one hundred trillion synapse man

"one hundred trillion synapse man"

better faster stronger

this structure will endure

but not as it has endured

as I have never stood still

this repository contains

experiences and protein sequences

fit for a life, fit for a deluge

of stimuli and images

I am a vessel

there is no flesh and blood

there is no hair and sweat

there is only an impeccable order

descending through the generations

descending through matter in the limbs of my body

minute insights concealed in my membranes

subtly spawned genetically or environmentally

these handed-down tendencies essentially

compose a parade of uncertain moments

passing insubstantially

judge me by my activity

coursing through my neurons

the chemicals concocting my pride

the pathways diverting my anger

a streaming tide of unknown reaction

flowing without pause

expanding the caverns beneath the surface of my thoughts

I may not have a direction

I have a cause and I have a reason

dismember my love

find the anxiety which provokes it

you will notice the tension

your birthright and mine

there is a crack and a schism

never relinquish that

that is life itself



- Alex Abbott

Simplicity Followed By Awe

"Things used to be simple. There was one universe, and our galaxy was one among billions within it."

This is the first sentence from Marcelo Gleiser's column on NPR entitled "Multiverse Metaphysics".

If only things were simple! To understand that our planet lies in a solar system situated in a galaxy with more solar systems alone than we can imagine, and then - that there are billions of galaxies in our Universe...is this so simple after all? I think about the controversies surrounding Galileo and Kepler in their day, wondering what scientific discoveries will ascend from heresy to simplicity in the next 500 years?

I think about Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" TV series. I think about his wonder and fascination toward the magnificent intricacies of nature. A realization strikes me - awe is far more important than simplicity. I must resist simplicity.

A few days ago, I posted a column by Adam Frank of NPR on Facebook explaining how poetry can reconcile science and the sacred. Frank's column argues powerfully that science is a direct route to experiencing the sacred. This sacred awe is vitally important for the vitality of human life.

Because of its essential role in creating meaning for our lives, awe is fundamental to our shared humanity. To feel awe can be more important than understanding. Further, awe undermines understanding - to engage in awe is to admit a lack of understanding and to admit new possibilities amidst a mysterious unknown. One of my friends on Facebook, after I posted Frank's article on science and the sacred, complimented me for recognizing - as a non-religious person - that science and the sacred are compatible.

I have struggled to respond to that compliment, because I cannot accept it wholeheartedly. While I agree with my friend that science and the sacred are compatible, I do not agree that science and religion are necessarily compatible. There is a stark difference between the religion of awe and mystery, and the religion of simplicity and understanding. I believe that the first kind of religion is entirely compatible with science, but that the second kind of religion hopelessly distorts and undermines science.

To be fair, I also believe that the nonreligious can abuse excessive certainty - that a fundamentalist confidence in one's own understanding is just as dangerous to science as religious dogma. Any kind of strict adherence to simplicity annihilates both true science and true spirituality.

All too often, organized religion asserts a monopoly on fact and truth - while it asserts that there is only one way to live - and asserts that the course of existence is pre-determined and set by divine law. Science asserts, by searching for answers, that the world is unknown to it - while evolutionary theory demonstrates compellingly that life is a flowing and diverse tide, responding in different ways to a diversity of pressures and dangers - and asserts that existence can change rapidly and has done so constantly throughout its history.

There is no ducking the differences between science and organized religion, which have developed as organized religion has denounced and opposed science. I believe that it is far better to confront those differences than it is to leave them unaddressed in silence. However, confrontation does not have to become arrogance - the best confrontation occurs in humility, when people confront what they do not or perhaps cannot know, and a find a way to live within that mystery. Both true science and true spirituality actively confront that void and derive meaning from that mystery.

Where organized religion and dogmatic rationalism insist on muting mystery, disparaging differences, and attacking ambiguity, I must walk another path. I must seek other answers. I leave the road of simplicity to travel the road of awe.

Religion and Social Consciousness

I'm participating in a book study of Kevin Roose's book "The Unlikely Disciple". So far, I have only read the first two chapters, so there is no need for any spoiler alerts. However, if you've read the book before, please don't tell me what happens! I want to keep a fresh perspective.

During discussion in our study group today, I heard two rather broad, very compelling questions which I would like to discuss further on this blog.

1. Agnostic college student Kevin Roose transfers from east-coast, secular Brown University to Jerry Falwell's evangelical proving grounds at Liberty University for a semester to discover a greater understanding of evangelical Christianity. However, to fit in without giving himself away as an outsider, Kevin adopts a double persona as a fellow evangelical Christian. Is this double life justified?

I believe Roose had no other choice but to adopt the character of an evangelical Christian if he really wanted to obtain an insider's understanding. Was this choice a duplicitous one, a charade, a fraud? Maybe, to some extent - but I accept that his choice was no more a lie than the choices most people make every day. Why are any of us Christian, Muslim, Jewish, agnostic, liberal, libertarian, conservative, socialist, etc? Can we honestly embrace our own ideas as superior without honestly trying to understand all of the other alternatives which surround us?

Most individuals adopt convenient labels and narratives to use in their everyday lives with less thought than Roose puts into his pseudo-identity. How we do know that we are not defrauding ourselves? How do we know that when call ourselves something, that we are being true to ourselves, and whether we can really accept what we claim to be true?

Further, I think the only good way to understand someone else's ideas or values is to understand their experiences - or, even better, share some of their experiences. It really is futile to ponder someone's arguments or points without understanding why and how the person arrived at that place. Roose is doing the best he can to genuinely understand evangelicalism - he walks in their path and sees with their own eyes, instead of merely tracing their footsteps and following the breadcrumbs left in their wake, as so many other people content themselves to do and believe that they have a good understanding when they most assuredly do not.

2. Do you believe that Roose's beliefs will change during his time at Liberty University? Will he convert to evangelical Christianity, or even modify some of his beliefs to those of his peers? Why or why not?

To me, after reading just the first two chapters of "The Unlikely Disciple", it's inevitable that Roose will change many of his ideas as a result of spending a semester at Liberty.

But why should he change? Doesn't he already have many of his own well-established ideas, honed over the course of his entire life thus far?

Perhaps.

However, there is a key observation I must make to establish why I believe change is inevitable for Kevin Roose: that consciousness is a social product, evolving constantly with changes in one's environment and interpersonal interaction.

I'm currently enrolled in a philosophy course called "Persons and Selves". The last two weeks we've been discussing at various points how an individual's consciousness is shaped by a person's relationships with other people - that a person who is isolated eventually will begin to lose his or her personality, and that individuals gain much of their consciousness and sense of personhood as a reflection of the acknowledgement which they receive from other people.

I predict that by immersing himself in an environment dominated by evangelical Christianity, that Roose will experience a changing consciousness as he is recognized by other Liberty students for his actions as an evangelical, and that over time, he will slowly feel more and more attuned to those forms of recognition, so that his beliefs will shift in a way which accords with his social environment.

The consciousness of a human being is not a static product. You are not who you were as a young child or as an adolescent. You're not who you were a year ago, or a week ago. You're not even who you were yesterday.

I'm not on the record as someone who is very religious. But maybe there is a possibility that there is some kind of divine force in or behind our Universe. I believe that if there is a sort of animating force, akin to what is understood widely as God, that this God-like force most likely is a Process, which works through other things in the world.

Look around us: everything is in flux, and nothing is ever the same. Heck, that's what it says in Ecclesiastes (and on classic rock stations, if you like The Byrds). There is a season...for everything under the Sun, for agnosticism at Brown, for who knows what at Liberty, for hoping the Jets win so you can laugh at the New England Patriots, to ruing the day one said that because the Jets have just demolished one's favorite football team in the playoffs...

Return of the Journal-i: the Literati Strikes Back

Who has two thumbs and hasn't written a post on this blog in two calendar years?

Me!

Okay, since that awkwardness is out of the way for now, here's something I wrote on Facebook that I would like to re-post here.

"Thoughts on Comedy, Grief, and Human Existence"

I'm taken with the idea of grief as a sacrament, something through which the sacred passes; a vessel for humans to connect with something deeper which can be found within each individual.

I have long felt the same way about humor: that almost all absurdity in life is in extension a commiseration, an empathy, which springs from somewhere deep within us all - that the catharsis of laughter and comedy itself is really a transformation of our isolated, personal pain into a shared, expanded empathy that radically connects us to other beings in a profoundly new and meaningful way each time it occurs.

We encounter a new understanding of each others' experiences, a new relationship of shared joy and wonder at the vast depths of empathy which can be found in any of us, summoned against the potential agony of deep suffering and trauma.

In these ways, comedy and grief are identical: each brings from the deepest wounds of life, astonishment at our shared journeys and our shared perspectives. They produce a sympathy internal to us which directs us externally, to a shared life which is common to us all. They produce a shared transcendence of suffering, where a dramatically altered and expanded understanding of human love and human experience is possible.

Humor and grief at their best are the shared sufferings of other people, reflected and redirected through the prism of human compassion. They are expressed as exceedingly passionate and raw realizations of our shared human predicament. These revelations of grief and humor are both somewhat profane and somewhat sacred. But most thoroughly of all, they bear witness as a fulfillment of the highest which can be expected from the human condition. They are a positive and enduring testament to the power of the most decent and kind stirrings within the human soul: empathy, sympathy, compassion, and understanding.