It is good to get your Digital Life version of reality Mark.
It is not the ToK/UTUA version in several respects. But it is interesting and I look forward to continuing to see overlap and connections.
I will say that, as an agnostic atheist married to a "heritage" Jew, I find the first comment about non Christians perhaps not being able to "relate" to Western civilization odd. How Christian does one need to be to relate to the civilization?
Also, in the language of the ToK/UTUA we are absolutely information processors, and are that at the level of Life, Mind and Culture. Indeed, the nervous system IS an information processing system. Now, we are not electron computers (we are sentient, we are self-aware, we are self-determined and we know we will die---in short we are human persons). But there is a very important difference between strong AI claims (we are computers) and the complete excision of input output. What are afferent and efferent nerves, but nerves that translate information into the language of the nervous system and interface with things external to it. Certainly it is not serial digital logic processing via silicon chips. But information flow is what makes Life different from Matter, Mind different from Life, and Culture different from Mind. They are qualitatively different kinds of behavioral complexity because they operate via different informational mediums.
Best,
Gregg
-----Original Message-----
From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Mark Stahlman
Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2018 6:15 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: draft blog of what makes us different
Tokers:
Reading Gregg's "draft blog" a couple of points jump out at me . . .
1) We are the West -- not the East (or anything else.) Gregg is correct that the crucial "frame" for the West is Christianity. Yes, I say "is" not "was." Before Christianity, as in pagan Rome and Greece &c, it was a different civilization. Without Christianity (for which Talmudic Judaism and Islam are offshoots -- all being "people of the Book"), it is no longer the West. I am a Catholic and will be going to church a few hours from now. For those reading this who are not Christian all of this presents a problem. Perhaps a serious one. Can you even relate to your own civilization?
2) Science (in the West) set itself up -- from its "modern" 17th century beginnings -- against the Catholic Church (but not
Christianity.) It was intended to "reform all of the world," as the title of the 1612 Rosicrucian "Fama Fraternitatis" manifesto tells us.
This implied the need to eliminate Aristotle, since his work had been incorporated by the Church starting in the 13th century. This development of a *new* techno-paradigm in the West was the product of the Printing Press in the 15th century.
3) In the 20th century, under the influence of the *electric* paradigm, science declared victory (in the West) -- at precisely the moment that Oswald Spengler wrote his "Decline of the West." This meant not just victory over Catholicism -- which had been "defeated"
by PRINT as a techno-paradigm centuries earlier -- but also of Protestant Christianity. Max Weber called this the "disenchantment of the world" in his 1917 lecture "Science as a Vocation." The "New Age"
is, of course, what came next. Yes, drugs were involved. Pagan drugs.
4) Among the many outcomes of this situation of deep civilizational confusion/collapse was the push for "one world" (i.e. the elimination of civilizations.) It surfaced after WW I as the League of Nations and then morphed into the United Nations and World Federalism &c after WW II. It relied on the Rockefellers to fund it -- the UN headquarters was actually first meant to be built next to their homestead in Pocantico Hills -- whose progenitor, John D. Rockefeller Sr. (the world's first "billionaire") was such a devout Baptist that he build his house (now a must-see museum called "Kykuit") around a church organ (that his grandson, Nelson, tore out to replace with "modern" art.)
5) One of the other things funded by the Rockefellers was "systems
theory" -- which has now morphed into "complexity" and "emergence."
From the beginning, this was meant to be the "glue" that would hold everything (that was falling apart) together. It was the theory behind "one-world." The Society for General Systems Theory (now IIGS) was initially organized at the initial 1954 meeting of the Center for the Advanced Study of Behavioral Science (CASBS, as Stanford) -- which, in some ways, was an early version of what Gregg is trying to do. Yes, we've been down this road before.
6) In the 1950s, it looked like there was a *new* "synthesis" that was coming together. The World Council of Churches had religion taken care of (with the Catholics, who refused to join, disabled by Vatican
II.) Henry Kissinger (a creature of Nelson Rockefeller, who was supposed to become President in 1964 but his girlfriend, Happy, refused to get an abortion) had pulled together the outline of the "New World Order" (through what was called the "Special Studies Project," which then became the staff of JFK's "Camelot.") He even got China to sign-up (or so he thought) when he and Nixon met with Mao and company. They "owned" Japan and Germany. Venezuela was their plantation. They had deeply penetrated the Soviet Union (which is why the Wall came down, against which the Russians are now fighting back.)
They had the CFR and the Brits (now called "Five Eyes," aka the "Deep State.") No one could get in their way -- or so they thought.
7) In the 1980s, Samuel Huntington (with whom my Center's co-founder studied at Harvard), came up with a "rival" theory to the dominant one-world, new-world-order scheme. Instead, he proposed that there are multiple civilizations on earth and that they are inherently "clashing." He presented all this to the Council on Foreign Relations (with the help of Center Fellow, Tom Lipscomb, who had become a member via Herman Kahn, after whose Hudson Institute the Center is modeled) and was tossed out on his head. Kablam! Instead, F. Fukujama presented his acclaimed "End of History," reflecting the mood of victory following the fall of the Berlin wall. George H.W. Bush celebrated the millennium at the pyramids in a ceremony that was supposed to symbolize humanity coming full-circle. Alas, he was wrong. They were all wrong.
8) Sam was right. The West is *not* the whole world. There was not going to be a "new world order" run by the West. It is only one among many civilizations and, since it had jettisoned its own Christian principles, it wasn't even a civilization "on the rise" (if it could survive at all.) It was in decline and due to be overtaken by other civilizations -- most importantly China (where I've been engaging now for 20+ years.) Arnold Toynbee, who had spent his life writing his "A Study of History" (explicitly responding to Spengler) had made it
clear: Without a "great religion" at its core, there can't be a civilization. Far from taking over the world, the West was on its last legs. Kaput.
9) Of course, that didn't stop those who were still on a "mission."
The Department of Energy funded the Santa Fe Institute (and still does), in the hopes that "complexity" would become the ultimate "theory of everything." Bomb designers -- hearkening back to how Leo Szilard had provoked the atom bomb in the hopes that it would end all wars (following a suggestion by H.G. Wells in his 1914 "A World Set
Free") -- would now design a *new* civilization to replace the old one (and it would no longer be based on Christianity.) But today, with $300M+ spent on this bold plan, they have utterly failed. "Chaos theory" (as "Complexity theory" was originally called) has failed to explain anything. And it never will. Aristotle could have told you that.
10) In the face of this collapse, two other civilizations have stepped in to pick up where the West left off. China is now on the rise and we call it the "East Sphere." So is what we call the "Digital Sphere," which wants to scrap humanity and replace it with "perfect"
and "immortal" machines (yes, that's where Kevin Kelly and Ray Kurzweil &al fit in.) As a result, we now live in a world composed of Three Spheres: East, West and Digital. The Center for the Study of Digital Life is the *only* organization in the world focused on understanding this dynamic. Yes, it's exciting out there on the edge.
11) Naturally, this new "three-body problem" (btw, the name of an excellent Chinese science-fiction trilogy by Cixin Liu) causes a great deal of "anxiety." For those living in the West, it seems like everything is going down the toilet and, in superficial "historic"
terms, that is correct. All the dials point towards a fiery crash.
Danger Will Robinson! The current homosexual scandal in the Catholic Church (itself caused by the same collapse of confidence in the West
50+ years ago, aka Vatian II) only adds to the sense to impending
doom. Is the 2nd coming immanent (as Teilhard de Chardin believed)?
Are we living in the times of the Anti-Christ?
12) All this calls for a *new* psychology. We are already in a period of massive psychological disturbance -- for which all the previous "treatments" are woefully inadequate. As Talking Heads put it, the world has turned into "Stop Making Sense." None of the "brands" out there can deal with this situation -- not Humanistic (which came out of the last counter-culture), not Behavioral (which was born out of early psychological warfare), not psychoanalysis (also an "electric"
anti-Christian approach), not Cognitive (which equates humans with computers so they can be "programmed.") None of them even attempts to pull all this together. Clearly, something new is needed.
13) Whatever new psychology develops to deal with the "depression"
that results from living in a dying civilization -- including the hopes for colonies on Mars &c, so we can start over again -- it will need to deal with the following reality: the robots are taking over
"work" and the humans will be left with a lot of time on their hands.
H.G. Wells wrote about this in 1895 with his "The Time Machine." In it he predicted that humanity would "evolve" into two "species": the Morlocks (i.e. today's robots) and the Eloi (i.e. today's "whatever"
humans.) Wells was a protege of T.H Huxley (which is how he became "godfather" to his grandsons, Aldous and Julian) who, in turn, was a protege of Darwin (actually, known as "Darwin's Bulldog.) As things are currently "trending," humanity looks like it is heading towards becoming the "energy" that feeds the robots. Giving the machines their "maintenance" back massages. "Machines with Loving Grace,"
indeed.
14) Dealing with a humanity (in the West) which has comprehended its own demise -- while watching the rise of other humans, living in other
*spheres* (aka "civilizations") -- has now become our challenge. What is to be done (as V.I. Lenin once asked)? What is happening today is, in cultural terms for the West, an 8.0 on the Richter Scale. This is
the "big one" (as they refer to California falling into the ocean.)
The West has been dominant on earth since PRINT launched its collapse
400+ years ago. That collapse was accelerated by ELECTRICITY 100+
years ago. Now we are DIGITAL -- what prospects for the West does that imply . . . ??
Mark
P.S. The entire point of "What Makes Us Different?" is to distinguish us from the robots -- not other animals. To the extent that we allow "systems theory," "complexity," "emergence" &c to shape our "language games" about humans, we have already lost that battle. Humans have nothing in common with computers. I was a professional computer architect for a decade and I know what makes them tick. Humans do
*not* "process information." We do not have precision in our memories. We do not have "inputs" and "outputs." Phooey on all that
-- if we want humanity to survive (which, to be sure, some clearly do not want to happen, thus CRISPR.)
P.P.S. In the East, the "equivalents" to Plato and Aristotle in the pre-West (later expressed as Augustine and Aquinas as the Christian West took over from pagan Rome) are Confucius and Laozi (i.e.
"Daoism.") The Central Party School in Beijing -- which had taken up the "Sinicization" of Marxism from 2004-11, which led to the 2nd World Congress on Marxism I attended this past May at Peking University -- is now teaching these foundational Eastern sages to the next
generation of cadre taking over the Communist Party of China (CPC.)
Along with the Eastern "equivalent" of the Bible, the Yijing (i.e. "I Ching")! Just imagine St. Thomas Aquinas being mandatory for all undergraduates at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, plus Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne and University of Berlin. Heaven help us.
Quoting Joseph Michalski <[log in to unmask]>:
> Excellent Gregg and Chance. Note in editing the blog before final
> posting that the special issue is "Humans: Why we're unlike any other
> species on the plant". For me, the 'answer' to that question links
> back to the "emergent" aspect of the Mind-Culture joint point.
> It's not merely that there increasing information complexity
> associated with the development of "behavior", but rather that there
> are fundamentally different types of behavior associated with the ToK.
> I am not persuaded either by any specific theories or the body of
> scientific evidence currently available that the answer lies in
> reductionism. I'm not ruling out that general hypothesis, but rather
> simply more inclined to follow the logic of emergence at this point
> until convinced otherwise. Best regards, -Joe
>
>
> Dr. Joseph H. Michalski
>
> Acting Academic Dean/Associate Academic Dean
>
> King’s University College at Western University
>
> 266 Epworth Avenue
>
> London, Ontario, Canada N6A 2M3
>
> Tel: (519) 433-3491
>
> Fax: (519) 963-1263
>
> Email: [log in to unmask]
>
> ______________________
> eiπ + 1 = 0
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: tree of knowledge system discussion
> <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Henriques, Gregg -
> henriqgx <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Saturday, August 18, 2018 11:02 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: draft blog of what makes us different
>
>
> Dear list,
>
> I spent some time this morning crafting a draft of a blog on What
> Makes Us Different. It ended up being a bit more expanded than I
> originally anticipated. My original focus was to paint the ToK/JH
> picture. But what emerged was a five page summary of the “puzzle
> pieces” of our uniqueness, drawn from the Sept 2018 Scientific
> American special issue that Joe shared. In reading through it, I
> decided it was good way to summarize the current state of knowledge
> of the puzzle pieces that make us different.
>
> I am sharing it here because I think it is a great topic for our
> list. I would welcome any suggestions or recommendations or additions.
>
> If we as a group have a sense of these puzzle pieces, then I think
> discussion about the central missing piece, the Justification
> Hypothesis (framed by the ToK metaphysical definitional system and
> the BIT formulation of the evolution of the animal mind) can be
> productively had.
>
> Best,
>
> Gregg
>
>
>
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