Imperfection in Buddhism

Nothing lasts,
nothing is finished,
nothing is perfect.

In carrying water,
and chopping wood,
I am at peace. 

I was inspired by Richard Powell's description of wabi-sabi, Feng Youlan's five main points of Ch'an, and Thich Nhat Hanh's description of apranihita to compose this very short verse.  I hope, if you read it from a Buddhist perspective, you recognize that the subject is not resignation, but liberation.  It addresses pervasive performance anxiety.  (But who can find peace under those conditions?)  Not the best analogy, but it's something like finding a calm in the middle of a storm, or maybe like the concept of "flawed beauty" (though I'd argue that all real beauty is flawed).  Carrying water and chopping wood is a metaphor for any kind of work that is never finished and whose benefits are only transitory, but if not engaged in (as the need arises) can result in considerable stress and anxiety.

Living in the moment is the key to happiness.  To be a child, to marvel at the beauty of the world and see it new for the first time, pure and unstained, without cynicism, without pessimism, without judgement of any kind.  I watched Nature: The Himalayas last night; every exceptional scene brought this to mind.  Reminding myself that everything is transient and fragile allows me to better appreciate it while it lasts, and yet not regret overmuch when something new inevitably takes its place (this sentiment is also called “mono no aware”).

See also Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus.

Piotr Naskrecki

I just had my first consciousness raising experience in 2012 - I attended a presentation by Piotr Naskrecki on the subject of his latest book: Relics: Travels in Nature's Time Machine.  He was invited to speak at the university by his close friend, entomologist and Fairbanks resident Derek Sikes.  I have been familiar with Naskrecki's work for the last few years since I saw his first book for sale at the local bookstore.  His photography alone is incomparable.  But some of his best work has been in the field of entomology and conservation biology.  He gave one of the best computer presentations I have ever seen, making me wonder how long it will be before he is a TED conference presenter.  After his speech I asked him about cycad seed dispersal, but during the book signing I engaged in deeper conversation. 

"What would be your advice to someone interested in entering the field of conservation biology?" I asked Naskrecki after he told me about populations of insects that were extinct in the wild but sustained in captive populations.  He described this as a very wide area that can be approached from a variety of directions, but it is a field that he said he was leaving.  There are no real victories in conservation biology, it is all about making compromises, and it is ultimately a losing battle.  Most conservation biologists have focused their efforts on documenting biodiversity before it is lost, as that seems a near certain inevitability.  (All the same, he did recommend organizations such as WWF and Audubon as good places to start.)  He said the only solution, which he mentioned only all too aware of its futility as a politically insupportable policy, is population control.  I asked whether raising the standard of living, which tends to result in decreasing rates of reproduction, might be a solution.  He pointed out that this also tends to increase rates of consumption per capita.  The problem seems insoluble. 

How does one reward others for having fewer children, or consuming fewer resources?  The whole concept of "reward" seems firmly grounded in the framework of consumption!  The only thing that can be consumed without being used up is mental phenomena such as knowledge, understanding, and emotional gratification.  Maybe access to social services is another area.  But we need not abandon our self-centered way of life to see the rationale of population control.  Everything reaches a balance point sooner or later.  The question is if we will have the wisdom to anticipate where that will be and hold ourselves back from the edge. It seems clear that we have passed the point of diminishing returns a long time ago, and have placed ourselves in greater danger had we not.  Who has an ethically defensible solution that can prepare us for where we will go from here?

"By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man – man himself.  So he must supply his own indispensable competition.  He has no enemy to help him.... anyone with eyes can see that any organism which grows without limit always dies in its own poisons."  - Robert Heinlein, “Time Enough for Love”, 1973

Consciousness (and bonobos)

Why am I me and not someone else?  Or why am I the me now and not a younger or older me?  If subjective experience is an illusion, could I just as well be anyone else so much as I am myself?  Am I any different from anyone who at any time ever experienced the shared illusion of consciousness?  Is subjective experience of selfhood a sustained self-deception?

Due to the interconnected nature of physical reality we are all linked.  This is an evolutionary fact.  Vast domains of life on Earth are the progeny of a a single ancestral lifeform, and it may in fact be possible to trace all life back to a single organism.  The illusion, valid so far as it goes, is that we are separate.  Lines can be traced backward in time that connect us all together.  The same lines extend again forward in time.  The individuals that compose a species are extremely similar to one another.  The species of a family, such as Hominidae for example, are very much alike.  (Looking at the photo of a bonobo from a book by Frans de Waal, I see such striking similarities to humans.  For more on these animals, read Bonobo Handshake, by Vanessa Woods, or Our Inner Ape, by Frans De Waal.  PZ Myers weighs in.)

Wise, Ruskin, Veblen

I watched Tim Wise: On White Privilege and was reminded of a book I read five years ago: Unto This Last, by John Ruskin.  Then I encountered some interesting references to Veblen goods when I saw an interview on the Newshour with Robert Frank about his new book The Darwin Economy.  As anyone familiar with Veblen goods knows, it has similarities to sexual selection. 

Why did Tim Wise catch my attention?  Anything that dehumanizes people, via prejudice or objectification, bothers me.  Emily Nagoski gave a good definition of objectification:  decreased perceived agency.  Anything that is contrived, coerced, uncomfortable, artificial, inconvenienced, unwilling, non-consensual, non-participatory, or in any way unnatural is probably, at least in part, the result of objectification.  Not always bad, but worth the introspection to discern. 

The mortal illusion?

Is there free will?  Morality?  Or even hope (in an Absurdist sense)?  Is the mind anything more than a machine?  Several prominent writers have suggested no to each of these questions.  If it hasn't already occurred, there may be some notions of "emergence" and "irreducible complexity" that will probably also be found empty and illusory.  Daniel Dennett is one writer who would agree, since he takes a deflationary approach to the hard problem of consciousness.  Opposed to this is John Searle, who is "anti-deflationary".  (Searle famously illustrated his perspective with the "Chinese Room" argument.)

Life is often characterized as having emergent properties, but if the same physical laws can be used to describe life and death equally well, where lies any fundamental distinction?  Before anyone cries foul, I am aware that there are relative truths and there are absolute truths (a Buddhist notion) and each should carry equal weight.  But wouldn't the distinction between life and death lie in the former category?  It is a notion that has served humans well throughout evolution as we struggled to survive in the forests and savannas, and now the concrete jungles.  But we know that living organisms can be reduced to "non-living" components and scaled back up again to living organisms.  Each state seamlessly emerges from and returns to the other.  Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.

If the difference between life and death is an illusion, it would be the greatest illusion of mankind.  It is certainly already the source of our greatest fears.  But Lucretius first made the point: when an organism dissolves with its body, nothing is essentially lost in any permanent sense.  To which I would add: love recognizes a common origin and destiny. 

See also: emergentism, supervenience

Witricity assisted cycling?

About a year ago I heard that Ecospeed was a great product for converting an EZ-3 recumbent trike to electric power assist.  Now Lightfoot, a recumbent cycle maker, has partnered with Ecospeed and is offering their models with Ecospeed options.  I would love to try one of these out.  Better yet, I would love to combine an Ecospeed equipped cycle with the technology developed by Witricity for unlimited electric power assist!  Why not charge electric bikes as they run along bike paths?  Although possible, for a variety of other reasons that day is probably a long way off.  Until then, this is the coolest thing I could do for my BikeE AT.

Hot Sheets Episode III: Look at the scienciness!

Great new books to read:
The Folly of Fools by Robert Trivers
Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker
Lying by Sam Harris
Passing Pains: Revenge, Retaliation, and Redirected Aggression in a New Light by Barash and Lipton
Also anything by Tomas Tranströmer, and perhaps a few more Nobel laureates in Literature. 

Cool TED talks:
Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit
Marcel Dicke: Why not eat insects? (like this one maybe)
Rachel Sussman: The world's oldest living things
Viktor Frankl: Why to believe in others
Graham Hill: Why I'm a weekday vegetarian
Craig Venter unveils "synthetic life"
Charles Anderson discovers dragonflies that cross oceans
Mary Roach: 10 things you didn't know about orgasm
Robert Lang folds way-new origami
Tierney Thys swims with the giant sunfish

Media fun:
Victor Stenger mused on the implications if effects can precede causes.

What I saw on TV:
Nova: Surviving the Tsunami – an excellent account given by survivors of the tsunami
Japanland – interesting series on Japan (made me want to buy sake)

Organism fun:
Tigriopus californicus "tigger pods"
Euphorbia lactea var. Cristata "coral cactus"