a couple of random thoughts and pictures

[asakiyume]

I heard a quote last week from Lynn Margulis, of Gaia Theory fame: "Life is matter that chooses." My immediate reaction was that I liked it ... but then I started having doubts. It's appealing, but what does "choose" mean? If a single-celled organism moves toward light or engulfs a food particle or away from a predator, is that a choice? In what sense is it a choice? How is it different from a shadow's movement across the ground in response to the movement of the sun earth around the sun? For that matter, how is it different from the earth's own movement, or the sun's? Or if those things are too physical, then how is the single-celled organism's action more choice-y than a chemical reaction like rust forming on metal?

Maybe I'm too pedestrian a thinker in this case, but to me choice involves weighing alternatives, and while some things that are alive do weigh alternatives, I think it's a stretch to say all living things do, so I don't think this formulation really can be used to define life.

Completely unrelatedly, it hit me at 5:45 this morning that there's a good reason that various flavors of Christianity (maybe all of them?) tell people to imitate Jesus and not God, and it has entirely to do with the fact that on the face of things Jesus was just a person walking around doing person things--despite the central tenet of the faith that emphatically says we have to erase the "just" from the previous clause. You could say imitate the Dalai Lama or Nelson Mandela or Greta Thunberg or anyone else who's admired, and the effect is the same--you're picking a fellow human who's setting a good example for you in some way. But if you decide to imitate God/a divinity, then you and those around you are in for a world of trouble. (I mean, possibly you'll/they'll be in for that anyway, depending on the human you decide to choose as your model, but it's a guarantee if you take it into your head to imitate a deity.)

Last, a couple of pictures. I probably (most assuredly) won't do all of Inktober, but here's Day 1: "ring"



And here is some pointful stencil graffiti from Keene, NH, where we were this past weekend because Wakanomori was running a marathon

Comments

[csecooney]

I love this, and I love that you might do Inktober but not all of it. And "choice" is tricky. Because so much (though not all) has to do with where one was raised, and by whom, and how--and so many (but not all) choices spring from a history we barely remember, starting in a womb we did not choose.

[asakiyume]

Hi there you!! Nice to see you! (I do see you around the interwebs, but it's nice to see you here.)

It's so true that how we choose (and what we get to choose) depends on things beyond our control. In whatever our limited frame is, though, and given those limitations, we do still get to choose some things--even if only whether to tip our head up to look at the sky or sideways to look at the person next to us, or down at the ground. I think some people do argue that even those choices aren't freely made, but I'd say at least we have the *impression* that they're free.

[minoanmiss]

Oh well replied to an excellent post!

[asakiyume]

:-)

[missroserose]

I was reading a fascinating book on neurology (Sam Kean's The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons) that talked about some recent research that's being done with MRI machines, studying the concept of free will. And it turns out that, for all that we trumpet our ability to respond however we want to a stimulus, the biology paints a somewhat murkier picture—the evidence we've collected indicates that, when asked to make a choice, most of the time our brain patterns indicate that we've already made a choice, i.e. our hindbrain sends a signal along a discrete pathway full seconds before our forebrain catches up and we consciously think "I choose this". Which, of course, brings heavily into question whether we have "free will" at all.

There's an interesting wrinkle, though. Because when asked to make a different choice than they might usually make, the subjects still had the same signal fire in their brains along the usual pathway—but their forebrain put a stop to it, and instead sent it along a different path. I thought Kean put it very cleverly: "We might not exactly have free will, but we appear to have free won't." And it makes sense, really—there's so much information coming at us at any given moment in life that if we took the time to weigh all the factors make conscious decisions about how to react to each and every bit of it we'd be paralyzed (a la Chidi Anagonye). We need that autopilot to react to most of what we take in so that we have the available energy to focus on the important decisions.

Even more interestingly, it was not long after that I was reading a book on yoga philosophy, which was discussing the popularly misunderstood concept of karma: people think of it as a tit-for-tat kind of universal scale-balancing, when in fact it's almost exactly this idea—the culmination of our proclivities and environment and habits and past experiences, which all contribute to our tendency to make decisions one way or the other. But we always have that ability to break the cycle of karma, to stop and say "no, this habit isn't good for me, I'm going to do this other thing instead". And it takes time and practice and consistent effort (and this is why meditation and mindfulness practices are so helpful, because they help us practice paying attention to and thus expanding that space where we take unconscious choices and make them conscious), but we can reprogram ourselves to eventually make the better choices our first, subconscious thought.

[asakiyume]

I've been thinking of Chidi A LOT recently because I feel like I've fallen victim to the same agonizing indecision regarding moral choices, at least in the context of the jail. Just this morning I was thinking that in many circumstances you're just not going to be able to know for sure which choice is best, and often the very worst thing you can do is just freeze.

Sometimes there aren't good choices, or your heuristics for choosing (the autopilot you're referring to, or other shortcuts we may have) are in conflict. So you have to pick something and then work at making it work until it becomes very clear to you that it was a bad choice, and then you accept that and chose differently.

SO.
HARD.

[missroserose]

oh man do I feel you on this. Especially in the case of something like our prison system, I can only imagine how complicated it must get.

*hug*

[mallorys_camera]

You know you might like Barbara Ehrenreich's Natural Causes as she spends several chapters talking about how microphages and a few other human body cell types demonstrate behaviors that seem very much like "choice" at the microscopic level. She's no woo-woo gal; she has a PhD in cellular microbiology, so her thoughts are provocative but informed.

She also talks most interestingly about how the concept of "self" is a post-Enlightenment invention that coincided with the popularization of glass mirrors. 😀

[asakiyume]

And maybe it is choice! I probably should look at how she and others are using the word in their contexts. I can accept that we can use the word one way in the context of life-as-lived-as-a-human and in another way when we're talking about microorganisms. As I say, I liked the initial quote.

And yeah, plenty of people in plenty of times and places got or get along marvelously without the individualistic sense of self that's popular in the United States, much of Europe, and much of the Anglosphere.

[mallorys_camera]

I suppose they do. It's kind of a revolutionary thought to me because I'm such a flag-waving individualistic self fangirl. 😀

[sartorias]

Yeah, not so sure that "choice" is even relevant, though it does sound nice==as most sound bites do--on first reading.

[asakiyume]

Yeah, it was an attractive sound bite that seemed unsubstantiated when I thought about it. There may be some way that a single-celled organism's actions are analogous to choice, but it can't be choice the way humans choose. Maybe what people like Lynn Margulis really are saying is that people's choices--which we think can be these really fraught and complicated things--are really more like the single-celled organism's "choices," i.e., largely compelled by and in reaction to circumstances. But even that, I'd argue with (see reply to CSE Cooney above). But there also may well be more to it than I'm aware of--I'd have to read some actual stuff about microorganisms' choices to decide.

[sovay]

Yeah, it was an attractive sound bite that seemed unsubstantiated when I thought about it.

It felt a bit as though "choice" was standing in for "soul."

[asakiyume]

Yes!

[sovay]

Or if those things are too physical, then how is the single-celled organism's action more choice-y than a chemical reaction like rust forming on metal?

I flashed suddenly on The Far Side:



I like your Inktober ring.

[asakiyume]

The Far Side was one I hadn't seen--I laughed out loud.

[osprey_archer]

That inktober mushroom ring! Gorgeous. It looks like an illustration from a lovely old children's book.

[asakiyume]

:D :D :D

[amaebi]

Even though most of what I want to say about consciousness and choices and human analytical tendencies has already been said in your comments, even though putting it on my own DW will get drastically fewer responses than you get and presumably many fewer eyes, there's enough of a bouquet of it that I'll post it there, presumably some time today.

[amaebi]

I guess I will say here that I find it strange how readily and casually humans are sure that this and that entity aren't sentient.

[asakiyume]

I think it gets caught up in like-me and not-like-me (which is why/how it translates over into the realm of other human beings--with awful consequences). Even using like-me as a guide, you'd think that people would understand patterns of, say, grief in other beings--and some people do (but others don't). But we don't need to be limited by like-me thinking. A creature--or for that matter something that's not a creature--may have an awareness that's completely unlike human awareness, but that's still awareness.

It's true that here I'm questioning the use of the word "choose" and all it implies, as a way of identifying life, but I'm quite happy to turn around and accord things awareness. I just don't want to insist that things have a like-me awareness (but that's not to denigrate a not-like-me awareness).

Anyway, though, I look forward to your post!

[amaebi]

Oh, definitely. BTW, I was tangenting, not meaning You. :D

[asakiyume]

But it would be fine if you *were* meaning me--but I know you weren't: you're really good about just raising a concern directly if you have one (at least so it seems to me).

[http://lotuslandfineart.com/velvetrope/]

Being born and raised in evangelical Christianity, my understanding of the Jesus vs. God thing is quite different. According to that brand of Christianity, imitating Jesus is the same as imitating God. Jesus wasn't just a person: he was the human incarnation of God. So for them it isn't about removing the "just" from in from of "just a person". Saying one could imitate another good person wouldn't be anywhere near the same, because none of those people are the human incarnations of God to evangelicals. It would be like telling someone to treat the office of the president of your local rotary club with the same respect as the office of the president of the United States.

[asakiyume]

I apologize for being slow answering! I was away. Thank you for this thoughtful--and informative--reply. I need to say that Jesus = God in other branches of Christianity too! I was trying to say that there' something about Jesus being incarnate as a human that makes the task of imitation more plausible or permissible than imitating God the Father ... but as I thought about it more, I realized that even in the branch of Christianity that I'm familiar with, which is Catholicism, people do sometimes talk about imitating God the Father--usually when they talk about forgiving.