Church of the Churchless

Best wishes for a pleasant 2023

This being New Year's Eve, with several hours to go here on the west coast before 2022 departs, I want to share a few thoughts about how this year has gone on this blog, and what I look forward to in 2023.

First, I'm thankful for those who visit the Church of the Churchless, especially the regular visitors. Without people reading what I write, this blog would be a private diary, not a public square. 

Those who leave comments on my blog posts earn a special thank you. 

Just as those posts appeal to some, but not to others, I agree with some comments, but not others. No matter. The tagline of this blog is Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence. Independently minded people will agree about some things and disagree about other things.

What's important is the conversation, the dialogue, the exchange of ideas.

Even if someone reads a post on this blog and doesn't comment on it, that's still a valuable communication if what I wrote stimulates them to think more deeply about some aspect of our shared humanity.

After writing 3,310 posts for this blog over a bit more than 18 years, occasionally I feel that there isn't a whole lot left for me to say. This may be true for some subjects, especially since I no longer have as strong a desire to bash religion and praise atheism as I did previously.

But there's always more to say about living life as pleasantly and wisely as possible, no matter if we're a fervent religious believer or a committed devotee of godlessness. 

More binds us than divides us. I'm sure about that. Yes, religion and politics can be divisive, since it is natural to feel that our way is the best way. (Of course, we should remember that others feel the same about their own way.)

However, when it comes to family, love, health, misfortune, accomplishments, tragedy, and all the other ups and downs that come with being a human, almost everybody struggles with the same sorts of problems and enjoys the same sorts of pleasures.

So I wish for you in 2023 what I wish for myself and my family/friends. Happiness. Safety. Health. Peace of mind. However, it's virtually impossible to enjoy these things without their opposites popping in for an unwelcome visit.

But hopefully we all will have more of the positive side of life next year and less of the negative side. If this blog can play a small role in that overall positivity, I'll be pleased. Not that I won't be critical of people and things that strike me as deserving of criticism. 

I just want us to feel like we're part of a community of people seeking truth and wellbeing in a wide variety of ways, supporting each other in our individual pursuit of the good life.

Paradox: loss of self becomes deeply meaningful to our self

Recently I picked up Kevin Nelson's book, The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain: A Neurologist's Search for the God Experience, after reading it quite a few years ago. I first heard of Nelson, a leading researcher in near-death experiences, via a New Scientist article that I blogged about in 2010.

Not surprisingly, in his book Nelson concludes that spiritual experiences are decidedly physical. In his Epilogue, he writes:

We have placed fragmented consciousness at the heart of many of our spiritual experiences and stripped away the illusion of the seamlessly integrated self. Odd as it may seem, we have shown that primal brainstem reactions seem to be at the root of the experiences that we think of as spiritual and that make us most human.

This concept of "knee-jerk spirituality" deals a strong blow to the idea that free will is necessary to connect with whatever we feel is sacred.

At the neurologist's command, a flicker of electrical current to the brain makes it seem that our consciousness has been lifted from our body and is floating freely in space. The brain pathways used during "natural" spiritual experiences are the same pathways used by spiritual drugs, indistinguishable from otherwise genuine religious conversions, transforming lives long after the drug is flushed clear from the body.

Clinical neurology tells us that these are the same pathways distorted by some diseases of the brain that produce disorders fitting criteria for religious experience. Are spontaneous and authentic spiritual experiences nothing more that "experiments of nature" telling us how the brain works?

We have strong indications that much of our spirituality arises from arousal, limbic, and reward systems that evolved long before structures made the brain capable of language and reasoning. Neurologically, mystical feelings may not be so much beyond language as before language.

...We are all of this world, and my experience optimistically compels me to believe that understanding the brain as a spiritual organ strengthens our quest for meaning and complements a mature spirituality. My deepest hope is that this quest will ultimately bring us to a new birth of wisdom.

In his chapter, "The Fragmented Self," Nelson makes an interesting point. An obvious one, really, but something that gets ignored by those who claim that they went beyond their self into a sense of spiritual or mystical oneness.

If someone truly has no self, they have no way of remembering that they had an experience where they lacked a self. In other words, it takes a self to know that you don't have a self. Nelson writes:

The self, like consciousness, can fragment. And when we look closely, it may be that a little piece of the self remains even in the most powerful experiences of self-transcendence. After we delve into the way the brain constructs the self, we see that the complete loss of self, even in the most powerful of mystical experiences, is a dubious proposition.

...It is strange, even paradoxical, that the loss of self becomes one of the most powerful experiences that we can own, usually becoming deeply embedded in our lifelong self-identity.

There is no doubt afterward that the "me" of the experience owns the feelings, sensations, knowledge, and aftermath of the types of spiritual experience that involve loss of self! So powerful is this ownership that it often becomes integrated into our enduring religious beliefs and deepest aspirations.

Often we know, but don't understand how we know

I used to be in love with mysticism, where hidden secrets of the cosmos supposedly are revealed in a mysterious fashion. 

I'm still enthralled with hidden secrets being revealed in a mysterious way, but now I realize that there's no need to invoke gurus, meditation, god, inner visions, and all the stuff that mysticism evokes, because everybody has that capacity in everyday life.

This is one of the fascinating messages of Blink, a 2005 book by Malcolm Gladwell that a friend gave me, along with two other books by Gladwell that I'd never read before. 

Its subtitle is "The Power of Thinking Without Thinking." This too is a notion that mystically inclined people like to claim as their own. Actually, it is an integral part of human nature. Of course, early on in his book Gladwell points out several caveats.

Yes, "decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately. But, "it's not the case that our internal computer always shines through, instantly decoding the 'truth' of a situation. It can be thrown off, distracted, and disabled."

What's surprising, though, is how often our intuition understands what's going on in the blink of an eye, no time-consuming thinking or reasoning required. 

This morning I finished the book's second chapter, "The Locked Door: The Secret Life of Snap Decisions." It starts off with the story of how Vic Braden, a top tennis coach (and former star player) found that he could tell whether an expert tennis player was doing to double-fault. 

Meaning, fail to get a serve in twice in a row, which gives a point to the opponent. Tennis pros might serve hundreds of times in a match and double-fault only three or four times. Yet in one tournament Braden correctly predicted sixteen out of seventeen double faults in the matches he watched.

But here's the catch: much to Braden's frustration, he simply cannot figure out how he knows.

Gladwell goes on to say this.

This is the second critical fact about the thoughts and decisions that bubble up from our unconscious. Snap judgments are, first of all, enormously quick: they rely on the thinnest slices of experience. But they are also unconscious. 

...Snap judgments and rapid cognition take place behind a locked door. Vic Braden tried to look inside that room. He stayed up at night, trying to figure out what it is in the delivery of a tennis serve that primes his judgment. But he couldn't.

...If we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgments. We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that -- sometimes -- we're better off that way.

...In high stakes, fast-moving situations, we don't want to be as dispassionate and purely rational as the Iowa ventromedial patients. We don't want to stand there endlessly talking through our options. Sometimes we're better off if the mind behind the locked door makes our decisions for us.

...Ted Williams could hit a baseball as well as anyone in history, and he could explain with utter confidence how to do it. But his explanation did not match his actions, just as Mary's explanation for what she wanted in a man did not necessarily match who she was attracted to in the moment.

We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.

...After the O.J. Simpson verdict, one of the jurors appeared on TV and said with absolute confidence, "Race had absolutely nothing to do with my decision," psychologist Joshua Aronson says. "But how on earth could she know that? What my research with priming race and test performance, and Bargh's research with the interrupters, and Maier's experiment with the ropes show is that people are ignorant of the things that affect their actions, yet they rarely feel ignorant. We need to accept our ignorance and say 'I don't know' more often."

Of course, there is a second, equally valuable, lesson in the Maier experiment. His subjects were stumped. They were frustrated. They were sitting there for ten minutes, and no doubt many of them felt that they were failing an important test, that they had been exposed as stupid. But they weren't stupid. Why not?

Because everyone in that room had not one mind but two, and all the while their conscious mind was blocked, their unconscious was scanning the room, sifting through possibilities, processing every possible clue. And the instant it found the answer, it guided them -- silently and surely -- to the solution. 

Beautiful. Religious believers like to ask God to give them a sign as to what to do. Or they pray for guidance. 

There's no need for any of that. Each of us has an astounding piece of intelligence within us: the human brain's unconscious workings. Sure, often we need to use our conscious intelligence to wend our way through life's many problems and opportunities. 

But we also need to trust the much vaster part of our cognition, the unconscious that has ways of knowing beyond our ability to know what those ways are. All we can do is be grateful for that often right-on intuitive capability.

Worst thing about religions is unreasonable expectations

Since today is Christmas, supposedly the day Christ was born of a virgin (a crazy idea explored here), I feel like I should write about why I've come to dislike religions so much, whether of an Eastern or Western variety.

That's a difficult question to answer, because there's so much to criticize about these belief systems founded on supernatural premises that basically have zero grounding in any sort of evidence-based reality.

Here's an attempt that discusses something I haven't emphasized much in previous blog posts, at least not explicitly: 

One of the worst things about religions is how they encourage people to have unreasonable expectations about their life.

I say this as someone who enjoys what I've learned from various teachers of mindfulness.

Paying attention as much as possible to what is actually happening in the present moment, rather than mentally time-traveling to the past or future where regrets, memories, hopes, anxieties, anticipations, and such reside strikes me as a wise way to live. 

Part of mindful activity, I've found, is keeping comparisons of our current situation with that of other people to a minimal degree. Meaning, we should primarily be aware of our life as it is, not as how it would be if we were someone else.

I have sciatica pain in my right leg.

That physical pain bothers me, but it doesn't prevent me from doing what I need to do. However, sometimes I'll look at other people in a grocery store where I'm shopping and think, Most of them don't experience pain while standing or walking like I do.

This creates some extra emotional pain. I'll feel bad that I have sciatica and others don't. This isn't a massive emotional upheaval, just a disturbance in my feelings caused by a momentary expectation that instead of my right leg feeling the way it does, it should feel the way it used to: pain free.

Put another way, arguably contentment, or happiness, is when there's no gap in our life between what is and what should be. Or at least just a minimal gap. 

This doesn't mean having no goals. But I can have a goal of my sciatica going away someday without feeling that there's something wrong with me having sciatica now. A goal is an aspiration that might not happen. Achieving or not achieving a goal lies in the future.

However, when I have an expectation that something true about my life at this present moment should be different than it is, that creates an uncomfortable feeling. Life is giving me this, whereas I expect life should give me that.

I've read that surveys show that someone's satisfaction with their income is partly based on the actual amount they're getting, yet is heavily influenced by the person's comparison of their income with how others like them are faring. 

And it's clear that social media like Instagram affect the body image of girls: wow, everybody else looks so thin and beautiful, and I don't look that way, so there's something wrong with me.

Well, no, there's nothing wrong with you. You're fine just the way you are.

What's wrong is being led to feel that because you lack qualities others have, you expect that you should be like those other people. Since there's always someone who has what we lack, playing the Expectation Game dooms us to frustration.

Religions play that game to the fullest possible extent. This makes religions destroyers of contentment and happiness. 

Without religion, we'd accept that everyone who is born, eventually dies. Without religion, we'd accept that everyone is a mix of positive and negative qualities, of good and bad, as it were. Without religion, we'd accept that if change is needed in the world or our life, some physical work is needed to make that happen.

With religion, though, we get an expectation that eternal life can be ours; that it is possible to become a saint, an elevated being, even attain perfection; that prayer can tap into the grace of God and produce miracles at odds with the laws of nature and everyday goings-on.

Religious believers then strive mightily to attain the expectations that their chosen faith has put forward. No longer is it enough to live an ordinary human life, with all that this entails: education, play, work, marriage, child-raising, volunteering, and so much else.

Instead of simply accepting that what life offers us humans is what's possible for us, religions set forth unreasonable expectations of what we're supposed to do between our birth and death. Not only do what everyday living demands of us, but attempt to achieve divine or supernatural outcomes.

I don't know about you, but I'm happiest when I'm able to accept the circumstances of a present moment. If my leg hurts, that's OK. If our driveway is covered in ice, that's OK. If I'm unable to balance our checkbook, that's OK.

These are problems, for sure. But worse than having a problem is considering that you shouldn't be having that problem -- because now the problem is magnified by not only being a problem, but also being a problem that shouldn't be happening, so the problem is doubly wrong.

Agonizing over how to make your health better, your family more secure, your world more sustainable, or any of the countless aspirations we may have is absolutely fine. However, agonizing over how you're going to please God, ensure life after death, or enter heaven rather than hell is absolutely a waste of time.

My icy driveway experiment: what slides furthest?

Following up on my previous post where I spoke about the freezing rain that coated my area of Oregon with a sheet of ice yesterday, I'm pleased to present the video results of an experiment I conducted today on our very icy driveway in rural south Salem.

My quest was to determine what would slide furthest: a shoe, a banana, or a stuffed wolf? After the experiment, I then attempted to rescue the wolf from the middle of the driveway, which didn't go so well, as shown in the video. Nonetheless, I await my senior citizen scientist award.

Here's our 2022 Christmas letter, along with freezing rain thoughts

First, I'm pleased to share the 2022 Christmas letter that I wrote for my wife and I, which we call a Holiday Greetings to be all inclusive and non-religious. If you're addicted to reading Christmas letters, you can help feed your habit by clicking here, where you'll find the letters I wrote from 1995 onward.

After the letter, which is in both PDF and JPEG formats, I'll share some thoughts from unusually frigid Oregon about what freezing rain has to say about the Big Questions of Life. And also, mundane questions.
Download 2022 Christmas Letter PDF

Regarding freezing rain, it is one of many pieces of evidence that the laws of nature which govern our world weren't designed by a benevolent Creator, since freezing rain is the nastiest form of precipitation. Rain can be pleasant. Snow, which is frozen rain, also can be pleasant.

But freezing rain is just flat-out nasty. In February 2021 a freezing rain ice storm decimated our part of Oregon, including our rural property, as documented in photos I took. 

At the moment a milder, but still damaging, bout of freezing rain is causing problems in northwest Oregon, where the temperature was a chilly high of about 26 today. Luckily, we live in an age of pretty damn accurate weather forecasting. Yay, science!

So meteorologists gave advance notice that after eastern Oregon got hit with the edge of a polar vortex that is causing very low temperatures and nasty weather in most of the United States, an approaching low pressure system from the Pacific would cause east winds to funnel cold air through the Columbia River gorge and other mountain passes into western Oregon, where I live.

Now that cold air from the east is combining with warmer moisture coming from the west to produce freezing rain. This graphic shows how freezing rain happens, which is related to sleet. Again, yay, science!

If you've never experienced freezing rain, congratulations. It's nasty stuff. Driving or walking in rain or snow is completely doable. I have winter tires on my Subaru Crosstrek. Snow is no big deal to me, aside from worries about other people with less capable vehicles running into me.

But freezing rain produces black ice. Usually you can't see it on roads or walkways. It's a sheet of ice. No matter what car you have, or what tires you have, going down a hill covered in ice is not something you want to experience (unless you have a love for frequenting auto body shops).

Yet currently some major roads in Oregon, including parts of I-5, are closed due to accidents, almost certainly because of freezing rain. Which leads to a Big Question: what causes someone to head out on a freeway, or any road, when freezing rain is forecasted?

For days, news stories have told people that if they don't have to drive on Thursday night or Friday morning, they shouldn't. It's just too dangerous with freezing rain a near certainty.  Not a complete certainty, as this forecast from one of my weather apps for our location says.

I'm hoping that the ice we get tonight and part of tomorrow morning, before freezing rain becomes regular rain, is at the bottom end of the probability, rather than the full .4 of an inch forecasted. Currently we only have a tenth of an inch or so -- enough to make things really slippery, but not enough to topple limbs or trees on to power lines. I'm suspecting we might get a quarter of an inch by tomorrow.

But the odds obviously were that some freezing rain would hit western Oregon. Now, I realize that some people don't pay as much attention to news as I do. I also realize that some people don't believe the news, or weather forecasters, because sometimes they get things wrong.

Thus those are the people out on the roads right now, causing accidents. Maybe they saw that the weather was really cold but dry for most of today and figured that the forecast of freezing rain was wrong. 

Now some of them, maybe a lot of them, are paying the price for believing that their personal thoughts about the weather overshadowed what professional meteorologists were saying about the weather. Probably few of them liked to say Yay, science! 

Life is difficult. There's no way around that inescapable fact.

However, we make life more difficult when we fail to gather as much information about reality as possible in any given situation. If you go out driving when you don't absolutely have to when freezing rain is forecasted, you're causing yourself a preventable problem.

I'm not saying that I always practice what I preach. Yesterday I decided to start our Honda generator to make sure it was working if the electricity goes out in this ice storm. I found that the battery was completely dead. Thankfully, the generator started with a single pull of the manual cord.

It wouldn't recharge, so I ordered a replacement battery.

Then I recalled all the times I'd walked by the trickle charger connected to the generator battery in our garage, noting a single green light. There should have been two lights on: the green power light, and another light that shows the charging status, green if fully charged.

So that one green light meant there was a problem with the battery. I ignored what I kept seeing. I don't know why. Maybe because the battery was fine the last time I started the generator. Maybe because I simply wanted to assume that the battery was OK, and something was wrong with the trickle charger.

Whatever the reason, I neglected a fact that I should have paid attention to. Live and learn. That's all we can do, since mistakes are going to be with us as long as we're alive. My advice, though, is to do your best not to make the mistake of taking freezing rain lightly.

How Armin Navabi became an atheist after trying to die for God

At the end of Armin Navabi's book, Why There Is No God, a book I've written about several times before, I came to a fascinating description of Navabi's efforts to know God as a devout Muslim boy. It was written by a friend of his, Mohammad Savage.

Armin Navabi

Enjoy these excerpts. I find this tale highly inspiring. It shows that many atheists have pursued God with tremendous effort and determination, choosing to disbelieve only after giving belief a very good chance. 

Armin was born and raised in the Islamic Republic of Iran. He was indoctrinated quite thoroughly since early childhood in the Muslim tradition. He would pray regularly five times a day, as all Muslims are mandated to. Growing up, he was afraid of all the things which good Muslims are supposed to be afraid of: hell, sin, the devil, etc.

...During his formative years, Amin attended Muslim classes. In such classes, he learned that according to his Islamic teachers, if a boy were to perish before the age of 15, access to heaven would be guaranteed, regardless of any other extenuating circumstances. 

The same rule also applied to girls; however, for them, the cutoff age is 9. This thought stuck with Armin, and driven by the fear instilled in him by his religion, it began to consume him.

In his young mind, there it was: a surefire, absolute method to gain access to that which many Muslims strive for their entire lives. It confounded him to no end that none of his peers or elders had discovered or taken advantage of such a wonderful and easy shortcut. 

He would not be one such sheep; he wouldn't allow the joys of a full life to pull the wool over his young eyes. His future course of action became crystal clear. At age 14, after making up his mind and steeling his resolve, Armin launched himself from one of the higher windows in his school.

This was his attempt to end his life and guarantee his future ascendance. Needless to say, it didn't work out quite as he had hoped. Armin survived his suicide attempt but was ravaged by injury. Among the injuries he suffered were a broken wrist, two broken legs and an injured back. 

After the accident, Armin was confined to a wheelchair for the next seven months. Even after regaining permission to ambulate further, he still required months before he was able to travel with some semblance of independence. 

Wracked by more than the physical injuries of his failed suicide attempt, Armin was torn apart by the effect his actions had on his parents. Seeing the impact it had on them, Armin was no longer deluded by the temptation of an easy way to heaven, and so, he dedicated himself even more so to his religion and finding a better path to God.

...While his newfound dedication and studies did lead him to become more familiar with the intricacies of his religion, it also led to some rather unexpected and quite unwelcome thoughts. For every question his studies answered about his religious beliefs and the nature of God, ten more popped up in their stead, leading to a seemingly endless and inconclusive search.

The more he studied, the more questions he had and the more confused he became. He started to question God as well as God's motives, and judgments. For example, why would a benevolent God send people to hell simply because they picked the wrong religion?

Such novel questions did not come without a price. Every time Armin found himself questioning God, he felt the cold, creeping fingers of guilt grip his heart. Led by his thirst for knowledge and knowing that seeking Islamic knowledge is encouraged in his religion, he convinced himself that studying the nature of his God could never be a reprehensible act.

Emboldened by his newfound sense of purpose, he set out to study and learn all he could about more religions, including some dead religions. He was fueled by curiosity for why, according to Islam, these religions were so evil that all of their followers were damned to eternal hellfire and brimstone. What did they get wrong? What were their major errors?

The more he studied, the more he learned and the more and more he began to see the fallacies of all of these other religions, including his own. Through countless hours spent studying, researching and pondering, he began to see the greater possibility that religion could indeed have been a manmade concept.

...The more he began to think of religion as a manmade concept, not a divine statute, the stronger his doubt became. No longer able to abide the growing storm inside of him, Armin resolved to face the matter directly, disregard his doubts and attempt to convince himself simply that God was real and that he could be absolutely certain of this.

He simply needed proof, actual, verifiable proof, not the mythos of a centuries-old novel. He believed once he managed to locate this proof, his faith would be stronger than ever.

Failing to find proof, he settled on any logical reasoning for the existence of God, including examining philosophical concepts and theories. However, once all of the logical explanations supporting God had been thoroughly debunked, he grew desperate. 

He prayed harder, begging God to help him. He wanted a sign, a message -- anything at all to assure himself of a divine presence. Of course, his prayers were never answered. All of this transpired during most of Armin's relatively young life, and by the age of 18, he had lost all of his faith.

He felt cheated, betrayed and taken advantage of by society, his country, teachers, and those who impose the belief in God as an absolute truth without any proof, denying all other alternatives. He felt angry, depressed, and broken. He had sacrificed so much, even almost his life, all for the sake of a fairytale.

...Armin was the only atheist he knew. Being the proactive go-getter he had always been, he wished to let more people know about his lack of belief as well as the amazing journey which had led to this conclusion. 

...He started the Atheist Republic in 2011. The main purpose of this community was to let everyone know about the many people who didn't believe in God and provide an invitation for them to explore these ideas if they were interested.

Today I beheld the glory of blessed Lionel Messi

It was meant to be, I guess.

Being guided by a higher power, the Soccer God, referred to as the Football God by parts of the world other than the United States who don't recognize that if God wanted everyone to worship her as the patron saint of football, she wouldn't have created the genuine sport of football in my country.

Anyway, I must be viewed with special favor by the Soccer God, since just before turning our television off last night after watching the 11 pm news from Portland, a thought burst unbidden into my mind: "Thou shalt record the World Cup final match between Argentina and France."

Well, actually there was no thou shalt in that thought. But my tale sounds more impressive with those words substituted for "Hey, dude..."

Earlier in the day I'd considered recording the match. But since it was going to start at 7 am Pacific time, and I don't get up anywhere close to that early in my retired life, I figured that by the time I watched the recording, I would have known the outcome.

Plus -- and forgive me, Soccer God, for I have sinned against you -- I've never been all that interested in soccer. I described my viewing approach back in 2010 in "My tips for watching World Cup soccer."

(1) Record the event.

(2) Press "Play."

(3) Then -- this is really important, because life is short and you don't want to waste it on meaningless stuff -- immediately press the fast forward button repeatedly until it is at the fastest speed where the score being shown is still readable.

(4) Wait a while until you see the score has changed. Could be a long while, even at fast forwarding speed.

(5) Press "Play."

(6) Rewind/go back to fifteen seconds or so before the goal was scored.

(7) Watch the goal. Say "Nice, "Cool," "Crappy goalkeeping," or whatever else pops into your head.

(8) Repeat 3 through 7 until the game is over.

(9) Turn the TV off, content that you've watched hockey or soccer in the most efficient and enjoyable fashion if you're part of the 99% of humanity (in the United States, at least) who couldn't care less about the sport but sometimes want to act like they do, sort of.

Today, though, I woke up around 7:30 am to go the bathroom and, as suspected, noted a news alert on my iPhone that Argentina was leading France 2-0. That's like 63-0 in football terms.

So when I woke up again after getting back to sleep and saw that France had scored two goals near the end of regulation and the match was going to extra time, I rushed to turn the television on and, for maybe the first time in my life, watch a soccer match live. 

OK, part of a soccer match. But this was a major conversion for me. By no means had I joined the Soccer Religion that so many people in the world worship, but I'd taken a small step toward being baptized into it.

A revered holy man, Argentina's Lionel Messi, was a main reason why. I'd seen highlight videos of some amazing Messi performances in previous World Cup matches, and read laudatory news stories about him. 

Messi does seem to have a magical way about him. He makes moving with the ball (assume that isn't called dribbling, but I don't know the correct term) look so smooth and easy. Yet he leaves defenders clutching at where he isn't, not where he is.

Not quite walking on water miracle stuff.

Close enough for me to become a worshipful fan, though, given my almost complete lack of experience with anything involving a soccer ball. I also liked the fact that reportedly Messi walks much of the time during a match, running only when necessary. And that while walking around he's visualizing where the defenders might be at some point, and how he'd respond if they ended up there.

That struck me as pleasingly meditative. Or at least mindful. 

Anyway, the end of the Argentina-France match was a delight to watch. Really exciting, with each team scoring a goal in the extra time to keep the match a 3-3 tie. That meant the outcome would be determined by penalty kicks.

I enjoy penalty kicks, though I'm largely clueless about the strategy used by the goalkeeper and the kicker. Each player apparently tries to guess, or surmise, what the other will do.

Which gets complicated when a player thinks things like, "The goalkeeper probably thinks that I'll kick the ball in a different location than I did last time, so I should kick the ball in the same way, except maybe the goalkeeper thinks that I'll think he's thinking that, so I should kick the ball in a different location."

Watching Messi take the first penalty kick for Argentina, he made it look much easier than it must be. But that's the magic of Messi. He's like a Zen master of soccer. You don't really know how he plays so effortlessly with such great results. 

You just marvel at his blessed soccer skill. Along with the entire country of Argentina, and countless other fans around the world, since Argentina kicked France's ass in the penalty kicks, to use an American expression, giving Messi his first World Cup title.

Fitting, since I believe this was his last World Cup.

Scientology gets much-deserved ridicule in South Park episode

There's so much competition for The World's Craziest Religion, it's impossible to pick a clear winner. But Scientology has to be somewhere near the top of Mt. Crazy.

I say this even though I don't know very much about Scientology.

Well, until today. For after watching a South Park episode that was on one of the televisions in the aerobics room of my athletic club where I exercised this afternoon, I feel like I do know a lot about Scientology.

You can too, if you watch the 22-minute episode. Wikipedia has a summary of the plot of "Trapped in the Closet" if you're more into reading. And below I'll share some You Tube clips from the episode. 

South Park is wonderfully irreverent. Not just about religion. About everything. It's an animated series that appealed to adults. I've never laughed harder than at some South Park episodes. 

In the Scientology episode, Stan gets exposed to what Scientologists actually believe. Again, this sounds really, really crazy. However, every religion, pretty much, is equally crazy, just in different ways. Here's the clip:

Through a series of events, Stan is considered by Scientology leaders to be the reincarnation of L. Ron. Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. Trotted out to reveal Stan's fresh revelations, which are supposed to earn him and a Scientology leader $3 million, Stan goes rogue and tells the truth in this clip.

Proving that crazy religions don't have a sense of humor, the Church of Scientology targeted South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone by investigating them with the goal of finding embarrassing stuff that they'd done. 

Obviously Scientology didn't realize that the twisted minds who came up with South Park wouldn't be at all easily embarrassed. Apparently the investigation fell flat. 

I've only watched about half of this video. It was made by a guy who was a Scientology member for many years. He shares clips from the South Park episode, adding in his commentary on what was right-on about Scientology, and where South Park took some liberties with Scientology dogma in the name of comedy.

A systems view of reality shows the hollowness of religion

It dawned on me this morning that one reason people have so much difficulty understanding why free will is an illusion, a subject I've written a lot about over the years, is that most of us are addicted to a linear hierarchical view of the world.

So when presented with a perspective that undermines the simplistic "I wanted to do X, so that's what I did," substituting a vision where influences that determine our thoughts and actions come from many sources, with our thoughts and actions then affecting the world that determines our thoughts and actions, people tend to accept a simple but wrong view.

For reality isn't like an organizational chart with a Board of Directors and CEO at the top, and boxes showing underlings laid out in a hierarchy below the Big Boss. But this is what religions would have us believe. 

God is the CEO. God is in charge of things. There's angels and other supernatural entities who are subservient to God.

Here on earth, religions mirror this organization. Some people have a closer connection to God than other people. They're given names such as Pope, Master, Guru, Swami, Reverend, Imam, Rabbi, and such. Others in the religion are supposed to acknowledge them as leaders.

To which I say, of course, to hell with that. Not just because I no longer believe in God. Also because I've always believed in reality, and reality doesn't work like a corporate structure where power flows downward and obedience flows upward.

In the 1970s I was fortunate to have an opportunity to enroll in a Systems Science Ph.D. program at Portland State University here in Oregon, soon after I got a Masters in Social Work from PSU. My first job was as a Research Associate in the Family Practice Department at the Oregon Health Sciences University Medical School. I was encouraged to take Systems Science classes, which I happily did, eventually completing the coursework for a Ph.D. but not the other requirements.

An anecdote from my Systems Science days provides a good glimpse into systems thinking. 

I was sitting in the front row of a small seminar-like class taught by Magoroh Maruyama, a professor in the program who had a bit of a Zen master in him. Another student asked whether taking another class he taught had a prerequisite.

Maruyama jumped up, dashed to the blackboard, grabbed a piece of chalk, and emphatically said (almost yelling), "No prerequisites! That is not systems science! We start here, and then we go anywhere!!" as he started with a point and drew an expanding circular maze of scribbles with no discernible pattern.

I've forgotten a lot about what I learned about Systems Science. But I sure remember that moment when Professor Maruyama demonstrated how reality tends strongly toward creative non-linearity rather than predictable straight lines.

Here's a more traditional definition in a book by Fritjoj Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi, The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. (See here and here for some posts I wrote about the book.)

The ideas set forth by organismic biologists during the first half of the twentieth century helped to give birth to a new way of thinking -- thinking in terms of connectedness, relationships, patterns, and context. According to the systems view, the essential properties of an organism, or living system, are properties of the whole, which none of the parts have. They arise from the interactions and relationships between the parts.

...In the systems approach, the properties of the parts can be understood only from the organization of the whole. Accordingly, systems thinking does not concentrate on basic building blocks but rather on basic principles of organization. Systems thinking is "contextual," which is the opposite of analytical thinking. Analysis means taking something apart in order to understand it; systems thinking means putting it into the context of a larger whole.

If this sounds to you like Buddhism, or Taoism, that wouldn't be surprising.

After all, Fritjof Capra wrote the classic The Tao of Physics in 1975. When Buddhism and Taoism are stripped of their supernatural excesses, they end up being quite compatible with modern science, which is increasingly embracing a systems perspective.

This causes that is simplistic. It isn't how reality operates.

Yet religions have always used this way of thinking. God created the world. Jesus saves. The guru clears a disciple's karma. All statements like these are false. All are mired in a worldview that's so uncreative, it uses the tired metaphor of a king ruling his kingdom to describe the secrets of the cosmos.

Which is why I found more truth in The Systems View of Life than in any of the religious books I used to  read so avidly.

Why not believing in free will is so wonderful

I've written a lot about free will on this blog. More accurately, my posts on this subject have been about the near certainty that we humans lack free will. At least, as it is normally considered to exist.

Meaning, almost everybody who believes in free will considers that it means we're able to choose one thing instead of another without any causal influence affecting that choice.

Tonight I pondered whether to have leftover spaghetti for dinner, or to make tempe with rice. I decided on the tempe and rice. I had some reasons for that decision. This means that my will wasn't free, since those reasons influenced my choice.

In fact, this is always the case. There's absolutely zero evidence that the human brain is able to act or choose without being affected by prior experiences, brain states, the condition of the world, and such. 

The only way free will could exist is known as compatibilism. And this way negates free will as it is commonly understood.

Those who believe in the philosophical notion of compatibilism say that as long as a person isn't constrained by outside influences, such as someone holding a gun to my head and saying "You must choose to have spaghetti tonight," then that person is acting freely.

But this is a much watered-down version of genuine free will, which is viewed as the ability of a human being to choose between two actions, thoughts, or whatever in a way that is unaffected by the inward and outward state of that person's reality. 

In other words, neither the person's brain nor the external world has any effect on the person's choices. Those choices are made through some sort of unexplained supernatural Free Will Fairy Dust, which is such an absurd idea, I reject it (almost with most neuroscientists).

One big reason why I don't believe in free will is that I much prefer reality to unreality. I'd rather embrace an uncomfortable truth than a comfortable falsehood. That's why I no longer believe in God, soul, life after death, and other fantasies that used to give me comfort in my true believing days.

It's impossible to live a "spiritual" life, leaving aside the thorny question of what that word means, if that life is founded on untruths. Thus science is the cornerstone of any genuine search for meaning.

Imagine if we still had a medieval understanding of how the universe came to be. No knowledge of the big bang. No knowledge of the astounding vastness of the cosmos. Our worldview would be hugely constricted compared to the modern understanding astronomers and cosmologists have gifted us with.

I see a belief in free will as being similarly constricted. It imagines that each of us is, essentially, the "god" of our own thoughts and actions that are created by us independently, freely, out of nothing other than our own unfettered ability to choose between this and that.

Believers in free will typically don't try to justify their belief. They just accept what seems obvious to them: "It feels like I can choose freely, so that must be so." Of course, it also feels like the sun sets each day, rather than the sun standing still and the earth revolving.

The truths of science take quite a while to filter down into widespread understanding. So I look forward to the day that free will is viewed as akin to the earth-centered cosmos: a mistake caused by a superficial knowledge of reality.

Consider all the findings of modern science: physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, and so many other disciplines. These countless findings all have something in common. Regularities rooted in the laws of nature and other forms of causes and effects. 

There is no finding that free will exists, because if it did, this would be the only instance of an effect occurring in the everyday world without any cause. (I said "everyday" because arguably some quantum effects in the subatomic realm occur without a cause, though even here the wave function is a cause based on probabilities.)

Thus the interconnectedness of our universe, the marvelous oneness where causes and effects multiply without end across not only our planet but the vast expanse of time and space beyond earth, all that is not only compatible with the lack of free will, it demands it. 

Free will is a medieval'ish bastion of human separateness, specialness, individuality, and isolation.

Believers in free will imagine that they are islands of unfettered action unto themselves, rather than what we humans actually are: beings who are an integral part of everything in existence, both affected by everything that surrounds us, and affecting everything that surrounds us. 

What I or you or anybody does isn't based on our individual self. Every thought and action, no matter how small, requires an entire cosmos to carry out. My fingers typed this blog post, but the words and ideas didn't spring from my free will. They emanated from elsewhere. 

Understanding that "elsewhere" is what science is all about. Also, in my view, what spirituality is all about. We don't need to imagine supernatural realms beyond the physical to have a grasp of our place in the oneness of the cosmos. 

That oneness is right here, right now. And in large part it is glimpsed by giving up a belief in free will.

 

Open Thread 44 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread.

Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread. I'll copy in some examples of off-topic comments that I unpublished recently and included in this new Open Thread.

If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it might be because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an open thread.

As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is an Open Thread.

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Personal attacks on someone are an exception, as is hate speech. Argue with ideas, not insults.

Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. You can always find an Open Thread that way.

So if you're a believer in some form of religion, mysticism, or spirituality, this is where you can put your "praise God," "praise Guru," or "praise _______" comments.

Free will is the missing ingredient in self-improvement

I've almost finished reading Lisa Feldman Barrett's How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, a book I've been writing about lately. 

I have few criticisms of it. But after I read the "Emotion and the Law" chapter, I realized what was missing from Barrett's book: a discussion of free will. Meaning, the lack thereof.

Most of that chapter made sense to me. I'll explain the part that didn't. This passage struck me as fine.

The third type of responsibility relates to the content within your conceptual system, separately from how your brain uses that system to predict when breaking the law. A brain does not compute a mind in a vacuum. 

Every human being is the sum of his or her concepts, which become the predictions that drive behavior. The concepts in your head are not purely a matter of personal choice. Your predictions come from the cultural influences you were pickled in.

...All of your predictions are shaped not just by direct experience but also indirectly by television, movies, friends, and the symbols of your culture... Your mind is not only a function of your brain, but also of the other brains in your culture.

OK. I've got no problem with these thoughts. However, this passage strikes me as problematic.

This third domain of responsibility cuts two ways. Sometimes it's trivialized as "society is to blame," a phrase lampooned as bleeding-heart liberal sentiment.

I am saying something more nuanced. If you commit a crime, you are indeed to blame, but your actions are rooted in your conceptual system, and those concepts don't just appear in a puff of magic.

They are forged by the social reality you live in, which gets under your skin to turn genes on and off and wire your neurons. You learn from your environment like any other animal. Nevertheless, all animals shape their own environment.

So as a human being, you have the ability to shape your environment to modify your conceptual system, which means that you are ultimately responsible for the concepts that you accept and reject.

So Barrett is saying that while past experiences, both personal and cultural, go a long way toward determining our actions in the present, we still have the ability to choose different experiences in the future which will modify the conceptual system that guides our behavior now.

This assumes that we possess some sort of magical free will that operates outside of the causes and effects that are described in much detail by Barrett as creating the conditions that produce both human emotions and other behavior.

To confirm that Barrett has a flawed understanding of free will, I dug out my copy of Sam Harris' short 66 page book aptly called Free Will. It didn't take me long to re-read it. The way Harris talks about choices makes more sense than how Barrett views this subject.

Harris writes:

When we consider human behavior, the difference between premeditated, voluntary action and mere accident seems immensely consequential. As we will see, this distinction can be preserved -- and with it, our most important moral and legal concerns -- while banishing the idea of free will once and for all.

Certain states of consciousness seem to arise automatically, beyond the sphere of our intentions. Others seem self-generated, deliberative, and subject to our will... Within certain limits, I seem to choose what I pay attention to.

The sound of the leaf blower intrudes, but I can seize the spotlight of my attention in the next moment and aim it elsewhere. This difference between nonvolitional and volitional states of mind is reflected at the level of the brain -- for they are governed by different systems.

And the difference between them must, in part, produce the felt sense that there is a conscious self endowed with freedom of will.

As we have begun to see, however, this feeling of freedom arises from our moment-to-moment ignorance of the prior causes of our thoughts and actions. The phrase "free will" describes what it feels like to identify with certain mental states as they arise in consciousness.

Thoughts like "What should I get my daughter for her birthday? I know -- I'll take her to a pet store and have her pick out some tropical fish" convey the apparent reality of choices, freely made. But from a deeper perspective (speaking both objectively and subjectively), thoughts simply arise unauthored and yet author our actions. 

...And the fact that our choices depend on prior causes does not mean that they don't matter. If I had not decided to write this book, it wouldn't have written itself. My choice to write it was unquestionably the primary cause of its coming into being.

Decisions, intentions, efforts, goals, willpower, etc., are causal states of the brain, leading to specific behaviors, and behaviors lead to outcomes in the world. Human choice, therefore, is as important as fanciers of free will believe.

But the next choice you make will come out of the darkness of prior causes that you, the conscious witness of your experience, did not bring into being... From the perspective of your conscious awareness, you are no more responsible for the next thing you think (and therefore do) than you are for the fact that you were born into this world.

...You can do what you decide to do -- but you cannot decide what you will decide to do. Of course, you can create a framework in which certain decisions are more likely than others -- you can, for instance, purge your house of all sweets, making it very unlikely that you will eat dessert later in the evening -- but you cannot know why you were able to submit to such a framework today when you weren't yesterday.

...You have not built your mind. And in moments in which you seem to build it -- when you make an effort to change yourself, to acquire knowledge, or to perfect a skill -- the only tools at your disposal are those that you have inherited from moments past.

Choices, efforts, intentions, and reasoning influence our behavior -- but they are themselves part of a chain of causes that precede conscious awareness and over which we exert no ultimate control. My choices matter -- and there are paths toward making wiser ones -- but I cannot choose what I choose.

And if it ever appears that I do -- for instance, after going back and forth between two options -- I do not choose to choose what I choose. There is a regress here that always ends in darkness. I must take a first step, or a last one, for reasons that are bound to remain inscrutable. 

...To say that I could have done otherwise is merely to think the thought "I could have done otherwise" after doing whatever I in fact did. This is an empty affirmation. It confuses hope for the future with an honest account of the past. 

What I will do next, and why, remains, at bottom, a mystery -- one that is fully determined by the prior state of the universe and the laws of nature (including the contribution of chance). To declare my "freedom" is tantamount to saying, "I don't know why I did it, but it's the sort of thing I tend to do, and and I don't mind doing it."

...You will do whatever it is you do, and it is meaningless to assert that you could have done otherwise. 

...Why did I order beer instead of wine? Because I prefer beer. Why do I prefer it? I don't know, but I generally have no need to ask. Knowing that I like beer more than wine is all I need to know to function in a restaurant. Whatever the reason, I prefer one taste to the other.

Is there freedom in this? None whatsoever. Would I magically reclaim my freedom if I decided to spite my preference and order wine instead? No, because the roots of this intention would be as obscure as the preference itself.

So we see that while Barrett considers that we're able to modify our past mental programming by filling our brain/mind with different future experiences we consider to be better for us, she fails to realize that our choice of those different future experiences doesn't spring from our unfettered free will, but from the same sorts of influences that created our past mental programming. 

This seems clear to me, as it is to Sam Harris. But it's a fairly subtle notion that, as Harris says, is irrelevant to most of our everyday life. Nonetheless, it's an important notion, because it points to the wonderful awe-inspiring interdependency of everything in our world. Harris writes:

We do not change ourselves, precisely -- because we have only ourselves with which to do the changing -- but we continually influence, and are influenced by, the world around us and the world within us... In improving ourselves and society, we are working directly with the forces of nature, for there is nothing but nature itself to work with.

The universe has a plan for me. It's what's happening right now.

Religious people often say, "God has a plan for me." People who fall into the spiritual-but-not-religious camp often say, "The universe has a plan for me." Deepak Chopra assures us this is the case.

Some Googling revealed lots of examples of the second variety of planning. I looked at a few. 

In The Universe Always Has A Plan, I read: 

You aren’t sad because you are an unhappy person. You are experiencing sadness as part of your healing journey, to create space for more light to be embodied. You will receive everything you desire at exactly the moment in time it is meant to arrive.

There is a destiny. It is guaranteed, and it also requires your participation. It may include outcomes the ego may desire, but it can only be fulfilled by the light of your soul.

In 6 Ways to Accept the Universe's Plan For You, I read:

However, eventually things turned around for me and I did find some answers by learning to trust that the Universe had simply put me on a much more suitable path. In the process of making my life better, the first step that I made was to put aside my university dreams and study astrology instead.

I did much of my coursework from my bed during my illness, but, as I made changes, the Universe showed me signs that I was on the right track. At first, I didn’t understand these signs. I didn’t know the meaning behind seeing the number 11:11 everywhere I looked, or by seeing other number patterns and coincidences. At this time I had no idea that other young people all over the world were having the same experiences with seeing 111, 222, 333, etc.

Well, I have difficulty understanding the difference between God having a plan for me and the universe having a plan for me, since in either case a supernatural sentient being is aware of me and is actively working to change the direction of my life in a way that the being views as desirable.

Seemingly the main benefit to viewing the universe as my planner, rather than God, is that the universe doesn't demand that I do anything special, like going to church or praying. And the universe is, not surprisingly, universal, while God comes in all kinds of guises depending on what religion is followed.

My personal position is that I see no reason to believe that anyone has a plan for me. Sure, it'd be nice to have an all-powerful being on my side. But the idea that such a being exists makes no sense, and the notion that this being wants to direct my life in a certain fashion makes even less sense. 

However, I do accept that the universe has a plan for me in this way.

There are laws of nature. Causes and effects take place in accord with the laws of nature. Whatever happens occurs in accord with those causes and effects. So whatever is happening right now in my mental and physical life can be thought of as the universe's plan for me. 

It isn't a conscious plan. It isn't a plan created prior to happenings. It is simply that portion of the unimaginably vast network of causes and effects in the universe that impact little me.

Tonight I was drawn to write this blog post. I know this was the universe's plan for me because it is what happened. Now I'm going to eat a small slice of frosted carrot cake, my favorite evening snack. That also was the universe's plan for me, assuming it happens in the next few minutes, as I suspect it will.

Meister Eckhart, the great medieval mystic theologian, had a similar view about God's will, as I quoted him in a 2006 post.

Now I hear you ask: “How do I know that it is God’s will? My answer is that if it were not God’s will even for a moment, then it would not exist. Whatever is must be his will. If God’s will is pleasing to you, then whatever happens to you, or does not happen to you, will be heaven.

We need to try not to overdraw our body budget

Recently I've been writing about a book that I'm enjoying a lot more than I thought I would, Lisa Feldman Barrett's How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.

It's dawned on me that in the course of sharing ideas from various chapters I found compelling, I've largely neglected to make clear the importance of a key concept in the book: that of our body budget.

This was a new notion to me, and I don't claim to fully understand it even after reading Barrett's description of it. But here's some quotes from her book that give a good overview of what the body budget is all about.

Your body-budgeting regions play a vital role in keeping you alive. Each time your brain moves any part of your body, inside or out, it spends some of its energy resources: the stuff it uses to run your organs, your metabolism, and your immune system.

You replenish your body's spending by eating, drinking, and sleeping, and you reduce your body's spending by relaxing with loved ones, even having sex. To manage all of this spending and replenishing, your brain must constantly predict your body's energy needs, like a budget for your body.

...Your body-budgeting regions make predictions to estimate the resources to keep you alive and flourishing, using past experience as a guide.

...Whenever your brain predicts a movement, whether it's getting out of bed in the morning or taking a sip of coffee, your body-budgeting regions adjust your budget. When your brain predicts that your body will need a quick burst of energy, these regions instruct the adrenal gland in your kidneys to release the hormone cortisol.

...Withdrawals from your body's budget don't require actual physical movement. Suppose you see your boss, teacher, or baseball coach walking toward you. You believe that she judges everything you say and do. Even though no physical movement seems calls for, your brain predicts that your body needs energy and makes a budget withdrawal, releasing cortisol and flooding glucose into your bloodstream.

...Stop and think about this for a moment. Someone merely walks toward you while you are standing still, and your brain predicts that you need fuel! In this manner, any event that significantly impacts your body budget becomes personally meaningful to you. 

...To perturb your budget, you don't even require another person or object to be present. You can just imagine your boss, teacher, coach, or anything else relevant to you. Every simulation, whether it becomes an emotion or not, impacts your body budget.

As it turns out, people spend at least half their waking hours simulating rather than paying attention to the world around them, and this pure simulation strongly drives their feelings.

I'm finding this body-budget concept to be useful in my own life. It fits with the metaphor used for the title of a book, Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, which I wrote about in "No lions? Then relax. Especially if you're a zebra."

If a lion starts chasing a herd of zebras, their body budget predicts that they're going to need a release of energy for running away. But if zebras remained in this state of heightened arousal, with such a large withdrawal from their body budget, they'd be in bad shape. 

So zebras quickly go back to grazing on grass after a lion attack, because they need to replenish their body budget. Lucky them. We humans, on the other hand, often fret and worry about a stressful event for a long time after the event has passed.

If this happens repeatedly, we can find ourselves in a chronic state of anxiety or depression, which Barrett says is the result of prediction errors.

When we're anxious, we're predicting that bad things are going to happen even though there is little or no actual evidence of this. Thus we can get into a state akin to zebras imagining lions about to pounce even when no lions are around. This leads to excessive withdrawals from our body budget.

When we're depressed, we try to reduce the need for a deposit into our body budget by remaining still, cutting way down on our activities, staying at home, ignoring friends and family, which leads to a feeling of fatigue.

Everyday language echoes the notion of a body budget. "I feel drained." "I'm overflowing with joy." "I'm running on empty." "Your words filled me with hope." 

This evening I watched results of the runoff election in Georgia between incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker. 

Being a political junkie, and knowing the importance of this election for confirming judges, conducting investigations, and doing other business in the Senate for the next two years (a Warnock win would give Democrats a 51-49 majority), I found my mood rising and falling as the results were reported by MSNBC over the span of three or four hours.

At first Warnock was way ahead, since Georgia counts early and absentee voting first, methods favored by Democrats. I felt great! Then Walker -- an absolutely horribly unqualified candidate -- moved ahead as conservative counties released their vote tallies. I felt awful!

Finally, the liberal-leaning urban areas around Atlanta finished counting their same day votes and Warnock was declared the victor. I felt really great! So my body budget was rising and falling even though I was doing just about nothing physically. My mind was predicting how I'd feel if I had to watch Walker blunder his way as a Senator for the next six years, versus how wonderful I'd feel if Warnock won.

The human mind is a marvelous result of evolution.

However, that marvel has resulted in mental abilities that can easily go awry. For our modern malady isn't being chased by predators on the African grasslands, but having to cope with psychological stresses caused by our ability to remember problems from the past that we worry will recur, and imagine problems in the future that we worry will occur. 

Which is why I've taken up the habit of saying to myself, "No lions," when I find myself fretting unduly in the absence of clear reasons to do so.

The self, like emotions, is constructed by the brain

I'm continuing to make progress on reading Lisa Feldman Barrett's book, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. 

As noted in a previous post about the book, I'm glad that I decided to read it straight through, even though some chapters seemed more appealing than others. Barrett is a good writer. She organized her book well, with interesting topics in every chapter.

Before I get to how she views the self, which is pretty much how I also see it, as something constructed, not a given, I want to briefly mention her wise words about jumping to conclusions about how someone feels.

We're all guilty of this, me certainly included. It's easy to do, but we shouldn't do it. Feelings, or emotions, are private. And Barrett stresses that there aren't universal outward signs of any emotion. For example, a person can smile when happy, smile when anxious, or smile when angry.

So assuming that they are happy because they're smiling isn't justified. Of course, it's way worse when people on social media claim that they know how someone feels just from words appearing on a computer screen.

Barrett writes:

Perceptions of emotion are guesses, and they're "correct" only when they match the other person's experience: that is, both people agree on which [emotion] concept to apply. Anytime you think you know how someone else feels, your confidence has nothing to do with actual knowledge. You're just having a moment of affective realism [tendency of your feelings to affect what you see].

Now, regarding the self, Barrett views it as constructed in much the same way she views emotions as constructed.

Not by a conscious act of will, but via brain processes. This means that just as there is no hard-wired place in the brain where anger or any other emotion resides (an essentialist view), neither do we possess, or are, an essential self, a perspective shared by Buddhism. She writes:

My scientific definition of the self is inspired by the workings of the brain yet is sympathetic to the Buddhist view. The self is part of social reality. It's not exactly a fiction, but neither is it objectively real in nature like a neutron. It depends on other people.

In scientific terms, your predictions in the moment, and your actions that derive from them, depend to some extent on the way that others treat you. You can't be a self by yourself. We can understand why Tom Hanks's character in the movie Cast Away, who was marooned alone on a desert island for four years, needed to create a companion named Wilson out of a volleyball.

Certain behaviors and preferences are consistent with your self and some are not. There are foods you enjoy and others you'd prefer not to eat. You might call yourself a "dog person" or a "cat person." These behaviors and preferences vary quite a bit: your favorite food might be French fries, but not at every meal.

The most enthusiastic dog lovers know a couple of dogs that they can't stand and are secretly fond of a few cats. Overall, your self is like a collection of dos and don'ts that summarizes your likes, dislikes, and habits in the moment.

We've seen something like this before. These dos and don'ts are like the features of a concept. So in my view, the self is a plain, ordinary concept just like "Tree," "Things That Protect You from Stinging Insects," and "Fear."

I am quite sure you don't go around thinking of yourself as a concept, but just go with me for a bit on this.

If the self is a concept, then you construct instances of your self by simulation. Each instance fits your goals in the moment. Sometimes you categorize yourself by your career. Sometimes you're a parent, or a child, or a lover. Sometimes you're just a body.

Social psychologists say that we have multiple selves, but you can think of this repertoire as instances of a single, goal-based concept called "The Self" in which the goal shifts based on context. 

How does your brain keep track of all the varied instances of your "Self" as an infant, a young child, an adolescent, a middle-aged adult, and an older adult? Because one part has remained constant: you've always had a body. 

Every concept you have ever learned includes the state of your body (as interoceptive predictions) at the time of learning. Some concepts involve a lot of interoception, such as "Sadness," and others have less, such as "Plastic Wrap," but they're always in relation to the same body.

So every category you construct -- about objects in the world, other people, purely mental concepts like "Justice," and so on -- contains a little bit of you. This is the rudimentary mental basis of your sense of self. 

The fiction of the self, paralleling the Buddhist idea, is that you have some enduring essence that makes you who you are. You do not. 

I speculate that your self is constructed anew in every moment by the same predictive, core systems that construct emotions, including our familiar pair of networks (interoceptive and control), among others, as they categorize the continuous stream of sensation from your body and the world.

As a matter of fact, a portion of the interoceptive network, called the default mode network, has been called the "self system." It consistently increases in activity during self-reflection. If you have atrophy in your default mode network, as happens in Alzheimer's disease, you eventually lose your sense of self.

Deconstructing the self offers a new inspiration for how to become the master of your emotions. By tweaking your conceptual system and changing your predictions, you not only change your future experiences; you can actually change your "Self."

...Western culture has some common wisdom associated with these [Buddhist] ideas. Don't be materialistic. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Sticks and stones [may break my bones but words shall never hurt me]. But I am asking you to take this one step further.

When you are suffering from some ill or insult that has befallen you, ask yourself: Are you really in jeopardy here? Or is this so-called injury merely threatening the social reality of your self?

The answer will help you recategorize your pounding heartbeat, the knot in the pit of your stomach, and your sweaty brow as purely physical sensations, leaving your worry, anger, and dejection to dissolve like an antacid tablet in water.

Imagining one's death is impossible, but a crucial part of living

Some things are impossible to imagine, because we have no experience of anything akin to that thing.

This is why, as I noted in a recent blog post, we can't imagine what the cosmos would be like without consciousness existing within it, because our attempt at imagining takes place within our consciousness. 

It's also why, no matter how hard I or anyone else may try, we can't imagine what things will be like after we're dead, because our attempt at imagining takes place while we're alive.

So our living consciousness is an inescapable barrier to knowing what, if anything, lies beyond conscious life.

Still, I believe that making an effort to imagine the imaginable can be beneficial, even if the attempt is doomed to failure.

Rather strangely, the older I get (I'm 74), the less concerned I am with pondering my eventual death -- which, as the saying goes, is as certain as taxes. Well, actually a lot more certain, since we can escape taxes but not death.

When I was younger, and a devotee of an Eastern/Indian spiritual teaching that taught either rebirth or union with God awaited us after death, I made the attorney who handled the wills for my wife and I say "When Brian gerbils..." instead of "When Brian dies..." Back then I had a strong fear of non-existence.

I have no idea why I picked the word gerbil for a death substitute.

Maybe it was because we used to have an annoying gerbil when my daughter was young, and I'd wish that it would die a peaceful gerbil death and leave us in peace.

Now, though, I don't think about death nearly as much, even though I've become an atheist. And when I do, the thought, or more accurately a feeling, usually comes over me unbidden. Meaning, spontaneously.

I've written about this now and then -- how I'll be raking leaves, or walking to my Tai Chi class, or doing something else routine, and suddenly I'll have a sudden realization that one day will be the last day I do that activity.

Or any activity. Because I'll be dead.

It's both a weird disturbing feeling and a normal pleasant feeling. Somehow my mind manages to combine both sensations in a single experience. 

I don't like the notion that eventually I'll die and be gone forever. As Woody Allen said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying." I heartily agree, though sadly, I don't have any way to make that wanting a reality. Nor does anyone else.

What I do enjoy is how a visualization of death, as imperfect an imagining as this may be, leaves me with a deeper appreciation of life.

When that feeling of my eventual death comes over me, it makes my present-day living seem richer, more vibrant, more important. For at least a little while I vow to not sleepwalk through life, since each and every moment of this life is hugely significant compared to the nonexistence of death.

So there's a lot to like about death, as well as a lot to fear. If death were absent from life, seemingly the meaning we derive from our living would be much reduced, since we'd have plenty of time, eternity really, to do anything we wanted.

As it is, we don't know when we'll take our last breath. This lends every moment a certain poignancy. And it makes our problems seem less serious, given that most of us would rather be alive with problems, than dead with no problems. 

The exception being a life filled with so much pain and suffering, death appears preferable to life. Some people end up in such a state, and I find it difficult to deny them the right to end their life if that's what they want.