Church of the Churchless

Everything doesn't happen for a reason. Often things just happen.

Having written a book about karma (specifically, the karmic rationale for vegetarianism) called "Life is Fair," I'm well acquainted with the idea that everything happens for a reason.

For karma, when stripped of its supernatural notions of reincarnation and such, basically is just a law of cause and effect. You do this, you get that. Pretty damn simple. What complicates things is that while the effects are clear, in our life or the world at large, the causes are generally hidden to a large extent. 

In Eastern philosophy this may be due to actions in previous lives bearing fruit in a present life. You wronged someone in the sixteenth century. Now that person is reborn, as are you, and does something nasty to you.

I no longer believe in that religious view of karma. However, I'm still very much a believer in cause and effect, or determinism, since it seems clear that this is how the world works.

That's one reason why I'm enjoying Fluke by Brian Klaas, so much, a book I first wrote about here. Though the subtitle, "Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters," implies that life isn't deterministic, actually chance and chaos involve causes and effects as everything else does.

But when the cause of something is unknown, we call it "random." Actually, randomness is another word for our ignorance. Klaas explains this in a footnote:

When I mention "random" events, I always mean apparently random -- events that seem random to us due to our ignorance. A dice roll produces an unpredictable outcome that appears random to us, but it isn't random -- each roll of the dice is a deterministic event that follows the laws of physics.

Apparently random events still have definite causes, though they're not part of some larger hidden purpose. (As far as modern science can tell, the only phenomena in the universe that may be genuinely random are quantum effects at the atomic and subatomic levels.)

In this passage Klaas sounds a lot like Robert Sapolsky in his book, Determined, which argues persuasively that free will is an illusion. Both men say that praise and blame aren't really justified. Sapolsky looks at this from the perspective of determinism; Klaas, from the perspective of chance and randomness.

Yet, if luck plays such an important role in success, that should affect how we think about fortune and misfortune. If you believe you live in a meritocratic world, in which success is doled out to the most talented individuals rather than partly by accident or chance, then it makes sense to claim full credit for each success and blame yourself for every defeat.

But if you accept that apparent randomness and accidents drive significant swaths of change in our lives -- and they do -- then that will change your outlook on life.

When you lose at roulette, you don't kick yourself for being a useless failure. Instead, you accept the arbitrary outcome and move on. Recognizing that often meaningless, accidental outcomes emerge from an intertwined, complex world is empowering and liberating. We should all take a bit less credit for our triumphs and a bit less credit for our failures.

Here Klaas speaks our tendency to ascribe more meaning to events than is justified. Again, when he says that some things just happen, this doesn't mean that they pop out of nowhere. Rather, they happen without an apparent reason, because the cause(s) are hidden from us. Since this ignorance can be uncomfortable, we humans have a strong desire to make up spurious reasons for something happening.

We're particularly prone to inventing and clinging to false explanations in the face of seemingly random misfortune. We can't easily accept randomness as an explanation for why we get cancer or end up in a car accident. Bad news requires something behind it that makes sense. It's impossible to move on from misfortune without figuring out the real reason for your suffering.

It becomes a quest for an elusive meaning in what may have been a meaningless calamity. "Everything happens for a reason" is a coping mechanism most often heard when jobs are lost, when we're blindsided by breakups, or when people die.

While it can help to make sense out of the senseless, comforted by the myth of a neat, ordered plan for everything, the saying isn't true. It's a useful, reassuring fiction. Some things -- even important and maddening and horrific things -- just happen. That's the inevitable result of an interconnected chaotic world.

Accidents, mistakes, and above all, arbitrary neutral changes create species, shape societies, and divert our lives. 

Fluke: great book about chance, chaos, and how everything matters

I'd vowed not to buy any more books from Amazon until I'd finished reading the ones I'd already started. But then a review in New Scientist changed my mind. Which I'm glad it did.

Because Fluke, by Brian Klaas, is a highly provocative book about how chance and chaos govern life to a much greater extent than we normally consider -- since most of us consider that we're able to steer our way through the twists and turns of life through reason, intuition, and our own good sense when it comes to decisions.

I've only read the Introduction and the first chapter, which has a great title: "Changing Anything Changes Everything." 

However, I can already tell that I'm going to hugely enjoy the book. I say this because Klaas appears to be firmly in the same sort of worldview that most appeals to me.

Like Robert Sapolsky, who wrote Determined, a book about the illusion of free will that I've blogged about recently, Klaas (a professor of global politics at University College, London) views life as a tapestry made up of countless interrelated threads.

The tapestry of of life is woven with a magical sort of thread, one that grows longer the more you unspool it. Every present moment is created with seemingly unrelated strands that stretch far into the distant past. Whenever you tug on one thread, you'll always meet unexpected resistance because each is connected to every other part of the tapestry. The truth is, as Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his letter from a Birmingham jail, "We are caught in an escapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."

This is at odds with how life usually is simplistically viewed. We expect that big effects have big causes, often a single cause. What caused World War II? How did Covid-19 become a pandemic? Why did you marry your spouse? What made you choose your religion, or lack thereof?

Confronted with questions like these, typically we come up with an overconfident answer, because uncertainty is distressing while certainty gives us a pleasant feeling of knowingness. Or, we recognize that chance events have a large impact, but we view them as an exception to the rule, not the rule itself.

These passages provide an overview of Klass' central theme.

Few have had quite so dramatic an escape as Motoo Kimora narrowly avoiding death by atomic bomb. But everyone can pinpoint a moment that, in hindsight, was a fluke that changed his or her life. Perhaps it was a more traditional pivot, such as a chance encounter with your future spouse, or taking a class in high school that diverted your career plans to a new passion.

Or maybe it was a near miss, such as a swerve of the steering wheel that kept you alive, or having a generous offer rejected on a house or an apartment only to find something far better that you now call home. These moments stand out because they're obviously consequential. We contemplate what could have been.

It's clear there was an alternative path. But for one small change, spouses never meet, passions remain undiscovered, near misses become fatal hits.

But these seem to be the outliers, the moments we marvel at precisely because they are so rare and unusual. We feel as though we construct our lives not with chance, but with the building blocks of large, hopefully wise, choices -- choices that we feel we, alone control. We may seek advice for which path to choose, but we would not seek advice for that which we can't control.

...Watch just about any inspirational TED Talk or read just about any self-help book, and you will be told that you, alone, are the solution that you seek. These messages are popular because most of us view our lives through an individualistic prism. Our life stories are not crowdsourced. Our major decisions define our path, which means we control our path. To understand that path, worship at the Altar of Me.

Every so often, though, we see a fleeting, perplexing glimpse of our path colliding with someone else's in a way that seems out of our control. We call those moments luck, or coincidence, or fate. But we classify them as aberrations. 

When the world functions "normally," life seems to have a predictable, well-ordered regularity, a regularity that we convince ourselves we can mostly direct, masters of our own destinies. Then, whenever we're confronted by strange coincidences or chance diversions that seem to challenge that confident certainty, we shrug at the brief respite from normality and move on, preparing ourselves to make the next big call that shapes our future.

It's a style of thinking so ubiquitous and commonplace that it's uncontested. That's just how the world works.

There's just one problem: it's a lie. It's the lie that defines our times. We might call it the delusion of individualism. We cling to this delusion, the way a man overboard clings to floating debris. But every so often, a story comes along that makes clear how absurd it is to think of ourselves as separate or separable from everyone and everything else.

The story is about a tourist in Greece who was swept out to sea. A search was conducted, but it came up empty. Eighteen hours later the tourist was found. Alive. Clinging to a soccer ball that he'd seen floating in the distance and managed to reach with his last reserves of strength. The ball had been lost ten days earlier by some boys playing on the beach. Without that accidental kick, the tourist would have died.

This emphasis on interrelationships and the illusion of individuality has a strong Buddhist flavor. Indeed, Klaas says that Western philosophies are much more self-centered than Eastern philosophies, which tend to be other-centered. He advises that the Eastern view of reality is to be embraced, not shunned.

At first, an intertwined world seems terrifying. Nobody wants to be told they're not in control, or that a stranger's decision half a world away, or a long-forgotten decision decades in the past, could kill us or cause our economy to collapse into a crippling recession.

...The reality, for better and for worse, isn't terrifying, but wondrous, giving every moment of life potentially hidden meaning. It flips the individualistic worldview on its head. Rather than being in control of our individual destinies when we make big decisions, even our smallest decisions matter, forever altering the world.

...It's time to adjust our lenses of how we see ourselves within the world. Our chaotic, intertwined existence reveals a potent, astonishing fact:

We control nothing, but influence everything.

The real saints are ordinary people

"Saint" is a word that generally has religious overtones. For example, I used to belong to an organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that was part of the Sant Mat movement, which means "teaching of saints."

The RSSB saints were gurus who supposedly were God in Human Form, something I now deeply doubt. The Catholic church has a more expansive view of saints:

The saints of the church are a diverse group of people with varied and interesting stories. Their ranks include martyrs, kings and queens, missionaries, widows, theologians, parents, nuns and priests, and “everyday people” who dedicated their lives to the loving pursuit of God.

Religious and nonreligious people alike have found inspiration from their lives, particularly in the stories of saints who devoted themselves in service to the poor, sick, and disenfranchised, such as St. Mother Teresa and St. Vincent de Paul, among others.

Many of the saints who were persecuted for their faith, such as St. Stephen and St. Perpetua, showed remarkable forgiveness and patiently suffered through their trials and tortures. Some are revered for their simplicity and humility, including St. Francis of Assisi and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Several, notably St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, were writers and thinkers who shaped Western thought for centuries.

Then there's the Urban Dictionary definition, my favorite.

I like this because it doesn't have any sort of religious connotation. Indeed, to me the most impressive saints are, as this definition says, ordinary people who put others' needs before their own. Sure, not always, as this doesn't seem to be possible. But frequently.

That opens the door to sainthood for lots of people, probably most people. Which is as it should be. Genuine saints, not the fake saints revered by religions disconnected from reality by supernatural B.S., are usually little known, though greatly appreciated by those they serve.

Caregivers to those afflicted by dementia. Teachers who are overworked and underpaid. Sanitation workers. Advocates for the homeless. Immigrants who do the tough jobs Americans dislike, then send much of their money to relatives in their native country. So many others.

Sainthood isn't an either-or proposition. It's a sliding scale. Everybody possesses the capacity of acting in a saintly fashion. Some just are able to be compassionate and self-sacrificing to a greater degree than others. 

I'm definitely average when it comes to saintliness. There's nothing special about me in this regard.

But last Friday I had an appointment with the nurse practitioner who serves as my primary care provider. We talked about how to handle the sciatica in my right leg, which has gotten much more painful the past few months.

Since this was my first visit with the nurse practitioner after my doctor left the clinic and I needed a new provider, I told her about how the sciatica began four years ago, in early 2020. In the beginning it was super painful. Nothing could help the pain appreciably. The pain would laugh at the couple of Tylenol pills I'd take.

I'd cry out loud with the pain, and I'm normally not big on crying. I was determined to keep on doing what needed done around our non-easy-care house on ten rural acres. Back then we had a walk-behind mower. I'd mow the grass with tears streaming down my cheeks, the pain would be so bad. I got the grass cut, though.

Every day I'd walk our dog in the late afternoon, just as I'd done before the sciatica started. Some days I'd wonder if I could make the mile-and-a-half loop on roads in our neighborhood, which is quite hilly. Just as with the mowing, I'd hold the dog's leash while I cried out in pain, one step at a time. I'd want to quit and go home, but I never did.

In no way is what I did exceptionally saintly. I mention it just to give a personal example of how people can push through extreme discomfort because they want to feel useful and do something that benefits others. In my case, a wife and dog. 

Given my substantial ego, I'm proud of many things that I've done in my 75 years of living. However, doing household duties while I was racked with severe pain is something that especially pleases me, when I remember it. 

(That said, I'm still looking for ways to relieve my sciatica, since I'd prefer to be of service to others in ways that don't involve a lot of pain, even if that reduces my saintly rating.)

Nature uses quantum mechanics. But we humans don't understand how.

There's been a lot of scientific progress in the 10,000 or so years of human history, most of it in the past few centuries. But the natural world still has a lot of mysteries. 

I find this highly appealing. It shows that if someone is attracted to the unknown, there's no need to embrace religiosity or the supernatural. Just look around at the world that surrounds us, and indeed is us.

What you'll see are quantum phenomena. Not directly, because the quantum realm typically is well hidden, manifesting only in atomic and subatomic processes that are far beyond the ability of any person to observe with our usual senses.

However, as I've been reading in my new favorite book, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku's Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything, nothing in existence is independent of quantum mechanics.

Chemistry. Physics. Biology. Life. Evolution. Big bang. Galaxies. Plants. Brains. Animals. At their root lies quantum phenomena. Kaku says that nature effortlessly manages what we humans struggle to grasp.

The problem facing quantum computers was also foreseen by Richard Feynman when he first proposed the concept. In order for quantum computers to work, atoms have to be arranged precisely so that they vibrate in unison. This is called coherence.

But atoms are incredibly small and sensitive objects. The smallest impurity or disturbance from the outside world can cause this array of atoms to fall out of coherence, ruining the entire calculation. So the trillion dollar question is: Can we control decoherence?

In order to minimize the contamination coming from the outside world, scientists use special equipment to drop the temperature to near absolute zero, where unwanted vibrations are at a minimum. But this requires expensive, special pumps and tubing to reach those temperatures.

But we are faced with a mystery. Mother Nature uses quantum mechanics at room temperature without a problem.

For example, the miracle of photosynthesis, one of the most important processes on earth, is a quantum process, yet it takes place at normal temperatures. Mother Nature does not use a roomful of exotic devices operating at near absolute zero to execute photosynthesis. 

For reasons that are not well understood, in the natural world coherence can be maintained even on a warm, sunny day, when disturbances from the outside world should create chaos at the atomic level.

If we could one day figure out how Mother Nature performs her magic at room temperature, then we might become masters of the quantum and even life itself.

Fascinating. I've read quite a few books about quantum mechanics, those aimed at general readers like me who lack the knowledge of physics and mathematics necessary to grasp the details of this field. I don't recall any writing that spelled out so clearly the difference between how nature utilizes quantum phenomena and how we humans struggle to do the same.

One of the last paragraphs I read today described why quantum computers are so powerful. I don't pretend to fully grasp what is said here, but I look forward to reading more of Kaku's book and, hopefully, gaining a better comprehension.

It is precisely postulates 3 and 4 that make quantum computers possible. The electron is now described as the simultaneous sum over different quantum states, which gives quantum computers their calculational power. While classical computers only sum over just 0s and 1s, quantum computers sum over all quantum states between 0 and 1, which vastly increases the number of states and therefore their range and power.

Mind-body dualism ignores the close connection between mental and physical

Most religions are dualistic. They assume that something ethereal exists within us, or as us, that is separate and distinct from the physical body: mind, soul, spirit, divine energy, and such.

To which I say, maybe, since anything is possible. However, there's no convincing evidence that this ethereal something exists, with zero evidence that this something that can't be shown to exist has any observable effects.

Today I finished reading Ellen Langer's book, Mindfulness. In a final chapter, this Harvard psychologist has quite a bit to say about mind-body dualism, though not in a religious sense. She starts off by saying:

From earliest childhood we learn to see mind and body as separate and unquestionably to regard the body as more important. 

We learn that "sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you." If something is wrong with our bodies we go to one kind of doctor, while with a "mental problem" we go to another.

Long before we have any reason to question it, the split is ingrained into us in endless ways. It is one of our strongest mindsets, a dangerous premature cognitive commitment.

Later in the chapter, Langer talks about placebos, those supposedly inert substances that nonetheless often have substantial physical effects if a person believes they are effective (and sometimes even if that belief is lacking, an even more surprising effect).

When patients are given a placebo and then get well, the illness is considered to be "only psychological." (Here we see the old mind/body dualism, alive and well.) It is interesting that no one tests the effectiveness of active drugs by telling patients that "this is only a placebo." (Is this implicit recognition of the power of the mind to change the effect of the drug?)

...Placebo effects are real and powerful. Who is doing the healing when one takes a placebo? Why can't we just say to our minds, "repair this ailing body"? Why must we fool our minds in order to enlist our own powers of self-healing? 

Placebos, hypnosis, autosuggestion, faith healing, visualization, positive thinking, biofeedback are among the many ways we have learned to invoke these powers. Each can be seen as a device for changing mindsets, enabling us to move from an unhealthy to a healthy context.

The more we can learn about how to accomplish this mindfully and deliberately, rather than having to rely on these elaborate, indirect strategies, the more control we will gain over our own health.

Here's some of what Langer has to say about developing that sort of control.

Whenever we try to heal ourselves, and not abdicate this responsibility completely to doctors, each step is mindful.

For example, we question destructive categories of disease (such as the image of cancer as a death sentence). We welcome new information, whether from our bodies or from books. We look at our illness from more than a single perspective (the medical one). We work on changing contexts, whether it is a stressful workplace or a depressing rather than a positive view of the hospital.

Finally, the attempt to stay healthy rather than to be "made well" necessarily involves us with process rather than outcome.

...In a sense, we should be able to "take" a placebo instead of a pill. Conceiving of the mind and body as one means that wherever we put the mind, we may be able to put our bodies. Fo most of us, at present at least, the mind may have to be fooled to reach a healthy place. Once we learn to put it there consciously, the evidence suggests that the body may well follow.

In a book aptly titled New Bottles for New Wine, Julian Huxley quotes his grandfather, the great nineteenth-century scientist Thomas Huxley, on the subject of belief: "Everyone should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him. My faith is in human possibilities."

Me too. I much prefer faith in human possibilities to faith in divine/godly possibilities, for humans are clearly real.

The big bang shows the limits of human intuition

Almost everybody has heard about the big bang. That marked the beginning of our universe some 13.8 billion years ago, which has been expanding ever since.

But it is very difficult for most of us, me certainly included, to get a solid understanding of what the big bang really was. That's because our common sense intuitions of reality, which are founded in everyday experience, aren't of much help in domains of science such as quantum mechanics and big bang cosmology.

Religions appeal to those intuitions by making the creation of the universe into something our minds can easily grasp.

Like, that God stands outside the universe in His own heavenly realm and used his divine power to bring the universe into being in much the same way as a human artist would stand at an easel and create a painting on a canvas.

We can picture this in our minds. However, the big bang is very difficult to picture, since it is like nothing we're familiar with. So to grasp the big bang we have to embrace scientific knowledge, which is much better than religion or intuition/common sense when it comes to understanding reality.

In the December 31, 2022 issue of New Scientist the question was posed, "In which direction in the sky did the big bang take place 13.8 billion years ago?" The answers from scientifically-minded readers are illuminating.

The universe doesn't have a centre we can point towards. This is because the big bang wasn't a conventional explosion. If it were, you would be able to track the debris back to its origin and to a point in the sky. Instead, the big bang was the instant that both time and space were created.
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The abstract ideas that cosmology raises are often very difficult to intuit... Many years ago I discovered a lovely way to think about this inside a church in the Dee valley in Aberdeenshire, UK. The message said: "The Universe is a Circle whose Circumference is Nowhere and whose Centre is Everywhere." So the answer to the question is that the big bang happened in whichever direction you care to look. And you will never find its boundary.
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The big bang took place everywhere in the universe -- it was the universe. Hence, regardless of where you point, you always point in the direction of the big bang... Imagine you are an ant living on the surface of a huge balloon. For the ant, the surface is its entire universe. The inside or outside of the balloon can't be observed.

Now, imagine the balloon expanding. For the ant, there is no direction from which the expansion started, it is happening everywhere, in all directions. It is a bit like standing at the South Pole and trying to point in the direction of north. At the South Pole, all directions are north.

Regarding what the universe has been expanding into following the big bang, the answer is similar: nothing. Or rather, even less than nothing, if "nothing" is viewed as the absence of something, which isn't really correct when it comes to the big bang.

For the expansion of the universe is of space and time itself. So it isn't correct to view that expansion as akin to a balloon being inflated, for a balloon grows larger within already existing space. Instead, our universe is expanding. Period. It isn't expanding into anything. It is simply expanding.

I can't visualize this, because it is impossible to picture in any sort of familiar fashion. I suspect that only those comfortable with advanced mathematics can fathom how the big bang brings spacetime into being, yet didn't occur within spacetime.

Beware of ideologies, even though most of us embrace them

I enjoyed this recent comment on a churchless blog post from "sant64." There's valuable wisdom here. The first paragraph comes from what I said in the post.

"This makes sense in many situations. However, when it comes to solid facts, such as the reality of human-caused global warming, 'trying out different perspectives' isn't the right thing to do. In these sorts of cases, reality almost certainly is a certain way."

The proper perspective that jibes with "reality" is what? Believing that we're in the end-times because there's little hope we can reverse GW, or believing that GW is manageable and not the extinction-level event it's often characterized as? "Science" and "reality" aren't synonyms.

Unfortunately, we live in an age where many believe that scientific opinion is absolute truth. And perhaps just as many believe that scientific opinion is another term for propaganda. The best practice of mindfulness is like the best practice of science. Not looking for reasons why the party line in or outside one's head is right, but constantly observing how it is wrong.

What's being gotten at here, the way I read the comment, is that none of us, I'm pretty sure, is capable of achieving what I recall the detective on Dragnet, a TV show from my childhood (so a long time ago) was fond of saying: "Just the facts, ma'am."

Facts always are part of a certain worldview. They don't stand alone, though certainly some facts are more objectively true than others. As sant64 said, we have a party line that represents our political, religious, scientific, or other sort of leaning -- which could be called an ideology.

We like facts that support our favored ideology. We don't like facts that undermine our favored ideology. Usually. For it is possible, though rather difficult, to enjoy different perspectives, including as sant64 noted, observing how our party line or ideology is wrong.

Today I read a section in David Chapman's book about artificial intelligence, Better Without AI, that addressed the perils of ideologies. Here's some excerpts.

Ultimately, the problem is ideology as such. All ideologies are mistaken about many things, so each has to use underhanded tricks to blind you to realities that conflict with its narrative. However, with experience we've figured out how to keep the traditional ones mostly in check.

Most of the world has driven the nastier ones (absolutist religions and twentieth century totalitarianisms) to extinction. We've learned to live with the relatively benign ones, in part by stalemating them against each other. 

Almost all countries now employ mixtures of the better features of socialism and capitalism. That works reasonably well, confining conflict to comparatively minor aspects. 

...Everyone can examine their own relationship with ideology. Do you have an ideology? Or does an ideology have you. Do you "belong to" a political party or religious group? Maybe, if so, you are a slave, as the term implies. 

Ideology's trick is to convince you that it is True and Good, in absolute senses. Therefore, any evidence that contradicts the narrative can and must be ignored or explained away. Also, therefore, you are Good to the extent that you propagate the ideology (and Bad to the extent that you question it).

Mostly, nobody wants to get free from the ideology that owns them, because it constantly assures you that you are Good, so long you keep retweeting its messages. Everyone wants that cheap method for feeling morally adequate, and wants to avoid the painful shame of violating the sacred dictates.

That doesn't sound like you, of course. Your political opinions are just common sense, well thought out, and obviously true. You are entirely rational about specific issues. Not at all like the Bad Tribe, who are mysteriously possessed by an evil brain-eating quasi-religious fanaticism. If you sometimes make strong statements online, it's because their stuff must be stopped at all costs. 

I have mostly avoided naming examples of the new ideologies, because I expect a substantial fraction of readers are possessed by one or another of them. I've used QAnon as the example because I'm guessing few readers of this book are owned by it.

I suggest taking seriously the possibility that whatever ideology you are subject to appears similarly irrational and dangerous to anyone who isn't. I suggest considering what that may imply about that ideology, and about you -- not about its opponents.

The cultural assumption that everyone must "have" an ideology gives them much of their power. If you have any doubts about your ideology, you can reassure yourself that the alternatives are all vastly worse so switching is out of the question. Or, if your faith deteriorates sufficiently, you may switch after all -- and become a slave to Tweedledum rathe than Tweedledee.

You can free yourself entirely, if you realize you want to. I explain how, step by step, in "Vaster than ideology." You can turn the tables, and own ideologies instead. Many are useful for particular purposes in particular circumstances. You can recognize whatever actually is true and good in any of them.

Standing outside and above all ideologies, you can even see why so many adopt QAnon and sympathize. The current American ruling elites, both left and right, are pervasively mendacious, corrupt, self-serving, incompetent, and entrenched. They do need replacement. 

...The longer-run solution is broad cultural understanding that being a slave to any ideology is bad for you and everyone else. This observation is startlingly rare; nearly everyone assumes that you must belong to one. 

However, it's obvious once pointed out. Most people are also tired of ideological conflict, and understand that it's destructive; yet persist because the alternative seems to be surrendering to the Bad Tribe. I am optimistic that anti-ideological understanding could spread rapidly once it gets going.

I prefer the Eastern, rather than Western, approach to mindfulness

Since I enjoyed psychologist Ellen Langer's most recent book so much (The Mindful Body), I figured that I'd also enjoy what may have been her first book, or at least an early book, Mindfulness. 

Actually, not so much. As Langer says in a section called "Mindfulness East and West," she takes a decidedly Western approach to mindfulness.

The definitions of mindfulness in this chapter, especially the process orientation just discussed, will remind many readers of various concepts of mindfulness found in Eastern religion... While there are many similarities, the differences in the historical and cultural background from which they are derived, and the more elaborate methods, including meditation, through which a mindful state is said to be achieved in the Eastern traditions should make us cautious about drawing comparisons that are too tidy.

From what I've read so far in Mindfulness, which was first published in 1989 (I have the 2014 25th anniversary edition), I'd disagree that Eastern approaches to mindfulness are more elaborate than Langer's Western variety.

After all, mindfulness basically is just paying nonjudgmental attention to what's occurring in the present moment. That's pretty damn simple. The classic Buddhist approach to mindfulness in meditation is following the breath. Again, pretty damn simple.

When thoughts of past, present, or future arise, and are noticed, the attention is to be returned to the breath. Yes, Buddhism has an elaborate system of writings and practices that go far beyond attention to the present moment. But those aren't mindfulness. 

So I prefer my practice of mindfulness to be based on the simplicity of Eastern approaches. However, what Langer offers in her book is valuable, because she provides a conceptual or research underpinning to mindfulness. Langer notes that this is at odds with traditional Eastern teachings.

As an example of the semantic and philosophical tangles that arise if we try to compare Eastern and Western views of the mindful state, consider the activity of creating new categories. While this is a form of mindfulness in our definition, it appears to be in direct opposition to what one does during meditation.

In meditation, the mind becomes quieter and active thought is discouraged. In some forms of meditation, thoughts and images that come to mind are considered unimportant and are relinquished as one discerns their presence.

At the same time, in many Eastern views, the proper meditation techniques are said to result in a state that has been called de-automatization. In this state, old categories break down and the individual is no longer trapped by stereotypes. Such freedom from rigid distinctions is very similar to the mindfulness being described in this book.

True. That's why I'm enjoying certain parts of Mindfulness more than the overall approach, which is decidedly conceptual and research-based. For example, I like what Langer has to say in a section called "More Than One View." 

I aspire to the message of these passages, even though I readily admit that I'm attached to my own view and often find it difficult to take other views seriously, or even respectfully (especially when it comes to politics at odds with my liberal/progressive leaning).

Once we become mindfully aware of views other than our own, we start to realize that there are as many different views as there are different observers. Such awareness is potentially liberating.

For example, imagine that someone has just told you that you are rude. You thought you were being frank. If there is only one perspective, you can't both be right. But with an awareness of many perspectives, you could accept that you are both right and concentrate on whether your remarks had the effect that you actually wanted to produce.

...Every idea, person, or object is potentially simultaneously many things depending on the perspective from which it is viewed. A steer is steak to a rancher, a sacred object to a Hindu, and a collection of genes and proteins to a molecular biologist.

Good point.

My view of Langer's book is just one, my own. Everybody who reads Mindfulness will have a different response to it. Having just reminded myself of this, I'm going keep on reading the book with hopefully a mindset that is a bit more flexible.

Just because I prefer an Eastern approach to mindfulness doesn't mean I can't appreciate and value Langer's Western approach. As she says:

The consequences of trying out different perspectives are important. First, we gain more choice in how to respond. A single-minded label produces an automatic reaction, which reduces our options. Also, to understand that other people may not be so different allows us empathy and enlarges our range of responses. We are less likely to feel locked into a polarized struggle. 

This makes sense in many situations. However, when it comes to solid facts, such as the reality of human-caused global warming, "trying out different perspectives" isn't the right thing to do. In these sorts of cases, reality almost certainly is a certain way.

Sure, people can have valid individual responses to agreed-upon facts. But recognizing facts as facts seems as mindful to me as recognizing my inhale as breathing in and my exhale as breathing out. It's simply the way reality is at this moment.

My book made Shahid Kapoor into a vegetarian. Now he follows Radha Soami.

One of the people I follow on X, formerly known as Twitter, shared a post recently about Shahid Kapoor, a Bollywood actor in India, embracing the Radha Soami teachings that I followed for 35 years.

Below is one of the similar stories about this. It comes from The Indian Express. This interested me because Kapoor and I have a connection: a book I wrote turned him into a vegetarian. I'll describe this after the story.

In a chat with Quint Neon, Shahid was asked about an incident that shaped up his life, and he immediately spoke about the Radha Soami organisation. “It is my spiritual path. I always had a spiritual leaning. I always was very curious about life, about the source of life, about why we are here, what’s the point of it all, and I was very lost because I didn’t have any answers so I couldn’t make sense of anything,” he said.

Shahid continued, “I follow the Radha Soami path. I really connected with it, and I think that helped me set context to everything. I think that helped me understand things much better, understand myself better. And I think, amongst other things, like being an actor and being a parent, and being a child, I am actually on the quest of finding myself and my relationship with God.”

Shahid, in an earlier chat with Mid-day, opened up about sharing the same faith as his wife, Mira Rajput. “We do share a spiritual faith, but we met via family. We were aware of each other’s spiritual faith,” he said. Shahid and Mira lived with Mira’s parents in Punjab for two years during the pandemic. “We went and lived in Punjab for two years, with them for a few months, and on our own during Covid. So, I spent a lot of time with them… Her side of the family is very normal, and that’s something I cherish about them,” he said.

Shahid and Mira got married in 2015. They are parents to two children – Misha, 7, and Zayn, 5.

Regarding the first paragraph of the story, I too became an initiate of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) because I was looking for answers to the Big Questions of Life.

However, I came to the conclusion after those three and a half decades of being an active member of RSSB that while the organization did indeed have answers to some of the Big Questions, there wasn't any convincing evidence that those answers were more valid than any other answers.

So now I'm comfortable with the meaning I personally get from life, since the quest to find a universal meaning that applies to everybody seems doomed to failure. But I can totally understand why Shahid Kapoor is pleased with the Radha Soami teachings, since having meaning come ready-made from a spiritual group can be easier and more fulfilling (though not more valid) than finding meaning on one's own.

As to Kapoor becoming a vegetarian, I wrote about this in 2013 in "I changed a Bollywood actor's life... turning him vegetarian." The link in this post no longer works, but I just found the story that I quoted from on the DNAIndia site. Here's the story.

His father, who follows Radha Soami, had been preaching to him for years about the benefits of eating only what is grown in the farms, had no effect on him; but the book converted him.

A decade ago Shahid Kapoor turned vegetarian. He got on to a flight with a book Life Is Fair by Brian Hines (gifted to him by his father Pankaj Kapoor) and when he got off the flight, he never touched non-vegetarian food again. Such was the impact of the book that Shahid even wanted the women he dated to embrace his food habits...

His father, who follows Radha Soami, had been preaching to him for years about the benefits of eating only what is grown in the farms, had no effect on him; but the book converted him. It is written by an author for the Indian spiritual organisation, Radha Soami Satsang Beas and it is a karmic justification for vegetarianism. Strangely today, the author who changed the actor’s life does not believe in the same principles that he spouted then.

Hines, who now runs a a blog called Church of the Churchless, says, “Today, I don’t look upon karma and reincarnation as I did thirteen years ago. The only thing I can be certain about is that from this moment until the day I die, I’m not going to be absolutely certain about anything. But here’s the thing: I changed. And I’m still changing. As are we all. Thankfully. Because change only stops when we’re dead. Until then, living leads us in largely unpredictable ways. I’m glad I wrote the book. It pleases me to think that some people have become vegetarians as a result of reading it, or were strengthened in their commitment to remain meatless. Likewise, writing Life is Fair meant a lot to me. I agree that some parts of the book aren’t scientifically defensible. I’d write it differently today, but yesterday isn’t today.”

When asked if  Hines still subscribes to vegetarianism, he says, “Well, I no longer believe that reincarnation, and karma, that extends over multiple lives, is the best reason to be a vegetarian. However, there is plenty of scientific evidence, along with ethical arguments, for not eating animals. I still stand 100% behind these reasons for being a vegetarian. These really, are the main points I made in Life is Fair; killing and eating animals for food creates negative health effects for people and (obviously) negative effects for the animals who have been killed and eaten.”

When told that a leading Indian actor turned vegetarian after reading the book, he says, “I’m pleased that my book had an effect on Shahid. Since this book was written as seva, I didn’t get any payment from writing it other than the satisfaction of feeling that some people may have been encouraged to become vegetarians.”

"God" is a concept with no substance behind it

There's several ways of believing in God.

I suspect that most people who profess a belief in God really mean "I believe in believing about God." Meaning, they really are unsure that God exists, but for a variety of reasons they consider that it's a good idea to believe in God, so they do it.

Some of those reasons could be: family pressure, cultural expectation, fear of death, benefit of being part of a religious community. 

The reason I say this is that looking back at the 35 years I spent as a believer, Eastern religion variety, I'm pretty sure I never actually believed in God. Instead, God was a hypothesis to me, a possibility not a certainty. Or even a high probability.

After all, if someone is committed to evidence, reason, and science (I sure am), it's very difficult, if not impossible, to combine those values with a belief in God. 

For there's no demonstrable evidence of God; there's no convincing reasons why God exists; there's no scientific method for confirming the existence of God. So while God can't be ruled out as possibly being part of reality -- nothing can -- God falls in the same category as fairies: a pleasant concept with no substance behind it.

In the February 12 and 19 issue of The New Yorker there's a review of a new book about Baruch Spinoza, who wrote in the 1600s about a conception of God that appealed to Albert Einstein in the 20th century. Einstein said:

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."

But the references to "himself" in this quotation doesn't really fit with how Spinoza looked upon God. Here's some passages from The New Yorker article, "The Reticent Radical." (Online title: "Baruch Spinoza and the Art of Thinking in Dangerous Times.")

At the center of Spinoza’s thought is a new way of understanding God. Indeed, his God was so different from the one worshipped in churches and synagogues that almost everyone who read him believed he was an atheist. But Spinoza indignantly rejected the charge of atheism, and nowhere in the “Ethics” does he deny the existence of God.

What he denies is that God exists as a being or intelligence separate from the rest of the universe, as he is conceived of in Judaism and Christianity. Spinoza’s argument is disconcertingly simple. God is “a being absolutely infinite,” and the idea of infinity “involves no negation”: it would be contradictory to say that there is some quality an infinite being does not possess or some space it does not occupy.

It is therefore impossible for God to be somewhere—up in Heaven, perhaps—but not here, where we are. If God exists, then he must be absolutely everywhere; not even our own bodies and minds can be separate from him. As Proposition XV of the “Ethics” famously states, “Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.”

This idea is known as pantheism, from the Greek for “all” and “God.” One way of looking at pantheism is that it brings us closer to God than conventional religious belief ever could; in the nineteenth century, Romantic writers considered Spinoza a “God-intoxicated man.”

But, if there is no difference or distance between God and the rest of the universe, then he cannot do any of the things that we ordinarily think of God as doing: hearing prayers, working miracles, creating the world with a “Let there be light.”

Really, there is no compelling reason to call Spinoza’s infinite substance God in the first place. We might as well call it Being, or Everything, or Nature. In Part IV of the “Ethics,” Spinoza refers to “the eternal and infinite Being, which we call God or Nature”—in Latin, Deus sive natura.

In closing the gap between humanity, God, and nature, Spinoza also does away with any space for free will. The infinite substance that is God appears to be constantly changing, yet always in accordance with what Spinoza calls “the necessity of his nature,” or what a scientist would call natural laws.

The ancient Greek engineer Archimedes said that with a lever and a place to stand he could move the Earth, but in Spinoza’s universe there is no place outside nature where we can stand in order to exert force on it, since we ourselves are part of nature.

Thus Spinoza essentially flipped the traditional conception of God completely around, but arrived at the same place in regard to God's existence.

For the traditional conception of God has no substance behind it, no reality, no actuality separate from the mind of the believer in "God."

And Spinoza's conception of God also has no substance behind it, no reality, no actuality separate from the mind of the believer in "God." For as the book review says, if God is viewed as everything in existence, then God doesn't exist as any sort of distinct entity.

How could everything contain a thing that is both everything and itself? If it's everything, it isn't a thing. If it is itself, it isn't everything.

So as the reviewer notes, there's no compelling reason to call Spinoza's infinite substance "God." Being, Everything, or Nature would do just fine. This seems to point to Spinoza as one of those who believe in believing in God, rather than holding an actual belief in God.

The article gives some reasons Spinoza would have done this. Notably, even though burning at the stake wasn't a punishment for heretics/atheists in the 1600's in the Netherlands, there was still significant risk if you were branded as a religious unbeliever.

Spinoza, knowing this, took the route of believing in a God who wasn't at all like the Judeo-Christian God, yet still was named in his writings as "God" even though there was no substance behind this name.

Meditation isn't about doing it right. It's about trusting yourself.

TIME magazine rarely has stories about meditation. So it was a pleasure to turn a page of the February 12, 2024 issue and see a title: "The noises in my head at a silent retreat."

I could relate to those words. For after starting to meditate every day in 1971, during the past fifty-three years my meditation has involved a lot of noises inside my own head. 

Thoughts. Emotions. Cravings. Things to do. Cosmic conceptions. Crude desires.

You know, everything that's going through my mind outside of meditation. It's just more obvious when I'm sitting still, usually with eyes closed, doing whatever sort of practice appeals to me that day. 

The online version of the TIME story also has a good title: "How I Learned to Speak My Truth at a Silent Retreat." Here's a PDF file if that link doesn't work for you.
Download How I Learned to Speak My Truth at a Silent Retreat | TIME

Dorie Chevlen's description of the retreat made me realize why I've never wanted to go on a 10-day Vipassana meditation session.

So off I went, first to Chicago, then the middle of seemingly nowhere, for the retreat. I signed away my wallet and cellphone; I listened to the rules: No speaking, no eye contact, no physical contact, no drugs or alcohol, no sex or masturbation, no technology, and (scariest to me) no writing. I felt like screaming, but I trusted my boyfriend more than my own instincts; if this was good for him, this will be good for me, I assured my racing heart.

Had I bothered researching Vipassana prior to attending one, I would have read plenty about the hours. We awoke at 4 a.m. each day to make it to our first meditation by 4:30 a.m. After two hours of that, we’d congregate for our 6:30 a.m. breakfast. Then a brief break. Then more meditation. Lunch. A break. More meditation. Tea. More meditation. Then a viewing of a taped lecture by an esteemed teacher of the practice. More meditation. Then bedtime to prepare to wake up and do it all again.

That sounds ghastly to me, though I know many people enjoy retreats of this sort. It just strikes me as unduly structured and artificial. Shouldn't meditation be aimed at helping us navigate life as it usually is, not as how life is lived during a rare Vipassana retreat? 

(Vipassana basically is meditation based on Buddhist mindfulness principles.)

Initially, Chevlen doesn't do well with her meditation, or other aspects of the retreat.

In our nightly lectures, the teacher encouraged us not to think while meditating, and when a thought inevitably did cross our minds, to pass it aside without judgment. I floundered at this initially. Unintentionally, I’d screen entire films in my head (mostly M. Night Shyamalan, because even my subconscious has no taste), and analyze years-old interactions.

Constantly, helplessly, my mind kept replaying “Closing Time,” for which, unfortunately, I didn’t know all the lyrics. The result was a horrible mental performance in which Cohen would croon “And the bupbupbupbup dun-dun and the ladadadada and the Johnny Walker wisdom runnin’ high,” Plus, the campus’s picturesque geese were in the midst of mating season, so Cohen’s half-wrong lyrics were punctuated by the honking of fornicating waterfowl.

What I mean is meditating was difficult for me. But so was the time spent not meditating. Have you ever heard a cafeteria full of people eating in silence? An entire room echoing with the sound of conversation-less human mastication—all wet chewing and slippery gulps, suppressed belches and scraping silverware. 

But after a few days, she did better.

To my relief, meditating became easier, slowly, as the first days of the course passed. Whereas initially I couldn’t sit for five minutes without needing to shift my hips, I found myself still for longer and longer stretches of time. My hummingbird brain, too, slowed its vibrations; my thoughts still fluttered, but I could go stretches of time before they pulled me away. And yet, I still fantasized about leaving. Yes, I can sit here and not think, but what is the point, my mind demanded. “Run,” it urged. “Run!”

Chevlen ends up running, leaving the retreat after a few additional days. Her boyfriend was disappointed. So was she. Eventually, though, she realized that she also needed to run from the relationship with her boyfriend.

I considered leaving the life we’d built. But I didn’t. Not at first. I spent a few more months unhappy; I was sure, more so now than ever, that there had to be something wrong with me. I couldn’t meditate right. I couldn’t love right. Was there anything right about me?

Eventually, my fast-expanding misery burst like a balloon in my mouth. Pop!  “This isn’t working.” The words felt like poetry on my lips. My boyfriend helped pack up my stuff and drove me to the airport. This lovely man, with real sheets on his bed and the generosity to schlep me all the way to O’Hare International Airport—I was leaving him?

My intuition shouted to be heard over reason and though I thought it would break me, I hugged him goodbye and walked away. My legs nearly collapsed with relief on arrival. I was in the wrong place, with the wrong people, doing the wrong things, yes, but I wasn’t wrong. That toilet was probably busted before I ever used it [at the retreat, where she had to deal with a clogged toilet].

Her final paragraphs appealed to me. It mirrors, in a way, how I felt when I trusted myself and ran from the India-based religious organization that I'd belonged to for 35 years. It was a difficult decision, but I embraced the notion that after practicing a form of spirituality that involved a lot of rules, commandments, dos and don'ts, it was time to relax into a less rigid approach to life.

I’d love to say I’ve followed my instincts since then, but trust is a muscle, like any other; it only grows with pain and repetition. So I kept writing, even though it seemed doomed. I moved to New York, then I moved to LA. I got rejected; I got published; usually I got ignored. I fell in love and fell out of love and fell in love all over again.

I made a lot of mistakes, is what I mean. But they were my mistakes, at least; made from listening to my own inner voice, a voice which sometimes stuttered or misspoke or vocal-fried, but always rung true as my own. I made a lot of mistakes. But slowly, I started trusting that I could fix them. Even better, I could learn from them.

I didn’t finish the meditation course my ex-boyfriend recommended, but I sometimes still try to meditate. I’ll sit for 20 minutes and try to focus on my breath, on nothing else but just being, until my alarm goes off. I’m still not sure I’m doing it right. But I trust, now, that I don’t have to.

Pain is a good example of how mind and body are united

I'm intimately familiar with pain.

All of us are, of course, since everyone experiences pain -- aside from the unfortunate people who don't feel it at all, which isn't a good thing, because they usually suffer serious injuries or even death from not recognizing when something is dangerous, like a fire burning their skin.

Often pain becomes a more familiar companion the older we get. That's true of me. I was mostly pain free until early in 2020 when, at the age of 71, I developed sciatica in my right leg. 

Because this coincided with the beginning of the Covid pandemic in the United States, I wasn't able to get an MRI even though the pain was excruciating much of the time. I was determined to go for a lengthy walk around our rural neighborhood every day with our dog, since walking was supposed to be a good thing to do if someone had sciatica.

There were quite a few times when I'd cry for most of the walk, the pain was so severe. Ditto when I mowed our lawn with a walk-behind mower. I did it, but with a lot of tears. 

The sciatica pain eventually was markedly reduced, thanks to physical therapy and time. However, it's always been with me whenever I'm on my feet. I just have learned to tolerate or tune out the pain. For about the past six weeks the pain has been quite a bit worse, which led to me starting another round of physical therapy where I've gotten additional exercises to do several times a day.

My problem is that I'm not bad enough off to justify spinal surgery (the most frequent cause of sciatica is a bulging disk).

I might be able to get a MRI after I complete five physical therapy visits, but that depends on my insurance company. Cortisone injections in the spine are a possibility, though a MRI is needed to target their location.

So basically I've got sufficient pain to make it really annoying, yet not enough pain to justify a surgical or medical procedure. For the moment, I'm left with what I've been doing for the past four years: handling the pain as best I can with minimal outside help aside from physical therapy and pain patches at bedtime offered by SalonPas and BioFreeze.

Today I had a physical therapy appointment where I talked about the mental side of pain with Amanda, an experienced physical therapist who was familiar with the book I've been writing about recently, Ellen Langer's The Mindful Body.

Amanda agrees with Langer that every mental activity affects the body, and every bodily activity affects the mind. As an example of this, I told Amanda that even though my leg is hurting when I go to exercise at a gym three times a week, it doesn't bother me too much, because I'm focused on physical activity -- 30 minutes on an elliptical trainer, 20 minutes of lifting weights, 10-15 minutes of solitary Tai Chi.

However, twice a week, after the gym sessions I go to a Tai Chi class in downtown Salem at Pacific Martial Arts, where I've studied both hardstyle (karate) and softstyle (Tai Chi) practices for about 23 years.

Then I feel the pain in my leg considerably more. One reason seems to be that Tai Chi involves a lot of standing still along with slow movements that, when I have to put all my weight on my right/sciatica leg, is quite painful. 

A larger reason, though, is that I feel trapped in a way during the 90 minute class. Sure, I could go sit down and watch for a while if the pain was too intense, but I have never done this and don't want to do it, if at all possible. So there I am, me and my leg pain, with my mental focus much more on the pain, as contrasted with how I am at the gym, where I'm doing different things and control that doing.

Thus my experience is that while pain is undeniably physical, it also has a strong mental component. Meaning, the sort of attention I give to pain, along with my attitude toward pain, has an effect on how much pain I feel. 

(Pain is an interesting medical phenomenon, since it is entirely subjective, while usually having a physical aspect to it, one exception being "phantom limb" pain where someone feels pain from an arm or leg that has been amputated.)

I liked Langer's most recent book so much, I ordered one of her early books, Mindfulness, the 25th anniversary edition. I've only read a few pages, but saw in the index some mentions of pain. This quotation from William James, the noted psychologist of the late 1800s, mirrors what I've said above about how I experience pain.

The effect of context on pain has been known for a long time. In The Principles of Psychology, William James describes a Dr. Carpenter who suffered severe neuralgia:

He has frequently begun a lecture while suffering neuralgic pain so severe as to make him apprehend that he would find it impossible to proceed; yet no sooner has he by a determined effort fairly launched himself into the stream of thought, than he has found himself continuously borne along without the least distraction, until the end had come, and the attention had been released; then the pain has recurred with a force that has overmastered all resistance making him wonder how he could have ceased to feel it.

When one can take one's mind off pain, it seems to go away. Conversely, when the mind returns to pain, so does the body. If one can reinterpret a painful stimulus, it may cease to be painful.

Well, that'd be wonderful. I just haven't been able to do it.

However, as I said, I find myself able to lessen my sciatica pain by focusing on something other than my painful right leg. I recall that when I went on those super-painful dog walks around our neighborhood in 2020, tears welling up in my eyes, if I encountered someone else on the road, I was able to exchange some friendly greetings with them just fine. 

This shows the power of the mind. It can make painful things better, or pleasant things worse, depending on how we view those things and the meaning we ascribe to them.

Religion and mysticism are nothing other than the placebo effect

We've all heard about placebos. You know, those inactive substances, such as sugar pills, that are used as controls in research designed to determine whether a genuine drug has positive bodily effects. 

Most of us also are familiar with the frequent finding that placebos turn out to be as effective as genuine drugs, or even surgical procedures. This is perplexing if we assume that the mind and body are separate entities.

But not at all perplexing given the obvious fact that the mind is the brain in action, and the brain is an organ of the body. So if someone believes that a placebo will benefit them in some physical way, that's one part of the body -- the mind/brain -- affecting another part of the body, such as pain receptors.

In her book, The Mindful Body, psychologist Ellen Langer speaks about the fallacy of mind-body dualism. That's been part of our worldview for thousands of years, in both Western (think Descartes) and Eastern (think Hinduism) forms.

Langer writes:

Any change is virtually simultaneously occurring in every cell of our bodies. If I lift my arm, there are differences in my brain from before I lifted it. If I have a thought about my dog, my brain has changed from before the thought. 

Rather than assume that while our minds are engaged, our physiology is inactive, or vice versa, seeing it as one implies that thought and bodily responses occur simultaneously. One might ask, "If I lose a limb or weight, does that mean I lose part of my mind?"

The argument is mind-body unity, not mind-body equality; your mind is certainly affected by your lost limb or change in weight, it's just not one-for one. One might also ask, "If my mind keeps changing, does that mean my body does so as well." The simple answer is yes. The body regenerates all the time.

So again, recognizing the truth of mind-body unity makes it easy to understand how placebos can be so effective. 

Whether people are given sugar pills, saline injections, or sham surgery, when someone believes the treatment will produce a cure, a cure often follows. Among the more striking examples is one in which the patient was told ipecac would stop vomiting and it did stop vomiting, even though ipecac is a medication that induces vomiting. 

Langer describes many other examples of placebo research conducted by her team at Harvard and other investigators. She notes that even when pills are labeled as a placebo, they still have a positive effect: "I believe this shows that as long as patients are induced to have positive expectations, an open-label placebo approach should work."

Reading about placebos in Langer's book this morning got me to thinking about how supposed supernatural experiences are almost certainly another manifestation of the placebo effect.

Of course, with rare exceptions religions and mystical practices don't openly say, "What we're offering doesn't have any proven ability to experience supernatural phenomena, but if you believe they do, there's a good chance you'll have that sort of experience."

In other words, as Langer said, there's plenty of research showing that positive expectations lead to the expected result, even if there's no direct causal connection between what someone is doing -- like meditating -- and a result -- like seeing divine light, hearing divine sound, or otherwise experiencing the presence of a divine being such as God.

A Christian fervently believes that the Bible is true. Jesus is the Son of God sent by Heavenly Father to save souls and take them to heaven. That belief can easily lead the Christian to feel that Jesus is a living presence. They sense Jesus guiding them, loving them, protecting them. 

Jesus isn't actually there. But the benefit they derive from this religious placebo effect is as genuine as if Jesus truly was a force in their life. That's wonderful, even though in no way does it prove that God, heaven, and such are objectively real. They're simply subjective perceptions brought into being by fervent belief.

Or to offer another example from my own brand of religiosity, Eastern mysticism variety, that I embraced for thirty-five years: a guru is believed to be God in Human Form, a divine being who places his supernatural form in the consciousness of a disciple at the time of initiation. 

If this belief is strong enough, and persistent enough, a disciple of the guru may have a vision of the guru, either during meditation or at some other moment. This supernatural vision can seem absolutely real, in the same sense as a sham surgery can cause a patient's knee pain to go away just as a genuine surgery would have.

Placebos work because the human mind is a powerful force. It's absurd to discount placebos by saying, "They're just in the mind." Actually, everything is in the mind. Without a mind, without consciousness, we can't experience anything. 

So I'm not discounting the value of placebos, whether of a religious nature or otherwise. I use them all the time. A physical therapist told me recently that the SalonPas and Biofreeze patches I've been putting on my right leg and butt to relieve sciatica pain during sleep don't do very much, if anything, given the nature of nerve pain.

Okay. I accept that. And I still use the patches. I visualize them reducing pain. I expect they'll reduce pain. I realize that my belief may not be founded in actual fact. That doesn't matter to me. What matters is that I feel a benefit from the patches. 

That's the beauty of placebos. They work because we believe they will. 

 

 

 

In Daniel Dennett vs. Robert Sapolsky debate, Sapolsky clearly won

Hey, it's been a while since I've written a post about free will, or rather, the lack thereof. Obviously the universe determined that I take a break from one of my favorite subjects.

Not a complete break, though.

For during my daily at-home exercise routine, I've been listening to a debate between Robert Sapolsky, who wrote the recent instant-classic book Determined that persuasively argues why free will is an illusion, and Daniel Dennett, a philosopher who is noted for his view that while determinism guides the world, free will still exists.

Here's the You Tube video of their debate. To my mind, Sapolsky kicked Dennett's butt, metaphorically speaking. 

It really was an unfair contest, because Dennett is firmly in the compatibilist camp where most philosophers (as opposed to scientists like Sapolsky) hang out. Compatibilism, as the name implies, holds that while our thoughts, actions, emotions, and such are indeed determined, somehow we humans still possess free will. 

This seems to me, along with Sam Harris, Sapolsky, and other deniers of free will, to be a spectacularly nonsensical position. For it hinges on redefining "free will" to be something other than most people view it as.

Namely, a will that is free. Duh. 

Over and over, Dennett kept saying that, yes, Sapolsky is correct in saying that deterministic causes control what we do, think, and feel. Yet supposedly we humans have free will because those of us with normally functioning brains/minds are able to choose between various alternatives by considering the pros and cons of those alternatives, eventually selecting one that seems to be the best.

And over and over, Sapolsky kept saying that, yes, of course we humans are able to choose between alternatives. But that isn't free will, because we aren't able to choose our values, our preferences, our ways of looking upon the world that underlie all that other choosing. 

Sapolsky would say to Dennett, how did you become the sort of person who is thoughtful, reasonable, interested in carefully looking at various ways of acting, thinking, and feeling, which enables you to exercise the sort of free will that you believe you have?

It was your genes, your upbringing, your culture, your experiences, your education, your circumstances -- everything that has made you the person you are today. Absent all that, you might have become an impulsive drug addict instead of a famous professor and philosopher who carefully chooses between alternatives.

Watching the debate was like seeing two ships pass in the night. Or more accurately, one ship, Dennett's, was incapable of recognizing the other ship, Sapolsky, while it was evident that Sapolsky understood Dennett's position much more clearly than Dennett understood Sapolsky's position.

Both men got snippy and sarcastic toward the other. However, I feel that Dennett behaved considerably worse than Sapolsky. Dennett would make a ridiculous statement along the lines of, "Robert, you can't admit that you're wrong because you don't believe that people can change, they're just subject to the deterministic laws of physics."

That isn't at all what Sapolsky argues in his book. Of course, people change. That's the nature of determinism: causes produce effects, which become causes of further effects. As he told Dennett repeatedly, there simply is no crack, no crevice, in the workings of the world that allows for free will.

Yet obviously changes are continuously happening to everything in the world, animate or inanimate. At every turn, Sapolsky demonstrated the weakness, even vacuousness, of Dennett's brand of compatibilism. 

Dennett couldn't recognize that, not surprisingly. But I sure could.

Two examples of religious dogmatism from here in Oregon

Today the Portland Oregonian, our state's largest newspaper, had two stories side-by-side about Republican lawmakers acting like the Christian dogmatists that they are.

It's amazing, speaking as an atheist, how religious believers can be so hateful and prejudiced toward people who aren't like them.

I'd never say that Christians shouldn't serve in an elected office. I'd also never say that an entire group -- in this case the LGBTQ community -- supported child abuse and pedophilia. But that's exactly what the Republican lawmakers said. 

That's shameful. Unfortunately, I strongly suspect that enough of their conservative constituencies will like what they said, rather than viewing it as what it is: abhorrent. 

I've boldfaced the parts of the stories that outraged me the most.

A Republican Oregon lawmaker has suggested “you don’t want” Muslims, atheists and other non-Christians to serve in elected office.

Rep. E. Werner Reschke, of the small town of Malin near the California border, made the comments in a Jan. 17 appearance on “Save the Nation,” a talk show streamed on Facebook that is affiliated with the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported Monday. Reschke is a member of the association.

The show’s host, former Arkansas lawmaker Jason Rapert, for much of the episode asked Reschke about what he called the “sad reality of the lax treatment of drugs” in Oregon. Reschke said drug decriminalization “makes our state unlivable,” and argued that spirituality and church leaders are part of the solution.

Last week, Oregon Democratic lawmakers introduced a new bill that would undo a key part of the state’s first-in-the-nation drug decriminalization law, a recognition that public opinion has soured on it amid a fentanyl-fueled overdose crisis deadlier than any the U.S. has ever seen.

During the interview, Rapert also asked why Reschke feels it is important that Christians “be involved in government.”

“You go back in history, and you look at men and the struggles that they faced, and the faith that they had,” Reschke said. “Those are the types of people you want in government making tough decisions at tough times. You don’t want a materialist. You don’t want an atheist. You don’t want a Muslim. … You want somebody who understands what truth is, and understands the nature of man, the nature of government and the nature of God.”

The remarks prompted the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin nonprofit organization that advocates keeping religion out of governance, to call for Reschke to apologize to people in his legislative district or to resign. The group sent Reschke a letter last week saying his duty is to support the state and federal constitutions and not to promote his personal religious views.

Reschke told Oregon Public Broadcasting in an email that his comments had been “grossly taken out of context.” But when asked for more specifics about what he meant to say, Reschke did not respond.

Muslim state Sen. Kayse Jama, a Portland Democrat, told the public radio station that he was “disheartened to see one of my legislative colleagues express views contrary to American values, the U.S. Constitution, and our collective aspiration of building a more perfect union. Our ability to live and work with our fellow Oregonians who speak different languages, pray or vote different ways, celebrate different cultures is our strength.”

Here's the other story.

The newest member of the Oregon House of Representatives claimed supporting LGBTQ+ people was akin to supporting child abuse and accused drag queens of pedophilia in months-old posts on his campaign website.

Dwayne Yunker, a real estate broker and city councilor from Grants Pass, was appointed in December to finish the term of former Rep. Lily Morgan, who resigned to become the city manager of Gold Hill. Yunker was already planning to challenge Morgan in the Republican primary, arguing she wasn’t conservative enough for the southern Oregon district.

Yunker’s campaign website includes a post from last August titled “No to Gay Pride Month,” explaining his decision to skip the beginning of a Grants Pass City Council meeting to protest a proclamation about June as Pride Month. He was a member of the council at the time.

Yunker’s campaign post included claims that drag queens are pedophiles and events including family friendly drag shows or drag queen story hours are attempts to make pedophilia seem acceptable. He further declared that supporting Pride Month was akin to supporting child abuse. “It is shocking that any adult would endorse this child abuse,” he wrote.

Yunker expounded on his objections in a subsequent post, titled “Shouldn’t Christians avoid politics?” In it, Yunker wrote that he considered a statement in the resolution that LGBTQ+ people face persecution to be spurious. And he claimed LGBTQ+ people, who he referred to as “the ever-expanding alphabet movement,” discriminated against Christians.

“We cannot sit out afraid someone might call us right wing, homophonic (sic), or even Christian Nationalists,” he wrote.

Kyndall Mason, executive director of Basic Rights Oregon, called Yunker’s promotion of false ideas dangerous.

“The uninformed, hateful and false ideas written in Rep. Yunker’s blog posts are deeply dangerous, and will direct more hate to these constituents and all trans and queer Oregonians,” Mason said.

Yunker didn’t respond to a call or email from the Capital Chronicle on Tuesday.

House Minority Leader Jeff Helfrich, R-Hood River, defended Yunker’s right to express himself.

“While it may be hard for some leftists in Portland to understand this, many Oregonians — including members of the LGBTQ community — do not want children exposed to hyper-sexualized material that they are not developmentally able to understand,” Helfrich said in a statement. “Elected officials have every right to voice those concerns on behalf of the districts that they represent.”

Mason said in a statement that Yunker’s job requires him to serve all his constituents, including the LGBTQ+ Oregonians in his district.