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Click on the Random Read Generator for a chance post until I get back. I hope to resume posting on Tuesday October 6th.

Survival of The Kindest

In Good Natured (1996) Frans de Waal provides an account of an old male bonobo leading a blind female around by the hand, and another of an ape who helped an injured bird by climbing a tree, spreading the bird's wings, and sending it off into the air. The primate somehow knew the kind of help the bird needed. Throughout the world of primates, observers have noted how apes reveal a capacity to assist others insightfully.

De Waal studied the field work of researchers, and the "veneer theory" of people such as Jane Goodall, who held that apes and humans share an innate tendency toward agression and violence. In human society this tendency is veiled by the veneer of civilization. Instead, he finds, and argues for, a wide range of ape behavior, from agression to tenderness and explores what this might mean in human society.

"When a bird flew into the glass enclosure of a bonobo named Kuni, de Waal recounts, she picked it up and tried to help it fly away again. Rather than comforting the starling like a fellow ape, Kuni carried it to the top of a tree, carefully spread its wings, and launched it gently into the air, showing that she recognized its needs as distinct from her own--a remarkable act of empathy. Humans show the same inclination when they help strangers without regard to their own reward, such as stopping to assist accident victims or giving away money to people they have never met."

“I think our motivations often transcend the reason why a behavior evolved,” de Waal says. “Acts of helping may have originally evolved in context for their survival value, but are now applied to situations outside that.”

Notice the words "transcend" and "evolved" above. He refers to transcending evolution. Here, de Waal implies a position against the reductionist explanations of evolutionary psychology, which see behavior as a means to perpetuate individual genes. A catch-phrase of reductionism can be found in Richard Dawkins' concept of "the selfish gene."

In Our Inner Ape, de Waal has a section, “Girl Power,” in which he "describes how females run the show in bonobo communities, controlling the food supply and wielding considerable authority over relationships and mating. Even the male bonobo hierarchy, de Waal says, is actually determined by the influence of the mothers." More

Carlos Castaneda & Tin Cups

Carlos Castaneda reached world fame with 12 books that have sold more than 8 million copies in 17 languages. As in the 1960s and 1970s, today he is read for his descriptions of another way of seeing the world through heightened awareness. He rarely spoke in public about his work, but since his death in 1998 he remains widely read, with followers around the globe. To this day controversy surrounds his accounts of his experiences.

Bruce Wagner was not convinced of the author's accounts of don Juan Matus, the Yaqui nagual, or sorcerer. Castaneda's tales of shape-shifting crows and coyotes in the Sonoran desert seemed far-fetched. Wagner was fortunate enough to get an interview with the reclusive author, an interview which reveals Castaneda in a different light.

In 1960 Castaneda was a graduate student in anthropology at University of California Los Angeles. He said that on a field trip in Arizona researching the medicinal properties of plants, he met don Juan, an old Yaqui Indian shod in huaraches, who offered to help. Don Juan also happened to be a sorcerer.

Narrating the story of the old peasant, Castaneda wrote his first book, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, now a classic, and a runaway best seller when first published. Written in California during the days of LSD and peyote, Castaneda learns how to fly, talk to a bilingual Coyote, and behold wondrous columns of singing light. This and other books made Castenada famous.

Like authors J.D. Salinger, and Thomas Pynchon, his celebrity drove Castaneda into life incognito. Reporters clamored for interviews but he was nowhere to be found. He slipped out back doors as they came in the front, you might say. Photographs of him are publicly unavailable. On a 1973 cover of Time magazine, only eyes are visible against the the dark outline of a head, but then Time discovered that the person wasn't Castaneda. Other magazines have tried to reconstruct his face based on the memories of old colleagues and erstwhile acquaintances. When Wagner asked how he should describe Castaneda, Carlos replied, "You may say I resemble Lee Marvin." (A macho Hollywood star now dead.) In fact he was a short, pudgy Peruvian. His ex-wife, Margaret Runyon, said he looked like a Cuban bellhop.

When they met at a cafe of a hotel in Beverly Hills, Wagner shook the hand of a man who "smiled broadly" and then sat down. All seemed well, and Wagner began to frame his first question when Castaneda's forehead wrinkled, his body convulsed, and his lower lip twitched. " 'Please!,' he declared, a shaky truce with facial muscles just enough to spit out the words, He bore down on [Wagner] in needy supplication. 'Please love me!' "

"We are apes with tin cups," Castaneda said after his sobbing stopped. "We're too busy holding onto mommy's hand," he explained, adding that "the scenarios of our lives have already been written by others." Contrary to this, he also said, "We are sublime--but the insane ape lacks the energy to see--so the brain of the beast prevails. We cannot grab our window of opportunity."

Wagner asked him "But if we have a choice, why do we stay in the gutter?"

"It's too warm. We don't want to leave."

Castaneda later said, "We must see ourselves as beings who are going to die. Once you accept that, worlds open up for you. But to embrace this definition you must have balls of steel." He went on. "What's real?," he asked. "This hard, shitty, meaningless, daily world? Are despair and senility what's real?" Castaneda claimed his system of opening worlds derived from twenty seven generations of sorcerers, bequeathed him by don Juan.

In Castaneda's books, don Juan helped him to perceive energy directly, teaching that we are magical beings who mistake ourselves for egos rather than spirits

Castaneda had encountered people like Bruce Wagner, skeptics of his accounts. Castaneda recalled a party where he met a scientist who read the first book but said he wanted proof, not anecdotes. Castaneda replied that to understand the book, the scientist would have to take Sorcery 101.

Somewhere in his article, Wagner asks himself, "What if it turns out Castaneda is inventing nothing? If that's true, you are in a very bad spot."

Of course, Wagner's suspicions might have been groundless and Castaneda was no fraud. Then again, he could have found support in Amy Wallace. In her memoirs, The Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda, she recalls the May-December affair she had with Castaneda--she young, he aging. She met him at one of his workshops where he lectured on body movements, including sexual, as taught by his twenty seven generations of sorcerers. At a seedy Los Angeles motel they got into bed. "Carlos was so nervous that he insisted we leave our clothes on. He seemed anxious to complete the act quickly and was strangely businesslike, evidently struck with performance anxiety," Wallace writes. "As he fumbled with buttons, I stopped him and whispered, 'Let's relax for a while--Carlos, let's kiss for a while'. "

At a lecture by Castaneda in San Francisco, and attended by Wagner, a young man asked Castaneda how people could achieve all his experiences if they could not have access to a sorcerer such as don Juan. Castaneda replied that the fellow didn't need don Juan. Instead, he needed a lot of energy, "and for that you have to work your balls off."

Castaneda ended his lecture by saying that "don Juan used to say, 'One of us is an asshole. And it isn't me.' That's what I came to tell you today."

Although Wagner didn't, the audience roared with laughter and Castaneda disappeared through the back door. While the audience laughed, Wagner responded differently to Castaneda's remark. He made up his mind about Castaneda, and one imagines him thinking of P.T. Barnum's phrase, "There's a sucker born every minute."

After deciding on his opinion of Castaneda, he says of Carlos running into the alley, "I wanted to chase him down, calling 'Please love me!' " Wagner says "that would have been a good laugh, anyway. But I forgot my tin cup."

At his Los Angeles home, Castaneda died in 1998 of liver cancer. He was 72. His death went almost unnoticed by the press.
_____________________________________
This article derives from various sources, including Details magazine, March 1994, "You Only Live Twice," by Bruce Wagner.

Karen Armstrong, Religions, and The Golden Rule

"As she accepts her 2008 TED Prize, author and scholar Karen Armstrong talks about how the Abrahamic religions -- Islam, Judaism, Christianity -- have been diverted from the moral purpose they share to foster compassion. But Armstrong has seen a yearning to change this fact. People want to be religious, she says; we should act to help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help her build a Charter for Compassion -- to help restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine."

George Koval

Nobody knew it, at least almost nobody, but a man born and bred in Sioux City, Iowa, did great damage to the United States as a spy for the Soviet Union. "Atomic spies are old stuff. But historians say Dr. Koval, who died in his 90s last year in Moscow and whose name is just coming to light publicly, was probably one of the most important spies of the 20th century." George Koval grew up in a small town, made many friends, played baseball and football, ate hot dogs, served in the United States Army in World War II, worked on the Manhattan Project, and eventually defected to the Russians after they thought his cover was blown. Worst, he provided them with key information on how to make an atomic bomb. He was recently honored by Vladimir Putin with the Russian Federation's highest medal. Hero for them, traitor for the United States.

"On November 2, 2007, some of Russia’s most senior military and intelligence officials gathered at the Kremlin to honor a Soviet spy whose name was until then completely absent from the annals of espionage history. . . .Russian president Vladimir Putin [paid] tribute to George Koval. Koval was an American citizen born in Iowa to immigrant parents from Belarus. In 1932, Koval, his parents and two brothers, all of whom were US citizens, moved back to the then rapidly developing Soviet Union to escape the effects of the Great Depression. . . . He received Soviet citizenship and returned to the US through San Francisco in October 1940. By that time, Koval was an accredited agent of the GRU, what intelligence professionals usually refer to as a sleeper agent. In 1943, Koval joined the Manhattan Project –the allied effort to develop the world’s first operational atomic bomb. More. Also read this.

Mark Rothko & Trophy Paintings: Or What Is It Really Worth?

It's both a cliché and a truism that "starving" artists depend on discovery by critics and endorsement by rich patrons in order to spread their reputation for genius. It's another cliché and truism that many die undiscovered. In other words, the intrinsic value of a painting depends on the painter's reputation. Investment bankers don't worry about being discovered and they don't worry about where their next meal comes from. The intrinsic value of money may be arbitrary, but a million dollars are still a million dollars. They can buy lots of stuff. *(For my purposes here, read intrinsic as a consensual value which in turn dictates price.)

We are in a recession and in a bear market, and stock prices have plummeted. Toxic assets and banks involve a question of mark-to-market, which is another way of asking whether they have intrinsic value, or whether they simply should cost what the market will pay.

In current economic conditions, how do art prices find their level? How do prices form at all in the art market? Why $73 million for a Mark Rothko and not $7.3 million? So here is one consideration of the question:

"If you want to own things, art is a pretty good bet. Buy art, build a museum, put your name on it, let people in for free. That's as close as you can get to immortality . . . I love art. It is uplifting. If the choice is between buying another building or a Pollock, I'd go for the Pollock every time."

"When a living artist knows his works can sell for tens of millions of dollars--which is the case with Jasper Johns, say, if not quite yet with Damien Hirst--how does he respond to that opportunity? And how does a buyer feel about remunerating a living artist so hugely and directly? To buy a work of art is one thing; to make another man rich is somewhat different. It demystifies the process, at least. More

Alan Weisman: The World Without Us

In that classic movie, On The Beach, the submarine crew finally discover the source of the erratic Morse code they had heard in Australia. Arriving off the coast of California, they take a launch to a deserted industrial site. Prowling its grounds, they discover a window draw string that the breeze has wrapped around the lever of a telegraph key. When the wind blows, the key taps out its "code." In San Francisco, they had looked through a telescope at a deserted city. It was all gone. The United States was gone. The world was gone. Fallen to nuclear holocaust.

Picture a world from which we are all suddenly vanished. Tomorrow. For a few days, there would be silence as grass grows in neighborhoods, street lights burn at intersections, and static hisses on radios and televisions. In a few months, weeds take over. In a few years, wild animals prowl the neighborhoods. Colonies of cockroaches make homes in kitchen cupboards and scamper across floors.

"How would the rest of nature respond if it were suddenly relieved of the pressures we heap on it and our fellow organisms? How soon would, or could, the climate return to where it was before we fired up all our engines?"

And again. "After we're gone, nature's revenge for our smug, mechanized superiority arrives waterborne. It starts with wood-frame construction, the most widely used residential building technique in the developed world. It begins on the roof, probably asphalt of slate shingle, warranted to last two or three decades--but that warranty doesn't count around the chimney, where the first leak occurs. As the the flashing separates under rain's relentless insistence, water sneaks beneath the shingles. It flows across four-by-eight-foot sheets of sheathing made either of plywood or, if newer, of wood-chip board composed of three- to four-ince flakes bonded together by resin."

From The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. It can be found here and here

Buddhism, Animals, and The Desire To Live

Is there a philosophical link between Buddhist thought and the nature of animals? In his book The Ethics of Killing, Jeff McMahan claims that your interest in continuing your life depends on your understanding of the continuity between "you" and later "you's". Animals, he says, are not as connected to their later selves.

As a reviewer of the book puts it, "The interest in going on living that you have at a particular point in your life (your “time relative interest” in going on living) depends—says McMahan—on the “prudential unity relations” between you at that time of your life and you or you at later times."

McMahan says that animals have a tenuous connection to this continuity. The reviewer of his book has questions about McMahan's thesis. The implication is that animals have "a weaker stake in going on living." The problem, as the reviewer sees it, is that "it implies that certain kinds of people have a weaker interest in going on living than the rest of us."

This sounds reminiscent of Buddhist teachings on putting out the fire of desire and living in the now. Or, people who no longer believe in their religion. Or, those who lose themselves in intense activity--Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow. (He has a book titled Flow.) In all these three cases there is less continuity between your present and future self. Does this mean you and animals have a weaker desire to go on living?

The reviewer has this to say about Buddhists: "You’ve taken heed of Buddhist wisdom that desire is the root of all suffering, so you 'live in the present' and limit your desires about the future as much as possible."

As for me, I think McMahan is way off base. Apropos of not very much at all, I once heard a story about a captain, a first mate, an ordinary seaman, and a pig. Floating at sea in a life boat after their ship sank, they discussed how to stay alive with only a cask of water and a pig. They would have to ration the water, but how could they ration the pig? If they killed it, it would rot under the hot sun and they would starve. The captain and first mate thought it best to cut off a little chunk of the pig at a time, first a little here, then a little there. The ordinary seaman then pointed out one small matter. They were in a very small boat and the pig would violently resist any attempt to diminish it.

If you want to read the review of his book, here it is. More