and to completely eliminate the hunger for the next dish of meanings and language.

What's been most meaningful for me usually wasn't very pleasurable

Not surprisingly, the older I get, the more often I'm confronted with deaths of friends and relatives. That comes with the aging territory at some point, a point I've definitely reached at age 76. 

Recently a neighbor died who was a few years younger than me. His wife shared an obituary of sorts on Facebook, describing her husband's life -- his interests, hobbies, jobs, and such. I pay more attention to these life summaries than I used to, since I've been doing some pondering of what I'd like said about me after I die.

Since I've been an avid writer for most of my life, I'm leaning toward composing my own eulogy, so I can be sure that my Celebration of Life, or whatever the damn thing would be called, hits what I consider the high points of my life.

Idly thinking about this now and then, I've been struck by a fact that I suspect is fairly universal, though I can't be sure about this, one reason it's the subject of this blog post in my hope to get some feedback from others. What's been most meaningful for me usually wasn't very pleasurable. 

I find this intriguing given that pleasure is something I seek every day. I want my food to be pleasurable. I want my television watching to be pleasurable. I want my exercise routine to be pleasurable. I want my conversations to be pleasurable. I want my dog walks to be pleasurable. 

Yet when I ponder what's been most meaningful in my life, pleasure isn't a quality that comes readily to mind. I'm not saying that I never felt pleasure in doing the things listed below. I did. However, pleasure wasn't what I was seeking when I embarked on these pursuits. It was something deeper than pleasure. 

-- Caring for and raising my daughter
-- Writing three books on behalf of my spiritual organization
-- Co-founding a bioethics nonprofit, Oregon Health Decisions
-- Achieving a black belt in karate
-- Stopping a subdivision that threatened our neighborhood's groundwater 
-- Working to improve the ten rural acres our house sits on
-- Blogging regularly for 22 years
-- Meditating every day for 55 years
-- Earning a master's degree and completing course requirements for a Ph.D.

Now, I'm not claiming that I deserve any praise for doing these things. I used to feel that I did, but from my current old guy philosophical perspective I recognize that what I've done in my life has been determined by many factors, none of which I can be proud of, since I don't believe in free will. 

Everybody, naturally including me, is just doing what they're doing because it is what causes and conditions outside of their control are compelling them to do. Praise and blame for those doings comes easily -- I do this all the time -- but deep down I strongly believe that such isn't warranted.

So what I'm left with as a defensible philosophical position is how I subjectively feel about what I've done in my life. And like I said, my feeling is that my most meaningful doings weren't particularly pleasurable. 

In other words, I didn't do them for the pleasure they brought me. I did them because I had a strong desire to do something difficult that ended up being meaningful to me.

I can't draw any profound conclusions from this. It's just a fact of my life. I can't say that having grasped this fact, now I know what new thing I should do to add more meaning to my life -- since my experience is that meaning is a result of doing something difficult, not a reason to do that thing. 

What I'm trying to say is that with each of the things I listed above, I didn't have a sense of this will turn out to be deeply meaningful for me when I embarked on doing the thing. The meaning was manufactured in the course of pursuing that activity; it wasn't evident at the outset.

Thus for me, meaning is an unsought for gift from the universe. Meaning isn't something that I can produce on demand. It arrives in its own time, for reasons that I'm mostly clueless about, other than my strong suspicion that meaning arises from the undertaking of a difficult activity.

The pleasurable things in my life are mostly easy to do. Like eating a cookie after I finish a blog post, which I'm headed for now.