Not long ago people worried that nobody writes anymore. They recalled an era when friends and colleagues poured their hearts out to each other in letters. Even today, the unfathomable word count of the Internet notwithstanding, discovery of a handwritten missive in the snailbox from a friend or loved one continues to stir in its recipient anticipation and wonder. Other letters, those thick ones requiring two postage stamps, may sometimes raise a quiescent sense of dread. It turns out that conveying sadness and regret (and other frailties of the human condition) takes more words. For the writer who’s merely writing to thank you for a good time had, well, the space of a three by five card may be all that’s needed.

Yet as personally felt as a handwritten letter may be, it’s too often its own problem. Some writers cursive style I simply cannot read. Misspelling doesn’t bother me; words or whole phrases crossed out doesn’t put me off; if the ‘^’ character appears mid-word to correct a spelling, fine; or if the writer feels the need to shout in all caps, I can excuse that. What I find difficult to brook is penmanship that looks like it was trained on the Dead Sea Scrolls! If I hear one more person pine for the return of cursive writing instruction to the classroom…I can’t predict my behavior. Marshall McLuhan once famously claimed that the communication medium itself is more important than the message it carries. This would suggest that writers writing in the “medium” of glamorous cursive styles believe their flowery “Qs” and indecipherable loop-de-loop letters encode their own meaning. It’s like saying in the spoken word that dolphin-speak is its own meaning. If you’re a dolphin, maybe. Or a crackpot republican (fun begins around 40 seconds in). For the rest of us old schoolers, if you want to reach out to us hand-writers, yes! by all means. But please print next time. Your words mean things, not your penmanship.

Beautiful, innit? The brain of a fruit fly, showing neurons (~ 140,000) color coded by the circuit they operate in. See the full report here.

The entire brain of a fruit fly is no larger than a sesame seed. This is a breathtaking accomplishment, about a decade in the making. I mean c’mon, you don’t need to be a neuroscientist to have your mind blown by this. Better yet, read the report and you’ll see the scientists, having captured the full map of the fly brain, used it to create a virtual brain which they then installed in a virtual fly. Then they stimulated the specific neurons that sense a sugar taste, and viola! the toy fly’s proboscis (nose) extended toward the sensation, just like the proboscis would on a real fly intending to feed. As if that weren’t cool enough, they then figured out the specific neuronal pathways involved in sensing sugar on both the right side and left side of the proboscis, different pathways. And here’s what they found

The simulated brain did what a real brain would: It commanded the proboscis to stick out so that the fly could eat. And if the virtual fly tasted sugar only on the right side of its proboscis, the brain sent commands to bend it toward the right.

And you know what they didn’t find? Not a spec of evidence for a “conductor” of the fly’s thoughts. Imagine that – a brain that animates its host all by itself. The heresy!

And below is the animated 3-D image. See the article for the toy fly in action. More of this please, scientists 😉

People, I beseech you, that’s A LOT of interconnected ganglia to make a fruit fly work, no? Think about this next time you carelessly swat and kill one.

All moral judgement goes out the window once you accept the world as it is. I didn’t choose to write that sentence. It arrived in my brain, unbidden, all on its own. Same for this sentence, and the next. Imagine the experience of the feeling of freedom that comes from accepting that all that occurs in this world is as it is, that every single outcome (the future) could not have been otherwise. Next, consider putting this proverb into practice in your daily life. Start simple. Try it for one day. Monitor your thoughts closely. Each time you note yourself wanting to render moral judgment of any kind (“that was wrong, and so…“; “it was your responsibility to…“; “you should have instead done…“; blah blah) – stop yourself and consider that whatever this person did or said was not of her “choosing,” and then you might understand why any moral rebuke from you would be silly. After all, if she can’t choose her thoughts, then she can’t choose her actions either, so how can she be held “responsible” for causing the future? And withholding moral judgement cuts both ways. When what someone says or does aligns with a good outcome, to paraphrase Barack Obama, “You didn’t do that.” Withhold your praise. Same goes for someone whose action aligns with a bad outcome. Withhold your admonition. When you come to accept that you don’t think your own thoughts, and come to accept that you can’t do otherwise, then the moral judgement of any human actor (yourself included) is easily seen as a pointless exercise, like shaking your fist at the rain.

Also consider that the qualities of good and bad do not require the prior of a moral constitution. There are plenty of books of philosophy wherein the authors provide a secular basis for good and bad. Smart people have been thinking about this stuff for a very long time now. And I’m not saying good and bad are not subjective. Any given future state of affairs may be good (or bad) for you, consistent (or not) with the purpose of human flourishing, and simultaneously be the opposite for another person, surely. So if the action a person takes directly causes you to experience a bad state of affairs (e.g., she steps into the crosswalk and you hit her with your car), it seems to me it would be a natural and fair human response to say so (fuck, this is bad), just avoid any moral accusations directed at the pedestrian, implying that she could have thought or acted otherwise. This is a really hard way to think about this; I know, I’ve tried. I keep trying. Although I can report that, each time I’ve responded to a person absent the tone of moral judgement, I feel better about myself, like I’ve experienced a kind of positive feedback, even if it’s short-lived.

Personally, I don’t much care what the roots of moral sentiments are in human psychology. Evolution! Maybe. Although I find the conclusion that all physical and mental traits of an organism (humans included), viewed as they are by evolutionary biologists as being nothing more than in service to reproductive success, deeply unsatisfying. While it doesn’t really matter to my point here what the source of morality is, when I have paused to think about the root cause, my conclusion, more a hypothesis really, is that all the moral sentiments expressed by humans are grounded in some way in the religious traditions they practice, and have practiced in one form or another since we started to walk upright. I imagine that when the ancients looked into the night sky, they were both humbled and terrified. Terrified because unlike any other animal, they were self-aware of their own mortality. They thought themselves special. Different from the other animals in some important but hard-to-describe way. So they made up stories regarding their origin, which over time gave way to creeds for proper behavior within the groups they formed, and to guide their various modes of worship. In time, nearly ever human alive became convinced he was special in some way, came to believe all were endowed with free will, that each person had an author up there that directed his thoughts, an author which could realize any possible future, among many, that the free-willer desired. But before long people started suffering moral opprobrium for doing or saying (or not) things they couldn’t possibly do or say otherwise, all because of this ancestral, mythical belief that they could. The rest of it is explained by inheritance, the passing down of these stories and their creeds to subsequent generations of people, right up to today, including the underlying belief that humans can somehow “choose” the future with their minds. And when they screw up, the bad outcomes are their fault, because of course they could have done otherwise, right? And where their supposed “choices” align with good outcomes, well, atta-boys are used to reinforce the myth that I chose my future!

There has to be an unsettling consequence to the conscience of people who really deep down have come to believe the future is fully determined, and the notion that human beings cannot do (act or speak) otherwise to change it (cause it). Because even as I have tried to sustain my responses to people as though this is true, is has set me to experience a kind of cognitive dissonance in my mind. For example, when I speak my order to the ice cream store person – I’ll have chocolate, please – how is that not me changing the future state of affairs from what it otherwise might have been, i.e. a future where I had chosen vanilla or strawberry? The answer, I think, owes to a cultural myth, handed down from my ancestors, reinforced during my upbringing, which gives rise to the intuition that, as a human, I am special in some spiritual way. This is evidently so deeply felt it’s very hard for me (and likely you as well) to try and force my brain to relearn what, in fact, is really going on – understood through modern neuroscience that my brain output (thoughts) cannot, and do not, determine the future. But here’s the thing: If the act of my speaking “chocolate” was fully determined before I spoke it, if that instantaneous state of mind did not produce the future (chocolate vs another flavor), if it only represents the future after the fact of it, ok, but then what is the most immediate prior cause of any future state of affairs? The underlying laws of physics? I’m a science guy, I admit that makes my brain hurt.

A parting thought…

If we humans are merely amoral agents whose brains represent predetermined states of reality – what I call experience – instead of the widely held belief that we are the author of our own thoughts which determine the future, then all our moral sentiments are up for re-consideration. Take pride and forgiveness. Both are sentiments that entail a moral judgement. If a person can’t think her own thoughts, if I’m right she may only experience and respond to the thoughts that come to her unbidden, then whether some future state of affairs is good or bad makes no difference, she is both an acausal and amoral agent with respect to that state of affairs, no different than, say, a tree. And who is proud of a tree for the shade it provides, or forgives it for falling on a car.

Stars change state, too. They don’t choose to change state. Stars have existed much longer than life has. Now and then a star will go super nova, and there are no ifs, ands or buts (or choice) about it. Study any matter in the universe you’d like, at any level of order or organization. You’ll find it works automatically – that is, to the best of our knowledge, according to the immutable laws of physics. What you won’t find evidence of is a mysterious controller.

So how could it be that the matter between our ears fundamentally works any differently? I’m not saying it’s not Metamathemagical in its function. Hell, if you ask me, the common garden spider in our front yard is Metamathemagical! But it didn’t choose to spin its web today. Any more than I just now raised my arm to reach for a cup of coffee.

Or maybe you believe that the state of the entire universe might have been different – otherwise – at some point in time, merely because it’s unpredictable? Who’s to say what might happen tomorrow! Nobody can predict the future state of the entire universe, right? I mean, c’mon. Hell, you can’t even predict the precise 3-D state of your own body one hundred milliseconds from now! OK, sure, but here’s the thing, the fact of unpredictability doesn’t mean any future state of the universe is undetermined. Even as our present-day knowledge of the laws of physics is incomplete, it’s not like any future state of the universe could be otherwise, any different than exactly how it came to be. Quantum indeterminacy would seem to suggest that, at least at the quantum level, predicting the precise future position and direction of sub-atomic particles is not possible. But still, wherever a particle is, whatever its travel vector is, we’ve no evidence of, and thus no reason to suspect, a ghost-like chaperone particle exists, operating outside the realm of physics. That’s mysticism. If you believe that, I’ll kindly ask you to show your work! And since everything in the universe is part of it, including us, including every time-sliced state of mind, there’s no evidence of a ghost in the machine (brain) either. The organization of atoms and molecules in the brain versus a star is different, for sure, but unless you can show how that organization produces agency (choice), well, I’ll continue to prefer the principle of Occams Razor.

There is nothing in there controlling our states of mind, nothing making undetermined choices from alternatives. There are no alternatives when it comes to the future – there’s only one outcome in reality, the one that occurs. There is memory, and reasoning, and emotion, and a lot of other features of the human brain, but in the end it’s all really just experience. I don’t choose what memories to store; I don’t choose how to solve a puzzle; I don’t choose if and when to cry. I don’t choose my successes, I don’t choose my failures. I don’t choose anything because there is no I in there. I don’t think my own thoughts. None of us does. So far as we can tell, it’s the laws of physics doing all that. We merely experience it.

Or maybe you’re still unconvinced, maybe you think our spider up there might have done otherwise and taken the day off instead?

When He was in charge, each and every morning, very early, He’d swagger out of the barn, strut to the east facing fence, and like no cock ever before had ever manged to do – impossible as it may seem – this cock would jump to the lowest rail of the fence, gather Himself there briefly, and then, with a vigor never, ever before observed in a cock, jump again to the top rail of the fence. There He would remain, at the ready, for all to see and adore. It really was something to behold. Not one of the farm animals who came from far and wide, to gather below him in a swooning throng, had ever seen a cock quite like this cock. Especially the majesty of his wattle! A feature every cock used to lure mates, sure, but no cock anywhere has ever had a wattle as glamorous and shiny and alluring as this cock’s wattle. Not a Hen in the land could be found who didn’t want to titillate this cock’s wattle. There had never been a cock as beautiful as this cock, ever. All the plants and trees, even blades of grass, sun worshipers in the main, were seen to bend toward His orange glow instead. He really was something to behold, this cock. No one had ever seen a cock like Him, anywhere. There had never been a cock quite like this cock. He was big and beautiful and powerful as ever, this cock was.

And then, as he would do every morning, this cock, a cock the likes of which none of his adorers had ever seen before, to remind them all of his greatness as a cock, would raise his beak skyward and cock-a-doodle-do like no cock ever, anywhere has ever done before. And damn if the sun didn’t rise! For years the greatest cock ever did this every morning. Until, one day, he didn’t. It seemed the greatest and biggest cock ever had left the barn. Yet the sun kept coming up each morning. What’s up with that, the animals wondered.

Then one day, years later, the greatest cock ever known returned to the barn, such as it was. There were holes in the roof, quarters were in disarray, many animals had died or fallen sick since He’d left, and even the plants and trees were at war with invasive species. After He’d left, there was no one to replace the greatest cock ever known, no cock for the animals and trees and plants to adore. Times were tough, the animals bewildered. They feared the sun may never rise as high in the sky or shine as brightly as it had when the greatest cock ever known had perched on the fence and cock-a-doodle-doed, like no cock had ever done before. Ever.

Atheism is not the belief in nothing; it is the acceptance of nothing. The acceptance of the conclusion that we are alone in the universe. Acceptance of nothing must be one of the most genuine expressions of human humility. If an omniscient being exists out of nature, then it’s unknowable to every human conscience constrained by nature. So even if that’s the case (I doubt it is), it would still feel to me that we’re alone, and that’s ok.

Some refer to the connectedness of everything in nature as a kind of fabric, whose state at any moment in time represents the collective experience of all its members, animate and not. The nucleus of an atom is not one thing. A molecule is many atoms connected. A cell is millions of interconnected molecules. And so on, up the hierarchy of order, just so. An individual human being, her conscience constrained by nature, may nevertheless close her eyes and imagine what her existence on the fabric means. But an answer will never come. No entity may come to understand the true nature, or meaning, of the larger natural order it’s part of. And when left unchallenged, human imagination can morph into a malignant belief in the supernatural. The alternative is simply to acquiesce to one’s role in the order and acknowledge the absurdity of our existence within it. That’s how it feels to me.

The wisdom here is not to curb your imagination – it’s part of what makes existence on the fabric fun! – but to try and avoid having it metastasize into an irreversible belief in the supernatural.

And before you call me woo-woo, go ahead, try to provide a definition of meaning that doesn’t make you, too, sound woo-woo. And while you’re at it, try the same for good and evil.

All moral judgement is sort of funny, really, when you accept the absurdity of existence. It’s an axiom of existence that, tabula rasa, no one is better or worse than any other human being on the fabric. I think our desire to judge others may be driven by another kind of supernatural belief, Free Will. Ever had someone tell you that you under-performed, that you could have done better? Next time, smile and reply: No, really, I could not have performed differently, I could not have performed otherwise. Then maybe go a step further, get Socratic on your judger: Can the rock do other than roll (or not). Can the seed do other than grow. Can the heart do other than pump. Might the liver do other than metabolize, or a lung do other than respire. No? Well then, do tell, how could the brain (me) have done otherwise? There are no satisfying answers to that question.

And if you think I’m straying into the woo-woo again, go ahead, provide an explanation in science, or even a convincing thought experiment, starting with the atom and the immutable law of cause and effect, working your way up the hierarchy of material organization, that will show how the outcome of any human action could have been otherwise. (A caution for experts: Quantum indeterminacy doesn’t get around the problem).

Chloe, aka cinnamon girl, aka stinkopotamous – after a gleeful roll in a dead fish on the beach today (Yay!) – has at least one mental health issue we’re concerned about mildly amused by, Separation Anxiety. She gets indignant when we’re away. From the home that is. Left alone in the car, she’s been fine, so far. Although even there, we haven’t pushed our luck beyond the forty minutes or so it takes to shop at Costco. But at home, if HW and I leave for a couple hours, or her caretaker (house sitter when we travel) leaves to run an errand, Chloe’s MO has been to exhibit her displeasure with being left unaccompanied by selecting an item in the home and inflicting damage on it. Lately, her item of choice has been a book. It’s true that left-alone puppies often go for shoes first, I can confirm from personal experience – I’ve seen what a bored Airedale pup can do to turn a pair of stiletto pumps into perforated flats in the time it takes to walk to the mailbox and back. But one, Chloe’s not a puppy, and two, it doesn’t seem she takes the insult of our absence personally like that. Like by tearing into my OluKai sandals, which I’d left in plain site on the kitchen floor before leaving today to go get coffee beans (and stop for a Beer ‘n Bowl at one of my favorite haunts). No. When I returned home the sandals were untouched. It was later, in the fun room, where we go to kick back and chill, that I spotted the most recent victim of her terror: the book I’m reading. The damage this time was relatively superficial, she started in on the back cover, waded into the Index of Names, and then finally stopped about ten pages shy of my bookmark. And even there, only the corners of those pages bear evidence of her canine rage, before, evidently, she stopped and thought, That’ll show em. So the entire book is still readable. A couple weeks ago, while we were away traveling and the house sitter was watching Chloe, she was at it again. This time she shredded an entire paperback HW had kept bedside, fortunately not one she cared about. I got a photo text from the house sitter, Soooo sorry! I was with her the entire time can’t figur when she did this. I think I shot her back a LMAO emoji.

In time, this too shall pass. We’ll get older, Chloe will get older, and all of us will look forward to our alone time now and then. Until that time comes, and eventually it will, maybe I’ll go back to reading books on the Kindle. She hasn’t acquired a taste for electronics, yet.

Steady yourself for Mr. Lowry’s forthcoming, and eagerly anticipated, alternate history book on Cambodian genocide titled: Pol Pot Can Win on Compassion.

People talking lately about near death experiences. A friend asked me if I’d had one. Define near, I said.

His was the time he was underwater, trapped, out of air, hallucinating that this might be it. Then, at some point, he said, a miracle occurred. He’d managed somehow to get just his face above the water, gulped some air, then cried out as a deeply religious person does. Hard to describe the touch I felt, he said, but I knew then my cry had been answered, I wasn’t alone, none of us is.

This guy too had a near death experience with water. Though near the end of his story, he says that unlike the hallucinations of someone on LSD (even as he admits no personal experience with using psychedelic drugs), his experience was authentic, because, he claimed, the beings experienced in drug hallucinations are cynical, whereas the being of his experience was the real deal – mystic and multi-dimensional, benevolent, one that created in him a feeling of completeness, all of which, and more, he eventually concluded was God. One person said it was the most beautiful account of a spiritual experience she’s read all year. Thing is, though, with this guy, his experience was preceded by his attempt to drown himself, unlike my friend.

Near death experience, it seems, visits people of variable character. Interesting as well that both accounts involved water.

Speaking of which… there’s Cinnamon Girl, zooming over the surf so fast it seems like she walks on water. Miracle!

We left last week Thursday to travel to another land. A place we’ve both been before. They say you can never go home. They’re wrong.

We left here over a year ago. Not much has changed. Not that I expected much would in such a short period of time. After getting out and about these past few days, the overall vibe of this place, a place HW and I called home for the better part of thirty five years, has a palpable desperateness to it, but I feel like that impression might reveal a confirmation bias in me. Like, “Phew, honey, looks like we got out at just the right time.” But like midnight sun, sometimes you can’t tell dusk from dawn. There may be economic activity underway or in the works here that may turn the city’s fortune around. For instance, I read there’s tens of millions of dollars in federal infrastructure money just waiting to be spent here statewide. Not so much in terms of new private capital investment, so far as I can tell, but attracting that kind of investment has been a struggle here for quite a long time. It’s just so far away from the economic centers of lower-48 America, and on top of that there’s no commercially viable road system connecting the two. One thing that hasn’t changed is our love of the unique natural beauty here. And we’ve enjoyed re-connecting with friends who still live here. That’s priceless