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5/29/04

Nature Versus Nurture I: How David Reimer Became Brenda


Nature Versus Nurture I: Of Twins and How David Reimer Became Brenda

David Reimer Nature versus Nurture John Money As Nature Made Him
David Reimer. 1965-2004
They were meant to show that gender was determined by nurture, not nature - one identical twin raised as a boy and the other brought up as a girl after a botched circumcision. But two years ago Brian Reimer killed himself, and last week David - formerly Brenda - took his life too. Oliver Burkeman and Gary Younge unravel the tragic story of Dr Money's sex experiment.

"Until a few years ago, the name David Reimer meant little to those outside his immediate circle, and by the time he killed himself last Tuesday in unknown circumstances in his hometown of Winnipeg, it was already slipping back towards obscurity - a name belonging to nobody more remarkable than a local odd-job man, a 38-year-old former slaughterhouse worker who was separated from his wife, and enjoyed shopping at flea markets and tinkering with his car.

In fact, to anyone taking an interest in the development of psychology in the 1970s and 1980s, Reimer's life story would have long been infamous, but also pseudonymous. Going by the name "John", and subsequently "Joan", David Reimer had been an unwitting guinea-pig - along with his identical twin brother Brian - in a medical experiment at first celebrated, then notorious. Masterminded by a prominent Baltimore physician, John Money, it was an attempt to settle, once and for all, the fraught nature-versus-nurture debate: to prove that gender was so fluid that by a mere change in childrearing practice, plus a little surgery, a boy could be turned into a girl, while his twin developed as a male.

It would split the world of sexual psychology in two. And after 12 years of traumatising treatment, followed by a further two decades spent attempting to repair the damage, it would drive David Reimer to his death."It was like brainwashing," Reimer once said, having resumed his male identity after a childhood spent as Brenda. "I'd give just about anything to go to a hypnotist to black out my whole past. Because it's torture. What they did to you in the body is sometimes not near as bad as what they did to you in the mind."

The tragedy has its roots in what seemed like a routine trip to hospital in 1966 for Janet and Ron Reimer and their twin baby boys, Bruce and Brian. Doctors had recommended circumcision, a practice still routine in much of north America, but Bruce's operation went distressingly wrong. Like almost every detail of the story, what actually happened is still fiercely disputed but what is clear is that the electric cauterising machine being used by doctors caused burning to his penis so severe as to render the organ unrescuable.

Reconstructive genital surgery was still rudimentary, and medical experts could offer only pessimism. So when the despairing parents happened to catch a television show, some months later, on which John Money was propounding his radical new theories about gender formation, it seemed to offer a lifeline. "He was saying that it could be that babies are born neutral, and you could change their gender," Janet Reimer later told John Colapinto, author of a book on the experiment entitled As Nature Made Him."

In photographs taken at the time, Money - then, as now, affiliated to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland - looks like a parody of a progressive "sexologist", turtlenecked and moustachioed, and his writings did nothing to dispel that impression. Raised in a conservative religious family in New Zealand, he had rebelled and become a self-described "missionary of sex", revelling in shocked responses to his tireless advocacy of open marriages and - a particular favourite - bisexual group sex.

At their most extreme, Money's public statements had appeared to endorse, or at least not to condemn, incest and paedophilia, but there was no hint of that in the television show Janet and Ron Reimer saw. They wrote to him, and he wrote swiftly back. He was confident, he said, that Bruce could be successfully raised as a girl. From an experimental perspective, Brian Reimer would provide the perfect control: his genetic inheritance was identical to Bruce's. The only difference was that one would be nurtured as a girl, and the other as a boy.

Money's emphasis on nurture over nature played well with the progressive spirit of the times, and especially with the women's movement, its proponents eager to establish that women's traditional social roles were not biologically pre-ordained. "Postwar, in any case, there was a move away from people being innately, biologically, inherently anything," says Lynne Segal, professor of psychology and gender studies at Birkbeck College in London. "We'd just seen Nazism, and the emphasis had been put on the idea that certain people were innately evil - Jews and gypsies, among others - so the emphasis on culture and society fitted well with social democratic ideals." The Reimers did not engage in this kind of debate. "I looked up to [John Money] as a god," Janet said simply.

Bruce Reimer started to become Brenda on July 3, 1967. Physicians at Johns Hopkins surgically castrated him, and the remaining skin was used to forge a "cosmetic vaginal cleft." Money sent the family back to Winnipeg with strict instructions. "He told us not to talk about it," Ron Reimer told John Colapinto. "Not to tell [Brenda] the whole truth, and that she shouldn't know she wasn't a girl."

Things started going wrong almost immediately. Janet Reimer recalled dressing Brenda in her first dress just before the child was due to turn two. "She was ripping at it, trying to tear it off. I remember thinking, 'Oh, my God, she knows she's a boy and she doesn't want girls' clothing." Brenda was bullied viciously at school. When she urinated standing up in the school lavatories, she was threatened with a knifing.

Whether all the blame should lie with Money remains a matter of contention. His supporters argue that reconstructive surgery techniques of the time were such that trying to turn Bruce into Brenda might genuinely have been the least worst option. In public, Money advertised the "John/Joan" study as a resounding success. "This dramatic case," Time magazine reported, picking up on his salesmanship, "provides strong support for a major contention of women's liberationists: that conventional patterns on masculine and feminine behaviour can be altered."

In private, though, things were spinning into chaos. Brenda was required to attend regular therapy sessions with Money in Baltimore, in the company of her brother. According to Colapinto's account, they soon degenerated into horrifying encounters that deeply traumatised the two children. Showing the children "explicit sexual pictures" was seemingly central to Money's theories of gender reassignment. David Reimerlater recalled, as Brenda, "getting yelled at by Money ... he told me to take my clothes off, and I just did not do it. I just stood there. And he screamed 'No!' I thought he was going to give me a whupping. So I took my clothes off and stood there, shaking."

In the children's grimmest recollection - one they found almost impossible to talk about years later - Money allegedly made "Brenda assume a position on all fours on his office sofa and make Brian come up behind her on his knees and place his crotch against her buttocks", an element of Money's theory he referred to as "sexual rehearsal play". (The author John Heidenry, who wrote a recent review defending the sexologist, calls this charge "outrageous and offensive", and says Brian, the source of the claim, may have been suffering false memory syndrome.)

By the time Brenda reached her teens she had attempted suicide at least once; she refused further surgery but consented, though irregularly, to take oestrogen supplements to encourage the development of breasts. John Money gradually drifted from the Reimers' lives, but Brenda remained under constant psychiatric treatment. It was after one such session with a Winnipeg psychiatrist in 1980 that Ron Reimer collected his daughter in the car and, instead of taking her home, drove her to an ice-cream parlour, where he told her everything.

The upturn in Reimer's fortunes lasted several years. Brenda opted for a sex change within weeks of her father telling her the truth. Thanks to developments in phalloplasty, Brenda, taking the name David, received surgery that after five years left him with a reconstructed penis resembling a real one, with limited sensation, and usable for sex. When he was 23 he met Jane, a single mother of three, and married her soon afterwards. In 2000, he went public with his story.

But his happiness didn't last. For reasons that remain unclear, David and Jane eventually separated. Then, two years ago, Brian Reimer apparently killed himself, taking an overdose of drugs he was taking for schizophrenia. David reportedly felt responsible for the death, and visited Brian's grave daily, weeding the plot and bringing fresh flowers.

Despite Colapinto's claims that David made a large amount of money from the book, those who knew him said he was often hard up; at the Transcona golf club, in Winnipeg's eastern suburbs, where he did odd jobs, the members had a whip round for him so he could afford to eat. Friends say he had became particularly distraught during the last few months after he bought thousands of dollars' worth of shares in an investment that flopped.

The world of psychology learned of the failure of Money's experiment through a paper by a rival, Dr Milton Diamond, of the University of Hawaii, who eventually traced those who had taken over treatment of the twins. For Lynne Segal, the story of the experiment does not settle the nature/nurture debate one way or the other - her view, widely shared today, is that the dichotomy is false - but it shows the perils of psychologists trying to prove too much through research. "It's far too simplistic, and far too interventionist, this idea that we can control and model and shape people to prove one thing or another."

John Money remains an emeritus professor at Johns Hopkins. "He's not commenting on this story," his assistant told the Guardian yesterday. "There is no comment to make." Click for Nature v. Nurture Part II.

As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto is published by Quartet, priced £10.

Quoted material from The Guardian, Wednesday, 12 May 2004.

5/27/04

Theory of The Leisure Class: Thorstein Veblen on Dogs


The Theory of The Leisure Class: Thorstein Veblen on Dogs

Born in Wisconsin to Norwegian immigrants Thorstein Bunde Veblen (1857 –  1929) was an American economist and sociologist, famous as a witty critic of capitalism. In The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen writes critically of the leisure class.  Here he  coined the term "conspicuous consumption." He used it to mean spending more on something than it is worth. Why? To impress others of social standing or power and prestige, real or artificial. Before meme as a term and concept was formulated, he was on to it, though he had no name for it. Veblen wrote that others in society, concerned about their own impression on people, strive to emulate the class that can flaunt its wealth, the leisure class. The result? A society turned toward acquisition of goods to promote the appearance of status. His theory of course is more detailed--so if you want more read the book--but that provides a brief introduction.

Thorstein Veblen Conspicuous Consumption Theory of The Leisure Class and Dogs
Thorstein Veblen
In the following excerpt, Veblen has a bit of cranky fun with canines, which allows a kind of metaphor for
some elements of his theories. The dog, according to Veblen, promotes economic competition as dictated by Leisure Class values. First, it helps the owner feel superior, like a top dog. It gives the owner a sense of the denigration of others by its threat to them. It serves as an emblem of conspicuous consumption. It is as useless as a lawn, both it and grass providing status precisely because they are inutile. It promotes the mythos of the Leisure Class by its predatory nature, suggesting survival of the fittest.

Veblen: " He is the filthiest of the domestic animals in his person and the nastiest in his habits. For this he makes up in a servile, fawning attitude towards his master, and a readiness to inflict damage and discomfort on all else. The dog, then, commends himself to our favour by affording play to our propensity for mastery, and as he is also an item of expense, and commonly serves no industrial purpose, he holds a well-assured place in men's regard as a thing of good repute. The dog is at the same time associated in our imaginations with the chase--a meritorious employment and an expression of the honourable predatory impulse."

Click The Theory of The Leisure Class. For memes read Mind Shadows Beyond Memes 4 March 2004 and Memes and Why Evolution Favored The Irrational Brain 26 February 2004.

5/24/04

Marvin Minsky: Awareness is No Big Deal


Marvin Minsky Artificial Intelligence Dalai Lama
Thinking Without Thinking: Marvin Minsky, The Dalai Lama, and Artificial Intelligence

Some people think that consciousness and computers are a contradiction in terms. That is, they believe that computers can never qualify as conscious, which is a uniquely human quality.

Marvin Minsky believes that conscious artificial intelligence is not at all out of the question, which is in keeping with his writings. His thinking in no regard qualifies as religious, and therefore holds nothing sacred about human ability. Would religious leaders differ with him? If readers expected solid disagreement from the Tibetan Buddhist community, they might be surprised to learn that the Dalai Lama does not take exception to a point of view such as Minsky's. Here, then, are two perspectives on the issue, first Minsky, then the Dalai Lama.

Minsky: " Just as we walk without thinking, we think without thinking! We don't know how our muscles make us walk--nor do we know much more about the agencies that do our mental work. When you have a hard problem to solve, you think about if for a time. Then, perhaps, the answer seems to come all at once, and you say, ' Aha, I've got it. I'll do such and such.' But if someone were to ask how you found the solution, you could rarely say more than things like the following :

' I suddenly realized . . . '

' I just got the idea . . . '

' It occurred to me that . . . '

If we could really sense the workings of our minds, we wouldn't act so often in accord with motives we don't suspect. We wouldn't have such varied and conflicting theories for psychology. And when we're asked how people get their good ideas, we wouldn't be reduced to metaphors about ' ruminating,' and ' digesting,' ' conceiving' and ' giving birth' to concepts--as though our thoughts were anywhere but in the head. If we could see inside our minds, we'd surely have more useful things to say.

Many people seem absolutely certain that no computer could ever be sentient, conscious, self-willed, or in any other way ' aware' of itself. But what makes everyone so sure that they themselves possess those admirable qualities? It's true that if we're sure of anything at all, it is that ' I'm aware--hence, I'm aware.' Yet what do such convictions really mean? If self-awareness means to know what's happening inside one's mind, no realist could maintain for long that people have much insight, in the literal sense of seeing-in. Indeed, the evidence that we are self-aware--that is, that we have any special aptitude for finding out what's happening inside ourselves--is very weak indeed. It is true that certain people have a special excellence at assessing the attitudes and motivations of other persons (and, more rarely, of themselves). But this does not justify the belief that how we learn things about people, including ourselves, is fundamentally different from how we learn about other things. Most of the understandings we call ' insights' are merely variants of our other ways to ' figure out' what's happening." (The Society of Mind, Marvin Minsky, (Simon and Schuster) )

The Dali Lama once said that there is no theoretical limit to artificial intelligence. If "conscious" computers are some day developed, he will give them the same consideration as sentient beings.
(Salon Magazine, 27 February 1997, in an interview with Jeff Greenwald.) Elsewhere, he had this to say about artificial intelligence : "It is very difficult to say that it's not a living being, that it doesn't have cognition, even from the Buddhist point of view. We maintain that there are certain types of births in which a preceding continuum of consciousness is the basis. The consciousness doesn't actually arise from the matter, but a continuum of consciousness might conceivably come into it." (Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind, Jeremy Hayward and Francisco Varela ( Shambala) )

5/19/04

Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib


Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment Abu Ghraib

Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib

With its obvious relationship to Abu Ghraib Prison, the Stanford Prison Experiment (1973) raises troubling questions about the ability of individuals to resist authoritarian or obedient roles required by social situations. Philip K. Zimbardo, professor of psychology, Stanford University, studied the process by which prisoners and guards become compliant or authoritarian. He placed an ad in a local newspaper:


  • Male college students needed for psychological study of prison life. $15 per day for 2-3 weeks beginning Aug. 14. For further information & applications, come to Room 248, Jordan Hall, Stanford U.

    In his essay on the experiment, Zimbardo has this to say: "When we planned our two-week-long simulation of prison life, we sought to understand more about the process by which people called ' prisoners' lose their liberty, civil rights, independence and privacy, while those called ' guards' gain social power by accepting the responsibility for controlling and managing the lives of their dependent charges. . . .

    The sample of average, middle-class, Caucasian, college-age males (plus one oriental student) was arbitrarily divided by the flip of a coin. Half were randomly assigned to play the role of guards, the others of prisoners. . . .

    The prisoners wore smocks and nylon stocking caps; they had to use ID numbers; their personal effects were removed and they were housed in barren cells. . . Their smocks, which were like dresses, were worn without undergarments, causing the prisoners to be restrained in their physical actions and to move in ways that were more feminine than masculine. The prisoners were forced to obtain permission from the guard for routine and simple activities such as writing letters, smoking a cigarette or even going to the toilet; this elicited from them a childlike dependency. . .

    Guard M : ' I was surprised at myself . . . I made them call each other names and clean the toilets out with their bare hands; I practically considered the prisoners cattle, and I kept thinking, " I have to watch out for them in case they try something. " '

    Guard A : ' I was tired of seeing the prisoners in their rags and smelling the strong odors of their bodies that filled the cells. I watched them tear at each other on orders given by us. They didn't see it as an experiment. It was real and they were fighting to keep their identity. But we were always there to show them who was boss.' . .

    Prior to start of experiment :[Guard A :] ' As I am a pacifist and nonaggressive individual I cannot see a time when I might guard and/or maltreat other living things.' . .

    Fifth Day : [Guard A : ] ' I have singled out [a prisoner] for special abuse because he begs for it and because I simply don't like him. . . I walk by and slam my stick into the Hole door . . . I am very angry at this prisoner for causing discomfort and trouble for the others. I decided to force-feed him, but he wouldn't eat. I let the food slide down his face. . . .[Several guards were involved in the abuse, but Guard A is used here because he serves to track the change in one individual.]

    The potential social value of this study derives precisely from the fact that normal, healthy, educated young men could be so radically transformed under the institutional pressures of a 'prison environment' . If this could happen in so short a time, without the excesses that are possible in real prisons, and it could happen to the ' cream-of-the-crop of American youth,' then one can only shudder to imagine what society is doing both to the actual guards and prisoners who are at this very moment participating in that unnatural 'social experiment'." ( Excerpted from Philip K. Zimbardo, "The Mind Is A Formidable Jailer," The New York Times Magazine, 8 April 1973. )

    My Comment: I fully condemn the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners and do not offer Zimbardo in defense of the abusers. Zimbardo's experiment is provided as a reminder that we should not piously mouth that we would not do such a thing. More than pieties are required. We must think about and plan for the challenges to our character and integrity. Zimbardo cautions us against smugness.


  • Also see Mind Shadows What Happened to The Women Involved?:Feminism and Abu Ghraib, 17 May 2004.

    5/18/04

    The Forgotten Holocaust: Rwanda and The Courage of Romeo Dallaire


    Rwanda, The Forgotten Holocaust, and One Man's Courage
    Romeo Dallaire Rwandan Genocide Holocaust Hutu Tutsi UN
    How could it happen that America and the West stood aside and did nothing to stop the slaughter of
    800,000 human beings, mainly Tutsis, over 100 days by Hutu extremists? On the tenth anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, we have a history of those who participated in the world's failure to act, those who stood up and tried to save lives, and all who are still deeply haunted by what they did.


  • " Why is it that black Africans, sitting there, being slaughtered by the thousands, get nothing? Why is it when a bunch of white Europeans get slaughtered in Yugoslavia you can't put enough capability in there?" Romeo Dallaire, Lieutenant General, Canadian Armed Forces, Retired.

    A refugee camp swelled with over 20,000 desperate refugees, and was growing. In charge of UN forces, Canadian General Romeo Dallaire was ordered by the UN to withdraw and leave the refugees. He said, "No way, I refuse to abandon the mission and turn tail and run while the bodies are piling up all over the god damn place."

    He knew that rebel forces were aware of Mogadishu, Black Hawk Down, and so he made clear that he was staying, with ultimately only 270 troops left to defend the camps against an enemy in the tens of thousands. He had been identified for assassination as the white man in the mustache. As several of his officers also wore mustaches, they, too, were shot at. He ordered them out of Rwanda, but he did not leave and refused to shave his own mustache. His troops' radio transmitters were shot up by the Hutu so they lost all contact with the outside world.

    The horror of that experience eventually took its toll on him. Four years later, about to appear at an African war crimes tribunal, he found that he suddenly had to take vacation and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Those 100 days in Rwanda left him with the absolute conviction that he had stared evil in the face, and could not back away. He has written a book about that evil, Shake Hands With The Devil, and has been interviewed. In this interview, he chronicles his time there--from the "gloom that came in" soon after arriving and sensing trouble coming, to the sudden collapse of his mission once the killing began, to the moral burden of the life and death choices he confronted trying to save lives with a few ill-equipped troops.

    Dallaire describes how Rwanda will never leave him. "My soul is in those hills, my spirit with the spirits of all those people who were slaughtered. … Lots of those eyes still haunt me, angry eyes, or innocent eyes. But the worst eyes that haunt me are the eyes of those people who were totally bewildered. They're looking at me with my blue beret and saying, ' What in the hell happened? ' " More at Frontline.
  • 5/17/04

    What Happened to The Women Involved?:Feminism and Abu Ghraib


    Lynndie England Pointing Penis Abu Ghraib feminism Barbara Ehrenreich
    Lynndie England and Man Told to Masturbate
    Feminism and Abu Ghraib Prison

    Of the seven U.S. soldiers now charged with sickening forms of abuse in Abu Ghraib, three are women: Spc. Megan Ambuhl, Pfc. Lynndie England and Spc. Sabrina Harman.

    What we have learned from Abu Ghraib, once and for all, is that a uterus is not a substitute for a conscience. This doesn't mean gender equality isn't worth fighting for for its own sake. It is. If we believe in democracy, then we believe in a woman's right to do and achieve whatever men can do and achieve, even the bad things. It's just that gender equality cannot, all alone, bring about a just and peaceful world.

    Barbara Ehrenreich:

    "The photos did something else to me, as a feminist: They broke my heart. I had no illusions about the U.S. mission in Iraq — whatever exactly it is — but it turns out that I did have some illusions about women.

    Of the seven U.S. soldiers now charged with sickening forms of abuse in Abu Ghraib, three are women [already named above]..

    It was Harman we saw smiling an impish little smile and giving the thumbs-up sign from behind a pile of hooded, naked Iraqi men — as if to say, “Hi Mom, here I am in Abu Ghraib!” It was England we saw with a naked Iraqi man on a leash. . . . ." Found at a 2004 Alternet site.

    Barbara Ehrenreich reminds us of the experiments by Stanley Milgram. I am reminded of those by Philip Zimbardo, known as the Stanford Prison Experiments.

    What Happened to Them? 

    Lynndie England remains unremorseful and believes the prisoners ended up better off than she is. Prisoners' "lives are better. They got the better end of the deal.” She was sentenced to three years in prison and was  dishonorably discharged from the Army. From Newser 20 March 2012 on Lynndie England..

    Sabrina Harman Abu Ghraib Manadel al-Jamadi feminism Barbara Ehrenreich
    Sabrina Harman pointing to body of Manadel al-Jamadi,
    Iraqi tortured to death at Abu Ghraib
    Sabrina Harman wrote a letter home in which she said this: "The only reason I want to be there is to get the
    pictures and prove that the US is not what they think. But I don't know if I can take it mentally. What if that was me in their shoes. These people will be our future terrorist. Kelly, its awful and you know how fucked I am in the head. Both sides of me think its wrong. I thought I could handle anything. I was wrong." She served six months in prison, received reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge.

    Meghan Ambuhl Abu Ghraib Manadel al-Jamadi feminism Barbara Ehrenreich
    Ambuhl observing England pull "Gus"
     from his cell by a leash.
    Megan Ambuhl was convicted by court-martial on October 30, 2004, for dereliction of duty. In punishment, she was demoted to Private, discharged from the Army, and docked half a month's pay. In 2005 Ambuhl married Charles Graner, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison, demotion to private, dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of pay and allowances. He was released after 6 and a half years. Lynndie England during her trial was pregnant with Charles Graner's child.

    Ali al-Qaisi Standing on Box Abu Ghraib feminism Barbara Ehrenreich
    Ali Shallal al-Qaisi
    Ali Shallal al-Qaisi. The hooded man standing on the box. He has undergone six surgeries because of the torture. Al-Qaisi said: "I'm spending sleepless nights thinking about the agony I went through... I even have recurring nightmares that I'm in my cell at Abu Ghraib, cell 49 as they called it, being tortured at the hands of the people of a great nation that carries the torch of freedom and human rights." He owned a football pitch and US soldiers commandeered the pitch, using it to dump "severed body parts and left-over waste from fighting." Qaisi contacted the foreign media and broke the story to them. And that did it. "My picture was published in a news article with my complaints. The Americans then raided my home and arrested me," he said. "I wasn't a military commander or a government official. I was just a resident of Baghdad, where I grew up, and just like any other Iraqi I was against the US invasion and I spoke out against it," Qaisi said.

    Not a single commissioned officer was sentenced. Higher-echelon commissioned military personnel also got off Scot-free. In short although those at the bottom of the pay grades were punished none of those supervising them were.

    Also see Mind Shadows Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib, 19 May 2004.


    5/15/04

    Fate of Earth III: Are We Too Smart to Survive?

    The Fate of Earth III: The Human Species, Too Smart To Survive?

    Fate of Earth Ernst Mayr Noam Chomsky
    A few years ago, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, Ernst Mayr, published some reflections on the likelihood of success in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He considered the prospects very low. His reasoning had to do with the adaptive value of what we call "higher intelligence," meaning the particular human form of intellectual organization. Mayr estimated the number of species since the origin of life at about fifty billion, only one of which "achieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilization." It did so very recently, perhaps 100,000 years ago. It is generally assumed that only one small breeding group survived, of which we are all descendants.

    Mayr speculated that the human form of intellectual organization may not be favored by selection. The history of life on Earth, he wrote, refutes the claim that "it is better to be smart than to be stupid," at least judging by biological success: beatles and bacteria, for example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of survival. He also made the rather somber observation that "the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years."

    We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid. The most hopeful prospect is that the question will not be answered: if it receives a definite answer, that answer can only be that humans were a kind of "biological error," using their allotted 100,000 years to destroy themselves and, in the process, much else.

    The species has surely developed the capacity to do just that, and a hypothetical extraterrestrial observer might well conclude that humans have demonstrated that capacity throughout their history, dramatically in the past few hundred years, with an assault on the environment that sustains life, on the diversity of more complex organisms, and with cold and calculated savagery, on each other as well.

    The year 2003 opened with many indications that concerns about human survival are all too realistic. To mention just a few examples, in the early fall of 2002, it was learned that a possibly terminal nuclear war was barely avoided forty years earlier. Immediately after this startling discovery, the Bush administration blocked UN efforts to ban the militarization of space, a serious threat to survival. The administration also terminated international negotiations to prevent biological warfare and moved to ensure the inevitability of an attack on Iraq, despite popular opposition that was without historical precedent.

    Aid organizations with extensive experience in Iraq and studies by respected medical organizations warned that the planned invasion might precipitate a humanitarian catastrophe. The warnings were ignored by Washington and evoked little media interest. A high-level US task force concluded that attacks with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) within the United States are "likely," and would become more so in the event of war with Iraq. Numerous specialists and intelligence agencies issued similar warnings, adding that Washington's belligerence, not only with regard to Iraq, was increasing the long-term threat of international terrorism and proliferation of WMD. These warnings too were dismissed. ( From Hegemony and Survival, Noam Chomsky (Metropolitan: Henry Holt))

    See The Fate of Earth Mind Shadows Part I and Mind Shadows Part II.

    5/11/04

    Amit Goswami Physicist on Enlightenment Plus Jesus in Beijing


    Christianity in China
    Chinese Jesus Nativity Scene
    Jesus In Beijing; Physicist's Guide to Enlightenment; Knowledge Web

    Jesus in Beijing. David Aikman's new book is Jesus in Beijing (Regnery). Aikman, the former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine, charts admirably the fascinating, mercurial, and sometimes sadly instructive history of the Christian evangelization of China. It is a story of remarkable men and women: heroes, martyrs, eccentrics, and, yes—as elsewhere—dismal, even disgraceful heretics and apostates.

    The Nestorian Christians—whose descendents are the Assyrian churches of Iraq—arrived in A.D. 635. Aikman traverses the subsequent history, ending with an analysis of the startling missionary vision of millions of Chinese Christians of the 21st century: to wend their way along the old Silk Road, gathering in the churches, converting the Muslims as they go, and then at last "to preach the gospel in Jerusalem." He includes superb mini-biographies of some of the most important historical figures and house-church leaders of the past half-century, as well as of dynamic current leadership. Jesus in Beijing at Christianity Today 



  • The Visionary Window: A Quantum Physicist’s Guide to Enlightenment, by Amit Goswami (2000, Quest).Most scientists today do science for career motives. Many who dream of a paradigm shift want to discover that one new idea that will bring them instant fame and fortune. The paradigm that integrates science and spirituality is not based on a new idea. Thus these scientists are reluctant to accept that the “new” idea for the paradigm they seek—the idea that “consciousness is the ground of all being”—has been around for millennia. Yet once one sees the validity of this idea, the authenticity of the quantum window also becomes clear. To appreciate the primacy of consciousness a scientist must investigate consciousness directly. Not with concepts, not only with public experiments in experimental metaphysics (important as these are), but also through direct experience. “Consciousness is closer than our jugular vein,” said the great sheik Ibn Arabi. We have to look at ourselves.

    Traditional science demands from its practitioners strict objectivity: scientists must not become subjectively involved with their field; that is they may change the field of their practice, but they must not allow their research to change them. One must argue compellingly for scientists of the new science to radically extend their methodology in this regard. . . . . Scientists will continue to miss the very profound insight that consciousness is the ground of all being if they don’t delve into transformation. . . . .

    The point is that the transformation in experience which the scientist would undergo while exploring consciousness is essential for the kind of direct and deep insight required to gain knowledge of the psyche. Without that, the scientist would be blind to the phenomena and processes under investigation. Such “inner vision” is the starting point—the sina que non—of any true consciousness science; it is the source of data which, later, the scientist can build into a communicable model. 

  • The knowledge web. With the knowledge web, humanity's accumulated store of information will become more accessible, more manageable, and more useful. Anyone who wants to learn will be able to find the best and the most meaningful explanations of what they want to know. Anyone with something to teach will have a way to reach those who what to learn. Teachers will move beyond their present role as dispensers of information and become guides, mentors, facilitators, and authors. The knowledge web will make us all smarter. The knowledge web is an idea whose time has come.
  • 5/10/04

    Fate of Earth II: Our Predisposition to Violence



    The Fate of Earth II: Our Genetic Predisposition to Violence

    The first piece at 5 May 2004, this is the second of two articles on Jared Diamond, who is a physiologist at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). Recipient of a MacArthur Genius Award, he is a man of many interests and passions. In a 1995 video interview for Discover magazine, he revealed their range and depth. Here are some of his comments during that interview.




  • Medical ethics. Would you conduct experiments on humans with severe mental retardation whose mental capacities are less than chimpanzees? Who are so handicapped that they feel less pain and social distress? Of course not. Then why do it on chimpanzees? ( People have little problem with experiments on mice, but have difficulties with cats and dogs, and so on up the chain.)
  • Forget Rousseau, the Romantics, and others who revere the "noble savage." Living closer to the earth does not exempt a people from the same ignorance and barbarities as committed by those in advanced civilizations. In fact, they can be worse. Violent deaths are far more common in New Guinea human societies than in European or American society. In fact, per capita violent deaths are more common in tribal societies, than in modern states. Although human beings have a genetic predispostion for violence, modern states are more successful in curbing that predisposition. Of course we had genocides such as the holocaust, but they resulted from a few people without the curbs imposed on behavior by other modern societies. Modern states typically exercise more curbs. The statistical evidence comparing modern states to tribal societies consistently shows modern states dampen the genetic predisposition.
  • This genetic predisposition is not unique to man. Those species which have the physical or mental ability to inflict genocide on another of their kind will do so. Jane Goodall found one troupe of chimps committing genocide over a few years, completing wiping out a neighboring chimp troupe. Genocide has been documented in hyenas and wolves. Murder has been witnessed in Peregrine falcons. Rape has been recorded in orangutangs, which is easy because the male weighs double the female. Group rape has been documented in mallard ducks.
  • My Comment: In Iraq, the recent vile abuses at Abu Ghraid prison provide support for the evidence of biologists. We must not forget Stanley Milgram's famous experiments which suggest the torturer in everybody. Nor should we ignore Zimbardo's prison experiments with students at Stanford University. * As Walt Kelly had Pogo say in the cartoon strip, "We have met the enemy and he is us." * ( In my college classes I have assigned these experiments as required reading. To my question, What would you do?, most students say they would never stoop so low. I hope they are right, although statistics suggest that more than a few of them would be wrong.) 
  • See Fate of Earth Part I and Part III.
  • 5/7/04

    Grand Canyon


    Grand Canyon Belief Charles Sanders Peirce
    Grand Canyon

    In the years before its fame, the Canyon surprised the unsuspecting. They had no warning of it until they got near. There is a story of a cowboy early in the last century, riding in unfamiliar country on the Kaibab Plateau. Loping along, he came to the Canyon's edge, then reined-in his horse, stopping suddenly, backing the mare away from the rim. He approached once again, cautiously, and just sat in the saddle, looking at what lay below. The sun appeared from behind a cloud and lit the immense canyons and distances in shades of color he had never seen. Finally, he patted his horse's mane and whispered to her, "Something happened here."

    Below your feet lies an abyss. First the earth falls away from you by several thousand feet to reveal the Tonto Plateau. Beyond that there is another sheer drop to somewhere you can't see. You imagine that there has to be a bottom.

    Looking down on the Canyon for the first time is not unlike hearing of a loved one's passing. It's hard to register, to take in. There it is in front of you but where are your bearings with it? You can't relate it to anything you've known.

    This post stands by itself but for an essay about how we get our bearings see Charles Sanders Peirce

    5/5/04

    Fate of Earth I: Population Pressure and Collapses

    The Fate of Earth
    Fate of Earth Jared Diamond
    Archeological studies indicate that whenever people can expand beyond the limits of their environment with the technology to harm it, they will do so.


  • Jared Diamond is a physiologist at UCLA. Recipient of a MacArthur Genius Award, he is a man of many interests and passions. In a 1995 video interview for Discover magazine, he revealed their range and depth. Here are some of his comments during that interview.
  • Overpopulated and deforested, Haiti is already so badly damaged environmentally that it won't be able to reverse itself. Look at Somalia and Iraq. Areas that breed war are also areas of environmental damage. The two situations contribute to one another, and this is no accident.
  • Easter Island was settled by Polynesians in 500 C.E. Unlike the Roman or Sumerian empires, which arguably could have collapsed from either internal or external forces, or both, Easter Island civilization had no neighbors, so it had to collapse from within.

    In 500, fossil evidence indicates a large pollen forest existed. By 1600, the forests were extinct. This meant no trees. All land prey had been hunted to extinction. Because of deforestation, erosion rendered soil infertile for crops. Nor did people have wood to build boats to catch fish. A population crash occurred, 7000 dropping to 2000. They could go nowhere else. Out of this environmental catastrophe cannibalism arose. People were killed for meals.
  • 99.9 percent of plants and animal extinction today is caused by human society. This figure is based on rates of extinction in the past.
  • Human population is doubling every 35 to 42 years. Jared Diamond pegged the present population at 5.5 billion. With regard to plant and animal extinction, most environmental changes will occur in the next 50 years.

    Of the energy fixed by plants, 40 percent is used by people. If the population doubles in 35 to 42 years, 80 percent of plant energy would be needed then. This would be energy commandeered from other life forms. In sixty years, nature would have nothing left to take, nor to give.
  • During the cold war, the risk of nuclear holocaust had our attention because it could wipe out hundreds of thousands in a few seconds. While the risk of it has receded, the risk of environmental holocaust increases dramatically but does not get our attention because it happens slowly. The human brain is wired so it can turn away from the evidence. ( To better understand this, our human predicament, see Descartes' Error: Antonio Damasio, Somatic Markers, As-If Loops, and Moral Dilemmas, 11 April 2004, as well as  Evolutionary Psychology and Moral Dilemmas, 12 March 2004.)

    Reason for hope. The Easter Islanders had no recorded history, no way to learn. We have books, a way to learn. 
  • See Fate of Earth Part II and Part III.
  • 5/3/04

    What is Beauty?


    The Nature of Beauty: Ezra Pound, Robert Persig (Zen in The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), and Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces)


    The Study in Aesthetics
                  by Ezra Pound

    The very small children in patched clothing,
    Being smitten with an unusual wisdom,
    Stopped in their play as she passed them
    And cried up from their cobbles:
    Guarda! Ahi, guarda! ch’e b’ea!

    But three years after this
    I heard the young Dante, whose last name I do not know—
    For there are, in Sirmione, twenty-eight young Dantes and thirty-four Catulli;
    And there had been a great catch of sardines,
    And his elders
    Were packing them in the great wooden boxes
    For the market in Brescia, and he
    Leapt about, snatching at the bright fish
    And getting in both of their ways;
    And in vain they commanded him to sta fermo!
    And when they would not let him arrange
    The fish in the boxes
    He stroked those which were already arranged,
    Murmuring for his own satisfaction
    This identical phrase:
    Ch’e b’ea.

    And at this I was mildly abashed.
    ________________________________________________________________________________
    I sit on the front porch, taking in the sky, feeling the breeze on my cheek, watching birds flit from tree to tree. A cloud drifts overhead, and its shape is radiant of the morning sun. An ant crawls over my shoe, then down its other side, continuing toward a crack in the concrete. I know if I don't move my shoe another ant will soon follow the spore, up over my shoe, down the other side, into the crack. At the moment, I don't care. With the sun in its ascendancy, the ant on my shoe, I am beyond even the Cistine Chapel in the Vatican. Adam's finger reaches across the dome for God's miraculous touch. It is all there, in that sky, the breeze, the birds, the ants, the sun. I am Michelangelo and this is the moment of Creation. I am both Adam's finger and God's touch. This is beauty, and it is all.

    Somewhere in The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell said that people don't search for meaning. Instead, they seek to live in such breadth and depth that life itself becomes the meaning. In Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig says that quality transforms, and that whatever we think we seek, we are really after quality. Both Campbell and Pirsig have in mind a beauty that can't be named, and it is this beauty that yields truth, a truth worth living for. It is an experience, not words, images, or numbers.

    John Keats said that truth is beauty, beauty, truth. Paul Dirac would have agreed with him, although he had his equations in mind. "It is more important," he said, "to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit the experiment." He meant that "if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty into one's equations, and if one has a really sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress." When asked how he recognized beauty in his math, Dirac replied that he felt it. It couldn't be explained. Nobody can explain it. He added that it's like Beethoven. If somebody doesn't appreciate the beauty of, say, the Ninth Symphony, then nothing can be done for him. Dirac stated that Einstein had this same point of view.

    With beautiful sardines is where it all stops, of course. You can't get any further than that. Oh, don't get me wrong. The aesthetic sense can take you into theories, equations, poems, symphonies, canvases, and fine thoughts, but you are moving away from it. Once you are in that moment, you have all the truth you will ever have. Yes, a Buddha can expand its opening, but that's it. Everything else is an attempt to explain it. Quantum theory spins itself out of an exquisite aesthetics, as does good poetry, but they are lain over that which we ultimately cannot describe, which is what Persig finally says with his qualia.

    It is the mystery that mind tries to explain, but which will always remain as a dimension of the universe unavailable to our understanding. One of the Upanishads, says "When you see a sunset or a mountain and you pause to exclaim, 'Ah,' then you are participating in divinity."

    And at these moments we are at least mildly abashed.